Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [134]
“But to take it all into your own hands… how is that better?”
“It’s better because I would be killing one man, the killer of thousands. It’s just simple math, Will. One for many.”
“It’s more than math,” Will countered. “It’s what’s right and wrong. You can’t just decide for yourself that he’s guilty and decide his punishment.”
Marden stood up and paced around Will’s small room. “His punishment seems obvious to me. How could it be otherwise? Someone who is responsible for so many deaths…”
“I’m just saying, there’s a system to determine that. When you put on the uniform of Starfleet, you agreed to enforce that system.”
“But, Will… he…” Marden looked down at Will, still sitting back on his own bed, and his face was full of anguish. Will felt bad for the man, but not so bad that he could agree with his plan. As tired as he was, he realized that if he could just keep Marden here, talking, maybe they’d get to the point where they were to transfer Endyk Plure to another vessel before Marden could throw away his own career. He could almost kick himself for the inspiration, but he felt he had to try.
“Tell me about Handihar, Marden. What did your grandfather tell you about it?”
Marden smiled for the first time, a little wistfully, as if remembering pleasant times with his grandfather. He drifted back over to the chair and sat down again. “Like I said, it’s mostly a tribal society,” he began. “Close to the land. It’s a big planet, huge, I guess, according to him, and his part of it is densely forested. Junglelike. They live in wooden structures, not much more than huts, I think. The air is so humid that the buildings have to be replaced on a pretty regular basis. My grandfather left there when he was a young man, but from what he has told me it’s still mostly that way.”
“Sounds pleasant,” Will said, just to keep Marden talking.
“I’ve always wanted to visit,” Marden told him, smiling a little as he thought about it. “He makes it sound kind of like paradise. But… there’s one story he told me, Will. I think maybe it especially applies, in this case.”
Will had just wanted him to reminisce about the planet, trying to keep him away from the subject of Endyk Plure. But he guessed that sitting here talking was still better than seeking the guy out in the brig and killing him. “What story?” he asked.
Marden took a deep breath. Apparently it’s going to be a long one, Will thought. He hoped he could stay awake for it.
“Have you ever heard of a gralipha?” Marden asked by way of beginning.
Will racked his brain but couldn’t recall that he had.
“It’s a huge, wild beast,” Marden explained. “Many legged, and with a massive, heavy skull, horned on the top. Almost like some kind of Earth dinosaur, I think. Anyway, this story that my father’s family passed down, for generations, was about the time a gralipha attacked his family’s village. Just came in out of the jungle and ran around in a blind rage, berserk, smashing huts, killing with abandon. The people were taken by surprise-they lived with graliphas in the jungle all the time, but none had ever charged the village like this. They couldn’t do much to fight back-it was all they could do to try to stay out of its way. It cut a swath through the village and then left, back into the jungle it had come from.”
“Sounds kind of like those stories of rogue elephants,” Will suggested. “How they’d sometimes attack Indian villages.”
Marden nodded. “Very much like that. Except this thing was at least twice the size of any elephant. Or, that’s how my grandfather tells the story, anyway.”
“What did they do? The villagers.”
“They picked up after the attack. They buried their dead, they tended to the wounded, they rebuilt their homes and fortified the log wall around the village. Then they went into their culturally prescribed mourning period. For days, they mourned the dead, weeping and laying offerings at their graves. This was, grandfather said, how his people honored their dead.