Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (38 page)

One of the babies died in the initial transferral but of Helva’s “class,” seventeen thrived in the metal shells. Instead of kicking feet, Helva’s neural responses started her wheels; instead of grabbing with hands, she manipulated mechanical extensions. As she matured, more and more neural synapses would be adjusted to operate other mechanisms that went into the maintenance and running of a space ship. For Helva was destined to be the “brain” half of a scout ship, partnered with a man or a woman, whichever she chose, as the mobile half. She would be among the elite of her kind. Her initial intelligence tests registered above normal and her adaptation index was unusually high. As long as her development within her shell lived up to expectations, and there were no side-effects from the pituitary tinkering, Helva would live a rewarding, rich and unusual life, a far cry from what she would have faced as an ordinary, “normal” being.

However, no diagram of her brain patterns, no early I.Q. tests recorded certain essential facts about Helva that Central must eventually learn. They would have to bide their official time and see, trusting that the massive doses of shell-psychology would suffice her, too, as the necessary bulwark against her unusual confinement and the pressures of her profession. A ship run by a human brain could not run rogue or insane with the power and resources Central had to build into their scout ships. Brain ships were, of course, long past the experimental stages. Most babes survived the techniques of pituitary manipulation that kept their bodies small, eliminating the necessity of transfers from smaller to larger shells. And very, very few were lost when the final connection was made to the control panels of ship or industrial combine. Shell people resembled mature dwarfs in size whatever their natal deformities were, but the well-oriented brain would not have changed places with the most perfect body in the Universe.

So, for happy years, Helva scooted around in her shell with her classmates, playing such games as Stall, Power-Seek, studying her lessons in trajectory, propulsion techniques, computation, logistics, mental hygiene, basic alien psychology, philology, space history, law, traffic, codes: all the et ceteras that eventually became compounded into a reasoning, logical, informed citizen. Not so obvious to her, but of more importance to her teachers, Helva ingested the precepts of her conditioning as easily as she absorbed her nutrient fluid. She would one day be grateful to the patient drone of the sub-conscious-level instruction.

Helva’s civilization was not without busy, do-good associations, exploring possible inhumanities to terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial citizens. One such group got all incensed over shelled “children” when Helva was just turning fourteen. When they were forced to, Central Worlds shrugged its shoulders, arranged a tour of the Laboratory Schools and set the tour off to a big start by showing the members’ case histories, complete with photographs. Very few committees ever looked past the first few photos. Most of their original objections about “shells” were overridden by the relief that these hideous (to them) bodies
were
mercifully concealed.

Helva’s class was doing Fine Arts, a selective subject in her crowded program. She had activated one of her microscopic tools which she would later use for minute repairs to various parts of her control panel. Her subject was large—a copy of the Last Supper—and her canvas, small—the head of a tiny screw. She had tuned her sight to the proper degree. As she worked she absentmindedly crooned, producing a curious sound. Shell people used their own vocal cords and diaphragms but sound issued through microphones rather than mouths. Helva’s hum then had a curious vibrancy, a warm, dulcet quality even in its aimless chromatic wanderings.

“Why, what a lovely voice you have,” said one of the female visitors.

Helva “looked” up and caught a fascinating panorama of regular, dirty craters on a flaky pink surface. Her hum became a gurgle of surprise. She instinctively regulated her “sight” until the skin lost its cratered look and the pores assumed normal proportions.

“Yes, we have quite a few years of voice training, madam,” remarked Helva calmly. “Vocal peculiarities often become excessively irritating during prolonged intra-stellar distances and must be eliminated. I enjoyed my lessons.”

Although this was the first time that Helva had seen unshelled people, she took this experience calmly. Any other reaction would have been reported instantly.

“I meant that you have a nice singing voice . . . dear,” the lady amended.

“Thank you. Would you like to see my work?” Helva asked, politely. She instinctively sheered away from personal discussions but she filed the comment away for further meditation.

“Work?” asked the lady.

“I am currently reproducing the Last Supper on the head of a screw.”

“O, I say,” the lady twittered.

Helva turned her vision back to magnification and surveyed her copy critically.

“Of course, some of my color values do not match the old Master’s and the perspective is faulty but I believe it to be a fair copy.”

The lady’s eyes, unmagnified, bugged out.

“Oh, I forget,” and Helva’s voice was really contrite. If she could have blushed, she would have. “You people don’t have adjustable vision.”

The monitor of this discourse grinned with pride and amusement as Helva’s tone indicated pity for the unfortunate.

“Here, this will help,” suggested Helva, substituting a magnifying device in one extension and holding it over the picture.

In a kind of shock, the ladies and gentlemen of the committee bent to observe the incredibly copied and brilliantly executed Last Supper on the head of a screw.

“Well,” remarked one gentleman who had been forced to accompany his wife, “the good Lord can eat where angels fear to tread.”

“Are you referring, sir,” asked Helva politely, “to the Dark Age discussions of the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin?”

“I had that in mind.”

“If you substitute ‘atom’ for ‘angel,’ the problem is not insoluble, given the metallic content of the pin in question.”

“Which you are programed to compute?”

“Of course.”

“Did they remember to program a sense of humor, as well, young lady?”

“We are directed to develop a sense of proportion, sir, which contributes the same effect.”

The good man chortled appreciatively and decided the trip was worth his time.

If the investigation committee spent months digesting the thoughtful food served them at the Laboratory School, they left Helva with a morsel as well.

“Singing” as applicable to herself required research. She had, of course, been exposed to and enjoyed a music appreciation course which had included the better known classical works such as “Tristan und Isolde,” “Candide,” “Oklahoma,” “Nozze de Figaro,” the atomic age singers, Eileen Farrell, Elvis Presley and Geraldine Todd, as well as the curious rhythmic progressions of the Venusians, Capellan visual chromatics and the sonic concerti of the Altairians. But “singing” for any shell person posed considerable technical difficulties to be overcome. Shell people were schooled to examine every aspect of a problem or situation before making a prognosis. Balanced properly between optimism and practicality, the nondefeatist attitude of the shell people led them to extricate themselves, their ships and personnel, from bizarre situations. Therefore to Helva, the problem that she couldn’t open her mouth to sing, among other restrictions, did not bother her. She would work out a method, by-passing her limitations, whereby she could sing.

She approached the problem by investigating the methods of sound reproduction through the centuries, human and instrumental. Her own sound production equipment was essentially more instrumental than vocal. Breath control and the proper enunciation of vowel sounds within the oral cavity appeared to require the most development and practice. Shell people did not, strictly speaking, breathe. For their purposes, oxygen and other gases were not drawn from the surrounding atmosphere through the medium of lungs but sustained artificially by solution in their shells. After experimentation, Helva discovered that she could manipulate her diaphragmic unit to sustain tone. By relaxing the throat muscles and expanding the oral cavity well into the frontal sinuses, she could direct the vowel sounds into the most felicitous position for proper reproduction through her throat microphone. She compared the results with tape recordings of modern singers and was not unpleased although her own tapes had a peculiar quality about them, not at all unharmonious, merely unique. Acquiring a repertoire from the Laboratory library was no problem to one trained to perfect recall. She found herself able to sing any role and any song which struck her fancy. It would not have occurred to her that it was curious for a female to sing bass, baritone, tenor, alto, mezzo, soprano and coloratura as she pleased. It was, to Helva, only a matter of the correct reproduction and diaphragmic control required by the music attempted.

If the authorities remarked on her curious avocation they did so among themselves. Shell people were encouraged to develop a hobby so long as they maintained proficiency in their technical work.

On the anniversary of her sixteenth year in her shell, Helva was unconditionally graduated and installed in her ship, the XH-834. Her permanent titanium shell was recessed behind an even more indestructible barrier in the central shaft of the scout ship. The neural, audio, visual and sensory connections were made and sealed. Her extendibles were diverted, connected or augmented and the final, delicate-beyond-description brain taps were completed while Helva remained anesthetically unaware of the proceedings. When she awoke, she
was
the ship. Her brain and intelligence controlled every function from navigation to such loading as a scout ship of her class needed. She could take care of herself and her ambulatory half, in any situation already recorded in the annals of Central Worlds and any situation its most fertile minds could imagine.

Her first actual flight, for she and her kind had made mock flights on dummy panels since she was eight, showed her complete mastery of the techniques of her profession. She was ready for her great adventures and the arrival of her mobile partner.

There were nine qualified scouts sitting around collecting base pay the day Helva was commissioned. There were several missions which demanded instant attention but Helva had been of interest to several department heads in Central for some time and each man was determined to have her assigned to
his
section. Consequently no one had remembered to introduce Helva to the prospective partners. The ship always chose its own partner. Had there been another “brain” ship at the Base at the moment, Helva would have been guided to make the first move. As it was, while Central wrangled among itself, Robert Tanner sneaked out of the pilots’ barracks, out to the field and over to Helva’s slim metal hull.

“Hello, anyone at home?” Tanner wisecracked.

“Of course,” replied Helva logically, activating her outside scanners. “Are you my partner?” she asked hopefully, as she recognized the Scout Service uniform.

“All you have to do is ask,” he retorted hopefully.

“No one has come. I thought perhaps there were no partners available and I’ve had no directives from Central.”

Even to herself Helva sounded a little self-pitying but the truth was she was lonely, sitting on the darkened field. Always she had had the company of other shells and more recently, technicians by the score. The sudden solitude had lost its momentary charm and become oppressive.

“No directives from Central is scarcely a cause for regret, but there happen to be eight other guys biting their fingernails to the quick just waiting for an invitation to board you, you beautiful thing.”

Tanner was inside the central cabin as he said this, running appreciative fingers over her panel, the scout’s gravity-couch, poking his head into the cabins, the galley, the head, the pressured-storage compartments.

“Now, if you want to give Central a shove and do
us
a favor all in one, call up the Barracks and let’s have a ship-warming partner-picking party. Hmmmm?”

Helva chuckled to herself. He was so completely different from the occasional visitors or the various Laboratory technicians she had encountered. He was so gay, so assured, and she was delighted by his suggestion of a partner-picking party. Certainly it was not against anything in her understanding of regulations.

“Cencom, this is XH-834. Connect me with Pilot Barracks.”

“Visual?”

“Please.”

A picture of lounging men in various attitudes of boredom came on her screen.

“This is XH-834. Would the unassigned scouts do me the favor of coming aboard?”

Eight figures galvanized into action, grabbing pieces of wearing apparel, disengaging tape mechanisms, disentangling themselves from bedsheets and towels.

Helva dissolved the connection while Tanner chuckled gleefully and settled down to await their arrival.

Helva was engulfed in an unshell-like flurry of anticipation. No actress on her opening night could have been more apprehensive, fearful or breathless. Unlike the actress, she could throw no hysterics, china objects d’art or greasepaint to relieve her tension. She could, of course, check her stores for edibles and drinks, which she did, serving Tanner from the virgin selection of her commissary.

Scouts were colloquially known as “brawns” as opposed to their ship “brains.” They had to pass as rigorous a training program as the brains and only the top one percent of each contributory world’s highest scholars were admitted to Central Worlds Scout Training Program. Consequently the eight young men who came pounding up the gantry into Helva’s hospitable lock were unusually fine-looking, intelligent, well-co-ordinated and adjusted young men, looking forward to a slightly drunken evening, Helva permitting, and all quite willing to do each other dirt to get possession of her.