Gabe grinned. "Then we've each got something new to share, don't we?"

That was good. Gabe enjoyed meeting new people, hearing new things--and the latter really didn't happen very often. It was hard to hear things he didn't already know when he'd been around for as long as he had.

"What sort of ranch was it?" he asked. "What did you do there?" He could guess the technology-level. There was something charming about the days long past, but then again, that was coming from the perspective of not needing to worry about most of the things that made life a few centuries ago so uncomfortable.