The Ship Who Won by Anne McCaffrey, Jody Lynn Nye Page B

being
    enshelled.
    Several hundred years before, scientists had tried to
    find a way to rehabilitate children who were of normal
    intelligence but whose bodies were useless. By connecting
    brain synapses to special nodes, the intelligent child could
    manipulate a shell with extendable pseudopods that would
    allow it to move, manipulate tools or keyboards. An
    extension of that principle resulted in the first spaceships
    totally controlled by encapsulated human beings. Other
    "shellpeople," trained for multiplexing, ran complicated
    industrial plants, or space stations, and cities. From the
    moment a baby was accepted for the life of a shellperson,
    he or she was conditioned to consider that life preferable
    to "softshells" who were so limited in abilities and
    lifespans.
    One of the more famous brainships, the HN-832, or the
    Helva-Niall, had been nicknamed "the ship who sang,"
    having developed a multivoice capability as her hobby.
    Though she docked in CenCom environs but rarely,
    Helvas adventures inspired all young shellpeople.
    Although Carialle was deeply disappointed to discover she
    had only an average talent for music, she was encouraged
    to find some other recreational outlet. It had taken a disaster for Carialle to find that painting suited her.
    Encapsulated at three months and taught mostly by artificial intelligence programs and other shellpeople, Carialle
    had no self-image as an ordinary human. While she had
    pictures of her family and thought they looked like pleasant folks, she felt distinct from them.
    Once Carialle had gone beyond the "black" period of
    her painting, her therapists had asked her to paint a self-portrait. It was a clumsy effort since she knew they wanted
    a "human" look while Carialle saw herself as a ship so that
    was what she produced: the conical prow of the graceful
    and accurately detailed spaceship framed an oval blob with
    markings that could just barely be considered "features"
    and blond locks that overlaid certain ordinary ship sensors.
    Her female sibling had had long blond hair.
    After a good deal of conferencing, Dr. Dray and his staff
    decided that perhaps this was a valid self-image and not a
    bad one: in fact a meld of fact (the ship) and fiction (her
    actual facial contours). There were enough shellpeople now,
    JJ J
    Dr. Dray remarked, so that it was almost expectable that they
    saw themselves as a separate and distinct species. In fact,
    Carialle showed a very healthy shellperson attitude in not
    representing herself with a perfect human body, since it was
    something she never had and never could have.
    Simeons gift to Carialle was particularly appropriate.
    Carialle was very fond of cats, with their furry faces and
    expressive tails, and watched tapes of their sinuous play in
    odd moments of relaxation. She saw softshells as two distinct and interesting species, some members of which
    were more attractive than others.
    As human beings went, Carialle considered Keff very
    handsome. In less hurried situations, his boyish curls and
    the twinkle in his deep-set blue eyes had earned him many
    a conquest. Carialle knew intellectually that he was good-looking and desirable, but she was not at all consumed
    with any sensuality toward him, or any other human being.
    She found humans, male and female, rather badly
    designed as opposed to some aliens she had met. If Man
    was the highest achievement of Natures grand design,
    then Nature had a sense ofhuinor.
    Whereas prosthetics had been the way damaged adults
    replaced lost limbs or senses, the new Moto-Prosthetics
    line went further than that by presenting the handicapped
    with such refined functions that no "physical" handicap
    remained. For the shellperson, it meant they could
    "inhabit" functional alter-bodies and experience the full
    range of human experiences firsthand. That knocked a lot
    of notions of limitations or restrictions into an archaic
    cocked hat. Since Keff had first heard about
    Moto-Prosthetic bodies for brains,