The next morning, after a sturdy breakfast, she reported to Trag in the cutting room. Other members of Class 895 were already busy under the supervision of Concera and another Guild member. Killashandra greeted Concera and smiled at the others.
Trag jerked his head to a side door, and she followed him. She experienced a double shock, for there on the work table amid installation brackets and pads were five black crystals. And she didn't respond to their presence at all!
“Don't worry!” Trag picked up the nearest one and tossed it negligently at her.
She opened her mouth to scald him with an oath when the object reached her hands and she knew it wasn't black crystal.
“Don't you ever frighten me that way again!” Fury was acid in her belly and throat.
“Surely you didn't think we'd risk the black in practice.” Trag had enjoyed startling her.
“I'm too new at this game to know what is risked,” she replied, getting her anger under control. She hefted the block in her hand, wanting more than anything else to loft it right back at Trag.
“Easy now, Killashandra,” he said, raising a protective hand. “You knew it wasn't black crystal the moment you walked into the room!”
The coolness in Trag's voice reminded her that he was a senior Guild member.
“I've had enough surprises in the ranges without having to encounter them here, too, Trag.” As she controlled panic and rage, she also reminded herself that Trag had always been impersonal! Her relations with Lanzecki were clouding other judgments.
«Coping with the unexpected must become automatic for a Singer. Some people never learn how.» Trag's eyes shifted slightly to indicate the room behind them. «You proved just now that your instinct for the blacks is reliable. Now» – and he reached out to take the block from her hand – «let us to the purpose for which these were simulated.» He put the block among its mates.
Only then did she realize that the five mock crystals had been cast in the image of those she had cut, wiggles, improper angles and size.
“This substance has the same tensile strength and expansion ratio as black crystal but no other of its properties. You must learn today to install crystal properly in its bracketing with enough pressure to secure it against vibration but not enough to interfere with intermolecular flow.” He showed her a printed diagram. “This will be the order and the configuration of the Trundimoux link.” He tapped the corresponding block as he pointed out its position, repeating what Lanzecki had rattled through. “Number one and two, the smallest, will be on mining stations, number three on the gas planet satellite, number four on the ice planet satellite, and number five, the largest crystal, will be installed on the habitable planet. You and you alone will handle the crystals.”
“Is that Guild policy?” How much more did she have to learn about this complex profession?
“Among other considerations, no one in the Trundimoux System is technically capable.” Trag's voice was heavy with disapproval.
Killashandra wondered if he considered them “Trundies” or “Moux.”
“I would have thought Marketing would handle installation.”
“Generally.” His stiff tone warned her off further questions.
“Well, I don't suppose I'd've been saddled with the job if I hadn't lost my sled and if Passover weren't so near.”
She got no visible reaction from her rueful comment.
“Remember that,” Trag advised, and added with an unexpected wryness, “if you can.”
Installing crystal in padded clamps was not as simple as it had sounded, but then, as Killashandra was learning, nothing in the Heptite Guild was as simple as it sounded. Nevertheless, by evening, with arm, neck, and back muscles tense and hands that trembled from the effort of small, strong movements, eyes hot from concentration on surface tension readings, she believed she understood the process.
She was philosophical when Trag said they would repeat the day's exercise on the morrow, for she knew she must be motion perfect during the actual installations. Guild members had a reputation to maintain, and she would be up to Trag's standard of performance even if this was the only installation she ever made. Since her notion tallied with Trag's, she was undaunted by his perfectionism.
Lanzecki joined her again for her evening “gorge,” but he excused himself as soon as he'd finished. She didn't mind so much that night because she was very tired.
By meal time the following day, she had secured Trag's grudging approval for a deft, quick, and competent installation within a time limit he had arbitrarily set.
“Why not take more time?” she'd asked reasonably. “Installing a link between people ought to be an occasion.”
“You won't have time,” Trag said. “You'll be on an inbound gravity deflection course. There'll be no time to spare.”
He gave her no chance to query his emphasis on time. With a curt nod, he left the room. Maybe Lanzecki would be in an expansive mood. If, she qualified to herself, he joined her for dinner.
Dinner? She was starving for her midday meal. As she passed through the main training room, Rimbol had just finished making a diagonal cut under Concera's tutelage.
“Are you eating soon?” she asked Rimbol and the Older Singer.
“I'm always eating!” Rimbol's reply was half groan, half belch, and Concera laughed.
“Finish the last cut,” Concera told him.
“Go save us a table.” Rimbol shooed her off, then turned his attention to his cutting.
Killashandra went directly to the Commons and found the dining area well occupied, tables stacked with a variety of dishes that bore witness to the problem of symbiotic instinct. She was about to order something to sustain her during the search for a free table when a large group vacated one of the booths. She ordered hastily, dialing for beer in a pitcher and beaker and setting them about the table to prevent occupation. She had retrieved her first order and was already eating as Rimbol, Concera, and two others of Class 895 joined her.
The meal became a convivial occasion, and all made suggestions of this or that favored delicacy they'd discovered during what Concera styled “the hunger.”
“It's so good to have new members,” she said in a giddy voice, waving her beaker of beer, “to remind us of things we've forgotten. I can't think, of course, who it was the last time, but Yarran beer is so satisfying.”
Rimbol rose, bowed to the entire table. «Be upstanding all. Let us toast to the brewers of Yarran beer. May they always be remembered – by somebody!»
As the company hastily stood, the table was knocked askew, and before the toast could be made, the surface had to be mopped and more beer dialed.
Killashandra was suffused by a sense of camaraderie that she had often observed in the Music Center but had never been part of. She supposed it was Rimbol's special gift that, given half a chance, he could make an occasion of any gathering. She said little, smiled much, and ate with a heartier appetite for such good company.
As she sat facing the dispensing area, she found herself identifying high-ranking Guild members as well as Singers obviously just in from the ranges, some of whom were gaunt, nervous, and confused by the throng of diners. Others, despite the same noise-pollution discomfiture, appeared in very good spirits. The nervous ones hadn't cut enough crystal to get off-planet, Killashandra thought, and the relaxed ones had. Certainly, when Borella entered with Olin and another pair of Singers, they were a vivacious group. Obstreperously so, Killashandra thought, for they would whisper among themselves, then burst into laughter as they looked with mock surreptitiousness at silent diners.
Though Rimbol was joking with Concera and Celee, he had noticed Borella's table.
“D'you know?” he said in an undertone to Killashandra, “she doesn't remember any of us.”