“Tanny, I think you’d better go below,” Lars began, signaling Killashandra to join him in the cockpit. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you – ”
“Who says?” Tanny growled.
“Fix us some grub, will you? All this excitement gave me an appetite. So,” and once Tanny had slammed the hatch closed, Lars turned expectantly to Killashandra, “could I have some explanations?”
“I rather think a few are due me!”
Lars cocked an eyebrow, grinning sardonically at her. “Not when you must have figured out many of the answers already if you’re half as smart as I think you are.” Lars slid a finger across the scar on her arm, then he reached for her hand and held it up before her face, his thumb rubbing against the crystal scars. “ ‘I came from the City.’ Indeed!”
“Well, I did . . .” she said, deceptively meekly.
“Your best line, you witch, was the one about your having had no choice about coming to the islands!” Lars could not contain his mirth then and tilting his head back, roared with laughter.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you, Lars Dahl. You’re in an unenviable position in my files. “ She tried to sound severe but couldn’t.
His eyes were still brimming with humor when he abruptly switched mood. He touched the garland. “Yes, I am rather. And on Angel Island. For one thing, according to island tradition, this announces us handfasted for a year and a day.”
“I had guessed that the garlands signified more than your loving wish to adorn my person.” The words came out more facetiously than she meant for she ached with a genuine regret. Lars’s steady blue eyes caught her gaze and held it. He waited for her explanation.
“With all the will in the world to continue what we started, I don’t have a year and a day here, Lars Dahl.” The words left her mouth slowly, unwillingly. “As a crystal singer, I am compelled to return to Ballybran. Had I understood yesterday morning precisely what these blooms meant, I would not have accepted them. Thus does ignorance wound the giver. I am . . . tremendously attracted to you as a man, Lars Dahl. And in the light of what I have been told, heard, and overheard,” she gave him a faint smile, “I can even forgive you that idiotic abduction. In fact, it would have been far more humiliating for me to have been caught in a raid on a bootleg brewery. What you cannot know is that I wasn’t sent to Optheria merely to repair that organ – I am here as an impartial witness, to learn if restriction to this planet is popularly accepted.”
“Popularly accepted?” Lars lifted half out of the cockpit seat in reaction. “What a way to phrase it! It is the most singularly unpopular, repressive, frustrating, discouraging facet of the Optherian Charter. Do you know what our suicide rate is? Well, I can give you hard statistics on that. We made a study of the incidents and have copies of what notes have been left by the deceased. Nine out of ten cite the hopelessness and despair at having no place to go, nothing to do. If you’re lucky enough to be unemployed on Optheria, oh, you’re given food, shelter, clothing, and assigned stimulating community service to occupy you. Community service! – Trimming thorn hedges, tidying up hillsides, dusting boulders in the roadways, painting and repainting federal buildings, stuffing the faces and wiping the bottoms of the incontinent at both ends of life. Truly rewarding and fulfilling occupations for the intelligent and well educated failures that this planet throws upon the altar of the organ!”
He had been emphasizing his disgust with blows of his fist to the tiller, until Killashandra covered his hand with hers.
“Which one of our messages got through? It’s been like tossing a bottle message into the Broad Sea with precious little hope of its ever floating to the Mainland.”
“The complaint originated with the Executive Council of the Federated Artists’ Association, who claim a freedom of choice restriction. A Stellar made the charge, though I wasn’t told which one. His principal concern was with the suppression of composers and performers.” She gave him a wry grin.
Lars raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It wasn’t me who sent that one.” Then he seemed to lake heart, his expression lightening with renewed hope. “If one appeal got through, maybe others have, and we’ll have a whole school of people helping us – And you’ll help us?”
“Lars, I’m required to be an impartial – ”
“I wouldn’t dream of prejudicing you . . .” His twinkling eyes challenged her as he threw his free arm about her shoulders, nibbling at her ear.
“Lars, you’re crushing me. You’re supposed to be sailing this ship . . . I’ve got to think how to go on from here. To be candid, I really don’t have much more than your word that there is a widespread dissatisfaction, and not just a few isolated instances or personal grudges.”
“Do you know how long we’ve been trying to reach the Federated Council?” Now Lars gestured wildly in his agitation. “Do you know what it will mean to the others when I tell them one message has got through, and someone is actually investigating?”
“There’s another matter that we have to discuss, Lars. Is it advisable to tell them, or would it be wiser for me to continue covertly?” His jubilation subsided as he considered her question. “I suppose the suicide file would be acceptable as valid evidence. Has the restriction matter ever been put to the vote here?”
“A vote on Optheria?” He laughed sourly. “You haven’t read that abominable Charter, have you?”
“I scanned it. A boring document. all those highflown phrases turned my pragmatic stomach.” Before Killashandra’s eyes rose the vision of tortured architecture coping with “natural formations” so as not to rape” the Natural World. “So there is no referendum mechanism in the Charter?”
“None. The Elders run this planet and, when one of them keels over and can no longer be resuscitated, a replacement is appointed – by the remaining undefunct Elders.”
“No rising from the ranks on merit here?”
“Only in the Conservatory, and for especially meritorious composition and exceptional performance ability. Then one might possibly, on rare occasions, aspire to reach the exalted rank of a Master. Once in a century, a Master might possibly gain an appointment to the Council of Elders.
“Is that what you were after?”
Lars gave her a wry grin. “I tried! I was even willing to assault you to gain favor and show them what a good, useful, boy I was.”
He snorted at his gullibility.
“Granted, I haven’t heard an approved composition, much less yours, played on the sensory organ,” Killashandra began in casual accents, “but I was tremendously impressed by your performance the other evening. The musical one.”
“The time, the place, the ambiance . . .”
“Not so fast, Lars Dahl. I was a trained musician before I became a crystal singer. I can be a critical auditor . . . and when I heard your music, I didn’t know you as well as I do now, so that is an unbiased assessment. If by any chance the Stellar who lodged the complaint with the Artists’ Association had had you in mind, I second his concern.”
Lars regarded her with a genuine surprise. “You would? What music training did you have?”
“I studied for ten years at the Fuerte Music Center. Voice.”
Lars nearly lost grip on the tiller and before he had altered the course, the Pearl yawed in the rough seas, throwing Killashandra against him “You were the soprano that night?”
“Yes.” She grinned. “I recognized your tenor at the barbecue. Where did you learn Baleef’s Voyagers? And the Pearl Fishers duet? Certainly not in the Conservatory.
“My father. He’d brought some of his microlibrary with him when he came to Optheria.”
“Your father is naturalized?”
“Oh, yes. Like yourself, he didn’t come to the islands by choice. If we mention your true identity to no one else – and what is your true name? Or don’t crystal singers give them?”