The Crystal Variation (128 page)

Paitor grinned, no humor in it at all.

“Don’t need to be a believer when I got one across the table, asking for whole, working gadgets
by name
.”

“Point.” Grig lifted his brew and finished it off, put the bottle back soft on the table. “So you asked—yeah, Arin traded the underside in old tech. Far as I know, he was mostly buying—bought some few things, myself, now and then, like that weather maker Jeth adopted. Most of the stuff, it went—someplace else. And before you ask—no, I don’t know where it is or how it went. Arin’s business, first and finish. He didn’t tell me everything.” He reached to the middle of the table and snagged another brew; glanced back to Paitor’s face. “You know how Arin was.”

“This guy was buying,” Paitor said, but Khat could see that he was finding Grig’s story believable and in some part comforting.

Grig shrugged. “Man’s running with old info,” he suggested, breaking the seal on his brew. “Headcase, too.” He flicked a quick smile at Seeli, who didn’t let go of her frown. “You want me to talk to him?”

A pause, then a headshake. “No need. I told him we didn’t have no fractins; told him we’re fresh outta old tech. On planet for a refit, I told him. Got nothing worth trading at all.” He lifted his bottle, but didn’t quite drink. “Seemed satisfied with that. Though he left me a beam-code.” Paitor’s lips thinned. “In case I should come across something.”

“Which won’t happen, ‘cause we ain’t looking,” Seeli said, firmly, reaching for the last bottle and breaking the seal with a vengeance. “We’re well out of it.” She favored Grig with a glare, and he dipped his head, agreeable-like.

“Sure, Seeli.”

Day 155

DAY 155

Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

“GOOD-DAY, JETHRI.”
Ren Lar looked up from his lab table, meter held delicately in one hand, blue eyes soft as ever. Somehow, he managed to look cool and elegant, though his apron was liberally painted with stains, and his sleeves rolled to his elbows.

Jethri, his own sleeves rolled up in anticipation of another long shift spent readying barrels to receive their next batch of wine, inclined his head, which he had found was considered respectful enough, in this circumstance.

“Good-day, sir. I hope I’m not late.” He wasn’t, just, which was no fault of the tailor who had been summoned to produce what Lady Maarilex was pleased to call “appropriate” clothes for himself. Not satisfied with the first set of readings, the tailor—one Sun Eli pen’Jerad—had measured him again—and yet again, muttering over his readings, and at last jerked his chin at Jethri, giving him leave to cover himself decently.

“I will bring samples, in six days,” Mr. pen’Jerad said, gathering up his measuring devices and his notes. “Tarnia informs me that you are a trader-under-study, eh? What you wear now tells the world that you are a cargohand-for-hire. We will amend this.”He patted his pockets, making sure of his notes and bowed farewell. “Six days.”

Six days or never—it made no nevermind to Jethri, who cut out the door as soon as he was dressed and ran down the back halls to the winery, prudently pausing on the outside of the door until his breathing had returned to something like normal before entering and presenting himself to Ren Lar.

That gentleman looked dreamily amused. “My mother had warned me that you were with the tailor this morning. The pen’Jerad is a marvel with his needle. Would that he were as sure with his measure-tapes.” A device on the table chimed, and he glanced down with a slight frown, and then back to Jethri.

“In any case, I had not hoped to see you so soon. Now that you are here, however . . .”

Jethri sighed to himself, knowing what he was going to hear.

“Ah.” His face must’ve let something slip, ‘cause Ren Lar smiled his slight, dreamy smile. “The barrels grow tedious, do they? Then you will rejoice to hear that the end of the racking approaches. The last of the blends will be assembled by the end of the twelve-day. Soon, we shall take to the vineyard and the pruning.”

He said it like pruning was a high treat. On the other hand, he had shown Jethri the barrels, and explained the necessity of having them scrubbed spotless as if it were the most important job in the winery, which, Jethri thought now, having had some days to consider the matter, it might well be. Bacteria would grow in dirty barrels, and bacteria could spoil a whole batch of wine, so clean barrels was important, right enough.

‘Course, cleaning a barrel wasn’t anything so simple as shoving it into an ultraviolet box, because the UV broke down the wood too fast. No, cleaning a wine barrel involved gallons of hot water, scrub brushes, sodium carbonate and of all of things a length of plain chain. After the barrel was scrubbed down on the outside, and the inside filled with water, sodium carbonate and chain, then it was sealed up tight and rolled over to the agitator, locked in and shook up but good, while the faithful barrel-scrubber rolled another dirty over to his work space and started the process over again.

It was tiresome and tiring work, make no mistake. Empty barrels were heavy; full barrels heavier. Jethri figured he was earning gravity muscles, but that hardly made up for the ache in his arms and his shoulders and his back.

Halfway into his first shift, he’d come up with the conviction that chemical disinfection would be the surer—and easier—way to go, but he hadn’t made the mistake of saying that to Ren Lar. After a session with the house library, he was glad he’d kept his mouth shut on the point, for it transpired that disinfectants turned the taste of the wine, which meant “spoiled” just as sure as if the bacteria’d got in.

“There are only a few barrels today,” Ren Lar was saying. “When you have done with them, make yourself available to Graem, in the aging cellar. She will be able to put another pair of hands to good use.”

“Yes, sir.” Jethri inclined his head again, and went to see how many barrels was only a few.

Day 158

DAY 158

Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

“TELL US ABOUT
living on your ship,” Miandra said, shuffling the cards with bewildering speed between nimble fingers.

Jethri blinked, and shifted in his chair, trying for a position that would ease his back. The three of them were alone in a little parlor situated closer to the kitchen than the front door. In theory, the twins were teaching him to play
piket
, which unlikely pastime had the full approval of Lady Maarilex.

“Indeed, a gentleman should know his cards and be able to play a polite game.” She fixed the twins in her eye, one after the other. “Mark me, token wagers only. And all may practice the art of graceful loss.”

“Yes, Aunt Stafeli,” said Meicha.

“Yes, Aunt Stafeli,” said Miandra.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jethri, though he’d been taught not to show temper for losing by kin years his elder in the subtle art of poker.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Meicha, comprehensively, while Miandra continued to shuffle, with a thoughtful look directed downward at the dancing cards.

“I would like to know how the kin groups sustain themselves,” she said slowly.

“Sustain themselves? Well, there’s ship life support, for air, temp and—”

Meicha laughed. Miandra didn’t, though she did stop shuffling and raise her face to frown up at him.

“That was not at all funny,” she said sternly.

“I—” he began, meaning to say he was sorry, though he didn’t know, quite, what he should be sorry for, except that she was mad at him. His brain refused to pitch up the proper phrase, though, and after a moment’s floundering he produced, “I am sad that you are angry with me.”

“She’s not so angry that you must be sad for it,” Meicha said, matter-of-factly. “Only answer her question sensibly and she will be appeased.”

“But you see, I don’t understand why my previous answer was . . . annoying. We
do
sustain ourselves via ship’s life support. If something else was meant by the question, then I don’t know how to unravel it.”

There was a small silence, then Meicha spoke again.

“He
is
a stranger to our tongue, sister. Recall Aunt Stafeli? We are only to speak to him in Liaden, and in proper mode and
melant’i
, to aid and speed his learning.”

Miandra sighed and put the cards face down on the table. “Well enough. Then he must learn idiom.” She raised her hand and pointed a finger at Jethri’s nose, sharply enough that he pulled back.

“An inquiry into how the kin group sustains itself is an inquiry into genetics,” she said, still tending toward the stern. “What I wish to know is how your kin group maintains its genetic health.”

Maintains its . . . Oh. Jethri cleared his throat, thinking that his Liaden, improved as it was by constant use, might not be up to this. Good enough for Lady Maarilex to set rules on the twins for the betterment of his understanding, but nobody had drawn any lines for him about what was and wasn’t considered proper topics of conversations between himself and two of the house’s precious youngers.

“Is he shy?” Meicha inquired of her sister.

“Hush! Let him order his thoughts.”

Right. Well, nothing for it but to tell the thing straight out and hope they took it for the strange custom of folk not their own—which, come to think, it would be.

“There are . . . arrangements between ships,” he said slowly. “Sometimes, those. My older brother, Cris, came from an arrangement with
Perry’s Promenade
. Seeli—my sister—she came out of a—a
shivary
, we call it. That’s like a big party, when a lot of ships get together and there’s parties and—and—” He couldn’t put his tongue to a phrase that meant the polite of “sleeping around,” but it turned out he didn’t have to—Miandra knew exactly what he was on course for.

“Ah. Then your sister Seeli is as we are—Festival get and children of the house entire.” She smiled, as if the translation comforted her, and looked over to Meicha. “See you, sister? It is not so different from the usual way of things. One child of contract and one from Festival—the genes mix nicely, I think.”

“It would seem so,” her sister agreed, unusually serious. “And you, Jethri? Were you contracted—or joyous accident?”

Well,
there
was the question that had formed his life, now, wasn’t it? He shrugged and looked down at the table—real wood, and smooth under his palm, showing stains here and there, and the marks of glasses, set down wet.

“Unhappy accident, call it,” he said to the table. “My parents were married, but my mother wasn’t looking for any more children. Which is how I happened to be the extra, and available to ‘prentice with Master ven’Deelin.”

“The third child is produced from a lifemating,” Miandra summed up. “It is well. And your cousins?”

He looked up. “My cousins? Well, see, the Gobelyn’s are a wide family. We’ve got cousins on—I don’t know how many ships. A couple dozen, I’d say, some small, none bigger than the
Market
, though. We’re the mainline. Anyhow, we share around between us to keep the ships full. The extras—they take berths on other ships, and eventually they’re . . .” he frowned after the word “. . . assimilated.”

“So.” Miandra smiled and put her hand over his. “We are not so brutal of our ‘extras’, but perhaps we have the luxury of room. Certainly, there are those who go off on the far-trade and return home once every dozen Standards—if so often. Your foster mother is one such, to hear Aunt Stafeli tell the tale. But, in all, it seems as if your customs match ours closely, and are not so strange at all.” This was accompanied by a hard stare at Meicha, who moved her shoulders, to Jethri’s eye, discomfited.

“But,” he asked her, “what did you think?”

“Oh, she had some notion that the Terran ships used the old technology to keep their crews ever young,” Miandra said. “Aunt Stafeli says she reads too many adventure stories.”

“You read them, too!” Meicha cried, visibly stung.

“Well, but I’m not such a dolt as to
believe
them!”

Meicha pouted. “Terrans trade in old tech—Vandale said so.”

“Yes, but the old tech mostly doesn’t work,” Jethri pointed out. “The curiosity trade gets it, and sometimes the scholars.”

“Vandale said that, too,” Miandra said.

“And Pan Dir said that there is still some old tech in the out-beyond that
does
work!” her twin snapped, with a fair sitting-down approximation of stamping her foot.

“If you want to know what I think,” Jethri said, feeling like he’d better do his possible to finish the subject before the matter came to blows. “I think that Pan Dir likes to tell stories. My cousin Khat’s exactly the same way.”

There was a pause as Meicha and Miandra traded glances.

“There’s that,” Meicha said at last, and, “True,” agreed Miandra.

Jethri sighed and reached for the cards, sitting forgotten by her hand.

“I thought you two were going to win my fortune from me.”

That
made them both laugh, and Meicha snatched the deck from him and began to shuffle with a will.

“I hear a challenge, sister!”

“As I do! Deal the cards!”

Day 161

DAY 161

Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

“OOF!”

The weight hit him right dead center, and Jethri jack-knifed from sound asleep to sitting up, staring blearily down into a pair of pale green eyes.

“You!” He gasped. Flinx blinked his eyes in acknowledgment.

“Might let a man get his rest,” Jethri complained, easing back down to the pillows. Flinx stayed where he was, two-ton paws bearing Jethri’s stomach right down onto his spine.

He yawned and turned his head to look at the clock. Not enough time to go back to sleep, even if the adrenaline would let him. Stupid cat had jumped on his stomach yesterday morning, at just this hour. And the morning before that. He was starting to wonder if the animal could tell time.

Down-body, Flinx began to purr, and shift his weight from one considerable front foot to the other—and repeat. He did
that
every morning, too. The twins swore that the purring and the foot-shifting—kneading, they called it—were signs of goodwill. Jethri just wondered why, if the cat liked him so much, he didn’t let him sleep.