Anne McCaffrey
KILLASHANDRA—CRYSTAL SINGER
KILLASHANDRA came in from the Milekey Mountains with a load of rose quartz prisms and cylinders in A-sharp or higher. She worked well in the upper registers, which gave her a distinct advantage over most of the crystal singers in the Heptite Guild.
When she’d hit the frequencies, holding the tone long enough to locate and pitch the crystal cutter, she hadn’t thought twice before she’d decided shape: prisms and cylinders. A good crystal singer has to have, first of all, perfect pitch and then a fine intuition for shape. No sense coming in with black quartz in octagons and cubes when the critical demand was for beads and cones.
When Guildmaster Lanzecki told her she’d hit the market at the top, she shrugged.
“Made it lucky this time,” she said, wincing as she remembered the last week on the Range. The sun had been fierce on the scars of her cuttings, half-blinding her, and the scream of crystal had sliced through her mind as she’d cut. But she’d been desperate to hack enough cargo to get off-world for awhile away from crystal song, far away, so her mind would have a chance to heal. “What’s the guild’s percentage of it?”
Lanzecki peered up at her from his console, a little smirk bending the left corner of his thin mouth.
“Don’t quibble, Killashandra.”
She bridled, knowing what he meant. “I’m one of the best and you know it. I’ve got years to go.” Her tithe to the guild would keep her when crystal had blown her mind and stopped her ears.
Lanzecki lifted one shoulder. “You’ve cut crystal a long time, Killashandra.”
“I don’t need reminders,” she said, snapping the words out. And that was a fallacy for crystal singing sapped your memory. “How much is guild cut? I have to have enough to get off-world this time.”
Lanzecki inclined his head slightly for the wisdom of that. “Yes, you’ve soloed too long. That’s not smart, ‘specially in the Milekeys. Find yourself a new partner off-world.”
Killashandra laughed. “That’s what you always say.”
Lanzecki waggled a finger at her. “I mean it. You’ve been too damned lucky but I wouldn’t cut my margins again so fine if I were you, not at your age, and not cutting solo.”
She couldn’t think what he meant. She’d always had a second sense for storms in the Milekeys and always got out well in advance.
“You missed a big one by two hours and that is close,” Lanzecki told her.
“Close but I can still scramble. How many machs did it reach?” she asked with a good show of indifference, considering the cold fear in her belly. She couldn’t remember storm-sign.
Lanzecki tapped out the proper sequence and the slides on the back wall altered swiftly until the Milekey Range and a weatherscope were superimposed. The disturbance had reached the frightening velocity of twelve, mach forces that would have blown her mind had she been caught among crystal.
“There’ll be good cutting when I go back,” she said with an arrogant smile. No one else could cut rose quartz true in the Milekeys.
“Just don’t go back solo, Killa.” Lanzecki was completely serious. “You’ve sung crystals a long time now. You pulled out with a crazy two-hour margin but one day you’ll stay just that moment too long and poof...” He threw his hands up, fingers wide. “Burst ears and scrambled brains.”
“That’s the time, my friend,” and Killashandra patted the console on which he had just recorded her tithe, “I get some of my own back.”
Lanzecki eyed her. “With your ears ruptured and your mind rocking? Sure, Killa. Sure. Look, there’re half a dozen good men’d double you anytime you raised your finger. A good duet makes more than a solo. Larsdahl...”
“Larsdahl?” Killashandra was scornful and suspicious.
“You two worked damned well together.”
“Lanzecki, how much did he slip you to remind me of him?”
Lanzecki’s thin face became absolutely expressionless. When he spoke again, his voice was hard, as if he regretted his impulse.
“I was wrong, Killashandra. It’s too late for you to cut duo. Crystal’s in your soul.” He turned away.
She waited a moment, trying to be amused by his accusation. As if she’d ever sing duet with Larsdahl again. Then she wondered why. There must have been a good reason once if Lanzecki said they’d worked well together once. He’d know. But the prohibition against Larsdahl must have been severe for it to stay so firmly in her mind, even if she couldn’t remember the details.
She decided to clean up and outfit in her guild room. She must have something wearable left from her last trip in. Not that she could remember that time particularly well. That was one problem with being a crystal singer: The sonics did something to your recall circuits. Well, that was one excuse. Actually, unless you went off-world completely, and got away from crystal, nothing memorable ever happened.
Maybe she should double again. “Crystal in her soul, indeed!” Why had she split with Larsdahl? Why had he prejudiced her against any desire to share anything? And he’d had the nerve, the gall, the double-juice to ask about her? She snorted, wondering if he still sang slightly sharp. It’d been the devil to compensate when they cut minor notes.
She felt exhausted as she thumbed the lock on the door to her room and her body still pulsed with the frequencies of the Milekey lodes. She punched for a radiant bath, stripping as she heard the viscous liquid plunging into the tub-tank. Once immersed in that, the fatigue—and the resonances—would drain from her body and she could think beyond the next note.
By then, she did remember patches of her last break. They didn’t please her. For one thing, she’d come in with a light load, forced off the Range a few kilos ahead of a bad storm. She’d reaped the benefits of that storm this trip, of course; that was the way of it with crystals. But she hadn’t had enough credit to get off planet. (If a singer worked one lode a long while, those crystals had the power to call and resonate you no matter where you were on Ballybran until you had to go back to them.) She’d been tired, and lonely and sought company in a landsman; tone-deaf, sober-sided so she couldn’t circe him. But he hadn’t been man enough to anneal her. “Crystal in my soul, indeed!” Lanzecki’s words stung, like crystal scratch.
She made a noise of sheer self-disgust and pulled herself from the tank. The radiant fluid sheeted from her body, as firm and graceful as a youngster’s. Killashandra puzzled idly on the matter of personal chronology. She couldn’t remember her approximate age; it usually never mattered to a crystal singer. Something about the sonics, the crystal songs, stimulated the regenerative RNA and a crystal singer looked and felt young for far longer periods of time than other mortals. Not immortality, but close to it. The price was the risk of numb ears and scrambled brains, high enough.
“This time I’ll be off-planet,” she told her reflection and slid open the dresser panel.
She was mildly surprised at the finery there and decided she must have spent what credit she’d had for pretty threads to lure that unwary landsman. He’d been a brute of a lover, though a change. Anything had been a change from the possessiveness of Larsdahl. How dare he inquire after her? There was no harmony between them any more. He had no lien or hold on her because they’d been a duet!
Angrily Killashandra punched for Port Authority and inquired the destinations of imminent blast-offs.
“Not much, C. S. Killashandra,” she was told politely. “A small freighter is loading for the Armagh system. ...”
“Have I been there?”
Pause. “No, ma’am.”
“What does Armagh do for itself?”