by Laurence Yep
Oblivious to everyone but the prince, Mr. Spock was nodding his head. “Fascinating.”
McCoy nursed his drink in his hand. “I never thought Spock could get so intense when he was just talking [11] about people. Usually he only gets that look in his eye when he’s reprogramming the computer.”
“Obviously you never found the right topic.” Kirk popped another candied worm into his mouth.
McCoy rubbed an elbow. “But I didn’t think Spock cared if he was an outsider or not. And now I suddenly hear him talking like a doctoral candidate. Do you think sociology is his secret vice? Does he read it the way other people would read porn?”
Kirk finished crunching the worm. “I’ve got another surprise for you. Spock put in for duty to escort the prince to Angira and help change the Angiran astronomical charts as the emperor requested.”
McCoy looked down at his drink as if he thought the Cooler might be playing false with his hearing. “That can’t be right.”
“He asked for the mission himself,” Kirk said. “Do you think he’s branching out now from the physical sciences?”
“I gave up Vulcan-predicting long ago.” McCoy edged in closer to Kirk and whispered, “But I do know this much. You can’t let him go to Angira. It’s the first time ever that Angira has asked for any outside technical assistance from the Federation. The people you send will have to be diplomats as well as competent astrogators.”
“There’s even more reason than you think.” Kirk rubbed the ball of his thumb across his chin. “The Angiran court is supposed to have a ritual for everything. Do you know that they’re not supposed to swallow their own saliva in the morning until they’ve performed the proper ceremony?” He studied the prince. “Except you’d never know it from Prince Vikram.”
[12] McCoy pursed his lips. “Do you think the Angirans will blame the Federation for the way he’s changed?”
Kirk shoved himself away from the wall. “Who knows? But whoever goes on this mission had better be able to charm a bull right out of its hide.”
“Well, that isn’t Spock,” McCoy said. “So he’s out.”
“Except for one thing.” Empty plate in hand, Kirk returned to the buffet table.
McCoy kept pace. “What’s that?”
Kirk studied his science officer, who was busy interrogating the prince about some abstruse point in statistics. “He insists on going.”
“That’s no reason to jeopardize your career and his,” McCoy hissed.
“But look at how well he’s getting along with the prince.” Kirk nodded his head to the earnest pair.
“That’s the prince, not the Angiran court,” McCoy pointed out.
Kirk shrugged. “I still owe it to Spock to weigh all the factors before I decide on who goes on the mission.”
“For a man who preaches the simplicity of logic,” McCoy grumbled, “he certainly knows how to complicate what should be a routine mission.”
Kirk pressed the rim of the plate against his stomach. “Routine missions have tripped up more than one starship captain.”
“Touché, Captain!” Prince Vikram pressed the red bulb at the tip of his foil against Captain Kirk’s chest.
Kirk stepped back and saluted the prince. It took a moment for him to catch his breath because the prince had given him quite a workout. “Mr. Sulu, I think His Highness needs a lesson in humility.”
[13] The prince clicked his tongue—a mannerism that he had picked up during his long stay on Earth. “This is supposed to be fun, Captain, not a time for schooling.”
The captain raised his mask and strolled over to the side. “It stops being sport after you’ve been killed three times in a row. I’ll let Mr. Sulu teach you about the feeling.”
The prince whipped his foil back and forth through the air as if he had been fencing for only minutes instead of hours. “He’s already taught me quite well.”
Sulu lowered his mask. “You’ve won your share of matches.”
“But only half as much as you.” The prince saluted him. “Why should the chief helmsman of a starship want to master anything as archaic as a foil?”
“We can’t always cart the Enterprise around in our back pocket.” Sulu went on guard. “So fencing is handy to know.”
“I can understand having rudimentary skills like the captain—” The prince raised his arm, angling his sword toward the floor in second guard.
“Thank you,” Kirk said as he toweled the sweat from his face.
The prince wriggled the fingers of his left hand in deference to the captain. “I mean no disrespect, Captain, but you are hardly in the same league as Mr. Sulu or myself. Now in my savage little corner of the universe, fencing is a necessary survival skill so I learned it at an early age. But I gather that most of the crew regard it as a quaint if not amusing eccentricity in Mr. Sulu.”
“Maybe I like the exercise,” Sulu said. Suspecting that the prince was trying to distract him, Sulu watched the prince even more intently. The prince’s lunges were [14] quick and powerful. And it was only the prince’s lack of familiarity with the foil and his own impatience that had let Sulu win most of their matches.
The prince’s sword tip slowed. “But there are other forms of exercise that are just as strenuous and far less mirth provoking.”
Sulu turned his head slightly to glance at Kirk; and it was as if Kirk saw the look and understood.
“We’re equals within the gymnasium, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk assured him. “What you say here won’t go beyond these walls.”
“And you can always puncture us if we repeat anything you say,” the prince suggested.
Sulu would much rather have concentrated on fencing; but in the short time that the prince had been on the ship, Sulu had learned that the prince would not stop badgering him until he had an answer that satisfied him.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ve loved fencing since I was a kid.” Sulu paused, trying to analyze his immediate emotions. “I feel alive when I fence and ... well, clean.” Sulu raised his left shoulder in a slight shrug. “The whole world narrows down to less than a meter of steel, sometimes just to a centimeter.”
“If that’s true, why helm a starship cruiser? Why don’t you transfer to some commando outfit?” The prince extended his arm, trying to bind Sulu’s sword.
Sulu, however,, was having none of the prince’s tricks, so he skipped back a step. “That’s too much like back-alley fighting.”
The prince’s sword point dipped toward Sulu’s stomach. “I see. You wish for a certain style to your fighting as well—like French musketeers or English cavaliers. But isn’t it hard for an efficient starship officer like [15] yourself to keep that romantic streak hidden?” Sulu flicked his blade down to parry a lunge, but the prince’s movement turned out only to be a feint. The prince seemed to be waiting for an answer, and that expectation annoyed Sulu. Few—if any—of the crew on the Enterprise ever tried to penetrate that surface of cheerful competence that the chief helmsman affected.
For one thing, it was considered bad manners for a space traveler to pry too much. As large as the Enterprise was, it could still seem very small during a five-year voyage. And, in general, Sulu was reluctant to discuss his own secret fantasies with anyone as chatty as the prince.
And yet, Sulu asked himself, how often did he have the opportunity of discussing things with someone from a society where fencing was not only more than an outmoded form of exercise but was actually necessary for survival? The prince was probably genuinely intrigued by Sulu.
“It’s a funny kind of romanticism,” Sulu finally admitted. “I think they knew their time was already up. Gunpowder was seeing to it that fighting was no longer a gentleman’s game. So you had to live by your wits as well as your sword.”
“But it’s quite gentlemanly to fight by pushing the buttons on a panel.” The prince bent his legs even more as if getting ready to spring. “You could kill thousands, millions, and never soil your hands.”
“That’s not it,�
�� Sulu said with a slight shake of his head. “The musketeers always seemed so sure of themselves. They just slid through situations so easily.”
“Like their sword points through their opponents?” the prince asked.
“I guess that life was more exciting then than it is [16] now, and yet it was also simpler.” Sulu was sorry that he had said so much and he waited for the prince to begin laughing.
But the prince pursed his lips together sympathetically as he began to swing his sword tip in a small circle once again. “It must be lonely when you’re born six centuries too late.”
To Sulu’s surprise, there was more than a little truth to that statement. “Just four centuries would have done the trick. The emperor Meiji took control of Japan again by modernizing his armies.”
“Well, you don’t need a time machine. You simply must come with me. You’ll find Angira similar to Meiji Japan.” The prince seemed to rise up even higher on his toes.
Sulu got ready. “A closed society that’s finally opening up to the rest of the galaxy. And you’ll be right in the middle of things.”
“Or right on the edge.” Suddenly the prince’s pear-shaped torso thrust itself forward at a sharp angle and his arm stretched out.
Sulu barely managed to skip a half step to the side and make his own time thrust. “Touché!” Sulu’s tipped foil bent slightly as it pressed against the prince’s padded jacket near his heart. With a laugh, Sulu straightened up and saluted the prince. “Care to try again?”
The prince returned the salute. “No, no, I’ve let the captain have his little vicarious revenge to put him in a good mood.” He turned now to the captain. “You simply must assign Mr. Sulu to my escort when I return to Angira.”
Kirk folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
[17] “Forgive me, Captain. I can see that commanders of starships are very much like emperors. You should never use the word must to them. Will you log it simply as a strong request?” The prince took off his protective mask and fluffed the curls about his face.
“I certainly will.” Captain Kirk nodded politely to the prince and then looked at Mr. Sulu. “I’ll have my yeoman return the fencing outfit later to the ship’s armorer, but I don’t want to have to carry this foil around the halls. Would you mind returning it for me when you check in your gear, Mr. Sulu?”
“Yes, sir,” Sulu said.
“Please, Captain, must you leave so soon?” The prince placed a hand over his heart. “I was just going to propose we fence and recite poems at the same time.”
“You’d find my poetry is even worse than my fencing.” Kirk smiled and waved to the prince as he left the gymnasium.
Sulu lifted his mask and let it rest on top of his head. Perhaps it would have been kinder to let the prince win more often; but Sulu found it impossible to maintain his easygoing manner when he fenced. Once he had a foil in his hand, he was again a small boy with dreams of becoming a dashing musketeer. And though he had reached some compromises with those dreams as he had matured and entered Star Fleet Academy, he had never been able to suppress that younger self totally. “My watch is coming up pretty soon. I ought to shower and grab a quick bite to eat.”
The prince cradled his mask in the crook of his left arm. “Actually, I was hoping you’d be a bit more sporting than that.” He motioned to his grizzled old servant, Bibil. “I thought we might try Angiran swords.”
[18] Bibil bent down to lift the cloth cover from the long, flat box at his feet. Twisting a hand in a flourish, he proudly opened the case. There, resting on expensive flame silk, were a pair of swords in sheaths that curved slightly. The hilts, which continued the curving line, were clearly designed for two hands. “We call these sena.”
Sulu knelt beside the case and set his foil down before he raised one of the ornate sheaths from the case and slid the blade out. The finely polished steel caught the light and Sulu caught his breath. “They’re magnificent.”
“My arthritis won’t let me work out with the prince enough.” Bibil held out his right hand to show the fingers arched like claws.
The prince switched his foil over to his bare left hand and flexed his right wrist. “It’s not all that different from a Japanese katana. They’re about the same length and weight and the blades are positioned in the sheaths with the cutting edge upward.”
The prince seemed so confident of winning that for a second Sulu toyed with the idea of letting the prince have his own way. But Sulu found he could not. Though he was quite willing to give in on a good many other situations, this was one time he was not. Sword-fighting was too basic to Sulu’s life to be compromised. And that younger, boyish self was drawn to the idea of a match and a trick he had seen once. It was not without a certain risk—if he failed, Sulu would look like the biggest fool on the ship; and yet that very danger made the attempt all the more attractive.
Sulu lowered his mask over his face. “I’m willing to try anything with an edge to it.”
[19] The prince could not be sure, but he thought he saw Sulu smiling slyly through the mesh of his mask. “At home on Angira, we used wooden sticks. They didn’t have an edge, but it still hurt when you were hit. If you were slow, you could receive quite a beating.” He pointed to a thin button attached to either pommel. “But we’ll have to make do with these. I took the liberty of borrowing two guards from some sabers in the ship’s armory.”
Sulu picked up one sword. It seemed to balance well for his arm, though the hilt was made for the larger hands of an Angiran. “Has the magnetic field been adjusted?”
“Yes, I had the ship’s armorer do that for me. They’re quite safe. I’m not ready for mitosis and neither are you, I think.”
Tugging off his glove, Sulu ran his finger along the edge of the blade and felt the slight tingling sensation of touching the thin magnetic field that covered the edge of the blade. “You’ve been planning.” He glanced from the prince to Bibil.
Bibil handed the remaining sword to the prince and slammed the lid shut on the case. “He’s gotten tired of losing.”
“One’s ego must live up to one’s title.” The prince lowered his own mask. Because they were both in fencing outfits, the prince had also brought along belts—though the sheaths were thrust through the belts rather than attached to them.
When they were both ready, the prince stepped back. “The draw itself is much like a samurai drawing his katana.” The prince’s right hand crossed over his stomach and grasped the upper half of the sword hilt, [20] and he began to slide the sword from its sheath. As his sword point cleared the sheath, he brought his right arm down so that the blade itself began to swing upward. At the same time, his left hand clasped the lower part of the hilt, to add force to the arc of the blade so that it would swing down even faster and harder in a deadly slash.
The prince stopped the blade as it pointed at the ceiling. “Of course, you would do this as quickly as you could. And if you know some style of the katana, you should do all right.”
“All the colonial worlds on which we lived only had teachers in European-style fencing.” Sulu shoved his right hand back into his glove before he tried the several draws, one in which he raised the sword over his head as the prince had done and another in which he drew one-handed for a sideways slash. “So I never had any instruction in Japanese swordfighting until I got to the academy. I only know some of the rudiments.”
“All the better for me.” The prince sheathed his sword. “Now the next thing you have to be is panku.”
“I thought that meant ‘family’ in Angiran.” Sulu carefully restored his sword to its sheath.
The prince had turned sideways, spreading his legs and squatting slightly. His head and back were so straight, you might have used them as a ruler. “It’s a word with many meanings, but it originally was used for the stump of an old tree from which new shoots grow. So the roots reach back to the past, but the thing itself is fresh and new.”
“All right,” Su
lu said, and copied the prince.
The prince let his hands hang loosely by his sides. “Now we draw. Like gunfighters back in the American [21] West. And it’s quite acceptable for the slower person to move back and draw his or her sword.”
But Sulu remained where he was. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
The prince, watching Sulu intently, drawled exaggeratedly, “So make a move, Sulu.”
“After you, Your Highness.” Sulu mischievously twitched his fingers.
“I do believe you’re up to something,” the prince murmured. He started to move his right hand toward the sword hilt.
It was the moment that Sulu had been waiting for. Grabbing the sheath in his left hand, he tilted it up at a sharp angle so that, when his right hand clasped the hilt, he was pulling his sword downward out of its sheath rather than upward. At the same time, he bent his left leg and lunged forward. As the sword cleared the sheath, his left hand let go of the sheath and he clapped it against the dull back of the blade, adding even more force as he swung the sword up and in.
There wasn’t any time for the prince to say anything as his body automatically stepped forward. But instead of delivering a downward slash, he found himself literally throwing his chest and stomach against Sulu’s blade. It slapped against the padding of his jacket.
They stood like that, frozen in a kind of tableau, and for a moment Sulu wondered if he’d gone too far. Perhaps Sulu should have let the prince win as he’d expected to. Would the prince now explode into an imperial temper tantrum?
Suddenly Bibil gave a laugh. “Well done, Sulu.” He began to applaud in the Angiran fashion with his palms held horizontally.
[22] For his part, the prince simply looked in amazement at the blade that still rested against his torso. “I thought Lord Bhima had taught me every trick in the book.”
That was high praise, since Lord Bhima had been the prince’s fencing instructor back on Angira, and, according to the prince, was the best swordsman on all of Angira.