The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  Jela grinned. “They send a single M Series soldier under orders to act with discretion and to answer no questions, unless they’re put to him by his immediate superior.” He nodded at the datastrip, sitting unclaimed on the corner of the desk. “The information might be transmitted. The encoding might also destroy the packet when it hits Command comm protocols.”

  “I see.” The commandant put out a hand, picked up the ‘strip. “Perhaps the consolidated commanders are not risking as much as they seem.” He sighed, and slipped the strip away into his ‘skins.

  “Thank you, Captain. Is there anything this garrison can provide to you?”

  Now was the time. Jela kept himself relaxed and tipped his head to one side, the picture of an M who had private thoughts about what duty required of him next.

  “I wonder, sir . . . There’s rumor of an engine left over from the First Phase maybe stashed out here in the Rim somewhere.”

  The officer’s sandy brows lifted.

  “Rumor has all sorts of odd and old tech stashed out in the Rim somewhere, Captain,” he said drily. “Most of it, happily, is built from vapor.”

  “Yes sir,” Jela said respectfully. “This particular engine is reported to generate a field that will repel a world-eater.”

  Commandant Harrib smiled. “Well, that would be useful, wouldn’t it?” He turned empty palms upward. “I doubt the engine exists, now, Captain. If it ever had an exsitence beyond wishful thinking, it was likely sold for salvage or scrap hundreds of years ago.”

  So much for that, Jela thought. Still, it had been worth asking the question.

  “Is there anything else, Captain?” The question this time was pointed, and Jela took the hint.

  “No, sir.” He left the stonewood chair with real regret, and saluted. “With the commandant’s permission?”

  The officer moved a wiry hand—not a return of Jela’s salute, but a flicker of hand-talk: Information offered.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, suddenly feeling a bit wary himself.

  “That chair, Captain—remarkable substance, stonewood. When properly finished, it has the rather useful ability to detect a falsehood spoken by the person sitting in it.” A second flicker—not hand-talk, but humorous deprecation. “I am aware that M Series soldiers possess extraordinary control of their biologic processes. I merely note that by the chair’s report, you have been as truthful as a soldier on a difficult and dangerous mission can be.” He smiled, very slightly. “The chair has been in my family for quite a number of years, and I am something of an expert in interpreting its signals.”

  Jela considered that, then raised his hand, fingers acknowledging: Information received.

  “Good.” The commandant rose and saluted, then leaned forward to push a button on his desk. “Escort will be provided to the gates. Good fortune, Captain.”

  THE TEXTILE DID something better than she’d expected; the embryos something less. All of which meant that Cantra left the halls with trade coins in her pocket, which she would shortly convert at the currency desk—taking half in cash, and half as a deposit to ship’s fund.

  She sighed as she made her way through the free trade zone, dawdling a mite down long lanes of tables rented out to day-traders, locals, and others who for one reason or another weren’t able—or willing—to do business in the halls.

  To hear Jela tell it, their next port o’call would be the Uncle’s doubt-it-not former place of business. That being a given, and what came after by no means assured, she was wasting time shopping the free zone for trade goods.

  Still, she did shop, in order to give the brain something to do other than dwell on memories that were getting more agitated, the deeper they went into the Rim.

  No use thinking about the past, baby, Garen whispered from years agone.

  Well, she’d been right about that, not surprisingly. The past was a sorrowful place, littered with mistakes and the dead. Best to ignore it entirely and keep the mind focused on the present and that small bit of the future that could be manipulated.

  She came to a table covered with a black cloth, holding a spill of sadiline. The pale jewels blinked and flickered in the yellow day-light, and Cantra paused to admire the pretty little display.

  She’d had a sadiline necklace once. All the students in her dorm had one—it had been the talisman of their class, so the instructors had told them.

  “Natural gemstones, locally mined,” a voice said softly. “Very fine quality.”

  She looked up into a pair of pale blue eyes, set deep in a face seamed, wrinkled and brown. A red scarf was tied ‘round the trader’s head, covering one ear, knotted at the back, the tails left to flow over her right breast. The uncovered ear bore a single earring—a large sadiline drop, blazing in the sun.

  “The gem is said to improve memory,” the trader went on in her soft, sibilant voice, “and to impart fortunate dreams.”

  Cantra glanced down, extended a finger and lightly stirred the scattered gems. “Maybe you’d sell more,” she said, “if you said it dulled memory, and gave dreamless sleep.”

  “But that would be untrue.” The trader said, gently reproachful. “And the gem would take its revenge.”

  Revenge. Cantra gave the gems another stir, lifted a shoulder and looked back to the woman behind the table.

  “Not in the market today,” she said.

  The trader bowed her head. “Fair profit, Trader.”

  You saved my life, Garen, what can I do for you? There must be something . . .

  Her own voice, young—how long since she’d been that young?—echoed out of her back-brain. She remembered the argument. She’d been raised to pay her debts. Raised to believe that all debts could be paid, more often than not in cash. Not an understanding Garen shared, exactly, though she’d been a stickler about paying her own.

  You just be the best co-pilot you can be, baby. That’s all. And if somebody should bribe the luck and take ol’ Garen down—you do them the same, then. That’ll make us square. ‘til then, ain’t no sense frettin’. I got everything I need or want.

  Which might’ve been true, or might not’ve—Cantra had never quite figured that. And then what should Garen do but kill her own self and no way for Cantra to clear the debt.

  Damn if she wasn’t doing it again.

  She took a deep breath and forcefully thrust both memory and regret out of her waking mind, putting her attention on the table she’d almost passed by.

  The hand-lettered signed propped along the back edge read, “Oracle Odd Lots” and scattered on the scarred surface were several ceramic objects in various shapes—ship, groundcar, and a unfeatured square that looked like a standard logic tile, all about the size of her palm.

  Cantra paused and picked up the ship, smiling at the smooth feel of the thing against her skin.

  “Learning devices,” the woman behind the table said, her accent as hard as the sadiline merchant’s had been soft. “If the trader will make of her mind a blank screen while she holds the item in her hand, she may have a demonstration.”

  Learning devices? Well, why not? Intrigued, Cantra curled her fingers around the little ship and with the ease born of long practice smoothed the surface thoughts away from a portion of her mind. The rest of her—what the instructors had called The Eternal Watcher—did just that, alert for any suspicious move from the vendor.

  In the space between her ears, she heard a whispering, saw a shimmer of something, which solidified into the familiar pattern of a basic piloting equation, the last line missing. Cantra concentrated, trying to project the final sentence into the equation, saw another shimmer—as if she were looking at a screen—and the line appeared, as solid as the rest.

  In her hand, the toy ship purred, imparting a feeling of warm pleasure.

  Well.

  Not without a pang, she placed the toy back on the table.

  “That’s something unusual,” she said, looking at the woman’s smooth face and bland eyes.

  “They are s
pecialty items,” the other trader allowed. “We sell them in lots, from three to three dozen.”

  They were oddities, and it came to her that they were bound for Uncle, and that it might play well, her arriving with a gift.

  “What’s the price for three?” she asked.

  The trader named a sum—much too high. Cantra answered with another—much too low. And so it went until the thing was done and the three toys—one of each shape on offer—were packed snug together in a gel-box.

  Cantra took her leave of trader with a nod and continued on her way, a little brisker now, with less attention to the wares on offer.

  Time was moving on, and Jela due to meet her at the administration hall pretty soon, now.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Spiral Dance

  Twilight Interval

  WHEN THE DOOR was unlocked, the quarters were surprisingly convenable. When the door was dogged open, the quarters were quite comfortable.

  He relaxed there now, Dulsey bunked below him, both quietly occupying themselves while the ship moved—quietly and without turmoil—through what Cantra had styled “the long twilight.”

  He’d been working with his log book, bringing it up to date. It was . . . comforting to write out his notes and observations by hand, though some entries were necessarily in a code he held in common only with his commander. He had his doubts that the book would ever make it back into the hands of his commander, but it might. It might. And in the meantime, it was work, and a balm to an M’s active nature.

  Below him, Dulsey was reading her share of the flimsies the captain had allowed crew to print out to pass the time.

  Cantra was also reading in her quarters. If he craned his head one way, he could see her open door, and, beyond, a long leg stretched out on the bunk. If he craned his head the other way, he could see the tree in the pilots’ tower, dreaming its own dreams.

  Those dreams sometimes woke him from his own sleep cycle, as if a distant sun had come over the mountain just now. It had worried him for a while—the how and the why of it. Lately, he’d taken a more philosophic attitude. Ship time, tree time, what mattered it? Time passed—that was the fact no one escaped.

  Dulsey seemed not to notice that his day wasn’t quite in synch with the ship’s. Cantra surely did notice, as she noticed everything that bore on her ship’s state. She didn’t remark it, though, which Jela knew she wouldn’t do, unless and until he affected the ship’s necessities.

  Log brought up to date, Jela stowed the book and the pen, and reached for his own share of flimsies, which he’d anchored under his knee.

  He didn’t immediately begin to read though. Instead, he leaned his head back and listened to the sounds. The comforting, usual sounds of a well-maintained and ship-shape ship, her crew at ease and easy within the group.

  Oddly enough, the easiness of their odd and randomly formed crew reinforced one of the tenets apparently espoused by the sheriekas—that “old humans” were herd creatures.

  As a crew, Jela thought lazily, they were hardly a rousing illustration of the “old humans,” when between them none had or could have met anyone approximating mother or father.

  Still, he and Pilot Cantra might be said to have a mother and father; even if no one could ever have come forward to claim them. Met or unmet, there were progenitors of sorts.

  Dulsey, though, was a full custom build, her and the rest of her Batch pulled from human genetic parts for a specific job, for profit.

  That thought turned in his mind a moment, and he wondered briefly what motivated the sheriekas, for surely the universe that he knew and moved through was motivated by profit. Pilot Cantra’s considerable skills were surely the result of desire for profit, as were Dulsey’s. His own existence had been ruled by others, largely those who also obeyed others . . . and those others looking for little more than a quiet place to spin their webs and turn their profits.

  Now, though, it might be that the profit motivation would finally fail the herd of men. When men like Rint dea’Sord traded with the Enemy, with thoughts of their own profit uppermost. When those Inside interests who ordered the High Command declared that their profit—their lives—were of more importance than the profits and lives of those who lived elsewhere . . .

  The instinct for profit, thought Jela—personal profit. That instinct was maybe not a long-term survival trait.

  The herd instinct, on the other hand, apparently permitted Pilot Cantra, who had not too long past locked him and Dulsey in and out at whim—to lounge, reading, while they did the same, in pursuit of goals that might transcend simple profit. Though it was never, Jela told himself, well to assume that Cantra’s motives were either simple or apparent. And to remember that, if ever a woman held to her own profit above all else, it was Pilot Cantra.

  Which led back to the question of what profit Cantra saw for herself in their present operation. Was it after all the herd instinct propounded by some ancient sheriekas philosopher, rising above the instinct for personal profit?

  Well. Best not share that question with Dulsey, suddenly bereft of the life-long company of her Pod, nor with Cantra, who would surely laugh. The tree, now, might enjoy the puzzle, but it was presently in its more restful state, perhaps awaiting a dawn light years distant, so he forbore from passing it on.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Spiral Dance

  The Little Empty

  IT WAS QUIET in the piloting tower, both pilots at their stations, and the tree, Jela thought, at its. There was a tickle in the back of his mind, as if some intelligence beside his own was surveying the sparse starfield. If the sight awoke consternation in that other auditor, he didn’t know it—though he wouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been on the Rim more than once, and still the lack of . . . clutter . . . awed, amazed and intimidated him.

  Pilot Cantra, now. If she felt awe or amazement, she kept both far away from her face. It wasn’t to be expected, Jela thought wryly, that the pilot would be intimated by anything.

  From the jump-seat came the sound of small and shaky in-breath. Dulsey, at least, was impressed.

  “Are we in the Deeps, then, Pilot?” she asked softly.

  Cantra lifted a shoulder, her attention more than two-thirds on her board, which might at least indicate due caution.

  “Say, the Shallows,” she murmured. “When we come out of the next transition, then you’ll have the Deeps.” She finished fiddling with her board and released the shock straps.

  “Rimmers, they call this the Little Empty,” she said. “We’ll take ourselves a pause here. Pilots’ll do a complete systems check. Dulsey, if you’re willing, a good meal to go into the next phase on would be welcome.”

  Truth told, it was that next transition that was giving Jela a bit of worry. The pilot might be enjoying her joke, pretending they weren’t sitting in the Deeps, but he only had two beacons on con and some small star clusters on the screens, bright and hard against the velvet . . .

  “I am more than willing to provide a meal, Pilot,” Dulsey was saying. “Now?”

  “Give us time to do the checks,” Cantra answered, coming up out of her chair in a stretch. “Call it two ship-hours. Ace?”

  “Ace,” Dulsey said.

  “Good. I’m also going to need eyeballs on the clamps and a diagnostic on the can system. You take that on, while Jela an’ me get busy here.”

  “Yes, Pilot.” Dulsey unstrapped and slid to her feet with a will, moving out of the tower with the determined stride of a woman with work to accomplish.

  Cantra sighed and shook her head and gave Jela a look out of amused green eyes.

  “Hope the Uncle’s ready for this,” she said.

  “Dulsey’s a hard worker,” Jela answered. “If the Uncle’s surviving ‘way out here, he has to have a corps of hard, smart workers with him. She’ll fit right in.”

  “Uncle’s a bit further out, yet,” Cantra said, leaning over her board and initiating a system-wide check. “Found this area too crowded, is what I heard.
” She straightened and gave him another look, this one straight and stern.

  “Get your check running, Pilot. After, I’ll thank you to recall that you were going to be showing me what those guns you dote on can do.”

  “Understand,” Jela said, his big hands resting lightly on the edge of the co-pilot’s board, “that you’ll have to unlock the system all the way. I’ll need complete access. I’ll also thank you for sharing your codes so I won’t have to use the system override.”

  She’d expected him to need gut-level access, but it was still hard to get her fingers moving in the sequence that would open the guns to him and send the codes to his work screen.

  “Thank you.” That was said soft, like maybe he had an idea how much of a struggle habit had put up against need-to-know.

  “We’ll begin,” he said, of a sudden not soft at all, “with a complete system check, an inspection of records . . .”

  She frowned, reached to the board—and pulled her hand back. Need to know, she reminded herself. You need to know your guns, and this is the man to teach you.

  Which didn’t mean he had the right to snoop her info.

  “Right, Commodore,” she said with asperity. “I’m guessing you’ll need serial numbers, purchase dates, shell counts, and . . .”

  He sighed, and she figured he was going to come all high-brass now.

  Instead, though, he nodded.

  “We’ll want all of that, if you can give it to me. Then we can look and see what needs to be done to optimize things, and what rounds we might need to load up on.”

  Cantra sighed. If he’d yelled, she’d’ve yelled back. But him being reasonable . . .

  She sighed again.

  “This ain’t a cruise ship, Pilot; it’s a Dark trader. You think I keep copies of my receipts all nice and tidy for the port cops to look over at their leisure?”

  There was a brief bit of tight silence—then he sighed, and shook his head, and said, quiet, “I take your point. Let’s have some target practice, then.”

  SHE KEPT WAITING for it, but he never did turn the brass on. He did insist that the best target practice they could get was from using a couple sets of what he called “underpowered rounds” as targets.