Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line (30 page)

“All right, Lars, you’ve dined us and beered us, so what’s this really about?” Borton asked, settling back in his chair as he pushed his empty dinner plate away from him.

“All four of you have been profiting from cutting on
inactive singers’ claims,” Lars began, “and that’s exactly what I hoped would happen. But I’d like you four to take this a step further.” He went on, using almost the same explanation he had given Killa an hour before. Had he been rehearsing it on her? she wondered. But since she had heard it already, she could pay more attention to the way the other three were responding to his scheme.

Tiagana didn’t bother to disguise her reluctance. She leaned away from Lars, toward Borton, who was sitting beside her. He was not as unreceptive. And as for Jaygrin, Killa could almost see the credits dancing in his eyes, and his smile was positively greedy.

“How do we know that Donalla can’t unhypnotize herself and consciously
know
our claim locations?”

“She can’t,” Presnol said flatly, his tone brooking no argument.

“I wouldn’t want to,” Donalla said. “It would be pointless, since I don’t sing crystal, and the cutter is always paid on what he or she brings in. I couldn’t count on you to remember to give me a bribe, now could I?”

Jaygrin laughed, showing narrow, almost feral teeth. “So the deal is, Lars, that we’ll get inactive singer sites plus this hypnotic business to remember where we cut?”

Lars nodded.

“And no share out of the cut?” Borton asked.

“On the first cut of an inactive, you pay the twenty-five percent, but only the Guild tithe on any subsequent cuttings.”

Even Tiagana looked interested now.

“It works,” Killa said, deciding to enter the discussion. “I’ve flown out and cut as long as the claim was good. Came back in, got another set, and flew directly to it, ready to cut again. Of course, one claim was buried
too far to be reached, but the coordinates were accurate. Saves a lot of time and wasted effort.”

“You’ve been doing what Lars described?” Tiagana asked.

“I have,” Killa replied, nodding and managing a slightly smug curl to her smile. “A snap.” She snapped her fingers to match her words. “I think it’s a lot easier on a body, too,” she added, indolently easing her buttocks down in her chair. “Muhlah, when I think of the days I’ve spent trying to find a site, trying to remember if it was still workable. Sure saves a lot of stress.” She debated putting a word or two about loyalty to the Guild but knew that wouldn’t cut much with singers. Only credit did. And Lars’s new scheme was indeed the key to larger credit balances and fewer dry runs in the Ranges. “No more dry runs,” she reminded the three singers as they mulled what had been said.

Presnol slipped away from the table and returned with more Yarran beer. Wisely Lars switched to a discussion of the dinner they had just eaten, criticizing the preparation of one or two dishes and asking if anyone else had found them wanting.

Singers could talk food till the galaxy grew cold, and Presnol and Donalla kept the beer circulating until only Lars and Killa, who had been more abstemious than was her custom, were able to walk straight.

“Do you think it’ll work?” she asked him as they made their way to their quarters.

“We’ll know tomorrow. But that Jaygrin’s going to try it.” Lars chuckled. “Avaricious bastard! But then, he’s never come in with any of the darker colors on his own.”

Which, in crystal-singer parlance, was the most insulting thing one could say about another cutter.

A
s Killa was setting off for the next set of coordinates Donalla had obtained for her, she saw the other three singers readying their sleds in the Hangar. When she came back two days later, she had a full carton of deep amethyst crystals in fifths and thirds. They were not, of course, the black she had been after. But she had remembered that Clodine had said the darker shades were in short supply, so she had stayed to cut rather than return empty-handed.

Before she had lifted from the site, she had jotted down the coordinates and slipped the notation under the sheet of liberated markers taped to her console. In plain sight and yet hidden. Now if she could only remember
that!
She ought to think of some sort of code, something she would twig to the moment she saw it. She began to regret that she wasn’t a good subject for hypnosis. She wondered how Tiagana, Borton, and Jaygrin were getting on. She was pleased that she could recall
their names so easily. If she wanted to remember something, she really could!

She was in rare good spirits when she brought the cartons in to Clodine.

“Haven’t I seen you here a lot lately?” the Sorter asked, grinning because Killa was.

“Sure! I’m enjoying an excellent streak of luck. It was bound to happen,” Killashandra said blithely, “given the probabilities. Even if these aren’t blacks.”

Clodine held up the heaviest of the fifths, adjusting her eyesight to scrutinize the crystal. She put it on the scales and made minute adjustments, nodding all the while.

“Well, you remembered amethyst, and there’s a good market for them right now. Two space stations are being constructed, and the big Altairian way station is expanding, so darks are needed for their life-support systems. Lars’ll be real pleased to know these have come in.”

“I’ll tell him myself, hear?” Killa winked at Clodine.

“It’s nice to see you like this, Killa,” Clodine said, and gave Killa’s arm a tentative pat. “And you’re not even buzzing.”

“No, I’m not. I feel as if I could cut forever these days.”

“I’d heard you already had!” Clodine said with rare flippancy.

In great good humor, Killashandra laughed, then chuckled more heartily from her gut when she saw the final figure on two days’ work. Many were the times in her past when she would have killed for such totals. Yes, Lars’s idea of getting coordinates out of inactives was brilliant.

Before she went down to her quarters, she stopped in
the Hangar office to ask for her sled to be ready for the morning.

“Why don’t you just stay out, like you usually do, Killa?” Murr asked. “You’re like an overnight homer, in one day and out the next.”

“I find what the Guild needs, I cut, I bring it in. Much more efficient that way, isn’t it?”

“You’re using a lot of fuel,” he cautioned.

“I’ve the credit to pay for it, Murr. Humor me.”

She left him there, but his morose attitude had brought her down a bit. The moment she entered her quarters, the comunit buzzed.

“Muhlah! Can’t I even have a bath first?”

“Killa?” Lars’s image came up on the screen. “Glad you’re in, C.S. Ree. Would you join me as soon as possible in my office?”

She started to say something snide about his formality, but before she could speak he stepped to one side and she saw that he had visitors in his office: visitors who were wearing the clear plastic suits and breathing masks that meant their errand was urgent enough for them to risk possible contamination by the Ballybran symbiont.

“Permit me time to become presentable, Guild Master Lars Dahl,” she said in a similar manner, and waved the comunit off.

Curiosity moved her to shower and change quickly. Very few people would take the chance these were. Urgent was almost always interesting. As she strode into the office, there was a new person at Trag’s desk who looked up, seemed about to challenge her presence, hesitated, and then looked quickly back to the screen. She palmed the door and entered Lars’s office.

“Ah, Crystal Singer Ree, I appreciate your alacrity. These are Klera and Rudney Saplinson-Trill. Klera,
Rudney, this is the other member of the original Guild survey team.” He gestured for Killashandra to be seated.

She noticed that there were snacks on the table beside her and blessed him for such thoughtfulness. He had even managed drinkers for the suited Saplinson-Trills. But he hadn’t managed to indicate why they were braving the dangers of Ballybran.

“I’m not sure if you can recall the planet we visited some years back …” Lars began.

“Twenty-four years, five months, and two weeks, to be precise,” Rudney Saplinson-Trill said with the quick, humorless smile of someone to whom accuracy is more important than courtesy. The tinny and nasal quality the helmet speakers gave his voice increased the impudence of that unnecessary correction.

“Yes, the one with the opalescence which we investigated for the late Guild Master,” Lars continued. “It was posited at the time that Heptite Guild members, protected by their symbiont, would be safe from the infection which had killed the original exploratory team exposed to the opalescence—”

“Fluid metal, Guild Master,” Rudney said, “is a more accurate term for the material—FM for short.”

“We called it Jewel Junk,” Killashandra said, mimicking him. He didn’t notice, but Klera did.

“Yes, we did, didn’t we?” Lars said, clearing his throat. “For lack of a more accurate designation,” he added, nodding toward Rudney. “You will remember that we actually made two trips there, the second one after our visit to Nihal Three. On the second one we fed some trash to several of the Jewel Junk aka FM.”

Killashandra wanted to giggle at Lars, but mastered the urge.

“Actually,
nine
of the now twenty FM manifestations,” Rudney said.

“Yes. As I was saying …” Lars’s nostrils flared, a sign of rare impatience in him, and he gave Rudney a quelling glance. “We also tried to establish communications with the, ah, FM opalescence.” When the scientist seemed about to correct him yet again he said more firmly, “Or has the opalescence abated?” Lars fixed the scientist with a cold glare, then looked back to Killashandra, rattling his strong fingers on the table in a complex roll.

What appeared to be a nervous habit of his, plus the use of the words “opalescence,” “Nihal Three,” and “the infection” began to stir memories for Killa.

“We established a form of communication with it,” she said. “Have you managed to enlarge on that beginning?” Why else would they be risking their lives visiting Ballybran?

“We are pure research scientists,” Rudney said stiffly. “We are attempting to establish the parameters of an extremely complex life-form.”

“Then you agree that the Junk is sentient?”

Rudney made a gesture, discounting her assumption. “We are only beginning to analyze its substance.”

“Wasn’t it impervious to diagnostic instrumentation?” Killa asked Lars.

“Ours is considerably more sensitive,” Rudney continued inexorably, “and therefore we have made progress where the usual sort of instrumentation was inadequate to the purpose.”

“So,” Killa said, crossing her arms over her chest and focusing her entire attention on him. She had found this to disconcert the unwary. “What is it?”

“We have not yet finished our initial survey,” Rudney admitted.

“After twenty-four years, five months, and two weeks?”

“With such an unusual material, one does not rush to conclusions,” Rudney informed her.

“Did it ever digest the Ballybran crystal we gave it?” Killa was very pleased with herself for that recollection.

“Ah, no,” Rudney replied, and cleared his throat, causing an awful rasping sound to be broadcast. The nonabsorption seemed to worry him.

“In fact,” Klera said, plunging in, “all nine FM units prominently display the crystal shards in the center of the reservoir. That’s what we call the central node. Though ‘node’ is not exactly accurate either.”

“Would blob do?” Killa found scholarly precision tedious.

“Fluid metal is the proper description of its composition and, even, of its function,” Klera said, her round face solemn.

“But have you established any level of communication with my Jewel Junk?”

“Yyyeesss, and nn-no,” Klera said, momentarily flustered. “Our xenolinguist had hundreds of hours of recording but …” She sagged with a weary sigh.

“No mutual lexicon,” Killa said, adding her own sigh.

“The individual FMs, however,” Klera said, brightening, “
seem
to be communicating on some level. Though whether or not it’s through use of the crystal shards, we haven’t been able to ascertain.” She shot a worried look at Rudney.

“Just the nine, or the other Junks you’ve discovered?” Killa asked, wondering if that was the problem.

“We can’t be positive that they don’t have another means of interacting. But we have established that the
crystals send bursts of piezoelectric current,” Klera said.

“Though we have been unable to determine the exact reason for the activity,” Rudney said, smoothly taking over the explanations. “All the twenty FM deposits show irrefutable evidence of a thermoelectric effect, generating a voltage flow which, we have posited, is due to the extremes of temperature through which the planet goes. There is a recognizable tide, as it were, in the fluctuations of the thermoelectric effect that can be timed to the onset of deviations in the planet’s rotation around its primary.

“Naturally, we established a control group of three,” he went on, settling himself in his chair for a long lecture. “Caves Three, Nine, and Fifteen remain as we found them on our arrival, complete with their central nub of crystal. We’ve divided the others into three groups according to size, giving each group a special diet: organic wastes, which seem to have little effect on growth; inorganic wastes, which demonstrably increase the size exponentially to the amount offered; and a mixture, half and half, to the third group, which seems to thrive the best,”