They stood there for a long time, as the shadows con-tinued to lengthen in the garden. Then, sounding much older than he had before, Lodec said, "My humblest apologies, Lord Cwan, if you believe that you are being
deliberately distanced from the rebuilding of the Thai-Ionian Empire. I shall make certain, in the future, to do all that is possible to include you."
"That would be appreciated," said Si Cwan stiffly.
"And Lord Cwan..."
"Yes, Speaker?"
Lodec looked at him grimly. "If it had been you issu-ing the command... and a soldier pledged to you had refused your order... you would have struck him down where he stood. Do not waste both our time telling me otherwise, for we both know it to be true. And you would have given no thought to the man's conscience, or sacrifice, or principles. You would have stepped on him with no more thought than you would a bug, and dismissed him from your mind almost imme-diately thereafter as not worth dwelling upon. So do not lecture me on matters of principle... if you would be
so kind."
Si Cwan's jaw twitched, but he said nothing as he turned and left.., because he knew that Lodec was per-fectly right. And worse, he knew that Lodec knew.
ii.
If there was one thing that Kalinda knew when she saw it... it was death.
The home that the Danteri had provided for Si Cwan and her was spacious enough, certainly. It was well de-signed, with copious room-and rooms-for parties, gatherings, meetings, and so on. But she felt uncomfort-
able when she was there by herself, and so she had promised that she would meet Si Cwan outside the Sen-ate building and go home with him from there.
It truly was a gargantuan structure. She craned her neck to look up at the towers, silhouetted against the twin moons, and she still felt as if she was not coming remotely close to seeing the top. Thanks to optical illu-sion, it seemed as if the three towers that composed the senate building literally came down from the sky, rather than having been built on the ground and stretching up-ward.
It was a cool night and Kalinda drew her cloak more tightly around her.
Then she heard laughter, the voices of senators ap-proaching. Apparently they had been working late. They seemed to be in exceptionally good spirits, their voices echoing through the main entranceway that led to the great front doors. And they seemed to be saying some-thing about "Wait until you meet him" and "We knew it was right from the first moment," but she had no clue specifically as to what they were talking about
Kalinda had trained, as had Si Cwan, in the art of being unnoticed. Had it not been nighttime, she could still have blended in with the background and easily eluded all but the trained eye, which happened to be staring right at her. But here, with night having fallen, cloaked as she was, it was almost too easy.
She simply thought of herself as not being there. There was no magic to it, no supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Long ago she had learned that people tend to be noticed because they draw attention to themselves in
any one of a hundred ways. So in order not to be no-ticed, all one had to do was firmly believe that one was not there. Pull into oneself, as it were. Do nothing to command attention, and you would be given none. "I think not," Si Cwan had once explained, "therefore I am not."
Indistinguishable from a tree or a shadow, Kalinda melted into the background as the senators emerged. "He was supposed to be here," one of them said, and "I think you were exaggerating about him," claimed an-other.
Then their animated discussion suddenly faded, even became choked off, as if they'd seen something so star-tling that it had closed off the air in their throats. A tree blocked Kalinda's view, and she moved ever so slightly in order to make out what was happening.
That was when she saw death.
He was tall, incredibly tall... eight, maybe nine feet. And wide, powerfully built, muscles rippling. He was wearing what appeared to be a sort of gold-scaled kilt around his middle, and an elaborately sculpted breast-plate that curved up and back around his shoulders. His skin was black, as black as night, as black as the end of days, and yet it seemed to give off a glow. But not a glow from the moonlight; it seemed generated from within.
Most terrifying was his face. It reminded Kalinda a bit of the Dogs of War, and for a moment she thought that he was one of that breed. But there was no hint of fur on him, nor were his hands clawed. But his jaws, his nose, were long and distended, like a dog's snout. The
edges of his mouth were frozen in a slight upturn, like a leering death's-head grin. His eyes were glistening, red and pupilless, and to a degree they looked dead as well. The creature wore a gleaming helmet upon his head that rose in a semi-conical style, and it obscured the upper portion of his head. But she would have wagered that he had the triangular ears of a dog, or mastiff of some kind.
She perceived a dark and terrifying aura around him. He was there, right there before her, and yet in some ways it seemed that he wasn't That made no sense to her.
The Danteri senators were paralyzed in front of him. And then, almost as one, they went to their knees, and bowed their heads before him. As they did so, the glow surrounding him became that much stronger, the aura more defined.
When he spoke, it was with a low and frightening rumble, like an avalanche about to occur, and she was afraid she would be caught up in it. "Well met," he said. "We shall talk of many things... we..."
Then he stopped.
And turned.
And death looked straight at Kalinda.
She didn't move, didn't breathe. If she could have faded through the wall at that moment, she would have done so. He was staring right at her... and yet she wasn't certain that he could actually see her. Rooted to the spot, she didn't move so much as a centimeter.
The Danteri were, one by one, looking up at him in curiosity. They felt something in the air, felt the tension, but didn't know to what it should be ascribed. Finally one of them ventured, "High One... ?"
"It is nothing," he said at last.
Kalinda's gut reaction was to let out a sigh of relief, but she caught herself a heartbeat before doing so. It would have made her presence so obvious that even the deafest of senators would have perceived her at that
point.
The creature turned his back to her and walked away, the other senators following behind him like sheep. Kalinda waited a long time to make certain they were gone, and even then had trouble getting her legs to move because she'd been so paralyzed with fright.
She had no idea who or what that had been.
But she knew she had to find out.
iii
"You saw... death?"
Si Cwan and Kalinda were in their posh suites, Kalinda seated on the large couch and looking very ap-prehensive while Si Cwan was standing, hands draped behind his back, and looking extremely grave. It was not an affected look. There were certainly big brothers who condescended to their younger siblings, but Si Cwan was not one of those. And when it came to discussing matters of death, afterdeath, ghosts, and the like, he was fully prepared to acknowledge Kalinda as possibly the most knowledgeable Thallonian alive. "What do you mean 'death' precisely? Leave nothing out, Kally."
So she omitted nothing. She told him about everything that she had witnessed: the discussions, the genuflection,
all of it. And most particularly, she told him about... the thing. The creature that she had seen. The mere descrip-tion of the thing was enough to give Si Cwan chills.
"And you are quite certain," he said after giving her comments due consideration, "that it was not one of the Dogs of War. From your description, one of those-"
"I know, Cwan, I know that. That would make the most sense." Her hands were crossed carefully on her lap, a habit drilled into her by a mother long gone. "But it wasn't. It had... it had a totally different aura to it. An aura of something ancient. Of something..."
"Evil?"
She gave it some further consideration. "Actually... not evil. Not necessarily. Perhaps... trickery..."
<
br /> 'Trickery? Why do you say that?"
"Just... an impression I received. Nothing I can de-scribe precisely. Just a feeling. I think we're dealing with something much bigger, much greater than the Dogs of War. Something very ancient. Something very frightening."
"And it frightened you because..."
"It just did, Cwan," she said, sounding a bit exasper-ated. "But I think you need to do something about it."
"Yes," said Cwan thoughtfully. "Yes... I do." He clapped his hands together briskly. "Very well, then. Let us attend to this."
Kalinda almost felt a little taken aback. "Just like that?"
"Yes. Just like that," Cwan said. "We will talk to the right people. We will tell them the right things. We will prompt them to believe," he continued, warming to the task, "that we know more than we do... and they will suffer if they do not cooperate with us."
"Are you going to hurt people?"
He looked at her mildly. "Only the ones who bother me," he said.
EXCALIBUR
soleta sat alone in the officers' dining hall, having breakfast by herself, as was her custom. She tended to eat lightly most mornings, and this was no exception. She had a small bowl of ploineek soup in front of her, and was daintily sipping the hot broth from a spoon, when she came to the slow realization that it had sud-denly gotten rather quiet. This in and of itself was un-usual enough, for the dining hall was usually fairly boisterous in the morning. But when she looked up to see what could possibly have caused this unexpected drop in the decibel level, she saw that everyone was star-ing at her. Or, to be more precise, at a point directly be-hind her.
Very slowly she turned and looked over her shoulder.
A man with a bird's head was standing directly be-hind her, eyeing her soup.
He was dressed in what appeared to Soleta to be a
variation on Egyptian garb, except he had wings. Well... not exactly wings. They were more winglike ornaments that ran the length of either arm, festooned with a mixture of black and white feathers. His head... well, it was indeed a bird's head. The yellow eyes rotated to fix on her, the head itself was entirely white feathers, and the beak was very long and narrow, the sort of beak sported by the bird known as the ibis. Something that appeared to be a crown was perched atop his head.
Not for a moment did Soleta come even close to being disconcerted. Instead she studied him for a time. She was able to do so in relative peace, since the room was deathly quiet. Then Lieutenant Beth, who had just been finishing breakfast with Lieutenant Goodwin, reached up and tapped her com badge. "Dining hall to security," she started to say.
Immediately Soleta said, "Cancel that, Lieutenant. That won't be necessary." She slid the soup to the far side of the table, in front of the chair that was opposite her. "Have you had breakfast, Thoth?" she inquired, as if being faced with a man with a bird's head was some-thing she had to deal with routinely every morning.
His beak clicked as he spoke. "I have not, no. But I do not need to eat in your conventional sense."
"It is new experiences that make life interesting. Can you remove that... device?"
For a long moment more, the yellow eyes fixed upon her. And then Thoth reached up to the base of his throat, which, until he touched it, appeared perfectly fused with his dark brown flesh. But when he touched it, it peeled
away, and his bird's head retracted up and into the crown.
The face that was revealed was rather handsome at that His complexion was as dark as the rest of his skin, but his features were almost delicate. A slender nose, a thin mouth, an angular jaw, and his eyes... amusingly, his eyes were as yellow as the bird's eyes in the mask that had just vanished into the crown. He had a peaceful, almost gentle look to him that Soleta couldn't help but find mildly attractive. Considering the looks that he was getting from other women in the place-and a couple of the men-she wasn't the only one who considered him in that way.
He looked down at the soup, and then held out a hand. She placed the spoon in it and, very carefully so as not to spill any, he dipped the spoon into the soup, lifted it to his lips, and took a cautious sip. He pursed his lips a moment, and then nodded. "Intriguing," he said.
"I would not have thought to describe soup as 'in-triguing,' but I will accept your analysis," she told him.
He continued to eat the soup. "You do not seem sur-prised to see me."
"It takes a good deal to surprise me," she said, making no attempt to sound modest. "McHenry told me that Artemis said you might be coming."
"Yes. This was quite good." He seemed a bit startled when he realized that he had finished the soup.
"You are Thoth," she said. "The Egyptian moon god who oversees such disciplines as writing, astronomy, mathematics, law, magic..."
"Magic to the ancient Egyptians," he clarified for her. "I daresay that what you have here would certainly qualify as magic insofar as the ancients would be concerned. What is magic to some is, to others, science. But you seem to know a good deal about me, whereas I know nothing of you."
She was all too aware that every eye in the place was upon her. "I think it would be best," she said slowly, "if we were to meet with the captain. You are, after all, a newcomer to this vessel, and it would be best if that pro-cedure were followed."
"As you wish," he said.
Soleta quickly ascertained that Calhoun was on the bridge, in the captain's ready room, in conference with McHenry. Telling Calhoun of what had just occurred, and assuring him that a security escort was not going to be necessary, she set out down the corridor toward the turbo-lift with Thoth at her side. She resolutely ignored the looks and double takes she got from others as they passed by.
"You still have told me nothing of yourself," he re-minded her.
"My name is Soleta," she said briskly, as if it was a matter of no consequence, "I am the ship's science offi-cer, I am a Vulcan..."
"And Romulan."
He spoke so automatically, so effortlessly, that it caught her completely off guard. She spun to face him, eyes wide, unable to believe what she had just heard. "How did you-?"
"So it does not take all that much to surprise you after all," Thoth observed.
She lowered her voice, suddenly extremely apprehen-sive about being overheard by someone passing by. Fortunately at the moment that Thoth had chosen to blurt out her dual nature, there had been no one immediately around to hear. "How did you know?"
He smiled at her indulgently. "I am a god of truth. If it is spoken, I know. If it is not, I know... and will also know that which is not said. Call it a talent."
"I will call it none of your business, if you do not mind," she said, walking quickly down the corridor again with Thoth following her easily. She couldn't help but notice how perfect his stride was, and how his mus-cles seemed to ripple so elegantly as he moved. With ex-treme effort, she remained focused on the subject. "You came here because of my research into this area of space?"
The turbolift was just ahead of them, and they stepped in. They turned to face one another as the doors closed. "I know that you have some curiosity about it."
"Bridge," she said, and as the turbolift moved toward its destination, continued, "I am detecting energy waves, readings in patterns for which I have been able to find no precedent. I have not been able to detect one centralized source, and the very nature of the energy escapes me."
"Do you have any speculation, Soleta of Vulcan and Romulus?"
"Will you..." Her voice was far louder than she would have liked, especially in the confines of the tur-bolift, and she lowered it as she said, "Will you... please... not make mention of that again?"
"It is a tragic thing to be ashamed of one's heritage."
"It is a tragedy I am willing to live with," she said flatly. "The consequences of my silence on this matter, however, I would prefer not to have to live with, if it is all the same to you. And by the way, you are not a god."
He smiled that megawatt smile. "Are you quite cer-tain?" ,
; "An advanced being, yes, but not a god."
"That is very much in the eye of the beholder, is it not? To those who worshipped me... you would be a god. Or..." He studied her ears, chuckling softly. "... perhaps the devil. Who can say?"
"The energy waves," she said, trying to drag the con-versation kicking and screaming back to something that would be of use to her. "Are your people responsible for generating them? If so, is it a sort of spillage or overflow from your power source? Does it present a danger? Are there ways it can be harnessed? Do you-what's wrong?"
She had seen the change in his expression. Something had most definitely occurred, and she had no clue what But it had unquestionably changed the nature of the meeting, because bis expression was very clouded and his yellow eyes were deeply troubled. "Thoth," she said again, "what's-?"
Star Trek - NF - 12 - Being Human Page 18