Her role forgotten completely, Ansra flung herself forward at the two still embraced and lost to their surroundings. And the proximity alarms twanged. They had arrived at their destination.
"Now," Chadress said to the actors, all seated in the main cabin, hastily cleared of all its party debris, "the transceivers were fitted to your head sizes so they will be quite comfortable. You all heard the reports from those survey ship members who used the first device. You know the transfer process is painless and easy. You think yourself on the surface and there you are."
"How can you think yourself on a surface you've never seen?" Nia demanded, grimacing at the transceiver she was holding.
"The nearest analogue would be the underseascapes on Terra in the Carribean area, or the water world in Aldebaran. Or Vega IV. Imagine yourselves surrounded by seaweeds, all shapes and colors. Yes, the survey people repeatedly emphasized the enormous importance of color. The Corviki resemble a marine animal in the class hydrozoa, sort of a large sac-like body with a complex collection of tendrils that may be nerve endings."
"Gawd, what a costume!" Nia Tubb muttered, shuddering.
"It'll fit, I'm told." Chadress grinned at her. "Now, Helva is our fail-safe. She's equipped with an automatic return relay. We've been warned not to remain too long in the Corviki environment."
"Why?" Ansra demanded in a bored voice.
"The Corviki undoubtedly have good reason, but they did not say what. Now, Prane?"
The Solar rose, looked around at the entire cast "We all know the importance of this unlikely exchange of Shakespeare for power. The Bard has been translated into every conceivable language, alien and humanoid, and somehow the essence of his plays has been understood by the most exotic, the most barbaric, the most sophisticated. There is no reason to suppose that Will Shakespeare hasn't got something to say to the Corviki. . . if we do the job wholeheartedly. . . or whatever our Corviki envelopes use for that Organ.
"Ladies and gentlemen, curtain!" He sat down and donned his transceiver, settling back in the couch and relaxing completely. In a few seconds a light glowed across the rim of the transceiver.
"If that's all there is to it," Nia Tubb said, and pulled hers down on her head.
The others imitated her more or less simultaneously until only Chadress and Helva remained on board.
"Check Prane," Helva said.
"He's all right as far as I can see. I'll see you down there, Helva."
And he was gone. Helva had the uncanny notion that the new synapse leads were burning hot. But that was impossible. She willed herself to descend. On the heels of the thought that this was the first time she had been outside a shell in her life, came a terrifying surge of primitive fear and then. . . Transfer!
Her first indication of the difference involved pressure. . . an enveloping pressure. But the Corviki had said they would provide empty envelopes for the cast to occupy. She was enveloped and the envelope was also enveloped. She could 'feel' it all around. She undulated experimentally, hoping to rid herself of this sense of being covered. It was somehow unclean to feel all along every part of her. And yet, even as she felt loose, she was at the same time compressed. Not gravity pressure, but something in which she was and was moving. Well, movement was not a new skill for her. This was, then, just a form of motion. She wriggled again and things that were part of 'her' floated up from beneath her. She could not look at them because they floated away when she tried. Hmm. She could see every part of her ship-self from one scanner or another. How limiting mobility was. Well, she'd look around as far as she was able. And stared down, down, in an unlimited perspective until finally her sight distinguished a burbling, burping mass of ochre eruptions that she recognized as 'ground'. Above and around her fronds swayed, exhaled and inhaled in a full spectrum of colors unbelievably varied and varying. Colors which in some cases had 'sound' and 'smell' as part of their value. Only 'smell' was also a novel sensation to Helva, who had utilized gauges all her life instead of the olfactory sense.
"Adapting, Helva?" a familiar presence dominated her mind. Instinctively she turned toward the 'sound' that wasn't sound as she had previously known it, but a patterned interruption of the pressures around her.
"It's odd to feel physical sensations," she replied.
"It would be, for you."
"How do you feel, Chadress?" For the presence was indisputably her brawn.
"Velvet, soft, deep, a very pleasurable tactile sensation, I assure you. And a sense of unlimited power." Chadress was impressed. "Of being young and new again." Here the dominant quality of his thought was incredulous and self-amused. "They have evidently lent us brand-new, guaranteed-unsullied shells."
"I wonder where they get them from."
A new dominance approached them and this entity was recognized by both as being a true Corviki. The presence was very dense and Chadress and Helva both received an undeniable feeling of great age and wisdom, of a unique application of basic energy.
"I am your Manager," he introduced himself. "The others are all contained. We may proceed with this expression of energy."
"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," thought Helva as they propelled themselves toward a sphere-shaped area, surrounded by unanchored lumps of a dead black substance, framed by enormous breathing fronds. And suddenly, she could recognize everyone, despite their apparently homogeneous shape, by the slight variation of color tone and pressure weight.
Prane came on as dense as Manager, Helva discovered. She began to equate density with age or wisdom. Subjectively, she wondered how she 'felt' to others. Then Prane called her as chorus to open the rehearsal.
For a frantic moment, she wondered how she could possibly project 'chorus' without the audio equipment available on the ship. She had an intense desire to retreat back to her own shell again. But Prane was Director and one obeyed Director.
"Two households, both alike in dignity," and somehow her dominance enlarged, darkened, and she was more than herself.
Then Sampson and Gregory emerged from behind fronds and their dominance was shallow, light, tenuous as if inconsequential. In a fashion the cast managed to condense or dissipate themselves through the scenes until by Act IV, the new medium and the difference or exposition no longer seemed strange.
It was almost physically painful to be wrenched by the time control back into the ship and discover that they were, sadly, only flesh and blood. No one said much. They ate a great deal quickly, and then went to bed.
Helva, unfortunately, was wide awake and, for the first time in her conscious life, envied the others for the gentle oblivion of sleep. She tried not to think of the experiential effect of mobility on her conditioning. She disciplined herself by running a full scan outside. Not because anything might have changed but just to make sure all was as before. They were in orbit, black space topside, but the amorphous boiling cloud of diffuse colors, shot with brilliant lights, loomed below. She ran a check on her systems and discovered something a little unnerving in her engine compartment.
There was something blocking her readings there, yet the systems were all green on the boards. She could not 'feel' power, although there was no evidence of its absence. It was simply unavailable to her. As she pondered the implications of this, she heard a faint susurrus. She snatched at the diversion and traced it: Prane at his litany.
"If by your art, my dearest father, you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.. . . "
She listened avidly until the sleepy voice trailed into silence after "As you from crimes would pardon'd be. Let your indulgence set me free."
They picked up the staging the next 'day' where they had left off. Helva had the feeling none of the Corviki had left the 'stage' or were even aware that the troupe had been away. Did they control time as well as energy? Was time, as one Alpheccan theoretician maintained, merely another emission of energy?