"Davo! Davo!" Helva shouted.
The actor, shaking his head as the urgency of her voice roused him, responded dazedly. Then he saw Ansra, saw what she was doing and launched himself at her. Davo's thrust pinned her against the far wall as other members of the cast began to revive.
"Escalus, help Davo with that crazy woman," Helva ordered, for Ansra was twisting and screaming, beating at Davo with maddened strength. "Benvolio, come on, man. Snap out of it. Check Chadress. How's his pulse?"
Benvolio leaned to the limp body beside Mm. "Too slow, I think. It's so. . . so faint."
"I've got to get back to Corvi. Someone, Nia, you're awake. Find two usable transceivers in the mess Ansra made of them and put 'em on Prane and Kurla. I've got to get them back here."
"Wait, Helva." She heard Davo call as she was in the act of transferring.
The Manager was beside her. And so were the shells that were undeniably Prane, Kurla, and Chadress. Their pressure dominances were overwhelming.
"Stay with us, Helva. Stay with us. It's a new life, brand new, with all the power in the universe to control. Why go back to a sterile life in an immobile envelope? Stay with us."
Too tempted, too terrified to listen further, Helva retreated to the safety of her ship, the sanctuary of the only security she knew.
"Helva!" Davo's voice rang in all her ears.
"I'm back," she murmured.
"Thank God. I was afraid you'd stay with them."
"You knew they'd stay?"
"Even without Ansra's help," Davo admitted. Beyond him Nia nodded.
"It's the answer for Kurla and Prane, you know," Nia said. "Hell, they can combine energies now," and her laugh was mirthless.
"But Chadress?"
"Shock you, huh, that a brawn would defect?" Davo asked sympathetically. "But he wouldn't be a brawn much longer, would he, Helva?"
"And what if I had stayed?"
"Well," Davo admitted, "Chadress didn't think you could, but he did think you should."
"It was a case of being where I am needed, Davo. And sometimes you have to help by not doing anything, I guess," she added, more to herself. She looked then toward the four breathing but lifeless bodies. "Four." she cried aloud, stunned to identify Ansra, laid beside the others. "What did you do? How could you do it?"
"Easy," Nia replied, shrugging negligently. "A case of the punishment fitting the crime. Besides, the Corviki are better qualified to deal with unstable energies than we are, Helva. Can't we leave now?"
"Manager said the exchange had been made," Escalus said. "Have they unblocked your power?"
"Yes," Helva sighed, unwilling to act yet.
"Helva," Davo murmured gently, his hand palm down on the titanium column, "Helva, the play was the thing, wherein to catch the conscience."
As she wearily fed the return voyage tape into the computer, his words echoed in her mind like a gentle absolution.
With an exquisite sense of reprieve, Helva watched official debriefing experts disperse to their waiting vehicles that clustered in the floodlights at the base of the XH-834 like energy motes. . . Helva censored that analogy. Night-piercing lights blinked on, jabbed in crisscross webs as the groundcars turned and wheeled. All momentarily were parallel, outlining the darkened lower stories of Regulus Base tower. Not all the vehicles made for this structure, Helva noted. Some darted beyond, out of the Base complex, into the distant metropolis.
Shell-people were presumably inexhaustible, but Helva felt drained and depressed. She was not sure which experience had been the worse, coping with Beta Corvi or with the repetitive questioning of the affair by singleminded specialists. She could appreciate why Prane had made use of mindtrap to retard neuron loss. Had she no memory banks to scan, she might cheerfully have forgotten much of what had happened. Too bad she couldn't.
Helva sighed. Not, Helva, the XH-834, sleek BB ship of Central Worlds Medical Service, but Helva, the woman.
They encase us in titanium shells, place the shells in titanium bulkheads and consider us invulnerable. Physical injury is the least of the harmful accidents that this universe inflicts on its inhabitants; it is soonest mended.
Lights began to appear in the Base Tower and Helva was perversely delighted. So, others would have a sleepless night tonight. They deserve it, unsettling her fragile resolution of the Beta Corvi affair with their barrage of questions. How powerful was the Corvi community? How large were the individual entities? How long did she believe the human/Corviki shells that contained Prane, Kurla, Chadress, and Ansra would retain their previous loyalties and memories? How soon could, should a second expedition attempt to broach their atmosphere? What other mediums of exchange would Helva recommend, assuming Prane's encyclopedia of drama was bled from him? And why did she feel that the Corviki environment was so dangerous to the human mind? Could she explain the dangers? Could she recommend preventive measures to be used in preconditioning?
There was no consolation in the fact that every other member of the mission was also being closely interrogated, prodded and probed, physically as well as mentally. At least she was spared that, although the shell medics had run an acidity test and checked the intake on the nutrients that sustained her. There had been a rise in the protein flow, which was deemed consonant with the unusual activity required of her.
The Base computers were going to get a workout tonight, but she didn't want to have to think at all. Not about the Corviki, at any rate, or the four humans who had opted to remain in Corviki shells, to exchange and lose energy in the new sub-orbital. . .
"I don't want to think at all," Helva said aloud.
Restlessly she scanned outside, her glance reaching briefly the lighted windows in the brawn barracks. She felt no desire to place a call there. She hadn't the requisite flexibility to enjoy contact with new personalities, usually such a reviving and stimulating experience for her. She didn't want, either, to be alone tonight.
"This time I get a brawn before I move a centimeter from this base," she vowed.
The Service cemetery where Jennan lay buried was mercifully lost in darkness kilometers across the huge Base field, but she began to feel that distance psychologically diminishing.
Rather than dwell on that closed chapter of her life, she masochistically reviewed the last few hours. Had she really given them all the information available to her? Was she subconsciously withholding a single important fact or minor observation? Had she really analyzed the schizophrenic trauma of the human mind in the Corvi shell? Had she. . .
A groundcar braked to a rocking drop at the base and someone activated the passenger lift, which she had not withdrawn when the last of the debriefing group had left.
"Who the hell. . ."
"Parollan!" a sharp voice reassured her in the Supervisor's curt way.
As her Service Supervisor, Niall Parollan had naturally been present during debriefing. He had kept to the role of arbiter, speaking only when the experts had got excited or too insistent on points that Helva was unable to clarify. She had been grateful as well as impressed by his unexpectedly deft handling of the incidents. Evidently Parollan enjoyed considerable prestige in spite of his blunt manners. Was he returning for a private session?
He stepped into the airlock, feet spread, arms dangling at his side. He was glaring at her column with unexpected belligerence.
"Now what have I done?" Helva asked, masking a sudden apprehension.
As he broke the pose and swaggered forward, Helva wondered if he had been drinking heavily.