Star Trek: The Original Series: Seasons of Light and Darkness (8 page)

“You're being too pessimistic, Leonard,” Wieland said. “We've started making real progress toward a formal topaline-mining treaty over the past couple of weeks. Keer is genuinely intrigued by our offers to trade other commodities for certain topaline-extraction rights. I think the notion of incorporating stronger metals into the Canyonfolk Tribe's
kligats
and hunting spears has begun to win him over.”

“Considering the decisive way he grabbed power, Keer doesn't strike me as a man who has any trouble making tough calls,” McCoy said. “So what's taking him so long to make up his mind?”

“It's projection, most likely,” Wieland said. “Being a conquest-driven warrior, he's having some difficulty appreciating the fact that we have no ambitions to do as he does. Keer doesn't understand why an entity as powerful as the Federation would hesitate to use force to take whatever it wants.”

“Then we'll just have to go on giving them reasons to believe in our motives,” McCoy said. “Medical miracles should have been the perfect way to do that. It's too bad that Keer seems so dead set on keeping us stymied on that front.”

“Don't lose heart, Leonard,” Wieland said. “Just keep on being a credit to your profession and your uniform. And stay alert for every opportunity to put your skills to their highest and best use—”

A sudden commotion just outside the tent ran right over the older physician's words, diverting the attention of everyone present. Before anyone could get to his feet, a huge, fully armed Capellan hunter shouldered his way past the canvas flap. A momentary frisson of dread stiffened McCoy's spine when he recognized Efeer.

But it became apparent almost immediately that Efeer wasn't bent on violence. McCoy could tell at once from the hunter's uncharacteristically stricken expression that something was terribly wrong.

“I have returned early from Subteer Keer's hunt,” the warrior said breathlessly.

McCoy rose to a standing position, as did the rest of his colleagues. “Why?”

“An accident has befallen a member of my House.”

Ten

McCoy was the first to emerge from the tent. About five meters away a pair of beefy hunters deposited an unconscious third figure on the ground while Subteer Keer himself looked on in grim silence.

McCoy felt a transitory surge of disappointment when he saw that Keer had emerged unscathed from whatever mishap had befallen the man who lay on the dusty ground. Pushing the shameful thought out of his head, the doctor ran to the injured person.

His heart plunged when he recognized his prospective patient.

Naheer.
McCoy had known it since Efeer had entered the lab tent, but had hoped he'd been wrong somehow.

“Give us some room, everybody,” McCoy said. Efeer obediently took a couple of large backward steps away from his nephew's still form.

McCoy wasted no time breaking out his medikit. In the space of heartbeats, he was using his handheld scanner to assess the adolescent Capellan's erratic vital signs. Though Wieland was nominally in charge during medical emergencies, McCoy knew that he was far too good a doctor to raise any points of protocol or ego, especially under circumstances as dire as these. He threw himself into the emergency, checking the patient for wounds.

McCoy found the initial scans both discouraging and confusing. And the visual profile of the boy's injuries was just plain weird.

“What the hell happened here?” he demanded.

“Lightningbeast,” Efeer said. He spoke in an emotionless, shell-shocked tone. “It sprang at us from behind the boulders near the far end of Eastgorge.”

Naheer's long dark hair had come loose from its braid, and much of it stood on end. The portion of his tunic that stretched across his broad chest had been charred black, as was much of the flesh beneath. Some of the tissue surrounding the burned area was already showing extensive signs of suppuration, and the unscorched portions of the boy's tunic advertised his extensive blood loss.

“This looks like some kind of high-voltage electrical discharge,” Wieland said.

“I have no understanding of such things,” Efeer said. “All I know is that the creature's lightning struck him down.”

“What are you doing, Mak-Koy?” Keer rumbled. The subteer had sidled up to the boy's uncle but was staying out of the way of the doctors.

It suddenly came to McCoy that he was in the process of doing something that Subteer Keer had not yet officially approved. Doctor Wieland, who was frozen in midstep with a hypo, had obviously just come to the same realization.

But McCoy couldn't bring himself to simply stop. Instead, he decided to vamp for time.

“We're just looking him over,” he said. “We have to assess the extent of his injuries.”

“Can you tell us whether or not Skyfather Gaar will decide to save him?” Efeer said.

“You'll know the minute I do,” McCoy said.

Glancing up, McCoy saw that Keer was watching him intently from just behind Efeer. The tribal leader's narrowed eyes shone with silent accusation.

McCoy looked away, trying to return his focus to his first priority—the welfare of his patient.

“Does this sort of thing happen often?” he heard Shellenbarger asking Efeer. Fortunately, the security officer had the presence of mind to insert himself between Efeer and his nephew, a move that had gently forced the warrior to give a little more room to the wounded boy and the doctors tending him.

“I have witnessed lightningbeast flashes on several prior occasions,” Efeer said. “I have even been struck myself more than once.”

“Sounds like this must happen a lot,” Shellenbarger said.

“The animals require little encouragement to release their power,” Efeer said. “All one has to do is venture too close to a lightningbeast that has yet to succumb to the spear.”

Keer nodded. “Or be insufficiently fleet-footed to step out of the creature's way when it rushes you.”

McCoy checked his scanner readings again. The boy's vitals were astonishingly strong, considering the obvious seriousness of his injuries, which included voluminous blood loss and an incipient and apparently rapidly worsening febrile state. But the readings were also erratic and inconsistent. Until he was stabilized, Naheer would remain in very real danger of succumbing to a sudden cardiopulmonary crash. The suppurating chest wound worried him greatly as well, since it was a telltale sign of a likely infection; without immediate treatment, the infection alone could overwhelm his already stressed and damaged immune system.

“I can't do much more for him out here,” McCoy said. “I'm gonna need some help moving him into the lab tent for further treatment.” He made eye contact with Wieland, motioning with his head in the direction of the tent.

A long shadow engulfed Wieland, who shook his head sadly. McCoy realized with a start that Subteer Keer was looming directly over him, his patient, and the older doctor.

“Mak-Koy,” Keer said. “As subteer of the Canyonfolk Tribe, I have not yet agreed to allow the practice of sorcery on the sick or injured. If I understand your own laws, you may not proceed without first obtaining that consent.”

McCoy could hardly believe what he was hearing. Hiking a thumb in Efeer's direction, he said, “But I had permission to save
him
.”

“That was Usaak's decision. He is subteer no longer.”

Wieland deflated, surrendering utterly. But McCoy wasn't quite ready for that, despite Keer's intimidating presence.

“Doesn't Efeer have anything to say about that?”

Keer shook his massive head. “Efeer does not speak for the tribe.”

“But he can speak for his family, can't he? By rights the decision ought to be up to h—”

“Hold, Mak-Koy,” Efeer said. “
I
shall move my nephew.”

McCoy decided not to question his sudden good fortune. There would be plenty of time later to sort out the consequences—
after
he'd saved Naheer's life. “That's great, Efeer. Thank you. I'll help you get him into our tent.”

“No,” Efeer said, with a wave of one of his outsize hands. “I do not trust you Earthmen, or your potions and powders. Naheer has spoken to me about your strange ideas many times. Perhaps without those ideas distracting him he might have paid proper attention to the performance of his duties on the hunt.”

With that, Efeer turned on his heel and faced Keer.

“Subteer, will you help me bear my nephew to the Tent of Dying?” he said. “Whether Naheer lives or dies, I do not want Skyfather Gaar to render His decision within the sight of outworlders.”

Eleven

The hours between the incident and nightfall passed with agonizing sluggishness. McCoy spent most of the time either stalking around the camp, pacing inside the tent, or wearing a groove in the furs that made up the floor of his canvas-lined sleeping quarters. When he opened his tent's entry flap and peered upward into the night, he got a clear view of the red lights of Gaar and Baan, the distant third and fourth stars of the double-binary Capella system.

Please don't make any hasty decisions up there, fellas
, he thought. He hoped Naheer's desire to survive would prove at least as strong as that of his obstinate uncle.

Of course, Efeer's condition hadn't been complicated by a virulent infection.

“Doctor?”

McCoy started at the unexpected sound of Doctor Wieland's disembodied voice. But he recovered quickly and stepped outside his tent. The older physician was standing just outside the entry flap.

“Did Keer agree to that private meeting I proposed?” McCoy asked without preamble.

The starlight and the low, fluctuating illumination from the campsite's scattered braziers made Wieland look gaunt and grave. “He did. Lieutenant Plait and I just came from there.”

“Damn. I wanted to be there, too.”

Wieland offered a gently consoling smile. “You just would have lost your temper, Leonard. You know, you'll become more patient when you get a bit more seasoned.”

“The hell I will. What did Keer decide?”

“Only that the answer is still ‘no.' I'm sorry, Leonard. I don't want that boy to die any more than you do. But unless Keer and Efeer both relent, the Prime Directive won't permit us to render aid. I'm afraid our hands are tied.”

Tied in goddamned red tape
, McCoy thought.
The only substance in the universe more common than both hydrogen and stupidity.

“Thanks for keeping me in the loop,” McCoy said at length.

“Get some sleep, Leonard. You look like warmed-over hell.” With that, Wieland turned and disappeared into the night.

Alone with his thoughts and the stars that the Alpha Aurigans considered the auguries of their fates, McCoy decided that catching up on his sleep wasn't a viable option this evening.

Instead, he contemplated doing the least he could do. And he decided it was nowhere near enough.

Twelve

Stardate 814.2 (November 17, 2254)

It took the anesthezine nearly two seconds longer to take effect than McCoy had expected. Immediately after the hypospray spent itself in the back of his broad neck, the startled Capellan warrior turned toward him. The thickset man reached for the
kligat
on his belt.

Then his knees buckled and his eyes rolled up into his head.

I'm glad
one
of us will get a little sleep tonight
, McCoy thought as he caught the dead weight of the fallen guard's unconscious form and lowered him gently to the ground just outside the Tent of Dying.
Now let's just hope I don't find any more watchdogs like this one inside of the tent.

Once he'd made sure that the sedative wasn't causing the Capellan any complications, he slipped quietly into the tent. The light inside was dim, as it had been during Efeer's stay here. Also as before, a large figure lay supine and motionless on the raised bier in the tent's center.

Naheer.

McCoy tucked the hypospray back into his medikit and started running a battery of scans. So far so good: The boy was still alive.

But that was the only upbeat news. On the debit side of the ledger, Naheer had lost a great deal of blood. Despite his innate Capellan toughness, his untreated wounds were steadily overwhelming his body's capacity to heal itself. His pulse was weaker and threadier than before. His breathing was shallower. His fever had increased by nearly a full degree, and his white blood-cell count was declining rapidly. The boy was in a footrace against a virulent bacterial infection, and he was clearly losing ground from hour to hour.

McCoy set his medical tricorder and scanner aside and began manipulating the settings on his hypospray's molecular synthesizer.

As bad as this looks
, he thought,
thirty ccs of corophizine should give him better than even odds of surviving long enough to get him into a surgical bay.

While he waited for the hypospray's indicator to flash
READY
, he took a moment to examine Naheer's burns. As he'd expected, the suppurations had grown significantly worse, progressing in lockstep with the rapidly worsening infection. He started tearing the scorched tunic open in order to get a better look at the extent of the electrical burns the boy had sustained. Fortunately, he found little damage that he hadn't already noted.

Naheer began to stir and his eyes fluttered partway open. “Mak-Koy,” he whispered. His throat sounded dry, but he wasn't coughing; he appeared to have escaped much of the pulmonary trauma associated with the inhalation of burning particulates.

“Don't try to speak, Naheer,” McCoy said, astonished to see anyone this badly injured regain consciousness, even for a moment. “You have to save your strength.”

“Has Skyfather Gaar made His decision?” Naheer asked, his voice as dry as ancient parchment.

“I don't know, kid,” McCoy said. “But
I
sure as hell have.”

Naheer's eyes closed as he slipped back beneath the threshold of consciousness. For a moment, McCoy feared that he'd stopped breathing altogether. But he discovered to his relief that the boy had merely depleted some portion of the extraordinary reservoir of strength that had briefly enabled him to speak.

McCoy took another look at his hypospray. Noting that it was ready to deliver the dosage of corophizine he'd prescribed, he brought the injection nozzle up to Naheer's neck.

“Doctor!” The voice directly behind him startled him into dropping the hypospray only a split second before it would have reached its mark. Annoyed, he turned toward his unwelcome visitor.

“Doctor Wieland?” he said, surprised all over again. “What are
you
doing here?”

The untended brazier's wan light only accentuated the older officer's disapproving scowl. “That's a question I'd like to hear
you
answer, Leonard.”

McCoy retrieved his hypospray and held it up for Wieland's inspection. “Isn't it obvious? I was about to put my thumb on one side of Skyfather Gaar's scale.”

“Oh, that's a relief,” Wieland said. “For a moment there I thought you might have completely lost your sense of objectivity. What a relief to discover that you've only decided to throw your entire career away.”

McCoy grinned humorlessly. “I'm afraid you're way too late to talk me out of that, Rigby.”

Wieland's gaze flicked down to the instrument in McCoy's hand. “Not unless you've already emptied that hypo into your patient's bloodstream. What's in it, by the way?”

“It's an antibiotic that's already tested out as effective against most of the local bacteria, at least in the lab. If it clears out his infection and gets his fever down, then maybe he'll have a shot at surviving surgery.”

“But Keer isn't going to let you perform surgery. And neither will Efeer. And neither will I. You
know
that.”

McCoy shrugged, neither lowering the hypo nor bringing it into contact with Naheer. “True. But even without surgery, Naheer still might recover on his own—you know how tough these people are—but he won't have even
that
chance if I don't knock down his fever and his infection first.”

Squinting through the semidarkness at the hypo, Wieland said, “So you
haven't
treated him yet.”

“Your timing was impeccable,” McCoy conceded.

Wieland approached him so that they stood face-to-face, close enough to touch each other. “Then it's not too late, Doctor. You can still back away from the edge.”

“The edge of
what
? Doing right by the Hippocratic Oath?”

Wieland sighed. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' ”

“What the hell's
that
supposed to mean?” McCoy said, lowering the hypo, though without deactivating it or putting it away.

“It means that you have considerations other than the oath you swore, that we both swore,” Wieland said. “You took an oath as an officer of Starfleet.”

“I have a patient who's hanging between life and death.
That
is where my duty lies! What else should take priority over
that
?”

“Topaline, Doctor. This planet contains enough of it to fill the Federation's demand for several centuries. That's why the mining agreement we've been working toward is so important.”

“I've shared a drink or two with the
Yegorov
's geology people during the trip out here,” McCoy said. “I already know more than I ever wanted to know about topaline. Not to mention the settlements that can't keep their life-support systems running without it.”

“Good,” Wieland said, looking impressed. “Then you must also be familiar with Altimara.”

At length, he said, “No.”

“Altimara is a planet that supports dozens of extensive mining operations,” Wieland said. “For more than a hundred years, it's been the main topaline source for Federation colony worlds that otherwise wouldn't be able to support life. During the last few decades, virtually all of the Federation's topaline has come from the Altimaran mines. But those mines are rapidly playing out. Over the next few years—
years
, mind you, not decades or centuries—they're expected to run out entirely.”

“Right now I'm concerned with the welfare of only one person,” McCoy said, gesturing toward Naheer.

Doctor Wieland raised his hands in a gesture of concession. “All right. But how does a single individual's life stack up against the lives of countless millions of Federation citizens?”

“I don't make those kinds of decisions!”

“Leonard, you are about to make
precisely
that kind of decision,” Wieland offered quietly. “By deciding to throw out the Prime Directive, and disobeying your oath as a Starfleet officer, you are deciding the fate of all those millions of topaline-dependent Federation colonists. Only you can decide whether or not to throw your career away. But take a moment and think: How do you suppose the people closest to you will take the news that you've been demoted for insubordination? Or even cashiered?”

McCoy lowered his gaze and took a moment to ponder both of Wieland's aftermath scenarios. Jocelyn would no doubt see a dishonorable discharge as more evidence of his unreliability as a father. Further proof of his inability to follow through on his commitments. He was bitterly aware that he'd already given her ample evidence of those failings over the past several years.

And Joanna will probably believe whatever her mother tells her to believe
, he thought glumly.

McCoy looked Wieland directly in the eye. “How can I just let this boy die?”

“Doctor, you can't force these people to adopt practices for which they're not yet prepared,” Wieland said. “And there's no telling when they might finally be ready to accept what we've been offering them. You certainly can't force it.

“Whether they come around a thousand years from now or next week, this boy's death won't be
your
responsibility—it'll be
theirs
. They've made their choice, as is their right, and they'll have to live with it. Now it's time for you to do the same.”

“You outrank me, Doctor,” McCoy said. “Are you
ordering
me to violate my oath—to stop trying to save Naheer's life?”

“No,” Wieland said. “I don't think I'll have to. You have a promising Starfleet career ahead of you, Leonard.” He extended his right hand toward McCoy.

McCoy studied the older man's hand.

Ignoring the still, silent voice that warned him not to do it, he deactivated his hypo and placed it in Wieland's outstretched palm.