"THE SHIP IS RUN at sublight speed by an internally metered pulse drive. We call it impulse."
"We have something similar."
"I know you do. There's quite a bit that's similar about your civilization and ours. If we can reach an understanding, perhaps your people will be satisfied to settle here and exchange knowledge, share a few things."
"Vergokirk … you underestimate the passion of my civilization. You are too comfortable in your identity. You and your friends, and the Klingons and others here, all have a sense of home. You all know where you came from. You have no doubt in your souls about defending it. When we find our space, we will defend it."
Each corner of the captain's cabin and office had been thoroughly roamed, and now Zennor had found himself the most amenable corner from which to contemplate the place and people among whom he now found himself. He hovered behind the perforated privacy partition, which cast a gridlike pattern of shapes and shadows upon his face and form. Standing there in the dimness, he was as bizarre a visage as Jim Kirk had ever seen.
"You say that with great conviction, but I'm not sure I accept what you say," Kirk told him. "You've admitted you think the evidence is too scant."
"Scant or not, it is taken as religion now." Zennor turned to Kirk, and his bony face was terrible as it caught the brittle shadows. "I do not believe you are the conquerors."
Strange how his words were so antithetical to the appearance of this enigmatic alien. He was indeed a ghastly visage hovering there in the shadows, the light designed mostly for humans stamping in confusion across the angles and twists of his skull and horns. And it had no idea what to do with those eyes.
"If we find this is the wrong space, we can live among your Federation. There is something here upon which to build, and my people are builders."
"And we'll welcome you," Kirk said. "We'll welcome you right now, if you'll let us."
Before Zennor could answer, the comm unit behind Kirk twittered and he turned to it. "Kirk here."
"McCoy, Captain. As soon as you can, would you please come down to sickbay? I've got an emergency and I believe you should know about it."
Abruptly interested, Kirk pressed his elbow to the comm and leaned closer. "Is Spock all right?"
There was a pause. "It's something else, Captain. Please come alone."
Come alone? What was that supposed to mean?
Instantly he knew what it meant. Leave Zennor up here, something's been found out.
"If you'll excuse me," he said quickly, "my first officer was severely injured this morning and I think my ship's surgeon is trying to cloak any weaknesses in my staff. If you wish to leave here, push this button and Security will answer. They'll escort you back to the bridge or to the others in your party. As I understand it, they're enjoying their tour of the ship."
* * *
"Bones? What's going on?"
Sickbay's main door panel to the corridor closed behind Kirk.
"I'm in here, Captain," McCoy called, and appeared in the doorway of an auxiliary examining room.
Kirk glanced into the main ward, where Spock was confined, but didn't go in there. "All right, what's your crisis?"
"Captain," the doctor said, "there's been a murder."
As he looked at McCoy's sober face and hoped for a punch line, Kirk felt his feet go cold. "You mean, other than Brown? A second one?"
"Yes. But not one of our crew. This is one of Captain Zennor's people. It was just discovered about twenty minutes ago. Security delivered the body down here and I instructed them that I would notify you."
Ramifications tumbled across Kirk's mind, piling one upon the other. A visitor from an alien vessel in a volatile situation, murdered. Here.
Horrible.
But only a little more horrible than the body McCoy led him to. This wasn't just a murder. This was a slaughter.
Kirk stood over the mutilated cadaver lying on its slab in the lonely and so rarely used morgue, unfortunately today occupied by the bodies of crewmen killed in the land battle with the Klingons. In a few days, they would be buried in space with full honors, once matters at hand were dispensed with and the crew could adjust to the loss of shipmates. It was never easy.
This, though—this thing on the slab …
He cleared his throat. "Where's the head?"
"I don't know," McCoy said straightaway. "We haven't been able to find it. I suspect—"
"That Kellen took it with him."
"Then you do think he did it?"
"We'll know in a minute." He reached for the comm on the wall, the least-used one on the ship. "Kirk to Security."
"Security, Hakker."
"Do a biosweep of the ship for Klingon biological readings. Hail sickbay with the results."
"Right away, sir."
"Kirk to bridge."
"Bridge, sir."
"Bring the ship to double yellow alert. And hail the Klingon fleet."
"One moment, sir."
The moment was a long, ugly one. Kirk stared at the remains, and McCoy stared at Kirk, both supremely aware of each other.
"What're you going to do?" McCoy finally asked when the pressure got to him.
"I don't know," Kirk said. "But I have to decide the next move, or Kellen will decide it for me."
"How could he get off without tripping some alarm somewhere?"
"I'd get off."
"Captain, bridge. The Klingons refuse to answer our hail, sir."
"Any movement out there?"
"None yet, sir."
"Notify me if there's the slightest change. Kirk out."
Stiff-lipped and severe, he circled the foot end of the corpse.
Its pale hands were chalky with lack of life, long fingernails nearly blue now, and there seemed to have been very little blood, or whatever fluids this creature possessed. Its clothing was nearly pristine. There hadn't been much of a struggle, but considering Kellen's strength and experience, that was no surprise.
"You didn't do an autopsy, did you?"
"I wouldn't do that without consent," McCoy said with a touch of pique. "I sterilized the body and had the scene of the crime searched and sealed off. If they want it back, or want back any of this jewelry it's wearing, we're prepared to comply. By the way, look at this." He plucked up the round bronze piece hanging from the chain, similar to Zennor's and all the others'. "This medallion isn't a medallion. Did you notice? It's a mirror."
He turned the oblong disk over to the undecorated side, and sure enough there was a crudely polished surface there that could be used as a mirror when held up by what now looked like a small handle.
"They each carry a little mirror?" Kirk looked, but didn't touch. "Why would they do that?"
"I certainly don't know. Would you carry a mirror if you looked like that? But, Jim, there's something else. If you'll come with me …"
He led the way into a smaller examining room, where a normally clean metal experimentation table was cluttered with a matte of shredded cloth and separated piles of what appeared to be dried leaves, nuts, hair, and some kind of chips.
"What's all this?"
"I found it on the body. Take a look."
At closer examination Kirk realized what he was looking at. "It's the doll. Each of them carries one. You dissected a doll? This is a new low for you, isn't it?"
"It's more efficient than reading the handwriting on a wall. Besides, it smelled funny and I wanted to see why. Now, take a closer look."
"Yes, I see it. It's got strings in its head and clothes like that. The doll looks like them."
"No, no. It looks like him." McCoy pointed at the headless corpse. "With the head on, I mean. Look at it."
Irritated and impatient, Kirk pointed at the doll, whose guts lay spread all over the table, but whose little wormy head was still mostly intact. "I don't get your meaning."
"That corpse is of that species and the doll is also, but look closer. It's got the same features, the same coloring, the same hair—well, yarn—and it's missing the same finger that the corpse has been missing for most of his life."
"You mean, if one of them loses a finger he cuts it off his doll?"
"A finger, or whatever they've got. And one leg is a little shorter than the other, just like the corpse, and it's got the same scars marked on it as the real body has. And it's wearing tiny versions of the same jewelry that's on the body. Jim, this doll isn't just any doll. It's a poppet."
Kirk looked up and let silence ask his question before he barked it out.
Getting the message, McCoy held one hand over the piles of hair and leaves and bits. "All these things filled the doll. It's not just stuffing. You could throw this in a pot and make soup. Here you've got bits of hair, fingernails—not from the same person—buttons, something that might be a kind of bullet, pulverized nutshells, candle wax, caraway seeds, dried rosebuds, berry leaves, various worts, cloves, spider's web, and over here is the dried heart of some kind of small animal. And these things didn't all come from the same planet." The doctor looked up at him and meaningfully said, "I think this is a chronologue of this creature's life. They're relics of his experiences. If I didn't have the body, I could even roughly guess his age from just this mannequin. It's a facsimile of that very person over there."
"Yes," Kirk murmured, glancing back. "Zennor's has little antlers, a crescent brooch, bands on its wrists, and it wears his clothing. If it gets filled gradually, over a lifetime, older beings would have more items inside their doll than younger beings." He paced around the table again, thinking. "So Garamanus is older than Zennor."
Seeming satisfied that he was getting his analysis across, McCoy sighed and nodded. "Very likely so."
"What was that other word you used?"
"Poppet. I was getting to that. It's a medieval practice that came out of witchcraft and sorcery, which basically was the first practice of medicine. Poppets were one method of mixing mysticism with herbal medicine, invoking sympathetic magic."
"But that's Earth. It's trillions of miles away from where these people come from. What're you getting at?"
"That's what I'm getting at." McCoy leaned over the table. "I'm talking about Earth. That other one—they introduced him as Garamanus Drovid, right?"
"Yes. So?"
"I did a little skipping around in my medical-history files and there's a match. The word 'drovid' has roots in Old English, and that was where I found the references to poppets and midwives and sympathetic medicine."
"Bones, make your point before I stuff this mess back in the doll and stuff it down your throat."
"First ask me where the other two wise men are."
The doctor stood back a step, pointed at the piles of herbs and bits, then swept his hand toward the corpse on the table in the next chamber.
"Drovid," he said. "The drovids. The 'infernal of our past, the sinister, the banished'? Jim, don't you hear it? These people are druids!"