Vulcan’s Soul Book II - Exiles Read online

  “An honor guard?” Karatek asked, raising his eyebrows at T’Partha. “Commissioner, I hardly think…”

  She had never been a woman for superfluous formality. Karatek knew that if he played the role of leader aboard Shavokh, he did so only with her cooperation.

  “There is a crowd forming,” T’Partha confirmed his fears. “You can hear it in the corridor. And it would be unwise to allow any provocation.”

  “From security or from the crowd?” asked Solor.

  T’Vysse and Sarissa fixed him with identical glares.

  “My brother’s manners may be atrocious,” Sarissa announced, “but his question is appropriate. That is why we will accompany you to the shuttle. All of us.”

  T’Vysse raised her eyebrows at Karatek as if picking up one of the antique swords that some people brought on board, either smuggled or as part of their weight allowance. Karatek knew better than to argue with her. More: she was right. Even the most battle-hardened te-Vikram would not offer violence to women who were visibly pregnant, like T’Vysse, or old enough to take a mate, like Sarissa, who remained unbonded after her betrothed since childhood had been slain in the desert defending her.

  T’Partha drew herself up, always her habit before she arrived at what she considered the sense of the meeting. No one sensed how opinions flowed into a consensus better than she or channeled the information to the scientific, technical, and security staff more diplomatically. She had greater skill with the arts of the mind than anyone else he knew who was not an indweller on Seleya or at Gol. He would rely on her at the coming council.

  But right now, he would have to rely on her, as well as security, to get to the shuttle that would take him there.

  Before leaving, his guards put on their helms. The heavy cheekpieces made them look curiously faceless, symbolizing the fact that the law was no respecter of persons.

  That some on Vulcan disagreed with this maxim had been one cause of the exile. The rule of law: many had already died back on the homeworld to defend it. Now, each year, more in exile died to preserve it.

  Streon and T’Via formed up ahead and behind Karatek and T’Partha. T’Vysse and their children joined what Karatek began to think of as a procession. Lovar, their middle son—the eldest now remaining to him—was standing watch. He had inherited Karatek’s gift for science and his mother’s dislike of the politics in which Karatek regretted involving her.

  (“Am I an indweller, to be thus secluded?” she had demanded of him. “We all dwell within these ships; seclusion is not only illogical, it is impossible.”)

  Streon reviewed the small party. As always, Karatek felt a moment’s surprise that a security guard had chosen to take an S-name in honor of Surak, now long dead. But he supposed that keeping order was, in itself, a logical activity.

  “Ready,” Streon announced through the com link built into his helm and opened the door.

  Noise erupted in the thin air as they walked down the corridor. The bleakness of its metal walls had been concealed, partly, by a mosaic of the land around Seleya, worked in cubes of glass that gleamed in the steady overhead lights.

  “Let us pass, let us pass,” Streon’s and T’Via’s voices were insistent monotones as they guided Karatek, T’Partha at his side, past people who pressed against the mosaics. Someone had chipped away some of the tesserae that had gone to form the image of the Gate of ShiKahr. Karatek saw Streon pause and quite obviously make a mental note for future investigation: casual disregard for public property was a hazard to the ship, even in so small a thing. Survival lay in detail.

  He knew better than to turn to see how T’Vysse fared. For one thing, she had already rebuked him with “I am only pregnant, not helpless” three times just in the last day. For another, he knew well that their children had taken her arms and were guiding her. Besides, he knew T’Via had medical training.

  As they edged through the gesturing, shouting crowd—no Surak followers there, to be sure—T’Partha kept up a far-from-casual flow of conversation. Duty rosters. The agenda of the conference they were to attend. It was meant to reassure, and it more or less succeeded.

  The guards whisked them into the welcome silence of the nearest ship’s lift.

  “No doubt the crowd will be worse at the shuttlebay,” Karatek observed.

  Behind him, T’Vysse sighed.

  Do you regret the decision to leave home, my wife? Karatek forbore to ask. He remembered their small, walled villa in ShiKahr. Every creak in the walkway leading to it, every splash of the fountain in the pebbled courtyard, every line of the Forge beyond its walls came to mind, long gone, yet instantly familiar and loved beyond all logic. We have here all we need: the hope of Vulcan’s safety and of a better life at journey’s end. And our integrity, he told himself.

  You protest overmuch.

  Streon and T’Via tilted their heads, listening to the communications links inset in their helms. Their shoulders stiffened.

  “I agree. We face quite the sendoff,” T’Partha remarked.

  Streon awarded her a nod, tribute to the logic of her conclusion, if not her irony—although Surak too had been a master of the ironic reply. Karatek had taken more than one blow from it.

  “Brace yourself,” Solor told his sister. With a composure that had more to do with familiarity than with any control he had learned from Surak, he disregarded her hiss of rebuke.

  Even though Solor had legally been an adult for decades, his elder sister still sometimes tried to correct him. The results would have frustrated her profoundly if her control—and her courtesy—had not become so strong.

  “How is it out there?” Karatek asked Streon.

  “Crowded,” he replied.

  In a Vulcan ship! In a ship intended only to wage peace and find a new home! Karatek felt his eyes heat.

  He had already disgraced himself once today; he would not do so again. And when he returned from the council, he promised himself he would spend more time in meditation and less time recording events of what had already become a most painful Fifth of Tasmeen indeed.

  The lift door hissed open. The cries of the crowd pushed at him like heavy gravity. Government on board Shavokh was more personal and therefore noisier than on Vulcan.

  Karatek and T’Partha had expected to be met by people protesting various policies, people pleading for a chance to rejoin families, for lab space, for permission to demonstrate a new technique to the council. They had even expected protests such as had confronted them in the corridor outside Karatek’s quarters.

  What they did not expect was what they saw blocking their access to the shuttle, which had withdrawn its long boarding ramp: a party of male te-Vikram, all but snarling at the security that, thus far, held them in check. They wore the gemmed regalia that Karetek knew they brought out only for the most solemn occasions. At their hips, they wore the triangular ceremonial blades of te-Vikram warrior-priests. They each held a long bundle, wrapped in green, glittering fabric that they unwrapped to produce a lirpa, one end bladed, the other a blunt, deadly war-hammer. When they presented arms, three additional te-Vikram stepped forward. Two carried systras. As they jangled the metal frames, the hundreds of bells strung on the instruments produced a painfully shrill chime that carried the message: Pay attention. Here is danger.

  And there stood danger itself, unarmed, but potentially explosive.

  The systra bearers flanked a man whose too-taut posture and blazing eyes were explained by the sash wound round his waist.

  “How did they get in here?” T’Partha asked T’Via.

  The guard murmured into the com built into her helm.

  “Subterfuge,” she replied. “They claimed to have reserved a cargo hold for a religious rite. Under the circumstances”— she gestured at the sashed man, clearly in the grips of the Blood Fires—“that would only have been logical. A bonding ceremony would gain them access as well as the right to bring religious articles into the area. Once inside, they rushed the shuttlebay.”

&
nbsp; “If there was to be a bonding,” Solor asked, “where is this man’s mate?”

  It was a logical enough question. He edged his way out of the lift, moving toward his father.

  “Observe the cloak on the deck,” said Solor. “The color of pure water, running over silvery stone. A poor enough attempt at seclusion of the bondmate before the ceremony. Deceit is not quite honorable in the strictest tradition, but it allowed them to smuggle in one more warrior.”

  “Get back!” Streon’s voice, raised to a most illogical pitch, echoed in the shuttlebay. After all, Pon farr was only an aspect of Vulcan biology, not a plague. As disciples of Surak, whose disciplines prescribed regular meditation, Solor and Streon were actually less likely to suffer from the deadliest aspects of the Fires.

  That relative immunity to the Fires had also created some resentment on both sides: Surak’s disciples considered the te-Vikram weak-willed, a judgment that the te-Vikram, understandably enough, resented, considering they deemed the people of the cities soft. And the question of mates had never been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.

  T’Via’s presence might be provocation, although she was a bonded woman. But the sight of Sarissa, unbonded and not even pledged, represented oil, ready to be poured upon a fire.

  T’Partha directed a warning glance at Karatek. Seeing that no priestess or matriarch of the te-Vikram kin was present to conduct the rites—and no intended bride present—Karatek stepped forward.

  “May one ask,” he raised his voice, “what the problem is? Aside, of course, from the obvious,” he added, with a glance toward the man in the grips of the Fires.

  A cloaked te-Vikram pushed his way forward but was brought up short against Streon, who halted him. The cloaked man’s hood fell back as he attempted to push past three more guards, who came up fast. Restrained, he stood there and simply glared. He was a man in late middle life, and though it had been many years since he, like the others of his clan, had walked the desert, his hair was still sun-reddened, his skin weathered.

  “N’Keth!” Solor said. “Do you countenance this intrusion on my father’s duties?”

  The situation had just improved minutely, Karatek decided. N’Keth and Solor had a long history, since the time during Solor’s rite of passage into legal adulthood when N’Keth had tried to kidnap the boy and take him back to his clan. Solor’s counterattack, his escape, and their subsequent reunion on board the shuttle taking them all to the Shavokh, had made for a grudging, ironic respect over the years of the journey. And it hadn’t hurt that Solor had interceded just when Rovalat, Solor’s teacher for the kahs-wan ordeal, had been trying to pound N’Keth’s head into a paste against a bulkhead.

  “N’Veyan requires that shuttle,” the te-Vikram elder told Solor. “His intended mate awaits him.”

  Karatek glanced quickly back at T’Partha. “The rule restricting travel was created to protect resources, not to cause madness and loss of life,” he murmured. They could afford one shuttle trip if it would save N’Veyan’s life and perhaps that of his intended mate. Many women could withstand the Fires without a mate, but there were always some who died.

  T’Partha inclined her head. Her eyes were remote. “The law is the law. It is no respecter of persons.”

  “It is only a rule!” Sarissa said. “Surely, in this case, the needs of the one…”

  Drawing a deep breath, T’Partha cast aside her cloak. She had aged during the journey, Karatek saw. There was a chance she might be considered a matriarch, venerable enough to mediate the ceremony of bonding, even one that still lacked a bride.

  N’Veyan looked toward T’Partha like a pilgrim, lost in the desert, sighting water. He lurched forward as if he were going to attack, or fall. At the last moment, he steadied himself sufficiently to kneel at her feet.

  T’Partha reached out with joined fingers to touch his temple. Her hand scarcely shook at all. Karatek revised upward his opinion of her yet again.

  “My eyes are flame,” N’Veyan whispered. “My blood is flame.”

  T’Partha’s eyes filled with a cool pity. Perhaps this day of memory would not be marked by the loss of yet another life.

  “The law was not intended to cause loss of life.” T’Partha nodded as she spoke to Karatek, then turned back to N’Keth.

  “Who is this man’s intended mate?” she asked him.

  Wrong question, Karatek realized as Solor stepped forward.

  N’Keth’s face went remote, and N’Veyan gathered himself as if to spring at T’Partha.

  “You’ve just violated their customs,” he hissed at T’Partha. “Te-Vikram seclude their mates before the ceremony and never mention women’s names before strangers. Ask who her family is, instead.” Louder, he cried, “Wait! If you tell me who her family is, I will bring her back to you.”

  “Unattended?” asked N’Keth. “Or would you send attendant males to guard her?”

  He turned his back on T’Partha.

  “I am the father of a family,” Karatek said. “What use have I for another man’s mate?”

  N’Veyan looked wildly around. Night and day, Karatek thought. The madness of blood fever makes him think I’ve challenged, and he is looking for a way of invoking Kal-if-fee.

  He touched T’Partha’s shoulder.

  “Kal-if-farr,” she intoned.

  “Where is the bride?” demanded N’Keth. The systra shook wildly. “The law is that if a bonding is forestalled, another bride must be provided.”

  N’Keth looked over at Sarissa. “You are my former captor’s sister. You are unbonded, though not of the order of unbonded. Need N’Veyan call challenge on your father and brother to win you? Or shall I add your bloodline to my family peacefully?”

  T’Vysse stepped in front of her daughter.

  Solor leapt between his old adversary and his elder sister. “When I was a child, I defeated you,” he began.

  “Which is why I rejoice at the opportunity to form a family relationship with you through N’Veyan,” N’Keth replied. He glanced appreciatively at Sarissa. “She is fit to be the mother of heroes.”

  Sarissa looked down, in brief, obligatory modesty—and to hide the fact that her eyes were flame—the fire of pure rage, a loss of control for which she would not readily forgive herself. Then, she turned on her heel and walked back into the lift, escorted by T’Vysse.

  “Come on,” said Solor. “What are you going to do? Fight me again? Or will you have N’Veyan do it? He is younger than I, true, but he is weakened by the blood fever. Even in the Plak-tow, he is no match for me, or for Security here.”

  Karatek stepped forward, waving aside the attempts of Streon and three other members of his team to push him and T’Partha toward the lift. They were all one people: scientists, adepts, te-Vikram, even politicians. And if they were all one people, if they were all going to survive, he needed to attempt to resolve this problem.

  “What do you think you are doing to our sacred customs? We have offered you a solution that will preserve life, and you spurn it. I submit that it is not logical to die and forget all you are.”

  “Some things are more important than life,” N’Keth said.

  “So they are, but this is about furthering life, carrying it to a next generation. So this, logically, is not one of those ‘some things.’”

  He strode forward. “Let me go and bring N’Veyan’s betrothed back. Let us leave challenges behind as one more remnant of the Mother World that we left on her sands. Please.”

  “Let him challenge, Karatek,” came a voice that still carried remnants of its former strength. It was old Rovalat, who had lost so many of his kahs-wan class the year the te-Vikram raided. “T’Kehr Karatek suggests we work together, and I concur. You do not? Well enough. Space yourself. Walk out those gates into the desert of stars as you would return to the Womb of Fire at your life’s end. We can use the additional food and water. And we will make sure your names are forgotten.”

  N’Keth stepped forward, his eyes flashin
g.

  “Look at him,” Solor said again. “I have refused N’Veyan’s challenge. My sister, who is not of the order of unbonded, has left this place. So, N’Veyan’s only hope lies in finding his true mate. Give these elders her family’s name, and they will bring her back. Refuse, and lose another member of your kin. Reject as you may the teachings of Surak, even you must logically conclude that you have lost enough kinsmen already.”

  N’Keth looked over at N’Veyan, who was trembling visibly. One of his attendants set down his systra with a final discordant chime of bells to kneel beside him and help him stay on his feet.

  “Come,” urged Karatek. “Let us help you!”

  N’Keth’s shoulders slumped, but only for an instant. “Seeing that she stands as matriarch here, I will tell her.” He pointed with a stubborn chin at T’Partha.

  “See you bring her back swiftly. Truly, I do not think he can last long,” N’Keth added.

  “My word on it,” said Karatek.

  Pulling his dagger, N’Keth drew its tip across his arm, letting three drops of blood fall onto the deck. Reversing the blade, he passed it to Karatek while Streon restrained himself from leaping forward to confiscate it.

  Karatek drew his own blood, a sacrifice of life and water to match N’Keth’s.

  At Karatek’s gesture, T’Partha came forward. N’Keth knelt. As T’Partha bent over him, he raised his head to whisper the name and clan of N’Veyan’s promised mate. Karatek could not hear them.

  “They will meet at the appointed place,” T’Partha proclaimed.

  She turned and swept forward toward the shuttle. Its crew, clearly, had been observing because, as she advanced, its boarding ramp slid forward. As Karatek followed, the systras sounded, impossibly shrill, until he and T’Partha were safely in the shuttle, its ramp retracted, and its doors sealed against the noise.

  “Is the bay empty now?” asked the pilot.