The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  “If I might suggest a portable kit, Trader?” he murmured. “It fits easily into a pocket, and includes three each of cleansing and pain alleviation wipes, and a small roll of antibiotic-treated gauze and wrapping tape. Two dex, only.”

  And cheap insurance at that, Jethri thought, glancing down at his gloved hand. Who expected toys to bite, anyway?

  “An excellent suggestion,” he said to the philterman. “I will have one of your kits. Also—” he said, suddenly remembering another item that might be found in such a shop. “I wonder if you have a sort of cream which is commonly sold to Terrans, which dissolves facial hair and keeps the face pleasing.”

  “Ah!” The man looked up at him interestedly. “Is there such a thing? I had no notion. We do not, you understand, much deal with Terrans at Irikwae. But hold. . .”

  He bustled to the back and returned with a flat plastic pack prominently marked with the symbol for medical supplies. Slipping a finger under the seal, he unfolded the pack to display its contents—three each, cleaning wipes and painkiller wipes; one small roll of antibiotic gauze, one small roll of tape. Check.

  “I thank you,” Jethri murmured, slipping two dex from his public pocket and putting them on the counter.

  “It is my pleasure to serve,” the man said, folding the kit and resealing it. Jethri picked it up; it fit into one of the smaller of his jacket’s numerous inner pockets, with room to spare.

  “Of this other product,” the philterman murmured. “There is a shop at the bottom of the street which does from time to time have specialty items on offer. It may be that you will find what you are seeking there. The shop is the last on the left side of the street. It has a green-striped awning.”

  “I thank you,” Jethri said again and got himself disentangled from the stool and on his feet, heading for the door.

  “DISSOLVES HAIR?” The woman behind the counter at the philtershop at the bottom of the street stared at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “Nothing like that here, young trader—nor likely to be! We offer oddities from time to time, but nothing—well. Perhaps you want the Ruby Club? The director has been known to keep . . . exotic items on hand.”

  “Perhaps I do,” Jethri said, by no means certain. “My thanks to you.” He departed the shop of the green awning, feeling the woman’s eyes on his back as he paused, looking up and down the street for a public map.

  The Ruby Club was somewhat behind and at a angle to the warehouse district, not quite adjacent to the salvage yards. Well. The toys having fallen through, he figured he had an hour or two at liberty and, while Meicha’s handiwork had so far stood up, he didn’t know how long that would be so, or if his first warning of its failure would be on the morning he woke up to find he’d overnight grown a beard down to his knees.

  Prepared is better’n scared, he thought, which was something his father used to say, and Grig, too—and pushed the button on the bottom of the map to summon a taxi to him.

  “YOU ARE CERTAIN that this is the location to which you were directed?” The taxi driver actually sounded worried, and Jethri didn’t know as how he particularly blamed her.

  The Ruby Club itself was kept up and lighted; with a red carpet extending from its carved red door right across the walkway to the curb. The surrounding buildings, though, were dark, not in repair, and in some cases overgrown with plants that Jethri’s time in the vineyards had taught him were weeds.

  “Is there another Ruby Club on the port?” he asked, half-hoping to hear that there was, and that it stood next to the Irikwae Trade Bar.

  To his surprise, the driver leaned forward and tapped a command into her on-board map. After a moment, he heard her sigh, lightly.

  “There is only this one.”

  “Then this is my location,” Jethri said, with more certainty than he felt. He wasn’t liking the looks of this street, at all. On the other hand, he thought, given the general feeling that Terrans were pretty good zoo material, maybe it wasn’t surprising that a place known for carrying exotic Terran items was situated well away from the main port. He pushed open the door.

  “Wait for me,” he said to the cabbie. She looked over the seat at him.

  “How long?”

  Good question. “I shouldn’t be above twelve minutes,” he said, hoping for less.

  She inclined her head. “I will wait twelve minutes.”

  “My thanks.”

  He left the cab and walked briskly down the red carpeting. Seen close, the red door was carved; the carving showing a lot of naked people having sex with each other, and maybe some things that weren’t exactly sex—or if so, not the kind that had been covered in either his hygiene courses or the bits of the Code the twins’ tutor had marked out for him to read.

  It did come to him that he was not prepared to deal with the consequences of that door, and he began to turn away, to go back to the cab and uptown and his quarters at the trade hall—

  The door opened.

  He glanced back, and down, into a pair of jade green eyes, slightly tip-tilted in a soft, oval face. Jade-colored flowers were painted along the ridge of . . . the person’s . . . cheekbones, and their lips were also painted jade. They were dressed in a deep red tunic and matching trousers, beneath which red boots gleamed.

  “Service, Trader,” the doorkeeper said huskily, and the voice gave no clue to gender.

  Jethri bowed, slightly. “I was sent here by a merchant uptown,” he said, keeping his voice stringently in the mercantile mode. “It was thought that there might be depilatory for sale here.”

  “Why, perhaps there is,” the doorkeeper said, standing back, and opening the door wide. “Please, honor our house by entering. I will summon the master to your aid.”

  It was either go in or cut and run. He didn’t especially want to go in, but found his pride wouldn’t support cut and run. Inclining his head, he stepped into the house.

  THE DOORKEEPER INSTALLED him in a parlor just off the main entryway and left him. Jethri looked about him, eyes slightly narrowed in protest of the decorating. A deep napped crimson carpet covered the floor from crimson wall to crimson wall. A couch in crimson brocade and two crimson brocade chairs were grouped ‘round a low table covered with a crimson cloth. A black wooden bookshelf along one short wall held volumes uniformly bound in red leather, titles outline in gilt.

  Jethri was starting to feel a little uneasy in the stomach by the time the hall door opened and the master of the house joined him.

  This was an older man, entirely bald, dressed in a lounging robe of simple white linen. His face was finely lined and unpainted, though a row of tiny golden hoops pierced the skin and followed the curve of his right cheekbone from the inner corner of his eye out to the ear.

  Two paces into the room, he paused to bow, low, and to Jethri’s eye, with irony.

  “Trader. How may our humble house be of service?”

  “House Master.” Jethri inclined his head. “Pray forgive this unseemly disturbance of your peace. I had been told at a shop in the main port that perhaps I might find a certain cream here—it is often used by Terrans such as myself to remove hair and to condition the face.”

  “Ah.” The man raised a hand and touched his shining bald head. “Yes, we sometimes have such a commodity in the house.”

  Jethri blinked. The amount of cream necessary to unhair a whole head would be considerable. Once the head in question was bald, it would take less cream to keep it that way, but the supply would need to be steady. The woman at the second philtershop had not sent him astray.

  “I wonder,” he said to the house master, “if I might purchase a small quantity of this cream from you. Perhaps, a vial—no more than two.”

  “Purchase? Let me consider . . .” The man ran his forefinger, slowly, along the line of tiny hoops, his eyes narrowed, as if it were pleasant to feel the gold slide against his cheek.

  “No,” he said softly. “I really do not think we can sell you any of our supply, Trader.”

&n
bsp; Well, there was a disappointment, Jethri thought. He took a breath, preparatory to thanking the man for his time . . .

  “But we will trade for it,” the house master said.

  “Trade for it?” Jethri repeated, blankly.

  “Indeed.” Again, the slow slide of the forefinger along the row of piercings and the long look of narrow-eyed pleasure. “You are a trader, are you not?”

  When I’m not busy being what Lady Maarilex calls a moonling, well yes, Jethri thought, I am. He inclined his head.

  “I am a trader, sir, and willing undertake a trade for the item under discussion. However, it is so small a transaction that I am somewhat at a loss to know what might be fair value.”

  “There, I can provide guidance,” the man said, turning his hand palm up in the gesture that meant, roughly, ‘service’. “I understand, as you do, that the item under discussion is a rarity upon this port, as much as it might be commonplace upon other ports. We receive, as I am sure you have surmised, a small but steady supply, from a source that I am really not at liberty to share with you. This source also provides other . . . specialties . . . to the house. However, we have not been able to procure formal masks. In trade for two tubes of the cream, I will accept four half-face masks made from crimson leather, or two whole-face masks.”

  Red leather masks?

  “Forgive me, sir, but the trade is uneven,” Jethri said, which was sheer reflex, rather than any real knowledge of how costly red leather masks were likely to be. “Two half-masks for two tubes achieves symmetry.”

  The house master blinked—and bowed.

  “Of course,” he said smoothly, “you are correct, Trader. Two half-masks in red leather for two tubes of Terran depilatory cream. It is done.” Straightening, he motioned to the door.

  “When you acquire the masks, return, and we will make the exchange.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Jethri inclined his head, and took the hint. At the outside door, the person with the flower-painted face bowed him out.

  “Fair profit, Trader. Come again.”

  “Joy to the house,” he answered and went down the red carpet to the taxicab, waiting at the curb.

  He settled into the back seat with an audible sigh.

  “I thank you for waiting above the twelve minutes,” he said to the cabbie.

  She slammed the car into gear and pulled away from the curb more sharply than she should have.

  “Are all Terrans fools?” she asked, sounding merely interested in his answer.

  “Only the ones that apprentice to master traders and take certification at the Irikwae Trade Hall,” he answered, feeling like she’d earned honesty from him—and a good sized tip, too.

  “Hah,” she said, and nothing more. Jethri leaned back as well as he could in the short seat and looked out the window at the unkempt streets.

  The cab glided through an intersection, Jethri glanced down the cross-street—and jerked forward, hand on the door release.

  “Stop the cab!” he shouted.

  The driver braked and he was out, running back toward the scene he had glimpsed: four people, one on his knees, and all four showing fists.

  Jethri had size and surprise, if not speed or sense. He grabbed a handful of jacket and yanked one of the attackers back from the victim, putting him down hard on his ass. The other two shouted, confused by the arrival of reinforcements, while the lone defender seized the opportunity and the room to leap to his feet and land a nice, solid punch on the jaw of the man nearest. In the meantime, Jethri faced off with the third attacker, his body curling into the crouch Pen Rel had drilled him on, knees bent, hands ready.

  The man yelled and swung, putting himself off-balance. Jethri ducked, grabbed the man’s wrist and elbow, twisted—and shouted with joy as the attacker flew over his shoulder to land hard and flat on his back on the street.

  His victory was short-lived. The first man was back on his feet, and moving in fast. This one had a cooler head—and maybe some training in Pen Rel’s preferred style of brawl. Jethri dropped back, turning, caught sight of the yellow-haired victim, face cut and jacket torn, having heavy going with his man.

  The guy stalking Jethri kicked. He sank back—but not quick enough. The edge of the man’s boot caught his knee.

  This time, the shout was pain, but he kept his feet, and there was a roaring in the street, growing louder, and then the blare of a klaxon, and it was the taxicab accelerating toward them, the cabbie’s face implacable behind the windscreen.

  The three attackers yelled and scrambled for the safety of the rotting sidewalk.

  The taxi slammed to a halt, back door snapping open.

  “In!” Jethri pushed the other man, and the two of them tumbled into the back seat, legs and arms tangled as the cab roared off, back door swinging. It slammed itself into place a few seconds later, when the cabbie took the next corner on two screaming wheels.

  Fighting inertia, Jethri and the erstwhile victim slowly sorted out which legs and arms belonged to who and got themselves upright in the seats.

  The yellow-haired man sank back on his seat with an audible sigh, and sat for a second, eyes closed. Jethri, blowing hard, leaned his head back, considering his rescue. It came to him that the man looked familiar, and he frowned, trying to bring the memory closer.

  Across from him, the other opened his eyes a slit—and then considerably wider as he snapped straight upright.

  “You! Jeth Ree Gobelyn, is it not?”

  The voice rang the memory right up to the top of the brain. Jethri stared.

  “Tan Sim?” he heard himself say, in a mode insultingly close to the one he used when talking with the twins. “What are you doing here?”

  Tan Sim grinned, widely, then winced. “I could ask the same of you! Never tell me that the ven’Deelin sends you to the low port unguarded.”

  “That one,” the taxi driver said over her shoulder, “should not be let to roam the high port alone. Where shall I have the extreme pleasure of dropping the two of you off?”

  PATCHED AND WELL-SCOLDED by the hall physician, it occurred to them in a simultaneous way that they were hungry. Accordingly, they adjourned to the Trade Bar, where they were fortunate to find a booth open.

  “Bread,” Jethri said to the waiter. “And two of whatever the day meal is. Fresh fruit.”

  “Wine,” Tan Sim added, and the waiter bowed.

  “At once, traders.”

  Tan Sim sank into deep upholstery with a gusty sigh. “There’s a day’s work done and the afternoon still before us!”

  Jethri grinned. “Now, tell me why you were walking alone on such streets.”

  “The short answer is—returning from inspecting a pod offered at salvage,” Tan Sim retorted. “The longer answer is—longer.”

  “I have the time, if you have the tale,” Jethri murmured, moving his hand in an expression of interest.

  Tan Sim smiled. “Gods look upon the lad. Jeth Ree, you are more Liaden than I!”

  “Surely not,” he began, but a discreet knock upon the door heralded the arrival of the requested wine—a bottle of the house red, a comfortable blend, as Jethri knew—and two glasses.

  “The meals are promised quickly, traders,” the waiter said and left them, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “Well.” Tan Sim took charge of the bottle and poured for both of them. “If you will join me first in a sip to seal our friendship—”

  Jethri put his glass down. Tan Sim paused, eyebrows up.

  “What’s amiss?”

  Jethri tipped his head, considering the other. The physician had cleaned and taped the cut on Tan Sim’s face, muttering that bruises would rise by nightfall, and suggesting, with a fair load of irony, that perhaps the trader might wish to cancel any engagements for the next few days.

  Truth told, bruises were starting to rise already, but it wasn’t that which took Jethri’s notice. It was the face beneath the cut—thinner than he had remembered, the mouth tigh
ter. The torn jacket hung loose, which bore out Jethri’s impression that maybe Tan Sim had been eating short rations lately.

  “I believe,” he said delicately, wishing neither to offend nor expose a weakness, “that there is a matter of Balance unresolved between us.”

  “Which would—naturally!—constrain you from drinking with me. Very nice. If such an unresolved Balance sat between us, I would commend you for the precision of your melant’i.”

  Meaning that Tan Sim didn’t think there was a debt, and that didn’t jibe.

  “I had considered you my most grievous error,” Jethri said, making another pass at getting it out in the open where they both could look at it. “It has troubled me that, all unknowing, and wishing only to honor one who had shown me the greatest kindness, I brought to that one only grief, and separation from clan and kin.”

  “If you believe for one moment that separation from my honored mother or my so-beloved brother is a matter of grief, then I must allow you to be in your cups,” Tan Sim retorted and paused, face arrested. “No, that cannot be. We’ve not yet had to drink.” He leaned forward slightly, to look earnestly into Jethri’s face.

  “My sweet fool—does it occur to you that you have just now preserved my life for me? Even supposing that I held you to book for my mother’s temper and my brother’s spite—that small matter would put paid to all.” He raised his glass.

  “Come, do not be churlish! At least drink to the gallantry of a taxi driver.”

  Well, Jethri thought, ‘round a mental grin, he could hardly refuse that. He raised his glass.

  “To the gallant driver, who preserved both our lives—”

  “And refused any tip, save a scold!” Tan Sim finished with a flourish of his glass.

  They sipped, and again, the wine tasting more than usually pleasant.

  “So, tell me then,” Jethri said, putting his glass aside and relaxing into the cushions.

  Tan Sim laughed lightly. “Demanding youth. Very well.” He put his glass down and folded his elbows onto the table, leaning forward.

  “Now, it happens that my mother was very angry indeed over the incident with the bow. She swore that I was a disgrace to her blood and that she would have no more of me. For some significant time, it did appear that she would simply cancel my contract and send me out to earn my own way. A not entirely unpleasing prospect, as you might imagine.”