Dwellers in the Crucible

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  She had thought she'd dreamed a Rihannsu female, thought her part of the bloodlust and febrile hallucinations that had assaulted her so utterly she knew nothing else. Now she focused intently on this obviously real being.

  "It appears you're going to live," the Commander said drily. "Are you hungry? The human tells me you haven't eaten for some time."

  "I have no hunger," T'Shael said weakly, fighting a wave of nausea at the very thought. But weakness was no excuse for impropriety. "It is apparent that I owe you my life. My gratitude for this."

  The Commander gave her a wry look.

  "Spare me your gratitude. You are my hostage. I can take your life as easily as I have saved it. As the situation stands at present you are more valuable to me alive, that's all."

  "Nevertheless, while I live it is your doing," the Vulcan said carefully. "With all due respect, I am certain you know my name, yet I have no name to call you."

  "Nor will you," the Commander said abruptly. "My name is private to me."

  "I ask forgiveness," T'Shael said, lowering her eyes.

  "No need. It's an idiosyncrasy of mine. You could not know. I am known for all practical purposes as the Commander. It serves."

  "I shall obey your restrictions, Commander," T'Shael said solemnly.

  She did not see the Rihannsu blanch at the familiarity of her words, their emulation of another time, another Vulcan. The Commander gave her a piercing look, almost as if she suspected her of some form of mockery.

  "When I tell you my reasons perhaps you will rethink your gratitude."

  "I've allowed you to live so that you may be of use to me," the Commander said.

  She had brought the Vulcan into the Klingon quarters so as not to be overheard by the human. Her crew was preparing to leave orbit; there was little time remaining to make clear to the Vulcan why she had been pulled back from the brink of death.

  "I owe you my life," T'Shael said yet again. "I will serve your purpose."

  She was stronger now—up and about, showered and rested; she had even eaten something. There was a haunted quality to her that might never go away, and her unwavering willingness to be used by one who was her ideological enemy and potential executioner almost swayed the Commander from her intent. Almost. She was still the Commander.

  "Tal tells me you speak High Rihan," she said as if making idle conversation. "Is this so?"

  "Some scant knowledge of the tongue is mine," T'Shael replied.

  "Typical Vulcan understatement!" the Commander remarked. "Well then, you know something of our languages and perhaps something of our ways. How well do you know our ancient culture—our martial arts, for example?"

  "The ways of violence are of no interest to me," T'Shael replied. "Though my present captivity has been most instructive."

  Could a Vulcan be sarcastic? The Commander ignored the irony, intended or not.

  "We have a kind of dagger in our ancient tradition," she began, as if giving a lecture. "More of a short sword, really. Small enough to be concealed on the person if one is resourceful, yet of sufficient length to run an adversary through."

  Her small hands described the motion in the air as if from long practice, and T'Shael's being might have shuddered. She wasnot yet fully recovered from her ordeal.

  "It is called a dirhja," the Commander went on as if she hadn't noticed. "A beautifully designed thing, often with a jeweled hilt; some are quite valuable. It is unique in that it has three perfectly equilateral edges rather than two, and it is of course incredibly sharp. Its advantage over an ordinary two-edged sword is that, wielded skillfully, it enters painlessly and with little loss of blood. What follow depends upon the victim.

  "If the victim has courage he will make no move, and the dirhja, depending upon the wielder's discretion, can then be withdrawn—though not quite painlessly. The wound can be cured, though it leaves a most unusual scar. On the other hand, if the victim is craven or a fool he will struggle against the blade, and it will disembowel him with varying degrees of thoroughness."

  The Commander studied the still weakened Vulcan, perhaps a little cruelly. T'Shael's face betrayed nothing.

  "Can you-" the Commander said at last, "—you who abhor violence, possibly appreciate the beauty of such a weapon?"

  "Duobtless there is a logic in your telling me of this," T'Shael said evenly. The taste of blood, taste of death, lingered in her mouth; such talk visited her with revulsion, yet in deference to her rescuer she must listen.

  "Of course!" the Commander said, shaking her soft hair off her shoulders imperiously. "You are to be such a weapon for me. You are to serve as my dirhja, my three-edge sword."

  "I do not understand," T'Shael said carefully, a wave of something that was not nausea washing over her, threatening to engulf her.

  She had sensed the complexity of this Rihannsu, this warrior female, from the very beginning, and understood that whatever she had in mind must be worthy of her complexity, her warrior's need to command, to control. T'Shael thought of her lecture to Cleante on the ripple effect of one individual's actions against the face of existence, and was appalled at her own naïveté. How far removed she was from that now, dragged by circumstance into situation after situation that rippled outward from her very being no matterif she acted or remained passive, circumstances that she was helpless to affect by logic or moral stance. Stalek's death was but one instance, and it was profound enough. What followed now?

  The imagery of the three-edged sword visited the Vulcan with a sudden, chilling metaphysical terror. She who had never been afraid for herself stood transfixed at the permutations the Rihannsu Commander had at her disposal. The Commander had said she would use her, but how? And how would her usage ripple out into the universe? T'Shael allowed herself the indulgence of wishing she had died when Stalek did.

  "I do not understand," she said to the Commander, who at any rate owned her life or her death.

  "Two edges of my sword are fairly obvious," the Commander began. "You and the human both will serve me in these. It will be upon my authority that you are returned to your Federation, if and when the tangle of details is untangled. I will tell you at least that negotiations have resumed—"

  She waited for some reaction from the Vulcan, who could not have known for all these many months that any such negotiations even existed. Whatever she expected—hope, relief, gratitude at least for this much information—she saw no change on the austere face. She might have known better.

  "So," the Commander went on wryly. "Upon your return, you and the human will testify that it was the Klingons who abused you and killed the Deltans, that your treatment at the hands of Rihannsu was consistently deferential, nonthreatening and in accordance with intergalactic treaties on the disposition of political prisoners.

  "By your testimony my Empire's honor is salvaged, my Praetor saves face, and I personally can only profit. That is the first edge of my sword.

  "But it cuts another way, and the second edge is this: There are those within the Federation who will demand retribution, who will seek to embarrass our Empire, provoke a confrontation, perhaps threaten war. Your testimony will have the effect of neutralizing these recidivist warmongers, rendering them impotent. They can't touch the Klingons in any event thanks to the Organians, damn them!"

  T'Shael considered. The Warrantors' abduction by the Rihannsu, their sedation aboard the starship were reprehensible acts, crimes against their persons certainly. But no permanent damage had been sustained, and Theras's death was a result of his own madness. It would be no untruth to fulfill the Commander's dictates here, and the ripple effect would be the prevention of further hostilities. This was unquestionably a good. T'Shael nodded her silent acknowledgment; this much she would fulfill, and willingly.

  "Your sword has a third edge," she said quietly, masking her intellectual terror, knowing that this edge would be sharpest of all.

  "That is for you alone," the Commander said. "The human will have no part in it. Only a Vulcan mer
its it."

  There was the briefest flicker of emotion across the austere face. The Commander knew something of Vulcan friendship bonding, remembered the human's unsleeping vigil. She waited.

  "The human has great value to me," T'Shael said unashamedly. She knew she risked much in revealing this, but trust must begin somewhere. "I would spare her whatever ordeals I might."

  "I thought as much," the Commander said, pleased, allowing herself the ghost of a smile. "This also serves my purpose. You will do much to assure the human's safe return to her loved ones."

  T'Shael gathered herself for what was to come.

  "There is a certain Vulcan," the Commander began, watching the plain face carefully. "He is a high-ranking officer in your Federation's Starfleet. One of the terms of your repatriation will be that his commander's starship must retrieve you from this place when the time comes. His name is Spock"

  Spock, son of Sarek, whom I have never met and yet whose Warrantor I am, T'Shael thought. What would the Rihannsu do with that piece of information? The austere face betrayed nothing.

  "This Spock and I have encountered each other before." The Commander's face was less adept than T'Shael's at concealing her emotions for all the intervening years. Her voice took on a sharpness that seemed on the verge of a great anger or perhaps tears. "He was on an espionage mission to infiltrate my flagship and abscond with a priceless military secret. In so doing, he betrayed my trust in a manner both personal and humiliating. For this he has earned my unmitigated enmity."

  "With all due respect, Commander," T'Shael presumed to interrupt. "If this is a matter of personal privacy, I do not wish—"

  "Oh, don't worry," the Commander said archly. "I have no intention of telling you anything more. That is for Spock, if he has the courage."

  T'Shael drew upon herself and decided something. She would not be the instrumentality of any more death. She would not endanger the one called Spock or any on his starship—if it meant her own death or even Cleante's.

  —Cleante! My friend, my would-be t'hy'la, you who have interceded for my life against all odds, you whom I have not even had opportunity to speak to since my ordeal—I have no right to speak for your life, yet if I give my own and you must remain here alone …

  Forgive me, my more-than-worthy, but if the third edge of the Commander's sword means death it will only be for me. The ripple effect must end here—

  "If it is your intention to use us as a lure, to entrap the starship and the one called Spock."

  "Of course not!" the Commander said, amused at how ruthless she must appear to this introverted being. Hadn't she considered this as one of the possibilities open to her from the first—a way to end this sordid mess in a kind of glory and purge her soul of Vulcans for all time? "That is the approach of the battle ax, not the dirhja. The dirhja is subtle. It uses the victim's own weaknesses against him. And it always leaves a scar.

  "When you are repatriated you will seek out the one called Spock. You will presume upon his Vulcan privacy, his Vulcan pride. You will require of him that he tell you the tale of his betrayal of a Romulan. You will be living proof that a Rihannsu has sometimes more honor than a Vulcan. You will require this of him because I have saved your life, and he will tell you on his honor as a Vulcan. If he has that honor, that courage—the courage to face the dirhja."

  T'Shael was silent, weighing what she had just been told. If the one called Spock had indeed done these things, surely as a Vulcan he would accept their responsibility. Nevertheless, such an invasion of his privacy was dimensioned by levels of meaning which—

  "You style yourself as a Warrantor of the Peace," the Commander said, again wondering if what she was doing was just. Surely it was not this one's fault she had been born a Vulcan. "I have made you the Warrantor of my vengeance. Oh, don't trouble your Vulcan soul about it," she said almost tenderly as she sensed T'Shael's inner; shying from the choice of words. "It is a good vengeance, a noble vengeance. To know that Spock has the courage to admit what he has done to one other—a disinterested stranger and one who abhors the ways of militarism—assuages my lust to destroy him. Can you understand that?"

  "Perhaps," T'Shael said carefully, but without hesitation. "I accept your charge, Commander. I will do what you require of me. On my honor as a Vulcan."

  The Commander allowed herself a bitter smile.

  A slight, athletic figure, treading lightly to compensate for the psychic weight of the information he carried (certain death if he was more than peripherally searched; he might as well have it tatooed across his high-cheekboned face), braved his way through the RihanFed Border Station toward the helmeted and heavily armed sentry at the single airlock. The next few minutes would make him either a free human or a dead Rihannsu.

  They would not take him alive. He had decided that hours ago as he carefully concealed the microcoded data chips on various parts of his person. It wasn't cowardice, his decision, nor fear of their methods of interrogation; it was his certain knowledge that once they started asking their questions they would get the answers. Spock had warned him the Rihannsu had certain techniques to which even Vulcans were not impervious. He knew he wouldn't have a chance. And there were so many others involved. . . .

  Okay, Sulu thought, eyeballing the sentry from his place in the queue with the other departees. If he tries to stop me I'll either make a grab for his blaster and hope he's got it on full charge, or I'll throw myself out through the airlock and jam the mechanism behind me. By the time they get the atmospherics operating my lungs will have burst in the vacuum. Sayonara, Lel em'n Tri'ilril. Better luck in the next life.

  Gods, he thought. I've been playing Rihannsu too long; I'm beginning to think like them. Suicide as Viable Option? Have to bounce that little paradox off Spock when I get back. If I get back.

  The queue moved forward.

  Wake up, Hikaru! Three hundred meters beyond that airlock lies freedom. Pretty stupid of you to screw up now.

  The border station, which the Rihannsu called ch'Mrelkhre("the small end of the funnel" was the nearest Standard rendering, implying that only the chaff got through) and humans called simply Omega, had been set up on the Federation edge of the Neutral Zone by the terms of the Earth-Romulan treaty at the end of the Wars over a century before. An uneasy agglomeration of Rom-human space architecture, constructed more in a spirit of competition than cooperation, it perched precariously half in, half out of the Zone, constantly patrolled by ships from either side. As many as several hundred passed daily through the no-man's land of the umbilical between the two halves of the station after being carefully screened by the sentries on either side.

  Sulu, waiting in the queue with the appearance of a calm he did not feel, occupied his brain with searching for some analogue to this place. Checkpoint Charlie, he thought. The Berlin Wall, Old Earth. How childish all that seemed now, in the enlightenment of a United Earth. Maybe someday this station would also seem childish, obsolete, in a time when Rihan and human embraced as brothers and border sentries were an endangered species.

  He had come close to believing that possible over the past few months, rubbing elbows with the Rihannsu in the street—living with them, working with them, sharing a meal, a card game, the company of a woman. Perhaps the day would come when he could call them friend.

  He was the next save one in the queue; in front of him an elderly Tellarite struggled with a cumbersome musical instrument in a sealed case. The sentry was insisting the case be opened despite its showing clean on his scanner rod. The Tellarite was protesting loudly, attracting a crowd of mixed Rihan and humanoid types.

  Gods, Sulu thought, beginning to sweat. Just what I need!

  "Enough, grandfather," the sentry said at last; whatever else might be said about them, the Rihannsu had a certain respect for age. "Either you unseal the lock now or I'll blast it open."

  The Tellarite grumbled and grudgingly opened the case. A hands-on search revealed a tiny packet of illicit stimulants cleverly concealed i
n the instrument's reed box.

  "I have a heart condition!" the Tellarite pleaded. "I can't get those drugs on the other side. Excellency, please!"

  The bribe passed from hand to hand so quickly Sulu almost missed it; anyone standing behind him would have seen nothing.

  "Only because I'm in a generous mood, grandfather," the sentry said magnanimously, pocketing the drug pouch anyway, pulling the Tellarite out of the queue to stand by the airlock while he resealed the case. "You could be detained for a lot less."

  The crowd lost interest and began to drift away. Sulu stepped forward, his identicard at the ready.

  "They'll try anything, won't they?" He nodded in the direction of the Tellarite, to be certain the sentry knew he had seen.

  "Destination, Clerk Lel?" the sentry barked. Sulu's heart skipped; the confidentiality might have been unwise.

  "Earth Outpost 3," he said with equal terseness, tapping the carrycase under his arm importantly. "New list of contraband."

  The sentry eyed him skeptically.

  "Missed my transport," Sulu explained, hoping it sounded casual. "Thought I'd slip through with the civilians."

  Still the sentry said nothing.

  "Like to get back by twelfth hour. Got a lady waiting for me."

  He said something else in an obscure dialect he'd picked up in his travels, and elicited a quick leer from the sentry.

  "If she's worth it, she'll wait," he said at last, his suspicions dissipating. He ran the scanner rod over the carrycase perfunctorily and jerked his head in the direction of the unhappy Tellarite. "Escort the old one through, will you? Better he has his heart attack on the Fed side."

  Sulu laughed at what could only be called a Rihannsu joke. The sentry activated the atmosphere inflow and opened the airlock. Records Clerk Lel em'n Tri'ilril took the disgruntled Tellarite's arm and tried to hurry him down the umbilical.