Dwellers in the Crucible

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  "Why do you care what happens to her?" he demanded, frankly puzzled. "She's not of your species. There can be no kinship. Your death won't do her any good. It's meaningless!"

  Cleante looked at him with pity. What could friendship, love, possibly mean to him?

  "You're an idiot, Kalor," she said sadly and without fear. What more could he possibly do to her? "You don't understand anything. Now get out of my way! I'm going to be with my friend."

  The fire in her eyes challenged the Klingon, fanned the flame of his desire. He seized her face in one rough hand and forced his mouth onto hers, remembering at the last moment not to bare his teeth. Cleante did not struggle, nor was she passive. Kalor felt a resistance in her, which suggested it could be overcome with the proper technique. He stepped back, still holding her chin in his hand. Her lips were bruised, but her eyes continued to dare him.

  "Bring T'Shael back," she whispered, breathless, seductive. "Bring her back and I'll do whatever you want!"

  It was too tempting, too easy. It's a trap! Kalor's Klingon soul shouted, almost in the voice of Krazz. He thrust the human away from him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  "You're very beautiful—for a human," he breathed. "And full of fire … I like that … But we both know it's only to save the Vulcan. I know you hate me. You say you will do anything? I want to see you beg. I want to know that though you loathe me you will come to me on your knees and beg."

  Cleante went rigid. Humility had never been her strong suit. No one would degrade her in this way, no one!

  The wind moaned about the compound. The crucible of the t'hy'la could strengthen, refine, purify, T'Shael had said. Anything for you, t'hy'la, anything!

  The diplomat's daughter took Kalor's coarse hand in her own, kissed it tenderly, brushed it against her cheek and the luxury of her hair, cradled it between her breasts so he could feel the beating of her human heart. Slowly, her eyes never leaving his, she sank to her knees at his feet.

  "Please, my Lord Kalor!" she begged softly. Anything, t'hy'la! "Please!"

  Kirk hovered over Spock's shoulder as the science officer decoded the coordinates Command had just relayed to them. He could not hope to make sense out of the complexity of figures with anything like the Vulcan's speed, but thought maybe being there could somehow make things happen faster. They'd been given the final go-ahead to retrieve the Warrantors, and Kirk's adrenaline had just kicked into overdrive.

  Spock finished decoding and called up the correct starchart. Kirk leaned in and squinted at it.

  "Practically off the edge of the quadrant," he remarked. "Which one specifically?"

  "This one." Spock's delicate finger pinpointed an undistinguished dot in the center of the starfield. "One of a group of predominantly uncharted small planetoids clustered around a number of Class N variable stars, approximately midway between both Neutral Zones and in disputed territory. The nearest Federation parameters would be the Minara system and Outpost One on the Rihannsu border."

  Kirk looked to Sulu. Freshly debriefed, he had returned to the Enterprise via Special Section VIP courier. He had refused to part with his Rihannsu ears and seemed to relish the stares of the crew. Ever eager to do his share, he was not about to interrupt these two for whom it might be said that Genius at Work was no hyperbole.

  "Does that jibe with what you brought back?" Kirk wanted to know.

  Sulu leaned over Spock's other shoulder, studied the chart for a moment as if recalling something he had committed to memory, and nodded.

  "It's for real, sir. No question." He traced an invisible line of planet hops with one finger. "The Klin ships cross the border here, then diverge here, make three colony stops along this route, refuel here, rendezvous with the slower Rihan transports here, then double back. This one—" his finger stopped where Spock's had, "—is the only uninhabited stopover. As far as I know."

  Kirk nodded, satisfied.

  "Not exactly a day trip," he mused. "Scotty says he can give us Warp eight to Rator. That's where we have to leave Enterprise. How long?"

  Spock calculated in his head.

  "Fifteen days, four-point-zero-six hours at optimum warp."

  "And then we cut loose in the Galileo." Kirk grimaced, still unhappy about it. "Lame duck in a shooting gallery. How long will we have to be a target out there?"

  Spock looked thoughtful.

  "Difficult to be precise over such a distance in uncharted territory. However, barring unforeseen obstacles … an additional two-point-seven-six days."

  Kirk rubbed his lower lip absently.

  "And as many days back with possibly sick or injured passengers. If only we could bring a medical team … damn diplomats!" He rested a hand on Spock's shoulder as if to borrow some of the Vulcan's imperturbability. "All right, let's go!"

  T'Shael opened her eyes to darkness.

  The last thing she remembered was a slow, helpless slipping into the final sleepy stages of hypothermia. She analyzed. Kalor had come for her as he had the night before, but this time he had not brought her back to the cage. Her eyes accustomed themselves to the imperfect darkness, her acute night vision picking out starshine through flaws in the roof of the tremor-damaged structure. Kalor had locked her in the storage shed. But why?

  T'Shael shivered involuntarily; she had been unconscious and unable to engage the healing trance and her body was making a slow recovery. There were sharp stabbing pains in her extremities and the bones of her face and she couldn't flex her fingers, but these things would remedy themselves now that she was out of the killing wind. The shed was unheated; it was cold here, cold enough to be uncomfortable, but not cold enough to kill.

  Kalor arrived at dawn, leading Cleante into the shed.

  "Not long," he warned her, locking the door behind him.

  Cleante did not say a word. She took T'Shael in her arms and held her for a long moment, rocking her like a child. T'Shael found herself returning the embrace. Awkwardly with her damaged hands and her inexperience in such matters, she returned it nevertheless, finding it strangely curative.

  "Thank God, you're all right!" Cleante said, breaking the embrace at last, blinking back tears.

  She had brought food and blankets, and busied herself setting things up on crates and containers stacked about the shed. Kalor apparently intended T'Shael to remain here indefinitely. The Vulcan watched the human cautiously, not misled by her industriousness.

  The dim light in the shed could not disguise how haggard Cleante looked. Not that the events of the past few days had lent themselves to restfulness, but there was something more here.

  "You look unwell," T'Shael observed gently, charily, noting that after her first carefully orchestrated embrace Cleante shied from her touch, her very proximity. "Has something untoward happened in my absence?"

  Cleante laughed her nervous, high-strung laugh; T'Shael had not heard it for some time.

  "Whatever gave you that idea?" the human asked, her voice laced with heavy irony and not a little hysteria. "What could possibly have happened? I spent another night not knowing if you were dead or alive, another night pounding on the door begging Kalor to listen to me. Nothing unusual."

  "Forgive me," T'Shael said, made more uneasy by the human's answer. She who could not lie was unable to prove untruth in another. "These past few nights must have been most difficult for you to bear."

  More than you can know, my friend, Cleante thought, though her face was almost Vulcanly controlled. More than I can ever burden you with knowing. I must not let slip the slightest clue as to how I've spent this past night.

  "I'll live," she said airily. "We both will, T'Shael, and that's what matters. Kalor has decided to keep you here. Even he's not stupid enough to let the Rihannsu find you half-frozen."

  T'Shael received this information with deepening concern.

  "Is that truly his reason?"

  "How should I know?" Cleante demanded irritably. "We're only prisoners; we don't get answers." She began pacing re
stlessly, hugging herself. "Maybe he got tired of listening to me scream. What difference does it make? The only important thing is that you're here, you're safe, and we're one day closer to rescue. We've got to hold onto that, T'Shael, no matter how."

  Something in the way she said this gave T'Shael pause. She dared invade the human's privacy enough to take her by the shoulders and seek the depths of her eyes.

  "Cleante, if you have interceded with Kalor in any way—"

  Cleante pulled out of her grasp.

  "Don't be ridiculous! What could I possibly do? There's only one thing he could possibly want from me."

  She stopped. She had rehearsed this scene all night, planning it even as she lay in Kalor's fevered embrace. The diplomat's daughter must draw upon every bit of her acting talent to mislead the one person in the universe who knew her best.

  "You don't actually think … T'Shael, I'm amazed! How could you think that of me?"

  The Vulcan bowed her head, ashamed.

  "It seemed a logical possibility in view of our captor's appetites and his persuasiveness. I ask forgiveness for the very thought."

  "I'm really surprised, that's all," Cleante went on, playing her role to the hilt. "If I were going to do anything like that I'd at least insist he bring you back to the cage where you could be warm, where I could talk to you."

  I tried, T'Shael, the human thought. I pleaded with him all night but he refused me, knowing if you and I were together too long you would learn the truth. These visits are all he will allow.

  "Besides," there was no pretense in the shudder she experienced, "he disgusts me!"

  T'Shael looked at her for a long moment. There was an undefined tension here.

  "If you are certain—"

  "Have I ever lied to you?" Cleante demanded, trying not to sound too aggrieved.

  "Never," the Vulcan acknowledged, but she was not satisfied.

  Night after night she spent alone in the cold and dark of the storage shed, wrapped in a blanket and her meditations, wondering why Kalor had spared her. Was it only to protect himself from the Rihannsu or was this some new aspect of his experimentation? Could a Klingon be merciful? Or was Cleante lying to her?

  Day after day Cleante came to visit her, staying only a short while, bringing food and nervous conversation and a renewal of T'Shael's uneasiness. The lie that human could not admit to and Vulcan could not prove began to form a barrier between them. Cleante's mood swings in these brief visitations were alarming. At times she was almost manic, chattering away about their impending rescue as if it would happen that very day. At other times she was listless, enervated, lapsing into an uneasy silence long before Kalor came for her. She would not let T'Shael touch her nor even come too close. T'Shael noted these things somberly and without remedy.

  Meanwhile, Kalor was fairly intoxicated; intoxicated with the success of his experiment, which he would entitle, in the report he need not entrust to anyone this time: "Honor and Friendship: Exploitable Weaknesses in the Vulcan and Terran Species"; intoxicated, too, with the discovery that pleasure need not always take the form of debauchery and slaughter; intoxicated with the discovery that certain human females could be extraordinarily gifted in the love arts.

  When did it stop being brutal gratification and begin to evolve into interest and concern and a kind of sharing? As one night followed another, on which night did Kalor express concern that Cleante might be too fatigued to continue? On which occasion did he begin to evidence that he could give pleasure as well as take it? In which instance did Cleante cease to close her eyes and clench her teeth and force her mind back to Rico or the boy from Deneva and accept the reality that this was Kalor—Klingon and murderer, but also a being who was not entirely insensitive? One might as well try to determine at what moment Kalor ceased to be a total brute and began to become an intellectual. His venture into xenopsychology had begun to operate on a level he could never have anticipated.

  "Cleante," he would whisper (tenderly?), at any rate softly, as she lay with her head on his broad, vestigially scaled chest, no longer pretending relaxation but experiencing it, as he tangled his no longer quite so coarse fingers in the luxury of her hair. "Kleant. It could almost be a Klingon name."

  "But I could never be a Klingon," Cleante murmured. "I could never kill to earn adult status, and call it a game."

  She could hear her voice trailing off. How could she possibly allow herself to feel drowsy? She thought of T'Shael alone in the cold and was suddenly alert.

  "Tell me more about the Games. About the komerex tel khesterex, the Expanding Empire. And about you, Kalor. I want to know."

  At first she had started him talking to keep his sexual demands bearable, but as he talked and talked she found herself taken up in his narrative. Was this any different really than her study of the Vulcan through T'Shael?

  Kalor was inordinately pleased. No one had ever taken an interest in him in this way before. He told Cleante about his father, about his obsession with rehabilitating the family name, about the cunning and the compromises and the sacrifices necessary just to stay alive in his society. Cleante began to understand, and her horror at a being who could execute his own father, then kill the friend who had assisted in the execution turned to pity.

  Sad, twisted Kalor, Klingon who never should have been. If he had been born anything else … if, when she and T'Shael were rescued, she could intercede for him, ask that he be re-educated within the Federation, explain that—

  Explain what? That he had killed the Deltans, had almost killed T'Shael, could no doubt kill her as she lay in his arms?

  Cleante was confused, more confused than she had ever been in her life. She thought of the philosophical "crises" that had beset her on Vulcan and had to force the laugh back in her throat lest Kalor hear her. How trivial all that seemed now! Here in this place that didn't own a name she walked a tightrope of indeterminate length—daily lying to her closest friend, nightly making love to her worst enemy, while awaiting the arrival of friend or foe to set things right again. If she did not go mad …

  "The shuttlecraft has left the Federation mother ship," Tal reported to his Commander.

  "You are certain it's the Enterprise?" she asked without looking up from her reports.

  "We are monitoring from a considerable distance, Commander," Tal reminded her. "Its call-signal is definitely that of a Constitution-class heavy cruiser. We cannot identify it precisely, but we have no reason to believe the Federation would renege on its pledge at this point."

  "Nor shall we," the Commander said, putting down her writing implement and looking at her sub-commander for the first time. "How many life forms do you read in the shuttlecraft? They do have their screens down?"

  "As promised," Tal affirmed. "They have left themselves open to our scanners. We read two: one human, one Vulcan."

  "Good," the Commander said without reacting, knowing Tal was watching her closely. "Set course back to the planetoid at maximum speed. I want to be there and gone before that shuttlecraft arrives."

  Tal frowned.

  "For what purpose, Commander? We have been instructed that the Klingons will retrieve their own."

  The Commander looked annoyed.

  "To ascertain the final status of the prisoners, of course. I argued myself hoarse before the Praesidium about the inadvisability of leaving that thrai alone with the prisoners and for once I lost. I would not put it past him to have interfered with our purposes, even at this late date."

  "Are you certain that is the only reason?" Tal presumed to ask, wondering what scenarios would transpire on the desolate planetoid if she and the Vulcan from the shuttlecraft should encounter each other by her design. "And, more to the point, will we be able to depart in time?"

  "Leave that to me!" the Commander said dangerously, trying unsuccessfully to wilt Tal with her glare. "In the meantime, amuse yourself with giving me hourly status reports on the whereabouts of that shuttlecraft."

  "Of course, Commander," Tal sa
id. If there was irony in his voice, there was none on his face.

  Cleante grew careless, and T'Shael discovered the truth. She who could not lie learned at firsthand how many cutting edges a single lie could possess.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," Cleante said a little too lightly as Kalor locked the door behind her on this particular day now slipping into night. Did T'Shael only think she saw a glance exchanged between human and Klingon? "I seem to have slept most of the day. I've been so restless lately!"

  "Perhaps you are ill," T'Shael suggested, probing. "Does the tension of our captivity weigh on you so greatly now that it is almost at an end? Or is there something more?"

  Cleante laughed her nervous laugh, fidgeting with the food containers she had brought.

  "Will you stop cross-examining me? Come and eat this while it's still hot."

  "I have no hunger," the Vulcan said, her eyes deep with perplexity. The human's tension was almost tangible. "I had thought you might not come."

  Cleante stopped her fidgeting and looked into the hooded eyes, taking T'Shael's statement as an accusation, realizing how much she must depend on her visits.

  I'm all she has now, the human thought with a pang. All the more reason why she must never know the true cause of my restlessness, my exhaustion.

  "I'm sorry, I—" she began, but T'Shael interrupted her.

  "It is of no matter, except that I sense further groundquakes, perhaps soon. I wished to warn you."

  "Oh," Cleante said, relieved that minor things like deadly groundquakes were the only cause of T'Shael's concern. "Well, for the next few nights I'll have to sleep under the bunk instead of in it, I guess. What about you?"

  "I can make shelter here," T'Shael said, dismissing it.

  "Should I—should we tell Kalor?" Cleante asked after too long a pause. "Or should we let him suffer through it?"

  T'Shael gave no answer. She drew closer than Cleante found comfortable, assessing the sleep-heavy eyes, the bruised lips, the fact that Cleante had absentmindedly worn the Rihannsu clothing instead of her uniform. Cleante realized this too late and her hand went to the neck of her tunic. It was a high-necked one, but not high enough to completely cover her throat.