“Our children are with my parents, lest they disturb our guests,” she explained. Which translated as T’Vysse’s unwillingness to let them anywhere near these strangers until she had observed them for herself.
T’Vysse met Surak’s eyes unflinchingly. “Are there people I may call on your behalf?” she asked.
Why, that little le-matya! Karatek thought. She had to know that Surak’s family lived on the other side of ShiKahr. No creature on Vulcan guarded its young with more ferocity than the le-matya. Did T’Vysse truly consider these strangers to be such a threat? If so, her suggestion of a call to Surak’s family might be considered a form of warning.
“I do not think they would welcome such a call,” Surak admitted. “But I thank you for the courtesy.”
Which, judging from the way T’Vysse lowered her eyes, indicated that Surak knew precisely what she had had in mind.
She turned away. This was Karatek’s cue to lead his “guest-friends” to the rooms that had been hastily cleared out. Surak could have the spare chamber, while, Karatek decided, Varen and Skamandros would share the room that ordinarily housed Turak and Lovar. Neither Karatek nor T’Vysse would open what had been his daughter’s room to strangers.
In the coolness before full dark, Karatek awaited his guests in the courtyard. Flames leapt in the firepit. A cauldron whose handles were cast in the shape of wild beasts was filled with the broth that would be their first course and bubbled over the fire. On the firepit’s lip were spread hand-woven cloths on which rested flagons of sweet water and ceramic bowls and plates. Yellow and green legumes were arrayed on a round iridescent platter beside a basket of flatbreads and a glass tray of melon slices arranged to resemble a sandblossom.
T’Vysse stood before the flames, setting out skewers of food. Spiced succulents and mushrooms, mostly, Karatek observed.
“Surak and his followers do not eat meat,” she whispered to him.
Now, when had she found time to research that? The wisest thing his parents had ever done was arrange his bonding to her, he thought, and reached out to touch her face.
Hearing footsteps, she pulled away.
From Surak’s room came Karatek’s three guests. They wore fresh sandsuits and had evidently washed the dryness of the desert from their skins with a plunge into the thermal pools around which the house’s bedrooms had been built. Varen’s eyes brightened at the spread table, the peaceful courtyard.
“The broth is plomeek,” T’Vysse assured him. “Though the spices are a family secret.”
Surak bowed. He waited for her to be seated, then bowed his head as Karatek broke the pale yellow flatbread that would be served with the broth.
Varen and Skamandros fell upon the food as eagerly as if they had eaten little during the past few days, which was probably the case.
“We encountered a sandstorm, which delayed us by two days, and our supplies ran short,” Varen explained.
Surak, who must have been equally hungry, raised his bowl in time with his hosts. His family was a noble one, and, as Karatek observed, he retained its exquisite manners.
As if reading his thoughts, Surak raised an eyebrow. “My family considers me a dangerous radical.”
“And are you?” Karatek found himself asking.
“A radical in my approach, certainly, to our planet’s difficulties. It is a violent world, and we have evolved into a violent people. That was logical before we mastered the arts of reason—to whatever degree that we have mastered them. I simply attempt to take that mastery to the next step.”
“It is no longer enough to be effectively violent: we must seek to control violence. To cast it out,” Varen broke in. Then, he cast down his eyes. “I ask pardon for the interruption.”
Surak nodded. “We eat no meat, as your consort”—he bowed ceremonious respect to T’Vysse—“appears to have learned. We carry no weapons. And, hardest of all, we attempt to master the root cause of violence, our emotions.”
“The mastery of passion,” T’Vysse mused. “Can it be done? What do you think, sir?” she asked Skamandros.
“I am Surak’s shadow,” he said, his voice hoarse, his eyes intense. “My name used to be Ayhan, but I changed it in honor of my teacher.”
“I will change my name once I find the one that truly suits me,” Varen declared.
“Would it not be as logical,” asked T’Vysse, “to live so that your name reflected you, and you alone?”
Karatek was only an engineer, he thought, quicker to think than to speak. It was a wonder he had found the words to claim Surak and his companions as guests. Holding his water flagon, he leaned back as T’Vysse, with a teacher’s skill, drew the men into conversation or, in her skilled hands, the most exquisitely courteous interrogation Karatek could imagine.
No, Surak’s principles were not just intellectual: they were an integral part of his life. And expressed so persuasively it drew a pang from his host. Surak ate no meat, not just because meat was the result of the end of a life, but because it was too wasteful of resources on a scarce world. Besides, Surak added, glancing politely aside, if you spent any time in the desert, you realized that meat-eaters had an odor that drew predators.
“Like the creatures of the deep desert,” Surak said, his voice resonant, “we Vulcans are predators. But, unlike the le-matya and the shavokh, we perceive that the desert itself is as precious as food or water. Therefore, it is logical to preserve it. How best to preserve it? By realizing that warfare is illogical, a waste of life and of Vulcan’s scarce resources.”
“And yet, our people still produce more warriors than scientists,” T’Vysse murmured.
“Even surgery is violence,” said Surak, “but violence harnessed to the cause of healing. If one can wage war, how much more logical is it to wage peace? I have made it my mission to persuade scientists to wage peace instead of war, by removing themselves as the means of keeping Vulcan fighting.”
“You speak as one who knows the desert well.” Karatek made himself take his part in the conversation.
“I was a computer scientist 10.3 years ago,” Surak replied. “When I perceived that the machines I built were being used to drive the machines of war, I forsook my family and my laboratory. I went first to Seleya, but my emotions were so strong that my teachers thought they might melt the snow on the mountain’s peak. They were, of course, speaking hyperbolically. Now I see their words as a rebuke to the emotionalism with which I confronted them. They did what they could: they sent me into the deep desert to burn the passions out of me. So, I realized that Seleya was not the answer, any more than the arts I had learned in the Science Academy. I walked from Seleya to Gol, but the adepts there failed me, too: it is not withdrawal from our world that will save it, but instead, the desire to go out and transform it.”
Surak’s face glowed in the firelight. Its finely cut features were almost delicate—too fragile a lamp to hold so much fire.
While I tinker with defense contracts, thought Karatek. Who is at war now? The Northeastern Alliance against the priest-kings of this latest dynasty of the te-Vikram, and everyone against the bandits? This was not how I wished to spend my life.
Karatek forced himself not to bristle. Suspicion had afflicted Vulcan along with war: one’s neighbor was one’s enemy. So far, strangers still were welcome, although, judging from how ShiKahr’s security force had greeted Surak and his companions, not for much longer. But strangers as strange as this? They might well be spies. At least they were civilized these days. In ancient times, Surak might well have been cast blinded from the Bridge at Seleya, the traditional punishment for sorcery.
Surak’s words were only words, not threats, he told himself. But one did not need to be an ascetic or a historian like T’Vysse to realize that his line of reasoning was revolutionary.
“Our work has changed since you set your own research aside,” he said. “You are my guests. Perhaps you would care to tour the Vulcan Space Initiative and see the models of the ships—ships for peaceful use—that w
e are creating.”
Surak almost smiled, a brightening of the eyes and the attention. “I had hoped for such an invitation,” he admitted. “But beginnings are important. Do you offer this because you feel you owe it to a guest-friend, or because you feel it is the logical thing to do?”
What would it mean for the VSI to have Surak as a guest-friend?
Karatek found himself smiling. “I think,” he said, “that we have a great deal to talk about, your people and mine.”
Five
Now
KI BARATAN, ROMULUS
The great Council Chamber of the Romulan Senate in the capital city of Ki Baratan on Romulus was a starkly elegant room in a building that was over two hundred years old—the pride of the architects (who, since they’d been unfortunate enough to live in a more violent age than the current civilized regime, had not lived to build anything ever again).
The Council Chamber was a huge room with a high-arched ceiling from which hung long rows of lights, and its walls were vast sweeps of stone. Each of those walls was inset with its own red, blue, and blood-green mosaic images showing off past glories and metal trophies from various interstellar victories. A gleaming silver fragment of Starfleet ship hull embedded in one wall even commemorated one rare but spectacular victory against the Federation.
But no one was bothering with any sightseeing just now. The Romulan Senate was in session, which meant at the best of times an unstable mixture of stoic calm and warrior ferocity.
Right now, Praetor Neral thought, watching the senators in action where they were seated along both sides of the long, dark green stone table, they were shouting back and forth at each other out of grief and shock mixed in with fury. And right now, fury was uppermost.
At least they were all still in their seats, not hurling themselves across the table at each other’s throats.
Dralath, Neral remembered suddenly, had once slit a senator’s throat at one of these meetings, right there, where stolid Senator Durjik sat now, just to make a point to everyone about loyalty. They’d had to scrub the bloodstains off the stones.
I am not Dralath. And my predecessor never deserved the title of praetor.
His immediate predecessor, Narviat, had been a different matter, suave, charming, and dedicated to the Romulan people. Too good to live. Not that Neral had had anything to do with the “accident.” This time, at least, his hands were perfectly clean.
Besides, Neral could thoroughly understand the senators’ anger and horror. How could such a massacre have happened to innocent colonist Romulans? Why? His own blood burned as well, just as fiercely as that of the senators, every time he thought of those lying murderers, those utterly foul, totally against all law or honor perversions that called themselves the Watraii—
No. Calm yourself. You cannot afford to lose your self-control.
After these few…interesting years as praetor of all the Romulans and a good many more years before that as an ambitious young officer working his way up through the ranks and managing to survive two regime changes, he’d gotten very good at that bit of self-hypnosis. But then, one thing he was, Neral thought wryly, was a survivor. If he’d managed to stay alive during all of the perilous, utterly corrupt reign of Dralath, no one was going to get him now.
Brave words. But there were times—such as right now—when he could almost wish he’d never fought to be praetor.
Yes? And be what instead? A politician and officer who had the misfortune of having outlived his career while still young? A nobody too unimportant to assassinate, policing farmers on some remote colony world? Oh, he hardly thought so! Neral could hardly imagine any worse fate than quiet, powerless stagnation.
Besides, he thought dryly, he did look the part of praetor. Why waste any assets? Neral’s face was still strong-featured, although there were premature lines of stress at the corners of his eyes and mouth that had not been there before he’d assumed the rank and streaks of gray in the glossy black hair.
But I still live. Which is more than my predecessor could say.
The shouting had gone on long enough, he thought. It was growing too fierce. Allowing everyone to let off his or her tension in harmless noise was well and good, and truly necessary in this case. But even unarmed Romulans could do each other genuine damage if they grew too angry. Too much blood had already been spilled in this chamber under Dralath’s reign.
“They have attacked without provocation—”
“—attacked sovereign Romulan territory—”
“—colony destroyed—”
“—eradicated—”
“—murderers—”
“—killing without warning or cause—”
“—monsters!”
“Silence!” Neral shouted. “Enough of this! Silence!” Curse it. That hurt. “Do you not think me as utterly horrified, as utterly outraged as the rest of you? Do you not think that every drop of my blood burns like yours to exterminate that sickening foulness that calls itself Watraii?”
“Yes!”
“Of course!”
“Destroy them!”
“Wait, Senators. Wait!” I am going to get an amplifier built into this chair, I swear it. “Whatever we might want to do, we must face reality! I don’t have to tell any of you that the Dominion War was long, vicious, and expensive. Difficult though it is to admit, difficult to accept, the hard fact is this: We cannot afford another war!”
That only started up the storm anew:
“How can you say—”
“We cannot lose honor—”
“The accusations, lies—”
“I had a cousin on that colony!”
“I had a nephew!”
“I grieve with you,” Neral said in a moment of genuine pity. But pity wouldn’t help anyone. He gave them a second, then added in a more stentorian voice, “But hear me, all of you. The facts cannot be bent and twisted into becoming whatever we want them to be! And the facts state, whether we like it or not, that we cannot go to war, not now, not yet!”
No, curse it, they were off and shouting again.
“Silence!” Neral shouted again.
But this time even his trained voice couldn’t penetrate the noise, and by now he was truly tired of having to shout. He was armed, since who was going to have the nerve to search a praetor? So Neral calmly drew his disruptor pistol and fired it directly at the support of one of the overhead lights—one of the smallest ones, and hanging right over the table and not over any chairs since he didn’t want to kill anyone.
The light came crashing down onto the table with a most satisfactory amount of noise and a shower of sparks, smoke, and bits of glass. Gasping and swearing, the senators nearest the crash staggered back from their chairs, frantically brushing out sparks, and then meekly sat again.
Into the stunned silence that followed, as the last of the sparks sputtered out against the stone of the table and the senators cautiously regained their chairs, Neral said suavely, “Now that I have your undivided attention, Senators, you will hear me out. I said that we could not afford a war, and that fact remains quite true. I did not say, however, that we would not defend ourselves! We may not be at our full military strength, Senators, but we are hardly defenseless.
“As of today, I have ordered all available crews to their ships. They are already launching, and by now will be forming an impenetrable guard around the homeworlds. In addition, all ground personnel have been ordered to report to their gun batteries.
“We may not be able to fight a wide scale battle in space, Senators, but let me assure you all that any Watraii who try to attack the homeworlds are in for a deadly surprise.”
And let it only be enough, he thought, remembering how easily the Watraii had destroyed that colony. Let it only be enough.
The Office of Homeland Peace, as it was deliberately and euphemistically mislabeled, was tucked away into a quiet corner of the Ki Baratan government buildings, as though it were nothing more important than just another room in the
Romulan government bureaucracy.
It was actually the head office of Romulan Security.
The room hardly looked like an office, let alone a dangerous place. It was ironically tranquil, with walls painted a soothing pale blue. In addition to a desk and chair of pale golden shera-wood, the room also contained a softly cushioned beige chair of Irlani design, and a finely woven historic tapestry of Estrak and Thuraka that would not have been out of place in a noble lady’s mansion. Only the viewscreen and piles of printouts cluttering the desk spoiled the illusion of luxury—that, and the war trophies hanging on one wall.
They were Charvanek’s personal trophies, all of them earned by her in battle.
Charvanek herself could never have been called anything as weak as pretty, even when she was still young. By now, though, the years of hardship, stress and grief had burned away any trace of softness, leaving the Romulan woman looking as strong, fierce, and beautiful as a bird-of-prey. And every bit as dangerous.
Until I fade away from disuse, that is, she thought dryly.
It had been quite a varied career so far. Once upon a time, she had been Charvanek the warrior, a noblewoman who was distantly related to Narviat and the Emperor both, and who was also the honorable captain of the Honor Blade.
But then a mistake, one moment of ridiculous weakness with the Vulcan Spock of the Starship Enterprise, had turned her instead into Charvanek the disgraced, the woman who had been tricked and captured by the Federation and who had needed to be ransomed from them.
She had survived that disgrace by sheer determination, and survived all the perils of Dralath’s regime as well, slowly working her way back until she was trusted with Honor Blade again.
But when Dralath had treacherously attacked the Klingon colony of Narendra III—fierce irony there, she thought—Charvanek had been forced by honor to fight against his fleet, and lost the ship and her rank.
She’d survived that, too, with the help of none other than Spock.
For several amazing years, she had then been both Charvanek, consort to Praetor Narviat, and the chief of Romulan Intelligence.
Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Page 5
