Crystal Line

by Anne McCaffrey

  "I'm not letting you go, Sunny," he said sternly.

  "Who else can you send?" she asked reasonably. "I'm the only one qualified, and you can't afford to have the installation messed up, can you?"

  Lars gave her a long searching look and then sighed. "You're right there. Much is at stake."

  Just as he gathered her closer, she caught a fleeting expression on his face that might have been satisfaction. She didn't have time, then, to sift the matter through, because he distracted her thoroughly.

  Being aboard the Brendan/Boira 1066 was a mixed pleasure, since Killashandra had to share the ship's good company with Rudney and Klera. Fortunately, the two scientists had brought reports with them to study, and they spent most of their time in their cabin, or using Brendan's powerful and complex computer banks.

  "They did the same thing on the way out," Boira told Killa.

  "The tedium was palpable," Brendan added, in the exact affected tone Rudney used.

  Killa and Boira smothered laughs. Killa had taken to Boira the moment she had seen the 1066 brawn. Not that Boira could be described as brawny: she was of medium height, and her figure was compact. She was very attractive, smooth-skinned and with the symmetry provided by reconstruction; her eyes were dark, and her dark hair was kept at shoulder length. She moved with an odd grace that Killa suspected was also due to the accident that had left Brendan unpartnered during the singers' first expedition to Opal. Best of all, Boira had the same quick wit and ready humor that had made Brendan such a good travel companion.

  "Do be careful, Bren," Boira murmured. "You'll set me off again. Bren had me in kinks," she told Killashandra. "It got to be embarrassing, because every time they ventured out of their cabin, they'd say something that Bren had lampooned and I'd dissolve—in a coughing fit, of course. Wouldn't do to laugh in their faces!"

  "Then it isn't just me," Killa said, grinning broadly.

  "Oh, no," Boira assured her. "It's them! The only time they acted human at all was during decomposition."

  "Then they were very human," Bren said caustically. "Had to circulate and clean the air nine times."

  "D'you still have the radiant-fluid tub on board?"

  "Indeed, we do," Boira said, "and back in your cabin."

  "What'll you do about them, then?" Killa asked, jerking her finger in the direction of the Saplinson-Trills.

  "Oh, them! This time we may let them stew in their own juices, as it were," Brendan said. "I can close off the vents to their cabin so we're spared the stench. At least they cleaned themselves up afterwards."

  "And what about you?" Killashandra asked Boira. But apart from a mild headache, Boira was not adversely affected by decomposition.

  "Repetition dulls the effect," she told Killashandra, "though it'll never be my favorite way to spend five of the longest minutes ever invented by the mind of man."

  "So, did you see much of the FMs?" Killa asked, drawling the term sarcastically.

  Boira gave a snort. "After a very lengthy briefing and all sorts of dire warnings about keeping my mitts to myself and going through a rather ridiculously involved decontam. It was worth the effort," she said. "The brilliance, the design . . . I really think they ought to pay attention to the complex patterns—What did you call them? Jewel Junk? I suggested," she added, grimacing at her recollection, "that the patterns the Junk displays could be another attempt at communication."

  "And?"

  "I got told in long chapters how such a theory was ludicrous and had no possible scientific basis." She shrugged. "I am entitled to an opinion."

  Killa mulled that over. "Pattern is as good a method of communication as any other. Aren't words patterns?"

  "Hmmm. Hadn't thought of it in quite that way, but they are, you know," Bren said. "Full marks to you, Killa."

  "I gather they didn't test your theory, Boira?"

  "Fardles, no! What does a ship's brawn know about esoteric life-forms?"

  "Fifteen minutes until the first Singularity Jump," Brendan announced, and Killa immediately adjourned to her radiant fluid tank.

  Awash in the fluid, Killa had only the mildest of decomposition willies. When she returned to the main cabin, where Boira and Brendan were running a systems check, she jerked her head in the scientists' direction.

  "Oh, them?" Boira grinned. "This time they took the precautions we always recommend. Never have understood why the cerebral types think I don't know as much about my profession as they know about theirs. Hungry?" She smiled slyly.

  "Brendan, did you have to tell Boira about that?" Killa asked, halfway between irritation and amusement.

  "She insisted that I explain why I spent so much credit on food stores."

  "Why? Did she think you'd wined and dined pretty girls all in a row while she was incapacitated? And thank you, Boira, I am hungry, but not starved and certainly nowhere near another Passover gorge."

  Boira liked food as much as Killa did, and they compared notes until the next Jump. Both women were spared the company of the Saplinson-Trills, though Boira periodically enquired solicitously after their health and well-being. The two did emerge when the last Jump brought them into the Opal system. Rudney asked Brendan to open a channel for them, so that he and Klera could get caught up on any new developments. There were enough to send Killa and Boira into the galley to get away from the scientific jargon.

  "You'd think, from all that gibberish, that they were activating a sorcerous spell or something," Boira said.

  "Equations are a form of spell, aren't they?" Killashandra asked.

  "Hmmmm, perhaps, if you get the right answer."

  They batted the notion about until Brendan quietly informed them that they would be landing in fifteen minutes.

  Rudney and Klera were excited about something, the upshot of which was that they wanted Killa to install the crystals as soon as possible. Rudney sputtered, close to being inarticulate in his instructions. Fortunately he had a diagram of where he wanted crystal installed, though to judge by the strikeouts, the list of priorities had altered several times. He wanted the biggest, or strongest, of the crystal pieces to go in Cave Fifteen, which Killa shortly learned was the one that she and Lars had named Big Hungry Junk.

  "It already has crystal," she began.

  "It must have the best of the crystals," Rudney insisted, spittle spattering Killa in the face.

  "I really don't believe that FM Fifteen will surrender the one it has when the larger unit is installed," Klera said, her face screwed up with concern. "I really do feel that we have no way of adequately explaining that we need the old shard for one of the smaller FMs."

  "Is that what you want to do? Exchange?" Killa asked, surprised.

  "Of course, of course. You only supplied us with twelve crystals. We now have thirty FMs to be brought into the comnet we posit."

  "Have you ever tried to remove anything from a Junk?"

  "A Junk?" For a moment, Rudney was confused. "Oh, please employ the proper nomenclature."

  Killa gave him the sort of look that had once been extremely effective in reducing affectations.

  "No, we actually haven't," Klera admitted.

  "It's always been on the receiving end, though, hasn't it?" Killa said. "Well, I'll try, but I'm not risking a finger or a hand."

  "We're most certainly not asking you to take a physical risk," Rudney said.

  To prove that, he and Klera were among those in the A&E installation who suited up to watch Killashandra install the crystal. When Rudney pompously introduced her, she got the usual guarded reaction from the staff assembled in the decontamination room, but there were several broad smiles of welcome as well as help when she began suiting up.

  There was one black crystal, not a large shaft but tuned to a dominant, and this was the one she felt Big Hungry Junk deserved.

  "Surely this one," Rudney said, pointing officiously to the largest, a pale blue, "would be more suitable."

  "It's blue, a minor and considerably less stable than the blac
k," she said in a tone that she hoped would end the matter.

  "But—but—"

  "Rudney," she said in a loud firm tone, "I am the crystal singer, not you!"

  Rudney seemed surprised at her vehemence and stood there, blinking in astonishment. She became aware that everyone else was regarding her with similar surprise. Well, Rudney might be a boor to her but he was clearly held in considerable respect by his staff.

  "Black," she began in a milder tone, "is the most powerful of the Ballybran crystal range. Even a small one, like this, is three times as useful as the large pale blue. The paler colors are notoriously fragile." She held up the black, though she could feel the tingle of the damned thing right through her heavy vacuum gloves. "The black is also in a dominant key, which increases its potential threefold. Minors are good for small repetitive jobs, but you want some character for Big Hungry Junk to work with. Now, let's go."

  She gestured for the two who had been assigned to carry the crystal-packing carton to put on their helmets as she adjusted her own. A few more moments sufficed for the usual pre-exit tests, and then everyone was checked out as ready to go. She activated her private com to Brendan and Boira.

  The airlock cycled open to the black bleakness of Opal's surface. Changes had been made: light flooded the cindery surface, illuminating paths from the facility to the various caves, each path neatly signposted for its destinations. Big Hungry, posing as Cave Fifteen, seemed to be the most popular direction—the path was the smoothest in appearance. Killa struck out, leading the way, Rudney having missed the chance to get in front of her.

  As she neared the cave, she could see splotches of brilliance penetrating to the surface. "Big Hungry must be really big," she murmured to herself.

  "I can pick you up at that level, Killa," said Brendan softly.

  "What did you say, Crystal Singer?" Rudney asked, reaching forward to tap her arm.

  "I mutter a lot," she said loudly enough for her voice to carry to his comsystem. Then she smiled. Nice to be one up on Rudney! "You really have improved the place," she added. The approach had been cleared of all rubble, and the steps down to the entrance of the cave widened. Lights weren't needed: blue radiance leaked up the first five steps. And suddenly dimmed as Killa's helmet adjusted to the increased exterior illumination.

  Even with that aid, she was nearly blinded by light as she turned the corner into Big Hungry's cave. Her gasp elicited a concerned request for explanation from Brendan and a smug chuckle from Rudney, which turned into a gargle of surprise.

  "Great Muhlah on the mountains of Za!" She was transfixed in the entrance until Rudney brushed past her.

  "Can I have a reading on why the pattern has so dramatically altered?" he asked in a sharp tone.

  No one could miss the shower of complex interlacing designs that expanded from the center core. They were different from the idle banding she had first seen as she paused on the threshold. Majestic, they radiated down the sides of the cave, to disappear below the floor.

  "It's most unusual, Doctor. First time this one has been screened," one of the technicians told Rudney.

  "Maybe it's a welcome for me," Killashandra said facetiously.

  Rudney shot her a fierce look of disgust and denial as he brushed past her and into the cave.

  "There is a considerably higher level of static," the technician added. "Now it's dropping to normal output."

  Hastily, Killa stepped to one side, watching the last of the fractal-like design slide out of sight. She shivered. To divert herself, she looked about the magnificently festooned cave. No one had told her that the fluid metal completely covered the walls of its site. She had thought it had merely sent tendrils to the lower levels. How many had Klera said Big Hungry went down? Nineteen? Incredible and yet . . . All it may have needed to grow was some decent food.

  As the plasglas of her helmet darkened sufficiently in the gloriously lighted cave, she finally made out the central hub of the Junk, a now-infinitesimal sliver of crystal standing upright at the pulsing core. Rudney probably used a more accurate scientific name for the heart of the Junk. Odd, though, Killa thought, searching her memory for details of that earlier visit. She could resurrect little beyond knowing that Big Hungry had grown.

  "Bren," she asked softly, "did we ever measure the original center of Junk?"

  "We did, and . . ." He paused briefly. "Circumference is the same, but I'd say it was denser, thicker. Ask Rudney. The sort of thing he'd know."

  She heard Bren, but her attention was somewhat distracted by the shift and play of color and pattern that radiated from the core down the sheet of opalescence. It was more colorful, too, than it had been: speeding up and down the spectrum of visible color even as arcs of shifting hues and shades rippled across. Try as she would to follow one pattern, it melded or was overrun by others. She remembered Junk doing that before but surely not as rapidly.

  "Our instrumentation is picking up considerable excitation but not on a band usually occupied," someone said over the comunit.

  "Crystal Singer," Rudney said, bouncing over to her and tapping her shoulder, "let's proceed. There's unusual activity recorded . . ."

  "I heard," she said repressively. Abruptly, the thought of setting black crystal in that throbbing heart of opalescence disturbed her to a degree she had never experienced before. "Having seen this one, I believe it would be wiser to install crystals in the lesser units first."

  "I disagree," Rudney said, appalled at the sudden change of plans. "Cave Fifteen is responding to some sort of—"

  "Exactly! I'm not risking my wits on black until the last possible moment," she said, and, gesturing imperiously to the two carrying the carton, she started from the cave. "I'll start with Three."

  Rudney objected; he even jumped in front of her when they had left Cave Fifteen in his effort to stop her. She bounced away from him, urging the carton carriers to follow her. He tried to get them to follow his orders.

  "You want crystal installed. I do it. I do it my way," she roared at him, and saw people recoil. "Now, do I proceed to Three or back to the 1066? Because if you don't let me handle the installation my way, I'll leave. With the crystals, too, by the way, since they're the gift of the Guild!"

  That threat, combined with pleas from Klera and one of the other senior members of his team, silenced Rudney's objections, and she was allowed to proceed.

  Three had been a small, pretty cap of Jewel Junk when she and Lars had first seen it. Sothi, one of the carton carriers, told her that it had insinuated itself down three levels now. Smack dab in the center of its core was the original splinter of pink. Muhlah, if the Junk could do this well with only bloody pink, it would flood with the good green destined for its second crystalline intrusion.

  The rest of the observers had filed into the cave by then, and the portable ladder was erected right under the core. Killa hefted the green shaft and peered at it in the radiance to be sure it had not somehow become flawed in transit. She clamped the forceps about the green and, carefully examining the position of the pink splinter, started to insert the new crystal. The moment it touched the opalescence, it was sucked up so rapidly that only her trained reflexes kept her hand from following it into the core. The forceps were gone. In the next instant, the pink splinter fell, and there was a flailing of gloved hands as three people tried to catch it.

  "Got it!" Sothi exclaimed, holding up the splinter for all to see.

  "More than a mouthful is impolite," Killa said drolly. She hadn't anticipated any success in trying to yank out the old splinter.

  "Ooooh!" Klera's exclamation, anxious and fearful, brought everyone's attention back to the core.

  "Bloody hell, it swallowed it!" Killa announced, unable to perceive any trace of the green. "Of all the ungrateful . . ."

  "Oh, there it is," Klera went on, pointing as the green slowly came into view again, positioned in the exact center of the core, with two-thirds of its length visible.

  "We are monitoring increased
activity in Three," was the report from the base.

  "No quarrel with that," Killa said, delighted with the effect. And yes, she thought, Boira's theory about pattern talk was an avenue that ought to be explored. She found herself tracking a brilliant display of green, blue, and yellow herringbones that flashed from the core to the floor and disappeared.

  "Crystal Singer . . ." Sothi had her by both hands, gripping tightly. "You were swaying . . ."

  Killa accepted his help down from the ladder. He pressed his helmet against hers. "Don't watch the patterns, C.S. You lose time that way," he murmured.

  Her lapse had gone unnoticed, save by Sothi, for the other observers were helmet to helmet in deep consultations. Killa wondered how much time she had lost.

  "Does it happen often, Sothi?" she asked.

  "Often enough to need to be cautious."

  "Which cave is next?" she asked him. In that moment of distraction, she had forgotten.

  "Two, which is only a step away," he answered, and suddenly she remembered the entire sequence and where each crystal was supposed to go. Time was not the only thing that you lost following Junk patterns, she thought.

  Then, when Sothi would have signaled to Rudney that they were leaving Three, she caught his hand and waggled her finger at him. "C'mon," she said, touching her helmet to his. "We can get this all done in half the time if we leave these science types to talk."

  Sothi seemed hesitant, but his companion, whose suit bore the name "Asramantal", pulled him toward the entrance.

  Killashandra had done four, with Sothi or Asra neatly catching the discarded slivers, before Rudney and the observers caught up. She ignored Rudney's harangue and continued on her scheduled round. If she kept herself busy, watching her feet on the cindery paths, even doing a bit of pattern watching, with Sothi or Asramantal to pull her out if she dallied too long, she didn't have to think about installing the black in Big Hungry. As they had trudged from one cave to the next, she had confided some of her anxiety to Brendan and Boira.

  "Can I count on you two for a bit of help?" she asked.

  "What kind?" Boira asked.

  "I might have trouble with Big Hungry . . ."