Star Trek - Log 8 (15 page)

Directly before them what looked like several doors were recessed into the wall, scattered seemingly at random at various distances from one another.

"Might as well try the nearest one as any and go on from there," Kirk announced, his open communicator carrying his words to his companions.

Lightning flashed nearby as they began walking slowly toward the closest door. Spock's attention was still partially diverted by the giant jackstraw arrangement behind them. "A remarkable feat of engineering," he murmured. "The principles behind it imply a metallurgic technology radically different from our own. I wish I knew how it was built, let alone how it generates the radiance it does."

"Maybe the Boqus can tell you," advised McCoy, "if any are left."

They had all reached the wall and stopped before the first recess. The door was of an unmistakably different composition from that of the structure's exterior, and had the look of machined metal. The recess was narrow at the top and quite wide at the base, rather like a pyramid with a domed crown, and rose to a height of two and a half meters.

"Indicative of heavy-gravity physiology," observed Spock easily.

"That's assuming this entrance is designed for the Boqus themselves," argued McCoy. "For all we know, this could be a local livestock barn. Maybe the Boqus were tall and spindly and just raised squatty cattle."

"Unlikely, Doctor," countered a disapproving Spock.

Attempts to open the door which formed the far wall of the niche met with failure. Attempts to open succeeding doors met with successive failures. Not only did none of them show signs of opening, they betrayed no hint of how they might be opened. Inspect as they might, the little party could find nothing resembling a handle, knob, keyhole, depression-response pit, or anything else they would have recognized.

Kirk was about to try a swift kick on the sixth and last door, a gesture which would have been not just futile but dangerous in the heavy gravity, when it slid aside smoothly. Life-belt sensors carried a thick whine to them as powerful machinery shifted the massive door, fighting its inertia.

"Automatics?" Meyers asked rhetorically, regarding the dim interior with a professional's eye.

"Maybe," murmured McCoy, "though despite my first impressions I've got to admit it looks more and more like we're expected. After you, Spock," he said, gesturing.

Once past the door (which, Kirk was gratified to see, showed no inclination to close suddenly behind them), they found themselves in a long trapezoidal hallway. At regular intervals its walls and ceilings were lined with panels phosphorescent with orange light. It bent and wound confusingly, but the distance covered was less than it seemed (the gravity wearing on them again) before they emerged into a vast, brightly lit chamber.

The roof arched overhead, and the surrounding walls were filled with consoles and instrumentation as alien and unrecognizable as the material they were constructed of. Larger panels threw more light here, though it was still of that uniform orange hue. Kirk found the warm tint it lent to the metal furnishings very attractive, though it could never take the place of the familiar light of Earth's sun.

The greatest surprise, however, was not the instrumentation but the decor. On first glance, the chamber appeared to be lavishly landscaped, filled with strange bushes and small clusters of trees. McCoy had moved to feel the petals of a purple leafed growth, and drew back in surprise, apparently at the tactile sensation he received from the bush. For a fearful second Kirk thought the doctor had been stung.

"Are you hurt, Bones?"

"What? No, Jim, it's this thing." He glanced around at the other growths. "It's all of them, probably. The surface is cold . . . and hard. Hard as rock."

Kirk moved to stand alongside him, and regarded the construction. "Interesting . . . is it mineral sculpture, or what?"

Nearby, Spock was studying a taller specimen. "If so, Captain, the imitation is carried to remarkable extremes." He gestured at the base of the tree-thing, where it disappeared into the open earth. "It seems to enter the ground, obviously drawing support from it. I wonder if it may not draw more than that."

"Oh, come on, Spock! It's stone, or something equally inorganic. Obviously it—"

A friendly, oddly prickling thought appeared abruptly in McCoy's mind—in all their minds.

"Nothing is obvious, everything is infinitely indeterminate," the thought explained sharply. "You look intensely, physician, but not well."

Kirk spun and glanced around the chamber. It still appeared deserted. "Where are you," he asked warily, adding almost as an afterthought, "man of Boqu?"

"Closer than you think, Captain Kirk."

One of the "trees" nearby started toward them.

Kirk found himself face to . . . well, to something, with one of the strangest creatures he had ever seen. By comparison, the bulky, limbless Lactrans appeared almost normal.

The being moved on a base two meters across, consisting of hundreds of long dark yellow limbs. Stiff and many-jointed, they rippled with an eerie clacking along the hard floor, like the march of millions of ants on a sheet of paper.

The centilimbs radiated from a thick central post twice as broad as a man's body, roughly circular in form, like an addled fence post. This main part was shaded a deep brown, almost the color of unpolished mahogany, and was veined with exterior vertical ribs of gold.

It rose in three jointed sections to the level of Kirk's nose, then tapered slightly before spreading out into a wide circular plate whose upper surface was plano-convex, like the upper half of the
Enterprise
's primary hull.

The head, or such Kirk considered it, was a milky opaque crystalline substance resembling rutilated quartz. Black striations ran through it, bunching into dark nodules at various points within.

From the flat underside of the head, set several centimeters in from the fringe, dangled long articulated tentacles of dark yellow. They were similar in shape and form to the hundreds of skittering feet projecting from the Boqus's base. They swayed and moved easily, under obvious control.

It was impossible to tell whether the expedition was facing the creature's front, back, or side, or indeed if such terms meant anything in regard to a Boqus. Equally, there was nothing faintly identifiable as a mouth, nose, eyes, ears, or anything else indicative of a face.

Kirk elected to regard the portion of the being facing him as its front. "I'm—" He cleared his throat, still recovering from the initial surprise of the Boqus's unmasking. "I am Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S.
Enterprise
. This is my first officer, Mr. Spock; my chief medical officer, Dr. McCoy; and sec—our vehicle pilot, Lieutenant Meyers."

This produced an agitated jangling of those dangling tentacles, and the creature seemed to draw back. Could he have made a mistake already, Kirk mused?

He had not. "Chief medical officer!" came the excited thought. "Then you have come in response to the prayers of the
animax
!"

"Prayers? Animax?" McCoy echoed in confusion. The Boqus's limbs relaxed, but its thoughts were still in turmoil.

"You have not come in response to our need, to end the epidemic?"

Kirk suddenly understood the reason behind the deserted metropolis they had passed over, and felt saddened as McCoy replied, "I'm truly sorry. We know nothing of any local epidemic."

The Boqus appeared to slump, and the opaqueness in its crystal skull increased until the striations within could no longer be seen.

"Why then," it inquired with sudden brisk curiosity, "have you come here? I cannot believe it was by accident."

That
Kirk could sympathize with. Boqu was not a world the casual explorer would stumble upon. "We are here at the request of an ancient race acquainted with your people," he explained, "the people of Lactra."

"Lactra, Lactra," the uncertain thought reached them. "I know them not. I am old, visitors, yet this is something well past my forming. Admitted it is that we Boqus are sadly lacking in methods of history and social record. We follow our past not as well as we ought to."

The suspicions brewing in McCoy's mind, temporarily interrupted when the Boqus had revealed himself, now surged back full strength, not to be denied.

"Jim, these bushes and trees around us—the Boqus himself—Spock's hesitation in classifying them was justified. They're not sculptured any more than you or I are sculptured." He rushed on, flushed with excitement. "We've long postulated the possibility of a living organism based on the silicon atom instead of carbon. Boqu . . . Boqu is a whole world based on that substance. A world of living crystal."

"I sense carefully concealed distaste in your mind, physician," came the thought from the creature before them. "Pity us not. It is we who have always been sorry for those we know of you. You poor carbon-based creatures, with your saggy, flexible, unrigid limbs. Your bodies lack discipline and form and true beauty.

"Even so, for all our inherent superior endurance to disease, we are not immune, it seems." The thought seemed to brighten in Kirk's mind, brighten with uncertain hope. "It is true you are a medical scientist, Bones McCoy?"

"I'm a doctor," McCoy replied readily. "My job's to make sick people unsick."

"Concise, yet thorough enough," came the response. "A great epidemic of tragic proportions has ravaged Boqu for many
nevars
. It is conceded among the surviving scientists that a new approach to a solution is required. We have despaired of ever finding one. Yet here you are."

"Now just a minute," began a cautious McCoy, but the Boqus rambled on.

"If you could find a cure for this devastation, you would gain the eternal gratitude of all the people of my world." Many limbs moved, indicating all directions simultaneously. "This is but one of many laboratories scattered about the surface of Boqu, isolated to protect those surviving scientists while they exhaust every means in the search for a solution. I was granted the opportunity of watching for an unlikely savior from afar. It was I who signaled you with the light, and it was you who responded. I solicit your aid."

Everyone, it seemed, needed their help, Kirk thought. McCoy returned to his protest.

"I don't know how to cure a sick rock. I don't know the first thing about silicon biology."

"No one does, Doctor," pointed out Spock, "since until this moment such a thing was not thought to exist."

"However," McCoy added reluctantly, at the overpowering sense of desolation the Boqus projected, "I'm willing to try."

"No more than that could be asked," replied the Boqus ringingly. "I am Hivar the Toq, and will aid you . . ." The thought faded, to be unexpectedly replaced by a mental frown of contrition. "But you are here for another reason, at the request of these beings you call Lactrans. I cannot interfere with prior obligations."

"I don't think it will matter," Kirk informed him. "Matter of fact, the Lactrans are here to ask for
your
help."

"Poor help we can give now, for anything," Hivar the Toq confessed. "Yet I would hear the circumstances."

"The Lactrans," Kirk explained, "have made much of their world over into a great zoo, a collection of diverse life forms the inspection of which provides them with knowledge and pleasure. They wish to add one last creature to this assemblage, one creature they have failed to capture over the centuries. We were told that only your people possess the means to capture such a being, which they call a jawanda."

Hivar considered for a moment, its mind intent on unscrambling this new riddle.

"The creature your friends call the jawanda troubled Boqu for many
multinevars
," it finally informed them. "We have not had the need to control them since then, for they have learned to avoid us. Yet I have some knowledge of the means you speak of."

Kirk glanced to Spock, then McCoy. The Lactrans had been reluctant to divulge details of the jawanda, for reasons unknown. Perhaps true ignorance was the honest one; possibly the evasion was intentional. Regardless, Hivar the Toq apparently knew of the creatures. At the moment they were in mental contact with the young Lactran, but out of immediate danger of Lactran attack. If there was a serious reason for this concealment of facts . . .

Kirk made his decision and asked hastily, "We're still not too sure what a jawanda is. If you could explain . . ."

No mental blast sent him writhing to the floor, but the Boqus didn't respond with an answer, either.

"I will bargain with you, Captain Kirk," Hivar announced, scuttling in small circles, "and with your friends of Lactra." Several crystalline tentacles pointed sharply at McCoy. "If your medical scientist Bones McCoy can discover a cure for the disease which plagues my people, then I will consult with the surviving guardians of the trust of science to see what can be done about the jawanda."

"Listen," McCoy objected, "I said I'd be willing to try. But I've no experience. Making our journey's success contingent upon my solving something which hasn't even been imagined until now just isn't fair."

"Somehow you must do more than try, medical scientist."

Kirk had the impression of a stone back being turned to them.

"Whatever you need will be provided instantly. We can expect no other visitors, for our signals have gone unheeded. Your presence is proof of that, since you are not here in response to them. We can expect no help beyond your own."

"How can you expect me, someone totally ignorant of your body chemistry, your very makeup, to succeed where your own best scientists have failed?" an exasperated McCoy wanted to know.

Hivar the Toq replied almost sullenly. "I do not know myself. I know only that a new approach offers the best remaining chance of a solution. Your very ignorance saves you from the misconceptions and false approaches which have stifled us."

"First time anyone ever complimented me for ignorance," McCoy grumbled. "I've got to forget four thousand years of biology and start from scratch."

"Does that mean you're convinced you can't do it, Bones?" wondered a concerned Kirk.