Carigana might well have been floating in deep space in a servomech suit for all the notice she gave to Tukolom's recitations on the care and packing of crystal cuttings. He informed Class 895 that they must pay strict attention to these procedures, as one of their first official tasks for their Guild would be to prepare crystal for export. As he spoke – he reminded them – Crystal Cutters were in the ranges, making the most of the mild spring weather and the favorable aspects of the moons. When the Cutters returned, Class 895 would be privileged to have its first experience with handling crystal, in all its infinite variety . . . and value.
The reverence with which Tukolom made the announcement showed Killashandra a new and unexpected facet of the humorless instructor. Did crystal affect even those who did not sing it? How long had Tukolom been a Guild member? Not that she really wanted to know. She was just intrigued by his uncharacteristic radiance when discussing, of all the dull subjects, the packing of crystal.
As soon as Tukolom released the class from the lecture, she murmured something about returning in a moment to Rimbol and slipped away to her room. She drew out the console and tapped the Flight Office, requesting the use of a skimmer for personal relaxation. The display spilled out a confirmation that she could use vehicle registry VZD7780 for two hours, confined to over land flight.
As she slipped from her room, she was relieved to see Rimbol's door open. He was still in the lounge, so she suppressed the vague disquiet she felt about sneaking off without him. Her first visit to the crystal ranges was better experienced as a solo. Besides, if Rimbol and Shillawn couldn't figure out how to obtain a clearance, they didn't deserve one.
The vast hangar complex was eerily empty. A light breeze sighed through the vacant racks for Singers' air sleds as Killashandra hurried to the skimmer section. An air sled engine revved unexpectedly and caused her to leap inches off the plascrete surface; then she saw the cluster of mechanics on the far side of the building, where lights exposed the sled's drive section.
Killashandra finally located the VZD rack and her assigned craft at the top of the skimmer section. The vehicle was sand-scraped, although the plasglas bubble was relatively unscathed. She climbed in, backed the skimmer carefully clear of the rack, and proceeded from the hangar at a sedate pace.
“Pilot may fly only in area designated on master chart,” a mechanical voice announced: to her left, an opaque square lit to display an overlay of the Joslin plateau, the Guild complex out of which a small flashing dot, herself, was moving.
“Pilot complies.”
«Weather alert must be obeyed by immediate return to hangar. Weather holding clear and mild: no storm warning presently in effect.» As she cleared the hangar, she noticed three figures emerge from the ramp. She chuckled – she'd got her skimmer first.
She didn't want to be followed, so she pushed the control bar forward for maximum speed. The master chart cut off just at the fringe of the Milekey Range to the northeast but close enough for her to see exactly what she had mortgaged her life for. It was suddenly very necessary to Killashandra to stand on the edge of this possible future of hers, to be close to it; to make it more vivid than Tukolom's carefully recited lessons; to make her understand why Borella had smiled in longing.
The old skimmer didn't like being pushed to maximum speed and vibrated unpleasantly. None of the function dials were in the red, so Killashandra ignored the shaking, keeping on the northeasterly course. The Brerrerton Range would have been closer, almost directly south, but Milekey had been the range Carrik frequently mentioned, and her choice had been subconsciously affected by him. Well, the others were certain to head to the nearer range, which was fine by her.
Once she had bounced over the first hill, Killashandra saw the smudge of the range, occasionally reflecting the westering sun. Beneath her, the dull gray-green shrub and ground cover of Ballybran passed without change. Dull exteriors so often hid treasures. Who could ever have thought Ballybran worth half credit? She recalled the model of the planet that Borella had shown them on Shankill. It was as if cosmic hands had taken the world and twisted it so that the softer interior material had been forced through the crust, forming the jagged ranges that bore crystal, and then capriciously the same hands had yanked the misshapen spheres out, the ridges falling inward.
The plain gave way to a series of deep gullies that in a wetter season, might have become streams. The first of the jagged upthrusts coincided with the edge of her chart, so she settled the skimmer on the largest promontory and got out.
To either side and before her, the planet's folds stretched each cline peering through a gap or a few meters higher than the one before. Shading her eyes, she strained to see any evidence of the shining crystal that was the hidden and unique wealth of such an uninviting planet.
The silence was all but complete, the merest whisper of sound, not wind, and transmitted not through the atmosphere but through the rock under her feet. A strange sound to be experienced so, as if her heel were responding to a vibration to which her keen ears, expectant, were not attuned. Not precisely comprehending the urge to test the curious unsilence, Killashandra drew a deep breath and expelled it on a fine clear E.
The single note echoed back to her ears and through her heels, the resonance coursing to her nerve ends, leaving behind, as the sound died away, a pleasurable sensation that caressed her nervous system. She stood entranced but hesitated to repeat the experience, so she scanned the dirty, unpretentious mounds. Now she was willing to believe what Carrik had said and, equally, was credulous of the hazards attached. The two facets of singing crystal were linked: the good and bad, the difficult, the ecstatic.
She quickly discarded a notion to fly deeper into the range. Common sense told her that any crystal in the immediate vicinity would long since have been removed. A more practical restraint was Killashandra's recognition that it would be easy to lose oneself beyond the curiously reassuring flatness of the plain and the sight of the White Sea. However, she did skim along the first ridges, always keeping the plain in sight and at the edge of her flight chart. The undulating hills fascinated her as the sharper, young thrusts and anticlines of Fuerte had not. Ballybran's ranges tempted, taunted, tantalized, hiding wealth produced by titanic forces boiling from the molten core of the planet: a wealth created by the technical needs of an ever-expanding galactic population and found on an ancient world with no other resources to commend it. That was ever the way of technology: to take the worthless and convert it into wealth.
Eventually, Killashandra turned the skimmer back toward the Guild Complex. She had renewed her determination to become a Singer, which had been dampened somewhat by Tukolom and an instructional mode that subtly ignored the main objective of the recruits – becoming a Crystal Singer. She could understand why their initiation took the form it had – until the symbiosis occurred, no lasting assignments could be made, but other worthwhile skills and ranks could be examined. She sighed, wondering if she could sustain another defeat. Then she laughed, remembering how facilely she had shrugged off ten-years' hard work when Carrik had dangled his lure. Yet, to be perfectly honest, he hadn't dangled: he'd argued against her taking such a step, argued vehemently.
What had Rimbol said about being denied making an object more desirable? And it was true that the maestro's histrionic condemnation of Carrik and Crystal Singers had done much to increase her desire. She had, of course, been so elated by her interlude with Carrik that the luxurious standard of living – and playing – to which he had introduced her had been a lure to one who had had no more than student credit. Carrik's fascinating personality had bemused her and given her the recklessness to throw off the restraints of a decade of unrewarded discipline.