"Sit down, sit down," she said with expansive cheer, gesturing to the floor beside her. "Make yourself comfortable. Can my darling husband get you anything? Accelerants? Placations? Our synthesizers have complete pharmaceutical indices for Earthlings and Divians; it’ll only take a second to whip up your favorite stimulant."
"How about food?" Festina said, making no effort to seat herself. "Something humans can digest." She glanced in my direction. "Preferably transparent."
I lowered my head, trying not to show shame. It is mortifying when your Faithful Sidekick believes you are crazed with hunger and she makes a scene to ensure you are properly fed. I knew I could not the from starvation, but I was not so certain about embarrassment.
Fortunately, Lady Bell was not such a one as could feel urgency about someone else’s problem. She therefore did not make a fuss: Oh yes, we must quickly bring sustenance for the poor dear and make her lie down in the meantime. She merely told Rye, "See to that, darling!" and puckered several of her cranial orifices at him. He muttered something in the universal language of unappreciated persons and slunk out of the studio.
"Now everyone just sit down!" Lady Bell said brightly. "I don’t want you pacing during the show. Pacing will upset the audience — not to mention that the lights and cameras will have a hard time following you. Shadows on one’s face can completely ruin credibility. Sit down, sit down!"
"Where are the cameras?" I asked, looking around the blank room.
"Built into the walls, dear."
"But the walls are clear glass. They do not contain cameras."
"You’re clear glass, and you contain all kinds of things: lungs, kidneys, a heart… pity you only have one of those, but let’s pray it holds out till the recording is over. And your heart will last ten times longer if you just sit down."
Grudgingly, I lowered myself to the floor. I do not enjoy anyone offering advice about my health; and I knew I would not enjoy the floor either. Sure enough, the moment my bottom touched the carpet, it began to squirm beneath me. (The carpet, I mean, not my bottom.) A sizable gully sank down to accommodate my feet, while a woolly black hump rose to support my back. I grant that the seat was comfortable — like reclining on a mound of dead sheep whose bones have been softened with hammers. The problem was I did not wish to be comfortable. I did not wish to be soothed because…
…I worried I would not retain consciousness.
There. I have said it. Though I told Festina I was fine and resented her suggesting otherwise, I feared my mind would go blank if I allowed myself to relax. Perhaps it would happen even if I did not relax. Nomatter how hard I fought the Tiredness, I still was most terrified I would sink into the cozy carpet and my brain would cease to function. Mental emptiness had swallowed me too often in the past few hours; it seemed as if I could not spend an idle minute without slipping away from the world. Being forced to sit in a comfy place was almost a sentence of execution… but of course I could not say that for fear of being called a coward.
So I sat and cringed and shivered.
"Excellent," Lady Bell said as the others also claimed sections of carpet. Festina sat right beside me, probably wishing to be within reach in case my brain dribbled out my ears: a gesture which infuriated me greatly.
"Now," said Bell, "we’ll record everything before we broadcast, so we can edit out slips of the tongue, and perhaps passages of testimony that don’t work… though I don’t want anyone to be self-conscious, just say whatever you want and let me decide whether you’re being tedious and pedantic. By the way, I hope you can all take direction. And perhaps it would be best to do vocal warm-ups right now: run through some tongue-twisters, practice speaking from the diaphragm. You all have diaphragms, correct? Except for you, cloud man, I don’t know what you have. Why don’t you practice holding a nice solid shape rather than wavering about. Try to look like a person instead of a pukka -ball. And make your arms bulgy to suggest muscles. Viewers like muscles. Taut lean muscles gleaming with sweat. Perforated with tight puckered orifices and preferably highlighted in at least two of the primary colors. Umm, well… work on that, do your best. Meanwhile, I’ll call a newsbroker I know on Jalmut — have him put out the word that we’ll soon have some hydrogen-hot footage for sale."
She raised her voice slightly and said something in Cashlingese. I did not know whom she was addressing; but a moment later, a gusty voice whooshed and fribbled an answer from the ceiling. Either the words came from another person elsewhere in the ship, or it was the voice of Unfettered Destiny itself: what humans call the "ship-soul." I have been told that in the Technocracy navy, the ship-soul is intentionally given a mechanical-sounding voice so it can be distinguished from humans. On Unfettered Destiny, the voice sounded more windy than Bell or Rye, as if it were powered by huge ship-sized lungs instead of the many little lung-ettes of real Cashlings.
The ship-soul spoke briefly, then fell silent. Lady Bell seemed waiting for more; I suppose she had instructed the ship to contact her newsbroker and was now expecting a reply.
In the meantime, I squirmed in my too-comfy seat. Uclod and Lajoolie still appeared bleary after their nausea in the receiving bay; Nimbus hovered near them while Festina whispered to Aarhus in confidential tones. I disliked my friend speaking in a manner I could not overhear… but it seemed a great deal of trouble to move into a position where I could eavesdrop, especially when she and the sergeant were probably just discussing tiresome navy topics.
It was all too much bother to pay attention. In fact, everything in the world seemed excessively complicated. I remember thinking, Why can’t I just sleep for a while? Then I snuggled into the soft woolly floor.
Enough To Wake Me Up
Lady Bell said something sharp in Cashlingese. I sat up abruptly, unsure how much time had passed since my last conscious thought. As far as I could tell, no one had changed position at all. Perhaps it had only been a few seconds.
But I did not know how long I had blanked out, and that terrified me.
"Is something wrong?" Festina asked. I opened my mouth to say, I am very very scared… but she was looking at Bell, not me.
I pushed myself up to look at Bell too. Even though the Cashling woman had no face, it was clear she was most upset. In fact, his. Prophet was wheezing indignantly from a dozen orifices at once.
"This stupid ship!" Lady Bell said. "The most important day of my life, and wouldn’t you know, the communication system breaks down. We can’t raise a peep from Jalmut; no trans-light communications at all."
As the human phrase goes, a chill went down my spine. In fact, it felt more as if the chill moved upward from my stomach to my shoulders and thence to my face, but perhaps chills behave non-traditionally in artificial gravity.
"Uh-oh," muttered Uclod. "I hate to say it, missy," he told Bell, "but it sounds like you’re getting jammed."
"Jammed?" Aarhus repeated. "Oh crap."
"Quick!" Festina said. "We need a long-range scan right now!"