The Ship Who Sang (15 page)

His discussion with Ansra had done nothing to aid Prane, antagonizing her and adding to the tension within the ship. Helva wondered if he had deliberately led the woman on to expose her ambitions, with herself, Helva, the unsuspected witness to the actress' intentions. Yet if he wanted Ansra to compromise herself before
witnesses, why give her the second chance? Did Davo really trust the woman enough to think she'd reform?

Well, this wasn't Helva's problem, although she would play back that interlude if necessary. Let another ship worry about the conniving actress, the lovelorn m.a., and the dying actor. Amon could have the whole bit. Romeo and Juliet, at free-fall in a gas atmosphere! Shakespeare for stabilizers? Helva concurred with Ansra; the whole idea was ridiculous!

A long, shuddering sigh broke into her reveries. A restless sleeper? No, Prane was not asleep though everyone else was secure under the mesh blanket. And Prane needed rest the most.

His voice rose to the challenge of the lines, rich, tender, unsullied by whatever debilitated his physical self. The laugh that followed, however, was hollow and bitter.

Another long pause, then:

Another pause, so long that Helva wondered if he slept.

Helva felt herself wince at the scorching regret, the yearning in that emotion-laden voice. He wants to die! He expects this venture to kill him and he wants to die.

Helva comforted herself with a string of Kira's most colorful oaths, wishing she knew more about the mechanics of this Beta Corvi psyche transfer. Well, if they were, as reputed, able to stabilize isotopes, they obviously were energy-engineers of a remarkable genius. Now, considering that the brain generated electricity, a very primitive form of energy, so presumably the electrical charge could be transferred from one receptacle to another. In theory, easy; in practice? There could be a power loss, a faulty imprint in the receiver. Someone could return half-witted? Helva abandoned that thought on the grounds of insufficient data. Besides, this was not her problem.

And she doubted Prane would be able to effect
his demise: not with Kurla Ster determined to keep the mortal spark in his own husk. She knew nothing of these Beta Corviki, but it encountered that sentience was not permitted to waste itself. Kira Falernova had found it excessively difficult to commit suicide.

And, if Kurla was not stupid, which she didn't appear to be despite this terrible infatuation for Prane, she must be as aware of his death wish as of his physical pain.

Helva's thoughts chased around, directionless. She had few facts, including how Prane Liston could have reached such a state of decay in today's diagnostic-preventive and corrective medical climate. He was patently in his second 50 years – but soft bones? Bone marrow can be calcium-shot, phosphorus supplemented to the diet. Yet Ansra had made sly digs about drug addiction. Said his brains were soft . . . no, his head bones, Helva corrected herself . . . ‘his headbones are softened by mindtrap.' Yet mindtrap was a harmless drug; mind-expanding, yes, but long and widely used by anyone who wished to retain information without loss. The adult mind loses 100,000 neurons a day. An actor couldn't afford memory loss. Was it possible that mindtrap, overused for a long period, could build up a harmful residue injurious to the bones?

Helva tapped the ship's memory banks, but there was no recorded incidence of any side-effect for mindtrap. An actor, however, playing
on hundreds of planets, exposed constantly to some cosmic radiations, suffering a minor breakdown of cell-coding? A protein lock? Surely some medical engineer would have noted it, could isolate the faulty enzyme and correct?

Helva looked in on the sleepless man. He was murmuring speeches now, changing his voice as the lines went from character to character. Entranced, Helva listened through the ship's night as scene after scene poured from the Solar's lips, word perfect. Shortly before dawn, the litany ceased as sleep finally bestowed her accolade of peace.

Dawn came and went. Helva performed the routine check of all systems, ran a scan on detectors and established that there were no ships within hailing range. She was irritated . . . and relieved.

The first one to stir was Kurla. She drifted immediately to Prane's bedside. Her concern dissolved as she found him sleeping quietly, the fatigue lines smoothed from his face. Her own expression infinitely tender with love, the girl withdrew, pulled the door across, and floated over to the galley.

Davo joined her shortly. ‘How is he this morning?'

Defensively, Kurla started to go into medical detail.

‘I'm not at all interested in your lover's internal economy . . .'

‘Prane Liston is not my lover.'

‘Oh, hath desire outstripped performance then?'

‘Davo, please!'

‘Don't blush, my dear. Only teasing. However, a simple yes or no will suffice. Can Prane rehearse today? That free-fall staging is going to be difficult and he mentioned wanting to go through several scenes now when he has more time. Helva can oblige us with free-fall as we choose. Can't you, Helva?'

‘Yes.'

‘It sounds so human,' Kurla said, suppressing a little shudder.

‘
She
, please, Kurla. Helva is human; aren't you, Helva?'

‘Oh, you'd noticed?'

Davo laughed at the consternation on Kurla's face.

‘My dear Miss Ster, surely you, a medical attendant, would have tumbled to the identity of the captain of our ship?'

‘I've had a lot on my mind,' she said, lifting her chin defensively. ‘But I apologize,' she added, swinging round, ‘if I've offended you, Helva . . .' Then her eyes rested on Prane's closed door and her face flooded with color.

‘You
have been the soul of discretion,' Helva replied, aware of the girl's sudden confusion. ‘As
I
try to be,' she added, so pointedly that Davo understood Kurla's blush.

‘Honor among cyborgs, huh?' he asked, his
eyes dancing as he added a subtle thrust of his own.

‘Yes, and considerable evidence that we are eminently trustworthy, loyal, courteous, honest, thoughtful, and inhumanly incorruptible.'

Davo roared with laughter until Kurla, pointing toward Prane's cabin, shushed him.

‘Why? I want him up and about. It ought to be good for his soul to wake to the sound of my merry laughter.'

‘That sounds like a good entrance line,' Prane remarked, pushing the door aside. He was smiling slightly, his shoulders erect and easy, his head high, all trace of fatigue and weakness erased. He hadn't had that much rest, Helva knew it, not after murmuring through plays half the night. But he even looked younger. ‘Shall we have at it, Davo?' he asked.

‘You'll “have at” nothing, Solar,' Kurla said emphatically, ‘until you've eaten.'

He meekly acquiesced.

In spite of her intention to remain aloof from the personality conflicts of this quartet, Helva watched the rehearsal with keen interest. A script was thrust in Kurla's hands and she was made the prompter.

‘Now,' Prane began crisply, ‘we have been given no inkling of Corviki attitude toward personal combat, if they have one. We don't know if they can appreciate the archaic code which made this particular duel inevitable. Interpreting our social structures, our ancient
moralities, however, is not the function of this troupe. According to the Survey Captain, the Corviki were entranced with the concept of special “formulae” (the crew had been watching Othello) intended purely to
waste
energy in search of excitation and recombination with no mass objective.' He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘There always has been an element of the population that ranks play-acting as a waste of energy. However, there is no point in our trying to play Shakespeare as a social commentary. We shall be classicists – pure Shakespeare as the Globe troupe would have played it.'

‘For purity, then, Juliet ought to be a preadolescent boy,' Davo reminded him with wry malice.

‘Not that pure, Davo,' Prane laughed. ‘I'll keep the casting arrangements as they are, I believe. We shall have enough of a problem acting in free-fall and getting used to the envelopes the Corviki will supply us. So, if we can get stage movement set in our minds now, we shall have only the problem of becoming accustomed to the new form when we reach Beta Corvi. I think of the exchange as merely another costume.

‘Now Davo, as Tybalt, you enter downstage. Benvolio and Mercutio will be stage south and I, as Romeo, will approach from elliptical east.'

Both men had worked in free-fall, Helva noticed, for they modified all gestures skillfully
yet managed to simulate the power of a thrust, the grace of a dancing retreat. Such movements, however, required great physical effort and both were shortly sweating as they floated through their measured duel again and again to set the routine in their minds.

They worked hard, experimenting, changing, improving until they got through the duel scene twice without a flaw. Even allowing for his handicap, Helva was impressed by Prane.

Ansra drifted lauguidly into the main cabin and the atmosphere changed so abruptly that Helva inadvertently scanned her warnings system.

‘Good morrow, good madam,' Prane said jauntily. ‘Shall we have at the balcony scene, fair Juliet?'

‘My dear Solar, you have obviously been hard at it with Davo. Are you feeling up to more?'

Prane hesitated a microsecond before he bowed and with a genuine smile replied: ‘You, as Juliet, are up, my dear,' and he gestured with a flourish to the area where she was to play the scene, above him.

He turned then, floating to the edge of the cabin and Ansra, her jibe ignored, shrugged and projected herself upward.

‘Give me Benvolio's line, please,' Prane asked Kurla.

Ansra's entrance had flustered the girl and she flipped nervously through the sides.

‘Act II, scene i, Kurla,' Davo murmured encouragingly.

Helva dropped her voice to a tenor register:

‘Zounds, who was that?' cried Prane, whirling in such surprised reaction that he drifted toward the wall, absently holding himself off with one hand.

‘Me,' Helva said meekly in her proper voice.

‘Can you change voices at will, woman?'

‘Well, it's only a question of projection, you know. And since my voice is reproduced through audio units, I can select the one proper for the voice register required.'

The effect of her ability on Prane, Helva noticed, was nothing to its effect on Ansra.

‘How could you see to read the line?' Prane demanded, gesturing toward the script in Kurla's hands.

‘I've been scanning the text from the library banks.' Helva forbore to tell the long story of the childhood years during which she had been hooked on ancient movies, leading somehow naturally to Shakespeare, and opera, both light and grand. Her only hobby – and it was her own memory she was scanning.

Prane imprudently flung out both arms and had to correct against the ceiling.

‘What incredible luck. Can you, would you read something else?'

‘What? Auditioning a ship, Prane?' Ansra asked, her voice richly intimating that he'd gone mad.

‘If I'm not wrong,' Davo put in, his eyes glinting sardonically, ‘Helva here is also known as the ship who sings. Surely you saw the tri-cast on her some years back, Ansra? In fact I know you did. We were playing the Greeks in Draconis at the time.'

‘If you please, Davo,' Prane-the-director interrupted, gliding over to Helva's central column. ‘You are the ship who sings?'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you be kind enough to indulge me by reading the Nurse's speech, Act I, scene iii, where Lady Capulet and the Nurse discuss Juliet's marriage. Begin “Even or odd of all days in the year” . . .'

‘The nurse is to be played as an earthy type?'

‘Yes, indeed, blissfully unregenerate. Her lines are a triumph of characterization, you know: only she can speak the ones the playwright gave her. That is, of course, the test of true characterization.'

‘I thought this was a rehearsal of my scene, not a lecture,' Ansra remarked acidly.

Prane silenced her with a peremptory gesture. ‘The cue is,' and he altered his voice to a husky, aging contralto, ‘“A fortnight and odd days” . . .'

Helva resigned herself to an active part in this incident, and responded as Nurse Angelica.

Helva called a halt to what promised to be a round-the-chrono affair, on the spurious grounds of some critical computation. What had turned critical was Ansra's temper.

Davo and Kurla had willingly read additional parts, Davo with an insight to the minor characters that wrung mute respect from Helva and generous thanks from Prane. Kurla rose to the challenge of Lady Montague. Ansra's Juliet became less and less convincing. She was ‘reading,' not acting, certainly not reacting to the passion, the youthful enthusiasm and tender passion of Prane's Romeo. She was wooden. The voice was youthful, the gestures girlish, but she resisted every effort of Prane's to draw out of her that quality he wanted Juliet to project.