Nightfall_at_Algemron

"I get the feeling you're beginning to enjoy rubbing this in," Gabriel said. "I'm beginning to wish we'd gone ahead and bought that new ship or that I could get someone to die and leave me one."
Helm snickered. "Don't get your hopes up."
Enda rolled those expressive eyes of hers and turned away with a slight smile to pour herself some fruit juice. Grawl had cooked this evening, doing an entire half-side of whilom. She was expert at the more carnivorous kind of cooking, and seconds and thirds had been happily dispensed to the participants.
"It is good to see you frail creatures exhibiting some kind of appetite," she said, sawing off another rib steak for herself.
"I've got the coordinates sorted out, anyway," Gabriel said and felt around in his pocket for the chips on which he was carrying the data. "You can lay them in when you get back." He handed one to Angela and one to Helm.
"Query: method of determination?" asked Delde Sota.
Gabriel looked sheepish. "I hold the stone and turn myself until it feels right," he said, "then the fighting field programs an equivalent and isolates the coordinates."
Helm guffawed. "Better hope we don't wind up at Aegis again," he said. "What if that thing's homing in on where you were born or something? Maybe it thinks you want to go home to spawn."
"Spawning is fairly low on my list of things to do at the moment," Gabriel said. He poured another glass of kalwine for himself then handed Enda the bottle. "It's not my home the thing's looking for. Its home, possibly. or one place it identifies as such."
"You hear it thinking?" Grawl said, looking up from the last bite of the ribs she was holding daintily in her claws.
Gabriel shook his head. " 'Thinking' isn't the word." "Feeling?" Angela asked.
"I don't know about that either," Gabriel said, then he laughed. "Sorry. It's frustrating. There aren't a lot of words for the things it does, but when I make the image in my mind of what I'm after—the big 'facility' that the little edanwe on Danwell told me was 'not too far off—the directional quality in the stone's response is really noticeable. The correlation's clear in the heads-up display for the navigational system. It worked well enough at just seat-of-the-pants stuff on Danwell. We'll see if it works out here."
Delde Sota looked somewhat mischievously at Gabriel. "Commitment: and if you do spawn, we get to watch."
He laughed and said, "No promises. about spawning or otherwise. You want to write that kind of
scientific paper, you're going to have to make the details up."
Dinner went on as long and cheerfully as usual, and about the time the cook began to fall asleep, the separate ships' companies went back to their ships. Their first jump out into the darkness in search of Gabriel's unknown "facility" would be in forty-three hours, though there was no need to hasten out of the Crow system with the Lighthouse hanging there, silently benevolent and extremely well armed.
When they got back to Sunshine, Gabriel was ready to turn in immediately, but Enda sat down in the living area and stared at her display of the green field rippling in the wind. Her expression was a little troubled.
"Indigestion?" Gabriel asked, knowing this was not the case.
She glanced at him with some amusement, but the emotion was edged with discomfort. "Gabriel," she said, "I fear I am not myself at the moment."
"What? Because of the way you answered Helm earlier?"
"Not at all." She looked rather guilty. "I believe it is the stone."
"What?"
She laced her pale hands together as Gabriel sat down opposite her. "Gabriel," she said, "I feel it looking at me, and I am not sure the look is a friendly one. Do you understand what I mean?"
"About the looking," he said, "yes, but not about the unfriendliness."
"It." She shook her head, gazed at the display, which was showing green fields wavering in a silken wind, a favorite display of hers. "It is keyed to you, that stone, or it s a key, and you are the lock for which it was made—or which it is remaking to fit it. That is what Delde Sota warned you of, is it not?"
"It wasn't so much a warning," Gabriel said, "as an advisory."
"Yes. The problem, I believe, is that it is keying itself to you and to you alone—and becoming less tolerant of others nearby, especially lifeforms that have the ability to mindwalk." She sighed. "If I read the situation aright, it began turning you into a mindwalker on Danwell. You had a great deal of help: a group of communal telepaths, and a considerable incentive to communicate with them. Friendship, support, danger."
"You had that, too," Gabriel said.
"Yes, but not the stone. It took you through that particular challenge and out the far side. Now it has another challenge for you—a larger one. You do not yet know entirely what this one entails, and neither do I. You will find out, but the stone does not easily tolerate the presence of others whom it fears may interfere with its business."
"You speak of it fearing, making things happen. as if it were sentient. Is it?" Gabriel asked, for this was the one question that had been taxing him most lately.
Enda tilted her head halfway over in a gesture of uncertainty. "I would not know how to say. Sentience is such a slippery subject to define, even when you have it. nearly as bad as consciousness. I mean, you and I know we are conscious, but how do we know?"
Gabriel blinked. That was high on a list of questions that had not been bothering him.
"Let it lie," Enda said. "The point of all this is that I am not you, and the stone does not entirely trust anyone or anything that is not you. It has begun turning its attention to me with increasing intensity more and more often. I feel it as a physical discomfort at the moment. I can bear it. The stone has offered me no violence, mentally or psychically speaking. Should it attack me, I do not have the training or the power to stop it. If it should take a dislike to me. I would have to leave, Gabriel. I could not bear to stay with it in such a confined space."
Gabriel swallowed. "How long has this been going on?"
"Since Danwell," Enda said. "It was always on the borders of my consciousness before then, but at Danwell, something happened. I was judged, as you were, by whatever force or presence was lying hidden in the edanweir group unconscious. Both of us, fortunately, were not found wanting—otherwise we would not now be alive, but the stone itself was also. perhaps not judged, but. upgraded? Reprogrammed perhaps? Or maybe it had new programming added. It is becoming increasingly vigilant about protecting you, I believe, though its definition of protection may look odd to you."
"I think it made Jacob Ricel turn up," Gabriel said. This was a thought that had been lurking fairly unformed in the back of his mind and turned up again now.
Enda looked thoughtful at that. "Maybe," she said. "I do not know how it could do such a thing, but I suspect that it could. It does not seem to hold cause and effect the same way we do, and sometimes I think I can feel things twisting around it."
Gabriel nodded. "I feel something like that too," he said. He reached into his pocket.
"No, please," Enda said, "not right now. Seeing it makes me uncomfortable." She sighed. "I just felt I had to tell you that these feelings were growing on me, Gabriel. If I do have to leave you, it will be most against my will. We are good friends, and you have a great work that you are doing, for which you will need all possible friends around you, all the help you can get. If it comes to a choice between dying and leaving in hopes that the situation may improve, I think I will choose the second option."
"Well, of course," Gabriel said. He was trying hard, though, not to reveal how shaky he felt. The thought of being without Enda—