“What is it?” Tram Bir said eagerly.
“A gift only you can offer. God-touched though it is, the Messiah’s spirit inhabits a man’s body, even as yours and mine. Think back to last night–what happened when our sister danced?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kirk shivered and pulled his cloak tighter about him as he paced near the Beshwa caravan. Cold gusts of wind blew from the west, bringing smoke and fine ashes from the still-smoldering embers of the fires. Thunder clouds building on the western horizon held a threat of rain. To the north, the sky began to lighten with the first flickerings of an aurora. Two of Kyros’ moons had set and the third wouldn’t rise for several hours. The camp was quiet except for occasional shouts and bursts of raucous laughter from the Messiah’s pavilion.
“What’s taking him so long?” McCoy muttered.
“I told him to wait until the Messiah had several cups under his belt. Chag Gara was as much a lush as he was a lecher. When Spock was imprinted, the process wasn’t selective.” Kirk glanced at the sky. Stars were winking out as the thunderclouds rolled eastward.
“I wonder what’s going on up there?” McCoy asked.
“It’s getting ready to storm, what else?”
“No, I mean on the Enterprise.”
“They’re sweating us out—and getting ready for evacuation, just in case. Radiation will reach redline in fifteen hours or so.”
“Where will they go?… If they have to, that is,” Chekov asked.
“I told Sulu to break the crew up into groups of forty to fifty and to scatter them among the neighboring city- states. Four hundred and twenty-five strangers showing up in one place would be a bit too much. After the life they’ve had, it isn’t going to be easy to be exiles on a backward mud-ball like this; but they’re all bright people, they’ll survive. At least they won’t starve. Thanks to Scotty’s money machine, they’ll all be coming down with full purses.”
“And when the Messiah comes?” Chekov asked.
‘They’ll fight.”
“Stop it, you two,” McCoy said. “You’re having a wake before the patient is dead.”
Sara came out of the van. “The costumes are ready,” she said. “Come on in and try yours on. Wait till you see what Scotty made for me.”
Scott looked up from an improvised workbench as they came in. “How do you like this?” he said, holding up a stylized golden mask of a creature half cat and half woman. “We had to figure out some way to cover Sara’s face so Spock wouldn’t recognize her.”
“Beautiful,” McCoy said, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. “But how did you make it?”
“I used gold foil from the trade goods and the rest from your medikit. Sara modeled the features from that foam for making casts. I used that as a matrix for the gold foil. When the foil was shaped, I removed it and sprayed the inside with duraplast to give it strength. A little trimming, a couple of eye holes, and that was that. Not a bad job, if I do say so myself.”
“What about the rest of us?” Kirk asked. “Spock isn’t exactly unfamiliar with our faces.”
“Ready to wear,” Scott replied, pointing to some grotesque masks on the bunk beside him.
Chekov’s voice called from outside. “Captain, somebody’s coming from the direction of the Messiah’s tent. It looks like Tram Bir.”
It was.
“Hurry,” he said as he came out of the darkness. “You’re to entertain the Messiah. When I described what he might expect, he became most interested.” Anxiously, he added, “She will do as well as she did last night, won’t she?”
“Better,” Kirk promised.
It took them only a few minutes to get ready. The men wore flowing cloaks made of a patchwork of multicolored furs with collars of bristling orange feathers. Kirk’s mask was a neelot’s head; Chekov’s, an exaggerated clan-style hood with a pointed top from which sprouted more orange feathers. McCoy and Scott wore the heads of antlered, deer-like animals.
Kirk slung a Beshwa drum over one shoulder as McCoy and Chekov took up their thirty-seven stringed instruments. Scott experimented with a Kyrosian horn that curved from the mouthpiece down to his waist, where it swelled into an ovoid.
“Reminds me of my bagpipe back aboard the Enterprise,” Scott murmured sadly.
“I’m glad our dops know how to play these crazy things,” McCoy said as his fingers ran a masterly arpeggio on the strings.
Ensign George came down the van steps to join them. Her face was adorned in the delicately styled golden mask. It disguised her completely, but was as deliciously female as the face it covered. Her body was wrapped in a long black cape.
Kirk called to the impatient Tram Bir, “We await the Messiah’s pleasure.”
Tram nodded and gestured for them to follow. They moved away from the Beshwa caravan under a cold glitter of stars, and marched toward the looming black of the Messiah’s tent.
Driving gusts of wind raced through the area whipping the Messiah’s banner and buffeting the sides of the huge, ebony pavilion. Tram Bir exchanged a few words with the soldiers who guarded the entrance. The flaps were flung back, and the party passed into a small antechamber.
Inside, guards gathered around them curiously.. Tram Bir said something that Kirk couldn’t quite catch to a soldier who seemed to be in charge. He glanced back at the group, then nodded; and Tram moved through a heavy curtain which separated the antechamber from the main body of the tent.
From beyond the curtain, Kirk heard the growl of a mass of voices, sporadic laughter and shouts. There was the clatter of crockery and an occasional crash as a drinking bowl was dropped. Kirk was given a brief glimpse of the interior as the curtain parted again. He got an impression of depth, darkness interspersed with the light of hot- burning torches, and many clan chieftains. Tram came back out.
“The Messiah awaits your performance,” he said. “But it is his order that you be searched carefully before entering.”
Kirk glanced at the others in his party, then made a sign of acquiescence. He took a step, brushing closer to Ensign George.
“Almost home, Ensign. Turn on the nullifier,” he whispered.
Without a sign that she had heard, Kirk saw her left hand move to cover a thick wristband, one of several on her right arm. She gripped it tightly, activating the mechanism.
Tram disappeared behind the curtain again and the guards moved toward them.
“Open your clothes,” one guard growled. “Messiah orders that you be searched—completely.” His smile displayed decaying, crooked teeth.
“For what?” Chekov began.
“Hikif! You know better than to question the Messiah’s command,” Kirk snapped. One of the guards moved to Chekov, while two more pinned his arms. The search was brief, painful, and thorough.
When several of the guards turned to Sara, she stepped back. Kirk opened his mouth to order her to cooperate, then closed it quickly.
She pirouetted away from the men and giggled. In a low voice, she purred to the guards. She turned her back to the Enterprise party and parted her cloak. The guards gasped.
One nudged another whose mouth was partway open. “She couldn’t hide much in that outfit,” he said and grinned appreciatively.
The others nodded in agreement. Sara giggled again and demurely closed her cloak. She rejoined her fellow officers.
“That was quite a performance,” Kirk whispered.
