Crystal Soldier Read Free Page A

leg, with its water . . . .

    He gently squeezed a drop or two onto his fingers first, carefully rubbing them together, then wiping his upper lip and clearing some of the grit away from his nose. Then he sipped.

    As he sipped, he thought.

    There had to be a connection between the trees, the pattern of their flight, and the attack from which the sheriekas had withdrawn. Almost, he had it, that idea of his. Almost.

    Well. It would come.

    One more sip for the moment. One more right now for the soldier.

    He sighed so gently a lover sitting beside him might have missed it.

    So he was a soldier. In various places humans saw the fighting and withdrew, saw the fighting and played the warring parties against each other, fought as these trees had fought to draw every bit of water from the dying world, fought to hide and survive and perhaps outlast the madness of the battle.

    In the end, the powers-that-were had permitted the experiments to resume. To fight augmented humans, one needed special humans. Not quite as adjusted and modified, perhaps, as the sheriekas or their manufactured allies, and perhaps lacking the power to sing away the death of worlds, but fighters who were more efficient, stronger, and often faster.

    Did he survive this world and a dozen more he'd not live the life nor die the death of an ordinary citizen.

    Retire? Quit?

    "Not me!" His voice echoed weirdly against the grating of the wind. He sighed, louder this time, sealed the partial bulb and replaced it in its pocket. Then, he staggered—truly staggered—to his feet

    He centered himself, felt the energy rise—somewhat, somewhat—danced a step or two, did the stretch routine, settled.

    Things to do. He had things to do. With or without his ID on his face, he was M. Jela Granthor's Guard, a Generalist in the fight to save life-as-it-was. Who could ask more?

    He laughed and the valley gave his laugh back to him.

    Heartened, he followed the march of the trees.
    * * *

    HE'D MANAGED TO wake, which he took for a good thing, and he managed to recall his name, which was something, too. Eventually he bullied his way through a two-day old partial ration pack, knowing there weren't many more left at all, at all, not at all, and glanced at his location sensor.

    The map there seemed clearer and his location more certain. There were still just three satellites working instead of the ideal seven, but they were working hard—and all on this side of the planet at the moment, by happy accident, building exactly the kind of database a Generalist would love to own.

    The trees he'd been following for the last—however long it had been—now were downright skinny, as if they'd been striving for height at the expense of girth, but that was only six or eight times his own paltry height rather than a hundred times or two. Some of them were misshapen, short things, as if they'd tried to become bushes. He tried to use one as a bridge from the right bank back to the left, as he had done several times during his hike, and it broke beneath his boots, both frightening and surprising him since this was the first such bridge that had failed him.

    He'd landed in the silted river channel, not too much worse for the fall, knowing he was at the delta he'd been aiming for since he first stepped put of his lander . . . .

    He climbed, slowly, onto the firmer soil of the bank, blinking his eyes against the scene.

    Had he the water to spare he would have cried then. He'd come through the last bend of what had been a mighty river; before him the channel led out into the dusty, gritty, speckled plain of what had been a vast and shallow salt sea. Here and there were great outcrops of boulders and cliffs, and when he turned around he could see the distant hills.

    There were a few more trees ahead of him, lying neatly in a row as if each had fallen forward exactly as far as it could, and a new one had sprouted right there and—

    There was nothing