by L. A. Graf
Chekov wished he'd thought to record this conversation before it started, if only to prove to Uhura that not all paranoia was unfounded. "We'll see who's at a disadvantage."
"Yes. I'm sure we will." Alion backed out the door with hands held out to either side, as though proving he carried no weapons against them. Chekov had a feeling Alion's greatest weapon would be all the things about him that Chekov had no hope of discovering until far, far too late.
"You know," Howard remarked conversationally from the rear of the tent, "I don't think I like that guy."
Chekov resealed the door flap, shivering a little despite the resurgence of inside warmth. "If you can convince Lieutenant Commander Uhura to feel the same way, Mr. Howard, I'll put you in for a promotion."
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Chapter Seven
MCCOY STARTED to run his fingers through his hair, then thought better of it. The gesture reminded him too much of Muhanti's fixation on phrenology. He settled for pressing the palms of his hands tightly over his eyes. The insides of the lids felt like coarse-grain sandpaper against the tired irises, and he wondered if they were as red as they felt.
He'd spent the last couple of hours since the kraken fight alone in Muhanti's lab, cleaning. The accumulated waste and clutter made quite an impressive heap, which he jettisoned into the disposal unit, all the time wishing irritably that he could do the same with the Soroya's doctor. No self-respecting scientist would ever let his or her work station deteriorate to such a degree. That Muhanti had allowed just that to occur was only further evidence in McCoy's mind of the Indian doctor's instability.
At least now the place was clean enough to begin to do some work without something heinous contaminating the results, McCoy reflected. He'd left Muhanti's noxious experiments alone, and only hoped he could ignore the fumes and tune out the happy bubbling long enough to build up some concentration.
His mind replayed the last few hours since Spock's soul-numbing call. He and Kirk had met with Mandeville in her quarters. "Captain," she said somberly, closing the door behind them. "I'm sorry about your people."
"Thank you." Kirk managed to sound gracious despite his own turmoil. "This is asking a lotbut there may be injured survivors. I'm requesting that the Soroya detour from her present heading to the crash site and cut through the ice in an attempt to pick up the survivors."
Mandeville shook her head, braids lashing like cats' tails. "That's impossible."
McCoy stepped nearer, convinced Kirk would not be able to stop from shaking the woman. He was relieved to see Kirk's hands merely curl into fists at his sides. "This is an emergency, Captain Mandeville." Kirk's tone was under tight control. "You may not care about your rescue team, but I care about mine. If they're alive and injured, they won't last a day unprotected on the ice."
"If they're injured and on the ice without protection, they won't last an hour." She wasn't being flippant. Her expression was gravely serious. "I appreciate your concern, but there's nothing I can do." She held up a hand to forestall any argument. "Not because I won't, but because I can't. Or, rather, the Soroya can't. The ice sheet in the north is almost five hundred meters thick. There's not a ship in the fleet that can bust through that without damaging itself and probably killing everyone up on the ice or in the ship to boot."
"So where does that leave us?" McCoy asked after a long, painfully silent pause.
"It leaves us," Kirk said decisively, "with doing what we can from this end. We'll have to rely on Nordstral ground personnel and Mr. Scott to take care of the shuttle crew." It was a wish and a prayer rather than a confidence. McCoy saw that at once. But it wasn't the first time he'd seen Jim Kirk want something to be so badly that he brought it into existence by sheer force of will. James Kirk carried his own brand of magic with him, and Leonard McCoy had learned a long time ago to place a great deal of faith in it. Things just had a way of turning out, if Kirk wanted them to badly enough.
"What can I do to help?" Mandeville asked.
Kirk glanced at McCoy. "Bones?"
"Well, I'd like your permission to use the lab. I want to take some samples from the air filtering system, waste disposal, that sort of thing, to see if I can get a handle on what might be causing the aberrant behavior we were sent here to track down."
Mandeville nodded sharply, hands sliding into her back pockets. "That's fine. I can assign one of the crew to help you."
"If you don't mind, Captain Mandeville, I'd like it to be Nuie or no one at all. It's not that I question their integrity," McCoy hurriedly added. "It's just that I want to keep the variables as small as possible. And I've already decided Nuie can be trusted."
She answered his smile with one of her own. "All right. What else?"
"That'll do for starters," Kirk said. "Let me start discounting things before I put too much on my plate." He quirked a not-quite-happy grin. "Maybe I'll get lucky on my first shot."
"I'll start praying to the kraken if you do," she vowed. She held the door open for them to pass into the corridor ahead of her. "And, listen, Dr. McCoy. About the aberrant behavior? Just remember that harvester workers will do almost anything to break the monotony. That's just to give you some kind of rule to judge them by." She peered more closely at him, and he felt like a bug under a glass. "Have you seen something?"
He reluctantly nodded, his eyes flicking to Kirk's first for approval. "I suspect another of your crew might be falling victim to whatever this sickness is."
"Who?" Mandeville asked anxiously.
"I'd rather not say."
"Dr. McCoy, if my people are in danger because of an illness one of them has contracted, I need to know."
"I appreciate that, Captain Mandeville. And as soon as I know for certain that this person is ill and not just eccentric, you can be assured I'll come to you immediately. I have no desire to put you, your crewmen, or your ship at risk."
She studied him for a moment, obviously not entirely happy, then nodded. "All right." She pulled the door shut behind her. "You know your way to the lab, Doctor? Good. Nuie's on the bridge. I'll send him down to help you. Captain Kirk, you can come with me." Her teeth flashed whitely against her dark skin. "You can be first mate in Nuie's place."
A smile graced the Enterprise captain's lips. "I'd be honored."
They went their separate ways. The first mate arrived in the lab and listened seriously to what it was McCoy wanted. He then patiently led the doctor from one end of the ship to the other, holding supplies as bidden, shining probing lights into dark corners and along damp filters and conduits. Snippets of remembered conversation played across the back of McCoy's mind as he wiped the counter a final time, methodically hunting out the last bits of dirt and sticky residue. He felt almost as though he could traverse the submarine blindfolded. Certainly, he could ace a test on how often the filters were cleaned and the waste disposal units cleared. He'd hunted out every speck of mold he could find, uncertain what he thought he'd discover, and afraid he wouldn't know it when he saw it.
He bowed his head, mentally preparing himself for the work at hand, forcing sleepiness to bay. He'd contemplated a nap, but the noises of the ship through the water, the disquieting creaks and snaps of a vessel under enormous pressure, kept him uneasy and awake. He wasn't going to sleep until he got back aboard the Enterprise.
A deep, distant sound reverberated through the ship's metal hull, and McCoy raised his head, staring at the wall with eyes a little wider than normal. Another kraken? Or something else he didn't want to know anything about? He shifted his shoulders, feeling the tension. "Get a grip on yourself, McCoy," he ordered under his breath. "You're acting like a kid at his first autopsy." He reached for the nearest vial of sample, this one labeled, Center conduit; crews quarters; aft.
"What are you doing here?"
Already more jittery than he probably had a right to be, McCoy jerked and spun about. The disk of the petri dish fumbled against his fingers, slid from his grasp and shattered on the floor. Green
gobbets spewed in a bright sweep.
McCoy glared at Muhanti, unsure which he was most angry aboutbeing frightened or losing the sample. "Don't you ever knock?"
"At the door of my own lab?" Dark spots of color shaded Muhanti's cheeks as he advanced into the room.
McCoy bent to pick up the shattered glass. "You always go around sneaking up on people?"
"Only people I feel have no right being where they are." The Indian doctor stopped, the sole of his boot almost brushing McCoy's busy fingers. "Leave it alone, or I'll crush your hand."
McCoy froze, a long sliver of glass between two fingers. He'd learned the art of reading tone and nuance at Jim Kirk's knee. He didn't have to look into Muhanti's face to know that if he didn't stop immediately, there was every chance Muhanti would carry out his threat. He gently replaced the shard where it had lain, slowly brought his hands close to his knees and stood.
Muhanti's eyes were white-rimmed and angry. "You've made a shambles of my lab."
McCoy goggled. "This lab's never been so clean," he rasped.
If Muhanti heard him, the insult had no impact. "Who gave you permission to use my facility?"
"Captain Mandeville."
"Captain Mandeville," the other doctor mimicked, his voice a sneer. "She would. I suppose it never occurred to her that it was common courtesy to ask if I minded."
"Then let me apologize." McCoy strove to make his voice as sincere as possible. "I take full responsibility. I should have asked your permission before I ever approached her."
"Yes. You should have." Hands on hips, Muhanti pivoted slowly, eyes scanning the room, always between McCoy and the door. When he looked back, he was more furious than he'd been before.
McCoy's mind singsonged madness in a babble of hysterical bird voices, like a flock of sparrows driven into sudden, terrified flight.
"Bad enough my good captain was so rude as to give you access to my laboratory without my consent. But I don't believe she's stupid enough to give you permission to tamper with my experiments."
"I never touched them, Muhanti." McCoy tried hard to keep his voice neutral, gentle. "But those are rudimentary experiments, and we both know it. Child's play. If it's your way of letting Mandeville think you have a handle on things, that's your business. I won't say anything. But we need to work together to"
"I don't need to do anything! I had everything under control! I was this close"his fingers spanned a tiny distance"to breakthrough. I could have saved hundreds of crew the fate of madness, but you had to intervene. The great Federation doctor comes to lead the savages out of darkness." He spat, face angry as a cat's. "You just want the glory for yourself! Well, you aren't going to get it with my help!" He bent, graceful as a stooping crane, snatched a shard of glass from the floor, and lunged for McCoy's throat.
McCoy jumped back from Muhanti's attack and cracked his backbone against the rigid edge of the lab table behind him. The sharp, unexpected blow momentarily numbed him from the waist down, and his knees felt rubbery. His feet skidded on the spray of shattered glass and he collapsed onto one knee, cutting open the pant leg and the skin beneath it. He raised a hand in awkward defense, balance lost, and felt a blast of pain as Muhanti sliced into his palm.
Vision suddenly tunneled, McCoy stared at the hand as though it belonged to someone other than himself. Shock briefly numbed the realization of injury as he watched blood well from the gash like an encroaching tide.
Just as swiftly, pain returned, galvanizing him into action. He lurched sideways under Muhanti's second swing, shoving the Nordstral doctor back and leaving a lurid red cameo of his hand across the company logo on the doctor's chest. McCoy scrabbled across the floor, tiny splinters of glass digging into his hands and knees, gaining his feet as he ran. He clutched at the end of the lab table, reaching blindly for anything with which to defend himself. His undamaged hand curled around the neck of a bottle awaiting cleaning. He spun around and flung it at Muhanti. The Indian skipped aside with an unbelievable agility and came on, the glass shard held low and dangerous, in a hand slicked with its own blood where he'd cut himself and taken no notice.
McCoy's fingers felt wet and sticky where they curled tightly into his palm in an effort to staunch the blood flow. A whisper of thankfulness kissed his mind that his fingers could curl at all, given the suspected depth and angle of the slash. He backed up, eyes on Muhanti's taut features, his free hand flailing for a weapon of any kind, and brushed heat. Fingertips danced in rapid exploration of the hot surface. Muhanti's stupid experiments still bubbled, uninterrupted until now. Unmindful of the damage he might do his good hand, McCoy grabbed one of the vials and launched the contents at Muhanti's face.
The Indian doctor shrieked and ducked aside, covering his eyes with his arms as hot liquid sprayed over him. McCoy dove forward and tackled Muhanti around the waist. They crashed to the floor and McCoy twisted to get astride, kicking savagely at the hand still holding the blood-tainted shard of glass, knowing that if Muhanti got the chance, he'd slit him from neck to gizzard.
Blood-slicked fingers loosened and the shard went flying, striking the floor and spinning like a gory top. It skittered across the floor with an almost musical sound and slid under a bank of cabinets. McCoy was never so glad in his life to see something disappear.
He grunted as Muhanti attempted to knee him sharply in the back, and shifted, grabbing for the other man's hands, twining bloody fingers with those of his assailant and biting back on the pain that lanced up his arm from his lacerated hand. Muhanti rocked from side to side and back and forth, trying to dislodge McCoy, and all the time he was deathly silent, his eyes fixed solidly on McCoy's face as though burning it in effigy onto his pupils.
McCoy struggled in despair. His wounded hand was going numb, the fingers useless. His fingers slipped within the confines of Muhanti's, and the harvester ship's doctor lurched to the side, rolling, pinning McCoy beneath him. He freed his hands from McCoy's with a snap of his wrists and grabbed for the Starfleet officer's throat. His hands were warm and wet around McCoy's neck, his thumbs firm across the windpipe. McCoy bucked frantically, clawing desperately at the other man's hands with fingers that would not obey him. His vision began to blur and darken. There was a rushing and roaring in his ears, as of much water through a confining space, and a responding growl from somewhere outside the ship, echoing distantly through the hull and leading McCoy into oblivion.
A distant, bone-deep rumble crept into Uhura's sleep and woke her. She stirred, pushing back folds of cold-stiffened fur from her face to blink into the frosty darkness. The Chinit alcove was so quiet, she could hear the whispery breaths of sleeping Kitka and the low hum of Tenzing's insulated tent. The security guard hadn't tried to stop Uhura from staying inside the native village for the night, but she'd drawn the line at sleeping in her insulation suit under furs.
Another rumble edged the silence, so deep and far away Uhura could barely hear it. She frowned and sat up in her nest of furs. Originally, she'd thought it might be the approach of an Enterprise shuttle, but the noise was too irregular for an impulse drive. It sounded as if it came from somewhere deep in the ice sheet. Uhura put her gloved hand on the floor to feel for vibrations, then gasped as another hand closed hard over hers. She looked up to see ghost-pale eyes staring at her from the darkness.
"Ice hurts." Ghyl knelt beside her, almost invisible in her ancient dark furs. The elderly Kitka spoke in a quiet, falling hiss. "The ice hurts. You hear, Kraken Eyes?"
"Yes." Uhura spoke softly, knowing the translator would match its tones to hers. She could feel the thin tendons in Ghyl's hand shake when the native released her grip. "Does it do this every night?"
"No. Only when god is angry." Ghyl lifted her hands and played with the blackened bone mask she wore around her neck. Beneath it, her face looked more lined than it had the day before, as if worry had aged her. "Great-granddaughter says you talk to god, Kraken Eyes. Tell me then, why ice hurts?"
"Um " Uhura frowned, hunti
ng for an explanation the Kitka could understand. "The god I talk to lives above the aurora. He doesn't know things like that."
"I know." The sudden bitter note in Ghyl's wail caught at Uhura's breath. "Only gods lived in deep water, before humans came down from auroras. Now Kitka live there, too, and hunt things gods don't want them to have."
"The plankton," Uhura said. She wasn't sure how the translator made that come out, but Ghyl grunted something that sounded like agreement.
The native fingered her mask, face crumpled in deep thought. "Gods give Kitka everythinglight to see, furs to keep warm, weapons to hunt. Ask us only to go meet them, and apologize to hunted things before we catch." Ghyl looked up at Uhura, her bone-colored eyes sharp with suspicion. "Do men in deep water apologize to small swimming things before they catch, Kraken Eyes?"
"I don't know." Uhura put out her hand to touch Ghyl's shoulder reassuringly. "But there are Kitka who work under the water, too. Surely they'll remember to apologize before they catch the plankton."
"Some, maybe." Ghyl's voice wailed very softly, in what might have been despair. "Others maybe not know. Many Kitka, like Alion, come from villages in far south, where now no one goes to meet with gods. How can they know the proper things, growing up so?"
"Oh." Uhura pulled her hand back inside her furs, feeling helpless. The elderly Kitka sat huddled for another moment, lips working although no sound emerged. Around them the other natives slept, undisturbed by the quiet conversation, although a rustle of motion stirred inside Tenzing's tent. A third faint rumble gnawed at the silence, then died away again.
"Time to go." The sudden strength in Ghyl's rising voice startled Uhura and woke the other Kitka into sleepy murmurs of inquiry. The elderly woman ignored them, sliding her bone mask back over her face with hands that no longer shook. She stood and lit one of the oil-pot lamps with a quick strike of flint, then began to gather things from the carved bone chests lining the walls. Uhura heard the odd little keen she made under her breath, but the translator provided no English equivalent.
