The Hand of Kahless

by John M. Ford

  There were two days of “opening ceremonies,” during which the delegates showed short dull tapes of their planets and held long dull parties at which everyone pretended to be drunker than they actually were, presumably hoping to catch carelessly dropped information. Krenn did discover that Earth made some excellent black ales, and whenever an “important secret” was tossed in his direction he dutifully caught it, as he was meant to.

  After the opening came meetings with political representatives and military ones—Krenn was startled to discover how different the two sorts were, even when they represented the same population. Akhil reported that the scientists were just as isolated from their “colleagues” in the other branches.

  Each meeting took half an Earthly hour to begin, with recitations of each present delegate’s credentials for being present, invocations to three Federation religions chosen randomly, and a song. Krenn was certain that he was misunderstanding the anthem’s lyrics. At least, he hoped he was.

  The shape of the meeting table was different for every session: now round, now polyhedral, now scalloped, now long and narrow…“Part of the system,” Dr. Tagore said. “Used to be, you could hold up a conference for weeks over the shape of the table.”

  No one shot anyone else, at least while Krenn was present.

  For all the protocols, the meetings did not seem to be about much of anything. Trade was mentioned, but not what might be traded. Peace was a constant topic (“…but there is no peace,” Emanuel Tagore said once, and silenced the room, and departed it with a small strange smile). It was suggested that a true Neutral Zone in space be established. They could not, Krenn thought with distasteful irony, have known just how empty a thought that was.

  There seemed to be a huge game going on, with dozens of pieces on an indeterminable number of sides, and most of the board obscured. Krenn did not deny the komerex zha, that was not his strategy, but the komerex zha was for something. Each night, after the long ritual of ending the day’s discussion and an aimless social function, Krenn returned to his hotel room and sank into a warm bath…the Humans did know how to build a bath…and wondered what any of it was for.

  And if perhaps Maxwell Grandisson III was not such a fool after all.

  During the sixth day, or perhaps it was the seventh—Krenn was losing track—a diplomat offered an elaborate plan of exchanging prisoners across the boundary—he kept saying Neutral Zone, of course; Krenn had forgotten whether that plan was a precondition of this plan—anyhow, at the recitation of the twenty-sixth Point Governing the Treatment of Federation Prisoners, Krenn stood up from the table, excused himself in Fed-Standard, said in klingonaase that he must have time to think, and used all he knew of the Kinshaya language to curse the Humans and their riding animals.

  Krenn sat down in a small lounge, expelling the Human servitors and xenophysician sent after him.

  Dr. Tagore came in. “The one is well?” he said, then tucked his hands inside his gown and sat a polite distance away. He said, “The one asks the wrong question.”

  “Does the one know what will happen,” Krenn said, feeling rage tearing at him, “if this proposal is set before the Imperial Council? Orion pirates take hostages for ransom. Kuve in desperation take hostages for their lives. And now the Federation shows us more rules than a Vulcan would make, about selling hostages! I will tell you what the Klingon law of hostages is: A dead thing is without value.”

  Dr. Tagore said, “Klingons do take prizes. For the Year Games, and the Thought Masters of medicine.”

  “Of course,” Krenn said. “How else to supply them?”

  “And prizes have a value.”

  “This need not be said.” Krenn was puzzled.

  “Then might not the sale of prizes be arranged? I do not speak of a universal rule, but only a case for discussion. Either side might refuse the trade, but that is the nature of trade. And the one taken as prize might refuse to be part of a sale…or might refuse to be taken.”

  Krenn had an unsettling thought. “Are…many Klingons taken?” He thought about the Human fondness for stunning weapons. And he knew that the Federation kept its criminals in cages, for years, or their lives. The idea made him slightly sick.

  “There are not many,” Dr. Tagore said. “But it is a common belief that the Klingons take no living prizes at all.”

  “But you know this is not true—you just said—”

  “I know,” Dr. Tagore said. “A very few know. If more than a very few were to know, then it would not be this one going to Klinzhai, but a thousand warships. And if you were to see the pain of those we take, and keep in the places without memory…”

  Dr. Tagore paused, hands to his eyes. Krenn could not react: the little Human seemed huge before him. The Ambassador uncovered his face, and began to speak again, and while his voice was like no Commander’s Krenn had ever heard, still it held him tight.

  “It is not the one with his thousand rules who must speak to the Imperial Council, but I, and I must have the right thing to tell them, for while too many are dying for fear’s sake right now, it is nothing compared to those who will die if those fears take their true shape, and if the naked stars see what we have done to one another.”

  A clear fluid was running from Dr. Tagore’s eyes. Tears, Krenn thought; he vaguely recalled that pain brought them. The Human wiped the fluid away with his sleeve; his gaze did not leave Krenn.

  Krenn said, “It is that you do not want the war. You do not want it, even if your people should be certain of the victory. You do not want the war as a thing.”

  “Yes,” the Human said, and his voice was thick with the fluid but still very strong. “I do not want it, as a thing. And if it comes, I will have no part of it, except to save what peace I may.”

  Krenn stared. The other diplomats, and they had been many, made clear that the war stood behind their plans, as a cruiser squadron escorts a convoy of freighters. But this one denied that, and this was the one who went to Klinzhai.

  Why would the Federation send one who cared not enough to fight for it?

  Unless, Krenn thought, this was the trapped move in the game. Krenn remembered Admiral Kezhke’s strange advice: You must bring him alive…no matter what you are told.

  This was such a little Human, to start a war of a thousand years: but only a little antimatter started a great reaction.

  “I don’t…understand,” Krenn said finally.

  Dr. Tagore sat down, his eyes no longer running, but red-colored. “That’s all right,” he said. “There’s still a little time.”

  The only good thing about the Embassy reception, Krenn thought, was that it was not also a dinner. Those present were free to wander around a large building, starting or avoiding conversations as desired.

  It was now common knowledge that the two Klingons understood the Federation language without translators, and discussions tended to sputter and shift as Krenn approached. This made little sense to him. Not only did half the beings present carry translating machines (or have servitors to carry them) but Krenn could not even hear very well. Akhil said it was the thinness of the air.

  The air seemed thick enough to Krenn, but not pleasantly so. The Federation beings preferred talking around him than to him, but when he was asked questions, they were the same. Yes, he had been a privateer. No, he had never taken Federation prizes. Yes, he had killed with his hands. And his teeth. Krenn thought he should have a tape recorded.

  In one of the larger rooms, the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth stood near a fireplace, speaking to a moderately large circle of guests of a dozen miscellaneous races. A Human female, even-featured and light-haired, stood near the Ambassador: Krenn recalled from the first day’s shock wave of introductions that she was the Vulcan’s sole consort. Interested, Krenn went that way, not quite joining the group; no one turned to notice him as the tall Vulcan talked on.

  Krenn could not understand any complete sentence of the lecture. The Ambassador’s Federation Standard was Vulcan-flawless, of co
urse, but there was no machine program that could make a Vulcan’s technical conversation intelligible. Krenn supposed the other listeners must all be Thought Masters, or one of the equivalent Federation degrees. Or perhaps they had other reasons for standing in the barrage of words.

  Krenn watched the Human female. There seemed to be a tightness in her expression; if it was humor, it was not any sort he had seen. It looked more like distress, but at what? Krenn? No, she was not looking at him. She was not, Krenn saw, looking at anything.

  A few of the Vulcan’s words registered on Krenn: something about chromosomes and interspacing.

  Krenn withdrew, and wandered from room to room until he found Akhil, who was amusing himself with an electronic pattern-matching toy.

  “Where did you get that?” Krenn said.

  “There’s a games room upstairs. Want to try this? It helps if you drink something strong.”

  “How does that help?”

  “You don’t mind losing. Here.”

  “Not now. Come with me. I need a Specialist to listen to something.”

  They went back to watch the Vulcan Ambassador, and listened until the two Klingons together began to attract the attention Krenn alone had avoided.

  “What was he talking about?” Krenn asked Akhil.

  “I’m an astronomer, not a geneticist.” There was a hesitation in his voice.

  “That still tells me more than I knew. What was he talking about, even generally?”

  “Oh, I know more than generally. He’s discussing genetic fusion. Don’t you remember, when we were meeting half the Federation, that son of theirs—seven or eight years old? He’s a fusion, and the Ambassador was describing the process.”

  “With his consort present?” Krenn said, astonished and disgusted.

  “What? Was she there?” Akhil said, distracted. “He said something really interesting, in with all the technical detail.”

  Krenn said, carefully, “Interesting?” He had heard Akhil call off incoming fire as if it concerned him not at all; he had heard the Exec tear a slacking junior officer into raw protein with his voice. But only very rarely had he heard Akhil angry. It was not a loud effect. The sharpest knives are the quietest. And ’Khil was angry now.

  “He was saying that the fusion techniques were ‘only recently perfected by Vulcan scientists.’ Recently perfected? If that gets back to the Imperial Institutes of Research, there are going to be some tharavul headed back to Vulcan, Warp 4. Without a ship around them.”

  “How can he say that? If he lies—” Krenn thought that, if it should be found that a Vulcan could lie, the tharavul would soon be more than just deaf telepathically.

  “Lies?” Akhil said, and stopped short; the anger slipped out of his voice. “No. He doesn’t lie. He reports scientific results.” Akhil laughed. “Scientists know some tricks Imperial Intelligence will never master.”

  Krenn asked Akhil the way to the Embassy game room, and they separated again. Krenn climbed a curving white staircase, carpeted in black velvet with tiny crystal stars, and turned down the corridor Akhil had indicated. He passed a door, and despite that it was closed and his hearing diminished, he could clearly hear a Human voice within, saying, “…not whether Tagore’s a competent negotiator, we’re not even that far along in the argument. First I want to know if the bastard’s sane.”

  There was an unintelligible reply.

  “I’ll grant you that…volunteering for this should be grounds for confinement. But you know his record…all right, sure, but would you send Gandhi to argue Hitler out of…How do we know he won’t?”

  The rest was lost in a sound of plumbing. Krenn moved on to the room he wanted.

  It was dim within, pleasantly so after the Earth-level lighting of the main rooms. Spotlights shone on tables set for several different games; Krenn examined the unfamiliar ones, and sat down at a chessboard with pieces lathe-turned from bright and dark metal.

  “Would you wish an opponent, sir?” said a voice behind Krenn. He turned, hand dropping to his weapon. There was a small being a few meters from him, in a spotlit alcove of the room; it had been reading a book. It came forward.

  It was only a child, Krenn saw at once. The hair was cut in the Vulcan style, and the ears were unmistakable.

  “My parents are downstairs,” the young Vulcan said. “I did not wish to be an annoyance. I will leave.”

  This must be the Ambassador’s son, Krenn thought, the fusion. “You do not annoy me,” he said, as the boy moved toward the door. “And I would welcome a chance to play this game.”

  Krenn won the chess game, but he did not win it easily. “A pleasant game,” he said. “My compliments to a worthy opponent.”

  The child nodded.

  Krenn said, “That is a phrase we use at the conclusion of our game, klin zha. In my language it is ‘Zha riest’n, teskas tal’tai-kleon.’ ”

  “Zha riest’n,” the boy said, carefully copying Krenn’s pronunciation, “teskas tal…la…”

  “Tal’tai-kleon.”

  “Tal’tai-kleon.”

  “Kai,” Krenn said, and laughed.

  “Are you the Klingon Captain, sir, or the Science officer?”

  “I am the Captain…of the cruiser Fencer,” Krenn said. He had been about to give his full name and honorific, but it had suddenly seemed unnecessary. Rather silly. And he was tired of introductions. “Have you ever thought of being a starship Captain?”

  The boy’s lips compressed. Then he said, “I plan to be a scientist. But perhaps I will join the Starfleet.”

  “The sciences are a good path. I’m sorry my Specialist isn’t here to talk to you.”

  “No insult was meant, sir—”

  “None was assumed.”

  “There will be a logical choice.”

  “Sometimes there is,” Krenn said. “Another game?”

  They talked as they played. It did not affect the boy’s play, but Krenn let a bishop get away from him, and lost. The boy gave him the whole klingonaase phrase, perfectly accented.

  “Sa tel’ren?” Krenn said.

  “What does that mean, Captain sir?”

  “Two out of three.”

  Krenn wondered what Vulcan children said to a fusion in their midst. The two races were similar to start with, and this one’s physical characteristics leaned to the Vulcan. The ears especially. Krenn tried to think what would have happened, in his House Gensa, to one with Vulcan ears. He seemed to feel the blood on his fingers. Would it be green, he wondered.

  The boy moved a knight, taking one of Krenn’s rooks. He waited.

  Krenn slid a pawn forward.

  “Given the established balance of our skills, Captain, and other factors being equal, you cannot defeat me with the odds of a rook. It would be logical for you to resign.”

  “Klingons do not resign,” Krenn said. Seven or eight years old, Akhil had said. Krenn had killed his first intelligent being when he was this one’s age. A Human starship crewman, a prize, in the Year Games.

  “The sequence of moves is predictable, and barring suboptimal strategies, inevitable. The time consumed—”

  “If I go to the Black Fleet, what matter that I go a little slowly?” Krenn thought of the Human, who had shouted challenge into Krenn’s face even as he died. It was an honorable death, and a glorious kill.

  “What is the Black Fleet?” the Vulcan asked.

  Krenn was pulled back from his memory. “One who serves his ship well, in the life we see, will serve on a ship of the Fleet when this life ends.” Krenn’s Federation vocabulary was not right for this; the words would not fit together as Dr. Tagore could make them to fit. “In the Fleet there is the death that is not death, because not the end; there is the enemy to be killed a thousand times, and each time return; and there is the laughter.”

  “Laughter?” the boy said. “And enemies?” His eyes were calm, and yet almost painfully intense to Krenn, who struggled to make the languages meet, and wondered why he so badly needed
to.

  “Fed, Rom…others,” Krenn said. “Without kleoni, what would be the purpose?”

  “My mother says that the spirit is eternal,” the boy said. “My father says this is true in a purely figurative sense, as the wisdom of Surak is not forgotten, though Surak is become unstructured.”

  “We have one who is not forgotten,” Krenn said. “His name was Kahless. When his ship was dying, he had his hand bound to his Chair, that no one could say he left it, or that another had been in the Chair at the ship’s death. Then all his crew could escape without suspicion, because Kahless had taken on all the ship’s destiny.

  “Kahlesste kaase, we say. Kahless’s hand.”

  “This would seem a supremely logical act.”

  “Logical?” Krenn said, and then he understood. The boy was raised in his father’s culture. It was the highest praise he knew. “I think you are right,” Krenn said. “I had not perceived the logic of the situation.”

  “My father says that this is his task: to communicate logic by example.”

  Is that why you were caused to exist? Krenn was thinking. As an example? He could see that the boy was proud of what he had just done—communicated to a Klingon! Was that not the victory? And yet he could not shout it. Vulcans did not shout.

  “My mother is a teacher,” the boy said. “She also communicates. My parents are—” He looked away.

  “My mother,” Krenn said, “was not of my father’s race.”

  The boy turned his eyes on Krenn once more. It could not be called a stare, it was absolutely polite, but it did pierce, and the arched eyebrows cut.

  “It is a custom on Earth,” the Vulcan said, “on concluding a chess game, to shake hands.”

  Krenn’s liver pinched. That was not a Vulcan custom, he knew well enough. Touching a Vulcan’s hand opened the path for the touch of their minds. And that touch could pull out thoughts that the agonizer or the Examiner’s tools could never reach. It was said by some that it could burn the brain; Krenn did not believe this, but…

  The touch, Krenn thought, the touch. And he raised his right hand, slowly held it out over the chessboard, palm up.