by Diane Duane
Ael laughed. “Captain, you’re right. You deserve better of me. Your plan excels. Of course there are always things that can go wrong, but we cannot be sure what those will be until we reach Augo. I gather from your initial scheduling that you expect that to happen the day after tomorrow, by Enterprise’s time.”
“No later,” Jim said. “Every second we spend here is a second that someone on ch’Rihan may be spending getting ready to meet us there, and I grudge them every second of that time.”
“Still,” Ael said, “even if the strategists at Grand Fleet had read your whole plan while we were reading it, it would still take them a matter of some days to gather the materiel to handle us at the kind of odds they prefer. I have high hopes for this engagement—to a point.”
Spock gave her a thoughtful look. “But no great pleasure.”
“No,” Ael said, “I am well past that point, Mr. Spock, if ever I was there for long. War is a means to an end. The possibility of a good end to it—that thought sustains me. But the means itself…” She shook her head.
They looked out into the room again. “Captain,” Spock said, “I see Mr. Scott over there, and I believe he is looking for me.”
“Go on, Mr. Spock.” As Spock got up, Jim said, “By the way, I just had a thought about that mate in six.”
“Only one, Captain?” Spock said. He nodded to the commander, and moved away through the crowd.
“And what was the thought?” Ael said.
“That I ought to resign while the resigning was good,” Kirk said. “But now he’ll spend all night running the scenario in his head and wondering whether he missed something.”
“Mr. Spock? All night? Hardly,” Ael said. “Getting him to do that for an hour would be an accomplishment, I would think.”
“You’re probably right,” Jim said. “But with Mr. Spock, you take your advantages where you can. Come on, Commander, we’re taking up space for ten. Let’s go up to the gallery level. Would you like an ale to take with you?”
“I would like that very much.”
Jim spoke to the menu on the media table, and a few moments later it produced a tall cold glass of blue for Ael and a shorter glass of whiskey for Jim. He handed Ael her glass. She looked at it in some bemusement. “Is this a message?” she said.
Jim pulled the bamboo-and-paper cocktail umbrella out of the glass, looking at the Chinese characters on it and then folding it up and leaving it on the table. “Only that Scotty’s kids need watching,” he said. “Come on.”
Together they made their way out of the pit and toward the stairs that led up to the gallery, which stretched straight across the middle of the huge glasteel windows that looked aft. As they went, Jim paused and looked down into the crowd, which now contained at least a hundred fifty of the crew. From the midst of it came some sounds that suggested it was not physics being discussed in the musical mode, at least not yet. Someone was playing an electronic keyboard, and a male voice rose above the hubbub, singing:
“—drunken spaceman,
What do you do with a drunken spaceman,
Ear-ly in the stardate?
Beam him down into liquid methane,
Beam him down into—”
The singer was interrupted by cries of “Naaah!” “Oh, please!” “That old thing again?” “What else have you got?”
Various people began shouting suggestions, some more helpful than others. Jim raised his eyebrows and continued up the stairs. Chairs were scattered here and there up on the gallery; he led the way over to one pair, down at the far end, where they could overlook the refreshment tables and the pits at the center of the main recreation floor. For a few moments they just sat quietly, and Jim lost himself briefly in the stir and noise from below.
“Now that we are in private…” Ael said. “Captain, I heard about Gurrhim.” She paused, looking down at the crowd, and very softly said, “It is not true, is it?”
“No.”
She nodded, satisfied; but the look in her eyes was strange.
“How did you know it wasn’t?” Jim said, suddenly suspicious.
Ael looked at him without that odd expression changing much. “Because Dr. McCoy was involved.”
Jim nodded. “You’ll forgive me for not telling Bones about that, because he’d become insufferable for days. But I see your point.”
“Others who have less confidence in McCoy’s skill,” Ael said, “or know less of his stubbornness, will find it easy enough to believe. Otherwise, they will find it equally easy to believe that Gurrhim left Gorget’s infirmary with such injuries as were not meant to allow him to survive long.” She leaned back, stretched a little. “But now perhaps you will tell me why you so suddenly chose this action. It does not sound like something you contemplated for long.”
“Ael,” Jim said, “you told us yourself, not so long ago, that you weren’t entirely sure there wasn’t someone else in your crew who—” Thinking of Ael’s son Tafv, and a memory that must still be bitter to her, Jim swiftly discarded the phrase “was a potential traitor.” “—whose loyalties might waver under stress.”
“Or who had been planted there by Grand Fleet a long time ago,” Ael said. She sighed. “Mine would not be the only ship with such. Once they were out in the open, actually called ‘political officers’ or ‘loyalty officers.’ Did you know that? But then Fleet stopped that practice, for the accident rate among such officers became unaccountably high, and personnel would seek transfer or demotion rather than hold such posts.” Ael smiled gently.
“I believe you,” Jim said. “Anyway, I’m curious to see whether this particular piece of misinformation spreads. No harm in it, anyway, since I think I’d rather have Gurrhim out of the public eye. Leaving aside the completely crass and self-serving idea that he might be extremely useful to you later on, there’s no telling whether someone might not pop up and try to kill him again, and I wouldn’t care for that.”
“Nor I,” Ael said. “He is a good old man, of a type we have too few of anymore in our world.”
“Old?” Jim said. “Well, maybe as you reckon these things. But he doesn’t come across that way.”
“No,” Ael said. “Which makes him all the more valuable.”
“Anyway, Dr. McCoy asked me to reassure you about the Praetor’s status. He says Gurrhim is doing remarkably well for someone who has suffered the equivalent of having his heart, as McCoy put it, ‘pulled out of him and stamped on.’”
“It is a great heart, that,” Ael said. “I am glad he survived.”
“That’s more or less what McCoy said, on both counts,” Jim said. “And I agree with him. Meanwhile, he has elected to stay ‘dead’ for the time being, which means he will remain our guest. Which leads me to my next question: What to do with young tr’AAnikh?”
“Well,” Ael said, “does he know that Gurrhim is alive? If so, then to keep the secret, he cannot come back to Bloodwing. When the secret is secret no longer, then we will be glad to bring him wherever he wishes to go. And the same for Gurrhim, as well. But I would lay a small wager that where he would want to go, is where we are going.”
Jim nodded. “I’d put my money right down by yours. Meanwhile, let’s put the issue on the back burner. In two weeks, who knows, we might not need to worry about it. By then we might be the conquerors of ch’Rihan and ch’Havran.”
“Or plasma,” Ael said.
“Optimist,” Jim said.
They sat and watched the crewpeople below them. In the middle of the group that had been doing most of the singing, a guitar started to strum hard, a series of swinging chords, and another joined it, and voices went up together in song. Jim smiled a little and reached for his whiskey, while Ael gazed down at the crowd gathering around the central conversation pit. The raised voices got considerably louder with the end of the first verse, and a fit of melodious yodeling broke out after the chorus. Jim looked over at Ael’s expression with some amusement.
“How can they do this?” she said softly
. “Seeing what they have just endured, and what lies before them.”
“It’s how they cope,” Jim said. “And how they remind themselves who they are.” He leaned back against the cushions and stretched a little. “Ael, do me a favor.”
“If it’s in my power.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind without stopping to think about the tactics of revelation.”
She had to smile at that, though the smile was sad. “I think that perhaps some of these people will not do this again,” she said, so softly it could hardly be heard. “That for some of them, this is their last time to sing together.”
“You think they don’t know that?” Jim said.
Ael shook her head. “No. But the fact is no less bitter in my heart for all their recognition of it.”
He watched her watching them. The prospect of their danger hurts her as much as that of her own people, Jim thought. Possibly even more. Interesting. And something about her that Starfleet would never believe.
“Third verse!”
“There is no third verse.”
“That’s not what I heard—”
More shouting of suggestions followed. Jim let out a long breath and said, “That’s not all that’s on your mind, though.”
She glanced at him. “How can you tell?”
“Because it’s not all that’s on mine, and we are too damn much alike, some ways.”
Ael was quiet for several breaths. Then she said, “I have been having second thoughts about your presence here.”
“A little late for that,” Jim said.
“Yes, so Aidoann tells me,” Ael said wearily, “and tr’Keirianh as well. But I have these thoughts nonetheless. I would ask you not to needlessly endanger Enterprise on behalf of my cause.”
“I would never needlessly endanger her for any cause,” Jim said, “so you can put your mind to rest on that count. But as for the rest of it—there comes a time when you have to make a stand.”
He waited.
“Yes,” Ael said after a long while. “That is what I have been thinking about. There has been so much running, in the last few years.”
Jim kept quiet.
“I am afraid,” Ael said finally. “Afraid of it all having been for nothing, if I die. Or, even worse, afraid of being turned from my path afterward, if we succeed. If the old government of the Empire does indeed fall, if it is replaced by a Senate and Praetorate committed to the kind of changes I have been dreaming of, then I fear to be paid off, given a medal for my great contributions to my people’s culture, and sent away for a ‘well-deserved rest.’ Or perhaps not that, so much, as being too tired to come back from the rest afterward. Finding myself saying, ‘Not today. I have no stomach for the fight today. Tomorrow.’”
“And tomorrow never comes,” Jim said.
“True. And then, slowly, everything goes back to the way it was, after the fervor dies down,” Ael said. “And it all turns out to have been for nothing. The last stands and the first ones, the betrayals and the heroism, the great battles and the small. Despite them, everything ebbs back to what it was before. Oh, a few things are improved, some of the tyranny scraped away—but elsewhere it accretes again, and everything is as it was before. That is what I fear.”
“The inertia of history,” Jim said.
She glanced at him. “Is that what your people call it?”
“I don’t know,” Jim said. “But I know what you mean. The fear of not mattering, of having made no difference.”
“Yes.”
They sat quietly for a while longer. When Jim looked at her again, Ael’s expression was rather drawn. The admission had cost her something.
“What does one do at such times?” Ael said.
Jim shook his head. “Stick it out, and see what happens.”
Ael laughed. “Yet more adhesives.”
“Maybe. Sometimes they’re all that makes the difference.” Jim looked down into the crowd. “Hear that?”
Ael listened. “Hear what?”
“The change in the noise level.”
She shrugged. “That happens once every forty t’stai or so in any gathering, my people say.”
Jim nodded. “It’s something cyclic. Practically everything in human life—excuse me, hominid life—has some kind of cycle attached to it. So why is this one surprising you? You carry the banner up high for hours at a time, then after a while you have to let it fall, but not forever. You push and fight and make your way forward in a battle, and then sometimes you have to fall back a little, until the moment comes to start pushing forward again. The uncertainty, the difficulty—you’ve been there before, in battle. So have I. The cycle’s just a little longer than usual this time. But it’s still a cycle. Ride it out.”
Below them, the sound started to come up again. Ael had a long sip of her drink, and then turned slightly to look over her shoulders at the stars, and at the air-blued curve of Artaleirh sliding by under them as Enterprise made her way toward the terminator, and night.
“That cycle is longest, though,” she said. “Worlds around their stars, stars in the long flow through the galaxy’s arms, as all the little spirals fly apart. And then perhaps back together again.” She looked over at Jim with just a little humor showing in her eyes again. “Or have they changed the theory again, this year? Sometimes the scientists say the universe is ‘open,’ and the cycle can never repeat, then two or three years later they reverse themselves.”
“We could ask K’s’t’lk,” Jim said. “But if you ask me, I think we should just stick it out, and see what happens.”
Ael looked at him for a moment, and then raised her glass to him. Jim clinked his against it; they drank.
They sat there for a great while longer, talking about all manner of things, while underneath them sunset and dawn and sunset passed over Artaleirh at the usual accelerated rate. Every now and then they got a glimpse of Tyrava, like a shadow in deeper night, pacing them above and behind, glinting now and again in planetlight, or the light of Artaleirh’s star slipping up through the atmosphere in yet another dawn. Below the gallery, the singing and the laughter went on, coming to crescendo and fading, and always coming up again in another wave of sound. Jim was not aware of actually counting the cycles, but he knew that at a certain point he would have to stop merely being aware of them. One of those silences would be meant for him, and the crew was waiting.
“I cannot think how they all fit in here,” Ael said. “And who is running the ship?”
“It takes fewer people to run Enterprise than most people would think,” Jim said. “But you know that. I would rather the news didn’t get around too much, though.”
He stood up and leaned on the gallery railing. There had to be at least three hundred and eighty of the four hundred and thirty down there; people of many species, eating and drinking and talking like there was no tomorrow. And maybe there’s not, Jim thought. There was no point in putting it off any longer.
“If you prefer,” Ael said, “perhaps I should go back to Bloodwing now.”
“Why bother?” Jim said. “About a third of your people are down there already. What happens here, you have a right to hear.”
She bowed her head to him, then, and lifted her empty glass, but said nothing more.
Jim went over to the stairs and started to make his way down. As he went, he noticed how quickly the room was starting to go quiet. Not just twenty after the hour, he thought. Not this time.
He made his way over to the side of the room where there was a one-step dais used for informal theatricals, dancing, or the occasional performances of the Enterprise’s jazz band. As he stepped up onto it, the quiet settled down hard over the room, and held.
“Thank you,” he said, and then had to stop for a moment, because his throat suddenly dried up on him.
Jim swallowed. “Some of you will in recent days have been discussing among yourselves the correctness, in view of our oaths to Starfleet and the Federation, of the actions I’ve taken, and
which I am about to take.”
There was no sound, no rustling. His people were still, watching him.
“I am convinced that the course we are about to pursue is in the best interests of the Federation. I am willing to face a court-martial, if necessary, at the end of all this, to justify my actions. And I’m almost certain, even at this point, that I’m going to have to. I stand on the brink of a series of actions that at the very least will make me extremely uncomfortable about the future, but which I believe my oaths demand of me.”
More silence. He took a long breath and went on. “I am aware that some of you are going to find my actions questionable. I am therefore taking this opportunity to offer you a choice to act on your own consciences. If at this point any of you feel that what has been happening, or is likely to happen, will conflict with your oaths, I want you to disembark and be returned to Federation space.” He looked around at all the terribly immobile faces. “The Artaleirhin have undertaken to send a ship back to RV Trianguli. There they will transfer anyone who wants to return either to Mascrar, which is still there, or to one of the Starfleet vessels shortly scheduled to be coming into that neighborhood in the pursuit of the war.”
Silence. They looked at him.
“Captain—”
Sulu.
Of all the voices he would not have expected to hear raised, that voice spoke up now, and the sound of it bit him deep. Jim looked over at his helmsman, wondering what to say now, wondering how Enterprise would possibly cope without him. And if Sulu, veteran of so many difficult and dangerous situations aboard Enterprise until now, felt this way, how many others would feel the same?
“Captain,” Sulu said. “We have been talking, some of us.” The voice sounded a little shamefaced. “We thought—”
Here it comes.
“—that we should give you something, just so that you understood our feelings.”
Sulu turned to Chekov, standing in the crowd behind him, and then the pair of them stepped out of the crowd, holding something dark in their arms.
They unfolded it, shook it out. Black, with a flash of white in it, settling as Sulu and Chekov grabbed the upper corners and held the silken shimmer of the thing up to show it.
