THE SECURITY GUARDS did return to the ship in the morning. An agricultural specialist, an expert in jungle education, and a historian were beamed down to replace them. The phasers were returned, which seemed a show of good faith on the part of Tamara Angel. A breakfast of meat was provided, with a separate bowl of fruit for Spock, apparently because of his Vulcan vegetarian beliefs. This, to Kirk, also seemed surprisingly knowing and thoughtful.
After the meal, Kirk found Spock outside the bungalow, watching the city come alive. Merchants and women selling fruit were taking to the streets, rhythmically wailing out praise of their goods. Small, reptilian flying creatures, with ridiculous feathery tufts on their heads, swooped between buildings, and picked at bits of meat that had dropped off the spits of the night before. And small lizards crept in the dust along the roadside, their backs the rich orange color of the dust in which they lived.
"Fascinating, isn't it, Captain?" Spock said, pointing at various creatures. "These reptilelike birds, and these dust lizards, are animals which have become fully adapted to urban life, dependent on it, as rats and pigeons and sparrows and some insects were, at one time, on your Earth. And look at that animal," he continued, indicating a scruffy snout which poked through the doorway of a house across the road from them. "In the wild, it is remarkable for its intelligence and its ferocity. But the Boacans have managed to tame them, and domesticate them, and they are fiercely loyal, ideal for guarding homes. Almost no household is without one. Unfortunately, many of the local animals are inedible, which is why starvation has sometimes been a problem—though usually not in times of peace. And look at that beast of burden carrying that tinsmith's pots." Spock switched his focus once again. "It carries its young in a pouch, similar to marsupials on Earth, and to Denebian momruks. But this does not impede its usefulness to merchants here."
Kirk squinted lazily at the ungainly shabby creature as it rolled its fleshy body along, close to the ground, and clattered with its pots and pans down the street. It was followed by a young boy who carried a large pole.
"One must admit, Captain," Spock went on, "that the variety of fauna on this planet is striking and impressive. Even here, in the heart of the capital city. And because of the incompetence of the old rulers, and our bad relations with the new ones, it has never been properly cataloged."
"Remember, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "we're not here on a zoological expedition. We've got plenty of other things to be looking into."
"Quite so, Captain. I was merely struck by the abundance of uncharted wildlife around us."
The light from the two suns poured down and lit the clay and wooden walls of the buildings, which were covered with a film of morning dew. The moisture was black, but it lit up as brilliant fuchsia when penetrated by sunlight. One of the three moons still hung in the early morning air, a sliver, silvery pale.
"Yes, this place is remarkable," Kirk said slowly. "A tragedy that violence has marred it for so long."
The sounds of infants crying and of sleepy children waking and chattering could be heard in the neighboring homes. A woman five houses away came into her yard to shake out a blanket, and shooed away the reptile birds feasting on scraps. They descended again when she was gone. The tufts on their heads hung over their beaks as they plucked at the dust.
"There's something invigorating about a world like this, Spock. Something renewing."
Kirk's beatific expression as he said this caused Spock to express his concerns of the night before. "And yet, Captain, a deceptively lovely atmosphere could alter our perceptions, interfere with our investigations."
Kirk smiled. "Don't worry, Mr. Spock. I'm more taken by the return of our phasers than by the pretty scenery." He felt the butt of the phaser reassuringly strapped at his hip. "That girl, Tamara Angel …"
"An unusual minister of state."
"Most definitely. Do you think 'Angel' is a family name, Spock? Or a name she's taken for herself?"
"A combination of both, Captain. History tapes show that the Angel family is an old and prestigious one on Boaco Six. The real name is ancient and, to a Terran tongue, unpronounceable. 'Angel' is an attractive English rendering of it."
Kirk knew that his first officer's own Vulcan family name was something equally impossible to pronounce. But there was no such colorful English version of it. "Well, if the rest of the ministers are like her, we're in for quite a week."
They reentered the bungalow. The recomposed landing party was assembled, its new members briefed. A young boy guard appeared in the doorway, to escort them to a nearby public square to meet the minister of education. His name was Noro. He pumped their hands eagerly, an impossibly young, slightly awkward fellow who was missing many of his teeth. Kirk tried to imagine this unprepossessing youth shouldering the job of educating a world whose illiteracy rate had always been staggeringly high.
After introductions were completed, nine lumbering animals were led into the public square on tethers. They were covered with gray fur, short and downy as peach fuzz, but thicker, and had lumpy, sloping backs. The animals greatly resembled Earth camels except that they had six legs, three on each side—a trait all Boacan fauna seemed to share. If they had wings, Kirk mused, you'd expect them to buzz like insects, and fly away.
The animals knelt before them. Rich, embroidered saddles were draped across their backs. Clearly, they were expected to ride.
"I'm a doctor, not a rodeo cowboy," McCoy protested softly, more to himself than to anyone else, as they mounted and the creatures rose. They began to trot.
"Hang on, men. It's all in the line of duty!" Kirk called out, as he rode in front with his host, leading the party. Hand pressure on the fuzzy sides of the animals' long skinny necks seemed to regulate their speed. Spock soon rode by his side.
"These beasts are called larpas," Noro said to Kirk, and beamed. Kirk beamed back, though the bony back of the animal could be felt through the rich silk of the ruglike saddle, and the rolling of the three legs on each side being picked up and set down made for a curiously bumpy ride. The larpas called to each other in strange, comical hoots.
The historian, Rizzuto, yelled ahead to the captain. "An ancient form of transportation here, sir. The planet was pretty famous for it. Rulers still used it on state occasions until recently, and then Markor the Tyrant made old-style motor cars fashionable. Only the rulers and the very wealthy could afford those, too, but I haven't seen any …"
"No," Noro explained. "We in the council do not use those so much. We are hoping to soon have mechanized public transportation in big cities such as this. Such a system is already under construction on the other landmass. We thought you might like to ride larpas as, one might say, a 'traditional' welcome to Boaco Six." Again, he flashed a gap-filled smile.
People in the streets openly gawked at the passing cavalcade; children squealed and pointed.
"A royal welcome, Mr. Spock," Kirk said quietly.
"Indeed, Captain."
Some of the townspeople shouted and made disrespectful remarks. Everyone else seemed to be on foot, though some carts filled with goods were drawn by the beasts Spock had pointed out earlier, and by smaller, scrawny, miserable-looking animals. Kirk realized that riding a larpa was now a pretty exceptional way of getting around.
They're doing it because they think it will appeal to whatever romantic ideas we have about their planet. They see it as a treat. They may make speeches slandering the Federation, and officially are wary of our aid. But in their own clumsy, haphazard way, they're trying to give us the red-carpet treatment. They must, after all, want Federation support, want it very badly.
Noro gave a sharp yell, and all the larpas halted before one of the scorched and battered buildings of white stone. Cautiously, uncertainly, the landing party dismounted, McCoy moaning loudly.
Noro faced them from the middle of the stone steps, which glittered brilliantly under the glare of twin suns. "This was the palace of Puil, former ruler of the city of Boa and the lands surrounding it. We have opened it to the public as a museum, so they can see what the money that could have been bread and meat in their children's mouths was used for."
Kirk and Spock exchanged glances, and the landing party entered the palace.
They milled amongst the people of the city, let the current of people lead them. One room contained glass cells where exotic animals from all over the galaxy had been kept, in an impressive menagerie. Many of these creatures were still there, being maintained. But among these cells were the ones in which Boacan political prisoners had been kept, naked, sometimes for years, as curiosities in Puil's zoo. These cells were now empty.
Adjacent to this room was the torture room. A young man was picking up smooth metal objects from a table, explaining what each was used for to a crowd of children. The room was vast and featured an array of instruments ranging from a rack, hot pokers, and thumbscrews, to the very latest in renegade molecule rupturers and nerve center paralyzers. The young man explained that there were many subterranean chambers like this room throughout the city. "This room, here in the palace, was only for Puil's very special guests."
McCoy, his face grim, kept a low-running commentary going on what each of the devices would do to the human body.
And then there were the ballrooms. Great round rooms festooned with dazzling candelabras; boots and bare feet moved gingerly across the floors of smoothly polished stone. Voices echoed in the stillness. The walls were a sea of mirrors; to glance around was to see oneself and those nearby duplicated hundreds of times, stretching backward into a hundred different infinities.
Courtly music could be faintly heard, like a whispering ghost of former grand parties; it came from a small section of one of the rooms which had been partitioned off. Behind the partition, old royal "home movies" of various parties and gala events were shown every hour. Kirk and his group waited to watch them from the beginning. They showed what this room had looked like in the time of Puil, filled with glittering guests and music, the images of the twirling couples flashing on the mirrored walls like bursts of color and light. The Federation men stood in the crowd and watched as the films chronicled royal festivals and party games, masques and practical jokes, pantomimes and magic acts. A poetry recital was followed by the torturing to death of a thief; both met with showers of applause and drunken delight from Puil's guests.
The coifs of the women were intricately woven and piled on their heads like jeweled mountains; the weave of the hose on the legs of the men was no less elaborate. Kirk and his friends watched the series of films through once, then moved on.
They wandered out into a maze of long, twisting staircases and corridors, encrusted with sculptures and paintings of the ruler and his family dressed in Terran Greek classical garb, in their ceremonial robes, even in Starfleet uniforms, receiving honorary decorations from the Federation. The Enterprise men winced at the sight. It was not pleasant to recall that the Federation had helped Puil to first achieve power.
Stemming out from the corridor were smaller ballrooms, the banquet rooms, the music chambers … they moved with the crowd, everyone gawking and craning their necks.
"It's fantastic. It's like some sort of grotesque amusement park," McCoy said.
"More like a treasure trove for a historian," said Rizzuto. "I hope when they get better organized they'll beef up the security and limit the number of people tracking through here. Their concept of 'giving it back' to the Boacan people is all very well, but it needs to be protected." He sighed. "How I would love to lose myself in research here."
"We do not know how much time we will be given to see the palace," Spock remarked, "and we may miss much of it."
"Very well, men," Kirk said. "Take advantage of this opportunity and go look at anything that interests you. We'll compare notes later."
They separated in the arch of the hallway and wandered off in different directions, freely exploring the palace with its hodgepodge of styles, more dizzying than Versailles.
Kirk followed a stream of people slipping through a hidden door in the wall of the corridor. It led to a dark tunnellike hall, and a rickety wooden stair that wound up and down through the palace—obviously a stair for servants. He followed it upward and it led to a long bare room, cramped by a low slanting ceiling, the roof of the palace. Light came in through narrow slats, hidden in the woodwork.
The people he was with stopped to listen to the account of an old man, a bent retainer from a long line of palace servants, describe what his duties had been, the hours he had worked, and what life had been like above and below stairs. His attitude seemed to change with every sentence. He was bitter about the stinginess and cruelty of Puil's family. He described the long hours, and the high rates of sickness and death among the servants matter-of-factly. Yet serving at the palace was all he had known, all he had ever been raised to dream of; his life now was without purpose. He said that the revolution had made him an antique.
The attic room was filled with a long line of narrow beds in which the servants had slept. There was a long troughlike bed stretching out at their feet; this had served as the bed for the servants' children. The dimness of the room bothered Kirk's eyes. He followed a family of Boacans out through the doorway, and down the winding staircase.
He descended all the way down to the basement level and walked out into another tunnellike corridor, past a well-stocked wine cellar, dust covering great tankards of the finest Boacan brandy. He headed on into the kitchen complex, where the stone walls seemed clammy with dank moisture. Stretching all around him was a network of stoves and carving tables, spits for roasting meat, boiling tanks and deep frying pits. New equipment that had been added in the last years of the regime augmented cruder implements, centuries old.
Old servants were on hand here as well, old chefs and kitchen workers, to describe the work that went into the feasts they had served, the quantities of food prepared every day, for Puil's family and courtiers and for beloved pets, and the great quantities sent back uneaten. Are they well paid by the new government to do this? Kirk wondered. Are they told what to say? These servants had many harsh words for Puil. But the older chefs were openly angry at the revolution, which had deprived them of the chance to practice and profit from their art; the common people could not afford it, and the new rulers refused their services.
There were small bedrooms down here as well, filled with berths for the kitchen staff. There were great chimney flues, and the visiting Boacan children crawled inside them to look around and emerged covered with soot. Children had been used, in Puil's day, for the cleaning of chimneys, and other such specialized work. Kirk knew if he lingered down here too long, he would have to leave much of the rest of the palace unexplored.
Stepping from the twilight of the servants' stairway out into the main hall of a higher floor caused Kirk to blink several times, from the brightness of the light. Light was the thing most revered on Boaco Six, and a well-lit home thus a sign of prestige. The palace was illuminated by vast windows of crystal and stained glass, aided by some artificial sources. Once his eyes adjusted, Kirk became aware of space-age noises which seemed incongruous in such a place, on such a world.
He walked along and discovered a laser room with a built-in light show unit, and a children's arcade—all the equipment was an example of modern state of the art Federation technology. Children visiting the palace-museum were allowed to play laser battles in the arcade. They whooped as they aimed and blasted at each other's targets. Such expensive, sophisticated equipment seemed unreal on a backwater world such as this.
In another wing, Kirk found a succession of sumptuous bedrooms and boudoirs, closets stuffed with clothes, wardrobes and vanities dripping with jewelry. It was a banquet of opulence, spread out for inspection. Women wandered, murmured, reached out their fingers to stroke a plush or glittering object—and then drew back their hands, afraid. A guilty atmosphere seemed to hang over the people here, as if they were raiders, trespassers in a temple. This mood affected the children less; they caught up and exclaimed over shiny trinkets, and ran their feet back and forth in the layers of deep downy carpeting.
Kirk encountered young Ensign Michaels in a room filled with women's stockings, girdles, and other undergarments. The stockings were piled high on the bed in a rainbow of colors, a dozen of every pair, and a mountain of satiny drawers was spilling off a reclining couch. A portrait of one of Puil's fat mistresses hung over the vanity in a gilded frame. She was dressed as a Terran shepherdess, and coquettishly held a jeweled shepherd's crook. A small, fuzzy, six-legged animal, with an orange bow around its throat, rubbed its head against her dress. The portrait was illuminated by a large lamp built into the wall above it, and it was at this fluorescent source of light that the Boacans gazed with wonder. Candlelight was still the reality in their homes.
Michaels stared around him, his face expressing awe and nausea. It was what his captain felt as well.