Return to Valjiir Stories
Return to Valjiir Continum
Lian Rendell’s lips curved into a smile as Noel DelMonde entered the Drake’s transporter room in costume appropriate to the planet they were about to visit. “Don’t you look just dandy?
“I feel like a pallbearer.” DelMonde pulled as the unfamiliarly high, stiff collar of his outfit as he stepped back to get a better view of the impressive getup the Haven doctor was wearing.
Although he’d seen Rendell in civilian gear as well as her Star Fleet uniform, he’d never seen her wearing so much clothing at once. Like the outfit he was wearing, her costume seemed to be based on something from American fashions of the late 1800’s. It seemed more than a little bizarre for a Haven to be wrapped up in something so modest and frilly, though. The dress covered her from neck to ankle in boatloads of black lace and great sweeps of dark blue fabric. She was even wearing a tiny veil topped with a fake velvet flower and what looked like pieces of a fake bird stuck in her upswept hair. “You look real… different.”
Rendell rolled her eyes. “Now there’s a compliment I’ll cherish on many a lonely night…”
Although unusually concealing, the tight-fitting bodice did outline her trim form in a very appealing manner and the black curls of her fussy hairdo did frame her striking features to great advantage. “Mais, gorgeous go wit'out sayin'…”
“Must we?” Rendell pursed her lightly rouged lips into a sexy pout. “Must we not say it?”
“Lian Rendell,” DelMonde pronounced judiciously, “You are in actuality jus' as pretty as you t'ink you are… An' that sayin' somet'ing, cher.”
A Human woman might have slapped him for delivering such a barbed compliment. Fortunately for the engineer, though, the Haven sense of humor was made of sterner stuff.
“My voracious vanity is appeased…” she replied smiling and acknowledging his tribute with a bow ladylike enough to suit her costume. “…for the moment.”
The Cajun finally figured out what was bothering him about the doctor’s appearance. He stepped forward and gently turned her head from side to side so he could better see her cheeks that were Caucasian creamy pink instead of Haven golden tan. “Why you so pale, darlin’?”
“I’m blanching at the thought of the lengths we’re going to to coddle these provincials,” she informed him solemnly.
“I didn’t ask you to change your skin color, Lian,” Captain Sulu reminded the doctor as he entered the transporter room looking like an Asian riverboat gambler in his string tie and dark blue frockcoat.
“After the makeover you had me do on Tristan Vale, I was afraid not to,” the Haven countered.
“These people have spent most of their lives conditioned to be alert for any deviation from the norm,” Sulu reminded his team. “We’re just trying minimize anything about our appearance that will cause unnecessary alarm during our inspection.”
“An' that why we dressed up like a bunch o' bit players from a musical comedy 'bout the Wild West?” DelMonde asked, referring to the fact that all of their outfits incorporated the exact same shades of black, slate grey, and dark blue.
Dr. Rendell chuckled.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing…” The Haven smiled. “Just the thought of the two of you in a musical… as if anything like that could ever possibly happen… and I would hear about it…”
Sulu cleared his throat. “At any rate, the conditioning was so profound and difficult to reverse that Director Lindstrom and his team consider it a major achievement that they’ve got the Landrans able to tolerate a little color in their clothing.”
“As long as it all th' same color,” DelMonde pointed out.
“Apparently that’s still a must,” Sulu acknowledged, then shook his head ruefully. “Trust me, Del, you don’t want them to get upset about what you’re wearing.”
“That’s right,” Rendell interjected as the transporter chief handed her a communicator and a phaser. “The report said you were part of the landing party from the Enterprise ten years ago. So you knew Lindstrom while he was still part of that crew?”
“Yes, he’s a….” The Captain paused as if it were very difficult to choose just the right descriptor for his former crewmate.
“…An asshole?” DelMonde guessed, tucking his phaser and communicator inside a specially made pockets in the blue paisley vest he was wearing.
“One of the things you learn very quickly upon becoming a Captain, Del,” Sulu replied as the chief handed him his allotment of equipment. “Is that there are hundreds upon thousands of very, very good reasons why it is ultimately very, very unwise to ever refer to a person with a title in front of his name as an asshole.”
“Even when they are?”
“Especially when they are,” the Captain confirmed.
The two men watched as Lian Rendell lifted her heavy skirts far enough to place her phaser in a garter-belt holster.
“Damn, girl.” DelMonde whistled appreciatively. “That hot.”
“You see much more of my legs every day of the week, Mr. DelMonde,” the doctor reminded him.
“Hidin' 'em like that makes me miss 'em,” the Cajun assured her.
“As I was saying,” Sulu continued. “Lindstrom and his team are overdue for an inspection and according to him, there’s real trouble brewing down there. It seems the Landran parliament…”
“You keep callin’ em ‘Landrans,’” the Cajun interrupted. “If that planet is Beta III000, wouldn’t they be Betans?”
The Captain sighed and shook his head. “Del, you’ve got to start reading beyond the first page of the mission briefing packet.”
“When Star Fleet mission briefin's turn into more 'an 20 pages o' 20 different departments rewordin' th' first page so it look like they the one that come up wit the stuff, I will.” When a quirk of his captain’s lips told DelMonde he was pushing too far to the wrong side of the friend-subordinate ratio, he rolled his eyes and amended, “I mean, yes, sir. You are correct, sir. I’ll get on that li'l t'ing right away fo' you, Captain, sir.”
“Beta III000 is just a Star Fleet designation for the planet, isn’t it?” Rendell broke in before the spark of irritation between the two men could break into any sort of conflagration. “If the actual name of the planet is Landra, that wasn’t in the report.”
“The natives of the region we’re visiting call their planet Darna – which means “blessed soil,” Sulu replied, discouraging the engineer from making any disparaging comment about his love of historical trivia with a stern glance. “Landran comes from Landru…”
“Landru?” the engineer repeated. “The computer that was runnin' th' place 'til ol’ JTK single-handedly talked it t' death?”
Sulu crossed his arms. “I’m glad that information made it to the first page of the report.”
“First sentence o' th' first paragraph,” the Cajun confirmed. “Under th' sub-headin' -- Cap’n Kirk Kicks Some Uppity Metal Ass… Yet Again.”
Sulu grinned and nodded. “As it should be.”
“So let me get this straight...” DelMonde folded his arms. “These folks -- ten years out from bein' freed from bein' computer-zombie-slaves —still prefer to call themselves by th' computer overlord’s name?”
“Landru was the prophet who served the voice of the computer, not the computer, but…yeah.”
“I t'ink them sad sons o' bitches do have themselves a problem.”
“They’ve got enough problems to fill pages 2-20 of the mission briefing,” Sulu confirmed pointedly.
“The mental health issues alone are enough to fill a computer bank,” Rendell added.
The engineer made an expression of extreme distaste. “Crazies?”
“Why else do you think they dress this way?” Rendell replied.
The Cajun turned to his captain accusingly. “You draggin' me down to wade 'round hip-deep in crazies?”
“No, I’m taking you down to inspect the equipment that Captain Kirk deactivated to make sure no one is working on trying to re-activate it.”
“Yeah, that I know,” DelMonde retorted. “That were on page 6 – which I wrote the biggest part of, Captain, sir. But didn’t nobody say not'ing 'bout this bein' a planet full o' crazies, though.”
“I fairly sure I covered the subject pretty thoroughly on pages 12-15,” Rendell asserted. “Next time though, I’ll be sure to clarify by changing my subheadings from phrases like ‘Potential for Psycho-social Dysfunction’ to ‘There Gonna Be Some Crazies Here.’”
“I’m more worried about the reactionaries,” Sulu said, as the Cajun favored the doctor with an unappreciative glare. “From what Lindstrom says, there is a vocal minority who see the time they were under Landru’s control as the being the Golden Age of their society and are very angry that the Federation interfered.”
“Ingrates,” Rendell shook her head. “Well, at least we’re making a tidy profit from mineral rights and planetary tribute while they’re under our Protectorate status…”
When her two fellow officers stopped to stare at her for this starkly mercenary assumption, the Haven blinked then shrugged. “Oh, yes, forgot which army I was in for a moment… Glad we’re promoting justice and goodness in the galaxy… or whatever it is we do here in the noble Federation…”
Sulu took a miniaturized tricorder disguised as a decorative timepiece from his vest pocket and checked the chronometer. “Where’s Vale?”
“What’d you do t' him anyway, sugar?” DelMonde asked the doctor.
“Oh, just put a little color in his cheeks… and eyes… and hair.”
“Sorry I’m late, Captain,” Tristan Vale apologized, hurrying through the doorway on cue. “I had some trouble getting into the costume.”
“Didn’t fit?” Sulu asked, taking the fact that his formerly silver skinned, silver eyed, burgundy-haired Indiian officer now had red hair, blue eyes and a peaches and crème complexion completely in stride.
“No,” Vale shimmered a little with embarrassment. “Actually I couldn’t stop staring at myself in the mirror.”
Del couldn’t stop staring either. At first he couldn’t figure out why the sight of an Indiian with strawberry-blonde hair made something in the pit of his stomach tighten into a knot. It wasn’t until Vale came close enough for him to see that Rendell’s skin work had been detailed enough to put a sprinkling of freckles across the Indiian’s cheeks that the engineer was able to place the exact image Vale’s transformation recalled.
DelMonde stared at his friend-captain and his friend-doctor in mute horror. How could they do this? How could they purposefully turn Tristan Vale – who he’d never liked – into this obscene parody of his beloved, lost Pelori?
As he watched, too numb with outrage to speak, his two supposed allies chat pleasantly with the grotesquely transformed Indiian, it gradually began to occur to the engineer that there was actually no way the resemblance could be on purpose. Neither Sulu nor Rendell had ever met Pelori MacIntyre. Red-haired, freckle-faced Human-Indiian hybrids weren’t exactly commonplace. No, this had to be yet another example of the Fates waking up on the wrong side of the cosmic bed one morning and deciding kicking old Noel DelMonde in the balls as hard as they could was gonna be a good way to perk up their day…
“C’mon,” the engineer growled to his team mates, heading for the transport chamber. “Let’s get this freak-show on th' road.”
“That’s my line, Del,” Sulu corrected, taking the foremost spot on the transport pad. “Energize.”
They beamed into a transporter pad in what looked to be a wood-paneled closet. Immediately a door rolled open flooding the small chamber with sunlight.
“Sulu!” A tall man in a frockcoat with thinning blonde hair exclaimed as he stepped forward to clasp the hand of the Drake’s captain. “My God, you don’t know how good it is to see you!”
Sulu blinked at this unexpected warmth. “Good to see you too, Lindstrom,” he replied politely.
“Nobody at Headquarters seems to be able to grasp what I’m up against here,” the director complained, gesturing the rest of the party out into what looked more like a replica of the lobby of a modest Victorian-era hotel than the reception center of a Star Fleet planetary embassy. “The Vulcans have been rumbling about mission over-reach since the last inspection tour,” Lindstrom was saying as he led them down a hallway wallpapered in an unassuming floral print. “And now some blockhead Andorian in the Senate is trying to cut my funding. We’ve been desperately understaffed from the beginning and we lost our representative from the diplomatic corps last year – and he was only a junior staffer in the first place. What we need is a full….”
“That’s why we’re here, Lindstrom,” the Captain interrupted, fearing his host was going to try to pack ten years of grievances into the first five minutes of their visit. “… to assess what you need to go forward.”
“That’s why I’m so relieved they sent you, Sulu.” The Director beamed magnanimously before continuing his rant. “They keep complaining about our lack of progress – like we’re supposed to be able to turn this place into clone of some place like Deneb IV overnight.”
“Ten years is not exactly overnight…” the Drake’s captain pointed out gently.
“And we have made progress,” Lindstrom countered. “But with the problems we face… Ten years is a drop in the bucket. That’s why you were so perfect for this assignment, Sulu. You can understand better than anyone what these people’s mental state has been. You were under Landru’s control…”
“Briefly,” the captain reminded him.
“Yes, but you know exactly how strong that influence was, how addicting it can be. These people in the Senate have no grasp of what has gone on here…”
An aide costumed like a prairie schoolmarm stuck her head out of a doorway. “Director?”
“Just a second,” Lindstrom apologized, turning to his assistant.
DelMonde raised an eyebrow. “You was a computer-zombie?”
His captain frowned. “Briefly.”
“I not t'ink that were in th' report.”
“Not on the first page, no.”
“Page 19,” Rendell supplied helpfully. “At the bottom… In the small print.” She patted the Cajun’s arm reassuringly. “…He got better, though.”
Lindstrom returned to them with another one of his toothy smiles. “Sorry about that. Here’s my office.”
The room was filled with all sorts of familiar 23rd century office equipment covered over with wood, brass, or silver plating.
“I feel like I’ve walked into a Jules Verne novel,” Sulu commented.
“Or th' Wild West whorehouse on Wriggly’s planet,” DelMonde agreed.
“The sight of alien technology sets off even some of the most seemingly rational people here,” the Director explained. “We do what we can to make things palatable for them. Baby steps. Baby steps.”
“Lindstrom…” the captain began, then stopped dead as he caught sight of a painting on the far wall. “That’s a pretty remarkable image.”
The canvas was over four feet in length. The background was blood red. The foreground was dominated by a figure that was half-man half-rocking horse. A look of stark terror was in the figure’s eyes. Its mouth gaped open in silent horror. On a banner over the half-man’s head appeared the words, “Guide Me, Landru!”
“Isn’t it?” the Director replied with incongruous cheerfulness. “This is one of my success stories.”
“This is a success?” Tristan Vale asked.
“Bet you never saw anything like this the last time you were here,” Lindstrom said, turning back to the captain.
“No.” Sulu shook his head, unable to take his eyes off the ghastly expression on the figure’s face. “I don’t remember any art at all.”
“They did have art. Just nothing you’d remember – mass produced formulaic landscapes. Portraits were either studio photographs that were all posed and lit exactly the same way or tracings of those photographs done by one of the art factories. Nothing like this.” Lindstrom gestured to the painting proudly. “Nothing creative. Nothing individual. Nothing that makes a statement.”
Rendell tilted her head to one side. “I think that statement might be ‘Help!’”
“Maybe,” the director agreed pleasantly.
“I haven’t introduced my officers,” Sulu said, forcing himself back to business. “This is my Chief Medical officer, Lian Rendell, Chief Communications officer, Tristan Vale, and Assistant Chief Engineer Noel DelMonde.”
“Didn’t bring your chief engineer?” Lindstrom’s mouth quirked into a frown as he turned back to Sulu. “Because I need the best set of eyes you’ve got on this technology…”
Rendell turned to DelMonde, nodded in Lindstrom’s direction and silently mouthed, “You were right. He is an asshole.”
“He may have not made it to chief yet, but I assure you that Mr. DelMonde is one of the five top engineers in Star Fleet today,” Sulu informed the director firmly. “You couldn’t ask for anyone better qualified.”
“Top five…” Lindstrom smiled and nodded as if mollified, then continued, “but you didn’t make him your chief?”
“Everybody agree that there still some important skills I lack pretty badly,” DelMonde conceded.
“Such as?” “Ass-kissin'.”
“Okay, now you’ve met Del,” Sulu interjected hastily. “I’d like to get started with the inspection right away if your team is ready.”
“Been ready for years,” Lindstrom affirmed.
“Mr. Vale and I will do the official tour with you, but I want DelMonde and Rendell to walk around the city for a few hours on their own to so some on-site observation without being identified as outsiders.”
Lindstrom pressed his lips together thoughtfully for a moment before nodding. “Okay, we’ve got nothing to hide. That’ll be fine as long as they avoid the A-zones.”
“A-Zones?” Sulu repeated. “You mean the Art Zones?”
“Thought that was your big success, Mr. Lindstrom,” Rendell said with a frown.
“It is but – this is the thing outsiders fail to grasp. The vast majority of the population has spent their entire lives conditioned so that any deviation from the norm that occurs outside of Festival triggers a limbic rage. You can’t undo that kind of training overnight. So to get around it, we set up Art Zones in all the population centers where special rules are in place that permit and encourage…”
“Deviation?” Vale guessed.
“Exactly. Only problem is that they tend to attact…”
“Deviants?” Rendell concluded.
“Things get a little rough there sometimes,” Lindstrom admitted.
“Duly noted,” Sulu answered for his officers. “DelMonde, Rendell – check-ins on the half hour. Exercise all due caution. Vale, you’re with me. Director Lindstrom, we’re at your disposal.”
“Prepare to be amazed,” Lindstrom promised with his un-reassuring bright smile.
“So, we’re given a warning not to go into the A-zone,” Rendell summarized as she and DelMonde exited discreetly out a back entrance to the Federation embassy. “And our dear captain cautions us to use due caution… So do we head there at a gallop, a cantor, or just break into a dead run?”
“I t'ink I ought to go t' that temple first an' check out that machinery I s’posed t' look at,” the engineer replied, frowning as he checked his watch/tricorder for directions.
“Really?” The doctor lifted an eyebrow. “We’re going to choose the church over the playground? Devotion over deviancy?”
“’Less you got a problem wit' that,” DelMonde replied, unyieldingly snapping his pocketwatch/tricorder shut.
“By no means,” The doctor said, slipping her arm around his as they set off down the sidewalk. “I just have one question.”
“What that?”
“Who are you and what did you do with Noel DelMonde?”
The engineer sighed as they strolled along, matching the almost unnaturally leisurely pace of the other pedestrians. The street scene before them was idyllic, like something out of a travel holograph. It was a little too perfect for Del’s taste. He’d never encountered much that was this groomed and manicured too look sweet and harmless that didn’t have a heaping portion of sinister underneath. And yet, all his senses could detect around him were more layers of bland upon bland. “This place is too strange,” he complained. “I not wantin' t' plunge straight into th' deep end o' th' crazy pool right off.”
Rendell patted his arm approvingly. “Uncharacteristically sensible of you.”
The Cajun snorted. “It surprise you that someone as crazy as me don’t like crazy in nobody else?”
“I would never be surprised at you not liking something,” the doctor assured him as they made their way down a shop-lined thoroughfare that was as clean and quiet as a park or museum exhibit. “It is odd to see you avoid anything, though …Other than an appointment in Sickbay, of course.”
“Oh?” The engineer raised an eyebrow. “Have I been neglectin' you, cher?”
“Criminally,” the Haven confirmed. “It’s all right, though. I’ve figured out why you and I are doomed never to become lovers.”
The Cajun blinked in surprise. “An' why would that be?”
“We’re cursed.” Rendell smiled as they paused to nod politely at an empty-headed looking passerby who stopped to tip his hat in their direction.
“I thought Havens all claimed not t' be superstitious,” DelMonde said as they resumed their maddeningly slow progress down the street.
“Oh, we’re not…“ Rendell assured him.
“...'Cept when it comes t' money.”
“You could say that,” the doctor conceded as a wagon pulled by a native draft animal that looked very cow-ish rattled past them.
“So... that mean you superstitious 'bout ever't'ing, non?”
“My dear boy,” Rendell replied, sniffing in an exaggeratedly arch fashion. “What you mistake for superstition is actually a deep understanding of patterns of energetic dynamics far too complex for Humans to begin to grasp.”
“Maybe if we started graspin' on each other wit' some dynamic energy, we could bust that ol’ curse wide open,” the Cajun suggested.
“There.” Rendell squeezed his arm. “I knew I could make you smile.”
“What?”
“Look around you.” The doctor nodded towards the other pedestrians. “Everyone is smiling.”
“Like th' greeters at a numbskull convention,” the engineer agreed, although he was relieved that they had thus far found themselves surrounded by natives who showed no signs of being the psychotics he had feared. If these people were deranged, they were obviously dealing with it by staying blissed out on some very fine tranquilizers.
“Your habitual expression makes us stand out like a sore thumb,” Rendell pointed out. “And if I’d just told you to smile, you’d frown or be damned.”
DelMonde scowled. However the doctor’s analysis was impeccable… And it was hard for a man to stay too down in the mouth when he was walking in the sunshine with a beautiful woman on his arm, flirting her heartless little Haven heart out.
“Sweet Mary.” The Cajun rolled his eyes. “Now this is why us two is cursed, Lian. You always gotta be tryin' to play me. Can’t never jus' ask fo' somet'ing.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I’m a Haven. You wouldn’t expect a bird to stop using its wings, would you?”
“No.”
“Or a fish to stop swimming?”
“I guess not.”
“Then you should accept me for what I am,” she concluded. “We Havani have accepted the Federation for what it is, haven’t we? We don’t ask that you Humans stop having red blood cells, or breathing oxygen, or being adaptive, or stop pretending to be do-gooders as an excuse for aggressively colonizing half the galaxy, now do we?”
“Rendell…” The engineer shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder why you bother t' stay in Star Fleet.”
The Haven sighed. “Not as often as I do, Mr. DelMonde.” From around a street corner ahead of them came a sound of whistling and what might be marching.
“What th' hell…?” DelMonde started as a company of around twenty or so men in sturdy blue overalls entered the street carrying brooms.
“Just smile and keep walking like everyone else,” Rendell advised, guiding him with a nudge to vacate the sidewalks as all the other pedestrians were doing.
The sweepers took up evenly spaced positions on the sidewalk. When the last two men were in place at the end of the procession, they tapped their broom handles as a signal. After this count-off, the company began to sweep the pavement, whistling a cheery work tune to keep their efforts in unison.
“We are in a fuckin' musical comedy,” DelMonde concluded.
“When the people from the Enterprise turned off the Landru computer,” Rendell explained. “They assumed the population of this planet would give themselves a quick shake and go back to some normal form of humanoid society.”
“But they won’t no normal t' go back to.”
“Living lives under the direction of a computer was normal for them and their parents and their grandparents and their great-grandparents…”
“I thought some o' them was immune.”
Rendell smiled. “You did read that mission briefing, didn’t you?”
“I got that firs' page down real good,” the Cajun replied.
“Yes, there was a tiny, tiny percent of the population who were free from Landru’s influence. But the only way these individuals have survived was by blending in, being very quiet, and remaining completely unnoticed by the people around them. So when Kirk and his team left them in charge of reforming their planet – becoming the responsible decision-makers who would need to be highly vocal and highly visible to their peers…”
“They shit themselves an' run…” the engineer guessed.
“Basically.”
“And after ten years, this is as close as the rest of these sad sons of bitches can come to acting like they got a brain?”
“Under Landru, there were varying degrees of autonomy. With that control removed, the team found that some individuals weren’t able to even feed or clothe themselves without being instructed to do so.”
Despite the guiding rhythm of work song and the example of their peers, DelMonde noticed that there were a few sweepers in the middle of the pack who seemed to struggle with their task. When these stragglers would get out of sync or obsess on a corner, a slightly less blank-seeming fellow would gently correct them with an unobtrusive nudge in the right direction.
“The conditioning regime the Landru computer deemed necessary to keep some individuals functioning as unquestioningly obedient members of its society narrowly focused on performing their assigned role has left them stunted, both emotionally and cognitively,” Rendell continued. “Physically they’re adults, but their ability to learn, reason, engage in analytical/critical thinking, and make complex judgments is barely beyond the level you’d expect of a toddler. From what I’ve read, many of them have severely impaired memory as well – which is probably a blessing.”
“So workin' up to be a grinnin' zombie street sweeper not so bad fo' them, non?”
The doctor nodded. “This probably another of Mr. Lindstrom’s success stories.”
The engineer suppressed a shudder. “Th' more I see that man’s success stories, th' more scared I get o' runnin' into one o' his failures.”
“Oh, my God…” Sulu breathed as he looked down the almost endless rows of occupied hospital beds. “After ten years, still this many?”
They stood at the end of a room nearly as long as a shuttlebay. Soft sunlight streamed through the lace curtained windows and the soothing sounds of a string quartet floated from loudspeakers as silent nurses in angelic white uniforms moved from patient to patient. Occasionally, they lifted the wooden covers camouflaging medical monitors. The normal beeps of a sickbay had been replaced by clock-like ticking and hushed chimes.
Despite the carefully tranquil décor, there was no escaping the horror of seeing so many catatonics in one room. Some looked merely asleep, but most eyes were wide and vacant. Many faces were contorted with an unspoken torment.
“This is one ward of one floor of one department of one psychiatric hospital in one city,” Lindstrom informed them quietly. “Peace City has a population of 136, 000. It has seven other hospitals just like this. It’s the same way in every population center in all three of the inhabited zones on this planet. The majority of the workers and aid we get from the Federation goes to staff these hospitals.”
"I’ve seen the numbers… but…” Sulu struggled for a moment to put words to the feelings of shock, pity, and dismay that welled up inside him, then asked simply, “What happened?”
“After Captain Kirk destroyed Landru, he left me on Beta III000 with a staff of ten.” Lindstrom had to pause and give a short bitter laugh at the memory. “We thought we were only going to be observer/advisors. What a great opportunity for a sociologist – to watch a culture right itself and re-emerge after being suppressed for generations...”
“And why didn’t that happen?”
“We didn’t understand what Landru had come to mean to these people.” The director gave the bedstead nearest to him a sympathetic, if ineffectual pat. “Within the first six months, in this city alone, there were around seventeen hundred homicides.”
“Aema have mercy!” Tristan Vale exclaimed softly.
“That was bad, but not entirely unexpected given the sudden freedom from the kind of the restraint they’d lived under. What we didn’t anticipate was…” Lindstrom had to stop and swallow before he could continue. He turned to his former shipmate. “Sulu, there were over fourteen thousand suicides… in just this one small city.”
“Jesus.” Sulu had a hard time reconciling his fragmentary memories of streets full of happy, friendly citizens with despair on that order.
“The computer controlled them, oppressed them… but the image of Landru…” Lindstrom shook his head. “Did you ever see any of them communing?
“I’m not sure. I wasn’t here that long...”
“Things were set up so that they could call out and Landru would appear to them. It was just a projection of a dead man making pre-recorded speeches cued by keywords the computer could parse from their requests, but effect was that Landru talked to them about any problem they had. He could give them advice or calm them down when they were worried. The computer created an image and a voice that would literally answer the people’s prayers.”
Sulu could still vaguely recall the warm stillness that had filled his head during his short time as part of The Body. Fragments of the sense of unconditional acceptance he’d felt played in his brain like notes from a half-forgotten melody. “Everyone had his or her own personal Landru…”
“They all had it.” Lindstrom gazed down the long row of beds. “And then suddenly, like flipping a switch, they all didn’t.”
The Captain of the Drake remembered the moment of wrenching agony when the Landru’s cocoon of expansive belonging was abruptly ripped from his heart. For him, the resulting searing emptiness had been brief. With the alien interference removed, his memories had quickly returned. His own ambitions, joys, and even sorrows had rushed back to re-fill the void left by Landru’s removal.
Looking at the beds around him, Sulu could now recognize the expressions of those who were forever frozen in that moment of aching loss.
“That’s what we didn’t understand,” Lindstrom was saying quietly. “When Captain Kirk deactivated Landru, we hadn’t just turned off an over-reaching computer monster for these people.” The director paused and took in a deep, remorseful breath. “We killed God.”