The Crystal Variation (48 page)

Monitor the flux of the emotion ‘gratitude.
’

She was not a base construct. She was
not
. She would fight. She would—

She would dominate.

Atom by atom, she scraped together her shattered will and focused on the roaring source of energy obscuring her perceptions. Pain. Pain could be used.

Beyond the inferno, she felt the weight of her tutor’s regard increase.

She thrust her will into the howling depth of the pain—

The tutor’s regard altered, sparked—

Using raw power and no finesse whatsoever, she created shields and threw them into place.

There was an orange and yellow detonation as the tutor’s will slammed into her barriers—but she had no time for that, now.

The tutor launched another assault, but her protections held. Of course they held. Had she not survived the First Doom? Her shields had withstood the stare of one of the Iloheen; they would hold against a mere
dramliza
.

For a time.

Working with rapid care, she bled off the pain, sublimating it into working energy, using it to rebuild her depleted strength.

As she dominated the pain, her focus returned and she was able to survey the wreckage of her envelope.

Tentatively at first, then more swiftly as she began to integrate the fine points of the interrupted lesson, she rebuilt her body.

Arms, legs, eyes, ears, nerves, dermis . . . As she worked, she considered making alterations—and regretfully decided not to do so. Alterations made in haste and in unstable conditions might later be revealed as errors. Best to wait.

She did, however, strengthen her shields.

Then, she opened her eyes.

Carefully, cocooned in total silence on all perceptual levels, she came to her feet, and raised her eyes to the instructor’s dias.

Lower your protections
. The characteristic bright orange thought was shading toward a dangerously bland beige, and the taste of manganese was very strong.

With all respect
, she answered—
no.

You may lower them or Anjo will destroy them
.

She looked to the submissive, and found his pale eyes open and focused on her face, with . . . interest . . .

I will not
, she made answer to the dominant.
And Anjo shall not.

Upon what order do you undertake this action
?

Upon my own initiative.

Ah.
The dominant extended her will to the submissive—and froze in time and space as a long Shadow fell across the room and the perceptions of all within.

The air grew chill and the tile took on a glaze of ice before the Iloheen deigned to speak.

Discipline has been meted and met. It goes no further.

Edonai
, the Anjo Valee dominant answered, her thought warm against the Shadow’s chill. On the dais, the
dramliza
bowed low. Those who yet knelt before their lab dishes threw themselves upon their faces on the ice-slicked floor.

She—she bowed until her head touched her knees, and held it, as the Shadow fell full upon her—

And was gone.

Abruptly, the room warmed. Behind her, she heard small noises as her cohort straightened and stilled. She unbent slowly, and looked up to the dais. The dominant did not meet her eyes.

You will return the specimen to its original state
, the tutor ordered the class entire.
When that is done, you will wait upon the philosophy tutor.

III

THE DOWNLOAD WAS
about to take place.

She, with those of her cohort who had survived the Second Doom, watched from a distance, thought stilled and vital energies shielded, to insure that the
tumzaliat
would not perceive, and thus seek to attach, their essences.

In the birthing room, the vessel was readied. Its arms were spread, held thus by chains woven of alternating links of metal and force, the ends melded with the smooth tile floor. Similar chains around each ankle pulled the legs wide. Its head was gripped in a metal claw; a metal staple over its waist held it firm and flat.

On the plane from which they observed, the vessel was nothing more than a smear of pink, which was the glow of the autonomous systems. The hopeful dominant showed not even as much as that, so closely did she hold herself.

Within the lesser aetherium, the
tumzaliat
pursued their small, simple dances, which were so much less than the intricate movements of rebellion and abandon performed by their wild kin, the
zaliata
. Those such as she—and the cadet preparing herself below—they were fit only to exercise dominion over
tumzaliat
and so forge a working
dramliza
unit, to thereby accomplish the will of the Iloheen as it was expressed to them.

They were, after all, nothing more than embodiment of the vast wills of the Iloheen, without which they would have no existence. So the philosophy tutor taught.

In the birthing room, all was ready.

The cadet knelt beside the vessel and took the autonomous system under her control. This was necessary to prevent the
tumzaliat
from sabotaging the vessel, or, as was more likely, damaging it through terror and ignorance.

Control established, the cadet entered the lesser aetherium, cloaked and dim against the brilliant broil of the
tumzaliat
.

Cloaked and dim, the cadet drifted, while the heedless
tumzaliat
frolicked, melding their energies and dashing off at angles that seemed random until one considered the ley lines that passed through the lesser aetherium. The
tumzaliat
followed the ley lines, feeding on them—perhaps. Seeking to influence them, certainly. But the Iloheen had constructed the aetheriums in such a way that the ley lines which intersected there were rendered sluggish. They could, so said the engineering tutor, be manipulated, though not by a mere
tumzaliat
. Once downloaded, dominated, and fully integrated into a
dramliza
unit, then—perhaps—a
tumzaliat
might have access to sufficient power and focus to manipulate the ley lines from within the aetherium.

But, by then, it would no longer wish to do so.

The cadet had, by stealth and by craft, managed to separate one particular
tumzaliat
from the rest. She had not yet fully revealed herself, though she was now shedding a small—and unavoidable—amount of energy.

The chosen
tumzaliat
was large, its energies brilliant. Its cohesion was perhaps not all that could be desired, and it showed a tendency to flare in an unappealing manner. But it was well enough. For a
tumzaliat
.

The chosen abruptly rolled, as if suddenly realizing its vulnerable position on the outer edge of the tumbling pod. It flared and changed trajectory, seeking to rejoin the others—

And spun hard as the cadet revealed herself in a blaze of complex energies, cutting it off from the group, crowding it toward the containment field.

It was a bold move, for
tumzaliat
rightly feared the field, and the danger was that it would bolt and break through the cadet’s wall of energy, with catastrophic results for both.

The creature hesitated, confusion dulling its output. The cadet pushed her advantage, herding it, pushing closer to the containment field and the egress port. The
tumzaliat
took its decision, feinted and reversed, diving for the fiery fringe of the cadet’s wall, gambling, so it seemed to those observing, that it could survive the passage through the lesser energies.

It was over quickly, then.

The cadet allowed the
tumzaliat
to approach quite near, allowed it to believe its gamble was about to succeed. At the penultimate instant, the
tumzaliat
gaining momentum, its emanations coalesced to an astonishing degree—the cadet released the greater portion of her energies.

The
tumzaliat
tumbled into an oblique trajectory, now running parallel to the cadet’s weaving of power. She contracted the field, as if she meant to embrace the fleeing creature in her energies.

Again, it changed trajectory, hurtling back toward the containment field with undiminished momentum. Perhaps it had some thought of immolating itself. It was of no matter. The cadet extended a tendril of energy, slipping it between the
tumzaliat
and the containment field, at the same instant contracting the field.

The force of the contraction threw the
tumzaliat
into the egress port. In one smooth maneuver, the cadet triggered the port and withdrew the tendril separating the
tumzaliat
from the containment field. Emanations sparking in terror, the
tumzaliat
tumbled into the port, bracketed and contained now only by the funnel of the cadet’s energies, guiding it, forcing it—

The port closed.

In the birthing room, the readied vessel flared, the glow lingering as the nervous system accepted and imprisoned the
tumzaliat’s
energies. The cadet’s envelope flared less brightly as it accepted her return. She raised her head, and a small tremor of satisfaction escaped her.

On the floor beside her, the vessel spasmed against its restraints. The chest heaved, mouth gaping, and the birth scream echoed against the air. Quickly, the cadet straddled the vessel and lowered herself onto its erection, bonding herself with it on the biologic plane. Beneath her, the vessel screamed again—and again.

“Nalitob Orn,” the cadet crooned against the air. She extended her will and plucked at the
tumzaliat’s
captured essence, weaving the syllables into the fabric of its frenzied consciousness. The vessel would already have been seeded at the cellular level with those same syllables, which would now and henceforth be its—his—name, binding it to the body and to his dominant.

The submissive drew breath for another scream; his dominant extended her will and disallowed it. Carefully, caressingly, she relaxed the straining, fear-poisoned muscles, and released sleep endorphins.

Only when Nalitob Orn was entirely and deeply asleep did she rise. With a thought, she cleaned herself, and with another clad herself in the blue robe of a
dramliza
-under-training. For of course the work just completed had been only the first and the simplest of the bondings required before this nascent pair become a functioning unit.

The new-made dominant turned toward her sleeping and receptive submissive—and turned back, bowing low as the Shadow fell over the birthing room, excluding the observers from whatever passed between the Iloheen and the daughter of its intent, the Nalitob Orn dominant.

IV

ATTEND ME IN
the testing chamber
.

Their philosophy tutor’s thought was a steady silken mauve, lightly flavored with copper.

With the five others of her cohort, she rose and walked down the stone hallway—naked, silent, but no longer identical. They had some time since been instructed to adjust their physical seemings. This was—so the philosophy tutor explained—to allow them to grow more easily apart, to sluff off the small ties that bound sister-students, and to make themselves ready for that bond which would define their futures and their service to the Iloheen.

As it was also necessary to seem to be one of those who continued to defy the Iloheen, among whom she would of necessity walk, she considered it well to appear both harmless and unable to defend herself. Thus, her stature was small, her bones delicate, her breasts petite. She sharpened her facial features and added amber pigment to her eyes. Her hair was red, short and silky; her ears shell-like and close to her head. She would appear, to one of those enemies of the Iloheen, to be young, her skin unlined and tinged with gold.

With these changes she was content, though she was the least altered of her cohort. Neither their tutors nor any of the Iloheen who increasingly oversaw their progress instructed her to make further alterations, so she accepted it as her full and final physical form.

Attend me
, the philosophy tutor sent again.

The thought was no less serene, the tang of copper no more pronounced than ever it had been. There was nothing to differentiate this from countless thousands of previous summons.

Saving that the philosophy tutor never summoned them twice to the same lesson.

It was then that she knew they were being summoned, not for a mere philosophy test, but to the Third Doom, the last they would face as students.

The others must have also perceived the warning in that second summons and drawn their conclusions. Indeed, the two boldest quickened their steps, eager to meet the challenge, while the three most thoughtful dared to slow somewhat.

Being neither bold nor thoughtful, she kept to her own pace, and withdrew slightly from her envelope, centering herself and unfurling what she might of her protections. It was, of course, beyond her ability to know what test the Iloheen would bring to them this time. Experience of two previous Dooms, however, indicated that it was well-done to hold oneself both aloof and prepared upon all planes.

Behind two sisters and leading three, she turned the corner into the hall. The stones were slick and frigid beneath her bare feet, the air thick with ice. Ahead, the entrance to the testing chamber was black; empty, to her perceptions, of all energy.

A state of no-energy was impossible, so her tutors had taught, each in their own way. To which the philosophy tutor had added,
With the Iloheen, all things are possible
.

The two at the lead faltered; one recovered in the next instant and strode ahead, energies blazing, entered the void, and was gone—- whether unmade or merely passed beyond the senses was not for such as they to know.

Yet.

The second of the bold approached the void, her energies furled close and secret, and was in her turn swallowed, vanishing as if she had never been.

She, the third, neither quick nor slow, continued onward, protections in place, her essence at a slight remove, tethered by the slenderest of thoughts. The iced stones tore at the soles of her feet, her lungs labored in the thick air. She thought, within her most private and protected self, of the
Iloheen-bailel
, beautiful and subjugated, transforming the void with its dance.