“Take them away.”
“Orsova.”
“You brought me back already? Why? I stopped the Federation people. Their ship ran away.”
“Their ship did not leave the solar system. I have been monitoring. They’re hiding somewhere. I have discovered why they came here.”
At these words from the Voice, Orsova paused and frowned. He had been sure the Federation ship had run away. He had the Federation’s Vulcan ambassador and Eric Stiles where no one would find them, and the Federation ship had run off. But this person, this ghost who spoke to him in unexplained terms, with impossible knowledge, said otherwise.
“I have changed my plans. I must have these people alive. The doctors, and Zevon.”
“And Stiles?”
“Do what you wish with him.”
“Why do you want doctors? Why don’t you just kill them? We’ve killed plenty of others—”
“The have found a way to do the impossible, cure the incurable. I must know how. You must capture them and bring them to me.”
Trying to make sense of a puzzle when he had only half the pieces, Orsova paced the small chamber of the humming craft as the planet of his birth rotated outside one of the little holes.
“I have something here,” the Voice began again, “that will make the Pojjana supreme in Red Sector. Even the Bal Quonott will shrink before you.”
Suspicious of such a brash statement, Orsova narrowed his eyes. “What will make spaceships bow before our planes?”
“You will have more than planes if you do as I tell you. Look in the space chest.”
Space chest…this brass case? It had a lock, but the lid opened for him anyway. He looked inside. There was only one thing in there.
“A bottle?”
“A medical vial.”
“Poison?”
“Something similar.”
Orsova straightened sharply. “Is this biological war? You want me to put a plague on my own people? I won’t!”
“No.”
“I have no one else to poison.”
“You have Zevon.”
At this, Orsova paused and grimaced. “Why should I poison Zevon? Who are you to want it?”
“You’ll never know me. All these years, and I am still a stranger. You were a jail guard. You became assistant warden, but you would never have grown beyond that but for the day I spoke to you and told you to believe that Zevon could predict the Constrictor. Now, Zevon’s usefulness is coming to an end here. Give this to Zevon before he is enticed away, and the galaxy moves forward by a leap.”
“Away?” Orsova reacted. “Why should he go away? He hates his own people. We’re his people now! He says it every day.”
“He is royal family. They need him. He may go.”
“He’ll never leave. No one could get him to leave now.”
“The Federation and the Romulans both have reasons to make him want to go. If he leaves, you lose your power and I lose my chance to have what I want. The vial will end the Romulan threat and make the Pojjana strongest, because it will stop Zevon from leaving.”
“Because he’ll be dead? What…what do…if I kill Zevon for you, what comes to me?”
“This will force the collapse of the Romulan Empire. When it falls, you will get Romulan ships.”
“Warwings? You’ll give me those?”
“And birds-of-prey, and at least one full-sized converted heavy cruiser…for the sector governor, so he will become accustomed to flying in space.”
“Sector governor…”
He discovered a series of small cracks—or were they openings? seams?—in the panels….
“You will get a Romulan fleet, enough ships to control the Bal Quonott and make the Pojjana the power in this sector. Rather than cowering before the Federation, the Romulans, or any other aliens, you will be the winner.”
“Winner…”
“Stop…trying…to see me!”
The cabin vibrated with the voice’s sudden rage. Whoever this ghostly person was, he would not be discovered.
Orsova felt his curiosity wane and let it go. Some things, he didn’t have to know. “Zevon’s alien,” he protested. “How do you know this will kill him? Are you an alien too? Are you a human?”
“No.”
“Are you Romulan, Voice? Is that who you are all these years?”
“No.”
“Are you—”
“Zevon will be contaminated. Then the Federation won’t have any reason to stay in Red Sector, and Zevon will have no reason to leave. Either way, I will honor my agreement with you.”
Standing in the middle of the cabin, Orsova gazed at the reflection of himself. An older man, no longer as fat as the prison guard had been, a glowing copper complexion on his cheekbones and streaks of dignified gold in his black hair. This was the leader of a planet, perhaps the leader of a whole sector of space? Dominion over the Bal Quonott, who had lorded their spacefaring capability over the Pojjana since before he was born?
Liking what he saw, he squared his shoulders and imagined a fur cape. The voice remained silent until he decided to ask a question.
“Every time you speak,” he attempted, plumbing for more information,
“I still have no reason to believe what you say.”
“Believe because you can be in charge of this whole sector instead of just one weak and troubled planet, and I will be in charge of you. You will have more power, more comfort, more stability than ever you dreamed on the day you were happy to become a jail guard, the day you were astonished to be made warden, or the day you realized Zevon was right about predicting the Constrictor and that he would be silent for you. This is easy for me because you have already seized power here. With Zevon dead or ill, you will be my wealthy, powerful little puppet. Number two is still very high. Do this, and you will be sector governor when the Romulan Empire falls. Don’t, and I will kill you now and find someone else. I don’t care. Is this difficult?”
“No.”
“Take the vial. You no longer need Zevon. Killing him is better. I will be happier. If you cannot kill him, infect him.”
The small undecorated bottle was slightly warm, as if it had been kept heated. He noted the temperature and planned to keep it insulated. If he was going to do this thing, he would do it right.
“Needle?”
“It must go in the body. Skin contact is not enough. Only Zevon’s DNA will absorb the virus. Get it into him any way you can. Report to me on this frequency when you have succeeded. The Romulan family dies, you become sector governor and get more than your dreams. You’re a small and greedy man, Orsova. But take no insult…I need small and greedy men.”
Orsova tucked the vial deep into his jacket, against the warm skin of his chest, and looked up to the faceless persona that promised him glory.
“Small and greedy governors,” he corrected.
“Something weird’s going on. Why wouldn’t they want help? The Constrictor still comes—that’s obvious from the architecture. And that pig’s no provost or magistrate. I don’t know how he got that kind of power, but he’s nothing but a glorified jail guard. You saw how he acted! Nobody runs a planet honesty and forthrightly and then turns down help.”
“He did seem somewhat cross-purposed.”
“He’s got some kind of racket going on here. How else in hell could a brutal superficial lout like Orsova end up in control of a whole planet?”
“How could a corporal become Führer?”
Stiles felt his face pinch. “Who?…oh. How’s your leg? It’s still bleeding?”
“Yes, it seems to be.” The ambassador turned his leg for a better look at the wound. “You were right. I should have left the projectile embedded.”
“Let me wrap it up.”
Forcing himself to put Orsova aside in his mind, at least long enough to open the first-aid kit they’d been given, Stiles knelt beside the cot where Spock was sitting. The smell in here was so familiar—that combination of dust and m
oisture that never quite goes away….
Spock pressed his hands back on the cot, tightened up visibly, and endured the stinging pain as Stiles cut the trouserleg away from the wound. The puncture had clotted some, though blood and tissue still leaked from it. Stiles tried to remember how big the projectile had been. Details failed him. All he could do was apply antiseptic, then pressure, both of which caused Spock to stiffen noticeably. Typically Vulcan, Spock was suppressing both the pain and any appearance of it. Stiles wondered if he could do that well if somebody put an arrow through part of him.
“At least they gave us a medical kit,” he muttered as he gauzed the leg.
“They may have an ulterior motive,” Spock suggested.
“You mean they want us to escape?”
“Possibly. What do you think?”
Confronted with having to cough up an answer, Stiles felt as if he were back in grade school and hadn’t done his reading assignment.
“If anything made sense, I’d have something to think. Orsova as a planetary leader, no sign of Zevon…all sorts of technology and architecture that wasn’t here ten years ago…that composite beam reaching out of the atmosphere and grabbing a ship as big and powerful as a CST—even Starfleet can’t mix those properties that way. How could the Pojjana do that in just ten years?”
“From what you tell me,” Spock contemplated, “Zevon knew what every civilization needs to make its quantum leap. Energy. Yet, to build and use high energy, he would need to influence the use of resources and manpower on the planet. If somehow he obtained influence, gained trust…yet how does an alien, particularly a Romulan, come to gain trust in a culture as xenophobic as this?”
“He couldn’t. Something else must’ve happened. Orsova would never let us get past him to talk to anybody else…he kept everything to…”
Everything he’d seen, the inconsistencies and irritating facts, stewed under his skin. He thought of those last few hours with Zevon, with Orsova, the last beating that had been auctioned to an alien-hating Pojjana. Bruises nearly rose on his skin as if by habit, summoned by the nearness of those old miseries. Suddenly, as if being tapped on the shoulder, he remembered what he had said to Orsova during that last beating.
“That’s it! Orsova as planetary leader makes no sense at all unless it finally sank through that iron skull that Zevon really could predict the Constrictor! I told him myself! I tried to convince him! If after I left he decided to check it out and Zevon convinced him, Orsova could’ve taken that message to the government, succeeded in warning the planet, saved a bunch of people and parlayed that into power—” Grasping his head to keep it from blowing off, Stiles raved, “That’s got to be it! Orsova’s getting credit for Zevon’s work!”
Spock stretched his leg, thinking. “Why would Zevon agree to such an arrangement?”
“Oh, he’d agree in a flat minute,” Stiles tossed. The familiarity rushed back. “Zevon didn’t want power. He was never afraid for his own life. He wanted to redeem himself in his own eyes by saving more people than he killed when his team’s experiments started the Constrictor.”
“A composite graviton-traction beam with polarity that high, as well as the phaser-resistant envelope the CST encountered, can only be generated with very delicately balanced quantum charge generation. They plainly have warp energy, but it seems to be planet-bound.”
“I know why,” Stiles said. “Zevon wasn’t interested in space. He’d been there. If he’d had influence and resources, he would’ve turned all the energy he could control to saving the planet from the Constrictor and other outside threats. Looks to me like the Pojjana turned out to be pretty sharp, at least sharp enough to follow instructions, learn physics and engineering…even Zevon couldn’t do this by himself. They still don’t have massive warships or anything, but in spite of that we were in for a real surprise when we got here.”
“If Zevon is the real genius behind the planet’s sudden advancement,” Spock continued, “and I agree that is likely, then Orsova is in constant danger of his secret’s being found out.”
Stiles looked up. “He sure wouldn’t want you and me blabbing it around, would he?”
“No. Nor would he want Zevon taken away. No deal or favor from the Federation could be as beneficial to him as having Zevon here, with a pact to remain behind the scenes.”
Coming to his feet, Stiles paced a few steps. “If all this is right, then if Zevon leaves or dies, the jig is up. Orsova couldn’t keep up the illusion of being brilliant all by himself.”
“Sounds like a threatening symbiotic relationship,” the ambassador surmised. “Zevon has managed to bridge the Pojjana through this period of Constrictors which otherwise would have killed vast numbers of them. Instead, they thrive despite the Constrictor.”
“They thrive. Orsova thrives. Zevon’s here somewhere, alive, working for Orsova. And we’re here, locked in a stone crate.”
His words fell to the floor. With nothing more to do for the ambassador’s leg, Stiles sat on the other cot against the other wall, and descended into captivity as naturally as into a warm tub. Its arms folded around him. They’d been waiting.
The walls around them, stone and mortar, lichen and leakage, uttered their opinion. All the old perceptions came rushing back. Someone was using an autovac on a floor one story up. Water ran through the pipes. Other prisoners, probably, taking showers in the next wing. A flicker of the lights. Circuits needed adjustment.
He stared at the opposite wall.
“Somehow I knew,” he murmured. “I knew I’d end up back here. It’s been like one of those nightmares that won’t quit coming back. Look at me…I can’t breathe right, there’s no blood in my hands…I used to get like this before academy exams. Or before meeting you.”
Across the cell, the ambassador observed him as if he were watching bread dough rise, which annoyed Stiles right to the hairs on the back of his neck. Kicking at a loose stone that had been loose ten years ago too, Stiles vented, “Did it ever happen to you that you didn’t know what to do next?”
Spock did not venture an answer to that. Instead of the ambassador’s voice, Stiles heard a thousand voices from the past speaking to him, echoing against the hard-learned lessons of a young officer, the struggles of living with crewmates, and finally learning to live with himself. He seldom looked in this kind of mirror any more. He’d never liked the reflection when he had.
Today, though, he didn’t look away.
“Funny,” he began aloud, “when we were about to die because something grabbed the ship and we had thirteen minutes to live, I wasn’t afraid. Standing up there looking at Orsova over the top of that big desk…I about crapped my pants.”
“I’m glad you restrained yourself,” Spock commented lightly.
“Ship disasters don’t scare me,” Stiles said, keeping on his track. “Disastrous people scare me.”
It seemed there was something just around the corner, just beyond his grasp, a whisper in the fog.
After a few seconds, Stiles found himself asking, “Did people scare…him?”
The last word, revered somehow all by itself, came out as a pathetic sigh, a comparison that shouldn’t be made if any progress was ever to be accomplished. Instantly Stiles regretted that he’d asked.
Spock’s answer took some time coming. “Helplessness scared him.”
For the first time, Stiles felt a steely connection forged in the cool cell. “Did he ever think of himself the way I think of myself? Like I don’t belong where I am?”
Veiled contentment settled over Mr. Spock as the past opened briefly before him for viewing and he enjoyed what he saw. His voice was low, even soft, yet carried a scolding tone.
“‘He’…was an exceptional man. He was also my friend. As such, we had our disagreements. We saw each other’s uglier moments. The mission logs fail to show those aspects.”
Stiles looked up. “Are you saying the logs are inaccurate?”
“Not at all. We simply left things out.
”
“Like what?”
Spock paused to think a moment. “The logs, the legends, the tall tales, the song and story—these are spirit-charging powers for us all. But legend is selective and usually written by the winners. The legends of the first Enterprise…they reflect the heroic, not the human aspects, of our life together in those years…Jim Kirk, Dr. McCoy, the others, and myself. Legend is a great filter. The traits that shame us most, the ones we leave out of the stories, are often the flaws that give us texture. Without them, we would be only pictures.”
Spock leaned back on an elbow, maneuvered his leg to a better position, and considered the past through scopes in his own mind.
“I have come over these many years to understand what it means to be a captain not so much in rank but in manner. There are captains of rank, captains of ships, and captains of crews. A few men are all three. I once commanded the Enterprise as her captain. I was capable of giving the proper orders and expecting proper behavior, but I was never captain of the crew’s hopes and devotions. That is a different passion. A different manner of man than I.”
At first it seemed Spock might be selling himself short, judging the past too harshly—but no. Stiles knew too well the symptoms of that, and didn’t see them here. This, instead, was a kind of personal honesty, a stunning depth of self-respect.
He wanted it. He wanted to know how to do that. Spock was so graceful at understanding subtle differences that mattered, and didn’t recoil from knowing his talents and limitations.
“Different how?” Stiles asked, somewhat abrasive.
Spock tipped his head in thought. “I see chess,” he said. “You see poker.”
Broiling with envy and impatience, Stiles rubbed his cracked hands on his trousers. He didn’t understand that, exactly, but something about it lit a fire under him.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he announced. “It’s time to go. We’ve got to do something.”
“Then you have decided to act?” Spock asked.
Bitter, humiliated, and angry about it, Stiles held back the answer that bit at his tongue. He looked up, met the ambassador’s keen eyes. If only he could slap back the undercurrents of mockery and deserve better!