Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line Read online

  “In either yours or mine,” Lanzecki replied with cool courtesy.

  “You singers have crystal for blood! Crystal for hearts!” Lideen yelled as the other two miners’ reps hauled her out of the room.

  “The Guild does not make deals,” Lars added. “The integrity of our price scale has to be maintained. Two options are currently open to you. You can, of course, wait until there is a glut of blue crystal on the market, which would bring the unit price down, but there is no downward market forecast on blue crystal at the moment. Or you can install green when it is available. Your credit balance indicates that your League is able to fund either. It’s up to you to decide.”

  As Killashandra followed Lanzecki and Lars to the door, she sneaked a look over her shoulder and saw the hesitation on the leader’s face. He wanted the crystal badly; he knew he could pay for it; he was just trying it on as standard operating procedure. But he had obviously never approached this Guild before. Quite likely, there would be an order from the Apharian League before the Apharians departed Shankill Moon Base. Someone should have warned them not to haggle with Lanzecki and the Heptite Guild. Most people knew that. Still, there were always those who would chance their arms to save a few credits. Only this group had forgotten that mining crystal was not so very much different than mining asteroids: the result of failure bore the same cost.

  She shrugged.

  “Damn fools,” she heard Lanzecki say as she closed the door to the conference room.

  He stalked across to the table at which he and Lars had been working, slammed a new file into the reader slot, and stared at the display.

  That wasn’t like Lanzecki, and Killashandra blinked in surprise. Lars gave an imperceptible shake of his head; she shrugged and dismissed the matter.

  By the seventh day, when Lars hadn’t mentioned going out into the Ranges, she did.

  “Did those Apharians order? Or should we concentrate on finding some green crystal?” she asked when he finally appeared late that evening.

  “Huh?”

  Lars’s mind was clearly on other matters. She felt excluded and that made her irritable. They were partners, close partners, and shared everything.

  “I thought we came back to cut crystal, not sit around playing diddly with pencil files.”

  He gave her one of his quick, apologetic grins. “Well, we can depart in a day or two.”

  She raised her eyebrows, trying for a light touch.

  “Are you aiming to take over from Bollam?”

  “From Bollam?” He stared at her in amazement, then laughed, pulling her into his arms. “Not likely, when I’ve the best partner in the whole Guild. It’s just that—well, I can’t help being flattered when Lanzecki keeps asking my advice, now can I?”

  “I don’t mean to denigrate your advice, but that’s not like Lanzecki.”

  “Too true, Sunny, too true,” he said with a sad sigh. “I’d hazard that he misses Trag more than he’d admit.”

  “Then why did he take on such a want-wit as Bollam! There must be someone more qualified!”

  Lars grinned at her vehemence and rocked her close in his arms. “Did you find anyone to replace him over the last few days?”

  She pushed him away, glaring reprovingly at him. She had thought her search discreet enough.

  “Oh, there’s little going on here that Lanzecki doesn’t hear about sooner or later. He said to tell you that he appreciated your efforts. Bollam suits his needs.”

  Killa swore.

  “Hey, I wouldn’t mind a late-night snack,” Lars said, hauling her with him to the catering unit. “And yes, the Apharians ordered the blue, still registering complaints about the cost and issuing veiled statements about unethical access and invasion of commercial privacy and all that wind and piss.”

  Two days later Killashandra and Lars lifted their sled out of the Hangar and headed east, toward the Milekey Ranges. Behind them a second sled departed, but immediately struck out on a nor’easterly course.

  “That’s Lanzecki’s,” Killashandra said in surprise.

  “Yes, that’s why he’s been working such long hours, to clear all current business. He’ll be the better for a spell in the Ranges. That’s all he needs, really.”

  “But with Bollam?”

  “I’ll grant you that I’ve qualms, but who knows? Bollam might turn out to be a top-rank cutter. Or why would Lanzecki shepherd him?”

  “Shepherd him?” Killa blinked. “Bollam’s not been blooded in the Ranges yet?” She recalled the fine crystal scars on Bollam’s hands and arms. “He’s cuts enough.”

  Lars grinned. “I heard tell that he was the clumsiest apprentice they ever had on the Hangar floor. He’s lucky to find anyone to shepherd him, the number of singers he annoyed dropping crystals when he was unloading sleds.”

  Killa muttered uncomplimentary epithets about Bollam.

  “I suppose that sort of duty does fall with Lanzecki,” Lars went on with a sigh, “shepherding the ones no one else will take to initiate.”

  “I don’t envy him the job, that’s for sure.”

  “Nor I.” Lars turned to grin at her, his eyes deep with affection. “But then, I had the best of all possible partners.”

  “You!” She faked a cuff to his jaw. She could, and did, envy Bollam the chance to be shepherded by Lanzecki on his first trip into the Ranges: the twit didn’t deserve such an honor. Odd, though; she would have thought Lanzecki would have blackmailed someone else to shepherd Bollam, reserving his own talents to take the rough edges off the man once he had been exposed to the Ranges.

  “Where’ll we head, partner?” Lars asked her as they entered the Milekey.

  Killashandra grimaced. The usual ambivalence surged up in mind and body. A singer cut crystal in order to leave the Ranges as frequently as possible. But a singer also had to renew herself with the crystal she cut. The more she cut out of a certain lode, the easier it was to find later. If she went off-planet for any length of time, that attraction diminished. But a singer had to go off-planet to ease the crystal pulse in her blood. Cutting too much was almost, not quite, as much a hazard as cutting too little. With Lars, she had often been able to cut just enough, which was the main advantage of singing duet.

  “Can you remember where we cut those greens a couple of trips back?”

  Lars gave her a long thoughtful look.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “We have cut greens, and with none available it seems sensible to get top market price on something.”

  “Why don’t we go for black?”

  “You know how hard it is to find black, good black,” she replied in a cranky tone. She didn’t want to cut blacks—ever.

  “Green it is,” he said, and slightly altered the sled’s course. “Our marker may have faded a lot,” he went on. “Lots of storms have passed over since we cut green.”

  “Not that many!”

  He said nothing and accelerated the sled. “It’ll be a while. Settle down.”

  She watched the jagged pinnacles of the Range. Paint splotches, old and new, indicated claims. Once she would have recognized markers by their color and pattern. She didn’t try anymore. Theirs was a black and yellow herringbone design, which Lars had thoughtfully painted on the console. She often cursed that choice, because it was hell to paint the pattern on uneven rock surfaces, but she had to admit that the black and yellow herringbones had high visibility.

  The sled plowed through the skies, the sweep of peak and pinnacle flowing past her in an almost mesmerizing blur. Below a relatively fresh paint splotch, she caught the metallic glitter of a sled half-hidden under a canyon overhang.

  “They ought to watch out,” she murmured under her breath. “Ledges can fall down on top of you.”

  “What say, Sunny?” Lars asked, and she grinned as she waved at him to ignore her.

  It was late in the morning when he began to circle the sled. “Think I found one,” he said, bringing them down to hover over the spot.

  �
��Are you sure?” Killa squinted down at rocks bearing the barest hint of color: the herringbone pattern was all but indistinguishable.

  “Sure as I can be. Shall we put down and see what we remember of the site?”

  “We certainly have to renew the marker,” she said, annoyed that the paint, which was supposed to have a long sun-life, had faded so badly. Markers were what kept other singers from usurping claims. A claim was circular in shape, with a radius of a half kilometer radiating from the painted logo. No one was supposed to enter a space so marked. As further protection, the mark was not required to be at the lode itself—or even anywhere near. The lode could be right at the edge of the enclosed space and still be claimed by the singer.

  “Paint first, look later,” Lars said, calling the order.

  They painted and then took a meal break, all the while looking around the circle, hoping to trigger recollections of this particular site.

  “We’ve got to go down,” Killa said after she had swallowed her last mouthful. “Nothing’s familiar at this height.”

  “Eeny, meeny, pitsa teeny,” Lars chanted as he circled up from the peak. At “teeny” Lars left the circle in that direction, bringing the sled down into the small canyon. He grinned at Killa: a random choice had often proved lucky. He neatly parked their vehicle in the shadow cast by the higher side, and she nodded approval of his caution. They would be hidden from an aerial view until the morning.

  She was first out of the sled, running her fingers along the uneven rock walls of the canyon and hoping to catch a trace of crystal resonance. Or find the scars of a previous working.

  Lars struck off in the opposite direction. They met on the far side, having seen nothing to indicate that this canyon was the one they were looking for.

  “Shall we go left or right?” Lars asked as they got back into the sled.

  “Off the top of my head! Right!” Killashandra said after a moment’s sober thought. “Not that that’s any indication.”

  But she turned out to be correct—for in the narrow ravine to the right of their first landing they came across evidence of cutting.

  “I’d know our style anywhere,” Lars said.

  “You mean yours,” she replied, settling in to another of their long debates as they returned to the sled and unpacked their sonic cutters.

  “We’d do better if we waited until the sun hits them,” Lars said.

  “No better or no worse. Hit a C.”

  Inhaling deeply, he sang a fine powerful true mid-C, his eyes sparkling at her, daring her as he so often did. She sang out a third above his note, as powerfully as he had. Sound bounced back at them, making them both flinch at the undertones.

  “Some of it’s cracked,” Killa said, but, as one, they moved toward the resonating point. “Green, from the power in its echo.”

  “I told you I remembered where we’d cut green.”

  Once at the side of the ravine, they sang the pitch notes again and set their cutters to the sound. Killa indicated the cut she would make and set herself for the first wrenching scream of cut crystal. No sooner had she set the cutter than Lars set his a handspan to the right.

  The first set cleared away the imperfect crystal to reveal a wide vein of fine green.

  “Shards, but those Apharians are going to be furious when they hear about this,” she said, slicing away additional marred quartz.

  “What’ll we try for?”

  “Comunit sizes, of course,” she said with a snort.

  Once the debris cleared, they sang again in case they had to retune the cutters, but Lars’s C and her E rang clearly back at them. Together they placed their cutter edges and, taking a simultaneous breath, turned on the power.

  Darkness forced them to stop with twelve fine crystals cut and stored in the padded carrier case carefully strapped in the cargo bay. Quietly, from the ease of long practice, they made a meal and ate it. Then, continuing their rituals, they washed—there would come days when crystal song would override such habits. While Lars made entries in the sled’s log, Killashandra pulled down their double bunk and got out the quilts. They were both ready to settle at the same time.

  The morning sun, stroking the Ranges awake, provided an alarm no singer could resist: the insidious chiming of crystal as the first rays dispelled the chill of night. The notes were random, pure sound, for only perfect crystal could speak on sunlight. The ringing stirred senses and awoke desires as it grew louder and more insistent. Killashandra and Lars simultaneously turned to each other. She could see his smile in the shadowy cabin and answered it, lifting her arm to his shoulders, eager for the touch of his bare skin against hers. It seemed to Killashandra that as their lips met an arpeggio rippled through the air, excitingly sensual, deliciously caressing, ending on a clear high C that shivered over them just as their bodies joined.

  This was the real reason men and women sang crystal together—to hear such music, to experience such sensations and such ecstasy as only crystal could awaken on bright, clear mornings. Such unions made up for all the mundane squabbles and recriminations between partners when crystal cracked or splintered and a whole day’s work might lie in shards at their feet. There was always the prospect of the incredible combination of sound and sensation in sunlit crystal to reanimate their relationship.

  “We must get moving, Sunny,” Lars murmured, making an effort to move. Too languorous with remembered passion, Killashandra murmured a throaty denial and shaded her eyes from the sun splashing into the cabin.

  “C’mon now. Hell, we’ll be having a spate of good clear weather,” he said, pushing her toward the edge of the bunk. “We can afford to do a little work today. I’ll start breakfast. Your turn in the head.”

  He used the light jocular tone that he knew Killashandra would accept. As she rose and stretched luxuriously, she glanced enticingly over her shoulder at him.

  “That won’t work on me today, Sunny,” he said wryly and gave her a slap across the buttock. Sometimes the sight of her at full stretch was enough to tempt him, despite the fact that they both knew a repeat performance once the sun had risen would be less satisfying than the first.

  She strutted sensually across to the head, flirting with him, but he only laughed and stuck his right leg into his coverall, pulling the garment up past his unresponsive member. She grabbed up her own clothes and slid open the door. As he took his turn, she finished making the substantial breakfast they would need to fuel them for working crystal all day. On clear days, singers rarely stopped to eat, cutting as long as there was light enough to see where to place their blades.

  Killashandra recalled, without remembering when, that there had been a time or two when she had cut throughout a double-moon night: the times when she had struggled to cut enough to afford passage off the fardling planet to get some respite from crystal song.

  They had been profitably working that vein for five days when Killashandra’s weather sense began to pluck at her consciousness.

  “Storm?” Lars knew her so well.

  She nodded, and set her cutter for a new level. “Not to worry yet.”

  “Nardy hell, Killa, we’ve got eight crates of the stuff. No sense in taking a risk. And the marker’s new enough to draw us right back here after the storm.”

  “We’ve time. Sing out,” she told him in a tone that was half command, half plea. “Greens aren’t easy to find, and I’m not about to quit when there’s still time to cut. The storm could ruddy well splinter this vein to nothing good enough to spit at.”

  Lars regarded her levelly. “Just let’s not cut it too fine!”

  “I wouldn’t let you get storm-crazed, lover.”

  “I’m counting on it. I think this tier’s going to be minor key,” he added, humming a B-flat and hearing the same tone murmur back at him.

  “I’ll make mine E, or would A be better?”

  He nodded crisp agreement for the A, and they sang, cutting as soon as they heard the answering notes the crystal flung back at them, its o
wn death knell.

  But storm sense caught at Killashandra again, not long after they had crated the nine crystals of that cutting.

  “I think we’re going,” she told him, hefting the cutter in one hand and bending her knees to take one handle of the crate. He did the same, and she set a rapid pace back to the sled. As Lars settled the crate into its strap-pings, Killa racked up both cutters and took the pilot’s seat, closing hatches and starting up the engines.

  Lars peered out the window of the right-hand side and muttered a curse. “Angle of the wall’s wrong. Can’t see anything. Where’s it coming from?”

  “South.” Just then the weather-alert klaxon cut in. It got one hoot out before her hand closed the toggle.

  “You’re ahead of the best technology the Guild can beg, borrow, or steal, aren’t you?” Lars grinned at her, proud of her ability.

  “Yup!”

  “Don’t get cocky.”

  “It’s going to be a bad one, too.” She shifted uneasily in the seat, her bones already responding to the distant stroking of the crystal. “I swear, the longer I cut, the more sensitive I get to the intensity of weather systems.”

  “Saves our skins, and our crystal.”

  She lifted the sled vertically, and as they rose above the sheltering walls of the ravine, storm clouds could be seen as a smudge of dark, roiling gray on the horizon. She veered the sled about to port and lifted above the higher cliffs, hovering just briefly over their paint mark, satisfied that it would survive this storm and a few more before wind-carried abrasives scoured the rock clean again.

  They were nearly out of the Ranges when their comunit lit up.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” cried a frantic voice.

  “Mayday? What the—” she demanded indignantly, leaning to one side to close the connection.

  Lars’s hand masked the plate. “That’s Bollam’s voice.”

  “Bollam?” Killashandra stared at him in puzzlement: the name meant nothing to her.