In the Hall of the Mountain King
By Asso
Chapter Sixteen
The Fifteenth without the Prologue, the Sixteenth counting the Prologue
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Where we talk of evilness.
And of love and death.
And of legends of love and death.
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Her face gets distorted.
He sees her, feels her. Understands.
"No! Stop it! No need! No need!"
Pain! Pain! PAIN!
Agony!
Of body and mind.
It is again inside her. Crushes her brain, tears apart her flesh.
Lacerates her soul.
He holds her, caresses her, kisses her. On the face, on the head... on the eyes wide open in excruciating hurt.
Desperate.
Desperately.
And in despair, his face rises to the nothing that listens.
"I tell you that there is no need! There's no need! NO NEED! Leave her alone! Leave her alone!"
His face goes down, again, on hers, sweaty and twisted, her mouth half open and trembling, in the attempt to breathe amid all the agonizing suffering that all at once has swooped upon and within her, that overwhelms her like a swollen river of blazing lava.
More intense, much more intense, infinitely more intense than she has felt before.
More than excruciating.
Against which there is no defence.
His tears wet her contorted visage, the mask of torment that it has become.
He cuddles in his arms her body that flinches in the spasms of the ache.
"I beg you! I BEG YOU!" – Without lifting his face from hers. – "I will be faster than the flash! Without need of any help!"
His eyes rise again, filled with tears. A cry of pure despair. "I DO NOT NEED ANY GOAD!"
He turns his gaze around, at the malevolent nothing that you feel, you perceive, that there is, there or anywhere else; everywhere and nowhere; and that hears; and sees. And… is having fun!
"I swear that I will make you have fun! Madly! I will not let you down!"
Nothing happens, nothing moves.
The woman in his arms starts to breathe laboriously, in dribs and drabs.
"Listen to me, damn you! Give heed to me!"
Her erratic breathing and strident and uneven makes him mad of despair.
"You will end up killing her, this way!"
The pauses between a breath and the other grow more marked. Her breaths become gasps.
"Stop it, hell's bells! I'm telling you I will not let you down! I'm not cheating! I'll make you roll in the aisles with laughter, if you know laugh!"
Her hands grab him convulsively.
"I'll make my heart leap out of my chest!"
Her fingernails scratch him.
"I'll make my tongue dangle out from my mouth!"
The waves of her pain submerge his mind unremittingly. A bloody-red tsunami.
"I'll pull my breath with my teeth! I'll hurtle along the burrow with the eyes popping out of the orbits!"
He cries out. He shouts, screams, yells.
"I'LL MAKE YOU ENJOY YOURSELF IN A WAY THAT YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE! MOUNTAINS OF FUN FOR YOU! OCEANS OF FUN! GALAXIES OF FUN! I SWEAR! I SWEAR! OH PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! LEAVE HER ALONE!"
"T... Trip..."
It is a hiss, a gasp, a rattle; that crawls out doleful and thready between her lips.
Her body stiffens, tautens to the point that it seems it may break off.
Before his horrified eyes, her pupils tip over upwards.
Then… she lets herself go, gives in.
Her body slips down between his arms.
It hangs limp into his embrace.
Her head tilted back.
Her lips parted; only just; faintly looking for air.
In her merciful swoon.
He remains so, watching her like that, wide-eyed, out of breath; with her motionless body hanging from his arms. Motionless, but ... ALIVE!
ALIVE!
She is alive! Oh God God God God! She is alive! Alive alive alive! The excruciating pain that knows no pity did not kill her!
He hugs her, supporting her inert body into his arms; kisses her greyish cheeks, her cold forehead, her bloodless lips; covers her wan visage with tears together of relief and despair.
She alive! And she… she can no longer feel pain! SHE CAN NOT! Oh merciful God! She's fainted! She can no longer feel all that atrocious torment!
But… it is not allowed to her.
The lash of pain prods her, scourges her, forces her mind to re-emerge.
Her body shudders, shakes, into his arms.
Her mouth trembles.
And... from it...
Weak... long... painful... broken... croaky…
A moan.
"Ahhhh... ah... ahhh..."
That flays his soul.
Suddenly, her head snaps up. Her eyes fly open, all of a sudden. They see him. They look at him, glassy.
They implore him.
Her lips move. They pant. Few shattered words among her broken breaths.
"Trip... do... do so…me...thing!"
He feels a suffocating bite to the throat.
"Trip..." Again, weakly.
And then again. "Trip!" Imperiously!
And then one more time. A whisper; of pain and prayer. "Trip..." A heartbreaking plea. "Do… so… "That she not even manages to pronounce coherently, entirely. "…me… th..."
She suddenly winces, under the searing blow of a jolt of unbearable pain.
She wrestles, sobs, weeps. She squirms in his embrace under the lash of a pain that has no name, limits, pause; which becomes more and more violent, second after second.
She clenches her eyes, desperate, in the desperate effort to resist. Reopens them, so wide that they seem to explode out of their sockets; stares at him through the tears, wild-eyed, hallucinated, desperately trying to speak among the stumps of wheezing gasps.
Her trembling hands claw his shoulders.
"Do... someth… do… s… som… do… some... thing…"
Then the ruthless, iron vise of that inhuman suffering clenches her unmercifully, closes around her completely. With no more escape.
She stiffens in his arms, she rolls her eyes, she writhes. Screams.
"TRIP!"
Her fingernails dig bleeding grooves on his shoulders. Her eyes - horribly vitreous, horribly wide open - get fixed in his without even seeing him. Her body seems to shrink into his arms. A contracted and strained lump of unspeakable agony.
"Tr…"
The rasp of her unrecognizable choked voice abrades his ears.
"Do… so… me… thing".
Something snaps inside me. Horror and horror and horror again! Enough! Enough, please! Almost ominously, I come forward.
"What do you mean, Your Excellency?"
The Bannerda seems even hesitant.
"Ensign, I mean…"
Then he decides.
"Only the devil, your devil... the being that the King had become... could conceive something... like that."
Mal and I are hanging on His Excellency every word. What other horror is he going to reveal to us? Which and how many horrors lie in this ancient story? Which and how many horrors are re-emerging from the tide of the time to reappear now? In all their heinousness?
"One after another, our mighty vessels were being annihilated into nothing and could not even run away because more new deadly locusts of the Army of Darkness appeared, everywhere, on all sides, enveloping our ships in a lethal embrace that did not grant escape. How was it possible? Where had all those small and deadly spaceships come from? Who was driving them? There was no doubt that the ancient enemy, the King, had returned, that his it was that infinite army, and this added terror to terror in the hearts of our people. He was still there, he was there again. He had come out of nowhere where they believed they had cast him. How had he done? And how had he been able to build up over time that immense fleet, when it was well known that nothing more remained of his planet if not an icy wasteland of lifeless ice? And where had he found the troops that could handle those malefic spacecrafts? They were not radio-controlled, it would not be possible to drive by remote control, so precisely, such an infinite number of ships. They could not even be guided automatically, through on-board computers for example. Their manoeuvres were too precise and, at the same time, too unpredictable, to allow such a thing to be possible. And, even in the immense chaos of those terrible moments, the captains of our ships had been able to notice a fact."
"Which one?"
Mal has failed to restrain himself. The Bannerda does not care.
"No sign of life came from any of the enemy ships. The only sign of life that was possible to pick up was coming from a black ship, larger than the others, which bore very clear the insignia of the King, more evident and bigger than on the other ships, and which stood on the sidelines, well protected behind the unlimited barrier of myriad of other spacecrafts."
"The ship of the King."
"Yes, I lieutenant. The King. His, and his alone, was the only sign of life that could be picked up, even though it was a signal..." The Bannerda keeps silent for a moment, looking intent at us. "...that did not have anything that could make one think of a being belonging to the race of the King. Or to any other race.
The Bannerda looks at us again with the eyebrow raised. "We, my friends, we now know why. As well as the Great Monarch. And of course as well as the men closest to him, in the trusty circle of his high princes-officers. But the crews of our ships could not know and could not even figure out who was steering the ships of the King."
"Who, Your Excellency? Who were the kamikaze... of the King?"
"We were forced to figure it out soon, Ensign, and the discovery of who they were... of what they were, it was... chilling."
I shudder. But the horror of this all...is it never-ending?
His Excellency folds his arms behind his back, à la T'Pol - but by now I can't certainly be surprised anymore, for an act of this kind.
"While the tragedy of the destruction of our fleet was taking place in the icy wastes of deep and far space, the Great Monarch, on our planet, the one from which we come and that now we no longer know where it is, if it still exists, was preparing to face what would happen. And which happened. Each signal from our ships eventually ceased. The Great Monarch, our people, knew very well what that meant."
I cannot help but emit a faint moan. "Your fleet ..."
"Destroyed, Ensign. Of our great power, nothing remained."
I find myself repeating like a parrot, in a feeble voice "Nothing remained."
"However, other signals could be picked up. Myriads of signals. As those that had filled the space before our ships had gotten up aloft for intercepting those who had emitted them. Now, even those signals disappeared, only to reappear, later, at the edges of our planetary system and, like murderous vultures, the sources of those signals rushed towards our planet. Our space fighters flew up and, one by one, were destroyed by the multitude of deadly killer locusts that swooped on them from all sides. Our missiles, launched from the ground and from our orbiting stations, opened large gaps in the hordes of those locusts, but they were too many and it seemed that for each one that was knocked down four of them took its place. Our space stations were destroyed as well as our emplacements on the other planets of our solar system. Our missiles were being intercepted and our artillery batteries on land were being hit from space and silenced. We remained defenceless. And, one day, the skies of our planet have gotten dark."
I don't find it hard to understand what His Excellency intends to say.
"Above the columns of thick black smoke that rose from the smouldering ruins of our cities; above the dark glow of the fires that gobbled up the glories and the splendours of our civilization; above the streets, deserted and in ruins; above the silent seas, crowded by the carcases of our destroyed ships... in the skies of our planet, an infinity of black, deadly locusts in the form of small spaceships obscured the light. Beneath them, only the livid gleam of the fires, to give ghostly flare to the dead day."
"You... you're unfailing in speaking in your epic manner, Your Excellency, but I can not say that your way of telling is not able to grasp the mark."
Mal is absolutely right. His Excellency seems to be a bard, but - damn! - if he knows how to give depth to the words! It seems to me to live within the scene he described. In... in all that spectral destruction. And I seem to sense... the despair.
"They are not words of mine, Lieutenant." A slight smile arches the corners of the lips of the old and statuary Bannerda. "These are the words of one of the greatest of our playwrights." The smile turns off, on his mouth. "And, apparently, they are words of truth."
Mal and I stay silent. What else could we do?
The grievous voice of His Excellency breaks the heavy silence.
"Our people crowded in the great underground network of the subsurface of our planet. Waiting for the invasion."
The head of the Bannerda does a jerk. As his voice. "Because this, it was. The invasion of the overwhelming forces of evil that would put an end to our people. The arch-nemesis, the King - the devil - risen from his ashes more powerful than before, was going to savour his final revenge."
The Bannerda takes a deep breath. It's certainly painful for him saying what he is telling us, especially knowing, now, that he is telling the pure truth.
"The enemy ships came down, they touched the ground, countless, while others of them, myriads, continued to hover in our skies. And they disembarked the hordes of the invaders. And our soldiers, guided by our warrior princes, ready, in arms, to fight - futilely, and they knew it - the last battle... they could see who were the invaders. Something that they would never have believed they might see. Something..."
The Bannerda's face tenses, seems to contract. "Nothing like that should ever be seen. Or... done."
God! Oh God God God God! Possible that he can do... nothing?
It's T'Pol the one who is going crazy with pain in his arms; it's T'Pol, his T'Pol, the one who's asking him to do something, to subtract her from that suffering - excruciating, unspeakable, inhuman! Unvulcan! – which is sucking away from her the mind and soul!
It's T'Pol! HIS T'Pol!
His woman, his love, the treasure of his life!
She... she... even now ... just now ... especially now!... believes in him... counts on him... has faith that he can save her!
Begs him to save her!
She is relying on him! She has no longer even the strength to think, and yet she... is relying on him!
Possible that he can not do anything?
It is not possible! It is not possible! He must do something! He must! He must he must he must!
HE MUST!
He hugs her desperately.
Her face... her beautiful face...
Oh God! God God God!
It is an unrecognizable mask of pure pain!
He holds her. Squeezes her strongly.
How she is cold!
She doesn't even struggle anymore!
She almost does not breathe!
She suffers! Suffers! SUFFERS!
Her eyes...
Her splendid, wonderful big eyes...
They are steamed up! Clouded. Without light!
They are... dead!
Maybe they are not even longer able to see him!
Suddenly those eyes come alive.
They look at him. THEY SEE HIM!
THEY SUPPLICATE HIM!
Her lips ... her... her gray, strained lips...
Her mouth...
It distorts, it twists...
It strives...
A doleful and heartbreaking grimace.
"Ash…ayam... I be… seech… you... do… som…"
And then she fails to say anything more; she closes her eyes, clenches them with strength and buries her face in his chest, clinging desperately to him.
His eyes flood with tears, that drop plentiful on his cheeks.
But why? WHY? WHY!
His moist face rises up. His irate and searing eyes look among the tears for what he knows there is and they can not see.
He shouts. Wildly. Desperately.
"WHY?"
His voice gets lower. A little.
"You know that you will have me! Whether I lose or I win, you will have me! The only difference will be her freedom. Why torturing her so? Which benefit for you?"
The tone drops a bit more. Almost, it tries to be convincing.
"Why? Why doing that? This will be of no use to push me to face the ordeals with greater vigour to make you enjoy yourself. I will endeavour to the maximum and more than that. I do need no other stimulus that is not my love for her, my will to save her. I will do it in any case. For love. Do you understand? Can you understand this? For the love I feel for her."
The voice goes up again.
"Do you understand this?"
And then it rises up even more.
"Do you understand this?"
It becomes a shout once again.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?"
That turns into a scream. Savage and fierce.
"WHY TORTURING HER SO?"
And then into a yell that makes the air tremble.
"WHY TORTURING HER SO?!"
Nothing.
Nothing.
Only the roar of the flames.
There, in the hell that awaits him, in which he will have to enter, leaving her alone so, in this way, to suffer so.
Conscious that that thing, that Being, that devil, who is just cruelty and evilness, does not understand, can not understand. How can something that is the exact opposite of love understand what love is? Something that is only and solely evilness? Something that, perhaps, wants not even to understand?
And...
Now he knows it. He understood. Was forced to understand. With all the pain of the world and even more. Much, much more.
… And aware, now, fully, that to the ordeal, the second one, that he is called to face, it has been added a further ordeal, and far more terrible, because it consists in managing to endure her suffering, the pain of his T'Pol; in his being capable of not being broken apart by despair under its unacceptable weight.
And conscious… well conscious by now… that squalling and squawking is to no purpose, and, even less, trying absurdly to reason with who knows no other reason but his own evilness, the only reason which can be listened by a Being who is nothing but evilness.
Who is... the evil!
Oh yes. Now he knows. Has understood. Is miserably aware that the only way he has to subtract his love from the hell of suffering she has been flung down into, it is to confront and overcome the ordeal - the hell where he must allow himself to be sucked in - together with the other ordeal which is been wedged in that one, the monstrous ordeal of managing to withstand her suffering, her pain. Her torment. Her torture.
Her unbearable agony.
Hoping, then... hoping, desperately hoping, that it is really so.
That his may be not a vain hope.
That when... and if... he will be successful in overcoming the second ordeal - and the ordeal, the ordeal more than terrible, of being capable of tolerating her pain, her suffering - then these... her cruel agony... may cease to exist.
Nothing moves, around there.
Nothing is heard.
Only the silent sound of his thoughts.
And the noise of the flames.
The roar of the flames of the hell…
And... her breaths.
Her heavy and laboured breaths.
His face lowers. Among the burning tears he looks at her.
Her head is still buried in his chest, her visage pressed strongly against it.
He can glimpse her neck, tense and stiff; the contracted muscles of her shoulders.
He can't see her eyes, but he's sure – knows - that they are closed. Tightened. Clenched. As well as her teeth. He… can hear them creak against each other.
Her body flinches and arches ceaselessly against his.
Her arms are twisted spasmodically around his torso.
On his back, he feels her nails stuck into his flesh.
Her breaths… are sparse painful gasps.
He squeezes her tightly and tenderly in his arms with desperate sweetness, holding her close with desperate love, hoping with desperate self-deception to be able to give her some relief.
"Why?" It's a sorrowful and low murmur. A tormenting whisper full with despair. "Why all this evilness?"
"Evilness is an end in itself, does not have a reason, a why. And it is made of horror, it feeds on horror. Lives by it and for it and with it. And pure horror it was what… the things… that landed from the ships of the Army of Darkness. Perhaps not even the King, one time, would have been capable of conceiving them. But the King, now, was no longer simply the King."
"He... was the devil."
"Yes, Ensign. Now we know it. And those that our warriors were faced with were his creatures."
"Creatures of the devil."
I wince at hearing the grim tone of Mal's voice.
"I think this is a way of saying of your race, isn't it, Lieutenant?"
"It is so, Your Excellency. When a man, a woman, are evil without remedy, we say that they are creatures of the devil, made of his own evilness."
"Well, Lieutenant, in the case of the creatures we are now speaking of, the meaning of your expression must be taken literally."
No, the horror, in this story that story is not, has really no end, if what I understand that the Bannerda wants to say is just how I understand it.
"They were things, my friends, things made by him, by the King, by the devil. Without a soul. And without a mind that were not his mind."
And it is just as I'd got it!
"They were bipedal and had two arms and two hands, but for the rest, nothing like a Bannerda or a member of the race of the King, or any other humanoid race, like yours or that of Vulcans. And they were horrible, had no colour and had a sort of semblance of a face with two liquid eyes and lifeless, and a kind of cutting instead of the mouth and... and scraps of what could look like noses and ears. They looked like they were... dead."
"Dead?"
"Dead. And, in fact..."
In fact? What ... what the heck does the Bannerda want to tell?
"In fact, this they were. Dead. Brought back to a pseudo life devoid of soul and will by the sordid wishes of the King."
Oh my goodness!
"Even the zombies, Your Excellency? Even the zombies? Really we make us miss nothing."
"I do not know what this term means for you Humans, Lieutenant, but I don't find it hard to believe that with it you intend to describe what those beings who were not supposed to exist... were."
"Living dead."
"Living dead? Well, Lieutenant, one has to admit that the term gives the idea. There is no denying. You Humans are full of colourful expressions and... incisive."
"Mh… I guess I should thank you for the appreciation, Your Excellency. Probably our ...illustrious lineage plays a not insignificant role in this, though."
"Oh... yeah. Sure."
Living dead! Oh my goodness! Luckily there is Mal, my Mal, here with me, to give me courage!
"We could not know it, of course, when we had to deal with them. All we could realize was that they were… horrendous, and, in some way, formless or, rather, half-formed; incompletely formed. We soon discovered much more about them. They did not speak, they did not communicate in any way with each other, either by voice or gestures, or by any communication system that could be picked up. They fell under our fire, to rise again soon after, unscathed, and if their body fell dismembered into two or more parties, each part got up again and resumed fighting, as if nothing had happened and, even, either part could give rise to another creature, even more horrible and incomplete, but able to take action and to fight. Only by completely destroying their bodies, it was possible to avoid they could resurrect, and these bodies… did not bleed, just as, we realized, they did not breathe. But they were not machines capable of self regeneration. They were made of flesh, cold and hard at the touch, as reported by those who had the misfortune of having to fight against them in hand to hand combat."
Oh God God God!
"They threw themselves against us, careless we could hit them. They were myriads, silent and deadly, resurgent whenever they fell, increasing in number, even, under our shots. Hordes of spectral creatures that, whole or in pieces, poured against us. In swarms. Everywhere. Without speaking, without feeling fear or fatigue, without ever deflecting. Where they came from? What were they? Why fought they for the King? Had it been by their hands that it had been built that endless army of myriads of small and deadly spacecrafts that had reduced to silence our mighty fleet? Our scientists were able to find it out. Our people were about to be deleted, this is true; the night of the chaos enveloped and suffocated our planet; our phalanxes, although mighty, gave way, inexorably, under the relentless impact of those voiceless and wild hordes, but not for this we were not able to catch alive - if one may say so, from what we discovered about them - many of them. They were examined and studied. Feverishly. They could provide useful guidance to a possible albeit unlikely victorious counterattack."
"And what did they find, your scientists, your Excellency?"
"They discovered, Ensign, that those Beings were made of muscles and bones and organs reconstituted from the basic element constituent of the organic tissues. The cell. They were the result of an extremely advanced technique of biological engineering. From the flesh - from the cells, primary unit of the remains of dead creatures, from their DNA, it had been given life to creatures that were not supposed to have life. It is not impossible, I'm sure you know this, although extremely difficult, to the limit of the actual feasibility, and even dangerous. And if it can be thought as not impossible for us - for you - doing such a thing now, think about how it could have been far from impossible to do it for a science such advanced as it was the science in the possession of our ancestors and of the King. And if our ancestors would never have done it, the King, yes. He would have done it. And he did. And so those things were born, or, rather, were built, produced; mindless and soulless things, alive and yet dead wrappings, designed only to be the receptacle of the will of the king and to act blindly in accordance with it. The result, even admitting the emphasis that the transposition of those creatures from the scene of history to the realm of myth has inevitably placed on their horrid aspect, did not bring in truth - could not - to the building of beings that were perfectly formed and... visually pleasing, as their appearance showed, perhaps reflecting, in some ways, the dark and monstrous soul of the King, now, in addition, definitely deformed, such as his physical appearance. Body and mind are inseparable; they influence each other, even though, obviously, treasures of inner beauty can be found in the most horrendous bodies. But in this case we are talking of evil and evil is ugly inside and out. I've told you, my friends. Evilness is made of horror. The outcome of whatever it produces or attempts to produce can only be horror."
"Yeah. Sure. Bloody hell, just to stay in topic. And certainly the fact that we are talking of a thing scientifically and technically possible is of no use to diminish the bloodcurdling horror it inspires."
I nod to the words of Mal. Bloodcurdling. Yes, this is the right word. But not only in reference to what Mal wants to say. "Apparently, Your Excellency, there is nothing in the bloodcurdling traditions and beliefs of horror that permeate our history, I mean human history, which has not happened in the far away past that you're telling us."
"What do you mean, Ensign?"
"Fallen angels, devils, living dead, lifeless bodies brought back to a life that is not life... and so on and so forth. Things like that, crowd our horrific traditions and beliefs. They have disturbed the sleep of generations. Since forever. There is to believe that shortly even the werewolves will make their appearance."
"Werewolves?"
"Never mind, Your Excellency. Just another of the pleasant superstitions and beliefs of the human race. Only, it seems that in these things there is a grain of truth, after all; indeed, more than a grain, even though it is incredible to think that they may have come from a past more distant than the very birth of our race."
"Because in you - in your DNA - there is the ancestral memory of those facts, those events. They relive in your traditions and your beliefs, distorted by the lens of time and imprecise, nebulous, fantasized, because in reality you have not lived them. This, on closer inspection, is the difference between us and you, and all races that came after us. The distortion of the past, of facts and things of the past, their transformation in myths and legends, it is common to all races. But we have lived them, we remember them not only through the traces that they may have left in our genetic heritage, but also with our conscious memory. However, as you can see, we too have garbled the facts, to the point of believing that many events could be nothing more than figments of our imagination."
"But your myths, your legends are so ... scientific, Your Excellency! Ours are made of ... of mystery, magic, supernatural. Yours are made of... transposition into the world of myths and legends of things that smell of science!"
"This derives from our immeasurable antiquity, Ensign. Since time immemorial, the mystery, the magic, the supernatural is no longer part of us. Perhaps at one time, at the beginning of time. But by now it are eons and eons, more, much much more than eons, that our life is made up of science and knowledge, although, of course, we are well far from the true knowledge, and although immense treasures of science and knowledge have been lost many, many times in our past. But... I have told you in the beginning, when I decided of having to open myself up to you ... of our past - of our hugely remote past - we maintain, albeit imperfectly and incompletely, consciousness and memory."
Yeah. I had almost forgotten. Or, perhaps, my mind has avoided dwelling on that. In front of us there is a Being whose ancestors have seen the dawn of time! Crazy. But not crazier than what is happening, than the crazy forest that swallowed Trip and T'Pol. Than that book, those images, that the Bannerda has displayed us, and especially the image of Lil, that's as to say... the image of T'Pol. So crazy to be true.
"But that doesn't mean - it would be impossible - that the myths and legends - interwoven of science, of course - can't be born also among us. The time is so great! Even for us! And we are not arid Beings without any life-giving breath of fantasy. And you can not maintain a perfect memory of everything. It can happen, and it happens - to everyone, even to us - that the mists of time envelop and hide - and transfigure - facts and events and figures that are historical, but that become legendary. Facts, events and figures so beyond the natural order of things to turn into fantasy. Like… the figure of the King, handed down as a deplorable and legendary figure born from our subconscious and immortalized in our literature, in our art. We have put all those facts and events and figures together with other facts, events and figures of our legends that are truly legends, when, it is now clear, they – and… the King, your and our devil - legends are not."
Oh yeah. They are not legends. They are frightening and horrific reality. The horror - concrete - that is evil. I shudder slightly. One more time. One more time, I seek the hand of my Mal.
"And, in some way, in a way inevitably and profoundly different from ours, the memory of all this is in you, as well as in all breeds, we can be sure, even if each breed, obviously, interprets and transfigures this memory in its own way, follows its own inclinations, inserts it in its own context - historical, cultural and imaginative, too; adapts it to its own nature, to its environment."
"Oh!"
"Hoshi?"
Oh my God!
"Hoshi. What's up?"
I barely hear Mal. The words of the Bannerda echo inside me.
…the memory of all this is in you, as well as in all breeds, we can be sure, even if each breed, obviously, interprets and transfigures this memory in its own way, follows its own inclinations…
Oh my God! My God!
…each breed interprets and transfigures this memory in its own way…
"Hoshi! By God! What's come over you?"
I turn my eyes to Mal. I look at him, stunned. Bewildered.
…each breed interprets and transfigures this memory in its own way…
Oh God! T'Pol... she...
"Hoshi!"
I remember it well... I remember well what she...
"Hoshi! For God's sake! Do you want to answer me yes or not?"
At that moment, I did nothing but smile... Per force. Coming to know that T'Pol, just she... But now... now...
"Ensign!"
…each breed interprets and transfigures this memory in its own way…
"Ensign Sato!"
I manage finally to shake myself. Mal is watching me halfway between annoyed and worried.
"Mal..."
"So then, Ensign? Can we know what's going through your head?"
"Mal... even Vulcans have their myths and legends. With all their logic, they too have them, though... they do not like to talk about that. It's not... it's not nice for a breed that wants to be the quintessence of logic and rationality to admit to have given space to fantasy."
"Well, understandable. Are they or are not, in some way, the most direct descendants of our august hosts? Of the Bannerdas? They tend to the highest echelons of empyrean knowledge. They are not cut from our same cloth. Perhaps, though, the little bit of red blood that is in them, coming from our most direct precursors, is not sufficiently diluted in their green blood to prevent entirely them from yielding to fantasy. Quite a problem for them."
I let go of huffily the hand of Mal. Ah no! It's not really the moment to speak that! "Mal, stop it! Your friend Trip influenced you a bit too much! It is not just the case to be so sarcastic. Remember that a certain vulcan female has renounced a lot, if not everything, or nearly so, of what she believed in, which was the basis of her being, of her life, her existence, the world of quiet and granitic certainty in which she had always lived, accepting, even, of being disliked not to say even despised by her fellows, as well as by many - too many - of our fellows, only to be free to love one of us, the man she had fallen in love with. And remember that, just at this time, she..."
I stop speaking abruptly. I can't... I can't say out loud what crossed my mind. Just I can't!
"Oh... oh sure. You are right. Sorry, Hoshi. I..."
I squeeze Mal's hand, my annoyance instantly subsided. "What I wanted to say, Mal, is that... well... you know... T'Pol and I... we have become close friends. Really. And so she has let herself go to tell me things of Vulcan that are... little known. She told me that in the ancient times of the history of the Vulcans, before, very much before the terrible wars that nearly destroyed them, times so much distant as not to be possible to describe them with the usual meticulous vulcan precision in the historical chronicles of their archives, theirs was a race of proud warriors. Or, at least so their legends tell, the legends of those far times, just those legends they tend to ignore, not exactly proud to have... produced them. And those legends tell of fierce and noble wars. And…"
"Well, Hoshi, excuse me, but this is really understandable. You know, maybe my sarcastic tone may even have been out of place, but that Vulcans have hot blood... well, after all this is true, in a sense. T'Pol, just she, said it clearly to us. Their emotions are savage, to the point that they are afraid of being overwhelmed by them and so they have relied on logic, hoping in this way to be capable of not ending up destroyed by the ferocity of their feelings. T'Pol, to tell the truth, has come to the conclusion that, in this way, her compatriots have moved from a precarious balance to a balance even more precarious and that the real balance is the one she has been able to achieve with Trip, though ... well... these are the words of a vulcan woman in love. Anyway…"
"Mal, you have not been paying attention to my words. I said..."
"Either way, I do not find anything strange that a breed that has almost risked to destroy itself in fratricidal wars, may have in its past a history of fierce wars, cloaked or not of legends that these wars may be. I see fine the Vulcans as fierce warriors and proud."
"Mal, listen to me. I said..."
"Perhaps, after all, I wasn't not wrong, Hoshi. A little - maybe a tad more than a little - of our red blood really flows, so to speak, in their veins. But the green blood has made it. It prevailed. Our red blood was sufficiently diluted. Good for them. Just in agreement with what our friend Bannerda told us. Another proof, if it were needed, that what he is saying…"
"Mal! Please! Do you want to listen to me?"
"Eh? Oh but of course, Hoshi, sure. So what? What's the problem with these legendary wars of the distant past of Vulcan?"
"I said fierce and noble wars, Mal. Noble, do you understand, Malcolm? Noble… as the endless wars the Bannerdas fought against the King since the dawn of time."
"What... what do you mean, Hoshi?"
"Noble wars. Wars fought for freedom. For survival. Against obscure forces and cruel. Brutal. Evil. Wars fought against… against dark beings, truculent and ferocious men coming from... from... from who knows where. From afar. Very far. No one knew from what unknown land. And... led by a fierce and strong king. Mighty and sinister. And cruel. And... handsome."
"Oh... bloody hell!"
"And those legends say that that king, animated by an irrepressible desire of conquest, puissant and unmerciful, heartless and soulless as much as he was handsome, was defeated. By a wonderful vulcan maiden... a marvellous warrior princess, proud and strong as much as beautiful, who…"
"A marvellous… warrior princess…"
"Yes, Mal. A marvellous warrior princess, who…" - What happens to me? It is as if the words gush out spontaneous, inside of me. Full of ardour, impetuous. Vehement. - "…who after having taken the guidance of her tribe in the fight against that king, her father - the leader of the tribe - being dead, killed by the very hand of that one; after having remained - all the other vulcan tribes already vanquished, one after other - as the last bastion standing up against the enemy ranks, in that merciless war whose outcome would have been the victory or the enslavement of the Vulcans; after having succeeded incredibly, in holding in check for not a short while the overwhelming forces of the king; after having at the end been reduced in dire straits, beset and surrounded without escape, and by now on the verge of being vanquished - and massacred, her, and what remained of her tribe, men, women, children - by the king's savage hordes..."
"Bl… bloody hel!"
"... agreed to be his bride in exchange for the salvation of her people."
"Bloody hell and all its devils!"
"The king had stood struck, deeply, by her. No one, ever, had managed to thwart him for so long, so fiercely. And in him admiration had been born for her. And also respect. And something else. For the first time in his life of violence and oppression, inside him a thing had been born, something that he didn't understand. And that filled up the heart he didn't know he had."
Mal's gaze is intent. I perceive that behind us, even the Bannerda is listening carefully.
"And that thing demanded, required, that he had to have her, because if he'd not had her, if her boldness, her fierce pride… her supreme and savage beauty... hadn't been his, it - that thing - would have made burst the heart in which, surprising and unexpected, it had been born."
It is strange. But in what way am I expressing myself? How am I speaking? What is it that drives me to talk like that, like... like His Excellency? In these high tones and tragic? Is it perhaps the tragicalness of this ancient legend? And of what it means? The tragicalness of all that is happening?
Yet I can not help it. I can not but speak so.
And somehow I feel that this is right, that's okay. We have been plunged into something, we are living into something that has the tone not only of the horror, but also of the tragedy, a tragedy of love and death. So, my tone, my way of expressing myself, it's just right. And it is not wasted time. I feel, I am sure that it is not.
Although... well, even though I just do not understand from where I can take this way of speaking. I've never been able, it is not in my comfort zone.
And yet it happens. And Mal does not even seem to notice. He simply listens to me. Tense and... rapt.
And, under his gaze of wait, the words flow natural from me, as guided by a sure hand, by a will higher than mine.
"But just that thing, that thing that he did not understand, that was swelling his heart as an impetuous wind swells the sails of a majestic windjammer, that thing he not only couldn't manage to comprehend, but not even to conceive, pushed him - forced him - not to take possession of her as he had done so many other times with women he used to cheer in some way his grim and lonely life."
I remain silent for a moment. Mal says nothing. He hangs from my lips. And... I do not know... this fills me with pride. We are in the midst of horror. Yet I can not help but feel proud. I'm captivating my Mal with much more than with my comeliness. At this moment, I can fully understand what Trip meant when, speaking of T'Pol, he said... 'She is beautiful. There is no woman more beautiful than her. But she's also much, much more. She is a chest, overflowing with unsuspected and immense treasures.'
Fluently, once again, the words gush forth from me.
"He did not understand either how or why, but he just did not want merely her body. He didn't want that, simply, she were his slave, prone to his wishes. He wanted… her heart. Maybe he could not even arrive to understand that it was so, but it was so. And, to have her heart, to try to have it, he did something he'd never even imagined he could do."
I feel the bated silence with which Mal, and Bannerda too, are waiting for me to continue with my narration. And I do.
"All was lost. The king's wild legions, all around the warrior princess in arms and the last vulcan warriors gathered around her to useless defence of what was left of her tribe and of their houses, were about to hurl themselves on her and on her meager handful of torn up and exhausted men, for the final attack. Yes. All was lost."
I stop. Just an instant. It seems to me that it is okay to do so; that this may give more strength to my narration and the tense attention I see in Mal's eyes proves I'm right. Who is giving me these abilities? And why am I doing that?
"And, at that moment, just then, a voice rose. Strong and powerful. The voice, unmistakable, of the king. And immediately the endless ranks of his cruel and savage warriors…"
Another pause for effect.
"Come on, Hoshi, don't stop! What did the hordes of warriors of the king?"
"Obeyed his order, Mal"
"Which was?"
"That of stopping. The final attack that would wipe out the princess and her wretched warriors had been blocked. By him. By the king."
"And then, Hoshi? What happened?"
"The king's voice rose again. And the ranks opened and parted. From behind them, a figure appeared. It began to move, solemn and lonely. It moved through the ranks, between two immense wings of warriors that opened at its passing. It walked, in silence and in the silence of all, between them and then beyond them, on the hot sand that covered the short arid flatland that separated them from the Princess and her men. And before her, in the bated silence that reigned supreme, without anyone daring think of doing anything against it, of trying to hit it, the puissant figure stopped. And it, the figure - the king – looked, without one only word coming out from his mouth, at the beautiful and fierce and ragged princess. And the princess, in silence, looked at him."
I stop again. I harvest ideas. I concentrate. I go on.
"Finally the silence got broken. The king spoke. In a stentorian voice, that everybody was able to hear, he asked the princess to be his spouse. All heard him. With enormous surprise, with amazement, everyone heard him. And he did not order. He asked. And he made her an offer. He told her that he would have made of her his queen and that, if she had accepted, she would have reigned together with him on all peoples, including her tribe, against which he would not have raged. And all Vulcans would have had of being thankful that at his side and in his bed, as his queen and as his bride, there would have been her. Their warrior princess."
"Holy crap!"
I smile, I can not avoid it, at the exclamation of Mal. It comes straight from his heart.
Then my smile turns off. We're coming to the point. At the core of this legend... Sure. Of this legend... what else, if not?... of love and death.
"The princess watched the king, who had stormed on her people, who had treated her people with unheard ferocity. Who had killed his father. She watched him a long time, while the ranks of warriors quivered, in suspense, and while the king was standing up, stiff and silent, in front of her, waiting for her answer. Then, slowly, she knelt in front of him, her eyes locked in his, fixed in them. Lastly she bowed her head. Without raising her gaze, she took the King's hand and brought it to her lips. And kissed its knuckles. In acceptance and submission. She would be his. She would be his bride. And his queen. He would be her bridegroom and king."
"Well! That's…"
"But an obscure shadow was stirring within her, in her heart. The shadow of the oath she had done to herself."
"Oath? What o…"
"And, on the night in which she became his, of her bridegroom and king, just in that night, she complied with that oath."
I stop once more. Now we have really reached the point, the core of this legend. Only, it must be expressed. Clearly. Mal, this time, doesn't say anything, he doesn't urge me. He almost seems to be eager to hear how this legend ends and, at the same time, to have dread to come to know it. And no one - neither he nor the Bannerda - hints at the slightest sign of protest for the fact that now - right now - I'm lingering in the narration of this myth. No one does it, no one asks why I'm doing this. Because - I know - they know it. Exactly like me.
I take a breath. And I resume.
"The dawn of the forenoon following the first night, the wedding night, of the king and his bride, rose. The day of Vulcan advanced. In the large and spartan palace which had become the residence of the king, life went back to hum. And all was quiet in the lodgings of the newlyweds. Too much quiet, for too much time. And the moment came that the king's court began to wonder why no sign was coming from his rooms, why his voice didn't rise from the room, the bedroom, of him and of his queen. Worried, his closest faithful finally decided to go and see. Fearful, they stopped in front of the closed door of that room, the wedding room of the king and of his queen. Fearful, they knocked at the door, without having any answer. Fearful, they opened that door and, fearful, they entered and advanced into the room."
Here we go. Come on, Hoshi. It is a legend, after all, is not it? A strange, incredibly ancient legend of the Vulcans. Who never speak of their legends. Who, indeed, almost seem to try to make people believe that they haven't any of them.
"There, against the wall, the great nuptial bed. With the king lying down on it, quiet and peaceful, partially hidden from view by the sheets, piled up and in disarray. And the queen..."
"Yes, the queen, Hoshi. Where was she? What...?"
"The queen was curled up on the ground, with her back leaning against the wall facing the left side of the bed. Naked. Gorgeous. And motionless. And silent. She held her knees tight to her chest with her arms and her face, resting on her knees, white and unmoving, was pointed at the bed. The entry of the intruders appeared to dent her not even minimally. She continued to stare at the bed. At the one who was lying on the bed."
"At the king."
"At him, Mal."
"And…?"
"Uncertain and insecure, confused, hesitant, and more and more fearful - differently fearful, this time - the men and women of the royal court advanced towards the bed, came up to it. So, they could clearly see the king. They could see..." - I breathe deeply again, while Mal looks at me waiting. – "…the long bloody blade protruding from his chest."
"BLODY HELL!"
"He lay on his back on the bed, bloodied by his blood. Dead. Killed by his own sword. Pierced with it from behind. As if his slayer had not wanted to face him, while the murderous hand was killing him."
"The... the queen!"
"The queen, Mal. Certainly. And who else, if not?"
"Bl... oo... dy hell!"
"She had fulfilled her oath."
"Damn!"
"The death of so many Vulcans, the death of her father, had been avenged."
"Damn! O… oookay! Agree! But… but…"
"But, Mal?"
"Hoshi, let's even assume she, the queen I mean, may have made to herself the most solemn of oaths! But... but... but she..."
"She had betrayed her bridegroom and king? Had deceived him? Had agreed to be his bride and queen only to be able to comply with her oath? That's what you're thinking?"
"Well…"
"And maybe also to succeed, in this way, decapitating them of their leader and lord, in undermining the strength of the hated assailants of Vulcan, paving the way for a possible revenge of her people?"
"Well, actually..."
"Ignoble, isn't it? What kind of nobility there may have ever been in her, since I have spoken of the noble wars, if that were the case? Of course, that was the sanguinary and cruel king of those Beings without faith and without pity who had reduced the Vulcans to be larvae of what they were. But... to act that way! One can understand why she was staying so, curled up on the floor, leaning against the wall, her face as white as a sheet, to look at the body, treacherously deprived of life by her, of the man she, just she, the valiant warrior princess, had so shamefully cheated and betrayed."
"If indeed… it was so."
I look at Mal poignantly. "Do you think it were not so, Mal?"
He returns my gaze. It seems to me to see a trace of gloom in his eyes. "I think that it was not for shame that she was standing so, Hoshi. I think that the reason were another."
I nod. It is a legend. An ancient legend, that's all. Also quite predictable, at the bottom. Why am I feeling so sad in telling it? And why I feel the need to recount it so richly? So minutely? Scene by scene? Just like... yeah... just like it was narrated me by T'Pol. Strange on her part, isn't it?
I clear my throat. We are not at the end. There is more to say. There is yet to show to my Mal how much he is right.
"Actually, the effect that the sight of their dead king had on the conquerors who had entered the wedding room was overwhelming. And immediate."
"Immediate?"
"Yes, immediate. It was as if they were unable to believe their eyes, unable to bear even the sight of their dead king. What had happened was what they thought it would never happen. It was not possible. It could not be true. The universe was upsetting. The terror - the real terror - caught them. Screaming, they turned and ran out of the room, as if they had the devil at their heels. And, out of the room, in the hallways, in the great halls of the palace, they, running and yelling, shouted to the four winds the news."
I take a breath. Then I attack again. The words come spontaneous. The scenes that take place in my mind, the scenes that T'Pol has told me, are clear. It is easy to make them live.
"And it was chaos."
I perceive the keen concentration with which Mal is listening to me. His tension. And that of the Bannerda.
"The Vulcans, enslaved, slaves of war, males and females, who crowded the palace at the service of their winners, realized that their enslavers seemed - were - in panic and uncertainty. For the first time they had no guide. Seemed unable even to act. They fidgeted and shouted, in the throes of agitation. The king... the king was dead! It was not possible! The king... was the king! And in that chaos, it happened that some Vulcans remembered what they were. Warriors. Strong and brave. Defeated and enslaved, this was true, but still warriors. Warriors who, perhaps, in that moment, could attempt what until just before was not even conceivable they could. And they did. They managed to overpower some guards. And then others did this. And then, others. And others. And others… And before the oppressors, now orphans of their warlord, were able to understand what was happening and to react and to organize themselves; before their bewildered leaders were able to realize; before these were able to restore the order and the discipline without which there's any number, as far large and well-armed, of warriors that can repel any attack, and especially that attack, or better, those attacks, or, even better, those aggressions, not carried out into the open field, which perhaps would have been easier to deal with, but rampant everywhere in the corridors, rooms, stairways, courtyards of the palace at the same time and one behind the other at the hands of a far greater number of slaves who were well trained to fight and had managed to arm themselves with the weapons of their enslavers... before all this could happen... in a flash, the revolt, just broken out, was running wild in all the palace. And in a flash, the palace, the entire palace, was in the hands of the rebels."
Yes. It's easy to make alive these scenes, these events. Now I understand why my speech is so fluent. It is the passion. The passion... the passion that T'Pol showed in narrating all this to me. The passion for this legend that she loved. The passion that, as far as by now it wasn't a secret to anyone the passion of which she is capable, amazed me at that time. And that now I understand.
"The astonished eyes of the Vulcans and their oppressors around the great palace, in the meadows and fields torn from the desert, in the villages at its feet, saw the bodies of the invaders be thrown down from its ramparts. They saw swing open its big gates. They saw the multitude of Vulcans who poured out. Screaming. In arms. Who pounced on the garrisons of their flabbergasted oppressors. Unrelenting. Unstoppable. They heard, clear and distinct, what the tide of reborn vulcan warriors continued to shout at the top of their lungs. 'The king is dead! Our princess killed him! ' At lightning speed, the news spread. At lightning speed, the contagion of the revolt became widespread. And, in the evening, it was clear that the revenge had really begun. And would not have been stopped. It would have taken time, but the invaders would have been driven out. Wiped out. Destroyed. A new confidence had taken root in the Vulcans. Now they knew that their oppressors could be won, while these had lost all their boldness. It was as if they had been deprived of the primary source of their pugnacity. The shadow of fear and distrust had seeped into their hearts, while in the hearts of the Vulcans it had flared up the flame that would have made them free. Yes, they would have been free again. Their warrior princess had made it. She had defeated the king."
I stop. I have to catch my breath. Mal looks at me. His gaze speaks.
"And their warrior princess… where was she, Hoshi?"
This is a pointless question, because... where else could the princess have been if not in the vanguard of the rebels? So why did Mal do such question? This is only an oblique way to get me to say what he fears... just so… what, at heart, he fears that I might say. And that I have to say.
"Where was the queen, Hoshi?"
He emphasizes strongly 'the queen'. The queen. The queen of the dead king. Of her dead king. Yes, Mal already knows the answer. Or maybe he presages it. And he fears it. And he is absolutely right to fear it. Especially... especially in the light of what His Excellency has just told us.
"In the evening, an evening different from all others, while, from everywhere, news, excellent news, arrived about the course of the revolt, in the palace that had been of the king and that now was of the victorious rebels, these began to organize themselves, to think about giving themselves an order, a structure. A leader. A leader was needed. And of course the only true leader could only be her."
"Their warrior princess."
"Yes, Mal. But... where was she? Suddenly they realized that she was not there, was not with them. Certainly, it had been a whirlwind, a storm, a hurricane with no bridle. There had been no way or time to think; exactly so; not even to think. But now... where was their warrior princess? Their liberator? All of a sudden fear seized them. And if she... if she was dead? Killed? In the mayhem out of control that had happened? Without anyone noticing? And along with the fear something else made its way into them. The shame."
"Oh I can believe! Eh sure! No one had cared about her. No one had thought of her. She was not with them and no one..."
"…Had noticed it, Mal. Just like that. Really to be ashamed. However… no one had seen her. No one. This was reassuring, in a way, but then... where was she? Possible that she had remained... that she were still..."
"In the wedding room? Hers and of the king?"
"Yeah. Could it be so? There was nothing else to do..."
"...than go and see."
"Right. And so they did. And there, they found..."
"What, Hoshi?"
That of Mal is a dark frown. I make a deep sigh. Here we go. Come on, Hoshi. Say it.
"The room was dark, but the bed, the great nuptial bed, could be seen well, lit by the dancing light of the torches. On the bed, as white as ice, the king, lying motionless in the alienating fixity of death. And…"
"And, Hoshi? And?"
"Above him, prone on him, embraced to him, her face buried in his neck, as white as ice like him, as motionless as him... the princess. His queen."
"His... queen..."
"The sharp-edged tip of the blade that had pierced the king was sticking out from her back, coruscant of her blood."
"My God!"
Here! I've said it! And now I can not stop me! I have to say it all! I have to give voice to what stirs within me!
"She had killed herself, Mal. She had taken her own life! And she had done it so! Throwing herself on him, on her king, spearing herself with the blade she had killed him with! She... she…"
I realize that I'm almost shouting. I have to calm down. I have to do it. I try to do it! The emotion that I felt when T'Pol told me this legend was strong, very strong. And then, at that time, I did not understand why. But now... now... the emotion is not strong. It is heartbreaking! Perforce! Now I know! I understood what it means, why T'Pol was so attracted to it, without knowing the why, without even knowing that there was a 'why' to wonder. However, I make it. I manage to calm down a little and to make sure that my voice is not too loud and that does not tremble too much.
"You were quite right, Mal. Completely. It wasn't certainly for shame that, when the small group of courtiers found her, in the morning of their first wedding day, she stood huddled so, with that lost and empty look, which watched, almost without seeming to see it, the lifeless body of the king, of the one she had accepted that he were her king - and her bridegroom - and whom she had betrayed, whom she had killed. No. It was not for that. But how could she have ever imagined? How could she have ever understood? How could she have ever comprehended what were that thing that she had felt - within her; strange; acute; subtle yet powerful - when their eyes had chained themselves to each other at the moment he had asked her to be his bride and his queen? That one was the man - sanguinary; ruthless - who was exterminating her people! That one was the man whose hand had killed her father! That one was the man she had sworn to kill! The man she now... she now had the chance to kill!"
My voice is back loud. I try once again to control it.
"How could she think that it was not for contempt, for outrage, that her murderous hand had decided, almost by their own will, to transfix the king - her king! Her bridegroom! - not frontally, not face to face, but from behind? In his back! How could she think that it was because her eyes could not tolerate the sight of his eyes, the eyes of the man who had made her his, to whom she had given herself - Impetuously! With desire! With ardour. - while she was robbing his life?!"
I lower my voice. I almost whisper.
"How could she have ever imagined that, at the very moment when her killer blade had broken his heart, that blade would have broken, along with his, even her heart?"
I lower my eyes, almost talking to myself. "No. It was not for shame. It was for..."
I gaze up. I look at Mal straight in the eye. My voice is firm. "For despair."
Mal nods. Gloomily. "She had understood."
"Yes, Mal. She had understood that she had killed the man…"
"… she had fallen in love with."
I nod, in my turn. Gloomily, like my Mal. "Yes, Mal."
He nods again. Even more gloomily. "Despair, Hoshi? I do not think that 'despair' can express even minimally what she has felt. She had fallen in love with the man she would have had to hate and…"
"Had killed the man she loved."
He too, my Mal, whispers. "Yes."
"How can you fight against such a disruptive emotion, Mal? With such a lacerating awareness? How can you live… with it?"
"You can not, Hoshi. I think it is impossible."
"And if it's impossible for us Humans, I don't dare think how it can be for the Vulcans. They have emotions, Mal, you yourself said it, and these emotions are stronger, more intense, much more violent than ours. And when they erupt unrestrained within them, they are not able to control them, they can be overwhelmed by them, can be destroyed. That's why they have entrusted themselves so wholly to logic. Logic is their hope. With it, they can control their emotions. Perhaps."
"Yeah. Perhaps, Hoshi. Exactly. Perhaps."
"Sure. Perhaps. And for the princess that 'perhaps' didn't even exist. She did not possess the logic of the Vulcans of today. They were not times of logic, those ones. Surak was a seed that would have sprouted in a future shrouded yet in the mists of the unknowable. And then... oh, Mal... even if she had had it, the logic I mean... it would have been of no use to loosen the grip of hopeless despair that gripped the shreds of her heart."
"No. It would not have been, Hoshi. Just as there is no logic that could save T'Pol, if she were to lose her Trip."
I wince. Mal is able to be without mercy, sometimes! And he knows how to hit the mark! I swallow. "Oh yes! It's just like that, Mal! And so, the princess found no other way. She couldn't have other way! The sword that, at the hand of her, had severed the life thread of the man she was supposed to hate and instead she loved, would have united her with him… forever!"
Mal smiles, bitter. "Yeah. Logical, after all, to tell the truth." - His voice is tough – "T'Pol would have done the same."
Oh God! Mal said it! He has practically asserted it! Without even being able to fully realize he was saying it, he has basically said that T'Pol and the princess... that the two of them are... could be... that the fate of the princess... and... and of her king... her king... could be also the fate of... of...
"And, if I must be honest, Hoshi, she, T'Pol I mean, has already done something similar. She has tried at least. Just change the sword with a knife."
Oh my goodness! Mal is right! It's just so! T'Pol ... T'Pol has already tried to kill herself! With... with a knife! When she thought that her Trip were dead! (o)
I gulp down. Visibly, I think that both Mal and the Bannerda notice it perfectly. I push back the lump I feel in my throat. There's something else to tell yet, and I want to do it. I want to tell the whole... legend that T'Pol has narrated to me.
"The will of the princess was observed, Mal. Those who owed their life and freedom to her did not deceive themselves about the why of what she had done. The why of her suicide, the reasons that had pushed her to take her own life so, in that way. And they did not want to separate what that murderous sword of blood and of passion had united in an eternal bond of death and love."
I stop talking once again. We are at the last act. I want to... I want to represent it to the fullest. I feel... that T'Pol would be glad of that.
"While the fires of the struggles and battles were burning everywhere on Vulcan and were lighting up its night, a silent crowd of Vulcans entrusted the bodies of their princess and of her king to truest fire of their world. The blazing lava of the biggest of its volcanoes. Just as they had found them, united to each other by that sword of death and love, they threw those bodies into the lava. The bodies of the princess and of her king sank into it, disappeared in it, were consumed in it."
The last thing. Just like T'Pol told it to me.
"The legend says that before the eyes of the silent bystanders, after awhile, the sword reappeared from the depths of the boiling lava. They saw it float on the bubbling surface of the lava, shining and glowing. Perfectly intact. It disappeared from their sight, sinking slowly. Without giving any sign of wanting to melt in that heat that was supposed to liquefy anything."
The closing. I seem to see T'Pol as she finished her narration.
"It is said that in the bowels of Vulcan, in its depth, that sword still exists. And it is said that it will exist forever, just as, stronger than death, forever there will be... "
I take the hand of my Mal and I hold it strongly. Without embarrassment, without shame, without false coyness.
"Vulcans have difficulty pronouncing the word love, Mal. Almost they feel ashamed of uttering it. Yet they possess a word that means the same thing; indeed, a word that is even stronger, more intense, more violent, just as stronger, more intense, more violent their emotions are. T'Pol has said it many times to Trip - I know, I know by T'Pol's own admission - in their private, when she wanted to try to convey to him what she was feeling, no, what she feels for him, telling him that this is what she feels for him. And you've heard many times how she calls him."
I also take Mal's other hand. I watch him straight and deeply in the eyes. I complete the sentence that I had left pending.
"Just as, stronger, much stronger than death, forever there will be Ashaya. The love."
Mal remains looking at me for a moment, with eyes wide open. Then quickly disentangles his hands from mine.
"T'Pol... has she recounted you all this, Hoshi? Just she? Just this way?"
"As far as it may sound strange to you, Mal, it was exactly her, and, as far as this it may seem even stranger, she did not use words much different. If anything, it is surprising that I was able to tell blow-by-blow what she told me and make properly the way she did. You could say that she was full of passion in telling me this legend and I haven't added or removed anything of the vividness of the scenes she described to me."
"Well, this is..."
"Mal, you know very well how great it may be the strength of the passions of T'Pol."
"Well, yes, but..."
"And you must consider very well her state of mind when she told me this legend, together with many other things, Mal. Those were terrible moments for her. Trip was struggling between life and death. Her control was extremely fragile, practically non-existent, not to mention that, in those moments, just when she needed it most, the one who, as it is now well known, has become the very source of her ability of self-control - her Trip - was not able to offer her his essential aid; indeed, just he, his health status, was the very source of the precariousness of her inner poise, of her extreme difficulty to rein her emotions. But luckily for her, and... yes... even for me, there was me. I was the rock she knew she could hold on to."
I hear my voice vibrate. I can not restrain my pride in saying that.
"In the rare moments when she moved away from Trip's bed, she came to me; no, better said it was me who managed to take her away from there and who brought her with me, to give her the possibility to relax a bit, to evade for some time from her torment. She spoke with me, Mal, I have already said it to you. Opened herself to me. She told me that she felt she could rely on me. And talking with me calmed her, eased her anxiety and her anguish. She spoke to me about a lot of things. Sometimes she was like a river in flood. She was not ashamed to tell me things about herself that she would never have thought of telling if not to Trip. She, just she, told me this."
"I see."
"So, she told me that there wasn't then too much to remain surprised if she had tied so deeply herself to Trip, if she had done something that no other vulcan woman would have thought of doing. Without even imagining what there was to lose in not doing such a marvellous thing, she added, without feigning or hesitation. And she also added that sooner or later some other Vulcan would understand, eventually."
"There wasn't too much to remain surprised?"
"No, Mal. She told me that her emotions were much more at the surface in her than in the other Vulcans. For her, it had always been difficult both to handle her emotions and handle her coexistence with her compatriots. Only her father knew how understand and comprehend her and, after his death, everything became even more difficult for her. Trip was for her lifeline. She said just like that, Mal. Her lifeline. Her safe harbour. She had struggled to understand it, but, thanks to Surak - and these too are her own words - in the end she had understood."
"Hardheaded, women, eh, Hoshi?"
"Mh, yeah. Okay. Anyway, Mal, her difference from the other Vulcans manifested itself in many ways. For example, she said, she felt strongly attracted, even as a child, to the ancient legends of her world. The... passion... just like that... the passion which overflowed into them, a source of embarrassment for the other Vulcans, was to her a source of strange pleasure, incomprehensible and irrational. Oh she was fully aware that she should have been ashamed of such a feeling, but ... yeah! ... she didn't manage to be ashamed! Not at all! Indeed! She had even memorized - anything but difficult for her - some of the ancient writings, shunned by his countrymen, which tell of those ancient legends. And, in particular, she had learned by heart, word for word, exactly as she has narrated it to me and as I tried to report it to you, that legend, Mal. The legend of the ancient warrior princess and of her king."
"Precisely that one, Hoshi?"
"Yes. Precisely that one. She told me... Oh Mal! She told me that she, as a child, and even later, as a girl, she had felt... had felt as if she could identify herself with that princess! Indeed... she said… as if she had to identify herself with her!"
"She had felt..."
"Yes, Mal! And, she did not understand why, but that legend was back well vivid in her mind since she and Trip..."
"Bloody hell!"
"Probably - her own words - because the princess had killed her king, and, sometimes, she felt the urge to kill Trip."
"A quip!"
"Yes. Another of the quips of which she is capable since she and Trip - yet her words, Mal - have become one."
"Well, actually it is not hard to believe that sometimes it can be quite difficult for her to bear Trip."
I can not help but smile. Yeah. The smile turns off immediately, though.
"At that moment, Mal, in the light of what she had told me of herself, I did not find too strange that she could feel so close to that princess of the myth to the point to identify herself with her. I just told her, kidding her, that evidently, in the bottom of her... well, yes, I said so... of her katra, in the teeth of her being Vulcan, she was an incurable romantic. The perfect woman for Trip. But now, Mal, now!... and then... and then, Mal, she told me also something else."
"What, Hoshi?"
"She told me..." - The anguish seizes me. And how could it not be so? - "... She told me that she had always tried to put a face to that king, doomed and damned. She had imagined him in many ways, but she had always failed in giving him a precise face. Now, instead, yes. Now, if she thought about a face for that king, she could think only about the face of Trip."
"For ... for God's sake!"
"I told her that it was... that it was logical. Romantic, once again, but logical. Perfectly logical. She, merely, gave the king, who had made fall in love with himself the princess with whom she identified herself the face of the man who had made fall her in love with him. I can swear to you, Mal, that she took on a colour that for Humans is tantamount to a deep blush. Yet she nodded at my words. She told me it had to be so. And, in those moments, I, too, I thought... I thought that there could be no other reason. In ... in those moments, Mal. Now, instead... now... "
I stop. I can not talk anymore.
"Hoshi..."
I snuffle. As a little girl in the throes of things bigger than her. "Yes, Mal?" He's looking at me with a look so intense as to make you sick.
"Hoshi, you have asserted that T'Pol did not know give a face to that king... before. So one must think that... Hoshi, are there no portraits, representations, paintings, drawings or the devil that you will, of that King?"
"Mal, Vulcans do not like to portray people, their art is abstract, is… is thought, in a way, almost cerebral, you could say. Not that there are no representations of people and faces, but they are rare and certainly they do not relate to mythical figures. Vulcans love beauty, but tend to express it not concretely and visually as we do."
"So, nobody knows..."
"What could the colour have been of the hair of that King, Mal? This is what you want to know? No. No one knows. And no one knows what colour his eyes were. Black, brown, gray, green, yellow, red, purple, or... blue."
Mal's expression becomes almost grim. He nods. "I see, Hoshi. So I guess that not even the appearance of the princess is reported, somewhere."
"No, Mal. T'Pol was clear even about that. All that is known of her and of her appearance is what of her is said in the legend, and that is that she was dauntless and fierce. And beautiful. Such as... such as..."
"Such as T'Pol."
"Yes... Mal."
Here we are. I've said it all. All that had to be said, it has been said.
Mal and I stay to look at each other, without uttering a single syllable. The words of Bannerda resound, loud and clear, in my mind.
'… the memory of all this is in you, as well as in all breeds, we can be sure, even if each breed, obviously, interprets this memory in its own way.'
Even if each breed, obviously, interprets this memory in its own way!
The Bannerda's voice shakes us.
"Thus, the circle closes, it seems. Do not you think?"
We turn toward him. I feel my head spin. He looks at us, solemnly.
"Genes are immortal, somehow, you know. They come from the mists of time. They get distributed randomly in the offspring, for all we know. They get dispersed in innumerable rivulets over the centuries and millennia, not to speak of eons, and much beyond. But they persist. And they bear traces of antique things."
"But they are not nice traces, Your Excellency."
Malcolm's voice sounds shaken, in the teeth of his British self-control. I can understand it. Another confirmation of what we already know. And a confirmation, even, that comes to us from the myths of Vulcan. Yes. Everything converges. The circle... sure ... the circle closes.
And inside that circle. Mortal. Deadly. Lethal.
Within it.
Locked inside.
There are Trip and T'Pol.
End of Chapter Sixteen
TBC
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A circle. Which closes. Mortal. Deadly. Lethal.
Around Trip and T'Pol.
(o) Do you remember "Destiny", my friends?