That reminded her of Shillawn, and of other credit-debit discussions.  She keyed the Guild's commissary, ordered additional furnishings, rugs of the Ghni weavers, and by 1400, when Concera touched her door chime, Killashandra had wall-screens that mixed the most unlikely elements from an ice-world to the raving flora of the voracious Eobaron planets.  Startling, but a complete change from sterility.

      Concera, a woman of medium height and slender build, glided into the main room, exclaimed at the sight of the wall-screens, and looked questioningly at Killashandra.

      "Oh, aren't you clever?  I would never have thought of combining different worlds."  Do come right along.  He has such a temper at the best of times, but without his skill, we, the Singers I mean, would be in a terrible way.  He is a superior craftsman, which is why one humors his odd temper.  This way."

      Concera covered quite a bit of ground with her gliding gait, and Killashandra had to stretch her legs to keep pace.

      "You'll get to know where everything is very soon.  It's nice to be by oneself, I feel, instead of in a pack, but then different people have different tastes," and Concera peered sideways at Killashandra to see if she agreed.  "Of course, we come from all over the galaxy, so one is bound to find someone compatible.  This is the eighth level where most of the technical work is done — naturally the cutters are made here, as they are the most technical of all.  Here we are."

      Concera paused at the open entrance and, with what seemed unexpected courtesy, pushed Killashandra ahead of her into a small office with a counter across the back third and a door leading into a workshop.  Her entry must have triggered an alarm in the workroom, for a man, his sun reddened face set in sour lines, appeared in the doorway.

      "You're this Killashandra?" he demanded.  He beckoned to her and then saw Concera following.  "You, I told you you'd have to wait, Concera.  There's no point, no point at all, in making you a handle for three fingers.  You'll only outgrow it, and there's all that work could be put to better use."

      "I thought it might be a challenge for you — "

      "I've all the challenges I need, Concera."  He replied with such vehemence that when he returned his stare to Killashandra, she wondered if his disagreement with the woman would spill over on to her.  "Let me see your hands."

      Killashandra held them, palm up, over the counter.  He raised his eyebrows as he felt with strong impersonal fingers across the palm, spread her fingers to see the lack of webbing from constant practice, the hard muscle along the flat of the hand and thumb pad.

      "Used your hands right, you have."  He shot another glance at Concera.

      It was only then that Killashandra noticed that the first two fingers on Concera's left hand had been sheared off.  The stumps were pinkish white, healed flesh but oddly shaped.  It occurred to Killashandra in a rush that made her stomach queasy that the two missing digits were regenerating.

      "If you stay, you be quiet.  If you go, you won't be tempted.  This'll take two — three hours."

      Concera elected to leave, which had no positive effect on the morose technician.  Killashandra had naively assumed that tuning a cutter would be a simple matter, but it was a tedious process, taking several days.  She had to read aloud for a voice print from boring printout on the history and development of the cutting devices.  She learned more than she needed to know — some of the more complicated mechanisms proved unreliable in extremes of weather; a once-popular model was blamed for the high-voltage discharge which had carbonized the corpse Killashandra saw on Shankill.  The most effective and reliable cutter, refined from Barry Milekey's crude original, required that the user have perfect pitch.  It was a piezoelectric device that converted the Crystal Singer's vocal note and rhythm into high frequency shock waves on an infrasonic carrier.  The cutting edge of the shock wave was pitched by the Singer to the dominant tone of the "struck" crystal face.

      Once set to a voice pattern, the infrasonic device could not be altered.  Manufacture of such cutters was restricted to the Guild and safeguarded yet again by computer assembly, the program coding known only by the Guild Master and his executive assistant.

      As Concera had mentioned, the technician was a temperamental man.  When Killashandra was reading aloud, he was complaining about various grievances with the Guild and its members.  Concera and her request for a three fingered handle was currently his favorite gripe — "Concera is cack-handed, anyway, and always splitting her grips."  Another was that he ought to have had another three weeks fishing before returning to work.  The fish had just started to bite, and would she now sing an octave in C.

      "She sang quite a few octaves in various keys and decided that there were worse audiences than apparently receptive audition judges.  She hadn't used her voice since the day she met Carrik; she was sore in the gut from supporting tone and aware the sound was harsh.

      When Concera glided into the room, Killashandra was overwhelmingly relieved.

      "Back tomorrow, same time.  I'll do casts of your good ten fingers."  And the man sent an arch glance at Concera.

      Concera hurried Killashandra out of the workshop and the office.

      "He does like his little jokes," she said, leading the way down one corridor and left at the next.  "I only wanted a little favor so I could go back into the ranges without wasting so much time."  She entered a room labeled "Training," sighing as she closed the door and flicked on the privacy light.  "Still" — and she gave Killashandra a bright smile, her eyes sliding from a direct contact — "we have your training to take in hand."  She waved Killashandra to one of the half-dozen chairs in the room facing a large hologram projector.  She picked up a remote control unit from a shelf, darkening the room and activating the projector.  The outsized lettering of the Guild's rules, regulations, and precepts hovered before them.  "You may have had a Milekey transition, but there's no easy way to get over this."

      "Tukolom — "

      "Tukolom handles only basic information, suitable for anyone joining the Guild in any capacity."  Concera's voice had a note of rancor.  "Now you must specialize and repeat and repeat."  Concera sighed.  "We all have to," she added, her voice expressing patient resignation.  "If it's any consolation to you, I'd be doing this by myself and I've always found it much easier to explain than memorize."  Her voice lightened.  "You'll hear even the oldest singers muttering regs and restricts any night in the Commons Hall.  Of course, you'll never appreciate this drill until it's vital!  When you reach that point, you won't remember how you know what you do.  Because that's when you really know nothing else."

      Despite Concera's persuasive tone, Killashandra found the reasoning specious.  Having no choice in study program or teacher, Killashandra set herself to memorize regulations about working claims, claiming faces, interference with claims, reparations and retributions, fines and a clutter of other rules for which she could see no need since they were obvious to anyone with any sense.

      When she returned to the privacy of her quarters and the anomalies of her wall-screens, she checked with the infirmary and was told that Rimbol was weak but had retained all his senses.  Shillawn, Borton, and Jezerey were satisfactory, in the proper use of that word.  Killashandra also managed to extract from data retrieval the fact that injured Singers like Concera and Borella undertook the role of preceptor because of the bonus involved.  That explained the spiteful remarks and ambivalent poses.

      The next morning, when Concera drilled her on her understanding of each section of the previous day's subjects, Killashandra had the notion that Concera silently recited paragraph and section just one step ahead of her pupil.

      The afternoon was spent uncomfortably, in the workshop of the fisherman, where casts were made of her hands.  The Fisher maundered on about having to make hundreds of casts during a Singer's lifetime.  He told her she wasn't to complain to him about blisters from hand grips an affliction that he alleged was really caused by a muscling up that wasn't any fault of his.  Killashandra spent that evening redecorating her room.

      She had a morning drill with Concera, spent a half hour with the Fisher, who grumbled incessantly about a bad morning's fishing, the inferiority of the plastic he had to work with, and the privileges of rank.  Killashandra decided that if she were to ruffle at every cryptic remark tossed her way, she'd be in a state of constant agitation.  The remainder of the afternoon, Concera reviewed her on crystal shapes, tones, and the combinations that were marketable at the moment:  black crystals in any form always having the highest value.  Killashandra was to review the catalog, commit to memory which shape was used for what end product, the range in price, and the parameters of value variation in each color.  She was taken through the research departments, which sought new uses for Ballybran crystal.  There she noticed several people with the eye adjustment of Enthor.

      In the days that followed, she was given instruction in the sled-simulator, "flying" against mach storm winds.  By the end of the first lesson, she was as battered, sweaty, and trembling as if the flight had been genuine.

      "You'll have to do better than that," the instructor commented unsympathetically as she reeled out of the simulator.  "Take a half hour in the tank and come back this afternoon."

      "Tank?"

      "Yeah, the tank.  The radiant fluid.  Left-hand taps.  Go on!  I'll expect you back at 1500."

      Killashandra muttered the terse instructions all the way back to her rooms, shedding her clothes as she made her way to the tank.  She turned on the left-hand taps, and a viscous liquid oozed out.  She got the temperature she wanted and dubiously lowered herself into the tank.  In minutes, tension and stress left her muscles, and she lay, buoyed by the radiant bath, until the stuff cooled.  That afternoon, her instructor grudgingly admitted that she had improved.

      A few days later, half a morning through a solo training flight across the White Sea where thermal patterns made good practice, every visual warning device on the controls turned red, and a variety of sirens, klaxons, bells, and nerve-tinglers was activated.  Killashandra immediately veered northeast to the Guild Complex and was relieved when half the monitors desisted.  The rest blared or blinked until she had landed the sled on its rack and turned off the power.  When she complained to her instructor about the warning overload, he gave her a long, scathing look.

      "You can't be warned too often about the approach of turbulence," he said.  "You Singers might be as deaf as some of us no matter how we rig cautions.  While you remember advice, remember this:  a mach storm won't give you a second chance.  We do our fardling best to insure that you have at least one.  Now change your gear for cargo handling.  A blow's on the way!"

      He strode off, waving to attract attention from a cluster of hangar personnel.

      The storm was not rated Severe and only the southeast section of the continent had been alerted.  Forty Singers had logged out in that general area, and thirty-nine straggled in.  The flight and hangar officers were conferring together as Killashandra passed them.

      "Keborgen's missing.  He'll get himself killed!"

      "He's been bragging he was out for black.  If he managed to remember where the claim is .  .  ."

      Killashandra had no excuse to linger near the two at that point, but when the other ships had been cleared and racked, she stayed on after the rest of the unloaders had been dismissed.

      The wind was not strong enough at the complex to require the erection of the baffles, so Killashandra stationed herself where she could watch the southern quadrant.  She also kept an eye on the two officers and saw them abandon their watch with a shrug of shoulders and shakes of the head.

      If Keborgen had actually cut black crystal, she would've liked to have unloaded it.  She wasn't needed on the sorting floor.  She consoled herself with the knowledge that she had racked up some danger credit already, and wasn't much in the red for decorating her room and days of uncredited instruction.  Being a recruit had had advantages.

      She was crossing the hangar to return to her quarters when she heard the sound, or rather felt it, like a thread dragged across exposed nerve ends.  She wasn't yet accustomed to her improved vision, so she shook her head and blinked, expecting to clear the spot on the right retina.  It stayed in position in the lower right-hand quadrant, dipping and swaying.  Not a shadow in her own eye but a sled, obviously on course for the complex.  She was wondering if she should inform anyone when wrecker personnel began to scramble for the heavy hoist sled.  In the hustle, no one noticed that Killashandra had joined the team.

      The wrecker didn't have far to go for the sled plowed into the hills forty klicks from the complex.  The comtech could get no response from the sled's pilot.

      "Bloody fool waited too long," the flight officer said, nervously slapping his fingers against his thigh.  "Warned him when he went out, not to wait too long.  But they never listen.  He repeated variations of those sentiments becoming more agitated as the wrecker neared the sled and the damage was visible.

      The wrecker pilot set his craft down four long strides from the Singer's sled.

      "You others get the crystal," the flight officer shouted as he plunged toward the crumbled bow of the sled, which was half buried in loose dirt.

      As Killashandra obeyed his order, she glanced back on the sled's path.  She could see, in the distance, two other slide marks before the crashing sled had bounced to a stop.

      The storage compartment had withstood impact.  Killashandra watched with interest as the three men released the nearest hatch.  As soon as they emerged with cartons, she darted in.  Then she heard the moans of the injured Crystal Singer and the drone of curses from the flight officer and medic attending him.

      The moment she touched the nearest carton, she forgot the injured man, for a shock, mild but definite, ran along her bones from head to heel to head.  She gripped the carrier firmly, but the sensation dissipated.

      "Move along.  Gotta get that guy back to the infirmary," she was told by returning crewmen.

      She picked the carton up, minding her steps, ignoring the exhortation of the crewmen who passed her out.  She crouched by the carton as the cocoon of the injured Singer was deftly angled into the wrecker.

      During the short trip back to the complex, she wondered why there was such a fuss.  Surely the symbiont would repair the man's injuries, given the time to do so.  She supposed that the symbiont relieved pain.  Borella hadn't appeared uncomfortable with her awful thigh wound, and Concera, given to complaints, had said nothing about pain in her regenerating fingers.

      As soon as the wrecker landed, the Singer was hurried to waiting meditechs.  Hugging the carton that she devoutly hoped contained black crystal, Killashandra walked straight through the storage area into the sorting room.  She had no problem finding Enthor, for the man almost bumped into her.

      "Enthor," she said, planting herself and pushing the carton at him, "I think this has black crystal."

      "Black crystal?"  Enthor was startled; he blinked and peered frowningly at her.  "Oh, it's you.  You?"  His lensed eyes widened in surprise.  "You?  What are you doing here?"  He half turned in the direction of the infirmary and then up to the recruits' level.  "No one's been cutting black crystal — "

      "Keborgen might have been.  He crashed.  This is from his sled."  She gave the carton an urgent shove against his chest.  "The flight officer said he had been out to cut blacks."

      Out of habit, Enthor took hold of the carton, quite unable to assimilate either her explanation or her sudden appearance.  Killashandra was impatient with Enthor's hesitation.  She did not want to admit to the contact shock she had felt in Keborgen's sled.  Deftly, she propelled Enthor at his table, and though still perplexed, he presented the ident to the scan.  His hands hovered briefly but dropped away as he twisted toward Killashandra.

      "Go on," she said, annoyed by his dithering.  "Look at them."

      "I know what they are.  How did you?"  Enthor's indecision was gone, and he stared, almost accusingly, into her eyes.

      "I felt them.  Open it.  What did Keborgen cut?"

      His unearthly eyes still on hers, Enthor opened the box and lifted out a crystal.  Killashandra caught her breath at the sight of the dull, irregular 15 centimeter segment.  Consciously, she had to make her lungs expel air as Enthor reverently unpacked two additional pieces that fit against the first.

      "He cut well," Enthor said, scrutinizing the trio keenly.  "He cut very well.  Just missing flaw.  That would account for the shapes."

      "He has cut his last," the deep voice of the Guild Master said.

      Startled, Killashandra whirled and realized that Lanzecki must have arrived moments before.  He nodded to her and then beckoned to someone in the storage area.

      "Bring the rest of Keborgen's cut."

      "Is there more black in it?"  Enthor asked Killashandra as he felt carefully about in the plaspacking.

      Killashandra was vibrantly aware of Lanzecki's intense gaze.

      "In that box or the cargo?"

      "Either," Lanzecki said, his eyes flickering at her attempt to temporize.

      "Not in the box," she said even as she ran her hand along the plasfoam side.  She swallowed nervously, glancing sideways at Lanzecki's imposing figure.  His clothing, which she had once thought dull, glinted in a richness of thread and subtle design very much in keeping with his rank.  She swallowed a second time as he gave a brief nod of his head and the six cartons from Keborgen's sled were deposited on Enthor's table.

      "Any more black crystal?"  Enthor asked.

      She swallowed a third time, remembered that the habit had irritated her in Shillawn, and ran her hands over the cartons.  She frowned, for a curious prickle rippled across her palms.

      "Nothing like the first one," she said, puzzled.

      Enthor raised his eyebrows, and she could only have imagined his eyes twinkling.  He opened a box at random and removed, carefully, a handful of cloudy slivers, displaying them to Lanzecki and Killashandra.  The other boxes held similar slivers.

      "Did he cut the triad first or last?"  Lanzecki spoke softly as he picked up a finger-long splinter, examining its irregularities.

      "He didn't say?"  Enthor ventured quietly.

      Lanzecki's sigh and the brief movement of his head answered that question.

      "I thought the precious symbiont healed — " Killashandra blurted out before she knew she was going to speak.

      Lanzecki's eyes halted her outburst.

      "The symbiont has few limitations:  deliberate and constant abuse is one.  The age of its host is another.  Add the third factor — Keborgen stayed too long in the range, despite storm warnings."  He turned back to look at the three pieces of black crystal on the weighplate and at the credit valuation blinking on the display.

      If Keborgen was dead, who inherited the credit?  She jumped as Lanzecki spoke again.

      "So, Killashandra Ree, you are sensitive to the blacks, and you have enjoyed a Milekey transition."

      Killashandra could not avoid the Guild Master's disconcerting appraisal.  He seemed neither as remote nor detached as he had the day she had; arrived at Shankill with Carrik.  His eyes, especially, were intensely alive.  A nearly imperceptible upward movement of his lips brought her restless gaze to his mouth.  Wide, well-shaped lips evidently reflected his thoughts more than eye, face, or body.  Did she amuse him?  No, probably not.  The Guild Master was not known for his humor; he was held in great respect and some awe by men and women who were awed by little and respected nothing but credit.  She felt her shoulders and back stiffen in automatic reaction to the flick of amusement.

      "Thank you, Killashandra Ree, for your prompt discovery of that triad," Lanzecki said with a slight inclination of his head that reinforced his gratitude.  Then he turned and was gone, as quickly as he had arrived.

      Exhaling, Killashandra leaned against Enthor's table.

      "Always good to know black when it's near you."  Enthor paused as he gingerly unpacked shards.  He blinked his eyes to focus on the weight display.  "Trouble is finding it in the first place."

      "What's the second place?" she asked impudently.

      Enthor blinked his lens into place and gave her a shrewd look.  "Remembering where the first place was!"

      She left him, walking back through Sorting to Storage and out onto the hangar deck, the shortest way back to an arc lift down to her quarters.  Hangar personnel were busy dismantling Keborgen's wreck She grimaced.  So a damaged ship was repaired as long and as often as necessary during its owner's lifetime — and then stripped.  Had Carrik's sled been dismembered?

      She halted at a sudden notion, wheeled and stared out at the hills in the direction of Keborgen's erratic last flight.  She half ran to the Hangar Ready Room for a look at the met printout, continuously displayed and updated by the minute.

      That storm to the southeast?  It's dissipating?

      The weather officer glanced up, a frown on his face.  Forestalling rejection, Killashandra held up her wrist-band.  He immediately tapped out a replay of the satellite recording, which showed the formation of the storm and its turbulent progress along the coast of the main continent and the Milekey Ranges.  The gale had blown up quickly and, as unpredictably as most Ballybran storms, caressed one large sector of the range and then roiled seaward across the edge of the Long Plain where warm air had met its colder mass.

      "I was on the wrecker which brought Keborgen in, but I must have dropped my wrist-unit there.  Can I use a skimmer?"

      The met officer shrugged.  "For all of me you can have a skimmer.  No weather to speak of in our zone.  Check with Flight."

      Flight thought her cack-handed to have dropped equipment and assigned her a battered vehicle.  She paused long enough to note that the recovery pattern of the wrecker was still displayed on the emergency screen.  Once she left the office, she made notes on her wrist unit.

      She unracked the skimmer and left the hangar at a sedate pace entirely consistent with a routine errand, then flew to the crash site.  She was increasingly possessed by the thought that Keborgen, trying to out run the storm, surely must have come back to the complex by the most direct route.  Though Concera had maundered on and on about how careful Singers were to protect their claims by using devious routes to and from, Keborgen might just as easily have flown straight in the hope of reaching safety.  His sled had come in well behind the others from the same area.

      Given that possibility, she could establish from data retrieval the exact second when the storm warning had been broadcast, compute the maximum speed of his sled, the direction of flight at the time of his crash, and deduce in what general area he had cut black crystal.  She might even do a probability computation on the length of time Keborgen had delayed at his claim by the span of time it had taken the other thirty-nine Singers to return.

      She hovered the skimmer over the crash site.  The sharp mounds were beginning to soften as a brisk breeze shifted the soil.  Skewing the skimmer, she located the next skid mark and two more before she spotted the raw scrape across the bare rock of a higher slope.  She landed to examine the marks closely.  The scar was deeper on the north side, as if the sled had been deflected by the contact.  She stood in the mark and took bearings through her wrist unit.  Then she returned to the skimmer and quartered the sector, looking for any other evidence of Keborgen's faltering, bumping last flight.

      Shadows and sunset made it inadvisable for her to continue her search.  Killashandra checked her bearings and then returned to the complex.

CHAPTER 7

      Killashandra leaned back from the terminal in her room, noted that the time display marked an early-morning hour.  She was tired, her eyes hot with fatigue, and she was ravenous.  But she had every bit of data she could extract from the Guild's banks that might be useful in narrowing her search for Keborgen's black-crystal claim.  She keyed the program into the privacy of her personal record, then stood and walked stiffly, arching against the ache in her back, to the catering unit where she dialed for a hot soup.  Though she had stored the data, she couldn't stop thinking about her plan.  And all the obstacles to its implementation.

      Keborgen was dead.  His claims, wherever they had been, were now open according to the vast paragraphs on "Claims, the making and marking thereof, penalties for misappropriation, fines and restrictions," and all subparagraphs.  However, the claim first had to be found.  As Enthor had said, that was the first problem.  Killashandra might have theories about its location, but she had neither sled to get there and look nor cutter to take crystal from the "open" face.  Her research revealed that Keborgen had worked the claim for at least four decades and analysis proved that twelve black crystal cuttings had come from the same face, the next to last one some nine years previously.  The second problem, as Enthor had so pithily stated, was remembering.

      To relieve the tedium of drill.  Killashandra had asked Concera how Singers found their way back to claims after an absence, especially if memory was so unreliable.

      "Oh," Concera had replied airily, "I always remember to tell my sled what landmarks to look for.  Sleds have voice print recorders so they're dead safe."  She hesitated, looking in an unfocused way that was habitual with her.  "Of course, storms do sometimes alter landmarks, so it's wiser to record contour levels and valleys or gorges, things that aren't as apt to be rearranged by a bad blow.  Then, too," she continued in a brighter voice, "when you've cut at a particular face a few tunes, it resonates.  So if you can recall even the general direction and get there, finding the exact spot is much easier."

      "It isn't so much singing crystal then, as being sung to by crystal," Killashandra had noted.

      "Oh, yes, very well put," Concera said with the false cheerfulness of someone who hadn't understood.

      Killashandra finished the soup and wearily shuffled to the bedroom, shedding her coverall.  She wasn't unsatisfied with the information she'd accumulated.  She could narrow the search to older claim markings in the geographical area dictated by the top speed of Keborgen's elderly sled, the time the storm warning was issued, and the registered storm wind speed.

      She fretted about one point.  Keborgen's sled recorder.  She had seen the sled being dismantled, but would the Guild technicians have rescued the record for the data that might be retrieved?  She wasn't certain if anyone had ever broken a voice code.  It hadn't been so much as whispered that it was possible.  Though the rules did not state the Guild was able to take such an action, a terrible breach of privacy under FSP rights, the Charter didn't specifically deny the Guild that right, either, once the member was dead.  On the other hand, Trag had said that private personal records were irretrievable.

      The darkness and absolute silence of her bedroom compounded her sudden doubt.  The Guild could and occasionally did exhibit a certain ruthlessness.  For sanity's sake, she had better decide here and now whether or not the Guild adhered faithfully to its stated and endlessly cited principles.  She took a sudden comfort in the very length of the Charter.  Its voluminous paragraphs and sections obviously reflected contingencies and emergencies that had been dealt with over four hundred years of usage and abuse.

      With a sigh, Killashandra turned over.  Avoiding restrictions and defying laws were completely in the human condition.  As the Guild prohibited, it also protected or the bloody planet would have been abandoned to the spores and crystal.

      She woke later in the morning to the insistent buzz of her terminal.  She was informed that her cutter was now ready and she was to collect it and report to training room 47.  Groggy from insufficient sleep, Killashandra took a quick shower and ate a good meal.  She found herself directing glances to the computer console, almost as if she expected last night's data to spring from the cover and expose itself.

      Computers had to deal with fact, and she had one advantage that wouldn't compute:  a sensitivity to black crystal — Keborgen's black crystal.  Computers did not volunteer information, either, but she had few doubts that with the news of Keborgen's death, the opening of his rich claim would be widely known.  Only 39 Singers had come in from that same storm.  She couldn't know how many other Singers had returned from leave and were available to search.  She knew that the odds against her finding the claim were good on the one hand and unlikely on the other.  The delivery of her cutter she took as propitious.

      She was waiting for the lift when she heard her name called in an incredulous shout.

      "Killashandra!  I'm recovered.  I'm a Singer, too."

      Herself astonished, she turned to find Rimbol striding toward her.

      "Rimbol!"  She returned his enthusiastic embrace, acutely aware that she hadn't given him any thought at all in several days.

      "I was told you'd got through the transition satisfactorily, but no one else's seen you.  Are you all right?"  Rimbol held her from him, his green eyes searching her face and figure.  "Was it just the fever, or did you come see me at one point?"

      "I did at several points," she replied with perfect truth and instinctive diplomacy.  "Then I was told that I was interfering with your recovery.  Who else is through?"

      Rimbol's expression changed to sorrow.  "Carigana didn't make it.  Shillawn is deaf and has been assigned to research Mistra, Borton, Jezerey, bless the pair; in total twenty-nine made it.  Celee, the spacer, made only a tolerable adjustment, but he's got all his senses, so he's been shunted to shuttle piloting.  I don't think that goes against his grain, anyway."

      "And Shillawn?  Does he mind?"  Killashandra knew her voice was sharp, and Rimbol's face clouded until she hugged him.  He was going to have to learn not to care so much about people now.  "I really think Shillawn will be happier in research than cutting.  Celee was already a pilot, so he's lost nothing .  .  .  Antona told me Carigana wouldn't surrender to the spore."

      Rimbol frowned, his body stiffening so that she released him.

      "She rebelled against everything, Rimbol.  Didn't you ask Antona?"

      "No."  Rimbol ducked his head, a silly grin on his face.  "I was afraid to while others were going through transition."

      "Now it's all over.  And you're installed on Singer level."  She saw the wrist-band and showed him hers.  "Where 're you bound for now?"

      "To be fitted with my cutter."  His green eyes brightened with enthusiasm.

      "Then we can go together.  I'm to collect mine. They had entered the lift, and Rimbol half turned in surprise.

      "Collect it?"

      "They did tell you how long you've been ill.  didn't they?"  Killashandra knew her quick question was to give herself time.  Rimbol's eyes mirrored surprise and then perplexity.  "Oh, I lucked out.  I had what Antona calls a Milekey transition, so they pushed me out of the infirmary to make room for someone else and put me into training to keep me out of mischief.  Here we are, and don't mind the technician's manner.  He hates to be kept from his fishing."

      They had come to the cutter office and found Jezerey, Mistra, and two others.

      "Killashandra!  You made it!"

      Killashandra thought there was a note of unwelcome surprise in Jezerey's voice.  The girl looked gaunt and had lost her prettiness.

      "Quiet out here," the Fisher said, his voice cutting through Killashandra's attempt at reply.  He had a cutter in his hand, patently new.

      "You Killashandra," and he beckoned her brusquely to the counter as the others stepped back.

      Killashandra was uncomfortably aware of the attention focused on her as she accepted the device.  Then she curled her fingers around the power grip, the right hand on the guide, and forgot embarrassment in the thrill of being one step closer to the Crystal Ranges.  She gave a little gasp as she saw that her name had been incised in neat letters on the plas housing that covered the infrasonic blade.

      "Bring that back to be serviced after every trip, D'you hear?  Otherwise, don't fault me when it doesn't cut proper.  Understand?"

      Killashandra would have thanked him, but he had turned to the others, beckoning to Borton.  Cutter in hand, Killashandra turned and saw the indignation in Jezerey's eyes, the hurt, surprise, and betrayal in Rimbol's.

      "Antona tossed me out of the infirmary," she said, more to Rimbol than the others, but they all seemed to accuse her, "So the Guild put me to work."

      Holding her head high, she gave them all a polite smile and left the office.

      As she marched down the hall to the lift shafts, she was perversely angry with herself, with their ignorance, and with the Guild for thrusting her ahead of the others.  She remembered similar scenes in the Music Center when she had achieved a role or an instrumental solo after unremitting practice and knew that the majority of her peers had favored another.  Then she had been responsible.  Now, though she had done nothing, consciously, to provoke her fellow recruits, she was being faulted because she'd had a bit of luck, just as she'd been blamed at the Music Center for hard work.  What was the use!

      "Watch that fardling cutter!"  A savage tone interrupted her mortified self-pity, and someone shoved her to the right with unnecessary force.  "I said, watch it!"

      The man backed hastily away from her, for Killashandra had instinctively raised the cutter at the aggressive voice.  Her confusion was further complicated by the knowledge that she had been careless and now was acting the fool.  To be brought to task did not improve her temper.

      "It's not on."

      "It's bloody dangerous, on or off.  Haven't you had the proper guidance with that?"  The tall man glaring at her was Borella's companion from the shuttle.

      "Then complain to Borella!  She instructed us."

      "Borella?"  The Singer stared at her with a perplexed frown.  "What has she to do with you?"

      "I was one of her recent 'catch,' I believe was her word."

      His frown increased as his eyes flicked over her, pausing at the wristband.

      "Just received your cutter, my dear?" He smiled now with supercilious condescension.  "I'll forget any charge of discourtesy."  With a slight bow and a sardonic grin, he strode on to the workshop.

      She stared after the man, aware again of the strange magnetism of the Crystal Singer.  She'd been furious with him, and yet her anger had been partially fed by his diffidence and her wish to impress him.  Had Carrik once been like that, too?  And she too green to know?

      She continued to the lift and entered.  The encounter with the Singer had restored some perspective to her.  Whatever else, she was a Crystal Singer:  more of one than the rest of her class by a physical anomaly and a time factor that were no connivance of hers.

      As she entered training room 47, she received another surprise.  Trag was there, leaning against a heavy plastic table, arms folded across his chest, obviously awaiting her.

      "I'm not late?" she asked, and experienced a second jolt of confusion, for the tones of her question seemed to echo sourly in the room.  Then she saw the unmistakable plasfoam cartons on the table behind Trag.  "Oh, how curious?"

      "Soured crystal," he said, his deeper voice resounding as hers had.  Then he extended his hand for her cutter.

      She released it to him, somewhat reluctantly since it was so recent an acquisition.  He inspected every part of the device, even unsheathing the infrasonic blade, which he gave the keenest scrutiny.  He moved to her left side, proffering the cutter and watching as she took it by the grips.  He checked her hand position and nodded.

      "You are familiar with the controls?" he asked, although he must have known that the Fisher had carefully explained them.  "And the process of tuning?"  She nodded again, impatient with the catechism.

      Now with a disregard for its contents that made her catch her breath, he dumped onto the plastic table a crystal carton.  Trag grinned.

      "This is soured crystal.  Sent to us from some of the nearer systems which never bother to employ tuners.  These will teach you how to learn that weapon you carry."

      For one horrified second, Killashandra wondered if Trag had been a witness to her encounter with the other Singer.  She glanced down at the device which she realized, could be used as a weapon.

      From the carton, Trag took five octagons of rose crystal.  With a hammer similar to the one Enthor had used, he tapped each in turn.  The third crystal was sour, off significantly.

      "Now the five must be retuned to match.  I suggest you sing them a full note below this" — and he tapped the faulty octagon — "and shave the top of this until it rings pure against the infrasonic cutter."  He placed the soured crystal in an adjustable standing vise.  He tightened the braces and tugged to be sure the crystal was secure.  "When this sings properly, you merely recut the others in scale."

      "How did it go sour?"

      "Bracket flaw.  Common enough in rose quartz."

      "Dominant or minor?"

      "Minor will be acceptable."

      He nodded at her control grip, and she turned on the cutter, remembering to brace her body against the power that would surge through the handle.  Trag tapped the sour crystal with his hammer, and she sang the minor note below, twirling the tuner with her thumb until the sound of the cutter matched her pitch.

      The crystal screamed as she laid the blade against it.  It took every ounce of self-control she had not to pull away.

      "Slice it evenly," Trag commanded, his abrupt order steadying her.

      The rose scream blended into a purer tone as the infrasonic cutter completed its surgery.  Trag signaled her to turn off the cutter, ignoring her trembling hold.  He tapped the crystal, and it sang a pure A minor.  He tapped the crystal next in line.  A major.

      "Go to the G minor," he said, fastening the second octagon in place.

      Killashandra found it took an effort to erase the echo of the major note from her mind.  Turning on the cutter, setting the tuner to G minor, this time she was ready for the power surge and the cry of crystal.  It was not as shrill, but the rose octagon seemed to resist the change in note as she drew the blade across it.  Trag tapped the recut G minor and nodded approval, setting the third in the vise.

      When Killashandra had recut the five, she felt drained and, in a bizarre fashion, elated.  She had actually cut crystal.  She leaned against the table, watching Trag repack them and make appropriate notations on the carton.  Then he reached for a second container.  Bracket rub again, and Trag made a few derogatory comments on technicians who did not recognize that proper bracketing prolonged the life of crystal.

      "How would beginners like me learn if someone didn't make such mistakes?" she asked.  "You surely don't use fresh crystal from the ranges."

      "Those octagons were relatively new.  They ought not need tuning yet.  I object to carelessness in any form.''

      Killashandra rather thought he would and determined to give him no cause to complain about her.

      She recut the contents of nine boxes, twelve sets of crystal, blue, yellow, and rose.  She had earnestly hoped that one of the boxes might reveal black crystal and as the last box was unpacked to expose two squat blue dodecahedrons, one with a vertical split, she asked if black never had to be recut.

      "Not within my service," Trag said, glancing at her keenly.  "That is partly because the segments are separated and partly because their installation is handled by technicians of impeccable training and standard.  Black does not suffer from bracket erosion or mishandling.  Black crystal is too valuable."  He put the damaged blue into the brace, split side exposed.  "This will require a slightly different technique with your blade.  If you slice off the damaged portion entirely, you will have destroyed the symmetry of the form.  Therefore, the entire piece must be reshaped, scaled down in the dodecahedron.  Ordinarily, one goes from major to minor, minor to major down the scale.  This time, you must drop at least a sixth to achieve a pure note.  As blues are nearly as common as rose, error presents no great loss.  Relax.  Proceed."

      Killashandra had felt unequal to such an exercise, but Trag's inference that she could err with impunity stiffened her resolve.  She heard the sixth below the moment she tapped the blue, set her cutter, and was slicing before he had time to step out of her way.  She made the next two cuts without hesitation, listening to the change of pitch in the crystal.  Curtly, she nodded for him to turn the dodecahedron in the vise and did three more passes.  Only when she had completed the recutting did she turn off her device.  Then she stared challengingly at Trag.  Blandly, he placed the second crystal in the grips, tapped it and then the recut dodecahedron.  They were in tune with each other.

      "That is sufficient for one day, Trag."

      At the unexpected voice behind her, Killashandra whirled, the cutter again rising in automatic defense, as Lanzecki finished speaking.  With the slightest movement of his lips, he eyed the blade turned broadside to him.  Instantly, she lowered it and her eyes, embarrassed and agitated by her reaction, and utterly wearied by the morning's intense concentration.

      "I'd always heard that Fuerte was a pacific planet," Lanzechi said.  "Nevertheless, you take to cutting well, Killashandra Ree."

      "Does that mean I can get into the ranges soon?"

      She heard Trag's snort at her presumption, but Lanzecki did not reflect his chief assistant's attitude.  The brown eyes held hers.  Meeting that appraising stare, she wondered why Lanzecki was not a Crystal Singer:  he seemed much more, so much more than Carrik or Borella or any of the other Crystal Singers she had met or seen.

      "Soon enough not to jeopardize a promising career.  Soon enough.  Meanwhile, practice makes perfect.  This exercise" — and Lanzecki gestured to the boxes of tuned crystal — "is but one of several in which you must excel before you challenge the ranges."

      He was gone in one of those fluid movements that was swift enough to make Killashandra wonder if Lanzecki had actually made his visit.  Yet his brief appearance was undeniable by the effect he had on her and Trag.

      The assistant Guild Master was regarding her with covert interest.

      "Take a radiant bath when you reach your quarters."  Trag said.  "You are scheduled for sled simulator practice this afternoon."  He turned away in dismissal.

      The training pattern held until the next rest day, though she wished the two elements could have been reversed, with the sled simulation in the morning when her reflexes were fresher and the cutting in the afternoon so she could collapse.  There proved to be a reason for that apparently irrational schedule.  As she would invariably be flying the sled after she had cut crystal, she must learn to judge blunted reactions.

      The radiant baths, the viscous liquid a gentle pressure on her tired body, its thick whirling like the most delicate of massages, did freshen after a morning's intense cutting drill.  She checked with the computer and discovered that she was being paid a tuner's wage for her morning work but charged for the flight officer's instruction in the afternoon.

      After six days of such an exhausting routine, she looked forward to a day of relaxation.  A low-pressure ridge was moving in from the White Sea, so rest day might be cloudy with rain.  She had begun to develop the Ballybraners' preoccupation with meteorology, encouraged by Trag's invariable questions about weather conditions at the start of each training session.

      Her flight instructor also pressed heavily on weather wise acumen.  His insistence made more sense than Trag's since a good deal of her simulation drill involved coping with turbulence of varying degrees and types.  She began to distinguish among the tonal differences of the warning equipment with which the simulator was equipped.  Sound could tell her as clearly as the met display the kind and scope of the gale her practice flights trained her to survive.

      Privately, Killashandra decided the warnings were an over kill situation; after being banged at, rung out, and buzzed, your mind would turn off most of the noise.  The nerve tingler, last of the series of cautionary devices, couldn't be ignored.

      Meanwhile, her practice performance developed from merely adequate to perfect automatic reaction as she simulated flights over every sector of Ballybran, land, sea, and arctic ice.  She learned to identify, within seconds of their being displayed on her plan board, the major air and sea currents everywhere on the planet.

      As she practiced, so she learned confidence in her vehicle.  The sled was highly maneuverable with VTOL capabilities and a variety of assists to the basic crystalline drive, which had been highly refined for Ballybran's unusual conditions.

      Killashandra had had only glimpses of the other members of Class 895.  Rimbol had waved cheerfully at her from a distance, and she saw Jezerey scooting across the hangar floor once, but Killashandra wouldn't count on her tolerance unless the girl's temper had markedly improved since the last time they'd met.  Jezerey might be more amenable now that she and the others were in full training.

      She saw Borton first as she wandered into the Commons hall of the Singers' level.  It was an evening when most of the Guild's full members could relax.  No storms were expected despite the low-pressure ridge, and Passover — the ominous conjunction of the three moons that produced the fiercest storms — was nine weeks away.  Borton didn't see Killashandra, for he and the others in the lounge with him were on the far side.  Augmented vision had advantages:  see first; plan ahead.

      She ordered Yarran beer, a beaker for herself and a pitcher for the group.  She was annoyed with herself for anticipating a need for subtle bribery, but an offer made in good faith was unlikely to be refused.  Especially of Yarran beer.

      Borton saw her coming when she was about twenty meters away.  His expression was of mild surprise, and he beckoned to her, speaking to someone hidden from view by the high back of the seating unit.  A stir, exclamations, and Rimbol emerged, meeting her with a wide grin.  The sense of relief she felt caused the pitcher to wobble.

      "Don't waste a drop of good Yarran," he admonished, rescuing it.  "Not everyone's down.  Some are flaked out in radiant tanks.  Shillawn has been transferred to the North Helton continent.  That's where they do most of the pure research.  Would you believe it, Killa?  He doesn't stammer anymore."

      "No!"

      "Antona said the symbiosis must have corrected the fault in his palate."  Rimbol was being determinedly affable, Killashandra thought as she took a place on the wide seating unit.  Jezerey, seated in a corner of the unit, acknowledged Killashandra's arrival with a tight smile, Mistra nodded, and Celee and two other men whose names she couldn't call to mind greeted her.  All of them looked tired.

      "Well, I can't really say I'm sorry Shillawn didn't make it as a Singer because he certainly won't be wasted in research," Killashandra said, raising her beaker in a circular toast to him.

      "You mean, you haven't cut crystal yet?"  Jezerey asked, a strident note in her voice as she pointed to the wristband evident as Killashandra made her toast.

      "Me?  Bloody no!"  The disgust and frustration in her tone made Rimbol laugh, head thrown back.

      "I told you she hadn't got that far," he said to Jezerey.  "She only collected the cutter the day we met her."

      Killashandra overtly eased the band on her wrist, aware now that it constituted her passport to friendship as well as to Singer levels.

      "Furthermore, Jezerey," she went on, letting resentment sharpen her words, "I'll be spending weeks more tuning crystal and simulating gale flights before I'm so much as allowed to put my nose past skimmer chart range.  And by then there'll be Passover storms!"

      "Oh, yes."  Jezerey's attitude brightened, and her smile was complacent.  "We'll all be storm bound then."

      Killashandra was sensitive to the perceptible change of the atmosphere around her and decided to secure the advantage.

      "I may be a little ahead of you in training — you do know that injured Singers take it on only for the bonuses?  Good.  Well, once you've got those wretched cutters, you'll know what 'tired' means.  Cut in the morning, then they send you on simulator flights, and when you're not doing either of those, it's drill; regs, rules, claims, fines — " Groans rose from her listeners.  "Ah, I see you're getting the drills."

      So what other jollies are we to get?  Rimbol asked, his eyes sparkling with an almost malicious delight.

      Most of those present were interested in any details she'd give concerning the retuning of crystal.  She explained as best she could, truthfully if not fully, for she said nothing about Lanzecki's flattering appearances, her empathy with black crystal, and the rapid progress she seemed to be making in cutting difficult forms.  She found it took an effort to be discreet, for she had never practiced tact in the Music Center.  She'd be spending the rest of a very long life with these people, had nearly lost their friendship once through circumstances beyond her control, and she wasn't knowingly going to jeopardize it again.

      Sufficient beer and other intoxicants were consumed by the recruits to make it a convivial evening.  Killashandra found herself ready to be on old terms with Rimbol, and many of the tensions that had built over the past few weeks were dissolved in that most harmonious of activities.

      When they woke, rested, they continued, although Killashandra was a trifle surprised to find that they had ended up in Rimbol's quarters.  Location made little difference, as the apartments were in every respect similar.  He had done little to furbish his rooms and solicited Killashandra's assistance.  In this way.  they passed agreeable hours and virtuously ended with a game reviewing rules and regulations from the clue of a phrase.  In the glow of utter relaxation, Killashandra came very close to mentioning Keborgen's black crystal to Rimbol, rationalizing her evasion later by her desire not to burden her friend with unnecessary detail.

      The next week, she suggested to Concera that she join the others in their classes rather than hold Concera up.  The Singer's two fingers were complete except for nails.

      "You're not holding me up," Concera replied, her eyes sliding past Killashandra's, her mouth pursing with angry frustration.  "Those others evidently have priority over a Singer of my long standing.  Besides, I only accepted you as a favor, I much prefer single teaching to group learning.  Now let's go on to claims and counterclaims."

      "I know those paragraphs sideways, frontwise, and backward."

      "Then let's start in the middle of one," Concera said with unexpected levity.

      As Killashandra really could rehearse claims and counterclaims as well as she boasted, she could also let her mind deal with her biggest problems:  how to get her sled, how to get Lanzecki's attention and obtain clearance to cut crystal rather than chant about it.  With the prodigious Passover storms looming only nine weeks off, she had to speed up.  Research in the data banks about post — Passover problems indicated that it would be weeks before a new Singer would be permitted to claim hunt in ranges made more dangerous than ever by the ravages of Passover.  Keborgen's claim could be so altered that her sensitivity to his black crystal might be nullified.  Mach storms could damage or substantially alter an exposed crystal face, flawing deep into the vein and rendering it useless.  She had to get out soon.

      Lanzecki had been in the habit, over the preceding two weeks, of appearing as if teleported, generally when Killashandra was retuning crystal under Trag's scrutiny.  Once Lanzecki had sat in the observer's seat of the sled simulator while she flew a particularly hazardous course.  Instead of making her nervous, his presence had made her fly with heightened perception.  Lanzecki also roamed through the Commons in the evenings, stopping for a word with this or that group, sorter, or technician.  Now, when she very much wished him to materialize, he wasn't anywhere to be seen.

      The fourth day, she casually asked Concera if she'd encountered the Guild Master and was told that Trag would know better where to find him.  Trag was not the easiest person to question or converse with at all except in the handling of cutter or about incisions into crystal.  Gathering all her self-assurance, Killashandra resorted to stratagem on the sixth day.

      Trag had her shaving cones:  she had ruined three the day before and quite expected to spend the morning's lesson avoiding future failures.  After she had made a cut, she would look behind her.  The fourth time, Trag frowned.

      "Your attention span has been longer.  What's the matter?"

      "I keep thinking the Guild Master will appear.  He does, you know, when I least expect it."

      "He's on Shankill.  Attend to your business."

      She did, with less enthusiasm than ever, deeply grateful that the morrow was a rest day.  She had half promised to spend that evening and the next day with Rimbol:  half promised because her urgency to reach the ranges was in no way shared by the young Scartine.  Trag released her at the end of the gruelingly precise session, his impassive face giving her no indication that she had learned to cut cones properly, though she felt in every muscle of her aching hands that she had achieved some proficiency.

      She considered a radiant bath before the afternoon's flight practice.  Instead, she put in a call for Rimbol:  his company would be a soothing anodyne for her increasing frustration.  Waiting for his answer, she had a quick hot shower.  She paced her apartment, wondering where in hell's planets Rimbol had got to.  Her mealtime was nearly gone, and she hadn't eaten.  She ordered a quick meal from the catering unit, bolting the hot food, adding a seared mouth to her catalog of grievances before she went to the hangar level.

      She was now one of many using the sled simulator so she had to be on time.  She knew the flight was only an hour long, but this one, a complicated wind and night problem that kept her preternaturally alert and made her wish she'd taken the radiant bath instead of the shower, seemed endless.  She was very pleased to avoid several crashes and emerge unscathed from the simulator.  She waved impudently at the flight training officer in his booth above the sled and passed the next student, Jezerey, on her way.

      "He's either crash happy or he hates me," Killashandra commented to Jezerey.

      "Him?  He's crazy.  He killed me three times yesterday."

      "Kill or cure?"

      "That's the Guild's motto, isn't it?"  Jezerey replied sourly.

      Killashandra watched the girl enter the simulator, wondering.  She hadn't been killed yet.  She thought of going to the ready room and watching Jezerey's flight.  No one else was in the ready room, so she dialed a carbohydrate drink to give her blood sugar level a boost.  She was watching Jezerey take off when she became conscious of someone in the doorway.  She turned and saw the Guild Master.

      "I understand you've been looking for me," he said to compound her astonishment.

      "You're on Shankill.  Trag told me so this morning."

      "I was.  I am here now.  You have finished your afternoon's exercises?"

      "I think they've about finished me."

      He stood aside to indicate she should precede him.

      "The severity of the drills may seem excessive, but the reality of a mach storm is far more violent than anything we can simulate in the trainers," he said, moving toward the lift while touching her elbow to guide her.  "We must prepare you for the very worst that can occur.  A mach storm won't give you a second chance.  We try to insure that you have at least one."

      "I seem to hear that axiom a lot"

      "Remember it."

      Killashandra expected the lift to plummet to the Singers' level.  Instead, it rose and, tired as she was, she swayed uncertainly.  Lanzecki steadied her, hand cupped under her elbow.

      "The next bad storm is Passover, isn't it?"  She was making conversation because Lanzecki's touch had sent ripples along her arm.  His appearance in the ready room had already unnerved her.  She glanced sideways at him as unobtrusively as possible, but his face was in profile.  His lips were relaxed, giving no hint of his thoughts.

      "Yes, eight weeks from now is your first Passover."

      The lift stopped, and the panels retracted.  Killashandra stepped with him out into the small reception area.  No sooner had he turned to the right than the third door opened.  The large room they entered was an office, with one wall covered by a complex data retrieval system.  Printout charts hung neatly from the adjacent wall.  Before it, a formidable console printed out fax sheets that neatly folded into a bin.  Several comfortable chairs occupied the center of the room, one centered at the nine screens that displayed the meteorology transmissions from the planet's main weather installations and the three moons.

      "Yes, eight weeks away," Killashandra said, taking a deep breath, "and if I don't get out to the ranges before it comes, it will be weeks, according to every report I've scanned — "

      Lanzecki's laugh interrupted her.

      "Sit."  He pushed two chairs together and pointed a commanding finger to one.

      Amazed that the Master of the Heptite Guild laughed and infuriated because she had not been able to state her case, she dropped without much grace into the appointed chair, her self-confidence pricked and drained.  Presently she heard the familiar clink of beakers.  She looked up as he handed one to her.

      "I like Yarran beer myself, having originated on that planet.  I'm obliged to the Scartine for reminding me of it."

      Killashandra masked her confusion by drinking deeply.  Lanzecki knew a great deal about Class 895.  He raised his glass to her.

      "Yes, we must get you out to the ranges.  If anyone can find Keborgen's claim, it's likely to be you."

      Feeling the beaker slip through fingers made nerveless by shock, she was grateful when he took the glass and put it on the table he swung before her.

      "Conceit in a Singer — voice or crystal — can be a virtue, Killashandra Ree.  Do not let such single-mindedness blind you to the fact that others can reach the same conclusions from the same data."

      "I don't.  That's why I've got to get out into the ranges as soon as possible."  Then she frowned.  "How did you know?  No one followed me that night.  Only you and Enthor knew I'd reacted to Keborgen's crystals."

      Lanzecki gave her a long look that she decided must be pity, and she dropped her gaze, jamming her fingers together.  She wanted to pound him or stamp her feet violently or indulge in some release from the humiliation she was experiencing.

      Lanzecki, sitting opposite her, began to unlock her fingers one by one.

      "You played the pianoforte as well as the lute," he said, his finger tips gently examining the thick muscle on the heel of her hand, the lack of webbing between her fingers, their flexible joints and callused tips.  If this hadn't been her Guild Master, Killashandra would have enjoyed the semicaress.  "Didn't you?"

      She mumbled an affirmative, unable to remain quite silent.  She was relieved, taking a deeply needed breath as he leaned back and took up his drink, sipping it slowly.

      "No one did follow you.  And only Enthor and I knew of your sensitivity to Keborgen's black crystal.  Very few people know the significance of a Milekey transition beyond the fact that you somehow escaped the discomforts they had to endure.  What they will never appreciate is the totality of the symbiotic adjustment."

      "Is that why Antona wished me luck?"

      Lanzecki smiled as he nodded.

      "Does that have something to do with my identifying black crystal so easily?  Did Keborgen have a Milekey, too?"

      "Yes, to both questions."

      "That totality didn't save his life, did it?"

      "Not that time," he said mildly, ignoring her angry, impudent question.  Lanzecki voice-cued a display screen, and the guild s chronological roster appeared.  Keborgen's name was in the early third.  "As I told you that evening, the symbiont ages too, and is then limited in the help it can give an ancient and abused body."

      "Why Keborgen must have been two hundred years old!  He didn't look it!"  Killashandra was aghast.  She'd had only one glimpse of the injured Crystal Singer's face, but she never would have credited twenty decades to his age.  Suddenly, the pressure of hundreds of years of life seemed as depressing to Killashandra as her inability to get into the ranges.

      "Happily, one doesn't realize the passage of time in our profession until some event displays a forcible comparison."

      "You had a Milekey transition."  She shot her guess at him as if it were undeniable.

      He nodded affirmation.

      "But you don't sing crystal?"

      "I have."

      "Then .  .  .  why .  .  ."  and she gestured around the office and then at him.

      "Guild Masters are chosen early and trained rigorously in all aspects of the operation."

      "Keborgen was .  .  .  but he sang crystal.  And you have, too."  She sprang to her feet, unable to assimilate the impact of Lanzecki's quiet words.  "You don't mean .  .  .  I have to train to be .  .  .  You're raving!"

      "No, you are raving," Lanzecki replied, a slight smile playing on his face as he gestured her to her seat and pointed at her beer.  "Steady your nerves.  My only purpose in having a private talk with you is to reassure you that you will go out into the ranges as soon as I can arrange a shepherd for you."

      "Shepherd?"

      Killashandra was generally quick enough of wit to absorb the unexpected without floundering, but Lanzecki's singular interest in her, his awareness of intentions that she had kept utterly private, and his disclosures of the past few minutes had left her bewildered.

      "Oh?  Concera neglected to mention this facet of training?"

      "Yes, a shepherd, Killashandra Ree, a seasoned Singer who will permit you to accompany him or her to a worked face, probably the least valuable of his claims, to demonstrate in practice what, to that point, has been theory."

      "I've had theory up to my eyeballs."

      "Above and behind them is better, my dear, which is where your brain is located, where theory must become reflex.  On such reflexive knowledge may lie your survival.  A successful Crystal Singer must have transcended the need for the conscious performance of his art."

      "I've an eidetic memory.  I can recite — "

      "If you couldn't, you wouldn't be here."  Lanzecki's tone reminded Killashandra of her companion's rank and the importance of the matter under consideration.  He took a sip of his beer.  "How often has Concera told you these past few weeks that an eidetic memory is generally associated with perfect pitch?  And how often that memory distortion is one of the cruel facets of crystal singing?  Sensory overload, as you ought to know, is altogether too frequent an occurrence in the ranges.  I am not concerned with your ability to remember:  I am concerned with how much memory distortion you will suffer.  To prevent distortion, you have been subjected to weeks of drill and will continue to be.  I am also vitally concerned in a recruit who has made a Milekey transition, retunes crystal well enough that Trag cannot fault her, who drives a sled so cleverly that the flight officer has given her patterns he wouldn't dare fly, and a person who had the wit to try to out smart as old a hand at claim-hiding as Keborgen."

      Lanzecki's compliments, though delivered as dry fact, disconcerted Killashandra more than any other of the afternoon's disclosures.  She concentrated on the fact that Lanzecki actually wanted her to go after Keborgen's claim.

      "Do you know where I should look?"

      Lanzecki smiled, altering the uncompromising planes of his craggy face.  He crossed one arm on his chest, supporting the elbow of the other, sipping at his beer.

      "You've been doing the probability programming.  Why don't you retrieve the data you've been accumulating?"

      "How do you know what I've been doing?  I thought my private voice code was unbreakable!"

      "So it is."  The sardonic look on Lanzecki's face reproved her for doubting.  "But your use of data retrieval for weather, sled performance, and the time you have recently spent programming was notable.  In a general way, what recruits or newly convalesced Singers do is unregarded.  However, when the person in question is not only sensitive to black crystal but signs out a skimmer to track the crash of a sled known to have transported black crystal, a quiet surveillance and a performance check are justified.  Don't you agree?  My dear girl, you are a very slow drinker.  Finish it up and call up your program on Keborgen."  He stood and indicated that she was to sit at the big console.  "I'll get more beer for us and something to munch."  He sauntered off to the catering unit.

      Killashandra quickly took her place at the console, voice coding the program.  Though she might have doubted before now, Lanzecki's reproof reassured her.  Nor did she doubt that he wanted more black crystal from Keborgen's claim, and if she offered the Guild the best chance of retrieving the loss, he would support her.

      "Did you know Keborgen?" she asked, then realized that this must sound a stupid query to his Guild Master.

      "As well as any man or woman here did."

      "Part of my theory" — and Killashandra spoke quickly, tapping for the parameters she had stored on sled speed, warning time, and storm winds' velocity based on Keborgen's crash line — "is that Keborgen flew out direct."

      Lanzecki put a fresh beaker on the ledge of the console, a tray of steaming morsels beside it, and smiled indulgently at her.

      "No consideration, even his own safety, would have weighed more with Keborgen than protecting that claim."

      "If that was what was expected of him, mightn't he once, in his desperate situation, choose the straight course?"

      Lanzecki considered this, leaning against the console edge.

      "Remember, he'd left escape to the last minute, judging by his arrival," Killashandra added earnestly.  "The sled was not malfunctioning:  the medical report postulated that he was suffering from sensory overload.  But when he set out, he would have known from the met that the storm would be short.  He would have known that everyone else would have cleared out of the ranges so a direct route wouldn't be observed.  And he hadn't cut that claim in nine years.  Would that be important?"'

      "Not especially.  Not for someone who had sung as long as Keborgen."  Lanzecki tapped his forehead significantly and then looked down at the display where her parameters overlaid the chart of the area.  "The others are searching west of your proposed site."

      "Others?"  Killashandra felt her mouth go dry.

      "It's a valuable claim, my dear Killashandra; of course, I have to permit search.  Don't be overly anxious," he added, resting one hand lightly on her shoulder.  "They've never sung black."

      "Does being sensitive to it give an advantage?"

      "In your case quite likely.  You were the first other person to touch the crystal after Keborgen cut it.  That seems to key a perceptive person to the face.  Seems, I emphasize, not does.  Much of what we should like to know about cutting crystal is locked within paranoid brains; silence is their defense against detection and their eventual destruction.  However, one day, we shall know how to defend them against themselves."  He was standing behind her now, cupping her shoulders with his hands.  The contact was distracting to Killashandra, though she fancied he meant to be reassuring.  Or supportive, because his next words were pessimistic.  "Your greatest disadvantage, my dear Killashandra, is that you are a total novice when it comes to finding or cutting crystal.  Where" — and his blunt forefinger pointed to the rough triangle on the map "would your projected flight place his claim?"

      "Here!"  Killashandra pointed without hesitation to the spot, equidistant from the northern tip of the triangle and the sides defined.

      He gave her shoulders a brief squeeze and moved off walking slowly across the thick carpeting, hands behind his back.  He tilted his head up, as if the blank ceiling might give him back a clue to the tortured reasoning of a dying Crystal Singer.

      "Part of the Milekey transition is a weather affinity.  A spore always knows storm, though its human host may choose to trust instrumentation rather than instinct.  Keborgen was old, he'd begun to distrust everything, including his sled.  He would have been inclined to rely on his affinity rather than the warning devices."  Lanzecki's bland expression cautioned her against such ignorance.  "As I told you, the symbiosis loses its capabilities as the host ages.  What you haven't accounted for in your program is Keborgen's desperate need to get off-planet during Passover — and he hadn't quite enough credit to do so.  A cut of black crystal, any size, would have insured it.  Those shards would have been sufficient.  My opinion is that, having cleared them, he found he had a flawless cut.  He ignored both the sled's warnings and his symbiont and finished the cut.  He lost time."

      He paused behind Killashandra again, put both hands on her shoulders, leaning slightly against her as he peered at the overlay.

      "I think you're nearer right on the position than the others, Killashandra Ree."  His chuckle was vibrant, and the sound seemed to travel through his fingers and down her shoulders.  "A fresh viewpoint, unsullied as yet by the devious exigencies of decades spent outwitting everyone, including self."  Then, releasing her when she did not wish him to, he continued in a completely different tone of voice.  "Did Carrik interest you in the Guild?"

      "No."  She swung the console chair about and caught a very curious and unreadable movement of Lanzecki's mouth.  His face and eyes were expressionless, but he was waiting for her to elaborate.  "No, he told me the last thing I wanted to be was a Crystal Singer.  He wasn't the only one to warn me off."

      Lanzecki raised his eyebrows.

      "Everyone I knew on Fuerte was against my leaving with a Crystal Singer in spite of the fact that he had saved many lives there."  She was bitter about that, more bitter than she had supposed.  While she knew it had not been Maestro Valdi's fault, if he hadn't initiated the hold on her, Carrik and she would have been well away from Fuerte and that shuttle crash; Carrik might still be well.

But would she have become a Singer?

      "Despite all that is rumored about Crystal Singers, Killashandra, we have our human moments."

      She stared at Lanzecki, wondering if he meant Carrik's saving lives or warning her against singing.

      "Now," and Lanzecki walked to the console and touched a key.  Suddenly, the triangle of P42NW down to F43NW in which Killashandra hoped to search was magnified on the big display across the room.  "Yes, there's plenty of range totally unmarked."

      At that magnification, Killashandra could also discern five paint splashes.  Within the five-klick circle centering on the paint splash, the tumbled gorges and hills were under claim.  A Singer could renounce his claim by listing the geographical coordinates, but Concera had told Killashandra that such an occurrence was rare.

      "You could search an entire ravine and still miss the hoard inside the face," Lanzecki said, staring at the target area.  "Or come a cropper with the claim's rightful owner."  He reversed the magnification, and slowly the area was reduced until it faded into the rocky wrinkles surrounding the bay.

      "Monday you will go out.  Moksoon is not willing.  He never is.  But he's trying to get off-planet; with a decent cut and the bonus for shepherding, he could make it this time.

      "Killashandra?"

      "Yes, I go out on Monday.  Moksoon is not willing but for the bonus — "

      "Killashandra, you will find the black crystal!"  Lanzecki's eyes took on an uncanny intensity, reinforcing his message and the strength of his conviction that Killashandra Ree was an agent he could command.

      "Only if I'm bloody lucky."  She laughed, recovering her equilibrium as she gestured to the vast area she'd have to comb.

      Lanzecki's eyes did not leave hers.  She was reminded of an ancient piece of drama history:  a man had hypnotized a girl, a musical idiot, into vocal performances without peer.  She couldn't recall the name, but to think of Lanzecki, Resident Master of one of the most prestigious Guilds in the Federated Sentient Planets, attempting to .  .  .  ah .  .  . Svengali her into locating the nardy precious black crystal was ludicrous.  Only she couldn't suggest that to Lanzecki, not when he was regarding her in so disconcerting a fashion.

      Suddenly, he threw up his head and started to laugh.  He abandoned his whole body to the exercise, his chest caving in, his ribs arching, his hands spread on his thighs as he bent forward.  If anyone had told her five minutes before that Guild Master Lanzecki was capable of humor at all, she'd have thought them mad.  He collapsed into a seating unit, his head lolling against its back as he roared.

      His laughter had an oddly infectious quality, and she grinned in response.  Then laughed, too, to see the Guild Master so reduced in dignity by mirth.

      "Killashandra .  .  ."  He gasped her name as the laughter subsided.  "I do apologize, but the look on your face .  .  .  I've thrown the reputation of the entire Guild into jeopardy, have I not?"  He wiped moisture from the corners of his eyes and straightened up.  "I haven't laughed in a very long time."

      A wistful quality in that last remark made Killashandra change her reply.

      "They used to say at Fuerte that I'd have been a good comic singer if I hadn't been so hipped on leads."

      "I find nothing comic about you, Killashandra," he said, his eyes sparkling as he held out his hand.

      "Dramatic?"

      "Unexpected."

      He took the hand she had unconsciously extended, caressing the palm with the ball of his thumb before turning her hand over and dropping a kiss in it.

      She caught her breath at the spread of sensation from her palm through her body to the nipples on her breasts.  She wanted to snatch her hand from his but saw the tender smile on his lips as he raised his head.  Lanzecki had his eyes and face under control; his mouth betrayed him.

      The pressure he exerted on her hand to draw her to him was as inexorable as it was gently and deftly done.  With her across his thighs, her body against his, and her head in the crook of his arm, he brought her hand again to his mouth, and she closed her eyes at the sensuality of that delicate kiss.  Her hand was placed palm down against warm skin, and she felt him stroke her hair, letting one curl wrap round his finger before he dropped his hand to her breast, lightly and with skill.

      "Killashandra Ree?"  His low whisper asked a question that had nothing to do with her name but everything that pertained to who she was.

      "Lanzecki !"

      His mouth covered hers in so light a caress that she was at first unaware of being kissed.  It was so with the rest of her first experience with the Guild Master, a loving and sharing that paled into insignificance any other encounter.

CHAPTER 8

      When she gradually awakened the next morning, she found his fingers lightly clasping her upturned hand.  Her slight movement of surprise caused his fingers to tighten, then caress.  Opening her eyes, she turned her head toward him, to meet his eyes, sleepily narrow.  They were lying, she on her back, he on his stomach, stretched out, the only point of contact the two hands, yet Killashandra felt that her every muscle and nerve was in tune to him and his to her.  She blinked and sighed.  Lanzecki smiled, his lips relaxed and full.  His smile deepened, as if he knew of her fascination with his mouth.  He rolled to his back, still holding her right hand, now pulling it up to kiss the palm.  She closed her eyes against the incredible sensation the lightest touch of his lips created within her.

      Then she noticed the fine white lines across his bare arm and chest, parallel in some places, criss-crossed in others.

      "I believe I mentioned that I sang crystal," he said.

      "Cut crystal would be nearer the truth from the look of you," she said, raising her upper body to see the rest of his well-muscled torso.  Then she frowned.  "How do you know so accurately what I'm thinking?  No one mentioned a telepathic adaptation to the spore."

      "There is none, dearling.  I have merely become adept at reading expressions and body language over the decades."

      "Is that why you're Guild Master instead of Singer?"  She had heard, and savored, the endearment.

      "There must be a Guild Master,"

      "Trag would never make it."

      "Now who is telepathic?"

      "Well, you'd better watch your mouth."

      "My mouth said nothing about Trag's future."

      "It didn't have to.  So, are recruits deliberately selected?"

      His mouth gave nothing away to her.  "Where did you get that idea, Killashandra Ree?"  His eyes were laughing, denying her remembrance of Borella's conversation to the other Singer on the shuttle from Shankill.

      "The notion had occurred to me from the pounds of prevention FSP applies to keep people from joining the Guild .

      "The FSP" — and Lanzecki's mouth drew into a thinner line — "is also the largest purchaser of crystal.  Especially black crystal."  He rolled back to her, his eyes on her mouth.  "This is my rest day, too.  I earnestly desire to relax in your good company."  He was indeed as earnest as she could have wished and exceedingly obliging.  While they paused to eat, she asked him how they had moved from his office suite to his apartment on the Singer level.

      "Private lift."  He gave a careless shrug of his cicatriced shoulders as he sought morsels of food in the rich spicy sauce.  "One of my perquisites."

      "Is that how you do your appearing act?"

      Lanzecki grinned at her, delighted in an unexpectedly boyish way — that put her guiltily in mind of Rimbol — that he had disconcerted her.

      "I often have need to 'appear' unexpectedly."

      "Why?"

      "In your case?"  His smile altered slightly, his lips taking a bitter twist.  "Serendipity.  I liked your misplaced loyalty to Carrik.  I wished you well away from the Scoria system.  Once you passed the entrance requirements, you became my responsibility."

      "Isn't everyone in the Guild?"

      "More or less.  But you, Killashandra Ree, had a Milekey transition."

      "You do this every time? .  .  ."  She was piqued by his candor and gestured with all the contempt of an outraged opera heroine around the bedroom.

      "Of course not," he said with a burst of laughter.  He caught her hand and kissed her palm with the usual effect, despite her indignation.  "This is not one of my perks, dearling.  It is a privilege you have granted me.  I did — and have no doubts on that score for the duration of your memory — want to know you before you went into the ranges."

      "Before?"  She caught that subtle emphasis.

      He made an untidy pile of their dishes and shoved them into the disposal slot.

      "Before singing crystal has stung your blood."

      He turned back, and she could see the sadness in the droop of his mouth.

      "But you've sung crystal?"

      He put both hands on her shoulders, looking down at her.  There was no expression in his eyes; the planes of his face were still, the line of his mouth uncompromising.

      "Do you mean that after I have sung, I won't be any good.  Or any more good to you?"  She flung the options at him.

      Instead of repudiating either, he caught her resisting body up in his arms, laughing as he swung her around and around tight against him.

      "My darling, I shall make love to you until tomorrow morning when I shall .  .  .  shepherd .  .  .  you to your sled and to Moksoon.  You shall endeavor your best, once Moksoon has demonstrated the Cutter's art on an actual face, to find Keborgen's claim.  When you return from your first trip" — and he gave an enigmatic laugh — "I shall still be Guild Master.  But you" — and here he kissed her-"will be truly a Crystal Singer."

      He did not let her speak then; nor did they return to the subject of their occupations.

      The following morning, Lanzecki was completely the Guild Master when she met him and the petulant Moksoon in the flight officer's ready room.  She had been out in the hangar checking her sled, putting her cutter in its brackets with a loving snap, aware of the acrid, chemical tang of new plastic and metal from the run-in of the drive.

      Moksoon was not Killashandra's notion of a shepherd for her first trip into the dangerous Milekeys.  That he was as dubious about her was unmistakable in the sidelong glances he gave her.  A slightly built man who had probably always had a wizened appearance to his face, he looked old, odd enough in a Crystal Singer.  He also looked thoroughly annoyed, for the maintenance officer was suavely explaining why it had taken so long to repair his sled.  Since Lanzecki had explained to her that Moksoon's most important qualification as her guide was that he was known to be cutting in the Bay area, Killashandra knew that the delay had been contrived.

      "Remember, of course, Moksoon, that the bonus alone sees you safely off-planet."  Lanzecki said, deftly entering the conversation.  "This is Killashandra Ree.  Master recorder on!  Moksoon, this will be on continuous replay in your cabin.  You are shepherding Killashandra Ree in accordance with Section 53, Paragraphs one through five.  She is cognizant of the fact that she is entitled to nothing that she may cut under your direction at your claim.  She is entitled to stay with you two working days when she will depart to seek a claim of her own.  She will never make any attempt to return to your claim under Section 49, Paragraphs 7, 9, and 14.  Killashandra Ree, do you .  .  ."  And Killashandra found herself repeating, affirming, avowing, under the strict penalties imposed by the Heptite Guild that she would obey the strictures of the two sections and the paragraphs cited.  Moksoon was also required to repeat his willingness, which was forced, above and beyond the bonus offered, to instruct her in the cutting of crystal for the two day period as allowed by Guild rules and regulations.

      Moksoon's repetition was so marred by lapses into silence and prompts from Lanzecki and the flight officer that Killashandra had half a mind to revoke her contract.  Lanzecki caught her eye, and her rebellion ended.

      The official recording made, replicas were patched into the communications units of both sleds.  The flight officer escorted Moksoon to his vehicle, slightly canted to the left and battered in spite of fresh paint that attempted to blend the most recent repairs into the older dings.  Lanzecki strode beside Killashandra to her brand new sled.

      "Use the replay whenever he falters.  Your switch is rigged to activate his."

      "Are you sure that Moksoon is the right — "

      "For your purpose, Killashandra, the only one."  Lanzecki's tone allowed no argument.  "Just don't trust him about anything.  He's cut crystal too long and sung too long alone."

      "Then why — " Now Killashandra was totally exasperated.

      Lanzecki cupped her elbow and half lifted her into her sled.

      "His hands will automatically do what you need to see.  Watch how he cuts, what he does, not what he says.  Heed your inner warnings.  Watch your met report as often as you think of it.  Fortunately, you'll think of it often enough the first trip out.  Passover's in seven weeks.  Storms can blow up days before the actual conjunction.  Yes, I know you know all this, but it bears repeating.  He's in and belted.  No time now.  Follow him.  The charts of the Bay area have been put on instant review.  Be sure to pack crystal as soon as you have cut, Killashandra!"

      He had smoothly engineered her departure, Killashandra thought, giving her no time for regrets and none for personal farewell.  Yesterday, she reminded herself, he had been Lanzecki the man.  Today he was Guild Master.  Fair enough.

      Moksoon took off just as she switched on her sled's drive.  His craft canted even in the air, a distinctive silhouette, like that of a person with one shoulder higher than the other.  Despite her severe doubts about Moksoon, Killashandra experienced a rush of elation as she drifted her sled from the hangar.  She was going to cut crystal at last.  At last?  She was first out of Class 895.  She thought of Rimbol and grimaced.  She ought at least to have left a call for him, explaining her absence.  Then she remembered that she had placed a call to him that hadn't been answered.  That could suffice!

      Bollux, but that fool Moksoon was running like a scared mushman!  She increased the speed of her sled, closing to a proper following distance.  In a peculiar change of direction, Moksoon now headed due north and dropped to a lower altitude, skimming the first folds of the Milekey Range.  As she was above him, she caught his second, easterly shift, and then he disappeared over a high fold.  She decelerated to a near hover, scanning both ends of the drop as she approached it.  He was hovering on the north end of the fault.  She caught the merest glint of sunlight on the orange of his sled, then flew on to the next ravine as if she hadn't spotted him and mimicked his tactics until he showed at the southern edge, just as she'd expected.

      "Twithead's forgotten I'm supposed to follow him," she said, and slapped on the replay.  The one in his sled would project its message.  She sighed deeply, resigned to a long and difficult day, but suddenly his sled popped up into sight, and Moksoon made no immediate attempt to evade her.

      She checked his new heading, south at four, which was an honest direction for Moksoon's eventual destination.  She wondered how long she could trust the reinforcement of the replay.  A direct flight would get them to the Bay area in two hours at the reasonable speed Moksoon was maintaining.  She might not know where he was leading her, but she had the advantage over him in a new sled capable of speed and maneuverability.

      Even on a direct course, Moksoon was an erratic flyer.  There shouldn't have been thermals or violent air currents at his level, but his sled bounced and lolled.  Was he trying to make her air sick following?

      Why had Lanzecki chosen this man?  Because of his faulty memory!  Because, once Moksoon had achieved his desired trip off-planet, he would not, in the fashion of Crystal Singers of long service, remember that he had shepherded one Killashandra Ree into the Bay's range.  Well, that was logical of Lanzecki, provided she could also find Keborgen's claim.  Before the others who were looking for it.  Patently, Lanzecki was backing her.

      "Once a Singer has cut a certain face, she only needs to be in its general area and she'll feel the pull of the sound," Concera had said.  "Your augmented vision will assist in distinguishing the color of crystal beneath storm film, base rock, and flaw.  Catch the sun at the right angle and crystal cuttings are blindingly clear."

      Phrases and advice flooded through Killashandra's mind, but as she looked down at the undulating folds of the Milekey Ranges, she entertained serious doubts that she would ever find anything in such a homogeneous land.  Kilometers in all directions flowed in similar patterns of fold, ridge, valley, gorge.

      A sudden stab of piercing light made her clutch the yoke of the sled to steady herself.  She peered down and saw an orange slice of sled top, half hidden by an overhang and deep in the ravine, only its luminescent paint and her altitude disclosing it.  On the highest of the surrounding ridges was the splash of paint indicating a claim.

      That crystal flash, as unlikely as everything else that had been happening to her recently, confirmed that some of the other improbables might also be true on Ballybran.

      Fardles!  Where had Moksoon got to?  During her brief inattention, the old Singer's orange sled had slipped from view.  She speeded up and caught a glimpse of the orange stern winding through a deep ravine.  Without changing altitude, she matched pace with his cautious forward movement, her view screen on magnify.  Since she had his sled well in view, she did not reactivate the tape.  He might just as easily slam into one of the odd stone buttresses that lined the canyon if she startled him.

      She checked the heading; Moksoon had gone north by 11.  Suddenly, he oozed up and over a ridge, down into a deeper, shadowed valley.  She dove, noting quickly that the deep went south.  Unless he flipped over the intervening fold, Moksoon would have to follow the southerly course.  That gorge continued in its erratic fashion stubbornly south by 4.  She couldn't see Moksoon in the shadows, but there was no place else he could be.

      The long winding of the gorge ended in a blockage of debris, the erosion of a higher anticline.  There was no sign of Moksoon.  He had to be in the gorge, hiding in shadow.  Then she saw the faded claim blaze on a ridge.  Even in Ballybran's climate, the stuff was supposed to take decades to deteriorate so much.  A released claim always had the piss-green countermark — not that she'd seen any of those during her pursuit of Moksoon.

      Cautiously, she guided her sled down the rock slide and into the gorge.  In some places, the sides nearly met; in others, she had a view of ranges folding beyond.  Something glinted in the little sunlight that penetrated.  She increased the magnification and was surprised to see a thin stream meandering the base of the gorge.  There had been no lake at the blocked point, so she assumed that the little stream went underground in its search for an outlet to the Bay.

      She was beginning to feel anxious when an oxbend revealed a wider valley; the orange sled was parked on the right, on a shadowed ledge that would have been invisible from all except a direct search of this particular canyon.

      She keyed the replay and turned up the volume so that Lanzecki's voice was echoing off the rock walls as Moksoon slipped and slid toward her, the crystal cutter held safely above his head.

      "Claim jumper!  Claim jumper!"  he shrieked, stumbling to the ledge on which she had rested her sled.  He turned on the cutter, held it well in front of him, as he approached her sled door.

      "In accordance with Section 53, Paragraphs 1 through 5 .  .  ."  the replay roared.

      "Lanzecki!"  He's with you?"  Moksoon glanced wildly around and above him, searching for another sled.

      "Playback," Killashandra yelled through Lanzecki's amplified words.  "I'm not claim jumping.  You're shepherding me.  You get a bonus."  She used her voice training to shoot her message through the pauses in the recording.

      "That's me?"  Moksoon pointed accusingly at her sled from which his own hesitant voice emanated.

      "Yes, you made the tape this morning.  You promised to shepherd me for the bonus."

      "Bonus!"  Moksoon lowered the cutter, though Killashandra adroitly maneuvered herself farther from its point.

      "Yes, bonus, according to Section 53, Paragraphs 1 through 5.  Remember?''

      "Yes, I do."  Moksoon didn't sound all that certain.  "That's you speaking now."

      "Yes, promising to abide by Section 49, Paragraphs 7, 9 and 14.  I'm to stay with you two days only, to watch an expert cut crystal.  Lanzecki recommended you so highly.  One of the best."

      "That Lanzecki!  All he wants is cut crystal."  Moksoon snorted in sulky condemnation.

      "This time you'll have a bonus to get you off-world."

      The cutter pointed down now, the fingers of the tired old man so slack on the grip, Killashandra hoped he wouldn't drop it.  She'd been told often enough how easily the wretchedly expensive things damaged.

      "I gotta get off Ballybran.  I gotta.  That's why I said I'd shepherd."  Head bent, Moksoon was talking to himself now, ignoring the replayed affirmations.

      Suddenly, he swung the tip of his cutter up and advanced towards her menacingly.  Killashandra scooted back as far as she could on the ledge.

      "How do I know you won't pop right back in here when I'm off-world and cut my claim?"

      "I couldn't find the bloody place again," she said, exploding, discretion no advantage in dealing with the fanatic.  "I haven't a clue where I am.  I had to keep my eyes on you, zipping here and dropping there.  Have you forgotten how to pilot a sled?  You sure have forgotten a perfectly valid agreement you made only five hours ago!"

      Moksoon, his eyes little slits of suspicion, lowered the cutter fractionally.  "You know where you are."

      "South at four is all I bloody know, and for all the twists and turns in this ruddy gorge, we could be north at ten.  What in damnation does it matter?  Show me how to cut crystal and I'll leave in an hour."

      "You can't cut crystal in an hour.  Not properly."  Moksoon was scathingly contemptuous.  "You don't know the first thing about cutting crystal."

      "You're quite right.  I don't.  And you'll get a huge bonus for showing me.  Show me, Moksoon."

      With a combination of cajolery, outrageous flattery, constant repetition of words like "bonus," "Lanzecki expects," "off-world," and "brilliant Cutter," she pacified Moksoon.  She suggested that he eat something before showing her how to cut and let him think she was fooled into offering from her own supplies.  For a slight man, he had a very hearty appetite.

      Well fed, rested, and having filled her with what she knew must be a lot of nonsense about angles of the sun, dawn, and sunset excursions down dark ravines to hear crystal wake or go to sleep, Moksoon showed no inclination to pick up his cutter and get on with his end of the bargain.  She was trying to think of a tactful way of suggesting it when he suddenly jumped to his feet, throwing both arms up to greet a shaft of sunlight that had angled down the ravine to strike their side just beyond the bow of his sled.

      A peculiar tone vibrated through the rock on which Killashandra was sitting.  Moksoon grabbed up his cutter and scrambled emitting a joyous cackle that turned into a fine, clear ringing A sharp below middle C.  Moksoon sang in the tenor ranges.

      And part of the ravine answered!

      By the time she had reached him, he was already slicing at the pink quartz face his sled had obscured.  Why the old —

      Then she heard crystal crying.  For all his other failings, Moksoon had an astonishing lung capacity for so old a man.  He held the accurate note even after his pitched cutter was excising a pentagon from the uneven extrusion of quartz, which flashed from different facets as the sunlight shifted.  The dissonance that began as he got deeper into the face was an agony so basic that it shook Killashandra to her teeth.  It was much worse than retuning crystal.  She froze at the unexpected pain, instinctively letting loose with a cry of masking sound.  The agony turned into two notes, pure and clear.

      "Sing on!"  Moksoon cried.  "Hold that note!"  He reset his infrasonic cutter and made a second slice, cropped it, sang again, tuned the cutter, and dug the blade in six neat slashes downward.  His thin body shook, but his hands were amazingly steady as he cut and cut until he reached the edge.  With an exultant note, he jumped to a new position and made the bottom cut for the four matched crystals.  "My beauties.  My beauties!" he crooned and, laying the cutter carefully down, dashed off to his sled, reemerging seconds later with a carton.  He was still crooning as he packed the pieces.  There was a curious ambivalence in his motions, of haste and reluctance, for his fingers caressed the sides of the octagons as he put them away.

      Killashandra hadn't moved, as stunned by the experience of crystal as she was by his agile performance.  When she did sigh to release her tensions, he gave an inarticulate shout and reached for his cutter.  He might have sliced her arm off, but he tripped over the carton, giving her a head start as she raced back to his sled, stumbled into it, and hit the replay button before she slid the door closed.  It caught the tip of the cutter.

      And Lanzecki had suggested she go with this raving maniac?  Lanzecki's voice rolled out, reverberated back, and made a section of the rock face above the sled resonate.

      "I'm sorry, Killashandra Ree," Moksoon said, a truly repentant note in his voice.  "Don't break my cutter.  Don't close that door."

      "How can I trust you, Moksoon?  You've nearly killed me twice today."

      "I forget.  I forget."  Moksoon's tone was a sob.  "Just remind me when I'm cutting.  It's crystal makes me forget.  It sings, and I forget."

      Killashandra closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath.  The man was so pitiful.

      "I'll show you how to cut.  Truly I will."

      Moksoon's recorded voice was duly affirming his willingness to shepherd her, Section 53.  She could break his cutter with one more centimeter of leverage on the door.  Her own voice dinned into her ears, affirming and averring to abide by section and paragraph.

      "You'd better be able to show me something about cutting crystal that I couldn't learn at the Complex."

      "I'll show you.  I'll show you how to find song in the cliffs.  I'll show you how to find crystal.  Any fool can cut it.  You've got to find it first.  Just don't close that door!"

      "How do I keep you from trying to kill me?"

      "Just talk to me.  Keep that replay on.  Just talk to me as I'm cutting.  Give me back my cutter!"

      "I'm talking to you, Moksoon, and I'm opening the door.  I haven't damaged the cutter."  The first thing he did when she eased up the pressure was examine the tip.  "Now, Moksoon, show me how to find song in the cliffs."

      "This way, this way."  He scrabbled to the outcropping.  "See .  .  ."  and his finger traced the faultline, barely discernible.  "And here."  Now a glint of crystal shone clearly through the covering dirt.  He rubbed at it, and sunlight sparkled from the crystal.  "Mostly sunlight tells you where, but you gotta see.  Look and see!  Crystal lies in planes, this way, that way, sometimes the way the fold goes, sometimes at right angles.  You sure you can't find your way back here?"  He shot her a nervous glance.

      "Positive!"

      "Rose always drops south.  Depend on it."  He ran his finger tips lightly down the precipice.  "I hadn't seen this before.  Why didn't I see this before?"

      "You didn't look, did you, Moksoon?"

      He ignored her.  At first, Killashandra thought a breeze had sprung up, highly unlikely though that was in this deep gorge.  Then she heard the faint echo and realized that Moksoon was humming.  He had one ear to the rock wall.

      "Ah, here.  I can cut here!"

      He did so.  This time, the crystal cry was expected and not as searing an experience.  She also kept herself in Moksoon's view, especially when he had completed his cuts.  She got a carton for him, carried it back and stored it, all the time talking or making him talk to her.  He did know how to cut crystal.  He did know how to find it.  The gorge was layered in southerly strips of rose quartz.  Moksoon could probably cut his claim for the rest of his Guild life.

      When the sun dropped beyond the eastern lip of the gorge, he abruptly stopped work and said he was hungry.  Killashandra fed him and listened as he rambled on about flaw lines and cuts and intruders, by which he meant noncrystal rock that generally shattered the crystal vein.

      Since she recalled Enthor's poor opinion of rose quartz, she asked Moksoon if he cut other colors.  It was an unwise question, for Moksoon had a tantrum, announcing that he'd cut rose quartz all his working life, which was far longer than she'd drawn breath, or her parents, or her grandparents for that matter, and she was to mind her own business.  He stalked off to his sled.

      Taking the precaution of locking her door panel, she made herself comfortable.  She wasn't sure that she could endure, or survive, another day with the paranoid Moksoon.  She didn't doubt for a moment that the uneasy rapport she had finally achieved would fade overnight in his crystallized brain pan.

      In the cool darkness of the gorge, where night made the rocks crack and tzing, she thought of Lanzecki.  He had wished to know her, he said, before she sang crystal.  Now that phrase had both an overtone of benediction and a decided implication of curse.  Would just one trip to the Crystal Ranges alter her so much?  Or had their night, and day together occurred to form some bond between them?  If so, Lanzecki was going to be very busy over the next few weeks, cementing links between Jezerey, Rimbol — and then Killashandra's sense of humor over ruled vile whimsies.  Lanzecki might be devious but not that damned devious!

      Besides, none of the others had made Milekey transitions or appeared sensitive to black crystal.  It was a concatenation of circumstances.  And he had said that he liked her company.  He, Lanzecki, liked her company.  But Lanzecki the Guild Master had sent her out with crazed Moksoon.

      Killashandra set her waking buzz for sunrise so that she'd be out of the gorge before Moksoon woke.

CHAPTER 9

      She woke to darkness and a curious pinging.  Cautiously, she put her head out the sled door, checking first in Moksoon's direction.  Not a sign of life there.  She looked upward, between the steep walls of the gorge, to a lightening sky.  After her hide-and-seek with Moksoon the day before, she appreciated the navigational hazards of semidark.  She also didn't wish to be around when the old Crystal Singer roused.

      She checked that all her lockers were closed and secure, an automatic action learned during her simulated-flight instruction.  Fortunately, she had made "dark" landings and take offs in imaginary shallow canyons and deep valleys, though she wished she'd paid more attention to the terrain just beyond Moksoon's claim.  She couldn't risk retracing yesterday's circuit to the avalanche.

      She strapped into her seat, turned the drive to minimum power, easing up half a meter by the vertical and out ten horizontal, then activated the top scanner to be sure of her clearances.

      The sky was light enough for her purposes but not as yet touched with the rising sun.  She lifted slowly, carefully, her eyes on the scanner to be sure she didn't bounce off an unexpected outcropping.

      Abruptly, she was above the gorge and hovered, quickly switching the scan to under-hull and magnify.  Her departure had not aroused Moksoon.  With luck, he would have forgotten that she'd been there until he received his bonus.  And how she had worked for that!

      The notion that one day she might be as Moksoon now was crossed her mind, but that, she firmly assured herself, was a long time in the future.  She'd make it as future as possible.

      She proceeded with fair haste to the F42NW-43NW where five old paint splashes made an irregular pattern on Lanzecki's aerial map.  The sun was rising, an awesome sight at any time, but as it gilded the western folds and heights of the Milekey Range, it was truly magnificent.  She settled the sled on a flattened, eroded syncline to enjoy the spectacle of morning breaking as she ate breakfast.  It was a lovely clear morning, the light breeze tainted with sea, for the Bay was not far.  She checked meteorology, which indicated that the clear, dry weather was confirmed for the next six hours.

      She would come in over F42NW at altitude and proceed to F43NW, just to get an overall picture.  If her hunch was right, and Lanzecki's privileged information had only confirmed it, one of those five claims had to be Keborgen's black crystal.

      From height, the area looked desolate — valleys and ravines, blind canyons, few with water, and not so much as a glint of crystal shine in the morning sun.  Furthermore, one of the painted claim marks was newer than the others.  The sun reflected off the mark.  Had one of the other Singers actually found Keborgen's claim?  She reminded herself sternly that none of the others had come this far north.  One new claim mark among five.  But Lanzecki's original aerial scan had displayed five old marks.

      Killashandra caught her breath.  Keborgen had not been to this claim in nine years.  Because he couldn't remember where it was?  He had garnered useful shards and splinters and a triad, worth a fortune of credit.  Might he not have used up his margin of time between storm warning and escape to repaint his claim so he could find it more easily after the storm?

      Killashandra searched her mind about claims and claim jumping.  Nothing prevented her from checking the circumscribed area.  Lifting or cutting crystal was the felony.

      She reduced her altitude and swept round the claim in a circle roughly five kicks in diameter from the brightly painted ridge mark.  She could see no other sled, though she hovered over several shadowed ledges and overhanging cliffs to be sure.  She also noted no spark or glint of sun struck crystal.  After the initial survey, she landed on the ridge.  The paint was new, only scored here and there by the last storm.  She could see edges of the old where the new had been applied in haste.  Then she found the paint container, wedged in some rocks where it had been thrown or wind-swept.  She hefted it, smiling in exultation.  Yes, Keborgen didn't want to forget this claim.  He'd wasted time to preserve it.

      She looked out across the ridges and nearest gullies and wondered where.  From this vantage point, she could see the five klicks in every direction.

      Since Keborgen had obviously cleared the crystal shards from his site, there'd be none to indicate where he'd worked.  But he would have had to hide his sled from aerial observation, as Moksoon had done.

      So Killashandra spent the rest of the morning flying search patterns over the circle.  She found five locations; two partial hides in the south on 7 quadrant, an undercut in west 10, a very narrow blind valley in 4, and two shadowed gorges in north 2.  On her master chart, she noted each location by some distinguishing contour or rock and the angle at which she had been flying to discern it.

      She had no further support from the weather, for a drizzle began mid afternoon.  There'd be no sunset flashes to lead her, no sun-warmed crystal to speak.  She saw no advantage in sitting on the claim ridge, either.  There were other Singers looking for Keborgen's claim, No sense being so visible.

      "Eena, meena, pitsa teena," she chanted, pointing at one site on each syllable.  "Alloo bumbarina, isha gosha, bumbarosha, nineteen hundred and one!"

      "One" was the west 4 undercut.

      As she approached from the south, she noticed that the ridge was curiously slanted.  Since it was protected on all sides by higher folds, the erosion had not been caused by wind.  She landed the sled as well as she could on uneven ground beside the over hang.  She would inspect first.  As she pulled on wet-weather gear, she noticed that debris had showered on either side of the ledge, which was, in fact, just the right length for a sled.

      Much heartened, she went out and prowled around.  The rock falls were of long residence, well chinked with grit and dirt.  The ledge was solid, but at one end heterogeneous rocks had been tamped in for critical reinforcement.  A little scrape of orange paint along the inside wall was her final reassurance.  A sled had parked there.  She parked hers with a sense of accomplishment.

      She was not so happy after she had climbed to the highest point above the blind valley.  She stared about her in the drizzling gloom.  The valley was in the form of a blunted crescent, any part of which was an easy hike from the undercut.  Crystal Singers exerted themselves only to cut crystal, not heft it any distance.  Keborgen's claim had to be somewhere in the valley.

      She slithered down the rocky side, adding more rubble to what was scattered about.  When she returned to her sled, she checked the met report.  Cloud cover ending midday, unless the cold front moving up from the southern pole picked up speed.  She'd probably have a clear afternoon and Sun on the southern tip of the valley.  Rain or not, she told herself, she'd be out at first light.  Keborgen had made two obvious mistakes:  fresh claim and old sled paint.

      Keborgen's cutting eluded her the entire damp gray morning as she searched the crescent for any signs of cutting, rubbed her hands and fingers raw scraping at stone.  The valley's walls varied in height, on the longer curve up to 10 meters, sloping down to a dip almost directly across from the undercut.  From the bottom of the valley, she couldn't see any signs, even accounting for the fact that Keborgen had taken crystal rubble with him.

      She clambered back to her sled for something to eat, totally discouraged.  She might just as well have braved Moksoon another day for all she had accomplished on her own.

      A sudden gleam of light attracted her attention to the window.  Clouds were scuttering across the sky to the north, and she saw patches of bright sky.  As she left her sled, a light breeze blew directly into her face.  Suddenly, sunlight shafted from the clouds, blinding after almost two days of dismal gray.

      With sun, she might just he lucky enough to catch crystal flash — if she was turned in the right direction at the exact moment.  Keborgen's cut could not have built much dirt cover after the short storm.

      The sun was more west than east.  She'd have a better chance if she was facing the west.  She scrambled up the valley side to the ridge, turning to her right and stopped.  With the sun shining, she could discern what the rain had hidden the day before, a clear if uneven and winding path of packed dirt, suitable for an agile pair of feet.  The path had been worn by a long-legged man, and as she eagerly followed it, she occasionally had to hop or stretch.  She was so much occupied with her footing that she would have tripped into the fault if she had not first noticed the tamped-down flat space 2 meters from the edge.  Just where someone could leave crystal cartons.  It could have been excitement at first, but Killashandra felt a prickling along her legs.  Then she heard the soft sighing, more noise than so light a breeze should make.  It was as if someone distant were humming softly, and the sound floated to her on the breeze.  Only this sound emanated ahead of her.

      Trembling, she took the last two steps and looked down into a trench, a V shape, slanting down toward the valley floor, some 10 meters below the lowest arm of the V.  Muddy water oozed off the V point.  Water had collected in a too obviously geometric puddle halfway down the uneven side.  Uneven because Keborgen had left foot rests for easy access to the heart of his claim.  As she descended, she could feel black crystal surrounding her.  When she reached the bottom, she knelt by the symmetrical pool, a fingertip deep, and felt its sides.  Smooth.  Her fingers tingled.

      Rising, she looked around.  Roughly 6 meters long, carefully cut to maintain that rough, natural look, the V opened to a width of 4 meters on the ravine side.  Reverently now, she took a waste-cloth and brushed mud away.  The dull shine of cold black crystal was revealed.  Using the cloth, she mopped away the water.  Keborgen's triad had been cut true, but to themselves, not to the angle of the vein, leaving this little wedge to accumulate water.  No, this little piece was flawed, storm damage, more than likely.  She caressed it, feeling the roughness of the flaw.  Then she began excitedly to clean the ledge, to find out where the flaw stopped, where was the good black crystal.  Ah, here, at the side, just where Keborgen had stopped cutting when the storm arrived.

      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 connection between hand and eye stopped her.  She let that instinct assist her in making the horizontal slice that would sever the crystal from the vein.  Its cry was not as fierce.

      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.

      She glanced at the sky and realized that the sun was dropping to the west.  She must have spent half a good clear day admiring her handiwork.

      "Ridiculous!"

      The scoffing "d" sound spat back at her.

      "I wouldn't mock if I were you, my friend," she told the claim as she eyed the cuts for the second block.  She'd want to get this one squarer or she'd end up with a suspiciously symmetrical puddle as Keborgen had done.

      She didn't need to tap for pitch the A was seared into her mind.  She turned on and adjusted the cutter, nerving herself for the crystalline response.  She was almost overset by the pure, unprotesting note given back.  Immensely relieved, she made the two vertical cuts, watching to keep the cutter blade straight.  She made the third, horizontal slice and cursed herself for unconsciously following the pattern of her first, uneven cut.  Sensation palpably oozed off the cut black, but this time she knew crystal tricks and quickly buried it beside its mate in the carton.

      The third crystal ought to have been the easiest.  She made the first cut deftly, pleased with her expertise.  But the vertical incision to sever the rectangle from the face went off the true pitch.  She halted, peered in at the grayish, pale brown mass, touched it and felt, not tactilely, but through the nerves in her finger tips that she was cutting on flaw.  If she moved a half centimeter out .  .  .  The block would not match the other two but the crystal cried clear.  She turned it over and over in her hands, her back carefully to the sun, inspecting the block for any other sign of flaw.  This was, she told herself sternly, an excuse to caress it with fingers that delighted in the smooth, soapy texture, the whisper of sound, the sensations that reached her nerves as delicate as .  .  .  as Lanzecki's kiss in her palm?

      Killashandra chuckled, her laughter tinkling back from all sides.  Lanzecki, or recollections of him, would seem to constitute an anchor in this exotic arena of sound and sensation.  Would he appreciate that role?  And when, or if, she returned to Lanzecki's arms, would she remember crystal in them?

      Thoughts of him effectively blotted the lure of the third rectangle that she packed away.  She was then aware of a coolness, a light breeze, where before the air had been warm and still.  Looking westward, she realized that she had once more been crystal — tricked.  The day was almost over, and she'd only three black crystals to show for sixteen hours' work — or mental aberration.  There was a whole side to be cut.

      Obviously there was much about the cutting of crystal that could not be explained, programmed, or theorized.  It had to be experienced.  She hadn't acquired enough tips or tricks or insights from watching Moksoon.  She had learned a good deal from observing Keborgen's cutting.  Intuition suggested that she would never learn all there was to the cutting of crystal.  That ought to make a long life as a Singer more eventful.  If she could just handle the frustration of losing hours in contemplation of her handiwork!

      The three crystals were quiescent in their packing case, but her hands lingered on it as she fixed the stowage webbing.  She assembled a large hot meal for herself and a beaker of Yarran beer.  Taking food and drink outside, she strode to the dip and seated herself on a convenient boulder.

      She watched the sun set on her claim and the moons rise.  The cooling crystal cried across the blind valley that separated them.

      "You had your way — " and Killashandra stopped her mocking sentence as her first word was echoed back from the newly exposed crystal.  "You who — " And the vowel came back to her, in harmony.  Amused by the phenomenon, she pitched a second "you who" a third lower and heard it chime in with the faint reverberations of the first.  She laughed at her whimsy.  Crystal laughed back.  And the first stirrings of the night breeze as great Shankill moon rose brought counter harmonies to her solo.

      She sang.  She sang to the crystal; the wind learned the tune, though gradually the crystal chorus died as the last sun warmth left it, and only the wind softly repeated her lyric line.

      Shilmore rose and the night air brought a chill that roused her from a trance of the kind that Maestro Valdi must have meant.  He was right, she thought.  crystal song could be addictive and was utterly exhausting.  She staggered back to the sled.  Without shedding her coverall, Killashandra drew the thermal sheet over her as she turned her shoulder into the mattress.  And slept.

      A faint sound roused her.  Not the buzzer, for she hadn't remembered to set an alarm.  Groggily, she raised her head staring in accusation at the console, but there was no warning light and certainly no buzz.  However, something had awakened her.

      Outside, the sled the sun was shining.  She pushed herself off the bed and dialed a strong stimulant.  The time display read midmorning.  She'd missed five hours of cutting light!  She'd a cramp in one shoulder, and her knees ached.  The heat of the drink flowed through her, dispersing the sluggishness of her mind and easing her muscles.  She drank as quickly as she could, dialed a second cup, shoved protein bars into her coverall pockets.  Unbracketing her cutter, she slung it across her back, got another carton, a handlight, and was on her way to the claim ten minutes after waking.  The sound that woke her had been the crack of raw black crystal feeling the touch of sun.

      First she had to clear splinters that had fallen from the end of her cut, the result of the night's chill and the morning's sun.  Stolidly, she set her mind and collected the small pieces, dropping them into the packing case.  With the handlight, she could now see where another flaw crazed the crystal quartz on the hillside.  Using the inner edge of the previous day's shelf, however, she could make an interlocking group, four medium — or five smaller — rectangles.  She'd cut these now, let the chill crack off flaw.  A little expeditious trimming on the ravine side and the temperature would remove the blemishes.  Tomorrow she'd have a rare day's cutting.

      Killashandra set her nerves for the first incision of the infrasonic cutter and was relieved to endure less shock.  Relieved and dismayed.  Was the claim admitting her right to it by lack of protest?  Or did one day attune her body to the resonance?  She had half wished to experience that pleasurable, nerve-caressing distraction, as if a highly skilled lover were inside her body.

      She did not remember, due to those reflections no doubt, to pack away as soon as she'd turned off the blade She did remember to shield the rectangle from the sun as she stroked it, totally in rapport with her creation.  She admired the clever angle she had contrived to make an old cut —

      And suddenly realized that she had been communing with the violated crystal.  She resolutely packed it away, and the next four were stowed as soon as she laid the cutter down.  She had to teach herself the automatic sequence.  "Habit," Concera had endlessly and rightly said, "is all that saves a Singer."

      Killashandra set herself to clearing the ravine face, but the sun's reflection off the quartz pained her eyes.  She'd wasted too much time in sleep and in crystal thrall.

      She woke in the night suddenly, an odd apprehension driving sleep from her mind.  Uneasily, she checked the stored cartons, wondering if something had caused them to resonate.  Outside the night was clear, the moons had set, and the range was deep asleep.  She glanced at the console and the storm alarms.  She cursed under her breath.  She hadn't had a met reading.  The printout showed clouds moving in from the White Sea, some turbulence, but at an altitude that might reach the dominant easterly air current and dissipate.  A pattern to watch, to be sure.

      She slept uneasily until the first crack of light.  Apprehensively she dialed a met printout.  The picture wasn't alarming, though cloud cover had increased in depth and speed.  A high-pressure area was coming south, but no storm warning was issued for the Bay area.  If a storm were making, she'd've had a satellite warning by now.

      The continual awareness of something out of kilter made cutting easier.  She completed a cut of four large five-sided blacks, had stored all the debris, when the pressure of her subjective anxiety became too intense to continue.  Operating on an intuition too powerful to be refused, she slung the cutter over her shoulder, grabbed a carton in each hand, and started back to the sled.  Halfway there she heard the hooter and nearly tripped for looking up at the still cloudless sky above her.

      She tapped out an update for the weather.  The hooter was only the first warner:  a watch-the-weather-picture caution.  Everything inside her head was far more alarmed than the Guild's signal.  The met displayed a brewing turbulence that could bow either north or south, depending on the low pressure ridge.

      She stared at the display, not at all reassured.  She did her own calculations.  If the very worst occurred, the storm could boil across the tip of the main continent and run across her position in four or live hours, building speed at a tremendous rate once it acquired the impetus of the advancing ridge.

      "I thought you were supposed to warn us?" she shouted at the other silent storm-alerts.  The hooter had automatically ceased blaring when she had programmed the weather picture.  "Four, Five hours.  That doesn't give me time to cut anything more.  Just sit here and stew until you lot wake up to the danger.  Isn't anyone analyzing the met patterns?  Why all this rigmarole about distant early warnings and weather sensors if they don't bloody work?"

      As she vented her tension in a one-sided tirade, she was also rigging her ship for storm-running.  The four precious canons of black crystal were securely webbed in front of the mocking empties.  She changed her coverall and realized from the grime on her wrists and ankles that she hadn't bathed since coming to the ranges.  She wanted to reappear at the complex looking presentable.  A quick wash was refreshing, and she ate a light meal as she did some computations of deviation courses that would disguise the direction from which she came and confuse other Singers called in by the storm.  She had just completed what would be a most elaborate break-out when the first of the dead earnest storm warnings came on.

      "About bloody time!  I came to that conclusion an hour ago."

      Airborne, she skimmed ridge and hollow, heading north at 11 for half an hour.  She turned on a western leg for twenty minutes and was starting a southern track when she flipped over a gorge that looked familiar.  A blur of orange in the shadows brought to mind Moksoon and his wretched pink crystals.  The storm readings were insistent now.  She made another pass up the gorge and saw Moksoon bent over his outcrop, two cartons beside him.  He ought to have been heading out, not calmly cutting as if he had all day and a mach storm wasn't bowling down.

      She came in as quietly as she could, but the grating of her sled runners on the loose rock at the valley bottom warned Moksoon.  He charged down the slope, cutter held aggressively.  She slapped on the playback, turned up the volume, but he was caterwauling so loudly about Section 49 that he couldn't have heard it.

      The wind however had picked up and made it difficult for him to swing and keep his balance, though Killashandra doubted that the infrasonic blade would do her sled much harm.  Break his cutter.

      "Storm, you addled pink tenor!"  She roared out the open window.

      Despite the wind scream, she could hear the hooter buzzer-bell systems of his sled.

      "Mach storm on the way.  You've got to leave!"

      "Leave?"  Panic replaced wrath on Moksoon's face.  He now heard her ship's klaxons as well as his own.  "I can't leave!"  The wind was tearing the sound from his mouth, but Killashandra could read his lips.  "I've struck a pure vein.  I've — "  He clamped his mouth shut with caution and had to lean into a particularly strong gust to keep from being knocked over.  "I've got to cut just one more.  Just one more."  He raced up the slope to his site.

      Unbelievingly, Killashandra watched him raise his cutter, to tune it in the teeth of a gale.  Cursing, Killashandra grabbed up her hand light.  Not as sturdy a weapon as she'd've liked, considering the probable denseness of Moksoon's skull, but used with the necessary force in the right spot, it ought to suffice.

      As she left her sled, she experienced a taste of what it would be like to be caught in a mach storm in the crystal ranges.  Sound, waves of dissonance and harmony, streamed through her head.  She covered her ears, but the sound maintained contact through the rock under her feet.  The keening wails masked her slithering approach, and Moksoon was too preoccupied with cutting to see anything but the octagon he was excising.  Just as she had braced herself to slug him, he laid the cutter down but caught a glimpse of her descending hand and flung himself to the side.  She grabbed up his cutter and pelted for his sled, nearer than hers.  He'd follow her for that cutter, she was positive.  She bounced into his sled, plastered herself against the wall, the brackets digging into her shoulders, wincing against the shrill obligato of Moksoon's unheeded warning devices.

      He was wilier than she'd credited him.  Suddenly, a strong hand grabbed her left ankle and hauled her leg sideways, a rock coming down to crush her kneecap.  But for the fact she still held his cutter, she would have been crippled.  She brought the cutter handle up, deflecting the rock, bruising Moksoon's fingers.  She pivoted on her captured foot and delivered a second blow to the old man's jaw.  He hovered a moment until she thought she'd have to club him again, but it was the wind that supported him, then let him crumple.

      Automatically, Killashandra bracketed his cutter.  She tapped for a weather printout, which silenced three of the mind-boggling alarms.  Glancing to the rear of the sled, she saw that Moksoon had not bothered to web his packed cartons.  She did so, ignoring the filth and discarded food that littered the living section.  Then she remembered that there were several cartons by his claim.

      Luckily, she hadn't any rocky height to negotiate from Moksoon's sled to his claim or she wouldn't have made it back with the heavy cartons.  Moksoon showed no signs of reviving.  She lugged him into the sled, then deposited him on the couch.  He didn't so much as groan.  He was alive, though she was revolted by the grease on his neck as she felt for a pulse.

      It was then she realized her dilemma.  Two ships and one conscious pilot.  She tried to rouse Moksoon, but he was completely oblivious, and she couldn't find the med-aid kit that contained stimulant sprays.

      The alarms attained a new height of distress, and she recognized that time was running out.  She couldn't transport all of Moksoon's cargo to her sled.  She had four canons more precious than all of his.  There must be something in Guild rules about rescue and salvage.  She'd got two vouchers for escorting Carrik, so she decided the wind had gotten her wits.  She made a battered dash to her own sled, slung her cutter over her shoulder and grabbed two cartons.  The warnings in Moksoon's sled had climbed several deafening decibels toward the supersonic, but there was no way she could diminish them until she had taken off.

      She staggered back to her sled, which was bouncing now from the gusting wind.  She wondered if she could secure her craft, somehow keep it from being flung about the gorge, and decided against wasting the time.

      She grabbed her remaining cartons and was glad of the weight to anchor her feet to the ground.  She was gasping for breath as she finally closed the door of Moksoon's sled.  He still lolled on the couch.  She webbed her four cartons and secured her cutter among his empties.  She strapped Moksoon tightly to the couch and then took her place at the console.

      All sleds had similar control panels, though Moksoon's was much the worse for wear.

      Moksoon's claim was a dangerously enclosed area from which to ascend into a wild storm.  She fought to keep the vertical, fought again to increase the horizontal to clear the ridge top, then let the wind take the sled, hauling as hard as she could on the yoke toward the west.

      The mach-tuned dissonance's were worse in the air, and she made a grab for Moksoon's buffer helmet.  It was stiff, dusty, and too small, but it blocked the worst of the wind shriek.  She'd not got it on a moment too soon, for the sled behaved like a crazed beast, plunging and diving wildly then sliding sideways.  Killashandra learned appreciation of the simulation drills sooner than she would have liked.

      It was as well she'd strapped Moksoon down, for he regained consciousness before they'd quite cleared the Milekeys and started raving about pain.  She felt quite enough jabbing at her nerve ends through the ear pads.

      Moksoon regained unconsciousness after throwing his head against the duralloy wall, so the last hour into the Guild Complex gave her sufficient quiet to ease her own aggravated nerves.

      She had reason to be proud as she brought Moksoon's canting sled up over the wind baffles at the complex and landed it conveniently close to the racks.  She signaled for medics, and as she pointed them toward Moksoon, one of the hangar personnel grabbed her arm and gestured urgently toward the hangar office.  The information that Lanzecki awaited her was reinforced by that message on the green display, blinking imperatively.

      Cargo personnel had opened the sled's storage, and now Killashandra moved to collect her precious cutter and to point out the four cartons which held her blacks.

      "Enthor!"  she roared at the handlers.  "Take these immediately to Enthor!"

      Despite their obliging grins and nods, she wasn't sure they understood her urgency.  She followed them, but half way there, someone matched pace with her, tugging angrily at her arm.

      "Report to Lanzecki" the hangar officer yelled, pushing her away from Storage.  The look in his eyes was not reassuring.  "You might at least have saved the new sled!"

      She jerked her arm free and, leaving the man astonished at her imprudence, ran after her cartons.  She saw the first handler just plop his burden down on the stack.  She grabbed it and roared at the others to follow her into Sorting.

      "Killashandra?  Is it you?" a familiar voice asked.  Without checking her determined forward march, she saw Rimbol following her, one of her cartons held carefully against his body.

      Two absurdities impinged on her thoughts as she rushed into Sorting:  Rimbol was unaware of the fortune of black crystal he carried, and he had trouble identifying her.

      "Yes, it's me.  What's the matter?"

      "You haven't looked in a mirror lately, have you?" was Rimbol's reply.  He seemed amused as well as surprised.  "Don't scowl.  You're terrifying, you — you crystal, you!"

      "Be careful of that carton," she said, more commanding than she should be of a friend, and Rimbol's welcoming smile faded.  "Sorry, Rimbol.  I had one helluva time getting in.  That bollux Moksoon wouldn't believe a storm was coming and him having trouble standing straight against the gusts."

      "You brought another Singer out of the ranges?"  Rimbol's eyes widened with incredulity, but whatever he had been about to add was cut off as Killashandra spied Enthor and called his name.

      "Yes?"  Enthor's query was surprised.  He blinked at her uncertainly.

      "I'm Killashandra Ree," she said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.  She couldn't have changed that much since she'd last seen Enthor.  "I've black crystal!"

       "Black?"

      "Yes, yes.  Black!  Here!"

      "And how were so you fortunate as to find that which eludes so many?" an implacable voice demanded.

      Killashandra was setting her carton down on Enthor's table, but the cold, ominous tone paralyzed her.  Her throat went dry and her mind numb because no consideration was excuse enough for her to have ignored the Guild Master's summons, to make him seek her out.

      "Well, it doesn't surprise me that you have," Enthor said, taking the box from her.

      Lanzecki's eyes never left hers as he advanced.  She let the sorting table support her shaking body and clutched its edge with nerveless fingers.  Regulations and restrictions that could be levied against a disobedient member by the Guild Master sprang to her mind far more vividly than the elusive ones about rescue and salvage.  His lips were set in a thin, hard line.  The slight flare of his nostrils and the quick lift of his chest under the subtle gleam of his shirt confirmed that he had appeared through effort, not magic.

      "You could improve on your acute angles," Enthor was saying as he unpacked her triad.  "However, the credit is good."  Enthor blinked before he peered approvingly at Killashandra.  He noticed her immobility, looked around, not unsurprised to see the Guild Master, and back to Killashandra, aware now of the reason for her tension.

      "Which is as well for Killashandra Ree," Lanzecki said with deep sarcasm, "since she has not returned in her new sled."

      "Moksoon is all right?"  Killashandra asked, anything to be able to speak in the face of Lanzecki's fury.

      "His head will heal, and he will doubtless cut more rose quartz!"

      That Lanzecki's tone was not derisory did not signify.  Killashandra understood what was implied.  Nor could she break from his piercing stare.

      "I couldn't very well leave him," she said, the solace of indignation replacing fear.  After all, Lanzecki had arranged for Moksoon to shepherd her.

      "Why not?  He would have shown no compunction in leaving you had the circumstances been reversed."

      "But .  .  .  but he was cutting.  All the storm warnings were on in his sled.  He wouldn't listen.  He tried to slice me with his cutter.  I had to knock him out before he .  .  ."

      "You could be subject to claim-jumping, Section 49, Paragraph 14," Lanzecki went on irreconcilably.

      "What about the section dealing with rescue and salvage?"

      Lanzecki's eyelids dropped slightly, but it was Enthor who answered her in a startled voice.

      "There are none, my dear.  Salvage is always done by the Guild, not a Singer.  I would have thought you'd been taught to know what exactly is in rules and regs.  Ah, now these .  .  .  these are very good indeed.  Two a trifle on the thin side."

      Enthor had unpacked the quintet.  For the first time, Lanzecki's attention was diverted.  He shifted his body slightly so that he could see the weighplate.  He lifted one eyebrow in surprise, but his lips did not soften with appeasement.

      "You may come out of this affair better than you deserve to, Killashandra Ree," Lanzecki said.  His eyes still glinted with anger.  "Unless, of course, you left behind your cutter."

      "I could carry that, and these," she retorted, stung more by his amusement than his anger.

      "Let us hope then that Moksoon can be persuaded not to charge you with claim-jumping since you preserved his wreck of a ship, his skin, and his crystal.  Gratitude is dependent on memory, Killashandra Ree, a function of the mind that deteriorates on Ballybran.  Learn that lesson now!"

      Lanzecki swept away from Enthor's table and walked down the long room to the farthest exit, thus emphasizing that he had come on discipline,

CHAPTER 10

      Killashandra stayed with Enthor while he tallied her four cartons, though she was hardly aware of what the old Sorter was saying to her.  She kept glancing toward the far door where Lanzecki had made his dramatic exit, aware of the surreptitious looks in her direction from other Sorters, aware of an emotion more intense than hatred, emptier than fear.

      "Now that'll buy you your two sleds."  Enthor's words penetrated her self-absorption.

      "What?"

      "Those black crystals brought you a total of twenty-three thousand credits."

      "How much?"  Killashandra stared incredulously at the displayed figures, blinking green.  "But a sled only costs eight thousand."

      "There's the tithe, my dear.  Thirty percent does eat a hole in the total.  Actually, you have to pay for two sleds, the one you lost and the replacement.  Still, 16,100 clear does help."

      "Yes, it does."  Killashandra tried to sound grateful.

      Enthor patted her arm.  "You'd best take a good long radiant bath, m'dear.  Always helps.  And eat."  Then he began to package her beautiful black crystal.

      She turned away, unexpectedly feeling the separation from her first experience of crystal.  The weight of the cutter made her sag as she slung it to her back.  She would take it to be checked in the morning.  She estimated she had just enough strength left to get her body back to her quarters and into the radiant bath.  She took the nearest door out of the Sorting room, aware marginally that people were still rushing cartons in to Storage, that the howl of the wind was loud at this level even inside the complex.  She should be grateful!  She was too weary to laugh or snort at her inappropriate choice of word.  She got into the lift and its descent, though smooth, made her sink toward the floor.  She was able to prevent complete collapse only by hanging on to the support rail.

      She wobbled to her room, oblivious to the gaze of those in the Commons.  As she walked, the drag of the cutter pulled her to the right, and once she caromed numbly from a doorway.

      When she finally raised her hand to her own door plate, she realized that she still wore the ident wristband.  She wouldn't need that anymore, but she hadn't the strength to remove it.  As she passed a chair, she dropped her right shoulder, and the cutter slid onto the cushioning.  She continued to the tankroom where she stared in dazed surprise at the filling tank.  Did her entry into the room trigger the thing?  No, it was almost full.  Someone must have programmed it.  Enthor?  Rimbol?  Her mind refused to work.  She tore at her coverall, then her sweat liner, pulling her boots off with the legs of her coverall, and crawled up the three steps to the platform around the tank.  She slid gratefully — that word again — into the viscous liquid, right up to her throat, her weight supported by the radiant fluid.  Fatigue and the ache of crystal drained from her body and nerves.  In that suspension, she remained, her mind withdrawn, her body buoyed.

      Sometime later, the room announced a visitor, and she roused sufficiently to deny entrance.  She didn't want to see Rimbol.  But the intrusion and the necessity of making a decision aroused her from her passivity.  The fluid had provided the necessary anodyne, and she was acutely aware of hunger.  She had pulled herself from the tank, the radiant liquid dripping from her body, and was reaching for a wrap when a hand extended the garment to her.  Lanzecki stood there.

      "I will not be denied twice!"  he said, "though I will allow you couldn't know that it was I at your door."

      Surprised at his presence, Killashandra wavered on the edge of the tank, and he immediately held out a steadying hand.

      "You can fill tanks and open doors?"

      "One can be programmed, and the other was not locked."

      "It is now!"

      "It is," he said smoothly; his mouth, she quickly noticed, was amused.  "But that can be changed."

      For a picosecond, she wanted to call his bluff.  Then she remembered that he had said she might he luckier than she deserved as Enthor tallied her cut.  He had implied she had enough credit not only to buy a new sled but pay off what she already owed the Guild.  Lanzecki had remembered the vouchers she still held.  With those, she would have just enough.  What mattered was that Lanzecki had remembered that margin at a time when he was rightfully infuriated by her disregard of her Guild Master's summons.

      ''I'm much too tired to change anything."  She gathered the toweling about her and extended her hand to him, palm up, summoning a weary smile.

      He looked from her smile to her palm, and his lips curved upward.  Now he took a step forward.  Placing both hands on her slender waist, he swung her down from the tank platform.  She expected to be set on her feet.  Instead Lanzecki carried her into the lounge.  The spicy aroma of a freshly cooked meal was heady, and she exclaimed with pleasure at the steaming dishes on the table.

      "I expected you might be hungry."

      Killashandra laughed as Lanzecki deposited her in the chair, and she gestured with the over blown gentility of an opera heroine for him to assume the other seat.

      Not that evening or ever did Lanzecki ask her if she had found Keborgen's black crystal, though he had occasions later to refer to her claim.  Neither did he ask her any details of her first trip to the Milekey Ranges.  Nor was she disposed to volunteer any comment.  Except one.

      Having teased her adroitly, Lanzecki finally gave her the caress she had been anticipating so long, and the sensation was almost unbearable.

      "Crystal touches that way, too," she said when she could talk.

      "I know," he murmured, his voice oddly rough, and as if to forestall her reply, he began to kiss her in a fashion that excluded opportunity.

      She awoke alone, as she had expected, and much later than she had planned, for the time was late evening.  She yawned prodigiously, stretched, and wondered if another radiant bath would further her restoration.  Then her belly rumbled, and she decided food was the more immediate concern.  No sooner had she dialed for a hot drink than a message was displayed on her screen for her to contact the Guild Master when convenient.

      She did so promptly before she considered convenience, expedience, or opportunity.

      Her reply was cleared immediately, and her screen produced a visual contact with the Guild Master.  He was surrounded by printout sheets and looked tired.

      "Have you rested?"  Lanzecki asked.  Belatedly, Killashandra activated her own screen.  "Yes, you look considerably improved."

      "Improved?"

      A slight smile tugged at his lips.  "From the stress and fatigue of your dramatic return."  Then his expression changed, and Lanzecki became Guild Master.  "Will you please come to my office to discuss an extra-planetary assignment?"

      "Will," not "would," Killashandra thought, sensitive to key words.

      "I'll be there as soon as I've eaten and gotten dressed."  He nodded and broke contact.

      As she sipped the last of the drink, she took a long look at herself in the mirrors of the tank room.  She'd never been vain about her appearance.  She had good strong face bones, wide cheeks, a high forehead, and thick, well-arched eyebrows, which she had not narrowed, as the natural emphasis made a good stage effect.  Her jaw was strong, and she was losing the jowl muscles formed by singing.  She slapped at the sides of her chin.  No flab.  Whatever produced the gaunt aspect of her face was reflected in her body.  She noticed how prominent her collarbones were.  If her appearance was now an improvement, according to Lanzecki, whatever had she looked like the previous day?  Right now, she wouldn't have needed face paint to play Space Hag or Warp Widow.

      She found something loose and filmy to wear, with ends that tied about her neck and wrists and a long full skirt.  She stood back from the mirrors and did a half turn, startled by her full-length reflection.  Something had changed.  Just what she couldn't puzzle out; she had to see the Guild Master.

      She was almost to the lift shaft when a group emerged from the Commons.

      "Killashandra?"

      "Rimbol?"  Killashandra mocked his surprised query with a light laugh.  "You ought to know me!"

      Rimbol gave her an odd grin that relaxed into his usual ingenuous smile.  Jezerey, Mistra, and Borton were with him.

      "Well, you're more like yourself this evening than you were yesterday," Rimbol replied.  He scratched his head in embarrassment, grinning ruefully at the others.  "I didn't believe Concera when she kept saying singing crystal makes a big change, but now I do."

      "I don't think I've changed," Killashandra replied stiffly, annoyed that Rimbol and, by their expressions, the others could perceive what eluded her.

      Rimbol laughed.  "Well, you've used your mirror" — and he indicated her careful grooming — "but you haven't seen."

      "No, I haven't."

      Rimbol made a grimace of apology for her sharp tone.

      "Singers are notorious for their irritability," Jezerey said with an uncordial look.

      "Oh, pack that in, Jez," Rimbol said.  "Killa is just in off the ranges.  Is it as bad as it's made out, Killa?"  He couched that question in a quiet tone.

      "I would have been fine if I hadn't had to deal with Moksoon."

      "Or the Guild Master."  Rimbol was sympathetic.

      "Oh, you stayed on?"  Killashandra decided to brazen through that episode.  "He was quite right, of course.  And I pass on that hard-learned lesson.  Save your own sled and skin in the ranges.  Will you be around later, Rimbol?  I've got to see Lanzecki now."  She allowed her voice to drop, expressing dread and looking for sympathy in their expressions.  "I'd like to join you later if you're in the lounge."

      "Good luck!"  Rimbol said, and he meant it.  The others waved encouragingly as she entered the lift.

      She had much to think about during the short drop, and none of it about her interview with Lanzecki.  How could she have changed so much in the past few days just by cutting crystal?  Jezerey had never been overly friendly, but she had never been antagonistic.  She was annoyed with herself, too, for that off handed reassurance to Rimbol.  "I would have been fine without Moksoon."  Yet how could she possibly have explained the experience that had annealed her, confirmed her as a Crystal Singer?  Maybe, alone with Rimbol, she would try to explain, forewarn him that once past the curious unpainful agony of the initial cut, there was an elevation to a totally bizarre ecstasy that could only be savored briefly or it overwhelmed mind, nerve, and senses.

      She sighed, standing before the door to the Guild Master's office.  In the second between the announcement of her presence and the panel's smooth retraction, she remembered how hard Concera had tried to explain some facets of crystal singing.  She recalled the odd harsh tone in which Lanzecki had admitted knowledge of the tactile feel of crystal.

      "Killashandra Ree."  Lanzecki's voice came from the corner of his large office, and she saw him bent over a spotlighted work surface, layers of printout in front of him.  He did not look up from his research until she reached him.  "Did you have enough to eat?" he asked with more than ordinary courtesy and a close scrutiny of her face.

      "I had a high-protein and glucose cereal — " she began because, as soon as he mentioned eating, she felt hungry again.

      "Hmmm.  A bowl was all you had time for, I'm sure.  You've slept sixteen hours, so you've missed considerable nourishment already."

      "I did eat in the ranges.  Really I did," she protested as he took her hand and led her to the catering console.

      "You've still wit enough to feed yourself, but you can't know how immensely important it is to replenish reserves at this point."

      "I won't be able to eat all that."  She was appalled at the number and variety of dishes he was dialing.

      "I get peckish myself, you know," he said, grinning.

      "What happens that I need to eat myself gross?" she asked, but she helped him clear the catering slot of its first deposit, sniffing appreciatively at the enticing mixture of aromas from the platters.

      "You'll never see a plump Singer," he assured her.  "In your particular case, the symbiont is only just settled into cell tissue.  A Milekey transition may be easier on the host, but the spore still requires time to multiply, differentiate, and become systematically absorbed.  Here, start with this soup.  Weather and other considerations compelled me to direct you into the ranges prematurely as far as the process of your adaptation is concerned."  He gave her a sardonic glance.  "You may one day be grateful that you had only two days on your claim."

      "Actually three.  I didn't spend two with that twithead Moksoon.  He's utterly paranoid!"

      "He's alive," Lanzecki replied succinctly, with sufficient undertone to make the statement both accusation and indictment.  "Three days!  In ordinary training, you would not have gone out into the ranges until the others were also prepared."

      "They won't make it out before the Passover storms now."  Killashandra was dismayed.  If she had had to wait that long .  .  .

      "Precisely.  You were trained, eager and clever enough to precipitate the event."

      "And you wanted that black crystal."

      "So, my dearling, did you."

      The caterer chimed urgently to remind them to clear the slot for additional selections.  Lanzecki slapped a hold on the remainder of the programmed order.

      "Even with your help, I'll never eat all this," Killashandra said after they had filled the small table and three more dishes remained in the slot.

      "Listen to me while you eat.  The symbiont will be attenuated after intense cutting.  I could see that in your face.  Don't talk.  Eat!  I had to be sure you ate last night once the radiant fluid had eased your nerves.  Your metabolism must be efficient.  I would have thought you'd been awakened by hunger a good four hours ago."

      "I was eating when I got your message."

      He grinned as he inserted a steaming, seeded appetizer into his mouth.  He licked his fingers as he chewed, then said, "My message was programmed the moment your caterer was used."  He stuffed another piece of appetizer into her mouth.  "Don't talk.  Eat."

      Whatever it was he fed her was exceedingly tasty.  She speared another.

      "Now, several unexpected elements are in display.  One" — and he ate a spoonful of small brilliant green spheres — "you brought in five medium black crystals for which we have received an urgent request."  He waved his empty spoon at the printout layers on his desk.  "Two, you have no sled, nor can Manufacturing produce a replacement before the Passover storms.  Which, by the way, were heralded by that unpredicted blow in the Bay area.  Short, hard, but destructive.  Even though conjunction occurs over the seas north and east of this continent, Passover is going to be particularly nasty, as it coincides with spring solstice.  Weather is generally cyclical on Ballybran, and the pattern which has been emerging coincides with '63 .  .  .  2863GY, that is — eat, don't gawk.  Surely you have wandered through data retrieval, Killashandra, and discovered how long I've been a member.  Fuerte cannot have eradicated human curiosity, or you wouldn't be here."

      She swallowed as the significance of his qualifying the century occurred to her.

"But not how long you've been Guild Master."

      He chuckled at her quick reply, passing a dish of stewed orange-and-green milsi stalks to her.  "Excellent for trace minerals.  The Passover turbulence will be phenomenal even in terms of Ballybran's meteorological history.  Which, I might add, goes back further than I do.  Don't choke now!"  he rose to give her a deft thump between her shoulder blades.  "Even the Infirmary level will shake.  You, so recently exposed to crystal for the first time, will be severely affected by the stress.  I can, as Guild Master, order you off Ballybran," and his face fell into harsh immobile lines, impersonal and implacable.  But his mouth softened when he saw her determined expression.  "However, I would prefer that you cooperate.  The five blacks you brought in are currently, if you'll forgive the pun, being tuned and should be ready for shipment.  I would like to assign you to take them to the Trundimoux System and install them."

      "This duty will provide me with the margin of credit for my future foolishness?"

      Lanzecki chuckled appreciatively.

      "Think about the assignment while you eat some fried steakbean."

      "It is, then, a suggestion?" she asked around a large mouthful of tasty legume.

      "It is — now — a suggestion."  His face, mouth, and tone were bland.  "The storms will soon be hammering the ranges and forcing Singers in.  Others would undertake the assignment happily, especially those who haven't cut enough crystal to get off-world at Passover."

      "I thought Passover was an incredible spectacle."

      "It is.  Raw natural forces at their most destructive."  A lift to his shoulders suggested that it was a spectacle to which he was inured and yet .  .  .

      "Do you leave during Passover?"

      He gave her a keen glance, his dark eyes reflecting the spotlights over his work desk.

      "The Guild Master is always accessible during Passover."  He offered her some lemon-yellow cubes.  "A sharpish cheese, but it complements the steakbean."

      "Hmmm.  Yes, it does."

      "Help yourself."  He rose and took the next dishes from the catering slot, which had been maintaining them at the appropriate heat.  "Will you have something to drink?"

      "Yarran beer, please."  She had a sudden craving for the taste of hops.

      "Good choice.  I'll join you."

      She glanced at him, arrested by some slight alteration of tone, but his back was to her.

      "Rimbol's from Scartine, isn't he?"  Lanzecki asked, returning with a pitcher and two beakers.  He poured with a proper respect for the head of foam.  "He should cut well in the darker shades.  Perhaps black, if he can find a vein."

      "How could you tell?"

      "A question of resonance, also of the degree of adaptation.  Jezerey will do lighter blues, pinks, paler greens.  Borton will also tend to cut well in the darker.  I hope they team up."

      "Do you know who will cut what?"

      "I am not in a position to imply anything, merely venture an informed guess.  After all, the Guild has been operating for over four hundred years galactic, all that time collecting and collating information on its members.  It would show a scandalous want of probity not to attempt more than merely a determination of probability of adjustment to Ballybran spore symbiosis."

      "You sound like Borella's come-all-ye pitch," Killashandra replied.

      Lanzecki's lips twitched in an amusement that was echoed by the sparkle in his brilliant eyes.  "I do believe I'm quoting — but whom, I've forgotten.  How about some pepper fruit?  Goes with the beer.  I've ordered some ices to clear the palate.  A very old and civilized course but not one taken with beer."  As he passed her the plate, the tangy scent of the long, thin furry fingers did tempt her to try one.  "As I was saying, by the time candidates are through the Shankill checkpoint, as many variables as can be resolved have been."  He began to pile empty plates and dishes into one untidy stack, and she realized that while he had sampled everything, she had eaten far more.  Yet she didn't feel uncomfortably full.  "You ought to have been shown the probability graph," he said, frowning as he rose.  He tossed the discards deftly into the waste chute before pausing yet again at the catering slot.

      "We were."  She nibbled at another pepper fruit while wondering why his face showed no trace of aging.  He wasn't singing crystal anymore, but that was the ostensible reason for the specious youthfulness.  "We were told nothing about individual capabilities or forecasts."

      ''Why should you be?  That would create all sorts of unnecessary problems."  He set two dishes of varicolor sherbets, two wine glasses, and a frosty bottle on the table.

      "I couldn't eat another thing."

      "No?  Try a spoonful of the green.  Very settling to the stomach and clears the mouth."  He seated himself and poured the wine.  "The one critical point is still adaptation.  The psychological attitude, Antona feels, rather than the physical.  That space worker, Carigana, should not have died."  Lanzecki's expression was one of impersonal regret.  "We can generally gauge the severity of transition and are prepared for contingencies."

      Killashandra thought of the smooth disappearances of Rimbol and Mistra during the night, of meditechs collecting Jezerey before she had fallen to the plascrete.  She also recalled her indignation over "condition satisfactory.

      "How do you like the wine?"

      "Does it have to be so mechanical?"

      "The wine?"

      "The whole process."

      "Every care is taken, my dear Killashandra," and Lanzecki's tone reminded her incontrovertibly that he was Guild Master and that the procedure she wished to protest was probably of his institution.

      "The wine's fine."

      "I thought you'd appreciate it."  His response was as dry as the wine.  "Not much is left to chance in recruiting.  Tukolom may be a prosy bore, but he has a curious sensitivity to illness which makes him especially effective in his role as tutor."

      "Then it was known that I — "

      "You were not predicted."  He used the slightest pause between each word for emphasis, and raising his glass to her, took a sip.

      "And .  .  ."  It was not coquetry in Killashandra that caused her to prompt him but the strongest feeling that he had been about to add a rider to that surprise comment.

      "And certainly not a Milekey, nor resonant to black crystal.  Perhaps" — and his quick reply did, she was positive, mask thoughts unspoken — "we should initiate handling crystal with recruits as soon as possible.  But" — and he shrugged — "we can't program convenient storms which require all-member participation."

      "Rimbol said you couldn't have planned that storm."

      "Perceptive of him.  How did those ices go down?"