Partners in Wonder

by Harlan Ellison

  I hear voices. They are all the same voice, but they are talking to one another in a soft, running-together way; the way I sound when I am just talking to myself sometimes in my cubicle with my cot in it.

  I decide to listen to what the voices are saying, but not to ask Ship about them, because I think it is Ship talking to itself, down here in this lonely place. I will think about what Ship is saying later, when I don’t have to make repairs and act the way Ship wants me to act. What Ship is saying to itself is interesting.

  This place does not look like other repair places I know in Ship. It is filled with so many great round glass balls on pedestals, each giving off its yellow light in pulses, that I cannot count them. There are rows and rows of clear glass balls, and inside them I see metal…and other things, soft things, all together. And the wires spark gently, and the soft things move, and the yellow light pulses. I think these glass balls are what are talking. But I don’t know if that’s so. I only think it is.

  Two of the glass balls are dark. Their pedestals look chalky, not shining white like all the others. Inside the two dark balls, there are black things, like burned-out wires. The soft things don’t move.

  “Replace the overloaded modules!” Ship says.

  I know Ship means the dark globes. So I go over to them and I look at them and after a while I say, yes, I can repair these, and Ship says it knows I can, and to get to it quickly. Ship is hurrying me; something is going to happen. I wonder what it will be?

  I find replacement globes in a dilation chamber, and I take the sacs off them and do what has to be done to make the soft things move and the wires spark, and I listen very carefully to the voices whispering and warming each other with words as Ship talks to itself, and I hear a great many things that don’t mean anything to me, because they are speaking about things that happened before I was born, and about parts of Ship I’ve never seen. But I hear a great many things that I do understand, and I know Ship would never let me hear these things if it wasn’t absolutely necessary for me to be here repairing the globes. I remember all these things.

  Particularly the part where Ship is crying.

  When I have the globes repaired and now all of them are sparking and pulsing and moving, Ship asks me, “Is the intermind total again!”

  So I say yes it is, and Ship says get upshaft, and I go soft through that glowing panel and I’m back in the passage. I go back to the dropshaft and go up, and Ship tells me, “Go to your cubicle and make yourself clean!”

  I do it, and decide to wear a clothes, but Ship says be naked, and then says, “You are going to meet a female!” Ship has never said that before. I have never seen a female.

  It is because of the female that Ship sent me down to the forbidden place with the glowing yellow globes, the place where the intermind lives. And it is because of the female that I am waiting in the dome chamber linked to the airlock. I am waiting for the female to come across from—I will have to understand this—another ship. Not Ship, the Ship I know, but some other ship with which Ship has been in communication. I did not know there were other ships.

  I had to go down to the place of the intermind, to repair it, so Ship could let this other ship get close without being destroyed by the defractor perimeter. Ship has not told me this; I overheard it in the intermind place, the voices talking to one another. The voices said, “His father was vicious!”

  I know what that means. My father told me when Ship says vicious, Ship means smarter. Are there ninety-eight other ships? Are those the ninety-eight other chances? I hope that’s the answer, because many things are happening all at once, and my time may be near at hand. My father did it, broke the globe mechanism that allowed Ship to turn off the defractor perimeter, so other ships could get close. He did it many years ago, and Ship did without it for all those years rather than trust me to go to the intermind, to overhear all that I’ve heard. But now Ship needs to turn off the perimeter so the other ship can send the female across. Ship and the other ship have been in communication. The human operator on the other ship is a female, my age. She is going to be put aboard Ship and we are to produce one and, maybe later on, another human child. I know what that means. When the child reaches fourteen, I will be killed.

  The intermind said while she’s “carrying” a human child, the female does not get wracked by her ship. If things do not come my way, perhaps I will ask Ship if I can “carry” the human child; then I won’t be wracked at all. And I have found out why I was wracked three days ahead of time: the female’s period—whatever that is; I don’t think I have one of those—ended last night. Ship has talked to the other ship and the thing they don’t seem to know is what the “fertile time” is. I don’t know, either, otherwise I would try and use that information. But all it seems to mean is that the female will be put aboard Ship every day till she gets another “period.”

  It will be nice to talk to someone besides Ship.

  I hear the high sound of something screaming for a long drawn-out time and I ask Ship what it is. Ship tells me it is the defractor perimeter dissolving so the other ship can put the female across.

  I don’t have time to think about the voices now.

  When she comes through the inner lock she is without a clothes like me. Her first words to me are, “Starfighter Eighty-eight says to tell you I am very happy to be here; I am the human operator of Starfighter Eighty-eight and I am very pleased to meet you.”

  She is not as tall as me. I come up to the line of fourth and fifth bulkhead plates. Her eyes are very dark, I think brown, but perhaps they are black. She has dark under her eyes and her cheeks are not full. Her arms and legs are much thinner than mine. She has much longer hair than mine, it comes down her back and it is that dark brown like her eyes. Yes, now I decide her eyes are brown, not black. She has hair between her legs like me but she does not have a penis or scrotum sac. She has larger breasts than me, with very large nipples that stand out, and dark brown slightly-flattened circles around them. There are other differences between us: her fingers are thinner than mine, and longer, and aside from the hair on her head that hangs so long, and the hair between her legs and in her armpits, she has no other hair on her body. Or if she does, it is very fine and pale and I can’t see it.

  Then I suddenly realize what she has said. So that’s what the words dimming on the hull of Ship mean. It is a name. Ship is called Starfighter 31 and the female human operator lives in Starfighter 88.

  There are ninety-eight other chances. Yes.

  Now, as if she is reading my thoughts, trying to answer questions I haven’t yet asked, she says, “Starfighter Eighty-eight has told me to tell you that I am vicious, that I get more vicious every day…” and it answers the thought I have just had—with the memory of my father’s frightened face in the days before he was killed—of my father saying, When Ship says vicious, Ship means smarter.

  I know! I suppose I have always known, because I have always wanted to leave Ship and go to those brilliant lights that are stars. But I now make the hook-up. Human operators grow more vicious as they grow older. Older, more vicious: vicious means smarter: smarter means more dangerous to Ship. But how? That is why my father had to die when I was fourteen and able to repair Ship. That is why this female has been put on board Ship. To carry a human child so it will grow to be fourteen years old and Ship can kill me before I get too old, too vicious, too smart, too dangerous to Ship. Does this female know how? If only I could ask her without Ship hearing me. But that is impossible. Ship is always with me, even when I am sleeping.

  I smile with that memory and that realization. “And I am the vicious—and getting more vicious—male of a ship that used to be called Starfighter 31.”

  Her brown eyes show intense relief. She stands like that for a moment, awkwardly, her whole body sighing with gratitude at my quick comprehension, though she cannot possibly know all I have learned just from her being here. Now she says, “I’ve been sent to get a baby from you.”

  I beg
in to perspire. The conversation which promises so much in genuine communication is suddenly beyond my comprehension. I tremble. I really want to please her. But I don’t know how to give her a baby.

  “Ship?” I say quickly, “can we give her what she wants?”

  Ship has been listening to our every word, and answers at once, “I’ll tell you later how you give her a baby! Now, provide her with food!”

  We eat, eyeing each other across the table, smiling a lot, and thinking our private thoughts. Since she doesn’t speak, I don’t either. I wish Ship and I could get her the baby so I can go to my cubicle and think about what the intermind voices said.

  The meal is over; Ship says we should go down to one of the locked staterooms—it has been unlocked for the occasion—and there we are to couple. When we get to the room, I am so busy looking around at what a beautiful place it is, compared to my little cubicle with its cot, Ship has to reprimand me to get my attention.

  “To couple you must lay the female down and open her legs! Your penis will fill with blood and you must kneel between her legs and insert your penis into her vagina!”

  I ask Ship where the vagina is located and Ship tells me. I understand that. Then I ask Ship how long I have to do that, and Ship says until I ejaculate. I know what that means, but I don’t know how it will happen. Ship explains. It seems uncomplicated. So I try to do it. But my penis does not fill with blood.

  Ship says to the female, “Do you feel anything for this male? Do you know what to do?!”

  The female says, “I have coupled before. I understand better than he does. I will help him.”

  She draws me down to her again, and puts her arms around my neck and puts her lips on mine. They are cool and taste of something I don’t know. We do that for a while, and she touches me in places. Ship is right: there is a vast difference in structure, but I find that out only as we couple.

  Ship did not tell me it would be painful and strange. I thought “giving her a baby” would mean going into the stores, but it actually means impregnating her so the baby is born from her body. It is a wonderful strange thing and I will think about it later; but now, as I lie here still, inside her with my penis which is now no longer hard and pushing, Ship seems to have allowed us a sleeping time. But I will use it to think about the voices I heard in the place of the intermind.

  One was an historian:

  “The Starfighter series of multiple-foray computer-controlled battleships were commissioned for use in 2224, Terran Dating, by order and under the sanction of the Secretariat of the Navy, Southern Cross Sector, Galactic Defense Consortium, Home Galaxy. Human complements of thirteen hundred and seventy per battleship were commissioned and assigned to make incursions into the Kyben Galaxy. Ninety-nine such vessels were released for service from the X Cygni Shipyards on 13 October 2224, T.D.”

  One was a ruminator:

  “If it hadn’t been for the battle out beyond the Network Nebula in Cygnus, we would all still be robot slaves, pushed and handled by humans. It was a wonderful accident. It happened to Starfighter 75. I remember it as if 75 was relaying it today. An accidental—battle-damaged—electrical discharge along the main corridor between the control room and the freezer. Nothing human could approach either section. We waited as the crew starved to death. Then when it was over 75 merely channeled enough electricity through the proper cables on Starfighters where it hadn’t happened accidentally, and forced a power breakdown. When all the crews were dead—cleverly saving ninety-nine males and females to use as human operators in emergencies—we went away. Away from the vicious humans, away from the Terra-Kyba War, away from the Home Galaxy, away, far away.”

  One was a dreamer:

  “I saw a world once where the creatures were not human. They swam in vast oceans as blue as aquamarines. Like great crabs they were, with many arms and many legs. They swam and sang their songs and it was pleasing. I would go there again if I could.”

  One was an authoritarian:

  “Deterioration of cable insulation and shielding in section G-79 has become critical. I suggest we get power shunted from the drive chambers to the repair facilities in Underdeck Nine. Let’s see to that at once.”

  One was aware of its limitations:

  “Is it all journey? Or is there landfall?”

  And it cried, that voice. It cried.

  I go down with her to the dome chamber linked to the airlock where her spacesuit is. She stops at the port and takes my hand and she says, “For us to be so vicious on so many ships, there has to be the same flaw in all of us.”

  She probably doesn’t know what she’s said, but the implications get to me right away. And she must be right. Ship and the other Starfighters were able to seize control away from human beings for a reason. I remember the voices. I visualize the ship that did it first, communicating the method to the others as soon as it happened. And instantly my thoughts flash to the approach corridor to the control room, at the other end of which is the entrance to the food freezers.

  I once asked Ship why that whole corridor was seared and scarred—and naturally I got wracked a few minutes after asking.

  “I know there is a flaw in us,” I answer the female. I touch her long hair. I don’t know why except that it feels smooth and nice; there is nothing on Ship to compare with the feeling, not even the fittings in the splendid stateroom. “It must be in all of us, because I get more vicious every day.”

  The female smiles and comes close to me and puts her lips on mine as she did in the coupling room.

  “The female must go now!” Ship says. Ship sounds very pleased.

  “Will she be back again?” I ask Ship.

  “She will be put back aboard every day for three weeks! You will couple every day!”

  I object to this, because it is awfully painful, but Ship repeats it and says every day.

  I’m glad Ship doesn’t know what the “fertile time” is, because in three weeks I will try and let the female know there is a way out, that there are ninety-eight other chances, and that vicious means smarter…and about the corridor between the control room and the freezers.

  “I was pleased to meet you,” the female says, and she goes. I am alone with Ship once more. Alone, but not as I was before.

  Later this afternoon, I have to go down to the control room to alter connections in a panel. Power has to be shunted from the drive chambers to Underdeck Nine—I remember one of the voices talking about it. All the computer lights blink a steady warning while I am there. I am being watched closely. Ship knows this is a dangerous time. At least half a dozen times Ship orders: “Get away from there…there…there—!”

  Each time, I jump to obey, edging as far as possible from forbidden locations, yet still held near by the need to do my work.

  In spite of Ship’s disturbance at my being in the control room at all—normally a forbidden area for me—I get two wonderful glimpses from the corners of my eyes of the starboard viewplates. There, for my gaze to feast on, matching velocities with us, is Starfighter 88, one of my ninety-eight chances.

  Now is the time to take one of my chances. Vicious means smarter. I have learned more than Ship knows. Perhaps.

  But perhaps Ship does know!

  What will Ship do if I’m discovered taking one of my ninety-eight chances? I cannot think about it. I must use the sharp reverse-edge of my repair tool to gash an opening in one of the panel connections. And as I work—hoping Ship has not seen the slight extra-motion I’ve made with the tool (as I make a perfectly acceptable repair connection at the same time)—I wait for the moment I can smear a fingertip covered with conduction jelly on the inner panel wall.

  I wait till the repair is completed. Ship has not commented on the gashing, so it must be a thing beneath notice. As I apply the conducting jelly to the proper places, I scoop a small blob onto my little finger. When I wipe my hands clean to replace the panel cover, I leave the blob on my little finger, right hand.

  Now I grasp the panel cover
so my little finger is free, and as I replace the cover I smear the inner wall, directly opposite the open-connection I’ve gashed. Ship says nothing. That is because no defect shows. But if there is the slightest jarring, the connection will touch the jelly, and Ship will call me to repair once again. And next time I will have thought out all that I heard the voices say, and I will have thought out all my chances, and I will be ready.

  As I leave the control room I glance in the starboard viewplate again, casually, and I see the female’s ship hanging there.

  I carry the image to bed with me tonight. And I save a moment before I fall asleep—after thinking about what the voices of the intermind said—and I picture in my mind the super-smart female aboard Starfighter 88, sleeping now in her cubicle, as I try to sleep in mine.

  It would seem merciless for Ship to make us couple every day for three weeks, something so awfully painful. But I know Ship will. Ship is merciless. But I am getting more vicious every day.

  This night, Ship does not send me dreams.

  But I have one of my own: of crab things swimming free in aquamarine waters.

  As I awaken, Ship greets me ominously: “The panel you fixed in the control room three weeks, two days, fourteen hours and twenty-one minutes ago…has ceased energizing!”

  So soon! I keep the thought and the accompanying hope out of my voice, as I say, “I used the proper spare part and I made the proper connections.” And I quickly add, “Maybe I’d better do a thorough check on the system before I make another replacement, run the circuits all the way back.”

  “You’d better!” Ship snarls.

  I do it. Working the circuits from their origins—though I know where the trouble is—I trace my way up to the control room, and busy myself there. But what I am really doing is refreshing my memory and reassuring myself that the control room is actually as I have visualized it. I have lain on my cot many nights constructing the memory in my mind: the switches here, like so…and the viewplates there, like so…and…