by Peter David
But destiny had fallen short. D’ndai was dead, the last of his remains fluttering away on the winds.
What, then, was Gr’zy left with?
His mewling puke of a younger son, who had trembled and whined with fear whenever news of D’ndai’s exploits, out there in the savage badlands where the war of resistance had mostly been waged, had reached them. M’k’n’zy, who couldn’t hold a sword properly, who uncontrollably flinched away even during the most rudimentary of training exercises.
It should have been you, Gr’zy thought furiously. He knew he should be ashamed of even contemplating such a thing, and yet he did. It should be you, you little waste of flesh and blood, who lie dead, and my magnificent D’ndai should be leading our people toward glory.
M’k’n’zy the beggar, they called him. The beggar brat, and Gr’zy knew all too well why. He and this useless little nothing, bound forever due to a single act that displayed M’k’n’zy’s craven nature for all to see.
As Gr’zy offered up his youngest son to the Danteri, not a single one of his people questioned why. Trust the Danteri to be so stupid that they didn’t see it.
Let them take him, then. Let him be brought to Romulus. Let him live there, let him stew there, let him die there, and good riddance to him.
Gr’zy barely heard his son’s muted farewell, and only chanced to glance in his direction at the last moment before the boy vanished in a haze of transported molecules. Hurt and rejection were plastered on the boy’s face, so much so that a lesser man would have been cut to the quick by them. Gr’zy, however, was not.
Instead, registering and then forgetting about the departure of his youngest son, now renamed Muck and aptly so, Gr’zy watched the last of the black smoke representing his incomparable D’ndai drift lazily toward heaven, and one thought was uppermost in his mind:
He will not have died in vain.
2
Hiren, the Praetor of the Romulan Empire, waited for Muck to make some sort of comment.
He watched the boy stand in the middle of the quarters that had been assigned to him at the palace. They were not ostentatious by any means. The Romulans, by nature, tended to be somewhat spare in their furnishings. But it was nevertheless far better than anything the boy could have experienced in that rough agglomeration of huts and tents the Praetor had spied when he’d spend his brief sojourn on the surface of Xenex.
Muck said nothing.
This wasn’t entirely unexpected. The boy had been mostly silent the entire journey from Xenex to Romulus, save for when the Praetor had addressed him directly about something. At those times, the response had been a terse, “Yes, Praetor,” and that was all. The Praetor had almost been disappointed. He’d seen the savage mien of the Xenexians, seen the quiet hatred that burned in the eyes of the boy’s father. So naturally he had expected to experience some of the same in Muck himself. But there seemed to be absolutely nothing. He’s the son of a chieftain. How could I have broken him that easily?
It made Hiren think that either the boy had been broken by the father long ago, or else that he simply had never possessed any strength of character in the first place. Either way, it was of no consequence to Hiren beyond academic interest.
The boy’s fascination with space, however, had been a sight to see. After all, he had never been off the surface of his homeworld. Hiren, like any Romulan worth his salt, was thoroughly accustomed to traveling through the void in vessels. For Muck, it was an entirely new experience. He had pressed his hand repeatedly against various bulkheads, as if uncertain that they would be able to stand up to the rigors of space travel. He had stared through a viewing port in utter astonishment at his world as it turned far, far below him. When they had turned away from it, the vista of stars that lay before him nearly caused him to choke, and he had uttered one of the only sentences that was not, “Yes, Praetor.” He had said, “The stars are broken,” and at first the Praetor had not understood what in the world the boy was referring to. But then he did, and explained patiently, if brusquely, why stars didn’t scintillate when one was out in space. Later, when they had leaped into warp space, and Muck had watched space itself twist and bend around them, the Praetor had thought the boy’s head was going to explode.
Experiencing space travel through the eyes of a child had been privately amusing to the Praetor.
“Are these quarters satisfactory to you?” he asked Muck as the boy glanced around. He waited for the boy to respond with his typical “Yes, Praetor.” Instead Muck didn’t reply. Keeping the impatience out of his voice, he said, “A Praetor is not accustomed to repeating himself. Are these satisfactory to you, yes or no?”
Slowly the boy turned his deep purple eyes upon the Praetor. His voice utterly flat, he asked, “Does it matter?”
The question caught the Praetor off guard, but he didn’t let it show. Instead he paused, giving it due consideration, and then shrugged. “I suppose it does not, no.”
Muck nodded as if that confirmed what he’d already thought. He walked slowly around the room like a caged animal.
“You will be treated as a guest, for as long as your status warrants it,” said the Praetor.
The phrasing of the statement caught Muck’s interest. He stared at the Praetor with an upraised eyebrow. “Warrants it?”
“Your father,” the Praetor told him, “gave you over all too easily. I tend to be suspicious, more often than not, of anything that transpires too easily. Falkar of the Danteri is under the impression that your father was simply in shock due to your brother’s death, but I believe otherwise. I think that your father will betray his agreement with us. That he will betray you.” He tilted his head slightly, like a curious dog. “Do you think that possible? Or likely?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. You must have some opinion on it.”
Muck shook his head. “No, Praetor.”
“What do you think your father will do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m not asking what you know. I’m asking what you think.”
Muck licked his lips, looking nervous, as if he wished he could be anywhere except where he was at that moment. “My father doesn’t like it when I think. He says I think too much. He says that’s bad.”
“Bad?” The Praetor didn’t quite know what to make of that. “How is that bad?”
“He says a man who sits around and spends too much time thinking is a man who doesn’t spend enough time doing.”
“I see. One of the great philosophers of our time, your father is.” He saw the confusion on Muck’s face. “What is it?” When the boy hesitated, the Praetor said impatiently, “Spit it out. What is it?”
“What is philosophers?”
The question made the Praetor laugh. It was a sharp, unpleasant sound, and Muck winced at it. “A philosopher,” he explained, when he realized that Muck was serious, “is someone who sits around and does nothing but think.” He saw a flash of interest in the boy’s eyes, just enough to make him wonder whether the child—worthless as his father clearly thought he was—might have some potential after all. “There are great Romulan philosophers. Would you care to read some of their works?”
Muck shook his head.
“Why not?”
Shrugging, the boy said, “I cannot read. My father said it was a waste of time.”
“Yes, he would. And even if you could read, you certainly wouldn’t be able to read Romulan. No matter, then. There are teaching vids available, if you’re interested. Would you like to see them?”
“I suppose.”
The Praetor’s brow darkened. “That is not an answer. To ‘suppose’ something is not an answer. It’s mealymouthed. It’s indecisive. I never want to hear those two words in conjunction with each other coming out of your mouth. Am I clear?” The boy nodded quickly. “Now…would you like to see them?”
“Yes, Praetor.” Then he added, “Very much.”
The Praetor nodded once in satisfaction a
nd started to head for the door. He was brought up short when Muck said, “Praetor?”
The Praetor turned, hiding his surprise that the boy had actually dared to launch a query. “Yes?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
The words might have indicated fear from someone else. A dread of the unknown. But the way that Muck had asked it, it came across as a simple query. A distant, even clinical interest in his fate, as if it involved someone other than himself.
“I don’t know,” the Praetor said in all honesty. “Quite possibly. We’ll have to see how events unfold.”
“I sup—” He caught himself and instead nodded and said, “Yes, Praetor.”
The Praetor glanced behind as he exited the room, and saw that the boy was simply standing there, watching him go. “Odd one,” he muttered to himself as the door slid shut behind him.
Although he could have dispatched an aide to attend to it, the Praetor decided to bring the vids to the boy himself. He held the assortment of data disks in his hand and entered the room without bothering to knock.
The boy was asleep.
He was not sleeping on the bed, however. Instead he was on the floor next to it. The Praetor felt an odd sensation in the lower half of his face and realized that it was a smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.
Hiren walked over to the sleeping Muck and lifted him. He was surprised; he had expected that the slender boy would weigh next to nothing. Instead he was much heavier than anticipated. There was muscle on his frame that his build didn’t even hint at. Muck didn’t stir as Hiren lay him on his bed. He didn’t pull the boy’s boots off or change him out of his desert rags; he wasn’t Muck’s mother, after all. But he did take the time to drape a thin blanket over him. He stepped back and watched the boy breathe steadily in deep sleep.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill the boy. It struck Hiren that it might well be a tragic waste of material.
3
Muck had become accustomed to the Praetor entering his room without any announcement of his intentions. Sometimes he thought that the Praetor was trying to catch him at something. Making some seditious plans, perhaps. The Praetor studied Muck’s face very carefully each time he showed up, scrutinizing him for some hint of guilty reaction or conscience. Every time that occurred, the Praetor looked disappointed.
And for good reason. Muck wasn’t planning anything. He had little interest in scheming against the Praetor or anyone in the Romulan Empire.
The simple fact was that, in the year that he’d been there, Muck had been treated better on Romulus than he had been on his homeworld.
First of all, they left him alone for the most part, except for the occasional surprise visits from the Praetor. It was a solitary life. But back on Xenex, any time that Muck (he had stopped referring to himself by any other name) had any sort of interaction with other Xenexians, they had treated him with scorn. No doubt they had picked up on their chieftain’s view of his youngest son and acted accordingly. So it wasn’t as if he’d had any friends back there.
Second, he had employed his time well. He had not only become absorbed by the many vids that had been made available to him, but he had taken it upon himself to learn how to read Romulan. This had opened up his horizons to various publications and documents, for he found that he could absorb the material far more quickly by reading it than by hearing it. He had mowed through assorted Romulan philosophers, and had moved from there to the writings of various warriors. Although he still had no stomach for actual fighting, he considered the theories and strategies of warfare to be endlessly fascinating. He was reasonably certain he would never find himself thrust into some sort of battle situation. But in the unlikely event that he was, he had found enough precedent to draw on that he believed he could outthink an opponent.
This belief was lent additional weight when he discovered a computer program that contained chess games from several different worlds. Chess, he discovered, was a fundamental strategy game. The specifics and pieces varied from one culture to the next, but the theory was much the same, and he became quite adept at it. He played the computer, and although he never beat it, he had managed to play it to a stalemate on a number of occasions. He had taken great pride in those draw victories, and only wished that he’d had someone with whom he could share his achievements.
He decided that the next time the Praetor came by to try and catch him out or simply visit with him or whatever, he would tell the Praetor of his accomplishments and perhaps even challenge him to a game.
But when that day finally arrived and the Praetor burst into his quarters, Muck could tell instantly that this was not the time to speak of games. There was burning anger in Hiren’s face. Muck wondered for a heartbeat what he could possibly have done to draw such ire from the Praetor.
Almost immediately he realized that there wasn’t a single thing he could have done. He had done nothing this day or this week that he had not done every single week since his arrival there a year ago. If none of those activities had angered the Praetor before, they certainly wouldn’t have done so now.
Which meant that something else had transpired to incur the Praetor’s wrath, and the Praetor was associating it with him for some reason.
There seemed to be only one real possibility as to what that might be.
All of that went through the boy’s head in a matter of seconds, and so it was that before the Praetor could speak, Muck spoke first and asked, “What did my father do?”
The matter-of-fact tone of the boy’s voice brought Hiren to a halt in mid-step. His eyes narrowed in suspicion after a moment and he snarled, “How did you know?”
Muck shrugged. He had no real means of breaking down the thought process that had come so easily to him.
“Did he tell you somehow?” demanded the Praetor.
Muck looked puzzled. “You monitor any messages I receive…except I never receive any. So how would he?”
“That’s not an answer,” the Praetor reminded him stubbornly.
“Very well. No, sir. He did not.”
The Praetor hesitated, and then nodded to indicate that he found the response acceptable. Then he growled angrily, “Your father has landed you in a world of trouble, is what he’s done.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Once again the Praetor was clearly surprised by the dispassionate tone of Muck’s voice. “Do you feel you should die?”
“If that was the arrangement,” Muck said distantly, “then that’s the way it must be.”
Even though he had seen the boy, spoken to the boy, repeatedly over the past months, he studied Muck as if seeing him for the very first time.
“We leave for Xenex immediately,” the Praetor told him, “and that visit shall determine whether you live or die.”
“All right,” said Muck, who didn’t appear to have much stake in the subject no matter which way it went.
4
Muck did not recognize his father.
Some of that had to do with time. It had, after all, been a year. A year can be a lifetime to a child.
In this case, though, a mere day could have passed and Muck would still have had difficulty realizing that the man in front of him was the man he’d grown up knowing and fearing.
They had returned to Xenex, but they had not descended to the surface. Instead they were in the Praetor’s personal ship. The Praetor had despised Xenex during his extremely brief stay, and had no desire to lower himself to going there unless it was absolutely necessary. He had the savage bastard named Gr’zy brought to him. The Danteri had been more than happy to cooperate.
It was obvious from Gr’zy’s appearance that the Danteri had not simply been sitting around waiting for the Romulan Praetor to make his triumphant return. They had brutalized him, beaten his face into a twisted mass of meat. The only things remotely recognizable were the eyes that glared at the Praetor with unbridled hatred. Muck knew that glare all too well. He had been subjected to it a
ny number of times. Seeing it now, for the first time in a year, reminded him of how much he had hated it.
Gr’zy’s hands were bound behind his back with gleaming metal cuffs. He had materialized on the platform in the transporter room, and he was on his knees. Even in this completely humbled position, he didn’t act as if he were someone whose life would likely be coming to an end. He looked as if everyone in the room—the Praetor, Muck, the guards who had weapons leveled upon him—were dirt beneath his feet.
Muck didn’t know whether to admire him for it or feel sickened.
“Well, well,” the Praetor said, moving toward the Xenexian chieftain. He walked with a sort of swagger that Muck had come to know quite well. “It seems, good sir, that you have not exactly behaved yourself since last we met, have you?” When Gr’zy did not respond immediately, the Praetor took a swift step forward and drove his foot into Gr’zy’s stomach. Gr’zy gasped, but otherwise did not acknowledge the impact. “Have you?” repeated the Praetor.
Gr’zy glared at him once more.
“You tried to lead a rebellion,” the Praetor continued. “You tried to take the place of your late son. Apparently you have a desire to share his fate.”
Still Gr’zy made no reply.
The Praetor suddenly pulled a dagger from his belt, stepped behind Muck, and put it to the boy’s throat. He noticed that Muck made no sound at all. He wondered what was going through the boy’s mind at that moment and then decided he didn’t actually care all that much. “And what of him?” he demanded. “What of your son who lives? Did you consider the impact your decision would have on him? Did you care that his life would be forfeit for your going back on our agreement?”
“Agreement?” Gr’zy growled. He spit on the floor. The puddle it left was dark red. It was entirely possible the man was bleeding inside. “That makes it sound like I had a choice.”