Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [49]
But then, they were in a necessary buffer zone between the temperature-controlled environment of the checkpoint and the arctic cold of the outside. It was bound to be a little cooler there.
Wordlessly, Picard and his comrades made their way past the guards to the door at the far end of the passage. As they got closer they saw it was actually two doors, each an intricately carved slab of rich dark wood.
Obviously, thought Picard, relics of the original structure.
The carvings displayed scene after scene of openhanded benevolence-Kevrata gracing each other with food, drink, gems, furs, and other gifts. The Romulans, of course, were absent from these depictions. But if they had been included, it wouldn’t have been for their generosity.
The captain was surprised that the imperial authorities had left the doors intact, considering how thermally inefficient they had to be. The natives must have taken a great deal of pride in them, or the Romulans would simply have torn them out and discarded them.
“Bundle up,” said Pug, “it’ll be chilly out there,” and pulled forward the formfitting hood of his thermal suit.
Picard did the same. Then he positioned a pair of attached goggles over his eyes. Without them it would be too easy to go snow-blind. Finally, he pulled a flap of thermal material across the lower portion of his face to protect it from frostbite and fastened it on the other side.
It would have been nice if the guards in the passage could have opened the wooden doors as they had the others. However, whatever impulse had persuaded the Romulans to preserve the carved hunks of wood as artifacts had also persuaded them to leave them unmechanized. To get outside, the captain and his party would have to use a little elbow grease.
Girding himself for the cold, Picard leaned against one of the doors and shoved, while Pug did the same thing. The pieces of wood were heavier than they looked, but after a moment they swung open, giving the three humans their first glimpse of Kevratan civilization outside the checkpoint.
The briefing material sent by Admiral Edrich had been exhaustive, including any number of Kevratan images captured by Federation-friendly traders. And yet, they paled in comparison with the sight that met the captain’s eyes.
He had expected to see a bleak terrain of crude stone edifices all but buried in the wild, gray drifts of winter, with only the occasional pale gleam of sunlight for relief. Indeed, the buildings that sprawled before Picard were covered with snow, and soft flakes were even then falling from the sky.
But it wasn’t as dreary as he had anticipated, because in the midst of it all was a moving sea of coats representing every bright, warm color in the rainbow. The captain couldn’t help smiling in appreciation.
He had seen other societies, both on Earth and on worlds beyond, where people worked hard to ensure the beauty of their garb. But in those societies, clothing was an indicator of status.
Not so in the case of the Kevrata.
They didn’t believe in the sort of class distinctions that hinged on what a person possessed. Quite the contrary. In Kevratan society, social standing was based entirely on what someone was capable of giving away.
Picard was reminded of a custom embraced by some of North America’s ancient tribal cultures. Known as the potlatch feast, it was an occasion on which some of the more affluent members of the tribe went so far as to bankrupt themselves in order to demonstrate the extent of their openhandedness.
It is better to give than to receive. The potlatch peoples certainly lived by that code. And so, apparently, did the inhabitants of Kevratas.
Or rather, they had lived that way once. Then, nearly fifty standard years ago, the Romulan Empire underwent yet another in an ongoing series of expansions, and claimed Kevratas in the name of whoever was