The Ship Who Sang (23 page)

‘Orders can be cut without foreknowledge of
unavailable but highly relevant facts. Such as the before-mentioned corrosive atmospheres . . .'

‘Hypothetical . . .'

‘. . . but valid as a case in point. We do, you must admit, often approach relatively unexplored star systems. Therefore, it is entirely possible, not merely hypothetical, that precut orders can require an intelligent and mature reevaluation which may require what appears to be insurbordinate alteration of those same orders and/or rank disobedience to those before-mentioned orders.'

Teron had shaken his head, not sadly, because Helva was certain he had experienced no deep
human
emotions in his life, but reprovingly.

‘I know now why Central Worlds insist on a human pilot as commander of the brain-controlled ships. They are necessary, so necessary when an unreliable organism is nominally in control of so powerful an instrument as this ship.'

Helva had sputtered in astonishment at his misconception. She had been about to point out that the pilot control board did not override her.
She
had the override on the pilot.

‘There will come a day,' Teron had continued inexorably, ‘when such poor expedients are no longer necessary. Automatic operations will be perfected to such a fine degree, human brains will no longer be needed.'

‘They use
human beings,
' Helva had replied, pronouncing each syllable distinctly.

‘Ah, yes, human beings. Fallible creatures at best, we are, subject to so many pressures, so frail a barque for so great a task.' Teron tended to go in for homiletics at the drop of a gauge. ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.' He sighed. ‘And when this human element, so prone to error, is eliminated, when automation is perfected – ah, there, Helva, is the operative word – when it is
perfected,
there will be no more need for such stopgap techniques as Central Worlds must presently employ. When that perfection is achieved, ships will be truly reliable.' He patted the computer-console patronizingly.

Helva had stifled a monosyllabic comment. Historical and incontrovertible arguments welled up from her schooling and conditioning years. These were based, she abruptly realized, on incidents that unfortunately tended to support his peculiar theory of unreliability – however sane the outcome. In each instance, the brain ships had acted by ignoring or revising previous orders as the unusual circumstances they encountered required them to do. By Teron's unswerving logic, intelligence itself – whether shell or mobile – is unreliable. Helva could not see him ever admitting that intelligent conclusions are not always logical.

And right now, every scrap of intelligence, instinct, training, conditioning, and reason told Helva that brain ships do not just
disappear.
Not four in a row. Not four in less than a Regulan month. One in 100 years, yes, that was possible,
logical and probable. But there was always some hint, some deducible reason. Like the 732 – psychotic with grief on Alioth.

Why had she allowed Kira to leave her when that assignment was over? Kira would have been quite of Helva's mind in this matter, but Helva did not see the faintest hope of convincing Teron that multiple disappearances were so preposterous. Because it involved some intuition, of which Teron had none.

How had this didacticism of his escaped Psychprobe? And another thing she had noticed about him, whether he would ever admit it consciously or not, the very concept of cyborgs like Helva was repugnant to Teron. A brawn was very much aware, if the majority of Central Worlds' populations were not, that behind the ship's titanium bulkhead reposed a shell, containing an inert – but – complete human body.

If only Teron weren't so thoroughly irritating, she could almost feel sorry for him. And before he had antagonized her, she had actually understood this drive to perfection that motivated every thought and action. Teron was psychotically afraid of error, of making any mistake because mistake implied failure and failure was inadmissible. If he made no mistakes, he would never be guilty of failure and would be a success.

Well, Helva mused, I'm not afraid of making a mistake and I'm not afraid of admitting failure. And I sure made one with Teron. When he starts mistrusting shell people, he is not good to me or
Central Worlds. Well,
I
won't be vindictive. I'll request a change and take the fine. It won't set me too far back in the red. And with a new partner and a couple of good assignments, I'll still Pay-off. But Teron goes off my deck!

The decision of divorce, now subvocalized, made her feel much better.

When Teron woke the next ‘day', he checked, as he always did, every gauge, dial and meter, forward and aft. This practice took him most of the morning. A similar rundown would have taken Helva 10 minutes at the outside. By custom and by any other brawn but Teron, the check was left to the brain partner. Wearily Helva had to read back to Teron her findings, which he corroborated with his own.

‘Shipshape and bristol fashion,' he commented as he always did. Then he seated himself at the pilot console awaiting touchdown on Tania Borealis.

As the TH-834 had had planetfalls on Durrell, Tania Borealis' fourth planet before, the spaceport was familiar with Teron; familiar with and contemptuous to the point of addressing all remarks to Helva rather than to her brawn. If this complimented Helva, it made Teron harder to deal with later. He responded by being twice as officious and pompous with the port officials and the Health Service Captain to whom the cargo of rare drugs had been assigned. A certain amount of extra precaution was required, considering the nature and potency of the drugs, but
it was offensive of Teron to tight-beam back to Central Worlds for a replica of Captain Brandt's ID Cube before turning over the invaluable packet to him.

To make matters worse, Niall Parollan, being Section Supervisor, had had to take the call, and Helva caught all the nuances in his carefully official words.

Helva seethed inwardly. It would have to be Parollan. But she had the heretofore unexperienced urge to burst outward from her shell in all directions. Parollan would be unbearably righteous no matter when she filed intent to change brawns. There were three more stops, one at Tania Australis and the two Alula counterparts, before she would touch down at Regulus Base. Better let Niall Parollan have his laugh now so he'd be over it by the time she did ditch Teron.

So, girding herself for Parollan's smug reception, Helva flashed a private signal for him to keep the tight beam open. Teron, slave that he was to protocol, would see Captain Brandt off the ship, to the waiting landcar. She'd have a chance to file her intention then.

‘Tower to the TH-834. Permission to board you requested by the Antiolathan Xixon,' said Durrell Tower.

‘Permission refused,' Helva said without so much as a glance in Teron's direction.

‘Pilot Teron speaking,' the brawn interjected forcefully, striding to the console and opening
the local channel direct. ‘What is the purpose of this request?'

‘Don't know. The gentlemen are on their way by ground car.'

Teron disconnected and glanced out the open airlock. Brandt's car was just passing the oncoming vehicle midfield.

‘You have no right to issue orders independently, Helva, when the request has been properly stated.'

‘Have you ever heard of an Antiolathan Xixon?' Helva demanded. ‘And isn't this a restricted mission?'

‘I am perfectly aware of the nature of our mission and I have never heard of an Antiolathan Xixon. That doesn't mean there isn't one. And, as it sounds religious and one of our prime Service directives is to be respectful to any and all religious orders, we should receive him.'

‘True enough. But may I remind Pilot Teron that I am his senior in service by some years and that I have access to memory banks, mechanical memory banks, less prone to
lapsus memoriae
than the human mind? And there is no Xixon.'

‘The request was issued properly,' Teron repeated.

‘Shouldn't
we
consult Central first?'

‘There are some actions that are indicated without recourse to official sanction.'

‘Oh, really?'

The groundcar had arrived and the Xixon-people had dutifully requested permission to board. Their arrival meant no chance for Helva to speak privately with Central. She was doubly infuriated by Teron's childish insistence on seeing whoever these Xixon were. She knew perfectly well, if
she
had countermanded
his
order, he would have been in the right of it to call her down. But since
he
had taken the initiative, naturally it was all in order.

The four men stepped on board, two in plain grey tunics, stepping smartly inside the lock as though the vanguard of a great dignitary. Sidearms hung from their belts and both wore curious cylindrical whistles on neckchains. The third man, gray of hair but vigorous, obsequiously ushered in the fourth, a white-haired man of imposing stature in a long, gray-black robe. He fingered a whistle, larger than the guards, but similar in design, as if it were some sacred talisman.

There was something not at all reassuring, Helva noted, in that obsequious performance. For the gray-haired man, in the action of ushering, was missing no single detail of the cabin's appointments. Just as he switched his direction to put him beside Teron, who was still at the control console, the old man reached the titanium bulkhead behind which Helva resided. The maneuvers were almost completed when something in Helva's mind went wild with alarm.

‘Teron, they're impostors,' she cried, remembering with sudden hope that the tight beam to Central Worlds was still open.

The white-haired man lost all trace of formal dignity and, mouthing syllables in a frightful cadence, stabbed a finger towards her column.

Helva, in the brief moment before she lost consciousness, saw the two guards blowing on their whistles, the piercing notes sonically jamming the ship's circuitry. She saw Teron slump to the floor of the cabin, felled by the gray-haired man. Then the anesthetic gas the old man had released into her shell overwhelmed her.

My circuits are out of order, Helva mused . . . and then returned to acute awareness.

She saw nothing. She heard nothing. Not so much as a whisper of sound. Not so much as a tiny beam of light.

Helva fought a primeval wave of terror that all but washed her into insanity.

I think, so I live, she told herself with all the force of her will. I can think and I can remember, rationally, calmly, what has happened, what can have happened.

The horror of complete isolation from sound and light was a micrometer away from utter domination of her ego. Coldly, dispassionately, Helva reviewed that final, flashing scene of treachery. The entrance of the four men, the arrangement of the two guards and their whistle-ornaments. A supersonic blast patterned to
interfere with her circuitry, to paralyze her defense against the unauthorized activation of her emergency panel. The maneuvering of the third man to overpower Teron.

Now, Helva continued inexorably, this attack was engineered to overcome brawn and brain simultaneously. Only someone intimately connected with the Central Worlds would have access to the information needed to vanquish both mobile and immobile units. The release syllables, and the proper pitch and cadence at which they must be spoken, were highly guarded secrets, usually kept separate. For anyone to have known this information was shocking.

Helva's mind leaped to an obvious, but still startling conclusion. She knew now how the four brain ships had ‘disappeared'. They had unquestionably been shanghaied in much the same way she had been. But why? She wondered. And where were the others? In-communicado like herself? Or driven mad by . . .

I refuse to consider that possibility for myself or any other shell personality, Helva told herself firmly.

Constructive thought, fierce concentration, will relieve the present tedium.

The first ship to disappear was the FT-687. They had also been on a drug run, picking up raw material, though, not distributing it. So had the RD-751 and the PF-699. This line of thought bore possibilities.

The drugs that she had been delivering were
available only through application to Central Worlds and were delivered in minute quantities by special teams. A 100cc ampul of Menkalite could poison the water of an entire planet, rendering its population mindless slaves. A granule of the same drug diluted in a massive protein suspension base would inoculate the inhabitants of several star systems against the virulent encephalitis plagues. Tucanite, a psychedelic compound, was invaluable for psychotherapy in catatonic and autistic cases, since it heightened perceptions and awareness of environment. The frail elders of Tucan had revived waning psychic powers with its use. Deadly as these drugs might be in one form, they were essential to millions in another and must be available. The Damoclean sword of use and abuse forever swung perilously over the collective head of mankind.

Not even a shell-person was sacred from the machinations of a disturbed mind.

Disturbed mind? Helva's thoughts ground down. Where was that idiot brawn of hers right now? Him and his Neanderthal attributes – his muscles would be very useful. She felt a distinct pleasure within herself as she recalled his being clouted wickedly by the third man. She hoped he was bruised, beaten, and bloodied. But at least he could see and hear without mechanical assistance . . .

Helva felt every crevass of her mind quivering with the effects of sense deprivation.
How long could she keep her mind channeled away from . . .

Two households, alike in dignity . . .

I attempt from Love's fever to fly . . .

Fly, I cannot see. Fly?

The quality of mercy is not strained . . .

It droppeth as the gentle rain from . . .

No, not heaven. Portia will do me no good. The Bard has played
me
false when I have been his sturdy advocate on other shores.