"They used to call them 'beachheads,'" Kirk said, forcing a smile. "We'll have to coin a new word." For just a moment, he feared the Vulcan would take him seriously and try to provide the new word.
Veedron was not there when they arrived. Nor did he show up as the hours passed and the evidence accumulated that the Sealons were establishing themselves in Trellisane's oceans with an air of permanence and an attitude of aggression. Spock remained impassive, but Kirk fumed at his own impotence. Reports came in a steady stream, detailing the Sealons' cool destruction of what little remained of the Trellisanians' ability to resist them. First, ships already at sea began to disappear. From the few eyewitness reports from aircraft, whose pilots told of seeing explosions dotting the surface of the oceans, it was clear that Trellisanian shipping would be destroyed immediately upon detection. Shortly afterwards, contact began to be lost with the aircraft themselves, those that were over the open sea. The Sealons had not only come prepared to stay; they had also brought with them weapons that could eliminate any craft flying over their new domain. All too obviously, it would only be a short time before they attacked the Trellisanians on land. Even those few Trellisanians with the courage to resist would by then be too weakened to do anything, for the sea was their main source of food, and that was to be denied to them.
A subtler kind of attack soon manifested itself. Kirk, raging inwardly but knowing how futile any outward display of anger would be, left the operations center, where Spock remained to watch with detached, clinical interest, and roamed the halls of the great building. Kirk felt that he needed to do something physical, anything, even if that was no more than aimless wandering. And he came across Veedron, curled into a ball on the floor up against one wall of a corridor, still in his colorful robes, like a tropical bird that had been crushed by some winged predator and then cast aside.
Veedron was still alive, but he didn't respond when Kirk spoke his name and grasped his shoulders. His eyes were open, but they stared unseeing at Kirk, with no hint of either recognition or intelligence in them. Kirk cursed and looked quickly up and down the hallway. No one was in sight. He pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open. "Bones! Where are you?"
There was a few seconds' delay, and then McCoy's voice spoke from the communicator in miniature. "McCoy here. Jim? What's wrong?"
"That's what I want you to tell me, damn it." He told the doctor where he was. "Get one of your teams here as soon as you can. Something's wrong with Veedron." Silently he added, Veedron's not much but he seems to be the best we've got, and I want him preserved.
"Veedron. Well, in that case, Jim, I'll come myself. Sit tight."
Kirk bit off an angry response, saying instead only, "Kirk out," and flipping his communicator closed. Won't do to take my feelings out on one of the two good men on the planet. Restraint is the word. Sit tight, he says!
Subjectively, it seemed forever before McCoy arrived, but Kirk checked his timepiece half unconsciously and realized that the time was very short. He was mightily impressed by the speed of McCoy's response; it indicated to him what a fine job the doctor had done of organizing an emergency response system under these very trying conditions. All he said, however, was, "Can you bring him out of it?"
McCoy was kneeling beside the curled-up Trellisanian leader in the hallway. Now he straightened, drew a hypospray from his equipment pack and pondered its settings for a moment. "Probably." He fiddled with the device for a moment, then shook his head. "And to think my instructors used to spend so much time worrying about what's ethical and what isn't. I'd like to see one of them deal with a war." He leaned forward again and applied the spray to Veedron's arm. There was a faint whoosh. "No physical damage that I could detect," McCoy said, meanwhile preoccupied with another tricorder examination of his patient. "Some sort of mental shock, I'd guess. What I just gave him should shock him out of it, at least temporarily."
As if at a signal, Veedron groaned and relaxed from his fetal curl. He muttered something, scarcely understandable. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Captain Kirk? Is that you?"
Kirk kneeled beside him. "Here, sir. I found you on the floor, unconscious." He chose not to mention the wide-open, empty eyes nor the position of Veedron's body.
"Yes, yes. Thank you for helping." Veedron struggled to his feet and stood swaying, the two Star Fleet officers supporting him on both sides. "I was standing here, in the hallway, engaged in a worldwide meeting of gemot delegates." He looked around as if in wonder, still dazed. "There was no one here," he explained, his voice almost that of a trusting child whom someone had injured, "and I thought it would be a good place to be while communicating with the others. Suddenly, there was a blast of sound, of noise, in my head! The others went away, disappeared. Not all of them, just those on other continents." He wailed in despair: "They're gone! I'll never talk to them again!" Tears streamed down his face and he pulled his arms from the supporting hands and fell to his knees, his shoulders heaving with his sobs.
McCoy took out his communicator and quickly called his Trellisanian helpers. "We'll keep him in bed and sedated until he can recover enough to take care of himself," he said in a low voice, as if he were speaking more to himself than to Kirk. "Damn it, I shouldn't have shocked him awake, after all. That trance may have been a natural Trellisanian defense mechanism against trauma. I hope I haven't done any permanent harm."
Kirk listened but didn't respond. "Worse and worse," he muttered. "Or perhaps not." He knelt down, close to Veedron. "Veedron!" he said sharply, but the Trellisanian was too deeply sunk in his sorrows to hear. "Veedron!" Louder this time, but still no response.
McCoy pulled him away, his face suffused with rage. "Damn it, Jim, leave him alone! We may already have done him irreparable harm."
Kirk ignored him and took out his communicator again. "Mr. Spock."
"Spock here, Captain."
How Kirk valued those calm and calm-inducing tones at such times as these! "Mr. Spock, do you have any indication that the Trellisanian leaders' communications with each other may have broken down, that their implanted communicators may no longer be operable?"
"One moment, Captain. I shall enquire." A minute of silence; two minutes. Then Spock's controlled voice again. "Indeed, Captain, the technicians monitoring those channels locally say they can no longer establish contact with their opposite numbers on the other continents. It would seem that the Sealons have instituted some type of blocking or jamming action to prevent such communication. I cannot guess whether or not they will be able to extend that jamming over the airspace of the continents themselves."
"It scarcely matters if they do, Mr. Spock," Kirk said thoughtfully. "Kirk out." Merely by cutting the gemot leaders on each continent off from those on all the other land masses, the Sealons had managed to paralyze the already ineffectual Trellisane governmental structure. The natives had managed little enough in their own defense before this; now they would be able to do nothing.
"Jim," McCoy said, "what was that about an implant?"
Kirk quickly explained Spock's surmise to him.
"Hmm. That's interesting." McCoy put his hand in his pocket and fiddled with a centimeter-long cylindrical capsule he had put there only minutes earlier. He had recovered it from the brain of a dead servant, victim of a head injury in an earlier Sealon bombardment, whom he had been vainly trying to save. Kirk's communicator call had come just as McCoy was admitting defeat: another loss to his oldest adversary.
By now, the medical team called in by McCoy had arrived and were removing Veedron on a stretcher. McCoy went with them, casting an angry glance back at Kirk, who told himself, not for the first time, that McCoy's protective feelings toward his patients were just about the only thing that could ever cause the doctor to really seriously consider mutiny.
Kirk headed rapidly back toward the control center where Spock was still observing. As he walked, he pondered the latest change of conditions and tried to estimate the impact on his already bizarre
circumstances. On the one hand, the dissolution of the local tenuous governmental system, based on long-distance meetings between the leaders of the various gemots—whatever in God's name those were, anyway—meant that the organization, the infrastructure, needed to organize some kind of resistance had effectively disappeared. On the other hand, though, Veedron himself had predicted that that government would have capitulated to Klingon; even if that hadn't happened, what Kirk had seen so far on Trellisane made him feel sure that the government would have been more of a hindrance than a help. Now that it was out of the way, he could feel unconstrained, could do whatever he felt was necessary. What that might be and how he could go about doing it, without the Enterprise being available, was another question, and perhaps a far more difficult one.
Kirk reentered the control center's main room and found Spock standing where he had left him, watching the technicians bustling about, on his face an expression as close to one of interest as Kirk could expect to see on a Vulcan. Kirk beckoned Spock to follow him out of the room. In the hallway outside, Kirk said, unknowingly echoing the thoughts of Ensign Chekov on the bridge of the Enterprise, now so far away, "It's very strange, Mr. Spock, but in the middle of this disaster I find myself most concerned with a sudden, overwhelming hunger. Do you know how we can get some food to fuel us for what comes next?"
"From observing Veedron, I would say it is simple enough, Captain. Follow me." Spock set off down the hallway, and Kirk, after a moment's hesitation, followed him. The First Officer led the way to a room that Kirk recognized as the one in which he had first met Veedron. That time seemed years ago now; indeed, he thought, the change in Trellisane's condition since that time is of such a magnitude that, in peace time, it would have taken years or even generations to come about. "And now, Captain, I believe we need only do this." The Vulcan clapped his hands sharply, once. However, nothing happened. "Curious," he murmured.
Kirk grunted. "Veedron must have a flair that you lack, Mr. Spock."
Calmly, unperturbed, as if hunger and frustration didn't exist, Spock said to his hungry and frustrated captain, "By the way, Captain, I took the liberty of questioning some of the technicians in the control center concerning these gemots and their method of government. A fascinating system. It seems that governments of the type we know never really evolved on Trellisane, and neither did a religious hierarchy. What took their place was a vast collection of professional organizations, each representing a profession or trade or craft, much like the guilds of medieval earth. Those guilds are what they call gemots. Each handles matters within its area of competence. Any matter not thus covered is overseen by cooperative councils of gemot representatives, such as the supreme council to which Veedron belongs."
Kirk nodded. "That would explain their reluctance to do anything out of the ordinary, to take drastic action at a time like this. Even on earth in the Middle Ages, the guilds that ran the towns in Europe were often a force for conservatism, for things as they were. They protected the status quo as a shield against the hostile outside world."
"Precisely, Captain. And since there is no equivalent of the medieval overlord to oppose the gemots and threaten their power on Trellisane, there is no impetus to change and advance for their own sake."
"Fascinating, indeed, Mr. Spock, but my most immediate concern is my growling belly. Perhaps if I try." Kirk clapped his hands sharply, trying to imitate Veedron's manner of superior self-assurance.
This time, there was some success. The hangings on one of the walls parted and a servant entered the room. He approached the two officers hesitantly and bowed quickly. "Sirs, you wish something?"
"Yes, indeed," Kirk told him. "We'd like some food, a meal."
Anger flickered on the servant's face for an instant, then disappeared. He bowed again. "Many are dead, sirs, or requisitioned to help in the rebuilding and rescuing, but I will try to find someone to prepare food for you. Forgive me for any delay."
The man's anger and his manner, which indicated that the anger was still there but held rigidly in check, hinted at something important, and Kirk momentarily forgot his hunger. "Just a moment. 'Requisitioned,' you said?"
The servant's eyes darted from side to side nervously and he licked his lips quickly. He knew these two were from somewhere other than Trellisane, but clearly he did not know how far he could trust them. "Yes, sir," he said at last, reluctantly, "I said that. The Man Healers gemot requisitioned some, but most of them were taken away by the Builders gemot. And of course the Food Provenders gemot has requisitioned, too."
"But what about your own gemot? Doesn't it object to its members being … requisitioned … this way?"
The servant laughed harshly. "Our gemot! You must be joking." He looked them over and decided they were serious. Kirk could almost see the man make up his mind to trust them. "We have no gemot. Didn't the illustrious Veedron explain that to you?"
Spock said, "Veedron explained nothing to us about this world's social or governmental system. We have found out some things on our own and deduced others."
The servant's anger had returned, and this time he made no attempt to conceal it. "Then you didn't find out or deduce enough. Those of us who serve and tend our masters—we have no gemot, and we never have had one. No one protects us, no one pleads our cases. The only time a gemot or its members notice us is when we do something wrong. Anyone can punish one of us, and there is no gemot to stand in the way."
"Fascinating, Captain. This class of helots was never mentioned to us before, nor do I remember seeing any word of it in the reports I reviewed on the way to Trellisane."
Kirk's face was grim. "No, Mr. Spock, and it's clear enough why not. These aren't servants: they're slaves. The Federation would not have approved, and any negotiations over Trellisane's admission to the Federation would have gone by the board until this system was reformed. Now listen, Spock, I don't want to hear anything from you about the Prime Directive. Clear?"
Spock gazed carefully in a neutral direction.
"Fine." Kirk turned back to the slave, who had listened with both evident interest and confusion. "If your world can be saved from the Sealons and the Klingons, then it will be obliged to turn to the Federation of Planets for future protection; it will almost certainly petition for membership. That will be to your advantage."
The servant snorted. "Klingon, Sealon, Federation, or the ones we have now. One master is no better than any other."
"No, damn it! The Federation is no one's master. Each world that belongs to it is the equal of any other world. And every single Federation citizen is the equal, before the law, of any other citizen. Do you understand that? It doesn't matter how many arms and legs you have, or eyes, or what things used to be like on your world before it joined the Federation. To become a member, a world has to guarantee every single citizen legal equality, and it has to adhere to all Federation legal and social principles in that regard."
"Equal!" The servant's eyes shone. "Does that mean we'd have a gemot of our own?"
Kirk laughed. "A gemot! Better than that: you'd have the entire Federation government behind you whenever you needed it—the biggest gemot in the known universe!" Then he said, harshly, breaking through the man's sudden reverie, "But not if the Sealons and Klingons succeed here. If they take over, Trellisane will never join the Federation. It'll become part of the Klingon Empire instead, and then you'll find out that some masters can indeed be much worse than the ones you're used to. We're no longer able to protect you, because our ship has been taken from us. The gemots are virtually paralyzed, both because of this communications breakdown and because it seems to be in their nature to be paralyzed. It's up to you—you slaves. You're the only ones left who can save this world."
"And then," the slave whispered, "we'll join your Federation, and we'll be in charge!" He turned and ran from the room.
"Captain—" Spock said quietly.
Kirk held up his hand. "I know, Mr. Spock. But what other reaction could we have expected? At an
y rate, we've found the men we want, the ones I said must exist somewhere on this world: those with something to fight for and the guts to do it. Let's try to win this war first, and then we'll worry about reeducating them." He paused for a moment. "Funny. I've lost my appetite."
Chapter Nine
McCoy was puzzled more than he was disturbed. He had found the tiny capsules in the brains of all the slave corpses he had examined, but not yet in the brains of any other corpses. Of course, he had not yet happened to have access to casualties of the uppermost class—Veedron's class, the gemot leaders, and he knew from what Spock had told Kirk that that class had brain implants of some kind.
Very strange, he thought, that only the topmost and bottommost classes would have it. Assuming it's the same gadget in both cases. Communication for the rulers, Jim said. But what about the slaves? What's it for? So that they can be given orders? Why not just speak to them, for that? In fact, they do speak to them, to give them orders. I can't get anything out of the Trellisanians. They act so ignorant and innocent.
The next day, as McCoy and his Trellisanian assistants were having a working lunch together—truly excellent steaks, very uncommon for the apparently vegetarian Trellisanians—when one of the slaves who'd brought in the food and was now standing in the background against a wall suddenly slumped to the floor. McCoy rushed to his side, tricorder out. "Complete brain death," he muttered. "My God. What the Hell …?" Only then did he notice that none of his assistants had stirred from his place. All were staring at him with puzzled expressions. One of them—Pellison, the best of the lot—said, "Sir, Dr. McCoy, it's only a yegemot."
Only then did it occur to McCoy that injured slaves had never been brought to him for treatment. Those he had worked on, he had come across on his own, while exploring the sites of Sealon attacks.
Two slaves came into the room, their faces expressionless. They picked up their dead fellow silently and moved toward the door.
The Trellisane Confrontation Page 6