STAR TREK: The Original Series - Garth of Izar

by Pamela Sargent

  “So I am to be a prisoner,” she said. “We are not to command after all, and you are with our enemies.”

  “No,” Garth said. “We are not your enemies, Hala-Jyusa.”

  “You’re not an Antosian,” she said. “You have no [147] right to interfere with our struggle. You were never with us.”

  “It is a struggle for only a few of your people,” Garth said. “Most of them agree with Empynes, the First Minister. Even Heje-Illuss turned against the revolt.”

  “Heje-Illuss! A coward! He lost the will to fight on!” She hissed, and for a moment Kirk thought that she might morph again into something even more threatening than the furred creature he had seen. Then her shoulders sagged; she bowed her head in defeat. “You lied to us,” Hala-Jyusa said sadly. “You lied to me.”

  Garth gazed at her, and then a look of such despair crossed his face that Kirk knew something had broken inside him. “Please believe me,” he said in a choked voice. “I did not come here to betray you, I came to help. I came to repair the damage I caused.”

  “Liar! You came to rob us of our heritage.”

  Garth turned away from her, shaking his head.

  “Keep her under restraint,” Kirk said to the security men, “until further orders from me.”

  Hala-Jyusa was being led away when the entrance to the transporter room whisked open again, revealing Dr. McCoy.

  McCoy came toward Kirk. “Gyneeses is dead,” the physician said, but Kirk had already read that news in McCoy’s solemn expression. “That sword ripped his heart to pieces and severely damaged one lung. There was too much brain damage from loss of blood [148] and oxygen—I couldn’t repair anything in time to prevent it.”

  McCoy looked back at Hala-Jyusa, who stood in the open entrance with her guards. Kirk expected to see a look of triumph on her face, now that her enemy was dead, but she was staring blankly in his direction, as if she no longer saw anything in the room. Then she disappeared behind the closing door.

  Garth turned to face Kirk. “I am responsible for this,” he said.

  “But you couldn’t—” McCoy began.

  “I will not weep too much for Gyneeses. I suspect that even before I came to his world, he was a small and petty man, useful in sifting data and making recommendations to the First Minister, the most helpful of which were probably passed on to Gyneeses by his subordinates. Without me, he might have remained a petty but peaceful and harmless man. Perhaps my mad dream seduced him to lay his own plans, to betray the trust others had in him, yet it probably didn’t change his underlying character. But Hala-Jyusa—” Garth let out a sigh of despair. “She is my creation. I know of her earlier reputation from others—she was a kind and compassionate woman, someone who felt that her long and ancient lineage also gave her a great responsibility to help others.”

  “Noblesse oblige,” Kirk said.

  “Yes, but more than that. She was kind and gentle, and when I was damaged and dying, she healed me. Heje-Illuss was also one of those who healed me, but [149] it was Hala-Jyusa who found me, who insisted that those with her do everything they could to help me. And this is how I repaid her—with insane ambitions that have driven her mad.”

  “Captain Garth,” Kirk said, “we have to get back to the rebel base.”

  “Yes, I know.” Garth drew himself up. “They will be wondering what happened to us.”

  They stepped onto transporter plates. For a moment, Kirk reminded himself that, without a doubt, he and Garth were acting together, on the same side, in the just cause of restoring peace to Antos IV. If such a thing was possible.

  “Energize,” he said, resolved that he would make it possible.

  Chapter Eight

  AS KIRK AND GARTH reappeared before the massed rebels, a shout went up from the crowd in the clearing. At first Kirk thought that the cheer was for them, but then he saw that the Antosians were gathered in a half circle, watching a man being driven by spears across the empty space. Another cheer went up as an Antosian thrust a spear toward the man’s feet.

  The man tripped and sprawled into the dirt. His hood fell back, revealing his long white hair. It was Heje-Illuss. Another man was pushed into the space, spears prodding him forward, and Kirk recognized Empynes. The First Minister’s black coat was in tatters; he seemed about to fall, then righted himself.

  “Comrades!” Garth shouted in his most commanding voice.

  [151] The Antosians nearest them turned toward him and Kirk.

  “You are safe, Lord Garth?” young Kellin called out.

  “Of course I am safe!” Garth cried back.

  The muscular young man came toward him as others cheered.

  “I am greatly relieved to see you,” Kellin said. “When you disappeared so suddenly—”

  “Have no fear,” Garth said, clapping a hand on the Antosian’s shoulder. “We have control of the Enterprise. Hala-Jyusa and Gyneeses already command the bridge, while our allies wait to beam us all aboard.” He gazed past Kellin at Empynes. “But this—this is beneath such brave men and women, to seek a petty revenge on Heje-Illuss and to show such disrespect to Empynes. However misguided he might be, he is still First Minister.”

  “For how long?” a dark-haired young man shouted.

  Garth shot him an angry look; the young man and those standing near him shrank back, obviously intimidated.

  “As I told you,” Garth said in a soft but deadly voice, “these two, Empynes and Heje-Illuss, might be useful to us later on. But they’ll be of no use at all if they’re damaged.” His voice was rising. “Now I say to all of you—prepare to board our great ship of justice and glory!”

  “Glory enough after we kill those two!” a voice shouted back with a savage happiness that sent a chill through Kirk. He searched the crowd and saw a blond [152] man shaking a spear. “Why keep them? Why waste food and water on them?”

  “You fool!” Garth strode toward the man, who suddenly looked terrified. The Antosian dropped his spear and turned to run, but Garth grabbed him by one arm, swung him around in one swift movement, struck him hard in the chest, then threw him to the ground. “There is food and water aplenty aboard the Enterprise,” Garth continued, “and wine, and also the delicacies of many worlds to sate our appetites and fuel us for battle! There are brigs in which to hold our prisoners until they come around to our way of thinking, or until we find ways to use them in furthering our cause!” He grabbed the young man’s collar and pulled him roughly to his feet.

  The blond man gasped for breath. “Forgive me, Lord Garth.”

  Garth smiled broadly. “I am magnanimous, and I forgive you, comrade.” He turned and walked back to Kirk. “Now bring those two misguided Antosians here.”

  Others in the group pushed Empynes and Heje-Illuss after Garth. “Heje-Illuss,” Garth said as he turned around, “you should not have turned against my co-commander Hala-Jyusa. That was most shortsighted of you. But you were my comrade, and you did not betray Kellin to anyone when Kellin was impersonating me in your camp. So it pleases me to show you some mercy now.”

  Kirk wondered why Heje-Illuss had not said [153] anything to him about Garth’s double after they had arrived at the clearing, but kept silent. Heje-Illuss might have been waiting for the right moment to expose him, or he might simply have been too frightened of Garth to act. In any case, he had come around to share the view of Empynes, that the rebellion had to be stopped.

  “And you,” Garth said to Empynes, “can ponder the mistakes you have made and consider the wisdom of accepting the inevitable while you are our prisoner.” He looked to the crowd. “Hear me, my comrades! When word spreads through the city of Pynesses that the First Minister is now our captive, fear will seize the minds and hearts of those who stand against us. We will win our first victory over them before we even have to fight!”

  Heje-Illuss’s eyes darted back and forth as he watched Garth. Empynes held himself erect, obviously refusing to be cowed.

  “Bind their hands!” Garth commande
d those standing near the two men.

  The arms of Empynes and Heje-Illuss were quickly bound behind their backs.

  “Captain Kirk,” Garth ordered, “take them to that end of the clearing and have them beamed aboard to their imprisonment! And we will send those cowards who chose to follow Heje-Illuss after them!”

  Garth’s followers were already shoving their other bound captives in his direction.

  Kirk accepted a spear from a man near him and [154] prodded Empynes and Heje-Illuss southward, away from the crowd, then reached for his communicator. “Kirk to Scott,” he whispered, but did not wait for Scotty’s reply. “Ready to beam two aboard. Make sure that they and the thirty who follow them end up at a different site from the rest, as far away from them as possible.”

  The First Minister glanced at him, but had the presence of mind not to react to what he had heard.

  Kirk halted, then turned so the crowd could see him. “Hala-Jyusa,” he shouted into his communicator, “I send you those who stood against you! Mr. Scott, beam them up!”

  Empynes and Heje-Illuss dissolved in a shimmer.

  “They are imprisoned!” Garth cried.

  The captive Antosians who had given their loyalty to Heje-Illuss were now driven toward Kirk, all of them looking fearful and dismayed.

  “Thirty more to beam up,” Kirk said to Scotty.

  “Aye, Captain,” Scotty’s voice replied. “They’ll go to the same place as the other two.”

  “Stand in groups of six,” Kirk ordered. The arms of the captives were still bound behind them, which was fortunate; the furious faces they showed to Kirk told him that they would have tried to resist if they could. One man muttered what might have been a curse; another spat on the ground. He was relieved to see how angry they were; it meant that his performance, and Garth’s, had convinced them.

  Heje-Illuss’s followers stood together, whispering [155] among themselves, and then one group after another shimmered and was gone.

  “We have secured our prisoners!” Garth shouted to the rebels. “Hala-Jyusa, my co-commander, awaits our arrival! Now to board the starship that will bring us victory!”

  A woman stepped forward. “Lord Garth, I am ready to follow you, but why isn’t Hala-Jyusa here to—”

  “Silence!” Garth roared. The woman stepped back, but gripped her spear more tightly. “She is not here because she is in command of the Enterprise. Must she come back here to lead you aboard like children?”

  The woman looked away.

  “We have wasted enough time,” Garth continued. “Come forward in groups of six.”

  Kirk waited, wondering if some of the rebels might resist from fear of the transporter technology.

  But at last a few Antosians came forward toward Kirk. He motioned for them to stop in the clearing. As the transporter beam snatched them, another group of six took their place; they shimmered and disappeared. Some Antosians hung back, looking anxious and uncertain; they did not understand where they were going, or how they were being transported. Maybe a few of them were thinking of the accident that had befallen Garth when he had first come to their world.

  “Do not hesitate,” Garth called out. “You’ve seen me come and go without harm. You see Captain Kirk here. He has used the transporter hundreds of times without ill effect.”

  [156] More Antosians came forward and disappeared. Garth nodded to each group reassuringly; but as the departures continued, Kirk saw warriors hesitate as they watched their comrades dissolve; from all that was visible to them, they might be going to their deaths. In a literal sense, Kirk thought, they were dying, as their atoms and physical structures were broken down, transmitted, stored, then sent on to the prison island of Acra. In those moments, all life ceased: death and resurrection, McCoy sometimes joked. It was death in a literal, trivial sense, and resurrection in the most important sense, since accidents, however improbable, were always possible. But for a moment it seemed strange to Kirk, despite the lessons of his years of command, that death should never be a trivial matter.

  Group after group of sixes stepped into the area between Kirk and Garth; as they passed Garth, he spoke to them encouragingly or raised a fist in the air. The knot of tension inside Kirk began to ease as the rebels at the campsite thinned out; smaller numbers could be better controlled if any Antosians suddenly grew fearful. Martial figures came toward him, and dissolved in the glitter of the beam, until finally the clearing in the forest was empty, the throng of four hundred gone. Only the tents and shelters were left, and the softly mewing elleis tied up at the eastern edge of the clearing, and the pile of saddles near the animals, and the dying embers of the camp’s fire.

  Kirk and Garth scanned the campsite and the [157] nearby forest with their tricorders, but the readings showed that no humanoid life-forms were present.

  Garth was silent as they walked toward the elleis, and Kirk wondered what he was thinking, if he was regretting the betrayal of those who had believed him to be their comrade and one of their leaders.

  The elleis tied to the long rope mewed and pawed the ground as Kirk and Garth approached. “We’ll have to let them go,” Garth said.

  “Can they survive?” Kirk asked.

  “They’ll feed on leaves and insects in the woods until they reach the desert, which is part of their natural habitat.” There was a melancholy tone in Garth’s voice. “They’re nomadic—they wander the desert and find water at the oases and graze in the grassier lands bordering the desert. They’ll survive. The Antosians say that there really is no such creature as a domesticated ellei, that however gentle they may seem, their gentleness is only a guise that cloaks a free spirit.”

  They walked along the rope, untying the mounts and removing their bridles. The animals slipped away through the forest. Kirk and Garth stood alone in the clearing and listened to the sighing of the wind in the trees.

  “What will become of us,” Hala-Jyusa asked, “now that you have turned against us?”

  Garth replied, “I am not your enemy, Hala-Jyusa.” She gazed across the table at Garth and Kirk with a look of defeat. Two security guards stood at the [158] doorway. She had killed a man, and was no doubt capable of killing others, but Kirk felt a little pity for Hala-Jyusa, who had the slumped posture and lifeless expression of someone who had lost everything.

  “You had no right to interfere with our struggle,” she said to Garth. “You know a little of our world, and thanks to Heje-Illuss and me, you have learned how to morph as we do, but you are not an Antosian. You will never be an Antosian.”

  “Heje-Illuss has turned against the revolt,” Garth said. “Empynes is against it, and so are most Antosians.”

  “They don’t understand.” Her hands gripped the arms of her chair. “They don’t know what will be asked of them. Their bodies and the bodies of their children will be robbed of our heritage, of an art—”

  “—that is no longer needed,” Garth said, “and might cause great harm, especially now that Antosians are beginning to look beyond their sky.”

  Hala-Jyusa shook her head. “Is there no other way?”

  “Your planet could be put under quarantine,” Kirk said, thinking of Talos IV, “but that would stunt the development and culture of your people. And there’s much that others in the Federation could learn from you. Even with the little contact there has been so far between your people and offworlders, the Antosians have acquired a reputation for benevolence and peacefulness.”

  A wistful look passed over her face. “Oh, yes. We were kind, we were good. We could not bear to see [159] the offworlder suffer, we could not leave him to struggle for breath as he lay dying at our feet, and we could not allow him to live on with the burden of deformities. We restored his body to what it was and taught him shape-changing, too, and he came back to our world to rob us of what we had given him.” The gentleness in her face died and was replaced by a look of implacability. “So what now?”

  “You and your followers will be confined on the island of
Acra,” Kirk said. “Your people will avoid a civil war, and many lives will be saved. You’ll be given everything you need. You won’t be locked up in a prison or punished, and Captain Garth tells me that Acra is a pleasant place. You’ll talk to one another, and to Empynes and other Antosians who share his views, until agreements are reached that will keep the peace and allow you to join the Federation, if that is what you choose to do later on.”

  She laughed harshly. “What a fool you are, James Kirk.” The glint of madness played in her golden eyes. “Do you think that the group you found with me are all of my followers? There are countless others, Antosians who sympathize with us and who will rise up if I call upon them to join my fighters.”

  “You have murdered a man,” Garth said. “Do you love death so much that you wish to bring it to as many people as possible?”

  “If I had not put my blade into Gyneeses, he would have thrust a knife through me sooner or later, and you know it.”

  [160] Garth stood up. “Hala-Jyusa, you will leave the Enterprise now for Acra.”

  She looked at him coldly and said, “I go to the exile I deserve for ever having helped you, for ever believing that you were my comrade.” She rose and stared at him until he looked away from her.

  Kirk waited on a transporter plate. The transporter room disappeared—

  —and he was standing on a hillside amid a profusion of green leafy shrubs and colorful flowering bushes that might have been a botanical garden. The trees that shaded them were unlike the tall trees he had seen at the rebel campsite; these trees had wide, flat green leaves and yellow and red orbs that looked like fruits. He heard a soft trilling, then the sound of sharp high squeaks. Several small birds with bright blue, green, and orange feathers suddenly flew out from the trees into the clear blue sky.

  He glanced at Garth, then at Hala-Jyusa. The Antosian was looking around with wonderment; a fleeting smile crossed her face, but then she frowned again.