Yurnos
Wavebreak was a modestly sized seaport about half a day’s ride from the mill. A marmot-drawn wagon brought Spock and Chekov to the edge of the town, where Jord dropped them off to avoid attracting too much attention to herself. A country road, running along a rocky coastline, led toward the port, whose outer buildings could be spied in the near distance. Sailing ships, sporting brightly colored banners, were docked at piers roughly half a kilometer away.
“Sorry I can’t take you straight to Eefa’s shop, but I need to be discreet. I’d rather not be seen chauffeuring a pair of strangers through the middle of town.”
“Your caution is well warranted,” Spock said. “We can manage from here.”
“Just follow the directions we gave you, and you’ll be fine. Good hunting.”
She turned the wagon around and started back toward the mill as the men set off on foot for the town. It was midafternoon, but the weather was still hot and humid, relieved only by drifting white clouds and a briny breeze blowing off the harbor. Both men had changed into native garb, borrowed from Vankov, their phasers and communicators hidden beneath linen vests and jackets. A stitched leather satchel, slung over Spock’s shoulder, held his tricorder. Wide-brimmed hats protected their heads from the sun, while also helping to conceal the tapered points of Spock’s ears. He hoped that would be sufficient to disguise his alien origins.
At least the Yurnians do not sport horns, antlers, fur, or scales.
A short hike brought them into the town proper, where the dirt road evolved into a wide city street paved with seashells. Spock noted that shells of various colors and sizes were widely used as decoration throughout the town, often in the form of mosaics adorning the entrances of assorted shops, taverns, and temples. Some such mosaics displayed geometric patterns similar to those displayed on the carpet at the farmhouse—apparently a popular design in this region of Yurnos—while others were less abstract, advertising the nature of the various shops and businesses by depicting cups, baths, cakes, candles, and so on. Townspeople strolled the sidewalks, largely ceding the streets to carts and wagons. Harnessed marmots padded down the streets, occasionally leaving their droppings behind. He and Chekov drew a few curious looks, but no one appeared particularly startled or alarmed by their presence. It occurred to him that a seaport would likely be accustomed to travelers and traders from elsewhere. He wondered if that characteristic had attracted the anonymous smugglers to Wavebreak in the first place, on the assumption that they would attract less notice here.
A plausible theory, he thought.
“What do you think, Mister Spock?” Chekov asked, keeping his voice low. “Do you really think this Eefa person can lead us to the smugglers?”
They had already discussed this on the way to town, but Spock had long since accepted that humans were often uncomfortable with silence and felt a need to generate “small talk,” even if this meant repeating themselves.
“That the bootleg tea came from Eefa’s shop is our most promising lead,” Spock said. “I lack sufficient data, however, to estimate any probability of success when it comes to locating the actual smugglers trespassing on Yurnos.”
According to Jord and Vankov, Eefa was incontrovertibly a native Yurnian, born and raised in this vicinity, whose family and origins were a matter of record. It stood to reason therefore that she was not one of the actual smugglers, although it remained to be determined whether she was at all aware of where her tea was going. It was entirely possible, he reminded himself, that Eefa was simply an innocent tea merchant who had never heard of Baldur III, let alone the Prime Directive.
“But what if we don’t learn anything from Eefa?” Chekov asked. “What then?”
“We will cross that bridge when we come to it, Ensign. In the meantime, we appear to have arrived at our destination.”
Eefa’s tea shop was located on a quiet side street within sight of the docks. The mosaic above the doorway depicted a nabbia bush, denoting the nature of her business. A whistle sounded as they entered the shop, thanks to a small bellows attached to the door’s hinges. Spock admired the ingenuity of the simple mechanism.
Very creative.
The robust aroma of nabbia permeated the interior of the store, which was relatively cool compared to the heat outdoors. The front of the store displayed a wide selection of pots, cups, saucers, empty glass canisters, and other paraphernalia, while the actual tea was stored in a wall of wooden racks behind a long rectangular counter. A mechanical scale rested atop the counter. An erasable slate announced current prices and specials. Spock noted that Suffusion was among the varieties of tea being offered.
“Cozy shop,” Chekov commented. “Very tidy.”
The shop was occupied only by a hefty male Yurnian sitting on a stool in one corner, fanning himself with a paper fan bearing the same logo seen above the door. A colored bandanna covered his pate, a fashion choice often adopted, according to Vankov, by Yurnian men who were losing their hair, as they were apparently prone to do as they aged. The man looked the newcomers over, but made no effort to stir from his perch. A single grunt acknowledged their arrival.
Security, Spock surmised. Not a salesclerk.
“Hello?” Chekov said.
“Be right with you!” a chipper voice called from a back room. A Yurnian woman emerged to greet them, bustling up to the counter. She was a handsome older woman wearing an apron over her everyday attire. A bun of auburn hair was piled atop her head. Calculating blue eyes struck Spock as possibly out of alignment with her broad professional smile. “Well, well, I see we have some new faces visiting us today. Take off your hats, gents, and make yourselves at home. Let me get a better look at your handsome faces.”
“As you wish.”
Spock removed his hat, not wishing to offend. A tightly wound bandanna, similar to the one sported by the guard, protected the tips of his ears from scrutiny. Chekov doffed his hat as well; a mop of dark hair explained his lack of a bandanna.
“There now,” the woman said. “My name’s Eefa. How can I help you fine gentlemen?”
“I am Fultar, and this is Tocas,” Spock stated, using names supplied by Jord and Vankov, who had assured their visitors that the aliases were so common as to be forgettable. “We represent a trading company that is interested in purchasing large quantities of nabbia on a regular basis.”
“Is that so?” Eefa’s smile grew even broader, her eyes even more calculating. “Any variety in particular?”
Spock played the next card in his deck. “I understand Suffusion is quite popular.”
The name did not provoke a visible response beyond a flicker of avarice. Spock had hoped for a more telling reaction.
“A delicious tea. Very much in demand.” She inspected his attire as though assessing his income. “How much are you looking to pay?”
“We have considerable resources,” Spock said, “but would prefer to trade in goods rather than local currency.”
“Interesting.” She leaned across the counter. “What are you looking to trade?”
Spock nodded at Chekov, who produced a felt bag from his vest pocket. Chekov opened the bag and spilled a handful of polished trillium beads onto the table. Their lustrous black gleam attested to their appeal and value.
The gems came from a trillium bracelet in Jord and Vankov’s collection of contraband. Spock had judged the Klingon and Capellan artifacts too distinctive to recycle, but hoped that the trillium beads would be less distinctive if no longer in the form of a bracelet. It was a calculated risk, but he had deemed it preferable to introducing yet another offworld item to Yurnos. And if it happened that Eefa did recognize the gems . . . that too could be informative.
“There is more where these came from,” Chekov stated. “Much more.”
Eefa’s eyes lit up at the sight of the trillium, but a new wariness entered her face and body language as well. Spock could practically see her go to yellow alert. Her eyes went from wide to narrow. Her smile became more forced.
“Seems to me I’ve seen beauties like these before.” She lifted her gaze from the gems to appraise her visitors once more. “Where exactly did you say you were from again?”
“We did not specify that,” Spock said.
He could not even hint at space travel or other worlds without knowing whether or not Eefa was aware that she had sold nabbia to aliens.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Eefa insisted. “If you’re foreigners, there’s legalities to be observed. Taxes and tariffs and duties, all of which need to be carefully recorded so the governor’s tax men get their share. And if you’re thinking of a serious, long-term business arrangement . . . well, you’ll need to be registered as foreign trading partners, times being what they are.”
Spock rather doubted that the anonymous smugglers observed such niceties.
“That would be . . . inconvenient for us. We would prefer to keep our transactions off the books, as it were.”
“Ah, so that’s how it is.” She mulled the matter over, as though weighing caution against profit, before addressing the guard. “Woji, I think this business requires some privacy.” She glanced at the doors and windows. “If you don’t mind . . .”
The guard grunted in assent. Hopping off his stool, he locked the front entrance and pulled some blinds down over the windows. Eefa turned up a lamp to compensate for the sunlight being blocked by the blinds.
“There; now we can speak frankly.” She faced Spock and Chekov with her hands upon her hips. “What makes you think that I would be party to such an arrangement?”
“We were drawn by the quality of your wares,” Spock suggested, wanting to draw her out. His goal, after all, was to extract vital intelligence from her without compromising his own mission.
“No, there’s more to it than that,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not the only tea dealer in this province, let alone this town, and yet somehow these beauties”—she gestured at the trillium—“have found their way to my shop again? Don’t tell me that’s mere coincidence.”
“I would not insult your intelligence by doing so,” Spock said. “In truth, we have reason to believe that you have conducted similar transactions with other traders.”
“What other traders?” she quizzed him.
She wants to know how much I know, Spock realized, while I seek to discover how much she knows about the smugglers and their operation.
He regretted that Captain Kirk was not at hand to conduct this negotiation. He excelled at such exercises, which he often likened to human card games. Spock preferred chess himself, but had been told he had a good poker face.
“Strangers from afar,” he said, “such as ourselves.”
“Friends of yours?”
“Let us say that we are in the same business,” he said with deliberate vagueness.
“Ah, I get it now.” Comprehension dawned on her face. “You’re the competition, looking to horn in on their business.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Spock said, going along with her narrative. “We represent another, larger trading company with an interest in absorbing our colleague’s operation, on terms equitable to all, naturally. Perhaps you can arrange an introduction?”
“We can make it worth your while.” Chekov scooped up the trillium and placed it back in his bag. “If you’re interested.”
Her eyes tracked the bag as he returned it to his pocket. She licked her lips, clearly unwilling to part with it. She looked Spock squarely in the eyes.
“Are you willing to put that in writing?” she asked.
“Is that necessary?” Spock asked. He could not imagine that such a contract could be legally enforceable under the circumstances. “As mentioned, we prefer to keep our business off the books.”
“This would be just between us,” she said, “to jog your memory just in case you suddenly remember this conversation differently once I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain.” She smirked at them. “You know the old saying, ‘Memories fade faster than ink.’ ”
“Ah, yes,” Chekov said, unconvincingly. “That old saying.”
“My family came over from the Old Kingdom,” she said proudly. “That was two generations ago, but I learned the old wisdoms on my mother’s knee and hold to them to this day.”
She drew a parchment and a coral pen from a drawer beneath the counter and hastily dashed off a letter of agreement. “Shall we agree to goods equivalent to, say, two hundred zeels in exchange for me facilitating a meeting between you and certain customers, with a ten percent bonus if the meeting yields the desired outcome?”
“Those terms are acceptable,” Spock said, declining to haggle over payments he had no intention of making. A contract to enable an illegal conspiracy was null and void by definition, nor did he wish to insert any further non-Yurnian goods into the planet’s economy. He took the document from Eefa and briefly reviewed it, having acquired a rudimentary knowledge of the written language while studying Yurnos earlier. “Shall I sign at the bottom?”
He reached for the pen, but she refused to surrender it. She put the pen away and extracted another sharp piece of coral, which she handed to Spock instead.
“Not in ink,” she specified. “Blood, as tradition requires for bargains of import. ‘Swear by the heart, sign by the blood,’ as the saying goes.”
Spock found himself wishing that Eefa was less of a traditionalist. Her stipulation posed a difficulty: Yurnians did not boast green blood.
He attempted to pass the coral needle to Chekov. “Would you care to do the honors?”
“What’s the matter?” Eefa said, the evasion not escaping her notice. “Your own blood is too good to seal a deal with?”
“I am merely prone to infections,” Spock said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, frowning. “Nobody ever died of a pinprick.” She shared a glance with Woji, who loomed ominously behind them. “Or is it that you don’t truly wish to commit to this pact?”
“I am quite sincere,” he lied.
“Then why balk at signing the proper way?” She took the parchment back from him and tore it up. “I can’t do business with someone I can’t trust, and I can’t trust anybody who won’t spill a few drops of blood as a show of good faith. A pity, truly. I’d thought we might all profit from our acquaintance, but it seems I was mistaken.”
“Let’s not be too hasty,” Chekov said. “Perhaps we can still work this out.”
“Too late for that, I think.” She pointed toward the exit. “You’d best leave now.”
Woji grunted in agreement.
“I disagree.” Spock was not ready to depart as they had yet to achieve their aims. To retreat now would leave them no closer to tracking down the smugglers and shutting down their operations. Better perhaps, he concluded, to force a confrontation in hopes of inducing the opposition to show their hands.
“What was that?” Eefa said, bristling. “This is my shop. I decide when it’s time for you to go. Isn’t that right, Woji?”
The guard massaged his knuckles. Spock ignored him.
“Let us dispense with polite circumlocutions,” he said. “We all know that you have been selling your tea—Suffusion, in particular—to smugglers in exchange for exotic goods which you then sell on the black market. We are in pursuit of the smugglers and will not be deterred. You can answer our questions . . . or would you prefer that we summon the local constables?”
She blanched at the suggestion.
“I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m a tea merchant. I sold tea. Where’s the crime in that?”
“That is for your own magistrates to decide,” Spock said, “but surely you are aware that your customers have secrets to hide, and that you are abetting them by helping them to conceal their illicit activities.”
Spock wished he knew more about her actual dealings with the smugglers, as well as whatever local regulations she may have bypassed. He could only hope that her guilty conscience would fill in the blanks in his accusations.
“You tell her, Mister . . . Fultar,” Chekov said, playing along. He subjected Eefa to a stern gaze. “You’re up to no good, and you’re not going to get away with it.”
“Is that so?”
She drew a flintlock pistol from beneath the counter and aimed it at Spock. It was a primitive firearm, not nearly as sophisticated as a phaser or disrupter, but possibly even more dangerous at close range. Old-fashioned projectile weapons could not be set on stun, as Spock knew from painful experience. He had once been shot—and nearly killed—by an equally crude firearm.
“Stay where you are,” she ordered. “You had your chance to leave peacefully, but, no, you had to make trouble.” She peered at them above the muzzle of the pistol. “Who are you exactly? And what made you think you could bully me in my own shop?”
“We are no one you want to pull a weapon on,” Chekov blustered. “I’ll tell you that.”
The young ensign’s tense body language indicated that his human fight-or-flight reaction was urging him to action. Spock suspected that Chekov was only moments away from drawing his phaser or perhaps springing forward to wrest the pistol from Eefa’s grip; as both he and Spock were well trained in various forms of combat, it was likely they could subdue both Eefa and her guard if necessary, but that would not gain them any more information than they already possessed. Allowing Eefa the upper hand for the time being was more likely to yield significant revelations, albeit at some risk to their personal safety.
“We are at a distinct disadvantage,” he advised Chekov. “I suggest we comply.”
Chekov shot him a puzzled look, as though uncertain why they were not making more of an effort to defend themselves, only to catch on belatedly. He nodded at Spock, somehow resisting the urge to wink. Spock admired his restraint.
“Of course, Fultar. I understand.”
“Now you’re talking sense,” Eefa said. “Shame it took so long.” Brandishing the pistol, she gestured toward a curtained doorway at the rear of the shop. “Take them in the back while I figure out what to do with them.”
Woji escorted them into a back room behind the wall of tea racks. The chamber appeared to combine the functions of office and storeroom. Ledgers were piled atop a desk. Canvas bags and metal canisters held additional stock that had not yet made it to shelves. Barrels were tied together by lengths of sturdy chain. A wastebasket needed emptying.
“Search them,” she instructed Woji.
The guard frisked the prisoners, grunting as he confiscated their phasers and communicators. Despite the logic of letting themselves be captured at this juncture, Spock flinched inwardly at the loss of the devices, which represented yet another potential source of cultural contamination. It had been a risk carrying the items on their persons, but one could hardly go searching for criminals unarmed and with no means of calling for assistance. Woji’s hands-on search provided an opportunity for a judicious nerve pinch; Spock relinquished that chance, but not without reservations. He hoped he would not regret that lost opportunity later.
Playing it safe, on the other hand, will get us nowhere.
Woji presented his discoveries to Eefa, who did not seem nearly as confounded by them as perhaps she should have been. If anything, her eyes widened in recognition.
“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “You’re from Collu S’Avala too!”
Chekov blinked in confusion. “Colloo savalla?”
“Don’t play dumb,” Eefa said. “Collu S’Avala. The mystical kingdom far across the waves, atop the highest mountains, where you obviously hail from.” She toyed with the phaser in a way that Spock found somewhat troubling. “Where else could you have obtained these marvels?”
Spock thought he understood. The name had escaped his studies of Yurnos, but Collu S’Avala appeared to be some fabled, supposedly distant realm that was likely more myth than reality, not unlike Shangri-La, Atlantis, or Sha Ka Ree.
“And that is where you believe your mysterious trading partners come from as well?” he asked Eefa. “From Collu S’Avala?”
“None other,” she replied. “Some believe it is just a legend, but I always knew it was real.”
All became clear to Spock. It was evident that Eefa did not know that her clients were from another world. Instead she had been led to believe that they came from a mythical land embedded in the lore of the planet. Spock greeted this realization with some relief; playing on the local folklore was preferable, from the standpoint of the Prime Directive, to prematurely introducing Yurnians to the reality of interstellar travel and societies. He resolved to do nothing to disabuse her of the notion.
“A logical conclusion,” he told her. “I cannot refute it.”
“I should think not.” She kept the pistol trained on the captives. “Tie them up and gag them,” she instructed Woji. “I need to think.”
Spock considered resisting, but decided there was still more to be learned about the actual smugglers, so he stood by calmly. Eefa looked to be in no hurry to eliminate them, suggesting that she was merely a greedy tea dealer, not a murderer. This struck him as eminently plausible; furtively selling nabbia to smugglers was one thing, committing cold-blooded homicide was another.
Spock was caught off guard, however, when Woji roughly yanked his bandanna off, exposing the Vulcan’s ears. Spock assumed that the guard had simply intended to use the cloth as a gag, but the results were far more consequential. Woji backed away, gasping instead of grunting, while Eefa gaped at Spock in a way that implied that she had never laid eyes on a Vulcan before.
Spock shared the sentiment.
“Your ears!” Eefa said redundantly. “Who . . . what are you?”
“An accident of birth,” Spock stated, hoping to salvage the situation. “Nothing to concern you.”
“Don’t tell me what to be concerned about, you . . . whatever you are.”
Her voice quavered while becoming shriller as well. She was clearly more agitated by his ears than by the sophisticated electronic devices they had been carrying. Spock was suddenly very glad that she had not been exposed to the sight of his verdant blood, even if his refusal to sign the contract had placed him and Chekov in their present predicament.
“These waters are too deep for me,” she lamented. “Finish tying them up while I reach out to our other friends from across the seas. They had better know what to do!”
Woji eyed Spock uneasily, but worked up the nerve to bind the prisoners’ arms behind their backs with thick lengths of chain at hand in the storeroom. Metal locks clamped shut, holding the chains in place. Pistol in hand, Eefa observed the procedure even as she retrieved a surprising item from a desk drawer: a modern communicator, not unlike the ones taken from Spock and Chekov.
The plot thickens, Spock thought.
The communicator was notably generic in design, making it difficult to link to any specific world or species. It was a simple civilian model of the sort that could be acquired at any common port of call, such as Deep Space Station S-8 for instance, but not on a world as technologically undeveloped as Yurnos. Spock deduced that Eefa had received the device from the smugglers. It chirped as she switched it on.
“Hello, hello?” she said into the communicator. She paced about the back room impatiently. “Answer me, curse your skins. I need to talk to you at once!”
A blinking violet light indicated that her hail had been received. She stepped away and turned her back on the prisoners, but Spock’s keen hearing allowed him to easily eavesdrop on the discussion.
“We hear you,” a male voice replied. “What’s so urgent?”
“We’ve strangers poking around, asking questions and wanting answers. Strangers of your sort, no less.”
“Our sort? What do you mean by that?”
“From your corner of the world, I mean. Well, one of them is. I don’t know where the other comes from. He doesn’t look like any person I’ve ever laid eyes on. His ears are pointed . . . like a whysser tree leaf.”
“Whatever that is.” The anonymous voice sounded annoyed at being bothered. “Just get rid of them. Send them away.”
“It’s too late for that. They already know too much for my peace of mind. I’ve got them wrapped up tight in the back of my shop, but I can’t hold them here indefinitely. We need to do something about them!”
“So dispose of them.”
“Oh, no,” she protested. “You’re not sticking me with this. This is your business, your affair, your people. You need to deal with this!”
“What exactly do you expect us to do?”
“I don’t know. That’s your problem. I just want them off my hands and out of my hair. Do you understand me?”
Spock listened intently. From what he heard, his strategy was working even better than he had hoped. If Eefa had her way, they might soon be face-to-face with the smugglers themselves. Matters were proceeding in a most productive manner.
Aside, that was, from the unfortunate matter of their captivity.