Crystal Singer (21 page)

“This apartment is assigned to you.” Trag pointed to the lock plate.

Killashandra pressed her thumb to the sensitized area. The panel slid back.

“Use what is left of the morning to settle in and initiate your personal program. Use whatever code you wish: personal data is always voice coded. At 1400 hours, Concera will escort you to the cutter technician. He’ll have no excuse not to outfit you quickly.”

Killashandra noted the cryptic remark and wondered if everyone would address her comments she couldn’t understand yet apparently ought to. As she mused on what “ought to” had accomplished for her, Trag was striding back down the hall.

She closed the panel, flicked on the privacy light, and surveyed her permanent Guild quarters. Size might denote rank here as on other worlds. The main room here was twice the size of her ample recruit accommodation. To one side was a sleeping chamber that was apparently all bed. A door on one wall was open to a mirrored dressing area that, in turn, led into a hygiene unit with a sunken tank sprouting an unusual number of taps and dials. On the other side of the main room was a storage closet larger than her student room on Fuerte and a compact dining and self-catering area.

“Yarran beer, please.” She spoke more to make noise in the sterile and ringingly quiet place. The catering slot opened to present a beaker of the distinctive ruddy beer.

She took the drink to the main room, sipping as she frowned at the utilitarian furnishings. Laying her lute carefully on a chair, she let her carisak slip off her shoulder and onto the floor, seized by an urge to throw her possessions around the stark apartment, just to make it look lived in.

Here she was, Killashandra Ree, installed in spacious grandeur, achieving status as a Crystal Singer, that fearsome and awful being, a silicate spider, a crystal cuckoo with a luxurious nest. This very afternoon, she was to be tuned to a Cutter that would permit her to slice Ballybran crystal, earn stunning totals of galactic credits, and she would cheerfully have traded the whole mess for the sound of a friendly voice.

“Not that I’m certain I have a friend anywhere,” she said.

“Recording?”

The impersonal voice, neither tenor nor contralto, startled her. The full beaker of beer trembled in her hand.

“Personal program.” That was what Trag had meant. She was to record those facts of her life that she wished to remember in those future times when singing crystal would have scrambled her memory circuits.

“Recording?”

“Yes, record and store to voice print only.”

As she gave such facts as her date and place of birth, the names of her parents, grandparents, sisters, and brothers, the extent and scope of her education, she stalked about the main room, trying to find exactly the right spot in which to display her lute.

“On being awarded a grant, I entered the Music Center.” She paused to laugh. How soon did one begin to forget what one wished to forget?

“Right now!”

“Recording?”

“End of recording, Store.” And that was that. She knew she could reconsider, but she didn’t want to remember those ten years. She could now wipe them out. She would. As far as she would be ever after, henceforth, and forevermore concerned, nothing of moment happened after the grant award until she encountered Carrik. Those ten years of unremitting labor and dedication to ambition had never occurred to Killashandra Ree, Cutter in the Heptite Guild.

To celebrate her emancipation from an inglorious past, Killashandra dialed another beer. The digital indicated an hour remained before Concera was to take her to the appointment. She ordered what was described as a hearty, nourishing soup of assorted legumes. She checked her credit, something she must not forget to do regularly, and found herself still in the black. If she were to enter the rest of the Guild voucher and her open ticket, she would have quite a healthy balance. To be consumed by the equipment of a Crystal Singer. She’d keep those credits free.

That reminded her of Shillawn, and of other credit-debit discussions. She keyed the Guild’s commissary, ordered additional furnishings, rugs of the Ghni weavers, and by 1400, when Concera touched her door chime, Killashandra had wall-screens that mixed the most unlikely elements from an ice-world to the raving flora of the voracious Eobaron planets. Startling, but a complete change from sterility.

Concera, a woman of medium height and slender build, glided into the main room, exclaimed at the sight of the wall-screens, and looked questioningly at Killashandra.

“Oh, aren’t you clever? I would never have thought of combining different worlds! Do come right along.
He
has such a temper at the best of times, but without his skill, we, the Singers I mean, would be in a terrible way. He
is
a superior craftsman, which is why one humors his odd temper. This way.”

Concera covered quite a bit of ground with her gliding gait, and Killashandra had to stretch her legs to keep pace.

“You’ll get to know where everything is very soon. It’s nice to be by oneself, I feel, instead of in a pack, but then different people have different tastes,” and Concera peered sideways at Killashandra to see if she agreed. “Of course, we come from all over the galaxy, so one is bound to find someone compatible. This is the eighth level where most of the technical work is done—naturally the cutters are made here, as they are the most technical of all. Here we are.”

Concera paused at the open entrance and, with what seemed unexpected courtesy, pushed Killashandra ahead of her into a small office with a counter across the back third and a door leading into a workshop. Her entry must have triggered an alarm in the workroom, for a man, his sun-reddened face set in sour lines, appeared in the doorway.

“You’re this Killashandra?” he demanded. He beckoned to her and then saw Concera following. “You? I told you you’d have to wait, Concera. There’s no point, no point at all, in making you a handle for three fingers. You’ll only outgrow it, and there’s all that work could be put to better use.”

“I thought it might be a challenge for you—”

“I’ve all the challenges I need, Concera.” He replied with such vehemence that when he returned his stare to Killashandra, she wondered if his disagreement with the woman would spill over on to her. “Let me see your hands.”

Killashandra held them, palm up, over the counter. He raised his eyebrows as he felt with strong impersonal fingers across the palm, spread her fingers to see the lack of webbing from constant practice, the hard muscle along the flat of the hand and thumb pad.

“Used your hands right, you have.” He shot another glance at Concera.

It was only then that Killashandra noticed that the first two fingers on Concera’s left hand had been sheared off. The stumps were pinkish white, healed flesh but oddly shaped. It occurred to Killashandra in a rush that made her stomach queasy that the two missing digits were regenerating.

“If you stay, you be quiet. If you go, you won’t be tempted. This’ll take two-three hours.”

Concera elected to leave, which had no positive effect on the morose technician. Killashandra had naively assumed that tuning a cutter would be a simple matter, but it was a tedious process, taking several days. She had to read aloud for a voice print from boring printout on the history and development of the cutting devices. She learned more than she needed to know—some of the more complicated mechanisms proved unreliable in extremes of weather; a once-popular model was blamed for the high-voltage discharge which had carbonized the corpse Killashandra saw on Shankill. The most effective and reliable cutter, refined from Barry Milekey’s crude original, required that the user have perfect pitch. It was a piezoelectric device that converted the Crystal Singer’s vocal note and rhythm into high-frequency shock waves on an infrasonic carrier. The cutting edge of the shock wave was pitched by the Singer to the dominant tone of the “struck” crystal face.

Once set to a voice pattern, the infrasonic device could not be altered. Manufacture of such cutters was restricted to the Guild and safeguarded yet again by computer assembly, the program coding known only by the Guild Master and his executive assistant.

As Concera had mentioned, the technician was a temperamental man. When Killashandra was reading aloud, he was complaining about various grievances with the Guild and its members. Concera and her request for a three-fingered handle was currently his favorite gripe—“Concera is cack-handed, anyway, and always splitting her grips.” Another was that he ought to have had another three weeks fishing before returning to work. The fish had just started to bite, and would she now sing an octave in C.

She sang quite a few octaves in various keys and decided that there were worse audiences than apparently receptive audition judges. She hadn’t used her voice since the day she met Carrik; she was sore in the gut from supporting tone and aware the sound was harsh.

When Concera glided into the room, Killashandra was overwhelmingly relieved.

“Back tomorrow, same time. I’ll do casts of your good ten fingers.” And the man sent an arch glance at Concera.

Concera hurried Killashandra out of the workshop and the office.

“He does like his little jokes,” she said, leading the way down one corridor and left at the next. “I only wanted a
little
favor so I could go back into the ranges without wasting so much time.” She entered a room labeled “Training,” sighing as she closed the door and flicked on the privacy light. “Still”—and she gave Killashandra a bright smile, her eyes sliding from a direct contact—“we have your training to take in hand.” She waved Killashandra to one of the half-dozen chairs in the room facing a large hologram projector. She picked up a remote control unit from a shelf, darkening the room and activating the projector. The outsized lettering of the Guild’s rules, regulations, and precepts hovered before them. “You may have had a Milekey transition, but there’s no easy way to get over this.”

“Tukolom—”

“Tukolom handles only basic information, suitable for anyone joining the Guild in any capacity.” Concera’s voice had a note of rancor. “Now you must specialize and repeat and repeat.” Concera sighed. “We all have to,” she added, her voice expressing patient resignation. “If it’s any consolation to you, I’d be doing this by myself and I’ve always found it much easier to
explain
than memorize.” Her voice lightened. “You’ll hear even the oldest singers muttering regs and restricts any night in the Commons Hall. Of course, you’ll never appreciate this drill until it’s
vital!
When you reach that point, you won’t remember how you know what you do. Because that’s when you really
know
nothing else.”

Despite Concera’s persuasive tone, Killashandra found the reasoning specious. Having no choice in study program or teacher, Killashandra set herself to memorize regulations about working claims, claiming faces, interference with claims, reparations and retributions, fines and a clutter of other rules for which she could see no need since they were obvious to anyone with any sense.

When she returned to the privacy of her quarters and the anomalies of her wall-screens, she checked with the infirmary and was told that Rimbol was weak but had retained all his senses. Shillawn, Borton, and Jezerey were satisfactory, in the proper use of that word. Killashandra also managed to extract from data retrieval the fact that injured Singers like Concera and Borella undertook the role of preceptor because of the bonus involved. That explained the spiteful remarks and ambivalent poses.

The next morning, when Concera drilled her on her understanding of each section of the previous day’s subjects, Killashandra had the notion that Concera silently recited paragraph and section just one step ahead of her pupil.

The afternoon was spent uncomfortably, in the workshop of the Fisherman, where casts were made of her hands. The Fisher maundered on about having to make hundreds of casts during a Singer’s lifetime. He told her she wasn’t to complain to him about blisters from hand grips, an affliction that he alleged was really caused by a muscling up that wasn’t
any
fault of his.

Killashandra spent that evening redecorating her room.

She had a morning drill with Concera, spent a half hour with the Fisher, who grumbled incessantly about a bad morning’s fishing, the inferiority of the plastic he had to work with, and the privileges of rank. Killashandra decided that if she were to ruffle at every cryptic remark tossed her way, she’d be in a state of constant agitation. The remainder of the afternoon, Concera reviewed her on crystal shapes, tones, and the combinations that were marketable at the moment: black crystals in any form always having the highest value. Killashandra was to review the catalog, commit to memory which shape was used for what end product, the range in price, and the parameters of value variation in each color. She was taken through the research departments, which sought new uses for Ballybran crystal. There she noticed several people with the eye adjustment of Enthor.

In the days that followed, she was given instruction in the sled-simulator, “flying” against mach storm winds. By the end of the first lesson, she was as battered, sweaty, and trembling as if the flight had been genuine.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” the instructor commented unsympathetically as she reeled out of the simulator. “Take a half hour in the tank and come back this afternoon.”

“Tank?”

“Yeah, the tank. The radiant fluid. Left-hand taps. Go on! I’ll expect you back at 1500.”

Killashandra muttered the terse instructions all the way back to her rooms, shedding her clothes as she made her way to the tank. She turned on the left-hand taps, and a viscous liquid oozed out. She got the temperature she wanted and dubiously lowered herself into the tank. In minutes, tension and stress left her muscles, and she lay, buoyed by the radiant bath, until the stuff cooled. That afternoon, her instructor grudgingly admitted that she had improved.

A few days later, half a morning through a solo training flight across the White Sea where thermal patterns made good practice, every visual warning device on the controls turned red, and a variety of sirens, claxons, bells, and nerve-tinglers was activated. Killashandra immediately veered northeast to the Guild Complex and was relieved when half the monitors desisted. The rest blared or blinked until she had landed the sled on its rack and turned off the power. When she complained to her instructor about the warning overload, he gave her a long, scathing look.