Duane, Diane - Harbinger 3 by Duane Diane

Author:Duane, Diane
Language: eng
Format: epub

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.

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