“Good,” Kirk said. “When we locate him, and our little sex machine gets him turned on, our problems will be solved. Do you think you’ll be able to handle your end, Sara?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, her voice cool and professional. “The new filter stage in my implant is working perfectly. Enough of my dop is coming through so that I can imitate her actions—but with me firmly in control.”
“Good girl.” Kirk turned to Scott.
“All right,” he said to the engineer, “give us an hour. Spock wasn’t bluffing, I’m sure, when he said he rigged his tricorder to detect communicators, so we’ll be out of contact. We’ll have to work on blind coordinates from here on in. Keep the transporter locked onto the inn room and energize every fifteen minutes.”
“No problem, Captain,” Scott replied.
Kirk turned to face the other two. “That’s a fetching ensemble, Doctor, you must introduce me to your couturier,” he heard Sara say to McCoy.
“It’s what they’re wearing this season,” McCoy retorted.
“Are you two ready to beam down?” Kirk asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be, Jim,” McCoy replied unhappily. “I trust that what comes out down there bears some resemblance to what went in.” He glanced ruefully at his legs again. “Those knees may be knobby, but at least they’re mine.”
“With Scotty at the controls, you have nothing to worry about.”
“The last time he was at the controls, we ended up with duplicate Spocks,” McCoy said sourly.
See: SPOCK MUST DIE!, Bantam Books, 1970.
“This time,” Kirk said, as he stepped onto the transporter, “I’ll settle for just one. All right, Mr. Scott, energize.”
“Energizing, sir,” responded Scott. His thick fingers played over the controls, then gripped the phasing runners. The deep hum of power from the operating transporter filled the room, and the rising crackle of the carrier wave became more distinct.
The Enterprise began to fade from Kirk’s sight. He caught a glimpse of a darkened room with a single, glowing lamp. Then suddenly, the ship was back and solid around him.
“What’s the problem, Scotty?”
“Och! That damn radiation must be bollixing up the magnetic field of the planet and reflecting back the transporter beam.”
He worked the controls to compensate for the effects of the slowly increasing radiation front.
“Captain, if this interference keeps building up, an’ I ken it will, this transporter is nae going to be working at her best. None of them will.” He looked at his captain with a grim face. “I canna guarantee I’ll be able to bring you back.”
Kirk glanced at McCoy, and then George; she gave a slight shrug.
“We’ll try to be quick about it, Scotty,” Kirk said in a reassuring voice. “Energize, again.”
“Aye,” Scott said. He looked glum as he moved the phase controls a second time. The power hum resurged, and the Enterprise again faded from Kirk’s sight. It flickered once, then twice, then once more, before it finally disappeared.
Kirk watched as the darkened room solidified around him again. There was that seemingly interminable moment before it stabilized; then it did, and Kirk knew he was whole and could move. He stepped forward into the weak pool of light cast by a smelly lamp atop a smooth-surfaced table. The lamp held animal fat in an earthen cup with a lit wick floating in it. There were deep shadows in the corners of the room, and the ceiling was black as space itself.
Ensign George went to the room’s only window and jerked back the heavy curtain covering it.
The early morning light of Kyr, the system’s yellow sun, poured in through mica-like panes set in the frame. Kirk and McCoy crowded close as the woman swung the window open. From their second-story vantage point they looked down on a large, paved plaza, obviously a marketplace from the bustle of activity around the stands and shops that lined it. The plaza was bounded on the left by the city’s wall. A main gate, a massive triangular opening with a center post holding the hinges and long ropes running from the base angles to huge winches, gave access to the world beyond. On each side of the gate, steps went up to a parapet that ran along the top of the wall. To the left, and on the far side of the plaza, were numerous multilevel buildings made of stone with sides painted in abstract, geometric shapes.
Ensign George pointed to a raised stone platform near a central well.
“That’s a speaker’s block,” she said. “One of the nice things about Andros is that anybody who wants to can get up there and speak his mind anytime on anything. Chag Gara was up there ranting the day I came down. Only a few people were listening, and most of them were laughing, but I scanned him so I could include some hillmen.” Her face grew bleak. “That was my next biggest mistake. If only I—”
“We’ve no time for ‘if onlys,’” Kirk said. “What’s our first step?”
Sara took a moment to answer. “Gara usually shows up early. He’s a tall, slender man, built much like Commander Spock. He’ll be easy to spot. He always wears a black hood with vermilion stripes under the eye slits.”
She stepped away from the window. “Once he shows up, I’ll have him hooked in no time. My dop knows how to get any man. I’ll bring him up the back way, and when you hear us in the hall, get set. Wish me luck,” she finished.
She gave them both a languid, promising smile, and her firm bottom gave a provocative wiggle as she slipped out of the door.
An hour crawled by before McCoy called excitedly, “Jim, I think I’ve spotted our man!”
Kirk jumped up from the bed where he had sprawled and looked out the window.
“Where?”
“There! Coming across the far corner toward the speaker’s block.”
Kirk followed McCoy’s pointing finger.
A small, disciplined group of hillmen was opening a path through a small gathering of curious onlookers. In their center, head bowed as if in meditation, walked a man in a long black robe, face hidden behind a red and black hill mask.
“Where’s Sara?” Kirk wondered.
“Over there. She’s coming toward him.”
The two watched intently. Distant as she was from the inn, the woman was easy to follow because of the glittering gold comb in her hair.
“Chag Gara’s bodyguard may present a problem,” Kirk muttered.
“Sara will find a way,” McCoy said. “She’s as bright as she is sexy.”
As they watched, she made her way through the ranks of the hillmen and approached the hooded leader, hands raised as if in supplication. He didn’t seem to notice her as, head bowed, he continued to walk slowly toward the rostrum. She tugged the sleeve of his flowing robe and he looked at her.
The result was electric!
The robed man jumped back as if he’d seen a venomous snake and, pointing an accusing arm at the woman, shouted something. Two of his hill disciples grabbed her roughly as he leaped onto the rostrum in two bounds. He began a rapid, intense scanning of the faces in the small group of city people who waited to hear him speak. Then he turned, jumped lithely down from the stone platform, and began running to the far side of the square. The people in the crowd looked at each other with puzzled expressions, and the bodyguard, after several moments of confusion, ran after him as he disappeared into a narrow alley. The two holding Sara waited a moment, then pushed her roughly to the ground and ran off after their companions.
Kirk threw open the door as Sara came running up the ramp that led to the second story of the inn, then slammed and barred it as soon as she entered.
“What happened out there?” he demanded angrily.
“I don’t know,” she said breathlessly. “Those eyes
… cold, deadly-looking…” Shoulders shaking, she tried to muffle a sob.
McCoy gripped her shoulder firmly. “Stop it, Sara, you’re safe here.”
A moment later, she was back in control.
“Sorry, my dop…” she said in a shaky voice. “I felt it myself, though
. I couldn’t help it. When he turned to look at me, those red eyes in those narrow slits became… horrible! He couldn’t have reacted more violently if I’d been lunging at him with a dagger! But why? I used all my dop’s wiles. His response doesn’t make sense. The Chag Gara I profiled would have responded with a wink and a suggestion to meet somewhere.”
Kirk went to the window and stood there for a moment, staring out into Andros.
“Yesterday and the day before—did you have any contact with him that might explain his reaction?” Kirk asked.
“Negative, sir,” Sara said to his back. “We never even spoke. After I finished snapping him from here, I went out to get more profiles from other parts of the city. I paused by the platform as he was speaking—ranting, really, about the wickedness of the cities and the wrath of the gods that would follow. There was an almost hypnotic quality about his voice, but he jumped from one idea to another so incoherently it was pathetic. I only stayed a minute or two, so I don’t see how he could remember me as anything but another face in the crowd.”
Kirk turned away from the window. “Bones, do you get the same reading I do?”
The surgeon nodded somberly. “I’m afraid so, Jim.”
“What do you mean?” Sara asked in a puzzled voice.
“Since, as you say, there could be no reason Chag Gara would remember you, then the man in the mask must have been someone else,” Kirk said. “Someone who knows you on sight and who could scan that crowd for other faces from the Enterprise!”
“Commander Spock!” George gasped.
“Exactly,” McCoy said.
“Yes,” Kirk muttered. “He’s assumed Chag Gara’s identity. Spock’s brilliance linked to that hill maniac’s emotional power, believing, as Chag Gara did, that he’s the chosen of the gods… destined to bring a new order to Kyros.” Kirk paced the small room. “There’ll be no laughter when he speaks now. He’ll mold his listeners to his will in a way that will make… Hitler look like a rank amateur.”
“He knows we’re down here now, Jim,” McCoy said quietly. “What do you think he’ll do?”
“Do?” Kirk faced the doctor. “The first thing he’ll do—the logical thing—will be to protect his rear, like any good strategist. He’ll protect Chag Gara! He can’t afford to let us get to him because if we do, he’ll lose his emotional power. He’s paranoid, thinks he’s being persecuted, and we’ve given him evidence that people are after him. In a warped way, Spock is a whole man for the first time; and now that he’s tasted the h’fe he can have—power, women, fame—he won’t give it up for the loneliness of a life where the high point of the week was a game of chess with a computer.”
“So he’ll head for Chag Gara,” McCoy said, “to get him before we do.”
“Right!” Kirk said smashing a fist into one palm. “We’d better get moving. Sara!”
“Yes, sir?”
“You’ll have to take the con. McCoy and I don’t know the language or customs and now there’s even less time to get implanted. Our disguises as foreign seamen will give us freedom of movement, but we’ll only be able to tag along. You’ll have to find out where Chag Gara lives, and fast.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” she said. “What’s the procedure if we do find him? Do we try to use me again?
Kirk thought for a moment then shook his head. “No, that’s too uncertain. Chag might agree, but put the rendezvous with you off until later in the day, which might give Spock time to get to him, if he isn’t there already. Bones, can you adjust that hypo to give Gara a dose to put him under control without knocking him out?”
“Yes,” McCoy replied as he withdrew the hypo from his pouch and made an adjustment. “If I can get close enough to hit him with this, he’ll still be able to navigate, but won’t know what’s going on. We can pass him off as a friend who’s had one too many.”
“Good,” Kirk said, unbarring the door. “Let’s move. Sara, even though you didn’t intend to, you got us into this mess. Now, it’s up to you to help get us out.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Follow me, Captain, Doctor,” Sara said, turning right as they left the room. “We’ll go down the back way.”
She led the way through a narrow, gloomy corridor. A few lamps guttered along the walls, throwing a dim, yellowish light. They came to a down-sloping ramp and took it. At the bottom, they exited through swinging doors and found themselves under a portico roof which shielded a patio paved with multicolored, triangularly-cut stones. Cages holding small, hissing, lizard-like birds hung from brackets attached to the columns which supported the roof.
“This way,” the female officer said, and turned to her left. They walked alongside the inn until they came to the end of the building.
Kirk and McCoy at her heels, Sara stepped out into a narrow alley, again turning left. It was like walking along the bottom of an air shaft. Tall buildings on the left, and the high city wall on the right, cut off most of the light and air. A stench rose from the containers of garbage stacked beside rear exits.
When they finally emerged into the square, it was like leaving a dark tunnel. They found themselves squinting and blinking as their eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight
The woman hesitated for a moment, scanning the crowded square; then she started for the opposite side.
More Kyrosians had begun to congregate in the plaza as Kyr mounted higher in the sky. City women with market baskets were jostled by hooded hillmen stooped under great bundles of hides and bales of a wool-like material brought to the city for barter. Bareheaded farmers in sun-faded smocks carried trays of exotically colored fruits and vegetables. There was a creaking of ungreased wheels as several wagons came through the open, triangular main gate. The tailless, hairless, reptile-like draft animals that were pulling them squealed in protest at the weight of the piles of iron ingots the wagons carried. Behind them came another wagon, a long, eight-wheeled hybrid that was articulated in the middle and had an open wagon in front and a closed van behind.
“Beshwa,” Sara said in answer to Kirk’s question. “They must have come in to load up with trade goods before they make their summer sweep through the hills.”
When they reached the far side of the square, Sara tugged at Kirk’s vest-like jacket and gestured toward a stooped, wizened old man standing in front of a shop staring apathetically at a table covered with pottery.
“What about him?” Kirk asked.
“That’s the dop I was supposed to link Mr. Spock to,” she said bitterly, her voice heavy with self-recrimination. “If I—”
“Right,” McCoy interrupted before she could finish, “but there’s nothing that can be done about it now. We’ve got to get to Chag-whatever-his-name-is before Spock does. Now, let’s move it, Ensign.”
Sara grinned wryly at him and nodded. “I think we should try Vembe’s place first. The hillmen don’t like city food and a lot of those who have businesses in the-plaza eat at his place.”
She led them through an archway into a long arcade that stretched along the entire width of the far side of the square. It was lined with many small shops and eating houses. As Sara paused about a third of the way along, McCoy gave an appreciative sniff.
“Something smells good,” he said. “I was in such a hurry this morning that I didn’t have time for any breakfast.” He was turning into the doorway from which came the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat simmering in some spicy sauce when the girl grabbed his hand.
“Next door,” she said, and led the way into a dark opening that was so low that, small as she was, she had to stoop to enter.
“Good lord!” muttered McCoy as his nostrils were assaulted by a charnel stench. “What’s that?”
Sara giggled. “Vris. It’s a hill delicacy. First you take a haunch of neelot and hang it in a dark room until it’s good and moldy. Then—”
“Neelot?” interrupted McCoy.
‘They’re those big, hairless, lizard-like animals you saw pulling carts. They remind me of a s
kinned manx cat. The hillmen use them for food, leather, and as draft animals. There’s also a special breed for riding.”
“They sound like the old Mongol hordes of Earth and their horses,” Kirk said.
“Never saw a horse—or a cat—with a head like an alligator,” McCoy murmured.
Sara continued to speak to Kirk. “The hill culture is similar: nomadic people, sparse grazing lands, and a horse-like animal.”
She advanced into the dimly lit interior of Vembe’s eating house and approached a gnarled little man squatting in front of a fire pit. His leather mask was black, but with orange stripes under the eye slits. Several hillmen glanced at the three, then turned back to their bowls of vris and jugs of wine.
“Vembe,” Sara said and made an odd little bow of greeting.
The Kyrosian hunched his shoulders in acknowledgment of her salute and, picking up a small pitcher, dribbled a slimy-looking sauce over the chunks of greenish-yellow meat that were slowly turning on a spit. As drops of sauce dripped onto the hot coals, little puffs of oily smoke arose, and the stench intensified. Vembe leaned forward, took a long sniff, nodded, and said something to Sara.
“The vris is ready,” she translated. “He says he would be honored if you’d have some.”
Kirk’s gorge heaved at the thought.
“You can tell him… tell him we appreciate the offer but we both had a very large breakfast before leaving our ship…” Kirk paused, and glanced at McCoy. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t speak for the doctor. He was just telling us how hungry he was.”
McCoy rolled his eyes and said hastily, “I’ve a better idea. Tell him our religion won’t let us eat meat on whatever day this is.”
Sara spoke rapidly to the little man in guttural Kyrosian. Then, gesturing toward her companions, she made what was obviously an introduction. Vembe rose, touched a finger to the middle of his forehead, and bowed. Kirk and McCoy responded with like movements.
“Ask him if he can tell us where to find Chag Gara,” Kirk said.
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