Nightfall_at_Algemron

Gabriel heard the thought but said nothing about it for the moment. "We should get suited up," he said, "and get the hurt people out of here."
Helm looked at him a little strangely.
You know what he has in mind, Enda said silently.
I do, Gabriel said. I won– 't do it.
He turned to the Patterner, which stood nearby, watching the others prepare to leave. This facility is too dangerous to leave open, Gabriel told the creature. There are inhabitants of this system who would attempt to make inappropriate usage of it.
This facility has no further use, the Patterner said. When you depart, it will be destroyed.
That shocked Gabriel a little. Don'tyou think it would be wise to keep a backup?
It felt around in his mind for his meaning and then made a simple sense of negation in reply. The data was not copied but transferred. It was always intended to be held inside a life form. It had been hoped that we might serve that purpose, but it seems life is more than intelligence and free will. When there were no more of our makers left and our prototype program was discontinued unfinished, that data was stored solid, but such storage is merely static and is seen as far more insecure than that in living beings.
Oh?
That was their way, it said. That is the way the programming was laid in. You must now see to the propagation of the data yourself.
Gabriel laughed a little, seeing that what he was going to have to do with Jacob Ricel's memories for his testimony was the same thing he was going to have to do with the mapping information of which he was now the sole bearer. More homework, he thought. Is the testing stage ever going to end?
The Patterner gave him a dry look with all those eyes.
What about you, Patterner? Gabriel asked.
I and my other selves are done, it said. We have fulfilled our programming and our purpose. Go well., Harbinger. Fulfill your programming as well.
It fell silent. Gabriel felt for its mind. and found that it was gone.
He looked at Enda, sad and a little shocked. "That was sudden."
She shook her head and turned to look at the others.
The Marines, suited and waiting, stood a little distance away, regarding Gabriel with expressions of which
he could make little. There was horror in some of them and awe in others. Some seemed afraid to look at him. Others seemed unable to take their eyes off him.
Gabriel could only shake his head and wonder what they saw. He had seen too much of the insides of others' minds for the moment. For the next little while, the only mind he wanted to see the inside of was his own. It would take a while to get a sense of what it looked like these days, but he would have plenty of time for that.
He turned to Enda again. "Let's get my cousins here into Longshot and Lalique." Helm looked thoughtfully at Gabriel.
"Give them a ride back to Schmetterling, but you and I will go in first." He put his arm through Enda's, and they headed toward the corridor entrance. "I have an appointment to keep."
Chapter Nineteen
They were aboard Schmetterling for several days before anything significant happened. Mostly everyone in the system was preoccupied with repairing damage done during the battle, helping add their own information to the master report that was being assembled, and simply recovering.
Gabriel was returned to the same cell where he had previously been kept, and Enda and the crews of Longshot and Lalique were allowed to visit him pretty much at will. Gabriel spent his first day aboard in collapse, and the next couple of days trying to sort out what had happened to him. For one thing, he understood the strange looks on the faces of Bertin and the other Marines. When he had finally had strength to get up and have a shower and a shave, the first look in the mirror shocked him. The hair had a little ways yet to go before it became completely white, but the eyes, his eyes, were now silver-pale, gone white as Precursor glass. That he had not expected. Shaving had taken a long time that day.
Longer still would be the business of sorting out everything he now had in his head—a task Gabriel began to despair of ever completing before he died of old age. I was so bloody worried about not being human at the end of this, he thought late one night, and it turns out the problem was the reverse. I'm still too human. I'm terrified of losing this data.
It seemed to be safely esconced inside him for the time being, and by the third day he found himself able to start to relax. That was his error, for he came out of the little head down at the end of the cell corridor that evening to find the door to the living area open. Gabriel went toward it, smiling slightly.
Inside, sitting on one of the pulldown sofas and looking at the wall display, was Lorand Kharls.
He stood up to greet Gabriel, which he did not have to do, and saw him seated first, as he might have done with an honored guest. Then he sat down and looked at him for a while.
"Are you surprised to see me back here?" Gabriel asked at last.
"Oh, no," the administrator replied. "I was expecting you."
Gabriel looked at him. "I could have left."
"I didn't expect that," Kharls said, "but indeed, here you are back. So I came partly to ask whether you have the proof you went for."
"Not in any form that is likely to be useful," Gabriel said, "but I have it all."
Kharls looked at him strangely. "What form is it in?"
"Telepathic. Jacob Ricel dumped me the story of his life before he died."
Kharls blinked. "No, you don't make this easy, do you?"
"That doesn't seem to have been the story of my life recently," Gabriel said, "no."
Kharls nodded and said, "Well, I would imagine that we should be able to find someone in the Concord Legal Service who's also a mindwalker, one certified highly enough that he would be empowered to assess your evidence. seeing that this is the only form in which it can be provided."
Gabriel nodded. His main fear was that whatever mindwalker they found would either not be able to work out what had happened to the inside of his head and synchronize successfully with it or to clearly perceive all the nuances that Gabriel had acquired from Ricel while going over his memories. But it was a better outcome than he had hoped for, and all he could hope for, under the circumstances.
"Where will the trial be held?" Gabriel asked.
"On Lighthouse," Kharls said. "It's here now, and I will be moving my administrative work there for a while. If I can, during my own part in these proceedings, I will suggest to the adjudicators that your sentence, for I assume there will be one, should be served on Lighthouse as well. It strikes me that we might be able to use your services should you be inclined to give them."
The man's presumption was amazing, Gabriel thought. "If you think that after everything I've been through, the way I was set up, that I would—"
Then he stopped himself, for he knew that he would do exactly that.
Damn it, Gabriel thought.
"Oaths," Kharls said, "are an annoyance sometimes, but once taken, they seem almost impossible to remove. I see you have been unable to remove yours."
"Kharls," Gabriel said, "are you a mindwalker?"
He shook his head. "Heavens, no, and I resist any attempt to turn me into one, so keep your distance." "Then how do you always know what's going on around you?"
"I keep my eyes open. Most people don't, Connor. They look but don't see, listen but don't hear—the great fault of our age, I think, and probably of most ages before it. The mind that already is made up and sees only what reinforces its own beliefs, no matter what else it perceives. that's our greatest enemy. Me, I don't have any beliefs. I just look at people."
"And judge them."
"That's what I'm paid for, partly."
"There's something I want to talk to you about in that regard." "Your friend Ragnarsson," said Kharls, "and Delonghi."