Then he blinked. He realized that he suddenly couldn’t recall what Aidulac looked like, even though he’d been looking at her for the past minute. More to the point, his head cleared and he realized just what he’d been thinking during that minute. And then he remembered the Constellation’s trip to Pegasus Major.
“Computer, disengage video transmission, now!”
Kirk was aghast as the screen went dark. “Commodore, why did you do that? That poor woman needs our help.”
“Commodore, I don’t understand, why have you—”
“Don’t even think about it, Captain Aidulac. You are hereby instructed to leave orbit, or I will order the Constellation to fire on you. Do I make myself clear?”
Kirk grabbed Decker’s shoulder. “Commodore, what are you doing? This woman has a simple—”
“‘This woman,’ Kirk, is a Siren.”
A blank expression came over Kirk’s face. “A what?”
“Can I assume,” Decker said, addressing himself to the darkened viewscreen, “that the Sun’s registry is to the Peladon Affiliation, Captain Aidulac?”
The silence that met the question spoke volumes.
“As I expected. Captain Kirk, maybe you’re familiar with the world of Pegasus Major IV. A humanoid race evolved there known as the Peladons, who eventually founded an Affiliation that encompasses the entire solar system. On that planet, there’s a sect of specially trained women who can exert great influence on the male of the species—as well as the males of several other species. Vulcan men have proven to be able to overcome it, and Andorians are immune for some reason, but every other species they’ve encountered that has men in it have succumbed. The first Federation captain to deal with one called them ‘Sirens.’”
“Commodore, you’re being horribly unfair. I just want—”
“Still there, Aidulac? I’d have thought you’d have obeyed my instructions by now.” He took out his communicator. “Decker to Constellation. Has the Sun left orbit yet?”
“Takeshewada here. Not yet. Orders?”
“Give her two more minutes, Number One, then blast her out of the sky.”
Aidulac’s voice—now sounding rather petulant, though Decker suspected it was the same tone of voice she used when pouting earlier, he simply was interpreting it differently now—came through the desk’s speakers. “There’ll be no need for violence, Commodore. But I can assure you, I have friends at Starfleet—”
“All men, I’m sure,” Decker muttered.
“—and they’re going to hear about this. Trust me, these aren’t men you want to have as enemies.”
“They’ll have to get in line, Captain,” Decker said with a snort, thinking back on all the people he’d pissed off in his decades of service. “Proxima out.”
As he cut off the connection, Takeshewada said, “She’s leaving orbit now, Commodore. She was a Siren, wasn’t she?”
Decker blinked. “You knew?”
“It was a guess. I wasn’t entirely sure. Best way to be sure was to gauge your response. If you gave in, I’d know for sure.”
Sighing, Decker said, “Remind me to yell at you for that later.”
“Of course, sir.” Again, Decker could envision his first officer’s not-a-smile. “Constellation out.”
Closing his communicator and directing several unkind thoughts in Takeshewada’s direction, Decker turned to look at Kirk. The captain had an angry look on his face.
“I’m sorry, Commodore. I can’t believe I fell for such a—a cheap parlor trick.”
“Easy, Kirk, it’s no parlor trick. The Peladons have been breeding and training Sirens for centuries. Hell, I knew about ’em, and I almost gave in.”
Kirk shook his head. “Still, it’s not a weakness a commanding officer can afford.”
Shrugging, Decker said, “Maybe. But the good COs figure out how to pay it off anyhow.” Decker leaned back in his chair. “So, how’d the address go?”
“Well enough,” Kirk said after a hesitation. The captain obviously didn’t want to change the subject, but Decker had always thought of recriminations as being generally useless, self-recrimination even more so. His mindset was more toward solving the problem than apportioning blame.
Before Kirk could elaborate, Decker’s communicator beeped.
Sighing, Decker muttered, “Does it ever end?”
“Never soon enough,” Kirk replied with a smile.
With a snort, Decker opened the communicator. “Decker here.”
A cacophany of noise erupted from the communicator—people shouting, mostly, and the occasional sound of soft impacts. “Vascogne here, Commodore,” said Decker’s security chief. “We’ve got a situation.”
“You still at SCMC?”
“Yes, sir.” Vascogne had just reported everything being quiet at the Sierra City Medical Center a mere hour earlier.
What have they done this time? Decker wondered. “What kind of situation?”
“Somebody started a rumor that they found a cure up on the Constellation. Now everyone’s trying to get into the hospital to get it. Request permission to pacify the crowd, Commodore.”
Decker’s eyes grew wide. Vascogne wouldn’t have made the request if he thought there was a better alternative. For a security chief, the middle-aged lieutenant was remarkably nonaggressive. “Is that your recommendation, Lieutenant?”
There was a pause, and an “oof” sound could be heard through the speaker amidst the growing crowd noise. “It’s my opinion, sir, that no other option is viable.”
“Commodore, wait,” Kirk said before Decker could give the order. “I’d like to try something else.”
I really hate my job, Lieutenant Etienne Vascogne thought as he pulled the large Proximan off his leg.
“Keep these people back!” he screamed at his people, who were mixed in with some local police.
Should’ve joined the police force back home on Gammac like Uncle Claude wanted me to, he thought as he awaited the arrival of his commanding officer.
Vascogne was glad that Captain Kirk had apparently come up with some kind of alternative to shooting these poor people down. He hadn’t been able to come up with a better plan of his own, and stunning a large crowd was infinitely preferable, to his mind, to said large crowd stomping all over him. The people were pressing up against the cordon with such force, Vascogne couldn’t tell whether it was his own sweat he smelled or that of the person shouting epithets into his face.
Most of the cries of the people in that crowd were so much white noise, but certain phrases kept cropping up: “We want the cure!” “Give us the cure!” “Stop holding out on us!” “Cure now!” Some held signs with similar sentiments. Despite himself, Vascogne was impressed with how quickly the signs had been put together, given that the rumors had started less than an hour earlier.
Suddenly, an amplified voice blared out over the crowd. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, there is no cure!”
Vascogne allowed himself an instant to turn around, and he saw both Decker and Captain Kirk standing at the hospital entrance. He wondered briefly how the hell they got there, and then realized that they must have transported. That’s quite the loud crowd, he thought, if they can drown out a transporter. Either that or I’m just getting old…
The crowd noise abated slightly at Kirk’s utterance, but not much. “Don’t gimme that!” “We know there’s a cure!” “They told us you had it!” “We need it!”
“I can assure you that people are working around the clock to find a cure for this plague—but whatever you’ve heard, it’s just not true!” Kirk raised his hands as if he were trying to push the crowd back. “Now please, return to your homes—your families. I promise you, the minute we find a cure, we will be distributing it to everyone as fast as we can, but until then—”
“Liar!” “We want it now!” “You’re never gonna give it to us!”
“If you want, I can have the doctors working on the problem give you an update themselves. But right now
they’re working diligently—both the medical staffs of the Enterprise and the Constellation, and the acting surgeon general of Proxima.”
“You want to kill us all!” “I bet you’re not even working on it!” “Liar!”
Kirk looked directly at the person who called him a liar. “I’m not lying to you! I have no reason to lie to you! All I have to do is give one simple order, and these security guards and Proximan police will fire their weapons and leave you all lying stunned in the street. Or one of our ships can do the same thing from orbit. But I don’t want to do that to you—because you don’t deserve that. You deserve the truth—you deserve to not have to live in fear that you may be the next one to contract the disease—you deserve not to be treated like criminals in your own home. That’s why we’ve been keeping you all updated—so you know that we’re doing everything we can to help you! We will get through this crisis—I know we will. All it will take is patience on your part. Give us a chance to prove ourselves.”
He looked out over the crowd, seeming as if he was trying to look each person in the eye, even though that wasn’t really possible. Despite himself, Vascogne admired the rhetorical technique. Guess they’re teaching public speaking at Captain School these days, he thought wryly.
“Whoever’s doing this to you wants this. Whoever’s doing this wants you all at each other’s throats—fighting each other like animals, rioting like maniacs. This virus is being used as a weapon of terror—and the best way for you to fight back is not to let it change anything! The best way to fight this battle is to let us do our jobs—and to go on doing yours. Show whoever’s attacking you that you won’t let this stop you—won’t let their cowardly attack turn you into savages.”
Now he seemed to be looking at all of them. There was a pleading look in his eyes—and, at the same time, a very tired one.
“Please—go home. We will inform you the minute there’s a cure.”
As Kirk’s speech had gone on, the crowd had slowly quieted down, and had just as slowly calmed. Shouters had shut up; people gesturing and holding up signs had let their arms fall, the signs lowered or dropped to the ground; those rushing the cordon of security and police had ceased their forward motion.
Then what had been a furious, amorphous blob of humanity gradually became a group of individuals slumping their dispirited way home. The captain’s words had broken the mob spirit.
Vascogne just hoped it was replaced with something—well, calmer. His cynical side was quite sure that said replacement would not be permanent unless a cure was found, and damn soon.
As his people and the Proximan police kept an eye on the erstwhile mob and guided them away from the SCMC, Vascogne approached the captain, standing next to Decker. “Nice speech.”
Kirk blew out a sharp breath. “Thank you.”
Smiling, Decker said, “I especially liked all the dramatic pauses.”
“Just fumbling for words, Commodore,” Kirk said with a smile.
“I gotta say,” Vascogne said, running a hand over his bald head, “I didn’t think anything short of phaser fire would stop that crowd.”
“It was certainly my first choice,” Decker said.
Kirk took a breath. “No offense, Commodore, but—well, weapons fire is what Kodos would have done. For years I thought of martial law as inherently evil because of what Kodos did. But don’t you see?” He clenched his fists. “This is our chance to show that it can be a source of good if it’s used properly.”
“Yeah, well, from your mouth to these people’s ears,” Vascogne muttered. “What I want to know is how that rumor got started in the first place.”
Decker shook his head. “Situation like this, rumors are flying all over the damn place. I’m sure half the people on the planet are convinced that Starfleet made this up so we could declare martial law and take over.”
Taking out his communicator, Kirk said, “We’ll just have to prove them wrong, won’t we, Commodore? Kirk to Constellation.”
“ Constellation here.”
“Put me through to Dr. McCoy, please.”
After a moment, another voice came through the communicator’s tinny speaker. “McCoy here. What is it, Jim?”
“Progress report, Doctor. How goes the search for a cure?”
“Slower the more I talk to you.”
“Sorry, Bones,” Kirk said with a small smile. “I’m going to need one of you to give an address to the people down here—fill them in on your progress.”
“I don’t have time to be giving press conferences. Besides, that’s how rumors get started, and we’ve got enough of that going on here.”
Frowning, Kirk asked, “What do you mean?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. Rosenhaus thought he found a cure and made the mistake of telling someone before he tested it.”
Vascogne almost groaned out loud. He knew how fast the rumor mill on the Constellation could function. Within two-and-a-half seconds of Rosenhaus saying he found the cure—and knowing the young doctor, he probably sounded supremely confident as he said it—the whole ship probably knew about it. That could just as easily have spread to the planet through one of Vascogne’s own people.
“Bones, does that mean—?”
“It means we’re on a track, Jim, but I don’t have any idea whether it’s the right track, or how far we have to go on it. I’ll keep you posted. McCoy out.”
Decker regarded Kirk with a quizzical look. “Kirk, I can’t help noticing that that doctor of yours didn’t actually agree to give a statement.”
“He thinks it’ll distract from his work. All things considered, it’s probably best to let him proceed as he sees fit. Perhaps your Dr. Rosenhaus can speak at our next state-of-the-planet address?”
Vascogne rolled his eyes. “Like the doc needs a reason to feed his ego.”
Chuckling, Decker said, “Don’t worry, Vascogne, I’m sure we’ll all work to make sure he doesn’t live it down.”
Chapter Six
GUILLERMO MASADA blinked as he entered the sensor room and saw Lt. Commander Spock sitting at one of the consoles. “What’re you doing here?”
Spock’s right eyebrow climbed up his forehead. “I assume that is a rhetorical outburst and not an actual request for information?”
Chuckling, Masada said, “Yeah, something like that. Sorry, but when I said we should take a break for twenty minutes, I thought that meant that you’d, y’know, be out of the room for twenty minutes.”
Turning back to the readings he was getting from the sensors, Spock said, “Your exact words, Lieutenant, were an expression of exhaustion, followed by the words, ‘I could use a break. What do you say, Spock, twenty minutes?’”
Smiling as he sat at the console next to Spock, Masada said, “Yeah, well, when you agreed and left with me, I thought that meant you were going to take the full twenty.”
“Your assumption was made on a faulty premise. I don’t require large amounts of ‘break-time.’”
“Really?” Masada said with a smile. “And that’s because you’re a Vulcan.”
“Correct.”
“Except you’re not—entirely. You’re half-human.” He grinned. “That explains two things, actually. One, you’re half-human, so you only needed half the break time.”
The eyebrow shot up again. “Oh?”
Masada turned to face Spock directly. “I do love that trick. Ensign Sontor does it, too.”
“Trick?”
“The eyebrow thing. My theory is that’s the Vulcans’ secret for repressing their emotions—they channel them all into that one eyebrow. That’s why you guys raise them so often—it’s the focal point of all those emotions you’re suppressing.”
Spock turned back to the sensor display. “Your reasoning could charitably be referred to as ‘specious,’ Lieutenant. Barring the unlikely happenstance that you have scientific data to back it up, it is a hypothesis, not a theory. In addition, it’s equivalent to hypothesizing that you cull information from your hair.”
>
Masada frowned. “Excuse me?”
“The small gathering of hair at the back of your head. You have a tendency to grab it before providing information.”
Straightening in his chair, Masada said, “I do not!”
Again, the eyebrow shot up.
“Fine, whatever. And it’s called a ponytail.”
“A misnomer, given that ponies actually have much longer tails.”
Masada laughed. “That’s the second thing that you being half-human explains. You, Commander Spock, are a laugh riot.”
To Masada’s great joy, that earned him a sharp look from the Enterprise first officer. “I fail to see how my conversations are akin to the behavior of the people on Proxima.”
“No, no, not that kind of riot. It’s an old expression—it just means you’re funny. One of my staff is a Vulcan—that Ensign Sontor I mentioned. I’ve worked with a bunch of other Vulcans, and you’re the only one of ’em that’s cracked me up.”
“Fascinating,” Spock said dryly as he turned back to the console. “However, I can assure you that any humor you might perceive is solely a construct of your own interpretation.”
Masada said, “Don’t you see, though, that’s exactly what makes it funny? The literal-mindedness, that dry tone of yours—by being so serious, you become humorous.”
“That is a contradiction in terms, Mr. Masada. If one is serious, one cannot be humorous.”
“Sure you can. It’s the inherent contradiction of human existence. The difference between the interpreter and the interpreted, the—” He cut himself off. “Sorry, I guess I’m still tired. I only get philosophical when I’m tired. Feel free to ignore me.”
“I had already decided on just such a course of action,” Spock said.
Laughing, Masada said, “See? There you go again. You just crack me up.”
Turning his gaze back to Masada, Spock said, “I do not discern any ruptures in your skin, Lieutenant.”
“It’s another expression,” Masada said with a sigh.
“Another contradiction of human existence?”
“Sort of. More like a metaphor. You make me laugh so hard, I’m in danger—well, metaphorical danger, anyhow—of shaking myself to pieces. Hence, ‘crack me up.’”
The Brave And The Bold Book One Page 8
