Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line (34 page)

The emotional and psychical discharge of her first black-crystal installation had now paled to the insignificance of an insect sting. Lars was going to be furious with her, but there was no way she would ever again cut black crystal. Of that, if nothing else at this particular moment in time, she was certain. On the plus side, she would be able to tell him every single location where she had cut black. Indeed, she now remembered every site she had ever cut, and the type, size, number, and tuning note of every cutting she had ever made over the past one hundred and ninety-seven years. She remembered everything, and completely, to the last petty detail, and the weight of such total recall was worse than having it restored to her.

“Hungry?” Boira asked gently.

Killashandra considered this. “Yes, I think I am.”

“Then you must be on the road to complete recovery,” Boira said, smiling as she rose. “Any special requests?”

“Chicken soup?”

“The very thing,” Brendan replied so heartily that Killa winced. “I’ve an old family recipe that’s supposed to cure anything from ingrown toenails to the worst degree of space fug.”

Killa closed her eyes. Chicken soup, no matter how efficacious, was not going to cure what really ailed her. Who needed to remember
everything?
Everything except how Big Hungry Junk had done what it had done to her.

Being aboard the BB-1066 had other advantages besides excellent nursing care and incredible food. Rudney could not get to her, though he demanded interviews on an hourly basis, insisting that she finish installing the crystal according to the contract he had made with the Guild Master. He threatened to sue her and the Guild for breach of contract.

“Tell him I installed the crystals as per the contract. Nothing in it said I had to do the old splinters, too. And I won’t.”

When Rudney exhorted the 1066 to turn the crystal singer over to him, Brendan informed him that he had no such authority over his passengers.

They remained on Opal’s surface only long enough to be sure Killa had sufficiently recovered from the physical depletion to withstand the disorientation of a Singularity Jump. Then Brendan lifted his tail from the planet.

After the second of the three Jumps, curiosity got the better of Killashandra. She wanted to know what had happened to Big Hungry after it had gobbled the black crystal. Maybe that would distract her mind from a constant survey of memories she really didn’t want to have on replay.

“Rudney’s group haven’t come to any conclusions,”
Brendan said, having discreetly continued to monitor all their transmissions and internal conversation. “They’re still examining their data. Thermoelectric emissions have gone off the scale of their instrumentation. Significant growth of all the FM units—”

“Jewels, please, Bren, or Junk,” Boira interposed.

“They seem to be oozing into every available cave, crack, crevice, cranny. The planet’s rotation has shifted erratically, and sunspot activity has also increased. All the crystals glow, and the static they emit is constant.”

“Junk is using the crystals for communication, then?” Killa asked.

“It would appear so,” Brendan said, “though to what end, Rudney’s group doesn’t know. Their semanticist is analyzing the frequency and consistency of patterns, and the rhythm at which they flow, which varies.”

“Klera was correct?” Killa asked, quite delighted at the thought.

“They won’t commit themselves,” Brendan said in a mildly snide tone of voice.

“Naturally. They don’t deny the sentience of Junk, do they?”

“They can’t when it is obviously altering its environment,” Boira said, grinning broadly. “Oh, by the way, Rudney sent off a request for another singer to install the splinters.”

“For ail the good it’ll do him,” Killa said caustically.

“Fifteen minutes to the last Jump,” Brendan said, and Killa scurried to the radiant-fluid tank.

Lars was waiting for her at Shankill, his worried expression clearing when he saw her striding down the corridor toward him. He embraced her hungrily, burying his face in her hair, his fingers biting into her shoulder blades and then her waist. She leaned into him,
grasping him as tightly as he did her. He was warm, strong, and just as lean as he had been when they had first met so many years before on Optheria. The essential Lars Dahl hadn’t changed … she cut off the other memories that threatened to swamp her. She was getting the hang of censoring recall when she had all she needed. Otherwise all that memory could be overwhelming.

“Honest, Sunny, I had no idea what I was asking of you!” he murmured.

“You didn’t ask anything,” she said, surprised. “I volunteered. Remember?”

He held her off, his expression wretched. “Sunny, I maneuvered you into volunteering.”

She reviewed the occasion quickly, laughed, and pulled him back to her. “So you did, but I didn’t resist much, did I?”

“How could you, crystal-mazed as you were?” He was so miserably repentant that she chuckled.

“At least you have the grace to apologize,” she said. “Lanzecki never did.”

She felt the change in him, and this time when he held her away, he apprehensively searched her face.

“What happened, Sunny?” His anxiety was palpable; even the grip of his hands on her arms altered as if she had become noticeably fragile.

“It would appear—” She gave a breathless laugh. “—that Big Hungry Junk reconnected all my memory circuits when it zapped me. The brain’s electric, you know, and it got recharged, right back to my first conscious memory.”

“Muhlah!” Lars stared at her, appalled.

“And I thought placing that Trundomoux king crystal was bad. The merest piffle in comparison. It’s all right, love,” she reassured him as she saw his eyes blink
frantically. “Now let’s get back to Ballybran, which, incidentally, I have never been more glad to see. By the way, did you get Rudney off your back?”

“I did, finally! I had to threaten to sue him for placing my best singer in jeopardy. And you got all your memories back?” She knew that he had briefly assumed his Guild Master’s role. “Maybe I should send another singer in …”

“Lars Dahl!” She stopped dead in her tracks, pulling him off balance. “Don’t you dare, Lars Dahl, don’t you dare consider for one moment sending any member of the Guild to Opal for any reason!”

“Was it that bad, Sunny?” Lars was instantly solicitous.

“Was, is, and shall be, I suspect, my love, but I can handle it.” She anticipated his next question. “And yes, as a bonus, I can give you the coordinates of every single claim I ever cut. I can’t wait to get that off my mind.” She began to hurry him along to the airlock where his shuttle awaited them.

“
All
your coordinates?”

“That’s right.”

She would explain the other side of that coin to him later, and as gently as possible. Maybe out sailing in the
Angel II.
Then she had to cope with a flood of memories, all associated with the word “angel”: sailing to Island Angel’s back, the storm, sheltering in the command post, meeting Nahia and Hauness, meeting his father, Olav, marrying Lars formally by island rites … Ruthlessly she cut off the stream; resolutely she closed down those reminiscences.

Lars handed her into the cabin of the shuttle and would have fastened her harness; but, laughing, she slapped at his hands, saying she could do it herself.

“Oddest thing, Lars,” she said in a low tone so that
Flicken, the pilot, wouldn’t hear. She was going to freak a lot of folk out by suddenly remembering their names, she thought, amused. She forced her errant mind back to what she had to tell Lars. “Big Junk recognized me. I remembered that little bit during the last Singularity Jump. I don’t mean it said ‘hello,’ but I think I was aware of its recognition when I got to its cavern the first time. That’s why I panicked and did Three first.”

“Hmmm. Interesting.”

“Yeah.” She smiled in a somewhat maudlin fashion. “I’m glad we put its piece back.”

“Is that what it remembered?”

She shrugged. “Who knows what passes for memory with Junk? Rudney certainly doesn’t and we decided—”

“We who?”

“Brendan, Boira, and me … decided that Klera had the right idea about the
patterns
being part of the communication effort.”

“Pattern and rhythm?”

“Pattern, rhythm, and color.”

“Hmmm. Complex.”

“Too much for this back-planet girl.”

“You remember everything?” he asked, dismayed for her sake.

She nodded. “But I’m learning to chop ’em off before they overwhelm me. Too much is not a good thing.”

“Hmmm.”

He laced his fingers in hers, and she let her head roll to rest on his shoulder. She had been exceedingly lucky to have been kidnapped by Lars Dahl. She hadn’t really had any guide by which to measure that serendipity or realize how truly Donalla had spoken when she had said that Lars was devoted to her. She could see it now, in the tapestry of their years together—all hundred and
twenty-three of them, incredible as that total was—that he had been more than friend, lover, partner, and alter ego. She remembered how devastated, how lost, she had been when he had been falsely disciplined for the Optherian affair … She remembered, with great relish, their first sexual encounter on the beach at Angel—and, more importantly, how the mutual attraction had only strengthened and deepened throughout the years. “Everlasting love” took on a new dimension when applied to what she and Lars shared.

And now she could share even more with him: his duties as Guild Master. She would be Trag to his Lanzecki. Muhlah! Had Lanzecki and Trag … She stifled a giggle. Lanzecki had been quite willing, but she had never known if Trag had had any liaisons with Guild members. Lack of memory, a fear of displaying the gaps and embarrassing herself, and Lars, had been behind her resistance to his offers. She couldn’t be less than the best for Lars, and now she could take on those responsibilities with a clear conscience—and an infallible memory.

Odd how so many things worked out—if one waited long enough. That initial humiliation back on Fuerte when she had been refused solo status by the bombastic little Maestro Valdi had resulted in her meeting Carrik and discovering the covert Heptite Guild. “Silicate spider,” “crystal cuckoo”—Valdi’s accusations rang in her head. Foolish little man. Singing crystal had been so much more rewarding than being a mere concert singer, who could expect only three or four decades of a “good” voice! She was still “singing” after a hundred and ninety-seven years.

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.