Vulcan's Forge

by Josepha Sherman

  The Romulans prodded McCoy through a maze of tunnels, pushing him past intersecting corridors where he could see people, their backs to him, working feverishly, or caches of stored goods, some covered with the types of dropcloths the Federation routinely used for valuable supplies—Nice little thieves' ring here, maybe, as a sideline to the sabotage? From one or two tunnels he caught distinct whiffs of the sorts of chemicals one found in primitive armories.

  The ancient rock was honeycombed with these tunnels, which probably allowed the "wild nomads" to communicate during storms. So they weren't truly primitives, despite citydweller prejudice. McCoy hadn't seen this many tunnels since Janus VI. I could use a nice friendly Horta or two about now, he thought. Even if "friendly" was hardly the word to describe what was left when a Horta with a grudge got done with an intruder.

  Their path slanted down. McCoy almost lost his footing on a patch of slick obsidian he wasn't expecting. Great. Let's all go sliding down into wherever. . . wouldn 't that reflect credit on the Federation? We come in peace for all mankind—oooops!

  Fortunately for the remnants of his dignity, he didn't have to traverse the rest of the tunnel on his backside. One of the Romulans steadied him roughly. He found himself standing in what looked like a huge natural cave, roughly the size of a shuttlebay on a Federation spacecraft, its walls smoothed and painted with symbols such as McCoy had seen on rocks here and there in his brief visit to this world.

  Pictoglyphs . . . graphs . . . whatever the hell they're called. Wonder what they mean.

  In some past era, the cave had been equipped with two enormous metal doors that sealed it off from what must surely be the desert. McCoy tried and failed to pick up any residual vibrations from the storm. Clear skies, maybe? He hoped Spock and Rabin wouldn't waste time going after him.

  He took a second look at those doors. Damned impressive! Etched with similar glyphs and figures, they were probably as much a work of faith as of protection and technology. Metal-poor as Obsidian was, simply mining and smelting enough metal or trading for it with the citydwellers must have been the work of generations.

  The Romulans came to military attention. A little slow to salute, aren't we? Is this your traitor? He raised an eyebrow as Centurion Ruanek brought his fist to his chest in seemingly reluctant deference to . . .

  Standing with his back to the Romulans was a tall mysterious figure in pure white robes. Slowly, the figure turned and acknowledged the saluting Romulans as if his acknowledgment was an honor, even a blessing. He was taller and leaner than the Romulans and veiled to the eyes.

  A little overdressed for the vast indoors, aren't you? McCoy wanted to ask. It had to be all this desert melodrama that was getting on his nerves, not the threat to his life or to his crew or to Obsidian's Federation or the planet itself, right? Right. And maybe pigs can fly.

  With the same sense of ritual that he had shown before, the tall figure unveiled, revealing a cold face with high cheekbones planing up to elegantly angled pointed ears.

  I'm dead anyway. Might as well make it good. Rejecting the idea of an exaggerated salaam, which probably wouldn't translate from one culture into another, McCoy groaned melodramatically and set his hands on his hips. "Well, look what we've got here. Another Romulan just crawled out from under a rock."

  He heard a faint choking noise from one of his guards.

  "Vulcans do not crawl out from under rocks," said the figure in white.

  Does Spock know about this? was McCoy's first thought. Just when he thought things had gotten as bad as they could, a renegade Vulcan would have to turn up. He supposed that if he wished this one "live long and prosper," he wouldn't reply with "peace and long life." Not unless renegade Vulcans lied as well as betrayed.

  He had had years of practice in riling Vulcans, or one particular Vulcan, and some good luck in fooling Vulcans as eminent as T'Pau herself. He'd give it his best try.

  "Vulcans don't attack their allies either. When I last looked, mister, Vulcan was a part of the Federation, and the Romulans weren't. Seems to me that you've got things mixed up, haven't you? What's the logic in that?"

  The Vulcan studied him as if he were a Rigelian flatworm. Worse: he might have had some scientific respect for Rigelian flatworms. Contempt glinted in the absolutely flat, cold eyes. Bones had last seen that fixed intensity on Khan as his madness worsened, but there was more to this gaze than simple madness.

  When McCoy had been a boy, he had sneaked off to a revival meeting, one of the last held on Terra, by a man later remanded for treatment for an attempt on the Andorian ambassador's life. "God created man in His image. Man, not aliens that creep or crawl or have blue skin."

  The Vulcan who stood before him had the look of a religious fanatic. McCoy thought of holy wars from centuries and planets past—some now little more than radioactive asteroids orbiting desolate stars—and suppressed a groan of real pain.

  The Vulcan barely stirred. "If you are in truth the physician McCoy, as my long-sundered cousins tell me, then he who leads you is Spock, half-breed and outsider, flawed from his boyhood and usurping the place of those worthier than he."

  Bad as McCoy's Old High Vulcan was, he recognized the gutturals of invective mode. Linguistics said it was vanishing from the language, but, as far as McCoy was concerned, it couldn't disappear fast enough.

  Well, wasn't it a small galaxy? How did this madman know Spock? No, wait a minute. The birth of a half-human baby, particularly one who was the son of Ambassador Sarek, certainly would have made the equivalent of the front pages all over Vulcan. Not unusual at all that this guy should know about Spock. Definitely not unusual that he'd single Spock out as an example of all that was wrong with Vulcan: they'd gone through the same deadly nonsense back on Earth with such nasty terms as "miscegenation" and " halfbreeds."

  Yeah, but we outgrew it. Vulcans are formidable enough. Vulcan religious fanatics, with their logic and their physical strength perverted —God, that doesn't bear thinking about.

  "All right, maybe you think Spock's nothing more than a half-breed," McCoy accused. "But you're a fine one to talk, turning your back on your own people and double-dealing with Romulans."

  "They are our brothers," the Vulcan said. "You others are creatures of a lesser breed."

  "And what do you call the people around here?" McCoy gestured in the direction of the cave warren and the feverish workers within. "Cannon fodder?"

  The Vulcan might not have understood the archaic term, but he certainly understood the point. "The Faithful will receive their reward in the fullness of time. And so will you. Come, there is a task you must perform for me."

  He held out McCoy's communicator. Hell, he practically dangled it in front of McCoy's nose.

  "The storm has ended for now. You will communicate with your captain"—disdain slimed the military title—"Spock. You will be well paid for your words."

  "Go fish." If this madman pushed him, the next thing McCoy said wasn't going to be a tenth as polite and would probably break every privacy taboo on the planet.

  "There are no fish on Obsidian. Just fools and puppets and my long-lost cousins. If you seek to force me into ancient brutality, learn that my will is stronger than that of any lesser being."

  "How nice for you."

  Not the faintest flicker of emotion crossed the cold, insane face. "We shall consolidate power here, eliminating the man your Federation has set up as puppet-master among slaves. He is a fool, but capable of causing damage just as a backward child playing with fire can burn down a house."

  "So, you insult my captain, threaten a brother officer, then expect me to sing for my supper?" McCoy asked. "That's hardly logical, let alone coin enough to buy me."

  Behind McCoy, the centurion stirred.

  "I believe I have your price, Doctor," the Vulcan told him. If he'd poured any more acid sarcasm on the word, it would probably have disintegrated. "Let me demonstrate."

  His gesture of "after you, sir" was not convincing. The gemmed
blaster he pulled was. McCoy went. It beat being dragged. Or burnt and dragged.

  He was guided back into the maze of caves, taking a sharp turn away from where McCoy had first been brought. The passage wound on for what McCoy guessed was a couple of hundred meters, then opened into another chamber.

  McCoy looked up at its ceiling. Impressive. When this range heaved itself up from the planet's core, gas bubbles must have formed in the rock, which hardened about them, forming huge natural caves. Or else this was one hell of a lava tube.

  "These are my Faithful," the Vulcan told McCoy. "And I am their Master. Observe."

  A few artificial lights set in the cave's roof glowed faintly. But more light came from outside: the so-called Faithful had opened a smaller, unornamented version of the massive metal doors. Three nomads entered the cave, dragging a fourth. None wore headcloths or protective robes; in fact, they were ridiculously exposed for this climate, let alone for sunlight as tricky as Loki's.

  "That man's collapsed," McCoy said.

  "A stunning demonstration of the obvious," the Master replied. "Your deductive skills overwhelm me."

  "Heat prostration . . . no . . ." He watched while the sick man's friends set his emaciated form down—laid him out, rather—against the rock wall. McCoy drew in his breath sharply at the sight of the multicolored blotches marring the nomad's flesh, large, raised, unevenly shaped. Some bled sluggishly.

  "God. Man's dying of metastatic melanoma if he's not dead already."

  More nomads entered. McCoy looked about in growing horror, seeing similar, if smaller tumors on many. One or two sat quietly, their eyes blank—burnt out by the sun. A thin woman coughed rackingly: silicosis or the equivalent, from all the dust. Many more bore signs of malnutrition or mistreatment in addition to the cancers that rose on their skin, birthmarks from Loki's treachery.

  "It's bad enough to make them go out there unprotected," McCoy exploded. "But you're working them to death and starving them, too! Dammit, man—"

  "I am Vulcan, not 'man,'" the Master interrupted coolly. "I make them do nothing: they have chosen to serve me of their own free will. As will you, physician. Serve me, and I will give you your price: permission to go among my Faithful and help them. I will also give you this."

  He snapped his fingers. One of the Faithful ran up, inflamed eyes wide. This loyal follower was scarcely more than a child. McCoy's diagnostic instincts came alive: squamous carcinoma, a bloated belly, and what looked like trachoma or something else that would probably leave him blind within the year, if he didn't die first of sunstroke or overwork. Hungrily, McCoy eyed what the child presented to his master as if it were a sacred relic—McCoy's satchel of medical supplies.

  Let me help. It was one of the greatest phrases in the language, and had won the off-Earth writer who had made it the theme of his masterwork a Nobel Prize. McCoy's Starfleet oath restrained him, but an older oath by far overrode it. I swear by Apollo the Physician, and Aesculapius, and Hygeia and Panacaea His daughters, and by all the other Gods and Goddesses, and the One above Them Whose Name we do not know . . .

  "Give me that!" He lunged forward at his medical kit. A protoplaser used as a weapon could create a nasty burn. That, too, violated his oath, but maybe he could buy enough time to help someone.

  "Earn it," the Master told McCoy. Then, appallingly, he smiled.

  McCoy's eyes watered. It's the damn sunlight, he told himself. And knew he was lying.

  Spock, where are you? Get me out of this hell! Let me get them all out of it! Spock!

  But of course there was no answer other than the groans of the dying.

  ELEVEN

  Vulcan, Deep Desert

  Day 4, Eighth Week of Tasmeen,

  Year 2247

  Speck's faster metabolism woke him with a shock: He was hungry. For a moment, he lay staring up at the barely light sky of early morning, startled to find himself out in the desert when he had been dreaming of home and bed.

  Desert, yes. A neat twist extricated him from the grit into which both boys had dug for warmth the night before. Exhausted from the brutal heat of Vulcan's Forge, David still slept deeply, curled in on himself like a child.

  "David, it is time."

  Two days into their trip across the Forge, and they had already fallen into a routine. If they rose now, they could travel until the sun hammered the Forge and David's footsteps as well as his ready flow of speech faltered. Even a Vulcan needed to seek shadow by midday, sleeping or meditating through the worst of Vulcan's heat. Then, as the sun waned, they would rise and hike on until the darkness and the predators—any predator surviving on the Forge was a highly efficient one—grew too dangerous.

  The fact that the headgear of their salvaged protective suits contained a visor allowing David to see in the dark as efficiently as a Vulcan had let them come farther than Spock's most optimistic estimate. That estimate, he realized, had been predicated on bigoted observations from the likes of Stonn.

  Illogical. I should have drawn my data from closer to home. After all, Mother has proven herself able to adapt to this world.

  Could she, he wondered, have survived kahs-wan? Speculation was fruitless. So was idling in the coolness of the waking desert to watch the dawn, beautiful though it promised to be.

  "David," Spock repeated more loudly, "it is time."

  The human stirred. "Another scenic day in hell," David muttered. He coughed, then shook himself free of the grit and stretched. "I don't suppose you'd let me call school and say I'm sick."

  "Are you ill?" If so, their chances of survival plunged.

  "It was a joke, Spock. I'm fine, honest. Grubs for breakfast again today? The ones in the Negev tasted better. And I got to grill them."

  "Half a ration bar for you," Spock said. Perhaps he should allot the survival rations entirely to David rather than letting the human risk eating off the land.

  "Hogging all the good stuff, are you?" David's grin turned into a yawn.

  "Hogging?"

  The human groaned. "I was kidding. And they say Vulcans have no sense of humor."

  He could, Spock thought, chart the passage of the day by the type and quantity of his companion's observations. But the idea of David ill, David delirious and dying, David buried in the desert with flat rocks heaped over a lonely part of Vulcan that would henceforward be human territory—Spock drew a deep breath, summoned his control, and decided he preferred the ready babble of speech even this early in the morning.

  Together, they reached for their water bottles.

  "L'chaim!" David toasted. "In Hebrew that means 'to life.'"

  "Highly appropriate," Spock nodded. He drank, scanning the desert, then, as David munched the tasteless rations, face wrinkled in disgust, began a morning hunt. A flat rock flipped over produced several grubs, which he passed over to David, who neatly nipped off their heads with a fingernail, then resolutely ate them.

  "Better than ration bars. What isn't?"

  Meanwhile, Spock stripped several stalks from a hardy khara bush to reach its moisture-laden core, carefully leaving most of the plant to regenerate, then nibbled the soft, slightly salty pulp. This, too, was better than ration bars!

  "Are you ready, David?"

  "Just a minute." The human boy searched in his makeshift pack for a spray hypo and one of the precious vials of tri-ox. He injected himself, breathed deeply, then paused, looking at the empty vial.

  "Spock," he said slowly, "I've been thinking this over. And the tri-ox won't let me ignore this. I've got tri-ox to help me. But what about the others, back there with that religious fanatic? True, they're not as active as I'm being, and that should buy them a little more time. But still. . . even if we do manage to walk out of the deep desert, maybe reach one of those science outposts on the Perimeter, there's no way we're going to make it before people—maybe all the hostages—start to die."

  "I . . . have considered that."

  "Right, and what odds do you give on that madman getting them proper me
dical care?"

  "Approximately—" Spock began.

  "I know you're some sort of math genius!" David interrupted. "It was one thing to raid the—the shuttle as long as we thought we could find communication gear. But it all got fried by the crash. So, where are the closest communicators?"

  "Either at the research stations—"

  "Or back at Sered's hideout. Spock, I think we ought to turn back."

  Spock fought down a wince. He had been thinking the same thing. But logic insisted that he point out, "Two youths against armed Romulans and an adult Vulcan male, David. The odds against—"

  "I'm not saying we go in like the cavalry, lasers blasting. We haven't got any, at any rate. But, Spock, if we got out, we can sneak back in."

  "If Sered finds us, he will put us under heavy guard."

  "Wanna bet? He despises us. I'm a human, and you—you heard what he called you. To him, we're kids, Spock. We can't do anything. Even if he found us, he'd just say we were so scared we came back. If we picked our moment, we could steal a communicator—"

  "Logically, he would have them watched," Spock said. "Our safest plan—"

  "Are the hostages safe?" David countered. "Listen, my mother's Starfleet, and that means she'll do everything in her power to help people. Maybe we can run interference for her and the other adults—if we get there in time. If they haven't all collapsed from oxygen deprivation or the heat. Now calculate your math," he challenged fiercely. "What's the odds on either of these plans working out?"

  Spock paused, mind turned inward, calculating strengths, weaknesses. "Odds are approximately equal," he admitted after a moment. "And equally bad. David, is this an example of what humans call 'a dirty job, but someone has to do it'?"

  "Spock, my friend, this is about as rotten an example as we'll ever find. So, we're agreed? Back the way we came?"

  "No," said Spock. He knelt and smoothed a patch of sand. "Let us say that here is Sered's cave, here is the shuttle, and here is our relative position." He drew lines joining each position. "We actually gain time not by retracing our footsteps, but by charting our course along the hypotenuse of this triangle."