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supplemented to the diet. Yet Ansra had made sly digs about drug addiction.
Said his brains were soft ... no, his head bones, Helva corrected herself ...
'his headbones are softened by mindtrap'. Yet mindtrap was a harmless drug;
mind-expanding, yes, but long and widely used by anyone who wished to retain
information without loss. The adult mind loses 100,000 neurons a day. An actor
couldn't afford memory loss. Was it possible that mindtrap, overused for a
long period, could build up a harmful residue injurious to the bones?
Helva tapped the ship's memory banks, but there was no recorded incidence of
any side-effect for mindtrap. An actor, however, playing on
hundreds of planets, exposed constantly to some cosmic radiations, suffering a
minor breakdown of cell-coding? A protein lock? Surely some medical engineer
would have noted it, could isolate the faulty enzyme and correct?
Helva looked in on the sleepless man. He was murmuring speeches now, changing
his voice as the lines went from character to character. Entranced, Helva
listened through the ship's night as scene after scene poured from the
Solar's lips, word perfect. Shortly before dawn, the litany ceased as sleep
finally bestowed her accolade of peace.
Dawn came and went. Helva performed the routine check of all systems, ran a
scan on detectors and established that there were no ships within hailing
range. She was irritated ... and relieved.
The first one to stir was Kurla. She drifted immediately to Prane's bedside.
Her concern dissolved as she found him sleeping quietly, the fatigue lines
smoothed from his face. Her own expression infinitely tender with love, the
girl withdrew, pulled the door across, and floated over to the galley.
Davo joined her shortly. "How is he this morning?"
Defensively, Kurla started to go into medical detail.
"I'm not at all interested in your lover's internal economy ..."
"Prane Liston is not my lover."
"Oh, hath desire outstripped performance then?"
"Davo, please!"
"Don't blush, my dear. Only teasing. However, a simple yes or no will suffice.
Can Prane rehearse today? That free-fall staging is going to be difficult and
he mentioned wanting to go through several scenes now when he has more time.
Helva can oblige us with free-fall as we choose. Can't you, Helva?"
"Yes."
"It sounds so human," Kurla said, suppressing a little shudder.
"She, please, Kurla. Helva is human; aren't you, Helva?"
"Oh, you'd noticed?"
Davo laughed at the consternation on Kurla's face.
"My dear Miss Ster, surely you, a medical attendant, would have tumbled to the
identity of the captain of our ship?"
"I've had a lot on my mind," she said, lifting her chin defensively.
"But I apologize," she added, swinging round, "if I've offended you, Helva
..." Then her eyes rested on Prane's closed door and her face flooded with
color.
"You have been the soul of discretion," Helva replied, aware of the girl's
sudden confusion. "As I try to be," she added, so pointedly that Davo
understood Kurla's blush.
"Honor among cyborgs, huh?" he asked, his eyes dancing as he added a
subtle thrust of his own.
"Yes, and considerable evidence that we are eminently trustworthy, loyal,
courteous, honest, thoughtful, and inhumanly incorruptible."
Davo roared with laughter until Kurla, pointing toward Prane's cabin, shushed
him.
"Why? I want him up and about. It ought to be good for his soul to wake to the
sound of my merry laughter."
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"That sounds like a good entrance line," Prane remarked, pushing the door
aside. He was smiling slightly, his shoulders erect and easy, his head high,
all trace of fatigue and weakness erased. He hadn't had that much rest, Helva
knew it, not after murmuring through plays half the night. But he even looked
younger. "Shall we have at it, Davo?" he asked.
"You'll 'have at' nothing, Solar," Kurla said emphatically, "until you've
eaten."
He meekly acquiesced.
In spite of her intention to remain aloof from the personality conflicts of
this quartet, Helva watched the rehearsal with keen interest. A script was
thrust in Kurla's hands and she was made the prompter.
"Now," Prane began crisply, "we have been given no inkling of Corviki attitude
toward personal combat, if they have one. We don't know if they can appreciate
the archaic code which made this particular duel inevitable.
Interpreting our social structures, our ancient moralities, however, is not
the function of this troupe. According to the Survey Captain, the Corviki were
entranced with the concept of special 'formulae' (the crew had been watching
Othello) intended purely to waste energy in search of excitation and
recombination with no mass objective." He gave an embarrassed laugh. "There
always has been an element of the population that ranks play-acting as a waste
of energy. However, there is no point in our trying to play Shakespeare as a
social commentary. We shall be classicistsl, pure Shakespeare as the Globe
troupe would have played it."
"For purity, then, Juliet ought to be a preadolescent boy," Davo reminded him
with wry malice.
"Not that pure, Davo," Prane laughed. "I'll keep the casting arrangements as
they are, I believe. We shall have enough of a problem acting in free-fall and
getting used to the envelopes the Corviki will supply us. So, if we can get
stage movement set in our minds now, we shall have only the problem of
becoming accustomed to the new form when we reach Beta Corvi. I
think of the exchange as merely another costume.
"Now Davo, as Tybalt, you enter downstage. Benvolio and Mercutio will be stage
south and I, as Romeo, will approach from elliptical east."
Both men had worked in free-fall, Helva noticed, for they modified all
gestures skillfully yet managed to simulate the power of a thrust, the grace
of a dancing retreat. Such movements, however, required great physical effort
and both were shortly sweating as they floated through their measured duel
again and again to set the routine in their minds.
They worked hard, experimenting, changing, improving until they got through
the duel scene twice without a flaw. Even allowing for his handicap,
Helva was impressed by Prane.
Ansra drifted languidly into the main cabin and the atmosphere changed so
abruptly that Helva inadvertently scanned her warnings system.
"Good morrow, good madam," Prane said jauntily. "Shall we have at the balcony
scene, fair Juliet?"
"My dear Solar, you have obviously been hard at it with Davo. Are you feeling
up to more?"
Prane hesitated a microsecond before he bowed and with a genuine smile
replied: "You, as Juliet, are up, my dear," and he gestured with a flourish to
the area where she was to play the scene, above him.
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