Crystal Dragon (46 page)

"Doubtless." He flicked his will outward, found the lines and the pattern, thought a curse, and returned to his body to find Lute smiling sardonically.

"She can ruin all, can she not?"

"Nay, I think not—all," Rool answered. "Though certainly she may introduce... unneeded complexity..." He turned his attention to the lady.

"I ask—your preparations are made?"

"The Weaving is complete. Fourteen templates have been crafted and stand to hand."

"Fourteen?" Lute turned to her, eyes wide. "I—surely, Thirteen."

"Nay," she said softly. "Fourteen. You have earned your freedom, whatever that may come to mean." She slanted a cool glance toward Rool. "I thank my sister for her instruction."

He felt her move forward within their shared essence. "You are most welcome," she said. "It falls to chance, now, all and each. We shall not meet again, I think, sister. Go you in grace."

"And you," the other answered.

The energies swirled—and Rool stood alone once more.

THE AROMA OF FRESH, enticing goodness hit her the second she opened the door, and by the time the door had closed and she'd crossed the room to where it sat in front of the window, her mouth was watering, her body clamoring. She could see the very pod, outlined against the window, the branch bowed slightly with its weight—the pod that had been grown and nurtured especially—only—for her.

"Right," she said and forced herself to move away from the window, to pull the leather book out of her jacket, and put it with finicky care in the very center of the desk. That done, she she slipped the jacket off, shook it and draped it over the back of the chair. A couple of deep, centering, breaths, and finally she went to the window, leaned a hip against the wall, crossed her arms over her chest, and addressed the tree.

"Now, as I recall it," she said, her voice rasping with over-use, "Jela told you this particular hobby wasn't a good use of your resources. He was right, as far as I'm able to determine. But there's something else you have to know and think on—a being as long-lived as maybe you'll be." She took a breath, and it was all she could do not to reach out a hand and take that pod, that smelled so good and looked ripe to eat now.

"What you got to realize is that
humans are hard
. You just can't go shuffling their designs around, and changing them on the fly. They need study, and long thought. Planning. We live fast, compared to yourself; one tiny miscalculation and you've set twelve generations on the wrong course. Actions have consequences—and what you want to avoid is those unintended consequences that destroy all the good intentions you ever had." She sighed. "I'm assuming, you understand, for Jela's sake, that your intentions tend to generally align with humankind's, which for the sake of this discussion we'll call 'good.'"

Across the cloudless sky behind her eyes, a dragon glided, smooth and strong, wind whispering over its wide leather wings.

Cantra nodded at the pod. "Me, now, I appreciate your care, but I'm not going to avail myself of that particular pod. I'm going to have some sleep, because I'm tired, and humans, they sleep when they're tired."

No response, save that the tantalizing aroma faded slowly, 'til she couldn't smell it at all. The pod in question broke away from its branch, with a sharp, pure
snap
, and landed on the dirt inside the pot.

"Thank you," she whispered, and pushed away from the wall with an effort, heading for her bed.

SHE GOT TWO HOURS' sleep before the kid woke her up, shoved a mug of hot tea into her hand and dragged her down the hall. There they'd found the scholar in a fever of calculation so intense he'd barely been able to wrap his tongue around a non-math sentence. In the end, he'd simply spun the screen so they could see for themselves—'quations that sent a chill down her piloting nerves, and fetched an actual gasp out of the boy.

More tea and a quick meal happened between questions—not all of which were asked before it came time for pilot and co-pilot to depart for the meeting with the client.

Nalli Olanek was before them in the conference room, attended by a man so non-descript Cantra thought he would have vanished entire, had it not been for the scroll under his hand.

"Speaker," she said, inclining her head, but not bothering to sit down. "You get the contract written?"

"Indeed." Nalli Olanek moved a hand and her companion rose, bowing with neither flattery nor irony.

"Captain yos'Phelium," he said, offering the scroll across his two palms, as if it were priceless treasure. "It is my sincere belief that I have conveyed the agreed-upon duties, responsibilities and command chains accurately."

She eyed him. "Who are you? If it can be told."

He bowed again, and gave her a surprisingly straight look right in the eye. His were brown.

"My name is dea'Gauss, Captain. Account and contract keeping are the services which my Family has been honored to provide for the High."

"I see." She extended a hand, caught the boy around his wrist and brought him forward. "This is my co-pilot, Tor An yos'Galan. He'll sit right here with you and go over those lines. If everything checks out with him, then he'll bring it to me—same like you've got outlined in that section on command chains, right?"

"That is correct, Captain."

"Good. Me an' Speaker Olanek need to take a little trip."

The Speaker's eyebrows rose. "Do we, indeed? May one know our destination?"

Cantra gave her a hard, serious stare. "I want you to have a tour of the ship," she said. "Get a good idea of what you and yours are contracting for."

Nalli Olanek frowned. "We are contracting for passage off of Solcintra and—"

Cantra held up a hand. "You're contracting to travel on a ship," she interrupted. "Ever been on a ship, Speaker?"

The other woman's lips thinned. "Of course not," she said distastefully.

"Right. Which is why you need the tour. You not being wishful of putting your folk in the way of Captain's Justice, it'll fall to you to figure out how to keep them calm and happy and out of the captain's way. And to do that, you need to see, touch and smell exactly what you're contracting for." She jerked her head toward the door.

"Let's go. Soonest begun, soonest done, as my foster-mother used to say."

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT was earned, Cantra conceded: Nalli Olanek was tough. It was clear enough that the means and workings of
Salkithin
distressed her. By the time they'd finished the tour, and Sergeant Ilneri had delivered himself of a short lesson on slow-sleep so pat and slick she figured he must've only given it twelve hundred times before, the Speaker was pale, but she hadn't broke out into active horror, nor demanded to be brought back down to cozy Solcintra where the council of law called outlaw to any such devices as the
sheriekas
might use, and others of more normal habit to the wider galaxy. Gene selection beyond physical pick-and-choose, commercial AI, even personal comm units were either disallowed or else heavily regulated on Solcintra, and though many such devices would have given the service class an easier life, they seemed as wedded to the minimal tech as their now-departed overseers.

Seeing her charge was like to wobble a bit in her trajectory, Cantra set them a course for the galley and waved the other woman to a table while she poured them each a mug of tea.

"You'll want to be careful of that," she said as she settled into the chair opposite. "It'll be pilot's tea—strong an' sweet." She sipped, watching with amusement while Nalli Olanek sampled her drink and struggled to keep the distaste from reaching her face.

"S'all right," Cantra said comfortably. "What they call an acquired taste." She had another sip and set her mug aside, looking straight and as honest as she could muster into Nalli Olanek's cool gray eyes.

"Now's the time to say out what you think, Speaker. Your folk going to hold still for putting their lives in the care of this ship—not to say the slow-sleep?"

The other woman sighed. "Truthfully, Captain—it will be a challenge, even in the face of such an enormous catastrophe as Captain Wellik proposes. Slow-sleep—" She closed her eyes, opened them, and pushed her mug toward the center of the table.

"You understand," she said, "that I must ask this, though I believe I know what your answer will be. Is it necessary that we ride as sleepers, wholly dependent upon the—the devices that govern the operations of this vessel for our well-being?"

"Sleepers don't use as much of the ship's resources," Cantra answered. "Since we don't know where we're going, and we don't know how long we'll be a-ship, the pilots have got to calculate on the conservative side of the 'quations; we'd not being filling our guarantee of care for all the passengers doing it any other way. It ain't our intention to dice with anybody's life. Now. You heard what Sergeant Ilneri had to say about the redundant life-support systems, right?"

Nalli Olanek's mouth tightened. "I did. And I understand that he meant to convey the point that, should the ...device... supporting the sleepers fail, the ship would be in such peril as to be unlikely itself to survive."

Cantra looked at her with approval. "That's it. Those asleep are every bit as well-protected as those of us who're going to be awake for the whole adventures. The captain makes no difference between who's asleep and who's not in her calculations of passenger safety." She sipped tea, watching the other woman over the rim of the mug. "There ain't any High or Low 'mong the passengers on this ship, 'cept as you need to keep trouble out of my hair. I won't have it, and I don't expect to have it proposed."

"I understand." The Speaker folded her hands on the table, knuckles showing pale. "Livestock—"

"Livestock travels as embryos and Batch samples," Cantra said. "It's gotta be that way, for all those good reasons the sergeant listed out for you. The ship's equipped with reconstitution equipment. Captain Wellik states the garrison stands ready to help get those samples in order for you, if needed."

"We have samples and Batch seed, as it happens," Nalli Olanek murmured, and smiled when Cantra looked at her in surprise. "Several of the husbander Families have created a ...bank, as I believe they call it, in case there should be an emergency requiring that the flocks and herds be re-established." She reached for the tea mug; thought better of it, and refolded her hands. "I believe they were thinking in terms of illness—plague. But—surely this qualifies as an emergency."

"You could say." Cantra finished her tea, and considered the other woman. "Some other info you're going to need. Share it or hold it—that's your call. But you need to have it, so you understand what we're likely to have before us."

Nalli Olanek snorted lightly. "We have received much information from Captain Wellik's office. Also, we have—obtained those records upon which the High Families based their decision to return to the core. I believe that we are conversant—"

Cantra held up her hand. Nalli Olanek stopped, eyebrows arched delicately.

"I figured Wellik'd be free with the info of what's coming," she said. "What he doesn't have—though he should by the time we get back to the ground—is a picture of what comes
after
we make what Ilneri's calling a retreat."

"Ah. I had assumed that we would simply outrun the Enemy; locate worlds beyond the Rim, perhaps."

Grounders. Cantra felt the sharp words lining up on her tongue—and heard Jela's voice, damn' near in her ear.
She doesn't have the math, Pilot. She's never seen the Rim; there's no way she can know it like we do...

Well. She looked down at her mug, then back to Nalli Olanek.

"The Enemy's actions," she said, keeping her voice friendly and calm—"the decrystallization, like Scholar dea'Syl names it—that's creating a wave front of energy—or say it creates an opportunity for that wavefront to exist. The actual math is tricky, admitted. What we're going to be doing is riding this wave of opportunity straight on out of—straight out of everything we know, Speaker. The best the scholar can figure is that those objects and energy states which haven't been compromised by the Enemy's actions will be
introduced
into another—energy phase let's call it—and then into—another galaxy."

"Another galaxy..." the Speaker repeated, brows drawn. "But such forces—we will be damaging ...existing worlds?"

"Don't know," Cantra said, which was the truth as spoken by none other than Rool Tiazan, damn his pretty blue eyes. "Never been done before. Don't know if we can do it now, though the scholar's math says it's possible." She paused, then added, in the spirit of being as honest with the client as was safe. "Understand, it's not a risk-free thing we're doing. The only reason to take this kind of chance is because there's no other choice."

Silence.

When it had stretched a while, and Speaker Olanek didn't look any less grim or get any more communicative, Cantra cleared her throat.

"What's good," she said, making her voice sound like it was just that. "What's good is that the initial burst—that ought to be fast. And see, what you can't tell from down here in the thick of this galaxy, is that really, most of what's in a galaxy is empty space, anyhow. The Arm's collided with other galaxies back in the 'way back, so pilot lore tells us, and mostly what happened is we moved through each other like ghosts.

"So what we'll be doing is going into a transition, almost like normal. That part'll be quick, real quick. What we might have to do in order to come to land, that might could take a while. Which brings us right 'round again to the necessity of slow-sleep."

"I—see." There was a little more silence, then Nalli Olanek pushed away from the table and stood.

"I thank you for the tour, Captain yos'Phelium," she said formally. "It has been most informative. I believe we should return home—" Her face tightened, and she took a hard breath. "I believe we should return to Solcintra, and see if your co-pilot has cleared the contract for signature."

"Right you are." Cantra came to her feet, collected the mugs and set them into the washer, then led the way down the hall to the shuttle bay.