Текст книги "Deny Thy Father"

Автор книги: Jeff Mariotte

Соавторы: Jeff Mariotte
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PART TWO

FEBRUARY-MAY 2356

Chapter 15

The sun set late on Hazimot, which was one of many reasons why Kyle liked it there. Eighteen hours of sunlight in a row reminded him of the Alaskan summer, that golden time of year when you remembered why you put up with Alaskan winters. Of course, Hazimot was hotter than Alaska, even Valdez in midsummer. It had its sun, technically a star known as Iamme IV, and then it had a secondary sun, Myetra, much farther away but still near enough to cast light and some warmth down on Hazimot’s arid surface. The conflicting gravitational fields gave all the system’s planets skewed orbits, and there were long winters on Hazimot that were much colder than Alaska’s. But the next one wouldn’t come around for about twelve earth years, and Kyle didn’t plan to stay that long.

Kyle was walking home from work through the twilight streets of Cozzen, one of the largest cities in the nation of Cyre, with Clantis, a Cyrian coworker. The day had been long and wearying and as Kyle walked he felt a heaviness of limbs and a weariness of muscle that left him at once tired, sore, and satisfied. Clantis, taller than him and broad, with a deep chest and massive shoulders that made him well suited to hard physical labor, had skin the color and texture of hammered copper. The months on Hazimot had bronzed Kyle’s as well, but he figured he’d never achieve the look that Clantis had.

When they reached the intersection where Kyle went one way and Clantis another, the Cyrian regarded Kyle with a bemused expression and shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe you still live in that hole,” he said. “You make enough, don’t you, to get a real place? In a neighborhood where you don’t have to fear for your life every day?”

Kyle shrugged. He had always had a facility for languages, and Cyrian had been easy for him to learn. “I guess it just suits me.”

“Suits the vermin who get into your food and bedding,” Clantis argued. “Not you. You’re a smart guy, a hard worker. You could do better, easy.”

Clantis’s own home was a low, domed house in a neighborhood of similar structures, all built in the shadow of one of the great walls that surrounded Cozzen. It had seven rooms and was technologically current. Kyle, on the other hand, still lived in the place he’d found upon first arriving in Cozzen, so many months before. His building was half a dozen stories tall, one of many in its cramped district, a warren of narrow streets and abandoned buildings turned squatters’ hovels. Kyle shared his building with a changing cast of characters, twenty or so at any given time. But rent was free and, more important, no one asked difficult questions there or pried into one another’s private affairs. Hazimot had a fairly substantial human population, and the natives were humanoid enough that blending in was easy.

“I suppose,” Kyle said, noncommittal. “But I’m happy, so why worry about it?”

“Happy?” Clantis echoed. The two had grown fairly close, working side by side on the interminable public redevelopment projects that were so common in the city, and walking home together most days. Close enough,Kyle thought, that he seems to be taking my life choices personally now.

That’s not good. Next thing, he might start wondering about my past.

“I don’t see how you can claim to be happy,” Clantis continued. “Living down there with the dregs, the losers and maggots that feed on society’s droppings.”

“It’s not quite that bad,” Kyle said with a chuckle. “Like you say, I’m a smart guy. I wouldn’t put up with it if it was as bad as you describe.”

“Everyone has their own standards,” Clantis admitted.

“Exactly. I’ll see you tomorrow, Clantis.”

“See you then, Joe.”

Kyle tossed off a casual wave and headed into the neighborhood called The End, because it had, once upon a time, been at the end of a long road that connected several of Cyre’s cities. The name had stuck, and now had quite different connotations. Kyle’s own name had not passed his lips since he left the Morning Starto live here; instead he had called himself Joe Brady, because it was a bland name with absolutely no resonance for him. Except for the fact that he was a mass murderer, Kyle had been a little sorry that John Abbott hadn’t lived longer—while it had lasted, their relationship had been an educational one.

Kyle tried to clear his head before venturing into The End. The mazelike streets were unmarked, for the most part, the buildings nearly identical. There were vehicles on the streets, sometimes moving faster than was safe, and few sidewalks, no specially designated pedestrian areas. And, as Clantis had hinted at, it wasn’t the safest neighborhood in the city. Kyle had seen dangerous neighborhoods on a number of planets, in fact, and with the possible benefit that there didn’t seem to be any Tholian neighbors here, this was one of the worst.

Which made it, of course, perfect. Or as nearly so as he could hope.

Most buildings on Hazimot, it seemed, were round, or at least rounded off. By the time Kyle had been on the planet a few days, he had understood why. Another effect of the dual suns was wind, and lots of it. It slipped around the curved buildings, where more squared-off ones would have resisted and eventually been damaged in the process. When the winds blew on Hazimot, everything bowed to them.

This golden evening, though, the air was still, and The End was quiet as Kyle walked its confusing streets. A few of the locals were out, standing on the streets or sitting on the stairs of their buildings, dodging the sweltering heat that could build up inside. They watched him pass, most without comment, though there was an occasional hand raised in greeting. Poverty was rampant in this neighborhood, and most of those Kyle saw didn’t have jobs to take them out of it during the long hot days, or much inside to keep them occupied at night.

After the death of John Abbott, Kyle had studied up on the Class-M planets that the Morning Starwould be visiting. Hazimot had met his requirements in a number of ways. It was not a Federation planet, nor would it be anytime soon, Kyle was certain. It was politically unstable, with armed and economic conflict among a few superpowers and a host of lesser ones. Within Cyre there was an enormous gap between rich and poor, and the scramble for money was one of the society’s most prevalent features. Kyle was reminded of the Gilded Age of the early twentieth-century United States, just before the Great Depression helped even things out.

It was not, by any means, an ideal place to live. But that made it good for Kyle. He was unlikely to run into anyone he knew, and it was unlikelier still that anyone who knew him would look for him here. Since one needed money to buy goods here, he worked, but instead of a military or government job, as he had at home, he worked at menial labor. He was paid in cash daily by contractors working for the city. If he showed up and worked, he was paid, but if he didn’t that was okay too. No one sought him out, until he’d made friends with Clantis, which had happened more or less by accident. Now, if he skipped a day, Clantis noticed. Clantis invited him home, asked him over for meals with his family, took an interest in his welfare. That was just the kind of thing Kyle didn’t want.

At one point, five streets came together in a starburst pattern, and the most direct route home was straight across the middle of the star. But as Kyle stepped toward the center of the intersection, a two-person transport came hurtling down the street, skating just centimeters above the surface, kicking up dust and small stones as it charged. Kyle dodged, slamming back into the nearest building, and felt the wind tear at him as it passed. He started out again, but saw a police transport coming behind, half a dozen officers inside. Living in The End, Kyle had learned the poor person’s instinctive distrust of law enforcement, of police who enforced the laws made by the rich for the benefit of the rich. He hadn’t, to his knowledge, broken any of the laws of the city, but still he shied away from the oncoming vehicle.

For that matter, he realized, he hadn’t been breaking any laws back home when the Starfleet officers started gunning for him. So maybe that wasn’t necessarily a good indicator.

As he stood there, eyes downcast, the police officers cruised past him. A dropfly, attracted by his stillness, landed on his cheek. He twitched a couple of times and the thing flew away without biting. He was glad—raising a hand toward it might have alerted the cops, and in this neighborhood you didn’t want to do that if you could help it. When the police had gone from sight, he continued toward the place he had started to think of as home.

“Tough day in the ditches?” Elxenten asked when he saw Kyle climbing the three wide, curving steps toward the front door of their building. He had, in fact, been building walls all day, but the first day he’d met Elx he’d been filthy and bedraggled after a day of digging ditches for a sewage system, and that had been the Cyrian’s standard greeting ever since. He shot a grin at the older man, who’d done his share of ditchdigging over the years.

“That’s right,” he said. “Everything okay on the home front?”

Elxenten scratched his grizzled chin and laughed. “Yeah, no trouble here.”

That, Kyle had learned, was Elx’s highest praise. “No trouble” was as good as his life got. He had lived on Hazimot for what Kyle estimated would have been forty Earth years, but he looked at least seventy. His hair was pure white, and sparse, and a thin coating of white fuzz covered his chin and cheeks. Like Clantis, he had copper-colored skin, but this was copper that had been tarnished for too long. “Glad to hear it,” Kyle said.

“Michelle’s grilling up some hesturn, if you’re hungry.”

“Hesturn?” Kyle echoed. “Must have been a good day.” Hesturn was a kind of fish that lived in the local creeks. They were hard to catch, though, and, while considered fairly common in most parts of Cozzen, they were rare enough in The End to be notable.

“Yeah, it was,” Elx said. “You should’ve seen her when she came in, carrying five of the ugly beasts in a bag like it was treasure, a smile as bright as Iamme on her face.”

“Sorry I missed that,” Kyle replied. Michelle, a human who’d been here for a few years, was a lovely woman, especially, Kyle believed, when she smiled.

“She’s probably sorry you did too,” Elx told him. “Lady’s sweet on you, Joe.”

Kyle laughed. “Right,” he said sarcastically. “Because I’m such a good catch.”

Elx fixed him with a clear-eyed gaze, and rose up from his seat on the steps. “Steady worker. Honest man, far as I can tell. No obvious addictions. Don’t get into a lot of fights. What’s wrong with that?”

“You’d have to ask Michelle,” Kyle answered. “If I was her, I’d go for me in a heartbeat.”

Elx clapped a hand on Kyle’s shoulder that almost knocked him to the floor. As was typical with Cyrian men, Elxenten was big and powerful, with the overdeveloped shoulder muscles that made him look like he was wearing padding. “Maybe I’ll just do that. After I’ve got a gut full of her hestum. Let’s go on back.”

Kyle reached the door first and held it open for Elx, who nodded his appreciation as he passed. The building had been, in its heyday, a mundane apartment building, and still served essentially that same function today with the exception that nobody collected any rent. The front room was a lobby area, its gold paint flaked and peeling. There wasn’t a corner in the place; every wall swooped and arced in reflection of the outside curvature. It was, Kyle thought, an interesting contrast to Starbase 311, which went to such trouble to hide its curved nature. Stairways wound up from the lobby to the various apartments above, and through the lobby there was a courtyard, shared with the other buildings clustered around. It was here, on a heavy grating over an open fire pit, that Michelle was grilling her fish. Kyle could see her through the small-paned double doors, the evening’s last slanted rays of light slipping through a space between two buildings and striking her honey-colored hair like a fireball bursting into life. She saw him watching her and laughed, waving her tongs at him like an admonishing finger. It had been a long time since he’d known a woman so alive.

“I told you,” Elx murmured behind him.

“It’s just wishful thinking,” Kyle rejoined. “You’re too old for her so you want to live vicariously through me. But you can’t do that unless I’m living in the first place.”

“Got that right.”

“Listen, I need a shower before I’m fit company for anyone, man, woman, or child,” Kyle said. “Do me a favor, tell her I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

“Unless I forget about living vicariously and just run off with her myself,” Elx said.

“If you do that, more power to you,” Kyle offered. He had a strong hunch that Michelle and Elx would still be in the courtyard, with some of the other neighbors, when he came back downstairs. Unless he hurried, though, it was anyone’s guess if there would be any of that hesturn left, and when Elx opened the double doors the scent wafted in with a cloud of smoke, sweet and intense. Kyle could almost taste the tender pink flesh of the creature, and he had to force himself to keep heading toward his own apartment and the shower he so badly needed. Between the heat, the hard work, and the wind that blew almost constantly, he came home filthy every day. The winds dried his sweat almost instantly but kept him coated with a layer of the city’s dirt.

The squatters who lived in this building tried to keep it clean, but there were limits. They could only rely on the strength of their own group effort to keep out others, who might not be so careful. And no one, having turned to living here when they were unable to afford a place of their own, wanted to then impose exclusivity on it. Anyone who wanted to sleep here was welcome to do so, as long as basic rules of behavior were followed. Fortunately, there were plenty of empty buildings in The End and a few other, similar neighborhoods scattered around Cozzen.

But there was a tendency for trash and litter to build up in the common areas, and Kyle had to walk through some as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, where his place was. He kept his own apartment as clean as any he’d ever lived in, which meant that it would withstand inspection from the pickiest Starfleet admiral there was, and he made a mental note to pick up the refuse on the stairway when he came back down to get some of that hesturn.

On such an arid planet, water was a precious commodity, and it was therefore carefully regulated. Every building had its share, even those that were officially empty, because to deny access to water was tantamount to a death penalty. In return, Hazimot’s citizens learned to use it sparingly. In most homes of the middle and upper classes, sonic showers were commonplace. Power derived from sun and wind was cheap and abundant, so even these squatters’ tenements had power as well. As Kyle entered, his apartment recognized that the daylight was fading and lights turned on. He went to the flat’s bedroom and stripped off his filthy work clothes, then into the bathroom for a quick shower.

When that was done he put on a tunic and some baggy pants of a light, cool local fabric. The clothing was meant to be comfortable in heat and still protect against the winds, and it did a good job of both. He didn’t have the build of a Hazimotian, but other than that he looked like he belonged here, and he found that he liked it that way. Kyle was pleased that he had found a niche here and fit into it so well. He worked because he believed in work, believed that a person had to do a job of some kind to contribute to society. He made a little money, and most of that he contributed, anonymously, to local charities, since he didn’t need much to live on.

But it still bothered him that he was so far from his real job, from Starfleet. They needed him, he was convinced, needed the services that only he could provide. On the Morning Star,during his month of solitude before he had disembarked on Hazimot, he had wracked his brain trying to fathom why he would have become a target. He had made plenty of enemies among Starfleet’s foes, but there was nothing– nothing—that should have made him an enemy of Starfleet. So there was something more going on, and he couldn’t figure out what it might be. He had gone over every job he’d done, every conflict on which he’d advised. And he kept coming up blank. If there was no reason for Starfleet itself to want him out of the way, he reasoned, then that left someone within Starfleet, acting for reasons of his or her own. Which meant, since he was no threat to Starfleet, that there was someone in the organization’s ranks pursuing a private agenda. Which, since that agenda ran counter to Starfleet’s interests, was treasonous.

Except for being unable to solve that problem, though, as the time had passed, he had felt himself healing more. He wished, from time to time, that he could talk to Kate, could describe to her how he was getting better and seek her counsel for continued improvement. The Tholian attack flashbacks faded, and he realized that there would come a day when he would even forget the details of that terrible event, as it drifted further into the past. The unreasoning fear that had propelled him off-planet had faded too. Now, he stayed away as a strategic ploy, not out of blind panic. But he remained at a standstill—he didn’t want to go home until he had a plan, and he couldn’t come up with a good plan until he had some sense of what he was facing.

Dressed and dried by the crisp, hot air, he went back downstairs, collecting the trash from the staircase as he went and tossing it into a recycling unit at the bottom. It was a simple chore; he couldn’t understand why some folks didn’t bother to do it at all.

The odor of the grilled hesturn had filled the lobby now, and other residents were coming down to see what was going on. Kyle nodded hello to a few of them, Templesmith and Blevins and Xuana, and joined the procession through the double doors out of the lobby. The suns had gone down and the firepit provided the only light, casting shadows that danced throughout the circular courtyard. Michelle had pulled her day’s catch off the fire and was bent over a table, cutting them into sections, one strand of her long blond hair clamped between her lips as she concentrated.

“Smells delicious,” Kyle told her as he approached.

She glanced up at him, tossing him a quick smile, then turned back to her work. “I think it is,” she said. “It’s just that people keep showing up, and it’s getting harder and harder to get the pieces to equal sizes.”

“Well, they shouldn’t all be equal,” Kyle said. “You caught them all, right? You should help yourself to as much as you want.”

“I’m just trying to get close,” Michelle insisted. “I’ll have plenty, Joe, don’t you worry about me.”

In the light from the fire, he could see that she looked older than he had first thought. Time, work, and worry had etched lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. But she was beautiful, there was no getting around that. Her eyes were like Annie’s had been, blue as an Alaskan lake, her forehead wide and smooth, her rose petal-pink lips full. Occasionally in the time Kyle had known her, a shadow had seemed to cross her face, and her brow furrowed, eyes narrowing and lips pressing together. There was, he felt sure, something troubling her, something dark and private. He found himself wanting to know, wanting to help, and he didn’t even know how to ask her about it. But then, most of those living in The End had secrets. He was certainly no exception to that rule.

Instead of prying, he found a chair in the balmy courtyard and, surrounded by the casual conversation and easy laughter of his new neighbors, he joined with the others in eating her fish.

Chapter 16

Drake Kimball, though he had retired from Starfleet a decade before, looked every inch the military officer he had once been. His silver hair was cut short and impeccably combed, his clothing was as crisp and neat as any dress uniform, and his bearing and posture were textbook perfection. He sometimes paced as he delivered his military history lectures, for which he never used notes, but his attitude was always formal, as if he were on parade.

“Every battle is brand new,” he said as he stood at the front of the classroom, hands clasped behind his back. “But the elements that make it up have been around forever. The flank, the feint, the siege ... these have been practiced since the first bipeds picked up sticks and attacked the band next door. You are not, ladies and gentlemen, likely to invent any new maneuvers, any new tactics, in the course of your Starfleet careers. So the key to success is in how you apply the old ones, how you combine them to new effect. And that means being thoroughly conversant in them.”

This was nothing new to Will. Kimball had said basically the same thing on the first day of class, expressing the importance of knowing military history inside and out. For his part, Will was sure he’d finish this class near the top. He’d studied the history of strategy and tactics on his own, ever since his father had told him bedtime stories of Napoleon and Alexander and Hannibal. He had realized early on that he would never be the biggest kid in school, or the strongest, or the fastest. But he could still be big and strong and fast enough, and he could amplify his own skills by the application of strategic thinking.

“You have, ladies and gentlemen, occasionally pleased me, and sometimes disappointed me, with the essays I expect from you,” Kimball continued. “This one will be a little different than most. Rather than examining a particular battle or the work of a master tactician, I want you to research an individual soldier. I want you to delve into the life and career of a man or woman who fought on the fields of battle, famous, infamous, or unknown, and I want you to tell me, in this essay, what that particular soldier did, right or wrong, that resulted in victory or defeat. If the soldier you’re studying survived, I expect to discover why. If not, why not. Understood?”

There was a chorus of “Yes, sir” from the assembled students. Kimball gave a due date and a few more detailed instructions, and dismissed the class. Will met up with Dennis Haynes on the way out of class. “This should be kind of interesting,” Dennis said. “A little different, like the old man said.”

“Do you have any ideas yet?” Will asked him. “Anyone you’d like to research?”

“The first thought that came to mind was James T. Kirk,” Dennis told him. “But then, I figure he’ll get a dozen of those.”

“You’re better off picking someone less well known,” Will agreed. “Less competition for original ideas, less chance that Kimball will have already reached his own conclusions.”

“Harder to find source material, though,” Dennis said as they walked across the open campus. “If I pick someone who’s not well known.”

“There are ways around that,” Will told him. The sky was the color of lead, and cloudless, and the air carried that metallic, charged tang that it sometimes did when it seemed as if the weather might assert itself.

“What about you?” Dennis asked him. “Got any ideas? You’re always so good at coming up with creative twists.”

“I’ve got a couple of possibilities in mind,” Will said. This was a lie, though. He had made up his mind as soon as Kimball had described the assignment. He owned, thanks to his father, the diary of an ancestor named Thaddius Riker, who had fought in the American Civil War. That’s who he was going to write about—his own kin.

He and Dennis were continuing across campus toward their next class when Will noticed a familiar, dark-haired shape walking toward them. “It’s Felicia,” Dennis said.

“So it is,” Will noted. He hadn’t talked to Felicia much since the end of the last school year. He had thought that maybe she was interested in him, during Admiral Paris’s survival project. But after the project’s disastrous end, he had come out the superintendent’s office and she had been gone, halfway across the Quad, lost in conversation with Estresor Fil. He had kind of expected her to be waiting for him, and when she wasn’t he became convinced that his typical luck with women was holding, and he had only imagined that she might be attracted to him. Embarrassed by his own ineptitude, and moody and depressed at being, once again, stuck on Earth all summer, he had avoided contact with almost everyone he knew. The longer he had gone without talking to anyone, the more shy he had been when he’d seen them again. With Paul and Dennis and some of the others, he had fallen quickly back into old routines once school started up again. But with Felicia, he had never been able to overcome that double dose of awkwardness. And this year, they had no classes together. The few times he’d run into her it had been with a lot of people around, and he’d managed to avoid having an actual conversation with her.

Now as she approached, he saw on her lovely face a sly half-grin.

“Excuse me,” she said, projecting a naiveté that he knew was an act, but which he found somehow appealing anyway. “You look a lot like a young man I used to know. His name was Will Riker. Have you ever heard of him?”

Will had to laugh. “Yes, Felicia,” he said. “Yes, I’m a big fat loser. I admit it. I’m sorry.”

“I was thinking along those same lines, Cadet Riker,” she said. “Though a little stronger, perhaps. Hello, Dennis.”

“Hi, Felicia.”

“I don’t suppose you’d mind leaving Cadet Riker and me alone for a little while,” she said, still directing her words to Dennis. “Will and I need to talk about how he’s going to atone for his foolish and, may I say, ungentlemanly behavior.”

Dennis seemed a bit flabbergasted, but she had made it clear that she was demanding this, not really asking, and he responded with his typical good humor. “I ... uh, sure. I’ll leave you two alone. Send Will’s pieces back in a bag when you’re done with him.”

“I’ll do that, and thank you for your consideration.” She stood with her hands on her hips, watching Dennis get beyond earshot, then faced Will. Her stance was determined, and Will figured he was in for a severe admonishment. Which I no doubt deserve,he thought. Not that that’ll make it any easier to hear.She pointed to a nearby bench, and they both sat down.

“Felicia, I—” he began, hoping to ward off the brunt of her attack with some kind of excuse. But he didn’t really have one, and she didn’t give him a chance to get it out anyway.

“Be quiet, William Riker, and let me talk. I get the distinct impression that you’ve been avoiding me, ever since September. I also have the feeling that if I hadn’t made a point of ‘accidentally’ being outside your classroom today, I still wouldn’t have seen you. What I’d like to know is what terrible crime I committed to deserve this exclusion from your life, because I must have done something.”

“You ...” Will began, and then he stopped because he didn’t know where else to go. “It isn’t anything youdid, Felicia,” he said. As he spoke he watched a bird struggle to lift a crust of bread nearly as large as it was. He knew how the bird felt. “I ... I had a rough summer, I guess. And then that kind of led into a rough year. I’ve been busy, you know, trying to knuckle down and get my grades up.”

“Even so ...”

Will shrugged. “I guess I’m not always good at understanding women.”

Felicia stared at him, open-mouthed, as if he had just emerged from a particularly disgusting cocoon. “Understanding women? It isn’t like we’re a separate species, much less a non-humanoid alien life-form, Will. We’re just like you, only with some different parts.”

He felt duly chastised. “I guess it’s those different parts that throw me off.”

“You don’t have to let them. It’s those different parts that make things interesting. Anyway, how would you feel if you knew I had avoided you for the last six months?”

“I didn’t realize you hadn’t been,” Will offered. “I mean, I wasn’t so much avoiding you as just not seeking you out. And I thought ...” He stopped, once again not quite sure how much he wanted to say, or in what direction he really wanted to take the conversation. “I think I thought you weren’t interested in me. In being friends with me.”

“Well, you were wrong. And I have looked for you, a few times. But after you didn’t answer my messages during the summer, and then during the school year you never seemed to be where I could find you. I got the feeling you just didn’t want to be bothered. At least, not by me.”

Will found that he was smiling for the first time since they’d taken their seats on the bench. “So I’m not the only one who doesn’t always understand other people.”

“People are hard to understand if they don’t communicate,” she said. “But yes, apparently I misjudged you as well. Will you forgive me?”

“I think there’s going to have to be some mutual forgiving,” Will suggested.

“Maybe we should just start over from the beginning,” Felicia said. She offered her hand. “Hello, Cadet. I’m Felicia Mendoza, from El Salvador, Earth.”

“William T. Riker,” he said with a smile. “Valdez, Alaska, Earth.”

“Can we be friends, Cadet Riker?”

“I think I’d like that, Cadet Mendoza.” He felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders that had been there since the end of school last year. The awfulness of the summer had been compounded, he knew, by his confusion over Felicia’s feelings—or, as he understood now, his misjudgment of Felicia’s feelings. He still didn’t quite know what had happened, but he thought that it might be better just to let the details slip away, rather than dredging them up and having to undergo the discomfort of facing them specifically. For now, the softness of her hand in his, her warm smile and the light that danced in her brown eyes and the way a strand of her dark hair rested against her olive cheek, where it had escaped her ponytail, all conspired to make him believe that he had come out of a long tunnel into a glorious day.