Crystal Singer

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Oh, aren’t you clever? I would never have thought of combining different worlds! Do come right along. He has such a temper at the best of times, but without his skill, we, the Singers I mean, would be in a terrible way. He is a superior craftsman, which is why one humors his odd temper. This way.”

  Concera covered quite a bit of ground with her gliding gait, and Killashandra had to stretch her legs to keep pace.

  “You’ll get to know where everything is very soon. It’s nice to be by oneself, I feel, instead of in a pack, but then different people have different tastes,” and Concera peered sideways at Killashandra to see if she agreed. “Of course, we come from all over the galaxy, so one is bound to find someone compatible. This is the eighth level where most of the technical work is done—naturally the cutters are made here, as they are the most technical of all. Here we are.”

  Concera paused at the open entrance and, with what seemed unexpected courtesy, pushed Killashandra ahead of her into a small office with a counter across the back third and a door leading into a workshop. Her entry must have triggered an alarm in the workroom, for a man, his sun-reddened face set in sour lines, appeared in the doorway.

  “You’re this Killashandra?” he demanded. He beckoned to her and then saw Concera following. “You? I told you you’d have to wait, Concera. There’s no point, no point at all, in making you a handle for three fingers. You’ll only outgrow it, and there’s all that work could be put to better use.”

  “I thought it might be a challenge for you—”

  “I’ve all the challenges I need, Concera.” He replied with such vehemence that when he returned his stare to Killashandra, she wondered if his disagreement with the woman would spill over on to her. “Let me see your hands.”

  Killashandra held them, palm up, over the counter. He raised his eyebrows as he felt with strong impersonal fingers across the palm, spread her fingers to see the lack of webbing from constant practice, the hard muscle along the flat of the hand and thumb pad.

  “Used your hands right, you have.” He shot another glance at Concera.

  It was only then that Killashandra noticed that the first two fingers on Concera’s left hand had been sheared off. The stumps were pinkish white, healed flesh but oddly shaped. It occurred to Killashandra in a rush that made her stomach queasy that the two missing digits were regenerating.

  “If you stay, you be quiet. If you go, you won’t be tempted. This’ll take two-three hours.”

  Concera elected to leave, which had no positive effect on the morose technician. Killashandra had naively assumed that tuning a cutter would be a simple matter, but it was a tedious process, taking several days. She had to read aloud for a voice print from boring printout on the history and development of the cutting devices. She learned more than she needed to know—some of the more complicated mechanisms proved unreliable in extremes of weather; a once-popular model was blamed for the high-voltage discharge which had carbonized the corpse Killashandra saw on Shankill. The most effective and reliable cutter, refined from Barry Milekey’s crude original, required that the user have perfect pitch. It was a piezoelectric device that converted the Crystal Singer’s vocal note and rhythm into high-frequency shock waves on an infrasonic carrier. The cutting edge of the shock wave was pitched by the Singer to the dominant tone of the “struck” crystal face.

  Once set to a voice pattern, the infrasonic device could not be altered. Manufacture of such cutters was restricted to the Guild and safeguarded yet again by computer assembly, the program coding known only by the Guild Master and his executive assistant.

  As Concera had mentioned, the technician was a temperamental man. When Killashandra was reading aloud, he was complaining about various grievances with the Guild and its members. Concera and her request for a three-fingered handle was currently his favorite gripe—“Concera is cack-handed, anyway, and always splitting her grips.” Another was that he ought to have had another three weeks fishing before returning to work. The fish had just started to bite, and would she now sing an octave in C.

  She sang quite a few octaves in various keys and decided that there were worse audiences than apparently receptive audition judges. She hadn’t used her voice since the day she met Carrik; she was sore in the gut from supporting tone and aware the sound was harsh.

  When Concera glided into the room, Killashandra was overwhelmingly relieved.

  “Back tomorrow, same time. I’ll do casts of your good ten fingers.” And the man sent an arch glance at Concera.

  Concera hurried Killashandra out of the workshop and the office.

  “He does like his little jokes,” she said, leading the way down one corridor and left at the next. “I only wanted a little favor so I could go back into the ranges without wasting so much time.” She entered a room labeled “Training,” sighing as she closed the door and flicked on the privacy light. “Still”—and she gave Killashandra a bright smile, her eyes sliding from a direct contact—“we have your training to take in hand.” She waved Killashandra to one of the half-dozen chairs in the room facing a large hologram projector. She picked up a remote control unit from a shelf, darkening the room and activating the projector. The outsized lettering of the Guild’s rules, regulations, and precepts hovered before them. “You may have had a Milekey transition, but there’s no easy way to get over this.”

  “Tukolom—”

  “Tukolom handles only basic information, suitable for anyone joining the Guild in any capacity.” Concera’s voice had a note of rancor. “Now you must specialize and repeat and repeat.” Concera sighed. “We all have to,” she added, her voice expressing patient resignation. “If it’s any consolation to you, I’d be doing this by myself and I’ve always found it much easier to explain than memorize.” Her voice lightened. “You’ll hear even the oldest singers muttering regs and restricts any night in the Commons Hall. Of course, you’ll never appreciate this drill until it’s vital! When you reach that point, you won’t remember how you know what you do. Because that’s when you really know nothing else.”

  Despite Concera’s persuasive tone, Killashandra found the reasoning specious. Having no choice in study program or teacher, Killashandra set herself to memorize regulations about working claims, claiming faces, interference with claims, reparations and retributions, fines and a clutter of other rules for which she could see no need since they were obvious to anyone with any sense.

  When she returned to the privacy of her quarters and the anomalies of her wall-screens, she checked with the infirmary and was told that Rimbol was weak but had retained all his senses. Shillawn, Borton, and Jezerey were satisfactory, in the proper use of that word. Killashandra also managed to extract from data retrieval the fact that injured Singers like Concera and Borella undertook the role of preceptor because of the bonus involved. That explained the spiteful remarks and ambivalent poses.

  The next morning, when Concera drilled her on her understanding of each section of the previous day’s subjects, Killashandra had the notion that Concera silently recited paragraph and section just one step ahead of her pupil.

  The afternoon was spent uncomfortably, in the workshop of the Fisherman, where casts were made of her hands. The Fisher maundered on about having to make hundreds of casts during a Singer’s lifetime. He told her she wasn’t to complain to him about blisters from hand grips, an affliction that he alleged was really caused by a muscling up that wasn’t any fault of his.

  Killashandra spent that evening redecorating her room.

  She had a morning drill with Concera, spent a half hour with the Fisher, who grumbled incessantly about a bad morning’s fishing, the inferiority of the plastic he had to work with, and the privileges of rank. Killashandra decided that if she were to ruffle at every cryptic remark tossed her way, she’d be in a state of constant agitation. The remainder of the afternoon, Concera reviewed her on crystal shapes, tones, and the combinations that were marketable at the moment: black crystals in any form always having th
e highest value. Killashandra was to review the catalog, commit to memory which shape was used for what end product, the range in price, and the parameters of value variation in each color. She was taken through the research departments, which sought new uses for Ballybran crystal. There she noticed several people with the eye adjustment of Enthor.

  In the days that followed, she was given instruction in the sled-simulator, “flying” against mach storm winds. By the end of the first lesson, she was as battered, sweaty, and trembling as if the flight had been genuine.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” the instructor commented unsympathetically as she reeled out of the simulator. “Take a half hour in the tank and come back this afternoon.”

  “Tank?”

  “Yeah, the tank. The radiant fluid. Left-hand taps. Go on! I’ll expect you back at 1500.”

  Killashandra muttered the terse instructions all the way back to her rooms, shedding her clothes as she made her way to the tank. She turned on the left-hand taps, and a viscous liquid oozed out. She got the temperature she wanted and dubiously lowered herself into the tank. In minutes, tension and stress left her muscles, and she lay, buoyed by the radiant bath, until the stuff cooled. That afternoon, her instructor grudgingly admitted that she had improved.

  A few days later, half a morning through a solo training flight across the White Sea where thermal patterns made good practice, every visual warning device on the controls turned red, and a variety of sirens, claxons, bells, and nerve-tinglers was activated. Killashandra immediately veered northeast to the Guild Complex and was relieved when half the monitors desisted. The rest blared or blinked until she had landed the sled on its rack and turned off the power. When she complained to her instructor about the warning overload, he gave her a long, scathing look.

  “You can’t be warned too often about the approach of turbulence,” he said. “You Singers might be as deaf as some of us no matter how we rig cautions. While you remember advice, remember this: a mach storm won’t give you a second chance. We do our fardling best to insure that you have at least one. Now change your gear for cargo handling. A blow’s on the way!”

  He strode off, waving to attract attention from a cluster of hangar personnel.

  The storm was not rated Severe and only the southeast section of the continent had been alerted. Forty Singers had logged out in that general area, and thirty-nine straggled in. The flight and hangar officers were conferring together as Killashandra passed them.

  “Keborgon’s missing. He’ll get himself killed!”

  “He’s been bragging he was out for black. If he managed to remember where the claim is . . .”

  Killashandra had no excuse to linger near the two at that point, but when the other ships had been cleared and racked, she stayed on after the rest of the unloaders had been dismissed.

  The wind was not strong enough at the complex to require the erection of the baffles, so Killashandra stationed herself where she could watch the southern quadrant. She also kept an eye on the two officers and saw them abandon their watch with a shrug of shoulders and shakes of the head.

  If Keborgen had actually cut black crystal, she would’ve liked to have unloaded it. She wasn’t needed on the sorting floor. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she had racked up some danger credit already, and wasn’t much in the red for decorating her room and days of uncredited instruction. Being a recruit had had advantages.

  She was crossing the hangar to return to her quarters when she heard the sound, or rather felt it, like a thread dragged across exposed nerve ends. She wasn’t yet accustomed to her improved vision, so she shook her head and blinked, expecting to clear the spot on the right retina. It stayed in position in the lower right-hand quadrant, dipping and swaying. Not a shadow in her own eye but a sled, obviously on course for the complex. She was wondering if she should inform anyone when wrecker personnel began to scramble for the heavy hoist sled. In the hustle, no one noticed that Killashandra had joined the team.

  The wrecker didn’t have far to go for the sled plowed into the hills forty klicks from the complex. The comtech could get no response from the sled’s pilot.

  “Bloody fool waited too long,” the flight officer said, nervously slapping his fingers against his thigh. “Warned him when he went out, not to wait too long. But they never listen.” He repeated variations of those sentiments, becoming more agitated as the wrecker neared the sled and the damage was visible.

  The wrecker pilot set his craft down four long strides from the Singer’s sled.

  “You others get the crystal,” the flight officer shouted as he plunged toward the crumbled bow of the sled, which was half buried in loose dirt.

  As Killashandra obeyed his order, she glanced back on the sled’s path. She could see, in the distance, two other slide marks before the crashing sled had bounced to a stop.

  The storage compartment had withstood impact. Killashandra watched with interest as the three men released the nearest hatch. As soon as they emerged with cartons, she darted in. Then she heard the moans of the injured Crystal Singer and the drone of curses from the flight officer and medic attending him.

  The moment she touched the nearest carton, she forgot the injured man, for a shock, mild but definite, ran along her bones from hand to heel to head. She gripped the carrier firmly, but the sensation dissipated.

  “Move along. Gotta get that guy back to the infirmary,” she was told by returning crewmen.

  She picked the carton up, minding her steps, ignoring the exhortation of the crewmen who passed her out. She crouched by the carton as the cocoon of the injured Singer was deftly angled into the wrecker.

  During the short trip back to the complex, she wondered why there was such a fuss. Surely the symbiont would repair the man’s injuries, given the time to do so. She supposed that the symbiont relieved pain. Borella hadn’t appeared uncomfortable with her awful thigh wound, and Concera, given to complaints, had said nothing about pain in her regenerating fingers.

  As soon as the wrecker landed, the Singer was hurried to waiting meditechs. Hugging the carton that she devoutly hoped contained black crystal, Killashandra walked straight through the storage area into the sorting room. She had no problem finding Enthor, for the man almost bumped into her.

  “Enthor,” she said, planting herself and pushing the carton at him, “I think this has black crystal.”

  “Black crystal?” Enthor was startled; he blinked and peered frowningly at her. “Oh, it’s you. You?” His lensed eyes widened in surprise. “You? What are you doing here?” He half turned in the direction of the infirmary and then up to the recruits’ level. “No one’s been cutting black crystal—”

  “Keborgen might have been. He crashed. This is from his sled.” She gave the carton an urgent shove against his chest. “The flight officer said he had been out to cut blacks.”

  Out of habit, Enthor took hold of the carton, quite unable to assimilate either her explanation or her sudden appearance. Killashandra was impatient with Enthor’s hesitation. She did not want to admit to the contact shock she had felt in Keborgen’s sled. Deftly, she propelled Enthor at his table, and though still perplexed, he presented the ident to the scan. His hands hovered briefly but dropped away as he twisted toward Killashandra.

  “Go on,” she said, annoyed by his dithering. “Look at them.”

  “I know what they are. How did you?” Enthor’s indecision was gone, and he stared, almost accusingly, into her eyes.

  “I felt them. Open it. What did Keborgen cut?”

  His unearthly eyes still on hers, Enthor opened the box and lifted out a crystal. Killashandra caught her breath at the sight of the dull, irregular 15 centimeter segment. Consciously, she had to make her lungs expel air as Enthor reverently unpacked two additional pieces that fit against the first.

  “He cut well,” Enthor said, scrutinizing the trio keenly. “He cut very well. Just missing flaw. That would account for the shapes.”

  “
He has cut his last,” the deep voice of the Guild Master said.

  Startled, Killashandra whirled and realized that Lanzecki must have arrived moments before. He nodded to her and then beckoned to someone in the storage area.

  “Bring the rest of Keborgen’s cut.”

  “Is there more black in it?” Enthor asked Killashandra as he felt carefully about in the plaspacking.

  Killashandra was vibrantly aware of Lanzecki’s intense gaze.

  “In that box or the cargo?”

  “Either,” Lanzecki said, his eyes flickering at her attempt to temporize.

  “Not in the box,” she said even as she ran her hand along the plasfoam side. She swallowed nervously, glancing sideways at Lanzecki’s imposing figure. His clothing, which she had once thought dull, glinted in a richness of thread and subtle design very much in keeping with his rank. She swallowed a second time as he gave a brief nod of his head and the six cartons from Keborgen’s sled were deposited on Enthor’s table.

  “Any more black crystal?” Enthor asked.

  She swallowed a third time, remembered that the habit had irritated her in Shillawn, and ran her hands over the cartons. She frowned, for a curious prickle rippled across her palms.

  “Nothing like the first one,” she said, puzzled.

  Enthor raised his eyebrows, and she could only have imagined his eyes twinkling. He opened a box at random and removed, carefully, a handful of cloudy slivers, displaying them to Lanzecki and Killashandra. The other boxes held similar slivers.

  “Did he cut the triad first or last?” Lanzecki spoke softly as he picked up a finger-long splinter, cramming its irregularities.

  “He didn’t say?” Enthor ventured quietly.

  Lanzecki’s sigh and the brief movement of his head answered that question.

  “I thought the precious symbiont healed—” Killashandra blurted out before she knew she was going to speak.