The Crystal Variation (63 page)

Grudent tel’Ashon dropped to one knee, head lowered, right hand fisted over her heart. “Prime Chair tay’Palin,” she murmured respectfully as he drew level with their position.

The scholar paused, dark eyes sweeping over the grudent, and lingering rather longer than Jela liked on himself.

“Grudent tel’Ashon,” he said, his voice smooth and mannerly. “Please, arise, and tell me where you have found this extraordinary—being.”

The grudent came to her feet with alacrity, sliding a sideways glance in Jela’s direction. He stood, chair held against his chest, eyes focused on a point in space approximately six inches from the end of his nose.

“Prime, that is the kobold Jela, which belongs to Scholar tay’Nordif.”

“Is it, indeed?” Scholar tay’Palin took a step forward, his gaze sharp. “And why has Scholar tay’Nordif a Series—”

“tay’Palin!” a woman’s voice—precisely the voice of the woman who had been talking to tay’Welford earlier—accompanied by the sound of someone running inefficiently in soft shoes, and an arrhythmic clacking, as if a dozen or more data tiles were striking against each other.

The scholar sighed, closed his eyes briefly, and turned—carefully, to Jela’s eye.

“Scholar chi’Farlo,” he said distantly. “How may I serve you?”

The woman lowered her robe, which she had held up to her plump knees in order to run, and smiled. Her yellow hair was divided into many braids, each one tied off with a cluster of tiles, which would account for the clacking. Her face was soft and pale; her eyes were round and blue. The smile didn’t begin to warm them.

She came close to Scholar tay’Palin, and put a plump, soft hand on his arm. He twitched, so slightly that most observers would scarcely have seen—though Jela did.

And so, he was willing to wager, had Scholar chi’Farlo. Her smile widened, displaying dainty white teeth, and she exerted pressure on the arm, pulling the scholar with her.

“Walk with me, tay’Palin. I have something to say to you.”

It seemed to Jela that the Prime Chair’s shoulders sagged just a little beneath his robe. He inclined his head to the wide-eyed grudent.

“You may go, Grudent tel’Ashon.”

She gulped and bowed, hurriedly. Keeping her head down, she snapped, “Follow me, Jela!” and moved away, hugging the right wall.

Jela perforce followed, carrying the chair, and straining his ears. All that exercise gained him was the whisper of slippers against the floor and the gentle clacking of tiles.

SCHOLAR TAY’NORDIF BENT
her cool, misty gaze upon the chair. To her left, on the polished and well-kept task table, a brand-new terminal and wand reposed in that space not taken up by the sprawling orange cat, which was watching the proceedings with interest.

The scholar extended a slender hand, pulled the chair to her, sat, and deftly put it through its phases. The grudent held her bow, her tension so marked that Jela’s skin began to itch.

“Well done,” Scholar tay’Nordif said from her comfortable recline. “I commend you, Grudent tel’Ashon; you have fitted me with honor and—”

A klaxon sounded, shrill and serious. Scholar tay’Nordif gasped, and cringed in her chair, one hand pressed to her breast. Jela could hardly blame her; it was all he could do not to jump for the handholds that weren’t there and blink up the command screen in the helmet he wasn’t wearing.

The grudent, however, snapped upright out of her bow, a grin on her face and her dull brown eyes sparkling.

“The Truth Bell!” she said excitedly.

“Indeed?” Scholar tay’Nordif said faintly. She fumbled at the chair’s control, eventually coming perpendicular to local conditions. She blinked up at the grudent, the pulse at the base of her throat beating rapidly.

“Surely, truth need not be quite so stern?” she whispered. “Indeed, as the great philosopher bin’Arli tell us,
Truth is that silent certainty in one’s—
”

The klaxon sounded again, and the rest of bin’Arli’s wisdom was lost in a gasp as the scholar staggered to her feet, startling the cat, which leapt to the top of the work screen, tail lashing.

“Come, Scholar!” The grudent was half-way to the door. “The community is called to witness!”

“Witness?” the scholar said faintly.

“Yes, of course!” Grudent tel’Ashon waved an impatient hand. “Quickly, Scholar! We don’t want to miss a point!” She was gone.

“I—see,” the scholar said. She pushed her sleeves up her arms nervously, took a deep breath and marched resolutely in the grudent’s wake.

“Jela,” she said, without turning her head. “Follow me.”

THEY SAT ON RISERS
inside a soaring, airy foyer strongly reminiscent of the octagonal hall of the flying platforms—many dozens of scholars, grudents, and the blind Smalls, all facing a center expanse of creamy floor with what looked for all of space like a training rectangle, marked out in rust-colored tile.

Jela stood behind and slightly to the right of Scholar tay’Nordif, which gave him a clear sight of the combat zone, and also of a command room situated about halfway up the wall directly opposite his position. The observation port was opaqued, but Jela felt certain that command of one sort or another was present.

The mass of scholars rippled, murmured—and stilled, as a yellow-haired woman marched out onto the floor, the tapping of her tile-braided hair clearly audible in the sudden silence.

Deliberately, she stepped into the rectangle, pulled the blade from its place in her sash and brandished it dramatically over her head.

“I, Leman chi’Farlo, Seated Scholar and Third Chair of the Department of Interdimensional Statistics, challenge Kel Var tay’Palin to defend his Thesis Number Twenty-Seven, in which he avers that the value of Amedeo’s Constant as reflected in N-space is a contingent process and is not an ordered process.” Her voice echoed weirdly, which Jela took to be an affect of a wide-area amplifier.

“What’s this?” a scholar some places to Jela’s right whispered to the scholar next to her. “She challenges him on work he published before he was seated?”

“It’s allowable,” her mate whispered back. “Bad form, but allowable.”

The first scholar sighed lightly. “Well, it is chi’Farlo, after all.”

“Come forth, Kel Var tay’Palin,” a voice boomed across the hall—likely originating, Jela thought, in the shielded command room. “Come forward and defend your work.”

And here came the lean figure of the Prime Chair, walking carefully, his knife held business-like. It was, Jela saw, a well-kept weapon, the edge so sharp it shone like an energy blade. He stepped into the rectangle, and bowed slightly to his opponent. She returned the courtesy, lunging out of it low and vicious, going for the belly.

Prime Chair twisted; his opponent’s blade sliced robe, and in the moment it was fouled, he chopped down at her exposed neck. Unfortunately, the yellow-haired scholar was more nimble than she looked; she tucked and dove, freeing her knife with a wrist-wrenching twist. There was a clatter of tiles as a severed braid hit the floor.

Scholar tay’Palin spun, a trifle ragged, to face his opponent as she came to her feet and danced forward, knife flashing, pressing him fiercely.

And that tactic, Jela thought, was likely a winner, given that knife fights were never certain. No question tay’Palin was the better fighter, but he was wounded and weary while she was fresh and energized, and that more than balanced her relative lack of skill.

The blonde woman thrust, tay’Palin twisted—and went down to one knee. She pressed her advantage, going for his eyes now, his throat, his face, working close, giving him no opportunity to gain his feet.

Still, he fought on, grimly, blood showing now on his sleeve—which was, Jela thought, the old wound, torn open again—and down the front of his robe from his numerous cuts.

All at once, the woman twisted, feinting; the scholar on his knees realizing the deception too late—and that quickly it was over, the blonde woman’s knife was lodged to the hilt in tay’Palin’s chest.

Exuberant, she turned, raising her hands above her head. And as she did, the mortally wounded scholar raised his arm, reversed his blade—and threw.

The victor staggered, mouth opening in a silent scream—and fell all at once, blood streaming. Scholar tay’Palin lay on his side, eyes open and empty, his blood pooling and mixing with that of his opponent.

“Scholar tay’Palin,” the disembodied voice announced, into the absolute silence of the lobby, “has successfully turned the challenge. Let his grudents amass his work and publish it wherever scholars study. Let his name be recorded on the Scholar’s Wall.”

There was a murmur of approval from the assembled scholars.

“Scholar chi’Farlo,” the voice continued, “is found to have wrongly issued challenge. Let her office be purged, her files wiped and her name struck from our rolls.”

“Well deserved,” whispered the scholar to the right.

“We have an administrative announcement.” the voice said briskly. “Effective immediately, Scholar Ala Bin tay’Welford, formerly Second Chair, will serve the Department of Interdimensional Statistics as Prime Chair.”

The Mercy Bell rang.

LUTE CAST HIS NET WIDE,
watching, as she had asked him to do, while she prepared herself to accept that burden which no dominant had taken up since the first had been born from the need of the Iloheen.

It was Lute’s belief that what she proposed to do would alter the bounds of probability more certainly than any mere manipulation of the lines, no matter how bold or subtle. It would be the sum of small things—a truth not said, a law unobserved, a heart engaged—which would, in the final accounting, weigh against the Iloheen.

His lady held otherwise, as did Rool Tiazan and his lady, differing merely on the fine points of process. In the end, process mattered to Lute not at all. That the Iloheen were brought down—he barely dared form the word
destroyed
within the cavern of his secret heart—that had been his only desire, long before his first encounter with Rool Tiazan, long before he listened to what the Iloheen might call treason—and allowed himself to be bound.

He had been mad, of course. Confined, in thrall, compelled against his will to do . . . terrible things. Terrible things. When Rool had proposed a lesser slavery, the acceptance of which might, possibly, with luck, on some day long in the future even as they counted, bring the Iloheen defeat—

It was an odd thing, this container in which he had allowed himself to be prisoned. The weight of it dulled his senses, limited his reach. And yet even now, after . . . so long . . . Even now, he sometimes woke, the screams of a dying star ringing in ears unfit to hear them; the pure crystalline agony of Iloheen pleasure stretching his soul to the point of annihilation.

That the new slavery he had agreed to had not been lesser, nor even less horrifying; that the probability of gaining ascendency over the Iloheen was not very much greater than the probability of one of the stars he had destroyed blazing into renewed life—he thought he had suspected as much, even as he agreed to the plan Rool proposed. He thought he might have suspected that Rool, twice a slave and old in treachery, was himself more than a bit mad. And yet, if not they, who in their true forms had held dominion over space, time, and probability—if they could not deny the Iloheen the future, who—

The ley lines flared. Lute traced the disturbance, saw a small brilliance, of no more consequence against the blare of all possibility than a spark against a bonfire, dancing hectic before a black wind.

Lute coalesced, wrapped his awareness closely and returned to that place where his lady lay guarded, preparing for her ordeal.

She noticed him at once, and he bowed under the weight of her regard.

“It begins,” he said.

TOR AN WOKE WITH
a cry. Before him, the board glowed green; the screens displayed a starfield, perfectly orderly and ordinary. The coordinates of that starfield were displayed at the bottom of the forward screen, with the legend, “Transition complete.”

Light Wing
maintained position, awaiting orders from her pilot, who struggled upright his chair, gasping once against a flare of pain—and again at finding the belts loose and unfastened. What had he been thinking, to go into transition without engaging the safety web?

He had survived to ask the question, therefore it could be put aside until more immediate concerns were addressed. Such as—what had wakened him?

It must, he thought, examining the board more closely, have been the chime signaling the end of transition. He frowned at the coordinates, which were unfamiliar, and at the starfield, anonymous and soothing. A glance at the elapsed time caused his frown to deepen. He had been asleep for what would have amounted, on the planet of his birth, to two full days while the ship transitioned from—

Memory abruptly returned; his hand rose to the burning shoulder; he felt the dressing, recalled the laughter of the soldiers, his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he ran for his life. Shot. Yes. He remembered.

He swallowed, forcing himself past the memory of terror. He had returned to the ship, dressed his wound as best as he’d been able, sat down in the chair and—

“Landomist,” he murmured, reaching to the board and petitioning the nav-brain for an approach, while he struggled to reproduce the reasoning which had led to feeding those particular coordinates into—

A set of syllables rose from the mists of memory, and he gave them shape, his voice a cracked whisper: “Kel Var tay’Palin.” A name, certainly—though who the gentleman might be, or where Tor An yos’Galan had acquired—no. Now he recalled what his fingers had never forgot. Kel Var tay’Palin had been an . . . acquaintance of Aunt Jinsu, traveling with her in pursuit of his studies, back when Aunt Jinsu had been a fiery young pilot and the despair of all her elders. It had pleased her that the young man had journeyed at last to Landomist, and taken his chair in Interdimensional Mathematics. He remembered when the letter came. Aunt, home between staid and stable trade rounds, had read it aloud to the youngers, telling them the story of how the young scholar had ridden with her, and perhaps not . . . quite . . . all the truth of how he had paid his way . . .