With flashing strong fingers she wove a pattern of chords and notes, drawing more volume from the instrument than its fragile structure suggested. To Helva's amazement she recognized an ancient Bach fugue just as Kira struck an angry discord, clamping both hands on the strings to keep them from resonating.
"Achh," she exclaimed, sharply flapping her hands and then clenching them into tight fists. "I haven't played since. . ." She struck a major chord, then modulated to a diminished minor. "I remember we spent one entire night. . . till noon the next day, actually. . . trying to analyze an early Dylan song. The trouble was, you weren't supposed to analyze Dylan. You had to feel him and if you tried to parse what he was saying into Basic or into psychological terms, it. . . it was meaningless. It was the total imagery of the music and the words that made the gut react. That was the whole purpose of his style. When the gut reacts the mind gets the whiplash and another chip is knocked off the solid block within."
"I'd say his work might be good therapy," Helva remarked dryly.
Kira flashed her an angry look that dissolved into a grin. She made her guitar laugh. "The trouble with therapy is you tend to find too many confusing alternative meanings to the simplest motions and words, and then you're so confused, you suspect everyone and everything." And Kira's guitar echoed the pitch of her words derisively.
A red warning light flashed on the panel simultaneously with an impulse to Helva's internal monitors. The guitar was the sole occupant of the pilot's chair and Kira was halfway down the passageway to the No. 3 hold before Helva could activate her own visual check.
Kira paused at the hold door long enough to assess the damage before she spun to the farther hold, where their additional supplies were stored.
The clumsiness of the technician had, to all scrutiny, been remedied at the time of the accident by securing the tubing in the demijohn of nutritive fluid. What had not been apparent at that time was that the closure at the other end of the line had been loosened. Sufficient of the fluid had dripped away from the weakened joint to register on the telltale. Helva anxiously checked with her magnified vision along the section of embryos serviced by that tank. There was loss at the joint, but the ribbon was still full.
Kira was back with new tubing and joints. Deftly she removed the faulty equipment, careful in her transfer to prevent air bubbles seeping in along the ribbon. Then she checked the entire length of ribbon and each minute sac under magnification to make certain there were no visible bubbles or disruption to the contact between sac top and the nutritive nipple fastening.
Then she checked the joints in the other ribbons, each line, each flask, every connection. It was a job of several hours' duration but she made no attempt to hasten the process.
Reassured, she and Helva did another check of the internal monitors before she closed the hatch.
"I should have cut him up and made him into the paprikash. That would have served him right!" Kira muttered as she disappeared into the privacy of her cabin.
Helva eavesdropped until she heard the slow, even breathing. All the while the mute guitar stared back at her from the pilot's seat, threads of that haunting melody plaguing Helva as she maintained her vigil.
At Dubhe, Kira insisted on an elaborate spectrum inspection on the disturbed ribbon to make sure none of the several thousand fetuses within the strand had suffered impairment. Whatever emotional problems tormented Kira, she held them apart from her professional life. Her objectivity was the more appreciated by Helva because she had had a glimpse of Kira's personal turmoil.
The KH-834 sped onward from Dubhe to Merak, where another 20,000 waited. On the short voyage between Dubhe and Merak, neither Kara nor Helva mentioned what Helva styled 'the paprikash' incident. Kira did not put the guitar away but spent some time every 'evening' giving Helva additional samples of Dylanist wit and social penetration, from the ancient dream songs of the Protest Decade in early Atomic history to contemporary examples.
When the call from Alioth came, it interrupted Kira's masterful rendition of a very early Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind."
Kira carefully laid aside her guitar and answered the call, her face registering polite surprise at the origin.
"Fifteen thousand?" she repeated for confirmation, and received what Helva felt was an unnecessarily curt rejoinder and cutoff.
While Kira had been dealing with the call, Helva had activated the ship's memory files for facts on the planet.
"That's odd," she remarked.
"How so?" asked Kira, jotting down eta computations.
"There's no record of their having a bank. Grim planet. In a highly unstable volcanic period. Use a lot of molten mining techniques. Highest mortality rate in the Central Worlds."
"I think," commented Kira dryly, "you'd better see what Cencom has to say about our landing there."
"It's not on the restricted list, Kira," Helva replied, but she activated the tight beam.
"Alioth?" Cencom exclaimed, surprised out of its formal voice. "The mayday didn't go out to them. We've no record of a bank there. Ethnically speaking, it's possible. Hold."
Kira cocked an eyebrow at Helva. "They're checking with I know who. Two gets you one they abort the call."
"Two gets me one of what?" jibed Helva.
"KH," Cencom returned. "Proceed to Alioth. No bank listed but traders report improvements in mining techniques indicate technological advances at proper level for race propagation. Religious hierarchy powerful, so do not antagonize. Repeat, do not antagonize. And report soonest."
"You just lost two whatever it was you bet," Helva taunted.
"Okay," Kira said with a shrug. "Filmbank have any clips?"
Helva flashed them on the viewer. The first were aspects of the small spaceport The main city was dominated by an enormous temple built against the side of an extinct volcano; the broad multiple steps leading to it reminding Helva of a ziggurat. She didn't much care for worlds with a religious hierarchy, but she was aware that her opinion was at the moment jaundiced. Too many religions were gloom and doom. Alioth, fourth planet of its solar system, was far enough out from its primary to get little of its brightness and its volcanic era predisposed it to Dantean excesses. One last scene showed a procession of torch-bearing cowled figures crossing a huge central plaza in front of the temple.
"A truly cheerless place," Kira said, making a face. "Well, with only 15,000, we can't have to stay long." She strummed a gay tune to counteract the morbid pictures.
"They are in the ethnic group required by Nekkar," Helva remarked dubiously,
"Can't see a thing with all those hoods," Kira said. "You don't suppose the embryos come complete with cowl, do you? That'd be a facer for the Nekkarese," and she giggled, adding a guitar laugh.
"You should say, born with a caul."
Kira threatened Helva with the guitar, then made her inspection of the three holds.
"This extra 15,000 will crowd us a little, with the 20,000 at Merak," Kira said as she worked.
"Alioth is spatially aligned with Nekkar. We can make it there with time to spare. Then, hoiyotoho off on another stork run."
Kira straightened, wrinkling her nose in Helva's direction.
"Hoiyotoho is utterly inappropriate to a stork run."
"For you, maybe, but not for me. I am, after all, an armored maid."
"Ha!" Kira fell silent as she peered through a magnifying lens at a joint.
When the two had finished the inspection, Kira paused at the galley, reaching absently for coffee. She wandered, moody for the first time in nearly a week, into the main cabin and plunked herself down on the pilot's chair, curling her feet under her and sitting quietly, only the vapor of the heating coffee moving.