Fergil waved aside these considerations. “Even octagon blues are bringing in a small fortune. I’m going to try prospecting for blues this trip out. There’s a bonus posted for any new veins discovered. A good haul of blues and I’m off to Parnell’s World.”
Killashandra snorted. She could use a trip to Parnell’s World; she’d been there before, because it offered the widest variety of pleasure and vice in the galaxy. It was naturally a favorite destination of crystal singers.
“You could be a rich woman in eleven days, Killa,” he said with a rueful grin.
“Yeah, rich with addled brains. I’m so farding tired of singing crystal. . . .” her vehemence startled Fergil. “I’m as close to crystalizing bone and blood as makes no never mind.” She rubbed at her arms, unnervingly reassured by the warm flesh she touched.
“Oh, Killa! You’re far from crystallized,” Fergil said, an intense gleam in his eyes as he embraced her sensuously.
She pushed away from him, both aroused and annoyed.
“There, there, lover,” Fergil said, soothingly. He kept hold of one hand. “Okay, so you’ve had too much. Just go off-world. How can he stop you?”
“He can and has, and I’d be twice the fool to risk suspension or expulsion.”
Fergil let out a surprised laugh. “Heptite Guild doesn’t expel. ...”
“They don’t have to. They know we can’t last without crystal. I remember what happens.” She gritted her teeth against the memories that flooded, all too unwelcome, into her mind—the ache and throb of crystal-hungry flesh and blood, the excruciating spinal agony that rippled and wrenched you apart. . . . Equally unendurable was the thought of returning to the Ranges, of being submerged so soon again in crystal noise. “I can’t go back, Fergil. I can’t go back,” she cried in a voice that was close to a scream.
He gathered her into his arms gently, holding her head into his shoulder to muffle her hysterical sobs.
“It’s too much.” Killashandra wasn’t certain if she was vocalizing the terror or not. She couldn’t go back into the Ranges, not until she’d had some rest, some time away from them. She was sobbing uncontrollably now as Fergil carried her. That was good of him because she didn’t have to expend any effort. She hadn’t any strength left. Maybe if she collapsed completely. . . .
She was being inserted into a warm radiant bath, the soothing liquid relaxing the taut hysteria of her body.
“You can’t send her out in this kind of state, Lanzecki,” Fergil was saying at the top of his voice. “She’d crack. She couldn’t sing!”
“I’ve no choice but to send her, Fergil.”
“She’s got to have some rest.”
“Rest she can have. Eleven days of it, but then she has to go out.”
“In this condition? Eleven days won’t give her enough of a respite, not this close to crystal. You know that.”
“I know it, but the situation does not permit exceptions. We must have blues. Of course”—and despite her desperate condition, Killashandra caught the change in Lanzecki’s voice—”if she will detail the location of her workings. . . .”
With a scream of protest, Killashandra tried to rise from the tub to get at Lanzecki.
“By all that’s holy,” Fergil was bellowing, “give over her claim? Why, I’d sooner double with her to protect it...”
“By all means do so.”
Killashandra had enough strength left to fight off Fergil’s hands but she slipped back into the radiant, shrieking curses.
“You won’t have to go out alone, Killa. I won’t let you go out alone. I’m going with you!”
“You’re going with me?” Killashandra desisted in her feeble efforts to loosen his hands.
Gently he pulled her into a more comfortable position in the tub, stroking her hair back from her face, deftly wiping some of the liquid from her cheeks and mouth.
“Yes, dear girl, I’m going with you. And we’ll cut every barfing blue the GCS could use for a thousand years. And then we’ll do Parnell’s World like it’s never been done before! Won’t we?”
Compelled by the exultation in those gray eyes, too weary to resist the strength in the comforting hands, Killashandra nodded assent. Before she could gainsay it, a medic had pushed his way to the tub edge and pumped her full of sedatives.
She was kept tranquilized for four days, aired full of high-potency vitamin compounds and anabolics to overcome her pernicious exhaustion. Fergil apparently never left her side for whenever she roused briefly from the euphoric haze, he was there, murmuring soft reassurances, patting her, until the touch of his deft hands became a corollary to her drugged equanimity.
How could she have censored someone like Fergil from her life? Possibly because he was so compatible. And he hadn’t wanted to give up his independence, had he? That would have infuriated her. So that would have been why she hadn’t wanted to remember the man: her own bruised ego.
She was still bemused when they took off in Fergil’s flitter five days later. There’d been an argument between Fergil and Lanzecki: Fergil insisting that she had the right to the eleven full days, with Lanzecki replying that three more of the great interstellar drives had gone sour and that the Guild was under heavy pressure from GCS to get blue dodecahedrons or suffer tremendous penalties. Every singer able to walk was out in the Ranges, trying to find more blues.
“All right, we’ll cut your damned dodecs, and then don’t try to call us back,” Fergil had roared.
“Don’t let Killa turn off the storm warnings, Fergil!” was Lanzecki’s parting advice.
The first touch of crystal sound as they entered the Ranges brought Killashandra completely out of the thrall of sedation. Her mind was suddenly too clear, like the Milekey’s humpy outline against the green sky.
“I’d better fly now, Fergil,” she said.
“Now, look, Killa, you’re barely. . . .”
“Now, look, Fergil, if you think you’re going to track back to my blue cuttings when I’ve scrambled up, think again,” she said, laughing at the shock in his eyes. “I’ve sung crystal too long, young man, not to appreciate your strategy. Well, we’ll duet. This time, because I’ve no guts for the Ranges by myself. But I’ll do the piloting.”
Judging by the way he recoiled from her accusation, by the hurt in his darkened gray eyes, maybe she’d done him an injustice. Fergil didn’t protest, but he shook his head from side to side as he backed into the furthest corner of the flitter, out of line of sight with any of the directional dials. As a further mute refutation of her indictment, he studied the meteorological charts intently.
Fergil’s craft was new, but somewhat sluggish in maneuvering and she tended to compensate, out of habit, for the idiosyncrasies of her ancient flitter. Neither was Fergil accustomed to flying in the Milekeys, to judge by his taut expression as she angled through passes, all but scraping the belly of the vessel on the rocky sides. She dipped low in some canyons, flying their length where speed kept individual markings from being obvious to Fergil. She was feeling much better than she’d expected. True, she was aware of crystal hum along her bones, in her blood, but it wasn’t by any means acute.
“Did they pump me full of depressants?” she asked Fergil.
“Some. Not enough to worry. Lanzecki and the medics were pretty thick, but I watched and most of what they gave you were standard B complexes and anabolics, plus sedatives to keep you asleep.” He gave her a cocky grin. “Must’ve worked. You’re more yourself today, my girl. How’s the ship handling? She’s packed with stores.”