Killa could not control the trembling that racked her body.She fumbled with the door release, managed it the second time, and half fell from the sled.
"Careful now, Sunny," Lars called, rapidly flicking through essential landing procedures at the console.
She stumbled forward to the shards, crouching to gather handfuls, closing her fingers about them, oblivious to the sharp edges, even grateful for the caressing cut of crystal, grateful to spill blood and ease the sting that made artery, vein, and capillary itch.
"Easy, Sunny, easy," Lars cried, and gripped her firmly by the shoulders, pulling her to a standing position.
"Muhlah!" she sighed with relief."I needed that!"
"I don't think you need go to extremes, however," Lars said dryly.He leaned down and picked up a hunk that had crazed in faulty cutting.He tilted her bloody hands to tip the fragments out and replaced them with the larger, blunter piece.Putting his arm about her, he guided her back into the sled and washed each hand, while she held the shaft against her in the other like the talisman it was.The tiny crystal slices were already healing as he finished.
"You'd better eat, Sunny," Lars went on, still using that gently matter-of-fact tone.And he prepared a meal while she sat rocking the crystal against her, feeling it draw the sting from her, damaged as it was, as contact warmed it to her body temperature.
As she mechanically ate the meal he placed in front of her, she kept up her rocking motion, shifting the crystal to her thighs, bending her knees so the crystal touched her belly.She didn't resist when he put her to bed, letting her wrap herself around the crystal in a semifetal position.And that was how she spent the long night, comforted by crazed crystal.
When crystal song woke her the next morning, the damaged shaft sent out painful emanations.With a cry, she unwound, pushing the crystal from her as if it were polluted.Lars picked it up and flung it from the sled, relieving her of the sudden agony.
Then he spread himself across her body-she was arching in the agony of crystal song, too long away from it to be stimulated in the usual way.
"It'll ease, Sunny, it'll ease…" he murmured, struggling to keep her from straining herself in the paroxysms that were shaking her.If she had been alone in such a state, she would have launched herself to the nearby lode.In such disorientation, compelled by the irresistible need to reestablish contact with the ecstasy of sun-warmed singing crystal, she could have done herself a fatal injury.
Writhing against his restraint, she screamed at him, desperate to get to the crystal face and ease the intolerable sting and achings.
"Let me go!I'm begging you, Lars, let me go!I've got to get to-"
"You do and you're dead," he yelled back at her, resetting his hands on her wrists, managing, each time she nearly squirmed free, to cover her body with his and deny her freedom."Hang on, Sunny.It won't be long now.Just let the sun get up!"
She twisted and bit at him, tried to knee his crotch, but he was quicker, stronger, and fitter than she and evaded her savage attempts to inflict enough pain to get free.
Abruptly the dawn chorus ended as the sun's rays flicked up and over the surrounding ridges and lit the ravine.She sagged against the hands that held her, limp, weeping because the itch was back, intensified.The compulsion to seek crystal, however, had eased.Wearily, she rubbed sweat and tears from her face on the quilt beneath her.
"Let me up, Lars," she said dully.
He kept his grip a moment longer, and then his fingers slowly released her wrists and he slid off her.
"Sorry about that, Killa, but you know I was right."
"Yes, I know," she replied, absently rubbing her wrists before she elbowed herself to a sitting position."You're sneakier than an Altairian tangier," she said nastily.But the purely physical aches distracted her nerves from the interior throb of crystal sting.
A mug of some warm liquid was thrust at her.
"Drink this.Stuffed full of stimulants," Lars said, and she obeyed.
The beverage coursed down her gullet and seemed to find an immediate path to her armpits and stomach, radiating out from those points to her extremities.
"Thanks, Lars," she said.
He ruffled her hair."That's my Sunny!"
"I am not your Sunny," she said, shooting him a brief, dark scowl of denial.
"No, you're not much like my Sunny, are you?" his voice had gone expressionless again.
She tried not to care, but perhaps it was as well."We're here to cut, aren't we?Let's do it."
Stiffly she got to her feet and walked as firmly as she could to the cutter rack.The weight of the tool was almost more than her flaccid arm could support, but just as Lars's hand came to her assistance, she managed to heave the cutter strap on to her shoulder.
"Let's go."
As she descended from the sled on to the rock- and shard-strewn ground, she was vaguely aware that he had slung more than his cutter to his shoulder.By the time she had scrambled to the rock face only fifteen meters from the sled, she was panting with exertion.She paused long enough to catch her breath to sing.She chose an A; heard Lars sing out in C and the face echo it back.Not a strong rebound but enough to encourage her.With her hand flat on the rock, she tried to find the source of the echo.
"It's stronger over here," Lars said, and she closed the distance between them with a leap."Don't break a leg!" he shouted.
She sang A again, and the reverberation rippled through her hand.
"Easy, girl," he said, but she was too busy tuning her cutter.
Old habit guided them both, and Killa managed to hold her cutter against the buck of the subsonic blade through the crystal that had lain hidden since the tectonic pressures had formed it.
"Hold it steady!"Lars's voice penetrated her cutting fever and steadied her just enough so that their initial cut was true.Lars did the underslice as Killa held out eager hands to receive the excision.Her fingers clawed it free, ignoring the lacerations, and she held it up-a form in green, clear and solid.
Sunlight caught it, making it sing in her hands.The shaft sang on and on, its sound coruscating through her skin to bone and blood, flowing down her arms to her body, through her body to her legs, flowing and blotting out the sting with its resonance, leeching the agony of her long absence from the crystal that rejuvenated her.
When someone wrenched the shaft from her, she screamed and received a hard slap across her face; she dropped to the ground, bruising her knees on the scattered crystal debris.
"Killa!You've been thralled!"Lars's voice caught her just as she was about to launch herself at him, a formless silhouette in the haze beyond her crystal rapture.
Slowly she got to her feet, crawling her hands arduously up her legs to straighten a body shaking with fatigue and the residue of thrall.Lars reached out to support her, one hand gently brushing dirt and sweat from her face.Instinctively she leaned into his body, accepting support, unconsciously entreating sympathy, and his arms closed about her, his chin on her head, as they had so often stood after a good cutting.
"There, there, Sunny," he said, patting her shoulder and cuddling her."You needed that.Feel somewhat better?" he asked, tipping her head back and looking down into her haggard face.
"How long did you let thrall last?" she asked, aware of her incredible weariness.
"Considering your condition," he said with a laugh, "most of the day,"
She pushed away from him."You mean, you let me thrall all day long when I could have been cutting?An hour or so at most would have been enough."
He stepped back from her ire, grinning more broadly now, holding up his hands in mock appeal."That's more like my Sunny."