In the Hall of the Mountain King - Chapter Four By Asso
Rating: PG-13
Genres: angst, adventure, romance, drama
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note:
Let's see, my friends.
How were we placed at the end of the previous chapter?
Mh... Trip and T'Pol were really in a bad way, especially T'Pol, I think, with that infernal Thing who (Mh... or which?) was about to... Well! Maybe it's better if I don't say what the hell that damn Thing was about to do!
Hoshi and Malcolm were underway toward the Bannerdas' planet. Why? Oh well, the Bannerdas' boss talked of a book. Just so! A book!
And Enterprise, with the Captain and all the crew, was about to get destroyed, falling headlong against the Mountain, without energy and without hope.
Definitely there is a lot of meat on the fire.
Let's see, did I say? Ok. Let's see what happens now.
And, once again, I have to thank Linda, who, once again, wanted to give me her help.
In the hall of the Mountain King - Chapter Four
The large salon where His Excellency brought us appears austere, even if lit by broad windows which look directly to the outside, showing a sky intensely blue and cloudless and clear.
It doesn't sound, here, like it's possible that's happening, all which is happening. That our ship, Enterprise, is running at this precise moment, blindly, toward a planet which seems to not exist anymore. Where our two Commanders, our friends, have disappeared in the nil, by means of... of a living, diabolical weald, into a mountain which seems spit out from a horror story, and...
I smile bitterly and sadly to myself.
... and without me doing my job on our ship, far from my comrades.
I virtually shake myself. These are useless thoughts. Useless and stupid. My Hoshi was right. If His Excellency wanted her and me here, there has to be a valid reason and every way has to be tempted if there is even the tiniest possibility of showing a way to rescue our friends.
And... and then...
Inevitable, even if I feel guilty in having this thought, the comforting idea that Hoshi is with me, safe, soothes my soul.
But, right after, the sense of guilt grows fiercely inside me.
Of course, I have Hoshi, here, with me, safe.
While the Captain, Phlox, Hess, Dougal, Travis, all our comrades, are fighting, just now, amid the unknown, to rescue two souls who have finally found their happiness after such an awful extent of dire ordeals. They who are at last able and free to love each other, exactly...
... exactly like I... I and Hoshi...
I straighten. Enough now. Time presses.
I look across the room. There is a table in the middle, wooden, of exquisite handiwork, as far as I am able to understand. I am not versed in art, but Hoshi has enlightened my mind a little, and the table looks admirably handmade. And ancient.
I reflect deeply inside myself.
Ancient.
Everything seems to be ancient here.
Furniture, decor... all things. Even in the clear conspicuousness of a very advanced science, everything has an effluvium of the antique, here. A flavour, a patina of something which comes from a distant time. Very distant.
Once again I shake myself. Bloody hell! My experience with that infernal forest has marked me in a way I would have never believed!
I head quickly toward the table, where His Excellency is already, with Hoshi at my side.
He beckons to the table's surface with an elegant gesture of his long hand.
"Here it is, my guests."
Hoshi and I look at the object on the table, disregarding the pompous and high-falutin language of our... host.
I can't help but smile sarcastically, unable to believe that thing can be of some help for our purpose.
The Bannerda notices clearly my expression. And my diffidence.
"Don't you think it would help us, Lieutenant?"
"Excellency, it's... a book."
"Ancient, Lieutenant."
"Oh, ancient, sure. An ancient book. A very ancient book, I am persuaded."
Our composed host takes a slight breath. His calm and his control sound almost Vulcan, even if a trace of impatience can be perceived in his posture.
"Lieutenant Reed, this book is so ancient that I am unsure that even your skilful translator officer is capable of understanding what the title means. The language is too ancient, to such an extent that few people even among us are able to comprehend it, even the writing symbols.
I raise my eyebrow, the way T'Pol would do.
(*T'Pol! *).
The thought of her and of Trip and of the dangerous road all my friends are passing through at this moment, without me being able to help them, hits me painfully, and my voice resounds harshly and a little too loud in the salon's silence.
"Excellency..."
The hand of His Excellency arises imperiously and stops me abruptly, while I feel Hoshi's hand laying on my arm to remind me to act less rashly.
I try to calm down, under the attentive and severe look of the old Bannerda.
He lowers his hand, then talks gravely, while taking the book off the table with intense attention, in both his hands, like he was doing that with effort.
And... there is ... yes... a weird look in his eyes. I am experienced with that. My training and my day to day job has brought me to notice what there is in people's looks, what they are feeling, sometimes even in T'Pol eyes, though I can't compete with Trip in that. This kind of skilfulness is indispensable for me, as a responsible security operative.
So, I don't think I'm deceiving myself. There's a hint of fear, in the eyes of His Excellency. And his voice, too, slightly betrays such a feeling from him.
"Lieutenant, the title's translation could be in your language..." - A pause, short. - "...The Mountain King of..." - Another brief pause of suspense. A grave look. - "... of the Weald World."
It is as if everything stops.
The eye which watches and doesn't see, the ear which listens and doesn't hear, the body which pervades all and doesn't have substance, the mind which thinks and doesn't have understanding, the soul which is and doesn't exist...
The heart which bleeds without having blood, without beating... without having life...
... It remains bated and motionless.
All remains bated and motionless.
Even the silent, anguished soul's scream of the woman, clenched in the ice of the blackest and frostiest despair, stops abruptly, while - madly, unthinkably - a tenuous and tiny beam of insensate hope brings into her being a dwarfish clot of light and of warmth.
That triumphant scream stops all.
Fills up all.
"I'M HERE!"
And replenishes her anima, too.
Hoshi and I almost jerk.
(*The Mountain King of the Weald World! The Mountain King... of... the Weald World.*)
The words of His Excellency resound in my mind; I have no doubt that the same is happening to Hoshi.
(*The Mountain King of the Weald World. What does this mean? Could this book have something to do, REALLY, with... with the mountain on that damned world? With that... with that diabolical weald? And...this... Mountain King? Who....*) - And, unexpected, unwelcome, a scary idea hits my brain. - (*... What is this? *)
I chase away this frightening and absurd thought in the depth of my mind and try to focus on the meaning of His Excellency's words.
I stare uneasily and suspensefully at him. He is the highest headman of a race which is esteemed as very wise, even if, in reality, there's not much really known in regard to this species. Can he truly believe that this book could give us some useful information about that planet, which seems to have sprung from the ill mind of a horror writer? Truly can he think that its title could be more than a simple coincidence, that in the book's pages could be concealed something helpful for us?
His Excellency reciprocates my stare. Steadily, then, resolutely, he hands the book to me.
I take it with circumspection. It is giant-sized, heavy, impossible to handle easily. It sounds... strange. Its book-jacket appears made with a material I don't know, it seems... it seems... a sort of skin. A soft leather, slightly pinkish... almost...
I don't dare to give course to my inconceivable impression, to my absurd thought.
I lay the book on the table and, after I have levelled a questioning glance at the stern Bannerda before us and after I have an affirmative nod from him, I open it, inviting my Hoshi to look at it with me.
And we find... nothing. There are only a few pages inside, tattered, where large characters, red, vaguely... disquieting, stand out. The remainder of the pages have been ripped out, and in a great hurry, judging from the small, battered shreds that are yet remaining, and on which some words can still be recognized.
Hoshi and I watch each other, baffled.
It's she who breaks off the procrastination. "Excellency, why do you not explain something to us?"
So, it's possible.
It's a real, witty and fully coherent thought, this one.
Full of marvel.
And bringing hope. An unexpected, undreamed-of... infernal... hope!
The awareness has come back, and this time it won't decease again.
No. This time it won't happen, because if it was possible to occur, what has occurred... Well then! The Impossible can become Possible!
And so, the dark, unknowable thing understands that it's really possible that its time... has arrived.
And it understands also that it has to act.
The tall, severe man nods soundly, then sits down, heavily, in a large and imposing armchair, wooden. Concurrently, with a broad move of his hand, he invites us to do the same, using the other easy chairs around the table.
"Lieutenant, Ensign, as I said previously to you and to your Captain, while you were making your action plan with our help, we began to examine attentively whatever we were able to find pertaining to the planet."
His Excellency seems to be quite embarrassed, while speaking.
"I think I have to give the two of you and all your comrades our apologies. When the signal sprang up from the planet, honestly we didn't pay attention to the history of that world. It has been what it has been from time immemorial - an uninhabited world, covered with an immense weald, made with enormous trees, without seas, with a unique and stark mountain, tremendously high - skywards, surrounded by stormy nimbuses which block any view and any communication system. Strange, that's true, but we accepted it in this way all along. It's a part of our life."
His Excellency breathes deeply, and then goes on, bitterly.
"So, this... this old and wise race, as we are known by everyone, simply asked you to investigate that new strange event, trusting in your undeniable skilfulness and in your desire for exploration. And in your youthful enthusiasm."
His Excellency, stands up. The old man stays silent for a while, turning his back toward us, and watching through one of the large room's windows, toward the sapphire-blue of the sky, his hands intertwined behind him, like... like Commander T'Pol used to do.
Without turning around, he speaks, and his voice resounds strongly in the noiseless room.
"But when we heard your report about what happened and, above all, when we saw, with our eyes themselves, the planet's sudden and unexplainable transformation..." - His Excellency turns slowly and watches us with an impenetrable look. - "We, our guests, began to scrutinize carefully all that we were able to track down about it, like we promised you, and... we found something."
We stay silent, waiting for His Excellency's next statement.
I feel Hoshi's hand again on my arm and I do nothing to withdraw. She is searching for a little courage. And me too.
Because, I'm sure, there's something dreadfully terrifying hidden behind the Bannerda's behaviour. In his words.
To understand means to know, because only those who know can act.
And so, forcefully and inexorably, under the whip of a hope and a possibility which the aeons had made almost forgotten, whole knowledge pervades a mind which had been so powerful that it hadn't been possible to restrain entirely, to control completely. Let alone to destroy.
And with knowledge, the awareness comes back OF THE POWER!
OF THE FORCE.
And so, through that soul which is and doesn't exist...
... giving an unimaginable life blood to that mind which thinks and doesn't have thoughts...
... in the middle of that body which pervades all and which doesn't have substance ...
... a heart without flesh begins again to beat.
Inconceivably.
With puissance.
"My esteemed guests, a young and attentive scientist, believing to find something helpful, noticed a thing which had slipped by everyone. Perhaps luck, like you Humans would say, helped her, because she was working in an old workspace and that is probably the point. I had ordered all people, able to do it, to work without rest just to find the most tenuous gleam of light, regardless of where and of how the job was taking place. And, in the distant and secluded outstation where the scientist was working in solitude, she found something, in her database, different from what there was in the normal database we use. There was, in the memory of her old computer, an older and unknown version of the grid references which are in our usual database in regard to the planet you well know, by now.
His Excellency looks at us penetratingly. "Incredible, isn't it? But it's so."
"Excellency, are you telling us that the grid references of the planet in that database were different from those you have in your common database that you communicated to us?"
"Not exactly, Lieutenant."
"Not exactly?" - I cannot restrain myself. - "Bloody hell, Excellency! What the devil do you mean?"
"Lieutenant, it would be inconceivable that such a sort of imprecision is able to be in the web of our sophisticated and advanced computer system."
"Damn, but you just said..."
"I said that that young scientist found another version of the grid references."
"But..."
Once again the old Bannerda raises his hand, stopping my outcries. Then he softens a little, while the hand of my Hoshi on my arm intensifies its grip, trying to lessen my anger and my hastiness. And her anxiety.
"I told you, Lieutenant, that our scientist was working in a distant and secluded outstation." - The old man breathes strongly. Uneasily, one can say. - "And the reason for the existence of this outstation is... that there has been a time, far-off, incommensurably far-off, where war wasn't unknown to us."
His Excellency sighs again, patently uncomfortable. And I can understand why. He is revealing to us that there's a past the Bannerdas have to be ashamed of. A past of wars, and evidently of violence, capable of displaying to us an image very different from the one they are known by now.
He goes on. "Yes, Lieutenant. Yes, Ensign. We had our wars. But..." - Our host sits down again, unable to bear the burden of his revelations while standing. - "But we never wanted to scathe anyone, never or bring offense. In the middle of a wild universe, when we were already age-old, surrounded by many races - young and hot-headed - desirous to conquer our territories and our knowledge, we had to defend ourselves."
I can't help but open my eyes wide, and my look mirrors the look of my Hoshi.
In the middle of a wild universe? When we were already age-old? But... but how much old is this race?
His Excellency is continuing his narration, and the sound of his voice has a slightly hypnotic cadence.
"With the aim to protect ourselves without being forced to give violence to anyone, we built bastions, numerous, interspersed all around in our space, in the space we determined belonged to us. They were sort of sentries, able to detect any kind of invasion attempt, and able..." - The voice of His Excellency gets low, somber. - "... capable of an enormous fire capacity, with tremendously deadly and destructive weapons, heritage of our oldest past, and whose memory has been lost for a very long time. Thankfully."
I feel Hoshi's grasp becoming even more tight, and it isn't difficult to guess the reason. Is His Excellency aware of what he just told us? He told us of an ancient past of wars, unknown to everyone, during which his race built those outstations, and, at the same time, he talked about a past even more ancient, from which those weapons he spoke about were coming. How... how much older is his race? And... what sort of wars had this race been forced to conduct in that age-old past? Against... against whom... against... what... were those forgotten weapons supposed to have to fight?
Force. Power.
Potency.
Immense.
The awakened age-old mightiness now remembers.
Perspicuously.
It remembers the force. The power. The potency.
I try to smooth Malcolm's impatience and his disquiet squeezing his arm, but I attempt also to relieve my own tizzy and my own uneasiness. And something else, too. Something which rings as fear.
His Excellency is telling to us of ancient wars, of age-old times, of weapons that don't exist anymore, and, somehow, he is telling us that there's a nexus between all this stuff and our situation, and that book and the abduction of T'Pol... they are someway connected with the scenario he is describing to us.
But how can a book have the power of aiding us? Sure, the title sounds really meaningful, striking. Evocative, one could say. But it is the title of a book, nothing more than that. Or, even less, the title of a tale, of a story for children, simply that.
I lower my glance in disbelief. With wry and jeering disbelief.
Sure. A tale. For children. And then, how can it be called the real story we are passing through? Isn't it just a tale, or, rather, a horror story, that we might narrate to our children, in the evening, having their pleasure in getting frightened? And it's true that T'Pol was kidnapped by a living weald covering a entire world, where an immense mountain is raising its peak to the sky, among the eternal and dark stormy clouds that prevent any sight and any possibility to communicate.
The Mountain King of the Weald World.
There's all. The mountain, the world, the weald.
Only the King is absent at the roll-call. The king of the mountain whence the signal has sprung out.
Was... this King the one who threw the signal? Who kidnapped T'Pol? And could the book disclose to us who this King is?
Or... or - I swallow, while a dull turmoil stirs inside me - or... what... is this King?
THE KING!
That's it!
The King.
THE KING!
And now the King is back. And he remembers. And he knows.
EVERYTHING!
A sort of vibration permeates all, shakes all, even the woman in the Thing's clutches. It is a waggle made with full comprehension and with furor!
The King is back, the King remembers. The King knows.
The King of his dominion... of his Kingdom.
Of his prison!
YES! Now the King remembers all and knows all his powers.
And all his limits.
He knows it's... prison.
Rage... FURY!... boil into the nil which was all, in the age-old days of the deepest yore.
How did they dare? HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO?
RAGE! FUROR! FUROR! RED, BLIND FUROR!
How is it possible that he... HE!... has been coerced to live the life of a grub? To live... without life? To depend on the life... on the death!... ON THE VITAL LYMPH!... of so many inferior creatures? Weak, frail, ephemeral, imperfect, inane females! Helpful only to give pleasure, born only for this aim.
How did it happen that he... HE!... had to suck their bodies and their animas to go on with a non-life made of an empty nothingness?
Like an unconscious butcher-vampire, an unaware and abhorrent bloodsucker.
He!
HE!
HE!!!
The greatest potency which exists!
THE EVERYTHING!
THE POSSESSOR OF ANY BODY, ANY SOUL.
OF ANY THING!
A whine. Feeble, doleful, painful, low. It soars, heartrending, in the frosty cold of this non-place.
The female.
It didn't soften the grievous, horrid grasp of the repugnant non-being on the helpless mind of the woman, who trembles, nude and defenceless, squashed under the heel of a terror which has no name, against which there's no will power able to combat this thing, because it is a terror which flays the soul, which gnaws the thought.
No, it didn't get softer, this horrendous grip and, nay, it deepened in the bottomless wrath which pervaded the unfathomable and incomprehensible Thing, clenching the woman's mind in a painful vice.
And she whined, feebly, avoiding his... HIS!... attention. Daring to moan because of the fair pain inflicted by the rage of her Master. Of the KING!
Seeing without eyes, it abandons the running and frenzied figure who is continuing to penetrate precipitously the dark more and more, and, madly angry, it focuses on the female.
On that female so very... so very beautiful and... pitiable.
Like a misty shadow this strange thought appears suddenly, too quick and indistinct to be seized, too tenuous and slender to not get lost in the alien fury, in the abyss of extraneousness of THAT awakened mind.
Too subtle and unknown is this thought to avert the furious train of irate and animal feelings the woman's reaction unleashed.
She whined! She dared to do it.
SHE DARED!
She dared do a thing which not even minimally can touch upon the mind of anyone else, because no living creature can think to raise its voice, can dare to let out even the most feeble wail, under the mental hold - disrupting, but inevitable. fatal! - of HIM.
The Master and the Lord.
The Supreme.
The First.
The Highest.
The Sublime.
No! Nobody can do that. Let alone a female! A faint and nether being. A thing made uniquely to give her body and her soul to her possessor, assuming that it can be called a soul, the clot of awareness that females have, and that HE absorbed so many times. A female. Without any right to speak, to hear, to see, not even to think! A female! A female who dares to whimper because of the clenched mental grasp, because of the touch - obvious, natural - of THE ONE she belongs to!!
BUT SHE WILL LEARN!
As far... as far as she can be... beautiful... she will learn. As far as... she can arouse... pity.
Again another rapid and ungraspable, elusive thought shade, but once again too foreign it's this thought in THAT untouchable brain. It's unable this thought to touch That brain, to bottle up the reaction which will happen now, to deviate the behaviour which has been the only way all along, or at least since when... since when...
She will learn!
SHE WILL LEARN.
NOW!
And, without any pity, without even the tiniest knowledge of compassion, as it happened at other uncountable times in the forgotten abysses of yore... cruelly and savagely... the punishment arrives.
"The outstation where your scientist was working, Excellency, is one of those bastions you spoke of, isn't it?"
"Yes, Lieutenant. It's ancient, as I said, but still operating and functional, even if its weapons are dumb, now. It's useful in order to conduct researches and surveys in a region space distant from the core of our dominion and from where we withdrew very long ago, but interesting and intriguing because of the unique spatiotemporal distortions which take place there, most likely as a consequence of.. the battles that occurred in that site. It's not the only outstation we still use with this aim. They don't need modern and sophisticated devices for this purpose. To tell the truth..." The Bannerda gives a sigh again. - "To tell the truth, they possess some science equipment which is more advanced than those which we use now, heritage of a destruction technology that we have forgotten and that we are not capable of renewing. And which we don't want to remember."
It's a blade, which carves. A fire, which sears. A frost, which freezes. A vise, which grinds. A claw, which flays, which rends, tears, rips...
Fangs which dismember...
Scourges which skin...
Bradawls which pierce, which blind. Which dig into flesh.
It's a pain without name, without voice.
Without top and without bottom, without start and without end.
Which spreads broad all over, which goes down everywhere.
Into any fiber. Into any cell.
Without limits.
Without pause.
Infinite.
Inhumane.
"You... you are telling us that in your far-off past, your science was more evolved than the science you possess now?"
I can't help but ask that in wonder. And I also wonder how is it that His Excellency is revealing to us all these things. Okay, surely this book is important, but is this enough to compel this old Bannerda to disclose to us bursts of light about the past of his race no other species is aware of?
The Bannerda's look lies upon me, stern, almost reproaching, and I forcibly squeeze Malcolm's arm, because there's a light in it ... sinister, like a shadow, dark and somber, revealing a Bannerda... unknown. Frightening. Not... not as good as they look normally.
And his voice, too, has something scary, when he begins again to speak.
"Do you find this strange, Ensign? And yet, is it true or is it untrue that many of your race suspect, and with not bad reasons, that in the dark of your passed ages a lot of cognitions - great, and maybe not exactly bright - can have got lost? And you have to think that your ilk is very young."
The Bannerda's tone hardens yet a little more.
"Ours is old, Ensign, so very old that not even we, ourselves, have an exact perception of the eras which stay behind our shoulders. And during these eras... "
His Excellency pauses for few instants, rubbing his face wearily with his hand, as if he were attempting to ease a heavy and saddening burden.
Then he resumes his talk, and his tone has lost any veneer of hardness. It, rather, sounds tired. And worried. And heavily sad.
"During these eras, my... friends, we fell and resurged many times, and the more we go backward in time, the more the memories of these events fade and dim, mixing with the stories and the legends of ancient and passed epochs which don't have real, tangible voices anymore."
He stops again, then gets up and stands majestically in front of us, looking at us poignantly.
His voice rises puissantly.
"But sometimes the legends get a voice, tangible and real, which talks potently a language impossible to not understand."
His Excellency stares at us with eyes that speak volumes. "And which requires to speak with clarity, without shame and without hiding anything, if it is needed for the salvation of those we are in debt with. And... " - He lowers quickly his eyes, for a brief instant, looking like if he were in shame, and... and in worry. - "... maybe not only for that."
Then he recovers, and, finally, while I begin to catch a glimpse of the reasons behind all the revelations he is giving us, even if the end of his sentence resounds very obscure, he indicates augustly the book with a large gesture of his arm.
"This book, my friends, is the voice, tangible and real, of a legend, age-old, coming from the dawn of time. And this book is a legend itself, lost in the mists, in the night of the most ancient past, and now revealed to us in its palpable substance, in its physical reality."
The old man levels a penetrating look at us and his voice becomes very low.
"It speaks to us of someone who, by means of its pages which arrived from immemorial days, acquired a real consistency. A... true... existence. It talks to us of the Mountain...."
One last pause. Heavy.
Then, with a voice almost inaudible, His Excellency talks once again, and visibly appalled, he finishes his sentence.
"... King."
Silence weighs hard upon us for some moments, then he repeats this name again, but differently, this time.
He says... "THE... King."
"NOOOOOOO!!!!!"
It's a scream overflowing with desperation, crazy, shrill, angry, delirious, rampant, wrathful, frenzied.
It explodes, furious and mad, as an uncontrollable and destroying plasma bomb.
It penetrates to the most profound depths, and there's no shield capable of halting it. There's no action which cannot get broken off under the unstoppable imperiousness of this savage yell.
And so, suddenly, the intolerable pain has to cease.
But the furious and blind rage doesn't fade away, and rather it grows even more and begins to flow impetuously toward the one who dared to shout, inducing the end of the infamous punishment.
I try to bring things to a little more normal level. I... don't know if I'm totally ready to know who is THE King. Some... some instant yet!
"Excellency, you said that your young scientist found another version of the grid references regarding this planet."
"Yes, Lieutenant."
I can't help but speak a little tauntingly. Scathingly. "Please forgive me, Excellency, but I don't see any unlikeness between 'another version of these grid references' and 'different grid references'."
Our host looks at me steadily. "Lieutenant..."
Then he stops abruptly and turns his eyes toward Hoshi. "Ensign, obviously it's superfluous to ask you if you know what this means: 'False Friends'."
Now he will see! He will see, this impudent creature, this man, who found the strength to penetrate inside, to compel him - HIM! - to stop the woman's dreadful chastisement.
He who has been capable of shaking him.
HIM!
THE KING!
He will see, this man! He will pay!
He will pay!
The livid furor surrounds the yelling and running figure. Like a flood tide, it starts to surmount it, until nearly it submerges it.
It's a cinch, a trifle.
A flutter of eyelash, and nothing will remain of that creature. Of that man.
Nothing! NOTHING! Nothing!!!
Then, suddenly, with stunned estonishment, the blind wrath halts, in a flash of regained cognition.
What has almost been done? Which sort of idiotic mistake has almost been accomplished?
Slowly, little by little, the tide goes down, subsides, smoothes out.
But it doesn't calm the ebullient lava, the tangle of clashing emotions, of nearly unintelligible thoughts which twirl in whirls in the mind that fights to find itself again.
Thinking coherently...
... Following the ratiocination's light between the contrasting imperatives which clash violently against each other...
... Trying to allow age-old, almost forgotten abilities to regain their vigour after uncountable eras of frosty and dead darkness...
The innumerable ages of black unconsciousness... the incoercible habit of a whole, primeval existence...
... the indomitable hunger pangs...
And the most recent awareness that there could be a hope, and that this tenuous, wafer-thin promise of resurgence might reside in this creature, this man.
And the knowledge that this man draws his unthinkable strength - the basis of the hope - from the woman who ran the risk of getting lost, destroyed - Stupidly! Idiotically! - under a fury which cannot be allowed to burst out freely.
Or, rather, not now.
Not yet.
I look at our host with genuine wonder, while the puzzled eyes of my Mal turn inquisitively from His Excellency to me, then from me to him, and to me again.
"Well, Excellency, this is my job. They are pairs of words in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ in meaning. Also letters in two alphabets can be False Friends. But what's this got to do with ..."
"In our case, Ensign Sato, we can restrict this to words that look similar, and rather extending the meaning of False Friends also to the phrase structure."
Mal and I stay silent, waiting for some explanation.
His Excellency turns his head slightly toward the table and gives a little nod, almost imperceptible. An image, vivid and three-dimensional, appears suddenly over the table. It is big and looks tangible, real; I have to struggle not to stretch out my hand to try to touch it.
It is writing. It stays perfectly firm before us. Perfectly legible.
I can flatly see that, no matter how we look at it, from of any perspective, it remains absolutely in focus and as if it was exactly in front of the one who is watching it.
I hear Mal's sharp inhalation, clearly displaying all his wonder at such an advanced technology, and I don't dare to think of what such an evolved race could do, if it was a warlike breed, like it has evidently been in the past, with weapons which thankfully don't exist anymore. What... - I inhale in my turn - ... what might the Xindi have done if they suspected that such weapons, such technology, could be?
Mal interrupts the course of my thoughts. "What does this writing mean?"
I mentally thank the utilitarian pragmatism of my strong-minded and down-to-earth personal warrior.
"Mal..." He looks at me at my call and I mirror his gesture - "It's the planet's location, the one we well know, in Bannerda standard language."
"Your fame is indeed deserved, Ensign. I am persuaded you will be capable of doing what we required you to come here for."
"There is no doubt about my Hoshi's capability."
I can't help but smile slightly, hearing Mal's statement, and sensing the evident pride perceived in his words, feeling proud... and happy... in my turn for his pride and for that my which, in the strain of the situation, he put unconsciously before my name.
A smile spreads also on the Bannerda's mouth. "I'm sure you have no doubt, Lieutenant."
"Oh... ahem... of course..." - Mal clears his throat, then speaks aloud. - "Anyone so gentle to explain anything to me?"
I shake myself and inquire. "Yes, Excellency. I don't see any recondite meaning in the writing; it is expressed in your written language, but doesn't have any difference from its translation in our language."
I can plainly descry in His Excellency's eyes a spark of amusement. "True, Ensign, but do you not find it a little bit strange that these words, exactly THESE words, written in this way, with this exact phrase structure, were in the memory archive of a computer dating back six hundred thousand standard-Earth years ago?"
It's time to act, eventually. The opportunity cannot be lost.
Nevermore will there be another chance.
As a shroud, frosty and leaden, as a hellish cloak, the gloomy abyss begins to enshroud its victim and saviour, to suck into its darkness the one who embodies the tenuous hope of bringing the light and the warmth which have been lacking since time immemorial.
And the real force, the real power, the real potency... old-time.
AND the vengeance!
Slowly. Cautiously. Attentively. Prudently. Carefully, Guardedly. Cagily. Warily.
This mind mustn't get broken. This mind has to survive. Intact. Its force... its eternal slavery... will be new life.
LIFE!
True life.
Feeling alive again.
For real.
Feeling... the flesh's concreteness. The blood flowing in the veins. The wind's breath on the face. The day's light, and the dark of the night.
Touching. Tasting. Savouring.
Savouring... really... a female.
Her warmth.
The sweetness of her abandon.
Thoughts inconceivable, indistinct. Pale shade of a forgotten time.
The warmth of a woman who... is in love.
Thoughts elusive. Hazy sensations. Faded memories of a passed time.
A woman... in love. And loved.
Thoughts impalpable. Misty perceptions. Forgotten... feelings. Remembrances... painful... of a time that was.
And which the touch - needfully soft, necessarily airy - on the man's mind brings back to the light.
"Six... six hundred thousand... years!?!"
My voice resounds harsh and choked in the air.
Next to me, Hoshi seems to have forgotten to breathe. Her grip on my arm became nearly painful and within my eye's view I can see she is mouth-agape.
I am sure that a tenuous glint of mocking amusement shimmers in the eyes of His Excellency. "Lieutenant, I told you we are a very old race."
"O... old? Ex... Excellency... 'Old '... BLOODY HELL! 'Old ' doesn't do justice! Six... six hundred thousand years! Six..."
Then, suddenly, my already wide eyes snap even widen more, if that's possible.
"Excellency! You said that those computers... THOSE COMPUTERS DATING BACK TO ALL THESE YEARS AGO - are still operating!"
"Not completely, Lieutenant, and surely not with the whole potential they could have, but, substantially, yes, it's so."
"And... and also that outstation - THOSE OUTSTATIONS! - are still capable of functioning!"
"Exactly, Lieutenant, even if..."
"But... but... Excellency...you are telling us... you are telling us..."
But I have to stop, abruptly, because the impact of what His Excellency is confirming to us, as far as it can be hard to digest per se, fades away at the sudden thought which strikes me, abysmally potent.
I leap up, unable to remain seated. "EXCELLENCY! You said that those weapons came from a past even more ancient! Excellency! But... but how ancient...is your race?"
Then, another thought. Weird. Indefinably scary. "WHO... are you?"
A maelstrom of despair.
A storm of pain. Of sorrow. Of grief.
Of anguish. Of torment.
Of endless agony.
A plea without voice, desperate, invoking.
A beseeching entreaty, an imploring supplication.
In the dark, in the dust, in the bowels of the earth, scraping in vain with broken fingernails the rock walls which block the road, raining blows with bleeding fists, inanely, on the frosty and rugged rocks, which don't move.
Between rage and impotence, between blind ire and atrocious woe.
Into an infinite fear.
All that, perfectly and wholly, irrupt inescapably in the alien essence while encircling the man's mind, while being about to engulf it.
The prayer...
It can feel the silent prayer which streams out from the man's soul, like the dumb tears gush from his eyes.
I beg you, take me! Leave her alone! Take me instead of her!
Instead... of... her.
How is it possible? How can a living creature think to offer himself in place of someone else... to death?
Is... love?
The foggy sense of this word... of this... this feeling, yes... which started the new course of the events and compelled the yet asleep conscience to regain awareness... it begins to take a more defined contour...
And brings with itself thoughts... thoughts and... feelings... age-old, forgotten. Lost in the mist of time.
They were indistinct, earlier. They were potent and known, but weren't pinpointed, they weren't clear.
Now, under the storm which blusters in the mind and the soul of the man, they come again, potently and imperiously, to the surface.
Strong. No longer so obscure.
And the unfathomable will reverts to the woman who lies in its thrall.
To its first prey.
I stand up, and reach Mal's side. I seize his arm and I hold myself tightly to him. Staring fixedly at the old alien in front of us, I repeat Mal's question under my breath.
"Who are you?"
He looks at us for awhile, without talking, a pensive expression in his eyes, then he takes a deep breath and nods, like if he has made a decision.
He folds his arms on his chest and finally speaks solemnly.
"We don't know who we are. Perhaps we might be called the imperfect memory of the time, the evident testimony of life's fallacy, of the impossibility to reach the summit without falling down, at a low ebb."
The old and still vigorous man pauses, and sits down again on his wing-chair, lowering his chin on his chest. Then raises his eyes and starts again to speak, soundly.
"When we took our first steps from the dust, your race, and Vulcans, and Andorians, and Denobulans, and whichever other race which exists now, were not even a far-off possibility, in the womb of a remote and unwritten future."
I try to digest what we are being told, feeling Mal get stiff. The poignant look of His Excellency doesn't leave ours. Every word he says has the impact of a ram.
"But we have a bleary knowledge of the eras we have gone through, because they are too long and because too many times we fell again in the mud we rose from in the beginning of time. This is the curse, the damnation, the perfidious doom of a race whose past is too widespread for her to be able to have a real consciousness of it. This is the revenge, the nemesis of time over us."
The Bannerda gets up again, and his hefty and still harmonious figure stands upright proudly and powerfully before us. His voice resounds strong and mighty.
"And nonetheless, even in the events that swept us away so many times in the course of time and that we can remember only in a little measure, the events which compelled us to regain - every time and only in part - what we had lost; to make up for the ken we had - and with great effort and only in a little fraction; to retrieve, among the ruins of a dire fate, a few pieces in rags of the splendour of our yore... in spite of all that, we never forgot what we were and are."
The voice gets lower, and sad. "And we wonder why we have this fate. Only we, among all the races which populated and populate space."
I hung onto Mal even more. I seem to be able to perceive the abysses of time lying heavy on the shoulders of this man. I watch him with new eyes. And I see that his eyes are wretched.
He looks at us with those eyes, and talks again. And his words seem to reverberate in my thoughts.
"We don't know who we are, Ensign, and not even why we are those who we are. The only thing that we know is that our past is an unbearably heavy rock, a squashing granite massif upon us. We cannot ignore it and we cannot know it."
He pauses once more and a sort of bated grief seems to load his silence. There's a toneless and hollow smile, on his face, when he resumes his speaking.
"We feel alone. We are... alone. Our provenance world doesn't exist anymore. In reality, we don't even know from where we came. We only know that we came here a far-off day, in the yore. Yes, we are alone, and we want to be alone, and to not have many contacts with the other races, to such an extent that we gave up our spaceships. Why? Because we feel... guilty. And afraid. Afraid of ourselves and of what we could do. The races... the races we fought against... where are they? Who were they? Is it possible that... we destroyed them? For defence, of course, but... maybe, could there be something else, hidden behind what we know? In our passed and undisclosed days? How... how were we, in our past? Why did we build those weapons, before we decided to enclose ourselves in our dominion? For defence or... for some other reason? And against whom, did those weapons have to fire?"
A short pause, again. Tense.
"Against... The King?"
She trembles. Huddled and curled in upon herself. Her arms pressed against her naked and beauteous body. Her hands covering her mouth, half-open in a weeping without sound. Her beautiful eyes veiled by crying. Her lovely visage bathed in tears of fear and of shame. Of pain. Of despair.
She trembles. And sobs.
She rends... She rends the heart.
The Being without body and without soul watches the woman who bemoans silently, forgetful of the man who could be the bridge toward the craved and long-awaited future and along which the tricky treading had started to be undertaken.
Nonetheless, the walking has been interrupted, unbelievably. It has ceased, the conquest of that man, because something, unexpected, has happened.
The man's enamored heart, the flow of his soul, the touch of his thoughts, were capable of reawakening a thing which hadn't awoken since an immemorial age, which the Being was not able even to think might exist.
Or, at least, not now or long since.
But in the days of yore, this thing there has been.
Is it possible that HE... can feel compassion?
The look without eyes lingers on the female, on her attractive shapes. It caresses her skin, strokes her smooth shoulders which jounce by the sobs.
Compassion. Pity. Not hunger. Compassion.
(*Y... Yes. *)
There has been a time in which this... this feeling... warming... and mild... has been felt.
(*Yes. There has been such a time. Before ... before ...*)
Compassion.
And... and...
And...
The look alights on the woman's face.
How it is beautiful, her visage. How... sweet. How... heart-moving, tear-stained in this way. How capable it is of pushing to caress it, to try to smooth her pain and her fear brushing it, mildly, with... with the fingertips.
(*The way... the way...*)
Forgotten memories, vague and faint, of a far-off time.
The look without eyes scrutinizes the woman's visage, attempting to remember, to understand.
(*... the way... *)
The way HE had done, with another female, when HE was yet capable of feeling pity.
And... love.
The look stares at the woman's face and it seems to see on it another face, which re-emerges from the fogs of time.
HE remembers. HE remembers, not in the amorphous way like it happened in the beginning of the consciousness's recovery. HE remembers... clearly.
Her lovely features. Her laugh. Her dark hair. Her dark-green eyes, her ears. Pointed, like these, of this woman, who is... who so looks like her.
HE remembers.
Her name... L... L...Lil... Lil, yes. As soft as the touch of a feather.
HE remembers the silk of her skin, its bronzy colour, so similar to the one of this woman... the velvety sensation of her touch...
The ravishing sweetness of her love...
Before she was torn away from HIM. Before her loss made HIM... what HE had become.
Pain.
Pain, PAIN, PAIN!!!
PAIN!
Dull.
And rage. And fury. Again. Uncontainable and mad. And infernal. And inhuman. Like what He had become.
Compassion? What does this name mean? What is compassion?
WHAT IS LOVE?
Power, and potency, and force, and possession.
POSSESSION!
Only that!
AND REVENGE!
"Do not make her suffer! Do not make her cry! She can't bear all that!"
The invocation resounds loud and clear to those senses, foreign and inconceivable, and regains their full attention. And sinks back HIM into what HE must really do, into HIS true purpose. HIS needs.
Revenge! Yes, revenge. And life! True life! And... YES! ALSO HER! THE FEMALE! ALSO HER! FOR REAL! Her living flesh!
(*Lil...*)
"I can! I can bear emotions! I can! Take me and leave her alone!" Again. This incomprehensible sacrificial offer of his self. For love.
(*Lil...*)
"I beseech you, whatever you are." Standing up, in rags, bleeding, in the dark, surrounded by rocks which bar any access.
(*Lil! Lil... this man will be the life again... *)
"Take me." Clenched fists, raised chin, turning all around, speaking inanely to the obscure nil, with death in the heart.
(*...will be the force... *)
"TAKE ME! Take me in her place! Don't touch her! Don't hurt her! Nevermore! Please! PLEASE! PLEASE!" Yelling in vain, with futile wrath and useless hope, between aimless prayer and hollow menace.
(*... the power... the potency... the revenge...*)
"PLEASE!!!" Crying out to who won't ever respond, while the frostiest despair is devouring the soul.
(*... and... the possession... *)
"NO!". Understanding... feeling... what it wants, the obscure will.
(*... Lil... *)
"NO!".
(*... the possession... *)
"NO!!!!".
(*... of her!*)
"You won't have her!"
Wild and puissant, the words resound everywhere. They resonate like a mighty, thawing, beamy hope chant in the woman's soul, they ring like the blusterous and shrill sound of a war horn in the bodiless mind.
"You won't have her!"
It's a roar, ferocious and mad.
"I defeated death, for her!"
The man's face rises defiantly in the dark, an azurine flash in his blazing eyes.
"I will defeatyou!"
The man's arms go up toward a sky which isn't there.
"I call you, abject abomination.
His hands clenched in fists."
"Show yourself."
His knuckles get livid.
"Fight."
The tendons of his neck tauten like cords in his extreme, folly holler.
And under the high vaults of the Hall of the Mountain King, it echoes the ultimate and insensate defiance.
"I challenge you!"
End of Chapter Four
Oh damn! But Trip... DOES HE BE SURE OF WHAT HE IS DOING?
TBC