by Jane Seaton

Uhura left Sulu looking at the rack of swords outside the shop, jangling the chains that secured them to the stall. Inside it was dark. The shelves were overfull of things no one could conceivably want to buy: ugly paperweights, lumpish vases, brass objects of dubious usefulness and no aesthetic merit. She was about to turn around and go back out into the daylight when a glint of something bright caught her eye from the darkest corner furthest from the window. She moved towards it. She still couldn't quite make it out but she had an impression of eyes...

Tribbles, she reminded herself under her breath. If it was alive there was no way she was interested. Something made of feathers brushed at her face. She looked up at a stuffed bird of prey on a perch... no, a reassembled bird of prey, badly put together with plumage from several different species. She coughed a little at the dust she'd dislodged.

Now she had reached her goal. A hand lettered sign hung from a nail above a narrow bookcase. 'Alein in a botle' it declared. The shelves were crowded with squat jars, each one topped with a cheerful little circle of gingham fabric in one of several different colours. She picked up a jar and squinted to see inside in the poor light. A humanoid figure, perhaps three inches long, sat hunched miserably on a rustic log. Its eyes were picked out with something shiny enough to catch even the scant illumination in the shop, but beyond that the lieutenant couldn't make out much detail. She carried the jar over towards the door and looked more closely.

The base of the jar had been coated inside with a layer of something green. The log was a piece of apparently genuine timber, cut with a blunt saw at either end. On it sat a Klingon.

He was wearing military uniform, his hair was shoulder length and untidy and his brow was ridged in classic Klingon style.

"Three credits."

Uhura looked up to find that the shop assistant, a dough-faced girl with stringy hair as dusty and faded as her stock, was standing by her shoulder.

"What does it do?"

The girl shrugged.

"I thought I saw it move. It's not alive, is it?"

She immediately felt silly for asking but the girl merely shook her head. "You don't have to feed it or anything."

"What's it for?"

The girl picked up something from the back of the jar and showed it to the lieutenant. It was a little label on a piece of red yarn. Uhura accepted it and pressed it open with her free hand.

"In case of emergency," the label instructed, "break glass."

"Hm," she said. She turned the little label over but the back was blank. "Where do they come from?"

"The warehouse," the girl told her unhelpfully.

Uhura had lost interest in the label and was examining the contents of the jar again. She was sure it had moved before. The little figure was quite motionless now, not even breathing that she could see.

"Is it a hologram?"

"A what?"

The lieutenant lifted the jar up so that she could examine its base without dislodging the Klingon from his seat. There was only a smooth, glassy surface, through which showed the green floor of the scene inside the jar. No obvious power source or controls.

Well, if it was battery driven, it clearly wasn't designed to take a replacement. Then she had a thought. Such a novelty could easily be powered by ambient light. That would explain why it wasn't doing anything. For some reason, she was utterly certain that it must do something.

"Can I take it outside?"

"Why?" the girl demanded resentfully. She moved a fraction to cut off Uhura's path to the door.

"To have a better look at it."

"If you pay for it, you can look at it all you like. That's what it's for, to look at. And you can take it outside then."

Uhura considered asking whether she could bring it back if she decided on better acquaintance that she didn't like it, but decided that three credits were hardly worth the trouble.

"I'll buy it. You said three credits, didn't you?"

"Yes." The girl plucked the jar out of her hand and carried it off to the counter which was half submerged under discarded packaging and mugs with half an inch of cold beverage in the bottom. She pulled a crumpled paper carrier from a shelf on the wall behind the counter and dropped the jar negligently into it, then handed it to Uhura by its string handles. She stuck out a grubby hand, palm up, for payment. The lieutenant obliged with six local coins that corresponded to the agreed price.

"Thanks," the girl said gruffly, slipping them quickly into her pocket rather than the antique art deco cash register that was by a long way the most attractive thing in the shop. She let Uhura get almost out of the door before she said, "That's just a joke, about breaking the glass."

"Oh, there you are!" Sulu had plainly given up on the swords. He was thumbing through the grubby paper tourist guide Kevin Reilly had lent him. "D'you want some lunch now?"

"Sounds a nice idea. Where do you suggest?"

"Over there?"

The street they were in ran alongside a canal and a little restaurant had put tables out on the narrow cobbled quay, right by the water's edge. Uhura nodded happily.

"What did you buy?" Sulu pulled a chair out for her. She was never certain whether such gestures on his part were gallantry or irony but it was easier to accept than to argue, particularly as she was concerned to keep her purchase upright and unshaken. "A Klingon," she told him, putting the jar down, still in the bag but on its base.

The helmsman raised his eyebrows. "Is that legal?"

"I'm not sure." She picked up the menu and pretended to read it, enjoying teasing him.

"It's a pretty small Klingon," Sulu said, looking at the outside of the bag. The carrier was secondhand, its origins being in a local shoe shop.

"Can I help you?" a native voice asked. Uhura did a double take. The girl from the shop seemed to have put on a slightly soiled, ruched apron and adopted the role of waitress. There was no sign of recognition on her face though. Sisters, the lieutenant told herself.

"I think we're about to order lunch, but could we have drinks, please? A fruit juice for me, something local, and..."

"I'll have a beer, an imported one," Sulu filled in, still looking at the carrier. "I'm sure if it was a real Klingon it would have escaped from a paper bag before now."

Uhura smiled and took the jar out, setting it in the middle of the table. She turned it, so that the Klingon was facing the canal. He wasn't moving but she rather thought he was no longer in his original position.

Sulu wrinkled his nose at the novelty, which, to be fair, did look disappointingly cheap now that it was out in the sunlight. The top was tied on with string, sealed with red wax over the knot.

"Why did you buy that?"

"For Chekov."

"What?"

"Well, I thought he might like to have a Klingon he could keep in its place."

"Yes..."

Chekov's misfortunes with Klingons would have been well on their way to being a running joke, if any of the individual incidents had been even remotely funny.

Sulu reached out and tapped the jar with a fingernail.

"Don't!"

"I'm sorry." Sulu sat on his hands with exaggerated contrition. "You don't think it's alive do you? It's probably just flour and water dough and cheap paint."

Uhura was sure the miniature Klingon tightened his mouth at that.

"I'm not sure how fragile it is," she said. She arranged the menu to keep the sun off the jar, realising that it would act like a little greenhouse.

Half an hour later, the lieutenant finished off a glass of what tasted very much like synthetic orange juice, while Sulu wiped round his plate with a piece of French bread. "You were right to avoid anything local," she told him. She pulled the bill over so she could read it and counted out her share. "I ought to be getting back."

"Don't forget Chekov's Klingon." Sulu picked the jar up and peered into it. "He's an ugly little bastard. You'd better watch he doesn't get out."

Uhura retrieved her purchase and replaced it carefully in the carrier. "Are you coming?"

"Me? No, I'm going to walk a bit more. I'm not on duty till seventeen hundred. Do you want me to walk back to the transit station with you?"

This time it really was gallantry. The route back to the transit station, even if you avoided the run down areas that were particularly dangerous, was through a dull, commercial sector of the city.

"No. Don't waste your liberty. I'll keep to the busy areas."

"If you're sure. I'll see you later."

He turned up the street, towards a picturesque high arched bridge over the canal, while Uhura began to retrace her steps to the transit station, the transporter and the Enterprise. There were quite a few people around now, not only tourists. Uhura stepped aside to avoid a heavily burdened native, an old woman in a black headscarf with wrinkled stockings, who didn't seem to be looking where she was going. At that moment the woman tripped on an missing cobblestone and dropped everything she was carrying.

"Fuck!" she cried, dispelling her fairy tale persona in a single syllable. She tottered uncertainly and clutched at Uhura's arm as she recovered her balance. "Now look what I've gone and done!" She stooped awkwardly to retrieve her packages, bending her aged knees with care.

"Let me." Uhura knelt swiftly and picked up half a dozen items of various shapes and sizes.

"Why, thank you, my dear. Thank you." The woman then seemed to notice the bag in Uhura's hand. She shook her head. "Oh dear. Late as usual. Good deeds first... Still, so long as they gets done. Tell me, dearie, is your friend the deserving only son of a poor mother?"

Uhura frowned. She wasn't at all sure Sulu fitted that description.

"Not him," the woman said impatiently. "The other one."

Confused as well as unsteady, Uhura thought, and then, catching a blast of alcohol on the woman's breath, she thought she knew why. "Oh yes," she said reassuringly.

"Then that's all right," the woman muttered, more to herself than anyone. She tottered away, picking her feet up with exaggerated care to start with but soon lapsing to a tired shuffle. Uhura watched her for a few seconds, wondering if the local tourist authority paid her a small pension on condition that she provided local colour.

The narrow cobbled street soon disgorged into a modern thoroughfare, busy with workers returning to their offices after lunch. The lieutenant walked fairly slowly, being careful not to swing the bag with the jar in, but not letting herself give in to the urge to cradle it in her arms. If it was that fragile, better it got broken before she gave it to Chekov. Otherwise, he'd only contrive to damage it and be embarrassed.

The crowd began to thin a little as she got further from the shops and tourist areas. She felt her feet wanting to hurry.

"Lady!"

Uhura stopped. Two large men, locals she thought, had suddenly stepped out of a doorway, right in front of her. The building looked derelict, its street level windows boarded up.

"Just give us any money you have. Understand?"

"Y... yes." She felt her heart speed up unpleasantly. She began to open the carrier, as if to take out a purse, then turned quickly and bumped into two more men who were standing right behind her.

One of her assailants snatched at the carrier. The paper tore easily in two, letting the jar fall to the ground. It smashed.

She looked unthinkingly down at her purchase and saw knives in the hands of both the men who barred her way.

"No purse in there. What's in your pockets?"

Oh well, she hadn't brought much money with her. She sorted what coins she had out of the pockets in her dress and dropped them into the hands of the larger of the two men.

"Is that all?"

"I'm afraid it is. I only came out for lunch..."

"Don't waste my time, lady."

"I don't have any more money. Look, I wouldn't be stupid enough to try and lie to you."

"I think you would."

The ringleader suddenly grabbed her and shoved her through the door into what seemed like pitch blackness. Before she could orientate herself and show off her self defence skills, she was pinned to a wall by two large hands on either shoulder. The man's arms were long enough to keep the rest of his body out of her reach.

"Okay then, search me," she said desperately. "But I don't have any more money."

"I know you don't, darling."

Sulu, she thought wryly, why aren't you a patronising chauvinist when I need one? Four against one just wasn't reasonable.

The door abruptly swung open again and someone large- very large - came through like a stampeding gorn with a battle cry that wouldn't have shamed a platoon of Klingons.

Uhura made herself as flat as possible against the wall while a major battle seemed to go on inches from her nose. It wasn't long before she worked out that no one could see her and anyway, she probably wasn't at the head of anyone's list of priorities just now. She began to sidle along the wall towards the door. There was no point staying here to become an inadvertant casualty in a local mafia brawl...

As she recovered her cool in the coffee shop by the transit station, Uhura calmed her conscience by reminding herself that her saviour was probably just another local mugger with a grudge. She'd called the police at the first opportunity after all, and four to two wasn't much better odds than four to one. If she'd gone back, she'd only have put herself in danger and complicated things for whoever had charged in at just the right moment. Getting to a comm unit and the police was exactly what she should have done.

"Lieutenant?"

"Chekov?" She smiled determinedly. "I thought you were busy..."

"Security received a call to say one of our officers had reported an attack, and that you were at the transit station. Someone had to come and check it out."

"I'm all right," she told him hastily. "I just lost all my money, and my shopping."

"Are you injured?"

"No - well, shaken. Just shaken."

"I thought you and Sulu were together." He sat down on the stool next to hers. "What happened?"

"There were four of them. They dragged me off the street, into a boarded up office. I thought I was... in trouble. Then someone charged in and started a fight. I just ran. I hope whoever it was knew what they were doing."

"The local police will sort it out. If they haven't already."

She followed his attention to the door, where a couple of natives in dark uniforms were just entering. They looked around the tables and picked out the Starfleet officers with no difficulty.

"Miss Nyota Uhura?"

She pushed away her coffee cup and stood up. "Yes. Was anyone hurt? Did you arrest anyone?"

The first officer waved her back into her seat. "Yes, Miss. We arrested all four of them. You said that someone came to your assistance..."

"I'm not sure if he came to my assistance exactly. I didn't recognise him in the dark and he didn't say anything to me. He just... roared."

"Roared?" the second officer queried. "You mean like a Klingon?"

Uhura thought about it. "It did remind me of a Klingon, but I don't imagine you see many Klingons here."

"No," the first officer agreed. "We don't see any, outside of dramavids and newscasts. Which makes it all the more surprising that the two men who were still conscious claimed they were attacked by a Klingon."

The lieutenant shrugged. "Well, if he sounded like a Klingon to me, I suppose he would have sounded like a Klingon to them too. It was dark. I really didn't see the guy."

"You didn't notice anyone on the street before this all happened? He can't have been that far away, can he?"

"When they first stopped me, I just noticed that there wasn't anyone close enough to really realise what was happening."

The two policemen looked at each other, as if they could quite believe that Starfleet provided Klingon bodyguards for their people, but didn't for a moment expect anyone to admit as much.

"Well, then, we're glad you weren't hurt. We searched the suspects. How much money did you say you lost?"

"I don't know. About four credits, I think. I spent nearly all my local currency."

One of the men pulled a handful of change out of a pocket and counted out that amount. "Could I ask you to sign for that, please, miss?"

"And you said you dropped your shopping?" the other asked. "Is this it?"

Chekov looked suspiciously at the crushed paper the man deposited on the table. He turned to Uhura once the policemen had departed. "That was very straightforward. What is it?"

"I heard it break when I dropped it," she said sadly. "It was a present for you."

"For me?"

"Don't worry, you haven't forgotten your own birthday. It was in pretty poor taste anyway. It's probably better you never saw it."

He rolled the wadge of paper towards himself with one hand and cautiously unwrapped the wreckage. Uhura reclaimed her coffee and hoped it would be unrecognisable. Suddenly she didn't feel like explaining why she'd bought it.

"It's not broken."

He held the jar up. The Klingon was sitting on the bottom with his hands clasped behind his head, using the log as a backrest.

"Why did you buy me this?"

"I think... I just wanted to buy it." She took the jar from him and turned it around carefully, looking again for mechanisms or projectors. Chekov propped his elbows on the table and watched her. "What do you think it is going to do?"

"I don't know," she said at last. She handed it back to the ensign. "Still, there you are."

He looked embarrassed. "A Klingon in a bottle? What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Well, does he like it?" Sulu asked, inches from her ear. She was glad she'd handed over the jar or she might have dropped it again, and heavens knew what might have happened this time.

"Read the label," she told Chekov, then turned to the helmsman. "Sulu, the shop where I bought that..."

"Yes, you'll never guess... When I walked back, I came past the restaurant but there was no sign of that shop at all. I don't mean it was closed. It just wasn't there."

"Somehow," she said, "I'm not surprised."