Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line (29 page)

She had been scared, Killashandra decided; that’s what was making her angry now.

“Don’t reproach yourself, Donalla. I got out, and the crystal’s okay. I’d’ve been out of thrall once the sun went down. Or did Lars remember to mention that?” He hadn’t, to judge by the expression on Donalla’s face. “Fix me something to drink, will you? I’m too tired to move, and my throat’s so dry …”

Donalla banged the cup on the counter as she hauled the water out of the cooler, her movements revealing more plainly than any words the state of her feelings.

With food in her stomach, Killashandra took a hand beam and went out to examine the face. If she could cut past the damaged crystal to clear stuff, she ought to. She was damned lucky to find black—then she laughed,
recalling that luck hadn’t entered into the discovery.
Knowing
that she would have black to cut in this site took some of the elation out of the work. It was the mystery, the challenge of having to
find
the elusive material. But the work was still rewarding—and Donalla had had the chance to acquire firsthand Range experience to augment her clinical knowledge of crystal singers.

Killa hummed softly, listened for an answering resonance, and heard none. Cursing under her breath, she went back to the sled. She would have to wait till morning to see how deep the flaw was. Worse than not finding black was finding it uncuttable.

She woke in the night, aware of the warm body beside her and instantly recognizing it as Donalla’s, not Lars’s. That was another matter they had neglected to explain to Donalla. As the woman was apparently unremittingly heterosexual, Killa decided she would have to manage on her own—morning song could be rather more of a shock than Donalla was ready to handle.

Moving carefully, Killa rose. She found an extra thermal blanket in the cupboard and let herself out of the sled. This wouldn’t be the first time she had slept on the ground. Rolling herself up under the prow of the sled where she would be protected from any heavy dew, she wriggled around until she got comfortable and dropped off to sleep again.

Dawn and crystal woke, singing her awake. She took deep breaths to reduce the effect on her until she heard Donalla crying out. Grinning, but as uncomfortable as Donalla probably was, Killa endured. She waited until the effects had faded before returning to the cabin.

“What was that? Where did you go?” Donalla demanded, her tone almost accusatory.

“That’s crystal waking up to sunlight. Fabulous experience, isn’t it?” Killa grinned unrepentantly, folding her thermal to stow it away again. “I felt discretion was the better part of retaining our growing friendship.”

“Oh!” Donalla flushed beet red and turned away, looking anywhere but at Killashandra. “No one told me about this.”

“I know,” Killashandra said sympathetically. “It’s another case of us knowing it so well we think everyone else knows it.”

Donalla took another deep breath and managed a weak smile. “I gather—I mean—well, is that why certain partnerships … Oh, I’m not sure what I mean.”

Killa laughed, flicking the switch on the hot-water heater as she began preparations for cooking breakfast. “It has a tendency to make minor quarrels disappear in the morning.”

By the time she had eaten, Donalla had turned clinical in her examination of the sensual effect of sun-warmed crystal on human libido. Killa answered honestly and fully, amused at Donalla’s professional curiosity.

“What’s astonishing is that more singers don’t sing duet,” the medic finally announced, turning inquiringly to Killa, who shrugged.

“I suppose it’s like anything else,” she said. “Palls after a few score years.”

“You and Lars were partners for—” Donalla bit off the rest of her sentence.

Killa regarded her for a long moment. Those of the Guild who did not lose “time” in the Ranges were taught not to make comparisons that could upset singers.

“A long time,” Killa said. “A very long time.” She
paused. “It doesn’t seem like a long time. How old am I, Donalla?”

“You certainly don’t look your age, Killashandra,” Donalla said, temporizing, “and I won’t put a figure to it.”

Killa grunted and heaved a big sigh. “You’re right, you know, and I don’t really want a figure.”

“You don’t look older than four, maybe five decades,” Donalla offered as compensation.

“Thanks.” Then Killa rose, having finished her meal. “I’ve got black I might be able to cut out of that face. I’ve got to try.” She waggled a finger at Donalla. “Only today, you make bloody sure you take any cut right out of my hand the moment I’ve pulled it free. You wrench it from me, if necessary; and carefully, mind you, stow it in the carton.”

Donalla stood ready all day to follow those orders, but they were never needed. The black had fractured right down into the base of the site. Killa swore, because she had cut so carefully the day before. She hadn’t heard the fracture note as she finished cutting the third shaft. Usually a crack like that was not only audible but sensed even through the thick soles of her boots.

“Damn, damn, and double damn,” she said, admitting defeat in midafternoon. She had even tried to find an outcropping somewhere else in the rock but hadn’t heard so much as a murmur from crystal.

“What?” Donalla asked, rousing from a state of somnolence. She had been patiently watching Killa’s explorations from a perch on the height.

“It’s gone. No point in staying here.”

“We’re going back?” Donalla’s expression brightened.

“We shouldn’t. We should look around.”

“Lars only gave you these coordinates.”

“Yes, but somewhere around here,” Killa said, waving her hand in a comprehensive sweep that took in the entire ravine, “there’ll be more black crystal.”

“How long will it take you to find it?”

“Ah …” Killa waggled her forefinger. “That’s the rub. I don’t know where.”

“Well, then, let’s go back to the Cube and get coordinates to another known black-crystal site,” Donalla said, pushing herself off her perch and brushing dust from her trousers.

“It’ll take us three hours to get back,” Killa heard herself protesting. “Why, I could be—”

“Circling the area unprofitably for hours, days, more likely,” Donalla said. “Let’s do it the easy way, with another set of coordinates. Huh?”

Killa considered this, sweeping aside all the arguments she was ranging against the common sense Donalla was speaking. She owed it to Lars. He had been right. She had some black to return with. She shouldn’t waste time. She should cut where they knew there was more.

“You’re right. Absolutely right. We go back. We do it Lars’s way.”

L
ars was pleased with the four she brought back, disappointed by Donalla’s failure, and relieved that they had returned. He had other coordinates for Killa to use.

“I don’t really
like
this,” she told him. “It still feels like claim jumping.”

Lars grinned at her. “You won’t say that when you have to share the proceeds, Sunny.”

“There’s that, too, of course,” she said, making a face at him.

She went out by herself within the hour, after getting a severe lecture from Lars about remembering to stow black the instant she cut it.

“If I find it!”

“You will.”

She did, but whatever crystal might have been there once was now buried under a mass of rubble and boulders too big to be shifted. She sang at the top of her
excellent lungs and didn’t hear so much as a squeak from the buried crystal.

So she returned to the Guild, arriving just before dark and, while Lars was willing to give her another set of coordinates, he wasn’t willing to let her start until the next morning.

“Take a long bath, have a good meal, sleep in a good bed,” he said with a wink and a leer. “Missed you, Sunny,” he added in a soft voice, and pulled her to him, to kiss her neck. He pulled a face as he licked his lips. “Yugh! You need the bath.”

“Thanks!”

“Look,” he said, becoming serious, “I badly need your help, Sunny. Really, more your presence and a nod or two when necessary. If you seem to be going along with my scheme, the others’re more apt to.”

“Go along with what scheme?” she demanded warily. Lars was wearing his Guild Master’s face.

“I’ve got three other singers who I believe—I hope—are still flexible enough to go along with me in this.”

“In what?”

“Easy, Killa!” He grinned down at her, a twinkle returning to his eyes. “Using coordinates from the inactives.”

“Oh.” She began to see both his problem and his scheme.

“I also want to see how they respond to that alternative Donalla’s suggested.”

“Which is?” She had slightly eased herself back from his embrace.

He scrubbed his head with his knuckles, a sure sign that he was uncertain and nervous. “If singers didn’t spend so much time trying to
find
claims they haven’t worked in a while, if they could just go right back to them, they’d save a lot of time.”

“So you want them to permit Donalla to hypnotize them and force memory of their coordinates?” Killa asked, cutting to the gist.

He nodded.

“I don’t think they’ll go for it,” she said, shaking her head.

“You took mine and found the black. You took Rimbol’s and got to his site.”

“I know it can be done, and you might get some singers to use inactives’ coordinates, but I don’t think you’ll get them to submit to hypnotic recall of their own sites. You know how paranoid we all are about claim locations.”

“Paranoia doesn’t have to enter the picture.”

“Ha!”

“Look, Donalla’s not a cutter and she’s demonstrated her integrity as a medic. She’s certainly not going to violate their trust.”

“First she has to get it.”

“All right, but she’s not about to go mouthing off coordinates. Muhlah, but she could implant—in herself—a posthypnotic command to forget what she’s just heard.”

“She could?” Killashandra was surprised.

“Even better, she wants to give each singer who’ll go for this a keyword. She may have to keep track of keywords, knowing the fragile memory of singers”—and Lars gave Killa a wry grin—“but that keyword would allow them to recall their own coordinates without any other further assist.

“I mean,” Lars continued, beginning to pace the room in his enthusiasm, “this is the way it’d work, according to Donalla. She gives them a posthypnotic command to remember coordinates whenever they set down the sled. That’s locked in their memories. Guild
records show what they cut, if not where they cut. When they want to return to a site, they say the password, and that makes the information accessible again. To them, and to them only, so their privacy hasn’t been violated.”

“It sounds feasible—for those who accept hypnosis.”

“You seem to be one of the few who don’t,” he said, resignation in his voice.

“I’ve always marched to my own drumbeat,” she said in a light tone that masked her own sense of failure. She really did want to help him. “Count on me for support—for however much good it does you.”

“Your support’ll mean more than you imagine, Sunny,” he said, and gave an emphatic nod of his head. “Go on and get cleaned up. I’ve got a few more things to clear off my screens.” And he gestured to a desk littered with pencil files. “I’ll meet you in the main dining hall in an hour, all right?”

When she had bathed and dressed with some care, she made her way to the dining hall she had not patronized at all in recent years. There weren’t that many diners in the big room, and most of the alcoves were dark. It made her shiver a little. Was it just that all working singers happened to be out in the Ranges right now? That there wasn’t a group of novices waiting around to be infected by the symbiont? That the large number of support staff had all decided to eat in their quarters this evening?

She looked around for Lars and then heard his distinctive whistle. He was just loading a tray with beakers of what looked like Yarran beer. Beside him were Donalla and Presnol and three singers, the same three she had recognized at the meeting at which Lars had officially opened inactive claims.

Now he nodded toward a banquet table off to one
side of the huge low-ceilinged room, and she turned to meet them there. She managed to drag one singer’s name to mind: Borton. Pushing harder, she remembered that he had been in the group she had “graduated” with. He didn’t look much older than he had looked back then. But why should he, if his symbiont was doing its job?

“Borton, how nice to see you,” she said, smugly pleased that she had placed him. She smiled at the other two, a man and a woman, as if she remembered them, as well. She gave Lars a quick glance.

“Tiagana, Jaygrin,” he put in quickly, “do you recall Killashandra?”

“I think we’ve met either on ships leaving Shankill,” Killashandra said, addressing Jaygrin, “or wandering around the moon waiting for a shuttle.” She glanced at Tiagana. “Ah, Yarran beer. What would we do without it?”

That seemed to bridge the gap. Everyone reached for a glass from Lars’s tray and then helped transfer platters and covered dishes to the round table. Lars acted the genial and diligent host and sent Presnol back for more Yarran beer when the first beakers were empty. Killa saw flashes of amusement in the other singers’ faces, as if they were well aware of how Lars was trying to lull them. It had been a long time since she had been in a peer group, or in a dinner party of any kind. If it hadn’t been for Presnol and Donalla deftly stimulating conversation, this party might never have come to life. But it did.