Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages (61 page)

“We were a little surprised too, at first,” Jim said, “but it turned out we’d been laboring under a misconception about sizes. The only fullgrown Horta we had seen was the lieutenant’s mother…and after many, many years standing guard duty over her eggs, she’d worn off a lot of her bulk.”

“During the pre-hatching period,” said McCoy, “it turns out the momma Horta doesn’t have much of an appetite, and doesn’t eat much. I suspect as much because she’s a natural-born worrier as because of the basic biological setup of the species. But the youngsters have started coming up to the full ‘normal’ size for the species real quick, once they’ve passed latency.”

“That is a relief,” Ael said. “I would not have liked to think I had caused you to become obese by all that hyponeutronium I suggested you eat at Levaeri V…”

Naraht’s fringes rippled. “It was a little uncomfortable for a while, madam,” he said, “but I burned off the excess soon enough.”

“Might have brought his growth spurt on a little sooner,” said McCoy, “but that’s all.” He patted the lieutenant’s outer “mantle” idly. “You want to slow down soon, though, son, or we’ll have to keep you permanently in the hangar bay, and all you’ll be good for is being dropped on people we don’t like.”

“I should say he has done well enough at that…” Ael said, with a wry smile.

“More than well enough,” Kirk said. “Well, carry on, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. A pleasure to see you again, Commander,” Naraht said, and rumbled away out of the hangar bay, filling the corridor outside nearly from wall to wall as he went.

They walked out into the hangar bay, where the ship that had just landed was cycling back into launch position on the turntable. It was of unusual design, an oblong four-meter-thick spindle of glassy ropes and angular shapes woven and melded into one another, some straight and edged, some smooth and curved, some even radiating into what looked like a brush of spines at what might have been the propulsion end. Even here under the artificial lights the “glass” seemed to keep something of the color of Hamal’s sunlight, a gleam of dark gold under the glitter and sheen of the brilliantly polished surfaces.

The turntable stopped. As they watched, the whole smooth side of the craft facing them seemed to lose that smoothness, going matte, then revealing a fibrous structure like something woven or spun, then finally refining itself away to a delicate-looking webwork of threads that vanished away entirely, leaving what looked like a cocoon cut in half, all sheened inside with webs and points of light.

Down out of the cocoon stepped a glass spider—if spiders had twelve legs, each a meter long, arranged evenly around a rounded central body, the top of that body furred with spines of clear glass almost too fine to see, and a raised ridge of nubbly crystal running back to front amid the “fur,” with four eyes in the middle of the ridge and two clusters of four eyes each, near each end of the ridge. With every movement of the much-articulated legs came a delicate chiming, and as the entity came walking, nearly waltzing, over to them, more chimes filled the air—a brisk staccato of glass bells, running up and down the scale, and saying, “What a pleasure to see you all; it’s been too long—you’re very welcome to Hamal!”

Jim stole a glance at Ael. She had shown surprise at the sight of Lieutenant Naraht before, but him she knew. In this case, she was managing herself more carefully—but Jim had seen this calm expression on Ael before, too, and knew what it concealed. “Commander,” he said, “allow me to present K’s’t’lk. She’s one of the senior Hamalki physicist-engineers associated with Starbase 18. K’s’t’lk, this is Commander-General Ael i-Mhiessan t’Rllaillieu.”

K’s’t’lk reached up one delicate limb and laid it in Ael’s outstretched hand. “My great pleasure, Commander,” K’s’t’lk said. “I’ve heard of your doings; and I hope to be of some service to you shortly.” She cocked an eye up at Jim. “I hope you don’t mind my bringing my own ship along, J’m.”

“Seeing that we weren’t going to be coming within transporter range of 18,” Jim said, “what was I going to make you do? Walk?”

She chimed unconcerned laughter at him, and Jim turned back to Ael. “K’s’t’lk and the
Enterprise
have had some history together,” he said.

“Not so much history,” K’s’t’lk said to Ael, “but a fair amount of mathematics. Though often enough, the two have come to nearly the same thing….”

“When she’s not rewriting the local laws of physics,” Jim said, “she also does research in various areas of astrophysics…and one area which has been of particular interest to her has been the study and manipulation of stellar atmospheres.”

“I see,” Ael said. “That may indeed be of use to us all soon…”

“But what we need more first,” Jim said, “is news. Let’s take a break to get everyone settled…then we’ll meet in the main briefing room and get caught up.”

Hvirr tr’Asenth had thought he had known what cold was, before. Now he knew he was wrong.

Emni, behind him, was crying silently as they slowly walked. He would have dropped back to put his arm about her again as they walked, but twice now she had pushed him away, if gently enough, the second time whispering, “You already have Dis to carry: I can manage.” And indeed she was carrying more than he was, at the moment, the few belongings the soldiers had let them take. But he knew the real reason that she would not bear his comfort. She was ashamed to need it. Hvirr could not see why: anyone would need it, in a situation like this. But there was no telling Emni that. She came of proud people, and was harsher to herself than anyone needed to be, especially now, when she felt she should be acting as Mother-of-House in their time of trouble, and a tower of strength. It was bitter to her that shock had derailed her strength, that she had gone along with all the others when the soldiers told her to, just like one more victim.
Maybe,
Hvirr thought unhappily,
it’s just as well that she should find her pride a piece of baggage too heavy to take with her on this trip. Precious little any of us are likely to have left of it, by the end….

The snow lay all around them, in drifts and hillocks blown among the tall narrow
maithe
trees, faintly reflecting what light of the stars in the hard black sky managed to make its way down through the forest’s boughs. But the starlight was too little to make the going at all easy, and the moons were both dark tonight. For a mercy, the wind had died down, and the snow here was not crusted, but light enough to kick aside as one walked. But otherwise life, if this could be called any kind of life, went on for Hvirr and Emni and their fifty companions as it had for the last two days and a night: the endless marching through bitter weather, without a rest. Ahead of them went the faint light borne by the man who had volunteered to lead them, the one who knew the way over the pass.
And how sure are we of that?
Hvirr thought, desperate, trying to swallow, finding nothing to do it with: his mouth was dry as any desert.
What if he gets us lost? We will all die out here.

Though I suppose it is preferable to being shot.
It was supposedly a merciful death, the death by cold: weariness, then sleep, a sleep from which there was no waking—

Hvirr grimaced in anger, shook his head. Ice crystals cracked and fell away from his coat hood and neckwrap at the gesture. Hvirr gazed down sadly at the wrapped-up bundle he held, and hoped that the wrapping was enough. Dis was only two, and had always been somewhat delicate of health. Still, he was sleeping; that was better far than him being awake in this frightening dark place, so unlike the sunny little house in the valley, where they had lived until three days ago.

The house. Odd how clear everything about it seemed now, in memory: the particular hiss the front door had when it opened, the sun across the flagstones in the front hallway, the warm clear light in the kitchen when the hearthfire was going and Emni lit the table lamp to do her late work on the family finances on her small computer.
Who has our house now?
Hvirr thought, no longer having the energy to even be bitter about it, only resigned.

Emni came trudging up beside Hvirr, then, her faced wiped as if she had not been crying. But he could see the telltale darkness in her cheeks, the chapping already starting from the cold. It was why Hvirr had stopped letting himself cry many hours ago, though desperately he wanted to. He had miseries enough already without adding chilblains to the list. “How is he?”

“Asleep, I think. Oh, I wish I were too.”

He nodded, swallowing, finding it hard, with his throat so dry. “Don’t think about it,” Hvirr said, “it just makes it worse.”

“I am so angry,” Emni said, though the weary, dreamy tone of her voice made it seem a strange declaration. “And all our neighbors standing there, letting it happen. After all the years we’ve been there. Could none of them have said a word?”

“It’s hard to find your voice sometimes,” Hvirr said, “when the ones you’d try to convince are holding guns, and you have none.” The memory of that first gun, on his own doorstep, was burned into his memory as if lightning had etched it there. A great misshapen ugly thing, eloquent of imminent death, with an emitter bell that seemed big enough to put his head into—it seemed to float there by itself, until Hvirr comprehended, in the clear bright light of the morning, that it had a man attached to it, that the man was wearing dark-green military armor, and that he was pointing the gun at Hvirr and saying, “You have ten minutes to get your stuff and get out.” At first it had seemed like a joke, then like a misunderstanding.

“Get out? Why, what’s the matter?”

“Get out,” the man said, bored. “Relocation order. All the people on this list—” He flashed a padd at Hvirr, not even letting him look at it. “You’re to be out of the town in an hour. Twenty
stai
away by noon tomorrow.”

“But where will we go?”

The soldier had already turned his back on Hvirr, not leaving, but just dismissing Hvirr as something he didn’t have to deal with anymore. Then Hvirr realized that what he and Emni had seen on the news was happening to others, on this continent of Mendaissa—the forced relocations that had seemed so unnecessary, so sad, so distant—were distant no longer. It was happening here, happening to them.

They had gathered together everything they could: some food, some spare clothes, their credit chips, Emni’s little computer and the charger for it. One of the others who had been turned out, a distant neighbor whom they knew by sight, having seen him at market sometimes in the next town over, came to the little confused knot of them, maybe twenty people from six houses in Steilalvh village, “I know the way over the pass to Memmesh. Nothing’s happening over there, it’s safe. Come with me and we’ll all get out of here together. Have you got warm clothes? Then hurry, come on—”

That was when this unreal walk had begun. Morning, through afternoon, through night, through the next morning, the next afternoon, and night again…It was twenty minutes in the co-op flyer, this journey to Memmesh town, over the pass. Never in Hvirr’s wildest imaginings had it occurred to him that he might ever walk it. The pass was two
stai
up in the clouds, for Fire’s sake! But now they had come over it, gasping for air—and filled with terror, for Dis had turned dark green as he slept—and all of them had survived, the child getting his proper color back quickly. That had been this morning. Under cover of the trees, though they had been walking for a day already, they kept going, hearing the constant scream of iondrivers and impulse engines overhead—the sky suddenly alive with cruisers and government shuttles. This too they had heard about in the news: that the space around the Mendaissa and Ysail star systems was being fortified against possible Klingon invasion, that the government would protect its people—that to help it protect them, certain unreliable elements of the population were being removed from security-sensitive areas—

That was us, of course,
Hvirr thought.
And everyone else in this part of the country who has Ship-Clan connections.
“It’s the big spaceport at Davast,” he had heard one of the people farther up the line mutter to someone else, her brother, Hvirr thought. “They’re worried about security, there have been attacks on some other planets…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. Even among themselves, those who had been driven out of the valley didn’t want to be caught talking about it. Even here, who knew, there might be spies….

But they were on the downhill side now. It was, their guide had come back to tell them, earlier in this second darkness, only a few more hours. The path had been getting easier, even if the snow was no less deep. “I only wish I knew where we were going.”

“Memmesh, dear one.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean afterwards. We can’t stay there, they won’t have room for all of us…” She looked at Dis, in Hvirr’s arms. “He’s been sleeping so much,” Emni said. “I hope he’s not sick.” She paused.

“But then I suppose we should count ourselves lucky,” she continued. “Other people had their money taken from them too, the soldiers charged them to let them get out of villages they’d been commanded to leave on pain of being shot.” The bitterness briefly showed its edge in her voice again, then sheathed itself once more in weariness. “At least we’ve still got a little…”

Hvirr did not say that he wasn’t sure it was going to do them any good. Anyone who had both Ship-Clan blood and a scrap of sense would try to get off the planet now. But there was no one who could take them, legally, and those who would do it illegally would charge the sun and both moons for passage.