The Tears of the Singers

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “Yes, Captain. We managed to convince the Taygetians of your plight, and they sang you back into existence.”

  “Then you’ve broken the language?”

  “Yes, but only the cubs will have anything to do with us. We have had one brief conversation with one of the adults, but—”

  “Jim, Spock,” McCoy suddenly interrupted. “It looks like the old lady is coming back.” The two officers turned and surveyed the cliff face, and as McCoy had said the matriarch was returning.

  Kor, his arm around Kali’s waist, walked over to the three officers of the Enterprise. “What is happening?”

  “I think we’re about to be granted another audience,” McCoy said quietly. “I just wonder what she wants this time. She seemed very reluctant to approach us the first time so why do it now?”

  “Speculation without facts will accomplish little, Doctor. I suggest we wait.”

  In a short time the matriarch had arranged herself on the top of a hillock of sand, and with a stately inclination of her head indicated to the intruders to approach. The cubs had gathered about her like a court about their queen. There was some melodic murmuring, then silence fell as the Singer began to speak.

  “We have done as you requested,” she sang, and Spock, frowning a bit with concentration, translated. “But now you must leave. Your presence, beginning first with the destructive presence of the hunters, and now your own internal squabbling, has disrupted the Great Song.”

  “Great Song? What’s the Great Song?” Kirk whispered.

  “Apparently the constant song that the adults are singing,” Spock answered.

  “But what does it? …” Kirk began, but the matriarch was once more speaking.

  “Nothing must interfere with the sacred work which protects our world, and you have begun to interfere. Therefore you must go.”

  “But the space/time rip,” Kirk objected. “Spock, we’ve got to make them understand the danger. We’ve got to stay in order to discover a way to remove the phenomenon.”

  “It will be difficult to pursuade her given that the Taygetians apparently view our presence as interfering with a ritual of religious significance.”

  “Well try, we’ve got to get through to them.”

  “Lieutenant,” Spock said with a glance to Uhura.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. She drew in a breath of air, but Maslin was not there to provide the melody. Instead he was staring off into space with a rapt expression.

  It was the first time Kirk had really taken a look at the composer and he was shocked with what he saw. The man looked shrunken and frail, as if he had aged twenty years in the past few days. His skin was drawn tautly over the bones of his face, and his eyes had sunk to dark hollows. Uhura touched him gently on the shoulder. He gave a start, and slowly focused on his surroundings.

  “Yes?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I need music.”

  “Okay.”

  “Great Lady,” Uhura sang. “There is a danger in the sky that surpasses the danger caused by—”

  “Silence!” the Taygetian ordered with an imperious shake of her head. “We are a peaceful people wishing no harm to any living creature, but I tell you now, if you will not leave our world we will destroy you. We have the power to restore. Do not doubt that we have the power to remove.”

  “So what do we do now?” Kor asked with a grimace.

  Kirk spread out his hands in helplessness. “I don’t know. Recommendations?” he said, looking about the circle of anxious faces.

  “Leave,” Ragsdale growled. “What else can we do?”

  “But that won’t solve the phenomenon,” McCoy protested.

  “Oh, yes it will,” Maslin said suddenly from the bench. Everyone stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “The solution is so obvious,” he said, sliding off the bench, and walking painfully over to Kirk. “I should have seen it days ago. The rip exists because the Taygetians are singing with missing voices. The disruption in the harmonics caused the rip. It will go away if the Taygetians quit singing.”

  “But it is unlikely the Taygetians will voluntarily stop the song, given its significance to them,” Spock said.

  “They’re not going to have much choice,” Kor muttered dryly. “Once that phenomenon hits their sun they will all die.”

  “An expedient solution, but one I am not fond of,” Spock replied. “These are a highly sentient race. They deserve to live.”

  “So how do we get them to shut up?” Kor demanded somewhat belligerently.

  “By convincing them that there is no longer any reason for the song to continue.”

  “But if the song is a religious—”

  “It is not mere religious formula,” Maslin stated, his voice rising in anger. “Don’t you understand yet? They believe they have to keep singing or be destroyed by the radiation wave from that nova.”

  “What?” came a chorus from the listening people.

  “An interesting theory, Mr. Maslin, but what do you offer as empirical evidence?” Spock asked.

  “Look, we all wondered at the destruction on the other planets, and wondered how Taygeta could have avoided being fried with the rest of them. There had to be something on this world that protected them against the radiation wave. Well, the only thing that’s here are the Taygetians, all of them busily singing from birth until death. What could possibly require such an immense effort except a life-threatening crisis?”

  “But that wave passed through here three thousand years ago,” Kirk protested. “No race would keep on after the danger had passed.”

  “Wait, Captain. Mr. Maslin’s theory has a great deal to recommend it. We know that the Taygetians have the power to manipulate their environment, so why not extend it out to the fabric of space that surrounds them?”

  “But the time, Spock, the time.”

  “It would have taken years for the wave to pass fully beyond their world. By then the true purpose of the song might have been lost, and the action taken on a purely religious significance.”

  Kirk rounded on Maslin. “Can you translate the song, find out if we really are on the right track?”

  “I was trying that earlier, and it’s just too damn complex. It would take me weeks, and I gather we don’t have weeks. I can tell you that in form it closely resembles the manipulative songs that the cubs sing to bring in fish, or create forests, or whatever, so it’s clearly an environment-affecting song.”

  “Only it’s the granddaddy of all of them,” McCoy muttered with a glance up at the cliffs that surrounded them.

  “My God,” Kirk murmured, also gazing incredulously up at the cliffs. “How terrible. An entire race has devoted all its energy to defending against a threat that no longer exists. All development in art and science has been stunted because there was no time to spare for them. What these creatures might have accomplished if this had never happened,” he concluded softly.

  “And think of the young ones,” Uhura said, dropping to one knee and stroking one of the cubs. “How horrible to grow up knowing that once you reach adulthood you will have to take up a life of endless drudgery. There’s no choice, no opportunity.”

  “Ideas? Recommendations?” Kirk said, looking about the assembled people.

  “Why don’t we just tell them the danger’s past,” Maslin said with a flash of his old impatience. He began moving back to the synthesizer. “We know the language now, it seems fairly obvious to me, but maybe there’s some reason why we need to be complicating matters,” he concluded, and dropped heavily onto the bench.

  “It would seem logical, Captain, but since the Taygetians are a highly telepathic race it might be best if I melded with the matriarch. Our grasp of their language is as yet imperfect, and this is far too important to run the risk of a misunderstanding.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. So how do we start?”

  “You make your plea, Captain, and Mr. Maslin, Lieutenant Uhura and I will try to insure that it reaches the Taygetians intact.”

>   Kirk moved away from the assembled people to marshal his thoughts. His eyes were focused intently on the glittering cliffs, and occasionally one hand would tighten into a fist. It betrayed his nervousness.

  “So, the humans are once more going to sweep the field,” Kor murmured to Kali.

  “I don’t begrudge them the victory,” she replied, her eyes moving from Maslin’s slender, pain-racked body, to Uhura’s beautiful face, and on to Spock, where he was cautiously approaching the matriarch. “They have earned it, while we have done little but hinder them.”

  “Imperial High Command is not likely to share your view.”

  “So,” she said with a little shrug. “We will have to give them a tale that will make them happy.”

  Kor chuckled, and pulled her tightly against his body. “Such a cunning little Klingon.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if I am a very good Klingon. Kor,” she said, looking seriously up at him. “I like the humans.”

  “Kali, my darling, so do I. Or at least I like these humans,” he added after a moment’s thought. “I don’t know how I would feel about them if I had to live among them.”

  “Then by all means let us make sure the High Command doesn’t find out about our collaboration or we will find ourselves living with the humans.”

  Kirk walled back to the group, and took up a position near Spock. “All ready?” he asked tensely.

  Spock nodded. “The matriarch seems undisturbed by my physical contact, so I see no problem,”

  “I see lots of them,” Kirk muttered, and glanced over at Maslin and Uhura. “Ready?”

  “Ready, sir,” Uhura replied. Maslin said nothing. Instead he stared blankly down at the keyboards, and pulled in great breaths of air as if preparing himself for some final, mighty effort.

  Spock reached out, and spread his long fingers over the rounded cranium of the Taygetian elder. She lifted her fathomless blue eyes to meet Spock’s brown ones, and suddenly the four people, Spock, Kirk, Maslin and Uhura, gasped and became rigid at their places. McCoy started forward only to be pushed back by Kor.

  “Leave them! It is apparent they are in the Taygetian’s hold now. To interfere might do irreparable harm.”

  “But what about harm to them!” McCoy raged, but Kor maintained his implacable grip on the doctor’s arm.

  Suddenly Maslin began to play. It was haunting, desperate music that rose in sweeping waves into the silver sky. Kirk, his eyes seeming focused in eternity, began to speak, and seconds later Uhura’s voice rose in song. Spock, who was the focal point for all of this energy, jerked as if he were a puppet whose strings had been pulled in random directions, and his face twisted in pain.

  Kirk felt as if he were once more trapped in the phenomenon. Colors twisted and swirled about him, and music was all about and even within him. He began to lose sight of who he was, and what he had come to do. The very awareness of self that was the core of all humans was slipping from him, whirled away in the fantasy of music that comprised all reality for him now. He longed to spread open his arms, and spin away like some chip carried on the maelstrom of sound.

  Suddenly he became aware of other presences that inhabited this strange silver overworld with him. He felt a strong and beloved touch, and knew Spock. That familiar contact brought back his own identity, and he once more knew himself. Next there was an impression of warmth and beauty, and he knew he had found Uhura. Then there was the other presence. Quicksilver and mercurial, it danced just beyond his reach. But there was something wrong with this presence. Its fire was dimming, and it flickered feebly while the others who were with him burned with a solid light.

  He sensed another presence behind him, the way a blind person could sense the position of the sun by its warmth and light. He slowly turned, although such a mundane word could not fully describe the movement that he made, and there was the Taygetian. He knew it was she from emanations that flowed from the glowing white-and-gold form. Kirk suddenly realized with a thrill of shock that he was seeing the Taygetian as she would appear to other psychic beings. He warily approached the creature. Not so much out of fear, because there was nothing threatening about the feelings that washed about him, but out of respect for the awesome power that was embodied before him.

  “Lady,” he said, and was startled when his voice rolled away from him with a mighty echoing sound.

  “Speak, human.”

  “Lady, the danger that you guard against has long passed.”

  “How shall I know that you speak the truth? Your kind has done little to recommend itself to us.”

  “We are very sorry, lady, for the harm that was done to your people by the hunters, but I beg you not to judge all humans by the acts of a few evil ones.

  “As for proof, on my ship there are very sensitive devices that can scan the heavens, and read and analyze what is found there. When we first arrived on your world we discovered the passage of the nova, and have traced it far beyond Taygeta. The traces of the radiation wave are now very distant, for it passed through here some three thousand years ago.”

  There was a long pause during which Kirk tried to cling to his identity and not become lost in this strange, silver mind world. As he drifted he suddenly felt a delicate touch on his mind, as if gentle fingers had explored through his memories and emotions.

  “I have searched your mind, and it seems that you have spoken the truth.” Kirk could feel the Taygetian’s distress and confusion, and he pitied the creature. “Still, I cannot see that this alters matters. The Great Song is a sacred trust passed down from the time of Nasul, the leader who taught us to blend our individual powers to save our world.”

  “But surely this Nasul would not have wanted to condemn his people to endless drudgery for no purpose,” Kirk desperately cried, for he could sense the matriarch withdrawing from his mind. “Nor would he have wanted his people to destroy themselves. Please, listen to me! The song is no longer an instrument of protection. Instead it has become a weapon that has turned against you! That rip in space and time is caused by the loss of voices in your song. If you don’t stop now it will destroy your sun, and with it your entire race! Surely the fulfillment of your duty doesn’t require you to go down into death and darkness.”

  “Show me this danger. I would look upon this vortex. Take me there.”

  “But,” Kirk began, then speech became impossible. There was a moment of gut-wrenching nausea, and then he found himself floating above his collapsed body. He watched with detached interest while McCoy raced from his side, to Spock’s, and then to Uhura and Maslin. He wanted to call out to the doctor, to tell him that all was well, but even though he formed the words and heard himself speaking McCoy took no notice.

  “Come. We will go now,” the matriarch ordered, and Kirk found himself traveling through space. Even though he knew intellectually that his frail, physical body was not being exposed to the deadly cold and airlessness of space, he still found himself cringing in on himself.

  “Fascinating,” Spock’s voice came from the glowing entity on his right. “Some form of astral projection. But obviously limited in range,” the Vulcan added when they all came to rest some distance out from Taygeta.

  Kirk found that he could see very clearly and to a much greater distance than his human eyes would have permitted. He could see the Enterprise orbiting the planet in close formation with Kor’s flagship, and he felt his chest squeezed tight with emotion as he gazed on her perfect lines. Beyond the two ships he could see the second Klingon ship looking like a toy as it hung before the phenomenon. The phenomenon itself shimmered and glowed with iridescent fires as it hung like a prismatic curtain across the fabric of space. The Taygetian sun was only a faint yellow glow behind the shifting colors of the space/time rip. Even though Maslin’s and Uhura’s physical bodies were slumped unconscious over the synthesizer there was still music swelling and ebbing all about Kirk. He realized that he must be “hearing” the music that was in their minds, and he found it more beautiful than any
earthly music he had ever heard.

  “So,” the matriarch said quietly, and her thoughts fell bleak and hopeless upon Kirk’s mind. “I behold our doom.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be!” the captain insisted. “It is your doom, in the sense that you created it, but you can also stop it. Just stop the song!”

  He could sense the indecision in the elder Taygetian, and he cast about desperately for some other argument, some plea that would reach and convince her.

  Suddenly a group of cubs came flying past like a bevy of glittering comets. If they were awkward and ungainly on land here in the dark sea of space their astral bodies darted and spun with the grace of dancers. They whirled about him and his companions, playing at intricate games of tag while the distant stars formed a glittering backdrop for their antics.

  Like children of any world, Kirk thought. But what children! They can have the stars as their playground. Or can they? Once adulthood is reached such games are put aside in favor of their duty—a duty that is pointless and wastes their potential.

  And it was then that he knew what to do.

  “Lady, if not for yourselves then for the sake of the children. Stop this song before it destroys you all. For generations your children have only been able to look forward to a life of endless toil and drudgery, and a toil to no purpose. Trust us and we can give you the stars. As members of the Federation the resources and learning of a thousand worlds will be available to your people, and your great powers can be used for the benefit of hundreds of races. Lady, I beg you, don’t deny your children a future!”

  The music which had been maintaining a quiet counterpoint to his words suddenly rose in a joyful crescendo. It mirrored Kirk’s sincerity and desperate hope, and it seemed that a hundred orchestras overlaid by one lone voice wrote a tone poem of a future so beautiful that only the most callous of creatures could have ignored its vision.

  There was again a moment of nausea and dislocation, and then Kirk found himself rising shakily to his feet. Sand cascaded from his parka, and he brushed the last clinging particles from his pants.