Spock Messiah

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Clansmen pounced on and rolled the defenseless captives onto their backs. Knives lifted and were about to slash down, when there was a sudden shout

“Chief, look! Your son Alt!”

A neelot was coming toward the group, a boyish figure slumped in the saddle, head hanging and eyes closed. The side of his mount glistened red where blood had run down it. The rider came to a stop a few meters from the chief and tried to straighten up.

“Father and chieftain, your orders have been carried out,” the boy said in an almost inaudible, faltering voice. “I tried to do you honor in the fight and… and…” His voice died away and he started to fall sideways. Hands caught him and lowered him gently to the ground. His father knelt beside him and opened the boy’s battle cloak. Extending from his side was a short length of broken spear shaft. The chief reached out his hand as if to grasp it, and then drew back.

“Hestor,” he said, looking up. “Can this be removed?”

A stooped man with an elder’s markings on his clan hood knelt beside Tram Bir. He took hold of the spear shaft and tugged at the splintered stub. The boy bit his lips and unsuccessfully tried to stifle a scream. Then he coughed and a bloody froth appeared.

“It’s barbed,” said the older man, rising to his feet “It cannot be removed. It would be useless to let the boy suffer any longer.”

For a moment, the chief gazed silently at his dying son. Then he reached down and drew a short, wide-bladed dagger from a sheath marked with ceremonial designs. He touched the tip of the blade to the boy’s throat and said in a low voice, “I offer my son to the Messiah. He dies a warrior’s death. At the appointed time, may he be lifted to Afterbliss with the rest.”

There was a hushed silence as he lifted the blade, and then a voice said quietly, “Our lives for his, Tram Bir. I can save your son.”

The chief turned his head toward the prisoners. “The spear is barbed,” he said harshly.

“Be that as it may,” McCoy said, “I can heal him. But it must be done quickly. He bleeds inside. Soon it will be too late.”

Tram Bir shook his head and turned back to his son.

“Beshwa have strange powers,” said the elder who had examined the boy’s wound. “Long ago they healed me of a fever when all else had failed.”

Tram Bir considered the advice silently for a moment. At last, slowly replacing the ceremonial dagger in its sheath, he rose to his feet.

“If it is as you say, old friend, they shall earn my gratitude. If it isn’t, they shall die… but not swiftly. Unbind them.”

Moments later, the now unconscious boy was lifted into the van and laid on one of the built-in bunks. Sara, holding her slit tunic together with one hand, climbed in, followed by McCoy.

“You two wait out here,” Kirk said to Chekov and Scott. He stepped up into the van and shut the door.

“All right, Bones,” he said, “how are you going to get out of this?”

McCoy seemed strangely unperturbed. “We’re still alive, aren’t we, Jim? Since your Azrath didn’t bail us out, somebody had to.”

“For how long?”

“Just watch. If you thought for one moment that I, a Starfleet surgeon, was going to land on a planet two thousand years behind the Federation in medical technology and rely only on their herbs and potions, you are out of your star-picking mind.”

Leaving Kirk standing with his mouth open, McCoy went to the front of the van and, bending down, opened a small, concealed panel. Reaching in a hand, he drew out a standard-issue Starfleet medikit.

“Did you think I was going to operate with a dirk and no antiseptics, Jim?” he asked blandly.

Before Kirk could answer, there was an imperious knocking at the van door. “Open up,” called Tram Bir from outside, “I wish to be with my son.”

“Sorry, honored chief,” Kirk replied through the door, “but our spells won’t work if you are present We’ll call you when we’re through.”

Tram Bir growled and went away.

McCoy gave the unconscious boy a shot of anesthetic and then straightened. “That should keep him under until I get the job done,” he said. “I’m going to need your help in a minute, Jim, but first I’ve got to take a crash course in Kyrosian anatomy.”

He switched on a medical tricorder and began to scan the boy’s body.

“Heartbeats fluttering,” he muttered, “—he has two, both tri-chambered—liver function normal, gastro-intestinal OK, lung–only one of those but as big as the two we have—severe trauma. Massive laceration of muscles and blood vessels, of course, but actually it looks worse than it is. This will take some time, though.”

Then, moving the instrument to the boy’s head, he continued, “Minor head wound, mild concussion.” Glancing up at Kirk, he said, “Jim, get that hood off and staunch the blood while I work on this.” He gestured at the broken spear shaft.

“Hold it,” Kirk said. “If we’re going to make this look really impressive, we ought to have atmosphere.” He went to a chest and took out two native instruments, an oddly shaped horn that looked like a flat-iron with a hose attached to one end and a lute-like instrument with strings going in all directions. He went to the door, opened it a crack, and passed the instruments out to Scott and Chekov.

“Give us some music to make magic by,” he muttered. “I don’t care if it comes out sour, but I want it loud.” As he shut the door and locked it, there was a brief moment of cacophony as the two officers struggled to agree on pitch, tune, and tempo; and then, somewhat off-key, the morbid strains of the “Saint James Infirmary Blues” resounded through the hills for the first time in the history of Kyros.

“Isn’t that a violation of General Order One?” McCoy asked sourly, wincing at the raucous intermingling of toots and tweedles.

Kirk grinned. “Who’s going to report us?”

“Well, if you can stand that racket, I guess I can. Let’s get started. Get that hood off and clean up the head wound.”

“Aye, sir,” Kirk said. He untied the thongs holding the boy’s headgear on and tried to pull it off. He couldn’t. McCoy, seeing the trouble Kirk was having, handed him a scalpel.

“Cut it off,” he said. Kirk carefully slit the hood from chin to forehead and then, bit by bit, peeled it back on both sides until it was free. Sara handed him a moistened sterilized pad from the medikit. He pressed it gently to the wound and began mopping away the congealed blood.

McCoy’s fingers probed lightly around the broken spear shaft that protruded from the boy’s side.

“Sara, put a represser on that,” he ordered.

The woman removed a small, oblong object and placed it near the wound. She pressed a button on the instrument and, instantly, the flow of blood stopped under the influence of a low-power force-field.

“Suction,” McCoy said.

Sara pressed a flexible hose to the wound and the blood was drawn away.

“Now, I can see what I’m doing,” McCoy murmured. “Sara, prepare an automatic IV, universal he-mo factors, one liter,” he ordered a moment later.

Snapping open a small kit, Ensign George removed a telescoping metal rod with a collapsible tripod base. Next, a plastic pouch containing a dark powder was hung at the top of the rod. She poured a liter of water from a storage jug into it. The powder dissolved almost instantly, and a red fluid began to run through a plastic tube into a needle which had been inserted in the boy’s left arm.

“Good,” McCoy said, his eyes glancing up briefly. “Now a type oh-oh scalpel.”

Ensign George handed the instrument to McCoy and he pressed the tip of the slim cylinder against the boy’s side. A short, bloodless incision appeared under the ragged hole around the spear shaft.

“Probe,” he ordered.

Sara handed him a flexible, light-carrying tube with tiny waldoes on it, and he inserted it into the small incision below the wound. Plugging a lead from the other end into the medical tricorder, he studied the display on the instrument’s tiny screen.

“Take a look, Jim.”

“Ugly,” Kirk said, looking at the black silhouette of the barbed spear point which had torn through the chest muscles and was buried in spongy gray lung tissue. “How are you going to get that thing out?”

“Watch. Minilaze, Sara,” he ordered.

She handed him the tiny cutting tool. He made a clean incision through the tissue that had closed in around the barbs, the beam cauterizing as it cut. Then, grasping hold of the short, splintered stub, he gently pulled the head out.

“Sara, anabolic protoplaser, type zero.”

He applied the tip of the instrument to the ulterior of the wound, slowly working it outward to repair torn veins and gashed arteries, and unite nerves and muscle fibers. Soon, all that was left was the closing of the jagged tear where the spear had gone in and the small incision below it.

“Type two protoplaser.”

“Bones, wait,” Kirk said, breaking his long silence. “I have the impression this is the boy’s first battle; he only looks about fourteen or fifteen.”

“So?” McCoy asked.

“How about giving him something to remember?”

“Like old Heidelberg, eh?”

“Something like that, Bones.”

“If Starfleet finds out, they may lift my license.”

McCoy said, adjusting the protoplaser and setting to work.

When he finished, he looked at a puckered scar that made a semicircle on the boy’s chest where the shaft had been. He made a quick scan with the medical tricorder and then switched it off.

“That’ll give him some status with the other boys,” he said. “And with a little rest, some hot soup, he’ll be back on his feet in a day or two. Now the head wound.”

He studied the torn flesh critically. “Good thing they shave their heads. Saves me the trouble of depilating him.”

When he had finished, McCoy injected Alt with another dose of universal antibiotic and a stimulant to counteract the anesthesia. By the time the boy began to come around, the Federation medikit was safely back in its hidden compartment.

Alt’s eyes flickered, then opened. “Who…?”

“It’s all right, son, you’re going to be fine,” McCoy said, giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “You’re almost as good as new.”

The boy’s lips turned up in a hesitant smile.

“Here,” Kirk said, handing the boy the broken spear, “a little souvenir.” The boy studied the deadly object, turning it over in his hands and testing the razor-sharpness of the head with a finger. He looked down at his side and saw the lavish scar. His eyes widened.

“Truly, I am a warrior. But I thought only the Messiah could work such magic,” he said, his voice touched by awe. “You have given me back my life. My father will be grateful.”

“I hope so,” Kirk said. “Not too long ago he was ready to cut our throats.” He went to the rear of the van as Scotty and Chekov switched from off-key blues to equally off-key baroque. “Knock it off, out there,” he called, opening the door a crack.

“My son, how is he?” It was the voice of Tram Bir.

“Fine, you can see him in a moment.” Kirk turned to McCoy and hissed. “Get the boy’s hood on. If his old man finds out that we’ve seen his face, we’ve had it.”

The boy suddenly stiffened as he realized that, for the first time in his life, strangers had seen his uncovered face. His fingers touched his cheeks and then, in sudden panic, he grabbed the blood-soaked hood from McCoy’s hand and jerked it down over his head. The slit that Kirk had made to get it off gaped open, exposing his features.

“My father will have you killed,” he said. “You have seen my face. You hold my soul.”

“Our only power is to heal,” McCoy said. “Why do you think Beshwa go unhooded? Your magic is not ours.”

“My father won’t believe that. As soon as he sees me, he’ll know you’ve seen my face.”

There was a roar from outside and a banging on the door.

“When can I see my son?”

“Soon,” McCoy answered, “very soon.”

“I know a way,” the boy said suddenly. “Who is the head of this family?”

“I guess I am,” Kirk said.

“Then give me your hand. Don’t question.”

Kirk hesitated for a moment and then extended his right hand. Alt grabbed the broken spear which had almost ended his own life, gashed his own palm with the sharp point, and then did the same to Kirk. He took the captain’s bleeding hand in his and gripped it tightly.

“Thy blood is my blood,” he chanted, “Thy breath is my breath.”

The door of the van jerked open and an impatient Tram Bir lumbered in. His cry of joy at seeing his son alive, sitting up, changed to a snarl of rage when he saw the split hood gaping open to reveal the boy’s features. His hand dropped to his sword hilt.

The boy somehow pulled himself to his feet and staggered toward his father, holding his bleeding hand before him.

“We are of one blood, the Beshwa and I. We share one tent.” Strength exhausted by the ordeal he had been through, his knees buckled and he sagged at his father’s feet. McCoy grabbed him before he fell, and laid him gently on the bunk.

“He’ll be all right,” he said, “but he needs rest and care.” He beckoned to Tram Bir. “Look at our work and rejoice in your warrior son,” he said, pointing to the scar. Tram bent over.

His hand left his sword hilt and he ran his fingers over the snaking ridge of flesh. He straightened, took Kirk’s hand, and looked at the bleeding palm.

“The blood mingled,” he muttered, “but Beshwa…? This will need long thought. Care for the boy. I will decide what is to be done with you when we reach the place of our clan.”