Tales from the Captain's Table

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “I see,” the Boundarian squeaked, “he would recover his honor after his death. Interesting.”

  “The practical advantages…” the Olexan began.

  “The philosophical implications are…” the Telspong began, but Gold cut him off.

  “When Abe was finally well enough to return to Starfleet, he was reassigned to the Tian An Men, which was on patrol in a sector not anywhere near Carthius IX….”

  By the time he was able to return to the planet, three years later, the Gallamite, the Mausetite, and the Katcherian had all moved offworld, in entirely different directions. The young woman who had entertained him that night was still around, and it was a matter of only a little effort to track her down. Abe didn’t know what angered him more—what she had done to him, that she had done it so many times to others that she didn’t remember him in particular, or that she offered to deliver on the promised culmination of the evening if he didn’t hurt her.

  But while he was angry at her, she had merely taken advantage of a naïve young officer; by the time he was beaten to death, she was long gone. Maybe she deserved some sort of payback, maybe not. All Abe knew for sure was, the brunette was the type who knew all the scuttlebutt. If anyone could tell him where the three murderers were now, it was her. She had no information on the Gallamite or the Mausetite, but the Katcherian, she knew exactly where he was: Argelius. Presumably continuing his gambling operations on that world. Fine. Argelius was on the Tian An Men’s regular route. Getting a short leave there—all he’d need is a few hours, Abe told himself—should be no problem at all.

  A month later, Abe found himself standing outside a small stone house in a heavily forested area of Argelius. He had been surprised to find out that gambling and all other such entertainments had been banned from the planet sometime during his rehabilitation.

  The Argelians were pacifists by culture and nature and had come to the conclusion that gambling clubs and such were, in the end, simply too likely to cause violent conflict to be allowed. The clubs that had once lined its long streets had moved en masse to a planet called Risa, but, Abe had learned, the Katcherian had not gone with them, but had instead moved to where Abe now found himself: a friendly-looking house in the woods surrounded by multicolored trees, lulled by the harmonic vibrations of the glanthor in their burrows under the ground, and cooled by gentle breezes that washed down the nearby mountain.

  Hard as it was to maintain an angry demeanor in this genteel setting, Abe’s fury at his own murder was strong enough to overcome it. Still, he felt a bit foolish as he pulled on the rope that rang a square metal bell hanging on a post near the front of the house.

  The woman who came to answer the bell was cheerful and outgoing, and of a friendly demeanor that would have disarmed Abe had he not already steeled himself against the bucolic environment. There was a bit of gray in her red hair, and two young children, a boy and a girl, were peering from around her skirts.

  When the woman saw Abe, her face fell. “You must be here for my husband. Is there anything I can say that would convince you to walk away?”

  Abe shook his head and stepped past her into the house.

  Resigned, she led him to the back door, and then out behind the house where there, indeed, was the Katcherian that Abe had been pursuing. He was wearing a black robe with silver trimming, standard Argelian clothing, and lying facedown near a stream that ran through the backyard, his right hand trailing in the water.

  “We have company,” Abe heard his wife say from behind him. The Katcherian turned and saw Abe. He smiled a wan smile and pulled himself up to his feet.

  “You are…” the man paused, but before Abe could answer, the Katcherian continued. “You are Abraham Silver, once an ensign in Starfleet, now, I see, a lieutenant. Congratulations. Ah, I see you are surprised I remember you, that I know your name. Let me be honest. I know it only because I have forced myself to remember all those whom I have wronged, and what I did to each.”

  Abe stared at the person who had been a specter in his mind for years. His face was older than the image that Abe had carried with him. The blank cruelty Abe had seen in the man’s eyes so long ago had disappeared, and was replaced now by sadness and resignation.

  “My life,” the Katcherian said, “is by right yours to take. I have learned that no matter how hard I try to make amends, there are some things that cannot be mended.”

  Abe felt his phaser burning against his hip. He had imagined the Katcherian’s death at his hands many times, but looking the real man in the eye and taking his life, while his victim made no move to dissuade him, that was a different matter entirely.

  From behind him Abe suddenly heard the rustle of Argelian silks. The Katcherian’s wife had come up from behind Abe almost without him noticing, and Abe reflexively stepped back and reached for his phaser.

  “There is no need for a weapon,” the Argelian woman said. “I have no plans to attack you. This is Argelius. Here violence is unthinkable.”

  Abe was certainly thinking about violence, but he chose not to express that.

  “What I do intend to do,” she continued, “is tell you about my husband. True, he fled Cathius IX in fear of the repercussions from the murder of a Starfleet officer, one Abraham Silver. He came to Argelius to work in one of the now-banned houses of chance. That was the only life he knew—at the time.

  “But the path of one’s life can change. The life of the people of Argelius, one of peace and respect, has a strong effect on everyone, and on my husband stronger than most. He studied our ancient writings, attended our consensus gatherings, and after a while, began to speak out at them. Soon he was recognized as what we call a parnon, one whose understanding of the ways of peace and cooperation not only goes beyond that of others, but spreads to others as well.

  “It was his words that led us to expel games of chance from our planet. It is his words that have begun to bind our planet together in a web of peace and prosperity that exceeds any we have known before. We have no central ruler, because that always leads to conflict. But if any were known as the first among equals, it would be him.

  “You can take his life, if you choose,” she continued, “and neither he nor I will move to stop you. The old laws punishing murder have been repealed as being, in themselves, violent. If you kill him, no one on this planet will hinder you afterward, or prevent your leaving to return to your life among the stars. I will certainly be the poorer for his loss, and I will mourn, as will our children. Our planet will mourn as well. What impact his death will have on you is something perhaps even you yourself do not know, but whatever it is, it will be yours to bear.”

  Gold stopped his story and looked at his four companions at the Captain’s Table. Al, the Starfleet officer from the future, had gotten lost in the story and was taking a moment to come out of it. The Telspong was furiously searching through the data on his padd and, reading upside down, Gold could see that the philosopher was scanning over data on Argelius and its philosophies.

  At that point the Boundarian spoke up. “I assume that Abraham Silver’s honor and duty propelled him to take the Katcherian’s life, no matter what the cost?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” the Telspong said. “After all, the subject of his wrath had changed. Is the person you are tomorrow the same person you are today?”

  “Of course,” the Boundarian said. “To think otherwise would negate all concepts of responsibility for one’s actions.”

  The Olexan put in, “The rule is that an honorable man will not hear anything said against his honor-quest.”

  “But is one forever bound by a bad deed done?” the Telspong asked. “Can amends not be made? Can, in your terms, the honor of another be restored by the actions of the one who offended it, rather than by the actions of the offended?”

  “No,” the Olexan replied, “there are no ‘amends’ as you call them, only a failure of will on the part of the offended party.”

  The Boundarian replied, “That depends on t
he deed. Some deeds hang on one forever, some do not. For example…”

  “An excellent start,” Gold said, addressing his table companions in a tone much like, he realized, that his rabbi wife took when addressing a congregation. “Discussion of such issues has been carried on among my people for thousands of years.”

  “And what conclusions have you reached?” the Telspong asked eagerly.

  “Wait,” Al said, his technologically generated uniform shimmering as he spoke, “first I’d like to know what Silver decided to do.”

  “Well,” Gold began….

  Abe Silver looked at the Katcherian, then looked at the man’s wife, then stepped over to the rushing stream and stared down at his own face as reflected in water dyed red with minerals from the Argelian mountains. He took out one of the three black chips that he had kept with him for years and tossed it into the reddish stream, where it quickly floated downriver and out of sight.

  Then he stood up, turned his back on the Katcherian and his wife, and walked back through the house and out onto the path he had taken to reach the small stone cottage. He felt more angry than he had even during his long months of painful recovery. His vengeance had been taken from him in a way that seemed almost cosmically unfair. In a sense, the man who had killed him so violently and painfully no longer existed. He had been replaced by a noted leader and scholar as cleanly as if he had switched with a double from an alternate universe. Silver weighed his needs and his anger against what the Katcherian had accomplished, and let his anger go.

  But there were two more men on his list, and he was damned if he was going to be denied his vengeance again.

  “So this is the tale of a coward,” the Olexan said.

  “On the contrary,” the Boundarian stated, “it is a tale of a man in whom honor is balanced against other concerns.”

  “Or possibly,” the Telspong said, “it is the tale of an unselfish man, who puts the needs of others over his own need for vengeance.”

  “Or perhaps,” Al from the future said, “it’s a tale that isn’t finished yet, and that I would like to hear more of.” He turned to Gold. “Please go on.”

  Time passed, and it was six years before Silver tracked down his next quarry, in this case the Gallamite. In that time, Silver’s career had prospered and he had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander and was serving on the Venezia. The Gallamite had moved to an unallied planet named Carnegie by its earliest colonists, whose intent had been to take the planet’s abundant resources and turn it into a worldwide factory. By a hundred years before Silver’s time, the planet had become a global industrial park, and for most of those hundred years its specialization had paid off. The planet grew wealthy.

  By the time Silver arrived on the planet, however, the need for its manufactured items in the galaxy had been almost entirely eliminated by the development of large-scale industrial replicators. Why order something shipped from Carnegie when you could zap it into existence nearby for a tenth the price? Having taken shore leave while his captain tried to talk the planet into aligning with the Federation after all, Silver walked the dusty, gray, silent streets of the nearly deserted city, wondering why anyone who had the chance to leave here could possibly stay.

  The Gallamite’s office was in one of the few remaining factories that still had life to it. There was a sign on the side that Silver couldn’t immediately understand, but that his tricorder said read “Creative Development” in Gallamite. Silver walked through the front door of the bright red building—the only colorful building he’d yet seen on Carnegie—and asked for directions to the Gallamite’s office. The cheerful, brightly dressed young human behind the desk explained that the head of the company typically didn’t see anyone without an appointment, but since he was a Starfleet officer and all, and they were working on a Federation grant, he’d be happy to give his name to the CEO’s office and see if they’d accept him.

  Silver looked around the entryway as he waited. It was brightly painted and decorated with extremely imaginative high-quality art. Silver was particularly intrigued by a holographic display that showed a close-up of the surface of Carnegie as it was transformed from forested to industrialized, and then ran the time frame backward as slowly the artificial constructs were dismantled and taken away, restoring the planet to a pristine condition. Silver had the time to see the entire presentation three or four times before there was a hand on his shoulder.

  Silver turned around to see himself facing four Creative Development security guards in uniforms of interlocking pastels, none of whom had facial expressions as cheerful as their outfits.

  “Listen, friend,” the largest of them said to Silver, “the CEO sends his regrets, but he knows why you’re here and he has no desire to see you. We’re here,” he indicated himself and his three large companions, “to make certain you leave peacefully.”

  “But,” the friendly desk clerk started to object, “we operate on a—”

  “CEO’s orders,” the lead guard said without taking his eyes off Silver.

  Silver was tempted to allow the guards to escort him out of the factory and to confront the Gallamite after working hours, and had the situation not been quite so similar to the original scene that had led to his death, he might well have. At first he nodded in agreement and headed for the door, listening for the footsteps of the lead guard right behind him. When his ears told him that he and his target were in the right positions, Silver spun and dropped the guard with a quick chop to the side of the neck. While the other three guards were still reaching for their weapons Silver had pulled his phaser and stunned them into unconsciousness.

  Silver walked back over to the desk clerk, who was pale as a ghost and frozen in place. Silver reached past him, looked down at his signaling board, and flipped the “all clear” button, informing the security office, inaccurately of course, that the problem he represented had been dealt with.

  “CEO’s office?” he asked the desk clerk, who was barely able to stammer out an answer. “Thanks. Take the rest of the day off. You don’t look well.”

  The Gallamite’s office was right off what clearly had once been an assembly-line floor, but was now more like an artist’s studio, with holoequipment and replicators and even good old-fashioned marble, paint, and canvas, as well as several dozen artists hard at work. Silver barely took in the surroundings as he headed straight for the Gallamite’s office and kicked open the door.

  There he was, the gamemaster, the man who had conned him and set him up to die. He’d put on about a hundred pounds since then, but somehow looked younger than his years. The Gallamite shrugged as Silver walked in, not at all thrown by the abrupt opening of his door.

  “You’re here to kill me,” he said softly to Silver. “So go ahead.”

  “But you’ll have to get through us first,” came a voice from behind Silver, and as he turned, the artists from the factory floor stepped into the room around him and closed ranks in front of the Gallamite.

  “Wasn’t for him,” one of them said, “we’d have starved.”

  “Everyone else left,” someone else said, “and took their money off-planet with them. They left us with nothing, and no way out.”

  “He’s the one who came up with this,” another said, waving at the factory floor that was now an art studio.

  Silver took a long hard look at the factory floor. So that was what was going on here, he realized. What’s the one thing a replicator or a holodeck can’t give you? Something you haven’t thought of yet. What was the one thing it cost almost nothing to make and nothing to export? Art. Designs. Replicator patterns for useful and decorative items that no one had thought of yet. Holographic dramas that could be generated entirely on one or two small machines and then sent out to the rest of the galaxy for next to nothing, but at a high profit. If the Gallamite had really come up with the concept, no wonder these people thought so highly of him.

  Of course, going through them to get to the Gallamite wasn’t much of a problem. Silve
r had a phaser, not a shotgun, and a quick blast or two on light stun would clear the path to the Gallamite and leave nothing on Silver’s conscience. Still, he hesitated to draw his weapon on innocents, and while he did, the Gallamite’s soft voice came out from behind the crowd that had gathered.

  “Thank you all,” he said, in the very same soothing voice that had kept Silver putting more chips down on the table all those years ago, “but if you’d just step outside now, I’m sure that this nice officer and I can resolve our problems amicably.”

  The crowd seemed uncertain, but the Gallamite’s words sank in and one by one they left, glaring at Silver on their way out.

  “So,” the Gallamite said, “either shoot me or take a seat.”

  Silver sat.

  “First of all,” he said, “I’m sorry. Things shouldn’t have gone as far as they did, and we never should have killed you. I’m glad the condition wasn’t permanent.”

  Silver found the apology oddly comforting, even though the smoothness of the Gallamite’s voice left him questioning its sincerity. He felt some of his anger slip away and was annoyed to feel it go.

  “However,” the Gallamite said, “I hope you know there were consequences for me. I had killed a Starfleet officer, and suddenly I was out of a job and, for that matter, out of a planet. I couldn’t settle anywhere without my Starfleet warrant popping up, whether in a month, a year, or two years, and bang, once again my life was gone.” The Gallamite held up his hands, cutting off the remark Silver was going to make. “Not in the way that yours was, but in a way. Finally it occurred to me that the one place no one would look for me was somewhere that people were deserting in droves. By all accounts, Carnegie would be almost empty soon after I got here—and that suited me fine.”