But the wild stampede of an hysterical mob was evident to the control tower personnel and automatically someone slapped on the abort signal to all incoming and outgoing shuttles and craft. Moments later, while the comunit was demanding an explanation from Killashandra, from anyone who could make themselves heard over the bedlam in the reception area, a fireball blossomed in the sky, raining hot molten fragments on the spaceport below. The exploding shuttle spewed bits and pieces over a radius of several kilometers, several larger hunks burned craters in the heavy plastic dome of the port facility. Had the shuttle exploded any closer, the damage would have been disastrous.
Apart from bumps, bruises, lacerations and a broken arm sustained in the crush to leave the hall, there were only two serious casualties. The shuttle pilot was dead and Carrik would have been better off so. The final sonic blast knocked him out and he never did recover his senses with consciousness. After consultation with the Heptite Guild medics it was decided to return him to Ballybran for treatment and care.
‘He won’t recover,’ the medic told Killashandra and Maestro Valdi who instantly assumed the role of her comforter. His manner provided Killashandra with a fine counter-irritant to her shock over Carrik’s state.
She chose to disbelieve the medic for surely they could restore Carrik to mental health on Ballybran. It was just that he’d been away from crystal too long: that he was weakened by the seizures. There’d been no mach storm to scramble his mind. She’d escort him back to Ballybran. She owed him that in any reckoning for teaching her how to live, fully, not vicariously as she’d been doing rehearsing opera roles of by-gone griefs and antedated conflicts.
She took a good long look at the posturing Valdi and thanked her luck that Carrick had removed the scales from her eyes. How could she have believed such an artificial life as the theatre was suitable? Just look at Valdi! Present him with a situation, hand him a cue and he was on in the appropriate role. None existed for these circumstances but Valdi was struggling to find one to suit.
‘What will you do now, Killashandra?’ he asked in sepulchral tones, obviously settling for Dignified Elder Gentleman Consoling the Innocent Bereaved.
‘I’ll take him to Ballybran, of course.’
Valdi nodded solemnly. ‘I mean, when you return from Ballybran.’
‘I don’t intend to return.’
Valdi stared, dropping out of character, and then gestured theatrically as the aircushion stretcher on which Carrick was strapped drifted past them to the shuttle gate.
‘After that?’ Valdi cried, full of dramatic plight.
‘That won’t happen to me,’ she said confidently.
‘But it could! And you, too, could be reduced to a thing with no mind, no memories, unalterably scrambled brains.’
‘I think,’ Killashandra said slowly, regarding the mannered little man with thinly veiled contempt, ‘that everyone’s brains get scrambled some way or other.’
‘You’ll rue this day -’ began Valdi, raising his left arm in a classical rejection gesture, fingers gracefully spread.
‘That is, if I remember it!’ she said and her mocking laugh cut him off mid-scene.
Still laughing, Killashandra made her exit, stage center, through the passenger shuttle door.