Strange New Worlds IX

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “We shall be rich, Puor,” she hissed sibilantly, and he closed his eyes as she rubbed neck frills briefly with him.

  “And now, dinner, perhaps?” he asked quietly. She laughed her agreement.

  Malcolm and Hoshi had managed to eat while avoiding conversation—an accomplishment made easier by the fact that one of them couldn’t speak English…or any language, for that matter. Malcolm was trying to think of some way to apologize for his earlier inadvertent faux pas when he was saved by the bell—well, the comm.

  “Hoshi?” Archer’s voice came over the intercom. “We need you on the bridge. The Kintarra have just contacted us.”

  The giant orange lizard on the screen did not greatly improve Hoshi’s mood. He looked rather smug (as smug, anyway, as a giant orange lizard can appear), and he was staring at her—had been staring at her since the moment she entered the bridge. Not just her, she realized after a moment, but at the small dog she held in her arms.

  “He wants to speak about Malcolm,” Archer told Hoshi in a low voice, “but he said something about wishing to speak directly to our ‘Controller’—whatever that means. It might just be a glitch in the UT; I’m hoping you can make better sense out of it.”

  “Ah, you have arrived; perhaps now we can dispense with the puppets and speak directly? Perhaps these pale creatures amuse you, but we prefer a more…personal approach to business.” The lizard directed this at Hoshi—no, she realized abruptly, at Malcolm. Suddenly it all clicked. She reached down and hit the Mute button at her console.

  “Captain, I think the Kintarra somehow believe that Porthos—er, Malcolm—is controlling us. That he’s the only intelligent being on board! But I don’t understand how…” Her eyes met Archer’s in sudden comprehension.

  “If they have Malcolm’s body, with Porthos’s mind in it…” he breathed. “Of course they’re assuming we’re all at the same intelligence level!” He stared thoughtfully at the screen for a moment.

  “Hoshi, I want you to speak to them, see if you can find out where they have Malcolm’s body. Malcolm, go sit in my chair and try to appear to be intelligent.” The small beagle threw his captain a cold look. “Ah, what I meant was, make it look like you’re the one doing all the thinking—we’re just your pawns.” The dog made what appeared to be an attempt to roll his eyes, but jumped out of Hoshi’s arms to trot over to the captain’s chair and hop up. Archer nodded briefly to Hoshi, who tapped her console and turned to reply to the Kintarran.

  “What is it that you wished to discuss?” she asked the lizard. His neck frills snapped back, a sure sign of annoyance.

  “I wish to speak with you directly,” he told Malcolm. Hoshi moved to stand behind the chair that the dog/Malcolm was occupying.

  “The ‘puppets’ are a necessity,” she answered, thinking fast. “My own vocal cords are insufficient to communicate in your tongue.” Malcolm tried to look imperious and condescending; at the helm, Travis stifled a laugh.

  “I see,” the Kintarran murmured. “Well, perhaps we should simply proceed. Perhaps you have noticed that one of your puppets is missing? You should not be worried; we have it in our care at the moment.”

  “I had noticed,” Hoshi admitted. “I have been searching for it. I’m so glad that you found it, as it is one of my favorites. How soon may I retrieve it?” Malcolm tipped his head to one side, shrewdly eyeing the viewscreen. The lizard’s smug look turned sly.

  “Well, now, we should discuss this. My mate has grown very fond of the creature; perhaps, since you yourself have so many, you would be willing to let this one go? Of course, we would be willingto pay you—perhaps more than it is worth.” Malcolm shook his head, eyes narrowing. Hoshi imitated the movement.

  “I’m afraid that is out of the question,” she replied. “I am quite fond of all of my pets. I only want its return.” The Kintarran stared at the dog for a moment, then shrugged his neck frill.

  “Perhaps it is just as well that you come retrieve your pet. You may, perhaps, bring the dark-haired puppet with you; it has the best accent.” Hoshi glanced surreptitiously at Archer, who nodded slightly.

  “This is acceptable,” she told the lizard. They spoke for a few more moments, making arrangements, then said their good-byes.

  “My ready room,” Archer said as soon as the screen went black.

  “Puor, what are you doing?” Ta’kha snapped at her mate. “We are not willing to pay for the creature we already have, nor do we wish to return it! We want another one!”

  “Perhaps you did not realize what I did,” Puor soothed. “The puppet-creature I requested to accompany the Controller is a female. When they arrive, we simply take them both into custody. Then we will have what we want.”

  “Or, perhaps we can take it a step further,” Ta’kha said, her frill brightening. “If we simply kill the Controller, then we can take all of the puppet-creatures for ourselves.” Puor smiled benignly.

  “Your wisdom is, perhaps, beyond mine,” he murmured. “It is an excellent plan.” The two Kintarra hissed in glee.

  To say that Malcolm disapproved of the plan would be an understatement. Malcolm was profoundly unhappy with the plan, a fact that he was communicating by barking loudly. Trip and Travis were frowning, and Hoshi was wincing slightly. Archer frowned at his security officer.

  “Malcolm, I realize you’re not happy with this, but it’s the only way the Kintarra will allow us anywhere near your body. Look, we’re not going to send you and Hoshi down there all by yourselves, despite what we told that Kintarran. For one thing, Hoshi isn’t qualified to pilot a shuttlepod. Take a moment and be reasonable about this.”

  Malcolm was still unhappy, but the captain was making sense…and, of course, he was the captain. So Malcolm settled down to wait anxiously as the rest of the command crew discussed their options—feeling powerless and wishing desperately to be back in his own body.

  In the end, Malcolm was still not pleased with the travel arrangements, though he grudgingly admitted that (despite his vow the previous day) Captain Archer was the best choice to pilot the shuttle since he had more experience than Travis (and was a better shot). And it made sense for T’Pol to come along in case anything else were to go wrong with the mind-switching situation (or in case anyone else got hit by the Kintarran weapon). However, despite the fact that there would not be that much room in the shuttlepod, he still would have felt better if they were accompanied by a team of security officers. Two teams. With rifles. But he knew that the Kintarra would most likely react badly to that, and so he kept his muzzle shut and sat dubiously next to Hoshi as the small away team headed back to the Kintarran ship.

  Twenty minutes later Malcolm found himself once again dodging alien gunshots and thinking fiercely that if people would just listen to him once in a while he wouldn’t get shot at so often. Then again, he reflected, if he would stop volunteering as bait, his injury quota would probably drop significantly.

  It had started out well enough; the Kintarra had greeted them civilly and politely accepted Hoshi’s spurious explanation of the presence of the other two “puppets.” They had courteously led the way to where they were keeping Malcolm’s body and even amicably chatted with Malcolm (through Hoshi, of course) on the trip there. It was when they actually got within sight of Malcolm’s body that things began to fall apart again.

  Porthos had caught sight of Archer, and immediately began yelling at the top of his lungs and lunging at the barrier that separated him from his beloved master. Malcolm would never know whether the Kintarra thought he was warning them, or just thought that he had provided them with a good opening—either way, they chose that moment to open fire.

  Luckily, Malcolm had been walking at that point, and they seemed to be concentrating on him, which gave his crewmates time to find some cover, minimal though it was in the menagerie. Malcolm, noticing that the Kintarra were ignoring the others completely, remembered Archer’s puppet theory, put two and two together, and played a hunch. Praying his crewmates wo
uld understand, he took off deeper into the menagerie—and was rewarded by both Kintarra following him.

  A blast that destroyed a section of wall over his shoulder brought his attention back to the present. These shots were obviously not meant to stun…Malcolm wasn’t sure why the Kintarra wanted to kill him, nor did he care—but he had had just about enough. Okay, he gritted silently to himself. You want to play? Let’s play. Darting around a corner, he skidded to a stop under a low-hanging bench and waited, motionless.

  Moments later the two lizards rounded the corner and stopped, glancing about. The tangerine one hissed something in its own language and plunged deeper into the menagerie, leaving Malcolm crouched behind the smaller, turquoise one. He contemplated several courses of action before settling on finding out just how similar to lizards the Kintarra really were.

  Apparently very similar—when he sank his tiny fangs into the turquoise tail in front of him and jerked hard, the tall alien was thrown completely off balance…and fell backward into the bench Malcolm was still crouching under…and shrieked in pain as the long turquoise tail separated from its body, sending Malcolm tumbling.

  Unfortunately, its mate’s screams attracted the tangerine Kintarran, who came barreling back down the path. Malcolm knew when to cut his losses; he ran, as fast as his four legs would carry him, back toward his shipmates, hoping desperately that they would have some sort of plan. Fortunately, they hadn’t been idle in his brief absence.

  “Malcolm!” Hoshi cried, waving from the path in front of him. He wanted to growl at her to get out of the way…when she did just that—leaving an open doorway behind her. Malcolm recognized the now-empty cage that had previously held his own body, calculated his position, and slowed down just enough to let the outraged Kintarran behind him get close enough to make a grab at him…just as he ducked through the doorway.

  He immediately hit the brakes, paws scrabbling for purchase on the floor, and managed to somehow twist out of the lizard’s grasp. He launched himself desperately back at the doorway and was swept up into Archer’s arms as the alien threw itself at the door…and slammed into the barrier that T’Pol had reestablished an instant before.

  The four humans and the dog stood staring at the Kintarran, who was shrieking what Malcolm suspected were swear words in its own language at them; Porthos responded by yelling nonsensically. T’Pol’s face took on a slightly pained expression, and for once Malcolm could sympathize with her sensitive hearing.

  “Let’s go home,” Archer said, shaking his head. Malcolm sighed in relief.

  “And then T’Pol had to sedate Porthos because he kept trying to climb into the captain’s lap to lick his face—which would have been fine except for the fact that he was still in Malcolm’s body and Captain Archer was trying to pilot the shuttle.”

  Malcolm winced to himself as he paused outside the mess hall, listening to Hoshi tell Travis the unedited version of the story that no one outside of the command crew was allowed to hear. Ever. Travis hooted with laughter and Malcolm winced again as Trip’s voice joined in. He was never going to live this one down.

  On the other hand, it was a relief to hear Hoshi laughing. Apparently Porthos’s antics in Malcolm’s body had more than made up for the fact that he had accidentally been in her room while she undressed (even though he had sworn several times that he had not peeked). And at least he was back in his own body, none the worse for wear, he reflected before finally dredging up the courage to enter the mostly deserted mess hall.

  “Well, look what the dog dragged in,” Trip drawled as Malcolm joined the trio at a far table.

  “That’s cat,” he glowered, trying his “evil eye” on the grinning engineer.

  “Yeah, Commander, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Travis said gleefully. Malcolm turned his glare on the helmsman, who simply continued to look amused. Trip shook his head.

  “I will never understand how you managed to pull off that look as a dog—I mean, your nostrils even flared the same way!”

  “Well, you know what they say, Commander,” Hoshi put in smoothly. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Malcolm groaned and buried his face in his hands as the other three snickered.

  “Something wrong, Lieutenant?” T’Pol’s voice behind him made him lift his head. The Vulcan was standing with a steaming cup in one hand and a data padd in the other.

  “What are you working on this late at night?” Hoshi asked curiously.

  “I am finishing my report on the effects of the Kintarran weapon to send to Vulcan,” she explained. “This technology should be examined thoroughly by some of our experts.” Malcolm returned his face to his hands, wondering just how much worse this could get.

  “Are you going to include an in-depth study of Porthos’s actions in Malcolm’s body?” Trip asked interestedly. Malcolm’s head shot up. T’Pol stared somberly at the armory officer’s suddenly panicked face.

  “I will, Lieutenant, be quite…discreet in my report,” she assured him seriously. “Besides,” she added, quirking one eyebrow, “I have heard that it is always best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Malcolm felt his face flame as his crewmates burst into laughter. Oh yeah, he was never going to live this one down.

  Mother Nature’s Little

  Reminders

  A. Rhea King

  T’Pol, Archer, Trip, Phlox, and Hoshi raced across the open prairie through a downpour. They ran into the waiting shuttlepod, stopping once they were out of the rain. Trip stopped next to the open hatch and leaned against the hull as he caught his breath. They were all soaked to the bone and he considered jabbing Archer for not listening to him when he said the storm was coming fast. The five jumped when something thumped loudly against the shuttlepod hull.

  “What was that?” Hoshi asked.

  With a deafening roar the sky let loose golf-ball–sized hail.

  “Shut the hatch!” Archer yelled over the din.

  Trip reached out, grabbing the hatch handle. He started to pull it shut but stopped. He heard something beyond the pounding hail, rain, and wind. It was something that his mind was certain it knew; something his mind told him to fear.

  Trip looked up at the putrid green and black clouds overhead. His subconscious was trying desperately to recover a deep recessed memory.

  “Shut the hatch, Trip!” Archer repeated.

  “Ho—” Trip started to yell. The hail abruptly stopped the rest of her name.

  The rain and wind stopped and the planet held its breath, anxiously waiting for something. It made Trip’s stomach knot, because his mind knew what was going on, it just couldn’t find the alcove where the associated memory had been stored.

  “What?” Hoshi asked him.

  The memories suddenly broke free and with them surfaced terror. His breath caught.

  “Let’s gather the gear and head back,” Archer said.

  He remembered a small voice screaming, I have to get Rufus! He’s going to die! I have to get Rufus, Grandpa!

  Trip began to visibly tremble, but only Hoshi noticed. She laid a hand on his arm as a comforting gesture. In response, he looked at her, wide-eyed with terror.

  “Trip, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  The other three crew members looked at him.

  “It’s coming,” Trip whispered.

  “What is?”

  Trip heard it now: a low, distant rumble.

  We should lift off! Get the hell out of here! We—We’re out of time, Charles! We’re going to die! It’ll kill us! It won’t care! It doesn’t have feelings, it’s not sentient!

  The elements outside bombarded the land again. A piece of hail stung Trip’s arm and the physical pain brought his mind and body back into synch. He regained control of his paralyzing panic.

  Trip turned to the others. “We have to go to the gully. Come on.”

  He ran into the storm but stopped when he realized the others weren’t following. Trip ran back to the open hatch.

  “We have to go
!”

  “It’s hailing, Trip!” Archer argued.

  The roar was getting louder.

  “Cap’n—”

  “What’s that sound?” Phlox asked.

  Trip looked across the prairie and gaped. He grabbed Archer’s wrist, and at a run, yanked him out of the shuttle pod.

  “Come on, people!” Trip screamed, running toward the gulley.

  Archer tried to pull his arm away from Trip’s painful grip, but adrenaline had made Trip’s grip unbreakable. Behind them, the roar was growing to a deafening decibel level. Archer looked back and everything in the universe seemed to slow, except for the massive black funnel cloud that filled the horizon as it bore down on them. At the realization of what they were running from, Archer stopped fighting Trip.

  Trip came to a wide, steep-sided gully and let Archer go. He slipped and slid down the muddy embankment, spotting an opening on his way down. He ran to it, clawing at the dirt and rocks as he scuttled into the tiny space. Trip crawled into the far back and sat down. Archer was right behind him and sat down on Trip’s leg. T’Pol, Hoshi, and Phlox squeezed in around them.

  “That was…” Hoshi panted. “There was a…”

  “Tornado,” T’Pol finished dully.

  Trip closed his eyes. He clenched his hands into fists that were so tight that his fingernails cut into the skin on his palms. As the volume of the tornado increased, Trip’s trembling intensified.

  Through gritted teeth Trip muttered, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…”

  Confused by his actions—or rather, reactions—the other four looked at him. Something crashed loudly outside and Archer glanced away. Outside, the light had faded to dark gray. Trees flew past the cave, some hitting the ground and splintering. Archer’s communicator beeped. He reached into his arm pocket with a shaking hand and ripped it out.