The Crystal Variation (130 page)

Khat let go a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and stepped up to the desk, pulling her papers out of the zip-pocket.

“Disaster shift?” she asked the clerk, crew-to-crew.

The clerk took the manifest. “Be nice if it was that calm,” she said, unfolding the papers. “Let’s take a look at what you got here . . .”

ESCAPED AT LAST
into his own clothes from
Elthoria
, he slipped into the kitchen and wheedled an off-hours lunch from Mrs. tor’Beli, the cook.

“For the vines today, are you?” She asked, handing him a plate so full of eatables that he had to hold it in both hands for fear of losing some of the contents.

“Yes ma’am,” he said politely, guiding his plate over to the table and setting it down.

“Be sure you have a hat and a pair of heavy gloves out of the locker before you go out,” she said, placing a glass of grape juice on the table next to his plate. “Summer is still before us, but the sun is high enough to burn, and the vines not as weak as they might appear.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said again. She returned to the counter where she was enthusiastically reducing a square of dough into a long, flat sheet, with the help of a wooden roller. Jethri nibbled from his plate as he looked around the kitchen, with its multiple prep tables, and its profusion of pots, pans and exotic gadgets.
Dyk would love this
, he thought, and gulped as tears rose up in his eyes.

C’mon, kid, what’s up?
He said to himself sharply.
You crying over Dyk?

Well, in point of fact, he thought, surreptitiously using his napkin to blot his eyes, he
was
crying over Dyk—or at least crying over the fact that Dyk would never see this place, that would have given him so much pleasure . . .

“You had best hurry, young ven’Deelin,” the cook called over her shoulder. “Ren Lar Maarilex puts the vines before his
own
lunch, much less yours.”

He grinned, and sniffled, and put serious attention on his plate, which was very soon empty, and drained his glass. Pushing back from the table, he looked around for the dishwasher. . .

“Leave them,” Mrs. tor’Beli said, “and betake yourself to the wine room—at a run, if you are wise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said for a third time, pushing in the chair. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Hurry!” she responded, and to please her he left at a pace, stretching his legs.

Outside of the kitchen, he kept moving, taking a right into the hall the twins had shown him, and arrived handily at the door to the wine room. It opened to his palm, and he clattered down the stairs, through the vestibule and tapped the code into the keypad set in the wall next to the ancient wooden door.

The lock
snicked
, and he worked the old metal latch. The door was slow on its metal hinges, and he put some shoulder into hurrying it along, stepping into the wine room proper only a little out of breath and scarcely mussed at all.

Ren Lar was not at his accustomed place at the lab table. Instead, there was Graem, busy with the drops and the calibrator. She glanced up as he entered, and frowned.

“The master’s gone to the vineyard; he said that you’re to find him on the north side.”

Late
, Jethri thought, and sighed, before remembering to incline his head. “Thank you, I will. Before I go, can you tell me where I might draw a hat and a pair of gloves?”

She jerked her head to the left, her attention already back with her calibrations. “Locker over there. Take shears, too.”

“Thank you,” he said again and moved to the locker indicated.

A few minutes later, wide brimmed hat jammed onto his head, too-small leather gloves on his hands as best he could get them, and shears gripped firmly in his right hand, he left the wineroom by the side doors and entered the vineyard.

No one was waiting for him, in the yard, and there were no signs to tell him which way to go. He considered, briefly, returning to the cellar and asking Graem for directions, but—no, blast it. He was tired of depending on the directions and help-outs of the various members of the household, like he was a younger—and a particularly backward younger, at that.

There had to be a way to figure out which way to go. If he put his thought on it, he ought to be able to locate north. He remembered reading a story once, where someone lost on a planet discovered his direction by observing which way a stream ran—not that there were any streams in his sight.

“And not that it would work, anyway,” he grumbled to himself. “Meicha isn’t the only one who reads too many stories, I guess.”

He shifted his shears from his right hand to his left, pushed his hat up off his forehead and frowned around him. You’d think there’d
be
signs, he thought. What if somebody got turned around and didn’t have a navigation device?

Navigation device
.

He slapped his pockets, found what he wanted in the right leg and pulled it out. The mirrored black face grayed, displaying swirls, like clouds, or kicked-up dust, then cleared, showing the old, almost-forgotten icons along the top and bottom of a quartered screen.

Jethri frowned down into it, trying to put sense to symbols he hadn’t seen for ten Standards—and suddenly, he
did
remember, the memory seating itself so hard that the inside of his head fair vibrated with the snap.

The icons at the top—those were detail buttons; the ones at the bottom indicated direction, while the quartered screen was meant to be read left-right/down-up, with the first square representing planetary north.

He touched a direction icon, and touched the north square. The screen changed, and now he was looking at a vid of the yard he was standing in, with a blue line superimposed over the image, shooting off to the left.

Making sure of his grip on the shears, he moved left, one eye on the screen and one eye on the treacherous dirt underfoot.

The next thing he’d do, Jethri thought some while later, would be to puzzle out if the device had a
distance
indicator. He’d walked a goodly distance, by his reckoning, along a dirt path crossing long corridors of wire fencing, against which bare wooden sticks leaned, dead vines like tentacles sprouting from their heads. It was an eerie landscape, and the vines just tall enough that he couldn’t see around them, and sufficiently complicated to the eye that there was no need to look up at the unfettered sky. He did look the length of each corridor as he crossed it, and saw not one living thing. The birds, which sang outside his window, and in Meicha and Miandra’s favorite garden, were silent, here in the vineyard—or maybe they preferred other circumstances.

Jethri had worked up a fair sweat and was reassessing how good an idea striking out on his own actually was, when he finally heard voices up ahead. Relief fetched up a sigh from approximately the soles of his boots, and he slipped the device back into his pocket before moving forward, quicker now. He turned right—and braked.

Ren Lar, hat on head, gloves tucked into his belt and looking just as comfortable as if he were standing in the coolness of the wine cellar, was talking with two men Jethri didn’t know.

“This section here, today. If you finish while there is still sun, then begin tomorrow’s section. We race the weather now, friends.”

“Yes, sir,” one of the men murmured. The other moved a hand, and Ren Lar acknowledged him with a slight nod of the head.

“Shall I call in my cousins, sir? They’re able and willing for a day or three, while the warehouse refits.”

Ren Lar tipped his head. “How many cousins?”

“Four, master. They tend our house vines and understand the pruning. If I call tonight, they can be here at first sun.”

A small pause, then a decisive wave of a hand. “Yes, bring them up, of your kindness. It is, after all, a wind year—bitter beyond bearing last relumma, and now it grows warm too early. I do not wish the sap to surprise us.”

The man inclined his head. “I will call them.”

“Good. Then I leave you to your labors.” He looked up. “Young Jethri. I trust you left Master pen’Jerad well?”

“Your honored mother was present, sir,” Jethri said carefully, “so there was no hope of anything else.”

Ren Lar’s eyebrows rose. One of the strangers laughed.

“A stride, in fact. Well said. Now, walk with me and we will find you a section in need of your shears.”

He moved a hand, beckoning, and turned left. At his feet a shadow moved, flowed, and gained shape.

“Flinx,” Jethri said. “What are you doing out here?”

Ren Lar glanced down, and moved his shoulders. “He often comes to help in the vineyard. For which assistance we are, of course, grateful. Come with me, now.”

Down the row they went, turned right down a cross-path—which would be north again, Jethri thought with pride.

“You will be tending to the needs of some of our elders,” Ren Lar said, moving briskly down the pathway. “I will show you how to go on before I take up my own duty. But have no fear! I will be but one section over, and easily accessible to you.”

That might have been a joke, though on consideration, Jethri didn’t think so. He very likely
would
need a senior nearby. The wonder of it was that Ran Lar was apparently not going to be in the same row with him and keeping a close eye on the precious “elders.”

“Here we are,” the man said, and dodged left down a corridor, Jethri on his heels and Flinx flowing along in the shadows beside them.

The vines here were thick-bodied; some leaned so heavily into their support that the wires were bowed outward.

“Now, what we will wish you to do,” Ren Lar said, pausing by a particularly bent specimen, its head-tentacles ropy and numerous. “Is to cut the thick vines, like this, you see?” He pulled a branch forward, and Jethri nodded.

“Yes, sir. I see.”

“That is good. I must tell you that there is a reason to take much care, for
these
—” he carefully slipped his hand under a thin, smooth branchlet— “are what will give us this season’s fruit, and next year’s wine. So, a demonstration . . .”

He lifted his shears, positioned the blades on either side of the thick branch, and forced the handles together. The wood separated with a brittle snap, and before the severed twig had hit the ground, Ren Lar had snipped another, and a third, the shears darting and biting without hesitation.

The old wood tumbled down into an untidy pile at the base of the vine. Ren Lar stepped back, kicked a few stray sticks into the larger heap, and inclined his head.

“At first, you will not be so quick,” he said. “It is not expected, and there is no need for haste. The elders are patient. The cuttings will be gathered and taken to burn, later.” He moved a hand, indicating the next vine down.

“Now, let us see you.”

Teeth indenting lower lip, Jethri looked over the problem, taking note of the location of the new growth inside the woody tangle. When he had those locations in his head, he carefully lifted his shears, positioned the blades and brought the handles together.

The wood resisted, briefly, then broke clean, the severed branch tumbling down to the ground. Jethri deliberately moved on to his next target, and his next.

Finally, there was only new wood to be seen, and he stepped back from the vine, being careful not to tangle his feet in the grounded branches, and pushed his hat back up from his face.

“A careful workman,” Ren Lar said, and inclined his head. “The elders are in good hands. You will work your way down this row, doing precisely what you have done here. When you reach an end of it, you will go one row up—” he pointed north— “and bring your shears to bear. I will be six rows down—” another point, back toward the house and the wine cellar— “should you have need of me.”

“Yes, sir,” Jethri said, still feeling none too good about being left alone to do his possible with what were seemingly valuable plants.

Ren Lar smiled and put his hand on Jethri’s shoulder. “No reason for such a long face! Flinx will doubtless stay by to supervise.”

That said, he turned and walked off, leaving Jethri alone with the “revered elders,” his shears hanging loose in his right hand. Ren Lar reached the top of the corridor and turned right, back down toward the house, just like he’d said, without even a backward glance over his shoulder.

Jethri sighed and looked down at the ground. Flinx the cat was sitting three steps away, smack in the center of the dirt corridor, casually cleaning his whiskers.

Supervise. Sure.

Well, there was nothing for it but to step up and do his best. Jethri approached the next plant in line, located the fragile new growth, and set to snipping away the old. Eventually, he moved on to the next vine, and a little while after that, to the next. It was oddly comforting work; soothing. He didn’t precisely
think
; it seemed like all his awareness was in his eyes and his arms, as he
snip, snip, snipped
the old wood, giving the new wood room to breathe.

It was the ache in his shoulders and his forearms that finally called him back to wider concerns. He lowered his shears and stepped away from his last vine. Standing in the middle of the dirt corridor, he looked back, and whistled appreciatively.

“Mud and stink,” he said slowly, looking down the line of pruned vines, each with a snaggly pile of twigs at its base. He looked down at the base of his last victim, saw a twig ‘way out in the corridor and swung his foot, meaning to kick it back into the general pile.

The twig—
moved
.

Jethri jerked back, overbalanced and fell, hard, on his ass, and the twig reared back, flame flicking from the rising end and a pattern of bronze and white scales on its underside, moving toward him and he was looking to see
how
it was moving, exactly, with neither feet nor legs, and suddenly there was Flinx the cat, with his feet on either side of the—the
snake
, it must be—and his muzzle dipped, teeth flashing.

The snake opened its mouth, displaying long white fangs, its twig-like body flailing in clear agony, and Flinx held on, teeth buried just behind the head.

“Hey!” Jethri yelled, but the cat never looked up, and he surely didn’t let go.