“So I have been told,” the android replied with a smile.
As he was marched into the installation, Spock warily observed every detail without giving the impression of being at all interested. The structure seemed to be made mostly of composite materials, not metal, although of course he could not be sure of that without being able to run a scan on it. But composites would be quite understandable since resources were so scarce.
And they certainly would not wish the building to suffer constant electrical strikes.
The outer doors were as heavy and as heavily guarded as Spock had expected: they were truly the entrance to a fortress. The Watraii guarding him exchanged complex codes with those inside for several minutes. Then at last one of the doors slid open just wide enough to let the Watraii and Spock enter in single file. As they passed into the installation, Spock noted that the outer wall was thick, perhaps two or three meters so, as befitted a military structure—or, for that matter, any structure that needed to remain standing in this savage environment. As the Watraii marched him forward, Spock felt the slight change of air pressure as the door slid shut again.
They were in a wide, straight corridor that sloped steadily downward. Most of the installation did, indeed, seem to have been built into the ground. The end of the corridor was hidden in shadow. There were, not surprisingly, no windows, but the yellow glow of the evenly spaced lights showed that floor and walls alike were a matte charcoal gray. That the Watraii should be using an old-fashioned electric lighting system hardly surprised Spock. Electricity would certainly be the cheapest and most easily accessible resource on this world. What did surprise him was the utter lack of any ornamentation. Even the most severe of military installations on Romulus had borne heroic murals and war trophies. Here there was nothing.
Of all the oxygen-breathing species known to the Federation, Spock thought, only the Borg have no sense of ornamentation. In their case, the lack of any form of artistry was understandable. Yet these people may be highly organized, but they are not a hive intelligence, and the patterns on their masks show that they do, indeed, understand the concept of ornamentation.
Then why is their installation so utterly sterile? The plainness implies a temporary facility, one on which no time need be wasted for artwork. Yet the entire structure seems to have been built to last for years. It resembles a prison more than it does a major installation…almost as though the Watraii are trying to turn themselves into emotionless military machines—or perhaps are punishing themselves.
It was a confusing puzzle. But without further evidence one way or another, speculation was useless. Spock could only content himself with: Fascinating.
The group of Watraii children was ushered away down a narrow side corridor. The little troop went obediently without so much as a curious glance back at Spock.
It truly does seem as though the Watraii don’t even consider their children primarily as replacement members of the species, but first and foremost as a military resource.
He and his Watraii escort continued down the wider, absolutely straight and utterly featureless main corridor, their footsteps echoing dully on the charcoal gray floor. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and of dust.
The corridor leveled out eventually and ended abruptly in a blank wall into which was set a smooth black door. It, like everything else that Spock had seen so far, was utterly without ornamentation, though he noted a small, lighted panel at one side. One of the Watraii tapped out a code on the panel, shielding what he did from Spock’s sight.
The door slid open, creaking slightly, revealing a chamber that instantly struck Spock as the basic essence of “command central.” The room was large and circular, as plain and gray as the rest of the installation, but viewscreens lined the walls, and a desk of black stone nearly hidden by a communications console was set squarely in the center of it.
At the desk sat a Watraii.
Spock needed no formal introduction to know: Ah, they have, indeed, taken me to their leader.
The Watraii at the desk fairly radiated authority. His dark uniform was no different from that of the others, save for a light gray slash across one sleeve, and his mask was no different from the masks of the others, either. But he carried himself with that unmistakable combination of pride and weariness that Spock knew from every captain, every admiral, everyone in charge of others whom he had ever seen.
This Watraii was the person who was, at the heart of it, responsible for everyone else.
Very good, Spock thought. Better, in fact, than one could ever have predicted.
“Greetings,” he said, saluting the Watraii with hand raised in the split-fingered Vulcan salute, ignoring the guards standing at rigid attention to the left and right of their leader. “I am Ambassador Spock of the planet Vulcan, and I come in peace.”
“Welcome,” the commander replied. His voice was as chilly as the room around them, and held not a trace of emotion. “Welcome, you who have no sense of survival.”
“Had I no sense of survival, I would not have come here peacefully,” Spock countered, “but would have tried to attack you as an army of one.”
“I do not know what game you play,” the Watraii said coldly, “but I care nothing for your words—you who are one of the creatures that we have sworn to wipe from the galaxy.”
Spock calmly retorted, “I mean no insult, sir, but I must make a correction. I can understand why you think me a Romulan. There is, indeed, a resemblance between those people and my own. But as I have already said, I am not a Romulan. I am of the planet Vulcan.”
“Do you think we have no eyes?” There was a sudden edge of impatience in the Watraii commander’s cold voice. “No intelligence? There is no distinction between you and the enemy, or so small a distinction that it matters not. You are, indeed, of the same enemy race. And your reckless invasion and attempts to trick us are not going to bring you anywhere but to your death.”
“An invasion of one is hardly logical,” Spock returned smoothly. “I am certain that you agree about this. Those who captured me can vouch for the fact that I was alone.”
“I know that you were alone when you were taken. Whether or not there are others hiding on the surface, others we have not yet taken prisoner, remains to be seen.” The commander leaned forward ever so slightly. “But never mind that. Let us accept your claim for the moment. Let us assume that you really are here alone. Then the question becomes simply this: Why are you here?”
“Believe me,” Spock countered, “I wish no harm to you or your people.”
“Why are you here?”
“I am here because I wish only the truth.”
“The truth,” the Watraii commander echoed flatly.
“I am aware of the claims that your people have made against the Romulans. I seek to find a peaceful solution to—”
“There can be none.”
“Your pardon, but there is always a possibility for a peaceful solution to even the most—”
“There is no settlement but death. And I do not have any time to waste on this nonsense. Guards!” the Watraii commander snapped. “Prepare this intruder for interrogation.”
Judging from their environment, Spock assumed that the Watraii must have turned electroshock into something nearing an art form. That was not precisely a pleasant thought.
But before anyone could move or say anything more, a new Watraii rushed into the room without waiting on ceremony. He (or she?) hastily saluted before the Watraii guards could shoot, and rattled off a series of coded statistics to the commander.
The commander instantly switched on the console at his desk. From what little Spock could see from where he stood, the crisis concerned a Watraii shuttle. Coming in for a normal landing, it had just been caught in a wind shear and had been forced to make a crash landing instead. In the process, it had apparently also done a fair amount of damage to the landing area and nearby transports.
The commander began snapping out orders into a com link and t
o those around him, and only then stopped short for a moment, turning to stare at Spock as if suddenly remembering him.
Interesting. You are not as blindly militaristic as the others. You consider the welfare of your people before all else, Spock thought. That is definitely a good sign.
“There is no time for this,” the commander snapped. “Throw the creature into a cell—yes, yes, all right then, if that is the only cell with sufficient security, then make it the cell with our prior guest.”
Prior guest? Spock wondered as he was marched by the Watraii down yet another featureless corridor. Chekov?
The Watraii unlocked and opened a door. The cell that lay beyond it was so dimly lit that Spock stopped involuntarily, trying in vain to see where he was going.
The Watraii didn’t actually throw him into it. Shoved, yes, but not so roughly that he lost his footing, as though they were less interested in him than they were about getting back to deal with the shuttle crash.
Understandable.
As Spock heard the door slide shut and lock once more behind him, he blinked in the near darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the faint light. Now he could vaguely make out a figure standing at the back of the cell, but he couldn’t quite tell yet who or what…
Was that figure standing in the cell actually Chekov?
Or was it, perhaps, an enemy?
Twenty-One
Memory
As Shavokh braked toward system entry, Karatek panted from the additional “weight” of the coronet he wore. Because his lungs had never recovered completely from the fever, he forced himself to breathe slowly, carefully. These days, it was a fight to breathe at all. The cold, thin air was stale now past the ability of any recycling system to make it fresh. Sometimes, when an unexpected gust from, say, hydroponics or engineering huffed out of one of the ancient vents into the battered corridors, it was all he could do not to collapse, retching, on the deck.
He and T’Vysse would sit each evening in the courtyard of their house in ShiKahr. Their fingers would touch and they would simply breathe in the sweet, wild scent of the desert night.
Even with the weakness, the heaviness, and the sickness, Karatek was hungrier than he had ever been. They all were, even with their population depleted by epidemics, accidents, or just wearing out from despair.
Life had become almost killingly austere as the exiles fought to keep their ships flying. Fewer remained alive now. Some perished in industrial accidents. Others died out working on the hulls. Whenever possible, their bodies had been retrieved to be buried when they finally reached a planet they could call their own.
For the past 19.8 years, they had tested the limits of the great ships and their own strength. First, they had accelerated to reach the star S’task’s chief astronomer had seen while, simultaneously, laboring to strengthen engines and hulls against the long, long deceleration period while they decided whether it was safe to enter the system or try to struggle on to the next before the ships broke apart.
Maybe it was just as well that so few children had been born in the past 19.8 years: it meant fewer to die, fewer parents to suffer as he and T’Vysse had when their little daughter slipped out of life. These days, when a child survived to come of age, what that chiefly meant was that the new adult learned a new discipline: leave enough food so that children had a remote chance of growing up healthy.
This final period of uncertainty had been more than some of the exiles could bear. Quarrels among the various factions on board each of the ships grew worse, threatening to succeed where black holes, alien predators, epidemics, and time had failed. Vulcan’s exile was ending just as it began, in politics, plots, and recriminations.
And this time, they had no Surak to unite them.
It was the death, finally, of an entire family in a suicide pact that had convinced every person of logic and goodwill on board each ship that it was time at least to try to unite once more.
Did they have one more effort in them? Though so many Vulcans had died, hope had not. Not quite.
The fleet was working for a common cause again, but the different groups on board were not united. Nor would they ever be united again, except in suspicion of one another. He knew Solor was watching the te-Vikram, while Sarissa, through her ties with the engineers, managed civil relations with the technocrats—“up to a point,” she always cautioned.
But the great ships still flew. Ships’ systems worked. Nobody fought. And no one died, except of natural causes. Karatek, as worn out as his ship, was content to call that a victory.
With the discipline of long practice, Karatek tried to form coherent, discrete thoughts for the coronet to store. After a time, he gave it up and just peered out into the dark, looking for that one particular star that might mean his people had a future.
There it was! How it glowed, even if it was not the brightest star in the sky or even on the main sequence. Possibly, it was not as hot as Vulcan’s home sun. They could live with that. They had gotten used to being cold. But right now, the very sight of it made Karatek’s eyes blur. He fought off a preposterous sense of homecoming. He had never been here. How, then, could he be coming home?
Karatek had once seen Surak yield to emotion at the death of a student. More than a hundred years away from his great teacher, Karatek remained a student, in need of guidance. But he could not play the student now. Shortly, he must take his place in the command center as Shavokh and her consorts made the irrevocable course change and engine burns that would take them into the star system. Even if this system proved unsatisfactory, it was likely to be the last one they would ever see. The ships’ engineers calculated that any attempt to reaccelerate, let alone to near-relativistic speeds, would make the engines burn out—assuming they did not explode.
Early in the ten years’ deceleration, Shavokh had come into sensor range of the star system. Then, the ships had received further indications that at least one of the planets that circled this star might be Minshara-class. But the long-range scans were inconclusive. At times, they showed a world that was habitable by Vulcan standards, if very damp; at others, they showed wild fluctuations of heat and cold.
At all times, bio-readings showed the possibility of life-forms, but there were no indications that a technological civilization existed. The systems were checked and rechecked, but always gave the same answers. Whether or not there were sapient beings on that planet, they would have to wait to find out. They would have to come closer, with no hope of ever being able to escape if they entered the system and found they were wrong.
That provoked another quarrel. Early in the exile, the fleet had refused to consider landing on a habitable world because it possessed intelligent life. But if this world had intelligence, they would have no choice but to make the best accommodation with the natives that they could. It was an ethical dilemma for which the ships’ commanders were sharply criticized. But, as S’task said, gathering up a desperate consensus, it was a logical risk to take.
And so, the decision had been made. Karatek still shook his head over the wildness of the night in which Shavokh permitted itself to celebrate. Those on board who had not studied Surak’s disciplines had screamed, laughed, wept, brought out supplies of potions brewed from things Karatek refused to imagine, and danced in the corridors and shuttlebays. A number of women even conceived, as if to contradict the fear that the fleet lacked sufficient fertile men and women to populate a new homeworld.
As far as Karatek knew, however, Sarissa and her intended mate—at least, Karatek hoped he was still only her intended mate—would wait so that any children they might have would be born on a new homeworld.
When the hangovers subsided, the survivors of the fleet settled down to plan how they would make this new system theirs.
How beautiful the star was. How it drew Karatek’s gaze. Surely no other star in this strange quadrant of space…But he was being illogical.
He tried to imagine standing upon the soil of a new world, looking up at it
through a veil of atmosphere, of fresh, sweet air. He had his old memories.
Sunset over the Forge.
Dawn breaking behind the peaks of Mount Seleya.
Now, he would create new ones. Logically, this new homeworld would have sights he would find similarly pleasing and would love just as much, if not more.
Karatek’s com buzzed, summoning him to command.
He gave the star one last look and turned away, ready to give the orders that would bring Shavokh to its new home.
Twenty-Two
Now
WATRAII HOMEWORLD STARDATE 54107.2
The figure stood motionless in the darkness, staring at Spock. It was quite alarming in that first instant of purely atavistic reaction, but in the next moment, Spock realized the truth of it. There wasn’t a threat at all. Since he was outlined against the slightly brighter light from outside, the figure couldn’t be sure of his identity, either, and was standing motionless because he or she was desperately trying to puzzle it out.
His vision adapted to the dim light in the next moment. With a rush of what he could not deny was joy, Spock saw that this was, indeed, Pavel Chekov standing there. But…it was not exactly the man whom he remembered from barely two months before.
Instead of the energetic, cheerful person who had gleefully defied all of Starfleet and not worried about little things such as demotion or court-martial, Spock saw a Chekov who was clad in drab gray tunic and trousers, a Chekov who—for the first time in his life—looked genuinely old, genuinely worn, and quite embittered.
But, mercifully, the man seemed still to be in one piece. There were no obvious scars or bruises, either. He had not been, at least not visibly, badly mistreated.
They could not, for safety’s sake, show that they knew each other. But Spock turned slightly in the dim light so that Chekov could see him more clearly. Chekov started visibly as he recognized Spock, but said nothing. However, the sudden coldness in his eyes said volumes.
Spock moved forward as though about to challenge the other for space. As soon as he was close enough to risk a whisper, he said, “Chekov.”
Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 21