Dwellers in the Crucible

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  Tried to tend to her friend, T'Shael thought, thinking it in Standard, not daring to think the Vulcan word t'hy'la with all of its levels of meaning. Such was not for her. But friend, then, for she and the human had crossed that threshhold before this crisis, and it was Cleante who insisted upon the usage.

  Or had, until today. T'Shael wondered what right she had to call herself anyone's friend. Would a friend have engaged her Mastery in the compound this morning?

  T'Shael had examined her behavior repeatedly since. Everything she had done had been absolutely logical, yet she was not convinced that it had been right. She had never encountered such a discrepancy before, and it perplexed her deeply.

  If it had not been for Jali, what might the Klingons have done? And how would she, T'Shael, have accepted the responsibility for doing nothing?

  She sat beside the human now, lightly, on the very edge of the bunk, wanting to touch but not daring, keeping a barren vigil.

  If I could make you understand, she thought to Cleante. When Krazz put his hands on you I averted my gaze to spare you further shame. Such would any Vulcan have done for another. I could not know that a human would have desired eye contact for comfort, for strength. I have failed you. Forgive me, my … friend.

  But because she could not speak the words, and because the human, curled into herself, withdrawn, could not read her thoughts, it was as if they had not been thought. Human and Vulcan, separated by a matter of centimeters, were in fact divided by a vast gulf of misunderstanding. T'Shael's burning eyes looked up to find Jali's.

  "Cold!" the Deltan clucked, plopping herself uninvited onto the bunk, all but pushing the Vulcan aside. "Cold is worse than useless! If you are not being of help at least move aside for one who can!"

  T'Shael gathered her desolation about her like a cloak and withdrew.

  She did not observe how the Deltan activated a certain level of asexual, comforting pheromones, lightly stroking the human everywhere that Krazz had pawed her as if to eradicate all memory of his violation. If T'Shael was at all aware of what transpired between Deltan and human. it only added to her desolation.

  Worse than useless.

  "Speak to me of love."

  The request came not quite out of nowhere, but it startled Cleante nevertheless. For a time after the storm in the desert her role and T'Shael's seemed to have been reversed; it was now she who instructed the Vulcan in the ways of humans.

  They no longer visited the ruins after that day. T'Shael no longer stopped at Cleante's flat in silent invitation on their off-days, and Cleante did not presume to go alone. She affected a Vulcan's sense of place, at least in this. And if T'Shael went to the ruins alone, melancholy pilgrim, Cleante did not inquire.

  But they continued their student/instructor mode, now strangely inverted—sometimes in the parks that were everywhere in the city, or in the many study rooms and art galleries throughout the settlement, but most often in T'Shael's austere flat.

  "Speak to me of Earth," T'Shael would say, hearing her own boldness, wondering at it. Was it the human's influence that made her thus? Would Master Stimm approve? "Speak to me of the ways of humans. Of your museums and cities and cherished places. Of your oceans and the blueness of your sky and this thing you call snow. Of your arts and languages and customs. Of your theatre and opera, these artificial displays of the emotions of fictional beings; these most especially I do not understand. Speak to me of the ways in which your world differs from mine."

  Her words, spoken hesitantly and over many months, were certainly less than demands, yet more than requests. Did their place between the two polarities render them neutral? Was that which could be refused, offensive by definition? Grappling with her many levels of meaning, swimming against the ripple effect that at every waking moment threatened to engulf her, T'Shael dared to slake her thirsting curiosity, dared to hunger, dared to know.

  And thus as she sat cross-legged and dark-clad in the windowseat of her simple rooms overlooking a pristine and moonless Vulcan night, studiously restringing and tuning her ka'athyra, at ease in the presence of the human, who if nothing else had mastered the art of one Vulcan's silence, she summoned enough daring to say:

  "Speak to me of love."

  And Cleante's Byzantine eyes widened in astonishment.

  "That's an odd request from you."

  "Is it?" The Vulcan selected an H-string for her instrument from among several in an ornate box, pulled it taut to test its tensile purity, and expertly looped it about the intricate insides of the resonancer, stretching it across the soundboard with strong fingers. Her eyes did not rise from her task, and it was possible that her somber voice grew even softer, an indication of her interior struggle. "I have asked you of human emotions before."

  "But why this one, now?" Cleante countered, perhaps thinking of the boy from Deneva and feeling a little guilty. The Vulcan couldn't know about that, could she? And what if she did?

  "If you prefer not to answer—" T'Shael began, but Cleante cut her off.

  "That's not good enough, T'Shael."

  The human had learned to use the Vulcan's self-imposed restraints, her introversion, against her of late. She was not sure why she did this, was certain it was cruel, but found it sometimes revealed hidden and intriguing aspects of her cryptic companion's character.

  "Why do you spend so much time with her?" her human friends asked Cleante. "Don't you get bored?"

  "Not at all," Cleante would say, tossing her hair off her shoulders to hide her embarrassment. "She's really very interesting."

  The others grouped in various languid postures about the fountain in the atrium of the Arts Hall expressed their skepticism. Most of them were from the Martian Colonies, possessed of all of the parochialism that implied. Some of them had never seen a Vulcan before coming to T'lingShar.

  "Their voices always put me to sleep," one of the boys said.

  Boys? Cleante wondered, looking at him with a Vulcan's eyes. A few weeks ago she would have called him a man, but he seemed suddenly to have shrunk in her estimation. How immature they are! she thought, wondering if her new perspective was any more accurate than the previous one.

  "They all talk in monotones," he continued while the others nodded. "Their faces never move. And that one! She's worse than most."

  Before Cleante could say anything someone else chimed in.

  "You know, I tried to be friendly," she said, trailing one hand in the fountain. A kind of late afternoon sleepiness affected them all. Their belongings lay scattered about the atrium as they themselves lounged amid a profusion of outworld plants, listening to loud empty music on their transceivers and wasting time. "Okay, so I don't know much about their way of life, and maybe I put my foot in it a few times, but from the very beginning I always felt as if she was looking down on me. Passing judgment. That superior look they have all the time. I hate that!"

  "You don't understand" Cleante said loudly to be heard over the dull repetitive music which until recently had been a constant in her life but which now irritated her almost unbearably. She no longer felt any kinship with these people. How shallow they are! she thought. "T'Shael has studied with a Master. That makes her more introspective. But she doesn't pass judgment. That's not the Vulcan way. The philosophy of IDIC says—"

  Her friend from Deneva reached for her wrist and pulled her down beside him. He'd become something of a nuisance since their single night together, but she acquiesced to his horseplay. Until he began playing with her hair.

  "What're you doing?" she demanded, squirming out of his grasp.

  "Watching the points grow on your ears," he teased.

  Cleante jabbed him with her elbow so hard he yelped.

  "Stop it!" she snapped. "It's an insult to both of us. I can never be what T'Shael is, never. And it's insulting to even think she'd want to be like me."

  The boy from Deneva pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her and whispering in her rounded ear.

  "It's a good thing I know
you like men," he insinuated, no longer quite teasing. "Otherwise I'd wonder what went on between you and that green-blooded ice maiden."

  Cleante resisted the urge to scratch his eyes out. Why fuel his viciousness? She suffered his embrace, deliberately dissociating herself from this group of—of children.

  What's happening to me? she wondered, growing so remote that even the Denevan sensed it and released her. Is this what it means to think like a Vulcan? Is this what I want? She saw one of the boys pulling the leaves off a nearby plant and went into a rage.

  "Stop that!" she shrieked, jumping to her feet. "You're hurting that plant. It's not necessary!"

  He jerked. his hand away as if it had been burned.

  "Excuse me!" he said in mock chagrin, then adopted what he thought was a suitable imitation of the Vulcan manner. "I ask forgiveness, honored one!"

  Cleante stalked away to the sounds of convulsive laughter.

  "You're all a bunch of idiots!" she shouted.

  Well, that took care of that. If she hadn't been sure about dissociating herself from humans before …

  "That's not good enough, T'Shael," she said now with her particularly human challenge. "If you're going to ask me about love, you'll have to tell me why."

  She compared the scene at the fountain with the present one—two quiet beings, supposedly so very different that no amount of social exchange could ever alter what each one was, speaking of important matters in a manner which brought profound peace of mind to at least one of them, at least some of the time. With all their differences, with the sheer difficulty of maintaining their relationship in the face of multiplicities of misunderstanding, Cleante was more at ease with this one than with any human she knew.

  "That's not good enough, T'Shael," she said, risking their tenuous tranquility despite her having severed all other friendship ties. This relationship was important enough to her to take such risks.

  The Vulcan had secured the H-string to the frets at the neck of the ka'athyra and was about to select a K-string and repeat the procedure when her eminently skilled hands strangely faltered. She looked at the human for the first time.

  "This thing you call love—" she began, struggling with her phrasing, her hands uncharacteristically idle yet devoid of tension. Did the human have any idea how long she had contemplated this topic before broaching it? Did anyone save Master Stimm know how long this one wrestled with a concept before she could put words to it? "I have studied it in the literatures of many races, including my own, yet it is a matter of which I in truth understand nothing—"

  "I didn't know Vulcan literature dealt with love," Cleante interrupted, genuinely surprised. She leaned forward from her place on T'Shael's sleeping couch, the only other seating place in the room. "I thought it was considered the most dangerous of emotions—"

  "The concept of love is written large in Ancient Vulcan literature, yet it is dimensioned by levels of meaning too complex. . . ."

  T'Shael stopped herself. How to explain to the human the dimensions of t'hy'la when she did not comprehend them herself? As to Vulcan mating and all of its ramifications—if such could be considered in the context of love—she was forbidden to speak of such things. She put the ka'athyra aside and seemed to gather herself, speaking with great difficulty.

  "Terra's poetry is eloquent on the topic of love. You, as a human, have experienced this emotion on a number of levels. I would learn from you."

  Cleante sank back against the cushions on the couch. She shook her head and forced herself not to laugh her high-strung humorless laugh.

  "I don't know anything about love," she said. "Sex, yes, but that's not what you mean. I can tell you what it's like to live without love—" She thought of her mother, and the thoughts were bitter. She, too, gathered herself. "But tell you about love? I can tell you nothing, T'Shael!"

  An error, my human friend, T'Shael thought in the night of an unnamed planetoid, her desolation wrapped about her like a cloak. You were incorrect. You have accomplished what I asked you that long ago night. You have instructed me in love, and in its shadow side, which is loneliness. She who cannot love cannot know this emptiness.

  I have failed you. Forgive me, my friend.

  The bottle was half empty by the time Krazz invited Kalor to his quarters, and the commander made no secret of this. One stayed with fruit nectars in the Fleet, but a Klingon who couldn't hold his liquor planetside was no Klingon. Between them, commander and lieutenant would finish this bottle and the greater part of another before the murky red suns crept above the horizon.

  "If I'd wanted to tend sheep I'd have stayed in the agricaste like my father!" Krazz growled. The encounter with Jali had shaken him more than he cared to admit. "I do not relish this pastoral assignment. It's an insult!"

  "The strength of the Klingon is the strength of the whole," Kalor recited stiffly. He disliked it when Krazz was in one of these moods. Someday, his disaffection with his superiors would force Kalor to kill him, but this was not to be the day. "He who is strong is he who obeys."

  "Stop spouting doctrine and have a drink!" Krazz roared; his words were already slurring at the edges. "If you are strong enough to obey, then obey me. Sit and drink with me. That's an order."

  Kalor sat, straddling the chair, and Krazz poured them each three drinks in succession before he spoke again.

  "Ah!" he declared with satisfaction, tossing the vitriolic liquor against the back of his throat and slamming the glass on the table top. "That takes the edge off an ill-omened day." He thought for a moment, his beady eyes glittering. "It was close, the moment with the hairless one. I'd heard they had that much power, but I didn't believe …" His eyes grew crafty. He knew how close he sometimes came to slipping, and how Kalor made note of it. "Obviously that was why I had to see for myself."

  "Obviously," Kalor said slowly, nursing his third drink, "my Lord."

  Krazz's eyes grew craftier still.

  "As I recall, Kalor, you were the first to succumb to the alien's … influence. It might behoove you to remember that if you're thinking of reporting me, I, too, have a report in the works."

  "If asked, I would respectfully point out that my Lord was—otherwise engaged—with one of our valued prisoners when the Deltan created her diversion," Kalor said evenly, downing his drink at last. He also slammed his glass on the table and met his superior's stare.

  Krazz poured himself another drink; he did not pour one for his lieutenant. He grasped the edge of the table and leaned toward Kalor ominously.

  "You'd like to see me blunder, wouldn't you, Kalor? Your aristocratic sensibilities are offended by having to serve under a bumpkin like me, and you'd welcome the chance to remove me. But before you make the attempt, take a moment to consider your opponent."

  Kalor could not meet that knifelike stare forever. It suggested too many things to him—old secrets, perhaps not buried deeply enough. He broke his gaze and fumbled for the liquor bottle, pouring himself another drink without asking.

  "I may be a hayseed, Kalor, but I keep up on internal politics," Krazz continued smoothly, his voice a serpent's. "Even old news. I have read your dossier thoroughly. And your father's."

  Kalor's teeth gnashed involuntarily. The shame of Mertak epetai Haaral's treason had haunted his youth, excluded him from the Academy, and cost him access to all normal career routes despite his officiation at the old man's execution. (He still bore the claw marks on his throat and always wore his collars high, but the roar of his father's outrage remained in his ears, more profoundly scarring. They had grappled for the stunner with which he'd hoped to take the old dragon down without pain before dispatching him. Zoren, his boyhood friend, had caught Mertak in the spine with his blaster to end it, and Kalor had had to kill Zoren to erase the dishonor.) Only his mother's powerful connections—she was Gelfa; that and the long-standing estrangement from her spouse had been all that saved her life—had given him a solitary chance, as an enlistee on a merchanter, possibly the deepest humiliation for a
scion of Haaral.

  Kalor had won his commission in the Navy dearly. He would do nothing to jeopardize it now.

  "My father paid for his mistake, my Lord," he said carefully. "And I have spent my life restoring the honor of my House."

  "That's why I'm advising you now," Krazz said, affable, almost paternal, leaning back in his chair and tossing down another drink, then pouring another for his lieutenant. He had Kalor right where he wanted him. "Your father's activities will hang over your life like a cloud. These things sometimes take several generations to be forgotten. You yourself will always be suspect, no matter how you comport yourself. You must learn to look life straight in the eye and stare it down; get rid of that horrible sideways analytical squint you've acquired. At times you border on intellectualism, Kalor. It's a dangerous trait for a Klingon."

  So saying, Krazz swaggered outside to relieve himself of the side effects of that much alcohol. He was blowing on his fingers when he returned.

  "Incredible how cold it gets when those infernal suns go down," he remarked. "Two suns—what a novelty! And not another living thing on this entire rock but ourselves and the Federation's sheep."

  "Lord Tolz and the Rihannsu chose our place of concealment well," Kalor said dutifully.

  He wished he could excuse himself from the rest of the night's drinking He knew not what other battles he would have to fight to stay alive and in his lord's good graces.

  Krazz merely grunted at the mention of Romulans.

  "Ri-hann-su," he sneered. "I hope Tolz knows what he's doing." He glowered at Kalor to discourage any further spouting of doctrine. "I don't like Roms. They're too … subtle. Too serious. They deny the Game, yet they play it to win. And they'd rather intrigue than fight. It's not normal."

  Kalor said nothing.

  "This theory of theirs about corrupting the Federation from within. What nonsense!" Krazz had begun to pace, working himself into a frenzy. "It's a test, you realize, Kalor. This 'privileged assignment.' Some mumble about 'future glories' which exist only in Tolz Kenran's fevered brain. Perhaps they've thrown us together on this rock in the hope we'll kill each other." Kalor was made of stone. "Rid of the upstart and the traitor's son in one swoop. Or perhaps the test is whether we will accept our sheepherding meekly or take the initiative and find some way of turning this against the Roms, which is the current favored tack, or was when we left port.