Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line (22 page)

He is very much too young for me, she told herself, and I am brittle with too much living.

The next day she nursed what must have been her first hangover in a century. She had worked hard enough to acquire one. She lay on the beach in the shade and tried not to move unnecessarily. No one bothered her until midday—presumably everyone else was nursing a hangover as well. Then Shad’s big feet stopped on the sand beside her pallet. His knees cracked as he bent over her and his compelling hand tipped back the wide hat she wore against sun glare.

“You’ll feel better if you eat this,” he said, speaking very softly. He held out a small tray with a frosted glass and a plate of fruit chips on it.

She wondered if he was enunciating with extra care, for she understood every soft word, even if she resented the gist of them. She groaned, and he repeated his advice. Then he put gentle hands on her, raising her torso so she could drink without spilling. He fed her, piece by piece as a man feeds a sick and fretful child.

She felt sick and she was fretful, but when all the food and drink were in her belly, she had to admit that his advice was sound.

“I never get drunk.”

“Probably not. But you also don’t dance yourself bloody-footed either.”

Her feet were tender, come to think of it, and when
she examined the soles, she discovered blisters and myriad thin scratches.

Tucker sat with her all afternoon, saying little. When he suggested a swim, she complied. The lagoon water was cooler than she had remembered, or maybe she was hotter for all she had been lying in the shade.

When they emerged from the water, she felt human, even for a crystal singer. And she admired his straight tall body, the easy grace of his carriage, and the fineness of his handsome face. But he was much too young for her. She would have to try Orric, for she needed a man’s favors again.

Evidently it was not Shad’s intention that she find Orric: he persuaded her that she didn’t want to eat in the hostelry; that it would be more fun to dig bivalves where the tide was going out, in a cove he knew of, a short walk away. It was difficult to argue with a soft-spoken man, who was taller than she by several centimeters, and could carry her easily under one arm … even if he was a century or so younger.

And it was impossible not to touch his silky flesh when he brushed past her to tend the baking shellfish, or when he passed her wine-steeped fruit chips and steamed roots.

When he looked at her, sideways, his blue eyes darker now, reflecting the fire and the night, it was beyond her to resist his subtle importunities.

She woke on the dark beach, before the dying fire, with his sleeping weight against her side. Her arms were wrapped around his right arm, her head cradled in the cup of his shoulder. Without moving her head, she could see his profile. And she knew there wasn’t any crystal in her soul. She could still give, and receive. For
all she sang crystal, she still possessed that priceless human quality, annealed in the fire of his youth.

She had been wrong to dismiss him for what was a mere chronological accident, irrelevant to the peace and solace he brought her. Her body was exultant, renewed.

Her stretching roused him to smile with unexpected sweetness into her eyes. He gathered her against him, the vibrant strength of his arms tempered to tenderness for her slighter frame.

“You crazy woman,” he said, in a wondering voice, as he lightly scrubbed her scalp with his long fingers and played with her fine hair. “I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

“Not likely to again.” Please!

He grinned down at her, delighted by her arrogance.

“Do you travel much?” he asked.

“When the mood strikes me.”

“Don’t travel for a while.”

“I’ll have to one day. I’ve got to go back to work, you know.”

“What work?”

“I’m a guild member.”

His grin broadened and he hugged her. “All right, I won’t pry.” His finger delicately traced the line of her jaw. “You can’t be as old as you make out,” he said. She had been honest enough earlier to tell him they were not contemporary.

She answered him with a laugh, but his comment brought a chill to her. It couldn’t have been an accident that he could relieve her, she thought, caressing his curving thigh. She panicked suddenly at the idea that, once she had tasted, she could not drink again and strained herself to him.

His arms tightened and his low laugh was loving to her ears. And their bodies fit together again as fully and
sweetly in harmony as before. Yes, with Shad Tucker, she could dismiss all fear as baseless.

Their pairing-off was accepted by Orric and Tir, who had his ready credit now and was off to apply it to whatever end he’d had in mind. Only Biyanco searched her face, and she had shrugged and given the brewman a little reassuring smile. Then he had peered closely at Shad and smiled back.

That was why he said nothing. As she had known he wouldn’t. For Shad Tucker wasn’t ready to settle on one woman. Killashandra was an adventure to him, a willing companion for a man just finished with a hard season’s work.

They spent the days together as well, exploring the coastline in both directions from Trefoil, for Shad had a mind to put his earnings in land or seafront. She had never felt so … so vital and alive. He had a guitar of his own that he would bring, playing for hours little tunes he made up when they were becalmed in his small sloop and had to take shelter from Armagh’s biting noonday sun in the shade of the sail. She loved to look at him while he played: his absorption had the quality of an innocent boy discovering major Truths of Beauty, Music, and Love. Indeed, his face, when he caressed her to a fever pitch of love, retained that same youthful innocence and intent concentration. Because he was so strong, because his youth was so powerful, his delicate, restrained lovemaking was all the more surprising to her.

The days multiplied and became weeks, but so deep was her contentment that the first twinge of uneasiness caught her unawares. She knew what it was, though: her body’s cry for crystal song.

“Did I hurt you?” Shad asked, for she was in his arms.

She couldn’t answer, so she shook her head. He began to kiss her slowly, leisurely, sure of himself. She felt the second brutal knock along her spine and twisted herself closer in his arms so he wouldn’t feel it and she could forget it had happened.

“What’s wrong, Killa?”

“Nothing. Nothing you can’t cure.”

So he did. But afterward, she couldn’t sleep and stared up at the spinning moons. She couldn’t leave Shad now. Time and again he had worked his magic with her, until she would have sworn all crystal thought was purged … until she had even toyed with the notion of resigning from the Guild. No one ever had, according to the Rules and Regs she had reviewed over and over. No one ever had, but likely no one had wanted to. When she
had
to have crystal, she could tune sour crystal. There was always a need for that service, anywhere, on any world. But she had to stay with Shad. He held back fear; he brought her peace. She had waited for a love like Shad Tucker for so long, she had the right to enjoy the relationship.

The next moment another spasm struck her, hard, sharp, fierce. She fought it through a body arched with pain. And she knew that she was being inexorably drawn back. And she did not want to leave Shad Tucker.

To him, she was a novelty, a woman to make love to—now—when the lunk season had been good and a man needed to relax. But Killashandra was not the sort of woman he would build a home for on his acres of seafront. On her part, she loved him: for his youth, for his absurd gentleness and courtesy; because, in his arms, she was briefly ageless.

The profound cruelty of her situation was driven home to her mind as bitterly as the next hunger pain for crystal sound.

It isn’t fair, she cried piteously. It isn’t fair. I can’t love him. It isn’t fair. He’s too young. He’ll forget me in other loves. And I—I’ll not be able to remember him. That was the cruelest part.

She began to cry, Killashandra who had forsworn tears for any man half a century before, when the harmony between herself and Lars Dahl had turned chaotic. Her weeping, soft as it was, woke Shad. He comforted her lovingly and complicated her feelings for him by asking no questions at all. Maybe, she thought with the desperation of fearful hope, he isn’t that young. He might want to remember me.

And, when her tears had dried on her face, he kissed her again, with an urgency that demanded to be answered. And was, as fully and sweetly as ever.

The summons came two days later. Biyanco tracked them in the cove and told her only that she had an urgent message. She was grateful for that courtesy, but she hated the brewman for bringing the message at all.

It was a Guild summons, all right: a large order for black crystal had been received. All who had sung black crystal were needed in the Ranges. Implicit in the message was a Guild warning: she had been away too long from crystal. What crystal gave, it took away. She stared at her reflection in the glass panel of the message booth. Yes, crystal could take away her appearance of youthfulness. How long would Shad remember the old woman she would shortly become?

So she started out to say good-bye to him. Best have it done quickly and now! Then back to Ballybran and forgetfulness in the crystal song. She felt cold all over.

He was sitting by the lagoon, strumming his guitar, absorbed in a melody he had composed for her. It was a pretty tune, one that stayed in the mind and woke you humming it the next day.

Killashandra caught back her breath. Shad had perfect pitch—he could come with her to Ballybran. She would train him herself to be a crystal singer.

“Don’t,” Biyanco said, stepping to her side.

“Don’t what?” she asked coldly.

“If you really love the boy, Killashandra, don’t. He’ll remember you this way. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

It was, of course, because she wouldn’t remember him. So she stood there, beside Biyanco, and listened to Shad sing, watched the boyish intensity on his beloved face, and let cruelty wash hope out of her.

“It never works, does it, Killashandra?” Biyanco asked gently.

“No.” She had a fleeting recollection of Lars Dahl. They had met somewhere, off-world. Hadn’t they? His had been a water world, too. Hadn’t it? Had she chosen another such world, hoping to find Lars Dahl again? Or merely anyone? Like Shad Tucker. Had she herself been lured to Ballybran by some ageless lover? Perhaps. Who could remember details like that? The difference was that now she was old enough not to play the siren for crystal. Old enough to leave love while he was young and still in love enough to remember her only as a woman.

“No one forgets you, Killashandra,” Biyanco said, his eyes dark and sad, as she turned to leave.

“Maybe I can remember that much.”

“T
he Guild has received the biggest order ever requested, to facilitate the colonization and exploitation of seven new systems,” the Guild Master told the twenty singers he had called back from their travels. “We must be able to fill these orders for black crystal. All of you”—and his blue eyes settled on one after the other—“have cut black crystal from time to time.”

“When I could find it,” someone said facetiously.

“The chosen few,” another added.

He wasn’t really all that much like Shad, Killashandra thought, her mind jumping as much from crystal deprivation as deliberate inattention because it was Lars Dahl who was talking in his Guild Master role. Just because they both have blue eyes and love the sea, that doesn’t make them comparable. Or it shouldn’t. And if any of us could find black crystal, we would, without him having to order us!

“To facilitate that search,” Lars Dahl continued as the screen behind him lit up with a variety of paint emblems, “the Guild is canceling the markers of singers who, for one reason or another, are not actively working in the Ranges.” That caused a stir and some consternation. “I should amend that—singers who have been known to bring in black crystal,” he went on, raising his voice slightly over the murmuring. “We must follow up every potential source of black crystal.”

“Leaving no stone unturned?” the wit asked, rousing some laughter and groans.

Lars Dahl grinned in response. “That’s it. Now”—he gestured behind to the screen—“these are the canceled markers. If, however, one of you finds black on the claim of a still-existing singer …”

“Can’t regress ’em back far enough to tell you where they cut black yet, eh, Lars?” someone asked, ending with a malicious laugh.

Regress? The word reverberated, jogging an uneasy memory, and Killa sat upright, trying to locate the speaker. “Regress”? Why should that word alarm her?

“I’ll be forced to use that option, Fanerine, if you sane and active ones can’t cut the blacks the Guild is obligated to supply. As I was saying, if an existing singer’s claim is worked, there’ll be a levy of twenty-five percent on your cut which is to go to the original claimant.” He held up his hand to interrupt the sharp protests. “That will include the Guild tithe, so you aren’t losing much to gain a viable site. Of course, you have to find it, first.” Killashandra rather liked that droll touch. Lanzecki had reserved his humor for private moments. “Now, here’re copies of these released markers for you to take with you. Secure it somewhere highly visible and
try
to remember why the sheet’s there. First comer to
any of these reopened claims has possession: mark it with your own colors.