Chorus

Chapter Ten

Note: Managed to find some time to pop this chapter out in between the chaos that makes up my summer months. A reminder: this fic has an 8-tracks playlist under the title Chorus-Inspiration Tracks.I know has been doing a sort of website blocking thing lately so I can't post links, but it's there if you feel like having a soundtrack to your reading.

…..

The blind pearl regenerated quickly after her surgery, and sure enough there was no trace of the cut on her face or the furrows under her eyes. Steven felt it would be rude not to at least try to talk to her, but as much as he didn't want to ask about her blinding it was the only thing he could think of to say.

"Did it hurt?" he asked, knowing he probably wouldn't like the answer.

"Yes," she replied in that smooth emotionless way most Homeworld pearls seemed to have.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out.

"Why? You didn't order it," she asked, tilting her head owlishly.

"I know, I'm just...sorry that they did that to you."

"It could have been worse," she said with a shrug.

That was a conversation he didn't want to have. He sat with her in awkward silence until a knock at the door brought Orthoclase out of the operating room. She swung open the door and ushered in a Jasper-no, the Jasper that had brought the pearl in for surgery before.

"Took a while to find you," the Jasper grumbled.

"What can I say, we live in interesting times," Orthoclase said. "Did you talk to Spinel for me?"

"Yeah, but you'll have to go see her yourself," the Jasper answered. "She won't just break the law on anyone's say-so, especially right now."

"Fine," Orthoclase groaned. "And you?"

"I'm staying out of this. Whatever you're up to, I really don't want any part in it..."

"Then why are you here?"

The Jasper sighed, clenched her fists, and then reached into her pocket and dug out her pearl.

"She wants to be involved," she said, holding the pearl as carefully as an egg.

"Hm? She said this?"

"Not really, no," the Jasper replied. "She made sure I knew though..."

"We need voices for this. If she can't speak, she can't sing."

"I'm pretty sure she knows that. I wouldn't have brought her here otherwise..."

The gem glowed, and the pearl manifested. Steven only got to see her for a split second, because in an instant she had moved behind Jasper, and all he could see were the tips of her yellow curls and her fingers curled around Jasper's arm. She whispered something, and Jasper crouched to hear.

"She says she should be able to sing, as long as there's other pearls around."

"Then we will be glad to have her," Ginger announced, emerging from the alcove where she had been working.

Her presence seemed to make the other pearl just a little braver, and she stepped out just far enough from Jasper to be able to use their finger-talk. On the couch, the blind pearl's fingers fluttered too, but she also mumbled something under her breath.

How does sign language work if you can't see it?

"Her voice is less important than her presence," Ginger informed them. "As long as she can use gesture-speak, she can add to the chorus."

"Well, she can definitely do that," Jasper responded. "But just how risky is this? I mean, I didn't get her out of the barracks just to stick her in more danger..."

"She'll be one of fifty pearls or so," Orthoclase said. "And we have some excellent muscle providing back-up, it's practically risk-free!"

Jasper looked very doubtful, but judging by the way the pearl was pulling on her arm her resolve could only last so long.

"Okay, fine," she said at last. "Just give me a place to be and I'll bring her there."

"I'll be in touch," Orthoclase nodded, ushering them to the door.

"Don't leave it too late, all Jaspers are on lockdown until they figure out what happened in that barracks."

"I won't," Orthoclase laughed uneasily.

Once she closed over the door, she turned on her heel to Steven and Ginger to give them the plan.

"We need to go see Spinel, and with any luck we'll be in a processing plant before the curfew hits. Ginger, prep the nanobytes. Pebble, wipe that guilty look off your face."

…..

Orthoclase only managed to get the first few words of the plan out before Spinel started laughing. It was mean laughter, devoid of genuine mirth and more a poke at a detested competitor.

This is the Spinel that messed up the blind pearl's face.

"Exactly how stupid do you think I am, Orthoclase?" Spinel sighed, wiping away a tear. "I mean, a dozen or so, who hasn't dipped their toes in that...but forty? Right now?"

"We could make do with thirty-nine," Orthoclase shrugged. "And right now is perfect, the slag won't be looking at us."

"Or they'll be looking extra hard at us," Spinel growled. "Forty-six Jaspers, in one quadrant. Gems are out there thinking we have a zoatox infestation..."

That was the second time Steven had heard the word zoatox mentioned. His curiosity was pricked, but he kept his silence.

"Only half-baked gems think it's zoatoxes," Orthoclase responded.

"Maybe, but a processing plant full of pearls goes missing a few cycles after a barracks full of Jaspers gets shredded? I know some of us didn't see actual combat but you know they never went for pearls like they did every other gem..."

"Spare me, they won't even notice. In order for a gem to actually spread a zoatox infestation by using pearls as incubators they'd have to get right up close to a breeding specimen, and both you and I and any right-thinking gem knows that's impossible."

"Key words being right-thinking. What in Core's name do you want forty pearls for, anyway?"

Orthoclase thought for a moment, but that moment was all it took for Spinel to immediately know it was a lie.

"I need more filler and my usual supplier is laying low," she replied, to a derisive laugh from Spinel.

"If you're not going to be honest, why should I help you?"

"Maybe there's something in it for you," Orthoclase said. "I only need these pearls temporarily. A gem could make some money on the black market..."

Steven gulped. That awful crawly feeling washed over him again.

"How exactly would a gem make money on a load of broken pearls?" Spinel drawled.

"They wouldn't be broken. I'd fix 'em up good as new, and for free," Orthoclase offered. "What you do with them afterwards is up to you."

Spinel hummed, tapped her fingers on her desk, but Steven could see by the greedy glint in her eye that her mind had been made up.

"Deal," she said. "I'll get some of my gems to distract security. You'll have about half a quadrant."

"That's all we need," Orthoclase said with a smile.

…..

"You disapprove, pebble," Orthoclase sighed as they walked to the processing plant. "Don't deny it, I can see it even through the nanobytes."

The streets were almost empty, and Orthoclase felt secure enough to let Ginger walk with them. Even the checkpoints were empty.

"Yeah, kinda," Steven said quietly.

"Look, if they're in the processing plant they're at the end of the line," she told him. "At least this way they get a reprieve, sort of."

"Yeah, but...isn't the black market a bad place?" he asked.

"Depends on your definition of bad," Orthoclase shrugged.

"What do you think, Ginger?"

Ginger blinked. Clearly she was unused to being asked such an open-ended question.

"Answer the pebble," Orthoclase drawled. "What do pearls think of the black market?"

"It's a bit worse than normal shops," she said uncertainly. "But you can't tell, some pearls sold legally have ended up in terrible homes, and some pearls on the black market have gone to better owners than they had before. It's impossible to predict."

If that was meant to make Steven feel better, it failed.

They won't go to the black market. I can take them with me when I leave. I don't even have to tell Orthoclase. Ginger will probably help me. She doesn't like this any more than I do.

When they reached the building they were looking for, Ginger scanned the alleyways and doors for signs of security.

"There was a scuffle," she said. "There was only one Amethyst on duty, she's in gem form somewhere now."

"With any luck, they dropped her somewhere across town," Orthoclase said, kicking open the door.

After using some sort of rod to disable any recording equipment in the plant, Orthoclase gave Steven a long sharp prod of some sort and a small metallic bag.

"We need to be quick," she told him. "So all you need to do is poke them somewhere, they'll release their form and you pop 'em into the bag. No making conversation, no trying to heal them, just poke 'n' grab. Got it?"

Swallowing, Steven nodded.

When he was lead into the main factory floor, he thought his knees would buckle under him. Rows and rows of pearls sat on purpose-built shelves beside a machine that looked near-identical to the hydraulic press he'd seen once when his Dad took a factory job for a while, except that it was rectangular instead of round. And just about big enough to fit a pearl between the steel plates.

The worst part was that nobody was stopping the pearls from getting up and leaving, but they hadn't. They were sitting on those shelves placidly waiting for their doom.

He would have been sick, if there was anything in his stomach to bring up, but somehow he'd known this was what it would be like and didn't drink any of Ginger's liquid nutrition thing before they left.

Ginger...however bad this is for me, it must be worse for her.

But when he looked at her, she didn't seem upset or angry or anything other than utterly, as always, calm. Her fingers were fluttering, and a few of the shelved pearls were talking back and faintly smiling.

"Get to work, pebble," Orthoclase muttered to him before she sauntered off to the far end of the factory floor.

The first pearl he approached had long straight hair and was dressed in some sort of heavy embroidered robe, she looked immaculate. Her eyes followed him as he walked up to her shelf, nervously clutching the prod.

"Uh, hi," he said, even though he was very aware he had been told not to make conversation.

"Hello," she replied.

"So, I guess I'm going to be stealing you? I kind of have to poke you with this and then put you in a bag..."

"I understand," she said airily.

"But, I don't want to hurt you or anything, so if I do I'm sorry."

"That's all right."

When he plucked up the nerve to poke her in the side, the little 'ow' she released before retreating to gem form seemed to be mostly for his benefit. He placed her carefully in the bag and moved on to the next shelf, to a pearl that looked considerably more battered.

"Hi, I'm going to poke you and put you in a bag because we're robbing this place and..."

"She can't talk," the pearl in the next shelf over piped up. "But she says it's okay."

Swallowing hard, he collected the battered one and the helpful one from the next shelf. He asked for permission every time, and none of them seemed to object to being stabbed and stuffed in a bag. They all took it with a sort of vaguely baffled good humour.

He had gathered fourteen pearls before he encountered a problem. The fifteenth pearl didn't say anything when he tried to talk to her, and she didn't react at all when he used the prod. He was still trying to poke her harder without actually hurting her when Orthoclase turned the corner and saw him.

"We have pretty much all of them, you can stop," she told him.

"This one's not releasing her form," he said, pressing a little harder with the prod. "I don't want to just leave her here, what if..."

Orthoclase leaned in, checked the pearl's eyes and inspected her gem.

"That's because she's dead," she said. "See how her gem is splintered? She probably died on the way here."

Between the vacant stare from the dead pearl's eyes and the casual way Orthoclase talked about her, a cold horror washed over Steven. He thought by now he had seen the worst of Homeworld, but he had only scratched the surface.

"We have over fifty living pearls now, pebble. Be thankful for that, for Core's sake."

Orthoclase dragged him away, leaving just the one pearl sitting on a shelf waiting to be processed. But just as they were going for the door, another pearl emerged from the small room just off of the factory floor.

"You belong to the owner of this place, right?" Orthoclase asked her.

"That is correct," the pearl answered.

"Well, that means I have to steal you too. Can't afford to let you tell on us..."

"I am happy to go with you. I wish to help with the chorus."

Orthoclase gaped, and then turned to Ginger with a frown.

"Exactly how far has this spread among pearls?" she growled.

"It's hard to say," Ginger answered.