Ganzar Chapter eight

"I already know," the chair of the governing council informed Kirk as he entered her office.

If the Ganzarites already knew that they'd found Chekov, then they must have had ways of knowing exactly where the ensign and Ghyka had been from the beginning. Kirk wished that his orders allowed him to give vent to what he would have liked to have said. However, he'd just gotten through talking with Commander Ghyka who had forcefully reminded him that Ganzar was now a situation for Star Fleet Intelligence and the diplomatic corp. A few ill-considered words from the captain and all the hardships endured by Ghyka, Ensign Chekov and nameless others would all have been in vain.

"Oh?" Dargion crossed her arms. "I assume this indicates that I and my planet will be now be dealt with by higher levels of authority than a mere starship captain... I suppose we should be flattered."

Kirk bit his tongue on the reply that came to mind. "I've simply come to say goodbye, Madame Chair."

Dargion stepped forward angrily as he made a move to leave. "You violated our laws," she accused. "No alien women are allowed on Ganzar. Transportation to the interior is forbidden."

Kirk folded his arms. So, the Ganzarites not only knew exactly what had happened but also how it had happened...

"If you believe that I or members of my crew have violated your laws," he replied evenly, "you are free to register a formal complaint against me with the Federation."

"It looks like you'll be getting what you wanted after all, Captain Kirk," she said bitterly. "We'll have to join the Federation now. The Orions will abandon us and the Klingons would destroy us. Therefore we will join your Federation. Not as full members, of course, we're too backwards and barbaric for that, but after a few years of learning to submit to your ways...."

"Equal rights for all your people will be more equitable for everyone. And if you're going to benefit from the technology that more advanced civilizations have to offer, you've got to learn to be more tolerant of differences. Maybe it's time for your planet to collectively grow up and stop believing that you can have things your way all the time."

"Grow up?" She laughed. "Growing up in your sense only means putting ourselves under the domination of men."

"No. Not at all. If your planet joins the Federation you will see that we value people without regard to gender, race or creed."

"Perhaps so," she said as she walked over to her office door and opened it for him. "But, since that hasn't happened yet and since this is probably the last time I'll ever be able to say anything like this to anyone like you, you can shove it up your ugly white ass and get the hell off my planet, Captain."

"Welcome to the 23rd century, lady," Kirk said, with a vindictive smile as he exited. "Whether you like it or not."

"Ah, ladies..." Pavel Chekov smiled as Lieutenants Uhura and Hiroto joined him at his table in the Rec room on Deck Five. It was his first day back on the Enterprise after nearly three months of intensive debriefing and psychological rehabilitation at a base in an undisclosed location used by Star Fleet Special Intelligence.

"We've been looking for you," Kathy Hiroto said, setting her tray down next to him.

"If I show no adverse reactions, I should be back on the bridge within a week." Chekov answered, feeling a twinge of embarrassment that there were still doubts about his mental competence. This feeling was quickly overwhelmed by the pleasure being back where he was supposed to be. He looked back and forth between the two of them and sighed contentedly. "I want you to know that the whole time I was on Ganzar and much of the time I've been I away, I wanted nothing more than to be here drinking coffee with the two of you."

Hiroto laughed. "Well, Dorothy, you should have just clicked your ruby slippers together a lot sooner."

"I also wanted to apologize..." Chekov began seriously. "My behavior when you recovered me, Lt. Uhura, and in the transporter room was.."

"Oh, never mind about that, sugar." Uhura smiled as she reached out and patted his hand. "I understood."

"Oh, yeah," Hiroto agreed, giving his other hand a reassuring squeeze. "No problem."

Chekov wondered if contact with women was so marvelous as a lingering effect of the control device the Ganzarites had used on him or just because he'd been deprived of such interaction for so long. For the first month, he'd been limited to the exclusive company of men. After that, the few females he'd had contact with had been carefully neutral in their dealings with him and religious in their avoidance of touching him. Because of his still vulnerable emotional state he'd been warned not to form any romantic -- particularly sexual -- relationships with women for at least the next six to twelve month period. The warning had been given so frequently and insistently that Chekov had actually become quite flattered that the therapists assumed that he had that much of an active social life.

Although he'd only been back a matter of hours, this was a treatment the ensign had experienced several times already -- friends censoring themselves for fear of upsetting what they seemed to think was his precarious mental balance. He was now beginning to see why the doctors had insisted that he take a week before resuming his duties. They hadn't released him a moment before they and he had felt he had made a sufficient recovery. However, it looked like it was going to take a little while to convince his co-workers of that fact.

"Lieutenant," he said. "If you have a question, please ask. I am not made of glass."

"Right." Hiroto looked at little embarrassed. "I was wondering if you'd heard that Ganzar was officially admitted as a Federation protectorate."

"Yes," Chekov answered, hoping that he sounded as if the question had no impact on him. He might not be made of glass, but he wasn't up to the tensile strength of steel either. "Ganzar's admission was a topic of great interest at the Intelligence base. I followed most of the official debate and hearings."

"It had to happen quickly. That planet was being used by the Orions as a testing ground for environmental and psychological warfare techniques that they were planning to use against Klingon agricultural colonies," Uhura said, casually revealing classified information that Chekov had been instructed to reveal under no circumstances. Knowledge of covert Orion actions (which had, contrary to Uhura's information, already begun to take place) against the Klingons could provoke full-scale galactic warfare. "If Ganzar hadn't joined the Federation, either the Orions would have blown the planet away to cover their tracks or the Klingons would have gobbled them up like a little chocolate drop."

"So all those men they have been holding down there will finally be free to go?" Hiroto speculated.

Chekov picked up his cup, gratified that his hands showed no signs of beginning to shake as they had for a very long time in connection with his thinking about that planet. "Theoretically."

"No." Chekov decided he'd put the coffee down -- just as a precaution. "I doubt the men will leave."

"I don't understand that," Hiroto said. "I mean from what I understood, the whole thing was... pretty unpleasant."

"Very unpleasant," Chekov confirmed. "It's difficult to explain... The Ganzarites are adept at a variety of techniques to convince you that you have no option other than cooperation... from the obliteration of memories to engendering profound feelings of inferiority and incompetence."

After the doctors had killed the organic half of the control device using the same experimental drug with which they'd vaccinated Ghyka and surgically removed the mechanical half, the bulk of the ensign's memory returned within a few days. That had been the only easy or quick part. To matters even more difficult, Chekov's faith in his own self-worth had been so profoundly shaken by the experience, he had often been unable or unwilling to aid in his recovery. With no help from him, it had taken the rehabilitation experts weeks to notice things like the fact that he avoided mirrors and went to great lengths to keep from using the word "escape".

He took the most heart when they'd finally told him that the reason he'd been particularly susceptible to the machinations of the control device was not due to his own weakness, but because the Ganzarites were using a newer, stronger generation of the device. It and the four-hour initial conditioning session (of which Chekov had never regained full memory) were designed by Orion mind-control experts to defeat the rigorous anti-interrogation programming, natural aggression, and superior physical capabilities of Klingon military personnel. Despite Star Fleet training, a civilized person with a normal human nervous system was not much of a challenge for the device in comparison.

"Did you find out what happened to the woman who had you?" Uhura asked. "From what I've heard about your report, you believed that she knew that we were aliens when she sold you to us."

"I don't know." Chekov picked up the cup again to test his hand. His grip was within his standards of acceptability for steadiness. He wondered if this was only because he was following the advice Tarell had given him about painful subjects -- not allowing himself to consider it too deeply. Although his therapists had encouraged him not to, he usually avoided thinking about Tarell at all. "I didn't inquire."

He avoided thinking about Tarell because he wasn't sure how he felt... or more accurately because he was afraid that he would discover he felt some guilt and regret at having left her or that there was a masochistic trace of affection in his remembrances of the Ganzarite. He wondered if she'd sold him to people that she and her sister had immediately spotted as offworld imposters because she'd sensed that there was a fantastic profit to be made or because in the end she'd taken pity on him. He wondered if she'd found a way to get the yellow pills for Tirst. He wondered if he'd given Tarell the daughter she wanted so badly. He wondered if a little girl with brown eyes and red human blood would grow up on Ganzar...

This was always the point where he made himself stop wondering about such things. It always led him to the same inevitable conclusion. His presence on Ganzar had not been a hallucination or a bad dream. A million years of psychological rehabilitation couldn't change the reality of his experience. His presence had consequences for himself and the beings with whom he had come into contact. A part of his heart and mind would always remain captive to Ganzar, never to escape.

In the hopes that he would some day come to accept this, he drank a sip of the good coffee he'd ordered for himself, and smiled at his two good friends. "There is an old proverb..."

"Of course," he acknowledged graciously. "According to this proverb, living well is the best revenge. Ladies, I intend to live the rest of my life very, very well."

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