Tales from the Captain's Table

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “So what happened?” Silver asked. He had to steel himself to remember that this man made his living conning people, and that his words should not be trusted. Still, he was curious.

  “So I got here, felt safe for the first time since I helped kill you, and I got bored,” he said. “And I never could resist a gamble. So I bought out this factory for back taxes, applied under the corporate name for a Federation grant under the Assistance to Unaligned Planets program, and started turning this place around, employing the same engineers and designers and artists who created our physical products in the past to make virtual ones that can be produced by our customers on-site.”

  “Good idea,” Silver said.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I have an even better one. How about you don’t shoot me, and I’ll cut you in for, say, five percent of the profits? After all, if I’m dead, I can’t make a dime off this place.”

  Silver was taken aback. He hadn’t expected to be offered a payoff, and it was clear that the Gallamite, in his own selfish, self-centered way, was doing a world of good—literally—for these people and this place.

  Gold paused in his story. His throat was dry, and if it weren’t Yom Kippur, he would have asked for a drink of water before continuing.

  “Pausing to heighten suspense,” the Olexan said, thinking Gold had stopped his tale for that reason, “is dishonorable.” His hand began to move toward the weapon at his side, but stopped at a stern glance from Cap, who was, as usual, aware of everything that was going on in the Captain’s Table.

  “Hardly,” the Boundarian put in. “Risking, as the storyteller is, the wrath of his audience, pausing is an act of bravery, greatly to be admired.”

  “No, it is merely annoying,” Al put in.

  “Gentlemen,” the Telspong said softly, “in music, the spaces between the notes are often as important to the enjoyment of the piece as the notes themselves—sometimes more. I see this as a period of contemplation that enhances the overall effect of the story. For a moment, we remain curious what the star of the story did, and that curiosity, in and of itself, improves the story.”

  “The only honorable thing would be to accept the offer,” the Olexan said. “Blood money is a standard contract, although typically the victim does not rise from the dead to demand it himself.”

  “I would have refused the offer,” the Boundarian said. “Accepting money to abandon a blood debt is dishonorable.”

  It was unclear to Gold, as he waited for his throat to recover, whether the Olexan and the Boundarian intentionally took opposite sides on every issue of honor simply for the pleasure of annoying each other, or if these differences were the root cause of the conflict between their peoples.

  The table’s consensus was that it was the Telspong’s turn to comment, but he declined. “I prefer,” he said, “to wait and see how a story plays out without attempting to get ahead of it. I find that if I guess successfully, the impact is weakened for me, and if I guess unsuccessfully, I am annoyed at my failure to make an accurate prediction and again the impact is weakened.”

  “I,” Al said somewhat fiercely, “am beginning to see how this story relates to my current situation, and would like to hear how this section of it turns out.” He glared the others into silence, then turned expectantly to Gold.

  Well, Silver found this situation to be far different from the one he had faced with the Katcherian years ago. The Gallamite was unchanged, simply forced by circumstances into behaving as a benefactor, by accident, almost. Now that he had introduced the idea of selling creativity rather than large blocks of metal, it would spread throughout the planet with or without him. There was a sense in which he was no longer necessary. And for that matter, there were, as the Gallamite had pointed out, active Starfleet warrants out for his arrest. Gold could simply stun him, ask for a beam-up to the ship, and execute the warrant once on board. True, it might upset his captain’s current negotiations, but those negotiations were pro forma anyway and not expected to succeed.

  “That five percent,” Silver said at last. “Let me ask you a question—what percentage of the profits do your designers receive?”

  The Gallamite’s face showed his surprise at the question, and perhaps a bit of suspicion and defensiveness. “They are amply compensated,” he said warily, “but you have to understand, the major investment is mine, the equipment is mine, I make the decisions as to which product lines we are going to pursue, and so on. Their contribution, while vital, is only a small part of…” The Gallamite trailed off as Silver’s hand started moving involuntarily toward his phaser.

  “Here’s what I suggest,” Silver said. “You give your designers the extra five percent you were going to give me, and I’ll forget I found you here.”

  The Gallamite smiled widely. “Certainly! Absolutely! Consider it done!” He tapped some keys on the computer in front of him. “There! The designer compensation fund has already been increased by five percent of the after-tax profits from last year, and will be for this year.”

  “That’s nice,” Silver said, “but not what I meant. What I mean is that each designer will receive five percent of the profits from their particular creative endeavor.”

  The Gallamite’s face fell. “Pay them directly? That will cost me…”

  “A lot less than your life, or a life sentence for killing a Starfleet officer,” Silver said.

  “But my competitors…they aren’t online yet, but they will be shortly, and…”

  “Oh,” Silver said, “I’m quite sure your competitors are in startup mode right now. Once you announce your new percentage plan, not only will you retain your best designers, you’ll set the participation standard for your entire industry, and perhaps the entire planet. It’s likely I’m only asking you to accelerate a payment structure you would have been forced into anyway.”

  The Gallamite considered his options for a moment, then agreed. Silver, remembering the guards he had stunned down below and that they were quite possibly awake and angry by this time, called to his ship for beam-up.

  “I’ll be stopping by from time to time,” Silver said, “to make certain that you’re following your end of our deal. I’ll leave you this to remember me by.” He took out one of his two remaining black chips and flipped it across the desk to the Gallamite, who, old gamemaster that he was, caught it deftly. His expression was no more cheerful when he saw it than it had been when Silver had tried to tip him with it, all those years ago. Good, Silver thought. Let the coin remind him of the consequences of his actions, as it has reminded me all these years. As Silver felt the transporter beam dissolve him, he felt his hatred and anger toward the Gallamite dissolving as well.

  “Fair enough,” the Olexan said, “a blood price is a blood price, and if the offended decides to spread the wealth, that’s up to him.”

  “Nonsense,” the Boundarian said, “a payoff is a payoff, no matter how the money is spent.”

  The Telspong tapped on his padd and pulled up the current status of the planet Carnegie. “Carnegie,” he read aloud, “is a center for art and design known throughout the galaxy. The basic design for the fighter craft used by the Federation against the Dominion came from there, as did the winners of the last four Virtual awards for Best Holographic Scenario. The economy of the planet is stable and the distribution of wealth is among the most equitable in the Federation, of which it is now a member. Is it still known in your time?” the Telspong said to the man from the future.

  Al waved the question away. “I’m not supposed to say. And I’m more interested in getting to the rest of the story as quickly as possible. My quarry,” he said, although with less vigor than he had before, “moves quickly, and while this story is instructive, I do need to get back to the hunt.” He turned to Gold. “So what of the last target of Silver’s revenge, and the last black chip he carried?”

  It was a few years later, just after Silver had been promoted to captain but before the ship he was to command had returned from its latest missio
n. Word of the Mausetite reached Silver through—let’s say a contact in Starfleet Intelligence who was aware of his situation but should most likely not have offered him the information. Nonetheless the information that reached Silver seemed to have divine energy behind it. The Mausetite was already scheduled for execution on yet another unaligned planet. That part was straightforward.

  The penal system on the planet, however, had an odd twist to it that played right into Silver’s hands. The right to execute a prisoner was auctioned off by the government. The highest bidder was awarded the privilege of choosing the time and method of the prisoner’s death. The latest bid on the Mausetite was actually quite low, and it was simple for Silver to outbid the only other interested party. Soon he literally had the Mausetite’s life in his hands. All he had to do was comm back the go-ahead, and the Mausetite’s life would end in whatever manner Silver chose.

  But the black chip Silver carried still weighed on him, as did the memories of his encounters with his two previous intended targets. A Starfleet captain, even one whose ship was still months out of drydock, had privileges, and passage to the frontier world where the Mausetite was imprisoned was fairly simple to arrange.

  Silver found that the prison where the Mausetite was held was a sewer, literally. It doubled as the waste-processing plant for the local city, and the prisoners were forced to wade naked through the waste to retrieve anything the guards thought might be of value—which was then turned over to the guards to sell. After stepping out of the constant stream of waste, the prisoners were hit with high-pressure streams of hot water to clean the waste from them and thrown, still naked, into cells with cold stone floors and nothing else.

  It was enough to make Silver begin to pity the man, but the list of his crimes had been sent along with the paperwork surrounding the execution, and the unspeakable things the Mausetite had done since Silver had last encountered him called out for a high level of punishment. While the Federation did not punish even its worst offenders in a way as harsh as this, the Prime Directive certainly gave unaligned planets the right to do so.

  Getting an audience with the Mausetite was only a matter of a small payment to the guard captain, who wondered why anyone would want to speak with any of his charges. To Silver’s surprise, the Mausetite remembered him the moment he walked up to the old-fashioned metal bars that made up the front of his cell. He not only knew Silver’s name, he knew the number of credits Silver owed him and demanded them the moment he saw him.

  As the Mausetite yelled at him for his money, Silver read inmore detail the list of horrendous crimes the Mausetite had committed, and this list was only what he had done since he got to this particular planet. The number of lives he had damaged or destroyed was impressive, in a horrible way. Silver’s other two assailants had in some way redeemed themselves; either they had changed themselves or they had been changed by circumstances. If the Mausetite had changed at all, he had only gotten worse. On top of which, having him killed or killing him himself was totally legal under the laws of this planet. Silver took out his last black chip and stared at it.

  Gold paused, again unintentionally, and the discussion began again. This time the Telspong spoke first: “Kill him.” The others looked at him in surprise. He remained firm. “Kill him, yes, kill him. Not only is it the only way to be certain that others will be safe from him in the future, but he has shown no growth, no repentance. He has not earned forgiveness, so should not be granted it.”

  “I thought you preferred not to guess at the endings of stories?” Al said to him.

  “That is correct,” the Telspong said, “but then I, too, am imperfect and inconsistent. What a boring place the galaxy would be without imperfection and inconsistency!”

  Gold smiled at that.

  “I agree with the Telspong here,” the Olexan said. “Kill him. Kill the Mausetite. He has earned his death.”

  “Well,” the Boundarian said, clearly hating the prospect of agreeing with the Olexan, “yes, kill him. He is dishonorable and dangerous. There is no other choice.”

  “And yet,” Gold said, “Silver found one.”

  Silver stared at the Mausetite, who ranted on about Silver’s unpaid debt. Then Silver came to a decision, and felt a weight he had been carrying for years lift from his shoulders. He interrupted the Mausetite’s ranting and said, “I’m here to settle up.”

  Fear shrouded the Mausetite’s face.

  “No, not for killing me. The debt I owe you, the debt you’ve been ranting about. Here you go.” And Silver tossed the Mausetite’s death papers through the cell’s bars. The papers had cost him just about as much as the amount of his original debt, the one he had been killed for.

  “Now,” Silver said, “the burden of your life is on you, where it should always have been, and no longer on me. They will never let you out of here, you know that. But now you have a decision to make. With those papers, you can live here as long as you want, or die any way and any time you want. Your life is about your choices, not mine. I’m tired of you, and tired of thinking about you.”

  Silver turned, ignoring the Mausetite’s screams, and walked out of the prison, feeling lighter than he had in years. On the way out he tossed his last black chip into the waste stream in which the second shift of prisoners was standing chest-deep.

  “Pointless!” the Olexan shouted. “You have wasted our time with a story of a man who travels great distances to confront his enemies, and does nothing when he encounters them!”

  “I am not so sure,” the Boundarian said. “It seems there is a point to it, but it escapes me. Perhaps it is—” Gold felt his struggle to get the condescension out of his voice. “—a human thing.”

  The Telspong sighed. “It so often falls to me to provide the moral to a story. That’s a danger of my profession as a philosopher. What the parable our friend the captain has been telling us has a deep meaning, one that—”

  “Wait!” the Olexan shouted. “Are you saying that the story we just listened to, on top of being pointless, might never have happened? Might be only a fictional tale?”

  “Well, it might or might not be true,” the Telspong answered, “in a factual sense. But its level of factual accuracy is hardly an important matter. There is great truth to be found in nonfactual stories.”

  “There certainly is,” the Boundarian agreed.

  “Bah!” The Olexan stood up and stomped off toward a table in the back of the room. “My short leave time, spent listening to pointless events that never even happened….”

  It was hard to figure out if a Boundarian was smiling, Gold knew, but he would bet his rank this one was.

  “Quiet,” Al from the future said. “Quiet, please. After all, this story was meant for me, not for you. And I think I take its meaning. I will reconsider my pursuit of my namesake, and perhaps seek other paths. I thank you for your instruction.”

  “No problem,” Gold said, his voice a little hoarse from telling the tale and still taking no water. He checked his chronometer. “Wait another three minutes, and I’ll buy you a drink to go with it.”

  “I cannot,” Al said. “I have family/crew whom I have neglected for my pursuit long enough. You have given me a gift, though, and I wish to give you one in return—but without breaking Starfleet temporal regulations that may be difficult.”

  Al paused to consider, then smiled and stood up. “I leave you with this. I come from around two hundred years in your future, give or take a few decades. And yet, while I was too intent on my quest to mention it on my arrival, when I saw you sitting here I knew at once that you were Captain David Gold of the U.S.S. da Vinci. Two hundred years, give or take, and I knew you on sight. You have given me something to think about. Now you think about that.”

  His piece apparently said, Al nodded to Gold, to the Telspong, to the Boundarian, and attempted to wave good-bye to the Olexan. And then he took his leave.

  When Gold turned back from watching him go, Cap was placing a tall glass of water and a large
bowl of matzoh ball soup in front of him. To the side of the soup Cap had already set an over-stuffed pastrami sandwich dripping with mustard. Gold took a long drink of the water, a spoonful of the soup, and a large bite out of the sandwich, then ordered the drinks he had promised the Telspong and the Boundarian and even had a drink sent to the Olexan’s table at the far side of the bar.

  The sun had gone down in the Bronx, and Yom Kippur was over for another year.

  Tending Bar…

  Shortly after Gold told his midrash , Chakotay, Shran, Archer, and Porthos all left the bar. After downing his sandwich, soup, and water—and the Telspong and Boundarian had finished their drinks—Gold too left, his ritual complete.

  The Ferengi who had been so interested in Archer’s canine fable started telling his own tale, a boast involving great profit for him and great destitution for his enemies. Across the bar, the Telspong and the Triexian started comparing and contrasting Gold’s and Klag’s stories. And at the bar itself, Prrgghh started telling a story of her own, but only Cap and Lizzy were paying attention. Prrgghh didn’t seem to notice; if she had, Cap suspected that Lizzy wouldn’t be long for the universe.

  Soon Demora Sulu came in. She was older than she had been when she entered earlier that day, and older than she had been at the time when she first met Chakotay. Her face betrayed disappointment, as if she was hoping to catch her erstwhile protégé. Cap knew, however, that if they were meant to encounter each other, they would have. Instead, he simply poured her another glass from the same bottle of red wine she’d drunk from earlier that day many years ago.

  All in all, Cap decided, it had been a good day. He gave Sulu her drink, and then sat back and waited for the next story….

  About the Authors

  Peter David is a prolific author whose career, and continued popularity, spans nearly two decades. He has worked in television, film, books (fiction, nonfiction, and audio), short stories, and comic books, and acquired followings in all of them. Peter has had over fifty novels published, including numerous appearances on the New York Times best-seller list. His novels include Sir Apropos of Nothing (and its two sequels), Knight Life (and its two sequels), Howling Mad, and the Psi-Man adventure series. He is the co-developer and author of the best-selling Star Trek: New Frontier series for Pocket Books, and has written over a dozen other Trek novels. He produced the Babylon 5: Centauri Prime trilogy of novels, and has also had his short fiction published in such anthologies as Shock Rock, Shock Rock II, Other-Were, and Tales of the Dominion War, as well as Asimov’s Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Peter has an extensive, and award-winning, comic book résumé, and he has co-edited two short-story anthologies, The Ultimate Hulk and New Frontier: No Limits. Furthermore, his opinion column “But I Digress…” has been running in the industry trade newspaper Comic Buyer’s Guide for over a decade, and in that time has been the paper’s consistently most popular feature and was also collected into a trade paperback edition. Peter is the co-creator, with actor Bill Mumy, of the Cable Ace Award–nominated science-fiction series Space Cases, which ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon. He has written several TV scripts for Babylon 5 and its sequel series Crusade and has written several films for Full Moon Entertainment and co-produced two of them. He lives in New York with his wife, Kathleen, and his four children, Shana, Gwen, Ariel, and Caroline.