Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain (23 page)

“Aye, that’s the dilemma of all parents everywhere,” Scott replied. “I don’t care if they’re Horta or Vulcan, Romulan, or Klingon. My old father would have said that you must make ’em understand that
what they’re fighting about doesn’t matter a hill of beans to anybody else, and that it’s going to get them in a world of trouble if they don’t cut it out.”

“Mister Scott, there is wisdom in what you’ve said,” Spock replied. “In fact, it reminds me of a Vulcan proverb.”

“What’s that, Mister Spock?”

“Never cuddle with a
sehlat
until you can defeat it in battle.”

Mister Scott slowly nodded his head. “Aye, I suppose if I understood that in the least, I would agree with you. One other thing, Mister Spock.”

“Yes?”

“It might help if you give them something to . . . well, take their minds off their squabbles.”

Spock nodded. It was an excellent suggestion. “Thank you,” he said. “I now know what to do.”

He turned back to the assembled Horta
. Here is a message from Speaker from the Stars,
Spock thought.
You ask me to decide which of the Horta clans I will place in a position of honor. That is, you inquired which of you I like better. The answer to this is that, as far as I am able, I like you all equally, and I respect and honor all of you each in your different way. That said, I must also point out to you that I am a Vulcan. Vulcans do not have emotions as you know them, and while I find you a curious and interesting species in many ways, I can never love you. I am simply incapable of doing this because of my physiological makeup. Your All Mother loves you, but I am not she. You must think of me more as your All Father. My attitude toward all of you is one of extreme emotional detachment.

The Horta shuffled a bit as if a tremor of distress had run through them. It could be that they had never been spoken to in such a manner before. How very unlike his own upbringing on Vulcan. Perhaps, Spock considered, they were quite used to being indulged by a loving All Mother with no corrective whatsoever. After all, they lived on a resource-rich planet with a caretaker who clearly doted upon them all.

You must think of me
not
as the All Mother,
Spock intoned,
but as the All Father.

How would his father, Sarek, put it? Spock wondered. He wasn’t certain, but one thing he knew: Sarek would speak logically and without mercy or pity in the slightest, especially toward his own children.

And as your All Father, I say to you: it is time to leave me to my work. It is time to go and find your own way. Frankly, I have other things to do than to come down here from my ship and settle your petty differences. It may not occur to you, but I too have to work. And I shall tell you something else: my work gives me great satisfaction. I have no intention of losing that satisfaction in order to placate your wounded sense of clan honor.

The Horta tremor became agitation. Horta shuffled back and forth within the chamber, and a grinding and rustling clamor of rock against rock arose. Spock decided to press his point home.

Now that you are away from your mother,
Spock intoned,
it is incumbent upon you to find a way to handle your differences by yourselves. You must resolve your differences in a way that does not destroy your common purpose as well. But most of all, you must deal with your differences in a way that does not bother me. For, as I have explained, I have a great many matters that I must see to, and those matters are of great importance to your own place in this galaxy, and the future of Horta-kind in general. Make your peace now. The All Father demands it.

The rumbling din within the chamber became a roar as Spock’s thoughts made their way through the hive mind of the Horta.

It was Slider Dan who finally replied.

We wish to express our extreme apologies for having disturbed the All Father. We will find a way to overcome these differences among us without distracting you any further. What’s more, the fact that you consider each Horta as equal in our own way had never occurred to most of us. It was our understanding that one of us
had
to be the honor clan, and so contention was built into all that we did. You have shown us a new way.

You did not need me to find this way,
Spock thought.
It is fairly obvious and entirely logical. You each have separate strengths. Use them to make the whole greater, and not to tear the hive apart. And if you don’t do so, I will have to impose the appropriate punishment.

It was as if a collective gasp passed across the Horta now.
And what will that punishment be, All Father?

Merely my extreme disappointment,
said Spock.
I believe that that will sting you far more than any physical retribution I could employ. I will be very, very disappointed in you. You don’t want that, do you?

No!
came the collective shout.

Then get back to work,
said Spock,
and so shall I. And please don’t make me come back down here.

Never! But Speaker from the Stars . . .

Yes?

We . . . I have a suggestion.

I am listening.

Very well,
thought Slider Dan.
Here is what I propose, All Father . . .

Spock’s mind flooded with their idea. The Vulcan paused to consider what had been put forward.

I will take this under consideration.

I believe it will work, Speaker from the Stars.

As I said, I will consider it and put it before the captain at the appropriate time. In the meantime, you must complete your task here and I must go to return to my duties.

Understood, Speaker from the Stars.

Spock grunted assent and broke his connection with the hive mind. He gazed around.

“So?” said McCoy. “Get your point across?”

“I have delivered the message,” Spock said. “And you, Doctor McCoy?”

“I’ll be damned if I haven’t patched together another Horta,” McCoy replied. “She may be sore for a while—who the heck knows?—but she will live to fight another day.”

“Let us hope the internal struggles are over,” Spock replied. “We haven’t time for such nonsense.”

•   •   •

The work of carving up the asteroid proceeded more smoothly thereafter, to Mister Scott’s immense relief. With his tunnel rover’s sensor apparatus showing the way, the Horta were proving to be the perfect workforce to exploit and build on its soundings. It seemed they were going to just pull it off.

The scoring cuts were being completed, but all would depend on four successive hammer blows from the ship’s deflector shields and phasers to finish the process. All of the work would come to nothing if the calculations were not correct. The asteroid might break up, or it might not, but the
deflector array would likely not be able to push the pieces out of a collision vector with Vesbius—they would either be too small or too large.

Nevertheless, Scotty found himself humming “The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond” as he worked with the Horta. Whatever the outcome, it was going to be one of the most glorious demolition projects in history, and he was happy to be the chief engineer on an undertaking of such epic scale. This was not because he wanted fame, but because Scotty felt he was putting his skills to their fullest possible use. And that was all a good engineer should ever want, in Scotty’s estimation.

The work proceeded. The asteroid drew closer and closer to the planet.

It’s going to be as close as close can be,
Scotty thought. But he smiled when he considered the prospect, for with each passing hour he became more and more convinced that this harebrained scheme of Spock’s might actually work.

Fifteen

Hannah Faber surveyed the motley collection of ships and lift vehicles that the settlement had assembled to aid the evacuees who were attempting to leave the planet before the asteroid arrived. When she had returned it had become apparent to all that repairs on the sabotaged underground shelters were not going to be completed in time. The Exos movement had not succeeded in its plan to destroy the structures entirely, but they may as well have, for they succeeded in making the shelters impossible to inhabit at the crucial moment they were needed. For all practical purposes, they may as well have collapsed the mountains on top of them.

This left five shelters that were inhabitable, each by three thousand people, if as many as possible were crowded in. With fifteen thousand of the settlement thus accounted for, this meant five thousand people must flee. There was no other choice. As the
Enterprise
’s Mister Spock might say, the logic was inescapable. They did not even address the problem of what would happen after the strike.
Once away, the evacuees could not remain in space or they would die just as surely as they would had they remained on the surface of the planet.

Hannah did hope that the Horta would succeed and the strike would be averted. But to plan on that happening and do nothing else was madness. Her priorities were her people and her planet.

With the
Enterprise
’s aid, a temporary habitat was established on Toro, the smaller of the Vesbian moons. But this was not a permanent solution. After the initial asteroid strike, those in the lunar habitat would have to be transported back to the planet surface where they must take their chances. Yes, relief ships would come from Starbase Twelve, but there were not enough resources in the entire sector to keep the colony supplied indefinitely. Mister Spock had estimated that the Federation could supply aid for approximately a year after the disaster, but at that point there was nothing more that could be done without the expenditure of enormous resources. Vesbius was simply too far away from the heart of the Federation for mass transport of goods. The colonists would either have to come up with a solution, or they would slowly die of starvation and lack of medical supplies.

The problem was, there simply were not enough ships. Hannah had counted and recounted the berth spaces, calculated what it would take to cram
every nook and cranny with people, to no avail. The numbers did not match up.

There were five thousand to be evacuated, and there were twenty-eight hundred spaces available. She knew the
Enterprise
could temporarily take two thousand. Kirk had said that was his absolute upper limit, which was barely sustainable for a day or so. Multiple trips to the Toro habitat would deliver three hundred more. The remaining ships, shuttlecraft included, accounted for, at most, five hundred more slots.

That left twenty-two hundred souls with no means of escape.

One thing Hannah was sure of was that none of those who must remain would be children. But, because Vesbian had such a fertile population, a good portion of those without berths must, nonetheless, be mothers or fathers of Vesbian children.

Those children were going to lose a parent, perhaps both. There simply were not enough single and childless people to substitute, even though almost all of those who were had volunteered to remain on the surface.

She herself would be among those remaining on the surface.

The settlers who were evacuating or sending off children had moved away from their homes and were beginning to assemble in tent-covered enclaves near the ships. Among these were many
families, for although some parents had decided to leave the children in the shelters and take the ships away, others had decided the family must remain united. The choice was up to them. Hannah had made the plea to the Planetary Council that parents should be the ones who made the decision, and the Council had acquiesced. But the failure of the autoimmune rejection drugs had made clear that if the children left Vesbius for a lengthy amount of time, they would be the first to experience the rejection response that had almost killed Hannah on the trip to Janus VI.

As Hannah passed among the refugee tents of the waiting families, many eyes followed her, particularly the eyes of children. She stopped here and there to pat a head or say hello. One little girl was playing with a doll, and Hannah joined her for a while, losing herself in the familiar childhood ritual. But then the little girl asked her, “What is it like in space?” She pointed to her doll. “Is Jillie going to like it?”

It took Hannah a moment to swallow the lump in her throat and reply.

“Jillie might be a little frightened,” she said, “but she will not have to be there long. And then you and she will be back on the ground and we will take care of you.”

Somehow or another,
Hannah thought,
I swear that we will.

Two days until impact. It had seemed, at least momentarily, that the Exos movement on the planet was stymied, if not disbanded, as the last of the days before the asteroid arrived were upon them all—at least Hannah had hoped so. But her hopes proved to be misplaced. As she got into her transport sled to make her weary way back to the capital complex, Hannah received an emergency call from Fussdesberge, a wealthy and environmentally blessed sector of the settlement near a rushing river that fell from the mountains and fed the rich barley fields below.

Ferlein, recovered and faithful as always, remained with her as a bodyguard. Her father had replaced Hox with a woman from his own security detail. Hannah had gone to school with her, though they had not gotten along back then. Frances Meredith was a by-the-book, rule-following sort, and Hannah was a free spirit. While their personal relationship might be prickly, Hannah didn’t have the slightest doubt Meredith would defend her to the death.

Another lesson learned,
Hannah thought.
Trust your own intuition over some applicant’s impressive résumé.

They arrived at dusk at the Fussdesberge courthouse, just as the moons were rising. A scene of pandemonium stretched out below. People from the countryside surrounded the courthouse steps. They held up lighted nightsticks, the illumination source
commonly used for evening travel in the colony, and several groups gathered around roaring bonfires. Hannah could not be sure, but as they swooped in closer, they seemed to be burning straw effigies and, here and there, a Planetary Council flag.