IMBALANCE

by V. E. Mitchell

  Distracted by trying to interpret the sounds he was hearing, Riker did not see the thick mat of algae that crossed the ramp below the dry zone. His boot heel hit the slime and kept going. Landing on his seat, Riker shot down the slippery, wet ramp. His head cracked on the concrete, stunning him for a moment, and he continued to slide downward, picking up speed. Although the narrow ridges made the ramp’s surface uneven, the coating of algae was like grease, giving him no purchase.

  Riker pulled in his arms and legs to minimize his body profile and concentrated on controlling his descent. He tried to imagine that his body was a toboggan and the ramp was his track. Even so, he bounced between the outer wall and the center column, collecting more bruises with each ricochet. He rounded the last bend and crashed into the end wall, all the breath knocked from his body. Just then the upper door gave way with a wrenching groan that echoed and reechoed in the enclosed space. A multitonal shriek of triumph from a horde of Jarada roared down the shaft.

  A dawed hand gestured from the darkness beside him. “Quick. This way,” Zarn whispered, his voice a single note instead of the usual chord.

  Riker, stunned and battered by his precipitous descent and its equally sudden ending, struggled to get to his feet. His lungs gasped for air and his abused muscles refused to cooperate.

  “Hurry,” Zarn ordered, scurrying out to help Riker. “We must get the door closed before they discover where we went.”

  Realizing Zarn lacked the strength to pull him to his feet, Riker waved the insectoid away. The yells of their pursuers were growing louder by the second. He still felt too shaky to stand, so he struggled to his hands and knees and crawled after the Jarada. It was undignified, but it worked. He had barely cleared the opening when he heard Zarn tap in the command to close and lock the door. It slid into its frame, shutting out the cries from the Jarada charging after them.

  The tunnel was dark and poorly lit, its tiled surfaces as damp and slimy as the ramp they had just left. Riker collapsed on the floor, desperately trying to regain his breath and his equilibrium before they resumed their flight. The stone beneath his body was cold and damp, and the chill worked its way quickly through his uniform.

  “Come. We must hurry,” Zarn whispered, still with only a single note in his voice. “It won’t take them long to figure out which door we used.”

  Riker shivered and pushed himself to a sitting position, his muscles shaking both from the temperature and the tension. His right shoulder protested, and he probed gently, finding a large tender spot that was already starting to swell. From the pull on his muscles he judged he had similar bruises on his hips and buttocks. “What’s the hurry?” he asked, as much for the information as to delay climbing to his feet.

  “They are extremists. Xenophobes who don’t want relations with your Federation. Do you not have this problem among your people?” Zarn started along the corridor, his claws tapping impatiently against the floor.

  “We do.” Riker pushed himself up on one knee, pausing when his head started spinning. Something in Zarn’s manner told him the insectoid was lying, but Riker was not sure what rang false. The dank, moldy air clogged his lungs, making it hard to breathe and harder to concentrate. He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to bolt for the Enterprise without getting to the bottom of this mystery. “Why didn’t you mention this to us before?”

  “It is not right that they should oppose the will of the Hive. However, at the moment, they have us outnumbered. We must hurry before they find us.”

  Riker struggled to his feet, ignoring the protests of his bruised muscles. “I think Captain Picard will be very interested to hear this. We’ll beam up to the ship and you can explain it to him.” Through the door, Riker heard the high-pitched yells of their pursuers.

  Zarn’s claws tapped out an impatient jig. “We don’t have time for that now. We must hurry.”

  Riker flipped over his sleeve and tapped his communicator. To his surprise, nothing happened. He hit it again, harder. The dampness in the tunnels shouldn’t have affected it, and he didn’t remember striking it against anything in his wild descent. However, the device wasn’t working and, judging from the sounds on the other side of the door, his options were fast slipping away. He started after Zarn, surprised at how unsteady he felt.

  Zarn set a mean pace, his four legs covering the ground with surprising ease. After a few minutes Riker was breathing hard and sweating from the exertion, despite the chilly air. The insectoid followed a twisting, circuitous path that soon had Riker completely disoriented. He was not sure whether the Jarada intended to confuse him or if the complicated route was needed to throw off their pursuers. Riker thought they were headed farther underground, but by the eighth or ninth odd-angled transition from one curving, sloping corridor to another, he was no longer sure where they were or in which direction they were traveling.

  Finally, Zarn stopped beside a narrow door, the first Riker had seen since they left the ramp. The Jarada coded the door open and gestured for Riker to enter. “We can hide here for a while. No one would ever think to look in this place.”

  The room was long and narrow, almost a corridor, with the only light coming from a single feeble glowstrip in the far corner. Piles of trash were heaped along one of the long walls and the dank, mildewy smell was overpowering. Reluctantly, Riker limped inside and looked for a place to sit.

  Zarn followed him in and keyed the door closed. “Forgive the poor accommodations, Riker-Commander. This place is never used now, and no one ever comes here.”

  Easing himself to the floor in the cleanest spot he could find, Riker studied his surroundings carefully. Glowstrips were spaced along the wall behind him, their surfaces dull and inert. Even the one remaining strip was mottled and unsteady, as if the photoactive bacteria in it were dying too. Badly eroded lines etched the wall opposite him, intersecting here and there at blobs of decaying materials. After several minutes Riker realized the lines described a hexagonal pattern like the cells in a honeycomb. The moldering refuse on the floor was probably the remnants of material that had been attached to the wall. “What was this room used for?”

  “It was one of the original hatching chambers.” Zarn moved to Riker’s side and folded his legs under him, the closest the insectoid could come to sitting. “When we first built on this planet, it was a very dry year. We have since come to discover that the ground in many places is damper than we thought and we have been forced to abandon most of our original tunnels. This is one of the worst areas, where we were unable to exclude the moisture from our living and working spaces.”

  Riker ran his finger over the rough tiles, feeling the film of dampness that clung to them. The floor here lacked the brilliant glazes and elaborate mosaics that characterized the other Jaradan floors he had seen. “If your people wish, the Federation has many techniques for dealing with this type of problem. We would be more than willing to assist you in reclaiming these tunnels.”

  “That is an interesting proposal, and I am sure the Council of Elders will be happy to discuss it.”

  The tone of Zarn’s voice caught Riker’s attention. The words themselves seemed encouraging, but Riker sensed the Jarada was withholding something. He shivered with an unwelcome premonition that more things were wrong on Bel-Minor than he already knew. Forcing that thought away, Riker reached for his communicator and again tried to call the Enterprise.

  “I do not think your communications device will work here,” Zarn said as he watched Riker try for the third time. “There is something in the rocks in this area that blocks out the signals.”

  Riker scowled, thinking the excuse was a little too convenient. Still, the communicator was not working and he lacked the means to test it. Zarn’s explanation was barely plausible, and certainly no more unlikely than the idea that he had managed to break the nearly indestructible device on his rapid slide down the ramp. Whatever the explanation, he now lacked any way of contacting the ship. He would have to rely on Zarn to guide him back to th
e Governance Complex, where he could rendezvous with the rest of the away team when they returned from their excursions.

  “I believe we must stay here for some time.” Although Zarn kept his voice low, he had returned to his usual multitonal mode. “I did not hear the alarms to signal the guardians, so we must wait until we are sure all our attackers have been captured. In these tunnels, I fear that will not be accomplished soon.”

  Again Riker had the feeling that Zarn was not telling him everything, but he did not know how to get the full story from the Jarada. If diplomacy was the creative art of telling only what you wanted known, then Zarn was possibly the greatest diplomat Riker had ever met. Somehow the Jarada had told him so little that Riker did not even know what questions to ask in order to uncover Zarn’s duplicity or his omissions.

  The effort of trying to outguess his companion, combined with the bad air in the room and his reaction to the day’s events, hit Riker all at once. He felt as though he had just run a marathon, and his body was so wrung out that he could not keep his eyes open. Locking his arms around his legs, he lowered his head to his knees, hoping that Zarn would think he was just resting. For some reason, it was important not to let the Jarada know how tired he was. Even so, he was soon fast asleep.

  A light, repeated tapping on his shoulder finally wakened Riker. He stirred, trying to remember where he was. The surface beneath him was cold and hard, and dampness had soaked into his uniform. Finally the smell, dank and moldy, registered and memory returned.

  He had slipped from his sitting position while he slept and was now lying on his side, curled up against the cold. A shiver ran through his body, and then another, as awareness of the temperature returned along with wakefulness. Riker tried to lever himself upright, but the bruised muscles in his shoulder had stiffened while he slept. Waves of pain washed through him and the arm collapsed. For a moment he just lay there, willing his body to respond to his orders.

  “It is time to go now, Riker-Commander. I am sure the bad ones are no longer here.” Zarn’s claws chittered against the rough tiles as the Jarada started toward the door.

  How does he know that? Riker thought. He pushed himself off the floor again, moving more slowly this time and gauging the effect of each movement on his battered muscles. The chill and the inactivity had taken its toll, making him feel as though he were a hundred years old. In truth, he supposed, the cold had probably reduced the swelling of his bruises, but that did not make it easier for him to start moving again.

  It was a struggle, but finally he made it, sweating from the exertion despite the icy leadenness of his limbs. The cold and stiffness, at least, would go away when they began walking. Zarn was doing an impatient tap dance by the door, but Riker ignored the Jarada while he stretched some of the kinks from his muscles. If they had to move fast, he wanted to be ready. Besides, although Zarn was calling the shots here, Riker was reluctant to let him know how completely he was at the insectoid’s mercy.

  “Will you please hurry?” With a visible effort Zarn slowed his jigging and looked toward Riker. In the weak light his eyes glowed a pale green. “There’s no one in the nearby corridors, and I can get you to safety before there is any more trouble.”

  Riker moved toward the door, testing his legs as he went. Aches and twinges greeted every motion, and he certainly would not want to go into hand-to-hand combat against a Klingon or a Vulcan—but he decided he could manage. In any case, he would be glad to see the last of this smelly, damp room. “How do you know that no one’s around?” he asked as he reached the door.

  “I don’t sense anyone. They’re not there.” Zarn tapped the code into the door and it swished open. He walked out into the corridor without even looking to see if it was occupied.

  “Sense? How?” Riker glanced both ways before he followed Zarn out of the room, even though he knew that anyone waiting in ambush would already be alerted to their presence.

  “We of the Hive are always aware of each other, to a greater or lesser extent. Don’t you always know what is happening with the others of your hive?” Without waiting for an answer, Zarn started down the corridor at a rapid pace.

  At first Riker had to struggle to keep up with his guide. His battered body protested at the speed, and he wondered at Zarn’s hurry. After fifteen minutes of twists and turns, of ducking around corners and down short ramps, he felt better. The exercise was working out the soreness, loosening up his muscles, and dispelling the chill that had penetrated to his bones.

  He began to take more notice of his surroundings, trying to orient himself and to figure out where they were heading. The walls and floors lost their dampness, suggesting they were moving into the drier, inhabited parts of the complex. This impression was reinforced by the glowstrips, which were brighter and more closely spaced. However, they saw no one and Riker concluded that Zarn was going out of his way to avoid any encounters.

  They had been moving for almost half an hour, with Zarn setting a pace that left Riker with no breath for asking questions. He wondered if it wasn’t deliberate, since the number of riddles that demanded his attention multiplied with each step. Was Zarn’s explanation for the attack, that the assailants were xenophobes, correct—or was there some other reason for the event? Why was Zarn trying so hard to avoid meeting anyone? Was it truly to avoid danger, or was his guide kidnapping him? If the circuitous route they were traveling was deliberately planned to take him away from the area where the Enterprise could find him, was Zarn acting with or against government orders? And, finally, how was Riker to determine the true answers to his questions, when he had no accurate way of deciding when the Jarada was lying to him?

  They turned onto a ramp that spiraled upward at a steep angle. An intense floral odor assaulted Riker, as concentrated as though someone had crammed a hundred square kilometers of jungle blossoms into the volume of a turbolift car. The suffocating fragrance made his head spin and he paused to catch his breath. A turn and a half above him, he heard Zarn stop too. The Jarada’s hand-claws clicked against a door panel. Hoping they had reached the end of their tunnel odyssey, Riker started up the ramp. Zarn’s claws hit the controls harder, and Riker realized that he had not heard a door open in response to the command.

  He rounded the curve in time to see Zarn drop his hand from the control pad. Vrel’keth brefteev! the Jarada muttered, his voice thick with a nasty buzz. From the tone, Riker did not need a translation. Sweating sounded remarkably similar in every language in the galaxy.

  Zarn started up the ramp again, his movements stiff and jerky from anger. Two turns higher, they came to another door and Zarn tried to open it. This time the barrier slid aside on command, sending a suffocating wave of floral perfume down the shaft. Beckoning to Riker, Zarn moved into the corridor beyond.

  Riker stepped through the door and slammed into an oppressive wall of heat and humidity. The temperature was at least twenty-five degrees Celsius warmer than the tunnels through which they had been dodging, and the humidity now approached a hundred percent. Combined with the overwhelming floral reek, Riker felt as though someone had dumped a ton of Tribbles on him. Sweat sprang out on his forehead and poured down his back. He struggled to breathe, to drag the thick air into his lungs and extract oxygen from it. His head felt as though it had been detached from his shoulders and was floating away, making for the Enterprise by itself.

  “Come. Hurry,” Zarn whispered, gesturing impatiently. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  With a supreme effort Riker forced his legs to move. The heat sapped his energy and sent thoughts of sleep tumbling through his head. Zarn’s form swam in and out of focus—one moment hard and sharp, as dangerous as his current predicament, the next moment fuzzy and dreamlike, a phantasmagorical monster from a children’s story. Fighting his disorientation, Riker kept moving, following his Jarada guide even though he was no longer sure of where he was or if he even dared trust the insectoid. In his curiously detached state, nothing seemed to matter, and it was eas
iest to follow Zarn because that was what the insectoid had told him to do.

  Part of Riker’s mind observed his actions, cataloging his surroundings and his peculiar reactions to the heavy odors. Unlike the parts of the complex he had seen before, broad archways opened off this corridor, giving him a clear view of the rooms beyond. Through one opening he glimpsed the yin and yang of two Jarada locked together in rut. As they passed, the white female sank her teeth into the ebony male’s throat.

  The male’s final shriek was cut off by the crunching sounds of the female’s teeth shearing through his exoskeleton, but even after death his body continued to convulse beneath hers. Farther along, a female with an obscenely distended abdomen was sprawled beside a wall covered with hexagonal cells. Pale gold attendants stroked her thorax, encouraging the contractions that rippled her softened and leathery exoskeleton. Slowly, with each pulse accompanied by a high-pitched whistle of pain, she expelled the eggs from her ovipositor.

  The attendants lifted them into the waiting cells and sealed them inside, their movements taut and jerky. Seeing the attendants’ tension, Riker knew that the queen was dying, that this agonizing labor was as unnatural for the Jarada as it was normal for humans.

  “Hurry!” Zarn spat out. “We haven’t much time before the guardians discover us.”

  The urgency in Zarn’s voice made Riker realize that the lack of a challenge had been bothering him. Even in his strangely drugged state, he knew that the Jarada would not wish anyone to see what happened in these chambers. What the penalty for his intrusion was, he did not wish to find out. Sobered enough by that thought to be worried for the first time, Riker broke into a jog. Zarn increased his pace, maintaining his lead.