Strangers from the Sky

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Strangers from the Sky Page 8

by Margaret Wander Bonanno


  female in slapping him to lighten his coma had

  unwittingly given him the means to cure his own

  concussion. She had also dressed his burns, cutting

  away the

  charred tunic lest the fabric become embedded in

  the wounds. Barechested, Sorahl shivered. It was

  cold on this human planet; Selik's

  instruments had recorded remarkable extremes in

  temperature pole-to-pole.

  Selik, my best teacher, Sorahl thought with a

  sudden flash of memory, seeing the stark face over

  his shoulder, instructing him. Circumstance has taken

  your life and spared me mine.

  Whatever I do henceforward must honor the memory

  of those whose lives were lost. 69

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Again he shivered. The burns, residual shock,

  lack of sustenance, the lingering traces of concussion,

  exacted their toll. Sorahl wondered if it would be

  a breach of propriety to take the brightly patterned

  afghan thrown carelessly over a chair and wrap it

  around his shoulders.

  Instead he put aside his own needs and went

  to his mother. Carefully he touched his fingers to the reach

  canters of her ravaged face. He was no healer,

  but if he could start her on the healing trance and stand

  by until she needed him to bring her out

  Mother, he thought to her knowing it was the one word that would

  tell her the most, bring her back through memories

  of the crisis, the

  abortive selfdestruct sequence, the plummet

  to Earth, let her know that he was here and whole and

  required her presence. If she thought him dead, her

  mission would be complete; she

  would have no reason to preserve her own life.

  Mother, he thought, searching for her through eddies of

  trauma and recent memory . . .

  "Malfunction Retro One, Commander," Helm

  T'Preth had reported in her usual

  imperturbable tone. No matter that an irreparable

  malfunction of their retro-rockets could

  mean death for all of them this far from home.

  "Compensate," T'Lera ordered with equal

  calm. "Are you in need of assistance?"

  The others were already on alert: Stell leaning over

  Sorahl at the navcon to provide a third pair

  of hands should two prove insufficient, Selik and

  T'Syra coordinating readouts as they scanned for

  some external factor responsible for the

  malfunction. The ancient Savar had moved

  without sound to the airlock; it would be he who led the

  self-destruct if it came to that.

  "Negative, Commander," T'Preth replied,

  nimble

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  fingers flying across her console.

  "Compensation adequate at present."

  "Affirm," FL-ERA said as the others returned

  to station as if the alert had been just another drill.

  "All stations, causative scan."

  Silently all complied.

  They had circled Earth for forty-seven of Its

  days, pursuing their research and watching a thousand

  sunsets, undetected by the most

  sophisticated of Earth's scanning

  systems. Under Selik's tutelage, Sorahl

  had devised a remarkably flexible and intricate

  navigational pattern that brought them in under

  satellite tracking stations and maneuvered them around

  ground-based observatories, bringing them closer to the

  planet surface than any scoutcraft had dared

  venture before. Their impulse

  engines, recharging on solar while they were on

  dayside, allotted them fifty days of such

  observation, and then they must return home.

  "Compensation insufficient, Commander," Helm

  T'Preth reported some moments later. "Retro

  Three now indicating variable instability."

  Silently each resumed alert status.

  "Causative, Science?" T'Lera addressed

  Selik crisply, pivoting her chair in his

  direction.

  "Unknown, Commander," Selik replied at

  once. "No external damage. Calibrating

  for internal malfunction now."

  T'Lera swung her chair forward again.

  "Bring us up, Helm," she said sharply.

  "Twenty thousand perigee. Navigator, oblique

  angle. We must not be seen."

  "Affirm, Commander," T'Preth and

  Sorahl said in the same breath, but T'Lera was

  already out of her chair and under the engineering con with

  Stell.

  "Scanning Two and Four as well," Stell

  reported, and T'Lera merely nodded. She was

  listening to something else, sensing something.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "Status, Helm?"

  "Retro One shutdown, Commander," TP-RETH

  barely whispered even as it happened. "Three on

  blue line. Temporary hold at fourteen

  perigee. Downspiral estimated nineteen

  seconds mark."

  And the rest was nightmare.

  Mother! Sorahl thought to her, drawing her away from

  such thoughts lest the healing trance prove impossible.

  Mother!

  still am here, Sorahl-kam, T'Lera replied

  at last, and engaged the healing trance as he took his

  hand away.

  Outside the wind was howling now, whitecaps

  churning, thunderheads roiling on the horkon. It was

  typhoon season, and someone was getting a lot of

  rain.

  Several kilometers distant, along the

  bottomless rift known as the Mayabi Fault,

  the ocean floor slipped slightly, and a

  spacecraft of no known Earth design slid

  grating across the bottom. Under the silent silver

  stare of a thousand sea creatures it teetered and

  vanished over the edge of the crevasse in a churning of

  sand and was gone.

  In the sleeping room of the agrostation, a young and

  shivering Vulcan wrapped a

  human-made afghan about his naked shoulders,

  keeping watch over his mother and looking out over the heaving

  sea.

  And in the other room, two humans continued

  to argue.

  "dis . . don't even know what they eat.

  Suppose they need some kind of special

  environment? We may be endangering them by keeping them

  here, doing nothing his

  "You just don't want the responsibility!"

  Tatya nearly shouted. "Shrug it off like you always

  do, dump it on someone else. You know what the

  bureaucrats will do to a find like this. Turn them

  into zoo specimens, destroy them. Over my dead

  body!"

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "I beg your pardon his

  His voice was very soft, accustomed to

  speaking to more acute ears, but it brought them both

  to an instantaneous, electrified silence. Yoshi

  felt the hair on his neck start to prickle again.

  "I mean no intrusion. It is obvious that we have

  caused considerable disruption in your lives. We ask

  forgiveness."

  Tatya moved toward him like a sleepwalker,

  reached out a hand, and almost touched him, exotic

  apparition like a genie from a lamp, except for the
<
br />   burn plasters on his chest and arms, then stopped

  herself.

  "You're awake," she said unnecessarily, the

  paramedic in her taking charge, holding at bay the

  wonder, the incredulity. "H-how do you feel?"

  "I am well. Some physiological damage,

  but functional. As T'Lera will be, in time. Your

  concern for our physical well-being is no longer

  necessary."

  He looked from one stunned face to the other. Was it

  possible they did not understand him? Or was it the

  incongruity of his speaking their language?

  "But you had a concussion," Tatya blurted.

  "At least, I thought his

  "It is no longer a factor," Sorahl said.

  Studies indicated humans had no telepathy,

  no

  self-healing. There was no purpose in broaching

  such subjects now. It would serve only to confuse and

  frighten them. And in his hurry he had neglected the

  most basic of amenities. "Forgive me. I am

  called Sorahl. The other" he gestured toward the

  sleeping room "is T'Lera. My mother, and commander

  of our vessel."

  It was Yoshi's turn to move forward.

  Instinctively he held out his hand in a typical

  human gesture. Sorahl, recalling the record

  tapes, extended his own hand and, the

  reluctance of the touch-telepath held firmly in

  check by the student of IDIC, made actual the first

  humanalien handshake.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "So-rail," Yoshi said carefully, sensing the

  reluctance, releasing the warm, dry hand; truth

  to tell, the moment terrified him. "And Talera?"

  Sorahl assented. Inaccurate, but it

  would suffice. Yoshi seemed pleased.

  "My name's Yoshi. Yoshiomi Nakamura,

  actually. But Yoshi's fine. And this is his

  "Tatya," she said firmly, waving Yoshi

  aside. Tatiana Georgevna Bilash was someone

  she'd left behind on the mainland, along with three younger

  sisters and an inordinate number of bossy female

  relatives. She went to shake Sorahl's hand as

  well, was surprised to see him hesitate, seemed

  to shrink back slightly. "I'm sorryl Did I

  do something wrong?"

  "No." Sorahl extended his hand a second

  time, touching hers briefly. How explain that among

  his kind a betrothed male did not . . . "It is

  simply not our way."

  "I guess we have a lot to learn about each

  other," Yosh' said quickly, covering their varying

  degrees of embarrassment.

  "Indeed," Sorahl said, and fell silent.

  "You must be starved!" Tatya said suddenly,

  remembering the practicalities. "You just sit right

  here and I'll get you something to eat."

  Halfway to the kitchen area, she stopped.

  "I'm sorry, That is, we don't know his

  "We are vegetarian

  by philosophical choice," Sorahl explained

  carefully, remembering his amazement that other

  intelligent species could eat meat. "We will eat

  neither animal flesh nor the products of

  animals. Anything else is acceptable."

  "I see," Tatya said slowly, temporarily

  nonplussed. H was an awesome responsibility,

  serving the first meal to an alien guest. What was

  appropriate?

  "There's some tofu In the fridge," Yoshi

  supplied helpfully. He was consumed with

  curiosity, wished Tatya would stop fussing and

  give him a chance to ask a few of his thousand questions.

  "Dried fruit, brown

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  rice. Look around." He turned toward

  Sorahl. "We're due for supplies shortly.

  Tomorrow, in fact." He shook his head. Tomorrow. Oh,

  gods, tomorrow! "The joke is, of course, that we're

  sitting on one of the staple foods of the planet,

  only it's not as H you can step out onto the porch and

  clip a few leaves for salad. What we grow is

  industrial-grade kelp. It has to be

  reprocessed."

  "I quite understand," Sorahl said patiently.

  Food production had been Stell's area of

  expertise, and he had instructed his young pupil

  well. Yet another ghostly face, this one strong and

  benevolent, swam before the young

  Vulcan's vision.

  "Tofu, then," Tatya was muttering to herself,

  clattering around in the kitchen area.

  "You said, "we,"" Yoshi said intently, taking

  the chair beside Sorahl's, marveling at the sight of

  an alien occupying his beanbag chair. He must not

  stare. If it weren't for those ears . . . "Who

  exactly are you? And how did you get here?"

  "We are the Vulcan," Sorahl began, and

  proceeded to explain.

  act

  The Vulcan captain of a human crew continued

  the age-old tradition of his kind, asking nothing of

  those he commanded that he would not do himself.

  The young cadet stood stiffly at attention as

  Captain Spock signed the end-of-shift status

  report. Spock allowed him a moment more of this

  posture, as good for the soul as it was for the spine, before

  favoring him with a mild glance.

  "Stand at ease, Lieutenant. Is

  there anything else?"

  The young human relaxed his stocky frame, though

  his spirit was still beset with the trials of serving under a

  Vulcan commander. Spock saw this in his eyes and

  addressed it.

  "No sir, only his

  "Only what?"

  "It's end of shift, sir. Owing to the drills this

  morning

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  you've been on the bridge since alpha shift.

  I was wondering if you planned to give over to anyone

  else for gamma, sir."

  "As I read the duty roster," Spock said without

  having to look at it, "all who have requested gamma

  shift are currently at their posts. To have someone

  relieve me would necessitate awakening or

  otherwise intruding upon the offshift time of someone on

  alpha or beta. I see no logic in this."

  "Only the logic that a commander shouldn't have to take

  a triple shift, sir," the young lieutenant

  suggested softly; he was met with a raised eyebrow.

  "Begging the captain's pardon, but it seems to me

  even Vulcans must get tired sometimes."

  A quiet bemusement tugged at the corners of

  Spock's mouth.

  "Mr. Mathee, are you offering to relieve me?"

  "I would, sir," the young human said sincerely.

  "If I didn't think you'd think it was

  presumptuous."

  "Thoughtfulness is never presumptuous,

  Lieutenant," Spock said, compounding the young

  man's confusion. "Nevertheless, I might point out that

  you would have to pull a double shift were I to take you up

  on your offer. his

  "Due respect, sir," the human said, finding

  ground at last to anchor on. "Logic suggests that

  if you can handle a triple, I can handle a double.

  Sir."

  Spock nodded, pleased, and rose from the center

  seat.

  "Very well, Mr. Mathee
. The ship is yours for the

  next 7.94 hours. I shall be in my quarters."

  Though far from sleep, the Vulcan thought as the

  turbolift brought him down the levels. There is

  something I must do.

  He entered the dark cabin, deactivating the body

  scanner to keep the lights from coming on. His night

  76

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  vision and the precise placement of every item in the

  room carried his body around petty concrete

  obstacles like furniture to where his mind had begun

  its journey while he was still in the lift.

  In the briefest of moments he had discarded the

  Starfleet uniform (did it arrange itself so

  precisely in its place in the cabinet or were his

  hands so deft they conducted the busyness of mere things

  in such a way that they only seemed to move by themselves?)

  for the black meditation robe with its Kohlinahr

  glyphs, as easily as he exchanged the day's

  cares, concerns and

  calculations for the level of tranquility he

  desired.

  As he knelt in the loshiraq, the "open

  posture," his hands formed in the double ta'al of

  Focus, his mind had already passed the purifying

  ritual, his heart rate slowed almost to human

  languor, his breathing almost to nil. His mind floated

  down, down, down, searching.

  What he searched for was the answer to a most

  illogical question: how was it possible to remember that which

  had not taken place?

  There is no true forgetting. Locked

  within the convolutions of every sentient mind is the exact

  recollection of every event that has transpired in the

  presence of that mind. Yet few humans would

  desire such total recall, and the human animal

  is notorious for its ability to forget, its memory

  lapses willed or unwilled. Not so the Vulcan.

  The Vulcan memory is actively eidetic,

  unforgetting. Within the reaches of certain levels of

  meditation any past moment can be recollected in its

  entirety. It was this Spock sought to do.

  His was not the realm of daydream, of

  preoccupation with things past. Yet something from that past

  had of late intruded upon his consciousness. Ever since

  he had read Strangers from the Sky. Tracing it

  back, he found no background, no event

  to surround it. Yet the memory remained, an

  indication to the logical mind 77

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  that such memory was faulty. Ever intolerant of

  flaw in his own logic, Spock sought to correct the

  error.

 

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