The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  THE FOOTING had become treacherous and Jela half-regretted his decision to travel with light-pack. The dangle-cord he carried was barely three times his height and it might have been easier to get through the more canyon-like terrain with the long rope. On the other hand, he was moving faster than he would have with the full pack, and he’d have had no more rations anyway . . .

  Now that he was below the ridges rather than walking them, he found the grit and breeze not quite so bad, though the occasional eddy of wind might still scour his face with its burden. Too, not being constantly in the direct rays of the local star helped, though that might be a problem again as it approached mid-day. For the moment, though, he was making time, and was in pretty good shape.

  Rations now. Rations were becoming an issue. It was true that his rations were designed to let him work longer on less, and it was equally true that he’d been designed—or at least gene-selected—to get by on less food than most people ate, and to be more efficient in his use of water. Unfortunately, it was also true that he did require some food, some water, some sleep, and some shelter—or he, like most people in similarly deprived circumstances, would die.

  Bad design, that dying bit, he thought—but no, that was what the sheriekas had thought to conquer—and perhaps had conquered. No one seemed to know that for sure. Meanwhile, he—Generalist Jela—had been designed with human care, and he approved of much of the design. He could see and hear better than average, for instance, his reaction times were fast and refined—and he was far stronger for his size than almost anyone.

  It was this last bit of design work that had gotten his leg broken, despite it, too, being stronger than average. He just couldn’t hold the weight of six large men on it at once. He’d gone over that fight in his mind many times, and with several fighting instructors. He’d done everything right—just sometimes, no matter what, you were going to lose.

  He was rambling again. Deliberately, he brought his attention back to the job at hand. The next moment or two would bring him to the mouth of the canyon and into the valley proper; soon he should have sight of the structures he’d spotted on his recon runs.

  The possibility that they were flood control devices had been suggested by the ship’s geologists, as well as the idea that they were “cabinets” for some kind of energy generating stations that needed to be able to survive both flood and ice. Dams—for water conservation? Even the idea that they were the remains of housing had been suggested . . .

  His stomach grumbled, protesting the lack of wake-up rations. He figured he’d be hungry for awhile. No reason to break that next pack open quite yet.

  He slogged on, cap shading his eyes, watching for the first sign of the—

  There! There was one!

  It was silted in, of course, and beyond it another—but the form of it, the details of it, the stubs—

  He ran—a hundred paces or so it was to the nearest—put his hand on it—

  Laughed then, and shook his head.

  And laughed some more, because he didn’t want to cry. . .

  TWO

  On the ground, Star 475A

  Mission time: 9 planet days and counting

  THE TREES had been magnificent. Their crowns must have reached above the canyon rim in spots, and together they may have shaded the valley below from the direct light of the local star. An entire ecosystem had no doubt depended upon them. No wonder the ship’s geologists had thought them constructs from orbit . . .

  What remained was still impressive. The base diameter of the downed trunk he touched was easily six or seven times his own height and he hesitated to guess how long a board might have been sawn from its length.

  The shadow caught his attention then as light began filling the area in earnest.

  It was time to move downstream. If there was water left at all, it would most likely be at the ancient headwaters—too far by days for him to reach—or downstream. Downstream, he might make in time for it to matter.

  HE WALKED, because he’d chosen to explore, and explore he would. At night, he stopped when his augmented vision blurred, camping where he stood. He went to short rations, cut them in half, and in half again, stinting on water as much as he dared. So far, the rescue transponder had guided no one to his position—friend or foe.

  So, he walked, and he strove to be alert, spending part of the time analyzing his surroundings, part watching the sky, and part in an on-going argument with himself—an argument he was losing.

  “Not going to do it, I bet. They can’t make me!”

  “Will, can.”

  “Won’t, can’t.”

  The argument concerned the growing fashion among the newer troops of putting their ID markers on their face. Fashion was something he didn’t deal with all that much, and besides, he felt that a commander should be making these kinds of decisions, not a troop. And yet, he had to own it was convenient to be able to tell at a glance which unit, rank, and specialty defined a particular soldier.

  “Shouldn’t!”

  He’d said this loudly—definitively—just before Tree Number Sixty-four, and it was while using the base of that tree as shade—and checking the angle of its fall—that the position locator in his pocket chuckled briefly.

  He grabbed the unit, watching the power-light—but there, that was silly. Unless things improved pretty soon the unit’s power would outlast him by quite some number of years. After all, it had been three days—four?—since he’d last had heard that sound . . .

  Live now, the sensor showed him to be somewhat closer to the pre-marked goal than he had expected; the map roughed in by the original orbital photos showed that he’d managed to miss an early valley entrance—likely by refusing to walk quite as boldly as he might have into the teeth of the gritty breeze—and had thus saved himself a half-day or more of trudging down a much longer hillside.

  The big question was becoming “saved” for what? There were no signs of life that was still alive; nor of water. The trees—

  Maybe the trees were worth the walk, after all. There was a theory growing in his head—that he’d come in part looking for great works, and he’d found great works. In the days he’d been walking with the trees he’d found evidence of purpose far beyond the probability of happy accident.

  For one thing, in places—not random places but specific kinds of places—the trees had fallen across the ancient watercourse, high ground to high ground, just where there was no marching forward to the ocean on that bank. They seemed to have preferred the left bank—which was generally wider, when it existed at all—and they sometimes seemed to have rested from their march and made a small grove, while at other times they’d hurried, stringing a long line of solitary trees.

  Too, they were getting smaller. It saddened him, but the later trees . . . sigh.

  Sloppy thinking. He didn’t have dated evidence. For all he factually knew, the first tree he had encountered was the youngest, not the eldest. And yet he persisted in believing that the trees had marched from the high ground down to the sea, and with purpose. And what other purpose could they have but to live—and by continuing to live fight the purpose of the sheriekas?

  “As long as there is life in the Spiral Arm, especially intelligent, organized life, the sheriekas will not easily reach their goal!” The memory-voice rang in his ears, for the moment obscuring the sound of the wind.

  That had been . . . who had it been, after all?

  Song-woman.

  Right.

  Jela closed his eyes, saw the small troop of them standing on a hilltop like so many ancient savages, singing, singing, singing.

  He’d been part of a survey team then, too, his very first, and he’d laughed at their belief that they were fighting some space-borne invader by standing there singing, singing in the light and long into the night.

  In the morning, there had been three fewer of the singers, and word eventually came down from the frontier that three sheriekas world-eaters had simply vanished from tracking—gone
, poof!

  The timer on his arm went off. He reached for a water bulb . . . and stopped before his hand got close to the pocket. Not yet. He’d been waiting a little bit longer of late, and longer still if he could. There wasn’t a whole lot of water left and he’d stopped counting. That he was in the valley helped, since the cutting wind—though noisier—was much less in evidence here among the fallen trees at river height.

  But he’d been thinking about something . . .

  Trees.

  That was it. Like the singers, the trees had helped hold off the sheriekas, he was sure of it. But why then had the sheriekas not taken the planet and the star system, the trees being dead? Why did they skulk about the edge of the system, rather than occupying the place, or blowing up the star, as they had become so fond of doing the last decade or two?

  The singer-woman and her ilk were every bit as needed as was his ilk, if they could sing or pray or startle the enemy to a standstill. The trees, too, if they were on their own inimical to the scourge. The trees. Why if the trees, without human help or human thought—had fought the sheriekas to a standstill he should have them—he should take a piece for cloning, plant them throughout the Arm and—

  He sat, suddenly, not noticing that he landed on rock. There was something here to be thought on. If worse came to worse, which it rapidly was, he would need to write this down, or record it, so that the troop could see this new ally in its proper light.

  Before writing or recording anything, he reached to the left leg pouch and took hold of the water container. Beneath, in the next down, was one more. And then, of course, there was his right leg, with its water . . .

  He gently squeezed a drop or two onto his fingers first, carefully rubbing them together, then wiping his upper lip and clearing some of the grit away from his nose. Then he sipped.

  As he sipped, he thought.

  There had to be a connection between the trees, the pattern of their flight, and the attack from which the sheriekas had withdrawn. Almost, he had it, that idea of his. Almost.

  Well. It would come.

  One more sip for the moment. One more right now for the soldier.

  He sighed so gently a lover sitting beside him might have missed it.

  So he was a soldier. In various places, humans saw the fighting and withdrew, saw the fighting and played the warring parties against each other, fought as these trees had fought to draw every bit of water from the dying world, fought to hide and survive and perhaps outlast the madness of the battle.

  In the end, the powers-that-were had permitted the experiments to resume. To fight augmented humans, one needed special humans. Not quite as adjusted and modified, perhaps, as the sheriekas or their manufactured allies, and perhaps lacking the power to sing away the death of worlds, but fighters who were more efficient, stronger, and often faster.

  Did he survive this world and a dozen more he’d not live the life nor die the death of an ordinary citizen.

  Retire? Quit?

  “Not me!” His voice echoed weirdly against the grating of the wind. He sighed, louder this time, sealed the partial bulb and replaced it in its pocket. Then, he staggered—truly staggered—to his feet.

  He centered himself, felt the energy rise—somewhat, somewhat—danced a step or two, did the stretch routine, settled.

  Things to do. He had things to do. With or without his ID on his face, he was M. Jela Granthor’s Guard, a Generalist in the fight to save life-as-it-was. Who could ask more?

  He laughed and the valley gave his laugh back to him.

  Heartened, he followed the march of the trees.

  HE’D MANAGED TO WAKE, which he took for a good thing, and he managed to recall his name, which was something, too. Eventually, he bullied his way through a two-day old partial ration pack, knowing there weren’t many more left at all, at all, not at all, and glanced at his location sensor.

  The map there seemed clearer and his location more certain. There were still just three satellites working instead of the ideal seven, but they were working hard—and all on this side of the planet at the moment, by happy accident, building exactly the kind of database a Generalist would love to own.

  The trees he’d been following for the last—however long it had been—now were downright skinny, as if they’d been striving for height at the expense of girth, but that was only six or eight times his own paltry height rather than a hundred times or two. Some of them were misshapen, short things, as if they’d tried to become bushes. He tried to use one as a bridge from the right bank back to the left, as he had done several times during his hike, and it broke beneath his boots, both frightening and surprising him since this was the first such bridge that had failed him.

  He’d landed in the silted river channel, not too much worse for the fall, knowing he was at the delta he’d been aiming for since he first stepped out of his lander . . .

  He climbed, slowly, onto the firmer soil of the bank, blinking his eyes against the scene.

  Had he the water to spare, he would have cried then. He’d come through the last bend of what had been a mighty river; before him the channel led out into the dusty, gritty, speckled plain of what had been a vast and shallow salt sea. Here and there were great outcrops of boulders and cliffs, and when he turned around he could see the distant hills.

  There were a few more trees ahead of him, lying neatly in a row as if each had fallen forward exactly as far as it could, and a new one had sprouted right there and—

  There was nothing else.

  Wind.

  Rock.

  Grit.

  Three thousand two hundred and seventy-five of the trees then, since he’d started counting—maybe one or two more or less as he’d walked some nights until he could see nothing.

  “Finish the job, soldier.”

  He was the only one to hear the order, so it must be his to carry out.

  Dutifully, he walked those few steps more, to see it to completion. To honor the campaign, well-planned and well-fought, which had nonetheless ended in defeat.

  After, he knew, he’d need to find a shaded spot down in the dead channel. Above it he’d build a cairn, set his transponders to full power and put them on top—and then he’d settle in with his last sip or two of water to wait. The hill wasn’t all that bad to look at, and he’d be comforted by the presence of fallen comrades. It was a better death than most he had seen.

  Reverently, Jela stepped over the last tree—like so many others, it had fallen across the river, across the channel. It was hardly thicker than his arm, and had scarcely reached the other side of what had been a skinny riverlet, where its meager crown lay in a tangle over a rock large enough to cast a shadow.

  His boot brushed the tree, snagged in a small branch, and he fell forward, barely catching himself, the shock of the landing leaving a bright flash of sun against pale rock dancing in his head, and a green-tinged after-image inside his eyelids, strange counterpoint to the speckled brown and dun of the ex-seashore.

  He closed his eyes tightly. Heard the sound of the wind, heard the rattling in the branches that still graced the dead trunk, felt the sun.

  I could stay here, he thought, just like this, sleep, perhaps not wake—

  He opened his eyes despite the thought, caught movement across the way, keeping time with the beat of the wind.

  There at the root of the rock, just beyond the meager crown of the downed tree, was a spot of green. A leaf—and another.

  Alive.

  THREE

  On the ground, Star 475A

  Mission time: 14 planet days and counting

  DUTY WAS A STRANGE thing to think of in this moment, for he was giddy with a joy totally beyond reason, and he knew it. He felt as he had when he’d come back to the troop hall after serving seventeen days in detention for his single-handed fight against the squad from Recon. He came into the hall to absolute silence. No one spoke to him, no one said anything. He’d been so sure he’d be sent off—

  And there o
n his bunk was his personal unit flag—wrapped around the shaft of it were green and blue ribbons of exactly the shade Recon preferred. When he had it in his hands and held it up and looked out at them, they cheered him.

  And that’s how he felt, looking across at the green life dancing in the wind—as if dozens stood about it, cheering.

  And then, there was duty.

  Though the tree was alive, and mostly green, some of the leaves were browning, and his first thought was to give it water.

  Of course, he didn’t have enough water to rescue it, really, just as he didn’t have enough rations to rescue him. But he gave it water, anyway—the last of the partial, and a fourth of a new bulb, the same as he drank himself.

  Duty made him wonder if the tree was poisonous.

  It was a scrawny thing, barely half his height, with a fine fuzzy bark about it. Perhaps he could suck on a few of the leaves.

  There was something else, among those leaves, and he knew not if he should consider it fruit or nut. He knew not if he should eat it, for surely anything that could live in this environment was—

  Was what? He was living in this environment, after all. For a time.

  The fist-sized pod was high on the tree, its weight bending the slim branch on which it grew, and he saw the thing now as yet another soldier carrying out its duty. All of the trees he’d walked beside had marched down to the river and then down to the sea, each with the goal of moving forward, each after the other bearing the duty of taking that seed-pod, high up in the last tree this world was likely to see, as far forward as possible.

  Duty it was that made the little tree grow that pod . . .

  And duty told him that this tree was far more important than he was. It and its kin had preserved a world for centuries, as the report he’d carefully written and repeated into voice record told those who would follow.

  At this point, even with the tree withering in spots, it would—like the satellite sensor he carried—outlast him. Duty dictated that he should help keep it alive, it being life and he being sworn, in essence, to help things live.