Spock Messiah sttos(n-3 Page 16

  There was silence until the Messiah appeared, then a great roar went up. He walked slowly forward to the platform and mounted its steps. He stood for a moment, head bowed. Clansmen, as if on cue, scurried out from the sidelines with large leather sacks. Liquid gushed as they drenched the kindling.

  The Messiah raised his head and cried in a ringing voice, “Give fire to the gods!”

  The waiting hillmen flung their torches onto the oil-soaked wood. It ignited with an explosive юwhoosh, and a cross of flames leapt into being.

  Lit by the leaping flames, the Messiah began to speak. In spite of himself, Kirk felt a shivering tingle run up his spine as the hypnotic voice rolled out over the assembly.

  “The gods have touched me and ordained that I work their will through you, their instruments of holy wrath. Tonight we have kindled a flame which shall spread out against the darkness until all Kyros shines with holy light.

  “I am the hammer of the gods, and I will forge your souls in battle until all dross is driven forth and they, bake shining blades, arise at last to their reward in Afterbliss.”

  His left arm stabbed toward the east. The thousands turned as one and watched the glittering point of light climb over the horizon.

  “There, the souls of those who died for me already walk the golden streets. But disembodied souls can never know the joys of battle, wine, and surging loins. And so all men have always feared that final sojourn in the joyless halls of death. But now, for you who follow me, who serve as swords to win a world-wide holy state where I may rule as viceroy of the gods, they have prepared a golden place. There, warrior bodies unite with warrior souls and find each day of their reunited, eternal life a new delight. Behold! The first to fall depart.”

  An awed moan came from the watchers as a shimmering pink opalescence sprang into being around the white-swathed bodies. Then, as a low, throbbing sound began, the dead seemed to stir.

  “They live again! The gods summon them to Afterbliss!”

  As if in response to the Messiah’s words, the dead clansmen began to rise into the air, slowly drifting upward accompanied by the awed moaning of the warriors. Faster they rose, and faster, like snowflakes falling upward, they vanished into the darkening sky.

  “A tractor beam from the Enterprise,” Scott whispered.

  Kirk paced silently for a moment and then faced the others.

  “After that demonstration, there’ll be no stopping Spock once he begins to march. His men will rum into berserkers when the fighting starts. Now… they knew that death in the field is a passport to a warrior’s idea of heaven.”

  “And they move against Andros tomorrow,” McCoy said somberly. “Once through the gates—what we saw in that village yesterday is just a taste of what’s going to come. What do we do now?”

  “We use the only weapon we have—Sara. She’s the only one with half a chance of getting close enough to Spock to do any good. We know she turns him on—that episode at the inn the morning they beamed down shows what kind of animal he’s turned into. Look, Bones, he’s bound to have some kind of celebration for the clan chiefs tonight. We’ve got to get Sara in there to dance. The way she had Tram Bir’s men howling shows that, once she’s turned her dop loose, she can be as hypnotic as Spock.”

  “And what if the nullifier doesn’t work?”

  “Then we’ll kill him,” Kirk said flatly, “I don’t know how, but we’ll kill him.”

  The two stood silently and watched as subdued hillmen streamed back to their clan areas. Then a familiar voice caught their attention and Kirk peered down into the darkness. Tram Bir had just returned and was questioning one of the guards.

  “Where’s Greth? He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”

  The guards shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since he rode off just as we entered camp.”

  “The Messiah wants an exact accounting of our clan at once,” Tram Bir said in an irritated voice, “—men, weapons, and neelots. I don’t have time to prepare it; I have to dress for the Messiah’s feasting. Have Greth attend to the counting as soon as he arrives.” Muttering to himself, he was turning to go when Kirk jumped down and called to him.

  “Was the Messiah pleased with your gift of spearstone?”

  “I couldn’t get close enough to tell him about it,” Tram Bir grumbled. “Obeisance was by ranking of clans, and I was so far back in the line that the ceremony started before I could get to him. It’s thanks to your healing that my numbers are enough so I wasn’t the last of the chiefs. As it is, though, I’ll have to sit in the last row as we feast.” His unhappiness about his placement was evident in his voice.

  “Preference shouldn’t depend on numbers alone,” Kirk commiserated. “If there were just some way you could attract the attention of the Messiah… I know that if you just had a chance to talk with him he would see at once—as I did—that you are a leader among leaders, a warrior whose fierce courage and wisdom in battle fit him to be chief of chiefs…”

  “I agree,” Tram Bir said, waving a hand to interrupt Kirk. “But how could I attract the attention of one so mighty?”

  “We Beshwa are practical men,” Kirk said. “If you stood at the Messiah’s right hand, we couldn’t help but benefit. I think I know a way.”

  “What is it?” Tram Bir said eagerly.

  “A gift only you can offer. God-touched though it is, the Messiah’s spirit inhabits a man’s body, even as yours and mine. Think back to last night–what happened when our sister danced?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kirk shivered and pulled his cloak tighter about him as he paced near the Beshwa caravan. Cold gusts of wind blew from the west, bringing smoke and fine ashes from the still-smoldering embers of the fires. Thunder clouds building on the western horizon held a threat of rain. To the north, the sky began to lighten with the first flickerings of an aurora. Two of Kyros’ moons had set and the third wouldn’t rise for several hours. The camp was quiet except for occasional shouts and bursts of raucous laughter from the Messiah’s pavilion.

  “What’s taking him so long?” McCoy muttered.

  “I told him to wait until the Messiah had several cups under his belt. Chag Gara was as much a lush as he was a lecher. When Spock was imprinted, the process wasn’t selective.” Kirk glanced at the sky. Stars were winking out as the thunderclouds rolled eastward.

  “I wonder what’s going on up there?” McCoy asked.

  “It’s getting ready to storm, what else?”

  “No, I mean on the Enterprise.”

  “They’re sweating us out—and getting ready for evacuation, just in case. Radiation will reach redline in fifteen hours or so.”

  “Where will they go?… If they have to, that is,” Chekov asked.

  “I told Sulu to break the crew up into groups of forty to fifty and to scatter them among the neighboring city-states. Four hundred and twenty-five strangers showing up in one place would be a bit too much. After the life they’ve had, it isn’t going to be easy to be exiles on a backward mud-ball like this; but they’re all bright people, they’ll survive. At least they won’t starve. Thanks to Scotty’s money machine, they’ll all be coming down with full purses.”

  “And when the Messiah comes?” Chekov asked.

  ‘They’ll fight.”

  “Stop it, you two,” McCoy said. “You’re having a wake before the patient is dead.”

  Sara came out of the van. “The costumes are ready,” she said. “Come on in and try yours on. Wait till you see what Scotty made for me.”

  Scott looked up from an improvised workbench as they came in. “How do you like this?” he said, holding up a stylized golden mask of a creature half cat and half woman. “We had to figure out some way to cover Sara’s face so Spock wouldn’t recognize her.”

  “Beautiful,” McCoy said, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. “But how did you make it?”

  “I used gold foil from the trade goods and the rest from your medikit. Sara modeled the features from tha
t foam for making casts. I used that as a matrix for the gold foil. When the foil was shaped, I removed it and sprayed the inside with duraplast to give it strength. A little trimming, a couple of eye holes, and that was that. Not a bad job, if I do say so myself.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Kirk asked. “Spock isn’t exactly unfamiliar with our faces.”

  “Ready to wear,” Scott replied, pointing to some grotesque masks on the bunk beside him.

  Chekov’s voice called from outside. “Captain, somebody’s coming from the direction of the Messiah’s tent. It looks like Tram Bir.”

  It was.

  “Hurry,” he said as he came out of the darkness. “You’re to entertain the Messiah. When I described what he might expect, he became most interested.” Anxiously, he added, “She will do as well as she did last night, won’t she?”

  “Better,” Kirk promised.

  It took them only a few minutes to get ready. The men wore flowing cloaks made of a patchwork of multicolored furs with collars of bristling orange feathers. Kirk’s mask was a neelot’s head; Chekov’s, an exaggerated clan-style hood with a pointed top from which sprouted more orange feathers. McCoy and Scott wore the heads of antlered, deer-like animals.

  Kirk slung a Beshwa drum over one shoulder as McCoy and Chekov took up their thirty-seven stringed instruments. Scott experimented with a Kyrosian horn that curved from the mouthpiece down to his waist, where it swelled into an ovoid.

  “Reminds me of my bagpipe back aboard the Enterprise,” Scott murmured sadly.

  “I’m glad our dops know how to play these crazy things,” McCoy said as his fingers ran a masterly arpeggio on the strings.

  Ensign George came down the van steps to join them. Her face was adorned in the delicately styled golden mask. It disguised her completely, but was as deliciously female as the face it covered. Her body was wrapped in a long black cape.

  Kirk called to the impatient Tram Bir, “We await the Messiah’s pleasure.”

  Tram nodded and gestured for them to follow. They moved away from the Beshwa caravan under a cold glitter of stars, and marched toward the looming black of the Messiah’s tent.

  Driving gusts of wind raced through the area whipping the Messiah’s banner and buffeting the sides of the huge, ebony pavilion. Tram Bir exchanged a few words with the soldiers who guarded the entrance. The flaps were flung back, and the party passed into a small antechamber.

  Inside, guards gathered around them curiously.. Tram Bir said something that Kirk couldn’t quite catch to a soldier who seemed to be in charge. He glanced back at the group, then nodded; and Tram moved through a heavy curtain which separated the antechamber from the main body of the tent.

  From beyond the curtain, Kirk heard the growl of a mass of voices, sporadic laughter and shouts. There was the clatter of crockery and an occasional crash as a drinking bowl was dropped. Kirk was given a brief glimpse of the interior as the curtain parted again. He got an impression of depth, darkness interspersed with the light of hot-burning torches, and many clan chieftains. Tram came back out.

  “The Messiah awaits your performance,” he said. “But it is his order that you be searched carefully before entering.”

  Kirk glanced at the others in his party, then made a sign of acquiescence. He took a step, brushing closer to Ensign George.

  “Almost home, Ensign. Turn on the nullifier,” he whispered.

  Without a sign that she had heard, Kirk saw her left hand move to cover a thick wristband, one of several on her right arm. She gripped it tightly, activating the mechanism.

  Tram disappeared behind the curtain again and the guards moved toward them.

  “Open your clothes,” one guard growled. “Messiah orders that you be searched—completely.” His smile displayed decaying, crooked teeth.

  “For what?” Chekov began.

  “Hikif! You know better than to question the Messiah’s command,” Kirk snapped. One of the guards moved to Chekov, while two more pinned his arms. The search was brief, painful, and thorough.

  When several of the guards turned to Sara, she stepped back. Kirk opened his mouth to order her to cooperate, then closed it quickly.

  She pirouetted away from the men and giggled. In a low voice, she purred to the guards. She turned her back to the Enterprise party and parted her cloak. The guards gasped.

  One nudged another whose mouth was partway open. “She couldn’t hide much in that outfit,” he said and grinned appreciatively.

  The others nodded in agreement. Sara giggled again and demurely closed her cloak. She rejoined her fellow officers.

  “That was quite a performance,” Kirk whispered.

  “Captain, I haven’t even begun to perform. Just wait!” she said.

  The chief guard barked an order and his men snapped to attention and marched to the curtain and parted it.

  Kirk caught Sara’s hand. “Do your best,” he whispered. “There’s a lot at stake.”

  “Aye, Captain,” she whispered. “Trust my dop.” Her hips moved sensuously and she gave a provocative little bump before moving ahead of the four men.

  Kirk nodded to his officers and led the party through the tent doorway.

  Directly ahead was an oval of hard-packed earth. Ranged around it were intricately woven mats and husky chieftains lounging on throws of lush fur. Large trays loaded with wine jugs and exotically colored and strangely shaped fruits and nuts were at their elbows. Serving men scurried in and out of another entrance directly across from Captain Kirk and his fellow officers. The lift of a hand or a bellow from the first rows of men sent a servant scuttling to his side to replenish his wine jugs and fruit bowls. Further back, the men were less lavishly dressed. They sat on bare neelot hides, and their signals to the servants were not answered with such alacrity. Kirk suspected Tram Bir had been in their ranks, on the very perimeter of their ranks, before he had gotten the Messiah’s ear and told him of Sara’s charm. Now he sat importantly in the very first row.

  The Messiah was at the head of the oblong tent. He lounged on a raised dais draped with a silken, vermilion fur, the exact shade of the slashes of color beneath the eye holes of his ink-black, hooded mask. Guards were ranked in a semicircle behind him. Oil lamps on long poles flickered and smoked and sent eerie, grotesque shadows up the sides of the tent.

  Kirk gave a roll on his drum to announce their presence. When he dropped his arms, the guard led the Beshwa party forward to the edge of the circle of hard-packed earth.

  The Messiah waved a long-fingered hand. “Welcome.”

  The performers bowed and Kirk murmured, “Peace and long life, Messiah.”

  “Live long and prosper—Hirga of the Beshwa,” the Messiah responded after a pause.

  Tram Bir stood, swaying slightly, and raised a nearly empty wine bowl. “Bring more torches that we may have more light to see the performance!” he shouted.

  Instantly, serving men scurried in bearing torches. They drove the sharpened pole ends into the ground around the edge of the tamped earth circle.

  The Messiah moved his hand in an impatient gesture. “We’re waiting, Beshwa. Entertain us.”

  Kirk bowed and moved his band to one side. Scott, Chekov, and McCoy squatted and began to tune their instruments. Kirk set his drum on the ground and went to Sara, who still stood at the edge of the circle with her golden-masked head lowered, her slender body completely hidden in the long cape. As she lifted her hands to the clasp at her throat, his eyes caught the thick band on her wrist and he breathed a silent prayer. Then he took hold of the cape and whirled it away. There was a momentary silence as the tent full of men leaned forward to ogle the shapely body of the young ensign.

  Kirk took his place behind the drum, glanced at his friends, and relaxed his mind, allowing the talent of his Beshwa dop to flood through him. As his ringers lightly caressed the drum’s taut membrane, bringing a soft murmur from it, McCoy and Chekov drew bows across their instruments, evoking steadily rising, pulsing notes. Sco
tty joined in just as the sound seemed on the verge of passing from the audible range. Kirk’s palms came down on the drums, interweaving a beat into the cascading sounds.

  Sara’s amis uncurled to reveal jutting breasts that were barely covered by golden circlets of the same material as her mask. Below, she wore a small golden triangle. A sparkling jewel nestled in the dimple of her navel. A transparent, shimmering fabric, light as air, floated from her shoulders and, rather than hiding her nudity, enhanced it. Her hips made sensuous movements in rhythm with the music, and her gold-tipped fingers and toes punctuated the beat.

  Beshwa it wasn’t, but the sighs and groans of the watching hill chieftains told Kirk that no one would object. Ensign George was pure, unadulterated, wanton sex. She pirouetted slowly, and the jewel in her navel danced to the music that spiraled from the Beshwa instruments. Although she moved teasingly among the clansmen seated nearest the circle, her graceful and nimble feet danced her out of their reach as they lifted hands toward her shapely body. Her smooth shoulders swayed, making the filmy fabric that enveloped her a shimmering cloud of color through which her creamy body glowed. The torchlight flashed and glittered from her mask.

  Gracefully she whirled, coming ever closer to the Messiah. He sat impassively, but his eyes followed her every movement. Her arms wove graceful patterns as her body undulated before him.

  Not close enough, Captain Kirk said to himself, as he gauged the distance from her arms to the lounging man. The range of the nullifier was only one meter. He increased the tempo.

  As Kirk’s drum boomed faster, Chekov and McCoy followed along with a frantic sawing of their bows across their instruments. Scott hit and held a single high, pure note. Ensign George twirled across the hard-packed floor, her body a frenzy of orgiastic movement. She came to a halt before the Messiah with her arms raised beseechingly. Only her round little belly with its glittering jewel continued to dance. Her slender, swelling hips began to punctuate the beat and she slowly inched her feet forward. She was dancing solely for the leader, now.