“Oh…no, thank you,” she said, unhappy to be disturbed during this critical juncture with Strolt. Thinking of the most efficacious means of dismissing the bartender so that he would not return, she said, “I’m afraid I have no money.”
“Money?” he said, and his mouth widened into a lopsided smile. “Here at the Captain’s Table, our customers pay for their drinks with something other than money. They pay with stories.”
“I’m afraid I don’t—” Sulu started, keenly aware of Strolt’s presence in the hallway, but the bartender interrupted her.
“Don’t what?” he asked. “Don’t have stories? Everybody has stories.” Again, he proffered to her the glass of what appeared to be wine.
Around them, Sulu realized, the tavern had quieted, the conversations and laughter silenced, the shifting of chairs and the clink of glassware stilled. She peered about and saw that the collective attention of the tavern’s patrons had swung toward her. At the table nearest where she stood, a pre-Shift Frunalian male rose to his feet, stepped back, and then with a wave of one chitinous hand offered up his vacated chair to Sulu.
Quickly glancing back toward the hall, she saw that Strolt hadn’t moved, but continued to watch her. Suddenly, she perceived an opportunity. Had she managed to apprehend Strolt, she would have attempted to persuade him to reveal the information necessary to prevent Zeeren Tek Lom-A from crossing back into Tzenkethi space. Perhaps this moment provided her a chance to do just that.
Sulu reached out and accepted the wineglass from the bartender, the liquid inside a rich, translucent maroon. “All right,” she said loudly, addressing the tavern’s patrons. “I’ll tell you a story.” She padded over to the Frunalian’s table, at which one other individual sat, an Alonis woman in a formfitting landsuit. As Sulu set down her stemmed glass and took the empty seat, she searched her memories for a tale that would convey to Strolt the appropriate message. Finding one from just two years ago, she said in a raised voice, “I’ll tell you a story about one of the most difficult times in my life. I’ll tell you about when I had to step down from command of the U.S.S. Enterprise.”
By 2315, I’d already been commanding the Federation flagship for almost four years. During that time, my crew had navigated an impressive record of exploration, including a number of significant first contacts. We’d also endured our share of military engagements, although after the Tomed Incident and the Romulans’ adoption of an isolationist doctrine, tensions throughout the quadrant had eased considerably. We’d all welcomed the prospect of seeing less combat, returning instead to the types of missions for which most of us had joined Starfleet in the first place: those of scientific discovery.
The Enterprise had just completed such an assignment, a rigorous survey of several super star clusters. We put in at Starbase Magellan for six weeks of dual R and R: rest and recreation for the crew, and repair and refit for the ship. At the end of that time, we would head out into unexplored territory, on a long-term mission in search of new life and new civilizations.
As ship’s captain, I had numerous duties to tend to during the layover at Magellan. Among my responsibilities, I had to oversee the removal of the special equipment the crew had utilized to study the super star clusters, and once that had been done, I had to supervise the installation of new scientific instruments considered better suited to investigating several anomalies known to lie along our prospective flight path. I also needed to complete personnel evaluations, and at the same time, welcome thirteen new crew members to the Enterprise.
Except that I completed none of those tasks. On the third day in dock, I received a subspace communication routed to me through Starfleet headquarters. The message had originated on Sentik IV, a world outside Federation space. By the time the transmission reached me at Magellan—the starbase itself out on the frontier—it was already seven days old, despite having been tagged as urgent. I listened to the message at once—it came with no visual component—but even before it began to play, I knew who it must be from: Shimizu Hana, my paternal grandmother. I also knew that she must be in trouble.
Only twice in my life had I spent time with Hana, although that had been enough for me to formulate a lasting impression of her. I initially visited her when I was a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen. I remember meeting her that first time, walking into her apartment and seeing her standing out on a balcony that overlooked the dense, modern city of Kaiseki. Small in stature—I was already taller then she was—Hana appeared positively diminutive against the backdrop of the numerous tall buildings that formed the skyline of New Tokyo’s capital. And yet when she walked back inside the apartment, the room seemed to fill with her presence. Not given to emotional displays, she spoke little and in quiet tones, which somehow lent her words even more weight when they did come. I’m not sure if I ever saw her smile.
Hana’s husband, my grandfather, had died a few years before my childhood visit to New Tokyo. I got to meet him just once, when he visited Earth to attend a physics conference. A kind man, a gentle man, he stayed with my father and me for two weeks, and when he left to return home, I hated to see him go. Later, I found in my room a gift he’d left for me: a poem, tenderly celebrating my presence in his life, even though he’d only just met me.
When I met Hana that first time, I guess I expected her to act in a similar manner, to be of a similar temperament, caring and expressive. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Stern and stoic, she seemed more interested in maintaining her daily routine than in getting to know her granddaughter.
The ten days I spent in Kaiseki with her—a time to which I’d been looking forward with great anticipation—dragged on like a prison sentence. After my grandfather had died, Hana had relocated to New Tokyo in order to care for her older sister, Nori. And although my great-aunt was very sweet to me, her health was poor, and so I didn’t get to spend much time with her. What little time we did have together was hard, since her physical condition brought her almost constant suffering. When I finally left to go back to Earth, I felt as though I’d escaped an unwarranted punishment.
I next saw Hana about a decade later, on the occasion of Nori’s funeral. As far as I could tell, Hana hadn’t changed much, except possibly that she’d grown even more austere, even more cold. Other than to offer my condolences, I didn’t speak much with her.
After that, with most of her family gone, and the few that remained scattered throughout the quadrant, Hana relocated again. This time, she moved to Sentik IV, a far-flung world that played host to a small community opposed to the use of almost all technology. So when I received the transmission from there, I knew immediately that she had sent it.
Except that when I listened to the message, it turned out to be not from Hana, but about her. Somebody on Sentik IV, a man named Rosenzweig, had taken it upon himself to contact Starfleet with news of Hana’s failing health. With everybody else in her family either dead or unreachable, the message had been directed to me.
I barely knew Hana, and since I was facing a month and a half of preparations for the Enterprise’s upcoming assignment, my choice seemed clear. I would find medical care for her, and send somebody to look after her, possibly to bring her to an assisted-care facility. I knew that many doctors and nurses and other health-care personnel in the Federation had dedicated their lives to tending to the elderly, the infirm, and the sick.
Except that I couldn’t do that. Maybe I didn’t know Hana very well, maybe I didn’t even like her very much, but she was still my grandmother. And right then, at that moment, I knew that there was nobody else in the universe to whom she could turn, other than me.
As Sulu had begun to speak, searching for the right tale to tell, and the right way in which to tell it, she kept Strolt in her peripheral vision. At first, he remained stationary, doubtless not wanting to attract any attention to himself. After a couple of minutes, though, with the tavern’s patrons concentrating on Sulu, she saw him begin to move.
He edged toward the front door slow
ly, staying close to the walls and clearly attempting to maintain a low profile. Wanting to stop him without risking detonation of the explosives he carried, Sulu paced herself, timing the introduction of Hana’s predicament to the moment when Strolt passed closest to her. Carefully, as she delivered the words about being the only person to whom her grandmother could turn for help, she looked over and made eye contact with her quarry.
Strolt stopped.
Sulu held his gaze an instant longer, willing him to stay, willing him to listen to what she had to say. She knew that his mate had no one to whom she could turn but him. Once Zeeren had wed a human, the Tzenkethi people—including her family and friends—had shunned her, and the coalition had closed its borders to her. Strolt’s reason for betraying the Federation was simple and understandable: he loved his mate, and Zeeren’s reward for bringing Starfleet intelligence to the Tzenkethi would be acceptance—or at least tolerance—of their marriage. Strolt wanted to allow her that opportunity to reconnect with those she loved.
But Sulu could not permit that.
She took a breath, and then continued.
I requested a two-week leave of absence, which Starfleet Command granted. In order to expedite my return to duty, though, and because the Enterprise would be moored at Starbase Magellan for weeks, Admiral Ratnaswamy authorized me to utilize the Armstrong—one of the ship’s warp shuttles—for my travel. Even then, it still took me three and a half days to reach Sentik IV.
When I arrived there, I found a world even more unwelcoming than I’d imagined. With a narrow habitable zone, indications of harsh summers and winters, and subsequently difficult agricultural conditions, life must have been a constant struggle for survival. According to Federation records, the lone settlement there had been established three decades earlier by neo-Luddites as a refuge from technological society. The archaic haven had been intended for hardy people seeking isolation and the chance to truly take care of themselves.
From orbit, I scanned the surface. Sensors identified a population of only a few thousand, spread out across twenty-five thousand hectares. I detected almost no electronics or duotronics, and virtually no modern equipment of any kind, save for a small subspace communications assembly and several solar-powered generators feeding it. There also seemed to be no town of any sort, although the comm station sat in a building centrally located amid the farms surrounding it.
Not wanting to create a stir in the community, I landed the shuttle in a glade well outside of the inhabited area, flying in low over a neighboring forest. From there, I used the Armstrong’s sensors to locate Hana’s farm, the longitude and latitude of which had been included in the message I’d received at Magellan. I outfitted myself with a transporter recall and a medical tricorder, then beamed myself on my way.
I didn’t wish to surprise anybody, and so I materialized on an empty dirt path leading to Hana’s house. Above, a thick, gray cloud cover blanketed the sky, and a slight breeze rustled the tall grass atop the hillocks on either side of the dusty trail. In the distance just a hundred or so meters ahead stood the farmhouse and, not far from it, a small barn.
I started toward the house. The hillocks flattened as I approached, revealing fields beyond them. To the left of the path, short, red-leafed plants grew, and to the right, taller, leafier green plants. It appeared that some of the former had been harvested, but what remained of both crops looked sere and unhealthy.
When I reached the farmhouse, I saw that it could more aptly be described as a cabin. Small and simple, it had been constructed out of logs. To me, it looked like something out of a historical holo.
I walked up to the house and rapped my knuckles against the wooden planks of the door. My knocking sounded hollow, and somehow fit the cool, gray day around me. After a few seconds, I heard footfalls clocking along the floor inside, growing louder with each step, until the door opened to reveal a short, portly man, perhaps my age or a little younger. He wore large, round glasses, and a beard traced from ear to ear along the line of his jaw. He had a thin mustache, and dark brown hair receding above his temples.
“Hello, my name is Demora Sulu. I’ve come to see my grandmother, Shimizu Hana. I received a message that she wasn’t well.”
“I sent that message,” the man said, sounding annoyed. “Almost two weeks ago.”
“You’re Mister Rosenzweig,” I said, even as I recognized his voice from the transmission. He nodded, but said nothing more, instead regarding me for a long moment, as though deciding whether or not he could trust me. I was pleased that I’d worn my Starfleet uniform, although given the reclusive nature of the people on Sentik IV, I wondered whether my position and rank would carry any weight at all with Rosenzweig. “Thank you for sending the message. I received it only a few days ago, and I came as quickly as I could. I took a warp shuttle to get here.”
Rosenzweig looked out over my shoulder at the mention of the shuttle, as though searching for a glimpse of the spacecraft. “I landed out in the forest to avoid causing any disruption,” I explained.
Rosenzweig nodded again, then moved back and waved me inside. I stepped up onto the raised floor and past him, entering Hana’s house. As Rosenzweig closed the door behind me, I paused, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, the only light in the room coming through a small window in the right-side wall.
I peered around and saw a place as primitive inside as it had appeared outside. There looked to be neither power nor running water. Rough-hewn wooden furniture sat scattered about, most of it arranged around a stone hearth in the center of the left wall. A round iron stove squatted in one far corner, and a washbasin in the other, with two stretches of simple cupboards between them, separated by a door. Just past the fireplace, another door stood ajar. I assumed that the back door led outside, and the side one to a bedroom. Hana’s bedroom.
“I came by a few weeks ago to borrow an ax,” Rosenzweig said as he moved over to my side. “Ms. Shimizu wasn’t here, so I looked out in the fields. I found her there, collapsed in a heap, exhausted. She claimed it was the sun, but I don’t think it was. I helped her back here, and I’ve been visiting as often as possible since then, but I have my own farm to tend to, and my own family to feed.”
“I understand,” I said, taking note that although Rosenzweig had helped Hana, he also seemed to resent having to lend such assistance. Of course, the founding of the settlement possessed something of an antisocial aspect, as did the layout of the place, which contained no real communal areas. I could not imagine living in such an environment, though I had no difficulty at all believing that Hana did so.
“May I see her?” I asked. I wanted to take care of Hana, get her moved to an appropriate facility if necessary, and get back to Starbase Magellan and the Enterprise as quickly as possible.
Rosenzweig—I realized that he hadn’t offered his given name—pointed toward the door past the fireplace. I padded over to it and pushed it fully open. Even before I saw Hana, I heard her labored breathing. I walked into the room, which was small and almost completely filled by a large four-poster bed, its uprights reaching nearly all the way to the low ceiling. Amid heaps of pillows and linens, Hana’s form was almost lost. She lay on her back, propped up against the headboard, her eyes closed. The bedclothes pulled up to her chin seemed barely to rise with her respiration. She looked even slighter than I remembered her.
I turned and gestured to Rosenzweig, who stood in the doorway. I pointed him back to the main room, then followed him, quietly closing the door behind me. “Has a doctor seen her?”
“There are no doctors on Sentik, Captain Sulu,” he said, employing my rank for the first time, obviously recognizing my insignia. “I’m sure you noticed from your shuttle that there aren’t many modern conveniences here. That includes physicians.”
“But people must get sick or injured,” I said. “Surely you must have a means of dealing with such inevitabilities.”
“People do get sick or hurt, and mostly their families take care
of them as best they can,” Rosenzweig said. “Only a handful of people here are completely alone. As for medical personnel, there are two individuals who each have some training as a medic. Both visited Ms. Shimizu several times during the last ten days and did what they could for her.”
“Do they know what’s wrong with her?” I asked, hoping to get an idea of what I could do for Hana.
“What’s wrong with her?” Rosenzweig echoed, clearly surprised by my question. “Nothing, really. She’s just had a hard life, and she’s old.”
Hana was one hundred fifteen, I knew—past middle age, to be sure, but not necessarily so old that she should be reaching the end of her years. In my own life, I’d known people who’d lived robustly into their one hundred forties and fifties. Still, not everybody experienced the same things in life, nor did every person age in the same way. I asked, “Did the medics provide a prognosis? Did they say whether she would recover from her fall?”
“She might recover from the fall, but she won’t recover from her age,” Rosenzweig said. “She’s dying.”
I thanked Rosenzweig for everything he’d done, and he quickly left, evidently anxious to return to his own house and family. Once he’d gone, I pulled a chair from around the table in the main room and brought it in beside Hana’s bed. In the quiet broken only by her ragged respiration, I studied her face as she slept. She looked like an apparition of the woman I’d last seen more than twenty years before. Her pale flesh had grown looser with time, particularly around her neck, and the complex of wrinkles suffusing her features had expanded and deepened. No vestige of color remained in her hair; even her eyebrows had faded to white. Her slight form seemed smaller and more frail. Even in repose, she appeared old and worn down, as though no longer capable of drinking in the everyday elixir of sleep.
Tales from the Captain's Table Page 21