Killashandra

EPILOGUE

Stolidly Killashandra watched, arms folded across her breasts, as Enthor reverently unpacked the nine black crystal shafts.

“Interstellar, at the least, Killashandra,” he said, blinking his eyes back to normal vision as he stepped back to sigh over the big crystals. “And this is all from that vein you struck last year?”

Killashandra nodded. Not much moved her to words these days. Working the new claim, she had quickly recouped her losses on the Optherian contract; Heptite rules and regs had required her to part with a percentage of that fee to Trag. She accepted that as passively as she had accepted everything since that day in Court on Regulus. Not even Rimbol had been able to penetrate her apathy, though he and Antona continued their attempts. Lanzecki had spoken pleasantly to her after her first return from the Ranges, complimented her on the new black crystal vein but their early relationship could never have been revived even if Lanzecki had persisted

She didn’t see him. She saw no one but Lars, a laughing Lars, garland-wreathed, his blue eyes gleaming, teeth white in his tanned face, his bronzed body poised on the deck of the Pearl Fisher. She woke sometimes, sure she felt his hand on her hip, heard his voice in the whisper of the wind in the deep ravine, or in the tenor of warming crystal at noon, when the sun finally touched the cliff. She made two attempts to succumb to crystal thrall but each time the symbiont had somehow pulled her back. Not even that enchantment was powerful enough to break through her emotions, obsessed as she was by the guilty betrayal of her body in the witness chair on Regulus.

She had kept informed of the situation on Optheria and often, on the nights brilliant with crystal song, she composed letters to Lars, asking to be forgiven that betrayal. She wrote imaginary letters to Nahia and Hauness, knowing that they would be compassionate, and intercede for her with Lars. In her better moments, common sense dictated that Lars would not have held that bizarre psychoanalysis against her for he, of them all, knew how much she treasured and admired him. But he had not heard her impassioned plea to the Court, and she doubted if “I love you” had been included in the hard copy of the hearing transcript. And he had other plans for the rest of his life.

She frequently entertained the notion of returning to Optheria to see how he was getting on, even if she never made actual contact with him. He might have found another woman with whom he could share his life on Optheria. Sometimes she returned from the Ranges, full of determination to end her wretched half-life, one way or another. She had more than enough credit for a fiercely expensive galactic call: ironically through some of the black crystal she had herself cut. But would she reach Lars on Optheria? Maybe, once he had completed that disciplinary action and his subordination to the Federal investigation of Optheria, he had found another channel for his abilities and energies. Once he discovered his freedom to travel the stars, they might have won him from his love of the sea.

At her most rational, she recognized all the ifs ands and buts as procrastination’s. Yet, it was not exactly an unwillingness to chance her luck that restrained her: it was a deep and instinctive “knowing” that she must remain in this period of suspension for a while yet. That she had to wait. When the time was right, action would follow logically. She settled down to wait, and perfected the art.

“You’re in early, too, you know,” Enthor was saying to her. “Storm warnings only just gone out.”

“Aren’t those good enough?” Killashandra asked. “No need to risk life and limb, is there?”

“No, no,” Enthor hastily assured her.

Killashandra had, in fact, answered the storm warning her symbiont had given her. She was used to listening to it because it so often proved the most accurate sense she had.

“You’ve enough here to spend a year on Maxim,” Enthor went on with a sly sideways glance. “You haven’t gone off in a long time, Killashandra. You should, you know.”

Killashandra shrugged her shoulders, glancing impassively at a credit line that would once have made her chortle in triumph. “I don’t have enough resonance to have to leave,” she said tonelessly. “I’ll wait. Thanks, Enthor.”

“Killa, if talking would help . . .”

She looked down at the light hand the old Sorter had put on her arm, mildly surprised at the contact. His unexpected solicitude, the concern on his lined face nudged the thick shell which encased her mind and spirit. She smiled slightly as she shook her head. “Talking wouldn’t help. But you were kind to offer.”

And he had been. Sorters and singers were more often at loggerheads than empathetic. The northeaster which her symbiont had sensed swept a fair number of singers in from the Ranges to the safety of the Complex. The lift, the hall, the corridors were crowded but she wended her way through, and no one spoke to her. She didn’t exist for herself so she didn’t exist for them.

The screen in her quarters directed her to contact Antona. There usually was a message from the medical chief waiting for her. Antona kept trying to make a deeper contact.

“Ah, Killa, please come down to the infirmary, will you?”

“I’m not due for another physical?”

“No. But I need you down here.”

Killashandra frowned. Antona looked determined and waited for Killashandra’s acquiescence.

“Let me change.” Killashandra brushed at the filthy blouse of her shipsuit.

“I’ll even give you time to bathe.”

Killashandra nodded, broke the connection and, unfastening the suit as she made her way to the hygiene room, switched on the taps. Though once – fresh in from the Ranges – she might have done, she didn’t luxuriate in the steaming water. She made a quick but thorough bath, and put on the first clean clothes she found. Her hair, close crapped for convenience, dried by the time she reached the Infirmary Level. Her nostrils flared against the smell of sickness and fever, and the muffled sounds reminded her of her initial visit to Antona’s preserve. A new class must be passing through adjustment to the Ballybran symbiont.

Antona came out of her office, her color high with suppressed excitement.

“Thank you, Killa. I’ve a Milekey Transition here whom I’d like you to talk to, reassure him. He’s positive there’s something wrong.” Her words came out in a rush, as she dragged Killashandra down the hall, and thrust her through the door she opened. Impassively, Killashandra noted the number: it was the same room she had so briefly tenanted five years before. Then the occupant rose from the bed, smiling.

“Killa!”

She stared at Lars Dahl, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes for she had seen his phantom so often. But Antona had brought her here so this vision had to be real. Avidly she noted each of the tiny changes in him: the lack of tan, the gauntness of his shoulders under the light shirt, the new lines in his face, the loss of that twinkle of gaiety that had been a trademark of his open, handsome expression. He had subtly aged: no, matured. And the process had brought him distinction and an indefinable air of strength and the patience of strength and knowledge.

“Killa?” The smile had dropped from his face, his half-raised hand fell to his side as she failed to respond.

Imperceptibly she began to shake her head, and tentatively, certain that he would vanish if she admitted to herself that he was flesh, bone, and blood, her hands began to lift from her sides. Inside her body the cold knot into which all emotion and spirit had been reduced began to expand, like a warm draught through her veins. Her mind reverberated with one exultant conclusion: he was there, and he wouldn’t be if he hadn’t forgiven her.

“Lars?” Her voice was a whisper of disbelief but sufficient reassurance to propel him across the intervening space. Then, as if he found their reunion as incredible as she, he folded her carefully into his arms.

Momentarily she lacked the strength to return the embrace but burrowed her head into the curve of his shoulder and neck, inhaling the smell of him, and exhaling into the tears she had kept bottled for the eternity in which they had been parted.

Lars swept her up in his arms, and carried her to the chair, where he cradled her, appalled at the wildness of her sobbing and comforting her with kisses, caresses, and strong embracings.

“That fardling machine that served justice was never told we were emotionally attached, the one piece of information that no one but us would have thought relevant,” he said, releasing in talk the tension he had endured all through the process of getting to this point when he would be ready, and able, to meet her again.

“Then Father found out what had happened and he moved the entire Department to revoke that judgment on the basis of misinterpretation of your psychological response. Poor sweet Sunny, so worried about me she messed us both up.” To her surprise, he chuckled. “You didn’t know that the only reason that disciplinary action was entered against me was the Court’s attempt to satisfy what they took to be a suppressed desire for revenge in you. Justice was being served, blind as it was. Father finally reached a human in authority, swore blind to half a dozen psych-units that he himself had hand-fasted us on Angel Island and got the action revoked. D’you know, that Court Bailiff was a narding construct! No wonder I couldn’t move when he grabbed me. Then, when we did understand our rights, Trag had already departed with you.

“I guess you were pretty upset.”

At such a massive understatement of fact, she managed to nod, trying not to laugh at the absurdity, but she couldn’t stop weeping. It had built up quite a head and it ought to prove conclusively to Lars, if he needed any, just how much she had missed him. She had waited so long to be in his arms, to hear his rich and pleasant tenor voice, and the sort of nonsense he was likely to speak. He could have been speaking gibberish and she’d have been content to listen. But he was also telling her the things she would have asked about him, what she needed to know to put some color in the past dreadful year.

“Then Father, Corish, and I spent two months processing material for the Council. Theach, Brassner, and Erutown had come out with Corish and they got assigned to the Revision Corps until someone in the Council took a closer look at the equations which Theach was idly calling up on his terminal.” Lars smiled tenderly as he delicately blotted tears from her cheeks, then kissed her forehead for such an un-Killashandraish display of sentimentality. “So he landed on his feet, as usual. Five more people, including the brewmaster of Gartertown, whom you might remember,” he added, tapping her nose as he teased, “got out on the next liner and are being resettled. What had worried Nahia and Hauness was what refugees would do once they got off Optheria, but there seems to be a resettlement policy. Not that Optherians have all that many skills to offer the advanced societies.

“Father and I got drafted to brief the actual Revision Force. You see, right after that infamous hearing, several more agents were sent in to play tourist during the Summer Festival. Good job we left some two-manuals intact. They came back, reporting that they were subjected to blatant subliminal conditioning at public concerts in Ironwood, Bailey, Everton, and Palamo. One thing Father and I emphasized was that the Revision Forces had better wait until after The Festival or they’d have a bankrupt planet as well as a disorganized one. So Optheria got its annual chance to acquire revenue,” and Lars grinned with great satisfaction, “and the Elders hadn’t twigged to the fact that no subliminal messages were going out on either of the big Conservatory organs. Leaving the mainlanders quite willing to accept anything said about them.

“When we’ve spare time, I’ve got some tapes of the actual landing and the takeover. Four Elders had fatal seizures but Ampris, Torkes, and Pentrom will answer to the Supreme Judiciary for their infamous, felonious, malicious, premeditated, and illegal manipulation of Optherian loyalties.

“The Revision Forces are well installed now on Optheria . . .” He looked out with the unfocused gaze of someone imagining a scene and was briefly sad. He bent to kiss Killashandra again, noting that her tears had abated and her breath was no longer taken in ragged gasps.

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Oh, I was given many arguments why I should. Even a rather complimentary commission. Father returned, but I rather thought he wouldn’t leave Teradia for long. To my surprise, Corish went, and of course Erutown and Brassner. I had other plans.”

Killashandra shook her head in sad rebuke. “If I’d known what you planned to do . . .” Her gesture included all that his presence in the infirmary signified.

Lars hugged her tightly to him. “That’s why I didn’t mention them. Besides,” and he gave her a raffish look, “I hadn’t really made up my mind.”

“How did Trag recruit you then?”

Lars raised his eyebrows in surprise. “He didn’t. It is illegal to recruit citizens for the highly dangerous Heptite Guild. Didn’t you know? Candidly, my beloved Sunny, I was much impressed by Trag’s integrity. It was refreshing to find an honorable and trustworthy man. It was yourself who did the recruiting, Killa. You were the embodiment of the undeniable advantages of being a crystal singer. Your vibrant youth, charm, invulnerability, indefatigable energy, and resourcefulness. Then all those diversified assignments, space travel, credit, not to mention the chance to see a Galaxy I had been denied all my reckless youth – ”

“You’re mad.” Vitality returned to Killashandra in the form of exasperation with his flamboyance, and such relief that she was once again in its presence. “Did you listen to one word I told you about the disadvantages? Didn’t you pay attention to any of the details in the Full Disclosure and that isn’t the half of what does happen? As you’ll find out. How could you be so blind?”

“None so blind as will not see, eh, Killa, my lovely Sunny? My pale Sunny, my beloved. Is there no sun on this planet that you are so wan?” He began to kiss her in a leisurely fashion. “I admit I did hesitate. Briefly.” His eyes sparkled with his teasing. “Then I ran the entry on Ballybran itself. That decided me.

“Ballybran? Ballybran decided you?” Killashandra wriggled about in his arms, astounded. Not that she understood why she had such ambivalent reactions to his decision in the first place. He was here! How had she, and that conniving symbiont of hers, known that he would come? Because she didn’t think that he wouldn’t’? Long absent, she felt the caress of crystal along her bones.

“Of course, Sunny. Now if you’d thought to mention earlier on that Ballybran has seas – ”

“Seas?” Killashandra put a hand on his forehead. He must be feverish. “Seas!”

“All I’ve ever needed for perfect contentment is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.” He held her as her temper began to rise, though she didn’t know if he was mauling that obscure quotation or not. And then, too, Ballybran has you, beloved Sunny!” His tenor voice dropped to an intense and passionate whisper, his eyes were an incredible brilliant blue, dominating her immediate vision. His arms encompassed her in a grip that reminded her of sun-warmed beaches and fragrant breezes and – “Show me, crystal singer, all that Ballybran has to offer me.”

“Right now?”