“Hestor,” he said, looking up. “Can this be removed?”
A stooped man with an elder’s markings on his clan hood knelt beside Tram Bir. He took hold of the spear shaft and tugged at the splintered stub. The boy bit his lips and unsuccessfully tried to stifle a scream. Then he coughed and a bloody froth appeared.
“It’s barbed,” said the older man, rising to his feet “It cannot be removed. It would be useless to let the boy suffer any longer.”
For a moment, the chief gazed silently at his dying son. Then he reached down and drew a short, wide-bladed dagger from a sheath marked with ceremonial designs. He touched the tip of the blade to the boy’s throat and said in a low voice, “I offer my son to the Messiah. He dies a warrior’s death. At the appointed time, may he be lifted to Afterbliss with the rest.”
There was a hushed silence as he lifted the blade, and then a voice said quietly, “Our lives for his, Tram Bir. I can save your son.”
The chief turned his head toward the prisoners. “The spear is barbed,” he said harshly.
“Be that as it may,” McCoy said, “I can heal him. But it must be done quickly. He bleeds inside. Soon it will be too late.”
Tram Bir shook his head and turned back to his son.
“Beshwa have strange powers,” said the elder who had examined the boy’s wound. “Long ago they healed me of a fever when all else had failed.”
Tram Bir considered the advice silently for a moment. At last, slowly replacing the ceremonial dagger in its sheath, he rose to his feet.
“If it is as you say, old friend, they shall earn my gratitude. If it isn’t, they shall die… but not swiftly. Unbind them.”
Moments later, the now unconscious boy was lifted into the van and laid on one of the built-in bunks. Sara, holding her slit tunic together with one hand, climbed in, followed by McCoy.
“You two wait out here,” Kirk said to Chekov and Scott. He stepped up into the van and shut the door.
“All right, Bones,” he said, “how are you going to get out of this?”
McCoy seemed strangely unperturbed. “We’re still alive, aren’t we, Jim? Since your Azrath didn’t bail us out, somebody had to.”
“For how long?”
“Just watch. If you thought for one moment that I, a Starfleet surgeon, was going to land on a planet two thousand years behind the Federation in medical technology and rely only on their herbs and potions, you are out of your star-picking mind.”
Leaving Kirk standing with his mouth open, McCoy went to the front of the van and, bending down, opened a small, concealed panel. Reaching in a hand, he drew out a standard-issue Starfleet medikit.
“Did you think I was going to operate with a dirk and no antiseptics, Jim?” he asked blandly.
Before Kirk could answer, there was an imperious knocking at the van door. “Open up,” called Tram Bir from outside, “I wish to be with my son.”
“Sorry, honored chief,” Kirk replied through the door, “but our spells won’t work if you are present We’ll call you when we’re through.”
Tram Bir growled and went away.
McCoy gave the unconscious boy a shot of anesthetic and then straightened. “That should keep him under until I get the job done,” he said. “I’m going to need your help in a minute, Jim, but first I’ve got to take a crash course in Kyrosian anatomy.”
He switched on a medical tricorder and began to scan the boy’s body.
“Heartbeats fluttering,” he muttered, “—he has two, both tri-chambered—liver function normal, gastro-intestinal OK, lung–only one of those but as big as the two we have—severe trauma. Massive laceration of muscles and blood vessels, of course, but actually it looks worse than it is. This will take some time, though.”
Then, moving the instrument to the boy’s head, he continued, “Minor head wound, mild concussion.” Glancing up at Kirk, he said, “Jim, get that hood off and staunch the blood while I work on this.” He gestured at the broken spear shaft.
“Hold it,” Kirk said. “If we’re going to make this look really impressive, we ought to have atmosphere.” He went to a chest and took out two native instruments, an oddly shaped horn that looked like a flat-iron with a hose attached to one end and a lute-like instrument with strings going in all directions. He went to the door, opened it a crack, and passed the instruments out to Scott and Chekov.
“Give us some music to make magic by,” he muttered. “I don’t care if it comes out sour, but I want it loud.” As he shut the door and locked it, there was a brief moment of cacophony as the two officers struggled to agree on pitch, tune, and tempo; and then, somewhat off-key, the morbid strains of the “Saint James Infirmary Blues” resounded through the hills for the first time in the history of Kyros.
“Isn’t that a violation of General Order One?” McCoy asked sourly, wincing at the raucous intermingling of toots and tweedles.
Kirk grinned. “Who’s going to report us?”
“Well, if you can stand that racket, I guess I can. Let’s get started. Get that hood off and clean up the head wound.”
“Aye, sir,” Kirk said. He untied the thongs holding the boy’s headgear on and tried to pull it off. He couldn’t. McCoy, seeing the trouble Kirk was having, handed him a scalpel.
“Cut it off,” he said. Kirk carefully slit the hood from chin to forehead and then, bit by bit, peeled it back on both sides until it was free. Sara handed him a moistened sterilized pad from the medikit. He pressed it gently to the wound and began mopping away the congealed blood.
McCoy’s fingers probed lightly around the broken spear shaft that protruded from the boy’s side.
“Sara, put a represser on that,” he ordered.
The woman removed a small, oblong object and placed it near the wound. She pressed a button on the instrument and, instantly, the flow of blood stopped under the influence of a low-power force-field.
“Suction,” McCoy said.
Sara pressed a flexible hose to the wound and the blood was drawn away.
“Now, I can see what I’m doing,” McCoy murmured. “Sara, prepare an automatic IV, universal he-mo factors, one liter,” he ordered a moment later.
Snapping open a small kit, Ensign George removed a telescoping metal rod with a collapsible tripod base. Next, a plastic pouch containing a dark powder was hung at the top of the rod. She poured a liter of water from a storage jug into it. The powder dissolved almost instantly, and a red fluid began to run through a plastic tube into a needle which had been inserted in the boy’s left arm.
“Good,” McCoy said, his eyes glancing up briefly. “Now a type oh-oh scalpel.”
Ensign George handed the instrument to McCoy and he pressed the tip of the slim cylinder against the boy’s side. A short, bloodless incision appeared under the ragged hole around the spear shaft.
“Probe,” he ordered.
Sara handed him a flexible, light-carrying tube with tiny waldoes on it, and he inserted it into the small incision below the wound. Plugging a lead from the other end into the medical tricorder, he studied the display on the instrument’s tiny screen.
“Take a look, Jim.”
“Ugly,” Kirk said, looking at the black silhouette of the barbed spear point which had torn through the chest muscles and was buried in spongy gray lung tissue. “How are you going to get that thing out?”
“Watch. Minilaze, Sara,” he ordered.
She handed him the tiny cutting tool. He made a clean incision through the tissue that had closed in around the barbs, the beam cauterizing as it cut. Then, grasping hold of the short, splintered stub, he gently pulled the head out.