Crystal Dragon (33 page)

There'd been some little discussion of whether she would or wouldn't also be delivering the tree to Solcintra; the tree being of one opinion on the subject and Jela another. In the end, what he'd done was asked for her promise to keep it safe, which seemed to satisfy both.

Whether it satisfied her—Well. There was a reason why they said, "Crazy as a Rimmer."

She sighed and shook herself back to the here-and-now. Maybe she could try at the pilot's hall, should there be one. Might be some courier work to be had or—

"Pilot Cantra!"

She almost stumbled, it surprised her that much, but she caught the boggle and turned, smooth and easy, pasting a smile on her face, and showing her hands empty.

"Dulsey," she said, flicking a quick glance over the crew clustered 'round the ex-Batcher and finding nothing overtly life-threatening among them. "You're looking well."

THE MEDIC WAS a natural human; a woman with the burdens of years he would never see etched into her face. He would have preferred, Jela thought, in case his preferences had to do with anything, another M, but he also owned to a feeling of relief, that the medic wasn't an X.

"Imminent decommission, hmm?" The medic's name tag said 'Analee;' and there was a lieutenant's chop on her sleeve. "ID number?"

"M-nine-seven-three-nine-nine-seven..." He recited the long string of digits that described his particular self to the military. Beside his personal name, it was the first thing he'd ever learned, but it felt odd in his mouth, as if the shape or the weight of it had somehow changed over the years he'd been on detached duty.

"Hmph," said Analee. "Well, you're in the range. Lie down on the table there and let's have a look at you."

Obediently, he put his back against the table, feeling the sensors pierce him in a thousand places.

"Hood coming down," Analee said, stepping to her control board.

Above him, the hood flared, light gleaming on a thousand more sensors, bristling like teeth, and began to descend. Jela closed his eyes.

There was the usual space of hum-filled disorientation, then the sensors withdrew, the hood rose, and Jela opened his eyes. Analee the medic was frowning at her readouts, having apparently forgotten about him for the moment. In the absence of further orders, he swung his legs over the side of the table and stood.

"Now, that's odd," the medic murmured, maybe to herself; then, clearly to him, "You're certain of your date, Captain?"

Jela sighed. "I thought I was," he said wryly, "but I'm told the mind is the first to go."

Analee raised her eyes, spearing him with a look. "They say that," she acknowledged seriously, "but it's hardly ever so, with Ms." She frowned down at her screen, touched a series on her pad. "I'm calling up your complete medical file," she said, "to see if there's some clerical error which would account for this."

"This?" Jela asked.

"This," she jerked her head at her screen. "You'll be relieved to know that, according to records, your calculations are correct, and sometime within the next two days, local, you should be undergoing decommission. Visually, I've got clear signs of aging—hair going gray, some loss of mass and muscle tone—which are consistent with the early phases of decommission." She raised her eyes to his again, hers pale and tired. "We have drugs, to ease the last of it," she said, gently.

"Thank you," Jela said quietly, and considered her. "But?" he suggested.

Her lips bent slightly. "But, what I have on the scan is the portrait of an M Series soldier who is several months short of decommission. Which is why we're going to check—here we are..." She bent to her screen, manipulating keys, her concentration palpable.

Perforce, Jela waited. For no reason, other than his tricksy generalist mind, he thought of the tree, and the taste of its pods. It came to him that he'd been eating quite a number of pods, lately—it had gotten so he'd scarcely noticed. And it also came to him that the tree had demonstrated some versatility in its production of pods—the one it had insisted he feed Maelyn tay'Nordif in order to ease her passing had been specially grown for her, and for that sole purpose, he thought. It could even have been, he thought suddenly, that the very first pod he'd ever had from the tree, in the desert with both of them at risk—which he'd eaten and straightaway fallen into an energy-conserving sleep that might just have saved his life—and the tree's life, too.

He wished, suddenly and sharply, that he could talk to the tree about this new insight. But the tree was gone by now, lifting out on
Dancer
, with Cantra at the board. His heart twisted painfully in his chest, he could see her sitting there just as clear...

"Oh-ho," Analee said from her computer. She looked over to him. "You were the one survived the attack on the lab at Finthir."

He blinked. "And that explains—"

"Nothing—and everything," she said briskly. "You're an anomaly, is what you are—the only one of your cohort. Nothing else in the birth lab survived that attack. The
sheriekas
poured raw energy down on the facility—and I'm not telling you anything you likely don't know when I say that they should have aborted everything in the nursery wing. The
sheriekas
were pressing, though, and every soldier was needed. So you were reassigned, allowed to mature, and to serve out your time."

He knew this, of course; the tale of the quartermaster's mercy was at the bedrock of his existence. The few personnel remaining after the
sheriekas
attack had been repelled had needed a mascot; a reason to hope—so the quartermaster reasoned. And who was M. Jela, standing now at the end of his life, to say he'd been wrong?

"But," he said yet again, and this time Analee didn't smile.

"But that means you're not a standard M Series soldier. Thed anamoly hasn't shown up in any important way until now, and what it looks like is that you've got a while longer to serve, Captain." She nodded at her screen. "I'm going to enter into your file that the high dosages of radiation you absorbed during a vulnerable developmental stage has lengthened your life expectancy. Short of a battle, or a nasty fall down the stairs, you're going to see tomorrow, and a good few tomorrows after that."

AT DULSEY'S INSISTENCE, they'd staked out a table at what passed for a bar hereabouts, Cantra keeping an uneasy peace with the ex-Batcher's comrades, haphazardly introduced as Arin, Jakoby and Fern. Arin, who Cantra had pegged as the leader of the expedition, was tall and lean and tough, with gray eyes set deep under strong black brows, and a perpetual frown on his face. Jakoby was fair and small and showed a business-like gun on her belt; she sat slumped in a chair at Arin's right hand, her arm around Fern's waist.

"Have you been in the mines, Pilot Cantra?" Dulsey was the only one of them having a good time, Cantra thought; though it didn't seem exactly like her to be blind of her companions' moods.

"Can't say as I have," she answered, watching Fern wave a hand at the 'tender. "Just hit dirt a couple hours ago, figure to be gone before local dawn."

"So soon? I had hoped you would be willing to accept a commission."

Jakoby sat up straight at that, and Arin's frown got frownier, but neither one said a word.

"Always willing to listen to a paying proposition," Cantra said carefully. "But I have to tell you straight, Dulsey—I'm not looking at jumping off the Rim any time soon."

"Certainly not," she said primly, as if such an idea would never occur to her. "What I wondered is if you would be able to take several canloads of artifact to—"

"Dulsey!" That was Arin, goaded at last to speak. "She's not in."

"Not
in
?" Dulsey rounded on him. "Do you know who this is? The
Uncle himself
has spoken highly of this pilot! Why, he had even offered Pilot Jela a place among—" She stopped and turned back to Cantra.

"Where is Pilot Jela?"

Well now, Cantra thought, that was a question, wasn't it? She moved her eyes, taking her time about scanning the street outside the bar, thinking how best to put the thing. Dulsey'd been fond of Jela—maybe more than fond. It wouldn't do to—she blinked as a familiar pair of shoulders hove into view among the thin crowd, moving quick and purposeful. Cantra looked back to Dulsey.

"Jela?" she repeated, around the sudden lump in her throat. She nodded toward the window and the street beyond. "Here he comes now."

HE'D DRAWN A ROOM in the officers' barracks and a meal card. There was, said the assistant quartermaster—a scarred and sardonic Y Strain—plenty of room, and plenty of food, too, stipulating base rations were food. His kit, he'd left on-ship, thinking there might be something in it that Cantra could use, and nothing he needed for his last couple days.

And if he'd known those "last couple days" were in actuality
months
, he could have—he could have been on
Dancer
, sitting co-pilot and content. As it was,
Dancer
was no doubt long lifted, maybe even heading for Solcintra. He thought she'd take the book to Wellik, like he'd asked her to. Just like he thought she'd do her best to keep the tree safe. He had to trust to that.

He shook his head, ran through a focusing exercise—and sighed. Months. If he'd known—

No use thinking about that. And truth told, he could put months to use here, same as he'd intended to use his days. He had the info he'd lifted out of Osabei Tower's brain, and all his generalist's intuition to bring to bear on the problem. If he could locate that world-shield, he could send that info along to Wellik, who he trusted would use the weapons that fell into his hand. Had to trust, in fact, Wellik being the only one left.

Being as he had months, it might have been best to put himself into his bunk for a nap, but he was an M and an M hates to be idle.

So he drew a local map from stores, and headed out for a stroll through the port—whether for distraction, to gather information, or to walk off a mood hardly mattered.

"Pilot Jela!" a familiar voice shouted. He spun, spied Dulsey at the front of what the map told him was Watt's Bar, waving at him energetically, her grin so wide it was like to split her face.

He felt his mood lighten somewhat, and changed his course.

"Dulsey," he said, giving her a smile. "You're the—next-to-last person I'd expected to see. How are you?"

"I am exceptionally well," she assured him; her grin dimming somewhat as she got a good look at him.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"I—have you lost weight, Pilot Jela?"

In fact, he had, as the medic had also mentioned. No sense involving Dulsey in all that, though, so he gave her another smile and moved his shoulders in a dismissive shrug. "Had some short rations for a while," he said easily.

"Of course." She hesitated, then rallied. "You must come in and meet the others!"

THERE WERE OTHER people in the bar, but he could only see one, elbow on the chipped table, next to a beer she hadn't touched, chin resting on her palm.

"Cantra." He had the impression he'd been about to say something else, though he couldn't have guessed what, and in the end it was no matter. His throat had closed and squeezed off all the words.

For her part, she gave him a wide, too-bright smile, which was nothing less than he deserved. "That didn't take long," she said, falsely cheerful.

He cleared his throat. "The commander's a fool," he told her, which piece of nonsense earned him a wise look from foggy green eyes and a knowing, "Ah."

"Here," Dulsey broke in, intent on introducing him to her troop. She touched his arm lightly, and nodded toward a tall glowering fellow with a strong jaw. "This is Arin, our librarian and linguistic specialist."

Jela gave him a polite nod, which Arin, despite his glower, returned.

"And this," Dulsey continued, indicating a pale port-rat of a woman wearing her only weapon out in the open on her belt, "is Jakoby, our weapons expert—- and Fern, our archeologist and pilot." She smiled 'round at the three of them, seeming not to notice that none of the three smiled back, and told them, "This is Pilot Jela, who the Uncle offered a place among us."

"The soldier," Jakoby spoke up, her voice a dry whisper, "who killed fourteen of us?"

Jela gave her a grin, feeling rather than seeing Cantra get her balance adjusted for a quick move, if it came to that—which it shouldn't. He hoped.

"The soldier," he said to Jakoby, "who was attacked on a dock where he and his pilot had been guaranteed safe crossing. That's right."

There was a sharp pause. When next anyone spoke, it was Arin, remarkably civil.

"Uncle has spoken to me often of these pilots and their role in bringing the
Fratellanzia
to his attention," he said, and inclined his head once more, this time like he meant it.

"Pilot Jela and Pilot Cantra, I know Uncle would wish me to convey to you his gratitude as well as his feeling of obligation. If there is anything I, as Uncle's representative, might do to serve you, please do not hesitate to ask my assistance."

"That's said pretty," Cantra allowed. "Don't exactly compensate for the loss of custom 'skins nor Pilot Jela's peace of mind, but I 'preciate the sentiment. I can't off-hand think of anything that might bring us more into alignment, but I'll be sure to let you know if something occurs."

Arin inclined his head yet a third time. "I am at your service, Pilot."

"No you ain't," she said agreeably, "and neither Pilot Jela nor I is fool enough to believe you are. Though it might be we'll be taking you up on that offer of balance, like I said."

"Dulsey," Jela said, before Arin could get his tongue around an answer to that, "what brings you here? If it can be told."

"There are certain items of antiquity in which the Uncle has an interest," the silent pilot—Fern—said. "Our team was sent to collect them, if they are here, as well as those other objects we deem to be useful."

"If what I'm told about the mine-outs being full of First Phase artifacts is true," Jela said, "I'd say you had your work cut out for you."