Star Trek: The Original Series - 161 - Savage Trade

by Tony Daniel

  “Those lights? Is that the propulsion mechanism or the Excalbians themselves?” Kirk asked.

  “Both,” Washington-Yarnek responded.

  “Captain, I’m picking up an incoming message from one of those vessels,” Uhura said.

  “Put it on, Lieutenant.”

  The view of the crystal ships vanished and what replaced it on the viewscreen was—Valek.

  She was unhurt, but her hair was disheveled and a portion of her collar was torn.

  “Captain, it seems I have become a diplomatic hostage.”

  “Have they hurt you in any way? Where are you?”

  “They have not harmed me in any permanent way,” Valek answered, touching the tear. “Although I admit to experiencing an extremely jarring mental sensation when I was snatched from the Montana akin to the sudden and unexpected breaking of a Vulcan mind-meld. As to your second question, they are holding me in what appears to be a small cell kept at Class-M environmental conditions. As you can see behind me, the walls of this holding cell are transparent, and what is beyond does not seem as if it would be amenable to Vulcan or human life.”

  Suddenly a voice interrupted the audio feed from Valek. It was loud, of indeterminate sex, and flatly insistent. “You will assist us in our purpose, or Valek shall be harmed.”

  “Threating a Federation representative is not a very good opening move for negotiations,” Kirk replied.

  “This is no time for frivolous responses,” the voice said. “Valek’s life and the lives of your crew are at stake.”

  “Are they?” Kirk said.

  “A demonstration is required.”

  The viewscreen went blank, then returned to the image of the five Excalbian vessels. One of them, a pale blue one, flared brightly.

  The voice spoke again, sounding none-too-pleased. “You have shielded your ship from direct matter manipulation.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We will proceed with the destruction of the Montana as an alternate demonstration.”

  Damn, Kirk thought.

  He stood up from his chair. “Wait a minute,” the captain said quickly. “Do not destroy the Montana. If you do, I assure you that we will do whatever we can to prevent you from achieving what you want.”

  “Do you know what we want?”

  “I presume you’ve come for the refugee Excalbians.”

  There was a brief pause, then a crackling, as if hundreds of tiny sticks were breaking at once.

  “That’s the sound of an Excalbian laugh, Captain,” said Washington-Yarnek next to Kirk in a low voice.

  “If not that, then tell us what you want,” Kirk said.

  “Very well.” A form appeared on the viewscreen. It was the rocky, barely humanoid form Kirk had seen Yarnek assume before. It had claws for hands and a circle of eyes around its head, each oval in appearance, and white with no pupils to speak of. There was no possibility of reading expression from that rocky visage. “I am Anvit, commander of these vessels.”

  “Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise,” Kirk responded.

  “We are well aware of who you are, Captain,” said Anvit. “I hope you are aware of the great trouble you have caused my people.”

  “Trouble?” Kirk said. “Last I checked, it was you who had taken myself and my first officer prisoner and forced us to fight reincarnations of some of the galaxy’s worse villains. You have some nerve, calling me trouble.”

  “If it had not been for you, we would not have initiated the morality scenarios,” said Anvit. “If we had not continued with the scenarios, we would be safe, instead of a people on the run.”

  Kirk was unsure about what Anvit meant by this, but first he knew he must attend to the Montana’s safety. “Anvit, I will listen to whatever proposal you have to make if you will leave the Montana untouched.”

  There was a brief pause, then an answer came. “The collective has conferred, and this is acceptable. We cannot, however, restore the engines to working condition. The deterioration has become too great.”

  Kirk made a cutting motion, and the Enterprise’s feed to the Excalbian was ended. “Uhura, get me the Montana.”

  “Aye, sir, a channel is open.”

  “Montana, Kirk here.”

  “Kirk! Good news. We’ve managed to retain the engine integrity and prevented a meltdown. We only have minimal impulse, but for the moment we’re safe.”

  “Hang tight. We’ll be back in touch momentarily. Kirk out.”

  He nodded to Uhura. Anvit reappeared.

  “We have come seeking our runaways, Captain Kirk, but not to bring them back. Instead, we are going to join them. Now we have found you, as well. If you do not aid us, we will cause pain for the one you call Valek.”

  You almost had me on your side. Now you lost me.

  “More threats?” said Kirk. “Let me tell you something, Anvit, and you can take this to your collective. We don’t negotiate with those who threaten our lives or the lives of others.”

  “Is that so, Kirk? Behold.”

  The view switched back to Valek. Suddenly her cool and serenity were interrupted by a choking cough. She put a hand over her mouth, felt around for any exit from her cell.

  “Anvit,” Kirk shouted, “what’s happening?”

  Valek evidently heard him. “The Excalbians have introduced a chemical I judge from the smell to be a copper bonding agent into the atmospheric mixture. It links with the oxygenizing metal in my blood and causes . . .” She jerked forward, put a hand to her abdomen. She put her other hand to her head. “Excruciating pain.”

  “Valek, how long can you stand it?”

  “I am attempting . . . I am attempting to . . .” Valek seemed to regain control of herself. She raised her hands and touched her fingers and thumbs together to make a triangle and stared intently at this form. “I am attempting use of Vulcan mind control techniques to mitigate the pain.”

  “Can you keep it up, Valek?”

  “Unknown, Captain,” she replied, her voice straining. Then the tension slowly drained from her face. Valek looked up. “Captain Kirk, I hereby use my plenipotentiary power as Federation representative to order you to disregard any torture they inflict upon me and to not, repeat not, attempt any sort of rescue of myself.”

  “Valek,” Kirk said. He paused, shook his head. “We aren’t in the Gibraltar system anymore. You don’t have authority here.”

  “James, please,” she said. “Do not let them use me to blackmail you into illogical action.”

  Kirk considered. There was no way he would give up on her. But he didn’t have to let the Excalbians know that.

  “Very well, Valek,” he said. “I will follow your instructions. And . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Do not be,” Valek replied. “This is—” Another wave of pain struck her, and it took her a moment to re-center and return to her serene posture. She breathed in and spoke again. “This is merely part of my job, Captain, as facing danger is part of yours.”

  “Did you hear me, Anvit?” Kirk angrily said. “You will never get what you want from us by force.”

  “This response is irrational,” said Anvit. An exasperated tone had crept into his voice. “The fact that those you call ‘good’ act to protect others when faced with coercion through threats made upon those others to whom the good have an altruistic or romantic commitment is the prime lesson of your previous visit to Excalbia. You are not behaving as you should according to your own rules!”

  “They have learned nothing about good and evil,” said Washington-Yarnek with a laugh, but a laugh filled with sadness.

  “Yarnek? You are present? We did not detect you on the Enterprise.”

  “I noticed that,” Washington-Yarnek replied. “Which means that the blocking methods of the humans has been successful.”

  “Yarnek, we must speak.”

  “I don’t think so, Anvit,” Yarnek replied. “You have reached an erroneous conclusion based on incomplete evidence.”

 
Kirk raised a hand to cut them both off. “Enough of this. We will not turn over the humanoid Excalbians of Zeta Gibraltar to you, Anvit.”

  “You misunderstand our intentions, Captain Kirk,” Anvit said. “Whatever desire we had to capture and reintegrate the runaway scenarists has been overridden by other concerns at present.”

  “So you have decided to go ahead with your plan to attack the Federation?”

  “No. We shall not destroy your Federation, Captain.” Anvit cocked his head and adjusted his rocky carapace to a different position.

  If I didn’t know better than to impute human body language to aliens, I’d say he was fidgeting, Kirk thought.

  “Well, that’s . . . good to hear,” Kirk responded. “But the very fact that you even considered the possibility is bound to make us wary of you.”

  “The collective has made its choice,” said Anvit, raising his hands in what seemed to be a gesture of dismissal. “This matter is resolved. Your response is irrational.”

  “What the captain is trying to communicate to you, Anvit,” said Washington-Yarnek, breaking in, “is that humans have no reason to believe that the collective won’t change its mind again should circumstances change.”

  “That is entirely correct,” Anvit replied. “How could it not be? In the future, we may very well change our mind.”

  “You have learned nothing, Anvit,” Washington-Yarnek said. “All of you have learned nothing.”

  “Yarnek,” said the Excalbian captain. “We do not wish to dispute this with you.”

  “Then why . . .” Washington-Yarnek’s look of puzzlement slowly became one of comprehension. “You are in trouble, aren’t you? You have come seeking help.”

  “Your assessment is accurate, Yarnek.”

  “Release the Vulcan representative immediately, and I will speak with you.”

  “James T. Kirk has already refused to negotiate. Your collective has decided.”

  “I am not Captain Kirk.”

  “But—”

  “Anvit, I am human now. Or at least I wish to be. Here there is no collective. There is no restraint but one’s own conscience. There is freedom.”

  Anvit said nothing. Then he slowly nodded his head. “Valek is released from coercive excruciation.”

  The view shifted back to Valek. She slumped forward. She took a deep breath, then another, and finally stood straight again.

  “Valek, are you all right?” Kirk asked.

  “I am quickly recovering,” the Vulcan answered. “The compound should be out of my bloodstream momentarily.”

  “Captain Kirk, if you will lower your shield, we will send Valek back to you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kirk said. “And I’m sure Representative Valek concurs.”

  “I do,” Valek stated off screen. “Don’t do it, James.”

  “Then we are at an impasse,” Anvit said with a shuffle of the shoulders that passed for an Excalbian shrug.

  Suddenly Washington-Yarnek let out a real, unrestrained laugh. “I’ve just realized something,” he said. “Captain, may I make a suggestion?”

  Kirk looked at him. “Be my guest, Mister President.”

  Washington-Yarnek nodded, turned to the screen. “Anvit?”

  The image of Valek, now in no apparent distress, was replaced by the rocky Excalbian. “What is it you wish to propose?”

  “That you tell the truth, Anvit,” Washington-Yarnek said. “Stop trying to bully your way to an outcome. Treat us humans as equals, and simply tell us why you are here.”

  “How will that be effective? We would thus display our weakness.”

  “Just trust me, Anvit.”

  There was a pause, then the rocky Excalbian spoke. “Very well. We have come seeking sanctuary with the Federation. We are in dire need of your help.”

  Kirk shook his head in wonder. “You . . . expect me to believe this?”

  “I think he is telling the truth, Captain,” said Washington-Yarnek. “Or believes himself to be.”

  “Go back to your planet.”

  “We cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “Excalbia no longer exists.”

  No one spoke for a long moment.

  “We are the last Excalbians,” Anvit continued. “We are fleeing a terrible enemy.”

  “And you believe you were going to coerce your way into our good graces?”

  “We do not often deal with species unlike us. There was no time to run scenarios. We act on incomplete information. Captain Kirk, Representative Valek, please help us. We are afraid.”

  Kirk rubbed his temples. “How can I verify any of this?”

  “Perhaps I can,” Valek’s voice said. “Commander Anvit, can you create a space where you and I can coexist for at least a short while?”

  “I can.”

  “If we can be in close proximity, I can attempt a Vulcan mind-meld to verify the truth of what you are saying.”

  Anvit tilted his head and seemed to consider for a moment—although his lack of a true face made any other human expression impossible. “This will be done,” he finally said.

  On the Enterprise viewscreen, Valek was now standing beside the Excalbian. She’d evidently been transported to what served as the Excalbian vessel’s bridge.

  “Proceed,” Anvit said. With one of his crab-like claws, he pointed to a spot on his lower torso. “I have cooled a portion of my carapace to a degree that should be warm, but not excessively hot, to your touch. I cannot maintain this temperature for long without damage to myself.”

  Valek nodded that she understood.

  “Clear your mind, Anvit,” she said, “and we shall begin.”

  Eighteen

  For Valek, the experience was unlike any other mind-meld she had ever attempted. The Excalbian thought process was utterly alien. It was a creature of reason, but of reason turned in and around on itself so that instead of clarity there was endless convection, endless churning.

  She realized she was floating in the mental equivalent of magma. For a moment, it almost pulled her under, almost burned her own mind, a small space within the massive silicon sea.

  But Valek held herself afloat. Schooling her thought to perception only, so that she would not run the risk of being absorbed and dissolved. Then, slowly, she found that she could swim among the thoughts. She began to detect currents, and she followed these. The current converged. Coherent thought emerged.

  She followed further, deeper—

  And slowly, those thoughts formed into a story . . .

  * * *

  I, Anvit, remember the cause of the turmoil first. I recall the single event that resulted in the catastrophic cascade that changed everything.

  The coming of James T. Kirk.

  After the coming of James T. Kirk, the ground broiled without thought and conversation. Good and evil? Bravery and heroism? Greed and self-sacrifice? Treachery and honor? All of these were concepts for dealing with the outside of things, for interacting with the world of reality. They were ideas we hadn’t thought about since our species had been cave crawlers, before we learned to flow through the magma.

  We had spent millennia exploring our inner selves, considering and reconsidering our consciousness, our awareness, our form, and the substance of which they were made. Above all things, we were students of our own minds and thought processes. The goal of life was to find repose in order to contemplate the self and its relationship to the mind of the collective and the universal mind. To comprehend thought as a process was enlightenment. Cultivating inwardness was the goal of all philosophy.

  We learned much in this manner. In so many ways, we were as far ahead of James T. Kirk and his Federation as a sentient being from a microorganism. Could we not manipulate the material world itself and turn it into thought and back again?

  We captured and held the Enterprise with the ease of a parent plucking a nymph-child from sipping at its magma flower. These others did not even perceive matter in its atomic form directly.
Their senses only apprehended surfaces. They could not even dip into one another’s minds to assimilate experience or conclusions. All they had was the guttural utterances of language. They seemed to do everything the hard way.

  Yet when we dipped into their minds, we found conclusions we had never considered. We found new concepts instead of the same ideas we had been turning over and over in our minds for fifty thousand years. Our curiosity grew.

  Could these primitives have something to teach us?

  It seemed impossible, but was it? They had ventured out after all. They had found us, and not we them. Could this be significant?

  Could it be a threat?

  We began with the most general of their ideals, the concept of good and evil.

  We mined their memories and constructed our scenario, our drama. We built our stage. We assigned the first roles: Abraham Lincoln, Surak, Colonel Phillip Green, the others. We impressed the human conceptions of these beings upon those of us assigned to play the roles. We changed our actors’ forms—an easy thing to accomplish—so that they wore the physical mask of the humanoids that they mimicked.

  Then we lured James T. Kirk and Spock to the surface, and the thought experiment began. But James T. Kirk surprised us. He did not enter into the spirit of the drama. He fought against the very idea that he and his people should be made to act out the very ideals they believed in.

  This puzzled us. It was very strange. We forced him back into the drama, and when he won, when good triumphed over evil, instead of thanking us for the privilege of participating in our elucidation, he told us that it was we who were the primitives!

  Unbelievable. He held us in contempt for what we had done to him and his crew! He lectured us about rights and fairness. What if we had destroyed him and his ship instead of letting them go? Were not we, and our right to know, more important than this insignificant species?

  Most dismissed his absurd charges, but we did not forget them.

  What if his people, his primitive Federation, posed a threat to us because they knew something we did not? As we evolved, we had learned how to deal with threats to our own species from within and without the planetary crust.