Dwellers in the Crucible

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  Tal gripped her shoulders fiercely, forgetting himself.

  "No!"

  "You were close to him, weren't you?" she asked, not without sympathy.

  "We were brought up in the same regimental unit, from boyhood," Tal said distantly, his hand going to the scar on his shoulder. "He was always my better; it was why he rose higher than I." He smiled bitterly. "Only to come of this!"

  He leapt off the couch then, knotting the dressing gown about his waist and pacing restlessly.

  "And why?" he demanded, rounding on her as if it were her fault. "Executed! For what reason? For the accidental death of a crazed and dangerous prisoner? And not so much as a choice of means, but garroted like a common criminal? Why?"

  "For bungling the abduction," she said indifferently. "That is the official word handed down from the Praesidium. The dispatch that returned to the Federation with the Andorian's remains was worded somewhat differently."

  Tal stopped his pacing. He no longer asked her how she knew such things. She was closer to the Praetor than either of them ever acknowledged aloud.

  "That dispatch," the Commander went on, "was apologetic in the extreme. The gist of it was that the abductors were a splinter faction acting in collaboration with the Klingons but without authorization from the Praesidium. Once that little untruth was let fly, the negotiations with the Federation were begun in earnest. They have just been informed of the Deltans' deaths. It is incumbent upon us to blame that on the Klingons. It would be the first intelligent step in this entire terrorist charade.

  "As for the garroting. It's an accepted form of execution on Andor, I'm told. Appeasement, reparations, whatever one wishes to call it—little short of groveling, if you ask me. Now it is my task to somehow hold the two remaining prisoners safe from Klingon depredations, though without setting foot on the planetoid, until the Praesidium can find a way to relinquish them without further antagonizing the Klin and without further loss of face. Situations like this, Tal, make me embarrassed to be Rihannsu."

  Tal looked at her in some alarm, and she laughed her breathy laugh.

  "Come, Tal, if we can't be honest with each other … besides, I said as much to the Praetor the last time we—before we left the home port. It was why he gave me the task of somehow setting this mess to rights."

  She rose from the couch too, slipping her small hands inside his dressing gown to embrace him.

  "It is my final test. My last atonement for the loss of the cloaking device. Our Praetor has a long memory. This will be the final proof that I am worthy of my flagship and his trust. And perhaps, one day, higher things. Will you still be by my side on that day, I wonder, Tal?"

  She saw that he was brooding, though whether over the death of his comrade Delar or over her constant references to the Praetor she could not tell. She stepped into the sonic shower, returned moments later to don her uniform.

  "We're in a precarious position, Tal," she said at last. "We have several dimensions in which to operate. We have our official orders. I also have top-security discretionary orders for which I alone must take responsibility. And then we have the Klingons, whose orders frequently contradict ours, and whose perversities present an ever unpredictable variant. I shall be glad when this is over."

  She glanced at her chronometer.

  "Get some sleep before you go on watch," she said, making it an order. "I must find a way to relieve the universe of at least one Klingon."

  Tal watched her go. He was tempted to ask permission to accompany her, but knew better. There were some things she must do alone.

  The desolate planetoid revolving around its twin suns beneath her flagship was to solve the Rihannsu Commander's problem with Krazz, though it would rob her of the satisfaction of personally sending him to the Black Fleet. It had already chosen another destination for the short-tempered Klingon.

  "What's going on?" the Commander demanded of the last of the repair crew, who had formed a hasty honor guard to greet her personal scoutship when it touched down in the dust of the barren plain just beyond the compound. She vaulted out of the scout, which had made a particularly rough landing, to find the ground beneath the hatch ramp she stood on rippling so violently it nearly knocked her off her feet.

  "Groundquakes, Commander," one of the guard reported, saluting sharply as he too struggled to remain upright. "The planetoid's surface appears quite unstable. This is why our initial repairs were necessary. We have been experiencing intermittent tremors all morning, Commander!"

  "Wonderful!" the Commander grimaced, steadying herself. The ground beneath her small craft shuddered into stillness at last and she stepped off the ramp with Rihannsu dignity. "Escort me to Lord Krazz. I will have words with him!"

  The journey was unnecessary. Krazz was coming to her.

  "I've had enough of Rom meddling!" he roared, storming out of his headquarters with the entire Klingon contingent at his heels and heading in her direction. "I have my orders, Kahlesste kasse! Put up with your comings and goings … interference … my prisoners … my orders … had enough!"

  Half of what he said was lost in the distance between them and the rumbling of the ground far off, but still he kept coming. The Commander waited, trying not to smile at the ludicrous figure, his short legs churning up a great cloud of yellow dust that half obscured and nearly choked him for all his roaring. Let him bellow, she thought haughtily. He won't have sufficient wind to spit by the time he gets here.

  Krazz never reached his destination. The ground beneath him first rumbled as if in warning, then began to heave. Krazz's legs shot out from under him and he pitched forward onto his face. Kalor, only a step behind him, shortening his long stride to match his lord's, grabbed for him and also fell. Krazz shook him off with a murderous glare and got to his feet on his own power. Before Kalor could rise, a great fissure split the ground, and Krazz disappeared as if by sorcery.

  He never had time to scream his terror or bellow his outrage. As quickly as it had opened, the ground buckled and groaned and slid shut again with a sickening grinding sound. Krazz was gone.

  And with him, for he had fully intended to smuggle it out on the next supply ship whose commander he could trust and therefore kept it concealed at all times upon his person, was Kalor's report on the innate weaknesses of the Deltan species and how best to utilize them for purposes of conquest and the glory of the Empire.

  Kalor gnashed his teeth and tore at his mane and slobbered in his rage, which the Rihannsu mistook for grief and wondered at. How else did a Klingon rise in the ranks except through the death of his commander?

  Kalor eventually calmed himself, both because the Rihannsu were watching and because it finally dawned on him that Krazz's taking the report with him to his eternally unmarked grave could only be to his advantage. He could certainly piece the report back together again from memory, if he ever got off this miserable rock, and perhaps the arrival of the Roms would expedite that. Further, he could now explain that the Deltans' deaths had been Krazz's doing and that he, Kalor, had only been obeying orders.

  "I'd like to believe you," the Rihannsu Commander said, sitting behind what had been Krazz's desk in the headquarters. Her repair crew was once again inspecting the buildings, which thanks to their previous work had sustained little damage this time. They would be leaving soon. She looked fixedly at Kalor, who stood in his customary place, at attention, but just barely. "Unfortunately for you, Klingon, I don't. Not entirely. There is a grain of truth in what you say, but no more. Unfortunately for me, I haven't the leisure to investigate more thoroughly. My flagship is too well known to Starfleet; it draws too much attention to linger too long near the border. Nor can I so much as leave one of my officers here to keep an eye on you. You are in charge here, for the present. But I will tell you one thing—"

  She leaned forward, resting her elbows tentatively on the desk, half expecting to encounter some noisome Klingon slime there, but she did not. Only then did she notice how immaculately clean the room was. Some i
nfluence other than Klingon had been at work here. The Commander thought about the two prisoners, whom she still had not seen, much less spoken to. The sight of a Vulcan, even a female, after so long—

  "If it were up to me," she said to Kalor, focusing herself on the matter at hand. "I would relieve you of command and intern you aboard my flagship until I could learn the truth of this sordid affair. At the very least I would assign some of my own hand-picked guard to keep an eye on you. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to do that."

  The fact being, she thought but did not say, that the Praetor wants to be certain there are no Rihannsu in evidence in the event that talks break down and the Federation comes seeking its orphans.

  "So I must leave you here, alone. I'm taking your guards with me as surety in case your Empire becomes … recalcitrant. You needn't bother to object. I'm sure you can manage two unarmed females without recourse to guards."

  "I was not going to object, Commander," Kalor said slowly, speaking for the first time. His eyes were a lizard's in his inscrutable face. "It is the Klingon's duty to obey."

  The Commander looked at him contemptuously.

  "Let me make one thing clear to you," she said, getting up and confronting him with the desk between them. "When I return, I will find two living, healthy, unmolested prisoners. Either that, or I will find one very dead Klingon. I promise his death will not be an easy or dignified one. Do you understand me?"

  "Perfectly, Commander," Kalor said, his reptilian eyes glinting with grudging admiration.

  "All that negotiating with the Romulan to get the extra tapes and you've scarcely looked at them!" Cleante teased T'Shael, trying to break her unblinking stare.

  Both had weathered the quake unscathed despite the strange fact that T'Shael had given no warning this time, and Cleante had actually had to pull her to safety. Neither had yet been informed of Krazz's death; they were only prisoners after all.

  The human had noticed the Vulcan staring at a single frame on the computer screen for an inordinate amount of time before abruptly switching it off. Now she sat staring vacantly into space—alarming behavior for one who was never idle. Cleante teased her to mask her own uneasiness.

  "What are you doing, making the tapes last longer?"

  There was no response.

  "Or is it against your principles to admit you enjoy them?"

  Still there was no response.

  "T'Shael, for the love of Allah, what's wrong?"

  The Vulcan's eyes, when at last she turned them toward the human, made Cleante pale. Where they had always burned with her internal fire, now they were unnaturally bright, febrile, all but incandescent. Cleante thought of the ever-deepening trances, of Resh's dying words in the link, of the coldness of T'Shael's hands and the seeming coldness of her heart in refusing her friendship, and began to understand.

  "Your eyes are feverish," Cleante observed carefully. "You are ill!"

  The Vulcan shied from her concerned touch, raising a warning hand that trembled uncontrollably.

  "Yes!" she acknowledged at last, her voice strangely husky as if it, too, like the tremor in her hands, was beyond her ability to control. "It is a form of sickness. The time is past when I was to have returned to Vulcan. Now there is no recourse."

  Cleante knew that whatever she said now must be phrased with the utmost care.

  "T'Shael—it's not your father's sickness, is it?" she asked, knowing it was not.

  "No." T'Shael bowed her head, her voice damping down some great reluctance, some powerful shame. "No, it is not."

  Cleante said nothing. She crossed to the transparency, still unaccustomed to the absence of guards, and looked across the compound. It was what she had thought it was as far back as the link with Resh. Something to do with the immutability of Vulcan biology and their strangely illogical betrothal customs, some overpowering mating urge which, left unconsummated … There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but knew she could not.

  "Maybe," she began after a small eternity. "Maybe now that the Romulans are here, maybe if we explained—"

  She did not have to turn to know that the Vulcan's eyes burned into her.

  "I'm sorry," the human said.

  "It is too late for that," T'Shael said with a desperately Vulcan resignation. "Kaiidth! And it cannot be spoken of."

  She paused.

  "Cleante, if I might presume to ask a thing of you …"

  "Anything!" the human cried, and T'Shael faltered, awed at the trust that single word implied.

  "It will be a sickness, and a madness, and a great shame. I will do things no sentient being should do, powerless to prevent myself. I ask your forgiveness in advance, for my behavior."

  "T'Shael—"

  "I beg of you, let me finish! While there is still time, while I still retain some measure of rationality. If you would assist me. Do whatever I ask, no matter how bizarre—"

  "Anything!" the human said again.

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  Ten

  "NOW THE WRISTS,"T'Shael instructed once she had finished binding her ankles to the foot of the bunk with braided strips torn from an extra blanket. Cleante stood testing one with all of her feeble human strength; it seemed to her to be strong enough to hold anything. "Secure them to the support posts as tightly as you can."

  The Vulcan lay with her arms outstretched above her head as if in supplication, wrists passive beside the support posts of the bunk to make it easy for the human to tie them there. Cleante clenched her fists at her temples and shook her head in despair.

  "It's such an indignity," she whispered. "T'Shael, I can't!"

  "If it were possible, I would lock myself away where I could not be seen and could not cause you harm," T'Shael explained, her voice strangely harsh and edged with impatience. "Soon I shall become a mad thing, beyond my ability to control. I do not wish to harm you! Cleante, please, there is not much time! And you have given me your word."

  "Yes, I have, haven't I?" the human sighed, fumbling the makeshift cords around her companion's wrists with clumsy, reluctant fingers.

  "Tighter!" the Vulcan commanded through clenched teeth.

  Her body tensed suddenly in a kind of seizure and it was some moments before she could regain control. When at last she did her eyes accused the human.

  "Spare me your human delicacy! Mastery of the Unavoidable, as I have endeavored to teach you! Pull the cords as tight as you can. I must not have opportunity to free myself!"

  Cleante gritted her own teeth and wrenched the cords tight, forcing herself not to react as they cut into the flesh of T'Shael's wrists.

  "Excellent," the Vulcan said, straining against the bonds and finding that they held. "Now the final one. Quickly!"

  There was a single length of cord left, enough to loop around T'Shael's waist and the entire bunk, lashing her fast to it. Cleante coiled it nervously around her two hands.

  "If you have another seizure you could strain yourself, damage something inside," she said. "You're secure enough this way. I won't do it!"

  "There will be further seizures and far stronger. It makes no difference," T'Shael said, and Cleante began to realize exactly what she meant. "Cleante, please!"

  The human did as she was instructed, tears running silently down her face and splashing onto the cords as she knotted them.

  "Oh, T'Shael, why?"

  "Because I am linked with Stalek." The Vulcan's voice was hollow and remote, as if she spoke from a great distance within herself. Her incandescent eyes were as far away. "If the male's need is not fulfilled, he must die. When the male dies, she who is linked with him, if her need is not fulfilled, also dies. As it was in the dawn of our days, as it will be for all tomorrows. This is our way."

  Her eyes fixed on the human as if for the last time, and not a little fondly.

  "One thing more?"

  "Anything!" Cleante whispered, wiping the tears away with the heel of her hand, not thinking of what that word had required of her so far.<
br />
  "Speak of this to no one, neither Klin nor Rihannsu. I cannot ask you to conceal my condition, for it will soon become impossible; I ask only that you spare me its shame for a time. No Vulcan should be seen at this time, but there is no help for it. None can spare me what is to come; you alone can spare me its shame, for a time at least."

  "I'll try!" Cleante sobbed, wanting to touch her, to offer some comfort, knowing any attempt would only make it worse. "T'Shael, I'll try!"

  It was all anyone could ask. The Vulcan nodded without speaking, clamping her eyes and throwing her head back as another seizure took her.

  "A betrothal ceremony!" Cleante had cried with a child's delight when she and T'Shael had stepped from the music crafters' shop into the warm velvet darkness of a Vulcan evening in the safe times, a small eternity ago. "I didn't think outworlders were permitted."

  "You attend as my guest," T'Shael explained, implying that this was no small honor. "The honor is extended to me because of he who was my father."

  "He must have been a wonderful person," Cleante said, thinking of the father she had never known.

  Her invitation to the betrothal ceremony had been but the final event in a day filled with events.

  "The performer must be worthy of the instrument," T'Shael had said, finishing the simple melody and handing the ka'athyra back to Crafter T'Sehn as if it were a living thing. "I am not my father."

  That was when Cleante began to drift away, to remove her intrusive human presence from the specialness of the moment between these two. She backed up and almost stepped on a small, sleek animal that shot precipitously across her feet, hissing irritably. Cleante crouched to investigate and was amazed at what she found beneath one of the workbenches.

  "It is indeed a Terran feline," said an even male voice. "Though having been born on Vulcan, it has a Vulcan name."