Nightfall_at_Algemron

Angela looked at the uneventful darkness and blew out an annoyed breath.
"You ought to get some sleep," Gabriel said.
"Hah," Angela said, "but so should you, if it comes to that."
"No chance," Gabriel said. "Not in this situation."
"Me either," said Angela. "It's like getting shot at."
"Now when have you ever been shot at?" he said.
"Oh, it's happened once or twice," Angela said. "Mostly I try to avoid it. It has unfortunate side effects, like causing you to develop big holes in your body."
Gabriel's mind, however, was on another unfortunate side effect that males sometimes experienced upon being shot at, and from which he was also suffering at the moment. Not that anyone had shot at him, but the excitement of being here on the planet in potentially dangerous circumstances was now producing the same result. A good meal and a slight rest, especially in the presence of Angela, were all making it worse rather than better. He was presently thinking hard about how he was going to stand up without one particular embarrassing symptom of the side effect showing. The singlesuit tended to rather unfortunately emphasize the presence of the symptom. Now if I can just turn a little this way, Gabriel thought, and started to get up.
Then he stopped himself. Why am I doing this? I don't want to get up. I know perfectly well what I want, except I must be nuts, and she'll kill me if I ask her.
"Something on your mind?" Angela asked.
"Uh—" Gabriel swallowed. "Now that you mention—"
"Yes," Angela said.
"Huh?"
"Me, too," Angela said with a knowing smile. He looked at her.
"It affects me like that, too," she said, enunciating clearly, as if for someone who was hard of thinking. "For cripes sake," she added, "just this once. could it hurt?"
Put that way, Gabriel thought, she may have a point.
"Well?" she said softly.
He widened his eyes a little. She nodded once, waiting.
Gabriel very slowly pulled her close and kissed her very slowly. It was surprisingly easy. After a moment, he said so.
Angela looked at him in heavy-lidded amusement. "Did you think it was going to be hard?" "I hope it is," Gabriel said.
Angela smacked him in the head, not very emphatically.
"I'm sorry," Gabriel said. "Earlier it would never have occurred to me. In fact, exactly the opposite."
He had an idea that he was possibly making an error. He remembered Hal, a long time ago now, saying, "Never admit to any woman that you would never have considered sleeping with her. This is a sure way to have someone wind up on charges for assault—her, not you. No jury in the military would convict either."
But Angela was decidedly un-military.
"Which just goes to show you," Angela said, reaching out, "that brains, too, can grow suddenly and without > warning."
She turned out the light.
Some hours later, Gabriel slipped quietly back into Sunshine. His feelings were more than complex at the moment, especially since he knew that Enda would be sitting up keeping watch.
She simply looked at him from the pilot's couch and said, "Did you want some chai? I made an extra supply. In the pot."
He went back to get some. Normally he wouldn't have bothered this late at night, but he much doubted at the moment that mere chai would be able to do anything to keep him awake once he lay down again.
With his mug, he leaned over the free pilot's couch and looked out the front ports at the cliff on the other side of the canyon, into which a little starlight filtered. "If they wanted to hide that," Gabriel said, "I'd guess it worked."
Enda nodded. "Is everyone all right over there?" she said.
"More than all right," Gabriel said idly.
Enda gave him a sidelong look. "Grawl?"
"She was on watch when I left."
She nodded again and said, "A pleasant night."
"Yes, it was," Gabriel said and drank his chai.
"Gabriel."
He looked at her.
Enda was wearing one of those small demure smiles in which fraal specialize. "Perhaps you would do me a favor."
"Mmm?"
"I realize that you probably took this particular action out of consideration for me, but the next time by your favor. leave the stone here."
Gabriel stared at her. and then turned, very quickly, very quietly, and went to bed.
Grinning.
Chapter Twelve
It was more of a doze than a sleep, and much later he had trouble remembering the details, but the dream itself was straightforward enough.
Eyes were looking at him.
At first this unnerved him, then Gabriel decided he had nothing to lose and looked back. I have a right to be here, he cried into the echoing darkness. I'm the one who was sent. Give me what I came for!
What would that be?
What exactly am I here for? He considered for a moment, then said, My people are in trouble. There are forces coming from outside that mean to wipe us out. It's wrong to let that happen!
A long silence, while the presence over there in the darkness considered that. It was not the one with which Gabriel had been communicating before, but it was possibly related to it somehow, but then probably all these Precursor races knew each other, he thought. I mean, a hundred million years ago, who else would they have had to talk to but each other?
He had a clear sense that this conversation was passing through some kind of a translator, that whatever was on the other side was stranger than he could possibly imagine, yet at the same time, he was related to it somehow, for the stone had been changing him. It, too, had been learning to perform this translation by being in his company for so long. Changing.
It suddenly occurred to Gabriel to be sorry for the stone. He had been complaining about the changes in him that it had been causing. Now the idea presented itself, not as a possibility but as a certainty, that it was changing too. A nature as unchanging as, well, as stone, was being forced to shift into a new one. For a purpose.
The change of viewpoint so staggered Gabriel that he hardly knew what to do or say for a moment. Finally he just kept quiet.
This has happened before, said whatever was on the other side of the translation. This'? Gabriel asked.
The ones from outside, said the one who had been listening. The Externals. Their presence in this galaxy is nothing new.
Well, that's a relief. Gabriel said. Or I guess it is. So what did you do about them ? We died, said the other. Gabriel swallowed.
I'd like to avoid that if possible, he said after a moment. I mean, in the short term.
It may not be avoidable, said that voice sorrowfully, in any term. Much depends on whether the new enemy is more powerful or wiser than the old one… and whether the new antagonists are capable
of doing better than we did.
Gabriel could see the point of that, but it didn't make him any less tense. He could see—or feel—all those eyes looking at him, a long unblinking regard, made worse by the sense that some of them had no eyelids to blink with anyway. No one had ever had anything but theories about what the Glassmakers or Precursors looked like. It was the merest guesswork that they were human-sized or human-shaped, all based upon the size of some doors that had been found in sites on High Mojave. There was something about those eyes that made Gabriel very uncertain about the theories, no matter how many university qualifications their propounders might possess.
This enemy is powerful enough, Gabriel said into the darkness, remembering the tremendous ships that had come slipping up out of drivespace just off Danwell. Nor did power mean just ships. He thought of the kroath, the terrible strength and savagery of them and of what their existence said about the creatures who willingly created them.