Burning Dreams

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  Startled, the guard recoiled before it could deactivate the force field, nearly dropping the container of food it was holding. It hissed, its nearly two-foot-long forked tongue darting in and out, but did not retreat further. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Pike made the gesture again.

  The guard hissed again, and pulled out what looked like a weapon before deactivating the force field just long enough to thrust the food container inside before it moved off. Pike waited until he could no longer hear its heavy tread on the deck plates before picking up the food container and tentatively having a look inside. If whatever they’d decided to feed him was still alive—

  It wasn’t. It was some sort of food dispenser ration with a vaguely grain-like taste—probably the same thing they fed the marsupials, he thought. When the first mouthful went down without protest, he realized he was starving and started on the rest.

  He had barely finished when he heard the heavy tread again. There were two of them this time.

  The one just behind the guard was larger and more gaudily decorated, both in terms of its scales and in the trappings it wore. Someone in charge, Pike decided. Uneasily, he realized it looked familiar. Was it the same one that had devoured D’zekeo? Its sides still bulged slightly. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be hungry again for a few more days.

  The larger alien and the guard were deep in conversation, their gestures and head nods happening so quickly Pike couldn’t follow. Something else was happening, too, a vague buzzing in his head that reminded him of the Talosians. Was there a telepathic component to the aliens’ language as well? He forced himself to focus on looking for gestures he might remember from the translator, but the conversation was as brief as it had been rapid. He suddenly found himself under scrutiny.

  The larger alien had large golden eyes, actually quite beautiful, with vertically slitted irises, and one of them—as with most snakes, its eyes were on either side of its head rather than forward—was studying him. Pike steadied himself and made the “hello” gesture once more.

  The larger alien wasn’t as startled as the guard had been. Only the depthless black pupil expanded, then narrowed, then returned to normal before the creature gestured to the guard to turn off the force field.

  What happened next was so familiar Pike almost burst out laughing.

  The guard balked. Pike could hear the conversation behind the gestures.

  “Sir, are you sure it’s safe? What if the creature tries something? What if—?”

  “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Ensign? That’s why you’ve got a sidearm. Shut down the force field, Ensign. That’s an order!”

  Once the force field was down, the larger alien made an almost human gesture that said “Come with me.”

  Falling into step behind her (yes, her, something about the accoutrements said “female”), the guard falling into step behind him, Pike obeyed.

  18

  The Kanes Homeworld

  “Wot ahr yu?” the Director purred, flicking his face gently with one tip of her forked tongue.

  “Human,” Pike replied. He’d worked with one of her scientists to develop the voder. It had its flaws, but it was adequate for small talk. He’d reasoned that since the Kan’ess already had access to Starfleet technology, it was no violation of the Prime Directive.

  Eggshells, was his first thought when the Director released him from the pen and brought him to her quarters. He was thinking of the number of times both in Mojave and on other worlds that he’d watched a snake disjoint its jaw, swallow a bird’s egg whole, use its powerful muscles to crush it, extract its contents, and disgorge the compacted, empty shell.

  Four Starfleet communicators, three tricorders, two phasers, and Ensign Norgay’s universal translator lay spread out on a low table. Three of the communicators were crushed beyond salvage, and there were strange striations on the casings of the tricorders (powerful stomach acids?), but the other instruments were apparently still functional. They’d been ingested with the crewmen the Kan’ess had captured in those early moments on the wilderness world, and subsequently egested, cleaned up, and displayed for Pike’s perusal.

  As he approached the table, intending to pick up the last functioning communicator, the guard who had accompanied him from the pen instinctively reached for his weapon. A rapid gesture from the Director stayed him. Another motion instructed the guard to back off and take his position by the door. Pike memorized both gestures, then realized the Director was focused intently on him.

  Time for the dog and pony show, he thought, sensing that she wanted an explanation for how a species her kind considered food could produce such advanced technology.

  Feeling more than a little foolish—but first contact was first contact, regardless of whether it was acted out in mime—Pike picked up a tricorder and, mindful of the guard’s whereabouts, slowly ran it over several objects in the room, including himself, to register the different readings. As he ran it over the guard (dicing with death, he thought, but at this point what did he have to lose?), he remembered that Spock had been unable to read these creatures, and was not surprised when the tricorder picked up only the molecular structure of the guard’s uniform and weaponry. When he ran it over the Director, whose head was tilted in a gesture of frank curiosity, he was surprised. She gave off a faint reading, and he recorded it.

  Interesting, he thought. She’s not in uniform. The creatures themselves can be read, but something in their military trappings must give off the same kind of sound waves as their ship’s shields and the planet’s. No wonder Spock couldn’t penetrate the “interference”—it wasn’t that they were trying to jam us, just a by-product of their clothing.

  He filed that thought for future reference. Something else was tickling at the back of his mind, and he almost spoke aloud.

  You can stop the illusion now! he thought, but nothing happened. If he’d expected to find himself back on the ship, or standing in front of a Parisian pastry shop, or even back in the Talosian cage (which, compared to his present situation, might almost be a relief) it was not to be.

  Steadying his nerves, he showed the Director the results of the tricorder’s scans, at the same time trying to memorize the difference between her bioscan and the guard’s.

  She studied the readouts and moved her head in the gesture Pike had learned meant “yes” or “I see.” Then she motioned to the guard in a gesture that clearly meant “Wait outside” because, hand still on his weapon and, if Pike was any judge, an expression on his face of pure loathing for the human, he did so.

  On the journey back to the Kanes homeworld, and for the next several days confined in a niche carved out of the native rock, Pike worked with the universal translator and whatever else he could cobble together from the devices given him, to create a voder that, when worn against the Director’s throat, translated vibration into speech. A sensor placed against the aural spot on the side of her head, behind the slitted golden eyes and the venom pit, made it possible for her to hear the human when he spoke. Her expression of wonderment (at least Pike took it to be wonderment, watching her pupils dilate as she discovered the world of hearing for the first time) was almost as priceless as his ability to communicate with more than gestures.

  If he’d had time, he’d have congratulated himself on his ingenuity, though he suspected a Vulcan or an engineer would have been able to knock something together in an afternoon.

  In any event, he and the Director could now communicate, at least a little. And while his repeated attempts to use the same equipment to penetrate the dampening field that prevented human comm from getting in or out of the homeworld had so far been unsuccessful, he continued to try.

  “U-mun,” the Director said now. While, not unexpectedly for a species whose natural vocalizations consisted primarily of hissing, her standard fricatives were outstanding, she was apparently incapable of a number of other sounds, most notably voiceless glottal fricatives. In short, she had a Cockney “aitch,” which was to say none at all.
Nevertheless, Pike was becoming more adept at understanding her.

  Now she was weaving her head in the gesture that meant Come closer to me. Pike almost wished he could pretend he didn’t understand that. Hoping she couldn’t read his squeamishness (he’d had ample opportunity to observe that the Kan’ess could not only stun their prey with the powerful curarelike venom in those six-inch fangs, but they could outdo the largest of Earth’s boa constrictors in crushing the life out of anything smaller than themselves; if he displeased the Director, his life span would be measured in seconds), he rose from where she’d ordered him to sit on the floor at first, and sat on the edge of the long divan where she reclined. She reacted by wrapping her tongue around his wrist like a bull-whip and pulling him closer until he could no longer keep his feet on the floor without actively resisting, and had no choice but to stretch out on the divan and lie beside her. She, in turn, coiled her powerful lower body over his, effectively pinning him in place.

  The patterns of her scales were actually quite beautiful, the contrasting reds and yellows reminding him of the shovel-nose snakes back home. Her skin was cool and dry, not unpleasant to the touch. In contrast, he could feel himself sweating, not only because the room was warmer than was strictly comfortable. She killed D’zekeo, he reminded himself. Ordered the deaths of Norgay, Brandt, and Chisholm, but she personally executed D’zekeo!

  The Director tilted her head, her nearer eye studying him in a series of slow flickers that he’d learned meant Unhappy?

  “Not unhappy, no,” he said, speaking slowly so the aural patch would catch it all. “But not happy.” The rest had to be explained in gestures. Don’t belong here…caged. Free?

  It had taken all his skills to get this far, to get her to understand that he was not just a larger version of the marsupials, not something to be treated like a pet (a step up from being considered lunch, he supposed, but still), but an equal. As she continued to flick his face with her tongue in what, if it wasn’t affection, could certainly pass as a reasonable facsimile, he wondered if he’d gone too far. Or perhaps, he thought, as she pretended not to understand his bid for freedom, he hadn’t gone far enough.

  “It’s obvious they’ve taken the captain to their homeworld,” Spock insisted as Enterprise, having followed the alien ship at a discreet distance away from the wilderness world and toward their home planet, now hung at station-keeping just outside the system.

  Number One sighed inwardly. The briefing was not going well. She’d expected a ruckus from Tyler, but not from Spock.

  “It’s not obvious at all, Mr. Spock. From your report on what happened to the landing party and the fact that there’s no trace of Captain Pike on the wilderness world, what would be obvious is that they’ve made a meal of him and it’s time for us to move on.”

  “If we could get close enough to scan their homeworld—” Spock began. Number One silenced him with a look.

  “You’ve decoded their language?” she demanded.

  “Not entirely. The translator was not designed for a solely gestural language.”

  “But you have enough to be able to communicate with these…creatures?”

  “Face to face? Affirmative. But their comm code is another matter.” Spock worked a toggle on one of the screens in the center of the conference table. “The creatures utilize a hieroglyphic alphabet which could take weeks to decode. However—”

  “Never mind then,” Number One decided, brushing it aside. “You and the computer can play with it at your leisure, but we need another alternative. Mr. Grace? What about the shielding on those ships?”

  “They’re unusual, Number One, but I think I’ve managed to ascertain the mechanism.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s a phased ultrasound wave, too high for us to hear. Because the creatures don’t hear, they’re completely unaware of it. It would be like a human trying to see on an ultraviolet wavelength.”

  “All well and good. Can you penetrate it?”

  “If the frequency were regulated. But it alternates among several subfrequencies, and I haven’t as yet deciphered the pattern. I have worked out a preliminary algorithm. In a few more days—”

  “I’ll give you thirty-six hours,” Number One said. “If you’re successful, we’ll get in as close as we can and scan that planet. If we don’t find Captain Pike, we’re leaving, getting out of range, and contacting Starfleet Command for further orders.” She got up from the table. “Dismissed.”

  The guard didn’t look well, Pike thought.

  He’d had ample opportunity to study a number of the Kan’ess by now, even to learning their name for themselves. If he had to be imprisoned here, he supposed, at least there were a number of ways he might manage to escape.

  The Director was apparently some sort of regional governor. Her function offworld was to lead the hunting parties that supplemented the region’s native food supply (as nearly as Pike could tell, they had no agriculture, but were entirely hunter-gatherers, a reminder to him that not every species developed all of its technologies in parallel). Her function here in her city—a complex of caves and tunnels augmented by some artificial construction, but following the contours of natural rock formations—was apparently to deal with endless bureaucratic decisions.

  The daily parade of petitioners allowed into her presence with their wants and grievances was a treasure trove for Pike. As the Director’s pet, he was eyed with some curiosity whenever a new visitor entered the room, but quickly forgotten once the petitioner began to address the Director. Pike was able to learn more and more of the language, and more and more about Kan’ess society, with each passing day.

  He noted that the Director did not wear the voder except when he and she were alone, as if, while she couldn’t seem to accept that Pike’s species was as intelligent as her own, she nevertheless wanted to hide this clever toy from the eyes of the curious.

  Pike hoped he could work with that, too.

  To assuage his claustrophobia, his sense that he might be trapped here for the rest of his life, he told himself that this was a first-contact mission, that he was a diplomat sent to treat with the Kan’ess, a scientist sent to infiltrate their society and study them, and this was an adventure. Knowing that his life could be snuffed out at any moment only made it more challenging.

  He would continue to impress the Director with his species’ intelligence, and perhaps with the advantages of communicating with his people. He would also learn as much about Kan’ess social structure as he could, in order to find its weaknesses if the first course failed.

  He noted that there were as many different “species” of Kan’ess—distinguishable by the markings on their scales, the shapes of their heads, the length of their fangs—as there were snakes in the Mojave. He wondered if these represented different castes that were forbidden to intermarry. All the guards, for example, had the same markings and came from the same “caste.”

  And this morning this one didn’t look well. His skin seemed dull, and more than once Pike noticed him scratching.

  A reptile’s skin didn’t grow. The guard and all his kind, if they were true reptiles, would have to molt, shed their old skin as they grew larger. That would take time, probably several days. This could work to Pike’s advantage. He took the opportunity—the Director had not yet summoned him to her offices—to “talk” to the guard.

  Well? he gestured. Not-well?

  The guard neither liked nor trusted the human any more than he had the first day. Still, after he’d tilted his head and examined the question from all sides, he did reply. Rubbing his head irritably with one hand, he explained without having to explain. When he was finished, Pike noticed the skin covering his eye was dulled, ready to split away and reveal the new eye. After the midday meal, a new guard Pike had never seen before appeared to relieve the familiar one. And when the Director summoned Pike, he asked her about it.

  “Sssskkinnn,” she repeated the new word he had taught her. “Yesss.” She f
ollowed this with a gesture which, accompanied by that buzzing in the back of his head, suggested to Pike a primitive telepathy (or maybe only his inability to hear it): Not you?

  “No, not me,” Pike answered aloud. “Humans stop growing when they reach adulthood. We don’t need to shed our skin.”

  She watched him in wonderment, not entirely understanding, but ever more intrigued by her new pet. It was then that Pike noted a few rough patches on her usually glistening skin, a slight clouding at the corner of her nearer eye.

  It would be her time soon, he realized, keeping his face and—he hoped—his more obvious thoughts neutral. Still, he suddenly had hope. And a working communicator.

  The new guard clearly wasn’t happy about the fact that Pike still had access to all that working Starfleet equipment scattered around the Director’s office, and he told the Director as much. While they discussed it, Pike for once didn’t watch their dialogue, concentrating instead on swapping out several pieces of the crushed communicators with the working one, secreting everything in his boot as the two Kan’ess hissed and gestured and flicked their tongues at each other heatedly.

  The guard apparently managed to convince the Director, because he came to collect every piece of human equipment he saw lying about, including the empty communicator casing. Pike breathed a sigh of relief when the guard didn’t notice it was empty, and another when the guard’s reluctance to touch anything as ugly as a human spared him a search.

  So he still had enough components to rebuild a working communicator. He might never have an opportunity to use them, but they were there if needed.

  By late afternoon the Director was restless, irritable, off her feed. Pike didn’t mind that last part. The Kan’ess ate a variety of small creatures, all of them live, and having to be in the same room with the Director while she ate was not one of his favorite things to do. But her increasing mood swings, as her old skin started to itch more and more, could either work to his advantage or get him killed.