CHAPTER 4: Deciphering Cyphers
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
SUMMARY: On a lush planet devoid of sentient life, the crew of the Enterprise discover an ancient alien religious artifact that takes two of the crew on a vision quest to Camelot.
NOTES: I realize the idea of Arthur and Guinevere having difficulty conceiving is not original, but I assure you, it came TOTALLY out of the blue in this story. LOL! I didn't know it was going to crop up until it was suddenly THERE. LOL! If you'd like to read a much better (and more in depth) exploration of that topic, I highly recommend Marion Zimmer Bradley's masterwork, "The Mists of Avalon." I read it years ago, and it's remained with me to this day. But until then, I hope you'll enjoy the rest of my humble story. :-D
Malcolm sat up and hovered over her. "What?" he asked sharply, more Malcolm than Arthur for the moment. "What do you mean, you've known all along?"
Hoshi almost laughed at the look on his face. It was comical. Obviously, the impatient tactical officer in him was annoyed that she'd been holding back vital information this whole time. "It was not knowledge I was aware I possessed," she explained. "But now that I think on it, I don't know how I could have been so blind."
"Tell me!"
This time, she allowed herself to laugh as she pushed up into a sitting position next to him. "Has anyone mentioned the Holy Grail?" she asked, gazing down into his eyes.
He frowned up at her, pushing higher on his elbow. "What do you mean?"
"The Grail. The Cup of Christ. One of the most well-known aspects of the Arthur legend. Have you heard tell of it?"
"No…" He answered slowly, obviously unsure where she was heading.
"What about the Green Knight?"
"What?"
"The Green Knight. Of Gawain and the Green Knight? Of British literature. Have you heard whispers of that while we have been here? Did Gawain once mention it?"
"No." He sat up beside her, gazing levelly into her eyes. "What are you saying, dearest?"
Arthur was back in charge. "Tristan and Iseult," she continued, unswayed. "Merlin. The Lady of the Lake. Even Excalibur. Have you heard anyone speak of these things? Have you heard any of them mentioned? The defining moments of the Arthur legend - have you encountered them anywhere other than your own mind?"
Malcolm shook his head slowly, never breaking their eye contact. "What does it mean, Hoshi?" he asked in a hushed voice, as if worried speaking louder would break her concentration.
Taking a deep breath, she continued. "This vision, Malcolm" she murmured. "It's not about the legend. This is YOUR vision, have no doubt. You were the first over the threshold, and the obelisk is telling you who you are. But it is not using archetypes and legend; the Arthur of your vision is a man. A simple man. A king, perhaps, but a king who gets drunk, and who has difficulty sleeping, and… and a man who cannot conceive a child with his wife." She saw him wince and felt a pang of sympathy, but made herself go on. "The Arthur of your vision is fallible, just as all men are fallible, even those thought great as gods. And therein lies the answer to this riddle."
He was dangling from a thread now. She could almost see it, glistening above his head like spider silk, keeping him aloft as she spun her web of truth around him. "What does this mean for us, Hoshi?" he asked, not pleading, but placing his fate in her hands. "I am no good at dreams. Am I a king and you my queen? Is that what this means? Please, dearest, I cannot understand it alone."
Spiders were tricky animals. They spun webs that were nearly invisible to the creatures they preyed upon, then sat quietly, curled in a corner, and waited for a juicy blue bottle to fly through and get stuck. They were subtle predators, depending on surprise and cunning to win them their daily meals.
Here, now, as Hoshi gazed into this man's eyes, she was feeling very much like a tasty morsel writhing in the obelisk's web. It had drafted her to do its dirty work. It had tapped her to deliver its sentence. If she refused, they would lose themselves to this vision; lose sight of all they had been, and would someday have become. If, on the other hand, she gave in and told him what the vision had told her, he would know more about himself than he'd probably ever wanted to learn.
And he would hate her for it.
But they would be free.
Hoshi Sato made the hardest decision of her life in one brief second, and began to speak.
She shook her head slowly. "It is not like that, Malcolm. That is not how this works." She swallowed. "This place was never meant for us. This place was meant for people who died centuries before we crawled out of the oceans. But it is giving us something we know - a story. An allegory. Something we can interpret. Do you see? This is not about kings and queens and vassals and knights. This is not about Camelot. It IS about you - your story. Arthur's story. Your moral."
"What is my moral, Hoshi?"
She rested her palm on his cheek, the one facing away from the fire. It was cool to the touch. "You are hollow, Malcolm," she whispered, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. "So much potential, but you keep it leashed. Arthur wed Guinevere, despite Merlin's protests, because he loved her. And Guinevere ruined him, even as she loved him. All that he had built - all that he was - fell to pieces, and became the stuff of fairytales and legends. The promise of Camelot was brought low by the hand of a woman. Nothing tangible remained; not even one shard of the Round Table.
"You, Malcolm, have wed yourself, too. Not to anything as romantic as a woman, but to something deeper and more insidious. You have wed yourself to your failures. Your fear of water. Your estrangement from your family. The hollow ache of every woman you've never let yourself love. No matter how much you accomplish - no matter how many lives you save, or feats you complete - you will only remember the things that you consider shameful. You have never let yourself see the beauties of this world, Malcolm. You have never let yourself see the roses of Eden for the snakes at your feet. You have never allowed yourself to believe yourself worthy of that beauty, and so it lays dormant inside you, shriveling like tea leaves left too long in the sun. Your beauty has atrophied, Malcolm Reed, and all that remains of it are your eyes."
She took a deep breath, and forced herself to plunge onward, before those beautiful eyes could deter her. "And when you die, Malcolm Reed - Arthur Pendragon - all that will remain are the sad whispers of your friends. And they will say, No family, no home. A box of medals and a phase pistol. How did he come to this?"
She steeled herself.
"And then they'll forget you, Malcolm. They won't talk about you at reunions and parties. They'll teach you in classrooms, but YOU'LL be forgotten. You'll become an allegory, just like this vision. Just like Arthur. He became a Christ figure. You'll become a tactic. The Reed maneuver. Your coffin will be a dusty history book, and no one will remember your first name, just as no one remembers Arthur's last without prompting."
Malcolm was staring at her with unfathomable blue eyes. She wanted to beg him to speak, but feared what he would say.
"And what of you?" he finally murmured, voice husky. "What of you, my Guinevere?"
Hoshi swallowed and closed her eyes, letting her hand fall away from his cheek as her chin dipped down to rest against her chest.
"Don't you see?" she whispered, not trusting her voice to go any louder. "Guinevere was a puppet; a pawn in Arthur's downfall. She... she loved him, but she couldn't stop herself from destroying him. She couldn't mend what had been broken." A deep sigh shook her shoulders and fluttered in her stomach. "In the end, despite all her best intentions, she was helpless to save him from his fate." A breath. "And so am I."
************
The silence was killing her, sure as slow poison. It trickled through her veins, turning her blood to ice and crusting her lungs with frost. Soon, she would be cold as stone, pale as smoke, with dry lips painted blue by death's brush.
If only he would speak. Nothing had passed between them in the twenty minutes since she'd finished extolling their fortunes; not so much as an eyelash fluttered in thought, or a cramped muscle flexed to relieve tension. Stillness and silence reigned in the tower bedroom. Even the crackling fire had calmed down, fading from brilliant oranges to eye-tricking scarlets. Any warmth it had afforded had slowly ebbed away, leaving an unbearable chill in the air.
She couldn't blame him. She had just told him he was fated to die ignominiously, doomed by his own pessimistic nature. If he HADN'T reacted badly, she would have been frightened.
"I have almost forgotten completely."
The words were spoken softly, but they sounded like a rifle shot in the quiet room. "What?" she whispered.
Slowly, Malcolm raised his head from his intense study of the counterpane and stared into her eyes. "Malcolm," he explained. "I have almost forgotten him. Bits and pieces… Only fragments remain."
Hoshi frowned. "That… That is not possible. This vision…"
"It is a strange thing," he went on, as if she hadn't spoken, "to know how you are going to die. I can see it, clear as day. I will be slain by my bastard son; murdered on the battlefield. I will order [I]Excalibur[/I] flung back into the water, and then I will die. Fairy women will bear me on a raft to Avalon, and I will become legend." He laughed humorlessly. "Featureless legend, as you pointed out. A name, but no soul."
He held up a hand to keep her from responding. "No," he said firmly. "Hoshi, you are right. I am… my own worst enemy. I have doomed myself to this destiny. " His gaze softened. "I can see your fate, too, dearest. I see you, standing on the parapet of Joyous Garde*, gazing down at me, begging me silently to leave in peace." He shook his head faintly. "The siege will last for months. Knights will die by the hundred, until they soak the ground with their noble blood. And in the end, I will win you back… only to lose you again." A deep sigh seeped past his lips as he wilted. "Mordred will hold you to bargain, and then I will kill Mordred, and Mordred will kill me." He barked out a sharp laugh. "Funny, that. I will be killed by my son. I could not get a child with you, dear Guinevere, but I could with Morgana; and that child will kill me." Grim humor flickered in his eyes. "I will be killed by my heir, and Malcolm Reed will be killed by his duty. Even in death, fitted like a glove."
Hoshi shook her head firmly. "No. The vision… it is over now. Soon, we will be back with the others." She clasped his hand tightly. "Do not give in to the memories so easily, my love. Fight them."
"Why?"
"We will be home soon!"
"Will we? What home do I have? What future? Like this, I can die a king and a hero. As Malcolm, I would die as little more than a footnote." He shook his head again. "I think I will take the hero's death, Guinevere."
"Hoshi," she reminded him, though her voice faltered a little with the name.
"Are you so sure?"
She wasn't.
A warm hand cupped her cheek, and Hoshi found her face being tilted up until she was gazing deeply into his blue eyes. "You needn't stay with me, dearest," he whispered, brushing her lips with his own. "I know you will not, whichever life you choose. You will be stolen away from me, by my closest, most trusted friend. It will break my heart, and people will bleed for it, but in the end, there is no changing legend. It is even more immobile than history."
"Arthur…"
A faint smile graced his lips. "I have always loved how you say my name."
Guinevere slid her hand up his arm and buried it in his hair. "I will never leave you, my love, my lord," she whispered against his mouth. "Temptations greater than the flesh may grace my doorstep, and I would never falter."
"Do not vow what you cannot promise."
"I can and do."
"You are a foolish woman."
"I am your wife. You married me - the blame is yours alone."
A low laugh rumbled in Arthur's chest. "Woman," he chuckled. "You will be the death of me."
She grinned. "Your life, my lord, or I'll know the reason why."
"Mmmm…" She watched his eyes drift shut as he moved slowly forward, tilting his head to press his lips gently against hers. The queen moaned happily, wrapping her arms around his neck and furrowing her fingers through his hair as he slowly tilted her back to the bed…
….Then, suddenly, as though a hook had been caught in her hair, she felt her entire body jerk backward. There was no time to cry for help as she felt herself torn out of the bed, away from the king's strong arms.
"ARTHUR!" she shrieked as the bedroom melted away like mist.
"Hoshi!"
The queen raised her hand to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight that suddenly blinded her. "Arthur! Where is Arthur!" she cried, trying to focus on the man who was speaking to her.
"Arthur? Who in hell is Arthur?" He knelt beside her. She could make out blonde hair and amiable blue eyes. "If you mean Malcolm, he's still in there. But we'll have him out in a jiffy."
Guinevere blinked at the man, eyes watering from the effort of trying to focus despite the sun. "Who… Who are you?" she asked.
The man frowned. "What?"
"Who are you?" she asked again, using a firmer tone and trying her best to assume a regal…slouch.
"Hoshi? You all right?" The man tried to lay a hand on her forehead, but she smacked it away.
"Stop calling me that!" she exclaimed angrily, scooting a short distance away from him. "I am Guinevere, queen of Britannia, wife of Arthur. And I demand to know who you are, sir!"
The man's jaw was slack enough to catch flies.
"Aw… shit," he cursed. Guinevere blushed.
The man sighed. "The name's Trip, yer highness," he told her, tilting his head to the side. "And I sure's hell hope this amnesia thing you've got wears off, cuz you're a heck of a lot more fun when you AREN'T being royalty. And because if Malcolm's acting all kinglike when we drag his sorry ass out of that building thingy, I think I'm gonna kill him."
"Malcolm?"
"Arthur."
Of course. "And you're… Trip." A funny enough name.
"Yes, ma'am. Your highness. Whatever infernal thing you wanna be called." He stopped, thought for a moment, and chuckled. "Guess you can call me Lancelot."
She felt herself go white as a sheet.
"Hey, you all ri-"
"Commander!"
The man named Trip looked over his shoulder at another man who had called to him. "What's up, Travis?"
"It's Lieutenant Reed, sir!" the dark-skinned young man replied. "We've got him, but he's not breathing!"
"Aw, hell no. Hell no!" Trip leapt to his feet and hurtled down the rocky embankment, towards where a towering stone spire stood out in stark contrast to the natural setting. A crowd had gathered near what appeared to be a door in the side of the structure. At first, Guinevere couldn't see what they were fussing over. But after squinting at the crowd for several seconds, she caught a glimpse of a figure - a man - collapsed on the ground in front of the door.
It was Arthur.
And she fainted.
TBC…
*Lancelot's castle of legend