by Диана Дуэйн
The luckstone lay there in his hand, dark now. It was a Glassmaker artifact. he thought. The Glassmaker people had inhabited some of the worlds of this part of the Verge untold millennia ago. They had left a few artifacts behind in the ruins of their cities—objects usually inexplicable, most seemingly made of this glasslike material, some of them having energy trapped or sourced within them in ways no one understood. Some were thought, perhaps, to be weapons. Some were tools, though to do what jobs, no one knew. The species itself was long gone from these spaces, and no one knew anything more about them, not even what they looked like.
This little stone had come to him as a gift, part of a load-lightening exercise by another Marine going home. There were stones like it from some of the Stellar Ring worlds, natural electrically charged silicate-compound fragments that would glow sometimes, and so at first Gabriel had thought nothing of it. But slowly it had started to make plain that it was more than just some pebble picked up on some alien beach. Some of its behavior was simply peculiar—like melting that hole into the deck when it had been dropped there. Other things it did, though.
He shook his head, scuffing with one soft-booted toe at the little melted pit. The stone had become a key to the detection and use of other alien artifacts scattered around this part of space. One such facility had been hidden on Danwell, revealed when Gabriel and Enda came there in company with Helm, Delde Sota, Angela, and Grawl. Other things had been revealed as well, as Gabriel found the stone opening parts of him that had been locked up, their presence hitherto unsuspected—especially a part of his mind that seemed increasingly likely to see the future as just a kind of past that hadn't yet happened and to remember what Gabriel hadn't yet personally experienced. That same part of his mind started experiencing all kinds of other traffic as well: he found himself participating in the edanweir's communal telepathy and being used by the alien facility on Danwell for its own purposes. Defending the planet, yes, but there had been something else going on as well.
One of the powers he had met on Danwell—then wearing the shape of a very small edanweir child, but as time went by Gabriel was less and less deceived by this—had told him that relatively nearby was a great hoard of the same kind of alien technology—very old, very powerful. waiting. She had not said so in so many words, but the implication had been waiting for the right person to come along. Someone carrying the right kind of key. or who, in contact with it, had become the right kind of key.
The comms chimed.
"Hey, Sunshine," Angela said, "Longshot, sorry for the delay."
Gabriel smiled slightly and reached into the control display to toggle the image-conference mode. There was Angela, blonde and cheerful as always, and Grawl beside her in their roomy cabin.
"It's all right," Gabriel said, as Enda came up the hall to sit down in the other pilot's seat. "Angela, we really ought to get out of here immediately. You didn't have any further business here?"
"What's the problem?" Angela asked.
"I had to shoot somebody."
She whistled softly. "Did they start it?"
"Did you ever know me to start anything?" Gabriel said.
"No, you've always been a perfect gentleman," said Angela. She smiled sweetly.
Grawl guffawed.
"I didn't mean that," Gabriel said.
Helm's image appeared in the tank, along with that of Delde Sota in her usual mechalus rlin noch 'i, her hair bound back into a long braid all intertwined with cyberfiber and motile fibrils so that it wove and wavered gently in the air as she spoke or gestured. "Assessment: probably needed shooting, if you shot them. Concern: possible early exit from system advisable, though some will draw incorrect conclusions from same."
Helm looked across the table at Gabriel. "Before we go on to decisions about where to go next, what about this new ship you wanted to buy?"
Gabriel sighed. "There are a few possibilities sitting around in some of the showrooms on Bluefall, but the prices here are pretty inflated."
"The prices everywhere are inflated," Enda said, somewhat wearily. "This is, after all, the Verge. If we were within the Stellar Ring, the prices would be lower." She sighed and said nothing more.
Gabriel clearly heard her not saying it and was briefly both amused and annoyed. He couldn't go within the Ring because he would immediately be arrested. Still, there were times, like this one, when he was tempted to do it in order to get a price break, but that wouldn't work either. In the Ring, buying a ship with false ID was even harder than it was in the Verge.
Helm grunted and said, "Only thing the Ring has over the Verge is that the swindlers are packed that much closer together. The paperwork back there would kill you, not to mention the ancillary expenses. Registry fees, police inspection fees, planetary taxes, national taxes, city taxes, local squeeze. I'd sooner pay a little extra and have less attention from the snoopies to what I was doing."
"It's the paying a little extra I was trying to avoid," Gabriel muttered.
"No way to do that," Helm said. "One way or the other, they get you. I'd just prefer to pay people I like, but that removes one set of options. We won't be staying on here. So what do you have in mind for our next jump?"
"Well." Gabriel knew what the response was going to be to this, without recourse to any luckstone-assisted visions, but that couldn't be helped. "I was thinking about Algemron."
The others looked at each other in surprise.
"Algemron?" Helm said. "Don't like a quiet life much, do you? Or a long one." "What's the matter with Algemron?" asked Angela. "They're shooting at each other," replied Helm. "Again?" Grawl said.
"Not so much 'again' as 'still,' " Helm said. "That war's been going on, how many years now, fifteen, twenty? And it just doesn't seem able to stop."
"A good war," said Grawl, "can become traditional."
Delde Sota laughed, but the laughter had little humor about it. "Conjecture: can become part of business as usual," she said. "Result: participants decide they cannot do without it."
"Like Phorcys and Ino," Gabriel muttered. "All the same, I think that's where I'm headed."
"Can I ask what brought on this sudden attack of insanity?" Helm asked. He glanced at Enda.
She shook her head. "This is the first I have heard of it."
"Conjecture: Gabriel is running a hunch," said Delde Sota.
He nodded. "That's about as much as I can confirm at the moment."
"Okay." Helm sighed. "We're going to Algemron. Fine. You'd better brush up on your guns, and so will I." He started to get a thoughtful expression.
"Advice: no gunrunning on this run, Helm!" Delde Sota said immediately. "No," Helm said almost sadly. "I suppose not."
Gabriel smiled a little. The governments of the two planets Alitar and Galvin were always hungry for new weapons, but usually they preferred to buy in bulk from the major arms companies. Private gunrunning was frowned upon, and both worlds' police vessels routinely stopped passing traffic to see whether it was carrying contraband. Their levels of enforcement in this regard varied wildly—in some moods, personal sidearms had been adjudged to be contraband, and the sidearms' carriers had been imprisoned for prolonged periods.
"We'll only be running data," Gabriel said. "There's no drivesat there, and there are too few infotraders coming in. Both planets are always complaining about it."
"Might the reason there are so few infotraders," said Angela, "be anything to do with the war, and the fact that it's dangerous to go anywhere near that system?"
"Especially when the two worlds go most eagerly to war," said Grawl, "when they draw close, once each year."
"We wouldn't be anywhere near that time right now, would we?" Angela said.
Helm's eyes narrowed as he did math in his head. "Coming up on it now, I think."
"Beginning of 'close approach' season in ninety-four standard days," said Delde Sota. The end of her braid, presently looped around her whisky glass, twitched a little.
"Helm," Gabriel said,
"what I mean to tell you is. this might actually be too dangerous. I wouldn't want you to—"
"Get in trouble?" Helm said and burst out laughing. "Gabe, you need your head felt if you think I'm going to let you go to Algemron by yourself, after not leaving you in places that should have theoretically been a lot less dangerous."
"I'm serious," Gabriel said. "When it comes to getting out of harm's way, we're not as quick as you are, and I don't like you having to wait up for us while we take an extra starfall or so to catch up. Leaving out the fact that it's dangerous, it's just not fair to you. The extra supplies you use up—"
"You let me worry about that," Helm said, narrowing his eyes at Gabriel a little in a way meant to suggest that Gabriel should let it drop. "I don't mind."
"I just wish we had a more powerful engine for our drive," Gabriel said, "one big enough to keep up with you. How the heck did you get a ship with an engine like that, anyway?"
"Someone died and left it to me," Helm said, grinned, and narrowed his eyes harder.
Gabriel started to open his mouth, then thought better of it. There was no telling under what circumstances the "someone" had died, and possibly this was something Helm preferred left behind him. Helm had been good enough about believing Gabriel's protestations of innocence, no matter how unlikely they seemed. This seemed like a good time to return the favor.
"Look," Helm said. "Kid, you're into something here, you and your magic pebble. I don't know what's going on, exactly, but we were all at Danwell together, and I know the kind of results your hunches produce when you let them run. If you think you need to go to Algemron, I'd bet that it'll be worthwhile, if only in terms of how interesting things are going to get. I'd bet serious money that they'll get interesting enough for you to need some extra guns to back you up. So I'm in. I'll find a way to cover my expenses and have a good time, too." He turned to Delde Sota. "Doctor? You want to sit this dance out? Your choice. I can arrange reliable transport back to Iphus before we head out, if you like."
Delde Sota gave him a cool look, though it was an amused one. "Assessment: chivalry not yet dead. Professional assessment: unwise to allow this venture to proceed without adequate medical advice available. And other areas of expertise."
Gabriel cleared his throat, which felt oddly tight. "Angela, you don't—"
"If you think you're going to invite me out of this little venture," she said dryly, "think again. The past couple of months have been the most interesting that I've had in a long time."
"Maybe so," Gabriel said, "but look, your ship is a family venture. Taking Lalique into harm's way might—"
Angela tilted her head to one side and said, "For insurance purposes, title vests in whoever's piloting her at the time. Believe me, I've read the fine print in the contract. Mine is a private vessel. If I choose to travel with you to Algemron, and they try to interfere with me, I'll sic the Concord on them. The place may be hazardous, but the rule of law hasn't broken down entirely out that way. Otherwise there would be no infotraders going there. Or am I wrong?"
She was right, a situation that annoyed Gabriel considerably. There was a particular smug look she got at such times. "Grawl?"
"I am a poetess and a chronicler of my times," the weren said, ruffling her forearm fur idly with one claw, "and it would look ill should I opt out of a venture merely because fangs may here and there be shown. Let us therefore lay our plans."
Gabriel looked over at Enda.
"It is as I have said to you before," she said. "I will be three hundred in a decade or so, and there are many places I have not been. Algemron, I must admit, is one of them." Enda shrugged gracefully.
Gabriel breathed out. "All right."
"So let's go, then," Helm said. "The sooner the better, it sounds like."
"I will query the drivesat for traffic destined for Algemron," Enda said. "There should be some, but not so much that it will delay our departure by more than half an hour or so."
Helm got up to go do a weapons check somewhere else in his ship. "Okay," Angela said, "flash us when you're ready to go." The connection from Lalique faded out.
Enda went back to the main infotrading console to start the business of picking up a load of data from the drivesat. Gabriel started to get up. "One moment," sad Delde Sota. "Professional requirement: put arm in display, please."
Gabriel blinked and put the arm that had his medical chip embedded in it into the control display. The end of Delde Sota's braid went out of sight of the pickup. A vague tickling sensation started in the skin around the chip.
He glanced at the doctor with slight concern. That long, high-cheekboned face was more than usually thoughtful.
"Any big changes?" Gabriel asked quietly.
"Corrected assessment: what else but big changes," Delde Sota said, more quietly still. Gabriel was rather astonished by the look of concern in her eyes. Delde Sota was a very managing type, both of her own emotions and of situations in general. It was not usual to see her seeming out of depth.
"How?" Gabriel said. "I haven't started to sprout toadstools yet. Or horns and batwings, either."
"Might be preferable," said the doctor. "Could suggest interventions for those." She breathed out, a concerned hiss of sound. "Systemic changes, shifts in microchemistry, endocrinal balances, neurochemistry. here a molecule, there a molecule; a bond breaks, another one fuses in a new way. the implications are disquieting."
"We both know I've been changing," Gabriel said, "but you said there was no physical engine for the changes. It's not as if I'd been hardwired or anything."
"Hardwiring too could be dealt with," Delde Sota said. "At least some chance of selectivity there, of personal choice, or of putting it back the way you found it if you don't like the way things have turned out. But who chooses what happens to you now? Where are these decisions being made, and by what instrumentality? Internal? External? Combination of both by way of implanted suggestion?" She shook her head. "Diagnosis: no sign of such, and hard enough to get you to take a suggestion anyway, even not implanted. Molecular engine? No sign of such. Reprogramming of DNA? No sign of that either. Changes are coming out of nowhere. Going—"
"Nowhere, maybe," Gabriel said.
She looked at him with the expression of someone willing to humor a crazy person, but only so far. "Challenge: tell me again that changes of such subtlety, so perfectly tailored to you, are happening accidentally. Have various bridges to sell you, if you believe that."
Gabriel looked at her slightly cockeyed. "Why would you want to sell me bridges?"
Delde Sota gave him an exasperated look. "Waste of good idiom. Gabriel, neurochemical changes alone suggest purpose. Careful phasing of neuropeptide sequences into ancillaria, concealed myelin restructuring strategies—"
"I can't feel those," Gabriel said. "Even if I did, I still wouldn't know what they meant. I'd sooner know
why my hair's gone so white."
"Assessment: archaeotypically hominid-masculine response," Delde Sota said, flipping her braid in the air in an I-give-up gesture. "Follicular obsession. Opinion: only fortunate the perseveration does not concern iphyphallocointrinism." She rolled her eyes as she said this, and Gabriel tried hard to fix the last word in his mind so that he could look it up later. "Warning: more important things to be concerned about. Idiomatic description: your body is becoming less your own and more something else's." She paused. "Incorrect. Someone else's."
"As long as it's still mine," Gabriel said.
"Precisely the problem," Delde Sota said, "since the 'someone else' in question is you. Alert: mind/body is a spectrum, not a dichotomy! Shift one part, other parts shift as well. Physical affects mental as profoundly as mental/physical." She looked at him narrowly. "Example: rather odd events just now on Danwell. Alien machine acting as mind/body extension. Conjecture: unaffected?"
Gabriel kept quiet for a moment and thought about that. The strange dreams he had started having before Danwell had not stopped, though their emphasis had c
hanged. Since then, he had been feeling. well, not exactly tired, not physically anyway, but as if he had overextended himself somehow. At least he had been feeling that way for the first few days after that last battle. The feeling had gone away. Now he was beginning to wonder whether it had done so too quickly.
"No," Gabriel said, "I don't think so."
Delde Sota let out another long breath and said, "Statement: remiss of me to leave client unsupervised during period of unpredictable change. Addendum: if toadstools do occur, would not like to lose chance to publish."
Gabriel gave her the driest look he could. "Ambulance chaser."
Delde Sota gave him that look right back, with interest. "Notification," she said, "skilled enough practitioner has no need to chase. Knows where to stand so that vehicle stops right in front of her."
Gabriel smiled too, though he had to force it a little, and closed down the display.
Much later that evening, after they had made their first starfall on their way to Algemron, Gabriel lay in the dimness of his little cabin, under the blanket, with the luckstone in one hand.
He had begun to feel it looking at him.
The feeling had first crept up on him when they arrived at Danwell, and it had been increasing since. It was not an unfriendly regard, particularly. just a sense of being thoughtfully, carefully watched.
It wanted something.
Yet the wanting was very cool, dispassionate. There were no emotions attached to it that Gabriel could sense, which was just as well.
He wished he knew what it wanted, so that he could get it out of his life.
Is that even possible any more? Gabriel thought. There were the physiological changes Delde Sota had spoken of.
In the dimness, he glanced across the room toward his mirror. He knew that if he got up and looked at himself, he would only see again what he had been trying not to see every morning: all the hair that was coming in silvery white, the hair of an old man. Though not entirely white yet, it would be soon.