The pace at which the woman scurried from the room soothed Killashandra’s ego, and she stared around the hall, idly wondering if her voice could crack Ballybran crystal.
“You don’t give up, do you?” said Lanzecki as he glided into the hall, the receptionist hovering about anxiously.
“No, I don’t.” One didn’t antagonize the Master of the Guild one wished to join. At least not face to face.
“That’s as well.” He seemed pleased by her obduracy. “You’ve perfect pitch all right, according to the Fuertan report.”
So Lanzecki’d been checking up on her.
He nodded. “And you’ve seen what supersonic overloads do to a crystal singer.” He gestured toward the back of the building where the infirmary wing was situated. “Members of the Heptite Guild,” and he gave a sour smile, “are prone to sensory overload. Sooner or later it will happen to you. But you insist on joining?” He waited until she nodded. “Despite repeated warnings and attempts to dissuade you?” She nodded more vigorously. “Will you swear that there have been no attempts to coerce you against your will to become an apprentice in the Heptite Guild?”
“Of course!” Killashandra’s irritation returned, doubled.
To her surprise, Lanzecki strode past her, beckoning her to follow him out of the Guildhall and down the main street of the city into the communications building, where they were instantly ushered into the Spaceport Commissioner’s office.
“This young woman insists on becoming an apprentice to the Heptite Guild,” Lanzecki said. He then stepped out of the room.
“Now what. . . ,” began Killashandra, whirling at his exit.
“Your name, rank and planet of origin, young woman,” asked the Commissioner in a stern forbidding voice.
She gave it to him, startled by his unaccountable attitude. After all, his bloody planet was Mudball #1 if it weren’t for the crystals. . . .
She was then subjected to an intensive physical examination, and a series of mental-health routines. She had to recite her life’s history, up to and including her reasons for leaving the Arts Center on Fuerte.
Two intensive attempts were made to dissuade her, one including an hour-long documented film of the condition of storm-maddened victims. Finally Lanzecki was recalled and she was permitted—permitted!—to announce her official intention of becoming an apprentice to the Heptite Guild.
“I’ve never been through such a rigmarole in my life,” she said, fuming, to her new Guildmaster on their way back to the Hall.
“You won’t be again,” Lanzecki said in a droll fashion but his manner was subtly altered. He seemed less austere, but not happy.
“Well, that’s something.”
“As you’ve been reminded, there are certain advantages to being a crystal singer, Killashandra. Very few, however. But then, there are some advantages to every situation ... if you care to look on the positive side of events. Take myself.” He gave her an odd smile. “I’m totally deaf.”
“I’d never’ve guessed.”
He inclined his head, smiling again. “An advantage, I assure you. I need only turn my back and I can hear nothing.” His smile was tinged with a certain malice. “You’ll find, however, that the inhabitants of Ballybran, save only the singers, are either tone-deaf or have some serious impairment of that sensory faculty. In fact, these past few generations of babies are now born with impaired hearing.” That seemed to please him. “You may wish you had been, too.”
“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” she said, and he nodded, humorlessly. “That accounts for everyone seeming so rude, then,” she added.
“Probably.”
“Here, you’d better have these back,” she said, suddenly remembering the vouchers and thrusting them at him.
He glanced indifferently at the chits, and waved aside her offer.
“The Guild was grateful, a signal event I assure you in this profession. Make the most of it. Such opportunities will soon be beyond you.”
They had reached the Guildhall and Lanzecki directed her to what was obviously a training room.
“Enough time has been wasted,” he said. “Now, some of the necessary reeducation will be done by an aural teacher, for I am useless but I am your principal instructor. Initiation lasts until you have completed your first solo trip into the crystal-bearing ranges and return.” He smiled sourly. “The ranges are not, by the way, mountains in the upward sense of the word, but deeps.”
Lanzecki had gestured her to a seat at a small desk that bore writing materials and a taper. He pulled down a tri-d screen and took a pointer.
“Ballybran,” and he indicated the fourth planet of the system on the tri-d visualization, “has a low volcanic action, being an old planet and well settled down. As you are aware from primary school galactology, quartz structures take eons to produce and occur where volcanic action is negligible, as it is on Ballybran. This planet has achieved an almost circular orbit so there are few changes of season such as you might have experienced on Fuerte or other planets you’ve visited.”
He went on in detail about Ballybran’s discovery on a routine survey and how its potential was overlooked until a vacationing engineer escaped from the crystal canyons only seconds before a mach storm. He’d been nearly driven mad by the sounds stroked by the freak high winds from the quartz hills and had returned later to investigate the phenomen. Since there was always a dearth of usable quartz crystal to focus the coherent light needed by lasers and communication devices, his discovery made him a wealthy man. One day he didn’t outrun a mach storm. He and fifty other crystal prospectors.
Galactic Overgovernment had interdicted the planet until the hazard had been thoroughly assessed, and proper precautions could be specified. The Heptite Guild was formed to recruit (“Ha, dissuade,” Killashandra thought to herself), train and maintain quartz prospectors. The Guild very properly tithed active members throughout their working lives and then cared for those incapacitated. Since humans with perfect pitch were in a minority and since the Guild was required to explain the hazards of the profession in detail, the active membership remained small and the price of crystal high. No research disclosed a reliable substitute for Ballybran-mined crystal and blackmarket mining was notably unsuccessful for the improperly equipped pirates.
By constant handling, Killashandra learned the various marketable shapes. She had intensive drill on her pitch, which remained accurate to the machine-oriented vibrations: a simple matter with her background as a musical student. Easy, too, for her to sound a pitch and then key the polydiamond supersonic cutter to that exact note. She learned to tune soured crystal as an exercise preparatory to the actual cutting of quartz from the living hills. She studied thousands of diagrams and slides of crystal walls until she was able to discern at a glance where major fractures had been caused by alignment and realignment as the crystal was “born” from the tremendous pressures of volcanic action in the planet’s surface. She began to appreciate micro-errors, those impure molecules that might, at a later date, cause a seemingly perfect crystal to fracture and explode, just as the shuttle’s crystal had blown apart at Fuerte. Sometimes one could “hear” the micro-errors when one sounded a note and cut a “good” crystal above or below the error. But she wasn’t to learn that trick until she got out into the ranges.
Though she fumed about the delay, she was forced to endure equally boring rehearsals of Guild rules, precepts and regulations until she’d wake herself up chanting Section and Paragraph. She was held in training for excessively long drills on the dangers, spotting and evasion of mach storms.