Its Hour Come Round Read online

  “Are you attempting to censor us, Jo’Zamestaad?” one asked.

  “I’m asking you to police yourselves!” she said, making sure the cameras were on her and the recorders were picking up every word. “What is accomplished, besides selling a few more downloads, by spreading panic and hysteria? Have you no pride in your world? Where is your dignity?

  “Dr. McCoy went to Nehdi to help people. The disease existed long before he arrived. That your employers were too little interested in an obscure story in a remote backwater until now is no one’s fault but their own. You will each of you see to it that the rumors are put to rest. The fact that this is a local phenomenon and there is no need to panic will be your lead story tonight. I give you fair warning: I will pull the license of every outlet that refuses. If it’s censorship you want, you will have it!”

  She stormed off without waiting for them to answer. Not that she expected them to have any answers, though she heard some muttering in her wake. The media were accustomed to asking questions, not answering them.

  In the antechamber leading into the council room, Raya tried to calm herself. Just when she thought she had seen and heard everything from her fractious and unruly people, they managed to surprise her, and not in a positive way. Massaging her temples with her thumbs and breathing deeply, she put on an expression of serenity out of old practice and nodded to the guards at the doors to let her pass.

  Spock had wisely led the Federation delegation back to their quarters for the day as soon as the Zamestaad had departed. The Klingons, however, were still there. Raya sighed inwardly, wondering how much controversy she could countenance.

  She moved toward Azetbur and was about to apologize, but the chancellor’s advisers had gathered in a tight knot around her and were engaged in a heated—if quiet, for Klingons—discussion. Raya could not have interrupted if she’d wanted to.

  It occurred to her that she was alone in this room with a half-dozen Klingons and was not afraid. Was that a good thing, she wondered, or was she just too weary to care?

  “naDevvo’ yIghoS!” Azetbur said. “Leave us, the Jo’Zamestaad and me, all of you. There are too many voices in this room, and I need to concentrate.”

  “You should not be alone with any of them,” Kra’aken muttered.

  The chancellor dismissed this with an impatient gesture. “I have no reason to believe any here will harm me. Besides, she weighs no more than a child. With which of her four thumbs will she manage to break my neck?”

  “Our people and theirs have a past,” Kra’aken reminded her.

  “That was a long time ago, it was not me, and no one is holding me responsible for it,” Azetbur said tightly. “These people do not have the same sense of honor that we have, or they would not have invited us here. More likely they’d have blown us out of the sky as soon as we made orbit.”

  She regretted it the moment she said it, caught the glint of suspicion in Kra’aken’s eye. There were many who thought her soft, and not only because she was a woman. Too friendly with outworlders, went the murmurs; not Klingon enough.

  They would rather die on a Qo’noS gasping for air than do business with anyone who is not Klingon! Azetbur thought with something like disgust. They will be the death of me yet….

  “naDevvo’ yIghoS,” she said again. “Go away. Wait outside the door if you want, but go.”

  “Madam Chancellor…”

  “bIjatlh ‘e’ yImev!” Would the man never stop talking? “Shut up! Go. Question my orders again and I’ll—”

  Kra’aken gave the Klingon equivalent of a shrug, saluted, and turned smartly on his heel, drawing the rest of the entourage with him like a comet’s tail.

  When the door had closed behind them, Azetbur gave Raya a quizzical look and, in a surprising gesture, leaned down to pull off her boots, tilted her chair back, and put her feet up on the highly polished table.

  Raya understood the gesture and, with a short, bemused laugh, kicked off her own practical shoes and did the same.

  Not for the first time, Azetbur was struck by how fragile Payav seemed, with their reedlike necks and their startling hairlessness. She reminded herself that not all strength was in muscle—consider Andorians, for example—nor was all strength physical. Having studied this Raya elMora and her people before coming here, Azetbur had come to respect her for her sheer endurance, if nothing else.

  CHAPTER

  7

  “I sometimes think,” Raya said, pouring them each a cup of the local fermented beverage from the carafe at the center of the table, “that if policy were left to the women…”

  “Perhaps,” Azetbur said, raising her cup in a salute before sipping. “But then there is the tale of Magna the Magnificent, who began a war that lasted forty years because her husband’s mother insulted her gown….”

  Raya wondered if the tale was true or just made up on the spot, but found herself giggling anyway. “Perhaps. And you’ll note that half of my councillors are women.”

  Azetbur seemed to be doing a mental head count. “Also true. But surely you, Jo’Zamestaad, appreciate how often women in power have to act like men in order to retain that power?”

  Raya touched the rim of her cup to Azetbur’s and both women drank ceremonially. Then Raya said what she had been meaning to say from the very first day.

  “Why are you here, Chancellor? I mean you, personally. Oh, I know, a Klingon presence was requested by the Federation because of Mestiko’s proximity to the Empire; the situation on Qo’noS suggested a study of Mestiko’s plight might be helpful. But surely you could have done as President Ra-ghoratreii and sent a delegation. I am most interested in why the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire takes it upon herself to come in person.”

  “You do not trust me, Jo’Zamestaad,” Azetbur answered by not answering. “And in your place, I would not trust me either. I could say I am here solely because of the situation on Qo’noS, but I doubt I would convince you. After all, we Klingons have the luxury, unlike you, of having years to prepare to either abandon our world or try to save it. But I wished to see what the Payav have done, and to learn from it.”

  Wisely, Raya waited, knowing there was more. A gesture inquired whether Azetbur wished to have her drink refreshed, and a nod from Azetbur indicated she did.

  “I could point out, empirically, that my skills at diplomacy are a shade better than Kra’aken’s.”

  This made Raya laugh again. Then Azetbur said something which surprised her.

  “But the real reason is that I was curious about you. If you and I are to be ‘neighbors’—inasmuch as, while our worlds are parsecs apart, nevertheless the universe is shrinking every day—I wanted to understand what you are like. What I discovered is that you and I have a great deal in common.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Raya said, setting her cup down and rotating it idly among her four thumbs.

  Azetbur found herself unconsciously doing the same, though she had only two thumbs. “There is a saying on my world. ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ You did not wish to be Jo’Zamestaad,” she said incisively.

  “I most assuredly did not!” Raya blurted before she could stop herself. Was it only the drink? Why else had she taken such an instant liking to this Dinpayav, whose people had been less than honorable in their dealings with her own?

  No, it was not the drink; it was the fact that Azetbur was right. What might she have become if there had never been a Pulse? A dozen alternatives coiled through Raya’s head, all of them easier, less harrowing than the one which had indeed been thrust upon her. And yet, she had never stepped down, never willingly let another take her place. She had gone into exile and fought her way back to stand where she stood now. Why? Because she believed she and she alone knew what was best for her people, or because she was simply too stubborn to let go? When she emerged from her reverie, the look in Azetbur’s eyes was knowing.

  “Indeed. I at least had some fore
warning. My father was grooming me to be his successor. Had things followed their usual course, I’d have had to be approved by the High Council, but when he was murdered…”

  The memory was not recent, but the wounds still ached. Wisely, Raya said nothing. The more she could learn about this woman, the better.

  “And had things followed their usual course, I might have begged off,” Azetbur mused. “Accepted a lesser office, a diplomatic post, even an academic one, though I might have been assassinated anyway, lest I change my mind. I had thought I might marry someday, have children. Not that I necessarily had to do those things, but it might have been nice to have the option. As chancellor, it is impossible. Too many of my enemies would try to get to me through someone I cared for.”

  Here the paths diverge, Raya thought. At least no one’s tried to assassinate me. That’s not how we do things. Send a leader into exile and pretend she’s dead, yes, but have her killed outright? Not Payav.

  And now? she thought, studying the depths of the liquid in her cup and finding unsettling thoughts there. I’m past hope of childbearing, and I’ve always questioned the wisdom of those who did have children in the immediate wake of the Pulse. If they had not, of course, the Payav would have gone extinct, and yet to bring a child into a world underground because the air outside was poisoned…in any event, it was not for me. Not then, not now.

  There was Theena, she reminded herself. But the little girl she had snatched off the street as the Pulse passed and raised as her own had always been wise beyond her years, and their relationship had always been more that of mentor and student than mother and daughter. Until Theena betrayed her trust by siding with Vykul and the Torye.

  That thought was painful, and Raya set it aside.

  When she and Cadi orMalan had been together in exile on Kazar, she’d thought they might marry, but he had stayed behind when she returned to Mestiko, not understanding her loyalty to the place. And what other man would tolerate the hours she kept, the work she did; and how could she expect him to go for weeks or months or even years without seeing her?

  There was one man who might have, given that his own life was as fraught with responsibilities as hers. Well, Raya thought, too little too late.

  She looked up to find Azetbur studying her in silence and wondered how long the silence had endured. She found herself wiggling her toes, and wondered if that, too, was only the drink.

  “I will be blunt,” Azetbur said, tilting her chair forward and swinging her feet back onto the floor. “I cannot tell you how tempted I am to say, ‘Leave Mestiko to the Federation—they deserve each other.’”

  Raya laughed nervously. “I wish to apologize for my people’s bad manners.”

  “On the contrary.” Azetbur’s smile contained a hint of teeth. “I find them refreshing. I have had too many dealings with humans of late. They say one thing and mean another. And Vulcans! They either say nothing, or attempt to smother you in words. Oddly, I find myself preferring Payav.”

  Raya wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she said nothing, suspecting Azetbur had more on her mind. She also managed to slide her feet onto the floor and try to remember her dignity.

  “A meeting of minds never attempted before,” Azetbur was musing. The carafe in the center of the table, meant to refresh half a dozen Summit members, was nearly empty. “Your people, mine, and the Federation, in the person of Spock, who attempted to bring my father to what was to have been the Khitomer Peace Accords. Do you know the story?”

  Raya had a vague idea, but shook her head anyway, wanting to hear it from the Klingon point of view.

  “…and then,” Azetbur concluded her narrative, “there is Kirk. Or, perhaps better to say, there is no longer Kirk. Kirk who restored my father’s faith, and mine, but who is no longer with us. I miss him.”

  “I do, too,” Raya heard herself say. “Over the past few days, I’ve found myself wondering if the negotiations would have gone differently if James were here. Spock is a gifted diplomat—”

  “—but sometimes diplomacy needs to yield to the desire to knock heads together,” Azetbur suggested dryly, and this time both women laughed. Then Azetbur drained her cup and went looking for her boots.

  “We must find a way,” she said, on her feet and completely sober regardless of how much of the unfamiliar liquor she had consumed, “to bring a little bit of Kirk back into the room the next time your councillors meet. As my father would say, ‘Politics makes strange bedfellows.’”

  Raya watched her depart. Whatever else had just happened in this room, she believed she had found in Azetbur someone from the Klingon side whom she could trust.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Uhura’s work was almost done. She’d been hopscotching back and forth from orbital stations to comm nodes on the ground, assisting local authorities in bringing Mestiko’s entire comm grid in synch, and had just a few more locales to visit. Borrowing a small Federation-issue skimmer left behind by one of Dr. Lon’s assistants at her last location, she was on her way to troubleshoot one last tangle of comm nodes that hadn’t responded when “tickled” from orbit. While gadding about the planet renewing old acquaintances and seeing how well the recovery was progressing had been gratifying, she was looking forward to returning to vosTraal for some R & R, or perhaps investigating the famed hotsprings of Gelta province, which she understood were accepting visitors again.

  Most of the problem sites she had needed to visit were in remote areas and, while the work was tedious, the countryside was varied, and signs of regeneration were everywhere, so very different from her last visit here.

  The Payav she met along the way were for the most part friendly, grateful for her presence, because it meant they could watch the video feeds from vosTraal and follow the proceedings of the Summit. Occasionally she encountered Payav who had never met a Dinpayav before. Too polite to stare, they were nevertheless watchful, and Uhura made a point of holding impromptu tutorials while she worked, so that the locals would know exactly what she was doing and why.

  It was at one site just on the other side of the hills separating Alangabi territory from Nehdi that she quite literally stumbled upon a group of young people who had transformed one of the relay stations into a kind of clubhouse.

  They’d heard her skimmer set down outside and emerged from the bunkerlike structure to investigate. Uhura counted nine of them, six boys and three girls, all sporting the same tattoo of a flowering vine just below the left ear. Silent, they gathered around her in a loose circle and simply stared.

  “Dinpayav,” one of them said finally.

  “Yes,” Uhura said hopefully, giving them her best smile. “I’m here to—”

  “We didn’t do anything!” one of the girls shouted, and as if on some prearranged signal, they bolted as one, disappearing into the underbrush. With the sound of badly tuned engines—some sort of improvised dune buggy—and a cloud of dust, they were gone.

  With a shrug of resignation—she really would have preferred to assure them she meant them no harm—Uhura retrieved her tricorder and cautiously scanned the relay station from the outside to determine that in fact it was empty. Inside she found it surprisingly neat, until she remembered that these kids had been born and had lived most of their lives underground. But they had disabled the comm grid, probably scrounging it for parts for their vehicles, and it took her the better part of an hour to set it to rights. She left the tricorder running in case someone decided to come back. That was how she noticed the peculiar readings.

  Apparently the aboveground portion of the building was only a small part of it. What Uhura found next, hidden behind a bolted-shut door further hidden by utility shelves stacked with cartons of stem-bolts and coils of antique coaxial cable, set off alarms on more than her tricorder.

  “Water,” Ejo elPrahno said from his place at the head of the table, refilling his guest’s glass unerringly despite his blindness. “Water that glows in the dark.”

  McCoy had brought
them hopeful news: Several patients had responded well to the treatment, while a few more had at least stabilized. But he was no closer to figuring out what was causing the anomaly, and it was a weary McCoy who could barely keep his eyes open during dinner that evening. Sorodel was too polite to notice, but nothing escaped Ejo’s observation.

  “Chimeji,” he said, as Sorodel brought more homemade biscuits straight from the oven and the boy immediately grabbed one in each hand. “Tell our guest, what is the greatest change in our society since the Pulse came?”

  “Water,” the boy said as solemnly as he could past a cheekful of biscuit.

  “You have seen the stilt-houses,” Ejo explained to a puzzled but intrigued McCoy. “And no doubt wondered why they were built in the desert.”

  “They do seem a little odd,” McCoy admitted. He’d thought he was full until the biscuits arrived, but their enticing aroma changed his mind and, emulating Chimeji, he soon found himself with one in each hand.

  “Before the Pulse, much of our land was marsh,” Sorodel explained. “There was always enough water. But the Pulse changed everything, transforming our world into desert. We have since had to learn about such things as irrigation.” She stopped, looking at her husband with great seriousness. “Ejo? You have seen something,” she said.

  “What does a blind man see?” he asked with a wry smile. “A river that glows in the dark. That is where, Dr. McCoy, you will find the cause of our affliction. I only wish I had seen it sooner….”

  There was, as it turned out, no river on Nehdi land that glowed in the dark, and McCoy filed Ejo’s observation away as something from a mystic realm he did not fully understand.