Star Trek - Log 9

by Alan Dean Foster

  Never in his wildest nightmares as a child had Kirk envisioned anything so ghastly as any one of the oncoming gargantuas. Tendrazin was being assaulted by creatures a dying addict could not have imagined in his most frenzied moments.

  Now they were packed so close to one another by the dissolution drug that there was no room left for the creatures inside to move any direction but straight ahead. Any brains contained by the monsters were lost in the task of simply running the huge collection of integrals.

  Kirk watched in absolute fascination as the rain of darts continued to strike the outside of the two creatures nearest the narrowing battlements. As each dart injected its tiny portion of drug, a small portion of creature would slough away, to run, hop, scramble back toward the forest, all will to integrate lost. Those on the flanks had lost considerable mass by now, but the remaining majority of creatures in between were only weakly affected.

  "Something's got to happen soon," McCoy said nervously. "There's hardly enough room for them to move without stepping on each other."

  At first it seemed as if McCoy was wrong, that the abominations would continue their inexorable side-by-side march on the city. But soon a great tintinnabulation arose among the heaving mass of integrated flesh, a cacophony produced by the simultaneous activating of ten thousand mouths.

  Coming to a slow, ponderous halt, one creature turned furiously on its neighbor, and it in turn on the next, and it on yet another, so that soon jaws and limbs were engaged in a frightful battle the likes of which no world had ever seen.

  "That's done it!" McCoy exulted. "They're attacking one another. They're going to . . . to . . ." His voice faded, crushed by the enormity of what was taking place out on the innocent plain.

  "Oh, my God," Kirk murmured.

  Indeed, the results of the Klingon experiment had begun to turn on one another—but not in the way Kirk had predicted, and in a fashion none had foreseen.

  No more limbs were torn, no flesh ripped from a fellow mountain of integrals, no teeth dug great sores in the body pressing so claustrophobically upon it.

  "They're not fighting any more," Kirk whispered in disbelief. "They're integrating with each other."

  Panic had fallen like a wave on the high council. "Sound full evacuation!" one was yelling repeatedly. "All to retreat! Is lost Tendrazin . . . Is lost Pandro . . .!"

  Gunners continued desperately to pour their unceasing hail of darts on the flanks of the attackers, which were attackers no longer. In their place the ultimate horror had been created, forced for survival to close integral ranks instead of fighting among itself. Under the constant prodding of the dissolution drug, the lumbering horrors had blended, joined to form one single, awesome, pulsating mountain of flesh. It towered above the highest structures of central Tendrazin and cast a long, threatening shadow over the plain and city wall behind which Kirk and the others stood.

  So enormous was it that it blocked out the sun. Thousands of jaws bellowed and snapped along its front and sides, thousands more eyes of all shapes, sizes, and colors rolled madly in all directions. With a heave that shook the ground, the Pandronian mountain threw itself forward in a half hop, half fall. The action was repeated again, covering more distance this time.

  With energy born of desperation the gunners on the enbankments flanking the quivering hulk poured more and more of the dissolution drug into its clifflike sides. Integrals continued to fall and tumble from the creature's sides, looking like pebbles bouncing down a canyon wall.

  "It's not going to work, Jim," a frantic McCoy declared. "We've failed."

  "It's my fault, Bones," a disconsolate Kirk replied. "I didn't imagine this possibility."

  "Do not blame yourself, Captain." Spock viewed the catastrophe with typical detachment. "Neither did I, though something was bothering me about the concept from the first. Who would dream that the attackers would combine to create one invulnerable beast instead of fighting one another, as would be expected of carnivores in such a situation."

  "There's still one last chance, Spock."

  The first officer noticed the wild gleam in Kirk's eye. "Captain, I must object. We cannot transmit ship's power. To so weaken the Enterprise while it lies in range of a potentially belligerent enemy vessel—"

  "I know, Spock, I know!" Kirk's voice was agonized as he fought to make the decision, while the oncoming colossus rolled steadily nearer.

  The Pandronians could not wait for Kirk to make up his mind. All had rushed as one to stand before eb Riss, who glared down at them, apparently indifferent to approaching annihilation. They took turns pleading with the wearer of the Tam Paupa to save them, as Pandronians had done for thousands of years in moments of crisis.

  eb Riss finally deigned to speak. "Is This One confirmed as premier?"

  "Yes—yes!" several voices acknowledged hastily.

  "Too easy," eb Riss objected. "It must by the Oath of dn Mida be so sworn."

  The members of the high council began to recite in Pandronian a long, involved, unchallengable oath. When concluded, it would irrevocably install the traitor eb Riss as supreme head of the planetary government—no matter what anyone might decide subsequently. Having been sworn in by that oath, eb Riss could not be removed from office.

  It looked, Kirk thought, as if the master Pandronian manipulator was about to gain everything he had planned from the very beginning, eb Riss had made use of Kirk and his companions, of the Klingons, and of his own people to achieve absolute power.

  And there didn't appear to be any way to stop him.

  "Hold your oath a moment. Councillors of Pandro!" Spock's cry was loud and strident enough to startle the councillors to silence.

  eb Riss eyed Spock wamingly. "Listen not to this alien outworlder. Finish the oath!"

  Spock turned, pointed toward the field. "Closely to look at what happening is, gentlemen," he insisted in halting Pandronian.

  In spite of themselves, in spite of the anxiety of the moment, all of the council members gave in to the urge to see what this strange alien was so insistent about

  "It—it's stopped," McCoy stammered in amazement.

  Similar wondrous mutterings rose from the group of high councillors, for truly, the ontumbling mountain had come to a halt.

  "The organism has reached a critical organic mass," Spock explained to the mermerized onlookers. "The demands of an impossible body have overridden the arguments of its nervous systems. Organic demands insist that it can proceed no further without massive ingestions of food. And food it will have."

  All gaped as thousands of mouths tore at the flesh nearest to their respective maws, shredding limbs and scales, necks and motile limbs in a frenzy of hunger.

  "It's devouring itself," Kirk said for all of them.

  "One section no longer can communicate with another," the first officer went on. "Internal communication has collapsed under the all-consuming need for sustenance.

  "It has become big enough to go mad."

  Steadily one section of the monster vanished into another, all internal direction submerged in the orgy of mindless feeding. Soon the irrigated croplands just outside the old city wall were awash in a sea of Pandronian animal blood. Claws and fangs continued to rip away at helpless body parts.

  The rejuvenated Pandronian gunners had no time to cheer. They were too busy, continuing to pour an unending flood of drug-laden darts into undamaged integrals. Now the individual sections of the creature commenced to fall away in clumps instead of single components. The retreat of disassociated integrals back toward the forest grew from a steady stream into a stampede.

  Between its own depredations and the effects of the massive infusion of drug, the ultimate monster dissolved like a steak in an acid bath.

  "Will they ever recombine?" Kirk mused.

  "I think not, Captain," ventured Spock. "The effects of the dissolution drug are long-lasting. In any event, it was only the Klingon hormones and frequency controller that induced the component integrals to combine into s
uch huge, unnatural associations. That hormone is now being broken down by the dissolution chemicals. Those integrals which are not drugged will likely experience no desire, retain no drive, to form anything other than natural integrations again."

  By now the monster had shrunk to half its initial size. Dead sections, paralyzed or wounded integrals began to pile up around its pulsing base like so much living talus. At the rate dissolution was proceeding, the creature would shortly be reduced to manageable proportions. It already appeared to Kirk that the number of wounded or dying integrals exceeded the healthy ones still constituting the living body.

  "We give thanks to you for aid," Commander bn Bem told Kirk gratefully, "for having Tendrazin saved from greater evil than could be imagined." Turning, he addressed the silent council members.

  "Have done the outworlders of the Federation what they said could be done, what This One said they could do. Have we now another task before us of equal importance." His gaze went past them. "To choose new premier of planet Pandro."

  Somehow a shaken eb Riss managed to retain a modicum of composure, although his previous arrogant confidence had vanished. If it weren't for the Tam Paupa he wore, Kirk suspected, eb Riss would long since have been running for the nearest exit.

  "Still This One wears the Tam Paupa," he boomed shakily. "Are among you any who would oldest Pandronian law violate to take it from me?"

  Not one of the by-now-angry councillors took a step forward, nor did bn Bem.

  "What are we to do, Kirk Captain?" he wondered, bemoaning the seeming standoff. "Cannot anyone take Tam Paupa from wearer without incurring wrath of all Pandronians past. Cannot we confirm nonperson eb Riss as premier, but cannot we have premier without Tam Paupa."

  "I still don't see why the situation doesn't warrant an exception to the law," Kirk objected. "For this one time, can't you try and—Spock?" He broke off, staring at his first officer, who was standing utterly motionless, looking into nothingness. "Spock, are you all right?"

  McCoy had noticed Spock enter his present state from the beginning, and he cautioned Kirk, "Easy, Jim—Vulcan mind trance."

  Already Kirk had noticed the familiarity of Spock's peculiar vacant expression. The Vulcan body swayed ever so slightly, but remained otherwise rigid. Kirk followed the direction of that blank gaze of concentration and discovered it was focused directly on Lud eb Riss.

  Gradually that Pandronian's air of determined defiance faded, to be replaced quickly by first a look of uncertainty and then one of alarm. On his head the Tam Paupa seemed to quiver, just a hair.

  "No," eb Riss stammered, stepping back away from Spock. "Stop now, Outworlder!"

  But Spock's attitude did not change one iota, and the Tam Paupa's quivering increased. Kirk, McCoy, and the other Pandronians were united in their dumbfounded feeling—but for different reasons.

  Kirk had no idea what Spock was up to, but he knew better than to try to question or interfere while his friend and second in command was locked in that trance.

  The oscillation of the Tam Paupa continued to increase, until a fully panicked eb Riss was forced to put his hands to his head to try to steady it. Both hands came away as if the Pandronian had immersed them in fire.

  Something else seemed to go out of the traitor. He stumbled backward blindly, crashed into the restraining wall lining the top of the building, and slumped to a sitting position. He wore the look of a badly beaten boxer.

  At that point, when Kirk began to feel he was gaining some understanding of what was going on, something happened which dropped his lower jaw a full centimeter.

  Rising on a ring of glistening cilia, the Tam Paupa lifted itself into the air. Microscopically fine filaments withdrew bloodlessly from a circle around eb Riss's scalp. As he stared in disbelief, Kirk could just barely make out a line of tiny eyes, much like those of a spider, running around the front rim of the brilliantly colored circle.

  What had given the appearance of metal now revealed itself as organic, having the same sheen as a shiny-scaled Terran lizard. Gemlike bulges in front now declared themselves to be eyes, which stayed glazed over while the Tam Paupa was being worn.

  While eb Riss lay like one paralyzed, the Tam Paupa slowly crawled off his head, down his face, and away from his body.

  "I'll be an imploded star," Kirk exclaimed, "the blasted thing's alive!"

  bn Bem spared a moment to turn a curious look on Kirk. "Of course is alive the Tam Paupa. You mean you knew this not?"

  "We thought," murmured McCoy, "it was some kind of crown."

  "Is crown truly. Is crown alive," the commander hastened to explain. "Why you think we not make new Tam Paupa when this one first stolen?"

  "We thought this one had some particular cultural or spiritual significance," Kirk reasoned.

  "Has that," admitted bn Bem, "but is much more why. Tam Paupa is maybe rarest integral on Pandro. One found only every two to five hundred our years. Is why this one missed so badly. Immature Tam Paupa types live plentiful, but useless to us. Have no ability to integrate with Pandronian mind, to aid in decision-making."

  "It's an intelligent creature, then?" a skeptical McCoy wondered.

  "Not intelligence as we say," the commander continued. "Is most specialized integral—perhaps most specialized on all planet Pandro." He frowned a Pandronian frown.

  "But This One not understand why it left eb Riss. eb Riss not dead."

  "What happens when the Pandronian wearing—no, I guess I should say associating—with the Tam Paupa does die?" McCoy inquired. "Surely Pandronians don't live six hundred years or so."

  "No. When that happens, council or similar group of potential premiers is assembled. At moment of decision Tam Paupa leaves now useless body of former integration and chooses new one to associate with. That One becomes new ruler of Pandro.

  "Is most fair and efficient method of choosing new Pandro leader. Tam Paupa always selects best mind present to associate self with. Is also why Pandro never have any fat premiers," the commander added as an afterthought. "Tam Paupa draws sustenance as uneating integral from its Pandronian host-partner."

  "Sort of like a mental tapeworm," McCoy observed fascinatedly.

  "But still remains question, why Tam Paupa leave eb Riss traitor? Is That One not dead," and he gestured at the dazed but still very much alive eb Riss.

  "I think maybe I can answer that," Kirk said slowly. "When he enters a Vulcan mind trance, Mr. Spock is capable of mental communication to a certain degree. What he's doing to, or with, the Tam Paupa I can't imagine, but he's obviously doing something.

  "I wonder how long Spock's known that the Tam Paupa was a living creature and not a hunk of metal, Bones."

  "No telling, Jim," the doctor replied. "Could have been from the beginning, or he might have discovered it just now. We never discussed it among ourselves, so if he did know, he probably saw no reason to bring the subject up. Besides, you know Spock when he really gets interested in something."

  "I know, Bones. Sometimes he forgets that the rest of us might not see things as clearly as he does," Kirk noted. "And speaking of seeing things clearly . . ." He pointed downward.

  After a long pause next to eb Riss's motionless body, the Tam Paupa had apparently concluded its scrutiny of the assembled prospective candidates. It began to move again on its hundreds of tiny cilia—directly toward Spock.

  "We've got to wake him up, Jim," McCoy exclaimed, alarmed at the direction events were taking. "He may not be aware of what's happening." Indeed, the Enterprise's first officer was still staring off into space, and not down at the shining circle approaching his feet.

  "Bones, I don't know. Maybe—" Kirk moved to intercept the creature, bending and reaching down with a hand.

  A strong blue arm grabbed his shoulder, pulled him back. "No, Kirk Captain," bn Bem warned him. "Not to touch the Tam Paupa. Recall that creature which can live six hundred Pandronian years in unstable jungles of Pandro has defenses other than mental. Recall recent actions of traitor
eb Riss."

  Kirk thought back a moment. When eb Riss had sought to prevent the Tam Paupa from leaving him, he had reached up with his hands—and promptly yanked them away, in evident pain. Now Kirk scrutinized those limp hands and saw that they were burned almost beyond recognition.

  "When so wishes, can Tam Paupa secrete extremely caustic substance for protection," bn Bem went on to explain. "Protects self also from disassociation, even while wearer sleeps."

  "Then how the devil," McCoy wondered, "did the rebels manage to remove it from old afdel Kaun?"

  "That answer's obvious, Bones, if you stop a minute and think."

  "Sure—the Klingons have methods of handling anything, like we do, no matter how corrosive. They must have supplied the rebels who committed the actual theft with everything they needed." His attention was directed downward.

  "Right now I'm more concerned with what that impressive little symbiote has on its mind," the doctor finished, voicing professional concern.

  "We can't stop it, Bones," a tight-voiced Kirk reminded him, "and it would be highly dangerous to try beaming Spock up while he's still in trance state. He must have known what he was chancing when he began this. Let's hope he has some control over what's happening now."

  The first officer of the Enterprise showed no sign of retreat or awakening, however, as the Tam Paupa continued its deliberate approach. Although Kirk knew it was a benign creature, he couldn't help comparing the scene to a large spider stalking its prey.

  Reaching Spock's feet, the front end of the Tam Paupa touched his left boot. Kirk stiffened, started to reach for the hand phaser at his hip—no matter the consequences to Pandro if he vaporized the creature. More important were the consequences to Spock.

  But his hand paused when the creature did. It remained there for long minutes, and Kirk wondered if it could detect his implied threat to kill. Abruptly, it backed away, hesitated again, and this time started straight for Commander Ari bn Bem.