Crystal Singer

by Anne McCaffrey

  Pendel and Tallaf hastily motioned the guard to comply, and the container was already aboard the shuttle, webbed tight, before Captain Francu arrived. He stopped abruptly, stared with rage and shock at the carton, then at Killashandra who smiled pleasantly at him.

  “You carried the other crystals, Guild Member—”

  “Ah, but this is a longer journey, captain, and unless that crystal is safely installed in your main communications room, all the others are useless and this voyage of your cruiser an exercise in futility.”

  “Captain, the time factors—” Tallaf stepped forward, his expression one of cautious concern.

  Francu set his jaw, edged past the crystal to the stern of the cutter. She could hear the crack of metal tabs as he webbed himself in. She supposed that she was lucky that, in his current frame of mind, Francu wasn’t the pilot.

  The shuttle disengaged itself from the cruiser, seemed to hang suspended as the cruiser moved obliquely away from it. Actually, before the view ports were closed, Killashandra realized that the shuttle had done all the moving: the cruiser was inexorably set in its direction, and nothing would deter it.

  She had meant to stay awake, but the scream and heat of entry into the planets atmosphere roused her from another irresistible snooze. She stared about, momentarily startled by the unfamiliar surroundings. Hastily, she swallowed two stimutabs, smiling serenely around as if she had only been conserving her energy.

  The shuttle had been brought to a complete halt before the medicine took effect, and she debated taking a third as the hatch was being opened.

  A landing platform appeared at once, and from her seat, she could see the vast crowd assembled on both sides of a wide aisle leading to the huge communications building with its roof clusters of dish antennas, tilted like caps to the sky, caps raised to salute their own obsolescence.

  “The crystal, Guild Member!” Francu’s acid voice reminded her, too, of this final surrender.

  She flipped open the carton and removed the king crystal, took a deep breath, and walked down the landing ramp, holding the crystal before her. She always played best to a full house, she reminded herself. The other installations were only rehearsals for this one.

  The fresh air of the planet was naturally scented and crisp. She breathed in deeply and would not be hurried in this ceremonial walk.

  Francu appeared at one side, Tallaf at her other, both muttering about walking faster.

  “It’s so good to breathe uncontaminated air. My lungs have been stifled. I must breathe.”

  “You must walk faster,” Francu said, a smile jiggling his cheeks as he responded nervously to the presence of a large crowd of people in an open space greater than his huge new cruiser.

  “If you can, Killashandra. We’ve a time boggle,” said Tallaf, his voice anxious.

  “They’re all here to see the crystal,” Killashandra noted, but she lengthened her stride, holding the cocoon above her head, hearing the surprise wave of exclamations, seeing the nearest drawing back. Was the crowd here to see crystal succeed, she wondered, or fail? This was not a receptive audience! She’d faced enough to sense the animosity and fear.

  She strode on to the building’s entrance, slightly outdistancing the two spacemen.

  “We will have to hurry this, Guild Member,” a man said, taking her arm as she passed the doorway.

  “Yes, we will, or we can’t be responsible for your safety.”

  She heard heavy metal doors thud shut behind her and a muffled noise emanating from outside and becoming louder.

  “I’ve been given to understand that this project is not universally favored, gentlemen. But one message sent and received will disperse that . . .” and she indicated the crowd which had pressed in about the building.

  “This way, Guild Member.”

  They were all almost running now, and she was annoyed that the urgency of the situation was going to ruin her performance. Ridiculous! How absurd to be put in such a position! Especially when she was possessed of an overwhelming desire to go to sleep again. She shoved the crystal into the crook of one arm—there was no one to impress with her theatrics in this hurry—and managed to stuff two more tabs into her mouth.

  Then she was whirled into the main chamber of the immense building, where nervous technicians were more interested in the outward-facing security scanners than the printouts and displays common to their business.

  “Do hurry with this one, Killashandra,” Tallaf urged as she took the last few steps to the raised level and the empty niche where the king crystal would be mounted.

  She stripped the plastic away with nervous fingers and suddenly found serenity and surcease as the bared crystal caressed her skin.

  “Hurry!” Francu exhorted her. “If that thing won’t give us a message from Copper—”

  Killashandra withered him with a glance, but her dislike of him broke the tenuous enchantment she had been hoping to enjoy. Now she heard the noise of the crowd, the increasing pitch of its excitement and frustration. She dare not delay the mounting. Nor did she want to relinquish her black crystal to this stem of ignorant savages, this society of metal-mongerers, this—

  The black crystal was mounted, turning matte black as it responded to the heat of the room.

  “Hurry!” “Has something gone wrong?” “It won’t work!”

  “Of course, crystal will sing,” said Killashandra, raising the little hammer and striking the king block.

  The rich full A of the king crystal rang through the large room, silencing the irreverent babble. Killashandra was transfixed. The A became the louder note of the five-crystal chord, the two F and two E crystals singing back to her through the king. The human voice cannot produce chords. With the pitch of the A dominant in her head, that was the note that burst from Killashandra as the shock of establishing the link between the five crystals enveloped her. Sound like a shock wave, herself the sound and the sounding board, vision over vision, a fire in her bones, thunder in her veins, a heart-contracting experience of pain and pleasure so intense and so total that every nerve in her body and every convolution of her brain echoed. The chord held Killashandra in a thrall more absolute than her first experience of crystal. Sustaining the note despite the agony of the physical mechanics of breath, Killashandra was simultaneously in the communications rooms of the two mining stations and the two moons. She splintered in sound from one crystal block to the next, apart and indissoluble, a fragment of the first message sent and instantly received and forever divorced from it.

  “Copper to home. Copper to home base!” She knew the message, for it passed through her as well as the crystal. She heard the exultant reply and the incredulous response to its simultaneity. She had cut the crystals for this purpose, she had borne them to their various sites, and she had condemned them to sing for others. No one had told her they would cause her to sing through them in a space-crossing chord!

  “Killashandra?” Someone touched her, and she cried out. Flesh upon flesh broke her awesome communion with the crystal link. She fell to her knees, too bereft to cry, too stunned to resist.

  “Killashandra!” Someone raised her to her feet.

  She could feel crystal power singing behind her through the king block, but she was forever excluded from its thrall.

  “Get her back to the shuttle.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Of course, it’s safe. The link works! The whole system knows that now!”

  “Through this door, lieutenant. You’ll have to detour. The crowd is blocking your way to the shuttle.”

  “We don’t have time to detour.”

  “We’ll break through the crowd. Carry her first. That’ll make them give way!”

  “They can’t be afraid of a woman!”

  “She’s not a woman. She’s a Crystal Singer!”

  Killashandra was aware of being carried through a dense crowd. She heard a rapid clattering, and loud but jubilant cries and, somewhere in the section of her brain that recorded i
mpressions, she correlated sound and cheers with applause. So many people in such proximity was an unexpected torture.

  “Get me out of here,” she whispered hoarsely, clutching the man who carried her with desperate hands.

  He said nothing but quickened his pace, his breathing ragged with effort. He could barely disentangle himself from her when a second man came to his assistance.

  “This delay may abort the whole intercept.”

  “Captain, we’d no idea how feelings ran here. No warning that there’d be such a crowd. We’re almost there now.”

  “If we’ve lost the window—”

  “We’ll have a frigate standing by ready to catch up—”

  “Do shut up and let me sleep. Stop joggling me so.”

  “Sleep?” The indignation in Francu’s voice roused her briefly from her torpor. “Sleep she wants when—”

  “Just settle yourself in this seat, Killashandra. I’ll do the webbing.”

  “Drink. Need a drink. Anything. Water.”

  “Not now. Not now.”

  “Yes, now! I thirst.”

  “Captain, you fly. Here’s water, Killashandra.”

  She drank deeply, aware that the substance was water, real water, crisp, clear, cool water, used only this once, for her consumption. Some of it spilled when she was jolted about, and she protested the loss, licking it from her hands. She was shoved away from the water by a tremendous force and pleaded to be given more to drink.

  She was soothed, and then finally the weight was lifted, and she was given as much as she wanted to drink.

  “Are you all right now, Killashandra?” She rather thought it was Tallaf asking.

  “Yes. Now all I need is sleep. Just let me sleep until I wake.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Waking up was a gradual and remarkably languorous process. Killashandra felt that she was unfolding in sections, starting with her mind, which sent out sleepy messages to her extremities that movement was possible again. She went through a long series of stretchings and yawnings, interspersed with rather wild and vivid flashes. At first, she thought them picodreams but then realized that all were from one viewpoint: hers! And she was overwhelmed by faces and applause and light flashing from the blackening crystal. An orgasmic sensation in her loins completed her unfolding and brought her to sharp consciousness and regret. Those half dreams had been lovely echoes of the linkage with black crystal.

  Crystal! She sat up in bed and nearly caught her head on the bedside shelf. She was on the wretched cruiser! She glanced at her wrist-unit, confirming it with the cabin time display.

  “Three days! I’ve been asleep three days!” Antona had warned her.

  Killashandra lay back, easing shoulder and tightening back muscles. She must have slept all three days in one position to have such cramps.

  A soft scratching at her door panel caught her attention.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you awake, Guild Member?”

  There were several answers she would have given if she hadn’t recognized Chasurt’s voice.

  “You may enter.”

  “Are you awake?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t be answering you in my sleep. Come in!” As the door panel slid open, she added, “And would you ask Pendel if he can supply me with something decent to eat?”

  “I will ascertain if food is advisable,” the man said, holding in her direction a diagnostic tool similar to Antona’s.

  “Not the stodge that’s served in the cruiser’s mess but liquid and fruit—”

  “If you’ll just be cooperative—”

  “I am!” Killashandra felt that attitude rapidly changing. “This sort of sleep phase is perfectly normal—”

  “We haven’t been able to contact Ballybran for specific instructions—”

  “For what?”

  “Proper treatment of your prolonged coma—”

  “I wasn’t in a coma. Did you not check the printout in your own medical library? I want something to drink. And eat.”

  “I am the cruiser’s meditech—”

  “Who has never met a Crystal Singer before and knows nothing of my occupational hazards.” Killashandra had pulled on the nearest piece of clothing, her Guild coverall. Now she swung herself off the bunk and lurched past Chasurt, who made a vain attempt to grab her. “Pendel!” Killashandra started down the corridor. She surprised herself that she could maneuver so readily after the exhaustion that had overtaken her. The symbiont might take, but it also gave.

  “Guild Member!” Chasurt was in pursuit, but she had the head start and longer legs.

  She turned again, into the super’s corridor, and saw Tic at Pendel’s door, and then his head was visible.

  “Pendel? I’m perishing for a glass of Yarran beer! Please say you have some fruit left? And possibly a cup of that excellent soup you served me some time a hundred years ago?”

  By the time she reached his door, Pendel handed her a half-empty glass of Yarran beer for one hand and a fruit for the other. She squeezed past him and Tic, leaving them to block Chasurt.

  “There you are, Killashandra,” Pendel said, standing across the doorway so that Chasurt could not barge in. Tic moved staunchly in front of Killashandra as the second line of defense. “More fruit within hand. Now, Chasurt, don’t get yourself knotted. Come with me, and you can add whatever nutrients and restoratives you feel are required to the soup I’m getting Killashandra. Put those stupid sprays back into your pockets. Crystal Singers don’t ordinarily require any medication. Don’t you know anything beyond space-freeze and laser burn?”

  Pendel hurried Chasurt away, signaling Tic to close the door and stand guard. Killashandra had finished the beer and started on the fruit. She closed her eyes with relief as juice and pulp soothed her parched mouth. She ate slowly, an instinct imposed on her by the symbiont, which knew very well what it required after fasting. With distaste, she remembered the mad hungers of pre-Passover and was grateful that the affliction had waned.

  “Ma’am? . . .”

  Killashandra only heard the soft whisper because there was no other sound in the cabin but her chewing.

  “Tic?” It was the first time the girl had addressed her.

  “Ma’am—thank you for the crystal!” Tic blurted her words. “Comofficer let me speak with my mother on Copper. Right away. No waiting. No worrying that something’s gone wrong and I wouldn’t hear . . . Comoff says with crystals I can call Copper any time I want!” Tic’s eyes were round and liquid.

  “I’m happy for you, Tic. I’m happy for you.” Killashandra thought that response a little graceless on her part, but Tic’s awed response embarrassed her.

  The panel was suddenly whipped aside, and Tic tried not to fall into Killashandra’s lap as Captain Francu, radiating fury, stood in the opening.

  “My medic tells me that you have refused his assistance.” The cubicle was too small for his oppressive anger.

  “I do not need his assistance. I am a Crystal Singer—”

  “While you are on board my vessel, you are under my orders—”

  Killashandra rose, pushing Tic into the seat she had vacated, facing the captain with a wrath far more profound than his. From her thigh pouch, she produced the Guild ident and shoved it at the captain.

  “Even you must recognize this authority!”

  Pendel arrived at that moment, carrying a laden tray.

  “Federated Sentient Planet Sessions authority!” Pendel gasped as he read, and the tray wavered in his grasp. “I’ve only seen one other.”

  “You are clearly suffering from aberrant behavior following a period of deprivation—” the captain began.

  “Nonsense. Hand me that tray, Pendel. Thank you.”

  “Guild Member, attend me!”

  “I am, but I’m also eating, as my body needs sustenance after my long rest.”

  “You were in coma—”

  “I was doing what all Crystal Singers do, resting after a difficult and exhausting as
signment. And that is all I wish to say until I’ve eaten.”

  “You are mentally affected, shoving an FSP authority at me to obtain food.” Captain Francu was sputtering now.

  “That authority will be invoked as soon as I find out the nearest transfer station—”

  “You are to remain on this cruiser until the Five Systems’ Satellite—”

  “I will remain on this cruiser only as long as it takes me to call up a shuttle or cutter or gig from the next system. And my authority permits me to do so. Right?”

  “Right,” Pendel affirmed.

  The captain glared at him and stared for a moment longer at Killashandra, speechless with suppressed anger. Then he turned on one heel and stamped down the corridor.

  Tic was regarding Killashandra in white-faced perturbation.

  “That’s all right, now, girl,” Pendel said to her soothingly. “You will, of course, discuss this with no one no matter how you are pressed. I don’t think Captain Francu will care to remember the incident.”

  “How soon can I get off this ship? No offense to you and Tic, of course.”

  Pendel edged himself in front of his keyboard and tapped a code. It took longer than usual for the display to start rippling across the screen, and there were only four lines.

  “I wouldn’t suggest that one. Drone tanker and primitive food supplies.” Pendel tapped again. The printout was denser. “Ah. We can arrange a transfer to a small but adequate changeover station for a Selkite direct to Scoria. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t recommend Selkites for any reason, but you’d be the only passenger in their oxygen life-support section.”

  “Grand! I’ll take it.”

  “Means another three days aboard us.”

  “I’ll sleep a good deal of the time. Light meals when I need ’em.”

  “There’s just one thing,” and Pendel cleared his throat, ducking his head from her glance. “The Selkite reaches Ballybran just toward the end of the Passover storms. The original E.T.A. would land you well after they’d completed.”

  “Oh, you’ve been doing some retrieving, have you?” Killashandra grinned.