Pawns and Symbols

by Majliss Larson

  "Oh, could I ask you one more thing?" Jean asked.

  Mara paused. "What is that?"

  "Aetheln. What does it mean?"

  Mara sat back down. "As in Aethelnor? The suffix means 'bearing'. And aetheln is … well, it carries some of the meaning of your Terran concept of kismet—one's fate or destiny in life. It also has something of the original Confucian concept of … li I think it was called—that internal ability to perceive and accept the mandate of heaven, to perform your proper role in the order of things. I guess Aethelnor would translate roughly as Confucius's chun-tzu, the prince-son or superior man, wouldn't it? Why do you ask?"

  "Nothing important," Jean replied. "It's just that Kang mentioned the word to me once but couldn't explain it. I was struck by the coincidence."

  Mara chuckled. "Kang is not as widely read in Terran culture as I." At Jean's questioning look, she continued, "Those days on the Enterprise after the truce. Kang wouldn't let me out of our quarters, so I spent a lot of time with computer tapes. Your science officer, Mr. Spock, gave me only limited access to scientific areas so I spent a lot of time on history and culture. Perhaps," she finished almost wistfully as she rose, "it will be different with Aernath."

  Jean stood up quickly to match Mara's gesture. "I'm sure we'll work out something."

  "Excellent. Survival and success to you both. I hope the next time we meet will be at the negotiating table. Aernath, Kyrnon will have your orders. Good-bye."

  Their immediate destination was Tsorn. They had traveled by a small, fast courier ship and the trip went without incident. Jean shivered slightly in her shurdik as she stood on the apron of the spaceport and looked out over the red sands of Tsorn. This was a rim planet of the Klingon Empire located in a quadrant tangential to Federation space. The interior of its main continent was dominated by salt flats and great deserts of red sand. A fairly narrow belt around the continental periphery supported a modicum of native vegetation as well as agricultural development with careful management. The capital city, Ichidurtsukaitsorn, or Ichidur as it was often called, was located on the northwest part of the continent not too far inland. The spaceport was sited farther inland on the edge of the desert.

  Aethelnor was shivering too. She reached out and wrapped him in a double thickness of her redundant shurdik. By custom, women on Tsorn went out only if covered from head to toe by this voluminous garment. It had fine meshwork in front of the eyes so one could see out—straight ahead. Otherwise, there were no openings. It was winter now so Jean welcomed its warmth as well as the cover but it must be stifling in the summer when the hot dry winds blew off the desert.

  "Comfortable now?" she asked Aethelnor.

  The boy nodded. "Yes, it's warmer." He was a very reserved child by human standards, at least with Jean. He had spent more time with Aernath than with her on the ship. Aernath took his charge seriously and spent several hours each day in various sorts of lessons with the boy. Now he had left Aethelnor with her while he cleared them through entry formalities. Their documents indicated that she was a Penelian bringing her son to live with his uncle who was allegedly a wealthy trader in Ichidur. Beyond that, she knew nothing of the plans to get them off Tsorn. If Aernath knew, he gave no indication, saying only that they would be contacted.

  The wind blew more insistently now and Jean noticed a few drops of rain on the apron in front of her. She sat down on one of the two pods supposed to be their "luggage" and drew Aethelnor up on her lap. That way she could better shield him from the wind and rain. She wondered how Tsorni women navigated in these garments. She couldn't turn her head to see if Aernath was coming or not. While it's concealment protected her from casual detection, it also made her feel hemmed in and half blind. She jumped nervously at the sound of the voice directly behind her.

  "Here. Take these two. Follow me." It was Aernath and a porter. The porter picked up the two dufflepods. With a curt gesture, Aernath set off without a backward glance. The others followed. He was dressed in a gray one-piece suit that seemed to be standard dress for all civilian men on Tsorn. Class and status could probably be distinguished by the subtle differences in markings and decoration but this had not been included in Jean's briefing.

  They approached a row of small cubicles. The porter deposited their pods in one and Aernath motioned Jean and Aethelnor to enter also. Following them, he closed the door. The compartment immediately began to subside into the ground. Startled, Jean turned to look at Aernath. His attention was fixed on a wall panel. After a moment's scrutiny of the symbols, he punched several buttons in rapid succession. His explanation to the boy was obviously for her enlightenment as well. "Aethelnor, do you see this panel? It tells you all the places you can go on this subtern. All you have to do is push the buttons for where you want to go." The cubicle halted. "Now we are waiting to be shuttled to a group going in our direction. Pretty soon we will start moving again." The operation proceeded as promised. They were reshuttled at a couple more junctions and finally emerged above ground within Ichidur itself.

  A cold rain was falling with a gray dreary steadiness. As Aernath was removing their pods from the subtern cubicle, a small vehicle pulled up. Its occupant entered another cubicle. As that sank out of sight, Aernath appropriated the street vehicle which was apparently a sort of autotaxi. It operated on the same principle as the subtern: when coordinates were entered on its control panel it set off to the specified location.

  As they rode along, Jean took in what she could with her limited view. Ahead, off to one side, she could see the low escarpment that separated this seaward sloping plain from the desert beyond. Though low, it apparently served to set up meteorlogical conditions so that moisture laden clouds coming in from the sea during winter months dumped almost all their moisture here before hitting the desert beyond. Though it seldom got below freezing, winters were very wet in Ichidur. Here, as on Tahrn, Klairos, and Peneli, based on the brief glimpses she had been accorded, urban Klingons seemed to live behind massive stone walls. Little could be seen of the houses except for glimpses of the roof peaks above the walls. None of what little vegetation she saw was familiar. Most striking were the occasional huge trees they passed: great tangles of aerial roots rising some two meters into the air surmounted by an abbreviated trunk that formed almost a platform. Around the periphery, branches reached skyward to the thick gray-green canopy. The shape, Jean decided, was virtually an organic replica of a planetary magnetosphere with its tail stuck in the ground.

  The vehicle glided noiselessly to a stop at another nexus. There was very little traffic and the street was deserted. Jean watched in puzzlement as Aernath extracted some type of small device from his belt and applied it to the door of the vehicle they had just exited. He reached in, punched a fresh set of coordinates, then closed the door, removing the device as he did so. He repeated this maneuver with a second vehicle before moving to a third. "Aernath, what are you doing?"

  "Taking precautions. We were supposed to be met at the spaceport. The contact didn't show. Don't say anything once we get in now. He motioned her in ahead of him.

  Jean perched tensely on the edge of her seat the rest of the brief trip, mentally cursing the limitations of the shurdick which left her feeling already half-trapped. Once again they stopped, this time in front of one of the stone-walled compounds. Jean and Aethelnor remained seated as Aernath approached the solid wooden door set in the wall. She could neither see nor hear clearly what he was doing but after some moments the door opened to disclose large burly Klingon who came and took the dufflepods. They followed him inside and across a rain-slick terrace of red polyhedral tiles to the house beyond.

  They learned that, "officially," their contact had met with an unfortunate accident on the way to the spaceport. Unofficially, Aernath was convinced he had died under an I.S.G. agonizer. Unfortunately, he was to have been their liaison with those arranging the next leg of their journey. So now, they were waiting until an alternate contact was made. Jean went to the window for the thir
d time that afternoon. It had been raining steadily for two days. Now it had stopped.

  She turned back to the room where Aernath was trying to teach Aethelnor the basic positions used in Klingon swordplay. "The sun is out. Couldn't we all go out in the yard for a bit of air and sun?"

  Aernath lowered his fencing wand and looked at her. "Sure, why not—"

  "Gotcha!" exclaimed Aethelnor with gleeful satisfaction as his thrust touched Aernath on the hip.

  Aernath laughed. "Excellent! Always look for a chance to score when your enemy is paying attention to something else." Then he added more sternly, "But the correct term is 'Mark', not gotcha! Remember that. Now let's go outside to finish this practice."

  The yard sloped down to a stream in back of the compound. This side was not fenced with stone but rather a delicate metal grillwork and plantings of dwarf trees. Glimmerings of sun-touched water were reflected through the leaves. It was perhaps an hour or so before sunset and even the winter sun was warm. As Aernath continued his drill, Jean wandered contentedly around the yard examining various plants and bushes. As she approached the grillwork her eye was drawn to an odd, brown object in one of the planting beds near the wall. Curious, she reached out and touched it, then recoiled in astonishment. It was furry, warm, and mobile. What she had taken for a tree trunk or dormant plant was an animal. Roused, it uncurled and regarded her with benign curiosity in return.

  "Aernath, come here! What in space is this?"

  At her call he came to investigate. "Oh, that. I forget what they're called but they're harmless. Aethelnor, if you run into the kitchen and get some bread you can feed it." He turned back to Jean. "They are burrowing creatures native to Tsorn and in settled areas have become pretty good scavengers. Tame, too. Kind of cute, isn't' he?" He squatted to stroke the creature's fur as it sniffed Jean curiously.

  Reassured, Jean knelt for a closer look at the animal, too. Slightly over a meter long, the sinuous body was covered dorsally with soft mahogany-colored fur. It was six-legged with a fold of furred skin running from forelimbs to hindmost limbs. The sleek head showed no sign external ears. Two copper-hued eyes regarded her above a slender muzzle. The creature reared up on its back four legs and grasped one of Jean's hands with its front paws as if searching for something.

  Entranced, Jean reached out to stroke its head as the moist nose muzzled the palm of her hand. She was engulfed in a cacophony of sounds like a Chinese orchestra that was tuning up. Solitude! The sounds died away to a faint chime and tinkle. You are different. You are Yumyn. That is so—yes? You think to disconnect. That is not, good, no. You are sought. Come with me. Jean pulled back with an exclamation. The sounds and sensation ceased.

  Aernath looked at her in puzzlement. "Did it nip you?"

  "Aernath! It spoke to me!"

  He laughed, then stopped when he saw she was serious. "Ridiculous. It didn't make a sound. They seldom do, I understand."

  "No, I don't mean talking. I just … heard it, inside my head. At first it was like music and then thoughts. Are these animals telepathic?"

  "Of course not. They are simple animals that live in burrows near rivers and streams. They give no evidence of social structure or higher intelligence. You're imagining things."

  "Aernath, it told me I was different, human, and that I was being looked for. It wants me to go somewhere. Here you try it."

  He made a gesture of impatient disbelief, then faltered in the face of her conviction. Dubiously, he repeated Jean's motions. The animal sat patiently for a moment, then turned back to Jean. He shook his head. "Nothing. You're just …" He stopped, noting her rapt attention to the animal again.

  The sounds were muted now. That one cannot connect. His kind is different. Come. You must come now.

  I can't. I cannot go without him and he does not believe you. Where do you want us to go? Why?

  The music welled up into the foreground. Jean felt the sense of listening, not her own but that of the animal. You must come to another one who waits. That one says the strange bird flies when the sun leaves its burrow. Tell this one. Come now. The sense of urgency was unmistakable, the sense of calling strong even beyond the thought messages she was receiving.

  She lifted her hand from the soft furred head. The animal retained its tiny pawed grip on her fingers. "Aerath, it says that Klingons can't connect with them but it clearly wants me to go with it to meet someone. Does this mean anything to you: 'the strange bird flies when the sun leaves it's burrow'?"

  Aernath's manner changed instantly. "Incredible! But how could they … Never mind, yes, it might. If you think you're 'talking' to that thing—ask it what kind of bird."

  Jean turned to the animal, then back to Aernath. "It says it is a strange bird, unfamiliar to it, but a bird of prey of some sort."

  Aernath pursed his lips thoughtfully. "It could be … all right, wait here a moment." He got up and went into the house. At the same time Aethelnor came out with the bread, and Jean helped him feed the animal. It certainly gave no overt sign of awareness or higher intelligence as it busily consumed the morsels Aethelnor fed it. After the last piece, it nosed his hands hopefully for a moment, then sat back and set to grooming its fur unconcernedly.

  Delighted, Aethelnor went back to fetch more bread. Immediately the animal moved to the grillwork gate, then turned to look at Jean. It returned to her again grasping her finger with a forepaw and thrusting its head into her palm like a cat seeking to be petted. Again she felt/heard the urgent Come! It had a musical quality and once again she was aware of the undertones, more coherent and harmonic this time … quite pleasant really …

  Aernath was shaking her shoulder gently, "Jean?" He seemed relieved when she looked up. "How are we supposed to go?" She noticed he had his cloak and a shurdik draped over his arm.

  "That way, along the stream somehow. Apparently it's not too far."

  He handed her the shurdik. "All right. Put this on and let's go."

  "What about Aethelnor?"

  "He'll be fine here. The cook has him occupied at the moment." Aernath released the lock on the gate and they stepped through the trees to the river's edge. Like its neighbors, this property had a small quay with a little boat moored to it. It seemed to be intended for fishing or simple outings as it was equipped only with a pole.

  Jean knelt in the bow while Aernath cast off. Their guide had disappeared into a burrow hole before they left the yard. Now the animal surfaced silently beside the small craft, its sleek dark head making eddies in water the color of dark red tea. Jean slipped her hand under the edge of the shurdik and trailed her fingertips in the water. The wet muzzle touched them. This way. Against the water. The music was a tantalizing background. "Head upstream, Aernath."

  The water drew its color from the roots of the large llngen trees, several of which bordered the stream along this stretch. The sun had sunk nearly to the horizon now and bathed the stream with that surreal, limpid glow that precedes sunset. The trees already held the gloom and stillness of dusk as Aernath poled soundlessly between their roots.

  Here and there water dripped from the gray-green leaves. The effect was that of some primeval, temrperate rain forest.

  Urged forward by periodic encouragement from their aquatic guide, they reached an area more sparsely settled and the llngen thinned to reveal a park-like area which had an air of neglect about it. The animal urged them to a decrepit dock on the opposite bank, then disappeared.

  Aernath muttered an oath as he secured the painter and helped her out. "Cymele's Cloak! This is a queer business. What are we supposed to do now—take a walk in the park? Careful, there's a missing plank here." He grasped her arm through the enveloping garment.

  Infected by his unease, Jean remained close to him and spoke in a virtual whisper though no one was in sight. "I guess so. It said only, 'walk and seek food.'" There was a faint path overgrown with weeds along the edge of the stream. They followed this for some distance encountering only two other persons: a small boy fishing fro
m the bank and a tall spare scholar-robed Romulan seated on a bench, engrossed in a book.

  The path twisted and carried them away from the river into a grove. "This is an old botanical garden from the looks of things," Aernath commented. "But it's in woeful shape." On the other side of the grove the path turned back to the river. Here a single immense llngen stood overlooking a small lagoon. Atop its platform trunk, skillfully constructed so that it blended into the camouflage of the branches, was an ancient rustic building that served mainly as a restaurant with a few rented rooms for short term visitors. "Perhaps here's the food we are looking for. Come on."

  Jean followed Aernath up the narrow, wooden steps as she awkwardly grasped the railing through the folds of the shurdik and prayed that she wouldn't trip in the process. They were met at the entrance by the proprietor who greeted Aernath with some regret. "Welcome, Kinsman. Unfortunately, at the moment I have no available, closed dining space. The last one is reserved for a current roomer who usually eats at this hour. If you wish to wait for a while, perhaps one of the other two will be available shortly."

  Aernath replied with equally formal courtesy. "No inconvenience at all, Kinsman. I shall wait." The proprietor showed him to a table and Jean followed. She saw him glance around cursorily before he took a seat facing the door. She sat down opposite him as he ordered a drink. Obviously nothing would be ordered for her unless and until they obtained a closed space. She would be expected to sit and wait silently. As far as she could tell, there were only three other occupants in the room: a young man with the air of a scholar, book in one hand and fork in the other; and a pair of old men absorbed in a tsungu game in the corner.

  The proprietor delivered Aernath's drink and moved to the entrance to greet another arrival. Jean saw Aernath's hand tighten fractionally on the handle of his tankard. The black and scarlet uniform of I.S.G. moved into her field of vision. But the Klingon passed them with the merest of glances and moved to the tsungu game. "The usual, Amar, and make it snappy." The proprietor bowed and scurried away.