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Strangers from the Sky

Page 6

by Margaret Wander Bonanno


  get you killed, but it was the reports after the fact that

  busted your

  Jim Kirk sighed. Now Spock had his

  Enterprise and all he had left was the paperwork.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  He'd started fiddling with the closures on his

  uniform tunic while he was still in the

  turbolift.now he threw its stiff red newness

  (almost the color of drying humanoid blood, he

  thought, as if noticing it for the first time. Whose

  brilliant idea was that?) over a chair,

  admiral's bars clanking disconsolately. He

  dumped his carrycase on top of it pompous,

  silly thing with his name and rank holoscribed in one

  corner, hermetically sealed against all environmental

  conditions, equipped with a security lock that would

  implode and destroy the contents if it was tampered

  with.

  Your tax dollars at work, Kirk thought. All

  it contained at the moment was a couple of

  medium-security tapes supplementary to this

  afternoon's meetings, which he would return unread in the

  morning, and The Book.

  The book. He'd made a great to-do about having

  it made up in bound form, though it had cost him a

  bundle and sent the Troyian bookseller into a

  spasm over the inconvenience. "Surely the

  admiral has a speed-read degree!" the

  Troyian had clucked, fluttering his aquamarine

  fingers disconsolately over the order form for such an

  anachronism as a book with paper pages. "Why,

  a tome of this size can be scanned in an evening with

  comm-enhance. We even carry a "read while you

  sleep" version. Such a waste of valuable time

  turning pages, reading words instead of scanning

  paragraphs . . ."

  "One of the reasons God gave man eyes and

  fingers, Purdi," Jim Kirk had said softly, but

  as if to suggest that the subject was closed.

  Troyians talked too much.

  "Coffee-table book!" Purdi sniffed. "At

  least that's what they used to call them. That's why you

  want the antique version part of your

  collection!"

  Kirk had left him with his misconception.

  "Over a Billion Copies in Scan!"

  raved holo-ads and vidvertising every time Kirk

  switched on Prolificom for a weather report.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Not only was everyone buying Strangers, everyone

  actually seemed to be reading it. Kirk caught

  Heihachiro Nogura scanning it on his office

  screen the morning after three civilian friends had

  tried to press their copies on him at a party.

  Even his students, whose tastes usually ran

  to Astromance and Warmongor tilde a, were

  debating its merits in the corridors between

  classes. When they asked the admiral his views

  on its merit, Kirk waived comment on the basis that

  he was still weighing it in the context of his ahem

  personal experience in diplomatic matters.

  The final straw was when he thought he'd managed

  to escape it for a day by attending to some business up at

  TerraMain Spacedock, about as far offplanet as

  one could go without leaving orbit. He'd stopped by the

  commissary for a cup of coffee and the latest gossip

  when he caught sight of Nyota Uhura and

  "Admiral, you remember Cleante

  alFaisal."

  Silly question. Remember her? He'd once been

  madly in love with her, for nearly five minutes.

  Enterpr tilde se had been on a rescue

  mission,

  retrieving the two survivors, human and

  Vulcan, of a bit of Romulan nastiness at the

  edge of the quadrant. There'd been a moment's peace

  and respite beside a lotus pool, and this sad,

  beautiful creature with Byzantine eyes . . .

  "Hello, Jim."

  "Cleanse."

  He kissed her hand now as he had then.

  Uhura's eyes danced as she watched the two of

  them.

  "Join us," she invited Jim Kirk, and he

  did.

  "What brings you to these parts?" he asked Cleante

  pleasantly.

  "Coincidence," she replied. Her voice was as

  Iyrical as he'd remembered. "T'Shael had

  an appointment with Dr. M'Benga in Old

  Frisco and I tagged along to do some window-shopping.

  I ran into Nyota and she invited me up for lunch.

  I'd never been to Spacedock before."

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "I see." Kirk nodded. T'Shaelwas the

  Vulcan survivor, genetically prone to some

  blood disorder that required periodic monitoring;

  Vulcan healers were hard to come by on Earth, and

  M'Benga was still the best of the humans. "Well,

  don't let me interrupt your conversation his

  "Cleanse was just telling me the most

  fascinating thing," Uhura said brightly. "She's

  discovered a longlost relative."

  "Really? Something to do with your archaeology work?"

  Cleante shook her head, her masses of dark

  hair an aura about her face.

  "Surprisingly enough," she said, "he turned up

  as a rather mysterious character in a history book. Have you

  read Strangers from the Sky yet?"

  Inwardly Kirk groaned, defeated. "No, not

  yet."

  "Well, I'm sure you're familiar with the

  premise. Here you have the entire

  military-intelligence community of Earth with its

  knickers in a knot trying to figure out what to do with

  two misplaced Vulcans, when this tilde

  haracter by the name of Mahmoud Gamal al-Parneb

  Nezaj, if you can believe all that . . ."

  That very afternoon, Jim Kirk beamed down from

  TerraMain and stopped by Purdi's Book

  Emporium, waving a white flag.

  He'd had his copy of Strangers sent to the

  Admiralty on purpose, to pique the curiosity

  of the younger generation onstaff, most of whom wouldn't know

  what a book was if they fell over it. He'd sat

  at his desk holding the thing, still in the plain brown

  wrapper Purdi had so discreetly provided,

  delighting in the feel of it, the heft of it in his

  hands. There was something vaguely obscene about owning a

  copy of War and Peace or Bleak House complete

  and entire on a little plastic disk that could be read

  to you by a computer.

  Aides and junior officers passed in and out of his

  54

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  office all day, eyeing this audacious

  anachronism sitting plunk in the middle of Jim

  Kirk's desk, utterly mystified. Kirk did

  not bother to enlighten them, locked the book in a

  drawer while he locked himself into an endlessness of

  staff meetings, then smuggled it out of the Admiralty

  as if it might have been Klingon aphrodisiacs,

  instead of what it was.

  Alone at last in the penthouse, he still didn't

  take it out of the carrycase. The longer he waited,

  the greater the pleasure when at last he took it out,

  settled himself by the fire with his feet up, and began

  turning pages, losing himself in ano
ther time, another

  place. He kept himself in suspense, poured himself

  a drink, and woke his computer.

  "Computer?"

  "Yes, Jim?" it answered sleepily; it had

  had the apartment to itself all day.

  Kirk stopped himself from snapping at it for

  familiarity; he had requested a

  personality-specific model for home use.

  "Read me tomorrow's sked, please. One item at

  a time."

  "Of course, Admiral," it said more

  formally. "Beginning 0800: Quadrant Three

  commandants' tie-in briefing."

  More talk, Kirk thought, complicated by time lags

  across an entire quadrant.

  "Confirmed. Next?"

  "Approximately 0930: workout with kendo

  instructor.

  Kirk groaned; his arm was still sore from last

  week's session.

  "Is that a confirm, Admiral?"

  "What? Yes, continue."

  "Ten hundred to 1200: Visiting Firemen."

  "Say again?"

  "Only notation you gave me, Admiral," the

  computer responded primly. "I took the liberty

  of tracing the 55

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  etymology through Linguistics and can report that the

  term originated on Earth in the then-United

  States of America circa his

  "Never mind!" Kirk snapped. Had Spock

  been tinkering with this thing behind his back? Some sort of

  Vulcan practical joke?

  Of course, Vulcans did not engage in the

  employment of jokes, practical or

  otherwise, Kirk reminded himself. He could almost

  hear Spock saying it. There didn't seem to be a

  profound statement on any subject that Spock

  hadn't already uttered. Or was it just his manner that lent

  whatever he said an aura of profundity?

  "Jim?" the computer intruded gently into his

  woolgathering. "Was it something I said?"

  "What? Yes no! I remember now. Visiting

  firemen. Means the command staff from Starbase 16

  is in town and I have to give them the Cooks' tour."

  "Cooks' tour? Shall I check Linguistics for that

  also?"

  "On your own time!" Kirk said testily. It

  Has ragging him, Spock's influence or no.

  "Continue schedule."

  "Very well; 1200 to 1400: lunch with

  Admiral Nogura, his office."

  Ulcer territory, Kirk thought. Heihachiro

  only schedules lunch with me when he wants something

  done yesterday.

  "Next?"

  "Fourteen hundred to 1600: tactics seminar,

  Blue and Gold groups."

  Boredom, Kirk thought. How to keep myself

  awake so I don't put the cadets

  to sleep.

  "Confirm."

  "Sixteen hundred: Kobayashi Maru, Green

  group his

  was and debriefing at 1700? Assuming they

  haven't incinerated themselves?"

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "Would you care to do this for me?" the computer demanded,

  touchy about interruptions.

  "No, continue." Kirk knocked back half his

  drink without tasting it, rubbed his eyes. "Sorry if

  I disrupted your train of thought."

  "Not possible," the computer responded, literal-

  minded. "Seventeen hundred: Kobayashi Maru

  debriefing, Green group. 1800: Cocktail

  reception for his

  "Stop!" Kirk had clearly had enough. There was

  a cumulative unifommity to his days that was

  terrifying in its implications. He turned his thoughts

  toward the one thing he really cared about. "Computer,

  present position and status of Enterprise?"

  "One moment." Pretty kaleidoscopic

  patterns played across the small screen. Kirk

  swirled the ice cubes in the bottom of his

  glass, waited. The rest of him might be parked behind

  a desk, but his heart was always with his ship. "Ready."

  "Go ahead."

  "Position and status USS Enterprise,

  NCC-1701: Stardate 8083.6. Crew

  complement comprising engineering officer and thirty-seven

  trainees: bridge crew comprising seven cadets,

  Captain Spock in command. Presently engaged in

  training patrol two parsecs off Llingri Star

  Cluster, to continue approximately three solar

  days.

  Employing Regulation 14-B standard

  maneuvers with accepted Vulcan variant. As of

  last report, all is well."

  "I see," Kirk mused. Accepted Vulcan

  variant, indeed. That meant Spock was working their little

  human tails off under Vulcan regimen. Good for

  him! "Estimated return date?"

  "Captain Spock had logged return date of

  8097.4. Precisely."

  Precisely. He would do it, too. Bring her

  into spacedock trim and unscathed and down to the minute

  by his calculations ion storms,

  intervening interplane

  57

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  tary conflicts, and Scotty's lamentations about his

  engines notwithstanding. Good old Spock.

  Enterprise couldn't be in better hands.

  Dammit.

  Kirk ran himself through the sonic shower in record

  time, and slipped into an old sweat-quit. He

  padded into the kitchen and punched up a salad

  McCoy had been on him about his weight again then

  settled back by the fire, and lovingly turned the

  crisp new pages of his anachronistic book.

  THREE

  In the dying light of a stormy afternoon, Yoshi sat

  in the other room of the agrostation staring at the comm

  screen, neither hearing nor seeing it.

  They had always called this the "other room."

  There was the sleeping room and there was this room

  tilde iving room, kitchen, den, workroom,

  office, storage area, library, gym,

  entertainment canter. The comm screen dominating one

  wall was combination computer, holovision,

  ship-to-shore, mail service their only

  contact, except for Delphinus's monthly

  supply runs, with the rest of the world.

  What Yoshi really wanted to do was to cut himself

  themselves off entirely from that world, pretend nothing had

  happened, retreat, hide out, wish it all away.

  But he kept the screen on, kept staring at its

  melange of images though most of them made no

  sense in his

  present state of high agitation. He seemed

  to think he ought to be watching for something specific, but

  whets er or not he would recognise it when he saw

  it . . .

  Did he actually expect MediaComm to

  announce that an alien spacecraft was being

  hunted in the South Pacific?

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  He'd thought of tapping into the Aeroationav band.

  He was a good enough hacker to make it work, but figured

  their equipment was

  sophisticated enough to detect a tap and

  abandoned the idea. Instead he sat flipping from

  one news channel to another, mesmerised.

  "dis . . following his attempted assassination

  by pseudo-religious factions calling themselves the

  Alliance for the Twelfth of November . . ."


  Flip.

  "dis . . threatening their mutual nonaggression

  pact with a renewal of hostilities unless . . ."

  Flip.

  "dis . . when a riot, believed to have been

  instigated by spectators for the Southern Hemisphere

  team, resulted in twenty-three deaths . . ."

  Good old Earth, Yoshi thought. Half a

  century since the last world war and we still can't keep

  from cutting each other up for anything from the rights of the

  persecuted to a disputed soccer score. Any aliens

  in their right minds would have taken a quick look around and

  kept right on going. Those poor souls we fished out

  of the water this morning must have been lost but good.

  Flip.

  "dis . . trading was active, the price of mixed

  SeaSources shares plummeting in the wake of

  reports that fungus infestations first noted in the

  mid-Pacific region continue to spread

  unchecked . . ."

  Uh-oh, Yoshi thought, coming back from

  wherever he'd been with a bump. This one

  piece of local news was the only thing that could

  make him sit up and pay attention.

  Word of a new and particularly resistant strain of

  kelpwilt had been rampant up north for

  months. None of the usual treatments worked, and the

  disease had been spreading inexorably in Agro

  IlI's direction. Stations to their north and east had

  already reported losses of up to a quarter of their

  acreage.

  Yoshi shook his head, incredulous. Until this

  mom

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  ing his most pressing task had been scooting up

  and down the access lanes in the hydrofoil examining

  random samples of the weed for

  possible infestation. Now he could sit content in the

  middle of his acreage and happily let it rot out

  from under them, as long as no one came near him and

  demanded he hand over the

  aliens.

  He asked himself the same question Tatya had asked

  herself. What was he afraid of?

  Nothing terrible would happen to him and Tatya. At

  most they might need some outside "help" to forget

  what they'd discovered. Their ilves would resume their

  normal course, and it would be as if they had never

  discovered the aliens, or as if there had been no

  aliens at all. Wasn't that what he

  wanted?

  But if he let them do what they wanted, what would

  Aeroationav and the intelligence networks and the

  PentaKrem and the powers-that-were do to the ailens? And

  why did he care?

 

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