Star Trek: The Empty Chair (26 page)

Jim glanced at Spock. “Maybe we should resume this later?”

Spock nodded; Jim reached down to touch the table, and the board and pieces were transported away. Ael slipped into the pit to sit a little apart from Jim. “I received a copy of the proposal you sent to Veilt tr’Tyrava,” she said.

Jim nodded. “And?”

The look Ael gave him was quite matter-of-fact, so much so that Jim wondered if she were trying to get a rise out of him. “Well,” she said with a very slight smile, “we already have evidence of what you are worth as a tactician in the small scale. But now I see you have increased the aunt significantly.”

“‘Upped the ante,’” Jim said. “Commander, have you been taking language lessons from K’s’t’lk?”

“No,” Ael said, and laughed. “But there have been some poker lessons. After Mr. Scott discussed the game with my master engineer earlier, he and his crew became enthusiastic, so Mr. Scott was kind enough to send tr’Keirianh some tutorials. They took my fancy as well when he showed them to me. The game is complex and interesting, and from my crew’s point of view, any new way to redistribute their personal wealth is always welcome. But the idiom—I was sure I had it right. Or is the translator failing again?”

“It’s the homonyms,” Uhura said, glancing up. She had been checking the harp’s stringing; now she touched its “on” control to give the old-fashioned solid-state electronics time to warm up. “They’re always a weak point in the present implementation of the translator. They keep promising they’ll fix it in the next version.” She glanced over at Ael. “I’ll have a word with it, Commander—patch you in a module of games terminology to suit those tutorials, and a translation of
Hoyle
as well, if I can find one I can adapt quickly.”

“Thank you, Commander. I take that very kindly.”

Uhura wandered off into the crowd. Spock glanced at
Jim, asking without words whether he should leave. “No, stick around, Spock,” Jim said.

Ael gave him another look. “I thought our language was rich in peculiar idiom, but yours is far more so. I would not have thought of Mr. Spock as particularly adhesive.”

Spock bowed his head to her slightly. “That reassures me, Commander.”

“English is like that, I’m afraid,” Jim said, “It doesn’t so much
borrow
words and idioms from other languages and cultures as chase them down dark alleys, bludgeon them into submission, and go through their pockets.”

Ael raised her eyebrows at that. “Well, Captain, one bit of business before we abandon it for the evening. I heard from Veilt earlier. He continues to analyze your proposal along with Courhig and some other members of his own crew. Doubtless he will have some suggestions, and I will have some for you as well. We must meet tomorrow to discuss them. But this I can say…”

She paused. Jim looked at her, then realized she was indeed hesitating for the sake of his reaction. “If I’d made
you
wait that long before we fired at those torpedoes running up your rear at RV Trianguli,” he said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

Ael laughed. “Captain, you’re right. You deserve better of me. Your plan excels. Of course there are always things that can go wrong, but we cannot be sure what those will be until we reach Augo. I gather from your initial scheduling that you expect that to happen the day after tomorrow, by
Enterprise’
s time.”

“No later,” Jim said. “Every second we spend here is a second that someone on ch’Rihan may be spending getting ready to meet us there, and I grudge them every second of that time.”

“Still,” Ael said, “even if the strategists at Grand Fleet had read your whole plan while we were reading it, it would still
take them a matter of some days to gather the materiel to handle us at the kind of odds they prefer. I have high hopes for this engagement—to a point.”

Spock gave her a thoughtful look. “But no great pleasure.”

“No,” Ael said, “I am well past that point, Mr. Spock, if ever I was there for long. War is a means to an end. The possibility of a good end to it—that thought sustains me. But the means itself…” She shook her head.

They looked out into the room again. “Captain,” Spock said, “I see Mr. Scott over there, and I believe he is looking for me.”

“Go on, Mr. Spock.” As Spock got up, Jim said, “By the way, I just had a thought about that mate in six.”

“Only one, Captain?” Spock said. He nodded to the commander, and moved away through the crowd.

“And what was the thought?” Ael said.

“That I ought to resign while the resigning was good,” Kirk said. “But now he’ll spend all night running the scenario in his head and wondering whether he missed something.”

“Mr. Spock? All night? Hardly,” Ael said. “Getting him to do that for an hour would be an accomplishment, I would think.”

“You’re probably right,” Jim said. “But with Mr. Spock, you take your advantages where you can. Come on, Commander, we’re taking up space for ten. Let’s go up to the gallery level. Would you like an ale to take with you?”

“I would like that very much.”

Jim spoke to the menu on the media table, and a few moments later it produced a tall cold glass of blue for Ael and a shorter glass of whiskey for Jim. He handed Ael her glass. She looked at it in some bemusement. “Is this a message?” she said.

Jim pulled the bamboo-and-paper cocktail umbrella out
of the glass, looking at the Chinese characters on it and then folding it up and leaving it on the table. “Only that Scotty’s kids need watching,” he said. “Come on.”

Together they made their way out of the pit and toward the stairs that led up to the gallery, which stretched straight across the middle of the huge glasteel windows that looked aft. As they went, Jim paused and looked down into the crowd, which now contained at least a hundred fifty of the crew. From the midst of it came some sounds that suggested it was not physics being discussed in the musical mode, at least not yet. Someone was playing an electronic keyboard, and a male voice rose above the hubbub, singing:

“—drunken spaceman,
What do you do with a drunken spaceman,
Ear-ly in the stardate?
Beam him down into liquid methane,
Beam him down into—”

The singer was interrupted by cries of “Naaah!” “Oh, please!” “
That
old thing again?” “What else have you got?”

Various people began shouting suggestions, some more helpful than others. Jim raised his eyebrows and continued up the stairs. Chairs were scattered here and there up on the gallery; he led the way over to one pair, down at the far end, where they could overlook the refreshment tables and the pits at the center of the main recreation floor. For a few moments they just sat quietly, and Jim lost himself briefly in the stir and noise from below.

“Now that we are in private…” Ael said. “Captain, I heard about Gurrhim.” She paused, looking down at the crowd, and very softly said, “It is not true, is it?”

“No.”

She nodded, satisfied; but the look in her eyes was strange.

“How did you know it wasn’t?” Jim said, suddenly suspicious.

Ael looked at him without that odd expression changing much. “Because Dr. McCoy was involved.”

Jim nodded. “You’ll forgive me for not telling Bones about that, because he’d become insufferable for days. But I see your point.”

“Others who have less confidence in McCoy’s skill,” Ael said, “or know less of his stubbornness, will find it easy enough to believe. Otherwise, they will find it equally easy to believe that Gurrhim left
Gorget’
s infirmary with such injuries as were not
meant
to allow him to survive long.” She leaned back, stretched a little. “But now perhaps you will tell me why you so suddenly chose this action. It does not sound like something you contemplated for long.”

“Ael,” Jim said, “you told us yourself, not so long ago, that you weren’t entirely sure there wasn’t someone else in your crew who—” Thinking of Ael’s son Tafv, and a memory that must still be bitter to her, Jim swiftly discarded the phrase “was a potential traitor.” “—whose loyalties might waver under stress.”

“Or who had been planted there by Grand Fleet a long time ago,” Ael said. She sighed. “Mine would not be the only ship with such. Once they were out in the open, actually called ‘political officers’ or ‘loyalty officers.’ Did you know that? But then Fleet stopped that practice, for the accident rate among such officers became unaccountably high, and personnel would seek transfer or demotion rather than hold such posts.” Ael smiled gently.

“I believe you,” Jim said. “Anyway, I’m curious to see whether this particular piece of misinformation spreads. No harm in it, anyway, since I think I’d rather have Gurrhim out of the public eye. Leaving aside the completely crass and self-serving idea that he might be extremely useful to you later on, there’s no telling whether someone might not pop
up and try to kill him again, and I wouldn’t care for that.”

“Nor I,” Ael said. “He is a good old man, of a type we have too few of anymore in our world.”

“Old?” Jim said. “Well, maybe as you reckon these things. But he doesn’t come across that way.”

“No,” Ael said. “Which makes him all the more valuable.”

“Anyway, Dr. McCoy asked me to reassure you about the Praetor’s status. He says Gurrhim is doing remarkably well for someone who has suffered the equivalent of having his heart, as McCoy put it, ‘pulled out of him and stamped on.’”

“It is a great heart, that,” Ael said. “I am glad he survived.”

“That’s more or less what McCoy said, on both counts,” Jim said. “And I agree with him. Meanwhile, he has elected to stay ‘dead’ for the time being, which means he will remain our guest. Which leads me to my next question: What to do with young tr’AAnikh?”

“Well,” Ael said, “does he know that Gurrhim is alive? If so, then to keep the secret, he cannot come back to
Bloodwing.
When the secret is secret no longer, then we will be glad to bring him wherever he wishes to go. And the same for Gurrhim, as well. But I would lay a small wager that where he would want to go, is where we
are
going.”

Jim nodded. “I’d put my money right down by yours. Meanwhile, let’s put the issue on the back burner. In two weeks, who knows, we might not need to worry about it. By then we might be the conquerors of ch’Rihan and ch’Havran.”

“Or plasma,” Ael said.

“Optimist,” Jim said.

They sat and watched the crewpeople below them. In the middle of the group that had been doing most of the singing, a guitar started to strum hard, a series of swinging chords, and another joined it, and voices went up together in song. Jim smiled a little and reached for his whiskey, while Ael
gazed down at the crowd gathering around the central conversation pit. The raised voices got considerably louder with the end of the first verse, and a fit of melodious yodeling broke out after the chorus. Jim looked over at Ael’s expression with some amusement.

“How can they do this?” she said softly. “Seeing what they have just endured, and what lies before them.”

“It’s how they cope,” Jim said. “And how they remind themselves who they are.” He leaned back against the cushions and stretched a little. “Ael, do me a favor.”

“If it’s in my power.”

“Tell me what’s on your mind
without
stopping to think about the tactics of revelation.”

She had to smile at that, though the smile was sad. “I think that perhaps some of these people will not do this again,” she said, so softly it could hardly be heard. “That for some of them, this is their last time to sing together.”

“You think they don’t know that?” Jim said.

Ael shook her head. “No. But the fact is no less bitter in my heart for all their recognition of it.”

He watched her watching them.
The prospect of their danger hurts her as much as that of her own people,
Jim thought.
Possibly even more. Interesting. And something about her that Starfleet would never believe.

“Third verse!”

“There
is
no third verse.”

“That’s not what I heard—”

More shouting of suggestions followed. Jim let out a long breath and said, “That’s not all that’s on your mind, though.”

She glanced at him. “How can you tell?”

“Because it’s not all that’s on mine, and we are too damn much alike, some ways.”

Ael was quiet for several breaths. Then she said, “I have been having second thoughts about your presence here.”

“A little late for that,” Jim said.

“Yes, so Aidoann tells me,” Ael said wearily, “and tr’Keirianh as well. But I have these thoughts nonetheless. I would ask you not to needlessly endanger
Enterprise
on behalf of my cause.”

“I would never needlessly endanger her for
any
cause,” Jim said, “so you can put your mind to rest on that count. But as for the rest of it—there comes a time when you have to make a stand.”

He waited.

“Yes,” Ael said after a long while. “That is what I have been thinking about. There has been so much running, in the last few years.”

Jim kept quiet.

“I am afraid,” Ael said finally. “Afraid of it all having been for nothing, if I die. Or, even worse, afraid of being turned from my path afterward, if we succeed. If the old government of the Empire does indeed fall, if it is replaced by a Senate and Praetorate committed to the kind of changes I have been dreaming of, then I fear to be paid off, given a medal for my great contributions to my people’s culture, and sent away for a ‘well-deserved rest.’ Or perhaps not
that,
so much, as being too tired to come back from the rest afterward. Finding myself saying, ‘Not today. I have no stomach for the fight today. Tomorrow.’”

“And tomorrow never comes,” Jim said.

“True. And then, slowly, everything goes back to the way it was, after the fervor dies down,” Ael said. “And it all turns out to have been for nothing. The last stands and the first ones, the betrayals and the heroism, the great battles and the small. Despite them, everything ebbs back to what it was before. Oh, a few things are improved, some of the tyranny scraped away—but elsewhere it accretes again, and everything is as it was before.
That
is what I fear.”