Concera, a woman of medium height and slender build, glided into the main room, exclaimed at the sight of the wall-screens, and looked questioningly at Killashandra.

"Oh, aren't you clever? I would never have thought of combining different worlds." Do come right along. He has such a temper at the best of times, but without his skill, we, the Singers I mean, would be in a terrible way. He is a superior craftsman, which is why one humors his odd temper. This way."

Concera covered quite a bit of ground with her gliding gait, and Killashandra had to stretch her legs to keep pace.

«You'll get to know where everything is very soon. It's nice to be by oneself, I feel, instead of in a pack, but then different people have different tastes,» and Concera peered sideways at Killashandra to see if she agreed. «Of course, we come from all over the galaxy, so one is bound to find someone compatible. This is the eighth level where most of the technical work is done – naturally the cutters are made here, as they are the most technical of all. Here we are.»

Concera paused at the open entrance and, with what seemed unexpected courtesy, pushed Killashandra ahead of her into a small office with a counter across the back third and a door leading into a workshop. Her entry must have triggered an alarm in the workroom, for a man, his sun reddened face set in sour lines, appeared in the doorway.

“You're this Killashandra?” he demanded. He beckoned to her and then saw Concera following. “You, I told you you'd have to wait, Concera. There's no point, no point at all, in making you a handle for three fingers. You'll only outgrow it, and there's all that work could be put to better use.”

"I thought it might be a challenge for you – "

“I've all the challenges I need, Concera.” He replied with such vehemence that when he returned his stare to Killashandra, she wondered if his disagreement with the woman would spill over on to her. “Let me see your hands.”

Killashandra held them, palm up, over the counter. He raised his eyebrows as he felt with strong impersonal fingers across the palm, spread her fingers to see the lack of webbing from constant practice, the hard muscle along the flat of the hand and thumb pad.

“Used your hands right, you have.” He shot another glance at Concera.

It was only then that Killashandra noticed that the first two fingers on Concera's left hand had been sheared off. The stumps were pinkish white, healed flesh but oddly shaped. It occurred to Killashandra in a rush that made her stomach queasy that the two missing digits were regenerating.

«If you stay, you be quiet. If you go, you won't be tempted. This'll take two – three hours.»

Concera elected to leave, which had no positive effect on the morose technician. Killashandra had naively assumed that tuning a cutter would be a simple matter, but it was a tedious process, taking several days. She had to read aloud for a voice print from boring printout on the history and development of the cutting devices. She learned more than she needed to know – some of the more complicated mechanisms proved unreliable in extremes of weather; a once-popular model was blamed for the high-voltage discharge which had carbonized the corpse Killashandra saw on Shankill. The most effective and reliable cutter, refined from Barry Milekey's crude original, required that the user have perfect pitch. It was a piezoelectric device that converted the Crystal Singer's vocal note and rhythm into high frequency shock waves on an infrasonic carrier. The cutting edge of the shock wave was pitched by the Singer to the dominant tone of the «struck» crystal face.

Once set to a voice pattern, the infrasonic device could not be altered. Manufacture of such cutters was restricted to the Guild and safeguarded yet again by computer assembly, the program coding known only by the Guild Master and his executive assistant.

As Concera had mentioned, the technician was a temperamental man. When Killashandra was reading aloud, he was complaining about various grievances with the Guild and its members. Concera and her request for a three fingered handle was currently his favorite gripe – «Concera is cack-handed, anyway, and always splitting her grips.» Another was that he ought to have had another three weeks fishing before returning to work. The fish had just started to bite, and would she now sing an octave in C.

"She sang quite a few octaves in various keys and decided that there were worse audiences than apparently receptive audition judges. She hadn't used her voice since the day she met Carrik; she was sore in the gut from supporting tone and aware the sound was harsh.

When Concera glided into the room, Killashandra was overwhelmingly relieved.

“Back tomorrow, same time. I'll do casts of your good ten fingers.” And the man sent an arch glance at Concera.

Concera hurried Killashandra out of the workshop and the office.

«He does like his little jokes,» she said, leading the way down one corridor and left at the next. «I only wanted a little favor so I could go back into the ranges without wasting so much time.» She entered a room labeled «Training,» sighing as she closed the door and flicked on the privacy light. «Still» – and she gave Killashandra a bright smile, her eyes sliding from a direct contact – «we have your training to take in hand.» She waved Killashandra to one of the half-dozen chairs in the room facing a large hologram projector. She picked up a remote control unit from a shelf, darkening the room and activating the projector. The outsized lettering of the Guild's rules, regulations, and precepts hovered before them. «You may have had a Milekey transition, but there's no easy way to get over this.»

"Tukolom – "

“Tukolom handles only basic information, suitable for anyone joining the Guild in any capacity.” Concera's voice had a note of rancor. “Now you must specialize and repeat and repeat.” Concera sighed. “We all have to,” she added, her voice expressing patient resignation. “If it's any consolation to you, I'd be doing this by myself and I've always found it much easier to explain than memorize.” Her voice lightened. “You'll hear even the oldest singers muttering regs and restricts any night in the Commons Hall. Of course, you'll never appreciate this drill until it's vital! When you reach that point, you won't remember how you know what you do. Because that's when you really know nothing else.”

Despite Concera's persuasive tone, Killashandra found the reasoning specious. Having no choice in study program or teacher, Killashandra set herself to memorize regulations about working claims, claiming faces, interference with claims, reparations and retributions, fines and a clutter of other rules for which she could see no need since they were obvious to anyone with any sense.

When she returned to the privacy of her quarters and the anomalies of her wall-screens, she checked with the infirmary and was told that Rimbol was weak but had retained all his senses. Shillawn, Borton, and Jezerey were satisfactory, in the proper use of that word. Killashandra also managed to extract from data retrieval the fact that injured Singers like Concera and Borella undertook the role of preceptor because of the bonus involved. That explained the spiteful remarks and ambivalent poses.

The next morning, when Concera drilled her on her understanding of each section of the previous day's subjects, Killashandra had the notion that Concera silently recited paragraph and section just one step ahead of her pupil.

The afternoon was spent uncomfortably, in the workshop of the fisherman, where casts were made of her hands. The Fisher maundered on about having to make hundreds of casts during a Singer's lifetime. He told her she wasn't to complain to him about blisters from hand grips an affliction that he alleged was really caused by a muscling up that wasn't any fault of his. Killashandra spent that evening redecorating her room.