The Ship Who Won Read Online Free Page B

if they're music.
    They're nothing."
    'That isn't true, and you know it. You're a brain's artist."
    With little reluctance, Carialle let Simeon tap into her
    video systems and directed him to the comer of the main
    cabin where her painting gear was stowed.
    Mine Wic^dJJreij u juuy i-it/ini ivyv
    To any planetbound home-owner the cabin looked spot-less, but to another spacer, it was a magpies nest. Keffs
    exercise equipment occupied much of one end of the
    cabin. At the other, Carialles specially adapted rack of
    painting equipment took up a largish section of floor space,
    not to mention wall space where her finished work hung-the ones she didn't give away or throw away. Those few
    permitted to see Cans paintings were apt to call them
    "masterpieces," but she disclaimed that.
    Not having a softshell body with hands to manage the
    mechanics of the art, she had had customized gear built to
    achieve the desired effect. The canvases she used were very
    thin, porous blocks of cells that she could flood individually
    with paint, like pixels on a computer screen, until it oozed
    together. The results almost resembled brush strokes. With
    the advance of technological subtleties, partly thanks to
    Moto-Prosthetics, Carialle had designed arms that could
    hold actual fiber brushes and airbrushes, to apply paints to
    the surface of the canvases over the base work.
    What had started as therapy after her narrow escape
    from death had become a successful and rewarding hobby.
    An occasional sale of a picture helped to fill the larder or
    the fuel tank when bonuses were scarce, and the odd gift
    of an unlooked-for screen-canvas did much to placate
    occasionally fratchety bureaucrats. The sophisticated servo
    arms pulled one microfiber canvas after another out of the
    enameled, cabinet-mounted rack to show Simeon, who
    appreciated all and made sensible comments about
    several.
    'That ones available," Carialle said, mechanical hands
    turning over a night-black spacescape, a full-color sketch of
    a small nocturnal animal, and a study of a crystalline mineral deposit embedded in a meteor. 'This one I gave Keff.
    This one I'm keeping. This ones not finished. Hmm.
    These two are available. Sos this one."
    iiir, Stilf \VtiU WUTM

23
    Much of what Carialle rendered wouldn't be visible to
    the unenhanced eyes of a softshell artist, but the sensory
    apparatus available to a shellperson gave color and light to
    scenes that would otherwise seem to the naked eye to be
    only black with white pinpoints of stars.
    'That's good." Simeon directed her camera to a spacescape of a battered scout ship traveling against the distant
    cloudlike mist of an ion storm that partially overlaid the
    corona of a star like a veil. The canvas itself wasn't rectan-gular in shape, but had a gentle irregular outline that
    complimented die subject.
    "Um," Carialle said. Her eye, on tight microscopic
    adjustment, picked up flaws in some individual cells of
    paint. They were red instead of carmine, and the shading
    wasn't subtle enough. "It's not finished yet."
    "You mean you're not through fiddling with it. Give
    over, girl. I like it."
    "Its yours, then," Carialle said with an audible sigh of
    resignation. The servo picked it out of the rack and headed
    for the airiock on its small track-treads. Carialle activated a
    camera on the outside other hull to spot a technician in the
    landing bay. "Barldey, would you mind taking something for
    the stationmaster?" she said, putting her voice on speaker.
    "Sure wouldn't, Carialle," the mech-tech said, with a
    brilliant smile at the visible camera. The servo met her
    edge of the dock, and handed the painting to her.
    "You've got talent, gal," Simeon said, still sharing her
    video system as she watched the tech leave the bay. 'Thank
    you. I'll treasure it."
    "It's nothing," Carialle said modestly. "Just a hobby."
    "Fardles. Say, I've got a good idea. Why don't you do a
    gallery showing next time you're in port? We have plenty
    of traders and