Killashandra (31 page)

“That is so thoughtful, Elder Ampris. Resetting a crystal drive is an exhausting process. So many fiddling things requiring fine muscle coordination and complete concentration.” She sighed wearily, turning slightly to
smile apologetically at Mirbethan and the others. “I want to be well rested to attack that repair tomorrow. Oh, Thyrol? With Captain Dahl to assist me, I won’t need any other helpers.”

She took Lars’s arm and ascended the shallow steps to the main entrance. She felt him quivering but for which of several reasons she couldn’t have told without glancing at his face. And she didn’t dare do that. “Do you know the way to my quarters, Captain Dahl?”

“If I may just escort you,” Mirbethan answered, hastening to lead the way.

“I was never in this part of the Conservatory, Crystal Singer,” Lars said as they entered the imposing main lobby.

“You’ve been to the conservatory, Captain Dahl?” Killashandra asked.

“Yes, Guildmember, I studied here for three years.”

“Why, Captain, you have unexplored capabilities. Are you then a singer?”

“Vocal music is not taught at the Conservatory: only the organ.”

“Really, I would have thought the planet’s main Conservatory would exploit every musical potential. How odd!”

“Do you find it so, Guildmember?”

“In other parts of the FSP, vocal arts are much admired, and a Stellar soloist highly respected.”

“Optheria places more value on the most complex of instruments.” Lars’s tone was of mild reproof. “The sensory organ combines sound, olfactory and tactile sensations to produce a total orchestration of alternate reality for the participant.”

“Is the organ limited to Optheria? I’ve never encountered one before in all my voyaging.”

“It is unique to Optheria.”

“Which certainly has many unique experiences for the visitor.”

Mirbethan’s pace, and her erect back, seemed to reflect at once her approval, and shock, at their conversation.

“Why, then, Captain Dahl, if you have studied to use the organ, are you sailing about in the islands?”

“Because, Guildmember, my composition was ah … not approved by the Masters who pass judgment on such aspirations, so I returned to my previous occupation.”

“To be sure, I am selfishly glad, Captain—for who would have rescued me had you not been in those waters?” Killashandra sighed deeply just as they turned the corridor into the hall she did recognize. “Mirbethan?”

The woman whirled, her expression composed though she was breathing rather rapidly.

“By any chance, I mean, I know I’ve been gone a good while, but I do hope that those beverages …”

“Your catering facility has been completely stocked with the beverages of your choice.”

“And the chimes have been turned off?”

Mirbethan nodded.

“And the catering unit instructed to supply proper-size portions of food without requiring additional authorization?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. I, for one, am starving. Sea air, you know.” With a final smile, Killashandra swept through the door Lars held open.

By the time he had shut it, she had discovered four ceiling surveillance units in the main salon. “I am quite weary, Captain.”

“With due respect, Guildmember, you did not eat much of the evening meal, perhaps a light supper—”

“The variety on the catering unit seems geared to student requirements … unless you, having spent time here, can make a suggestion.”

“Indeed I would be delighted to, Guildmember.” Lars located several more as they moved through the suite to the two bedrooms. He peered into the first bathing room and grinned broadly at her. “May I draw you a bath?”

“An excellent idea.” She strode to what was evidently the one room that had been left unmonitored.

Lars began filling the tub, having turned the taps on full.

He reached into his tunic and extracted an innocuous metal ball. “A deceiver, Father calls it. It distorts picture and sound—we can be quite free once it’s operating. And when we leave the suite,”—he grinned, miming the device returned to his pocket—“it’ll drive their technicians wild.”

“Won’t they realize that the distortion only works when we’re here?”

“I suggest that tomorrow you complain about being monitored in the bedroom. Can we cope with just one free room?” He began to undress her, his expression intense with anticipation.

“Two,” Killashandra corrected him with a coy moue as the bright and elegant overall Teradia had chosen for her fell in a rainbow puddle at her feet.

It was, of course, thoroughly soaked with the water displaced when Lars overbalanced her into the tub.

When they had sated their appetites sufficiently, Killashandra idly described wet circles on the broad expanse of Lars’s chest. “I think that with the best motives in the world, I have placed you in an awkward situation.”

“Beloved Killashandra, when you sprang that,” and he aptly mimicked her voice, “ ‘I have no fear of being assaulted with Captain Dahl beside me,’ I nearly choked.”

“I felt you quaking, but I didn’t know if it was laughter or outrage.”

“And then suggesting that someone else had instigated the attack to implicate islanders—Killashandra, I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. You really got mine back on the flatulent fardling. But watch him, Killa. He’s dangerous. Once he and Torkes start comparing notes …”

“They still have to get that organ fixed in time for all those lucky little composers to practice their pieces. I’m here and even if a replacement is coming, it’s the old bird-in-the-hand.”

“Yes, and they’ve got to have done all the Mainland concerts to ensure a proper Optherian attitude toward visitors.”

“Proper attitude? Mainland concerts? What do you mean?”

Lars held her slightly away from him in the capacious bath, reading her face and eyes.

“You don’t know? You don’t really know why that organ is so important to the Elders?”

“Well, I do know that the set-up will produce an intense emotional experience for the listener. It verges on illegal manipulation.”

Lars gave a sour laugh. “Verges? It
is
. But then you would only have seen the sensory elements. The subliminal units are kept out of sight, underneath the organ loft.”

“Subliminals?” Killashandra stared at Lars.

“Of course, ninny. How do you think the Elders keep the people of Optheria from wanting any of the marvels that the visitors tell them about? Because they’ve just had a full dose of subliminal conditioning! Why do you think people who prefer to exercise their own wits live in the islands? The Elders can’t broadcast the subliminals and sensories.”

“Subliminals are illegal! Even the sensory feedbacks border on illegality! Lars, when I tell the FSP this—”

“Why do you think my father was sent to Optheria? The FSP wants proof! And that means an eyeball on the illegal equipment. It’s taken Father’s group nearly thirty years to get close enough.”

“Then you weren’t here just to learn to play that blasted thing?”

“Playing the blasted thing is the only way to get close enough to it to find out where the subliminal units are kept. Comgail did. And died!”

“You’re suggesting he didn’t suicide?”

Lars shook his head slowly. “Something Nahia said during the hurricane confirmed my suspicion that he hadn’t. You see, I knew Comgail. He was my composition tutor. He wasn’t a martyr type. He certainly wanted to live. He was willing to risk a lot but not his life. Nahia mentioned that he’d asked Hauness to provide him with rehab blocks. A good block—and Hauness is the best there is—prevents the victim from confessional diarrhea and a total loss of personality. Comgail had been so above reproach all the time he’d been at the Conservatory that not even a paranoid like Pedder would have suspected him of collusion with dissidents. But, for shattering the manual, Comgail’d automatically be sent to rehab. He had prepared himself for that. He wasn’t killed by a crystal fragment, Killa, he was murdered by it. I think it was because he had found the access to the subliminal units.”

“Subliminals!” Killashandra seethed with horror at the potentially total control. “And he found the access? Where? All I need is one look at them—”

Lars regarded her solemnly. “That’s all
we
need—once we find them. They’ve got to be somewhere in the organ loft.”

“Well, then”—Killashandra embraced him exuberantly—“wasn’t I clever to insist that you and I handle the repairs all by ourselves.”

“If we’re allowed!”

“You’ve the jammer.” She rose from the deep bath, Lars following her. “Say, if your father’s so clever with electronics, why hasn’t he figured a way to jam the shuttleport detection arch?”

Lars chuckled as she dried him, for once more interested in something other than his physical effect on her.

“He’s spent close to thirty years trying. We even have a replica of the detector on Angel. But we cannot figure a way to mask that residue. Watch out for my ears!” She had been briskly toweling his hair.

“Does the detector always catch the native?”

“Infallible.”

“And yet …” She wrapped her hair in a towel. She pointed to the jammer and then proceeded to the salon. Lars followed, the jammer held above his head like a torch, a diabolical gleam in his eye as he waved it at each of the monitors he passed. “Yet when Thyrol came out right with me, the detector didn’t catch
him
. And passed me.”

“What? No matter how many people pass under it, it will always detect the native!”

“It didn’t then! I wonder if it had anything to do with crystal resonance.”

“You mean in you?”

“Hmmm. It’s not exactly something we can experiment with, is it? Prancing in and out of the shuttleport.”

“Hardly—and we’re half a world away from the only other one.”

“Well, we can worry about that later. After we’ve found the access and after we’ve repaired that wretched organ! Now,” and she opened the doors of the beverage store with a flourish, “what shall we drink with our supper?”

K
illashandra woke before the chimes, which did not sound in her suite but were nevertheless audible from the adjacent sections of the Conservatory. She woke refreshed and totally relaxed, and cautiously eased herself away from Lars’s supine body so that she might have a better view of his sleeping form. She felt oddly protective of him as she propped her head on one hand and minutely inspected his profile. Thus she noticed that the tips of his long eyelashes were bleached and the lid itself was not as dark as the surrounding skin. Fine laugh, or sun lines, fanned out from the corners to the temple. The arch of his nose just missed being too high, too thin, being balanced by fine modeling and length. His cheeks wore a dusting of freckles which she hadn’t noticed before. And several dark brow hairs were out of line as the brow curved around the eye socket. Several hairs bristled straight up at the inner edges of brows that would almost meet when he frowned.

She liked best his wide lips, more patrician than sensual. She knew the havoc they could raise with her body and felt they were perhaps his best feature. Even in sleep, the corners raised slightly. His chin was rather broader than one was aware when his face was mobile, but the strong jawline swept back to well-shaped ears, also tan, with a spot of new sunburn about to peel on the top skin.

The column of his neck was strong and the pulse beat in his throat. She wanted to put her finger tip on it and almost did before retracting her hand. He was more truly hers when asleep, untouched by stress, relaxed, his rib cage barely moving.

She loved the line of his chest, the smooth skin clothing smooth pectoral muscle, and once again she had to repress the wish to run her hand down the shape of him, to feel the fine crisp hair on his chest. He was not hirsute and she found that much to her preference as well, his legs and arms having only a fine dusting of blond hairs.

She had seen handsomer men but the composition of his face pleased her better. Lanzecki—now that was the first time she’d thought of him in days—actually was the more distinguished in looks, heavier in build. She decided she preferred the way Lars Dahl was put together.

She sighed. It was easier to be philosophical about Lanzecki. Would she have been as easily resigned to that loss if she hadn’t met Lars Dahl? She had broken off with Lanzecki for his own good, but she hadn’t “lost” him, for she would return to Ballybran. Once she’d left Optheria …

For a moment her emotions hovered above a new abyss of despair and regret. And for the first time in her life, the thought of bearing a man’s child crossed her mind. That was as much an impossibility as remaining with Lars, but it emphasized the depth of her emotional
envolvement with the man. Perhaps it was just as well that no child was possible, that their liaison would end when this assignment was over. She surprised herself! Children were something other people had. To feel that desire was remarkable.

Optheria, for all its conservatism and alleged security, had unexpected facets of danger. Not the least of which were her adventures so far. She could hardly fault Trag, or rail at the
Encyclopedia Galactica
. Facts she had had. What couldn’t have been foreseen were the astonishing predicaments which had entangled her. And the fascinating personalities.