by Diane Duane
Moira snickered. “No sooner said than done, boss.”
Harb nodded, satisfied, and resumed his course across the room. As he went, someone said in his ear, “We’re out of dip.”
“Keep your pants on,” he said, turning, and then laughed a great laugh and added, “—Captain!”
“I do try,” Jim said, rather drily. Then he smiled. “Nice party, Mr. Tanzer.”
Harb smiled back as they began to stroll together through the crowds of people. “Their doing, as usual,” he said, glancing around. “I just clean up afterward.”
Jim made another small wry smile. Recreation was viewed by Starfleet as being an extremely important part of the ship, especially for the captain: a commander who could not play—and could not relax—was a liability. So was a crew that could not unbend, and in any starship going into a battle situation, the Rec officer was consulted for his opinion of the crew’s readiness and morale. Therefore, a Rec officer who described himself as just part of the cleaning crew could be assumed to be indulging in humor. “Mr. Tanzer,” Jim said, “I need to talk to you about something.”
The “Mr.” alerted Harb to this being something official. “Certainly, sir. We’ll find a quiet corner.”
“Inhere?” Jim said, glancing around with an amused look. The musical group had begun clapping and stomping along with an instrumental in almosttoo spirited a manner.
The captain noticed this and glanced at Harb as they turned away. “They’re a bit loud, aren’t they?”
Harb nodded. “Best they express it now,” he said, as he and the captain headed off toward one side of Rec, toward the big blank walls behind which the holography area lay, and past that, Harb’s office.
“No,” Jim said, “there’s no need to be private really: just out of the crush. Have you been in the ship’s BBS lately?”
They came to the wall by the door next to the holo area, and Harb leaned against it, folding his arms. “I have.”
“Do you find anything unusual about the level of discussion going on in the ‘common room’ lately?”
Harb tilted his head a bit and thought. “I’ve been running the standard semantic checks,” he said. “The computer doesn’t find a threshold number of loaded words.”
“That’s not what I meant. The computer doesn’t have hunches.”
“My hunches are sometimes wrong.”
“That’s better than not having any at all…. ”
Harb looked at the captain. “You’re worried about some of the anti-Vulcan feeling you’ve been seeing.”
Jim nodded.
Harb shook his head. “It’s always been there,” he said quietly. “But when an opportunity like this comes along, it tends to come out more strongly.”
Jim looked uncomfortable. “I just find it hard to believe,” he said, “that in this day and age, bigotry is still with us…. ”
“I seriously wonder if it’s anything as complex as bigotry,” Harb said. “Simple envy, more likely. Consider the Vulcans from the point of view of someone who is unsure about his or her own position in the Universe, someone who’s looking to see whether a Vulcan is a threat. All kinds of obvious reasons not to like the species come up. They’re peaceful, they’re extremely strong, both physically and in terms of personality; they’re mysterious, they have powers that ‘normal’ people don’t understand; they have a great deal of political status and influence. But at the same time they keep to themselves; their stand on the requirement for personal privacy sounds suspiciously like ego, like being stuck up, to people looking for a grievance. Whywouldn’t human beings dislike them every now and then?”
Jim nodded. “I’m not seriously worried,” Harb said. “Sometimes, in the BBS especially, sentiments like those get aired so that the people airing them can get them out of the way and move on to something else.”
“But not always.”
Harb nodded too. “I’ll keep my eye on it, for what it’s worth. It’s not as if we’re going into a battle situation where someone’s stance on the subject is likely to affect the mission’s effectiveness. But at the same time a starship is a microcosm…and usually accurately represents in small the things going on in the Federation at large—”
Sirens began whooping, and all around the room people looked up suddenly and put their drinks down. The singing stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. But before anything else happened, Chekov’s voice, echoing very large, said on the all-call,“All hands, yellow alert for Engineering and Nav staff only. Rendezvous with USS Coromandelin thirty seconds. Going sublight.”
This caused a stir of pleased excitement, and a lot of people made a rush for the observation windows on the upper level of the Rec deck. No one paid much attention to the view out the windows while a ship was in warp. The otherspace in whichEnterprise traveled at such times had a speed-of-light much faster than that of Earth’s universe: even the slowest-moving particles moved faster than tachyons there. Most of the humanities found the effect of this strange light an unnerving one, and while in warp, ports were usually closed, or the views through them filtered and processed by the ship’s computers. But starlight in normal deepspace was another matter; most of theEnterprise crew, like the crews of most other starships, were addicted to it.
“Up?” Harb said.
“Why not?” said Jim, and together they went up one of the catwalk-stairs to the upper level to join the many crewmen leaning on the railings and looking out the great glasteel windows. So they saw what not too many people have an opportunity to see—a starship decelerating hard from warp, the point of a silver spear piercing through from the far side of the darkness in a trailing storm-cone of rainbows, asCoromandel came out of warp in a splendor of Cherenkov radiation from the super-relativistic particles she dragged into real-space with her. She streaked towardEnterprise, braking hard, and the rainbow lights burned low and faded and went out as she matched her sister starship’s course and speed.
“I’ve always had this feeling that there should be some loud noise when that happens,” Jim said to Harb. “A bang, or a thunderclap or something.”
“Romantic,” Harb said. “What was the reason for the rendezvous, sir? Staff transfer?”
Jim nodded. “We have some people destined for Vulcan who’ve come in from some of the more remote starbases and systems. Fleet detouredCoromandel in to drop them off.Swiftsure is coming in for the same reason later. Then it’s the straight run for Vulcan for us.”
They leaned there and watched the smaller ship ease closer—not that she needed to: her transporters would have been effective fourteen thousand miles away—but doubtless her own crew were as interested to get a glimpse ofEnterprise as vice versa. After a little while, a nearby wall comm whistled.“Bridge to Keptin Kirk.”
Kirk stepped to it. “Kirk here, Mr. Chekov.”
“Our transfers are all aboard, Keptin. Keptin Warburg wants to know if there’s anything you need out Vashath way.”
Jim smiled. “Tell her if she sends me another package of that blue stuff they eat for breakfast there, I’m going to get McCoy to send her grits by way of revenge.”
“Aye, sir,”Chekov said, chuckling a little.“Bridge out.”
“Blue stuff?” Harb said.
“Don’t ask,” said Jim. “Vashath is a beautiful planet, but if I were you, and you go there on vacation, I wouldn’t get up till lunch…. ”
Coromandelaccelerated away on impulse, then flung a cloak of spectrum-colored fire about herself, leaped away, and was gone from sight on the instant. Jim and Harb turned away from the window and headed down the stairs again. “Well,” Jim said, “keep your eye on the BBS, as you say. I’m going to be a little busy pretty soon…. ”
“Aye aye.” Harb’s practiced eye glanced over the room as they came down the stairs, and he paused. “Look, here comes Mr. Spock.”
Jim was surprised at that. “So he does. Unusual to see him come back to a mixer once he’s made his appearance at the start. Hope there’s nothing
wrong on the bridge—”
“He would have called. We’ll find out soon enough.”
They got down to the floor level, where their path was crossed by a group of crewmen bursting out of the holography area, all rather out of breath. “What have you got in there this time?” Jim asked, a touch suspiciously. “I was hoping for something pastoral to stroll around in…. ”
Harb smiled a little. “Not that, I’m afraid. But come take a look.”
They went over to the wall, and Harb waved the door open. A blast of music blew out past them, something with a hard, driving beat and almost no identifiable melodic line. Together Jim and Harb stepped a little way through the doorway to let their eyes adjust.
They were standing somewhere high up, in darkness, over a great city. At least it might have been great once, but the high glassy buildings had a grimy look about them; there were shattered panes, stone stained and acid-etched, an aura of old decay. A soft bloom of rain was falling out of the starless sky, and through it blazing signs in odd languages, and strange symbols, burned with a fierce light that the misting rain fogged into slight unreality. Some kind of small shuttle craft, iondrivers perhaps, swooped past through the wet dark night on their business. In the middle of all this, seemingly in the middle of the air—for the view from where they stood was very high—numerous crewpeople were dancing on platforms, sheets of softly glowing, translucent force. Some of them were dancing cheek-to-cheek, however incongruous the effect was with the ferocious music, and some of them were doing dances that had possibly been current on the planets where the people had taken their leave…but were otherwise unidentifiable.
“What is it?” Jim said.
Harb shrugged. “A synthesis. It could be Earth, or Andor, or the Cetians, or a hundred other places where humanoids have lived.”
Jim shook his head. “Looks old. I prefer the present…. ”
“Mmm,” Harb said. “That’s doubtless why you keep pulling out that eighteenth-century naval scenario. It soaks the rugs…. ”
Jim smiled and said nothing about that. “Funny, though,” he said. “This music sounds fairly dissonant. Twelve-tone, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“Well, putting wind chimes in it seems a little strange—”
“Isaid,” the wind chimes repeated, more loudly this time, from behind them, “you look marvelous, Jim; have you misplaced some weight?”
Jim and Harb both looked around, and down, in astonishment. Behind them stood a twelve-legged glass spider about a meter tall, with delicate glassy spines on her domed body, and fiery blue eyes, twelve of them gazing up at them with what looked distinctly like amusement.
“K’t’lk!”
“I’ve added a syllable,” she said, putting out a slim glassy claw as Jim dropped to one knee and stretched out a hand to her. “I’m K’s’t’lk now.” There was a wind-chime chuckle. “After all, you’re entitled to another syllable when you’ve been dead…. It’s good to see you, J’m.”
“Dead” was probably not the most accurate way to put it, for K’s’t’lk’s species, the Hamalki of alpha Arietis IV, did not deal with death in quite the same way that other species did. K’s’t’lk—or K’t’lk as she had been then—was a physicist, a ‘creative physicist,’ who had done some work on theEnterprise ’s warp engines and helped to take her most emphatically where none had gone before. She had died of what happened to the ship, there beyond space and time, but she had left an egg case behind her with Jim, a forgotten piece of spun-glass bric-a-brac in his cabin. On her death the egg had hatched, with her new life in it, and her old memories; and with theEnterprise ’s return to normal spaces, her daughter-self had gone back to her work in physics.
“But what brings you here?” Jim said with surprise and pleasure. “Not that we’re not glad to see you. Scotty’ll be delighted.” It was a slight understatement: the chief engineer had become first disturbed by, then very fond of, this sprightly creature who found nothing wrong with the idea of rewriting the laws of physics if they didn’t do what you wanted them to. There were certainly going to be people on the ship who would not wonder twice, in the light of this, why the syllable K’t’lk had added to her name was “s”.
K’s’t’lk shook herself all over, a slightly dissonant chiming more in touch with the blast of background music still coming from the holodeck. “The Vulcan thing; what else? I did most of my basic research with the people at the Vulcan Science Academy, after all; so when this mess came to the boil, Starfleet reactivated my commission again and recalled me to give testimony.”
“Well, how long are you going to be with us?”
“Till Vulcan, no longer. I have one evening to spend talking the kinesics of galactic cores with Mr. Spock…then it’s to business, I’m afraid. And likely to be dreadfully difficult; the Universe is easier to reshape than a Vulcan’s mind if it’s made up.” She cocked a cheerful eye at Kirk. “However…would you particularly mind if I had a quick look at your warp engines while I was here? There are some minor adjustments I’ve come across in my research that, if you made them—”
“NO,” Jim said, and then burst out in completely delighted laughter. “Don’t you dare! You so much astouch my engines and I’ll toss you in the brig, madam, and keep you there on—” He paused. “I don’t know what you eat. Except graphite.”
K’s’t’lk glittered and sang with an arpeggio’s worth of laughter. “You might as well lock Sc’tty up with a case of Scotch, Captain. But your orders are heard and understood…. Pity,” she added.
“It’s just that we have somewhere to be,” Harb said. “Somewherenearby.”
She chimed cheerfully. “Well enough. Whereis the graphite, by the way?”
“Over there by the green salad,” Harb said, and indicated the table.
“Right you are then, gentlemen. Until later,” K’s’t’lk said, and spidered off through the crowd, exchanging greetings with the crewpeople as she went. Harb chuckled a little and waved the holodeck door shut. Everything suddenly seemed very quiet.
Jim and Harb headed casually in K’s’t’lk’s wake. Harb was shaking his head. “Who else came in on that transfer?” he said.
“The manifests are in the computer,” Jim said, pausing by one of the drinks dispensers. “Angostura and soda,” he said to it, and watched bemused as the machine beamed in first the liquid, then the glass—just in time—and finally a drinks stirrer with a tiny model of theEnterprise on the end of it. “I’m not sure I believe this,” he said, and got rid of the drinks stirrer. His eye lit on something else on one of the nearby tables. “And what in space isthat?”
Jim was pointing at a bowl that at first sight seemed to be black bean soup…except that black bean soup usually does not have an oil slick. From the other side of the table, one of Naraht’s fringes came up holding what looked like a piece of singed metal, or plastic, or both. Naraht dunked the singed thing into the bowl, and his fringe then whispered back out of sight again, to be followed by slight hissing and munching noises.
“Dip,” Harb said. “The silicon-physiology people like it. It’s crude oil and iron filings, flavored with sodium oxides and a few rare metals. At least,” he added, “most of the sillies eat it, but the Andalusian crewmen won’t, even though they like it. Religious reasons.”
Jim shook his head again, bemused. “That looked like a piece of a used data solid he was dunking in it.”
“It was. We used to incinerate them when their effective lives expired, but then someone found out that Naraht likes them as a snack.”
They walked on and paused by the spot where one of the games tanks was situated in the middle of the floor. It was simply a large three-dimensional video tank—a bare platform six feet by six that projected synthesized holographic images upward into empty air. The tank was hooked into the master games computer, and could run any one of a number of games: “board” games like 3D and 4D chess, or role-playing games with animated characters, or action games in which
a player handled controls, rather than simply talking to the computer. It was in the latter mode now, and Sulu was sitting in the “hot seat,” tapping or stroking at the touchpads that curved around him. In the tank was the image of a Klingon D7D battle cruiser, diving toward a star, or appearing to. Sulu seemed to be trying a slingshot maneuver at extreme warp speed—not exactly the safest move in the world, since going into warp too close to a star usually made the star in question go nova. The crewmen gathered around were offering encouragement or cheerfully predicting disaster, or sometimes simply passing credit chits back and forth. Harb and Jim watched long enough to see that the money changing hands seemed to be slightly in Sulu’s favor. “Want to make a small side bet?” Harb said in Jim’s ear.
Jim smiled. “I already made one. Come on. I have to see someone.”
“Oh? May I ask who?”
Jim shrugged. “It’s just a suspicion. But Spockis here, and we’ve just had a rendezvous.”
They walked over toward the main doors, where Spock was standing gravely talking to some of the crew, people from Sciences. “Mr. Spock,” Jim said, “have you seen K’s’t’lk?”
“Indeed yes,” Spock said. “I anticipate a most stimulating conversation with her: her latest paper on the applications of string theory to matter-antimatter reaction is likely to revolutionize warp technology—”
“Oh no,” Jim said.
“—that is, if the Federation’s scientists can be convinced that the intermix formulas she suggests are anything less than insane.” Spock looked resigned.
“And what do you think of them?” Harb said.
“I do not understand them in the slightest,” Spock said, “and they appear to make no sense by normal parameters. But with K’s’t’lk’s brand of physics, appearances are usually misleading. I will reserve any final evaluations until the trial runs. Meanwhile—”