The Ship Who Sang (20 page)

It was as well, Helva knew, for the cast could not have accepted, in their present enervation, the devastating truth of their captivity.

The silence of the ship was unbroken, even by Prane's nightly litany. Helva, too, found herself close to the verge of unconsciousness, too fatigued to worry about the problems of the morrow.

The next day brought no visible change. Everyone was still enervated. Kurla turned professional and roused those seeking oblivion in slumber to take high-protein meals and massive therapeutic i.v. sprays.

Toward the evening of that day, Helva got Chadress alone in the galley for a conference.

‘We'll have to put it off as long as we can, Helva. These people are drained dry. I know,' and he shook his head slowly. ‘How're you doing?'

Helva temporized. ‘I always maintained shell people are as human as anyone mobile. I know it now. I'll find it extremely difficult to go back to Beta Corvi myself. Only I
know
we have no choice.'

‘What do you mean, Helva?' Chadress didn't
have enough energy left to be more than mildly curious.

‘They're wondering where we are right now. They have the understudies lined up and raring to learn.'

Chadress mustered a defeated groan.

‘Helva, how can we ask anyone here to undertake that?'

‘As I said, Chadress, we have no choice.'

‘I don't follow you.'

‘There is a little block on any lead into my power sources. I couldn't even dodge a meteor if I had to.'

Chadress dropped his head into his hands, his whole body shuddering. ‘Helva, I
can't
go back. I can't I'd . . .'

‘You don't have to go back. Not right now. Lord, you don't even have the energy to put on a transceiver,' she said, deliberately misunderstanding him. ‘It's up to me.'

‘What's up to you?' Prane asked, drifting into the galley.

‘I'm going down to explain our absence.'

‘On the contrary,' Prane objected, trying to straighten his shoulders but all he managed was a directionless lurch against the warming units. ‘I'm the director. I should explain our inability to fulfill our contract.'

Chadress groaned in distress.

‘You're out on your feet, Prane. Chadress, too. I'm going. That's final. Chadress, we'll discuss this further when I get back,' she ordered.
‘Chadress?' she prompted until he nodded acquiescence.

Pain assailed Helva's mind in a brief flicker of thought as she reentered the Corviki envelope. The myriad tactile sensations from her trailing appendages indicated the presence of several strong pressure-dominances. How was she going to explain human frailty to these masters of pure energy?

The atmosphere, however, was unusually free of energy emissions. Manager, dark and full and rich, discreetly contained his mass of pressure-dominances. The others, ranged beyond him at a courteous distance, must be the understudies, she thought. If a Corviki had compassionate levels in his consciousness, surely the Manager was activating them, for he was patient as Helva struggled to present the explanatory equation, pointing out the unresolvable fractions. He replied with a show of depletion that could only be an apology that the unprecedented feedback and the production of an unstable reaction mass had resulted in such entropy for the visitors. However, they had themselves as cause.

Nevertheless, Manager sternly informed Helva, a new condition of immense significance had developed. Every single energy group around this thermal core insisted on obtaining the formulae which could repeat those unique emissions. The benefits of such expulsion would rejuvenate static energy groups once considered lost beyond reactivation. The formulae must be
passed on. No matter would be considered too precious in the exchange.

Helva, feeling she was emitting desperate energies, repeated the impossibility.

Some arrangement would have to be effected, the Manager insisted. There was one unit – he drew the equation of sound that meant Juliet – which had shown an admirable control of intrinsic energy. Let it return and deliver the formulae. Otherwise . . . the Manager swayed his tentacles in an unnerving approximation of a human shrug.

For a long interval Helva lacked the moral courage to indicate her return. She tried to think how this simple mission had turned into such a catastrophe. Ruthlessly she reviewed the elements of this impasse, trying to find a solution. There
had
to be one.

How cosmically ironic that Ansra Colmer, so bent on ruining them, was the only personality with sufficient egocentricity to survive the experience. But would she save them all?

‘I'm not out of my mind, even if you all are,' was Ansra's immediate response. ‘Nothing . . . not even if you beat me to death . . . could make me go back to that . . . that . . . gas factory. I've done all my contract called for.'

‘Actually you haven't, Ansra,' Davo replied wearily, ‘not that any of us are likely to take you to task for it at Guild. But those contracts read that, if the Corviki accept our dramatic presentation as payment for their techniques
we must instruct Corviki understudies.'

‘Go back? Just to teach a Corviki to play Juliet?' Ansra laughed, shrilly, semi-hysterical. She whirled on Prane. ‘I told them at Regulus that you'd fail. And you have! I'm glad,
glad, GLAD
!'

Her hatred washed like a visible tide over sensibilities already abraded and tender. Still laughing, she careened off the walls on her way to the cabin, collapsing like a limp doll in front of the mirror, alternately laughing and staring at her reflection.

‘She's gone stark raving mad,' Nia stated in a flat voice.

‘I don't think so, unless we're all mad right now,' Davo replied judiciously.

‘Well, we can't just sit here and let her spite us,' Nia exclaimed, rousing to indignation. ‘She's just got to do her part.'

‘The show must go on?' Escalus asked sarcastically. ‘Not this one.'

‘I apologize to everyone,' Prane began, rising to his feet. ‘Ansra's grievance is with me. You shall not be the victims of it.'

‘Christ, Prane, spare us that role,' Davo exploded.

‘No role, the solution is simple,' the Solar went on, his voice and manner so matter-of-fact that the accusation of heroics was void. ‘As director, I know every single line in this play. In fact, I have complete recall of some 212 ancient, medieval, classical, atomic, and modem dramas.'

‘You'd die under the strain,' Kurla cried, throwing her arms around him.

He disengaged himself, smiling tenderly at her.

‘I'm dying anyway, my dear. I'd prefer a good exit line.'

‘Next week
East Lynne,'
roared Helva, successfully shocking everyone alert with her mocking laughter. Prane was deeply hurt, which Helva found a trifle healthier than heroic self-sacrifice. ‘Now will everyone
calm down
! All is not lost because Ansra Colmer is a vicious, vengeful bitch. In the first place, Solar Prane, we don't want the Corviki possessed of our entire bankroll in one mass cathartic purge. One play,
Romeo and Juliet,
which has rolled 'em up by the fronds, is all we contracted for. And we shall give it to them and then accelerate out of their sphere of influence as fast as I can blow my jets. I shall strongly, urgently recommend that we do not darken their dominance again until our bright boys figure out how to cushion our fragile psyches against Corviki feedback.

‘And, Solar Prane, you are not the only person on board with perfect recall. I know this may sound fatuous but I too – probably Davo as well, possibly our Escalus – know every bloody line of R & J, too. All three of us are physically and emotionally better able than you to go back down to Beta Corvi . . .'

‘
Listen to me
,' she bellowed when everyone began to protest. She shifted to the voice that
signified a broad smile and hammed it: ‘
This is Your Captain
speaking!' And as they broke into laughter, became dead serious. ‘I, Helva, have the final responsibility for this mission and for everyone on board the ship.'

‘I know all of
Romeo and Juliet
, too. Used to play Juliet, you know, when I was in my first hundred,' Nia said quietly, before Helva could continue. ‘And you've forgotten something, Helva. A very essential point. It's
performances
, on Beta Corvi, not rehearsals, which rock us. I feel sure I could cope with a rehearsal situation, with the customary halts and breaks needed to teach understudies. We don't even have to rehearse the full seven hours. Not if these Corviki want the plays so bad. We can call the tune.' Then her expression changed and she glanced toward the women's cabin, where Ansra was laughing softly. ‘And I'll be goddamned if I'll let that bitch close the most successful show I've ever been in.'

Escalus roared with laughter and embraced Nia in a mighty hug.

‘By the toenails of the seven saints of Scorpius, neither will I!'

‘I'm game, too,' Benvolio agreed, ‘and bugger her!' he added with a rude gesture in Ansra's direction.

‘Look, Helva, get the Corviki to give us another day's rest,' Chadress said. ‘Then we'll all go down and finish the job. The show must go on!'

‘Who'll do Juliet?' Davo asked and then answered his own question by pointing directly at Kurla. ‘You'll do Juliet.'

‘Oh, no. Not me!'

‘Why not, my sweet young love?' asked Prane, pulling her hands from her cheeks and kissing her tenderly before them all. ‘You're more Juliet than she at her best.'

‘I'm worried about only one thing,' Escalus said then. ‘I don't like her – here – with us – there,' and his forefinger punctuated his words with stabs in the proper directions.

‘A very good point,' Davo agreed with a whistle.

‘No problem,' Helva assured them. ‘Miss Colmer is . . . resting, I believe the professional term is. I shall encourage it.' And she proceeded to flood the pilot's cabin with sleepy gas.

The Manager signaled acceptance, emitting relief that the problem had a solution. Helva sent everyone off to bed after a protein-rich meal. Kurla and Nia preferred to bunk on the couches despite the fact that Helva had cleared the gas from the cabin. Kurla agreed to administer a timed sedative to Ansra to keep her unconscious while there was no-one in the ship.

The cast voted to limit the first rehearsal to 4 hours. However, all apprehensions vanished when it became evident to the troupe that the understudies were very discreet with energy
emissions. In fact, back at the ship again, there was a mood close to hysterical relief.

‘Those Corviki are the quickest studies I've ever worked with. Tell 'em once and they just don't forget,' Escalus exclaimed.

‘Yes, they are holding back, aren't they,' Davo agreed. ‘But will they know how much to emit, to make the show come alive? I mean, there's that old difference between amateur and pro.'

‘Good point, Davo,' Prane said, ‘and one I discussed with Manager. I talked over unconserved energy levels with him and he assured me that he had taken measurements during our performance so that they will know when to emit energy to produce the proper reactions. He has great dominance, that man, great dominance.'

‘And a fine sense of level integrities, too,' Chadress added, nodding thoughtfully.

‘You sound more Corviki than human,' Nia said in her droll way.

Prane and Chadress looked at her, their expressions puzzled.

‘Well, you do,' Kurla agreed.

‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know,' Prane said into the silence, but, to Helva, his joviality sounded forced.

The second rehearsal went so well that Prane decided only one, slightly longer additional session would complete the contract.

‘Let's get it over with then,' Escalus said. ‘There's something seductive about that
freak-out place that gets to you. I've a hard time thinking human.'

Escalus was right, Helva thought. She found it all too easy to think in Corvikian terms. And Prane and Chadress seemed to have moved theatre semantics into another frame of reference entirely. She'd heard them discussing staging in terms of excitation phases, shell movements, particle emissions, sub-shell directionals until she wondered if they were talking theatre or nuclear physics.

She kept an eye on Prane, anyhow. Kurla was, too, but playing Juliet to Prane's Romeo was over-loading her circuits sufficiently to cloud her discretionary . . . Helva caught herself up sharply. The sooner they all got away from here, the better.

She watched Kurla administer an additional sedative to Ansra. The woman had been kept unconscious for 40 hours. Five more wouldn't hurt her. It had certainly improved the ship's atmosphere.

She told Kurla that she'd be down directly and then checked all circuitry on the ship. Once the Corviki removed that power block they could leave, but she wanted no last-minute delays.

Prane was offstage when she got down, dominating with his understudy. She found hers and then was swept into scene ii of the fourth act.

The Corviki had more trouble this cycle controlling their suppressed energy. It occurred to Helva that Davo need not have worried that the
dramatic content would be lacking. Remove all the instructors with their frail spirits, and the Corviki would deliver every bit of excitation required by the formulae.

Helva had to expend effort now to control excitement. Prane did, too, for as he and his understudy, the two Balthazars beside them, waited to enter the churchyard for Romeo's death scene, he seemed to be leaking energy.

‘The time controls are fixed?' he asked nervously. ‘They cannot be altered?'

He was on before Helva could answer.

The rehearsal was soon over. The Manager had to exert tremendous control over his spontaneous emissions as he complimented the actors. He announced that the information on isotope stabilization had been sent to the ship in a specially prepared container, and that the ship's power was unblocked. He kept emitting on such a broad band that Helva felt the insidious tug of entropy and resolutely made her farewells.