Brain Ships

by Anne McCaffrey

  She sighed. Probably this new brawn would be of the other sort.

  Not that it really mattered how she affected adults. She didn't see that many of them, and then it was never for very long. Though it was important to impress Mum's and Dad's superiors in a positive sense. She at least knew that much now.

  "Your visitor is at the airlock," said the AI, breaking in on her thoughts. "His name is Tomas. While he is cycling, Moira would like you to have me turn on the ground-based radio link so that she can join the conversation."

  "Go ahead, Socrates," she told the AI. That was the problem with AIs; if they didn't already have instructions, you had to tell them to do something before they would, where a shellperson would just do it if it made sense.

  "Tomas has your birthday present," Moira said, a moment later. "I hope you like it."

  "You mean, you hope I like him," she replied shrewdly. "You hope I don't scare him."

  "Let's say I use you as a kind of litmus test, all right?" Moira admitted. "And, darling—Charlie really did fall in love with a ground-pounder. Even I could see he wanted to be with her more than he wanted space." She sighed. "It was really awfully romantic; you don't see old-style love at first sight anymore. Michiko is such a charming little thing—I really can't blame him. And it's partly your fault, dear. He was so taken with you that all he could talk about was how he wanted children just like you. Well, anyway, she persuaded Admin to find him a ground job, and they traded me Tomas for him, with no fine, because it wasn't my fault this time."

  "It's going to take you forever to buy out those fines for bouncing brawns," Tia began, when the inner airlock door cycled, and a pressure-suited person came through, holding a box and his helmet.

  Tia frowned at seeing the helmet; he'd taken it off in the lock, once the pressure was equalized. That wasn't a good idea, because locks had been known to blow, especially old ones like the Class One digs had. So already he was one in the minus column as far as Tia was concerned. But he had a nice face, with kind eyes, and that wasn't so bad; a round, tanned face, with curly black hair and bright brown eyes, and a wide mouth that didn't have those tense lines at the corners that Ari'd had. So that was one in the plus column. He came out even so far.

  "Hello, Tomas," she said, neutrally. "You shouldn't take your helmet off in the lock, you know—you should wait until the interior door cycles."

  "She's right, Tomas," Moira piped up from the com console. "These Class One digs always get the last pick of equipment. All of it is old, and some of it isn't reliable. Door seals blow all the time."

  "It blew last month, when I came in," Tia added helpfully. "It took Mum hours to install the new seal, and she's not altogether happy with it." Tomas' eyes were wide with surprise, and he was clearly taken aback. He had probably intended to ask her where her parents were. He had not expected to be greeted by a lecture on pressure-suit safety.

  "Oh," was all he could say. "Ah, thank you. I will remember that in the future."

  "You're welcome," she replied. "Mum and Dad are at the dig; I'm sorry they weren't here to meet you."

  "I ought to make proper introductions," Moira said from the console. "Tomas, this is Hypatia Cade. Her mother is Doctor Pota Andropolous-Cade and her father is Doctor Braddon Maartens-Cade. Tia, this is Tomas Delacorte-Ibanez."

  "I'm very pleased to meet you, Tomas," she replied with careful formality. "Mum and Dad will be here in—" she glanced at her wrist-chrono "—ten minutes. In the meantime, there is fresh coffee, and may I offer you anything to eat?"

  Once again, he was taken aback. "Coffee, please," he replied after a moment. "If you would be so kind."

  She fetched it from the kitchen; by the time she returned with the cup balanced in one hand and the refreshments in the other, he had removed his suit. She had to admit that he did look very handsome in the skintight ship-suit he wore beneath it. But then, all of Moira's brawns had been good-looking. That was part of the problem; she tended to pick brawns on the basis of looks first and personality second.

  He accepted the coffee and food from her gravely, and a little warily, for all the world as if he had decided to treat her as some kind of new, unknown sentient. She tried not to giggle.

  "That is a very unusual name that you were given," he said, after an awkward pause. "Hypatia, is it?"

  "Yes," she said, "I was named for the first and only female librarian of the Great Library at Alexandria on Terra. She was also the last librarian there."

  His eyes showed some recognition of the names at least. So he wasn't completely ignorant of history, the way Julio had been. "Ah. That would have been when the Romans burned it, in the time of Cleopatra—" he began. She interrupted him with a shake of her head.

  "No, the library wasn't destroyed then, not at all, not even close. It persisted as a famous library into the day of Constantine," she continued, warming to her favorite story, reciting it exactly as Pota had told it to her, as it was written in the history database. "It was when Hypatia was the librarian that a pack of unwashed Christian fanatics stormed it—led by some people who called themselves prophets and holy men—intending to burn it to the ground because it contained 'pagan books, lies, and heresies.' When Hypatia tried to stop them, she was murdered, stoned to death, then trampled."

  "Oh," Tomas said weakly, the wind taken quite out of his sails. He seemed to be searching for something to say, and evidently chose the first thing that sprang to mind. "Uh—why did you call them 'unwashed Christian fanatics?' "

  "Because they were," she replied impatiently. "They were fanatics, and most of them were stylites and other hermits who made a point of not ever bathing because taking baths was Roman and pagan and not taking baths was Christian and mortifying the flesh." She sniffed. "I suppose it didn't matter to them that it was also giving them fleas and making them smell. I shan't even mention the disease!"

  "I don't imagine that ever entered their minds," Tomas said carefully.

  "Anyway, I think Hypatia was very brave, but she could have been a little smarter," Tia concluded. "I don't think I would have stood there to let them throw stones at me; I would have run away or locked the door or something."

  Tomas smiled unexpectedly; he had a lovely smile, very white teeth in his darkly tanned face. "Well, maybe she didn't have much choice," he said. "I expect that by the time she realized she wasn't going to be able to stop those people, it was too late to get away."

  Tia nodded, slowly, considering the ancient Alexandrian garments, how cumbersome they were and how difficult to run in. "I think you're right," she agreed. "I would hate to think that the librarian was stupid."

  He laughed at that. "You mean you'd hate to think that the great lady you were named for was stupid," he teased. "And I don't blame you. It's much nicer to be named for someone who was brave and heroic on purpose than someone people think was a hero just because she was too dense to get out of the way of trouble!"

  Tia had to laugh at that, and right then was when she decided that she was going to like Tomas. He hadn't quite known what to make of her at first, but he'd settled down nicely and was treating her quite like an intelligent sentient now.

  Evidently Moira had decided the same thing, for when she spoke, her voice sounded much less anxious. "Tomas, aren't you forgetting? You brought Tia her late birthday present."

  "I certainly did forget!" he exclaimed. "I do beg your pardon, Tia!"

  He handed her the box he had brought, and she controlled herself very well, taking it from him politely, and not grabbing like a little child would have. "Thank you, Moira," she said to the com-console. "I don't mind that it's late—it's kind of like getting my birthday all over again this way."

  "You are just too civilized for your own good, dear," Moira giggled. "Well, go ahead, open it!"

  She did, carefully undoing the fastenings of the rather plain box and exposing bright-colored wrapping beneath. The wrapped package within was odd-shaped, lumpy—

  She couldn't stand it any longer; she tor
e into the present just like any other child.

  "Oh!" she exclaimed when she revealed her prize, for once caught without a word, holding him up to the light.

  "Do you like it?" Moira asked anxiously. "I mean, I know you asked, but you grow so fast, I was afraid you'd have outgrown him by now—"

  "I love him!" Tia exclaimed, hugging the bright blue bear suddenly, reveling in the soft fur against her cheek. "Oh Moira, I just love him!"

  "Well, it was quite a trick to find him, let me tell you," Moira replied, her voice sounding very relieved, as Tomas grinned even wider. "You people move around so much—I had to find a teddy bear that would take repeated decontam procedures, one that would stand up to about anything quarantine could hand out. And it's hard to find bears at all, they seem to have gone right out of style. You don't mind that he's blue?"

  "I like blue," she said happily.

  "And you like him fuzzy? That was Tomas' idea."

  "Thank you, Tomas," she told the brawn, who beamed. "He feels wonderful."

  "I had a fuzzy dog when I was your age," he replied. "When Moira told me that you wanted a bear like the one she had before she went into her shell, I thought this fellow felt better than the smooth bears."

  He leaned down confidentially, and for a moment Tia was afraid that he was going to be patronizing just because she'd gone so enthusiastic over the toy.

  "I have to tell you the truth, Tia, I really enjoyed digging into all those toy shops," he whispered. "A lot of that stuff is wasted on children. I found some logic puzzles you just wouldn't believe and a set of magic tricks I couldn't resist, and I'm afraid I spent far too much money on spaceship models."

  She giggled. "I won't tell if you don't," she replied, in a conspiratorial whisper.

  "Pota and Braddon are in the airlock," Socrates interrupted. "Shall I order the kitchen to make lunch now?"

  * * *

  "So why exactly are you here?" Tomas asked, after all the initial topics of conversation had been exhausted, and the subject turned, inevitably, to Pota and Braddon's work. He gestured at the landscape beyond the viewport; spectacular mountains, many times taller than anything found on Terra or any other inhabited planet. This little ball of rock with a thin skin of dirt was much like the wilder parts of Mars before it had been terraformed, and had a sky so dark at midday that the sun shared the sky with the stars. "I wouldn't expect to find much of anything out there for an archeologist—it's the next thing to airless, after all. The scenery is amazing, but that's no reason to stay here—"

  Braddon chuckled, the generous mouth in his lantern-jawed face widening in a smile, and Tia hid a grin. Whether or not Tomas knew it, he had just triggered her Dad's lecture mechanism. Fortunately, Braddon had a gift for lecturing. He was always a popular speaker whenever he could be tempted to go to conferences.

  "No one expected to find anything on planets like this one, Tomas," Braddon replied, leaning back against the supporting cushions of the sofa and tucking his hands behind his head. "That's why the Salomon-Kildaire culture is so intriguing. James Salomon and Tory Kildaire discovered the first buildings on the fourth moon of Beta Orianis Three—and there have never been any verifiable artifacts uncovered in what you and I would call 'normal' conditions. Virtually every find has been on airless or near-airless bodies. Pota and I have excavated over a dozen sites, doing the Class One studies, and they're all like this one."

  Tomas glanced out the viewport again. "Surely that implies that they were—"

  "Space-going, yes," Pota supplied, nodding her head so that her gray-brown curls vibrated. "I don't think there's any doubt of it. Although we've never found any trace of whatever it was they used to move them from colony to colony—but that isn't the real mystery."

  Braddon gestured agreement. "The real mystery is that they never seem to have set up anything permanent. They never seem to have spent more than a few decades in any one place. No one knows why they left, or why they came here in the first place."

  Tomas laughed. "They seem to have hopped planets as often as you two," he said. "Perhaps they were simply doing what you are doing—excavating an earlier culture and following it across the stars."

  Braddon exclaimed in mock horror. "Please!" he said. "Don't even think that!"

  Pota only laughed. "If they had been, we'd have found signs of that," she told both of them, tapping Braddon's knee in playful admonition. "After all, as bleak as these places are, they preserve things wonderfully. If the EsKays had been archeologists, we'd have found the standard tools of the trade. We break and wear out brushes and digging tools all the time, and just leave them in our discard piles. They would have done the same. No matter how you try to alter it, there are only so many ways you can make a brush or a trowel—"

  "There would be bad castings," Tia piped up. "You throw out bad castings all the time, Mum; if they were archeologists, we'd find a pile of bad castings somewhere."

  "Bless me, Tia's right," Braddon nodded. "There you are, Tomas; irrefutable proof."

  "Good enough for me," Tomas replied, good-naturedly.

  "And if that idea was true, there also ought to be signs of the earlier culture, shouldn't there?" Moira asked. "And you've never found anything mixed in with the EsKay artifacts."

  "Exactly so," Pota replied, and smiled. "And so, Tomas, you see how easily an archeologist's theories can be disposed of."

  "Then I'm going to be thankful to be Moira's partner," Tomas said gracefully, "and leave all the theorizing to better heads than mine."

  After a while, the talk turned to the doings of the Institute, and both professional and personal news of Pota and Braddon's friends and rivals. Tia glanced at the clock again; it was long past time when her parents would have gone back to the dig—they must have decided to take the rest of the day off.

  But these weren't subjects that interested her, especially not when the talk went into politics, both of the Institute and the Central Worlds government. She took her bear, politely excused herself, and went back to her room.

  She hadn't had a chance to really look him over when Tomas gave him to her. The last time Moira had come to visit, she'd told Tia some stories about what going into the shellperson program had been like, for unlike most shellpersons, she hadn't been popped into her shell until she'd been nearly four. Until that time, there had been some hope that there would have been a palliative for her particular congenital condition—premature aging that had caused her body to resemble a sixty-year-old woman at the age of three. But there was no cure, and at four, her family finally admitted it. Into the shell she went, and since there was nothing wrong with her very fine brain, she soon caught up and passed by many of her classmates that had been in their shells since birth.

  But one of the toys she'd had—her very favorite, in fact—had been a stuffed teddy bear. She'd made up adventures for Ivan the Bearable, sending him in a troika across the windswept steppes of Novi Gagarin, and she'd told Tia some of those stories. That, and the Zen of Pooh book Moira brought her, had solidified a longing she hadn't anticipated.

  For Tia had been entranced by the tales and by Pooh—and had wanted a bear like Moira's. A simple toy that did nothing, with no intel-chips; a toy that couldn't talk, or teach, or walk. Something that was just there to be hugged and cuddled; something to listen when she didn't want anything else to overhear. . . .

  Moira had promised. Moira didn't forget.

  Tia closed the door to her room and paged the AI. "Socrates, would you open a link to Moira in here for me, please?" she asked. Moira would be perfectly capable of following the conversation in the other room and still talk to her in here, too.

  "Tia, do you really like your present?" Moira asked anxiously, as soon as the link had been established.

  "He's wonderful," Tia answered firmly. "I've even got a name for him. Theodore Edward Bear."

  "Or Ted E. Bear for short?" Moira chuckled. "I like it. It fits him. He's such a solemn-faced little fellow. One would think he was a software
executive. He looks like a bear with a great deal on his mind."

  Tia studied Ted carefully. Moira was right; he was a sober little bear, with a very studious expression, as if he was listening very hard to whatever was being said. His bright blue coloration in no way contradicted the seriousness of his face, nor did the frivolous little red shirt he was wearing with the blue and yellow Courier Service circle-and-lightning-bolt on the front.

  "Is there anything going on that I need to know, Moira?" she asked, giving over her careful examination of her new friend and hugging him to her chest instead.

  "The results of your last batch of tests seems to have satisfied all the Psych people out there that you're a perfectly well-balanced and self-sufficient girl," Moira replied, knowing without Tia prompting her just what was on her mind. "So there's no more talk of making your parents send you to boarding school."

  Tia sighed with relief; that had been a very real worry the last time Moira had been here. The ship had left with the results of a battery of tests and psych-profiles that had taken two days to complete.

  "I have to tell you that I added to that," Moira said, slyly. "I told them what kind of a birthday present you had asked for from me."

  "What did they say?" Tia asked, anxiously. Had they thought she was being immature—or worse yet, that it meant she harbored some kind of neurosis?

  "Oh, it was funny. They were questioning me on open com, as if I was some kind of AI that wouldn't respond to anything that wasn't a direct question, so of course I could hear everything they said. There was silence for a moment, and then the worst of the lot finally blurted out, 'Good heavens, the child is normal,' as if he'd expected you to ask for a Singularity simulator or something." Moira chuckled.

  "I know who it was, too," Tia said shrewdly. "It was Doctor Phelps-Pittman, wasn't it?"

  "Dead on the target, wenchette," Moira replied, still chuckling. "I still don't think he's forgiven you for beating him in Battle Chess. By the way, what is your secret?"