"Go ahead, CenCom," she replied, wondering who on earth, or off it, for that matter, could be calling her.
Strange how we've been out of Terran subspace for so long, and yet we still use expressions like 'how on earth'... there's probably a popular science paper in that.
The central screen directly opposite the column she was housed in flickered for a moment, then filled with the image of a thin-faced man in an elaborate MotoChair, No, more than a Moto-Chair; this one was kind of a platform for something else. She saw what could only be an APU, and a short-beam broadcast unit of some kind. It looked like his legs and waist were encased in the bottom half of space armor!
But there was no mistaking who was in the strange exoskeleton. Doctor Kenny.
"Tia, my darling girl, congratulations on your graduation!" Kenny said, eyes twinkling. "You should, given the vagaries of the CenCom postal system, have gotten your graduation present from Lars and Anna and me. I hope you liked it, them."
The graduation present had arrived on time, and Tia had been enthralled. She loved instrumental music, synthcom in particular, but these recordings had special meaning for any shell-person, for they had been composed and played by David Weber-Tcherkasky, a shell-person himself, and they were not meant for the limited ears of softpeople. The composer had made use of every note of the aural spectrum, with supercomplexes of overtones and counterpoint that left softpersons squinting in bewilderment. They weren't for everyone, not even for some shell-persons, but Tia didn't think she would ever get tired of listening to them. Every time she played them, she heard something new.
"anyway, I remembered you saying in your last transmission how much you liked Lanz Manhem's synthcom recordings, and Lars kept telling me that Tcherkasky's work was to Manhem's what a symphony was to birdsong." Kenny shrugged and grinned. "We figured that it would help to while away the in-transit hours for you, anyway. Anna said the graduation was stellar, I'm sorry I couldn't be there, but you're looking at the reason why."
He made a face and gestured down at the lower half of his body. "Moto-Prosthetics decided in their infinite wisdom that since I had benefited from their expertise in the past, I owed them. They convinced the hospital Admin Head that I was the only possible person to test this contraption of theirs. This is supposed to be something that will let me stroll around a room, or more importantly, stand in an operating theater for as long as I need to. When it's working, that is." He shook his head. "Buggy as a new software system, let me tell you. Yesterday the fardling thing locked up on me, with one foot in the air Wasn't I just a charming sight, posing in the middle of the hall like a dancer in a Greek frieze! Think I'm going to rely on my old Chair when I really need to do something, at least for a while."
Tia chuckled at the mental image of Kenny frozen in place and unable to move.
He shook his head and laughed. "Well, between this piece of, ah... hardware, and my patients, I had to send Anna as our official deputation. Hope you've forgiven Lars and me, sweetheart."
A voice, warm and amused, interrupted Doctor Kenny. "There was just a wee problem with my getting leave, after all," Lars said, over the office speakers, as Kenny grinned. "And they simply wouldn't let me de-orbit the station and take it down to the schools for the graduation ceremony. Very inconsiderate of them, I say."
Tia had to laugh at that.
"That just means you'll have to come visit me. Now that you're one of the club, far-traveler, we'll have to exchange softie-jokes. How many softies does it take to change a lightbulb?"
Kenny made a rude noise. Although he looked tired, Tia noted that he seemed to be in very good spirits. There was only one thing that combination meant; he'd pulled off another miracle. "I resemble that remark," he said. "Anyway, Lars got your relay number, so you'll be hearing from us, probably more often than you want! We love you, lady! Big Zen hugs from both of us!"
The screen flickered and went blank; Tia sighed with contentment. Lars had been the one to come up with 'Zen hugs', 'the hugs that you would get, if we were there, if we could hug you, but we aren't, and we can't'.
and he and Kenny began using them in their weekly transmissions to Tia all through school. Before long her entire class began using the phrase, so pointedly apt for shell-people, and now it was spreading across known space. Kenny had been amused, especially after one of his recovering patients got the phrase in a transmission from his stay-at-home, techno-phobic wife!
Well, the transmission put the cap on her day, that was certain. And the perfect climax to the beginning of her new life. Anna and her parents at the graduation ceremony, Professor Brogen handing out the special awards she'd gotten in Xenology, Diplomacy, and First Contact Studies, Moira showing up at the landing field the same day she was installed in her ship, still with Tomas, wonder of wonders.
Having Moira there to figuratively hold her hand during the nasty process of partial anesthesia while the techs hooked her up in her column had been worth platinum.
She shuddered at the memory. Oh, they could describe the feelings (or rather, lack of them) to you, they could psych you up for experience, and you thought you were ready, but the moment of truth, when you lost everything but primitive com and the few sensors in the shell itself... was horrible. Something out of the worst of nightmares.
And she still remembered what it had been like to live with only softperson senses. She couldn't imagine what it was like for those who'd been popped into a shell at birth. It had brought back all the fear and feeling of helplessness of her time in the hospital.
It had been easier with Moira there. But if the transfer had been a journey through sensory-deprivation hell, waking up in the ship had been pure heaven.
No amount of simulator training conveyed what it really felt like, to have a living, breathing ship wrapped around you.
It was a moment that had given her back everything she had lost. Never mind that her 'skin' was duralloy metal, her 'legs' were engines, her 'arms' the servos she used to maintain herself inside and out. That her 'lungs' and 'heart' were the life-support systems that would keep her brawn alive. That all of her senses were ship's sensors linked through brainstem relays. None of that mattered. She had a body again! That was a moment of ecstasy no one plugged into a shell at birth would ever understand. Moira did, though... and it had been wonderful to be able to share that moment of elation.
And Tomas understood, as only a brawn-partner of long-standing could, Tomas had arranged for Theodore Edward Bear to have his own little case built into the wall of the central cabin as his graduation present. "And decom anyone who doesn't understand," he said firmly, putting a newly cleaned Ted behind his plexi panel and closing the door. "A brawn is only a brawn, but a bear is a friend for life!"
So now the solemn little blue bear in his Courier Service shirt reigned as silent supervisor over the central cabin, and to perdition with whatever the brawns made of him. Well, let them think it was some kind of odd holo-art. Speaking of which, the next set of brawn-candidates was due shortly. We'll see how they react to Ted.