The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

Corporal Kinto stood guard at the last open hatch, eyes studiously on the hatch’s status display, hand on the emergency close button.

  “He’s in!” Kinto said to the air, and then the Chief Pilot’s voice came across the intercom. “We lift on a count of twenty-four.”

  Kinto glared around the branches at Jela then, and smiled an ugly smile.

  “Even a Hero shouldn’t order a Chief Pilot about, Jela. I anticipate your trial!”

  THEY LIFTED. The lander crew had allowed him to strap the tree into the jump seat beside him; and then they ignored him: Ignored his careful dusting of the leaves, his positioning of the plant where it could reap whatever feeble grace the ship’s lights might bring it, ignored his use of camp-cup to dampen the sandy roots . . . and they ignored his talking, for his words were all for the tree. To Corporal Kinto, he had nothing to say. Contado and Tetran being dutifully occupied at their stations, he—a passenger—should not distract them with chatter. So he whispered good tidings and calm words to the tree, which was departing not only its home world and its honorable dead, but the very soil that had nourished it.

  THE TRANSFER to the Trident was awkward. He was left to negotiate himself and the tree through the transfer port, and emerging, arms full of trunk and branches, he’d been unable to properly acknowledge the captain. Then, as a pilot returning without his craft, there were the docking logs to sign, certifying his ship lost due to enemy action, which duty he performed clumsily, tree propped on a hip, log tipped at an unstable angle, while the quartermaster displayed an unlikely degree of interest in his secondary screens.

  None of his wing met him, which he thought a bad sign, and he’d been directed not to his own billet but to the pilot’s lounge, escorted by the assistant quartermaster.

  “I should go to my quarters, change uniforms, clean myself . . .”

  His escort cut him off sharply.

  “Troop, you’re just about at the limit, you ought to know,” she snapped. “Took the pilots a lot of jawing to convince the captain to come back this way long enough to pick up your signal. Besides, there’s no guarantee you’ve got quarters to go back to . . .”

  That last sounded bad—worse than being at the limit of what would be officially tolerated. He was old friends with the limit. No quarters, though—

  With him up ahead in the corridor, there wasn’t a good way to get a look at his escort’s face, to see if she was having some fun with him, and just then they reached a junction in the passageway and had to make way for pilots wearing duty cards. Jela managed to hide his face in the branches, pleased that the youngsters—for they were both rookies—could not see his reaction to the gaudy tattoos they wore on their faces. It was while looking away that he saw two of the hatches in the passage dogged to yellow, and another dogged to red.

  “Took a hit?” he said over his shoulder as they continued. “I thought—”

  “Your boat took most of it.” Her voice was gentler now, as if she gave due respect to duty done, and done well. “But there was still some pretty energetic debris, and a bad shot from one of ours, too.”

  Jela grimaced, partly from the news and partly from the exertion of carrying the tree. He’d have sworn it had been much lighter when he’d grabbed it out of the ground.

  Forced to the side of the passage once more by through traffic, he leaned against the metal wall, resting for a moment, until a tap on the shoulder reminded him that he was on ship’s business and not his own.

  Moving forward, he vaguely wondered which—if any—of his belongings might have survived, but then let that thought go; he was here, and the tree was here, and that was more than he had a right to expect, after all.

  They came at last to the pilots lounge. The hatch was uncharacteristically dogged—to green at least!—but with ship’s air at risk it was only a common-sense precaution. He had time to note that his wing’s insignia was pasted roughly to the door, then the assistant quartermaster reached past him to rap—which was her right, after all, to have a lesser open for her from within.

  The hatch swung wide, an unexpected hand between his shoulders sent him through, half-stumbling, and he looked, quick eyes raking past the scraggly leaves of the tree, taking in the six empty helmets sitting with unsheathed blades beside them on a table, and five faces—familiar, strained, concerned, watching him.

  His knees shook. He locked them, refusing to fall, but . . .

  Six? Six gone?

  Corporal Bicra it was who gently took the tree from him, and Under Sergeant Vondahl who led the salute.

  With Jela, they numbered six—the smallest number Command would recognize as a wing.

  And as luck would have it, he was now eldest in troop, and senior in rank.

  He returned the salute uncertainly, and sat heavily in the chair beside the tree.

  “Report,” he said, not at all wishing to hear the tale.

  FIVE

  Trident

  Isolation Ward

  THE MED TECH WAS adamant, the while admitting Jela’s basic understanding of the theory of contagion.

  Yes, many diseases could be spread—could have been spread already—by the mere passage of an infected person, such as Jela, bearing an infectious object, such as the tree, through the ship.

  That Jela had been escorted by the assistant quartermaster, and welcomed into the temporary wing wardroom was unfortunate. That no one had yet died of some hideous, unknown disease since his return to the ship was not proof positive that no one would.

  More to the point, several standard protocols had been abused and the med tech was voluble in their listing.

  First and foremost, Jela should not have been permitted to land on the planet without a thorough reevaluation of the biological information from the old surveys.

  Secondly, neither Jela nor the tree should have been permitted back into the pick-up ship without disinfection.

  Thirdly, and most annoying to the tech, as Jela read it, neither he nor the tree should be aboard now without having been disinfected.

  The tech knew the rules and had the ear of someone on staff; and that someone had been appropriately notified, dignified, and horrified.

  And so it was that the second day of Jela’s reign as Acting Wingleader was spent in an isolation tunnel. The double-walled see-through chamber was inflated inside an ordinary infirmary room. The tree, within a double-walled flex-glass cubicle, was isolated all the more within that chamber while various tests were done on the dirt it called its own. At least they’d seen the wisdom of leaving the tree were Jela could watch it—if it turned blue or purple or became infested with bugs in its chamber he’d be right there to see it.

  He hadn’t pointed out to the med tech that no one knew exactly how long it might take a scruffy-looking tree of unknown genus to exhibit signs of parasitism, decay, or the like, but he had managed to get the tech to agree to a watering system for the plant so it wouldn’t give a “false positive” that might have the fleet isolating the whole ship . . .

  Luckily, the tech admitted the biotic sanctity of electronic communications, so Jela’s small command was able at least to speak with him when required and otherwise keep his comm-screen active with the news and goings-on of the group.

  Things might have been busier had Corporal Bicra also not been in isolation elsewhere, this news brought and left by a smirking Kinto. The corporal had touched the tree, carried her Wingleader’s burden—as both proper and prudent!—after all. Bicra being the most organized of the remaining squad, some important details were sure to be missed.

  Jela was inclined to consider Kinto a factor in the isolation as well, since he was known to be a friend of the med tech. What use any of the fooraw could be to Kinto was a mystery worth exploring at a later date; for the moment Under Sergeant Vondahl was too busy overseeing the maintenance and repair of the wing’s ships to spend time on a vital-records search.

  The med tech seemed a busybody of the highest order. Jela’s three sensor packs reported ably to the
room’s central console, but the tech remained in the room nonetheless. More, he constantly checked Jela’s rate of water intake and—

  “Will you give me ten heartbeats to myself, Tech? You’ve already got cameras, body sensors, air-intake gauges, and two measurements of my weight. Do you think I’ll grow wings and leave you behind if you don’t check my color every tenth-shift?”

  Most of Jela’s attention was on his porta-comp, where he was following with interest the check on Sergeant Risto’s ship. Risto was one of the three who’d died when the primary passage had been laid open to space while they were scrambling.

  “Not likely,” admitted the tech. “I don’t think there’s anything in the literature about a more or less standard human being able to fly—or even grow wings. The sheriekas are said to . . .”

  Jela looked up when the phrase wasn’t finished.

  “Are said to what?”

  The tech looked down, rising blood staining sturdy cheeks a deeper brown. “I can’t say. You haven’t been confirmed as Wingleader, and the information may be restricted to . . .”

  Jela looked on with interest as the tech mumbled words into silence, and turned to busy himself with adjusting various dials that didn’t need adjusting.

  Understanding blossomed.

  “I see,” Jela said. “Until I’m scanned, rescanned, sampled and shown to be free of disease and healthy of mind—hah!—I might be an agent of them, magically cloned on the spot and released to destroy the defenders from within.” He took a breath, decided he was still irritated, and furthermore that the tech had it coming, and continued.

  “Will it ease your mind to know that I was one of the Generalists brought in to study the problem of how to spot sheriekas and sheriekas-made in their human disguises? That would be, before they sprout wings and—”

  “Stop, Troop!”

  This was a new voice. An entirely new voice, from a woman he’d never seen before.

  Her uniform—

  Jela slowly moved the keypad back, stood, and saluted.

  “Commander, I have stopped.”

  She snorted delicately.

  “I hear, Troop. I hear.”

  She pointed at the med tech.

  “You may leave, Tech. Your monitors will warn you if there’s a problem.”

  A quick salute from the tech, who nearly tripped in his hurry to leave the scene.

  As the door sealed the commander sighed, none too gently.

  “Wingleader.” She said the word as if she tasted it, as if she tested it.

  “Wingleader. Indeed, it would look good on your record, were that record reviewed but not much inspected—I may allow it to stay. May.”

  She moved closer to the wall of his enclosure, studying him with as much interest—and perhaps even concern—as the med tech had showed disinterest and disdain.

  In his turn, Jela studied her: A woman so near his own height he barely needed to look up to meet her eyes; strongly built, and in top shape. Not a Series soldier, but a natural human, her brown hair threaded with gray.

  She continued as if there had been no pause for mutual evaluation.

  “Wingleader . . . Yet, I’m not sure if that would be best for you, howsoever it might serve the troop.”

  She peered through the inflatable, studying his reaction.

  “No comment, Troop Jela?”

  “Wingleader has never been in my thoughts, Commander. It is an unexpectable accident . . .”

  She laughed.

  “Yes, I suppose it is. I have seen your record. You always seem to rise despite your best efforts!”

  Jela stiffened . . .

  “Stop, Troop. Relax. Understand that you are monitored here. You are on camera. You are being tested for contagion of many sorts. There’s no need to bait the tech. He’s too ordinary to be worth your trouble.”

  Jela stood, uncertain, aware that information was being passed rapidly, aware that levels of command were being bypassed.

  “Sit,” the commander said finally. “Please, sit and do what you can for the moment. As time permits, we will talk.”

  Jela watched as her eyes found the cameras, the sensors, the very monitors on his leg. He sat, more slowly than he’d risen.

  “We will talk where we might both be more comfortable. In a few days, when you will be quite recovered from your trek, Wingleader.”

  She saluted as if that last word was both a command and a decision, and then she was gone.

  THE COMMANDER made no more appearances in Jela’s isolation unit—a unit he’d begun to think of as a cell after the third day schedule commenced in the vessel outside his walls, and by the start of the sixth ship-day knew to be the truth, if not the intent.

  He’d been in enough detaining cells in his time to see the similarities: he was on his jailer’s schedule, he exercised when they told him to, ate what they brought him, and slept during a portion of the time after they turned the lights out on him.

  He did have his porta-comp, which meant some communication, after all, and he had received a few visitors, though he’d had more visitors in some lock-ups than he had here. Then, too, most often his jail cells hadn’t had the luxury of his very own green plant.

  It turned out that the “alien plant” was under every bit as much scrutiny as he was—in fact it appeared that many of the sensors he wore or was watched by were duplicated for the tree.

  Perhaps the most frustrating thing was that though he could see the tree—and was under orders to observe it and report any anomalies—he could not to touch it, or talk to it, or comfort it in what must be new and terrifying circumstances.

  Shortly after the commander’s visit, he gained an amusing rotation of warders to replace the solitary med tech and his curious warnings—or, perhaps, threats.

  What was amusing about the new set of keepers was that they each seemed guided by a printed sheet. They neither saluted nor acknowledged him other than directing him for exercise or tests. They also wore medical gowns without emblem, name, rank, or number.

  What they did not wear were masks—thus baring the all-too-silly tattoos that were becoming the rage—and making each as identifiable in the long run as if they’d shouted out name, rank, birth creche, and gene units . . .

  For in fact, every one of the new keepers were of the accelerated, the vat-born, the selected, the so-called “X Strain”—able to work harder and longer on less food than even the efficient Ms. Too, they had for the most part had similar training, similar instructors, similar lives. They spoke amongst themselves a truncated and canted artificial dialect, and appeared to lump any soldier but those of the latest vat runs into a social class of lesser outsiders.

  Despite the disdain, and the tendency to seek only the company of their own kind, what had so far eluded the designers of soldiers was the sought-after interchangeability that would have made them—the Y Strains and the X—in the image of some committee-envisioned super-fighter: Physically perfect, identical, and above all amenable to command. It was the downfall of the M Series, so he had heard it said—they were too independent, too individual, much too prone to use their own judgement. And much too often, Jela might have added—right.

  So, he found himself in the care of the proud yet still-flawed X Strains, and he’d been annoyed in the night to wake as some one of the guardians attempted to enter the room without disturbing him: They were all of the blood, dammit! Would he have assumed them so lax . . . well, yes. He might have.

  “You of Versten’s Flight have no regard for the sleep of your brethren, eh?” He called out in the assumed dark of the infirmary’s night. His reward was a not unexpected flash of light as the woman with a red lance crossing a blue blade tattooed on her right cheek reacted, alas, predictably.

  “Wingleader,” she gasped.

  He’d startled her—and if he’d been of a mind he might just as easily have killed her—been though the transparent enclosure and had his hands around her throat before she’d known he was awake.

/>   “Wingleader,” she said again, recovering her voice, if not her dignity. “The monitors must be checked manually from time to time, and the calibrations . . .”

  “The calibrations may be made just as conveniently from a remote station,” he said, allowing his voice to display an edge. “It would be well if these things were done during ship’s day, for who knows what one who has been abandoned on a near lifeless world might do in the midst of being startled awake?”

  “Wingleader, I . . .”

  “Enough. Calibrate. I will sleep again tonight, and some of tomorrow day as well . . .”

  Which was unlikely, so he owned to himself, but minor, as he was no longer entirely on ship schedule.

  This was an oddity he considered too minor to concern med techs of any ilk, though interesting to himself. It seemed he was keeping two clocks now. One was the ordinary ship-clock any space traveler became accustomed to. The other . . . the other was the daily cycle of the planet he’d been stranded on, though he’d kept planet-time for so few days he might still be expected to be in transition-timing.

  The X Strain tech finished a half-hearted tour of the sensors, used her light to peer inside his cubicle and satisfy herself that he was not green and leafy, and that the tree was. She left then, without a word to him, leaving him wakeful.

  And that, too, might have been her purpose.

  Jela crossed his arms over his head, his thoughts on the planet of the trees, its sea, and other things he could not possibly remember from the place. No doubt he’d been very close to total exhaustion and on the verge of dementia when he’d been picked up. Perhaps the techs were right to be concerned, after all.

  Because he was a pilot, and an M, with all that Series’ dislike of being idle, he began to calculate. He checked his new sense of time against the trip back to the mother-ship, knowing that the breeze would about right now have been shifting to come at his face if he stood on the hill over the empty sea.

  That established, he calculated the entirety of his journey to his best recall—brief time outbound, to taking on the enemy vessel, to near automatic charting of course to the nearby planet, to the landing . . . likely he spiked this or that spy-sensor as he recalled the grueling and pitiless flight through that eventually life-saving atmosphere—and then the walk. He recalled the walk vividly, recalled the valleys, treasured the long trip the trees had undertaken from the side of a mountain to the ocean so far away . . .