STAR TREK: TOS - Prime Directive Page 28

  Penn’s hands fluttered rapidly in front of him. “But Marita told me what happened when you saw Ambassador Sytok. He said that if the Council found out Marita would be attending the general meeting, then they’d cancel it or something so she couldn’t disrupt it.”

  “First, I must remind you that under the terms of our agreement, the Council meeting must not be disrupted. All business which I shall present there will be conducted in accordance with the Federation’s Rules of Order.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Penn said rudely.

  [276] “Second, at no time during the update conference did I mention that Marita would be attending the Council meeting with me. All the update services reported was that I would be speaking on behalf of Students for Stars for the People to press for the repeal of the Prime Directive.

  “If any of the Council members had learned of the topic of my address before it had been made public, then the meeting could have been delayed quite easily. But now that my intentions have been widely reported, the Council cannot postpone their meeting without inviting public criticism and an increased public debate on the propriety of the Directive. By holding the update conference, I have removed that choice from the Council’s options and we remain in control of their agenda.”

  Marita clapped her hands. “Well done, Mr. Spock.” She looked scornfully at Penn. “See? I told you he knew what he was doing. You should have seen the look on the ambassador’s face when Mr. Spock had me do the finger-embrace thing. I tell you, this guy knows how the system works. He’s just what the SSP’s been needing—someone from the inside who knows firsthand how morally bankrupt the Federation is.”

  Penn sat back in the couch and folded his arms across his chest. “I thought that the finger embrace was something that only married Vulcans did. Or ...”

  “I assure you, Penn, that I asked Marita to attend me only to distract the ambassador from the true purpose of our visit to his embassy. Nothing else was intended by it.”

  One of the other three students in the cramped room chuckled. “Hey, Penn’s jealous of a Vulcan!”

  Penn was indignant. “I am not! It’s just that ...” He glared at Spock. “We were doing pretty good on our own. We didn’t need him to come along and take over.”

  Spock remained expressionless though he conceded to himself that, for all of Penn’s misplaced nervous energy, the young human was quite perceptive.

  Marita pushed against Penn’s shoulder. “Mr. Spock hasn’t taken over, Penn. He’s helping us. Running student rallies and [277] uploading pamphlets is one thing ... but Mr. Spock is the first person from the inside who believes the same things we do. The Prime Directive has got to go and Mr. Spock’s the one who can make that happen.” She smiled up at Spock. “Isn’t that right?”

  “I do not know if I can indeed convince the Council to repeal the Directive,” Spock said truthfully.

  “See?” Penn said, hands waving. “He admits he can’t help us.”

  Marita stood up from the couch and gathered a stack of serving plates from a small table. “All he’s saying is that he can’t guarantee anything. He’s just being truthful, Penn. You know that Vulcans can’t lie.” She carried the plates over to a small autokitchen set in a corner of the room. As the plates clattered in the metal-walled cleaner, Spock heard the first stirrings of the baby waking in the bedroom. No one else did.

  Penn stared at Spock. “Is it true what she said? Is it true that Vulcans can’t lie?”

  Spock allowed a momentary half-smile to come to his lips. “Assuming that you really do not know the answer, I believe if you consider that question carefully, you will discover that no possible answer I could give would provide you with any useful information.” Spock was pleased that he would not have to answer Penn’s question directly. The truth was that Vulcans, as a matter of principle, strove to avoid the telling of lies at almost all cost. However, there were times when, to accomplish the greater good, it was necessary to disguise the truth. In the past, Spock had experienced no moral qualms in telling outright lies to Klingons and others who would do violence to the innocent, just as he experienced no qualms in lying to Marita and the other students involved in the SSP. Despite what they might think when they discovered his real purpose in joining them, he was not seeking personal gain. Someday, he hoped they would understand his motives, and condone them.

  The student who had laughed at Penn’s apparent jealousy got up from the floor where he sat. Beside him, the two other students who had been sitting crosslegged stretched out their legs. One of them knocked over a stack of music cubes. Spock [278] noted disapprovingly that many of the cubes were not in their covers.

  “So when is this other bigshot insider going to be coming?” the standing student asked. His name was Lowell and he had told Spock he intended to study law. Spock had noted the orderliness of Lowell’s mind and was thankful that he was not the leader of the group. That role had fallen to Marita not because she was the best organizer among the students, but because of her unrelenting energy. The notoriety she had gained by having and caring for a child while still a student also helped attract attention to the group. It was a choice seldom made on Earth these days.

  “I believe my guest is due at any moment,” Spock said in answer to Lowell’s question.

  The young law student stood by the window beside Spock and stared out as if trying to find whatever it was that Spock had been looking at. “And he’s just supposed to be another guy from Starfleet who’s seen the light about the Directive and wants to make the galaxy a better place?”

  Like Penn, Lowell also had his doubts about Spock’s motives in becoming involved in the SSP. But unlike Penn, he seemed willing to go along with Spock, if not trust him, as long as he felt that the group might gain an advantage from their association with him—even if it wasn’t the advantage they were hoping for.

  “He is not ‘just another guy,’ ” Spock said. “And he will attract even more public attention for the SSP than I.”

  “Hard to imagine that,” Lowell said, giving up on his search out the window. “You were the first Vulcan to join Starfleet, and the first Vulcan to resign. And along the way you helped destroy a world.” Lowell glanced at Spock, looking for a reaction.

  But Spock gave him none. He was used to the charges and the misconceptions by now. He felt no need to correct them. There were other solutions. “I believe young Alexander is waking up,” he said to Marita.

  The woman turned away from her recycler and smiled at Spock. “Would you?” she asked. “You’re so good with him.”

  [279] Spock nodded. Since the day he had resigned from Starfleet and sought out the SSP to take his first unexpected step in his new course to correct the errors of the past, Marita and Penn had not accepted what little payment he could make for his room and board. Thus, he felt he was obliged to contribute to their lives in other ways, such as by tutoring and helping with Alexander. He excused himself to the students and went into the small bedroom.

  Alexander’s crib module hung against the wall near a larger bed. The walls were decorated with two-dimensional images printed on sheets of plastic and paper. Spock found it ironic that many of the images depicted pristine landscapes from other systems—not colony planets but alien worlds. He wondered if Marita could imagine what these scenes would look like if the Prime Directive did not exist. From Earth’s own history, images of the fate of indigenous North Americans came to Spock. As was known now, the European colonists were not representatives of a better culture, simply a more intrusive one, and the indigenous cultures had been overwhelmed. The Federation Council was committed to ensuring that such outrages were never repeated on an interstellar scale, which is why Spock had had to be so careful and so precise in orchestrating the appearance he planned to make before them. He had no doubt that they would not be a receptive audience for what he had to say.

  Alexander stopped rocking in his crib as he heard Spock enter the darkened room. He waved his stubby arms and legs as S
pock appeared above him and gurgled happily as he was lifted into the air.

  When Spock returned to the main room, Alexander was contentedly resting against the Vulcan’s shoulder, intently tugging on a gracefully pointed ear.

  Penn came over as Spock rocked the child gently, waiting for Marita to finish at the autokitchen. “I didn’t think Vulcans liked to be touched by humans,” he said waspishly.

  Normally, when a Vulcan came into unexpected physical [280] contact with a human, or any being with an undisciplined mind, the crude contact-telepathy transmission of uncontrolled emotion could be distressing. But children were an exception. “The minds of babies are seldom confused,” Spock observed. “And, in fact, they can be quite refreshing.” However, he did have to adjust Alexander’s position against him to prevent the child from deciding to chew on the ear to which he had become so attached.

  A few moments later, the visitor chime sounded. It was an old building, so Marita couldn’t speak to the door. She had to walk to it and open it by hand.

  Lowell was the only one to recognize the man Spock had invited to join them.

  “Alonzo Richter?” the student said in awe.

  The old theoretical culturalist chased Marita back from the door by waving his black cane at her.

  “What about it, you little brat?” Richter sneered at Lowell. He shuffled into the room and looked around, licking his teeth and lips noisily. “Bargeg’l, what a dump. You actually live here, Spock?” He coughed loudly.

  Alexander twisted in Spock’s arms to see who the new intruder in his home was. Richter stuck out his tongue at the child and Alexander began to cry.

  Marita took Alexander from Spock and was jostled out of the way as the other students gathered excitedly around Richter. They all had heard his name before, even if they hadn’t recognized his face.

  “Dr. Richter,” Lowell said, “your work is the underlying structure upon which the Prime Directive is based. Are you seriously joining us to oppose it?”

  Richter frowned and made another face at the crying baby. “I’m one hundred percent behind Spock, here,” he said. “And I’ve come a long way to be able to say that, you can be vrelq sure about that.”

  The autokitchen buzzer blared and Alexander responded with screams. Marita bounced him energetically and smiled in [281] the face of the chaos. “The sandwich tubes are ready, Mr. Spock. Would you?”

  Spock dutifully went to the autokitchen to remove the sandwich tube trays.

  Richter called out to him. “And get me a bubble of ale while you’re there, Mr. Spock.”

  Spock worked quickly and efficiently, all the time preparing for what he would say in his address to the Council, and knowing that no matter how his and Richter’s plan worked out, he had to get back into space.

  The buzzer sounded again. Alexander yowled. Two more requests for ale were shouted out and someone plugged a music cube into the player.

  Spock had no doubt whatsoever. He had to get back into space, and quickly.

  SIX

  Sulu jerked awake and tried to jump from his bunk as the shipmaster’s voice roared from the overhead speakers. But he had forgotten the Queen Mary’s double-gee field. He heard something crack in his neck and fell back onto the bunk with a drawn-out groan.

  “Don’t complain,” Chekov said from the other bunk. “At least you can still move.”

  “Attention, all tislins,” Krulmadden bellowed. “This jewel of the luminous veils drops from warp in less than the time it will take you to crawl to the bridge.” Krulmadden sang a few notes as if delivering a morning concert. “That is all.”

  Sulu rolled to his side and raised his eyebrows at Chekov, even though they felt as if they weighed a hundred kilos apiece. “And cadets think that Starfleet commanders are crazy.”

  Chekov slid his legs to the edge of his bunk and slowly rose to a sitting position. “What is this ‘tislins’ he keeps calling us? Why always ‘tislins’?”

  Sulu tensed his neck to keep anything from grating, and forced himself up. At least if they ever got off this ship alive, they were both going to have muscles like iron.

  “Do you know this word?” Chekov asked.

  Sulu nodded carefully. He did.

  [283] “Well?” Chekov said.

  “I think you can figure it out, Chekov. You see, we didn’t want to have anything at all to do with the slavegirls.”

  “So? We are gentlemen. What of it?”

  “Tislins means that even if we wanted to have something to do with the slavegirls, we couldn’t.”

  Chekov waited expectantly for more.

  “Keepers of the harem, Chekov. Snip snip.”

  “Oh,” Chekov said as the realization hit home. “Cossack,” he muttered.

  The vibration in the deck abruptly changed and Sulu heard the whine of the impulse engines coming to life. The Queen Mary was much smaller than the Enterprise and the sound of her machinery traveled through her more easily.

  “We are out of warp,” Chekov said.

  Sulu sighed. “Time to meet this ‘Black Ire,’ I guess—whoa!”

  Sulu and Chekov both flew from their bunks, then slammed onto the metal deck as if they had been snapped from a whip.

  “Where did he buy his grawity generator?” Chekov complained. “Or more likely, where did he steal it? I have not felt one malfunction so badly in—”

  “Hold on,” Sulu said, pushing experimentally against the deck. The movement was far more effortless than it ever had been before on the ship. “That’s not a malfunction. The field’s been reset. It’s so weak ... it’s like Mars.”

  Chekov jumped smoothly to his feet. He picked up one of his boots from the side of the bunk, held it over his head, then dropped it. “But look how fast that fell. This is not Mars normal. This is Earth normal. We are just ... not used to it.”

  Sulu pushed off from the floor and was impressed with how painless the action was. It was better than being in Mars gravity. It was like being on the Moon.

  “I wonder why he’s reset it?” Sulu said.

  Krulmadden’s voice squawked over the ship’s intercom. “Because our guests to be are from a weaker planet, little mammals. Your shipmaster is being courteous, oh yes, indeed.”

  “We’re from a weaker planet, too,” Chekov grumbled.

  [284] “But you are not guests aboard Queen Mary,” Krulmadden crooned. “You are crew and courtesy is not required. Now to the bridge before I see what gravity setting for Jupiter does to your little hollow squishy bones!”

  Chekov sat on the edge of his bunk and pulled on his boots. “Let’s hope ‘our guests’ remain onboard for a long meeting,” he said.

  Sulu wanted to say what he was hoping for, too, but he didn’t think it was something Krulmadden would enjoy overhearing.

  The bridge of the Queen Mary was arranged in a standard configuration—it was a circular deck ringed by elevated monitoring stations, with a main viewscreen mounted in front of a helm and navigation console, and a central commander’s chair. But what wasn’t standard was the way every surface in it had been finished with gleaming horizontal strips of gold and silver plating. Beneath the blazing blue Rigel-normal lighting, Chekov had to squint to keep from being blinded by the painfully harsh reflections from the bulkheads, consoles, and deck. He saw Sulu doing the same.

  As Chekov and Sulu carefully entered the bridge from the ladderway entrance, Krulmadden whirled around in his chair to face them. More like a throne, Chekov thought. The shipmaster’s bulk flowed seamlessly into a rippling gold chair that resembled a sculpture of an alien flower bud.

  “Ah,” Krulmadden said, “so f’deraxt’l mammals can walk upright like real bipeds after all.”

  Chekov peered around the bridge, trying to see if the infamous Black Ire had already beamed aboard. But all he saw was Lasslanlin at the helm. Chekov presumed that the other mate, Artinton, was somewhere else in the ship.

  “If you are going to reset the grawity for Black Ire,” Chekov said, �
��why not reset the lighting as well?”

  “What weaklings you are,” Krulmadden jeered. “But it is the least I can do for fearsome pirate guest to be.” He rubbed a thick finger against a part of his chair where there were no [285] apparent control surfaces and the bridge lighting dimmed to a more tolerable level. Tolerable like high noon on Mercury, Chekov thought. But at least his eyes had stopped hurting. He decided Krulmadden’s unmarked chair control surfaces were the strongest proof of his paranoia yet. Even if someone managed to steal this ship from him, it would take days to learn how to run it. Though he guessed the two mates could be convinced to give up her secrets if the price were right.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Sulu suddenly asked. “A gunnery target?” He sounded as if he were ready to laugh.

  Chekov looked at the screen and saw a vessel that was even more improbable than the Queen Mary. The main hull appeared to be a leftover from the days of the old DY-500s when surplus submarine shells were reconfigured to transport cryogenic cargo through vacuum. And the warp pod slung on the back of the hull looked as if it were nothing more than a half-hearted attempt to disguise a twenty-year-old Mark II shuttle.

  “That is supposed to be the ship of a fearsome pirate?” Chekov asked. He and Sulu looked at each other and smirked.

  “It is good disguise,” Krulmadden protested. “Who suspects that Black Ire hunts the spaceways in rundown cargo ship not worth fifty credits to spit for? But little tislins ... see why Black Ire so clever.” He palmed another unmarked surface on his chair and a tactical display sprang up in a corner of the viewscreen. “Lasslanlin! Full scan on Heart of the Storm!”

  Chekov watched as the Orion mate engaged the Queen Mary’s sensors from his station. Then he waited for the results to appear on tactical. But there were no results.