The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  A curse, more like, and a danger to her and to those who fell under her sway. The best course—the safest—was to keep herself to herself, and to stand as cantankerous and off-putting as possible when human interaction came necessary.

  The meager stars danced in the screens. She closed her eyes, which didn’t shut the empty out.

  Five years since Garen’d died. Five years of running solo, keeping low, with nobody except herself to talk to.

  And for what?

  “Habit,” she whispered, and in the Deeps behind her eyelids she saw Dulsey, her stolid face animating as she talked about the Uncle and his free and equal society of Batchers. Jela, the joyful gleam of anticipated mayhem in his eye as he squared off in front of an opponent twice his mass.

  . . . and other images—Jela half-way up the ramp and more; Jela parting the killing mob around her; Jela’s face, worried and relieved and cautious all at once, the first thing in her eyes when the ‘kit opened up.

  Jela, who had a mission and a reason to live his life as he did, and who had promised to take himself and his tree off at Gimlins, which was, damnitall, what she wanted.

  Wasn’t it?

  Should’ve sold the man to the Uncle, and had done she told herself—and laughed. Selling Jela would have solved more than one problem, the way she figured it now.

  So you owe him, she said to herself, but it was more than that. She’d gotten used to him; gotten used to his back up and his good sense. Worse, she’d gotten used to having him on her ship, in her daily routine. Gotten used to regular sleep shifts, and not running half-ragged. Hadn’t touched a stick of Tempo in—

  Well, she was going to miss him, that was all.

  Nothing else but what you traded for.

  Right.

  Deliberately, she put her feet down on the cold decking, and pushed out of the chair.

  Behind her, the door cycled.

  She turned and considered him, the tight ship togs showing the shoulders to good advantage.

  He paused just inside the door, his face open and a little unsure, hands quiet at his sides.

  “Occurs to me,” he said, quiet-like and as serious as she’d ever heard him. “That I put you off more than one course at Faldaiza. I’m no redhead, but I can try to make it up to you.” He gave her a smile that was nigh heart-stopping in its genuine wryness. “If you’re interested.”

  Well. Yes, as a matter of fact, she was interested.

  So she smiled and walked toward him, knowing she was going to regret this, too, at Gimlins.

  He tipped his head, the black eyes watching her with a certain warm appreciation. She felt her smile get wider and let it happen while she held out a hand.

  He met it, his fingers warm, his palm calloused, his grip absurdly light for a man who could crush another man’s fist.

  “My cabin’s bigger,” she said softly, and they left the tower together.

  THIRTY

  Spiral Dance

  Gimlins Approach

  GIMLINS HUNG IN the second screen, where it had been for some time while Jela played with various comm-codes, his face slowly settling into an expression of grim patience, tension coming off of him in waves.

  Cantra busied herself with the piloting side of things, pulling in such feeds as were available; checking her headings for the sixth time; and riding the scans harder than need be.

  The tension from the co-pilot’s side continued to build, to the point where the pilot started to itch. Sighing, she released the straps and stood.

  “I’m fixing tea,” she told the side of Jela’s face. “Want?”

  Not even a blink to show he’d heard her. His fingers moved on the comm-pad, paused—moved again.

  Give it up, she thought at him. Anybody who’s hiding this hard can’t be anything but trouble.

  “One more string,” Jela said, his voice as distant as his profile. “Tea would be fine, thank you.”

  “Right.”

  She took herself off to the galley, put the tea on to brew and leaned against the cabinets, arms crossed over her chest, feeling something like grim herself.

  “Cantra yos’Phelium,” she said aloud, “you’re a fool.”

  Worse than a fool, if she was going to start talking out straight to herself while there was still another pair of ears on-board to hear it.

  She sighed heartily and closed her eyes.

  The man’s leaving at Gimlins, she told herself, counting it out by the numbers. He’s taking his tree and he’s going; it’s what he wants and if you had a brain in your head, which you don’t, it’s what you want. Yes, you owe him—he’s done everything and more that a co-pilot should, to keep his pilot hale and steady. So pay him up even and set him down where he says. It’s not like he can’t take care of himself. And his damn’ tree, too.

  The tea-maker squawked, startling her. Grousing, she pulled open the cabinet, unshipped mugs, poured, stuck a couple of high-cals into her sleeve as an afterthought and went back to the tower.

  Jela was on his feet, expression now forcibly agreeable, tension still evident, but of a different quality.

  Cantra raised an eyebrow, deliberately nonchalant.

  “Contact,” he said. “We go in.”

  “Great,” she answered, like she meant it, and showed a smile as she handed him a mug.

  HE DRESSED IN trade leathers, rolled up his kit and stood for a moment staring down at it: a moderate pack, the tough coderoy scarred and travel-worn. Not the sort of thing a trader would be carrying on his back to a business meeting.

  It would have to stay.

  Sighing lightly, he bent, rummaged briefly, pulled out the log book and slid it into an inside vest pocket, straightened the pack and lashed it to the wall. Nothing there that couldn’t be replaced, and it could be that Cantra would find use for some bits. After all, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to abandon what was his in the course of obeying orders. And it wouldn’t be the last.

  Not quite the last.

  The tree, too, was going to have to stay, and take its chances with whatever care Cantra could give it. He’d tried to express this, and his reasons, though he couldn’t tell if he’d actually gotten through. He hoped he had and that the tree understood—though it couldn’t make any difference if it didn’t.

  The voice on the comm had been furtive and something less than knowledgeable, though they’d had the pass-codes ready enough. And while that wasn’t conclusive, it was better than no answer at all. His guess was that the voice on the comm was a local who had been paid to keep an ear on the old feed, with no expectation that a call would ever come in. The only thing he could reasonably expect was to be passed up the line as quickly as the contact could manage.

  He closed his eyes, trying to feel out the tree, but all he found in the back recesses of his skull was a cool and distant greenness.

  Right, then.

  It was time to take his leave of the pilot—a thought not as comforting as it could be.

  She’d stood at his back, and tolerated his infringement of her life without either shooting him or selling him; she’d been more than generous in bed, and he was going to miss her—vile temper, sarcasm, and all.

  Well.

  He straightened his vest once more, needlessly, and settled his belt ‘round his waist, making certain his shib was in place and drew easily. The flexible ceramic cutting edge felt cool against his fingers, and he smiled. All in order.

  Then he went out to the tower to take leave of his pilot.

  “With me?” Cantra repeated, with a glance over her shoulder at the tree sitting calm in its pot. “I thought you two were partners.”

  “We are,” Jela answered, trying to sound like there was agreement on all sides. “But it’s time to split up. I can’t take it with me to the meeting and—” He stopped because she had raised her hand, palm out toward his nose.

  “You risked your life—and mine, too—getting that tree off Faldaiza; you took it with you when I set you down at Taliofi. It
guarded your back while we was visiting with the Uncle, and now you’re leaving it with me?” She shot another glance over her shoulder.

  “Why?”

  A fair question, and trust Cantra to ask it. He moved his shoulders, easing out some of the tension.

  “The contact I’ve got—is deep. Likely the only thing they’ll be able to do is pass me up-line. I’ll have to go quick and I’ll have to go light.” He sent a look to the tree himself, absurdly pleased to see how tall and how full it was now.

  Looking back to Cantra, he saw her eyeing his vest.

  “No ‘skins?” she said, and held up her hand again. “I know they ain’t proof against all evil, but they’re something better than trade leather.”

  “I don’t want to draw attention to myself,” he said. “The meet’s up in the city, and I don’t want to compromise my contact.”

  Cantra closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Jela,” she said, flat calm, which meant he was in for a tongue-lashing.

  “Pilot?”

  She opened her eyes and glared at him.

  “This smells bad to me. Say it smells sweet to you.”

  Truth told, his nose for trouble detected a decided odor about the business, too. On the other hand, he wasn’t getting any younger, and none of the usuals—none—had answered.

  “They had the right codes,” he said mildly, into Cantra’s glare.

  She sighed. “Would Pilot Muran of late lamented memory have had those same codes?”

  The woman had a wonderful mind for a detail, Jela thought and stifled his own sigh.

  “Yes,” he said, keeping in calm and friendly. “Muran would have had the same codes. And if they are using Muran’s codes, then—I need to know that, too. My orders are clear.”

  “And this time you feel like following them.”

  There wasn’t any real answer to that, so he just stood there, bearing her scrutiny, until she sighed again and lifted a hand to push her hair back from her eyes.

  “You don’t,” she said, softly, “need to be this desperate to leave on my account. If there’s a less chancy place to look for news of folk gone missing, Dancer’s good for the trip.”

  Of the things he might have expected to hear her say, an offer of continued passage was last. The brain in his fingers, quicker than the one in his head, came up with a reply first.

  Condition is?

  She glanced aside and if he hadn’t known her, he’d had judged her to be embarrassed.

  “I don’t have anything on the screens that can’t wait,” she said huskily.

  The offer warmed him, but nothing could be said about his next-best-hope but that it was riskier still.

  He smiled, to let her know he appreciated the offer, and flipped his hand, palm up, palm down.

  “I’ve got to try here,” he said.

  Green eyes considered him. “Got to, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then,” she said briskly. “I’m coming with you.”

  He blinked. “Cantra—”

  “You can be sure that the pilot of this ship ain’t taking her orders from the co-pilot, current or former,” she interrupted. “You can wait for me to get dressed up all pretty like a trader, or you can leave now. If you leave, I’ll follow you, which might could be awkward for you. If you wait, I’ll cover your back and follow your lead.”

  She was serious.

  “The ship,” he said, playing the one argument that was sure to sway her. “The ship would be at risk, with her pilot on the port and maybe headed for rough ground.”

  She smiled, which was bad.

  “Ship’s safety comes under the pilot’s care,” she said, voice serious. “And the pilot judges the risk to the ship is acceptable.”

  He had, thought Jela, done Cantra yos’Phelium a disservice. She could step outside of the boundaries she’d made for herself and take a decision that risked her and her ship, if needed.

  Damn everything, that she thought it was needed now.

  “I once let my pilot go outta here to a meet maybe a little less hazardous than the one you’re on course for,” Cantra said, her voice still carrying that note of complete seriousness. “Wasn’t much choice about it—she was my pilot and she made it an order. And she come back on-ship in a body-bag.”

  She gave him another straight-on glare. “I don’t expect to let my co-pilot walk out into clear and present danger without back-up,” she said. “Damn if I will, Jela. You hear it?”

  He heard it. It might have been that he heard more of it than she wanted him to hear. Or she might have intended it all.

  In either case, he was running out of time to argue, and he didn’t doubt she’d make good on her threat.

  So.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be grateful for the back-up, Pilot.”

  THE MEETING PLACE was away up in the city, beyond yard and port—which was yet another thing not to love about it, in Cantra’s opinion.

  Jela’d flagged down a robocab at the port, directing it to a point somewhat to the east and north of the final destination, according to the city map she’d hastily memorized. From there, they walked, two traders taking in the sights, of which there were a few.

  As a general rule, Cantra avoided cities. Garen had never gone beyond the port proper, contending there was more than enough trouble to be found right there—and mostly she was right.

  The last time Cantra was inside a city had been during the course of a training run, about a half-year before Pliny put paid to them all. That city had been vertical, rising bone pale and fragile out of the depths of a tumultuous planetary sea. Cylayn, that city had been named, and it was a triumph of bio-engineering. The fragile-seeming and extremely tough shell in which the city was housed had been spun by sea creatures designed for that single monumental task, who then died, dried and blew away on the constant winds, precisely on schedule, leaving behind a marvelous habitat for the imported human population.

  It had also been a marvel of security regulations and law, the habitat being, in its way, as risky as any space station, and it had been lessons in circumventing those safeguards of the common good that had occupied Cantra’s time there.

  This city, now—this Pluad—was level, its streets laid out in a grid—north-south, east-west—dusty, and heavier than she liked. Then there was the noise, and the smells, and the sheer press of people.

  She was watching for anything from armed ambush to pickpockets, so it was the people took most of her attention. They weren’t on a Closed World, or even close Inside, so there was a spacer’s dozen of types on the street—long, short, thick, thin; pale, dark, and in-between.

  Her own type, with the high-caste golden skin and the slim, deceptively frail-seeming build, was nothing to notice in this, or almost any, crowd.

  Jela made a little bit of stir, but if she was to judge from various interested glances, the reasons would be the shoulders and the hips.

  The clothes were as varied as the people wearing them—gowns with sleeves so long they trailed on the dusty walkway, daysilks and sandals, Insider formals, a couple of spacer ‘skins, trader leathers, and the inevitable tunics, sleeveless so the Batcher tats showed.

  Jela turned into a wide space in the walk and stopped. She swung in beside him. Overhead, suspended from a thin silvered arc, hung an inverted ceramic bowl. As they came to rest beneath, its color changed from pale yellow to bright red.

  “‘nother cab?” she asked, which was the first thing either had said to the other since leaving the ship.

  He glanced at her. “Are we being followed?”

  She sighed lightly. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Right. So we’ll go further in and then take another walk.” He looked around at the wide crowded walk and busy street, the low, featureless pastel buildings shining in the full light of the local sun.

  “Nice city.”

  “If you say so,” she answered, as a flutter caught the edge of her eye
and she turned to look up the walkway.

  The next building up was a domed affair, pale pink, with a striped yellow-and-blue awning over the door. Coming out of the door were a dozen or more people in long, cowled robes striped to match the awning, bearing pale pink baskets. As they reached the common walkway, they separated into pairs, each pair taking off at a tangent. The pair walking toward their position on the taxi stand were pressing something from their baskets into the hands of those they passed, with a murmured phrase she couldn’t quite pick out at this distance in the general city din.

  Cantra moved her eyes, checking the moving people and assuring herself that they still weren’t being followed. Near as she could tell, which wasn’t as near as she’d like.

  “Here comes our cab,” Jela said from beside her.

  She turned face forward, spying the thing as it cut across four lanes of traffic, not much more than a bench seat mounted behind the hump of a nav-brain, enclosed in plas-shielding, the whole vehicle scooting along on three wheels.

  She took a step forward, felt someone too close to her right shoulder and spun, nearly knocking over one of the striped-robes—she had an impression of pale eyes, and a glint of teeth in the dimness of the cowl, and something cool pressed into her hand.

  “Die well, sister,” the soft voice murmured and they were gone, the cab was arrived, and Jela was already on the seat, the door coming down, the shielding already starting to opaque—

  “Cantra!”

  She jumped, ducked under the descending door and fell heavily onto the bench, banging into Jela’s shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “No problem,” he answered, most of his attention on the map panel. He jerked his head toward the sealed door.

  “What was that about?”

  “Couple of crazies, giving me a—” She opened her hand, and blinked down at the plain square tile in her hand.

  “Looks like one of the toys I took to the Uncle,” she said.

  Destination chosen and accepted, the cab accelerated. Cantra breathed a small sigh of relief for the now completely opaqued dome as Jela sat back and held out a broad hand.