Crystals (standard:science fiction, 2412 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Aug 10 2007	Views/Reads: 3554/2439	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Working inside of giant crystals is a nonpareil experience, especially when they sing with you!

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

striking the right facet would be enough to set it off. 

On the other hand, crystals of boron carbide are light and easy to
explore.  The black jewels of carbon glow serenely like the eyes of a 
many-eyed spider, while the web of stress among them forms a geometric 
skein supporting atoms of boron, like so many black-and-white volley 
balls.  There was no harm in switching a boron atom here and there -- 
they were all pretty much alike.  An occasional switch wouldn't disturb 
the balance of stress.  But a harsh kick from your boot on a carbon 
atom might end your world in an instant. 

I loved to work inside crystals because of the fringe benefits.  Light
had a way of reflecting off prime facets to create a monochromatic 
rainbow at times.  My last zircon coruscated hyacinth, flickering from 
dusty white through a green so delicate I called it "a hint of mint".  
As the sun traversed the zodiac, green elided to lemon yellow, to wine 
yellow, to precious amber, dainty pink, a sad, mute red, and reddish 
brown.  Not monochromatic perhaps, but a rainbow in time. 

That reminds me of the time I was working a crystal of barium aluminum
silicate, which we usually called Eddingtonite.  This one was a little 
bigger than average, long and wide like a hospital corridor.  I was 
rubbing up along one wall when the crystal lit up like a lightning 
flash: shameful pink!  Fluorescent fuscia!  One flash was edged in 
brown, with a white line to emphasize the coral salmon hue that glowed 
from its center.  Flash after flash zapped before my eyes and faded, 
followed by more.  This one orchid pink, that one peach blossom, 
another incarnadine royal pink, then burnt rose.  I could almost swear 
that each one smelled a little different. No crystal had ever done that 
to me.  I worked on, awed by nature's power to create beauty, even if 
the raw commercial crystal was man-grown. 

The most impressive crystal I work with makes make music.  You know, if
two walls of any crystal are perfectly parallel and spaced at a 
distance precisely equal to the wave length of a musical note, then the 
vibration of one wall makes the opposite one vibrate harmonically. 

Before long, I learned how noisy it could get inside this crystal.
During inspection, my wrist-compass struck my hat beam, ringing out a 
melodious clang.  The walls took up this tone, tossing it back and 
forth, amplifying and enriching it until I thought I would go deaf.  I 
began to paddle desperately toward the other end of the crystal and 
with each stroke the tone changed.  When the sound volume fell to a 
tolerable level,  I swam back, trying to remember each point in space 
where my body's presence caused the tone to change.  By tapping my 
wrist to my hat very gently, I learned to set off the vibration softly. 
 Then I controlled it, moving up and down the length of the crystal.  
The results weren't very exciting, but I came to realize that I was 
making music in symphony with this crystal --the most incredible 
symbiosis of cooperative effort! 

I would be putting you on if I were to speak about the possibility of
crystals having something akin to human intelligence -- but in its own 
way, that crystal was making music every bit as much as I was. 

Now and again, every few months, one or another crystal-worker would
have a brush with death.  It was all part of the job.  We didn't 
consider it a threat or a hazard as much as you might think.  If death 
comes, inside the crystal, there was usually no time to feel it, much 
less be consciously aware of the danger.  When a crystal seam ruptures 
with someone inside, the molecular pattern goes out of synch.  In 
something like a ten-millionth of a second, whoever was working inside 
becomes one with the universe -- nothing but atoms and molecules, 
dispersed to the infinite poles. 

One quasi-tragic incident was actually comic!  Cynthia was inside one of
the younger liquid crystals when its synthetic shroud sprang a leak. 
She fumbled for her patch kit and slapped on a patch.  With a gush, the 
finger-hole became a baseball hole, and liquid crystal began draining 
out of the cocoon pretty fast.  The next minute, the liquid line was 
down to her waist, so when she disaligned her molecular structure from 
the crystal, only half of her responded.  Where her body now stood in 
air, she was paralyzed.  "It felt like lockjaw, right down to my navel" 
she said later.  We didn't discover the spill -- and Cynthia -- until 
the end of the shift.  She had spent the five quietest hours of her 
life. 

Oh, yes.  We got Cynthia back into shape by putting her back into a
liquid crystal.  Once her lower half was back in synch, she switched 
back to flesh and blood, materializing outside the crystal. 

Before I came, they say, one crewman fell in love with a crystal so
deeply, he gave his life for her.  Dave was a quiet blond intellectual, 
with a blond beard and mustache, wrinkles around his worried eyes, 
young in an ageless way. He looked sort of Scotch.  One usually found 
him skeining a cat's cradle with the patience of a Saint. 

Dave's crystal patch contained Xenotime (a dirty yellow Yttrium
Phosphate) and Hermaphrodite, a crystal messenger of love and beauty, 
widely used in making perfumes, deodorants and things like that.  They 
say that Dave also tended the needs of a sensuous crystal of 
Sapphirine.  She was imbued with a pale green brilliance that flipped 
over into pale blue as the sun rose in the sky.  Sapphirine was what we 
call an aplanar crystal, meaning that some of its walls were not 
perfectly flat.  They tucked in at the waist, lending the crystal a 
distinctly feminine appearance.  Like her sister, Hermaphrodite, 
Sapphirine was sometimes used for fixing the essence of a flavor.  The 
market among bakers and candy-makers has grown huge, these days.  At 
any rate, Dave used to get inside his crystals every day, for 
inspection.  Before long, some of the other workers noticed that he 
would pop in and out of the Xenotime in five minutes, but stay inside 
Sapphirine for two or three hours. 

Once word got around, they pinned him to the mat.  "Look!" he shouted
back, "It's none of your business.  Just between us, okay?  Stay out of 
it."  Cynthia found it pathetic.  The rest of us found it queer.  Like 
consorting with the animals.  Dave and that crystal must have been 
doing some strange things together! 

Some of the crew set out to watch for him at night.  They came for a
week or so, with infra-red telescopes, cameras, sound-parabolas, ground 
probes -- but he never showed up.  Somebody thought to ask him straight 
out: "Dave, you never go inside that crystal after sundown.  Why is 
that?"  Dave had paused, they tell me, for maybe five minutes before 
answering. 

"Y'know them curved walls," he elaborated, "Well, after dark they kind
of relax.  When they come near-flat and plane, all four facets vibrate 
harmonically.  These harmonies reinforce each other, so the vibration 
builds to a crescendo.  Little by little this busts up the molecular 
alignment.   When this happens, you just phase out.  If I've gotta go, 
that's the way I want to go!"  The story survived because somebody 
wrote the words down. 

Not long after, Dave was inside Sapphirine when a total eclipse of the
sun took place. 

I loved to stare at the fields of giant crystals when the shift was
over.  They had the magic to command our attention for hours after the 
workday ended.  On one survey, four of us had to enter a crystal of 
Valentinite, lozenge-shaped, clear as water and as big as a squash 
court.  We were looking for an airy, milky film that might indicate an 
incipient flaw.  To find flaws, we've learned to "listen" to our 
bodies: if I swim through a flaw, it rakes my body with tickling 
fingers.  After a closer look, it can usually be repaired with a 
Tantalum hot patch.  When our inspection proved the crystal to be 
flawless, I popped a tennis ball out of my pocket and began to bounce 
it off the walls.  Before long, we had a game of hardball going.  We 
invented a game and called it "Crystal Ball".  I shudder when I recall 
that game today.  If we had missed just one flaw, if the ball should 
scratch the crystal wall just one smidgeon...all gone. 

Beyond the awesome profits, crystal-growing was a clean business.  All
the crystals came from the ground and our only liquid was holy water of 
crystallization.  There was no waste.  Once each crystal was fully 
grown, it went to the alignment temple -- a covered bridge lined with 
magnets.  As we pushed each crystal through on its little plastic 
carriage with rubber wheels, powerful magnetic fields swept every stray 
atom into perfect alignment.  The temple's nave had a sunken altar.  
After we rolled the crystal over it, the altar rose, presenting its 
sacrifice to the laser.  Minutes later, each crystal was sharply 
divided into a thousand crystallites ready for market.  When the 
weather was good, we managed to harvest a couple of crystals a week. 

One by one, my fellow workers succumbed to crystals of one kind or
another.  When harvest time came, we knew whose atoms made up part of 
the Sapphirine.  I came to feel my time was very close.  On Friday I 
retired.  By frugal living, I could stretch the earnings from six 
months of work to last the rest of my life.  I had it made.  This 
bright morning I stood at the balcony railing, smothered in flowers, 
enjoying the crystal-clear air, remembering, remembering ....... 

I tried not to notice that my middle finger had already crystallized to
Galena.  I always hated the smell of Galena. 

*   *   *   *   * 

Seattle WA Gerald X. Diamond Copyright 1990


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