Judith Merril - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7

After the initial, thrilling forward surge at her maximum speed, Helva realized her muscles were to be given less of a workout than her brawn on this tedious mission. But they did have plenty of time for exploring each other’s personalities. Jennan, of course, knew what Helva was capable of as a ship and partner, just as she knew what she could expect from him. But these were only facts and Helva looked forward eagerly to learning that human side of her partner which could not be reduced to a series of symbols. Nor could the give and take of two personalities be learned from a book. It had to be experienced.

“My father was a scout, too, or is that programmed?” began Jennan their third day out.

“Naturally.”

“Unfair, you know. You’ve got all my family history and I don’t know one blamed thing about yours.”

“I’ve never known either,” Helva said. “Until I read yours, it hadn’t occurred to me I must have one, too, someplace in Central’s files.”

Jennan snorted. “Shell psychology!”

Helva laughed. “Yes, and I’m even programmed against curiosity about it. You’d better be, too.”

Jennan ordered a drink, slouched into the gravity couch opposite her, put his feet on the bumpers, turning himself idly from side to side on the gimbals.

“Helva, a made-up name…”

“With a Scandinavian sound.”

“You aren’t blonde,” Jennan said positively.

“Well, then, there’re dark Swedes.”

“And blonde Turks and this one’s harem is limited to one.”

“Your woman in purdah, yes, but you can comb the pleasure houses, “ Helva found herself aghast at the edge to her carefully trained voice.

“You know,” Jennan interrupted her, deep in some thought of his own, “my father gave me the impression he was a lot more married to his ship, the Silvia, than to my mother. I know I used to think Silvia was my grandmother. She was a low number so she must have been… a great-great-grandmother at least, I used to talk to her for hours.”

“Her registry?” asked Helva, unwittingly jealous of everyone and anyone who had shared his hours.

“422. I think she’s TS now. I ran into Tom Burgess once.”

Jennan’s father had died of a planetary disease, the vaccine for which his ship had used up in curing the local citizens.

“Tom said she’d got mighty tough and salty. You lose your sweetness and I’ll come back and haunt you, girl,” Jennan threatened.

Helva laughed. He startled her by stamping up to the column panel, touching it with light, tender fingers.

“I wonder what you look like,” he said softly, wistfully.

Helva had been briefed about this natural curiosity of scouts. She didn’t know anything about herself and neither of them ever would or could.

“Pick any form, shape, and shade and I’ll be yours obliging,” she countered, as training suggested.

“Iron Maiden, I fancy blondes with long tresses,” and Jennan pantomined Lady Godiva-like tresses. “Since you’re immolated in titanium, I’ll call you Brunehilde, my dear,” and he made his bow.

With a chortle, Helva launched into the appropriate aria just as Spica made contact.

“What’n’ Hell’s that yelling about? Who are you? And unless you’re Central Worlds Medical go away. We’ve got a plague. No visiting privileges.”

“My ship is singing, we’re the JH-834 of Worlds and we’ve got your vaccine. What are our landing coordinates?”

“Your ship is singing?”

“The greatest S.A.T.B. in organized space. Any request?”

The JH-834 delivered the vaccine but no more arias and received immediate orders to proceed to Leviticus IV. By the time they got there, Jennan found a reputation awaiting him and was forced to defend the 834’s virgin honor.

“I’ll stop singing,” murmured Helva contritely as she ordered up poultices for this third black eye in a week.

“You will not,” Jennan said through gritted teeth. “If I have to black eyes from here to the Horsehead to keep the snicker out of the title, we’ll be the ship who sings.”

After the ‘ship who sings’ tangled with a minor but vicious narcotic ring in the Lesser Magellanics, the title became definitely respectful. Central was aware of each episode and punched out a ‘special interest’ key on JH-834’s file. A first-rate team was shaking down well.

Jennan and Helva considered themselves a first-rate team, too, after their tidy arrest.

“Of all the vices in the universe, I hate drug addiction,” Jennan remarked as they headed back to Central Base. “People can go to hell quick enough without that kind of help.”

“Is that why you volunteered for Scout Service? To redirect traffic?”

“I’ll bet my official answer’s on your review.”

“In far too flowery wording. ‘Carrying on the traditions of my family, which has been proud of four generations in Service’, if I may quote you your own words.”

Jennan groaned. “I was very young when I wrote that. I certainly hadn’t been through Final Training. And once I was in Final Training, my pride wouldn’t let me fail…

“As I mentioned, I used to visit Dad on board the Silvia and I’ve a very good idea she might have had her eye on me as a replacement for my father because I had had massive doses of scout-oriented propaganda. It took. From the time I was 7, I was going to be a scout or else.” He shrugged as if deprecating a youthful determination that had taken a great deal of mature application to bring to fruition.

“Ah, so? Scout Sahir Silan on the JS-44 penetrating into the Horsehead Nebulae?”

Jennan chose to ignore her sarcasm.

“With you, I may even get that far. But even with Silvia’s nudging, I never day-dreamed myself that kind of glory in my wildest flights of fancy. I’ll leave the whoppers to your agile brain henceforth. I have in mind a smaller contribution to space history.”

“So modest?”

“No. Practical. We also serve, et cetera.” He placed a dramatic hand on his heart.

“Glory hound!” scoffed Helva.

“Look who’s talking, my Nebula-bound friend. At least I’m not greedy. There’ll only be one hero like my dad at Parsaea, but I would like to be remembered for some kudo. Everyone does. Why else do or die?”

“Your father died on his way back from Parsaea, if I may point out a few cogent facts. So he could never have known he was a hero for damming the flood with his ship. Which kept Parsaean colony from being abandoned. Which gave them a chance to discover the antiparalytic qualities of Parsaea. Which he never knew.”

“I know,” said Jennan softly.

Helva was immediately sorry for the tone of her rebuttal. She knew very well how deep Jennan’s attachment to his father had been. On his review a note was made that he had rationalized his father’s loss with the unexpected and welcome outcome of the Affair at Parsaea.

“Facts are not human, Helva. My father was and so am I. And basically, so are you. Check over your dial, 834. Amid all the wires attached to you is a heart, an underdeveloped human heart. Obviously!”

“I apologize, Jennan,” she said.

Jennan hesitated a moment, threw out his hands in acceptance and then tapped her shell affectionately.

“If they ever take us off the milkruns, we’ll make a stab at the Nebula, huh?”

As so frequently happened in the Scout Service, within the next hour they had orders to change course, not to the Nebula, but to a recently colonized system with two habitable planets, one tropical, one glacial. The sun, named Ravel, had become unstable; the spectrum was that of a rapidly expanding shell, with absorption lines rapidly displacing toward violet. The augmented heat of the primary had already forced evacuation of the nearer world, Daphnis. The pattern of spectral emissions gave indication that the sun would sear Chloe as well. All ships in the immediate spatial vicinity were to report to Disaster Headquarters on Chloe to effect removal of the remaining colonists.