“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?»