Star Trek: The Hand of Kahless (19 page)

This must be the Ambassador’s son, Krenn thought, the fusion. “You do not annoy me,” he said, as the boy moved toward the door. “And I would welcome a chance to play this game.”

Krenn won the chess game, but he did not win it easily. “A pleasant game,” he said. “My compliments to a worthy opponent.”

The child nodded.

Krenn said, “That is a phrase we use at the conclusion of our game,
klin zha.
In my language it is
‘Zha riest’n, teskas tal’tai-kleon.’ ”

“Zha riest’n,”
the boy said, carefully copying Krenn’s pronunciation,
“teskas tal…la…”

“Tal’tai-kleon.”

“Tal’tai-kleon.”

“Kai,”
Krenn said, and laughed.

“Are you the Klingon Captain, sir, or the Science officer?”

“I am the Captain…of the cruiser
Fencer,
” Krenn said. He had been about to give his full name and honorific, but it had suddenly seemed unnecessary.
Rather silly.
And he was tired of introductions. “Have you ever thought of being a starship Captain?”

The boy’s lips compressed. Then he said, “I plan to be a scientist. But perhaps I will join the Starfleet.”

“The sciences are a good path. I’m sorry my Specialist isn’t here to talk to you.”

“No insult was meant, sir—”

“None was assumed.”

“There will be a logical choice.”

“Sometimes there is,” Krenn said. “Another game?”

They talked as they played. It did not affect the boy’s play, but Krenn let a bishop get away from him, and lost. The boy gave him the whole
klingonaase
phrase, perfectly accented.

“Sa tel’ren?”
Krenn said.

“What does that mean, Captain sir?”

“Two out of three.”

Krenn wondered what Vulcan children said to a fusion in their midst. The two races were similar to start with, and this one’s physical characteristics leaned to the Vulcan. The ears especially. Krenn tried to think what would have happened, in his House Gensa, to one with Vulcan ears. He seemed to feel the blood on his fingers.
Would it be green,
he wondered.

The boy moved a knight, taking one of Krenn’s rooks. He waited.

Krenn slid a pawn forward.

“Given the established balance of our skills, Captain, and other factors being equal, you cannot defeat me with the odds of a rook. It would be logical for you to resign.”

“Klingons do not resign,” Krenn said. Seven or eight years old, Akhil had said. Krenn had killed his first intelligent being when he was this one’s age. A Human starship crewman, a prize, in the Year Games.

“The sequence of moves is predictable, and barring suboptimal strategies, inevitable. The time consumed—”

“If I go to the Black Fleet, what matter that I go a little slowly?” Krenn thought of the Human, who had shouted challenge into Krenn’s face even as he died. It was an honorable death, and a glorious kill.

“What is the Black Fleet?” the Vulcan asked.

Krenn was pulled back from his memory. “One who serves his ship well, in the life we see, will serve on a ship of the Fleet when this life ends.” Krenn’s Federation vocabulary was not right for this; the words would not fit together as Dr. Tagore could make them to fit. “In the Fleet there is the death that is not death, because not the end; there is the enemy to be killed a thousand times, and each time return; and there is the laughter.”

“Laughter?” the boy said. “And enemies?” His eyes were calm, and yet almost painfully intense to Krenn, who struggled to make the languages meet, and wondered why he so badly needed to.

“Fed, Rom…others,” Krenn said. “Without
kleoni,
what would be the purpose?”

“My mother says that the spirit is eternal,” the boy said. “My father says this is true in a purely figurative sense, as the wisdom of Surak is not forgotten, though Surak is become unstructured.”

“We have one who is not forgotten,” Krenn said. “His name was Kahless. When his ship was dying, he had his hand bound to his Chair, that no one could say he left it, or that another had been in the Chair at the ship’s death. Then all his crew could escape without suspicion, because Kahless had taken on all the ship’s destiny.

“
Kahlesste kaase,
we say. Kahless’s hand.”

“This would seem a supremely logical act.”

“Logical?”
Krenn said, and then he understood. The boy was raised in his father’s culture. It was the highest praise he knew. “I think you are right,” Krenn said. “I had not perceived the logic of the situation.”

“My father says that this is his task: to communicate logic by example.”

Is that why you were caused to exist?
Krenn was thinking.
As an example?
He could see that the boy was proud of what he had just done—communicated to a Klingon! Was that not the victory? And yet he could not shout it. Vulcans did not shout.

“My mother is a teacher,” the boy said. “She also communicates. My parents are—” He looked away.

“My mother,” Krenn said, “was not of my father’s race.”

The boy turned his eyes on Krenn once more. It could not be called a stare, it was absolutely polite, but it did pierce, and the arched eyebrows cut.

“It is a custom on Earth,” the Vulcan said, “on concluding a chess game, to shake hands.”

Krenn’s liver pinched. That was not a Vulcan custom, he knew well enough. Touching a Vulcan’s hand opened the path for the touch of their minds. And
that
touch could pull out thoughts that the agonizer or the Examiner’s tools could never reach. It was said by some that it could burn the brain; Krenn did not believe this, but…

The touch,
Krenn thought,
the touch.
And he raised his right hand, slowly held it out over the chessboard, palm up.

The boy extended his own hand, above Krenn’s, palm down. A drop of water fell into Krenn’s palm.

A Vulcan sweating. And I am drenched already.

There was a choked cry from the doorway, a scream stopped at the last instant. Krenn and the boy turned together, and saw the Ambassador’s consort standing there, her whole body rigid, her knuckles bone-white against the sides of her face.

“What is this?”
the Human said.

The boy said, “We were playing a game—”

“Game!” It was half a gasp. The female looked at Krenn, and the hatred in her look was like a blow against his body.

Then she said, very calmly, without looking away from Krenn, “Your father’s looking for you. Go to him now.”

“Yes, Mother.” At the door, the boy stopped, turned, held up his hand with fingers at an angle. “Live long and prosper, Captain.”

Krenn nodded. He could still feel the hate and fear radiating from the Human. He raised his hand and saluted the boy, who bowed and went out.

“I don’t…” said the Ambassador’s consort, still angry and frightened, but now with the tension of confusion as well.

“You would fight for your line,” Krenn said. “That is a good thing. I think that is the best honor I know. That one is…” He tried to think of a praise the Human could not misinterpret. “…worthy of the stars.” He was, now, a little relieved that events had ended when they had.

The woman’s face had softened, though her stance was still rigid. “Perhaps I misunderstood,” she said. “I am sorry. It can be hard to…protect a child, on Vulcan.”

“You fear the Klingon,” Krenn said. “In this is no need for apology.”

The meetings dragged on for three more days. Krenn had a sort of waking nightmare that the Federation had lost or forgotten the procedures necessary to end their conferences, and the sessions would continue until all those present crumbled into dust around rotting tables.

Then, rather suddenly, a hammer came down on a wooden block and it was all over, and even more suddenly diplomats and attachés were headed for their homeworlds, each packing a shuttle-load of luggage…each but one.

“These are all the goods you require?” Krenn asked Dr. Tagore. “We do not have such a mass constraint.”

“There’s more there than I can carry, and that’s already too much. But I’ve become used to having certain things around…softer than I used to be.” Krenn looked at the Human, who seemed made of dry brown sticks, and wondered at that.

The Ambassador bent over one of his cases, examined the label. “They’re going to seal my apartment, I hear, and fill it with nitrogen. If I don’t return, I suppose they can just bolt a plaque on the door.” He pointed at one of the smaller cases. “This is a data encryptor. I’ll have to warn your Security people that it’ll destroy itself if the case is opened. Starfleet wanted me to take a complete subspace radio rig, three hundred kilos plus spares, not that I’d know what to do if it needed spares. The ComInt man said a Klingon set would be bugged.” He looked up, smiled. “Monitored, that is. Of course it will, I said. What would I be saying that I would not want heard?”

He sat down on a suitcase. “I’ve brought quite a few clothes.
Zan
Akhil tells me your ship’s laundry doesn’t synthesize from basic fiber, as ours do. And I’m not built much like the Imperial Race.” He looked at the time display on his wrist. “That ‘demonstration’ of Marcus van Diemen’s, whatever it is, is in twenty minutes. Shall we go, Captain?”

“It would please me, Thought Master, to be called Krenn.”

“Honored, Krenn. And you must call me Emanuel.” He laughed. “Hoping that isn’t blasphemy.”

They went to a small auditorium, half full of Starfleet Naval and Technical personnel. Akhil was already there, in a front-row seat; Krenn sat next to him. As Dr. Tagore prepared to sit, a junior officer whispered in his ear. “A moment, Krenn. I seem to be wanted.” The officer led him away. Krenn looked after them until they were lost in the crowd; he was remembering that the people along the train route, the ones with torches, had been called
demonstrators.

The Humans all found seats. Admiral van Diemen stepped onto the dais, looking the very image of heroism in his full-dress uniform and weapon with gilded hilt. “Good afternoon, fellow officers…and our honored guests. It is a Human custom to provide something special at a guest’s departure, so they may carry with them an enduring memory.

“Now, through the latest breakthrough in Federation scientific research, we wish to present to you something very special indeed.
Lights.
”

The room darkened. “Another
gagny
hologram show?” Akhil muttered.

There was an electronic squeal, a rising, oscillating hum. On the dais, three columns of light appeared, took shapes.

Three armed soldiers were transporting onto the stage.

Krenn went for his pistol. It was, he thought, a crude trap, but deadly enough; but there were many targets behind him, and he would die spitting challenge at them, and not all of them would live to hear his last words.

His arm would not move. He turned his head. Akhil had three fingers tight on Krenn’s arm, pinching the nerves, blocking the muscle. “No,” he said, not loud but urgently. “Not yet.”

“What are you doing?”

“If I’m wrong,” Akhil said coolly, “kill me first.”

The armed Humans solidified; the mechanical noise died away. The soldiers did not move, nor did their weapons come to bear on the Klingons; Krenn saw they were frozen in a sort of heroic tableau.

The lights came up. Krenn winced. No one was moving yet.

“The most important development in translator applications in fifty years,” Admiral van Diemen was saying. “Thirty years in development, and now certified safe for intelligent life.”

The Humans were applauding. Krenn looked at Akhil. Akhil released Krenn’s arm, said very quietly, “Now we know.”

As the clapping subsided, Admiral van Diemen said, in a completely friendly tone, “I hope, Captain, that you and your Science officer will take word of this breakthrough to your own physicists.”

“Of course I will, Admiral,” Krenn said. He took out his communicator, glanced at Akhil; the Specialist nodded.

“Captain to
Fencer.
”

Kelly responded. Krenn snapped a line of Battle Language.

“Captain, are you—”

“The situation is stable, Kelly. Action.”

“Acting.”

Akhil stood, muttering, “Don’t want to land on my butt,” and flickered golden, and evaporated without a sound.

Around Krenn, there was a silence like the silence of vacuum. Then there was a single sound of applause: Krenn turned to see Dr. Tagore clapping furiously, the fluid called tears rolling down his cheeks as he laughed.

“Our physicists will indeed be interested,” Krenn said to Admiral van Diemen, who stood gripping the podium with both hands. “They will want very much to know why your system makes that terrible noise.”