Where will I go now? How will I stay alive?
Nothing moved in KothaVillage, save the gathering chill wind and the door of the Healer’s hut. The injured Terran emerged, the rest of his colleagues evidently having returned to the skies. How much had he seen and heard of what had just transpired?
The shorter man’s eyes were dark and piercing. Angry. But Lojur sensed that he was not the target of that anger. The Starfleeter extended a hand in Lojur’s direction. Lojur approached the Terran silently, and no one in the village made a move to block his path.
The wind was kicking up leaves and dust, its icy fingers cutting right through Lojur’s thin robe, making him shiver. He had never felt so cold and alone before in his young life.
The Terran was glaring at the crowd, which regarded him with wide-eyed curiosity. Then he slowly and deliberately removed his maroon uniform jacket, placing it gently around Lojur’s narrow shoulders. The Elders remained standing statuelike in the square, their faces impassive.
The human removed a small device from his belt and spoke into it. As long as he lived, Lojur would never forget the peculiar lilt and inflection of the man’s speech.
“Chekov to
Reliant.
Lojur noticed that Chekov was staring at him inquisitively. “Commander, are you listening to me?”
“Violence has no place in the Halkan heart,” Lojur repeated, startled out of his reverie.
“Violence is often the way of the universe, Commander,” Chekov said, leaning forward. “And that universe is [173] inhabited by many who are considerably less gentle than the people of Halka.”
His earlier anger at Lieutenant Akaar now largely spent, Lojur found himself nodding. “I think there are few who understand that better than I do, sir.” Especially now.
Chekov’s eyes reflected concern. “I don’t doubt it. If you need some time off to help you through this—”
Lojur interrupted. “No, sir. Staying busy is the way to healing. As are the writings of Tharn the Wise.”
“Such as?”
“ ‘When one sheds the blood of others,’ ” Lojur quoted, “ ‘the stains are indelible. In war, even the victor can never come home again.’ ”
Rising from behind his desk, Chekov said, “That’s a good principle to live by. When the universe lets you get away with it, that is. If you need to discuss this further later on, Lieutenant, my door is open. Now I’d better get to the bridge, in case either those territorial Tholians arrive early, or the Neyel finally decide they want to talk to us.”
“Yes, sir,” Lojur said, also rising.
After Chekov had dismissed him, Lojur wandered the corridors aimlessly, his next duty shift not due to begin until early the next morning.
Shandra was dead.
A familiar, though long-absent, burning sensation welled up from somewhere deep within him. He had not known it since the day the Orions had descended upon Kotha Village. It was a demon that he’d hoped his transgression—raising Chekov’s dropped phaser in anger—had exorcised forever.
Shandra is dead.
Despite all that his people had taught him, in defiance of a lifetime of faith in the ways of peace, he now wished only suffering and death upon the aliens who had consigned the woman he loved to the abyss. We should destroy them. Crack[174] their hull open like a ripeh’eka nut. Those animals would surely do the same to us were we to let them. And they won’t even deign to speak to us.
No one on Halka, or even in Starfleet, could sanction such thoughts. Probably not even a man like Akaar, who had been born to blood and violence.
As Lojur continued toward his quarters, hot tears seared his cheeks. Maybe Thorn the Wise was more right than he knew. Not only can I never go home, I can’t even seem to find or make one of my own.
As Sulu, Lieutenant Hopman, and Ambassador Burgess simultaneously descended upon the sickbay pathology lab, Chapel desperately wished she had a way to account for the test results. Unfortunately, the results themselves would have to serve, at least until more data arrived to explain the inexplicable.
“What you’re saying is impossible, Doctor,” Sulu said in answer to her terse announcement, his eyes riveted to the Neyel corpse that lay on the table.
“I’m forced to agree with the captain, Doctor,” Hopman said, her voice deeper than it had been the last time Chapel had seen her. She was in her male phase. “I mean ... lookat him.”
“I know,” Chapel said, nodding. “But you can examine the DNA patterns for yourselves. The electrophoretic graphs don’t lie. Say ‘hello’ to your cousin. This creature’s DNA is as human as yours or mine.”
Hopman wrinkled her nose. “I think you can count me out of this family reunion, Doctor. The only thing human about me is something entirely vestigial.”
Chapel wasn’t sure she wanted to follow Hopman wherever she was going with this. Being around someone who could be a man one day and a woman the next took some getting used to. “Your appendix?”
“My married name,” Hopman said with a chuckle.
[175] Chapel smiled back. “Well, Lieutenant, that’s one bit of surgery I’m not qualified to perform.”
Looking impatient, Aidan Burgess moved silently along the length of the table, bending down as she studied the motionless, supine creature. Her eyes followed the curve of its club-tipped tail, which extended to the floor.
“How could a long-lost population of humans have gotten so far from Earth?” Sulu asked, his eyes alight with curiosity, clearly in his element.
Chapel shrugged, feeling genuinely at a loss. “Maybe they were blown here somehow by the weird winds of interspace.” She wasn’t at all certain that the bizarre interdimensional phenomenon that had swallowed up the Defiantcould really account for the dislocation of these strangely altered humans. But it was an explanation that could serve as a scientific placeholder until something better came along. Perhaps Lieutenant Tuvok could find some definitive answers, once she certified that he was ready to leave sickbay.
Burgess straightened and met Chapel’s gaze. “If this creature is human, then how do you explain these ... features?”
Chapel folded her arms before her. “In the absence of any other information, my best guess is some sort of crash genetic engineering program. Recombinant DNA. Note the opposable thumbs on the feet. That wouldn’t be a difficult tweak to make to the human genome, and the extra hands would be useful to people who spend most of their lives in variable gravity environments.”
“And the tree-bark skin?” Sulu said, laying a hand against the gray being’s rough thorax.
Chapel shrugged again. “It’s not impossible. Other species have similar, naturally occurring traits. Nasats, for example, are equipped with plates of biologically generated armor. They can withstand even hard vacuum for quite a long time.”
“A trick like that would certainly have come in handy [176] today,” the captain said in a low tone. Chapel wondered if he was thinking of the dead alien, or Lieutenant Docksey and the phaser specialists who had been blown out into space when the Neyel attack breached the hull.
“This is crazy,” Burgess said, shaking her head. “Human genetic engineering has been forbidden ever since Khan Singh was banished at the end of the Eugenics Wars.”
“Surely you’re aware that not everybody always follows the rules, Ambassador,” Chapel said. She was convinced that Burgess’s unauthorized revelations to the Tholians had not only led to Kasrene’s death, but also endangered Excelsior.She was gratified to see a spark of anger—mixed, perhaps, with guilt—appear in the ambassador’s green eyes.
Sulu seemed to be studying the dead being’s face. “Human, yet not human,” he murmured thoughtfully. “We can guess the ‘how.’ The real question is ... why? And what are they doing out here?”