(Anne McCaffrey, 1961)
‘Singing’ as applicable to herself required research. She had, of course, been exposed to an enjoyed a music appreciation course that had included the better known classical works such as ‘Tristan und Isolde,’ ‘Candide,’ ‘Oklahomea,’ and ‘Noze de Figaro,’ along with the atomic age singers, Birgit Nilsson, Bob Dylan, and Geraldine Todd, as well as the curious rhythmic progressions of the Venusians, Capellan visual chromatics, the sonic concerti of the Altairians and Reticulan croons. But ‘singing’ for any shell-person posed considerable technical difficulties. 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 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 diaphragmatic 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, 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.
Helva “was born a thing,” according to the opening words of Anne McCaffrey’s story (later turned novel) “The Ship Who Sang.” That is, the infant’s senses are dull and limbs twisted. But an EEG reveals that her mind is alert, and so she is slated to become a shell-person, her brain encapsulated in a metal shell and neurons connected to various mechanisms for running a space ship. She discovers singing as a student in Laboratory School, after a visitor from the Society for the Rights of Intelligent Minorities notices her humming and comments that she has a nice singing voice (“Shell-people used their own vocal chords 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,” the narrator explains). Helva’s enthusiasm for singing becomes central to her personality and her connection to Jennan, her chosen “brawn” to co-pilot her ship along with her brain. In the great tradition of science fiction writing, “The Ship Who Sang” refracts for our examination the lines between person and thing, programming and free will, self and embodiment – all of these tangled in the relationship between Helva and musical instrument.
Text: Anne McCaffrey, “The Ship Who Sang” short story
Image: Cover to the first edition of the book The Ship Who Sang (1969) by Jack Gaughan