Holding the welder low so he could see what was underfoot, Martok moved carefully to the console, the sound louder with every step. Laying the welder on a metal shelf, he studied the beam by its green glow for several moments. He couldn’t lift it, he decided, but he might be able to shift it to one side. Hopefully, when he moved it the ceiling would not drop down onto his idiotic head. Not that I wouldn’t deserve it, he decided.
Bending low, Martok grasped the lowest edge of the beam and straightened his legs. The beam was much heavier than he had expected, but its position was much more precarious than he had guessed. When he tried to shift it to the left, he discovered the beam was really broken into two pieces that happened to be lying one on top of the other. The ceiling sagged and suddenly it was no longer a question of whether or not he wanted to move the beam. If he didn’t—and quickly—both pieces and a large chunk of ceiling would become his ignoble burial marker. Tendons and muscles in his lower back and arms protested. A sudden shower of powdered mortar blinded him, and a large chunk of concrete fell to the floor, clipping his shoulder and tearing a hole in his cloak.
“Old man!” he taunted himself, imagining the expression on Sirella’s face if she had been there. Drex would be appalled at how weak his father had become. Lazhna and Shen wouldn’t say a word, but they would begin to treat him like a doddering relic, bringing him warm slippers and a mug of warm ale on the chilly mornings. … “No!” he bellowed. “Not yet!” Collecting all his strength, Martok dug his toes into the ever-shifting rubble underfoot and shoved at the beam with his chest. Something in his left thigh let go, and he felt a bolt of pain shoot up into his lower back. Still, he did not release the beam and his legs churned and churned, the weight shifting by inches to the left.
Persistence rewarded him. The weight eased, and mortar stopped falling onto his head. Cautiously, Martok loosened his grip on the beam, and it did not move. There was a brief pause when the only sound in the building was Martok gasping for breath. He moved his left leg experimentally and felt the twinge of pain. Bad, he decided. But not unbearable. When his breathing evened out, he realized that the thudding had stopped. All that for nothing? You are a fool, old man.
And then it began again right at his feet. Martok felt ridiculously grateful. Sighing, he gripped the lip of the console and tipped it to the ground. A cloud of dust bloomed up around the edges of the console, and Martok had to wait several seconds for it to settle. When it did, he found himself staring down at a body. To be precise, it was a Ferengi’s body, but not a dead Ferengi’s body. He didn’t look up at Martok. In fact, the Ferengi seemed completely oblivious as he lifted his head, then let it drop down against the concrete. Every bump made an echoing thump that seemed to fill the room. Ferengi, Martok decided, have a great deal of empty space in their heads. It’s the only possible explanation. He watched this performance for what seemed an interminably long time, until, finally, not knowing what else to say, he remarked, “You realize, if you keep doing that long enough, you’ll break your head open.”
The Ferengi paused, finally aware of his visitor, and tipped his head back to look up. In the green glow of the welder, his face was eerily serene. “Really?” he asked hollowly. “How long do you think it will take?”
11
REMOVING THE DEBRIS that pinned the little alien to the floor took Martok about five minutes. During the next ten, he worked on convincing the Ferengi that if he didn’t help him find the key to the Sporak, then Martok would arrange for a much more painful way for his head to be cracked open (though, honestly, Martok couldn’t think of any way more painful than the one he’d been attempting).
Guiding the Ferengi through the debris by the light of the welding torch wasn’t particularly difficult, either. He was compliant enough once he got under way, though there was the problem of having to listen to the little man mumble and mutter as he stumbled along. “They broke that,” he would say, pointing at a broken chair, or “What am I supposed to do about that?” while staring at a hole in the ceiling and decidedly not looking where he was going. All the muttering stretched Martok’s patience. Worse, it preyed on his sense of responsibility. The Ferengi’s business wouldn’t have been destroyed if Morjod hadn’t come looking for Martok and the crew of the Negh’Var.
So, after Martok had broken down the door to the office and the Ferengi had pulled the key out of the desk drawer, Martok (almost against his will) found himself saying, “You should come along with me. There’s no reason for you to stay here any longer.” The Ferengi stared at him for the space of three heartbeats, his eye sockets deep pools of shadow, then nodded once. He staggered back around behind the desk, quickly opened a small, cunningly hidden door, and removed a small pouch from a deep recess. The movements were mechanical, as though the Ferengi wasn’t even thinking about what he was doing. Martok was curious about what was in the bag, but he decided it wasn’t really his business. He would just give the Ferengi a ride to the First City and drop him at an embassy before proceeding on to rescue Sirella. It was the least he could do, since he was, after all, stealing his vehicle. Maybe Martok would be able to figure out some way to repay him later, which led him to ask, as they climbed into the vehicle, “What’s your name?”
The Ferengi stared out into the darkness for a moment, clutching his bag tightly, and then the question seemed to register. “Hmmm? Oh. Uh, Pharh.” He turned and extended his hand to shake. Martok knew that some humans followed this custom, but this was the first time he had ever seen a Ferengi use it. He took the hand and gripped it, too tightly apparently. Pharh winced, withdrew his squashed fingers, and asked, “And you are?”
“Tark,” Martok said. He had come up with the alias within the first couple of kellicams after leaving the encampment, selecting and discarding details. Finally, he had settled on the simplest story: He was a retired soldier who had been so inspired by Morjod’s rhetoric that he had decided to journey to the First City and offer his fealty. It was exactly the sort of mad nonsense that might find favor with Morjod’s loyalists and would be ignored by everyone else. Of course, none of this would explain why he felt it was acceptable to “borrow” this vehicle, but Pharh didn’t seem to be in a mood to ask.
Martok inserted the key and touched the ignition switch, and the Sporak’s engine groaned to life. He checked the gauges, made sure the system was stable, and gripped the control yoke. A gentle pull up on the controls, to bring it several inches off the deck before heading for the door. Nothing happened.
“You have to pull it harder,” Pharh said.
Martok pulled harder. The Sporak lifted up off its pad, hovered uncertainly, and then lurched backward and crunched into the wall. Chunks of what had been ceiling banged onto the roof of the cab.
“It doesn’t stop very quickly,” Pharh said.
Martok fumed. “Yes? Really? Anything else I should know?”
“Well, if you’d like, I could drive. I’ve driven this a number of times, whereas you …” He let the thought trail off and indicated the roof of the garage. “It doesn’t look like you’ve driven anywhere for a while.”
Martok considered. It had been many years since he had driven a vehicle like this … or any vehicle, come to think of it. Others had been driving for him. He digested this fact for a moment. He could use some sleep, he decided. But would it be a good idea to trust this Ferengi? Was it a good idea to trust any Ferengi? “I’ll be all right,” he growled and hit the accelerator. He pushed forward on the yoke—more authoritatively this time—and the Sporak surged forward, pressing Martok back into his seat. He eased off on the pressure and flopped forward against the harness. Pharh screeched. There came another crash and when Martok tried to assess the source, he looked around and realized he wasn’t in the garage anymore. He looked over his shoulder. He had removed about a meter’s worth of wall with the Sporak’s starboard side, but the vehicle itself didn’t seem to be damaged. He shrugged. They were outside. That’s what mattered.
“Do you have
any strong attachment to the gates?” Martok asked Pharh, who was hunched against the door.
“What?”
“I thought not,” Martok said and gunned the engine. The Sporak barely bumped as it rolled over the crushed metal.
* * *
Two hours passed in relative silence. Pharh bleated every once in a while when Martok forded streams or accelerated sharply to get up a steep hill. He had decided to seek an off-road route as much as possible to get as close as he could to the First City without encountering patrols. He knew he would sooner or later, but later was better than sooner. The Sporak was not the ideal vehicle for overland trekking, but Martok watched the indicators carefully and eased back on acceleration when the engine showed signs of overheating.
Around the second hour, they finally passed out of the lowlands and entered the edge of the wide, flat plain that encircled the First City. Archaeologists and environmentalists argued about the origin of the barren waste-land. Had the plain once been a lush garden that had been destroyed by a military action? Could there have been an environmental disaster that had shifted the course of a once-great river? Since Klingon recorded history went back only fifteen hundred years—and the ruins unearthed from beneath the First City were much, much older—it was impossible to say for certain. Martok held the opinion that the Ka’Toth plains (for such were they called) had been ever as they were and that a wise warlord had built his stronghold in the most inhospitable place on the planet in order that he and his warriors would always remain strong. If anyone had asked him, Martok would have admitted that the idea made no strategic or historical sense, but since no one ever asked generals or chancellors such questions, it was a moot point.
Sometime in the middle of the third hour, Pharh uncoiled and began to take an interest in what was going on outside his window. By this time, Martok had found a fairly smooth, flat access road that was headed in the right direction. According to the maps stored in the Sporak’s memory, the access road would join a primary route about a hundred kellicams up that led directly into the First City. It would be nearing the middle of the night by then, and Martok’s plan was to stop, grab as much sleep as he could, then proceed on after explaining to his traveling companion what dangers they would face. Martok assumed Pharh would choose to part ways at that point, and if Martok left him a couple kilos of water, the Ferengi would be able to make it to some safe refuge.
But something bothered him, and Martok knew himself well enough to know that the nagging curiosity wouldn’t disappear when the Ferengi did. He would, he knew, very likely be dead before the week ended, and this wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to be thinking about in Sto-Vo-Kor. So, he asked, “Why were you banging your head against the floor?”
The Ferengi answered without hesitation, almost as if he had been pondering the question throughout their travels and he had just formulated an answer. “When the roof fell in,” he said quietly, “I had been listening to a message from my father on Ferenginar. I think he was telling me that I had to call and tell him that I was coming home or I could just forget about ever coming home again.”
“And you were planning to call and tell him that you were coming home?”
Pharh shrugged. “Not necessarily.”
Martok pondered his response, then asked, “Certainly he would understand why you didn’t respond to his message. You could contact him once you reach the First City.”
“I could,” Pharh said. “I suppose. If I want to. And it’s possible that they wouldn’t have finished the contracts yet.”
“Contracts?”
“The disowning contracts. The ones that mean I’m out of the family.”
“They would do that?” Martok asked. “So quickly?”
Pharh snorted. “They say that Klingons have a reputation for ruthlessness, but they don’t have anything on Ferengi when there’s shares of a family business on the line. A successful family business.”
“The trash business?” Martok asked. “There’s profit to be made?”
“Spectacularly so,” Pharh said. “Especially when you’re dealing with a people who, well, the kind who don’t like to think about their own past.”
“And Klingons are that kind?”
Pharh looked over at Martok and seemed to suddenly realize with whom he was conversing. “No offense,” he said. “But yes, Klingons are that kind.”
“Why do you say that? Most other species believe that Klingons are obsessively concerned about their past, the stories of their family’s line.”
“For the past two, three hundred years, yes. But before that,” Pharh said, “not so much. And in trash terms, in ‘resource reclamation’ terms, it doesn’t even get interesting until you go down a couple hundred years.”
“Why is that?”
“Because that’s where you start to find stuff that people threw away because they didn’t know how to reuse the things it was made of. The nanotech necessary to make matter compilers cheap and affordable didn’t become available in this part of the galaxy until about two hundred fifty years ago, and that was mostly in the Vulcan and Andorian allied worlds. Nobody was handing out tech like that to … others.”
“To Klingons, you mean.”
“Yes. To Klingons.” Pharh looked over at Martok again and seemed confused by his behavior. “None of this bothers you?” he asked. “What I’m saying.”
“Why should it? It’s all true. It’s all history.”
“Yes,” said the Ferengi. “But my experience with Klingons is that they like to interpret history from their own perspective.”
Martok grinned and rubbed the ridge of bone over his missing eye. “Well,” he said. “I’ve learned to see things a little differently than most Klingons. But let us return to your father. Why can’t you just call him and talk about your situation? Why choose to bang your head on the floor?”
Pharh sighed and stared out the window. “My father is difficult,” he finally said. “He isn’t easy to talk to. Somehow, banging my head against the floor just seemed simpler.”
Martok laughed appreciatively as he flipped the switch to run a quick passive scan of the road ahead. The results came back in seconds: All clear. Distressingly all clear. He was beginning to wonder whether Morjod’s alliance had begun to crumble already if he couldn’t arrange for routine roadblocks. He glanced at Pharh and realized that the Ferengi had been staring fixedly for several seconds. To cover up his discomfort, he said, “Fathers can be difficult.”
“Is yours?” Pharh asked.
“No,” Martok said. “Not anymore. He’s been dead for many years.”
“Oh. Sorry. But he was?”
Considering the question, Martok realized there was no simple way to answer it. Klingon fathers are supposed to be many things: stern, demanding, and even, he supposed, ruthless. But difficult? No, he supposed not. A Klingon child always knew precisely what his or her father wanted from him or her. Didn’t they? Martok thought about Drex and wondered if his son had ever felt like his father was being unnecessarily obtuse. And what about old Urthog? Martok had felt like he was disappointing his father, but he couldn’t say precisely why. Did that qualify as being difficult? He shook his head, as much to answer his own question as Pharh’s. “No,” he said. “My father was not ‘difficult.’ I did not understand him, but that was not his fault. I think he was waiting for me to understand him, but I was never able to do that. Perhaps if we had had more time together before he died …”
“I’m pretty sure the only thing my father’s trying to tell me is ‘Make more profit.’”
“What’s so difficult about that?” Martok asked, shaking off his revelry. “It sounds like the same thing every Ferengi says to his children.”
“It is,” Pharh replied. “But I think that I wanted to hear a little more than that.”
“Such as?”
He shrugged. “Other things. I don’t know. Maybe …” But the thought trailed off into silence.
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe, like ‘Why?’”
Martok laughed and pounded the steering yoke. “Gods of my ancestors, we are in mortal danger! A philosopher! Save us all from philosophical Ferengi!”
Pharh squirmed, embarrassed. “I’m not … philosophical. Anything but. I think I might just be simple. Too stupid to get it all. Everyone else seems to.”
Chuckling, Martok shook his head. “I knew a Ferengi like you once,” he said. “A long way from here. You two would like each other.”
Pharh looked at him curiously, but didn’t press him for a name. Martok thought they were both talked out and, more, that it was time to consider stopping for a rest, when Pharh said, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
This might be the right moment to bare my teeth and snarl, Martok thought, but stopped himself. The boy had been willing to answer his own rather personal questions. And, besides, if he was talking, he might be able to stay alert longer. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Why is the chancellor of the Klingon Empire wearing beggar’s clothes and driving a fifty-year-old Federation vehicle across the Ka’Toth plains?”
He stared directly at the Ferengi for much longer than was strictly safe, but he wanted the boy to squirm a little. Surprisingly, he didn’t. “You’ve mistaken me for another.”
“Please,” Pharh said. “I’m simple, but I’m not stupid. And I watch the news feeds. Shouldn’t you be off with your army somewhere preparing to take back the First City or something like that?”
Glowering out at the road, Martok found that it was getting too dark to see without the headlamps, so he jabbed the button that turned them on. In the sudden glare, he discovered that his eye ached badly. He needed to sleep soon. “I’m going to meet my army when we get into the city,” he said.
Martok could feel Pharh staring at him. Finally, after several seconds, he said, “Uh-huh. How big is your army?”
“Vast,” Martok answered quickly. “Huge. And they’re all going to transport into the center of the First City and crush Morjod on my command. It will be a glorious bloodbath.”
The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 1 Page 16