The Dragon Variation

by Sharon Lee

  Daav shook his head. "Korval takes no public action, other than divesting itself entirely of Sykun stocks. Of course, the delm shall not find it possible to attend any function where Sykun is also a guest, but I rather think the world will have decided that already. I fancy I hear the match programs running as we speak."

  Still Er Thom would not be tempted to a laugh, nor even to the fullness of his smile.

  "I wish you will come to us," he said suddenly. "Anne—She is not in agreement with Balance. She feels—she says that it is—a joy—to have found Sykun so rude, for now she is relieved of the necessity of courtesy when they meet."

  "Which is true enough," Daav pointed out. "Excepting that they shall—very likely!—not meet again."

  "Yes, but—" Er Thom bit his lip, looked away. "She says," he continued, very low, "that to answer insult with Balance is to bring all eyes upon it—upon her—us. She—I feel she—is angry." He looked up. "She is gone to play the 'chora."

  "Hah." Daav stood, shaking his hair back. He smiled into his cha'leket's worried face. "I'll come. Until very soon."

  "Until soon, Daav."

  "WHAT DO YOU THINK of these oxy tanks?"

  Clonak gave them consideration, fingering his mustache with absent affection.

  "They're very nice oxy tanks," he offered after a minute's critical study. "Symmetrical—and of a pleasing color. Full, too. I like that in an oxy tank."

  Aelliana sighed. "Forgive me. I had meant to ask if you thought four sufficient, or if these four should be replaced with four of larger capacity."

  "Four's the regulation number, Beautiful Goddess, but no one's going to howl if you want to carry more. If the hold's empty you can indulge your whim to the limit."

  "Yes, but it's not my whim," she said with a fair semblance of patience. "Daav had seemed to think that four was not enough, and I—"

  Clonak's face changed, and she suddenly knew she had his serious and entire attention.

  "What precisely did Daav say, Goddess?" Very careful, that tone, with the taffy eyes gone solemn as stone.

  Aelliana blinked. "Why, that he had been on a ship which had lost life support, and that one need only be in such a situation once, with a too-short supply."

  "So-ho. I shouldn't have thought he remembered that." His voice was quiet, as if he spoke to himself. He made no other comment.

  "Why shouldn't he remember?" Aelliana demanded and almost flinched at the sharpness of her own voice.

  "Because he had the Healers," Clonak said, and grinned his crazy grin. "And the Healers had the devil's own time, as I heard it. They swore he'd forgot. Gods know, he wanted to forget."

  "He—ran out of air?" But that's absurd, she thought distractedly. People who ran out of air were far beyond giving advice of any kind . . .

  "Not quite," Clonak assured her. "Not—entirely—quite." He shifted, opened the suit closet, slid the rack free.

  "You understand, his ship was holed—comps blown to bits, shielding in rags. He kept patching the hole, the patching kept cracking—an outside job, but he'd had the bad luck to Jump into the middle of a rock storm—a matter of a place error in the unrevised Tables, as it happens.

  "However that was, it was certainly suicide to go out. Daav's no suicide—he stayed in. Loosed his beacons. Blew what was left of the coils trying to send Mayday along the pin-beam. Did what he could, you see? Then all there was to do was wait—and use up oxy."

  "But you came—" Aelliana said, without knowing how she knew it.

  "I came," the pudgy Scout agreed, bending to check the seams on suit number one. "I came in thirty-six Standard Days." He looked up, showing her eyes bleak as rain.

  "I Jumped in, caught the beacons, hit the comm—" He took a hard breath. "He didn't answer—for a—a long time." He moved his shoulders.

  "Took some talk before he'd believe I was there—he's always been stubborn. I finally latched on and crossed. He was on his last canister—three-quarters down, I guess. Maybe more. He was building a gadget—planned to separate the hydrogen atom and the oxy atoms in the reservoir—make his own air. Last I heard, they were still studying that one, down Academy lab . . ." He glanced aside, mouth twisting.

  "Convinced him to come over to my ship. Convinced him to leave the gadget behind. Even convinced him to crack the suit—to conserve the air in the canister, you see. But damn me if he didn't sit there in the copilot's slot and keep turning the air down from the board! Had to threaten to sprain his head for him and stuff him in the 'doc before he stopped." He fingered his mustache. "Wouldn't have liked to try that. Daav's strong—and scary quick. Even then. Especially then." He shook his head, Terran-wise.

  "He started to shake when we hit Headquarters. Olwen and Frad got their arms around him and just hung on 'til the Healers came through."

  "And the Healers made him forget," Aelliana whispered.

  "That's what I've always thought." Clonak frowned.

  "I'll tell you what," he burst out suddenly. "I was ready for the Healers myself. Daav—Daav's the best pilot you're going to find—and one idiot math error left him hanging in a holed tin can, waiting to die! I thought I was too late, when it took him so long to open his line. Then I knew he was alive and I thought everything was binjali—until I saw him sitting his board calm as you like, turning the air down and talking in that reasonable way of his—And if that could happen to Daav, who's the best there is, then what might happen to clumsy Clonak? It scared me. I thought about quitting Academy. I talked to Jon. I talked to the commander—to Olwen—Frad. The more I talked, the more I determined to quit. Had my kit packed, in fact." He shook his head, hard.

  Aelliana licked her lips, forced herself to extend a hand. "But you didn't quit."

  Clonak stared, stepped forward and took her hand gently between his palms.

  "I didn't quit," he said, "because I stopped to say good-bye to Daav. He asked why I was leaving and I told him, 'Because it's dangerous. Because people die, doing what we're trained to do.' And he said . . ." He grinned, lopsided.

  "He said, 'That's life, you know.'" Clonak moved his shoulders. "So, I stayed."

  "Are you glad?" Aelliana asked. Clonak snorted.

  "Glad? I'm doing the only work worth doing. Does that make me glad? Or mad as any other Scout?" He stepped back, releasing her hand, and gestured toward the suits. "Have you done any practice with these?"

  "I've had one on and tested the circuits."

  "Well, I see we've got our work cut out for us! Why don't you file for something upper-level and out of the way? Outyard One has a nice quiet little lagoon where we can park us and do a bit of walkabout outside."

  "All right," Aelliana said, pushing away from the wall and heading for the companionway. She paused. "What is walkabout?" she asked, pronouncing the non-Liaden word with care.

  "Aha!" Clonak said with a laugh. "Odd that you should ask . . ."

  "IT'S THAT DAMN BOOK!" Anne snapped. "Of all the foolishness I never heard—it was meant for scholars! Who else minds about the dead, dusty past?"

  The dialect was the one she had spoken in her childhood, which was, Daav thought, indication enough of her upset. He perched on the arm of a parlor chair and lifted an eyebrow.

  "Very true," he said, calm in Standard Terran. "What would you have had us do instead of what has been done?"

  "Ignore it," Anne cried, rounding on him swiftly. "Let it go. Turn the other cheek. Act as if the great House of Korval were above children's games and found such goings-ons just—faintly—ridiculous."

  "Ah. And what would that accomplish, I wonder?"

  She glared as if she suspected him of laughing at her. He showed her his palms, fingers spread wide and empty.

  "Anne, I ask because I don't know. You say there is a better way to answer Sykun's insolence. Teach it to me."

  "You're not a fool."

  A complimentary manner, indeed, in which to address one's delm. Daav grinned. "I have my moments. As do we all. What is gained by allowing Sykun l
icense to abuse you?"

  She sank to the edge of the chair opposite his, fingers tightly gripped together. "Forgetfulness."

  He waited, head tipped and face attentive.

  "She—cut me—because she wanted to show that the book—the proof of the common back-tongue—was a lie. She wanted to make a stir, don't you see? And by rising to the bait, you've given force to her argument. You've said, in effect, that Korval has something to apologize for. People will notice. People will talk. Instead of the whole thing dying down, like an eight-day wonder . . ." She shook her head.

  "If you had just ignored it, then people would have shrugged and said that Sykun was making a mountain out of a molehill—She would have looked ridiculous—and people would have talked about something else."

  "Ah." He closed his eyes, weighing it, tasting it, feeling the shape of it and the outline of the culture which would make such action sensible.

  "I see," he said eventually, "that this might, indeed, be the appropriate response." He opened his eyes to Anne's hopeful face. "Elsewhere."

  Hope died. "Daav—"

  He raised a hand. "Given a society based upon the communal effort of unallied individuals, each of whom cooperates with the others solely for individual gain, this response has obvious merit. To shake off an insult is to conserve energy for the more important work of individual advancement. However, such a society does not exist upon Liad and the answer you suggest will not work. Worse," he said, deliberately softening his voice, "it may do active harm."

  "I don't—"

  "Recall that we are predators, enclosed in kin-groups, held in check by the laws of Clan and Council. Precedence is guarded as jealously as children. Melant'i opens more doors than cantra, as a rich man who has sullied his name may tell you. Insult must be Balanced, immediately and stringently, else the other predators see that you are weak."

  "But—"

  "Hear me out. I do not say that your answer is wrong. I merely say that Er Thom's is better. On Liad. To preserve our melant'i, our precedence—and our right to peace—Sykun must be lessoned. Did we ignore this morning's insult, the world would talk, and wonder—and plan. The next insult must in such a case be more daring—and we reach a point very soon where we play with lives."

  Anne stared.

  "This way," Daav said gently, "Sykun looses a few cantra and the pleasure of a few parties. Korval must make some adaptation of trade and contract. It is done. The world is satisfied and the matter falls away, as you wish it to do, in a twelve-day or so. To follow your plan—" He leaned forward and took her hands in his.

  "We are too few. I cannot risk one life on the chance of a Balance done badly. It is Korval's duty to protect its own. Which duty I take most seriously."

  She was silent a moment or two, eyes searching his face.

  "What are the odds," she asked then, "of this getting—dangerous?"

  Dangerous. He paused a moment, considering what that might mean to her. Surely, he decided, in this case her danger and his were the same—physical harm befalling lifemate, child, herself, or other kin.

  "Less this afternoon than this morning," he told her, with the utter truth one owed to kin. "Two moves have so far been made upon the theme and we have answered appropriately. It may be some shall try a third time. Vigilant response to that must establish our position without doubt."

  She sighed, and took her hands away, though pensively, and not in anger.

  "Your lifemate," he said softly, "will protect you with all of his skill. And your delm shall protect you, with all of his."

  "Yes." She sighed, then, and rose, tall and graceful and Terran. "Thank you," she said, which—Liaden—kin should have no cause to say, one to another. "I'll speak to Er Thom."

  He smiled and rose also. "Rest easy," he told her. "All will be well."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  In an ally, considerations of house, clan, planet, race are insignificant beside two prime questions, which are:

  1. Can he shoot?

  2. Will he aim at your enemy?

  —From Cantra yos'Phelium's Log Book

  "YOUR ANALYSIS IS ELOQUENT, my son. Allow me to hold it for a day or three, that I may give it the study it merits."

  Ran Eld bowed, fighting to conceal his dismay. He had sweated over that analysis, striving to illuminate every benefit to be gained by adopting San bel'Fasin as a partner in Sood'ae Leather Works. Indeed, he had written so compellingly of the advantages of upgraded facilities and increased production he had quite convinced himself that selling bel'Fasin as much as half the enterprise would be all Mizel's gain. Surely even cursory study must make these advantages plain to the delm's eye?

  And the twelve-day was winding to a close.

  "The gentleman who makes the offer of partnership," he said, careful to keep his voice even, his face calm, "did seem desirous of a speedy resolution."

  "Ah, did he?" Mizel glanced up. "It is well to recall that the gentleman approached us, we did not seek him. If he cannot wait upon rational consideration, he is free to offer his partnership elsewhere."

  Ran Eld went cold. "Mother, perhaps—"

  She raised a hand. "My son, I see that you are convinced of the benefits of the scheme. You are perhaps too young to understand that no scheme brings unalloyed profit. I must consider what it is this San bel'Fasin thinks he will gain in the venture, and whether Mizel can afford to indulge him." She smiled. "We learn something of value, should it transpire that San bel'Fasin cannot afford to wait. Nor do I think a man who is unable to adopt a temperate course will be a suitable partner for Mizel. Slow, steady and careful are the cards to play, when we decide for the clan's future. I shall give your analysis due thought, never doubt it."

  There was finality in her voice and, perforce, Ran Eld bowed.

  "Good-day, Mother."

  "Go in joy, my child."

  He gained the safety of his rooms and shut the door firmly behind him. Gods, what should he do, if the delm refused the scheme? Twenty cantra—soon to be doubled! But there, he assured himself, splashing brandy into a cup, she would not refuse. Further study could only show the plan's excellencies to fuller advantage. His mother was not stupid, merely conservative. Caution must bow to good sense.

  Soon.

  IT WAS A SMALL, neat house on a small, neat street handy to Solcintra's business district. Daav worked the gate-latch and followed the stone path through the meticulously-kept front-garden, mounted six shallow stairs to the porch and pulled the bell.

  He had not sent ahead, nor was he dressed in the formal style mandated by the Code, when a delm went calling upon a delm. Indeed, he might almost be a solicitor who had wandered a few blocks north of his usual preserve, excepting, of course, that not many solicitors were adopted of the Mun.

  The plain blue door opened wide and Daav found himself looking down into the serious face of a boy no older than eight Standards.

  "Good-day," the child said, eyeing the leather jacket with interest even as he lisped the doorman's traditional challenge. "Who calls and upon what business?"

  "Daav yos'Phelium calls," he returned, in Visitor-to-Child-of-the-House, "upon business of the House."

  The child frowned. Line yos'Phelium belonged to Korval, as he assuredly knew. The precise place held by Daav of Line yos'Phelium was likely at the root of the frown, as the personal names of delms tended to become lost outside the circle of their own kin.

  "Line yos'Phelium does not belong to Reptor," the boy said, with certainty. "I shall need to know your business, sir."

  "Very proper," Daav murmured, bringing his hand slightly forward, so that Korval's Ring glinted in the afternoon sun. "My business is with Delm Reptor."

  The boy's eyes moved, tracking the glint—widened and came up.

  "Sir," he said and stepped back from the door, bowing as Child- of-the-House-to-Honored-Guest. "Be welcome in our House."

  "Thank you," Daav said gently and stepped into the dim entrance hall.

  He stood aside
while the child shoved the door to and engaged the lock, then followed him down a short hall to a room overlooking the back garden.

  "Refreshment will be brought," the boy said, with all the gravity due his House's honor. "I go to fetch the delm, sir."

  "Thank you," Daav said again, and the boy ducked back into the hall, leaving the door open.

  Daav glanced around at the book-lined walls and comfortably shabby chairs. This was no state chamber, as called for by the Code, preserved in soulless perfection for the edification of formal visitors. This was a room lived in, enjoyed and enjoyable. Daav moved toward those temptingly overfull shelves.

  A step in the hall beyond brought him around in time to see a girl perhaps a year the doorman's senior cross the threshold, bearing a tray.

  This she carried to the stone table before the window; rapidly set out a sweat-studded carafe, two plain crystal cups and a painted plate piled high with cookies. Turning, she made a hasty bow, "Sir," and was gone, all but running out into the hall. The door swung gently on its hinges as she passed.

  Refreshment, as promised, and which courtesy required that he sample. Daav poured clear liquid from the carafe to the cup and sipped: Simmin wine, icy cold and tart enough to take one's breath. He looked wryly at the hopeful plate of sweet things and carried his cup with him to the shelves.

  He had barely grazed the contents of the first shelf when a new tread was heard down the hall. Daav turned and moved to the center of the room, wine cup in one hand, Korval's Ring in plain view.

  The man who stepped firmly into the chamber was soft-bodied and sandy-haired, not old, though some years older, Daav thought, than himself. He was dressed in rumpled day-clothes and scuffed houseboots, and had extraordinarily quick brown eyes, set wide in a weary, clever face.

  Those quick eyes flicked to Daav's hand and back to his face, betraying puzzlement without alarm. He raised his own hand to show Reptor's Ring and bowed, Delm-to-Delm.

  "How may Reptor serve Korval?"