by Peter David
He reached for the newcomer’s arm, with the intention of twisting it back and around, and possibly even wrenching it from the socket. For Krave knew that if the Litens were starting to put up resistance, the fun was going to be over.
And that’s all they were looking for, really. Fun.
Because the university was just so damned boring.
No one could blame them, really, in their search for amusement. Granted, the Kondolf Academy was one of the foremost universities in the quadrant, capable of giving the best education to the best and brightest of the most influential and powerful families in the Federation. But the course work, the discipline, and the sheer crush of study that awaited students at that annoying satellite where they ate, slept, and worked . . . well, where was the fun? The excitement? The humor and drama of life? They were only going to be young once, after all. Shouldn’t they be permitted to have their occasional amusements?
And Liten, and the residents thereupon, had provided that amusement.
Krave was no fool, though, nor was he completely amoral. He and his friends weren’t out to cause any permanent damage. Just be entertained by the superstitious and fearful Litens, who knew nothing of the great plethora of sentient races out there. Oh, some of the faculty members knew about it, but they turned a blind eye to it. After all, the families from which Krave, Nyx, and Quiv came were among the most influential of all in the Federation, and no one at the school was going to want to gainsay them. Not over something as trivial as the sensitivities of a backward race like the Liten.
In a way, he was almost glad that one of them was offering some degree of resistance. Up to this point, it had been so easy that it was becoming just the tiniest bit dull.
So when he grabbed the newcomer’s arm, he was actually looking forward to the challenge.
He stopped looking forward to it when the Liten’s arm was abruptly not there.
The Liten had stepped aside, very quickly and smoothly, and the look on his face had been one of casual indifference, as if his mind was a million miles away. As if he was looking not toward what Krave had just done, but rather toward what he was going to do.
Krave, in reaching for the Liten’s arm, stumbled as he missed, and before he could recover, the Liten had driven a knee squarely into Krave’s midsection. Krave let out a startled gasp and staggered, and then a double-handed smash on the back of his neck sent him to the ground. The Widow Splean let out a joyous whoop as Krave tasted dirt.
He started to scramble to his feet, but his assailant moved with a studied lack of speed, as if he had all the time in the world. As if he knew precisely how long it was going to take Krave to get his breath back, and wasn’t devoting a single minute more than was required to deal with the situation. Then his assailant swung a well-placed kick squarely at Krave’s head and knocked the Andorian flat again.
By this point, Nyx and Quiv had realized that their companion was in trouble. With a yelp of alarm, they started toward him. They did not get very far at all, for the extremely large Liten had snagged them by the scruff of their necks and, in a stunning display of strength, lifted them off the ground. The two stunned Tellarites (for such they were) kicked furiously at the air, trying to wrestle themselves free and having no luck whatsoever. They emitted loud squeals of protest and hammered at the arms of the big Liten, but he didn’t even seem to notice them.
“Kebron!” called the other Liten, as another well-placed kick sent Krave rolling. “Are you okay over there?”
“Of course,” said Kebron. He drew his arms apart, holding the Tellarites to either side, and they had about a second to wonder what was about to happen. Then they realized it an instant before it actually occurred, and there was nothing they could do to stop it as Kebron slammed them together in midair. The impact was bone-jarring, and didn’t appear to tax him at all, for he separated them and did it again. And again. Each time they crashed into each other, they would emit squeals of protest and howls of rage. But the quality and quantity of their protests started to change, as repeated threats very quickly changed into pleas for mercy.
Krave, in the meantime, had managed to roll far enough away from his opponent to get to his feet. He was not without resources of his own, and although he was in agony, he had enough strength left to still be a threat. He charged toward the Liten who had treated him so poorly, his focus on him and only him.
As a result, he didn’t see the large club swinging into his face until it was too late. It completely blindsided him, and struck him so powerfully in the face that it shattered two of his teeth. Agony stabbed through his head and he hit the ground, rolling and moaning.
The Widow Splean, who had been wielding the club, came after him and hit him again and again. The Liten who had, until moments before, been so thoroughly manhandling Krave now seemed to have some degree of pity on the young Andorian. “All right, that’s enough,” he said to the Widow Splean, and he wrapped his arms around her from behind and hauled her off him. “We don’t want to kill him.”
“Oh yes we do! Then we can autopsy the remains!”
“No,” he said firmly. “You’ve done your part. Leave them to us.” And there was something in his voice that made it quite clear that he was not simply going to allow her to annihilate the Andorian, no matter how much she wanted to and no matter how much he deserved it.
With a frustrated sigh that acknowledged his obvious position on the matter, the Widow Splean backed off as the Liten walked over to the Andorian. “Go on inside, ma’am. We’ll take it from here.”
“All right,” she said reluctantly, although she did take the opportunity to spit at the fallen Andorian before going into her home.
“Who . . . are you?” gasped out the Andorian as the Liten hauled him to his feet.
“McHenry. Now . . . let’s chat with your pals.”
McHenry hauled the Andorian over to where the two Tellarites were lying on the ground, moaning and holding their sides. Kebron stood over them, his arms folded. “Now,” McHenry said as he dropped Krave next to his associates, “this gentleman here is Adulux. Apologize to him.”
“We’re not going to—” began Krave defiantly.
Kebron glowered at them.
“We’re sorry,” Nyx said, and Quiv echoed the sentiment.
Krave quivered in frustration, but there was nothing he could do, for he certainly had no desire to deal with Kebron. The one called McHenry had already done enough damage, along with that awful old female. McHenry prodded him with his toe. “I’m sorry,” said Krave.
“Now give Adulux back his wife. If you have to go get her from wherever you’ve got her hidden, I will accompany you while Kebron here stays with your associates, for safekeeping. Or is she on your vessel?”
“What wife? What are you talking about?” demanded Krave.
“My wife! My Zanka!” Adulux said with increasing agitation. “When you kidnapped her . . . took her in a flash of light . . . !”
“We never kidnapped anybody!” said Nyx with such a whine in his voice that the truth of what he was saying seemed impossible to doubt. “Never!”
“We just terrorized people, that’s all! That’s all!” Quiv added.
“No! It had to be them! It had to be!” Adulux said.
“Calm down, Adulux,” said Kebron.
“Calm down! I can’t calm down! If they don’t return her—! But . . . but we can show them to the Elders,” he began to say with excitement. “Show them that aliens exist! That might at least get them to believe me somewhat . . .”
“We’re not going to show them to anyone,” McHenry said firmly. “The people of this world don’t need that sort of evidence. We just want them to return your wife and go away—”
“We don’t have his damned wife!” shouted Krave, spitting out another tooth.
“Oh, really!” Adulux shot back. “Then if you don’t, who does?”
That was when the light stabbed down at them from above.
It was blinding. All of t
hem threw their arms in front of their faces to shield them from it. From overhead there was a deafening roar, mighty engines at work powering some gigantic vessel. They could only see the barest outlines of it owing to the intensity of the light that was pounding down upon them like a thing alive.
“It’s them!” shouted Adulux. “It’s the light! It’s the ones who stole Zanka! Give her back! Give her back!”
The light increased in intensity all around them.
“This,” Kebron said, “is ill-timed.”
And that was the last thing any of them managed to say before they all blinked out of existence.
A moment later, all was silent, except for the placid sighing of the Furn, contentedly chewing its food in the middle of the field.
SOLETA
SHE DID NOT WANT to like him.
She was already accustomed to hating him, even dedicated to hating him.
She understood that the universe was not one of black-and-whites, but grays. She understood this, even though her scientific nature usually drove her to look for stark and straightforward answers with no shadings. Yet she had been certain that this aspect of her life was clear-cut. Rajari, the man who had brutalized her mother, was unrepentant slime.
Except . . .
He was repenting.
She sat in his apartment, wondering for the umpteenth time in the last two weeks what her mother would have made of the situation. If Rajari had come to T’Pas on bended knee, begging forgiveness, would she have granted it? Would she have found any logic in continuing to hate him for what he had done? Part of Soleta wanted to think that, yes, she would have continued to hate him. That was the aspect of Soleta that wanted that nice, tidy, black-and-white ethic.
But what if she had been willing to forgive him? What if T’Pas had considered continued antipathy to be an illogical waste of time and energy? What then?
Soleta’s mind had been awhirl with the psychological and even philosophical ramifications that were part of any involvement she might have with Rajari. She had decided two things early on. The first was that under no circumstance would she tell him that she was his daughter. The second was that if he made any sort of aggressive move, if he gave her any reason whatsoever to think that he was about to hurt her, she would pull out her phaser and blast him into nonexistence. She knew, in her heart, that she was capable of doing it.
She had taken a lengthy meditation, had explored the innermost recesses of her resolve, and she was convinced that there was no mental block whatsoever. The fact that Rajari was her father was a biological happenstance only. The individual whom she truly thought of as father was back on Vulcan, and the fact that there was no genetic tie between them was purely incidental. So if Rajari became a threat, she knew that she would not hesitate to dispatch him. There would be no pause, no flash of guilt, no mental cry of No, not my father! She could, and would, do what had to be done.
With that in mind, she had met him several times at the bar. Remaining in one place had quickly become boring for both of them, and they had taken to walking around the city. Rajari was quite conversant in the ins and outs of Catalina City, and had even steeped himself in the history of the place. He seemed pleased to have someone to talk to about it. He would chat for hours on end about the original purpose for this building or that building, and how the city founders had taken meticulous care in laying the place out. Soleta herself had been unable to discern any pattern at all; despite all his explanations, the place still seemed like a confused hodgepodge. She saw no advantage to arguing it, however.
They would also talk about theology. And science. About philosophy and methodology. She could not believe how well read he was, how versed he was in such an amazing variety of topics. She remembered the evil, chortling creature that had sat in the brig those many years back in the Aldrin and tried to see something of that man in the Rajari she had now encountered. But there seemed to be nothing of him there. It was as if another being altogether had taken over his body and mind.
This alone was enough to make Soleta suspicious, to wonder if indeed someone or something else was impersonating him or had somehow seized control of his mind. During the time she was on Titan, she managed to get his medical records and matched his profile from the beginning of his stay to that which was assembled at the end of his stay. Allowing for some diminishment due to the passing years, it was indisputably the same individual.
Rajari had asked no more questions about Soleta’s own background. It was as if he was afraid to find out, as if probing too closely to the circumstances that had brought her here might somehow drive her away. So instead he spoke mostly about himself, or those topics that were of interest to him. Soleta found it most disconcerting that many of those same topics were of interest to her as well.
She sent a message to her father, telling him that she had investigated the situation and was convinced that Rajari posed no threat. At the very least, she could alleviate whatever anxiety (controlled and hidden away, of course) Volak might be feeling. She did not, however, mention to him that she was remaining on Titan and spending an inordinate amount of time with Rajari.
She knew that it was insane to try and get to know him. Having ascertained that he posed no threat, the wise course would have been to leave. But the unwise course seemed to pose so many more interesting possibilities, and as a naturally curious creature, she found it impossible to pass them up.
She sat in his apartment, staring out the window thoughtfully, while he poured out a drink for himself. He had offered one to her, but she was not a huge fan of alcohol, and he appeared to have no synthehol in the small, cramped domicile that barely ranked as a room, much less an apartment. She also noted that what he was pouring out was Romulan ale.
The first time she had accepted his invitation to come up to his apartment, her heart had been in her throat. She had remained in a state of mental preparedness for the entire time that she had been there, wondering when and if he was going to strike. After a while there, she had discarded the “when” part and downgraded it to “if.” As it turned out, he requested that she leave shortly after 2200 hours, claiming fatigue. Just before she had gone, he had extended the first two fingers of his right hand and chastely touched her on the side of her face. It had been the slightest brushing of finger against skin, but its meaning was standard in the unspoken Vulcan lexicon: it was a physical term of endearment. Soleta had flinched automatically. Rajari caught her reflexive reaction and immediately withdrew the gesture; he did not make any attempt after that to repeat it.
She kept telling herself that he was an experiment, a subject worthy of study. Even if she did not have the direct, undesirable tie to him that she had, he still would have merited an investigation.
“Rajari,” she said as he sipped his Romulan ale behind her. “Do you believe in absolute evil?”
“How do you mean?” he replied, not quite understanding the question. He circled the Spartan apartment as he approached her. She noticed that he rarely went directly from one point to the other; he always seemed to adopt a circuitous route.
“The question is fairly self-explanatory. Do you believe that someone can be entirely evil.”
“Are you thinking of anyone in particular?”
She tried to say “no.” Instead she wasn’t able to say anything.
“Ah, that damnable Vulcan penchant for honesty,” chuckled Rajari. “But very well . . . let us pretend that we are speaking in abstracts instead of about me specifically. The question is not whether someone can be entirely evil. The question is, rather, does evil exist.”
“Does it?”
“What is evil?” he asked. “That is the difficult proposition, you see. Because evil cannot be defined as itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that evil can only be defined as the opposite of good. Evil is not a presence of one thing, it is the absence of something else. Evil is the absence of good, just as dark is the absence of light and a vacuum is the a
bsence of air. So you are not truly asking whether pure evil, in and of itself, can exist. You are asking instead whether such a thing as a total absence of good can exist.”
“And can it?”
“I don’t think so.” He pulled a chair up next to hers and joined her in gazing out the window. “Not if ‘good’ is defined as the impulse to try and do something on behalf of someone else. Anyone is capable, at any given moment, of performing an action that is selfless. The most brutal, most heartless individual in existence is still capable of—oh, I don’t know—preventing a small child from being run over, for instance. Or doing a good deed to make life a little better, if even for a moment, for an elderly person.”
“But a small act of the type you’re describing can hardly mitigate a lifetime of evil deeds.”
“True. That, however, was not what you were asking. You were questioning whether evil can be absolute. The answer is, I don’t think so. Darkness can be absolute, for you can have a situation where there is no source of light and never will be, as in a black hole for example. But when you talk of matters of spirit, there are always possibilities for actions that will be of benefit. That’s what hope is, after all. No one, and nothing, is truly hopeless. Look at me.”
“Look at you,” she said evenly. “Filled with light, are you?”
“That is it, yes. That is exactly it. I was evil. I was darkness. But then I was filled with light. It was a wonderful thing, Soleta.”
“But if that is the case . . . then perhaps you are still evil.”
He looked at her in curiosity. “How do you mean?”
“Well, the way in which you’ve described the circumstances of your luminous uplift, you appear to have been filled with this,” and she gestured vaguely, “this spiritual comprehension. A gift to you from the gods, as you have said.”
“That is true, yes. A fair summary, although I detect a hint of the famed Vulcan irony in your tone.”