Killashandra Part 21

"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 antic.i.p.ation.

"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 appet.i.tes 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 a.s.saulted 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'd 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 att.i.tude toward visitors."

"Proper att.i.tude? 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 pa.s.sed. "Yet when Thyrol came out right with me, the detector didn't catch him. And pa.s.sed me."

- "What? No matter how many people pa.s.s 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?"

Chapter 19.

Killashandra 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 fell 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 involvement with the man. Perhaps it was just as well that no child was possible, that their liaison would end when this a.s.signment 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 astonis.h.i.+ng predicaments which had entangled her. And the fascinating personalities.

More extraordinary still, she remembered all too vividly, and with just a trace of chagrin, her rantings and ravings and desperation's when she'd left Ballybran, a sacrifice to the Guild for Lanzecki's good. Now, when contemplating a much deeper and irreversible loss, why was she so calm, fatalistically resigned, even philosophical. How very strange! Had her loss of Lanzecki inured her to others? Or was she mistaking her feelings for Lars Dahl? No! She'd remember Lars Dahl for the rest of her life without benefit of data retrieval.

The second chimes rang faintly across the open court outside the windows. Faint but sufficient to waken Lars. He was as neat on wakening as he was in sleep. His eyes opened, his right hand searched for her body, his head turned and his smile began as he located her. Then he stretched, arms above his head, back arching toward her as he extended his legs and then on the top of his extension, suddenly retracted himself, drawing her against him, to complete a morning ritual which included the exercise of their intimate relations.h.i.+p. Each time, they seemed to discover something new about themselves and their responses. She particularly liked Lars's capacity for invention, stimulating as it did heretofore unsuspected originalities in herself.

As usual hunger roused them from these variations.

"Breakfast here is the heartiest meal," Lars said cheerfully, striding quickly for the catering unit. "You'll like it."

Killashandra saw that he had left the jammer behind him, and she followed him at a quick trot, holding the device up to distort anything else he might say.

He laughed. "We'd best leave them something to hear. A discussion of breakfast must be sufficiently innocuous."

Killashandra settled in one of the chairs near the catering unit, swiveling her hand as she looked at the little jammer. If only some way could be found to mask that mineral residue in Optherians! Blank out the detector.

"You know," Killashandra said as they ate, sitting companionably together on the elegant seating unit, "I simply cannot understand this concentration on one instrument -- albeit a powerful one -- but they're wiping out more than ninety-nine percent of the FSP's musical traditions and repertoire, as well as stultifying talents and potential. I mean, your tenor is formidable!"

Lars shrugged, giving her a tolerant side glance. "Everyone sings -- at least in the islands, they do."

"But you know how to sing."

Lars c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her, still humoring what he felt was her excessive fascination with a minor ability.

"Everyone knows how to sing -- "

"I don't mean just opening the mouth and shouting, Lars Dahl. I mean, projecting a voice, supporting it properly on the breath, phrasing the music, carrying the dynamic line forward.

"When did I do all that?"

"When we did that impromptu duet. When you sang on the beach, when you did that magnificent duet from The Pearl Fishers."

"I did?"

"Of course. I studied voice for ten years. I -- " She shut her mouth.

"Then why are you a crystal singer instead of one of these famous vocal artists?"

A surge of impotent fury, followed by a wave of regret, and then a totally incomprehensible loathing of Lars for reminding her so acutely of the interview with Maestro Valdi -- the moment that had changed her life -- rendered Killashandra speechless.

Lars watched her, his mild curiosity turning to concern as he saw the emotions in her stormy eyes and face. He put a hand on her bare thigh.

"What did I say to distress you so?"

"Nothing you said, Lars." She dismissed all that from consideration. It was over and done with. "I had all the requirements to be a Stellar, except one. A voice."

"Ah, now." Lars pulled back in indignation.

"I'm quite serious. There's a flaw, a noticeable and unpleasant burr in the voice that would have limited me to secondary roles."

Lars laughed now, his white teeth gleaming in his tanned faced, his eyes sparkling. "And you, my beloved Sunny," he kissed her lightly, "would never settle for being second in anything! Are you first among crystal singers, then?"

"I don't do badly. I've sung black crystal, which is the hardest to find and cut properly. In any event, there aren't degrees among singers.