Strangers From the Sky (23 page)

“I ask you to consider”—there was no trace of joy on his usually smiling face—“the plight of one who awakens each morning not knowing if he is older or younger, who dares not give himself in friendship or love lest he watch those he cherishes grow younger even as his children live to become his elders. Consider one who must stand helplessly by as humanity unlearns what it knows, grows ever more superstitious and disease-ridden and primitive. If he tries to intervene, to speak what he knows, he is stoned for a fool or persecuted for a sorcerer. I will live to see six thousand years of war beset this part of the world, Captain, and there is nothing I can do about it. Even you, who are here because of my dilemma, believe me only because to deny my reality makes you the madmen!”

“It’s insane!” Elizabeth Dehner said quietly. All of her professional cool was gone; she was genuinely moved. “How sad!”

“What’s the crystal made of?” Mitchell asked, cutting across the mood, refusing to pity Parneb, refusing to succumb to any kind of feeling. “Where did it come from?”

“A meteor,” Parneb said dispiritedly, as if the whole subject wearied him more than he could say. “A chunk of rock of no composition I can analyze, retrieved from the desert, whence it drew me on a moonless night, and probably not mine to keep. I suspect it will in its time become an object of great value, even of worship. Perhaps the celebrated Philosophers’ Stone? I do not know.”

Having told his fable, he seemed to gather it back into himself, put it back in its box while he resumed his characteristic affability.

“Vulcans have a saying, do they not, that none can know the future? Obviously no Vulcan was ever trapped in my situation.
Malesh
, at least I have managed to encounter interesting people in my times.

“I do not know entirely how the crystal works, lady and gentlemen, only that it works. In that respect I am not a scientist, only a sorcerer after all, Captain. But not a con man, nor quite a lunatic, if you please.”

“I’m sorry,” Kirk said sincerely. “As my first officer might say, I have a tendency to be—precipitous.”

“Which is why we must locate that first officer, in order that he might continue to perform that invaluable public service,” Parneb quipped, unfolding himself like an oversize grasshopper and taking out the smaller crystal again. “I surmise that in pulling him off the planet before I caught the four of you, I simply caused him to materialize somewhere else on Earth. The crystal is not without its flaws. I trust, Captain, he has sense enough to assess his situation and not tamper with present history?”

“Of course!” Kirk said impatiently; he was surer of that with Spock than anyone else. “Assuming you didn’t dump him at the North Pole or in mid-ocean, he’s perfectly capable of surviving on his own.”

“And as he is the only alien on this pre-interstellar planet,” Parneb said, leaning into the larger crystal as they all were, anxious for it to clear, “this should be quite simple.”

But it was not. The large crystal did not clear, but continued to swirl and glow and pulsate. Only Parneb saw something in its depths and what he saw, to judge from the expressions that came and went like lightning across his face, at first delighted, then profoundly distressed him.

“Ah, there we are! Your Vulcan is in fact in the middle of an ocean, Captain, but altogether quite high and dry. He—oh, dear!”

“What is it?” Kirk demanded, nerves stretched to the snapping point.

“This is not possible! It is too soon!” Parneb cried, releasing both crystals and clasping his brow in distress. “I find not one Vulcan, but two!”

W
HAT DID
M
ELODY
Sawyer expect to find when she followed Jason out of the sunlight into the main room of the agrostation? Little green men, talking petunias, creatures so uncanny she could justify blowing them out of the water to protect future generations from the very sight of them?

They are not human, she told herself over and over again. They are something completely other, and we can’t have any idea what they want here. That makes them dangerous until proven otherwise.

“You all right?” Jason inquired as she swung the rad-detector up to him out of the skiff. “You look a little green.”

“Save that for ‘them,’ why don’t you?” Sawyer said wanly. “I’d feel better if I had my hardware is all.”

“State you’re in, I’m damn glad you don’t!” Jason rumbled. “If you didn’t shoot your foot off, you’d get me in the back. Sure you don’t want to wait in the boat?”

“And let them kidnap you for a love slave?” Melody swung herself up onto the dock and grabbed the medical equipment. “Damn the torpedoes and all that.”

“Right,” Nyere said, and they went in.

They’d had to wait on the dock while Yoshi brought the clothing bundle in. Now the young man held the door and tried to slip out past them. Melody’s hands instinctively went for the weapon she didn’t have.

“Where d’you think you’re going, Buster?” she nailed Yoshi with her voice.

“Out!” he sulked. “It’s too crowded in there, and I don’t want to watch, okay? I have to go check my crops. I’ll be back.” He jerked his head angrily in the direction of
Delphinus
. “Besides, how far could I get?”

“Let him go,” Jason interceded before Melody could get hard-nosed about it. “See you’re back before dark,” he told Yoshi.

“Sure!” Yoshi let the door slam behind them. The hydrofoil’s motor made a prodigious noise pulling away.

They are not human, Melody thought, her eyes adjusting to the dimmer light as she picked out Tatya hugging one wall, looking simultaneously defiant and scared. There were two other figures in the room. Melody looked.

They are not human. They are not like us. If they go to heaven when they die, it’s their heaven, not mine. They are not human. Killing one or both of them to protect my world is not the same as killing one of my own. They are not human….

Her first thought when she actually looked at them—the tall young male so striking he’d have reduced her teenage daughter to a helpless puddle, the slender, stark-faced female with the oddly crooked nose, looking almost fragile in one of her old flannel shirts—was that this was a joke. Something cooked up by Command to keep them on their toes, some top-secret drill concocted behind closed doors at the PentaKrem to see how AeroNav personnel would respond to a real alien invasion.

Sure, Melody thought. Some HQ genius went and hired a couple of actors or maybe intelligence people, stuck those funny-looking ears on them, trained them to speak in those clipped, accentless tones…

Only the female actually spoke; she and Jason Nyere exchanged formal understandings in a way that always made Jason shine. He considered himself a front-line diplomat (“If I screw up there won’t be anything left for the hair-splitters to do but pick up after me,” he always said), and at the moment he was being magnificent.

The male alien stood silently behind the female, who was obviously in charge, almost mirroring Melody’s parade rest behind Nyere’s strangely reassuring shoulder; he seemed to devour each speaker’s words, his eyes moving intently from face to face as each spoke.

“…quite understand your position, Captain,” the female was saying. “We will comply with whatever you deem necessary.”

Her eyes, Melody thought, were like those ancient religious paintings where the eyes seemed to follow you around the room. She spoke solely to Jason, her eyes meeting his, yet at the same time they followed Melody. And talk about burning holes in a person!

She knows exactly how to work people with those eyes, too! Melody thought when it was her turn to go into her act, running the rad-scanners over both aliens without trying to look like she was hunting lice. Because now she’s not so much looking at me as looking past me, as if I don’t exist! I don’t
like
this one; I don’t care how peaceful her intentions or how many of her crew she lost getting here. I don’t trust her, and excuse me for living, I don’t like her!

In fairness, she tried being friendly to the male.

“Don’t worry,” she said off his serious face when it was his turn to submit to the scanner. “This won’t hurt a bit!”

“I was not under the misapprehension that it would,” he replied solemnly.

And they claim they learned our language from video? Melody wondered. They sure go out of their way to remember the big words! There’s something pompous about a kid his age using words that size. Still, he has a nice voice.

“How old are you?” Melody tried, making conversation.

“Nineteen-point-six-five-eight, as measured in our years,” Sorahl replied politely. The question hardly seemed pertinent, though perhaps there were medical reasons. “By conversion to your years, that would be—”

“Never mind!” Melody tried a different tack. “Do you ever smile?”

“Never,” Sorahl said sincerely.

“Jesus!”

Melody tried not to notice that Jason was laughing at her.

“I’ll have to ask you both to accompany me to our vessel for the present, Commander,” Jason Nyere said. “For one thing, it’s safer for all parties concerned. For another, my superiors will probably want to have a—talk with you.”

He had almost said “a look at you,” because that was what it would amount to, a lot of brassheads goggling at the comm screen and asking fool questions. He would see to it that it got no sillier than that.

Yoshi was right. There was something strangely compelling about these people, something that demanded respect and, considering their vulnerability on this alien world, evoked a kind of protectiveness.

Thank God! Jason Nyere thought, who had been so reluctant to assume the responsibility in the beginning. Thank God this has fallen to me and not to some hotshot looking for a place in the history books. The brass must be made to see the immeasurable value of these people, and the race they represent.

“As long as you’re aboard my ship, you will be under my protection,” Nyere told T’Lera. As one commander to another he had immediately sensed in her something simpatico, and in listening to her story his sense of who and what she was grew stronger. If the rest of her people were anything like this…“However, what my superiors will deem necessary after that will ultimately be out of my hands.”

“Understood, Captain,” T’Lera acknowledged with a tilt of her head. Without so much as questioning what Nyere thought would be the final solution, she indicated that they would go with him.

Tatya was less easily persuaded. She’d been tensed against the far wall like a trapped animal, watching her foundlings put through what she considered a series of humiliations, and she had had enough. She threw herself in T’Lera’s path and all but attacked Jason Nyere.

“You haven’t asked
me!
” she accused him. “As long as they’re under
my
roof they’re under
my
protection, and I say they’re not going anywhere!”

Within no span of real time, three forces of will contended silently to change Tatya’s mind. So strong were those wills that the thoughts of all three converged in Sorahl’s telepathic mind, and he heard them as if they were speaking aloud.

They’ve given their consent freely and without duress, Jason Nyere would have said. Don’t complicate this, Tatya, don’t—

Make a scene, I dare you! Melody Sawyer would have hissed. Just you dare, and I’ll tell Jason about the woman in Kiev, no matter if it makes me look bad—

We do not belong on your world, T’Lera would have said. Therefore we have no rights. What the captain chooses to do with us—

But Sorahl found his voice before the others.

“Tatiana,” he said softly, and she turned to him, tolerating that name from him as she never had from anyone else, not even Yoshi. “It is logical.”

“But it’s not
right!
” Tatya protested tearfully.

“Are the two frequently incompatible on your world?” Sorahl asked, honestly puzzled, and because she could not answer him, Tatya was puzzled too. Unsure, she could no longer fight.

“I’m going with you!” she declared. “I won’t let either of you out of my sight!”

Like I’m not going to let you out of mine! Melody thought. She and Yoshi would have had to go with them anyway.

Five sat in a skiff intended for a maximum of three and overloaded with equipment, so low in the water before Jason started the motor that the larger swells slapped over the gunwale and Sorahl, Vulcan-curious, marveled at the spray on his face, touched it with sensitive fingertips, smelled it, tasted it. T’Lera, erect and seeming unmoved beside him, noted her son’s reaction and rejoiced that, whatever was to come, he had lived to experience this much.

Melody and Tatya sat squashed sullenly together in the bow, facing aft, both keeping an eye on the Vulcans for their respective reasons, each keeping an eye on the other for the same reason. Jason sat aft and steered, his mood strangely serene considering the unknowns ahead. In the center, T’Lera, wearing a colorful Ukrainian
babushka
—Tatya’s last-minute solution to an obvious problem of ears—and Sorahl in one of Yoshi’s hooded sweatshirts, looked like nothing so much as a pair of refugees.

“A question, Captain, if I may.” T’Lera half turned to address Nyere, aware that the one named Sawyer tensed every time she made an unexpected move. “Forgive my curiosity, but how will you explain us to your crew?”

“I’d like to hear the answer to that myself!” Sawyer called over T’Lera’s head. The Vulcan’s eyes were upon her again, intent. “Last thing he told them was we were hunting a satellite.” She addressed T’Lera directly for the first time, felt herself blushing, infuriatingly, like a schoolgirl.

“Indeed?” Could she have rendered her voice more neutral, T’Lera would have done so. But she was T’Lera, and Sawyer could not but hear the irony.

“Yes, ma’am!” she shot back rudely. “So what’s the answer, Captain suh?”

“Actually, Sawyer, I thought I’d let you handle it,” Jason Nyere said just under the wind, aware of how voices carried, aware of Ensign Moy waiting wide-eyed and twitchy with amazement on the foredeck to bring them in. “Suppose you call an all-hands briefing while I see our guests secured. Inform the crew from me that we were actually out looking for survivors of a Mars-base craft but, owing to security reasons and the need to notify next of kin…you know the drill. That ought to satisfy everybody.”

Except me! Melody steamed, aware that he was laughing at her again. She vented her anger by shoving Tatya over on the seat, aware once more of a pair of laser eyes watching her, making her feel somehow foolish.

“
Two
Vulcans, in this time? That’s impossible!” Jim Kirk breathed, resisting yet again the urge to grab Parneb by the throat. “If you’ve lived in the future as you claim, you know the Vulcans aren’t due to arrive for another twenty years!”

“Of course I know!” the sorcerer said plaintively. “Nevertheless, they are here. I cannot explain it.”

The large crystal sat opaque and pulsing in the center of its table, mesmerizing. Kirk narrowed his eyes at it.

“You saw them in the crystal?”

Parneb nodded miserably.

“Parneb, it’s time you told us how this thing works.”

The conjurer weighed something carefully before he spoke.

“I am afraid I cannot do that, Captain. Now, do not get angry; you know it accomplishes nothing. I can tell you only that the stone works with my natural psychic abilities, as it might with anyone with a high esper rating, but it is activated by a science taught in a century after yours and possibly not on this planet. As I have told you, I also have a Prime Directive.”

Kirk sighed, sat. Disgruntled, defeated, he glared at the throbbing orb.

“It’s all connected somehow,” he mused. “Spock’s disappearance, the other Vulcans’ premature appearance. And the fact that
Enterprise
was not orbiting M-155 when you looked for it, was it?”

Parneb sat fingering the folds of his
djellaba
, eyed Kirk warily before he answered.

“It was not where I expected it, Captain. I did not tell you that then, nor did I continue to look overlong, for fear you might lose your temper and attack me again, possibly damaging the crystal. For if you had done that, you would never get back home.”

Kirk paced for what seemed the hundredth time that day, and it had been a very long day; he was running on one-hundred-proof adrenaline by now. Parneb, doomed to travel the millennia, seemed to need no rest. The others, endowed with lesser amounts of stamina, were in various states of repose. Elizabeth Dehner lay curled on a couch with her eyes closed, though she might have been only drowsing. Lee Kelso, adaptable as a cat, sprawled snoring on a pile of Kaffir rugs in one corner. Gary Mitchell sat staring at Parneb’s vidscreen, anachronism in a room filled with anachronisms, watching a news program with the volume at minimum.

“Is it possible”—Kirk turned to Parneb, rubbing his brow in perplexity—“that by bringing us here—”

“I managed to wrinkle the fabric of time so to speak, causing things to happen out of sequence?” Parneb finished for him. “Quite possible, Captain. Quite alarmingly possible, and I must take full blame for not considering that before I began.”

“And any change in the continuum of time—” Kirk began.

“—can have untold ramifications in the future,” Parneb said unhappily.

Kirk crouched beside him, reasonable, beyond anger. “You’ve got to help us put things right. Can you imagine what would happen if mankind came face-to-face with Vulcans before we even knew there were other humanoids out there, much less—”

Much less the kind of alien I still can’t get along with on my ship a full two centuries later, Kirk thought without saying. We think we’re so sophisticated, so beyond all that, but we all still have our residual prejudices, I as much as any man. Imagine the men of this century…