The Ship Who Sang (25 page)

‘Well, Delia's Rife will pull out of Menkalite addiction. He'd had only the one dose. They've still to track down the other two ships, but I
expect all the brawns'll survive.' His expression altered abruptly as if he had caught an unpleasant smell. ‘Why did you have your tight beam channel open, Helva? When we got that brawn of yours out of his padded cell, he was furious that you could disregard proper procedure in such a fashion.' The Captain managed to sound like Teron for a moment. ‘Why, if you hadn't, and Cencom hadn't heard the whole damned thing . . . How come you left the channel open?'

‘I'd rather not say, but since you've met Teron, you might do a little guessing.'

‘Huh? Well, whatever the reason, it saved your life.'

‘It took 'em long enough.'

The Captain laughed at her sour complaint. ‘Don't forget, you'd been cleared, so your kidnappers just lifted off Durrell before your supervisor could stop 'em. But Parollan sure scorched the ears of every operator in frequency range getting Fleet ships after you. At that, with a whole sector to comb, and the drug runners using this asteroid off Borealis as a hideout, too close to Durrell to be even a probability, it took a little time.'

‘That Xixon thing was smart-mad, hiding right out in sight.'

‘Well, he had a high intelligence factor,' the captain admitted. ‘After all, he made it into brawn training 20-odd years ago.'

That had been an unnerving development,
Helva reflected. If he'd actually qualified and then developed neural maladjustments . . . He had taken enough Tucanite to break the deconditioning mind blocks – another matter that was going to be reevaluated by Central Worlds as a result of this incident – and had managed to insinuate himself into maintenance crews on Regulus Base, laying the groundwork for his operation by the judicious use of addictive drugs on key employees. Then, using Central World brains ships with drugged brawns under his control, he could have landed anywhere, including Regulus Base.

‘I'll be off now,' the Captain said, saluting her respectfully. ‘Let your own brawn take over now.'

‘Not if I can help it,' Helva replied.

Whatever bond of loyalty she had once had for Teron had dissolved as surely as she had been parted from her security. Teron, having decided that he was hopelessly incarcerated, had stolidly composed himself to await the worst with calm dignity . . . as any logical man ought to do.

On anyone else's tapes (including the Captain's, to judge by the expression on his face), such logic was cowardice; and that was Helva's unalterable conclusion. Although she would grant that his behavior had certainly been consistent.

Delia's Rife, on the other hand, had
tried
to break out. He had clawed a foothold in the padded fabric of his cell, lacerating hands and
feet in the attempt to reach the ceiling access hatch. Dizzy from a Menkalite injection – confused and weak from starvation intended to allow the Menkalite to work unhindered in his system – he had actually crawled as far as the airlock when the rescue group had arrived.

Helva let the ST-1 down the personnel lift and ran a thorough but hasty flip-check of herself, scanners, sensory meters, power-pile drive chamber, inventory. It was like revisiting a forgotten treasury of minor miracles. Helva wondered if she had ever before appreciated the versatility incorporated in her ship body, had really valued the power she had at her disposition, or cherished the ingenuity of her engineers. Oh, it was good to be back together again.

‘Helva?' a low voice spoke tentatively. ‘Are you alone now?' It was Central Worlds on the tight beam.

‘Yes. The ST-1 has just left. You can probably reach him . . .'

‘Shove him,' and then Helva realized that the hoarse voice must belong to Niall Parollan. ‘I just wanted to know you were back where you belong. You're sure you're all right, Helva?'

Niall Parollan laryngitic with concern? Helva was flattered and surprised, considering his uncomplimentary description hurled at her at their last parting.

‘I'm intact again if that's what you mean, Parollan,' she replied in droll good humor.

She could have sworn she heard a sigh over the tight beam.

‘That's my girl,' Parollan laughed, so it must have been a wheeze she'd heard. ‘Of course,' and he cleared his throat, ‘if you hadn't had your synapses scrambled on Beta Corvi, you'd've listened to me when I tried to tell you that that simple simian Acthionite was a regulation-bound brass . . .'

‘Not brass, Niall,' Helva interrupted sharply, ‘not brass. Brass is a metal and Teron has none.'

‘Oh, ho ho, so you admit I was right about him?'

‘“Tis human to err . . .”'

‘Thank God!'

Just then Teron requested permission to board.

‘I'll see you later, Helva. I couldn't stomach . . .'

‘Don't go, Parollan . . .'

‘Helva, my own true love, I've been glued to this tight beam for three days for your sake and the stimutabs have worn off. I'm dead in the seat!'

‘Prop your eyelids open for a few moments more, Niall. This'll be official,' she told Parollan as she activated the personnel lift for Teron. She felt a cold dislike replace the bantering friendliness she had been enjoying.

Big as life and disgustingly Neanderthal her brawn strode into the main control room, saluting with scant ceremony toward her bulkhead.
Strode? He swaggered, Helva thought angrily, looking not the least bit worse for his absence.

Teron rubbed his hands together, sat himself down in the pilot's chair, flexed his fingers before he poised them, very businesslike, over the computer keyboard.

‘I'll just run a thorough checkdown to be sure no damage was done.' His words were neither request nor order.

‘Just like that, huh?' Helva asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

Teron frowned and swiveled round in the chair toward her panel.

‘Our schedule has been interrupted enough with this mishap.'

‘Mishap?'

‘Modulate your tone, Helva. You can't expect to use those tricks on me.'

‘I can't expect what?'

‘Now,' he began placatingly, jerking his chin down, ‘I take into consideration you've been under a strain recently. You should have insisted that I oversee that ST-1 Captain during that installation. You might have sustained some circuit damage, you know.'

‘How kind of you to consider that possibility,' she said. That was it!

‘You could scarcely be harmed, physically, contained as you are in pure titanium,' he said and swung back to the console.

‘Teron of Acthion, all I can say at this point is that it's a damned good thing for you that I am
contained behind pure titanium. Because if I were mobile, I would kick you down that shaft so fast . . .'

‘What has possessed you?'

For once, sheer blank illogical amazement flashed across Teron's face.

‘Get out! Get off my deck! Get out of my sight. Get OUT!' Helva roared, pouring on volume with each word, with no regard for the tender structure of the human ear.

With sheer sound she drove him, hands clapped to the sides of his head, off the deck, down the side of the 834 as fast as she could escalate the lift.

‘Take me for granted, will you? Unreliable organism, am I? Illogical, irresponsible, and inhuman . . .' Helva bellowed after him in a planet-sized shout. And then she burst out laughing, as she realized that such emotional behavior on her part was the only way she could have routed the over-logical Teron of Acthion.

‘Did you hear that, Niall Parollan?' she asked in a reasonable but nevertheless exultant tone. ‘Niall? Hey, Cencom, you on the tight beam . . . answer me?'

From the open channel came the shuddering discord of a massive adenoidal snore.

‘Niall?' The sleeper wheezed on, oblivious, until Helva chuckled at this additional evidence of human frailty.

She asked and received clearance from the asteroid's half-ruined spaceport. She was going
to have a long chat with Chief Railly when she returned.

Her penalty for ‘divorcing' Teron would be a speck against the finders' fee for four shanghaied BB ships. And there ought to be a Federation bonus for aid in the apprehension of drug runners. Totaled, if true justice was giving her half a chance, the rewards might just make her a free ship, out of debt, truly her own mistress. The thought was enough to set her singing.

HURTLING THROUGH SPACE
at speeds no unprotected human could tolerate, Helva contemplated the delightful knowledge that she had paid off her indebtedness to Central Worlds Brain-Brawn Ship Service. She was her own mistress. Free. And free to choose, at long last, a partner, a brawn, a mobile human to companion her wherever she chose to wander. She was no longer limited to those sterling souls, fresh and eager from Academy training, fully indoctrinated in Central Worlds' ethos, conditioned to a set way of thinking and acting, molded according to predetermined physical, intellectual, spiritual, psychological requisities, and
not
what she had in mind. She could pick anyone now. She could . . .

Well, now, come to think of it, she couldn't. Brawns, for all their shortcomings, were not ordinary technicians, cranked out by the thousands from specialists' programs on every planet. They were especially trained and educated to function in an unusual partnership. She could not pick out an agreeable personality and find
him deadheading on that charm. Even on short contracts, with an industrial or planetary agency, she'd have to rely to a certain degree on a brawn with sense, integrity, and a certain breadth of education, or she'd get royally rooked, industrially and systematically. And besides, she wanted a permanent partner, not another transient. She wanted companionship, an intelligent, sympathetic friend: not a passive employee.

Another factor limited her field further. Many otherwise well-adjusted citizens of a complex, civilized galaxy were revolted or superstitiously terrified at the thought of a human being entombed in a bulkhead, connected to the operational circuitry of a powerful space ship. The neurosis could even extend to personalities like Teron, who deluded themselves that a shell person was really not human, was actually a highly sophisticated computer.

Very few people she had met, Helva admitted sadly, thought of her as Helva, a person, a thinking, feeling, rational, intelligent, eminently human being.

Jennan had. Theoda, except for that one brief instance of rapport, had been too immersed in her life-long expiation to entertain a personal reaction to Helva, the human. And, although Kira Falernova had been with her over 3 years, neither of them had let the friendship develop into a deep attachment.

In fact, the only mobile human who appeared to regard Helva as Helva was Niall Parollan. And
for all Helva knew, he had merely developed an effective way of handling his BB ship subordinates by alternately praising and insulting them in that highly personal, stimulating way.

And yet, he had stayed on the tight beam for 3 days, nursing that tenuous trace of her whereabouts. He could just as easily have delegated the duty to a regular com man. That he hadn't done so absolved him of her previous grievances.

She hoped someone had discovered him asleep at the control panel. He must have been in a deuced uncomfortable position to snore that way. Helva chuckled to herself. Too bad he wasn't bigger. He'd've made a good brawn. And yet, he was passed over, while someone like that nardy idiot, Teron, tall, brawny enough to look at, not only got into training but completed the rigorous course. He must have done it . . . as Niall had acidly suggested . . . on theory credits. Perhaps Central Worlds had better reevaluate their image requirements as a result of this Borealis fiasco. What heavy-worlders like Parollan lacked in stature, they made up in mass . . . and pure cussedness.

‘Fardles,' Helva said in unaccustomed profanity. The word echoed satisfactorily through the empty cabins. ‘I wonder if he stayed awake long enough to record my divorce.'

She didn't like to contemplate Niall's remarks anent ditching Teron. She could practically hear his rasping voice reminding her that he'd tried to talk her out of Teron.

‘For a smart ship, you can be a dumb broad!'

Well, it hadn't been a complete disaster: she'd have that to counter Parollan's scorn. In fact, if Teron
hadn't
been such an irritating dolt, the Xixon creature would never have got into the main cabin; she and Teron wouldn't have been overwhelmed and she wouldn't have made enough in bonuses and rewards to Pay-off so soon.

That was such a comforting thought. To accomplish Pay-off so early on in her career; to reach the goal all BB ships dreamed of. So, now what? She needed a brawn, one of her exceeding careful choice, and she needed another goal, a point, a destination. Maybe one would supply the other. Or vice versa?'

‘I could go to the Horsehead Nebula,' she said aloud for the sound of it.

And the sound triggered a carefully suppressed memory: Jennan leaning against the console, grinning at her, his eyes alight with affection and humor . . .

‘If they ever take us off the milkruns, we'll make a stab at the Nebula, huh?'

She was off the milkruns, but Jennan lay dead in Regulus Base cemetery, all their wild, happy schemes entombed with him. The challenge of such a flight, unaccompanied, was as empty as her ship self.

Horsehead Nebula, indeed! To divert her trend of thought, she ran a rapid calculation. Oh, she could make it, for all her present
material dependence on man. Her pile was fresh, though she wished someone would rattle a few brains and develop an energy source that would utilize the full potential of the f.t.l. principle. It was like having two high gears in a powerful ground car that couldn't be used because they'd burn up all available fuel in a few milliseconds. As it was, she could reach the Horsehead . . . in a 100 standard years, at her present top speed.