The Crystal Variation (40 page)

The fact was that he faulted himself, for what increasingly seemed a life misspent and useless. Yes, he had followed orders. More or less. Which was all that was required of a soldier, after all.

And duty required him, right now, to plan for the best outcome of the mission, since success was not within his grasp.

Sighing, he shifted against the wall, sealed the pen, closed the book and put both on the hammock by his knee. He closed his eyes.

Gimlins, now.

Gimlins was a risk. It might even be an unacceptably high risk. He wouldn’t know that until he did or didn’t have someone on the comm who did or didn’t have the right sequence of passcodes.

There’d been a corps loyal to the consolidated commanders on Gimlins. Some time back, that would have been, and he was the first to realize the info was old. His big hope, in a narrowing field, was that the corps was still there. His smaller, more realistic hope, was that the corps had moved on to fulfill its duty, leaving behind a contact for those who might have lost their way.

If there was neither corps nor contact at Gimlins, then he’d—

He wasn’t precisely sure what he’d do then, in the cause of the consolidated commanders.

Which unsettling thought spawned another. He’d promised Cantra he’d clear off her ship, and that was a promise he
did
intend to keep. Duty might have required him to find quiet transport out of the range of fire, but duty hadn’t required that he continue to impose his will—
his
will—upon her once he’d gotten clear.

He could have picked up a ship at any of the ports they’d passed through on their way to settle Dulsey with the Uncle. The truth was, he hadn’t chosen to. Like he’d chosen to sign on as Dulsey’s escort to safety, forcing Cantra onto a course she’d never have charted for herself, and for which audacity she’d determined to sell him to a ruthless man who she might have had reason to believe could keep him occupied long enough for her to lift, regaining her life and her liberty.

He understood her motive, and didn’t blame her for the intention. A fully capable woman, Cantra yos’Phelium, and as good as her word—when she gave it. He’d enjoyed being her partner in trade. And he’d learned something about piloting from her, which he wouldn’t have thought was possible.

He smiled a little, remembering her yawn for the X Strain’s display of prowess—and the smile faded with the more recent memory—looking down to the dock where she was surrounded, smoke billowing from her ‘skins and the scream—

He’d never thought to hear Cantra yos’Phelium scream—and hoped never to hear it again. The sound of her laughter—that was a memory for a soldier to take away with him, and treasure.

Memories . . . Well, a soldier had his memories—which shouldn’t, in the normal way of things, interfere with his duty or his planning.

Sighing, he shifted again against the wall, settling his shoulders more comfortably, and engaged one of the focusing exercises.

The sound of the air being cut by wings disturbed his concentration; sunlight flickered in strange patterns across the barely visualized task screen, which melted, morphing into a wide band of blue, arcing from never to forever over the mighty crowns of trees.

Again came the sound of wings and there, high against the canopy sky, two forms, necks entwined, danced wing-to-wing.

“Not likely,” Jela muttered and started the exercise from the beginning, banishing the dancing lovers from his mind’s eye.

The exercise proceeded, task screen came up—and was again subverted by the tree’s will.

This time he saw the now-familiar green land, gently ridged by the great roots of trees. Against one giant trunk a nest sat a little askew, with bits and pieces of it strewn about, as if it had fallen from a higher branch, unmoored perhaps by the wind.

In the nest was a dragonling, its tiny wings still wet, and it was crying, as any baby will, for food, and for comfort.

As he watched, a seed-pod fell into the nest, and the baby set to with a will; another pod was given and devoured; and a third, as well, after which the baby curled ‘round in its battered nest, eyes slitting drowsily . . .

Leaves sifted gently downward, filling the nest softly. The dragonling sighed and tucked its head under its wing, slipping off into sleep.

A flash of the task-screen, then, and a shift of scene to doleful, dusty wasteland, the sun pitiless overhead, and below, nested in the sand, a creature soft and dun colored, its snout short; its eyes reflective . . .

In the hammock, leaning against the wall of his quarters, Jela snorted a laugh.

“And a pretty sight I was,” he said aloud.

The tree continued as if he had not interrupted, displaying now an unfamiliar green land touched by soft shadows—and there, curled against a trunk he somehow knew for the tree’s own, despite its greater girth, a small and soft dun-colored creature was peacefully asleep.

In the now of Cantra’s ship, Jela frowned.

“Is that real?” he asked the tree, but his only answer was a flicker of shadows and the sound of the wind.

* * *

SHE CHECKED THEIR location,
and gave Jela full points for finding his way out of the Deeps and into the relative safety of the Shallows.

For old time’s sake, she called up reports from weapons and from the ship-brain, opened the comm logs, read the Uncle’s note, laughed, and scanned the long list of sends which had raised no answers.

She went down the list again, frowning after call-codes familiar from her previous audits of Jela’s comm activity, through a complicated skein of unfamiliar—and increasingly untraditional codes.

The man’s worried
, she thought, and caught herself on the edge of starting a third time from the top.

Mush for brains
, she growled, and banished the log with a flick of a finger.

She should, she thought, get dressed, pull up the charts and do some calculations, checking Jela’s filed route to Gimlins.

The sooner you raise it
, she told herself, when she just sat there—
The sooner you raise this Gimlins, the sooner you’ve got your ship back
.

True enough and a condition she’d yearned for since shortly after shaking the mud of Faldaiza off of
Dancer’s
skin.

Despite which, she stayed in the pilot’s seat, pulling her feet up onto the chair and wrapping her arms around her knees, the silk robe sliding coolly against her skin.

The Little Empty was in the forward screen, the few points of light showing hard against the endless night. She leaned back into the chair . . .

Don’t stare at the Deeps, baby
, Garen muttered from memory.
The empty’ll fill up your head and make you’s crazy as your mam, here.

No use explaining that Cantra knew her pedigree down to multiple-great-grandmothers and that Garen yos’Phelium was nowhere in the donor list. Garen believed Cantra to be her daughter—the same daughter who had been annihilated, along with the rest of Garen’s family, acquaintances, and planet, by a world-eater, some many years before the directors of the Tanjalyre Institute commissioned Cantra’s birth.

Garen’d told her the story—how her ship had come home from a run, excepting there wasn’t any home there. Told how they’d checked the coords, gone out and tried to come back in. How they’d done it a dozen times, from a dozen different transition points until finally the captain put them in at Borgen, cut the crew loose and sold the ship.

She told that story, did Garen, and as far as Cantra’d ever determined, she’d seen no inconsistency in admitting her daughter dead and destroyed while at the same time believing Cantra to be that same daughter. Not the least of Garen’s crazies, and the one that Cantra ought by rights to have no argument with, it having saved her life.

The question now being
, Cantra thought, tucked into the pilot’s chair of a ship she could never fully trust, staring out over the Deeps—
saved it for what
?

Life wants to live, baby. That’s just natural
.

True as far as it went. But life—life wanted to accomplish, too; to make connections; to trust; to be at ease and off-guard for some small moments of time . . .

That’s a powerful gift you’ve been given, baby. A weapon and a boon. You can have anything you want, just for a smile and a pretty-please
.

A curse, more like, and a danger to her and to those who fell under her sway. The best course—the safest—was to keep herself to herself, and to stand as cantankerous and off-putting as possible when human interaction came necessary.

The meager stars danced in the screens. She closed her eyes, which didn’t shut the empty out.

Five years since Garen’d died. Five years of running solo, keeping low, with nobody except herself to talk to.

And for what?

“Habit,” she whispered, and in the Deeps behind her eyelids she saw Dulsey, her stolid face animating as she talked about the Uncle and his free and equal society of Batchers. Jela, the joyful gleam of anticipated mayhem in his eye as he squared off in front of an opponent twice his mass.

. . . and other images—Jela half-way up the ramp and more; Jela parting the killing mob around her; Jela’s face, worried and relieved and cautious all at once, the first thing in her eyes when the ‘kit opened up.

Jela, who had a mission and a reason to live his life as he did, and who had promised to take himself and his tree off at Gimlins, which was, damnitall, what she wanted.

Wasn’t it?

Should’ve sold the man to the Uncle, and had done
she told herself—and laughed. Selling Jela would have solved more than one problem, the way she figured it now.

So you owe him
, she said to herself, but it was more than that. She’d
gotten used
to him; gotten used to his back up and his good sense. Worse, she’d gotten used to having him on her ship, in her daily routine. Gotten used to regular sleep shifts, and not running half-ragged. Hadn’t touched a stick of Tempo in—

Well, she was going to miss him, that was all.

Nothing else but what you traded for
.

Right.

Deliberately, she put her feet down on the cold decking, and pushed out of the chair.

Behind her, the door cycled.

She turned and considered him, the tight ship togs showing the shoulders to good advantage.

He paused just inside the door, his face open and a little unsure, hands quiet at his sides.

“Occurs to me,” he said, quiet-like and as serious as she’d ever heard him. “That I put you off more than one course at Faldaiza. I’m no redhead, but I can try to make it up to you.” He gave her a smile that was nigh heart-stopping in its genuine wryness. “If you’re interested.”

Well. Yes, as a matter of fact, she was interested.

So she smiled and walked toward him, knowing she was going to regret this, too, at Gimlins.

He tipped his head, the black eyes watching her with a certain warm appreciation. She felt her smile get wider and let it happen while she held out a hand.

He met it, his fingers warm, his palm calloused, his grip absurdly light for a man who could crush another man’s fist.

“My cabin’s bigger,” she said softly, and they left the tower together.

Thirty

THIRTY

Spiral Dance

Gimlins Approach

GIMLINS HUNG IN
the second screen, where it had been for some time while Jela played with various comm-codes, his face slowly settling into an expression of grim patience, tension coming off of him in waves.

Cantra busied herself with the piloting side of things, pulling in such feeds as were available; checking her headings for the sixth time; and riding the scans harder than need be.

The tension from the co-pilot’s side continued to build, to the point where the pilot started to itch. Sighing, she released the straps and stood.

“I’m fixing tea,” she told the side of Jela’s face. “Want?”

Not even a blink to show he’d heard her. His fingers moved on the comm-pad, paused—moved again.

Give it up
, she thought at him.
Anybody who’s hiding this hard can’t be anything but trouble
.

“One more string,” Jela said, his voice as distant as his profile. “Tea would be fine, thank you.”

“Right.”

She took herself off to the galley, put the tea on to brew and leaned against the cabinets, arms crossed over her chest, feeling something like grim herself.

“Cantra yos’Phelium,” she said aloud, “you’re a fool.”

Worse than a fool, if she was going to start talking out straight to herself while there was still another pair of ears on-board to hear it.

She sighed heartily and closed her eyes.

The man’s leaving at Gimlins
, she told herself, counting it out by the numbers.
He’s taking his tree and he’s going; it’s what he wants and if you had a brain in your head, which you don’t, it’s what you want. Yes, you owe him—he’s done everything and more that a co-pilot should, to keep his pilot hale and steady. So pay him up even and set him down where he says. It’s not like he can’t take care of himself. And his damn’ tree, too.

The tea-maker squawked, startling her. Grousing, she pulled open the cabinet, unshipped mugs, poured, stuck a couple of high-cals into her sleeve as an afterthought and went back to the tower.

Jela was on his feet, expression now forcibly agreeable, tension still evident, but of a different quality.

Cantra raised an eyebrow, deliberately nonchalant.

“Contact,” he said. “We go in.”

“Great,” she answered, like she meant it, and showed a smile as she handed him a mug.

HE DRESSED IN
trade leathers, rolled up his kit and stood for a moment staring down at it: a moderate pack, the tough coderoy scarred and travel-worn. Not the sort of thing a trader would be carrying on his back to a business meeting.

It would have to stay.

Sighing lightly, he bent, rummaged briefly, pulled out the log book and slid it into an inside vest pocket, straightened the pack and lashed it to the wall. Nothing there that couldn’t be replaced, and it could be that Cantra would find use for some bits. After all, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to abandon what was his in the course of obeying orders. And it wouldn’t be the last.