Get Off the Unicorn (37 page)

Only now had it become important to Helva to know that, but for the birth defect that had destined her to be a shell person, she would have been beautiful. She wanted to be, she could have been, but she wasn't. And it was possible that Niall, deprived of all feminine companionship on long trips, might succumb to the temptation to open her shell. Illegally he had obtained the release words, a sequence and pitch unique and supposedly known only to one person, which would open the panel and give access to her titanium shell beyond. As Rocco had said, a brawn fixation was dangerous.

The unbidden thought of Niall sporting with the three nubile girls in the galley exacerbated her mind. Had he suggested to Permut and Abu that they keep her occupied while he was . . .?

You
 . . . are a jealous bitch! Helva told herself in measured tones of surprise and self-repugnance. A shell person jealous of a mobile? For a sexual reason? Ridiculous and yet, she'd all the symptoms of sheer flaming jealousy.

She'd loved Jennan, but there'd been no trace of that utterly human vice in their relationship.

Well, Helva thought sternly, you didn't have to worry about sharing Jennan with half the female population of the Galaxy. And you didn't love him this way: you loved Jennan with a purity equal to Juliet's, with not a care as to things-as-they-are. You'd've changed your tune if Jennan had lived.

Or would I?

Jennan, at least, had been discreet. Unlike the stud she'd aboard her now.

Had Niall passed the danger point of his fixation? Or, when his libido reached the unendurable in space, would the temptation to open her panel return?

How much did Niall count on the Corvikis approving the drive? How long would he stay her brawn if they didn't?

It was scant consolation to realize that the cycle-variant drive wasn't the only one undergoing a test run.

 

By the time the immense crane had swung her back on her tail fins, Helva was evaluating her new suit of superfine superskin.

“You gleam, baby, you glisten, you shine in the sun like a jewel,” Niall said into his combutton. In the company of Breslaw and Railly and several of the ceramicists, he was standing at a distance from her on the apron of the kiln building. “By god, you're blue in some lights. Is that stuff iridescent, Breslaw?”

Helva increased the magnification of her scanner on the group. Breslaw was beaming fatuously, for the process was a new application of old techniques and the coating had been accomplished with relatively no halts or snags. Certainly the finished product was impressive.

“How d'you feel, Helva,” Niall asked.

“How's one supposed to feel after a face-lifting?”

“Bruised. Stop being so eternally female, woman. Are all your systems go? We don't need a clogged pore where we're going.”

Helva'd been doing a rapid check of her exterior installations. Everything was in operating order, but she felt differently. Not uncomfortable, merely altered.

“So,” Railly was saying to Niall in a steely, teeth-clenched voice, “now how soon can you lift?”

“Why, Chief, we'd've been away two days ago if I could've got any decent cooperation from servicing personnel.” Blithely unaware of Railly's pop-eyed reaction, Niall turned to the startled ceramicists. “Do we need to wait until her skin cools?”

The senior technician stammered out something about temperature variations and tolerances, and then shrugged assent.

“Great. Good-bye all. See you sometime yesterday!”

With an insolent salute, Niall strode across the permatarm toward Helva. She let down the lift for a quick getaway, keeping one eye on Railly, who was apoplectic at the calculated insolence. Breslaw began speaking to his superior, though Helva couldn't tell if he were pacifying Railly or diverting him with other matters. The ceramicists had certainly departed quickly.

No sooner was Niall within than he brusquely signaled her to secure for lift-off. She started to get clearance from the Control Tower before she remembered a minor detail.

“We've no supervisor.”

“Oh yes, we have. Railly!” The name came out as a growled curse. Niall bounced into the pilot's seat, strapped down. “Let's get off this fardling base. Now!”

She began lift-off, sluggish because of the extra weight in drive chamber, strut, and skin.

“It's heavy going, Niall,” she warned him and then piled on thrust.

Once clear of Regulus's service satellites, Niall spun himself away from the console.

“One more moment down there listening to Railly and I'd've done my nut!” He heaved himself out of the pilot chair and floated across the lounge, his expression bleak and weary.

As she felt rather elated to be finally away, she was momentarily dumbfounded by the transformation in her private whirlwind. She was even more surprised when he bypassed the galley and hand-pulled himself into his cabin.

“Wake me, girl, if anything startling occurs.”

He kicked off his boots, stripped off the shipsuit, rolled under the cover, pulling the free-fall strap across him, and was asleep before his arm dropped slowly back.

And so he slept and slept and slept. Which was no consolation to Helva.

She occupied herself at first by space-testing all her functions, did a bit of jockeying on thrusters to get the feel of how the modifications in her hull affected her maneuverability. She felt like a scow, and wondered if the now inert mass of the c-v drive would lighten once it was operative.

Asleep, Niall Parollan did not resemble his waking self: there was a curious vulnerability about his mouth, the sweep of rather long eyelashes on wide cheekbones. He looked altogether too young to be his chronological age and rather defenseless. He did not twitch, toss, or snore, moving less than usual in what she understood were normal sleep patterns. Economical that. She watched him for quite a long time, as if memorizing the very pores of his rather coarse skin, the way his hair pattern took an abrupt turn at the back of his head.

She firmly closed off that scanner and searched about her for sleeptime occupation. She dialed for Abu's dance tapes and viewed the first five minutes of one before it occurred to her that the dance forms were highly erotic and far too suggestive for her present state of mind. She flipped over to Permut's latest showing and, although she tried to be completely objective, discovered phallic symbols of one flagrant sort or another were the themes of all the art forms he was currently exhibiting. Exhibition indeed!

Rather appalled at the prominence of sexual motifs, she sought refuge in the good Solar Prane's nighttime occupation, but she had scarcely got into
Julius Caesar
, a play that ought to have been safe, when the tone of jealousy began to make itself obvious.
King Lear
was not much better, nor
Coriolanus
. She switched to comedy and got a good way into
The Comedy of Errors
before the stupidity of the lovers became too ironic.
The Tempest
was no good: she felt akin to poor Caliban and that did her morale no good.

She decided that the only safe subject was the specs of the c-v drive, and tried to imagine that she were a Corviki examining the data and how it/ she/ they/ he would react. The exercise was not felicitous because she began to think the c-v drive
wouldn't
work: it was an appallingly wasteful use of energy because the thrust had to be directed away from the goal to protect frail human bodies. Her conclusion depressed her so she turned back to Abu's tapes. There must be some dances that did not depict love-erotic or love-denied or . . .

Yes, the fifth tape was of a formal insect dance from the Lyrae IV system: color, motion, almost mesmerizing, very soothing certainly to Helva's distressed sensibilities. Gratefully, she gave herself up to the play of form and color. Halfway through the tape and much calmer, she wondered idly if it were
Niall's
sex drive she'd have to worry about.

Sixteen hours later Niall Parollan awoke, stretched, catapulted out of the bunk in one movement, and sang merrily away in the shower.

“What's our running time to Beta Corvi?” he asked as he was dressing. “And let's put on a bit of grav, love.”

“Fourteen standard days, twelve hours, and nine minutes. How much grav, three-quarters?” She began to apply gravity as he settled himself in the galley.

“That's it exactly,” he said, holding up his hand, and making a cut-off gesture. He bounced a little as he made for the coffee cupboard. With a warming container in one hand, he prepared a staggering protein meal.

“What? No shish kebabs?”

“That junk's for show.” He took a long swig of the now hot coffee. “Ah, that's the stuff. Gotta keep up the image.” He snorted as if repudiating that same image. “I think what recommends you most to me, dear girl, is that I don't have to
be
anyone but Niall Parollan within your stately walls.” He stretched again until his shoulder bones cracked. “God, I'm still tired, riding those ship monkeys to get us out of there. Say, how's your nutrient balance?”

“Just great.”

“What'd you do to amuse yourself last night?”

“Actually, I settled on some tapes Abu sent on board . . . formal insect dances from Lyrae.”

Niall stared at her. “Great jumping puddles of fardle! Couldn't you find anything more exciting?”

“Quite likely,” and Helva giggled without explanation. “But you know, the dances were very soothing.”

“Do you always do something like that?” The notion evidently distressed Niall, as if she'd suddenly sprouted facial hair.

“Oh no. If I'm near enough, I can chat up another ship.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, you BB ships are divvils for knowing gossip before groundstaff.”

They talked amiably about other inconsequentialities while he consumed his enormous meal. He stretched out on the couch, then patted the bulge of stomach.

“Do you eat like that often?”

“Fardles, no. I'd be fat. That'll last me a long while.” He yawned. “Did you get any new music on board? Abu was talking about some new reels . . .”

He was asleep within half an hour. At first concerned, Helva came to the decision that one of the reasons Niall Parollan seemed indefatigable around people was because he could conserve energy at other times. He woke up refreshed several hours later, ate lightly, did isometrics “to get rid of some breakfast,” and then settled down to browsing through the technical journals he'd had her collect from Regulus Central Information. They discussed the article on polymer extrusions from alien silicates, he studied the c-v drive specs yet another time, relaxed over a coffee while the two worked a crossword puzzle in Deltan symbology, and then he bade her a fond goodnight and went to bed again.

That set the pattern for their trip as far as activity was concerned, exactly in accord with what could be expected from any trained brawn. Two evenings from Beta Corvi, it dawned on Helva that she had allowed herself to be influenced too much by people who did not know Niall Parollan at all . . . who knew of him and about his reputation. She, Helva the 834, knew another side of the man “himself,” without image or affectation, and that personality was very likable, too likable. She sighed as she watched, for the twelfth time, the Lyraen dances and let herself be soothed. She could carry her true love through the stars and never touch him. But she could be more to Parollan than any other female in the entire galaxy, and woe unto her who tried to part them now!

 

Beta Corvi pulsed a vivid orange-red on the viewscreen as Helva picked up the first Corviki space buoy on her scanners. Instantly it colored, a microsun in the carpet of blackness.

She roused Niall, who was sleeping in eagle-spread abandon. Simultaneously the psyche-transfer circuit in her mind was activated and she felt the query of the alien mind.

In the time it took Niall to rise from his bunk, the Corviki had established the identity of their visitors, the reason for their return, the alterations in her hull and the inactive core of the new drive, and issued her orbital instructions.

“Hey,” Niall protested as a surge of power, uninitiated by Helva, sent him lurching into the door frame.

“Sorry, pal, they just took over.”

“Took over?” Niall padded into the main cabin, rubbing his right arm. “I thought you'd wake me when we reached their first buoy.”

“I did.” She turned on the rear screen, focused on the fast-receding marker. “The Corviki don't waste time, which they consider another form of energy.”

“Hmmm. An interesting concept.”

“We're approaching orbit,” she told him.

He blinked in astonishment. “One thing sure: those modifications of yours can sure take speed.”

“A point.”

“Hey, will they give me time to eat? A cup of coffee, at least?” He gestured at his nakedness. “The head? Clothes?”

“We should have a few moments to spare,” Helva said with a laugh. His expression was small-boy-embarrassed.

“Ever the courteous hosts.”

He had managed to get himself assembled by the time the glowing luminosity that was Beta Corvi's third planet filled the viewscreen. Somewhere down in that moiling envelope of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen were the Corviki. Or were Solar Prane and Kurla Ster, Chaddress or a vengeful Ansra Colmer rising in those spectacular flares to greet the visitors? If anything remained of those personalities. Helva preferred to share Dobrinon's optimistic view that those immigrants retained something of their former personalities.

Helva felt the change in the ship before it registered on the console before Niall.

“We're in orbit? We can transfer?”

The eagerness in his voice produced a perverse reluctance in Helva. Niall couldn't know, despite all she and Davo and the others had told him, how devastating that experience could be, how insidious. Now a new fear threatened her: what could that experience do to the fragile bond they'd been contriving?