IMBALANCE

by V. E. Mitchell

  Keiko glanced around, noticing how the young Jarada were fidgeting in their seats. Not surprisingly, no one had any questions. Canjiir signaled for the other teacher to open the door and the class marched out. They seemed so quiet and orderly that Keiko wondered if she was missing something. Even the boys she grew up with would have been kidding and jostling each other to work off the excess energy accumulated by sitting for three hours. Frowning, she watched the youths as they retrieved their luggage and headed for the flat area Canjiir had marked as their camp, still strangely subdued.

  Their equipment was, of course, in the back of the compartment. When the last Jarada had retrieved its luggage, Tanaka squirmed inside and pushed their packs out the narrow opening. As Keiko struggled into hers and stood, a wave of dizziness swept through her. She caught herself and leaned against the vehicle, waiting for the vertigo to pass.

  “Are you all right, Keiko?” Tanaka reached out to help her, a concerned frown on his face.

  She brushed his hand away, irritated that he had caught her in a moment of weakness. “I just stood up too fast, that’s all.” Pushing off from the vehicle, she started down the beach, looking for a campsite away from the Jarada. The two teachers were standing to one side, watching their students and talking in low tones. Again Keiko felt a prickle of worry, a sense of impending trouble. She wished she knew more about the Jarada, to be able to translate her premonition into something more concrete.

  A low ridge of boulders separated the sand near the lake from the rest of the meadow. As they passed the area where the Jarada were pitching their shelters, the rock pile bent sharply toward the lake, then retreated to form another curving bay.

  “Definitely artificial,” Tanaka announced, studying the arrangement. “They must use this place often.”

  Keiko picked a level spot in the lee of the rocks and shrugged out of her pack. “Why not? It’s more efficient than having to locate new places every time you want to run a group outing.”

  She burrowed into her pack, pulling out her tent. Tabbing the activator switch, she stepped back and let the single-person shelter unfold. The metal poles expanded and burrowed into the ground, anchoring the circular structure, while the double layer of duroflex fabric pulled the upper supports into shape. Keiko clipped the power pack into its socket and programmed the tent’s controller for a comfortable internal temperature and for an external camouflage before tucking the unit into its pocket beside the door. Unsealing the flap, she shoved her sleeping bag inside and pulled its tab. It expanded to a mid-weight bag over a firm mattress which compensated for the ground beneath it. Pushing her pack inside, Keiko turned to see how Tanaka was doing.

  “Tie!” He grinned, pointing to his own tent. He had programmed it to an orange so bright it was probably visible from the Enterprise. From inside came the last hiss of his inflating sleeping bag. “I thought I’d grab some lunch and then go exploring. What do you think?”

  At the mention of food, Keiko felt her stomach lurch. She struggled against the nausea, dismayed that she would be catching something at such an inconvenient time. All her shots were current and she had passed her last physical six weeks before. Struggling to hide her reaction from Tanaka, she pulled her tricorder and a couple of ration bars from her pack. “I’am really not hungry yet. I think I’ll just walk along the shore a ways. You can catch up when you’ve finished eating.”

  “What? And let you be the first to discover that it is a beaver dam?” Tanaka’s grin took any possible offense from his words. He dived into his tent and pawed through his pack. Finding what he wanted, he dropped his tricorder into its holster and strapped a full pouch of ration bars to his waist. “I’m ready when you are,” he said, scrambling to his feet.

  They started along the lake shore, leaving a double line of boot prints behind them in the sand. A light breeze gusted off the water, burdened with the scent of mud and water-logged vegetation. Keiko swung her tricorder back and forth, recording a panoramic view of the lake and the meadow for later reference. Detailed scans of individual plants were the core of her work, but without the overview it was impossible to work out a planet’s ecology.

  Tanaka moved quickly, bounding back and forth like a child just released from class. “I always forget how exhilarating it is to move in lighter gravity.”

  “It’s only point nine. Hardly enough to make a difference.” Still, maybe that was what was wrong with her stomach. Keiko tried hard to believe that, tried hard to convince herself that she was imagining her queasiness, but that didn’t work either. The next thing she knew, she was kneeling on the sand, vomiting.

  Tanaka was there immediately. “Here, rinse out your mouth.” Where he had gotten the collapsible cup, she didn’t know, but Keiko accepted the water gratefully. The sour taste wouldn’t wash away at first, but finally she sat back, feeling light-headed but otherwise much better.

  “I’m calling the ship,” Tanaka said in a tone that brooked no argument. “If there’s a bug down here that doesn’t like humans, we need to know about it fast.”

  He touched his sleeve where his communicator was hidden in deference to Jaradan wishes. Silence answered him. He slapped it harder, but the device still didn’t respond. Frowning, Keiko tapped her communicator, but it, too, was dead. She shivered, realizing how much trouble the malfunctions could cause. Without communicators, she and Tanaka had no way of contacting the ship if they ran into serious trouble.

  Keiko stood, moving slowly to keep her stomach under control, and brushed the sand off her uniform. “I’m all right now, Reggie. It’s probably something I ate.”

  “I’d still prefer to have the doctor look at you.”

  She snorted. “I’m not that delicate that I need a doctor for every little problem. You’re sounding as bad as my husband.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Tanaka’s face flushed. “But I’d feel better if you’d at least take a nap while I run some diagnostics on the communicators.”

  His suggestion went against the grain when they needed every minute on the planet for collecting information. However, she still felt a little shaky, and without the communicators, regulations dictated that away-team members remain within earshot of each other. That severely limited what she could do. “All right, Reggie. I’ll take a nap if you promise the communicators will be fixed when I wake up.”

  “I’ll do my best. Otherwise, we’re not going to get much work done, are we?” He gave her a rueful grin, his expression reminding her so much of her childhood friend that a surge of homesickness washed through her. What would Kiyoshi say if he could see her now?

  “Certainly not as much as I’d like.” Keiko scowled, wondering why both communicators should malfunction at the same time. It was an odd coincidence—if it was coincidence. Suddenly she realized they might have more problems than random equipment failure. The communicators were almost indestructible because they had to work under all sorts of conditions. Outside interference was the most likely explanation for two simultaneous breakdowns, but if the Jarada had caused the problem, why had they done so? However she looked at it, Keiko could find no explanation that fit the facts.

  Chapter Seven

  “CAPTAIN.” Worf’s deep voice was harsher than normal. That, plus his vigilance in watching every direction of approach, betrayed his continuing distrust of the Jarada. To the Klingon, the layout of the Jaradan Prime Council Chamber, with its tapestries and hidden entrances, suggested a dozen ways to ambush an opponent. “I still believe my duty as your security chief is to remain with you at all times.”

  Picard turned toward the Klingon with a slight, exasperated shake of his head. “Mr. Worf, your assignment is to go with Zelk’helvtrobreen and discover what Zelfreetrollan thought you would find so interesting.”

  “Captain, I must protest. Commander Data’s best translation indicates that I will be attending a performance of the local equivalent of the—ballet.” He said the last word in a tone usually reserved for some particularly filthy perversi
on, such as unconditional surrender.

  The captain’s mouth quivered with the effort to suppress a laugh. “Mr. Worf, we are at the moment guessing at our translations of half the Jaradan words we think we know. I’m sure our hosts are aware of your feelings about ballet, since they seem almost too well informed about us. We need all the information we can gather about the Jarada. Therefore, I’m ordering you to find out why the Jarada believe my Chief of Security would be interested in their val’greshneth.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Dissatisfied, Worf turned away from the captain and Troi. Data had spent almost half an hour the previous night puzzling over the word val’greshneth. That was a record for the android—to have taken so long to produce so little. Val translated to “group” or “troupe,” as best Data could determine. Greshneth was more of a problem, since it was also a compound word. The first syllable meant “movement” or “progress,” while the second syllable was a modifier which, in some contexts, denoted “control.”

  Unfortunately, Data could not locate a definitive meaning for either of the compound words. He had insisted that “dance troupe” was only an approximation for the literal “group of controlled movement,” but that guess had been enough to keep Worf growling for hours. Though Worf’s adoptive mother had tried to teach him an appreciation of human cultural values, Worf never understood why she bothered. Such things were frivolous, beneath a warrior’s notice, and he had more important things to do than watch a group of Jarada cavort for his benefit.

  Worf’s mental grumbling was interrupted by the arrival of Zelfreetrollan and his guide. Zelk’helvtrobreen appeared beside him so quietly that Worf’s first impression was that the Jarada had beamed in. Seeing the Klingon’s reaction, the chestnut-colored Jarada clacked its claws together in amusement. “Appearing as if from thin air is a good trick for a guardian, is it not?”

  “I suppose so,” Worf replied evenly. For the Jarada, with their hard claws which clicked against the tiled floors, it should be nearly impossible. Worf felt his curiosity getting the better of his caution. “How do you accomplish it?”

  Again the Jarada clacked its claws together. “It is a matter of rhythm and anticipation, mostly. When several people are present, they are always moving, always creating small sounds that can mask a set of random noises. As long as I vary the hesitation between my steps, the sounds will not be noticed. It is the even, rhythmic pattern that alerts one to the coming of a stranger. How do you achieve a silent approach?”

  “I use a similar technique. Also, our floors produce less noise.” His boot heels made almost as much clatter on the hard floor as the Jarada’s claws, Worf thought. With a start he realized that he had seen no carpeting anywhere in the Governance Complex. He filed that fact away for his report on the defensive aspects of Jaradan buildings.

  The insectoid gestured for Worf to accompany him through the door. “Today we are no longer sitting in Council, so you should call me Breen. After all, we are fellow guardians of our hives. The full naming title is only for ceremonies and strangers. Are you called only Worf?”

  “It is the way of my people to have only one name that is spoken in public.” Worf frowned, trying to isolate an impression that nagged at the edges of his awareness. Something about the Jarada Breen was different from the day before, a change in its speech or its gestures that was triggering a warning in Worf. Regrettably, from what little the Federation knew of the Jarada, either behavior pattern might be normal for Breen. There was no way to tell.

  They turned the corner and started down a long corridor. Breen bombarded Worf with questions about his work, about what it was like to be in Starfleet, and about minority treatment on a human-dominated starship. In return for Worf’s answers, the Jarada supplied anecdotes from its own experience, rarely noticing that Worf’s answers were so terse as to be almost uninformative. Even so, after fifteen minutes Worf began to relax marginally in response to Breen’s apparent interest. After all, it wasn’t often that he could talk shop with someone outside Starfleet.

  While they talked, they moved downward along a sloping corridor. When it leveled off, Worf judged they were the equivalent of five decks below ground. A maze of tunnels and side passages branched off from the main corridor, and Worf realized the tunnel system must connect most of the buildings in the city. After ten minutes they reached a spiral ramp that led both up and down.

  Breen started upward, still talking about its duties as a hive guardian. Worf found it difficult to concentrate on the Jarada’s words; although Breen was talking incessantly, it actually said very little. The chatter was a distraction, Worf suspected, a diversion intended to keep his attention focused on the Jarada rather than on his surroundings.

  Worf found the layout of the complex enlightening. The extensive cross-tunnels and the apparent lack of markings or directional devices suggested that defensive considerations had determined the design. Without a detailed map, invaders would soon be hopelessly lost in the underground maze, while the numerous side corridors provided endless opportunities for reinforcements to attack from the flank or rear.

  The Klingon suspected that security doors operating on the same principle as a starship’s decompression doors were spaced at strategic locations along many of the tunnels. He had not identified any such doors, which aroused his curiosity further. Were they disguised behind a false layer of plaster, or was Breen leading him through the only corridor in the area that was not protected by advanced security devices? The more he thought about it, the more puzzled Worf became. A warrior learned to trust his senses, and Worf’s perceptions told him something was not right. He knew he should never have left the captain alone.

  When they reached what Worf judged to be ground level, Breen stopped. The outline of a door was sharply drawn on the wall, as clear to Worf as the designs on the floor. Breen scraped its claws across the wall and a control panel appeared. Fitting its claws into the depressions, it entered a code into the panel. Much to Worf’s surprise, the relays on the touch points each gave off a slightly different sound. He wondered if the Jarada knew this or if the distinguishing overtones were outside their hearing range. Listening carefully, he memorized the sequence: 1-1-3-2-1-2-3-3-1.

  “Our locks are our finest security feature,” Breen said as the door retracted into the wall. “If intruders want to open a door, they must first find the control panel before they can enter the code. And if they enter the wrong code three times in a row, an alarm alerts the hive guardians that strangers are attempting to enter our home. Of course, no outsider knows where our control panels are, so it is virtually impossible for them to enter in the first place.”

  “This is a precaution against predators on your homeworld?” Worf could see no way the invisible panels would be effective against other Jarada, unless each hive used a completely unique security system. Given how conservative the Jarada seemed, he was willing to bet that most, if not all, the control panels in every hive were in precisely the same position relative to the doors they controlled. Was it possible the sharp, bright outlines of the doors were not visible in the frequencies detectable by Jaradan eyes?

  “There are many dangers on our world.” Breen turned its head toward Worf, rainbow interference patterns flickering across the large central facets of his eyes. It started down the corridor, its head turned sideways to watch the Klingon. “We cannot be too careful in the ways of protecting our hive. Is it not the same for you? How do you prevent intruders from entering your hive?”

  “That problem is less difficult for us.” They turned left into the first hall, a short dead end with heavily carved doors facing each other across the mosaic floor. “A starship is a closed system, with all access systems strictly under our control.”

  “You must tell me more of this later.” Breen pushed open the right-hand door and gestured for Worf to enter first. A thick, heavy smell—of cloves or cinnamon or some other spice he remembered his human mother overusing—swirled out of the room and wrapped itself around them.
“Now, however, we have arrived, and I am sure you are eager to witness the presentation.”

  The room was large, larger even than the Audience Chamber, and the roof was at least three levels above them. Worf was reminded of the Enterprise’s shuttle deck, both by the sheer size and by the open space. The floor was wood, its pale surface pitted and scarred, worn by constant use despite its protective coating. The boards flexed under his feet and sprang back, almost alive in their response. Such a surface was made for fighting, and Worf wished he had a partner to help him test it.

  Fifty or sixty large reddish-brown Jarada were standing near the far wall, their true-arms crossed over their feeding-arms in a posture that suggested deferential waiting. Near one end, Worf spotted a russet individual with a broken antenna. He had noticed a similar injury on a member of the ceremonial guard the previous day, and he was sure this was the same Jarada.

  Examining the rest of the group, Worf recognized other markings—here a discoloration, there a nick on an exoskeleton. He grunted, feeling the first stirrings of interest since Zelfreetrollan had issued the invitation. If these were the guardians entrusted to protect the highest officials on the planet, he did want to see what they were planning to show him.

  The tallest of the group stepped forward three paces. “Admirably Massive Worf-Guardian, you grace our humble exercises with your presence. When we scented the joyous tidings of your visit, we prepared a special performance for you.”

  At those words, every Jarada in the room crouched deeply, bending their heads until their antennae brushed the floor. Worf shifted his weight uncomfortably, uncertain whether this excessive obeisance was intended to express their respect for him and the Federation or if they were mocking him. Before he could decide, the leader ordered the group to break ranks. While most of the Jarada scurried around the room, setting up a series of large, strangely shaped objects, two individuals carried a bench with a cut-out seat over to Worf. After they filled the Jarada-shaped indentation with blankets, Breen gestured expansively to Worf and said, “Please accept our hospitality for the duration of our performance.”