Killashandra (7 page)

“May I join you?” The man held up beakers of beer, each a different shade. “I noticed that you were sampling the brews. Shall we combine our efforts?”

He had a pleasant voice, his ship-suit was well cut to a tall lean frame, his features were regular but without a distinguished imperfection; his medium length dark hair complimented a space tan. There was, however, something about his eyes and a subtle strength to his chin that arrested Killashandra’s attention.

“I’m not a joiner myself,” he said, pointing one beaker at the gyrating dancers, “and I noticed that you aren’t, so I thought we might keep each other company.”

Killashandra indicated the chair opposite her.

“My name is Corish von Mittelstern.” He put his beers down nearer hers as he repositioned the chair to
permit him to watch the dancers. Killashandra turned ever slightly away from him, not all that confident of the remission of resonance in her body, though why she made the instinctive adjustment she didn’t know. “I hail from Rheingarten in the Beta Jungische system. I’m bound for Optheria.”

“Why, so am I!” She raised her beer in token of a hand clasp. “Killashandra Ree of Fuerte. I’m—I’m a music student.”

“The Summer Festival.” Then a puzzled expression crossed Corish’s face. “But they have a Fuertan brew—”

“Oh, that old stuff. I might have to travel off-season and economy to get to Optheria but I’m certainly not going to waste the opportunities of trying everything new on the
Athena.
”

Corish smiled urbanely. “Is this your first interstellar trip?”

“Oh, yes. But I know a lot about traveling. My brother is a supercargo. On the
Blue Swan Delta
. And when Mother told him that I was making the voyage, he sent me all kinds of advice”—and Killashandra managed a tinkling giggle—“and warnings.”

Corish smiled perfunctorily. “Don’t ignore that sort of advice. Fuerte, huh? That’s a long way to come.”

“I think I’ve spent half my life traveling already,” Killashandra said expansively while she tried to compute how long she ought to have been traveling if her port of embarkation had been Fuerte. She hadn’t done enough homework. Though she couldn’t imagine that Corish would know if she erred. She took a long sip of her beer. “This is a Bellemere, but it’s too sour for me.”

“The best beer in the galaxy is a Yarran brew.”

“Yarran?” She regarded Corish with keener interest. If Corish came from Beta Jungische, he was a long way from a regular supply of Yarran beer. Killashandra’s curiosity rustled awake.

“The Yarran brewmasters have no peers. Surely your brother has mentioned Yarran beer?”

“Well, now, it’s possible that he has,” Killashandra said slowly, as if searching her memory. “But then, he told me so much that I can’t remember half.” She was about to giggle again and then decided that, not only did her giggle nauseate herself but it might repel Corish and she wanted to satisfy this flicker of curiosity about him. “Why are you traveling to Optheria?”

“Family business, sort of. An uncle of mine went for a visit and decided to become a citizen. We need his signature on some family papers. We’ve written several times and had no reply. Now, he could be dead but I have to have the proper certification if he is, and his print and fist on the documents if he isn’t.”

“And you have to come all the way from Beta Jungische for that?”

“Well, there’s a lot of credit involved and this isn’t a bad way to go.” He enscribed a half circle with his beaker, including the ship as well as the dancers, and smiled at Killashandra over the rim as he sipped. “This Pilsner’s not all that bad, really. What have you there?”

She went along with Corish’s adroit change of subject and with the beer sampling. Although singing crystal brought with it an inexhaustible ability to metabolize alcohol without noticeable affect, she feigned the symptoms of intoxication as she confided her fake history to the Jungian, whenever necessary embellishing her actual experiences at the Arts Complex. Thus Corish learned that she was a keyboard specialist, in her final year of training, with high hopes that the Optherian Festival would provide her with sufficient data for an honors recommendation. She had credentials of sufficiently high caliber to gain entrance into the Federal Music Conservatory on Optheria where she hoped she’d be allowed to play on an Optherian organ.

“An hour is all I need,” she told Corish, blinking in her simulation of advancing inebriation, “for the purposes of my dissertation.”

“From what I hear about their precious organ, you’d be lucky to get within spitting distance.”

“Even half an hour.”

“I hear that only Federal licensed musicians are allowed in the organ loft.”

“Well, they’ll have to make an exception in my case because I have a special letter from Fuerte’s President—he’s a friend of my family’s.
And
a sealed note from Stellar Performer Dalkay Mogorog …” She paused deferentially at the mention of that august personality, who was evidently unknown to Corish, “and I’m sure they’ll concede. Even fifteen minutes?” she asked as Corish continued to shake his head. “Well, they’ll just have to! I haven’t come all this way to be refused. I’m a serious student of keyboard instruments. I won a scholarship to the Federated Sentient Planets Conservatory on Terra. I’ve been permitted to play on a Mozartian clavier, a Handelian spinet, Purcell’s harpsichord, a Bach organ, and a Beethoven pianaforte and—” She hiccuped to mask the fact that she was running out of prestigious composers and instruments.

“So? Which beer do you prefer now?”

“Huh?”

Corish solicitously conducted her to her cabin and arranged her on her bunk. As he drew a light blanket over her, she felt the static leap from her shoulder to his hands. He hesitated briefly, then quietly left.

As Killashandra gave him time to leave her passageway, she reviewed her “performance” and decided that she hadn’t dropped from character, even if he had. It was rather nice of him, too, not to have “taken advantage” of her. When she felt secure, she slipped from her
cabin and down to the gymnasium level. At that hour, it was empty and she enjoyed an hour’s luxuriating in the radiant fluid.

They met the next morning at the breakfast hour, Corish solicitously inquiring after her health.

“Did I fall asleep on you?” she asked with wide-eyed dismay.

“Not at all. I just saw to it that you were safely in your own cabin before you did.”

Critically, she held her hands out in front of her. “Well, at least, they’re steady enough to practice.”

“You’re going to practice?”

“I practice every day.”

“May I listen?”

“Well … it can be quite boring—I have to spend at least an hour on the preliminary finger exercises and scales before I can do any interesting music …”

“If I’m bored, I’ll leave.”

As she led the way to the practice rooms, she wondered if she had slipped up in her characterization. Why else should he be curious enough to want to listen to her practice?

Killashandra was rather chuffed to discover that the old drills came easily to her fingers as she addressed the keyboard with every semblance of true authority. Corish departed after fifteen minutes but she left nothing to chance and played on, making remarkably few errors for someone who had not played in three years.

As she had established her credentials with him, he continued to project the image of an amiable young man on a journey to protect family interests. He sought her out at mealtimes, helped her evade the organizers of team sports, directed her investigations of the caterer’s potential with the amused tolerance of the mature traveler, and accompanied her to shipboard activities. On one or two occasions, she had the urge to shock him
with her true identity just to see how he might react, but she repressed that whimsy.

Then, after a particularly bibulous evening, when she had taken an extra long radiant bath, she encountered him in the gymnasium. He was sweating profusely, working out against a hefty weight on the apparatus with apparent ease. Stripped as he was for the exercise, Killashandra could appreciate that Corish’s lean frame was suspiciously well muscled and fine tuned for his public image.

“I didn’t know you were a gymnast!”

“It’s only smart to keep fit, Killashandra Ree.” He whipped a towel about his shoulders and mopped his face. “Where’ve you been?”

Killashandra managed a blush of embarrassment, dropping her eyes and affecting mortification.

“I tried that radiant stuff. In the tank,” and she pointed vaguely in the right direction. “That blonde girl from Kachachurian was saying that it was good for hang-overs!” She kicked at the apparatus base with her toe, eyes still downcast.

“Well, is it?”

“I think it is.” She allowed some doubt in her tone. “At least that awful spinning has stopped … and the nausea!” She put one hand to her head and the other to her stomach. “I think I may have to go back to Fuertan beer. I could always drink as much of that as I wanted. Or is it something to do with traveling in space? My brother did say something about that …” She looked up at Corish. “Isn’t this a funny time to be working out?”

“That’s how I work alcohol out of my system,” Corish said, pulling on his shirt. “I’ll see you back to your cabin. You really shouldn’t be wandering about the ship at this hour. Someone might get the wrong impression about you.”

As Killashandra permitted him to escort her back, she wondered why he was rushing her out of the gym. She felt she had deftly accounted for her presence. And naively accepted his explanation. Safely returned to her cabin, she agreed to meet him as usual for breakfast the next morning, and dutifully went to bed.

Waiting for sleep, she reflected on his extraordinary fitness and the stealth in which he kept it. Could Corish possibly be an FSP agent? It struck her as unlikely that the Federation would choose to send only one observer—an inexperienced one at that—into a planetary society that was being investigated. She chuckled to think that, out of the eighteen hundred passengers and crew on the
Athena
, Corish should attach himself to her. Of course, in her eager-student guise, she might constitute an integral part of
his
shipboard cover. Unless he had been advised of her extra assignment by his superiors. If he was a Federal agent, he would also know the capabilities of crystal singers, and the subtler ways to identify them.

No matter! In her concentrated efforts to recall her days as an impecunious and ardent music student, she had been able to shelve the more recent, painful episode. Seriously now, Killashandra considered Antona’s advice to record incidents in detail. Who knew when she might find it necessary to adopt the role of the student again?

A
s the
Athena
plunged toward the Optherian primary for the deflected hyperbolic pass that would bring it close to the one inhabited planet of the system, the passengers who were disembarking went through the rituals of leave-taking from their shipboard acquaintances. That strange magic of voyaging which could make total strangers into confidantes and lovers had lost none of its potency in the space age.

As they waited in the airlock for the shuttle that would take them to the surface, Killashandra found herself prattling on at Corish about how they must meet and share their adventures: that they couldn’t part and never meet again while they were on the same planet. She’d want to know how he’d made out with his uncle and she hoped she’d be able to tell him of her success, invading the Optherian musical hierarchy. Of course that sort of chatter was in character with her role. What astonished Killashandra was that she meant what she said.

“That’s very sweet of you, Killa,” Corish replied, patting her shoulder in a condescending fashion that returned her instantly to her own personality.

“If I don’t get a place at the Music Center hostel, I’ll go to the Piper Facility,” she said, ducking away from his hand as she fumbled with the fastening on the side pocket of her carisak. She tendered the small plastic card distributed by the Facility with its communit codes. “The Optherian Traveler’s Guide says they’ll take messages for visitors. You could leave word for me there.” She smiled up at him with tremulous wistfulness. “I know that once we leave Optheria, we’ll never meet again, Corish, but at least while we’re still on the same planet, I was hoping we could stay friends.” She broke off, ducking her head and dabbing at her eyes which, on cue, had filled with moisture. She let him have just a confirming glimpse of her teary face, although why she was prolonging their association, she hadn’t a notion. One can get too wrapped up in role-playing.

“I promise you, Killa, that I’ll leave word at the Piper for you.” And Corish put a finger under her chin and lifted her head to his gaze. He had a rather engaging half-smile, she thought, though it wasn’t a patch on Lanzecki’s. She managed to squeeze out a few more tears on the strength of that comparison. “No need for tears, Killa.”

Just then the shuttle clanged against the
Athena
’s side and conversation became impossible with the noise of lock engagement and the excited crescendo of farewells. Then crewmen were officiously directing passengers to move to the port side of the lock. Killashandra was crammed rather tightly between two large men and separated from Corish by another sideways push.