“What's the second place?” she asked impudently.
Enthor blinked his lens into place and gave her a shrewd look. “Remembering where the first place was!”
She left him, walking back through Sorting to Storage and out onto the hangar deck, the shortest way back to an arc lift down to her quarters. Hangar personnel were busy dismantling Keborgen's wreck She grimaced. So a damaged ship was repaired as long and as often as necessary during its owner's lifetime – and then stripped. Had Carrik's sled been dismembered?
She halted at a sudden notion, wheeled and stared out at the hills in the direction of Keborgen's erratic last flight. She half ran to the Hangar Ready Room for a look at the met printout, continuously displayed and updated by the minute.
That storm to the southeast? It's dissipating?
The weather officer glanced up, a frown on his face. Forestalling rejection, Killashandra held up her wrist-band. He immediately tapped out a replay of the satellite recording, which showed the formation of the storm and its turbulent progress along the coast of the main continent and the Milekey Ranges. The gale had blown up quickly and, as unpredictably as most Ballybran storms, caressed one large sector of the range and then roiled seaward across the edge of the Long Plain where warm air had met its colder mass.
“I was on the wrecker which brought Keborgen in, but I must have dropped my wrist-unit there. Can I use a skimmer?”
The met officer shrugged. “For all of me you can have a skimmer. No weather to speak of in our zone. Check with Flight.”
Flight thought her cack-handed to have dropped equipment and assigned her a battered vehicle. She paused long enough to note that the recovery pattern of the wrecker was still displayed on the emergency screen. Once she left the office, she made notes on her wrist unit.
She unracked the skimmer and left the hangar at a sedate pace entirely consistent with a routine errand, then flew to the crash site. She was increasingly possessed by the thought that Keborgen, trying to out run the storm, surely must have come back to the complex by the most direct route. Though Concera had maundered on and on about how careful Singers were to protect their claims by using devious routes to and from, Keborgen might just as easily have flown straight in the hope of reaching safety. His sled had come in well behind the others from the same area.
Given that possibility, she could establish from data retrieval the exact second when the storm warning had been broadcast, compute the maximum speed of his sled, the direction of flight at the time of his crash, and deduce in what general area he had cut black crystal. She might even do a probability computation on the length of time Keborgen had delayed at his claim by the span of time it had taken the other thirty-nine Singers to return.
She hovered the skimmer over the crash site. The sharp mounds were beginning to soften as a brisk breeze shifted the soil. Skewing the skimmer, she located the next skid mark and two more before she spotted the raw scrape across the bare rock of a higher slope. She landed to examine the marks closely. The scar was deeper on the north side, as if the sled had been deflected by the contact. She stood in the mark and took bearings through her wrist unit. Then she returned to the skimmer and quartered the sector, looking for any other evidence of Keborgen's faltering, bumping last flight.
Shadows and sunset made it inadvisable for her to continue her search. Killashandra checked her bearings and then returned to the complex.
CHAPTER 7
Killashandra leaned back from the terminal in her room, noted that the time display marked an early-morning hour. She was tired, her eyes hot with fatigue, and she was ravenous. But she had every bit of data she could extract from the Guild's banks that might be useful in narrowing her search for Keborgen's black-crystal claim. She keyed the program into the privacy of her personal record, then stood and walked stiffly, arching against the ache in her back, to the catering unit where she dialed for a hot soup. Though she had stored the data, she couldn't stop thinking about her plan. And all the obstacles to its implementation.
Keborgen was dead. His claims, wherever they had been, were now open according to the vast paragraphs on “Claims, the making and marking thereof, penalties for misappropriation, fines and restrictions,” and all subparagraphs. However, the claim first had to be found. As Enthor had said, that was the first problem. Killashandra might have theories about its location, but she had neither sled to get there and look nor cutter to take crystal from the “open” face. Her research revealed that Keborgen had worked the claim for at least four decades and analysis proved that twelve black crystal cuttings had come from the same face, the next to last one some nine years previously. The second problem, as Enthor had so pithily stated, was remembering.
To relieve the tedium of drill. Killashandra had asked Concera how Singers found their way back to claims after an absence, especially if memory was so unreliable.
“Oh,” Concera had replied airily, “I always remember to tell my sled what landmarks to look for. Sleds have voice print recorders so they're dead safe.” She hesitated, looking in an unfocused way that was habitual with her. “Of course, storms do sometimes alter landmarks, so it's wiser to record contour levels and valleys or gorges, things that aren't as apt to be rearranged by a bad blow. Then, too,” she continued in a brighter voice, “when you've cut at a particular face a few tunes, it resonates. So if you can recall even the general direction and get there, finding the exact spot is much easier.”
“It isn't so much singing crystal then, as being sung to by crystal,” Killashandra had noted.
“Oh, yes, very well put,” Concera said with the false cheerfulness of someone who hadn't understood.
Killashandra finished the soup and wearily shuffled to the bedroom, shedding her coverall. She wasn't unsatisfied with the information she'd accumulated. She could narrow the search to older claim markings in the geographical area dictated by the top speed of Keborgen's elderly sled, the time the storm warning was issued, and the registered storm wind speed.
She fretted about one point. Keborgen's sled recorder. She had seen the sled being dismantled, but would the Guild technicians have rescued the record for the data that might be retrieved? She wasn't certain if anyone had ever broken a voice code. It hadn't been so much as whispered that it was possible. Though the rules did not state the Guild was able to take such an action, a terrible breach of privacy under FSP rights, the Charter didn't specifically deny the Guild that right, either, once the member was dead. On the other hand, Trag had said that private personal records were irretrievable.
The darkness and absolute silence of her bedroom compounded her sudden doubt. The Guild could and occasionally did exhibit a certain ruthlessness. For sanity's sake, she had better decide here and now whether or not the Guild adhered faithfully to its stated and endlessly cited principles. She took a sudden comfort in the very length of the Charter. Its voluminous paragraphs and sections obviously reflected contingencies and emergencies that had been dealt with over four hundred years of usage and abuse.
With a sigh, Killashandra turned over. Avoiding restrictions and defying laws were completely in the human condition. As the Guild prohibited, it also protected or the bloody planet would have been abandoned to the spores and crystal.
She woke later in the morning to the insistent buzz of her terminal. She was informed that her cutter was now ready and she was to collect it and report to training room 47. Groggy from insufficient sleep, Killashandra took a quick shower and ate a good meal. She found herself directing glances to the computer console, almost as if she expected last night's data to spring from the cover and expose itself.