Crystal Singer

by Anne McCaffrey

  “The what?” Killashandra stared at him, for he was describing exactly her sensation.

  Enthor shot her a surprised glance. “Scalp itch? Spasm at the back of your head?”

  “Am I coming down with symbiont fever?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Five days.”

  He shook his head. “No! No! Too soon for fever.” He narrowed his eyes again, turning his head to one side as he squinted at her. Then he pointed to the seven remaining containers.

  “Pick the next one.”

  “Me?”

  “Why not? You might as well get used to handling”—he paused, scrubbed at his close cropped hair—“crystal. Myself, I don’t agree with Master Lanzecki. I don’t think Gorren has come to the end of the black face he’s been cutting. Gorren’s clever. Just enough substantial stuff to get off-planet, and slivers now and then. That way he’s got Lanzecki in a bind and a route off-planet any time he chooses. Pick a carton, girl.”

  Startled by the command, Killashandra reached for the nearest box, hesitated, and drawn by a curious compulsion, settled her hands on its neighbor. She picked it up and would have given it over to Enthor, but he gestured for her to place it on the table, its ident facing the scanner.

  “So open it!”

  “Me? Black crystal?”

  “You chose it, didn’t you? You must learn to handle it”

  “If I should drop—”

  “You won’t. Your hands are very strong for a girl’s, fingers short and supple. You won’t drop things you want to hold.”

  Tension, like a frigid extra skin about her torso, crept down her thighs. She had felt this way, standing in the wings before an entrance in the Music Center, so she took three deep breaths, clearing her lungs and diaphragm as she would if she were about to sing a long musical phrase.

  Indeed, when her questing fingers closed on the large soapy-soft object in the center of the plasfoam, she exhaled a long, low “ah” of surprise.

  “NO!” Enthor turned to her in outrage. “No, no,” and he darted forward, clapping his hand to her mouth. “Never sing around raw crystal! Especially”—and his tone intense with anger—“near black crystal!” He was so agitated that he blinked his lens on and off, and the red of his unprotected eyes effectively cowed Killashandra. Enthor looked about him in a frenzied survey to see if any one at the nearer tables had heard her. “Never!”

  She didn’t dare tell him at that juncture that the black crystal had vibrated in her hands at her spontaneous note and her finger bones had echoed the response of other segments still unpacked.

  With an effort, Enthor regained his composure, but his nostrils flared, and his lips worked as he struggled for calm.

  “Never sing or whistle or hum around raw crystal no matter what the color. I can only hope you haven’t inhibited the magnetic induction of a whole ring linkage with that ill-advised—ah—exclamation. I’ll say it was an exclamation if I should be asked.” He let out one more unaspirated breath and then nodded for her to take out the crystal.

  Killashandra closed her eyes as she freed the heavy block. Enthor was not going to like this if she had indeed blurred raw crystal. Told she had been and at some length and with considerable emphasis by Tukolom all about the subtle and delicate process by which segments of the black quartz crystal were subjected to synchronized magnetic induction, which resulted in the instantaneous resonance between segments as far apart as five hundred light years. The resonance provided the most effective and accurate communications network known in the galaxy. That she might have inadvertently damaged the thick block she now exposed to Enthor’s startled gaze weighed heavily in her mind.

  With an intake of breath for which she might have returned him his caution on sound, Enthor reverently took the dodecahedron from her.

  “How many more are with it?” he asked in an uneven voice.

  Killashandra already knew how many there should be. Twelve, and there were. She retrieved them from their webbing, handing them carefully to Enthor, though they were not as massive or tall as the king crystal. They fit as snugly to the central block as they had lived with it until Gorren had cut the crystals from the quartz face.

  “Well!” Enthor regarded the matched set on the scale.

  “Are—are they all right?” Killashandra finally found a contrite voice for the urgent question.

  Enthor’s little hammer evoked a clear tone that rippled from her ear bones to her heels, like an absolving benison. Even without Enthor’s verbal reassurance, she knew the crystal had forgiven her.

  “Luck, m’dear. You seem to have used the note on which they were cut. Fortunate for me.”

  Killashandra leaned against the sorting table to balance her shaky self.

  “A set like this will provide a multiple linkage with thirty or forty other systems. Magnificent!” By this time, Enthor was examining the thirteen crystals with his augmented vision. “He cut just under the flaw,” he murmured, more to himself, then remembered the presence of Killashandra. “As one would expect Gorren to do.”

  Brusquely but with precise movements, he put the crystals on the scale. Killashandra allowed herself an unaspirated sigh at the size of the huge fortune in credits Gorren had just acquired.

  “Magnificent!” Enthor said. Then he gave a chuckle, his glance back at Killashandra sly. “Only Lanzecki will have the devil’s own time persuading Gorren to cut anything for the next two galactic years. There’s not that much black being cut. Being found. Still in all, that’s Lanzecki’s problem, not mine. Not yours. Bring another carton, m’dear. You’ve the knack of picking them, it seems.”

  “Luck,” Killashandra said, regarding the remaining boxes, none of which seemed to draw her as that other had done.

  She would rather have been wrong but the rest of Gorren’s cut was unexciting. The small clusters were unexciting. The small clusters, absolutely flawless, would be quite sufficient for the larger public entertainment units that provided realistic sensual effects, Enthor told her.

  That night, most of the recruits insisted on her telling them about the black crystal, and Lanzecki and the chief marketing officer, for they had been unable to hear much and not permitted to stare. She obliged them, including a slightly exaggerated version of Enthor’s dressing down that she felt would be salutary. Besides, the telling relieved the tension she still felt at how close she had come to buggering up enough credit to ransom a planet.

  “What could they do to you if you had?” Shillawn asked, swallowing nervously as if he envisioned himself mulling it in a similar instance.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something bizarre, I’m sure,” Borton said. “Those Singers don’t spare anyone if their cuttings are mishandled. I was lucky enough to be the sorter who did Uyad’s cut.” Borton grinned. “I hid in the storage behind enough cartons, so I didn’t get much of the back blast.”

  “So that’s where you were,” Jezerey asked, teasing.

  “Bloody well told. I’m not here to bucket someone else’s bilge.”

  Conversation continued about the variety of cuts and sizes and colors of the crystals from the Brerrerton and Milekey Ranges. Killashandra added nothing else, considering it more discreet to remain silent. When she could do so without attracting attention, she rose and went to her room. She wanted to think and recall the sensation of handling that massive black crystal. It hadn’t been really black, not black at all, nor clear the way the rose or indeed any of the other crystals had been. She had accepted the designation at the time, for surely Enthor knew his crystals, and certainly the black quartz was different.

  She tapped data retrieval for all information on black quartz crystal and specimens thereof. The data included black crystal in segmented units, none quite like the dodecahedron. Another display showed an octagon in its luminous, unchanged state, then the same form shading gradually to a matte black as it responded to thermal changes artificially induced. The data began to take up the lecture T
ukolom had given, and she switched it off, lying back and recalling the sensation of her first contact with black crystal.

  The next day, recovery teams brought in the cargo from sleds that had not reached the safety of the Guild Complex, and depression settled over the sorting room when the cartons, dinged, scarred, and discolored, were deposited on sorting tables. The mood was partially lightened when two containers disgorged some good triple and quadruple black crystal.

  “What happens to them?” Killashandra asked Enthor in a low voice.

  “To what?”

  “The crystal of the Singer who didn’t make it.”

  “Guild.” Enthor’s terse reply seemed to imply that this was only fair.

  “But doesn’t a Guild member have the right to dispose of the . . . things of which he dies possessed?”

  Enthor paused before opening the carton before him.

  “I suppose so,” he finally answered. “Problem is most Singers outlive their families by hundreds of years; they tend to get very greedy; don’t make many friends off-world and are unlikely to remember them if they have. I suppose some do. Not many.”

  Halfway through the next day, the backlog of crystal cartons having been substantially reduced, the recruits were assigned to help the hangar crew clean and resupply the Singers’ sleds, for the storm was blowing itself out. There was some disgruntlement, but the hangar officer hadn’t the look of someone to antagonize. It seemed to Killashandra that discretion was necessary.

  “I’m not going to clean out someone else’s filth for the nardy day’s credits that gives,” Carigana said. “No one ever cleaned up for me in space, and I’m not doing it on the ground. Pack of vermin, that’s all they are, for all their airs and arrogance.” She glared at the others, daring them to follow her example. Her contempt as she walked off was palpable.

  Remembering the state of some of the sleds, Killashandra would have been sorely tempted to follow—if anyone other than Carigana had set the example.

  “We do get paid. And it’s better than twiddling your fingers!” Shillawn caught at Killashandra’s arm as if he had divined her thoughts.

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” the hangar officer went on, forgetting Carigana the instant she was out of sight, “but there is a bonus for every rank finished. The first eight are already done. Singers can make life intolerable for those who don’t assist them. This storm is nearly blown out, and there’ll be Singers frothing to get into the ranges. Met’ll give ’em clearance by midday tomorrow. Get on with it. Get ’em cleaned and stocked and the Singers out where they belong.”

  He resumed his seat at the control console, peering out at the vast orderly ranks of airsleds where the regular suppliers were already at work. He frowned as his gaze rested briefly on the undecided recruits; the grimace deepened as he saw a damaged sled being hoisted for repair.

  “There must be some way the Guild handles dossers like Carigana,” Borton said, squinting after the space worker. “She can’t get away with it!”

  “We don’t have to clean up after a bunch of shitty Singers,” said Jezerey, her eyes flashing her personal rebellion. “I remember some of those sleds. Faugh!” and she pinched her nose shut with two fingers.

  “I want a closer look at some of the equipment inside the sleds,” Rimbol said, turning on his heel toward the sled racks.

  “Closer smell, too?” asked Jezerey.

  “You get used to any stinks in time,” Rimbol said, waving off that argument. “ ’Sides, it keeps my mind off other things.”

  “Those sleds will keep your mind off many things,” Jezerey snapped back.

  They were all silent a moment, knowing exactly what Rimbol meant. They were near the earliest day of onset of the symbiotic fever.

  “We do get paid. And the hangar officer mentioned a bonus . . .” Shillawn let his sentence fall off, swallowing nervously.

  “Hey, you, there. You recruits. I could use some help.”

  A supplier, by the shade of his uniform, leaned out of an upper level. Jezerey continued to grumble, but she followed the others toward the array of cleaning equipment.

  Not since Killashandra had left her family’s small tree farm on Fuerte had she had to muck out on this scale. By the fifth sled, as Rimbol had suggested, she had become inured to the various stenches. It was also, as he had said, worth the chance to examine a Crystal Singer’s airsled firsthand: at its worst and, after proper restoration, at its best.

  The sled’s control console took up the bow section, complete with pilot safety couch. Built into the couch’s armrests were an assortment of manual override buttons. Alongside the main hatch were the empty brackets for the crystal cutter; the instruments were serviced after each trip to the ranges. The main compartment was the Singer’s in-range living accommodations, adequate if compact. A thick webbing separated the forward sections from cargo storage and the drive section.

  Her supplier, to give the ancient man his proper title, was so deaf that Killashandra had to shake him violently to get his attention. However, once she had asked a question (for his lipreading was good), she received an encyclopedic answer and a history of the particular sled and its Singer. The fellow might be elderly, but he worked so swiftly that Killashandra was hard-pressed to do her share in the same time.

  The supplier, for he admitted no name to Killashandra’s polite inquiry, seemed to have a passion for orderly, gleaming, well-stocked vehicles. Killashandra wondered at his dedication since the order he cherished would so soon deteriorate to slime and shit.

  “One can always get at crystal,” the old man said. He invariably pointed out the five hatches: the one into the main compartment, the bottom through the drive area, and the two on either side and the top of the storage compartment. “Strongest part of the sled as well. On purpose, of course, since it’s crystal is important. If a Singer gets injured, or worse”—and he paused reverently—“especially if Singer’s injured, the crystal can be salvaged, and he isn’t out of credit. Singers get very incensed, they do, if they’re done on crystal, you know. Maybe you will. You be a recruit, don’t you? So this is all new to you. Might be the only time you see a sled. Then again, it might not—no, safety net is always fastened.” He did the catches himself, a mild reproof to her quickness in stowing the empty crystal containers. “Can’t have these, full or empty, bouncing about in flight or in a storm.”

  He consulted his wrist-unit, peering around at the hatch to confirm the sled number.

  “Oh, yes, special orders for this one. Never eats animal protein. Prefers nonacid beverages.” He beckoned to Killashandra to follow him to Stores. He took her past the sections from which they had been restocking, and into a blandly pink section. She rather hoped the food wasn’t the same color. It’d be enough to put her off eating entirely.

  The sled’s catering unit did not allow much diversity, but the supplier assured her that the quality was always the best that was obtainable even if the Singers sometimes didn’t realize what they were eating in the frenzy of their work.

  Frenzy, Killashandra decided, was an inadequate description of the state in which most sleds had been left, though the supplier reminded her time and again that the storm that had forced all the Singers in had caused some of the internal spillage.

  After another wearying day, she had helped clean and stock ten sleds, three more, her supplier noted, than he would have been able to do himself.

  Technically, the next day was a rest day, but the hangar officer told the recruits that any who cared to continue would get double credit.

  Shillawn shoved his hand up first; Rimbol, grimacing at Killashandra, followed with his; and she, perforce, volunteered as well. The hangar officer, however, was surprised when all present signaled their willingness. He grunted and then went back into his office.

  “Why did we volunteer?” asked Jezerey, shaking her head.

  “Thoughts of double credits to be earned, staving off the pangs and uncertainties of debt!” Rimbol rolled his eyes.
“My supplier had a thing about debt.”

  “Mine did, too,” Killashandra replied.

  “At this rate”—and Borton pulled across his shoulders at aching muscles—“we’ll be ahead of the Guild even before we get the fever.”

  “They’ll charge us for time off then without due cause,” said Jezerey sourly.

  “No,” Shillawn corrected her. “All medical treatment is free.”

  “Except you don’t get paid for work you can’t do.”

  “May you never stand outside during a full Passover,” said Rimbol, intoning his blessing in a fruity voice.

  “I don’t think I’ve worked this hard since I was a kid on my father’s fishing trawler,” Borton continued. “And fishing on Argma is done in the oooold-fashioned way.”

  “Which is why you studied spaceflight?” asked Killashandra.

  “Too right.”

  “Well, you’re slaving again,” said Jezerey, fatigue making her sullen.

  “But we’re Guild members,” Rimbol mocked her.

  “Reducing our initial debt,” Shillawn added with a sigh of relief.

  “All green and go!”

  At Rimbol’s quip, they reached the top of the ramp and the lounge. Rimbol made drinking motions to Killashandra, smiling wistfully.

  “Not until I’m clean, really clean!”

  “Me, too,” Jezerey said, her whole body giving way to a shudder.

  They all made for their private quarters. Carigana’s red-lit door caught Killashandra’s gaze as she passed it.

  “Don’t worry about her, Killa. She’s trapped by more than just the Guild,” Rimbol said, taking her elbow to move her on.

  “I’m not sorry for her,” Killashandra replied, obscurely annoyed by herself and Rimbol’s remark.

  “No one’s ever sorry about anything here,” Shillawn commented almost sadly. “No one thanks anyone. No one has good manners at all.”

  This was very true, Killashandra thought as she wallowed in steaming-hot, scented water, scouring the stench of the day’s labors from body and breath.