Ghost of a Chance (13 page)

After a time, we returned home.

We thought they would come for us, and we have waited, ready to fight them however we can. So far they have stayed near the hills.”

“And so much for the Televek’s story about mounting a rescue expedition,” Kim muttered darkly.

“We are not creatures of war, Captain,” Nan Loteth said in a supplicating tone. “We have been at peace for five generations now.

Our leaders have joined in a pact that has allowed us all to prosper.

We do not have great armies to fight these demons.

That is why the Jun-Tath have sent you to us.”

“An interesting theory,” Tuvok commented, his eyes wide.

“You still took quite a chance approaching our shuttle like that, after what the Televek—the demons—did to you,” Janeway said.

“Your vision of our landing must have been a very clear one.”

“As was my own vision of you, Captain. And your two companions.

That is why you were brought to my house. The Jun-Tath have chosen me to speak with you, I think. It is my great honor.”

“And mine,” Janeway reciprocated, trying out a smile of her own; it didn’t hurt as much as she thought it might.

“Do you have anyone watching the sky-boat?” Tuvok asked.

“Yes, but few would survive an attack if it came.” Nan Loteth sighed, and the lines in his face seemed to deepen. “Since the first attempt, a few of our bowmen have fired on the demons again, but now our arrows only bounce off their clothing.”

“Light armor of some kind,” Kim speculated.

“Your people are very brave, my friend,” Janeway said, thinking of the Prime Directive, then trying not to, at least not for the moment. “And we intend to do whatever we can to help them stay that way. I promise you that.”

Nan Loteth nodded, then turned and started out the door. The four of them made their way into a little yard between two houses where a flower garden now shriveled and died under ash and dust.

Janeway could easily imagine how fine it all must have been. She noticed that the sun was low in the sky and that the shadows were growing long. The group moved on, around the corner and into the street.

From where they stood, the village seemed to go on endlessly in all directions. They were only four houses from the nearby intersection that was shaped like a crow’s foot. And the area was busy indeed. The smooth dirt streets were lined with houses and shops, many of them two stories high.

People walked in and out of numerous shops, and the Drenarians’ now familiar beasts of burden pulled wagons loaded with goods and children down the center of each street. Again, Janeway was reminded of a frontier town—or perhaps an early American Indian village, she reflected, as she watched a woman pass by carrying a baby on her back in what could easily have passed for a papoose board.

Janeway watched a young man making his way toward them. He was carrying a stool and lighting oil lamps that hung on wooden poles. No moths gathered near his flames, nor did she note any other kind of insect. She had been stung and bitten on dozens of worlds like this one, but here insects were not a problem. This was not paradise, she realized. The planet’s ecosystem was breaking down utterly, yet another indication of the Drenarians’ grim situation.

A small crowd began to gather in front of Nan Loteth’s house, their eyes wide under their heavy brows, to observe the strange new visitors.

Their expressions were familiar enough to Janeway.

She never ceased to be amazed by how similar most intelligent peoples were, not so much physiologically, but inside, in their hearts and minds, and how easily one could see that, even in the most alien eyes.

Janeway and her officers greeted the other Drenarians, then stood about for a long, awkward moment.

“You came from up there, from the night, just as the demons did.”

Nan Loteth pointed toward the sky. “The Jun-Tath have shown me this.”

Janeway looked up. The stars had begun to appear and, with them, all three of the planet’s moons, each one no more than a crescent. The smallest moon had just appeared over the big hills to the east and seemed to be chasing the others into the sky.

Janeway looked at Nan Loteth and saw the glow in his eyes suddenly dim.

“You do not answer,” he said glumly.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes, we came from the sky.”

“Which star is yours?” he asked.

Janeway looked at him with mild surprise. It was one thing for a primitive people to imagine beings, perhaps gods or demons, descending from the sky or from mountaintops, or arriving from across the seas, from some far distant and unexplored part of their own world.

Humanity’s past was filled with gods of every manner and purpose—angels and spirits had filled mankind’s mythical skies by day and by night—beings who controlled all the functions of the heavens from mountains and unseen worlds.

But that was not what Nan Loteth had said at all.

“What do you know of the stars?” she asked, regarding him more seriously now.

“I have seen them.”

“What do you mean?” Janeway asked, glancing at Kim and Tuvok, both of whom seemed as fascinated as she was.

“Wait right here,” Nan Loteth said, his eyes suddenly wide and full of excitement. “I will show you.”

The old man disappeared back inside his cabin with a spry dash that made Janeway blink. She waited only a moment for his return.

“This is how I see,” Nan Loteth exclaimed. He held in his hands a long, smooth wooden tube, which he gingerly handed to Janeway.

She quickly recognized the device; it was composed of two tubes, one slightly smaller than the other, allowing it to slide in and out, thereby changing the overall tube length. A neatly cut glass disc had been fitted into either end of the tube.

“You look through it, like this,” Nan Loteth explained, gently taking the tube back. He raised the device lengthwise toward the sky, then put the smaller end up to this right eye. Holding it steady, he aimed at the largest of the three moons, which had nearly reached its apex.

Janeway watched him with fresh regard.

“Look,” he said excitedly. “You look.” He handed the tube back to Janeway. She held it as he had and aimed it at the moon.

Countless craters and stark mountain ranges leaped into focus as she gently slid the smaller tube out of the larger one, just a bit. The instrument was crude, but it was one Galileo himself would have been proud of.

“It is true, isn’t it,” Loteth said, “that the stars are suns, like our own sun? I have seen the other worlds in our sky, the ones that follow our world on its journey through the skies.

They have moons, just like those.” He waved at the three bright satellites crossing the darkened skies overhead.

“Quite remarkable,” Tuvok said.

“Yes,” Janeway agreed, now considering the Drenarian with fresh amazement.

“So you actually believe we might have come from one of the other worlds in this solar system?” Kim asked, equally surprised.

“No, I do not think so,” Nan Loteth said.

Tuvok and Kim looked suddenly bewildered. “Most curious,” the Vulcan said. “I would have thought—” “No, Tuvok,” Janeway said, watching Nan Loteth, “you don’t understand. He doesn’t think we’re from his system, he believes we are from a world belonging to one of the other stars he sees.”

“Yes,” the Drenarian said, nodding, though his tone had grown more pensive. “Is… is it so?”

“I understand, Captain,” Tuvok replied, now properly impressed.

“I do, too,” Kim said.

For a long moment no one said another word, which apparently made Nan Loteth uncomfortable. “You must tell me,” he said, almost pleading.

“Many will not speak of this with me. They keep their children away.

They say that beyond the sky there is only the realm of the gods. I have been told many times that, if I am fortunate, the Jun-Tath will one day heal my mind in a vision and I will cease to think such thoughts.”

“That figures,” Kim said, shaking his head.

Tuvok nodded. “I can well imagine how some of your contemporaries might feel that way.”

“Then you think I sound like a fool, just as they do,” the old man said, despondent now. He took the telescope back again, let it hang at his side, bowed his head. Then his eyes came up, peeking at Janeway puppylike from under that ridiculous brow.

She couldn’t help but smile at him.

“Now you think I am a joke,” he said. “I am sorry.”

“No, Nan Loteth. You do not sound like a fool, or a joke.” She placed one hand gently on the arm that held the instrument. “You sound like a scientist.”

“A… scientist?” the old man repeated.

“Yes. And a good one.” Janeway turned and tugged gently at the Drenarian’s arm, directing his attention toward the sky again.

The heavens were half obscured by thick volcanic clouds, but where the winds had blown them clear the stars were multiplying as the darkness continued to deepen. “We are from a world much like yours, one that orbits a star, up there, just as yours does, but our star is much too far away for us to see from here. So far away, in fact, that we may never see it again. Though one day, perhaps, your people might find it.”

Nan Loteth’s breath had quickened. “How many stars are there?

How many worlds?”

“Far too many to count.”

The old man’s mouth hung slightly open. “And what are these other worlds like?”

“Many are very much like your own,” Janeway said.

The ground shook once more, another aftershock that did little more than rattle nerves and spook the draft animals along the street.

Still, Janeway knew there would be more quakes like the one they had experienced at the shuttle, and if computer predictions held, they would grow in severity. Meanwhile, the wind might shift…

As the tremor subsided, Nan Loteth asked Janeway to follow him up the street. “You need food,” he said. “We haven’t much, but what we do have is yours.” He set off walking, leaving no one any choice. The rest of the crowd, more than three dozen strong now, came quietly along behind them, speaking only in whispers.

“Tuvok,” Janeway said as they went, “Could the Televek have something to do with what is happening to this planet? Could the destruction be related to that anomalous underground power source, or to the Televek’s attempts to get at it?”

“I doubt the Televek are capable of anything on that scale.

However, I find it hard to believe that their arrival here during such a major geologic event is simply a coincidence.”

Janeway nodded, then wondered if they were thinking along the same lines. “Can you explain?”

“I cannot. It is what I believe humans would call a… a hunch.”

Janeway paused and stood looking at him. She and Tuvok had known each other for many years. He was as logical and staid as any Vulcan she had ever met, but sometimes, she had come to realize, he was capable of much more than that. “Mr. Tuvok,” she said softly, “it would seem that I am starting to rub off on you.”

“I would consider that a compliment, sir,” Kim told the Vulcan, butting in before the other could respond.

Tuvok drew a long, contemplative breath. “Very well then, Mr. Kim, I will take your advice.”

The walk continued past stables filled with animals and emitting a smell that seemed to change very little from one part of the galaxy to another. The next large building featured double doors flung wide.

Peering in, Janeway saw what could only have been a blacksmith shop, judging by the bellows, three in all, that hung from the ceiling, with foot pedals rigged to work them. Two craftsmen were on hand, hammering at glowing bits of metal.

Building spaceships, Janeway thought, which brought her right back to the situation at hand.

“Mr. Tuvok, would you agree, then, that the Televek’s proximity to the underground power source is also not likely to be a coincidence?”

“Yes, but I remain doubtful that they control it, or that they have gained access to it. We have seen no evidence of that.”

Janeway nodded. “Agreed.”

“But they haven’t given up trying,” Kim said.

A woman, trailed by three children, moved cautiously to one side, allowing the strange aliens and the small mob that surrounded them to pass. No one seemed interested in blocking the way, yet no one panicked, either, which was something Janeway might have expected. She said as much to both her officers.

“I’ve never met a people quite like them,” Tuvok agreed.

“Neither have I,” Kim said with a wry grin, “but Voyager is my first mission, after all.”

“We haven’t forgotten,” Janeway assured him.

“They are physiologically well behind mankind on an evolutionary scale,” Tuvok said, “and yet they have inventions and ideas far ahead of anything early man was capable of, or the early ancestors of present-day Vulcans, for that matter.”

“But the possibility still exists that they’re being manipulated by some outside presence,” Kim suggested.

“Perhaps,” Tuvok said, “but I would suggest that they are simply very intelligent.”

“An interesting theory, Mr. Tuvok,” Janeway said, finding the idea quite palatable. In man, just as with every advanced species mankind had encountered, the sudden emergence of intelligence as an evolutionary advantage, a key survival trait, had ultimately allowed those species to leap up the natural-selection ladder. With the Drenarians, things had simply gone a little faster than usual. Their first leaps had been nothing short of extraordinary, and their progress showed no signs of slowing down.

“Can you imagine Neanderthals developing villages and agriculture like this?” Kim said.

“The Drenarians are a remarkable people,” Janeway agreed. “And as long as we’re in it this far, I’ll admit that I believe they are definitely worth saving. The trouble is, their own planet doesn’t seem to agree.”

“They may need protection as well, Captain,” Tuvok said. “The Televek have left them alone until now, but there is no reason to believe they will continue to do so.”

“Agreed. We may have to organize them somehow.”

“Nan Loteth isn’t one of their leaders,” Kim explained, leaning toward the captain and away from the Drenarian just ahead of them, “although he does seem to be a respected citizen, a wise man of some kind.”