"You have helped- a great deal. And you can help us still more," Kirk assured her and saw her tail straighten with pride. "Keep answering our baby questions."
"All right," she said. She gave his cheek a last feathery caress. Glancing at the smoke hole, she said, "It's getting dark...time for bed. Evan Wilson, do you still want to spend the night with me?"
"Do I?" said Wilson. She leapt to her feet. "Lead the way, Brightspot- nothing short of Stiff Tail could stop me!"
"Stiff Tail says it's okay. You should bring some usefuls, though; it gets cold. And you really don't have much fur," Brightspot finished apologetically.
Wilson grinned. "I know.... Usefuls?"
Brightspot pointed at the pile of brightly colored fabrics Wilson had been sitting on. Wilson snatched twice and flourished the results. One "useful" bore a design of stylized flowers in blue and gold, the other a geometric pattern of intertwined helices. Both shone in the firelight. Wilson looked down at them and said, "I do like a world where something that beautiful is called a useful!"
A wrinkle twitched through the fur along Brightspot's side; it seemed to be her equivalent of a shrug. "Useful for making a swagger-lair," she said, "or a tent, or for keeping you warm at night." But she seemed pleased by Wilson's delight. Then she uncurled her tail to gesture Wilson away.
Kirk rose to follow. "A swagger-lair," he said to Brightspot. "This I have to see." The rest of the landing crew were not far behind.
They walked to the edge of the clearing. The sky was darkening rapidly now, and the light of campfires twinkled cheerfully in the dusk. A song, as sweet as the smell of the wood fires, drifted on the wind. Brightspot pointed with her tail. "Rushlight camps outside the clearing," she said. "That way - turn left at the stream and follow the song."
Uhura nodded at her, then she said, "Oh, look, Captain! How beautiful!"
He followed her gesture. Some half dozen of the tents were lit from within; they glowed a rich profusion of color, like pavilions in a fairy tale.
"Remarkable," said Spock, "It would seem they have a form of artificial lighting."
Jim Kirk frowned slightly at his first officer, then looked again. Spock was right: the interior lighting did not have the flicker of candles or firelight. Spock was also, all too often, unnecessarily pragmatic.
"This way, Evan Wilson," said Brightspot.
Her voice came from somewhere above his head; he looked up to find her ten feet up the side of a tree and still climbing. Her claws sent tiny shreds of bark down on them all. Jim Kirk shielded his eyes and peered into the deepening darkness. Brightspot's swagger-lair, some thirty feet from the ground, was little more than a hammock: one useful stretched from branch to branch of two adjacent trees. And the trees rose straight and slender for twenty feet before they branched. "Evan," he said, "how do you propose to climb that without claws?"
Brightspot clung to the lowest branch and looked down, tail twitching. "Oh, Evan Wilson! You don't have claws!"
"Keep going, Brightspot," Wilson said, as she shook out her usefuls and tied them at her throat. "I may not have claws, but I come from a long line of the best tree climbers nature ever invented- and I haven't forgotten their techniques." With a sidelong smile at Kirk, she wrapped her arms and legs about the trunk and began to shinny up.
Brightspot stared. "That's neat!" she said. "I couldn't do that!"
"You couldn't?" said Wilson in surprise. Like a double cape, the two usefuls billowed out behind her in the soft night breeze.
Brightspot had resumed her climb. Now she reached the level of her swagger-lair and sprang in; it bulged from her weight and swung precariously back and forth. Just as Wilson reached the first of the branches, Brightspot peered over the edge at her. "No," said Brightspot, "my legs don't bend that way."
"Oh, I see," said Wilson, now hanging upside down from the branch that supported one side of the shelter. She made a quick swing and brought herself to a sitting position, perched on the tree limb. She sat for a moment and caught her breath. Then she said, "Now comes the tricky part.... How much sudden shock of weight can that take, Brightspot?"
Brightspot said, "If it won't take four of us jumping into it at once, I didn't do it right."
"Good enough," said Wilson. "Any etiquette I should know?"
Brightspot thought, then she said, "No, you just come in."
"Easier said than done," Kirk observed. "Tsk, tsk, Captain," Wilson said, "you have no faith. Watch and wonder!" She straightened suddenly, snatched the branch above her for balance, and slowly walked toward the swagger-lair. "Move a little to the right, Brightspot, if you will; I don't want to bash my host for my first act as a guest." As Brightspot shifted, Wilson stretched out her other hand, leaning dangerously, to grasp a branch from the adjacent tree. She tugged it for a moment and then swung abruptly into midair.
Jim Kirk's stomach lurched.
She landed in a great sprawl; the swagger-lair rocked with her impact and Brightspot shifted hastily to steady it. A moment later, Evan Wilson's face, almost luminous with delight, appeared at the edge. "Lieutenant Uhura," she called, "do you know the old lullabye 'Rockabye Baby'?"
Uhura smiled up at her, equally radiant. "Yes, Doctor, I do."
"Then I give you something to remember me by: I promise you'll think of me every time you sing it. Good night, Captain, all."
Kirk laughed. "Good night. And Evan- don't fall out of bed!"
"Don't pull my tail, Captain."
Evan Wilson found herself chortling. The whole experience seemed so unreal, yet even the sway of the swagger-lair was pleasant in an odd, dreamlike way. When Brightspot stretched out her tail and drew a second useful arching over their heads to form a roof, it only added to the sensation, making her feel like a dam in a clamshell. Happy as a clam, she thought, and she chortled again.
Brightspot said, "You're all loops! You like this!" Her voice in the darkness carried a note of surprise.
She means, thought Evan, 'all smiles'. She said, "Yes, I do. I've never slept in a tree before, and I like new things."
"Me too," admitted Brightspot. "Distant Smoke says I have a to-Ennien tail, but Stiff Tail says I should be more cautious."
"But she didn't mind my sharing your swagger-lair," said Wilson. "I wonder why?"
"I know why," said Brightspot. "She thinks you'll talk more to me than you would to her."
"Then what would you like to know? I'll answer almost anything I can."
"Answer a baby question. I don't understand your names: you each seem to have several and you never fight about what someone calls you."
"Quite honestly, Brightspot, I'd say it's a lot easier for someone to shame his name than for the name to shame him. But I think you mean customary use of names, and that varies from culture to culture. I can give you the short course that'll work with most of the Enterprise personnel...."
Using Captain Kirk for example, she talked long into the darkness, carefully explaining the possible variations of his name and the social occasions in which they occurred. She followed up with an explanation of rank structure. At last she finished, "I'd be pleased, Brightspot, if you'd call me Evan."
"You mean, to be your friend?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." There was a small hesitation. "I don't have a name to give you in return, but I'll try to help you. That's our friendship, Evan." She pronounced the name with extreme care.
"Ours too," said Evan Wilson.
"Then we'll sleep like friends and be warmed by it." By this, Evan learned, she meant spoon-fashion. Brightspot took the inner spoon for fear she might stir in her sleep and accidentally claw. With much shifting and, on Wilson's part, giggling, they nestled in for the night.
But for the sounds of their breathing and the stirrings of night creatures in the forest, the dark was silent. Then Brightspot said softly, "Evan? What's so funny about a lullabye?"
Evan Wilson, wrapped in usefuls and pressed against the soft warmth of Brightspot's body, chuckled once more and quietly began to sing, "Rockabye baby, on the treetop..." When she finished, Brightspot's tail curled happily around her ankle. She took a deep, contented breath, smelling the sweet scent of Brightspot's fur, and drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Eight
Kirk woke, sweating, from a nightmare of the Eeiauoan hospital. He sat up, trusting the movement to shake away the horror. It did not- unfamiliar shapes and shadows assaulted his senses. He fixed on an image beside the fire and found the reassuring form of Spock.
Spock stared into the fire as if into his attunement flame. Perhaps any fire could serve the purpose, thought Kirk; he did not wish to disturb the Vulcan.
"Captain," said Spock softly. Taking the acknowledgment as an invitation, Kirk threw off the light, warm usefuls and moved quietly to the fireside. "Standing guard, Mr. Spock?" he said, low enough not to wake Chekov. "These people seem friendly enough." He had not ordered a guard, for fear of insulting their hosts, though he had set a sensor to wake them if anyone entered.
"Thinking, Captain." Spock's voice was as quiet as his own.
"Any conclusions, Mr. Spock?"
"I regret to say I have only theories. It is my hope that Lieutenant Uhura and Dr. Wilson will be able to supply further data."
"Mine too, though I admit I'm not happy about leaving either of them- unprotected- in an alien environment about which we know so little."
"I do not believe you would have been able to keep either of them from undertaking the risk, short of a direct order to return to the Enterprise."
"You're probably right, Spock. And I'm not sure a direct order would have done it either. Certainly not in Wilson's case: she's just wild enough to pull medical rank on me."
"Indeed," said Spock, "that is my impression also. And there is a high probability that the lieutenant would have disobeyed such an order as well."
"Mutiny? Uhura? You must be joking, Spock."
"No, Captain. My conclusion was based upon considerable observation of your species. You yourself have disobeyed Starfleet Command- for a friend." It was something they seldom mentioned but that was a part of their own long friendship. "Lieutenant Uhura has not one friend, but several, at risk of their lives. To spend the night in a dangerous situation to gain the information we seek is a logical risk. Had you ordered her to return to the Enterprise, her logical response would have been to disobey that order."
"In other words, I would have been illogical to order her back to the Enterprise."
"Precisely, Captain."
"Thanks, Spock, you make me feel better about it- I think." He smiled.
They sat side by side, human and Vulcan, staring into the fire. The night was filled with unfamiliar sounds. At last, Kirk said, "Find us a way, Spock. You found this world, and the odds against that..."
"With the information Lieutenant Uhura provided," Spock said.
"Correction noted, Mr. Spock. We need all the help we can get." A vivid image of the Eeiauoan hospital flashed in his mind once more. "Bones and Christine need all the help we can get." As he stared into the fire once more, he thought of the last image he'd seen of Leonard McCoy, haggard and beaten. Hold on! he thought. Hold on, Bones! We're working as fast as we can!
Leonard McCoy found it increasingly difficult to keep his mind on his research. He was more and more conscious of the overpowering smell of the Eeiauoan hospital wards- the sweetish alien smell of lingering death. Try as he might to avoid it, his mind kept returning to Christine, to Micky, miles above his head; to Sunfall, whom he had never met, half a continent away. He tended Quickfoot daily and saw the progress of their disease in the body of his new friend- and knew that for Christine and Micky, he was being optimistic.
He focused his eyes with difficulty. He hated what he saw, and he knew that the hardest thing to deal with was the magnitude of the disaster. The sheer volume of cases made him helpless with rage.
This morning one of his Eeiauoan staff, discovering in himself the first symptoms of ADF syndrome, had attempted to commit suicide. McCoy had managed to talk him out of it, but even Spock might have found Patterner of Vensre's reasoning logical. His entire family was in second-stage coma- when Patterner reached that stage he would no longer be of help- he would be an additional burden that might prevent his family from receiving full care. McCoy had only gotten through to him by pointing out that they needed his help as long as he could give it.
How long that would be, neither of them knew.
Two others had been admitted to the hospital not for ADF syndrome but for- hopelessness. One, a mother who had lost three of her children to ADF syndrome, had simply stopped nursing the fourth. The other was in physical shock, brought on by severe depression.