Alan Dean Foster - Star Trek Log Four

The view Kirk was studying at the moment differed little from the one normally projected on the main screen up on the Enterprise's bridge. Except the brilliant specks immersed in the sea of shifting black were a uniform white instead of the variegated spectrum of a normal universe. True, the floating motes did vary in brightness and intensity, as did the pale swirls of chalcedony-colored nebulae that formed a backdrop for the white spheres. But it remained a universe singularly devoid of color.

Kirk made a movement with his right hand and a cascade of new stars permeated the void. Contemplating the result, he smiled.

Perhaps the theologians were right after all and there was some idle omnipotent force Out There that treated the real universe with the same studied indifference he was now lavishing on this private one. He moved his hand holding the instrument once more, and the tiny circular cosmos became a maelstrom of white particles and cream-colored cloud-shapes.

"Come on, Arex, play something for us."

Kirk recognized the voice of Sub-lieutenant M'turr and glanced up from his dreams.

M'turr stood off in the far corner of the Officers' Lounge. She and several of the other younger officers had cornered Arex and were gently pleading with him.

The Edoan navigator, like most of his kind, preferred his own company to that of others. This was the outgrowth of a natural shyness and strong sense of modesty, not of any feeling of awkwardness around other beings.

Ordinarily, the crew respected Arex's desire to keep to himself. Kirk wondered what would have prompted them to intrude on the navigator in an off-duty moment of privacy. Curiosity astir, he moved closer to the group; and when one of the belligerent officers moved aside, the reason for the sudden assault on the Edoan's privacy became obvious.

Arex had his sessica with him, and the rest of the crew around him were exhorting him to play. They were not being especially courteous, but Kirk found it hard to be angry.

Arex usually played in the isolation of his cabin. The fact that he had brought his sessica out with him was a hint that he was half-willing to offer one of his infrequent concerts. His sense of humility, however, required that he be suitably harangued until he couldn't escape without playing.

Arex owned several of the slim, flutelike instruments, keeping each one in its own special case. Certain sessicas were used for different songs, others only on special occasions or days of the week.

Sipping his coffee, Kirk studied the one the Edoan was half-consciously fingering now. It was made of some light, ivory-colored wood that shone like fine Meerschaum. Delicately inscribed designs flowed like crevices in the bark of a tree along the instrument's sides and baffles - Edoan trees and mammals and flowers - the work of some master craftsman.

"Do play us something," Ensign Yang implored.

"Anything at all - even improvisation," another urged.

"Really, my friends, I...," Arex started to protest, but his companions didn't give him time to finish.

"We've got you trapped, Lieutenant," an ensign wearing the insignia of the Quartermaster Department insisted with mock warning, "and we're not letting you go until we hear at least a one-movement Edoan cycle." The threat was echoed enthusiastically by the rest.

"Well..." Arex spotted Kirk hovering in the background and appealed to him. "Captain Kirk, can you not explain to my friends that I have to be in a certain outgoing frame of mind in order to be able to play for others?"

"I would, Lieutenant," Kirk said slowly, "except I'd like to listen myself." He thought a moment, then suggested, "Why not tell them the story about the Edoan contortionist who operated on Earth for nine months as an incredibly successful pickpocket until the police discovered he had a third arm?"

Arex hesitated, but once Kirk had mentioned the subject, there was no way the others were going to let the navigator go without hearing the story. So he told it, letting the absurd, amusing tale unravel in his lilting, sing-song tones. Then he seemed as embarrassed as pleased by the resultant laughter.

His nervousness abated - besides, he had run out of excuses - he shifted the sessica in his hands and moistened the curved mouthpiece. Residual chuckles faded into respectful silence, and a respectful hush absorbed the assembly. The Edoan blew a couple of experimental notes, adjusted several openings in the body of the instrument, then paused. He appeared to be looking at something in the distance. Even his voice changed, growing slightly rougher, charged with something out of his past.

"This song," he told them, "is in the form of an ode, in tripartite mode, and is called 'The Farmer and the Road.'"

A recording enthusiast in the group, who seemed to know several Edoan folk ballads, murmured appreciatively.

Arex set the mouthpiece firmly to lips and his boney, rather homely face assumed an expression at once sad and noble. He played.

Despite the inescapable alienness of the song, there was no atonality or sharpness about it. What stood out immediately was an ineffable sense of longing coupled with some mild, admonishing irony. The sessica produced long, deep tones of winsome mournfulness, rather like those of an oboe, but having much greater range in the upper registers.

Arex played easily, almost indifferently. At times he seemed to be falling asleep, then he would suddenly waken in a burst of rapid, calling notes. The delicate fingers shifted in triple patterns that grew ever more complex as he piled variation on variation on top of the basic melodic line.

Like the others, Kirk stood entranced and just listened.

Arex played for many minutes. When the last bit of honeyed sound slipped from the multiple mouths of the sessica, no one broke the mood with rude applause. But there were satisfied smiles all around.

"You liked it, then?" the Edoan asked hesitantly, when no one spoke. Ann Sepopoa of Engineering nodded softly, once, for all the listeners and asked, "More?" Arex made a gesture of agreement, obviously pleased. Another moment of thought, then: "'The Song of the Orchard-Master and the Twelve Polor Trees,' to be sung to children as they rest on their knees, provided they each see fit to ask, please?"

Supple fingers commenced rapid tattoo on the wood and Arex's head began to weave from side to side on his thin neck. The new tune was the emotional opposite of the one that had gone before. Lively, catching, expressing an interspecies joy which soon had the little group clapping in time, awkwardly at first but with increasing confidence in the peculiar skipping rhythm.

Kirk put cup to lips and became aware that he had ignored his coffee completely during the previous playing. It was cold now. Well, no problem. Coffee was an especially efficient recycler. He moved off and poured it into the proper disposal, drew a fresh cup nearby. Adding more cream and sugar, he stirred idly, listening to the music.

"Plays grandly, doesn't he, sir?" Kirk looked around.

"Hello, Scotty. Yes."

"Interestin' fellow, our Arex," Scott went on. "I'd like to know more about him, Cap'n, but ... well, you know. It's not that he's standoffish, but he dinna have the sort of personality that encourages intimate questions."

"You know how shy the Edoans are, Scotty."

"Aye, Cap'n." He nodded in the direction of the concert. "It's just that to me, Arex seems more so than most. I'll give him this, though - passive he may be, but he's the best damn navigator in the fleet."

"Not everyone's naturally as nos ... curious as you, Scotty."

They moved to a table. Scott drew a drink of his own, Darjeeling tea, with a touch of nutmeg. He also picked up a hot muffin with loganberry jam before sitting down next to Kirk.