The Left Hand of Destiny, Book 1 Page 14

  It was his mother. The first thing she did was to tell him how much the call was costing. The second thing she did was to tell him he was an idiot and how dare he force them to spend all this money scouring the quadrant for him? Pharh knew this was nonsense since all his mother had to do was check with the Hall of Commerce and find out where he was filing his P-and-L statements. The third thing she did was let his father speak to him, but, as Pharh guessed, he had little to say. It was a common expression in Pharh’s family that his father was a man of few words. Pharh had been in his midteens before he had figured out that they meant he didn’t know many.

  Had they even noticed they were yelling at a machine?

  During another brief lull, Pharh heard the soft inrush and explosive burst that meant his father had inhaled, then sighed. The twin sounds encompassed worlds, systems, galaxies. They said how ungrateful, what a disappointment, what a poor excuse for a son Pharh was. They said that he had better give up this ridiculous adventure, admit that he was fooling no one (except perhaps himself) and get his lobes home and back into his cupboard at the office just as fast as a cheap transport (that would be coming out of his pay) would carry him or he was out of the family forever. It was just about the most eloquent thing Pharh’s father had ever not said.

  Though he knew that he was talking to himself, Pharh began to form a reply in his mind, but, more significantly, before that reply was complete, he felt his lips begin to move. A well-worn psychic alarm system warned him that he was about to say something he was going to regret. Alas, the alarm system was not so well made that it would prevent him from saying it. An image formed in his mind of a wide and deep dry riverbed and there in the middle of it was himself, Pharh. He could feel the cracked mud rumble under his feet as the torrent of capitulation headed toward him. It would sweep him away, out into the great, wide ocean where he would drown, soggy and unmourned. He could feel the dreaded words—“I’m sorry”—rising in his throat. It wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t the brave thing to do, but rightness and bravery were not especially notable features in Pharh’s mental landscape, though sometimes, on a good day, he could almost see them across the wilderness from atop the tiny little knob of rebelliousness that he lived on.

  Some sick sixth sense told him that this might be his last chance to escape, to go be someone other than the person his mother and father expected him to be, but that same sense told him he probably wasn’t strong enough. He wasn’t going to be able to get away. He felt the first word—“I’m …”—begin to come out.

  But sometimes Fate takes a hand. Sometimes Fate diverts the river, plucks the almost-a-hero from the stream, makes the almost-a-fool shut his mouth before it’s too late. Sometimes, the bomb falls on the wrong place at the right time and occasionally Fate sounds like a click even when it’s really a boom.

  The blasts from the bombing finally collapsed the ceiling. Heavy chunks of plasteel dropped smack into the companel, rendering Pharh’s last connection with Ferenginar null and void, eradicating any evidence that his parents had ever contacted him. He would never know the rest of what his parents said, nor would he be able to return their call in a timely fashion. They would cut off any ties he might have to the family business.

  And he didn’t even have to call an accountant to initiate the dreaded “D” word: divestiture.

  * * *

  Pain-racked, Martok hung on the fringe of consciousness. Enemies beset him, but he could not lift his head. A weapon pressed into his side, but was it his own or an attacker’s? He could not say, nor could he move his arms to defend or attack. Sound swirled all around him, loud shouts and thumps of battle, but no light. And he was cold. Martok had never minded the cold. You couldn’t grow up in Ketha and mind the cold. During the winter months, the wind would howl down from the north and claw at you, shredding clothing, stripping away heat. But now he was cold, dammit.

  Above him—no, against his back—a sharp weight shifted and the pressure lessened. He heard a familiar voice. Maapek was calling to someone: “Here! I’ve found him!” More voices. Sounds of scrabbling and things being shifted. Dust in his nose and eye.

  More voices: “Help. Carefully. Watch that.” The weight lessened even more. Martok realized that he had been buried. He must have been in the rubble from the Great Hall all this time and now they were finding him. They would lift him out and see that he was not dead and that no one could kill the chancellor, not even a bomb from the sky, and he would rally the Defense Force and they would go take Morjod’s head. …

  Light. Wetness on the back of his head. Hands gripped his arms and legs. “Stop,” a voice called. “Let me check him first or you might injure him more.” Martok heard a beeping sound, a tricorder. They were checking him for injuries. Martok gritted his teeth, anger flaring, and pushed himself up from the ground. Muscles fluttered, and he felt the wet thickness in his chest move again, but he held himself up, kept himself from collapsing forward. He didn’t recognize the warrior who was checking him with the tricorder—another young recruit, he guessed—but grabbed the device with one hand and covered it.

  “Don’t,” he grunted. “If I can’t stand, then leave me here.” Around him, he heard voices respond, some in surprise, some in approval. He coughed again, choked wetly, then brought up a gritty gob. No, he thought. Not the Great Temple. Ketha. The base. We were hiding. Collecting data. Making a plan. … Martok got his legs underneath him and rocked back onto his haunches. “How long?” he asked.

  Maapek sat on the ground beside him, his forehead covered in a dirty, bloodstained bandage. “Three hours, General,” Maapek said. “It will be morning soon.”

  Confused, Martok asked, “Three hours?! And we’re still here? Why didn’t you move? What if there are infantry, cleanup patrols … ?”

  Maapek shook his head and tried to sound decisive when he said, “We stayed to find you, General.”

  Dust and small rocks tumbled down off his shoulders and slid down the back of his chancellor’s cloak. “Where is Worf?” he asked. Then, “What is our status?” Maapek wouldn’t meet his eye and instead glanced over at Tamal, who was crouched against a rock, propping herself up with a disruptor rifle. She looked back at Maapek, then turned her head to stare at Jaroun, who, miraculously, appeared unhurt.

  “The ambassador is unconscious,” Jaroun reported. “We found him a short time ago, and the medic is tending to his injuries.”

  Martok looked at the young warrior who had been checking him with the tricorder, and goaded him. “Go,” the general said. “Help Worf. We need him alive.” Martok turned back to Jaroun. “What else?”

  “I … We …” Jaroun faltered. “There is not much to tell, Chancellor. The ships found us. You ordered everyone to the basement where they had found the door to the vault or escape tunnel or whatever it was. No one had time to explore it. I was outside, guiding others in when the building was hit. The ceiling collapsed, but the walls tumbled away from the stairwell. Those who were with me …” He looked around him, showing Martok the ones he meant. “We suddenly saw the sky above us. And the others, those who had made it into the vault …” Martok watched as Jaroun’s face went dark, like a winter sky before a heavy snow, and then he shrugged. Shrugged. He had been such a proud man, so unsullied by confusion. And I have brought him to this. “We tried to dig them out, but soon it became clear that there was no point. No life signs, no communications, no …”

  Martok took a tentative step toward Jaroun with every intention of laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but Jaroun stepped to the side even as the general reached out to him. Looking around, Martok tried to ascertain whether anyone had seen what had happened and decided from the way none of the warriors would meet his eye that they had all seen. Is this a mutiny? he wondered, and then realized it was nothing so overt. It’s exhaustion. It’s shock and disillusionment. And why not? What have we accomplished? Not even bothering to try to answer his own question, Martok limped past Jaroun and to the crumbling st
airs and began to climb. Adding to his humiliation, his legs were so unsteady that he had to grip the metal rail to keep his balance. Keep walking, old man, he thought. And don’t look back. There are demons—and worse—behind you. Disturbingly, he could not name the demons and neither did he know their faces, but he had no doubt that they were there.

  Halfway up the stairs, the smell hit him. When he had been a boy, it had been his job to gather the household trash and throw it into a large stone oven in the yard behind their house. Every week or so, his father would ignite the rubbish with his igniter and the young Martok would sit and watch it burn down to a pile of ash, the black-gray smoke rolling over him, filling his senses. He used to imagine that he was standing on a cliff overlooking a great battlefield and this was how victory would smell. Only much later did he learn the truth: Victory and defeat smell the same. They reek of oil and fear and cooked meat.

  At the top of the stairs Martok stopped to catch his breath. The thermocrete floor was cracked and pitted, and three of the four walls of the large room where they had camped were gone. The sun was a dim orange ball to the east, shrouded behind the leaden sky. A light breeze swept whorls of ebony ash across the concrete, but except for the soft whisper of the wind there was no sound. Much to Martok’s chagrin, he recognized that he had taken for granted the sharp cries of birds and the humming insects that must have been all around them. Now they were gone. The mounds of refuse had been leveled. Last night, Martok had stood atop one and stared out at the lights, knowing that some were hearth fires. They were gone now, along with the hearths, along with the homes. Curls of greasy smoke wound up into the black sky, and to Martok they might as well have been the bars of a cage. As a child, he had known that despite its appearance, Ketha teemed with life.

  Not now. Not here, anyway. His enemies had done their job well and erased the site of Martok’s childhood. What else are they going to take from me today? he wondered. A gulf opened up inside him and a memory rose, unbidden, to his mind. Sirella had called him to tell him that their then fourteen-year-old daughter Lazhna had been attacked. Only a long time later, after he had heard the rest of the story and learned that Lazhna had crippled two grown men for daring to try to corner her in an alley, did Martok admit the truth to himself. In the few moments between his wife’s sentences, Martok had imagined every possible form of violation and realized precisely how vulnerable he truly was.

  And now it had happened to him again. Someone has taken something from me, he thought, and I do not know who or how or why. The rage, the confusion, the shock, all of these mingled together to form a brew so potent that Martok felt his senses begin to grow dull. It would be so simple to just allow himself to sink into numbness, to lose his outrage, but he would not, could not. He heard the groans and low moans all around him. For my people, I must embrace my fury.

  Jaroun came up behind him and cleared his throat. “Chancellor …” he said.

  “Don’t call me that,” Martok said. “I’m not the chancellor. Not anymore. Maybe I never was.” He turned and looked at Jaroun and commanded, “Take what you have. Save as many of them as you can.”

  Jaroun was confused. “Save who?”

  Martok gestured back at the collapsed building, then swept his arm around to encompass the burning landscape. “Anyone you can,” he barked. “All of them.” The general then turned away and stalked down the low hill without saying another word. Heavy black smoke swirled around him as he moved, making his eye sting and his flesh prickle. At the bottom of the hill, he spied a shallow puddle of burning oil. As he approached it, Martok first shrugged one shoulder out of the heavy chancellor’s cloak, and then the other, until it was dragging along the ground, loosely held with one finger. As he stepped over the puddle, Martok released the cloak and let it fall. He thought he would feel lighter when he let it go, but it was not true. Despite that, he began to walk faster. Sirella, he thought. I’m coming. He had a lot of ground to cover.

  Behind him, the heavy cloak almost smothered the blaze, but one tiny lick of flame at the edge of the puddle guttered, flickered, then began to grow.

  Part Two

  “We are not accorded the luxury of choosing the women we fall in love with. Do you think Sirella is anything like the woman I thought that I’d marry? She is a prideful, arrogant, mercurial woman who shares my bed far too infrequently for my taste. And yet … I love her deeply. We Klingons often tout our prowess in battle, our desire for glory and honor above all else … but how hollow is the sound of victory without someone to share it with. Honor gives little comfort to a man alone in his home … and in his heart.”

  10

  “WHEN WILL HE COME?”

  “Soon,” she said, her voice low and seductive. “He will be here soon. Do not be impatient. Impatience leads to carelessness.” Her words relaxed him like fingers stroking his furrowed brow, and Morjod’s neck muscles unknotted. Transfixed, he watched her graceful hands punctuate her words with delicate gestures as if she conducted an orchestra or wove a conjuror’s spell. He looked up from the stack of reports sliding off his desk and watched his lady as she slowly walked around the perimeter of the room. As long as he could remember, this had calmed him. She walked soundlessly, her austere black fur robes concealing her in the shadows until she stood beside the row of tall, narrow windows and her tall, thin frame cast an indistinct shadow across Morjod’s desk. Pushing aside the tightly woven braids that wreathed her face, she cocked an ear closer to the glass.

  The emperor’s—that is, Morjod’s—office was on the east side of the palace. Normally the morning sun would flood the room, but today the light was anemic. It was his doing, Morjod knew. Though their blow against the fossilized relics of the old empire might have been necessary, it also had the unfortunate side effect of casting tons of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Last night’s spectacular coral-scarlet sunset would replay for the next several months, the scientists said, but the price was a thin, gray-brown tint to the atmosphere that Morjod found depressing.

  Serenely, she gazed out over the First City, perhaps contemplating the new world they had birthed together. He would like to hear her thoughts, listen to the silvery caresses of her words. He especially liked to see her eyes when they talked, enjoyed the sensation that he might at any second fall into them, plunge headlong into their darkness and never return again to the land of the living. She could not see him with her back turned, but he knew that she was aware of his eyes being fixed on her. If she tilted her head back, he would be able to see the tiny smile she wore when her plans were successful. To Morjod’s profound delight, she had been smiling from morning till night every hour of the past several days.

  “We have planned well.” To Morjod’s ear, she sang the words and they echoed into his heart. “He is predictable. We have only to wait.”

  “So you say,” Morjod said, making an effort to sound grim, though it was difficult when she was so merry. He carelessly tossed the Ketha report onto the pile. Should anything slide off the desk, a nameless functionary would scurry in and tidy things, which strangely bothered Morjod. Assuming the role of the emperor should be thrilling, but he found much of it … distasteful. This room, for instance, this office. … Except for the windows, he did not like it. It was much too large, much too ornate, and filled with useless icons, statues and ceremonial weapons. Lining the walls were rows of shelves that sagged under the weight of leather-bound books and clay canisters that contained crumpling scrolls made from pounded plant matter. He could understand the emperor surrounding himself with knowledge, but why had old Kahless been so attached to these ancient media? Disposing of the musty-smelling antiques and scanning the contents of these tomes and rolls into a computer would make this a fit room for a warrior. He made a mental note to order this done as soon as possible, if his lady agreed.

  And then there were the life-size statues of mythological warriors that stood at the end of every shelving unit. Images of Reclaw and his seven companions, the traditional
depiction of Mow’ga and his wife, the holy warrior T’Chen from the Second Dynasty—all of them archaic reminders of times long dead and best forgotten. For what purpose had the clone emperor put them here? Decoration, Morjod suspected. And if that’s true, then the old fool must be even more defective than we had thought. How can anyone expect to accomplish anything in a dusty shrine to the past?

  But Morjod understood why he had to use this office. She had explained it to him. Someday, they would remake it and the First City in their own image. Both would be simpler, starker, more like their home, but that time had not come yet. There was much to do first before they could reveal to the people the entire scope of their plans for the future. It will be too much, too soon, he thought. She said this was true and so it must be.

  “The report from Ketha,” he said. “I find it … dissatisfying.” One of the generals had scurried in mere minutes ago and handed it to Morjod, but he had never taken his eyes off his lady. Morjod had absorbed it quickly and completely—would be able to recite the contents line-by-line if he was asked or the contents of any of the other score of reports on the desk. It was one of his special skills, another of her gifts to him.

  “Why?” she asked. “Everything went precisely as planned. We knew one of Negh’Var crew would report their location. It was just a matter of time after your broadcast.”

  Morjod shook his head. “Yes, I know. It went as planned. But now we have lost track of him. Had you anticipated that he would leave the others behind?”

  A nod.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I wanted to see how you would respond without my telling you what to expect. Someday, you might need to come to a decision without my guidance.”