Crystal Heat

2

Lylunda smiled as she patted the arm of her pilot’s chair. It was good to be back in her own ship; she could feel the tension draining out of her. She woke the kephalos and initiated the call to Digby, then sat back and waited for it to go through.

Digby was a silver-haired docent, handsome and stately, with what Lylunda took to be a smug gleam in his bright blue eyes. “What can I do for you, Lylunda Elang?”

“I was wondering if the Kiln had finished inspecting the site and were satisfied with what they saw.”

“That’s proprietary information, you understand. However, I’m willing to let it out. For a price, of course. Nothing extravagant, just a brief report on your views.”

“My views about what?”

“About the events between the time you left Bol Mutiar and arrived at Wolff.”

“Shadith will have given you that already.”

“And do you never cross-check your information?”

“Hm. I see no problem with that; the whole thing was a disaster.” She went through the meager calendar of events after the healing, adding no commentary, keeping strictly to what happened and what she was told.

“You’re sure the dead man was the xenobi Prangarris?”

“I didn’t go downside, but that wouldn’t have helped anyway, he was inside that crystal weave. I watched Tigatri’s keph peel through the crystal until you could see the man inside. It ’was Prangarris, no doubt about that. And there were shells of dead Taalav all around the site.” She tapped impatiently on the chair ann. “So, have the Kliu been there? Are they satisfied?”.

“My fee was released from escrow two hours ago. They are satisfied. I would advise staying away from that sector of Cousin space; they won’t be looking for you, but if you fell into their hands, your life would be short and messy. Mmh. Should you take a notion to look for steady work one day, come see me.” The screen blanked as he cut the connection.

Lylunda wrinkled her nose. “Not likely, my friend.” She stretched, groaned with pleasure at the feeling of chains dropping off her body. “We say good-bye and thanks much, 0 Aleytys of Wolff, then I go find a Pit and throw myself a party. O000 eee, it’s been a while.”

21. Endgame

Once the ship was down, Digby wasted no time. He had the body on its feet and moving before the engines cooled; it was out of the ship and installed in a bubble car so fast Shadith only caught a few glimpses of the lichens and rubble that seemed to make up most of the local landscape.

After the flat metallic atmosphere of the ship, the air was cool and crisp with a sharp, fungal tang to it. She was irritated at being dumped back into the sterile blandness of machined air and made a note to do her version of the Vryhh ship gardens once she got back to her own transport. Having plants about would make more work and introduce more contaminations into her ship, but the feel of the atmosphere would certainly be worth it.

The car zipped from the recamouflaged pad and plunged straight at a granite cliff rising a hundred meters straight up.

Idiot poseur. Playing infantile games of scare the prisoner. Tchah!

She ignored the rock and mused over what she’d have to do to her ship to get it ready for use. It had been sitting at Wolff since she signed on with Digby and would have developed the quirks and crotchets all moth-balled ships picked up. At least those with complex kephaloi. She hadn’t run across any major problems ’splitting from Wolff to University, even though she was towing the Backhoe and putting more strain on the ship, but sometimes it took a while for the quirks to start showing.

The membrane that sealed out the local atmosphere and mocked the mottled gray of the granite twanged as the car passed through it.

The weight of the mountain pressed down on her as the flimsy car scooted deeper and deeper into it. And even more oppressive was her growing fear that she wasn’t going to get out of this with mind intact. If Digby wouldn’t let her speak before he tried the probe… all she could do was try to short it out. Which would work once…

A second membrane squeaked. The bubble car stopped and stood shuddering on its supports as jets of fluid hammered at it from above, below and both sides.

After the wash was done, Shadith heard a series of clunks and clanks; then the car began gliding forward, drawn along by some exterior method of propulsion.

During the next fifteen or so minutes the car was scrubbed thoroughly, the air in it expelled and replaced repeatedly until she was as battered as the small vehicle, the body she couldn’t feel coughing with irritation from the sterilizers carried by that air.

The car passed through a third membrane and stopped. The gullwing doors swung up and the body moved stiffly out. It walked to a massive plug in the wall, waited for it to slide open, then stepped into a rock lined with shining white tiles where it was inundated once again with antiseptic fluids. If she could have, Shadith would have sighed with frustration and impatience.

Hair kinked into curls so tight and close to her head they hurt, throat raw and temper on the point of exploding, she moved with the body into a white room beyond the lock; it marched to a chair facing a wall, plopped itself down, and folded its hands in its lap.

The wall irised open.

Behind thick glass she saw a nude male body wrapped in a cocoon of wires and tubes, a Sustain unit almost as complex as those she’d seen on Ibex when Aleytys was hunting the last clues that would put her in touch with her mother. In a sort of irony she was in no mood to appreciate, it also looked rather like the crystal mass the Taalav had woven around Prangarris. Digby, she thought, the original, the one and only. Wonder how old he is? From how he looks, he was here before this world formed. Gods, unless I talk really fast, for sure I’m not getting out of here knowing that.

Digby’s simulacrum formed, translucent so she could see the outline of the body through it. “You’re aware,” he said. “You aren’t supposed to be aware.”

He gestured and her face came back to her control, her throat, her voice.

“I’m a lot of things I’m not supposed to be,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, her lips trembled, and it was difficult to speak, but the relief in that much relaxation of the lock was enormous. She tried not to let it affect her; she had to remain focused-and avoid the temptation to talk too much.

“How?’

“Practice:”

“That’s not responsive.”

“It isn’t, is it.”

He gestured again, and the chair she sat in began to shift around her.

“No!” She spat the word at him, rushed the rest of it while she still had the ability to speak. “Before you touch me, check Backhoe’s kephalos.” The chair froze in midshift and she went on more slowly. “I saw the destination code and I programmed it into a drone’s message flake. Along with my speculations as to what this was about. Aleytys should have it by now and be on her way here.”

The simulacrum looked away for a moment. When it turned back, she faced its fury with her first degree of hope.

“How?”

She’d gone over this moment again and again on the way here and had changed her mind as many times as she thought she’d finally made it up. On top of that, the Sustained body on the far side of the glass was a factor she had to fit into her reasoning and she didn’t have much time. Go with instinct, she thought. Trade him secret for secret. That might be sufficient to tilt the balance…

“I was hatched twenty millennia ago, Digby. You may be old, but you’re a child compared to me. For a long time you’ve wanted to know who I was, what I was. So listen. I was a Weaver of Shayalin, born to a family who danced dreams for the Shallana and any who caine to listen. You wouldn’t know of Shayalin. It was ash before your species left the ocean that spawned them. That’s what I was until. I died. Then I was a pattern of forces caught in the RMoahl Diadem and I watched the years pass through other eyes than my own. It was useful training. The techs who craft mindlocks have limited imaginations; they don’t dream of someone like me. When the Diadem came to Aleytys, after a while I traded eternity for mortal flesh. This flesh. We are sisters of the soul, Digby. We are more than sisters. I would die for her and she for me. More important to you, she’ll come for me and she won’t be alone. The Vrya will come because I know how to reach Vrithian and that’s not a secret they’ll trust you with. And there are the other souls I shared space with in the Diadem. Like Aleytys they are bound to me in ways you’d never understand. If they find a shell, not their sister soul, you’re dead. The Vrya and my soul’s kin, they’ll destroy this place and purge you from every inch of the systems you control until you simply do not exist any more.”

“And why should I believe any of that preposterous story?”

“Wait a few days. Vryhh ships are fast; it won’t take long for Lee to get here. Two weeks at most. The others might need more time, but they’ll come, too.”

“My defenses are considerable. What if I simply deny you’re here and let them do their worst?”

“That’s your decision. By that time you’ll have done your probing and your wipe, so I’ll be dead even if this body lives and I won’t care what happens to you.”

“Seyirshi, was right, you’re a mutagen, transforming everything you touch. I should have taken his warning and kept clear of you.”

“I survive,” she said. “One way or another. A bargain, Digby. You leave me and mine alone, I’ll go my way and not interfere with you.”

“I want to talk to Aleytys. Give me her call-sign.”

“If you’re thinking of infesting Tigatri’s kephalos, I warn you she’s self aware and apt to react murderously to intruders.” She saw the smug glint in the simulacnim’s eyes and sighed. “Send me out to Backhoe and I’ll make the contact for you. I don’t want to be under all this rock when you make an idiot of yourself and get your plug pulled. You’ve got control of Backhoe’s kephalos, so I won’t be going anywhere.”

The white non-corpse in the Sustain lay stony and immobile and for several minutes the gaze its spokesimage turned on her was as unyielding.

The body was still held in Digby’s grip, so Shadith could do nothing but sit and wait. She’d considered using the mindmove to attack the Sustain since Digby had unwittingly brought her close enough, but that might mean all systems would go out and the thought of being sealed into this hole in the ground nearly sent her reasoning paths into overload. She put that aside to save for a last and desperate stunt, taken in the hope that Aleytys would arrive before air and food were gone.

The body coughed, coughed again as the remnants of the disinfectant gas irritated its lungs.

The noise woke the simulacrum from its stasis. “The ship’s corn has been tied to the skipcom here. You can watch, but you won’t be permitted to speak once the connection is made.” A gesture and the last of the mindlock dissolved. “The car will take you back. This is not to be considered an agreement, you understand, but I am contemplating your offer.”