The Ship Who Sang (19 page)

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 shells.'

‘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.

She listened avidly until the sleepy voice trailed into silence after

They picked up the staging the next ‘day' where they had left off. Helva had the feeling none of the Corviki had left the ‘stage' or were even aware that the troupe had been away. Did they control time as well as energy? Was time, as one Alpheccan theoretician maintained, merely another emission of energy?

Her perceptions were more acute today. She had control over her envelope and the sensory data it constantly received. And while the others were beginning to act, Ansra was consciously damping down.

Manager approached Ansra, in front of all, just before time was up.

‘There is no logical reason to withhold energy. Conservation is not the aim of this experiment. We are assessing the effects of this form of energy expulsion on the pressure-senses and dominance factors. You inhibit this experiment. Therefore, lose energy as the equative factors require.'

‘Or?'

A ripple of pressure and color answered Ansra's ultimatum.

‘The envelope will be permanently emptied . . .'

‘I will not go back to that perverted seascape to be insulted and degraded in public,' Ansra declared.

She was rather magnificent, Helva thought, even if she left her audience unmoved.

‘That is sufficient, Ansra Colmer,' Prane said quietly, rising from the couch, his voice glacial, his eyes stony, his attitude unbending. ‘You have made your personal preferences and private opinions known to each and every member of the cast. However, there is more at stake than personal differences and everyone here has been exceedingly forbearing with your whimsies and little schemes. You
will
go back tomorrow and you will, as you were advised by the Manager, lose energy as the equative factors required.'

‘Who's going to make me?' Ansra struck a pose with that challenge.

‘Any one of us, honey,' Nia Tubb replied, forestalling Chadress and Davo, who began to rise from their seats. ‘Any one of us would be glad to make you. In fact, you might find when we got through with you here that it would be a relief to get into that Corviki envelope.'

‘You wouldn't dare!'

Helva wondered whether Ansra, having taken
a stand, was too hardheaded to retreat, or unable to believe that one of her standing could be violable. Fortunately, she was also a person who could not tolerate physical pain and a half dozen open-handed blows from Nia were an effective proof and promise.

‘Oh, no you don't, honey,' Nia cried, grabbing Ansra's arm as the sobbing woman headed for the cabin. ‘You're not moving from my side – because I don't trust you out of my sight. Now you sit down and you'll eat and you'll behave. And tomorrow you'll be the best Juliet that's ever trod air.'

That scene, on top of the psychological exhaustion of rehearsing on Beta Corvi, drained everyone's reserve. Chadress and Kurla passed around liquor bulbs and a high-protein soup. As soon as they ate, people drifted off to their bunks and meshed in.

‘Keep Nia and Ansra under observation, Helva, will you?' Chadress suggested.

There's something different about him, Helva realized, a new depth, oddly Corvikian.

‘Do you think she will play now?' Helva heard Kurla asking Prane. The two were the last awake, and seemed unable to separate.

‘Her color was that of an anger-fear composite . . .' Prane stopped short, staring down at Kurla.

‘You're thinking Corviki,' she laughed, her eyes dancing. ‘It's contagious, isn't it? Like assuming the characteristics of the part you're
playing? See, even a rank amateur like me picks up tricks of the trade!'

‘You transfer into a very solid, warm presence on Corvi, my dear.'

The laughter caught in her throat and her eyes were filled with a haunted yearning. They seemed to be a breath away from a kiss when Prane, a garbled sound issuing from his throat, whirled away down the corridor.

Ansra lost energy the next rehearsal with such good will they were able to run completely through the play. Prane was so pleased with the result he informed the Manager that they could give the first complete performance.

‘My energy group is excited to experience the total pressure dominances of these envelopes,' the Manager replied, emanating the lavender-purples Helva equated with pleasure in Corviki. ‘Your next entry here is convenient?'

Prane agreed heartily.

‘If this emission is satisfactory,' Chadress asked, shading his dominance with the sharply controlled waste of deference to a superior force, ‘will Corviki entities then undertake a transfer of our patterns so we may fulfill our contract with you?'

‘Affirmative. For it is evident that there is a loss of egoentity superior to the programmed minimum. Entropy could exceed basic energy requirements.'

Helva felt she'd better analyze that statement the moment she returned to herself. It sounded
. . . ominous . . . to Helva, but not to her imprinted self in the Corviki envelope. Such a split of personality could be dangerous indeed.

Once back on the ship, it was easier to spot those who were psychologically twisting their orientation. They tended to express themselves in Corviki terms, as Prane and Chadress had the night before. The only one who seemed impervious was Ansra, but then, Ansra was so wrapped up in her personal grievances, she had no energy . . . there I go, moaned Helva . . . for objective experiences.

Opening night on Beta Corviki was a white-hot, frenetic triumph as far as Corviki acceptance of this form of energy loss was concerned. Beyond the stand of fronds were masses of Corviki, pulsing, throbbing as they absorbed the cast's emission, to all appearances starved for this form of energy.

Helva could feel her Corviki envelope swell to incredible dimension as the feedback resulted in a thermal reaction, giving her an unlimited mass to energize to a high excitation level. Yet she was also aware that the Corviki audience understood the conflict of the two warring energy-groups, of the desire of the two new, but not shallow, entities to combine into a new force group, of the energy-stoking of herself as the Nurse, of the brilliant light of beta particles exchanged by the two new entities, swearing neuron coalitions and, finally, forced to expend the vital energy of
their cores to bring the warring groups to the realization that co-existence was possible on their energy level.

As the Prince summed up the entropy death of the two, novas of approval exploded outside the fronded area. And Helva, gross with feedback, found herself racing to emit into the nearest drained entity some ergs of that pressure, in a self-sacrifice that was ecstatic. All around her, the atmosphere crackled, popped, boomed and thundered with the resultant explosions as immeasurable positive forces recombined and all the previously expended energy was reabsorbed.

Then, indeed, did Helva bless the surgeons. Bless and curse them for hauling her inexorably back from such glorious intercourse. She dazedly recalled her scattered wits as warning lights and signals penetrated the coruscating impressions and forced her to be aware of imminent danger.

Lax figures lay, lifeless puppets with no more sign of vitality than the slight rise and fall of chests.

Scared, Helva tripped the transceivers. Lights reluctantly faded on the transceivers and still no-one stirred. It seemed an eternity to Helva before Ansra moaned.

‘Ansra. Ansra,' Helva called in an insistent, hard voice, hoping to penetrate the woman's trancelike state. ‘Ansra. Ansra.'

‘Wha . . . what?'

‘Get to the galley. Get stimulant K in the blue i.v. spray.'

It was like moving a robot. She kept droning her orders, relentlessly forcing Ansra to obey. The woman's eyes blinked, her body jerked as Helva encouraged, ordered, demanded the necessary actions. Finally she got Ansra's hands around the right i.v., and got the uncoordinated body to depress the dermospray against her arm. The stimulant took effect.

‘Oh migod, oh migod,' Ansra muttered hoarsely. ‘Oh migod.'

‘Ansra. Give them all injections. Move, woman, move.'

The actress was still little better than an automaton, so Helva took advantage of her will-lessness to make her give Kurla and Prane the first injections. Then Chadress. It was a stunned group who returned to their former bodies.

‘I don't think I can go back there,' Escalus told Prane in a hoarse tremulo. He put both hands to his temples, where the transceiver had left a red band. ‘Never thought to see the day when I couldn't face an audience because they
liked
me too much. But man, that place is . . . is,' his eyes widened with a terror he mastered. ‘I almost said, pure entropy.' And he laughed. ‘But
that's
what's wrong with it all.'

Prane, looking as drained and haunted as the others, managed a weak smile.

‘There is no question that we have been overwhelmed by an unpredicted reaction. At this moment,' and he paused to emphasize the
phrase, ‘I would find a return engagement inconceivable. No, no discussion now. We need to convert mass – in the parlance of our hosts – into much-needed energy and to conserve our emissions. But I want to say how very, very proud I am of you all.'