Crystal Line

And now, she could share even more with him: his duties as Guild Master. She would be Trag to his Lanzecki. Muhlah! Had Lanzecki and Trag . . . She stifled a giggle. Lanzecki had been quite willing, but she had never known if Trag had had any liaisons with Guild members. Lack of memory, a fear of displaying the gaps and embarrassing herself, and Lars, had been behind her resistance to his offers. She couldn't be less than the best for Lars, and now she could take on those responsibilities with a clear conscience—and an infallible memory.

Odd how so many things worked out—if one waited long enough. That initial humiliation back on Fuerte when she had been refused solo status by the bombastic little Maestro Valdi had resulted in her meeting Carrick, and discovering the covert Heptite Guild. "Silicate spider", "crystal cuckoo"—Valdi's accusations rang in her head. Foolish little man. Singing crystal had been so much more rewarding than being a mere concert singer, who could expect only three or four decades of a "good" voice! She was still "singing" after a hundred and ninety-seven years.

She turned her head and caught her reflection in the porthole. Well, a quadruple thickness of plasglas might blur lines, but she really didn't have many, thanks to the Ballybran symbiont. She certainly didn't look any two hundred and fifteen years. She smiled at her image. She wasn't much changed from the girl who had left Fuerte with a mind-damaged crystal singer. She gripped Lars's fingers tightly.

Now, if she could manage to cushion his shock that she could never again cut black crystal, she was good for another couple of hundred years.

"You won't mind letting Presnol and Donalla give you a good checkup, will you, Su

"Not at all," she replied blithely. "Though I'm sure Bren and Boira sent a report on ahead, didn't they?"

"That was hardly reassuring," he remarked dryly. "Especially the part where you were sure you were dead. I don't exaggerate when I say that the heart went out of me."

She stroked his hand. "But as it was me saying it, you had no cause to worry."

He gave her a long and trenchant look. "By any chance, among your newly revived memories, do you have the one of our first night together?"

She ducked her head: the recall was instant, and almost embarrassing in its intensity.

"Did I not tell you then," he said, his voice intimately low and rich with emotion, "that you gave me the most incredible love experience of my life?"

"Lars! You don't remember that?"

He smiled at her, his eyes so filled with passion that she could feel the blood rising to suffuse her face.

"It's one of my fondest recollections, Su

He kept gazing into her eyes, stroking her hand, so that she felt like a giddy youngling. Which, she remembered, she had never been, for even at that age she had already been dedicated to the notion of herself as a singer.

"Ah, ahem . . ." Flicken, standing by the open shuttle door, was clearing his throat.

"Thanks, Flick," Lars said, suavely recovering. He reached across Killashandra to release her harness and then handed her out as regally as if she were indeed a queen.

"The courier's scheduled for an oh-eight-thirty docking at Bay Forty-three, Guild Master. Shall I be ready at oh-seven-hundred?"

"That'll be fine," Lars said, and hurried Killa out, obviously wishing that Flicken had not spoken.

"Who's going where tomorrow in a courier, Lars?" Killa demanded as he guided her toward the lift. As they entered, he ran his hand through his crisp blond hair.

"I've put it off as long as I could, Killa," he said apologetically. "Presnol said he'd sit in for me. I shouldn't be gone long."

"Where?" She felt a definite sinking feeling.

He scratched the back of his neck. "I've been putting it off because you were away, and I wasn't leaving until you got back after what Big Hungry did to you . . ."

"Out with it!"

"I'm not sure if you'd remember . . ."

She quirked an eyebrow at him, gri

He jabbed an impatient finger on the control pad, and she didn't take her eyes off his face.

"All right." He gri

"You've got permission for overt recruitment," she replied without hesitating, precisely remembering the scene and where they had stood in his office in relation to each other, "and the courier's taking you where there're some live ones."

"My, my, we are vastly improved," he said, slightly mocking, but his fingers were wrapped tenderly about her forearm.

The lift stopped, and he tugged her out. She stopped in the foyer.

"This is not the medical level."

"No, it is not. It is our level, and you can spend tomorrow with Presnol and Donalla, but you are spending the next hours with me, your Guild Master, and your ardent lover who is overjoyed to have his Su

Sometime during the loverly reenactment of their first night together, he spoke of his trip to three overpopulated city-planets where he hoped to find recruits. He also had permission to enlist specific technicians to fill the empty positions or to train up in the specialist support skills.

"We desperately need more medical staff," he told her, stroking her hair as they lay entwined on the sleeping platform. "Too many singers are so long in their craft that they get arrogant about their abilities and lose all common sense and any caution they might have once possessed."

"And a one-way trip to the Infirmary." She thought of Rimbol, poignantly remembering the bright gay chap he had been when they had both first come to Ballybran. That was not a comfortable memory when contrasted with his current condition. She shuddered.

"Which will have to be enlarged unless we can somehow stop the stupid mistakes singers are making . . ."

"You know, Lars, it can be stopped," she said, describing idle circles on his chest as she chose her words. "By knowing where exactly to go to cut, cutting, and coming right back out."

"You tell 'em, Su

"You already have, Lars, you already have."

Such a statement demanded ratification. Later he returned to the subject. "A few of them are, because Tiagana, Borton and Jaygrin have been loudly declaring how much credit they've made in easy straight-out-in runs. But so many singers are ru

"Maybe I was hasty a bit ago, Lars," she said, "saying you mustn't send other singers to Big Hungry. If he could bring my memory back . . ."

"I think we'll leave that as the solution of last resort. I may be prejudiced," he said, kissing her cheek, "but you were always more than just a singer, Su

"Being just a singer would have been rather limiting," she remarked, but she meant something different than he. "Which reminds me, why on earth saddle Presnol with pro-tem duties? I'm much better qualified than he is."

"Are you volunteering, Killa?"

"I believe so . . ." She gri

He gave a snort and wiggled his shoulders into the pillows.

"Not bloody likely. You are the best singer I've got."

She didn't like the way he said that, but by the time she had thought of a suitable response, his breathing had slowed into a sleep rhythm. An infectious one because she slipped into it, too.