Shilmore rose and the night air brought a chill that roused her from a trance of the kind that Maestro Valdi must have meant. He was right, she thought. crystal song could be addictive and was utterly exhausting. She staggered back to the sled. Without shedding her coverall, Killashandra drew the thermal sheet over her as she turned her shoulder into the mattress. And slept.
A faint sound roused her. Not the buzzer, for she hadn't remembered to set an alarm. Groggily, she raised her head staring in accusation at the console, but there was no warning light and certainly no buzz. However, something had awakened her.
Outside, the sled the sun was shining. She pushed herself off the bed and dialed a strong stimulant. The time display read midmorning. She'd missed five hours of cutting light! She'd a cramp in one shoulder, and her knees ached. The heat of the drink flowed through her, dispersing the sluggishness of her mind and easing her muscles. She drank as quickly as she could, dialed a second cup, shoved protein bars into her coverall pockets. Unbracketing her cutter, she slung it across her back, got another carton, a handlight, and was on her way to the claim ten minutes after waking. The sound that woke her had been the crack of raw black crystal feeling the touch of sun.
First she had to clear splinters that had fallen from the end of her cut, the result of the night's chill and the morning's sun. Stolidly, she set her mind and collected the small pieces, dropping them into the packing case. With the handlight, she could now see where another flaw crazed the crystal quartz on the hillside. Using the inner edge of the previous day's shelf, however, she could make an interlocking group, four medium – or five smaller – rectangles. She'd cut these now, let the chill crack off flaw. A little expeditious trimming on the ravine side and the temperature would remove the blemishes. Tomorrow she'd have a rare day's cutting.
Killashandra set her nerves for the first incision of the infrasonic cutter and was relieved to endure less shock. Relieved and dismayed. Was the claim admitting her right to it by lack of protest? Or did one day attune her body to the resonance? She had half wished to experience that pleasurable, nerve-caressing distraction, as if a highly skilled lover were inside her body.
She did not remember, due to those reflections no doubt, to pack away as soon as she'd turned off the blade She did remember to shield the rectangle from the sun as she stroked it, totally in rapport with her creation. She admired the clever angle she had contrived to make an old cut —
And suddenly realized that she had been communing with the violated crystal. She resolutely packed it away, and the next four were stowed as soon as she laid the cutter down. She had to teach herself the automatic sequence. “Habit,” Concera had endlessly and rightly said, “is all that saves a Singer.”
Killashandra set herself to clearing the ravine face, but the sun's reflection off the quartz pained her eyes. She'd wasted too much time in sleep and in crystal thrall.
She woke in the night suddenly, an odd apprehension driving sleep from her mind. Uneasily, she checked the stored cartons, wondering if something had caused them to resonate. Outside the night was clear, the moons had set, and the range was deep asleep. She glanced at the console and the storm alarms. She cursed under her breath. She hadn't had a met reading. The printout showed clouds moving in from the White Sea, some turbulence, but at an altitude that might reach the dominant easterly air current and dissipate. A pattern to watch, to be sure.
She slept uneasily until the first crack of light. Apprehensively she dialed a met printout. The picture wasn't alarming, though cloud cover had increased in depth and speed. A high-pressure area was coming south, but no storm warning was issued for the Bay area. If a storm were making, she'd've had a satellite warning by now.
The continual awareness of something out of kilter made cutting easier. She completed a cut of four large five-sided blacks, had stored all the debris, when the pressure of her subjective anxiety became too intense to continue. Operating on an intuition too powerful to be refused, she slung the cutter over her shoulder, grabbed a carton in each hand, and started back to the sled. Halfway there she heard the hooter and nearly tripped for looking up at the still cloudless sky above her.
She tapped out an update for the weather. The hooter was only the first warner: a watch-the-weather-picture caution. Everything inside her head was far more alarmed than the Guild's signal. The met displayed a brewing turbulence that could bow either north or south, depending on the low pressure ridge.
She stared at the display, not at all reassured. She did her own calculations. If the very worst occurred, the storm could boil across the tip of the main continent and run across her position in four or live hours, building speed at a tremendous rate once it acquired the impetus of the advancing ridge.
“I thought you were supposed to warn us?” she shouted at the other silent storm-alerts. The hooter had automatically ceased blaring when she had programmed the weather picture. “Four, Five hours. That doesn't give me time to cut anything more. Just sit here and stew until you lot wake up to the danger. Isn't anyone analyzing the met patterns? Why all this rigmarole about distant early warnings and weather sensors if they don't bloody work?”
As she vented her tension in a one-sided tirade, she was also rigging her ship for storm-running. The four precious canons of black crystal were securely webbed in front of the mocking empties. She changed her coverall and realized from the grime on her wrists and ankles that she hadn't bathed since coming to the ranges. She wanted to reappear at the complex looking presentable. A quick wash was refreshing, and she ate a light meal as she did some computations of deviation courses that would disguise the direction from which she came and confuse other Singers called in by the storm. She had just completed what would be a most elaborate break-out when the first of the dead earnest storm warnings came on.
“About bloody time! I came to that conclusion an hour ago.”
Airborne, she skimmed ridge and hollow, heading north at 11 for half an hour. She turned on a western leg for twenty minutes and was starting a southern track when she flipped over a gorge that looked familiar. A blur of orange in the shadows brought to mind Moksoon and his wretched pink crystals. The storm readings were insistent now. She made another pass up the gorge and saw Moksoon bent over his outcrop, two cartons beside him. He ought to have been heading out, not calmly cutting as if he had all day and a mach storm wasn't bowling down.
She came in as quietly as she could, but the grating of her sled runners on the loose rock at the valley bottom warned Moksoon. He charged down the slope, cutter held aggressively. She slapped on the playback, turned up the volume, but he was caterwauling so loudly about Section 49 that he couldn't have heard it.
The wind however had picked up and made it difficult for him to swing and keep his balance, though Killashandra doubted that the infrasonic blade would do her sled much harm. Break his cutter.
“Storm, you addled pink tenor!” She roared out the open window.
Despite the wind scream, she could hear the hooter buzzer-bell systems of his sled.
“Mach storm on the way. You've got to leave!”
"Leave?" Panic replaced wrath on Moksoon's face. He now heard her ship's klaxons as well as his own. "I can't leave!" The wind was tearing the sound from his mouth, but Killashandra could read his lips. "I've struck a pure vein. I've – " He clamped his mouth shut with caution and had to lean into a particularly strong gust to keep from being knocked over. "I've got to cut just one more. Just one more." He raced up the slope to his site.