Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series) (2 page)

"I don't want a balanced tree! I want one that will fall exactly where I know it will fall!"

"Take another tree, then. One that suits your temperament."

"Unbalanced... temperament," he murmured. Then he lifted the saw. "I believe I'll trim off an excrescence or two here," he said, making a playful feint at her bosom with the laser.

She scooted backward. "You do, and I'll trim off a protuberance
there
," she said, indicating his crotch. "Your bovine girl friend wouldn't like that."

He cocked his head. "Which bovine?"

"That cow Bessy, of course."

"Oh,
that
bovine." He shrugged. "How about your lecherous commoner buck, who thinks you're a chambermaid? Now
there's
a protuberance that needs trimming!"

"Don't be jealous. Nature grants to commoners' bodies—"

"What they lack in intellect," he finished for her.

"You have a tree to fell."

"Um." He set his saw against the trunk just where the tree began to broaden into the root, and angled the laser blade slowly across the wood.

"It's not working," the girl said, concerned.

"That's what you think, you dumb female," he said with satisfaction. He angled his cut back without removing the beam from the tree. The bit of white visible between the saw and the tree turned red. "Oops, I'm going too fast; the blade's dulling. Slowing, rather. It's molecule-thin; the visible bar is only to mark the place. Still, there's work in burning through solid wood; you have to cut slowly, give it time. There." The beam had converted back to white.

"But there isn't any cut," she said.

He ignored her, angling up. In a moment the beam emerged. The tree stood untouched. "Now take out the wedge," he told her.

"Sure." Playing the game, she put her hands on the trunk where the imaginary wedge of wood had been sliced out, heaved with exaggerated effort—and fell over backward as the wedge came loose.

Her brother-self chuckled. "Now get your fat posterior off the grass and straighten your skirt; I'm not your protuberant commoner-friend. I'm going to drop the tree there."

She looked at the wedge in her hands, then at the gap in the trunk. The edge of the cut wavered somewhat because of his unsteady control, and one section was ragged where he had pushed it too fast. That was why the wedge had not fallen out of its own accord. There was no doubt the laser had done it. She hoisted her slender derriere up. "That's some machine!" she remarked with involuntary respect.

"That's what this mission means to us," he said smugly. "I've got three days leave before I report; I want to get that summer house built."

"In three days?" she asked incredulously. "We can't even set the foundations in that time."

"True, the saw can't do it all," he said, reconsidering as he started to cut from the opposite side of the tree. "You may have to put the finishing touches on it while I'm away. Give you something to do when you're not polishing your claws. The mission only lasts ten days or so. It's good payment for that time."

"It certainly is," she agreed, involuntarily glancing at her neat, short, unpolished nails. Her suspicion was reasserting itself. "There has to be a catch."

"So maybe it's an unpleasant mission," he said, his eye on the progress of the cut. "An obnoxious transfer host. A giant slug made of vomit or something. I can put up with it for ten days. And if the mission is successful, and I get the completion payment—" He glanced at her and the beam jerked, messing up his cut. "We could afford a marriage and reproduction permit for one of us, nonclone. No more fooling around with sterile partners."

"Yes..." she breathed. "To be free of this ruse at last. To have meaningful sex, a family, security—"

"Recognition, status," he added. "Timber."

"Timber?"

"That's what you say when the tree's falling."

"Oh." She skipped out of the way as the pine tilted grandly.

The crash was horrendous. Purple needles showered down, and a large branch shook loose and bounced nearby. The sound echoed and reechoed from the near hills. The base of the trunk bucked off the stump and kicked back, as though trying to take one of them with it to destruction.

Brother and sister selves stood for a moment, half in awe of what they had wrought. Even a comparatively small tree like this had a lot of mass! A large one would shake the very mountain.

Jesse hefted the laser. "Now for the beams," he said, his voice calm but his aura animated.

"Beams? How many does that saw have?"

"Idiot! I meant the beams of wood. Measure off a ten-meter length, and I'll hew it now."

"Doesn't it need to season?" she asked. "Suppose it warps?"

"Don't you know
anything
, cell of my cell? Purple pine doesn't warp. It hardly even woofs. Or tweets. It merely hardens in place. That's why it's such valuable wood, that has to be protected by being included on grand old estates like ours. So that only selective cutting is done, to thin the groves, no commercial strip-cutting. We want to hew it now, while it's soft."

"Oh." She was of exactly the same intelligence as he, and had had the same education, but that particular fact had slipped by her. Sometimes they had substituted for each other during boring classes, so one could pick up sundry facts the other missed. She was beginning to diverge more obviously from her brother, and the mask of identical garb in public would not be effective much longer.

She brought out her measure, touched the little disk to the base of the trunk, walked along the tree until the readout indicated ten meters, then touched the trunk again. A red dot now marked the spot.

He trimmed the base smooth, then severed the trunk at the ten-meter mark. The log shifted and settled more comfortably into the spongy ground. Now he fiddled with a special control, adjusting the saw. "Actually, I'm doing this for you. I'll have to marry another aristocratic clone; you'll get to pick a real person to family with."

"Want to bet? There are more males of our generation than females. That's why they operated on me to turn me female, hedging the bet. I'll probably have to marry the clone, while you get to graze among the common herd."

"There is that," he agreed. "I must admit, there are some commoners I wouldn't mind hitching to. Clonedom is seeming more sterile these days; so few of our kind have any real fire or ambition. They're mostly all socialites, forcing us to play that game too. Stand back, doll. This can be tricky."

The laser beam shot out way beyond its prior length. He aligned it with the length of the log, then levered it slowly so that it made a burn in the bark from end to end. He moved the beam over and made a similar burn, a quarter of the way around. Then he readjusted the saw and used the short cutting beam to trim an edge lengthwise along one line. A meter on the saw showed him precisely what orientation to maintain to keep the cut correctly angled.

"You know, someday the other clones will have to find out about you," he remarked as he worked. Jesse was never silent for very long. "We can't keep it secret forever."

She knew it. She had nightmares about premature, involuntary exposure. Yet she responded bravely enough: "If you find an aristocratic spouse soon, we can. It would be nice to save this hedge for another generation, protecting our line. Once the other clones catch on, they'll all be doing it, and our line will have no advantage."

He nodded soberly. With four cuts, he had a beam roughly square in cross section, ten meters long. The irregularities of his trimming only made it seem authentically hand-hewn. "Where could we get a finer ridge-beam than that?" he asked rhetorically.

"Nowhere," she answered, impressed.

"Still mad at me for buying the saw?"

"No, of course not."

"Five thousand credits—you could buy a lot of silly perfume for that, to make commoners think you're sexy."

"I'll take the saw."

He grinned, pleased. "Make that literal. You hew the next beam. Why should I do all the work?"

"And the castle mortgage paid off," she said, liking the notion better. "That's the first time our family's been solvent in a generation."

"Still, considering the danger of the mission—" he teased.

"Oh, shut up!"

"Now you know how to turn it on and off, Jess. The saw, I mean. It's not heavy, just keep your arm steady and your dugs out of the way; don't let them dangle in the beam."

"I don't dangle,
you
do!" But she accepted the saw, eager to try her skill. She had, of course, been raised in the male tradition, and there were aspects of it she rather enjoyed, such as hewing beams.

"I don't dangle when I'm with someone interesting." He took the measuring disk and marked off another ten-meter section. "Sever it here."

She started toward him. "The trunk, not me!" he protested, stepping back with his hands protectively in front of him.

She shrugged as if disappointed and set the saw at the mark. The laser moved into the woods. "I can't even feel it!"

"Right. There's no recoil, no snag with laser. Just watch the beam, make sure it stays white. With this tool we can saw boards, shape columns, polish panels, drill holes—anything! I plan to cut wooden pegs to hold it together, along with notching. This saw has settings for carving out pegs, notches, and assorted bevels and curlicues; you just have to program it. We can build our whole house with this one saw!"

"You're right," she said, no longer even attempting to be flip. "We need this machine. It is worth the credit. You just be sure you report for that mission on time."

"Precious little short of death itself could keep me away," he assured her. "And the Society of Hosts insurance would cover the advance, if I died before reporting, so even then you'd keep the money. But it's not just the money I'm doing it for; I'm tired of this dreary aristocratic life. I want real adventure for a change. I want to go out among the stars, travel to the farthest places, experience alien existence, see the universe!"

"Yes..." she breathed, envying him his coming adventure.

"You just make sure I wake up in time to report for transfer when—"

The log severed before she was aware of it. It dropped suddenly and rolled toward them. It was massive, half a meter thick at the cut: weight enough to crush a leg. Jessica screamed in temporary panic and swung the valuable saw out of the way, her finger locked on the trigger. Jesse grabbed for her, trying to draw her bodily out of harm's way.

The wildly shifting laser beam passed across his spine. His shirt fell open, cleanly cut, but for a moment there was no blood. He fell, his arms looped about her thighs.

The rolling log stopped short of his body, balked by the chance irregularity of the ground. Jessica, acting with numb relief, drew her finger from the trigger, turned off the saw, set it down carefully, and caught her brother under the arms as he slid slowly facefirst toward the turf. "Oh, Jesse, are you hurt?"

But even as she spoke, she knew he was. His aura, which really merged with hers, was fluctuating wildly. The beam, set to cut wood, had touched him only briefly—not enough to cut his body in half or even to cut his backbone, but sufficient to penetrate a centimeter or so. Elsewhere it would have made a nasty gash in the flesh; across his spine it was critical.

His body was paralyzed, but he retained consciousness and speech. "Jess—" he gasped as she rolled him over and tenderly brushed the dirt from his face. "My aura—is it—?"

"Jess, the beam cut into your spinal cord," she said, horrified. "Your aura is irregular." She knew the extent if not the precise nature of the injury because the sympathetic response in her own aura touched her spine, lending a superficial numbness to her legs. His aura irregular? It was an understatement. "I'll call an ambulance." She fumbled for her communicator. The health wing would arrive in minutes.

"No, Jess!" he rasped. "I may live—but hospital'd take weeks! I have only two days."

"To hell with two days!" she cried, the tears overflowing. "You can't go on that mission now! Even if you weren't badly injured, your aura would never pass. It reflects your physical condition. It has to be fully healthy to pass, you know that! I'll take care of you, I promise!"

"Kill me," he said. "Say it was part of the accident Just pass the laser across my chest, slowly, so as to intersect the heart—"

"No!" she screamed. "Jess, what are you saying?"

"The insurance—death benefit—only if I die, it covers—"

"
Jess!
"

"Jess, I can't renege on that mission. The advance would be forfeited, the insurance invalid, and we'd lose the whole estate and the family reputation. Have Flowers pick up the body; he'll cover for you. He's been in this business a long time, he's doctored family skeletons before, you can bet on it, and he's completely loyal to us. He'll do it. I'd rather die than—"

"Jess, I won't do it!" she cried. "I know Flowers would cover for us. I don't care. I love you, clone-brother! I don't care what—"

But he was unconscious; she knew by the change in his aura. He had fought for consciousness until his message was out, then let go.

She brought the communicator to her mouth—and paused, comprehending the position they were in. The first flush of emotion was phasing into the broader reality of their situation. She could save her brother's life—for what? For a remaining life of poverty and shame? He had spoken truly! He was a joker, but never a coward. He would prefer to die. Now, cleanly, painlessly, with a certain private honor, leaving her to carry on the reputation of the family and maintain the millennium-old estate. She knew this—for his aura was hers, his mind was hers, and she shared this preference. They were aristocrats! If she had been injured in such a way as to forfeit honor and fortune together, death would seem a welcome alternative.

She could do it. She had the nerve, bred into the royal line, and because she was royal, she would not be interrogated. Her word and the visible evidence would suffice. Flowers would employ his professional touch to make the case tight. She could kill her brother-self, and save the family honor and fortune. It was feasible.