Aylis Mnro said to the swimmer.
1-16 The Singer Awakes
She followed and watched. The stars drifted by. Instruments measured and recorded. Solitude enveloped her. The starship Titanic sailed ahead of her, sailing to the inward galactic frontier. Her little ship, the Demba, had made the trip many times but this time she flew with an improved starlight drive, its cleaner envelope making her invisible to all but the most sensitive detectors. He requested it. She didn't hesitate to oblige, even though the delay and the expense meant no profit and a delayed freight load. The broker had threatened to drop her.
His wife and child sailed aboard the Titanic, the first time in a decade a large ship dared to take such a route. She didn't understand what she could do if anything happened. She didn't know what he suspected might happen. She didn't understand why he would let his family travel on a ship that might encounter trouble. She could have transported them aboard her own ship. She had suggested that. She thought he had agreed to it, but by the time she reached their port of departure, the Titanic had sailed with his wife and child aboard.
She regretted not having the companionship on this trip. She hated the loneliness. She couldn't even sing now, for fear of missing some audible warning from the instruments. Three women on the Demba would have required more maintenance for life support in the tiny crew quarters but they would have had fun together. She liked Susan and Fidelity. Apparently Fidelity did not like her.
She never saw the first few anomalies. Only when the Titanic lost its starlight drive did she discover their existence. Spherical objects blinked in and out of space, appearing to jump out of sight and into sight, so great was their acceleration. She lowered her velocity, keeping a safe distance from the big starship. Now she could see the jumping globes against the scale of the starliner. They measured no larger than her own ship but they numbered over a hundred. Seconds later another thousand joined the hundred, forming a cloud of dark spheres that all but occluded the Titanic.
She reversed course to reduce the risk of discovery. Even as she slowed to a stop, another ten thousand spheres jumped into the cluster and completely enveloped the starship. She could do nothing but watch and record. A distant cloud of ionized gas provided scant visual illumination for the scene before her. Her telescopes scanned the many sources of energy and recorded them in many wavelengths.
Nothing seemed to happen for a long time. She missed it when the little ships disappeared. She had to play back and enhance the images. In less than a heartbeat the storm of small spheres had vanished, not all at once but nearly so. So, too, did the Titanic disappear - that is, it did not reappear when the cloud of spheres departed. Nothing remained but empty space.
Forty-three thousand passengers, one hundred million tons of ship and cargo - and Susan and Fidelity - were gone without a trace.
"What are you thinking about?" Samson inquired.
She had to call on the steel person within her to disengage from the vision. Hopefully Samson couldn't see the reaction on her face, the astonishment, the tears, and the terror. This was a most powerful - memory? - image? - vividly detailed, implicitly vital, both personally and in some greater context. Impossible enemy ships, discontinuous in flight, as deadly to a starship as was a school of piranhas to a cow fording their river. She heard names, already trying to evaporate from her memory: Demba, Fidelity, Susan. The first two were her names, that of a ship and that of a person she must have known. Who was Susan? She could no longer set these mental events apart from the current outer reality of her life. These powerful internal cinemas must converge on who she once was and what she was destined to do.
"Something I remembered from a long time ago," she finally answered Samson's question.
She shook herself, both mentally and physically, to cast off the paralysis of powerful emotion. Just by being here, Samson brought her back to here-and-now, and eased her suffering. The dream continued to evaporate, but the disappearance of the Titanic was an event known to her from history, and she would not lose that connection to the escaping images.
She willed herself to be what she was not - not now, not yet: a mother.
"I'm also thinking you need a bath," she said. "You smell like Gator."
"I'll just stand out in the rain," Samson said, smiling mischievously.
"That will be a good start. Then I'll put you in the bath."
"Do I have to?"
"If you want to sleep in my bed. What's wrong with taking a bath?"
"I just had one yesterday!"
"You used up that bath before breakfast!"
"I never used to take a bath!"
"How proud you are of that fact!"
= = =
She studied Rafael's painting of her. He hopped over to her side and grabbed her arm to maintain his balance. Fidelity put her hand on Samson's shoulder and pulled him against her hip. His hair was still wet from his bath. They stood there in silence for several minutes. The last of the rain dripped off the roof and rattled on the palm fronds outside the screened porch. Rich green humidity thickened the evening air. The sketches Rafael had made of her and Samson had impressed her: an immediate proof of the power of his talent. In so few strokes of a pencil Rafael could evoke deep meaning and strong emotion. She thought he over-dramatized reality, yet she conceded certain elements of truth. She was learning to care for Samson, even as a mother cares for her child: that was in the sketches. She was shocked that it had been so obvious to Rafael. She guessed Rafael also found something potent for himself in the image she had presented to him. He gave her the yellow dress, in which he had painted many portraits of his wife - his most famous series of paintings. She reminded him of his wife, perhaps. But even Samson seemed to have a special meaning for Rafael. She began to understand Pan's reason for sending her and Samson to the old artist. It was not a correct reason but it was a powerful reason.
As evocative as the sketches were, they did not prepare her for the portrait that now transfixed her.
"I like it," Samson said of the portrait. "That's what you look like. Those are your eyes."
The oil painting was not yet finished but it sent chills down her body, all the way to her ankles. Was that really her? Was she smiling or not? It was not a Mona Lisa expression, just... undecided, unfinished, awaiting judgment, hopeless and hopeful, and how many other potential human conditions of feeling, of being, of becoming?
"I don't know!" She sought some release from the unbearable flattery of the beautiful image. "It's his idea of me. He must think I'm much more than I am. But it's a fascinating portrait... of someone. Did you wash everywhere?"
= = =
Samson snored lightly, finally asleep after a long battle against the dark forces of fatigue. She rose quietly from the bed, trying to shush Gator, whose tail gave a loud thump before he arose to lie down again closer to the bed. She went outside and walked through the wet grass, back to another building where she saw light through north-facing windows on the roof. She entered and found Rafael sitting on a stool, looking through a stack of art canvases. He looked up and smiled, and shoved the paintings aside.
She rescued the paintings after they tipped onto the floor. Touching them... These were probably the originals! Rafael's originals! Why was he so careless with his work? She looked at each picture, placing it carefully on a shelf with other paintings. Paintings filled many shelves. Sculpture occupied most of the remaining storage space. She looked at as much as she could, pausing often to show a work to Rafael. She could put a title to almost every painting.
"How do you know the titles of all those?" Rafael asked. "Even I don't remember them all!"
"I don't know! I'm no longer connected to the Navy data network. This is in my personal data augment."
"And yet there are so many things you can't remember."
"You assume I have many things I might remember. This is just data, not memory. All I need is a key to unlock a piece of data. I see a painting and suddenly the title is there. In many cases the record has mo
re facts about each piece of art. I was always interested in your work. I own at least three replicas."
"These are all originals. You can have whatever you would like of my art, Fidelity."
"You can't mean that, Rafael! And you know it's illegal to own originals."
"And you know how collectors ignore the law! They are idiots. The soul of the picture is what is important, not the material of its reality. And there is no significant difference between the original and the replicas nowadays, so I don't worry about it. But with a fresh signature on them, that might make them more valuable to you, personally. No one would ever know. Please, take your pick. But there is a small price."
"What -"
"Two small prices. Don't let them revive me, should I die in your presence."
"I'm sorry I've brought danger to you, but that's a very large price, Rafael."
"I'm not concerned about danger. One never knows how many more seconds remain in his life. All I ask is for you to do what you can. If I'm rejuvenated, I'll be someone else. Maybe that person won't regret losing the gift of art, or perhaps he'll learn a different thing to do with his life. It won't be a real tragedy but we all have to die the final death sometime."
"I'll respect your wishes, Rafael, but I probably won't be with you much longer."
"You will be with me forever! The second price is: sing for me."
She made the