by Diane Duane
“Gentlemen,” she said to them, picking up the S’harien’s scabbard from the desk and sheathing it again, “I had no idea that the Enterprise would be carrying museum pieces. Can it be that all those stories about starships being instruments of culture are actually true?”
And to her utter astonishment, she saw that her cautious flippancy was not fooling the captain, either. He was looking at her with the small wry smile of someone who also knew and loved the feel of a blade in the hand.
“We like to think so, Commander,” he said. “You should come down to recreation, if there’s time…we have some interesting things down there. But right now we have other business.” And he glanced at Spock much as Ael might have glanced at Tafv when there was some uncomfortable business to be gotten over with quickly.
She bowed slightly to him, sat down in the chair at Spock’s desk. The Vulcan came to stand behind her. Ael leaned back and closed her eyes.
“There will be some discomfort at first, Commander,” said the voice from above and behind her. “If you can avoid resisting it, it will pass very quickly.”
“I understand.”
Fingers touched her face, positioning themselves precisely over the cranial nerve pathways. Ael shivered all over, once and uncontrollably; then was still.
Her first thought was that she couldn’t breath. No, not that precisely; that there was something wrong with the way she was breathing, it was too fast…. She slowed it down, took a longer deeper breath—and then caught it back in shock, realizing that she couldn’t take that deep a breath, her lungs didn’t have that much capacity—
Do not resist, her own voice said in her head without her thinking any such thing. Surely this was what the approach of madness was like.
No! They are breaking faith with me, they are going to drive me mad—no! No! I have too much to do—
Commander—Ael—I warned you of the discomfort. Do not resist or you will damage yourself—
—oh, bizarre, the words were coming in Vulcan but she could still understand them—or rather she heard them at the same time in Rihannsu, and in Federation Basic, and in Vulcan, and she understood them all. Her own voice speaking them inside her, as if in her own thought—but the thought another’s—
Better. Our minds are drawing closer…. Open to me, Ael. Let me in.
—impossible not to; the self/other voice was gentle enough, but there was a strength behind it that could easily crush any denial. Would not, however—she realized that without knowing how—
—closer now, closer—
—Elements above and beyond, what had she been afraid of? What an astonishment, to breathe with other lungs, to see through another mind’s eye, to journey through another darkness and find light at journey’s end…. That was no more than she did on Bloodwing, than she had done all her life; how could she possibly fear it? She reached out for the other, not knowing how: hoping will would be enough, as it had always been for everything else—
—we are one.
She was. Odd that there were suddenly two of her, but it seemed always to have been that way. With the odd calmness of a dream, where outrageous things happen and seem perfectly normal, she found herself very curious about the events of the past few months, the whole business regarding Levaeri V, from beginning to end. Luckily it took little time, in this timelessness, to go over it all; and she took herself from beginning to end in running commentary and split-instant images—the crimson banners of the Senate chambers, the faces of old friends in the Praetorate who solemnly said “no,” or said “perhaps” meaning “no.” There were the faces of her crew, glad to see her back, outraged nearly to rebellion at the thought of her transfer from Bloodwing. There were the hateful faces of the crew of Cuirass, and there was t’Liun’s voice shouting over ship’s channels for her to come to the bridge. There was Tafv, dark and keen, reaching out to take her hand as she boarded Bloodwing again, raising her hand to his forehead in a ridiculously antique and moving gesture of welcome. And her cheering crew, all of them like children to her, like brothers and sisters. There was Bloodwing’s transporter room. And there was another transporter room entirely, with men in it. One fair and lithe, with an unreadable face and a very unalien courtesy; one dark and fierce-eyed, with hands that looked skilled; and one who could have been one of her own brothers, if not for Starfleet blue, and the memory of old enmities….
Her sudden curiosity invited her to look more closely at those enmities. She resisted at first—they were old history, and their consideration bred nothing but anger. But the curiosity wouldn’t be balked, and finally Ael gave in to it. That image of her sister’s-daughter standing before the Senate after her defeat at the captain’s and Spock’s hands, after the loss of the cloaking device to the Federation. Ael’s impassioned, desperate defense of her before the Senators—useless, fallen on hearts too obsessed with vengeance and fear for their own places to hear any plea. Ael stared again down the length of the white chamber, looking toward the Empty Chair, while around her the voices proclaimed her sister-daughter’s eternal exile from ch’Rihan and ch’Havran, the stripping of her honors from her, and worst, the ceremonial shaming and removal of her house-name. Ael had protested again at that, not caring how it would endanger her own position. The protest had gone unheeded. She stood at marble attention while the name was thrice written, thrice burned, and watched bitterly as her sister-daughter went from the chambers in the deepest disgrace—no longer even a person, for a Rihannsu without a house was no one and nothing.
And where is she now? she cried to that curious, silent part of her that watched all this. Wandering somewhere in space, or living alone on some wretched exile-world, alone among aliens? How should I not hate those who did such a thing to her? Nor was there any forgetting Tafv’s bitter anger at the exile of his cousin, his dear old playmate. Yet he had come to know cool reason, as Ael had, just as this sudden new part of her had learned it when he was young and occasionally angry. Hate would have to wait. Perhaps some kind shift in the Elements, at another time, would allow her a chance to face her enemies and prove on their bodies in clean battle that they were cowards, who had consented to deal in trickery to achieve their means. Now, though, she needed those enemies badly. Personal business could not be allowed to matter where the survival of empires was involved.
The new part of her agreed silently and said nothing more for a moment. Ael seized that moment, for she had her own curiosity. Here was one of those enemies, inwardly linked to her. Becoming “curious” in turn, she reached out to it; and the other part of her, in a kind of somber acknowledgment of justice, suffered her to do so. Ael reached deep—
She had for years been picturing some kind of monster, a half-bred thing without true conscience or sense of self, the kind of person who could work a treachery on her sister-daughter with such cool precision. But now, as in her estimate of what his rooms would be like, she found herself wrong again, so very wrong that her shame burned her. Certainly there was the vast internal catalogue of data and store of expertise that she would have expected from a man whom even among the Rihannsu was a legend as one of Starfleet’s great officers. But what she had not suspected was someone as torn as she was, and as whole as she was, and in such similar ways. Someone who had sworn himself to a hard life, for what seemed to him a greater good more important than his own, and who had suffered for the oath’s sake, and would again, willingly; someone who was also powerfully rooted in another life, a heart’s life—based around a planet where he could hardly ever walk, and relationships he could never fully acknowledge, because of what he had chosen to be. No oaths were attached to those choices—just simple will, rock-steady and unbreakable. That person she had not suspected. Alien he might be, but there was that very Rihannsu characteristic, the unshakable, unbreakable loyalty to an idea, a goal, a man who embodied it. The best part of the ruling Passion, a banked fire, but burning this man out from within, and never to be relinquished, no matter how much it hurt—
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sp; That man she could open to, as she might open to Tafv or Aidoann or tr’Keirianh. And she did, feeling suddenly for the terrible suppressed passions in him, and for one of them more than any of the others—for homesickness. She showed him Airissuin, and the barren red mountains of her home, so like his own; she showed him the farmstead, and the place where the hlai got out, and her father, so very like his; the small dry flowers on the hillside, and the way the sunlight fell across her couch the day after her son was born, and she held him in her arms for the first time without the distraction of pain, wishing his father had lived to see—oh, Liha, lost to the Klingons in that ridiculous “misunderstanding” off Nh’rainnsele! Could there never be an end to such misunderstandings—worlds to walk safely, an end to wars, other ways to avoid boredom and find adventure? Must the innocent die, and must she keep on killing them? An end to it, an end!
Her second self was in distress; but so was Ael, and for the moment she had no pity on either of them. This was after all the most important matter, the only one that ranked with truth and hearts and names. Life must go on, and with the implementation of the project at Levaeri, there would be an end to it. Truth would become deadly, hearts would become public places, and names—Better that small wars should flare up and take their inevitable toll, better that she and Tafv and all the crew of Bloodwing, yes, and that of Enterprise too, should die before such a thing happened. For these were honorable people, as she had always suspected and now found that she had not known half the truth of it. Just the image of the captain that her otherself held was enough to convince her; his image of the doctor, very different but held in no less loyalty, was more data toward the same conclusion. Such people, whatever her hatreds, hinted at the existence of many more on the other side of the Zone. They must not be allowed to become obsolete, or dead, as honorable people everywhere would should this technique be carried to its logical conclusion; they must not, they must not—
—and her mind abruptly came undone. Not a painful sensation, but a sad one, as if she had been born twins and was bidding the twin good-bye.
Ael opened her eyes. The Vulcan she could still feel behind her—some thread of the link apparently remained; she could feel the stone-steady foundations of his mind shaken somewhat. But of more interest to her was the look the captain was giving her, both compassionate and bleak. The doctor was turned toward the wall and rubbing his eyes, as if something ailed them. She realized abruptly that her face was wet.
Spock came around from behind her, his hands behind his back, physically standing at ease; but Ael knew better. “Commander,” he said quietly. “I apologize profoundly for the intrusion.”
“I thank you,” she said, “but the apology is unnecessary. I am quite well.”
Glancing up at him, she saw that Spock, also, knew better. The captain was looking from one to the other of them. “I also apologize, Commander,” he said. “If it will do any good…”
“It will do none to the exiled or the dead,” Ael said, as levelly as she could, wondering how much she and the Vulcan might have spoken aloud in this meld, and fearing the worst. “But for myself, I thank you.”
“If you would excuse us a moment,” the captain said, “I must discuss this business with Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy.”
She bowed her head to him; they went out into the corridor together, all three moving as separate parts of one mind. We are more alike than I imagined, she said to herself, rubbing briefly at her face and thinking of those times in battle and out of it when she and Tafv and Aidoann functioned as one whole creature in three different places. If I am not careful, I will forget to hate these people for what they did to my sister-daughter…and what will become of me then?
“Captain,” she distinctly heard Spock saying, “every word she has told us is the truth. She is under no compulsion save that of her conscience—which is of considerable power; her resolve and fear of lost time was what broke the link—I did not.”
“Any sign of tampering with her mind at all?” the captain said.
“None. There were areas I could not touch, as there might be in any mind. And one piece of data with unusually powerful privacy blocks around it—an area somewhat contaminated with emotions that I consider similar to human types of shame and regret. But my sense was that this was a private matter, not concerning us.”
“I don’t like it,” the doctor said. “Did you get a ‘sense’ of any associational linkages to that block that might reach into the areas that do concern us?”
“Some, Doctor. But this blocked material had linkages to almost every other part of the commander’s mind as well. I do not think it is of importance to us.”
“Well,” said the captain, and let out a long breath. “Spock, I hate to say this, but Fleet is not going to buy what the commander’s proposing. It’s too farfetched, too dangerous, and even though the commander is an honorable woman, I can’t possibly trust all those other Romulans. She tells us herself that the Romulans as a whole are becoming more opportunistic, less attached to their old code of honor. What do we do if some one of them, while aboard the Enterprise, gets the idea to try a takeover? Granted that we outnumber them incredibly—if so much as one of my crew should die in such an incident, Starfleet would have my hide. And rightly. I agree with her that we have a moral responsibility to the three great powers—but if we tried to carry off the operation she suggests, and then botched it somehow so that word of what’s going on at Levaeri leaked out without our managing to destroy the place—No. I’m sorry. Strategically it’s a lovely idea, but tactically, with our present force and numbers, it’s a wash. I am going to send for more ships—quietly—and then act.”
The captain let out another unhappy breath. “Come on, gentlemen. Let’s tell her the bad news as gently—”
The small viewer on Spock’s desk whistled. “Bridge to Captain Kirk.”
Ael reached out to flick the small switch beside it. “If you will hold one moment, I will get him.” Mr. Spock, she said through the rapidly fading mindlink, would you please tell the captain he has a call?
A flash of acquiescence reached her. The door hissed open, and in the three came again. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Commander,” the captain said. “Let me handle this first. Kirk here,” he said to the viewer.
“Captain,” said the communications officer, a gray-skinned hominid who had apparently replaced the lovely dark woman Ael recalled from Tafv’s earlier call to Enterprise, “we have another squirt from Intrepid. They were passing by NZR 4486 when they were apparently attacked.”
“By what?” the captain said, glancing sharply at Ael.
“That’s the problem, sir. They didn’t know. The ion storm suddenly escalated to nearly force-ten—enough to leave them sensor-blind. It was just after that that they were fired upon. But the odd thing is that they didn’t fall out of communication with the relay station until almost a minute and a half after the storm escalated. Then they just cut off communication in the middle of transmission—not a storm-fade, or a catastrophic loss of signal, as if they’d been—as if something had happened to the ship. Just a stop.”
“Keep trying to raise them, Mr. Mahasë. And call red alert. All hands to battle stations. Alert Inaieu and Constellation; they’re to go to red alert as well.”
“Aye aye, sir. Any further orders?”
“None at present. Kirk out.”
Outside Ael could hear the ship’s odd red-alert siren whooping, and people hurrying past the room “Commander,” the captain said, “what do you know of this?”
“That the attacking ship is almost certainly Rihannsu,” she said, “and the ion storm almost certainly our doing. I wish you had told me of this earlier; I have had no news of it from my ship. Unfortunately your sensors seem to be rather better than ours—”
“What do you mean the ion storm’s ‘of your doing’?” the doctor said.
“I am sorry, gentlemen,” she said, “but it is hard to tell you everything presently happening in Rihannsu s
pace while standing on one foot. Mr. Spock, if you look into your memories of our meld, you will find this information accurate. One research that has been complete for some time now is a method for producing ion storms by selective high-energy ‘seeding’ of stellar coronae. The High Command has been using it for some time as a clandestine weapon to keep the Klingons from raiding our frontier worlds. Their economic situation has been very bad recently, as you may know, and their treaty with us has been honored more in its breach than in its keeping. However, the technique has also been used on this side of the Zone—to cover the tracks of those who have been stealing Vulcans. How better to spirit away small ships, without anyone noticing, then to have them vanish in ion storms? Everybody knows how dangerous those are—”
“Then the change in the stellar weather hereabouts,” Spock said, “has not been natural, but engineered.”
“To some extent. There was some concern that changing it in one place would also cause changes elsewhere; so the climatic alterations of which you speak may be secondary rather than primary. However, things now look even worse than they did, gentlemen. The research at Levaeri must be even further along than I thought, for the researchers to take such a large group of Vulcans—and right out from under the noses of a Federation task force. They must be about to start production of the shifted genetic material in bulk, to need so wide a spectrum of live tissue.” Ael looked grave. “Captain, if you do not do something, shortly half the Imperial Senate will be reading one another’s alleged minds, courtesy of the brain tissue of the crew of the Intrepid….”
Spock stood still, appearing unmoved—but again Ael knew better; and the other two stared at her in open horror. “Commander,” McCoy said at last, “this is ridiculous! If the Romulan ship tries to capture the Vulcans, they’ll die sooner than let that happen—”
“They will not be allowed to die, Doctor,” Ael said, becoming impatient. “Don’t you understand yet that this technique not only reproduces in its users the mental abilities of trained Vulcans, but raises those abilities to a much higher level than normal? What use would it be making touch-telepaths out of the Senate? Who among them would allow anyone to touch him? The technique was designed to enable mindreading and control at a distance for short periods—even control over the resistant minds of Vulcans already knowledgeable in the disciplines! Three or four people aboard a Romulan ship could easily hold the bridge crew of Intrepid under complete control for the short time it would take to make them stop firing, lower their shields and be boarded. Or there are other methods equally effective. Then the Rihannsu would simply take ship, Vulcans and all across the Zone, under cover of the ion storm, and do their pleasure with them.”