by Peter David
“Who?”
“The billion we can save.”
“You son of a bitch…don’t do this to me.”
“And me, Eric. You’ll save me too.”
For the first time, the idea of going home seemed less prickly. “How?” he demanded.
In a measured tone, Zevon explained, “If you go back and they cure you, you can get word to the Romulan Empire that I am here, that I’m alive. The royal family will have no choice but to breach Red Sector and get me out. My people don’t think I’m alive, or they would have come already. They can find resources to make a deflection system. Look what I’m working with—ancient trash, chips and coils and conductors, a spectrograph the age of my mother, and still we’ve found a way to predict. Look at those copper wires! On my ship, I had more facilities in my cabin than we have here. Mathematics based on assumptions of certain things happening at the same time—think what I could do with real technology!”
Zevon paused, seemed to dream briefly, then leaned back until he could rest against the wall. He had to tip his head forward a little to avoid scuffing the points of his ears against the wall when he turned his head to glance at Stiles.
“I am still royal family, Eric. If they know I’m here, they’ll get me out. They’ll negotiate, they’ll threaten, but they’ll gain my freedom. And I will come back—I’ll wring cooperation out of my people for what we’ve done here. The Pojjana will finally believe, when I come back with resources. I know what can be done. You must go out of Red Sector, Eric. Go out and get cured, and tell my people. And they will come. This is the greatest favor you can do, of all the good you have done here.”
Stiles blinked, surprised. “Me? What’d I do? I’m barely an assistant. Don’t treat me like that.”
“I would never bother to patronize you,” Zevon said, giving him a glare of inarguable clarity and conviction. “You are nothing like the young man in the pit. That boy, yes, he died there. But the boy in us always fades, Eric, if we’re fortunate. Now you’re a different man, a better man. Look at what you’ve learned in four years. I know technical things, but you’re the one who had the breakthrough with the flux meter. You’re the one who told me to check for invisible phase shifts in the infrared. I told you how ridiculous that was, but you insisted I check, and you were right. Look what you and I have done here, with tricks and dirt and screwdrivers. I explain what I’m doing, and you provide the leap of imagination that sends us to the next step. We…Romulans and Vulcans, even Klingons, we were all in space before Terrans, but look at you. Look how fast your progress has been…You’ve caught up in a century and charged beyond us. You are the people who see things the rest of us miss. One day together, with real facilities…your people and mine, working together…some day we’ll stop shooting at each other, and think what we can do then!”
Now Stiles did look at him, and did not look away. Zevon’s dark umber hair had long ago lost its polished-wood gloss, his complexion its glow of youth, and his face was creased now with weariness, starvation, physical stress, and the unending worry that their time would run out, yet still his brown eyes held a glimmer of purpose and hope that had never once flagged in all these years. Zevon had been in the pit with Stiles. Together they had crawled from the lowest place a man can go, the place of worthlessness and damage, and they had made something of it. They had made a bond with each other, and they had achieved a breakthrough that could save a billion people.
If things went right…just a little more right.
“If I go,” Stiles murmured, “we’ll never see each other again.”
The words struck them both with the force of a physical blow. It was the one thing they’d never mentioned. Excuses, platitudes, hollow reassurances dodged through his head. The Federation would make peace with the Romulans. There’d be a treaty. Most Favored Systems status. Mail. Visits. The curtain rising so the two of them would be able to…see each other.
No matter how the story played in his mind, the final scene was the same. None of that would happen. He and Zevon would never see each other again.
He held on to Zevon in mute torment, the light touch becoming a sustaining grip, and he didn’t know what in the universe to say.
“You must go,” Zevon quietly insisted, “because you must live. You must live because I have to get off this planet so I can save these people even against their will. If I leave, I will come back. If you leave…you must never come back.”
The faucet dripped, the computer clicked, and with a palpable crack Eric Stiles’s heart broke in half for the second time in his life. In Zevon’s angular features he saw the blurred echo of the face of Ambassador Spock, calling him from the distant past, beckoning one more act of Starfleet honor from the carved-out gourd of failure.
Zevon squeezed Stiles’s hand again and thumped it placidly against the edge of the cot in punctuation, as if instructing a child about something which must, absolutely must, be the choice of the day.
“Go home, Eric,” he summoned. “Go home, and live.”
Chapter Eight
“THAT’S NOT A STARFLEET SHIP. What is this? Who in hell’s coming for me?”
Stiles wrestled back against the grip of Orsova and one of the prison guards. They had him by the elbows, and there was no breaking away. He was too weak to do more than protest with anger and suspicion in his voice.
Orsova clapped a wide hand to Stiles’s chest and said, “Stand still or I’ll be happy to take you back to your cell.”
“Take me back, then! Fine!”
“Stand still.”
There was no chance to run, even if he could. The landing field was dotted with Pojjana soldiers, their red-and-brown jackets flashing in the landing lights, their coppery faces flinching at the approach of the unwelcome craft. Alien spacecraft hardly ever landed on the planet anymore. They just weren’t welcome. This was a bizarre occasion and Stiles still didn’t know what he was watching.
His head swimming with regrets, fears, and rough-edged anguish, Stiles begged the stars to put things back the way they’d been this morning, but no miracle came his way. The clanky-looking merchant trader, bulbous and utilitarian, with its exhaust hatches flapping and its hull plates chattering, continued its inartistic approach.
“If that’s a Federation ship, it’s second-hand,” he commented. “No Federation spaceport ever built anything like that.”
Unable to wrestle Orsova or the other guard, Stiles condemned himself to watch the landing. Port fin was high…too much pitch…not squared on the strip markings…lateral thrusters going too long.
Ah, the echoes almost hurt, echoes of another landing, not so far from here. He’d come to this planet an outclassed hotfoot who let haste get the better of him, overwhelmed by proximity to greatness, the approval of his hero, whose face he’d seen in the back of his mind all these many, many months, urging him to rise above the mangled messes he’d made. His life had imploded, his preconceptions defoliated, his internal fortitude hammered to a fine edge by circumstances he’d never anticipated, and he’d been preparing himself for a long time to die. Now living was a lot more scary than dying of whatever was eating his muscles. Strange…he and Zevon didn’t really even know what illness Stiles had. The Pojjana doctors hadn’t been able to identify it. Of course, since the patient was a prisoner and an alien, they hadn’t tried all that hard.
So Stiles had gotten ready, over the months, to pass away. Now he was suddenly afraid not to go. Today, once again, the universe turned on its edge for him. He stood now at the municipal landing field, barely an echo of that feckless and slapdash boy, but he was still trembling like a kid, so fiercely that Orsova and the other guard had to hold him up. Would Ambassador Spock himself step down the black ramp of the unfamiliar vessel landing out there?
“I don’t want to go,” he muttered in his throat.
Beside him, Orsova watched the ship settle. “I’ll miss you, too.”
This time there was no Zevon to talk sense into him. Zevon was
back in the prison. For him, nothing had changed. Except, now, he would be alone.
Terrible guilt racked Stiles’s chest. All the words of sense and reason from the lab suddenly seemed to leak like cheesecloth. How could he leave Zevon like this? Here in this dump, alien and hated, alone, powerless, with another Constrictor coming and nobody to believe him about it? Before this, they’d at least always had each other.
“Who’s doing this?” he demanded as the ship settled and its thrusters shut down with a wheeze. “Who’re you giving me to, Orsova? This is your doing, isn’t it? You weren’t getting anything out of watching Zevon while you tortured me anymore, so now you’re up to something else, aren’t you?”
“You’re going home,” Orsova drably said. “I would enjoy keeping you, but you’re going.”
“Why?” Stiles glared at him. “Why would you let anybody shove you around? Who are you afraid of?”
“You’re an alien. Your own filthy kind have come to get you. Shut your mouth and go with them.”
“What about Zevon?”
“He’s mine from now on.”
Summoning his last threads of energy, Stiles raised his elbow and rammed it laterally into Orsova’s round face. The big guard staggered, but never let go of Stiles’s arm. Before even regaining his balance, Orsova shoved Stiles viciously sideways, into the rocky substance of the other guard, who pivoted to provide a backboard for whatever Orsova wanted to do.
Stiles tried to brace himself, but he might as well be skinned alive as drum up a vestige of physical superiority—hell, he could barely keep standing. Orsova reeled back a thick arm like a cannon, poised to turn Stiles into mashed oats.
Refusing to close his eyes, Stiles winced and prepared for pain and flash.
“Stop!”
Though he attempted to turn toward the sound, Stiles found his head reeling and comprehended that somehow Orsova had gotten a lick in there someplace. He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut briefly, and fought to focus.
When he could see again, he frowned at a clutch of odd-looking aliens he didn’t recognize, yellow in the face with some kind of green growth on their heads that might be their idea of hair. Their cheeks were smooth as babies’ butts, they had no recognizable nose, and two eyes pretty far apart. Their clothing was a mishmash, obviously not uniform in any way, so this wasn’t anybody’s military unit, just a ship’s crew from some ungodly where. Sure wasn’t Starfleet. Why were yellow aliens coming for him?
From the middle of the clutch came the sharp voice again. “Stop that. Get away from that man.”
Abruptly—and that was the shock—Orsova flinched back, and so did the other guard.
And so did about a dozen other Pojjana soldiers who were standing within flinching distance.
What?
Stiles found himself struggling to stand up all alone, without even the assistance of his daily tormenter to help.
An old man strode bonily up to him, right up until there wasn’t even a foot between them. Human. Old, darn old. Over a hundred, maybe, with a full head of frost-white hair, a simple flight suit framing his narrow body. The old man flicked a medical scanner between them. Piercing blue eyes watched the instrument’s indicator lights.
“You Eric Stiles?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m your new granddad, son. Grew a beard, huh? I had one of those once. Itched.” The ancient man turned to the yellow aliens who flanked him and said, “Get him aboard, boys.”
Stiles backed up a clumsy step as two of the yellow aliens stepped toward him. “Who are you? Where are you taking me? You’re not Starfleet. There’s nobody like them in the Federation—what do you want?”
From behind, Orsova and two other Pojjana guards shoved him forward again roughly, but the narrow old man snapped his fingers and his blue eyes flashed with confidence and he barked, “Hands off him!”
So abruptly that Stiles almost collapsed between them, the guards—even Orsova—relaxed their threat.
The old man approached and leered at Orsova. “Don’t get any ideas, butch. I’m old, but I’m ornery.”
Amazing! The burly Pojjana all backed away again, so fast that the suction almost dragged Stiles off his feet.
“What the hell—” Stiles glanced at them, then glared at the frail white-haired codger. “Who are you that you can make them flinch like quail?”
The old man was completely unimpressed by the lines of Pojjana soldiers, and indeed they shied away from him. “Let’s just say that once upon a time I removed a thorn from the lion’s paw. Now the lion thinks I’m powerful. Of course, he’s right.”
Weird—somehow this old man’s voice…it sounded familiar. The way he snapped at those men—
“What’s all that mean?” he asked. “What thorn?”
But the codger, without taking his eyes off Stiles, waved at the yellow guys, who moved forward again. “Don’t look back, son,” he said. “It doesn’t pay.”
As the yellow aliens pressed toward him, Stiles stumbled back. “You keep your alien paws off me!” He slapped at them as they attempted to get a grip on him. “I don’t want to go without Zevon! Orsova, I’ll get you for this someday! All of you get away from me!”
“Hypo.”
“I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go…I don’t…want….”
Familiar voices. How secure they sounded, how wondrous! The anchorage of life, those voices. All the hours upon hours, watching historic mission tapes, memorizing the fiery defiance of Captain James Kirk during the M5 experiments, the Nomad occurrence, the incident at Memory Alpha, sinking into Mr. Spock’s baritone warble explaining where the probe came from, listening to the counterpoint of Dr. McCoy’s perplexed and concerned protests, the voice less of an officer than a humanitarian trying to expand his humanity beyond natural limits…those men, they always pushed themselves, teased every limit, never backed away….
Wish I’d been there, with those men in those times, taking those orders. I could’ve followed those orders and given them ten cents change! Just imagine—First Officer Spock saying, “These are your orders, Ensign Stiles.” Imagine….
Their voices were more familiar than his own family’s, more familiar than Travis Perraton’s calming tone behind him making sure he didn’t make quite as much a fool of himself as he otherwise might, or Jeremy White taunting him while the others laughed. But it had been a good laugh…he hadn’t appreciated it back then. They were having fun, enjoying themselves all because he was with them. That was worth being laughed at. It never hurt so much, except that he let it hurt. If they were enjoying themselves, then the existence of Eric Stiles was doing some good.
He wanted to wake up. Usually he could will himself out of unconsciousness after a short struggle. Orsova commonly knocked him into a dither, and he had learned to claw his way out of the tunnel to the light place where Zevon would be waiting for him, usually stitching a cut or stanching a nosebleed. Wounds could actually heal without a tissue-bonding beam.
That medical scanner, it looked like a super satellite to him after four years in a culture backed off a hundred fifty years from what he’d grown up with. Funny how quickly he’d gotten used to the downteching. Before, he’d never thought a person could get through a day without Federation flash and spark. He’d gotten through a day.
“At a time.”
Oh—his own voice this time. Didn’t sound so bad. Come on, fight out of the hole. Zevon would be at the top of the tunnel, pressing a wet cloth to Stiles’s head.
“Mmmm…”
“That’s it, son, wake up. You’re bound to have a headache, Don’t fight it.”
Stiles fought anyway. He defied the thrum in his skull and finally found the power to force his eyes open when he sensed there was some kind of light on the other side of the lids. Zevon would be there when he got them open.
Red lights? Familiar too…shipboard lights in an alert situation. Red, so the eyes could still adjust. Most eyes, anyway. Human eyes…
>
“Let me get the lights.”
That gravelly, homespun voice again. The codger.
“Where’s Zevon?”
Stiles registered his own voice and clung to the sound, which brought him all the way up to consciousness. When he could see, he realized the lights weren’t red anymore, but were a soft golden light, shining in small, obviously ship-built quarters rigged as some kind of sickbay. He saw a shelf with rows of bottles, piles of folded cloth, several pieces of medical scanning equipment, hyposprays, and a dozen other recognizable and somehow foreign contraptions. He knew what they all were, yet they were foreign to him, and unwelcome.
“So I’m out,” he managed.
“You are,” the old man said.
Forgetting himself for just a moment, Stiles fixed upon the old man’s face and tried to register that voice. He felt like a computer with a new search order—identify, identify.
“Who are these people running this ship?”
“Smugglers.”
“Why would a human ride with them? And why’d you come into Red Sector? Are you an expatriate or something?”
The old man’s icy blue eyes flickered and one brow arched. “I came because of typical pointed-eared hardheadedness, that’s why.”
“Huh?”
“And once in a while a man’s got to slip into forbidden territory. Inoculations, contraband chemicals, antitoxins…makes the stars spin.”
“But…if you…why would they….”
“Why don’t you just relax, Ensign?”
“Ensign…haven’t heard that in a while. You better call me something else.”
The doctor tilted his snowy head. “Why should I? You haven’t surrendered your commission, have you?”
“It got surrendered for me. I’m not that kid anymore. Starfleet gave up on me. I gave up on them.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Look, don’t you think I know pity when I see it? Guilt? It’s not Eric Stiles they came after. It’s their own reputation for not leaving a man behind.” Stiles huffed. “I grew up back there. I did leave Starfleet behind. I could handle myself. I didn’t want to be rescued. Starfleet can’t just fly in and order me to leave when I don’t want to go.”