Duane, Diane - Harbinger 1 - Starrise at Corrivale

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THE HARBINGER TRILOGY

Volume One:

STARRISE AT CORRIVALE

Volume Two:

STORM AT ELOALA

(March 1999)

Volume Three:

NIGHTFALL AT ALGEMRON

(October 1999)

Starrise at Corrivale

Volume One of the HARBINGER TRILOGY

Diane Duane

For Martin and Julia Zurmiihle,

with many thanks for making available a high place

from which the view of Corrivale was unusually clear.

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STARRISE AT CORRIVALE

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

purely coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or

unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written

permission of TSR, Inc.

Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Random House, Inc. and in Canada by Random

House of Canada Ltd.

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

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

STAR*DRIVE and the TSR logo are trademarks owned by TSR, Inc.

All TSR characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned by

TSR, Inc.

TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Cover Art by rk post

First Printing: October 1998

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:

987654321

ISBN: 0-7869-1179-4

2810XXX1501

U.S., CANADA, EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS

ASIA, PACIFIC, & LATIN AMERICA Wizards of the Coast, Belgium

Wizards of the Coast, Inc. P.B. 34

P.O. Box 707 2300 Turnhout

Renton, WA 98057-0707 Belgium

+1-800-324-6496 +32-14-44-30-44

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Visit our web-site at www.tsr.com

WARNING: certainty, much-desired, gives way,

great change, great difficulty now descends.

Harbinger bows beneath the load, cries out:

cold-starred silence says, seek no respite:

refuse the load and it will crush you still:

accept the burden and it bears you down,

though willingness may help to ease the pain:

but virtue is yet cruel: though change brings good,

beware, harbinger, how it changes you.

Stochastics. mechalus version (v28.0).

XV. 3-11

Chapter One

THE WOMAN STOOD at the window, watching the planet turn beneath her, or seem to turn. The ship's

orbit was low, but not so much so that the dun and emerald curve of Ino would seem to take up the

whole view that her two-meter-wide window afforded. Over the world's edge, night was approaching,

one of ninety or a hundred nights that the ship would see in the course of one of Ino's genuine rotations.

Under the ship, for the moment, a golden day of early summer in the planet's northern hemisphere lay

drowning deep in lazy afternoon. The startling blue of the huge twin lakes of Aimara and Noumara, old

meteoric impacts in the planet's equatorial continent, looked at her like eyes, round and surprised, a little

hazed even at this altitude with the slowly burgeoning seasonal warmth. There would be people fishing

out in little boats on those lakes right now, while overhead, water birds skimmed by uttering little lazy

cries. Nothing disturbed the placid waters but the stroke of oars and the glittering golden circles of water

where the fish rose into the endless brazen afternoon, daring the edge of their world for a gulp of air.

But if you raised your head only a little from the blue of the lakes and the thought of the afternoon, you

could see the night coming-the blurred, shadowy edge of it sliding on toward the unsuspecting

afternoon, silent, inexorable, and uncaring. And how do you stop the night? she thought, shivering, just

once.

The Concord Heavy Cruiser Falada had been her home for nearly three years now. Although Lauren

Delvecchio had grown used to life on the ship, she would be more than glad to leave it when this

mission was done at last. There had indeed been times during these last few years when she had thought

it would never be done-that she would spend the rest of her life circling one or the other of these globes,

either the green and dun belted globe of Ino with its polar seas, or the dun and white streaked expanse of

Phorcys. There were periods during which she had become heartily sick of the sight of both of them and

refused to look out the window when she woke up in the morning because she would see only one or the

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other of them again, going through the same old dance around their primary, Thalaassa. Day succeeding

night, and night succeeding day, and not a breath's worth of change ensuing as a result. How many

thousands of these "little nights" have I seen now, Lauren had thought at such times, and how many

more am I going to see before this situation improves?

But now it was changing. Slowly, like a real night shading moment by moment into the gray of earliest

morning, the change had begun ... no thanks to the people down below. Or rather, all thanks to them.

The unquestioned, intransigent mutual hatred of the people on these two planets had finally pushed them

into a position from which neither could escape without the other's assistance. Except for the inherent

ironies, it was a nasty situation, but the present circumstances promised the beginning of an end to the

troubles which had brought Lauren here in the first place. She would finally be able to go home to

Thuldan Prime for a leave long enough to help her forget-with the utmost pleasure-what both these

planets looked like. Soon enough after that she would be back at Corrivale, helping the senior staff in

juggling the economic and political tensions among VoidCorp, the Hatire Community, and the Concord

to which her own allegiance was given. But let a little forgetfulness come first....

She turned away from the window to look around the small wood-paneled room and at her desk, which

was clear for the moment. Her office was unlike any other in Falada's maze of corridors. Ambassadors

of her station were allowed a bit more room for personal conceit than even the higher ranking officers on

board, and Delvecchio had taken eager advantage of it, for beyond the thick wooden door of her office,

the majority of Falada 's inner passageways were uniform durasteel and molecularly enhanced plastics,

just several thousand tons of dull metal floating in space above Ino. But within these four walls was a

sanctuary that held at least the promise of warmth and solitude. Dark wood paneled the walls and

ceiling, reflecting the light from the ceiling illuminators with a soft, warm glow. A large, tasseled rug

covered all but the edges of the tile floor. The three high-backed chairs facing her desk were designed

for both comfort and beauty. But even these small comforts had long since lost their ability to soothe her.

She paused to think about where she should start the day's preparations. Just as she turned, the knock

came. Tck, tck, tck. For the first time that morning she smiled just a little, knowing who it was.

"Lieutenant," she said, "come in."

The thick wooden door opened a crack, and the young man in the somber dark blue uniform of a

Concord Marine put his head into the room and glanced at her amiably. That by itself struck Lauren as

charmingly old-fashioned, but it was like Lieutenant Connor to exploit the presence of an old-fashioned

non-dilating door for such a gesture. This sort of behavior was one of the things that had made him stand

out for Lauren at the beginning of this long cruise and more so as time went by. The senior diplomat

under whom she had trained had often said, "There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned manners," and

he would pause, and get that wry look for which he had been famous, adding, "Especially since old-

fashioned manners throw the people around you completely off their stride." All the more so, Lauren

knew, when the manners in question were natural, not applied as a cosmetic. As far as she could tell, in

Gabriel Connor they went down to the bone.

Gabriel shut the door behind him and came to stand in front of her desk, looking at it without really

looking-the kind of circumspect glance intended to see whether there was something there that he should

avoid looking at.

Lauren laughed. "No need yet," she said, "It's too early for paperwork. Can I give you something hot?"

"Let me do that, Ambassador."

She chuckled and sat down at her desk, knowing there was no use arguing with him when he got into

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one of these chivalric moods. "A throwback," she called him sometimes, teasing Connor with references

to ancient times when men were afraid or unwilling to let women do anything physical. Lauren watched

him go to the dispenser set in the wall between two of the oldest watercolors that hung on the dark

paneling. He tapped in the code for what he knew she would want-grosgrain brew, half and half with hot

milk-and his own preference, black chai, no sweetener, no anything. She shuddered at the thought of

drinking such stuff, but he seemed to thrive on it.

Connor handed her the mug and sat down, sipping at the chai already, even though by the way it was

steaming it looked hot enough to burn anyone's mouth.

"I thought only drill instructors had leather tongues," Lauren said, sitting down at her desk and putting

the grosgrain aside for the moment. "You make me think Marines must have them installed as standard

equipment."

Gabriel looked at the plain white mug, surprised, and then at Lauren again. "Sorry?"

"The heat."

"Oh. I didn't notice."

That's in character, I suppose, Lauren thought. She had seen him equally untroubled by other kinds of

heat on this cruise. The way he handled pressure was another aspect of this young marine that made her

interested in the further progress of his career.

"How did the spatball game go last night?" Lauren said.

Connor shrugged. "We lost to Star Force. Fifteen-eight."

"Terrible."

"It hardly came as a surprise, Ambassador," Gabriel said. "But at least we knew which way to bet." His

smile was ironic. He took another sip of chai and said, "Are you all ready for the resumption of the

plenary?"

"Ready?" she said, and smiled slightly. "I might look for some other word. The lion's den has never been

one of my favorite places."

"You seem to be doing all right," Gabriel said.

"Well..." she said. He considered her, under cover of drinking his chai. Idly, Lauren watched him do it.

Just fleetingly the idea went across the front of her mind: If I were even fifty years younger ... But

Lauren suppressed the thought, not for the first time, with some amusement at herself. It was hard for

anyone around here, male or female, to ignore such rugged good looks. They seemed even more

attractive since Gabriel wore them completely without affectation, even apparently without seeming to

be aware of them at all. He was dark with high cheek bones. His eyes were set deep so that thoughtful

looks on him seemed more thoughtful than they might have on a less structured face, and angry looks

seemed somehow more threatening, flashing out from underneath those eyebrows that nearly met over

the nose-- a feature that the old stories suggested indicated an unusual amount of blood more directly

traceable to the Union of Sol. Either way, it was rare enough to see an angry look from Gabriel, but you

saw a lot of the thoughtful ones, another reason why Lauren had begun making a point to invite him to

work more closely with her. There were few enough career officers who had that considering look this

early in their careers. It always boded well, in Lauren's opinion, and she was not above grabbing new

young talent for her branch of the Services when she could. There was too much old entrenched habit

and lack of talent to make up for.

In any case, she considered him an asset. Add to the physical handsomeness the size of the young man-

tall, big across the shoulders-and you came up with an almost daunting package. It never hurt for an

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