Pawns and Symbols

by Majliss Larson

  The others had said their good-byes and left. McCoy, Maevlynin, Pavel, and Reena walked slowly toward sick bay. They paused at the door. Carefully not looking at them, Chekov said, "Good-night, Maevlynin, Doctor," and deliberately set off with Reena in the direction of his quarters. McCoy looked at Maevlynin. Conspiratorily she raised an eyebrow in delightful caricature of Spock. They both grinned.

  "Hell," grumbled McCoy, "Jim said it was my responsibility so I'm going to exercise my discretion. If he finds out …" He shrugged. Maevlynin headed into sick bay. "Where do you think you're going?"

  Indicating Reena's bed, she said, "I think someone ought to sleep there in case you-know-who's famous intuition about his ship gives him insomnia tonight."

  "Maevlynin, you're a gem." He kissed her soundly. Might as well—she knew how he felt anyway.

  Maevlynin laughed delightedly. "Len, you're learning. Good night."

  Reena, Pavel, and McCoy stood in the shuttlecraft bay next to Reena's launch. Spock was already aboard. The Organians had agreed to receive her and get her safely home.

  "Well, good-bye, Reena, and good luck. Don't forget us."

  "I won't, Dr. McCoy. You may be sure of that … and my gratitude."

  McCoy suddenly remembered he hasd something very important to do in sick bay and left them alone.

  She leaned her forehead against Pavel's shoulder. "Oh, Pavel. I wish we had another choice," she sighed. "We will do what we have to, but nothing says I have to like it. And I'm frightened."

  His arms tightened around her. "That they'll kill you? But you said—"

  She made an impatient gesture. "No, they won't. My story and Spock's mind block will take care of that. You have no concept of the diabolical image your Enterprise has in the minds of our High Command. They'll believe me. What I fear is losing you. Pavel, promise me you will stay with the Enterprise. I'll arrange to be assigned as far away from her as possible." Her voice was low. "I don't ever want to face an engagement with her knowing you're on board."

  "I promise," Pavel's voice was bitter. "At least you'll know where I am. And me? How will I know where you are? I'll face that question anytime we meet a Romulan ship. Can't you arrange to stay planet-side?"

  "Pavel … could you?"

  He shook his head. "Let's not argue about it again. Here, I want you to have this. It's been in my mother's family for several generations." He dropped a gold locket into her hand. Reena stripped the silver ring from her finger—the one piece of jewelry she wore. It had the shape of a delicate flower.

  "It's a gilphin, the native flower of my home, worn only by those from my village. Good-bye, my love."

  "Goodbye, Reena."

  She stepped into the launch. The door slid closed. Blindly, Pavel made his way across the hangar and into the airlock. Behind him the shuttlecraft bay doors now opened and the Romulan craft slipped into space.

  Eight

  JEAN STOOD IN the transporter room checking out the assembled materials a final time. They had achieved orbit around Klairos yesterday. Kang had spent the afternoon and early evening in conferences planetside. She and Aernath were expecting the order to beam down as soon as he emerged from this morning's session. Since the night she about his thinking. If indeed he had been in the habit of confiding in Mara, he showed little inclination to do so with her. However, the arrangement did appear to satisfy him. At first, he had seemed quite relaxed, sometimes almost cheerful, but as they approached Klairos his manner became taut and moody, never, however, to the point of tension that Jean had observed the night before they orbited Tahrn. He had about his thinking if indeed he had been in the habit of said nothing further by way of instructions to her and when she had asked him last night he had merely smiled and said, "Remember your position, try to think like a Klingon, and if you have any questions, ask Aernath. He seems to have advised you competently so far." For some reason she did not understand this seemed to amuse him.

  Aernath was not amused. Since they had left Tahrn his manner had been distant and distracted. Although they continued to work together he frequently seemed preoccupied. He seldom manifested that almost boyish irreverence which provided her with such a refreshing counterpoint to the generally oppressive military atmosphere of a Klingon battle cruiser. On several occasions, she had become aware that he was scrutinizing her with the same odd speculative look she had noted that night over dinner in her room. Once she had wondered, wistfully, if it might be jealousy. "A half-credit for your thoughts," she had ventured.

  "Peneli," he had said shortly and offered no elaboration.

  So much for that theory, thought Jean ruefully, thankful that she had not voiced her thoughts more directly. Aernath was disappointed not to be going to. Peneli and had every reason to be worried about his own people. Except for a couple of brief instances of tenderness, his actions toward her had never gone beyond those of a cordial colleague which, she admonished herself sternly, was more than one might reasonably expect of any Klingon under the circumstances.

  Her reverie was broken by the arrival of Aernath and Tirax, who was again accompanying them on assignment. The clearance to beam down had come through, so Aernath went down to supervise the transfer there while Jean monitored their dispatch from the cruiser. Finally, she and Tirax beamed down to Klairos spaceport. They emerged in a large warehouse where she spotted Aernath and another Klingon overseeing the loading of a glide-car with their equipment. As Jean joined them, the Klairosian suddenly stopped his work and greeted her with an unbelieving stare. "Is this the human?"

  "That's her," Aernath affirmed.

  The man's hostility was evident. "A woman!" he spat contemptuously.

  Aernath flushed but replied in a light tone, "Cymele incarnate, you might say."

  The other man glowered darkly at him. "I wouldn't say that too loudly, spacer. I'm not superstitious but there are those who would believe the goddess herself had a human streak the way things have been going here lately. Do you really intend to have a female working on this project?"

  "We will be working together," Aernath asserted with just the barest emphasis on the final word. His tone was mild but his eyes flashed angrily. Jean could have hugged him.

  At that moment Kang approached. The third Klingon turned to him accusingly. "You didn't tell us that this human was a female!"

  Kang's eyes ginted momentarily with grim amusement. "A human is a human. Her gender is irrelevant to your project so I saw no reason to mention it."

  The Klingon exploded, "'Gath's teeth! You're mad! It won't work. Discipline, morale, efficiency! I won't have a woman mucking up the project!"

  "That is unlikely to be your problem with her, Kasoth." Kang's face darkened with a frown that Jean had come to recognize as an analogue to Captain Kirk's stubborn look when a command decision was questioned. "I believe I also neglected to mention that she holds consort-status with me. You will do well to accord her the respect due a member of my Theld."

  Kasoth's mouth opened, then closed abruptly. He saluted Kang stiffly and stalked off clearly unhappy with the state of affairs. Kang's frown faded into a brief smile as he watched Kasoth's receding back. Jean wondered if this, too, was one of Kang's "reasons". He had had dealings with this planet before. Intended or not, she could see it might make things a little easier for her while she was here. Kang was apparently, about to beam up to his ship. Her farewell was brief but sincere: "Clear space and good landings. I shall look forward to your return."

  He brushed her chin lightly with a finger tip. "You'll survive." It was said softly but with satisfaction.

  Jean felt one of her rare flashes of genuine affection for the man. "Thanks," she said simply. Then as Kang's form disappeared in the characteristic flashing of the Klingon transporter beam, she turned to Aernath. "Come on. Let's go face the D.K.E. again." Then she added, "And thanks, Aernath. If I do survive, it will be as much your doing as his." She gave his hand a quick squeeze. He gave her one of his odd looks in return but said nothing.


  They rode in silence as the three car convoy moved past the I.S.G. checkpoint, out of the spaceport and into the surrounding countryside. The windows were not opaqued so Jean got her first glimpses of Klairos. From the flora and fauna on the tapes, she would have placed Klairos somewhere in the late Tertiary period on the Terran-based geological time scale: late Miocene or early Pliocene. There were some variations, of course Notable was the persistence of myriad large amphibian species as had been pointed out by Aernath's zoologist friend.

  The spaceport and Port Klairos, the capital city, had been built less than three-quarters of a century earlier on the first polderland reclaimed from the sea. Located in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, it lay virtually encircled by mountains with only a narrow mouth opening to the sea. It was there that the dike and tide gates had been built which allowed this tidal marsh to be drained. A brief portion of their drive paralleled a section of the dike and she could see the gray sea pounding sullenly against it. The cordillera that formed the ring around Port Klairos valley continued out to sea creating a myriad of small-peaked offshore islands. Jean gasped as she caught sight of them. "Vinh Dong Kinh" she murmured to herself. The scene was virtually identical to one that used to hang in her grandfather's study on Aldebaran Colony. As a recent widower with a small daughter, he had brought few possessions with him when he emigrated from Earth to Aldebaran. One was that picture: a coastal scene from near his birthplace somewhere in Southeast Asia she believed. Like many Asians, he often talked of returning there in his old age. It made her homesick and she was thankful when the road turned away inland.

  The land here had been desalted enough to support a variety of vegetation; however, much of the area was devoted to industry and the capital itself. Here and there she saw plantings of evergreens. Although winters were mild on the coast here, it was still early spring so other plants were barely coming out in foliage.

  The convoy left the valley and moved into the foothills. The road, obviously new, narrowed to a single lane. The second was still under construction. At the summit of the pass, the remaining lane terminated in front of a massive stone building where Jean learned they would complete their journey to the agricultural station with pack animals.

  It was cold on the summit and now she could see snow-covered peaks. She thumbed the thermal control unit on her belt up a couple of notches and pulled her hood forward more snugly over her ears. The building served as a sort of combination hotel and headquarters for the construction crew. After a sparse meal of a sort of vegetable soup and sour Klingon bread in a stand-up canteen, they reassembled outside once again. Jean pulled on her fuir-fined gloves as she approached the small group. Kasoth was fuming again.

  "No one warned me to bring a back-litter and there's none to be had here. Would serve 'em both proper to put her in an equipment rack but that means leaving some stuff here until tomorrow. Gath's teeth! Bloody woman's disrupting things already." He glared at her.

  Jean looked questioningly at Aernath. "What's the problem?"

  "Kasoth says he doesn't have the proper equipment, to transport you to the station."

  "Why can't I ride up like everyone else?"

  Angrily Kasoth turned to Jean. "Have you ever ridden a krelk?"

  "No," Jean answered truthfully. She hadn't the faintest idea what a krelk was. Then, annoyed with this Klingon's condescension, she added, "But I've ridden worse. If you can ride them, I will." No sooner had she made this rash statement than she remembered the beasts that had pulled the ceremonial carriage on Tahrn. She endured a momentary panic at the thought of having to ride one of those.

  When she actually saw the krelk a few moments later she laughed, partly from sheer relief. They looked like a cross between a llama and a kangaroo. The average beast's head towered about half a meter above hers with the back at shoulder height; coarse dun-colored hair with black dorsal stripe, black ears and nose; the forelegs were slender and delicate like a goat's. The hind legs were slightly longer and much more heavily muscled. The large tail looked like the formidable weapon it was. The last meter of its length was prehensile, allowing the krelk to seize attackers and batter them against any convenient rock. One rode the krelk, she discovered, with the prehensile tail wrapped once about the waist and once about the pommel of the saddle. This meant that one had warning of an impending attack as the krelk would uncoil its tail unless, Kasoth pointed out, the beast simply forgot and used its rider as a blunt instrument against its assailant.

  The rider controlled the krelk by foot and knee movements so as to leave hands free for weapons—a system apparently common to Klingon planets but unfamiliar to Jean. Aernath rode alongside, coaching her.

  The rough roadbed gave way to a narrow but well-worn trail. For a while they followed a mountain stream edged with a lacy purfle of winter's last ice. Snow still clung to the southern slopes and shaded valleys but faint green showed on the clear northern slopes. The stream dropped away on their left as the trail turned inland to the west. Shortly they passed a trail leading back down toward the sea, giving a glimpse of open lowlands at its foot. "That's the polderland being reclaimed by the agricultural station," Aernath said as they passed. In that universal anticipation of a home stable, the animals quickened their pace, giving powerful leaps that Jean found quite disconcerting. It wasn't until they arrived at the station and she dismounted that she could adequately survey her new surroundings.

  Like newly settled Federation worlds, this planet presented a peculiar amalgam of space-age technology and frontier construction. In this gently rolling upland valley it was more apparent than in Port Klairos where the Klingon penchant for massive stone buildings was expressed. Settled before stone quarrying was well underway, this valley presented a different appearance. The oldest buildings were geodesic domes constructed of lightweight materials analogous to duralloy and flex-glas brought by the first settlers. Subsequent structures utilized a plentiful local tree called stonewood, giving arough-hewn, rustic appearance but lasting for decades without need for further maintenance.

  Above the settlement buildings the flashnet guaranteed protection from aerial predators. The perimeter was similarly guarded. Only in the outer fields did one need to be vigilant. Originally a farming village, it had recently been converted to an agricultural experiment station to meet the threat of the blight. Some of the original inhabitant remained; others had been moved out to accommodate the station personnel.

  Jean's quarters consisted of a small outbuilding. The single dark room contained a bed, table, bench, and massive stone fireplace. Smoke-blackened beams overhead testified both to the fireplace's long use and faulty draft. Jean distributed her meager belongings on the lone shelf and wooden wall pegs, then tackled the task of building a fire. At least on Tahrn her room had had central heat and lighting. It promised to be a grim summer ahead.

  That assessment was promptly underscored by her next encounter with a Klairosian. The fire well established, she set out to locate the mess hall. A chill wind swept down off the peaks, gusting and eddying around the buildings of the compound. Rounding a corner, she spotted a Klingon coming her way. She approached him intending to ask directions. He looked at her with angry astonishment and abruptly sent her sprawling with a powerful blow to her head. Dazed, Jean tried to sit up. The man seized her angrily by the back of her hood. "Insolent scum. What Theld owns you that you dare to …"

  Another voice broke in. "Hold, Kinsman. What's the problem?"

  The Klingon paused to glance at the new arrival. "Look for yourself. She approached me like this. Don't interfere, Spacer."

  "Hmmm. I see. Allow me." Tirax bent over Jean, inserted a finger under her chin and stripped her hood cleanly off.

  The other Klingon growled, "The human!"

  "Yes, the human. Unfortunately, she is also of the Theld of Kang. You would be ill-advised to rebuke her further—for the moment." He turned to Jean with a malicious grin. "On Klairos, a woman never approaches any man with her head covered.
Remember that and keep your place, human!" Turning back to the other Klingon, he clapped him on the shoulder. "Come, Kinsman, let's share a drink before we eat." The two Klingons sauntered off, Tirax swinging her hood mockingly in his hand.

  The agonizer, Jean thought vindictively as she watched them leave, was appropriate technology for the Klingon culture. They deserved it. Grimly she got up, dusted herself off, and looked around. She still didn't know where the mess hall was.

  When she did find it she joined the line of women and children waiting their turn to eat. Men ate first, then women and children. It was her first close contact with the local inhabitants. The line was laser straight, unmoving and preternaturally quiet. Part of the quiet came from apathy. Only the boys seemed to have any energy or curiosity. How much of theapathy was from malnutrition and how much was culturally determined Jean could not tell, but the ravages of malnutrition were clear to be seen. Even the pregnant women, of whom there were many, looked emaciated. Shocked, she wondered what the infant mortality rate was on this planet this year. Ignoring the curious stares and occasional whispers, Jean moved through the food line and carried her soup and bread to the nearest table. A number of armed guards were posted about the periphery of the room. As she moved to sit down the nearest one snarled at her. "Not there, woman. Over there." He gestured preemptorily. Hastily Jean complied having no wish to provoke another attack. The first table, she now realized, was reserved for the boys. It got extra rations.

  The meal proceeded in silence. Jean, ate slowly, stealing occasional glances at her tablemates. She shivered. The aura of prison camp was too strong to be ignored. Finished, she followed her tablemates' lead and carried her utensils to the dish line. Then she escaped to her own quarters. She spent a cold night but at least she was left undisturbed.

  Breakfast was a kind of gruel and something Jean took to be the Klairosian equivalent of coffee. It was strong and very bitter but definitely a stimulant. Aernath was waiting for her when she emerged from the dining hall. He handed heir the hood. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you about that, but I wasn't aware of it myself. Are you all right?"