The Ship Who Sang

by Anne McCaffrey

  He wanted her to sing, did he?

  She waited and she kept calm.

  Presently he returned, absently rubbing his shoulder. Helva increased magnification and noticed the traces of the subcutaneous blue. He used Tucanite, then.

  A chair was produced from somewhere for him and he settled himself. Another disembodied hand provided a table on which a dish of choice foods was set.

  ‘Sing, my pretty obscenity, sing,’ the mad Xixon commanded, reaching languorously above his head toward her input leads.

  Helva complied. She began in the middle of her range, using the most sensuous songs she could remember, augmenting them subtly in bass reflex but keeping the volume tantalizingly low so that he had to crouch forward to hear her.

  It got on his nerves and when he peevishly reached out to snatch all but her leads from the board, she begged him not to deprive her peers of sense.

  ‘Surely, sir, you could not, when all you need do is augment my power just slightly from the main board. Even without their very minute power draw on this amplifier, I could not possibly Reticulate a croon, for instance.’

  He sat up straight, his eyes flashing with anticipation.

  ‘You can Reticulate the mating croons?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied with mild surprise.

  He frowned at her, torn between a desire to hear those renowned exotic songs and a very real concern to limit a shell’s ability. He was deep in the thrall of the Tucanite now, his senses eager for further stimulation, and the lure of the Reticulan croons was too much for him.

  He did, however, call over and consult with a fawning technician, who blinked constantly and had a severe tic in one cheek. Fascinated, Helva magnified until she was able to see each muscle fiber jerk.

  She plunged into dark soundlessness and then, suddenly, felt renewed with the sense of real power against her leads.

  ‘You have ample power now, singer,’ he told her, his expression vicious with anticipation. ‘Perform or you will regret it. And do not try any shell games on me, for I have had them seal off all the other circuits on this amplifier. Sing, shipless one, sing for your sight and sound.’

  She waited until his laughter died. Even a Reticulan croon could not be heard . . . or be effective . . . above the cackling.

  She took an easy one, double-voicing it, treble and counter, testing how much power she could get. It would be enough. And the echo of her lilting croon came back, bouncingly, to reassure her that this installation was not large and was set in natural stone caverns. Very good.

  She cut in the overtones, gradually adding bass frequencies but subtly so they seemed just part of the Reticulan croon at first. Even with his heightened sensibilities, he wouldn’t realize what she was doing. She augmented the inaudible frequencies.

  Her croon was of a particularly compelling variation and she heard, under her singing – if one would permit Reticulan croons such a dignified title – the stealthy advance of his slaves and co-workers, lured close by the irresistible sirens sounds.

  She gathered herself and then pumped pure sonic hell into the triple note.

  It got him first, heightened as he had been by the Tucanite. It got him dead, his brains irretrievably scrambled from the massive dose of sonic fury. It got the others in the cavern, too. She could hear their shrieks of despair over the weird composite sound she had created, as they fainted.

  The overload shortcircuited several panels in the master board, showering the unconscious and the dead with blinding sparks. Helva threw in what breakers she could to keep her own now-reduced circuit open. Even she felt the backlash of that supersonic blast. Her nerve ends tingled, her ‘ears’ rang and she felt extremely enervated.

  ‘I’ll bet I’ve developed a very acid condition in my nutrients,’ she told herself with graveyard humor.

  The great room was silent except for hoarse breathing and hissing wires.

  ‘Delia? Answer me. It’s Helva.’

  ‘Who is Helva? I have no access to memory banks.’

  ‘Tagi, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’ A flat, mechanical affirmative.

  ‘Merl, can you hear me?’

  ‘You’re loud.’

  Helva stared straight ahead at the dead body that had tortured them so cruelly. Oh, for a pair of hands!

  Revenge on an inert husk was illogical.

  Now what do I do? she wondered. At that point, she remembered that she had been about to divorce Teron. And the tight beam had been left open! Parollan wasn’t the kind to sit on his hands. WHERE WAS HE?

  ‘There you are, Helva, back at the old stand,’ the ST-1 Captain said, patting her column paternally.

  She scanned to make certain the release plate was locked back into seamless congruity with the rest of the column.

  ‘Your new cadence-syllable release was tuned into the metal and Chief Railly is the only one who knows it,’ the Captain assured her.

  ‘And the independent audio and visual relays are attached to the spare synapses of my shell?’

  ‘Good idea, that, Helva. May make it a standard procedure.’

  ‘But mine are hooked up?’

  ‘Yes, yours are hooked up. Seems like a case of asking for clearance when the ship was blasted off, this precaution after the fact, but . . .’

  ‘Have you ever been sense-deprived, Captain?’

  He shuddered and his eyes darkened. None of the Fleet or Brain-Brawn Ship personnel who penetrated the Xixon’s asteroid headquarters would be likely to forget the pitiable condition of the shell-people – the amplified human beings who had once been considered invulnerable.

  ‘Tagi, Merl, and Delia will recover. Delia’ll be back in service in a year or so,’ the Captain said quietly. Then he sighed, for he, too, couldn’t bring himself to name Foro. ‘You people are needed, you know.’ He leaned forward so suddenly toward her panel that Helva gasped. ‘Easy, Helva.’ And he slid his hand down the column. ‘Nope. Can’t even feel the seam. You’re all secure.’

  He carefully gathered up the delicate instruments of his profession, wrapping them in soft surgi-foam.

  ‘How’re the brawns?’ she asked idly, as she stretched out along her rewired extensions, shrugging into her ship skin.

  ‘Well, Delia’s Rife will pull out of Menkalite addiction. He’d had only the one dose. They’ve still to track down the other two ships, but I expect all the brawns’ll survive.’ His expression altered abruptly as if he had caught an unpleasant smell. ‘Why did you have your tight beam channel open, Helva? When we got that brawn of yours out of his padded cell, he was furious that you could disregard proper procedure in such a fashion.’ The Captain managed to sound like Teron for a moment. ‘Why, if you hadn’t, and Cencom hadn’t heard the whole damned thing . . . How come you left the channel open?’

  ‘I’d rather not say, but since you’ve met Teron, you might do a little guessing.’

  ‘Huh? Well, whatever the reason, it saved your life.’

  ‘It took ’em long enough.’

  The Captain laughed at her sour complaint. ‘Don’t forget, you’d been cleared, so your kidnappers just lifted off Durrell before your supervisor could stop ’em. But Parollan sure scorched the ears of every operator in frequency range getting Fleet ships after you. At that, with a whole sector to comb, and the drug runners using this asteroid off Borealis as a hideout, too close to Durrell to be even a probability, it took a little time.’

  ‘That Xixon thing was smart-mad, hiding right out in sight.’

  ‘Well, he had a high intelligence factor,’ the captain admitted. ‘After all, he made it into brawn training 20-odd years ago.’

  That had been an unnerving development, Helva reflected. If he’d actually qualified and then developed neural maladjustments . . . He had taken enough Tucanite to break the deconditioning mind blocks – another matter that was going to be reevaluated by Central Worlds as a result of this incident – and had managed to insinuate himself into maintenance crews on Regulus B
ase, laying the groundwork for his operation by the judicious use of addictive drugs on key employees. Then, using Central World brains ships with drugged brawns under his control, he could have landed anywhere, including Regulus Base.

  ‘I’ll be off now,’ the Captain said, saluting her respectfully. ‘Let your own brawn take over now.’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Helva replied.

  Whatever bond of loyalty she had once had for Teron had dissolved as surely as she had been parted from her security. Teron, having decided that he was hopelessly incarcerated, had stolidly composed himself to await the worst with calm dignity . . . as any logical man ought to do.

  On anyone else’s tapes (including the Captain’s, to judge by the expression on his face), such logic was cowardice; and that was Helva’s unalterable conclusion. Although she would grant that his behavior had certainly been consistent.

  Delia’s Rife, on the other hand, had tried to break out. He had clawed a foothold in the padded fabric of his cell, lacerating hands and feet in the attempt to reach the ceiling access hatch. Dizzy from a Menkalite injection – confused and weak from starvation intended to allow the Menkalite to work unhindered in his system – he had actually crawled as far as the airlock when the rescue group had arrived.

  Helva let the ST-1 down the personnel lift and ran a thorough but hasty flip-check of herself, scanners, sensory meters, power-pile drive chamber, inventory. It was like revisiting a forgotten treasury of minor miracles. Helva wondered if she had ever before appreciated the versatility incorporated in her ship body, had really valued the power she had at her disposition, or cherished the ingenuity of her engineers. Oh, it was good to be back together again.

  ‘Helva?’ a low voice spoke tentatively. ‘Are you alone now?’ It was Central Worlds on the tight beam.

  ‘Yes. The ST-1 has just left. You can probably reach him . . .’

  ‘Shove him,’ and then Helva realized that the hoarse voice must belong to Niall Parollan. ‘I just wanted to know you were back where you belong. You’re sure you’re all right, Helva?’

  Niall Parollan laryngitic with concern? Helva was flattered and surprised, considering his uncomplimentary description hurled at her at their last parting.

  ‘I’m intact again if that’s what you mean, Parollan,’ she replied in droll good humor.

  She could have sworn she heard a sigh over the tight beam.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ Parollan laughed, so it must have been a wheeze she’d heard. ‘Of course,’ and he cleared his throat, ‘if you hadn’t had your synapses scrambled on Beta Corvi, you’d’ve listened to me when I tried to tell you that that simple simian Acthionite was a regulation-bound brass . . .’

  ‘Not brass, Niall,’ Helva interrupted sharply, ‘not brass. Brass is a metal and Teron has none.’

  ‘Oh, ho ho, so you admit I was right about him?’

  ‘“Tis human to err . . .”’

  ‘Thank God!’

  Just then Teron requested permission to board.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Helva. I couldn’t stomach . . .’

  ‘Don’t go, Parollan . . .’

  ‘Helva, my own true love, I’ve been glued to this tight beam for three days for your sake and the stimutabs have worn off. I’m dead in the seat!’

  ‘Prop your eyelids open for a few moments more, Niall. This’ll be official,’ she told Parollan as she activated the personnel lift for Teron. She felt a cold dislike replace the bantering friendliness she had been enjoying.

  Big as life and disgustingly Neanderthal her brawn strode into the main control room, saluting with scant ceremony toward her bulkhead. Strode? He swaggered, Helva thought angrily, looking not the least bit worse for his absence.

  Teron rubbed his hands together, sat himself down in the pilot’s chair, flexed his fingers before he poised them, very businesslike, over the computer keyboard.

  ‘I’ll just run a thorough checkdown to be sure no damage was done.’ His words were neither request nor order.

  ‘Just like that, huh?’ Helva asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

  Teron frowned and swiveled round in the chair toward her panel.

  ‘Our schedule has been interrupted enough with this mishap.’

  ‘Mishap?’

  ‘Modulate your tone, Helva. You can’t expect to use those tricks on me.’

  ‘I can’t expect what?’

  ‘Now,’ he began placatingly, jerking his chin down, ‘I take into consideration you’ve been under a strain recently. You should have insisted that I oversee that ST-1 Captain during that installation. You might have sustained some circuit damage, you know.’

  ‘How kind of you to consider that possibility,’ she said. That was it!

  ‘You could scarcely be harmed, physically, contained as you are in pure titanium,’ he said and swung back to the console.

  ‘Teron of Acthion, all I can say at this point is that it’s a damned good thing for you that I am contained behind pure titanium. Because if I were mobile, I would kick you down that shaft so fast . . .’

  ‘What has possessed you?’

  For once, sheer blank illogical amazement flashed across Teron’s face.

  ‘Get out! Get off my deck! Get out of my sight. Get OUT!’ Helva roared, pouring on volume with each word, with no regard for the tender structure of the human ear.

  With sheer sound she drove him, hands clapped to the sides of his head, off the deck, down the side of the 834 as fast as she could escalate the lift.

  ‘Take me for granted, will you? Unreliable organism, am I? Illogical, irresponsible, and inhuman . . .’ Helva bellowed after him in a planet-sized shout. And then she burst out laughing, as she realized that such emotional behavior on her part was the only way she could have routed the over-logical Teron of Acthion.

  ‘Did you hear that, Niall Parollan?’ she asked in a reasonable but nevertheless exultant tone. ‘Niall? Hey, Cencom, you on the tight beam . . . answer me?’

  From the open channel came the shuddering discord of a massive adenoidal snore.

  ‘Niall?’ The sleeper wheezed on, oblivious, until Helva chuckled at this additional evidence of human frailty.

  She asked and received clearance from the asteroid’s half-ruined spaceport. She was going to have a long chat with Chief Railly when she returned.

  Her penalty for ‘divorcing’ Teron would be a speck against the finders’ fee for four shanghaied BB ships. And there ought to be a Federation bonus for aid in the apprehension of drug runners. Totaled, if true justice was giving her half a chance, the rewards might just make her a free ship, out of debt, truly her own mistress. The thought was enough to set her singing.

  The Partnered Ship

  HURTLING THROUGH SPACE at speeds no unprotected human could tolerate, Helva contemplated the delightful knowledge that she had paid off her indebtedness to Central Worlds Brain-Brawn Ship Service. She was her own mistress. Free. And free to choose, at long last, a partner, a brawn, a mobile human to companion her wherever she chose to wander. She was no longer limited to those sterling souls, fresh and eager from Academy training, fully indoctrinated in Central Worlds’ ethos, conditioned to a set way of thinking and acting, molded according to predetermined physical, intellectual, spiritual, psychological requisities, and not what she had in mind. She could pick anyone now. She could . . .

  Well, now, come to think of it, she couldn’t. Brawns, for all their shortcomings, were not ordinary technicians, cranked out by the thousands from specialists’ programs on every planet. They were especially trained and educated to function in an unusual partnership. She could not pick out an agreeable personality and find him deadheading on that charm. Even on short contracts, with an industrial or planetary agency, she’d have to rely to a certain degree on a brawn with sense, integrity, and a certain breadth of education, or she’d get royally rooked, industrially and systematically. And besides, she wanted a permanent partner, not another transient. She wanted companionship, an intellig
ent, sympathetic friend: not a passive employee.

  Another factor limited her field further. Many otherwise well-adjusted citizens of a complex, civilized galaxy were revolted or superstitiously terrified at the thought of a human being entombed in a bulkhead, connected to the operational circuitry of a powerful space ship. The neurosis could even extend to personalities like Teron, who deluded themselves that a shell person was really not human, was actually a highly sophisticated computer.

  Very few people she had met, Helva admitted sadly, thought of her as Helva, a person, a thinking, feeling, rational, intelligent, eminently human being.

  Jennan had. Theoda, except for that one brief instance of rapport, had been too immersed in her life-long expiation to entertain a personal reaction to Helva, the human. And, although Kira Falernova had been with her over 3 years, neither of them had let the friendship develop into a deep attachment.

  In fact, the only mobile human who appeared to regard Helva as Helva was Niall Parollan. And for all Helva knew, he had merely developed an effective way of handling his BB ship subordinates by alternately praising and insulting them in that highly personal, stimulating way.

  And yet, he had stayed on the tight beam for 3 days, nursing that tenuous trace of her whereabouts. He could just as easily have delegated the duty to a regular com man. That he hadn’t done so absolved him of her previous grievances.

  She hoped someone had discovered him asleep at the control panel. He must have been in a deuced uncomfortable position to snore that way. Helva chuckled to herself. Too bad he wasn’t bigger. He’d’ve made a good brawn. And yet, he was passed over, while someone like that nardy idiot, Teron, tall, brawny enough to look at, not only got into training but completed the rigorous course. He must have done it . . . as Niall had acidly suggested . . . on theory credits. Perhaps Central Worlds had better reevaluate their image requirements as a result of this Borealis fiasco. What heavy-worlders like Parollan lacked in stature, they made up in mass . . . and pure cussedness.