Nightfall_at_Algemron

Gabriel felt himself start to go numb inside. He had expected acceptance or rejection, not this ambivalence. He didn't know how to take it.
"I was afraid for you," his father said. "I'm glad to know you're well." He got up, pushing himself up out of the chair as if he were somehow afraid to move. "But, son, I'm—" He broke off, and a brief choked laugh broke out of him. "I was going to say, 'I'm getting old,' but look at you! How can I say that now?"
He was clearly fighting tears, and it came to Gabriel that the best thing he could do, the wisest thing for both of them, was to get out of there before those tears had a chance to break loose. "Papa," he said, "I'll be all right, so please take care of yourself. I'll be back. I promise."
He turned and went out the way he had come. The door slammed behind him—harder than he had meant, much too hard. Its hydraulics were not what they had been.
Without looking left or right, Gabriel went back up the road again. He heard the creak of the door, but he would not look back. Even looking straight ahead of him as he passed the neighbor's houses, he saw the occasional blind or drape twitch just a little as he went by. He cursed them softly under his breath, words that other Marines would definitely have approved and that his father would once unquestionably have switched him for.
At the top of the little hill in the road, Gabriel stopped, almost against his will, and turned. The front porch of his father's house was empty. The man who had stood there was gone now. Gabriel turned and headed back toward Sunshine.
It had all gone wrong. Everything had gone differently from what he had imagined. He wanted to turn around, go back, try to do it all over again. but there was no point.
He stopped again and looked back toward the house. The porch remained empty.
He turned again and started back up the road. There was someone coming down toward him from the general direction of the pad. No, not from the pad proper, but out of the field that led down to the rocky beach on the far side of the pad. It was a man, dressed in the loose bright clothing that people in this climactic belt tended to favor. Good protection against the sun, comfortable when a breeze came up. The
man had a net and a surfcasting reel over his shoulder. He had probably been down there doing exactly what Gabriel had done often enough as a kid: casting for gillies and sunfish. They favored that side of the island because of the prevailing westerlies.
Gabriel's first urge was to avoid the man, but then it occurred to him that this might be one of the neighbors, and he didn't want to look any guiltier around them than he already did.
Though if their minds are already made up, why should I bother caring one way or another?
Gabriel kept walking up the road and studied the man's face as he drew nearer. He didn't look familiar, but then any number of neighbors could have moved in and out since Gabriel had last been here. His heart ached a little at that. Once upon a time, he had known every soul on this island, and the sense of belonging had practically been a palpable thing. One more of the changes, he thought, as the man approached. Nothing is the same. It's true what they say, you can't go home again.
The man was smiling slightly as he got within calling range of Gabriel. So I can be rude, a total boor, and ignore him, or—Gabriel shook his head at himself and set his face into a smile as well. "Good morning," he said. "How're they biting?"
"Better than I thought," said the man. His smile fell, he dropped the rod and the net, and came up with a gun.
The blast went by Gabriel's ear as he flung himself aside just in time. That could have been my head! he thought somewhat belatedly as he rolled, got up, then dived and rolled again, for the man was still firing at him, peppering the road with projectiles.
Keep moving, they had told him in his hand-to-hand classes. Whatever you do, keep moving until the enemy is disarmed.
Armed! Gabriel thought. The two concepts "being home on Tisane" and "carrying a weapon" were so far apart in his mind that he had forgotten what he had put in his pocket. Nonetheless, for the moment he kept moving, kept diving and rolling, trying to work his way closer to the man. Then he got his hands on his own pistol, brought it up, and squeezed the trigger.
Clean miss. He swore, dived, rolled again, choking on dust as he went down. A slug impacted the ground no more than three inches from his head. Gabriel bounced to his feet much faster than he would have thought he could, impelled by another close call, much too close—
This time, he and the man swung their weapons toward each other at the same instant, but Gabriel fired first.
The other's shot went wild. When Gabriel got up again, he could see why. Gabriel's flechettes had neatly torn the side of the man's head off.
Gabriel stood there, shocked, for again this scenario completely disagreed with his images of home, the feel of the place. Then he bent down hurriedly and began to go through the man's pockets. It took several minutes, and he felt distinctly creepy during the whole process. What if one of the neighbors comes along? What if—but that was not troubling him half so much as the strange feeling that had begun to creep along his nerves as soon as he got close enough to the man to touch him.
Something stroking, sliding, in his mind. Something warm. and loathsome.
Gabriel froze for a moment. He shuddered and set the feeling aside. He didn't know what it was, except that his brain had been put through some major changes recently, and as a result, he often found himself
feeling things he couldn't identify. If he was lucky, sometimes he found out later what they meant, but there were no guarantees. In any case, this particular feeling was one he wasn't sure he wanted to know much more about.
There was a lump inside the man's shirt that didn't have a corresponding pocket to go with it. Gabriel pulled the shirt open, felt for hidden seams, then finally, in an agony of haste, simply ripped the shirt apart, tearing the fabric and spilling the contents onto the blood-spattered body.
He poked cautiously through the things. A little sheaf of Bluefall currency. A notepad, empty, but he took it anyway. One last thing that he used a corner of the man's big loose shirt to pick up and hold in a gingerly manner: VoidCorp Employee identification, GK004 967KY. Gabriel turned it over to see if there was any indication of what department of VoidCorp this man had been with. There was none that he could find, but he was more than willing to believe that it was Intel. They had been after him for long enough.
And if they know I'm here, who else knows I'm here? Time to go.
Gabriel was sweating and dirty, and he brushed himself off as best he could as he hurriedly made his way back toward Sunshine. He didn't care who might see him at this point.
Was this guy alone? Gabriel wondered. Did he have an accomplice, or was he just here on the off chance that I would turn up? How long might he have been waiting here?
Well, his waiting's over, but as for me. I can't come back here now. So much for promises to my father. Now I've left another corpse behind me.
He felt more bitter as he got back to Sunshine. This one part of my life, he thought, this one place in my universe, was untouched by what's happened to me. Now look at it. It's contaminated now, too, and not just by gunfire and a new murder. That strange, sliding, considering warmth.
like something wet and nasty and alive. What had that been? Whatever it is, I want away from it!
Gabriel got into Sunshine's lift, slapped the close and lock control, and then rode up to the cabin level, urging the lift to go faster all the while. When the door opened again in the upper level hallway, he stepped out, locked it, and headed for the pilot's cabin.