The Crystal Variation (39 page)

“Why not?”

“It’s not exactly usual,” she pointed out. “Where’d you get it? If you don’t mind saying.”

He sent another over-the-shoulder glance at the subject of the conversation. When he looked back, his face was serious.

“I found it on a desert world; the only thing alive in a couple days’ walk. We’d seen some action and it was my misfortune to be shot down. By the time I found the tree, I was in pretty bad shape. It saved my life and I promised, if rescue came, that I’d take it with me.” He glanced down, maybe into his mug.

“Promised I’d get it to someplace safe.”

“Safe,” she repeated, thinking of Faldaiza, Taliofi, the Uncle, and of a dozen chancy ports between.

“It’s probable,” Jela said, “that ‘safe’ is a relative term. The tree was in danger of extinction when I found it. When things are that bad, someplace else is pretty much guaranteed to be better. Safer.” He looked down into his mug again, lifted it and finished off his tea.

“I’d hoped,” he said, slotting the empty, “to find a planet where it would have a chance of a good, long grow . . .”

“Which doesn’t,” Cantra said when he just sat there, eyes pointed at the empty mug, but clearly seeing something else, “address what it
is
. Or how it was able to tweak the Uncle’s hydroponics long-distance.”

He glanced over his shoulder, and then gave her an amused glance.

“I don’t know how—or what—the tree did,” he said, “but I’m not surprised it was able to act in its own defense—and in defense of its ship.”

Cantra closed her eyes. “Now its official crew, is it?”

“Why not?” Jela returned, damn him. And, no matter its vegetative state, the tree
had
acted to protect the ship, and made it stick when both pilot and co-pilot were cut off and helpless.

“All right,” she said, opening her eyes with a sigh. “It’s crew.” She stretched in her chair to look past Jela to the end of the board.

“Done proper,” she said to the tree. “The captain commends you.”

The top leaves moved, probably in the breeze from the circulation system, but looking eerily like a casual salute.

In that breeze there was a sharp snap; a branch carrying two small pods fell to the deck, and bounced once.

Jela laughed, picked up the branch, and felt the pods relax, almost as if they ripened in his hand.

“Here,” he said, smiling. “The tree commends the captain and the crew!”

She looked them askance.

“What’ll I do with it? Plant it?”

His free hand fluttered pilot talk—
Eat up, eat up
.

She lifted an eyebrow, watching him carefully as he approached, teasing, as she read it, and leaned conspiratorially toward her.

“You’ve never tasted anything quite like this,” he suggested in a mock whisper.

“You sure it’s good?” she asked, not so much playing as seriously wanting to know.

The tree’s top branches waved slightly—she was really going to have to check those fans soon if they were creating that much disturbance.

“Edible? Yes! Good? Really good . . .”

He broke the pods into sections; she took them into her hand to avoid him hand-feeding her, which it looked like he might.

He challenged her then, holding a piece to his lips while watching her expectantly.

She looked to the fruit, caught a bouquet reminiscent of half-a-dozen high-end eats she could name.

Damn’ thing smelled good—

“Not very big, is it?” she asked, by way of buying time while she sorted past the inviting smell. She knew all about nice smells, now, didn’t she?

“You’ll like it,” Jela said, suddenly serious. “I promise.” He popped the piece into his mouth then, and, not to be outdone, or seen to be timid, so did she.

He was right. She liked it.

SHE’D EATEN THE pod,
cleaned her fingers, and studiously did not give herself over to considering Jela’s person, though there was that urge. She noticed it on the two previous occasions she’d had to make use of the first-aid kit. It was like the unit brought everything right up to optimum . . .

“If it can be told,” Jela said, breaking her line of thought, “Where did you get those devices you gave the Uncle?”

She sighed. “Like I said, a couple ports back. A lucky find, since the Uncle has this interest in
sheriekas
artifacts.”

“Do you remember,” Jela persisted, “the name of the trader or company who sold them to you?”

Well, she did, as it happened, the directors having done them all the favor of breeding for extra-efficient memories—and she was damned if she was going to share the news.

“I’m gonna tell you so you can report trading with the enemy and send somebody out to pick ‘em up?” she snapped. “No point to it. A lot of weird drifts in from the Deeps and catches up against the Rim. Depend on it, somebody bought a box-lot or a broken pallet somewhere and the toys were in it. There’s a lot of
sheriekas
tech on the Rim; people trade ‘em as oddities, or collect ‘em.”

“Like the Uncle?” Jela asked, and Cantra laughed.

“The Uncle ain’t collecting; he’s using. Figures he can beat the enemy by mastering their machines and turning them against their makers.”

“Then he’s a fool,” Jela said, with a return of the stern grimness he’d given the Uncle, “and an active danger to the population of the Spiral Arm.”

Cantra frowned. “Could might be. In point of fact, though, what the Uncle exactly ain’t is a fool, nor any of his folk. The Batchers who make it out to the Uncle, they’re tough and they’re smart. Seems like if anybody was going to be able to figure how to use the enemy’s equipment against them, it’s the Uncle’s people.” She considered Jela’s face, which was no more grim or less, and added—

“Understand me, I ain’t the Uncle’s best friend, by any count.”

That got a real, though brief, smile, and a roll of the wide shoulders.

“I don’t doubt that they’re smart,” he said slowly. “But they’re not the only ones who’ve thought of using the
sheriekas
weapons against them—and come to grief for it. I’ve seen battle robots based on captured
sheriekas
plans which have gone mad, laying waste to the worlds they were built to defend—a flaw in the design, or are they performing exactly as the
sheriekas
intended them to?”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, warming to his topic.

“Another case—out there in the Tearin Sector, they’ve been building battle tech based on plans captured from the last war—fleets of robot ships, under self-aware robot commanders who’ve been fed all the great battles fought by all the great generals. They’ve turned them loose, I hear, to roam out into the Beyond and engage the
sheriekas
.”

Cantra tipped her head. “So—what? They join the enemy when they make contact?”

“They might,” Jela said, sitting back. “The reports I’ve seen have them turning pirate and holding worlds hostage for their resources.”

“And you’re thinking this is also in the plan?” she persisted. “To seed us with tech and proto-machines that’ll attack us from inside while the world-eaters take bites outta the Rim?”

“Like that,” he said, and gave her one of his less-sincere half-smiles. “Old soldiers have their crochets. No doubt the Uncle’s harmless.”

Cantra laughed. “Nobody said so. And that thing that fried out my ‘skins sure wasn’t harmless.” She hesitated, wondering if she wanted to know—but of course she did.

“How bad?”

He glanced aside. “Bad,” he said, and sighed. “You needed nothing less than a
sheriekas
-made heal-box—and I wasn’t sure it was enough.”

Well. She closed her eyes; opened them.

“My ‘skins?”

“Sealed inside a sterile pack,” he said. “What’s left of them.”

She shivered, took a breath—

“I owe you,” she said, and her voice was a little lighter than she liked. She cleared her throat. “Owe you twice.”

His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything, only made the hand sign for
go on
.

“Right. You were clear—I saw you on the ramp. No reason for you to come back—you could’ve got away clean.”

He snorted. “Fine co-pilot I’d be, too, leaving my pilot in such a mess.”

She glanced aside. “Well, about that . . .” She took a hard breath and made herself meet his eyes.

“The thing is, I went in thinking that the Uncle might enjoy having himself a soldier, and that selling you might net a goodly profit.”

Something moved down far in those Deeps-dark eyes, but his face didn’t change out of the expression of calm listening.

“Say something!” Cantra snapped.

He raised his hands slightly, let them drop onto his lap.

“I’ll say that I don’t blame you for wanting me off your ship,” he said. “And I’ll point out that, intentions aside, you didn’t sell me to the Uncle.” He moved his shoulders against the back of the chair.

“No bad feelings here, Pilot.”

Which was generous, she allowed, and precisely Jela-like. She wondered if it came of being a soldier, his giving the greater weight to the action done, and the lesser to the reasons behind it.

For herself, she was unsettled by her intentions and her actions, both. She knew—none better—that Jela wasn’t anything like a partner, nor did she owe him anything as a co-pilot, being as he had forced his way into the chair and the ship.

Yet, when decision came to action—

Mush for brains
, she growled at herself.

“Meant to ask you,” Jela said. “Why did your directors decide to retire your Series? If it can be told.”

She blinked, it being on the edge of her tongue to tell him it
couldn’t
be told. But, dammit—she owed him . . .

“Pliny,” she said, and cleared her throat, “ . . . he’d’ve been a half-brother. So—Pliny come home from an assignment, reports to Instructor Malis for debriefing—and slapped her.” She paused, feeling Garen’s hand hard ‘round her arm, yanking her into a run—

“So,” Jela said softly. “He slapped a superior. In the military, that might be good for getting him shot, but not his whole unit.”

She looked up and met his eyes.

“He’d been delayed,” she said, just telling it, “and by the time he come in, he really needed that debriefing. Add that Instructor Malis . . . liked to hear us beg for the drug. The sum of it all being that he killed her—and the directors aren’t about to tolerate a line that bites the hand that’s fed it, housed it, clothed it, and taught it.” She paused, considered, then shrugged. Wouldn’t do him no harm to have the whole tale of it.

“The Uncle come into it because some level of Batchers’re are kept in line by binding—happy-chems, mostly—to certain receptors. Close enough to how the directors keep
aelantaza
in line, except the directors didn’t figure to waste any happy-chems. Uncle’s lab techs gimmicked an unbind process, which Garen knew, and figured it was worth the trip to find out would it work.”

“I see.” Silence, while Jela glanced over his shoulder at his damn’ tree, sitting still and green in its pot.

“So the line was ended because it showed independence and self-reliance,” he said. “And you’re the sole survivor.”

“By luck . . .” she muttered.
And by Garen.

He smiled at her—a wholly real smile.

“That’s all any of us can claim,” he said, and stood, gathering his empties into a broad hand, and reaching for hers.

“What I propose,” he said, looking down at her, his face serious. “If you agree, Pilot. Is that we do make for Gimlins. I’ve got a good chance at a contact there, which will get me off your ship and out of your life.”

For one of the few times in her free life, her mind went blank, and she stared at him, speechless.

“And I’ll apologize,” Jela continued, “for putting you in harm’s way. I
am
a soldier; the risks I find acceptable aren’t what a civilian ought ever to face.”

Almost, she laughed, wondering what he thought her life had been—but he was gone by then, the door sliding closed behind him while she sat in the pilot’s chair and for the first time since Garen died blinked away tears.

Twenty-Nine

TWENTY-NINE

Spiral Dance

Shift Change

JELA HAD GOTTEN
his log-book out, meaning to bring the entries current. An hour later, there he sat, the book open on his knee, pen ready—and he’d done no more than note down the date.

It happened that the date was of some interest to him, it being something over forty-four Common Years since the quartermaster had assigned M Strain Jela to Granthor’s Guard creche, despite the fact that the proto-soldier was smaller than spec. That he’d been the single survivor of an enemy action focused on the lab which had killed every other fetus in the nursery wing—that had weighed with the quartermaster, who’d noted in the file that a soldier could never have too much luck.

He’d been lucky, too—or as lucky as a soldier could be. Despite a certain reckless disregard for his own personal welfare, and what some might call an argumentative and willful nature, he’d outlived creche-mates and comrades; commanders and whole planets.

And now he was old.

Worse, he was old while the enemy continued to advance and wrongheaded decisions came down from the top; his mission was in shambles and—

The last—that rankled. No, it
hurt
.

That this would be his last mission, he had accepted, the facts being what they were. That he would fail—somehow it had never occurred to him that he would fail, though he’d certainly failed enough times in his life for the concept to be anything but new. This mission, though, assigned by this particular commander . . .

He’d been so sure of success.

And there was worse.

He’d promised—personally promised—the tree that he would see it safe, which he should never have done, a soldier’s life and honor being Command’s to spend.

It weighed on him, that promise, for he had made it with true intent, between soldiers, and the tree was as much his comrade-in-arms as any other he’d fought beside, down the years.

He told himself that the tree knew the realities of a soldier’s promise; that the tree, comrade and hero, didn’t fault him for putting duty before promises.