Nothing Beside Remains

6.25.2005

Martok's Death

***A newer version of "Karl's Death." Hopefully new-and-improved, rather than just new.***

The freak on the bus. That was what they called him. He would ride around nearly every day, sometimes sitting in the same seat for hours, perched on orange plastic. He just stared out the window at the people outside: an elderly man petting his little dog, a woman polishing her sunglasses. These people were his reality. He watched them through the glass, and they looked more real than real, like something you would see on TV.

The only time he looked inside the bus was when there were tourists there. He would stare through them into their hearts as they wrapped their mouths around the jagged shapes of an unfamiliar language.

The man on the bus –for he did not think of himself as a freak– imagined himself to be a foreigner, even though he had lived in the city all his life. He liked to translate things to himself to English, like a tourist. nuqDaq 'oH puchpa' 'e'? he would whisper, and then came the translation: where is the bathroom? The most important phrase in any language. The consonants rolled around on his tongue. 'arlogh Qoylu 'pu'? What time is it?

The others on the bus, the commuters just trying to get through the day, stared at this man, or else they averted their eyes. They didn't look at him in the same way as they wouldn't look at a homeless person. The man didn't look at them either, but for different reasons.

His name was Martok, he was thirty-four years old, and he was a warrior of the Klingon empire. It was Saturday, and today he wasn't riding just to watch people outside the bus. He was going somewhere. Somewhere important.

He clenched his hands in his lap, trying hard not to scratch at the prosthetic forehead he wore over his own, real forehead. It made his head look ridged and alien. The latex always made his head feel strange, but he didn't scratch at it. That would have ruined the illusion.

Today was convention day, one of the few days Martok could be himself, didn't have to hide behind an oxford shirt and clip-on tie. Today, he could be his true self: violent, honorable, passionate. A true Klingon.

Martok used to be a human, before his mother had died, before he had gotten into Star Trek. He would watch the show before that, but he didn't yet live it. He had been nineteen, and she had gone suddenly; a heart attack. He didn't leave the house for weeks after that, would have starved if his neighbor hadn't brought him meatloaf and tuna casseroles. He just sat on the couch with the pattern of kittens, his mother's old flowery bathrobe pulled tight around him, watching television. Or rather, he was sitting there, facing in that direction, and the television was on. But he was not watching. Nothing registered.

Until Star Trek. He was taken in by The Search for Spock. The way Spock had died but not really died, because he had given his katra, his memories, to Bones – it was what Martok needed to hear. He shed his mother's robe but kept her in his heart. He moved on with his life. He became a Trekkie, and more, he became a Klingon. And for sixteen years, he didn't look back.

**********

He met his shipmates in the hotel bar. They always did this for the conventions. The motley crew – Martok; Bernard, a fellow Klingon warrior; Dora, a Vulcan; and George the Andorian, who left blue smudges on everything he touched – were united only by their aloneness. Every time a con was in town, they'd go together to the posh hotel and shop and swap stories about their favorite Trek episodes and the freak of the week: the latest fan who had gone a bit too far. They pretended they couldn't see the giggles and stares and raised eyebrows of the normals who were suddenly wishing they'd chosen a different hotel.

Barbara Adams! This week's amusement. She had shown up for jury duty in Little Rock, Arkansas, in full Starfleet uniform. Bernard showed them the clipping he had gotten from the newspaper. It had a picture of her, walking though the courthouse metal detector, passing her tricorder through the x-ray machine.

This was something true, something that had happened in real life.

Bernard chuckled as he told them about how she always wore her communicator badge –a toy that didn't do anything but beep– everywhere, all the time. George giggled like a man half his size, nearly toppling his barstool, and even Dora permitted herself a raised eyebrow. But Martok was silent. This was no joke.

**********

In the lobby, he studied the check-in girl's face. He had hesitated at the row of hostile faces at the front desk, but her warm, open visage beckoned him from the far end. She smiled at him as he walked toward her, exposing two rows of round white teeth, and he almost forgot himself and smiled back. Behind him, Dora was expressionless as always, and Bernard remained hidden behind the non-canon Ray-Bans he always wore. Her nametag read Corrinne, and she said she was happy he had chosen the Hilton today. He was happy too.

For a fleeting moment, he felt compelled to tell her about Barbara Adams, tell her that he wasn't like that, that he was the real thing. But he couldn't.

Martok thought Corrinne was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He didn't have much to compare her to, though. The only women he knew were Dora and his mother. Martok's mother had been dead since he was nineteen and Dora – well, she was a Vulcan. No emotion. But Corrinne had welcomed him.

Corrinne was beautiful, though. Her hair was blonde and curly, and bounced around her shoulders when she moved. Her eyes were round and hazel, like the eyes of a cartoon owl. They made her look innocent but wise at the same time, like someone who would sit with her friends and help them with all their personal problems. Her nose was tiny and perfect. It was the same as it had been when she was a little girl. She looked like she was perfect for her job. She looked like she should be doing something more important. She looked so...ordinary.

Martok imagined he was looking at her through the window of a bus. He wondered if he had ever seen her before, but decided he would have remembered.

He wished he could talk to her about Barbara Adams.

While all this was happening, Dora stood behind him, ramrod straight, fists clenched. She mouthed one word over and over: illogical.

Dora and Martok had had a relationship, a love affair. They had met at a Star Trek convention, the first of many they would attend together. They had made love that night, had sex, fuled by Romulan ale, which was vodka and blue food coloring.

After a time, they had started living together, Dora moving into Martok's dead mother's house. They took down the musty lace curtains and hung up technical drawings of shuttlecraft and warp cores.

But the relationship had soon decayed, like improperly maintained dilithium crystals. This was, Dora presumed, because she was a Vulcan. Where he was passionate and impulsive, she was logical, calculating. A romance between a Vulcan and a Klingon could never last.

**********

Inside the convention hall, his crew went their separate ways. Bernard looked over the tops of his sunglasses at the list of featured speakers. George had already started a trail of blue fingerprints on merchandise. Dora had disappeared as soon as they had stepped through the door. Martok wandered over to the largest booth, where William Shatner was signing autographs, wondering why Captain Kirk wasn't in uniform.

The booth itself was made of white plastic: a plastic folding table at its center, and banners made of white plastic sheeting. A smaller table off to the side held books and DVDs and photographs of Shatner, which you could buy for only 25% more than the normal price, for convenience. William Shatner was at the center of it all, seated at the table, looking ancient and bored and a little bit resentful. He was signing his name on anything people handed to him and smiling a big fake smile. When Martok reached the front of the line, Shatner looked from his head down to his toes and raised an eyebrow, as if to ask, why? Just like everyone else did.

The man behind the booth reached out mechanically for something to sign. Martok wanted to ask him about Barbara Adams, to raise his eyebrow and ask, why? He produced a coffee shop receipt and got it autographed, never saying a word.

Walking around the convention hall and holding his autograph, he thought again about Barbara Adams and what she did, and he felt lost and dizzy. He stumbled through the maze of humanity, running his fingertips across the signed coffee receipt. All the other people here were like he was, lost, only they didn't know it. There was a couple who had just gotten married by a member of the Q Continuum. In the corner, three Ferengi quibbled over action figure prices. Aliens, blue and green, scaly-headed and leather-clad, swarmed around Martok, laughing and eating and talking as though this were the most normal thing in the world.

He kept walking, circling the hall. It was just something to do. He felt embarrassed to be a part of all this.

Dora had once said that they were strangers in a strange land. If he believed that, then they would always be strangers and then...well, no wonder Barbara Adams pretended she was a Starfleet officer, and no wonder his false forehead was always itching. Martok saw his whole life displayed in front of him, like a Star Trek episode. Forty-four minutes, and all the problems solved before the last commercial break, but the problems would never be solved, and when everything was over, he was stuck in this television world. He couldn't change the channel. He was just a character, not an actor. Not a person.

Close by, near the door to the men's room, he saw another Klingon. His headpiece was coming unglued, and he carried a bat'leth sword made of duct-taped cardboard. Today would be a good day to die, Martok thought, and translated, Heghlu' meh QaQ jajvam.

**********

Martok carried the autograph up to one of the booths.

He saw himself reflected in the knives being sold, distorted, all pinched in the middle. He looked at the image in the blade of a ma'veq, a knife used in ceremonial killings. He felt like this reflection was the real Martok, and the flesh-and-blood version was just an imitation, a poor copy, like a bad transmission of a TV show.

He held the newly purchased ma'veq in one hand and the autograph in the other, and walked back over to the signing booth. Shatner was still there, smiling like his life depended on it. He was framed by the metal poles of the booth, looked like he was on television. Martok's hand moved involuntarily, searching for the remote control to a TV that didn't really exist. The autographed receipt slipped from his hand and tumbled down.

Martok looked around him. Everything here was fake, a joke. He was fake too. Kirk was only Shatner and he didn't care that he was just a fictional character. Corrinne was real but Martok wasn't and so he could only ever watch her, watch her and pretend like he pretended when he watched Star Trek.

He was a freak, and a phony, and everyone knew it. His stomach clenched like a fist around the hilt of a blade.

Martok approached the fallen idol, the toupeed, disgruntled man giving away pieces of himself to pathetic, needy strangers.

"Barbara Adams," Martok said.

Shatner paused, his hand frozen mid-signature.

"She was not a freak. Barbara Adams was not a freak until you made her a freak."

The actor looked confused. No sign of recognition in his eyes.

Dora had come up alongside the table. "What are you doing?" she hissed. "Do you know who this is?" Martok did, of course he did.

Shatner looked to the next in line, pen poised to sign the proffered trading card.

Martok lunged.

He flung himself on top of the other man, toppling the folding chair and sending them both crashing to the floor. Shatner's hairpiece was knocked askew, his practiced celebrity smile vanished. The conventioneers and staff gathered around the scene in progress, formed a human wall of shock, frozen by Martok's warcry. It echoed throughout the hall: freak freak freak freak freak.

Martok now sat atop the chest of the man he had idolized for years. With a roar, he lifted the ma'veq high over his head and prepared to plunge it into his adversary's heart. Shatner knew the moment had come. His lips formed the question, why? but no sound escaped. Martok tensed, ready to avenge the loss of honor, the loss of self. This was for Barbara's honor, and for his own, too, and for all the people who had been living this lie with them.

"Stop!"

Corrinne's voice rang in the rafters. Everyone froze. Everyone except Martok. He moved his arms slowly down, bringing the knife toward its target. Shatner's lips again formed the silent question, why? The knife held its course, moving ever downward.

And then, a shift. Martok moved the knife to his right, letting it fall gently to the floor. His teeth, once bared, fell back behind pink lips forming a silent word, a name. Corrinne.

Police officers' black boots broke through the crowd of onlookers and Martok was lifted up. They carried him handcuffed through the lobby, and he saw Corrinne's grey-green eyes shining with concern. For the first time in years, he smiled. He shouted out above the din, ignoring the sea of outraged faces that followed him, ignoring Dora fighting to retain her Vulcan composure. He saw only the face that had brought him back to reality. His head felt light. He was floating. She looked like his mother, so very much like his mother. And he shouted to her:

"My name is Karl."

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