Anne McCaffrey - The Ship Who Searched

He faced her column, not the screen, showing the same courtesy Alex always did. Alex was not aboard at the moment; he was down on the base spending his bonus while Tia was in the refit docks in orbit. But since the Pride of Albion was so close, Doctor Kenny had decided that he couldn't resist making a visit to his most successful patient.

The new version of his chair had been perfected, and he was wearing it now. The platform and seat hid the main power-supply, a shiny exoskeleton covered his legs up to his waist, and Tia thought he looked like some kind of ancient warrior-king on a throne.

"Most of my classmates don't get the point of jokes," she said, with a chuckle. "They just don't seem to have much of a sense of humor. I have to share them with you softies."

"Most of your classmates are as stiff as AIs," he countered. "Don't worry, they'll loosen up in a decade or two. That's what Lars tells me, anyway. He says that living around softies will contaminate even the most rule-bound shell-person. So, how's life with a partner? As I recall, that was one of your worst worries, that you'd end up with a double-debt like Moira for playing brawn-basketball."

"I really like Alex, Kenny." she said slowly. "Especially after the Zombie Bug run. I hate to admit this, but, I even like him more than you, or Anna, or Lars. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about when you called the other day. I really trust your judgment."

He nodded, sagely. "And since I'm not in the brainbrawn program, I am not bound by regs to report you when you tell me how much you are attracted to your brawn." He sent an ironic wink toward her column.

She let herself relax a little. "Something like that," she admitted. "Kenny, I just don't know what to think. He's sloppy, he's forgetful, he's a little impulsive. He has the worst taste in clothes, and I'd rather have him as a partner than anyone else in the galaxy. I'd rather talk to him than my classmates, and being classmates is supposed to be the strongest bond a shell-person can have!" Supposed to be, that was the trick, wasn't it? There was very little in her life that had happened the way it was supposed to. At this point, she should have been entering advanced studies under the auspices of the Institute, not working for it. She should have been a softie, not a shell-person.

But you didn't deal with life by dwelling on what 'should' have happened. You handled it by making the best out of what had happened.

"Well, Tia, you spent the first seven of your most formative years as a softperson," Kenny pointed out gently. His next words echoed her own earlier thoughts. "You never thought you'd wind up in a shell, where your classmates never knew anything but their shells and their teachers. Just like when a chick hatches, what it imprints on is what it's going to fall in love with."

"I, I didn't say I was in love," she stammered, suddenly alarmed.

Kenny held his peace. He simply stared at her column with a look she remembered all too well. The one that said she wasn't entirely telling the truth, and he knew it.

"Well, maybe a little," she admitted, in a very soft voice. "But-it's not like I was another softie-"

"You can love a friend, you know," Kenny pointed out. "That's been acknowledged for centuries, even among stuffy shell-person Counselors. Remember your Greek philosophers. They felt there were three kinds of love, and only one of them had anything to do with the body. Eros, filios, and agape."

"Sexual, brotherly, and religious," she translated, feeling a little better. "Well, okay. Filios, then."

"Lars translates them as 'love involving the body', love involving the mind', and 'love involving the soul'. That's even more apt in your case," Kenny said comfortably. "Both filios and agape apply here."

"I guess you're right," she said, feeling sheepish.

"Tia, my dear," Kenny said, without a hint of patronization, "there is nothing wrong with saying that you love your brawn, the first words you transmitted to me from your new shell, in case you've forgotten, were 'Doctor Kenny, I love you.' Frankly, I'm a lot happier hearing this from you than something 'appropriate'."

"Like what?" she asked curiously.

"Hmm. Like this." He raised his voice an octave. "Well, Doctor Kennet," he said primly, "I'm quite pleased with the performance of my brawn Alexander. I believe we can work well together. Our teamwork was quite acceptable on this last assignment."

"You sound like Kari, exactly like Kari." She laughed. "Yes, but imagine trying to have this conversation with one of my BB Counselors!"

He screwed up his face and flung up his hands. "Oh, horrors}" he exclaimed, his expression matching the outrage in his voice. "How could you confess to feeling anything? AH-One-Oh-Three-Three, I am going to have to report you for instability!"

"Precisely," she replied, sobering. "Sometimes I think they just want us to be superior sorts of AIs. Self-aware and self-motivating, but someone get out a scalpel and excise the feeling part before you pop them in their shells."

"There's a fine line they have to tread, dear," he told her, just as soberly. "Your classmates lack something you had, the physical nurturing of a parent. They never touched anything; they've never known anything but a very artificial environment. They don't really understand emotions, because they've never been allowed to experience them or even see them near at hand. I don't think there's any question in my mind what that means, when they first come out into the real world of us softies. It means they literally enter a world as foreign and incomprehensible as any alien culture. In some ways, it would be better if they all entered professions where they never had to deal with humans one-on-one."

"Then why?" She picked her words with care. "Why don't they put adults into shells?"

"Because adults, even children, often can't adapt to the fact that their bodies don't work anymore, and that, as you pointed out yourself, they will never have that human touch again." He sighed. "I've seen plenty of that in my time, too. You are an exception, my love. But you always have been special. Outstandingly flexible, adaptable." He sat back in his chair and thought; she didn't interrupt him. "Tia, there are things that I don't agree with in the way the shell-person training program is run. But you're out of the training area now and into the real world. You'll find that even the Counselors can have an entirely different attitude out here. They're ready to accept what works, not just what's in the rule books."

She paused a moment before replying. "Kenny, what do I do if, things creep over into eros? I mean, I'm not going to crack my column or anything, but..."

"Helva," Kenny said succinctly. "Think of Helva. She and her brawn had a romance that still has power over the rest of known space. If it happens, Tia, let it happen. If it doesn't, don't mourn over it. Enjoy the fact that your brawn is your very best friend; that's the way it's supposed to be, after all. I have faith in your sense and sensibility; I always have. You'll be fine." He coughed a little. "As it, ah, happens, I have a bit of fellow-feeling for you. Anna and I have gotten to be something of an item,"

"Really?" She didn't even try to modulate the glee out of her voice. "It's about time! What did she do, tip your chair over to slow you down and seduce you on the spot?"

"That's just about word for word what Lars said," Kenny replied, blushing furiously. "Except that he added a few other pointed remarks."

"I can imagine." She giggled. Lars was over two centuries old, and he had seen a great deal in that time. Every kind of drama a sentient was capable of, in fact, he was the chief overseer of one of the largest hospital stations in Central Systems. If there was ever a place for life-and-death drama, a hospital station was it, as holo-makers across the galaxy knew. From the smallest incident to the gravest, Lars had witnessed, and sometimes participated in, all of it.