Nebula Awards Showcase 2006

by Gardner Dozois

  Even so-called spear-carriers in Anne’s books are so well drawn, responding to situations as actual people would, not just as the appropriately acting agent for the MacGuffin that would solve the world-threatening problem that is at the heart of any good science fiction story. Her characters’ strength to face challenges was not only to be found in the robust and muscular, but in those who were gentle and meek. There is danger, but there is also love. Anne has said in the past that her books are romances with a little science fiction wrapped around them. Her readers revel in the relationships as much as they do in the adventures and problems that must be solved for the characters to survive.

  But wait, as the infomercials say, there’s more! Most of Anne’s worlds touch the wish-fulfillment reflex in us. Imagine a job in which perfect pitch and musical talent is the key to limitless wealth, instead of second seat in the flute section. Imagine near-immortality and unfettered freedom even for those considered hopelessly physically handicapped. Imagine a humanlike species in whom the legend of the unicorn comes true. Imagine being able to communicate telepathically from star system to star system. Anne has brought us so many different dreams, and all we need to do to step into them is turn to the first page.

  Anne claims in her biographies to have written her first novel in Latin class. Furtive fiction writing certainly seems to have been a far better use of her time than learning declensions or reading Cicero’s orations in the original. Even if by her current standards the early book is unreadable, it was the first step in developing the style that her readers have come to know and cherish.

  The elevation of Anne McCaffrey to the status of Grand Master is recognition by the wide and diverse community of her fellow science fiction writers of the excellence of her writing, but not everyone knows what a wonderful person she is as well. Anne is generous, both professionally and personally. She gives the credit to the legendary editor John Campbell for suggesting that she write about dragons. She also said at the Nebula banquet when she was given the Grand Master award that Andre Norton told her to write about a white dragon, one with special abilities, which gave rise to Anne’s first New York Times best seller, The White Dragon.

  Quite a number of her fans whom I asked found Anne’s work in much the same manner I did: through a friend who wanted to share the pleasure of a cracking good read. Others were handed the books by parents or older siblings. More came across it in bookstores, libraries, and PXs (she has a huge readership in the military). But no matter where they met Anne’s worlds they all find that true treasure a writer can give her readers: escape in her books from their daily lives. Many feel as if they know her characters, and would like to live in some of her worlds, most notably Pern.

  There is a reason Anne McCaffrey doesn’t just have readers; she has fans . . . and friends. Her fans appreciate Anne not only for her writing, but for her approachability. She has a warm, open heart and great strength of character. Her knack for making anyone feel at home in her presence encourages even the most tongue-tied fan to open up and say what he or she spent far too much time nervously contemplating in that long autograph line, and to be devoted ever afterward to her. Anne’s fans have bonded with her and with one another to form an extended family. Except for a few “universes” that include Star Trek and Star Wars, there are probably more organized groups of Anne’s readers than any other writer’s. They have formed a mutually supportive community that is as full of talent, good humor, and hospitality to strangers as the lady herself. They keep in touch with one another, such communication greatly enhanced by the development of the Internet, share fiction set in her worlds, have hatching parties, exchange recipes, make costumes and write songs that celebrate facets of the complex worlds that Anne has created.

  Readers also applaud the inclusive nature of her work. Women are given starring roles, yet men are in no means given short shrift. Her heroes are every bit as glamorous as her heroines. The door is open to every kind of human being. Gay groups applaud the presence of green riders on Pern, male riders chosen by female dragons who participate in the complex, energetic (and occasionally violent) mating ritual with other riders, also male, while their dragons are similarly engaged. No Earth-based racial group is excluded from being part of an adventure. Dragonsdawn specifically treats with the many cultures who made up the landing party that settled Pern. Psychic ability, such as that described in the Talents series, knows no racial boundaries.

  Anne has, in the last fifteen or so years, allowed several junior authors, myself included, the privilege of sharing her spotlight by allowing further episodes to be written in a number of her established worlds, and in one case she created a series that has been collaborative since it began (The Powers That Be). I and my co-collaborators (we’ve each worked with Anne but not yet with one another) all have reason to be grateful to her, not only for the boost appearing on a cover with her has given our careers, but for the advice and encouragement she’s always given to us. She’s invited us into her home and made us feel part of the family. I learned a lot from her that I believe made my independent work better. I am also proud to be a friend of someone whom I admire so much.

  In the next pages you will find a story that touches on Anne’s humanity, insight, and quick wit. Enjoy the fiction, but enjoy too knowing that the warmth that pervades all Anne’s characters and worlds is a reflection of someone who could have been the heroine herself, and to many of us, she really is.

  ANNE Mc CAFFREY

  Here’s a classic tale by Grand Master Anne McCaffrey, one of the earliest science fiction stories to deal with cyborgs and the Posthuman Condition—and still one of the best. (Helva’s further adventures can be found in The Ship Who Sang; PartnerShip, written with Margaret Ball; The Ship Who Searched, with Mercedes R. Lackey; The City Who Fought, with S. M. Stirling; The Ship Who Won, with Jody Lynn Nye; The Ship Avenged, with S. M. Stirling; The Ship Who Saved the Worlds, with Jody Lynn Nye; The Ship Errant, by Jody Lynn Nye; and The City and the Ship, by S. M. Stirling.)

  THE SHIP WHO SANG

  ANNE McCAFFREY

  She was born a thing and as such would be condemned if she failed to pass the encephalograph test required of all newborn babies. There was always the possibility that though the limbs were twisted, the mind was not, that though the ears would hear only dimly, the eyes see vaguely, the mind behind them was receptive and alert.

  The electro-encephalogram was entirely favorable, unexpectedly so, and the news was brought to the waiting, grieving parents. There was the final, harsh decision: to give their child euthanasia or permit it to become an encapsulated “brain,” a guiding mechanism in any one of a number of curious professions. As such, their offspring would suffer no pain, live a comfortable existence in a metal shell for several centuries, performing unusual service to Central Worlds.

  She lived and was given a name, Helva. For her first three vegetable months she waved her crabbed claws, kicked weakly with her clubbed feet and enjoyed the usual routine of the infant. She was not alone for there were three other such children in the big city’s special nursery. Soon they all were removed to Central Laboratory School where their delicate transformation began.

  One of the babies died in the initial transferral but of Helva’s “class,” seventeen thrived in the metal shells. Instead of kicking feet, Helva’s neural responses started her wheels; instead of grabbing with hands, she manipulated mechanical extensions. As she matured, more and more neural synapses would be adjusted to operate other mechanisms that went into the maintenance and running of a space ship. For Helva was destined to be the “brain” half of a scout ship, partnered with a man or a woman, whichever she chose, as the mobile half. She would be among the elite of her kind. Her initial intelligence tests registered above normal and her adaptation index was unusually high. As long as her development within her shell lived up to expectations, and there were no side-effects from the pituitary tinkering, Helva would live a rewarding, rich and unusual life, a far cry from what she would
have faced as an ordinary, “normal” being.

  However, no diagram of her brain patterns, no early I.Q. tests recorded certain essential facts about Helva that Central must eventually learn. They would have to bide their official time and see, trusting that the massive doses of shell-psychology would suffice her, too, as the necessary bulwark against her unusual confinement and the pressures of her profession. A ship run by a human brain could not run rogue or insane with the power and resources Central had to build into their scout ships. Brain ships were, of course, long past the experimental stages. Most babes survived the techniques of pituitary manipulation that kept their bodies small, eliminating the necessity of transfers from smaller to larger shells. And very, very few were lost when the final connection was made to the control panels of ship or industrial combine. Shell people resembled mature dwarfs in size whatever their natal deformities were, but the well-oriented brain would not have changed places with the most perfect body in the Universe.

  So, for happy years, Helva scooted around in her shell with her classmates, playing such games as Stall, Power-Seek, studying her lessons in trajectory, propulsion techniques, computation, logistics, mental hygiene, basic alien psychology, philology, space history, law, traffic, codes: all the et ceteras that eventually became compounded into a reasoning, logical, informed citizen. Not so obvious to her, but of more importance to her teachers, Helva ingested the precepts of her conditioning as easily as she absorbed her nutrient fluid. She would one day be grateful to the patient drone of the sub-conscious-level instruction.

  Helva’s civilization was not without busy, do-good associations, exploring possible inhumanities to terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial citizens. One such group got all incensed over shelled “children” when Helva was just turning fourteen. When they were forced to, Central Worlds shrugged its shoulders, arranged a tour of the Laboratory Schools and set the tour off to a big start by showing the members’ case histories, complete with photographs. Very few committees ever looked past the first few photos. Most of their original objections about “shells” were overridden by the relief that these hideous (to them) bodies were mercifully concealed.

  Helva’s class was doing Fine Arts, a selective subject in her crowded program. She had activated one of her microscopic tools which she would later use for minute repairs to various parts of her control panel. Her subject was large—a copy of the Last Supper—and her canvas, small—the head of a tiny screw. She had tuned her sight to the proper degree. As she worked she absentmindedly crooned, producing a curious sound. Shell people used their own vocal cords and diaphragms but sound issued through microphones rather than mouths. Helva’s hum then had a curious vibrancy, a warm, dulcet quality even in its aimless chromatic wanderings.

  “Why, what a lovely voice you have,” said one of the female visitors.

  Helva “looked” up and caught a fascinating panorama of regular, dirty craters on a flaky pink surface. Her hum became a gurgle of surprise. She instinctively regulated her “sight” until the skin lost its cratered look and the pores assumed normal proportions.

  “Yes, we have quite a few years of voice training, madam,” remarked Helva calmly. “Vocal peculiarities often become excessively irritating during prolonged intra-stellar distances and must be eliminated. I enjoyed my lessons.”

  Although this was the first time that Helva had seen unshelled people, she took this experience calmly. Any other reaction would have been reported instantly.

  “I meant that you have a nice singing voice . . . dear,” the lady amended.

  “Thank you. Would you like to see my work?” Helva asked, politely. She instinctively sheered away from personal discussions but she filed the comment away for further meditation.

  “Work?” asked the lady.

  “I am currently reproducing the Last Supper on the head of a screw.”

  “O, I say,” the lady twittered.

  Helva turned her vision back to magnification and surveyed her copy critically.

  “Of course, some of my color values do not match the old Master’s and the perspective is faulty but I believe it to be a fair copy.”

  The lady’s eyes, unmagnified, bugged out.

  “Oh, I forget,” and Helva’s voice was really contrite. If she could have blushed, she would have. “You people don’t have adjustable vision.”

  The monitor of this discourse grinned with pride and amusement as Helva’s tone indicated pity for the unfortunate.

  “Here, this will help,” suggested Helva, substituting a magnifying device in one extension and holding it over the picture.

  In a kind of shock, the ladies and gentlemen of the committee bent to observe the incredibly copied and brilliantly executed Last Supper on the head of a screw.

  “Well,” remarked one gentleman who had been forced to accompany his wife, “the good Lord can eat where angels fear to tread.”

  “Are you referring, sir,” asked Helva politely, “to the Dark Age discussions of the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin?”

  “I had that in mind.”

  “If you substitute ‘atom’ for ‘angel,’ the problem is not insoluble, given the metallic content of the pin in question.”

  “Which you are programed to compute?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did they remember to program a sense of humor, as well, young lady?”

  “We are directed to develop a sense of proportion, sir, which contributes the same effect.”

  The good man chortled appreciatively and decided the trip was worth his time.

  If the investigation committee spent months digesting the thoughtful food served them at the Laboratory School, they left Helva with a morsel as well.

  “Singing” as applicable to herself required research. She had, of course, been exposed to and enjoyed a music appreciation course which had included the better known classical works such as “Tristan und Isolde,” “Candide,” “Oklahoma,” “Nozze de Figaro,” the atomic age singers, Eileen Farrell, Elvis Presley and Geraldine Todd, as well as the curious rhythmic progressions of the Venusians, Capellan visual chromatics and the sonic concerti of the Altairians. But “singing” for any shell person posed considerable technical difficulties to be overcome. Shell people were schooled to examine every aspect of a problem or situation before making a prognosis. Balanced properly between optimism and practicality, the nondefeatist attitude of the shell people led them to extricate themselves, their ships and personnel, from bizarre situations. Therefore to Helva, the problem that she couldn’t open her mouth to sing, among other restrictions, did not bother her. She would work out a method, by-passing her limitations, whereby she could sing.

  She approached the problem by investigating the methods of sound reproduction through the centuries, human and instrumental. Her own sound production equipment was essentially more instrumental than vocal. Breath control and the proper enunciation of vowel sounds within the oral cavity appeared to require the most development and practice. Shell people did not, strictly speaking, breathe. For their purposes, oxygen and other gases were not drawn from the surrounding atmosphere through the medium of lungs but sustained artificially by solution in their shells. After experimentation, Helva discovered that she could manipulate her diaphragmic unit to sustain tone. By relaxing the throat muscles and expanding the oral cavity well into the frontal sinuses, she could direct the vowel sounds into the most felicitous position for proper reproduction through her throat microphone. She compared the results with tape recordings of modern singers and was not unpleased although her own tapes had a peculiar quality about them, not at all unharmonious, merely unique. Acquiring a repertoire from the Laboratory library was no problem to one trained to perfect recall. She found herself able to sing any role and any song which struck her fancy. It would not have occurred to her that it was curious for a female to sing bass, baritone, tenor, alto, mezzo, soprano and coloratura as she pleased. It was, to Helva, only a matter of the correct
reproduction and diaphragmic control required by the music attempted.

  If the authorities remarked on her curious avocation they did so among themselves. Shell people were encouraged to develop a hobby so long as they maintained proficiency in their technical work.

  On the anniversary of her sixteenth year in her shell, Helva was unconditionally graduated and installed in her ship, the XH-834. Her permanent titanium shell was recessed behind an even more indestructible barrier in the central shaft of the scout ship. The neural, audio, visual and sensory connections were made and sealed. Her extendibles were diverted, connected or augmented and the final, delicate-beyond-description brain taps were completed while Helva remained anesthetically unaware of the proceedings. When she awoke, she was the ship. Her brain and intelligence controlled every function from navigation to such loading as a scout ship of her class needed. She could take care of herself and her ambulatory half, in any situation already recorded in the annals of Central Worlds and any situation its most fertile minds could imagine.

  Her first actual flight, for she and her kind had made mock flights on dummy panels since she was eight, showed her complete mastery of the techniques of her profession. She was ready for her great adventures and the arrival of her mobile partner.

  There were nine qualified scouts sitting around collecting base pay the day Helva was commissioned. There were several missions which demanded instant attention but Helva had been of interest to several department heads in Central for some time and each man was determined to have her assigned to his section. Consequently no one had remembered to introduce Helva to the prospective partners. The ship always chose its own partner. Had there been another “brain” ship at the Base at the moment, Helva would have been guided to make the first move. As it was, while Central wrangled among itself, Robert Tanner sneaked out of the pilots’ barracks, out to the field and over to Helva’s slim metal hull.