"I am Worf," the elder Klingon told the frightened guests. "What are your names?"
"Wolm," said the girl with a smile, apparently pleased that they had similar-sounding names. She pointed to her three companions. "Pojra, Krell, and Maltak." The young Klingons nodded and smiled warily as they heard their names p.r.o.nounced.
Data opened the packet of cherry cobbler and distributed bites of it to the four Klingons. "You will like this," he said. "Most humanoids enjoy food that is sweet."
By the way they gulped it down, thought Worf, they enjoyed it, all right. He thought this was a good time to ask the most pertinent question: "If the colonists gave you food like this, would you stop attacking them?"
Wolm looked at her comrades before replying, but it was obvious they weren"t going to venture an opinion. They were too busy eating and looking about nervously, waiting for something terrible to happen that would end the handouts.
"I would," said the girl warily. "But we have laws-not allow us."
Worf growled, "You have Balak, you mean."
"He is the voice of the laws," she said defensively.
"Where is Balak now?" asked Deanna.
"Seeing the G.o.ddess," Wolm answered.
"The G.o.ddess?" asked the Betazoid. "Can you tell me more about that?"
Wolm had other things on her mind. She pointed to the empty cobbler wrapper and demanded, "More of that."
Worf spotted eight more scrawny Klingons creeping out of the forest and starting up the mound. He could see them rubbing their mouths and licking their lips. As Deanna and Data rushed to dispense snacks to all of them the Klingon tapped his communicator badge.
"Worf to Enterprise."
"Riker here," came the concerned voice of the first officer. "Are you in any danger?"
"Only of running out of food," answered Worf. "Can you beam down fifteen full-course meals to these coordinates?"
The amus.e.m.e.nt in Riker"s voice was evident as he asked, "Any particular kind?"
"I don"t think it matters," said Worf. "We may need to request more food later."
There was a pause, and Riker responded, "We just relayed your request to Transporter Room Three. With all that hiking around in the fresh air you must have worked up quite an appet.i.te."
Not appreciating the joke, Worf scowled. "Have you ever heard the proverb: "The way to a Klingon"s heart is through his stomach"?"
"No," chuckled Riker, "I hadn"t heard that."
"It"s true," Worf said gravely.
"Your food should be there momentarily," the commander a.s.sured him. "On a more serious note, look out for any thin, green insects about a decimeter in length. There"s a type of mantis down there that"s very poisonous-one of them nearly killed Ensign Ro last night. But she seems to be recovering."
"That"s terrible," said Deanna Troi, overhearing. "President Oscaras warned us about the mantises, but I thought people would be safe in the village."
"Apparently not," answered Riker. "The captain is in the village, too, and you might want to contact him when you have the chance. I"ll let him know you"re serving breakfast down there."
"Thank you," replied Worf. "Away team out."
When the Klingon looked down he saw Wolm staring at him. The girl smiled, and he thought for a moment that she could be pretty-given a couple more years, a little fattening up, and lots of soap and water. A second later he grew angry at himself for these thoughts, until he realized that such thinking couldn"t be avoided. These survivors might once have been children, but they weren"t children any longer. They were on the threshold of becoming adults, and it was up to him, a cultured Betazoid, and an android to see that they became responsible Klingons instead of bloodthirsty brigands. If left on their own, they might breed an entire clan of Balaks.
Fifteen steaming plates of food materialized on the ground, which only reinforced Wolm"s claim that the flat-heads made food out of thin air. That didn"t keep the dozen Klingons from attacking it, and their ravenous hunger quickly turned to ravenous gluttony. They ate as though they weren"t sure they would ever eat again, and they fought like dogs over sc.r.a.ps and bones. Disgusted at their savagery and discouraged by the enormity of the task ahead of him, Worf wandered to the other side of the mound. He watched the fog dissipate with the first rays of morning, releasing the vast forest from its prison. He was standing there when Deanna Troi strolled to his side.
"They"re almost done with the food," she said. "What do you think we should do next?"
"I want to see Turrok," answered Worf, "and make sure he"s recovering. After that, I would welcome suggestions."
"It"s one thing to buy their loyalty with food," said Deanna. "It"s another thing to earn it. What do you think of Data"s idea about taking their Test of Evil?"
"Do we sink to their level," asked Worf, scowling, "or do we make them rise to ours?" He shook his head as if he didn"t have an answer. "What most disturbs me is that Klingons have a propensity to behave like savages. Would Betazoids or humans be like this after spending a few years in the woods? I think not."
"You should read more getazoid and human history," Deanna remarked. "What makes our job hard is that they have no frame of reference except for this bizarre existence they"ve cobbled together from a few childhood memories and a daily struggle for survival. I think you should be proud of them for the way they"ve survived and formed a society without any guidelines."
Worf frowned. "I"ll reserve my opinion until I find out more about their society."
The peaceful morning was suddenly broken by the pounding of a lone drum, which permeated the forest like the fog. The staccato drumbeats were in code; Wolm, Pojra, Krell, Maltak, and the others waited breathlessly. Worf was impressed because it looked as if nothing would stop their voracious eating. Carrying as much food as they could grab, they began to scamper away.
Gnawing on a drumstick, Wolm started down the mound. "We must go," she said. "Balak is back."
"We will go with you," offered Worf.
"No!" she cautioned. "We tell him you here. He will want to come."
"Wolm!" called Data. "Tell Balak that I wish to take the Test of Evil to prove our sincerity."
She blinked in amazement, as if she never expected to hear anyone offer to take the deadly test. "I tell him," she promised. She bounded down the hill and was gone.
Worf, Deanna, and Data looked around at the remains of fifteen meals and an uncounted number of snacks and packaged foods. They began to pick up the plates, most of which had been licked clean, along with wrappers, bones, and other bits of refuse. They stacked everything in a pile, then Worf drew his phaser, cranked up the setting to eleven, and vaporized the garbage.
"Maybe we should ask Guinan to come down here," remarked Deanna.
"May I ask why?" queried Data.
Deanna smiled. "Because we seem to have opened up the first restaurant on Selva."
Worf growled, "I fail to see the humor in this situation. They need more than food."
Data c.o.c.ked his head and remarked, "There is something that interests them in addition to food."
"Besides looting and killing, what?" asked Worf.
The android tapped his comm badge. "Data to Enterprise."
"Riker here," came the response. "Don"t tell me you need more food already."
"No," answered Data, "we need gifts. I believe the replicator is capable of producing a variety of drums and musical instruments. I would like to requisition twenty percussive instruments, such as snare drums, kettledrums, tambourines, maracas, marimbas, rattles, and gongs."
"All right." Riker laughed. "What are you going to do, form a marching band?"
"I have no doubt that would be possible given enough time," said Data, "but our immediate purpose is to make friends."
"I"ll check the replicator to see how many of those instruments we have in memory," Riker promised. "You"ll have them as soon as we can make them."
"Thank you, Commander," replied the android. "Data out."
Deanna Troi shook her head. "I"m not so sure the settlers are going to appreciate this."
Myra Calvert took the gla.s.s of apple juice away from her patient"s lips and scolded her. "The doctor said you should sleep. Why don"t you?"
Ensign Ro didn"t want to tell the girl she couldn"t sleep because she kept wondering if the mantis attack had been an accident. Myra was hardly the person to be burdened with such suspicions. Who could she tell? President Oscaras? Captain Picard? No matter whom she told, it was bound to create an uproar that would only further strain the relationship between the Enterprise crew and the colonists. Besides, she was hardly the first person to be bitten by a pit mantis; that much was clear. It was entirely possible that the insect had found its own way down her shirt, and her unfamiliarity with the life-forms of Selva had caused her to react in the worst possible way.
"Myra," asked Ro, "does the laboratory have any sort of visual system or automatic log that records who enters and exits? And at what times?"
"No," answered the girl. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason," sighed the Bajoran, slumping back in her bed. "I don"t remember what happened to me, and I just wondered if there was a visual record."
Myra rolled her eyes. "Believe me, Ro, you wouldn"t want to see what you went through. The only place we have any monitoring equipment is outside, on the perimeter. But it still doesn"t give us enough warning."
"Let"s talk about something else," said Ro, trying to sound cheerful. "Tell me about Doctor Drayton. I only met her once."
"Doctor Louise Drayton," Myra began, sounding eerily like a computer, "born in Ottawa fifty-three years ago. Achieved her doctorate in entomology at the Academy of Science on Arcturus IV. She"s been all over the galaxy, and my dad was a little surprised when someone with her credentials decided to sign onto this colony. But like all of us, she gets the first crack at cla.s.sifying the flora and fauna of Selva."
Ro tried to sound conversational as she asked, "Did she lose a husband, or someone close to her, in one of the attacks?"
Myra looked old beyond her years as she replied, "Ro, everyone has lost somebody close in these attacks. This is a small town. Doctor Drayton got a knife in her shoulder while she was out collecting specimens, but that didn"t stop her. She"d be out there now if it wasn"t forbidden. Most of the settlers wouldn"t leave the compound for anything."
Ro sighed aloud. She had to remember that she was living in a colony full of scarred people, both emotionally and physically. It reminded her too much of the refugee camps where she had grown up-the camps she had escaped in order to join Starfleet. Had she met Louise Drayton two years ago instead of now-in a place racked with violence-she might have met an entirely different woman. She was also beginning to think it was foolish and paranoid to blame a bug bite on a person.
Gratefully, her reverie was broken by a pleasant, deep voice. "Can I come in?" asked Gregg Calvert from the doorway.
"Daddy!" cried Myra with delight.
Ro waved weakly to him. "Please do."
As the handsome blond man approached the bed Myra exclaimed proudly, "It was my dad who saved you!"
"Was it?" responded the Bajoran. She rewarded him with the best smile she could muster under the circ.u.mstances. "Thank you."
He shrugged, blushing in that peculiar human way that Ro found fascinating. "I didn"t do anything but carry you up here."
"And look at the marks you left on him," said Myra accusingly as she pointed out three scratches on his cheek.
The ensign frowned. "Did I do that? I"m sorry."
Gregg smiled, "I haven"t been scratched by a woman in a long time."
With that remark Ro didn"t have to muster a smile-it came easily. The look between them lingered until Gregg glanced at the chronometer on his wrist.
"I only wanted to see how you were doing," he said. "President Oscaras has called a meeting, and I have to be there. Is Myra taking good care of you?"
"The best."
"I hope you"ll be well enough to have dinner with us," said the security chief. "Until then."
"Thanks for everything," said Ro.
The tall blond man strode out of sickbay, and both females gazed after him.
Myra beamed. "I think he likes you."
"You"re very lucky," said Ro, thinking about her own father and the horrible way he had died. The hallucinatory vision of it was fresh in her mind-only it wasn"t just a hallucination.
She wanted to change the subject. "Yesterday," she began, "before all this commotion, you started to tell me about a theory of yours. You said it was bad news, and no one wanted to accept it."
"Oh, yeah!" exclaimed Myra. "I first wondered about this when I came across a tree out in the forest that had been knocked over by lightning. This was before we knew about the Klingons, when we could travel wherever we wanted. Anyway, this was the biggest trunk I"ve ever seen around here, which is probably why it got hit by lightning. Like any kid, I counted the rings on the trunk, and there were only ninety of them."
"All right," nodded Ro, failing to see the significance of this discovery.
"Don"t you get it?" asked Myra. "That was the biggest tree on this part of the planet, and it was only ninety years old. A year on Selva is actually fifty-two days longer than a year on Earth, but they"re close enough for comparison. Ever since then I"ve been looking around to find something older than ninety years, but I haven"t found it yet."
Ro sat up in bed, intrigued. "Are you saying that all that vegetation out there is only ninety years old?"
"Yes," said Myra. "Don"t let the size of those trees fool you-they grow fast, up to half a meter a year. A lot of us have been trying to figure out why there isn"t more diversity in both plant and animal life around here. I mean, there"s plenty of stuff growing and living in the forest, but not as much as you would think. My theory is that something-or someone-wiped everything out about ninety years ago. But no one wants to hear that."
"Have you tried carbon dating and molecular a.n.a.lysis?" asked Ro.
"Of course," said Myra, slightly hurt. "Are you going to act like a grownup and not believe me because I"m only twelve years old?"
"No," said Ro, smiling and settling back in her bed. "I believe you. But if you"re right, and that same thing happens again-"
"Yep," said the girl. "This whole colony-and the Klingons, too-we"re history."
Ro lay back in her bed, staring at the corrugated ceiling and thinking. Finally she asked, "There aren"t any mountains or geological formations we can study, are there?"
"Nope," answered the girl. "This whole area is like a clean slate, and that"s what"s scary."
"Tomorrow," said Ro, "I want to take a trip to the ocean."
"Right." The girl chuckled. "It"d be easier if you said you wanted to take a trip to Earth. n.o.body is going to let us travel those twenty kilometers to the ocean."
With determination Ro said, "I"ll talk to your father, President Oscaras, and Captain Picard about it. We"ve got the Enterprise in orbit-we don"t have to walk there."
"Wow!" gushed Myra. "I hadn"t thought about transporting there. If you promise to get some sleep, I"ll go soften up my dad."
"All right," sighed Ro, suddenly feeling very weary. Myra"s disturbing theory had given her something bigger to worry about than angry colonists and poisonous bugs, and that freed the part of her mind that was forcing her to stay awake. Before the girl had left her bedside, sleep overcame Ensign Ro.