The captain understood why. But then, once the hearing was over, Simenon had had a chance to enlighten them a bit in that regard.
“Hey,” said Joseph, “the door’s opening!”
Picard followed his security officer’s gesture and saw that the door to the Great Hall—a ponderous wooden affair on ancient metal hinges—was indeed swinging open. Apparently, the Assemblage of Elders had completed its deliberations.
But it hadn’t been more than a couple of minutes since the Assemblage had begun them. The captain wondered if that boded well or ill for Simenon’s cause.
A hulking bailiff in a black robe emerged from the Great Hall. “You may enter,” he told everyone present.
“Let’s go,” said Ben Zoma, leading the way.
Simenon paused for a moment, seemingly reluctant to go back into the Great Hall. Then he followed Ben Zoma and the rest of their colleagues fell in behind them.
Picard went through the doorway last. But then, he wanted to see the expressions on the faces of Simenon’s adversaries. As it turned out, they didn’t look any more confident than Simenon did. The captain drew encouragement from that.
The Assemblage of Elders was just where the captain had seen it last, occupying the bench in the center of the room. Simenon walked up to them and stood before them, while Picard and the others again took seats on the stone shelves that protruded from the walls.
It took a moment for everyone to get settled. Then, as before, the High One spoke for the entire Assemblage.
“We have heard the arguments and made our decision,” he said, his voice echoing lavishly. “And it is this—that the offworlders will be allowed to participate in the ritual.”
The announcement was met with muttered protests and expressions of disgust from the camps that had spoken against Simenon. The High One didn’t respond to them. He simply stood there and waited patiently for them to subside.
“However,” he added at last, gazing directly at Simenon, “it will be up to you to keep your companions from violating the ancient laws that govern the ritual—for if they do, rest assured that you will be the one held accountable.”
Simenon nodded. “I understand.”
The High One regarded him for a little while longer. Then he turned to Picard. “Accommodations will be provided for all participants. However, I cannot guarantee they will be to your liking.”
“I’m sure they will be just fine,” the captain assured him.
But then, what else could he say? The Gnalish weren’t about to build a new wing on their majestic Northern Sanctum expressly for the comfort of meddling offworlders.
“Then,” said the High One, “this hearing is over.” He took in everyone present at a glance. “As always, the trial begins at first light. May all participants in the ancient ritual face the challenges ahead of them with skill and courage.”
There was a chorus of agreement with what was no doubt a traditional blessing. But, clearly, not everyone was happy with the Assemblage’s decision. The two who had spoken against Simenon earlier glared at him now with unabashed animosity.
But Ornitharen didn’t glare at his cousin. He walked over to him and put his scaly hand on Simenon’s shoulder as Picard and the others closed in on them.
“I think you’re making a mistake by not including me among your companions,” Ornitharen said. “But I’ll still be cheering more loudly than anyone for you to make it to the egg nest first.”
Simenon harrumphed—about as close as he ever came to a laugh. “Thanks,” he told his cousin. “I’ll feel better knowing that.”
He sounded sincere, Picard thought. However, it seemed to him that his engineer was simply trying to take the edge off Ornitharen’s humiliation. Nothing would truly make Simenon feel better except the knowledge that his ordeal was over. . . .
And that it had ended in victory.
Chapter Twelve
CARTER GREYHORSE FOUND HIMSELF in a dark, drafty place, surrounded by an eerie landscape of blanketed bodies. It took him a moment to get his wits about him—to figure out where he was and what the devil he was doing there. Finally, he figured it out. Gnala. The Northern Sanctum. He and his colleagues had been given this chamber so they could rest in preparation for Simenon’s ritual.
He raised his head and looked out past the last prone body, which was too large to belong to anyone but Vigo. Greyhorse remembered the weapons officer saying he liked to sleep by the exit. Apparently, he had done just that.
But the doctor couldn’t make out the outline of the door, which meant one of two things: either it fit its frame too perfectly to let any light in, or it was still the middle of the night. In a place this ancient, the doctor guessed that it was the latter.
He sighed and laid his head back against the wad of clothes he had employed as a pillow. Everyone else appeared to be sleeping soundly, despite the hardness of the surface beneath them. So why am I awake? Greyhorse asked himself.
He didn’t have to think for very long to come up with the answer. Her name was Gerda.
He had dreamed of her before he woke—dreamed of the two of them, actually. They were embracing in the cloistered confines of a scarlet forest, her face turned up willingly toward his, her blue eyes glittering like sapphires in the moonlight.
Even here, Greyhorse was preoccupied with her, obsessed with her. She invaded his every thought, day and night.
If one of his patients had come to him and described such an obsession, he would have prescribed therapy. It wasn’t healthy to dwell on someone so often and so intensely.
He probably needed a psychiatric counselor. Unfortunately, Starfleet crews didn’t include such people, and he wasn’t going to leave the Stargazer to gain access to one of them—because if he did, he would be giving up his only chance to be with Gerda. A vicious cycle, he mused, if ever there was one.
The doctor propped himself up on an elbow. Whenever he woke in the middle of the night—which was often—he had a difficult time getting back to sleep unless he took a nice, long walk. He had a feeling that this instance would be no exception.
Of course, he reflected, he wouldn’t be walking the predictable, temperature-controlled corridors of a starship down here. He would be outside in the open, unfiltered air of Gnala. But then, that might actually make him sleepier.
Besides, his only alternative was to lie there until the others woke up, which might not be for hours, and that was a bleak prospect indeed. Rather than contemplate it, he unrolled his clothes, put them on as quietly as he could, and threaded his way softly past his colleagues until he reached the door.
Fortunately, it didn’t creak as he opened it. Feeling a breath of warm, moist air on his face, he knew he had made the right choice. As he stepped out into the darkness, he closed the door behind him.
As luck would have it, the sky was clear and crowded with stars, the air redolent with scents that reminded him of mint and sage and other Earthly spices. A near-full moon frosted the mossy ground underfoot as if eager to guide his steps.
By the light of Gnala’s setting sun, the Northern Sanctum had looked like a colossal bloody dagger. By moonlight, it seemed even larger and more ominous. Likewise, the shaggy, wind-driven growth of forest surrounding it, where Greyhorse and the rest of the away team would be toiling after daybreak on Simenon’s behalf.
He didn’t want to lose his way in the depths of that forest—not after Ben Zoma had briefed him on the perils that awaited the unwary traveler. However, he wasn’t ready to go back inside their sleeping chamber yet, so he decided to simply walk a circuit around the sanctum.
As the doctor did this, the architecture of the place revealed itself to him line by craggy line. If the sanctum had seemed intricate and intriguing on the inside, its exterior was even more so.
What’s more, it featured a series of little alcoves, each one paved with small, flat stones and separated from the mossy ground by red walls. Greyhorse inspected a couple of the alcoves and found that there was nothing to
see in them. By the time he got to the third one, he was ready to assume the same of it.
But he gave it a glance anyway—and discovered that it wasn’t quite the same as its predecessors, after all. For one thing, the ground wasn’t paved. It was the same mossy stuff that the doctor had been walking on.
For another thing, there was something embedded in it—something oval in outline, its surface rounded like a small hill, and so pale as to appear luminescent in the moonlight. His curiosity aroused, Greyhorse entered the alcove to take a closer look.
And saw that it was a stone.
At first, he thought it had been milled by a machine—that’s how smooth and regularly shaped it was. Then he saw the tiny imperfections in its surface. He also noticed a complex network of glyphs that had been incised into it and darkened for greater legibility.
Greyhorse didn’t read Gnalish, so he had no idea what sort of wisdom the glyphs were meant to impart. However, he was intrigued by the patterns that seemed to emerge for him.
In fact, the more he looked for them, the more they seemed to reveal themselves to him. And the more they revealed themselves, the more he got the feeling that he had seen them somewhere before.
It can’t be, the doctor told himself. I’ve never set foot on Gnala before. And I’ve never seen anything of Simenon’s that might have borne these markings.
But he had seen them somewhere. He was certain of it.
Greyhorse had to stare at the stone for some time, kneeling before it and examining it in the moonlight, before he realized why the markings seemed so familiar. They were reminiscent of a genetic data map he had helped to compile back in medical school.
The doctor recalled it as if it were yesterday. He and his classmates had been given tiny batches of cellular material that belonged to an eel-bird, a denizen of the fifth planet in the Regulus system, and were asked to identify each of the creature’s genes by its unique sequence of purine and pyrimidine bases.
He had learned more from that simple exercise than almost any other facet of his medical education, perhaps because the professor involved was so passionate about his work. He had promised his students that they would never forget what eel-bird genes looked like—and, in fact, Greyhorse had never forgotten.
He nodded to himself now as he gazed at the markings on the moonlit stone. Yes, he told himself, there is a remarkable similarity to that eel-bird map.
Was it just a coincidence—or something else? After all, the ritual in which he and his companions were about to take part would determine whose traits would survive in the Gnalish gene pool and whose would be lost to the pool forever.
Could Simenon’s ancestors have understood the concept of genetics—and not just at the relatively superficial level of common sense? Could they have had the wherewithal to track the makeup of the species from generation to generation?
The medical officer sat back on his haunches and ran his fingertips over the markings. They were sharp-edged enough to have been carved just the day before. But this was an ancient complex according to Simenon, one that had been used for thousands of years. More than likely, the stone was as ancient as the rest of it.
And if that were so...
Greyhorse frowned. The Gnalish hadn’t climbed the ladder of technological development any more quickly than his forebears on Earth. If anything, Simenon’s people had been a little slower. To suggest that they’d enjoyed a grasp of advanced genetics thousands of years ago didn’t seem likely.
But then, things weren’t always what they seemed. A good scientist had to keep an open mind.
Greyhorse resolved to ask Simenon about the stone in the morning. Maybe he could shed some light on it.
Standing, the doctor stared at it some more, tilting his head so he could appraise it from another angle. Now that he knew where to look for the patterns, they were hard to miss.
Just then, a chill invaded the alcove—a sharp breath of unexpectedly cold air. It reminded Greyhorse that it was time he got back to the sleeping chamber. He would need his strength if he were going to be of any help to his colleagues in the morning.
And he had to be of considerable help to them if he were going to impress Gerda with his accomplishments.
With some reluctance, Greyhorse left the stone behind. Then he made his way back around the perimeter of the sanctum, Gnala’s moon diligently lighting his way.
As Errigo Shalay entered his captain’s ready room, he saw that she was intent on her monitor.
“Have a seat,” said DeMontreville, a stern-looking woman with a square jaw and short, dirty-blond hair.
Shalay sat down opposite his superior and watched her eyes move back and forth in the glare of her screen. A message from Starfleet, he thought. It had to be.
Finally, DeMontreville grunted, leaned back in her seat, and said, “Damned Romulans.”
“Romulans?” the Bolian echoed.
The cold-blooded bastards hadn’t been seen in or near the Federation in almost thirty years, ever since they signed the Treaty of Algeron. And as far as Shalay could tell, no one missed them.
DeMontreville nodded. “Every so often, Command receives a report of a Romulan vessel in our space. They all turn out to be false alarms when they’re investigated, but we’re still apprised of them.”
“I see,” said Shalay.
His captain regarded him. “So how was your shore leave?”
“Fine,” he told her, leaving out the details. After all, his meeting with Admiral McAteer was supposed to be a secret.
DeMontreville looked at him askance. “I know that look, Shalay. You’ve got something on your mind.”
The second officer smiled. “You know me too well.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that there’s a position opening for a second officer on the Stargazer.”
An expression of disappointment crossed the captain’s face. But then, no commanding officer liked to lose a valued officer, and Shalay had done an exemplary job on the New Orleans.
“And you’d like to apply for it?” she said.
“I would,” he confirmed.
DeMontreville sighed. “I hate to lose you, Commander. But if that’s what you want, you’ve got my permission.”
Shalay smiled again. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Just remember, there are no guarantees. The Stargazer’s a new ship. I’m sure you’re not the only one eyeing that post.”
“No guarantees,” he acknowledged.
What DeMontreville didn’t know was that it wouldn’t be any contest. The Stargazer position was Shalay’s, hands down.
Admiral McAteer would make certain of that.
Picard hunkered down next to Greyhorse in the darkness of the sleeping chamber and shook the big man’s shoulder. “Doctor?”
Greyhorse looked up at him with eyes so wide they looked almost comical. “Is it time already?”
“It is,” the captain confirmed.
The doctor sat up. “All right,” he said firmly, as much to himself as to the captain. “I’m awake.”
That is a matter of opinion, Picard thought.
Simenon was standing by the door to the chamber already, a scowl on his face, his arms folded impatiently across his chest. Obviously, he was eager to get going, eager to get his ordeal under way.
However, the captain’s wrist chronometer told him they had almost three quarters of an hour before the ritual was scheduled to begin. Certainly, that was ample time for a quick bite and some last-minute mental preparation.
Clearly, Simenon could use some calming down. With that in mind, Picard started across the room to join him.
As he passed Ben Zoma and Joseph, he saw that they were just beginning to pull their clothes on. “Let’s go, gentlemen,” he told them. “We’ve got work to do.”
Ben Zoma grunted good-naturedly. “And here I was thinking we were on shore leave.”
“No such luck,” the captain told him.
Joseph stretched his arms ou
t and groaned. “I feel like I just went to bed,” he complained to no one in particular.
“You did,” said Ben Zoma. “This time of year, the nights here are only five hours long.”
Joseph sighed. “Now you tell me.”
As Picard approached his engineer, he could more clearly see the nervousness in Simenon’s eyes. It was certainly understandable. If the future of the captain’s family were at stake, he would have been nervous as well.
The ritual, as Simenon had described it to them the night before, was really a foot race that took place in the wilderness surrounding the Northern Sanctum. Three teams started from the same point but were compelled to negotiate divergent courses.
However, the winners of the race didn’t get a trophy, as Picard had done when he came in first in the Academy marathon on Danula II. Instead, they won the right for one of their number to fertilize a cache of two dozen newly hatched eggs, the majority of which would then grow into a clutch of bouncing baby Gnalish.
Earlier in the evolutionary development of Simenon’s people, this competition had been a good deal more chaotic. Instead of a few hand-picked teams trying to negotiate a prescribed course in an orderly fashion, it had been a free-for-all, pitting huge packs of instinct-driven Gnalish against each other.
Unfortunately, each pack was more or less decimated in the struggle. Few males emerged from the struggle whole and even fewer reached a ripe old age.
As time went on and civilization took hold on Gnala, the impulse to fertilize was channeled into other pursuits. It became less of a biological imperative and more a matter of personal pride. Finally, a couple of thousand years earlier, the ritual began to resemble its current, considerably less bloody form.
Not that Gnalish didn’t get hurt in the course of the ritual; they did. And on occasion, their injuries were fatal. But at least most of them survived to tell the tale.
On the other hand, as Simenon had told them, those who lost the race sometimes didn’t wish to survive. That was because each Gnalish male had one chance and one chance only to succeed in the ritual—and the prospect of never seeing one’s progeny walk the earth was sometimes too much for them to bear.
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