Crystal Singer

How big, how deep, how wide was this crystal vein? This treasure store? Killashandra's elation overwhelmed her initial caution laughing, she scrubbed at first this spot in the opposite wall, then along the slanty arms of the V, mopping the disguising grit and mud from the crystal and giggling softly to herself. Her titter echoed back to her, and she began to laugh, the louder sound reverberating.

She was surrounded by crystal. It was singing to her! She slid to the floor, oblivious of the mud, stroking the crystal face on either side of her, trying not to giggle, trying to realize, get it through her dazed brain, that she, Killashandra Ree, had actually found Keborgen's black crystal claim. And it was hers, section and paragraph.

Killashandra was unaware of the passage of time. She must have spent hours looking around the claim, seeing where Keborgen had cleared flawed crystal from the outside. He had undoubtedly expected to return once the storm had blown out. He was cutting from a shelf a meter above the higher arm of the V. He was an astute Cutter, for he hadn't ravaged crystal but worked for flawless cuts, the triads, and quartets, the larger groupings that would command the highest price from the greedy FSP who were eager to set up the crystal links between all inhabited planets. Keborgen had kept a natural-fault look to his claim, allowing the foot of the V to gather mud and dirt that wind and water would spill naturally across the lower part. By comparison, Moksoon was a very lazy Cutter, but then he had only rose quartz.

The crystal around her began to crackle and tzing soft reassuring noises. As if, Killashandra thought fancifully, it had accepted the transfer of ownership. Enchanted, she listened to the soft sounds, waiting almost breathless for the next series until she also became aware of chill, that she sat in true dark, not shadow.

Reluctantly and still bemused by the crystalline chorus, she hoisted herself from the claim, retracing the rough path to her sled.

Relative sanity returned to her in the clean newness of her vehicle. She sat down and made a drawing of the claim, testing her recall of the dimensions, jotting down her assumptions on Keborgen's work routine.

She'd get an early start in the morning, she thought, looking at her cutter. She'd have several clear days now.

“I'll have several clear days?” The certainty of her thought on that score astonished her. She snapped on the met forecast. Tomorrow would be fair, with a likelihood of several more to come.

What had Lanzecki said about a weather affinity in the Milekey transition? That she could trust her symbiont? Distrust of the mechanical had brought about Keborgen's belated start to safety. Ah, but if he'd stopped to repaint his claim mark, he had listened to some warning.

Killashandra hugged her arms tightly to her. In theory, the symbiotic spore was now part of her cellular construction, certainly no part of her conscious mind nor a restless visitor in her body. At least until she called upon its healing powers. Or resisted its need to return to Ballybran.

She made a voice-coded note on the recorder about her instinctive knowledge of the weather. She could keep a check on that.

She remembered to eat before she lay down, for the excitements of the day had fatigued her. She set her buzz alarm for twenty minutes before sunrise. Breakfasted, and refreshed by her sleep, she was on the summit path as the sun's first rays found their way over the top of the far range, cutter slung over her shoulder, carton swinging from her free hand.

She left the carton where Keborgen had left his – how long would echoes of the dead accompany her in this site? – and stepped down into the claim. Sun had not yet reached even the higher point of the V. It would be easier to cut now, she thought, before the crystal started its morning song. She wiped clean the protuberance she meant to cut, roughly 50 centimeters long by 25 centimeters high and varying between 10 and 15 centimeters wide. She had to follow the ridges left by Keborgen's last cuts. Why ever didn't he just make straight lines? Flaws? She ran her hands across the surface, as if apologizing for what she was about to do. The crystal whispered under her touch.

Enough of this, she told herself severely. She imagined that both Trag and Lanzecki were watching, then struck the shelf with the tone wedge. Sound poured over her like tsunami. Every bone and joint reverberated the note. Her skull seemed to part at its seams, her blood pulsed like a metronome in time with the vibrations. Echoes were thrown back to her from the other side of the claim and, oddly soured, from crescent valley.

“Cut! You're supposed to tune your cutter to the note and cut!” Killashandra shouted at herself, and the echo shouted back.

Nothing as devastating as this had occurred when Moksoon had sung for note. Was it because she was sensitive to the black, not pink, nor attuned to his claim? He had also not been standing in the center of his claim but on granite. Nor was this experience like the scream of retuned crystal: there was no agony, no resentment in that glorious resonance, overpowering as it was.

She did not have to strike the crystal again. The A was locked in her head and ears. She hesitated just once more as she steadied the infrasonic blade to make the first incision. As well, for only an unconscious resolve, an obstinacy that she had never had to invoke, kept her cutting. Sound enveloped her, an A in chords and octaves, a ringing that made every nerve end in her body vibrate in a state that wasn't painful, was oddly pleasurable but curiously distracting. She felt the blade sound darken and pulled it out. She made the second vertical cut just before Keborgen's mark. This block would be shorter than the others and narrower. It couldn't be helped. She gritted her teeth against the coursing shock as blade met crystal and sound met nerve. Her hands seemed to respond to the endless hours of drill under Trag's direction, but she didn't consciously tell herself to stop the second vertical cut. Some practiced co

Carefully, she put the cutter down, awed by the thread thin separation she had caused. With hands still shaking from the effort of guiding the cutter, she tipped the rectangle out and held it up. Sun caught and darkened the oblong, showing to her wondering eyes the slight deviation from a true angle. She couldn't have cared less and wept with joy as the song of sun-warmed black crystal, now truly matte black in response to heat, seeped through her skin to intoxicate her senses.

How long she stood in awed thrall, holding the rectangle into the sun like an ancient priestess, she would never know. A cloud, one of the few that day, briefly obscured the light and broke the song. Killashandra was conscious then of the ache in her shoulders from holding weight aloft and a numbness in fingers, feet, and legs. She was strangely unwilling to release the crystal. “Pack crystal as soon as you have cut.” The echo of Lanzecki's advice came to her. Moksoon, too, had packed as soon as he had cut. She remembered how reluctant the crazed old Singer had seemed to release the rose into the carton. Now she appreciated both advice and example.

Only when she had snuggled the crystal block into its plastic cocoon did she realize her debilitation. She leaned, drained of strength, against the crystal wall and sank slowly to the floor, marginally aware of the murmuring crystal against which she rested.

“This will never do,” she told herself, ignoring the faint, chimed echo of her voice. She took a food packet from her thigh pouch and mechanically chewed and drank. The terrible lethargy began to ease.