The light grew stronger, penetrating even thick-walled opalescent spheres. He reached the edge of the wall, the interior of the worldship.
Koronin watched the exquisitely detailed transmissions that appeared in her communications area. They fascinated her, for the longer she refrained from replying, the more complex the transmissions became. At first the image of an alien being had appeared, spreading its hands in a gesture she perceived as supplication. Later it had flown for her. [282] Other flyers joined it, performing an eerie aerial dance. The transmission transmuted itself into patterns and three-dimensional graphics that could only have been produced by a powerful artificial intelligence. The transmissions continuously increased their control of her communications capabilities. She recorded everything. When she played back the segment in which the flyers changed to abstract patterns, she began to wonder if every scene she had watched had been computer generated, and none taken from life. It was possible that the worldship inhabitants showed her only what they thought she wanted to see.
At the same time, she reserved a portion of her communications area and used it to keep track of goings-on around the Enterprise. When the sailboat returned to the worldship, she thought of capturing it, but changed her mind and let it land.
Her serjeant, immensely flattered to be permitted on the command balcony, stared at the image. “Quundar can follow—the limpet hatch will seal us to the sphere, that one, there, sensors show it is. hollow and thin-walled. We blast through, follow—”
“Silence.”
The serjeant obeyed.
“Shall we attack, in full view of a Federation ship?” Koronin said. “Fool. We have no reason to enter as invaders. We can arrive as guests. Do they teach you nothing but force in the armada? Do they beat your sense out of you?”
“Forgive me, Koronin.”
“I will respond to the aliens’ transmission; I will accept the invitation they offered me. We will not put aside our sense—will we? Our continued existence may be evidence of the aliens’ goodwill. But it may not. Keep alert.”
“Yes, Koronin.”
“Return to your post. Prepare for acceleration.”
She considered taking Quundar completely out of sight of the Federation starship and entering the worldship in secret, but her pride intervened. If she concealed her plans, she as much as admitted the Federation possessed rights to the worldship that she did not.
[283] Suppose, she thought, just suppose this marvel is the product of a degenerated civilization. I have seen no weapons, no defense. Suppose the inhabitants can be conquered. If I claim this place, it will bring me power. Power can be the means to revenge. Power can be better than revenge.
Sun-and-Shadows loomed behind Sulu, watching the helm officer manipulate the controls.
Just like a kid, Jim thought, with a new Christmas toy.
“Scarlet, I feel responsible for the theft of your sailboat—”
“James, I own nothing. Nothing can be stolen from me.”
“I’m glad you can regard the incident with such equanimity. But I still feel responsible.”
“That is your choice. I cannot take it from you.”
“May I sail this boat?” Sun-and Shadows asked Sulu.
“No, sir, I’m sorry—it takes quite a lot of training, it isn’t as easy as it looks.”
“Of course it is.” He reached his long arms over Sulu’s shoulders and spun the shuttle on all three axes.
Jim shouted and gulped.
The spiraling, tumbling spin ceased and the shuttlecraft continued on its path as if it had never deviated.
Sulu flung himself at the controls. But nothing needed fixing. Sulu looked distinctly green. Sun-and-Shadows blinked at him calmly, touched the edge of his sensory mustache with his tongue, and said nothing.
“Scarlet!” Jim said. “Please ask your friends to stop endangering my people with their little games!”
After a long hesitation, Scarlet replied. “James, why do you shout at me for something that happened over there, when I am over here?”
“Why do you speak only to Scarlet?” Green spoke in Standard for the first time. “You act as if Cloud Touching and Sun-and-Shadows and I never existed, and only she does. We learned your language, too,” he said petulantly.
Jim looked from one flyer to the next, feeling confused. “She?” he said. “Who is she?”
“I am, in your language, she,” Scarlet said. “What does that have to do with Green’s question?”
[284] “I hadn’t realized ...” Jim said.
“Why should you?” Scarlet said. “I see no reason for you to care one way or the other.”
“You still have not answered my question,” Green said.
“I don’t have a good answer. I began by speaking to you, Scarlet. I got the feeling you were in charge.”
“That was your perception, not reality,” Scarlet said. “I told you we do not have leaders.”
“Green, I apologize,” Jim said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Green flicked his tongue against the edge of his mustache. “You are but young,” he said. He blinked.
I’m young? Jim thought. What about everybody else on this shuttlecraft?
“Captain! Quundar is going inside the worldship.”
Jim joined Sulu, glad of an excuse to escape his own discomfort. Quundar arced up and over and inside the wall. “Increase velocity.”
“Yes, sir.” Sulu refrained from mentioning that Quundar was heavily armed and Copernicus carried no weapons at all. James Kirk knew that.
This was proving to be an interesting trip.
He paused at a ventral opening of an interior sphere, gazing into the beauty of the worldship, drinking the wind, spreading his arms to the light. The land lay many times his height below him, a moment’s flight to reach.
But he could no longer fly. His voyage had changed him, the starship beings had changed him. They had taken his wings, half his sight and hearing, most of his ability to communicate. He cried out again into the silence of his mind. He received no reply, not even echoes.
He had spent time in silence, by his own choice, a response to grief and loss. Now he was forced into it. He could see only one course for his existence.
He began the long climb to the ground.
Koronin had wondered if the interior of the worldship would contain riches similar to the giant pearls outside. But when Quundar penetrated the light web that covered the [285] sky, she found a landscape of plains and mountains, sparse forests, streams.
The transmission she followed emanated from a place high above the ground. A flock of the aliens played in the updrafts and eddies that whispered along the worldship’s wall. The aliens circled her ship, diving, counting coup by brushing their wingtips against the outthrust control chamber. They impressed her with their disregard of danger, if not with their intelligence. One balanced on the bubble above her, azure flying webs folded. It leaped into the air, revealing the flame-yellow undersides of its blue wings. It soared off to join its fellows.
Three of the aliens landed on the ground. Quundar touched down near them at the base of the wall.
The aliens watched and waited, perhaps a hundred paces away. Koronin maintained an unhurried pose. Instead of rushing outside like a supplicant, she took her time. She secured the work crew within their stations. She collected portable sensors, translator, recorder. She put on a purple silk shirt, and the boots with the gold tracings. She fastened Starfleet’s collar around his throat, ignoring his pitiful attempts to thrust his tiny hands between buckle and strap. She snapped his leash to the collar. Instead of following obediently, he held back. She tweaked the leash; when he could resist its pull no longer, he scampered past her and crouched till she passed him and jerked the leash again. It was most unsatisfactory. He needed more training.
“Come along,” she said to the serjeant.
“Koronin, wouldn’t it be better to break out more weapons? Shouldn’t I stay here and guard yo
u from inside?”
She laughed at him. “You need no weapons when you’re with me. Come along. Now. Or I’ll leash you, too.”
He followed, unleashed but more docile than Starfleet.
The three worldship inhabitants watched in silence. Koronin approached, alternately dragging Starfleet behind her and jerking his collar when he fled too far ahead. The delicate breeze ruffled dust around her boots.
“I am Koronin,” she said.
The three aliens sang together for an inordinately long [286] time. Both sensors and translator gibbered and babbled till she grew bored with them and shut them off. She had little use for scientific data, anyway. If things worked as she hoped, she would not have to understand the inhabitants. They would have to understand her.
The aliens’ song soared beyond her range of hearing. She could tell they were still singing only by the movements in their throats and mouths. Finally they stopped.
“I am Koronin,” she said again.
“I don’t understand you,” the golden-winged blue alien said. “Yours is a language Cloud Touching didn’t give me. Do you have the means of conveying it?”
The creature spoke Federation Standard.
“What makes you think,” Koronin said coldly, “that I speak the Federation’s degenerate tongue?”
It began to speak another Federation language, one she did not understand but recognized as Vulcan.
“Stop!” Koronin said. If the Federation thought they could invade Empire space, claim the worldship, and subvert its inhabitants without a fight, they thought quite wrong. “I understand you. I will give you the means to learn my language soon, but Standard will suffice for the moment.”
An alien, so purple it appeared black at certain angles, moved around her till it could see Starfleet. The primate fled. Koronin switched the leash from hand to hand to keep her pet from wrapping her legs in the strap. This was not properly dignified. She jerked hard on Starfleet’s collar. He crouched, whimpered, peeked up, then hid his face.
“What is this?” the purple alien said. “Food?”
“No. I have resources. I feed pets, I don’t eat them.”
“Captive food is tasteless.” The purple alien turned toward Koronin’s Serjeant. “This is a pet, too?”
The serjeant, having too little knowledge of Standard to be offended, stared agape at the alien.
“That is my serjeant. My subordinate.”
“I heard you had such things. Pets. Things like pets.”
“Who among you is the leader?” Koronin said.
The aliens spoke in their own language, rudely. Koronin had the impression they found her amusing. She put one hand on the haft of her dueling blade. It gave her comfort, though under these circumstances she would find her blaster [287] more useful. Quicker. Though the aliens carried no mechanical weapons, their teeth and claws would be dangerous in hand-to-hand combat. She wondered where they kept their computer and transmitter. Perhaps in the bangles they wore. Perhaps some other entity kept the computer, and the flying creatures as well.
“It is contrary of you guests to ask for leaders,” the third alien said. It had black fur dappled in gray on back and flanks and legs. “The more often the companionship tells you no leaders exist, the more often you ask for one.”
“I have never—” She reined in her temper. The aliens implied she had asked the same question as the Federation invaders, so she would ask a question no member of the Federation ever asked. “I claim this land in the name of the empress. Do you dispute my authority?”
Ignoring her, the purple alien stroked Starfleet.
“I told you that isn’t food!” Koronin shouted.
“I know,” the alien said. “But it is unhappy.” It unbuckled the collar from her pet’s neck.
Koronin strode to the wall. Her blade sang like crystal when she drew it. The aliens could not know that when she acquired it, it had been transparent and colorless. It had grown dark with spilled blood. But the aliens could hardly fail to be impressed by the way the light of their strange world flared from the blade’s edge. They could not fail to be impressed by what she was about to do.
She stopped beside the curved flank of a pearly sphere. She swept the blade above her head and sliced it down against the wall.
The blade cut deep into the iridescent surface, gouging a deep, dramatic mark into the fabric of the worldship.
Koronin heard a keening wail, a combination of the song of the aliens and a high, agonized vibration. The silky webbing around the sphere trembled and contracted. Koronin wrenched her blade free, spun, and ran.
The sphere exploded against her back.
He saw the flying machine descend, and saw it land below; he heard the explosion, but needed his attention for the climb. The vibration nearly cost him his balance. Flinging himself into the webbing that linked the spheres, he hung on [288] tight. When the wall’s shuddering ceased, he continued his dogged descent.
Where the land met the wall, the flying machine rested on singed vegetation. Nearby, one wingless being crouched over another who lay motionless. The second being must have tried to damage a wall-sphere, and the wall-sphere had reacted. How foolish: people knew better than to behave like that before they ever left the aerie, if they were smart enough to live.
He smelled the scent of people, but none remained. High and distant, they parted from each other to return to a solitary way. He wondered if the wingless ones had bored the companionship, or simply disgusted them.
“You!”
The wingless being waved a bit of machinery. “Come over here! Carry my lady Koronin into the ship!”
He understood it poorly, but its meaning came across.
Sulu swooped Copernicus over the iridescent wall of the worldship, between the rays of the light web, and through the clouds to hover above the easy curves of the land.
Dionysus continued to ignore all transmissions.
“I will leave now,” Green said.
“Green, I know I offended you,” Jim said with consternation. “But it wasn’t intentional. Please accept my apology. Please stay with us.”
“You are but young,” Green said again, his tone gentle. “You cannot offend me. I will leave because I am hungry, and because this enclosure cramps my wings.”
“I wish you’d said something before—I’m sure we could have programmed the Enterprise’s synthesizer to produce something safe for you to eat.”
“I saw your food,” Green said. “It was dead.”
“Many people find it quite palatable,” Jim said.
“But it was dead.” He made a sound of disgust.
“That’s true ... but most of us prefer it to be dead before we eat it.” He chuckled. He stopped. “But you don’t like it that way ... do you?”
“Dead food makes one ill.”
“I see.” Jim thought he now understood Spock’s reaction to watching other people eat animal protein. “Very well ... [289] We’ll land and let you out. I wouldn’t keep you against your will.”
“No need to land,” Green said. He opened the hatch. The wind wailed in with cutting cold. Green leaped into the air. Jim lunged for the hatch. Ten meters below, Green fell as if in slow motion. He gradually extended his wing-fingers, putting himself first into a glide, then a turn, finally a high, fast soar.
“Will you come?” Sun-and-Shadows said. “Hunt with us.”
“No,” Scarlet said. “I’m not hungry yet.”
“Good-bye.”
Sun-and-Shadows leaped after Green. They soared into a duet of aerial acrobatics. They approached so closely that Jim caught his breath for fear they would collide, but they stroked each other with their wingtips and chased each other higher.
Lieutenant Uhura appeared beside Jim, watching the flyers and humming an eerie tune. She leaned toward the open hatchway. For an awful instant Jim thought she was going to plunge out into the sky. He grabbed her arm.
“Lieutenant Uhura!” She said nothing. Drawing her back,
Jim closed the hatch. “What’s wrong?”
She raised her head to look at him. Her face glowed with joy and wonder.
“Nothing, captain. Why do you ask?” She hummed again, a refrain Jim did not recognize.
Scarlet laid one long delicate arm across Uhura’s shoulders. He—she, Jim reminded himself—let her wing-fingers open so her wing draped across Uhura’s back like a scarlet cloak. She drew Uhura deeper into the shuttlecraft. She hummed a simple musical phrase. Uhura copied it. Scarlet hummed the phrase again; Uhura copied it with more assurance.
Jim left them humming to each other and rejoined Sulu at the controls.
“Any sign of Dionysus? Or of Athene?”
“Not yet, captain. They could be anywhere by now. Quundar has got to be around here someplace, though.”
Jim gazed out the viewport, hoping for some sign of Dionysus, wondering if he preferred to have Koronin close [290] enough to keep track of, or a long long way away. He searched the clouds, wondering if Lindy had finally found a place where Athene could fly. That would be some sight, he thought. It would.
Koronin woke slowly and painfully. So, she thought, the oligarchy caught up to me faster than I believed it would ... She opened her eyes.
She expected a prison cell or the interrogation chamber of a dreadnought. Instead, she found herself in her own bed. She sat up. Her body ached all over and her inner ears pained her. But she was alive, unwounded.
The Serjeant dozed on the floor nearby. A poor job of guarding: she wondered why he had not simply locked her away.
Then she saw her dueling blade and her blaster, laid side by side at the foot of her bed. She picked up the blade. The edge was not so much chipped as melted away. She cursed.
“Koronin!” The Serjeant clambered sleepily to his feet.
“Why did you bring me back?” Koronin said. “Why didn’t you kill me and take the ship?”
“I offered you my loyalty,” he said in a hurt voice.
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