by Diane Duane
He was on that first shuttle at oh-dark-forty, the one that went down to Phorcys to fetch Rallet, the chief investigator for the Phorcys government. Gabriel had no problem with the run down, which was enjoyable enough. He always liked near-planet work, and the view over the planet's peculiar bands of north-south-running mountains intrigued him, leaving him wondering about the tectonic forces that might have formed them. But the enjoyment ceased as soon as they grounded at a small private airfield near Endwith, the main city in the planet's northern hemisphere, and picked up Rallet. Gabriel resigned himself to the problem he'd gotten himself into. He would have preferred to escort almost anyone else, for he had done escort duty for Rallet once before. He therefore had a much more intimate and unpleasant knowledge of the man than the interminable transcripts contained. Rallet climbed onto the shuttle as if he owned it and never even glanced at Gabriel's salute, offered from the spot by the inner airlock that Gabriel would occupy during the trip to Falada. Well, it was Rallet's privilege to treat Gabriel like furniture if he pleased to, at least as far as protocol went. And so Rallet did, stalking past Gabriel without so much as a blink and sinking into the ridiculously luxurious bench seat the likes of which Hal and his people had spent the whole previous day installing in the shuttles. "Tat," Rallet muttered under his breath to his aide, who was busily opening a case and going through paperwork.
"Pardon, sir?" said the aide, though Gabriel guessed that the aide knew well enough what his master had said.
"Tat," Rallet said, more forcefully. "Look at these disgusting interiors. It's an insult, a calculated insult. This vehicle cannot have been maintained for months. Look at the stains! I shall speak to the ambassador about it when we arrive."
He went on in that vein for a long while, and Gabriel, true to his request from the ambassador and his thinly veiled orders from Jake, listened to every word. It was unpleasant work. The man's arrogance was apparently incorrigible, and his ego was the size of a planet to judge by his conversation, for everything that happened in his immediate vicinity was inevitably pointed directly at him as a carefully crafted insult to his position, his dignity, his political affiliations, his planet's sovereignty. He complained about the unsatisfactory course of the negotiations, about Star Force's unwelcome presence in his system, about the inequity of the agreement they were trying to foist on his free and proud people, about the covert intentions of the Concord toward his world. Gabriel had seen much of this material in the transcripts, and it gained nothing by being delivered live. But it's odd, Gabriel thought, he almost sounds like... The thought trailed off in another withering attack by Rallet, this time on why it took so ridiculously long for the shuttle to merely get from the planet's surface to Falada. Gabriel turned his mind away from the idea of how pleasant it would be to tie this bloated warmongering bureaucrat into a chair and lecture him for several hours on the specifics of low-fuel-high-decay tangential orbits. Then the thought he had been chasing abruptly clarified itself. He sounds like he's reading from a script, like it's an act. Like he really wants to stop. But why? came the ambassador's question again. Why now? Gabriel listened and heard nothing that suggested an answer.
After twenty minutes or so the ship began its final approach to Falada, and she took them inboard. Rallet's poor assistant, who had been trying to get a word in here or there during the tirade, finally said, "What do you wish to be carrying as we go in, sir? The last offer?" "No," Rallet said, "the order of business." "Which one, sir?"
"Ours, you idiot," Rallet said, and started fussing with his restraining belts long before they were far enough inside for it to be safe for him to do so.
Gabriel blinked, but did no more. So the ambassador had been right about this, at least. Rallet had an "order of business" that differed, possibly radically, from the one which Delvecchio openly intended. Might be something, might not. Better than nothing, though. He made a note to get word to the ambassador about this any way he could, well before the proceedings began.
The shuttle door was opened from outside, and ceremonial pipes were blown as usual. Rallet got off, actually bumping into Gabriel on the way out, jostling him. Gabriel gave way and caught his balance without looking as if he were doing so. Then when the man was away and well out of sight, Gabriel let himself have one grimace of pure rage before getting off the shuttle and looking around to see where the next one was.
The rest of the morning, to his annoyance, was not even as interesting as riding with the detestable Rallet. There were two more shuttle runs to Phorcys, once to pick up the secondary Phorcyn negotiator, Rallet's chief assistant, and once for the delegation's "support team"-ten quiet men and women who seemed to spend most of their time repeating the spoken proceedings near-silently into tiny repeaters held to their throats. They had no equivalent on the Inoan side. Gabriel knew that Phorcys had several major languages, but he didn't think these people were translators. Maybe they were record keepers? There was no telling. At least they tended to chat freely with one another on the way up to Falada, and the talk was at least vaguely interesting, as eavesdropping often is. But they said nothing about anything going on elsewhere in the system, overt or covert; and since Gabriel's position, in terms of protocol, forbade him to speak except when spoken to, he was unable to draw them out.
That shuttle in turn came home to Falada and discharged its passengers. Gabriel wearily got out, looked around to see which shuttle was the next to go out, and boarded it. This one went to a small military airfield near Ino's planetary capital. It returned with the Inoan secondary negotiator-who had a terrible cold- and his four staff, all of whom were trying desperately to avoid being too near their superior while equally trying not to look like they were trying to avoid him. The poor man himself, all wrapped up in the voluminous silken formal robes that Inoans favored, hardly noticed his staff at all. He was too busy sneezing and coughing as if he was trying to dislodge a thrutch that had somehow become lodged in one of his lungs. Gabriel escaped from that shuttle and found himself briefly standing off to one side of the hangar and brushing his uniform as if it were possible to get the germs off it that way. I'd better take an antiviral before the session this afternoon, he thought with resignation, and just stood where he was for the moment, wishing duty didn't require him to get on another shuttle as soon as one presented itself. One did within a matter of minutes. It was delightful, in a way, to have a few moments to admire the grace with which a shuttle could come sailing in through the hangar's force curtain and settle itself in place. This one did so with no wasted motions, came down, and sat there ticking gently to itself for a little while, the metal of its wings still shedding residual heat from the escape from atmosphere. The shuttle's hatch cracked open, top and bottom. A delay, and then after a few moments, another marine guard debarked and walked away from it, a woman who looked at least as tired of this kind of duty as Gabriel was. From inside the door of the grounded shuttle came a voice, which Gabriel was positioned fairly well to hear, saying, "-to know anything about that business, it's not my affair." Gabriel took a few steps backward, into the shadow of the shuttle's starboard airfoil. There was a reply from inside, but too far inside the shuttle for Gabriel to make it out as anything but a mutter. "I don't care," said the voice nearer the door in answer, "maybe she is cleared for it, but I've no orders to tell her, and if these people can't detect their ships out that far either, then it's not a problem for us, is it?" More muttering came from inside. The voice near the door suddenly became less distinct, but much more vehement. "-want to," it said, "you go ahead and tell them... kidnappings and . . . vanishing, but... mind being dismissed for fantasies about outsystem ghouls and ..." The voice went low, too low to hear any more. Then just two words were audible: ". . . ghost ships..."
The other voice, nearer the door, said, "Ridiculous."
A man stepped out, an Inoan, one of the other secondary negotiators. Behind him another human walked down the carpeted walkway. She was not an Inoan, but a woman in the plain grays of the Di
plomatic service-Delvecchio's assistant ambassador, Areh Wuhain. She went after the man, who looked unconcerned. Her own expression was extremely annoyed, but Gabriel watched her smooth it out as they headed for the airlock leading to the main corridors of Falada.
Now that, Gabriel thought, was something. Certainly something bizarre that he didn't understand terribly well, but possibly useful. He rehearsed the dialogue in his mind and locked it in place with the short-term memory technique he'd been taught and then looked for another shuttle to board.
"Are you crazy? Nothing's left, thank heaven," came Hal's voice from across the hangar. Hal was looking wearily at the last shuttle down, leaning against die second-to-last shuttle with his arms folded.
"No, I tell a lie. One more, but that's not for another hour. Some hold up down on Ino."
"So they're all here now?" Gabriel said, strolling over to lean beside him briefly.
"All the important ones. Gods, what a waste," Hal said and breathed out. "I saw you getting off after Old Flat Face this morning. What a treat he must have been. You looked like you wanted to throw up." "Duty before comfort," Gabriel said.
"For this kind of duty? You are sick," Hal said. "Sick. Your blood sugar must be off somehow. Did you take a pill before you went to bed?"
"Of course I did, you bollix," Gabriel said and shoved him amiably.
"Something else must be wrong with you, then. It's not normal for a marine to actively seek any duty except fighting."
"Well," Gabriel said, "maybe, but there's one I'm damned well going to actively seek out-the meeting this afternoon."
"Fireworks?" Hal said. "That 'violence' I heard mentioned?"
"I wish I could sell tickets," Gabriel said. He sighed, stood up straight again. "Never mind. I've got to go take an anti-cold nostrum."
"Did we catch a little chill?" Hal said, teasing, as Gabriel headed for the airlock back to the ship. "More than that," Gabriel said, and added to himself: A whole lot more than that, I think.
Three hours later it began in the large room that had been set aside aboard Falada as more or less neutral territory for the Ambassador and the negotiating parties to use. It was plush and beautifully decorated, looking like a drawing room one might find in a castle on some ancient Solar Union world. Wood paneling graced the walls. A suavely polished table gleamed beneath the non-glaring, soothing light. Graceful abstract art hung on the walls or stood in the corners on demure pedestals. Any normal person would have found the effect restful, calming, but these were not normal people. Gabriel stood in his "guard" position by the door and waited, aware that his pulse rate was starting to rise. The negotiating teams filed in, their leaders coming last. Rallet came first, with his oddly shaped head that made Gabriel think that at some point in his life his mother had lost patience with him and hit him in the face with a shovel. Then came ErDai-shan, with a face that had long since fixed itself into deep and permanent lines of dissatisfaction with everything around her, from the lighting and the shape of the table to the fact that she had to breathe the same air as her opponent across the table did. They looked at each other with animated loathing. It occurred to Gabriel suddenly that what he was seeing here was a marriage ... one into which the ambassador had unwelcomely intruded, bearing an olive branch instead of what each of the parties wanted: a stick to beat the other one with. Gabriel, meanwhile, held his breath to see what they would make of the stick that the ambassador was about to produce. "Thank you all for your promptness," Delvecchio said. "Before we resume the proceedings, I must take your excellencies into my confidence and ask you both a question that will determine much of the direction of what remains for us all to do today."
They looked at her attentively, with loathing only a little less than that they reserved for each other. Their respective civil servants shuffled and muttered and rustled paperwork, bound and unbound, and sorted carts, already uneasy with the breach in the order of the day. "Did you really think you could get away with it?" said the ambassador.
Those two faces went from loathing to the beginnings of outrage. Gabriel had seen this before, the how- dare-you-speak-that-way-to-me expression. But it was reflex in these two, and now it was edged with something much more noticeable: fear.
"I must inform you that this will be our last meeting," said the ambassador, "one way or the other-except for the very minor tidying up, which your assistants will manage. Since we last met, conditions have changed."
"Ambassador, this is outrageous. We are not children to be scolded by a mere-" "Ordinen," said Delvecchio. "Mashan."
Both their mouths fell open, even ErDaishan's mouth, that mouth whose lips never moved while its owner spoke. Now it worked, that mouth, and words tried to make it out, but couldn't. "Ordinen is safe," said Delvecchio, "and we have holo, lots of it, of your ships attempting the attack. And Mashan. Yes, Mashan is not just the name of a small town in the dust any more. We have holo of that too. Dirty breeding," and the ambassador shook her head like a mother tut-tutting over a child's dirty playclothes. "What will your investors think? And what about Ordinen, which you had guaranteed could produce eight thousand tons of refined ores per week? Not after all those tunnels had been blown into one great crater, it wouldn't."
The two stood up slowly, from either side of the table, with expressions of terrible rage on their faces, and they began to scream at each other.
The Crack! that came from the middle of the table stopped them. It was the cane, the one the ambassador had used to come aboard for the first few meetings, the long black cane she walked with or made show of walking with sometimes. Now, though, Gabriel finally understood what it was really for. "Don't bother," said the ambassador, very softly. "Collusion. It has been heavy in the air for the last few weeks. You two thought you were quite circumspect. No one knew about this, not even your own people, just the very few in your own defense forces whom you suborned to this business. Here, on this matter only, just this once, you were able to agree."
The silence that fell had weight. First it pushed ErDaishan back down into her seat, then Rallet. "So many other things you might have agreed on," said the ambassador, "but no. This, though, you thought you could get away with. I am sorry to interfere with your perception of your control over of the scheme of things, sir, madam. But now you have pulled the forces of the world around you a little too far out of shape. And like gravity and the other forces, the response is immediate. The talks are dissolved by cause of concrete proof of bad faith on both sides, and I must report my failure to the Concord." The two Thalaassan delegates sitting opposite one another went ashen. They did not start screaming, but they did start talking. Slowly at first, then faster. One of them, then the other, and then both together.
They became two matching portions of an incoherent babble, and Gabriel finally had to stop trying to make sense of it. The ambassador said nothing at all, just let them talk, let them run down. It took nearly half an hour.
Finally that heavy silence fell again. The ambassador leaned back in her chair and waited.
"Madam," said ErDaishan finally, "you do not understand. It cannot end like this-"
"It has ended," said Delvecchio. Was that just the shadow of a smile on her face, Gabriel wondered?
"If there was something that we could do-"
"If there was just some way that-"
"I await your suggestions with interest," said Delvecchio, "but I have no idea what can possibly restore the status quo that your acts have shattered."
She sat there and listened to them for another hour. During this period Gabriel had to revert to mind- control again, using the routine that helps keep the body from twitching while the brain is wishing it was somewhere else, anywhere else. The mitigating factor, the only thing helping Gabriel feel less than completely twitchy, was that the two negotiators-helped eventually by their teams-slowly began to suggest the very series of face-saving maneuvers that Delvecchio had described to him and written up for her team three days before. It occurred to Rallet and
ErDai-shan in fits and starts, in pieces that had to be rearranged, and some of those pieces caused screaming nearly as vehement as that which had begun the session. But slowly they created the solution that Delvecchio had predicted, almost paragraph for paragraph as the writing up began, as if they had genuinely thought of it all themselves. Gabriel had often enough wondered if the ambassador had a little mindwalker in her somewhere. Now he was less sure. What he was seeing was certainly something that could pass for predicting the future or mind reading, but it was neither of these. It was an understanding of people in general and these two people in particular and the circumstances that surrounded them-and it was so profound that once or twice it made Gabriel shiver. Also once or twice he saw ErDaishan or Rallet look up from the documents wearing an expression that was a terrible mixture of anger and, not fear, but now (toward the end of it all) disgust. Disgust at having been caught, at the unfairness of it. Gabriel looked at the ambassador, but no reaction to their expressions revealed itself on her face. She was like a statue, one that occasionally spoke to approve something and otherwise caused people to make notes very fast as they worked to produce the approving result again.
This process ran at least another three hours. Gabriel lost track of the time. His inner clock had for the time being been badly skewed by having to keep himself still. He was actually jarred back to consciousness-not that he had been sleeping, just elsewhere in mind-by the ambassador's voice saying, very simply, "No."
"I don't want to call it an agreement," ErDaishan was saying. "To imply that we agree on-" "It has to be called something that will suggest to your respective peoples that there is some hope of the war stopping," said the ambassador, "and since you will not allow it to be called a treaty, because you refuse to agree not to go back to war again later, or a settlement, because you claim nothing is settled, then agreement it must be. No lesser term will produce the stabilizing effect on the markets that you require for this whole process to bear fruit."