"You think MedServ doesn't procrastinate?" Helva retorted sharply. "Why Jennan and I. . ." and she stopped, startled to have been able to mention his name.
Ilsa took advantage of the brief pause and grumbled on, oblivious to Helva's stunned silence.
"You'd think they'd've briefed us better in training. When I think of the situations I've already encountered that were never even mentioned! Theory, procedure, technique, that's all we handled. Not a single practical suggestion. Just garbage, garbage, trivial garbage. They don't need brain ships, they need computers!" The 822 ranted on. "Stupid, senseless, unemotional computers."
Helva spotted the fallacies in the 822's complaints but remained quiet. She and Ilsa had been classmates and she knew from past experience the voids in the other's personality.
"I heard" the 822 said confidentially, "that your mission has to do with that blue block building in the hospital annex."
Helva adjusted her right fin scanner but the oblong structure was devoid of any unusual feature that would indicate its contents.
"Have you heard when I'm supposed to hasten away from here again?" she asked Ilsa hopefully.
"Can't talk now; here comes Seld back. See you around."
Helva watched as the 822s brawn-half ascended to the airlock and the SI-822 lifted off Regulus Center Base. Seld had partied with Jennan in Helva one time when both ships were down at Leviticus IV. Seld had a passable bass, as she recalled it. Envy briefly touched her. She flicked back to the ambiguous hospital annex, savagely wondering what kind of emergency this would be. And would she remain an X-designate the rest of her service life?
She had set down at the end of the great Regulus field, the farthest edge from the Service Cemetery. Despite her resignation to Jennan's loss, despite Theoda's healing tears, Helva could not bring herself to grind more salt into her sorrow by proximity to Jennan's grave. Perhaps in a century or so. . . Consequently, waiting around on Regulus was painful. And with the 822 gone, she could no longer divert her pain into anger at the prolonged wait she must endure.
"KH-834, your 'brawn' is on her way with assignment tape," Cencom alerted her.
Helva acknowledged the message, excitement stirring within her. It was almost a relief to receive a double initial call, the pleasure overriding her twinge of regret that her 'brawn' partner was feminine. It was a relief, too, to experience any emotion after the numbing of Jennan's death. The Annigoni experience had broken her apathy.
A ground car zipped out from the direction of the massive Control and Barracks complex, skidding to a stop at her base. Without waiting, Helva lowered the lift and watched as a tiny figure hefted three pieces of baggage onto the platform.
"K" meant to stay a while, Helva decided. The lift ascended and shortly her new brawn was framed in the open lock, against the brilliant Regulan sky.
"Kira of Canopus requesting permission to board the XH-834," said the young woman, saluting smartly toward Helva's position behind the titanium bulkhead.
"Permission granted. Welcome aboard, Kira of Canopus."
The girl kicked the limp lump of a fabric bag unceremoniously aboard. But she carefully carried the other two back to the pilot's cabin. The odd-shaped one Helva identified, after a moment's reflection, as an ancient stringed instrument called a guitar.
"Naturally they'd send me someone musically oriented," she thought, not at all sure she was pleased with this infringement on her most cherished memories of Jennan. She ruthlessly suppressed this unworthy thought with the admonition that the majority of service personnel were musically oriented. The infinite possibilities of the art passed travel time admirably.
Kira flipped open the other compact case and Helva, surreptitiously peeking, noticed it was full of vials and other medical equipment. Kira inspected the contents with quick fingers and, closing the case, strapped it with care against the rigors of acceleration on the shelves behind the bed.
Kira was, in form and nature as well as sex, the antithesis of Jennan. Since she was in a carping mood, Helva wondered how much of that was intentional. But that would mean Cencom had more sensitivity than Helva decided, privately, they were computationally blessed with.
Kira of Canopus couldn't weigh more than 40 kilos fully suited. Her narrow face with slanted cheekbones had a delicacy which appeared ill-suited to bear the designation brawn. Her hair, dark brown, was braided tightly in many loops around her long, oval skull. Her eyes, wide set and almond shaped, were of a clear, cool, deep green, thickly lashed Her fingers, slim and tapering, were as dainty as her narrow feet, oddly graceful in heavy shipboots. Her movements, swift and sure, were quicksilver, full of restless energy, dartingly inquisitive.
Kira reentered the main cabin. Helva, used to Theoda's lethargic movements, had to adjust quickly.
Kira inserted the order tape, locking it into its niche in the pilot's board. As the code ran through, a startled exclamation was wrung from Helva.
"Three hundred thousand babies?"
Kira's laugh was a staccato arpeggio of mirth.
"Assignment Stork, by the holies!"
"You're only temporary?" questioned Helva, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. There was a magnetism about Kira that appealed to Helva.
Kira smiled wryly. "This assignment will take some time. Only 30,000 are collected already. Even in this day and age, it takes time to make babies."
"I haven't got facilities. . ." Helva began aghast at the thought of becoming a nursery. She broke off as the tape elaborated on the condition of the proposed cargo. "Babies in ribbons?"
Kira, who had had previous briefing on their mission, laughed at Helva's outraged reaction.
The tape continued remorselessly and Helva understood the significance of the miles of plastic tubing and tanks of fluid that had been placed in her not over generous cargo spaces.
In the system of the star Nekkar, an unexpected radiation flare had sterilized the entire population of its newly colonized planet. A freak power failure had resulted in the total loss of the planet's embryo banks. The KH-834's mission was to rush embryos to Nekkar from planets that had answered the emergency call.
In the very early days of space travel, when man had still not walked on Mars, or Jupiter's satellites, a tremendous advance had been made in genetics. A human fetus in its early stages was transferred from one womb to another, the host mother bringing the child to term and giving it birth without having an actual relationship to it. A second enormous stride forward in propagating the race of man occurred when a male sperm was scientifically united with female ova. Fertilization was successful and the resultant fetus was brought to term, the child growing to normal, well-balanced maturity.
It became a requirement of those in hazardous professions, or those with highly desirable dominant characteristics of intelligence or physical perfection, to donate sperm and ova to what became known as the Race Conservation Agency.
As civilization expanded onto newer, rawly dangerous worlds, the custom was for young men and women to leave their seed with the RCA on reaching their majority. It was good sense to have such a viable concentration of genetically catalogued seed available. Thus, given a lack, say, in a generation of a particularly desirable ethnic group, sufficient additional embryos could be released to restore the ecological balance.
On an individual basis, the young wife, untimely widowed, might bear her husband's children from his seed on file at the RCA. Or a man, wishing a son of certain pronounced genetic characteristics to perpetuate a family name or business, would apply to the bank. There were, of course, ridiculous uses made of the RCA faculties. Women in the thrall of a hysteria over a noted spaceranger or artist would apply to the RCA for his seed if the male in question was agreeable. But naturally conceived children were the rule rather than the exception. Helva herself had been the naturally inseminated child of her parents.