Continuum 4, page 13
part #4 of Continuum Series
“I’d better fly now, Fergil,” she said.
“Now, look, Killa, you’re barely…”
“Now, look, Fergil, if you think you’re going to track back to my blue cuttings when I’ve scrambled up, think again,” she said, laughing at the shock in his eyes. “I’ve sung crystal too long, young man, not to appreciate your strategy. Well, we’ll duet. This time, because I’ve no guts for the Ranges by myself. But I’ll do the piloting.”
Judging by the way he recoiled from her accusation, by the hurt in his darkened gray eyes, maybe she’d done him an injustice. Fergil didn’t protest, but he shook his head from side to side as he backed into the furthest corner of the flitter, out of line of sight with any of the directional dials. As a further mute refutation of her indictment, he studied the meteorological charts intently.
Fergil’s craft was new, but somewhat sluggish in maneuvering and she tended to compensate, out of habit, for the idiosyncrasies of her ancient flitter. Neither was Fergil accustomed to flying in the Milekeys, to judge by his taut expression as she angled through passes, all but scraping the belly of the vessel on the rocky sides. She dipped low in some canyons, flying their length where speed kept individual markings from being obvious to Fergil. She was feeling much better than she’d expected. True, she was aware of crystal hum along her bones, in her blood, but it wasn’t by any means acute.
“Did they pump me full of depressants?” she asked Fergil.
“Some. Not enough to worry. Lanzecki and the medics were pretty thick, but I watched and most of what they gave you were standard B complexes and anabolics, plus sedatives to keep you asleep.” He gave her a cocky grin. “Must’ve worked. You’re more yourself today, my girl. How’s the ship handling? She’s packed with stores.”
Killashandra grunted noncommittally and kept her mind on the flying. Occasionally she caught a glint of other flitters in deep canyons as she flew deeper north into the Range.
“Will we have time to cut today?” he asked casually after they were two hours in flight.
“Should do.”
They were nearly to the place, she realized, feeling the answering resonance in her body. She wondered how she could tune her body so selectively: one time to the yellows, another to the rose quartz, and now to the elusive blues. Once a singer had worked a cutting several times, he could always find his way back.
So she flew up and west, to confuse Fergil. There was a long low canyon, one of the major fissures of the range, leading up to her cutting. She’d fly over it, swing around and come back at the furthest end, where the black crag cut off the rest of the trough. Of course, let him mark the black cliff, a seemingly distinctive landmark. Milekey had hundreds such. He’d learn soon enough.
She glided in, right over the crag, observing him glance up. Then he also saw where she intended to touch the flitter down and he blanched noticeably.
“Easy as she goes,” Killashandra said, having neatly aligned the craft with the marks left by her own flitter.
“I didn’t think you’d manage that,” Fergil said, his eyes dancing with admiration though his voice was full of relief.
Killashandra laughed, pleased with her expertise. “A few surprises in the old gal yet, aren’t there?” But suddenly, her doubts and fancies about him dissipated and she felt comfortable again with him. She unlatched her sonic cutter, motioned for him to do the same. “Grab a container,” she added, as she undogged the hatch and stepped, carefully, onto the narrow ledge. The inadequate landing space was one of the reasons she’d not worked this cutting more often.
Fergil gave the nauseating drop a passing glance and followed, hefting crate and cutter easily.
Sun glinted off the blue crystal rock laid bare of its encrustment of machstorm-driven debris and abrasions. Fergil whistled appreciatively, leaned closer and ran a speculative hand down the obvious axial flaws.
“Polyhedron blues! A mountain of them.”
“Let’s see can we carve a few triads out of this face,” Killashandra suggested and sang out an A. She gestured for him to sing a third above or below. He’d a good strong voice — not a vibe off pitch — and then the chord answered them from the mountain. Both had their cutters tuned when Killashandra’s hand found the resonating section of crystal. She was still singing her note as she made the first cut but he hadn’t her breath support. He’d learn.
They cut quickly; he was good and his sonic cutter was not a fraction of an inch behind hers as they sliced blue crystal from parent rock. She finished the outer edge cuts and turned off her cutter before she realized that his was still on… He stood, transfigured by the feel of vibrating crystal in his hand. She knew the sensation. Knew too well the insidious, mind-sapping joy of it. How long had Fergil been singing crystal? She snatched the orthorhombic from his hand and watched him snap out of the trance, snarling with anger.
“You can do that as long as you want on your own time, Fergil. We’re here to cut crystal, not be seduced by it. Finish off the shape.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, Killa. I forgot.”
She felt his crystal pulsing in her hand, in harmony with the one she’d just cut. She handed it back to him before she was entranced. “Shape it. Now! I’m watching.” He all but wrenched the polyhedron from her. “You haven’t been out that often, have you?”
“That much, too much! What does it matter? I sing well, don’t I?” He spun on her angrily, the cutter raised almost threateningly. He completed the cuts in a savage way and then placed the dodecahedron carefully in the crate. “Where now?” There was no expression at all in his face and suddenly Killashandra was afraid that she’d alienated him. She was desperate for the reassurance of his smile. Then he relaxed and grinned sheepishly.
She took a deep breath and sang out a C sharp. He belted out a respectable F sharp and they touched the resonating area at the same instant. They were cutting well when suddenly the sound distorted on her blade as the blue shattered down its longest axis. She switched off her cutter just in time to prevent his crystal from cracking with the dissonance. He was as unnerved by the break but kept to his cut, finishing deftly.
“Now what?” he asked her as he laid the F sharp in the protective foam sheath. “That’s only happened to me once before.”
They both regarded the long fracture with disgust.
“It happens most frequently cutting blues,” she said, glaring angrily at the half won C sharp. “We can cut further down the face” — and she gestured to the dull, pitted face — “but we’ve got to cut away a lot of junk first. Or we can suffer the noise and take this out down below the flaw.”
Fergil rubbed the side of his face by his ear, as if in anticipation of the aural distress. “How good’s this face? Worth wasting the effort if it fractures again?”
Killashandra shrugged. They weren’t really far enough past the surface to tell. “You get the largest percentage of defects on the outside, of course…”
“Let’s try once more to cut here.” Fergil raised his tool.
They did and got a good triad before a vertical flaw developed.
“I’ve a hunch we should keep on at this face, though,” Killashandra said, strewing the shattered fragments of the imperfect crystal down the precipice.
“I’ve not sung crystal long enough to argue,” Fergil said, grinning cheerfully at her as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
His candor reassured her as much as his subtle compliment.
“We’ll play my hunch, at least for today, then.” They ran across one other short fissure which ruined a tonic octave. Once past that, she could tell from the ring, mountain deep, that they were on to a fine, pure vein.
“Enough to buy Parnell’s World at current prices,” she told Fergil and laughed at the anticipatory gleam in his eyes. “The trouble is we wouldn’t live long enough to cut it all.”
“Why not?” Fergil demanded with a bark of exultant laughter. “Singers can last forever if they’re good…”
“If they’re lucky…”
He swung on her. “You’re good, one of the best, and you’ve been singing for…”
“Enough!” Suddenly she didn’t want to know, and it angered her to think that he knew. “I’m still singing. And let’s stop chattering and start cutting. That’s what we’re here for.”
She belted out a G and they cut a five note dominant before crystal began to murmur evening song.
That night, Killashandra would have preferred solitude to ponder some of the contradictions in Fergil but, as if he sensed her disquiet, he distracted her with loverly nonsense and skillful lovemaking. It was one thing to listen to night crystal song by yourself: quite another to hear the same serenade over the roar of the blood at climax. And very flattering to hear a man’s voice crying out his pleasure in you. Killashandra’d forgotten that facet of singing duet.
By high noon the next day, they had to work with blinder-slits, but the cuttings were fabulous. No partner could have been as good as Fergil now he’d hit his stride. Whatever her reservations had been the previous day, his performance now dispelled them. His voice and hers blended, caught resonances that could be heard echoing four canyons beyond: his cutter worked as swiftly and surely as hers, instinctively finding the axes of the octagons and dodecahedrons, producing symmetrical sets as neatly as she did. She was quite ready to concede that they two might well level the blue mountain when the alarms began.
“Hey, that’s the dew bell!”
“In weather like this!” Killashandra swung around to the northwest. No storm sign there at all. “Keep cutting. It’s only a dew bell.”
He finished the cut he was on, but when she started to sing another he yanked her cutter from her.
“Lanzecki warned me specifically about you and storm signals.”
“Look, I’ve sung crystal long enough to know safety margins. Something in here tells me when to go. That’s why I’ve kept my wits.” She glanced at the half-full container. “The dew bell only means alert. And we can finish that out.”
He shook his head and motioned her to the flitter.
“You nardy fool! Give me back my cutter!” She made a grab for it. He stepped into the flitter with the cutters just as another warning sounded.
“Several hours, huh?” he taunted, keeping his body between her and the narrow path to the flitter’s portal as he heaved the half-full crate into the lock. “We’ve four crates and no more time, Killashandra. That mountain’s not going anywhere.”
“The storm’ll change the frequencies, flaw the surface,” she shrieked. “We’ve cut deep. It could fissure and crack the mother rock.” She flung a protective arm against the face they’d been working so successfully. “We’ve thirds and fifths. Two full octaves. Please, Fergil? Just one more. I’ve got to get off this barfing world! I’ve got to!”
He hesitated for a fraction, twisting his head at the siren gleam of resonating blue crystal. If she could just edge past him to the flitter…
He caught her shoulder full with a narcotic blash, and she hadn’t time to curse him before unconsciousness overwhelmed her.
“I had to do it, Killa,” someone was saying. “Lanzecki told me how you’d act. Killa! Killa?”
She tried to strike out at him as consciousness returned but she was strangely hampered. And woke completely to find herself up to the neck in a hot radiant bath, Fergil crouched by the tub edge, holding her head out of the liquid.
“You misbegotten, sterile offshoot of degenerate perverts with blurred chromosomes from an outcasts’ planet… if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll warp you into early senility.”
“Killa! I had to. The storm was a variant. We nearly didn’t get out of the Milekeys at all. If you’d been in your flitter…”
“Leave the boy alone, Killashandra. He’s settled an old account of yours.” Lanzecki’s face appeared beyond Fergil’s shoulder. “There are nine scrambled singers lost in the Milekeys in this storm. If you hadn’t been paired with Fergil, you’d’ve been one, too.”
“And you’d’ve lost your blues, wouldn’t you? That’s all you care about really, Lanzecki! Isn’t it?”
She was screaming the last words because the crystal pain in her bones began to grab at her spine. She had gone back into the Ranges too soon.
“Where’s the barfing medic?” she shrieked, writhing.
“What’s the matter with her, Lanzecki?” cried Fergil.
The concern in his voice, the way he swung accusingly at the Guildmaster was balm to Killashandra’s soul. But the expression on Lanzecki’s face, almost pitying, was the final outrage.
“Get out of here, Lanzecki!” She grabbed at his hand at the same time, so he’d feel the crystal shock coursing through her body, so he’d have a taste experientially of what the farding Guild was demanding of her. “You forced me back too soon. How d’you like a taste of it?” To her surprise, Lanzecki stoically endured her grasp. It was Fergil who broke her hold and then dropped her hand as if it had burned him.
“What’s wrong with her?” Fergil demanded.
“Sometimes,” Lanzecki said in a soft distant tone, “a singer seems to be keyed into the last crystal he’d cut before a storm, and experiences the storm, too.”
” Where’s that medic, Lanzecki?”
The man appeared suddenly and Killashandra felt the coolness of air pressure and the merciful oblivion.
“You can’t ask her to go out again, Lanzecki. You can’t!” Fergil’s voice was stern. He was a good man, Killashandra thought, standing up against Lanzecki, against his own Guildmaster. She wasn’t really concerned, though, with the argument going on over her limp body.
When Lanzecki answered, also from a distance, his voice was dull and lifeless. “She’s the only one cutting blues, Fergil.”
“We brought in close to four crates…”
Lanzecki gave a mirthless snort. “When we need forty to ease the emergency?”
“Forty?” Fergil’s voice strangled on the repetition.
Killashandra let herself slip back into oblivion. Fergil was her champion. She could rest. She had to rest. For some reason that escaped her…
She was conscious first of the ache in her bones and the soreness that tenanted her entire body. She tried to ignore that, thinking beyond herself to externals and felt… the warmth of another body. The warmth… the comfort… the sensation of an arm around her waist, limp-handed, but the fingers loosely laced through hers. Puzzled, she moved slightly to peer at the face, but the room was dark. Carefully, she inched her free arm forward, pressed the bedlight and saw the ugly-attractive face of the man sleeping beside her. Strange.
She must have been out in the Ranges a long time for the ache to be still with her. Usually, three or four radiant baths sufficed to remove the worst of it. Who was this man? It was undeniably comfortable in his arms, and she felt protected. A nice, unusual feeling. Obviously he was no stranger to her, or her bed. They fitted too comfortably together.
She wriggled closer… and he roused.
He had gray eyes. That was right, but something in her look must have alerted him.
“Have you forgotten me again, Killashandra? I’m Fergil. And really, my dear girl, if you keep on forgetting me like this I shall be hurt.”
“Fergil?” The name did have a familiar taste in her mouth. “Oh, Fergil!” And she burrowed into the safe, remembered arms as all too painful memories surged back at his cues.
He held her, comforting her and she knew now why she ached so and what was in store for her. And Fergil. And she dreaded the Ranges and then suddenly, did not. Fergil would be with her, and memories that were pleasant reviewed themselves. As long as she had Fergil with her she could remember things easily. Memory now was far more preferable to blank ignorance.
The storm had blown itself out finally the morning Lanzecki came by to inquire about her progress.
“I’m the only one singing blues, aren’t I?” Killashandra asked the Guild master.
He nodded.
“Lanzecki, she’s not well enough to sing crystal yet,” Fergil said, throwing a protective arm about her shoulders.
“She is the only one singing blues…”
“You said you’d mobilized every singer to prospect…”
“So I have. Anyone who can handle a cutter is out in the Ranges now and Killa…”
“Haven’t you recalled Formeut…?” Fergil sounded desperate.
“He’s en route, but the situation worsens…”
“Killashandra brought you in three and a third crates…”
“As I told you then, we require forty at the bare minimum…”
“She can’t possibly cut forty crates…”
The Guildmaster drew himself up. “Unless Killashandra operates her own claim, I am empowered to obtain its direction so that…”
“No one works my claim but me!” Killashandra struggled to her feet, shaking now with anger rather than crystal shock.
Fergil thrust his body between her and Lanzecki. “How the flaming hell can you rationalize that in Guild Law?” Fergil was furious, too. “It’s her right…”
“Which can be set aside with due cause…” Lanzecki held out a plastic flimsy on which were impregnated the GCS seals.
With a sinking terror, Killashandra knew she had no alternative now.
“He’s bluffing,” Fergil cried. “He’s trying to murder you.”
“He’s not bluffing,” Killashandra said, dully staring at the flimsy, but she didn’t refute the second charge.
“I’m not trying to murder her either, Fergil,” Lanzecki said in a weary tone, “because I am within my authority to insist that you double with her again. The sooner you two can cut the required quota the sooner this,” and he shook the flimsy, “can be destroyed and… forgotten.”
“Easily forgotten!” said Killashandra in a barking sneer. “But you overlook one factor, Lanzecki. What if the storm has split the mountain to shards?” and she devoutly wished it true.
