She was dialing vigorously when the communit buzzed.
“Lanzecki here.”
“Are you linked to my catering dial?”
“It is not coincidence. Guild Masters are allowed to eat when their daily duties permit. May I join you?”
“Yes, of course.” She sounded as genuinely welcoming as she could after her facetious greeting.
Lanzecki was, she supposed, as much a victim to pre-Passover appetite as anyone else. Nor did she suppose him to be exploiting her by conveniently dispatching her off world. Or . . . taking the cup of protein broth she had dialed as Lanzecki's call came through, she went to the console and checked with Marketing. The display confirmed that the Trundimoux order for a five-place communications system utilizing black-crystal components had been received five days before. The order was priority rated by the FSP sector chief. She returned to the caterer and dialed enticing food for a tired, hungry man.
And it was Lanzecki the man who entered her apartments as she was vainly trying to squeeze plates, platters and pitchers onto the limited surface of her table. She really ought to have got in more furniture.
“I started,” she said, waving her soup. “I didn't think you'd mind.” She handed him a steaming cup.
“Nor do I.” As he smiled, the tension lines around his eyes and mouth eased.
“I had a morning snack with Antona after hunger over came me during the storm scan,” she said as he seated himself, stretching out his legs.
“She undoubtedly reassured you that we're all eating heartily at this moment.”
“She ate a lot, too.”
Lanzecki laughed. “Don't worry. You'll have no appetite during Passover.”
“But I won't be here.”
“The instinct operates independently of your physical where abouts. Especially, I regret to inform you, when your transition was so recent.”
“So long as I'm not gorging like this while I'm installing the crystals.” Some planets, particularly new ones like the Trundimoux system with limited food supplies, might consider a hearty appetite unbecoming.
“No, more likely you'll be sleeping it all off.” He finished his soup and seemed more interested in picking out his next item. “Tomorrow, Trag will instruct you in installation procedures. We had a secondary communication from the Trundimoux giving us the disposition of the five units. I understand that the kindly call them Trundies; the informed style them the Moux.”
“The what?” Killashandra demanded on a laugh, for she couldn't see herself using either nickname.
«Two crystals will be installed on mobile mining stations. Trundimoux has three asteroid belts. That's how they can afford black crystal.» Lanzecki snorted. «They've fortunes in ore whirling about, waiting to be grappled. The third unit is to be on the one habitable planet and one each on the large satellites of the gas and the ice planets. Trundimoux mining operations have been seriously hampered by lack of real-time communications, so they mortgaged half a belt and, I expect, will discharge that indebtedness in short order. Originally, the system was exploited merely for the asteroid ores, with several multihulks hauling the metal to the nearest manufacturing system – Balisdel, I think it is. The Balisdelians got greedy, Trundimoux miners rebelled, settled the better planet and one of the outer moons. In less than seventy-five years, they're a going concern.»
“With money enough for black-crystal communications.”
“They'd already a linkage with Balisdel and two other systems, but this will be their own internal link. Yarran beer?” Lanzecki rose to dial the order.
Killashandra laughed. “Who drank Yarran beer before Rimbol got here? Besides you.”
“The discovery was by no means original with me, either. Yarran beer is as close to addictive as anything can be for us.”
There was a heaviness about Lanzecki this evening, Killashandra thought. It wasn't fatigue, for he moved as easily as ever for a man of his build.
“I'd forgotten how pleasant the taste is,” he went on, returning with a pitcher and two beakers.
“Is this Passover going to be that bad?” she asked. Lanzecki took a long draught of the beer before he answered, but his eyes were twinkling, and his mouth fell into an easier line.
“We always plan for the worst and generally are not disappointed. The challenge thus presented by each new Passover configuration is irresistible, forces that are changeless and changing, as unpredictable as such natural phenomena are.”
Killashandra was startled by his unexpected philosophizing and wondered if she had been wrong about his mood.
“You actually enjoy this!”
«Hmmm. No – 'enjoy' is not the appropriate word. Stimulated, I think, would be more accurate.» He was teasing her. His lips told her that. Teasing, but something more, something deeper, the element that caused the heaviness about him. «Stop thinking and eat. I've ordered up a particular delicacy which I hope you'll enjoy, too. Catering goes to great pains at this time of Ballybran's cycle, and we must respond.»
Tonight, his appetite equaled hers as they sampled the marvels of taste and texture that had been conjured from the cuisine's of all the elegant and exotic worlds in the Federation. Lanzecki knew a great deal about food and promised her that one day he would personally prepare a meal for her from raw produce to finished dish.
“When eating is not a necessity, as it is now, but can be enjoyed,” and his eyes twinkled at the repetition of that word “in complete leisure.”
“We're not at leisure now?”
“Not completely. As soon as I have satisfied my symbiotic self, I must meet with the storm technicians again.”
She suppressed an irrational disappointment that their dinner was not a prelude to another loving night.
“Thank you, dear heart,” he said.
“Thank me? For what?”
“For being . . . aware.”
She stared at Lanzecki for a long moment.
“You're certain telepathy is not in the symbiotic . . .”
“Absolutely not!” Lanzecki's assurance was solemn, but she wasn't sure about his mouth.
Killashandra rapidly catalogued some of her responses to him and sighed.
“Well, I am sorry you're not staying!”
Lanzecki laughed as he reached for her hand and kissed it lightly. Not light enough so that she didn't respond to his touch.
«I have never intended to invade your privacy, Killashandra, by watching the shift and flow of your thoughts and emotions. I enjoy them. I enjoy you. Now» – and he rose purposefully – «if it were anything but storm tactics . . .» He kissed her palm again and then strode swiftly from the room.
She let her hand fall back to her lap, Lanzecki's graceful compliment echoing through her mind. Quite one of the nicest she had ever been paid.
Oddly enough, that he had been invading a Fuertan's treasured privacy, once her most defended possession, did not distress Killashandra. If Lanzecki continued to «enjoy» what he saw – She took a long swallow of beer. How much she had changed since that aimless, aching ride on the pedestrian way to Fuerte's spaceport! How much of the change was due to her «symbiotic self?» That, too, had been an invasion of privacy to which she had, before officialdom of the FSP, agreed.
Now that she had held crystal, vibrant in the palm of her hand, light and sound coruscating off the sun-warmed quartz, she felt no regrets for loss of privacy, no regrets for an invasion that had been entrance into a new dimension of experience.
She laughed softly at her whimsy. She finished the beer. She was sleepy and satiated, and tomorrow would be a wearying day. She hoped that Trag did not get reports from Enthor on the raggedness of her first cuttings.