Strangers From the Sky (14 page)

“I will try. Yet what I am about to suggest may place you in greater danger than where you are now.”

Why am I so hesitant? Kirk thought. He could feel the fear cold in his throat, hard in his stomach. Why is it so much easier to confront external terrors than the darker corners of the mind? If Spock were here, I would have no doubts. He struggled with his fear, wrestled it into submission until it was only confusion, only puzzlement, yet he could not make it go away. Not alone.

Spock was still a hundred parsecs away; by the time he returned it might be too late. Kirk must trust in a human guide to take him where a Vulcan had walked with him before. To leave the matter unresolved, as Galarrwuy suggested, invited the greater danger.

“I haven’t gotten this far by ducking danger,” Kirk said, hoping he sounded more certain than he felt.

“I had assumed as much,” Galarrwuy said, watching him intently. “Then Sing with me.”

The room grew suddenly dark, and filled with shadows.

Sorahl and T’Lera awaited the inevitable in the metaphorical shadow of an Earth ship, a seaship, a thing that had no counterpart on their oceanless world, named for a creature no longer extant on its own.

“
Delphinus
,” Sorahl said, reading it off the prow of the looming presence—instrument of their fate which no doubt contained weapons sufficient to destroy whole cities, much less two unarmed outworlders, though no weapons were visible—through the window-port of the agrostation. “Named for the smaller cetaceans—dolphins? The great whales are extinct, are they not?”

“By the beginning of this century, as measured in their years,” T’Lera replied, perhaps wondering at a species that could permit such things to happen, nay, could actively cause them to happen. She wondered also at her son. He knew the answer to the question he had asked. For what reason, after all the words that had poured from him at the Earthmen’s behest while she lay helpless in healing trance, did he find it necessary to speak still? “You told them all?”

Sorahl stopped looking at the great ship through the windowport but did not precisely look at his mother.

“I answered what they asked,” he said, neither apology nor excuse, merely explanation. “And they asked much. I knew not what else to do, Mother. To speak half truth seemed neither ethical nor wise; its later contradiction might prove the more damaging. Yet to remain silent would only augment their fears. I thought it logical to allay those fears until such time as my commander could decide the optimum action. Was I in error?”

It is not what I would have done, T’Lera thought, but spoke something other.

“You answered to your own logic,” she said with none of her usual irony of tone. “
Kaiidth!
It is done. And I no longer command you in this.”

Sorahl gave her a puzzled look.

“I do not understand.”

“The command mode as activated by Prefect Savar within the confines of a space vessel cannot apply to planetary situations,” T’Lera explained. That her father’s oversight in not providing an on-planet command mode placed her in an untenable position would remain unspoken. The circumstances that had brought her to Earth were not dreamed of in Savar’s logic. “There are too many variables, too many unknowns. For a commander to require unquestioning obedience in a situation unfamiliar to her is illogical. Therefore I am only your mother, Sorahl-
kam
, and you are long since an adult. I release you from your oath. You must answer to your own logic hereafter.”

Sorahl met the laser-sharp eyes in that ruined face for the first time and saw in them all that T’Lera was, all that mattered.

Restored to health, his mother had immediately risen from the alien sickbed, observing first with her eyes and then with her measured steps the room, the kelp fields beyond, and then the room again. She had stopped at the mirror hung over Tatya’s dressing table, coldly assessing the extent of damage the ordeal had wrought upon her person.

The human healer had dared not move her alien patient overmuch, Tatya had explained, for fear of exacerbating her injuries, though Sorahl was certain this was not her only fear. At any rate, the human had wrapped T’Lera in quilts without removing the burned and brine-stained tatters of her uniform. Her hair was matted from the salt water, her face disfigured—less so than when she’d been brought here, but her nose was frankly broken at the bridge, a practical flaw and aesthetic offense against the dignity of one who had never been less than fastidious about her person.

Yet no iota of the dignity, the mastery that was T’Lera had been forfeit to the ordeal. All that was T’Lera was contained within those far-seeing eyes, no matter what had been wrought upon the outer shell. And the mastery that was T’Lera required a fidelity not contained in oath.

“With all due respect, Commander,” Sorahl said, mustering his own fledgling dignity. “In wisdom and experience you are my superior. Therefore my oath remains.”

“I am honored.” T’Lera lowered her laser eyes briefly. “Yet neither a Vulcan’s wisdom nor her experience is applicable where Earthmen are concerned. What they will choose to understand of us, what final disposition they will make of us, are beyond the realm of my logic. In this I know no more than you, Sorahl-
kam
. Perhaps less.”

“Nevertheless,” Sorahl demurred, placing his life in her two capable hands, “I acquiesce to your command.”

His trust was profoundly affecting. A human mother might have embraced him, might have wept to have such a son. T’Lera had not the luxury.

“Hear me,” she said sternly. “It may be that my command includes your death.”

“It has already done so,” Sorahl reminded her, though the memory of those last moments in the scoutcraft grew less credible with time. “And I have acquiesced.”

“So you have,” T’Lera acknowledged. “Very well. I accept your fealty, Navigator, on two conditions: first, that such fealty not preclude the offering of correction should you find your commander in error.”

“Agreed,” Sorahl said at once. Conditioned from childhood, he had automatically assumed the position of respect—posture straight, hands clasped loosely behind one’s back, eyes meeting one’s superior’s with neither pride nor subservience.

“Second,” T’Lera went on with no acknowledgment of his swift obedience; she was in full command mode now, “that there be no further discussion of the merits of revealing our existence to Earthmen. The time for theory is past. We are here, however unwillingly, and we must accept whatever happens. In this I will brook no contradiction.”

Sorahl’s hesitation was so slight a human would not have noticed it. But T’Lera was nothing human.

“I—” her son began, but she refused whatever he might have said with a gesture.

“It is well that you hesitate,” Sorahl’s mother-commander said. “I know now what it is given to me to do.”

Outside on the landing dock, a confrontation of quite another order was transpiring.

“How’d you hurt your ankle, son?” Jason Nyere wanted to know.

Yoshi had forgotten the huge purple bruise on his leg from the snapped hawser, cursed himself for not wearing jeans instead of his usual cutoffs. Or would Jason have noticed that as well? Standing in the skiff at low tide, the captain of the
Delphinus
was about at eye level with the agrostation’s metal deck looking up at Yoshi, his slate-gray eyes reflecting simple curiosity, nothing more. Why did Yoshi feel all his prepared speeches drying in his throat?

“Oh, um, took a spill in the foil yesterday,” he stammered. “Some chop came in ahead of that rain, wasn’t it? Banged myself up pretty good.”

“Not like you to be so clumsy,” Nyere observed, avuncular. “Didn’t expect to find you in. Thought you’d be out on the lower forty checking for storm damage.”

“Yeah, well, getting a late start is all,” Yoshi excused himself, feigning embarrassment, finding a hook for one of his prepared stories. “Truth is, Tatya and I had a bit of a blowup last night. Cabin fever or something. Lots of yelling, some dishes broken. You know how these things are. Lovers’ quarrels.”

“Um-hmm.”

Jason Nyere waited rock-steady in the bobbing small boat, hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, trying to get the younger man to meet his eyes. Yoshi looked everywhere else but, his long hair flying in his face as he studied the far horizon away from the big ship, or his bare toes against the deck. Jason couldn’t remember ever seeing him in shoes.

“So, I mean, we neither of us got much sleep, Jace, is what I’m trying to say,” the younger man babbled on. “We’re in pretty much of a mess right now. Ordinarily I’d ask you in, but Tatya doesn’t want to see anybody, and I don’t dare cross her. You know the kind of temper she’s got.”

Um-hmm, Jason thought. Like I know the kind you don’t. “Lovers’ quarrel!” Why don’t you tell me the truth, son? Make it easier on yourself.

Sawyer had been furious with him for electing to go over alone.

“‘Regulation 17-C, Subparagraph 3: Disposition of Extra-Orbital Vehicles and/or Personnel Aboard Same,’” she recited at him from the reg book as he clumped about his cabin deciding which of his uniforms would appear least threatening to indigenous and/or alien life forms. A lifetime of standoffs had taught him that the best way to get shot at was to flash a lot of fruit salad. “‘Anything entering Earth atmosphere from beyond standard orbital range (as defined in Subparagraph 2) will be presumed to be potentially irradiated or contaminated with microbes or other organisms deemed harmful to human life. Said object, or any fragment thereof, or any living being found thereon, will be handled with extreme precautions, including the use of radiation suits—’”

“Melody, get off my case!” Jason had rumbled, settling on a work tunic with the least amount of braid and the windbreaker with its small insignia to wear over it. The overall effect was Just Folks, almost. “If there’s anything that virulent over there, we’re already in range of it and Yoshi and Tatya are probably dead. Anything else has got to be contained inside the station, and I can’t step foot one on that deck if Yoshi doesn’t want me to.”

“You ought to at least wear a rad suit,” Melody protested.

“And do what?” Jason demanded. “Assuming I could maneuver the boat in the damn thing, I’d scare the bejesus out of anyone. They’d think I was the alien!”

He buckled his belt, laced his boots, ran a brush through his close-curled, near-gray hair. He caught Melody’s reflection in the mirror, and her face looked drawn. It was the face of an old friend, not a fellow officer.

“I don’t like the thought of you going over there alone,” she said, and her voice had gone all soft and concerned to match her face. “Let me tag along, Jason, please?”

“Absolutely not! You’d blow off and have us in trouble in no time.”

“Then take one of the crew, at least to steer the boat and cover your back.”

“The fewer people get a look at whoever or whatever’s over there, the easier it’s going to be after the fact.” He zipped up his windbreaker, adjusted his cap. Goddamn scrambled eggs! Well, maybe an alien wouldn’t understand their significance, would think they were merely decorative. Assuming they saw things the same way humans did. Assuming they had eyes. Assuming—Jason Nyere shut off his conjectures at the source. “Mel, get out of my way now; I mean it.”

“You’ll at least go armed,” she begged, a last resort.

Nyere started to object, reconsidered, went to his private weapons locker.

“That I will do,” he acknowledged, choosing the smallest laser pistol and secreting it in his belt beneath the windbreaker. “No need to advertise.”

“I am going over there expressly to assess the situation,” Captain Nyere informed his first mate, deliberately within earshot of Ensign Moy, who stood ready to lower the skiff. “You are to take no action whatever at this end. In the unlikely event you see me fall dead on the dock over there, you are to back the ship out of here with all deliberate speed and report to HQ on the situation. That is all. Do you read me, Sawyer?”

The convention of the military salute had ceased to exist with the activation of the United Earth AeroNav Forces. Jason Nyere was old enough to have seen it employed; Melody Sawyer was not. Nevertheless, she saluted.

“Loud and clear—suh!”

“Good. Carry on.” Nyere stepped into the skiff and Moy lowered away.

“What’s he mean, sir?” Moy pestered Sawyer as Nyere’s resolute back in the small boat receded from them down the access lane of the agrostation. “About him lying dead over there? Thought we were after a satellite.”

“Microbes!” Sawyer snapped. It was what Nyere had instructed her to say, but it damn near killed her. “Thing was on a scoop mission and might’ve picked up some bugs.”

“But, sir—”

“Break out the binoculars and give me a report on whatever happens over there,” Sawyer cut him off. “Call it in on the intercom. I’ll be in Spectrography and I’m not to be disturbed.”

“Wasn’t expecting you until this afternoon,” Yoshi said pointedly. Sometimes the best defense…“How come the change in schedule?”

“I think we both know the answer to that,” Jason Nyere said quietly, and Yoshi felt the Earth shift out from under him. “Want to tell me what it is you found out there yesterday?”

Their eyes met at last. There was no bluffing Jason Nyere. Never had been.

“I can’t do that, Jason.”

“Yes you can. In fact, face it, son: you can’t do anything else. It’s out of your hands. Too big for you. Why don’t you give over to someone who can handle it? Make it easier on yourself.”

Yoshi held his hair out of his eyes with one hand, extended the other in a gesture of helplessness.

“Jason, I swear to you, if it were just you—But it isn’t. It’s the people who cut your orders, and the people over them. It’s the video people and the weirdos swarming around anything that’s new and different. I—I can’t explain it, but I can’t let that happen to them.”

Nyere listened, truly listened, to what Yoshi was saying. “Them.” More than one, and living, intelligent.

“How many of them are there?”

“Two,” Yoshi said, though he hadn’t meant to say anything. It was all going wrong. He stood staring at the waves lapping beneath the metal deck, literally at sea.

“Are they—like us?” Nyere didn’t know what he meant by that. Like humans in what way? In appearance, in outlook, in what? He needed something to hold on to.

“Like us? Jace, they’re so much better than us!” Yoshi’s face lit suddenly with a kind of rapture. “Better, different—I can’t begin to describe them. But I spent last night sharing ideas with someone born ten light-years from here and felt like I was talking to a brother…”

What he described was a pristine, beautiful encounter. What Jason Nyere heard could have been only that. Or it could have been the ramblings of someone drugged, hypnotized, coerced. Something of what he was thinking must have shown on Jason’s face. Yoshi picked up on it immediately.

“You think I’m nuts, don’t you, Jason? You think they’re in there holding Tatya hostage until I do what they want.”

Mentally Nyere reached for his laser pistol, allowed his mind to caress its outline, feel the grip of it in his hand. If he inhaled, he could feel its real, hard presence against his side, reassuring. Thirty-seven years in the service and he had never killed anyone, had never wanted to. But if he must—