Two Faces in Kalara
Posted on 27 Jan 2023 @ 7:22pm by Lieutenant Commander Maurice Rubens & Ensign Izatti Sitio & Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Kalara City
Timeline: MD09: 1530 HR
2256 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Home was too simple a word for the palace that Rice and Izatti walked up to. A stucco wall rose twenty feet into the air, capped with obsidian black tiles that glistened in the late afternoon sun. Two towers, topped with pointed merlons, rose either side of ten-foot-tall midnight double doors formed from Loki III’s ubiquitous stone and banded with massive brass hinges. Reliefs carved in the stone showed a dozen hunters with long spears and mounted on eralsu running to ground a large sounder of siniki.
Izatti and Rice came to a stop in front of the massive doors. Still in the civilian clothes they came down to Obsidian in, both stared up at the doors. She adjusted the hajib that covered her head and face, leaving only her eyes visible. Fine sand and dirt clung to everything the pair had; Rice had insisted they keep these clothes on.
“Do we just knock?” she asked him.
As if those were magical words, one of the doors slowly opened in. A small man in a clean white robe bowed to Rice, but pointedly ignored Izatti.
Rice considered the man – a servant, he assumed – before walking in. The doors didn’t open into a building, but a long courtyard. Izatti stepped to his side, nervously clutching her bag, as the servant shut the door with a surprisingly soft click. He passed around them and indicated to the pair of Starfleet officers to follow him.
The Obsidian man led them down a snaking walkway three people wide, paved in bright white stone that back and forth across the courtyard. Rice readjusted his definition of the space: it was more a carefully manicured jungle than a courtyard. A riot of flowers bloomed everywhere his eyes looked: red, pinks, purples, blues, yellows, and whites popped on background of green leaves, many variegated with yellow streaks. A stream of water, only a couple feet across, but still impressive considering the preciousness of the liquid on the planet, snaked through the entire space. Unseen, but heard was the splash of a fountain.
“Ooo,” Izatti stopped by a particularly large flower, wider then the palms of Rice’s hands put together. Yellow swirls dance across the blue petals, a fuzzy pink stamen jetting out from its center.
Rice looked at the flower closer and then scanned the rest of the vibrant foliage. "It's a shame for this to be behind close doors.”
“Do you garden?” Izatti asked.
“No."
The servant had stopped seven feet away and urgently indicated that they shouldn’t stop to enjoy the view, but follow him. Rice smiled and bowed slightly, before stopping Izatti walking further.
“Take off your hajib.”
“But, don’t they want women to wear veils? Or does it look bad? This was my mother’s I just thought…”
“You look great. That’s not why I want you to take it off. Just trust me,” Rice said.
Still unsure, she unwrapped the garment from her head, draping it over her arm as they continued to follow the impatient servant deeper into the courtyard.
“Sir, isn’t Chief Hazami ultra-conservative? You weren’t even sure how he was going to react having me with you. Now I’m showing up uncovered?”
“True, true. Just know that you’re following my orders and doing an invaluable bit of diplomatic work,” Rice told her. “And don’t feel bad about anything that I say to you. And after this begins, stay quiet and pay attention. I'll want your thoughts afterwards.”
Around a final corner of the path, the pair of Starfleet officers could see their destination. The fountain, louder now, bubbled away cheerfully next to a man in russet-red robes half sitting, half laying on carpet decorated with green-and-blue zigzags, surrounded by yellow round and cylindrical pillows of multiple sizes. There was no obvious place for Rice or Izatti to sit so both of them stood several feet away.
Rice bowed, “Suranji, thank you for meeting with us.”
Hazami remained still, only his eyes moving to one of his closest attendants, and then pointedly at Izatti, with the weight of disapproval. The attendant who had led the guests inside suddenly seemed ashamed as he realized that he had brought an uncovered woman in to the courtyard of his master. He stuttered apologies in a tribal tongue, shaking.
“Suranji! Have mercy on your servant!” he said, to afraid to make excuses for his oversight.
“Go!” One of the personal attendants of the Suranji made a motion of his hands and the porter backed away from the courtyard, who left walking backwards and bowing.
As the porter was gone, the attention returned back to the Suranji and his unannounced guests.
“Who are you? What business do you have with Suranji Hazami? Why do you shame his court with a loose woman?” the lead attendant boomed.
Izatti half turned her head toward Rice. Not only did he not look worried, but the corner of his mouth twitched into a pleased smirk before his face crumpled into an embarrassed grimace.
“Ensign, you should have told me this was going to be a problem! Put on your head covering,” Rice sternly ordered, before he bowed lowly, “My deepest apologies, Suranji. I messaged you yesterday about an audience. I’m Maurice Rubens, Obsidian Command’s new Chief Diplomatic Officer. I’ve only just arrived from Earth and am reliant on information about your customs provided by my staff. I can see now that disrespect is yet another failure by Starfleet’s personnel here. I must beg your forgiveness.”
The Suranji didn't change his position or his mind. His eyes remained slit as if staring into the devil's fiery pit. But the woman, being corrected, did pull her covering over her head and so he refrained momentarily from sending them away.
“I am happy, however, that my officers could not dissuade me from meeting with you. They told me that Councilman Jiran or the chiefs of the Halluman, Kiri, and Essir tribes would be better to meet with first, but I told them that after the chief of chiefs was embarrassed by Starfleet officers I needed to see you first and beg your forgiveness for that affront in person.”
At all these names of his political rivals Hazami visibly bristled, his lip curling enough to be visible through his black but graying beard. The mention of the smug officers who had out maneuvered him in the judgement hall of Kalara began to boil his blood anew.
When Hazami spoke it was with authority and ire. "The Federation behaves as if it has laid the foundations of the city. My ancestors settled in the Caldera many generations before you devils turned eyes on this world. You seek fault lines to purpose to drive wedges and defeat the bedrock. You break apart the people so you can offer solutions to the trouble you bring."
“Not to correct you, Suranji, but I think in this particular situation I would level the accusation at Starfleet. Although, I don’t think they meant the harm you accuse them of.”
Hazami rose to his feet, coming to height, with his robes cascading into place. His attendants swirled around him as if he were a gravitational pull and they were eddies responding to natural forces, forming with three attendants to either side. "What then do you claim to apologize for?" He held up a count of two fingers. "You speak from two faces."
Rice gave him a shallow bow, “I apologize. You misunderstand me. I don’t think they meant harm, because Starfleet is too inept devise a nefarious plan. On my home world there is saying that when someone blunders that they are ‘all thumbs.’ I think the idiom applies perfectly to Starfleet’s operations here.”
Hazami harrumphed. "Thieves, liars, and jinn often feign the role of fools to hide their misdeeds. Are you not of your Fleet of the Stars, Maurice Rubens?"
“Recently rejoined. Prior to this I was a high-ranking official with the Federation’s Department of the Exterior. I’ve come back because, despite my rank and my position, Starfleet was keeping secrets from me. In doing so, they were embarrassing me in meetings and treating me as…well,” Rice simply nodded his head toward Hazami, a way of indicating their shared experience. “I wanted to know why and sometimes I’ve found its best to get close to an adversary so when an opportunity presents itself, I’ll be prepared.”
Hazami considered. "It does not surprise me that a pit of vipers deceives its own. Would it surprise you to know, that since succeeding my Uncle as Suranji, since uniting the tribes Of the greater Caldera and the Oasis, Since brokering peace with the hill families and returning the way of the Divine to the people of the south— in all these years, always those of the outer dark have preferred to work their leaven of honeyed lies through sympathizers and the weak of conviction." He began to walk closer to this oddity of the jinn. "Always they have spurned me out of my hearing. The Fleet of the Stars has not once come to my court. You are the first, Maurice Rubens."
“I am not surprised,” Rice said. “I come from a different school of philosophy when it comes to those who disagree with the Federation. Where some see enemies, I see potential friends. So, let me ask a blunt question as friends do: what would have us do?”
"The Federation and all those who have come in the past hundred-year since, are not leaving. Afraid for our security, my forefathers' hands were forced to make treaties with Federation outsiders in the face of others more ruthless. But slow poison is no less deadly for being slow."
“It’s not a quick or easy thing, but you could ask for an official Federation ambassador. You’d have a direct line to the President of the Federation and the ability to circumvent Starfleet. Then the admirals and captains who command the starbase would come here often and you could begin laying the groundwork…oh. Oh, no.”
Rice paused. His eyes spoke of a disquieting epiphany and he started to shake his head with sadness. It was for dramatic effect, but he’d fine-tuned his performances over a long career. Actors and con-artists could do no better.
“No. Nevermind. That would never…It’s the killings, you see. The breaking of the Sunstorm Truce. The threat to the off-worlders. It’s made everyone nervous: other tribes. Starfleet. The Federation won’t send an ambassador here. But…but! You’ve brought together the Oasis and the greater Caldera. You could put an end to it all peacefully. I’m sure many more tribes would flock to you then. A united Obsidian would force us to leave.”
Hazami rested a foot on a ledge and looked past Maurice Rubens to a relief carved into the far wall of the garden behind the guest where the symbol of the Sunstorm Truce was raised from the stones, a blazing corona radiating in waves like desert mirage heat. Loki, the fire of life which seared the soul clean of impurities. Hazami seemed deeply disturbed, grave lines etched into his own visage. "You know not of what you speak, like a child playing a game of words." He had in his voice a kind of pity, as if for the very simple minded. " The matter is one of ancient law. According to the Daions, the keepers of the Divine Will, Sunstorm Truce cannot be invoked by outsiders, and those of Obsidian who shelter sky devils as their own profane the commands. They are no longer witnessed by the Divine. Those who break the law are no longer under its protection."
Rice sighed. “Thank you for the clarification, Suranji. It was just an idea, but I can see now not a workable one. It would be unimaginable for a devout follower such as yourself to do anything that ran afoul of your leaders – ah – your religious teachings.”
Clearly Maurice Rubens thought lightly of the will of the Divine, counting it as some irritable stone in the sandal to be picked out, and not as the well-spring of all life. "You align yourselves with the lawless. You seek to overlook it so the cancer may grow and weaken the whole body." Hazami waved backhandedly, as if swatting a fly. "It is your nature. I would be no more surprised at finding a chuchaki that startled at loud noises, an ortananni that fanned itself with it's wings, or a siniki grubbing in the soil. Every creature naturally behaves in it's kind, no less the children of the outer dark in line with the will of the fiery one."
Rice sucked on his tongue, a habit he’d developed negotiating intractable Free State Romulans. He turned and gave Izatti a quick nod to let her know they were going to leave. There was nothing else for them to learn there. “We thank you for your hospitality, Suranji. I hope that you and I might talk again soon. There are many things we disagree with, but perhaps we can find common ground nonetheless.”
"It is not likely though it is commendable that you attempt to do so. Perhaps other paths may be discovered." Hazami said dismissively as he resettled himself on his cushion and motioned for the guests to be shown out once more.
