Crystal Singer

by Anne McCaffrey

  Rising, she looked around. Roughly 6 meters long, carefully cut to maintain that rough, natural look, the V opened to a width of 4 meters on the ravine side. Reverently now, she took a waste-cloth and brushed mud away. The dull shine of cold black crystal was revealed. Using the cloth, she mopped away the water. Keborgen’s triad had been cut true, but to themselves, not to the angle of the vein, leaving this little wedge to accumulate water. No, this little piece was flawed, storm damage, more than likely. She caressed it, feeling the roughness of the flaw. Then she began excitedly to clean the ledge, to find out where the flaw stopped, where was the good black crystal. Ah, here, at the side, just where Keborgen had stopped cutting when the storm arrived.

  How big, how deep, how wide was this crystal vein? This treasure store? Killashandra’s elation overwhelmed her initial caution; laughing, she scrubbed at first this spot in the opposite wall, then along the slanty arms of the V, mopping the disguising grit and mud from the crystal and giggling softly to herself. Her titter echoed back to her, and she began to laugh, the louder sound reverberating.

  She was surrounded by crystal. It was singing to her! She slid to the floor, oblivious of the mud, stroking the crystal face on either side of her, trying not to giggle, trying to realize, get it through her dazed brain, that she, Killashandra Ree, had actually found Keborgen’s black crystal claim. And it was hers, section and paragraph.

  Killashandra was unaware of the passage of time. She must have spent hours looking around the claim, seeing where Keborgen had cleared flawed crystal from the outside. He had undoubtedly expected to return once the storm had blown out. He was cutting from a shelf a meter above the higher arm of the V. He was an astute Cutter, for he hadn’t ravaged crystal but worked for flawless cuts, the triads, and quartets, the larger groupings that would command the highest price from the greedy FSP who were eager to set up the crystal links between all inhabited planets. Keborgen had kept a natural-fault look to his claim, allowing the foot of the V to gather mud and dirt that wind and water would spill naturally across the lower part. By comparison, Moksoon was a very lazy Cutter, but then he had only rose quartz.

  The crystal around her began to crackle and tzing, soft reassuring noises. As if, Killashandra thought fancifully, it had accepted the transfer of ownership. Enchanted, she listened to the soft sounds, waiting almost breathless for the next series until she also became aware of chill, that she sat in true dark, not shadow.

  Reluctantly and still bemused by the crystalline chorus, she hoisted herself from the claim, retracing the rough path to her sled.

  Relative sanity returned to her in the clean newness of her vehicle. She sat down and made a drawing of the claim, testing her recall of the dimensions, jotting down her assumptions on Keborgen’s work routine.

  She’d get an early start in the morning, she thought, looking at her cutter. She’d have several clear days now.

  “I’ll have several clear days?” The certainty of her thought on that score astonished her. She snapped on the met forecast. Tomorrow would be fair, with a likelihood of several more to come.

  What had Lanzecki said about a weather affinity in the Milekey transition? That she could trust her symbiont? Distrust of the mechanical had brought about Keborgen’s belated start to safety. Ah, but if he’d stopped to repaint his claim mark, he had listened to some warning.

  Killashandra hugged her arms tightly to her. In theory, the symbiotic spore was now part of her cellular construction, certainly no part of her conscious mind nor a restless visitor in her body. At least until she called upon its healing powers. Or resisted its need to return to Ballybran.

  She made a voice-coded note on the recorder about her instinctive knowledge of the weather. She could keep a check on that.

  She remembered to eat before she lay down, for the excitements of the day had fatigued her. She set her buzz alarm for twenty minutes before sunrise. Breakfasted, and refreshed by her sleep, she was on the summit path as the sun’s first rays found their way over the top of the far range, cutter slung over her shoulder, carton swinging from her free hand.

  She left the carton where Keborgen had left his—how long would echoes of the dead accompany her in this site?—and stepped down into the claim. Sun had not yet reached even the higher point of the V. It would be easier to cut now, she thought, before the crystal started its morning song. She wiped clean the protuberance she meant to cut, roughly 50 centimeters long by 25 centimeters high and varying between 10 and 15 centimeters wide. She had to follow the ridges left by Keborgen’s last cuts. Why ever didn’t he just make straight lines? Flaws? She ran her hands across the surface, as if apologizing for what she was about to do. The crystal whispered under her touch.

  Enough of this, she told herself severely. She imagined that both Trag and Lanzecki were watching, then struck the shelf with the tone wedge. Sound poured over her like tsunami. Every bone and joint reverberated the note. Her skull seemed to part at its seams, her blood pulsed like a metronome in time with the vibrations. Echoes were thrown back to her from the other side of the claim and, oddly soured, from crescent valley.

  “Cut! You’re supposed to tune your cutter to the note and cut!” Killashandra shouted at herself, and the echo shouted back.

  Nothing as devastating as this had occurred when Moksoon had sung for note. Was it because she was sensitive to the black, not pink, nor attuned to his claim? He had also not been standing in the center of his claim but on granite. Nor was this experience like the scream of retuned crystal: there was no agony, no resentment in that glorious resonance, overpowering as it was.

  She did not have to strike the crystal again. The A was locked in her head and ears. She hesitated just once more as she steadied the infrasonic blade to make the first incision. As well, for only an unconscious resolve, an obstinacy that she had never had to invoke, kept her cutting. Sound enveloped her, an A in chords and octaves, a ringing that made every nerve end in her body vibrate in a state that wasn’t painful, was oddly pleasurable but curiously distracting. She felt the blade sound darken and pulled it out. She made the second vertical cut just before Keborgen’s mark. This block would be shorter than the others and narrower. It couldn’t be helped. She gritted her teeth against the coursing shock as blade met crystal and sound met nerve. Her hands seemed to respond to the endless hours of drill under Trag’s direction, but she didn’t consciously tell herself to stop the second vertical cut. Some practiced connection between hand and eye stopped her. She let that instinct assist her in making the horizontal slice that would sever the crystal from the vein. Its cry was not as fierce.

  Carefully, she put the cutter down, awed by the thread-thin separation she had caused. With hands still shaking from the effort of guiding the cutter she tipped the rectangle out and held it up. Sun caught and darkened the oblong, showing to her wondering eyes the slight deviation from a true angle. She couldn’t have cared less and wept with joy as the song of sun-warmed black crystal, now truly matte black in response to heat, seeped through her skin to intoxicate her senses.

  How long she stood in awed thrall, holding the rectangle into the sun like an ancient priestess, she would never know. A cloud, one of the few that day, briefly obscured the light and broke the song. Killashandra was conscious then of the ache in her shoulders from holding weight aloft and a numbness in fingers, feet, and legs. She was strangely unwilling to release the crystal. “Pack crystal as soon as you have cut.” The echo of Lanzecki’s advice came to her. Moksoon, too, had packed as soon as he had cut. She remembered how reluctant the crazed old Singer had seemed to release the rose into the carton. Now she appreciated both advice and example.

  Only when she had snuggled the crystal block into its plastic cocoon did she realize her debilitation. She leaned, drained of strength, against the crystal wall and sank slowly to the floor, marginally aware of the murmuring crystal against which she rested.

  “This will never do,” she told herself, ignoring the faint, chimed echo
of her voice. She took a food packet from her thigh pouch and mechanically chewed and drank. The terrible lethargy began to ease.

  She glanced at the sky and realized that the sun was dropping to the west. She must have spent half a good clear day admiring her handiwork.

  “Ridiculous!”

  The scoffing “d” sound spat back at her.

  “I wouldn’t mock if I were you, my friend,” she told the claim as she eyed the cuts for the second block. She’d want to get this one squarer or she’d end up with a suspiciously symmetrical puddle as Keborgen had done.

  She didn’t need to tap for pitch: the A was seared into her mind. She turned on and adjusted the cutter, nerving herself for the crystalline response. She was almost overset by the pure, unprotesting note given back. Immensely relieved, she made the two vertical cuts, watching to keep the cutter blade straight. She made the third, horizontal slice and cursed herself for unconsciously following the pattern of her first, uneven cut. Sensation palpably oozed off the cut black, but this time she knew crystal tricks and quickly buried it beside its mate in the carton.

  The third crystal ought to have been the easiest. She made the first cut deftly, pleased with her expertise. But the vertical incision to sever the rectangle from the face went off the true pitch. She halted, peered in at the grayish, pale-brown mass, touched it and felt, not tactilely, but through the nerves in her finger tips that she was cutting on flaw. If she moved a half centimeter out . . . The block would not match the other two but the crystal cried clear. She turned it over and over in her hands, her back carefully to the sun, inspecting the block for any other sign of flaw. This was, she told herself sternly, an excuse to caress it with fingers that delighted in the smooth, soapy texture, the whisper of sound, the sensations that reached her nerves as delicate as . . . as Lanzecki’s kiss in her palm?

  Killashandra chuckled, her laughter tinkling back from all sides. Lanzecki, or recollections of him, would seem to constitute an anchor in this exotic arena of sound and sensation. Would he appreciate that role? And when, or if, she returned to Lanzecki’s arms, would she remember crystal in them?

  Thoughts of him effectively blotted the lure of the third rectangle that she packed away. She was then aware of a coolness, a light breeze, where before the air had been warm and still. Looking westward, she realized that she had once more been crystal-tricked. The day was almost over, and she’d only three black crystals to show for sixteen hours’ work—or mental aberration. There was a whole side to be cut.

  Obviously there was much about the cutting of crystal that could not be explained, programmed, or theorized. It had to be experienced. She hadn’t acquired enough tips or tricks or insights from watching Moksoon. She had learned a good deal from observing Keborgen’s cutting. Intuition suggested that she would never learn all there was to the cutting of crystal. That ought to make a long life as a Singer more eventful. If she could just handle the frustration of long hours in contemplation of her handiwork!

  The three crystals were quiescent in their packing case, but her hands lingered on it as she fixed the stowage webbing. She assembled a large hot meal for herself and a beaker of Yarran beer. Taking food and drink outside, she strode to the dip and seated herself on a convenient boulder.

  She watched the sun set on her claim and the moons rise. The cooling crystal cried across the blind valley that separated them.

  “You had your way—” and Killashandra stopped her mocking sentence as her first word was echoed back from the newly exposed crystal. “You who—” And the vowel came back to her, in harmony. Amused by the phenomenon, she pitched a second “you who” a third lower and heard it chime in with the faint reverberations of the first. She laughed at her whimsy. Crystal laughed back. And the first stirrings of the night breeze as great Shankill moon rose brought counter harmonies to her solo.

  She sang. She sang to the crystal; the wind learned the tune, though gradually the crystal chorus died as the last sun warmth left it, and only the wind softly repeated her lyric line.

  Shilmore rose and the night air brought a chill that roused her from a trance of the kind that Maestro Valdi must have meant. He was right, she thought. Crystal song could be addictive and was utterly exhausting. She staggered back to the sled. Without shedding her coverall, Killashandra drew the thermal sheet over her as she turned her shoulder into the mattress. And slept.

  A faint sound roused her. Not the buzzer, for she hadn’t remembered to set an alarm. Groggily, she raised her head, staring in accusation at the console, but there was no warning light and certainly no buzz. However, something had awakened her.

  Outside, the sled the sun was shining. She pushed herself off the bed and dialed a strong stimulant. The time display read midmorning. She’d missed five hours of cutting light! She’d a cramp in one shoulder, and her knees ached. The heat of the drink flowed through her, dispersing the sluggishness of her mind and easing her muscles. She drank as quickly as she could, dialed a second cup, shoved protein bars into her coverall pockets. Unbracketing her cutter, she slung it across her back, got another carton, a handlight, and was on her way to the claim ten minutes after waking. The sound that woke her had been the crack of raw black crystal feeling the touch of sun.

  First she had to clear splinters that had fallen from the end of her cut, the result of the night’s chill and the morning’s sun. Stolidly, she set her mind and collected the small pieces, dropping them into the packing case. With the handlight, she could now see where another flaw crazed the crystal quartz on the hillside. Using the inner edge of the previous day’s shelf, however, she could make an interlocking group, four medium—or five smaller—rectangles. She’d cut these now, let the chill crack off flaw. A little expeditious trimming on the ravine side and the temperature would remove the blemishes. Tomorrow she’d have a rare day’s cutting.

  Killashandra set her nerves for the first incision of the infrasonic cutter and was relieved to endure less shock. Relieved and dismayed. Was the claim admitting her right to it by lack of protest? Or did one day attune her body to the resonance? She had half wished to experience that pleasurable, nerve-caressing distraction, as if a highly skilled lover were inside her body.

  She did not remember, due to those reflections no doubt, to pack away as soon as she’d turned off the blade. She did remember to shield the rectangle from the sun as she stroked it, totally in rapport with her creation. She admired the clever angle she had contrived to make an old cut—

  And suddenly realized that she had been communing with the violated crystal. She resolutely packed it away, and the next four were stowed as soon as she laid the cutter down. She had to teach herself the automatic sequence. “Habit,” Concera had endlessly and rightly said, “is all that saves a Singer.”

  Killashandra set herself to clearing the ravine face, but the sun’s reflection off the quartz pained her eyes. She’d wasted too much time in sleep and in crystal thrall.

  She woke in the night suddenly, an odd apprehension driving sleep from her mind. Uneasily, she checked the stored cartons, wondering if something had caused them to resonate. Outside the night was clear, the moons had set, and the range was deep asleep. She glanced at the console and the storm alarms. She cursed under her breath. She hadn’t had a met reading. The printout showed clouds moving in from the White Sea, some turbulence, but at an altitude that might reach the dominant easterly air current and dissipate. A pattern to watch, to be sure.

  She slept uneasily until the first crack of light. Apprehensively she dialed a met printout. The picture wasn’t alarming, though cloud cover had increased in depth and speed. A high-pressure area was coming south, but no storm warning was issued for the Bay area. If a storm were making, she’d’ve had a satellite warning by now.

  The continual awareness of something out of kilter made cutting easier. She completed a cut of four large five-sided blacks, had stored all the debris, when the pressure of her subjective anxiety became too intense to continue. Operat
ing on an intuition too powerful to be refused, she slung the cutter over her shoulder, grabbed a carton in each hand, and started back to the sled. Halfway there she heard the hooter and nearly tripped for looking up at the still-cloudless sky above her.

  She tapped out an update for the weather. The hooter was only the first warner: a watch-the-weather-picture caution. Everything inside her head was far more alarmed than the Guild’s signal. The met displayed a brewing turbulence that could flow either north or south, depending on the low pressure ridge.

  She stared at the display, not at all reassured. She did her own calculations. If the very worst occurred, the storm could boil across the tip of the main continent and run across her position in four or five hours, building speed at a tremendous rate once it acquired the impetus of the advancing ridge.

  “I thought you were supposed to warn us!” she shouted at the other silent storm-alerts. The hooter had automatically ceased blaring when she had programmed the weather picture. “Four, five hours. That doesn’t give me time to cut anything more. Just sit here and stew until you lot wake up to the danger. Isn’t anyone analyzing the met patterns? Why all this rigmarole about distant early warnings and weather sensors if they don’t bloody work?”

  As she vented her tension in a one-sided tirade, she was also rigging her ship for storm-running. The four precious cartons of black crystal were securely webbed in front of the mocking empties. She changed her coverall and realized from the grime on her wrists and ankles that she hadn’t bathed since coming to the ranges. She wanted to reappear at the complex looking presentable. A quick wash was refreshing, and she ate a light meal as she did some computations of deviation courses that would disguise the direction from which she came and confuse other Singers called in by the storm. She had just completed what would be a most elaborate break-out when the first of the dead-earnest storm warnings came on.