With a sinking terror, Killashandra knew she had no alternative now.
“He’s bluffing,” Fergil cried. “He’s trying to murder you.”
“He’s not bluffing,” Killashandra said, dully staring at the flimsy, but she didn’t refute the second charge.
“I’m not trying to murder her either, Fergil,” Lanzecki said in a weary tone, “because I am within my authority to insist that you double with her again. The sooner you two can cut the required quota the sooner this,” and he shook the flimsy, “can be destroyed and . . . forgotten.”
“Easily forgotten!” said Killashandra in a barking sneer. “But you overlook one factor, Lanzecki. What if the storm has split the mountain to shards?” and she devoutly wished it true.
The Guildmaster shuddered, his eyes closing as if fearful that the mere mention of such a possibility could bring it about.
“From what Fergil said, the mountain is pure crystal. It won’t have been affected by the storm as much as a thinner vein might.”
“What if it is, Lanzecki?” Killashandra could not resist taunting him. “What does GCS do then?”
“Then”—and Lanzecki called her bluff—”every singer concentrates on your claim until they recover the pure vein if they have to dig to plasma.” His manner was implacable. “Spare me further puerile divagations. Killashandra has the only blue workings: She is to cut there as long as she is able. Otherwise other singers will be sent to the claim.”
“And how could you bloody well find that claim, I want to know?”
“There are ways,” Lanzecki told Fergil, “tedious but ultimately successful. And you are to guard her life with yours, Fergil. You will obey, instantly, any storm warning and leave from the Range. But”—and there was no doubting Lanzecki’s meaning—”do not leave the Range without due cause or you both suffer expulsion.”
“Death either way, Lanzecki!” cried Fergil, but Lanzecki had gone. Fergil grabbed Killashandra into the protective circle of his body. “You can’t go!”
She pushed him away and reached for a Range suit. “He means it, Fergil. I’ve no choice but by all that’s holy on every planet in this galaxy, I’m the only one who will cut my claim as long as I can keep my wits!” A deep abiding fury strengthened Killashandra now and Fergil noted the change in her with reluctant approval.
“And I’ll make sure you keep your wits for years to come,” he cried, responding to the challenge. Then, as if he could not bear their separation any longer, he grabbed her back into his arms. “You’re the most fantastic woman. ...” His voice was shaking with pride, admiration . . . and love.
Although Killashandra’s flitter had been repaired, they took off again in his. The false energy of wrath deserted her once they were airborne, and at the moment Fergil turned expectantly to her.
“You’d better take the controls now, Killa.”
“Why? You flew her back!” That small snake of doubt nipped at the heels of her trust in Fergil. All the long moment he stared at her incredulously, she realized that he hadn’t been at her claim long enough, nor had he sung crystal long enough, to be drawn back by a familiar resonance.
“There was a storm blowing up, Killa,” he said, gently, ruefully. “I turned on the homer and pushed the ship as fast as she’d move. In fact”—and he shrugged regretfully—”I had to dump all our stores to lighten her for additional speed. I sure as hell had no spare time to mark the way.”
Since she’d seen Supply loading stores and yet they’d been full four days before on their first trip out, she had to concede that point and slowly took the pilot chair. Ingrained caution dictated another route into the Range, coming down a different trough, up over the ridge separating it from the major fissure and the black crag. Only there wasn’t much left of it. She didn’t mention its loss nor, apparently, was Fergil aware of the alteration in the landscape.
And there had been several. For one moment, as she got an unobstructed view of her mountain, Killashandra experienced a moment of pure terror—that the blue crystal lode had been storm-blasted: That her wish had become fact. But the answering note in her bones was clear and unsullied despite the fact that half the adjoining promontory had fallen atop the narrow ledge by the cutting and generously enlarged it. The face they’d been working was blackened and pitted by the storm’s violence: no one in passing would have known what lay behind that scarred rock.
“How do you know this is the right place?” Fergil asked, completely disoriented.
“You feel it,” she replied with the abrupt rudeness of experience in the face of ignorance.
“Feel it?”
“In your bones!” She laid her hand on his and this time he didn’t jerk it away. He blinked, frowned, and then recognition widened his eyes with astonishment.
“Is that how you know?”
“You haven’t cut crystal long enough.”
“No, Killashandra, I haven’t. You”—and he caressed her cheek gently, his eyes soft—”shepherded me my first time into the Ranges. Oh, I know you’ve forgotten,” he said with a half-apologetic grin, “probably because I was such a right dolt.”
“Well, you learned in a helluva hurry then, because you cut damned good duet with me,” she replied. “Speaking of which, let’s cut Lanzecki’s fecking blues.”
“Right! The more we do the sooner we can get off this crazy-cracked ball of sound, to Parnell’s World together and then. . . .” His voice dropped to a vibrant suggestive note that made her laugh.
“Then let’s sing crystal and cut the agony short!”
And how they sang the blues. The pure mountain had held. Once they cut away the storm-blasted layer, the crystal sang true, resounding across the storm-widened canyon, until the ache of the faultless sound reached the limits of the bearable. But Killashandra endured because she had to, and because somehow Fergil made it supportable.
They cut three crates the first day: working until the ping of crystal cooling in the twilight made tuning impossible. And then they lay in each other’s arms, too weary for loving, too keyed to the mountain to sleep until it, too, had hushed.
As long as she was actively cutting, the crystal pain was neutralized. Nonetheless by the third day, Killashandra asked Fergil what he’d brought in the way of depressants. With pity in his eyes, he gave her a dose. The fifth day she injured herself badly, slicing away the fleshy part of her thumb. Fergil mouthed requisite reassurances, but she could see that he was annoyed because they’d lost both of the huge dodecahedrons they’d been cutting.
She insisted that he permaflesh her hand, and dose her with pain-relievers so she could continue working. Perversely she was irritated because he tacitly accepted her sacrifice.
The sixth day he wouldn’t give her any more depressants because he said that was why she’d cut herself: Her reactions were too slow. She screamed that she couldn’t stand the pain until he did give her a half dose. She didn’t cut as well and bollixed four small cuttings. That night she tried to find out where he hid the drugs and moaned through a sleepless night without surcease while he snored with exhaustion.
The seventh day dawned with a stifling heat, the sort that precedes a break in weather. She began to cut with a frantic intensity, seemingly able to avoid all kinds of minor disasters through speed alone. But the pace told on Fergil and she blasted him for the novice he was; taunting him that a really experienced singer could keep up with her, crippled and crystal-crazed as she was.
“Crazy, is right,” he shouted back at her. “No sane person cuts as fast as you do.”
“I’ve got to cut fast. There’s storm coming!”
Immediately alert, Fergil cocked his head for the flitter’s alarms. “Did you short ‘em off? Did you?” he cried, shaking her when she didn’t answer him. When she denied turning the alarms off, he wouldn’t believe her and, despite her curses and threats, he dashed into the flitter to check..
“It’s the weather. I know! I can feel the storm coming. I don’t need alarms, you stupid twit! I’ve cut crystal long enough!”
“The charts say we’ve twelve clear days ...” he bellowed from the flitter, brandishing the meteorology flimsies at her.
“The variant storm, you numskull, changes any pattern,” she yelled back. “Those nardy charts aren’t worth the plastic they’re printed on. Move yourself out here and cut! Damn you! Cut!”
He came and worked grimly beside her until his voice was ragged and harsh when they pitched a cut. But with each crystal they cut, Killashandra reckoned that she was that much closer to peace, to tranquillity in blood and bone, to a long, long journey away from crystal.
The next octagons cut were flecked with bloodstains: Fergil’s and hers. She wouldn’t even give him time to get permaflesh from the flitter. He cursed once the cutters were tuned, cursed in tempo to the diabolical pace she was setting. They had just carved a match double fifths which finished off a crate when Fergil took her by the arm.
“Nothing’s worth this pace, Killa. Slack off! We’ll kill ourselves.”
She wrenched free, her sweeping glance of him deriding his weakness. “I’ve only today. The storm’ll be here soon.”
Before she could inhale to sing the cutting note, the dew bell clanged.
“Impossible!” Fergil said it like a prayer, dashing to the skimmer.
“Come back here and cut, you fool. It’s only the dew bell. We’ve time.”
“You said the variant storm changed everything,” Fergil replied, heaving the first crate into the lock. “I just got us out of here last time because I made you come at the dew bell.”
“Come back here and cut!”
“Forget the nardy cutting! Help me load.”
“There aren’t enough yet,” she cried, counting the crates as she passed them to him. How many had they already stored in the cargo bay? She couldn’t rightly remember. “There aren’t enough yet. I’ve got to cut enough this time.” She picked up her cutter again and dashed back to the cliff. She cleared her throat and reached for a high G. Her voice gave before she could tune the cutter. Startled, because her voice had never betrayed her, she swallowed several times, took a good deep breath, pressed against her diaphragm and sang out. Again her voice wavered and cracked. “Fergil. Sing it for me!”
The high clear D was almost drowned out by additional klaxons from the skimmer. But she caught the pitch and tuned her cutter.
“C’mon, Fergil,” she yelled over the piercing cry of crystal. “We’ve time for one more!”
“That’s the girl, Killa,” Fergil called back merrily. “Cut the next one for me. Your voice’ll recover. Just keep cutting. Lanzecki said to leave at the dew bell. Remember? I’ll be back. Yes, indeed. I’ll be back.”
His farewell suddenly penetrated the fogs of her fatigued mind. She turned and stared at the flitter.
“Wait for me, will you, Killashandra?” he cried, waving. His mocking laugh and his words made sudden, horrible sense.
She threw aside the cutter with a snarl and raced down the track they’d worn, but the skimmer’s hatch closed before she could reach it. The suction of takeoff pushed her back, almost to the edge of the precipice. She fell to her knees in the rubble, unable to believe that Fergil was abandoning her! And abruptly as certain that that had been in his mind all along. Weeping, she acknowledged both betrayal and abandonment. With an awful clarity she knew what she had tried to rationalize, that she never had met Fergil until the day he had insinuated himself into her presence in the hall. He’d banked, and accurately, on the fact that someone who’d sung crystal as long as she would have erratic recall, even with the help of a playback. He must’ve known of the emergency before he approached her, counting on Lanzecki’s unwilling cooperation. Had Lanzecki betrayed her, too, for the Guild’s need?
She didn’t feel the wind rising, the enormity of the double treachery dulling her sensation of physical buffets. It was the moan of crystal all around that roused her. The moan and the cessation of pain within her.
Utterly calm, she rose to her feet, incuriously noticed the roiling blackness of the swiftly descending storm. Why had she never appreciated the beauty of a mach storm? She became fascinated by its incredible speed, the look of unlimited power in the billowing multiplicity of black, ochre, and gray clouds. The moan intensified into a low shriek, then broke into chords, dissonances, harmonies as the storm winds caressed music from the living rock.
Her body arched with the sonic ecstasy which engulfed her. She began to sing, as her ear remembered melodies composed by the infinite chords around her. Arias seemed to crash into the canyons and symphonies leaped across peaks, bombarding her with ever more diabolically increased tempi, with rhythms that made her sway and whirl in time. She sang, and the whole blue crystal mountain answered her in a magnificently throated chorale.
The blue mountain! That was all Lanzecki had wanted of her. And Fergil. And Lanzecki had sent Fergil with her: certain that the traitor would get enough of the blue resonances on this second trip to bring him unerringly back to the parent sound. And for good measure, Fergil would have her dead body to mark the spot. For she’d never last the storm alive.
So she was to mark the spot? Not if she could prevent it.
The mountain was singing such a fortissimo that she didn’t need to pitch the cutter: She’d only to turn it on.
At the top of her lungs, playing her voice up and down an incredible span, she attacked the crystal face with the cutter, slicing irrespective of axes: hearing the satisfactory scream of the abused crystal as she hacked a way into the mountain.
“Abuse me, would he?” she chanted. “Use me, would he?”
She’d alter the frequencies for him so he’d never find his way back to her pure-hearted mountain. The storm-stroked crystal obligingly fell away in great rectangles from her ruthless assault. With an hysterical strength, she pushed aside, knocked over, crawled past crystal spires and spikes, and made herself a tomb deep in the heart of sound.
The mach storm seduced ever louder, weirder symphonies from the willing rock as it rolled over her blue sepulcher. And Killashandra, bone and blood vibrating to the phenomenon, willing, delivered her soul to the sound of death.