The Crystal Variation (56 page)

The fifth member of the committee, Seated Scholar and Committee Head Kel Var tay’Palin, was unabashedly napping, for which the sixth and final member, Seated Scholar Ala Bin tay’Welford, blamed him not at all. tay’Palin had been increasingly called upon of late to provide proofs of his work, and the strain was taking its expectable, regrettable, toll. That the man was tay’Welford’s own immediate superior and the head of the Interdimensional Statistics Department only made his decline more poignant. tayreported to Master Liad dea’Syl himself—a signal honor, though the Master was frail and had not left his rooms to walk even among those of his own discipline for—

The door slid back with a soft sigh, admitting the ostiary, who went down to a knee, head bowed, eyes stringently focused on the ebon floorboards.

“A supplicant comes!” she cried cleverly, thereby granting poor tay’Palin a chance to snort into wakefulness and for cards to vanish discretely into scholarly sleeves. tay’Welford set his logic-rack to one side, smoothed his robe and folded his hands onto his lap.

“Admit the supplicant,” tay’Palin said to the ostiary, his voice calm and scholarly.

The guard brought her hand up in the sign of obedience, and leapt to her feet. She straddled the doorway—one foot in the foyer, one foot in the committee room, and called aloud, “The admissions committee will hear the supplicant’s prayer!”

There was a moment of . . . stillness, as all scholarly eyes turned toward the door. tay’Welford noticed that he was breathing rather quickly, in anticipation, then a shadow moved in the foyer, coalesced into a slender woman in the green tabard and yellow sash of a Errant-Scholar. She walked forward precisely seven paces and dropped to her knees, head bent, arms held away from her body, palms out, fingers wide and pointing toward the floor.

One could feel the air in the room sharpen as the admissions committee took minute stock of the supplicant. She knelt, motionless, pale hair hiding her downturned face. The tabard moved, slight and sweet, over her breast, revealing the unhurried rhythm of her breathing.

Kel Var tay’Palin leaned forward slightly in his chair. “You may show your face,” he said, “and give your name into the committee’s keeping.”

Obediently, neither so quickly that she betrayed eagerness, nor so slowly that she was read as arrogant, the supplicant lifted her head. Her face was an agglomeration of angles, sheathed in supple gold. Her eyes were an indeterminate shade of green, set perhaps a bit too wide beneath the pale wings of her brows. Her mouth in repose was non-committal; the supple skin without wrinkle or flaw. Of Common Years, thought tay’Welford, she might as easily hold as few as twenty or as many as forty.

“Maelyn tay’Nordif,” she said, ceding her name to the committee, as she had been instructed. Her voice was high and clear, ringing sharply against the ear, and tay’Welford detected only the very least bit of tremble, which was expectable, and spoke well of her common sense.

“What is your specialty?” ven’Halsen asked, following form.

“Interdimensional mathematics,” the supplicant made answer. tay’Welford sighed, and leaned back in his chair.

“Under whom,” demanded tay’Azberg, “did you study?”

“Liad dea’Syl.”

There was a sharp silence—as well there ought to be, thought tay’Welford. Never, in all his time on the admissions committee had one of the Master’s own students come forth to claim a chair and a place at the Tower. They, therefore, had before them not merely a supplicant, but a marvel.

“Why,” asked dea’Bel in her wistful, cloying voice, “have you come?”

“To beg a place,” the supplicant answered, word perfect out of the protocol book, “and that an end be made to my wandering.”

“What token,” tay’Welford asked pleasantly, lightly, as if it were of no moment, “do you bring us?”

“I have given my coin into the keeping of the guardian of the halls of knowledge.” Her voice betrayed no trembling now, nor her face anything but an impersonal, unnuanced respect.

tay’Welford did not remove his gaze from the supplicant’s smooth, collected face.

“Ostiary,” he said, allowing his voice to reflect the faintest hint of doubt, “pray bring me the supplicant’s coin.”

The guard straddling the door spun smartly on her heel and marched forward. At the corner of his table, she bowed and opened her hand, offering on the flat of her palm a single tile, shaded green to match the supplicant’s tabard—or perhaps, tay’Welford thought whimsically, to match her eyes. He took the tile, his gaze resting yet upon the supplicant’s face. The ostiary went back a long step, straightened, turned and marched out of the room. The door whispered shut behind her.

The supplicant’s face did not change, the calm rhythm of her breathing was preserved.

Slowly, as though it were foregone that the work preserved on the tile would be second-rate, if not actually shabby, tay’Welford pulled the logic-rack to him, deftly re-arranged the tiles and slid the green into its place within the pattern.

The green tile pulsed. Figures and notations floated to the surface of the reader tiles, framing an argument both elegant and facile. tay’Welford smiled in genuine pleasure as the theory routines accessed the supplicant’s data.

“Scholar?” tay’Palin’s voice carried an edge of irritated dryness. “Perhaps you might share the joke with your colleagues?”

He bowed his head and answered soft, acutely aware of the rebuke.

“Forgive me, Scholar. The theory cross-check is almost—ah.” Very nearly, he smiled again. A
most
elegant piece of work.

“The supplicant,” he said, “builds a compelling proof
against
Master dea’Syl’s decrystallization equation.”

tay’Palin met his eyes, grimly; beleaguered as he was, still the Prime Chair was no one’s fool. A supplicant who came offering such a coin for her seat could in no case be allowed to depart.

Therefore did Scholar tay’Palin rise to his feet, and the others of the committee with him. Hands outstretched, he approached the supplicant, who bent her head back on her long, slender neck and watched him. The pulse at the base of her throat, tay’Welford saw, was beating a little too rapidly for perfect calm. It might be that the supplicant was not quite entirely a fool, either.

“Rise, supplicant,” said tay’Palin, and she did, swaying slightly as she gained her feet. To the left, tay’Azberg and dea’Bel had risen, as well. They approached the supplicant; tay’Azberg slipped the gloves and the blade free while dea’Bel removed the yellow sash, and stepped to one side.

tay’Welford rose and received the end of the black sash offered by ven’Halsen. They then approached the supplicant and wove the dusky length about her slim waist, tay’Palin stepped forward at the last to tuck in the ends and return blade and gloves to their proper places.

He then opened his arms in the ritual gesture.

“Allow me to be the first to welcome Seated Scholar Maelyn tay’Nordif home after her long wandering,” he said.

Seated Scholar tay’Nordif took a deep breath and stepped into the embrace. tay’Palin kissed her on both cheeks, and released her.

“Come,” he said. “Allow me to make you known to your family in art.”

* * *

“Alkia?”
The Korak trade master frowned at Tor An, spun on the stool and slapped up her screen, her right hand already on the wheel. Clan names flashed by in a blur, froze, blinked and reformatted as she accessed Alkia’s files.

“I’d thought there was something odd,” she muttered, whether to him or to herself he was uncertain. “But it’s all been odd of late; ships coming in behind-time; ships coming in ahead of time; whole routes collapsing under the weight of the damned war—Wait, wait . . .” She touched a button, accessing in quick sequence the shipping histories for the last month, two months, three—

And sighed of a sudden, closing the screen with a touch that seemed nearly gentle. She sat with her back to him though there was nothing but the blank screen for her to look at, and then turned on the stool again. Her face was somber, and Tor An felt his stomach clench.

“There is no record of any Alkia Trade Clan ship calling at any port in this sector across the last three months, Common Calendar. We have one report, unsubstantiated, that navigation to the Ringstars has become unstable.”

He stared at her, feeling the weight of the datastrip in the protected innermost pocket of his jacket.

“I have,” he said tentatively, “not been able to reach the Ringstars. I have data, if it—”

She moved a hand aimlessly, or so it seemed to him.

“I can use the data to substantiate the first report, close the route, file an amendment to the coordinate tables.” She reached beneath the counter. “There’s paperwork . . .”

Tor An stared at her.

“Won’t you investigate? Try to find what happened? A whole system—”

She looked at him wearily. “Routes have gone bad before, boy. In fact, lots of routes are going bad. It’s the damned war.” She sighed. “You want to fill out the paperwork so nobody else has to go looking for something that’s not there?”

“No,” he said sharply. “I want to know what happened.”

She sighed. “Then you want to ask the military.”

JELA STOOD IN THE alcove
where he’d been chained, and tried not to worry.

He was unfortunately not having very much success, and the half-humorous observation that this was no time for an M’s selected-for insouciance to fail him hadn’t derailed his distress. Nor had the tree’s cheerful image of a slim, golden-scaled dragon successfully vanquishing some sort of sharp-pinioned flying nasty with an easy wing-flick and a thoughtful application of teeth.

Cantra was, he reminded himself for the sixth time since submitting to the chain, a fully capable woman. She could handle a roomful of soft scholars. Very likely, she could handle the whole population of Osabei Tower with no help from him, which was, if he was destined to spend the greater part of his time on Landomist chained to walls, just as well.

Not that the chain was so much of a problem; just a short length of light-duty links—not even smart—attached to a staple in the wall at the far end and a mag-lock manacle on the near. A long stretch of his arm would snap the chain, if he was feeling unsubtle; or a little judicious pressure with his free hand would spring the cuff, in case subtlety counted.

Trouble was, either play would lose the battle and, if Rool Tiazan and his lady were to be believed, the war. No, he’d agreed to the role of laborer-class Batcher, just about smart enough to pick up a pot and carry it when given detailed instructions by his irascible high-born mistress. His brawn was entirely subservient to her brain, insured by the inhibitor implants, which obviated the need for restraints, even such toys as presently “bound” him. The question then being why they had bothered to bind him at all.

Mostly what we’ll be dealing with is culture and the assumptions that go with not ever having been noplace but Inside and knowing deep down where it matters that Inside ways’re best,
Cantra’s voice whispered from memory.
Lot of what you’ll be seeing won’t make sense, and won’t necessarily be keyed to survival. Inside, the important thing is prestige. If a point can be carried by dying elegantly at the exact proper second, that’s the choice your well-brought-up Insider’s going to make, hands down, no second thoughts.

Which led him to understand in the here-and-chained that the binding satisfied some deep-seated cultural necessity; that the chain was, in the larger sense, symbolic. What the symbol might say to the core of your general issue Insider, he couldn’t hazard, as he was short on context, but it didn’t take anybody much smarter than the Batcher he was supposed to be to figure out that the best thing to do—barring emergencies—was allow the restraints to bind him.

How long does it take to show an equation?
he thought, cycling back to worry. What if he’d flubbed the proof? The only check he’d had was Cantra, who—make no mistake!—knew her math. But she’d come fresh to the base assumptions of the decrystallization theory, and while she’d proved herself an awesomely quick study, she hadn’t lived the last five years with those numbers weaving possibles and might-bes through her sleep.

He was no stranger to subterfuge, misdirection, and papers created solely in support of fabricated reasons for him to be welcomed into places he’d no business knowing existed. In fact, he’d long suspected that Cantra yos’Phelium had a certain way with a Portmaster’s Writ herself. But what he’d witnessed from her—he’d never seen the like. What he’d been privileged to see—it was an art form, he supposed, and in retrospect held something in common with dancing. The intent to deceive was there; the intent to create a whole new fabric of reality which the audience would find not only believable, but preferable to the actual truth.

She forged papers, working with commendable care. She forged data-tiles—trickier, but nothing he hadn’t done himself. As she worked, she talked, maybe to herself, maybe to him, maybe to the long-ago teacher who’d given her the skill.

Now, this way here, this isn’t the best way to fabricate an upright citizen. Best way is to pull in some genuine papers and tile that’ve gone astray from their true and proper owner, then alter what’s there as least you can. Doing it like that, the paper tests genuine, the tamper-coding and the hey-theres on the tile are what’s expected . . .

Us, we don’t got the contacts and the timing’s ‘gainst us, so we’ll build our own as best we can. We’re lucky in that we ain’t gonna be long and all my job is to keep ‘em from looking at you—

If he’d still had doubts regarding Cantra’s status as an
aelantaza
-trained, they died as he watched her build her bogus docs.

But the docs were the least of what she built.

Now, here’s something custom-made for treachery, Pilot Jela. House Chaler, what more or less owns planet Shinto. You’ve heard of ‘em?

He hadn’t, and said so, watching her pull down data from sources he didn’t dare guess at, her face soft and near dreamy in concentration.

Horticulturists, they are. Build you a custom plant to any specs you want and be happy to lease it to you for as long as you like. Catch being that what they build, they own. Being they have extensive gardens, as you might expect, they also breed their own sort of Batcher, to work with the plants. The Batcher’s being ‘work units,’ for use on Shinto only, they get away with not registering the details of the design. Also doesn’t hurt that they’re House Chaler and it’s been ugly what’s happened to those who was hot-headed enough to try an’ push ‘em.