The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  “But you said it wasn’t accurate,” he countered.

  She used her chin to point at the device in his hand. “That does not appear to be accurate, either.”

  He had to admit that she looked to be right there, and slipped the device into his sleeve.

  “I suppose,” he said, a trifle glumly.

  Miandra laughed. “Come now, Jethri, do not be cast down! It is a most marvelous puzzle!”

  Her laugh was infectious and he grinned in response. “I guess I like my puzzles to have answers.”

  “As who does not?” she said gaily, and bounced to her feet, the ruby pendant flashing in the brilliant day.

  “It is nearly time for the gather-bell. Let us be at our places early and astonish Ren Lar!”

  Since Ren Lar actually expected everyone to be in the yard the instant the shift-bell sounded, this was a remarkably sensible suggestion and Jethri got to his feet with alacrity, following her out of the small garden and toward the wine yard.

  “What are wind-twists?” he asked as he came to her side. She glanced up at him, her face serious.

  “Very destructive and unpredictable weather,” she said. “A wind-twist might level a vineyard with a touch, or fling a house into the tops of the trees.”

  A breeze touched his face, moving off the side of the hill. “Wind can do that?” he asked, starting to believe that this was a joke.

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him. “Fortunately, they are very rare. And never in this season.”

  The hydraulics was up to spec for a wonder, and the yard boss wasn’t available to talk. That was all right. Myra Goodin, his second, didn’t talk much, but she did listen a treat, and tagged his specific concerns and problems in her clipboard, after which, she handed the ‘board to him.

  Grig read over what she’d input, nodded and thumbprinted it.

  “Yard’s doing good for us,” he said, easy and companionable, as he handed the ‘board back. “We appreciate the attention.”

  Myra looked him firm in the eye. Firm sort of woman, and not one to joke. Serious about her work in a way her boss didn’t appear to emulate—or value. Which was too bad, so Grig thought, given that the reputation of the yard sat square on her shoulders.

  She took the clipboard back, and counter-printed it, her eyes steady on his. “We got off to a rugged start,” she said seriously. “I place the blame equal, there. Your captain shouldn’t have popped off like she did and Roard shouldn’t’ve egged her.” She nodded. “We’ve been able to get back on a business-like footing since you and Seeli took over the inspections. I appreciate that you took the initiative, there. This is a joint project—we’re all here to see that the refit’s done right.”

  Which was true enough, but not something you’d hear comin’ outta Boss Roard’s mouth. Grig smiled at Myra.

  “Joint project, right enough—and a pleasure to be working on it with you.” He stood, and nodded at the ‘board in her hand. “When d’you want me by to okay those?”

  She frowned and touched the keypad, calling up her schedule.

  “Three-day,” she said after a moment. “I’ll give you a pass.”

  Myra had been the one who had worked out the pass system that allowed them in the yard more often than Roard’s so-called Official Inspection Schedule. It was best for all of them, if okays on inspection problems didn’t have to wait ‘til the next scheduled inspection, which you’d think a yard boss would understand. Well, Grig amended, a yard boss who wasn’t thinking with his spite gland.

  He reached out a long arm and snagged his jacket from where he’d thrown it across the back of a chair. Myra went across the room, pulled a green plastic pass from its hook, set it in the ‘coder and tapped a quick sequence in. The machine beeped, she slid the card free and held it out.

  “We will speak again in three days,” she said, which was dismissal, and right enough, busy as she was.

  Grig took the card with smile and put it away in an inner pocket of the jacket. “Three days, it is,” he said, gave her a nod for good-day, and let himself out of the office.

  He cleared the gate and was maybe eight, nine steps on his way back toward the lodgings when he was joined by a long, soft-walking shadow. He sighed, and didn’t bother to look, knowing full well what he’d see.

  “Grigory,” her voice was familiar. Well, of course it was.

  “Raisy,” he answered, still not looking, which maybe wasn’t right, when a man hadn’t seen his sister in so long, but damn it. . .

  “Uncle wants to see you,” she said, which he’d known she was going to, so it wasn’t exactly surprise that spun him around, boot heels stamping the road.

  ‘Well, now, there’s welcome news!” he snapped, and watched Raisy’s eyebrows go up on her long forehead.

  “Trouble?” she asked, quiet enough to make him ashamed of showing temper.

  “Not til you showed up.”

  She grinned. “Same could be said for yourself.”

  “‘cept I’m where I was, doin’ what I’ve been, and didn’t go lookin’ for relatives to complicate my life,” Grig said. “And you know for a space cold fact that Uncle is more trouble than any of the rest of us, living or dead.”

  She appeared to consider that, head tipped to one side. “Exceptin’ Arin.”

  He laughed, short and still sharp with temper.

  “True enough. We’d none of us be anywhere, if it wasn’t for Arin.” He sighed. “What’s Uncle want?”

  His sister shrugged. “Wants to talk to you. Catch up. It’s been—what?—twenty years?”

  “Long as that?” He closed his eyes, not wanting it. Not wanting it down deep in his bones. Seeli—Seeli’d be after takin’ his head, and she’d have nothing but the right of it on her side.

  “Time flows,” Raisy was saying, “when life is good.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, long and hard. “Life’s been good,” he said, sternly. “Don’t laugh at me, Raisy.”

  She shook her head, and put a long hand on his sleeve. “No mocking here, brother,” she said, serious as only Raisy could be. Her fingers tightened briefly, then withdrew.

  “You know Uncle won’t let it rest. Why not come along, get it over with? Be a shame to make him send an escort.”

  Uncle would, too, as Grig knew from bitter experience. Still—”What’re you?” He asked Raisy.

  She smiled. “Your older sister, here to show you the best course to not getting your arm broke. Or didja forget what happened the last time you turned stubborn?”

  “I remember,” he said and sighed, accepting it, because Uncle wouldn’t let it go and there was some small advantage to showing meek and biddable in the first round.

  “All right,” he told Raisy. “You’re persuadable; I’ll come. They’re expecting me back at the lodgings by a certain time. Lemme find a comm and file an amended course. Then Uncle can have me.”

  THE JOB TODAY was gathering up all the clippings they’d clipped over the last week and putting them in a cart parked at the end of each row. Filled carts were taken away, and an empty arrived to replace it.

  Meicha was on cart duty, along with some youngers from the kitchen and maintenance staff. Jethri was on gather-up, and Miandra, too, him working the left hall off the main corridor, her working the right. Flinx was about, lazing under the vines, and amusing himself however cats did; Jethri’d see him out of the side of an eye when he’d bend down to pick up a bundle of sticks.

  On one level, it was stupid, repetitive work—worse even than Stinks. But, where Stinks was a solitary aggravation that let a bad mood grow on you, the stick picking up was a group effort—and it was by large a merry group. The kitchen youngers sang when they pushed their carts, and laughter could be heard along the rows. The weather might have helped the spirit of the day, too—cool, with a light breeze to fan away the sweat of exertion, and some progressively denser clouds to cut the glare of the sun, as the day went on.

  Jethri met Miandra at the cart. She th
rew her armful of sticks onto the growing pile, smiling. He placed his more carefully, because the cart was almost full and he didn’t want to start a cascade of sticks to the ground.

  “That’s all for me!” the tender said cheerfully, reaching down to touch the power switch. She glanced up at the sky. “Hope it’s not going to—Gods!”

  Instinctively, Jethri looked along her line of sight, blinking up into a sky now almost entirely overcast with green-gray clouds, that seemed to be orbiting each other, picking up speed as he watched.

  “Wind-twist!” the cart driver shouted, and shouted again, loud enough to hurt Jethri’s ears. “Wind-twist! Everybody get to shelter!”

  Apparently suiting her actions to her words, she snapped off the power switch, turned and ran down the hill, toward the house, and the cellar.

  The green-gray clouds were moving faster, now, elongating, and there came a downward roar of ice-cold air, slapping the vines flat and abusing the ears, and he felt his arm grabbed and tore his attention away from the spectacle in the sky to Miandra’s horrified face, her hair twisting and tangling in the wind.

  “Jethri, quickly!” Close as she was, and shouting, too, he could barely hear her above the growing roar of the wind. “To the cellar!”

  “You go!” He yelled back. “I’ll get Flinx!”

  “No!” She grabbed his arm. “Jethri, a wind-twist can pick you up and break you—”

  “And you!” he yelled, and pushed her. “Run! I’m right behind you!” And he threw himself forward, away from the wagon, back down the row he’d been working. The vines were snapping like wild cable in the growing disturbance, and about halfway down the row, where he hadn’t finished cleaning up yet, some loose twigs started to stir, and dance above the ground, following a spiral path up into the sky.

  Just before that, crouched under a vine, all four feet under him, tail twice its normal size and ears laid back, was Flinx.

  Jethri jumped, grabbed the cat by the loose fur at the back of his neck, hauled him up and got him against his chest, arms wrapped tight. Flinx bucked, and he might have yowled, but the wind was roaring too loud for Jethri to be certain. Cat crushed against him, head down, so that none of the airborne sticks would hit his face, he ran.

  All around him, the wind roared, and there was the end of the corridor, and the abandoned cart, and a slender figure in wind-torn red hair, her ruby pendant flaring bright as a sun—

  “Hurry!” she shouted, and he heard her, somewhere between the inside of his head and the outside of his ears. “Hurry! It’s slipping!”

  He hurried, stretching his legs and the cat wrapped close, and he was past the cart and Miandra was beside him and they were running faster, faster, down the hill, and—

  Behind them came a boom like a ship giving up all its energy at once. Ahead of them, a meteor-shower of sticks and metal shred. Jethri faltered, felt Flinx’s claws in his flesh—

  “Run!” screamed Miandra.

  And he ran.

  The family had lodgings in an up-port hotel, which shouldn’t have surprised him any. Raisy’s jumpsuit was a serviceable, sensible garment, but it weren’t spacer togs, no more than his good jacket and respectful trading clothes could pass him as a credit-heavy grounder.

  He did see some of those they passed in the lobby notice him, then look back to Raisy and form certain opinions not particularly generous of either of them.

  “Should’ve stopped and bought me some dirt duds,” he muttered, and Raisy sent him a Look before pulling a key out of her pocket and sliding it into a call box. Up on the lift board, a light glowed blue and a second or two later a door opened, showing carpet, mirrors, and soft lights.

  “After you, brother,” Raisy said, and he stepped in, boots sinking into the carpet.

  Raisy settled herself beside him. The door slid closed, soundless, and the lift engaged with a subtle purr. Grig glanced to the side, catching their reflections in the mirror: Two long bottles of brew, craggy in the face and lean in the frame, both a little wilted with the heat. The man had his dark hair in a spacer’s buzz; the woman kept hers long enough to cover her ears. Despite that, and given a change of clothes for either, they looked remarkably similar. Family resemblance, thought Grig, and laughed a little, under his breath.

  “Something funny?” Raisy asked, but he shook his head and pointed at the numbers flicking by on the click-plate.

  “Rent the rooftop?” He asked, not quite joking.

  “Uncle likes the view,” she answered, matching his tone precisely. “The equipment needs to be dry, though. So we compromise.”

  The numbers stopped flicking, settling on 30. The almost subliminal purr of the machinery stopped and the door slid open.

  Raisy stepped out first, and turned to look back to where he stood, hesitating at the door, having fourth and fifth thoughts, and staring down a hall as deep in carpeting and showy with mirror as the lift.

  “Come on, brother,” she said, holding out a hand, like she was offering a tow. “Let’s get you a brew, and a chance to clean up.”

  Grig shook his head and came into the hall under his own power, though he did give Raisy’s hand a quick squeeze.

  “Why not fast-forward?” he asked, with a lightness he didn’t particularly feel. “I’ve always found Uncle went down better on an empty stomach.”

  Her smile flickered, and she shrugged, turning to lead the way. “Your call.”

  JETHRI SETTLED HIS shoulders against the cool wall and closed his eyes. His chest hurt, inside and out, and multicolored stars were spinning around inside the dark behind his eyelids. Miandra had been appropriated by Meicha the second they cleared the winery door. He’d dropped Flinx about that same time and gone to find himself a nice, secluded piece of wall to lean up against.

  It came to him, in painful bursts of thought uncomfortably timed to his gasps for air, that the weather device in his pocket was far more powerful—and far more dangerous—than he, or his father, had ever guessed. Definitely not a toy for a child. Possibly not a toy for a trader grown and canny. Certainly, the occasions that he mistily remembered, when Arin had used the device to “predict” rain, might just as easily been cases of rain being somehow produced by an action of the device. His father and Grig used to argue about it, he remembered, his breathing less labored now, and his brain taking advantage of the extra oxygen. His father and Grig used to argue about it, right. Arin had insisted that the little device was a predictor, Grig had thought otherwise—or said he thought otherwise. Jethri remembered thinking that Grig was just saying it, to tease, but what if—

  “There he is!” A voice cried, ‘way too loud, sending his overbusy brain into a stutter. He opened his eyes.

  Meicha was standing close, Miandra a little behind her shoulder. Both were staring at his chest.

  “Unfortunate,” Meicha commented.

  “Flinx was frightened,” Miandra said, her voice slow and limp sounding. The other girl’s mouth twisted into a shape that was neither smile nor grin.

  “Flinx was not alone.” She extended a thin hand, and brushed her palm down the front of Jethri’s shirt.

  “Hey!” He flinched, the contact waking long slices of pain.

  “Hush,” she said, stepping closer. “There’s blood all over your shirt.” She brushed his chest again—a long, unhurried stroke—and again, just the same, except now it didn’t hurt.

  “Much improved, I think.” She stepped back. “Ren Lar wishes to speak with you.”

  Now there was an unwelcome piece of news, though not exactly unexpected. Ren Lar would have a duty to find out in what shape the foster son of his mother’s foster child had survived his first encounter with wild weather. A duty he was probably more than a little nervous about, considering he had just lately almost lost that same foster son to a wild animal attack. Wild reptile. Whatever.

  Still, Jethri thought, pushing away from the wall, he wished he could put the meeting off until he had sorted out his personal thoughts and feelings re
garding the weather . . . device.

  “Ren Lar,” Meicha murmured, “is very anxious to see you, Jethri.”

  He sighed and gave the two of them the best smile he could pull up, though it felt unsteady on his mouth.

  “I supposed you had better take me to him, then.”

  REN LAR WAS PERCHED on a stool behind the lab table, but the calibration equipment was dark. A screen over the table displayed an intricate and changing pattern of lines, swirls and colors that Jethri thought, uneasily, might be weather patterns, the depiction of which held Ren Lar’s whole attention. Flinx the cat sat erect at his elbow, ears up and forward, tail wrapped neatly ‘round his toes. He squinted his eyes in a cat smile as the three of them approached. Ren Lar didn’t stir.

  “Cousin?” Miandra said in her limp voice. “Here is Jethri, come to speak with you.”

  For a moment, nothing happened, then the man blinked, and turned, frowning into each of their faces in turn.

  “Thank you,” he said to the twins. “You may leave us.”

  They bowed, hastily, it seemed to Jethri, and melted away from his side. Flinx jumped down from the lab table and went after them. Jethri squared his shoulders and met Ren Lar’s eyes, which weren’t looking dreamy at all.

  “Miandra tells me,” the man said, with no polite inquiry into Jethri’s health, or even an invitation to sit down on the stool opposite. “That you have in your possession a . . . device . . . which she believes, has the ability to influence weather. I have never seen nor heard of such a device, and I have made weather a lifelong study. Therefore, son of ven’Deelin, I ask that you show me this wonder.”

  Mud. He’d been hoping for time to think, to—but he couldn’t, in justice, blame Miandra for bringing the business straight to her senior. Nor blame the senior for wanting a looksee.

  Reluctant, he slipped the little machine out of his pocket and put it on the table. Ren Lar extended a hand—and then snatched it back like he’d been burned, a phrase Jethri didn’t catch coming off of his tongue like a curse.

  Ren Lar drew a hard breath and treated Jethri to a full-grown glare. “So. Put it away.” He turned his head, calling out into the depths of the workroom. “Graem?