A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [11]
The display showed thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds. He could feel the pain mounting, shooting through his wrists, his shoulders, his neck. His muscles spasmed and cramped as he fought to keep them steady.
Unbidden, the thought came to him that he had only substituted one form of discipline for another-Klingon discipline for human discipline. But the Klingon brand was liberating for him, while the human kind was stifling.
A contradiction? Not to one who appreciated the subtleties of the Klingon psyche.
Thirty-seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Fifty-eight…
Once, a Vulcan classmate at the Academy had taught him a method of submerging physical discomfort. Of letting it sink to a level at which it could be managed-tamed. And finally ignored.
But that was not the Klingon way. The whole point of the eurakoi exercise was to experience the pain. To meet it head-on, to embrace it. And then to laugh in its ugly face.
Anything less would make his victory a hollow one.
Thirty-nine minutes and forty-four seconds. Forty-five…
It was agony now. Sheer, unadulterated agony. Even his breath was coming harder. Sweat ran down the sides of his face from his temples-and a Klingon did not perspire easily.
Worf glared at the eurakoi as he would have glared at a living enemy. He noted the humpbacked shape of them, the grisly carvings that depicted the violence of his people’s earliest beginnings. The way the dull, dark metal seemed to absorb the light, giving off only the faintest of reflections.
His lips curled back from his teeth, wolflike. Deep in his throat, so deep it was audible only to him, he growled long and low.
He wanted very much to put the eurakoi down. He could not remember anything he had ever desired so fervently.
But he would not be defeated. He would not allow himself to be defeated.
Forty-one minutes and thirty seconds. Only three and a half minutes to go…
“Worf?”
The Klingon did not dare turn his head. But then, he didn’t have to. The voice was a familiar one. And a moment or two later, he saw Data’s approach out of the corner of his eye.
The android’s head was tilted slightly to one side as he came up alongside Worf. His brow was slightly wrinkled, his golden eyes alight with curiosity.
The Klingon concentrated on the eurakoi.
“If I may ask,” said Data, “what are you doing?”
“Exercising,” snarled Worf.
The android thought about that for a second, then registered mild surprise.
“Really? That is very interesting. I had always thought that exercise involved movement. And yet, except for that trembling in your arms, you are hardly moving at all.”
The Klingon’s teeth ground together. “My arms… are not… trembling,” he said.
Data looked closer. “It certainly looks as if they are trembling. Or perhaps ‘trembling’ is the wrong word. Would ‘shuddering’ be more to the point?”
“They… are not… shuddering… either.” Each word was an ordeal. But Worf could not allow himself to seem weak. Not even in front of Data.
The android regarded him with a strange expression. As if he had caught on that there was a discrepancy between his own perceptions and those of the Klingon. Or at least, a difference in their interpretations of the physical evidence.
And if he didn’t quite know why that should be, he appeared to have the sense not to press the issue. Worf was grateful for that much.
Forty-two minutes and eighteen seconds.
“Would you prefer that I went away?” asked Data. “Until you finish… exercising?”
Worf would indeed have preferred that. But the android was his comrade-his fellow officer. He could not simply rebuff him-not as he had been rebuffed by Picard.
“No,” Worf squeezed between clenched teeth. “You may… stay.”
Data’s face brightened. “Thank you,” he said. And folding his arms across his chest, he continued to watch-as immobile as the Klingon would liked to have been.
But the android was right-despite Worf’s denials. He saw that his massive, white-knuckled hands were beginning to tremble. The eurakoi