by Various
“He has anger, Father. Passion. A burning hatred like nothing I’ve ever seen. I wanted the opportunity to study it up close.”
“And you’ve had that opportunity. For a month now. I’m sending him back to the mines—”
“No, Father.”
“My decision is final.”
“Fine. Then I’m going with him.”
He uttered a dismissive laugh as if this were a mere jest, but then he saw the look in her eyes and the amusement faded. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m perfectly serious.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I would.”
Rojan stared at her with open astonishment. “Gods, I think you would. Just to spite me?”
“No. To make clear to you that I feel strongly about this. I am a student of the mind, Father, in all things. I want to understand how his mind works. I want to understand the forces that shaped him. It’s not my fault that there are no records of him.”
It was true. The standard procedure was that, when someone became a slave to the mines, their entire background was literally deleted from all records. Thus did they become nonpeople, with no existence save what they had in the mines. So she had been utterly unable to learn anything of the circumstances that had landed Muck, a Xenexian (she’d been able to determine that much at least, through a bioscan) in the Reman mines.
She had even tried her meld on several occasions, but had had no luck. There had to be a calmness, a serenity for the involved mind to be able to blend with hers. There had been none such for Soleta and Muck. The only time he permitted himself to come into physical contact with her was when they were sparring, and a furious battle was hardly the time to do a mind-probe. Even so, despite the difficulty of it, she had endeavored to at least brush against his thoughts, but she had been soundly rebuffed. She didn’t think that he was doing it consciously. It was just that his thoughts—his very personality—were so forceful that they pushed her away mentally.
Rojan placed his hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me, Soleta. Listen carefully. That day at the mines, that terrible day, I almost lost you. That was quite possibly the worst moment of my life. I don’t wish to take any chance of such a thing happening in actuality. And this…this Muck…I believe he could be the death of you.”
“I am asking you to trust me, Father. Do you?”
“Of course. Just—” He glanced at the closed door that led into the room where Muck was waiting, perhaps prepared to ambush her. “Just be careful, please.”
“I will, Father.”
He walked away, and Soleta reentered the workout room. Muck was standing right where she had left him.
They said nothing for a moment. Finally she informed him, “My father is concerned you’re going to kill me. Are you?”
“I am your slave.”
“So?”
“Killing you is not an option.”
She strode toward him, eyebrow cocked. “What if you were not my slave? Would that be an option then?” When she saw his uncomprehending stare, she continued, “I don’t think you would kill for no reason. And you have no reason to kill me.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself.”
If he was trying to say something that would shock her, he wasn’t successful. All she did was laugh.
In a rare instance of initiating a question, Muck said, “Do you find that so difficult to believe? That I would have reason to kill you?”
She stopped laughing then. Her father’s warnings rang in her head, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore them. “What possible reason could you have? I’ve treated you well since bringing you here. If not for me, you’d still be in the mines.”
“Of what importance is that to you?”
“It’s not important. It’s simply a fact.”
His lack of response seemed to indicate it was not a fact that especially interested him.
“Could you do it?” she demanded. “In your opinion. I’m asking you. Could you kill me? Would you?”
“I would find someone else to do it,” said Muck. “Why dirty your own paws when you can use someone else’s paws.”
Soleta’s eyes widened, and she rocked back on her heels. “You quote Landar the Elder?”
“Yes.” He seemed oblivious to her sparked interest.
“Did someone tell you that quote?”
“I read it. I’ve read all his works.”
“They have those works in the mines?” She was finding that very difficult to believe.
“No. I read them before I went there.”
“And that was when?”
He drew himself straight, formal in his bearing and tone. “If you have no further need of my services, Mistress…”
Soleta walked toward him, keeping a pleasant smile on her face. “Now, Muck,” she said coyly, and placed a hand gently on his forearm, “there are certain services that you could pro—owwwww!”
He had snapped his forearm around and snagged her hand. He was squeezing it incredibly tightly at the wrist. For a moment she thought her hand was going to pop right out like a cork from a bottle. He yanked her close and snarled in her face, “Don’t try your mind-probe tricks on me.” Then he pushed her away so hard that she thudded against the wall. But it was the surprise of his words that caused her to slide to the ground, looking stunned.
“How…” She glanced left and right, as if concerned that they were being listened to despite the fact that they were in the basement of Soleta’s own home that she shared with her father. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “How do you know about that?”
“Because I’m not stupid. I can feel you, trying to root around. Most people don’t know their own minds. I know mine. Stay out of it.”
He released her with a slight push to speed her along, and then stepped back. Once again, his voice completely flat, he said, “If you have no further need of my services, Mistress…”
Rubbing her wrist, she shook her head. He turned and walked out, heading back to the tiny, Spartan room that served as his quarters.
Her head was swimming with the emotional intensity of the encounter. Although Romulans were an offshoot of the Vulcan race, and not mired in the demands of repressed emotion, nevertheless they were still not an especially demonstrative people. This came more from political reasons than any deep philosophy. It was generally considered wise to keep one’s feelings to oneself so that potential opponents would not be able to utilize them against one.
So the emotional intensity displayed by Muck had been a new experience for her, one that she was finding overwhelming. And most significant of all was that, as quickly as Muck had shut her down…
…she had still picked up something. Just a hint of it, the faintest whisper, but still something.
The hate was there, oh yes. The burning hatred that she had found so compelling, so fascinating. But what she had not considered was that flame was always fed by something, and in the instant when she had launched the beginnings of a meld, she had obtained the briefest glimpse of what was fanning that fire.
It was sorrow. Sorrow and a sense of almost infinite loss.
Whoever this Muck was, he had lost everything that ever had meaning to him.
Soleta sat there, unmoving, for a long time, giving the matter more thought than she had ever given anything, before she finally resolved what to do.
Later that evening, there was a soft knock at Muck’s door. He answered it to find Soleta standing there, her shoulders squared with a very formal attitude about her. There was no surprise on his face, as if he’d been expecting her. “What do you require, Mistress?” he asked.
She held out a blue chip. He stared at it uncomprehending. “Take it,” she said. He did as he was bidden. “It’s your freedom.”
“What?”
“It’s your freedom,” she repeated calmly. “I’ve given you your freedom. You’re not a slave anymore. You can go anywhere on Romulus you want. You can go to Xenex. You can go to hell for al
l I care.” She paused, looking at him fixedly, and then in a gesture that was totally unplanned, she reached out and extended two fingers. She brushed them against Muck’s cheek ever so gently. He didn’t flinch away. “Have a good life, Muck.”
“Why?” he said angrily. “Why would you do this? You paid good money for me. What do you get out of this?”
“Do people only do things because they ‘get something’ out of it?”
“Yes,” he told her without hesitation. “In my experience, yes.”
“Well, then…you have something new to add to your experiences.”
She started to walk away from him, but he grabbed her by the elbow and turned her to face him. “Why?” he asked again. There was no anger in his voice this time, just curiosity. “I…would really like to know.”
“Because…” Her jaw was set. She was angry at herself over the depth of emotion she was feeling for this random slave, welling up from somewhere she couldn’t begin to understand, as if the two of them were somehow connected at a level so deep she couldn’t see its bottom. “Because you’ve had so much pain in your life, and I don’t feel like being a cause for any more. That’s why. Are you satisfied? You’ve discovered what’s in it for me.” She pointed at the chip. “There’s also a link to an account with a thousand credits in it. Enough to get you wherever you need to go. Good luck.”
She tugged slightly and it was only at that point he realized that he was still holding her arm. He released it, and Soleta walked away from him as quickly as she could.
Soleta returned to his quarters the next morning. He was gone. She wasn’t certain what she had expected, but in retrospect she supposed that she shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
A week passed. Two.
The beginning of the third week, she lay asleep in bed, and something—some inner sense of warning—awoke her. She sat up, peering in the darkness, and saw the outline of a figure standing there.
She was nude, as she always was when she slept. The blanket had fallen away to expose her breasts. She started to reach for the blanket to cover up, but then defiantly left the blanket where it was.
She said nothing, although she was suddenly aware of the beating of her heart. Instead she waited.
“When I first arrived in the pits,” came Muck’s voice from the darkness, “I wanted to die. That’s all. Simply die. They wouldn’t let me. Amusement doesn’t come easily in the mines of Remus, and I was seen as an opportunity for…entertainment. They delighted in tormenting me. All of them. I would have killed myself, but I lacked the…nerve…to try it. Because I knew my father would be waiting for me in the afterlife, and suicides are tortured for eternity. I didn’t want to give my father the satisfaction of inflicting that upon me. So, against all my hopes, I continued to live. Had they left me alone, the brutal conditions in the mines would have killed me, given time. But then they would have been robbed of their fun. Whenever I was ill, or the conditions became such that I nearly died, they would nurse me back to health, so that they could continue to have their…favorite plaything.
“And it continued for years. Years.”
He fell silent.
“Until…?” Soleta prompted him.
“Until I killed a man. I ripped his throat apart with my teeth. Then they feared me. Feared me so much that five of them came to me in my sleep with the intention of smashing my head open with a rock. I woke up. I killed them all. Six corpses in one day.”
“What did the overseers in the mine do?”
“Dumped the bodies. Life is cheap in the mines. They didn’t care. If we all killed each other, they wouldn’t care. They’d just get more slaves. There are always more slaves. Anyway, from then on, I was left alone.” He paused and then added, “Again.”
At that point, she didn’t need her telepathy. The hurt, the frustration, the isolation that this poor creature had endured year after miserable year radiated from him so fiercely that she thought she was going to drown in it.
Slowly she slid her legs out from under the covers and stood, naked in the darkness. He didn’t move. She felt as if the world had vanished, and they were the only two beings left in existence.
Soleta walked very slowly toward him, as if concerned that the slightest move on her part was going to cause him to vanish, popping like a soap bubble with sunlight directed toward it. She reached out tentatively, hesitantly, and rested her hand on his chest. His breathing continued slow and steady, but she detected the slightest catch in it when she first made contact.
Slowly she pulled his shirt up over his head. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by that point. She had never seen him fully stripped from the waist up. Running her fingers over his skin, she gasped as she found what seemed to be dozens of scars. “So many…” she whispered. Then she looked up at him, up into his eyes. They still blazed with hatred. Seized with impulses she had never experienced before, she wanted to thrust herself into that blaze. “But I suppose the worst scars we carry…aren’t on the outside.”
“No. They’re not,” he said, his voice deep in his chest. Then he hesitated.
“What?” she asked.
He actually sounded charmingly embarrassed. “I’ve…never done this before. It’s…not as if the opportunity presents itself in the pits. I think…”
“That’s your first mistake. Don’t think.”
She pressed herself against him and was rewarded, finally, with a change in his breathing rate. It sped up. She could feel his heart thudding against hers. He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her, and reached down and touched her and she gasped into his mouth.
At that moment, all the reasons she’d had for her interest in Muck went away. All the notions about plumbing the depths of his hatred, or using him as a weapon if she could master those emotions of his and point him in the right direction. Every self-serving motivation she’d ever had concerning him was washed away.
They never made it to the bed. They had to make do with the floor.
8
H iren, the Romulan Praetor, stood in his private reception room and spread his arms wide. “It is good to see you, my friend. You have not aged a day.”
“The same could be said of you, Praetor,” replied Si Cwan of the Thallonian coalition. The red-skinned member of Thallonian royalty had to bend over slightly in order to embrace the Praetor, who was a head shorter than Cwan. “It has been too long.”
“Indeed it has,” agreed the Praetor, gesturing for Cwan to take a seat.
Si Cwan did so, and then leaned back, looking extremely casual. His legs were extended and crossed at the ankles.
“So,” said the Praetor, “I have read the specifics of your ship’s escapades. Impressive endeavors, Cwan. Most impressive.”
“Thank you. The Stinger is a quality vessel.”
“You undersell yourself,” the Praetor told him, his voice slightly scolding in tone. “From everything I’ve seen and heard, the Stinger is the flagship of the Thallonian fleet. Faster, stronger, more maneuverable. Some who have seen it in battle claim the ship has a mind of its own.”
Si Cwan laughed at that. “Only my mind, Praetor, I assure you. Well, mine and my command crew. The simple truth—which others have no desire to admit—is that we’re able to anticipate what others are going to do and react before they have a chance to take action. There’s nothing mystical or wildly advanced about that. That’s just good, old-fashioned skill.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Hiren leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But the power source. You can tell me that, at least. It’s not dilithium crystals.”
“And you know that how?” Si Cwan studied the Praetor suspiciously. “You haven’t been spying on us, have you, Praetor? That’s certainly no way to earn the good will of an ally.”
“Spying? Of course we haven’t been spying. However,” the Praetor continued in a casual manner, “when your vessel is in orbit around our world, certainly we’re going to take as many sensor scans
as possible. That should be obvious. Go ahead and tell me that you wouldn’t be doing scans of vessels incautious enough to orbit your homeworld.”
“Fair enough,” Si Cwan admitted. “I suppose we would.”
“There you are. And our scans detect nothing of the normal particle trails that would accompany the standard means of propulsion. So I ask again: What is your power source?”
“Our ship is powered by the support and good feelings of the Romulan Empire.”
The Praetor stared at him for a long moment, and then threw his head back and laughed. He laughed so hard and so long that Si Cwan began to be concerned about Hiren’s health. Who would believe it, Si Cwan wondered, if he wound up having to tell everyone that the Praetor had laughed himself to death.
Fortunately enough, Hiren was able to pull himself together before his amusement proved terminal. He sighed deep in his chest and said, “You’re really not going to tell me the Stinger’s power source.”
“It is a state secret,” Si Cwan assured him, with a clear bit of chagrin over having to keep it from the Praetor. “It is not for you to know nor me to tell. I am truly sorry, my friend.”
Hiren waved off Cwan’s concern. “I was merely curious, that’s all. As long as your vessel functions, and as long as it serves the interests of the Romulan Empire when we have need, what care I how the vessel does the job?”
“And as long as the interests of the Romulan Empire coincide with ours, then we should continue to have a healthy relationship. May I safely assume that you have new business?” asked Cwan. “I would think that you would not have asked me to come were that not the case.”
“How do you know?” the Praetor demanded. “Has it never occurred to you that I might simply desire to bask in the pleasure of your company?”
Si Cwan smiled thinly. “Never.”
Again the Praetor laughed, although this time it was more controlled and lasted a far briefer time. “Well, the fact is, there are times I do desire to bask in the pleasure of your company, but this is not one of them. There is, in fact, a matter that I’m hoping you and your formidable crew could attend to for me.”