The Crystal Variation Read Online Free PDF Page B

while saving both the commander and the Trident , you can arrange it for me—” Jela murmured.
    There was a gasp at that, that he should so blatantly claim such a thing, but he pushed on, defiant.
    “And I promised, when I ate the fruit . . . I promised I’d save it if I could! All I need, sir, is . . .”
    Contado cut him off with a slash of the hand and a disdainful grunt.
    “Troop, if you insist on it, it’s yours. You have until the ship lifts to take your souvenir. The quartermaster will charge carrying fees against your account—I’ll not have that thing dignified as a specimen—and you’ll report for trauma testing as soon as we arrive at an appropriate location.”
    “I’d prefer to lift in daylight!” came the junior pilot’s voice, merciless.
    Jela broke toward the tree, survival knife and blanket out, hoping he didn’t kill the fool thing trying to save it!
    “We lift with or without you, Jela,” said the Chief Pilot, and the wind carried his voice elsewhere, unanswered.
    JELA WAS NOT a gardener, nor a tree surgeon, and if ever he’d felt a lack of training in his life it was now, on his knees on an alien planet, battle-knife in hand, facing the tree that had intentionally saved his life. His utility blanket was laid out beside it, and he fully intended to wrap the tree in that to carry it.
    “Thank you,” he said, bowing, and tried to recall a life’s worth of half-heard lore of those who had tread the forests on other worlds.
    And then, as there was absolutely nothing else to do, he began to dig a trench with the knife, cutting into the earth as he had been trained, recalling now the proper method of slicing through the outer roots quickly. The training—how best to avoid entangling the blade, how to get under the over-roots so that they might be preserved as camouflage or cover—came back, reinforced by the experience of digging for his life under fire.
    He knew that he shouldn’t take the tree entirely from the earth, that he needed to keep soil around some of the roots—but how should he know how much?
    The dirt surprised him, being drier even than he’d been expecting. He trenched the first circle around the tree hurriedly, realized that the sandy soil wasn’t likely to hold together anyway, and dug a new trench barely three hand-spans away from the spindly trunk.
    As he dug, he realized he was talking to the tree, soothing it, as if it could understand—as if it were a child, or a pet.
    What cheek I have, to tell the king of a planet to be calm while I dig it out of its safety!
    Despite that, he continued to talk—perhaps for his own comfort, to assure himself that what he did was right and correct.
    “We’ll get you out of here soon,” he murmured. “Won’t be long and you’ll see the dragon’s eye view . . .”
    The breeze began to pick up, as it always did at dusk, and the scents that played across his nose were those of sand and dirt and some sweetness he could not identify at first, until he realized it was the scent—the taste even—of the tree’s gift he’d eaten . . .
    Another turn around the tree, and Jela’s blade was much deeper, but digging toward the center. The sounds from the ship were familiar enough, and they were the sounds of vents being closed, of the testing of mechanical components, of checking readiness for lift.
    It was during the third turn around the tree that Jela could hear several of the hatches closing; and during that turn he realized that much of what he’d thought was a ball of dirt was in fact a bulbous part of the tree’s tap root. It was easily twelve times the diameter of the portion above the ground, and as he dug away he could feel that it likely weighed more than the visible stalk above as well.
    Finally, he reached beneath, found several strong cord-like roots leading deep into the bowels of the planet. He hesitated, not knowing which life-lines were critical, nor even knowing how to test—and in that moment of hesitation he