Crystal Singer

by Anne McCaffrey

  “You’re on Shankill. Trag told me so this morning.”

  “I was. I am here now. You have finished your afternoon’s exercises?”

  “I think they’ve about finished me.”

  He stood aside to indicate she should precede him.

  “The severity of the drills may seem excessive, but the reality of a mach storm is far more violent than anything we can simulate in the trainers,” he said, moving toward the lift while touching her elbow to guide her. “We must prepare you for the very worst that can occur. A mach storm won’t give you a second chance. We try to insure that you have at least one.”

  “I seem to hear that axiom a lot.”

  “Remember it.”

  Killashandra expected the lift to plummet to the Singers’ level. Instead, it rose and, tired as she was, she swayed uncertainly. Lanzecki steadied her, hand cupped under her elbow.

  “The next bad storm is Passover, isn’t it?” She was making conversation because Lanzecki’s touch had sent ripples along her arm. His appearance in the ready room had already unnerved her. She glanced sideways at him as unobtrusively as possible, but his face was in profile. His lips were relaxed, giving no hint of his thoughts.

  “Yes, eight weeks from now is your first Passover.”

  The lift stopped, and the panels retracted. Killashandra stepped with him out into the small reception area. No sooner had he turned to the right than the third door opened. The large room they entered was an office, with one wall covered by a complex data retrieval system. Printout charts hung neatly from the adjacent wall. Before it, a formidable console printed out fax sheets that neatly folded into a bin. Several comfortable chairs occupied the center of the room, one centered at the nine screens that displayed the meteorology transmissions from the planet’s main weather installations and the three moons.

  “Yes, eight weeks away,” Killashandra said, taking a deep breath, “and if I don’t get out to the ranges before it comes, it will be weeks, according to every report I’ve scanned—”

  Lanzecki’s laugh interrupted her.

  “Sit.” He pushed two chairs together and pointed a commanding finger to one.

  Amazed that the Master of the Heptite Guild laughed and infuriated because she had not been able to state her case, she dropped without much grace into the appointed chair, her self-confidence pricked and drained. Presently, she heard the familiar clink of beakers. She looked up as he handed one to her.

  “I like Yarran beer myself, having originated on that planet. I’m obliged to the Scartine for reminding me of it.”

  Killashandra masked her confusion by drinking deeply. Lanzecki knew a great deal about Class 895. He raised his glass to her.

  “Yes, we must get you out to the ranges. If anyone can find Keborgen’s claim, it’s likely to be you.”

  Feeling the beaker slip through fingers made nerveless by shock, she was grateful when he took the glass and put it on the table he swung before her.

  “Conceit in a Singer—voice or crystal—can be a virtue, Killashandra Ree. Do not let such single-mindedness blind you to the fact that others can reach the same conclusions from the same data.”

  “I don’t. That’s why I’ve got to get out into the ranges as soon as possible.” Then she frowned. “How did you know? No one followed me that night. Only you and Enthor knew I’d reacted to Keborgen’s crystals.”

  Lanzecki gave her a long look that she decided must be pity, and she dropped her gaze, jamming her fingers together. She wanted to pound him or stamp her feet violently or indulge in some release from the humiliation she was experiencing.

  Lanzecki, sitting opposite her, began to unlock her fingers one by one.

  “You played the pianoforte as well as the lute,” he said, his finger tips gently examining the thick muscle on the heel of her hand, the lack of webbing between her fingers, their flexible joints and callused tips. If this hadn’t been her Guild Master, Killashandra would have enjoyed the semi-caress. “Didn’t you?”

  She mumbled an affirmative, unable to remain quite silent. She was relieved, taking a deeply needed breath as he leaned back and took up his drink, sipping it slowly.

  “No one did follow you. And only Enthor and I knew of your sensitivity to Keborgen’s black crystal. Very few people know the significance of a Milekey transition beyond the fact that you somehow escaped the discomforts they had to endure. What they will never appreciate is the totality of the symbiotic adjustment.”

  “Is that why Antona wished me luck?”

  Lanzecki smiled as he nodded.

  “Does that have something to do with my identifying black crystal so easily? Did Keborgen have a Milekey, too?”

  “Yes, to both questions.”

  “That totality didn’t save his life, did it?”

  “Not that time,” he said mildly, ignoring her angry, impudent question. Lanzecki voice-cued a display screen, and the guild’s chronological roster appeared. Keborgen’s name was in the early third. “As I told you that evening, the symbiont ages too, and is then limited in the help it can give an ancient and abused body.”

  “Why Keborgen must have been two hundred years old! He didn’t look it!” Killashandra was aghast. She’d had only one glimpse of the injured Crystal Singer’s face, but she never would have credited twenty decades to his age. Suddenly, the pressure of hundreds of years of life seemed as depressing to Killashandra as her inability to get into the ranges.

  “Happily, one doesn’t realize the passage of time in our profession until some event displays a forcible comparison.”

  “You had a Milekey transition.” She shot her guess at him as if it were undeniable.

  He nodded affirmation.

  “But you don’t sing crystal?”

  “I have.”

  “Then . . . why . . .” and she gestured around the office and then at him.

  “Guild Masters are chosen early and trained rigorously in all aspects of the operation.”

  “Keborgen was . . . but he sang crystal. And you have, too.” She sprang to her feet, unable to assimilate the impact of Lanzecki’s quiet words. “You don’t mean . . . I have to train to be . . . You’re raving!”

  “No, you are raving,” Lanzecki replied, a slight smile playing on his face as he gestured her to her seat and pointed at her beer. “Steady your nerves. My only purpose in having a private talk with you is to reassure you that you will go out into the ranges as soon as I can arrange a shepherd for you.”

  “Shepherd?”

  Killashandra was generally quick enough of wit to absorb the unexpected without floundering, but Lanzecki’s singular interest in her, his awareness of intentions that she had kept utterly private, and his disclosures of the past few minutes had left her bewildered.

  “Oh? Concera neglected to mention this facet of training?”

  “Yes, a shepherd, Killashandra Ree, a seasoned Singer who will permit you to accompany him or her to a worked face, probably the least valuable of his claims, to demonstrate in practice what, to that point, has been theory.”

  “I’ve had theory up to my eyeballs.”

  “Above and behind them is better, my dear, which is where your brain is located, where theory must become reflex. On such reflexive knowledge may lie your survival. A successful Crystal Singer must have transcended the need for the conscious performance of his art.”

  “I’ve an eidetic memory. I can recite—”

  “If you couldn’t, you wouldn’t be here.” Lanzecki’s tone reminded Killashandra of her companion’s rank and the importance of the matter under consideration. He took a sip of his beer. “How often has Concera told you these past few weeks that an eidetic memory is generally associated with perfect pitch? And how often that memory distortion is one of the cruel facets of crystal singing? Sensory overload, as you ought to know, is altogether too frequent an occurrence in the ranges. I am not concerned with your ability to remember: I am concerned with how much memory distortion you will suffer. To
prevent distortion, you have been subjected to weeks of drill and will continue to be. I am also vitally concerned in a recruit who has made a Milekey transition, retunes crystal well enough that Trag cannot fault her, who drives a sled so cleverly that the flight officer has given her patterns he wouldn’t dare fly, and a person who had the wit to try to outsmart as old a hand at claim-hiding as Keborgen.”

  Lanzecki’s compliments, though delivered as dry fact, disconcerted Killashandra more than any other of the afternoon’s disclosures. She concentrated on the fact that Lanzecki actually wanted her to go after Keborgen’s claim.

  “Do you know where I should look?”

  Lanzecki smiled, altering the uncompromising planes of his craggy face. He crossed one arm on his chest, supporting the elbow of the other, sipping at his beer.

  “You’ve been doing the probability programming. Why don’t you retrieve the data you’ve been accumulating?”

  “How do you know what I’ve been doing? I thought my private voice code was unbreakable!”

  “So it is.” The sardonic look on Lanzecki’s face reproved her for doubting. “But your use of data retrieval for weather, sled performance, and the time you have recently spent programming was notable. In a general way, what recruits or newly convalesced Singers do is unregarded. However, when the person in question is not only sensitive to black crystal but signs out a skimmer to track the crash of a sled known to have transported black crystal, a quiet surveillance and a performance check are justified. Don’t you agree? My dear girl, you are a very slow drinker. Finish it up and call up your program on Keborgen.” He stood and indicated that she was to sit at the big console. “I’ll get more beer for us and something to munch.” He sauntered off to the catering unit.

  Killashandra quickly took her place at the console, voice-coding the program. Though she might have doubted before now, Lanzecki’s reproof reassured her. Nor did she doubt that he wanted more black crystal from Keborgen’s claim, and if she offered the Guild the best chance of retrieving the loss, he would support her.

  “Did you know Keborgen?” she asked, then realized that this must sound a stupid query to his Guild Master.

  “As well as any man or woman here did.”

  “Part of my theory”—and Killashandra spoke quickly, tapping for the parameters she had stored on sled speed, warning time, and storm winds’ velocity based on Keborgen’s crash line—“is that Keborgen flew out direct.”

  Lanzecki put a fresh beaker on the ledge of the console, a tray of steaming morsels beside it, and smiled indulgently at her.

  “No consideration, even his own safety, would have weighed more with Keborgen than protecting that claim.”

  “If that was what was expected of him, mightn’t he once, in his desperate situation, choose the straight course?”

  Lanzecki considered this, leaning against the console edge.

  “Remember, he’d left escape to the last minute, judging by his arrival,” Killashandra added earnestly. “The sled was not malfunctioning: the medical report postulated that he was suffering from sensory overload. But when he set out, he would have known from the met that the storm would be short. He would have known that everyone else would have cleared out of the ranges so a direct route wouldn’t be observed. And he hadn’t cut that claim in nine years. Would that be important?”

  “Not especially. Not for someone who had sung as long as Keborgen.” Lanzecki tapped his forehead significantly and then looked down at the display where her parameters overlaid the chart of the area. “The others are searching west of your proposed site.”

  “Others?” Killashandra felt her mouth go dry.

  “It’s a valuable claim, my dear Killashandra; of course, I have to permit search. Don’t be overly anxious,” he added, resting one hand lightly on her shoulder. “They’ve never sung black.”

  “Does being sensitive to it give an advantage?”

  “In your case, quite likely. You were the first other person to touch the crystal after Keborgen cut it. That seems to key a perceptive person to the face. Seems, I emphasize, not does. Much of what we should like to know about cutting crystal is locked within paranoid brains; silence is their defense against detection and their eventual destruction. However, one day, we shall know how to defend them against themselves.” He was standing behind her now, cupping her shoulders with his hands. The contact was distracting to Killashandra, though she fancied he meant to be reassuring. Or supportive, because his next words were pessimistic. “Your greatest disadvantage, my dear Killashandra, is that you are a total novice when it comes to finding or cutting crystal. Where”—and his blunt forefinger pointed to the rough triangle on the map—“would your projected flight place his claim?”

  “Here!” Killashandra pointed without hesitation to the spot, equidistant from the northern tip of the triangle and the sides defined.

  He gave her shoulders a brief squeeze and moved off, walking slowly across the thick carpeting, hands behind his back. He tilted his head up, as if the blank ceiling might give him back a clue to the tortured reasoning of a dying Crystal Singer.

  “Part of the Milekey transition is a weather affinity. A spore always knows storm, though its human host may choose to trust instrumentation rather than instinct. Keborgen was old, he’d begun to distrust everything, including his sled. He would have been inclined to rely on his affinity rather than the warning devices.” Lanzecki’s bland expression cautioned her against such ignorance. “As I told you, the symbiosis loses its capabilities as the host ages. What you haven’t accounted for in your program is Keborgen’s desperate need to get off-planet during Passover—and he hadn’t quite enough credit to do so. A cut of black crystal, any size, would have insured it. Those shards would have been sufficient. My opinion is that, having cleared them, he found he had a flawless cut. He ignored both the sled’s warnings and his symbiont and finished the cut. He lost time.”

  He paused behind Killashandra again, put both hands on her shoulders, leaning slightly against her as he peered at the overlay.

  “I think you’re nearer right on the position than the others, Killashandra Ree.” His chuckle was vibrant, and the sound seemed to travel through his fingers and down her shoulders. “A fresh viewpoint, unsullied as yet by the devious exigencies of decades spent outwitting everyone, including self.” Then, releasing her when she did not wish him to, he continued in a completely different tone of voice. “Did Carrik interest you in the Guild?”

  “No.” She swung the console chair about and caught a very curious and unreadable movement of Lanzecki’s mouth. His face and eyes were expressionless, but he was waiting for her to elaborate. “No, he told me the last thing I wanted to be was a Crystal Singer. He wasn’t the only one to warn me off.”

  Lanzecki raised his eyebrows.

  “Everyone I knew on Fuerte was against my leaving with a Crystal Singer in spite of the fact that he had saved many lives there.” She was bitter about that, more bitter than she had supposed. While she knew it had not been Maestro Valdi’s fault, if he hadn’t initiated the hold on her, Carrik and she would have been well away from Fuerte and that shuttle crash; Carrik might still be well. But would she have become a Singer?

  “Despite all that is rumored about Crystal Singers, Killashandra, we have our human moments.”

  She stared at Lanzecki, wondering if he meant Carrik’s saving lives or warning her against singing.

  “Now,” and Lanzecki walked to the console and touched a key. Suddenly, the triangle of F42NW down to F43NW in which Killashandra hoped to search was magnified on the big display across the room. “Yes, there’s plenty of range totally unmarked.”

  At that magnification, Killashandra could also discern five paint splashes. Within the five-klick circle centering on the paint splash, the tumbled gorges and hills were under claim. A Singer could renounce his claim by listing the geographical coordinates, but Concera had told Killashandra that such an occurrence was rare.

  “
You could search an entire ravine and still miss the hoard inside the face,” Lanzecki said, staring at the target area. “Or come a cropper with the claim’s rightful owner.” He reversed the magnification, and slowly the area was reduced until it faded into the rocky wrinkles surrounding the bay.

  “Monday you will go out. Moksoon is not willing. He never is. But he’s trying to get off-planet; with a decent cut and the bonus for shepherding, he could make it this time.

  “Killashandra?”

  “Yes, I go out on Monday. Moksoon is not willing but for the bonus—”

  “Killashandra, you will find the black crystal!” Lanzecki’s eyes took on an uncanny intensity, reinforcing his message and the strength of his conviction that Killashandra Ree was an agent he could command.

  “Only if I’m bloody lucky.” She laughed, recovering her equilibrium as she gestured to the vast area she’d have to comb.

  Lanzecki’s eyes did not leave hers. She was reminded of an ancient piece of drama history: a man had hypnotized a girl, a musical idiot, into vocal performances without peer. She couldn’t recall the name, but to think of Lanzecki, Resident Master of one of the most prestigious Guilds in the Federated Sentient Planets, attempting to . . . ah . . . Svengali her into locating the nardy precious black crystal was ludicrous. Only she couldn’t suggest that to Lanzecki, not when he was regarding her in so disconcerting a fashion.

  Suddenly, he threw up his head and started to laugh. He abandoned his whole body to the exercise, his chest caving in, his ribs arching, his hands spread on his thighs as he bent forward. If anyone had told her five minutes before that Guild Master Lanzecki was capable of humor at all, she’d have thought them mad. He collapsed into a seating unit, his head lolling against its back as he roared.

  His laughter had an oddly infectious quality, and she grinned in response. Then laughed, too, to see the Guild Master so reduced in dignity by mirth.

  “Killashandra . . .” He gasped her name as the laughter subsided. “I do apologize, but the look on your face . . . I’ve thrown the reputation of the entire Guild into jeopardy, have I not?” He wiped moisture from the corners of his eyes and straightened up. “I haven’t laughed in a very long time.”