by Jean Lorrah
“Birds on Earth that lay their eggs in other birds’ nests,” the Human explained. “But it doesn’t make sense for intelligent beings. Blood factor be damned, T’Pina is Vulcan—so what good would that do the Romulans? Leaving an infant to be raised as one of the enemy is not the same thing as planting adult spies.”
“You are correct that T’Pina is Vulcan,” replied Sorel. “And if there were more like her, or if there were adult spies among us, I cannot believe that none of them would ever have had a blood analysis. So T’Pina’s origin remains a mystery.”
McCoy looked at him sharply, reading him as easily as Daniel ever did. “And if there is anything a Vulcan cannot stand, it’s a mystery. This one appears insoluble, though. Insufficient data.”
The adaptation of the drug for T’Pina was not insoluble, however, and soon they went to look for the young woman. Not surprisingly, they found her at her mother’s bedside.
T’Kar was sleeping, her vital signs normal, her color pale but otherwise natural.
“Come, T’Pina,” said Sorel. “We must administer the drug.”
“Mother hasn’t awakened,” T’Pina protested. “I have not been able to tell her—”
“—that you’re Romulan?” asked Leonard McCoy. “T’Pina, surely you know it won’t make any difference to her. Sorel tells me you’re adopted—so you already know that what makes T’Kar and you mother and daughter comes from ties far stronger than those of blood. Nothing will change just because you now know what that mysterious factor in your blood means.”
T’Pina nodded. “It would be illogical to assume it makes a difference,” she said flatly.
“Never mind logic!” said the Human. “You may not like the term ‘love’ to describe what you and your mother feel, so how about ‘loyalty,’ or ‘family’? Those are revered Vulcan concepts.”
“Indeed,” T’Pina replied, but Sorel could see that she had not yet truly assimilated the news of her ancestry.
“T’Pina,” the healer said, “you must lie down now so that we may administer the blood stimulant. Perhaps you will be able to meditate for a time.”
“For a time?” she asked.
“The side effects don’t start right away,” Leonard explained. “After a few hours it produces a physical weakness that affects the mind. You may feel dizzy, and we will keep someone at your bedside because you may try to act irrationally. That’s nothing to worry about; the effects will go away as soon as the drug is out of your system.”
“Yes, Doctor,” T’Pina said with one last glance ather mother. Then she squared her shoulders. “People are dying, and my blood can save them. I am ready.”
But just as they were about to leave the room, the wall intercom gave a loud squawk, followed by a voice announcing, “Paging T’Pina—all channels emergency—T’Pina to any communicator.” Sorel could hear the announcement reverberating from other speakers down the corridor.
Leonard McCoy charged up to the wall unit and pounded the switch with his fist. “T’Pina’s here with us,” he growled. “What’s the damned emergency that you have to disturb critical patients?”
It should not have been possible, in fact, for whoever was calling to override the safeguards and broadcast into the patients’ rooms. Sorel had never seen it happen in any hospital before.
“I must talk to T’Pina,” the voice insisted.
There was a blast of static, through which they could hear James Kirk’s voice saying, “… cut off that—”
But he was the one cut off.
McCoy said, “Enterprise? What’s going on? Jim?”
“We are controlling communications,” said the original voice. “T’Pina, are you there?”
“It is Sendet,” T’Pina said, stepping to the intercom. “I do not wish to speak with you, Sendet,” she said calmly into the speaker.
“T’Pina, I need you!” The young Vulcan’s voice was suddenly hoarse. Then, more calmly, as if he had grasped control. “It is my time, T’Pina. You are one of us, young and strong, from good family stock. You must beam aboard and bond with me. It is my life, T’Pina.”
It was the final blow to T’Pina’s control. Sorel saw her cheeks flush green, and the—she laughed!
The laugh was harsh, bitter, edged with tears. Sorel moved toward her, but T’Pina raised a hand and straightened, forcing herself to tenuous control.
She breathed deeply, twice, and then said into the wall unit, “Other lives than yours depend on me, Sendet, and you have other choices. Make one. And when the madness passes, consider this: you think yourself a judge over other Vulcans. You judge by such things as strength and ancestry—but T’Kar and Sevel are my adopted parents. Until today I did not know my ancestry, but, unlike you, my parents did not care. They judged me for what I am, not whose blood flows in my veins.”
“As I will, T’Pina,” Sendet pleaded. “It doesn’t matter—you are strong and intelligent and pure Vulcan—”
“Fool!” the ‘girl exclaimed. “If I were pure Vulcan, there would be no way to stop this plague! Meditate upon the irony, Sendet: I carry the cure for Vulcans in my blood … because I am Romulan!”
There was silence from the wall unit. Then, in the background a voice said, “Sendet, what are you—?”
There was the sound of a chair overturning, an animal growl, and the noise of a struggle.
Those sounds cut off, and Uhura’s voice said, “Dr. McCoy?”
“McCoy here, Uhura. What’s going on up there?”
“The rebels—perhaps just Sendet—overrode communications from engineering, and blasted through all the safeguards on Nisus. Everyone who was anywhere near a communications console must have heard all that.”
Kirk’s voice cut in. “We’ve got it under control now. Scotty got the doors open, and security’s escorting the rebels to the brig.”
“That’s a relief,” said McCoy. “Uh, about Sendet—”
“I know what’s wrong with him, Bones. Or what he thinks is wrong. I’ll have him taken to sickbay. You want to come up and examine him?”
“Is M’Benga aboard? He can handle it. We’re about to administer the blood stimulant to T’Pina, and I want to monitor her personally until I’m sure it’s going right.”
“Good work,” said the captain. “T’Pina?”
“Yes, Captain Kirk?” the girl managed to say calmly.
“On behalf of all those whose lives you have already saved, and those you are about to—thank you.”
T’Pina’s upbringing among the diverse cultures of Nisus showed in her automatic, “You are welcome.”
As Kirk signed off, though, a weary voice spoke from behind them. “T’Pina?”
“Mother!” The girl hurried to T’Kar’s side.
Weakly, T’Kar raised her hands, crossed at the wrists. T’Pina echoed the gesture, touching palms with her mother in Vulcan greeting, parent to child. Then, “You heard?” T’Pina asked warily.
“It was … very loud,” T’Kar said. “It is true? You are—?”
“Romulan.”
T’Kar frowned. “How can that be?”
T’Pina straightened. “I do not know,” she said flatly. “I must go now, Mother.”
“T’Pina, no—we must talk,” T’Kar pleaded.
“Others have need of my blood,” T’Pina said stiffly. “Healer, Doctor—”
Sorel said, “Please take her and start the process, Leonard. T’Pina is right: we cannot delay further. There are lives at stake.”
As the Starfleet surgeon escorted T’Pina out, Sorel turned to T’Kar, who was trying feebly to sit up. He pressed her back against the pillows, saying, “Rest. T’Pina is safe with Dr. McCoy. He has performed this procedure before.”
T’Kar lay for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she opened them and said, “I failed her. I could not tell her she is my daughter, no matter what blood flows in her veins.”
“You’ll tell her tomorrow,” Sorel assured her. “T’Pina has experienced a great shock and n
ot had time to meditate and come to terms with it. Nor have you, T’Kar. These are the times we must use the techniques we learn as children.”
“I must talk with her.”
Sorel looked into the guileless blue eyes. “You will. After you have rested. I recommend that you try a meditation trance, T’Kar. I will help you if you wish.”
“No, Healer,” she replied as coldly as her daughter, “I remember the technique.” And she composed herself and closed her eyes.
Sorel straightened, rebuffed. T’Kar had been calling him by name for days now. He had thought—
Ialso need to meditate, he told himself. T’Kar had been critically ill, and awakened to discover that her cherished daughter was a Romulan. There was no wonder that at this moment she should not have a thought for anything or anyone other than T’Pina.
Chapter Thirty-three
KORSAL woke from restless sleep to find Arthur, the mop-headed med tech, removing the tube through which his blood had flowed into waiting containers. The apparatus that fed the blood stimulant into his arm was already gone. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Doc Gardens says ya gotta recover fer a coupla days,” the young Human replied. “Can’t keep you goin’ forever on that stuff. We took you off it last night; most of it’s out of you by now, but you’ll be knackered for a bit.”
“Surely you don’t have enough serum!” Korsal protested.
“An’ if you go and die on us we’ll be in a pretty fix, won’t we?”
The Klingon knew the Enterprise medical staff were correct. As a matter of fact, he felt miserable: mouth dry and foul-tasting, muscles stiff, head in a delicate balance with the rest of his body, threatening to float away if he lay still, but punishing him with dull, pounding pain if he moved.
“Drink this,” Arthur told him, handing him some blue liquid in the bottom of a plastic sickbay tumbler.
Korsal sniffed it. “What is it?”
“Cure fer what ails ya. Ol’ blue eyes’ private stock, so taste it on the way down!”
It was, indeed, a very fine brandy. “Ol’ blue-eyes,” Korsal surmised, was Chief Medical Officer McCoy. He did not ask how Arthur had gained access to his private stock.
The brandy helped, but still wisps of a headache blurred the edges of his perception. He saw that Kevin’s bed was empty, but it wasn’t long before his son returned, greeted his father, and turned on his computer terminal.
Korsal didn’t feel like talking, either. People were dying because he and Kevin and Karl simply could not give enough blood. Karl was in the third bed in the room, still on the drug because he had gone on it later than his father and his older brother. Kevin had not been able to stay on it as long as Korsal, and it was clear of his system now. He was studying the assignment Captain Kirk had given him.
It wasn’t long before the captain appeared to check his student’s progress. Korsal was still too weary to think about his own work, so he sat and listened as his son drew an analogy between fourteenth-century Englishmen and the population of Nisus.
“So the Canterbury Pilgrims come from all different classes except the ruling class, and all different occupations. Some of them are pretty despicable characters too. But although they quarrel among themselves, they are together for a common purpose: to travel to Canterbury and back safely. If they were to meet bandits, they’d band together to fight them off—only they didn’t meet any,” Kevin said in disappointment.
“Chaucer died before he finished the work,” said Captain Kirk. “I’ve always thought that if he’d finished it, there would have been bandits. And probably a sixth husband for the Wife of Bath. Go on.”
“They’re like us because they have a common purpose, and they can only achieve it by working together, no matter how different they are in their views and values.”
Kirk grinned and looked over at Korsal. “Bright boy you’ve got here.”
“He does me honor,” Korsal replied. But he could not confide his deep concerns about his son, both his sons. Lying here with nothing to do, not yet strong enough to concentrate on the plans he was drawing up for better safeties above the dam on Nisus, the thought preyed on his mind: now that Korsal was exiled, what would happen to his sons?
Soon after Kirk left, Arthur came around the partition to ask, “You feelin’ up t’ visitors?”
“That depends on who they are,” he replied.
“Yer wife an’ her uncle, they say.”
Then it was true: he had half wakened from his drug-fogged state to sounds of happy excitement in sickbay, and half understood that there was now a way to protect people with copper-based blood from the plague. If Seela and Borth were allowed aboard ship, it must be true.
Korsal closed his eyes. “Because I wish to see my wife, I suppose I shall have to suffer Berth’s company.”
Seela came to hug Korsal, nothing more. When she went to greet Kevin, Korsal looked up at the unwelcome visitor she had brought with her. “What are you doing here? And how did you get aboard?”
“We’ve been inoculated—all Orions on Nisus have,” Borth replied. “Diplomatic courtesy to non-Federation citizens.”
And you would use that leverage, wouldn’t you, Korsal thought viciously, while Vulcans and Rigellians die because there’s not enough serum to go around! But he didn’t voice his anger. Borth was here for a reason.
The Orion drew a chair close and leaned forward to say, “You think you’ve won, don’t you, Korsal?”
“I was not aware there was a contest, Borth.”
The yellow eyes held a feral gleam. “The game goes on, whether you are player or merely pawn. This plague will set the Federation and the Klingon and Romulan empires at one another’s throats—and the winners will be the Orions.”
“You are wrong, Borth,” said Korsal. “You underestimate our intelligence.”
“Whose? The Klingons?” the man hissed. “Surely you cannot mean the Federation! Have you applied for citizenship in that pitiful mix of slave-born races, Korsal?”
“I am a Klingon,” Korsal replied, refusing to admit that the thought had crossed his mind often since he had realized he could never go home. Where was home? Nisus was the only place he had ever felt truly welcome.
“You’re no Klingon,” Borth told him. “You’re weak as any Federate—you belong with them. When I sell this plague to the Klingons and the Roms, though, how will your fine friends treat you?”
Sell it to the Romulans? Then it was a Romulan on Nisus whose blood carried the immunity factor. He had thought he dreamed that part of what he had overheard. There weren’t supposed to be any Romulans in the Federation.
Borth continued with his threats. “Oh, the Federation will keep you alive, you and your half-breed sons.
They may even breed you, for your precious blood. You’ll be a laboratory animal to them—along with other Klingons they’ll capture for their blood.”
Anger gave Korsal the strength to grasp Borth’s shoulder in a bruising grip; had they been alone, he might have strangled him. “Do you think I will allow you to tell them, Borth? I will kill you first.”
“Then you’d better do it now,” Borth replied coldly. “I will be leaving Nisus soon—along with everyone else.”
“What?”
“Fool! This intermingling of races weakens both the Federation and the Klingon Empire. We Orions sell our excess women to both, diluting your bloodlines. When the Federation Council gets the report on the Nisus plague, they’ll recognize its source and disband the colony here. Then where will you go, Korsal? Whatever happens, you have lost. Unless—”
“Unless?”
Borth glanced over to where Seela now stood by Karl’s bed, stroking her sleeping stepson’s forehead. “When I let you marry Seela—”
But that was not how it had happened. Korsal had purchased his wife from Borth to prevent the man from sending Seela back to the Orion system when she had reached an age to be valuable. Her beauty and her dancing skills would probably have
meant her purchase as an expensive pleasure slave. Korsal had set her free before marrying her.
“Leave Seela out of this!” Korsal told him. “You sold her, just another transaction. You don’t care about her.”
“Ah, but you do,” said Borth. “She is amazingly loyal to you, Korsal. Since you married her, I haven’t gotten a single piece of useful information out of her.”
Hearing her name, Seela returned to Korsal, sitting on the edge of his bed. Her presence could have clouded his senses, but it did not. Instead, he felt her support, as if she lent him strength. All his friends had warned him against marrying an Orion, then become silent on the subject after he had done so. But he had been right: Seela did not manipulate him … except when he wanted her to.
“I know why you wanted me to marry Seela, Borth,” he said, taking his wife’s hand. “You badly underestimated her. She knows exactly what you are.”
“She is merely a woman. A commodity. You are a fool to treat her otherwise. However,” the Orion continued, “you can salvage her, make a place for your sons, escape before you become prisoners of the Federation. Come with me to Klinzhai. Report the plague to your people, Korsal. Be a hero, giving them a new weapon against their enemies. Your enemies.”
“No,” said Korsal. To his astonishment, Seela spoke the word in unison with him.
Then, “No, Uncle,” Seela said. “Whatever happens, we will not be party to starting interplanetary war.”
“You had your chance,” said Borth, extricating himself from Korsal’s grip and rising. “Now I will do what must be done for the good of Orion.”
When Borth had gone, Korsal said, “He does not know the codes for contacting the Klingon Empire. He will have to go there—and I must prevent him.”
“You are right, my husband,” said Seela.
Korsal stared at her and remembered several times recently when she had asked favors of him—always by communicator, so that her pheromones could not affect him. The third or fourth time it had happened, he had realized how much she wanted his trust. How she struggled to overcome her upbringing, her dependence on men to tell her what to do, her instinctive and practiced use of sensuality to obtain favor.
