The Crystal Variation (58 page)

“
Most
fortunate in her patronage,” Scholar tay’Nordif reiterated worshipfully. “I challenge anyone to produce a patron more thoughtful of one’s comfort, or more understanding of the demands of one’s work.”

“Indeed?” The other scholar turned from his study of the tree, and moved along the hall, walking flat, and with his hands tucked into his sash—the walk of a man used to consistent gravity, and hallways that maintained their orientation. “This way, if you will, Scholar.”

“Follow me, Jela,” Scholar tay’Nordif had snapped, and that was the last word or attention that either had squandered on him.

They were well ahead of him now, out of sight around a bend in the hall, though he could hear Scholar tay’Nordif’s voice clearly enough, extolling the seemingly limitless virtues attached to Master vas’Chaler.

“Will you believe me, Scholar tay’Welford,” she was saying, “when I tell you that nothing would do but that my patron give me apartments in her own home, and a servant whose sole duty it was to attend to my comfort and bring in meals so that on those occasions when I became immersed in my work, I should not be obliged to break my concentration in a descent to the mundane . . .”

It certainly sounded like a soft post, Jela thought, ducking through an arch that was even thinner than the hallway—and damned lucky he was to skin through with the pack on his back, and without breaking any branches off the tree—if it had been in the least part true.

The hall took a jig to the left, to the right, and opened suddenly into a high octagonal shaped lobby. The white light which had been an uncomfortable glare in the tight halls was easier to take here, and Jela breathed a very private sigh of relief as he stepped out onto the dark tile floor. The room extended upward for several stories; a surreptitious glance, under the guise of making sure that the “specimen” could now be held higher without endangering it, found balconies and walkways overhead, but no clear means of attaining them.

From the center of the floor rose a ceramic rectangle as high as Scholar tay’Nordif’s shoulder, rich in mosaic-work—

No, thought Jela, looking more closely. Not mosaic. Memory modules, set into the conductive material of the rectangle, creating a single computational device—but to what end?

Scholar tay’Nordif bent in close study of the comp, then straightened and stared upward, spinning slowly—and unsteadily—on a boot heel.

“I theorize,” she said, yet craning upward, “that yon device is the engine by which the stairways are driven.” She described an additional quarter-circle and lowered her gaze to Scholar tay’Welford, who stood yet with his hands tucked in his sash, an expression of interested amusement on his round, pleasant face.

“The question remaining,” Scholar tay’Nordif continued, on a rising inflection, “is how the device is induced to call the proper stairway.”

Scholar tay’Welford inclined slightly from the waist. “If you will allow me, Scholar, I believe that I may offer you the key to this puzzle.”

“By all means, Scholar! Produce this key, I beg you!”

He smiled, and slowly—even, Jela thought, teasingly—withdrew his right hand from its comfortable tuck in his sash, turned his palm up, and opened his fingers.

Across his palm lay a ceramic lozenge, pale violet in color; insubstantial as a shadow.

“Behold,” he said, “the key.”

“Ah.” Scholar tay’Nordif leaned to inspect it, her hands clasped behind her back. She glanced up at the other scholar. “May I?”

“By all means.”

She picked the thing up delicately with the very tips of her fingers, and subjected it to close study before folding it into her palm and turning her attention to the comp.

“I fear me,” she said after a moment, “that I have been given but half the key.”

“Is it so?” The other scholar stepped closer to her side. Jela felt himself stiffen; deliberately relaxed. “Surely, you have seen something like, in your travels along the frontier?”

“Alas, I have not,” Scholar tay’Nordif replied, sending a sideways glance into the other’s face. “Is this a Test, sir?”

It seemed to Jela as if the other scholar intended to answer in the affirmative, and amended his course at the last instant.

“Certainly not!” he said lightly. “We are not so uncivilized as to present a Test before even one has shared the evening meal with colleagues.” He put his hand atop the rectangle, palm down. “Place your key just here, Scholar; the device will read the imbedded data and fetch down the proper stair.”

Scholar tay’Nordif stepped forward, and placed the lozenge flat on top the comp. For a moment, nothing happened, then Jela noticed that the conductive material was glowing a soft rose color, and that various of the embedded modules were also beginning to shine. Air moved and he looked up as one of the high walkways swung out from its fellows, canted—and unfolded downward in deliberate sections until the leading edge touched the floor at the base of the wall.

“I am instructed,” said Scholar tay’Nordif and bowed.

“A small secret, I assure you,” the other said with a smile. He stepped back and swept an arm toward the waiting walkway. “Please, Scholar, mount and ascend! The stair will take you to the correct floor, and the key will guide you to the correct door! I will look for you at the common meal—ah, and another hint, out of kindness for one who comes into my own Department: It is not done to be late to the common meal.”

So saying, he swept around and went on his way, but not before he had sent a measuring look straight into Jela’s face. He produced his very best stupid stare, and wasn’t especially pleased to see the Scholar smile before passing on.

“Jela, come here!” Scholar tay’Nordif snapped and he stepped onto the ramp behind her as it began, rapidly, to rise.

Both of his hands being occupied with holding the tree, he braced his legs wide and sent a look down to the receding lobby, but there was nothing to see other than the shiny floor stretching away like some dark sea to break against eight white walls in which eight identical archways were centered.

The ramp turned, folding back up into the high ceiling. They passed one floor, moving so swiftly that all Jela retained was an impression of a long hallway lined with yellow doors. The ramp turned again, its far end, just behind Jela’s boot heels, giving off to empty air and a long fall to the dark floor below. The leading edge—ahead of the scholar’s position, snapped into a slot in the floor of the walkway.

She moved forward briskly, setting her feet firmly against the floor, her tabard billowing slightly.

The tree offered an image of the slender golden-scaled dragon, wings full of wind, gliding effortlessly down the sheer side of a cliff.

Jela refrained from answering. He followed her off the bridge and to the left, down a hall lined on both sides with identical orange doors, then again to the left—and abruptly halted to avoid walking on her, the tree’s branches snapping over his head.

She slid the shadowy tile into a slot in the surface of the door; there was a loud
snick
as it opened, lights coming up in the room beyond as it did.

THE QUARTERS WERE
featureless and functional: smooth white walls, smooth white floor; a basic galley and sanitary facilities to the right, work space, screen and a convertible chair to the left. In the absence of orders, and out of respect for the three spy-eyes that were too easy to spot, Jela stood just inside the door, cradling the tree’s pot in arms that were beginning to ache. Scholar tay’Nordif strolled into the room, giving it a casual, bored inspection. Whether she saw the spy-eyes—which the woman she had been would never have missed—he couldn’t say. She stepped to the chair and tapped the control on the arm; it shifted, stretching out to form a cot. Another tap, and it returned to its chair configuration.

She walked over to the work table, and touched the corner of the dark screen. The darkness swirled into gray, the gray into white. Blue words and images floated upward through the whiteness—a timetable, Jela saw, from his vantage near the door, and a map. The scholar raised her head to consult the time displayed on the smooth wall over the screen, and uttered a sharp curse.

“Jela!” she said sharply. “Put the specimen down
gently
and bring me my pack. Quickly!”

Gently, and with considerable relief, he eased the pot to the floor. That done, he skinned the pack off his back, remembering to work slow and stupid, for the benefit of those spy-eyes, opened it and had the scholar’s case out. Moving heavily, he went across the room to where his mistress was bent again over the computer—memorizing the map, he hoped—and stood patiently holding the pack out across his two palms, his eyes aimed at the floor.

She spun away from the screen, grabbed the pack and took it to the table, unsealing it hastily and snatching out a tablet, the squat book with scarred covers that she kept always to hand, her extra tabard, a data-case. Muttering under her breath, she reached back into the bag and brought out a second case, but in her haste, she fumbled, and it slid from her fingers onto the floor, data-tiles skittering noisily across the smooth floor.

Another curse, this one more pungent than the first, and the scholar was on her knees, scrabbling along the floor, sweeping the tiles in toward her. Body bent protectively over the case, she began to slot them quickly—sent a distracted glance over her shoulder at the clock and abruptly rose.

“Clean up that mess!” she snapped at him. “Then you may rest.”

He waited ‘til the door had closed and locked behind her before allowing himself a single, luxuriously loud, sigh, the whine of the jamming device irritating his super-sharp ears. Well, there was one way to put an end to
that
small discomfort, he thought. Rolling his shoulders, he turned his attention to locating the concealed spy-eyes.

* * *

DISTANT YET IN TIME
and space, the Iloheen sensed them as they phased. Rool Tiazan plucked the ley lines the way a mortal man might idly pluck at the strings of a lute he was too indolent to truly play. The Iloheen must believe them wary, fearful and furtive, all of their skill bent upon concealment, all of their intelligence focused upon escape. In this they were assisted by the natural order: the Iloheen were fell and awful, fearsome beings from which it were madness to do other than cover oneself and flee.

The Seon Veyestra dominant had known Rool; even as she had dissolved, she had exerted her will to etch his identity into the ether.

It was true that no
dramliza
fell but that the Iloheen saw. Eventually. But that last scream against annihilation, elucidating the tainted genetic code of an escaped slave—that had been heard instantly.

The Iloheen was nearer now to where they huddled, as small and as dim as was prudent, hidden within a dense weaving of ley lines. Did they make themselves as insignificant as they might, the shimmer of energies from the lines would indeed have concealed them. For this game, however—

Static disturbed the placid flowing of the lines, and in that place where there was neither hot nor cold, a chill wind disturbed the soul.

We must not
, the lady’s thought whispered behind the shields that protected them.
We must seem neither too easy nor too bold.

If we are then to seem craven
, Rool Tiazan’s thought replied.
Our moment approaches.

Have you identified a path?
she asked, as the wind grew stronger and the disruptive energies of the Iloheen drew sparks of probability off the lines.

I have.

Remove us
, she directed.

Rool teased his chosen line from the sparkling tangle all about them, exerted his will, and took them elsewhere.

In the nexus of probability they had hidden within, the ley lines crackled and spat, sparks freezing against the fabric of time. The wind blew—cold . . . colder—

And died.

THERE HAD BEEN
five snoops altogether, which, Jela thought, as he sealed the last hack and activated it, seemed excessive for a newly Seated scholar. On the other hand, maybe they were in the high-rent district.

Hacks online, he hunkered down by the quick-built jammer and began, carefully, to dismantle it, making sure as he slotted the tiles into the case that those from which the little device had been created were well-mixed among the others. It would be bad if a couple started associating without supervision, so to speak, and built up a wild interference field.

His best estimation was that the hacks would hold until sometime after he, Cantra, the tree, and Liad dea’Syl’s equations were gone from Osabei Tower. It bothered him that they’d likely have to be left in place until whoever had the snoops under their charge figured the game out and came to collect them; he liked to be tidy in his ops. Well, maybe a chance to remove or destroy them would come along.

In the meantime, he was cautiously proud of his handiwork. Since they couldn’t know the details of where they’d settle, he had to build the detail in on site—and quick, before someone noticed the feeds coming from the new scholar’s quarters were off. Fortunately, he’d been able to rough in the basics beforehand; adding the detail level had gone quick. Now, whoever was so interested in the doings of a new-arrived scholar would be fed edited versions of real events. Right now, for instance, they should be receiving a nice picture from five different angles of him slumped on the floor next to the “specimen,” napping in the absence of orders.

Data tiles slotted all nice and neat, Jela straightened and carried the case over to the worktable. His gear was out and assembled, and he’d be wanting to get to work pretty soon . . .

He turned his head, considering the convertible chair. It didn’t look precisely robust. There’d been a stool shoved under the counter in the galley, he remembered, and he went back across the room to fetch it, moving light and smooth.

As he passed the tree, he was suddenly aware of the minty aroma of a fresh seed pod. He paused, peering into the branches. Sure enough, one of several emerging pods had ripened, the branch on which it grew bending a little under its mature weight. The aroma grew more noticeable. Jela’s mouth watered, and the branch bent a little more, inviting him to take the pod.