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"Thorn. . .." and Kira cut off her words, pressing her lips firmly together, her face, for one tiny moment, showing i
She pivoted on her toes, round and round into the galley, laughing breathlessly as she caught the counter for support.
"Doesn't it smell heavenly?" Kira demanded of Helva, later pausing with the dish raised to Helva's column. "Be better with noodles and thick crusty bread. Hmm!" she mumbled happily over a full mouth. "Oh, perfect. I have not lost my touch." She put her fingers to her lips, releasing a kiss to the air in the extravagance of gustatory enjoyment. "Marvelous." She curled her legs under her on the wide pilot's chair and ate quickly, licking her fingers occasionally when the stew splashed.
"You make me wish I wasn't nourished by a bunch of flagons," Helva remarked. "I've never seen anyone enjoy the simple business of eating as much as you do. And you don't seem to suffer from excess calories."
Kira shrugged negligently. "Excellent metabolism. Absolutely unalterable. That's me!" That fleeting edge of bitterness crept into the gay voice.
Helva began to suspect that these sudden switches of mood were less the product of a naturally volatile spirit than the elaborate defenses of a badly hurt woman, struggling to suppress her pain by overriding all references to it.
Helva remembered how carefully the guitar case had been stowed in the closet. Not so much as a hint had Kira made that it was there, silently waiting. Was this out of deference to Helva's recent tragedy? for surely Kira knew of Je
Kira had finished her meal. The dish lay on her lap. Her face was brooding, eyes fixed on a spot at the base of the control console.
Her whole attitude was apathetical and unhealthy. Helva knew she must break this mood. Kira had somehow been touched on too vital a point, despite the overtly i
Softly, without conscious choice from her wealth of musical references, Helva began to sing an old air.
"Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile; Wond'ring how your Pains were eas'd."
"How my pains are eased?" hissed Kira, her eyes great green globes glittering with hatred at the titanium column. "Do you know how my pain will be eased?" She was on her feet in such a violent upward heave that there seemed to be no intermediate motion of rising. Tall in fury, Kira frightened Helva with the sudden strength in the slight body. "In death! In DEATH!" and she held her arms straight up, wrists turned toward Helva so that she saw the thin white scars of arterial cuts. "You," and Kira's arms dropped rigid to her side. "You had the chance to die. No one could have stopped you. Why didn't you? What kept you living after he died?" the girl demanded with trenchant scorn.
Helva drew in her breath sharply, against the tantalizing memory of an anguished desire to dive into the clean white heart of Ravel's exploding sun.
"Do you realize that even if a person wants to die, it is not allowed! Not allowed." Kira began to pace wildly, graceful even in this savage mood. "No. You promptly are subjected to such deep conditioning you ca
"Sit down," Helva ordered coldly and activated the final section of the mission tape with its restriction. As the import of the message reached Kira, she did sit, slumped lifeless in the pilot chair, her face drained of all emotion.
"I'm sorry, Helva. I'm really sorry." She raised trembling hands in apology. "I just didn't believe they would leave me alone at last."
"They are very good at conditioning," Helva remarked softly. "They must be and they have to be. They can't have ships or people going rogue from grief. But I think they have let you alone. They've merely made sure you can't get to those few worlds where ritual suicide is permitted, like Babam, Homan, Beid and Keid. And they can't allow you to suicide because the ethos of Central Worlds is dedicated to extending life and propagating it wherever and whenever possible. I'm a living example of the extremes to which they are willing to go to sustain a human life. The RCA is another aspect of the same ethos. For you to seek suicide means a breakdown in this ethos which ca
"You'd think," Helva sighed with exasperation, "they'd figure out some way to alleviate loss, since death is the one thing the great and glorious Central Worlds hasn't been able to cure."
Kira's tumbled hair hid her face from Helva's view. Even the slim fingers were motionless. The girl had abandoned herself to grief and suddenly Helva was immeasurably irritated with this immolation in self-pity. True enough, she had been tempted to suicide, but her conditioning had held. She had keened her loss to black space, but she had lifted with Theoda to A
Helva looked dispassionately at her brawn, furious at her situation, realizing that Central Worlds had known exactly what they were asking of Helva when they assigned Kira to her. That, too, was part of the ethos. Use what you have that will get the job done.
"Kira, what is a Dylanist?"
The lowered head jerked up, the curtaining hair falling away from the face. The scout blinked and turned to stare at Helva's bulkhead.
"Well, that is the last question I would have expected," she said in a quiet voice. She gave a little snort of laughter and then tossed her head, shaking her hair out of her way. She looked at Helva thoughtfully, speculatively. "All right. I'll absolve you of the guilty crime of psychotherapy. Although," and Kira pointed an accusatory finger at the column, "I was coerced to make this mission and I thought it awfully suspicious you were my ship."
"Yes, that would follow logically, wouldn't it?" Helva agreed calmly.
Kira laid a slim hand on the bulkhead, on the square plate that was the only access to Helva's titanium shell within the column. It was a gesture of apology and entreaty, simple and swift. Had Helva been aware of sensory values it would have been the lightest of pressures.
"A Dylanist is a social commentator, a protester, using music as a weapon, a stimulus. A skilled Dylanist, and I wasn't one," and from the emphasis on the pronoun, Helva assumed that Kira considered her husband, Thorn, had been one such, "can make so compelling an argument with melody and words that what he wants to say becomes insinuated into the subconscious."