STAR TREK: The Original Series - Garth of Izar

by Pamela Sargent

  [255] “But there’s more, isn’t there?” Mendez said. “You felt for Garth.”

  Kirk nodded. “There’s an old story, ‘The Secret Sharer’ by Joseph Conrad, in which a sea captain rescues a sympathetic soul and feels a kinship with him.”

  “I know the story. The captain sets him free.”

  “It’s something like that, as if I were looking at the universe through another set of eyes.”

  Mendez smiled. “I thought it might be like that. Now I know I was right to send you with Garth to Antos IV.”

  “And what now?” Kirk asked.

  Mendez was silent, staring at him from the small screen. The admiral knew that the Antosians, through their First Minister and his advisers, had formally requested that a Federation embassy be opened in Pynesses, and that Fleet Captain Garth of Izar was the ambassador they preferred. Garth was more familiar with their culture than any outsider, and was largely responsible for bringing about the possibility of more contact and exchanges with other races and worlds. But if Starfleet Command demanded Garth’s resignation from Starfleet, there was almost no chance that the diplomatic service would approve his appointment as an ambassador. He would be tainted; too many doubts would again be raised about his sanity and his judgment. Even Mendez was probably wondering if Garth had a diplomat’s temperament.

  “Would Garth be welcome on Antos IV,” Mendez [256] said then, “if he was forced to resign his commission and chose to stay there as a private citizen?”

  “Yes, sir, he would. I have no doubt of that.” Kirk had to admit the truth. Here it comes, he thought. Mendez would seize on that and convince himself that he could ask Garth to resign without denying him a chance to live out his life among the Antosians. Kirk found himself seeing through Garth’s eyes again, living on Antos IV as an exile with a clouded reputation, with no true role to play in either Federation or Antosian affairs, and no way to atone for his past mistakes. For a proud spirit like Garth’s, such a life, however pleasant and comfortable, would be a slow death.

  Mendez looked down for a moment, as if considering what to say.

  “Admiral Mendez,” Kirk said, “I was at Garth’s side throughout much of this mission. I saw what he had to overcome to accomplish his task. Frankly, I think he deserves a commendation, and I know how valuable he’d be as our first ambassador to Antos IV If you insist on recommending to Starfleet Command that they demand his resignation, I’ll file a protest and demand a hearing for Garth, and I can promise that I’ll offer a deposition in his defense if that’s what I have to do.”

  “Regardless of the possible consequences.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I expected you to say something like that.” Mendez sighed. “Very well, Jim, Garth will get his [257] commendation, and can retire from Starfleet when he so chooses with honor, and he’ll be ambassador to Antos IV—my recommendation will guarantee that. And I hope that history doesn’t make fools of us.” The admiral smiled, then said, “Jim, I’ll be truthful with you. I looked in my tool chest for what was available. I knew you. You knew Garth. That made you the best intermediary between Starfleet and Garth.”

  “And Garth the best intermediary between Antos IV and the Federation.”

  “Most definitely. Good work, Jim. Mendez out.”

  The screen went blank. Kirk let out a sigh of relief. He had dreaded having to disappoint Garth.

  His door sounded. “Come in,” Kirk said.

  It slid open and Spock entered. Kirk motioned to a seat. Spock sat down. “So you couldn’t stand the suspense, either.”

  The Vulcan nodded. “It was disconcerting.”

  “Yes, it was. Garth pretty much put it all on the line with what he did on Antos IV.”

  “And you with him, Captain. I surmise that you put even more on the line, as you say, during your conference with the admiral, that you informed him that you supported Garth’s appointment as ambassador and would fight for it regardless of the consequences to yourself and your career.”

  “You surmise correctly, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said with a small smile. “Still, Garth won’t be just an ambassador, but also an exile. He feels not quite [258] Antosian or human, you know, but something in between.”

  “In other words, a perfect ambassador,” Spock said.

  Kirk stood up. “We must tell him at once.”

  “That would be indicated, Captain.”

  Chapter Twelve

  GARTH STOOD ALONE by the road that ran past his residence and gazed north toward Greblendon Lake. His guests of the past days were riding away on their elleis. At the lake, they would turn east along the shore until they reached the river that flowed to the coast. As he watched the six riders, Garth saw Kellin turn around in his saddle and lift his hand in farewell.

  Kellin and Trialla and four other Antosians from Acra had visited Garth after meeting with Empynes and his advisers, and were now on their way home. At the coast, they would board their glider and the gentle winds would carry them home to Acra.

  Small ships now sailed to the Tiresian Islands with goods and people who wished to stay on Acra for a while, and then returned with exiles who had decided [260] to come home at last; but the gliders were becoming more popular among the Antosians. They were light aircraft, each able to carry five or six people; they were powered by sun and wind and were relatively easy to pilot. The gliders enabled the travelers to avoid the inconveniences and dangers of the sea voyage, which required sailing to the southeast from a northern port through icy waters often crowded with floes and icebergs, thus avoiding the cliff-lined eastern shore of Anatossia where no ships could be launched or safely land.

  Garth had helped in designing the gliders, and recalled the pleasure he had felt when he had seen the first one swoop over the plain to the west of the city. The exiles of Acra would again be airborne, carried safely over the ocean to their island.

  Since then, more Antosians were traveling between Acra and Pynesses, and the place of exile had become a settlement. Many were already planning to build new communities on the other Tiresian Islands, since ships could easily sail the short distances separating them. The ties between the former rebels and the rest of their people had been renewed, but Garth also felt that something new and valuable to the rest of Antosian society would eventually grow from Acra. The island settlers were the first Antosians in the recorded history of their people to live apart from the rest of their race, to break away from the highly centralized community that had always constituted their society. They would remain connected to the [261] rest of their people, but in time they would diverge, however gradually and subtly, and that divergence would enrich the rest of their culture.

  The residence in which he had been living for some years was at the northern edge of Pynesses. The official embassy building, now staffed by four Antosians and two human diplomatic aides sent there recently by the Federation, was adjacent to the First Minister’s compound, but Empynes had offered Garth this house.

  It was a square stone building with two floors and large, spacious rooms suitable for diplomatic receptions; massive trees grew in the grounds around the residence, shading the building with their leafy boughs. Once, this house had belonged to Hala-Jyusa and her family, but her brother and sister had left it after her death and had been among the first to join the exiles on Acra. Garth had been reluctant to live here at first, and had often slept in the embassy building instead, but the house had become a comfort to him, a link with the past. Hala-Jyusa was buried here, next to the path of flat white stones that led to the front door. A slender tree now grew from her grave.

  Death, Garth thought, was only another shape-changing.

  He stood there in the late afternoon, as he had so often done, looking at the trees that surrounded his house. The trees were vast tenements of life, reaching down into the soil and bedrock, and into the heavens toward the stars that waited beyond the brightness of the sky.

  [262] His understanding of the Antosian way of life had grown wi
th the years. Cellular flowing was the primal link between the Antosians and their planet, a closeness beyond words or thought. It was a musical stream of feeling that sometimes became a torrent of emotion. It was a solidarity with a library of life; it was the center of their life. He gazed up at the trees and felt his bond with all the life here.

  Birds sang in the high branches of the trees.

  Garth stood still and opened his arms to the sunlight that shone through the boughs—

  —and became a small tree among the giants.

  As the solar warmth spread through him, he listened to the planet’s ancient music. It sang to him across time, from the first cells to the multi-organisms of today, and through his body.

  He had been an intruder.

  Then a student.

  But now he was home.

  Afterword

  This is in many ways a long-cherished wish, to write about this character. Among the many actors who brought Star Trek characters to life, Steve Ihnat was probably the most unusual. As “Lord Garth,” the tall, blond, blue-eyed devil out of Starfleet’s past, he presented a noble, tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions. Only Ricardo Montalban’s Khan Noonien Singh, featured in the episode “Space Seed” and the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, is a worthy rival. One may wonder whether, if Steve Ihnat had not died prematurely, he might have been the character who would have been developed as Kirk’s antagonist for the second feature film instead of Khan.

  Our novel represents a youthful wish to have seen that happen. The wish stayed with us, and here it is.

  —Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski

  About the Authors

  Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski have been watching Star Trek since the 1960s, when they were students at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

  Pamela Sargent sold her first story during her senior year in college and has been a writer ever since. She has won a Nebula Award and a Locus Award, and has been a finalist for the Hugo Award; her work has been translated into twelve languages. Her epic novel Venus of Dreams was listed as one of the one hundred best science-fiction novels by Library Journal. Earthseed, her first novel for young adults, was chosen as a 1983 Best Book by the American Library Association. Her other acclaimed science-fiction novels include Cloned Lives, The Sudden Star, Watchstar, The Golden Space, The Alien Upstairs, The Shore of [266] Women, and Venus of Shadows. The Washington Post Book World has called her “one of the genre’s best writers.”

  Sargent is also the author of Ruler of the Sky, a historical novel about Genghis Khan, which Booklist called “an impressive novel from a veteran writer,” and best-selling author Gary Jennings described as “formidably researched and exquisitely written.” She has also published Climb the Wind: A Novel of Another America, a finalist for the 1999 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, which Gahan Wilson called “a most enjoyable and entertaining new alternate history adventure which brings ... a new dimension to the form.” Among the anthologies she has edited are Women of Wonder: The Classic Years and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years, which Publishers Weekly praised as “essential reading for any serious sf fan.” Her latest novel, Child of Venus, came out from Eos/HarperCollins in 2001; two collections, Behind the Eyes of Dreamers and Other Short Novels (Thorndike Press) and The Mountain Cage and Other Stories (Meisha Merlin), were published in 2002.

  George Zebrowski’s thirty-five books include novels, short fiction collections, anthologies, and a book of essays. His short stories have been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Noted science-fiction writer Greg Bear calls him “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration,” and the [267] late Terry Carr, one of the most influential science-fiction editors of recent years, described him as “an authority in the field.”

  Zebrowski has published more than seventy-five works of short fiction and over a hundred articles and essays, including reviews for the Washington Post Book World and articles on science for Nature and Omni magazine. One of his best-known novels is Macrolife, selected by Library Journal as one of the one hundred best novels of science fiction; Arthur C. Clarke described Macrolife as “a worthy successor to Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker. It’s been years since I was so impressed. One of the few books I intend to read again.” He is also the author of The Omega Point Trilogy and The Sunspacers Trilogy, and his novel Stranger Suns was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

  With scientist/author Charles Pellegrino, Zebrowski is the author of The Killing Star, which the New York Times Book Review called “a novel of such conceptual ferocity and scientific plausibility that it amounts to a reinvention of that old Wellsian staple: Invading Monsters From Outer Space.” Booklist commented: “Pellegrino and Zebrowski are working territory not too far removed from Arthur C. Clarke’s, and anywhere Clarke is popular, this book should be, too.” Zebrowski and Pellegrino also collaborated on Dyson Sphere, a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel.

  Zebrowski’s most recent novels are Brute [268] Orbits, published in 1998 by HarperPrism, which was honored with the John W. Campbell Award for best science-fiction novel of the year, and Cave of Stars, a novel that is part of the Macrolife mosaic, published by HarperPrism in 1999. A collection of his short fiction, Swift Thoughts (Golden Gryphon Press), came out in 2002.

  Sargent and Zebrowski are also the authors of Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Fury Scorned, Star Trek: Heart of the Sun, and Star Trek: Across the Universe. They live in upstate New York.

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