Startled by the command, Killashandra reached for the nearest box, hesitated, and drawn by a curious compulsion, settled her hands on its neighbor. She picked it up and would have given it over to Enthor, but he gestured for her to place it on the table, its ident facing the scanner.

“So open it!”

“Me? Black crystal?”

“You chose it, didn't you? You must learn to handle it.”

“If I should drop?”

“You won't. Your hands are very strong for a girl's, fingers short and supple. You won't drop things you want to hold.”

Tension, like a frigid extra skin about her torso, crept down her thighs. She had felt this way, standing in the wings before an entrance in the Music Center, so she took three deep breaths, clearing her lungs and diaphragm as she would if she were about to sing a long musical phrase.

Indeed, when her questing fingers closed on the large soapy-soft object in the center of the plasfoam, she exhaled a long, low “ah” of surprise.

«NO!» Enthor turned to her in outrage. «No, no,» and he darted forward, clapping his hand to her mouth. «Never sing around raw crystal! Especially» – and his tone intense with anger – «near black crystal!» He was so agitated that he blinked his lens on and off, and the red of his unprotected eyes effectively cowed Killashandra. Enthor looked about him in a frenzied survey to see if any one at the nearer tables had heard her. «Never!»

She didn't dare tell him at that juncture that the black crystal had vibrated in her hands at her spontaneous note and her finger bones had echoed the response of other segments still unpacked.

With an effort, Enthor regained his composure, but his nostrils flared, and his lips worked as he struggled for calm.

«Never sing or whistle or hum around raw crystal no matter what the color. I can only hope you haven't inhibited the magnetic induction of a whole ring linkage with that ill-advised – ah – exclamation. I'll say it was an exclamation if I should be asked.» He let out one more unaspirated breath and then nodded for her to take out the crystal.

Killashandra closed her eyes as she freed the heavy block. Enthor was not going to like this if she had indeed blurred raw crystal. Told she had been and at some length and with considerable emphasis by Tukolom all about the subtle and delicate process by which segments of the black quartz crystal were subjected to synchronized magnetic induction, which resulted in the instantaneous resonance between segments as far apart as five hundred light years. The resonance provided the most effective and accurate communications network known in the galaxy. That she might have inadvertently damaged the thick block she now exposed to Enthor's startled gaze weighed heavily in her mind.

With an intake of breath for which she might have returned him his caution on sound, Enthor reverently took the dodecahedron from her.

“How many more are with it?” he asked in an uneven voice.

Killashandra already knew how many there should be.

Twelve and there were. She retrieved them from their webbing, handing them carefully to Enthor, though they were not as massive or tall as the king crystal. They fit as snugly to the central block as they had lived with it until Gorren had cut the crystals from the quartz face.

“Well!” Enthor regarded the matched set on the scale.

«Are – are they all right?» Killashandra finally found a contrite voice for the urgent question.

Enthor's little hammer evoked a clear tone that rippled from her ear bones to her heels, like an absolving benison. Even without Enthor's verbal reassurance, she knew the crystal had forgiven her.

“Luck, m'dear. You seem to have used the note on which they were cut. Fortunate for me.”

Killashandra leaned against the sorting table to balance her shaky self.

"A set like this will provide a multiple linkage with thirty or forty other systems. "Magnificent!" By this time, Enthor was examining the thirteen crystals with his augmented vision. "He cut just under the flaw," he murmured, more to himself, then remembered the presence of Killashandra. "As one would expect Gorren to do."

Brusquely but with precise movements, he put the crystals on the scale. Killashandra allowed herself an unaspirated sigh at the size of the huge fortune in credits Gorren had just acquired.

“Magnificent!” Enthor said. Then he gave a chuckle, his glance back at Killashandra sly. “Only Lanzecki will have the devil's own time persuading Gorren to cut anything for the next two galactic years. There's not that much black being cut. Being found. Still in all, that's Lanzecki's problem, not mine. Not yours. Bring another carton, m'dear. You've the knack of picking them, it seems.”

“Luck,” Killashandra said, regarding the remaining boxes, none of which seemed to draw her as that other had done.

She would rather have been wrong but the rest of Gorren's cut was unexciting. The small clusters were unexciting. The small clusters, absolutely flawless, would be quite sufficient for the larger public entertainment units that provided realistic sensual effects, Enthor told her.

That night, most of the recruits insisted on her telling them about the black crystal, and Lanzecki and the chief marketing officer, for they had been unable to hear much and not permitted to stare. She obliged them, including a slightly exaggerated version of Enthor's dressing down that she felt would be salutary. Besides, the telling relieved the tension she still felt at how close she had come to buggering up enough credit to ransom a planet.

“What could they do to you if you had?” Shillawn asked, swallowing nervously as if he envisioned himself muffing it in a similar instance.

“I don't know.”

“Something bizarre, I'm sure,” Borton said. “Those Singers don't spare anyone if their cuttings are mishandled. I was lucky enough to be the sorter who did Uyad's cut.” Borton grinned. “I hid in the storage behind enough cartons, so I didn't get much of the back blast.”

“So that's where you were,” Jezerey asked, teasing.

“Bloody well told. I'm not here to bucket someone else's bilge.”

Conversation continued about the variety of cuts and sizes and colors of the crystals from the Brerrerton and Milekey Ranges. Killashandra added nothing else, considering it more discreet to remain silent. When she could do so without attracting attention, she rose and went to her room. She wanted to think and recall the sensation of handling that massive black crystal. It hadn't been really black, not black at all, nor clear the way the rose or indeed any of the other crystals had been. She had accepted the designation at the time, for surely Enthor knew his crystals, and certainly the black quartz was different.

She tapped data retrieval for all information on black quartz crystal and specimens there of. The data included black crystal in segmented units, none quite like the dodecahedron. Another display showed an octagon in its luminous, unchanged state, then the same form shading gradually to a matte black as it responded to thermal changes artificially induced. The data began to take up the lecture Tukolom had given, and she switched it off, lying back and recalling the sensation of her first contact with black crystal.

The next day, recovery teams brought in the cargo from sleds that had not reached the safety of the Guild Complex, and depression settled over the sorting room when the cartons, dinged, scarred, and discolored, were deposited on sorting tables. The mood was partially lightened when two containers disgorged some good triple and quadruple black crystal.

“What happens to them?” Killashandra asked Enthor in a low voice.

“To what?”

“The crystal of the Singer who didn't make it.”

“Guild.” Enthor's terse reply seemed to imply that this was only fair.

“But doesn't a Guild member have the right to dispose of the . . . things of which he dies possessed?”