Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line

by Anne McCaffrey

  Armagh men ran to height, tanned skins, and strong backs, Killashandra noticed approvingly. Redbeard was watching her out of the corner of his eye. He was interested in her all right. Just then, the nearest sailor turned landside and waved in her direction. His teeth were startlingly white against the mahogany of his skin. He tossed back a streaked blond curly mane of hair and waved again. He wore the long oil-shiny pants of his profession and an oddly fashioned vest, which left chest and arms bare and seemed stiff with double hide along the ribs. He looked incredibly muscular.

  Why was he waving at her? No, the greeting was for Redbeard beside her, who now walked forward to meet his friend. A third man, black-bearded and tanglemaned, joined them and was embraced by Redbeard.

  The trio stood facing the ship and talking among themselves until a fearsome machine glided along the rails to their side of the dock. It extruded a ramp out and down and into the deck of the boat, where it hovered expectantly. The two sailors had jumped back aboard, the blond man moving with the instinctive grace of the natural athlete. In comparison, the black-haired man looked clumsy. As a team, they heaved open the hatch. The hesitant ramp extruded clamps that fastened to the deck and the lip of the opened hold. More ramp disappeared into the maw of the ship. Moments later the ramp belt moved upward and Killashandra saw her first lunk, the great oil fish of Armagh, borne away on its last journey.

  She became absorbed in the unloading process, which, for all the automated assistance of the machine, still required a human element. The oil scales of the huge fish did not always stay on the rough surface of the ramp belt and had to be forced back on manually. The blonde used an enormous barbed hook, planting it deep in what was actually the very tough hide of the elusive fish and deftly flipping the body into place again. Redbeard seemed to have some official position, for he made notes of the machine’s dials, used the throat mike often, and seemed to have forgotten her existence entirely. Killashandra approved. A man should get on with his work.

  Yes, especially when he worked with such laudable economy of motion and effort. Like the young blonde.

  In fact, Killashandra was rather surprised when the ramp suddenly retracted and the machine slid sideways to the next hold. A small barefoot rascal of a lad slipped up to the crewmen, a tray of hot pies balanced on his head. The aroma was tantalizing, and Killashandra realized that she had not eaten since leaving the freighter that morning. Before she could signal the rascal to her, his merchandise had been bought up by the seamen. Irritated, Killashandra looked landward. The docks couldn’t be dependent on the services of small boys. There must be other eating facilities nearby. With a backward glance at her blond sailor, contentedly munching on a pie in each hand, she left the wharf.

  As it happened, the eating house she chose displayed a placard advertising the Golden Dolphin. The hostelry was up the beach, set back amid a grove of frond-leaved trees, which also reminded her of something and excited an irritation in her. She wouldn’t give in to it. The inn was set far enough around a headland from the town and the wharf so that commercial noise was muted. She took a room with a veranda looking out over the water. She changed into native clothing and retraced her steps along the quiet corridor to the public room.

  “What’s the native brew?” she asked the barman, settling herself on the quaint high wooden stool.

  “Depends on your capacity, m’dear,” the little black man told her, grinning a welcome.

  “I’ve never disgraced myself.”

  “Tart or sweet?”

  “Hmmmm … tart, cool, and long.”

  “There’s a concoction of fermented fruits, native to this globe, called ‘harmat.’ Powerful.”

  “Keep an eye on me then, man. You call the limit.”

  He nodded respectfully. He couldn’t know that a crystal singer had a metabolism that compensated for drug, narcotic, or excess alcohol. A blessing-curse. Particularly if she were injured off-world, with no crystal around to draw the noise of accidental pain from her bones and muscles. Quietly cursing to herself, she knew she had enough crystal resonance still in her to reduce even an amputation to minimal discomfort.

  Harmat was tart, cool, and long, with a pleasant aftertaste that kept the mouth sweet and soothed the throat.

  “A good drink for a sun world,” she commented.

  “And sailors.”

  “Aye, it is,” the barman said, his eyes twinkling.

  “And if it weren’t for them, we could export more.”

  “I thought Armagh’s trade was fish oils and glue.”

  The barman wrinkled his nose disdainfully. “It is. Harmat off-world commands a price, only trade rules say home consumption comes first.”

  “Invent another drink.”

  The barman frowned. “I try. Oh, I try. But they drink me dry of anything I brew.”

  “You’re brewman, as well?”

  He drew himself up, straight and proud. “I gather the fruit from my own land, prepare it, press it, keg it, age it.”

  She questioned him further, interested in another’s exacting trade, and thought if she weren’t a crystal singer, brewmaking would have been fun.

  Biyanco, for that was the brewman’s name, chatted with her amiably until the laughter and talk of a large crowd penetrated the quiet gloom of the public room.

  “The fishermen,” he told her, busying himself by filling glass after glass of harmat and lining them up along the bar.

  He was none too soon, for the wide doors of the public room swung open and a horde of oil-trousered, vested men and women surged up to the bar, tanned hands closing on the nearest glass, coins spinning and clicking to the wooden surface. Killashandra remained on her stool, but she was pressed hard on both sides by thirty or so people who spared her no glance until they had finished the first glass and were bawling for a refill. Then she was, rather casually, she felt, dismissed as the fisherfolk laughed among themselves and talked trade.

  “You’d best watch that stuff,” said a voice in her ear, and she saw Redbeard.

  “I’ve been warned,” she answered, grinning.

  “Biyanco makes the best harmat this side of the canal. It’s not a drink for the novice.”

  “I’ve been warned,” she repeated, mildly amused at the half insult. Of course, the man couldn’t know that she was a crystal singer. So his warning had been kindly meant.

  A huge bronzed fist brushed past her left breast. Startled, she looked up into the brilliant blue eyes of the blond sailor, who gazed at her in an incurious appraisal that warmed briefly in the way a man will look at a woman, and then grew cautious.

  Killashandra looked away first, oddly disturbed by the blue eyes, somehow familiar but not the same, and disappointed. This one was much too young for her. She turned back to Redbeard, who grinned as if he had watched the swift exchange of glances and was somehow amused by it.

  “I’m Thursday, Orric Thursday, ma’am,” the red-beard said.

  “Killashandra Ree is my name,” she replied, and extended her hand.

  He couldn’t have guessed her profession by her grip, but she could see that the strength of it surprised him. Killashandra was not a tall or heavily boned woman: cutting crystal did not need mass, only controlled energy, and that could be developed in any arm.

  Thursday gestured to the blond. “This is my good friend, Shad Tucker.”

  Thankful that the press of bodies made it impossible for her to do the courteous handshake, Killashandra nodded to Shad Tucker.

  “And my old comrade of the wars, Tir Od Nell.” Orric Thursday motioned to the blackbeard, who also contented himself with a nod and a grin at her. “You’d be here for a rest, Killashandra?” Thursday asked. And when she nodded, he went on. “Now, why would you pick such a dull fisherman’s world as Armagh if you’d the galaxy to choose from?”

  Killashandra had heard that sort of question before, how many times she couldn’t remember. She had also heard the same charming invitation for confidences.

  �
��Perhaps I like water sports,” she replied, smiling back at him and not bothering to hide her appraisal.

  To her surprise, he threw back his head and laughed. She could see where he had trimmed the hairs from his throat, leaving a narrow band of white flesh that never saw sun. His two friends said nothing, but their eyes were on her.

  “Perhaps you do, ma’am. And this is the place. Did you want the long wave ride? There’s a boat out every dawn.” Orric looked at her questioningly. “Then water skating? Submarining? Dolphin swimming? What is your pleasure, Killashandra Ree?”

  “Rest! I’m tired!”

  “Oh, I’d never think you’d ever known fatigue.” The expression in his eyes invited her to edify him.

  “For someone unfamiliar with the condition, how would you know it?”

  Tir Od Nell roared.

  “She’s got you there, Orr,” he said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. Shad Tucker smiled, a sort of shy, amused smile, as if he hadn’t suspected her capable of caustic reply and wasn’t sure he should enjoy it at his friend’s expense.

  Orric grinned, shrugged, and eyed Killashandra with respect. Then he bawled to Biyanco that his glass had a hole in it.

  When the edge of their thirst had been satisfied, most of the fishermen left. “In search of other diversions,” Orric said, but he, Tir Od Nell, and Shad Tucker merely settled stools around Killashandra and continued to drink.

  She matched them, paid her rounds, and enjoyed Orric’s attempts to pry personal information from her.

  He was not, she discovered, easily put off, nor shy of giving facts about himself and his friends. They had all worked the same fishing boat five seasons back, leaving the sea as bad fishing turned them off temporarily. Orric had an interest in computers and often did wharfman’s chores if the regular men were away when the ships came in. Tir Od Nell was working the lunk season to earn some ready credit, and would return to his regular job inland. Shad Tucker, the only off-worlder, had sailed the seas of four planets before he was landed on Armagh.

  “Shad keeps saying he’ll move on, but he’s been here five years and more,” Orric told Killashandra, “and no sign of applying for a ticket-off.”

  Tucker only smiled, the slight tolerant smile playing at the corner of his mouth, as if he was chary of admitting even that much about himself.

  “Don’t let Shad’s reticence mislead you, Killashandra Ree,” Orric went on, laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “He’s accredited for more than a lunk fisher. Indeed he is.” Killashandra felt yet another tweak of pain that she masked with a smile for Orric. “Shad’s got first mate’s tickets on four water worlds that make sailing Armagh look like tank bathing. Came here with a submarine rig one of the Anchorite companies was touting.” He shrugged, eloquently indicating that the company’s praise had fallen on deaf Armaghan ears.

  “They’re conservative here on Armagh,” Tucker said, his voice a nice change, soft after Orric’s near-bellow. She almost had to sharpen her hearing to catch what he said.

  “How so?” she asked Shad.

  “They feel there is one good way to catch lunk when it’s in oil. By long line. That way you don’t bruise the flesh so much and the lunk doesn’t struggle the way it does in a net and sour the oil. The captains, they’ve a sense of location that doesn’t need sonic gear. I’ve sailed with five, six of the best and they always know when and where lunk are running. And how many they can bring from that deep.”

  And, Killashandra thought, bemused by Shad’s soft accent, you’d give your arm to develop that sense.

  “You’ve fished on other worlds,” she said out loud.

  “Aye.”

  “Where, for instance?”

  He was as unforthcoming as a fish—or herself.

  “Oh, all over. Spiderfish, crackerjaw, bluefin, skaters, and Welladay whales.”

  The young man spoke casually, as if encounters with aquatic monsters were of no account. And how, Killashandra wondered to herself, did she know that’s what he’d named? Nervously, she glanced to one side and saw Orric’s eyes light up, as if he had hoped that the catalog would impress her.

  “A crackerjaw opened his back for him on Spindrift,” Orric said proudly. “And he flew five miles with a skater and brought it down, the largest one ever recorded on Mandalay.”

  Killashandra wasn’t sure why Orric Thursday wished to extol his friend. But it made him more acceptable in her eyes. Shad was too young, anyhow. Killashandra made no further attempt to draw Shad out but turned to Tir and Orric.

  Despite a continued concern for her consumption of harmat, Orric kept ordering until full dark closed down abruptly on the planet and the artificial lights came on in the room.

  “Mealtime,” Biyanco announced in a loud, penetrating voice, and activated a barrier that dropped over the bar. He appeared through a side door and briskly gestured them to a table for four on the other side of the room. Killashandra made no resistance to Orric’s suggestion that they all dine together, and she spent the rest of the evening—listening to fish stories—in their company. She spent her night alone—by choice. She had not made up her mind yet.

  When the sun came up over the edge of the sea, she was down in the hotel’s private lagoon, floating on the buoyant waters, just as the lunk ships, sails fat with dawn winds, slid out to open sea with incredible speed.

  To her surprise, Orric appeared at midday and offered to show her Trefoil’s few diversions. Nothing loath, she went and found him most agreeable company, conversant on every phase of Trefoil’s domestic industry. He steered her from the usual tourist path, for which she was grateful. She abhorred that label, though tourist she was, on any world but Ballybran. Nor did she give Orric Thursday any hint of her profession, despite all his attempts to wheedle the information from her.

  It wasn’t that she liked being secretive, but few worlds understood the function of crystal singers, and some very odd habits and practices had been attributed to them. Killashandra’s discretion and caution was instinctive by now.

  Late that afternoon, a bleeper on Orric’s belt alerted him to return to the dock: the fishing boats had been sighted.

  “Sorry, m’dear,” he said as he executed a dipping turn of his fast airflipper. “Duty calls.”

  She elected to join him on the wharf, allowing him to think it was his company she preferred. Actually, she wanted to watch the silent teamwork of docking, and see the mahogany figure of Shad Tucker again. He was much too young for her, she told herself again, but a right graceful person to observe.

  They had made a quick plenteous catch that day, Killashandra was told as the fishermen drowned their thirsts in harmat at the Golden Dolphin. Tucker seemed unusually pleased, and Killashandra couldn’t resist asking why.

  “He’s made enough now to go off-world,” Orric said when Shad replied with an indolent shrug. “He won’t go.” Orric shook his head, a wry grin on his face. “He never does. He’s been here longer than on any other planet.”

  “Why?” Killashandra asked Shad, then had to hush Orric. “Let Tucker reply. He knows his own mind, doesn’t he?”

  Shad regarded her with mild surprise, and the indolent look left his blue eyes, replaced by an intensity she found hard to ignore.

  “This is a real sea world,” Shad said, picking his words in his soft-accented way, “not some half-evolved plankton planet.”

  He doesn’t open his lips wide enough to enunciate properly, she thought, and wondered why he guarded himself so.

  “You’ve lunk for profit, territ and flatfish for fine eating, the crustaceans and bivalves for high livers, then the sea fruits for a constant harvest. Variety. I might buy myself a strip of land and stay.”

  “You do ship on more than the lunk boats?”

  Shad was surprised by her question. “All the boats fish lunk when it runs. Then you go after the others.”

  “If you’ve a mind for drudgery,” Tir Od Nell said gloomily.

  Shad gave Tir a forbearing glan
ce. “Lunk requires only muscle,” he said with a sly grin.

  This appeared to be an old challenge, for Tir launched into a debate that Shad parried with the habit of long practice.

  For the sake of being perverse, Killashandra took Tir to bed that night. She didn’t regret the experience, although there was no harmony between them. If it gave her no peace, his vehemence did take the edge off her hunger. She did not encourage him to ask for more. Somewhere, long ago, she had learned the way to do that without aggravating a lover.

  He was gone by dawn. Orric dropped by a few hours later and took her to see a sea-fruit farm on the peninsula, ten klicks from Trefoil to the south. When she assured Max Ennert, the farmer, of her experience, they were all fitted out with breather tanks and went submarine.

  Enclosed by water, isolated by her trail of bubbles, though attached by guideline to Max and Orric, she realized—probably not for the first time—why crystal singers sought water worlds. Below sea level, there was insulation against aural sound, relief from the play of noise against weary eardrums.

  They drifted inches above the carefully tended sea gardens, Max and Orric occasionally pruning off a ripe frond of grape or plum and shoving them in the net bags they towed. They bypassed reapers in a vast sea valley where weed was being harvested. Occasionally, loose strands would drift past them, the fuller, longer ones deftly caught and netted by the men.

  Killashandra was content to follow, slightly behind Max, slightly ahead of Orric, craning her neck, angling her body to enjoy as much of the clear-sea view as possible. One or the other man checked her gauges from time to time. Euphoria could be a curse undersea, and they didn’t know of the professional immunity she enjoyed.

  Perhaps that was why Orric argued with Max at one point, when they had been below some two hours. But they stayed down almost three more before they completed the circuit. As they walked out of the sea at Max’s landing, night was approaching with the usual tropical dispatch.

  “Stay on, Orric, Killashandra, if you’ve no other plans,” Max said, but the words sounded rehearsed, strained.