The Ship Who Sang (21 page)

Transferring back, it took her a moment – a moment of regret that seemed an eternity – to get her bearings. She detected the container neatly secured in her engine room, violently radio-active as yet, so it had better stay where it was.

Someone groaned in the dimly lit cabin. Dimly lit? But she hadn't lowered the lights!

She brought up every light in the ship, scanning the pilot's cabin for Ansra. The bed was empty. How had she thrown off the drug? Helva
did a searching scan and found Ansra, crouched down by Prane's body. In her hands were the wires that led to the transceivers on Prane and Kurla.

‘Ansra, that's the same as murder!' Helva roared, trying with sheer volume to stun the woman. With the determination of vengeance, Ansra ripped the helmets from their users and tried to tear the units apart.

Even as Ansra was acting, Helva triggered the return on the transceivers, desperately hoping that she'd forestall Ansra's intention. It seemed so long, with the woman's harsh panting as metronome, until transceiver lights winked out across the rim of the helmets. On one, the light remained. On Chadress.

‘Davo! Davo!' Helva shouted.

The actor, shaking his head as the urgency of her voice roused him, responded dazedly. Then he saw Ansra, saw what she was doing and launched himself at her. Davo's thrust pinned her against the far wall as other members of the cast began to revive.

‘Escalus, help Davo with that crazy woman,' Helva ordered, for Ansra was twisting and screaming, beating at Davo with maddened strength. ‘Benvolio, come on, man. Snap out of it. Check Chadress. How's his pulse?'

Benvolio leaned to the limp body beside him. ‘Too slow, I think. It's so . . . so faint.'

‘I've got to get back to Corvi. Someone – Nia, you're awake. Find two usable transceivers in the
mess Ansra made of them and put 'em on Prane and Kurla. I've got to get them back here.'

‘Wait, Helva.' She heard Davo call as she was in the act of transferring.

The Manager was beside her. And so were the shells that were undeniably Prane, Kurla, and Chadress. Their pressure dominances were overwhelming.

‘Stay with us, Helva. Stay with us. It's a new life, brand new, with all the power in the universe to control. Why go back to a sterile life in an immobile envelope? Stay with us.'

Too tempted, too terrified to listen further, Helva retreated to the safety of her ship, the sanctuary of the only security she knew.

‘
Helva!
' Davo's voice rang in all her ears.

‘I'm back,' she murmured.

‘Thank God. I was afraid you'd stay with them.'

‘You knew they'd stay?'

‘Even without Ansra's help,' Davo admitted. Beyond him Nia nodded.

‘It's the answer for Kurla and Prane, you know,' Nia said. ‘Hell, they can combine energies now,' and her laugh was mirthless.

‘But Chadress?'

‘Shock you, huh, that a brawn would defect?' Davo asked sympathetically. ‘But he wouldn't be a brawn much longer would he, Helva?'

‘And what if I had stayed?'

‘Well,' Davo admitted, ‘Chadress didn't think you could, but he did think you should.'

‘It was a case of being where I am needed,
Davo. And sometimes you have to help by
not
doing anything, I guess,' she added, more to herself. She looked then toward the four breathing but lifeless bodies. ‘
Four?
' she cried aloud, stunned to identify Ansra, laid beside the others. ‘What did you do? How could you do it?'

‘Easy,' Nia replied, shrugging negligently. ‘A case of the punishment fitting the crime. Besides, the Corviki are better qualified to deal with unstable energies than we are, Helva. Can't we leave now?'

‘Manager said the exchange had been made,' Escalus said. ‘Have they unblocked your power?'

‘Yes,' Helva sighed, unwilling to act yet.

‘Helva,' Davo murmured gently, his hand palm down on the titanium column, ‘Helva, the play was the thing, wherein to catch the conscience.'

As she wearily fed the return voyage tape into the computer, his words echoed in her mind like a gentle absolution.

With an exquisite sense of reprieve, Helva watched official debriefing experts disperse to their waiting vehicles that clustered in the floodlights at the base of the XH-834 like energy motes . . . Helva censored that analogy. Night-piercing lights blinked on, jabbed in crisscross webs as the groundcars turned and wheeled. All momentarily were parallel, outlining the darkened lower stories of Regulus Base tower. Not all the vehicles made for this structure, Helva
noted. Some darted beyond, out of the Base complex, into the distant metropolis.

Shell-people were presumably inexhaustible, but Helva felt drained and depressed. She was not sure which experience had been the worse: coping with Beta Corvi or with the repetitive questioning of the affair by singleminded specialists. She could appreciate why Prane had made use of mindtrap to retard neuron loss. Had she no memory banks to scan, she might cheerfully have forgotten much of what had happened. Too bad she couldn't.

Helva sighed. Not, Helva, the XH-834, sleek BB ship of Central Worlds Medical Service, but Helva, the woman.

They encase us in titanium shells, place the shells in titanium bulkheads and considered us invulnerable. Physical injury is the least of the harmful accidents that this universe inflicts on its inhabitants; it is soonest mended.

Lights began to appear in the Base Tower and Helva was perversely delighted. So, others would have a sleepless night tonight. They deserve it, unsettling her fragile resolution of the Beta Corvi affair with their barrage of questions. How powerful was the Corvi community? How large were the individual entities? How long did she believe the human/Corviki shells that contained Prane, Kurla, Chadress, and Ansra would retain their previous loyalties and memories? How soon could, should a second expedition attempt to broach their atmosphere? What other mediums
of exchange would Helva recommend, assuming Prane's encyclopedia of drama was bled from him? And why did she feel that the Corviki environment was so dangerous to the human mind? Could she explain the dangers? Could she recommend preventive measures to be used in preconditioning?

There was no consolation in the fact that every other member of the mission was also being closely interrogated, prodded and probed, physically as well as mentally. At least she was spared that, although the shell medics had run an acidity test and checked the intake on the nutrients that sustained her. There had been a rise in the protein flow, which was deemed consonant with the unusual activity required of her.

The Base computers were going to get a workout tonight, but she didn't want to have to think at all. Not about the Corviki, at any rate, or the four humans who had opted to remain in Corviki shells, to exchange and lose energy in the new suborbital . . .

‘I don't want to think at all,' Helva said aloud.

Restlessly she scanned outside, her glance reaching briefly the lighted windows in the brawn barracks. She felt no desire to place a call there. She hadn't the requisite flexibility to enjoy contact with new personalities, usually such a reviving and stimulating experience for her. She didn't want, either, to be alone tonight.

‘This time I get a brawn before I move a centimeter from this base,' she vowed.

The Service cemetery where Jennan lay buried was mercifully lost in darkness kilometers across the huge Base field, but she began to feel that distance psychologically diminishing.

Rather than dwell on that closed chapter of her life, she masochistically reviewed the last few hours. Had she really given them all the information available to her? Was she subconsciously withholding a single important fact or minor observation? Had she really analyzed the schizophrenic trauma of the human mind in the Corvi shell? Had she . . .

A ground car braked to a rocking drop at the base and someone activated the passenger lift, which she had not withdrawn when the last of the debriefing group had left.

‘Who the hell . . .'

‘Parollan!' A sharp voice reassured her in the Supervisor's curt way.'

As her Service Supervisor, Niall Parollan had naturally been present during debriefing. He had kept to the role of arbiter, speaking only when the experts had got excited or too insistent on points that Helva was unable to clarify. She had been grateful as well as impressed by his unexpectedly deft handling of the incidents. Evidently Parollan enjoyed considerable prestige in spite of his blunt manners. Was he returning for a private session?

He stepped into the airlock, feet spread, arms
dangling at his side. He was glaring at her column with unexpected belligerence.

‘Now what have I done?' Helva asked, masking a sudden apprehension.

As he broke the pose and swaggered forward, Helva wondered if he had been drinking heavily.

‘I claim refuge, milady,' he replied, bowing with exaggerated flourishes.

‘And a cup of coffee?'

‘You're out of it. Those fardling circuit-clowns drank it all up. But you're off bounds and incommunicado 'sfar as Cencom knows – my orders, m'love – so you're the safest place for
me
to be.'

‘You're not in trouble over the Beta Corvi . . .'

‘Trouble?' and he sat down on the couch facing her column, suddenly collapsing limply back against the cushions. ‘Hell no. Not my Helva gal. Not Niall Parollan, Supervisor extraordinary. But
we
are,' and a wild sweep of his arm suggested galactic rather than service parameters. ‘Well, you're not to be bothered, and I'm not to be bothered, and by morning, maybe the ol' brains'll be ready for more draining and dredging and . . .' His voice ground down to a whisper.

Helva thought he had gone to sleep, but then she saw that he was regarding her through narrowed eyes.

‘Did
anyone
remember to tell you how far you exceeded optimum expectation? Did the Chief remember to mention you've got two more
commendations on your distinguished record? And a whopping bonus!' He pounded the couch in emphasis. ‘You'll Pay-off if you keep up this rate.' Then his voice softened. ‘Did I remember to thank you, Helva, for pulling off a lousy, fardling, stinking job you got conned into . . .'

‘Not by you, Parollan . . .'

‘Ha!' Niall Parollan arched his body to let out that burst of laughter before he sank again into the cushions. ‘Well, you did a great job, gal. I don't think another ship could have pulled it off.'

‘Maybe another ship would have brought all her passengers back.'

‘Of all the noisome fardles, Helva,' and Parollan sat straight up, ‘I don't need that kind of irrational thinking from
you
! Prane and Kurla had their own reasons for transition; so did Chadress. All three profited. As for Ansra Colmer, best place for that bitch. Outsmarted herself for once. There is true justice in the universe, and the Corviki never heard of Hammurabi!'

He lay back again, lacing his fingers behind his head.

‘I like to see 'em sweat, those nardy bastards in Procedures,' he chuckled.

‘Over the bodies? Wouldn't decent burial be indicated by now?'

‘Why? The bodies are still clinically alive, Helva.
Your
body is clinically dead,' he added with utter disregard for the tacit strictures on
that subject in the presence of a shell-person. ‘And neither you nor I, nor anyone else on this Base tonight thinks
you're
a zombie. What does constitute death, Helva? The lack of mind, or soul, or what-have-you? Or the lack of independent motion? You're mobile enough, my pet, and you can't move a muscle.'

‘You're drunk, Niall Parollan.'

‘Oh, no! Parollan's a long way from drunk. I'm just hanging loose, gal, hanging loose.' He sat up in a single movement, that denied any impairment of motor control. ‘Ethically, socially, you delivered four corpses to that Fleet ship outside Beta Corvi. Four mechanically functioning but empty husks. And their original inhabitants, owners, what-have-you, won't be back in 'em.'

He was on his feet, striding toward Helva. ‘There's your chance, gal. Opt out . . . opt out into Kurla's body: it's the youngest. Or Ansra's. Or Chadress' for that matter, if you'd like a change of pace.'

For one blinding second of whirling possibilities, Helva considered the staggering proposal. As she had fleetingly considered remaining in the Corvi shell. Had she really presented an unbiased report to the specialists?

‘Presuming, of course, that I want to be a mobile human. Remember, Parollan,' she managed to answer in a reasonable voice, ‘I've just
been
in another body. I find I prefer myself.'

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.