The Ship Who Sang (24 page)

In Injia's sunny clime where I used to spend my time
. . . Time I have too much of or not enough. Could it be that I am suspended midway between time and madness?

There once was a bishop from Chichester

Who made all the saints in their niches stir . . .

I had a niche once only I was moved out, not by a bishop, but a Xixon.

I should sit on a Xixon or fixon a Xixon or Nix on a Xixon or . . .

I cannot move. I cannot see. I cannot hear.

Howlonghowlonghowlong? HOW LONG?

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one country to dissolve the . . . I'M
dissolving.

There is nothing I can think of in all space and time that does not bring me right back to . . .

SOUND.

A scraping metallic sound. But a SOUND upon her aural circuits. Like a hot iron in her brain, a fiery brand of sanity after the dense, thick, solid, infinite inquiet soundlessness. She
screamed, but having no connections except the aural, screamed soundlessly.

Something was thundering:

‘I have reconnected your sound system!'

Helva toned the volume rapidly down to an acceptable level. The voice was harsh, whining, nasal, unpleasant, but the sense divinely welcome.

‘You have been disconnected from your ship function.'

The words made no immediate sense. She was listening to the glory of sound and the sensation of noise was unbelievable agony. It took a moment for those syllables to reform themselves into comprehensive tones.

‘You have been connected to a limited audiovisual circuit to permit you to retain your sanity. Any abuse of this courtesy will result in further . . .' a nasty laugh accompanied the threat, ‘. . . if not permanent, deprivation.'

Unexpectedly sight returned, an evil benison, because of the object in her lens. She could not suppress the scream.

‘This is your idea of cooperation?' demanded the strident voice and a huge cavern, spiked with great ivory tusks, opened directly in front of her, pink and red and slimy white.

She adjusted vision hastily, putting the face into normal proportions. It was not a pleasant face even at proper size. It belonged to the man, no longer disguised as old, who had styled himself the Antiolathan Xixon.

‘Cooperation?' Helva asked, confused.

‘Yes, your cooperation or nothing,' and the Xixon moved his hand to one side of her limited vision, wrapping his fingers around input leads.

‘No. I'll go mad,' Helva cried, alarmed, frightened.

‘Mad?' and her tormentor laughed obscenely. ‘You've plenty of company. But you shan't go mad . . . not yet. I have a use for
you
.'

A finger dominated her lens like a suspended projectile.

‘No, no, fool, not like that!' her captor shrieked and dashed off to one side of her screen.

Desperately, assesmbling her wits, Helva tuned up her hearing, sharpened her sight focus. She was facing a small audiovisual amplification panel into which her leads and those of . . . yes . . . she could count 12 other . . . input lines were plugged. She had only one line of vision, straight ahead. Directly in front of her, before the panel, were two shells, trailing fine wires like fairy hair from their blunt tops. Within those shells existed two of her peers. There should be two more. Beside me? She had a peripheral glimpse of more wires. Yes, beside me.

Carefully, she drew against the power in the amplifier. A very limited capacity. To her left, whence the Xixon thing had gone, was the beginning of a complex interstellar
communications unit from the look of it and the few dial readings she could see.

Xixon returned, smiling a mocking, smug smile at her.

‘So you are the ship who sings. The Helva obscenity. May I present your fellow obscenities. Of course, Foro's company is limited to groans and howls. We kept him in the dark too long,' and the Xixon howled with pure spite. ‘Delia's not much better, true, but she will speak if spoken to. Tagi and Merl had learned not to talk unless I address them. So shall you. For I have always wanted my own zoo of obscenities and I have them all in you. And you, my latest guest, will cheer my leisure hours with your incomparable voice. Will you not?'

Helva said nothing. She was instantly plunged into utter dark, utter soundlessness.

‘He is mad himself. He is doing this to terrify me. I refuse to be terrified by a madman. I will wait. I will be calm. He has a use for me so he will not wait too long before giving me sight and sound again or he will defeat his purpose. I will wait. I will be calm. I will soon have sight and sound again. I will wait. I will be calm but soon, oh soon . . .

‘There now, my pretty awful, you've had time to reconsider my generosity.'

Helva had indeed. She limited her capitulation to a monosyllable. The blessedness of sight and sound could not quite erase the endless
hours of deprivation, yet she knew, from the chronometer on the panel board, that he had shut her off for a scant few minutes. It was frightening to be dependent on this vile beast.

She refined her vision, scanning his eyes closely. There was a faint but unmistakable tinge of blue to his skin tone that tagged him as either a native of Rho Puppis' three habitable worlds or a Tucanite addict. The latter seemed the more likely. Well, she had been carrying Tucanite and she knew the RD had, also.

‘Feel like singing now?' His laugh was demoniac.

‘Sir?' said a tentative and servile voice to her left.

The Xixon turned, frowning at the interruption.

‘Well?'

‘The cargo of the 834 contained no Mankalite.'

‘None!' Her captor whirled back to Helva, his eyes blazing. ‘Where did you squander it?'

‘At Tania Australis,' she replied, purposefully keeping her voice low.

‘Speak up,' he screamed at her.

‘I'm using all the power you've allowed me. That amplifier doesn't produce much.'

‘It's not supposed to,' the Xixon said irritably, his eyes restlessly darting around the room. Suddenly there was his finger obscuring all other objects from her vision. Tell me, which ship is to deliver Mankalite next?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Speak up.'

‘I feel that I am shouting already.'

‘You're not. You're whispering.'

‘Is this better?'

‘Well, I can hear you. Now, tell me, which ship is next to deliver Mankalite?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Will you “don't know” in darkness?' His laugh echoed hollowly in her skull as he plunged her back into nothingness.

She forced herself to count slowly, second speed, so that she had some reference to time.

He did not keep her out very long. She wanted to scream simply to fill her mind with sound, yet she managed to keep her voice very low.

‘Isn't it any better?' he demanded, scowling suspiciously. ‘Took that Foro obscenity off completely.'

Helva steeled herself against the compassion she felt. She comforted herself with the knowledge that Foro had already been mindless.

‘For speech, it is sufficient,' she said, raising her volume just slightly. She could not use that ploy again for it would cost Merl or Tagi or Delia what fragile grip they had on sanity.

‘Hmmph. Well, now, see that it does.'

He disappeared.

Helva heightened her listening volume. She could hear at least 10 different movement patterns beyond her extremely limited vision. From the reverberations of sound, they were
in some large but low-ceilinged natural rock cavern. Now, if the main communications panel, part of which was visible to her, was a standard planetary model, if there were not too many chambers beyond this one to diffuse the sound, and if all the madman's personnel were nearby, she might just be able to do something.

He wanted her to sing, did he?

She waited and she kept calm.

Presently he returned, absently rubbing his shoulder. Helva increased magnification and noticed the traces of the subcutaneous blue. He used Tucanite, then.

A chair was produced from somewhere for him and he settled himself. Another disembodied hand provided a table on which a dish of choice foods was set.

‘Sing, my pretty obscenity, sing,' the mad Xixon commanded, reaching languorously above his head toward her input leads.

Helva complied. She began in the middle of her range, using the most sensuous songs she could remember, augmenting them subtly in bass reflex but keeping the volume tantalizingly low so that he had to crouch forward to hear her.

It got on his nerves and when he peevishly reached out to snatch all but her leads from the board, she begged him not to deprive her peers of sense.

‘Surely, sir, you could not, when all you need do is augment my power just slightly from the main board. Even without their very minute
power draw on this amplifier, I could not possibly Reticulate a croon, for instance.'

He sat up straight, his eyes flashing with anticipation.

‘You can Reticulate the mating croons?'

‘Of course,' she replied with mild surprise.

He frowned at her, torn between a desire to hear those renowned exotic songs and a very real concern to limit a shell's ability. He was deep in the thrall of the Tucanite now, his senses eager for further stimulation, and the lure of the Reticulan croons was too much for him.

He did, however, call over and consult with a fawning technician, who blinked constantly and had a severe tic in one cheek. Fascinated, Helva magnified until she was able to see each muscle fiber jerk.

She plunged into dark soundlessness and then, suddenly, felt renewed with the sense of real power against her leads.

‘You have ample power now, singer,' he told her, his expression vicious with anticipation. ‘Perform or you will regret it. And do not try any shell games on me, for I have had them seal off all the other circuits on this amplifier. Sing, shipless one, sing for your sight and sound.'

She waited until his laughter died. Even a Reticulan croon could not be heard . . . or be effective . . . above the cackling.

She took an easy one, double-voicing it, treble and counter, testing how much power she could get. It would be enough. And the echo of her
lilting croon came back, bouncingly, to reassure her that this installation was not large and was set in natural stone caverns. Very good.

She cut in the overtones, gradually adding bass frequencies but subtly so they seemed just part of the Reticulan croon at first. Even with his heightened sensibilities, he wouldn't realize what she was doing. She augmented the inaudible frequencies.

Her croon was of a particularly compelling variation and she heard, under her singing – if one would permit Reticulan croons such a dignified title – the stealthy advance of his slaves and co-workers, lured close by the irresistible sirens sounds.

She gathered herself and then pumped pure sonic hell into the triple note.

It got him first, heightened as he had been by the Tucanite. It got him dead, his brains irretrievably scrambled from the massive dose of sonic fury. It got the others in the cavern, too. She could hear their shrieks of despair over the weird composite sound she had created, as they fainted.

The overload shortcircuited several panels in the master board, showering the unconscious and the dead with blinding sparks. Helva threw in what breakers she could to keep her own now-reduced circuit open. Even she felt the backlash of that supersonic blast. Her nerve ends tingled, her ‘ears' rang and she felt extremely enervated.

‘I'll bet I've developed a
very
acid condition in my nutrients,' she told herself with graveyard humor.

The great room was silent except for hoarse breathing and hissing wires.

‘Delia? Answer me. It's Helva.'

‘Who is Helva? I have no access to memory banks.'

‘Tagi, can you hear me?'

‘Yes.' A flat, mechanical affirmative.

‘Merl, can you hear me?'

‘You're loud.'

Helva stared straight ahead at the dead body that had tortured them so cruelly. Oh, for a pair of hands!

Revenge on an inert husk was illogical.

Now what do I do? she wondered. At that point, she remembered that she had been about to divorce Teron.
And the tight beam had been left open!
Parollan wasn't the kind to sit on his hands. WHERE WAS HE?

‘There you are, Helva, back at the old stand,' the ST-1 Captain said, patting her column paternally.

She scanned to make certain the release plate was locked back into seamless congruity with the rest of the column.

‘Your new cadence-syllable release was tuned into the metal and Chief Railly is the only one who knows it,' the Captain assured her.

‘And the independent audio and visual relays
are attached to the spare synapses of my shell?'

‘Good idea, that, Helva. May make it a standard procedure.'

‘But mine are hooked up?'

‘Yes, yours are hooked up. Seems like a case of asking for clearance when the ship was blasted off, this precaution after the fact, but . . .'

‘Have you ever been sense-deprived, Captain?'

He shuddered and his eyes darkened. None of the Fleet or Brain-Brawn Ship personnel who penetrated the Xixon's asteroid headquarters would be likely to forget the pitiable condition of the shell-people – the amplified human beings who had once been considered invulnerable.

‘Tagi, Merl, and Delia will recover. Delia'll be back in service in a year or so,' the Captain said quietly. Then he sighed, for he, too, couldn't bring himself to name Foro. ‘You people are needed, you know.' He leaned forward so suddenly toward her panel that Helva gasped. ‘Easy, Helva.' And he slid his hand down the column. ‘Nope. Can't even feel the seam. You're all secure.'

He carefully gathered up the delicate instruments of his profession, wrapping them in soft surgi-foam.

‘How're the brawns?' she asked idly, as she stretched out along her rewired extensions, shrugging into her ship skin.