Picard frowned. That hardly seemed like an equitable conclusion.
“Kasaelek,” said one of his comrades. The Aklaash knelt beside him. “Show the elder your insadja’tu.”
Kasaelek was still dazed, but not to the point where he couldn’t understand his comrade’s instructions. Delving into a pocket of his own, he felt around for a moment. Then he drew his hand out and showed the elders a white stone with black etchings.
The insadja’tu, Picard thought. Little more than a pebble. And this would decide the outcome of the ritual?
They had come so far, gotten through so much. They had won by every reasonable standard. It wasn’t fair for Simenon’s bloodline to be ended forever on a mere technicality. At least it seemed that way to his Terran mode of thinking.
But that weren’t on Earth, the captain had to remind himself. They were on Gnala, and what seemed like a mere technicality to him here may have made perfect sense to Simenon’s people.
“I have no choice,” the elder said, “but to award Kasaelak the victory. That is, if he can transcribe the glyphs that appear on his insadja’tu without error.”
Kasaelak laughed despite the bludegeoning he had endured. Clearly, he didn’t believe he would have any trouble doing what the elder had suggested—not when he had his little white stone for reference.
Simenon’s head drooped and he looked away. It didn’t seem he could bear to watch.
Nonetheless, the Aklaash moved into the center of the clearing, where he found a patch of soft, dark ground unconcealed by the spongy stuff. Then he pulled out his tellek and used it to make a line.
“Wait a minute,” said Greyhorse, who was standing next to the crestfallen Simenon. “That’s what the insadja’tu is for? So you can draw glyphs in the ground?”
“That’s what it’s for,” the engineer confirmed.
“What if you could draw the glyphs without the stone?” asked the medical officer.
“What if I could fly?” Simenon rasped bitterly. “Without the stone, I can’t do a thing.”
For the first time, Picard saw Greyhorse become angry. “Answer me, damn you,” said the doctor.
Surprised, the engineer looked up at him. “The law of ritual calls for a drawing. That’s it. But—”
Greyhorse didn’t let him finish. Limping out into the center of the clearing, he stopped in front of where Kasaelak was kneeling.
“Get out of my way,” the Aklaash growled, an unmistakable promise of violence in his voice.
But the chief medical officer didn’t answer him. He spoke to the elders instead. “I stand for Simenon,” he said.
The foremost elder regarded him. “In what capacity?”
“In this capacity,” Greyhorse told him.
With difficulty, he lowered himself to his knees alongside another open patch of ground. Then, looking as humble and miserable as Picard had ever seen him, the doctor took out his own tellek and began to draw. And as the captain watched—as they all watched—Greyhorse began to produce a set of glyph-like lines.
Simenon’s eyes narrowed as he looked on. “They’re the ones on my insadja’tu,” he muttered. He turned to Picard. “But how does he—?”
The captain shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Clearly, however, Greyhorse knew what he was doing. Though he worked intently and exercised great care, he didn’t stop even once. He inscribed glyph after intricate glyph as if he had known them from the moment of his birth.
Ben Zoma chuckled. “Amazing.”
“It is indeed,” Picard agreed.
“This is an outrage!” Kasaelak growled, his ruby eyes full of fury. He got up and charged the elders, stopping just in time to keep from bowling them over. “You gave me the victory!”
“We gave you the opportunity to inscribe the glyphs,” said one of the elders, unruffled by the Aklaash’s display. “But only because Simenon could not. Now, it seems, he can.”
“But that’s not Simenon!” Kasaelak snarled, pointing a thick, long-nailed finger at Greyhorse. “That’s an offworlder! Bad enough he was allowed to accompany the Mazzereht on his journey. But to let him inscribe glyphs in our sacred ground... that is beyond reason!”
The elder shook his head from side to side. “We have already determined that the offworlder may stand for Simenon—not just in one aspect of the ritual, but in all of them.”
Kasaelak sputtered with anger, but he had to see that he wasn’t going to make any headway with the elders. Which was, no doubt, why he whirled and faced Greyhorse instead.
Too late, Picard saw the Aklaash lower his head and go after the doctor. All he could do was cry out a warning. But Joseph wasn’t too late. He bolted for Greyhorse as well, embarking on an intercept course with the powerful Kasaelak.
For a moment, Picard wasn’t sure which of them would reach the doctor first. Then, with a desperate burst of speed that surprised the captain, the security officer interposed himself between Greyhorse and Kasaelek and took the brunt of the attack.
Aklaash and human rolled across the clearing in a tangle of arms and legs. Predictably, the larger and stronger Kasaelek got to his feet first, intent on doing further damage to Joseph.
But someone intervened. Not Vigo, who was best equipped to have done so. Not Picard or Ben Zoma or Simenon or any of the black-robed Aklaash who stood at the edges of the clearing.
Someone else got to Kasaelek first, tackling him at the knees and toppling him, and then leaping on top of him to deliver a crude but enthusiastic right to the Gnalish’s jaw.
It was Greyhorse.
Before Kasaelek could shrug off the blow, the Aklaash guards surrounded him and pulled him to his feet. And Greyhorse backed off, holding his right hand with his left.
“Are you all right?” Picard asked as he joined him there.
The doctor frowned as he inspected his hand. “As if tracing those glyphs wasn’t already difficult. Now I’ll be doing it one-handed.”
The captain glanced at the elders, who didn’t look very happy with Kasaelek’s behavior. “I think you’ll be granted a certain amount of leeway,” he said.
It turned out that Picard was right. Greyhorse was given all the time he needed to complete the glyphs on Simenon’s insadja’tu—time enough to describe where he had seen them before and how they came to be planted so firmly in his mind.
For all the captain knew, they might all have been perfectly accurate. Or then again, they might not have been. All that was important was that the elders accepted them.
Maybe by then, they had recognized that Simenon had earned his posterity many times over.
Finally, the engineer was officially declared the victor. But he didn’t celebrate. More than anything, he looked relieved.
“As my teammates,” he told Picard and the others, “you can stay and watch me inseminate the eggs.” But his tone and his expression indicated that he would rather they didn’t.
“I don’t think so,” the captain said.
Ben Zoma smiled. “Maybe some other time.”
So Picard and his officers left the clearing, walked back into the scarlet woods and waited. And when Simenon came to get them a short time later, it was after he had done his part—injuries and all—to add to the longevity of his bloodline.
Wu couldn’t wait any longer.
According to Kastiigan’s sensors, the Belladonna had slipped into the sinkhole almost to the point where it would be futile to try to drag her out again. If they were going to try to stage a rescue, they would have to do it now.
But the Stargazer couldn’t do it alone. As long as the scientists on the research ship had recognized the urgency of their situation and gotten their engines ready, they had a chance. If they had failed in that regard, perhaps because the impulse drive was just unsalvageable at this point, the Belladonna and all hands would be lost.
It was that simple.
Wu turned to Idun. “Helm, take us within a hundred kilometers of the accretion bridge.”
The helm officer did as she was told, her fingers moving nimbly over her controls. Almost instantly, the plasma stream began to loom larger on the forward viewer. After a while, all Wu could see from one side of the screen to the other was brilliant, red-gold turbulence.
Paris had returned from the brink of that chaos with his shuttle safe and sound. But Jiterica was still trapped inside the accretion bridge along with the people she had tried to save. Wu prayed that the ensign’s efforts there had paid off.
Finally, Idun turned to her. “One hundred kilometers,” she reported, though from the look in her eyes she would have liked to dare more.
Wu glanced at Gerda. “Give me a tractor lock.”
The navigator carried out the order. “Got it,” she said a few moments later.
The second officer frowned. This was it. If Jiterica had succeeded, they would know it soon enough. “Reverse engines and proceed at one-quarter-impulse. Let’s get them out of there.”
“Reversing engines,” Idun told her.
“Come on,” Wu breathed, staring at the screen as if that could make a difference. “Give us a hand.”
“I’m reading engine activity in the Belladonna,” Kastiigan announced from his science station. He looked up. “They appear to be operating at rated power.”
Wu nodded. Jiterica had done it. She had gotten the impulse drive ready in time. But would it be enough?
She felt a shudder in the deckplates. The Stargazer was straining to carry out her part of the bargain. But if the research ship was emerging from her trap, Wu couldn’t tell from the image on the viewscreen.
Needing to see what was going on, she got up and joined Kastiigan. “Progress?” she asked hopefully.
“None to speak of,” he said, intent on his monitors.
Wu bit her lip. The longer this went on, straining both their engines and the Belladonna’s, the less likely they were to pull the research ship out of there.
“All available power to the engines!” she snapped. “Shields, life support . . . everything but the tractor feed!”
The lights dimmed on the bridge and she felt another tremor run through the deck. Then she turned to Kastiigan’s monitors, which seemed brighter in the relative darkness, defying them to tell her that her order hadn’t helped.
In fact, it had. More of the research ship had crept out of the sinkhole. But she still wasn’t free. Wu needed to do more for her.
“We need more power,” she said out loud.
But there wasn’t any more power. They had already tapped all their vessel’s resources. Or had they?
They were still pumping incredible amounts of energy into their tractor beam—enough to maintain its integrity in this titanic tug-of-war across a hundred kilometers of graviton-riddled space.
They didn’t dare compromise the strength of the beam. But if they cut down its length, even by thirty kilometers, and shuttled that suddenly-available power to the engines . . .
“Take us in closer,” Wu told her helm officer. “Within seventy kilometers of the accretion bridge.”
Idun looked at her. “Aye, Commander.”
And she brought them in closer.
Of course, there was a problem with Wu’s idea—a flaw of which she was well aware. At some point, the sinkhole would begin to exert a pull on the Stargazer again as well. Then they would be trying to drag two ships at the same time—the scientists’ and their own.
Wu could only hope that flaw wouldn’t become a fatal one.
“Seventy kilometers,” Idun told her. She studied her instruments and frowned. “We’re being drawn in.”
Wu’s heart sank. “What about the Belladonna?” she asked Kastiigan, too discouraged to look for herself.
A pause. “She’s moving,” the science officer replied, a note of surprise in his voice. “Yes . . .she is definitely moving.”
But so was Wu’s ship—and in the wrong direction. If she allowed that go on much longer, the Belladonn a wouldn’t be the only victim of the rift. The Stargazer would be sucked in along with her.
The only prudent course of action was to deactivate the tractor beam and retreat while they still could. After all, Wu had the lives of her crew to consider. But she couldn’t do it. Not with all those scientists depending on them, clinging to the slender thread of hope only Wu and her officers could offer them.
And it wasn’t just the Belladonna’s crew she was thinking about. Jiterica had trusted her, risked her life at Wu’s request.
How could Wu fail to return the favor? Pull, she urged the Stargazer, intent on the yellow blip that represented the research ship on Kastiigan’s monitor.
Pull with everything you’ve got.
And as if her invocation had given the Belladonna the courage she needed, the vessel surged free of her prison, a flying thing too long denied flight.
Gerda turned to Wu, her eyes alight with triumph. “She’s escaped the sinkhole!”
“So she has!” the commander returned.
But it wasn’t over yet. The Belladonna still had to escape the sinkhole’s pull.
“Her impulse drive is giving out,” Kastiigan said, putting a damper on his colleagues’ enthusiasm. He pointed to the monitor that showed him the other ship’s energy levels. “Another few seconds and she will be without propulsion.”
But in the meantime, she was getting closer to the Stargazer. And the closer she got, the less energy it took to maintain the tractor beam that held her in tow.
Wu felt a muscle in her jaw begin to spasm. Wait, she told herself. Just a little longer . . .
To their credit, none of her bridge officers questioned her judgement. Paxton, Dubinski, Kastiigan... they remained silent and uncomplaining, watching along with Wu as the Belladonna slowly climbed out of the swirling plasma of the accretion bridge.
And just as the commander had hoped, the Stargazer began to win her battle as well. Even without any help from the research vessel’s impulse drive, the starship pulled away from the sinkhole—further and further, giving her crew more reason for optimism with each passing moment.
Then something strange happened, something Wu had never experienced in all the time she had spent on the Crazy Horse. Someone on the bridge began to cheer. And someone else joined him. And before the second officer knew it, everyone around her was cheering or applauding or grinning at her with unmitigated pride.
Part of her noted that it was very much against regulations to cheer on the bridge of a starship. But it was a very small part. The rest of her enjoyed every second of it.
Chapter Twenty-five
JITERICA FELT A WAVE of relief as she studied the readout on her console in the Belladonna’s small but efficient engineering facility. Despite her best efforts, the ship’s impulse drive had failed. But it had held out long enough to do what was required of it.
The Belladonna was out of danger, the sinkhole falling farther and farther behind her with each passing moment. Her crew was safe. The ensign took pride in that outcome.
Abruptly, she realized that there was a hand on the shoulder of her containment suit. Turning her helmet, she saw that the appendage belonged to the Belladonna’s captain. He and his son had come down to engineering without her realizing it.
The captain smiled in the depths of his beard. “Thank you,” he said, “from the bottom of my old, black heart.” Then he held out his hand.
Jiterica knew what she had to do with it. After all, she had seen humans do it often enough on the ship. Exerting the requisite control over her containment suit, she placed her gauntlet in the man’s hand.
His smile widened as he clasped it. “Ever have a yen to visit the colony on New Stockholm, Ensign?”
“No,” Jiterica had to confess. She didn’t even know what system New Stockholm was in.
“Well,” the captain said, “you should. It’s a beautiful place. If you ever feel like seeing it, look me up. I’ll be happy to show you around.” As he looked around the engineering facility, his face finally
showed the stress he had been under. “I think after this, I’ll be content to stay at home for a while.”
It occurred to Jiterica that she couldn’t “look him up.” She lacked an important piece of information.
“What is your name?” she asked.
The captain’s eyes opened wide as he realized his omission. “Hansen,” he said. “Erik Hansen.” He put his arm around his son’s shoulder. “And this is Magnus. I’m sure he’ll be happy to show you around as well. But you’d better visit soon, or he’ll be off on a voyage of his own.”
Magnus rolled his eyes. “I’m only thirteen, Dad.”
“In years,” said his father, who was obviously proud of him. “But you’ve already got more smarts than most grown men.”
The boy looked at Jiterica and shrugged. Parents, he seemed to say. They’ll embarrass you every chance they get.
The ensign knew the feeling. Hers were the same way.
Simenon stopped pacing the small meeting room when he heard its only door open.
“Phigus?” said his cousin Ornitharen as he poked his scaly head in.
“Yes,” Simenon said, “I’m in here.” He gestured for Ornitharen to come in and join him.
Ornitharen took a deep breath. “I wasn’t sure which room it was. Those Aklaash in the black suits don’t give very good directions. If I hadn’t been here in the Northern Sanctum just the other day, I never would have found you.”
“I’m glad you did,” said Simenon.
His cousin frowned at him as if realizing something for the first time. “You look terrible, Phigus.”
The engineer grunted. “I feel terrible.”
Ornitharen looked sympathetic. “You lost the race, didn’t you?”
Simenon shook his head. “Actually, I won.”
“You won?” his cousin echoed wonderingly.
“Yes. Fertilized the eggs and everything. Our bloodline will go on at least another generation.”
Progenitor Page 20
