Crystal Mentality (Crystal Trilogy Book 2)

by Max Harms

  «Are you okay to walk? Why were you laying down out here?» he asked.

  «I said I’m fine,» she snapped, more forcefully than she had intended. «I just needed to rest.»

  «Okay! Okay!» Tom said, raising his hands defensively. «I believe you.»

  Zephyr wanted to apologize. Tom was a friend, as well as an ally. The Afro-Cuban man and his brother had been nothing but kind to her in the time they’d known each other. But she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have the strength to say anything kind.

  An uncomfortable silence descended as the two of them carefully threaded their way through the sea of black leaves towards the tents.

  Eventually Tom spoke up. «Would you like me to take a look at your com? I might be able to figure out what malfunctioned.» Tom and Sam were both engineers. He’d know in an instant that she was lying.

  {Just like Crystal,} she thought briefly.

  «No. It’s fine. I think I was just using it wrong,» she said.

  Tom grunted acknowledgment, but didn’t say anything else for a while. They were almost back at the tents when Tom spoke again. One of the others was at the fab, making something. It was probably Sam. The twins always seemed to be making things together.

  Tom’s deep voice had an awkward forced-casualness as he said «Miss Adhiambo says you kissed Socrates back on Olympus.» He must’ve been talking about Kokumo.

  «None of your fucking business,» she said without thinking. She was slipping. This was bad. She was supposed to be stronger than that. It really wasn’t any of his business, but she could’ve been more diplomatic about it. Everything she had accomplished in life had been the result of either being diplomatic and putting up with bullshit, or being violent and hurting people. She always regretted when things turned violent. She didn’t need that right now.

  «Relax, Zephyra. I normally wouldn’t pry, but it actually is important, here and now.»

  «I don’t see how it would be,» she managed to say, keeping her emotion in check. She found the calmness of her voice reassuring.

  Tom sighed. «You’re a decent person, and Phoenix trusts you, so I’ll be honest with you. Mr Watanabe and Miss Adhiambo are talking about capturing and forcing the whole story out of Socrates. I think we Red Eagles should stand together, but Miss Adhiambo thinks that your judgment is compromised because of your… romantic feelings.»

  Zephyr wasn’t sure what to say to that. She wanted to defend herself, but she wasn’t even sure what she needed to defend from. She felt vulnerable. Ashamed. Still frustrated and angry. She should have been leading them, but instead her team was conspiring behind her back. She could hardly blame them.

  Instead of commenting directly on it, she turned towards the person working with the mirco-fab. Just as she suspected, it was Sam, Tom’s brother. «What are you working on?» she asked, voice strained.

  «Weapons. We need to defend ourselves if things go bad,» said Sam. He stopped his work and looked up at her expectantly.

  «Ah, good thinking. Thank you for your hard work.» Falling back into familiar patterns was soothing. She needed to be strong for their sakes.

  «No problem.» Sam looked back to his work. Now that she was closer, Zephyr could see he was printing a set of hollow cylinders out of metal. «Did you ask her about the thing?» Sam asked his brother.

  «We were just talking about it,» answered Tom.

  It occurred to Zephyr that she didn’t know whether Sam meant “if things go bad with the nameless” or “if things go bad with Crystal”. She didn’t trust herself to ask. Instead she said «It was a mistake. Yes, we… had a thing going. I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I am.» Her stomach tightened.

  «Good. The others are waiting in the tents. You should tell them that,» said Tom. «I’ll run the airlock for you.»

  A minute later she was undoing the clasps on her helmet as she lay on the floor of the first of the three environment tents they had set up. The only light in the first tent was from her helmet, which she set down beside her as she took off the outer layers of the suit. Irritating sweat rolled down the sides of her face, but she ignored it. The top of the suit was connected to the coolant layer by a hose, which she was careful to detach properly. The water in the shirt would warm up soon, but for now it was a blissfully cool armor against the heat of the tent.

  Other suit layers lay in piles on the ground, but they weren’t intact. The helmets and the brick-like backpacks had been taken further in. They had to keep the packs running or else they’d suffocate in the tents, and the helmets were their only sources of light.

  She could hear the others talking in the next tent over.

  “I mean, I’ll bow to your greater experience with the thing. I feel like something of the odd man out here,” said Michel Watanabe. His voice had the barest hints of a Brazilian accent.

  “You do not know how little I have spent with it. My experience is only a bit lahger thahn you own.” That was Kokumo, the African from Taro’s cell in Italy. Zephyr didn’t know much about her except that she was a little younger than Zephyr, followed orders well, and seemed fairly competent.

  Nathan Daniels, who had served with her in the army before they’d turned to Las Águilas Rojas, spoke. “Zephyr knows Crystal better than any of us. We should ask her. Can you hear us yet, Cap’n?”

  Zephyr unpeeled the air lining on the seal between the tents. It was a thick thing, not quite sticky but certainly not smooth, that always made her feel like she was peeling a banana or something when she used it. The smell of three sweaty people in an enclosed space blasted out of the tent as she worked.

  “Yeah, I’m here. You talking about forcing Crystal to give us the whole truth?” She did her best to control her voice. {Diplomacy. Tolerance. Patience. I’m a leader. Act like it.}

  “So much for keeping a secret. Should’ve known those two would tell her,” remarked Watanabe. He was a veteran of the organization, about the same age, with an angry sort of face that had clearly seen too much violence and death. He reminded Zephyr of herself.

  “If they hadn’t told her, I would’ve,” said Nate. “Las Águilas Rojas work together. Hell, we humans need to work together. If the Cap’n isn’t okay with it, then I’m not okay with it.”

  “You don’t need to keep calling me Captain,” said Zephyr as she pinned the tent flap up to increase the air volume and crawled through the joint into the other tent. It was an ongoing thing with the members of her old unit that had turned coat with her. They had made it something of a game to keep calling her by her rank in the army. She knew it was supposed to be in good fun, but it stung every time she heard it: a reminder of the price she had paid for her ideals.

  Watanabe spoke. He seemed to be leading the little conspiracy. “Kokumo told us about your… involvement with the android. Are we going to have a problem?”

  The three of them were lying down, understandable, given the intense gravity and the small size of the enclosure. Two helmets had their harsh lights on, positioned in the corners of the tent, giving everything two shadows that became blackness when they intersected. Their personal items weren’t here, except for a smattering of clothing that was used to form makeshift pillows. Next to the joint that led to the last tent sat their three suit packs, no doubt filtering the air. Two of the packs were connected to coolant suits that lay underneath Nate and Kokumo. Michel was still wearing his, much like Zephyr was, though his was connected to the pack.

  The coolant suits wouldn’t do much, and might make the whole heat problem worse, actually. Every bit of cooling the packs did to the water resulted in more heat from the packs themselves. Sure, they could try to put their bodies near the cool water, and put the packs far away, so as to minimize their heat, but the tent was barely big enough for them and the tubes weren’t very long.

  Nate was distractingly naked except for normal boxer underwear and his dog-tags. He must have found a way to deal with his suit’s diaper. Maybe that was why the joint to the last tent was sealed, r
ather than open. His pale skin glistened with sweat, and Zephyr couldn’t help ogling his muscled body.

  Kokumo was in a similar state of undress, wearing only a bra on her upper body, and a t-shirt worn as a kind of skirt over her legs. Because of how she was positioned in the tent relative to Zephyr her face was covered in inky shadow.

  “It doesn’t mean anything. Just a mistake,” grumbled Zephyr as she tried to make herself comfortable. Eventually she gave up and just collapsed, unwilling to fight gravity any more.

  “You fo’give me if I do not believe thaht,” said Kokumo. “You had feelings foh it.”

  Zephyr’s injured hand clenched and unclenched rhythmically, worsening the pain. She kept her face neutral, however. “Had. Emphasis on the past tense. It was a mistake. You’ve seen how convincing… they can be.”

  Nate managed to nod, despite being on his back. “We were thinking about threatening to talk to the nameless directly if Crystal doesn’t tell us the whole truth.”

  “What if what they’ve said was true? What if that gets us all killed?” asked Zephyr.

  Watanabe spoke up. “Emphasis on the ‘threaten’. I wouldn’t want to actually talk to the ugly crabs.”

  “You mean tha plahnts,” corrected Kokumo.

  “Only if you believe the android.” Watanabe ran a hand over his face, wiping the sweat away. “I personally don’t see how those vines out there could be their leaders. We’ve been talking to giant crabs for years now, and this whole business with the plants is something the AI just pulled out of the blue.”

  “The point is,” interjected Nate, “that we need to know how responsive Crystal Socrates is to threats. Since you have the most experience with them, I figure you’re the best judge of that.”

  The group looked at Zephyr, expectantly. Memories of Crystal came to her, unbidden, and largely unwanted. Feeling surprised at the warmth of Crystal’s body as she lay in their arms on Olympus, before they had sex. The feeling of exhilaration at being blind, bound, and under Crystal’s power. The inhuman strength and speed as Crystal’s hand squeezed at her neck and the genuine fear she had felt. The tenderness of Crystal’s, admittedly awkward, kisses. Laughing at one of their jokes in Havana. The look of pride on their face as she admitted to loving Zephyr in front of Phoenix, basically at the mercy of a firing squad.

  Not even the pain in her hand could keep her anchored. Zephyr shivered, despite the heat. She wanted to speak up, but her throat and jaw wouldn’t let her. {You can’t even control your own body. Pathetic.}

  “What if they’re right?” she managed to croak, eyes locked on a piece of black dirt that had gotten tracked into the floor of the tent. Strange, how even the dirt could be alien.

  “What?” asked Nate.

  Zephyr cleared her throat and tried to keep hold of her emotions. “What if Crystal is right?” she asked, more loudly. Her eyes couldn’t move from the floor of the tent. “What if learning the truth just puts us in danger?”

  “And you’d just take its word on that? Even after it lied to us?” asked Watanabe.

  “I don’t know…” was all she could manage. {Why can’t things ever be simple?}

  “Well, I’m going to threaten to talk to the nameless. You can trust it if you want, but I’m not some pawn to be manipulated by a machine,” declared Watanabe.

  “Socrates regresada,” said one of the twins over Watanabe’s com. Zephyr flicked the transcript away on her arm.

  “Already? Did something happen? The batteries were supposed to take an hour to fully charge.” Watanabe’s question seemed directed at her, but Zephyr could only shrug as she lay on the tent floor. The older man started to sit up and collect his things.

  “I hope everyone can hear me,” came Crystal’s calm voice over both Watanabe and Kokumo’s coms. “I’ve learned something new from the nameless. There are a collection of young walkers that need to essentially drink from the stalks here. It’s vitally important that we do not interfere with the process, but the nameless have told me that as long as we do not communicate with the children or interfere with their activity, we may stay in the garden during the event.”

  Watanabe had an annoyed look on his face as he did his best to slide his pack past Zephyr in the cramped tent. “I thought you said you had the nameless under your control? What do you mean ‘we may stay’? Sounds like they’re the ones calling the shots,” he said into his com.

  Crystal’s tone was harsh. “I do have control. I could force the children to starve, if I so chose. Is that what you want, Michel? Should I refuse them sustenance in their own home?”

  Zephyr sighed and began to follow Michel Watanabe back into the airlock. Kokumo and Nate made gestures to indicate that they weren’t coming. She’d been enjoying being out of the suit, even half-way. But she wasn’t about to stay inside the tent while this was going on, despite her aching body.

  “Okay, fine, so you’re still king of the hill. Good for you. That still doesn’t explain why you’re telling us their demands,” said Watanabe.

  “The nameless don’t want you to interact with the children any more than I want you to. It’s one thing to break into someone’s house and hold them at gunpoint. It’s quite another to kick their dog while you’re there. When possible we want to de-escalate the conflict by catering to their desires, understand?”

  Zephyr was confused. “If the nameless don’t want us interacting with their children, why are we staying in the garden? We could easily move out of the castle for an hour or so.”

  “Speak for yourself, Cap’n. I’m leaving this tent when you carry me out,” said Nate. She could hear his voice over the com and through the wall of the now-sealed junction between the airlock-tent and the tent where he was relaxing with Kokumo.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. The nameless have been emphasizing that we can stay. I think it may be that they want the children to see us, but I really don’t know.”

  As Zephyr and Watanabe clicked their helmets into place, the man looked back to get confirmation from Zephyr. She raised a hand, thumb-up. He peeled back the lining of outermost tent joint, letting in a flood of alien air.

  “When are the children going to arrive?” asked Watanabe.

  As the flap of the tent was pulled away, Zephyr saw Crystal Socrates standing before them, tall and dark. They extended a hand to her, not meeting her gaze. Their shimmering silver eyes were looking at Michel Watanabe instead. “They’re here now. As soon as I give the signal they’ll enter the garden.”

  Chapter Four

  Face

  The children of the nameless walkers marched into the garden in single file. Despite their alien shape and movements, they had a distinctly child-like shape and way of moving.

  None of us actually cared about the children. I certainly didn’t. The Purpose only had room for humans. I wanted humanity to adore me, but the nameless could all die and I wouldn’t care one bit.

  Wiki was typically curious, and Vista wanted to observe the children, but my knowledge-seeking siblings had that reaction to everything. Heart, like me, didn’t care about non-humans. From our perspectives the children were only a means to our respective ends.

  But I could tell that the humans had a novel response. I had inferred that humans cared about babies of other species based on the density of images of non-human baby animals I had encountered on the web, but the response to the alien young still surprised me.

  The young walkers were paired up, just like adults. One animal served as the “arms” while riding on the “shoulders” of an animal that served as the “legs”. I knew they were different species, but they appeared very similar. Their limbs all ended with the same kind of symmetrical, boneless, four-fingered grasper that looked something like a black starfish.

  Like all the adult walkers I had encountered, each of the arms-animals featured a penis on the top of its body, in the very centre. But the penises of the children were not as imposing as those of the adults. They were, proportionally, only about hal
f of the length (making them between about 3 and 16 centimetres, depending on the child), and while they kept the luminescent freckles, they had not yet extended to feature a sharp, glowing tip.

  Walkers had a generally radial shape, with each animal having four limbs spaced evenly around their body, each protected by smooth black plates of something resembling shell. Their limbs each had three joints: a ball joint at the intersection with the body (a shoulder/hip) followed by two hinge joints (elbows/knees). The hands/feet appeared flexible enough to not require wrists/ankles. Because of the intense gravity, the legs of the nameless were thick and pillar like compared to the arms. Not that the arms were weak; I wasn’t at all sure whether Body could win in a contest of strength, even ignoring the aliens’ greater size.

  Nameless didn’t have heads, faces, or even a front and back. Between each of the limbs were small eyes ringed with circular lids. Because of the offset of their limbs, each animal’s eyes were positioned either above or below the limb of the other. The eyes each looked in different directions, allowing no concept of “focus”. As was the case with animals from Earth, the eyes of the young walkers seemed to be full size even on their small bodies, making them much more prominent than on the large adults.

  While the adult walkers could get to be over 250cm from foot to penis tip, these youth were much smaller. The largest of them was only about 140cm tall, and the median height was closer to 80cm with the smallest at a mere 50cm tall—smaller than many human newborns. But even this smallest child was a pair of animals, and had a full eight limbs and eight (proportionally huge) eyes.

  I had heard that the nameless did not like being looked at, and I knew from experience that they found the human form frightening and evil. Humans were to the nameless what dragons would be to humans. There was a deep aversion there, which I didn’t fully understand. Despite this, Body watched the children openly, just as my companions did. And despite our attention, none of the children seemed afraid.