Killashandra (44 page)

“Justice has been served, Killashandra Ree. You and Trag Morfane are scheduled to leave this Court and this building immediately. Transport awaits.”

The silence after that impersonal order provoked a thunder of tinnitus in her skull.

“I don’t believe this, Trag. This can’t be right. How do we appeal?”

“I do not believe that we can, Killashandra. This is the Federal Court. We have no right of appeal. If there is one available to Lars, I am certain that Olav will in-voke it. But we have no further right. Come. Lars will be taken care of.”

“That’s what I’m fardling afraid of,” Killashandra cried. “I know what penalties and disciplines the Judicial Branch can use. I had Civics like any other school-child. I can’t go, Trag. I can’t leave him. Not like this. Not without any sort of a …” Tears so choked her that she could not continue and a sudden disastrous inability to stand made her wobble so that Trag only just kept her from falling.

She didn’t realize at first that Trag was supporting her out of the room. When she found them in the hall, she tried to wrench herself out of Trag’s grasp but there was someone else by then, assisting Trag and between the two of them, she was wrestled into the lift. She struggled, screaming imprecations and threats, and although she heard Trag protesting as sternly as he could, she was put in padded restraints. The ignominy of such a humiliating expedient combined with fear, disappointment, and her recent physical ordeal sent Killashandra into a trembling posture of aggrieved and contained fury.

By the time they reached the shuttle transport to the Regulus transfer moon, she had exhausted her scant store of energy and crouched in the seat, sullen and silent, too proud to ask for her release from the restraints. She let Trag and the medic lead her where they would, and didn’t protest when they undressed her for immersion in a radiant fluid tank. Legitimate protest and recourse denied her, she submitted to everything then, despairing and listless. Over and over she reviewed her moments in the witness chair, when her body, the body which had loved and been loved so by Lars, had betrayed them both with false testimony. She was appalled at that treachery, and obsessed by the horrifying guilt that she, herself, her anxieties and idiotic presentiments, had condemned Lars on the one count which had not been dismissed by the Court. She could never forgive herself. Somehow, sometime, she would be able to face Lars, and beg his forgiveness. That she promised herself.

All the way back to Ballybran, she said not a single word to anyone, nodding or shaking her head in answer to the few questions that were put directly to her by officials. Trag supervised her meals, immersed her in radiant fluid whenever such facilities were available, and remained by her side during her wakeful hours. If he resented her silence or intepreted it as an accusation, he gave no indication of regret, remorse, or penitence. She was too immersed in her obsession with the outrageous circumstance of Lars’s betrayal to try to explain the complexities of her depression.

By the time she and Trag had completed the long journey to Ballybran’s surface, Killashandra was completely restored to physical health. She paused only long enough in her quarters to check, as she had begun to do toward the end of the trip, with galactic updates. There was no further word on the Optherian situation
beyond the original bulletin announcing the arrival of Revision troops on the planet to “correct legislative anomalies.” She refused to consider what that statement might mean for Lars. Dumping her carisak, she changed into a shipsuit. Then she headed for the Fisherman’s bailiwick and, with a voice grown gruff from disuse, demanded her sonic cutter. While waiting for him to retrieve it from storage, she checked with Meterology and, with a twinge of satisfaction, learned that the forecast predicted a settled period of weather for the next nine days.

She backed her sled out of its rack herself, though she could see the wild protesting signals of the duty officer trying to abort her precipitous departure. As soon as she was clear of the Hangar, she poured on the power and, in an undeviating line, fled for the Ranges.

It was all part of the miserable web of ironic coincidence that she found black crystal again in the deep, sunless ravine in which she had hoped to bury herself and her grief for the reason and manner of her parting with Lars Dahl.

S
tolidly Killashandra watched, arms folded across her breasts, as Enthor reverently unpacked the nine black crystal shafts. “Interstellar, at the least, Killashandra,” he said, blinking his eyes back to normal vision as he stepped back to sigh over the big crystals. “And this is all from that vein you struck last year?”

Killashandra nodded. Not much moved her to words these days. Working the new claim, she had quickly recouped her losses on the Optherian contract; Heptite rules and regs had required her to part with a percentage of that fee to Trag. She accepted that as passively as she had accepted everything since that day in Court on Regulus. Not even Rimbol had been able to penetrate her apathy, though he and Antona continued their attempts. Lanzecki had spoken pleasantly to her after her first return from the Ranges, complimented her on the new black crystal vein but their early relationship could never have been revived even if Lanzecki had persisted.

She didn’t see him. She saw no one but Lars, a laughing Lars, garland-wreathed, his blue eyes gleaming, teeth white in his tanned face, his bronzed body poised on the deck of the
Pearl Fisher
. She woke sometimes, sure she felt his hand on her hip, heard his voice in the whisper of the wind in the deep ravine, or in the tenor of warming crystal at noon, when the sun finally touched the cliff. She made two attempts to succumb to crystal thrall but each time the symbiont had somehow pulled her back. Not even that enchantment was powerful enough to break through her emotions, obsessed as she was by the guilty betrayal of her body in the witness chair on Regulus.

She had kept informed of the situation on Optheria and often, on the nights brilliant with crystal song, she composed letters to Lars, asking to be forgiven that betrayal. She wrote imaginary letters to Nahia and Hauness, knowing that they would be compassionate, and intercede for her with Lars. In her better moments, common sense dictated that Lars would not have held that bizzare psychoanalysis against her for he, of them all, knew how much she treasured and admired him. But he had not heard her impassioned plea to the Court, and she doubted if “I love you” had been included in the hard copy of the hearing transcript. And he had other plans for the rest of his life.

She frequently entertained the notion of returning to Optheria to see how he was getting on, even if she never made actual contact with him. He might have found another woman with whom he could share his life on Optheria. Sometimes she returned from the Ranges, full of determination to end her wretched half-life, one way or another. She had more than enough credit for a fiercely expensive galactic call: ironically through some of the black crystal she had herself cut. But would she reach Lars on Optheria? Maybe, once he had completed that
disciplinary action and his subordination to the Federal investigation of Optheria, he had found another channel for his abilities and energies. Once he discovered his freedom to travel the stars, they might have won him from his love of the sea.

At her most rational, she recognized all the ifs ands and buts as procrastinations. Yet, it was not exactly an unwillingness to chance her luck that restrained her: it was a deep and instinctive “knowing” that she must remain in this period of suspension for a while yet. That she had to wait. When the time was right, action would follow logically. She settled down to wait, and perfected the art.

“You’re in early, too, you know,” Enthor was saying to her. “Storm warnings only just gone out.”

“Aren’t those good enough?” Killashandra asked. “No need to risk life and limb, is there?”

“No, no,” Enthor hastily assured her.

Killashandra had, in fact, answered the storm warning her symbiont had given her. She was used to listening to it because it so often proved the most accurate sense she had.

“You’ve enough here to spend a year on Maxim,” Enthor went on with a sly sideways glance. “You haven’t gone off in a long time, Killashandra. You should, you know.”

Killashandra shrugged her shoulders, glancing impassively at a credit line that would once have made her chortle in triumph. “I don’t have enough resonance to have to leave,” she said tonelessly. “I’ll wait. Thanks, Enthor.”

“Killa, if talking would help …”

She looked down at the light hand the old Sorter had put on her arm, mildly surprised at the contact. His unexpected solicitude, the concern on his lined face
nudged the thick shell which encased her mind and spirit. She smiled slightly as she shook her head. “Talking wouldn’t help. But you were kind to offer.”

And he had been. Sorters and singers were more often at loggerheads than empathetic. The northeaster which her symbiont had sensed swept a fair number of singers in from the Ranges to the safety of the Complex. The lift, the hall, the corridors were crowded but she wended her way through, and no one spoke to her. She didn’t exist for herself so she didn’t exist for them.

The screen in her quarters directed her to contact Antona. There usually was a message from the medical chief waiting for her. Antona kept trying to make a deeper contact.

“Ah, Killa, please come down to the infirmary, will you?”

“I’m not due for another physical?”

“No. But I need you down here.”

Killashandra frowned. Antona looked determined and waited for Killashandra’s acquiescence.

“Let me change.” Killashandra brushed at the filthy blouse of her shipsuit.

“I’ll even give you time to bathe.”

Killashandra nodded, broke the connection and, unfastening the suit as she made her way to the hygiene room, switched on the taps. Though once—fresh in from the Ranges—she might have done, she didn’t luxuriate in the steaming water. She made a quick but thorough bath, and put on the first clean clothes she found. Her hair, close cropped for convenience, dried by the time she reached the Infirmary Level. Her nostrils flared against the smell of sickness and fever, and the muffled sounds reminded her of her initial visit to Antona’s preserve. A new class must be passing through adjustment to the Ballybran symbiont.

Antona came out of her office, her color high with suppressed excitement.

“Thank you, Killa. I’ve a Milekey Transition here whom I’d like you to talk to, reassure him. He’s positive there’s something wrong.” Her words came out in a rush, as she dragged Killashandra down the hall, and thrust her through the door she opened. Impassively, Killashandra noted the number: it was the same room she had so briefly tenanted five years before. Then the occupant rose from the bed, smiling.

“Killa!”

She stared at Lars Dahl, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes for she had seen his phantom so often. But Antona had brought her here so this vision had to be real. Avidly she noted each of the tiny changes in him: the lack of tan, the gauntness of his shoulders under the light shirt, the new lines in his face, the loss of that twinkle of gaiety that had been a trademark of his open, handsome expression. He had subtly aged: no, matured. And the process had brought him distinction and an indefinable air of strength and the patience of strength and knowledge.

“Killa?” The smile had dropped from his face, his half-raised hand fell to his side as she failed to respond.

Imperceptibly she began to shake her head, and tentatively, certain that he would vanish if she admitted to herself that he was flesh, bone, and blood, her hands began to lift from her sides. Inside her body the cold knot into which all emotion and spirit had been reduced began to expand, like a warm draught through her veins. Her mind reverberated with one exultant conclusion: he was there, and he wouldn’t be if he hadn’t forgiven her.

“Lars?” Her voice was a whisper of disbelief but sufficient reassurance to propel him across the intervening space. Then, as if he found their reunion as incredible as she, he folded her carefully into his arms.

Momentarily she lacked the strength to return the embrace but burrowed her head into the curve of his shoulder and neck, inhaling the smell of him, and exhaling into the tears she had kept bottled for the eternity in which they had been parted.

Lars swept her up in his arms, and carried her to the chair, where he cradled her, appalled at the wildness of her sobbing and comforting her with kisses, caresses, and strong embracings.

“That fardling machine that served justice was never told we were emotionally attached, the one piece of information that no one but us would have thought relevant,” he said, releasing in talk the tension he had endured all through the process of getting to this point when he would be ready, and able, to meet her again. “Then Father found out what had happened and he moved the entire Department to revoke that judgment on the basis of misinterpretation of your psychological response. Poor sweet Sunny, so worried about me she messed us both up.” To her surprise, he chuckled. “You didn’t know that the only reason that disciplinary action was entered against me was the Court’s attempt to satisfy what they took to be a suppressed desire for revenge in you. Justice was being served, blind as it was. Father finally reached a human in authority, swore blind to half a dozen psych-units that he himself had handfasted us on Angel Island and got the action revoked. D’you know, that Court Bailiff was a narding construct! No wonder I couldn’t move when he grabbed me. Then, when we did understand our rights, Trag had already departed with you.