"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."
"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.
He turned then, floating to the edge of the cabin and Ansra, her jibe ignored, shrugged and projected herself upward.
"Give me Benvolio's line, please," Prane asked Kurla.
Ausra's entrance had flustered the girl and she flipped nervously through the sides.
"Act II, scene i, Kurla," Davo murmured encouragingly.
Helva dropped her voice to a tenor register: "Go then; for 'tis in vain to seek him here that means not to be found."
"Zounds, who was that?" cried Prane, whirling in such surprised reaction that he drifted toward the wall, absently holding himself off with one hand.
"Me," Helva said meekly in her proper voice.
"Can you change voices at will, woman?"
"Well, it's only a question of projection, you know. And since my voice is reproduced through audio units, I can select the one proper for the voice register required."
The effect of her ability on Prane, Helva noticed, was nothing to its effect on Ansra.
"How could you see to read the line?" Prane demanded, gesturing toward the script in Kurla's hands.
"I've been scanning the text from the library banks." Helva forbore to tell the long story of the childhood years during which she had been hooked on ancient movies, leading somehow naturally to Shakespeare, and opera, both light and grand. Her only hobby, and it was her own memory she was scanning.
Prane imprudently flung out both arms and had to correct against the ceiling.
"What incredible luck. Can you, would you read something else?"
"What? Auditioning a ship, Prane?" Ansra asked, her voice richly intimating that he'd gone mad.
"If I'm not wrong," Davo put in, his eyes glinting sardonically, "Helva here is also known as the ship who sings. Surely you saw the tri-cast on her some years back, Ansra? In fact I know you did. We were playing the Greeks in Draconis at the time."
"If you please, Davo," Prane-the-director interrupted, gliding over to Helva's central column. "You are the ship who sings?"
"Yes."
"Would you be kind enough to indulge me by reading the Nurse's speech, Act I, scene iii, where Lady Capulet and the Nurse discuss Juliet's marriage. Begin 'Even or odd of all days in the year'. . ."
"The nurse is to be played as an earthy type?"
"Yes, indeed, blissfully unregenerate. Her lines are a triumph of characterization, you know. Only she can speak the ones the playwright gave her. That is, of course, the test of true characterization."
"I thought this was a rehearsal of my scene, not a lecture," Ansra remarked acidly.
Prane silenced her with a peremptory gesture. "The cue is," and he altered his voice to a husky, aging contralto," 'A fortnight and odd days'. . ."
Helva resigned herself to an active part in this incident, and responded as Nurse Angelica.
Helva called a halt to what promised to be a round-the-chrono affair, on the spurious grounds of some critical computation. What had turned critical was Ansra's temper.