The Crystal Variation by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Read Free Book Online

mutual evaluation.
    “Wingleader . . . Yet, I’m not sure if that would be best for you, howsoever it might serve the troop.”
    She peered through the inflatable, studying his reaction.
    “No comment, Troop Jela?”
    “Wingleader has never been in my thoughts, Commander. It is an unexpectable accident . . .”
    She laughed.
    “Yes, I suppose it is. I have seen your record. You always seem to rise despite your best efforts!”
    Jela stiffened . . .
    “Stop, Troop. Relax. Understand that you are monitored here. You are on camera. You are being tested for contagion of many sorts. There’s no need to bait the tech. He’s too ordinary to be worth your trouble.”
    Jela stood, uncertain, aware that information was being passed rapidly, aware that levels of command were being bypassed.
    “Sit,” the commander said finally. “Please, sit and do what you can for the moment. As time permits, we will talk.”
    Jela watched as her eyes found the cameras, the sensors, the very monitors on his leg. He sat, more slowly than he’d risen.
    “We will talk where we might both be more comfortable. In a few days, when you will be quite recovered from your trek, Wingleader.”
    She saluted as if that last word was both a command and a decision, and then she was gone.
    THE COMMANDER made no more appearances in Jela’s isolation unit—a unit he’d begun to think of as a cell after the third day schedule commenced in the vessel outside his walls, and by the start of the sixth ship-day knew to be the truth, if not the intent.
    He’d been in enough detaining cells in his time to see the similarities: he was on his jailer’s schedule, he exercised when they told him to, ate what they brought him, and slept during a portion of the time after they turned the lights out on him.
    He did have his porta-comp, which meant some communication, after all, and he had received a few visitors, though he’d had more visitors in some lock-ups than he had here. Then, too, most often his jail cells hadn’t had the luxury of his very own green plant.
    It turned out that the “alien plant” was under every bit as much scrutiny as he was—in fact it appeared that many of the sensors he wore or was watched by were duplicated for the tree.
    Perhaps the most frustrating thing was that though he could see the tree—and was under orders to observe it and report any anomalies—he could not to touch it, or talk to it, or comfort it in what must be new and terrifying circumstances.
    Shortly after the commander’s visit, he gained an amusing rotation of warders to replace the solitary med tech and his curious warnings—or, perhaps, threats.
    What was amusing about the new set of keepers was that they each seemed guided by a printed sheet. They neither saluted nor acknowledged him other than directing him for exercise or tests. They also wore medical gowns without emblem, name, rank, or number.
    What they did not wear were masks—thus baring the all-too-silly tattoos that were becoming the rage—and making each as identifiable in the long run as if they’d shouted out name, rank, birth creche, and gene units . . .
    For in fact, every one of the new keepers were of the accelerated, the vat-born, the selected, the so-called “X Strain”—able to work harder and longer on less food than even the efficient Ms. Too, they had for the most part had similar training, similar instructors, similar lives. They spoke amongst themselves a truncated and canted artificial dialect, and appeared to lump any soldier but those of the latest vat runs into a social class of lesser outsiders.
    Despite the disdain, and the tendency to seek only the company of their own kind, what had so far eluded the designers of soldiers was the sought-after interchangeability that would have made them—the Y Strains and the X—in the image of some committee-envisioned super-fighter: Physically perfect, identical, and above all amenable to command. It was the downfall of the M Series,