Chapter Five

KIRK FELT the fleeting wish that he and Mudd were both Nevisians. He would love to challenge this overblown, self-aggrandizing irritant to a duel, slice him to ribbons, and then see what he thought of McCoy’s “callous disregard for local customs.” But even though Kirk could outfight him with one hand tied to his opposite foot, Mudd had the advantage here and Kirk knew it. And even if they had been Nevisians, Mudd would no doubt find a way to weasel out of a duel—and somehow make Kirk look bad in the process. He was the slipperiest con artist Kirk had ever met. He’d even managed to somehow foist his android chaperone off on the Grand General, further ingratiating the planetary leader to him in the bargain.

So Kirk swallowed his indignation and—ignoring Mudd—said to the Grand General, “Dr. McCoy didn’t mean to offend anyone. He’s trained to save people’s lives, no matter who or where.”

The Grand General wasn’t mollified. “That may be fine where you come from, but here in the Nevis system people die with honor.”

McCoy opened his mouth to protest, but Kirk waved him to silence. They’d gotten into enough trouble here. “We die with honor too,” Kirk said, “when the time is right. Apparently we disagree on when it’s appropriate, but with only one life to give we don’t want to throw it away lightly.”

“Perhaps if you had Arnhall to look forward to, you wouldn’t be so choosy,” said the Grand General.

That sounded like a religious reference to Kirk. If he’d learned anything in his years in Starfleet, it was never to get into a religious discussion with an alien, so he simply said, “Maybe so. In any case, we didn’t mean to put a damper on your celebration. Please accept our—”

“Careful, Kirk,” interrupted Mudd. “If you were about to say ‘apology,’ you should know a few more things about the local customs.” Tucking his thumbs into his wide black belt, he puffed out his ample stomach even farther than usual and said, “An apology is an admission of wrongdoing, which requires automatic punishment.” He paused dramatically before saying, “And the sentence is, of course, death. So think it over, Captain. Still feel like apologizing?”

Mudd had to be kidding. A society where nobody could apologize? Why, every little mishap could lead to a fight, and every fight to a feud. Global war could erupt over something as silly as…as which half of a Palko to eat. And it could last for twelve thousand years.

But something like that would have been in the first-contact files, wouldn’t it? In big, bold type: Never apologize to a Nevisian. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Kirk could imagine half a dozen reasons why not, ranging from inadequate research to lack of survivors to report it.

“No,” he said quietly. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think an apology is called for.”

Mudd nodded. “I thought you might see it that way. You owe me one, Kirk.”

Much as it galled him to admit it, Kirk supposed he did. But Mudd wasted no time in evening the score. He turned to the Grand General and said, “For their own good, I think we ought to send them back to their ship before they get into more serious trouble.”

“I agree,” said the Grand General, obviously still stinging from the perceived insult. He said to Kirk, “Captain, please remove yourself and your people. If you and Harcourt wish to continue your visit, you can do so on board your ship.”

Kirk laughed out loud at the thought. “No, thanks,” he said. “If I have anything more to say to Harry, I’ll send him a letter. By smoke signal.” He turned to his crew. “Come on. The party’s over.”

Ensign Lebrun knew something was wrong the moment her new husband entered their quarters after his shift. She had beat him home by a few minutes after her own day in security was over, and had been waiting with the lights turned down low.

“What’s the matter, lover?” she asked, rising from her chair by the viewport, where she’d been watching the planet spin below. She held out her arms for him, eager to welcome him home. It was still so new to have him actually living with her, she’d been daydreaming about how it would be when he arrived, how she would rub the stiffness from his muscles and how they would relax together before dinner, maybe have a drink and talk about their day or maybe just stare into each other’s eyes for a while.

But the fantasy started to crumble as soon as she saw his tired expression, and it fell apart even more when he avoided her arms and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then slumped down heavily into the chair she had just vacated.

“What is it?” she asked, a little less compassionately than before.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Mr. Scott got back early from that party down below, and he caught me reprogramming the warp panel to flash like it was about to blow up on him next time he asked the computer for a routine systems check.”

“You what?” asked Lebrun. “Simon, that’s dangerous.”

“That’s what Scotty said, too. Among other things.” He sighed heavily.

“What did you do such a dumb thing like that for, anyway?” she asked him.

He looked up at her and grinned weakly. “To get back at him for that ridiculous stunt he pulled with your ring. I couldn’t let him get away with that, now, could I?”

She shook her head. “Well, no, but reprogramming the warp panel isn’t the way to do it. What if we’d had a genuine emergency? We could have all been—”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” he asked petulantly.

“Whose side are you on?” she demanded right back. “You could have blown us all up over a stupid practical joke.”

“For crying out loud, I wouldn’t have blown anything up.” He got up from his chair and stomped into the kitchen. Lebrun heard him dialing for something to drink, and he came back out with a tumbler of something thick and purple.

“Is that Cetian laliska again?” she asked, though she knew already that it was. Its pungent odor, like garlic and vinegar, was impossible to miss. “You know I don’t like the way that makes your breath smell.”

“So don’t sit close,” he told her, settling pointedly into the farthest chair from her at the dining table. Even though there was a coaster right there in front of him, he set the glass directly on the tabletop, leaving a ring from the condensation that ran down its side.

Her fantasy was irreparably shattered. No quiet evening staring fondly into his eyes, no backrubs turning slowly into quiet lovemaking—just this tired irritability and spiteful reaction to everything she said. She stood before him with her hands on her hips, breathing hard and trying not to let herself explode when he took another long drink of his laliska.

“Simon Nordell,” she said at last, “is this the way you really want it to be?”

“Me?” He looked at her indignantly. “Why is it always my fault? You’re the one who started in with the questions the moment I came through the door.”

“All I asked was what was wrong.”

“And I told you. Now could I relax for a minute without the security debriefing?”

Security. Every time she tried to be assertive, he blamed it on her job. As if she couldn’t show any personal strength on her own.

“Fine,” she said, suddenly making up her mind. She stepped into their bedroom and tugged the top cover off the bed, then went back out and flung it onto the couch. “Relax all you want, but you can do it right there, because that’s where you’re spending the night.” She went back into the bedroom, punched the privacy button, and as the door slid shut between them shouted, “And you’d better not try coming in here without an apology.”

Whatever he said in reply didn’t make it through the room’s soundproofing.

She sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly conscious of just how small a starship bedroom was, even in a two-person cabin. And it was a long time until bedtime.

As her breathing slowed, she wondered: Would he come knock on the door? He had better. Otherwise it was going to be a lonely night for both of them.

Spock settled into his chair at the bridge’s science station, ready for a long evening of data analysis. The Nevis system was astronomically unusual enough that a few hours of observations would no doubt reveal a great deal about the ability of double star systems to support life-bearing planets, and Prastor and Distrel were also interesting in their own right. Two inhabited planets in the same system would provide a wonderful laboratory to study the parallel evolution of both geographic and biological aspects of living worlds. Yet the earlier contact teams had made only the most rudimentary of sensor sweeps. The computer records contained only low-resolution surface maps, and demographic information was even sketchier.

Spock had already made some interesting discoveries. For instance, there was a very good sensor web around both planets, and even scattered through interplanetary space between them. It was apparently a sophisticated information-gathering system, a spy network that, judging from the sensor capability, could track every living being on either planet or in transit between the two. It was no doubt the result of escalating defense technology, but the duration of the conflict in this system bore testimony to its ineffectiveness in preventing attack.

Even so, its very existence underscored the value of a careful survey. The sensor web bespoke a high level of technology, high enough to affect other cultures now that the Nevisians had begun trading. Whether or not they ever planned on joining the Federation—a prospect that seemed somewhat dimmer after the unfortunate first meeting in the Distrellian leader’s banquet hall—it never hurt to gain as much information as possible about an alien race’s planetary resources or technological and economic capabilities. It might even help the next people who dealt with them to avoid some of the mistakes that the Enterprise crew had made.

Spock wondered how much of the trouble they had encountered could have been avoided had they gone down to the surface with better information. Perhaps some of it, but with Harry Mudd complicating the issue something would undoubtedly have happened sooner or later no matter how well briefed they had been. Mudd had almost certainly been waiting for his chance to get back at Kirk and Spock for thwarting his earlier schemes and leaving him a prisoner of the androids; he would have engineered an excuse to throw them off the planet if one hadn’t arisen naturally.

Of course that couldn’t have been his original intention when he had come to the Nevis system. Mudd couldn’t have known that the Enterprise would be sent to investigate the results of his trade agreement. He had undoubtedly come here primarily to establish himself as the middleman and skim off half the profit from the sale of Palko fruit, and he had merely taken advantage of the opportunity to settle the score with his old antagonists when it had been presented to him.

That still left the question of the Stella android. What was she doing here? Watching over Mudd, of course, but the androids could have done that just as well on their home planet. They would never have let him go even with a chaperone unless they had a good reason to do so.

Unless he had reformed, Spock admitted. That was the sole condition of his release. Logic demanded that Spock at least consider the possibility. But not even logic could make him believe it. It would be easier to believe that the stars could spontaneously rearrange themselves to spell out messages in Klingon.

Mudd could, however, have convinced the androids that he had reformed. This might be a supervised test on their part, to see how he behaved in galactic society before they released him completely. That would be easy enough to check; Spock activated his communicator and hailed the Distrellian Grand General’s palace.

“This is science officer Spock aboard the Enterprise,” he told the woman who answered. “I wish to speak with Stella Mudd.”

“One moment please.” The woman consulted a monitor outside of camera range, then looked back up at Spock. “I’m sorry, sir, but she is in private conference with the Grand General. Would you like to leave a message?”

Did he? Spock considered the implications. If Mudd discovered that Spock wished to speak with his chaperone before the android did, then Harry could order it to answer untruthfully. He did, after all, have limited control over it, even though it wouldn’t let him go free. No, it would defeat the purpose of asking the android for information if Mudd had time to prepare it for questioning.

“No, thank you,” said Spock. “I will try again later.”

He broke the connection and leaned back in his chair. He supposed he could send a message to the androids’ home planet, but at this distance it would take even longer to get a reply than simply waiting for the local Stella to become available.

Private conference with the Grand General? It was late evening at the palace. What sort of conference would the Distrellian leader need with a Stella android at that hour?

Unless of course he wasn’t aware she was an android. He had seemed quite interested in her at the party. Perhaps he was trying to initiate a dalliance with her, or even steal her away from Harry.

From what Spock had seen of her behavior and attitudes, that would be an …interesting prospect. He nearly smiled at the thought.