Crystal Soldier (38 page)

He was wasting time, hovering over the box. It would open in its own time, or he would open it in his. Meanwhile, there was this and that of ship minutiae to occupy himself with, and for a change he could worry about not being able to make contact. He turned and left the alcove, heading for the galley to make tea and maybe a real-meal.

He hadn't reached the door when the chime sounded, and he spun 'round so fast he almost tripped on his own feet. An image flashed inside his head—one of the youngling dragons tumbling wings over snout down a long mossy slope.

Grinning, he went back to the first aid kit—not running. Not quite.

PERFECT, WHOLE, NEITHER happy nor unhappy, she lay swathed in light.

Gently, the light parted, admitting a crystalline whisper, bearing choices. Perfect though she now was, there existed an opportunity. She might be made
more
perfect, exceeding the arbitrary limits set by her original design. Smarter, quicker, more accurate—these things were but minor adaptations. The ability to bend event to her will, to sculpt the forces of the mind—those might also be attained. If she wished.

The cusp was here and now: Remain perfect and perfectly limited, or embrace greatness and be more than she ever dreamed. How did she chose?

Bathed and supported by the light, she considered. And as she did, a breeze sprang up, bearing scents of living green, while across the light fell the shadow of a great wing.

Startled, she looked up—and the light faded, the voice withdrew. She heard a chime, and opened her eyes.

Lean cheeks, black eyes, mobile mouth—doing his best not to look worried, and making a rare hash of it. She made a note to herself to remember that look. For some reason, it seemed important.

"Cantra?" Letting the worry leak into the voice, too. Deeps, but the man was going to bits—that's what came of talking to trees.

"Who else?" She looked up, saw the hatch above her leaking sickly green light, and took a breath, tasting ship air—and that quick memory came back on-line.

"You hurt?" she snapped.

Jela blinked and gave over a half-smile. "I'm hale, Pilot."

"Good. The ship?"

"Ship's in shape, and we're well away," he answered. The half-smile twisted a little. "There's a note in queue from Uncle, apologizing for any inconvenience and thanking us for smoking out his insurgents."

She snorted a laugh. "I'll send him a bill," she said, which pleasantry got a genuine grin from Jela and an easing of the muscles around his eyes.

"So." she said, swinging her feet over the side of the pallet. "Got tea?"

TEA WAS HAD, and a bowl of spiced rice mixed up by her co-pilot, who insisted that he'd been on his way to make the same for himself when the chime sounded and that doubling was no problem.

So, she'd leaned against the wall, wearing a robe she carefully didn't ask how he'd gotten out of her quarters, and sipped her tea, watching him work. She smiled when he handed her a bowl and followed him to the tower.

The bowls were empty now, and they sat sipping the last of the tea, companionably silent.

She rested her mug against her knee and waved her free hand at the board.

"I imagine you got a course set."

Jela looked wry. "It's my intention to raise Gimlins."

"Never come up on my dance card," she said. "What's to want on Gimlins?"

"Maybe contact," he answered, slowly, and looked at her straight. "I've been trying to report in, but I'm not getting any answers to my signals." That bothered him—and it bothered her that he let her see it.

"It could be," he said, but not like he believed it, "that we're too far out."

"It could be," she agreed, seriously. "The Deeps do funny things to comm sometimes—even the Shallows can play tricks on you." She finished her tea, slotted the cup and sat up straighter in her chair before meeting his eyes.

"We gotta talk."

He gave her a nod, face smooth and agreeable, which return to normal behavior she observed with a pang. Might be she'd taken a bad knock on the head, back on the Uncle's dock.

"First off—" She raised a hand and pointed at the tree, sitting quiet and green and for all the worlds like a
plant
in its pot. "What
is
that thing? And I don't want to hear 'tree.'"

Jela glanced over his shoulder at the tree in question, settled back into his chair and sipped tea.

Cantra sighed. "Well?"

He lifted a hand, showing empty palm.

"You said you didn't want to hear 'tree,' Pilot. Since that's what it is, I'm at a loss as to how to answer without violating my orders."

"That coin would spend better," she told him, "if I had any reason to believe you ever once in your life followed orders."

He grinned. "I've followed my share of orders. It's just that I have a bias against obeying the stupid ones."

"Must've made you real popular with your commanders."

"Some of them, yes; some of them, no," he said, easily, and flicked his fingers over his shoulder.

"That, now—that's a tree, and if it has a personal name, or a racial one, it hasn't shared them with me."

"A telepathic tree, is what I'm hearing," Cantra said, just to have it down on the deck where they could both consider it at leisure.

"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.