McCoy bowed slightly toward the dais. For an absurd moment he wondered if he’d violated protocol by failing to curtsy.
Usaak scrutinized him, his incredulity clearly evident. “Surely this cannot be the same man who came among us two sunrises past.”
“This is indeed the same man, Subteer,” Wieland said.
The subteer and his aide paused long enough to exchange silent looks of astonishment—commingled, McCoy surmised, with no small amount of superstitious fear—before turning back to face their visitors.
Adopting the blandly neutral expression of a seasoned poker player, Usaak directed his dark gaze toward the younger of the two doctors. “Mak-Koy, I am gratified to see that you have survived your injuries.”
“Believe me, sir, I’m mighty pleased about it myself,” McCoy said.
“The lightningbeast’s mate gravely wounded our brother hunter Efeer,” Keer said. “What sorcery is at work here? How can a small, weak Earthman recover from injuries that may yet claim the life of one of our mightiest hunters and warriors?”
“We used no sorcery, Subteer Usaak,” Wieland said. “What you see is the healing power of medicine.” He touched the medikit on his hip for emphasis.
“Meh-di-sihn,” Usaak said haltingly, the word sounding unwieldy in his mouth.
McCoy knew that the landing party’s universal translators worked accurately only when equivalent words or ideas existed on both sides of any given linguistic divide. That fact brought him to an astonishing realization: This culture had never produced anything that even remotely resembled the healing arts.
“Meh-di-sihn,” repeated Usaak’s lieutenant. “Is this what you call this sorcery of yours that raises the dead?”
“I assure you, we have no such power,” Wieland said. He gestured toward McCoy. “However gravely injured this man may have seemed two days ago, he never crossed over into death. If he had, he wouldn’t be standing before you now.”
“Yet you wield the power of gods,” Usaak said. “One of our hunting scouts has borne witness to this personally.”
McCoy exchanged a quick glance with Wieland; he saw his own surprise mirrored on the older man’s face. Had one of the locals seen the crisscrossing laser beams that had saved him from the lightningbeast?
The subteer held one of his massive hands out flat before his aide. The other man very gingerly laid one of the landing party’s hand lasers upon it.
McCoy suddenly understood why the landing party was carrying so little equipment: The local powers that be had confiscated their weapons.
“Yet you can hurl lightning more powerful even than the lightningbeast’s rage,” Usaak said. “Our scout also says that he saw all of you appear out of thin air.”
“It might look like that from your perspective,” Wieland said, as the science specialists and security officers shifted uncomfortably. “But I assure you, we are merely men, just as you are. The weapons we carry are nothing more than refined versions of the blades and spears you use in the hunt.”
“Our blades and spears do not carry power fit to rival that of the gods themselves,” Keer said. Awe and outrage commingled in his voice and manner.
This isn’t good at all, McCoy thought. The Prime Directive clearly prohibited exposing prewarp civilizations, like this one, to transporters, lasers, and most other advanced technologies.
But such considerations were outside his purview. McCoy was concerned only with the medical aspects of the mission. His thoughts flashed to the hunter who had spent the last two days languishing in the Tent of Dying.
And he saw an opportunity to make a difference.
“Subteer Usaak,” McCoy said, “we can’t hurl lightning bolts or raise the dead. But sometimes we can chase death away. I stand before you as proof.”
“More sorcery,” Keer growled.
“Not sorcery.” McCoy locked eyes with Usaak. “Medicine, given to you freely. Will you let me use it in your Tent of Dying? Will you let me try to chase death away from Efeer?”
“Subteer Usaak has already made his decision regarding your Meh-di-sihn,” Keer said, his tone growing brittle with impatience. “Why do you persist in this matter?”
“Because Efeer isn’t dead . . . yet,” McCoy said. “There’s still time to save a valuable member of your tribe.”
And because that’s what doctors do.
McCoy watched as Usaak stared pensively into the flames of the brazier. He hoped it meant that the subteer was reassessing his options—preferably one that didn’t involve confiscating the medikits as he had the rest of the landing party’s equipment.
“Only the strong should survive,” Keer hissed into his leader’s ear. “Such is the will of Skyfather Gaar. Only He may decide the fate of those who lodge in the Tent of Dying. To allow this . . . Meh-di-sihn to interfere would be to defy the will of both Skyfather Gaar and Baan, His only son.”
“Are your gods not powerful enough to enforce their will no matter what we do?” McCoy asked.
He ignored Wieland’s disapproving scowl, though he understood his mentor’s wordless criticism. McCoy had directly challenged the authority of the local gods, not to mention the faith of the adherents of those gods.
After a seeming eternity, Usaak looked up from the fire. He met McCoy’s gaze directly.
“Gaar’s will shall be made manifest, regardless of what others may do,” Usaak said with a shrug of his massive shoulders. “Go ahead then. Try your Meh-di-sihn on Efeer.”
Six
McCoy entered the Tent of Dying just ahead of Doctor Wieland. He found the semidarkened, enclosed space significantly less spacious than the one in which he had awakened. It had room for little other than the single large rectangular platform that dominated its center. McCoy saw that Naheer stood beside the platform, where he maintained a solitary vigil.
An adult male Capellan, decked out in a warrior’s fringed tunic, fur leggings, and cloak—all of which showed evidence of burn damage consistent with a high-voltage electrical discharge—lay on his back atop the sturdy wooden structure. The man’s heavily muscled arms were crossed over his bloodied chest, like the corpse of an ancient Viking raider laid out on a funeral pyre, patiently awaiting his fiery passage to Valhalla. His right hand clutched the haft of a round-handled blade whose three razor-sharp sides gleamed balefully in the low light of a nearby brazier.
The motionless warrior showed no obvious sign of life whatsoever.
“Damn it. I think we may be too late,” McCoy said, dispirited. Wieland moved to the side of the bier opposite from Naheer and began checking the body for vital signs.
Deciding that his duty lay with the living, McCoy stepped quietly toward Naheer. The boy started slightly when McCoy drew close, as though he’d been lost in thought or meditating.
“I wish we’d been allowed in here sooner, Naheer,” McCoy said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Naheer smiled. “But you are here now, Mak-Koy. It is an answer to my many prayers for Skyfather Gaar’s mercy. I have refreshed my offerings of quickblossoms three times just today to implore Skyfather Gaar to soften Subteer Usaak’s heart.”
The boy’s faith felt like a heavy iron chain wrapped around McCoy’s neck, weighing him down. Like Usaak, Naheer obviously credited the landing party’s doctors with supernatural abilities.
“I’m sorry, Naheer,” McCoy said. “I’m afraid your uncle is beyond help now.”
Naheer blinked in confusion. “But you strangers wield the power of life itself. Mak-Koy, everyone who has seen you two days ago, and then again today, knows this to be true.”
“Leonard, come take a look at this,” Wieland said, adopting the no-nonsense demeanor of a disciplined trauma surgeon.
McCoy began to scrutinize the body on the bier. Though Naheer’s uncle seemed no less dead than he had before, McCoy noticed something new: A dark, orchidlike flower lay on the man’s abdomen—no doubt one of Naheer’s quickblossoms.
“I have spent most of the past two days right her
e, at my uncle’s side,” Naheer said. “To see if Skyfather Gaar has yet decided whether he is to live or to die.”
“I think your god has already made up His mind,” McCoy said quietly. “Naheer, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“I do not understand,” Naheer said.
Cursing the circumstances that had cheated him out of any opportunity even to try saving this man, McCoy steeled himself to say what had to be said—
—until he noticed with a start that the flower on the dead man’s belly was moving, though only very slightly and sluggishly. A moment later he realized why: The prostrate warrior’s chest was rising and falling, passing its slow, marginal movement along to the flower.
The man on the catafalque was breathing, though only barely.
“Doctor, I think this man is still alive,” Wieland said with a grin.
McCoy nodded, relieved. “He’s just slowed his metabolism so much that we nearly wrote him off as dead.”
“Perhaps it’s like the healing trance Vulcans put themselves in after they’ve suffered an intense trauma.”
He had to concede it was a reasonable explanation. Activating his medical tricorder, he said, “Well, we’ve got work to do.”
Wieland opened up his medikit. “We have Subteer Usaak’s blessing,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.”
Seven
Stardate 721.1 (August 19, 2254)
Sword blades clattered and echoed in the distance while the aroma of roasting meat wafted across the designated festival area at the camp’s outskirts. Flames leapt from several broad fire pits and the late afternoon breeze bent the resulting plumes of woodsmoke toward the sinking twin suns.
Basking in the warmth of one of the fire pits, McCoy stood between Lieutenants Girard and Plait. Science Officer Plait inhaled deeply, beaming with anticipatory pleasure as he raised a tankard that all but overflowed with one of the local ales.
“Our hosts might not be the warmest people in the galaxy,” he said, “but they sure seem to know how to throw a feast.”
“Let’s hope the other out-of-town guests feel the same way,” Girard said. He made a sour face as he batted a stray tendril of smoke away from his face.
McCoy watched as the festival area—a wind-scoured, granite surface dominated by a wide natural amphitheater that radiated out of the base of a steep, rocky escarpment—was rapidly filling up with people he’d never seen before inside Subteer Usaak’s encampment. Doctor Wieland, Lieutenant Commander Aylesworth, and Lieutenant Shellenbarger were circulating through the gathering crowd, carefully minding the Capellans’ aversion to the shaking of hands. McCoy spotted young Naheer in the gathering scrum, not far from his dour-faced uncle Efeer, who’d made a nearly complete recovery from the lightningbeast attack. Like Efeer, the boy was wearing his Sunday-best cape, which he showed off proudly.
McCoy scanned the rest of the still-growing crowd. Judging by the bright colors and complex stitching of the fur-draped raiment of most of the native guests, he had them figured for VIPs who hailed from some of the more influential nearby tribes. In the presence of so many of these large, stony-faced people, McCoy felt intimidated, but also reasonably sure that none of them were bent on challenging Usaak’s authority. In obvious deference to the subteer’s will, the newcomers displayed no weapons. Regardless, there was no polite way to eliminate entirely the possibility that somebody had secreted a dagger or a short sword into the folds of a cloak, or had stashed a kligat—one of those three-bladed throwing knives of the kind Efeer had clutched during his time in the Tent of Dying—inside a boot.
Coughing, the geologist wrinkled his nose as he waved away another small cloud of invading woodsmoke. “Ugh. That does it, Doc. Next time I get some extended shore leave, I’m going to take it on Vulcan. I know I won’t have to deal with any carnivores there.”
McCoy could sympathize. Like some of his colleagues, Girard had begun this mission all but unable to remember the last time he’d eaten anything that hadn’t come from a food slot in the Yegorov’s galley. The sight and smell of large animal carcasses being slowly flame-roasted was utterly alien to the young geologist’s everyday experience.
“Since we’re guests of this planet’s dominant carnivores, Lieutenant,” the doctor said, “let’s not go out of our way to offend them by complaining.”
Plait nodded. “Good point, Doc. For all we know, the Capellans see vegetarianism and veganism the same way the Vulcans see the practice of eating meat.”
“Is it really that easy to violate these people’s taboos?” Girard looked surprised.
“Doctor Wieland seems to think so,” Plait said. “Haven’t you kept up with that staff etiquette manual he’s been compiling over the past few weeks?”
Girard scoffed gently. “That would be a full-time job in itself. I’ve been mapping this planet’s extensive topaline reserves. I’d rather put my trust in common sense and let the soft-science types fret about the correct handling of the pickle forks.”
McCoy coughed to suppress a laugh. He didn’t want to admit it in front of senior officers, but over the past week or so he too had fallen a bit behind in reading Wieland’s cultural protocol updates.
“To common sense,” Plait said. After a brief pause to take another quaff from his tankard, he added, “Speaking of which, Mohammed, maybe you shouldn’t be so hasty about planning your next shore leave. What would you do if you suddenly found yourself craving Texas-style barbecue while you’re on Vulcan? You’d suddenly discover that you’re over sixteen light-years too far south.”
“Touché,” Girard said.
Night had begun to fall in earnest, and warriors were lighting strategically placed braziers. The festival area was already beginning to bask in a warm, golden-orange glow.
The three men fell into a companionable silence, which allowed McCoy to focus his attention on the massive animal that was roasting over the nearest fire pit. It revolved on a spit, turning slowly over the flames, the metronomic precision of its motion regulated by a pair of thick-thewed, soot-dusted warriors who seemed utterly absorbed in their task. The sheer size and heft of the beast would have been impressive even in light of the typical Capellan’s larger-than-human proportions. But bagging this creature, whose considerable mass belied its sleek, leonine shape, must have been a very risky endeavor. The half dozen or so sharp spikes that lined the creature’s backbone might have given pause to even the largest and strongest of Usaak’s warrior-hunters.
Despite the sear-marks that covered its flesh and its lack of fur and skin, McCoy noticed the animal’s close resemblance to the creature that had jumped him during the landing party’s fateful first day on the planet’s surface.
Lightningbeast, I presume, he thought. And they’re cooking up at least three of ’em at once. Usaak’s really pulling out all the stops tonight.
Looking beyond the fire pit, McCoy watched as still more people filed into the festival area. Rank upon rank of majestic, extraordinarily proportioned Capellans, their ages spanning a bell curve that ran all the way from early adolescence to late middle age, were arranging themselves in orderly semicircles as they stood around the fire pit closest to McCoy and his comrades. At least sixty percent of the several dozen new arrivals were female—young women whose attractiveness ranged from “very” to “extremely,” at least in McCoy’s estimation.
Because of the patriarchal nature of Capellan culture—the landing party members had been selected very deliberately so as not to offend that particular native sensibility—none of the Starfleet men present had glimpsed such a large assemblage of native women since they’d left the Yegorov.
The orderly, almost pageant-like procession of brightly colored tunics and furs, heavy war boots, and long, diaphanous gowns must have represented every clan in the valley, and perhaps even points far beyond. All the while, a dozen or so of Usaak’s hunter-warriors continued sparring in the background, working in disciplined pairs in the scrub-covered vale about one hundred m
eters past the nearest fire pit. Save for the loud staccato clashing of their swords and knives and the THUNKs their hard-hurled kligats made against the tree trunks, the blade wielders maintained a grim, purposeful silence as they worked their way through a balletically complex series of combat maneuvers.
This display was no doubt intended, at least in part, to remind everyone of Usaak’s authority and power in this particular region of the continent. All this saber-rattling and swordplay, McCoy thought. It certainly explains why so few of these people ever make it to a ripe old age.
“Have you noticed all the women, Doc?” Plait said quietly.
“I’m a doctor, not a monk,” McCoy said, grinning. “Of course I noticed.”
Unfortunately, the presence of so many attractive young women—the preponderance of whom appeared to be somewhere in their early to middle twenties—only served to remind the doctor of the two particular females from whom he had become so painfully alienated.
Jocelyn, he thought, suddenly overcome by a sense of deep desolation. And Joanna.
But even now McCoy still clung to the hope of patching things up with his wife and daughter. All he needed was to restore his self-confidence. And though the Capellan tribesmen still remained suspicious of the medical arts he and Wieland offered, the few powders and potions the Canyonfolk had accepted so far—a liquid hay-fever remedy here, a powdered hangover cure there—McCoy believed that his work on this planet was starting to give him just the boost he needed, psychologically speaking.
“Don’t the Capellan men usually keep their women out of sight?” Girard said, interrupting the doctor’s unwonted reverie.
“ ‘In the rear, with the gear,’ as Lieutenant Shellenbarger would say,” McCoy said with a nod. “Understandable, especially in a patriarchal society like this one.”
“But they’ve obviously made an exception tonight,” Girard said. “What’s the occasion?”
Plait frowned at the geologist. “Maybe you should spend a little less time obsessing over your topaline maps and a little more keeping up with the briefings. Subteer Usaak is not only the Canyonfolk Tribe’s highest-ranking leader, he’s also its most eligible bachelor. If you’re this high on the Capellan social ladder, this is how you get a courtship off the ground.”
Star Trek: The Original Series: Seasons of Light and Darkness Page 4
