Strangers from the Sky
Page 30
his throat had been shot out or burned out or even
ripped out and replaced with a robotic voice box,
that other body parts had met similar
metal-and-plastic fates. Easter, watching those
eyes roll and click at him on the commscreen, could
well believe it.
"I ain't afraid o'nothin"!" Easter
retorted, having thought it through thoroughly. It was a
lie. Death he did not fear, at least not his
definition of it death immediate in a flash of heat and
fire with nothing to follow or, at worst, a hell of
further fire. But death by cold slow, creeping,
numbing, Dantesquc that was fear. "I done my
share. T'reporters is eating it out of our hands.
And I said yez could have any of me people."
"But not you?" Racher's metallic sneer
transmitted across a hemisphere from his base
somewhere in Africa. "Easter keeps his rear covered
while we freeze ours? Nicht so. You come with,
coward, or there is nothing!"
"Who yer calling a coward?" Easter
spluttered, then stopped.
Slowly it penetrated his brain that Racher intended
exactly what he'd had in mind, the real reason
behind this caper that made the capturing of spacemen
tilde 264
go
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secondary a desolation of polar ice as the
perfect arena for their true purpose, the elimination
of the other for supremacy over the global terrorist
ratpack. Only one King Rat would emerge from such
a showdown. The
white-on-white nihilism sparked some remnant
of Irish heroic poetry buried deep in the
detritus of Easter's murderer's soul.
"Listen, yer lousy scut." He chose his words
carefully, for all their seeming rage. "I'll beat
yer there!"
"Ever wonder about the others out there, Ben?"
Jeremy Grayson asked his
many-times-great-grandson.
Spock finished drying the dinner dishes,
meticulously folded the dishtowel. ""Others,"
Professor?"
"I've never known quite what to call them,"
Grayson said, setting out his pawns. was
"Aliens" sounds like a slur somehow, and
"extra-terrestrials" is so ethnocentric.
The Others, then. The intelligent beings on all those
other worlds out there."
Spock sat carefully opposite his ancestor.
Their nightly conversations had covered a variety of
philosophical and speculative topics, but
never this one. Was this some manner of test?
"Do you believe unequivocally that they exist,
Professor?"
Grayson found that amusing. "You mean do I
really think humans are all there is? A perfect
God would hardly be so easily content. Oh, I
believe in them, Ben. I only wonder if they
believe in us."
He palmed a pawn of each color for Spock
to choose from; his eye quicker than any human hand,
Spock chose the black.
"I am not certain I understand."
"It occurred to me" Grayson opened with a standard
knight gambit "that they've probably been out there
watching us for years, and if they aren't weeping,
they're probably killing themselves laughing."
Spock considered the actual history of
"alien" obser
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vation of Earth as he contemplated an unusual
bishop defence. "I must confess, Professor, that
I have never considered the question in quite that way."
"Captain's Personal Log, Day Six;
Location: Aeroationav Wingboat hangar, Staten
Island, Tierra del Fuego:
"I wait with the other intelligence personnel in
what passes for the VIP lounge of this desolate
great barn in this more desolate corner of the world. Our
destination: a place that gives new meaning to the word
"desolation": Byrd Research Complex, on the
inland edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica.
"My intelligence credentials have passed all
inspections thus far, making it possible for me
to infiltrate the system with remarkable ease.
Special Commendation, Lee Kelso, appended.
My fellow intell-agents are predictably
featureless; even those obviously traveling in
pairs do not speak to each other. At the opposite
end of the lounge, a select group of civilians
seems to be enjoying themselves a lot more.
"Dr. Dehner or, should I say,
Dr. Bellero, has gone on ahead with the first
boatload of military and medical personnel.
She, at least, left knowing what she had to do. I
only wish my mission were as clear.
"I have the virtually impossible task of seeking
out two Vulcans, stranded on an ambivalent
Earth twenty years before their appointed time, and somehow
persuading them to trust me to extricate them from their
velvet-lined captivity, lest they fall prey
to human fear or permit themselves to be "lost" in a
bureaucratic gulag from which there may be no
return.
"The only Vulcan I knew to speak
to invariably rubbed me the wrong way without trying, and
I am forced now to admit that most of the fault was
mine, my insistence on trying to make him over in a
human image, which simply cannot, and should not, be done.
If only I had been able to
understand that, we might never have been caught in
Parneb's machinery at all,
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and if Spock is lost, as Parneb believes
he is, it is my responsibility, and mine
alone. A Vulcan is not a human with
pointed ears; he is a Vulcan, with all of the
difference and similarity this implies. I have learned
this too late. How much more difficult will it be for
humans of this century to understand; how ironic that it
falls to me to make them see it!
"As for what I am to do about the human witnesses
to this event the logistics of escape are child's play
by comparison. As for my only other contact with
Vutcans, the celebrated Vulcanian
Expedition . . ."
Jim Kirk stopped jotting in his notepad,
aware that at least one other intell-agent was
pretending not to watch him behind dark glasses. This
compulsion to record his thoughts was a blatant threat
to his cover, and Jim Kirk cursed himself for a
fool. When the boarding announcement came, he
stopped in the lavatory, first incinerating his notes,
then flushing the ashes. Taking his seat in the
wingboateahe continued his log entry in his head.
The Vulcanian Expedition. Its very misname was
evidence of a fiasco masquerading as a serious
mission.
According to official statements, the
convergence of four starships in orbit around the dry
red planet was intended primarily as a show
of unity to impress the empires. That it also served
to remind the Vulcan Council of the scarcity of
Vulcan nationals in St
arfleet was purely
coincidental.
The Articles of Federation clearly stated that every
member planet was to provide a certain percentage
of its population for service to the UFP. Vulcan
had no objection to that, had in fact been one of the
major proponents of the article, and her scientists
and students provided far beyond the quota of
volunteers for research and exploration, as well as
such inglorious tasks as clearing brush and planting
crops on colony planets. But certain other
Federation members, Tellar in particular, found this
inequitable. Vulcans should 267
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
serve in Starfleet in equal numbers as well,
they maintained. Why should humanoids take the
brunt of combat missions while Vulcans raised
flowers and gave seminars on safe
outplanets"...Bywhat right did Vulcan waive a
military draft, leaving Starfleet service only
to those who wished it? Thus the Vulcanian
Expedition.
The outcome was the commissioning of the starship
Intrepid, built and manned entirely
by Vulcans, the only starship in the Fleet never
to fire its phasers against a living being. Rumor had
it the phaser tubes were sealed, the torpedo bays
empty, but any Vulcan would assert that this was
illogical. The weapons' existence did not
necessitate their use.
It was a logical response to a no-win
challenge. Starfleet chose to view it as a
compromise, a concession on the part of the Vulcans,
and the four starships left orbit with a feeling of
relief. Vulcan considered Intrepid neither
compromise nor concession, but a statement of
logical purpose a shipful of scientists without a
single combatant aboard. Vulcans would indeed
participate in Starfleet, but only according to their own
convictions.
Starfleet's concession was to send Intrepid
solely on research missions, leaving potential
combat situations to those who had manned them before.
Tellar lodged an official protest, but this was not
unexpected.
And a generation of young Starfleet officers could tell
their grandchildren that they'd been to Vulcan, though it
wasn't entirely true.
The Republic had been one of the starships sent
to flex its muscles over Vulcan, and her
navigator, one James T. Kirk, was one such
participant in the expedition who never set foot on
the planet. Unneeded at his post once they were in
orbit, he'd been drafted as a glorified
security guard, shepherding diplomats to and from
transporter rooms, Letting no closer to the world
itself than Vulcan Space Central, the vast
orbiting space station, over a thousand years old, with
its red-draped walls and torrid temperatures.
He'd man268
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
aged to keep his nose clean how not, on a world with
no words for the concept of a barroom brawls. and never
once spoke directly to a Vulcan, had to be
content with snatches of conversation overheard in
corridors to give him some vague notion of who these
beings were. What he had or had not learned would not
help him now.
Jim Kirk watched as the wingboat lifted off from
the frigid waters off Tierra del Fuego and
soared over an expanse of grey whitecapped sea
on its way to Antarctica.
If only Spock were here! he thought, not
for the first time, but for a different reason. I don't know
if I can dothis alone!
Lee Kelso yawned, stretched, checked the time.
Captain Kirk would still be in transit to Byrd;
there was no way to contact him until he arrived and
probably it was just as well. Better to save him a
few hours' grief over these news leaks.
There was nothing else to do tonight except possibly
key down and get some sleep. Kelso had barely
turned off the lights in his cubicle and wished his
trusty little computer pleasant dreams when the door
buzzer sounded.
Kelso frowned, half sat up, remembered the
cubicle's low ceiling just in time. He'd left a
wake-up call at the front desk, but that wasn't
for another four hours. Unless the buzzer was
defective, or whoever it was had the wrong cubicle
. . .
It buzzed again. Uh-oh, Kelso thought. This
has to be trouble. He looked around the tiny
cul-de-sac, as if there were any means of
escape. Bracing himself for just about anything, he leaned
against the entrance door and yawned.
"Yes?"
A baleful eye met his through the
peephole. "Mr. Howard Carter?"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Definitely trouble, Kelso thought, scanning the
room to make sure he'd left nothing incriminating
Iying around. "Who wants to know?"
A badge replaced the eye at the peephole.
CommPolice, here to question him on suspicion of
tampering, using computer time without paying for it.
"We'd like to talk to you."
Kelso laughed inwardly. If they had any
idea what else he'd been up to . . .
Opening the door slowly, looking like nothing so much
as a sleepy small boy standing there in his
skivvies, Kelso was inclined to be
philosophical. They'd have caught him
eventually; it had only been a matter of time.
Chapter Seven
WITH JASON NYERE at her right hand and
her son at her left, T'Lera of Vulcan
faced a United Earth and attempted to answer its
questions. Among the representatives of the
military, intelligence, and several diplomatic and
peace organisations, Jim Kirk
listened, and marveled.
He did not know what preparation the Vulcan
commander had made for this ordeal, only knew from her
answers and her unflagging patience that she was
prepared. He could not know that her transit here in the
big ship that lay now with its conning tower thrust up
through the pack ice like some fantastical city
mushroomed overnight in the wilderness, had been
spent kneeling in meditation on the unyielding metal
deck of her guest cabin deep in the belly of the
Whale, letting its vibrations subsume her body
and enter her very soul.
Another Vulcan might have found the
unrelenting noise of this human-built behemoth
unbearable as it Flowed its inexorable way first over,
then under, a cold dark Earthsea where dwelt
creatures so seeming-alien most humans would be
utterly repulsed by them, carrying far from the reach of
most humans two not so
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alien that those humans could not accept them, given the
chance. But T'Lera had lived in motion most of her
days, and however strident this pounding, thrumming machine
noise compared to the lissome slipstreaming of
ship through silent space, i
t was as much a part of her as
her own heartbeat.
A human's heartbeat, loud and slow and strong;
in close proximity these past days T'Lera's
acute ears had heard such hearts pulsing
urgently, all but engulfing the soft swift
susurration of her own. Thus this ship, slow and loud
and strong, traversed an ocean that had engulfed the
silent swiftness of her craft. Thus this species
loud of voice, slow to reason, strong by virtue of
its numbers tilde sought to exile the silent
swiftness of her and her son in a living desolation of
cold white Earth, where she had sought the peace of
death in cold black space. Overlong contemplation
of such ironies could threaten even a Vulcan's
mastery. T'Lera had moved her thoughts
elsewhere.
Father, she had thought, addressing Savar's Katra
not in prayer but as a kind of focus. Father, my
logic is uncertain where Earthmen are
concerned. were it for myself alone I would know what
to do. But for my son . . .
A hundred years' observation of Earthmen
indicated that they had evolved enough not to kill
indiscriminately but only when they perceived
themselves threatened. If they had considered T'Lera and
her son a threat, the task of executing them would have
fallen to Jason Nyere from the beginning. Had he
hesitated, the one named Sawyer would have only too
willingly fulfilled the duty he refused; it
needed no telepathy to read this in her eyes. Not
death, then, but some other fate, awaited outworlders on
this world. What price would Earthmen exact for what
they
obviously considered an act of trespass?
were aliens stranded on her world, T'Lera knew,
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they would be provided unquestioningly with a ship to return
to their own. Could humans be made to see the logic of
this? Or did they still disbelieve that Vulcans
presented no danger? If neither death nor
freedom, what alternative was there?
Delph tilde nus's destination provided its
own answer: exile in a place no Vulcan could
escape unaided, but exile of what duration? The
young human female seemed convinced her leaders were
capable of "losing" two unwanted visitors.
Would they be left alone in this wasteland of ice or,
perhaps more humanely the word was Earth
origin, derived from Earthmen's name for
themselves would they be provided with some less
inhospitable cage which was a cage