by Diane Duane
She watched Enterprise dump the last of her velocity and slip up alongside Bloodwing with easy precision, a very neighborly kilometer away. “I will be with you in a matter of some minutes, Captain,” Ael said. “I have a thing or two to make secure here first.”
She waved at t’Hrienteh to kill the communication, then stood up and stretched. “Your orders, khre’Riov?” Aidoann said.
“There’s nothing needs done,” Ael said. “Stand easy. But when did I ever obey any such request immediately, as if I had nothing better to do? Always wisest to leave even one’s close associates a little uncertainty; a little room to wonder what one is up to. That way, if one day you must suddenly change your course, or your mind, without warning, you will have left yourself room to maneuver.” She smiled.
“Even Captain Kiurrk?” Aidoann said, with a small smile of her own.
“Even the captain,” Ael said, “may someday need to change his mind…or may have it changed for him. For that day, which may never come or which may be hard upon us, we must yet remain prepared. Khiy, the center seat is yours. Mind you match their movements exactly. Their helmsman is watching you, and you know Mr. Sulu’s sharp eye—you must do us proud. Come along, Aidoann, t’Hrienteh; we have a meeting….”
Jim stood there in the transporter room in front of the console, which Scotty was presently manning. His hands were sweating.
Ridiculous, he thought. But at the same time, there were few guests aboard Enterprise about whom he had had more thoroughly mixed feelings than the one who was coming back aboard now. Here was a woman who had sat in his center seat, and had somehow managed to look like she belonged there; a woman who had not only thrown him in his own brig—well, yes, it wasn’t as if I didn’t cooperate—but had decked him out as well—all right, I returned the favor almost immediately, but still—
He caught himself, and smiled. “Worthy opponent” was the very least of the descriptions he might apply to Ael i-Mhiessan t’Rllaillieu; and there were others, more appropriate still, but he would not spend too much time thinking about them now. They would only make his hands sweat more.
He wiped them off against his pants and breathed out in brief annoyance. “Something holding them up over there?” he said.
Scotty shook his head. As he did, the door opened and Spock came in, closely followed by McCoy. It was just shutting when the communicator whistled. “Captain,” said Uhura’s voice out of the air, “we have an incoming shuttle.”
Jim leaned over the transporter console and punched the comm button. “From the starbase?” he said. Starbase 18 circled Hamal’s furious amber fire a couple of hundred million kilometers out.
“From the base, yes, but not Fleet registry,” said Uhura. “ID shows the shuttle as registered off Hamal III.”
“Aha,” Jim said. “Very good. Clear the shuttle through into the bay. We’ll be down to meet the passenger shortly.”
“Yes, Captain. Bridge out.”
The faint hum of the transporter came up. “Coming through now, sir,” Scotty said.
Three faint pillars of sparkle began to form on the transporter platform; the light swirled, went solid, and the bodies it formed were held in a fractional second’s immobility as they finished becoming real.
She was looking right at him, and Jim thought, almost with annoyance, How does she do that…?! A little woman, slight, dark, slender, in the faintly red-glittering tunic of a Romulan officer, the sash across it glowing a subdued gold in the transporter room’s low lighting; dark breeches and boots below, and above, long dark hair braided tight and coiled at the back of her head. She might have seemed unexceptional enough, except for those eyes—which even in this frozen moment held in them what seemed an uncomfortably assessing, knowing, look—and her carriage, even now like that something held proud and ready for a fight; a banner, a sword…
The shimmer of sound and light died away completely. “Commander,” Jim said.
She glanced around her for a second, taking in her surroundings, and half glanced off to one side of her: then looked forward again. Jim swallowed. Big blond Aidoann t’Khialmnae, Ael’s new second-in-command, was on the pad to Ael’s right, as Jim had expected, and Surgeon t’Hrienteh, whom he remembered from the way he had kept finding her in McCoy’s company when they were preparing the attack on Levaeri V, was on the transporter pad behind her. But Ael’s brief glance had been toward someone who was not there, and Jim thought of how he had first seen her son Tafv beside her, much taller than his mother, but as erect and proud. He would not now ever stand beside her again, of course; but it was poignant that Ael still carried herself, somehow, as if there were someone standing to her left, in his accustomed place. If I have my own ghosts, Jim thought, so does she….
She came down from the transporter and reached out to take his hand.
He took it, not to bow over it, having learned that the gesture, polite enough for an honored lady on Earth, was charged with meaning for a Rihannsu which he didn’t desire to invoke. He simply clasped it a little above the wrist, and she returned his grip and met his eyes forthrightly. The expression, as always, had an element of challenge to it, and more calm than Jim thought he would have felt under the circumstances.
She let him go. “Well met,” she said, “so far into your own spaces, and after such a time.”
“You’re very welcome,” Jim said, “in whatever time, and whatever space.”
That elicited a shadow of a smile. “Commander,” Spock said, stepping forward.
Did that assured expression become just slightly haunted as she looked at him? Hard to say; the look was concealed by the slight bow of her head to him, which Spock returned. “Mr. Spock,” she said, “well met indeed.” Then she straightened. “And Mr. Scott: do you do well?”
“As well as possible under the circumstances, Commander,” Scotty said. Jim tried to keep his grin from getting out of hand. Scotty had been sympathetic enough to Ael, but her involvement with Enterprise had caused the ship considerable structural damage, some of it actually planned rather than as an accident in battle, and Jim suspected Scotty was already having misgivings about what kind of trouble her presence was likely to bring this time.
“As do we all…” she said, possibly thinking along the same lines Jim was. She turned, then, and said, “Well, McCoy, and what of you?”
He simply smiled half a smile and reached out to squeeze her hand. “It can wait.”
A few more moments were spent greeting t’Hrienteh and Aidoann; but finally Jim said, “The doctor’s right, Commander. We shouldn’t linger here. Someone else is arriving whom you should meet.”
They all headed for the doors. “Someone from Starfleet?” Ael said.
“Occasionally,” Jim said. “I believe her commission may have been reactivated for the time being; officially she’s retired.”
Ael raised her eyebrows. “I am sorry to trouble an elder’s peace.”
McCoy made an amused face. “Nothing much troubles her,” he said, “and, besides, this ‘elder’ is somewhere between one and three years old, depending on whose years you’re using.”
“Doctor,” Spock said, “in Hamalki reckoning, it is considered an error of reckoning to separate out new ‘incarnations’ from the total life span—”
Ael looked over at Jim in some bemusement as they all got into the turbolift. “Doubtless this will be made clear to me shortly.”
“As clear as it gets,” Jim said.
There was some small talk in the lift, inquiries about Ael’s crew and Bloodwing’s whereabouts over the past month or so.
Then the doors opened and they all stepped out. Jim was amused to see Ael’s eyes widen a little at what they met first: a rugged rounded glittering shape nearly two meters tall and three meters broad, patched in what looked like rough amethyst, tourmaline, and ruby, with dark fringes all around that sparkled in the bright hangar bay lights as it moved.
Ael strode right up to that domed figure and stood there a moment wi
th her arms akimbo, looking him up and down. “Mr. Naraht,” she said, astounded, “what in Earth’s name have you been doing to yourself to grow so great?”
The rough scraping sound that emerged was plainly a compromise intended for those who used airborne sound in its higher frequencies; but it was also plainly laughter. “Commander,” said the Horta through his own translator, “just eating. But I’m told that’s enough.”
“We were a little surprised too, at first,” Jim said, “but it turned out we’d been laboring under a misconception about sizes. The only fullgrown Horta we had seen was the lieutenant’s mother…and after many, many years standing guard duty over her eggs, she’d worn off a lot of her bulk.”
“During the pre-hatching period,” said McCoy, “it turns out the momma Horta doesn’t have much of an appetite, and doesn’t eat much. I suspect as much because she’s a natural-born worrier as because of the basic biological setup of the species. But the youngsters have started coming up to the full ‘normal’ size for the species real quick, once they’ve passed latency.”
“That is a relief,” Ael said. “I would not have liked to think I had caused you to become obese by all that hyponeutronium I suggested you eat at Levaeri V…”
Naraht’s fringes rippled. “It was a little uncomfortable for a while, madam,” he said, “but I burned off the excess soon enough.”
“Might have brought his growth spurt on a little sooner,” said McCoy, “but that’s all.” He patted the lieutenant’s outer “mantle” idly. “You want to slow down soon, though, son, or we’ll have to keep you permanently in the hangar bay, and all you’ll be good for is being dropped on people we don’t like.”
“I should say he has done well enough at that…” Ael said, with a wry smile.
“More than well enough,” Kirk said. “Well, carry on, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. A pleasure to see you again, Commander,” Naraht said, and rumbled away out of the hangar bay, filling the corridor outside nearly from wall to wall as he went.
They walked out into the hangar bay, where the ship that had just landed was cycling back into launch position on the turntable. It was of unusual design, an oblong four-meter-thick spindle of glassy ropes and angular shapes woven and melded into one another, some straight and edged, some smooth and curved, some even radiating into what looked like a brush of spines at what might have been the propulsion end. Even here under the artificial lights the “glass” seemed to keep something of the color of Hamal’s sunlight, a gleam of dark gold under the glitter and sheen of the brilliantly polished surfaces.
The turntable stopped. As they watched, the whole smooth side of the craft facing them seemed to lose that smoothness, going matte, then revealing a fibrous structure like something woven or spun, then finally refining itself away to a delicate-looking webwork of threads that vanished away entirely, leaving what looked like a cocoon cut in half, all sheened inside with webs and points of light.
Down out of the cocoon stepped a glass spider—if spiders had twelve legs, each a meter long, arranged evenly around a rounded central body, the top of that body furred with spines of clear glass almost too fine to see, and a raised ridge of nubbly crystal running back to front amid the “fur,” with four eyes in the middle of the ridge and two clusters of four eyes each, near each end of the ridge. With every movement of the much-articulated legs came a delicate chiming, and as the entity came walking, nearly waltzing, over to them, more chimes filled the air—a brisk staccato of glass bells, running up and down the scale, and saying, “What a pleasure to see you all; it’s been too long—you’re very welcome to Hamal!”
Jim stole a glance at Ael. She had shown surprise at the sight of Lieutenant Naraht before, but him she knew. In this case, she was managing herself more carefully—but Jim had seen this calm expression on Ael before, too, and knew what it concealed. “Commander,” he said, “allow me to present K’s’t’lk. She’s one of the senior Hamalki physicist-engineers associated with Starbase 18. K’s’t’lk, this is Commander-General Ael i-Mhiessan t’Rllaillieu.”
K’s’t’lk reached up one delicate limb and laid it in Ael’s outstretched hand. “My great pleasure, Commander,” K’s’t’lk said. “I’ve heard of your doings; and I hope to be of some service to you shortly.” She cocked an eye up at Jim. “I hope you don’t mind my bringing my own ship along, J’m.”
“Seeing that we weren’t going to be coming within transporter range of 18,” Jim said, “what was I going to make you do? Walk?”
She chimed unconcerned laughter at him, and Jim turned back to Ael. “K’s’t’lk and the Enterprise have had some history together,” he said.
“Not so much history,” K’s’t’lk said to Ael, “but a fair amount of mathematics. Though often enough, the two have come to nearly the same thing….”
“When she’s not rewriting the local laws of physics,” Jim said, “she also does research in various areas of astrophysics…and one area which has been of particular interest to her has been the study and manipulation of stellar atmospheres.”
“I see,” Ael said. “That may indeed be of use to us all soon…”
“But what we need more first,” Jim said, “is news. Let’s take a break to get everyone settled…then we’ll meet in the main briefing room and get caught up.”
Hvirr tr’Asenth had thought he had known what cold was, before. Now he knew he was wrong.
Emni, behind him, was crying silently as they slowly walked. He would have dropped back to put his arm about her again as they walked, but twice now she had pushed him away, if gently enough, the second time whispering, “You already have Dis to carry: I can manage.” And indeed she was carrying more than he was, at the moment, the few belongings the soldiers had let them take. But he knew the real reason that she would not bear his comfort. She was ashamed to need it. Hvirr could not see why: anyone would need it, in a situation like this. But there was no telling Emni that. She came of proud people, and was harsher to herself than anyone needed to be, especially now, when she felt she should be acting as Mother-of-House in their time of trouble, and a tower of strength. It was bitter to her that shock had derailed her strength, that she had gone along with all the others when the soldiers told her to, just like one more victim. Maybe, Hvirr thought unhappily, it’s just as well that she should find her pride a piece of baggage too heavy to take with her on this trip. Precious little any of us are likely to have left of it, by the end….
The snow lay all around them, in drifts and hillocks blown among the tall narrow maithe trees, faintly reflecting what light of the stars in the hard black sky managed to make its way down through the forest’s boughs. But the starlight was too little to make the going at all easy, and the moons were both dark tonight. For a mercy, the wind had died down, and the snow here was not crusted, but light enough to kick aside as one walked. But otherwise life, if this could be called any kind of life, went on for Hvirr and Emni and their fifty companions as it had for the last two days and a night: the endless marching through bitter weather, without a rest. Ahead of them went the faint light borne by the man who had volunteered to lead them, the one who knew the way over the pass. And how sure are we of that? Hvirr thought, desperate, trying to swallow, finding nothing to do it with: his mouth was dry as any desert. What if he gets us lost? We will all die out here.
Though I suppose it is preferable to being shot. It was supposedly a merciful death, the death by cold: weariness, then sleep, a sleep from which there was no waking—
Hvirr grimaced in anger, shook his head. Ice crystals cracked and fell away from his coat hood and neckwrap at the gesture. Hvirr gazed down sadly at the wrapped-up bundle he held, and hoped that the wrapping was enough. Dis was only two, and had always been somewhat delicate of health. Still, he was sleeping; that was better far than him being awake in this frightening dark place, so unlike the sunny little house in the valley, where they had lived until three days ago.
The house. Odd how clear ev
erything about it seemed now, in memory: the particular hiss the front door had when it opened, the sun across the flagstones in the front hallway, the warm clear light in the kitchen when the hearthfire was going and Emni lit the table lamp to do her late work on the family finances on her small computer. Who has our house now? Hvirr thought, no longer having the energy to even be bitter about it, only resigned.
Emni came trudging up beside Hvirr, then, her faced wiped as if she had not been crying. But he could see the telltale darkness in her cheeks, the chapping already starting from the cold. It was why Hvirr had stopped letting himself cry many hours ago, though desperately he wanted to. He had miseries enough already without adding chilblains to the list. “How is he?”
“Asleep, I think. Oh, I wish I were too.”
He nodded, swallowing, finding it hard, with his throat so dry. “Don’t think about it,” Hvirr said, “it just makes it worse.”
“I am so angry,” Emni said, though the weary, dreamy tone of her voice made it seem a strange declaration. “And all our neighbors standing there, letting it happen. After all the years we’ve been there. Could none of them have said a word?”
“It’s hard to find your voice sometimes,” Hvirr said, “when the ones you’d try to convince are holding guns, and you have none.” The memory of that first gun, on his own doorstep, was burned into his memory as if lightning had etched it there. A great misshapen ugly thing, eloquent of imminent death, with an emitter bell that seemed big enough to put his head into—it seemed to float there by itself, until Hvirr comprehended, in the clear bright light of the morning, that it had a man attached to it, that the man was wearing dark-green military armor, and that he was pointing the gun at Hvirr and saying, “You have ten minutes to get your stuff and get out.” At first it had seemed like a joke, then like a misunderstanding.