STAR TREK: TOS #23 - Ishmael Read online

  Trae considered for a moment, eyes thinned to slits of thought as he fished in the awesome darkness of his memory. “As I recall, the planet Klinzhai had no standard system of dates before Karsid takeover,” he replied finally. “Most areas used reign-dating by the name of the local ruler, sometimes in conjunction with two or even three simultaneous cycles of identifying years. Khlaru—if indeed Spock was referring to the old realm of Khlaru on Klinzhai and not to my colleague—I believe was one of them.”

  He crossed to the larger of the two terminals in a slurring rustle of black robes. Skeleton-fragile fingers played over the input board for a moment, paused, then tapped in something else.

  Watching the play of the green light over those sharp-angled features, Kirk wondered if Spock would have become like that in time, when his Vulcan body had outlived those of his few human friends. Would he have settled into that distant and terrifying calm, coming at last to terms with the buried human side of his nature? Or would its stresses have grown instead of lessened, and eventually destroyed him? How human, Kirk wondered, had Spock been? How much of that occasionally maddening calm had been his true nature—the nature he was born with—and how much the result of his Vulcan conditioning?

  Hard to tell, thought Kirk, with sudden wryness. How much of my own stubbornness was inborn, and how much acquired in self-defense against a stubborn father? Who can pick apart the knots of the human soul, or trace the chains of circumstances to their first roots? Any event, as Trae said, causes its ripples. Spock had been what he had been: an enigma to his death.

  With a faint whirring noise the terminal extruded a half meter of hard copy. Trae tore off the pale green flimsiplast and returned to his guests. “Dating system in the realm of Khlaru just prior to Karsid first contact was a triple cycle of reign dates: the Arastphrid System common to the Gharhuil Continent in that era, and a longer cycle based on the variable star Algol. Thus the first Karsid contacts—which, of course, were in the Karsid’s usual form of ‘traders from another land,’ as they never disclosed the fact that they were alien until their hold on the economy was virtually unbreakable—was recorded as ‘In the Year of the Gashkrith in the reign of Khorad son of N’gar in the five-hundredth cycle of Algol’—or Shem, as they sometimes called that star. After the Karsids had established economic influence over the entire planet—not difficult to do, considering that Klinzhai was just entering into the early phases of industrialization and there was constant rivalry between the semi-industrial cloth-manufacturing towns and the land-based patriarchate—to the point where the Klingons could not do without them, the Karsids imposed cultural unity, wiped out recalcitrant minorities, dissidents and splinter-groups and adopted Klinzhai into full tributary status in Karsid Imperial Year 930.”

  He lowered the flimsiplast and looked at his guests.

  Kellogg murmured, “And not an 1867 in sight.”

  A little despairingly, Kirk said, “And what was the Earth date when all this was happening on Klinzhai?”

  Spock would have elevated one eyebrow. Trae had seemingly outgrown such extravagant emotional displays. He turned back to his computer terminal without a word. After a moment he replied, “Karsid first contact with the rulers of Thersach—the most warlike and socially flexible of the industrial federations—correlates to Earthdate O.R.-1486-A.D. Induction to full tributary status O.R. 1540 A.D.”

  McCoy frowned. “ They didn’t waste any time.”

  “It is surprising,” remarked Trae, making a handwritten note at the top corner of the readout and placing it unerringly in one of the myriad of completely unmarked pigeonholes that formed a sort of wine rack of cubbyholes along the rear wall of the study, “how quickly a senior technology can acquire a stranglehold over a junior one—particularly if it knows how to play on inner rivalries within the junior culture. Basically, the Karsids took over in a single generation, as soon as the majority of the population had never known a time without these new weapons, new luxury goods. ...”

  “New drugs?” put in Kellogg cynically. She had seen Klingon methods of takeover.

  The historian lowered his wrinkled eyelids a fraction of a centimeter. “Not generally. The Karsids were neither savages nor fools. They wanted intact, semi-industrial economies that they could develop and exploit, not herds of opiated slaves. Civilizations under their rule tended to be physically healthier and more puritanical than their self-governing forebears. The Karsids used drugs in specific incidents—a technique which the Klingons have adapted to their own use—but in most cases they operated on the simple theory that no nation will willingly forgo its source of machine guns to return to the use of the bow and arrow.”

  His dark gaze returned to Kirk again. “Do you wish to question my colleague Khlaru himself on this subject?” he asked.

  Kirk hesitated for a long moment, weighing factors in his mind. His instincts told him to trust the ancient Vulcan’s evaluation of his Klingon colleague. Vulcans seldom declare any feeling of their own, and when they do, it is not without careful thought.

  Kellogg broke in with, “You want the whole thing to get relayed to the imp rep? Whether Khlaru himself is a man of honor or not, he’s obliged to report questions to his superiors. If the Klingons even get the hint that we’re onto them, God knows what could happen.”

  Trae’s eyes moved from Kirk to Kellogg and back again. It was the tiniest of gestures, but Kirk could feel Kellogg bristle under the implied dismissal of the military mind.

  After a moment’s thought he said, “No. Not yet. But what we have spoken of, we have spoken of in confidence.”

  “This I understand,” said Trae quietly. “The matter is none of my affair.”

  “If you hear of anything ...” he began, and the Vulcan, who had turned away, glanced back at him.

  “I have said that it is none of my affair,” he reiterated. “You can scarcely speak ill of Khin Khlaru for reporting to his superiors what he hears, and then require me to do the same. I am a historian, Captain. I am not engaged in your temporary conflict with the Klingon Empire.”

  Kirk inclined his head, accepting the rebuke. “My apologies,” he said. “But if it happens that you do find yourself engaged in that conflict in the future, come to one of us.”

  With that he led the way from the room, and the transition from the age-piled gloom of the rock chamber to the bright aluminum and plastic of the halls of the starbase was like emerging from dreams into the cold brightness of an eternal and artificial day.

  Chapter 5

  “LOTTIE.” Candy Pruitt looked up in surprise as the saloonkeeper emerged onto the gallery above the main barroom. “Where are you off to? It’ll be raining again before noon.”

  Lottie came down the stairs, pulling her gloves on as she moved. She paused for a moment to look down at the saloon, and smiled. The place was closed, as it always was this time of the morning, and filled with girls.

  They were turning the place into a rope walk with stretched clothesline, stringing it from the rough banisters back and forth across the big room; chattering, giggling, talking as they worked. The place smelled of wet laundry and soap and the cool wintry smell of the rain, that had fallen steadily, drearily, on Seattle for the last four days now. The saloon itself was warm, and the wet clothes and the girls’ damp skirts steamed faintly in the cool filtered daylight.

  Lottie loved the girls. They were young, most of them, but above the age when girls back East would be married. Some of them had lost sweethearts in the War; others, only the chance to have them. New Bedford had been a town bereft of three-quarters of a generation of young men when those unlikely Pied Pipers, Roland Francis Clancey and Jeremy Bolt, had arrived, with the promise of a brave new world out beyond the frontier. Whether the girls had sought a woman’s destiny of marriage and children, or only forgetfulness of what had been, they were the ones who had turned their backs on their old lives and old memories, and that itself gave them a kind of beauty.

  Lottie smiled down at them, liste
ning to their treble babble. Candy Pruitt turned her head to give some instruction to the girls stretching a clothes-rope, her mahogany red hair gleaming in the pale light like wet autumn leaves. She was the unofficial spokeswoman and captain of the New Bedford girls, twenty years old, her face less pretty than strongly beautiful, with its close, secretive mouth. She was slim and strong as oak, and Lottie had often considered Candy as a good match for Jason Bolt. It would need her kind of stubbornness and temper to keep that big, bold bastard in line. And so it might have been, had Candy not met Jeremy Bolt first.

  Candy came over to Lottie as the saloonkeeper finished her descent. “Thank you for letting us use the saloon to dry in, Lottie. I think we were down to the last of the clean towels, and there’s simply no room in that dormitory to get anything properly dried.”

  “And besides, it’s baking day,” Biddy Cloom put in, shaking out white cotton petticoats briskly and hunting in her apron pockets for clothespins. “And Sheila’s meeting her beau in the parlor this afternoon, and she said she’d kill us if she had to do it with everyone’s unmentionables dripping on the floor.”

  “And who’s Sheila’s beau this week?” asked Lottie, smiling.

  “Well,” Biddy said archly, fluttering her straight, thin eyelashes, “I’m certainly not one to spread tales, but ...”

  “Jules Home.” Candy stepped equably into Biddy’s dramatics. “And you haven’t said where you’re off to yet, Lottie. Look, it’s already starting to rain again. You’d better take my cloak.”

  She made a move toward the piled cloaks that the girls had left heaped on the end of the bar. Their mothers would die if they knew their daughters came and went in a public saloon as freely as if it were their own living room. Never during open hours, never familiarizing with the men who came to drink, but still, their mothers would have said, it was the principle of the thing. Ladies didn’t frequent saloons, and they certainly didn’t lend their cloaks to the type of woman who ran them.

  Someone knocked on the front door, and through the pebbly glass of the windows Lottie could make out two gray, silhouetted figures. She yelled, “We’re closed!”

  A voice called back, “It’s Aaron, Lottie!”

  Her heart jumped, and she hurried to let him in.

  “Aaron,” she said quickly, as she opened the door, “I have something important to ...” She stopped, looking past over his shoulder.

  “Lottie,” introduced Aaron formally, “this is my nephew, Ishmael Marx. Ish—Lottie Hatfield.”

  Lottie’s blue eyes met Aaron’s dark ones, wide and warning, frightened at the memory of those two other aliens. Then they went past, and met the black, oddly wise gaze of the alien.

  Softly, Aaron said, “He’s lost his memory. We thought it was best this way.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” said Lottie, confused, not knowing what else to say. She held out her hand, and Ishmael bowed very properly over it.

  His eyes met hers again, and he said for her ears alone, “Aaron tells me that you know.”

  “I—yes. I saw you.”

  “Then I thank you for your silence.” He had an odd mouth, strangely shaped, thin but sensual. The slant of the eyebrows and the tips of the strange ears were hidden under Indian-straight black hair, which had been suffered to grow long, after the custom of a country where barbers are few. For the rest, she had an impression of catlike slimness and darkness; faded trousers, a dark sweater, a dark plaid jacket. When he moved past her into the saloon she saw that he was lame.

  Then she became aware of the loud silence in the room behind them. She turned, to meet the watching, curious eyes of the girls. Seattle was a small town, and any stranger worthy of mark; particularly, thought Lottie suddenly, this one. She glanced up at the hawk profile, then back at the girls.

  Stemple broke the silence. He stepped into the room, said, “Ladies, permit me to introduce my nephew, Ishmael Marx. He’s come to Seattle from the East; he’ll be doing the accounting at the mill. Ishmael—Jason Bolt’s seraglio.”

  Those who didn’t know what a seraglio was only studied Ish with frank and lively interest, but Stemple caught a glimpse of warning fire in Candy Pruitt’s eye. Under cover of the chatter of introductions, he took Lottie aside, and asked her, “What was it you wanted to tell me, when we came in? Something important, you said?”

  Past him, Ishmael was listening to the soft soprano confusion of the girls’ voices; deferential, attentive— not out of flattery, as Lottie knew some men would listen, but out of grave and genuine interest in this crowd of very young strangers. She said, “What do you mean, he’s lost his memory?”

  Stemple shook his head. “He was injured, I don’t know how. But he can’t remember how he got here, what brought him to Earth. He remembers nothing of where he came from, what happened to him, not even his own name.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Candy was gently, patiently drawing this stranger out of his reserve; Ishmael picking his way cautiously through the morass of this first test of his disguises. “He’s very adaptive,” Stemple went on. “He learns fast. But I thought I’d better break him in here, before he meets anyone more suspicious than the girls.”

  Typical of Stemple, thought Lottie, not sure whether to be amused or admiring. The man had manipulated people and situations for his own ends so long that he could use that talent to serve someone else’s needs. She knew, as he’d known, that the girls would be too fascinated by this dark stranger to notice or question the little lapses that must occur, and that would give Ishmael time to find his feet.

  “Then he’s starting out clean,” she said. “Like a child.”

  “No,” replied Stemple. “Like every man who comes West with something in his past he’d rather forget, and have forgotten.” His dark eyes rested on hers for a moment with ironic amusement. “I imagine there are men who’d pay gold for what Ish seems to have gotten at the cost of a sprung knee and a couple of burns.”

  Lottie sighed, remembering some of the past, and her own reasons for coming West. “Ladies, too, Aaron,” she murmured. “Ladies too.”

  “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t important.”

  “All of these young ladies belong to Jason Bolt?” asked Ishmael, bending his head under the light rain as they moved along the soupy mess of what was optimistically called Madison Street. Stemple heard the light irony in Ish’s voice, and thought, You’ve come far, fast, my friend.

  He grinned wryly. “In a sense.”

  “Fascinating.”

  The rain barely ruffled at the puddles that sheeted the muddy thoroughfare—the two men kept to the rim of tussocks that bordered the straggling buildings. Behind them, Seattle spread itself in a brave display of clapboard, canvas and mud over its hills—a handful of stores, a land office, two liveries, a laundry operated by some stout and smiling relative of Lottie’s barboy Wu Sin and the half-erected plank walls of some larger building with delusions of grandeur. Like a wall behind the town, the mountains rose, a looming blue-green bulk of mist-shawled trees, diminishing down into lesser mountains as they approached the town and finally to the hills on which Seattle itself was built. The street sloped down to the harbor, where the masts of the San Francisco lumber boats and the coast-running sloops bobbed at anchor, a second forest. The wind made tracks of white on Elliott Bay, and blew the salt smell of the sound over the shabby town. Laundry hung on more than one covered porch, and smoke poured in white billows from tin chimneys, caught and whipping like thin clouds into the mist gray sky.

  Just above the harbor, where First Street branched off toward the mill, Aaron and Ishmael passed a large pine barn of a building, two stories high and narrow, surrounded by a white picket fence and a border of dripping autumn flowers. “That’s the dormitory,” said Stemple. “And that ...” He gestured toward the eye-piercingly rich green of the slopes that rose nearest above the town to the south, its trees thrusting into the soft shroud of mist that hid its tower
ing head. “... is Bridal Veil Mountain. And Bridal Veil, and Seattle, and that dormitory, make the three strangest bedfellows since—well, never mind.”

  Overhead, gulls wheeled, crying. From here the turmoil around the docks could be seen and heard, a milling of men and horses hauling logs and cut timber, the strident arguing of voices.

  “As you may have noticed,” Aaron continued expansively, “Seattle isn’t what you’d call much of a town. It’s at the back end of nowhere, the wettest, coldest, unpleasantest piece of real estate you’re going to find in this end of the Territories. But it does grow good trees, and it’s got the best harbor to ship them out of on this coast. The town’s going to be big one day, but right at the moment it doesn’t have a whole lot to recommend it.

  “Now,” he continued, as they descended the deteriorating First Street toward the trees that screened the mill from town, “I can hire transients, men passing through. You’ll find out all about that once you try doing the payroll accounts. If there’s a bit of flux—well, it gets made up, and I’ve got the capital to see me through times when the output’s slack because we haven’t got enough men. But Jason, he needs a full crew if he’s going to make his contracts. And although he owns the mountain, he doesn’t have the capital to pay week by week. He needs a settled town, and settled men.”

  Aaron shrugged. “But why’s a man going to settle out here in the wet back end of the world just to cut trees? It got to a point where Jason’s men threatened to quit him, if he didn’t get them some ladies—not San Francisco fancy ladies, but real ladies, wives and mothers for the new town. The land’s a land of promise, but at thirty men for every woman, there wasn’t much reason to settle here.

  “So Jason came up with the scheme of sending Captain Clancey around Cape Horn to the East, to bring out girls to marry the settlers.”

  “I see.” Ishmael turned back to look at the dormitory again, small as a pine cracker carton on its long, narrow lot, its bright calico curtains only vague blurs inside the heat-misted windows, smoke billowing from its kitchen chimney.