No? You are a trained synthesizer? Hmmmm. "You don't have the patience to teach, but you could do very well in one of the theater arts where your sympathy with the problems of a singer would stand you in good stead. He had the grace to blink at her caustic words, then looked her squarely in the eye. "And what, in your judgment, would that be?" You had best strengthen another facet of your potential." I cannot, and it would be doubly cruel of me to encourage you further as a soloist. "I make few errors in judgment as to voice. This moment is cruel for you and not particularly pleasant for me." He gave her another stern look, reacting to the rebellion in her stance. "Today's audition with completely impartial judges proved conclusively that the flaw is inherent in the voice. While I thought it could be trained out, modified-" he shrugged his helplessness. But there is that burr in your voice which becomes intolerable in the higher register. "You have the gift of perfect pitch, your musicality is faultless, your memory superb, your dramatic potential can't be criticized. I want-I wanted "-and she had the satisfaction of seeing him wince at the bitterness in her voice-"to be a top-rank concert singer. "You haven't the voice to be a top-rank singer, my dear Killashandra, but that does not preclude any of the many other responsible and fulfilling." She opened her mouth to protest, but he raised a restraining hand. Maestro Valdi sighed heavily, a mannerism that had always irritated Killashandra and was now insupportable. "I've repertoire! I've worked hard and now-now you tell me I've no voice?" It takes years of hard work to develop the voice, to learn even a segment of the outworld repertoire that must be performed." "Of course you have worked hard." Valdi was affronted. "You did! You said-you said all I needed was hard work. "Lead you on? But, my dear girl, I didn't." "How could I what?" the maestro asked in surprise.
Just then, she was too crushed by overwhelming defeat to be aware of more than her terrible personal failure. One day, Killashandra might remember those details. The heavy singer's muscles in his jaw relaxed sorrowfully into jowls.
The genuine regret in his expressive eyes made him look older. She stared at the maestro's famous profile as his lips opened and shut around the words that meant the death of all her hopes and ambitions and rendered ten years of hard work and study a waste. Killashandra listened as the words dropped with leaden fatality into her frozen belly. But to Killashandra the risks were acceptable.
The problem was, few people who landed on Ballybran ever left. Until she heard of the mysterious Heptite Guild who could provide careers, security, and wealth beyond imagining. And after ten grueling years of musical training, she was still without prospects. A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction.200 Significant SF Books by Women, 1984-2001.
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