by David
another. The chairman led him into a smaller
room just off the Central Council chamber,
where Sejanus and a young man Picard did not
recognize were waiting. The Magna Roman
was clearly upset, striding back and forth
impatiently, muttering to himself.
By contrast, the young Tenaran was silent, and
looked to Picard to be almost in a state of
shock. He was sitting in the room's single
chair, a typically light and graceful piece
of Tenaran furniture that looked too
fragile to bear the weight of a grown human.
But the young man who sat in it was big-boned and
heavily muscled, and the chair held up under him
quite well.
"This is Quillen," Melkinat said.
Picard turned his attention to the young man.
Normally Quillen would have been an
impressive physical specimen, but not now.
He was pale and sweating as he chewed on his
lower lip and pressed himself back into the chair.
Melkinat spoke to him soothingly. "This is
Captain Picard, Quillen. From the
Enterprise. You know you can trust him. He's
also from the Federation, just like Captain Sejanus
--from Starfleet."
"We're here to help you," Picard added.
Quillen squirmed in his chair. "But
I've already told you what happened!" He was
whining and almost in tears. "Why can't you just tell
him, and let me go home?"
Melkinat opened his mouth to say something, but
Sejanus stepped forward abruptly and motioned
him to silence. He leaned over Quillen, who
shrank away from him. Sejanus stared at him
until he met the Roman's eyes, and then
Quillen seemed unable to look away.
Sejanus said in a soft voice, "I want
him to hear it from your mouth, Quillen, in your own
words. I want Captain Picard to know what
you experienced."
Quillen began to tremble.
Now Picard stepped forward, and Quillen
turned toward him. Picard could see the terror
in the young man's face, and he, too, spoke
softly to him. "You may leave if you wish,
Quillen. I'd like to hear your story from you.
Captain Sejanus thinks I should, and I
trust his judgment, but I've no wish to cause
you pain."
Quillen relaxed slightly. "This-thank
you, Captain. I'll try, for the sake of my
world." He took a deep breath, managed
to stop himself from shaking, and began to tell his
tale.
Quillen was a wood collector. In the
communal economy of Tenaran village
life, a few of the strongest young men were
assigned the task of gathering the wood that the
village needed for cooking and, in the
colder weather, for heating. Much of what
Quillen collected in the nearby forest was
deadfall, which he carried back to the village
on his shoulders. When the deadfall wasn't
sufficient, he would search out old or dying or
diseased trees and chop or saw them down. These,
too, he would carry--or sometimes drag--back
home.
He was an orphan, and was by nature a
solitary person with no real friends, so this
life-style suited him. Fond as he was of his
village and most of his fellow villagers,
Quillen loved roaming alone through the dappled
sunlight of the forest most of all. He loved the
sound of his ax and his saws as they cut through the
trunks of trees, and he loved the smell of
fresh-cut wood. He derived great
pleasure from working his own powerful muscles as
he carried great loads of wood home on his
shoulders.
He liked the animals of the forest, large and
small, and with the years they had grown
to recognize him and no longer fled.
"Sometimes," he said proudly to Picard, "they
even stand around and watch me work. They're really
interested, you see?"
Picard nodded. "I spent much time in the
woods myself when I was young, Quillen. I
understand your love for them." He thought of the
holodeck program he had established
to recreate an evergreen forest on the slopes
of the Alps. "I find it can be a refuge from the
complexities of dealing with other people."
The young Tenaran nodded vigorously. "Oh,
yes, Captain!" A bit shamefacedly he
added, "In fact, sometimes I put off going
home for as long as I can, so that maybe it'll
be late in the day and everyone in the village will
be too tired to want to talk a lot to me.
That's what happened that day. It was late when
I got back. Too late ..." He began
to shake again.
It took some gentle prodding by Picard before
Quillen was able to continue.
On his way home, Quillen often chose a
pathway that took him up a small hill in the
forest. The hilltop was bare because of a recent
lightning-caused fire. If his load was a
heavy one, he would circle the hill instead, but
he liked standing atop it and looking out
over the sea of treetops, undulating over
hills and ridges like the waves of a real sea
and stretching away to the horizon in all
directions. Here and there, he could see clearings
containing villages like his own. Last winter, the
hilltop had been covered by a thin layer of
frost that had crackled beneath his feet, and a few
bushes that had survived the forest fire had been
covered by ice, which glowed red in the setting sun.
He had been able to see smoke rising from
chimneys to the south, marking his village.
But this spring evening, he had seen something
different, something at first puzzling and then
terrifying.
"Things flying around in the air over my
village," he whispered. "At first I thought
they were some strange kind of bird, but then I
realized they looked a little bit like the flying
machines that sometimes come to pick up the saavta
members to take them to meetings at the
regional capital. But there's usually only
two or three of those, and this time there were a
half-dozen. And they weren't landing. They were
flying around in circles over the village. And
then ..." Tears began running down his
cheeks.
And then white-hot beams la nced down from beneath
the circling vehicles, and wherever the beams
touched the ground, flames erupted. The
vehicles were silent, the beams were silent, but
even from that distance Quillen could hear the whoosh
of the sudden fires, and the crackling of burning
wood, and he thought he could hear human
voices shouting and screaming.
Too shocked to think of the danger to himself,
Quillen dropped his load of wood and his ax
and saws and ran down the hill toward his
village. His only thought was to save his fellow
villag
ers.
Quillen ran along the forest track in the
dimming light. He was blinded by tears, but his
feet knew the way. Suddenly he felt the
heat of a fire ahead and saw its glow shimmering
through his tears. He stopped running and knuckled
his eyes clear. The forest ahead of him was
burning, blocking the path.
But he knew the woods here intimately,
knew virtually every tree and bush, every gully,
every creek, every mound of dirt. He left the
trail and slipped through the forest, making
his way around the fire and toward the village
clearing by another route. It was that that saved his
life.
Had he been able to stick to the trail,
Quillen would have emerged into the clearing in plain
sight, and then he would have faced the same fate
as his fellow villagers.
Instead, he was still hidden in the trees at the
edge of the clearing, disguised by rapidly falling
night and the dancing shadows cast by the huge fire
raging in the center of the clearing.
The small, neat wooden houses were gone.
In their place was an enormous bonfire.
Around the fringes of the fire were the remnants of
those few houses that had not been grouped with the
others. They had been burned separately,
reduced to collapsed piles of smoking
embers, nothing still standing but their stone chimneys.
"But worst of all," Quillen whispered,
"worst of all ..."
His eyes stared into the remembered vision of
horror.
Worst of all were the grotesque figures
dancing around the fire in celebration. Big
creatures, bigger than most men, with animal
faces--pointed ears and terrible fangs
glistening red in the firelight. They were covered
with fur, and their arms and legs ended in heavily
clawed paws.
"And they had tails," Quillen said. "Their
tails kept twitching, sweeping back and forth
over the ground. They reminded me of cats.
Man-size cats. But they were wearing clothing--
uniforms, it looked like to me."
Picard and Sejanus exchanged a glance.
If they had needed more confirmation that the beings
attacking Tenara were M'dok, then here it was.
But Quillen had more to tell them.
Now that he had managed to get himself to this
point in his narrative, he had little trouble
continuing. He seemed compelled to press on with
it, to purge himself of his awful memories and
shift them over to these two strong, capable
offworlders instead.
"I could see a lot of the villagers lying still
on the ground, all over the clearing. They
weren't moving at all. I don't think they were
breathing. A lot more of them were still alive, but
tied up. Some of them were unconscious, and some
were awake, but they looked dazed. They
weren't doing anything--not even struggling to get
free. They had bruises, and some were bleeding from
deep cuts on their backs."
The M'dok were yowling and screeching at each
other. Quillen realized it was their speech. It
sounded like a cat fight, he said, but the M'dok
weren't fighting, and he realized that they were
happy, that they were celebrating their victory.
They were swaggering around the clearing, and every now and
then one of them would stalk over to the bound
Tenarans, inspect them, and then walk away
again looking satisfied.
Some of the M'dok had large chunks of meat
impaled on long metal poles that they were
roasting in the bonfire. Fat dripped from the
meat and sizzled in the hot coals. When the
meat was adequately charred, the M'dok drew
it out, grabbed it with their paws, ignoring its
heat, and tore mouthfuls off with their great sharp
teeth.
The village had had a few cows and
goats, used almost exclusively as dairy
animals. It saddened Quillen to see them come
to this pointless end. But then he saw how wrong his
assumption was.
Two of the M'dok, wiping their greasy paws
on their uniforms, walked over to the bound
Tenarans, selected one, and grabbed him by the
arms, one M'dok on each side, and dragged
him away toward the fire. Quillen watched,
more puzzled than alarmed.
One M'dok grabbed the Tenaran's head with a
paw, digging his claws into the man's scalp.
The Tenaran screamed and struggled, but the other
M'dok joined in to help, and the two powerful
M'dok bent the Tenaran's head back further
and further. Quillen closed his eyes, but he
could hear the loud snap as the villager's neck
broke.
When he was able to make himself look again, the
M'dok had both drawn knives and were
butchering the Tenaran as though he were an
animal. Only then did Quillen realize
where the chunks of roasted meat had come from.
Quillen leaned against a tree, dazed and
sickened. Afraid to move at all for fear of
drawing the M'dok's attention, he stayed where
he was until full night had fallen. Then
he backed slowly into the forest and made his way
in the dark, hands outstretched before him.
He stumbled deeper and deeper into the forest,
hoping that the M'dok were making so much noise that
they wouldn't hear the breaking twigs and whipping
branches as he passed through the forest.
Finally he collapsed, emotionally and
physically exhausted, and lay in a daze
until morning.
With first light, Quillen roused himself and
made his way slowly, cautiously back
toward his village.
The M'dok had left, taking the surviving
Tenarans with them. Nothing remained of the
village in which Quillen had grown up but
smoking ruins. Nothing was left of the people he had
known but a few scattered corpses and
half-eaten pieces of roasted meat.
Quillen couldn't bear the sight of his
village. He headed back into the sheltering,
welcoming forest and lost himself there. He couldn't
say how long he had wandered, trying to forget
what he had seen.
The time came when, entirely by accident, he
found himself in another village in a forest
clearing. Later he learned that he had
traveled almost three hundred kilometers from
his starting point.
His first reaction was amazement that this village
was thriving and whole--that it, too, had not been
destroyed and its inhabitants eaten
by catlike monsters. His second reaction was
resentment that this place had survived while his
own home had not. But his third reaction was a
belated recognition of his duty to warn the
Tenaran government about the attack.
Quillen entered the village and asked the first
person he encountered to take him to the village
saavta.
Quillen's voice trailed away.
Picard could tell that the young man's strength was
utterly used up.
"Word finally reached us here in Zhelnogra,"
Melkinat finished the story for Quillen, "and
we had Quillen brought here."
He turned to Picard, and the anguish in his
eyes was almost more than the Enterprise's
captain could bear.
"Now you see why we are in such desperate
need of your assistance."
Before Picard could comment, Sejanus stepped
forward and placed a hand on Melkinat's
shoulder.
"You will have our assistance, Chairman--
everything we can give you. No M'dok will reach
the surface of Tenara again. I pledge my
word."
"Thank you, Captain," Melkinat said.
Picard bit his lip. "Excuse me,
Captain Sejanus, Chairman
Melkinat."
Both men turned to look at him.
"I believe we need some time to consider this
latest development, Captain," Picard
said. "I suggest we pass along Quillen's
story to Starfleet Command, and see if--"
"Am I to understand you do not favor giving us the
weapons we need to defend ourselves?" Melkinat
interrupted.
"I favor finding a peaceful solution to this
problem, Chairman. Quillen's story has
given us another piece to this puzzle. I
suggest we may find its solution somewhat
easier now."
Sejanus frowned. "I see your point,
Picard. But we must prepare the Tenarans for the
worst."
Melkinat shook his head sadly. "For the
worst? What "worst" could there possibly
be?"
Picard said nothing, but somehow he doubted that
the Tenarans understood the ultimate horrors
of war.
William Riker tore his attention away
from the pointing arm itself and looked where the girl was
pointing. She had caught the motion of his eyes,
and she smiled slightly in
self-satisfaction.
"I see," Riker said. "Quite a complex,
by any world's standards."
Gretna Melkinata laughed. "You're
trying to flatter us, Commander. I realize how
small and silly all of this must look, compared
to what you've seen on the more advanced planets
in the Federation."
"Will, please. That's what my friends call
me." He smiled at Gretna, who blushed
slightly and turned her attention back to the
valley below them.
The valley was filling with water. Slowly but
steadily, day after day, centimeter