Spock Messiah sttos(n-3 Page 12

  He was about to climb down from his vantage point when a light morning wind shifted and the mist was rolled back.

  “There it is,” he exclaimed. “I can just make out the top ends of the support poles. It’s not far off.”

  “Why couldn’t we have beamed down farther back?” Sara asked, as they headed back to the Beshwa caravan.

  “The migration path we’ll be taking to cut in behind Spock’s gathering is fairly heavily traveled. It might have looked a little odd if a Beshwa caravan suddenly appeared in the middle of a clan heading for their summer grazing grounds. This way, if we run into any hillmen when we reach the trail, we can simply say that we turned down to the mining settlement for some trading.”

  When they arrived at their strange, many-wheeled vehicle, McCoy poked his head out of the back door of the van, where he and the rest had taken refuge from the morning chill.

  “Do you have us located?” the doctor asked.

  Kirk nodded. “The road from Andros is just to the left, and the bridge is almost straight ahead.”

  They cut through the brush and then down a hill until they reached the dirt road. It was rutted from heavy traffic, though there was no one on it at the moment. As they traveled along, slightly below the level of the rolling country they had just left, the bridge’s support poles began to rise from behind a low hill. When they topped it, Kirk pulled the neelots to a halt and stared down in dismay.

  The heavy jakim cables which should have arced between the uprights to support the suspension bridge, dangled loosely into the ravine between.

  Kirk whipped the neelots forward, and the wagon lumbered quickly to the edge of the gorge. Halting it, Kirk leaped down.

  The bridge was gone; the only link between the hills and the lowlands for forty kilometers in either direction lay in tangled ruins at the bottom of the canyon.

  Kirk raised his eyes and peered to the opposite side. The cables had been cut from the far side and, like a taut ribbon cut at one end, the bridge had gone curling into the depths below. The party stood looking for a moment at the now inaccessible road on the other side that wound back into the hills; and then they turned and went back to the vehicle.

  “Why?” Sara murmured.

  Kirk dug into the memory of his dop.

  “Spearstone. It looks like the clans are already on the move.” He pointed toward the sharply rising hills on the other side of the ruined bridge. “Back that way about six kilometers is the source of most of Andres’s iron. There are some rich veins there. Spock’s working fast. The first step in a major offensive is to cut off the raw materials your enemy needs for instruments of war.” Kirk turned around and faced Chekov.

  “Get me the map, Ensign. There must have been a way to get across before the bridge was built.”

  The Russian went into the caravan and emerged a moment later with a roll of parchment-like material.

  Kirk unrolled it and spread it out on a flat rock. He studied it for a long moment, his face clouded in concentration. Finally, he put a finger on the map.

  “Look,” he said, his finger tracing a path. “A few kilometers downstream, the gorge river empties into a small lake. I’ll bet in the old days the iron was ferried across. I don’t know how they’d get it out otherwise. The terrain on the far end of the lake looks even more rugged than it is along here. If my hunch is right, there should be an old road branching off not too far back which we can take down to the lake.”

  “What do we do when we get there?” Sara asked. “Swim to the other side? Somehow I doubt that the ferry is still running.”

  Kirk grinned at the officer. “We’re Beshwa, remember? We go where we want, even when there aren’t any convenient bridges around.” He stood up, rolling the map. “You’ll see,” he added cryptically.

  There was a road. But it was so overgrown with vegetation that they almost missed it. As they jolted down the old trail, they had to stop at intervals and hack a path wide enough for the caravan to pass through the thickets which had grown up since the road was last used. Nearly an hour later, the Beshwa vehicle emerged from a narrow ravine onto a bank that sloped gently down to the edge of a placid lake. Sara ran to the shore, knelt, cupped her hands, and splashed cold, clear water on her sweaty, dust-grimed face. “Umm,” she called, “that’s lovely. Is there time for a quick swim, Captain?”

  “Go ahead,” Kirk said. “Since you don’t have a Beshwa dop, you won’t be much help rigging the caravan.”

  Sara stripped off her clothes without a hint of self-consciousness, ran out onto a long flat rock which jutted over the lake’s edge, and then, like a golden naiad, arced into the cool water.

  “You know, Jim,” McCoy chuckled and said, “no matter how this crazy expedition ends up, I don’t think Sara will ever go back to being her old, prim self.”

  “If this expedition is ever going to go anyplace.”

  Kirk said, “we’d better get to work. Scotty, you and Chekov unhitch the neelots. Bones and I will disconnect the van and wagon.”

  Not long after, the job was done. The long wagon tongue, hinged where it was connected to the front of the wagon, now stood erect, a sturdy mast. A timber had been attached about a third of the way up the tongue to serve as a boom, and the canvas-like covering that protected the trade goods in the wagon was ready to be rigged as a sail.

  “Sara,” Kirk called to the woman, who was happily cavorting in the water a hundred meters out, “we’re ready to launch. Come in and keep an eye on the neelots, while we take the van and the cargo across.”

  As she came flashing toward them, like a graceful mermaid, the four men put their shoulders to the back of the van and rolled it down the slope into the water. Then, as it bobbed gently like a great floating box, they went back and rolled down the wagon.

  “Can I help?” called Sara, as she pulled herself onto a sun-warmed rock, as unconcerned about her nudity as a child.

  “Now you can,” Kirk replied. He removed his neelot-hide boots and waded out to where the van and the wagon floated a few meters apart. “You can give me a hand getting these two hooked together.” She dove back into the water and surfaced at his side. He reached under the front of the van and took hold of the protruding end of the telescoping pole. He pulled it out a few meters and-then slid the tip into a socket at the rear of the floating wagon, locking it into place with a metal pin.

  “Push the wagon on out until this thing’s fully extended,” he said. “I’ll set the locking pins at each of the joints.”

  Sara dug her feet into the sand of the gently shelving bottom, and pushed the van out into the lake until the rod was fully extended.

  “That’s it,” Kirk said as he moved toward her, reaching under water at each junction of the sections to lock it in place. “We’re ready to go.”

  “I guess it’s a boat now,” Sara said. “But why break it into two parts?”

  “The van’s so high,” Kirk answered, “it would cut off most of the wind. It’s a stubby mast. Why don’t you untether the neelots and water them? They’re probably as thirsty as we.”

  The girl nodded, swam back to the rock, and slipped into her clothes. McCoy and the rest waded out and climbed up on the wagon. Scott broke into an off-key rendition of “Anchors Aweigh,” as Kirk hoisted the sail and let the boom swing out until it was almost at right angles to the wagon. Slowly, as the wind bellied out the one-piece canvas-like covering, the strange craft began to gather momentum. The van rode decorously behind, kept in position by the long, flexible connecting pole.

  “Ready on the brake, Bones,” Kirk said as the front wheels made contact with the shelving bottom of the opposite shore, and the wagon began to roll up out of the water. When it was far enough inland so the van also was beached, McCoy brought the vehicle to a halt

  Chekov jumped down and released the connecting rod from its socket, telescoping each section until all of it had slid back into its protective tunnel under the van. In the meantime, Kirk and the other two dropped the t
ailgate of the wagon and were busily unloading bundles of trade goods.

  When the wagon was finally empty, McCoy released the brake and it went sailing down the beach, entering the water at an angle as Kirk tacked into the northerly wind. Once across the small lake, they loaded the neelots into the now empty wagon and again set sail for the opposite shore.

  It took an hour of arduous brush-hacking before they finally got back onto the main road. Before it had seemed like only a rutted cart trail, but compared to what they had been over on their detour, it was more like a broad highway.

  When they were almost at the top of a long slope, Kirk turned the reins over to McCoy and unrolled the map.

  “We should reach the Androsian mining settlement in a couple of hours,” he said. “Once over the crest, the road doglegs into a narrow canyon. The mines and the workers’ huts are located where it widens out The smelter is up a side canyon near a stream that supplies water for its operation.” He raised his eyes from the map and rolled it closed. “Beshwa have been here before, so this will be the first test of how well we’ll be able to pass.”

  “That will be no problem, Captain,” said a confident voice from the rear. Kirk turned. Chekov had made a comfortable nest with carefully arranged bundles and a soft fur blanket. He sprawled indolently. “As long as we have our dops to cue us, nobody will be able to tell us from the real thing”

  “Except for Sara,” Scott said. “She isnae linked to a Beshwa.”

  Chekov chortled. “Sara doesn’t need a Beshwa dop. As long as there are males around, our little belly dancer will be able to handle the situation. Right, little vabushka?” he said, reaching over as if to pat her firmly rounded rump.

  “Ensign George to you, if you please,” she said. “And keep your hands to yourself. My dop doesn’t engage in erotic play with children.”

  Chekov’s retort was cut off by a sudden roll of thunder. Dark storm clouds were piling up over the mountains to the west and rapidly moving toward them.

  “Looks like another soaker coming up,” Kirk said. “That radiation front is really screwing up Kyros’s weather. Better get in the van; no point in all of us getting wet.”

  For the next hour the caravan crawled through the beating rain, climbing steadily up the road that snaked along the bottom of the winding canyon that led through the hills to the mining settlement. Finally the rain tapered off; and when Kirk stopped to rest the neelots, the others came out of the van and climbed back into the wagon.

  “Dismal territory,” Kirk remarked.

  The surrounding foothills were even more tumbled, rough, and rock-and-bush-strewn than they had appeared in the photos taken by the automatic survey cameras aboard the Enterprise. The sky was sullen gray, pregnant with dark, swollen thunderheads. Shivering, Kirk slapped the reins and urged the neelots into motion.

  When another hour had passed, they seemed to have almost reached the crest of the range of hills. The cloud cover had lightened considerably, parting occasionally to let a watery sun appear.

  Suddenly McCoy gripped Kirk’s arm.

  “Look, Jim,” he said, pointing. “Over there, a little to the left. Isn’t that smoke?”

  “It’s probably just mist.”

  McCoy sniffed the air. “Mist never smelled like that,” he said. “There’s something burning ahead.”

  Kirk took a whip from its socket beside the seat and cracked it over the neelots’ heads. They broke into a loose-jointed canter. When the caravan finally topped the crest of the hill and Kirk saw what lay ahead, he jerked back sharply on the reins, bringing the caravan to a sudden halt.

  “What’s going on?” Sara’s voice called from the rear.

  “Stand up and see,” Kirk replied grimly. “Spock must be already on the march.”

  A gusting wind, moaning dirge-like from the mountains, carried smoke and the smell of slaughter to the stunned travelers. Kirk sat, staring down at the scene of carnage. McCoy rose partway from his seat, his mouth open, and Chekov stared, shock scrawled across his boyish face. Only Scott spoke.

  “Great Lord of Space…”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  From the point where the caravan stood, the road ran in switchbacks down a steep hill. At the bottom stretched the smoking ruins of a small village. Kirk sat unmoving for a long minute. Nothing stirred below. Finally, he released the brake and guided the caravan down the twisting road, stopping at last at a half-open gate in the stockade that surrounded the village.

  It creaked slightly on its hinges, swinging slowly forward and then back as it was caught by gusts of wind. Hanging from it, pinioned grotesquely, was the spear-skewered body of a young Androsian in military dress. Several more bodies stood in military array against the palisade walls on each side of the gate, held erect by swords, their own swords, which had been pounded through their chests into the wood behind like giant nails.

  Kirk tapped the reins and the caravan moved slowly through the gate. As the wind blew it almost shut again, the blank eyes of the dead man pinned to the portal seemed to follow them accusingly.

  They moved along a deserted street into a small central square. Around it were smoldering ruins that once had been barracks and store houses. Hacked bodies lay where they had fallen, already enveloped by buzzing clouds of flies.

  Kirk halted by a central well which was ringed by a meter-high parapet. Propped against it, hands and feet bound behind them, were a dozen headless bodies. Chekov climbed down and peered over the edge at the blood-tinged water only a meter below.

  “Their eyes are open,” he said, “and they all seem to be looking up. I thought when you died your eyes closed like when you are going to sleep.”

  “Not when you die that way,” McCoy said. He had to help Chekov back into the wagon.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Sara murmured.

  Kirk knew what she was thinking. One impulsive act—and this!

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said harshly. “There’s nothing we can do about what happened here. But maybe we can stop any more of it from happening.” He pulled the neelots to one side to swerve around a corpse sprawled in the middle of the street, gashed throat gaping at the sky like a horrible second mouth.

  “Jim,” McCoy said suddenly, “do you notice anything odd about all of this?”

  The other shook his head. “There was no quarter given, and they cut the throats of all the wounded. But taking prisoners isn’t the hill way.”

  “Tap deeper into your Beshwa memories, Jim. During all the years your dop traded among the clans, did he ever encounter anything like a funeral service?”

  Kirk frowned, searched back through alien memories, and then shook his head. “No, come to think of it I wonder why?”

  “My dop,” McCoy said, “was with a group of hillmen once when an old chief dropped dead—coronary, I imagine. They just walked away and left him crumpled on the ground. When my dop asked why, they said that what the spirit left behind was just dead meat which had no connection with the person that had been. That’s what’s odd about this Hillmen have always left their dead where they fell, but this time they took their dead with them. And there must have been a number of them. The lads here didn’t just stand like sheep and let themselves be slaughtered.”

  “It must be Spock’s doing,” Kirk replied. “The cultural changes are already beginning.”

  The gate at the north side of the village was also open, and they went through it and shortly reached a fork. The good road veered west into a canyon. The one that continued on north was little better than a cart track.

  “Which way?” McCoy asked.

  “Straight ahead,” Kirk said. “The one to the left goes up a canyon to the smelter. No point in checking up there. There’d be more of the same. About a kilometer ahead we should hit the east-west migration trail. We swing left there.” He turned in his seat. “You, back there. If we run into any hillmen, we know nothing about what happened back there. Say that we came from the northeast.” Scott and
the rest nodded. After what they had just seen, nobody felt in a conversational mood, especially Ensign George.

  The migration trail wasn’t an actual road but rather a wide track that ran along the bottom of a shallow valley; occasional rings of blackened stone marked places where hill clans and their herds had camped for the night during their annual migrations. Kirk breathed a sigh of relief as they moved westward, making good time over the relatively smooth ground. With luck, he thought, they would reach the Messiah’s encampment sometime the next day.

  They had only proceeded for a short distance when a warning cry came from Scott, who had jumped out of the wagon a few minutes before and was jogging alongside to exercise his cramped legs.

  “Clansmen behind us! They’re turning in from the road that leads back to the village.”

  Kirk swung the caravan half around and looked back along the trail. A party of riders, spear points glittering in the sun, was coming out of the canyon mouth that opened onto the trail a kilometer or so back. Behind them came a long line of heavily laden carts and several more riders, leading neelots bearing some kind of a burden.

  “A raiding party,” Kirk said. “They must have hit the smelter while the main group took the village and destroyed the bridge.”

  Suddenly, the riders in front broke into a gallop, leaving the main column behind as they came riding up the trail toward the caravan.

  “It looks like we’re about to have company,” Kirk said quietly. “Everybody stay in character. Think Beshwa, act Beshwa, be Beshwa. Your dops will let you know how to behave. Sara, duck around the far side and get into the wagon. Stay there until I tell you to come out.”

  As the hillmen came galloping up, Kirk and the rest got down and stood in a line alongside the wagon, palms outstretched in greeting and bowing from the waist.

  This greeting wasn’t returned. Instead, as the masked neelot riders pulled to a halt, spears were lowered until their barbed points were only centimeters from the chests of Kirk and the rest.