The Ship Who Sang (22 page)

‘
Physical
movement,' he qualified, his manner wary. ‘
Physical
freedom.'

‘Define “physical”. As this ship, I have more
physical power, more physical freedom, than you ever will know. I think, I feel, I breathe. My heart beats, blood does flow through my veins, my lungs do work: not as yours, but they are functioning.'

‘So are the hearts and veins and lungs of those four – four nothings in the life support room of Base Hospital. But
they
are dead.'

‘Am I?'

‘Are you?'

‘You're drunk, Parollan,' she accused in a flat cold voice.

‘I'm not drunk, Helva. I'm discussing a deep moral issue with you and you evade me.'

‘Evade Niall Parollan? Or Supervisor Parollan?'

‘Niall Parollan.'

‘Why are you discussing this deep moral issue with Helva, Niall Parollan?'

Unexpectedly he shrugged and leaned back, his shoulders sagging as he lapped his fingers around the soup cup and regarded its contents moodily.

‘Passes time,' he said finally. ‘We both have time on our hands tonight. Time that must be passed some way or other. Silly to waste
our
valuable time (and he gave a sardonic laugh) in small talk. Might just as well discuss a deep moral issue which, I might point out, you dumped into our laps. Which no-one's going to resolve anyway. You should've made the Corvi clear their garbage before you cleared their fartful
atmosphere. Say,
did
you smell that stuff they breathe?'

Helva found herself answering his question while another part of her rapidly churning mind wondered at his remarkable behavior.

‘I, Helva, have no olfactory sense, so I, Helva, wouldn't have noticed how the Corviki atmosphere “smelled”. None of the others mentioned it, so I assume that, for Corvi entities, the atmospheric odor was unexceptional.'

‘Aha!' The thin forefinger jabbed at her accusingly. ‘You don't have that physical ability.'

‘Nor am I sure that I want it . . . except to smell coffee, which everyone says smells particularly pleasant.'

‘Remember to order some in the morning.'

‘Orders already on file with Commissary,' Helva said sweetly.

‘That's my gal.'

‘I'm not your gal. And, at the risk of being a bore, why are you here, Niall Parollan?'

‘I don't want to be bothered by those fardling specs,' he muttered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Base Tower, ‘and I would be if they could reach me. They can't here because Cencom is not allowed to admit any calls to you, Helva XH-834, until 0800 because you, Helva
m'gal,
have had enough of them for one revolution. Haven't you?' His question crackled in the air. ‘Don't deny it,' he advised when she didn't answer immediately. ‘I know you well enough . . . oh, I know you, gal, like no other
man ever has . . . and you were so close to telling them to stuff it, you were so close to . . .' his voice trailed off briefly. ‘This assignment was a lot rougher on you than you'll ever admit.'

She said nothing.

He nodded and took another mouthful of soup.

‘You aren't drunk,' she said.

‘I told you that.' He grinned at her.

‘I hadn't realized,' she went on in a light tone to hide the fact that she was deeply touched by his unexpected empathy, ‘that ship-sitting was a function of a Supervisor.'

He waggled a lean finger expressively. ‘We have wide discretionary latitude.'

‘And am I really incommunicado until 0800 or were you merely keeping me from meeting personable brawns?'

‘Hell no,' he explained, his eyebrows arching in protest. ‘That's absolute fact you can check out.
You
can call out, you know. It's just no-one can call in. And . . .'

‘You're here to divert me from calling the brawns.'

‘That woman's got brawns on the brain!' he exploded. ‘Go ahead,' he urged, ‘call the brawns in. Rouse the whole barracks. We'll have a swinging party . . .' He was halfway to the console.

‘Why are
you
here?'

‘Hey, moderate your voice, gal. I'm here because you're the safest place for
me
to be. He
turned back to her again, grinning wickedly. ‘Sure you don't want to call the brawn barracks?'

‘Positive. Why are
you
escaping?'

‘Because,' and he dropped down onto the couch again, making himself quite comfortable, ‘I've had it with their nardy questions and suspicions and . . .'

‘Suspicions?' Helva pounced on the word.

Niall made a crude noise. ‘
They
(and his fingers flicked in the direction of the Tower's lit windows) got fardling damned theories about schizoid brains and blocks and that kind of drift.'

‘About me?'

Again the expressive rude noise. ‘I know you, gal, and so does Railly and we're taking none of that crap about
you
.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Don't get snide with me, Helva,' and Parollan's voice turned hard. ‘I'll make you work your ass off for the Service. I'll make you take assignments you don't want because they're good for you and the Service . . .'

‘Good for me? Like the Corvi affair?'

‘Yes, damn your eyes, good for
you
, Helva. For the woman inside that armor plate!'

‘I thought you were urging me to come out of my armor plate . . . into Kurla's body.'

Parollan was still. His angry eyes seemed to bore through the column into her shell. Abruptly he relaxed and leaned back again, apparently at ease, but Helva noticed the small contraction of jaw muscles.

‘Yes, I was, wasn't I?' he said mildly. With a sigh, he swiveled his feet up on the couch and yawned in an exaggerated fashion. ‘You know, I've never heard you sing. Would you oblige?'

‘To keep you awake? Or would you prefer a lullaby?'

Niall Parollan yawned again, laced his fingers behind his head, crossed his neatly booted ankles and stared up at the ceiling.

‘Dealer's choice.'

Surprisingly, Helva felt like singing.

‘
BRAIN SHIPS DON'
T
disappear,' Helva said in what she hoped was a firm, no-argument tone.

Teron stuck his chin out in a way that caused him to appear a neckless Neanderthal. This mannerism had passed from amusing through annoying to unendurable.

‘You heard Central,' Teron replied at his most didactic. ‘They do disappear, because they have disappeared.'

‘The fact of disappearance is inconsistent with shell psychology,' Helva said, barely managing to restrain herself from shouting at top volume. She had the feeling that she might force him to understand by overwhelming him with sound alone. She knew this was basically illogical, but in trying to cope with Teron over the past galactic year, she found she reacted more and more on an emotional rather than a reasonable level.

This partnership was clearly intolerable – she would even go so far as to say, degrading – and she would allow it to continue no longer than it took them to finish this assignment and return to Regulus Base.

Helva had had enough of Teron. She did not care two feathers in a jet-vent if the conclusion wasn't mutual. It had been difficult for her to admit she had found herself in a situation she couldn't adjust to, but she and Teron were clearly incompatible. She would just have to admit to an error of judgement and correct it. It was the only sensible course of action.

Helva groaned inwardly. He was contagious. She was talking more and more as he did.

‘Your loyalty is commendable, if, in this instance, misplaced,' Teron was saying pompously. ‘The facts are there. Four brain-controlled ships engaged on Central Worlds commissions have disappeared without trace, their accompanying pilots with them. Fact: a ship can alter its tape, a pilot cannot. Fact: the ships have failed to appear at a scheduled port-of-call. Fact: the ships have failed to appear in the adjacent sectors of space nearest their previous or projected ports-of-call. Therefore, they have disappeared. The ships must have altered the projected journey for no known reason. Therefore the ships are unreliable organisms. This conclusion follows the presented data and is unalterable. Any rational intelligence must admit the validity of that conclusion.'

He gave her that irritating smirk she had originally thought a sweet smile.

Helva counted slowly to 1,000 by 10s. When she spoke again, her voice was under perfect control.

‘The presented data is incomplete. It lacks motivation. There is no reason for those four ships to have disappeared for their own purposes. They weren't even badly indebted. Indeed, the DR was within 3 standard years of solvency.' Just as I am, she thought. ‘Therefore, and on the basis of privileged information available to
me
. . .' she came as close as makes no never mind to spitting out the pronoun, ‘. . . your conclusion is unacceptable.'

‘I cannot see what privileged information, if you actually have any,' Teron awarded her a patronizing smile, ‘could change my conclusion, since Central has also reached it.'

There, Helva thought to herself, he had managed to drag in old infallible authority and that is supposed to stop me in my tapes.

It was useless to argue with him anyway. He was, as Niall Parollan had once accused her of being, stubborn for the wrong reasons. He was also pigheaded, dogmatic, insensitive, regulation-hedged and so narrowly oriented as to prevent any vestige of imagination or intuitive thinking from coloring his mental processes for a microsecond.

She oughtn't to have thought of Niall Parollan. It did her temper no good. That officious little pipsqueak had paid her another of his unsolicited, unofficial visits to argue her out of choosing the Acthionite.

‘He passed his brawn training on theory credits. He's been slated for garbage runs, not
you
!' Niall Parollan had cried, pacing her main cabin.

‘And
you
are not the person who will be his partner. His profile-tape looks extremely compatible to me.'

‘Use your wits, girl. Just look at him. He's all muscle and no heart, too perfectly good looking to be credible. Christ, he's . . . he's an android, complete with metal brainworks, programmed in a rarified atmosphere. He'll drive you batty.'

‘He's a reliable, well-balanced, well-read, well-adjusted . . .'

‘And you're a spiteful, tin-plated virgin,' said Parollan and for the second time in their acquaintance, he charged out of her cabin without a backward look.

Now Helva had to admit Niall Parollan had been demoralizingly accurate about Brawn Teron of Acthion. The only kind thing that could be said about Teron, in Helva's estimation, was that he was a complete change from any other partner she had had, temporarily or permanently.

And if he called her an unreliable organism once more, she would blow the lock on him.

However, Teron considered he had silenced her with the last telling remark. He seated himself at his pilot control board, flexed his fingers as he always did, and then ran his precious and omnipotent data through the computer, checking their journey tape. It was obvious he was out to thwart any irrational desire Helva might have
to change their journey and make them disappear.

Teron worked methodically and slowly, his broad brow unwrinkled, his wide-cheeked face serene, his brown eyes never straying from the task at hand.

How, under the suns of heaven, did I ever have the incredible lack of insight to pick him? Helva wondered, the adrenalin level in her shell still high. I must have been out of my ever-loving, capsulated mind. Maybe my nutrient fluid is going acid. When I get back to Regulus, I am going to demand an endocrine check. Something is wrong with me.

No, no, no. Helva contradicted herself. There is nothing wrong with me that getting rid of Teron won't cure. He's got me doubting my sanity and I
know
I'm sane or I wouldn't be this ship.

Remember that, Helva, she told herself. It's quite possible that, before this trip ends, he'll have persuaded you you're a menace to Central Worlds Autonomy because your intelligence is so unreliable the safest thing for the known world is for you to opt out. Him and his assumption that a brain ship must be an unreliable organism because they/she/he (never it, please) could digest data, ignore the irrelevant, and proceed on seemingly illogical courses to logical and highly successful ends. Such as the tangle she and Kira had got into on Alioth.

And to quote particulars, she, Helva, had
already been unreliable several times in her short career as a brain ship. Teron had been ‘kind enough' to point out these deviations to her, as well as a far more logical course of action under all the same conditions, and he had admonished her never to act outside cut orders while he, Teron of Acthion, was her brawn partner. She was to do nothing, repeat,
nothing,
without clearing first with him and then with Central. An intelligent organism was known by its ability to follow orders without deviation.

‘And you actually mean,' Helva had remarked laughingly the first time Teron had made this solemn pronouncement – she had still had her sense of humor in those days – ‘. . . that, if our orders require me to enter an atmosphere my subsequent investigations proved was corrosive to my hull and would result in our deaths, I should follow such orders . . . to the death, that is.'

‘Irresponsible orders are not given to Central Worlds Ships,' Teron replied reprovingly.

‘Half a league, half a league

Half a league onward . . .'

‘I do not understand what half leagues have to do with the principle under discussion,' he said coldly.

‘I was trying to make a subtle point. I will rephrase.'

‘In a concise, therefore comprehensible, manner, if you please.'