The Ship Who Sang

by Anne McCaffrey

  Prane looked so gay and alert that Helva glanced at Kurla, whose attitude would transmit a truer reflection of her patient’s health. The girl was radiant, her eyes as bright as Prane’s, her manner proud and confident. She managed a polite nod to Ansra, who smiled fixedly at everyone.

  By contrast, Davo looked tired and thoughtful. He pushed immediately toward the sleeping accommodations and meshed himself into a bunk.

  Prane hovered in front of Helva. ‘I want to thank you, very much, for putting aside your personal preferences to undertake this venture. Chief Railly has assured me that you will have the topmost priority when you return.’

  Helva did not have time to analyse why his words disturbed her, for the Orbital Station transmitted good luck and clearance. Chadress did the manual piloting – that was protocol – but Helva was so used to doing things herself it was hard to watch. Not that he was inept. Damn, damn, damn, she thought, glancing around the crowded cabin, wishing half her mind were busy on something routine, how had she let herself get talked into this?

  The moment Chadress announced turnover and free-fall, Prane called a rehearsal. First he put the five men who had joined the ship planetside through the staging they had missed. They’d all worked in free-fall and they knew their roles. All they required was time to familiarize themselves with movements and the Nurse’s voice issuing from the wall. Ansra, however, chose to be difficult about that. She undulated toward the director – whether to charm him or intimidate him was a question.

  ‘Really, Prane, I can project any emotion required of any capable actress, but to pretend an . . . an abstract voice is Juliet’s Nurse is the end. How can I play to a wall? And, how may I ask, can . . . Helva (it seemed to be difficult for Ansra to name her) acquire any ease in free-fall, when I understand she has never made any use of a body?’

  ‘My stage directions are perfectly clear and are printed in my circuitry. Therefore I cannot make a mistake. That is, as long as you are where Juliet is supposed to be,’ Helva answered.

  No one actually laughed aloud at the putdown. Ansra resumed her proper position, frowning, and chewing her lip.

  However, her assertion that she could project any emotion required of any capable actress seemed to fall short of the mark in scenes with proper actors. Her Juliet remained wooden and inadequate. She did not take fire from Romeo’s speeches, although how she could fail was beyond Helva’s comprehension. The man was inspired . . . and inspiring.

  Relieved now for many days of the press of gravity on his spongy bones, buoyed constantly by the success of every other aspect of this singular production, Prane exuded a vitality, an enthusiasm that was contagious. He was apparently indefatigable.

  As he was setting scene iv of Act I with himself, Mercutio, Benvolio and others doubling up as maskers and torchbearers, Mercutio finished his speech:

  ‘. . . Come, we burn daylight, ho!’

  The scene had been quick, bright exchanges, the light-hearted nonsense of friends bound for a gay evening.

  Mercutio repeated his line. Hastily, Helva remembered she doubled as prompter and found the place.

  ‘“Nay, that’s not so,”’ she read out.

  Silence met this attempt, so she, too, repeated the line.

  ‘We know the line,’ Prane said as this additional pause lengthened conspicuously. ‘Who says it?’

  Helva gulped. ‘You do.’

  For a moment a terrible expression haunted his eyes. Then he burst out laughing and the terror was gone. ‘’Tis always the littlest line that escapes,’ and he briskly cued Mercutio.

  That night, as everyone slept, Prane was restless. Shamelessly, Helva turned up the volume in the cabin he shared with five other men. He was repeating scene iv over and over. Then he lay silent. Helva thought he slept, until she saw his right hand slowly creep to his belt, carefully extract a small pill from the waistband fabric of his shipsuit. With a gesture counterfeiting a random sleepy movement, the pill reached his mouth.

  The secretiveness of his action, added to the intense rehearsal of that scene, gave Helva a tragic insight to the Solar. He was an addict, in the most horrifying degree: mindtrap, listed as harmless in the galactic pharmacopoeia, had become poisonous to him, fatal to mind and body. And he knew it. Yet more devastating to Solar Prane was loss of memory and to prevent that, he courted self-destruction.

  Except for Ansra, rehearsals proceeded well. How Prane kept his temper with such deliberate obstructionism, Helva did not know. Every scene the Solara played began to sag, lose fire, drop pace. But Prane did not react. And Ansra apparently gave up trying to goad him into an action no one could condone. She took to needling Kurla, a far more vulnerable personality.

  Fortunately, Nia Tubb, the Lady Capulet, shared the pilot’s cabin, which was the women’s room. She was wise in the ways of human relations and if she said nothing to the point, she did buffer Kurla from Ansra’s hostility. She also helped Kurla in her lines, and kept up a light-hearted monologue when the women were alone. But even she could see Ansra’s tactics increasing the pressure on the sensitive, anxious medical attendant.

  ‘Honey, you have any real trouble with Colmer, you let me help, huh?’ Nia Tubb said to Kurla one morning.

  ‘Thanks,’ Kurla answered with a wan smile.

  ‘Say, just between the two of us, Prane’s no addict, is he? He doesn’t look like one and I’ve seen enough to know, but still—’

  ‘Solar Prane developed an adverse chemical reaction to long use of mindtrap.’

  ‘I always thought mindtrap was the most harmless thing in the world. I’ve used it myself times without number.’

  ‘Ordinarily. But the Solar has been using it for over 70 years. A residue of the silicon content, which ought to have been flushed out of his system, has built up in his tissues. He also has a liquid retention problem and the diuretic originally prescribed combined unfavorably with the mindtrap residue, leaching potassium from his system in an unremediable process.’

  ‘What does that mean? He looks fine to me.’

  Kurla’s voice, dispassionately clinical, was more tragic than tears.

  ‘In low-grav conditions, in free-fall particularly, there is no strain on the skeleton and he’s fine. But his bones are soft: a fall, a blow, any long period of heavy physical strain and he would . . . in effect . . . break up. And the silicon is gradually choking his vital organs to death.’

  ‘Replace ’em!’

  Kurla shook her head. Nia patted her hand sympathetically. Helva interrupted them with a rehearsal call. And that was the worst rehearsal yet. Ansra’s attitude had insidiously undermined the entire cast. Everyone was off; they blew their lines, forgot stage business: When Mercutio and Paris got into a fight that was not in the script, Prane called a halt.

  ‘We’ve gone stale. We’ll take today off and tomorrow. Helva, break out the liquor rations. Nia and Kurla, would you be kind enough to see what surprises the galley might serve us? Helva, have you some tri-casts of interest? We need to relate to the everyday worlds that we have forgotten, immersed as we have been in ancient England.’

  Ansra stalked out of the main cabin, slamming the door to the women’s quarters. Helva looked in to find her staring angrily into a mirror. It was disconcerting for Helva to watch her frustrated, brooding self-examination while Nia and Kurla chattered inconsequentialities in the galley.

  Helva tried to be everywhere, keeping an ear out for any trouble . . . any more trouble, that is. Davo floated purposefully toward Prane. Since Helva had begun speaking only from the main cabin, she fostered the tendency for her passengers to forget she had ears and eyes everywhere in the ship.

  ‘You must realize by now, Prane,’ Davo was saying, ‘that Ansra is determined to ruin this production. And she is succeeding admirably.’

  Prane regarded his friend for a long moment, a slow smile beginning. ‘You’ve a solution?’

  ‘Let’s put her off balance. Remember what we used to do on the long hauls on tour?’


  ‘Reshuffle all the parts?’

  ‘Exactly. Christ, we all know each other’s lines and movements.’

  Prane began to grin mischieviously. ‘And . . . let Helva be Juliet?’

  ‘No, Kurla is Juliet!’ Davo returned Prane’s surprised stare with a dead serious dare.

  ‘And Romeo?’

  ‘That part need not change,’ Davo said evenly, then added in a light voice, ‘but I shall be Friar Lawrence and marry you two.’

  Prane waited till everyone had eaten and was relaxed with Thracian beer. The announcement met with approval, raucous and bawdy.

  ‘I’ll be Lady Capulet,’ Escalus announced in a squeaky falsetto.

  ‘And I’ll be Lady Montague,’ said Friar Lawrence in a quavering contralto, reverting to his own normal bass to add, ‘always thought she was a wino.’

  ‘I’ll be Escalus,’ Helva volunteered in a voice so like the real actor’s the man dropped his tankard.

  ‘You could be the whole damned play all by yourself,’ Davo vowed, his voice far more slurred than it should be on Thracian beer. ‘There isn’t one part you couldn’t do.’

  ‘Really? In that case, I’ll be the Nurse,’ Ansra Colmer announced. ‘Then Helva can see how the part should be played.’

  ‘And Kurla will be Juliet,’ Davo cried, his eyes on Ansra. ‘Set the stage, oh chorus. Places, everyone. Places.’

  ‘“Two households, both alike in dignity . . .”’ Helva began promptly in a basso, sweeping everyone into the act before they had time for second thoughts.

  Davo came on as Sampson, and Chadress, normally Lord Capulet, as Gregory, hamming their lines and indulging in slapstick nonsense. Baltazar rolled on, as though drunk, slurring through the establishment of conflict between the two houses. Lines were rattled off, and actors bodily moved each other into proper stage position or deliberately upstaged the speaker.

  When Escalus-Lady Capulet glided on in the company of Nurse Angelica, Ansra, with deliberate malice, dispensed with fun and played her part as she had not played Juliet. And somehow twisted her lines as Nurse to mean something entirely different. Her exit line: ‘Go girl, seek happy nights to happy days,’ was barbed enough to make Escalus falter.

  But then Juliet met Romeo at the feast, and Ansra’s spitefulness backfired. For Prane was a different, tenderer Romeo, his voice trembled not with fatigue but with newfound love, gentle, protective, eager. And Kurla, her eyes equally discovering her lover, was Juliet; breathless, shy, daring, and precious. She blushed shyly as she said,

  ‘For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch

  And palm to palm, is holy palmers’ kiss.’

  She turned her hands palms down on Romeo’s, as he had so often directed Ansra only to have her mistime the words and action as to make them meaningless.

  Romeo raised Juliet’s hands on his, and the ardor in his eyes, the answering joy in hers, made that little scene so tender that everyone was spellbound.

  ‘“Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg’d,”’ said Romeo in so soft a voice it seemed a faint echo, but it hung clearly until his lips met Juliet’s in a kiss that was as devout an avowal as a shout.

  Her role forgotten completely, Ansra flung herself forward as the two still embraced and were lost to their surroundings. And the proximity alarms twanged. They had arrived at their destination.

  ‘Now,’ Chadress said to the actors, all seated in the main cabin, hastily cleared of all its party debris, ‘the transceivers were fitted to your head sizes so they will be quite comfortable. You all heard the reports from those survey ship members who used the first device. You know the transfer process is painless and easy. You think youself on the surface and there you are.’

  ‘How can you think yourself on a surface you’ve never seen?’ Nia demanded, grimacing at the transceiver she was holding.

  ‘The nearest analogue would be the undersea scapes on Terra in the Carribean area, or the water world in Aldebaran. Or Vega IV. Imagine yourselves surrounded by seaweeds, all shapes and colors. Yes, the survey people repeatedly emphasized the enormous importance of color. The Corviki resemble a marine animal in the class hydrozoa, sort of a large sac-like body with a complex collection of tendrils that may be nerve endings.’

  ‘Gawd, what a costume!’ Nia Tubb muttered, shuddering.

  ‘It’ll fit, I’m told.’ Chadress grinned at her. ‘Now, Helva is our fail-safe. She’s equipped with an automatic return relay. We’ve been warned not to remain too long in the Corviki environment.’

  ‘Why?’ Ansra demanded in a bored voice.

  ‘The Corviki undoubtedly have good reason, but they did not say what. Now, Prane?’

  The Solar rose, looked around at the entire cast. ‘We all know the importance of this unlikely exchange of Shakespeare for power. The Bard has been translated into every conceivable language, alien and humanoid, and somehow the essence of his plays has been understood by the most exotic, the most barbaric, the most sophisticated. There is no reason to suppose that Will Shakespeare hasn’t got something to say to the Corviki . . . if we do the job wholeheartedly . . . or whatever our Corviki envelopes use for that Organ.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, curtain!’ He sat down and donned his transceiver, settling back in the couch and relaxing completely. In a few seconds a light glowed across the rim of the transceiver.

  ‘If that’s all there is to it,’ Nia Tubb said, and pulled hers down on her head.

  The others imitated her more or less simultaneously until only Chadress and Helva remained on board.

  ‘Check Prane,’ Helva said.

  ‘He’s all right as far as I can see. I’ll see you down there, Helva.’

  And he was gone. Helva had the uncanny notion that the new synapse leads were burning hot. But that was impossible. She willed herself to ascend. On the heels of the thought that this was the first time she had been outside a shell in her life, came a terrifying surge of primitive fear and then . . .

  Transfer!

  Her first indication of the difference involved pressure . . . an enveloping pressure. But the Corviki had said they would provide empty envelopes for the cast to occupy. She was enveloped and the envelope was also enveloped. She could ‘feel’ it all around. She undulated experimentally, hoping to rid herself of this sense of being covered. It was somehow unclean to feel all along every part of her. And yet, even as she felt loose, she was at the same time compressed. Not gravity pressure, but something in which she was and was moving. Well, movement was not a new skill for her: this was, then, just a form of motion. She wriggled again and things that were part of ‘her’ floated up from beneath her. She could not look at them because they floated away when she tried. Hmm. She could see every part of her shipself from one scanner or another. How limiting mobility was. Well, she’d look around as far as she was able. And stared down, down, in an unlimited perspective until finally her sight distinguished a burbling, burping mass of ochre eruptions that she recognized as ‘ground.’ Above and around her fronds swayed, exhaled and inhaled in a full spectrum of colors unbelievably varied and varying: colors which in some cases had ‘sound’ and ‘smell’ as part of their value. Only ‘smell’ was also a novel sensation to Helva, who had utilized gauges all her life instead of the olfactory sense.

  ‘Adapting, Helva?’ A familiar presence dominated her mind. Instinctively she turned toward the ‘sound’ that wasn’t sound as she had previously known it, but a patterned interruption of the pressures around her.

  ‘It’s odd to feel physical sensations,’ she replied.

  ‘It would be, for you.’

  ‘How do you feel, Chadress?’ For the presence was indisputably her brawn.

  ‘Velvet, soft, deep, a very pleasurable tactile sensation, I assure you. And a sense of unlimited power.’ Chadress was impressed. ‘Of being young and new again.’ Here the dominant quality of his thought was incredulous and self-amused. ‘They have evidently lent us brand-new, guaranteed-unsullied sh
ells.’

  ‘I wonder where they get them from.’

  A new dominance approached them and this entity was recognized by both as being a true Corviki. The presence was very dense and Chadress and Helva both received an undeniable feeling of great age and wisdom, of a unique application of basic energy.

  ‘I am your Manager,’ he introduced himself. ‘The others are all contained. We may proceed with this expression of energy.’

  ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ thought Helva as they propelled themselves toward a sphere-shaped area, surrounded by unanchored lumps of a dead black substance, framed by enormous breathing fronds. And suddenly, she could recognize everyone, despite their apparently homogenous shape, by the slight variation of color tone and pressure weight.

  Prane came on as dense as Manager, Helva discovered. She began to equate density with age or wisdom. Subjectively, she wondered how she ‘felt’ to others. Then Prane called her as chorus to open the rehearsal.

  For a frantic moment, she wondered how she could possibly project ‘chorus’ without the audio equipment available on the ship. She had an intense desire to retreat back to her own shell again. But Prane was Director and one obeyed Director.

  ‘“Two households, alike in dignity,”’ and somehow her dominance enlarged, darkened, and she was more than herself.

  Then Samson and Gregory emerged from behind fronds and their dominance was shallow, light, tenuous as if inconsequential. In a fashion the cast managed to condense or dissipate themselves through the scenes until by Act IV, the new medium and the difference of exposition no longer seemed strange.

  It was almost physically painful to be wrenched by the time control back into the ship and discover that they were, sadly, only flesh and blood. No one said much. They ate a great deal quickly, and then went to bed.

  Helva, unfortunately, was wide awake and, for the first time in her conscious life, envied the others for the gentle oblivion of sleep. She tried not to think of the experiential effect of mobility on her conditioning. She disciplined herself by running a full scan outside. Not because anything might have changed but just to make sure all was as before. They were in orbit, black space topside, but the amorphous, boiling cloud of diffuse colors, shot with brilliant lights, loomed below. She ran a check on her systems and discovered something a little unnerving in her engine compartment. There was something blocking her readings there, yet the systems were all green on the boards. She could not ‘feel’ power, although there was no evidence of its absence: it was simply unavailable to her. As she pondered the implications of this, she heard a faint susurrus. She snatched at the diversion and traced it: Prane at his litany.