"You make me wish I wasn't nourished by a bunch of flagons," Helva remarked. "I've never seen anyone enjoy the simple business of eating as much as you do. And you don't seem to suffer from excess calories."
Kira shrugged negligently. "Excellent metabolism. Absolutely unalterable. That's me!" That fleeting edge of bitterness crept into the gay voice.
Helva began to suspect that these sudden switches of mood were less the product of a naturally volatile spirit than the elaborate defenses of a badly hurt woman, struggling to suppress her pain by overriding all references to it.
Helva remembered how carefully the guitar case had been stowed in the closet. Not so much as a hint had Kira made that it was there, silently waiting. Was this out of deference to Helva's recent tragedy? for surely Kira knew of Jennan's death and the legends that had already begun to cling to the 834, Or was Kira avoiding the guitar for a reason of her own?
Kira had finished her meal. The dish lay on her lap. Her face was brooding, eyes fixed on a spot at the base of the control console.
Her whole attitude was apathetical and unhealthy. Helva knew she must break this mood. Kira had somehow been touched on too vital a point, despite the overtly innocuous conversation, to help herself.
Softly, without conscious choice from her wealth of musical references, Helva began to sing an old air.
"Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile; Wond'ring how your Pains were eas'd."
"How my pains are eased?" hissed Kira, her eyes great green globes glittering with hatred at the titanium column. "Do you know how my pain will be eased?" She was on her feet in such a violent upward heave that there seemed to be no intermediate motion of rising. Tall in fury, Kira frightened Helva with the sudden strength in the slight body. "In death! In DEATH!" and she held her arms straight up, wrists turned toward Helva so that she saw the thin white scars of arterial cuts. "You," and Kira's arms dropped rigid to her side. "You had the chance to die. No one could have stopped you. Why didn't you? What kept you living after he died?" the girl demanded with trenchant scorn.
Helva drew in her breath sharply, against the tantalizing memory of an anguished desire to dive into the clean white heart of Ravel's exploding sun.
"Do you realize that even if a person wants to die, it is not allowed! Not allowed." Kira began to pace wildly, graceful even in this savage mood. "No. You promptly are subjected to such deep conditioning you cannot. Anything else is permitted in our great society except the one thing you really want, if it happens to be death. Do you realize that I have not been left alone in three years? And now. . ." Kira's face was contorted in ugly anger and contempt, "now you're my nursemaid. And don't think for one moment I'm not aware you have had a confidential report on my emotional instability."
"Sit down," Helva ordered coldly and activated the final section of the mission tape with its restriction. As the import of the message reached Kira, she did sit, slumped lifeless in the pilot chair, her face drained of all emotion.
"I'm sorry, Helva. I'm really sorry." She raised trembling hands in apology. "I just didn't believe they would leave me alone at last."
"They are very good at conditioning," Helva remarked softly. "They must be and they have to be. They can't have ships or people going rogue from grief. But I think they have let you alone. They've merely made sure you can't get to those few worlds where ritual suicide is permitted, like Babam, Homan, Beid and Keid. And they can't allow you to suicide because the ethos of Central Worlds is dedicated to extending life and propagating it wherever and whenever possible. I'm a living example of the extremes to which they are willing to go to sustain a human life. The RCA is another aspect of the same ethos. For you to seek suicide means a breakdown in this ethos which cannot be permitted. Even the Pegasus and Eridani planets limit the conditions under which suicide is condoned and proscribe certain grotesque ceremonies to insure that only the most desperate attempt it.
"You'd think," Helva sighed with exasperation, "they'd figure out some way to alleviate loss, since death is the one thing the great and glorious Central Worlds hasn't been able to cure."
Kira's tumbled hair hid her face from Helva's view. Even the slim fingers were motionless. The girl had abandoned herself to grief and suddenly Helva was immeasurably irritated with this immolation in self-pity. True enough, she had been tempted to suicide, but her conditioning had held. She had keened her loss to black space, but she had lifted with Theoda to Annigoni and gone on with the business of living. Just as Theoda had after her own tragedy. As many people had, all over the universe and throughout time. When her medical advisers had realized that Kira was wallowing in sorrow, they should have applied a block. . . oh, no, not when Kira had nearly finished brawn training, Helva remembered that factor. She had been made block-resistant so the only therapy was intensive conditioning. They couldn't erase, only inhibit.
Helva looked dispassionately at her brawn, furious at her situation, realizing that Central Worlds had known exactly what they were asking of Helva when they assigned Kira to her. That, too, was part of the ethos. Use what you have that will get the job done.
"Kira, what is a Dylanist?"
The lowered head jerked up, the curtaining hair falling away from the face. The scout blinked and turned to stare at Helva's bulkhead.
"Well, that is the last question I would have expected," she said in a quiet voice. She gave a little snort of laughter and then tossed her head, shaking her hair out of her way. She looked at Helva thoughtfully, speculatively. "All right. I'll absolve you of the guilty crime of psychotherapy. Although," and Kira pointed an accusatory finger at the column, "I was coerced to make this mission and I thought it awfully suspicious you were my ship."
"Yes, that would follow logically, wouldn't it?" Helva agreed calmly.
Kira laid a slim hand on the bulkhead, on the square plate that was the only access to Helva's titanium shell within the column. It was a gesture of apology and entreaty, simple and swift. Had Helva been aware of sensory values it would have been the lightest of pressures.
"A Dylanist is a social commentator, a protester, using music as a weapon, a stimulus. A skilled Dylanist, and I wasn't one," and from the emphasis on the pronoun, Helva assumed that Kira considered her husband, Thorn, had been one such, "can make so compelling an argument with melody and words that what he wants to say becomes insinuated into the subconscious."
"Subliminal song?"
"Well, haven't you been haunted by a melody?" Kira paused at the door of her cabin.
"Hmmm, yes, I have," Helva agreed, not sure that the theme from Rovolodorus' Second Celestial Suite was exactly what Kira had in mind. Still the point was well taken.
"A really talented Dylan stylist," Kira continued, returning with the guitar case, "can create a melody with a message that everyone sings or hums, whistles, or drums in spite of himself. Why, you can even wake up in the morning with a good Dylan-styled song singing in your head. You can imagine how effective that is when you're proselytizing for a cause."
Helva roared with laughter. "No wonder you'd be considered an embarrassment to Central Worlds on the Ophiuchus circuit."
Kira's grin was impish. "I got the chapter, verse, and section on that, plus what a waste of time, talent, and ability that could be put to worthwhile use in service to C.W."
She made a face as she struck chords, sour from the instrument's long disuse. She tightened the keys, tuning up from the bass string, her expression unexpectedly tender as she worked. She struck a tentative chord, tightened the E string a fraction more, to nod satisfaction at the resulting mellow sound.