—tangle. Things stroked and writhed against one another, warm in the darkness, a warmth that seemed like light to them. They looked out through eyes that were being held at the moment but could be very empty if they let them. For a flash, a terrible second, Gabriel saw what the presence that looked through him saw: the layer that had been a man once, a personality, and still thought it was. Such was the dreadful persistence of this particular personality: self-assured, fierce, clever—so much so that it could not tell that it had been gnawed hollow as a bug-ridden tree on the inside, and that there was nothing left inside it but tinder and air. Below that layer was another, the deeper personality, the one hidden from most people and from the man who owned it: quite cold, quite fierce, a killer's heart, an assassin's heart, waiting for the right moment to be let out and do its work. But this layer too had been gnawed to a mere shell of itself, fragile, brittle, all too likely to break if any pressure were put on it—not that it would be. The people around this man feared him.
Under that layer, under the oldest layers of personality—a furious child, a consoling but despised parent, a chilly adult that spent its life reckoning the odds and balancing politics and violence against each other—should have been the inside.
But there was no inside, or no human one.
Tangle. The stroking, slithering warmth in the darkness—eyeless, soundless, mouthless, voiceless. except that Gabriel could hear their voices speaking to one another, looking at him through the major's eyes. The major did not know they were there. They found this amusing. They looked at Gabriel and saw nothing but another human, not a threat. They did not feel the presence that rode inside Gabriel, but that presence recognized them, knew them from some ways back.
Gabriel held very still and did not stare or shudder or get up and run screaming out of the room or do any of various other things that he would have liked to.
Something else, said the advising voice inside his head, silently, so as not to be overheard—for the creatures writhing in the darkness were sharp at this kind of hearing, this inner kind. Not anything human. something much older.
Gabriel very carefully did not look at the man's chest, half expecting to see some sign of squirm or writhe through skin and bone.
It all happened so fast. He had had experiences like this on Danwell, where half a life went by in a split second, the way it was supposed to when you were about to die. To have it happen this way in the middle of life had been very unsettling at first. Now he was beginning to get used to it, but for that first second or so after the return to "real time" Gabriel always blinked and found the resumption of life at one-second-per-second very bemusing. Now he blinked and didn't try to hide it. He rubbed his eyes and said, "Sorry. I had a late night."
"Starrise syndrome?"
It was common enough, the inability to get to sleep the night before an arrival. Gabriel shook his head and laughed a little ruefully. "No, just too much chai, I'm afraid That last cup before bed is always so tempting. I never learn. But no, not Hansen's. I didn't care much for their stock, and their prices looked inflated. Lalain's Sundries was the store I had in mind."
The major laughed. "Yes, I see you've done your research. After that you'll be moving right along again." It was not a suggestion.
"We'll be dumping our data to the local Grid after I finish with you, sir," Gabriel said, "and then doing our shopping. After that, on to the next destination. If we can find a load to take with us, so much the better."
"You'll have to help yourself there, I'm afraid," the major said. "Unfortunately government contracts are something I'm not allowed to get involved with. Thank you, Mr. Calvin, Madam Enda."
They were escorted into a holding area with some plain chairs but nothing to read or do. Gabriel, quite certain that they were being observed there, talked absently to Enda about the difference between the prices at Hansen's and Lalain's establishments, wondered out loud when the others would clear customs, and then trailed off. He was still trying hard to make sense of what he had experienced.