Star Trek - Log 7

by Alan Dean Foster

As he broke off and rose from the chair, McCoy stepped between Kirk and the elevator. "You're not going through with this, Jim. There are more sensible ways to get yourself killed!"

  "What makes you think I'm the one who's going to get killed, Bones? I'm afraid I've got to take the risk. Kumara's gambling too. This may be our only chance to rescue Van Delminnen. If we finish engine and weapons repairs first, you know they're going to kill him rather than risk the Federation's obtaining the device. But if we conclude our repairs first and have both Delminnens safely on board . . . no, I can't pass up that chance."

  McCoy looked desperately over at the science station. "Spock, you reason with him!"

  Spock left his position and confronted Kirk, who looked back at him in surprise. "I fear the doctor is correct, Captain. I must object. As it stands now, this scheme is inadvisable, highly dangerous, and illogical."

  "There, you see?" McCoy looked satisfied.

  "What's the matter, Spock?" a puzzled Kirk wondered. "A moment ago you declared the contest could be to our advantage. What's made you change your mind?"

  "He's seen reason, that's all, Jim."

  Spock's brows arched as he glanced at McCoy. "I always see reason, Doctor." Spock turned to face Kirk. "It is your present choice of personnel, Captain, which prompts my objection."

  Kirk frowned. The frown turned into a grin, and he walked back to the command chair and activated the intercom. "Sciences? Inform Lieutenant Celli his services will not be required on this expedition. The second set of native clothing should conform to the uniform specifications of First Officer Spock." He cut off and smiled back over his shoulder.

  "Mr. Spock?"

  Not a sign of a smile cracked that stolid visage, not a hint of a chuckle modulated the reply, but Kirk sensed both nonetheless.

  "I withdraw my objection, Captain. Subsequent modifications now indicate that participation in the contest is logical."

  "Spock!"

  The first officer turned a reproving gaze on McCoy. "As the captain is determined to go, Doctor, it is only sensible that the best-qualified support accompany him. I am the best-qualified support. Therefore, I am going too. Really, you complicate things unnecessarily."

  Spock brushed by a dazed McCoy, following Kirk into the elevator.

  Alien Sociology was in constant communication with the engineers in Nonmetallic Fabrication, with the result that Kirk had hardly entered his cabin when, a specialist, laden with an armload of clothing, buzzed for admittance.

  Kirk accepted the bundle, dismissed the man, and set about examining all the camouflage he would have on the strange world below. Sciences had assured him that, with a few minor changes, he, Spock, and Char Delminnen would be indistinguishable from the "Gypsies" they would soon move among.

  The clothes were unremarkable, that being remarkable in itself. To look closely at them one would have guessed that they had been produced on a primitive hand loom instead of in the bowels of a matrix synthesizer. Kirk tried on the boots, the simple long pants and loose upper garment, the fur vest, and he finished by closely inspecting the carefully "aged" necklace with its concealed universal translator. The matching earpiece would appear to an uncertain observer as nothing more than a minor deformity—nothing sufficient to arouse anyone's interest.

  Local currency was concealed in a sort of pouch-belt and consisted of a collection of small, heavy metal squares. Fortunately, the native coins were dull and poorly stamped. There were limits even to the Enterprise's ultra-high-powered sensors.

  Another buzz sounded insistently at the door.

  "Come," Kirk said, for the door's benefit as much as that of his visitor. Responding to his verbal command, the single wedge slid aside.

  Kirk examined himself in his mirror and turned to greet McCoy. "Well, Bones, do I look like a native?"

  "You look like a fool," McCoy shot back tautly, "which I suppose is appropriate, since you're going on a fool's errand."

  Kirk didn't reply, but waited for the doctor to finish.

  "You don't mean to go through with this, Jim. This isn't a game being played with plastic pieces on some rec-room board. Kumara wants only two things out of this—Char Delminnen alive and you dead." He looked across at his friend, expression and voice straining for comprehension. "How can you possibly trust that—that—his very concepts of right and wrong are alien to ours!"

  "Bones," Kirk began softly, "I knew Kumara when both of us were green, unspaced cadets. I know that was a long time ago, but from what I've seen these past days, he hasn't changed, and I don't think I have. He might steal you blind at the first opportunity, stab you in the back if he thought he could get away with it, lie, cheat—anything for an advantage."

  McCoy was nodding knowingly. "Sounds like a Klingon gentleman all right."

  "But he won't go back on that oath. He'll abide because he set the guidelines, Bones, not me. Yes, he'd do all those other things, given the chance, but he won't go back on that oath. And you're right—that is alien to us." Carefully he smoothed the pouch-belt around his waist, so that no tempting bulges would show.

  "Besides, there's no way he could go back on his word after we've exchanged nadas."

  McCoy momentarily forgot his anger in puzzlement. "Exchange nadas? Didn't that have something to do with the hostage exchange you two were talking about?"

  "That's right," confirmed the captain. "Another alien tradition, and another of the very few agreements binding on a Klingon. I hope you'll be comfortable during your visit to the Klathas, Bones."

  It took much less than a minute for McCoy to digest the import of that statement. "Me? I'm going to the Klathas? But why me, Jim?"

  "Because you're our resident servant and high priest of Nada, the Klingon god-patron of medicine. There have been reports of Klingons entering a hospital on board ship or on-planet and massacring the patients . . . but they have never touched a physician. It's part of their warrior-tainted cultural pattern. Your status on the Klathas will be that of a saint, Bones."

  "Saint to a bunch of Klingons—I can't think of a less welcome honor."

  "You'd better be grateful for it. It guarantees your immunity . . . and for that reason you're the only one I can trust the Klingons not to massacre if the contest goes against them. Naturally, while you're on board the Klathas, your Klingon counterpart will be here on the Enterprise."

  "But it's all unnecessary, Jim," McCoy objected one last time. "Kumara's set the whole thing up. He's called the rules, the place, everything. And another thing . . . How can you risk something as potentially dangerous as the Delminnen device on a two-man expedition?"

  Kirk sighed. "I told you, Bones, it's our best chance for rescuing Van Delminnen." He started for the door.

  McCoy put a restraining hand on his shoulder, still angry and still unconvinced. When he spoke again, his tone was low and almost accusing.

  "Blast it, Jim, are you sure you're going through with this because you believe that—or because you're as vain about your ability to outmaneuver Kumara on a strange world as he thinks you are?"

  Kirk glared at the doctor, and for a long moment what passed between them was as eloquent as it was unspoken. Finally: "You think Kumara's appealing to my vanity, then?"

  "Is he, Jim?"

  "I . . . I don't know. Maybe he is, Bones. Maybe he has already outmaneuvered me before the game's even started. But I do know this . . ." His voice rose.

  "Besides keeping the weapon from the Klingons, there's also Char Delminnen to think of. It's our duty to save her brother, because he's a Federation citizen, because he's a human being. If I pass up a chance to do that to protect my own neck, Bones, then my commission's worthless.

  "In addition, I'm going crazy waiting around while our engineering section races theirs to see who can fix their engines first. Don't you think Kumara's nervous? He's so nervous, he's the one who's proposed something to resolve part of our problem, given us the chance to do something besides sit around and wait for our fingernails to dissolv
e in our mouths.

  "By all that's worth salvaging in this bizarre galaxy, Bones, I'm going to make the most of that opportunity."

  Neither man moved until McCoy seemed to slump in on himself a little. He looked away. "All right. If I can't talk you out of it, at least I can accompany you to the transporter room."

  "Sure you don't want to take anything with you, Bones," Kirk wondered, "to make your visit on the Klathas more bearable?"

  "The only thing that could do that would be a Class Four phaser," the doctor grunted, "suitable for performing large-scale surgery on massed Klingon bodies. Let's go . . ."

  X

  "Captain's log, supplemental," Kirk recited, addressing the wall intercom in the Transporter Room. It was keyed by verbal command to the ship's log.

  "Char Delminnen, Mr. Spock, and myself are preparing to beam down to the wandering world we have named Gypsy to commence a contest with our Klingon counterparts. We hope this contest will favorably resolve the stalemate in which we presently find ourselves with regard to her brother and the Imperial cruiser Klathas.

  "In consequence of this, an exchange of ships' chief physicians has been effected, thus forcing a solemn bind upon the Klingons not to deviate from the rules set down for the competition . . . with appropriate sensors and scanners also monitoring the terms of the contest.

  "Doctor McCoy is now aboard the Klathas, and his Klingon doppelganger, Surgeon-in-Battle Kattrun dek Prenn, has arrived aboard the Enterprise." He paused for a second, finally adding, "I only hope that my evaluation of the incipient action turns out to be more accurate than Dr. McCoy's."

  The entry ended, Kirk turned and walked past the transporter console to join a waiting Spock and Char Delminnen in the activated alcove. Briefly he noted the disposition of their native garb, the quality and detail of their facial makeup, and found everything satisfactory, if not visually pleasing.

  "Ready, Mr. Spock?"

  "Quite ready, Captain." He rubbed at the thick cap pulled low on his head. "Though this wig and attendant headgear are more than a little irritating."

  "You'll get used to them, Spock. They're necessary—our Gypsies don't have acute hearing organs."

  "An unfortunate evolutionary defect," the first officer commented drily.

  Kirk smiled, then turned a more solemn, appraising gaze on the stiff figure at his right. "And you, Ms. Delminnen, are you sure you want to go through with this? Our success hinges on you, you know. I can't order you to participate."

  Her reply was impatient. "I've already consented to it, Captain, as has my brother. The sooner we stop brooding about possible consequences and get on with it, the sooner Van and I will be reunited. Isn't that right?"

  "That is very right." Convinced that the slight, hyper-tense woman would be an asset rather than a burden, Kirk turned to face back into the room. After a quick check of the chronometer disguised as a ring, he said pleasantly, "Energize when ready, Mr. Scott."

  "Aye, Captain."

  The chief engineer adjusted the necessary instrumentation, and in a moment the ship's population decreased by three. At the same time, two beings of differing temperament and physical makeup lay in unfamiliar surroundings and began counting the minutes. There were a great many to pass until the end of three days, and none could say whether Dr. Leonard McCoy or SIB Kattrun dek Prenn counted harder . . .

  A good deal of planning and examination of long-range sensor reports had gone into determining exactly where the party from the Enterprise should set down. Ideally, the place should offer temporary concealment without being too isolated, and without immediately exposing the strangers to the new world—or the new world to the strangers—before either had a chance to be acclimated.

  So the three ministers in mufti materialized in the middle of a deserted alleyway. Faint people noises could be heard nearby, just loud enough for all three to properly adjust their necklace translators.

  Even more than the damp alleyway with its claustrophobic high stone walls, even more than the always mind-tingling sound of a new tongue, Kirk was drawn to the sky overhead. The light was dimmer than was usual on Earth, but more spectacular than the meteorologists had predicted.

  No one color dominated a sky that was aflame with auroral blaze: Reds, greens, blues and golds and violent purple shifted and writhed in an atmosphere of perpetual excitation. Whenever a particularly brilliant display occurred, they would acquire a new phenomenon—a shadow. And the shadows changed constantly, according to the varying intensity of the sky. To look at one's own shadow was to be subject to a stroboscopic display of peculiarly personal dimensions.

  A final check insured that no one had observed their unorthodox method of arrival. "Everyone all right?" Kirk whispered. His words sounded strange and tickled his brain, voiced as they were through the translator in the local tongue and then retranslated back through the tiny device implanted in his left ear.

  "Quite, Captain . . ." "Yes, Captain . . ." came the replies.

  "Okay, our first step is to obtain some local weapons. I don't expect Kumara to waste any time in local sight-seeing, so we'd better not either." He turned to face the open end of the alley. "If Scotty dropped us where the cartographers indicated he should, we ought to be next to a fair-sized marketplace."

  The group moved cautiously down the alleyway and out into a strange new world of noise and movement and color. The alley fronted on an extensive bazaar. One old woman saw them emerge from the alley. If she found it extraordinary, she chose not to publicize the discovery. Kirk already suspected from the sociologists' preliminary reports that this was a world where one minded one's own business.

  They began to stroll down the long lanes between stalls. The bazaar was a weird combination of old Earth Arabian and medieval Edoan.

  One thing that was never in doubt from the moment they appeared was the efficacy of their disguises. They were immediately besieged by hawkers and vendors offering wares and goods and services as colorful as they were enigmatic. There were many offered which even Spock could make no sense of, and others which seemed to conflict with laws natural and otherwise.

  Their objectives now were too practical to be disguised by alien rhetoric, however. Kirk adopted what he hoped was just the right degree of imperious indifference, ignoring bargains and luxuries alike.

  "Something about this all strikes me as very strange, Captain," Spock commented, his gaze moving from one stall to the next.

  "That's hardly surprising, Mr. Spock," replied Kirk, fending off a proffered armload of aromatic meat. "This whole world is very strange, from its very existence on down."

  "Captain Kirk." He turned his attention to the booth Char Delminnen was pointing at.

  It was a tightly sealed, smallish shop, its narrow tables replete with lethal-looking medieval-style weaponry, some faintly familiar, some less so. None was beyond utilization by the new arrivals. There are only so many ways to change the appearance of metal designed to penetrate another person without impairing its efficiency.

  Hands clasped over a well-cultivated paunch, the proprietor stood staring pensively at the entrance to his stall.

  Kirk said, "Excuse me, we need to buy some weapons." The translator, bearing in mind Kirk's assumed social station on this world, translated it as:

  "Bestir thyself, o lazy one! We would purchase arms from your pitiful stock."

  The stall owner started and nearly fell over his own legs in his haste to get to his feet. His eyes glittered nearly as much as the false jewels in Kirk's necklace.

  "Ten thousand genuflections, noble sir! The gods' blessings on you and your offspring, may they be many. You desire weapons? Rest content you have come to the finest armory in the city. My most magnificent steels and swords, knives and daggers, are unmatched—and available especially to you, my lords and lady, at prices so modest as to make one blush the color of her cheeks. Were you to search a thousand years through a hundred—"

  "Enough, grandfather of loquacity! You have convinced us,"
Kirk declared, the translator once again having embellished his simple reply. He made a pretense of inspecting the stock. "We shall require two swords of your best metal and temper—sabers, not rapiers. And two dirks, short and tough enough to penetrate leather without turning." He hesitated. "And your most delicately honed stiletto for the lady."

  Char Delminnen eyed him with satisfaction.

  The owner was bowing and abasing himself to the point of embarrassing both Kirk and Spock, though it was more to conceal the mercenary gleam in his eyes than to honor his customers.

  "At once, noble lords! You shall have the finest only. I do not keep the very best here exposed to the sky, and to thieves. Pray grant me a moment." Still bowing obsequiously, he backed into the depths of the stall.

  Spock's attention had remained focused on the constantly moving, surrounding crowd. The first officer had been quite content to leave the purchasing to Kirk, who now turned to him, whispering.

  "Any sign of Kumara or anyone who might be his accompanying officer?"

  Spock shook his head. "If they are in our immediate vicinity, Captain, they are too well disguised for me to discover. I think we are still reasonably safe. Even at a fast run, it is still a fair distance to the other side of this town."

  They separated as the owner, puffing heavily, appeared with the five weapons.

  "As you requested, lords," he beamed, setting them out carefully on red velvet. "The apex of my humble craft. Notice the color in the metal, the superb honing!" He rambled on as Kirk and Spock hefted the swords, removing them from their matching scabbards. They made a few practice passes at each other with them, keeping the movements simple. Modern fencing might very well be an eye-catching anomaly here, and one thing they didn't desire was suspicious attention from the locals.

  "I suppose they'll do," Kirk agreed, the words coming out in a bored and slightly petulant tone. He slid his saber into the scabbard, which attached easily to his pouch-belt. The thick, triangular dirks went through a belt loop on the opposite side from the sword. Char Delminnen found a secretive place for the narrow stiletto.