The Ship Who Sang (5 page)

Onro's shoulder took a bruising as he careered off the threshold of the galley, wrenched open the cupboards, knocking containers about.

‘Coffee may still be in its accustomed place on the third shelf of the righthand locker,' Helva remarked drily. ‘Excuse me; a container just rolled onto the floor.'

Onro retrieved it but cracked his head smartly on the corner of the cupboard door he had left open. The stream of invective Helva expected did not come. The man carefully closed the cupboard with the controlled patience of the much-put-upon and, breaking the heat seal, immediately stalked back to the central cabin
and resumed his seat, watching the dial on the tight beam as it warmed slowly to peak, never blinking as he gulped the now steaming hot coffee. Even as he swallowed, the springs in his taut frame began to unwind.

‘Creatures of habit, aren't we, XH? I've been dreaming of coffee for 18 mortal days and nights. The stuff they use in its place on this lousy lump of ill-assorted metals makes ME sleepy. Coffee is not as potent as benzedrine nor half as rough to the system. Ah, there they are. I swear these beams take longer every time I have to fool with the damned things.'

‘Central Base Regulus.'

‘XH-834 reporting,' announced Onro.

‘Who?' gasped an unofficial voice.

‘Onro talking.'

‘Yes, sir, didn't recognize your voice.'

‘Did you think Helva had a cold?'

‘No, sir, that wasn't what I thought.'

‘Well, never mind the chitchat. Put this on the computers and let it do a little brainstorming. I'm too tired. You better check the computerese, too. I haven't been asleep much lately.' He turned to Helva, ‘How d'ya like the luck? First home leave in three galactic years and I have to time my arrival with the plague's. I wonder if I can get a rebate on vacation time.' He turned back to the beam. ‘Here's the garbage,' and he rapidly dictated the material. ‘Now here's a verbal to check it.

‘Disease unidentifiable on the Orson scale
as a known virus or variation thereof. Patients thoroughly tested and apparently perfectly healthy can develop clinical symptoms in 10 hours; complete deterioration of muscle control, presence of high fever, excessive spinal pain follow in 3 days. Death caused by 1) brain hemorrhage, 2) heart failure, 3) lung collapse, 4) strangulation or in case where medical help has been late in arriving 5) starvation. All survivors unable to make muscular coordinations of any kind. Extent of brain damage negative. But they might as well be dead.'

‘Impairment to intellect?' asked Central Control.

‘Impossible to ascertain except to hope that the injury to the brain has, as usual, left the intellect alone.'

‘Julie O'Grady and the Colonel's Lady are sisters under the skin,' muttered Helva for she could see through the MedOffs words that the victims of the plague were not as robbed of their bodies by disease as she had been by birth defects.

‘Our skintight friend is closer to the truth than she knows,' Onro snorted. ‘Except for infants, there isn't one of them that wouldn't be better off in a shell right now. They aren't going to go anywhere the way they are.'

‘Do you wish to stand by for report?' asked Central Control.

‘Take long?'

‘You could get a little sleep,' suggested Helva
blandly. ‘These reports don't usually take too long,' she added, tapping out a private distress signal to Central as she spoke.

‘Not long, MedOfficer Onro,' said Central on cue.

‘You'll get a crick in your neck, Onro,' remarked Helva as she saw him stretch out his long legs and scrunch down in the pilot chair for a catnap. ‘Use the pilot's bed. I'll give you a jolt as soon as the message returns.'

‘You'd better or I'll unscrew your safety panel,' Onro snapped, lurching drunkenly toward the bunk.

‘Yes, of course.' Helva watched as he took the two deep breaths that were all that were needed before he was oblivious.

Her contact with Theoda began, sight and sound. Theoda was bending over a bed, her strong fingers soothing the motionless frame of the woman there. Flaccid muscles, lack of reflexes, pastry skin, unfocusing eyes, loose mouth; the chords of the neck strained briefly as the patient made some incoherent sound deep in the throat.

‘There is no sensation in the extremities that we can discover,' the voice of an out-of-sight person said. ‘There is some reaction to pain in the torso and in the face but we can't be sure. The patient, if she understands us, can give us no sign.'

Helva noticed, and she hoped that Theoda did, that the half-closed eyelids made an almost
imperceptible downward motion, then upward. Helva also observed the flaring of the nostrils.

‘Theoda,' she said quietly so as not to startle her. Even so, Theoda straightened quickly in surprise.

‘Helva?'

‘Yes. In the scope of my limited range of vision, I could see a twitch of the eyelids and a motion of the nostrils. If the paralysis is as acute as I have learned from MedOff Onro, these bare flickers may be the only muscle controls the patient has. Please ask one of the observers to concentrate on the right eye, another on the left and you observe only the nostrils. Establish a pattern of reply and explain it to the patient and see if she understands you.'

‘Is that the ship?' an off-sight person demanded irritably.

‘Yes, the XH-834 that brought me here.'

‘Oh,' was the disparaging reply, ‘that's the one that sings. I thought it was the JH or GH.'

‘Helva is not an “it”,' said Theoda firmly. ‘Let us try her suggestion, since her vision is considerably more acute than ours and her concentration far superior.'

To the patient, Theoda said quietly and distinctly, ‘If you hear me, please try to lower your right eyelid.'

For an age-long second, there was no movement; then as though the effort were tremendous, the right lid slowly descended the barest fraction.

‘In order to be sure this was not an involuntary motion, will you try to dilate your nostrils twice.'

Very slowly, very slowly Helva caught the motion of the nostrils. She also saw, which was more important, the tiny beads of perspiration on the upper lip and brow, and quickly called attention to them.

‘What a tremendous effort this must be for that imprisoned mind,' said Theoda with infinite compassion. Her blunt-fingered hand rested softly on the moist forehead. ‘Rest now, dear. We will not press you further, but now we have hope for you.'

Only Helva was aware of the disconsolate sag and then straightening of Theoda's shoulders as she walked to the next bed.

Helva accompanied Theoda through the entire tour of the plague hospital, from the men's and women's wards to the children's and even into the nursery. The plague had been no respecter of age, and babies of a few weeks had been affected.

‘One would have hoped that in the younger and more resilient body those tissues that were damaged, if any have been, would stand the best chance of regeneration,' remarked one of Theoda's guides. Helva caught part of a gesture that took in the 50 cribs of motionless infants in the ward.

Theoda leaned down and picked up a small pink, blonde infant of 3 months. The flesh was firm, the color good. She tweaked the pectoral
fold with unnecessary force. The baby's eyes widened and the mouth fell open. A slight croak issued from the throat.

Quickly Theoda snatched the child to her breast, rocking it in apology for the pain. Sight and sound were muffled by the blanket but not before Helva, too, had seen and realized exactly what Theoda had.

Theoda was rocking the child, so that Helva caught only elusive fragments of a violent discussion. Then her scope of sight and sound returned as Theoda laid the child in the crib on its stomach and carefully started to move the child's arms and legs in an approximation of the crabbed action that is the beginning of independent locomotion.

‘We will do this with every child, with every person, for one hour every morning and every afternoon. If necessary, we will commandeer every adult and responsible adolescent on Annigoni for our therapists. If we are to reach the brain, to restore contact between intellect and nerve, we must repattern the brain centers from the very beginning of brain function. We must work quickly. Those poor imprisoned people have waited long enough to be released from their hells.'

‘But . . . but . . . on what do you base your premise, Physiotherapist Theoda? You admitted that the Medean plague has fewer points of similarity than originally thought.'

‘I can't give you a premise right now. Why
must I? My whole experience leads me to
know
that I am right.'

‘Experience?
I
think you mean “intuition”,' continued the official stuffily, ‘and we cannot, on the basis of one woman's intuition, conscript the workforce needed from busy citizens . . .'

‘Didn't you see the beads of sweat on that woman's face? The effort required to do so simple a thing as lower an eyelid?' demanded Theoda tardy. ‘Can any effort required of
us
be too much?'

‘There is no need to be emotional,' Theoda was told testily. ‘Annigoni has opened herself to these survivors with no thought of the danger of exposure to the same virus . . .'

‘Nonsense,' Theoda said. ‘Before your ships approached Van Gogh you made certain that the plague had passed. But that is neither here nor there. I will return to the ship and contact Central Control. I'll have your premise and authorization all neatly printed out.' She whirled around, facing back into the ward so that Helva could see the respectfully waiting ward-nurses. ‘But any of you who love children and trust another woman's instinct, do as I just did whether it is authorized or not. There is nothing to be lost and the living to be released.'

Theoda stormed out of the hospital, brushing aside the complaints and temporizing of the officials. She stumbled into the landcar, ordering it back to the ship. Her tight, terrible voice made the driver hold his tongue. Helva could
see her strong fingers washing themselves, straining in a tense clasp of frustration, never idle, groping, grasping, clenching. Then Theoda reached up to the button and cut the contact abruptly.

Unconcerned, Helva switched to the wide vision of her exterior scanners and picked up the landcar as it sped toward her. The car discharged its passenger and left. But Theoda did not step onto the lift. Somewhat at a disadvantage because of the angle, Helva could only watch as Theoda paced back and forth.

In the bunk, Onro slept on and Helva waited.

‘Permission to enter,' said Theoda finally, in a low voice.

‘Granted.'

Stumbling again, one hand in front of her as if feeling her way, Theoda entered the ship. Wearily she sagged into the pilot's chair and leaning forward on the console, buried her head in her arms.

‘You saw, Helva,' muttered the therapist, ‘you saw. Those people have been like that for upward of 6 weeks. To move an eyelid with a commensurate effort of budging a ton. How many will come out of this sane?'

‘They have an additional hope, Theoda. Don't forget, once you can establish that the integral intellect remains, the body may be bypassed. There are advantages to that, you know,' she reminded the therapist.

Theoda's head came up and she turned in
her chair, looking in amazement at the panel concealing Helva's shell-encased body.

‘Of course. You're a prime example, aren't you?'

Then she shook her head in disagreement.

‘No, Helva, it's one thing to be bred up to it, and another to be forced into it as the only expedient.'

‘The young would experience no shock at shell life. And there are, I repeat, advantages, even distinct gains, to be made. Witness my ability to follow your tour.'

‘But to have walked, and touched, and smelled, and laughed and cried . . .'

‘To have cried . . .' gasped Helva, ‘to be able to weep. Oh, yes,' and an unendurable tightness filled her mind as her brief respite from grief dissolved.

‘Helva . . . I . . . in the hospital . . . I mean, I'd heard that you had . . . I'm sorry but I was so lost in my own problem that I just didn't realize that you were the ship who sang, and that you'd . . .' Her voice trailed off.

‘Nor did I remember that at Medea the virus didn't just isolate the intellect in the body; it destroyed it, leaving only a mindless husk.'

Theoda turned her head away.

‘That baby, that poor baby.'

‘Central Control to the XH-834, are you receiving?'

Theoda, startled by the voice at her elbow, jerked back from the lighted tightbeam face.

‘XH-834 receiving.'

‘Prepare to tape computer report on MedOfficer Onro's request.'

Helva activated the apparatus and gave the a-ok.

‘Verbal?' asked Theoda in a stage whisper.

‘Verbal requested,' Helva relayed.

‘No correlation between age, physical stature, health, ethnic group, blood type, tissue structure, diet, location, medical history is indicated. Disease random, epidemic force. No correlation muscle, bone, tissue, blood, sputum, urine, marrow in postplague postmortem. Negative medication. Negative operation. Possibly therapy.'

‘There!' cried Theoda in triumph, jumping to her feet. ‘Therapy the only positive.'

‘Only “possible”.'

‘But the only
positive
factor, nonetheless. And I'm positive it's repatterning.'

‘Repatterning?'

‘Yes. It's a bizarre therapy and it doesn't always work, but the failure may have been because the intellect had retreated in desperation,' Theoda argued with vehement confidence. ‘To be trapped, unable to make even the simplest communication – can you imagine how ghastly that must be? Oh, what am I saying?' she said, turning in horror toward Helva's presence.

‘You're quite right,' Helva assured her blandly with inner amusement. ‘It would be intolerable if I could no longer control the synapses as I do
now electronically. I think I should go mad having known what it is to drive between the stars, to talk across light years, to eavesdrop in tight places, maintaining my own discreet impregnability.'