Diane Duane - Harbinger 3 - Nightfall at Algemron

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NIGHT AT ALGEMRON

By

Diane Duane

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Glossary

STARDRIVE

THE HARBINGER TRILOGY

DIANE DUANE

Volume One:

STARRISE AT CORRIVALE

Volume Two:

STORM AT ELDALA

Volume Three:

NIGHTFALL AT ALGEMRON

For Alison Hopkins

NIGHTFALL AT ALGEMRON

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

Distributed in the United States by St. Martin's Press. Distributed in Canada by Fenn Ltd.

Distributed to the hobby, toy, and comic trade in the United Slates and Canada by regional distributors.

Distributed worldwide by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and regional distributors.

Star*Drive and the Wizards of the Coast logo are registered trademarks owned by Wizards of the

Coast, Inc.

All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are

trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Cover art by rk post

First Printing: April 2000

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-65620

ISBN: 0-7869-1563-3

620-T21563

U.S., CANADA, ASIA,

PACIFIC, & LATIN AMERICA

Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

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+ 1-800-324-6496

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Visit our web-site at www.wizards.com

Yet how shall we judge

by counting the lives.

By the size of the field?

All these are but symbols:

The desperate deed

the blaze of blasters,

are ever held up

Yet all axework still

to the courage that stirs

slowly facing the fears

and the great awful dark

the cold empty realms

till the hero comes

inhabiting darkness.

Uncertain that battle:

and known least of all

for breath's a deceiver,

life's nightfall alone

the battle by blood.

mere columns of numbers?

By the ships there to-gathered?

true reckoning runs deeper.

in hot haste enacted.

the swift ship's firing,

as the warrior's meed.

must give pride of place

in uncertain silence,

of war's desolation

of unknown inner spaces,

uncharted, unhearted,

and with his will conquers.

and owning the silence.

all unknown its ending:

by him who has triumphed—

and mocks its own victories:

tells the truth of the battle.

Helm's Saga, song iii, staves 480-498. Grawl.

Chapter One

Gabriel Connor stood in bright sunshine on the little hill, looking down the dusty single lane road that led

down to the center of Tisane Island.

You've come this far, he thought. Get it over with.

He felt guilty about his own reluctance. He had been avoiding this visit for long enough. He shouldn't have

to feel that going to see his family was a chore. Except this was his father, and Gabriel had not heard

from his father in more than a year… and he was scared.

In the days before his exile from the Concord, Gabriel would normally have taken a public

transport—landed at Hughes Island, taken a Blue Sea Lines hopper to Stricken, and then a small

"subsidized" hopper from Stricken across the straits to Tisane. But something about such a routing,

enjoyable as Gabriel would have found it, made him nervous. There were too many things that could

happen, too many chances that someone would query his ID and discover that he should not have been

there at all… that the ID was a fake, hiding the identity of a wanted criminal. He finally had opted to

simply file for a landing permit for Sunshine with Bluefall Control—under the identity that Delde Sota had

crafted for him—and control had granted the permit. As an infotrader's vessel, no one was going to

subject Sunshine to too much in the way of customs formalities without reason.

Then Gabriel had taken her down. It had been a casual landing, one partially handled by ship's navigation

systems so that he had not needed to call Enda to help. Still, as Gabriel kept an eye on the progress of

the landing, she had come along in the middle of the approach, looking through the door from the main

hallway at the great, glowing blue curve of the world that filled the front viewports.

"Shall I come with you?" was all she had said.

Gabriel had thought about that. Her presence would certainly have been welcome. There was something

about Enda that always made him feel more confident. It was not specifically that she was a fraal—slight

and slim and pearl-complected—that made him feel large and strong around her. It was not her age,

though she was old enough to be his grandmother several times over. She just has the gift, Gabriel

thought, of bringing out the best in people.

But not today, not right now. Bringing her along would seem too much like an admission that he needed

her around to help him handle his fears.

"No… thank you, though," he'd replied.

"All right," she had said. "How long will we be down?"

"Probably not very long, an hour or so."

She had gone back down the hallway and said nothing more. The rest of the landing went without

incident, and Sunshine had more or less landed herself at the little field down at the far end of Tisane,

shutting her engines down to standby.

Gabriel had gone to the airlock door, called the lift, and stood there a moment brushing himself off. His

cream-colored smartfabric jumpsuit meant he was slightly overdressed for the climate—they kept the

ship at about 20 C, and it was closer to 30 outside—but he was not going to spend more time

temporizing over his clothes. He was nervous enough as it was.

One more thought had occurred to Gabriel, and he had almost been ashamed of it, but his life was no

longer the predictable thing it once had been. He had gone down to the arms cabinet and come back

with his little flechette pistol, a present from Helm. He had pocketed it, ashamed even to be thinking that

he might need it in this place of all places.

"Back shortly," he had said to Enda. He had been surprised by the strangled sound of the words as they

came out.

"All right," she had said as the door opened for him.

Gabriel had entered the lift and ridden it down. The door slid open—

The fragrance of the air… he had completely forgotten it. That peculiar and specific mix of salt, water,

sun on water, ozone, flowers, dried or rotting seaweed down at the shore, just at the bottom of the cliff

where the landing pad was positioned… and the light, the constantly shifting light nearby, of water moving

and glittering in the sunlight, and the more distant, hazy blue-white glow of cloud and haze and showers

trailing against the horizon. It all came together and took Gabriel by the throat, the sudden light and scent

of childhood lost. For many long moments, he had only been able to stand by Sunshine and wonder if

this was really what he had named his ship after: this memory, this most basic of his experiences.

He had started to walk, mostly to have something to do besides stand next to Sunshine like someone

lost. Decidedly, Gabriel was not lost. If he knew anything, he knew this road back to his house from the

landing pad. How often had he come here as a kid to watch the hoppers jump off, carrying local people

about their business or visitors back to their ships and off to the stars? There hadn't been that many

visitors. Tisane was not a place to which people tended to come back once they had managed to get

away from it.

It wasn't that way with the rest of the planet, of course. Bluefall was one of the most beautiful planets in

the Verge, possibly one of the most beautiful worlds anywhere on which humans and their associate

species lived. It had received its share of tragedies and difficulties over its history, but the friendly climatic

range, the buoyant economy, and the fact that the place was at peace kept bringing more colonists to

take advantage of the world's bounty.

It had become a rather crowded place, of course. There were something like four hundred and thirty

million people from all species here now, and every stellar nation had at least one island here. Beyond

those, though, away from the big, long-settled islands like Hughes, maybe three thousand islands lay

scattered in small chains or long ones, as accessible or inaccessible as their settlers chose to make them.

Tisane, near Stricken, was one of the more accessible islands that nonetheless was known by almost no

one but its immediate neighbors. This was emphatically one of the uncrowded places. There were a few

other small ships and hoppers parked on the pad, but that was all.

Pushing the memories aside for now, Gabriel walked down the single paved road that connected Tisane's

landing pad to the rest of the island. He looked at the houses as he went. Almost all of them were the

same, built and shingled in local woods and composites. Here and there a lot was empty, the house that

had stood there most likely fallen victim to one of the vicious hurricanes that came through here every

decade or so—the price you paid for living in a place so casual, so relatively unregulated. Stricken had

been settled by Hatire people, and some of them had come over this way, but only a few of them

remained here now. Most of the population was human, but there were a few fraal scattered here and

there as well. The island had a school, to which Gabriel had gone until he hit the secondary level, and

then he had to catch a hopper over to Stricken and back every day. Now he found himself wondering

how many children were left here, or whether there were any at all.

Gabriel walked through the shade of the big tropical alaith trees, which towered up on either side of the

dusty main road with their pale peeling bark and big blue-green fronds edged with red. The place was

very quiet. This was the hot part of the day, and many people rested or worked inside until the sun

became a little more tolerable.

Gabriel walked. He was shocked by how different everything seemed even though it was all the same.

Everything looks… wrong somehow, he thought.

When he had been here last, he had been young and innocent. Now it amazed him just how innocent he

had been, and how certain that the world was going to go well for him now that he was a Concord

Marine. None of that certainty clung to him now. The Marines had shaken him out as a criminal, and the

world had proved more complex and nasty than he had ever suspected. Probably nastier than I suspect

even now, Gabriel thought. The uncaring forces that moved people around like gaming pieces, him in

particular, were doing it more aggressively than ever. His increased consciousness of being so moved had

not improved matters. The world that once had been clean and cheerful and exciting now looked to him

like just another beautiful untruth laid over a substrate of intricate motion and countermotion, interwoven

plots, inadequately understood motivations, and endless traps set by those who were in on the secret for

those who weren't.

Gabriel stopped in the sunlight and took a few deep breaths to try to calm his nerves. He was at the top

of the little rise that divided the island in two, the hump over which the road crossed. From here he could

look down to see the little house, still all by itself down at the very end of their town's street, with more of

the alaith trees all around it, and up in those trees the whitetails singing "beewee," "beewee," "beewee,"

interminably as always.

Nothing had really changed. Nothing…

I have, though, Gabriel thought. It was very strange to stand here, being where he had been and who he

had been for the last year and more—and yet see everything else here exactly as it had been when he

left, as if time had stood still. Down in the cove, the blue water glittered. The fronds and leaves of the

trees moved gently in the wind, and everything was very quiet, but the disconnected feeling, as if

everything was somehow out of joint, would not go away.

Gabriel walked down to that little house with its broad roof and low eaves. He went up the front steps,

carefully, and touched the door signal set into the wood of the shut door.

He waited.

No answer.

He pressed the signal again, not wanting to seem too urgent. Then it occurred to him. Of course he's not

going to be here, Gabriel thought, starting to become annoyed at himself and at his own obtuseness. It's

the middle of the day. He's off at work.

He turned away from the door, grimacing at his own stupidity. I can't believe I did this, he thought. Nice

move, Connor. Just admit it to yourself, you don't want to see him, not really, and you set it up for

yourself so that you wouldn't. You didn't even—

The door opened.

Rorke Connor, his father, stood there looking at him, looking hard, and with an expression of

puzzlement—the look you give a stranger on your doorstep for the first time.

He doesn't want me to be here; he's pretending not to know me, was the first thought to flash through

Gabriel's mind, followed by another: he doesn't really know me. I'm too changed—

Gabriel's insides squeezed painfully. He had been gutshot in his time, but to his shock, he found that this

hurt worse.

And then his father rushed at him. Oh, gods, he's really angry, Gabriel thought in desperation. He doesn't

want me here—

Gabriel actually backed away a step, but his father's arms were thrown around him in a fierce grip, and

the old man was saying in a broken, ragged voice, "Where have you been, you idiot, where have you

been?"

His father was actually shaking him, whether more in rage or relief, Gabriel had trouble telling. "What

have they done to you?" his father cried, holding Gabriel away from him and staring at him. "What did

they…?"

Gabriel could only blink and had to do it a lot for a few moments. "No," he said finally, "it's nothing they

did, Papa, it's just… They didn't make the hair go white. That's not their fault."

All around them, the whitetails were singing their two notes with insane conviction. His father was holding

him away, looking at him. "You're older," he said, bemused, as if this should somehow be news.

"Not that much older," Gabriel said. "Papa, can we go in? The neighbors are going to stare."

"Let them stare," his father said fiercely. "Had enough of them, this last year. Would have moved, except

it would have given them something they wanted, the—" He shut his mouth on numerous things he plainly

wanted to call them. "Come on, son, come in."

They went in from the porch through the narrow front hallway and into the living room. It was all the

same, except that somehow it looked bigger than it had when he'd left. I would have thought it'd be the

other way around, Gabriel thought, but then he had been spending so much time in enclosed spaces over

the last few years—first his Marine carrier, then jail on Phorcys, then Sunshine—that a normal house

looked ridiculously roomy. His father pointed him at the big four-person lounger, which hadn't changed

since he left. Everything—the artwork on the walls, the light fixtures, the place where the wall-surfacing

was cracking a little over the door to the kitchen—looked almost too familiar, too prosaic, like a room

where someone used to live, which is being kept for them just as it was when they were last there, against

all hope that they might return.

Gabriel sat down. His father, looking at him intently, took the chair across from him and pulled it closer to

the lounger. "Where have you been, exactly?" he said softly. "How did you get here without—"

"Without the authorities picking me up?" Gabriel grinned, though not with good cheer. "Papa, maybe you

don't want to know too many of the details. I won't be staying long. It could be dangerous for you."

His father snorted, and Gabriel had to blink again at the dear familiarity of the sound. "They've made it as

dangerous for me as they can already," he said. "Investigators and military types dropping in at all hours

of the day and night, all last year. Quizzing the neighbors, too, and the neighbors ate it up. Damned

gossips." He frowned. "If any of them did see you, they're probably on the comm to the police right now.

Fortunately, it'll take them a while to get here."

It was one of the island's advantages, Gabriel had to agree. "I won't be here that long, I promise."

"As if I care about them!" his father shouted. "You stay as long as you have a mind."

Gabriel swallowed and held himself quiet. He had forgotten, almost, how intense his father could be when

he was annoyed.

"No, I know, son," Rorke Connor said. "Sorry. It's just"—he scrubbed at his eyes for a moment—"I

hate the thought that I'm going to have to lose you again shortly. I thought I'd lost you once when I heard

about the trial."

"How much did you hear?"

His father rubbed his hands together and stared at the floor. "About the ambassador and all of them being

killed," he said, "about the conspiracy—you and 'persons unknown.' I didn't believe a word of it." His

father was getting angry again. "And then you were released… and vanished. They said it was proof that

you were guilty."

" 'They'?"

"All the stuffed shirts who came around here afterward to interrogate me. They were sure you would

come here to hide. I told them they were out of their minds. My son would never do such a thing. I told

them so."

"Papa—"

"And then the neighbors started in on me. The ignorant—" He stopped himself again. "They believe

everything they see on the Grid, the idiots. I told them you were innocent. I told them all."

Gabriel looked up at his father, at that hard and indignant face, and had trouble opening his mouth.

"I might not be," he said.

His father looked at Gabriel in shock.

"Papa, I did not murder anyone," Gabriel said, "that much is true, but I was tricked into doing things that

resulted in people dying. That's too true, and there's no getting away from it."

His father just looked at him.

"I'm going to have to face trial eventually," Gabriel said, "by the Concord rather than by the planetary

government where it happened. The Marines are convinced I did it on purpose, that I was part of some

kind of plot. I think I was—but not the kind they're going to accuse me of. I'm getting close, I think, to

getting the evidence that will help me prove that to them."

"And clear your name."

Gabriel breathed in, breathed out. It had been hard enough telling himself this next part. Telling it to his

father would be more bitter still.

"As far as it can be cleared," he said. "I may have committed manslaughter. I may have to do time for

that, if I'm ever to be able to come home or go anywhere else in Concord space and stay free. But I'm

not going to go anywhere near Marine justice until I have enough evidence to prove that I'm not a

murderer. So I'll probably have to keep running for a while… and I won't be back here for a long time,

one way or the other." He paused for more breath. His throat felt very tight. "We're going to be heading

off soon to keep looking for that evidence. I wanted to see you first. And there are other things going

on…" He trailed off. How do you tell someone that you're deeply involved with some kind of alien

artifact that may or may not be trying to kill you—or worse yet, may be trying to make you less than

human… or more?

No time for that explanation, Gabriel thought, not now. Things are complicated enough as they are.

" 'Do time,' " his father said, very softly. "You mean more jail time."

Gabriel had no way to tell what this particular tone of voice meant. He did the only thing he could think

of. He kept still.

"What kept you so long, son?" his father said softly, at last. "A long time since they let you leave Phorcys.

Why didn't you write?"

"I did," Gabriel said. "You didn't get the messages?"

His father shook his head.

Gabriel hardly knew what to think. Someone must have been intercepting his father's messaging, certain

that Gabriel would try to get in touch with him and try to arrange a meeting. They must have trashed the

messages when they indicated that Gabriel had no such intent. It was just as well I didn't comm him first,

Gabriel thought. But who's at the bottom of this? Regency security? The Concord? Kharls?

That last thought brought him up short for a moment. Lorand Kharls. No, though I do want to have

words with him at some point…

"I did write to you," Gabriel said. "Someone must have been stopping the mail."

"Sons of bitches," said Rorke Connor softly.

"When I didn't hear back from you," Gabriel said, as softly, "I stopped writing. I thought maybe you

didn't want to…" He trailed off.

It was fear that made him stop, the sudden realization that, whatever and whoever his father might have

been when Gabriel had seen him last, he was not that person any more.

"I wrote to you, too," his father said. "They must have stopped the messages, intercepted them.

Bastards!"

The two of them sat quiet for a few breaths. "Tell me one thing," his father said. "Has it been worth it?"

Gabriel blinked.

"Before you… I mean, before it went…" his father struggled for the words. "Before you left, you were

always sure that everything was going to go well for you. A great adventure…"

Gabriel sighed. The constant wonder of starrise and starfall, the sight of new planets, strange people,

aliens, danger and sudden unexpected delight… He wished he could find words, or time, to tell his father

all about them. But crowding them out came images of fire in space, the briefest millisecond of screams

before death took his friends, the walls of that jail cell on Phorcys, the cruel set of Elinke Dareyev's face

the last time he saw her… Rejection, pain, loss, betrayed expectations…

"Worth it?" he finally said and wasn't sure what else to say. How did you put worth on a life? Was it fair

to judge it merely by whether things had gone well, gone according to plan or not? "I guess so. Things

haven't been all bad."

Gabriel thought of the luckstone. Whatever else might be happening to him, boredom wasn't part of it.

Uncertainty, yes, but life was uncertainty to some extent. "They'll get better," he said. He put all the

conviction he could find into the statement, hoping his father would believe him.

He looked up again, met the elder Connor's eyes, and was not quite sure he'd carried it off.

"They've been bad enough, though," his father said. "You're going to have to go to jail again, you think."

Diane Duane - Harbinger 3 - Nightfall at Algemron

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