You Don't Know Me, by Jane Seaton

You give your hand to me

And then you say, hello,

And I can hardly speak

My heart is beating so;

And anyone can tell

You think you know me well.

You don't know me.

You give your hand to me

And then you say goodbye.

I watch you walk away

Beside some lucky guy;

To never, never know

The one who loves you so,

'Cause you don't know me.

Walker/Arnold

"Since you obtained employment by pretending you were numerate, a thinker..."

The young man started up from his intense concentration on the strange device. "I am, but this is… I have never seen anything like this before."

"Come here."

The absolute monarch of the tiny, but powerful, palatinate of Cordes was standing in the shaft of fading sunlight that was the only illumination for the little chamber. She looked very cold and regal. Most of the time she was condescendingly pleasant to her ragamuffin mathematician, so much so that he'd wondered at first if some of the stories of her cruelty were untrue, or perhaps exaggerated — like the current gossip in the palace that she'd had her chief gardener executed for failing to ensure that her flower garden was in full bloom for the party several days previously — but there were moments when a look from her could fill his heart with ice. Today was turning into a long string of such moments.

Standing on the step, she was a few inches taller than him. He came as ordered and looked downwards at her brown feet, criss-crossed with gold straps.

"Whatever all this is, someone made it. That someone knows how it works. Since I employ you, and I only employ the best, you must be at least the equal of that someone. So you can discover how it works, can't you?" She spun away, back into the daylight, leaving him in the gloom.

'Gordo Calibar, why did you send me here?' He went back to the panel and looked at it again, tracing the unfamiliar writings and feeling the protuberances. The thought of Gordo cheered him a little. If Calibar thought he could do something useful here, then he was confident that he could. And the Queen found him useful, kept him to hand. Thus he was in position to hear her meetings with her councilors. And Gordo Calibar wanted very much to know all the most intimate councils of the Queen of Cordes, the better to overthrow her.

But the device. If he couldn't solve this mystery, the Queen might well decide that a pet mathematician was a luxury she didn't need. The knobs felt shaped for fingers to do things. But what things? The panel was set flush into the marble walls of the chamber. Was there something which the knobs controlled on the other side of the wall? He quickly traced out his knowledge of the Queen's palace. He'd entered it for the first time, on Gordo's orders, only seven days previously, and there was much of it he hadn't seen yet. The Queen had only today discovered this little chamber behind the panelling in her bedroom. He could imagine, uncomfortably, how Gordo would tease him for being so close at hand that she should call on him first to share the mystery. Above her quarters was the roof garden with the fountains. You could see the damage to the plaster mouldings in the ceiling where cracks in the tiles had let water through. Below was the vast, arcaded prayer hall, which the Queen seemed to make no use of. So beyond this wall was the housekeeper's office, or maybe cupboards or…

He paused in his reasoning, aware of a ghostly idea that a panel here, like this one, could control things half a world away… but by what ingenious trails of levers he couldn't quite imagine.

He dismissed the silly notion. It was like the unease that stalked him whenever Gordo talked of assassinating the Queen.

Now, the Queen, while she still lived, had scribes, many of whom were expert in foreign or ancient tongues, tongues that a mere tally keeper, lately employed counting bales of silk in a warehouse, couldn't expect to recognize. He went out into her room and looked around for materials to make copies of a few of the inscriptions, to show the learned old men. For his peace of mind, he didn't let himself see the hangings on the bed, with their embroidered erotica.

He found carefully scraped paper, ink and sand on her desk. Beside them was a document already half written, in her own hand. He couldn't help himself reading it.

'The ninth day of the month of golden flowers, in the fourteenth year of my reign, may it last forever - I think I have found another. He says his name is Samon, but that hesitation is there, that lack of certainty that I recognize so well...'

***

It was that lack of certainty that Gordo Calibar, leader of the revolution, had tried to beat out of him when he couldn't overcome it for himself.

"Your name is Samon! I don't care that you can't remember what your parents called you, or what you called them. You have a name now. Say it!"

"Samon .My name is Samon."

"But don't repeat it as if you have to convince me. I know what it is. I gave it to you. People won't want to hear it twice if you don't give them reason. What's your name?"

"Samon."

Gordo suddenly threw the switch down on the floor of the dusty stable. "I'm doing this because I don't want you caught."

"Yes, Gordo." Gordo had been using the switch more as a threat anyway, but just a few times he'd brought it down on flesh rather than the baled straw. His nameless recruit was looking at him with very mixed emotions.

"They'll hurt you far worse than this if they do catch you."

That, the recruit knew perfectly well. A howling mob had swept like fire through the market place in the old town, spinning Samon round and tossing him aside. He began to retrieve the tumbled bales, safe in their canvas covers, and his employer had come out of the drinking den where he was steadily absorbing his profit, to stand and watch while his underling restored order.

"What was that?" the fat merchant demanded angrily of a local urchin, plainly wondering if Cordes was truly a suitable outlet for his luxury wares.

"A man without a name, sir." The boy boldly came and held a hand out for money and the merchant grudgingly pulled one of the smallest sort of coin bearing the Queen's head out of his pocket and dropped it into the dirty palm. "When they catch him, they'll burn him," the informant added, plainly angling for more.

"And so they should," the merchant muttered. He glanced at his tally keeper. Samon was stacking the bales on end and pretending to pay no heed to the boy. But the merchant knew he had no name he'd admit to.

"What's your name, mister?" the boy suddenly demanded, perhaps thinking he'd get more reward for uncovering another untouchable than he would for playing guide.

"Brer," the merchant told him shortly. "And what's yours, young man?"

"Dio." The urchin turned his attention to Samon. "And you? Do you have a name?"

The tally man froze. He couldn't even lie… and what could be simpler than making up a name? Every stall around the market place proclaimed a name, any of which he could have borrowed, or he could have made up something as outlandish as the merchant's single syllable.

"Of course he has a name," the merchant said lazily. "What mother wouldn't give her child a name? Or if she was so negligent, he'd take his father's name, wouldn't he?"

"Only if he had a father," the boy objected. His dark eyes burned gimlet bright, as if he'd turned over a stone and found a snake to show off to his friends, and as if it might bite him.

Samon ran. It was stupid but instinct took hold of him. He was running away from himself as much as anything. To be without a name… He knew it was wrong, indecent, practically occult.

Of course the boy yelled.

The tally keeper ducked into one of the narrow streets that radiated from the market place, dived through the first open door and found himself in a dusty barn full of feed sacks and straw bales. He could already hear running feet and raised voices outside, so he squirmed head first in behind the soft, night-cold bags of beans and grain.

His pursuers went past but before he could wriggle out again an inner door opened and someone came into the barn.

"Make that door fast! How many are we saddling?"

"I've hired six fast beasts, from a good man who'll want our business again, so if there's any talk of people leaving the city by night he won't say much."

"Good work." The creak of leather tackle lifted down from hooks on the walls told Samon clearly enough what was happening. They were on their way out. He had only to be patient and hope the owner of this stable used enough poison to keep vermin at bay.

The first man spoke again. "I don't know when it will be safe for you to return. Perhaps never. But your men and property will be well cared for..."

"Gordo..."

"Yes?"

Something pulled on the sole of Samon's sandal. And he could feel whiskers. He was sure of it. Maybe it was only a mouse…

"My having to leave Cordes suits you well, doesn't it?"

"Not at all. We need all the help we can get."

"But you still have all the help, under your command and following your lead. If I didn't trust you like a brother, Gordo, I'd suspect you of giving my name to the Palace Guard yourself."

There was an awkward silence. The source of the tickling had moved on. Samon held his breath.

"Sally, you know I'd rather have you here by my side than any other man alive. And should things… change, you'll be the first to ride back in triumph. Look outside, Nether. See if the street's empty."

The outer door creaked open and more than one person left. Samon was just about to make a move when a new voice spoke.

"And was he right, Gordo?"

"Do you have that low an opinion of me?"

"Where your intelligence and your honour are concerned..."

"Yes?"

"My opinion of the former is not too high, and of the latter, not too low."

Again silence, then the one called Gordo laughed and Samon, drawing a quick breath, found his throat full of dust and sneezed. They dragged him out by his sandalled feet and hauled him upright with a knife blade pricking his throat.

Calibar was a good half head shorter than Samon had expected, from the stories that circulated in the market place. He also lacked the scars that legend gave him, and not quite all his bulk was muscle. But still, there was no question who he was.

"You're Gordo Calibar," Samon stuttered out, as if to forestall any asking of his own name.

"Yes .And you're dead."

***

Finding himself staring into his own grave for the third time in less than a month, Samon swallowed and blinked, but for once neither ran nor fell on his knees and begged for his life, as he had of Gordo Calibar. Things had changed and Samon had changed with them.

He went back into the secret chamber, but his mind was not on the devices it contained. Another… Why should the Queen say 'another' ?Was she hunting down his kind in order to exterminate them? And if so, why had she said nothing? The entry in the diary was three days old. She didn't need to blackmail him if she wanted anything — she'd already had anything he could offer her — and the mob would lynch him without any encouragement from her.

"Well ?Have you come to any conclusions yet?"

"No!"

"Jumpy, aren't you?"

"No, I..."

"What a terrible little coward, you are."

"Yes, ma'am," he agreed between his teeth.

"The way to find out what these artifacts do is to use them. Go on. Turn some of those keys. It probably plays music, or operates a fountain."

He frowned. She showed no sign of coming into the chamber to carry out her own suggestion.

"There are labels," he pointed out reasonably. "I can't read them, but I thought perhaps the Queen might have scribes. I could copy them out if the Queen didn't want anyone else to know..." The court protocol of Cordes required everyone to refer to the reigning monarch by her title at all times. Samon had quickly discovered why. It meant you could talk to her and pretend she wasn't there at the same time.

"I have been doing that," she informed him coldly. "And no one recognized the script. They all said that it looked familiar but none could read it. They made guesses that made no sense."

He looked round at her, surprised. He hadn't seen her make any copies of the lettering.

"Oh, get on with it!" Suddenly she was by his shoulder. He had to force himself not to step aside. Her perfume was as heavy as it had been the previous night. "Try that one, there. It looks as if it has two positions. Perhaps one when this contraption is operating, another when it isn't."

Samon glanced over the panels and realized that her suggestion was at least more than a caprice. The protrusion she'd chosen was unlike any of the others, and did look as if it was designed to be pressed down at either one end or the other. He licked his lips for luck and pressed the end that was currently proud.

It clicked positively under his finger and the room filled with light so abruptly that he found he was holding his breath. The Queen appeared almost as surprised as he, but then she realized he was looking at her and laughed haughtily. "What a pretty trick!"

"But how is it done?"

"How should I know? Try another."

Clearly she'd decided there was no threat. Samon wasn't yet so sure. "What if the next one is fire, or water?"

"A little coward," she repeated with heavy emphasis. Then she leaned forward and traced her fingers over some of the flat, vitreous shapes set into the panel. One of them suddenly flooded with more light.

"Hm." She withdrew her fingers, clearly startled. "That's pretty too. I wonder if they all light up. Try some of the others."

"Which one?"

"Whichever you like. Just choose one!"

He couldn't see any reason to press one rather than another. The first he touched glowed pale, phosphorescent green, the next blue, and then one of the larger shapes lit too, with patterns that moved.

"What have you done?" she breathed, then: "What… where are we? Chekov? What is this place?"

The ensign took a steadying breath. The lights seemed to have a hypnotic quality. He was unsure how long he'd been staring at them.

"I… don't recognize it..." He turned to look at her, almost as if he didn't recognize her either. "...Lieutenant Uhura. What are we doing here?"

"I don't know, but..." She rested her hand on his shoulder briefly, reassuring him even though she knew no more than he did. Whatever the circumstances, the contact confirmed, they would deal with them together. "Don't touch anything." She went over to the door of the little chamber, through which reassuringly bright sunlight entered. "It looks like someone's bedroom out here. Someone with a taste for the luxurious." She looked back at his inquiring expression. "At least… part of me's saying it's my bedroom." She frowned. "But I never chose those hangings."

Mention of the hangings stirred memories in Chekov's brain, Samon's memories. He came to her side. "It is your bedroom. You are the Queen here. The Queen of… Cordes."

"Yes .I am… the Queen of Cordes. And you work for me as… as my mathematician. Well, at least that's in character. Why am I a queen? With such awful taste?"

Chekov could think of a hundred and one reasons why the lieutenant would make an excellent queen, but since the absolute monarch of Cordes fell something short of the enlightened standards expected of governments in the Federation, he didn't say so. And he was suddenly consumed with awkwardness over the need to tell her that, while she undoubtedly paid his wages, his loyalty in Cordes lay with one Gordo Calibar, who was plotting to overthrow her.

"What is the last thing the Queen — I mean you — remember?" he asked instead.

She frowned. "Talking to you… wondering what all those panels and switches were… as if I'd never seen them, or anything like them before."

"I mean, what's the last thing you remember as a Starfleet officer, not as the Queen of Cordes?"

After a moment she responded enthusiastically. "Yes .You're right. I have two quite distinct sets of memories. And as myself… as Nyota Uhura… it's having dinner with Doctor Fajez, with you and Scotty, and… and the captain of course and… and Sulu. Is that what you remember?"

Chekov nodded. He remembered Doctor Fajez's daughters too. He'd rather suspected that he and the helmsman had been invited along to provide a little social diversion for the two young ladies: not too onerous a duty. Captain Kirk had been merely enjoying a chance to see Doctor Fajez, who'd taught him at Starfleet Academy before returning to research on pre First Contact worlds. Uhura and Mister Scott had been the only members of the party with real work to do, trying to determine the source of a low-energy but all pervasive 'buzz' that radiated from Forman IV and effectively scrambled the Enterprise's sensors. The survey ship that had first identified the class M world, and left Doctor Fajez behind to gather information at first hand, had been similarly afflicted, but less well equipped to solve the mystery.

"Do you think we are still on Forman IV?"

"That's what I was wondering." Uhura crossed over to the windows and drew back the heavy drapes. The palace sat on a mountainside and the view from it took in almost all the habitable parts of the realm of Cordes. "Weren't you talking to Isabella about the city, near the research station? Wasn't it called Cordes?"

The doctor's daughters had been more interested in hearing news of Earth than telling anyone about their necessarily circumscribed life on Forman IV.

"She said something about a city, and a palace that overlooked it," he replied encouragingly.

"And do you remember beaming back to the Enterprise at the end of the evening?"

The ensign tried very hard to remember. He had accepted an invitation to look around the garden with the younger girl. There had been flowers with a heavy, syrupy scent almost like… no, just like the flowers that should have been in full bloom on the Queen's terraces four nights previously, if the gardener had planted them early enough. That scent was distinctive enough to upset any theory that the two of them were now on a different planet. And no, he didn't remember beaming back. As Pavel Chekov, he remembered nothing further until now. Samon, the tally keeper turned revolutionary and lately the Queen's mathematician, had been having a far more memorable time.

"No, I don't .But I think this is the same planet. It… feels the same."

Uhura smiled at him. "You'd never say that to Mister Spock."

He shrugged. "Then it smells the same. The dust is the same."

It was: yellow dust that blew into the houses off the streets and tracks. Isabella had swept it out of the living quarters of the research station with a dampened broom. Almost every door onto the street in Cordes was similarly occupied by a small girl doing battle with the dust.

"I wonder what's happened to the others." Uhura broke into his thoughts. "They must be somewhere nearby--"

"What makes you think that?" Chekov demanded. "Since we have no idea how we arrived here--"

"If we were scattered at random, I'm sure Mister Spock would say something scathing about the odds against you turning up in my bedroom," the lieutenant pointed out. "It's much more likely that they're somewhere near. And anyway," she admitted, "that's the only hypothesis which gives us a realistic hope of finding them, so we might as well assume that."

She sat down on the enormous bed and gave the hangings a pained look. "You know, I may be Queen of this place, but I've hardly been out of the palace. What's it like out there?"

Chekov looked at the hangings too. He was still sorting out in his mind everything that had happened to him in the last few days, making sense of them as Chekov, rather than as Samon. Making sense of what had happened the night before, in that bed, was not going to be any easier than the rest of it. But looking at the hangings was at least easier than looking at the lieutenant. Maybe she'd ordered so many young men into her bed since becoming Queen of Cordes that she'd simply forgotten…

"Chekov ?What sort of place is it? Come on, open hailing frequencies!"

"Well..." Chekov considered. He felt he knew the capital of Cordes so intimately that he could no more sum it up adequately than he could have described Moscow in a few words. "Uh… poor, superstitious, controlled by a ruthless minority who own the means of production and oppress the working classes--"

"You weren't thinking of leading a revolution were you?" Uhura asked him worriedly.

"No, not exactly."

She frowned. "Then what, exactly?"

The ensign's throat contracted. He couldn't betray Gordo to the Queen. Of course, Uhura wasn't the Queen, and yet… She'd signed execution warrants almost daily since he'd worked here. How was he to know she wouldn't still sign one for Gordo Calibar? As Queen, she'd have good reason.

"There are revolutionaries, who want to overthrow the Queen. I've… people talk about them."

"Of course people talk about them! Even I know that. But you talk like one of them."

An uncharacteristic autocratic note had crept into Uhura's voice. Chekov could feel himself slipping back into being terrified of her. "When you talk like that you make me nervous, Lieutenant."

She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head vigorously. "I'm sorry. I… It's as if half of me's still her and she… She's a very strong character." She thought for a moment, then went on. "You're right. It's probably not safe for you to tell me much, if the Queen isn't meant to know. We need to think about the Prime Directive apart from anything. How easy would it be to launch a search for the others? If I sent my Palace Guard out with descriptions..."

"Anyone who knew the Palace Guard had his description would leave the city," Chekov said simply. "You have to assume, even if they've worked out who they really are, that they have no way of knowing who you really are. There are no recognizable pictures of you anywhere. It's not as if there's a video news service."

Uhura suddenly stood up. "I've got it. Something I realized you and I had in common, even before I recognized you."

Chekov shook his head. "You're a queen and I'm practically a beggar. You're female and dark skinned, I'm male and white. You couldn't even tell by our accents. This city is full of visitors and immigrants. No two people sound alike."

"Our names."

The ensign's pulse quickened. "What about them?"

"There's something odd about names here. Something very significant. People use my title, not my name. But their own names, they're very protective of those. They use each other's carefully too. And you didn't - quite - do it right. Look." She jumped up. "I wrote it in my diary."

She was, Chekov consoled himself, a Starfleet trained communications officer. She could interpret what people didn't say better than he sometimes understood what they were putting into words. Gordo's lesson was probably still good enough.

"They kill people who don't have names," he pointed out, before he could think better of it. "They hunt them down and burn them alive."

"Yes, they do." She swallowed, and made a better job of maintaining a brave face than he did. "I happen to know that at least a dozen nameless people have been lynched over the last ten days. The chief of my guard included that figure in his latest report. So there's no reason to suppose that we're the only ones who don't have proper names. And there's no reason to suppose..."

"There was a mob in the market place, chasing someone. I ran away. What if it was..."

"Chekov, stop it."

"What if it was the captain? Or one of the others?"

"Even if you'd known, if you'd been yourself, not some frightened peasant..." Her words stung him, reviving her earlier accusation of cowardice. "...how would you have stopped a lynch mob single handed?"

"I could have tried."

"You'd have got yourself killed too if you had. What if I decreed that I'd pay a small fortune for every nameless person brought to me alive? It might at least keep them safe, if it didn't winkle them out of wherever they're hiding."

"I don't think it would work," Chekov said grimly. "You haven't felt it close up. It's irrational, like a taboo. There's something… frightening, almost revolting, about just the idea of someone not having a proper name." He looked at her uncomprehending face. "Maybe that's the peasant point of view, but that's what I am — I mean, was — here."

"No… I… I don't think so. I wonder..."

"What?"

"Well… Maybe it isn't just us, just the landing party and the research post. Maybe everyone here has been caught up in this. Whatever this is."

"And?" Chekov said, confused.

"Most people seem to know who they're supposed to be. What if killing 'no-names' is a safety device? A way of sifting out people who haven't been properly prepared for… whatever this is."

"You keep saying 'whatever this is' .Until we know that..."

"Until we know, we need a hypothesis as a starting point," she snapped. "Or were you planning to go back to counting beans until someone shows up and rescues you?"

"No, Lieutenant."

She immediately became apologetic. "I'm sorry. I've been a royal pain for… well, it seems for my whole life. I'm afraid it's become a habit. Do you remember what happened to your uniform?"

"No, I… I don't remember waking up somewhere strange in peculiar clothes at any point, if that's what you mean."

"No, neither do I. And that's another thing. I do feel as if I've been here all my life, but I obviously haven't .How long do you remember being here?"

He thought about it, then shrugged. "I can remember… someone's childhood. I seem to have a childhood here that's nearly as clear as my own."

"Then surely you had a name at some point. You can't possibly recall an entire childhood in which no one ever called you by name."

He was lost for a moment in his additional memories. He couldn't remember what his name had been, but he couldn't remember that it was ever missing, not with the sharp and immediate absence that had so terrified him when the mob surged through the market place. "I think I have been here for..." He counted off days in his head. "...eleven days. I think I somehow acquired an entire set of false memories at that point. But they are not… personal, not very specific."

"Eleven days..." She turned over the loose sheets that made up her diary. "There .I started this exactly eleven days ago. It must be habit again. I always keep a personal log."

They looked at each other. If they'd been here eleven days, and they were still on the original planet, why the hell were they still waiting to be found?

***

"Hey !You!"

Chekov ignored the accented voice that bellowed across the parade ground before the palace. He kept his head down, walking into the strong wind of his reluctance to go back to Gordo Calibar.

"I'm talkin' to you!"

"Me?"

A solid, middle-aged man in neat but worn garments had planted himself firmly in Chekov's path. He had a roll of parchment tucked under one arm and clutched a leather bound cylinder in the other. It looked a little like a telescope, but of course this wasn't a society where every man in the street had a telescope. Chekov, absorbed in his own problems, took a step to one side to avoid the obstacle.

"Now, hold on now, youngster. You may be her majesty's numberer, but that doesn't make you too good to talk to me, and indeed, it is exactly the reason I want to talk to you."

"Excuse me! I'm on the Queen's business!" Chekov tried to put her royal snap into his voice too, but the result wasn't too impressive.

"Ah, screw that!" the man said cheerfully. "There's something important I have to tell her majesty, but I know I won't get an audience on my own account, so I thought I'd tell you instead."

Chekov glanced up at the sky. The sun was just creeping up over the lower rooftops, making the long shadows that spread across the square seem darker than night.

"I'm in a hurry--"

"And do you think I want to waste my time talking to you?" the man demanded unexpectedly. "Listen, you just tell her majesty this. The stars are wandering in their courses, or we have a new moon in the sky. Now, I'm no sage, but it's an uncommon event however you look at it."

"A new moon?"

"Listen, I've been watching the night sky, and charting the movements of the moon and the planets. I've studied the writings of men who've done the same since before our fathers' fathers' fathers were born. The planets keep to their established courses, as do the stars, and as does the moon. Three different families of heavenly bodies, moving in three different patterns. There's been a new one, these eleven nights past, small as a star and sharp as a planet, but its course in the heavens is like the moon. Now, you explain that, as a man of learning. Where's a new moon come from? Will it grow? Are new moons a thing to wonder at or do moons breed like cattle, hm?"

"Eleven nights?" Chekov seized on that reference amongst everything else. Anything that had happened eleven nights previously interested him, even if it was a sudden souring of milk or an unexplained run of luck at dice. "Did you say this was eleven nights ago?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "Why, did her majesty's soothsayers predict it?"

"No, but… if it was eleven nights ago, and nothing has happened since..."

The amateur astronomer looked deeply annoyed. "Ah, you're no better than the others. You can only think about omens and portents. I thought being a man of numbers you might understand, but if you think it's so important, will you not take the message for me?"

The more Chekov considered the matter, the more he was tempted by the desire to take this information to Uhura himself, and see if she too interpreted it as an observation of the Enterprise in orbit. And then there was his unwillingness to carry out his current mission… But the Queen's… no, Uhura's… orders had been plain. He was to return to Gordo Calibar. And it couldn't be the Enterprise. Mister Spock would never let her sit in an orbit around a first contact planet where a medieval stargazer with hand-ground lenses could catch the sun's reflection off her hull.

And even if it was the Enterprise, they couldn't reach the ship without communicators. Gordo Calibar had the communicators.

"I am on the Queen's business already. Ask someone else."

***

"And presumably whenever we lost our uniforms, that's when we lost our communicators too," Uhura had said.

Chekov's memory of handling a communicator — recently — was so sharp and clear that his hand had mimicked the action of taking one out and activating it. "I've seen them. I've seen a communicator somewhere."

"Where?"

The ensign sat down on the end of the Queen's bed and rubbed at his forehead. "Gordo has one… No, more than one."

"Gordo?"

"Yes .He..."

"Gordo Calibar?"

"Yes .He..."

"My mathematician is a follower of Gordo Calibar?"

"Yes .He..."

"By all the names of God! You could have murdered me in my bed. The man's a fanatic, a terrorist, a..."

"Lieutenant!"

Uhura stopped in mid tirade, but only to stare at Chekov in horrified silence.

'It was your idea I should be in your bed,' he thought, then: "He is a revolutionary," he admitted. "But he's not… Well, perhaps I should say that..."

"Yes?"

"I think a policy of active resistance to the current political system in Cordes..." Her eyes suddenly seemed very cold. "… is not impossible to justify," he finished lamely.

He could see her reminding herself that she was Nyota Uhura, and not, at least usually, the Queen of Cordes.

"Well, perhaps," she said eventually, like a butcher being polite to a vegetarian at a social gathering. "But why would Calibar have our communicators?"

"Someone brought them to him. I had no reason to take any particular notice when it happened, but I think… I think one of his… one of his men found them… somewhere."

He was doing it again, assuming that they were really on opposite sides in a deadly civil war. Calibar's men had been setting up a hideout in an abandoned building outside the city. The communicators had been found there, along with other artifacts described as 'occult' but too unwieldy to move. Calibar had concurred with his followers' superstitious desire to find an alternative location for their bunker. But Chekov wasn't prepared to tell the Queen any of that, and to a large part of him, Uhura was still the Queen.

"Chekov, Calibar is rumored to be trying to kill me. Is that true?"

"No, not… not just to kill you. That wouldn't do any good. He wants to bring down the whole dynastic system."

"But, as a first step to doing that, he might just decide to kill me."

"If he… if he was in a hurry to kill you, he could have told me to kill you. Couldn't he? And he hasn't."

"How do I know he hasn't?" she asked pointedly.

"I could have killed you last night," he said. Uhura frowned and stared at him. She glanced across at the bed, and looked at him again. "After you sent the guard away. But I didn't."

The lieutenant shook off what he'd said. Memories of last night were clearly being refiled under some mental 50 year embargo. She continued. "No, but it doesn't look like you're going to help me to find Calibar and stop him setting someone else to kill me either. Chekov, I can't concentrate on getting us both - all - back to the Enterprise if I'm having to worry about tin pot guerrillas sending assassins after me. I can't do it if I'm dead either. All I want to do is put Calibar, and everything else, on ice until we're safely out of here. What's your problem with that?"

Chekov stared at her, unwilling to answer. Gordo Calibar was… "You wouldn't understand. No one who has not met him could understand."

"Why ?What's so special about him? You owe him something?"

My life, certainly, Chekov reflected.

***

Calibar had dragged the merchant's tally man back to his feet with an impatient gesture. "He's not dead yet, not until I've finished with him," he said shortly to his companion. "What are you doing in here? Who are you?"

"I'm… my name is..." The tally man — Chekov — fell silent, crippled by ignorance.

Calibar and the other man exchanged glances. "You might as well cut his throat, or the mob will only do something worse, and you don't want him to try to buy a few more minutes life by leading them here first."

"Don't be in such a hurry, Leoman, old friend. If you had your way, there'd be no one left to thank us once we throw out the Queen. Let me give him a name. Hm." Calibar looked round the barn for inspiration. His eye fell on the name painted crudely above one of the stalls and he reversed the order of the letters. "Samon .Can you remember that?"

"Yes… Yes, I can."

"Good .Don't tell anyone anything else. And remember, if I tell anyone it's not your name, or Leoman here does, you'll be dead. So you'd better keep on the right side of both of us."

Leoman, who had a craggy, unattractive face, split it into a smile. "And what if he has a perfectly good name, and a commission in the Secret Police?"

"What's your name?" Calibar asked, apparently ignoring his henchman.

"It's… it's S… Samon." Chekov floundered.

"See ?He can't even lie about it to save his life, let alone to earn his keep." Then Calibar turned back to his prisoner. "You'll have to learn to do better than that. Tell me your name again."

"Samon." For all it would save his life, Chekov almost choked on the word. Even if he didn't know what his name was, he felt an almost paranoid revulsion for what it wasn't.

Calibar frowned. Then he casually punched Chekov in the mouth. "There, now you have an excuse for stuttering over it, for the moment."

***

"I'll go tomorrow morning," Chekov had insisted stubbornly.

"Chekov, tomorrow might be too late. The Enterprise could give up looking for us and leave in the next five minutes. This Calibar might decide to throw the communicators out. You have to go now!"

"No."

Uhura took a deep breath and reminded herself that as a Starfleet officer, she was entitled to be exceedingly angry that Chekov was refusing to obey her orders, or to tell her why he wouldn't obey her orders, but the queenly response of having him dragged off and thrown into a deep pit somewhere with only assorted large carnivores for company was not open to her on this occasion.

"He… he won't be expecting me now. He'll be suspicious. You don't want to make him suspicious," Chekov insisted.

"He trusts you enough to send you to spy on me. Can't you just tell him I gave you the evening off?"

"I… would just prefer not to go now," he said, shifting his ground yet again. "Really."

"Tell me why, Pavel. If there's a reason..."

"The streets are unsafe after dark. For people without names..."

Uhura hesitated. Chekov's brush with the mob had sounded frightening, certainly, but was an incident which he'd merely observed from the sidelines. Perhaps he'd played down what had really happened in telling her about it. Still, he was a Starfleet officer, and usually one who masked his worries with a show of bombast. She found herself wondering if he'd really fully regained his own personality, the way she had hers. After all, she reasoned, there wasn't a trace of that tyrannous sybarite left in her. She had nothing in common with the woman she had been for the last eleven days. That was plain. Consider last night…

***

"But..."

"Will you stop finding excuses to disobey me!" The Queen jumped up from her chair and snatched her mathematician's pen out of his hand. "I'll do it myself. All I said was that the number of infant children who end up in that mortuary is shameful, and you've spent the last hour making excuses, as if I'd said it was your fault to start with. Now, how many women of child bearing age are there in Cordes?"

Samon stared at her blankly. "I don't know, ma'am."

"Who will know?"

"Um..."

"Come on, it's simple. All you have to do is tell me how many children are born every year, then assume that half of them are girls. Then if a woman is fertile between the ages of fourteen and say… forty, it's easy to…

"But who would know how many births there are every year?"

She stared at him. "The midwives, of course."

"But poor women aren't attended by midwives. Their sisters or their mothers help them."

"I'll pass a law. A woman in labor must call a midwife. Now what objection are you going to make?"

"How will they pay them?"

She opened her mouth and then shut it again. After a moment's thought she announced triumphantly "I will pay them. I shall put a tax on marriage. It can be collected at the temples..."

"Then no one will marry. And where are the midwives to come from? And..."

She snatched up his papyrus and tore it in two. "Stop arguing with me!"

"Yes, ma'am."

She stamped around the room until her temper had cooled a little. It had grown dark while she'd bickered with her stubborn, know-it-all mathematician, just as the light of her dreams had faded. All she wanted to do was improve the life of her realm, make it wealthier, happier, more sanitary. Why was it so impossible to do that?

It wasn't impossible. She could do whatever she pleased. It was entirely this idiot's fault that they were making no progress. He was probably in the pay of her enemies. She went back over to the pool of light round the desk. The young man had ink on the fingers which massaged his obviously aching temples.

She found herself wishing she could lay aside her dignity sufficiently to do the same for herself. She laid the pen back down on the desk. "You're tired."

He looked up, startled.

She was tired. She'd worked hard today, even if there was nothing to show for it. She deserved a reward. Perhaps those two boys the Ambassador from Figeac had given her…

Her mathematician was still looking at her.

But that would be stupid. He wasn't trained for it, disciplined for it. He might turn out to be vicious, as well as being stubborn and contrary. Still, he wasn't stupid. He would probably learn quickly.

"Call a guard in."

"Yes, ma'am."

She watched as the young man went all unsuspecting to the door of the office and spoke to the sentry on duty outside. They returned together. The guard was a short, slender man a little older than Samon, wearing a soldier's jerkin and breeches, his bare arms golden and muscular, his face slightly scarred, probably by a bout of smallpox. The rest of him was pleasant enough, in an oddly familiar way. He'd probably stood on duty outside her door for years, and she'd simply never noticed him until today.

"Prepare this man for my bed."

"For the Queen's bed, ma'am?"

She sighed. It must be infectious. Now everyone was questioning her orders. She'd have the guard whipped. Or perhaps… Or perhaps she wouldn't .

***

"And even if I go now, I won't get the communicators any sooner. They're in his quarters. I won't be able to… to get to them until the morning anyway."

Uhura frowned distractedly. She shook her head as if she could dislodge the uncomfortable memory and concentrated on what Chekov was saying now. No, he could hardly go barging into Gordo Calibar's bedroom in the middle of the night. It was reasonable enough, if she believed Chekov wasn't just lying about where the communicators were.

Uhura decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wasn't a barbarian queen, and he wasn't an assassin sent to kill her.

"First thing in the morning," she amended.

***

"I'll go to the Queen myself then," the man with the telescope said shortly. He tucked the instrument under his arm and set off across the square.

An almost impenetrable barrier of civil servants usually dealt with petitioning commoners. If the amateur astronomer got anywhere near her, the Queen would probably have him beaten for his impudent presumption.

Chekov shook his head. It was frighteningly easy to fall back into the parts they were involuntarily playing. Frighteningly easy… And with Gordo, to resist might be almost impossible. The ensign took a deep breath.

The narrow lanes were dark, cool, and busy with traders and customers going to and from the market even at this early hour. The ensign slowed his pace and picked his moment carefully so that no one saw him enter Calibar's hideout, yet no one would think he was loitering suspiciously.

"Well, where were you?" Leoman demanded testily, looking up from the cook stove in the loft that served as mess hall and dormitory. "Here, take him his tea."

Chekov let Calibar's second in command push a steaming mug of herb scented infusion into his hands.

"Where is he?" he asked, looking round the deserted loft.

"Still in bed. He didn't get in till all hours. And didn't sleep well then. I dare say he was worrying the Queen had kept you overnight in her bed again."

It was the sort of unsettling accusation that Leoman threw out all the time so Chekov did his best to ignore it. He sniffed at the tea casually. "No, there was… there was a discrepancy in the harvest census. She wanted me to investigate it."

The lie Chekov had been practicing all the way from the Palace seemed to come out well enough, but Leoman still gave him an odd look. "And what was the problem?"

"Some reports had been omitted from the total. The rent in kind for farms in the districts of Lot and Garonne and..."

"Take him his tea before it gets cold."

Leoman turned away, showing his customary contempt for wearisome detail. Chekov carried the tea over to the door which led to Calibar's office, where he also slept. Gordo was always up with the sun, even when he'd been out half the night. He should have been gone long since, and Chekov should only have needed to find an excuse to be alone in his office.

Instead, this.

Chekov knocked softly on the door. There was no answer, but presumably Gordo had told Leoman to wake him at this time or the tea wouldn't be ready.

Inside sunlight filtered through the shutters in stripes, directly onto Calibar's sleeping form. Chekov put the tea down silently on the floor beside the mattress where Gordo slept and trod softly across to the shelves where he knew the communicators had been put.

"Don't worry. I'm awake."

Chekov stopped dead.

"I like watching you, when you don't know you're being watched."

The ensign turned round. "Gordo..."

"Where were you last night, and the night before? I was worried."

"I was… I had something… I had to finish. I brought your tea in."

Gordo glanced at the cup. "Come here."

"I can't stay long. They'll expect me back."

"Who will?"

"People..." Chekov shrugged unhappily.

"Come here, Samon."

Gordo said the name easily, as if he hadn't made it up by reversing someone else's .Hearing him say it sent cold shivers down the ensign's spine.

"I think Leoman wants to talk to you," Chekov objected, as a distraction.

"Let him wait."

Gordo sat up, letting the sheets fall away from his torso. He was a man of only medium build, very fair skinned: like everyone in this city, not quite like anyone else. His skin glowed in the morning light, throwing the muscles in his arms into artificially deep relief. He beckoned to the ensign. "Come here."

"I'll be in trouble if I'm late."

"Wouldn't it be worth it?"

Chekov bit his lip. "Gordo..."

The man stood up and stretched. "Bring my shirt over then."

Calibar's clothes were slung over a table. Chekov picked the heavy white shirt off the top of the pile and held it out, like a shield between them. Gordo reached round it and took shirt and ensign in his arms at once. "What's the matter with you this morning?"

"N… nothing."

"Nothing?" Gordo touched Chekov's chin with the tip of his index finger. "Nothing ?You're not telling me something." He pushed the ensign away and looked at him. "Has someone..?"

"No .I didn't sleep well last night. I was working very late. I'm tired. That's all." It was so hard to lie to this man. Gordo Calibar, Chekov realized now, was the big brother he'd never had, the impatient, affectionate, slightly brutal hero he'd always imagined, if not exactly wanted.

Gordo mimed a punch, then kissed Chekov's mouth instead. "You're lying to me again."

"Oh, Gordo..." Something inside him seemed to liquefy. Chekov could suddenly believe that Samon really had spent seven nights out of the last nine in Gordo Calibar's bed. Samon, he told himself, not Chekov.

"Someone at the palace..."

Chekov shook his head. "No .Really, Gordo. I'm tired and… and worried. The Queen was talking about you yesterday."

"Talking about me?"

"If she catches you, she'll kill you."

Gordo gave him a puzzled grin. "Of course she will. That's why I won't let her catch me. Go and lie down. I'll make you forget the Queen of Cordes."

Chekov found himself looking into Gordo's eyes, which was undoubtedly another mistake. "I can't."

"You can afford to forget her for an hour."

"No, I mean… " I mean I can't go to bed with you, Chekov wanted to say, because normally the thought of doing something of that sort… He realized the fluttering sensation in his gut was a mixture of lust and outright fear.

"I mean..." ...just because Samon did… I'm not Samon. I don't even know who Samon was.

Gordo kissed him again. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

***

Two palace guards dragged Chekov by his arms right to the Queen's feet and dropped him face first so that his nose bumped her sandals. "We brought him directly to you, Ma'am, as you ordered."

"Get out."

Chekov lay there and listened to the men march out of the Queen's audience hall before he dared to lift his head and see if any outward change betrayed Uhura's return to being a traditional Queen of Cordes. It was only because he knew her so well that he could tell she'd been crying. She reached out to take his hand and help him up.

"What is wrong?" he asked.

She pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead angrily. "I'm sorry. I was getting worried. I wanted you to come here as soon as you came back. I didn't mean them to manhandle you. Are you hurt?"

"No .Not at all. A bruise or two. Nothing."

The afterglow of Calibar's touch didn't let the pain through anyway. If Gordo hadn't reminded Chekov he was supposedly expected at the palace, the ensign would still be blissfully asleep in the loft. He blinked away the memory and realized that the lieutenant was too upset to be simply reacting to her guards' method of escorting him into her presence. "But what is wrong?"

"I… Uh..." A fresh tear escaped onto Uhura's cheek. "I had a terrible dream last night, about all the people I've… All the warrants for execution I've signed in the last ten days. When they bring them to me for signing, they always bring in the prisoner too. I kept replaying it and one of them looked more and more familiar. Then when I woke up, I realized. It was Sulu."

"You must be imagining it," Chekov said quickly. "You would have recognized him at the time..."

"No, I wouldn't .I didn't recognize you."

"You would have realized sooner."

"No..."

"Then you must cancel the execution."

"Chekov, it's too late. They've already..."

"No .They can't have," Chekov insisted, with nothing to back it up. "It probably wasn't anyone we know," he went on, rapidly. "We'll question the guards… and the executioner."

"Chekov, I already did. I drew a picture of Sulu and showed it to them." She turned round and took a fine, translucent piece of vellum off the great royal desk. The ink was tear smudged. "They recognized it. He was killed three days ago."

Chekov looked at the excellent portrait of his friend. "They would say that," he said hastily, "if they thought that was what you wanted to hear. You don't realize that most of your officials lie to you most of the time, to protect themselves..."

"I'm not stupid, Chekov," she answered angrily. "I didn't ask leading questions. I simply showed them the picture and asked them if they recognized him. They didn't hesitate." She took a breath. "He's dead."

Chekov's instinct was to put his arms round her, since he couldn't actually do anything more helpful than that. But his instincts had been taking a knocking recently.

***

"That's enough!" For once, a telling off from Calibar wasn't accompanied by a blow, probably because they were standing at a stall where a pretty girl with ebony eyes was selling hot pies and cool water and flirting cheerfully with her two latest customers. She'd just turned away to serve someone else when Calibar, suddenly unsmiling, delivered the prohibition in a low whisper.

Samon had looked at his leader — he'd joined the rebels by now, for want of anything better to do — in some surprise. The girl had been favoring him over the older man, in Samon's opinion. But then she was hardly more than fifteen or sixteen. Calibar was probably as old as her father. Was Calibar jealous?

"Look, you little fool," Calibar began to explain, leading Samon away from the stall with his supper still uneaten in his hand. As they went, Samon caught one last regretful look from the girl, who was obviously annoyed at their departure. Still, maybe he could go back later… "You can't… do whatever you're intending to do with her. You're at war, on the run. Consider what would happen to her if you were caught, if someone remembered seeing you with her and questioned her."

"But--" Samon started to object through a mouthful of pastry, but as usual, Calibar didn't let him finish whatever he had to say.

"Think about it. She'll start to ask questions about who you are and where you come from. Women always do. You can lie to her, but she'll see through it sooner than you imagine. And if she's one you can trust with the truth, one you could care about, you wouldn't want to put her in danger, would you?"

"I was only--"

"Being stupid. So we'll say no more about it. It's only what I expect of you." Calibar halted and handed his own half eaten meal to the younger man. "Go on, eat that. You could do worse, if I'd let you. She can cook."

The pie was only spiced vegetables in a pastry crust, but it crumbled on the tongue into a feast of flavor, quite the most delicious thing Samon had eaten since… As usual, specific attempts to recapture the past seemed to lose themselves in a vague fog. He could remember a childhood, a location where it had taken place, a set of people who had been his family but not a family that had ever eaten anything, or talked to each other.

He shook off the unease of being nameless. He had a name now, just like everyone else. Calibar had given it to him. "Leoman can cook, but he is not as pretty."

He regretted the remark as soon as he'd made it. He could see that Calibar hadn't taken it in the joking way he'd intended.

"But Leoman, or Nether, or one of the others, is in the same boat as you," Calibar told him seriously. "They're already running the same risks. You're not putting them in any more danger than they're in anyway, and you're not risking your safety, and everyone else's, for the sake of half an hour with some woman. So that's enough. Understood?" Calibar stood and waited for an answer.

Samon blinked, then agreed: "Yes, I understand," even though he didn't .He frowned as he dusted the crumbs off his fingers and followed Calibar's newly purposeful stride through the minor city gate, where they paused and joked with a couple of bored guards, then down the alley that led to the river bank. They were due to meet some of Calibar's men who were bringing something in from beyond the border of the state. Samon didn't know what it was and didn't really expect to be taken into Calibar's confidence, but the incident with the pie seller had raised questions in his mind. It was all very well joining in Calibar's revolution, but he hadn't yet thought through the consequences. His refuge from the mob, he was now forced to consider, was hardly a secure one. At some point, he promised himself, he'd sit down and really work out whether he wanted to tie his fate in with Gordo Calibar. For now, his feet went on following the man as they had since Calibar had stopped Leoman slitting his throat in the stable.

They turned off the road onto a track, then a chest-broad pathway through the reeds and scrubby bushes that grew in the broad wetlands along the river, then onto a beach of fine sand. Calibar walked along the water's edge, where the river lapped his footprints and obliterated them almost before he'd passed. Samon copied him exactly. Although it was early evening and the sun was weak, the still air seemed as warm as it had at midday. Even the river water was tepid when the ripples covered his toes. Samon imagined swimming out to where the water was deep enough to immerse oneself in the cool lower layers that the sun didn't touch.

"This heat," Calibar said, exasperated by it.

"Will there be much for us to carry back into the city?"

"Yes, but that's for tomorrow. Leoman's organizing it."

They rounded a small spit of higher ground that thrust out into the stream with a fringe of palms along its crest. The beach on the far side was broader and a half dozen or so men were scattered over it, looking as if they'd fallen where they stood, exhausted, having struggled just far enough to reach the lengthening shadows of the trees.

Calibar kept going, and from that, Samon deduced that these were the people they'd come to meet, even though there was no sign of whatever they'd been bringing with them.

He trotted down the slight rise onto the sand and suddenly found himself face to face with a man younger than himself, wielding a knife. Another, similarly armed, was confronting Calibar.

"I was just going to yell at you for forgetting to set a lookout," Calibar said. The guard laughed and pushed his knife into his belt, but Calibar reached out and stayed his hand. "We've been followed," he said, so quietly Samon almost didn't hear him.

Calibar put a hand on Samon's shoulder and gave him a firm push, keeping him heading onto the beach. Samon complied, his heart pounding furiously. Danger… suddenly it was a reality.

Then there was an outraged, female squawk and he turned round.

The pie seller was kicking and snapping at the two lookouts, who were holding an arm each and trying to keep out of range of her mouth and feet.

"Why the hell were you following us?" Calibar demanded of her. "Who sent you?"

"No one. Why should anyone send me? I was just coming down here for a swim."

"Alone?"

"Why not? I'm not a child. And it's hot."

The rest of the men were rousing themselves in response to the argument. She began to seem apprehensive, but Samon noticed mainly that she was looking anywhere but at him.

"I can see this beach is being used. I'll go." She pulled out of the grasp of her captors, only to be caught by Calibar himself.

"Why did you follow us? You haven't answered yet. You were busy when we saw you."

"My sister came to help. I left her with the stall. I told her where I was going and said I wouldn't be long." She threw that out defiantly, hinting at anxious parents who would react decisively if she failed to return in due course.

"Why did you follow us?"

"Because I… I didn't know you, and I was curious about you."

"What are you? The latest recruit to the city watch?"

"I didn't mean for you to see me. I just wanted to know where you were from, and if I'd see you again. I didn't mean any harm."

Calibar firmed up his hold on her arm and turned to Samon. "See what I mean? You smile and talk politely and they want to know who every one of your cousins is." He pulled the girl round in front of him. "So, you wanted to flirt with my friend here? Well, Samon, see the trouble your brown eyes have made now?"

"Let her go, Gor… Let her go. You're frightening her."

"She should be frightened. She could meet anyone down here. There are smugglers on the river, or worse."

"And who are you, then?" she demanded.

Samon's heart contracted. He could see Calibar was trying to play the heavy handed citizen, to leave the girl with the impression that her main danger was of being taken home to her parents and soundly beaten for being so forward. Then at least she could be sent home. If she was really curious about who they were, it might not be safe to let her home at all, and he could think of only one way to arrange that.

He stepped forward and took her arm himself. "My name's Samon. We lost some cargo overboard from a barge on the river and we're looking to see if any of it has been washed up. But if anyone knew it was lying around, other people might come and find it. It's valuable. Come on, I'll walk back with you, to make sure you're safe."

Calibar still scowled at the intruder, but Samon could sense that his intervention was accepted, even appreciated.

"Yes, you do that," Calibar snapped. "And if you see her father, tell him not to let her out until she's grown some sense to go with those tits."

Samon nodded quickly, slid the pack he'd been carrying off his shoulders and steered the girl back towards the path before Calibar could change his mind.

"I'm not that young," she objected, although not until they were safely out of Calibar's hearing. "Is he always such an old fart?"

"He's right. There's no one much around down here. What if you met someone who wanted to hurt you?"

"I can look after myself," she said stubbornly.

"Like just now?"

"There were four of you!"

"And what if all four of us had wanted to hurt you?"

She snatched her arm away from him and began to walk more quickly.

"I don't want to frighten you, but I think you should be more careful," he insisted.

She slowed again and Samon heard a crack of twigs as someone shadowed them along the path.

"But that's silly. I could tell you weren't like that."

"No, I'm not, and neither is… neither is my friend. But the men who were on the beach, they're just porters. They don't even come from round here. They might do anything. You shouldn't take such risks."

"Well, if I had someone to take me swimming, it wouldn't be a problem."

She came to a complete halt as she said this and looked up at him. She wasn't particularly short but she somehow seemed to be looking a long way up. Her mouth had fallen into exactly the right shape to be kissed too.

Two thoughts collided in Samon's head. This particular young lady was trouble, that was clear, but young ladies in general were not something he intended to give up just because Gordo thought he should. He could appreciate the practical argument that Calibar was making, but the answer to security problems was to be careful, not celibate.

"Are you just going to stand there?"

He kissed her. She returned the gesture with unexpected assurance.

"My parents aren't really expecting me," she admitted. "I'm not that young. I just said that."

"I know."

"Oh." She tossed her head and smiled again. "When will I see you again then?"

"Next time I'm hungry. You sell very good pies."

Her smile dissolved slowly into a frown. "Good… pies? Well, thank you very much!"

He watched her stride off into the city and sat down on a half crumbled gate post to think.

Calibar had taken a risk in letting her go home, and beyond that he'd trusted Samon — up to a point — with the task of minimizing the risk that the decision would backfire. The politics of Calibar versus the Queen of Cordes were still a puzzle to Samon. He knew only the accepted wisdom of Cordes, that new rulers were generally worse than whomever they replaced. But Calibar had listened to him. Calibar had paid attention to what he said, and trusted him to handle a potentially dangerous situation.

And for some reason, that was more important to him than kissing a beautiful girl.

"You kissed her." He looked up. One of the men from the beach was standing on the path.

"Yes .Why not?"

"Bossy little bitch. In ten years time she'll be as wide as she's tall and making some honest man's life a misery. She talks too much even now."

Samon shrugged and stood up. "Did Gordo send you to make sure I didn't run away with her?"

The man shook his head, tossing blond hair. "To make sure you didn't meet her father coming after her. Are you coming back now?"

"Yes." Samon followed the man back to the beach, thinking. Didn't Calibar allow any of his men to have women, then? That must be difficult. Maybe they went to the brothels by the docks and that didn't count. He'd have to ask Gordo. There was quite a list of things he needed to ask Gordo.

On the beach, someone had lit a fire and broken into Samon's pack to find the food he'd carried down to the river for the party, but most of the men seemed to be in the river, fooling around like a gaggle of children.

Calibar was among them. He turned as they came to the water's edge.

"Coming in, Samon?"

"Yes." He knelt down to unhook the fastenings on his boots, then peeled off the rest of his sweat stiffened clothes. As he folded them into a tidy bundle, he felt the knife on his belt. Danger… Presumably Calibar had thought about it, but was it sensible for them all to be playing about, unarmed, in the river?

"Something wrong?" Calibar was looking at him.

"What if..?"

"If anyone comes along, we're just having a swim. No one can object to that."

"But..." There was no sign on the beach of whatever precious cargo the men had brought. He frowned.

"It's safe. Don't worry."

Samon looked for the hiding place. Among the stunted trees around the beach… No, they weren't thick enough, and their roots would make digging impossible. On the beach itself… No, the sand was clearly undisturbed, and probably not deep enough to hide anything substantial.

"In the river?"

Calibar smiled.

Samon waded in up to his waist, coming level with his leader. The upper layer of the water was warm but underneath it was cold and he gasped at its icy touch. Calibar grinned now and splashed him.

"But..."

"Always 'but' .What?"

"I thought… What if it gets wet?"

"It won't come to any harm." Calibar suddenly launched himself into the water and tackled Samon's legs, dragging him under. He came up spluttering.

"I just… I assumed it was gunpowder," he continued, worrying at the problem.

"Gunpowder ?No, and no again. It ignites if you so much as look at it, until you want it and then it's damp. I don't trust the stuff. I don't trust the merchants either. They'll sell you sand and salt and run off with your gold."

"Oh." Samon followed as Calibar began to swim out into deeper water. "Then… Well, then what is it?" It was all very well, not expecting to be told, but he'd been happy in his own mind that the load was gunpowder, so a lack of improper curiosity was easy enough to fake.

Calibar rolled over onto his back and paddled lazily against the negligible current. "Counterfeit coins."

They'd come level with the man Samon had identified as the leader of the new arrivals. He'd pulled himself out onto a tree branch that hung far over the river from the opposite bank and sat, watching his platoon at play.

"Yeah, Gordo. What do you want it for? Cordes coinage, with the Queen's head on it, what's the point of that? You can't use it anywhere but Cordes, and if we buy weapons here, or pay bribes, word gets back to her. You don't let us out to spend it. What's the use of it?"

Calibar heaved himself out onto the limb, causing it to sag under the surface of the water. "Let me see if I can explain..."

"I know," Samon said. "Cordes has base coinage."

The platoon leader frowned mightily. "What?"

Calibar extended a hand to Samon, the branch parted from the tree with a groan of shearing timber and the two men toppled back into the river on top of Samon.

***

"You could create chaos." Samon was still thinking about the cargo hidden in the river, even as he helped himself to the last spitting skewer of meat from the fire.

"I intend to," Calibar admitted.

The merchant's tally man stood and let the meat go cold. Economic warfare. Safer than gunpowder, but probably even more effective. There would be shortages of goods, as people suddenly found they had more money in their hands than they were accustomed to. The merchants would try to profit by driving up prices. Foreigners would step in to take advantage, bringing more goods in, and the Queen's treasury would be forced to relinquish the gold it kept to back up its tin money to settle the state's debts and pay the merchants who were withdrawing their deposits to finance their imports. If Calibar had calculated correctly, the Queen wouldn't have enough gold. Then she'd find she couldn't do business with people who no longer trusted her to pay: foreign mercenaries, armourers, grain shippers — maybe even her own army. She'd probably have to strike more coins herself, to deal with the rising prices, making the situation even worse. If Gordo had calculated right…

"How do you know how much gold the Queen has to back the coins she issues?"

Calibar smiled. "Samon, you're a marvel. I think fate must have chased you into that stable. That's our problem. I don't .She won't let anyone know, for fear of the bankers getting the upper hand with her, as they have in half the states round here. They daren't ask, and they daren't pull the plug, for fear they'll lose everything if they've lent her too much."

"Then how can you..."

"I've been wondering about that. And I think I have the answer. You. You worked for a merchant. You can tally. Not many can. All you have to do is go and ask for work at the Palace."

"But why would she… the Queen, why would she ever employ me, if you say she doesn't want anyone to know how much gold she has..."

"Three reasons," Calibar interrupted. Then he stopped and looked at Samon, as if he expected to be told what the reasons were.

The younger man shook his head. "What three reasons?"

The meal all but over, Calibar's men were sitting in the deepening dusk, drinking and gambling. Someone began to pile sand over the embers of the fire and the river seemed twice as loud now. It was beginning to be cold too. Samon pulled his shirt more tightly closed. Calibar hadn't warned him they'd be staying out here with the men.

"I'll show you. Come over here, Samon."

Rubbing tiredly at his eyes, he obeyed. Most of the men they'd come to meet were clustered around two of their number who were playing a game that was common in the drinking houses of Cordes. They'd scooped a series of hollows in the sand and were taking turns to place pebbles in them.

"Yes?"

"Who's going to win?" Calibar demanded from the other side of the improvised playing board.

Samon smiled. With the game this far advanced there wasn't much doubt of that, so long as the player with the advantage didn't make a gross error.

"He is." Samon nodded towards the man who was about to place his next pebble.

The rest of the spectators looked skeptical, but seven moves later, Samon was proved right.

"A lucky guess," one of the other men insisted. "He can't do it again."

"He certainly can."

Samon experienced a glow of pleasure. It wasn't much of a trick if you knew how it was done, but he liked the sensation of being useful to Calibar, if only as an accessory to whatever game Calibar was playing.

"Go on then." The cynic placed his first pebble for a new round of the game.

"I can't do it before the third move," Samon objected.

"All right." The moves were made and the group of men looked to Samon for his verdict.

"He will win." Samon pointed at the cynic's opponent.

The projected loser looked outraged. "How much are you prepared to wager on that?"

Samon began to shrug. Calibar didn't seem to think he did anything to merit pay beyond his board and lodging. He was broke.

"He'll sleep with you if you win," Calibar interrupted.

"Fair enough." The gambler bent over the playing field and placed his next pebble with exaggerated care.

"And you'll pay him three crowns if you lose," Calibar added, smiling at the outrage on Samon's face.

The other man straightened up. "Three crowns?" He looked Samon up and down. "Is he worth that much?"

"If you don't think so, you can pull out now," Calibar assured him. The predicted loser grunted and placed the next stone.

Samon watched the rest of the game, stomach churning. He had no idea if he was being teased or not. But if Calibar insisted his men had no contact with women… The gambler was a swarthy, black eyed man a few years older than Samon, with a broken tooth that his ready smile kept revealing. He glanced at Samon after every move.

The outcome was exactly what Samon predicted and the three crowns were paid promptly and good-naturedly.

He stood watching the next game commence, wondering whether to go and throw his winnings in Calibar's face.

"I didn't mean to offend you."

Calibar had moved round to stand next to Samon so quietly, he hadn't noticed.

"You didn't offend me," he lied.

"I saw you watching them playing in the tavern last night. I saw you work it out. I can see it, but I've never known anyone else who could."

Samon didn't answer.

"I thought you'd be pleased to have some money."

"It's a stupid trick. After a few games no one else would take the bet."

"Three reasons, Samon. First, you're quicker to understand anything than almost anyone I know. The Queen will want to use that. Secondly, you look like you were born yesterday. She'll never dream that you're three steps ahead of her the whole time. And thirdly..." He stopped.

Samon felt like a cat, stretching to be petted. Calibar's praise was like wine, despite its occasional barbs. Then he remembered the other half of the bargain and snapped, "Yes ?What's the third reason?"

"I wanted to know if you had enough faith in your own abilities to take a risk. I couldn't think what else you had to gamble with. And I wanted someone else's opinion of whether you might be worth three crowns. You see, I think that could sway the lady's judgement a little. As you said, she'd be mad to take you, someone she doesn't know, from nowhere, but then I'd have to be mad to do that too, and here you are."

"You were… You were mad too? What are you saying?"

"I took a risk, because I made a judgement you were worth saving, and I trust my judgement."

"Oh."

"What did you think I was saying?"

"That… that the Queen might… might..."

"Think you're as attractive as you're useful. Yes. After all, that girl chased you all the way out here, and Gidon was prepared to wager his savings to have you. I gave him a way out; he could have turned the bet down because you weren't worth the stake, not because he was going to lose. Now, I think you are worth the stake."

"You..."

Calibar raised his eyebrows. "It's getting cold now, and it's a clear night. I'm just saying you needn't sleep on your own if you don't want to." Then he turned to the bedrolls lying on the sand and pulled a blanket out of one of the bundles. "Don't get cold," he admonished, and handed it to his wide eyed follower.

***

Chekov took the picture firmly out of Uhura's hands and started to put it back on the desk, but stopped when he saw the second of the three pictures. "Mister Scott..."

"I asked about him too. I was afraid I..."

"No !He's alive. I saw him this morning."

"You did?"

"Yes," he answered urgently. "He was… I spoke to him… or he spoke to me. He wanted to see you… That is, he wanted to see the Queen, because he..." He found himself almost laughing with relief at the good news he'd somehow forgotten until now. "He made a telescope and he has observed the Enterprise in orbit. At least I think it must be the Enterprise. She is still in orbit. But Mister Scott… He thought it was a… a sign or something. He wanted to report it to you. He could be in the palace now."

Immediately Uhura was at the door, ordering a servant to take the picture and scour the palace for the man it showed, then bring him — gently — to her. That left Chekov looking at the picture underneath. The picture of Gordo Calibar.

***

Scott groaned and rubbed his forehead with the balls of his hands. "Where the hell am I, lass? And why don't I remember the answer to that for myself?"

"It takes a moment to get used to it, Mister Scott. Do you remember beaming down to Forman IV?"

"Aye, to check over Doctor Fajez's equipment. But..." The engineer blinked at the monitors and indicators that lined the hidden chamber. "He didn't have anything like this."

"No .This is an extremely sophisticated device that seems to be able to suppress a person's own personality and memories and give them new ones. It turned me into the absolute monarch of a pre-technical city state and Chekov into a revolutionary masquerading as my court mathematician."

Scott wrinkled his brow. "Sounds more Leonard McCoy's field than mine. I'm still a mite confused though. Who else was..."

"Chekov thinks he knows where he can find the captain. He's gone to look for him now. And Sulu..."

"Aye?"

"He was killed," Uhura said. "Before any of us regained our memories. Before I knew what I was doing."

Scott gave her a look that said he knew she wasn't telling him everything. "Well, we can… we can think about that later. What about Doctor Fajez and his family? Those two lasses..."

"Chekov met you this morning and didn't recognize you until he saw a picture I'd drawn of you. The same with Captain Kirk. It's as if our memories are in compartments. The moment something makes a link, it's all there, but… I'm not sure I'd recognize them. Can you remember what they looked like well enough to draw them? I can't."

"I can't draw well enough," Scott answered. "What about our communicators? Did they go the way of our uniforms?"

"We found them, or rather someone else did, and Chekov managed to get hold of them. Only they don't work."

"Interference?" Scott suggested. "Jamming?"

"No .They've been code wiped."

The engineer looked stunned, as well he might. If anything, a communicator or a tricorder usually, couldn't be retrieved, a coded signal could be sent, causing the more delicate inner workings to self-destruct. What was left would be no more use than a child's replica from a toy store.

"Why in God's name would they have done that, Lieutenant?"

"I can't imagine." Uhura's voice caught. "And I've tried. I didn't tell Chekov that was the problem. He's… a little too shaken up by all this already."

"Could it have happened by accident?"

"To all six communicators?" Uhura looked skeptical. "I don't see how..."

"That radiation buzz we were getting — this planet is obviously a good deal more advanced than we were giving it credit for. What if that was leakage from some kind of communications grid?"

Uhura nodded thoughtfully. "But even so… That would imply an incredible volume of traffic..."

"Big enough for six thirty four digit codes to come up while we've been here?"

She smiled. "Maybe .Thank you. I'd rather believe that than that Mister Spock just gave up on us."

"That was always the least likely explanation," Scott said cheerfully. He climbed to his feet and began looking around the control panels. "You used this to restore my memory?"

"And my own, and Chekov's .We didn't know what we were doing: it just happened."

"Then I'm not going to start taking it apart. We should be needing it shortly when Chekov gets back with the captain."

"I hope so," Uhura said.

***

The stable was totally empty: feed sacks, harness, animals all gone. Chekov swallowed the bitter taste of panic and ran quickly up the stairs, only to collide with Leoman.

"I have to speak to… to Gordo."

Leoman dropped the kit he was carrying and grabbed Chekov's arms. "Too right you do."

The sheet that curtained off the bunks from the improvised kitchen had gone, along with the bedding and most of the cooking gear.

"Look who's come back!" Leoman declared. "I think maybe you and I should leave by the back door. After we've killed this weevil."

Calibar was just closing the door to his room. No, Kirk, Chekov told himself. It was Captain Kirk. Only for the moment, the captain didn't know that himself.

"Well, Samon? Ah, no. Of course. Samon was just what I called you. You have a perfectly good name of your own, don't you? What is it?"

"Gordo, I..."

Calibar crossed the room in four long strides and snatched Chekov bodily out of Leoman's hands. "I don't care that you made me look a fool. I do care for the safety of my men and my cause. And it makes me sick that you weren't even honestly working for the Queen: if you were there'd be a troop of guards mounting the stairs even now. Instead, you sold her information. In exchange for what? Have you come back to try and make yourself a little richer at my expense?"

"Nothing .I didn't sell her anything."

"You're lying — again." The man's fist sent Chekov stumbling across the room. "You drew my likeness, for her guards to use in seeking me. Where else could they have obtained it?"

"I didn't draw it," Chekov protested.

"Then who did?" Leoman demanded, splitting Chekov's attention between the two men. "Who is the traitor? Come on, if you're honest, tell us." He took a step in Chekov's direction.

"The Queen drew it herself. She showed it to me."

Gordo shook his head. "How could she? She's never seen me. Or do I inhabit her nightmares?"

"She..." Chekov tried to think himself back into the mind set of a Cordesian. "She says she knows you from… from another life. She didn't even know the face she had drawn was yours."

"Until you told her?"

"She wants to talk to you. She sent me to… to offer safe conduct."

Gordo looked at Leoman and laughed. "With what guarantees?"

"Well… I could stay here until you return. With Leoman. I'm certain she won't harm you."

"A generous offer," Gordo agreed. "But how does she value your life?" He pulled a couple of very small Cordesian coins out of a pocket. "One penny? Or perhaps two?" He held them up for Chekov to look at. "Still, Leoman would enjoy killing you… slowly. I think it would be better from your point of view if I killed you now myself."

He dropped the coins onto the floor and pulled a knife from his belt. "Hold him tight, Leoman. I want this to be quick and clean."

"Cap… Gordo..."

Leoman firmed up his grip on the ensign's arms. Gordo stood behind him, pulling Chekov's head back to expose his throat. The knife gleamed, and close up, it seemed to smell of blood and rust.

"If you're trying to frighten me… I can't tell you anything else. I didn't betray you. Gordo..."

"I'm not trying to frighten you. Tell me, before you die, what is your name?"

"Chekov, Pavel Andreievich. And if you kill me, you will..." He stopped. In a few hours he'd seen Sulu's death eat into Uhura like a cancer. Now, he had visions of his words echoing through the rest of James Kirk's life, poisoning everything they touched. "I don't blame you."

"Don't you?" Calibar frowned.

"Kill him, before something else goes wrong. Or I will if you're too besotted with him." When Calibar still hesitated Leoman snatched the knife from him. "I'll do it cleanly."

"Gordo..."

"And quickly."

Chekov struggled as Leoman brought the knife to his throat. There had to be something he could say or do… Something that Gordo Calibar wanted badly enough to…

"I know your name."

"What?"

"Your name."

The knife was back in Gordo's hand and a safe distance from the ensign's neck.

"What are you talking about?"

"You took me in because I was nameless like you, didn't you?"

Calibar's eyes met those of his second in command and Leoman shrugged. "I didn't tell him." He released Chekov. "And I don't know how he found out. You're Gordo Calibar as far as I'm concerned."

Just like Kirk, assured of the support of his officers, Calibar returned to the immediate problem. "How do you know it? What is it?"

Chekov climbed back to his feet. "James Kirk," he pronounced. He waited for some reaction but the revolutionary, after a moment's thought, shook his head.

"Is it? I never thought it would mean so little to me to find out. Are you sure that's my name and not someone else's?"

"Yes, I am sure."

"And that's what the fuss is all about? Some label that means as little as the nonsense I made up for you? Is that all a name is?" Calibar turned the question on Leoman.

"Your name is… who you are," the Cordesian explained. "And yours is Gordo Calibar, now. You couldn't be anyone else."

Calibar shook his head. "No .He's right. Calibar is not my name. But I don't think… what did you say?"

"James Kirk," Chekov repeated determinedly. "Captain James Tiberius Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise, from Earth."

"It gets longer," Calibar mocked. "And what was your name again?"

"Ensign Pavel Andrei'ich Chekov, also of the Enterprise, also from Earth." Chekov was beginning to lose hope. He'd relied on the revelation of his name to open at least some of the locked doors in the captain's mind.

"Did you know your name when I first found you?"

"No, sir."

"Then when did you learn it?"

"Gordo..." Leoman interrupted. "We don't have time."

"Have patience. This is important. And if he's lying, you can still kill him."

"We have to go now," Leoman continued with stubborn desperation. "Gordo… or whoever you want to think you are..."

"You have to go now," Calibar agreed. "I don't .I have to find out what he's up to, and on whose behalf."

"If you say so." Leoman began to pick up the equipment he'd dropped when Chekov arrived. "I'll see you at… or not. You realize he could be trying to trap you, to find out where we've moved to?"

"We won't be hiding much longer."

Leoman shook his head. "I know. And I suppose you have to do this. But you..." Now he grabbed Chekov's shirt and shook him. "If any harm comes to Gordo, and I see you alive, I will take great pleasure in killing you just as slowly and messily as I can. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, I understand."

The door at the top of the stairs swung shut behind Calibar's second in command.

"When did you learn your name?" Calibar repeated, as if Leoman had never existed.

"Yesterday."

"Then this morning..."

"I did not only discover my name. I found I had memories of being someone else, someone from a different place, a different world. Someone who would not..."

"So, today you just came back for those devices?"

"Yes, I… No. No, Gordo."

"Someone sent you to sleep with me so you could get them."

"No .You don't understand."

"I think I do."

"I didn't know what I was doing," Chekov protested, although the excuse only related to an awfulness that Calibar wasn't aware of.

"Samon… No, Pavel? Is that it?"

"Yes."

"Why did you come back now? You have the devices now. Why have you come back again?"

"To ask you to come with me now, to the Queen."

"What ?Are you mad? Or do you think I am?"

"She is… your friend. You can trust her. She's like you and me, not really who she seems to be. This is all the wrong way round. Both she and I are your officers."

There was a glimmer of uncertainty in Calibar's eyes. Then his face hardened.

"Now I wonder, if the Queen wants me, and knows where I am, why would she not send soldiers, and burn out this nest of trouble at the same time?"

"She sent me because she didn't want you to get hurt," Chekov insisted doggedly. "She knew that if she sent soldiers, there would be a fight. And she didn't know until today that James Kirk and Gordo Calibar are the same person. I didn't realize until I saw the picture she had drawn, the picture of James Kirk. I'd forgotten. I had forgotten who you were and who I was. But we know how to make you remember."

"Yes .I've heard the Queen's torturers can hang you up by your ankles and keep you there until you remember whatever pleases her."

"No .Really. Uhura is not the Queen. She's a friend..."

"A friend." Calibar left the word hanging in the air for a moment before he continued. "Only it hadn't occurred to me that perhaps it was all an act, so that I wouldn't realize you were working for her."

"An act?" Chekov was genuinely puzzled.

"Come on," Calibar said impatiently. "You knew you're not the only person I have reporting from the Palace?"

"I… I hadn't thought about it," Chekov stuttered. He could feel his face beginning to glow.

"Oh, I don't believe that. You think about most things, sooner or later."

"No, I..."

"So, when she ordered her guards to have you chained up in her bedroom, was it just… a display of affection, from a 'friend' ?Or a masquerade, for the benefit of anyone who might otherwise tell me you were working for her, rather than me?"

Chekov shook his head miserably. "She didn't know who she was. Like me, just like you, now. She didn't know what she was doing." Then he looked directly at Calibar. "If you knew she'd done that… why did you ask, this morning...?"

Calibar looked oddly embarrassed. "You might have wanted to… to talk about it. Or not. I felt responsible for getting you into that position, not that I had any choice." He shook his head. "I could have just ignored it, I suppose. Sometimes, you can know too much for your own good. After all, I had a pretty good idea it would happen. That's why you were the obvious person to send to the Palace. I knew she wouldn't be able to keep her hands off you." He shrugged. "I told you that. So, did she order you into her bed? This friend of mine?"

"She didn't know..."

"Yes or no, Samon."

"Yes."

A very bitter smile settled on Calibar's face. "So, this friend, of yours and mine, affectionately invited you to share her bed, and you, not knowing that anyone was watching who would bring the story back to me, had to be held down by a trio of palace guards while she made love to you so tenderly that by the end you were weeping. Is that so?"

"We didn't know each other!" Chekov protested. "And anyway… There was only one guard. And he wasn't yours. Was he?"

Calibar shook his head. "No, but you can imagine the story went round the guardhouse, getting worse at every telling, so I'm leaving out most of the details."

"I didn't weep."

"Of course," Calibar agreed. "I know. But you see, Samon, I can't help wondering if she didn't do something even worse to you, or frighten you with the threat of it, or maybe even offer you some reward..." He paused. "I want to know if you're lying to me."

"I have lied to you," Chekov admitted. "But not now." He kept his eyes quite steady, meeting Calibar's gaze. Kirk had never looked at him like that, never had reason to wonder if Chekov could be trusted, or if he was plotting betrayal. And of course, in a sense, he was plotting to betray Calibar.

He looked down.

"You can't lie to me, can you? Your mouth might say something that's not true, but the rest of you..."

"I can't tell you everything, that's all."

Calibar walked off down the length of the attic room and sat on the window ledge. "I've lain awake nights, because I'd sent you to the Palace, knowing what happens there… I chose you because I knew what happens there. I thought I was… selling you, for information. But it seems that someone else was already playing exactly the same game with me. Who are you working for?"

"You," Chekov said. "Not Gordo Calibar, James Kirk."

Calibar took a long moment to consider that.

"And I can't be both, can I? Either I'm… Kirk, or I'm Calibar. Which would you prefer?"

"Captain Kirk is… he's real. You know Calibar is… unreal. Don't you? The way Samon was unreal."

"Not in my arms," Calibar said. "Did he find Gordo Calibar unreal?"

Chekov shook his head. "That was a mistake."

"Then is this Kirk allied with the Queen, or with the old families?"

"Neither .You are not from Cordes."

"So I am not the Queen's enemy or her ally?"

"She is… your friend. She's as loyal to James Kirk as Leoman is to Gordo Calibar."

Calibar smiled and shook his head, then he stood up and paced the attic again while Chekov watched him. The ensign forced himself to superimpose a mental image of Starfleet uniform and starship decks, in place of Calibar's white shirt and dusty black pants and the scuffed wooden floor of the attic.

It was at least five minutes before Calibar came to a halt. He turned to Chekov with a very hard expression on his face. "I found you hiding in my stable, spying on me. I sent you to spy for me, and you didn't tell me everything that happened, you kept things back. The next thing I know, the Queen's guards are looking for me, with a detailed description only someone who knew me well could have provided. And there's this picture too, apparently. Your explanation for all this is — well, unbelievable. Isn't it? If we're both honest? I think it's far more likely the Queen has terrified you or bought you, or perhaps both. So, Pavel Chekov, what am I to do with you? Should I trust you and give myself up? Or kill you and sneak away out of Cordes before I'm found? What would you do in my place?"

***

"There's no one up there," the landlord told Scott in an artificially bored tone of voice. "I haven't been able to let those rooms above the stable in years. The alley's too narrow and the stairs are too steep for anyone to run much of a business there, and the rooms are too big for a dwelling. I've been meaning to put in some partitions, make it more snug, and maybe..."

The key turned and the door at the top of the steep flight of stairs up from the stable opened easily, letting sunlight into the almost black stairwell.

A voice within cut off the instant it became audible. Unsurprised, Scott looked around, his eyes taking in the cleanliness of the attic, the lack of dust and webs. "No one here?" he echoed.

"Probably some vagrant," the landlord breezed unconvincingly. "Some deserter on the run from the army. I'll soon kick him out." He spoke loudly, to alert his tenant, Scott guessed. The engineer walked confidently across the floor to the only door out of the big room and stopped dead in the open doorway. Beyond was Calibar's office, as empty as the rest of his hideout but for a pallet bed in the corner behind the door, a canvas wrapped bundle of some kind and two men.

"What are you doing here? Who gave you permission to..." the landlord blustered from just behind Scott's shoulder. Then he too stopped as he saw. The younger of the two men lay bound on the makeshift bed, gagged with strips of his own shirt. The other occupant of the room stood over him, his posture suggesting that he'd just made sure his prisoner was secure.

Scott turned and pushed the stable's owner back out of the room. "This is the man I want, thank you, and I suggest that you go and count the rent he pays you and keep your mouth shut. You can leave us."

"I had no idea..." The landlord backed a couple of paces away. He hesitated then suddenly turned and scurried off to the stairs.

Kirk was looking Scott up and down. "Why were you looking for me?"

"Sir, I… I wasn't exactly. I was looking for him." Scott gestured at the prisoner. "You'd better untie him."

"Untie him? Why?" Then in an even more skeptical tone. "'Sir'?"

Scott scowled uncomfortably. "Because..."

"What business is it of yours what I do with him?" Calibar waited a moment for an answer, then shrugged and knelt down by the bed. The gag was quickly loosed. Chekov shook his hair away from his face as he sat up and looked in grateful surprise at the engineer.

"Why did you come after me, Mister Scott?"

"It occurred to the lieutenant that Calibar might have got wind of the investigations she'd ordered." Scott looked at Kirk through narrowed eyes. "Captain Kirk?"

"So I'm told," Calibar agreed cagily.

"Well, you are, whether you realize it or not… sir. Now if you'll untie the lad, we can be going..."

"You call me 'sir' and yet you order me around as if I were a foot soldier and you were a general. Who exactly are you?"

"Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, sir," Scott said. "Are you injured, Mister Chekov?"

"No, Mister Scott, sir." Chekov frowned.

"Good." Scott stood, undecided. He wasn't sure Calibar wouldn't run, or worse, attack him, while he untied Chekov.

"Could you not persuade the captain that he can trust us?" he asked Chekov in desperation.

The ensign raised his bound hands. "He doesn't trust me. He thinks I gave the Queen… I mean, Lieutenant Uhura, his description. And he thinks that she… I mean, the Queen, wants to kill him."

"If she wanted you dead, sir, she'd have sent the Palace Guard, not me."

Calibar frowned. "We've been through all that. But who the hell are you?"

Scott looked at Chekov for clues. "How much have you explained to him?"

"I don't think I really explained anything. I have told him that we are not his enemies."

"And it doesn't look like he believed you." Scott sighed. "We should have just sent the Palace Guard in the first place."

"But people would have been killed," Chekov said indignantly. "Calibar wouldn't have given up without a fight."

"No." The engineer laughed shortly. "What we need, lad, is for Captain Kirk to talk this Gordo Calibar of yours around to our way of thinking."

Chekov stared at him.

It was Calibar who saw the joke. He shook his head, smiling. "Well, since Captain Kirk is unavailable, I'll just untie my young friend here and then I'll leave you." He pulled the strips of fabric free, then hesitated before tousling Chekov's hair . "You'd have got yourself free in a few minutes. I only wanted a head start, but I don't want to leave you vulnerable, since I don't know your friend here. Look after yourself, Samon."

"Captain..." Scott pleaded one last time. "I swear to you, we mean you no harm. You must come with us to the..."

Calibar bent to pick up the canvas roll from the floor and Scott delivered a double handed blow to the back of his neck while he was off balance.

Chekov stepped back in surprise as the two men sprawled on the floor at his feet.

"Get those rags," Scott ordered briskly, pinning Calibar to the boards with one knee in a businesslike fashion. "If we can't persuade him, we'll just have to use force."

The ensign held out the bindings but Scott shook his head. "No, you do it. Properly, mind."

Chekov hesitated before taking hold of Calibar's wrists and pulling them together behind the man's back. Calibar flexed his muscles and tugged against the ensign's grasp experimentally, but the ensign continued to obey the orders of the only man who seemed qualified to give any.

Scott watched, then, hearing a door banging below, said "Be careful, lad," and went to investigate.

Calibar waited a moment before clamping his wrists hard against his back, stopping Chekov from tightening the last knot. "Chekov, don't," he said softly.

The ensign froze uncertainly. "Captain?"

"I didn't want to have to tell you this, because knowing it could be dangerous for you. Yes, I'm pretending to be Gordo Calibar. And if you take me to the Queen now, you'll be signing my death warrant."

"But Uhura is the Queen."

"Yes, I know that. You don't understand what's happening here. And neither does Scott. It's not his fault. It just wasn't safe to let him in on what's really happening. Let me up, quickly."

Chekov considered. "No." He made the knot fast.

"How can you be so certain I'm not telling the truth?" Calibar asked. "Is it because you're lying too?"

"I am not lying, and I am certain."

"Why?"

"I am absolutely certain," Chekov repeated grimly.

***

Taking Gordo Calibar unwillingly to the palace was going to be impossible, even if they waited until after dark. Scott went to fetch Uhura instead.

The moment he stepped out into the alley, it was plain that something was wrong. At first, he couldn't extract any information from the hubbub as streams of people began to fill the alley, as many rushing in one direction as the other, but odd words and phrases had got through.

"A coup."

"An assassination."

"A massacre at the palace."

The name of Calibar was on most lips. Scott stood for a moment, undecided. Eventually, he opted for finding out, if he could, what was happening. He joined the press of bodies trying to reach the square outside the palace. As soon as he reached the mouth of the alley, he realized why so many were going the opposite way. A line of guards, angry and wielding sticks, were trying to empty the square of the mob that had assembled. He couldn't see across the heads of the crowd to the palace.

"She's dead."

"Murdered by an assassin. Throat slit. All her jewels taken..."

"Don't be stupid. Her jewels are in the treasury."

"I heard she sold her jewels to the king of Sarlat in return for the use of his army..."

"All her personal guard slain, twelve of them. The assassin got away..."

"...was disemboweled on the spot..."

"..is being tortured now, to find out who sent him..."

Scott's heart was thumping as he pressed nearer to the front of the crowd. A soldier's baton flicked into his face, narrowly missing his eye, and he could feel the blood trickling down over his cheek.

"Is it true, the Queen's dead," he yelled to an officer who was moving along behind the line of guards.

The man focused on him. "What's it to you? Go home. Get off the streets."

"I was talking to her majesty only this morning. She sent me to fetch something for her. She can't be dead."

The officer frowned and came closer to the line. The soldiers reformed around him and Scott, separating the two men from the crowd. "Yes, I remember you. Well, if you want paying for whatever she wanted, you'll have to speak to her heirs. And..." he lowered his tone confidentially, "...I wouldn't make so much noise about having been in the palace this morning, if I were you. If we can't find the real assassin, they'll hang whoever they can get their hands on."

"She is dead then?" Scott persisted.

The officer flicked his finger across his throat meaningfully. "Yes."

As Scott hurried back to the stable, the crowd was thinning, leaving space for groups of soldiers, never fewer than ten or twelve at a time, to pass along the streets. The engineer ducked into the stable and slammed the door closed behind him. He barred it by slotting a piece of timber as broad as his own arm through the keeps in the door frame. It wouldn't stop soldiers for long, but the noise of them breaking in would give some warning. He ran up the stairs three at a time.

Chekov came out of Calibar's room to meet him. His eyes widened at the blood on the engineer's face. "Is something..."

"There's a rumor that the Queen has been assassinated. The palace guard are keeping everyone away from the palace, and the army is on the streets. Is this Calibar's doing?"

The question became an accusation. Chekov shook his head slowly. "No .No, he was planning something else, not to kill her. He said it wasn't worth killing the Queen, because..."

"Is it possible any of his followers are responsible?"

Chekov blinked. "I don't think so. Why? If she's… if she's dead..."

"Why ?Because if they were, the palace guard might arrive here in search of Gordo Calibar at any moment. If the assassin was caught and knows about this place..."

"I don't know where they've all gone to," Chekov admitted. "I don't know what they were doing. I know Leoman wanted to kill the Queen, but Gordo told him it was pointless. I don't think Leoman would do anything..."

"No, I never thought he would," Calibar said, from the door of his office. He was leaning up against the frame, looking a little shaken by the news. "But… We had the devil's own argument just before you arrived, Samon. He's never been able to understand anything but killing, not that he didn't have reason. And then when you turned up and delayed us further..." Calibar shook his head. "I didn't think he'd ever do this, though. A year's work thrown away, and nothing to show for it but the expense of another coronation to be met by more taxes. I should have — I don't know — sent him on some adventure where he could get himself killed without doing any harm. Gods!" He tugged at his bound hands. "If it was him, more than likely he's been caught, or whoever he talked into this idiocy has. Samon, take your friend and get out of here now, but if you've any regard for me, untie me first and let me get away myself!"

"We daren't go to the palace now," Scott said, ignoring Calibar's entreaty.

"I could go," Chekov offered, and then amended, "Only that's no use."

"Aye, so where do we go?" Scott looked resentfully at Calibar. "That's two deaths, and more maybe that we don't know about. Uhura said you got the communicators from someone who found them, Chekov. Who was that?"

The ensign's face fell at the mention of the lieutenant's name. Scott bit his lip. "Look, Mister Chekov, she was a grand friend, and an excellent officer, but for now… we need to find either the research station we were taken from, or another room like the one at the palace. Either should give us an opportunity to contact the ship and get help."

Chekov turned hesitantly to Calibar. "Gordo..."

"Those boxes you took away? They found them at a farmhouse, a ruin, some way out of the city. The place was deserted. That's why we were interested in it."

"A ruined farmhouse?" Scott shook his head. It certainly didn't sound like the Fajez family's neat and deceptively primitive residence.

He and Chekov talked on, debating whether every seat of local government would conceal a secret room like the one in the Palace, whether they could hope to find Doctor Fajez' base: all they knew was a set of transporter co-ordinates, meaningless on the ground with no map and no idea of their present location. They turned the various options over and over, trying to pinpoint the strategy which gave them the best hope of achieving something. To some extent the talking was a way to stop themselves thinking. Chekov didn't even know if Scott was aware how Sulu had died.

Calibar sat silent, listening to them but saying nothing until their deliberations brought them round to the concealed room again. "How did the Queen find it?"

Chekov started at his voice, as if he'd forgotten about the third, unwilling member of their party. "She… " He stopped.

"Go on," Scott said.

"The plaster on the wall was damaged. There was a… a struggle..."

"Another assassination attempt?" Scott demanded impatiently. "If you knew that..."

"No .Just a… a struggle. I fell against the wall, and the plaster came away. There was a skin of it, of plaster over the panel and it just flaked off. The panel wasn't locked. Once you saw there was something there, you could easily open it and get inside." It was, in fact, curiously like the arrangement in the observation station, where the communications hardware was hidden in the thickness of the wall of the ancient house, behind a carefully fitted whitewashed panel.

"Where?" Calibar demanded.

"In the palace."

"Where in the palace?" Calibar snapped impatiently.

"Is it important?" Chekov snapped in turn. "In her bedroom, if you want to know."

"Mister Chekov," Scott admonished absently. "So there was nothing external, to let you know the hidden room was there?"

Chekov tried to remember everything about the room, the wall itself. When the Queen had asked for him again, in the late afternoon, he'd come reluctantly from his official place of work in the treasury office. She'd given him some papers to check over, something to do with taxes on imports of wine and preserved fruit. She'd said nothing about the previous night's events, but he'd been aware of her, looking at him out of the corner of her eye as she discussed household business with her chamberlain. He didn't care for the fact that she'd called him now, near the end of the working day, and to her bedroom once again. He wasn't flattered by her continued interest. He wanted to go back to Gordo.

Eventually, he'd finished totaling the lists of payments and crossed the rugs on the tiled floor to where she stood, to give it to her. When he'd flinched away from her kiss, she'd slapped him, hard enough to knock him back against the wall. That was all it had taken. He'd been terrified for a moment, by the almost silent fall of the plaster like snow from a roof at the end of winter, until he'd realized she was immediately more curious than angry.

"No .Until the wall was damaged, there was no sign of it."

Calibar scowled at Chekov, for no reason the ensign could see. "And what did it look like inside?" he probed.

The ensign frowned. The Queen had watched as he cleared the debris and revealed that the door was just what it seemed. Then she had sent him in before she entered herself.

"It was dark, with panels of switches..."

"Of what?"

For a moment, he'd thought he was talking to Kirk. He bit his lip and pulled his useless communicator out, opening it and showing Calibar the little control panel. "These are switches. But there were many more of them."

"What are they for?"

"You press them and… If it's working, that makes things happen. There were screens too." Chekov sighed. "Like windows, but with nothing on the other side, until… until you press the right switches. Then you can usually see things in the windows. The first switch we tried just turned the lights on."

"The room lit up?" Calibar asked.

"Yes." Chekov glanced at Scott for guidance. "How did you..."

"There was something like that where they found your..." Calibar gestured at the communicator. "Only no one lost their memory, or found it."

"The observation station," Scott said, triumphantly. "That's where we need to go." He turned to Chekov. "Do you know where this was?"

Chekov shook his head and looked at Calibar, who smiled. "I know. I can take you there."

They decided, after some discussion into which they all put their different knowledge of the city of Cordes, to head out of the city at early evening. There was likely to be a curfew at dusk, Calibar reckoned, and something of a rush to get everything done before then. Of course, anything that meant moving around the city in the present state of unrest was likely to bring them face to face with soldiers. They had no idea how widely Uhura's instructions to search for Scott and Kirk had been spread, or what reason she'd given for wanting the two men. There was the danger that they'd be recognized and arrested, but also the continuing risk that soldiers would arrive shortly at their present location. They had to move, and once they did, there was little to be gained by staying in the city.

Scott sent Chekov out to buy food. When he returned with provisions, Scott was pacing in the main attic. Calibar was sitting on the pallet bed, his hands still tied. Chekov took his purchases through into the smaller room and spread the food out on the window sill then turned back to face the engineer who had followed him in. "Are we going to untie the captain now, Mister Scott?"

Scott shrugged. "We'll have to once we move out of here, and now you're back, I suppose there are two of us to watch him."

It took Scott a moment to remove the bonds, allowing Calibar to stand up, stretch his arms and rub his wrists.

"Thank you, Samon," Calibar said quite deliberately, as if Chekov alone had the discretion to free him.

"That is not my name, sir." Chekov had been congratulating himself on the professional way he was behaving towards Calibar. He was determined to continue.

"Oh, no. I forgot. What was it again?" Calibar moved over to the window and looked at the food on offer.

"Chekov .Ensign Chekov."

"No .That's not what you said before." Calibar tore a piece of crust off one of the loaves.

"That is what you call me," Chekov said firmly.

Scott looked between the two men. "Well, now you're free, Captain, or Calibar, if you'd rather, why don't you tell us exactly where you found the communicators?"

Calibar ignored him. He poured a few drops of oil onto his bread from the bottle Chekov had brought, then reached out to take Chekov's chin in his still greasy fingers. The ensign jerked his head away. "Leave me..."

Scott took a step forward, then stopped abruptly, as if unsure of his right to interfere.

Calibar smiled oddly. "Well, now. You tell me you're both mine to command, but I don't see myself being allowed to do anything much. I'd still be tied up if you didn't need me as a guide." He took hold of a handful of Chekov's shirt and pulled the ensign round to face him. "I'm not quite sure yet what's going on with you two."

"Leave him alone!" Scott protested, but still didn't actively intervene to stop Calibar.

The rebel ran the edge of one finger down Chekov's cheek, and then pulled him into a hard, passionless kiss.

Chekov jerked away and stood there, looking at Scott.

Calibar shook his head at the engineer. "Are you going to stand there and let me do whatever I like to him?"

Scott fidgeted. "Captain… Calibar… there's no call to bully the lad. He's trying to help you, the best way he can. An' so am I. You don't belong here. You don't..."

"I know," Calibar broke in, unexpectedly. Then he grimaced at the disbelieving expression on Scott's face. "I'm not joking. I believe you. I know I'm not Gordo Calibar. It's like wearing a mask, too big, too noisy, too bright… But what are you offering me in return for giving that up?" He turned to address himself to Chekov. "I can see the difference in you. I could see it when you came back from her that morning. The morning after the struggle. In her bedroom. You knew who you were. And I couldn't see it then, but I can understand now, what happened when you remembered who I was too."

"Yes, I..." Chekov started to explain then stopped again. "Because..."

"Because now I'm someone you're frightened of. You were never frightened of Gordo Calibar, Samon. Of your own shadow maybe, but not Calibar."

"You saved my life," Chekov protested as if he was being accused of something.

"That's not all I did for you."

"Lay off him!" Scott raged, his patience suddenly snapping. "We should be eating and getting away from here. Let the lad have his meal in peace. Stop bullying him."

Calibar dropped his teasing smile. "A bully, am I?" His eyes slid across to Samon and his mouth tucked up at the corners again. "I suppose you could say that, but not in the way you mean, Mister Scott. You must imagine that I dragged your shy young friend here into my bed. Not quite the way it happened, was it? If I remember right, no one forced anyone. In fact I seem to remember..."

***

Samon wrapped the coarse, threadbare blanket around himself and wished again he'd realized they were planning a night in the open. He could have brought an extra blanket. Still, next time…

That was a comforting thought. At last he could honestly feel he had something to offer Gordo, that there was some reason why the man fed him and clothed him. His knees were beginning to ache from being pulled up close to his chest but it was too cold to stretch out. He turned over and all the comfortable moulding of the pine needles to his body became a series of rock hard ridges. He turned back.

A low hooting call drifted down from the trees and he heard someone climb to their feet. Then there was a soft muttering of men's voices getting a little louder as the new arrivals came across the beach. Someone who'd been expected, clearly. Leoman's voice was recognizable, a little harsher than Gordo's, a little more grating.

"You're being a fool about this, Gordo."

"Am I?"

Samon scowled to himself. No one but Leoman would dare say such a thing to Calibar.

"And for what? That's what I don't understand."

"I know you don't like him..."

"I don't know myself if I like him or not. All I say is that I don't trust him. And you know why that is. The mystery is why you have such a high regard for this no-name. Why take the risk, Gordo?"

Gordo didn't answer. Samon lay there and waited for him to make a case, to repeat some of the strokes of the previous evening.

"If it's for his backside, he doesn't seem to be earning his keep," Leoman goaded.

"Then I'll have to make him work harder," Gordo said lazily.

There was a snort of disapproval. Samon couldn't tell if the sounds he heard next were Leoman's departure or someone unrolling a blanket and settling for the night. His head was spinning. Not compliments, but flattery. Not companionship but seduction. Of course Gordo Calibar had a use for him, and not for his mind or any other talents.

The cold in his arms and legs seemed to have concentrated into his gut. Samon curled up tighter, trying to still his shivering.

He could run away. There had to be somewhere he could go. He tried to work through his options. He had a name now, at least, one he could say with as much confidence as any other man. The name Gordo had given him.

Everything he was, Gordo had given him, even the useless blanket and the food that lay like clay in his belly.

Samon kicked free of his tangled bedding and walked over to where Gordo lay. He knelt down by the sleeping man and touched one shoulder lightly with his fingers. Calibar shot upright like a bolt from a crossbow, his hand clamping Samon's wrist. Then he subsided, his breathing still fast and shallow.

"Damn you. What are you playing at?"

"I don't want to sleep on my own tonight."

Calibar looked at him as if he was mad. "What are you talking about?"

Samon took a deep breath. "You said, I didn't have to sleep on my own. So… I don't want to."

The moon was bright enough for him to see understanding dawn in Calibar's eyes.

"You were listening..."

"I couldn't help it. I was awake."

Calibar released his wrist. "You don't have to worry about Leoman. He means well. And however much he complains, he won't disobey me."

"I'm not worried about Leoman."

"Then what..."

"I don't want you to send me away. I don't have anywhere else to go."

Gordo shook his head. "Go back to sleep, Samon. Or if you're just cold and lonely, wake someone else up to take care of it."

"If this is what you want me for..."

"I won't send you away."

"You won't?"

"No .Not against your will. I won't sleep with you against your will either."

"It's not against my will."

"Then why are you quivering like a blade of grass?"

"It's cold."

"Not so cold as all that," Calibar disagreed.

"For all the stars in heaven, Gordo, do you have to seduce him out loud?"

Samon started. He didn't recognize the voice, but half a dozen sleepy laughs greeted the comment. Calibar's grip on his arm firmed up as their leader joined in the laughter. "We're sorry if we disturbed you. He'll try not to make too much noise."

Samon found himself being pulled down onto the ground and under Calibar's blanket. The older man was naked, and a minute later, he'd pulled off most of Samon's clothes and pushed them out of their shared bed. Calibar's skin felt deliciously hot but icy draughts of night cold crept in under the blanket with them as Calibar moved to lie on top of him. Samon folded his arms underneath his face.

***

Chekov turned his back on Scott and Calibar, and concentrated on putting together a cold meat sandwich he didn't want.

Scott was staring at Calibar in frank disbelief.

"What the hell did your James Kirk do to him, Scott?"

The engineer shook himself as if to dispel a bad dream. "Nothing .He's not frightened of anyone. He's just..."

"And you hate me," Calibar said baldly. "Don't you?"

"I don't like Gordo Calibar," Scott agreed grimly, "but that's beside the point."

"And this Kirk? What about him?"

"He's my captain and… and my friend, and I'd be best pleased to get him back to help us out of this mess, if I had the first idea of how to do that."

As usual, an honest statement of feeling seemed to work with Calibar where mere reason failed. He tapped Chekov lightly on the shoulder. "Are there still so many of the Queen's guard in the streets?"

The ensign hastily swallowed a mouthful of bread and meat. "No, and people are saying there will not be a curfew tonight. They've caught the assassins, two of them. They were killed trying to escape from the palace. I didn't ask any questions about who they were, but people were saying they were foreigners."

"How can they tell, if they're dead?" Calibar asked irritably.

"They probably can't," Chekov agreed.

Calibar thought for a moment. "Well, if they are looking for foreign involvement, they'll be watching the main routes out of the city, up and down the valley. We'll wait until just after dark, and go across the river between the two bridges, then out into the fields. Even if there are soldiers about, it should be easy to avoid them."

So they found themselves following the path down to the river again.

"You can swim, can you?" Calibar asked Scott once they reached the beach.

"Aye." Scott looked worried.

"It's not that wide or fast," Chekov said, surprised that Calibar anticipated problems.

The rebel laughed. "This is only the narrows between the shore and that island, Samon. It's wider and deeper on the far side, and visible from the road."

"Maybe we could borrow a boat..." Scott suggested.

"It would be seen," Calibar objected. "And then they'd wonder why we weren't using the bridge. We'll be invisible in the water once it's dark. The water's not too high at the moment, and the bottom's clear — gravel and pebbles. So long as you can swim, you'll be fine. You couldn't drown yourself in it for trying, could you, Samon?"

Chekov glanced up at the man who unaccountably wasn't Kirk.

***

He'd woken. Either Calibar had rolled and taken the blanket all to himself, or Samon had somehow wriggled out from under. He was itching all over. Some animal life in the litter of leaves and needles had fed on him. And he was just beginning to be cold again.

It was almost light, and everyone else still slept soundly. The river was louder than ever, rattling and splashing its way down to the city. Samon stumbled through the sand to the water's edge and drank. He watched the river's load of leaves and twigs eddying in the shallow water before catching the current again. The water was cold, clean, carrying everything away.

He decided to bathe, to wash away last night's sweat and… and everything. Last night's memories. What had he achieved? Proved that Calibar could have him? Gordo hadn't seemed very interested. In two minutes of brisk, impersonal friction, he'd made use of the body under him and fallen asleep, rolling off Samon's back just when the younger man had begun to think his ribs were going to collapse. The heat was nice. The glow enveloped both of them long enough for Samon to sleep too.

The water was cold, making his legs ache, making him pull in his diaphragm sharply as he walked out past waist depth. He didn't splash, just crouched down and rubbed over his skin, his hands scratchy with the sand his feet had stirred up. Then he leaned forward and swam strongly out into the main flow.

The water was cold, carrying him away. Who knew where he'd fetch up?

There was a sudden splash and he flipped to an upright position, looking back at the camp. A large, long necked bird was ruffling its feathers on the water while its mate sat on the far bank and wondered whether to join in the early morning dip.

Samon couldn't feel his legs or his arms any more. The water was too cold. He rolled over onto his back, letting the river carry everything away.

***

The moon was poised just above the rim of the valley, casting the palest of shadows from the tree branches onto the water. Just as Scott was about to slip into sleeping, at last, Chekov turned again, crunching the pine needles under him. The engineer opened his eyes. Calibar had been breathing evenly, deep asleep, for nearly an hour, but the ensign still lay on his back, staring at the moon in the black sky. Off in the water margins, small creatures croaked and whistled to one another. After swimming the main river, the three men had walked a while up the tributary that joined it here, replacing their clothes as soon as the night breeze had dried off their skin, and then walking on long enough to begin to feel warm again before stopping to sleep.

"Captain Groves needs an experienced navigator on the Agincourt."

The ensign rolled to face Scott, rising on one elbow. "The Agincourt? What...?"

"It's none of my business, I grant you, but I was talking with her chief engineer last week. It would be a good move for you." The amphibians seemed to get louder in response to Chekov's silence. "Well, you'll not be staying on the Enterprise, will you? Not now."

Some sort of dog or fox let out sharp, high bark. Chekov pushed his blanket off and sat up on his heels. "Yes, I will. There is no reason for me to leave. I have not..."

Scott sat up now too but kept the third blanket from Calibar's pack wrapped round his shoulders against the chill. Chekov was staring towards the stream where a large creature a little like a mountain cat was staring down the dog. They were only three or four meters from the three men but seemed oblivious to them. A low rumbling growl erupted from the cat's throat and it sprang forward. The dog leapt straight into the air and fled away into the scrawny trees and the cat's eyes caught the moonlight as it turned to stare straight at the engineer. After a moment, it sauntered off.

"Well, you didn't know what you were doing, that's true."

"He had the communicators."

"So in exchange for them..."

"No .But it was safer not to make him suspicious."

Scott wondered if his disbelief showed. The moonlight was so bright. "You still call him Gordo. Wouldn't it be a good idea to call him 'Captain'?"

Chekov shook his head vigorously. "But he isn't .I would just get more confused."

"Aye .Maybe. I'm not saying you've done anything wrong, Mister Chekov. Only that it's going to be damned uncomfortable for the pair of you. Believe me, I've been in Starfleet twenty three years..."

"And you have seen this sort of thing happen all too often?" Chekov interrupted sarcastically, and a little unexpectedly.

No, none of them were quite themselves in this place. Scott chuckled. "You'd be surprised. Aye, you'd be surprised."

"It will be for the captain to decide, I imagine," Chekov said. "Perhaps he will conclude that I am too morally debased even for the Agincourt. I don't care." He lay down and pulled his blanket over himself.

"Leave him alone, Mister Scott," Calibar said unexpectedly out of the darkness. "I give you my word, Samon. I won't send you off to the Agincourt, whatever that is. Sounds like a disease. Now go to sleep."

***

Eventually the sun broke cover over the hills. It was cold and for a moment Chekov missed Gordo's warmth. Then he shook himself back to reality. Gordo Calibar was unreal, whatever else he was.

One of the others was moving. Gravel crunched under bare feet. Chekov shut his eyes, wanting a few more minutes of peace before the two of them started squabbling again.

A hand gripped his shoulder, and another covered his mouth. "Samon?"

He opened his mouth to answer and realized he couldn't .He struggled half-heartedly against the hold, then gave in and kissed the palm over his lips. He heard Gordo chuckle and the hand lifted.

Chekov sat up sharply. Gordo was squatting beside him at the top of the gravel beach, while Scott lay sprawled under his blanket, snoring faintly.

"Now, I believe him."

"What?"

"I don't see any reason why I shouldn't slit his throat, do you? But he obviously does."

"You can't!" Chekov leaned forward and grasped Gordo's wrists. "Don't .Don't hurt him."

Calibar raised his hands slowly, pulling Chekov in closer to him. "I won't .Not that I understand any of this." He twisted out of Chekov's hold and grabbed the ensign by the shoulders, following up with a kiss. Chekov's stomach somersaulted queasily. "G...Gordo .Don't."

"Don't… what? This? Or this?"

"Please !Don't!"

Scott woke with a discontented snort. He rolled over, opened his eyes and looked at his two companions, their arms round each other, tumbling like children. He groaned. "I don't believe this. It's a nightmare. I had one too many las' night an' my guardian angel's finally given up on me. Will ye look at yoursel's .Before breakfast." The engineer stomped down to the water and splashed his face. Chekov backed out of Gordo's embrace. After a moment, he started rolling blankets and gathering up the rest of their sparse equipment. When he turned round, Gordo had gone, leaving him alone on the beach with Scott.

"Where..."

"I imagine he's gone to do the obvious. Chekov..."

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you trust him?"

Chekov looked at him blankly.

"I mean, he says he's taking us to where he found the communicators. Do you think he's telling the truth?"

"I… I… never thought that he wasn't." The ensign frowned unhappily. "I mean… why should he lie about it?"

Scott shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know what Gordo Calibar might be up to. Maybe he did plan to murder the Queen. Now, it makes sense that he wants to lie low a few days I suppose."

"He didn't know who she was, not who she really was," Chekov objected.

"That's not the point, Chekov. I only want to know what he's likely to do next."

"He never told me all his plans. He was planning to destabilize the economy. Everyone will have gone to ground for now, but there are prearranged meeting places..."

"Everyone?" Scott said.

"Leoman and..." Chekov halted. "Oh, no, not people we're looking for."

"The lieutenant said neither of you thought you'd seen Doctor Fajez and his two girls. But then… Oh, well. One thing at a time." Scott shook his head resignedly. "Have you any idea how far it might be to this place?"

"No… well, not far. The men who brought back the communicators were only gone a few hours, and they wouldn't have just gone there and back. Probably not much further."

Scott nodded. "That's good. See that, Mister Chekov? She's still up there."

"Sir?" Chekov followed the engineer's pointing finger. Every star had faded from the sky apart from one bright point of light.

"Our daystar," Scott said softly.

"The Enterprise? Is that her?"

"From what I've observed, and the little astronomy that's known here, there's no moon or planet that should be there now. Whatever it is, it's in orbit around the planet's equator, with a period of about fourteen hours."

Chekov was opening up his communicator, but a moment later he closed it again.

"If we can find the station, and there's anything left of the kit there, I'll make sure they hear us."

Chekov put the useless device back inside his jacket. "Could we… could we construct a visual signal, sir? Something big enough..."

Scott scratched his head thoughtfully. "Someone who knew what they were looking for, and where to look, could probably read a message laid out in branches on a field. But in order to have someone notice there's a message in the first place..."

"If Mister Spock is looking for us, he'll probably be using an Askey scan pattern." Chekov stopped to make some mental calculations and didn't notice Calibar coming back up the stream towards them.

"Is the sky falling in?" he asked.

"No, sir," Scott reported coolly. "We were just admiring your ship."

"My ship?" Calibar turned to look at the stream, now little more than a brook. He sighted up and down it and shook his head in exaggerated puzzlement. "I have an invisible ship? Or maybe she sank..."

"Up there, sir. Have you ever seen that star before?"

Calibar joined them in looking at the pin prick of light. It was beginning to lose its brilliance as the sky around it brightened.

"No .No, I haven't."

"Do you look at the sky often?"

"For telling the weather, and the hour, yes. What is it, then? A sign, maybe. For the Queen's death."

"No .She's a ship. She's the Enterprise. And you are her captain, sir."

After a moment, Chekov turned to see what Calibar was doing. He was staring up at the mountain top, watching the light weaken. There was a long moment when you couldn't be sure if you were seeing it or not.

"And you, Mister Scott," Calibar finally said in an indulgent tone, "are entirely mad."

***

"Not much further," Calibar declared, pausing at the top of a high point in the rolling road. He pulled out his water bottle and drank deeply. Chekov and Scott caught up with him. Both were wearing light sandals suitable for city streets. They were worse than useless on the badly rutted track they were now following, but Scott's grim determination to find the station overcame both his own and Chekov's discomfort.

Calibar's boots were far better suited to their current task. "Just over the next rise." The rebel gestured ahead with his flask and slung it over his shoulder.

They came to the brow of a yet another ridge and looked down. Chekov wasn't sure what he'd expected to see. They stood on the lip of a shallow valley, through which the track they'd followed ran back down towards the river again. Immediately before them there was an evenly ploughed field.

Calibar looked back along the track, as if he was calculating how far they'd come. As far as the eye could see, the track ahead was bordered by a low stone wall, broken by gates now and then, and sometimes fallen into mere heaps of rounded boulders. By the field, the wall had disappeared altogether, but stones that looked as if they might have been part of it littered the field.

Calibar grunted. A small cart, drawn by an elderly donkey, was making its way along the track towards them. A young woman sat on the front bench of the cart, while a man a little older led the animal.

Chekov's mouth dropped open.

"Six days back, there was a farmhouse here, and a wall. There was a high gate in the wall, broken, but still with the timber propped up against the pillars. The farm was abandoned, fire damaged. There was a well, with a lot of rubbish thrown down it, and a stone press. There was a stand of trees behind the house, too." Calibar sounded thoroughly confused.

The cart came to a halt by the far corner of the field and the man put his hand up to help his companion down from the cart. She jumped lightly onto the track and the two of them stood and stared at the field too.

"You'd think they were expecting to see something else," Scott commented.

"Mister Scott," Chekov said. "Don't you see who that is?"

"The engineer looked at the two again. "Why… now what the hell is going on here?"

"Sulu!" Chekov yelled. "Lieutenant Sulu!"

The man and woman both turned and looked up the track towards them. Chekov started to run but Calibar caught hold of his shirt and pulled him up short. "Show some sense. We don't know what's happening here."

"But Uhura was wrong. He wasn't executed..."

Calibar grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "Time for that later. There was a house here, a hard clay yard, trees. Where the hell can it all have gone?"

He marched past Chekov, down to the edge of the field, where he knelt down and peered among the clods of earth. It was plainly freshly turned, the top surface dried out and no sign of any weeds beginning to sprout. Chekov joined him. He bent down to pick up one lump of soil, keeping his eyes on Sulu and the woman all the time. The clod broke quite easily in his hands and was moist inside.

"What are you looking for?" he asked Calibar, glancing away from Sulu for a bare moment.

"To see how they did this. It would take teams of men and animals. Scores of them. There are no footprints, no hoof marks." Calibar turned back to the track. "No sign of wheels leaving the track either. So they didn't use carts. Or they took great pains to cover up the signs of it."

Chekov looked round too. For him, it was a lot easier to imagine that farm buildings and a yard and wall could have vanished, even in hours rather than days, but there was no evidence of heavy machinery being brought onto the land either.

"It's just not here. Damn it. How could that happen?" When Calibar looked up at Chekov, there was something like fear in his eyes. "I'm not a believer in sorcery, but this… this goes against the evidence of my own eyes. Now, you said your friend was killed, didn't you? And that's him? He doesn't seem to know you."

That much was true. Sulu and the woman still seemed as absorbed as everyone else by the field. Watching them, however, Chekov realized that the woman was glancing up the track at them every so often, while Sulu somehow gave the impression that he was deliberately ignoring them.

"Come on," Calibar said suddenly. "Let's see what they have to say for themselves."

The donkey raised its nose from the flowers along the side of the track and watched them suspiciously as they approached. It snorted and shuffled. Calibar made a show of going up and petting it, while its owners reluctantly stepped back from the field and moved possessively closer to their cart.

"Good day," Calibar said. "That's a fine piece of land."

"Yes," Sulu agreed noncommittally.

"I've heard it's for sale."

"Yes, that's what I heard too."

Scott pulled Chekov aside. "He doesn't know us, does he? So, do you think Lieutenant Uhura was mistaken, thinking he'd been killed?"

"She seemed very certain," Chekov said guardedly. "But it is possible someone released him. Maybe if someone bribed the guards..."

"Some kind of machinery's been used to turn this over," Scott went on. "And to clear it, if Calibar's right about what was here a few days ago. Something more bloody sophisticated than this planet could come up with. We're forcing them out into the open."

"Them?"

"Whoever's behind all this. Maybe Calibar's got the wrong place, but even so, why does this field look as though it's been ploughed using the latest nul-gravity cultivation technology, while everyone else is at the level of bloody… donkey carts?" The engineer turned his attention back to Calibar, who was talking animatedly. The young woman was beginning to smile at him, standing patiently beside Sulu and holding his hand.

"You're planning to farm here, then?" Scott interrupted. Calibar frowned annoyance at him.

"We heard the land was for sale," Sulu said awkwardly. "There's not often land for sale so close in to the city. There was supposed to be a house, though. And a well. Come on, Nita, there's nothing here for us." He was anxious to leave.

"Who told you it was for sale?" Calibar asked. He smiled back at the girl and she coloured prettily.

Sulu shrugged and linked arms with her, pulling her closer. "I just heard in the market." He reached out for the reins of the donkey. "Come on," he repeated.

"I'm looking for land around here myself," Calibar continued, deliberately placing himself so that the cart couldn't move. "What's your name, youngster?"

"Sulu, sir. And this is my sister, Nita. And yours?"

"Gordo Calibar."

Sulu took a deep, fearful breath and pulled his so called sister behind him.

"And my friends, Samon and..." Calibar hesitated for a bare second. "Scott .Now, let's move this cart of yours off the track so it's not in anyone's way."

The rebel leaned over the side of the cart and pulled out a hank of cord from among the odds and ends in the bottom. "Hold the girl," he ordered Chekov sharply, pulling her out of Sulu's arms and pushing her towards the ensign. Sulu fought desperately until Scott, afraid that one or other of them was going to get hurt, waded in to help Calibar. Realizing he was outnumbered, Sulu gave in and merely yelled abuse at the two men. He ended up face down on the track, bound hand and foot.

"What are you going to do to us?" the girl asked, twisting in Chekov's grasp to look up into his face. "We only wanted to buy the land. If it is not for sale..."

She had a distinctive accent that rang alarm bells. "You don't have a sister who sells pies, do you?" Chekov asked.

"I don't have a sister. Please, don't hurt him," she cried out as Scott and Calibar lifted their prisoner into the cart, provoking more oaths from the helmsman.

"And your name, what is it?" Chekov asked, glancing uncomfortably past her to his colleague.

"Nita .He told you..."

Calibar shook his head. "So these two have names. Are you sure this is your missing friend?"

"Yes, sir," Chekov said. "This is definitely Lieutenant Sulu. I don't know why he's using his own name though. And… I think this is Juanita Fajez." He turned to Scott. "The doctor's daughter? Do you remember, sir?"

Scott frowned and looked at the girl. She stared defiantly up at the engineer. "It could be. You were paying more attention to her than I was."

"What are you talking about?" the girl demanded desperately. "I've never met any of you before. Let us go!"

Calibar picked up the abandoned reins and shook them out. "Can you manage her, Chekov? There's no more rope." The donkey looked at him mournfully then lurched into bad-tempered motion, rattling the cart off the verge and back onto the track. Sulu grunted as the ruts and boulders shook him around on the wooden base.

"Where are we going?" Chekov asked, taking an apologetic but firm grip on the girl's arm and joining the procession.

"I don't think we're going to find what we want here, and I don't think this is a good place to stand around. Why would someone destroy a farm, level it as if it had never been there? Never mind why, how could they do that?"

Scott shook his head. As the cart passed back down the track, he turned to look at the field again. "Chekov, how well do you remember Fajez' station? Could it have been here?"

"I don't know, sir. There were trees around the back of the house..."

"And a yard with an hard clay floor, and a well. A bit of a garden at the back, with flowers, like a proper garden, I thought, out here in the middle of nowhere. There was a high stone wall along the front of the property with a wooden gate."

"Then what Gordo saw might have been the remains of the monitoring equipment. And it makes sense that our communicators were found here, too."

"Mmhm," Scott agreed. "So we're back at square one. And now we've these three to worry about." He nodded at the other members of the party.

Gordo looked round. "Here, you take charge of this thing." He held out the reins to Chekov and fell back to walk next to the girl. Scott eyed him suspiciously and strode past him to continue walking alongside the ensign.

"Did you say your name was Nita?" Calibar asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Now, don't worry. We're not going to hurt you or your brother. I'm just interested in what happened to that farm you were looking at. Were you told it was just the land, or that there were buildings?"

"You should ask my brother, sir."

"I'm sure you know just as much as he does. And anyway, you're prettier."

The girl giggled nervously.

Scott looked over his shoulder. "Captain, if that's one of Fajez' daughters, she can't be more than sixteen or seventeen. You'd best..."

"Seventeen?" Calibar mimed astonishment. "Well I never. Why aren't you married then, Nita?"

"No one's asked for me, sir," she answered, her blush showing in her voice.

"I can't believe that. I think your father just never told you when they did, for fear of losing you. Don't you think so, Samon? Isn't she far too pretty to be unwed at her age? Far too pretty."

Chekov stopped the cart and turned round. Calibar was standing in the middle of the track, kissing the girl. He looked up. "Well, go on then. We'll catch up."

The ensign yanked on the reins, forcing the donkey to give up the foliage it had immediately started browsing.

"She may know something useful, I suppose," the engineer said.

Chekov didn't reply.

"I suppose that could have been the Fajez' station," Scott continued ruminating, plainly wanting to convince himself that it wasn't the station at all. "It was about four kilometers from a sizeable city, away from any other dwellings. Who'd have leveled it though?"

"How should I know?" Chekov demanded. Then after a moment he said, "I'm sorry, sir. I don't know. I don't have any idea at all what is happening here."

Scott looked at him but didn't say anything more. They continued to walk along the road at the pace set by the donkey. Sulu was still calling down all manner of curses on the three of them, pausing to cough from time to time as the dust in the cart worked its way into his mouth and nose. Chekov glanced over his shoulder repeatedly. The track began to dip down as the valley deepened and first bushes, then trees lined it.

"Here."

The ensign stopped. "What?"

"The captain — Calibar — is busy, and if we meet someone along here, they're going to ask questions about why we have Mister Sulu tied up in this cart. Let's get off the track."

"Oh," Chekov said. He looked back along the road again. Calibar and the girl were out of sight over a rise.

"Let's get the cart behind this wall and see what we can do to persuade the lieutenant to keep quiet."

Chekov frowned. "But..."

Scott scowled in exasperation. "He's just interested in what she knows, Mister Chekov." He shook his head and snatched the reins out of Chekov's hands. "Just follow me and try to contain your jealousy. I'm sure once she turns out to know nothing of any consequence, he'll only have eyes for you again."

The cart flattened the weeds that had grown up in the old gateway. Chekov followed behind it. Behind the wall was a deserted orchard. The donkey hee-hawed cheerfully and began cropping the long grass between the trees. "I'm not jealous, Mister Scott."

"Never mind. I was joking. Where's that food you were carrying?"

Chekov swung the pack off his back. "You don't understand."

"No .And I don't want to. Let's see if we can't get any sense out of Sulu, shall we? Give me a hand."

The lieutenant let himself be helped out of the cart, but every inch of him radiated readiness to fight. He pulled away from Scott as soon as he was standing on the ground. A sudden coughing fit seized him and he nearly lost his balance.

"Sit down, lad," Scott said firmly. "We're not about to hurt you. Get him some water, Chekov."

The ensign brought a water bottle over as Scott persuaded their prisoner to sit down at the foot of the wall. He knelt down and helped Sulu to drink out of it.

"There .Is that better?" the engineer asked.

Sulu nodded.

"Good .Now, I want to ask you some questions. They might seem a little strange, but I'd appreciate straight answers all the same. How old are you?"

"Twenty six."

"And have you always lived around here?"

"Yes."

"What work do you do? Are you a farmer?"

"Yes."

"You've never worked in the city, then, at the palace?"

Sulu shook his head emphatically. "I've never been in the palace."

"What's your father's name?"

"Hiro"

"Chekov?"

The ensign turned from unpacking their lunch. "Heihiro .His father's name is Heihiro."

Scott frowned. "So why weren't you just called Pavel, and me..."

"His name wasn't Sulu before, I don't think, Mister Scott. I'm sure Lieutenant Uhura would have remembered if it was."

"Do you know either of us, Sulu? Do you remember ever seeing either of us before?"

The helmsman frowned. "I… I'm not sure." He looked from Chekov to Scott several times, as if trying very hard to oblige them by recalling something.

Chekov returned to his side and knelt down again. "You and I are friends. We work together, on a ship. You are the helmsman and I am the navigator. Your name is Hikaru Sulu. You're a lieutenant in Starfleet. The ship is called the Enterprise. Our captain is James Kirk. The girl you call Nita is not your sister. She's the daughter of Doctor Fajez. You met her a few days ago for the first time."

Sulu looked hard into his face. "Chekov?"

"Pavel Chekov."

"And..." He thought about it for a moment. "Mister Scott?"

"You think you remember something?"

"I think I do. The Enterprise… that sounds like… I'm not sure."

Scott looked over the food that Chekov had laid out on the bench across the front of the cart. "It looks like we've enough here for all of us. Do you know if you're hungry or not?"

"Yes, I am. And that girl… She's not my sister at all. What's happening? What am I..."

"We don't have a clue what's happening, Mister Sulu. Chekov, go and keep an eye out for the captain. We don't want him to walk past and miss us in here."

Chekov was gone like a runner hearing the starting pistol. Scott shook his head at the whole ridiculous situation and knelt down to unfasten the knots at Sulu's wrists. The captain might think he was Gordo Calibar, but he still tied a man up the way James Kirk always did. "Let me untie you… There you are, lad. Now, come and get yourself something to eat."

***

Outside, Chekov stood impatiently on the track. Calibar had just come over the rise and was strolling slowly, arm in arm with Juanita Fajez. 'I am not jealous,' Chekov repeated to himself. 'That is ridiculous. This whole situation is ridiculous.'

Juanita was smiling, her beautiful teeth whiter than white.

'He's just using her to obtain information. He always does that. It doesn't mean anything.' It struck him then that Gordo Calibar wouldn't mean anything, the moment Captain Kirk regained his memory. And then Samon wouldn't mean anything either.

A movement in the bushes somewhere between the captain and himself suddenly caught Chekov's eye.

"Gordo !Look out!" He started running, just as Sulu struck out at Calibar with a length of something that looked lethally heavy. The captain dodged just in time. Juanita slipped free and stood, frozen, watching Sulu and Calibar circling each other. Chekov skidded to a halt beside her. "Stop it! You'll both get hurt!"

"Nita, move away," Sulu ordered peremptorily. "I'm going to kill him."

"He didn't do anything, Sulu," the girl insisted crossly.

The helmsman didn't seem to be listening. He lashed out with the piece of wood. Chekov guessed it might be a broken cart axle. Calibar caught at it but misjudged its weight. He grunted and stepped back. "Don't be a fool. There are three of us..."

"Two of you now," Sulu disagreed curtly, swinging the stave at the side of Calibar's head. "And soon, just one." The captain dodged and ducked in to grapple close, trying to deprive the smaller man of the advantage the weapon gave him but Sulu danced back and brought the wood down in a glancing blow on his shoulder. Chekov shifted onto the balls of his toes, ready to come to someone's aid.

"He learned to fight the same place you did, Samon," Calibar said, rubbing at his arm irritably. Then he feinted forward, Sulu parried and Chekov jumped in, toppling the lieutenant. The two younger men fell as one and Sulu's head impacted on the track with bone shattering force.

For a moment, Chekov felt he was outside the scene, looking at it from a very great distance. Juanita's mouth was open but he couldn't hear her scream. Then the voices faded back in, Gordo impatient, the ersatz sister hysterical.

"Samon ?Samon?"

"You've killed him. Oh God, you've killed him! Look at him! Look at him!"

"I'm afraid he has. Samon?"

Suddenly, Chekov was right there again, sprawled across the body of his friend. He scrambled away, panicked. "No .No, he's not dead. He only fell..."

Calibar knelt quickly beside Sulu, half an eye on the girl. He felt for a pulse at the neck, then raised the head to look at the injury. It lolled back when he released it.

"Just bad luck," he said. "You couldn't help it. Let's go and see what he did to Scott."

He started off down the track. Chekov couldn't tear his eyes away from the body. He couldn't even feel his legs, let alone move them to follow Calibar.

"Bastard son of a flea bitten whore!" Juanita Fajez hadn't learned to fight anywhere, but she had nails and teeth, and Chekov was too shocked to do anything but stand there until Kirk came back and dragged her off him. The captain slapped her face and swung her over his shoulder.

"Come on, Samon. What's done is done."

"Bastard!"

"Gordo..."

"Your mother slept with your grandfather! For money!" Her fists pounded the captain's back and her feet flailed his thighs. One sandal then another went flying. Calibar carried on down the track and turned in through the gateway. Two minutes later he reappeared. Chekov continued to stand waiting for him, waiting for Sulu to move.

"Your friend Scott is a little groggy, that's all," he said, coming up to the body. "Why don't you go down and keep an eye on him?"

"What a… about Sulu?"

"There's nothing more you can do. I'll take care of him."

"How?"

Calibar looked around. "I don't imagine anyone will see him on the other side of that wall for a while, not until his sister's told them where to look anyway. We'll take her back to her village, leave her locked in a barn or something where someone will find her, and head for a safe house I know. Come on now." He bent over, dragged the body up and over his shoulder, then tipped it casually over the waist high wall behind the verge of dusty bushes. He was quite right, Chekov realized unhappily, if Juanita didn't tell anyone, it might be years before anyone noticed it.

"You can't..." Chekov took two steps in the direction of the wall, then stopped again. "I don't understand..."

"What?" Calibar came back over to him. He bent down and picked up the piece of wood.

"What we're doing here, why none of us knew who we were to start with, why he was using his real name this time..." Chekov began to follow Calibar along the track, talking, talking about anything to keep the immediate reality at bay. "...and I don't know why our communicators don't work, and why..."

"Okay .Now, what about what I don't understand? Why is there so much empty farmland here, so close to the city? If it's not worked, why isn't it overgrown? That place wasn't just damaged or fired, it was as if it was never there. And why don't I know who I am?"

Chekov caught up to him. "You're Gordo Calibar..."

His leader shook his head. "No, I'm not. No more than you're Samon."

"But Leoman and the others..."

"...Were quite happy for me to be Calibar, just like the entire population of Cordes was content for your friend to be their Queen, well, apart from a pair of assassins."

"You think she was killed because she wasn't supposed to be..."

"I hadn't thought about that," Calibar admitted. "Do you think that house we were looking for wasn't supposed to be there and that was why it was taken away?"

"I don't know. I just don't know."

"I know there's a safe house on the river, about a half league from here. I know who I'll find there. But when I think about it, I don't know how I know. I don't know when I was ever there."

"That's how I remembered growing up here, as if it was something I'd been told about. But I remember Sulu. He was my friend, Gordo. He was your friend."

"Kirk's friend?" Calibar laughed. "I don't believe you." He turned back in through the gateway, Chekov at his heels. Scott was sitting on ground by the cart, holding his head. His hair was matted with blood where Sulu had struck him. Juanita was in the back of the cart, bound. She spat at Chekov.

"What happened?" Scott asked. Chekov realized when Calibar didn't reply that the question was addressed to him. "Lieutenant Sulu attacked the captain. I was trying to stop him and he fell..."

"Murderer!" Juanita yelled.

"He hit his head on a rock."

"Coward!"

"Young woman, if you don't shut your mouth I'll fill it with mud," Calibar interrupted. "It was an accident," he continued, more to Scott than the girl. "Samon didn't mean to do anything but stop him braining me. Now, lie down in there, Nita. Samon, tear your shirt up so we can gag her, then pull up enough of this grass to cover her up. We'll leave her in the first safe place we see. Come on."

Chekov looked from Calibar to Scott, opened his mouth and shut it.

Scott sighed and pulled himself to his feet, holding on to the side of the cart as if he was giddy. "Come on, Chekov. What's done is done. If the captain says it was an accident, it was an accident." The engineer turned away. "This whole bloody planet is some kind of accident."

The ensign peeled his shirt off and tore another strip off the bottom edge.

***

There was a hamlet of eight or nine dwellings on an inlet that formed a deep enough harbour to take the barges that plied up and down the river. None were currently moored and the quay was deserted. The three men walked in to an argument in the main room of the inn.

"It's not for you to tell me if I can take a wife or not!"

"And what customers will you have, with some damned woman nosing around asking questions the whole time?"

The landlord, Chekov imagined, was standing in a doorway wiping a knife with a filthy rag. He looked over at the newcomers. "You've never said I couldn't marry if I chose, Gordo."

"I never thought you'd want to, Foster," Calibar countered. "I thought your customers were all the family you wanted. Is she rich or with child? Or both?"

"Neither," Foster said quickly. "Just a hard working widow, who's clever with money and not given to gossip. She'll see the advantage of keeping on the right side of her regular customers. Are you thirsty?"

Calibar nodded and sat down on one of the benches that ran around the edge of the room, pulling Chekov down to sit beside him. "And send your new wife out with some water and rags. Our friend here has a broken head . And an old shirt of yours, Foster." He waved Scott over to join them.

The ensign wasn't paying much attention to anything. They'd walked hard and fast once they'd left the girl behind them, tied to a fence post in a field full of grazing animals that would be sure of a visit from their owner before too long. Now that they'd stopped moving, it was more difficult not to think about what had happened earlier. He had a bad case of the shakes.

Calibar slid an arm round his shoulders. "We'll rest up here for a few hours," he said. "I'm sorry we didn't find your… whatever you were looking for. But life's full of disappointments. I've got to start everything over, now someone's killed the Queen. There's plenty you and your friend can do for me."

Chekov pulled free of the embrace. "But… Gordo, we don't belong here! Neither do you! I thought you were… were beginning to understand that. That house disappearing… And… and the things they found there… This morning, you wanted to know what was happening. This morning, you wanted to know who you really are!"

"I'm Gordo Calibar," the rebel replied easily. "What else matters?"

"But you know you..." Chekov stopped dead, realizing he had become the focus of everyone's attention.

Gordo patted him on the shoulder. "He's wrung out," he said easily. "We had some trouble this morning, a fight, and then we had to move quickly. You're in a muck sweat, Samon, and I'm not surprised. Just sit quietly there. Foster will find us some bread and cheese once we've washed the dust out of our throats."

The ensign looked to Scott, who simply shook his head. Calibar was more interested now in the arrival of their refreshments. "Bring that wine over here, Sulu."

Chekov started. He turned to look at the man who had just entered with a brass tray bearing a large earthenware jug and four mugs of the same material. The newcomer put it down on the wooden floor at Calibar's feet and pulled over a stool to sit on himself.

"So, tell me, Gordo, were you responsible for the Queen's death, or did she have other enemies?" The lieutenant was his usual, cheerful self. There wasn't a mark on him.

"Sulu..." Chekov said.

"That's my name, yes." The helmsman grinned at Calibar. "What have you been telling this kid about me, Gordo? That I eat his kind for breakfast?"

Calibar glanced from him to Chekov. "Sulu… Do you know this man, Samon?"

"Yes .And so do you, Gordo. We both saw him this morning, on the track. We… You know. You were there. He… Well, he can't be here now."

"Where on the track? What are you talking about?" Calibar was starting to sound impatient.

Chekov shook his head in bewilderment. "You know what I'm talking about. This is him, Sulu. The same name, the same person. The man I… I killed this morning."

Sulu's eyes widened. "What ?I'm a ghost, am I? What's he talking about, Gordo?"

Calibar looked carefully at the man sitting opposite him on the stool. "Where were you this morning?" he asked.

Sulu hesitated. "I was… we were… I was with you, Foster, wasn't I?"

"No," Foster replied lightly. He was sweeping the floor on the other side of the room. "You didn't get in from up river until an hour ago, did you?"

"Well, no." Sulu's smile brightened determinedly. "I certainly wasn't on the track between here and the city."

Calibar looked from Sulu to Chekov again, weighing the two men up, it seemed to the ensign. Plainly, Calibar's memory was playing tricks, but for some reason he took Chekov's story seriously enough, even when it contradicted his own recollection.

"So, this morning you were..?"

Sulu shrugged. "Coming down the river on Mason's barge. From Albi. Like Foster says." He tried to laugh. "Gordo, what the hell's wrong?

Calibar shook his head. "One of you is lying."

"But you were there, Gordo. You saw him yourself. He told you his name. Surely you remember that!" Chekov scowled in frustration at Sulu, forgetting how pleased he was to see his friend in his desperation to be believed.

Sulu shook his head stubbornly. "I don't know what he means, Gordo. I wasn't there."

"Sir..."

Calibar stopped at the engineer's quiet interruption. "What is it, Scott?"

"I remember seeing him this morning. It's all part of whatever is wrong here. Neither of them is lying to you, but I think this Sulu here is mistaken, or deceived."

Calibar waved Sulu back to his stool as the man rose to defend himself against this allegation. "Mistaken in what? Deceived how? And if you two can see it, why can't I?"

The engineer shrugged.

Calibar paused for a moment. He leaned over and poured out the contents of the jug, handing one of the mugs to Sulu. "Do you recognize either of these men?" He gestured at his companions.

Sulu looked at each in turn with exaggerated care. "I've never seen either of them before. Who are they?"

"Chekov and Scott." Calibar handed them each a mug in turn. "They're with us."

The helmsman nodded warily. "If you say so, Gordo."

Foster came over from where he'd been standing, confusion all over his face. "Then I should warn them as well as you, there have been patrols up and down the river all day. I've heard them asking about Gordo Calibar, and describing someone who sounded as if he might have been your young friend here. The two of you should keep out of sight for a while."

Calibar raised his mug. "And where better to do that, Foster? Now where's that new wife of yours?"

"I'm here." Her voice was disapproving, her hands gripped a dented metal bowl and a bundle of white fabric was tucked under one arm. She put the bowl on a table and tossed a shirt at Chekov. "Well then, who's hurt?"

"Scott here," Calibar said, nursing his drink.

"It's only a bump on the back of my head, lass," Scott protested.

The woman tsked, set her bowl down on the bench beside the engineer and began to soak the dried blood that matted his hair.

"Do you know who I am?" Calibar asked her.

"I don't care. You're friends of Foster's .That's all I need to know and more than I'll say to anyone else."

Calibar grinned broadly at Sulu. "Now that's the sort of wife I wouldn't mind anyone having."

The helmsman grinned back. "Are you going to look for one for yourself then, after all this time?"

"Not today," Calibar said lightly. "Not today." He glanced at Chekov. The ensign was still staring at Sulu as if afraid the man might burst like a bubble. "Why don't you show Chekov around, Sulu? We might be here for a day or two. He should know his way about."

Sulu nodded affably and upended his mug, draining it. "Come on, then, Chekov."

***

The ensign put his own mug down, still almost full. It contained well-watered wine but he wanted to keep his head clear. He followed the helmsman through the door into a dark kitchen, wanting desperately to do or say something to express his wonder and delight at Sulu's simple presence, but totally at a loss for the right phrase or action.

"So you killed me this morning? Am I supposed to like you any the better for that?" Sulu demanded, as soon as they were out of Calibar's hearing.

"Uh… No. I… It was someone who looked like you. Obviously it wasn't you."

"Well, that's a relief. It isn't pleasant, suddenly being told that you're dead. Where did Gordo find you, then?" Sulu was heading for a further door, and up a narrow, uneven stair.

"Um, in Cordes. I worked for a silk merchant, but he sent me to work for the Queen."

"For her? Doing what?"

"Listening, mostly."

The stair opened onto a landing. "Is it true what they say?" the helmsman asked, opening one of several doors into a little attic whose ceiling sloped down to the floor in three of its four corners. A roof truss bisected what was left of the available space.

"What do they say?"

"That she has… had… the appetite of ten men. I suppose you'll sleep in here with me and Scott, unless Gordo has other plans."

Chekov ignored the suggestion. "I didn't see her eating."

Sulu started to laugh. "I wasn't talking about eating."

"Oh."

"Did Gordo have her killed? I didn't think that was his plan."

"No .He didn't have her killed. He thinks… he thinks someone else killed her. Sulu..."

"Yes?"

"How long have you known Gordo?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because, this morning..."

Sulu rounded on him. "I wasn't there. You're talking nonsense. I know I wasn't there and so does Gordo, so there's no reason for you to go on lying about it. You're just crazy. I was on the river."

Chekov grabbed his arm as the helmsman turned to move on from the dormitory. "It's not crazy. Gordo isn't the person you think he is. I want to know..."

Sulu pulled free and shoved Chekov angrily up against the rough timber beam that divided the room. "Hey, watch it, Chekov. You're not Calibar's first lover and you won't be his last."

"I'm not talking about..."

"Then what are you talking about? I don't understand all this… this nonsense about meeting someone who looks like me. What are you saying? That I'm next to die? Or is that what you want me to think for some reason? Are you trying to knock off everyone Gordo had before you?"

"He didn't have anyone before me," Chekov said, wriggling out of Sulu's grasp. He dodged when Sulu tried to grab him, ducking into the corner of the room, by the window. "He wasn't here. He didn't know you. He's not really Gordo Calibar at all."

"Look, it doesn't matter to me," Sulu said. "It's all in the past. You'll see. That's how it is with Gordo. Damn."

The helmsman had forgotten Chekov in favour of something that had caught his attention outside. "Militia .Looking for you and Gordo, I imagine. For God's sake, keep quiet."

Sulu brushed Chekov aside and darted out through the door. The Russian hesitated before going closer to the window. It wasn't a glazed opening. Such things were rare outside the main city in Cordes. It was more like three arrow slits very close together. The roof hung low over the window He realized he'd be in shadow, and invisible from the bright, sunlit quay so he moved forward and looked out of the narrow openings.

He recognized the dull red of the militia uniforms. Half a dozen men and one officer stood on the quay side, half of them looking up and down the river, the others with their attention on the door to the inn. Chekov couldn't see what was happening immediately below him, but the soldiers looked bored and ill tempered.

Would they want to search the inn? Was Gordo still sitting downstairs? Voices drifted up the stair, rising in volume.

If they were looking for him and Gordo, Chekov told himself, he should stay up here, out of sight.

There were boots climbing the bare wooden treads. Chekov moved round behind the door. A moment later, Calibar entered.

"Samon?"

"Here .Are they looking for us?"

"Yes .But they had pictures with them, pictures of your friend Scott, of me, and of Sulu." Speaking quietly, Calibar went straight to the window. "Because the Queen was asking after the three of us before she died, they're assuming we're involved her death."

"But they didn't see you?" Chekov asked anxiously.

"No."

Calibar, still looking out of the window, beckoned Chekov to join him. On the quay side, two of the soldiers were standing watch. A moment later, one of their colleagues came out with mugs for them. Calibar laughed softly. "I sometimes wonder, if Foster doesn't let the militia think this is their own little safe house too."

"Are they going?" Sulu asked from the doorway to the room.

"No, enjoying the landlord's finest, probably from the same jug he just filled for us." Calibar turned away from the window, pausing to say softly to Chekov, "Let me know when all six of them move on."

"Yes, sir," Chekov assented automatically. He heard Sulu laugh. Calibar's men weren't much given to military formality.

"Gordo," the helmsman asked, "I can't see why they would have pictures of me and you. The other pair, Scott and whatshisname, have they had a run in with the militia? Or the palace guard?"

"I don't know," Calibar said blandly. "But apparently, the Queen was drawing pictures of people who'd appeared to her in dreams. I'm surprised any of them were still recognizable. They must have been copied twenty times over. And she didn't draw the one of Samon… of Chekov, I mean. That one was by someone else, and not a good likeness."

"I hadn't looked at him," Sulu said. The helmsman crossed over to the window and roughly took hold of Chekov's chin, pulling his face into the light. "No .The picture made him look almost human."

"Get your hands off me!" Chekov hissed.

Sulu grinned and wiped his hands on the sacking that was pinned to the underside of the roof trusses.

"You don't think he drew the pictures, do you?" he asked Calibar.

Chekov turned to deny it, but Calibar was shaking his head. "I thought I told you to keep watch on those red-shirts, Samon."

"I am. They're all outside now. They're just finishing their wine."

"So what did these dreams tell her, Gordo? That she was going to die?"

"No, that I was going to be ruler of Cordes, and her majesty just one of my officials, along with you, apparently, and our two friends Scott and Chekov here."

Chekov turned from the window yet again. "No, Gordo..."

"In god's name, boy, no one asked for your opinion. Watch the quay and keep quiet until you've something to report."

Calibar's voice snapped out like a whip and Chekov obeyed, smarting from the rebuke. He wasn't sure if Calibar was just reinterpreting what had been said for Sulu's benefit, or if he had so completely misunderstood what they'd been telling him. He watched the militia make a desultory inspection of a barge that was tied to the quay, its cargo of timber too tight to allow even the smallest hiding place, unless it had been loaded around the wanted men. How else, though, could Calibar understand them? And anyway, it made no difference. They had no plan at the moment, no objective. Calibar at least had the power to keep them alive until they worked something out.

"They're going, Gordo."

"Up river or inland?"

"Inland."

Calibar came over to the window and stood, looking out, but apparently uninterested in the now deserted quay. After a moment, Chekov heard Sulu's boots on the stairs and Calibar smiled at him. "We're at war, Samon, we're on the run, dependent on each other for victory and our lives. I sleep with who I please, and you have the same freedom. At the moment, it pleases me to sleep with you. That's it. No more than that. Do you understand?"

"I'm not… now I remember who I really am, I don't think we should..."

Calibar shrugged. "That's fine by me."

Chekov watched Calibar walk away, then stop by the door. "He'll try to wind you up, Samon. It's just the way he is. Don't react to it."

"You don't know him. How can you say that when you've only just met him? He was someone else this morning, and probably someone else..."

Calibar had gone.

"...before that."

***

His head ached. Samon kneaded his forehead with his fingers as he stared at the numbers on the paper in front of him, then looked at the fingers and wondered if he now had black ink smudges all over his brow.

'I'm not learning anything, I'm not doing anything useful. All I'm finding is that she wants to do the right thing and thinks she can tidy up everyone's lives as if they were dolls waiting to be put back on the right shelf in the toy cupboard. She doesn't even mean to be a tyrant...'

"You're tired."

Samon looked up at the Queen. The light was failing in the state office. No one had yet come in to light lamps and it was too dark to work. She looked tired too, and frustrated. All that power, and she couldn't even stop a few hundred babies dying every month. Calibar had probably never given a thought to the children.

"Call a guard in."

To light the lamps, of course. Samon went to the door and spoke quietly to the man who was standing guard just outside. The soldier marched in, his boots clicking on the polished tiles.

"What does the Queen require?"

She didn't answer for a moment. She looked at the guard, and at the mathematician, and smiled a little. "Take this man and prepare him for my bed."

"For your… for the Queen's bed, ma'am .Of course."

Samon's arm was taken in a firm, neutral grasp, which he wriggled out of the moment they were out in the corridor.

"What did she mean?"

"Seemed straightforward to me," the guard responded. "She wants you scrubbed, oiled, and put into her bed ready for tonight. Simple enough."

"But..."

"But what? Your mother wouldn't approve? Wise up, kid. Your mother doesn't count for much around here."

"But I'm a tally clerk, a record keeper, not a..."

"You are now."

They'd arrived outside the royal apartments, and another guard stepped aside to allow them to enter. A couple of male servants came forward to intercept the intruders. "For tonight?" one of them asked. The other looked the new arrivals up and down and seemed to come to some decision. He hurried off.

The guard retreated to the door and positioned himself beside it. He stood neatly to attention.

"Take those clothes off."

The second servant returned at the head of a line of underlings carrying variously a large brass basin of steaming, scented water, a pile of towels, a tray of oils and unguents, an embroidered robe, a pair of slippers and a basket of brushes, combs, knives, tweezers, pumice fragments and more that Samon simply couldn't identify.

"Off .Those clothes. Now."

The underlings formed themselves into a circle around the basin and Samon and waited. He closed his eyes and obeyed the order.

"Wash."

There was a sponge in the water. Samon used it, trying to ignore the silent, expressionless audience.

The basin was removed and a plain wooden chair fetched and covered with a towel. He was ordered to sit down and his face was shaved carefully and closely. His hair was combed.

"Clear away."

Every last drop of spilt water was dried and the tiles restored to their former gleaming condition. The towels and basin were carried out. The first servant, the master of ceremonies, walked round Samon a couple of times. "He'll do. Take him through."

Two minions carried the robe and slippers, and the jars and bottles of oil, through into another chamber. A large bed, surrounded by drapes that hung from rails attached to the ceiling, was the main feature of the room. The robe was laid over a chair, the bottles were put on a cloth on a table at the foot of the bed, the guard positioned himself again by the door out of this room and Samon was left standing, naked and isolated, in the center of the floor. He looked down at the tiles under his feet and found they were decorated with scenes of highly imaginative debauchery. When he looked at the hangings around the bed instead, he realized the intertwining figures woven into the fabric were human forms linked rather more intimately than seemed entirely comfortable.

He swallowed.

After a moment, he glanced at the guard, half expecting mockery, or sympathy. Maybe he too had caught the Queen's eye at some time, maybe he… The man's narrow eyes stared unseeing across the room, his face a mask.

Samon heard a door creak open, someone being dismissed, a rustle of fabric, a metallic clink of some kind.

"Turn around."

She was wearing white enamelled jewelry round her ankles, her neck, her wrists, on her ears, in her navel. Its clear brightness against her skin echoed the whiteness of her teeth and her eyes.

It hardly made any difference, but she was a very beautiful woman, at what was probably the peak of her physical condition. She took his hand and laid it across her heart.

"Such a pretty contrast."

She looked at him.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You don't think so?"

"I do think so, ma'am."

"Good."

She seemed dissatisfied still, by his forced response. "Very pretty, but maybe too… obvious, too abrupt. Do you think so?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then what shall we do about it?" The pads of his fingers were still stained with ink. She shook her head at them.

"The Queen could choose someone darker, ma'am," Samon suggested optimistically.

She was silent for a moment. "Do you want the Queen to choose someone darker?"

Samon hesitated. Gordo didn't need him to do this. And for the moment, the Queen seemed amenable to reason.

"You have to think about it?" she snapped abruptly. Her hand cracked across his cheek.

"No, I don't want the Queen to choose someone darker." 'No, I don't want to be dead,' he interpreted to himself.

"Good." She beckoned to the guard. "Here .Hold him..."

'She's going to do exactly what she wants with me,' Samon told himself. 'And I'll have to obey her. Because if I don't, she'll kill me. She'll probably kill me anyway. Maybe she gets off on torturing people, maybe that's what she's planning. After all, if I'm going to enjoy this, why does she need the guard?'

"...Oh, yes..."

He opened his eyes at the way she said it, at the anticipation in her voice. What the hell could she be planning?

The guard had obeyed her, grasping Samon firmly by locking his arms behind his back in a wrestler's grip.

She slid her hands between his ribs and the guard's hard, muscled forearms, making a tri-coloured braid of flesh, all set off by the gold and creamy white enamel of her bracelets.

Her touch against his skin sent cold shivers spiraling up and down his spine

She leaned forward and kissed him, forcing his mouth open and searching out every soft hollow and hard curve inside. Her body pressed up against his, and at his back, he felt the guard, hot and excited, unable to remain still.

So, the guard wanted her. Not surprising, really. What a strange duty, to have to stand by and guard your sovereign mistress's body while she pleasured herself on some unwilling servant. The temptation there must be, to just fling the poor dolt in the middle aside, and say, look, here I am.

The guard pushed against Samon as if he could be willed out of the way.

She was looking over his shoulder, straight into the man's eyes. Maybe she knew… she must know. Maybe that was part of the game, using the one who didn't want you to drive the one who did as near to insanity as you could contrive. Maybe it was the guard she wanted all along.

She kissed him again, hard enough that he could taste blood on his lips. The guard's hold on his arms tightened till his shoulders threatened to dislocate and the man was grinding his hips into Samon's in unconcealed arousal.

'Gordo.' For a moment, he thought he'd cried the name aloud, but neither of his two tormentors paid the slightest attention.

This close, her perfume was a musky syrup in the air around them.

Then she stepped back, without warning, and Samon stumbled forward under the force of the guard's desire. She caught hold of him, quite gently. She smiled. "Let's slow down and enjoy this." She released him, and reached out to the guard instead. "All of us."

***

Calibar was standing in the large room on the ground floor of the inn, draining a mug. He watched Sulu go through, out on to the quay, but stopped Chekov following him. "All friends?"

Chekov halted and looked at him. "Sir?"

"You say you know him. Is he supposed to be a friend too, or are your enemies also incarnated in Cordes?"

"He's… it's nothing. He's just..."

"Samon..."

"I know. I should ignore it. I'm an officer. If I can't control my own temper..."

Gordo snorted. "Is that what Kirk would say? Samon, the one thing that will stop Sulu's tongue is for you to follow him out there and thrash him."

"But..."

"He's trying you out, putting you in your place. If you slink off and lick your wounds, you'll never be able to command him."

Chekov felt his cheeks warming. "I don't command him. He's..."

"Samon .Listen. I may need you to command his obedience, and his loyalty. Before you can command it, you have to earn it. Show him..."

"He's a better fighter than I am..."

"Is he?" Calibar looked doubtful. "Well, there you are. That's your advantage. You know that he's a little better than you. He's probably so sure he outclasses you that you'll have him down before he can reconsider."

Chekov felt Calibar place a hand squarely in the small of his back and propel him out onto the quay. Sulu was talking to the master of the timber barge.

"Put him in his place," Calibar whispered.

Sulu turned at the sound of their boots on the cobbles. "You want me, Gordo?" he said easily. He stepped forward, and as he passed Chekov, spat casually at his feet.

"No." Gordo shook his head. "I just came out to watch."

"To watch?" Sulu glanced at Chekov as if noticing him for the first time. "Am I supposed to fight this… peasant?"

"He seems to think you insulted him."

Sulu laughed, exactly as the guard had laughed in the Queen's bedroom. "Fair comment, wouldn't you say, Gordo?"

The barge was casting off, men at prow and stern ready to coil the mooring ropes, and two more hauling the small square sail aloft. The captain stood by the tiller, half his attention on the scene ashore.

Sulu planted his feet square on the cobbles and smiled at Chekov. "Well… let's see then. I think you'd better agree that you're an ignorant, good-for-nothing, fuckwit with the manners of a pig, the courage of a barn fowl and..."

Chekov still hesitated.

"Come on, Gordo," Sulu appealed to his leader. He gestured carelessly at his friend. "Why should I bother with him?"

The inn owner came out onto the quay and bent to loose the first of the two mooring ropes. He too seemed keen to watch the promised fight.

"Get on with it," Calibar urged. "The two of you need to know who has the upper hand. Sort it out."

"But..."

Sulu made a grab for Chekov's jacket. The ensign dodged and rammed his shoulder hard into Sulu's chest, carrying the helmsman backward a few steps before he could regain his balance and throw himself back onto the attack… allowing Chekov to trip him and send him sprawling over the edge of the stone quay into the water.

The wind caught the sail, the prow of the boat swung out into the stream, the rope, still hitched, tightened and the side of the barge hit the quay side with a leaden thump.

"Cast off!" Calibar yelled. "Get her away from there! Fetch a rope!"

Chekov sat down on the cobbles and put his head in his hands. Around him, he could hear everyone rushing to obey Gordo's orders.

He heard the creak of the barge moving, the grunts of men pulling the victim out onto the quay.

He looked up and realized that his ability to perform emergency resuscitation was irrelevant. The helmsman's chest had been crushed by the barge. Blood and river water were bubbling out of his mouth.

***

Calibar came outside, into the still evening air. The smell of cooking hung around the doorway. "Samon?"

Chekov looked up from the water where he'd been watching shoals of fish chasing each other's tails. "Yes, sir?"

"Your Uhura, she'd be a reliable kind of person, would you say?"

"Sir?"

"I mean, if she said Sulu was killed, she wouldn't be lying to you, or just getting hysterical. She'd honestly believe it?"

"Yes, sir."

"So he's been killed three times. We can be more or less certain of that?"

Chekov nodded miserably.

"So how sure are you he won't pop up somewhere tomorrow, if not sooner?"

"What?" For a moment, Chekov didn't know if Calibar was joking. "But he was dead. At least, the last two times, I know he was dead."

"Well then, he's broken all the rules at least once, by coming back. Why not again?"

"That's not possible..."

"Samon, he's done it once. If it's possible once, who's to say how many times he can do it? Well?"

When Chekov didn't answer, Calibar bent down to look into his face. "Don't you want that?"

"I'm… I'm not sure."

"Because he teased you? Don't be ridiculous."

"No, not because of that… Gordo, he..."

"What?"

"He did something else. Not him… I mean, not this Sulu, another one. He..."

Calibar waited for him to finish, but Chekov could hardly admit to himself what had happened. He want back to an earlier question. "I… I'd like to believe he will come back, that he's not really dead, but..."

"Of course you would." Calibar lowered himself to sit on the quay, with his feet hanging just above the water level. He took Chekov's hand and tugged until the ensign sat too. "Tell me about… James Kirk."

"Uh..." Chekov took a moment to focus on the question. "He's thirty six years old, from Earth — we're all from Earth. That's a planet — a world — I..."

"No .I don't mean that. I mean… If someone asked me about you, I'd say you smile with one side of your face more than the other. When you wake up in the morning, if I haven't done something to hurt your precious feelings, you open your eyes and look at me and I could go out and take on an army single handed. You look up at the sky sometimes as if you've mislaid your soul and might catch a glimpse of it flying away from you. Now, tell me about James Kirk."

Chekov sat in silence for a moment. "He's… he's… I don't know. I admire him, I think. And I… I think I like him. He's..."

"Do you love him? Does he love anyone?"

"I think… he respects… some people… He needs some people… but we need him more than he… Yes, he loves his ship. And he cares about us, about his crew..."

Calibar rolled his eyes. "Oh."

"He's a brilliant captain. The best. Ever."

Calibar's mouth turned downwards.

Chekov kept trying. "I think he has two very good friends. Like you and Leoman. No, not like Leoman. Two friends he trusts and listens to. It's not like here. It's different."

"You don't know that Leoman killed the Queen. I don't believe he did. There's something else going on here that we don't know about. Two friends like Leoman. That would be worth having."

"What are you thinking, Gordo? We don't know how to get back there."

"I'd be prepared to take a guess though."

"What?"

Calibar dipped a toe into the water and watched the ripple spreading outward. "What's unnatural about this world?"

"Uh… people dying and coming back to life."

"And?"

"And… do you mean what is out of place? Like the room at the palace… And Doctor Fajez' research station was..."

"Destroyed .And the Queen was killed. As if someone wanted to stop us getting out of here. Trying to close the doors. I think we still have a way out though, that they can't close because it's part of what's happening here. When we arrived, we didn't have names. Now when someone comes back, he does. We got into this by accident." Calibar stopped. "Does that make sense, Samon?"

Chekov looked at him, wide eyed. "This is what you're like, what James Kirk is like, I mean. You always try to find the way out of an impossible problem. And you always succeed."

"Do I? Do I get it right? Am I right now?"

"I wish Mister Spock was here," Chekov said, suddenly aware once more that this wasn't James Kirk after all. He turned his attention back to the circling fish.

Calibar's arm settled on the ensign's shoulders. "Is he one of my friends? Is he part of getting it right? What would he say?"

"I don't know," Chekov admitted, in a small, uncertain voice. "I'm not a very good substitute for Mister Spock."

"Ah, well, if you were, I wouldn't need both of you. I'm sure you have your place too. And my other good friend..."

"Doctor McCoy? He'd say… I never know what he would say, except that he usually disagrees with Mister Spock."

Calibar chuckled.

Chekov thought hard about the problem. It was no good just saying, I'm not Spock, or I'm not Doctor McCoy. They weren't here. He was the one trapped here with the captain. "I think in this situation, Mister Spock would say there is insufficient information for logical analysis, so… so you should follow your instincts. And Doctor McCoy would say, you've got to do something, because otherwise… we'll just end up like them." Chekov pointed down between his feet at the shoal of minnows.

"Come on then." Calibar stood up. He looked round him, as if hunting for something quite specific. "This way."

"Gordo… What?" Calibar was striding away down the quay. He didn't turn back and Chekov hurried to catch up to him. "What are you going to do?"

He followed Calibar into a shed. It was empty, except for a half dozen wooden crates and some coils of rope. Calibar was shifting one of the crates into the middle of the floor. "What are we..."

"Can you make a noose?"

"Yes, I… Why? Why, Gordo? What are you going to do?"

"Go on then." Calibar tossed the ensign a length of cord, the thickness of a man's finger.

"What are you going to do? Gordo?"

"Scott should stay here, because he knows as much as any of us. If this doesn't work, he can try something else. You should go, because you know something too, more than I do. And I'm coming, because I won't send you alone."

"Send me where?" Chekov demanded, panic rising in his voice. "Gordo, we could wait to see if Sulu comes back this time, to be sure."

Calibar finished his noose and slung it over a beam. He fastened the other end to an iron ring set in the wall and took the second piece of rope from Chekov.

"And what if he doesn't ?Are you going to stay here?" He upended the crate so that it balanced precariously on one side. "Now, promise me, if this doesn't work, you'll try again. And I promise you the same. No waiting about. We don't know what we're getting into. That's why we should go together."

"But..."

"Promise."

"I… I promise."

"We'll get it right though. Don't worry." Calibar tipped another crate up against the first. "You have to kick the crate away and let yourself drop straight, otherwise you'll just strangle yourself. Same end result but it takes longer. Hold on..." He bent to lift one of the smaller coils of ropes. "Perfect .You're too light to be sure this will work. Wind that round your waist."

Like an automaton, Chekov obeyed. Calibar made the end of the rope fast for him, then caught Chekov by the shoulders and kissed him. "It won't hurt."

"I… I can't help thinking this isn't what Captain Kirk would do."

"He never kissed you?"

"No .He never… He wouldn't do this."

"What would he do then?"

"I don't know," Chekov said, staring mesmerized at the ropes above his head. "We ought to tell Mister Scott. He should know what we tried."

Calibar scowled. "You know the longer you leave it, the harder it's going to be. No, he'll work it out. Up on the crate now."

Chekov found himself being helped up, balanced precariously against Calibar. The noose was settled round his neck and drawn tight. There was perhaps thirty centimeters of slack, then the rope would stop him and break his neck, if he was lucky. The boxes wobbled. "Gordo..."

"I hope your James Kirk is worth it."

Calibar kissed him again and kicked the boxes out from under their feet.

***

The light was bright and artificial. Chekov lay for a moment, hoping against hope that he was waking in sickbay, back on the ship; that in a moment, he'd turn to look at the next bed and see the captain there. And then Doctor McCoy would appear, telling him to 'take it easy'.

There were quiet beeps and clicks from machinery somewhere, and the familiar scent of antibacterial sprays in the air.

He just didn't, quite, dare to open his eyes and look.

"Ensign?" A deep, unworried voice.

His eyes jerked open. "M… M..." His throat seized shut.

"Don't try to speak," Spock instructed him calmly. "Doctor McCoy will be here shortly."

He closed his eyes again, but not before he'd looked at the next bed. Empty.

"You awake, Chekov? Okay, try and relax. You're pretty bruised. It'll probably feel like the worse kind of sore throat for a while yet. Just drink this..."

The bed lifted, raising him to half-sitting, and a cup of something pleasantly cool was held to his lips. The liquid slipped down his throat soothingly, but the act of swallowing turned knives everywhere in his neck.

A hypo hissed somewhere near his left ear and the pain dulled immediately.

"There .You're doing pretty well."

"The..."

"Mm ?If it hurts too much to talk, I can get you a pad."

"N… The c… The..."

"The captain?" Spock guessed.

"Mm."

"You were with him?"

"Mm."

"You remember where you were, what happened?"

"Mm, most of it. Not how it began. Is he here?"

"No .We retrieved you from Forman IV alone."

"Only me?"

"We recovered Lieutenant Sulu two hours earlier," McCoy filled in. "He was more badly injured than you. We haven't been able to speak to him yet."

"He drowned. And he was crushed, between a barge and a jetty." Every word was still an effort. The pain had stopped but Chekov's throat now felt as if it was full of glue.

"That's pretty much what it looked like."

"I threw him in the river."

McCoy's eyebrows lifted. "I see. Well, he's recovering. He'll be okay."

"Only no one dies in Cordes, they always come back. That's why..."

"That's why...?"

"Why we tried to kill ourselves, me and Gor… me and the captain. It was the only way out."

"You tried to hang yourselves?"

"Yes."

After an awkward momentary silence, Spock frowned. "It was, apparently, the correct strategy."

"Sir?"

The Vulcan took a breath and launched into an explanation. "Forman IV is the home world of a race known as the Tesseri. They are biologically human, and left their planet of origin many centuries ago, to colonize other worlds. Forman IV has become… a shrine. It combines elements of entertainment and spiritual quest. The Tesseri come here to relive and recreate their history. As such, it is both an enormous economic resource for its managers, and, to the spiritually inclined, an object of intense veneration. We are currently forbidden, by direct order of Starfleet Command and an injunction obtained in the Federation courts, from interfering in any way with its operation. Starfleet has authorized us to remove our personnel, but that is all."

Chekov thought about it. So the Enterprise had been in orbit; Mister Scott was right. And trying to find them, but forbidden to do so actively. "But… How did we get involved? Doctor Fajez has been on the planet for years, observing..."

"Apparently, his presence was unnoticed. They simply did not anticipate any visitors. Re-enactments are staged, scenarios, of key periods in Tesseri history. Times of rapid change, conquest and discovery, the lives of charismatic leaders or eras that presented particular challenges. A Terran equivalent might be the reign of Alexander the Great, or on Vulcan, the mature years of Surak. Participants pay to play the role of a personal hero, or to be in their entourage. The popular decades are relived repeatedly. You were all caught up in a reinitializing of the system. Your own identities were stored, and you would have adopted stock identities, as… extras. When a character in a scenario dies, the participant is recycled into another role, but the Tesseri have agreed to return to us any of our personnel who 'die' .Since that agreement was reached, you and Lieutenant Sulu have, apparently, died."

"Lieutenant Uhura died too."

"When?"

"Uh… yesterday? I think."

"The agreement is only twelve hours old. She may have been recycled before that." Spock frowned. "If the Tesseri are in breach of the agreement, we may have cause to intervene directly, but I would require proof."

"It was more than twenty four hours ago."

"You're sure?" McCoy demanded impatiently.

Chekov went back over the events of the past two days. "At least that, plus however long I've been here."

"So we're just going to sit here, waiting for our people to come to violent and bloody ends, or for their damn scenario to wind up, is that it, Spock?"

Chekov sank back against the biobed. It was bad enough being trapped on the bridge when McCoy and Spock were having one of their notorious quarrels. Here, he was stuck literally in the middle. In sick bay. While Gordo…

"Mister Spock?"

The Vulcan halted in mid-sentence and looked at him. "Yes?"

"The captain agreed… we agreed, if either of us didn't… I mean, if we didn't succeed in killing ourselves, whoever was left behind would try again. So we shouldn't have to wait too long. For the captain."

McCoy scowled. "That doesn't change the basic problem. Or will he persuade the rest of the landing party to do the same? How come just the two of you planned this?"

"We weren't all together. And we didn't know if it would work."

It was Spock's turn to look thoughtful. "From what the Tesseri told us, you should not have recognized each other. Why were you seeking to leave the scenario at all?"

"We… Lieutenant Uhura and I found some equipment that made us remember who we were. We located Mister Scott and used it to restore his memory too, but it was destroyed before we could use it on the captain..."

"So Jim doesn't know who he is?" McCoy checked.

"No .He thinks he's someone called Gordo Calibar, a rebel leader..."

"Then how did you persuaded him to top himself? Just to keep you company?"

Chekov felt a burning blush flood his face at the perfectly reasonable question.

"And how can you be sure he didn't change his mind, or that he ever meant to go through with it in the first place?"

"We..." The ensign stopped and swallowed. The moment had been intensely intimate. "We were both standing on the same box. He kicked it away. He couldn't have changed his mind. There wasn't anything he could have done..."

"Could someone else have intervened?" Spock asked.

"No, there was no one else there. No."

"Doctor, did the Tesseri tell you how they contrive to preserve the lives of participants?"

"No, but with transporters and stasis, and prompt medical intervention, I can see how it could be done. You were lucky, Chekov: your neck didn't break. I don't know how they'd deal with that..."

"You think Captain Kirk isn't here because he's dead?" Chekov waited for Spock to say he'd meant something else, but the Vulcan merely nodded.

"That may be the case. The landing party has suffered three, or perhaps four, violent deaths within fourteen days. If revival techniques are not totally effective, then the risk to our personnel is much higher than the Tesseri led us to believe," he said thoughtfully.

"So the hell with the agreement, and we can demand they give our people back, or just go in and find them for ourselves? Right, Spock?"

Chekov bit his lip. "But..."

"Ensign ?Do you have further relevant information?"

"Yes .The captain made sure… he made sure I was heavy enough to break my neck…

"Hell .Didn't he want you to be revived?" McCoy shook his head. "The whole thing just doesn't… just doesn't sound like something the captain would do."

"He probably thought it wouldn't be a problem. Lieutenant Sulu was beheaded, and he was… recycled."

McCoy scowled at Spock as if the Vulcan was responsible for the whole mess. "Why aren't these people putting these skills to good use in a hospital somewhere?"

"As I have explained, these scenarios, and in particular their physical reality, have great significance to the Tesseri."

"Except they don't die. How real can something be if you never die? You can take ridiculous risks, or be appallingly cruel, and in the end it doesn't matter. It's just a game."

"You don't know that, in the scenario." Chekov recalled Juanita's nails clawing at him. She'd thought Sulu was dead. Hell, he'd thought so too.

Spock shook his head. "This emotional reaction is unhelpful, Doctor. The Tesseri have the law on their side. Forman IV is an economic resource and sacred ground. We are forced to respect their rights to unimpeded enjoyment of both within their own territory. The Enterprise is an intruder here. We must remember that."

"Whose side are you on, Spock?"

"Yours, as usual. However, the courts have ruled that we have the right, indeed the obligation, to withdraw our personnel. The Tesseri appear to be obstructing us. We need to discover why. Is Ensign Chekov well enough to accompany me, Doctor?"

"Yes… Sure. But..."

"I will meet you in the transporter room in five minutes, Mister Chekov.

***

They beamed into a large meeting room, furnished with antique tables and chairs. Details of the decoration recalled the palace in Cordes - patterned, glazed tiles, gold and enamel light fittings, woven silk mats . Then the Tesseri entered, men and women dressed alike in pastel jackets and skirts. Their clothes could have been made from bolts of Brer's silk.

One woman stepped forward to greet the Starfleet officers. She looked at Chekov curiously. "You're one of the landing party." She gestured around the room. "You should feel at home. This room is in the Cordesian style, prior to Calibar's destruction of the Palace. Did you enjoy Cordes?"

"Enjoy?" He floundered for a moment. "It was interesting," he said stiffly.

"I would imagine so." She smiled and turned to Spock. "Commander .I was about to contact you when you asked for this meeting. We've carried out an intensive review of our systems logs, and we have identified five participants in the Cordes scenario for whom we have no records. We've decided to bend the rules a little and withdraw them from the scenario prematurely. None of them are in critical roles, and my colleagues and I consider that it would be in everyone's best interests to make this goodwill gesture..."

"Five?" Spock interrupted. "We are missing six people."

"There is no trace of a sixth. Would you like to sit down, Commander? Perhaps..."

"Perhaps you should continue your search?"

"Let me explain something. When a scenario is reinitialized, the data streams are immense. Upwards of fifteen thousand participants need to be transported to their correct location, equipped and provided with background memory within a period of a few minutes. Naturally, there are safeguards. But the safeguards rely on tracking each individual. Those safeguards were not operating for people who shouldn't have been present. I am sorry, but… we never anticipated this problem."

"You are saying that one person did not survive the process?"

"We have carried out a head count, Commander. There are five extra people on Tessera, and only five."

"And the sixth?"

She shook her head. "I can only speculate. Purged from a transporter buffer? Or perhaps corrupted during transmission, with no backup to recreate the signal. I'm sorry."

"I never saw Doctor Fajez," Chekov half-whispered. "I saw his daughters, but not the doctor."

He and Spock looked at each other.

"Are you sure of this, Mister Chekov? You saw everyone else within the scenario?"

"Yes .Uhura was the Queen of Cordes..."

"Really?" A male Tesseri stepped forward. "You see why this is so impossible? An outsider, usurping the role of the last Queen of the Habinic descent. This scenario is ruined. And now you propose to go in and start removing participants piecemeal. There'll be complaints, demands for damages I shouldn't wonder. Can you imagine what the moderators will say? It's a disaster."

"Sir, didn't you say that people pay to take significant roles? Surely Lieutenant Uhura shouldn't have been Queen..." Chekov stopped. He wasn't sure Spock would appreciate awkward questions just now.

The woman laughed. "The Habinic queens are not popular characters. Or… well, while someone might enjoy playing the part, they don't very often admit to it. The roles most people want are as the tribal leaders in Calibar's war councils. This isn't one of our biggest earning scenarios. Where major roles aren't reserved, our computers select the most suitable participant. If your lieutenant was attractive, intelligent, experienced in diplomacy and used to giving orders, she could easily find herself in the palace. This scenario doesn't attract many able or adventurous women because the roles available are so limited. Females had no military or economic role in that era. The Queen kept no romantic harem, and Calibar was reputed to sleep with his own men. I would never even consider it."

Spock looked away from the Tesseri, as if studying the hangings on the walls. Chekov followed his gaze and then lowered his eyes. The design was an exact copy of the curtains around the Queen's bed.

"You must appreciate," Spock said evenly, "I'm reluctant to simply accept the loss of Doctor Fajez and leave..."

"We'll keep looking. We don't like the idea of losing a participant either. It's hardly good management. But we're not prepared to keep disturbing this scenario. The people in there have paid considerable sums for this experience: for some, it's a spiritual quest, a pilgrimage into their past that could be desecrated by an ill-considered intervention. Do you want to wait until we find this Fajez or until the scenario ends in fifteen years time, or do you want to take the five people we've found now?"

Spock nodded. "You will remain alert to the possibility of Doctor Fajez' presence."

"Of course. And I am assigning a data retrieval technician full time to the examination of our archives. There's always the possibility that a transporter file exists with an incomplete designation."

"Thank you."

"So, if you could just double check that the five persons we've identified are the right five." The woman pointed to a blank area on the wall while one of her colleagues picked up a remote device. A picture of Lieutenant Uhura flashed up, standing on the quay side by the inn, in apparently serious conversation with Mister Scott.

"I didn't recognize her!" Chekov exclaimed. "The innkeeper's wife. Then we were all there..."

Spock raised a silencing hand as the picture was replaced by one of Juanita Fajez, looking as sullen as Chekov recalled, but clearly none the worse for being left tied up in a field.

"Yes .That is Doctor Fajez' elder daughter."

"And this one..."

Isabella Fajez had returned to selling pies by the look of it. In the picture, she was being assisted by a middle aged man.

"And that is Doctor Fajez." Spock turned to Chekov. "We have accounted for five of our missing personnel, but not the captain."

"But..." Chekov stared at the picture. He recognized Fajez now, although he didn't recall seeing him in Cordes. "Well, that's good."

"It is?" Spock asked.

"Yes, sir, because I know where the captain is. He's with Mister Scott and Lieutenant Uhura, by the river. That was where I saw him last, only a few hours ago."

"In what role?" the Tesseri spokeswoman asked.

"Gordo Calibar."

"No."

Chekov stared at her, taken aback by her unexpected denial. After a moment, she smiled at him. "Gordo Calibar is not played by a participant. He couldn't be. He… Calibar means too much to too many people, devout Tesseri, and students of history, or even just ordinary individuals who have any sense of what it is to be Tesseri… Calibar is one of the Twelve Avatars. Some scholars consider that he couldn't ever have existed, but is a synthesis of the best of five or more pivotal personalities who lived at or around the time of the Cordesian Renaissance. 'Calibar' may not have been a name at all, but an honorific, given to successive leaders of the revolutionary movement. Since just about every political and technical innovation, and certainly every successful military campaign of the era, is attributed to him personally - well, one man couldn't do that much. In the Cordes scenario, Calibar is represented by a computer simulation. Participants project their own 'vision' of Calibar onto the blank that the scenario gives them."

Chekov turned to Spock. "It was the captain, sir. Whatever she says."

"Each participant sees Calibar as their archetypal leader, or enemy. If this young man idealizes his commanding officer..."

Spock looked thoughtful. "Your perceptions were not reliable, Mister Chekov. You were surprised to find that Lieutenant Uhura had been with you."

"It was the captain," Chekov repeated stubbornly. "Maybe something happened to the computer image she was talking about. I know it was the captain."

"Do you have an image of Calibar?" Spock asked the Tesseri.

She nodded, and a moment later, a picture flashed up, taken in the attic above the stable. A humanoid figure, quite naturally posed, but with the bland features of a mannequin, stood by the window of Calibar's room. For a moment, Chekov thought it was a still shot, then he realized that the person, if it was a person, was looking out into the alley below, still, but not lifeless. The familiar sound of wooden cartwheels over the rough cobbles echoed into the room.

"I do recognize the place, sir. That is not Calibar."

"That wouldn't be how you saw him," the Tesseri said patiently. "This is a straightforward electronic image. I'm sorry. I realize that you don't want to be told that Captain Kirk was a casualty of this situation..."

"He isn't dead. I was with him, talking to him, only a few hours ago!"

"Mister Chekov," Spock admonished, and the ensign fell silent.

"I'm sorry," the woman repeated. "Perhaps… Haden, can you locate an image of Calibar with other participants, perhaps with Chekov himself."

"I'll try," one of the Tesseri males agreed. He used another of the remote devices, studying its inbuilt screen. "There, Verla."

The new sequence had been taken with the same camera, but at night, by artificial light. The quality, however, was excellent. The camera, obviously movement or heat sensitive, panned to the door and watched Samon enter, followed him to the broad seat under the window, lingered on him as he sat there, knees tucked up, his chin resting on the heels of his hands. Chekov instantly knew the day, the hour, the what-happened-next.

It was the evening of the day that had started by the river.

***

Even if Samon had drowned in the river, letting the current carry him down to the race where the banks narrowed and the two smaller tributaries came tumbling down the mountains full of melt water, even then, he'd only have come back. He didn't know, but he somehow believed he'd have come back to Gordo, drawn to him. But it had never come to that. He'd heard an explosion of angry words on the bank and turned to see what it was. Gordo was arguing with Leoman. Perfect. Every man on the beach had his eyes on their leader and his second in command. No one would notice which way Samon went if he came ashore and vanished among the trees. The harshness of the two men's voices made it an easier decision, made staying less of an attractive option. Then Samon realized that Gordo was looking straight at him, his expression a little distracted, a little concerned.

"I took a chance and it didn't pay off. Nothing's certain in this life, you've told me that yourself often enough." Leoman's voice was like a whispered yell of rage.

Gordo shook himself and cursed. He was standing a bare pace from Leoman on the sand. "This is too important to ride on chances. You should have been there, made sure you carried it through, at least had something to fall back on."

Leoman shrugged. "I thought it would work. I didn't think we needed a second string. You've told me yourself if you tie too many knots in a net, the fish can see it a league away."

The sun's heat hadn't yet warmed the sand and the air and Samon was shivering. He moved up to stand with the crowd of men watching the disagreement in silence from a safe distance.

"Heaven preserve me from your judgement, Leoman," Calibar said finally. "We've fifty crates of coins and no way to get them in to the city now."

"Why can't we break open the crates and take them in a few at a time?" someone suggested. To Samon's surprise, Calibar didn't react angrily to the interruption.

"Either you carry enough that someone will eventually stop you and ask what you're carrying, or you go to and fro so many times that the same will happen. If the Queen gets wind of this, if her constables take her so much as one purse of suspect coinage before the whole lot is in circulation and the fire is well alight, we might as well melt the whole load down and make ale mugs." Calibar shook his head at Leoman.

"If his damn barge hadn't been rotten, he wouldn't have taken the risk of dealing with smugglers!" Leoman argued back. "Should I have had a shipwright look at it before I agreed his terms?"

"No, no." Calibar, Samon guessed, was still angry but saw nothing to be gained from prolonging the argument. "It was an honest mistake, I dare say. And if there's one man willing to cart contraband into the city, there must be a dozen. It's just the weight of the damn things. That big barge of his and that derelict wharf seemed perfect. We could have taken our time, once the load was stashed there, and kept it quiet. So, we need to think of something else."

"We could tunnel in under the walls," someone suggested. There was a ripple of nervous laughter.

"We could buy homing pigeons and strap a coin to each leg!"

Calibar threw his hands up and stalked away from his men down the river's edge. He knelt down and rinsed his face. Then he turned back and looked at Samon, who was drying himself with his shirt. "Come on, you're my thinker. How do we get fifty boxes of coins past her majesty's tax collectors and constables, without them sneaking a look in a single one?"

"Well, we..."

"What?"

"The merchant I worked for used a bill of lading to get his goods in without inspection, because the silk gets damaged if the bales are opened. We pay a bribe and show them the bill, and they reckon the duty on what it says on the bill, without checking the bales, even if I have to read it out to them most of the time. I could write out a bill of lading for a load of crates. They know me, at the East Gate. They'd think it was one of Brer's consignments and never think to look."

"You know how much bribe he paid?"

Samon shivered at Gordo's sudden quiet intensity. "Yes .And I know Brer won't be around the gate today. He'll be at the fairings auction, buying..."

Gordo was nodding, not interested in the merchant's business. "Good, so long as you're sure of that. The advantage of this is that it leaves us in the clear if it does go wrong. No one will necessarily blame a load of porters, if the merchant who hires them chooses to commit fifty kinds of treason. You wouldn't get off so lightly though." He stopped and gave Samon a considering look. "But I'm already gambling on you keeping a still tongue in your head, aren't I?"

Samon felt a disconcerting tremor that was no longer entirely from the chill of the river. "If they catch me, they'll blame Brer..."

"They'll certainly consider it," Calibar agreed. "Is that a problem?"

"I… He… He never cared that I… I don't..."

Calibar said nothing. The river talked though, rattling stones, impatient for Samon's answer.

"If everyone said I hired the porters and showed them where to collect the crates… If they all said they'd never seen Brer..." Samon looked round the dozen or so men who would undoubtedly be playing porter. They were bored. They didn't even know who Brer was. They just wanted their orders for the day.

Calibar was nodding agreeably. "Sure .Why not. It makes no difference to me."

Samon didn't know whether to trust the rebel or not. "He's not your enemy, Gordo..."

"No .For that matter, once this starts to work, I'll need every merchant in the land to be bringing goods in that the Queen can't afford to pay for. I've an interest in keeping your pet merchant in circulation, Samon. Haven't I?"

Brer was one silk merchant among a dozen, not a significant factor in anyone's plans, except, of course, Brer's own.

Samon shivered again, uncertain what Gordo's reaction would be to a refusal on his part.

Calibar suddenly flicked a gesture at his men and immediately he and Samon were alone at the riverside. "There is a risk for this man. How certain are you that it will never be a problem anyway, that the crates will go through with no questions? If the answer is that you're not certain, then we're not doing this so it doesn't matter."

When Gordo put it like that, it was easier to make a decision. Samon smiled gratefully. "I'm certain. If I take the paper through, and we go in at the East Gate at around the usual time, they won't ask questions. Particularly if we pick a moment when the road is crowded..."

"They'll be wise to that trick," Gordo said, sounding doubtful himself for a moment.

"Yes," Samon agreed hastily. "But they won't pick on us. I'm sure. If they upset Brer by damaging his goods, he'd use another gate in future and pay his bribes there."

***

It was much later in the day that the rebels finished stacking the crates in the cellar under the stable. Leoman supervised the operation, putting the boxes in the shadow of the big wooden barrels that half filled the underground chamber.

Samon was pushed aside by men with broader shoulders when he tried to help with the work, so Leoman sent him up the narrow stair to fetch jugs and tankards, then instructed him to fill them and line them up so that the porters could drink as soon as they'd maneuvered the last awkward load down the stair and through the door.

The men stood around in the half light of the oil lamps, enjoying the chill of the cellar after laboring in the full heat of the sun.

"To Samon!" Gordo toasted, once everyone had wine and water.

Even Leoman joined in the good-natured chorus. As the mugs were drained, some of the men disappeared upstairs. Gordo and a few others, Leoman included, settled on benches and passed the jugs round again. Samon leaned back against a barrel and drank slowly, listening to the men retelling battle stories that seemed more like myth than history, only the hero of every one was Gordo Calibar.

Today Samon had saved the day. Gordo had asked for his help, and he'd been able to give it, to do what Gordo needed. Gordo had even listened to his doubts, taken them seriously. And now he was included in the celebration, as if he'd been one of the rebel troop from the beginning — however long ago that was. It was hard to tell how much of the warm glow he was feeling came from that knowledge, how much from the wine. Whatever, the sensation was topped up by the occasional brilliant smile Gordo gave him.

"Samon."

His eyes shot wide open. Gordo was standing, looking down at him. Everyone else had gone, along with the wine jugs.

Gordo tapped the wine barrel that Samon had chosen for a backrest. It responded by trembling on its trestle. From the dull sound it made, it was almost full. A copper bowl stood under the tap, to catch any stray drops.

"I was thinking..." Calibar tapped the barrel again.

Samon blinked as he climbed to his feet. What was the plan now?

"Turn round," Gordo instructed him.

Samon did as he was told, looking at the barrel. He was missing something. What use was a barrel full of wine? It was young, from the lack of cobwebs on it. Too young to drink.

A firm hand pushed him forward, so he was leaning against the staves, smelling the wood itself along with the must. Yes, it was a new barrel. Oaky and astringent. So what?

Two hands slipped inside his shirt at the waist. Then they caught him under the ribs and lifted him so his feet were an inch or two off the dirt floor.

Gordo's breath was burning hot on the back of his neck.

Samon threw one arm over the top of the barrel, for purchase, and shoved the other elbow hard back into Gordo's belly. The man cursed and let him slip back on to his feet.

"It's just the right height," Gordo said. "I thought."

"You… you… I wasn't expecting..." Samon backed away. "I don't… I'll kill you if you do that again."

He was surprised when Gordo didn't laugh at the threat.

The bigger man shrugged. "Forget it."

"You startled me."

Gordo had started putting out the lamps.

"I only meant to say..."

The rebel turned and looked at him, a mocking half smile teasing at his mouth.

"I meant, if you want to make love to me, I wish you'd start out by looking at me."

Gordo laughed. "But I wasn't, making love to you. What gave you that idea?"

Samon was very grateful for the darkness that hid his blushes. "Oh." He was about to apologize for his ridiculous error, when it occurred to him that Gordo couldn't really have intended to do anything else. He stood there, feeling clumsy, stupid and angry, and wishing the solid earth floor would swallow him up.

"I was planning to have sex with you," Gordo clarified, with exaggerated patience.

It was Samon's turn to shrug. To say he thought there was a difference would probably only make Gordo laugh more.

"You're tired," Gordo said, sounding like a reasonable parent weary of childish argument. "Why don't you go to bed?"

Samon picked up one of the still burning lamps and passed Gordo on his way to the stairs. A hand caught his arm. Gordo held another lamp up to illumine Samon's stubborn, angry face.

"Why don't you go to my bed?"

***

The sound of the door opening, and a second set of shadows from another lamp, showed that another person had entered the room but the camera remained fixed on Samon as he stood and faced the newcomer.

"So here you are," Calibar said, his tone teasing but friendly. The captain's voice… or was it? The Tesseri had finally planted uncertainty in Chekov's mind. This man…

"Yes .Here I am."

"Are you going to play word games?"

"No."

Calibar's back moved into camera shot. In Chekov's memory his coloring had made him look like burnished gold in the lamplight. He started unfastening the front of Samon's shirt, pausing after each button to place a kiss on his lips.

The camera tracked the two men over to the bed, focused perfectly as the ghostly dummy pushed Samon/Chekov down to lie on the mattress. The microphone picked up the rustle of the straw which filled it so exactly that Chekov seemed to smell the lamp oil and the sweat on Gordo's skin.

"Enough," Spock said flatly.

Verla laughed. "Someone's dreams have been coming true." Then she put a hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry. This isn't funny."

Spock turned away from the image. "Verla, please proceed with the process of retrieving our personnel from the scenario. And with your search for any trace of Captain Kirk. We are grateful for your assistance."

***

Spock went straight to the intercom in the transporter room. "Doctor McCoy, the Tesseri have identified five of our people, and agreed to return them to us. Obviously, they'll want to do this in a way that causes minimum disruption to their… activities. I suggest you prepare yourself for casualties in the near future."

"Five? Does that include Jim?"

"Apparently not. I will keep you informed." The Vulcan closed the link before McCoy could explode and turned to Chekov.

The ensign was studying the toes of his boots.

"Mister Chekov… Let us go to the briefing room."

Once there, Spock seated himself and nodded to Chekov to do the same.

"Did you, or did you not, see the captain in the Cordes scenario?"

Chekov swallowed. "I did."

"How certain are you?" Spock asked simply.

"When we get Mister Scott back, he will confirm it."

"And why should I, or a Tesseri or Federation judge, believe him any more than you? You did not recognize Lieutenant Uhura, yet you are convinced that you recognized the captain."

"I… I spent a lot more time with Gor… with the captain. Lieutenant Uhura was just a… a bystander. I hardly noticed her."

"Obviously." Spock noted that Chekov was sweating, that his pulse was accelerated. In short, that the ensign was reacting as if he was under attack. For the moment, intelligent thought would be more use than adrenaline. "Please relax, ensign. Whether or not you, or anyone else, behaved improperly is irrelevant, for now. I need to know if you are correct in your identification of the captain, and I need to know quickly. If the Tesseri are lying, then we must assume they will take advantage of any delay on our part to cover their tracks. Conversely, I cannot take any action to retrieve the captain unless I have convincing evidence that the Tesseri are attempting to deceive us. They have no motive that we are aware of. You admit, now, to having failed to recognize two close colleagues. The Tesseri have suggested a convincing mechanism for a mistake on your part. While I am disposed to believe you, I need evidence. Did the captain show any sign of recognizing you?"

"No, sir."

"But you recognized him, immediately, at your first meeting?"

"No !I… I..." Chekov seemed to have been struck dumb, then he suddenly found the courage to protest. "Why did you want to… to go on watching that recording? If you're not going to believe me? How can you think I was mistaken about who he was, when… when..."

Spock slid his tricorder onto the table between them. "I hoped I could record enough of the simulation's speech or movement for computer analysis. But… the ship's computer does not, to my knowledge, contain any comparable recordings."

Despite the effort Spock had made to phrase things with human circumspection, with even a shred of gentle irony, Chekov seemed determined to respond defensively. "No, I did not recognize him. What do you want me to say, that I… that I...? At first, I didn't realize who Gordo Calibar was. I did not even know who I was myself. But once it had happened, it was impossible to… to..."

"I believe I understand what you are trying to say, Ensign."

The intercom whistled and Spock, seeming almost relieved, leaned across to respond.

"Spock ?Sulu's ready to answer questions. He's confused though. He seems to have at least three different sets of memories and he's not sure what order to put them in."

"I doubt if his recollections will prove anything," Spock responded. "But we will be with you momentarily."

***

"...And then this kid picked a fight with me, over Calibar. I think he was jealous or something. There were some heavy emotional undercurrents in the whole thing. But I don't remember seeing anyone else from the landing party, or the research post. I guess I wouldn't have been looking for them. Chekov! You're okay..." Sulu trailed off in response to the ensign's unenthusiastic expression. "Mister Spock, I've been trying to remember what happened, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. I had some..." The helmsman paused. "Some rather exotic adventures, got killed more times than I like to think about, and then I woke up here."

"You do not recall seeing the captain at any point?"

"The captain? No. Definitely not."

"You remember Calibar?"

"Oh, yes. He was one of the main players..."

"Please describe him."

"Uh..." Sulu looked puzzled. "That's odd. Or maybe… his personality kind of overwhelmed his appearance. I sort of remember what he said, and how he said it, more than what he looked like."

"Do you remember seeing me?" Chekov broke in to ask.

Sulu frowned at him. "No."

"Do you remember the Queen of Cordes?"

"Mm .Of course. That was the Errol Flynn part of it. No comment." Sulu glanced sideways at Spock.

"That was Lieutenant Uhura," Chekov said.

"Oh." Sulu now looked distinctly uncomfortable. "She didn't say anything else, did she?"

"We haven't spoken to the lieutenant yet," Spock informed him.

"Then how… Well, I didn't know, you see, Mister Spock..." He shrugged and smiled apologetically. "Oh, what the hell. We're both single adults. She seemed as keen as I was."

Chekov turned away from him with uncharacteristic impatience. "If Sulu did not recognize Uhura, it doesn't mean anything that he did not recognize Captain Kirk. Calibar could have been the captain."

It was Spock's turn to be brusque. "You are advancing contradictory arguments, Ensign."

Sulu lay back in his bed. "Calibar was Captain Kirk? Hey, I tried to kill him. But someone stopped me. So were you there, Chekov, in Cordes?"

"Yes .I was the one who was not so keen as you and Lieutenant Uhura."

It took Sulu a moment to figure that out. "Oh, my God..."

"Ensign Chekov, you will please keep your attention on our primary problem. We need evidence that Calibar was Captain Kirk. Were all three of you together at any point?"

"Yes, sir." Chekov stood there, concentrating on the primary problem and ignoring the helmsman.

"Well?"

"On the last morning, with Juanita Fajez. And in the early afternoon, on the quay side."

Sulu looked embarrassed all over again, as he remembered details. "But really, that wasn't the captain, Chekov. Calibar was… kind of… more oriental-looking than Captain Kirk. And less… um..."

Chekov sighed. "Mister Spock already knows, Lieutenant."

"Well, there you are, Chekov. How can you have had an affair with Calibar and still think he was the captain? I mean… It's not credible. I'm not saying I think you're lying, deliberately, but..."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Spock said. He turned to the ensign and waited. Chekov shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't care what anyone else says. I don't care that it's ridiculous and embarrassing and..."

"Then can you give me a location, where you last saw Calibar? Were you anywhere near the site of the research station?"

"The site… You know they destroyed it?"

"Yes .Quite comprehensively."

"We were never more than… ten kilometers from there."

"Can you be more precise? I want the captain's last known location."

"There is a track which passes the station. It joins a road..." Chekov paused, recollecting the odd journey with Juanita in the cart, the fight with Sulu fresh in his mind, and Calibar at his side. "...And then another, but if you keep going downhill all the way, you reach the river. There is a small harbour, a few houses, an inn. We were there.

"I will attempt to identify the location," Spock said. "Your description should be adequate. And then..."

"Yes, sir?"

"We will beam down and look for Calibar. Doubtless the Tesseri will object, but their reluctance to interrupt their 'scenario' should work in our favour."

***

Calibar hauled Foster after him under the overhang. The man was injured, breathing heavily and almost out of his mind with pain, but not letting out a sound. The militia were only a stone's throw away, their bright blue tunics vivid through the low branches of the trees.

What a day it had turned into. First that madman with the cart axle, then Sulu, ending up in the river with his chest crushed. And Samon… the man was demon-possessed, with extra demons working his tongue for him. If Scott hadn't walked in just as he'd kicked the crate away, he'd have broken his neck as surely as the youngster. Scott had been caught up in Samon's spell too. He'd still been talking about 'getting away from here', right up until the militia had burst in and taken care of it for him. Calibar spent a moment hoping the older man had found whatever he'd been looking for.

"My wife. They killed her. My sweet, darling lady..."

"Foster ?I thought you'd passed out. Just a few more minutes. Most of the militia chased off after nether and the others. Unless someone was keeping a tally, they won't realize they're missing two of us, and I doubt they can count that well."

No, they probably wouldn't notice. Scott dead, and Foster's wife. The rest of his men had made off up the cliffs, using paths known well to the rebels. But Foster had been too badly injured to go that way, and of course, Calibar had sent the others on, and stayed himself. They'd used the tunnel at the back of the kitchen to get out, onto the road. Foster had been hurt even worse than Calibar had realized. They'd only limped a few paces up a side track before he'd decided they had no choice but to find cover and wait it out.

Foster wasn't going to make it. He was bleeding badly. It would just be a few more minutes.

Another one lost. Every one that died was like a little piece of himself carved out of him. Every one that fell into the Queen's hands, or that he sent there, voluntarily…

Samon. Hell. Scott had seemed half out of his mind over losing the man. Or perhaps it was just how it had happened, walking in on them. Or perhaps that kind of madness was catching, like river fever. Calibar had come round with an ache in his chest as if a pack mule had kicked him, to find Scott swearing and shedding tears over Samon. But the youngster was already cold to the touch, his neck broken like a fowl for the pot.

It had all seemed to make sense, up until that point. He wasn't Gordo Calibar. No, he'd killed him in that fight ten days ago, and then he'd turned round to find himself surrounded by Calibar's men, twelve of them. He'd expected to die, there and then. So he'd pulled his clothes straight, wiped the dust off his face, and straightened up to face his executioners like a free man, not one of the Queen's 'subjects', no better than slaves. And Leoman had called them off.

"No man defeats Gordo Calibar," Leoman had said.

He'd shrugged. So he'd broken some unwritten rule. They were already going to kill him. Maybe he could have that as an epitaph.

"What's your name?"

"I don't have one." Kill me for that too, while you're about it.

"You do now. Gordo Calibar."

And they'd all twelve taken their knives out and given them to him. Everywhere, after that, he was Calibar. No one questioned it. Most of the time, he hadn't questioned it himself. Not until Samon came along and told him he was James Tiberius Kirk. And he'd believed him.

But he wasn't .He was… a no name. Like Samon. Well, Leoman had given him a name, and he'd given Samon a name too. Maybe not such a good one, but good enough for a merchant's tally man.

He checked Foster. The man's face was gray and he was laboring for every breath.

"You'll be fine. Don't worry. The militia should be clear now. We'll wait a moment longer."

Voices on the road below the cliff made Calibar raise his head cautiously, looking through the trees to make out who it was. They weren't shouting and making themselves obvious. Maybe some of his men had come back, in which case he'd give them hell for it, disobeying his orders. A tall figure and a shorter, slight one, civilians. One wore a piece of twisted cloth round his brow. A foreigner then. No one he knew. He wondered where they'd come from; down the road, not expecting trouble, or up from the river, in which case someone on the pier would have told them what had happened. They were standing there, talking earnestly, as if they couldn't make up their minds which way to go. Which was madness. The road only went up or down, and the track went nowhere unless you were collecting firewood or birds eggs. Maybe they'd come by river to see Foster, and were put out by the innkeeper's disappearance.

They might even be there to see Calibar himself, with some token or password to prove themselves trustworthy. Foster was beyond noticing whether Calibar was there or not, so he crept out from among the tree trunks and dropped onto the road, the tip of his knife digging into the smaller man's neck before they'd even realized…

"Captain."

He found himself staring into a lean, serious face, with dark brown eyes and oddly upswept brows under a straight fringe of black hair.

"Captain?" he repeated. Only Scott had ever called him that, and then it seemed like a slip of the tongue, as if the man had thought for a moment he was talking to someone else.

"Captain James Tiberius Kirk."

"I have… heard the name."

"From Mister Chekov." The stranger gripped Calibar's hand and moved the point of the dagger away from his companion's neck. "This is Mister Chekov, although I believe you know him as 'Samon'."

"Samon?" He looked at the man he'd been threatening. "But..." It was as if a mist was falling away from his eyes. How could he not have recognized… "...Samon ?You were dead. I laid you out with my own hands. I… I broke my promise, didn't I? But your neck was broken, and..." He was rambling, talking nonsense. He should get grip. The man wasn't that important, was he? Just an occasional bundle for a cold night...

***

Calibar pinched out the last of the lamps and turned to follow Samon up the stairs. His mind was already on the next step in the plan. Getting the coins into circulation would need patience and restraint. Hell, he could hand them out to a couple of dozen men and tell them to buy every whore available at ten times her usual price: that would spread them quickly enough, but it would also raise too many questions too soon. No, it had to be done with some subtlety. Better to wait until Samon had done his work in the Palace. And then get the money in the right place, at the right time, so there was no chance of the alarm being raised before enough harm was done. It wasn't beyond the Queen's power to simply declare all Cordes coinage valueless. He must be sure that when she did that, it would be seen as the action of someone clutching at straws. Then he could rely on her foreign creditors to yank the last straws away.

He walked through the attic, mechanically acknowledging 'goodnights' from men finishing a late supper and preparing for bed. The bunk Samon had been using was empty. He hesitated for a brief moment. What if he'd frightened the kid away?

No. Samon was sitting by the window, waiting for him.

"So here you are," Calibar said, keeping his relief out of his voice. There was no reason to let the kid know he was anything but a one night fancy.

"Yes. Here I am."

"Are you going to play word games?"

"No."

Samon slipped off the window seat and took a step towards Calibar. His eyes were wide. Calibar reached out and started unfastening the front of Samon's shirt, pausing after each button to place a kiss on his lips.

"It's all right. I'm not going to hurt you," he whispered, guiding Samon over to the bed. "You might..." Another kiss, another button. "Even..." The straw rustled as they settled onto the pallet. "Enjoy it."

The youngster's body was tense, trembling. Calibar stroked fingers up the man's naked back, soothing him, demonstrating that the touch could be gentle, pleasant, until finally he stopped squirming away from it.

No hurry. If he went too quickly, clutched too fast, he might lose it. He stopped and kissed Samon again, pushing his lips apart with his tongue, but not trying to get inside them, not yet. Not until Samon opened them of his own accord, and let him in, and Calibar realized just how much he wanted to be there.

***

He pulled Samon to him and held him so he could feel his heart pounding and the breath sighing in and out of him; the pulse in his neck and the softness of his lips and the sweet, sweet welcome of his kiss.

"Captain, we must hurry. We have to go to the Palace."

Calibar turned his attention back to the stranger, leaving a hand on Samon's arm, just in case he should vanish. "The Palace? Are you mad? Samon, who… Oh, this is Spock, am I right?"

"I am Spock, yes."

"The man Samon won't presume to replace."

Spock looked at him oddly. But maybe it meant nothing. The man was odd. His skin looked very green in the shade dappled evening light. "We can restore your memory if we go to the Palace. There are, apparently, facilities there for such a procedure."

"I'm not generally superstitious, but suddenly I can't help wondering if the two of you aren't really dead after all." Calibar had slipped his knife back into his belt before he went to embrace Samon, but what use was a knife against the dead, if they came for you? "How do you plan to get to the Palace? And into it, once you're in the city?"

"Allow me to arrange that, Captain. I suggest you have your knife ready for use. We may meet some opposition."

Samon frowned at that, but Calibar took the advice without argument. Opposition was something he understood, and even relished, if it was the kind you could use a knife against. What happened next, though, was enough to unsettle heroes greater than Gordo Calibar. The world went away, and came back as a cool, tapestry hung corridor.

"This is the Palace. We're on the wrong level. We need to go..." Samon was feeling for the direction, like a hunting dog. "That way."

"I'm not going anywhere," Calibar announced. He felt sick, as if he'd been spun around a few times getting here. "Who in God's name are you? And who sent you? Has the Palace been taken over by demons?"

"Follow Mister Chekov, or I will stun you and carry you."

Samon had already started off. It made sense to follow him, since Calibar had no idea where he was, but sense wasn't the point. There was no sense in any of this.

The Palace, if this was the Palace, was built on the side of the mountain, with its main entrance at the highest level. 'Up' therefore equated with 'out' .Samon was heading towards a distant glimpse of a flight of white stairs. Calibar decided he could always peel off from the party and make a bid for freedom. He shrugged. "Okay, Spock. Have it your way. Although I'd like to see you try."

He caught up quickly with Samon. "Where are we going?"

"To the Queen's private chambers."

"The Queen's dead."

"We know," Spock agreed succinctly. "Who replaces her?"

"Huh? I don't know yet. Most likely one of her sisters. There are four of them. She kept them under virtual house arrest. But… it depends who killed her, doesn't it?"

"You didn't?"

"Why bother? Since there are four more just as bad. The problem is the dynasty, not the… Careful!"

A troop of guards had turned into the corridor, and caught sight of the intruders. To Calibar's horror, neither Samon nor Spock were ready to defend themselves. Neither, he realized now, was even armed. And when he tried to push forward, they put their shoulders together and effectively excluded him from the fight. Then a lance of pure light shot out from Spock's hand and the lead guard collapsed to the floor.

The dead man's comrades didn't hesitate. They ran. Obviously the new ruler of Cordes hadn't yet convinced anyone she was worth battling demons for.

Calibar decided not to ask how it was done. He had a feeling that the time when he had to worry about how things were done in Cordes was coming to an end. Samon was chasing after the retreating guards, and then abandoning them to climb the stairs, two at a time, with Calibar at his shoulder and Spock, who moved quickly without any seeming effort, bringing up the rear.

"In here." It was the Queen's private chamber. Samon pointed at the wall opposite the door. "They have repaired it. Behind the plaster… a door."

Spock raised his hand again, and Calibar could see that he held some tool, or device. It threw its spear of light again, and the plaster, and the door, if there was one, vanished. There was a little, dark cupboard of a room beyond, lit up by an eerie blue glow, which died away. A woman stood there. Spirits and angels. Calibar was beginning to fancy himself caught up in a fable.

"Commander Spock," she said, in a voice that wasn't angelic, or awful, but merely irritated.

"You lied to us, Verla. Calibar is Captain Kirk."

"Our records were corrupted by the presence of your personnel in the scenario."

"Then who faked the pictures you showed us?"

She shook her head. "Very well. We lied. But you can't take him back. We can't locate his memory file. If you use the machine on him, you'll be left with a blank."

"I think it unlikely that you store participant's memories externally when it would be so much easier to simply repress them. But if you think I shouldn't take the risk, I won't .I'll take Gordo Calibar as he is. Our chief medical officer is quite competent and resourceful. He will appreciate the challenge."

Verla's expression hardened. "You can't take him, Spock. You don't understand. He is Calibar."

"Starfleet records will show..."

"No .You misunderstand me. I don't deny that he was Captain Kirk, but he, alone among hundreds of participants who have killed the model and tried to assume the role, he is Gordo Calibar. He belongs here. It's more than… an inconvenience, a matter of returning money to our clients. This man is the incarnation of the greatest Tesseri soul."

Spock paused, then nodded gravely. "I believe I do understand. We too, Verla, have a hero, a man who achieves the apparently impossible, who liberates us from danger and oppression, a leader whom we would follow to our deaths without question..."

"Then you know why I can't..."

"...Our own Gordo Calibar, and that man is James Kirk."

* * *

Chekov sat and picked at his dinner. He'd chosen safe, familiar, starship fare, and it tasted… alien.

Uhura was sitting opposite him, looking concerned.

"I would prefer to forget it," Chekov said into the silence.

"But you're not. You're sitting there, thinking about it."

The ensign shrugged and smiled unconvincingly.

"Is the Dalmatian good tonight, Cruella?" Sulu asked from behind him.

"Oh, dinner is turning out to be a little on the tough side," Uhura replied lightly. "Why don't you sit down?"

Sulu shook his head warily. "Has the big freeze set in?"

She raised a questioning eyebrow.

"I mean, is he talking to us?"

"Ask him yourself."

"Chekov?" Sulu sat down on the table facing the chair next to the ensign and picked up a fry from the neglected plate in front of his friend. "Are we talking?"

"Yes, of course we are," Chekov said tiredly. He shrugged. "I do not consider either of you responsible for what happened."

Uhura frowned. "But?"

"No 'but'. Really. That was all… so unreal. Like a fantasy. A strange dream."

"I suppose so," the communications officer agreed. "You wake up and think, did I dream that because I really want it to happen..? And you know you don't, really, so..."

"Exactly," Chekov said glumly.

"So what's bothering you?" Sulu demanded.

"The things that I did want to happen." Chekov pushed his plate away. "I just wish I could get it over with."

"What?"

"Saying something to him, or… something. Returning to normal. Going back to work."

Uhura stood and picked up her empty plate. "I think you're about to get your wish. The captain just came in."

Sulu patted the ensign reassuringly on the back and helped himself to another unwanted fry. "Good luck. And remember, it takes two to tango."

He was gone before Chekov could ask what he meant. The ensign took a deep breath instead.

Kirk pulled a chair out from the other side of the table, but waited until Chekov nodded uncertainly before he sat down.

"I'm glad you three are talking to each other."

Chekov shifted uncomfortably. "We are all… equally embarrassed."

Kirk nodded. "I'm finding this a little difficult. I keep seeing things from his point of view."

"Yes. It quickly becomes easier to keep things… separate. Otherwise, perhaps I would be angry with them, but I'm not."

"As if he's not real any longer."

"He never was real," Chekov came back immediately. "Samon never was real."

"He seemed real to me," Kirk said quietly. There was no answer. He sighed. "Well, I wanted to explain this, because I think we should stay out of each other's way for a few days. Once we get back on duty, I'll probably move you from the bridge for a week. It's not because you did anything wrong, or because I think you will. I just don't trust myself to remember where I am at the moment, and I can't really stay off the bridge."

"I understand," Chekov said readily.

"Calibar wasn't very Starfleet," Kirk admitted. And he smiled Gordo Calibar's easy, familiar smile.

Chekov's heart skipped a beat.

"I do understand, Captain," the ensign said over-hastily. Then he relented. "I think I would appreciate… a few days of doing something different. It is not a problem."

"Just a few days. And then..."

Chekov instantly looked up defensively at his captain.

"There were some parts of being Gordo Calibar that I enjoyed, Pavel." Kirk pushed his chair back and stood up. "Do you understand that?"

The ensign frowned. "No, I do not understand..."

"What I'm saying is, off duty, off the ship, if it ever seems to you that Samon might have been real after all… I'd appreciate knowing about it."

Calibar grinned as Chekov's jaw dropped. Then James Kirk resumed a serious, Starfleet expression and went about his business.

end