Star Trek - TNG - 08 - The captain's Honor

by David

  scrambled backward, widening the circle

  considerably.

  Well, that didn't work. What does it

  take? In as mild a tone as he could

  produce, Worf asked all of them, "Why

  can't I get any of you to truly attack

  me?"

  A young woman spoke up angrily from the

  circle. "That's not the way we do things."

  The others nodded in agreement.

  "You said you were going to teach us how to defend

  ourselves against the M'dok if they attack us on

  the surface again, but now you want us to do the

  attacking!" the woman accused him.

  Worf could sense their frustration and anger.

  Anger, he thought. We already know they're as

  capable of that as anyone else. Jenny de

  Luz found that out. So why can't they learn

  to control and focus that anger when needed?

  "It's not that I want you to do the attacking,

  as you put it. I had intended to start with a

  demonstration of defense--my defense against your

  attack. That's the way I was taught

  self-defense, and that is the way I'm trying

  to teach you. When you see how easy it is for me

  to defend myself against you, you'll be encouraged.

  You'll want to learn the techniques I know."

  The woman spoke again, thoughtfully this time.

  "It's true that a student who admires his

  teacher's knowledge is motivated to acquire that knowledge for

  himself," she pointed out to the others. "Perhaps we

  should try."

  "Excellent," Worf said loudly. "All

  right, then. Y." He pointed to the young woman this

  time, ignoring Ingerment, for he could tell that the

  young man was trying to avoid his eye now.

  "What's your name?" he asked her.

  "Nadeleen."

  "Nadeleen, do you have any younger brothers or

  sisters?"

  "Three."

  "Good. Do you find me frightening,

  Nadeleen?"

  "No, not really."

  "You don't?" Worf asked with some

  surprise.

  He drew in a breath, expanding his huge

  chest, spread his arms out, his fingers curved

  into claws, and bared his teeth.

  "Now?" he roared.

  Nadeleen stepped back, and the circle of

  seated Tenarans widened again.

  "Yes!"

  "I'm a M'dok!" Worf yelled.

  "I'm attacking your family! I'm about

  to murder and eat your baby broth--"

  That was as far as he got. Nadeleen's fist

  shot toward his eye. Worf was so surprised that

  he almost waited too long to move. Just in time,

  he knocked her arm aside. Still moving, he

  pivoted on one foot, hooked the other behind

  Nadeleen's legs, grabbed a handful of her

  blouse, and kicked her feet from under her. He

  used his hold on her clothes to lower

  her gently to the floor of the gymnasium. Even

  so, she was pale and shaking as she climbed to her

  feet. Worf smiled as unthreateningly as he

  could and said, "Thank you."

  Ingerment said belligerently, "So what did

  all that mean? You were a M'dok, and she

  attacked you, and you knocked her down. Then you

  would have killed her and eaten her!"

  "You weren't listening, Ingerment," Worf

  said. "My whole point is that I'll teach you

  to do what I did. That way, if I had been

  the Tenaran and Nadeleen had been the M'dok,

  I would still have been the victor. I would have had the

  M'dok helpless on the ground." The Tenarans

  looked at each other in surprised agreement.

  Pursuing the momentary advantage, Worf

  said, "Now, why don't you all get to your

  feet, pair off, and I'll teach you how to do

  what I just did to Nadeleen. There are a lot

  of other techniques you also need to learn, but

  we'll start with that one."

  The rest of the afternoon went well. After some

  initial clumsiness and hesitation, the Tenarans

  began to treat the exercise as a game and took

  to it with increasing enthusiasm. For a while, this

  meant an excess of horseplay, but Worf,

  who was at first annoyed by it, was able to channel it

  in the end.

  He was bone-tired when the day ended. His

  Tenaran students seemed, if anything,

  invigorated. They laughed and chatted happily

  and said goodbye to him cheerfully. Worf managed

  to maintain a friendly smile and to respond to their

  farewells appropriately, but behind the

  facade he was trembling with fatigue. He

  could not understand it. The physical work had been

  slight compared with what he was used to in his

  regular holodeck workouts, those martial

  simulations he used to keep himself in physical

  condition and fighting shape.

  Nadeleen was the last to leave. She waited

  until all of the others were gone, and then she

  approached Worf. "I still have one big question,"

  she announced.

  Worf sighed. Naturally. Moral

  philosophy. Nonviolence as a way of

  life. "And that is?"

  "Your demonstration at the beginning of the

  class, when you threw me to the ground. You said that

  showed how you could defend yourself against a

  M'dok. However, you know that had I been a

  M'dok and not a human, even if you had thrown

  me down hard, I'd have been back on my

  feet in an instant, attacking you again.

  They're much stronger than we are, very

  resilient, very aggressive. They go crazy

  with a kind of blood lust."

  Worf mentally apologized to her. "I was

  going to raise that very matter tomorrow afternoon. Thank you

  for asking me this in private, instead of in

  front of the class, but I'd actually like for you

  to ask me the very same question tomorrow, first thing, in

  front of everyone else."

  Nadeleen looked surprised, then agreed

  and walked away toward the exit. When she

  reached it, she paused to let two other people enter

  the gym first Jenny de Luz and Gaius

  Aldus.

  Worf greeted them with a pleased smile.

  "I was about to beam up. You caught me just in

  time."

  Gaius said, "We thought you might like to come with

  us to see a Tenaran play, Lieutenant.

  Jenny and I just heard that there's one being performed

  here in the city this evening."

  "I've been watching Tenarans play all

  afternoon," Worf rumbled.

  Jenny laughed at the disgust in his tone.

  "Believe it or not, sir, this play tells

  about some great battle in their distant past. Or

  so I've been told."

  Worf grunted. "Very surprising. I will

  attend." After a moment, he added, "Since

  we're both off duty and not on board ship,

  I'd prefer it if you'd call me Worf."

  J enny was delighted. Suddenly the forbidding

  Klingon warrior seemed almost human to her.

  She thought it wise not to tell him that, however.

  The theater was much like a theater on a
ny

  developed world, Worf thought. Tiers of seats

  for the audience faced a stage with proscenium and

  orchestra pit. Overhead, Worf assumed,

  but hidden from the audience, would be the machinery for

  lighting and for raising and lowering sets and equipment

  used for special effects.

  Members of the theater crew roamed around the

  stage completing the setting for the opening scene.

  Apparently the Tenaran theater tradition did

  not include the use of a curtain

  to hide this from the audience.

  As the seats filled with eager Tenarans,

  chatting happily with each other and waving to friends

  in the audience and stage crew, Worf turned

  to Jenny, sitting to his right, and said, "Form

  follows function. We could be on Earth, and it

  would look almost identical."

  "Or Meramar," Jenny said, nodding.

  Sitting on Jenny's other side, Gaius

  Aldus added, "Or my world. Except in

  Graecia, where our theater originated. The

  Graeci have deliberately retained the archaic

  format, and even give many performances in

  renovated theaters from ancient times. A few

  years ago, the old annual competition was

  revived in Athenae. All plays are given

  in the ancient language with the proper forms and

  costumes. Even the subject matter is

  drawn from their ancient mythology." He

  laughed. "It's almost as if the Roman conquest

  of Graecia had never happened. Which, I

  suppose," he added, "is exactly the

  point."

  Jenny said, "Sounds a bit silly to me."

  Gaius turned to her. His face was alight

  suddenly with a fascination Jenny had never seen

  there before. "Oh, no! Sometime, you must come

  to Athenae with me and see it for yourself. It's

  magnificent! No true Roman should miss

  it. They were our true forefathers, you know, not the

  primitive tribes of Latium--our

  cultural forebears, I mean. We fight

  wars our own way, and that gave us control of our

  world. But everything that's best in us, we got from the

  Graeci."

  Worf knew from his reading that Gaius was

  expressing an opinion that the ancient

  Romans had held. Or tried to convince

  themselves was true, he corrected himself. It

  enabled them to think of themselves as something other than

  mere barbarian conquerors, which was how the

  Greeks really saw them.

  Still, he found himself fascinated by an empire

  of warriors and conquerors that could give such

  praise to the civilization they had displaced.

  While Jenny and Gaius talked to each other,

  Worf thought The Klingons of the old days

  could never have been so generous to those they conquered.

  Nor could most human cultures.

  In spite of the orchestra pit, there

  was no music--at least, not with this play. The

  stage crew simply finished setting the stage

  and strolled off as the actors strolled on.

  Worf glanced sideways and saw Jenny

  watching in fascination, fully prepared to enjoy

  the presentation. Beyond her, Gaius watched with the

  analytical frown of the connoisseur.

  The action began. More actors came on the

  scene, and the stage was full of villagers

  discussing with concern the arrival of a band called the

  Lawless Ones. They shared stories about the

  crimes and atrocities Lawless Ones had

  committed in other saavtas, and what they might

  do when they arrived in theirs.

  The crowd became more and more agitated and began

  calling for the saavta leader. Finally a

  distinguished older man arrived on the scene and

  settled the crowd. The leader began his speech,

  talking about the danger they all faced and the

  difficulty he had in making his decision.

  Finally he announced that they would fight for their

  saavta, and a stunned silence descended on the

  crowd, who then began murmuring their fear and

  disapproval.

  Gaius was startled by their reaction.

  Certainly there was no alternative to fighting,

  even for the Tenarans. He watched as the leader's

  men devised a lottery and chose eight men,

  who stood before the saavta. The leader praised

  them in turn for their achievements and past

  contributions to their people.

  The older man handed the chosen warriors

  weapons--either sharpened "fighting sticks" or

  heavy axes. He commended them again and

  expressed his sympathy at the loss of their

  honor.

  Gaius started again. Surely there was no

  greater honor than the defense of one's people.

  As the eight men were ushered out, a young girl

  broke from the crowd and rushed to the youngest of the

  warriors, a barely adolescent boy. She

  cried and clung tightly to him until she was

  finally pried away, shrieking as the warriors

  exited.

  Then the scenery was changed quickly to indicate

  a forest. The eight warriors entered the stage

  disheveled, their clothing spotted with blood.

  The battle had obviously been waged and won

  offstage. Worf grunted his disappointment.

  As the men began speaking, it became

  clear to Gaius that they were not making plans

  to return to the village. They called themselves

  "men without honor" and denounced themselves as

  murderers. Now that they had killed, they could

  never return to their people and would have to live alone in

  the forest.

  Gaius watched the play's final scene with

  mixed emotions. He understood the importance of

  personal honor, as all Magna Romans

  did--suicide was still a common practice

  to restore lost honor. But for Romans,

  honor was inextricably bound with battle, with

  fighting and killing when necessary. For Tenarans,

  apparently, killing in self-defense meant

  loss of honor.

  As if reading his thoughts, Worf commented, "A

  most curious system of honor."

  Gaius nodded. Curious indeed. How could

  they change a people who lost their honor when they

  lifted a sword? And would they want to?

  To Worf, food was something one consumed

  to keep one's body functioning optimally, not a

  source of pleasure. Solitary by nature,

  he had also found it difficult to adjust to the

  human habit of treating the eating of food as

  a central part of a larger social ritual.

  However, over the years he had learned

  to tolerate that ritual and even, occasionally,

  to enjoy it. Since he enjoyed the time he spent

  with Jenny and Gaius, when Gaius asked their

  opinion of the restaurant, Worf said quite

  honestly that it was as good as any he could

  remember.

  Gaius was openly pleased. "Well, it's

  not what would be considered a feast by a patrician

  Roman, of course, like Captain Sejanus,

  but by my standards it's just fi
ne."

  "I'm surprised that the old distinction between

  patrician and plebeian survives in the

  republic," Worf said.

  Gaius looked a bit embarrassed. "Not

  officially, no. That is, people with patrician

  blood don't get special favors. But

  unofficially, a lot of the old thinking is still

  around. I was brought up to consider the

  Volcinians, and especially Sejanus'

  family, as my natural masters." He

  laughed. "That's not in line with proper

  republican thinking, I know, but it's

  pretty deeply ingrained in some of us."

  "I understand," Worf said. "Old

  traditions die slowly. The class

  structure, the warrior ethos, respect for

  imperial rights and privileges--it's the

  nature of men to adopt those ways easily and

  give them up with difficulty. It requires

  a conscious, deliberate effort." After a

  pause he added, "It's the nature of

  Klingons, as well." He noticed Jenny's

  surprised stare and said, "Did you believe I

  wasn't capable of such abstract thought, de

  Luz?"

  Jenny looked away quickly, then back, and

  said, "Well, uh, some of us have wondered about

  you. Specifically, if you're really as

  different from the rest of us as you ... Sorry."

  "As I look," Worf completed for her.

  He felt a moment of sadness, a sense of his

  alienness. "Yes and no," he answered

  obliquely. "Nature and nurture, and the

  interaction of the two. I am Klingon

  by nature, but only part Klingon by nurture."

  "My own world has a warrior heritage,"

  Jenny said thoughtfully. "How odd that we've

  all ended up in Starfleet."

  Gaius shrugged. "Civilizations pass beyond

  the need of the warrior ethos for anything but

  self-defense. Even Worf's people eventually

  reached that point."

  "Now, if only the M'dok would get there,"

  Jenny said. "And the Romulans, and all the

  rest of them."

  "The Romulans," Gaius said thoughtfully.

  "They fascinated us when we first heard of them.

  You can understand that, I'm sure. But the more we

  learned about them, the less they seemed like us."

  Worf nodded and added, "From what I've

  observed of you and the other Magna Romans,

  Gaius, the true similarity is between Magna

  Romans and Klingons."

  Gaius was clearly pleased at the

  comparison.

  Jenny said suddenly, "Then that's another thing

  the three of us have in common--Roman or

  similar origins. My ancestors were brought