Crystal Singer

Taking another sip, she raised her eyes above the cup and noticed the row opposite her: noticed and recognized the faces of Rimbol and Borton, and farther down, Celee. Half a dozen had black eyes, torn or scratched cheeks. Four recruits looked as if they'd been dragged face down over gravel. When she touched her own skin, she realized she, too, had suffered unfelt abrasions, for her numb fingers were pricked with dots of blood.

A loud hiss of indrawn breath made her look to the left. A medic was daubing Jezerey's face. Another medic was working down the row toward Rimbol, Celee, and Borton.

“Any damage?” Killashandra, despite her exhausted stupor, recognized the voice as that of Guild Master Lanzecki's.

Surprised, she turned to find him standing in an open door, his black-garbed figure stark against the white of piled crystal cartons.

“Superficial, sir,” one of the medics said after a respectful nod in the Guild Master's direction.

“Class 895 has been of invaluable assistance today,” Lanzecki said, his eyes taking in every one of the thirty-three. “I, your Guild Master, thank you. So does Cargo Officer Malaine. No one else will.” There wasn't even a trace of a smile on the man's face to suggest he was being humorously ironic. “Order what you will for your evening meal: it will not be debited from your account. Tomorrow you will report to this sorting area where you will learn what you can from the crystals brought in today. You are dismissed.”

He withdraws, Killashandra thought. He fades from the scene. How unusual. But then, he's not a Singer. So no sweeping entrances like Carrik or the three Singers at Shankill, nor exits like Borella's. She took another sip of her broth, needing its sustenance to get her weary body up the ramp for that good free meal. Come to remember, the last good free meal she'd had had also been indirectly charged to the Guild. She was, as it happened, one of the last of the recruits to leave the sorting area. A door opened somewhere behind her.

“How many not yet in, Malaine?” she heard Lanzecki ask.

“Five more just hit the hangar floor, one literally. And Flight says there are two more possible light-sights.”

"That makes twenty-two unaccounted – "

“If we could only get Singers to register cuts, we'd have some way of tracking the missing and retrieve at least the cargo . . .”

The door swooshed tight, and the last of the sentence was inaudible. The exchange, the tone of it, worried her.

«Retrieve the cargo.» Was that the concern of Malaine and Lanzecki? The cargo? Malaine certainly had stressed the cargo's being more valuable than the recruits handling it. But surely the Crystal Singers themselves were valuable, too. Sleds could be replaced – another debit to clear off one's Guild account – but surely Singers were a valuable commodity in their own peculiar way.

Killashandra's mind simply could not cope with such anomalies. She made it to the top of the ramp. She had to put one hand on the door frame to steady herself as she thumbed her door open. A moan of weariness escaped her lips. Rimbol's door whisked open.

“You all right, Killa?” Rimbol's face was flecked with fine lines and tiny beads of fresh blood. He wore only a towel.

“Barely.”

“The herbal bath does wonders. And eat.”

“I will. It's on the management, after all.” She couldn't move her painful face to smile.

After a long soak absorbed the worst fatigue from her muscles she did force herself to eat.

An insistent burp from the computer roused her the next morning. She peered into the dark beyond her bed and only then realized that the windows were shuttered and the gale still furious outside.

The digital told her that it was 0830 and her belly that it was empty. As she started to throw back the thermal covering, every muscle in her body a

“The medication is a muscle relaxant combined with a mild analgesic to relieve symptoms of muscular discomfort. This condition is transitory.”

Killashandra cursed fluently at what she felt was the computers embarrassingly well timed invasion of Privacy, but she drained the medicine, grimacing at its over sweet taste. In a few moments, she began to feel less stiff. She took a quick shower, alternating hot and cold, for unaccountably her skin still prickled from yesterdays severe buffeting. As she was eating a high-protein breakfast, she hoped that time would be allowed for meals today. She doubted that the rows of crystal containers could all be sorted and repacked in one day. And such a job oughtn't need the pace of yesterday.

Sorting took four days of labor as intense as fighting the storm wind, though presenting less physical danger. The recruits, each working with a qualified sorter, learned a great deal about how not to cut crystal and pack it and which forms were currently profitable. These were in the majority, and most of the experienced sorters directed a constant flow of abuse at Singers who had cut quantities of the commodity then most over stocked.

“We've got three ruddy storage rooms of these,” muttered Enthor, with whom Killashandra was sorting. “It's blues what we need and want. And blacks, of course. No, no, wrong side. You've got to learn,” he said, grabbing the carton Killashandra had just lifted to the sorting table. “First, present the Singer's ident code.” He turned the box so that the strip, ineradicably etched on the side, would register. “Didn't have that little bit of help and there'd be war unloading, with cartons getting mixed up every which way and murder going on.”

Once the ident number went up on the display, the carton was unpacked and each crystal form carefully put on the scale, which computed color, size, weight, form, and perfection. Some crystals Enthor immediately placed on the moving belts, which shunted them to the appropriate level for shipment or storage. Others he himself cocooned in the plastic webbing with meticulous care.

The sorting process seemed boringly simple. Sometimes it was not easy to retrieve the small crystals that had been thrust at any angle into the protective foam. Killashandra almost missed a small blue octagon before Enthor grabbed the carton she was about to assign to replacement.

“Lucky for you,” the sorter said darkly, glancing about him, brows wrinkled over his eyes, “that the Singer who cut this wasn't watching. I've seen them try to kill a person for negligence.”

“For this?” Killashandra held up the octagon, which couldn't have been more than 8 centimeters in length.

“For that. It's unflawed.” Enthor's quick movement had placed the crystal on the scale and checked its perfection. “Listen!” He set the piece carefully between her thumb and forefinger and flicked it lightly.

Even above the rustling and stamping and low-voiced instructions, Killashandra heard the delicate, pure sound of the crystal. The note seemed to catch in her throat and travel down her bones to her heels.

“It's not easy to cut small, and right now this piece's worth a couple of hundred credits.”

Killashandra was properly awed and far more painstaking, risking her fingers to search a plasfoam carton that seemed heavier than empty. Enthor scolded her for that, slapping her gloves across her cheek before he tugged one of his off and showed her fingers laced by faint white scars.

“Crystal does it. Even through gloves and with symbiosis. Yours would fester. I'd get docked for being careless.”

“Docked?”

“Loss of work time due to inadequate safety measures is considered deductible. You, too, despite your being a recruit.”

“We get paid for this?”