“Not necessarily,” Spock murmured to his crewmates. “An isolated population such as this, living in small bands separated by geography, may indeed be relatively free of serious disease. Any deadly infectious strains would kill off their host populations before they could spread far, and thus bring about their own extinction.”
“I’d think viruses would be more resilient than that, Commander Spock,” Errgang said.
“There are historical examples, Lieutenant. The Native Americans of Earth, for example, led extraordinarily healthy lives before the European contact.”
“And because of that,” McCoy said, “they had no immunity to European plagues. Up to ninety percent of them died of infectious diseases within the next two centuries. If these people are disease-free,” he went on heavily, “the Yemai could be dooming them just by coming here.”
“Unless there really is some healing property to this place.” This was from the final member of the landing party, Lieutenant Jerome Chaane of security. He was a tall, exotic-featured man, mostly human but with hints of Vulcanoid, Tiburon, and maybe something else in his physiognomy. But whatever his ethnic mix, it made him particularly robust, and a good choice to impersonate one of Sigma Niobe’s high-gravity natives. “Do you suppose the legends could be true?”
“Spock, are you reading anything?”
“Difficult to say,” the Vulcan told Kirk. He was holding his tricorder close to his vest in order to muffle its warbling. “There appears to be a pervasive electromagnetic interference field in this area, perhaps due to some form of magnetic anomaly or mineral deposit.”
“Or some kind of healing energy field?” McCoy asked, intrigued by the possibility.
“It would be premature to speculate at this point, Doctor. Although I will defer to you as an authority on voodoo medicine.”
McCoy glared. “Don’t knock it, Spock. It takes a good witch doctor to treat a hobgoblin like you.”
“If you mix your potions as crudely as your metaphors, then I am lucky to be alive at all.”
“All right, you two,” Kirk interposed. “Focus.” McCoy glowered, upset that Spock had been allowed the last word again.
Down in the lagoon, Captain Nohin was trying to extract more information from the Ilaiyenai about their alleged perfect health and the abundance of their land. They did not go into detail, aside from indicating that they had little need for anything the captain offered. Soon Nohin decided to try a different tactic, so as not to seem too eager for trade. “We have traveled far and are tired,” she said. “May we come ashore to rest and take on new supplies?”
“Just you?” the islander asked. “Or your other ships as well?”
Nohin faltered. “What other ships?” The crew was muttering, wondering how they could have known. Kirk figured they must have had lookouts, probably stationed on the mountains, who had seen the fleet coming and reported it before their arrival. Although the mountains seemed too far to run from in the available time. Some kind of heliograph system? Or perhaps this thick atmosphere just carried their shouts much farther.
The Ilaiyenai negotiator sighed. “We are sorry,” she said. “We do not trade with those who come falsely. Please leave.” She sat back down in the canoe and ordered her oarsmen to head back for shore.
“No, wait! Yes, all of our ships. We need to resupply.” But she was ignored.
“Captain!” Deyin called. “Come and parley.”
Nohin climbed a ladder up the side of the ship and came aboard next to the admiral. They spoke softly, but the translators, built with thinner atmospheres in mind, picked up their words easily. “Well, we’ve tried the sweetfruit,” Nohin said. “Is it time for the whip?”
“Yes,” Deyin replied. “Just enough to show them we mean business. Take several shore parties—armed with rifles. Show them what Yemai firepower can do; perhaps that will pique their interest in trade.”
Errgang frowned. “Does she mean they’ll be interested in trading for the guns, or that the guns will scare them into trading for other things?”
“Both,” Kirk told her. “She wants to show her strength, but only to establish a strong negotiating position.”
Deyin ordered the Enai-ra brought in closer to the beach and sent out several shore parties in the launches, one of them including the Enterprise contingent. Kirk was reluctant to participate in this armed incursion, but could see no way to refuse. At least if he was on the scene, there might be some way to head off violence.
As the launches approached the beach, the islanders paddled out in canoes to form a blockade. “Go away,” the negotiator said. “You are not welcome.” Men stood in the boats, bearing some kind of atlatls—no, Kirk amended, more like Australian woomeras, shaped like long, narrow bowls with sharp edges, useful as peaceful carrying tools or cutters as well as spear-throwers. He admired the simple sophistication of the design.
Nohin ordered her men to fire warning shots just short of the dugouts. Thunder cracked across the lagoon, noxious smoke rose from the rifles, and bullets sliced through the water. The Ilaiyenai winced from the noise but stood their ground.
Seconds later, each of the riflemen who had fired was struck in the hand by a short, blunted, perfectly aimed spear. Kirk was amazed by the woomera-wielders’ accuracy.
But the Yemai had no such academic appreciation. As the riflemen clutched their injured hands, Nohin and others snatched up their guns and began to open fire on the dugout crews.
“No!” Kirk reacted impulsively, tackling the rifleman in his boat to stop him from killing one of the Ilaiyenai. He wrested the gun away from the man, who overbalanced and fell into the water.
“What is this, Jeyam?” Nohin demanded.
“There’s no need for this! They only want to be left alone!”
“Traitor!” The cry came from the ship. Hearing the fury in Deyin’s voice, Kirk whirled to see her aiming a rifle straight at his forehead prosthetic. Without another thought, he hurled himself into the water. A second later, he heard other splashes as Spock and the others followed him in. Judging the angle of her shot, he swam down a meter or so, which should be a sufficient depth for the water to slow the bullets harmlessly. Once he made sure the others were following his lead, he set off for shore.
They came up for air on the other side of the dugouts, whose occupants were busy defending themselves against the attackers. But the dugouts held fewer occupants than they should, for there were bodies in the water. Some were motionless, but others still showed signs of life. “Get the wounded to shore!” Kirk called, and grabbed the nearest living body.
Once they reached the shore, the islanders accepted their help in getting the wounded to safety. No one seemed to question their allegiance or intentions. Meanwhile, McCoy did his best to stabilize the ones too injured to be moved farther, insofar as he could without exposing advanced technology to the locals. But Kirk did hear the occasional hiss of the hypospray that Bones kept concealed in his hands.
Suddenly McCoy froze over one of the bodies, a female who was barely moving, her limbs spasming irregularly as she lay on her side, her back to Kirk. “Jim!” he called.
“Bones, don’t waste time!”
“Jim, you need to see this! Spock, you too! Now!”
Kirk handed off the wounded man he was carrying to Chaane and jogged over to McCoy’s side, keeping low to avoid Yemai fire. He looked down at the woman’s now-motionless body. “I don’t understand,” he said as Spock came up behind him. “No blood.”
“There wouldn’t be,” Bones said. He rolled the body over onto its back, exposing the holes blown in its chest and midriff.
And the metallic ribs and sparking electronic circuits inside them.
“What in blazes…?” Kirk was stunned. What was an android doing here, of all places? The islanders couldn’t all be androids—their blood was proof enough of that.
“Captain,” Spock said, his calm helping to restore Kirk’s, “we must not let the Niobeans see this body.”
> “Right,” he said. He looked around; the islanders were sufficiently distracted by the battle and the care of the wounded. “Let’s get it behind those rocks.”
As quickly as they could without drawing attention, they moved the android body to a secluded section of the beach. Errgang followed behind them, while Chaane remained on the beach to continue helping the islanders. “Spock, analysis?” Kirk asked as soon as the android was on the ground once more.
Spock fiddled with his tricorder knobs. “The local interference is disrupting the readings,” he said. “But what information I can discern does not correspond to any known android technology. Judging from the isotope ratios of its constituent materials, however, I can confirm that it is not indigenous to this star system.”
“So where is it from?” McCoy asked.
“I can only narrow it down to a late K-type star between seven and ten billion years of age.”
“Maybe we can access its memory,” Kirk said. “Find out its programming, its mission.”
Spock waved his tricorder over its head and chest. “Its central processing unit seems rather small. Too basic to house an autonomous consciousness. It may simply be a drone, controlled from some central source.”
“Like the androids on Mudd’s Planet.”
“Yes,” Spock said, his grimace showing what he thought of that name for the world. “Logically, the control signal would be on a subspace frequency in order to circumvent the RF interference. With luck,” he said distractedly as he rose and began to pivot slowly with his tricorder, “I may be able to home in on the source.”
“Jim!” McCoy called.
“What is it, Bones?”
“I think its eyes just moved.”
Kirk knelt down and looked into its eyes. Although they were fixed and unblinking, they did seem to be focused, aware. He leaned closer. “Is anyone there?”
Glysinek swiveled her eyes back out of the telepresence hood to look at Nerrieb. “What do I do? There isn’t enough power left to work the speech module.”
“Never mind. Wait for our other probes to arrive.” Nerrieb had ordered two of them to converge on Glysinek’s probe body as soon as he’d seen the ostensible Yemai trader deploy a scanning device that could not be native to this world. The aliens’ evident intention to track down the Redheri control bunker called for intervention. Who knew what their purpose was on this planet? Were they rivals out to jump his claim? Well, he’d just see about that!
Nerrieb waded as quickly as he could through the high-buoyancy fluid that negated this planet’s uncomfortable gravity. He nudged Yanslet’s carapace with a grasping-arm, signaling him to extricate himself from the telepresence module so Nerrieb could take over the probe personally. The probe’s locomotion cycle proceeded automatically during the changeover. Nerrieb climbed out of the fluid, settled himself into the cradle, and found the controls with the ease of long practice: his rear two pairs of flippers to operate the lower limbs, the forward two pairs to puppeteer the face, one grasping-arm for each upper limb, mouth-tendrils to work the fingers. Once he plugged his eyes and olfactory flanges into their receptacles and the contact speakers came to rest against his head segment, it was as though he were actually up there on dry land, inhabiting an ungainly bipedal body whose only similarity to his—and a tenuous one at that—was its sex. Once he got a feel for its walking rhythm, he took it off autopilot and picked up the pace. The HUD overlay indicated that his and Hudalliuc’s probe bodies were just moments away from intercepting the unidentified aliens. The battle between the two indigenous groups was still being waged further on, but it seemed to be a safe distance away.
The one called Spock was addressing the ones called Jim and Bones. “…power levels are critically low. I cannot even confirm that the eyes are functional. Or, for that matter, the ears.”
“Well, if anyone knows ears…”
“Bones, enough. So we don’t know for sure if they can see us or hear us.”
“We can.” The bipeds whirled as the probes stepped out from the trees onto the beach. “Whoever you are,” Nerrieb told them, “we were here first.”
The one called Jim stepped forward. Nerrieb had spent enough time living as one of these bipeds to recognize the air of command in his body language, not to mention the suspicion. “Spock? More robots?”
Nerrieb saved Spock the trouble. “Yes, we are. At least, these bodies are. I assume you are all living flesh, though you’re clearly not from this world.”
The commander took another step forward. “I’m Captain James T. Kirk, representing the United Federation of Planets. My first officer, Mr. Spock, my chief medical officer, Dr. McCoy, and Lieutenant Errgang. And you are?”
“Nerrieb, of the Redheri Trade Consortium.” He had heard of the Federation, though as far as he knew, this was the Redheri’s first direct contact with that distant but growing power. Judging from the ranks, these were members of its Starfleet, which considered itself an exploratory body, yet could be the strong arm of the Federation when a reason presented itself.
Kirk frowned. “Redheri. I can’t say I’m familiar with the name.”
“We are here as explorers, much like yourselves. But unlike you, we do not resemble this planet’s natives, so we must take more elaborate measures to blend in,” he said, making the probe body gesture to itself.
“So your purpose here is…scientific?”
“Commercial, actually. We are advance scouts. Our mission is to prepare this world for contact and admission into the Consortium.”
Kirk’s expression didn’t seem pleased. “‘Prepare’ this world? How?”
Suspicious fellow, wasn’t he? “With great care and respect, I assure you. We have no wish to disrupt this planet’s native cultures unduly by exposing them to concepts they’re unprepared for. Which is the purpose for these telepresence probes. They allow us to pass as natives, integrate ourselves smoothly into the culture. Over the course of years, we study the natives, learn their psychology and values as well as their needs, and tailor a commercial strategy which respects those values and needs.”
“And then…what?” the one called McCoy asked. “How does that make it any easier for them to cope when you reveal the existence of aliens to them?”
“Ahh, that’s the other key component of the Redheri contact strategy.” Back in the bunker, he heard Glysinek and Yanslet discussing whether it was wise to spell this out in so much detail. But Nerrieb saw possibilities here. This bipedal form was strangely ubiquitous in the galaxy, so that these Federation people could pass for natives easily, without the difficulty and expense of telepresence probes. If he could recruit them as allies, they could be a positive boon to the Consortium.
“You see, as we live among the local population, observing them and getting to know them, we also subtly introduce the concept of life on other worlds into their public consciousness. We start conversations about the nature of the stars, whether there could be life elsewhere, what could be gained from communicating and trading with such life. Depending on the culture, we may tell campfire stories or songs about beings from the stars, or write speculative essays, or publish works of adventure fiction involving outer space or alien contact.” Nerrieb’s mission before this one had involved such a strategy, though he had accomplished it by befriending a local novelist and becoming her muse, providing the ideas while letting her write the words, for her mastery of her language’s elaborate literary-poetic style was far better than his. She had been fairly creative on her own, but her stories had tended to portray aliens as ruthless invaders or hidden killers, which didn’t suit Redheri needs at all. In fact, he’d adapted the tales from Consortium historical records, but had changed enough specifics so that no species or event was overtly recognizable. Some peoples didn’t appreciate being clandestinely observed and influenced prior to contact, so the Redheri took care to make their contacts seem spontaneous and keep mum about their earlier visits, at least until a planet had become comfortably integrated int
o the Consortium.
“In any case, we take our time, easing these concepts into a culture at its own rate of comfort, or emphasizing concepts that are already present within it. Thus, they become ready for contact at their own pace, and once that readiness is achieved, we reveal ourselves. This way, they gain all the benefits of interstellar trade, while their cultural integrity is preserved.”
The sales pitch didn’t seem to be working on Kirk. “You have an odd way of defining ‘cultural integrity.’ Of all the cultures on this planet to expose to the idea of space and aliens, you choose one of the simplest, most primitive ones? People who aren’t even aware of the full scope of their own world, let alone the galaxy?”
“Indeed,” Spock added. “Surely the Yemai, as the most technologically advanced culture controlling the widest array of resources, would be a more logical trading partner.”
Nerrieb puppeteered the probe’s face to reflect his amusement. “The Yemai are too solidly convinced of their own superiority, of the completeness of their belief structure. They’re not open to new ideas—certainly not to the knowledge that there are beings more advanced than they are.”
“He has a point there, Captain,” said the one called Errgang. “As humanoids go, they’re even more inflexible than most.” Nerrieb found that an odd sentiment from someone who was humanoid herself.
“Besides,” he went on, “they can offer us little that we don’t already have the like of. But this archipelago…well, we’re here for the same reason the Yemai are, and probably the same reason you are. The healing principle. Yes,” he said in response to their expressions. “It’s very real. We’ve seen it work. These people truly have no illness, heal swiftly from injuries, and have greatly extended life spans. Unfortunately our expedition here is still in its early stages, and we’ve had little success at penetrating the interference field to scan for its cause.”
“The other Ilaiyens don’t know anything?” McCoy asked.
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