The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  Jela insisted that the Enemy’d been human, once, but even if so, they were something other now. Something powerful and all-encompassing.

  Something unbeatable.

  Even Jela’d admitted that—and she’d seen plain on his face what it cost him to say so.

  Come right down to it, she thought, as the cycle clicked over and the steam began to thin—what was it made human-kind particularly worth preserving and continuing? If the Enemy manufactured biologics and smartworks to do their heavy lifting, how was that different, or worse, than those same things performed by the so-called natural humans of the Spiral Arm? If the Enemy dealt harsh with its creations—well, examine the life of your typical Batcher. And if the Enemy was cruel—measure the cruelty that bred a man alert, sharp, and able, with a taste for life as wide as the Deeps themselves, while making sure and certain he’d die before he could reason his way into damaging his makers in the style they most deserved . . .

  She shivered. The steam was gone, the tiles cooling. She had the robe out of the cabinet and shrugged into it, relishing the feel of plush against her skin.

  Tying the sash ‘round her waist, she moved from the bath to the great room—and stopped, the hair raising along her arms, breath-caught and heart-clutched—all and any of which was nothing more than missishness.

  “You,” she said, and slipped her hands into the robe’s pockets, feeling the ache in her abused knuckles as the fingers curled into fists.

  Rool Tiazan turned from the window and bowed, deep and respectful.

  “Lady.”

  He straightened, lissome and sweet, the red ringlets tumbling across his shoulder, his face ageless and smooth.

  “You,” she said again, voice harsh in her own ears. She took one deliberate, foolish step forward. “You let him die.”

  The dark blue eyes met hers, and she saw there honest sorrow. His voice when he made answer was soft.

  “He chose, Lady. You heard him.”

  “He chose between two choices offered—but who held back the third? You could’ve given him a good, long life—”

  “No.” He held up a hand, a ruby luminescence haloing the black ring on his first finger. “Forgive me, Lady, if what I say wounds you further. However, the only one who seems likely to have had a good, long life at the end of this day’s work is—you.”

  She closed her eyes, suddenly nearer to tears than mayhem.

  “I don’t want it,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said, voice gentle. “The luck swirls where it may, and not even the great Iloheen—whom you call the sheriekas—can force it to their will, or see through it to what will be.”

  “Which makes it a risky weapon, wouldn’t you say?” she snapped, opening her eyes again to give him a glare.

  He bowed slightly, accepting the challenge and in no way discommoded. “Indeed. The very riskiest of weapons. If there were another so likely—” He moved his hands in that peculiar gesture of his, as if he were soothing the air itself. “It is futile now to discuss might-haves. The course is set. The sheriekas advance ever more quickly; and we are very soon come to the point of proof.”

  “Which is why you’re here,” she said, and sighed, and sent a searching glance ‘round the room.

  “Speaking of proofs and points—where stands your own kind lady?”

  “Ah.” He inclined his head. “She fell in our flight from the Iloheen, yet not before striking a blow which will be recalled.”

  Another to add to the tally of too many gone. Despite she had neither liked nor trusted the lady, Cantra bowed, and gave her full measure honor.

  “My sympathy,” she said formally, “on your loss.”

  “There is no loss,” he answered, “for she is with me.”

  Like Jela was with her, and Garen, too, Cantra thought, and moved a shoulder. “Chill comfort, as my foster-mother would have it.”

  “Yet comfort still, and nothing I would spurn.”

  “Well.” Carefully, she slid her hands from the robe’s pockets; flexed her aching fingers. “You’ll be pleased to know that the task you set us is accomplished, and the scholar himself, with all his thought and work to hand and to head, lies in a room further along this hall. I’ll tell you that Jela felt his oath bound him, but as he’s in no case to finish it out, I’m sure you’ll find some way to use both the man and his work to your own ends.”

  Silence, then yet another bow.

  “Forgive me, that I did not inquire after the ssussdriad immediately. I trust good health and virtue attend it.”

  “It seems spry enough,” she said shortly.

  “I am delighted to hear so,” Rool Tiazan answered seriously. “May I speak with it?”

  “Can’t stop you.” She twitched a shoulder. “It’s on Dancer.”

  “On Dancer,” he repeated and tipped his head, dark eyes slightly narrowed. “Lady, surely you are aware that your actions upon departing Vanehald have engaged the attention of the Iloheen. They have seen you and your ship.”

  The aches and pains which were her take-home prizes from the bar fight were beginning to complain again. What she wanted, she thought, was to find her bed and sleep off the over-rush of adrenaline and anger, not stand arguing points of precedence and ownership with a tricksy, self-serving—

  “The ssussdriad,” Rool Tiazan said softly, “is needed here. It holds some part of the answers which yet elude the revered scholar’s grasp.”

  She glared at him. “Jela asked me to make sure that damn’ tree was taken someplace safe. Whether or not I happen to think that his last and best joke, or that only an addlepate would’ve promised so daft a thing—I did promise, and I intend to stand by it. Solcintra’s not looking like ‘safe’ to me, though I’ll allow a certain unfamiliarity with the parameters. That being the case—”

  “Lady, hear me! The Iloheen have your ship in their eye! They know it for one of their own, and if they have not yet bespoken it, they will soon do so. Such safety and shelter as it has offered you is about to be withdrawn. If you wish to honor your promise to M. Jela, you will remove yourself, the ssussdriad, and all that is valuable from that vessel and send it away from here!”

  She stared at him, reading honest alarm in the set of his shoulders.

  You be careful of them toys, baby, Garen counseled from memory; and you be careful of our ship. While some pilots might have a safe haven in their ship, we got what you’d call a paradox. Our ship’s good for us; she’s top o’line and quality all the way. But she’s carrying those things that’re Enemy-issue. And it’s true, baby—as true as I’m sitting here telling you this—that those things, they never forget who made ‘em.

  “Don’t you know,” she asked, not meaning to taunt him, “if they’ve called Dancer to heel?”

  His mouth tightened. “The more nearly the event from which we wish to emerge ascendent approaches, the less I know—anything.”

  She sighed. “Welcome to bidness as usual.”

  His lips twitched. “I fear I may require some time to become accustomed.” He lifted a hand, sparks dripping like blood from his ring. “Nonetheless, I am as certain as may be that the ssussdriad is in a position to greatly assist the scholar—and by extension, all life.” He sent a quick, sideways look into her face. “Mayhap the ssussdriad also feels bound by its oath.”

  “It might,” Cantra said wearily. “Ain’t something I’ve discussed with it.”

  “The ssussdriad is needed,” Rool Tiazan persisted, “here.”

  “I heard you the first time. Seems to me, you being the one who wants it here, that you can bring it here.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, indeed?”

  “Indeed. Jela might’ve been able to carry that damn’ tree around like it didn’t weigh no more than a data tile, but it’s more’n I can do to get it up onto a cargo sled. Besides which, as you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m a bit hard-used lately and not feeling quite the thing. It being your necessity that wants the tree here, ‘stead o’there, I�
��m thinking you can shift it, or it can stay where it is.”

  Silence, his face a study in blandness.

  With a fwuummp! of displaced air, the tree in its pot arrived overlooking the charming vista provided by the window, leaves fluttering wildly. Around it, manifesting with smaller, overlapping fwuummps of their own came Jela’s kit, the ceramic blade he’d taken off the X Strain a million years ago, a neat pile of her own clothes, and the bank-box.

  She inclined her head. “That’s thorough. I’ll ask you not to take Dancer in hand.”

  “Lady—”

  “My ship,” she growled. “I’ll do what’s needful, when it’s needful.”

  He bowed.

  “Right.” Her knees were beginning to wobble, by which sign she knew she needed sleep. She pulled up the sternest look she had on file and gave it to Rool Tiazan.

  “You have bidness with the scholar, now’s the time to tend to it.”

  “Ah.” He raised his hands, fingers wide. “My lady wishes to give you a gift,” he murmured. “Will you accept it?”

  She eyed him. “Her being dead—”

  “Nay, did I not say that she is with me?” He smiled. “You will take no harm from accepting; so I do swear.”

  Unless madness was contagious, which, according to everything she’d ever seen on the Rim, it was.

  “Fine,” she said. “A gift. And then you move on to haunt Ser dea’Syl. Do we have an accord?”

  Rool Tiazan smiled.

  “Pilot, we do.” He stepped forward, hands extended, palm up.

  “Your hands on mine,” he murmured, and it seemed to her that his voice was higher, sweeter, sterner.

  She put her palms against his, felt warmth spread, swift and soothing, through her veins.

  “The seed is not well-rooted,” Rool Tiazan whispered. “Is it your will to carry the child to term?”

  Yes, she said, or thought, or both.

  “Let it be so,” the other answered, and stepped back, breaking the connection between them.

  Cantra looked down at her hands, the knuckles healed and whole, and then to Rool Tiazan, who was bowing yet again.

  “Lady,” he murmured. “Until soon.”

  He blurred at the edges, his body melting into light—and she was alone, saving the tree, in her room.

  Slightly unsteady, she looked at the tree and the tumble of her belongings ‘round its base. It came to her that her face didn’t ache anymore. She applied her fingertips, lightly, to her right eye, found it open and unbruised; the opposite cheek smooth and unmarred.

  “Well,” she said to the air and the aether, and closed her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Impossible, Master?” Tor An went to one knee by the scholar’s chair, the better to see into the downturned face.

  The old man did not look up; he watched his own hand stroking the orange cat as if the action and the animal were the most important things in the galaxy.

  “Allow me to know,” he said softly, “when my own work has described a impasse. It is impossible to continue. I have been in error.”

  Tor An blinked, aghast. “But—your life’s work, an error? Surely not!”

  The scholar smiled and looked up. “Simply because one has spent one’s life at a work does not mean that the work must be correct, or of use.” He raised a hand and cupped Tor An’s cheek, as if he were one of Alkia’s grandfathers soothing a distraught younger.

  “What,” Tor An asked carefully, in case, like a true Alkia grandfather, this mood of sudden gentleness should evaporate even more suddenly, leaving the younger’s ears ringing from a sound boxing. “What of the Enemy, Master? Captain Jela had thought your work the best means of their defeat.”

  The old man patted his cheek—lightly, even fondly—and tucked his hand ‘round Lucky’s back.

  “Captain Jela was a wise and perceptive man,” he told the cat. “Yet even wise and perceptive men can sometimes be mistaken. Certainly, he wished, as I do and you do, to discover some way in which we might outwit the Enemy and snatch liberty from defeat. That was, as near as I am able to know his mind from his annotations, the breadth and depth of his hope for us all. It was not an unreasonable hope, and indeed it seems to me that he was correct in believing my work represented the best potential of realizing it. It is no dishonor to his memory that his best hope was not good enough.”

  Tor An considered. It was, he thought, very possible that the scholar was merely exhausted. He had stinted himself on sleep and on food, the hours of his days spent with his notes and his tiles, his work screen a riot of nested calculation.

  “My Aunt Jinsu had used to tell us youngers,” he began slowly, “that a pilot’s best friend was—”

  Lucky the cat jerked to attention on the scholar’s lap, ears pricked forward. A moment only he stared past Tor An into the great room, then leapt to the floor and ran, tail high. Tor An twisted ‘round, peering into the dimness, then came all at once to his feet, situating himself between the scholar and a red-haired man in formal black tunic and pants. The man paused, eyebrows up, Lucky weaving complex, ecstatic figures around his ankles, tail high and whiskers a-quiver.

  “Did the guard admit you, sir?” Tor An asked, sharply. “I did not hear the door.”

  “Nay, Housefather, I admitted myself,” the man said in soft and cultured accents. He bowed, low and respectful. “My name is Rool Tiazan. I was allied with M. Jela and seek to continue his purpose. I am come to offer assistance to the master, if he will have me, and it.”

  “Stand aside, child,” Master dea’Syl said to Tor An, “you obscure my view of our guest.”

  Reluctantly, Tor An stepped to the right, keeping his eye upon Rool Tiazan.

  “Well,” the master said after a long scrutiny. “Certainly one who was allied with the estimable M. Jela is welcome on that count alone. What sort of assistance do you offer, Ser Tiazan?”

  The man moved a graceful hand, encompassing the abandoned desk, notes, and screen. “I believe your work founders on the particulars of an energy state transformation under special near-ideal and probably unique circumstances. It happens that I am something of an expert in energies and their states, and have also some insight into the nature of the approaching, probably unique, event. Also, I bring with me another ally, who has seen the Enemy falter.”

  “Hah.” The scholar leaned forward in his chair, eyes gleaming. Tor An took a careful breath. “If you can show me the error in my work, I shall be most obliged to you.” He raised a hand, beckoning. “Come here, young man. Seat yourself. Tor An—a glass of wine for our guest, if you please.”

  “Certainly.” He inclined his head and moved to the kitchenette as Rool Tiazan walked forward and took the chair by the scholar’s table.

  By the time he returned with the tray, the two gentlemen were deep in conversation, and the cat was asleep on Rool Tiazan’s elegant lap.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Solcintra

  CANTRA WOKE UNEXPECTEDLY refreshed, more filled with energy than she had been since Jela died, and with the clear sense of having taken a decision while she slept.

  She dressed quickly from the store of clothes Rool Tiazan had so kindly delivered to her, watered the tree, which offered her neither comment nor salute, and was on her way down the hall, headed for the gate.

  It was early yet; the overnight dusting of snow still glittered in the abundant shadows. Sitting in a pool of sun on the low wall near the gate was the odd couple of Tor An yos’Galan and Arin the librarian, dark head and light bent over a shared scroll. Cantra hesitated, then changed course.

  “‘morning, Pilots,” she said cheerily, and gave them a grin to go with it when they looked up, startled.

  Arin recovered his wits first, inclining his head respectfully. “Pilot Cantra. Good morning.”

  The boy echoed the sentiment a heartbeat later, his voice a bit strained, and dark smudges showing under those improbable eyes. The scroll was an old star-map, its edges tattered and the three-dee grainy; she
couldn’t tell which sector from a casual glance, and she wasn’t there to discuss maps, anyway.

  “Arin,” she said, holding his eye. “Some happy news for you. Saw your brother on-port yesterday.”

  The dark eyes sparkled. “I thank you, Pilot. This is, as you say, welcome news. Did he mention when he might come to us?”

  “Got the impression he thought you’d rather to go him,” she said. “Seemed to be having a couple lines of trade going—you know how he is.”

  “I do indeed,” Arin said, with irony, “know exactly how he is.” He fingered the scroll, and sent a sideways glance at the other pilot’s face. “Your thoughts on my small difficulty were very welcome, Pilot. However, filial duty calls, and—”

  “I understand,” Tor An assured him, voice soft and sad. He extended a hand and touched a portion of the map lightly. “It would be my pleasure to assist you further, if you have need, after duty is answered.”

  “In the meanwhile,” Cantra put in, “if you’re at liberty, Pilot Tor An, I wonder if you’d bear me company.”

  He looked up, brows pulled into a frown. “I, Pilot?”

  “Exactly you,” she assured him, as Arin adroitly rolled the scroll. “I’d like your opinion on a certain vessel.” She tipped her head. “You’ve had training on the big ships—I mean real ring and pod-carrying transports, multi-mounts, that kind of thing?”

  Interest dawned behind the frown. “I have, of course, but—”

  “But I ain’t had that luck,” she interrupted, watching out of the corner of one eye as Arin stood and moved off toward the interior, walking like a man with a pressing errand in mind. “My life’s been small ships. I don’t know how to take the measure of anything more than a six-crew shuttle or a four place courier.” She paused. “If you’ll honor me, Pilot.”

  It might’ve been the polite that won him, but she thought it was rather the basic human desire to be useful and busy. A good boy was Pilot Tor An, she thought, as he came to his feet and inclined his head. So much the worse for him.

  “I will be glad to assist you, Pilot,” he said formally.