Sand and Stars

by Diane Duane

  That stunned silence fell again.

  “We could keep him in his cabin,” Tasav said, very low, in his reasonable way. “There would be nothing wrong with that. When we get to Ashif, we can tell the port authority that he’s lost his mind. They’ll agree to that, certainly, once they see what’s happened, and how he is. And then—”

  “Then what, Tasav?” Pekev looked over at him. “Then we choose a new Head of House, right? The eldest?”

  All were still for a moment. That would have been Pekev. He was closest by blood to Nomikh, and eldest of the close blood relatives.

  Alieth stared at him. “And letyou decide what happens to us all? You, the Good Son? You’d do as your father did. And hold to yourself the decision of what to do with the money—”

  Everything got still again as this new thought went through all minds. What was to guarantee that a new Head of House would be any more sane, one way or another, than the old one? What was to keep a new Head of House from keeping everything for himself, or herself, and turning all the others out, or doling out pittances to them that would keep them working on the ship, as wage slaves, for the rest of their lives? Who could trust any agreement any one of them would make, with control of such massive amounts of money at stake? Heads turned, and T’Vei was horrified to see the family looking at one another with terrible suspicion and assessment. Who might be managed, if they became Head of House? Who could be bullied or swayed into managing the money the way each ofthem would prefer it?

  Who would be permitted to live—?

  “No,” T’Vei whispered, horrified. “Listen, all of you, you will kill the House—”

  “The House is dead,” Alieth said, very low. “It died the moment Pekev brought that rock on board.”

  “It is not dead yet,” T’Vei said. “It lives still. If you will all see reason!” She glanced at Pekev, more terrified for his life, now, than she had been for Nomikh’s. “We can appeal to the port authority against Nomikh’s decision, as soon as we dock there, and get a ruling dividing it equally—”

  “After bribing the authority with how much?” Alieth said. “How much of what you bled and starved and sweated twenty years for? Why should they have so much as a copper cashsrikh of it? What have they done to earn it? Oh, no, darling sister-in-House. Indeed not. Let us settle family matters in the family, as has been done among our people these many years—”

  A chair scraped back. “Tasav—” T’Vei said, more horrified than ever, for he was making for the door, and in his hand was the pilot’s sidearm that he never, never drew.

  Tasav paused in the doorway. “We need not go straight to Ashif,” he said. “There is time to work matters out beforehand, to everyone’s satisfaction…and make sure all the stories match.”

  T’Vei’s heart raced in her. “Tasav, this is madness,” she cried.“All of it is madness. Nomikh has the computer keywords for navigation and helm! You cannot manage the ship without them…and the Head passes them to the computer through dermo-neural link—”

  “So he does,” Tasav said softly. “I think he can be encouraged to pass them on.”

  And he went out into the corridor.

  Alieth got up, knocking her seat over in her haste, and went after him.

  T’Vei looked at Pekev in utter horror.This is the end for us, she said down the bond.Did we think by coming out here into the dark that we were getting away from the madness of the world? We have brought the madness into the night with us —or else we pretend we have it not, like Alieth—but it is here. It ishere—

  They heard the first shot, then. Everyone in the room scrambled to their feet. Some ran one way, some another: but the end was the same for all of them. For T’Vei and Pekev, trying to stop Tasav, the quick bolt through the body or the head that killed their bond in fire: for Tasav, the answering bolt from Nomikh’s room that caught him, and several of the others, as they forced his door: for Nomikh himself, floundering in madness and old mourning grief, a last bolt that put out his pain forever: for the few remaining adult members of the family, and the children, crouching terrified in the living quarters, a long, long wait, while the ship went its way, the computer locked on course and unlockable save by passwords that no one alive now knew.

  And in one small room, a drifting over a misty landscape, a passage through a door—and one stands again before a robed priestess who gestures forth the sub-priestesses carrying objects of ancient rarity and virtue. They give her the spear, and its point runs green with blood: she brandishes it in the dawn. They give her the horn, graven about with dire runes and prophecies of death to her enemies: she lifts it, and winds it, and the walls of the mountain give back the terrible sound as if it were the cry of an avenging army encamped below. And they give her the most terrible weapon, the helm that teaches one to read the dreams of men, for by learning their dreams and turning them against them may they most easily be crushed. She fits it on her head, and it fits perfectly, and she knows her foes vanquished already.

  Take these,the priestess says,and go forth to victory. And all is swallowed up in a great burst of white fire as the Sun comes up, victorious and terrible, above Seleya—

  The ship came into Ashif Station on the wrong vector, at the wrong angle. It answered no hails: its engines were running at full, so that it was accelerating at a deadly seven g’s all the way in from the time it was first sensed. There was no way to catch it, no way to stop it. A particle beam targeted it at last, and blew the ship into pieces that rained down, around, and sometimes onto Ashif Station for hours. It had not been carrying any cargo that could be detected: its holds seem to have been empty. The assumption was that the ship had been pirated, or more likely taken by terrorists, and used in an attempt to destroy the station. Mahn’heh Protectorate, which owned the station, accused Lalirh of having engineered the attack, and shortly thereafter destroyed one of Lalirh’s orbital stations in the asteroids with something new: a weapon that seemed to involve the combination of matter and antimatter. There was general alarm about this, since it seemed likely that now someone with the proper technology, and the access to the necessary materials, could actually destroy Vulcan. But in the several wars that started as a result of Mahn’heh and Lalirh destroying one another’s populations with neutron bombs, this possibility seemed a little too remote to waste much time considering.

  Far out in the asteroid belt, the day theRasha was blown up, a small storm of glitter rained past Ashif and off into the endless night: odd small micro-meteorites, crystallized carbon of some sort, very hard, very tiny, and mixed up with other meteors. The station’s defensive field vaporized them in a shower of little sparks as they hit it, and the tourists from Vulcan pointed up through the dome and talked about the beauties of the universe.

  Far away, T’Khut looked over the edge of the world at the new fires burning on Vulcan…possibly some of the last ones.

  Enterprise: Six

  FROM: Curious

  DATE: 7466.31

  SUBJECT: Oh really?

  A lot of people have been making some pretty definite statements in here, the past couple of days, about the Vulcan situation and what they think should be done about it. It’s easy to do. But none of us are actually sitting in the hot seat: or none of us except the captain. A lot of people in here are acting as if he’s supposed to save this situation somehow. Well, how? No one has made a single suggestion that could actually be implemented. If you people are going to insist that the situation can in some miraculous way be saved from disaster by one man, the least you can do is share your wisdom with us as to how. Otherwise, you might have the grace to keep your traps shut.

  I await with interest what will probably be an echoing silence.

  Best, C

  “Now what do you make of that?” Jim said to McCoy. They were in his quarters the next morning, ready to beam down to the Hall of the Voice.

  McCoy studied the screen. “Piquant,” he said. “Very much to the point. A little rude. I wish I’d left it.”
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  Jim looked at him sidewise. “I thought maybe you had.”

  McCoy laughed. “Not me. My spelling gives me away every time.”

  “Why don’t you use the spelling checker? There’s one built into the system.”

  “I don’t like the way it punctuates.”

  Jim chuckled. “Well, look at the answers. You want rude—!” He leaned over the keyboard and started the replies scrolling down the screen.

  “Goodness,” McCoy said, staring at it, fascinated. “Temper, temper!” Once he laughed out loud: several times he frowned very severely. But mostly he shook his head. “Generally,” he said, “they sound a little sheepish. ‘Curious’ caught them out.”

  “But look at this one, Bones.” Jim scrolled ahead a few pages more. “Here we are.”

  FROM: Llarian

  DATE: 7466.35

  SUBJECT: Re: Oh, really?

  Those who know others are intelligent:

  Those who know themselves have insight.

  Those who master others have force:

  Those who master themselves have strength.

  Through nonaction nothing is left undone.

  L.

  Bones was nodding. “How about that,” he said. “We have a Taoist on board.”

  “I was wondering why it sounded familiar. TheTao Teh Ching ?”

  “That’s right.” Bones looked at the message. “What do you think of the advice?”

  “It sounds good.” Jim smiled slightly. “It always sounds good. I remember thinking how sensible a book it was, the first time I read it at Academy. But it’s always harder to practice the advice in the field.”

  “I guess you just have to keep practicing,” McCoy said. He scrolled through the rest of the messages, then cleared the screen and straightened up. “I wonder who ‘Llarian’ is.”

  “That thought has crossed my mind as well.” Jim shrugged. “I would love to know what he, she, it, means. But it’s not something I can find out.”

  “Maybe someone else could…. ”

  Jim looked at McCoy in shock. “Bones! And you’re usually so careful about confidentiality.” He shook his head. “Let it be. Whoever Llarian is, I appreciate the advice. Meanwhile…” He glanced at his chrono. “Where’s Spock?”

  The door signal chimed right then. “Come in,” Jim said.

  Spock entered. “Captain,” he said, “are you ready? The doctor will be needed in the Hall shortly.”

  “Just about. Off,” Jim said to the computer. “You set, Bones?”

  “Ouch,” McCoy said. “I assume that pun was meant to make me feel better, or else accidental. I amnever set to talk in front of large groups of people, especially not while sober.” He made a rueful expression. “But I’m ready to go.”

  “Do your deep breathing,” Spock suggested gently.

  McCoy made a friendly suggestion to Spock that did not involve the Vulcan’s respiratory apparatus.

  They headed out into the hall together. “I must admit,” McCoy said quietly as they went, “I still can’t get over your little tête-à-tête with T’Pring yesterday. And the sheer coldness of the woman. I had trouble believing what you told me she said the last time, when she challenged…but this was a hundred times worse.”

  Spock nodded. “She is implacable, Doctor. Even if there were something that she could do to stop this situation, she would not do it. And truly,” he added, “I much doubt that anything she might do would make any difference, at this point. This context of bigotry and exclusion is already finding too secure a foothold in too many Vulcans’ minds: they would overrule any attempted suspension of the proceedings.”

  Jim thought back to that cold, lovely face and the words Spock had later reported:You have become something of a legend among our people, Spock…. I became aware that I did not desire to be the consort of a legend. And the word she and her family had given at the original binding, and any concern about Spock’s feelings—not that a Vulcan would have admitted them, granted—went out the window at that point. All she needed was someone to challenge Spock when the time came: and Stonn, who had desired her then, had been willing.

  If you lost, then Stonn would be mine. If you won, then you would release me because I had challenged, and still there would be Stonn. And if your captain won, then he would release me because he did not want me, and Stonn would still be there….

  The sheer coldness of it. And the logic. That so sharp a mind should also be so cruel….

  I think I would like a little talk with this lady myself.

  But it would have to wait. They headed into the transporter room and climbed up onto the pads. “You have the coordinates?” Jim said to the transporter technician, Mr. Schneider. And then added to McCoy, “Why, Bones, you’re sweating.”

  “Your turn will come,” McCoy muttered.

  “Number six,” said Shath.

  McCoy stepped up there with great calm. Considering that those who spoke before him had been vehemently anti-Federation, and the audience was (if Jim judged the mood correctly) in a very satisfied mood, Jim thought he was being even calmer than he needed to be. McCoy stood in the shafts of downpouring sunlight, glanced up at them for a moment, and then looked once right around the room, as if taking the measure of it. His stance was remarkably erect for a man who habitually slouched a bit. But Jim looked at this and wondered if he was not seeing Vulcan body language, rather than Terran. Bones was shrewder than people usually thought.

  “My name is Leonard Edward McCoy,” he said, and the focusing field caught his voice and threw it out to the back of the room, all around: but there was still something about the tenor of the voice itself that hinted that the focusing field might be doing slightly less work than usual. “I hold the rank of Commander in the Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets: my position is Chief Medical Officer of theStarship Enterprise. And as regards the question of the secession of Vulcan, my position is, hell no!”

  There were chuckles from some of the humans present, a bemused stirring from some of the Vulcans. “I hope you will pardon me the momentary excursion into my mother idiom,” McCoy said: “perhaps I should more correctly say, with Surak,ekhwe’na meh kroykah tevesh.” This time there were murmurs from the Vulcans, and they were of approval. The translator did not render the words—Jim assumed they were in classical or “Old” Vulcan, which the translator was not equipped to handle.

  When the crowd settled a bit, McCoy went on in very precise Vulcan, and this caused a minor stir as well, which died down eventually. “I want to keep this on a friendly basis,” he said, “despite the fact that some of you are feeling decidedly unfriendly toward Terrans. Nor am I here to lecture you. Others here have been doing that a lot better than I could.” There was a dry sound to his voice for a moment. “I am here to ask you, as a planet, not to pull out of what has been a very old and successful affiliation for everyone involved.”

  He paused for a moment, looking around. “It’s kind of sobering to be looked at by an entire planet,” he said. “You people have hidden the cameras perfectly: I appreciate the effect. Anyway. Some people here have spoken about the mode of their comments—scientific or ethical or whatever. Well, for my own part I’m not sure there’s a difference, or should be. Science is barren without ethics, and ethics has very little to use itself on without science. But I’ll speak of what I know, if I may. The medical mode, I suppose we might as well call it. I understand that Surak valued the healer’s art highly, so I suspect there’s some precedent.”

  Bones walked around the stage for a moment, his hands clasped behind him. Jim had to smile: he had seen this particular pacing mannerism many times, while McCoy tried to figure out the best way to deliver some piece of good or bad news. “The first thing I would want to say to you,” he said, “is that it is illogical to rewound what is already healing. Or as my mother used to say, ‘If you don’t stop picking at it, it’ll never get better.’ ” A soft sound of amusement ran around the hall.

  “Most o
f the agreements going these days between Terrans, or the Federation, and Vulcan, are in the nature of band-aids. One of our species hurt the other, somewhere: the other said, ‘Sorry,’ and put a bandage on it. It’s the usual thing you see when you see two children playing together. At first they hurt one another a lot—”

  “Our species is hardly a child compared with yours,” said someone in the audience, a sharp angry voice.

  “Well,” McCoy said, turning that way and searching the audience with his eyes, “that depends on how you reckon it. Certainly your species was making bombs and guns and missiles and such while ours was still mostly playing with sharpened sticks and stone knives, or in a few favored areas, bronze. But I’m not sure that any particular virtue accrues to that distinction. And even if wehave been kicking one another’s shins for less time than you, it’s still true that era for era, Terra’s people have kicked a lot fewer shinsper capita than Vulcan has. You have several times almost reduced your population to below the viability level: it took a miracle to save you. We may be a bloody, barbaric lot of savages, but we never wentthat far. Even when we first came up with atomics.” He chuckled softly at the slight silence that fell. “Yes,” he said, “you saw that article in the data nets last night, too, some of you. Whereis Selv?” he said, peering amiably around the audience. “You in here?”

  “Here,” said the sharp voice.