by Diane Duane
“If you will tell me such jokes, in such an accent,” came the reply, “the fault is yours, not mine!”
“Now what’s wrong with my accent?” McCoy said, as Jim came into the diagnostic bay. The doctor was looking up at the readouts, and on a mobile bed below them lay Gurrhim tr’Siedhri, propped up about halfway and clutching his abdomen. For a man who had so nearly expired only the day before, he looked in surprisingly good shape. He was still rather pale for a Romulan who had been more on the swarthy side normally, but his eye was bright as he saw Jim come in, and if Gurrhim wasn’t moving easily, he was at least moving.
“Praetor,” Jim said. “How are you feeling today?”
Gurrhim gave him a wry look. “I am Praetor of nowhere and nothing now, Captain, so you had best omit the title. But otherwise, I feel far better than I did when they shot me. I may now say that being shot is greatly overrated, and an experience I could safely have forgone.” He shifted a little on the bed, and winced. “But then, for the moment, so was death, for which I owe the doctor here a debt.”
Jim leaned on the bed opposite and looked up at the readings. He was no expert, but they looked fairly steady. “All part of our basic service package,” McCoy was saying idly, as he studied the readings himself. “But you won’t be needing my attentions for that much longer, Gurrhim. I want to patch in a second layer of autoplast venal grafts tomorrow, but I can do that while you’re conscious, and you can watch and critique my style.”
Gurrhim shook his head in wry wonder. “You do a thing as routine with which our people seem to have great difficulty. I wish we could establish some kind of medical exchange program.”
“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” McCoy said, “assuming our respective governments can get the details sorted out. But that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“You may be right,” Gurrhim said, looking over at Kirk. “Captain, I must thank you first for giving me refuge. You would not have been blamed to have refused delivery on so abruptly delivered a package.”
“Well,” Jim said, “that kind of behavior wouldn’t normally be our way. And anyway, the package came with unusual, shall we say, wrappings.”
Gurrhim got a sly look. “That surprises me most, that the little trinket I gave to another has now come into your hands. You will keep it safe, I hope.”
“My chief engineer has it now,” Jim said, “and from what he’s said to me about it so far, I think it couldn’t be in better hands. When everything calms down again, we’ll return it to you. I take it that the doctor has filled you in on the circumstances under which you arrived.”
“I am glad he did,” Gurrhim said, “for I remember little of it. One moment I was reading in my quarters. After that—” He raised his hands to shrug, and then winced again. “—very little.”
“Standard partial global amnesia,” McCoy said. “Disruptor shock has a hydrostatic-shock element as well. The abrupt increase in intracranial pressure alone knocks most people out as soon as the beam-field hits. And you can’t remember after the fact what you weren’t conscious enough to have a memory of in the first place. I’d say it’s a recollection you wouldn’t much miss.”
“There are flickers of other memory, just disjointed scenes, from later on,” Gurrhim said. “I hurt most abominably. I fear I used bad language, and that to the young men who saved me.”
“One of them, by Rihannsu reckoning, is now where he understands what you were going through even better than you do,” McCoy said, “and the other’s long since forgiven you.” He looked over at Jim. “Young tr’AAnikh’s asleep now. He was worrying himself into a decline, so I took it on myself to slip him a mickey.”
Gurrhim tilted his head to one side as if listening to something. “You gave him a rodent?”
Jim smiled.
“I stuck an intradermal translator in the Praetor this morning,” McCoy said. “Sorry, Gurrhim, I just can’t stop calling you that. But, Jim, we’ve got to get the translator system’s damn idiom-handler looked at again. Every time we think we have it pretty much running right, something new pops up.”
“I’ll speak to Uhura,” Jim said. “She mentioned it to me herself, but she’s got a lot to do right now. Gurrhim, you’re our guest for the time being, and until our situation clarifies itself after our next stop—”
“Augo?” Gurrhim said.
Jim stared at him.
“It would seem the logical next step,” Gurrhim said, “judging only by what the doctor has told me, that we are at Artaleirh, where we have won a battle with a small but significant segment of Grand Fleet. But even after Augo, Captain, my personal resources are limited enough by circumstance that it would not benefit me to try to go home. Not just yet.”
“They’d just try to kill you again,” McCoy said, “and this time, they’d probably manage it.”
“Even if ‘they’ did not desire to simply kill me,” Gurrhim said, “whoever ‘they’ were—I would guess that one or more of the Three are somewhere behind the attempt—then there would also be the possibility of being arrested and tried for treason.”
“Which treason in particular?” Jim said.
“Well, escaping from my assassination,” Gurrhim said, and smiled slightly. “To a Federation vessel, yet. And by now ‘they’ would have had time to assemble plenty of evidence of whatever treachery it was that impelled them to try to assassinate me. Probably I will already have been arraigned for such in my absence on ch’Rihan. The end of such a proceeding would be for the government to seize my assets and properties on ch’Havran and elsewhere, and take control of my various corporations. But then, on the other hand, if the government assumed that I was dead…” He trailed off, thinking, and a dry, amused look started to spread across his face.
“Is this preferable?” Jim said.
Gurrhim shook his head. “Well, were I alive and attainted a traitor, and my name written and burned, then the government would simply seize all my properties and funds. I estimate that such an outcome would harm the revolution that is to come, which I know in advance my family will support. We have spoken of it often enough in private. But if I am dead, then control of my chattels passes to my children. And my son and daughters, while naturally having to seem to acquiesce with the Imperium’s demands as to what needed to be done with them afterward, would have their own opinions about how to handle such demands. We feel strongly about our holdings; they were hard-won, in the face of much interference from that same government. In particular, even if the Empire might eventually become frustrated with my children’s noncooperation and seize one or another industry from us, they would hardly know how to run it right off, and during that transitional time, many things might go missing, or otherwise astray.” He raised his eyebrows, an innocent look. “Funds. Physical plant.”
“Might be smarter, then,” McCoy said, “if you stayed dead, for a while, for tax purposes.”
Gurrhim stared at McCoy, then guffawed, and then stopped and groaned and clutched at his gut. McCoy raised his eyebrows, reached behind him, and handed Gurrhim a pillow. Wincing, Gurrhim hugged it to his abdomen, and then, properly splinted, began to laugh again, more circumspectly. “True it is,” he said, gasping slightly, “that medicine is the cruelest art. But you cut to the heart of the matter, Doctor, as might be expected.” Now it was McCoy’s turn to groan. “Let me, then, remain dead, by all means. For the time being, at least.”
“Your family…” Jim said.
Gurrhim’s face went grim. “I dislike bringing such suffering on them,” he said. “But I must balance that against what joy they will feel, once all this is over, to find that I live after all. And if accident so falls out that, after Augo or whatever follows it, I die at last, well, then no more harm is done. They are most unlikely to learn that I died twice.”
Jim thought about it for a moment, glanced at McCoy. McCoy nodded. “All right,” Jim said.
He went over to McCoy’s desk and hit the comms button on his desk monitor. “Br
idge. Commander Uhura.”
She looked at him from the screen. “Uhura here.”
“Commander,” Jim said, “send a message in the clear to Bloodwing, to Ael’s attention. Regret to inform you, and so on and so forth, that the Praetor Gurrhim tr’Siedhri has unfortunately died of his injuries.”
“He has?” But then, as she studied Jim’s expression, a very small smile appeared on Uhura’s face. “I mean, of course he has, Captain.” And the smile vanished again. “Such a shame.”
“No incoming communications from any source are to be directed to the Praetor without clearing them through me first,” Jim said. “Nor is he at any time to be referred to as if he’s still breathing. Meanwhile, pass this to security and flag it for Mr. Spock’s attention: sickbay is to be off limits to all Bloodwing personnel but Ael until further notice.”
“Yes, Captain,” Uhura said, though looking somewhat bemused. She made a note on her padd. “Shall I have guards posted?”
Jim threw a glance at McCoy. McCoy shrugged. “I was going to move him out of the IC area this afternoon anyway, and into one of the private rooms. But then again, we’re having a gathering tonight, aren’t we?”
Jim nodded. “Hold off on the guards until guests start boarding the ship this evening,” he said to Uhura. “Then post them only inside sickbay. And they’re not to be obviously identifiable as security.” He glanced at McCoy again.
McCoy raised his eyebrows. “I can always use some ‘extra staff’ to haul things around. We can put them in medical uniforms for the time being.”
Jim glanced at Uhura. “I’ll take care of it, Captain,” she said, turning to her station to begin instructing the computer accordingly. The screen went blank.
Jim nodded and turned away. Ael’s comment, some time back, about being none too certain about all of her crew—not even now—was on his mind. Though I wonder exactly where her suspicions lie.
“You’ll want to leak some ‘evidence’ to support the claim,” McCoy said thoughtfully. “I can do you some images of what Gurrhim looked like when he came in, and process them a little, but not so most people would notice.” He grinned. “We can even do his autopsy.”
“I will be glad to help you,” Gurrhim said.
“You will not,” McCoy said. “You may have a rubber brain inside a cast-iron skull, Praetor, but even your people aren’t immune to psychological damage from this kind of image. You just lie there and I’ll find you some other kind of entertainment. Something to read, perhaps.”
“I cannot think when I would have last had time to simply enjoy some reading,” Gurrhim said, his face suddenly acquiring a nearly angelic look of delight that sorted oddly with the lines of calculation and deviousness in that face. “Perhaps there is something to be said for being shot after all.”
“Praetor,” Jim said. “Yes, I know, don’t say it, I don’t care. I have a feeling that if things go well, you’ll be entitled to the title once again someday. I just want to ask you one thing before I go, though I do want to talk to you more about this some other time, when you’re feeling better. Right now I have little other opinion to go on. Ael’s I’ve heard plenty of. I’ve heard some of Veilt’s, and I hope to hear some more. But your opinion would interest me. Not as a Senator or Praetor, but as a Rihannsu citizen. When this revolution starts, are people going to support it?”
The blissful look faded somewhat. “Captain,” Gurrhim said, “were I so talented a prophet as you seem to think me, I would be many times richer than I am, by mere gambling, rather than having had to work so hard for so long. This matter is complex. Our people are oppressed, overtaxed, overgoverned by a structure that once was far looser and more forgiving, but has been tightening on them little by little, like a noose. That fact, hardly any of them would deny. But the oppression has been our oppression, if you follow me. It is native. Some there are who will see your involvement and instantly assume that what seems a revolution from within is actually being controlled from without, by our old enemies. Or those whom we have been taught are our enemies—for it’s been a century and more since the Empire and the Federation have been involved in anything more but the merest border skirmishes—an old war gone cold, but ‘warmed up’ at intervals when the government needs it for something, such as tightening that noose a little further.”
Gurrhim frowned. “The Klingons are another story. We have warred with them more or less constantly over the last three decades, and many people see the Empire as it’s presently constituted as being the only realistic defense against being overrun by the larger Empire next door. If the government was wise, it would invoke that fear as a reason against the revolution to come. But is it wise enough to do that? There lies a danger for you, if it does. And there is always an additional unpredictable factor in such a situation: the Fleet. Finally, the armed forces are the ones who will decide what happens to any revolution. The government itself has no guns; it depends on Grand Fleet and the ground security forces to do its bidding. Once upon a time it held them bound to it by mnhei’sahe, the desire to keep the given word to something that was worth serving. Now those bonds are weaker, or are constructed of money or power or fear, rather than virtue. Will they hold under stress?” Gurrhim started to “shrug” with his hands again, then thought better of it and dropped them.
“So,” Jim said, “you genuinely don’t know.”
“I think perception will matter a great deal,” Gurrhim said. “I think the actual conduct of the war will matter a great deal. It must do no more harm to Rihannsu people and Rihannsu property than it absolutely must. It must leave Rihannsu sovereignty intact. And it must not take too long, lest it start to recall memories of all those years of border skirmishes, and become a ‘normal thing.’ If that happens, we are all doomed: the Rihannsu and the Federation together, and maybe even the Klingons.”
Jim nodded slowly.
“But beyond that,” Gurrhim said, “there is a chance. If you take the opportunities offered you, and if your ally with the Sword does not back away.”
That remark surprised Jim. “The favorite Rihannsu tactic,” Gurrhim said, “is to hit and run. But comes a time when you cannot run, when you must stand. The Commander-General has had little practice at that. To do her justice, because of what the Fleet did to her, on the orders of their political masters, she has had little opportunity. Now, though, she must exercise that virtue. I hope she has it to use.”
Kirk nodded again. “Jim,” McCoy said, glancing up at the vital signs monitors, “you go on now. I want this man to get some rest.”
“Right,” Jim said. “Gurrhim—thank you.”
The Praetor nodded and put his head wearily back down on the pillow.
Jim left sickbay and headed for engineering, deep in thought. When he arrived the place was in its usual state of seeming busy even though nothing in particular was going on, with crew hastening in all directions. Scotty liked to see his people on the hop, and Jim knew that the engineers humored him in this regard. They also seemed to get a lot of work done in this mode, so everybody was happy.
He paused just inside the doors to look around, and caught the sound he had been listening for: the Scots burr mingled with a sound like a sporadically shaken wind chime. Jim followed the sounds into the center of engineering, where, over by one of the larger control panels, a design table had been set up. There the chief engineer and what appeared to be a giant twelve-legged glass spider were examining the holographic projection, rotating gently in the air, of a star’s limb and corona, with a superimposed spectrogram—a long rainbow band with dark lines through it here and there.
“It’s a bonny setup,” Scotty was saying to K’s’t’lk. “Just look at those iron lines. You could use them for crowbars.”
Jim raised his eyebrows as he came up behind the two of them, looking up at the spectrogram. “I take it this is a good thing?”
“Oh, good morning, Captain,” Scotty said. “Aye, it is.”
“What are we looking at?”<
br />
“This is 553 Trianguli,” K’s’t’lk said. “It’s a star we’ll be passing on our way to Augo. Well, not precisely passing, but we’d like to make a stop there.”
“What for?”
“Remember the little problem you tossed me last night?” Scotty said.
“Oh, Scotty!” Jim said. “You’ve found a lake to walk on already?”
Scott’s smile had that slightly self-satisfied tinge that had often made Jim feel happier than any number of citations from technical journals.
“In a manner of speaking,” Scotty said. He stood back from the holographic representation of the star’s corona and shifted to another display, a long strip of spectrum interrupted by thin lines all down its length, and most markedly by two of them, like railroad tracks, right in its middle. “There are the Fe IX lines, Captain. You need strong ones if you’re thinking of seeding a star. Robust lines mean the coronal plasma’s of the right minimum density, which in turn is a diagnostic that tells you the star’s core is stable.”
“After 15 Trianguli,” Jim said, “the star’s stability would definitely be on my mind.” He gave K’s’t’lk an amused look; she jangled gently, embarrassed.
“Well, we did the best we could with what we had,” Scotty said. “And that on short notice. But the situation’s much more clear-cut here. And we’ve time to prepare.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Scott,” Jim said, “but why exactly do we need to seed 553 Trianguli?”
“So that we can experiment with how to stop the process at a distance,” K’s’t’lk said.
Jim blinked. “You really have a method that doesn’t involve another ship running into a star’s corona and destroying the one that’s doing the seeding?”
“Yes,” K’s’t’lk said.
Jim sat down. “I take it this isn’t something that you two did since yesterday.”
“Captain,” Scotty said, “we’re engineers, not miracle workers.”
Jim was tempted to laugh at them, and restrained himself. “Go on, tell me what we’re going to have to do.”