Killashandra grunted noncommittally and kept her mind on the flying. Occasionally she caught a glint of other flitters in deep canyons as she flew deeper north into the Range.
“Will we have time to cut today?” he asked casually after they were two hours in flight.
“Should do.”
They were nearly to the place, she realized, feeling the answering resonance in her body. She wondered how she could tune her body so selectively: one time to the yellows, another to the rose quartz, and now to the elusive blues. Once a singer had worked a cutting several times, he could always find his way back.
So she flew up and west, to confuse Fergil. There was a long low canyon, one of the major fissures of the range, leading up to her cutting. She’d fly over it, swing around and come back at the furthest end, where the black crag cut off the rest of the trough. Of course, let him mark the black cliff, a seemingly distinctive landmark. Milekey had hundreds such. He’d learn soon enough.
She glided in, right over the crag, observing him glance up. Then he also saw where she intended to touch the flitter down and he blanched noticeably.
“Easy as she goes,” Killashandra said, having neatly aligned the craft with the marks left by her own flitter.
“I didn’t think you’d manage that,” Fergil said, his eyes dancing with admiration though his voice was full of relief.
Killashandra laughed, pleased with her expertise. “A few surprises in the old gal yet, aren’t there?” But suddenly, her doubts and fancies about him dissipated and she felt comfortable again with him. She unlatched her sonic cutter, motioned for him to do the same. “Grab a container,” she added, as she undogged the hatch and stepped, carefully, onto the narrow ledge. The inadequate landing space was one of the reasons she’d not worked this cutting more often.
Fergil gave the nauseating drop a passing glance and followed, hefting crate and cutter easily.
Sun glinted off the blue crystal rock laid bare of its encrustment of machstorm-driven debris and abrasions. Fergil whistled appreciatively, leaned closer and ran a speculative hand down the obvious axial flaws.
“Polyhedron blues! A mountain of them.”
“Let’s see can we carve a few triads out of this face,” Killashandra suggested and sang out an A. She gestured for him to sing a third above or below. He’d a good strong voice—not a vibe off pitch—and then the chord answered them from the mountain. Both had their cutters tuned when Killashandra’s hand found the resonating section of crystal. She was still singing her note as she made the first cut but he hadn’t her breath support. He’d learn.
They cut quickly; he was good and his sonic cutter was not a fraction of an inch behind hers as they sliced blue crystal from parent rock. She finished the outer edge cuts and turned off her cutter before she realized that his was still on. . . . He stood, transfigured by the feel of vibrating crystal in his hand. She knew the sensation. Knew too well the insidious, mind-sapping joy of it. How long had Fergil been singing crystal? She snatched the orthorhombic from his hand and watched him snap out of the trance, snarling with anger.
“You can do that as long as you want on your own time, Fergil. We’re here to cut crystal, not be seduced by it. Finish off the shape.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, Killa. I forgot.”
She felt his crystal pulsing in her hand, in harmony with the one she’d just cut. She handed it back to him before she was entranced. “Shape it. Now! I’m watching.” He all but wrenched the polyhedron from her. “You haven’t been out that often, have you?”
“That much, too much! What does it matter? I sing well, don’t I?” He spun on her angrily, the cutter raised almost threateningly. He completed the cuts in a savage way and then placed the dodecahedron carefully in the crate. “Where now?” There was no expression at all in his face and suddenly Killashandra was afraid that she’d alienated him. She was desperate for the reassurance of his smile. Then he relaxed and grinned sheepishly. She took a deep breath and sang out a C sharp. He belted out a respectable F sharp and they touched the resonating area at the same instant. They were cutting well when suddenly the sound distorted on her blade as the blue shattered down its longest axis. She switched off her cutter just in time to prevent his crystal from cracking with the dissonance. He was as unnerved by the break but kept to his cut, finishing deftly.
“Now what?” he asked her as he laid the F sharp in the protective foam sheath. “That’s only happened to me once before.”
They both regarded the long fracture with disgust.
“It happens most frequently cutting blues,” she said, glaring angrily at the half won C sharp. “We can cut further down the face”—and she gestured to the dull, pitted face—”but we’ve got to cut away a lot of junk first. Or we can suffer the noise and take this out down below the flaw.”
Fergil rubbed the side of his face by his ear, as if in anticipation of the aural distress. “How good’s this face? Worth wasting the effort if it fractures again?”
Killashandra shrugged. They weren’t really far enough past the surface to tell. “You get the largest percentage of defects on the outside, of course. ...”
“Let’s try once more to cut here.” Fergil raised his tool.
They did and got a good triad before a vertical flaw developed.
“I’ve a hunch we should keep on at this face, though,” Killashandra said, strewing the shattered fragments of the imperfect crystal down the precipice.
“I’ve not sung crystal long enough to argue,” Fergil said, grinning cheerfully at her as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
His candor reassured her as much as his subtle compliment.
“We’ll play my hunch, at least for today, then.”
They ran across one other short fissure which ruined a tonic octave. Once past that, she could tell from the ring, mountain deep, that they were on to a fine, pure vein.
“Enough to buy Parnell’s World at current prices,” she told Fergil and laughed at the anticipatory gleam in his eyes. “The trouble is we wouldn’t live long enough to cut it all.”
“Why not?” Fergil demanded with a bark of exultant laughter. “Singers can last forever if they’re good. . . .”
“If they’re lucky...”
He swung on her. “You’re good, one of the best, and you’ve been singing for. ...”
“Enough!” Suddenly she didn’t want to know, and it angered her to think that he knew. “I’m still singing. And let’s stop chattering and start cutting. That’s what we’re here for.”
She belted out a G and they cut a five note dominant before crystal began to murmur evening song.
That night, Killashandra would have preferred solitude to ponder some of the contradictions in Fergil but, as if he sensed her disquiet, he distracted her with loverly nonsense and skillful lovemaking. It was one thing to listen to night crystal song by yourself: quite another to hear the same serenade over the roar of the blood at climax. And very flattering to hear a man’s voice crying out his pleasure in you. Killashandra’d forgotten that facet of singing duet.
By high noon the next day, they had to work with blinder-slits, but the cuttings were fabulous. No partner could have been as good as Fergil now he’d hit his stride. Whatever her reservations had been the previous day, his performance now dispelled them. His voice and hers blended, caught resonances that could be heard echoing four canyons beyond: his cutter worked as swiftly and surely as hers, instinctively finding the axes of the octagons and dodecahedrons, producing symmetrical sets as neatly as she did. She was quite ready to concede that they two might well level the blue mountain when the alarms began.
“Hey, that’s the dew bell!”