Prelude to a Crystal Song

Killashandra listened, the words like cold bombs dropping with leaden fatality into her frozen guts. She stared at the Maestro’s famous profile as his lips opened and shut around the words that meant the death of all her hopes and ambitions, and rendered wasted ten years of hard work and study.

The Maestro finally turned to face her. The genuine regret in his expressive eyes made him look older as the heavy singer’s muscles in his jaw relaxed sorrowfully into jowls.

One day Killashandra might remember those details. Now she was too crushed by this overwhelming defeat to be aware of more than her terrible personal failure.

‘But... but... how could you?’

‘How could I what?’ the Maestro asked in surprise.

‘How could you lead me on?’

‘Lead you on? But, my dear girl, I didn’t.’

‘You did! You said ... you said all I needed was hard work and haven’t I worked hard?’

‘Of course you have worked hard.’ Valdi was affronted. ‘My students must apply themselves. It takes years of hard work to develop the voice, to learn a repertoire of even a segment of the outworld music that must be performed ...’

‘I’ve the repertoire? I’ve worked hard and now ... now you tell me I’ve no voice?’

Maestro Valdi sighed heavily, a mannerism which had always irritated Killashandra and was insupportable in this instance. She opened her mouth to protest but he raised a restraining hand. The habit of four years made her pause.

‘You haven’t the voice to be a top-rank singer, my dear Killashandra, but that does not preclude any of the many other responsible and fulfilling ...’

‘I won’t be second-rank. I want ... I wanted’’ - and she had the satisfaction of seeing him wince at the bitterness in her voice - ‘to be a top-rank concert singer. You said I had -’

He held up his hand again. ‘You have the gift of perfect pitch, your musicality is faultless, your memory superb, your dramatic potential can’t be criticized. But there is that burr in your voice which becomes intolerable in the higher register. While I thought it could be trained out, modified ...’ he shrugged his helplessness. He eyed her sternly. ‘Today’s audition with completely impartial judges proved conclusively that the flaw is inherent in the voice. This moment is cruel for you and not particularly pleasant for me.’ He gave her another quelling look for the rebellion in her manner. ‘I make few errors in judgement as to voice. I honestly thought I could help you. I cannot and it would be doubly cruel of me to encourage you to go further as a soloist. No. You had best strengthen another facet of your potential.’

‘And what, in your judgement,’ demanded Killashandra in a voice so tight that her throat ached, ‘would that be?’

He had the grace to blink at her caustic tone but he looked her squarely in the eye.

‘You don’t have the patience and temperament to teach, but you could do very well in one of the allied theater arts where your sympathy with the problems of a singer would stand you in good stead. No? You are a trained synthesizer? Hmmm. Too bad, your musical education would be a real asset there.’ He paused, had a thought and dismissed it. ‘Well then, I’d recommend you leave the theater arts entirely. With your sense of pitch you could be a crystal tuner, or an aircraft and shuttle dispatcher.’

‘Thank you, Maestro,’ she said, more from force of habit than any real gratitude. She gave him the half bow his rank required and withdrew. She did slam the panel shut behind her and stalked down the corridor, blinded by the tears she’d been too proud to shed. She half wanted and half feared to meet some other student who would question her tears, commiserate with her disaster, but was inordinately grateful when she reached the door of her study cubicle without encountering anyone. There she gave herself up to her misery, bawling into hysteria, past choking, until she was too spent to do more than breathe.

If her body protested the emotional excess, her mind reveled in it. For she’d been abused, misused, misguided, misdirected. And who knows how many of her peers had been secretly laughing at her for her dreams of glorious triumphs on the concert and opera stage. Killashandra had a generous portion of the conceit and ego required for her chosen profession, with no leavening dollop of humility: she’d felt her success and stellardom only a matter of time. Now she cringed against the panoramic memories of her Self-assertiveness and arrogance, hugging her fractured, deflated self as she recalled the agony of that audition this morning. She had approached it with such confidence, so sure of receiving the necessary commendations to continue as a solo-aspirant. She remembered the faces of the examiners, so pleasantly composed - one man nodding absent-mindedly to the pulse of the test arias and lieder. She knew she’d been scrupulous in tempi - they’d marked her high on that. How could they have looked so - so impressed? So encouraging? She wanted to erase the morning’s fiasco completely from her memory!

How could they record such verdicts against her? ‘The voice is unsuited to the dynamics of opera; unpleasant burr too audible.’ ‘A good instrument for singing with orchestra and chorus where grating overtone will not be noticeable.’ ‘Strong choral leader quality: student should be positively dissuaded from solo work.’

The judgements burned in her mind, abrading the tortured strands of her ego and shattered aspirations.

Unfair! Unfair! How could she be allowed to come so far, be permitted to delude herself, only to be dashed down in the penultimate trial? And to be offered, as a sop, choral leadership? How degradingly ignominious!

Wiggling up out of her excruciating memories were the faces of brothers and sisters, taunting her for ‘shrieking at the top of her lungs.’ Teasing her for the hours she spent pounding out finger exercises and attempting to ‘understand’ some of the weird harmonics of off-world music. Her parents had surrendered to her choice of profession because it was, for starters, financed by the planetary educational system; secondly, it might accrue to their own standing in the community; and thirdly, she seemed to have the encouragement of her early voice teachers. Them! Was it to the ineptitude of one of those clods that she owed the flaw in her voice? A mishandling in the fragile early stages of training? Killashandra rolled in an agony of self-pitying memories.

Then she realized that it was self-pity and sat bolt upright in the chair, staring at herself in the mirror on the far wall, the mirror which had reflected all those long hours of study and self-perfection ... Self-deception.

What was it Valdi’d had the temerity to suggest? An allied art? A synthesizer? Bah! Spending her life catering to flawed minds in mental institutions because she had a flawed voice? Or mending flawed crystals to keep interplanetary travel or someone’s power plant flowing smoothly?

All in an instant, Killashandra shook herself free of such wallowing self-indulgence. She looked around the study, a slice of a room with its musical scores neatly filed by the viewer, with the built-in keyboard and console that tapped the orchestral banks of the Music Center for any aria or song ever composed. She glanced over the repros of training performances - she’d always had a lead role - and she knew that she’d do best to forget the whole damned thing! If she couldn’t be top rank, the hell with the theater arts! She’d be top in whatever she did or die in the attempt.

She stood up. There was nothing for her now in a room that three hours before had been the focal point of every waking minute and all her energies. Whatever personal items were in the drawer or shelves, the prize certificates on the wall, the signed repros of singers she’d hoped to emulate or excel, no longer concerned nor belonged to her.

She reached for her coat, ripped off the student badge and threw the cloak across her shoulders. She remembered, hand on panel, that she’d better take her credit plate with her. As she fumbled in the slip drawer for it, she saw the notation on her engagement pad.

‘Party at Rory’s to celebrate!’

She snorted. They’d all know. Let them chortle over her downfall. She’d not play the bravely-smiling-courageous-under-adversity role tonight. Or ever.

Exit Killashandra, quietly, stage center, she said to herself as she ran down the long shallow flight of steps to the Mall in front of the Culture Center. Again she experienced both satisfaction and regret that no one witnessed her departure.

Actually she couldn’t have asked for a more dramatic exit. They’d wonder this evening what had happened. Maybe someone would know ... someone always did know even the most confidential things about fellow students. She knew that Valdi would never talk ... not about his failures, or anyone else’s. They’d not know from him. And the verdict of the examiners would be classified in the computer; but someone would ‘know’ that Killashandra Ree had failed her vocal finals, and what the grounds for the failure were. In the meantime, she would have effectively disappeared and they could speculate. They’d remember, when she rose to prominence in another field. Then they’d marvel that nothing could suppress the excellence in her.

These reflections consoled Killashandra all the way to her lodgings. Students rated supported dwellings: no more the terrible bohemian semi-filth and overcrowding of old, but her room was hardly palatial. After she had failed to re-register at the Music Center, her landlady would be notified and the room locked to her. Subsistence living was abhorrent to Killashandra : it suggested an inability to achieve. But she’d take the initiative on that too. Therefore leave the room now. And all the memories it held.

Also, it would spoil her mysterious disappearance if she were to be ‘discovered moping in her digs.’ So, with a brief nod to the landlady who always checked comings and goings, Killashandra ascended to her floor, keyed open her room and looked around it. Really nothing here to take but clothing. Despite that decision, Killashandra packed the lute which she had handcrafted to satisfy that requirement of her profession. She couldn’t bear to play it but she also couldn’t abandon it. Clothes in carisak, lute in case, she left the key in the lock. She nodded to the landlady just as she always did and exited.

Having fulfilled the dramatic requirement of her assumed role, she now didn’t have an earthly idea what to do with herself. She skipped onto the fast belt of the pedestrian way, heading into the center of the city. She ought to register with a work bureau, she ought to apply for subsistence. She ought to do many things but suddenly Killashandra discovered that ‘ought to’ no longer ruled her. No more tedious commitments to schedule, to rehearsals, to lessons, to study, to any of her so-called friends and associates. She was free, utterly and completely free, with a lifetime ahead of her that ought to be filled. Ought to? With what?

The walkway was whipping her rapidly into the busier commercial stations of the city. Pedestrian directions flashed at cross-points: mercantile purple crossed with social services’ orange: green manufactory and dormitory blue-hatching; medical green-red stripes and then airport red and spaceport star-spangled blue.

Killashandra was enmeshed by indecision. And while she toyed with the variety of things she ought to do, she was carried past the crosspoints that would take her where she ought to go.

Ought to, again, she thought. And stayed on the speed-way. Half of Killashandra was amused that she, once so certain of her goal, could be so irresolute. It did not, at that moment, occur to her that she was suffering an intense, traumatic shock. Nor that she was reacting to that shock, first in a somewhat immature fashion with her abrupt withdrawal from the abortive sphere of interest; secondly in a mature one, as she divorced herself from the indulgence of self-pity and began a positive search for an alternative life.

She couldn’t know that Esmond Valdi was concerned about her, realizing that the girl would be reacting in some fashion to the death of her ambition. She might have thought more kindly of him had she known, though he hadn’t pursued her further than her study or do more than call to the Personnel Section to report his concern for her. He’d taken the comfortable conclusion that she was in some other student’s room, having a good cry. Knowing her dedication to music, he’d come to the equally incorrect assumption that she’d undoubtedly continue in music, accepting a choral leadership in due time. That’s where he wanted her. It simply didn’t occur to him that Killashandra would be able to discard ten years of intensive training in one split second. He would not have done so, faced with her decision. He’d have been shocked if he’d known how completely she was to reject all references to those ten years.

Killashandra was halfway to the spaceport before she came to the decision that that was where she ought to go. ‘Ought,’ this time not in an obligatory but in an investigative sense.

This planet held nothing but distressing memories for her. She’d leave it and erase all vestiges of its painful associations, domestic and career. Good thing she had the lute. She had sufficient training credentials to go along as a casual entertainer on some liner at the best, or as a crystal tuner at the worst. She might as well travel about a bit to see what else she ‘ought’ to do with her life now.

The ‘now’ both exacerbated and amused her until the speedway slowed to run into the spaceport terminal. For the first time since he’d left Maestro Valdi’s studio, Killashandra was aware of externals - people and things.

Come to think of it, she’d never actually been to the starburst-design spaceport. She’d never been on any of the welcoming committees for off-planet Stellars. A shuttle took off from its bay, its powerful plasma engines making the port buildings rumble. There was, however, a very disconcerting whine that she was subsonically aware of, feeling it down the mastoid bone right to her heel. She shook her head. The whine intensified - it must have to do with the shuttle - until she had to clamp her hands over her ears to cut the irritation. The sonics abated and she forgot the incident, wandering around the immense, bubble-domed reception hall of the port facility. Consoles were ranked across the inner wall, each one labeled with the name of the freight or passenger service, each with its screen plate. Faraway places with strange sounding names: an ancient fragment of song obtruded and was suppressed. No more music.

She paused at a portal to watch a shuttle off-loading cargo, the dockmen working with aircushions to remove odd-sized packages which had traveled by drone from who-knew-where in the galaxy. A supercargo was scurrying about, checking numbers against the arm-computer he wore, juggling weigh-units and arguing with the dockees. He was a bustling portentous man, utterly involved in his lot of life. Killashandra snorted. She’d have more than such trivia to occupy her energies. In the process of inhaling, she caught the whiff of appetising odors not entirely cleansed from the air.

She was hungry! Hungry? When her whole life had been shattered? How banal! But the odors made her salivate. Well, her credit plate ought to be good for a meal. She’d better check the balance lest she be embarrassed if the plate was spewed back out in the restaurant check-desk.

She slapped the credit plate into one of the many public outlets in the reception hall and was agreeably surprised to see that there’d been a credit that very day. A student credit she was forced to notice. Her last one. The fact that the total represented a bonus did not please her. A bonus to signalize the fact that she could never be a soloist?

She walked quickly to the nearest restaurant, noticing that it was not an economy establishment. The old, dutiful Killashandra would have backed out hastily. The new Killashandra entered imperiously.

At this hour the place was uncrowded so she took a booth on the upper level by the viewplate so she could watch the flow of shuttle and small space craft. She’d never realized how much traffic passed through the space port of her not very important planet. She had heard it was a change-over point. She ate, with relish and appetite, of some piscine casserole purportedly composed of off-world fish. Exotic but not too highly spiced for a student’s untutored palate. An off-world wine included in the selection pleased her so much that she ordered a second carafe just as dusk closed in on the planet.

She thought at first it was the unfamiliar wine that made her nerves jangle so. But the discomfort increased so rapidly that it couldn’t be the effect of the alcohol. She looked around for the source of irritation, rubbing her neck and frowning. She shook her head and then, with the appearance of a descending shuttle’s retro-blasts, realized that it must be a sonic disturbance - though how it could penetrate the shielded restaurant she didn’t know. She had to cover her ears, pressing as hard as she could against her skull, but there seemed to be no escape from that piercing ache. When she thought she couldn’t bear the agony a second longer, it ceased.

‘I tell you, that shuttle drive’s about to explode,’ a man’s baritone voice cried in the ensuing quiet.

Killashandra looked round, startled.

‘How do I know? I know!’ A tall man was arguing with the human attendant of the restaurant and trying to get to the comunit which the attendant was covering with his body. ‘Let me speak to the control tower. Is everyone deaf up there? Let me at the unit, man. Do you want a shuttle explosion? Are you deaf that you can’t hear it?’

‘I heard it,’ Killashandra said, rushing over to the pair. Any action might relieve the itch which had replaced the agony in her skull.

‘You heard it, miss?’ The attendant was genuinely surprised.

‘I certainly did. All but cracked my skull wide open. What was it?’ she asked the tall man. He had an air of command about him, frustrated at the moment by the officiousness of the stupid attendant. He carried his overlean body with a haughty arrogance that went with the fine fabric of his clothes, obviously of an off-world design and texture.

‘She heard it, too. Now get that control tower, man.’

‘Really, sir. We have the most explicit orders

‘Don’t be a complete sub,’ Killashandra said insultingly and gestured with operatic imperiousness at the console. ‘He obviously knows what he’s talking about!’

The fact that she was obviously a Fuertan like himself did more to persuade him than the insult but he was still reluctant until the man, ripping off an off-world oath as colorful as it was descriptive of bureaucratic stupidities, flipped open his card case. Whatever identification he showed made the attendant’s eyes bug out and his fingers dash out a call code on the comunit.

‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know, sir. Here you are, sir.’ There was awe and a certain amount of fear in his manner.

The off-worlder ignored his reaction. ‘Control? That shuttle which just landed? It can’t be permitted to take off. Crystal drive’s gone sour. Must be recut or you’ll have an - No, this is not a drunk and this is not a threat. It’s a fact. Why that shuttle pilot didn’t insist on a hold, I can’t guess, but he must be deaf! Of course I know what I’m talking about! For the sake of whatever gods this mudball worships, don’t send that shuttle off again! What do you want, a drive check or a blasted port facility? Is this shuttlestop of a world too poor to employ a crystal tuner?’

The console muttered something back to him but, like all public facilities, the audio was shielded from anyone not in its direct line.

‘Well, now that’s a more reasonable attitude,’ the man said. ‘As to my credentials, I’m Carrik of the Heptite Guild. Yes, that’s what I said. And I could hear the crystal whine right through the walls so I know farging well how bad the drive is.’ Another pause. ‘Thanks, but I’ve paid my bill already. No, that’s all right. Yes ...’ and Killashandra could see that the gratitude irritated Carrik. ‘Oh, as you will.’ He stepped back, jerking his head for the attendant to take his place at the unit.

‘And make that for two,’ Carrik said over his shoulder at the man, as he cupped his hands under Killashandra’s elbow and led her to a secluded booth.

‘I’ve a bottle of wine over there,’ she said, half-protesting, half-laughing at his peremptory escort.

‘You’ll have better shortly. I’m Carrik and you’re ...’

‘Killashandra Ree.’

He smiled, gray eyes lighting briefly with surprise. ‘That’s a lovely name.’

‘Oh, come now. Surely you can do better than that?’

He laughed, absently blotting the sweat on his forehead and upper lip as he slid into his place.

‘I could and I will but it still is a lovely name. A musical one. What did I say wrong?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’

He gave her a skeptical look for that insincere disclaimer just as the attendant came bustling up with a chilled bottle, bowing as he offered it.

Carrik peered at the label. ‘I’d prefer the ‘72 and ... some Forellan biscuits, if you have them? Good, and Aldebaran paste? Hmmm. Well, I’ll revise my opinion of Fuerte.’

‘Really, I only just finished ...’ Killashandra began.

‘On the contrary, my dear Killashandra Ree, you’ve only just started.’

‘Oh?’ Any one of Killashandra’s former associates would have modified his attitude at that tone in her voice.

‘Yes,’ Carrik continued blithely, a sparkling challenge in his eyes, ‘for this is a night for feasting and frolicking - on the management, as it were. Having just saved the facility from being leveled, my wish - and yours - is their command. They’ll be more grateful,’ he continued in a droller tone, ‘when they take that drive down and see the cracks in the crystals. Off the true by a hundred vibes at least.’

Her half-formed intention of making a dignified exit died and she stared at Carrik. It took a highly trained ear to have caught that variation in pitch.

‘Off a hundred vibes ...? What do you mean? Are you a musician?’

Carrik stared at her as if she ought to know who, or what, he was. He looked to see where the attendant was and then, leaning indolently back in the seat, smiled at her in an enigmatic fashion.

‘Yes, I think you’d say I was a musician. Are you?’

‘Not anymore,’ Killashandra replied in a caustic tone. Her desire to leave returned with irresistible intensity. She’d been able for a very short time to forget why she was at a spaceport. He’d reminded her and she wanted no more such reminders.

His hand, fingers gripping hard into the flesh of her arm, held her in her seat. The attendant came bursting back with another chilled bottle which Carrik accepted and gestured him to pour. Carrik smiled at Killashandra, half daring her to contest his restraint in front of the attendant. Despite herself, Killashandra discovered she couldn’t start a scene and she’d no real grounds - yet - for a personal-liberty-infringements charge. He grinned at her, knowing her dilemma, and had the audacity to give her a semi-insolent toast as he took the traditional sample sip of the wine.

‘Yes, an excellent vintage. How long must we wait for the paste and biscuits?’

‘A few moments, sir. We’re warming the biscuits. They take the paste so much better then.’

‘At least they know how to serve it properly,’ Carrik told Killashandra in a patronizingly blasé tone.

The attendant who would have screamed insult at any other time bowed and smiled at Carrik and scurried away for the delicacies.

‘How do you get away with that?’ Killashandra asked Carrik.

He smiled. ‘Try the wine, Killashandra.’ And his smile suggested that this was going to be a long evening and the prelude to an intimate association.

In protest Killashandra stood up, but she sat down again immediately, very hard, an action imposed on her by Carrik whose eyes glittered with anger and amusement.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded, angry now.

‘I’m Carrik of the Heptite Guild,’ he repeated cryptically.

‘And that gives you the right to infringe on my personal freedom?’

‘It does if you heard that crystal whine.’

‘How do you construe that?’

‘Try the wine first, Killashandra Ree. Surely your throat must be dry and I imagine you’ve got a skull ache from that subsonic torture. That would account for your shrewish temper.’

Actually she did have a pain in her head. The sudden reseating had made that obvious. He was right about her dry throat ... and about her shrewish temper. But he’d modified that criticism by stroking her hand caressingly.

‘I must apologize for my bad manners,’ he said without genuine remorse but with a charming smile. ‘That crystal whine is so unnerving. It brings out the worst in us.’

She nodded as she sipped the wine. It was fantastic. She looked at him with delight and pleasure. He patted her arm again and gestured her to drink more.

‘Who are you, Carrik of the Heptite Guild, that port authorities listen and control towers order exorbitant delicacies in gratitude?’

‘You don’t really know?’

‘I wouldn’t ask if I did know,’ she said with a show of her characteristic acerbity.

‘Where have you been all your life that you’ve never heard of the Heptite Guild?’

‘I’ve been studying music in Fuerte,’ she said, spitting out the words.

‘You wouldn’t, by any chance, have perfect pitch?’ The question, both unexpected and too casually said, caught her halfway into a foul temper.

‘Yes, I do but I don’t-’

His face which was not unattractive in its most supercilious expressions became almost radiant with unfeigned elation.

‘What fantastic luck! I shall have to tip the agent who ticketed me here! Why this is unbelievable luck ...’

‘Luck? If you knew why I was here-’

‘I don’t care why. You are and I am.’ He took both her hands and seemed to devour her face with his eyes, grinning with such intense joy she found herself embarrassingly smiling back.

‘Oh, luck indeed, my dear girl. Fate, destiny, Karma, Lequol, Fidalkoram, whatever you care to call this coincidence of our life lines, I ought to order bottles of this wine for that lousy shuttle pilot for letting his crystals sour.’

‘I don’t know what you’re ranting about, Carrik of Heptite,’ Killashandra said, but she was not impervious to the compliments or the charm he exuded. She knew that she tended to put men off by her self-assurance and here was a well-traveled off-worlder, a man of obvious rank and position, genuinely taken with her, however inexplicably.

‘You don’t?’ He teased her for the banality of her protest and she closed her mouth on the rest of her customary rebuff. ‘Seriously,’ he went on, stroking the palms of her hands with his fingers as if to soothe the anger from her, ‘have you never heard of crystal singers?’

‘Crystal singers? Crystal tuners, yes.’

He dismissed tuners with a contemptuous flick of his fingers. ‘Imagine singing a note, a pure clear C, and hearing it answered across an entire mountain range?’

She stared at him.

‘Go up a third, or down, it makes no difference. Sing out and hear the harmony come back at you. A whole mountainside pitched to C, and another sheer wall of pink quartz echoing back in a dominant. Night brings out the minors, like an ache in your breast, the most beautiful pain in the world because the music of the crystal is in your bones, in your blood...’

‘You’re mad!’ Killashandra dug her fingers into his hands to shut off those words. They conjured too many painful associations. She simply had to forget all that. ‘I hate music. I hate anything to do with music.’

He regarded her with disbelief for a moment and then, with an unexpected tenderness and concern reflected in his eyes, he put an arm around her shoulders and drew himself against her despite her resistance.

‘My dear girl, what happened to you today?’

A moment before she would have swallowed glass shards rather than confide in anyone but the warmth in his voice, his solicitude, were so timely and unexpected that the whole of her personal disaster came tumbling out. He listened to every word, occasionally squeezing her hand with sympathetic understanding. But at the end of the recital, she was amazed to see the fullness in his eyes as tears threatened to embarrass her.

‘My dear Killashandra, what can I say? There’s no possible consolation for such a personal catastrophe as that! And there you were,’ and his eyes were brilliant with what Killashandra chose to interpret as admiration, ‘having a bottle of wine as coolly as a queen. Or,’ and he leaned over her, grinning maliciously, ‘were you just gathering enough courage to step under a shuttle?’ He kept hold of her when she tried to free herself at his outrageous suggestion. ‘No, I can see that suicide was furthest from your mind.’ She subsided at that implicit compliment. ‘Although,’ and his expression altered thoughtfully, ‘you might have inadvertently succeeded if that shuttle’d been allowed to take off again. If I hadn’t been here to stop it ...’ He flashed her that charmingly reprehensible smile of his.

‘You’re full of yourself, aren’t you?’ But her accusation was said in jest for she found his autocratic manner an irresistible contrast to anyone of her previous acquaintance.

He grinned unrepentantly and nodded towards the remains of their exotic snack, which the attendant had obsequiously deposited on the table at some point during Killashandra’s tale.

‘Not without justification, dear girl. But look, you’re free of any commitments right now, aren’t you?’ he asked, eagerly. When she hesitantly nodded, ‘Or is there a friend you’ve been seeing?’ He asked that almost savagely, as if he’d eliminate any rival immediately.

Later Killashandra might remember how adroitly Carrik had handled her, preying on her unsettled state of mind, on her essential femininity, but that tinge of jealousy was highly complimentary and the eagerness in his eyes, in his hands, was not feigned.

‘No one to matter or miss me.’

Carrik looked so skeptical that she reminded him that she’d devoted all her energies to singing.

‘Surely not all?’ He mocked her for such dedication.

‘No one to matter,’ she repeated firmly.

‘Then I will make an honest invitation to you. I’m off-world on holiday. I don’t have to be back to the Guild till ... well,’ and he gave a nonchalant shrug, ‘when I wish. I’ve all the credits I need ... Help me spend them. It’ll purge the music school from your system.’

She looked at him squarely, for their acquaintanceship was of so brief and hectic a duration she simply hadn’t thought of him as a possible companion. She didn’t quite trust him. She was both attracted and repelled by his domineering, highhanded ways and yet he presented a challenge to her. He was certainly the diametric opposite of the young men she’d encountered on Fuerte.

‘We don’t have to stay on this mudball either.’

‘Why did you come?’

He laughed. ‘I’m told I haven’t been on Fuerte before. I can’t say it lives up to it’s name - or maybe you’ll live up to the name for it? Oh come now, Killashandra,’ he said when she bridled. ‘Surely you’ve been jollied before? Or have music students changed so much since my day?’

‘You studied music?’

An odd shadow flickered through his eyes. ‘Probably. I don’t rightly remember. Another time, another life perhaps.’ Then his charming smile deepened, and a warmth came into his expression that she found rather unsettling. ‘Tell me, what’s on this planet that’s fun to do?’

Killashandra considered for a moment and then blinked. ‘You know, I haven’t an earthly.’

‘Then we’ll find out together!’

What with the wine, his cajoling importunities, her own recklessness, Killashandra could not withstand his invitation. She ought to do so many things, she knew, but ‘ought’ got suspended someplace during the third bottle of that classic vintage. After spending the rest of the night in his arms in the most expensive accommodation of the spaceport hostelry, Killashandra decided that she’d suspend duty for a few days and be kind to the charming visitor.

The travel console popped out dozens of cards on the resort possibilities of Fuerte, more than she’d ever suspected the planet boasted. But then her means had been limited and so had her time. She’d never water-skiied so Carrik decided they’d both try that. He ordered a private skimmer to be ready within the hour. As he sang cheerily at the top of a dammed good bass voice, floundering in the elegant sunken bathtub of the suite, Killashandra recalled some vestige of self-preserving shrewdness and tapped out a few discreet inquiries on the console.

‘“Crystal singer” - colloquial/universal euphemism for the members of the Heptite Guild, planet-based Ballybran, Regulus System, A-S-F/128/4. Ballybran crystals, vital to the production of coherent light, and as modules in tachyon drive components, are limited to the quartz mountains of Ballybran.’ She skimmed the intricate geological assay. ‘The cutting of Ballybran crystal is a highly skilled art and requires the inherent ability of perfect pitch. Crystal cutters are perforce members of the Heptite Guild which trains and maintains its applicants, exacting ten percent tithe from all working members. The current membership of the Guild is 425 but fluctuates considerably. Aspirants are advised that this profession is rated “highly dangerous” and the Heptite Guild is required to give full particulars of the dangers involved before contracting new members.’

Four hundred and twenty-five was an absurdly small membership for a universal Guild supplying an element essential to galactic intercourse, Killashandra thought. Most guilds ran to four hundred million on a universal basis. But that explained why Carrik had been insistent to know if she’d perfect pitch. ‘Full particulars of the dangers involved’ didn’t dissuade Killashandra one iota. Danger was relative.

There was more to the print out, mainly about the type of crystal cut, the types of subsonic cutters especially developed to slice the living quartz from the mountains, technical information which was beyond Killashandra’s musically oriented education. She aborted the rest of that tape and asked for a check on Heptite Guildman Carrik. Anyone could pose as a member of a Guild - chancers often produced exquisitely forged documentation but a computer check could not be forged. She got the affirmation that Carrik was a member in good standing of the Heptite Guild, currently on leave of absence, and a repro of Carrik rolled out of the console, dated a scant five days before. Well, he was who he said he was, and doing what he said he was doing. His being a bona fide Guild member was a safeguard for her so she could relax in his offer of an honest invitation to share his holiday. He’d not leave her to pay the charges if he decided to skip off-world unexpectedly. She smiled to herself, stretching sensuously. Carrik thought himself lucky, did he? Well, so did she. The last vestige of ‘ought’ was the fleeting thought that she ‘ought to’ register herself with the Fuertan Central Computer as a transient but, as she was by no means obligated to do so as long as she didn’t require subsistence, she did nothing.

At that moment several of her classmates began to experience some twinges of anxiety for her. Everyone knew Killashandra must have been terribly upset by the examiners’ verdict. While it served her right, in some opinions, for being such an overbearing conceited grind, the kinder of heart felt oddly disquieted about her disappearance. So did Maestro Esmond Valdi.

They probably wouldn’t have recognized Killashandra sluicing about on waterskis on the southern waters of the western continent, or swathed in elegant clothes, escorted by a tall distinguished man to whom the most supercilious hoteliers deferred.

It was a glorious feeling for Killashandra to have unlimited funds. Carrik encouraged her to spend and practice permitted her to suspend what few scruples remained to her from years of barely getting by on student credits. She did have the grace to protest his extravagance at the outset.

‘Not to worry, pet, I’ve got it to spend,’ Carrik reassured her. ‘I made a killing in dominant thirds in the Blue Range about the time some idiot revolutionists blew half a planet’s reactors out of existence.’ He paused, his eyes narrowed as he recalled something not quite pleasant. ‘I was lucky on shape, too. It’s not enough, you see, to catch the resonances when you’re cutting. You’ve got to chance what shape to cut and that’s where you’re made or broken as a crystal singer. You’ve got to remember political scenes. Like that revolution on Hardesty.’ He pounded the table in emphasis, obtusely pleased with that memory. ‘I did remember that all right when it mattered.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He gave her a quick look. ‘Not to worry, pet.’ His standard evasive phrase. ‘Come give me a kiss and get the crystal out of my blood.’

There was nothing crystalline about his love-making nor the enjoyment he got out of her body, so Killashandra elected to forget how often he avoided answering her questions about crystal singing. At first she felt that, well, the man was on holiday and wouldn’t want to talk about his work. Then she had the feeling that he resented her questions as if they were distasteful to him and that he wanted, above all other things, to forget crystal singing. That didn’t forward her ends but Carrik was not a malleable adolescent, imploring her grace and favor. So she helped him forget crystal singing.

Which, in the pursuit of the pleasure of herself and Fuerte, he was patently able to do until the night he awakened her with his groans and writhings.

‘Carrik, what’s the matter? Those shell fish from dinner? Shall I get the medic?’

‘No, no!’ He twisted about frantically and caught her hand from the comunit. ‘Don’t leave me. It’ll pass.’

She held him in her arms as he cried out, clenching his teeth against an internal agony. Sweat oozed from his pores and yet he steadfastly refused to let her get competent help. The spasms racked him for almost an hour before they passed, leaving him spent and weak in her arms. Somehow, in that hour, she realized how much he had come to mean to her, how much fun he was to be with, how much she had missed by denying herself any such intimate relationships before.

After he’d slept, she ventured to ask what had possessed him.

‘Crystal, my girl, crystal.’ His manner, terse to sullen, and the haggard expression on his face - he suddenly looked very old - made her drop the subject.

He was himself ... almost ... by the afternoon. But some of his spontaneity of spirit was missing. He seemed to go through the motions of enjoying himself, of egging her on to more daring exercises on the waterskis while he only splashed in the shallows.

They were finishing a leisurely meal at their favorite seaside restaurant when he broke the news that he must return to work.

‘I can’t say “so soon?”‘ Killashandra said with a light laugh- ’But isn’t the decision sudden?’

He gave her an odd smile. ‘Yes, but most of my decisions are, aren’t they? Like showing you another side of fusty fogey Fuerte.’

‘And now our idyll is over?’ She tried to sound nonchalant but an edge crept into her voice.

‘I must return to Ballybran. Ha, that sounds like one of those fisherfolk songs, doesn’t it?’ He hummed a banal tune, the melody so predictable she could join in firm harmony.

‘We do make beautiful music together,’ he said, his eyes mocking her. ‘I suppose you’ll go back to music now.’

‘Doing what?’ she asked. ‘Lead soprano for the chorus of some annotated, orchestrated grunts and groans by Fififididipidi of the planet Grnch?’

‘You could tune crystals. They obviously need a competent one at your spaceport.’

She made a rude noise in her throat and looked at him expectantly.

He smiled back, turning his head politely awaiting her verbal answer.

‘Or,’ she said in a drawl, watching him obliquely, ‘I could apply to the Heptite Guild as a crystal singer.’

His expression went blank. ‘You don’t want to be a crystal singer.’

‘How do you know what I want?’ She flared up in spite of herself, in spite of a gnawing uncertainty about his feelings for her. She might be fine to loll about on a sandy beach, but as a constant companion in a dangerous profession?

He smiled sadly. ‘You don’t want to be a crystal singer.’

‘Oh, fardles with that nonsense in the print out!’

‘They mean what they say.’

‘Then if I’ve perfect pitch, I can apply.’

‘You don’t know what you’re getting in for.’ He said that in a flat, toneless voice, his expression at once wary and forbidding. ‘Singing crystal is a terrible, lonely life. You can’t always find someone to sing with you, the tones don’t always strike the right vibes for the crystals. You do make terrific cuts singing duo.’ He seemed to vacillate.

‘How do you find out?’

He gave an unamused snort. ‘The hard way, of course. But you don’t want to be a crystal singer.’

There was an almost frightening sadness in his voice. ‘Once you sing crystal, you don’t stop. That’s why I urge you not to consider it.’

‘So you’ve urged me not to consider it.’

He caught her hand. ‘You’ve never been in a mach storm in the Milekeys,’ he said, his voice rough with remembered anxiety. ‘They blow up out of nowhere,’ he gestured vigorously, ‘and crash down on you like all hell let loose.’ She felt the tremor through his body into her hand. ‘That’s what that phrase means, “the Guild maintains its own.” A mach storm can reduce a man to a vegetable in one sonic crescendo.’

‘There are other - albeit less violent - ways of reducing a man to a vegetable,’ she said, thinking of the attendant in the restaurant, of the bustling supercargo worrying over drone-pod weights, of teachers apathetically reviewing the scales of novice students. ‘Surely there are instruments that warn you of approaching storms, even mach ones in a crystal range.’

He nodded. ‘But you get to cutting crystal, and you’re halfway through, you know the pitches will be changed once the storm has passed and you’re cutting your safety margin fine but that last crystal might mean you get off-world ...’

‘You don’t get off-world with every trip to the ranges?’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t always clear the costs of the trip, particularly if you cut the wrong shape or tone.’

‘As you said, you have to pay attention to the news and outguess what’ll be needed.’ She was serenely confident that she could master that facet of the new profession.

‘You have to remember the news,’ he said, oddly emphasizing the change of verb.

Killashandra was contemptuous of such a lapse. Memory was only a matter of habit, of training, of handy mnemonic phrases which easily triggered vital information.

‘You wouldn’t by any chance let me go back to Ballybran with you to see if I can join that chorus?’

His hand on hers, his body, even his breath, seemed to halt for a moment. ‘You asked. Remember that!’

‘Well, if my company is so -’

‘Kiss me and don’t say anything you’ll regret,’ he said, abruptly pulling her with rough urgency into his arms and kissing her so thoroughly she couldn’t speak.

The second convulsion caught him so soon after the climax of their love-making that she thought, guiltily, that overstimulation was the cause. The spasms were even more severe and he dropped into an exhausted sleep when they finally eased.

He looked old and drawn when he woke some fourteen hours later. And he moved like an advanced geriatric case.

‘I’ve got to get back to Ballybran, Killa.’

‘For treatment?’

He hesitated and then nodded. ‘Get the spaceport on the comunit and book us.’

‘Us?’

‘You may come with me,’ he said, nodding, though she was piqued at the phrasing and the invitation was more plea than permission. ‘I don’t care how often we have to reroute. Get us there as fast as possible.’

She got the spaceport and routing, and, after what seemed an age and considerable ineptitude on the part of the ticketing clerk, they were confirmed passengers on a shuttle flight leaving Fuerte in four hours, with a four hour satellite wait before the first liner due to relay in their direction.

There were a good deal of oddments to pack and Killashandra was for just walking out and leaving everything.

‘You don’t get such goods on Ballybran, Killa,’ Carrik told her, and began, slowly, to fold the bright gaudy shirts of a pounded tree fibre. The stimulus of confirmed passage had given him a surge of energy. But Killashandra had been rather unnerved by the transformation of a charming, vital, if domineering man, into a frail shadow. ‘Sometimes, something as flimsy as a shirt helps you remember so much.’

She was touched by the sentiment, and vowed to be kinder to him.

‘There are hazards to every profession. And the hazards to crystal singing-’

‘It depends on what you’re willing to consider a hazard,’ Killashandra replied, soothingly. She was glad to take along the filmy wraparounds in luminous dyes. They were a far cry from coarse durable student issue. Any hazard seemed a fair price for these bouts of high living. And only four hundred twenty-five in the Guild.

‘Do you really understand what you’d be giving up, Killashandra?’ His voice had a guilty edge.

She looked at his lined, aging face and did experience a twinge of honest apprehension. Anyone would look appalling after the convulsions which had racked him. She didn’t much care for Carrik in a philosophical vein and hoped he wasn’t so dreary all the time back on Ballybran. Was that what he meant? A man on holiday was often a different personality to a man at work?

‘What have I to look forward to on Fuerte?’ She asked with a shrug of her shoulders. She wouldn’t necessarily have to team up with Carrik once she got to Ballybran. ‘I’d rather take a chance no matter what it entails in preference to dragging about on Fuerte!’

He stroked her palm with his thumb and, for the first time, the caress didn’t send thrills up her spine but then, he was scarcely in a condition to make love and the gesture reflected that.

‘You’ve only seen the glamorous side of crystal singing ...’

‘You’ve told me of the dangers, Carrik, as you’re supposed to. The decision is mine. And I’m holding you to it.’

He gripped her hand tightly and there was a sort of gladness in his eyes that reassured her more thoroughly than any glib phrase.

‘It’s also one of the smallest Guilds in the world,’ she went on, freeing her hand to finish packing the last bits. ‘I prefer those odds.’

He raised his eyebrows, giving her a sardonic look more like the old Carrik. ‘A two-cell in a one-cell pond?’

‘If you please. I won’t be second-rate anything.’

‘A dead hero in preference to a live coward?’ He taunted her.

‘If you prefer. There! That’s all our clothes. We’d better skim back to the spaceport. I’ve got to check with planetary regulations if I’m going off-world. I might even have some credit left.’

She did the flying back as Carrik dozed in the passenger seat. The rest did him some good, or he was mindful of his public image. Either way, Killashandra’s doubts about him as a partner faded as he began ordering the port officials about imperiously, badgering the routing agent to be certain the man hadn’t overlooked a more direct flight, or a more advantageous connection.

Killashandra left him to it and began to clear her own records with Fuerte Central. The moment she placed her credit card in the plate, the console began to chatter wildly. She was startled. She’d programmed a credit check and the information that she was going off-world and wanted to know what immunization shots would comply with the worlds they’d touch. But the supervisor came leaping down the ramp from his desk, all boredom erased from his flushed face, and two port officials converged on her. The exits of the reception hall flashed warning red as holdlocks were applied to the consternation of people trying to enter and leave. Killashandra was too stunned to move and stared at the men who charged up to her.

‘Killashandra Ree?’ asked the supervisor, panting.

‘Yes?’

‘You are to be detained.’

‘Why?’ Now she was angry. She could conceive of no crime she’d committed, no infringement on anyone’s liberties. Nonregistration was no offense so long as she didn’t use planetary resources without credit.

‘Please come with us,’ the port officials said in chorus.

‘Why?’

‘Ah, hmm,’ muttered the supervisor as both officials turned to him. ‘There’s hold out for you.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘Here, what’s going on?’ Carrik was indeed his old self as he pushed through to place a protesting arm around Killashandra. ‘This young lady is under my protection.’

At which the supervisor and the officials looked suddenly stern and determined.

‘The young lady is under the protection of her planet of origin,’ said the supervisor in a stuffy tone. ‘There is some doubt as to her mental health.’

‘What? Because she accepted an honest invitation from a visitor? Do you know who I am?’

The man flushed. ‘Indeed I do, sir,’ and he was considerably more respectful suddenly.

‘Well then, take my assurances that Miss Ree is in excellent mental health.’

The supervisor was adamant. ‘Please come this way.’

There was nothing for it but to comply, although Carrik reminded their escorts that they’d booked a shuttle flight due to lift off in one hour and he had every intention of keeping that schedule - and with Killashandra Ree. She got the distinct impression that this ambition might be thwarted and rather than give rise to any speculation about her mental health, she remained uncharacteristically quiet.

‘I know,’ she said sotto voce to Carrik as they waited in the small office. ‘The Music School may’ve thought me suicidal.’ She giggled and suppressed it behind her hand when the supervisor glanced up at her nervously. ‘I did just walk out of the Center and my digs, and I saw no one on my way here. So they did miss me! Well, that’s gratifying.’ She was inordinately pleased but Carrik wasn’t. She’d only to reassure the authorities and she was certain she could. ‘I think it’s rather complimentary, actually. I’m going to leave Fuerte dramatically after all.’

Carrik snorted but the wait plainly irritated him.

Killashandra half expected to see her father though she couldn’t have imagined him bestirring himself on her behalf. She didn’t expect Maestro Esmond Valdi to enter, acting the outraged parent. Nor was she prepared for the attack he immediately launched on Carrik.

‘You! You! I know what you are! A silicate spider paralyzing its prey, a crystal cuckoo taking the promising fledglings from their maternal nest.’

As stunned as everyone else was at the almost physical attack on the Heptite Guildman, Killashandra stared at the usually dignified and imperturbable Maestro and wondered what operatic role he was playing. He had to be. His dialogue was so ... so extravagant. ‘Silicate spider.’ ‘Crystal cuckoo.’ And he had the analogy wrong anyhow.

‘Play on the emotions of a young, innocent girl. Shower her with unaccustomed luxuries and pervert her until she’s spoiled as a decent contributing citizen. Until she’s so besotted she has to go to that den of addled brains and sonic-soured nerves!’

Carrik made no attempt to divert the flow of vituperation or counter the accusations. He stood, head up, smiling tolerantly down at the stalky figure of Valdi.

‘What lies has he been feeding you about crystal singing? What extravagant tales has he used to lure you there?’ Valdi whirled to Killashandra.

‘I asked to go.’

Valdi’s wild expression hardened into disbelief at her calm reply.

‘You asked to go?’

‘Yes. He didn’t ask me.’ Killashandra saw Carrik smile with relief.

‘You heard her, Valdi,’ Carrik said and glanced at the officials taking in that admission.

The Maestro’s shoulders sagged. ‘He’s done his recruiting work well,’ he said in a defeated tone, even managing an effective slight break in his voice.

‘I don’t think so,’ Killashandra said.

Maestro Valdi took a breath, obviously going to make one last final attempt to dissuade the poor misguided girl. ‘Did he tell you about the mach storms?’

She nodded.

‘That scramble your brains and reduce you to a vegetable?’

She nodded dutifully.

‘Did he fill your mind with a lot of garbage about mountains giving back symphonies of sound? Crystalline choruses? Valleys that echo arpeggios?’

‘No,’ she replied in an acid tone, bored with the scene. ‘And he also didn’t feed me pap that all I needed was hard work and time.’

Esmond Valdi drew himself up, more than ever an exaggeration of a classical operatic pose.

‘Did he tell you that once you start cutting crystal you can never stop? And too long away from Ballybran produces convulsions?’

‘I know that’

‘That something in the water, the soil, the crystals affects your mind? You don’t remember anything?’

‘That could be an advantage,’ Killashandra replied, staring at the little man until he had to drop his glance.

She felt it first of the three, an itch behind her ears in the mastoid bone, an itch that rapidly became a wrenching nauseating pain. She grabbed Carrik by the arm just as the subsonic noise touched him. As Esmond Valdi lifted protecting hands to his ears.

‘The fools!’ cried Carrik, panic in his face and voice. He threw aside the door panel, running as fast as he could toward the control tower, Killashandra behind him. Anything to shut off that agonizing pain in her skull.

Carrik vaulted the decorative barrier into the restricted area, to be stopped by the force curtain.

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ he screamed, rocking in anguish.

The pain was no less supportable for Killashandra but she’d presence enough of mind left to bang on the nearest comunit, to strike the fire buttons, press the emergency signals.

‘The shuttle coming in ... the crystals are defective ... it’s going to blow,’ she yelled at the top of operatically trained lungs. She was barely conscious of the panic in the vast reception hall resulting from her all too audible warning.

But the wild stampede of an hysterical mob was evident to the control tower personnel and automatically someone slapped on the abort signal to all incoming and outgoing shuttles and craft. Moments later, while the comunit was demanding an explanation from Killashandra, from anyone who could make themselves heard over the bedlam in the reception area, a fireball blossomed in the sky, raining hot molten fragments on the spaceport below. The exploding shuttle spewed bits and pieces over a radius of several kilometers, several larger hunks burned craters in the heavy plastic dome of the port facility. Had the shuttle exploded any closer, the damage would have been disastrous.

Apart from bumps, bruises, lacerations and a broken arm sustained in the crush to leave the hall, there were only two serious casualties. The shuttle pilot was dead and Carrik would have been better off so. The final sonic blast knocked him out and he never did recover his senses with consciousness. After consultation with the Heptite Guild medics it was decided to return him to Ballybran for treatment and care.

‘He won’t recover,’ the medic told Killashandra and Maestro Valdi who instantly assumed the role of her comforter. His manner provided Killashandra with a fine counter-irritant to her shock over Carrik’s state.

She chose to disbelieve the medic for surely they could restore Carrik to mental health on Ballybran. It was just that he’d been away from crystal too long: that he was weakened by the seizures. There’d been no mach storm to scramble his mind. She’d escort him back to Ballybran. She owed him that in any reckoning for teaching her how to live, fully, not vicariously as she’d been doing rehearsing opera roles of by-gone griefs and antedated conflicts.

She took a good long look at the posturing Valdi and thanked her luck that Carrick had removed the scales from her eyes. How could she have believed such an artificial life as the theatre was suitable? Just look at Valdi! Present him with a situation, hand him a cue and he was on in the appropriate role. None existed for these circumstances but Valdi was struggling to find one to suit.

‘What will you do now, Killashandra?’ he asked in sepulchral tones, obviously settling for Dignified Elder Gentleman Consoling the Innocent Bereaved.

‘I’ll take him to Ballybran, of course.’

Valdi nodded solemnly. ‘I mean, when you return from Ballybran.’

‘I don’t intend to return.’

Valdi stared, dropping out of character, and then gestured theatrically as the aircushion stretcher on which Carrick was strapped drifted past them to the shuttle gate.

‘After that?’ Valdi cried, full of dramatic plight.

‘That won’t happen to me,’ she said confidently.

‘But it could! And you, too, could be reduced to a thing with no mind, no memories, unalterably scrambled brains.’

‘I think,’ Killashandra said slowly, regarding the mannered little man with thinly veiled contempt, ‘that everyone’s brains get scrambled some way or other.’

‘You’ll rue this day -’ began Valdi, raising his left arm in a classical rejection gesture, fingers gracefully spread.

‘That is, if I remember it!’ she said and her mocking laugh cut him off mid-scene.

Still laughing, Killashandra made her exit, stage center, through the passenger shuttle door.