Authors: Anne McCaffrey
Still the sleds hurled themselves in over the wind baffle and managed to land in the little space available: the gale was audible even through her ear mufflers, and the force of the wind smacked at the body as brutally as any physical fist.
“RECRUITS! RECRUITS! All recruits will regroup in the sorting area. All recruits to the sorting area!”
Dazed, Killashandra swung around to check the message on the display screens, and then someone linked arms with her, and they both cantered into the gale to reach the sorting area.
Once inside the building, Killashandra nearly fell, as much from exhaustion as from pushing her body against a wind no longer felt. She was handed from one person to another and then deposited on a seat. A heavy beaker was put into her hands, and the noise-abatement helmet was removed from her head. Nor was there much noise beyond weary sighs, an occasional noisy exhalation that was not quite a groan, or the sound of boots scraping against plascrete.
Killashandra managed to stop the trembling in her hands to take a judicious sip of the hot, clear broth. She sighed softly with relief. The restorative was richly tasty, and its warmth immediately crept to her cold extremities, which Killashandra had not recognized as being wind sore. The lower part of her face, her jaw and chin, which had been exposed to the scouring wind, were also stiff and painful. Taking another sip, she raised her eyes above the cup and noticed the row opposite her: noticed and recognized the faces of Rimbol and Borton, and farther down, Celee. Half a dozen had black eyes, torn or scratched cheeks. Four recruits looked as if they’d been dragged face down over gravel. When she touched her own skin, she realized she, too, had suffered unfelt abrasions, for her numb fingers were pricked with dots of blood.
A loud hiss of indrawn breath made her look to the left. A medic was daubing Jezerey’s face. Another medic was working down the row toward Rimbol, Celee, and Borton.
“Any damage?” Killashandra, despite her exhausted stupor, recognized the voice as that of Guild Master Lanzecki’s.
Surprised, she turned to find him standing in an open door, his black-garbed figure stark against the white of piled crystal cartons.
“Superficial, sir,” one of the medics said after a respectful nod in the Guild Master’s direction.
“Class 895 has been of invaluable assistance today,” Lanzecki said, his eyes taking in every one of the thirty-three. “I, your Guild Master, thank you. So does Cargo Officer Malaine. No one else will.” There wasn’t even a trace of a smile on the man’s face to suggest he was being humorously ironic. “Order what you will for your evening meal: it will not be debited from your account. Tomorrow you will report to this sorting area where you will learn what you can from the crystals brought in today. You are dismissed.”
He withdraws,
Killashandra thought.
He fades from the scene. How unusual. But then, he’s not a Singer. So no sweeping entrances like Carrik or the three Singers at Shankill, nor exits like Borella’s
. She took another sip of her broth, needing its sustenance to get her weary body up the ramp for that good free meal. Came to remember, the last good free meal she’d had had, also been indirectly charged to the Guild. She was, as it happened, one of the last of the recruits to leave the sorting area. A door opened somewhere behind her.
“How many not yet in, Malaine?” she heard Lanzecki ask.
“Five more just hit the hangar floor, one literally. And Flight says there are two more possible light-sights.”
“That makes twenty-two unaccounted—”
“If we could only get Singers to register cuts, we’d have some way of tracking the missing and retrieve at least the cargo . . .”
The door swooshed tight, and the last of the sentence was inaudible. The exchange, the tone of it, worried her.
“Retrieve the cargo.” Was that the concern of Malaine and Lanzecki? The
cargo?
Malaine certainly had stressed the cargo’s being more valuable than the recruits handling it. But surely the Crystal Singers themselves were valuable, too. Sleds could be replaced—another debit to clear off one’s Guild account—but surely Singers were a valuable commodity in their own peculiar way.
Killashandra’s mind simply could not cope with such anomalies. She made it to the top of the ramp. She had to put one hand on the door frame to steady herself as she thumbed her door open. A moan of weariness escaped her lips. Rimbol’s door whisked open.
“You all right, Killa?” Rimbol’s face was flecked with fine lines and tiny beads of fresh blood. He wore only a towel.
“Barely.”
“The herbal bath does wonders. And eat.”
“I will. It’s on the management, after all.” She couldn’t move her painful face to smile.
After a long soak absorbed the worst fatigue from her muscles she did force herself to eat.
An insistent burp from the computer roused her the next morning. She peered into the dark beyond her bed and only then realized that the windows were shuttered and the gale still furious outside.
The digital told her that it was 0830 and her belly that it was empty. As she started to throw back the thermal covering, every muscle in her body announced its unreadiness for such activity. Cursing under her breath, Killashandra struggled up on one elbow. No sooner had she put her fingers on the catering dial than a small beaker with an effervescent pale-yellow liquid appeared in the slot.
“The medication is a muscle relaxant combined with a mild analgesic to relieve symptoms of muscular discomfort. This condition is transitory.”
Killashandra cursed fluently at what she felt was the computer’s embarrassingly well timed invasion of Privacy, but she drained the medicine, grimacing at its oversweet taste. In a few moments, she began to feel less stiff. She took a quick shower, alternating hot and cold, for unaccountably her skin still prickled from yesterday’s severe buffeting. As she was eating a high-protein breakfast, she hoped that time would be allowed for meals today. She doubted that the rows of crystal containers could all be sorted and repacked in one day. And such a job oughtn’t need the pace of yesterday.
Sorting took four days of labor as intense as fighting the storm wind, though presenting less physical danger. The recruits, each working with a qualified sorter, learned a great deal about how not to cut crystal and pack it and which forms were currently profitable. These were in the majority, and most of the experienced sorters directed a constant flow of abuse at Singers who had cut quantities of the commodity then most overstocked.
“We’ve got three ruddy storage rooms of these,” muttered Enthor, with whom Killashandra was sorting. “It’s blues what we need and want. And blacks, of course. No, no, wrong side. You’ve got to learn,” he said, grabbing the carton Killashandra had just lifted to the sorting table. “First, present the Singer’s ident code.” He turned the box so that the strip, ineradicably etched on the side, would register. “Didn’t have that little bit of help and there’d be war unloading, with cartons getting mixed up every which way and murder going on.”
Once the ident number went up on the display, the carton was unpacked and each crystal form carefully put on the scale, which computed color, size, weight, form, and perfection. Some crystals Enthor immediately placed on the moving belts, which shunted them to the appropriate level for shipment or storage. Others he himself cocooned in the plastic webbing with meticulous care.
The sorting process seemed boringly simple. Sometimes it was not easy to retrieve the small crystals that had been thrust at any angle into the protective foam. Killashandra almost missed a small blue octagon before Enthor grabbed the carton she was about to assign to replacement.
“Lucky for you,” the sorter said darkly, glancing about him, brows wrinkled over his eyes, “that the Singer who cut this wasn’t watching. I’ve seen them try to kill a person for negligence.”
“For this?” Killashandra held up the octagon, which couldn’t have been more than 8 centimeters in length.
“For that. It’s unflawed.” Enthor’s quick movement had placed the crystal on the scale and checked its perfection. “Listen!” He set the piece carefully between her thumb and forefinger and flicked slightly.
Even above the rustling and stamping and low-voiced instructions, Killashandra heard the delicate, pure sound of the crystal. The note seemed to catch in her throat and travel down her bones to her heels.
“It’s not easy to cut small, and right now this piece’s worth a couple of hundred credits.”
Killashandra was properly awed and far more painstaking, risking her fingers to search a plasfoam carton that seemed heavier than empty. Enthor scolded her for that, slapping her gloves across her cheek before he tugged one of his off and showed her fingers laced by faint white scars.
“Crystal does it. Even through gloves and with symbiosis. Yours would fester. I’d get docked for being careless?”
“Docked?”
“Loss of work time due to inadequate safety measures is considered deductible. You, too, despite your being a recruit.”
“We get paid for this?”
“Certainly.” Enthor was indignant at her ignorance. “And you got danger money for unloading yesterday. Didn’t you know?”
Killashandra stared at him in surprise.
“Just like all new recruits.” Enthor chuckled amiably at her discomfort. “Not got over the shock, huh? Get a beaker of juice this morning? Thought so. Everyone does who’s worked in a gale. Does the trick. And no charge for it, either.” He chuckled again at her “All medical treatment’s free, you know.”
“But you said you got docked—”
“For stupidity in not taking safety precautions.” He wiggled his fingers, now encased in their tough skin tight gloves, at her. “No, don’t take that carton. I will. Get the next. Fugastri just came in. We don’t want him breathing down your neck. He’s a devil; but he’s never faulted me!”
“You’re being extremely helpful—”
“You’re helping me, and we’re both being paid by the same source, this crystal. You might as well know
this
job properly,” and Enthor’s tone implied that she might not have as good an instructor in any other sector. “You might end up here as a sorter, and we sorters like to have a good time. What’d you say your name was?”
“Killashandra.”
“Oh, the person who brought Carrik back?” Enthor’s tone was neither pleased nor approving: he just identified her.
Obscurely, Killashandra felt better: she wasn’t just an identity lost in the Guild’s memory banks. People besides Class 895 had heard of her.
“Did you know Carrik?”
“I know them all, m’dear. And wish I didn’t—However, it’s not a bad life.” He gave another of his friendly chuckles. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work and then the best possible domestic conditions.” His grin turned to a knowing leer, and he gave her a nudge. “Yes, you might remember my name while you can, for you won’t if you become a Singer. Enthor, I am, level 4, accommodation 895
.
That ought to be easy for you to remember, as it’s your class number.”
“What was yours?” Quickly, Killashandra sought a way to turn the conversation away from his offer.
“Class number? 502,” he said. “Nothing wrong with my memory.”
“And you’re not deaf.”
“Couldn’t sort crystal if I were!”
“Then what did the symbiont do to you?” She blurted it out before she realized she might be invading his privacy.
“Eyes, m’dear. Eyes.” He turned and, for the first time, faced her directly. He blinked once, and she gasped. A protective lens retracted at his blink. She saw how huge his irises were, obscuring the original shade of the pupil. He blinked again, and some reddish substance covered the entire eyeball. “That’s why I’m a sorter and why I know which crystals are flawless at a glance. I’m one of the best sorters they’ve ever bad. Lanzecki keeps remarking on my ability. Ah, you’ll shortly see what I mean . . .”
Another sorter, a disgruntled look on his face, was walking toward them with a carton and escorted by an angry Singer.
“Your opinion on these blues?” The Singer, his face still bearing the ravages of a long period in the ranges, curtly took the container from the sorter and thrust it at Enthor. Then the Singer, with the rudeness that Killashandra was beginning to observe was the mark of a profession rather than a personality, blocked the view of the sorter whose judgment he had questioned.
Enthor carefully deposited the carton on his work space and extracted the crystals, one by one, holding them up to his supersensitive eyes for inspection, laying them down in a precise row. There were seven green-blue pyramids, each broader in the base by 2 or 3 centimeters.
“No flaws perceived. A fine shear edge and good point,” Enthor rendered his opinion in a flat tone markedly different from his conversational style with Killashandra. With an almost finicky precision, he wiped and polished a tiny crystal hammer and tapped each pyramid delicately. The fourth one was a half note, instead of a whole, above the third, and thus a scale was not achieved.
“Market them in trios and save the imperfect one for a show piece. I recommend that you check your cutter for worn gaskets or fittings. You’re too good a Singer to make such an obvious mistake. Probably the oncoming storm put you off the note.”
The attempt at diplomacy did not mollify the Singer, whose eyes bulged as he gathered himself to bellow. Enthor appeared not to notice, but the other sorter had stepped backward hastily.
“Lanzecki!”
The angry shout produced more than the swift arrival of Lanzecki. A hush fell over the sorting room, and the Singer seemed unaware of it, his savage glance resting on Enthor, who blithely tapped figures into his terminal.
Killashandra felt a hand on her shoulder and stepped obediently aside to allow Lanzecki to take her place by Enthor. As if aware of the Guild Master’s presence, Enthor again tapped the crystals, the soft tones falling into respectful silence.
Lanzecki was not listening: he was watching the dials on the scales. One eyebrow twitched as the half tone sounded and the corresponding digits appeared on the display.
“Not a large problem, Uyad,” Lanzecki said, turning calmly to the flushed Singer. “You’ve been cutting that face long enough to fill in half tones. I’d suggest you store this set and fill it to octave. Always a good price for pyramids in scale.”