Crystal Line

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Symbiont," Killashandra managed to say, one hand cramming as many of the bright green vegetable spheres into her mouth as would fit, while she scooped up more milsi stalks in the other. "You'll never see a fat singer," she added after swallowing her mouthful.

  Oddly enough, the compulsion to gorge eased off about the time they were mopping up the plates with yeast bread that was one of Brendan's specialties. Though as a shell person, he was nourished entirely by the fluids pumped into the titanium capsule that contained his stunted body, still he was fascinated by food and did most of the catering, even when Boira was on board.

  Replete, Killashandra and Lars exchanged the depleted catering packets in their suits for fresh ones, donned their helmets, picked up the extra equipment, and exited the B&B to resume their explorations.

  "Why are we trying to carve a hunk out of the junk?" Killashandra asked as they made their way back to the lower cavern.

  "We were sent here to investigate the stuff, in situ, make recommendations as to its possible value, and/or usefulness," Lars said. "And see what makes it luminesce. Any report on whether or not the hunk of the junk grew in captivity, Bren?"

  "No. I mean, no mention of increase in the sample; however, the report said, once excised, the specimen lost all iridescence."

  "The junk doesn't like light," Killa said thoughtfully. "Could be it has to have darkness to sparkle. Or there's something in the composition of this planet that makes it iridescent?"

  "And some element that makes it expand, grow, flow, whatever it does," Lars remarked, equally thoughtful. "Down the sides and to the next level. All in four years or so."

  "Never heard of anything that grew in such a deprived environment as this," Killa said with a snort.

  "Well, we ain't seen everything yet, have we?" Lars responded equably.

  A ten-second spray of liquid nitrogen turned the entire stalactite colorless, and when Lars gave it a sharp chop with his rock hammer, the end—a piece the length and width of his gloved hand—fell to the ground. Through her boot soles, Killashandra felt a sharp shaking, unexpected and severe enough to unbalance her.

  "Did you feel that, Lars?"

  "Indeed I did!" Lars had flailed his arms briefly to steady himself.

  "Feel what?" Brendan asked sharply.

  "A tremor, a shake, a quake. Did you register anything?" Lars asked.

  "Hmm. Well, there is a minute blip on the stability gauge. Not enough to set off a stabilizer alarm."

  "Look!" Killa shone her light to the opposite wall, and the two singers saw that the other intrusion had disappeared. "A definite reaction to our action. The Junk has enough sense to retract from peril?"

  "Sense or reflex?" Lars asked, scooping the colorless stalactite into the duraplas specimen sack he had pulled from his thigh pocket. "Let's see how far it's retracting."

  Guided by Bren and moving as fast as was safe in the dark maze, they returned to the first chamber. The opalescence was subtly muted, and they had to turn on their suit lights. Then they could see that the Junk had noticeably contracted on both sides of the wall, though the farther "rib" was longer than the one from which they had taken the stalactite. They saw no other change in the central portion of the rib.

  "Hey, look, Lars, a channel," Killa said. She pointed to the faint shadow on the wall where the Junk had been. "It makes a channel. Does it absorb rock as it extrudes?"

  "Could it be making the caves?" Lars asked. That stunned both listeners into silence.

  "Total absorption?" Brendan asked, puzzled. "Most beings excrete some waste material."

  "This Junk makes a waste of space," Killashandra replied, grinning at Lars. "I can't see any movement now, but it sure moved incredibly fast in the twenty-odd minutes it took us to get back up here. Getting tape on this, Bren?"

  "You bet."

  "Well, then, let's try some comparison," Lars said. He motioned for Killashandra to follow him. "The first team found nine such phenomena? Well, let's go see the next one."

  "I'm hungry again," Killashandra added apologetically.

  Brendan made an exceedingly gross sound, but he had more food ready for them when they reached the airlock. They ate while he changed sites.

  And that became the routine of the next ten hours. Search and eat. Eat while searching. At first Brendan had clever, often hilarious comments to make about their "starvation diet", but then he became as fascinated as they by what could only be called the "behavior" of the Junk.

  At each of the five sites they investigated, they found that the opalescence had diminished in size from the mass that the geologists had recorded.

  "Hey, you two, I'm calling a rest period. Your vital signs are becoming erratic."

  "With all the food we're ingesting?" Killa said, half teasing. "Now that you mention it—whoops," and she tripped and fell forward into Lars.

  "Now that you mention it," Lars continued, steadying her, "I could curl up for a hundred or so hours."

  "Hunger would uncurl you in about three," Brendan replied. "Chow's up!"

  They waited long enough before eating to insert their suits in the cleanser and shower themselves. Bren did manage to keep them awake long enough after they had eaten to get to their bunk.

  But the next morning, as he served an enormous breakfast, the two singers were alert and keen to examine the remaining locations. By comparing the exploration notes with the present state of the ribbing, they saw distinct differences: less alteration the farther the opalescence was from the rib they had sampled.

  "Is this a mass defection, migration, withdrawal?" Lars asked, puzzled.

  "Pinch me, you pinch us all?" Killa responded.

  "How could one piece of Junk communicate with the others?" Brendan asked.

  "That's the easy one," Killa said with a grin. "Through the rock mass. We felt that tremble. Maybe that's communication."

  "I'll credit that," Lars said, "but where is the Junk retreating to? Anything show up on the scopes, Bren?"

  "Visualize me shrugging," the ship said drolly, "because I have checked all my systems for malfunction. The Junk refuses to have its picture taken. There isn't so much as a black blob registering on the walls of any of the caverns you've been in. But the Junk's very much in situ."

  "Wait a minute, team," Killashandra said, a grin deepening, "I know what I missed . . . crunch underfoot. There's no debris or rubble or pebbles or anything in the caves!"

  Lars blinked and lowered his head, frowning as he thought over her remark. "No, you're right, there isn't. Only that small pile of dust."

  "Where the rib finger had wormed its way down. It may eat its way down."

  "I could draw a comparison between your appetites and the—hey!" Brendan protested as Killa lobbed a pencil file at his titanium panel.

  "I wonder what it does eat," Lars said. "Shall we whip up some appetizing bits and pieces for it to sample?"

  "Didn't the explore team do that, Bren?" Killa asked.

  "No, they did not." Bren's voice rippled in amusement. "After they seemed to lose tools to its melt process."

  "I don't remember a mention of that," Killa said, frowning. She had only just reviewed the reports during breakfast.

  "I gather that by inference, Ki," Brendan said. "And the inventory."

  "So, what shall we offer up in sacrifice to the Junk God in the Grotto?" Killa asked.

  "A bit of this, a bit of that," Lars said. "Can I have a walk through your spare-parts hold, Bren?"

  "And can we return to our first cave?" Killa said, speaking from an impulse she didn't quite understand. "I'm beginning to feel guilty about carving off that hunk of the Junk. We really ought to make restitution by letting it have first crack at our offerings."

  That was granted, and Brendan told them what to take, and graciously offered what little garbage was left from preparing their meals, as well as samples of protein and carbohydrate. The two resumed their now-clean suits, packed the tube wells for their snack, checked the oxygen tanks, snap
ped on their helmets, and cycled through the airlock.

  "You know, you're right about rubble out here and none in the caves," Lars remarked.

  As soon as they saw the blue light, they doused their suit lamps.

  "The crunch stops here," Lars added as he strode on to the smooth surface of the cavern. "I don't think it's retracted further, Killa. What d'you think?"

  "Hmm. We should have thought to mark it. We can reach this far tip . . ." She took out a sample as she made her way across. "Copper, Bren," she said. Using forceps and stretched at full length upward, she laid the copper on the surface. Then she yanked her arm back. "Muhlah! Talk about hungry. And see, Lars, there's a definite pulse that's copper-toned running all the way back to the hub. Fascinating . . ."

  By the time they had exhausted the contents of their sacks, the Junk had accepted every single offering, the metallic ones with noticeable alacrity and reaction.

  "Omnivorous."

  "Not grateful though," Killa added. "Not so much as a centimeter has it expanded. Humpf."

  Lars regarded the central mass. "No, but I think it's brighter. Should we see if any of the others are more receptive?"

  She was standing in a pose of thoughtfulness, one arm across her chest, propping the elbow of the gloved hand supporting the tilt of her helmet. "I'm thinking!"

  "Are you?"

  "And what are you thinking?" Brendan asked.

  Killashandra began slowly, formulating her thoughts as she spoke. "I think we ought to return the piece we took. I don't think we ought to carve up the Junk."

  Lars regarded her for a long moment. "You know, I think you're right. That should put us in their good . . . gravel? dust?"

  "Cinder?" Killa offered coyly.

  "Well, we'll just do that wee thing then. Especially as it isn't doing us a blind bit of good as a specimen."

  "Which reminds me. When we excised that bit of stalactite, there was that shaking. Was that just a tremor, or an incredibly rapid beat of some kind?"

  "A percussive-type signal?" Lars asked.

  "Ah, like some primitive groups who wished to make long-distance communications," the ship said. "I'll analyze. Never thought of that." There was a pause during which lights and flicks of messages crossed the main control screen.

  "Ah, indeed! Spot-on, Killa. The tremor does indeed parse into a variety of infinitesimal pulses of varying length."

  "We need some drumsticks, Bren," Killa said, grinning at Lars.

  He put his hands on his hips in an attitude of exasperation. "Neither of us could rap that fast."

  "So we'll be largo, but it'll be a beat. We can at least use rhythm to see if we'd get any sort of response. Open some sort of a communications channel to this intelligence."

  "Intelligence? The retreat could be no more than a basic survival impulse."

  "Impulse is the word," Bren said. "I have no wood in my stores, but would plastic do?"

  "Anything strong enough to beat out a pulse . . . Maybe we can get an 'in' to our Junk."

  Lars groaned at her whimsy, but he was quite ready to return to the ship and take delivery of two pairs of taper-ended plastic lengths. He gave Killa one pair and, with the other, practiced a roll on the bulkhead of the airlock.

  "A little ragged," she said.

  "Who's had time to practice for the last seventy years?"

  Killashandra frowned in surprise that Lars would even mention a time span. Most singers ignored time references. Seventy years? Since they had been singing duet? Or since they had last done much instrumentalizing? She really didn't want to know which. Unlike herself, Lars often input material to his private file. And after a session in the Ranges, he also accessed his file. She couldn't remember when she had thought to add anything to hers. She shook her head, not wanting to think about that. She had far more important things to do than worry about relative time—it was rhythmic time she had to play with right now.

  "We are armed and ready," she said flippantly, holding the sticks under her nose as she had seen ceremonial drummers do on some old tape clip. "Front and center, and forward into the fray."

  "'We go, we go,'" Lars sang out.

  Long-forgotten neurons rubbed together properly, and Killashandra came out with the beginning of that chorus, altering it slightly to suit their circumstances. "'Go, we heroes, go to glory/we shall live in song and story . . .'"

  "'Yes, but you don't go!'" And Brendan's baritone entered the chorus.

  "'We go! We go!'" Lars toggled the airlock to open, awkwardly hanging on to his drumsticks as he resettled his helmet. Killashandra fastened hers.

  "'Yes, onward to the foe!'" sang Brendan melodiously.

  "'We go! We go!'"

  And then the airlock completed its cycle and they could go back out into the darkness of Opal. They marched into the nearest of the Junk caves and came to a militarily abrupt halt.

  "All right, Ki," Lars said, "where—and what—do we beat?"

  "Let's see if we can get its attention. Do we both happen to know a ceremonial roll?"

  "I do." Lars proceeded to beat it out.

  "Show-off. Now, let's do it together." They did, heads up to see if there was any reaction in the Junk.

  "I think you got through," Brendan said. "A hemi-semi-demiquaver of a response, but definitely just after your roll duet."

  Lars grinned drolly at Killashandra. "Having said that, what do we say next?"

  "Howdy?"

  Hunger drove them from the cave, and once they got back into the B&B, sheer fatigue required them to stay. They had beat every tempo they knew, with all the power in their arms, until their muscles had protested. Brendan kept reporting reaction, and once or twice, a repeat—at a much faster speed—of what the two crystal singers had just tapped out. Other patterns of response made no sense to Brendan. But as Killa and Lars reboarded the ship, he told them that he was trying to figure out any code, or pattern, in the Junk's response to their rolls. When he started to tell them, they begged a reprieve.

  "Save it, will you, Bren?" Lars said, an edge to his voice.

  "Sorry about that. You've seemed indefatigable. I was beginning to think you were crystal analogues. You have, after all, only been on the go today for twenty-seven hours. I'll reprise after you've had some sleep. And I mean, sleep."

  "Wicked little man," Killashandra said, struggling out of her suit and tiredly cramming it into the cleanser. Lars had to prop himself up against the wall to balance while he pulled off his suit.

  As she stumbled into the main cabin, she yawned, feeling those twenty-seven hours in every sinew in her body—and especially in her weary hands. "I'm almost too tired to eat," she said, but roused herself when the aromas of the feast Brendan prepared wafted through the main cabin.

  "I'm never too tired to eat during Passover," Lars announced, and picked up the biggest bowl. He half collapsed into the chair, then settled back with a plate on his chest so he didn't have so far to reach to get food into his mouth. "Can you analyze any particular response from the Junk?"

  "In all the caves, it has stopped retreating," Brendan said. "And while I do perceive a definite pattern in the rhythm of its tremors, that's the problem. You could never rap fast enough to 'speak' to them, and they can't seem to slow down enough to 'speak' to you."

  "How about us recording something, and you play it back at their tempo, Bren?" Killa asked. "Use one of your extendable tools to hammer the message home?"

  Lars tipped respectful fingers in her direction for that notion. "Yeah, but what exactly are we trying to tell them?"

  Killa shrugged, her mouth too full to answer just then. She swallowed. "We're singers, not semanticists. I think we've done very well!"

  "I concur," Brendan added stoutly. "There are specialists who could handle it from here, now you've established an avenue."

  "Yeah, but what about the disease?"

  "The specialists do not need to exit their vehicle. I've just monitored the dust your suits left in the cleanser's filters. I
can find no contaminants. So the planet must be safe enough. Remember, the geologists had that specimen on board to examine, and I doubt they thought of keeping it shielded."

  "You know," Killashandra began, interrupting herself with a great yawn. "We forgot to put the piece back." Her head lolled back.

  They fell asleep as they were, half-empty plates balanced on their chests. Brendan decided that he had not been scrupulous enough in monitoring them today—he'd been as fascinated as they had by their attempts to communicate with the Junk. In future, he must remember that singers had phenomenal powers of concentration, as well as appetite.

  Then Brendan noticed that weary fingers had left splotches on chairs and carpet. Though he could send the cleaner 'bot to attend to floor spillage, he resigned himself to spots on the chairs until they reached port again. Not that Boira was any neater all the time. He dimmed the lights and raised the ambient temperature, since he couldn't exactly arrange covers for them. Being a ship had a few limitations in dealing with passengers who insisted on falling asleep off their bunks.

  He was also obscurely delighted by their resolve to restore the specimen to the Junk. It was one thing to take samples of inanimate objects, but to do so to a living, feeling, communicating sentience was quite another matter in his lexicon. Singers were not as insensitive and unfeeling as he had been led to believe. In fact, his opinion of the breed had been raised by several singular leaps.

  He must remember to mention it—adroitly, of course, for even to imply that he had had his doubts about this mission, and them, was embarrassing. He had a lot to relate to Boira when she was restored to him.

  Chapter 3

  As soon as they returned to the original site with the excised "finger," Killashandra and Lars noticed the increase of the luminescence.

  "Well, we fed it, didn't we?" Killa said. "Big Junk looks fatter, too, don't you think?"

  Lars shrugged. "Brendan?"

  "Ambient light has increased in your present location, but, as you both know, I can read nothing of the Junk itself."