Parollan was staring at her with an inscrutable intentness. He put one hand out to stroke the smooth metal on the exact spot where the seam closed access to her inner shell.
‘Well put, Helva, well put.’ He turned and walked to the galley. He was dialing for soup, not a stimulant, Helva noticed with relief. He sat down again in the main cabin before he broke the heat seal. The wisp of escaping steam seemed to mesmerize him, for he shook his head as the pop of the released top broke the semitrance.
‘I didn’t think you’d do it,’ he remarked in a casual tone.
‘Why did you ask then? Testing, Supervisor?’
He glanced up, chuckling at the purring tone in her voice.
‘Not you, m’gal . . .’
‘And I am not your gal . . .’
‘. . . Irrelevant!’ and he took a careful sip of the hot soup.
‘Then why did you ask?’ she insisted.
He shrugged. ‘Seemed like a once-in-a-life-time chance to get you out of that titanium chastity belt.’
Laughter burst from Helva. ‘I’ve been out. On Corvi.’
‘Tried it once and didn’t like it?’
‘Movement? Freedom?’ she asked, deliberately ignoring the double meaning expressed in the cocked eyebrow and malicious grin on Parollan’s face.
‘Physical movement,’ he qualified, his manner wary. ‘Physical freedom.’
‘Define “physical”. As this ship, I have more physical power, more physical freedom, than you ever will know. I think, I feel, I breathe. My heart beats, blood does flow through my veins, my lungs do work: not as yours, but they are functioning.’
‘So are the hearts and veins and lungs of those four – four nothings in the life support room of Base Hospital. But they are dead.’
‘Am I?’
‘Are you?’
‘You’re drunk, Parollan,’ she accused in a flat cold voice.
‘I’m not drunk, Helva. I’m discussing a deep moral issue with you and you evade me.’
‘Evade Niall Parollan? Or Supervisor Parollan?’
‘Niall Parollan.’
‘Why are you discussing this deep moral issue with Helva, Niall Parollan?’
Unexpectedly he shrugged and leaned back, his shoulders sagging as he lapped his fingers around the soup cup and regarded its contents moodily.
‘Passes time,’ he said finally. ‘We both have time on our hands tonight. Time that must be passed some way or other. Silly to waste our valuable time (and he gave a sardonic laugh) in small talk. Might just as well discuss a deep moral issue which, I might point out, you dumped into our laps. Which no-one’s going to resolve anyway. You should’ve made the Corvi clear their garbage before you cleared their fartful atmosphere. Say, did you smell that stuff they breathe?’
Helva found herself answering his question while another part of her rapidly churning mind wondered at his remarkable behavior.
‘I, Helva, have no olfactory sense, so I, Helva, wouldn’t have noticed how the Corviki atmosphere “smelled”. None of the others mentioned it, so I assume that, for Corvi entities, the atmospheric odor was unexceptional.’
‘Aha!’ The thin forefinger jabbed at her accusingly. ‘You don’t have that physical ability.’
‘Nor am I sure that I want it . . . except to smell coffee, which everyone says smells particularly pleasant.’
‘Remember to order some in the morning.’
‘Orders already on file with Commissary,’ Helva said sweetly.
‘That’s my gal.’
‘I’m not your gal. And, at the risk of being a bore, why are you here, Niall Parollan?’
‘I don’t want to be bothered by those fardling specs,’ he muttered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Base Tower, ‘and I would be if they could reach me. They can’t here because Cencom is not allowed to admit any calls to you, Helva XH-834, until 0800 because you, Helva m’gal, have had enough of them for one revolution. Haven’t you?’ His question crackled in the air. ‘Don’t deny it,’ he advised when she didn’t answer immediately. ‘I know you well enough . . . oh, I know you, gal, like no other man ever has . . . and you were so close to telling them to stuff it, you were so close to . . .’ his voice trailed off briefly. ‘This assignment was a lot rougher on you than you’ll ever admit.’
She said nothing.
He nodded and took another mouthful of soup.
‘You aren’t drunk,’ she said.
‘I told you that.’ He grinned at her.
‘I hadn’t realized,’ she went on in a light tone to hide the fact that she was deeply touched by his unexpected empathy, ‘that ship-sitting was a function of a Supervisor.’
He waggled a lean finger expressively. ‘We have wide discretionary latitude.’
‘And am I really incommunicado until 0800 or were you merely keeping me from meeting personable brawns?’
‘Hell no,’ he explained, his eyebrows arching in protest. ‘That’s absolute fact you can check out. You can call out, you know. It’s just no-one can call in. And . . .’
‘You’re here to divert me from calling the brawns.’
‘That woman’s got brawns on the brain!’ he exploded. ‘Go ahead,’ he urged, ‘call the brawns in. Rouse the whole barracks. We’ll have a swinging party . . .’ He was halfway to the console.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Hey, moderate your voice, gal. I’m here because you’re the safest place for me to be. He turned back to her again, grinning wickedly. ‘Sure you don’t want to call the brawn barracks?’
‘Positive. Why are you escaping?’
‘Because,’ and he dropped down onto the couch again, making himself quite comfortable, ‘I’ve had it with their nardy questions and suspicions and . . .’
‘Suspicions?’ Helva pounced on the word.
Niall made a crude noise. ‘They (and his fingers flicked in the direction of the Tower’s lit windows) got fardling damned theories about schizoid brains and blocks and that kind of drift.’
‘About me?’
Again the expressive rude noise. ‘I know you, gal, and so does Railly and we’re taking none of that crap about you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t get snide with me, Helva,’ and Parollan’s voice turned hard. ‘I’ll make you work your ass off for the Service. I’ll make you take assignments you don’t want because they’re good for you and the Service . . .’
‘Good for me? Like the Corvi affair?’
‘Yes, damn your eyes, good for you, Helva. For the woman inside that armor plate!’
‘I thought you were urging me to come out of my armor plate . . . into Kurla’s body.’
Parollan was still. His angry eyes seemed to bore through the column into her shell. Abruptly he relaxed and leaned back again, apparently at ease, but Helva noticed the small contraction of jaw muscles.
‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I?’ he said mildly. With a sigh, he swiveled his feet up on the couch and yawned in an exaggerated fashion. ‘You know, I’ve never heard you sing. Would you oblige?’
‘To keep you awake? Or would you prefer a lullaby?’
Niall Parollan yawned again, laced his fingers behind his head, crossed his neatly booted ankles and stared up at the ceiling.
‘Dealer’s choice.’
Surprisingly, Helva felt like singing.
The Ship Who Dissembled
‘BRAIN SHIPS DON’T disappear,’ Helva said in what she hoped was a firm, no-argument tone.
Teron stuck his chin out in a way that caused him to appear a neckless Neanderthal. This mannerism had passed from amusing through annoying to unendurable.
‘You heard Central,’ Teron replied at his most didactic. ‘They do disappear, because they have disappeared.’
‘The fact of disappearance is inconsistent with shell psychology,’ Helva said, barely managing to restrain herself from shouting at top volume. She had the feeling that she might force him to understand by overwhelming hi
m with sound alone. She knew this was basically illogical, but in trying to cope with Teron over the past galactic year, she found she reacted more and more on an emotional rather than a reasonable level.
This partnership was clearly intolerable – she would even go so far as to say, degrading – and she would allow it to continue no longer than it took them to finish this assignment and return to Regulus Base.
Helva had had enough of Teron. She did not care two feathers in a jet-vent if the conclusion wasn’t mutual. It had been difficult for her to admit she had found herself in a situation she couldn’t adjust to, but she and Teron were clearly incompatible. She would just have to admit to an error of judgement and correct it. It was the only sensible course of action.
Helva groaned inwardly. He was contagious. She was talking more and more as he did.
‘Your loyalty is commendable, if, in this instance, misplaced,’ Teron was saying pompously. ‘The facts are there. Four brain-controlled ships engaged on Central Worlds commissions have disappeared without trace, their accompanying pilots with them. Fact: a ship can alter its tape, a pilot cannot. Fact: the ships have failed to appear at a scheduled port-of-call. Fact: the ships have failed to appear in the adjacent sectors of space nearest their previous or projected ports-of-call. Therefore, they have disappeared. The ships must have altered the projected journey for no known reason. Therefore the ships are unreliable organisms. This conclusion follows the presented data and is unalterable. Any rational intelligence must admit the validity of that conclusion.’
He gave her that irritating smirk she had originally thought a sweet smile.
Helva counted slowly to 1,000 by 10s. When she spoke again, her voice was under perfect control.
‘The presented data is incomplete. It lacks motivation. There is no reason for those four ships to have disappeared for their own purposes. They weren’t even badly indebted. Indeed, the DR was within 3 standard years of solvency.’ Just as I am, she thought. ‘Therefore, and on the basis of privileged information available to me . . .’ she came as close as makes no never mind to spitting out the pronoun, ‘. . . your conclusion is unacceptable.’
‘I cannot see what privileged information, if you actually have any,’ Teron awarded her a patronizing smile, ‘could change my conclusion, since Central has also reached it.’
There, Helva thought to herself, he had managed to drag in old infallible authority and that is supposed to stop me in my tapes.
It was useless to argue with him anyway. He was, as Niall Parollan had once accused her of being, stubborn for the wrong reasons. He was also pigheaded, dogmatic, insensitive, regulation-hedged and so narrowly oriented as to prevent any vestige of imagination or intuitive thinking from coloring his mental processes for a microsecond.
She oughtn’t to have thought of Niall Parollan. It did her temper no good. That officious little pipsqueak had paid her another of his unsolicited, unofficial visits to argue her out of choosing the Acthionite.
‘He passed his brawn training on theory credits. He’s been slated for garbage runs, not you!’ Niall Parollan had cried, pacing her main cabin.
‘And you are not the person who will be his partner. His profile-tape looks extremely compatible to me.’
‘Use your wits, girl. Just look at him. He’s all muscle and no heart, too perfectly good looking to be credible. Christ, he’s . . . he’s an android, complete with metal brainworks, programmed in a rarified atmosphere. He’ll drive you batty.’
‘He’s a reliable, well-balanced, well-read, well-adjusted . . .’
‘And you’re a spiteful, tin-plated virgin,’ said Parollan and for the second time in their acquaintance, he charged out of her cabin without a backward look.
Now Helva had to admit Niall Parollan had been demoralizingly accurate about Brawn Teron of Acthion. The only kind thing that could be said about Teron, in Helva’s estimation, was that he was a complete change from any other partner she had had, temporarily or permanently.
And if he called her an unreliable organism once more, she would blow the lock on him.
However, Teron considered he had silenced her with the last telling remark. He seated himself at his pilot control board, flexed his fingers as he always did, and then ran his precious and omnipotent data through the computer, checking their journey tape. It was obvious he was out to thwart any irrational desire Helva might have to change their journey and make them disappear.
Teron worked methodically and slowly, his broad brow unwrinkled, his wide-cheeked face serene, his brown eyes never straying from the task at hand.
How, under the suns of heaven, did I ever have the incredible lack of insight to pick him? Helva wondered, the adrenalin level in her shell still high. I must have been out of my ever-loving, capsulated mind. Maybe my nutrient fluid is going acid. When I get back to Regulus, I am going to demand an endocrine check. Something is wrong with me.
No, no, no. Helva contradicted herself. There is nothing wrong with me that getting rid of Teron won’t cure. He’s got me doubting my sanity and I know I’m sane or I wouldn’t be this ship.
Remember that, Helva, she told herself. It’s quite possible that, before this trip ends, he’ll have persuaded you you’re a menace to Central Worlds Autonomy because your intelligence is so unreliable the safest thing for the known world is for you to opt out. Him and his assumption that a brain ship must be an unreliable organism because they/she/he (never it, please) could digest data, ignore the irrelevant, and proceed on seemingly illogical courses to logical and highly successful ends. Such as the tangle she and Kira had got into on Alioth.
And to quote particulars, she, Helva, had already been unreliable several times in her short career as a brain ship. Teron had been ‘kind enough’ to point out these deviations to her, as well as a far more logical course of action under all the same conditions, and he had admonished her never to act outside cut orders while he, Teron of Acthion, was her brawn partner. She was to do nothing, repeat, nothing, without clearing first with him and then with Central. An intelligent organism was known by its ability to follow orders without deviation.
‘And you actually mean,’ Helva had remarked laughingly the first time Teron had made this solemn pronouncement – she had still had her sense of humor in those days – ‘. . . that, if our orders require me to enter an atmosphere my subsequent investigations proved was corrosive to my hull and would result in our deaths, I should follow such orders . . . to the death, that is.’
‘Irresponsible orders are not given to Central Worlds Ships,’ Teron replied reprovingly.
‘Half a league, half a league
Half a league onward . . .’
‘I do not understand what half leagues have to do with the principle under discussion,’ he said coldly.
‘I was trying to make a subtle point. I will rephrase.’
‘In a concise, therefore comprehensible, manner, if you please.’
‘Orders can be cut without foreknowledge of unavailable but highly relevant facts. Such as the before-mentioned corrosive atmospheres . . .’
‘Hypothetical . . .’
‘. . . but valid as a case in point. We do, you must admit, often approach relatively unexplored star systems. Therefore, it is entirely possible, not merely hypothetical, that precut orders can require an intelligent and mature reevaluation which may require what appears to be insurbordinate alteration of those same orders and/or rank disobedience to those before-mentioned orders.’
Teron had shaken his head, not sadly, because Helva was certain he had experienced no deep human emotions in his life, but reprovingly.
‘I know now why Central Worlds insist on a human pilot as commander of the brain-controlled ships. They are necessary, so necessary when an unreliable organism is nominally in control of so powerful an instrument as this ship.’
Helva had sputtered in astonishment at his misconception. She had been about to point out that the pilot control board did not override her. She had th
e override on the pilot.
‘There will come a day,’ Teron had continued inexorably, ‘when such poor expedients are no longer necessary. Automatic operations will be perfected to such a fine degree, human brains will no longer be needed.’
‘They use human beings,’ Helva had replied, pronouncing each syllable distinctly.
‘Ah, yes, human beings. Fallible creatures at best, we are, subject to so many pressures, so frail a barque for so great a task.’ Teron tended to go in for homiletics at the drop of a gauge. ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’ He sighed. ‘And when this human element, so prone to error, is eliminated, when automation is perfected – ah, there, Helva, is the operative word – when it is perfected, there will be no more need for such stopgap techniques as Central Worlds must presently employ. When that perfection is achieved, ships will be truly reliable.’ He patted the computer-console patronizingly.
Helva had stifled a monosyllabic comment. Historical and incontrovertible arguments welled up from her schooling and conditioning years. These were based, she abruptly realized, on incidents that unfortunately tended to support his peculiar theory of unreliability – however sane the outcome. In each instance, the brain ships had acted by ignoring or revising previous orders as the unusual circumstances they encountered required them to do. By Teron’s unswerving logic, intelligence itself – whether shell or mobile – is unreliable. Helva could not see him ever admitting that intelligent conclusions are not always logical.
And right now, every scrap of intelligence, instinct, training, conditioning, and reason told Helva that brain ships do not just disappear. Not four in a row. Not four in less than a Regulan month. One in 100 years, yes, that was possible, logical and probable. But there was always some hint, some deducible reason. Like the 732 – psychotic with grief on Alioth.
Why had she allowed Kira to leave her when that assignment was over? Kira would have been quite of Helva’s mind in this matter, but Helva did not see the faintest hope of convincing Teron that multiple disappearances were so preposterous. Because it involved some intuition, of which Teron had none.
The Ship Who Sang Page 17