Dwellers in the Crucible

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  "You frequently understand more than you are willing to acknowledge," T'Shael said with a suggestion of warmth.

  Whether she meant this as a compliment or not, Cleante accepted it as such. She would need it to steel her for whatever T'Shael had in mind.

  They had gone into the center of the city with a group from the settlement, students and instructors of many races, to browse among the shops and make a few small purchases, later to attend a performance by a visiting poet. Cleante found herself amazed as always by the quiet order of Vulcan crowds.

  No one hurried, no one would presume to push or jostle another. Children walked with the solemnity of their elders, neither running nor frolicking in the marketplace, and of course making no extraneous noise. Vehicles passed in whispers along the traffic streets and the overhead telpher networks, and the cries of birds could be distinguished in the most densely populated areas. Soft conversation, accented by the plash of fountains and the clack of ubiquitous windchimes, was the only extant sound.

  Cleante had to suppress a perverse desire to rend the soft, dry air with a very human shout, quell the urge to start a useless argument like a Tellarite. She would not embarrass her Vulcan companions, but there was something almost too perfect, too orderly here that her human spontaneity longed to disrupt.

  T'Shael had something else in mind, some other particularly Vulcan thing, some object lesson in the concept of Mastery of the Unavoidable for her unschooled human companion.

  "Put simply," T'Shael said, "it is to suppress overt reaction to that which one cannot prevent or remedy. Performed often enough, the exercise becomes internalized. One controls not only one's reactions, but the thoughts which might evoke those reactions. An example: If one observes from a mountaintop as a hovercraft crashes into the center of a city, killing many, one is well aware that one had not the means to prevent such an occurrence. What is gained, therefore, by averting one's eyes against the sight, or giving way to rage or horror? If one is alone, one simply yields to her own weakness in so doing, but if one is accompanied, what right has she to add to her companion's discomfort by making a display of her own?"

  "Maybe just letting off a little steam," Cleante suggested. "Avoiding an ulcer. I don't agree with you."

  "That is of course your privilege."

  "But what if you're not on the mountaintop, but right in the thick of the accident?"

  "Then one is obligated to offer service if one is qualified, or to get out of the way if one is not. Still, one is not entitled to an overt display of emotion, which can only disturb others and impede rescue."

  "But what if you can't suppress your emotions just like that? What if it's so horrible—"

  Cleante's voice had risen above the whisper with which they'd begun this debate. The Vulcans around them in the streets did not so much look at her as not look at her, as if to imply that where humans were concerned one made allowances. Cleante found her temper growing short.

  "What if your best friend were in the hovercraft, or in the crowd below?"

  "That adds another level of meaning, which requires that Mastery be even more complete," T'Shael replied, masking an uneasiness. "Perhaps it would be better if you did not accompany me."

  Cleante's eyes flashed; she recognized a challenge when she heard one.

  "Try and stop me!"

  "I do not offer this lightly," T'Shael cautioned her. "The privacy and the feelings of others are at stake here."

  Cleante had never heard the word "feelings" from her instructor's lips. If she had not been intrigued before …

  "I'm coming with you!" she said stubbornly. "It took your species thousands of years to develop this Mastery of the Unavoidable technique. Let's see what one mere human can accomplish in a single afternoon."

  "If you wish it," T'Shael said, putting the onus directly on Cleante's shoulders, and went to speak to the leader of the group from the settlement.

  "You would take her to the Enclave of the Faceless Ones?" he asked in Vulcan and with no little intensity when she told him. He gave her a penetrating look. It was known how much time this one spent in the company of the Terran. "She who has studied with a Master should not presume to the place of a Master."

  "That was never my intent, Sekal," T'Shael said levelly. "We will return in time to honor the poet. The rest is my affair."

  Surprised at her own uncharacteristic boldness, T'Shael took her market basket filled with purchases and departed. Cleante hurried to keep up with her.

  Human followed Vulcan out of the marketplace and into a residential district. Cleante noticed almost immediately that the pedestrian streets in this quarter were absolutely deserted. After several blocks, T'Shael turned into a courtyard and stopped at a certain garden gate, ornately carved in the Vulcan fashion, but without the characteristic speaking-port through which the visitor announced her presence. In its place was a kind of touch-sensitive plate to which T'Shael put her hand in the Vulcan ta'al. Within seconds the gate swung open.

  "There is a simpler phrase for the concept," T'Shael said softly as they walked the winding path to the dwelling. "It is Kaiidth!, meaning 'What is, is.' When one accepts what cannot be changed, one begins to think like a Vulcan."

  Cleante nodded without speaking. This would be another of T'Shael's object lessons in how impossible it was for a human, or at least for this human, to think like a Vulcan. What horror lay waiting in the house beyond to challenge her humanness? Cleante wondered. She tried to keep up with her Vulcan companion, tried to lock her facial muscles into an expression as devoid of expression as T'Shael's, but her palms were sweating and she would have given anything to be back in the marketplace with the others. She would never create a scene again, she promised, if only—

  The door of the dwelling opened to reveal one of the beings known as the Faceless Ones. Cleante gasped.

  "Some years ago a comet passed too close to their world," T'Shael explained imperturbably. They had almost reached the portico of the dwelling where the being waited for them, yet she did not slacken her pace. "Most died. Those who survived are as this one, bereft of sight and speech and hearing, all vestiges of facial features burned away."

  "Can't anything be done for them?" Cleante managed to choke out.

  "Except for sight, much of the damage might be surgically repaired, but their religious taboo forbids it," T'Shael answered. She did not have to look at Cleante to know what effect this was having upon her. She persisted. "They have taken refuge on Vulcan, where none is repulsed by their appearance. Of this family, several were known to my maternal parent, who was among those instrumental in their rescue."

  She approached the being on the portico almost reverently, and he reached up to touch her face in recognition. He took T'Shael's hand. Cleante imagined her being brought here as a child in the company of her mother, and growing up with the images of these faceless faces always before her. T'Shael signed something into the palm of his hand, and brought it to Cleante's face by way of introduction.

  Cleante did not know how much of her revulsion was evident in her features and tried to draw away. She was aware of T'Shael's eyes burning into her. This, then, was the challenge. She drew upon whatever human equivalent of Mastery of the Unavoidable she possessed, and held her ground.

  The Faceless One explored her features with a butterfly's touch, then gestured that he was pleased to form this new acquaintance. He led his visitors inside.

  Cleante would never know how she survived that afternoon, how she sat calmly while T'Shael communicated in the fingers-to-palm language with any number of these hideously deformed beings as they came and went, pleased with the visit and with the few simple gifts T'Shael had brought in her basket. What she longed to do for the duration of the visit was to rush outdoors and empty her human insides into the immaculate Vulcan gutter.

  She had asked for this, had accepted the challenge, but she had not known such beings existed. Their eyeless sockets stared hollowly at her, their sealed-over mouths and ears
were mere air-holes where there might have been noses. Most heart-wrenching were the children, born later on this new homeworld of Vulcan and unmarked. The articulate, extraordinarily beautiful children with luminous gray-green eyes and masses of curls were living memorials to what their parents had once been.

  Fighting nausea, Cleante searched herself, feeling a change. What if something similar had happened to her? She who had taken her beauty for granted all her life, what if a comet had burned across her sky …

  She thought of the history of Earth and especially of her region, of centuries of eyeless, leprous beggars roving the streets of Tunis and Old Cairo, their faces covered with flies. Cast out, living dead. Humans had no Mastery of the Unavoidable. Only hardness of heart.

  Point taken, my Vulcan instructor! Cleante thought across the room to her, though T'Shael might have been too preoccupied to notice. Have I come up to your expectations, atoned for the sins—no, excuse me, the responsibilities—of my ancestors? Have I passed your test?

  She managed to wait until she got back to the settlement and the privacy of her own flat to vomit. Feeling raw of nerve and more than a little defiant, she informed T'Shael she was not in the mood for poetry tonight, thank you. Instead she looked up a former male friend from the Deneva colony, indulging in a little no-strings lovemaking. It almost took the sting out of the day.

  Lord Krazz motioned his guards to stand the three females in a row in the dusty compound. His as yet unnamed second hovered behind him. He and his commander had focused on Jali, who fluttered her eyelashes but kept her pheromones carefully in check.

  "Kalor!" Krazz barked, squinting at Jali in the murky light. He continued to speak in Standard. "What is this kind called again?"

  "Deltan, my Lord," his lieutenant replied, masking his disdain at his superior's ignorance.

  Unlike most officers, Krazz had little experience with other species. He was not from one of the old houses, had not been reared with the luxury of servitors on Klin Zhai or any of the other cosmopolitan inworlds, but had clawed his way up from an undistinguished agri-clan, teaching himself the Games and winning his commissions by craft. He had never lost his provincialism, and his enemies claimed he still had triticale seeds in his mane and that downwind the smell of dung still clung to him.

  So while the more sophisticated scions of the old houses could distinguish a Withiki from a Cherwtl without so much as checking the color differential of the underwings, Krazz still got his humanoids scrambled.

  "Deltan," he repeated now. "Are they as good as it is said?"

  "Among the best, my Lord," Kalor reported. "Perhaps better than Orions, though I have no expertise with that category."

  It was possible that Jali exuded a minute suggestion of her pheromones then.

  "Hah!" Krazz triumphed. "Well, I've got you there. Remind me to tell you—"

  He broke off, squinting at Jali as if he hadn't really seen her the first time. He took a step toward her, then changed his mind.

  "Too easy!" he grunted. "I prefer a female with fight." He squinted at the remaining two to see if they would react. They did not. He moved toward them. "And these are—?"

  "Human and Vulcan, my Lord," Kalor said. His eye caught Cleante's and held it for a long moment. This one was beautiful, he thought.

  "They look very much alike, don't they? Except that one is ugly."

  Kalor was about to respectfully point out the differences, but Krazz was not finished.

  "I've heard it said that Vulcans do it only once in seven years. Can that be possible?"

  "It is common knowledge, my Lord."

  "But that's ridiculous!" Krazz exploded, his shoulders shaking with a kind of evil mirth. He enjoyed himself for a long moment, then leered at his lieutenant slyly. "Have you ever had a Vulcan, Kalor?"

  Cleante's eyes darted toward T'Shael, who was unmoved. I'm trying, as you have taught me! The human's thoughts pleaded across the few feet that separated them. But I will not let them touch you!

  Should she offer herself in T'Shael's place, or would that only increase Krazz's perverse interest in her friend? Her throat constricted; she could not speak. The Klingons continued their dialogue in Standard, a subtle form of torture.

  "Have you ever had a Vulcan, Kalor?"

  "Once, my lord. There was a disabled Federation border vessel, when I was an ensign on Flyer's Pride. It yielded some interesting prisoners."

  Krazz pictured the scenario, savoring it. While his highborn second had been cruising the borders on Targa's flagship, he had been executing colonists on Ailig IV under the heading of "political expediency." That had yielded some interesting prisoners as well. Incredible what a female would bargain for a death without pain.

  Krazz studied T'Shael. Once every seven years? Would that add to or detract from the effect?

  "This Vulcan," he said, his eyes on T'Shael. "You had her and then you killed her?"

  "Pride was a small vessel, my Lord. We had no room for prisoners. And for what little pleasure she afforded us, we might as well have killed her first."

  "Unresponsive, hm?"

  "If it is possible to be more so and still breathe, my Lord, I do not know. Even under agonizer she merely retreated deeper. Dull."

  "You wouldn't recommend a Vulcan, then." Krazz leered at Cleante. "Humans aren't bad, though?"

  "Fragile and easily exhausted," Kalor reported, getting into the spirit of Krazz's little farce. He was well aware of Cleante's silent pleading by now and had decided to use it against her. "But they'll do if nothing better is available."

  Krazz stood between the two females, leering.

  "Which is the human?" he barked suddenly, though by now even he could tell.

  T'Shael cautioned Cleante with her eyes, a single look over the Klingon's head. Do not speak! Let him work for the information he requires. Control! Cleante wrenched inside but kept still.

  I will not let them touch you! her eyes blazed.

  Krazz did not ask his question twice. The compound was strewn with loose rock, some of it jagged and quite sharp. He selected a fragment with the toe of his boot, hefting it in his hand, and drew close enough to T'Shael so that his rancid carnivore's breath was on her face. With a lightning movement he slashed the rock across her cheek.

  "Well!" he said, pleased with the color of the blood that flowed. Tears had sprung to T'Shael's eyes, but she had not flinched. "That's one way to tell the difference!"

  Cleante shrieked and lunged for him, only to have her shoulders nearly dislocated as the nearer of the guards yanked her arms back and held her. It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes, but not nearly as much as the look on T'Shael's face.

  Control! it seethed. Do not shame us both with such behavior!

  Krazz rounded on Cleante, dropping the rock. His experiment had had the desired result.

  "I like a female with fight," he leered, and he was upon her.

  His hands were rough, brutal, violating, intending pain, delighting in her struggle. Cleante went rigid, refusing to give him what he craved, but her eyes sought T'Shael's desperately. Strangely, the Vulcan averted her gaze, abandoning her, or so it seemed.

  There was no saying how far the Klingon would have gone had Jali not intervened.

  No one had been paying any attention to the Deltan, and she had casually activated her most enticing level of pheromones, letting them waft about the compound, weave their irresistible spell. First Kalor, then the guards and finally Krazz became aware of her.

  In predatory slo-mo they drew around her, circled her, abandoned the human, who clutched her torn clothing about her, sought refuge against the wall of their prison, one fist pressed against her lips to quiet her sobbing. Equally unnoticed, T'Shael moved to stand beside her. Her need overcoming anger and outrage, Cleante threw herself into the Vulcan's arms and T'Shael held her, sheltered her, though not without misgivings.

  How vulnerable these humans are! she thought, awed at the intensity of emotions flooding toward her. Emotion must
be ruled lest it rule.

  The four Klingons had formed a close orbit about Jali—panting, feral. Something about Jali indicated that she was in absolute control, that she would take one or all of them, in whatever combination, and casually exhaust them all. If Krazz had not come to his senses she might very well have succeeded.

  "Away!" he roared, first to lock into command mode and break the Deltan's spell. He backed away from her as if she poisoned the very air he breathed, waving his blaster at the others to break their fixation. When they had recovered themselves he leveled the blaster at Jali.

  "You will not do that again!" he snarled at her. "Again, and orders or no I'll kill the little one inside. Don't underestimate me!"

  Jali neutralized her pheromones—but casually, as if to imply that the Klingon had better not underestimate her.

  "Physical damage would appear to be minimal," T'Shael observed dispassionately. "One assumes it is the severity of psychic trauma which causes your continued reaction."

  Cleante swept her matted hair up off her forehead and wiped her tear-swollen eyes with the heels of her hands.

  "Leave me alone, T'Shael. Please, please just leave me alone!"

  She had curled up in a ball on her bunk, withdrawing from everybody, as soon as the Klingons had unceremoniously marched the three of them back to their cage. That had been hours ago. It was dark outside now; nights on this planetoid seemed twice as long as the days. In a far corner of their cell, as if to avoid disturbing anyone, the Deltans whispered among themselves, going over Jail's exploits—which Resh and Krn had been able to observe from a window—again and again. From time to time one of the guards would pass the transparent door, peer in, and move on.

  "Describe it to us again, cousin!" Krn crowed, beside himself. "The looks on their faces—tell us!"

  Resh hushed him, but the whispering continued. T'Shael would have reproached them, but to what purpose? Let them sustain their own morale—it was better to have them giggling than whimpering—while she tended to the human. Or tried to.