Continuum 1, page 13
part #1 of Continuum Series
The console muttered something back to him but, like all public facilities, the audio was shielded from anyone not in its direct line.
“Well, now that’s a more reasonable attitude,” the man said. “As to my credentials, I’m Carrik of the Heptite Guild. Yes, that’s what I said. And I could hear the crystal whine right through the walls so I know farging well how bad the drive is.” Another pause. “Thanks, but I’ve paid my bill already. No, that’s all right. Yes…” and Killashandra could see that the gratitude irritated Carrik. “Oh, as you will.” He stepped back, jerking his head for the attendant to take his place at the unit.
“And make that for two,” Carrik said over his shoulder at the man, as he cupped his hands under Killashandra”s elbow and led her to a secluded booth.
“I’ve a bottle of wine over there,” she said, half-protesting, half-laughing at his peremptory escort.
“You’ll have better shortly. I’m Carrik and you’re…”
“Killashandra Ree.”
He smiled, gray eyes lighting briefly with surprise. “That’s a lovely name.”
“Oh, come now. Surely you can do better than that?”
He laughed, absently blotting the sweat on his forehead and upper lip as he slid into his place.
“I could and I will but it still is a lovely name. A musical one. What did I say wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
He gave her a skeptical look for that insincere disclaimer just as the attendant came bustling up with a chilled bottle, bowing as he offered it.
Carrik peered at the label. “I’d prefer the ’72 and… some Forellan biscuits, if you have them? Good, and Aldebaran paste? Hmmm. Well, I’ll revise my opinion of Fuerte.”
“Really, I only just finished…” Killashandra began.
“On the contrary, my dear Killashandra Ree, you’ve only just started.”
“Oh?” Any one of Killashandra’s former associates would have modified his attitude at that tone in her voice.
“Yes,” Carrik continued blithely, a sparkling challenge in his eyes, “for this is a night for feasting and frolicking — on the management, as it were. Having just saved the facility from being leveled, my wish — and yours — is their command. They’ll be more grateful,” he continued in a droller tone, “when they take that drive down and see the cracks in the crystals. Off the true by a hundred vibes at least.”
Her half-formed intention of making a dignified exit died and she stared at Carrik. It took a highly trained ear to have caught that variation in pitch.
“Off a hundred vibes…? What do you mean? Are you a musician?”
Carrik stared at her as if she ought to know who, or what, he was. He looked to see where the attendant was and then, leaning indolently back in the seat, smiled at her in an enigmatic fashion.
“Yes, I think you’d say I was a musician. Are you?”
“Not anymore,” Killashandra replied in a caustic tone. Her desire to leave returned with irresistible intensity. She’d been able for a very short time to forget why she was at a spaceport. He’d reminded her and she wanted no more such reminders.
His hand, fingers gripping hard into the flesh of her arm, held her in her seat. The attendant came bursting back with another chilled bottle which Carrik accepted and gestured him to pour. Carrik smiled at Killashandra, half daring her to contest his restraint in front of the attendant. Despite herself,
Killashandra discovered she couldn’t start a scene and she’d no real grounds — yet — for a personal-liberty-infringements charge. He grinned at her, knowing her dilemma, and had the audacity to give her a semi-insolent toast as he took the traditional sample sip of the wine.
“Yes, an excellent vintage. How long must we wait for the paste and biscuits?”
“A few moments, sir. We’re warming the biscuits. They take the paste so much better then.”
“At least they know how to serve it properly,” Carrik told Killashandra in a patronizingly blasé tone.
The attendant who would have screamed insult at any other time bowed and smiled at Carrik and scurried away for the delicacies.
“How do you get away with that?” Killashandra asked Carrik.
He smiled. “Try the wine, Killashandra.” And his smile suggested that this was going to be a long evening and the prelude to an intimate association.
In protest Killashandra stood up, but she sat down again immediately, very hard, an action imposed on her by Carrik whose eyes glittered with anger and amusement.
“Who are you?” she demanded, angry now.
“I’m Carrik of the Heptite Guild,” he repeated cryptically.
“And that gives you the right to infringe on my personal freedom?”
“It does if you heard that crystal whine.”
“How do you construe that?”
“Try the wine first, Killashandra Ree. Surely your throat must be dry and I imagine you’ve got a skull ache from that subsonic torture. That would account for your shrewish temper.”
Actually she did have a pain in her head. The sudden reseating had made that obvious. He was right about her dry throat… and about her shrewish temper. But he’d modified that criticism by stroking her hand caressingly.
“I must apologize for my bad manners,” he said without genuine remorse but with a charming smile. “That crystal whine is so unnerving. It brings out the worst in us.”
She nodded as she sipped the wine. It was fantastic. She looked at him with delight and pleasure. He patted her arm again and gestured her to drink more.
“Who are you, Carrik of the Heptite Guild, that port authorities listen and control towers order exorbitant delicacies in gratitude?”
“You don’t really know?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I did know,” she said with a show of her characteristic acerbity.
“Where have you been all your life that you’ve never heard of the Heptite Guild?”
“I’ve been studying music in Fuerte,” she said, spitting out the words.
“You wouldn’t, by any chance, have perfect pitch?” The question, both unexpected and too casually said, caught her halfway into a foul temper.
“Yes, I do but I don’t —”
His face which was not unattractive in its most supercilious expressions became almost radiant with unfeigned elation.
“What fantastic luck! I shall have to tip the agent who ticketed me here! Why this is unbelievable luck…”
“Luck? If you knew why I was here —”
“I don’t care why. You are and I am.” He took both her hands and seemed to devour her face with his eyes, grinning with such intense joy she found herself embarrassingly smiling back.
“Oh, luck indeed, my dear girl. Fate, destiny, Karma, Lequol, Fidalkoram, whatever you care to call this coincidence of our life lines, I ought to order bottles of this wine for that lousy shuttle pilot for letting his crystals sour.”
“I don’t know what you’re ranting about, Carrik of Heptite,” Killashandra said, but she was not impervious to the compliments or the charm he exuded. She knew that she tended to put men off by her self-assurance and here was a well-traveled off-worlder, a man of obvious rank and position, genuinely taken with her, however inexplicably.
“You don’t?” He teased her for the banality of her protest and she closed her mouth on the rest of her customary rebuff. “Seriously,” he went on, stroking the palms of her hands with his fingers as if to soothe the anger from her, “have you never heard of crystal singers?”
“Crystal singers? Crystal tuners, yes.”
He dismissed tuners with a contemptuous flick of his fingers. “Imagine singing a note, a pure clear C, and hearing it answered across an entire mountain range?”
She stared at him.
“Go up a third, or down, it makes no difference. Sing out and hear the harmony come back at you. A whole mountainside pitched to C, and another sheer wall of pink quartz echoing back in a dominant. Night brings out the minors, like an ache in your breast, the most beautiful pain in the world because the music of the crystal is in your bones, in your blood…”
“You’re mad!” Killashandra dug her fingers into his hands to shut off those words. They conjured too many painful associations. She simply had to forget all that. “I hate music. I hate anything to do with music”
He regarded her with disbelief for a moment and then, with an unexpected tenderness and concern reflected in his eyes, he put an arm around her shoulders and drew himself against her despite her resistance.
“My dear girl, what happened to you today?”
A moment before she would have swallowed glass shards rather than confide in anyone but the warmth in his voice, his solicitude, were so timely and unexpected that the whole of her personal disaster came tumbling out. He listened to every word, occasionally squeezing her hand with sympathetic understanding. But at the end of the recital, she was amazed to see the fullness in his eyes as tears threatened to embarrass her.
“My dear Killashandra, what can I say? There’s no possible consolation for such a personal catastrophe as that! And there you were,” and his eyes were brilliant with what Killashandra chose to interpret as admiration, “having a bottle of wine as coolly as a queen. Or,” and he leaned over her, grinning maliciously, “were you just gathering enough courage to step under a shuttle?” He kept hold of her when she tried to free herself at his outrageous suggestion. “No, I can see that suicide was furthest from your mind.” She subsided at that implicit compliment. “Although,” and his expression altered thoughtfully, “you might have inadvertently succeeded if that shuttle’d been allowed to take off again. If I hadn’t been here to stop it…” He flashed her that charmingly reprehensible smile of his.
“You’re full of yourself, aren’t you?” But her accusation was said in jest for she found his autocratic manner an irresistible contrast to anyone of her previous acquaintance.
He grinned unrepentantly and nodded towards the remains of their exotic snack, which the attendant had obsequiously deposited on the table at some point during Killashandra’s tale.
“Not without justification, dear girl. But look, you’re free of any commitments right now, aren’t you?” he asked, eagerly. When she hesitantly nodded, “Or is there a friend you’ve been seeing?” He asked that almost savagely, as if he’d eliminate any rival immediately.
Later Killashandra might remember how adroitly Carrik had handled her, preying on her unsettled state of mind, on her essential femininity, but that tinge of jealousy was highly complimentary and the eagerness in his eyes, in his hands, was not feigned.
“No one to matter or miss me.”
Carrik looked so skeptical that she reminded him that she’d devoted all her energies to singing.
“Surely not all?” He mocked her for such dedication.
“No one to matter,” she repeated firmly.
“Then I will make an honest invitation to you. I’m off-world on holiday. I don’t have to be back to the Guild till… well,” and he gave a nonchalant shrug, “when I wish. I’ve all the credits I need… Help me spend them. It’ll purge the music school from your system.”
She looked at him squarely, for their acquaintanceship was of so brief and hectic a duration she simply hadn’t thought of him as a possible companion. She didn’t quite trust him. She was both attracted and repelled by his domineering, highhanded ways and yet he presented a challenge to her. He was certainly the diametric opposite of the young men she’d encountered on Fuerte.
“We don’t have to stay on this mudball either.”
“Why did you come?”
He laughed. “I’m told I haven’t been on Fuerte before. I can’t say it lives up to it’s name — or maybe you’ll live up to the name for it? Oh come now, Killashandra,” he said when she bridled. “Surely you’ve been jollied before? Or have music students changed so much since my day?”
“You studied music?”
An odd shadow flickered through his eyes. “Probably. I don’t rightly remember. Another time, another life perhaps.” Then his charming smile deepened, and a warmth came into his expression that she found rather unsettling. “Tell me, what’s on this planet that’s fun to do?”
Killashandra considered for a moment and then blinked. “You know, I haven’t an earthly.”
“Then we’ll find out together!”
What with the wine, his cajoling importunities, her own recklessness, Killashandra could not withstand his invitation. She ought to do so many things, she knew, but “ought” got suspended someplace during the third bottle of that classic vintage. After spending the rest of the night in his arms in the most expensive accommodation of the spaceport hostelry, Killashandra decided that she’d suspend duty for a few days and be kind to the charming visitor.
The travel console popped out dozens of cards on the resort possibilities of Fuerte, more than she’d ever suspected the planet boasted. But then her means had been limited and so had her time. She’d never water-skiied so Carrik decided they’d both try that. He ordered a private skimmer to be ready within the hour. As he sang cheerily at the top of a dammed good bass voice, floundering in the elegant sunken bathtub of the suite, Killashandra recalled some vestige of self-preserving shrewdness and tapped out a few discreet inquiries on the console.
“‘Crystal singer’ — colloquial/universal euphemism for the members of the Heptite Guild, planet based Ballybran, Regulus System, A-S-F/128/4. Ballybran crystals, vital to the production of coherent light, and as modules in tachyon drive components, are limited to the quartz mountains of Ballybran.” She skimmed the intricate geological assay. “The cutting of Ballybran crystal is a highly skilled art and requires the inherent ability of perfect pitch. Crystal cutters are perforce members of the Heptite Guild which trains and maintains its applicants, exacting ten percent tithe from all working members. The current membership of the Guild is 425 but fluctuates considerably. Aspirants are advised that this profession is rated “highly dangerous” and the Heptite Guild is required to give full particulars of the dangers involved before contracting new members.”
Four hundred and twenty-five was an absurdly small membership for a universal Guild supplying an element essential to galactic intercourse, Killashandra thought. Most guilds ran to four hundred million on a universal basis. But that explained why Carrik had been insistent to know if she’d perfect pitch. “Full particulars of the dangers involved” didn’t dissuade Killashandra one iota. Danger was relative.
There was more to the print out, mainly about the type of crystal cut, the types of subsonic cutters especially developed to slice the living quartz from the mountains, technical information which was beyond Killashandra’s musically oriented education. She aborted the rest of that tape and asked for a check on Heptite Guildman Carrik. Anyone could pose as a member of a Guild — chancers often produced exquisitely forged documentation but a computer check could not be forged. She got the affirmation that Carrik was a member in good standing of the Heptite Guild, currently on leave of absence, and a repro of Carrik rolled out of the console, dated a scant five days before. Well, he was who he said he was, and doing what he said he was doing. His being a bona fide Guild member was a safeguard for her so she could relax in his offer of an honest invitation to share his holiday. He’d not leave her to pay the charges if he decided to skip off-world unexpectedly. She smiled to herself, stretching sensuously. Carrik thought himself lucky, did he? Well, so did she. The last vestige of “ought” was the fleeting thought that she “ought to” register herself with the Fuertan Central Computer as a transient but, as she was by no means obligated to do so as long as she didn’t require subsistence, she did nothing.
At that moment several of her classmates began to experience some twinges of anxiety for her. Everyone knew Killashandra must have been terribly upset by the examiners’ verdict. While it served her right, in some opinions, for being such an overbearing conceited grind, the kinder of heart felt oddly disquieted about her disappearance. So did Maestro Esmond Valdi.
They probably wouldn’t have recognized Killashandra sluicing about on waterskis on the southern waters of the western continent, or swathed in elegant clothes, escorted by a tall distinguished man to whom the most supercilious hoteliers deferred.
It was a glorious feeling for Killashandra to have unlimited funds. Carrik encouraged her to spend and practice permitted her to suspend what few scruples remained to her from years of barely getting by on student credits. She did have the grace to protest his extravagance at the outset.
“Not to worry, pet, I’ve got it to spend,” Carrik reassured her. “I made a killing in dominant thirds in the Blue Range about the time some idiot revolutionists blew half a planet’s reactors out of existence.” He paused, his eyes narrowed as he recalled something not quite pleasant. “I was lucky on shape, too. It’s not enough, you see, to catch the resonances when you’re cutting. You’ve got to chance what shape to cut and that’s where you’re made or broken as a crystal singer. You’ve got to remember political scenes. Like that revolution on Hardesty.” He pounded the table in emphasis, obtusely pleased with that memory. “I did remember that all right when it mattered.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gave her a quick look. “Not to worry, pet.” His standard evasive phrase. “Come give me a kiss and get the crystal out of my blood.”
There was nothing crystalline about his lovemaking nor the enjoyment he got out of her body, so Killashandra elected to forget how often he avoided answering her questions about crystal singing. At first she felt that, well, the man was on holiday and wouldn’t want to talk about his work. Then she had the feeling that he resented her questions as if they were distasteful to him and that he wanted, above all other things, to forget crystal singing. That didn’t forward her ends but Carrik was not a malleable adolescent, imploring her grace and favor. So she helped him forget crystal singing.
