Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Page 19

  “Fascinating,” Spock murmured. “Were the Watraii always this cold, this vindictive?”

  “Why,” Ruanek murmured back, “do you care?”

  Spock raised an eyebrow. “I wish to understand them in the hope, one day, of making peace with them.”

  Ruanek glanced at him sharply, as though about to tell Spock just what a Romulan-in-exile thought of that idea, but then remembered where he was and merely shrugged.

  “Some manner of ceremony appears to be about to take place,” Data commented.

  “Data?” Ruanek asked. “What do you—Oh. I see.”

  “Indeed,” Spock said, keeping his voice expressionless. “I believe that we are about to watch a Watraii execution.”

  There was nothing to be done but watch, not when the odds were three against forty. From their new hiding places behind more of the endless rocks, they saw the children line up in perfectly straight ranks and the adults line up across from them in their own equally straight ranks.

  Down the space left between the two ranks came five more adult Watraii. Four of them were wearing the first unmarked masks—all four a stark, sterile white—that the watchers had seen.

  Are these Watraii priests? Spock wondered. Or are they perhaps a form of ritual police?

  The fifth figure was clearly the prisoner—or was that, perhaps, the criminal? His arms were held fast in metal restraints. He stopped when the white-masked Watraii did and stood rigidly still, either holding himself in such complete self-control that it rivaled a Vulcan’s, or that he was under the effect of some powerful drug.

  No one spoke. Moving with almost mechanical precision, the four white-masked Watraii swiftly stripped the prisoner of his insignia and his mask, revealing a dead-white, blank-eyed face. What made the proceedings utterly eerie was the complete lack of any sound other than the howling of the wind and the occasional faint crunching of gravel underfoot.

  Then, as the prisoner continued to stand resolutely silent, his pale face still emotionless, the white-masked Watraii caught him by the restraints and forced him forward to where a metal pole rose out of the rocks. Now at last he began to struggle, but it was too late. Before he could break free, the four had fastened his restraints to the pole. He struggled against the pole, then gave up and stood in resigned silence. The four white-masked Watraii turned away from him as one and strode away.

  As soon as the four white-masked Watraii had moved, all the Watraii stepped back from the prisoner as well—quite a way back and with more than a little unmilitary haste, Spock noted.

  Metal pole, he realized. Metal restraints. The means of execution was suddenly all too obvious.

  We cannot intervene, Spock reminded himself grimly. There are simply too many Watraii.

  Several tense moments of total silence slid by.

  Then lightning suddenly shot down from the stormy sky in one thick, blinding blue-white bolt. It struck the metal pole with a sizzling crack. Surrounded by light, the savage energy shooting around and through him, the prisoner convulsed again and again in violent agony, mouth open in a silent scream, skin blackening, smoke swirling up from his body.

  At last, mercifully, it was over. The prisoner slumped limply, lifelessly, in the restraints. As the white-masked Watraii moved forward to examine the corpse, the sickeningly sweet stench of burned flesh roiled into the air toward Spock, and he fought not to retch.

  The sudden death and stench were more than Ruanek’s already tight Romulan nerves could endure. “Are these the people you want to befriend?” he snapped at Spock.

  It was said with Ruanek’s not-quite-suppressed impulsiveness—and just a touch too loudly.

  Ruanek bit back an oath as he realized what he’d just done. “Sorry about that, but here they come. Too many to fight…” He glanced wryly at Spock. “Looks as though we get to meet the Watraii here and now.”

  “Necessity decides for us,” Spock told Ruanek and Data, “and it does so quickly and logically. Let them take me. It is the best way for me to get to Chekov.”

  “Spock—”

  “No. You and Data are the strongest and swiftest. You have the better chance to make the final assault on the site where the artifact is kept. There is no time to argue,” he added sharply. “Now, go!”

  Not waiting to see if Ruanek and Data had listened to him, Spock stepped out of hiding, one hand raised in the Vulcan salute, the other held out from his body to show he hid no weapons.

  “Greetings,” he said to the oncoming Watraii. “I come in peace.”

  Nineteen

  Memory

  The lunglock fever that had scythed through Shavokh’s population had spared Karatek, but it left him susceptible to the least discomfort, including the wires that linked him to the coronet. He flinched now at the brief pain.

  “We maintain course. Those of us who can remotely be considered fit for duty are serving, at the minimum, double shifts. With the death of Commander S’lovan—

  “I must acknowledge the military and technical assistance of—” He could feel himself tiring. Rather than form mental “words,” he allowed faces to form in his memory. The coronet would preserve them. What he had to say next, however, required careful thought.

  “Of the total ship’s complement, fifty-five percent have already perished of lunglock fever. Of the fifteen percent who remain disabled, approximately eight percent are projected to suffer various degrees of disability. My staff is planning a memorial service, at which time those katra s we did manage to preserve will be released.

  “An online fleetwide council has been called to discuss whether we should continue on our present heading or choose some other option.”

  Sending the mutineers off in a shuttle had done no good. The old quarrel had surfaced again.

  Whether or not anyone had a clear set of options, however, a fleet council was a positive development. It meant that on each ship, at least one communications specialist and one backup survived to make and maintain contact as the fleet hurtled through space.

  Karatek sighed and shifted position. Vertigo struck. He reeled and flung out a hand. The change of position made him cough until spots danced before his eyes as he fought to control his breathing. When the spasms finally subsided, and he wiped his lips, his hand came away streaked with green. He had been assured that, if he had survived for this long, his lungs would strengthen. Eventually.

  Once again, he was alone in his mind. During the worst of his own bout with the fever, T’Partha’s katra had decided that it was weakening him and released itself. Karatek missed T’Partha’s presence in his thoughts.

  He did not know whether it was fortunate or not, but it appeared that he was going to survive. So was Shavokh, although at the height of the epidemic, Karatek gathered that he had raved about how it would become a ship of the dead, hurtling through space until it ran into a meteor, disintegrated, or the universe perished in fire, as Vulcan’s oldest tales prophesied.

  “I have not the strength to calculate the odds of all of the great ships’ populations falling ill within 1.3 years of one another,” he told the coronet.

  In what one of the technocrats had described as a mathematical monstrosity, the fleet had fallen afoul of coincidence. No sooner had S’task collapsed of the infectious pericarditis that had killed more than half of the people on board Rea’s Helm than Shavokh was struck by a lunglock fever epidemic of its own.

  Back on Vulcan, modern medicine—plus the Mother World’s heat and distinct lack of humidity—had reduced lunglock to an unpleasant few days of antibiotics and bed rest at worst. But in early Vulcan history, it had rampaged through cities and decimated the northwestern continent.

  Shavokh, however, was cold and, despite the best efforts of its maintenance staff to reclaim all free moisture, much damper than the Vulcan norm. Lunglock tended to worsen at night: the relative scarcity of full-spectrum light on board only made it worse. Besides, years of radiation exposure within a sealed environment had weakened everyone’s resis
tance.

  A secret sorrow was that the lunglock fever might well have been exacerbated by the gas that T’Olryn had released throughout the ship. But as soon as the worst of the contagion was over, T’Olryn had resigned her post as healer and retreated to her quarters. Her meditations had been so rigorous that when she had emerged—only after the chief healer had threatened to put her in sickbay and keep her there—the tiny, imperious woman had been thin, silent, and so humble that Solor had to fight down horrified rage.

  Karatek could not tell his daughter-in-law it was illogical to blame herself. T’Olryn had done what she considered necessary. All else followed. If the healers had not been so necessary, they would have been disgraced. As it was, their casualties were far greater than those of any other population segment on board, not because of guilt, but because, even as they too fell ill, they had sought to reach out with their minds to the people under their care. Their duty had been their expiation.

  “I grieve,” Karatek continued. Then he stopped and removed the coronet. His daughter-in-law had lost her way, but she was, at the core, a logical being; she would recover. Especially with Solor to help her.

  Not so his eldest surviving biological child. T’Alaro, first of the daughters born to him and T’Vysse during the long journey, had been one of the first to fall ill. T’Vysse had nursed her until she collapsed, and then Sarissa had taken over. If sheer force of will could have kept that tiny heart beating, Sarissa would have succeeded. But the little girl died and was thrust out into the sanctity of the Great Dark with a rough-cut gemstone, which Sarissa had treasured since her betrothed had died, tucked into her best robes. Then she had devoted herself to helping the remaining healers restore T’Vysse to health.

  Karatek knew he would find T’Vysse in their cabin, wrapped in the robe she had to be coaxed to change, sitting where she always sat these endless days, looking out at the stars.

  Sarissa would be seated with her, her usual fire muted with grief. After the death of her betrothed back on the Forge, she had refused all suitors, not that there had ever been many. Karatek had always considered that illogical. Sarissa was beautiful in a fierce sort of way, highly intelligent, and not just fertile, but healthy. He would have thought she was a highly desirable mate.

  It appeared now, however, that that problem was solved. Serevan was seated in their living space, outside T’Vysse’s private quarters. As Karatek entered, he rose.

  “When Sarissa’s duty shift ended, she wanted to come back to her quarters and sit with her mother,” Serevan explained. “I asked leave to escort her. I apologize for my intrusion, and will take my leave.”

  Serevan was tall, broad of shoulder, dark of hair and eyes. Like Sarissa, he had passed through the epidemic unscathed. Builder of ships, miner of planetoids, if Serevan survived to make planetfall, he was the sort of man who could be a builder of worlds. Where he stood, he would put down roots. He was earth to Sarissa’s fire.

  If Sarissa had brought this man into a house of mourning, she might already have pledged herself.

  “Don’t go,” Karatek said in a voice he tried to make sound healthy, vigorous.

  Although Serevan looked down and away with perfect courtesy, he was so much taller than Karatek that their eyes still met. “Your son Lovar was my agemate. I had wished to pay my respects before, but you were ill. I grieve with thee.”

  Karatek inclined his head, not wanting Serevan to see the sorrow in his eyes.

  “Sir, I want you to know, I respect your daughter’s character. Her strength.”

  “Worry not. Life calls to life.” Karatek quoted a maxim from the Third Analects. “We will speak of this later,” he added. “Know now, however, that I do not disapprove.”

  Serevan looked down and aside, but not before Karatek saw how his eyes warmed. It was logical to be…pleased that life called to life, that Sarissa had made her choice, and that she had chosen well.

  As had Karatek himself. As he entered the tiny cabin, his eyes went instantly to the viewscreen that showed the distant star field, tinged with blue from the speed at which Shavokh flew. In the shadow beside the viewscreen, T’Vysse huddled in her usual chair.

  Sarissa rose somewhat uncertainly. “Father,” she began.

  Karatek raised a hand. “We will speak with you later about your bonding, your mother and I. After the council meeting.”

  He gestured for her to go to him.

  A flash of Sarissa’s eyes told Karatek that she was indeed eager to join Serevan. She bowed, then slipped out. The door whispered shut behind her without sticking, which led Karatek to deduce his daughter had, at some point, asked Serevan to repair it.

  Alone with T’Vysse at last, Karatek knelt beside her chair. With paired fingers, he touched her hand, then her face. Abandoning control, Karatek drew his wife into his arms. He wrapped his overrobe about them both to warm her. T’Vysse shivered once, then clung to him.

  Warmth seeped through Karatek’s shipsuit as T’Vysse at last succumbed to the release of tears. The scent of salt mingled with the herbal fragrance that, even now, rose from his wife’s hair. He had not realized just how much silver shone in the simple coil into which Sarissa’s capable hands had braided it.

  “T’Alaro never got to see the desert,” T’Vysse whispered. “Never touched minds with a boy we chose for her. Never had a real life.”

  Very tenderly, Karatek raised his wife’s chin in his fingers. Her skin was too soft, almost papery from ill health and sorrow.

  “Thy logic is at fault,” he replied, letting his eyes warm as he looked into hers. “Our child was cared for. She knew that. Her life was of great value. It was only too short. It is for us to give it meaning.”

  The question was, how? Out of answers at last, Karatek simply knelt in shadows and starlight, holding his wife.

  After a time, he raised his head and looked into her eyes again. Although he tried to keep his glance steadfast, she knew him too well for him to be able to keep up the pretense of courage and resolve. She had to know what the loss of their children had cost him. She had to know, too, how the period of her isolation had left him abandoned. His own mourning had been profound. If she had left him without anchor, she must have wandered so far in spirit that she might never have returned.

  “I have failed thee,” she whispered.

  “Never,” he told her.

  Absolved, she was able, from some recess of her spirit, to offer him strength.

  “I must do my share again. What has been happening?” she asked.

  “There is a fleet council today, my wife,” he said. Still weary from the aftereffects of lunglock, he could not immediately calculate how long it had been since he had been able to discuss fleet business with her.

  “Indeed?” T’Vysse tilted her head. “And what shall thee say?”

  He answered with the truth. “I have no idea.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Now thy logic is at fault. You yourself told me it was our duty to give our child’s short life meaning.”

  Pulling out of his hold, she shed her houserobe and reached for the gown and tabard that Sarissa had laid out on the bed just as she had every day, hoping to coax her mother into dressing, into sitting at table with the family, rejoining her world.

  “What are you doing?” Karatek asked.

  T’Vysse had always been a woman of great peace of spirit. Now, she seemed to have absorbed some of Sarissa’s fire.

  “Dressing, my husband. Then I am going to the fleet council with you. Any citizen may speak, and I intend to.”

  Even the short walk from Karatek’s quarters to Shavokh’s main amphitheater consumed most of his strength. T’Vysse’s support, her renewed spirits, were as gratifying as they were reassuring. He did not even criticize himself for feeling regret when she removed her hand from his arm and seated herself in the front row.

  Karatek took his place at the council table. He knew himself to be moving like a man in his second century, trying not to strain muscles that might
provoke a damaging paroxysm of coughing. He looked over at the communications officer, then nodded.

  “Ready to transmit, T’Kehr,” she said.

  “Sir” had always been Commander S’lovan.

  As each ship confirmed transmission, images formed on the viewscreens, like mirrors set in a circle. Karatek raised a hand to his temples as the reflected images dizzied him. When his head cleared, he could again discern subtle differences among the ships. That screen showed the soothing deep reds and ambers of Sunheart’s bulkheads; the one to the left, the display of archaic armor preserved behind the speaker’s table on Gorget; while a third revealed the glowing crest and cheekpieces of the helm on Rea’s Helm, its color somewhat distorted because the flagship had sped ahead of the rest of the fleet.

  Full-spectrum light and heat panels rendered Shavokh’s auditorium pleasantly warm in an attempt to ward off relapses into lunglock fever. In Rea’s Helm’s principal meeting place, every healer who could rise from bed clustered around those people, swathed in silvery blankets and attached to portable cardiac monitors, who had survived.

  Firestorm’s amphitheater was the only one to boast a crowd. That ship had been spared the epidemics that had wiped out from fifty to seventy percent of the other ships’ populations. Karatek would have to monitor Shavokh to learn whether people’s envy and resentment remained under control.

  He waited, staring out across the distances that separated the ships at flushed or livid faces. Many of the survivors were almost skeletal. Some had lost much or all of their hair, while others half lay across two seats, attached to tubes or monitors. Their survival was a tribute not just to the healers’ skill, but to Vulcans’ innate strength.

  How long could they go on like this?

  It was not a rhetorical question.

  Karatek made himself listen to the whispers that shivered across the amphitheater. Was it true that Karatek would stay in command? Was it true that S’task was really dying? Was it true that the ships’ engines were breaking down? Had all the frozen genetic material been destroyed in that power outage on board Vengeance? Had it been deliberate? Even if they reached a habitable world, would there be enough of them to create a viable community?