Dwellers in the Crucible (Star Trek: The Original Series Book 25) by Margaret Wander Bonanno

Author:Margaret Wander Bonanno [Bonanno, Margaret Wander]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2000-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

They were in a part of the city Cleante had never seen before. New architecture blended harmoniously with some quite old, all of it seeming to rise organically amid tranquil parks and airy meditation halls, broad softstone pedestrian streets, museums and art galleries, shops and libraries. It was typical of any Vulcan metropolis, with one significant difference. This part of the city of T’lingShar radiated music.

Countless small shops displayed row upon row of Vulcan and outworld instruments, sheet music and synthesizers; subdued notices announced a seemingly endless series of concerts and recitals in public theaters, gardens and private dwellings. There were odors of exotic woods and resins, a Vulcanly muted cacaphony of instruments being tested and tuned, stray arpeggios escaping from porticoes and open casements. The very windchimes, melodious throughout the city, were here refined to an exquisitely lyrical quality. Where elsewhere they might simply announce the hour, here they sang it.

Cleante was not aware that she was holding her breath, drinking everything in. She was aware that she was smiling, something she tried not to do in unfamiliar Vulcan situations. But none of the Vulcans they passed in the streets seemed to notice, nor to engage that particular non-noticing mode that so irritated the human under other circumstances. They were simply too absorbed in their work to concern themselves with the blatant emotionalism of one lowly outworlder.

A change had come over T’Shael as well. It could not be called excitement or anticipation, surely; there was no sudden spring to her long, easy stride, no lightness in the expression on the familiar somber face. But there was some intangible difference in her manner. It was as if she, melancholy pilgrim, were one with this place. As if here, as nowhere else, was where she belonged.

"You are of course aware that all of our world’s manufacturing and heavy industry have for centuries been conducted in the asteriod belt which surrounds the mainland," T’Shael was saying. "Only that which neither despoils the environment nor disturbs the tranquility of our world is permitted onworld. Music crafting is one such exception."

With that she led Cleante down a narrow cul-de-sac and through a side door of one of the shops.

It was actually one huge, high-ceilinged room, with every available space utilized in some aspect of the manufacture of the ka’athyra. Cleante marveled as always at the purring silence of Vulcan machinery. What in a human workshop would be the racket of robots, clatter of hand tools, insistent hum of computers and noisy banter of human voices, were here reduced to a soft whirring, the gentle rasp of minute handplanes against raw wood, the occasional murmur of subdued Vulcan voices. There were computers here, incredibly complex ones, and robots for the rough work of cutting and shaping, but the final workmanship was the product of the expertise of deft and meticulous Vulcan hands.

Perhaps a dozen crafters, mostly female, from young adults to the very ancient, labored over individual instruments in various stages of completion. As T’Shael

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.