Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line

by Anne McCaffrey

  She turned her head and caught her reflection in the porthole. Well, a quadruple thickness of plasglas might blur lines, but she really didn’t have many, thanks to the Ballybran symbiont. She certainly didn’t look any two hundred and fifteen years. She smiled at her image. She wasn’t much changed from the girl who had left Fuerte with a mind-damaged crystal singer. She gripped Lars’s fingers tightly.

  Now, if she could manage to cushion his shock that she could never again cut black crystal, she was good for another couple of hundred years.

  “You won’t mind letting Presnol and Donalla give you a good checkup, will you, Sunny?” he asked, his eyes dark and anxious.

  “Not at all,” she replied blithely. “Though I’m sure Bren and Boira sent a report on ahead, didn’t they?”

  “That was hardly reassuring,” he remarked dryly. “Especially the part where you were sure you were dead. I don’t exaggerate when I say that the heart went out of me.”

  She stroked his hand. “But as it was me saying it, you had no cause to worry.”

  He gave her a long and trenchant look. “By any chance, among your newly revived memories, do you have the one of our first night together?”

  She ducked her head: the recall was instant, and almost embarrassing in its intensity.

  “Did I not tell you then,” he said, his voice intimately low and rich with emotion, “that you gave me the most incredible love experience of my life?”

  “Lars! You don’t remember that?”

  He smiled at her, his eyes so filled with passion that she could feel the blood rising to suffuse her face.

  “It’s one of my fondest recollections, Sunny, and it is so wonderful that you remember it now, too.”

  He kept gazing into her eyes, stroking her hand, so that she felt like a giddy youngling. Which, she remembered, she had never been, for even at that age she had already been dedicated to the notion of herself as a singer.

  “Ah, ahem …” Flicken, standing by the open shuttle door, was clearing his throat.

  “Thanks, Flick,” Lars said, suavely recovering. He reached across Killashandra to release her harness and then handed her out as regally as if she were indeed a queen.

  “The courier’s scheduled for an oh-eight-thirty docking at Bay Forty-three, Guild Master. Shall I be ready at oh-seven-hundred?”

  “That’ll be fine,” Lars said, and hurried Killa out, obviously wishing that Flicken had not spoken.

  “Who’s going where tomorrow in a courier, Lars?” Killa demanded as he guided her toward the lift. As they entered, he ran his hand through his crisp blond hair.

  “I’ve put it off as long as I could, Killa,” he said apologetically. “Presnol said he’d sit in for me. I shouldn’t be gone long.”

  “Where?” She felt a definite sinking feeling.

  He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve been putting it off because you were away, and I wasn’t leaving until you got back after what Big Hungry did to you …”

  “Out with it!”

  “I’m not sure if you’d remember …”

  She quirked an eyebrow at him, grinning. “Try me.”

  He jabbed an impatient finger on the control pad, and she didn’t take her eyes off his face.

  “All right.” He grinned, his eyes sparkling with the challenge. “Recruitment …”

  “You’ve got permission for overt recruitment,” she replied without hesitating, precisely remembering the scene and where they had stood in his office in relation to each other, “and the courier’s taking you where there’re some live ones.”

  “My, my, we are vastly improved,” he said, slightly mocking, but his fingers wrapped tenderly about her forearm.

  The lift stopped, and he tugged her out. She stopped in the foyer.

  “This is not the medical level.”

  “No, it is not. It is our level, and you can spend tomorrow with Presnol and Donalla, but you are spending the next hours with me, your Guild Master, and your ardent lover who is overjoyed to have his Sunny compos mentis, hale, whole, and hearty, back again.” With a deft twist of his wrist, he pulled her into his arms and demonstrated his overjoy!

  Sometime during the loverly reenactment of their first night together, he spoke of his trip to three overpopulated city-planets where he hoped to find recruits. He also had permission to enlist specific technicians to fill the empty positions or to train up in the specialist support skills.

  “We desperately need more medical staff,” he told her, stroking her hair as they lay entwined on the sleeping platform. “Too many singers are so long in their craft that they get arrogant about their abilities and lose all common sense and any caution they might have once possessed.”

  “And a one-way trip to the Infirmary.” She thought of Rimbol, poignantly remembering the bright gay chap he had been when they had both first come to Ballybran. That was not a comfortable memory when contrasted with his current condition. She shuddered.

  “Which will have to be enlarged unless we can somehow stop the stupid mistake singers are making …”

  “You know, Lars, it can be stopped,” she said, describing idle circles on his chest as she chose her words. “By knowing where exactly to go to cut, cutting, and coming right back out.”

  “You tell ’em, Sunny,” he said wearily. “They’re not listening to me. And if you can get them to listen, I’ll love you forever.”

  “You already have, Lars, you already have.”

  Such a statement demanded ratification. Later he returned to the subject. “A few of them are, because Tiagana, Borton, and Jaygrin have been loudly declaring how much credit they’ve made in easy straight-out-in runs. But so many singers are running on instinct now, there’s no way to get through to them.”

  “Maybe I was hasty a bit ago, Lars,” she said, “saying you mustn’t send other singers to Big Hungry. If he could bring my memory back …”

  “I think we’ll leave that as the solution of last resort. I may be prejudiced,” he said, kissing her cheek, “but you were always more than just a singer, Sunny.”

  “Being just a singer would have been rather limiting,” she remarked, but she meant something different than he. “Which reminds me, why on earth saddle Presnol with pro-tem duties? I’m much better qualified than he is.”

  “Are you volunteering, Killa?”

  “I believe so …” She grinned up at him in the dim light of their sleeping room. “But only while you’re away. You don’t want to risk me getting to enjoy the power, you know.”

  He gave a snort and wiggled his shoulders into the pillows. “Not bloody likely. You are the best singer I’ve got.”

  She didn’t like the way he said that, but by the time she had thought of a suitable response, his breathing had slowed into a sleep rhythm. An infectious one, because she slipped into it, too.

  * * *

  Donalla and Presnol ran Killashandra through a gamut of tests, sampling her bodily juices and wiring her up to all kinds of monitors that provided reams of printout.

  “All of which only tells us that you’re in great physical shape …”

  “For a gal my age,” Killa added, preening in front of the mirror. She had been allowed to dress again and was hoping they would think of feeding her sometime soon.

  “Ah, yes,” Donalla responded, needing to clear her throat.

  Killashandra laughed. “Whatever zapped me seems to have burned off the outlived dross and stupidities any human collects along the way. I don’t mind being two hundred and fifteen years old. In fact, it’s fun, in a bizarre fashion. How’s my symbiont, by the way? I’m keenly interested in its continued functioning.”

  “Oh, that.” Presnol flicked his fingers dismissively. “It’s as vigorous as mine or Donalla’s, and we’re both much much younger than you.”

  “I,” Killashandra said quellingly, “may make comments, and even jokes, about my antiquity, Presnol, but”—she waggled her finger at them—“no one else can. Read me?”
r />   Presnol looked properly subdued, but Donalla had to cover her mouth to suppress her laughter. Killashandra focused all her attention on the medic.

  “And you, you ingrate,” she added sternly, “had better watch your step, too! Imagine! Not showing proper respect to a legend of your planet! Who is exceedingly hungry right now. And I don’t care if you need to make more tests. I’m eating first.”

  “We’ll join you.”

  * * *

  There were as few diners in the big room as there had been on her last appearance there, Killa noted. “How many singers are actually active?” she asked Donalla, vividly remembering the room packed so many years before.

  “Four hundred and forty-two,” Donalla said sadly.

  “Ouch! That’s ridiculous.” Killashandra was stunned, all too aware that there had been 4,425 singers when she had joined the Guild. “How many are off-planet right now?”

  “Three hundred and five.”

  “How many inactives?”

  Presnol made a face. “Three hundred and seventy-five.”

  Killa could not recall the appropriate total of that category, but then, she hadn’t been interested in the figures. In any event the number was depressing.

  “Seventy-four,” Donalla said with a sigh. “Rimbol passed on this morning. I hadn’t had a chance to mention it.”

  “Rimbol!” Killa’s throat closed after she spoke his name. She swallowed and felt tears forming in her eyes. She hadn’t cried in—no, that she couldn’t bring to mind. She ducked her head and struggled to get control of herself. A beaker of Yarran beer was pushed into her line of sight. She picked it up, nodding her appreciation to Presnol, and held it aloft. “To Rimbol, a gay lad with a kind heart and a fine tenor voice.” Then she downed the beer in one draft.

  She looked around her then, to see if she could put names to the handful of singers dining. She recognized two: they had been in the batch of twenty that Lars had recalled to cut black crystal. The tall thin fellow with the long jaw was Marichandim. But search as she did, she could not dredge up a name for the blond woman.

  “D’you know her name, Donalla?”

  Donalla craned her head over her shoulder. “The one with Marichandim? That’s Siglinda. They’ve done quite well cutting from coordinates.”

  “How many have joined in that program?”

  “Of the active singers, only twelve.” Donalla shook her head, and Presnol looked solemn. “The others won’t even listen. They run if you try to approach them. They’re too far gone in their sublimations.”

  “Well,” Killashandra said, rising, “I think I want to go over the Orientation program. If it’s the same as I had under Tukolom, I think we’d better overhaul the whole thing. That’s where the trouble started. Whatever singers Lars brings back are going to learn more than Rules and Regs!”

  It was strange to be in this office, Killashandra thought as she entered the Guild Master’s quarters. Trag’s desk was clear, empty, waiting. Waiting for her, she decided with a wry grin, even if she had done her damnedest to delay the inevitable.

  Lars’s desk was neat, with pencil files set in four platoons across the broad surface. One group had the notation “Orient. Revis.” And she smiled. She should have known he would consider that vitally important. She peered at the other notations: “Coords,” and there were nine files in that group; “Recruit” had seven; “R&D” was the sparsest with only three.

  There were several scrawled notes that she couldn’t decipher stuck to one side, near his comunit, and a hologram base. She flicked it on and was gratified to see herself—a shot taken while they were on Nihal III—and then she noticed that the unit, which could hold a hundred ’grams, was full. She flicked the change switch and there she was again, in the orange wet suit he had bought her for Flag, where he had seen the prototype of Angel II. She joggled the switch again and again, pausing only long enough to identify where the ’gram had been taken. She turned the holo off and, hauling the chair firmly under her, resolutely turned to the big monitor and called up the Guild Roster. She had a lot of work to do before Lars got back.

  As she had discovered once before on her single foray into administrative work for Lanzecki—she must remember to find out what happened to that dorkish Bollam, she reminded herself—she enjoyed rooting among the files and collating information.

  The Guild’s operating costs, of which the Infirmary was now requiring an increasingly larger share, came from tithing every singer’s cut, a bone of contention between singer and Sorter. Other costs, which the singer bore for sled, fuel, equipment, living accommodations, and food, were presented at market rate. That sank her notion that the Guild took a cut from the supplies, jacking the prices up periodically. The files proved that there was no markup whatever, merely a gradual increase in wholesale costs throughout the inhabited galaxy. There had been an increase of farming on Ballybran and, to give the Guild fair credit, they paid above the average market price for foods produced on Guild lands.

  There were, however, far fewer active singers to produce any tithes for the Guild and more inactive ones—some of those in a vegetable state—who had to be supported by an ever-dwindling income. Fewer cutters in the field meant less crystal to offer, and Killashandra came across orders three and four years old that were waiting to be filled. Black crystal figured largely in these back orders, but all the dark crystals were needed.

  Before she could be totally depressed by the outlook, she saw a remarkable upswing over the past few months—since Lars had thrown open unused claims. Her cuts were significant in that revival, though both Tiagana and Jaygrin had brought in more. To comfort herself, she reviewed the total of one hundred and ninety-five years of cutting and compared it with the records of any other singer. She was tons ahead of the two younger singers.

  She then reviewed Lars’s comments on Orientation. They showed the continued emphasis on note-taking after every Range trip and on the return from off-planet jaunts: he planned to have an automatic reminder on each singer’s console. He had also been listing the ways in which coordinates might be inviolably kept on file. There were notes on compulsory hypnotic sessions that would access such memories.

  Lars also had notes on how to modernize the various departments of the Guild, what new technology there was to replace worn machines and at what cost; and many notes on how to capitalize on the talents of the support staff with appropriate bonuses. Most of these possibilities would have to wait on a continued upward turn of filled orders.

  He had taken the trouble to investigate the alternatives used by people weary of waiting for the Guild to supply crystal. Advantage one to the Guild: Ballybran crystal had a longer work life and, if damaged, did not need to be jettisoned but could be retuned and used in other installations. Its competitors could not be recycled. Some of the original shafts of Ballybran crystal, cut by Barry Milekey, for whom the Milekey Range was named, were still in use after eight hundred years.

  “What we need is an advertising campaign, too,” she murmured, and tried to think—without much success—of interesting slogans. Ballybran crystal hadn’t needed hype: it sold itself. So long as supply met demand.

  “Well, there is an improvement,” she told herself, leaning back in the conformchair and stretching. “We’ll build on it.”

  The lights had come up when the sensors registered a diminution in available illumination. She swiveled the chair and noted that night had fallen—Shanganagh and Shilmore were chasing each other across the sky, but they were soon to be occluded by the clouds billowing in from the west. She turned the chair enough to see the weatherline blinking on its strip across the top of the room. Barometer was dropping, and the isobars were tight with gale-force winds. Storm warnings had been broadcast. She altered the monitor to pick up the Hangar scan and saw the blips of forty or so sleds homing in.

  Good! She would have a chance to speak to some of the less productive singers. She accessed the program that would identify returning craft and asked f
or details of each singer as they came in. She would approach them with facts and figures: the productive time charts on those working from coordinates, and the credit they raked in. Something that appealed to any singer was how to make enough credit quickly enough to get off-planet for as long as possible. Only “as long as possible” was going to be curtailed to “as long as necessary” until the Guild had returned to its once-prestigious position.

  Somewhat to Killashandra’s surprise, she was received with a good deal of awe by the first group of singers she approached. She had quickly scanned the details of the forty-seven who had left the storm-bound Ranges, so she knew what and how much they had cut and how long it had taken them, and she was prepared to talk them out of resisting the proposal.

  She marked her victims as she sat drinking with them: the ones who didn’t have enough credit to go anywhere interesting. She had been to a staggering number of R&R and vacation planets in nearly two centuries, so she was able to spin tales to make them yearn to visit such fabulous places. It didn’t take her long to interest this group, eighteen in all, in using a surefire way to achieve their ends.

  The insistent buzz of the comunit roused her from a deep, dreamless sleep. Once she heard it, she also recognized the emergency code and floundered with her blankets to roll to the control panel at the edge of the sleep panel.

  “Killashandra!” The caller was Flicken, his face stark with grief. “Oh, how can I tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “The B-and-B courier—it’s sent out a Mayday.”

  “A B-and-B courier …” She stopped, gasping. Lars had been on a courier ship. “Lars?”

  Flicken nodded slowly, his chin quivering and his mouth working. “Just came in.”

  “How? What? Couriers are …”

  “Singularity trouble!” Flicken gasped out again. “That’s all I know. All I can find out. Mayday and a Jump disaster tag.”