“I thought you were asleep,” Kirk said.
“With you shooting things at me…?” McCoy replied.
There was a soft tap on the closed outer door. “It’s Ker Kaseme, honored friends,” a voice called. “May I enter?”
“In a moment,” Kirk said. “Scotty,” he said in a low voice, “get into the other room. Ker is doing a fine job of keeping his eyes closed to our comings and goings, but an officer in Fleet uniform might be too much.” He glanced at the water clock. “The next beam-up is due in a few minutes, anyway.”
Scott nodded and went into the back room. Kirk followed him to the door. “McCoy and I will be out with Kaseme for the next couple of hours getting things organized for this evening. Bring the landing party down around 17:30. You stand by with your men here. . Once the other group is in position in the plaza, Ensign George will notify me. McCoy and I will be in front of Vembe’s.”
“Aye, sir,” Scott acknowledged the orders. “An” I hope that little widget does the trick.”
“You haven’t let me down yet, Scotty,” Kirk said as he closed and barred the door. He crossed the room and opened the outer door. “Enter, honored friend,” he said, shifting effortlessly into Kyrosian. Kaseme entered and bobbed a greeting.
“Have you gotten enough men?” Kirk asked.
“Yes, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” Kaseme replied. “I had to pay three times as much as I expected and promise to pay twice as much when the fracas is over.” He pulled out an almost empty purse and eyed it ruefully.
“There’s a lot more where that came from,” Kirk said. “Why was it hard to get the men?”
“The Messiah,” Kaseme answered. “Until he showed up, our city slum types, miserable as they were, had one thing going for them. Bad as their lot was, there was always one group they could look down on, the hill outcasts who had drifted into Andros because they had no place else to go. They’re the ones who have always done the dirty jobs no one else would touch, but now they’re walking tall. They’re carrying arms and no longer step into the gutter when they meet an Androsian on a narrow sidewalk. My veels aren’t too happy about picking on someone who might fight back.”
“What about the provost guard?” Kirk asked.
“That’s taken care of. I didn’t have to bribe the watch commander much to gain his cooperation. There’s no room for him and his men in the Messiah’s ‘New Order,’ and they’re itching for an excuse to bash in a few hill skulls. Once trouble starts, they’ll be in there swinging. But they’ve been ordered to stay away from the immediate vicinity of the Messiah, so they shouldn’t interfere with your plans.”
“Good,” Kirk said. “Where are your men?”
“I’ve got them spotted in little groups in taverns all over town. I didn’t dare assemble them in one place; there are too many of the Messiah’s agents around. I’ve left orders, though, that their wine be doled out in scanty rations so they’re not too drunk to be of use.” Kaseme fell silent.
Kirk rose to his feet. “All right. It’ll take us several hours to make the rounds with final instructions, so let’s suit up, Bones, and get going.”
He took two hooded white robes, with crimson slashes across their fronts, from pegs on the wall and tossed one to McCoy. After he’d slipped his on, he adjusted its folds carefully. As he picked up his silver wand from the table, he saw Kaseme gaze at it with obvious envy. Kaseme’s own carved wooden one looked cheap and gaudy by comparison.
“If our healing goes off on schedule,” Kirk said, “you can have this one. Call it a gift from a grateful patient.”
He glanced at McCoy who nodded his readiness.
“Let’s go.”
Captain Kirk drew his white healer’s robe tighter about him and shivered as a chill wind blew across the plaza. He had his hood pulled up, and his features were almost indistinguishable in the darkness.
“Looks like a storm blowing up,” McCoy remarked.
“I’m not surprised,” Kirk said. “That radiation front is beginning to interfere with the planetary weather patterns, in spite of an ozone layer twice Earth’s standard.”
He peered out at the plaza. “It doesn’t seem to have affected the turnout, though.”
“Curiosity seems to be a trait basic to most intelligent life,” McCoy remarked.
The two stood in silence for a moment, looking out from their vantage point under the arcade archway in front of Vembe’s shop. Its doors were closed and, happily, only a faint scent of vris lingered to pollute the air.
As they watched, the crowd in the square grew denser.
“It looks like Kaseme’s men are starting to arrive,” Kirk muttered, as roughly dressed men in groups of twos and threes, some lurching slightly, emerged from side streets and began to infiltrate the growing throng.
Thunder growled overhead, and a faint flicker of light glimmered briefly in the sky.
“Captain!” A whisper came from behind them. Kirk turned, and a scantily dressed figure stepped out of the gloom. It was Ensign George.
“Aren’t you freezing in that outfit?” McCoy asked solicitously.
“I sure am,” she replied, “but it would be out of character if I didn’t display the merchandise.”
“Is everything set?” Kirk asked.
Sara nodded. “Commander Pulaski is standing by for final instructions.” She gestured toward a cluster of men in hill dress standing on the other side of the square.
“Tell them,” Kirk began, “that as soon as Spock arrives, they are to get as close to him as possible. When Kaseme’s men start the riot, I want them to form a flying wedge and be ready to open a path through the crowd and out of there. I’m banking on there being so much confusion that Spock’s bodyguards won’t question our actions.”
“I’ll tell Pulaski,” Sara said, and headed across the square, attracting admiring glances and occasional shouted compliments as she undulated through the crowd.
A flash of lighting suddenly illuminated the square, and a stiff blast of wind almost extinguished the recently lighted oil lamps set on pillars along the arcade. A moment later a rumble of thunder sounded from the direction of the distant mountains. Kirk glanced worriedly at the sky. Tattered streamers of clouds, pale and ghostlike, skittered across the northern sky. An occasional early star gleamed between the rents in the clouds, and on the western horizon only a lurid red glow marked the place where Kyr had set.
“Look, Bones,” Kirk muttered. The doctor craned his head upward. Flickering, shifting, but ever growing, a dancing veil of light was forming, snaking between the racing clouds.
“An aurora,” Kirk went on. “I wonder if that’s Spock’s promised miracle.”
“I doubt it,” McCoy said, shaking his head. “My dop remembers seeing one when he was a child, so auroras aren’t unusual even this far south.”
“Well, whatever this ‘miracle’ is, I hope the weather holds off,” Kirk said. “Most of the crowd is here for a free show, and a heavy rain would send them scuttling for cover.”
Twilight deepened. The wind died to small, unpredictable gusts that seemed to be coming from every direction. The sky overhead cleared and most of the cloud cover seemed to be concentrated on the horizon. Suddenly, there was a rumble of hill drums and the sound of distant chanting came from a narrow street that opened onto the square.
Then the sound grew louder, as the high-pitched, strangely atonal skirling of native pipes fluted above the deep bass of the drums. A hush fell over the square, as thirty or forty clansmen mounted on hissing neelots began to open a path through the crowd.
There was a final pipe and drum crescendo as the procession entered the square, and then a sudden, dramatic silence. A hollow square of torch-bearing hillmen appeared; an alien army whose sinister masks, fitfully illuminated by the flaring, dancing torchlight, made them appear like a host from hell. In their center, drawn by four matched black neelots, was a window-less, hearse-like vehicle painted jet black.
As the procession neared the center of the square, Kirk, McCoy at his heels, headed rapidly toward it. Hillmen ringed the van, holding back the curious crowd that pressed in.
As the two Enterprise officers pushed their way through the throng, hooded hillmen and gaily dressed city folk alike stepped aside deferentially at the sight of their white healers’ robes. Just as they reached the front ranks of the circle of spectators, there was a roll of drums. A trapdoor opened on the roof of the van, just behind the
