Star Trek:
11.
Movements of the Unseen Hand
by Charles Hackney
Arthur and Gerard sat at Quark�s, and discussed the events of the day.
�So, then, after Constable Odo led him to his office,� Gerard was saying, �The two factions in the crowd started yelling at each other again, and it was about to turn into a full-scale riot, but the Bajoran deputies started pulling phasers and telling people to disperse. Well, apparently they did want to fight that bad, so they dispersed. It looks like Mar called it a day, though; he�s not back up on his perch yelling.� Nagato paused to sip his drink. �So,� he continued, �what happened in security?�
Arthur took a slug of his raktajino. �Well,� he said, �both Odo and Sisko wanted to hear my story; you know, about me being from the past and all that. Captain Sisko also wanted me to promise not to act like Teshem, stirring up the crowd and stuff. He seems like a pretty good guy.�
�I�m glad you think so,� said a new voice, as two people approached the table. One, the Human who had spoken, wore a perpetually smooth �I�m-so-handsome� expression on his face and spoke with a British accent. The other was a Cardassian, and wore a perpetually amused �I�m-so-clever� expression on his face. The Human and Cardassian introduced themselves: Doctor Bashir, the station�s Chief Medical Officer; and Gerak, who owned a haberdashery and dress shop on the station.
�May we join you,� asked Gerak.
�
Certainly,� replied Arthur. The pair sat, and Bashir (master of subtlety) broke the ice with �So, you�re from the twenty-first century.�
�Yup.� Arthur was amused.
�How do you like this century,� asked Gerak.
�I like it just fine. I had always hoped that there was life somewhere other than Earth, and I count myself blessed to be here, in a time when Humans and aliens live and work together. It�s�cool.�
�Ah. I bet you were surprised to see your first alien.�
�You have no idea.�
�Really?� Gerak sounded intrigued, but did not inquire further. �Is there anything so far that has not been to your liking?�
Nagato squirmed.
Arthur smiled. �Well, since I was revived, I�ve been attacked, enslaved, forced to fight in a bloodsport arena, imprisoned, yelled at, imprisoned again, and regarded by many as a backward-thinking primitive. But you know what really irritates me, Gerak? You know what really annoys me?�
Gerak was positively bug-eyed with anticipation. �Tell me.�
�The clothes. Who told you people that spandex jumpsuits looked good?�
Gerak�s face nearly split as he laughed, and Nagato seemed to be choking. Bashir was speechless.
Gerak regained his composure. �I think I can help you with that.�
Gerak and Arthur stood in Gerak�s shop as he produced holograms of many different styles of clothing. Arthur was unimpressed (Except for the Klingon outfits. Those had a certain panache.). Eventually, it ended up as a custom order. Gerak had to consult his historical database for the designs, and Arthur had to offer a great deal of advice, but at last Arthur was comfortable.
He walked back into Quark�s with a serious strut in his gait. Nagato, who had had lunch while he waited for Arthur, just stared. �What in the world are you wearing?�
�Real clothes,� replied Arthur proudly. �These are a genuine pair of blue jeans. This shirt looks just like one I wore back home, and these are the best cowboy boots I�ve ever owned!� The boots were made of a strange, scaled hide composed of three different colors.
�What are they made of? That doesn�t look like snake skin.�
�Dragon skin.�
�What?�
�Dragon skin. From Berengaria VII. Gerak had enough of it in his store, and the computer supplied the form for him to make them. Can you believe it? I�m wearing dragon-skin boots! If Mom could see me now.� Arthur puffed himself up. �Now I�m the grandest tiger in the jungle!�
�What?�
�Literary reference. Never mind.�
�What�s that on your head?�
�A baseball cap. Believe me, they were big in my day.�
�O-kay.�
It was nearing night, and Quark�s was slowly filling with off-duty personnel and the various transient individuals who had business on the station. Among them were two Klingons, operators of a modest cargo vessel. They bellied up to the bar and, while Arthur, Bashir, Gerak, and Nagato were talking, proceeded to noisily get drunk. This was a common occurrence among Klingons. While it was technically a breach of regulations to be drunk and disorderly, they were given some slack, since drunk and disorderly is practically a cultural requirement in Klingon society.
A mainstay of Klingon comedy is to pick out a victim among the crowd and ridicule him or her until a fight breaks out or the target slinks away in humiliation (either way is equally fun). As a matter of ego, Klingons looking for a good time will try to pick a target with as high a status as possible (but not too high, lest the tables be turned on them). That is, of course, unless a target presents itself that is just too funny to resist.
Yup, you guessed it. That�s what Arthur gets for wearing clothes three centuries out of date. Remember that mysterious item Arthur replicated several pages back? Keep your eyes open.
The shorter of the two Klingons stopped in mid-guffaw as he spied Arthur sitting at the table. He elbowed his colleague and gestured with his drink in their direction. His friend also found Arthur�s garb to be quite amusing, and the pair swaggered over to the table to capitalize on this new source of entertainment.
Arthur and company were deep in discussion, with Arthur commanding the floor. �So then,� he was saying, �after you spread out the cheese, you add the toppings. My personal favorite is pepperoni and sausage with pineapple chunks.� The other three immediately fell to discussing what other pizza toppings sounded good, but were interrupted by the arrival of the two Klingons.
The taller Klingon looked straight at Arthur and loudly said to his friend: �Kof, what do you think this is? It looks like a Human, but it�s dressed like a kok�mor!� The two belted out immense laughter at that. If you don�t know what a kok�mor is, look it up sometime. Believe me, it�s not a compliment.
Well, even though Arthur also didn�t know what a kok�mor was, he understood perfectly well what was going on. The smart thing, if he was dealing with two Humans, might have been to shrug it off and try to ignore them. Enough Klingons, however, had enjoyed themselves at Toth�s Arena, for Arthur to know the proper response. He looked the largest of the two right back in the face and laughed with gusto (Klingons don�t respect much of anything unless it�s done with gusto). He decided to see how these Klingons handled late twentieth-century insults. �I may dress like a kok�mor, but at least I don�t smell like the inside of a used sweat sock!�
The Klingons experienced a moment of confusion.
Arthur continued, borrowing a number from Don Rickles. �And look at you. You look like you came out of your mother and hit the wall. You�re so ugly, you have to wear a nametag at the zoo so they�ll let you out.�
The larger Klingon stopped laughing. The shorter one laughed all the harder at his friend being upstaged by a puny Human. His taller friend tried to redeem himself. �Well, it look like this targ-faced speck has spirit. Too bad he�s too stupid to��
Arthur interrupted. �Stupid? You want to talk about stupid, look in a mirror. I bet the computer screen in your ship is covered with white-out. I bet you stare at frozen orange juice all day because the jar says �concentrate.� Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, a smart Klingon, and a dumb Klingon all enter a foot race. Which would win? The dumb Klingon, of course! The other three don�t exist!�
Whoops. That one went too far. Now neither Klingon was laughing, and the bar had become very, very quiet. Doctor Bashir was heard mumbling �Oh, dear.�
The taller Klingon roared. He swung at Arthur, who was just now realizing his error. Arthur almost ducked in time. The glancing blow was enough, however, to send him head over heels over the table. The table broke under his weight, and Arthur�s companions quickly backed away.
Except for Nagato.
With a combination snarl and laugh, he launched himself at the shorter Klingon, driving his elbow into the sternum of his target. The Klingons were not wearing armor, so the strike was a good one, and the shorter Klingon gasped for breath as Nagato collected himself for another attack.
By this time the fight (as all classic bar fights do) had spread to the point that all the inhabitants were either engaged in combat or quickly exiting the bar. Security would be there momentarily, so the fight would have to be quick.
The taller Klingon, however, was not at all interested in the time allotted for the brawl, and picked himself up with a growl. Staring daggers at Arthur, he pulled his own dagger from its sheath and readied himself to kill. This was technically a slight violation of Klingon honor, since the fight was over humorous insults rather than true insults (even if Arthur had crossed the line), but it was unlikely that he would listen to reason at the moment.
He stepped toward Arthur, aiming a vicious slash at his abdomen. Arthur stepped backwards, out of range, and reached behind himself to his hip pocket. With a rattle of chain and a metallic flash, the taller Klingon found the bones in his knife-hand shattered. Arthur whipped the fundo (two metal weights separated by a short length of chain) in an economical arc, bringing one end down upon his opponent�s skull. In a Human, this could easily be lethal, but Klingons have incredibly tough skulls, so Arthur knew there would be no death there today. The Klingon grunted as the weight bounced off his skull, and went down hard. Out cold.
Arthur quickly stowed the fundo back in his pocket and looked for Gerard. Gerard was doing well, and had his opponent in a choke hold. The Klingon just refused to pass out, though, so Arthur helped a bit by driving his foot into the Klingon�s gut, forcing the air from his lungs. That did it, and the Klingon was soon unconscious.
Arthur and Gerard grinned at each other, and Gerak (who had been standing by observing) said �I think it would be wise to leave now. Security will be here any second.� Bashir had already fled, and was waiting across the hall from Quark�s. The three left, dodging those who were still fighting each other, and ran� smack into a quintet of Odo�s deputies.
Arthur was becoming quite a connoisseur of security cells. He liked the hum of this one�s forcefield better than the last one, but this one�s seat cushion had a stain on it from a previous inhabitant. Smythe still refused to acknowledge Arthur�s presence. Nagato sat next to Arthur, his head in his hands.
�I�ve never been in this much trouble in my life,� he said.
Arthur grinned. �You�re young, yet. I�m sure you�ll get into bigger trouble someday.�
�This isn�t funny. I could get sent back to the ship, confined to quarters, a letter of reprimand put in my record��
�Relax, Gerard. �You�ll never make an impact without causing a collision.��
�Who said that?�
�Some guy. The point is, everybody gets in trouble; everybody makes someone mad. That�s just the way it is. Relax and roll with it. I�m surprised that a martial artist like yourself hasn�t caught on yet that you�ve got to roll with the punches.�
Nagato hmphed. Arthur went to the replicator and ordered a raktajino, then lowered himself to the floor and reclined against the wall as he sipped the drink. He hummed �Beyond the Sea� while Nagato became thoughtful.
The quiet remained unbroken for a while.
Finally, Nagato spoke, obviously about something weighing heavily on his mind. �My grandfather was in Starfleet.�
Arthur said nothing, but gave Gerard his attention.
Nagato continued: �As a lieutenant, he was stationed aboard the Enterprise, under Captain Kirk. To hear him talk, it was like being in the middle of some King-Arthur-type adventure; space battles, infiltrating Romulan territory to steal a cloaking device, alien life forms poised to destroy entire planets, giant amoebas, Nazis. Fighting monsters, rescuing damsels in distress. There was one time, after he�d been on board for a while. An alien got aboard the ship. It was some kind of living cloud that fed off people�s blood, and it defied everything we know about life forms and even the laws of physics themselves. It could change its own molecular structure, manipulate gravitons to travel through space, and practically outran the starship at warp six! Impossible stuff. Anyway, this creature got on board the ship, and Granddad was one of the first crewmen it fed off of. He was saved by the senior staff�s actions, but he almost died right there. After that, he said, he lost his faith in science. �Gerry,� he�d say, �Science is a great tool of mankind, but there are things out there that science just can�t handle. We think that we�re so smart, that there�s no problem we eventually can�t solve, but we�re wrong.� He loved that old Shakespeare quote: �There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.�
�He never fully recovered from the attack. Starfleet gave him a medical discharge. He met my grandmother shortly after that, and he spent the rest of his life on Earth. I always thought he was just a crazy old man with strange ideas who�d lost his taste for life. But I was wrong. Despite how weak and sick he became, he had a taste for life that I�m only now beginning to understand. His encounter with the cloud thing showed him what was really important, and it taught him humility. I always thought that he had somehow betrayed his upbringing as a rational man when he belittled science like that. I always thought that there was nothing more to life than what we could see or measure. That�s why I joined Starfleet, I think; to expand what we could see or measure, and so contribute to the development of humanity.
�I don�t really know where this is going, but you talking about God and stuff. I� It makes me think about Granddad. Maybe he was right about science and the limits of our reason. Maybe there is something out there that science can�t handle. Maybe it�s something you know, or someone you know. Maybe it�s God out there.�
Arthur spoke. �God�s not out there, Gerard.�
�What?� This was not what Nagato expected to hear.
�He�s not out there. He�s right here. God is not removed from us, He surrounds us. He heard everything we�ve said, and He�s watched everything we do. I read a book once that talked about a tyrannical government that spied on its citizens, and they�d say �Big Brother is watching.� But when God is watching, it�s not anything to be afraid of. The only thing greater than God�s knowledge or His power is His love. He loved us all so much that He paid the price for us, removed all barriers that separate us from Him. We talked earlier about Jesus� life and death and His resurrection. That paid the debt, Gerard. Everything you�ve done to push God away, it�s all taken care of, if you�ll only accept it and embrace Him.�
Nagato wouldn�t look at Arthur. He seemed near tears. �After my grandfather returned to Earth, he got involved with this group that talked like you do. He�d come back from their meetings full of energy, saying that he �understood� something now. I never wanted to know what they were about. I thought they were throwbacks, advocating a dead theology in a world that didn�t need them anymore. I thought Granddad was a fool for having anything to do with them.
�But he wasn�t a fool, was he?� Nagato choked as he talked. �I was the fool, rejecting what he believed just because it wasn�t fashionable. And I never got the chance to apologize to him before he died. He was just to weak to keep going, and he kept getting worse, until he was at the hospital all the time.� Gerard was openly weeping now. �And I stopped going to see him. He kept talking about God and life after death, and I just couldn�t understand why he couldn�t see that death is just the end. I didn�t want to hear any more of his �delusions,� so I left him to die. The rest of the family kept asking me to talk to him. They didn�t believe any more than I did, but they never rejected him like I did.�
Arthur put a comforting hand on Nagato�s shoulder. �It�s not too late, Gerard. Your grandfather is with God now, and you can see him again. You can have the same peace and understanding that he had.�
Gerard stopped crying and looked into Arthur�s eyes. �I do want that. I want to know what he knew. I want to have that same assurance. I want to know God.�
Arthur and Gerard knelt and prayed right there, Arthur leading Gerard in what to say. It is written that when a sinner repents and comes to a relationship with God, that the angels rejoice. Well, I can tell you for a fact that it�s true. I sang a song of joy and thanksgiving that would have shook the bulkheads had it been sung in a physical voice. I could hear, far off, the singing of other angels who picked up my song and added to it. The song grew and grew until the entire universe reverberated with the music of our souls. As it reached its crescendo, God Himself sang for joy as His Holy Spirit entered Gerard and sealed him as a Believer. I could hear the voices of the saints who had gone before singing in harmony with God�s voice. Just wait until you get to Heaven. It�s a thing of beauty.
