Crystal Singer

by Anne McCaffrey

  Killashandra half expected to see her father, though she found it difficult to imagine him bestirring himself on her behalf. But she did not expect Maestro Esmond Valdi to enter the small office, acting the outraged mentor, nor was she prepared for the attack he immediately launched on Carrik.

  “You! You! I know what you are! A silicate spider paralyzing its prey, a crystal cuckoo pushing the promising fledglings from their nests.”

  As stunned as everyone else, Killashandra stared at the usually dignified and imperturbable maestro and wondered what role he thought he was playing. He had to be acting. His dialogue was so—so extravagant. “Silicate spider!” “Crystal cuckoo!” if nothing else, his analogies were incorrect and uncalled for.

  “Play on the emotions of an innocent young girl. Shower her with unaccustomed luxuries and pervert her until she’s spoiled as a decent contributing citizen. Until she’s so besotted, she has been brainwashed to enter that den of addled mentalities and shattered nerves!”

  Carrik made no attempt to divert the flow of vituperation or to counter the accusations. He stood, head up, smiling tolerantly down at the jerky motions of Valdi.

  “What lies has he been feeding you about crystal singing? What glamorous tales has he used to lure you there?” Valdi whirled toward Killashandra, his stocky figure trembling with outrage.

  “I asked to go.”

  Valdi’s wild expression hardened into disbelief at her calm answer.

  “You asked to go?”

  “Yes. He didn’t ask me.” She caught Carrik’s smile.

  “You heard her, Valdi,” Carrik said, then glanced at the officials witnessing the admission.

  The maestro’s shoulders sagged. “So, he’s done his recruiting with a master’s skill.” His tone registered resignation, he even managed to effect a slight break in his voice.

  “I don’t think so,” Killashandra said.

  Maestro Valdi inhaled deeply, obviously to support one last attempt to dissuade the misguided girl. “Did he tell you about . . . the mach storms?”

  She nodded, hiding her amusement at his theatricality.

  “The storms that scramble the brain and reduce the mind to a vegetable existence?”

  She nodded dutifully.

  “Did he fill your mind with garbage about mountains returning symphonies of sound? Crystalline choruses? Valleys that echo arpeggios?” His body rippled upward in an effort to express the desired effect of ridicule.

  “No,” she replied in a bored tone. “Nor did he feed me pap that all I needed was hard work and time.”

  Esmond Valdi, maestro, drew himself up, more than ever in an exaggeration of a classical operatic pose.

  “Did he also tell you that once you start cutting crystal, you can never stop? And that staying too long away from Ballybran produces disastrous convulsions?”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you also know”—Valdi rocked back on his heels—“that something in the water of Ballybran, in its very soil, in those crystals, affects your mind? That you don’t re-mem-ber?” He separated the verb carefully into syllables.

  “That could be a distinct advantage,” Killashandra replied, staring back at the little man until he broke eye contact.

  She was the first of the three to feel a peculiar itch behind her ears in the mastoid bone; an itch that rapidly became a wrenching nauseating pain. She grabbed Carrik by the arm just as the subsonic noise touched him and as Esmond Valdi lifted protecting bands to his ears.

  “The fools!” Carrik cried as panic contorted his features. He threw aside the door panel, running as fast as he could for the control-tower entrance. Killashandra scurried after him.

  Carrik vaulted the decorative barrier and landed in a restricted area, where he was deterred by a hastily engaged force curtain. “Stop it! Stop it!” he screamed, rocking in anguish and clawing at the curtain, oblivious to the sparks flying from his fingers.

  Though the pain was no less bearable for Killashandra, she had presence of mind enough to bang on the nearest communit, to strike the fire buttons, press the battery of emergency signals. “The shuttle coming in—something’s wrong—it’s dangerous!” she yelled at the top of her operatically trained lungs. She was barely conscious of the panic in the vast reception hall resulting from her all too audible warning.

  The possibility of a stampede by a hysterical mob was evident to those in the control tower, where someone, in reflex action, slapped on the abort signal to warn off all in-transit craft. Moments later, while the communit demanded an explanation from Killashandra or from anyone who could make himself heard over the bedlam in the reception area, a nova blossomed in the sky and rained molten fragments on the spaceport below. The control tower was unable to contain the destruction within the grappling field, and soon parts of the shuttle were scattered over several kilometers of the Port Authority and the heavily populated business district.

  Apart from bruises, lacerations, and a broken arm, there were only two serious casualties. A technician on the tarmac was killed, and Carrik would have been better off dead. The final sonic blast knocked him unconscious, and he never did fully recover his senses. After subspace consultation with Heptite Guild medics, it was decided to return him to Ballybran for treatment and care.

  “He won’t recover,” the medic told Killashandra, whereupon Maestro Valdi instantly assumed the role of her comforter. His manner provided Killashandra with a fine counterirritant to her shock over Carrik’s condition.

  She chose to disbelieve the medic’s verdict. Surely, Carrik could be restored to mental health once he was returned to Ballybran. He had been away from crystal too long; he was weakened by the seizures. There’d been no mach storm to scramble his mind. She’d escort him back to Ballybran. She owed him that in any reckoning for showing her how to live fully.

  She took a good look at the posturing Valdi and thanked her luck that Carrik had been there to awaken her senses. How could she have believed that such an artificial life as found in the theater was suitable for her? Just look at Valdi! Present him with a situation, hand him the cue, and he was “on,” in the appropriate role. None existed for these circumstances, so Valdi was endeavoring to come up with a suitable one.

  “What will you do now, Killashandra?” he asked somberly, obviously settling for Dignified Elder Gentleman Consoling the Bereaved Innocent.

  “I’ll go with him to Ballybran, of course.”

  Valdi nodded solemnly. “I mean, after you return.”

  “I don’t intend to return.”

  Valdi stared at her, dropping out of character, and then gestured theatrically as the air-cushion stretcher to which Carrik was strapped drifted past them to the shuttle gate.

  “After that?” Valdi cried, full of dramatic plight.

  “That won’t happen to me,” she said confidently.

  “But it could! You, too, could be reduced to a thing with no mind and no memories.”

  “I think,” Killashandra said slowly, regarding the posturing little man with thinly veiled contempt, “that everyone’s brains get scrambled one way or another.”

  “You’ll rue this day—” Valdi began, raising his left arm in a classical gesture of rejection, fingers gracefully spread.

  “That is, if I remember it!” she said. Her mocking laughter cut him off midscene.

  Still laughing, Killashandra made her exit, stage center, through the shuttle gate.

  CHAPTER 3

  Captain Andurs alerted Killashandra when the ship emerged from hyperspace and Ballybran was fully visible.

  “Good view,” he told her, pointing to the two inner moons, positioned at 10 and 5, but Killashandra only had eyes for the mysterious planet.

  She had heard enough to expect just about anything from her first glimpse. Consequently she experienced an initial disappointment—until she caught sight of the first crystal flare: a piercing stab of light as the sun’s rays reflected from an open crystal on one of the three visible continents. Clou
d cover swirled across most of the ocean area, occluded two subcontinents in the Southern Hemisphere, but where the sun shone, occasional pinpoints of blinding light were visible—light that was all color, yet white and clear.

  “How can they stand the intensity down there?” she demanded, squinting to reduce the keen glare.

  “According to what I hear, you don’t notice it on the surface.”

  “According to what I hear” had prefaced most of Captain Andurs’ statements about Ballybran, a sour comment on the restriction against his landing on one of the richest planets in the galaxy.

  From fellow passengers and garrulous crew members, Killashandra had gleaned additional information about Crystal Singers and Ballybran, a lot of which she discounted since most merely paraphrased Maestro Valdi’s comments. Andurs, despite his limited first-hand knowledge, had proved to be the most informative. He had been on the space run from Regulus to Ballybran for nine standard years and was always listening, so he had heard more than anyone else—certainly more than she had been able to extract from the cryptic vidifax of the three ships she had traveled on during the voyage. There was something mysterious about Ballybran and the Heptite Guild and its members—a mystery that she deduced from what wasn’t said about those three subjects. Individuals had privacy; so did certain aspects of any interstellar mercantile company, and one understood that references to certain planetary resources were understated or omitted. But the lack of routinely available printout on Ballybran, the Guild, and its select members doubled her suspicions.

  Conversely, she had been tremendously impressed by the Guild’s tacit power: high-rank medicorps men had awaited Carrik at the three intermediary ports. She herself had been accorded the most deferential treatment. She’d had very little to do other than check the life-support cradle that carried Carrik. The cradle was programmed for IV feedings, therapy, bathing, and the necessary drugs. The apparatus was checked by technicians at each port. Nothing, apparently, was too good for a Heptite Guild member. Or his escort. She’d had open credit in the ships’ stores, was a member of the captain’s private mess on all three ships. Except for the fact that she was left strictly alone, she thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of her first interstellar journey.

  Possibly because the trip was nearly over, she had received most of her information from Andurs the previous night as he judiciously nursed a Sarvonian brandy through the evening.

  “I hear it often enough to begin to believe it’s possible . . . but they say crystal gets into your blood.”

  “That’d kill you,” Killashandra replied though Carrik had used the same phrase.

  “I can’t tell whether they mean that the credits are so good,” Andurs continued, ignoring her comment. “Crystal Singers really whoop it up—big spenders, fun people—until the shakes start. Funny about that, too, because Crystal Singers are supposed to heal faster than other humans, and they’re not supposed to be as susceptible to the planetary goolies and fevers that catch you no matter what immunization you’ve got. And they stay younger.” That capability annoyed Andurs. “I asked one of ’em about that. He was drunk at the time, and he said it’s just part of singing crystal.”

  “Then there’d be a lot of people willing to sing crystal . . .”

  “Yeah, but you also risk the shakes or . . .” Andurs jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate Carrik in his cabin, “I’d rather grow old.”

  “That doesn’t happen often, does it?” Killashandra asked startled. She’d had the impression that Carrik’s collapse was unusual.

  “He’s the first I’ve seen that bad,” Andurs admitted. “Oh, they get the fevers, sometimes bad enough to be packed out in freezebags but not—” and he touched his forehead with one finger. “Not my business, but how did he get that way?”

  His question, though an obvious one, startled Killashandra because no one else throughout the journey had asked, as if they were afraid of the answer.

  “He was fine until we got to Fuerte Spaceport. Then a shuttle came in with a badly resonating drive. It exploded, and he got caught in the sonic backlash.”

  “Good of you to escort him back.”

  “I owed him that.” Killashandra meant it. “You said the Guild maintains offices on the moon? Is that where you apply for membership as well?”

  He looked at her in amazement. “Oh, you don’t want to be a Singer.”

  “Why not?”

  Andurs leaned toward her, staring hard into her eyes. “You weren’t forced to come with him, were you? I mean, he didn’t do anything to you?”

  Killashandra didn’t know whether to laugh or become angry. “I don’t know where you come from, Captain Andurs, but on Fuerte privacy is respected.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t . . .” Andurs responded hastily, raising his hand to fend off her outrage.

  “Do I look as if I’ve been conditioned?”

  “No, actually you don’t. It’s just that you strike me as a sensible woman, and crystal singing isn’t sensible. Oh, I know. I’ve heard all the fardling rumors, but that’s spaceflot because all the Singers I’ve seen—and I’ve seen a lot in nine years on this run—never bother anyone. They keep to themselves, really. But there is something very peculiar indeed about Ballybran and crystal singing. I do know”—and he glanced over his shoulder, a needless caution since they were alone in the lounge—“that not every one who applies and gets accepted makes it as a Singer. Whoever goes down to that planet”—he pointed toward the floor—“stays there. Only Singers leave. And they always return.”

  “How many people apply for entry into the Guild?”

  Killashandra was remembering the 20,007 technicians as well as the 4,425 Singers, and she wondered what the gross was if the net was so small.

  “I can’t answer that precisely.” Andurs seemed perplexed as he scratched his head. “Never thought about it. Oh, I get a few applicants almost every trip. Think we’ve got eight, possibly nine on this flight. You get to know who’s commercial traveling, and who’s hoping.” Andurs grinned at her. “We do have four Guild-vouched passages besides yours. That means these people have been screened at a Guild center somewhere. You know that tall, thin, black-haired fellow?”

  Killashandra nodded, remembering the man who had boarded the ship at the last transfer point. He’d stared at her inquisitively, and once she had found him standing outside her cabin, a strange wild look on his face.

  “He’s come on his own. I wouldn’t say he’d be accepted.”

  “Oh?”

  Andurs twirled his brandy glass for a long moment before he answered. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s the type they want.”

  “What is the type they want?”

  “I don’t really know,” Andurs replied after a moment, “but he’s not it. The Guild will pay your way back to the nearest transfer point,” he added as if this would be sufficient compensation for rejection. “I’ll let you know when we emerge, Killa. Ballybran’s one of the more interesting planets to see a moon’s eye view of—especially if there’s a storm in progress.”

  Killashandra remained at the view screen until Ballybran was eclipsed by the bulk of its largest moon, Shankill. If you’ve seen one moon installation, you’ve seen them all, she thought as she watched the domes and blackened landing pits swivel past. Her attention was briefly arrested by the sight of a second vessel swinging up over the horizon, a shuttle craft from the size of it, small enough to make no work of the landing. She thought she caught a flash of the Heptite Guild dodecahedron on the nose, but the shuttle moved into shadow too quickly for her to check.

  Whatever reception she had subconsciously hoped for was vastly different from the one she received from Lanzecki, the Resident Master of the Heptite Guild. He was standing at the portal when the ship opened its airlock: a dour man, with a swarthy complexion and a squat figure, clothed in dull colors. The only things bright and active about him were his wide-set piercing brown eyes, which moved incessantly, seeming to
catch more in one darting glance than they ought.

  He gestured to the two men accompanying him who were dun garbed as well. They silently entered the ship and paced down the corridor, Killashandra in the lead. She had never felt more superfluous. In Carrik’s stateroom, Lanzecki used that moment’s hesitation to press the panel plate open. He glanced once at the still figure on the carrier, his face expressionless. He motioned the others to enter and take the carrier.

  “Thank you, Killashandra Ree. You have an open ticket to whatever destination you desire and a credit of one thousand galactic units.” He proferred two vouchers, each emblazoned with the Heptite Guild dodecahedron black-quartz crystal. He accorded her a deferential bow, and then, as the men guided Carrik past, he followed them down the corridor.

  For a moment, Killashandra stared at the departing trio, the two metallic voucher slips clinging with static attraction to her fingers. “Guild Master? Lanzecki? Sir? Wait . . .” The stately progress continued without pause. “Of all the ungrateful—”

  “I’d not call them ungrateful,” said Captain Andurs, who had approached from the other end of the corridor. He craned his head to glance at the vouchers. “Not at all.”

  “I didn’t expect praise,” Killashandra exclaimed, though that indeed was what she had expected. “Just a word or two.”

  “You’ve got the important ones,” Andurs reminded her with a wry smile. “One thousand. They’re an odd lot at best,” he went on as the Guildsmen turned toward the accordioned portal maw. “Like I said, there’s all kinds of spaceflot about that Guild. I see strange things banging this old can from system to system, and I pretend not to see half of them.” Suddenly, he slid his arm about her shoulders. “Now that the dead meat’s gone, how about you and me—”

  “Not now,” Killashandra irritably pushed his arm away. “I want a word with that Guild Master first.” She strode rapidly down the corridor toward the portal.

  She never saw Carrik again, though he was listed among the inactive membership for a good many years. Not that she glanced at the lists, active or inactive, very often once the thrill of seeing her own name inscribed had passed.