by David Mack
“That’s precisely it, Majesty,” Dax said, plucking a ripe pear from a pyramid of fruit on the corner of the closest table. “I don’t let them intimidate me. Instead of appeasing them, I challenge them.” Dax took a healthy bite out of the green fruit and continued as he chewed. “From their point of view, I’m presenting myself as their equal, so they treat me like one.”
“Fascinating,” Spock said. “A keen insight into their psychology.”
“I know,” Dax said, grinning. “It’s also a fun way to live.”
Spock turned and faced the Trill. “Curzon Dax, I hereby appoint you as my Imperial Ambassador to the Klingon Empire.” He extended his hand.
Beaming with surprise, pride, and elation, Dax took Spock’s hand. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m honored to serve you.”
Their handshake lasted only a few seconds, but that fleeting contact was all Spock required to assess his new ambassador by means of touch-telepathy. He sensed no treachery or duplicity from Dax, but he detected something else, an unexpected psychic presence—a second mind, an independent intelligence existing in harmonic fusion with Curzon’s. It did not seem to be a parasite, so far as Spock could tell, but rather an equal constituent of the Trill’s personality. The humanoid mind and its partner were symbiotically linked. United.
Releasing Dax’s hand, Spock said, “Congratulations, Your Excellency. I must now take my leave of you.”
“Of course, Majesty,” Dax said, making a small bow as Spock departed.
Spock paused at the banquet room’s door and looked back. Dax, his manner even bolder than before, once again was flanked by solicitous female companions. Caught up in his revels, the Trill seemed oblivious of Spock’s telepathic insight into his secret. Watching the audacious young ambassador work the room, Spock decided to investigate Dax and the politically ambiguous Trill people much more thoroughly.
2287
37
Bloody Instructions
A crowd’s distant roar pierced a musical curtain of noise. Shapes formed in a storm of swirling whiteness. Captain Saavik, the new commanding officer of the I.S.S. Enterprise, drew a breath as the transporter beam loosened its paralyzing hold.
Taking in her surroundings, she noted they were every bit as lavish as she had been led to expect. The governor’s palace on Trill was a magnificent work of architecture in its own right, and its sprawling rooftop garden—which had been secured by Enterprise’s security division in advance of Saavik’s arrival—had been decorated with freestanding red banners emblazoned with the Empire’s sword-and-planet emblem. Adding to the palace’s beauty were roving beams of light in a range of intense hues; their movements and intersections painted the soaring towers and elegant curves of the palace’s façade with shifting splashes of color.
Saavik glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the landing party. Her first officer, Commander Xon, and chief medical officer, Dr. M’Benga, flanked her. Both wore dress uniforms, as she did. At the rear of the group were four of Spock’s elite Vulcan guards, attired in full lorica segmentata with battle regalia.
In the middle of their formation stood Empress Marlena, garbed in a scandalously sheer dress of teal-tinted Tholian silk. Her royal countenance was framed by a headpiece: a semicircular frame over which more Tholian silk had been stretched taut and adorned with diamonds in a pattern that evoked the rays of a rising sun.
Far below, in the streets and plazas surrounding the palace, a massive throng of Trill civilians had gathered to witness the occasion of an official state visit, the planet’s first in more than a century. Thunderous cheers filled the air as a fanfare sounded and fireworks lit the night sky in brilliant flashes of emerald and crimson.
Crossing the rooftop garden to meet the Empress’s party was Trill’s governor, a woman in her forties named Neema Cyl. She was trailed by her entourage and flanked by two columns of armed guards.
As the governor’s group neared the landing party, Saavik nodded at Xon and M’Benga, who moved aside to permit the Empress to step forward.
“Your Majesty,” Cyl said, bowing her head as she came to a halt. “Welcome to Trill. It’s a great honor to open my home to you.”
Marlena answered the governor’s courtesy with a subtle nod. “Thank you, Governor. On behalf of Emperor Spock, I bring you greetings and good wishes.” Turning at the waist, she gestured to Saavik. “Please permit me to introduce the commanding officer of the Starship Enterprise, Captain Saavik.”
Saavik stepped forward and offered her hand to the governor.
Cyl smiled as she shook it and said, “Captain, it’s an honor.”
“The honor is mine, Governor.”
Their handshake lasted a half second longer than was customary, but no one other than the Empress seemed to suspect why.
Saavik’s moment of contact with the governor had been the reason for this state visit by the Empress, for Captain Riley’s promotion to the Admiralty, and for Saavik’s early advancement to the center seat of the Enterprise. Spock had needed her to be of sufficient rank to merit a formal introduction to Governor Cyl.
Marshaling her hidden telepathic gifts, Saavik opened her psionic senses to Cyl’s mind—and what she encountered was exactly as Spock had described it in a classified briefing. The governor seemed to possess a curious dual sentience, two unique minds functioning as one identity.
Cyl let go of Saavik’s hand and motioned for the landing party to follow her inside the palace. “Your Majesty,” she said, “your banquet awaits.”
“Thank you, Governor,” Marlena said. “Lead on.”
The landing party stayed close behind the Empress as she accompanied the governor and her entourage inside the palace, but Saavik let them pass by her. Once the two groups had moved out of earshot, Saavik took out her communicator and flipped it open. “Saavik to Enterprise.”
“Scott here,” said her veteran chief engineer. “Go ahead, Captain.”
“Mister Scott, you may begin beaming down shore leave parties.”
“Aye, sir,” Scott said, confirming the coded order. “Are we allowed to bring back souvenirs?”
“Indeed,” Saavik said. “In fact, I encourage it.”
“Understood, sir. Scott out.”
Saavik closed her communicator, tucked it back onto her belt, and hurried to catch up with the rest of her team.
While she and the landing party dined with the governor, investigative teams disguised as shore leave parties from Enterprise would visit the planet’s surface. Posing as tourists, her officers would conduct clandestine scans of the Trill population, while Commander Scott and the crew of the Enterprise made detailed sensor sweeps of the planet’s surface.
Emperor Spock wanted to know whether all Trill possessed the curious trait of a dual mind, or if it was a mark of privilege for their society’s elite. Most important, he needed to know if the Trill would be his allies or his adversaries.
Her mind set to the task, Saavik was determined to find the answers to Spock’s queries before the next day dawned on Trill’s capital city.
The hour was late, and Marlena’s stomach ached from the surfeit of her feast with Trill’s governor. Every plate of the nine-course meal had been sumptuous and prepared to perfection, and despite all her attempts at moderation, Marlena had barely been able to keep from gorging herself. For decorum’s sake, however, she hid her discomfort as she sat in her quarters aboard Enterprise with Saavik, conferring with Spock over a secure subspace channel.
“Give me your summary evaluation of the Trill,” he said to Marlena.
“I find them interesting,” Marlena said. “They possess advanced technology, and they’ve integrated it well into their lives. Their political system seems malleable; I think it would be compatible with your democratically ordered vision of the future.”
“What of their culture?”
“My conversations with the governor and her senior staff suggest the Trill consider the continuity of memory and the accurate accounting of
history to be of paramount importance. Also, considering who their closest galactic neighbors are, they strike me as a remarkably open society.”
Saavik interjected, “I disagree, Majesty.”
She ignored Marlena’s glare as Spock replied, “Explain.”
“Trill society is many things, but it is not ‘open.’ They are keeping a great many secrets from us, most of them related to their peculiar joined intelligences.” She transferred an encrypted file over the channel to Spock. “Scans of the Trill population made by our landing parties and Enterprise’s sensors confirm a small minority of the Trill population—perhaps three hundred thousand persons—are bonded with symbiotic parasites, just as we saw in secret scans of Ambassador Dax. These parasites are known to the Trill people as ‘symbionts,’ and they are the source of the composite personalities we have encountered.”
Marlena asked sharply, “How did you learn that, Captain?”
Continuing to direct her reply to Spock, Saavik said, “In addition, Majesty, we have learned the symbionts are very long-lived and are passed from one humanoid host to another. They bond for the lifetime of each host, which implies they can survive as bonded entities for several hundred years—possibly longer.”
“A species capable of preserving knowledge and experience from one lifetime to the next could be instrumental to my long-term plans,” Spock said.
Saavik wore a dubious frown. “Perhaps. But if these symbionts have an agenda of their own, ‘joined’ Trill could be very dangerous.”
Growing more agitated, Marlena rephrased her previous question. “Where did this information come from, Saavik?”
Before Saavik could answer, Spock said, “If we knew more about these Trill-symbiont joinings, it might suggest our next logical step with regard to the Trill. How and where do the joinings occur?”
“They are performed by unjoined Trill known as Guardians, in a sacred underground location called the Caves of Mak’ala. There is a natural hot spring that serves as both the nursery and final repository of the symbionts.”
Marlena snapped, “Both of you, stop!” She pointed a finger at Saavik’s face. “You do not ignore me, Captain. I’m the Empress, and when I ask you a direct question, I expect a prompt and truthful answer.” Gesturing at the detailed report on the computer screen, she asked, “How did you and your crew learn all these facts about the Trill in such a short time, Captain Saavik?”
Saavik glanced at Spock’s image on the viewscreen. The Emperor lifted one eyebrow but said nothing to excuse Saavik from her duty to obey royalty. The Vulcan woman clenched her jaw. “We abducted a small number of joined Trill civilians from the planet’s surface using the transporters,” she said. “Aboard the Enterprise, they were … interrogated under controlled conditions.”
Jaw agape, Marlena blinked in horror at Saavik’s revelation. “And what happened to those people after their interrogations?” She waited several seconds, but Saavik said nothing in reply. Filling in the blanks for herself, Marlena said accusatorily, “You had them killed.”
“Operational security had to be maintained,” Saavik said, as if that excused kidnapping, torture, and mass murder.
The Empress was appalled. She aimed her furious gaze at her husband. “I thought your rise to power was supposed to put an end to this kind of barbarism! How can you speak of reform with one breath and sanction vile abuses of power with another? Why should anyone believe promises of change from a tyrant?”
“How would you have had me proceed?”
Lifting her hands in frustration, Marlena said, “With honesty? Why not meet their governor and open a frank dialogue? We could court them as an ally instead of treating them like an enemy at the gates.”
Spock looked at Saavik. “What is your advice, Captain?”
“The joined Trill might be benign, or they might have a hostile agenda,” Saavik said. “At present, we do not know for certain which is the case. It would be best not to involve their government or any joined Trill in your long-term plans for the Empire before investigating them to ensure they are, in fact, an ally.”
Nodding slowly, Spock said, “Agreed.” Looking at Marlena, he added, “I am sorry, but Captain Saavik is correct. This matter calls for caution.”
Marlena fumed in silence. Overruled again in favor of a Vulcan half my age. How utterly predictable.
Saavik asked him, “What are your orders, Majesty?”
“We must know the truth,” Spock said. “Explore the Caves of Mak’ala and make contact with the symbionts. If they wish to be allies, our plans for the future can become more ambitious.”
“And if they prove to be enemies?”
“That will be your first command decision as captain of the Enterprise.”
38
A Covenant with Death
The spinning shimmer of the transporter beam dissolved, leaving black-garbed Saavik alone and swallowed by darkness. She remained still and orientated herself.
Faint echoes of dripping water and moaning wind swirled around her. The atmosphere inside the Caves of Mak’ala was sultry and tinged with sulfur. Shifting her weight, Saavik felt her feet slip on the lichen-covered cave floor.
In the distance, through gaps in the walls of the cavern, she caught dim glimmers of lamplight and distorted shadows. None of them seemed close to her, so she lifted her tricorder from her hip and switched it on. She had dimmed its display as much as possible and had muted its feedback tones. Except for an almost inaudible hum, the device made no sound.
Saavik skulked forward. Using the tricorder, she maintained a safe distance between herself and the Guardians, who tended to move in pairs. It was only a short distance from her isolated beam-in point near the surface to the first level of symbiont pools. Peeking over a rock formation into an open chamber below, she saw it was better illuminated than most other areas of the caves, though the lights there still were kept to a minimum.
Fascinating, she thought, beholding the symbiont pools for the first time. Natural-looking craters dotted the expansive chamber beneath her. Each brimmed with slowly circulating, chalky water. Blue flashes resembling static electricity shot through the pools at varying depths and irregular intervals.
She scanned the pools with her tricorder. In seconds she amassed a significant volume of data about the caves’ geology, water chemistry, and submerged topography—but the electrical discharges remained a mystery.
Most curious.
Detecting a gap in the Guardians’ patrol coverage, Saavik turned off her tricorder and slung it behind her back. As soon as a path down to the pool chamber was clear, she stole forward, sticking as close as possible to the shadows. She shimmied down a narrow column formed by the merger of a stalactite and a stalagmite. Risking detection, she scampered across a patch of open ground and lay flat on the wet stone beside one of the pools.
Up close, she saw what was stirring the waters. Symbionts—tiny vermiform creatures—swam in the milky fluid, propelling themselves with flagellations of their tapered bodies. Saavik surmised the symbionts must have some means of altering their buoyancy—perhaps something as simple as air bladders or rudimentary lungs. The grayish worms were the source of the cerulean jolts of energy traveling through the water. Flashes traveled from one worm to another.
Saavik wondered, Could the discharges be a form of communication? As she leaned closer to the water’s surface, several worms swam toward her, as if conscious of her presence. One bobbed to the surface only centimeters from her face. Treading water in front of Saavik, the symbiont extended a few tentative arcs of blue lightning in the Vulcan’s direction.
My task will be easier if the creatures desire contact, she reasoned.
She reached toward the closest symbiont. The creature emitted a quick series of electrical discharges that arced over Saavik’s hand. As tendrils of energy danced around her wrist, she felt the touch of the symbiont’s mind. It was undeniably sentient, and it evinced great curiosity about her.
Projecti
ng a telepathic question, Saavik asked, Do you have a name?
The symbiont responded with pulses of color, sensations of warmth and cold, and waves of emotion ranging from fear to contentment.
Soon more of its kind drew near and added their energies to the communion with Saavik. None of them seemed to understand her simple inquiries. Their responses felt nebulous and unformed. She opened her thoughts to meld with the symbionts, and then she understood why their perceptions seemed so basic: they were mere younglings, only recently spawned.
To obtain the answers she needed, Saavik needed to find older symbionts.