Dwellers in the Crucible Read online

  "I will serve your purpose," she said evenly.

  "No one has consulted you!" the leader sneered with his Rihannsu cynicism, sharpening his sibilants and biting off the ends of his words. He and his second moved toward her, while the third made to pursue Cleante. T'Shael threw herself in his path.

  It was no contest. All Vulcan children are trained in the protective arts, and T'Shael was no less skilled than another. But they were three and she was one, and her purpose was not her own protection but Cleante's. She dodged, she whirled, she took blows which she knew would gratify Rihannsu aggression, but at last a powerful hand grasped her by the hair and yanked her head back, and a nerve pinch out of their common ancestry and harder than necessary brought her down.

  She was at least spared the look of terror on Cleante's face when they cornered her in a cul-de-sac in the Old City and closed in on her.

  "I'm bored," Jim Kirk announced to all and sundry lounging around the null-grav pool during their offshift. "God, but I'm bored!"

  Uhura propped herself up on one elbow under the ultraviolet and looked over her sunshade at McCoy. McCoy returned the look. Uh oh. Whenever the Big Guy was bored, the rest of them invariably got caught in the crossfire.

  "You're just annoyed because Ensign Chen beat the pants off you at five-card stud," was McCoy's opinion.

  He meant it literally. The game had nearly degenerated into old-fashioned strip poker until the Admiral remembered the dignity of his office. Or realized how badly he was losing, depending on which version one believed.

  "She didn't beat me; I let her win," Kirk said, all innocence, tugging at the ends of the towel draped around his neck after his recent swim. "Don't want to intimidate new crewmembers the first time out. Besides, she cheats. There's no such thing as a Ho Chi Minh straight."

  Uhura lay back and readjusted her sunshade; no way was she getting involved in this one. McCoy just grunted.

  "I don't know … is it me, or is Command shoveling us a lot of dull assignments lately?" Kirk mused, not really expecting an answer. "Mapping expeditions, training cruises, milk runs. Are they trying to tell us something?"

  Uhura rolled over to give her back equal time under the rays and began to hum a little tune. McCoy stopped scanning the freckles on his arms for latent melanoma and took the bait.

  "You know what annoys me about some people?" he addressed the high vaulted ceiling of the Rec Dec. "I'll tell you what annoys me about some people. Stick them up to various parts of their anatomy in Red Alerts and they complain about how overworked and under-appreciated they are, how all they ever wanted was a beach to walk on—you know the speech. Give them a little slack time to sit around the pool at the country club with friends and what do they do? Gripe about how underworked, under-appreciated and bored they are!"

  Kirk sat on the edge of a lounge chair, stretching his back muscles against the towel's resistance, getting the kinks out.

  "I'm not asking for a Red Alert, Bones. Just something more challenging than nursing a pack of green cadets through Standard Evasive."

  He stared out the main viewpoint wistfully; no matter where the man's body was, his spirit was always somewhere Out There. A supernova had been roaring its life away in the lower lefthand corner some fourteen parsecs distant for over a week now; spectral dampers had reduced it to a pale blue flicker. Tame stuff, supernovae, after a while. If you've seen one—

  "There are hotspots all over the map out there," Jim Kirk said plaintively, waving his hand at the starfield. "Disasters waiting to happen. At this very moment any one of a hundred worlds could be in need of our unique brand of troubleshooting. So why do they ship us off to the boondocks?"

  McCoy rendered a fair version of "It Was Paranoia" to the tune of "Fascination" in his cracked baritone. Uhura smiled quietly. Be careful what you wish for, Jim, honey, she thought, the ultra-v making her sleepy. A dose of McCoy's sarcasm brought her awake.

  "Now here comes somebody who's never bored. Boring, maybe—"

  Uhura flipped the sunshade up to see Spock crossing the Rec Dec in their direction.

  "Oh, Leonard, don't be so mean!" she said, always ready to defend her favorite Vulcan.

  With Spock was Lieutenant Saavik, brightest of the new crop of cadets and his unofficial protege. The two of them were engrossed in the sort of uniquely Vulcan dialogue that closed in around itself, shutting out everyone and everything but its participants. (M'Benga used to regale the others in Sickbay with the story of his first assist on a cryocardial bypass and how the Vulcan on the table had carried on an animated conversation about wildflowers with the attending surgeon while the surgeon held his frozen heart in one hand and sutured with the other, neither surgeon nor patient nor heart missing a beat.) As Spock and Saavik came closer, Uhura realized what they were doing.

  "They're playing cha'!" she said excitedly, sitting up, flicking off the ultra-v and stretching like a cat, all attention.

  "They're playing who?" All McCoy could tell was that they were engaged in a rapid-fire verbal fencing match in Vulcan interlayered with another language so alien all he knew for sure was that it wasn't Vulcan.

  "Cha'," Uhura explained as if to a child. "The Game of the Word. You know."

  "Oh," McCoy said.

  He knew of the Game, of course. Humans called it the Vulcan National Pastime, subtitled "What They Do for the Seven Years In-Between." But the rules for the Basal Game alone would fill an old-style Brooklyn telephone directory if Vulcans didn't carry them around in their heads. McCoy had never been able to follow even the infant school level of play, and the cutthroat intensity with which these two were going at it …

  Kirk was listening too, but with that bemused I'm-not-going-to-admit-I'm-out-of-my-depth expression he had. Uhura was the only one who seemed able to follow entirely, and when Spock concluded the match with a gesture of acquiescence giving it to Saavik, Uhura applauded loudly. Several other crewmembers looked up to see what the excitement was about.

  Spock raised an eyebrow, as if only now realizing there were others in the room. Saavik looked mildly embarrassed at all the attention.

  "Brilliantly played!" Uhura said. "May I have the next match?"

  Spock gestured toward Saavik as if to say, "She's all yours." Uhura threw a robe over her tank suit and she and Saavik went off to find a computer con to set up the rules for whatever variants on the Basal Game they selected between them. While Uhura was quite good for a non-Vulcan, she still didn't trust her memory against any Vulcan's innate eideticism.

  "That was Klin trade patois you were using as an alternate, wasn't it?" Kirk asked as Spock joined them by the pool, incongruously impeccable in his uniform compared to their varying degrees of dishabille. Spock was also the only person Kirk knew who could sit ramrod straight in a lounge chair.

  "Correct. Lieutenant Saavik was instructing me in its nuances."

  "I thought so." Kirk was pleased with his erudition, even if Spock took it for granted. "I didn't recognize the Variant, though."

  "cha' Damyath," Spock replied. "The Sim're'At cha' or Masters' Game, where the object is to sacrifice points rather than to accrue them. Sometimes imprecisely called the Loser's Game. Not a Variant you would find congenial, Admiral."

  Kirk decided to ignore that.

  "Where've you been all morning?"

  "Casting this month's ballots," Spock reported. "At this distance I will barely meet the deadline,"

  Voting from deep space was a sometimes sticky procedure, complicated by time-warp distortions, differing residency laws from planet to planet, and the difficulty of sending secret ballots on hyperchannel. Uhura's least favorite day of the year had to be the Federation-wide General Election; Communications was always in a tangle what with everyone trying to call home at the same time. The Vulcan system was at once simpler and more complex.

  "What is this—Vulcan Election Day or something?" McCoy wanted to know. "Somehow I just can't envision Vulcans stumping the campaign trail."

  "Pos
sibly that is because we do not, Doctor."

  Spock launched into a detailed explication of the Vulcan legislative system, in which balloting was exclusively on issues, never on candidates, where every Vulcan was eligible to vote on every issue, and where "politicking" and the concept of electing public officials on the basis of popularity were unheard of. McCoy's eyes began to glaze over.

  "And what else is new on the most peaceful world this side of Halka?" Kirk cut in when McCoy seemed in danger of toppling out of his chair.

  "All is well," Spock reported. "Ambassador Sarek sends his regards. And my mother says 'Hello.'"

  Kirk smiled at the distinction in greetings so typical of their senders. He sought out the Eridani system in the viewport; it wasn't visible from where they were, of course, but he knew approximately where it ought to be.

  "Vulcan," he mused, his restlessness less obvious now. "Probably the only place in the galaxy where I know we aren't needed."

  "Amen to that," McCoy said.

  Before McCoy had changed out of his swim trunks, taken an antidote for the sunburn he could feel prickling across his back under the uniform and ambled down to Sickbay, an All Points Communique had flashed from Vulcan Space Central, leaping across hyperspace in the direction of the Federation Council Emergency Session and the headquarters of Starfleet Command. Over the next several stardates it would radiate out to starbase after starbase down the line, and thence to every ship in the Fleet. Enterprise, owing to her particular locale and a mess of intervening ion storms, would be among the last to know that six of the Warrantors of the Peace had been abducted by force or forces unknown.

  Blackness. Impossible even for Vulcan eyes to penetrate. Blackness and a throb of engines and a subliminal odor of some kind.

  T'Shael analyzed. It was not actually an odor, but a sensory impression somewhere between olfaction and tactility, in a range usually more disturbing to humans but affecting Vulcans nevertheless. Now she knew.

  Deltan pheromones. Negative ones. Anxiety, fear, terror—stay away! T'Shael stirred and sat upright on the cold metal deck.

  There was an unpleasant taste in her mouth, a dryness at the back of her throat. She had been drugged, then. Her acute hearing distinguished the heavy breathing of several others in like condition. How many had been captured, and for what purpose? T'Shael groped along the floor until she made contact. Whoever it was let out a whimper of fear; the pheromones increased sharply.

  "Who? it cried in Deltan.

  "T'Shael," she replied in the same tongue. "Resh, it is you?"

  "Yes," he sighed in some relief, and the negative pheromones he'd been exuding since he'd awoken began to recede. "Where are we?"

  "In a 'craft of some sort. But as to where … who else is here?"

  "Krn and Jali slumber beside me. Others—two more, I think. I know not who."

  "Indeed," T'Shael acknowledged, listening for each one's breathing past the insistent thrum of engines. "What do you remember, Resh?"

  She knew how Deltans craved contact, communication, for their very survival. She shied from Resh's touch, but would let him speak his fill while she tried to analyze the situation.

  His story was not unlike hers and Cleante's—a surprise attack by Vulcan-clad Romulans with prior knowledge of their victims. He and his two cousins had been touring the points of interest in the Old City, Resh explained. They had stopped to rest and take refreshment in one of the many parks and naturally, as Deltans will, had fallen to gentle sex play among the shrubbery where none could see them. They knew they shouldn't, Resh explained, its being Vulcan and thus, but it was hard to resist Jali when she was in a whimsical mood and thus …

  Resh'da Maprida'hn, Jali'lar Kandowali, Krnsandor L'am, T'Shael thought with relish, strangely gratified with the beauty of their names. One could almost transform them into a meditative chant, she thought with a small part of her brain that was not engrossed in the problem at hand. Deltans had beautiful names and essentially sublime souls. As to their sexual practices …

  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, T'Shael reminded herself dutifully, and returned to her analysis.

  They were, to judge from the power of the engines vibrating the deck beneath them, in the hold of some interplanetary vessel. "They" were herself, the three Deltans, and two others. Six in all.

  T'Shael did not presume to touch unnecessarily, but followed the sounds of breathing to a hard, wiry form curled defensively against a bulkhead. Rapid breathing and the presence of antennae—an Andorian, male, and not to be awakened abruptly lest he strike out. Andorian aggressiveness was less predictable even than human, Andorian strength almost equal to a Vulcan's.

  One other, T'Shael thought, continuing her groping progress across the throbbing deck. She touched. Oh, by the All and why? she thought with what in a human might have been despair. Why must you be here?

  Cleante.

  The drug had affected some more profoundly than others. The Andorian stirred and hissed in his sleep; he was coming around. T'Shael sought the pulse in Cleante's wrist. There it was—human slow, but strong.

  Why must you be here? T'Shael wondered again. Why are any of us here except through my error?

  "What becomes of us now?" Resh lamented. His cousins were awakening; he would have to be brave for them, hide his fear—no easy task for those as psionically interdependent as Deltans.

  "Whatever our captors deem necessary."

  T'Shael had meant it as a statement of the inevitable. It sent Resh into a fresh bout of whimpering.

  "They know who and what we are!" he cried, wringing his hands in the darkness, resisting the urge to clutch at T'Shael because he knew it would be improper. He tried to keep rein on his pheromones, but without much success. "They will destroy us and the Federation with us!"

  "I submit that the fate of the Federation hardly hinges upon ours," T'Shael said drily.

  Must it depend upon her alone to counterbalance the emotions of all of these? She crouched between Cleante and the Andorian, waiting. Jali and Krn clung to Resh now, pheromones intermixing, imploring explanations, seeking comfort. Resh soothed them absently, stroking them in a way even human would call lascivious. T'Shael could not see his actions in the darkness, but heard the purring responses they evoked. She had observed Deltans doing this to each other in the most public of places and instinctively averted her eyes.

  "They know who we are!" Resh mourned. "They had identicards for each of us; I saw them. They know that we are Warrantors!"

  "If they did not know before, surely you have succeeded in enlightening them," T'Shael said with a touch of impatience.

  The planet Vulcan, in the year of T'Shael's birth, had begun its second millennium of peace. Surak, Father of all the Vulcan now holds true, brought about the final unification of a brilliant and violent race after untold millennia of barbarism; his codification of the teachings of the Masters was the salvation of the Vulcan as a species, though it cost them their emotions and Surak his life. What is less widely known is that for all his seeming innovation, Surak never disturbed anything which was already viable. Whatever innate moral principles feudal Vulcan possessed were preserved and cherished despite the carnage. Among these was the concept of the Warrantors of the Peace.

  In Vulcan prehistory, it was the custom for the firstborn of a tribal leader to dwell among a rival tribe once a truce had been declared. If the least of that tribe's members died in a renewal of hostilities, the rival chieftan's offspring was forfeit. The practice kept the peace, sometimes.

  By the time of the city-states which characterized Vulcan's Middle history the tradition had been refined and expanded. It was not only an offspring or consort who might be exchanged for a member of the other faction, but also t'hy'la, the soul-sibling of the leader, who went to dwell in the principality of the others. In the event of war, this one was the first to die—a death calculatedly brutal and, where possible, enacted before the eyes of those who cherished him.

  Surak had weigh
ed the inherent violence of this practice against the greater good, and decided it must be retained. In his wisdom, he refined the concept further. At his behest, the Warrantors came to have the formulae for global war implanted in their hearts.

  The term "first strike capability" appears in the language of every world's nuclear age, along with appropriate rhetoric assuring that no civilized nation would ever consider employing it. The Vulcan was no exception.

  By Surak's time, scientific evolution had far outstripped moral maturity. Vast intelligence provided the Vulcan with nuclear power and the potential for interplanetary travel a full millennium before Earth, yet placed these capabilities in the hands of savage feudal lords and petty dictators. If the Vulcan as a species had not yet succeeded in destroying itself, this period provided ample opportunity.

  Surak drew upon the gifts of the High Masters, especially those skilled in the sciences and the healing arts, and developed a procedure whereby an indestructible capsule containing the encoded formula for nuclear first strike could be surgically implanted in the heart of a Warrantor. In order to start a war, a leader must first, and with his own hand, cut out the heart of his child, his consort or his closest friend. With this as the finalization of Surak's Reforms, the first millennium of peace ensued.

  Similar concepts evolved independently on other worlds, including Earth. On Earth, the idea was first put forth by pacifists in the late twentieth century (Old Calendar), but was slapped down by the majority as "barbaric." Only within the past five years, despite the Vulcan delegation's repeated introduction of a referendum on Federation-wide Warrantorship at every Council meeting from the First Federation Congress in 2124 forward, was the concept adopted by the Federation as a whole. Surak's original settlement at T'lingShar, long a cosmopolitan gathering place for artists and travelers from many worlds, was expanded to include permanent residences for outworlders.