The Ship Who Sang (4 page)

Then, as the simple words of interment were spoken, as the atmosphere planes dipped in tribute over the open grave, Helva found her voice for her lonely farewell.

Softly, barely audible at first, the strains of the ancient song of evening and requiem swelled to the final poignant measure until black space itself echoed back the sound of the song the ship sang.

WITH EYES THAT
did not register what they saw, Helva watched stolidly as the Regulus Base personnel broke ranks at the conclusion of Jennan's funeral. Never again, she vowed, would she be known as the ship who sang. That part of her had died with Jennan.

From somewhere very far away from her emotional centers, she impassively watched the little figures separate, pair off, walking rapidly to continue interrupted tasks or moving slowly back to the barracks. Some, passing, looked up, but she did not interpret their glances. She had nowhere to move to and no desire to move anywhere away from the graveside of her dead partner.

‘It cannot end like this,' she thought, anguish overpowering the stupor in her heart. ‘I cannot be like this. But what do I go on to now?'

‘XH-834, Theoda of Medea requests permission to enter,' said a voice at the base of her lift.

‘Permission granted,' Helva said automatically.

So absorbed in her grief was Helva that by the
time the lift had deposited the slender female figure at the lock, Helva had forgotten she had permitted entry. The woman advanced toward the central shaft behind which Helva was embedded in her shell. In her hand she held out a command reel.

‘Well, insert it,' snapped Helva when the woman made no other move.

‘Where? I'm not regular service. The tape explains the mission but . . .'

‘In the northwest quadrant of the central panel, you will observe a blue slot; insert the tape with the wind tab in position nearest the center red knob of the panel. Press the blue button marked “relay” and if you are unaware of the text and are cleared for it, press the second yellow button marked “audio.” Please be seated.'

Dispassionately and with no more than a fleeting awareness that she ought to have put Theoda at her ease or made some attempt at graciousness, Helva watched the woman fumble before she was able to insert the tape. Theoda sank uncertainly into the pilot's chair as the tape began.

‘XH-834, you will proceed in the company of Physiotherapist Theoda of Medea to the NDE, System Lyrae II, Annigoni IV, and present all aid possible in rehabilitation program of Van Gogh space plague survivors. All haste. All haste. All haste!'

Helva slammed the stop signal on the tape and called Central Control.

‘Does Physiotherapist Theoda constitute my replacement?'

‘No, XH-834, Theoda is not in Service. Your replacement is delayed in transit. Proceed in all haste, repeat, in all haste, to Annigoni.'

‘Request permission for immediate lift.'

Established routine procedures took Helva through take-off before she consciously realized what she was doing. Leaving Regulus was the last thing she wanted to do, but she had her order-tape and she had heard the imperative ‘all haste' repeated.

‘All areas clear for lifting. Proceed. And XH-834 . . . ?'

‘Yes?'

‘Good luck.'

‘Acknowledged,' said Helva, ignoring the softened, unofficial farewell. To Theoda, she explained briefly how to strap herself into the pilot chair, following the woman's nervous fingers as they stumbled over the fastenings. Finally assured Theoda would be secure during acceleration, Helva lifted, her rear screen picking up the base cemetery as long as vision permitted.

It no longer made any difference to Helva what speed she attained, but when she found herself increasing acceleration in an unconscious desire to finish her mission quickly and return to Regulus Base – and Jennan – she sternly measured her rate against Theoda's tolerance. Journey speed achieved, she told Theoda she could leave the chair.

Theoda unsnapped the harness and stood uncertainly.

‘I was sent here so quickly and I've traveled 24 hours already,' she said, looking down at her rumpled, dirty uniform.

‘Quarters are aft the central column,' and Helva gasped inwardly as she realized Theoda would inhabit the place so recently vacated by Jennan. Instinctively she glanced in the cabin. Someone had already removed Jennan's personal effects. Not one memento remained of his tenancy, no souvenir of their brief happiness. Her feeling of desolation deepened. How could they? When had they? It was unfair. And now she must endure this fumbling female.

Theoda had already entered the cabin, throwing her kit bag on the bunk and entering the head. Helva politely withdrew her vision. She tried to make believe the homey noises of showering were Jennan's but her new passenger's ways were completely different.

The difference, oh, the difference to me, cried Helva, mourning.

Lost in an elegy, she became only gradually aware of the quiet in the ship and, scanning discreetly, saw Theoda stretched out on her back in the limp, deep slumber of the exhausted. In repose, the woman was older than Helva had initially assumed. Now, too, Helva justly attributed the ineptitude and fumbling to the true cause, exhaustion. The face was deeply lined with sorrow as well as fatigue; there were
dark smudges under the closed eyes. The mouth was dragged down at the corners from familiarity with pain. The long, blunt-ended fingers twitched slightly in reflex to a disturbing dream and Helva could see the inherent strength and sensitivity, the marks of use in odd scars on palm and fingers, unusual in an age where manual work was mainly confined to punching buttons.

Jennan had used his hands, too, came the unbidden comparison. Mourning reclaimed Helva.

‘How long did I sleep?' Theoda's voice broke into Helva's reminiscences as the woman wove sleepily into the forward cabin. ‘How much longer is the trip?'

‘You slept 18 hours. The tape estimates an elapse of 49 hours galactic to Annigoni orbit.'

‘Oh is there a galley?'

‘First compartment on the right.'

‘Umm, is there anything you require?' Theoda asked, halfway to the galley.

‘My needs are supplied for the next hundred years,' Helva said coldly, realizing as the words were formed that her critical need could not be met.

‘I'm sorry. I know very little of your ships,' Theoda apologized. ‘I've never had preferential treatment like this before,' and she smiled shyly.

‘Your home planet
is
Medea?' inquired Helva with reluctant courtesy. It was not uncommon for a professional person to claim the planet of his current employer.

‘Yes, Medea,' Theoda replied. She made immediate noise with the rations she held, banging them onto the table with unnecessary violence. Her reaction suggested some inner conflict or grief, but Helva could recall nothing of great moment connected with Medea, so she must assume Theoda's problem was personal.

‘I've seen your type of ship before, of course. We of Medea have reason to be grateful to you but I've never actually been in one.' Theoda was talking nervously, her eyes restlessly searching over the supplies in the galley cupboards, rearranging containers to see the back of the shelves. ‘Do you enjoy your work? It must be a tremendous satisfaction.'

Such innocent words to drop like hot cinders on Helva's unhealed grief. Rapidly Helva began to talk, anything to keep herself from being subjected to another such unpredictably rasping civility.

‘I haven't been commissioned long,' she said. ‘As a physiotherapist you must certainly be aware of our origin.'

‘Oh, yes, of course. Birth defect,' and Theoda looked embarrassed as if she had touched on a vulgar subject. ‘I still think it's horrible.
You
had no choice,' she blurted out, angrily.

Helva felt suddenly superior. ‘Initially, perhaps not. But now, it would be very difficult to give up hurtling through space and be content with
walking
.'

Theoda flushed at the almost scornful emphasis of the final word.

‘I leave that to whoever is my brawn,' and Helva inwardly cringed as she reminded herself of Jennan.

‘I've recently heard about one of your ships who sings,' said Theoda.

‘Yes, I have, too,' said Helva unencouragingly. Must everything remind her of Jennan's loss!

‘How long do you live?'

‘As long as we wish.'

‘That is . . . I mean, who's the oldest ship?'

‘One of the 200s is still in active service.'

‘You're not very old then, are you, being an 800?'

‘No.'

‘I am,' said Theoda, staring at the empty ration unit she held in one hand. ‘I am near my end now, I think.' And there was no regret in her voice, not even resignation.

It occurred to Helva that here, too, was someone with deep sorrow, marking time.

‘How many more hours until planetfall?'

‘47.'

‘I must study,' and abruptly Theoda rummaged in her kit for filmfile and viewer.

‘What is the problem?' Helva asked.

‘Van Gogh in Lyrae II was hit by a space plague similar in manifestation to that which attacked Medea 125 years ago,' Theoda explained.

Suddenly Helva knew why Theoda had seen.
Service ships. She microscoped her vision on Theoda's face and saw the myriad tiny lines that indicated advanced age. Theoda had undoubtedly been alive on Medea at the time of their plague. Helva recalled that the plague had struck a heavily populated area and swept with terrific violence throughout the entire planet in a matter of days – its onslaught so fierce and its toll so great that medical personnel often collapsed over the sick they tended. Others inexplicably survived untouched. The airborne disease spores struck animal as well as human, and then, as suddenly as it had come, almost as if the disease were aware that the resources of a galaxy were on the way to subdue its ravages, it disappeared. Medea had been decimated in the course of a week and the survivors, both the ones hardy enough to endure the intense fever and pain, and those who were curiously immune, spent their years trying to discover source or cause, cure or vaccine.

From her capacious trained associative recall, Helva found seven other different but similarly inexplicable plague waves, some treated with better success than Medea's. The worst one to be recorded had hit the planet Clematis, eliminating 93 per cent of all human life before help arrived. Clematis had been placed under eternal quarantine. Helva thought that was rather locking the barn and never bothering to track down the missing horses.

‘You had, I gather, sufficient experience with
Medea's plague so that your presence may be of help to Van Gogh's people?'

‘That is the thought,' said Theoda, wincing. She picked up her filmviewer purposefully and Helva realized that more discussion was out of order. She knew, too, that Theoda had painful word associations even at the end of a long life. Helva could not imagine a time centuries hence when mention of Jennan would not hurt.

Annigoni swam into view precisely as the trip chronometer edged on to 67 hours, and Helva found herself immediately answering a quarantine warning from an orbital monitor.

‘You have Physiotherapist Theoda on board, do you not?' Helva was asked after she identified herself.

‘I do.'

‘Your landing should set you down as close to the hospital city of Erfar as possible. There is, however, no space field in that vicinity and a meadow has been set aside for your use. Are you able to control your dangerous exhausts?'

Helva wryly assured them of her ability to land circumspectly. They gave her the latitude and longitude and she had no difficulty in bringing herself to a stand in the patch-sized meadow so indicated. A powdery white road led to a long white complex of multiwindowed buildings, half a kilometer away. From the complex came a land vehicle.

‘Theoda,' said Helva as they awaited the
arrival of the land-car, ‘in the effects compartment under the control panel, you will find a small gray button. With it attached to your uniform, you can maintain communication with me. If you would be good enough to rotate the upper section of the button clockwise, I can have two-way contact. It would afford me some satisfaction to be in on the problems you encounter.'

‘Yes, certainly, of course.'

‘If you rotate the bottom half of the button, I have limited scope vision as well.'

‘How clever,' murmured Theoda, examining the button before attaching it to her tunic.

As the car drew to a halt, Theoda waved at the occupants from the high lock and stepped onto the lift.

‘Oh, Helva, thank you for the journey. And my apologies. I'm not good company.'

‘Nor have I been. Good luck.'

As Theoda descended, Helva knew that for a lie. They had been perfect company, each locked in separate miseries. Somehow it had escaped her that grief was a frequent visitor in the universe, that her inability to aid Jennan was scarcely unique. Her sister ships had all had such experiences and were still at their jobs.

‘None of them ever loved their brawns as I did Jennan,' she soliloquized sullenly, perfectly conscious of how ill her sentiment befitted her steel, yet unable to extricate her thoughts from their unconscious return to misery.

‘Request permission to board,' came a rough voice at the lift bottom.

‘Identification?'

‘Senior Medical Officer Onro, Detached Regulus Base. I need to use your tight beam.'

‘Permission granted,' replied Helva after a rapid check of the name in the MedOff roster on file.

Med Off Onro plunged into her lock and, with the briefest of salutes at her central shaft, lunged into the pilot's chair and slapped home the call button on the beam.

‘Have you any honest-to-god coffee?' he grated out, swiveling the chair to launch himself from it toward the galley.

‘Be my guest,' murmured Helva, unprepared for such vigor after several days of Theoda.