Crystal Line

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Sometimes that's because it's too important to admit, even to himself."

  The intensity of those quiet words rang in Killa's mind. Lars had so often told her he loved her, but usually in a sort of offhand manner, as if he didn't really mean it, or was astonished by blurting out the declaration. Always his hands and eyes had conveyed more than he actually said aloud. Even when she was denying him, she couldn't genuinely deny her love for him, just her dependence on the affection of any other human being.

  The lift door opened and, taking a deep breath, she led the way out to the Hangar and the double sled waiting and ready.

  As there was no other sled in sight, Killa set the course directly toward the coordinates Lars had given her and, making a little display of it, dutifully chewed and swallowed the note. Donalla gave her a nervous smile. Killa found the fidgeting of the usually self-confident medic amusing. Well, her self-confidence was only to be expected—in an infirmary. But now she was in the singer's bailiwick, and the Ranges were awesome. No question of that.

  When Donalla relaxed enough to watch the spectacular scenery streaming by, Killa made something hot to drink and broke out some munchables. They hadn't had any noon meal, and she wanted something in her belly if she was to let herself get thralled.

  There was one problem, Killa mused, now that she focused her mind on the actual process. She never remembered a thing from any period in which she had been thralled. It was all a blank from the moment she lifted the crystal free to the moment thrall lifted. Of course, Donalla had carefully explained that one didn't remember the span of a hypnotic incident either. Well, Killa thought with a shrug, finishing the last of her ration bar, it was worth a try! Lars needed the boost a success would give him.

  Between sessions with Donalla, Killa had done some surreptitious poking in general files, from Recruitment to Deliveries, all readily accessible information. There certainly had been a drop in the numbers of applicants to the Guild. There had only been six in the last bunch to be processed, and a mere ninety signing up for Guild membership over the last decade. She checked back over four decades, when the totals had been up to the two hundred mark. More singers were rated "inactive" than active on the Roster. No deaths listed in the past twenty years. Killa's thoughts were grim. The cost of caring for singers was higher than the budgets for Research and Development, yet profits were dwindling. Lars had been all too correct in saying the Guild was in serious trouble. She really should have brought in . . . she frowned, for the name escaped her. She had found someone, hadn't she? With the perfect pitch required. Could that sort of ability be on the wane in the modern world? It was a trick of the ear and the mind.

  Gradually as the state of affairs of the Guild became obvious, her initial repugnance over invading singers' damaged minds to find the location of their sites began to subside. At Donalla's suggestion, she sat in on a hypnotic session with a man whose symbiont was visibly failing him. He was gnarled and wrinkled with age, joints thick with calcium deposits, veins engorged on fleshless limbs and digits. He seemed content, though, wrapped in a warm, soft blanket and smelling of a recent bath. There hadn't been much intelligence in the dull, deeply receding eyes, despite the fact that they were following the movement of the random fractals ever-shifting on the large screen in the corner of his room. He was an improvement over some of the living corpses Killa had seen on her way to his small single room.

  "I chose Rimbol, because at least he's tracking what's on the screen," Donalla said. "I've had some luck in restimulating one or two of the least damaged singers. I've just turned off the music in here, but we've found he does respond to aural as well as visual stimuli. I think whatever we do to try to reach their brains is better than just letting these poor hulks have nothing to see and hear. Rimbol's more receptive to hypnotism than some of the others."

  She held up the prism and turned Rimbol's head slightly so that the crystal was on a level with his eyes. She twisted the chain so that the prism caught the light, and immediately Rimbol's eyes were captured.

  "Watch the prism, Rimbol, watch the lovely colors, shifting and changing. Your eyes are getting heavy, you can't hold them open because your lids are so very heavy and you're falling asleep, gently falling asleep . . . " Donalla pitched her pleasant contralto into a slow rhythmic pattern, and Rimbol's eyes did flicker and close, and a sigh escaped his lips.

  "You will sleep and you will not resist. You will answer my questions as best you can. You will remember where you were when you cut black crystal. You will remember what the landscape was like, if there were any prominent landmarks. You will also tell me the coordinates, because you do remember them. And you do remember this particular site because you cut black crystal there, four fine crystals in the key of E Major. You made enough credits to leave Ballybran for over a year. Records show that you went to your homeworld on that occasion. Do you remember that time, Rimbol? Do remember the landmarks about that site, Rimbol?"

  "Ah, the E majors? Best I ever cut. I 'member." The words were slurred, but both medic and singer listened hard. "I 'member. Two peaks, like cones, and then the flat part . . ." The words became more distinct, the voice even sounded younger, more vibrant. "Narrow ravine, winds like an S, had to tip the sled and damned near lost her but I knew there was black around. Fardling steep slope up to the peaks, sharp to climb, slipped often but crystal's there . . . feel it in my knees and hands . . ."

  "The coordinates, Rimbol. What are the coordinates? You saw them when you finally set the sled down. You know you did. So put yourself back then, when you're looking down at your console. Now, you can see the figures on the scope, can't you?"

  "See 'em . . ."

  "What do you see, Rimbol? Look closely. The numbers are very clear, aren't they?"

  "Clear."

  "What numbers do you see?"

  "Ah . . ." And another sigh escaped the old man. "Longitude, one fifty-two degrees twenty-two, latitude sixteen degrees fifteen. Didn't think I'd 'member that. I did!" He smiled contentedly and his closed eyelids trembled.

  Killashandra had jotted down the coordinates and then looked at the figures, still uneasy about obtaining such information.

  "He'll never make it there again, Killa," Donalla said softly. "He doesn't need them. The Guild which cares for him does."

  "Someone else could probably find the claim without scouring it out of his mind," Killashandra said, resisting the intrusion for Rimbol's sake. His name sounded familiar, but he had altered far too much for her to recall what he had looked like as a young and vigorous man.

  "There isn't time for random chance." Then Donalla turned back to her patient. "Thanks, Rimbol. You have been marvelously helpful."

  "Have?"

  Killashandra was astounded to see a smile return to tremble on the wasted lips, a smile that remained even after Donalla ended the hypnotic session. She said nothing when she noted that Killashandra had seen that smile. She turned up the music, a lilting, merry tune, and, as the two women left, Killashandra turned back and saw a distorted finger lift in time to the rhythm.

  When they had finished their snack, Killashandra checked their flight path and estimated that they were nearly there. They overflew the black-and-yellow chevrons ten minutes later, and she circled, mentally chanting Lars's choosing rhyme—eeny meeny—as she looked for the landmarks he had told her marked the exact location of the black crystal.

  She had turned 160 degrees before she recognized the configuration of ravines: three, one rising behind the other, in frozen waves of stone. At the base of the third, she should find signs of workings. She did: recent workings because sunlit sparkles caught her eye.

  "Here we are," she caroled out to Donalla. "Behold!" She gestured expansively out of the front window. "An actual crystal site!"

  Donalla's lips parted and then a slight frown marred her high forehead.

  "No, it's not much to look at," Killa said, lightly teasing. "A place known only to few and treasured by many." She locked down the cont
rols, noting as she did so, as she always did whether she had realized it before or not, the coordinates on the screen before she shut the engines off. She had to admit that such an automatic scan was as much a part of a landing routine as turning off the engine—so automatic that she wouldn't remember she had done it three seconds after she had. There would be hundreds of such flashes for Donalla to probe . . .

  She reached for her cutter and gave the lined carrier for cut crystal to Donalla to tote and opened the sled door. Through the soles of her heavy workboots, she could feel the ripple of the nearby black. She swallowed hard. The call of black was strong. Maybe Lars had been right: she wasn't ready for black yet. But they hadn't much choice, had they?

  She led the way to the face, visible because of the regular steps where crystal had been recently cut. Nothing looked familiar. She knew from checking files that he had cut alone for nearly a decade—a decade she hadn't even known had passed while they were estranged. But, and she shook her head in surprise, the claim bore their chevron markings. Lars was a bundle of contradictions, wasn't he? He was too sentimental to be a good Guild Master, she thought; then, thinking of recent examples of his ruthlessness, she reversed her opinion.

  As she narrowed the distance, she explained once more to Donalla exactly how a singer proceeded on site: finding a clear side of crystal, sounding a tuning note, setting the cutter, and then excising the crystal.

  "The dangerous part is when I hold the crystal up. If sun hits it, I'll go up into thrall." Wryly she glanced up to check the position of the sun, trying to ignore the hard, cold knot developing in her stomach. "Well," she said, exhaling a deep breath, "here goes!" She motioned for Donalla to step back a bit, farther away from the business edge of the cutter.

  Killashandra eyed the crystal face. Yes, these were Lars's cuttings. She would know them anywhere. Recent storms hadn't damaged his distinctive style. She brushed some loose splinters away and felt the crystal resonance just a note away. She pressed her hand flat against the surface and, setting her diaphragm, sang a clear mid-C. The crystal vibrated almost excitedly to the sound. She set the cutter. Putting the blade perpendicular to the face, she rammed it in, disengaged the blade, sliced from the top to her lower cut, then quickly shifted position to make the second downward cut, freeing the shaft. She turned off the cutter, letting it slip down the harness that held it to her shoulder.

  "Now, Donalla," she said. She lifted the black crystal high, high enough to catch the sun and felt the beginnings of thrall paralyze her. She could no more have evaded that than Rimbol had been able to evade Donalla.

  Hard grit dug into her face, irregular hard objects poked her the length of her body, and her ears rang with an unpleasant dissonance that would soon split her skull. Abruptly the unendurable noise quit.

  "Killa! Killa! Are you all right?"

  A hand on her shoulder shook her, tentatively at first, then more urgently. But the voice was female. She had never cut with a woman! She propped herself up, one hand automatically feeling for the cutter. Her cutter? Where was it? She couldn't have lost her cutter? Dazed, she looked about, patting the ground. Her eyes were dry in their sockets and ached.

  "Killa?"

  Boots scrabbled on the litter and someone's face peered anxiously at her. But the someone held her precious cutter in one hand and a black-crystal shaft in the other.

  "I didn't drop it . . ." Killa was weak with relief.

  "I was about to shatter it if the cutter noise hadn't worked," the woman said.

  Killa peered at her anxious face. It was familiar. She forced a tired mind to put name to face. Ah! "Donalla!"

  "Who did you expect?" Relief made Donalla's voice sharp.

  Killa eased herself to a sitting position. She couldn't trust her legs yet. Her right shoulder ached, and her arm was riddled with sharp needles of renewed circulation. She massaged her shoulder, gradually becoming aware that darkness was rapidly shadowing the narrow ravine.

  "So?" she asked Donalla curtly as memory flooded back. She had cut black to go into thrall, which she had obviously done, and the thrall had lasted much longer than planned.

  The look on the medic's face answered her question. "You were more impenetrable than when I tried back at the Infirmary," she said, with a weary sigh. "You just stood there, holding this wretched thing." She gave the black shaft a careless waggle. Killa lunged to save it. Donalla drew it sharply back into her chest.

  "I'm all right now, Donalla. It can't thrall me again. Just don't damage the thing."

  "After what it did to you? I thought I'd never get it out of your hand." Donalla regarded her burden warily.

  "Then put it in the carrier." Killa wrenched her upper body about, looking for the carrier, and jabbed her finger at it. "Just don't drop it," she added as Donalla obeyed. Her voice was strident with anxiety. She cleared her throat and went on, controlling her voice, "For some reason, fresh crystal cracks faster than at any other time. Ah!" She sighed in relief as the medic stowed and covered the shaft.

  Killa got to her feet then, brushing off clinging bits and pieces of dirt and crystal. She was tired, but glancing at the sun, she saw there was enough light left to make a couple more cuts to add to this bigger C.

  "What are you doing?" Donalla asked, her voice sharp with concern.

  "I'm going to cut." She had to use force to get Donalla to release the cutter.

  "But I couldn't break through the thrall."

  "Shouldn't keep me from cutting. Especially as it's black."

  Killa went down a fifth, sang loud and clear, heard the answering note, and set her cutter. Donalla stepped in front of her.

  "Out of my way," Killa said, appalled that she had been about to swing the cutter into position—a movement that would have brought the blade slicing right through Donalla's thighs.

  "I can't let you."

  "Ah, leave off, Donalla!" Killa tried to push her away. "There's no sun. It's the sun that starts thrall. For the love of anything you hold sacred, let me use the light that's left."

  "You're sure? It took me hours . . ."

  "Well, it won't happen at this time of day." Killa blew out with exasperation. Donalla was worse than any novice she'd ever shepherded. "Sun's nearly down. Now, move out of my way!"

  Hesitantly and watching Killa very warily indeed, Donalla stepped aside. Killa sang again and tuned the cutter, neatly slicing beyond her first cut. She excised that one, managed two more quick ones in the same level—smallish and stocky but black! She had the cutter poised for a third when the face turned sour. There was an intrusion or a flaw. Cursing under her breath, she stepped back and signaled Donalla to bring the carrier over. She finished packing crystal just as the last of the sunlight faded from the ridges above them.

  The two women stumbled back to the sled, the carrier between them. Only when she had seen the carrier secured behind straps and the cutter properly racked did Killashandra allow fatigue to creep up on her.

  "How long did you say I was thralled?" she asked, slumping into the pilot's chair.

  "I forgot to check the time right away, Donalla admitted, "but from the time I did till I threw you down, it took three and a half hours!"

  Killa chuckled weakly. "Don't doubt it." She rubbed at shoulder muscles still twinging from a long inactivity. "And I wouldn't answer?"

  "You kept staring at the crystal. I tried every single maneuver Lars showed me and you might as well have been crystal yourself for all the blind good it did me."

  She had been scared, Killashandra decided; that's what was making her angry now.

  "Don't reproach yourself, Donalla. I got out, and the crystal's okay. I'd've been out of thrall once the sun went down. Or didn't Lars remember to mention that?" He hadn't, to judge by the expression on Donalla's face. "Fix me something to drink, will you? I'm too tired to move and my throat's so dry . . ."

  Donalla banged the cup on the counter as she hauled the water out of the cooler, her movements revealing more plainly than any word
s the state of her feelings.

  With food in her stomach, Killashandra took a hand beam and went out to examine the face. If she could cut past the damaged crystal to clear stuff, she ought to. She was damned lucky to find black—then she laughed, recalling that luck hadn't entered into the discovery. Knowing that she would have black to cut in this site took some of the elation out of the work. It was the mystery, the challenge of having to find the elusive material. But the work was still rewarding—and Donalla had had the chance to acquire firsthand Range experience to augment her clinical knowledge of crystal singers.

  Killa hummed softly, listening for an answering resonance, and heard none. Cursing under her breath, she went back to the sled. She would have to wait till morning to see how deep the flaw was. Worse than not finding black was finding it uncuttable.

  She woke in the night, aware of the warm body beside her and instantly recognizing it as Donalla's, not Lars's. That was another matter they had neglected to explain to Donalla. As the woman was apparently unremittingly heterosexual, Killa decided she would have to manage on her own—morning song could be rather more of a shock than Donalla was ready to handle.

  Moving carefully, Killa rose. She found an extra thermal in the cupboard and let herself out of the sled. This wouldn't be the first time she had slept on the ground. Rolling herself up under the prow of the sled where she would be protected from any heavy dew, she wriggled around until she got comfortable and dropped off to sleep again.

  Dawn and crystal woke, singing her awake. She took deep breaths to reduce the effect on her until she heard Donalla crying out. Grinning, but as uncomfortable herself as Donalla probably was, Killa endured. She waited until the effects had faded before returning to the cabin.

  "What was that? Where did you go?" Donalla demanded, her tone almost accusatory.

  "That's crystal waking up to sunlight. Fabulous experience, isn't it?" Killa grinned unrepentantly, folding her thermal to stow it away again. "I felt discretion was the better part of retaining our growing friendship."