The Tears of the Singers

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “They never take that action unless there’s something particularly vital to preserve on the planet.”

  “How about the Taygetians? Aren’t they particularly vital?” Uhura said as they stopped in front of Maslin’s tent.

  “To you and me maybe, but probably not to some bureaucrat back on Earth. They tend to think only in terms of tangibles.”

  “And music isn’t much of a tangible,” Uhura said as she unsealed the flap. “See you later, Doctor,” she added as she ducked into the tent.

  McCoy stared at the silver surface of the tent, and wondered what she was going to do in there. Probably just watch him sleep, he concluded. He frowned and turned away, wondering what the outcome of this attachment was going to be.

  He saw Spock and his party on the outskirts of the camp, and he went to meet them. Spock’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and he strode along at a great rate, leaving the smaller humans behind.

  “You look grim,” McCoy said, falling into step with him. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Hunters, Doctor. I must report to the captain at once.” He flipped out his communicator, and within moments had vanished. McCoy stood irresolutely in the middle of the camp, and wondered if he too ought to return to the Enterprise. Before he could make up his mind there was the hum of a transporter, and Riley sparkled into view.

  “Grand Central Station,” McCoy muttered under his breath.

  “Hi, doc. Where’s Mr. Scott?”

  “He was here a minute ago. There’s so much comin’ and goin’ in this place that a man can hardly—”

  “Thanks,” Riley said, ignoring the rest of McCoy’s remarks, and chugging off in search of the chief engineer.

  McCoy, who had a fine sense of knowing when things were happening, trailed after him. They found Scotty hunkered down in front of one of the smallest cubs, honking at the Singer with his bagpipes, and then recording the creature’s responses.

  “Come on, wee beasty, can’t you make the same sound twice running?” Scotty said, staring at the readings on his tricorder. “How are we going to learn your language if you keep using only new words?”

  “Mr. Scott.”

  “Aye, Riley, what is it?” he asked, straightening up with a grunt.

  “I know you put me in charge, sir, and I hate to run to you the first time I have a problem, but this one is frankly beyond me. Even the captain hasn’t been able to help.”

  “Well spit it out, lad. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “It’s the dilithium crystals, sir.”

  “Dilithium crystals,” he repeated ominously.

  “Yes, sir. They’re decaying, sir.”

  “Decaying!” Scotty yelped. “What the hell have ye been doin’ up there?”

  “Nothing, sir. That’s what’s so frustrating. There’s just been this slow but steady drain on the power. We’ve checked and rechecked every circuit, and it shouldn’t be happening.”

  “Have you at least got a theory, boy?” Scotty demanded over his shoulder as he gathered up his equipment, and marched for his tent.

  “Yes, sir. I think it has something to do with that phenomenon.”

  The engineer stopped, and stared at Riley. “Why couldn’t you have come up with something simpler, lad?”

  “Sorry, sir, but I call ’em like I see ’em.”

  “Donovan!” Scotty bawled.

  The young biologist came charging out of his tent. “Sir!”

  “See to it that my things get beamed back aboard the Enterprise.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And tell … no, never mind. I’d best tell him myself.” He crossed to Maslin’s tent, and stepped inside.

  Uhura rose quickly from the stool where she had been sitting. “Scotty, what is it?”

  “Trouble, lass. I’ve got to get back aboard the Enterprise.”

  “Klingons?”

  “No, engineering problem. I just stopped in to tell Mr. Maslin.”

  “Don’t wake him, I’ll tell him later.”

  “Tell me what later?” Guy said, pushing up on one elbow, and regarding Scotty out of one bleary eye.

  “I’ve got to go back to the Enterprise.”

  “Isn’t this a little sudden?”

  “There’s a problem with our power source. I’ve got to get it fixed.”

  “I had understood that solving the puzzle of the Taygetian song was first priority for this mission, Mr. Scott. It just becomes that much harder if I lose people.”

  “No, Mr. Maslin. Keeping the ship running is first priority.”

  “Is it as serious as all that?”

  “If the dilithium crystals decay far we won’t be able to fight or run if the Klingons decide to get ugly.”

  Maslin sat up fully in bed. “Then by all means go, Mr. Scott, and with my blessings.”

  “I thought you’d see it my way.”

  “Artistic temperament notwithstanding, I’m a man of extraordinarily good sense. You take care of our defense. We’ll handle things on this end.” Scotty turned and headed out of the tent. “I’ve got to get to work. With Scott leaving we’ve got to pick up the slack,” he heard Maslin say.

  “Dr. McCoy wanted you to rest. A few more hours isn’t going to make that much difference,” Uhura remonstrated with him. The falling tent flap cut off Maslin’s reply.

  Another anguished cry wailed down from the crystal cliffs, and Kali covered her ears with her hands. As the last echo died, and the cubs began their mournful dirge, Kali marched to her tent, and emerged moments later, strapping on her disruptor.

  Quarag looked up from a set of readings he had taken. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Going to put a stop to this. If the Earthers are too cowardly, I am most certainly not!”

  “They’re just stupid animals. What do you care?”

  “They are not animals, and they are not stupid, and I will not allow them to be slaughtered,” she yelled over her shoulder as she headed out of camp.

  “You come back here! I have not given you permission to leave the camp!”

  “So report me.”

  “I will! I am in command here!”

  “If you say so,” Kali said wearily, and loped down the hill with her black hair streaming behind her.

  “I can’t stand it!” Quarag howled, and flung his readouts onto the ground, where they were immediately whirled away by the brisk wind that was blowing in off the ocean. “Report her, you better believe I’ll report her,” he muttered to Jennas. “There must be someone who can control her.”

  “If you think it’s her husband, think again,” Jennas snorted. “The old man’s lost his touch. He’s soft on Earthers, and scared of a fight.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Quarag said cautiously, remembering all the times that Kor had resisted threats to his command. “Anyway, I’m tired of dealing with her. Let him come down, and try to make her behave.”

  “Soft, soft on women too,” Jennas mumbled into his cup of quavas, the hot, spicy Klingon brew.

  “Oh shut up! He’s probably not too soft to use the agonizer on you if he hears you carrying on.” Quarag pulled out his communicator and signaled the ship.

  Kali strode briskly down the beach and wondered why men were such fools. For a solid day the men of her race and the humans had dithered and debated while the slaughter went on. She and Uhura had encountered one another on the beach, and in a brief and hurried conversation had agreed that murder was too good for the hunters—castration seemed a more attractive prospect. Unfortunately neither of them was in command so the talk went on, and the Taygetians died and the cubs sang their mournful dirge until she had decided she could no longer stand it.

  She was passing by the opening into the humans’ sheltered cove, and she momentarily considered stopping to see if Uhura wanted to join her. She hesitated, nervously twining a lock of hair between her fingers, then decided against it. She liked the woman, it was true, but she was still an Earther, and it was probably not wise
to put too much reliance on her. Having an armed human at her back was not something she could view with equanimity no matter how pleasant she might seem to be. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, and continued her march to the hunters’ camp.

  The camp was deserted when she arrived. She glanced about, evaluating the positions of the tents, rocks, and noting possible approaches to the campsite. She then took up a position against a tall boulder which afforded her a clear view and angle of fire into the entire camp, and had the added benefit of protecting her back. She settled down to wait.

  She smelled them almost as soon as she heard them. There was always a subtly different scent about the humans, but the people from the Enterprise seemed to make a habit of bathing and the odor was bearable. The men who came stomping and shouting into the camp obviously did not share this habit, and the rank and alien odor of them washed over her almost like a physical wave. Her nostrils pinched fastidiously together, and she hefted her disruptor, testing the balance. For a moment the hunters didn’t notice her, and she had ample time to study them. What she saw made her begin to wish that she had not come alone to confront them, for they were large, brutish men with a look about them that she could only describe as threatening. She reminded herself that she was a Klingon and an officer, and she stepped into a defensive firing position.

  One of the men, who had a lean, whippetlike body, dropped his pack. As he straightened he found himself staring down the barrel of Kali’s disruptor. He placed his hands on his hips, and rocked back on his heels giving an appreciative whistle.

  “Well, well,” he drawled. “Look what’s come to visit.” His three companions whirled, and moved in to form a loose semicircle around the woman.

  “She’s a Klingon,” one of them muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Why so she is,” the biggest man said, leaning forward to peer at her. “I’ve never seen a Klingon woman before.” He grinned. It was a feral, ugly expression. “Course, if they’re all as pretty as you are, little lady, I can see why your men keep you hidden away.”

  These were humans as she had been taught to expect them, and she felt her mouth go dry. She forced herself to swallow, and took a firmer grip on the weapon. “I will not waste time with you,” she called. “You will stop the hunting or I will kill you.”

  “Oooh, she’s a dangerous as well as a pretty little filly,” the big man cooed, looking about at his companions. They laughed, and Kali felt the blood rise in her cheeks. She fired, sending a spray of sand into the air directly in front of the leader. The laughter cut off as abruptly as if they’d been throttled.

  “Now that I have your attention again,” she said smoothly, “we will discuss my proposal.” Excitement and a sense of power coursed through her, and she began to enjoy the situation.

  Suddenly a rock grazed past her head, cutting open her ear, and exploding in a burst of crystal fragments on the boulder behind her. She cried out and flinched away, and in that instant the men were on her. A heavy weight slammed into her and the disruptor was wrenched from her hand.

  “Looks like the tables are turned, pretty lady,” the big man crooned into her face. She twisted her head, trying to avoid the fetid breath. He laughed, and caught her by the back of the head in a viselike grip, forcing her to stare up into his face. “Now let’s see what little Klingon girls are made of.”

  Her words of protest became a cry of pain as his hand impacted on her cheek with the sound of an axe striking deep into wood. A gray curtain seemed to draw across her eyes, and her knees went weak. She slumped in the man’s arms and he laughed deep in his throat. His hand gripped the back of her neck.

  Kali forced back the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her, and began to evaluate her situation. If she could just shift slightly to the left she would be in a position to slam her knee into his testicles. She pretended to relax in his arms, and was rewarded by a loosening of the hand that gripped the back of her neck.

  Her knee was just coming up when there was the distinctive whine of disruptor fire, and her captor fell back with a bellow of agony. His sudden move ruined her aim, but she was gratified to hear him yelp yet again as her knee scraped across his groin. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it probably didn’t feel good, she thought with some satisfaction.

  The disruptor sizzled the air twice more, then it was over. The five men, the four she had confronted and the fifth who had arrived late and flung the rock, lay face down on the sand. One cradled a hand against his shoulder, and her attacker was moaning and nursing a blackened hole in his upper thigh.

  Kor stood nonchalantly over the hunters, his disruptor dangling slackly in one hand. Kali gave a cry of joy, and flung herself across the intervening space. He caught her with his free arm and held her close, but he never took his eyes off the humans, or allowed her to block his line of fire.

  “Kor, oh Kor, I’m so glad! How did you find me? Oh, I’m sorry, I was so stupid.”

  He cocked an amused and indulgent eye at her, and kissed the top of her head. “My darling, if you must be a heroine can’t you at least bring enough troops to make it successful?”

  She looked embarrassed and hung her head, but after a moment she threw back her head and gave him a militant look. “I would have if you had provided me with a landing party made up of something other than dithering fools.”

  “Oh ho, and when did it become your landing party?”

  “When that idiot Quarag stood by and let these animals,” she gestured contemptuously at the cowering hunters, “kill the Singers.”

  “Do the humans know of this?”

  “Of course, but they also do nothing.”

  “So you decided to act. Couldn’t you have at least told me?” he asked plaintively.

  “I didn’t want to give you something else to worry about.”

  “My dear one, you are amazing.” He brushed the back of his hand down her cheek, then looked back at the prisoners. “I’m going to spare you this time, but I warn you I won’t be so lenient when next we meet. Don’t any of you move a muscle for ten minutes.” He fired a warning shot between one of the men’s legs and, taking Kali’s hand, they hurried out of the camp.

  “Why didn’t you kill them?” she asked as they jogged down the beach.

  “Because they are humans, and Kirk probably wouldn’t like it if I started killing Federation citizens.”

  “But they are killing the Taygetians!” Kali protested.

  “I know that, and I will meet with Kirk and see what, if anything, should be done.” They slowed to a walk, and he gave her a curious look. “Why does it matter so much? If the Empire claims this planet the Taygetians may be an inconvenient presence that will have to be removed anyway.”

  “No!” She stopped, and placed both hands against his chest. “You don’t understand, Kor, you haven’t been here with them, listened to them, worked with them. The Singers are beautiful, special. We must not harm them.”

  He looked down into her beautiful, distressed face, and took her hands in his. “I’ve never seen you feel this strongly about anything before. What is it about this world, these creatures?”

  “I don’t know. It is as if the beauty and harmony of the song has the power to wind itself into your consciousness.” She groped for the words, then gave a defeated gesture. “I can’t explain.”

  “Perhaps I ought to spend some time on the planet and see how these Singers affect me.”

  “Please do, Kor, then you will see why we have to protect them.”

  “All right. But first we must see Kirk and decide what to do about our aggressive friends back there. They aren’t going to stop killing on our say so, and after our little altercation they may decide to add Klingons to the hunt.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I brought you some lunch,” Uhura said to Maslin’s hunched back. He didn’t respond. Instead his long, slender fingers continued to play across the synthesizer’s double keyboard. She moved to his side and tried again. “Guy, I said
—”

  “I heard you the first time,” he said, not looking at her. His eyes were locked on the long, narrow screen where two lines of indecipherable dots and dashes marched monotonously past.

  “You have to eat. Otherwise you’re going to end up in the sick bay, and be of no use to any of us.”

  “Never mind all that. I’m finally on to something.”

  “What?” she asked. She set aside the plate, both food and her concern over Maslin forgotten in the excitement that they might at last be on the verge of a breakthrough.

  “Come on.” He slid off the bench and, grabbing her hand, began pelting down the beach. “If I’m right,” he panted as they slogged through the deep sand, “an entire group of Singers up there,” he gestured at a section of the cliff face, “will drop out of the song, and I want to be there when they do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it finally started making sense.”

  “I’m glad it does for someone,” she said with some acerbity.

  “I’m sorry, I’m being cryptic. Remember when Chou and Donovan reported the strange fish behavior?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I went back and checked the recordings the synthesizer had made at that time. I keep a recorder on at all times because I keep hoping that the more passages the machine hears and compares the easier it will be to decipher the language. Anyway, at approximately the time that Donovan and Chou observed the fish the cubs began a very rigid and coherent song. It’s totally unlike their usual random hoots and tweets. Moments later a group of voices in the adult song dropped out. Since then I’ve been watching for it, and it happens with clockwork regularity every twelve hours.”

  “So what do you think it means?”

  “I’ve got a theory, but I’d like to see if I can find any evidence to support it before I go out on a limb.” He paused and stared up the cliff face. “This ought to be just about the place. Feel like a climb?”

  “I do, but how do you feel?” Uhura asked, studying his drawn face.

  “I can make it. Just knowing I may finally be on to something is enough to totally rejuvenate me.”