Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (19 page)

“These two will be useful,” Korrd said. He nodded at Sulu and Uhura.

Sybok turned to face them, his features composed in a pleasantly neutral expression.

Just what the hell did Korrd mean by
that? Sulu wondered. Were they now going to use them as hostages, as bargaining chips with the Federation? Or did they have something else in mind?

“We won’t cooperate, if that’s what you mean,” Sulu said tightly. He gave Sybok a defiant stare.

The Vulcan merely smiled and moved closer to them, barely an arm’s length away. He studied Uhura’s face intently for a moment, then reached out to touch her face.

“Leave her alone,” Sulu said dangerously, though there was little he could do with both Dar and Korrd aiming weapons at him.

Uhura tilted her chin defiantly as she met Sybok’s gaze. “It’s all right, Sulu. I’m not afraid of him.”

But as she looked into the Vulcan’s eyes, something happened. For an instant, she looked panicked . . . and then her face went completely slack. Sybok leaned forward and gently placed his fingertips against her temples.

Sulu had seen Mr. Spock do the same thing when attempting a mind meld, but according to Spock, Vulcans
never
did so unless the other person had given permission. What Sybok was doing was a total breach of Vulcan ethics.

“Hey!” Sulu cried, moving toward them with the thought of pushing Sybok away. “What do you think you’re—”

Korrd stepped forward and shoved the barrel of his pistol square in Sulu’s chest, with such force that it knocked the wind out of him. Sulu watched helplessly as Uhura closed her eyes and fell into a trance.

When she opened them again, it was to witness some interior vision that Sulu could not see. Sybok gently released his grip on her forehead, but hovered close by,

Uhura’s expression became one of despair. “No,” she whispered, “no, please ...”

Sybok spoke to her so softly that Sulu could not hear the words.

Uhura shook her head. “No . . . ”

“You’re hurting her!” Sulu said, but this time did not lunge at the Vulcan. Sybok and Uhura were far too focused on the invisible world to hear him.

Uhura’s face contorted as she witnessed an imaginary sight too terrible to bear . . . and then, slowly, her grief seemed to fade, and was replaced by a beatific smile. A single tear coursed the length of her cheek as she looked up at Sybok.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you . . . ”

“What have you
done
to her?” Sulu asked the Vulcan accusingly.

Uhura turned to him, her face radiant with love. “Sulu, it’s all right. He doesn’t want to hurt us; he wants to
help.”

“Right,” Sulu said tightly, and turned away to find the Vulcan staring at him.

Sybok’s gaze was compelling and more than a little unnerving, but Sulu refused to look away. It was as if the Vulcan were trying to hypnotize him, but Sulu knew for a fact that, regardless of what had happened to Uhura, no one could be hypnotized against his will. Certainly not Sulu himself; he was not at all suggestible.

And yet he began to feel the present slip away. “Don’t be afraid,” Dar said in her low voice. It was the last thing Sulu heard before ...

* * *

He was on Ganjitsu again.

Young Hikaru Sulu had spent his early childhood scaling the alarmingly steep sidewalks of San Francisco. By the time he turned eleven, his family had moved to the frontier world of Ganjitsu.

Unlike home, Ganjitsu was flat—at least, comparatively—but lovely in its own way. The small village of Ishikawa where Hikaru and his family lived was surrounded by cool, lush forests and running streams. Evergreens transplanted from Earth flourished in the dry, temperate climate. Of all the places the Sulu family lived, Hikaru loved Ganjitsu best. The planet was originally settled by conservationists who passed strict laws restricting the number of settlers and guaranteeing that Ganjitsu would never be developed. Living on Ganjitsu was a lot like camping out; the homes were makeshift, spread out, separated from one another by dense forest. People traveled in skimmers from village to village—on Ganjitsu, there were no real cities—but to get around town, everyone walked.

Hikaru and Kumiko walked six kilometers home from school every day. Weisel’s Grocery lay between, surrounded on either side by thick forest. Sulu’s earliest memories of Ganjitsu were happy ones . . . very happy, until the pirates came.

Ganjitsu was a sparsely populated border planet in an area of space whose ownership was disputed by the Federation and the Klingon Empire. At first the pirate attacks were rare, and too remote from the tiny settlement of Ishikawa to be a real concern. When they first began occurring, Hikaru loved to listen to
stories of the attacks; he thought it all very exciting.

And then the attacks moved closer. Settlers in Ishikawa, including the Sulu family, constructed what makeshift shelters they could, or did their best to fortify their flimsy homes. Even then, the pirates held no reality for Hikaru. They were exciting, dangerous, romantic . . . but not
real.
Those tales of people dying—they were just stories.

Most of the stories he heard from Mr. Weisel. Other than the Sulus, the Weisels were the only bona-fide Earth family in Ishikawa. There were third- and fourth-generation humans from Rigel, like Kumiko’s family, a sprinkling of Andorians, and a fairly large settlement of Vulcan scientists whose mission was to catalog the wealth of flora and fauna unique to Ganjitsu. But Mr. and Mrs. Weisel were the only other native Earthers. The silver-haired couple owned the largest business in the town: Weisel’s Grocery stocked all the servitors for kilometers around.

But Sulu didn’t like Mr. Weisel. He was eagle-eyed and crotchety, with wild gray eyebrows, which Hikaru assured Kumiko were ten centimeters long. Mr. Weisel was always complaining about everything—about the weather, about how long it took to get supplies for the Andorians, about the damn Klingons.

Damn Klingons, they’re behind all these attacks. Let them try to lie about this one! Twenty-six killed day before yesterday down in Tamaka. ...

Damn Federation. The Klingons can kill us all but will the Federation lift a finger to help us? No, they’ll just try to work it out diplomatically. Diplomatically!
Hah! In the meantime, people like us are getting killed . . ..

Mr. Weisel always stared at Hikaru and Kumiko when they came in every Thursday afternoon, as if he expected them to steal something. Hikaru was afraid of the old man. His friend and neighbor, Kumiko, teased him mercilessly about it. . . but Kumiko had been born fearless. Every Thursday when Hikaru and Kumiko went to the store—Hikaru to buy candy, Kumiko to pick up her family’s servitor order—Kumiko smiled and boldly said hello to Mr. Weisel, who bared his great yellow teeth and snarled. Hikaru merely gulped and trembled at the sight; to him, Mr. Weisel was far more terrifying than any stories about pirates.

But all the kids loved Mrs. Weisel. Everything about her was soft: voice, hair, eyes. She smiled and gave Kumiko and Hikaru candy when Mr. Weisel wasn’t looking.

Then, one Thursday afternoon, the pirates attacked Ishikawa. Htikaru remembered, because he was in Weisel’s Grocery at the time, standing in front of the counter.

In fact, he could see the counter in front of him now, touch its cold metal surface.

Hullo, Mr. Weisel,
Kumiko said.

Sulu swiveled his head to look at his friend standing next to him: Kumiko, precisely as she looked at fourteen, a skinny dark-eyed girl with a neatly trimmed cap of shiny black hair. She wore the faded khaki work suit of an agricultural worker and challenged the old man behind the counter with a smile. Amazingly, Sulu found he had to look
up
to see her,
and all that he saw, he saw through an eleven-year-old child’s eyes. Young Hikaru admired her because she was everything he was not: decisive, courageous, outspoken.

Behind the counter, Mr. Weisel grunted unpleasantly in response to Kumiko’s insistent smile; Sulu shifted his weight from leg to leg and tried to fade into invisibility.
Helene!
Mr. Weisel called.

The adult Sulu remembered suddenly what was about to happen next. “No!” he cried. “Gods, no, not again—”

Mrs. Weisel emerged from the back of the store with the Sulus’ order neatly packed into a box—and with two pieces of candy, Sulu knew, hidden in her left hand. Her cheeks were flushed with pink.

Hikaru, Kumiko, how are you? And your parents?

Sulu smiled shyly and mumbled an unintelligible reply.

We’re all just fine, Mrs. Weisel
Kumiko said.
How are you today?

Just the same,
Mrs. Weisel answered. She gave the same answer every Thursday. And, just as she always did, she handed Kumiko the box . . . and slipped Hikaru the candy.

“No,” Sulu whispered . . . but he was compelled to take the candy from her plump, soft hand with his own small eleven-year-old boy’s hand.

There was a sudden, ominous rumble, like a thunderclap. The floor beneath Sulu’s feet shuddered violently.

My God!
Mr. Weisel shouted.
What the hell was that? An earthquake?
Another rumble, louder this time; Sulu had to fight
to stay on his feet. Beyond the store windows, the afternoon sky erupted in a blaze of red.

“Pirates,” young Sulu remarked in amazement. His heart began to pound with an oddly exhilarating mixture of fear and excitement; the pirates were really
here,
in dull old Ishikawa, and he, Sulu, was about to have a
real
adventure. . . .

Kumiko dropped the box and stared, open-mouthed, through the window as a fire bolt streaked through the sky.

Mrs. Weisel darted out from behind the counter and began to push the children to the back of the store.
Come on. Get to the shelter now.
. . .

The store was one of the better-constructed permanent buildings in Ishikawa; it had a basement, with a real shelter. Hikarufelt safer than he would have in his own home.

I hope Mom knows about this,
Kumiko gulped, as Mrs. Weisel trundled them along.

Sulu looked over at her in shock; normally brave Kumiko’s eyes glistened with tears. Sulu was amazed. It had never occurred to him that someone might actually get
hurt
in his pirate attack. Sure, people got killed . . . but not anyone he
knew,
not anyone he cared about, not his parents ...

Mr. Weisel already had the trapdoor to the shelter open.
Come on, come on!
He gestured furiously for them to hurry. Mrs. Weisel pushed the children along.

And then Sulu’s eyes were painfully dazzled by a blast of pure white light. Stunned, he fell to the floor. This time the rumble was deafening. Something struck Sulu on the cheek, hard enough to draw blood;
he cried out. And then something struck his shoulder; something else hit his back. Horrified, he realized the store was collapsing around them. The noise increased until Sulu could no longer hear his own screams....

He faded into blackness.

And woke again to the sound of Kumiko’s voice, timidly pleading,
Hikaru, are you all right? Hikaru?

The sky was smudged with thick charcoal-colored dust. At first, Hikaru thought he had been unconscious a long time and that it was night, but he could see no stars through the thick iron-gray clouds. He took a deep breath and coughed until his eyes teared.

Not clouds but smoke. Ishikawa was on fire.

Sulu looked around him. Weisel’s Grocery was virtually destroyed; the front half of the building had collapsed into rubble under the pirates’ phasers. The back of the store was still standing. Mr. Weisel huddled, hands clasped over his head, by the open trapdoor.

Hikaru,
Kumiko begged,
where are you? Are you all right?

“I’m okay,” Sulu reassured her. “I’m right here.” His head hurt a little, and his shoulder was bruised and sore, but otherwise he felt all right. He got shakily to his feet. Kumiko sat next to him in the debris, her beautiful hair dull with dust; when she turned toward him, he saw a trickle of blood that went from her temple to her chin. “You’re hurt!” he cried, alarmed.

Kumiko touched it and stared vacantly at the blood on her finger, then wiped it on her work suit.
Just a little cut,
she said.
It doesn’t hurt much. You’re bleeding,
too. See?
She touched Sulu’s cheek and showed him the blood on her fingers.

Sulu tried to help her up, but she was unable to stand; her left ankle was swelling and darkening to violet.

“Stay here,” Sulu told her, a little frightened by her passivity, and the distant look in her eyes. He called out to the old man. “Mr. Weisel? Are you okay?”

Helene! Mr.
Weisel shouted, in a sudden spasm of hysteria.
Helene! Where are you?

“Mr. Weisel, take it easy! I’ll find her.”

Helene!
Mr. Weisel screamed with agonizing intensity, and then fell disturbingly quiet.

Sulu began to look through the rubble. Mrs. Weisel was somewhere nearby; Mrs. Weisel would be all right. After all, the rest of them weren’t badly hurt. He began to move slowly, carefully, through the scattered food packs, the smoking debris from the collapsed ceiling, the mangled furniture.

“Mrs. Weisel?” Sulu called.

Mrs. Weisel did not answer.

Over there!
Kumiko shouted, and pointed at an overturned storage shelf.

Sulu looked, but saw nothing at first. He frowned and picked his way carefully through the wreckage. And then he saw Mrs. Weisel’s hand, peeking out from under the heavy metal shelf. Sulu gasped and cried out.

“Mr. Weisel! She’s over here! You’ve got to help me move this shelf!”

Mr. Weisel was immediately galvanized; he ran, tripping over the twisted remains of the grocery
counter and, with surprising strength for an old man, lifted the shelf without waiting for Sulu’s help.

Helene!
he moaned at the sight of her.

Mrs. Weisel lay, face up and limp, in the debris. For one awful instant, Sulu thought she was dead. A sensation of electric horror traveled down his spine.