Crystal Singer (36 page)

Head high, she strode from the chamber, Tallaf running to get ahead of her, to lead her back to the cutter through the station’s twists and turns.

Each step took her farther from the crystal, and she twisted with the pain of that separation. Another small matter no one had explained to her before: that it would be so difficult to leave crystal she had herself cut.

The brief ride to the cruiser did ease that pain. And so did the lethargy that slowly overcame her. It couldn’t, she decided, be fatigue from that little bit of dramatization. It must be the sleepies that she’d been warned about. Conjunction was very near. Fortunately, she managed to stay awake until she reached her quarters.

“Tic, if I am disturbed for any reason whatsoever before the next station, I’ll dismember the person! Understood? And pass that on to Pendel just to make sure.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tic was trustworthy, and Pendel had authority.

Killashandra slid sideways onto the hard bunk, pulled the thin cover over her, and slept.

It seemed no time at all before a thumping and Tac’s anxious voice called her politely but insistently.

“I’m coining. The next station has been reached?” She swallowed the stimulant, forced her eyes wide in an attempt to appear alert as she opened the door.

Tallaf was there with a tray of food, which she imperiously waved away.

“You’ll need some refreshment, Killashandra,” the young officer said, concern overcoming his previous formality.

“Are we at the next station?”

“I thought you’d need something to eat first.”

She reached for the Yarran beer, trying not to exhibit the revulsion she felt at the smell of what once would have been a tempting meal. Even the beer tasted wrong.

“I’ll just take this in my room,” she said, closing the door panel and wondering if the nausea was due to the pill, the beer, her symbiont, or nerves. She made illicit use of drinking water and splattered her face. The effect was salutary. Without a qualm, she poured the Yarran beer down the waste disposal. Pendel would never know.

Tallaf rapped at her door panel again. This time, Killashandra was alert; the stimulant had taken effect. She swept forward, secure in the false energy and aware that more of the cruiser’s crew were in evidence as she made her way to the lock.

Pendel was unlashing the top of the crystal carton, stepping back to give her space to extract the next crystal. Holding it at arm’s length in front of her, Killashandra was congratulating herself on her smooth routine when she tripped getting over the cutter’s hatch. She’d best raise the skirt a trifle in front before the first moon installation. However, no one had noticed her slight gracelessness, and she settled down for the ride.

Station Iron was larger than Station Copper but as haphazardly contrived as far as companionways, hatches, and corridors were concerned.

“This is more than five minutes twenty seconds, Tallaf,” she said in a stern voice of complaint, wondering how long the stimutab lasted.

“Just in here, now.”

Communications obviously rated more unfragmented space than any other of the stations’ functions. And the larger station was reflected in the larger crowd that crammed into the area. Killashandra stripped the cocoon from the black crystal, held it up for all to see, and deposited it deftly in its position before it could woo her from her duties. Or maybe the stimulant helped counteract crystal’s effect. Nonetheless, Killashandra still experienced the pain of leaving behind her forever the shaft of darkening crystal.

The stimulant kept her functioning on the slightly longer swing to catch up with the cruiser. She graciously accepted Pendel’s offer of Yarran beer but, once alone, poured it down the drain. She squandered a day’s water ration to quench her thirst and reached her bunk before sleep again overtook her.

It was harder for her to wake up when Tic roused her at the first moon. One stimulant kept her awake on the outbound trip, a second got her through the installation, but Tallaf had to wake her to disembark at the cruiser. Pendel insisted she eat something, though she could barely keep her eyes open. She did have soup and some succulent fruit since her mouth was dry and her skin felt parched. She ached for the crystal she had consigned forever to an airless moon.

Three stimulants roused her sufficiently for the fourth installation, and she had to sneak one into her mouth as she set the crystal in its brackets. She was doing her high priestess routine by reflex, only peripherally aware of the blur of faces that followed her every movement and the thrilled sigh as the crystal’s pure note sounded in the communications room.

One thing she could say for the Trundimoux, when they found an efficient structure, they kept repeating it. All the communications rooms were of the same design. Blind, she could have found her way to the crystal mounting. Walking back, she kept tripping on the skirt hem she’d not had time to alter. Then Tallaf put one arm under hers. She concentrated on smiling serenely at the assembled until she had reached the cutter. She collapsed with relief into her seat.

“You’re all right, Killashandra?” Tallaf was asking.

“Just tired. You’ve no idea how difficult it is to surrender crystal you’ve cut yourself. They cry when you leave them. Let me sleep.”

But for that chance remark to Tallaf, Killashandra might have been forced to endure the ministrations of Chasurt, for her alternate periods of intense vivacity and somnolence had not gone unremarked. Nor were the opponents of the crystal communications purchase impressed by small unscintillating blocks received in exchange for massive drone loads of high-quality metals.

The moment he had seen Killashandra safely to her cabin, Tallaf had a word with Pendel. Pendel spoke quickly to others, and Chasurt was summoned to deal with a minor epidemic of food poisoning, investigate two other illnesses that required lengthy tests, and then was required to consult, at ordinary space-message exchange pauses, on a serious space-burn casualty.

Killashandra was roused for the longer shuttle flight to the planet’s surface for the final installation. The extended sleep had been beneficial, and although she ran nervous fingers over the short length of stimulant tabs remaining, Killashandra thought she could defer their use. She accepted the fruit and glucose drink Pendel offered her, though she would dearly have loved water, even the stale recycled water the cruiser supplied.

She felt equal to this final scene until she saw the crystal container. Abruptly, she realized that this largest piece would be the hardest to surrender. She didn’t dare have it on her lap all during the journey to the planet’s surface.

“Bring the container on board. The king crystal will be safer that way,” she said, curtly gesturing. She entered the shuttle before anyone could countermand her instruction.

Pendel and Tallaf hastily motioned the guard to comply, and the container was already aboard the shuttle, webbed tight, before Captain Francu arrived. He stopped abruptly, stared with rage and shock at the carton, then at Killashandra who smiled pleasantly at him.

“You carried the other crystals, Guild Member—”

“Ah, but this is a longer journey, captain, and unless that crystal is
safely
installed in your main communications room, all the others are useless and this voyage of your cruiser an exercise in futility.”

“Captain, the time factors—” Tallaf stepped forward, his expression one of cautious concern.

Francu set his jaw, edged past the crystal to the stern of the cutter. She could hear the crack of metal tabs as he webbed himself in. She supposed that she was lucky that, in his current frame of mind, Francu wasn’t the pilot.

The shuttle disengaged itself from the cruiser, seemed to hang suspended as the cruiser moved obliquely away from it. Actually, before the view ports were closed, Killashandra realized that the shuttle had done all the moving: the cruiser was inexorably set in its direction, and nothing would deter it.

She had meant to stay awake, but the scream and heat of entry into the planets atmosphere roused her from another irresistible snooze. She stared about, momentarily startled by the unfamiliar surroundings. Hastily, she swallowed two stimutabs, smiling serenely around as if she had only been conserving her energy.

The shuttle had been brought to a complete halt before the medicine took effect, and she debated taking a third as the hatch was being opened.

A landing platform appeared at once, and from her seat, she could see the vast crowd assembled on both sides of a wide aisle leading to the huge communications building with its roof clusters of dish antennas, tilted like caps to the sky, caps raised to salute their own obsolescence.

“The crystal, Guild Member!” Francu’s acid voice reminded her, too, of this final surrender.

She flipped open the carton and removed the king crystal, took a deep breath, and walked down the landing ramp, holding the crystal before her. She always played best to a full house, she reminded herself. The other installations were only rehearsals for this one.

The fresh air of the planet was naturally scented and crisp. She breathed in deeply and would not be hurried in this ceremonial walk.

Francu appeared at one side, Tallaf at her other, both muttering about walking faster.

“It’s so good to breathe uncontaminated air. My lungs have been stifled. I must breathe.”

“You must walk faster,” Francu said, a smile jiggling his cheeks as he responded nervously to the presence of a large crowd of people in an open space greater than his huge new cruiser.

“If you can, Killashandra. We’ve a time boggle,” said Tallaf, his voice anxious.

“They’re all here to see the crystal,” Killashandra noted, but she lengthened her stride, holding the cocoon above her head, hearing the surprise wave of exclamations, seeing the nearest drawing back. Was the crowd here to see crystal succeed, she wondered, or fail? This was not a receptive audience! She’d faced enough to sense the animosity and fear.

She strode on to the building’s entrance, slightly outdistancing the two spacemen.

“We will have to hurry this, Guild Member,” a man said, taking her arm as she passed the doorway.

“Yes, we will, or we can’t be responsible for your safety.”

She heard heavy metal doors thud shut behind her and a muffled noise emanating from outside and becoming louder.

“I’ve been given to understand that this project is not universally favored, gentlemen. But one message sent and received will disperse that . . .” and she indicated the crowd which had pressed in about the building.

“This way, Guild Member.”

They were all almost running now, and she was annoyed that the urgency of the situation was going to ruin her performance. Ridiculous! How absurd to be put in such a position! Especially when she was possessed of an overwhelming desire to go to sleep again. She shoved the crystal into the crook of one arm—there was no one to impress with her theatrics in this hurry—and managed to stuff two more tabs into her mouth.

Then she was whirled into the main chamber of the immense building, where nervous technicians were more interested in the outward-facing security scanners than the printouts and displays common to their business.

“Do hurry with this one, Killashandra,” Tallaf urged as she took the last few steps to the raised level and the empty niche where the king crystal would be mounted.

She stripped the plastic away with nervous fingers and suddenly found serenity and surcease as the bared crystal caressed her skin.

“Hurry!” Francu exhorted her. “If that thing won’t give us a message from Copper—”

Killashandra withered him with a glance, but her dislike of him broke the tenuous enchantment she had been hoping to enjoy. Now she heard the noise of the crowd, the increasing pitch of its excitement and frustration. She dare not delay the mounting. Nor did she want to relinquish her black crystal to this stem of ignorant savages, this society of metal-mongerers, this—

The black crystal was mounted, turning matte black as it responded to the heat of the room.

“Hurry!” “Has something gone wrong?” “It won’t work!”

“Of course, crystal will sing,” said Killashandra, raising the little hammer and striking the king block.

The rich full A of the king crystal rang through the large room, silencing the irreverent babble. Killashandra was transfixed. The A became the louder note of the five-crystal chord, the two F and two E crystals singing back to her through the king. The human voice cannot produce chords. With the pitch of the A dominant in her head, that was the note that burst from Killashandra as the shock of establishing the link between the five crystals enveloped her. Sound like a shock wave, herself the sound and the sounding board, vision over vision, a fire in her bones, thunder in her veins, a heart-contracting experience of pain and pleasure so intense and so total that every nerve in her body and every convolution of her brain echoed. The chord held Killashandra in a thrall more absolute than her first experience of crystal. Sustaining the note despite the agony of the physical mechanics of breath, Killashandra was simultaneously in the communications rooms of the two mining stations and the two moons. She splintered in sound from one crystal block to the next, apart and indissoluble, a fragment of the first message sent and instantly received and forever divorced from it.

“Copper to home. Copper to home base!” She knew the message, for it passed through her as well as the crystal. She heard the exultant reply and the incredulous response to its simultaneity. She had cut the crystals for this purpose, she had borne them to their various sites, and she had condemned them to sing for others. No one had told her they would cause her to sing through them in a space-crossing chord!

“Killashandra?” Someone touched her, and she cried out. Flesh upon flesh broke her awesome communion with the crystal link. She fell to her knees, too bereft to cry, too stunned to resist.

“Killashandra!” Someone raised her to her feet.

She could feel crystal power singing behind her through the king block, but she was forever excluded from its thrall.