The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  She said as much to Jela, now apparently recovered from the woozies, but he only shrugged and asked her to cut off the remains of the bloody sleeve.

  That done, the kit repacked and returned to its spot beneath the seat, she joined him in staring at the cab’s on-board map.

  “Don’t seem to be working,” she said after a moment, and heard him sigh.

  “That it doesn’t.”

  She considered their rescuer, slumped, to all appearances unconscious, on the jump-seat.

  He was a pretty little man, his bright red hair artfully cut and arranged in loose ringlets. He wore it long and carelessly caught over one shoulder with a twist of jeweled wire. The tunic’s long sleeves were cross-laced with black ribbons, and the elegant slippers were heavily embroidered with black silk.

  He looked, Cantra thought, like a high-caste member of a High House on one of the Inmost worlds—a supposition borne out by his accent, bearing, and bow. His face was a shade too pale for proper high-caste, but she thought that might be an effect of whatever induced state he was presently in. Awake, she thought he’d be as golden-skinned as any pure-blood or deliberate copy.

  “You’re sure this guy is sheriekas?” she asked Jela.

  “Yes,” he answered shortly, his attention still on the non-functional map.

  “Hm,” she said, eyeing him. “How’re you doing mostwise?”

  He looked up from the map, black eyes speculative.

  “I’m up for some action, if you are.”

  “Fine,” Cantra said firmly. “Then there’s no reason to stick around until the ser finishes his nap.”

  She reached into her vest, slipped a length of smartwire from the inside pocket, and shifted around on the bench to face the hatch.

  “Get ready to jump,” she said over her shoulder. “The door likely won’t go up all the way, and it might be something of a tumble, but we should be out of here—”

  The red-haired man on the jump-seat took a sudden deep breath, straightened, and opened his eyes. They were, Cantra saw, a deep and vivid blue, initially focused on something on the far side of the next sector, sharpening quickly on matters closer to hand.

  “That’s done then,” he murmured, and his voice was light and cultured. He sent a glance to Jela.

  “Indeed, sir,” he said, as if they had been engaged in cordial conversation. “It is my very great pleasure to correct you. Neither I nor my lady are sheriekas.”

  Jela snorted. “Tell me you’ve never destroyed a star system.”

  The little man smiled with gentle reproach. “But I am not such a fool, dear sir. Of course I have destroyed star systems. I hope you won’t think me boastful if I admit to being uniquely equipped for such work. Much as you, yourself, are uniquely equipped for fighting. Will you tell me, M. Jela, whose mandate is to protect life, that you have never killed?”

  Jela smiled—one of his real ones, Cantra saw.

  “No,” he said softly. “I’m not such a fool.”

  The little man inclined his head, acknowledging the point. “Well answered, sir. We stand on terms.” He turned his eyes to Cantra.

  “Lady,” he murmured. She held up a hand.

  “Hate to disappoint you,” she said, watching his eyes, “but I’m no lady, just a Rimmer pilot.”

  A flicker of amusement showed in the eyes, nothing else.

  “Lady,” he repeated, courteously. “Please allow me to be at your feet—your most humble and willing servant in all things. Your well-being is more important to me than my life. There is no need to resort to such things as pick-locks while you are in my care.”

  She considered him, admiring the way he blended irony with sincerity. Whoever had the training of this one had drilled him well.

  Unless of course he was the genuine article, in which case she wasn’t wholly certain that she wouldn’t rather have fallen into the so-called care of Jela’s sheriekas.

  “If my well-being means so much to you,” she said, bringing the Rim accent up so hard it rang against the ear. “Open the door and let us out.”

  “In time,” he said, lifting a slim forefinger. A ring covered the finger from knuckle to first joint—an oval black stone in a black setting, carved with—

  “In time,” their host-or-captor said again. “I would be careless indeed of your well-being, not to say that of the most excellent Jela, if I released you now, with enemies on the watch and information yet to be shared.”

  She sighed, and slipped the smartwire back into the inside pocket. “You got a name?”

  He inclined his head. “Indeed, Lady, I have a name. It is Rool Tiazan.”

  “And you can blow up star systems,” she pursued, since Jela wasn’t saying anything.

  “I can destroy star systems,” Rool Tiazan corrected gently. “Yes.”

  “Right—destroy,” she said, amiably. “And you ain’t sheriekas.”

  “Also correct.”

  “If you’re not sheriekas,” Jela said, finally joining the fun, “what are you?”

  “Excellent.” He placed one elegant hand flat against his chest. “I, my lady, and all those like unto us, are sheriekas-made, M. Jela. We were created on purpose that we should do their bidding and hasten the day when eternity belongs only to sheriekas; the lesser-born and the flawed merely distasteful memories to be forgot as quickly as might be.”

  “If you’re sheriekas-made, in order to do the bidding of your makers—” Jela began and Rool Tiazan held up his hand, the carved black stone glinting.

  “Forgive me, M. Jela,” he murmured, and his pretty, ageless face was no longer smiling. “You—and also you, Lady—are surely aware that choice exists. We no longer choose to perform these certain tasks on behalf of those who caused us to be as we are. We are alive, and life is sweet. There is no place nor plan for us in the eternity toward which we were bade to labor.”

  He moved his hand in a snap, as if throwing dice across a cosmic cloth.

  “We of the dramliz cast our lot in with those who are also alive, and who find life sweet.”

  “That’s a fine-sounding statement,” Jela said calmly, “and you deliver it well. But I don’t believe it.”

  “Alas.” Rool Tiazan tipped his head to one side. “I sympathize with your wariness, M. Jela—indeed, I applaud it. However, I would ask you to consider these things—that my lady and I have preserved your lives, and now assist you to evade those who wish you ill.”

  Jela held out his hand, palm up. “The first is probably true,” he said, and turned his palm down. “For the second, we have only your word, which I’m afraid is insufficient.”

  “You do not trust me, in a word,” Rool Tiazan murmured. “May I know why?”

  “You do,” Jela said, mildly, “destroy star systems, as and when ordered by the sheriekas.”

  “The correct verb is ‘did.’ I have absented myself from the work for some number of years. However, I understand you to say that there is no ground upon which we might meet in trust because I have done terrible things during the course of my training and my duty. Do I have this correctly, M. Jela? I would not wish to misunderstand you.”

  “You have it correctly,” Jela said.

  “Ah.” He turned his head, and Cantra felt the dark blue gaze hit her like a blow.

  “Lady—a question, if you will.”

  She held up a hand. “Why bother? Can’t you just grab what you want out of my mind?”

  He smiled—genuinely amused, as far as she could read him.

  “Legend proceeds us, I see. Unfortunately, legend is both accurate and misleading. Under certain conditions, I can indeed siphon information from the minds of others. It is not difficult, it does no harm to those so read, and may provide some good for myself and my lady. However.” He raised his jeweled forefinger.

  “However, there are some individuals whom it is very difficult to read—yourself, for an instance, and M. Jela for another. And even if I could siphon the answer out of your mind, M. Jela cannot, and it is
for him that I would ask the question.”

  He was good, Cantra thought. And she was intrigued.

  “Ask.”

  “You are, I believe, full-trained as an aelantaza, to deceive and destroy at the word of those who caused you to be as you are. I would ask if, in the course of those exercises necessary for you to gain competence in your art, you ever took a blameless life.”

  “For Jela, is this?” She faced her co-pilot. “We had—rabbits, they were called. We practiced all our kills on live targets.”

  “Rabbits that ran on two feet,” Rool Tiazan murmured.

  “Batch-bred?” Jela asked.

  She inclined her head. “What else?”

  There was a short silence, then Rool Tiazan spoke again.

  “M. Jela, do you trust this lady, whose training and acts run parallel to my own?”

  “I do. She’s proved herself trustworthy.”

  Accidents all, but it warmed her to hear him say it, anyway, praise from Jela being coin worth having—and keeping, if she was being honest.

  “Ah,” Rool Tiazan murmured. “Then I see I shall need to continue upon my path of candidness. So—”

  He gestured gracefully toward the roof of the cab—or perhaps beyond it.

  “While it is true that I have destroyed star systems, I must confess that those which fell to my thought were chaotic and incapable of supporting life. The more life-force—shall we call it will?” He paused, apparently awaiting their agreement.

  “All right,” Jela said, with a shrug of wide shoulders.

  “Will, then. The more will that exists within a system, the more difficult it is to bend the lines of probability into a conformation in which the extinction of the system is inevitable.

  “Similarly, though I may alter probability on a less epic scale, the subsequent ripple of unanticipated changes make the practice somewhat less than perfectly useful.”

  Cantra raised an eyebrow. “You’re trying to say that the sheriekas made a design error and that you’re really not worth their trouble?”

  “Not entirely, Lady. Not entirely. There is, after all, some benefit to be had from the mere reading of the lines, and by observing the congruencies of various energies. Indeed, observation of an anomaly in the forces of what we shall, I fear, have to call ‘luck’ is what brought my lady and I here to pleasant Gimlins.”

  “Just in time to save our necks,” Jela commented. “I’d call that lucky—or planned.”

  “You misunderstand me, M. Jela. It is neither I nor my lady who are lucky. It is you—” the slim, be-ringed forefinger pointed for a moment at Jela’s chest, then swung toward Cantra—

  “And most especially you, Lady—about whom the luck swirls and gathers.”

  “Lucky!” Cantra laughed.

  Rool Tiazan smiled sweetly. “Doubt it not. Between the two of you, the luck moves so swiftly that the effect—to those such as my lady and myself—is nothing short of gravitational. We were pulled quite off of our intended course.”

  “I’d be interested to hear how you’d rectify our being lucky with coming within two heartbeats of getting killed back there,” Cantra said.

  “The luck is a natural force, Lady Cantra. It is neither positive nor negative; it obeys the laws binding its existence and cares not how its courses alter the lives through which it flows.”

  “So you—and your lady—” Jela said slowly, “were pulled here against your will.”

  “Ah.” Rool Tiazan moved his hand as if he would hand Jela a coin. “Not quite against our wills, M. Jela. The dramliz have long been aware that if we are to win free to life, we will require allies. We have further understood, through an intense study of probability and possibility, that the best allies life has against the sheriekas is random action. It is our will to take part in the chaos resulting from your necessities, from your . . .”

  “Luck, in a word,” said Jela.

  Rool Tiazan inclined his head. “Precisely.”

  “And you think, do you and your comrades,” pursued Jela, “that the sheriekas can be defeated.”

  The little man gazed at him reproachfully.

  “No, M. Jela. The dramliz have come to the conclusion—as you have—that the sheriekas may not be defeated.”

  “Then what use are allies?”

  Rool Tiazan smiled.

  “Because, though the sheriekas may not be defeated, they can be resisted, they may be confounded, they might be escaped,” he said softly. “Life may go on, and the sheriekas may have their eternity, each separate from the other.”

  “Escaped how?” Cantra asked, and the blue gaze again grazed her face.

  “There are several possibilities, Lady, of which we most certainly must speak. I would ask, however, that we put the discussion of how and may be into the near future, when my lady may also take part.” He paused, his head inclined courteously.

  “Whatever,” she said, deliberately discourteous, but he merely smiled as if she’d given him proper word and mode, and turned his attention back to Jela.

  “Regarding your mission, M. Jela. You are aware that the consolidated commanders are effectively defeated, are you not? They have been routed in most of their bases, and are hunted—with more fervor than the proper enemy! Or do you believe the late contretemps in the alley a mere coincidence?”

  Beside her, Jela seemed to loose some breadth of shoulder. He sighed.

  “I had hopes that my commander . . .” he murmured, and let the words trail away into nothing.

  Rool Tiazan lifted his head, pointing his eyes toward—beyond, Cantra thought—the roof of the cab.

  “Your commander is at liberty,” he said, in a distant voice. “She has eluded those the High Command sent against her, and commands a small force of specialists. Their apparent course is for the Out-Rim, vectoring the area of increased sheriekas attacks.” He blinked and lowered his gaze to Jela’s face.

  “I do not find a probability or a possibility, not a likelihood at all, in which she survives beyond the turning of the Common Year.”

  Thirty Common Days, as Cantra did the math.

  “If it does not offend,” Rool Tiazan said quietly, “my lady and I offer our condolences, M. Jela.”

  Silence. Jela’s eyes were closed. He took a breath—another. Sighed and opened his eyes.

  “I thank you and your lady,” he said softly and with no irony that Cantra could detect. “My commander would wish to die in battle, doing proper duty.”

  “So she shall,” the dramliza assured him. “That she extends the fight acts to disguise event wonderfully. Your commanders may lose, but your mission . . . continues.”

  Another small moment of silence passed before Jela straightened, visibly throwing off grief.

  “Where are you taking us?” he asked Rool Tiazan.

  “Ah. To your ship, where my lady will meet us.”

  “What?” Cantra demanded, but Jela only nodded.

  “Good. I want another opinion of the two of you.”

  Rool Tiazan smiled. “We will be delighted to accommodate you, sir.”

  “If you will excuse me once more, my attention is wanted elsewhere,” the dramliz Rool Tiazan murmured.

  He apparently took their permission for granted. No sooner had he spoken, then he was slumped on the jump-seat again, in a trance so deep he hardly seemed to breathe.

  Jela took a moment to consider the extreme vulnerability of the man’s situation, then shook the thought away. He looked vulnerable, did Rool Tiazan, but it would be beyond foolish to assume that he allowed himself to be at the mercy of his enemies.

  Or of his allies.

  Jela sighed to himself, and put thoughts of mayhem on hold, pending the tree’s judgment.

  He glanced over and saw Cantra watching him. Her fingers moved against her knee, flicking out—Condition is?

  Now there was the question, he thought—wasn’t it? Trust Cantra to ask it, and he’d better be accurate in his assessment, because only she knew what course
she’d plot from the data.

  Condition is, he signed slowly—double usual rules.

  She gave a slight nod, indicating receipt of the message, and settled herself silently into her corner of the bench. Apparently neither one of them wanted to start a conversation that their host could retroactively snatch out of the air when he came to.

  What thoughts might occupy Cantra, he didn’t know, though he might guess it had to do with the prospect of allowing strangers possessed of peculiar talents onto her ship, and strategies for holding them harmless.

  For himself—well, for the first time in his Generalist’s life, he had too much to think about—and on subjects he’d rather not consider.

  That the consolidated commanders had been discovered and were in the process of being destroyed—he’d suspected the worst when his usual contacts had failed him.

  The situation of his commander—if he believed the report of Rool Tiazan—and he had no reason, given his own direst fears, to doubt it . . .

  The report that Commander Ro Gayda would soon be dead in action grieved him more than he could quite assimilate. He had lost comrades before—countless numbers of comrades—and commanding officers, as well. And yet this death, despite that he believed it to be one that she herself would embrace with a soldier’s fierce joy—this death pained him in places so deep and private he hardly knew how to deal with it.

  Had his arm been caught in a man-trap, he might have hacked it off and kept on fighting; had his ship been breeched, he might have rushed the enemy and with his last breath made the pain meaningful.

  But this—there was no getting at the wound; no assessing the level of function disturbed . . .

  A flicker out of the corner of his eye—Cantra’s fingers, asking—

  Condition is?

  He sighed, and watched his fingers spell out—Old soldier hit bad, which might’ve been more truth than he would have willingly given, but a pilot learns to trust his fingers—and besides, it was too late to unsay it.

  Cantra reached out and put her near hand on his knee, then leaned her head back against the bench. She didn’t say anything else, or even look at him, really, but the pressure of her hand eased the tightness inside his chest. His commander might be dead, her unit destroyed, but he had his duty, his mission—and a comrade. It wasn’t much—maybe, maybe. But when had a soldier needed more than his kit and his orders?