The Ship Who Sang (6 page)

Theoda resumed her restless pacing.

‘But you don't really think,' Helva said, ‘that you are going to get those skeptics to do the necessary recruiting on the basis of the computer report?'

‘The therapy was a positive factor,' Theoda insisted, her face set in stubborn lines.

‘It was a “possible”. I'm not arguing with your position, only pointing out their reaction,' she added as she saw Theoda gathering breath to protest. ‘I'm convinced. They won't be and it also won't be the first time when good samaritans have decided to rest on their laurels prematurely, convinced that they have in conscience done all they could.'

Theoda set her lips.

‘I'm positive those people can be saved . . . or at least enough of them to make every effort worthwhile.'

‘Why? I mean, why do you think repatterning will do the trick?'

‘It's a 20th century technique, used before the correction of the majority of prenatal defects and with some severe brain or neural accidents. I took my degree in physiotherapeutic history. So many of the early problems in the field no longer exist, but occasionally, of course, an ancient
disease reappears suddenly. Like the epidemic of poliomyelitus on Evarts II. Then the old skills are revived.

‘The plague, for instance, is like the Rathje Virus, only the original strain attacked sporadically and recovery was slow but certain. Perhaps because therapy was initiated as soon as the painful phase passed. Also, I believe that the paralysis was not so acute, but the strain has obviously mutated in the centuries and become more virulent.

‘However, the similarity cannot be denied. I brought my tapes, Helva,' Theoda said eagerly, enthusiasm giving her face a semblance of youth. ‘The Doman-Delacato repatterning was used with great effect on the victims of the Rathje Virus.'

‘You don't suppose,' and Theoda stopped dead in her tracks, ‘we could also prove that the space plague spores had passed by old Terra at that time. Have you any details on galactic spiral patterns?'

‘Stick to medical and physiological aspects, Theoda,' laughed Helva.

Theoda scrubbed at her face with her hands as though she would wash away fatigue and stimulate her tired brain to inspiration.

‘Just one child, one proof is all I need.'

‘How long would it take? What age child is best? Why a child? Why not that poor woman of the eyelid?'

‘The medulla handles reflex action at birth.
The pons, maturing at 20 weeks, directs crawling on the stomach. By 15 weeks, the midbrain has begun to function and the child begins to learn to creep on hands and knees. By 60 weeks, the cortex begins to act and controls walking, speech, vision, hearing, tactile, and manual competence.'

‘A year would be too young . . . no understandable speech,' Helva mused outloud, remembering her first birthday without effort. But she had already been ‘walking' and ‘talking.'

‘The best age is 5,' said another voice. Theoda gasped as she saw Onro standing in the galley, a warming container in one hand. ‘Because that is the age of my son. I'm Onro, MedOfficer. I sent for you, Physiotherapist Theoda, because I heard you never give up.' His face, still creased with blanket folds, turned hard, determined. ‘I won't give up either until my son walks, talks, and laughs again. He's all I have left. What a way to spend a happy vacation.' Onro laughed bitterly, then gulped at the steaming coffee.

‘You're Van Goghian?' Theoda demanded.

‘By chance, and one of the immunes.'

‘You heard what I was saying? You agree?'

‘I've heard. I neither agree nor disagree. I'll try anything that sounds even remotely feasible. Your idea is reasonable and the computer has only the one positive suggestion – therapy. I'll bring my son.'

He turned when he reached the lock, shook
his fist back at Helva. ‘You drugged me, you silver-plated sorceress.'

‘An inaccurate analysis, but the insult is accepted,' Helva said as he disappeared, scowling, down the lift.

Elated, Theoda snatched out her viewer and carefully re-studied the films of the technique she would try.

‘They used steroids as medications,' she mumbled. ‘Have you any?'

‘No medication was indicated on the report,' Helva reminded her, ‘but you can get Onro to steal what you require from the synthesizer in the hospital. He
is
a Senior MedOfficer.'

‘Yes, yes, that helps,' and Theoda lapsed again into fierce concentration. ‘Why did they use . . . oh, yes, of course. They didn't have any conglomerates, did they?'

Fascinated, Helva watched as Theoda scanned the film, winding and rewinding, rechecking, making notations, muttering to herself, pausing to gaze off into space in abstracted thought.

When Theoda had been through her notes the fourth time, Helva insisted with authority that she eat something. Theoda had just finished the stew when Onro returned with the limp body of a redheaded child in his arms. Onro's rough face was impassive, almost rigid in its lack of expression as the child was tenderly laid down on the bunk. Helva noticed the almost universal trait of the victims, the half-closed eyes, as if the lids were too heavy to keep open.

Kneeling down beside the bunk, Theoda turned the boy's face so that her eyes were directly on a level with his.

‘Child, I know you can hear. We are going to work your body to help you remember what your body could do. Soon we will have you running under the sun again.'

Without more ado and disregarding Onro's guttural protest, she placed the boy on his stomach on the deck, seized one arm and one leg and signaled to Onro to do likewise.

‘We are taking you back to the time when you were a baby and first tried to creep. We are making your body crawl forward on your belly like a snake.'

In a patient monotone, she droned her instructions. Helva timed the performance at 15 minutes. They waited a full hour and repeated the drill. Another hour passed and Theoda, equally patient, droned instructions to pattern the child's body in a walking, upright position, alternating the left hand with right foot, and right hand with left foot. Another hour and she repeated the walking. Then back to the crawling, again and again in double repetition: the two therapists caught naps when they could. Surreptitiously, Helva closed her lock, cut the cabin audio on her relays and ignored the insistent radio demands from the hospital that she put Theoda or Onro on the radio. After 24 hours, Theoda alternated the two patterns, and included basic muscular therapy on the lax body,
patiently, patiently manipulating the limbs in the various attitudes and postures, down to the young toes and fingers.

By the 27th hour, Onro, worn by previous exhaustion, frustration and increasing hopelessness, dropped into a sleep from which violent shaking could not rouse him. Theoda, looking more and more gray, continued, making each repetition of every motion as carefully and fully as she had the first time she started the intensive re-patterning.

Helva ignored the crowd outside. She paid no attention to the muted demands, threats, and entreaties.

‘Theoda,' Helva said softly in the 30th hour, ‘have you noticed, as I have, the tendency of the neck muscles to contort?'

‘Yes, I have. And this child was once so far gone that a tracheotomy was necessary. Notice the scar here,' and she pointed to the thin mark. ‘I see, too, that the eyelids describe a slightly larger arc than when we began the therapy. The child knows we are helping him. See, his eyes open . . . ever so slightly, but it is enough. I was right! I knew I was right!'

‘You won't have much more time,' Helva said. ‘The authorities of Annigoni have called in a Service Craft and it is due to land beside me in half an hour. I will be forced to open or risk damage to the ship, which I am conditioned to avoid.'

Theoda looked up, startled.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Look in my screen,' and Helva turned on the picture at the pilot's console so that Theoda could see the crowd of people and vehicles clustered at the base of the ship. ‘They are getting a bit insistent.'

‘I had no idea.'

‘You needed quiet, I could at least supply that,' Helva replied. ‘But to all intents and purposes, their Senior Medical Officer, his son, and their visiting technical adviser are imprisoned inside me and they suspect that my recent . . . that I am turning rogue.'

‘But didn't you tell them we were conducting therapy . . .'

‘Naturally.'

‘Of all the ridiculous . . .'

‘It's time for therapy. Every minute is necessary now.'

‘First he must be fed.'

Theoda carefully inserted the concentrated solution in the thin vein, smoothing down the lump that formed as the nutritive spray entered.

‘A sweet child, I imagine, Helva, from his face,' she said.

‘A young hellion, with all those freckles,' snorted Helva.

‘They are usually the sweetest inside,' Theoda said firmly.

Helva noticed the eyelids droop down on the cheek and then raise again. She decided she was
right, not the therapist. Imagine calling red hair and freckles sweet!

Again the patient routine, the assisted patterning. Then a loud thud startled Theoda. It shook the sleeping form of the doctor where he lay on the deck. Helva, with one eye outside, had expected the blow. Onro roused himself garrulously, unaware at first of his surroundings.

‘Whassa matter?'

A second dull thud.

‘Whatinell's happening? Who's knocking?'

‘Half the planet,' remarked Helva drily and tuned up the exterior visual and aural. She immediately cut down the nearly deafening noise.

‘All right, all right,' she said loudly to the audience, her voice amplifying easily over their angry roars.

‘DEMAND PERMISSION TO ENTER, XH-834,' squalled someone at her base. She meekly activated the lift and opened the lock. Onro stamped to the opening and leaned down, shouting.

‘Whatinell's the matter here? Go ‘way all of you. Have you no decency? What's the bloody fuss about? Can't a man get some sleep around here? Only quiet place on the whole lousy planet.'

The lift had by then come abreast of him with the brawn from the service ship and the stuffy hospital official of Theoda's tour.

‘MedOfficer Onro, we feared for you,
particularly when your son was discovered missing from his bed.'

‘Administrator Carif, did you expect that the lady therapist had kidnapped me and my son and was holding us hostage on a rogue ship? Romanticists all. Hey, what are you doing . . . you young squirt,' he demanded as the brawn made a pass at the protected panel of Helva's shaft.

‘I am following orders from Central Control.'

‘You warm up that tight beam and tell Central Control to mind its own damned business. Weren't for Helva here and the peace and quiet she maintained for us, don't know where we'd be at.'

He stalked into the cabin, where his son again lay on the floor, with Theoda painstakingly applying her Doman-Delacato therapy.

‘Don't know how many we'll save this way, but it does work and you, young man, will tell Central Control, after you've told them to go to hell for me, that they will issue authority to Theoda to recruit any and all . . . if necessary . . . of this planet's population as a therapy force to activate her rehabilitation program.'

He got down on his knees by his son.

‘All right, boy, crawl.'

‘Why, that child will catch a cold in this draft . . .' the official exclaimed.

Some woman was trying to get Helva to lower the lift for her but Helva ignored her as the beads of sweat started on the child's face. There
was no muscular movement, not so much as a twitch.

‘Son, try. Try. Try!' pleaded Onro.

‘Your mind remembers what your body once could do, right arm forward, left knee up,' said Theoda, with such control that no hint of the tension she must feel showed in her calm, gentle tones.

Helva could see the boy's throat muscles moving convulsively but she knew the watchers were expecting more dramatic motions.

‘Come on, momma's sweet little freckled-face boy,' she drawled in an irritatingly insulting voice.

Before the annoyed watchers could turn to remonstrate her, the boy's elbow had actually slid an inch on the floor and his left knee, slightly flexed by Theoda's hands, skidded behind as the throat worked violently and a croaking sound issued from his lips. With a cry of inarticulate joy, Onro clasped his son to him.

‘You see, you see. Theoda was right.'

‘I see that the child made a voluntary movement, yes,' Carif was forced to agree. ‘But one isolated example is . . .' he spread his hands expressively, unconvinced.

‘One is enough. We haven't had time for more,' Onro said. ‘I'll put it to the people out there. They'll be the workforce.'

Carrying his son to the lock, he yelled down what had happened. There was a great cheering and applause. Then the little group at the base
of the ship kept pointing urgently to the woman who had begged for the lift.

‘I can't hear you,' Onro called, for many people were shouting at once, all trying to get across the same idea.

Helva sent the lift down and the woman came up it. As soon as she was halfway to Onro she shouted her message.

‘In the nursery, we did as Therapist Theoda suggested. There is already some improvement among the children. Not much, not much and we want to know what we are doing wrong. But four of the babies are already able to cry,' she babbled, stepping into the ship and running to Theoda, where the woman leaned wearily against the door jamb. ‘I never expected to be happy to hear a baby cry again. But some are crying and some are making awful sounds, and one little girl even waved a hand when she was diapered. Oh, we've done just what you said.'

Theoda looked her triumph at Carif and he, shrugging acceptance of the accomplishment, nodded.