Killashandra Read Free

offense.
    “The only thing that’s good about any of them,” Killashandra said with disgust, “is that I haven’t been there yet.”
    Killashandra had thought to take her long-overdue holiday on Maxim, the pleasure planet in the Barderi system. From all she’d heard, it would be very easy to forget crystal resonance in the sophisticated amusement parks and houses of hedonistic Maxim. But she hadn’t yet the credit to indulge that whimsy.
    Exasperated, she rubbed her palms together, noticing that the thick calluses from cutter vibrations had been softened by her long immersion. The numerous small nicks and cuts that were a singer’s occupational hazard had healed to thin white scars. Well, that function of her symbiont worked efficiently. And the white crystal would assure her some sort of an off-planet holiday.
    White crystal! Enthor has said something about a fractured manual! Optherian sense organs used white Ballybran crystals and she had cut forty-four from the half centimeter on up in half-centimeter gradients.
    Lanzecki had asked her a question.
    “Would Optheria be far enough?” The words, remembered in his deep voice, sprang to mind.
    She grinned with tremendous relief at retrieving that question and turned to the viewscreen to punch up his code.
    “—Killa?” Lanzecki’s hands were poised over his own terminal, surprise manifested by his raised eyebrows. “You haven’t used the catering unit.” He frowned.
    “Oh, programmed to monitor that, did you?” she replied with a genuine smile at that reminder of their amorous alliance before her first trip into the Ranges. On her return from the Trundomoux System, they had had only a few days together before Lanzecki was swamped with work and she had to venture back into the Ranges. Since then, she had returned to the Complex only to replenish supplies or wait out a storm. Their reunions had consequently been brief. It was reassuring to realize that he wished to know when she was back.
    “It seemed the ideal way to make contact. After thirty-two hours in a tank, you should be ravenous. I’ll just join you, if I may …” When she nodded assent, he typed a quick message on his console and pushed his chair back, smiling up at her. “I’m hungry, too.”
    As further reassurance of her unimpaired memory, Killashandra had no trouble remembering Lanzecki’s tastes. She grinned as she ordered Yarran beer. Though her stomach gurgled impatiently, she’d had no desire for food in so long that she was as glad to be guided by Lanzecki’s preferences.
    She was just slipping a brilliantly striped robe over her head when her door chimed an entry request. “Enter!” she called. On the same voice cue, the catering slot disgorged her order. The aroma of the dishes aroused her already voracious appetite.
    She wasted no time in taking the steaming platters from the dispenser, grinning a welcome at Lanzecki as he joined her.
    “The Commissary has asked me to relay a few well-chosen words of complaint about the sudden fad for Yarran beer,” he said, taking the pitcher and the beakersto the table. He seated himself before filling the two glasses. “To your restoration!” Lanzecki lifted his glass in toast, his expression obliquely chiding her for that necessity.
    “Antona’s already scolded me, but I had to cut enough marketable crystal to get off-planet this time.”
    “You’ve certainly succeeded with that white.”
    “Don’t I remember you saying something about Optheria just as I passed out?”
    Lanzecki took a swallow of the Yarran beer before he replied. “Quite likely.” He served himself a generous helping of fried Malva beans.
    “Don’t the Optherians utilize white crystal in that multi-sense organ of theirs?”
    “They do.”
    So Lanzecki chose to be uncommunicative. Well, she could be persistent. “Enthor said that an entire manual was fractured.” Lanzecki nodded. She continued. “And you did ask me would Optheria be far enough?”
    “I