«She's just intense,» Rimbol noted when Jezerey faltered. «I don't think she trusts space stations any more than spaceships. She was tranked to her brows on the trip here. Shillawn» – and Rimbol favored Killashandra with a wry expression – «was knackered out of his bones, so I invaded Privacy and put a knockout in his brew. Got him to bed.»
“Why would someone like him want to be a Crystal Singer?” Killashandra asked.
“Why do any of us?” Rimbol answered, amused.
“All right, why would you?” Killashandra fired the question right back at him.
“Wasn't allowed to continue as an instrumentalist. Not enough openings on my mudball for a string player. Crystal singing's the next best thing.”
Killashandra nodded, looking to Jezerey.
“Curiously enough,” the girl said with a bemused expression, “I was redundant in my profession, too. Limb replacement therapist. And the Dear knows there're enough accidents on Salonika.” She wrinkled her nose and then caught the puzzled expressions of Rimbol and Killashandra. “Mining world, asteroid belts around us and the next planet out. Next to mining, you might say replacement was our biggest industry.”
“Space workers aren't apt to be redundant, either,” Killashandra commented, looking at Rimbol.
«Carigana wasn't. Psyched out when her safety cable snapped – I get the impression she was deep-spaced a long time before they found her. She didn't say» – and Rimbol emphasized the last word – «but she's probably unstable for such employment.»
Jezerey nodded sympathetically.
“Shillawn?” Killashandra asked.
"Told me he was a chemotech," Rimbol replied. "His project was finished up, and he was given an assignment he didn't like. Underground. He's a touch claustro! I think that's what makes him so nervous.
“And we all have perfect pitch,” Killashandra said more to herself than the others because the phrases Maestro Valdi had spat accusingly, particularly the one about a 'silicate spider,' came appropriately to mind. She dismissed the niggling suspicion as invalid.
An explosive curse burst from one of the card players, and his earnest request for arbitration from any and all in the room interrupted their private conversation.
Although Killashandra took no part in the intense discussion that followed, she deemed it good sense to lend her presence to a group with whom she might be spending considerable time. She also saw them as a group with no other common factor – aside from the invisible prerequisite of perfect pitch – than age. All seemed to be within their third decade; most apparently just finished with tertiary education, no two from the same system or planet.
Killashandra remained on the fringes of the good humored but volatile game discussion until she had finished another glass of the very good brew. Then she quietly retired, wondering as she prepared for sleep just how thirty plus people from so many different planets had all heard of the Crystal Singers.
She had just finished her morning meal when a soft, deep chime brought her attention to the screen. She was requested to go to the lounge room.
“You sneaked away nice and early,” a cheerful tenor said behind her. She turned to find Rimbol approaching, the awkward figure of Shillawn just behind him. “Missed the fun, you did.”
“Who won the argument?” she asked after a courteous nod to Shillawn.
“No one and everyone. It was the arguing that was fun!” The red-headed lad grinned.
They had reached the lounge by then, and from the other corridors the rest of the successful filed, some re-forming the groups she'd noticed the previous evening. Only Carigana seemed apart; she sat on the back of one of the loungers glowering at everyone. Something about the angry girl was familiar to Killashandra, but she couldn't place what.
Just then, from the fourth entrance, limped a tall woman holding the left side of her long gown slightly away from her thigh. Her gaze swiftly scanned the room, counting, Killashandra thought, and made her own tally. Thirty-three. Out of what gross number of applicants, she wondered again, over the nine weeks Jezerey had said Borton had waited?
“I am Borella Seal,” the woman announced in the clear, rich voice of a trained contralto. Killashandra regarded her with closer interest. “I am a miner of crystal, a Crystal Singer. Since I am recovering from an injury sustained in the ranges, I have been asked to disclose to you the dangers of this profession.” She pulled aside the long gown and revealed wounds so ugly and vividly contused that several people recoiled. As if this was the very reaction she had wanted, Borella smiled slightly. “I will expose the wound again for a specific purpose other than arousing nausea or sympathy. Take a good look now.”
Shillawn's elbow nudged Killashandra, and she was about to give him a severe reprimand for such a private insult when she realized he was drawing her attention to Carigana. The girl was the only one who approached Borella Seal and bent for the close inspection of the long gashes scoring the upper leg.
They appear to be healing properly, though you ought to have had them bonded. How'd you get 'em?" Carigana was clinically impersonal.
“Two days ago I slipped on crystal shale and fell fifteen meters down an old worked face.”
“Two days?” Anger colored Carigana's voice. “I don't believe you. I've seen enough lacerations to know ones as deep as these don't heal that much in two days. Why the color of the bruising and the state of the tissue already healed show you were injured weeks ago.”
“Two days. Singers heal quickly.”
“Not that quick.” Carigana would have said more, but Borella Seal gestured dismissal and turned to the others.
«By order of the Federated Sentient Planets, full disclosure of the dangers peculiar to and inherent in this profession must be revealed to all applicants who have satisfactorily completed the initial examinations.» She accorded them a slight nod of approval. «However, as is also permissible by FSP law, professional – problems – may be protected by erasure. Those to whom this practice is unacceptable may withdraw.»
“How much is erased?” Carigana asked.
“Precisely one hour and twenty minutes, replaced by a recollection of over sleeping and a leisurely breakfast.”
“On record.”
“If requested, the Guild supplies the information that a minor but inadmissible physical defect has been discovered. Few question the Heptite Guild.” For some reason Killashandra thought that fact amused Borella. Carigana's frown had deepened. “Any objectors?” Borella asked, looking straight at the space worker.
When no other voice was raised, she asked them to file before the screen she then activated, giving their name and stating their willingness to comply with erasure. The process didn't take long, but Killashandra felt that she had taken an irrevocable step as her acceptance was officially and indisputably recorded.
Borella then led them down a short hall to a door, Carigana the first to follow. Her gasp and half halt as she passed the entrance forewarned the others but in no way prepared anyone for the display in that short corridor. On either side were bodies in clear fluid – all but one glinted as if coated with a silicon. The planes of the faces looked rock hard; limbs, fingers, and toes were extended as if solidified, and not by the rigor of death. The crystalline sheen couldn't be some trick of the light, Killashandra thought, for her own skin showed no change. What roiled her stomach were the facial expressions: three looked as if death had over taken them in a state of insanity; two appeared mildly surprised, and the sixth angry, her hands raised toward some object she had been trying to grasp. The last was the most grisly: a charred body forever in the position of a runner, consumed by a conflagration that had melted flesh from bone.