The Ship Who Sang

by Anne McCaffrey

  ‘KH-834, your “brawn” is on her way with assignment tape,’ Cencom alerted her.

  Helva acknowledged the message, excitement stirring within her. It was almost a relief to receive a double-initial call, the pleasure overriding her twinge of regret that her ‘brawn’ partner was feminine. It was a relief, too, to experience any emotion after the numbing of Jennan’s death. The Annigoni experience had broken her apathy.

  A ground car zipped out from the direction of the massive Control and Barracks complex, skidding to a stop at her base. Without waiting, Helva lowered the lift and watched as a tiny figure hefted three pieces of baggage onto the platform.

  ‘K’ meant to stay a while, Helva decided. The lift ascended and shortly her new brawn was framed in the open lock, against the brilliant Regulan sky.

  ‘Kira of Canopus requesting permission to board the XH-834,’ said the young woman, saluting smartly toward Helva’s position behind the titanium bulkhead.

  ‘Permission granted. Welcome aboard, Kira of Canopus.’

  The girl kicked the limp lump of a fabric bag unceremoniously aboard. But she carefully carried the other two back to the pilot’s cabin. The odd-shaped one Helva identified, after a moment’s reflection, as an ancient stringed instrument called a guitar.

  ‘Naturally they’d send me someone musically oriented,’ she thought, not at all sure she was pleased with this infringement on her most cherished memories of Jennan. She ruthlessly suppressed this unworthy thought with the admonition that the majority of service personnel were musically oriented. The infinite possibilities of the art passed traveltime admirably.

  Kira flipped open the other compact case and Helva, surreptitiously peeking, noticed it was full of vials and other medical equipment. Kira inspected the contents with quick fingers and, closing the case, strapped it with care against the rigors of acceleration on the shelves behind the bed.

  Kira was, in form and nature as well as sex, the antithesis of Jennan. Since she was in a carping mood, Helva wondered how much of that was intentional. But that would mean Cencom had more sensitivity than Helva decided, privately, they were computationally blessed with.

  Kira of Canopus couldn’t weigh more than 40 kilos fully suited. Her narrow face with slanted cheekbones had a delicacy which appeared ill-suited to bear the designation brawn. Her hair, dark brown, was braided tightly in many loops around her long, oval skull. Her eyes, wide set and almond shaped, were of a clear, cool, deep green, thickly lashed. Her fingers, slim and tapering, were as dainty as her narrow feet, oddly graceful in heavy shipboots. Her movements, swift and sure, were quicksilver, full of restless energy, dartingly inquisitive.

  Kira reentered the main cabin. Helva, used to Theoda’s lethargic movements, had to adjust quickly.

  Kira inserted the order tape, locking it into its niche in the pilot’s board. As the code ran through, a startled exclamation was wrung from Helva.

  ‘Three hundred thousand babies?’

  Kira’s laugh was a staccato arpeggio of mirth.

  ‘Assignment Stork, by the holies!’

  ‘You’re only temporary?’ questioned Helva, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. There was a magnetism about Kira that appealed to Helva.

  Kira smiled wryly. ‘This assignment will take some time. Only 30,000 are collected already. Even in this day and age, it takes times to make babies.’

  ‘I haven’t got facilities . . .’ Helva began, aghast at the thought of becoming a nursery. She broke off as the tape elaborated on the condition of the proposed cargo. ‘Babies in ribbons?’

  Kira, who had had previous briefing on their mission, laughed at Helva’s outraged reaction.

  The tape continued remorselessly and Helva understood the significance of the miles of plastic tubing and tanks of fluid that had been placed in her not-overgenerous cargo spaces.

  In the system of the star Nekkar, an unexpected radiation flare had sterilized the entire population of its newly colonized planet. A freak power failure had resulted in the total loss of the planet’s embryo banks. The KH-834’s mission was to rush embryos to Nekkar from planets that had answered the emergency call.

  In the very early days of space travel, when man had still not walked on Mars, or Jupiter’s satellites, a tremendous advance had been made in genetics. A human fetus in its early stages was transferred from one womb to another, the host mother bringing the child to term and giving it birth without having relationship to it. A second enormous stride forward in propagating the race of man occurred when a male sperm was scientifically united with female ova. Fertilization was successful and the resultant fetus was brought to term, the child growing to normal, well-balanced maturity.

  It became a requirement of those in hazardous professions, or those with highly desirable dominant characteristics of intelligence or physical perfection, to donate sperm and ova to what became known as the Race Conservation Agency.

  As civilization expanded on to newer, rawly dangerous worlds, the custom was for the young men and women to leave their seed with the RCA on reaching their majority. It was good sense to have such a viable concentration of genetically catalogued seed available. Thus, given a lack, say, in a generation of a particularly desirable ethnic group, sufficient additional embryos could be released to restore the ecological balance.

  On an individual basis, the young wife, untimely widowed, might bear her husband’s children from his seed on file at the RCA. Or a man, wishing a son of certain pronounced genetic characteristics to perpetuate a family name or business, would apply to the bank. There were, of course, ridiculous uses made of the RCA facilities: women in the thrall of a hysteria over a noted spaceranger or artist would apply to the RCA for his seed if the male in question was agreeable. But naturally conceived children were the rule rather than the exception. Helva herself had been the naturally inseminated child of her parents.

  Generally, the RCA served Central Worlds as a repository in case of just such an emergency as had arisen at Nekkar: the inability of individuals to propagate the race. An appeal had reached the Main RCA on Earth to locate and deliver 300,000 fertilized ova of genetic type similar to the Nekkarese. RCA had 30,000 on hand and had forwarded the call to all major RCA banks throughout the Central Worlds asking for contributions, which the KH-834 would pick up and deliver to Nekkar.

  The tape ended with a silent hold cue to Helva. It took her a moment to realize that, though she had the mission information, she had received nothing on her new partner. No matter how temporary this assignment, it would take time. Some basic biography would be essential for Helva to function effectively in partnership with Kira. Obediently she cut the tape, activating a record-store of the balance for later playback. It would appear there were many unusual factors in this assignment. Central Worlds moves in mysterious ways, itself to sustain.

  ‘Well,’ Helva exclaimed, to end the brief silence after the mission portion of the tape was silent. ‘I hadn’t expected motherhood at my tender age. I see I have underestimated the demands Central Worlds makes of its minions.’

  Her attempt at levity touched off a violent response in Kira and Helva wondered what under a first magnitude star had she got for a partner.

  ‘Read this tape on me before we proceed with the mission,’ Kira said in a dead voice, all her previous vivacity wiped out.

  She slammed the store button, shunting the mission tape to the ship files, and inserted a second reel. With an almost savage twist she turned on the audio, sitting stiffly erect and motionless as the tape played back, either deaf or impervious to the biograph.

  Kira Falernova Mirsky of Canopus had finished all but a year of brawn training. She came from a Service-oriented family that had brought up 10 generations to illustrious – and once, exalted – careers in Central Worlds’ service branches. She had left the Training School on marital leave that had lasted two years, ending at her husband’s death. A long term of hospitalization and therapy followed during which time, the tape noted, K
ira had asked for and taken medical training but did not reapply for brawn education. She had responded to a high level request to take this temporary assignment, since her training had matched perfectly the needs of this particular emergency.

  Then followed a rattle of personal indices, emotional, psychological and educational, which Helva translated, as she was expected to, to mean that Kira Mirsky of Canopus would make an unusually fine brawn if she gave herself half a chance. The tape ended abruptly, as if there should be more. The omission, probably on the last tag of the mission reel, seemed to sing out its absence far louder than the tritest concluding evaluation or recommendations. Central Worlds had many devious facets and perhaps such an obvious omission was one. Surely Kira sensed it. That damned biograph left too much unsaid, particularly apparent to a brawn trainee. Helva’s mind danced with the possibilities and gnawed mental teeth against the silent hold-cue. In the meantime, Helva was faced with a very awkward situation, her new partner stiff with anticipation and predisposed by Central Worlds to make a bad first adjustment to Helva.

  Helva made a rude, sibilant noise and was relieved to see Kira react in surprise to it.

  ‘Brains they got?’ Helva demanded contemptuously. ‘I don’t call that a proper tape. They forgot half the garbage anyway. Ssscheh!’ and she repeated her exasperation noise. ‘Oh, well, I expect we’ll do fine together if only because they left out the usual nonsense. Besides, the mission is temporary.’

  Kira said nothing, but the woodenness left her slender body as if an anticipated ordeal had been canceled. She swallowed hard, licking her lips nervously, still unsure of her position, having steeled her nerves for something unpleasant.

  ‘Let’s get the cargo aboard and turn me into a rocking ship.’

  Kira rose, her body awkward, but she managed to smile at Helva’s column. ‘With pleasure. Have your holds been outfitted?’

  ‘“With yards and yards of lacing/and a bicycle built for two on it,”’ Helva replied, quipping from an ancient patter song. She was determined to establish a comfortable empathy.

  Kira’s smile was less tentative and her body motion became more fluid.

  ‘Yes, it would look like that, I guess.’

  ‘Of course I’ve never seen a bicycle built for two . . .’

  ‘Or a purple cow?’ and Kira giggled girlishly.

  ‘Hmmm. Purple cow, my dear brawn, is an all too apt analogy for our present occupation,’ Helva replied, ignoring the edge to Kira’s laughter. ‘And don’t tell me I’ll have room for 300,000 mechanical teats in the cargo space Central Worlds saw fit to give me.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Kira said. ‘We don’t have but the first 100,000 accounted for as of the time the tape was cut. We’ll swing out from Regulus toward Nekkar, picking up donations as we go, deliver them within the 4-week time limit when the fetuses must be either implanted or decanted, and swing around the Wheel until we do meet the quota.’

  Helva knew this from the tape. ‘Three hundred thousand isn’t a very big number for a planetary population of a million that needs to expand.’

  ‘My dear KH-834,’ and Kira savored the name, ‘the word “temporary” particularly when used by our beloved Service, has elastic qualities of infinite expansion. Also, another team, with drone transports, is recruiting orphans from unsocialized worlds to insure the proper age variations. But born children aren’t our concern.’

  ‘The heavens be praised!’ Helva muttered under her breath. She did not have room to transport many active live bodies nor the inclination, not so soon after Ravel.

  Kira smiled back at Helva over her shoulder as she contacted the Hospital Unit to request transfer.

  ‘Will you activate the pumping equipment?’ she asked Helva, who was in the process of doing just that.

  The miles of plastic tubing, once filled with the tiny sacs of fertilized ova, would contain the nutritive and amniotic fluids necessary for the growth of the embryos.

  The continuous ribbon of tiny compartments, each with its minute living organism, was prepared for the voyage with the caution and care of a major surgical operation on a head of planet. Each segment must contact an intake point for the nutritive fluid and an outgo valve for the dispersal of wastes. Each meter of ribbon was inspected to insure that the proper contact was made. The ribbon and its fluids as well as the encasing tube buffered the embryos with more invulnerability against the rigors of space travel than had they been carried in a natural womb. As long as the KH-834 made the journey to Nekkar within the 4 weeks, all 30,000 fetuses would live to be born.

  It became apparent to Helva that Kira was dedicated, in a detached if professional way, to the assignment. Central Worlds might be relying on a maternal instinct as additional insurance for the mission. Helva, to her inner amusement, found herself, the pituitarily inhibited shell-person, rising nobly to the challenge. Kira, obviously young enough to some day enjoy motherhood, was completely uninvolved. Yet the affinity Helva felt toward these minute voyagers was basically a shell reaction. They were, after all, encapsulated as she was, the difference being that they would one day burst from their scientific husks, as she never could nor even desired to. Still, she felt a growing protectiveness, above and beyond the ordinary, toward her passengers. The situation didn’t appear to touch Kira’s psyche, and that puzzled Helva.

  She struggled to identify the coldness of Kira’s reaction and could not. Then the technicians who had effected the installation of the precious cargo withdrew, and Helva was busy with the mechanics of takeoff.

  It was a pleasure to have a passenger who knew how to take care of herself. Not that Theoda had been a burden in the psychological sense of the word, but Kira knew the procedures and Helva did not need to spare a thought toward her. Takeoff was under minimum thrust, not that the triply buffered embryos could suffer damage had she blasted off with all power, but Helva preferred to take no unnecessary chances and there was plenty of time to reach Nekkar in Böotes’ sector.

  First planet of call would be Talitha, where 40,000 future citizens of Nekkar had been prepared. After lift, Kira made a careful check on all circuits in the nursery, confirmed her findings with Helva’s remote monitors and informed Cencom that they were clear of Regulus and driving toward Talitha.

  The formalities ended, Kira swung slowly around in the gimbaled pilot’s chair. Her slenderness lost in the padded armchair, she seemed both too fragile and young for her responsibilities.

  ‘The larder is well stocked,’ Helva suggested.

  Kira stretched leisurely, moving her shoulders around to ease the taut muscles across her back. She shook her head sharply, sending a shower of hair fasteners slithering across the cabin as her braids came tumbling out of the coronet. Helva watched, fascinated. Shoulder-length hair was the common fashion among spacewomen. The tips of Kira’s braids brushed the floor. Whatever maturity she possessed departed with the severe coiffeur. Like the prototype of an ancient fantasy creature, Kira rose from the pilot’s chair and moved across the deck to the galley.

  ‘You wouldn’t by any remote computational factor stock a beverage known as coffee?’ Kira asked wistfully.

  Helva chuckled, remembering Onro. It seemed to be an occupational necessity.

  ‘I have three times as much as normal service inventory suggests,’ Helva assured her.

  ‘Oh,’ and Kira’s eyes rolled upward in mock rapture, ‘you know! The ship that brought me here was a provincial transport from Draconis and hadn’t a drop on board. I nearly perished.’

  Kira flipped open the proper cabinet and broke the heat-seal, sniffing deeply as the fragrant aroma rose from the heating liquid. She gulped down a sip, grimacing against the heat. With an expression of intense relief, she leaned against the counter. ‘You and I are going to do nobly together Helva. I’m sure of it.’

  Helva caught the rasp of fatigue in the lilting voice. Would she always receive passengers in the advance stages of exhaustion? Or was something the matter with Helva that all her visitors tend
ed to fall asleep once aboard her? As a nursery ship this could be an asset, Helva thought acidly.

  ‘It’s been a long day for you, Kira. Why don’t you get some rest? I’m staying up anyway.’

  Kira chuckled knowing that the brain ships never slept. She glanced toward the cargo holds.

  ‘I’ll listen with all ears perked,’ Helva reassured her.

  ‘I’ll just finish my coffee and take a short snooze,’ Kira agreed. At the cabin door she turned back toward Helva’s column, cocking her head slightly, her green eyes sparkling.

  ‘Helva, do you peek?’ Her expression was prim to the pursing of her lips.

  ‘I assure you,’ Helva replied with great dignity, ‘I am a very properly mannered ship, Scout.’

  ‘I shall expect you to conduct yourself decorously at all times as behooves a person in your position in life,’ Kira replied so haughtily that Helva imagined her pedigree sprinkled with royal ancestors.

  Head high, Kira stepped into her cabin only to trip on one of her swinging braids and tumble into the room. Helva was sorely tempted to get a glimpse of Kira’s face.

  ‘Don’t you dare look in!’ Kira exclaimed, her voice breaking with laughter.

  Helva had promised nothing about turning off sound and heard Kira giggling softly. In a short while only the sound of a sleeper’s shallow, slow breathing broke the stillness of the ship.

  Helva took out of the file the portion of the tape which followed the hold-cue. The excerpt was brief and enigmatic.

  ‘Scout Mirsky is a practicing Dylanist, accepting this assignment in Central World Service without suspension of her craft. Accordingly she is not to be permitted shore leave on the following planets, as her activities constitute an infringement of planetary laws restricting proselytization of government groups and/or an embarrassment to Central World Service: Ras Algothi, Ras Alhague, and Sabek. Subject Scout and Ship designate are not, repeat, are not, to approach planets of stars Baham and Homan in the Pegasus Sector or planets of stars Beid and Keid in the Eridanus Sector.’