“What sort of local brew do you have here on Optheria?” she asked, keeping her tone casual. If the reply was “none,” she’d book out on the next available craft.

  “Well, ah, that is, possibly not at all to your taste, Guildmember.” Mirbethan’s startled reply was hesitant. “No beverages can be imported. I’m sure you saw the notice in the Port Authority. Our brewmasters produce four distinct fermented beverages: quite potable, I’m told. Spirits are distilled from the Terran grains which we have managed to adapt to Optherian soil, but I’ve been told that these are raw to educated palates.”

  “Optheria produces excellent wines,” Pirinio said rather testily, with a reproving glance at Mirbethan. “They cannot be exported and indeed, some do not travel well even the relatively short distance to the City. If wine is your preference, a selection will be put in your quarters.”

  “I’ll try some of the brews, too.”

  “Wine and beer?” Polabod exclaimed in surprise.

  “Crystal singers are required to keep a high blood-alcohol content when absent from Ballybran. I’ll have to decide which is the best for my particular requirement.” She sighed in patient forebearance.

  “I wasn’t informed that members of your Guild required special diets.” Thyrol was clearly perturbed.

  “No special diet,” Killashandra agreed, “but we do require larger intakes of certain natural substances from time to time. Such as alcohol.”

  “Oh, I see,” Thyrol replied, although clearly he did not.

  Does no one on this repulsive planet have a sense of humor? Killashandra wondered.

  “Ah, here we are so soon,” Pirinio said, for the vehicle had swung down the curving drive to the imposing main entrance of the largest building on this musical height.

  In orderly fashion but in decorous haste, a second welcoming committee formed itself on the wide and shallow marble steps under the colonnaded portico that shielded the massive central doors of the edifice. Although large urns had been planted with some sort of weeping tree to soften the harsh architecture, the effect was forbidding, rather than welcoming.

  Killashandra emerged from the vehicle, ignoring Thyrol’s outstretched hand. The Optherian’s obsequious behavior could quickly become a major irritant.

  She had just straightened up and turned to step forward when something slammed hard into her left shoulder and she was thrown off balance against the vehicle. The fleshy point of her shoulder stung briefly then began to throb. Thyrol began to bellow incoherently before he attempted to embrace her in the misguided notion that she needed his assistance.

  For the next few moments total chaos erupted: Thyrol, Pirinio, and Polabod dashed about, issuing conflicting orders. The throng of dignitaries turned into a terrified mob, splintering into groups which fled, stood paralyzed, or added their shouts to the tumult. A flock of airborne sleds reared up from the plateau to hover above the Music Complex, darting off on diverse errands.

  Mirbethan was the only one able to keep her wits. She tore a strip from the hem of her gown, and despite Killashandra’s protestations that she required no aid, bound the wound. And it was she who discovered the weapon, imbedded in the upholstery of the back seat.

  “That’s a businesslike piece of wickedness,” Killashandra remarked as she studied the asterisk-bladed object, three of its lethal blades buried in the seat back. The one which had wounded her pointed outward, a strand of her sleeve material laid neatly along the cutting edge.

  “Don’t touch it” Mirbethan put out her hand to prevent such action.

  “No fear,” Killashandra said, straightening up. “Local manufacture?”

  “No.” Mirbethan’s voice took on a note of indignant anger. “An island implement. An outrage. We shall spare no effort to discover the perpetrator of this deed.”

  There was a subtle, but discernible, alteration in Mirbethan’s tone between her first two remarks and the last which Killashandra caught but could not then analyse, for the rest of the committee suddenly recalled that there had been a victim of this “outrage” and more attentions were showered on Killashandra by the concerned. Despite her protestations, she was carried into the vaulting entrance hall of the main building, and whisked along a corridor, lined floor to ceiling with portraits of men and women. Even in her swift passage she noticed that they all smiled in the same tight, smug way. Then she was conducted to a lift while dignitaries bickered about who should accompany her in the limited space.

  Once again, Mirbethan won Killashandra’s approval by closing the door on the argument. They were met at their destination by a full medical convention and Killashandra was made to lie on a gurney and was wheeled into diagnostics.

  At the moment of truth, when the temporary bandaging was reverently unwound from the injury, there was a stunned silence.

  “I could have spared everyone a great deal of unnecessary effort,” Killashandra remarked drily after she glanced at the clean, bloodless cut. “As a crystal singer, I heal very quickly and am not the least bit susceptible to infection. As you can see.”

  Consternation was rampant, with all the medics exclaiming over the wound, and others cramming forward in an attempt to witness this miracle of regeneration. Glancing up, Killashandra saw the very smug smile on Mirbethan’s face, so very like the smiles on the portraits.

  “To what agency do you attribute such remarkable healing properties?” asked the eldest of the medical people in attendance.

  “To living on Ballybran,” Killashandra replied. “As you must surely be aware, the resonance of crystal slows down the degenerative process. Tissue damage regenerates quickly. By this evening this minor cut will be completely healed. It was a clean swipe and not all that deep.”

  She seized the opportunity to slip off the gurney.

  “If we may take a sample of your blood for analysis,” the elder medic began, reaching for a sterilely packaged extractor.

  “You may not,” Killashandra said and again felt a wave of incredulous dismay and surprise from her audience. Was contradiction forbidden on Optheria? “The bleeding has stopped. Nor will analysis isolate the blood factor which slows degeneration,” she went on with a kind smile. “Why waste your valuable time?”

  She strode purposefully toward the door, determined to end this interlude. Just then, Pirinio, Thyrol, and Polabod arrived, breathless in their haste to rejoin her.

  “Ah, gentlemen, you are just in time to escort me to my quarters.” And when there were stumbled explanations about receptions and Music Center faculty waiting and the prospect of attendance by the Elders, she smiled gently. “All the more reason for me to change …” and she gestured to the torn sleeve.

  “But you’ve not been attended!” Thyrol cried, astonished to see an unbandaged slash.

  “Very well, thank you,” she said and walked past him into the corridor. “Well?” She swung round to face a throng of very confused people. “Will no one escort me to my quarters?” This farce was beginning to pall.

  The corridor, too, had its occupants, mostly in the universal green garb of the medical profession. Therefore, the young man, clad in a dark tunic, his bronzed legs bare to the soft leather ankle boots, stood out among them.

  Lanzecki might swear that the Ballybran spore did not confer any psychic enhancement but Killashandra was entertaining severe doubts on that score. She had definitely caught conflicting emotional emanations from Mirbethan, from the other worthies, and now, from this young man—a curious flash of green, annoyance, interest, and anticipation far too strong to be the casual reaction to a visitor. And flash was all it could be, for Thyrol and Pirinio bore down on her, all apologies for their discourtesies real and imaginary. Mirbethan firmly took her place at Killashandra’s right, edging the three men out of position and motioning their guest down the hall. When Killashandra was able to glance back to the young man, he was striding down a side corridor, head down, shoulders sagging as if weighed down by some burden. Guilt?

  Then she was swept into the lift, down to the guest level, and into the most sumptuous quarters which had ever been allotted to her. Having agreed to descend to the reception as soon as she had changed gave her time for only the most cursory examination of the apartment. She’d been guided through a large, elegant reception room suitable for formal affairs. A smaller room was evidently to be used as a studio or office. They hurried past two bedchambers, one of them quite modern, before she was ushered into a main room so vast that she had to stifle a chuckle. Mirbethan indicated the toilet and the slightly open closet panel where her clothes had been hung. Then the woman withdrew.

  Stripping off the torn garment, Killashandra flicked open one of the Beluga spider-silk kaftans which ought to be suitable for any reception: certainly a foil against the predominantly white or pale colors which the Optherians seemed to prefer. Except for that brooding young man.

  Killashandra dwelt briefly on him as she washed hastily. Then she couldn’t resist a peek into the other hygiene rooms. One contained a variety of tubs, massage table, and exercise equipment while the third boasted a radiant-fluid tub and several curious devices which Killashandra had never before encountered but which left an impression of obscenity.

  Back in the bedchamber, she heard a soft rapping at the door.

  “I’m ready, I’m ready,” she cried, masking irritation with a lilt in her voice.

  That protocol had become an art form on Optheria told Killashandra quite clearly that if there were no rebellious spirits then the entire population had stagnated. At the reception, every faculty member, their subordinates, then every student, all in order of their rank and scholastic standing, filed past her. Mercifully, handshaking was no longer a part of the ritual. A nod, a smile, a mumbled repetition of the name sufficed. After fifty nods, Killashandra felt her smile fixed in her cheeks and her face stiffened into that mode. With her everfaithful quartette, she stood at the top of a massive double staircase, whose white marble flights curved down into a marbled hall below. The ceiling of the vast reception chamber was so high that the murmuring of the assembled crowd was absorbed.

  Killashandra had had a glimpse of tables, laden with patterns of plates whose contents were as precisely placed as the plates were, and with beakers of colored liquids. The assembled scrupulously kept their eyes from the direction of the refreshments. Killashandra guessed that they all knew too well the taste and texture of the reception repast.

  There were curious patterns, too, in the reception. Five poeple would take the right-hand staircase, the next five would descend on the left. Killashandra wondered if a steward in some distant anteroom ticked the people off for left and right. There were never more than ten people waiting to be introduced, yet the flow down the hallway was steady despite its apparent randomness.

  Abruptly no more people were making their way to the reception line and Killashandra let her cheeks relax, rotating her head on her neck, wriggling her lips and nose in a very undignified manner in order to ease the muscles. One never knows when one’s early training as a singer is going to prove useful, she thought, just as she heard a concerted intake of breath from her quartette. Reorganizing her expression, she glanced up the hall in time to observe the ceremonial approach of dignitaries.

  The seven figures who processed—and that was the correct verb to describe their advance—were not differently garbed from the other highly placed Optherians, but they wore their pale robes with an unmistakable air of authority. Four men and three women, each wearing the same slight smile upon their serene faces. Faces, Killashandra would shortly note, that had been carefully adjusted by surgery and artifice to enhance that serenity, for only one of the smiles reached the weary, bored, aged eyes.

  Elder Ampris, Killashandra was immensely relieved to discover, was the only one of the Optherian rulers with whom she would have much contact. He was currently responsible for the Music Complex. If there should ever be a Stellarity Award given for Best Character Actor among Planetary Rulers, surely Ampris would win it. But for the disparity of expression between eye and face, Killashandra might have missed that gleam of humor and possibly ignored that spontaneous lifting of the heart that occur when one encounters a kindred spirit. The others, whose names Killashandra promptly forgot, gave her hand one firm shake in welcome, a few words of gratitude for making “so arduous a journey in this moment of planetary crisis,” and passed on by, having acquitted their duty. They all waited, without appearing to wait, at the top of the right-hand stair. Then Killashandra felt the almost electric touch of Ampris’s hand, looked into his bright and knowing eyes and returned the first genuine smile of the long afternoon.

  “We will have time to talk later on, Guildmember. In the meantime, let us gild their afternoon with the gold and scarlet of our presences.” His negligent wave took in the whole room, not just the high dignities patiently awaiting the dissolution of the reception line.

  Thyrol glanced at Killashandra, her hand on Ampris’s arm, then he turned to the nearest Elder woman and offered his arm. No fuss, no confusion, no dithering about altered escorts or who would be left to descend alone: everything was already worked out, planned down to the last detail, including the unexpected. For, obviously, no one could have expected Ampris to confer such an honor as his personal escort on Killashandra.

  Killashandra wondered if the foodstuffs had been minutely measured, for two bites disposed of each of the four small tidbits, five mouthfuls emptied the wine glass. But she was among the lucky minority who had their glasses refilled and were offered additional canapes.

  “This will be over soon,” Ampris murmured to her, his lips barely moving. “A proper meal will be served us when the lesser orders have dutifully taken their sip and sup and toddled back to the comfort of their routines.”

  He spoke with neither scorn nor malice: Ampris was stating a fact about the majority of the assembled.

  “Having had their rare treats of standing in the same room with a real live breathing Crystal Singer?”

  “You are that!” Ampris’s gaze returned hers with no trace of guile or evasion but he had a definite twinkle in his eye. “Three minutes after you reached the infirmary, the news of your regenerative powers had seeped to the basements.”

  “Surely you are not housed in a basement?”

  Ampris’s bright brown eyes twinkled again. “The seat of all knowledge …”

  “So you can get to the bottom of things?”

  “Of course.”

  “And a position of maximum security?” Killashandra taunted him. Why shouldn’t she start at the top with her covert inquiries?

  “Security is never a problem on such a well-ordered world as Optheria.” He inclined his head to acknowledge the passing of three of the dignitaries circulating the gathering. “Everyone is secure”—he paused—“on Optheria, each knowing his place and his duties. Security is the foundation of the serenity of spirit which typifies this natural world.”

  Killashandra could find no mockery in his words nor any special inflection in his voice. No sparkle of amusement lit his eye, no cynical expression molded his face, yet Killashandra heard the denial as clearly as if he had phrased it.

  “Someone must have had a momentarily troubled spirit to launch that little star-knife at me.”

  “An island weapon,” Ampris said. “We allowed that settlement too much leeway during the early years on Optheria. Its original colonists were, naturally, of our mind, but before we could reestablish contact with them, they had deviated from the original intent. Optheria was to be an autonomous world: not to consist of autonomous groups.” Ampris’s humorless voice and manner implied the treatment which had undoubtedly been meted out to the dissenters. “The matter of that outrageous attack on your person will be resolved, I can assure you, Guildmember Killashandra.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

  Ampris searched her face. “On an ordered planet, the unusual is always remarkable.”

  “Ampris, you may not monopolize our distinguished visitor,” said a deep grating voice and Killashandra turned to find herself scrutinized by one of the other male Elders. He had the eyes of a scavenger, bright, dark, piercing. His thin, hooked nose did much to encourage the analogy. His skin had a curious lacquered look, crinkling at the edges of his face from whatever minor shift of expression he permitted. His glance dropped briefly to her left shoulder, as if his gaze could penetrate the silk and examine the healing wound beneath.

  “Monopoly has never been my passion, Torkes,” Ampris said. “My associate, Torkes, holds the Communications Seat on Optheria. We work closely together in our adjacent disciplines. He maintains that Music is dependent on Communications, and I, of course, take the position that Music is independent and without it, Communications would have nothing to disseminate!”

  “But of course!” Killashandra mustered a broad and giddy smile with which she favored both men impartially. Ampris accepted her evasion with a slight smile while Torkes bowed as if her ambiguous reply awarded him the decision. “What sort of crystal network does your facility use, Elder Torkes?”

  “Crystal?” Torkes’s piercing stare was affronted. “We have no funds to waste on that sort of technology. Crystal is reserved for musicians!”

  “Really?” And Killashandra caught the barest glimpse of the satisfied reaction from Ampris. Torkes seemed totally oblivious to the implication of his statement. “Even when crystal is a very natural—”

  “Crystal is not natural to Optheria. Not a native product, you understand. And we must maintain the integrity of our Charter.”

  “Indeed? Do you not violate that integrity by using alien instrumentation?”

  Torkes dismissed her argument with a flick of his bony fingers. “Music is an art form which we were able to bring with us, within the mind. It is intangible—”

  “And what is communication, then? Can it be touched? Smelt? Tasted?”

  Torkes stared at her so fiercely that Killashandra was made aware of the fact that not only had she dared to interrupt an Elder but she had argued with him. She sensed rather than saw Ampris’s intense amusement then, in the blink of his eyes, when Torkes was faced with the unpalatable realization that a Heptite Guildmember, an invited specialist urgently required by his planet, held equal status with himself.