"The Quiet Place."
"Yes. That's right. What? Has everyone heard of it?"
"The girl. What is her name?"
"Riella. Why, does that name mean anything?"
Kebron slowly shook his head, which, of course, required that his entire upper torso sway from side to side. 'Tell me, Xyon, do you believe that there is a great purpose in the universe that brings people together in unexpected but predestined ways?"
"No."
"Good. Neither do I. We'll chalk this one off to weird coincidence. Beam back with me to the runabout and tell my associates precisely what you've just told me. And when you do, watch the face of the red-skinned one in particular. It should be interesting."
Si Cwan became aware that his mouth was hanging open, and he closed it. "Are you sure about this?" he asked Xyon.
Xyon looked at the three individuals grouped around him and said flatly, "Yes, of course I'm sure. I knew the girl's name, I know where she said she wanted to go. God knows that enough people have been bandying about the name of the place.
Considering it was someplace I never even heard of before, a sizable number of folks seem rather interested in it. Can any of you tell me the truth behind this place?"
Si Cwan was quite aware of the eyes of Kebron and Soleta upon him. He did not, however, allow it to outwardly disconcert him. Instead, he circled the interior of the runabout slowly, thoughtfully.
"Is this pause for dramatic effect?" inquired Kebron. "Or are you trying to manufacture a story that will sound plausible?"
"I resent the implication, Kebron," Cwan shot back. "I may be many things, but a liar is not one of them. The fact is that the Quiet Place is a somewhat personal aspect of Thallonian tradition."
"The Redeemers, the Dogs of War, and some woman on Montos all know about it,"
Xyon pointed out. "How intensely personal can it be?"
"The fact that so many are aware of it is simply another example of the losses suffered by the Thallonians.
Our loss of homeworld... of our privacy... of our dignity..."
"Get to the point," said Kebron.
Si Cwan shot him a disdainful look.
"The truth is-"
"Finally."
He ignored Kebron's comment. "The truth is that even the truth about the Quiet
Place may sound a bit... preposterous. The Quiet Place is heaven. Or Hell. Or a bit of both. At least, that's what a number of races in the former Thallonian empire believe. It is a mysterious place, the whereabout of which is not generally known. Some actually claim to have been there, although there's never has been a way to confirm it. But those who say that they have been there, whether by intent or accident, claim to have been transformed in some way, although for good or ill is not always easy to discern at first. Some return claiming to have seen the dead, or are able to read the future, or possess arcane knowledge that they'd never had before. Some claim..." He hesitated, as if knowing that he was pushing the limits of credulity. But by that point he was more or less in deep, so he continued, "Some claim to have looked upon the face of their God or Gods. Others come back as pale and wretched things, shadows of their former selves who can barely string two sentences together. There are also rumors of a race of beings who actually reside beneath the surface of the Quiet
Place, although it would seem somewhat unlikely."
"Considering how far over the edge the things you've been telling us so far are, that would actually be believable," said Kebron.
"Where is this place?" asked Soleta. "I've not read of it in any scientific text."
"Nor will you. There is no scientific proof of its existence. The Quiet Place cannot be found. You have to receive the Summons."
"As with all beliefs that depend solely on faith," Kebron said skeptically.
"When even the slightest suggestion of proof is put forward, the tale descends into vagueness."
"Have you no faith in anything, Kebron?" Cwan inquired. He sounded almost a little sad.
"In myself. That's all I've ever needed."
Soleta was unable to keep the doubt from her voice. "And who receives this...
Summons."
"I cannot speak for others," Si Cwan said, "but in the ruling family of Thallon, every third or fourth generation a princess of the line, upon reaching a certain age, receives the Summons. There is never advance warning. She simply disappears one night, sometimes to return, sometimes never to be seen again. If the princess returns, she never speaks of what she has witnessed, except hi the vaguest of terms. But at this point, the tradition and knowledge of its occurrences is enough for us to determine what's going on."
"How utterly convenient," Kebron said. "So, if the princess in question just desires to go off for a weekend with her beau, she can come back wide-eyed and confused, and you will assume it's this Quiet Place."
"Kebron," Cwan said slowly, "If you had any beliefs, I would show respect for them. Kindly pay me the same courtesy. In point of fact, the Summons and its advent is one of the reasons, the many reasons, that I was so desperate to find my sister, Kalinda. She was just reaching the appropriate age when the
Thallonian Empire fell. She may well have received the Summons-"
Xyon suddenly stiffened, as if jolted. "She would have red skin? Like yours?"
"Of course. Why?"
"Patch me through to your comm system. I need to communicate with my ship."
They didn't understand the urgency in his tone, but there was no reason to deny his request. Within moments, he was saying, "Lyla. Access the shipboard visual log. I keep a visual log of everything that goes on on in my ship," he said to them in an offhand way.
"That is fairly standard operating procedure for Starfleet," said Soleta.
"Perhaps you should consider a career in the fleet."
"Don't even joke about it," he said with unexpected vehemence. "Lyla, do you have it?"
"Of course, Xyon," her voice came back.
"Put an image of Riella on the screen over here, would you, please?"
"Coming through now, Xyon."
The viewscreen on the runabout rippled for a moment, and then the picture of a young girl appeared on it. Her skin was rather pale, and she had an odd bump on her forehead as if something had been there before but no longer was.
Slowly Si Cwan approached the screen. His face was utterly impassive, but it was clear to the others that he was forcing himself to maintain that cool exterior, particularly when he extended his hand toward the screen. His hand was trembling, betraying the emotions roiling through him. He touched the screen gently, as if afraid that somehow the image upon it would ripple and disappear if he touched it too forcefully.
"Kally," he whispered.
"Who?"
He turned to Xyon. "What did you call her? What name?"
"Uhm... Riella," said the plainly confused Xyon.
Si Cwan shook his head. "No. No, her name is Kalinda. Kally, we... I call her.
She is my sister."
"Your sister? But she doesn't look like-no. No, of course." Clearly it was all making sense to Xyon even as he spoke. She underwent some sort of treatment, some sort of conditioning. It changed her appearance. That's possible, isn't it?" He turned to Soleta since she appeared to be the most likely to have an answer to that question.
She nodded slowly. "Yes. It is possible. But the maintaining of the...
'illusion,' as it were would vary, depending on how it was done. She might very well have had to undergo some sort of continuing treatment."
"What would the treatment have been like?"
"Hard to say. Some sort of radiation process, perhaps. If cellular regenesis was utilized, the daily inges-tion of certain extracts would perpetuate it. Absent those, however, the subjects own DNA would reinforce itself and the facade would begin to dissipate."
"So, if her mother was keeping it going-"
"Her mother?" Si Cwan shook her head. "Her mother-our mother-is dead. I held her in my arms when she pa
ssed away."
"It is becoming rapidly obvious that we will not have all the answers until we have caught up with the girl. Where is she?" asked Soleta.
"I'll tell you as soon as you fix my ship."
Si Cwan moved so quickly that Xyon never even saw him coming. One moment Xyon was just standing there, and the next Si Cwan had both hands on the young man's chest and had hoisted him off his feet, thumping him up against the bulkhead. "Don't issue conditions if you prefer to breathe," he snarled as his calm exterior cracked. "Where is she? Where is she?" and he thudded him against the wall once more for emphasis.
But Xyon wouldn't back down. "You want her? Then help repair my ship. The sooner you do that, the sooner we can find her."
"We can take it in tow and fix it en route," Soleta said quickly, obviously seeking the fastest compromise to forestall further violence. "Will that suffice?"
"How do I know, once I tell you the heading, that you won't just cut and run?
Leave my ship. Leave me."
"You have my word," Soleta said, "as a duly authorized repre-"
"I want his word," Xyon said, inclining his head towards Si Cwan.
Si Cwan growled low in his throat, and then released Xyon. The young man landed lightly on his feet. He straightened his clothes and looked imperiously at Cwan, waiting.
"You have my word," said Cwan. "As if I have a choice."
"I don't recall your asking my preferences when you were throwing me around a few moments ago," Xyon pointed out. He clapped his hands briskly. "All right.
Set our course for Star designated 7734, and let's get to work on my ship."
"Star 7734?" Soleta said, sounding mildly confused. "But there's-"
"Nothing there, yes, I know. But that's where she's heading, or at least where she believes this Quiet Place is. If she's the one you want, that's where we're going."
"If you are lying..." Si Cwan warned him.
Xyon turned towards Si Cwan and said impatiently, "Has it occurred to you that I might actually be anxious to find her, too? My own neck has been on the line in all this, believe it or not. Just to clue you in, I was willing to sacrifice my life to save her. And I saved her from the Dogs of War, too."
"I see." Si Cwan studied him a moment. "But you're still here, so obviously you didn't sacrifice your life. And who has her now?"
"The Dogs of War," admitted Xyon.
"It sounds to me, then, as if you haven't been doing a particularly good job."
"Hopefully, I'll be able to live up to your exacting standards," Xyon said sarcastically.
Si Cwan ignored the sarcasm and said, "I wouldn't bet on it."
In the meantime...
... elsewhere...
In his ship-a small vessel of his that he had salvaged from his days as a
Thallonian noble-Zoran stared fixedly at the transmission signal coming over his scanner.
It had been a testament to Zoran's skill as a pilot, and the quality of his tracking equipment, that he had been able to keep so far back from the Dogs of
War that they had not detected his presence. The subcutaneous tracking device that remained lodged beneath Kalinda's skin was sending out a steady signal fortunately, considering that the rest of the antennae graft had fallen off.
Only the implant bump remained. Fortunately, that was where the tracking device was.
The Montos experiment had been a complete disas- ter. He had sought to handle the princess carefully, craftily, and had gone to great effort to do so.
He had been certain that, sooner or later, she would receive the Summons. And like many others, he sought the powers and secrets that were legendarily part of the Quiet Place. But Kalinda had always been a stubborn little cretin, and he had been certain that she would be less than cooperative with his plans. It was possible that, even upon receiving the Summons, if she had known that would lead
Zoran there, she would have resisted the call. Of course, if one resisted it for too long, it could rend one's mind to ribbons and leave the subject a blithering idiot who would remain little more than an empty shell for the rest of her wretched life.
But Zoran had been willing to take that chance.
He had employed the services of a psi-surgeon to implant an imagined history for
Kalinda. Everything that she remembered of her life on Montos-her childhood, her loving mother, all of it-was mere fiction. The expert geneticist had done the rest, transforming her into a passable Montosian, with Malia's daily tonic providing the stability that the process needed to maintain itself. The plan had served a twofold function. It neatly kept Kalinda hidden away from the efforts of her annoying brother to find her. And it enabled her to live an easily observable life while Zoran, through Malia, waited for some sign of the Summons to manifest itself.
Which it had. With a vengeance.
But it had all come unraveled. Even with her false identity of Riella firmly in place, Kalinda had proven too intractable, too difficult to control. She had never fully trusted the woman she had believed to be her mother, not really. And with the intervention of the Dogs of War, the entire plan had come undone.
Sumavar. Who would have thought that Sumavar, that tough old warrior, the one who had put Zoran together with the geneticist... who would have thought Sumavar would prove to be the weak link?
Zoran had not killed Sumavar after he had served his need (as he had done with the geneticist and the psi-surgeon) out of a sense of loyalty and apparently misplaced confidence. And this debacle was a hard-learned lesson about the pointlessness of softer emotions. It was not one that Zoran would soon forget.
Fortunately, the tracking device provided nun a failsafe. Wherever Kalinda was brought, that was where Zoran would be.
And soon the secrets of the Quiet Place, whatever they were, would be his, and only his.
XIII.
"THERE'S NOTHING HERE. Can I kill her now?"
Krul's obvious irritation seemed well founded, indeed, there appeared to be nothing of remote interest nearby Star 7734. It was a fairly bright star, but no planets had come into formation, nor did there seem to be anything particularly suggestive for the renowned Quiet Place.
They were standing upon the bridge of Rier's personal cruiser. Carrying a crew complement of seventy, it was the sister ship to the one that had been destroyed back on Barspens, and he had kept it primarily in reserve. But the botched mission on Barspens had forced him to make use of it. He kept telling himself that that was what spares were for, nevertheless it didn't sit well with him. On the view screen, Star 7734 sat there in space, continuing to appear no more interesting than it had when they first arrived.
"Bring the young lady to us," Rier said coolly.
Moments later Riella was standing before Rier. She didn't even seem to be paying much attention to him, her focus was on the rather boring star in front of them.
"Thus far," he said, "I am not impressed. For your sake, it would be best if you could impress me, sooner rather than later."
He wondered if she had even heard him. He was about to repeat himself, which was not something he was accustomed to doing, when she pointed to her right. "That way," she said.
The Dogs glanced at each other. "In space, we generally prefer something a bit more specific than pointing and saying, 'That way,' " Rier informed her.
"If you want to put me in a small ship, so that I can go there and you can follow me, feel free."
"So that you can attempt to bolt? I don't think so."
"If you're that stupid that you would think I would try to outrace you-"
Rier stepped in close to her then, and the gaze from his black eyes lanced into her without so much as a hint of pity. "Perhaps," he said slowly, "you've mistaken my patience for weakness. My civility for actually being civilized.
Make no mistake. I'd as soon tear you apart myself as look at you. You can only act fearlessly because I've given you that luxury. If I choose to, I can make certain that you feel very, very afraid. Have I
made myself clear?"
He waited for her to argue, for he knew at that moment that the slightest wrong word from her, and he'd tear a chunk out of her face just to amuse himself. But instead, she offered no protest, no sarcastic or defiant word. She simply said, "Yes," so neutrally that it was impossible for him to take it at anything other than face value (although he very much suspected that it was meant as anything but).
He considered the situation a moment and then said, "If I put you at a navigation station, do you think you could navigate us wherever you wish to go?"
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