Star Trek The Original Series - 25 - Dwellers in the Crucible by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780671741471
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 1988-04-15T07:00:00+00:00

For as long as the child T'Shael could remember the healers had come to the house.

"Your father's sickness knows no cure," one of them said not unkindly, taking her aside in her seventh year. She was an adult by Vulcan standards and considered capable of accepting such information with maturity. That the plain-faced somber child already knew her father's fate, that it had become part of the fabric of her being, was neither within the healer's knowledge nor his jurisdiction. "It will weaken him over a period of years and inevitably bring about his death."

"My gratitude for your aid, Healer," T'Shael answered carefully, bidding him farewell in her mother's stead—T'Pei the master scientist was attending an academic conference in the city of ShiKahr—in the visitors' foyer as was proper. The healer's skilled hand might have rested for a moment on the small dark head, though none witnessed it.

Salet's affiction was still called by its ancient designation plak s'ran, "the blood killing." Its medical specification was leukokupricytosis, a progressive disorder in which hemocyanic blood cells became deformed and lost color. These color-stripped cells massed in major blood vessels and blocked the flow of oxygen, causing edema in the lungs. Bone marrow deterioration made the replacement of new cells inadequate, and as deformed cells accumulated in joints and spinal fluid, the victim's initial shortness of breath and chronic fatigue were replaced by severe joint pain, debility, wasting and death.

L-Kc was genetically linked, but undetectable by the most sophisticated antigen scan. Offspring of its victims carried a 50 percent risk factor. Once contracted, the disease was always fatal.

In ancient times it had been considered a form of retribution for certain transgressions of decorum, notably, overt emotionalism, whose rapid breathing and ensuing exhaustion mimicked the disease's symptoms. There were still those who could not deny some residual credence in this superstition.

The victim was not offered sympathy, for that was not the Way of the Vulcan. Nor were inquiries made as to his health, for such was a breach of privacy. The sight of the healers coming and going with the transfusions which sometimes offered a temporary reprieve was enough to inform the curious.

But Salet the Gifted One was a public figure, renowned not only on his home world but throughout the galaxy for his composition and performance on the ka'athyra and other instruments, though such notoriety did not carry the same weight on Vulcan as "fame" in human societies. To offer praise to the individual for innate gifts is illogical, though considerable honor attaches to one's use of such gifts. It is a fine distinction which few but the Vulcan understand. Though he was not a "celebrity" in the human sense of the word, Salet was known to many, as was his affliction.

"His life might be prolonged if he were to desist from public performance," one of the healers said to T'Pei the musician's consort on another occasion, after a particularly harrowing night. "His auditors make excessive demands upon him, which he, as his duty, fulfills to the utmost.

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