Lindy patted Athene and whispered to calm her. Sweat slicked the creature’s shoulders and flanks as she shifted nervously.
Jim leaned on the rail that fenced off the number six repair bay from the access tunnel. He wondered where Stephen had gone, but he decided not to ask.
“Is everything all right?”
“The trouble is,” Lindy said, “that when a horse gets scared, her instinct is to run. Here, she can’t. So she gets more scared.”
“The floor’s covered already,” Jim said. “The noise should stop soon.”
As if he had ordered the noise to cease, as if he had waved [173] his hand in a magic gesture, the thrumming of tractor beams faded and died. Athene snorted and fluttered her wings at the change, but after that she acted calmer.
“Thanks,” Lindy said to Jim.
“It was easy,” he said, and smiled.
“Say, Jim ...” Lindy said hesitantly. “About earlier. Stephen is, um, kind of flamboyant. A lot of performers are. We like to show off. I’m sorry that he scared you.”
“It isn’t a matter of being scared!” Jim said, stung. “But this—” He gestured around at the ship. “It’s a big responsibility.”
He felt as if her gaze could seek out every element in his body, all the way down to his memories and his fears.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.” Athene nuzzled Lindy’s side. She gave the equiraptor a protein pellet.
“Where did that come from?” Jim asked, grateful for the interruption. “I always think your hand is empty—then you pull carrots and sugar out of thin air.”
Lindy raised her hand, showed him the empty palm, reached up, and plucked a whole apple out of nothing.
“That’s exactly what I do,” she said. She fed the apple to Athene. It crunched loudly, solid and real. “I pulled it out of thin air. It’s magic.”
“That’s a good trick,” Jim said. “Can you do any others?”
“Of course I can. I’d be pretty lousy if all I could do was produce an apple.” She glanced at him quizzically. “You know all the other players, but you never asked about me. I’m the magician.”
“Based on the demonstration,” Jim said, “if I can get a ticket to the Starbase 13 performance, I’ll be in the front row.”
“The company would perform for the Enterprise, if anybody asked,” Lindy said.
Jim came to attention. “James T. Kirk, captain of the starship Enterprise, invites Amelinda Lukarian and the Warp-Speed Classic Vaudeville Company to entertain his crew.” He dropped the formal pose. “If you’re sure it wouldn’t be an imposition?”
“We’ve all been waiting for you to ask!” She laughed. [174] “Jim, we’re used to doing two shows a day. We’re used to giving an evening performance, tearing down, traveling all night on the train, and setting up the next day in time for the matinee. This is more time off than we’ve had in years—it was beginning to make everybody nervous.”
“Just let me know what you need.”
She finished rubbing the equiraptor down and patted her on the flank. Athene’s hooves rustled in the straw; she retreated to a corner and her rope net of protein pellets.
Lindy hitched herself up on the rail.
“We’ll need a theater with a backstage ...” Within a few minutes she had outlined the necessities of putting on a vaudeville show.
“It takes a lot of organization, doesn’t it?” Jim said. “You do it well.”
“I’ve done it for a long time.”
“Did you help your father?”
“You could say that ...” She sat side-saddle on the rail. “My daddy was one of the founders. He put himself into it at first—he even campaigned for the manager’s job. But once he got it started, he wasn’t really interested anymore. He was like that. And the company never caught on the way he thought it would. That didn’t help his enthusiasm any. Somebody had to get things done.”
“And that was you.”
She shrugged.
“He campaigned?”
“Uh-huh. The company’s a co-op. I’m a member, not the owner.”
“What happened to your father?”
“Oh ... greener pastures.” She spoke in an offhand tone; she almost pulled off the casual dismissal.
“It must have been hard to take on all the responsibility—”
“No, to tell you the truth, it’s easier now. At least I have the authority to go along with the responsibility. And his leaving wasn’t that big a surprise. Besides, he waited till I was eighteen before he disappeared. It must have been hard on him, all those years, to be so tied down.”
She did a good job of hiding her pain. Or perhaps she honestly did not feel hurt and abandoned by her father. [175] Perhaps Jim let his own feelings color his perception of hers.
“Things didn’t change much,” Lindy said. “And everybody finally got over thinking of me as a kid.”
“He should have said something before he left.”
“Maybe he was afraid to make me choose between him and the company. Maybe he knew what I’d choose.” She leaned against the edge of the repair bay wall and drew up her knees, resting both feet on the rail, oblivious to the precariousness of her position. “I love the company, Jim. I love everybody in it. Performers are different from anyone else in the world. They can do things nobody else can do. When we do the show, we make people happy. And I think—I know!—that if we can keep going long enough to become known, we can make a real success of it.”
“I wouldn’t want to switch places with you,” Jim said. “It’d be awkward to give an order and have the membership convene on the bridge to see if they approved.”
Lindy smiled. “That could happen. But it usually doesn’t. Artists are happy to have somebody else do the organizing. They don’t like to be told what to do, but they do like to feel like somebody’s taking care of them.”
“How did you decide to become a magician?”
“Same way I got to be manager—because of my daddy. Jim, he’s so good! I wish you could see him. He can do illusions you can’t believe.” She laughed. “I mean, people watching them do believe them, but people who know anything about stage magic don’t believe they’re possible. Even after they see them. Half his illusions I’m still not good enough to do.”
“He sounds like an extraordinary person,” Jim said.
“He is. I wish you could meet him—” She stopped and rested her chin on her knees. “I take that back. I’m not sure I do wish you could meet him. I don’t know if the two of you would get along.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He could be, well, difficult.”
“And me?”
She smiled. “You can be difficult, too.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Jim said. “But it comes with the job.”
[176] Athene, bored with protein pellets, returned to Lindy to nose around for carrots. Lindy produced one.
“How did the company get started?” Jim said. “Reviving a three-hundred-year-old form of entertainment isn’t an idea that would occur to just anybody.”
“The funny thing is, there are lots of people who perform in that style. Some of us began as a hobby. Some of the acts have adapted to modern times—Marcellin used to teach mime in the drama department of Monash University in Australia. Then there are magicians’ clubs and tap dancing clubs. And lots of people juggle.”
“So I’ve discovered,” Jim said.
“No one in a long time had thought of getting a bunch of devotees together and starting a company. When Daddy and Marcellin and Newland got the idea—”
“Newland? You mean Mr. Rift of the ‘puppies’?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t have thought he had much ...” Jim hesitated. He had spoken without thinking. “He didn’t strike me as an entrepreneur,” Jim said lamely.
“There’s not a real entrepreneur in the bunch of us,” Lindy said. “Even my daddy. That’s one of our troubles. But Newland ... he’s the steadiest and so
lidest and most sensible member of the company. He’s only silly over his puppies—he admits that himself. He’s awfully easy to misjudge—”
“So I see,” Jim said.
“—but we never would have made it this far without him. He encouraged me to run for manager. He could have had the position if he’d wanted it. He said that between his and Philomela’s kids, and the puppies, he couldn’t spare the time. But I think he didn’t want to oppose me, because he knew he’d win.”
“Philomela,” Jim said. “I met her at dinner the other evening, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Our singer, remember? Newland’s her husband.”
“I know better than to judge other sentient beings on appearance,” Jim said. “Maybe when it comes to my own species, I’ve got some lessons to learn.”
“He is striking, isn’t he? I think he enjoys the impression he makes. And it’s great for publicity.”
[177] “Is he what he looks like?”
“Uh-huh. His family’s Canadian-Japanese. The traditionalists didn’t quite know how to react to a red-haired Sumo wrestler, but after he’d competed for a few years, he won even them over. He doesn’t compete anymore, but he still meditates. He’s a very spiritual person.”
Jim shook his head. “You do have quite a group.”
“It takes a certain kind of wonderful person to choose a profession that nobody around them understands. They’re dedicated—sometimes they’re single-minded. And unique. That’s why I stayed with the company, Jim, even when I realized my daddy was about to leave. I love it, and I love all the people in it. Well, almost all.”
“Almost all?”
She blushed. “I shouldn’t have said that last.”
“Can I guess?” he said, teasing.
“I don’t think you have to,” she said. “I hear you had a discussion of politics with him last night.”
“Just out of morbid curiosity—where did you pick up Mr. Cockspur?”
“Daddy found him.”
“If he’s good, though—you can put up with a lot from somebody who knows what they’re doing.”
“Good!” Lindy laughed. “ ‘Good’ and ‘neo-Shakespearean’ are mutually exclusive terms.”
“What’s a neo-Shakespearean?”
“Somebody who ‘interprets’ Shakespeare for contemporary audiences. Mr. Cockspur does his own translations.”
“Is he that bad?” Jim asked.
“Wait and see,” she said, ominously.
Somehow, two hours passed without Jim’s being aware of them. He found Lindy incredibly easy to talk to, to listen to. He almost told her about Carol Marcus, but changed his mind without being quite sure why. His feelings tangled. He was powerfully attracted to Lindy, he thought she liked him, too, and yet he shied away.
He told her more about Sam and Winona, he told her about his father, he told her about Gary. Suddenly, he found himself telling her about Ghioghe.
“I knew everybody else had got out, but I knew I’d lost my ship. I was angry at myself for getting hurt too bad to [178] walk. I couldn’t see because of the blood in my eyes. I was yelling—I thought I was yelling, but I couldn’t have been, because I could hardly breathe—at the ship, at the miserable mess outside—’Just go ahead and get it over with!’ Then Gary appeared. And he cussed me out for getting hurt too bad to walk. What I remember is that he told me he’d come looking for my help, and I was an ill-mannered jerk to make him do all the work.” Jim tried to smile; he tried to maintain his pose of grizzled veteran telling exciting stories to an innocent. But Ghioghe was still too close, too painful, and he had lost too much. Ghioghe had not been exciting. It had been a terrifying, horrible disaster. And it had been unnecessary.
“Gary dragged me out of the control room,” Jim said softly. “We were the last people on board ... the last people alive. The ship—the Lydia Sutherland, it was a great little cruiser—started to come apart around us. Gary dumped me into the escape pod and piled in after me and blasted us free. He got the bleeding stopped ...” Jim absently touched the scar on his forehead. “I thought he was all right. He had a gash just below his ribs. It didn’t seem like much. But then ...” He took a deep breath, embarrassed to be shaken by memories. He wanted to stop, but he could not. “He’d been hit by a sneak. It’s a terrorist weapon. It looks ... insignificant. It breaks your skin, it burrows down, it finds your heart or your spine or your brain. And it explodes.” He remembered the quiet, sedate little explosion. Gary had looked mildly surprised as he collapsed.
“He was bleeding ... I ripped open his shirt. That was weird. The sneak hurt him so badly, but it didn’t even tear his shirt.” Jim remembered the warmth of Gary’s blood. “Blood flows so strangely in zero g, Lindy. It doesn’t pool up. It doesn’t hide anything. I could see Gary’s heart,” Jim whispered. “Every time it beat, it pumped blood out of a tear in its side. I didn’t know what to do—I just knew it shouldn’t look like that. I ... I held his heart together in my hands.”
“It’s over,” Lindy said. She touched his arm, a quick gesture of comfort. “Jim, it’s all over.”
“I know.” Again he brushed his fingertips across the scar [179] on his forehead. “Bones keeps promising this will disappear.” Again he tried to smile. “Gary was lucky, you know? If the sneak had been doped with radiation, the specialists wouldn’t have been able to induce regeneration. If that had happened ...”
He wished Lindy would touch him again. He liked the way her touch felt. He liked the color of her eyes, and their depth; he liked the way her hair framed her face with iridescent strands, all black, but almost imperceptibly streaked with highlights of the deepest possible purple and gold and green. Then he realized that her eyes were filled with tears that he had put there, tears of horror and disbelief—no, not disbelief, but not-wanting-to-believe.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said. “To you, to your friend ...”
“Lindy—I never should have told you about Ghioghe. I’m sorry. You didn’t need to hear about it—”
“But you needed to tell about it,” she said simply.
At the other end of the corridor, the door slid open and closed again.
“Lindy, hey!” Stephen said.
“Down here.” Lindy’s expression lightened at the sound of Stephen’s voice.
Jim felt disappointed and at the same time relieved. The strength of his attraction to Lindy surprised him, yet he did not think he could stand having the same thing happen again that had happened with Carol. Besides, it seemed to him that Lindy felt relieved at Stephen’s approach.
I shouldn’t have told her about Ghioghe, Jim thought. No, I shouldn’t. What a fool.
Stephen strolled toward them. Ilya balanced on his right shoulder, steady despite his perilous perch.
“It looks like everything’s nearly ready,” Stephen said.
Lindy smiled at him and took his hand.
Jim called the bridge. Uhura reported the deck repressurized, the temperature nearly normal.
“I can let her out?” Lindy said.
“Any time.”
Lindy slid off the railing into Athene’s stall. The equiraptor sensed her joy and excitement. She trembled, every [180] muscle tense, her wings quivering at her sides. Lindy put one hand on her nose and one on the crest of her neck.
“Okay,” she said. “Open the door.”
Lindy let Athene into the dirt-carpeted shuttlecraft deck. Athene walked gingerly, placing each foot lightly, her wings spread; she walked like a tightrope artist. Her hooves crunched on the fine-ground comet debris. She snorted.
“That’s better, isn’t it, sweetie?” Lindy said. One hand twined in her mane, she urged Athene into a jog. Lindy led Athene back over her own path, inspecting it to be sure she did not dig all the way through to the deck.
“Now or never.” She let go of Athene’s mane and stepped away.
Athene stood still for a moment, head up, ears pricked forward. Her wings opened, closed, opened; Jim cou
ld hear the flutter of the big primaries. Then she flattened her wings against her sides and sprang forward.
She galloped so fast Jim feared she would crash into the far bulkhead. But at the last second she slid to a dirt-spraying, spraddle-legged stop, spreading her wings wide as if she were coming in to land. Then she squealed and spun and galloped in the other direction, straight toward Lindy.
Before Jim could move, before he could shout a warning, Athene reached her. Lindy grabbed her mane, swung up, and straddled her. She slipped her legs beneath Athene’s wings and rode her across the deck, laughing, her arms spread wide.
Athene bounced to a halt, flung up her head, and snorted. Sweat covered her shoulders and flanks. The scarlet lining of her nostrils flared as she breathed.
Lindy stroked her neck, then urged her forward. Mane and tail flying, wings open, Athene trotted down the center of the deck, hesitating for a split second before she put each hoof to the ground. The pause made her float between each step, almost as if she really were flying.
Lindy looked up. Members of the Enterprise crew filled the observation tunnels and crowded onto the catwalk above. Athene circled the deck in her floating trot. Lindy waved at everyone as she passed. Jim saw McCoy and Sulu, Uhura and Cheung, Yeoman Rand, and even, there in the [181] corner, Mr. Spock. The bridge must be almost entirely deserted, but for just this one brief minute, Jim could not mind.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” Stephen said. Jim had not even noticed the Vulcan when he came alongside him.
“Yes,” Jim said. “She really is.”
Chapter 8
LATE THAT NIGHT, Commander Spock left the bridge and returned to his cabin. Though he could work without rest for days at a stretch, to remain at his intellectual peak he needed a few hours of sleep and meditation each night. He had skipped those hours during the past several days; and meditation spent considering what, if anything, to do about Stephen hardly qualified as rest. He wanted to be alert during the passage of the Enterprise into the Phalanx.
Stepping over the gravity shelf, he entered his cabin.
He stopped.
Even before red light dispelled the maroon darkness, he sensed a difference. Someone had entered while he was gone.
STAR TREK: TOS - Enterprise, The First Adventure Page 20
