Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Green’s easier to cut to get back into the swing of it.”

  “Ha! I’m back already.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “When thrall can hold you for hours?”

  “That,” she said, snapping her words out, “was your fault. I wouldn’t have needed more than an hour.”

  “Ha!” he mimicked her.

  But they were already, out of long habit, setting the cabin of the sled to rights to take off.

  They bickered with some heat and contempt for the first hour in the air. Some equity was reached when they came across another worn paint mark that bore enough resemblance to one of the released ones for them to land. But as they were surveying the canyons, they caught sight of a sled in one of the gorges and quickly left the area, Killa swearing under her breath.

  “What about one of the claims we cut? Aren’t there any in the vicinity?”

  Lars frowned thoughtfully. “Should be.” Then he banged his fist on the console. “If only we could establish some method by which singers could register the location of sites …”

  “Ha! And have renegades spend weeks trying to break into the program?”

  “There are security measures available now that no singer could break.”

  “Ha! I don’t believe you! I won’t believe you.”

  “I know,” he said, shrugging away her anger, and grinned over his shoulder at her. “But I’ll win ’em over to my way of thinking!”

  “That’ll be the day!”

  “It’ll come, Sunny. The Guild has to reorganize. It can’t continue to operate on guidelines that’re centuries old, incredibly obsolete, and damned naive.”

  “Naive?”

  “It’s a rough galaxy we live in. The business ethics that motivated the earliest Guild Masters simply don’t exist, and modernization is long overdue.”

  “Modernization?” Killa swept her hand around the cabin, where sophisticated equipment was installed in small, discreet, and effective packages.

  “I don’t mean the hardware. I mean”—he jammed a finger to his temple—“the software. The thinking, the ethos, the management.”

  Killa made a disparaging noise in her throat. “This Guild Mastership has addled your software, that’s for sure.”

  “Has it?” He cast her a sideways glance. “I think you’ll come to agree that updates are essential.”

  “Hmmm. Hey, isn’t that a marker of ours to starboard …”

  It was, though nearly rubbed completely off the flat summit. They touched down, as much to refurbish the marker as to see if anything was familiar.

  “Vaguely” was Killashandra’s verdict. Something nagged at her, something quite insistent. “I think,” she began hesitantly, “I think it’s black.”

  “You don’t sound sure …”

  “I think you were also right to ask me if I was up to it.” She fought the frisson that racked her.

  “We can go back and cut more green.”

  “No, we’re here to cut black and black we’ll cut, if it kills me.”

  “I draw the line at suicide, no matter how badly the Guild needs black right now.”

  She gave him a wry grin.

  What they found was a deep blue crystal, one of the loveliest colors either had ever cut. They got three cartons of it and were back at the sled, filling up their water bottles, when the first twinge of storm warning caught Killashandra. She sucked in her breath at the intensity of it. The crystal deprivation must have made her doubly vulnerable. She caught at the side of the cistern, and Lars reached out to support her.

  “What’s the matter? And don’t you dare say ‘nothing,’ Killa,” he said, eyes piercing hers with his growing recognition of the probable cause. “Storm?” When she nodded, he cursed under his breath. Then he closed the water tap and covered his half-filled canteen, stowing it in place. He took hers from her limp hand and put it away, as well. “All right, let’s get ready.”

  “But it’s only the—”

  “Fardles, Killa, I can tell just from your reaction that it’s going to be a bad blow.”

  “It’s only because—”

  “I don’t care what it’s because,” he cried, irritably chopping his hand downward to interrupt her. He took her arm and turned her toward the galley. “We’re returning, and that’s that. I’m not risking you to even the mildest blow. Your head’s not on straight yet from deprivation.”

  Though she protested vehemently, she had to recognize the fact that he was absolutely correct in assessing her state. She wouldn’t admit it to him—she argued out of habit. He refused to entertain her contention that they would have enough time to cut at least five; he agreed but discounted the fact that this was the best blue lode they had seen in decades.

  “It isn’t black,” he said, his mouth and eyes angry. “Try not to forget that, Sunny. It’s black we need!”

  “Then why did we waste time cutting this blue?”

  “You thought there was black here!” He was moving around his side of the sled, securing cabinets and stowing oddments away.

  “We cut good blue …” she began, going meek on him, a tactic that had often worked. “I don’t remember how many times you’ve told me that …”

  The anger went out of him all at once, and reaching across the narrow space that separated them, he caressed her cheek briefly, his smile penitent. “Sorry, Sunny, no matter how you try to slice it, we’re not cutting any more … here … today.”

  “It should be a partners’ decision, not one way,” she said, wondering if he was weakening. “You’ve never been this arbitrary before.”

  He gave a weary sigh. “I’m arbitrary now! As Guild Master, I have more than a partner’s stake in keeping your brain unscrambled.”

  “I didn’t want you to be Guild Master.”

  “You’ve made that clear,” he said, and his eyes flashed at her before once again he relented. “We were the best duet the Guild ever had. I’ve seen the printout of our aggregate cuttings. Impressive!” The smile he gave her was suddenly boyish, and she felt her heart unseize as the Lars she knew so intimately surfaced briefly. “Now let’s scramble. I’m not risking you, or me.”

  In far better charity with each other, they returned to the Guild. By then the storm warnings were far-flung, and sleds from all sectors began pouring into the Hangar. Lars was calling for assistance to unload their crystal just as the flight officer handed him a comunit with the message that the call had top priority.

  “I’ll take ours through Sorting,” Killa told him when he looked expectantly at her.

  For a moment she watched his tall figure stride to the nearest exit, his head bent as he listened to the priority call. Someone else needing black crystal?

  Guild Master’s cut also took priority in the Sorting Shed and Killa waved her cartons toward Clodine’s stall. She ignored the Sorter’s initial nervousness and did her best to be pleasant. It was the cut that helped restore Clodine to their previous easy relationship. The market price of the blues would have been enough to appease the most desperate singer.

  Once assured of the hefty credit balance, Killashandra became aware of externals—like the crystal pong emanating from her person and her clothes. Jauntily she strode to her quarters. As she palmed open the door, she heard the radiant liquid splashing into the tub and smiled. That was nice of Lars. A good long soak, something to eat, and she would be back to normal. Well, as normal as any crystal singer ever was. At least she had worked free of all that crystal cramp. Good cutting was what she had really needed to cure it.

  The moment she toggled the food dispenser, the screen lit up to display Lars’s face.

  “Killa? That’s a handy total on the blues,” he said.

  “Shards, I wanted to tell you myself,” she said, feeling a surge of disgruntlement.

  “I’ve ordered up a meal here, if you’d care to join me …” The hesitant tone of his invitation struck her as atypical, but it pleased her that this Guild Master was not as autocratic a
s Lanzecki had been.

  “I think I might at that,” Killa said graciously, and canceled the order she had just placed. Dinner with Lars, or for that matter, dinner with the Guild Master, tagged elusive wisps of memory, most of them pleasant.

  Looking at the garments in her closet, she picked the one that suited a slightly smug mood and dressed carefully, spending time to comb out her snagged hair and arrange it attractively. She ought to get it cut short again, she reflected. It had been a nuisance in the Range, sweating up and falling into her eyes when she wanted a clear view of her cuts. She peered at her face: she had a tan again, making her eyes brighter, canceling the yellow that had begun to tint the white. She pulled her hands down her cheeks: they were still gaunt, and were those age grooves from her nose to her mouth? She grimaced to smooth them away. Then she frowned. She did look older. She would have to be very careful not to tax her symbiont again as badly as she must have done to look this way.

  As she entered the Guild Master’s offices, the first thing she saw was the empty desk, its surface clear of pencil files or any work at all. She frowned. Trag? No, Trag was gone. Lars had not found a suitable assistant. He would have to. No wonder he had been snapping at her in the Ranges. She knew from the amount of work she had seen Lanzecki get through—and that with Trag’s help—that the Guild Mastership was no sinecure. She snorted to herself: Lars had been a damned fool to get roped into the job. She bet he hadn’t been sailing once since he had become Guild Master!

  “When” was not a word she often used, but it suddenly flicked across her consciousness. When had he taken over from Lanzecki? She grunted, canceling that irritating consideration as she continued across the floor to the inner office.

  Lars was deep in contemplation of whatever was on his desk screen. He had had time to shower and change; his hair was still damp. To one side, in front of the wide window that overlooked the immense doors of the Hangar, a table had been set, and the enticing odors of some of her favorite foods wafted to her. Becoming aware of someone else in the room, he looked up with a scowl that shifted into a smile as he jumped to his feet.

  “Sunny!” He gestured for her to join him at the table, then seated her.

  “What are you after now?” she asked, a teasing note in her voice to draw the sting of her cynicism.

  “Ah, lovey,” he said, dropping a kiss on her cheek before he took his own seat, “give me credit for some altruism.”

  “Why should I?”

  Grinning at her, he searched her face and was evidently satisfied by what he saw. She cocked her head at him.

  “So?”

  “Eat first, talk later. I’d like to see a little more flesh on your bones before we go out again.”

  She groaned. “So we’re not going back out as soon as the storm clears?”

  In place of an answer, he served generous portions of her favorite foods onto her plate. When he started to help himself, she saw that he had ordered the nicco spikes she hated even to smell. He grinned when she twitched her nose in disgust.

  “You see, I’m not catering entirely to you, Killa Ree, and no, we’re not able to go out immediately. Black crystal’s not the only one of our products in demand.” He ended the sentence abruptly. “I’d be able to go quicker if you could see your way clear to giving me a little help.”

  “I thought helping you was finding black. I’ll go alone.”

  “No!” The single word was so forceful that she stared at him in surprise. Lars hadn’t used to take such a tone with her. She bristled, but he reached for her arm, shaking some of the milsi stalks from her half-raised spoon, before his touch softened in apology. “No, Killa. Too dangerous. You’re not completely over the deprivation and you’d thrall. Especially if you were cutting black alone.”

  While she still resisted his prohibition, she had to admit that she would be extremely vulnerable to black thrall. She also had to admit that she had been in a terrible state when they had gone out: as near as made no never mind to being a crystallized cripple. They might have been searching for black crystal, but she was bloody lucky they hadn’t found any. Green thrall had been deep enough. She owed him a lot for risking his own neck taking her out at all in that state.

  “So, what do you need done, Guild Master?” she asked flippantly.

  He smiled with genuine relief. “Thanks, Sunny, I really appreciate it.”

  “So?”

  “Eat first,” he said. “I can’t think when my stomach’s clinging to my backbone.”

  She was hungrier than she had thought and quite willing to concentrate on eating. Odd how a full belly could reduce resistance to unpalatable business.

  When they had cleared the last morsel from the platters, Lars leaned back, patting his stomach and smiling.

  “That’s better. Now, if you could finish rounding up the figures and prices on the accounts I have on the screen, then I can go salve wounded feelings.”

  “Whose?”

  “Clarend and Ritwili have legitimate grievances which must be addressed, and I’ve a delegation to meet at Shankill that I can no longer postpone.”

  “I might be better with the delegation than with the files,” she suggested warily.

  “It’s the sort of thing you’ve done for Lanzecki before. D’you remember the Apharian contingent? Well, I’ve got the Blackwell Triad looking for favors now. Similar circumstances, similar solution, but I need the account figures on hand.”

  “Bor-ring,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “A lot of what I have to do is boring, and yet …” Lars regarded her, his wide mouth curling in a grin. “I rather like finding out how this Guild hangs together against all comers.”

  Killashandra snorted. “We’ve a unique product that no one else can produce, no matter how hard they try. We’re in control.”

  “I like that ‘we,’ Sunny.” He reached across the table to fondle her hand. “I’ll go heal fractured feelings; you find me figures.”

  “Just this once, because I owe you,” she warned him, pulling her hand away and shaking her finger at him. “Don’t think you can rope me into this full time. I’m a singer, not a key tapper! Find yourself a recruit with business training.”

  “I’m trying to,” he said with a sly grin.

  Once she became absorbed in the analysis, Killashandra found it more interesting than she had expected. Certainly the scope of the Guild’s authority—and its unassailable position as the only source of communication-crystal systems—was wider than she had imagined. Her job—the cutting—was but the beginning of a multitude of complex processes with end uses in constant demand throughout the inhabited galaxy. Deprive a world of Ballybran crystal, and its economy would collapse, so vital were the shafts, and even the splinters, to technology on all levels. The pure research buffos in the labs here kept finding new applications of crystal—even ground shards had uses as abrasives. The more brilliant of the smaller splinters could be made into resonating jewelry, much in vogue again. She wondered how the galaxy had let one Guild gain so much power. What had Lars been on about? Reorganizing? Modernizing? What? The Guild bought state-of-the-art technology in other fields.

  Unable to resist the temptation of having unrestricted access to the Guild’s master files, Killashandra ran some that she might never again have a chance to discover. Lars had said something about aggregate cutting figures. She wanted to know just how much she, Killashandra Ree, had contributed to the success of the Guild. Once in the ultraconfidential files, those entries were easy enough to find. But the dating of their first duet journey was a shock. They couldn’t have been cutting that long. They couldn’t …

  She canceled the file and sat looking at the screen, patiently blinking a readiness to oblige her. She couldn’t …

  “Sunny?” Lars’s voice on the comunit broke through the fugue such knowledge caused. “Sunny, got those figures for me? Sunny? Sunny, what’s wrong?”

  His voice, concerned and increasingly anxious, roused her.

&n
bsp; “I got ’em …” She managed to get the words out.

  “Sunny, what’s the matter?”

  “Am I old, Lars?”

  There wasn’t much of a pause and, later on, she was never sure if there had been any before he laughed. “Old? A singer never gets old, Sunny.” His voice rippled with a laughter that sounded genuine to her critical ear. She couldn’t even imagine that his amusement was forced. “That’s why we became singers. To never get old. Give me those figures, will you, and then I can get back from Shankill and show you just how ageless we both are! Don’t get sidetracked by trivia like that, Killa. Now, what are those figures? I’m nearly at Shankill Base. Patch them through, will you?”

  Like an AI, she performed the necessary function and then leaned back in the Guild Master’s comfortable but too big chair and tried to remember how she could possibly have cut so many tons of crystal over so many decades.

  Lars found her there when he returned long after night had fallen over Ballybran. Nor could he, using all his skill as lover or persuader, bring her out of her fugue. He did the only thing possible: took her out into the Ranges again.

  She broke out herself when she realized that they were deep in the Milekey Range. On that trip they found the elusive black crystal, a full octave in E that was likely to sing messages around the biggest of the systems vying for comcrystals. But cutting the blacks enervated Killa to the point that she did not argue with Lars when he reluctantly but firmly turned the sled back to the Guild complex. For the first time it wasn’t a storm that drove them in.

  Dimly Killa realized that he carried her in his arms all the way down to the Infirmary, refusing any assistance or the grav-gurney. He undressed her himself while Donalla attached the monitors and Presnol fussed over which medication would produce the best results in the optimum time.

  “Shard the optimum!” Lars raved. “Juice up her symbiont! Heal her!”

  He saw her harnessed into the radiant-fluid bath before he stormed off. She let herself drift then and didn’t even wonder how much credit that octave of blacks had earned them.