Banned From Argo -- Chapter 7
7.
Our doctor loves humanity. His private life is quiet.
The Shore Police arrested him for inciting nudes to riot.
We found him in the city jail, locked on and beamed him free,
Intact – except for hickeys and six kinds of STD.
Dr. Leonard McCoy spent a frustrating afternoon trying to find out where the Argo Portjoy-houses were, getting nothing but polite denials from the hotel bartenders, and by that evening he was desperate enough to call up Commander Scott and ask for advice.
“Eh, lad,” Scott chuckled in answer to his question. “Come right up here ta th’ Hotel Avalon. We’re a’ on the sixth floor, havin’ oorselves a wee party. Bring a couple o’ bottles, an’ join us. I’m in room 612.”
McCoy didn’t need to be asked twice. Half an hour later, laden down with several assorted bottles, he knocked on the door of 612, Hotel Avalon.
The door opened, revealing the front room of a large suite, a very rumpled Chief Engineer, and several giggling young women in bizarre dress. All of them welcomed him in, and were especially pleased by the bottles.
“Real Scotch! And Ekosian Moon wine!” Scott chortled. “Aye, Bones, ye’re a treasure. Maryanne, my lovely, come show the doctor some gratitude.”
A sweet-faced redhead in a minuscule silver dress trotted up, gave McCoy a beaming smile, and led him off to one of the bedrooms.
What McCoy remembered most, afterward, was that her bed was full of teddy-bears.
“I’ll probably have little paw-prints on my neck for days,” he told her, then took care to add: “They certainly do add to the charm.”
“Oh yes, I just love my little bears,” said Maryanne, pulling a lock of red hair out of her eyes. “It was so kind of Commander Scott to get them back for me.”
“Back for you? How did you lose them?”
Maryanne spent the next twenty minutes telling about the raids, and the reason for them. When she finished, McCoy was wide awake and doing some fast thinking.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “The governor’s afraid the vote will swing to the open-port faction, because he got caught in the coat-closet with the maid?”
“By an Open-Port senator, no less,” Maryanne added. “Ooh, the juicy scandal!”
“Right. So he tried to make up for it by bringing in Starfleet’s money and cleaning up the port. Now, this might at least get rid of the nasty problem with the Orions, but—“
“I don’t think so,” Maryanne sniffed. “Orion ships can still come through the sky-port without inspection.”
“Hmm, Starfleet could do something about that.” McCoy made a mental note to suggest it to the Captain. “But meanwhile, the spacers want the joy-houses and bars and gaming-dens and everything else. The trade won’t go away; it’ll just go further underground. That means it’ll be uninspected, unhealthy, and downright dangerous. In other words, a health-hazard.”
“Tell me about it,” grumbled Maryanne. “Why, we couldn’t even get regular doctors’ visits at our place; most doctors were nervous about being seen with us. I guess it’ll be worse now that we’re scattered.”
McCoy felt his alarm-bells go off, and made a red-flagged mental note to beam back to the Enterprisein the morning and give himself a thorough checkup. “Hypocrisy kills,” he muttered. “I can make a report to Starfleet…”
“But what good will that do?” Maryanne sighed. “The Feds can’t interfere in local planetary matters. All they can do is pull Starfleet out of Argo Port, take away the money, and maybe that will oust the governor and his rich-purist faction, but maybe it won’t. In any case, that’ll just bring the Orions back – or worse.”
“Worse?”
“With the new truce working, Klingon ships have been coming by. They haven’t sent their crews down here yet, but soon enough they will.”
“Oboy,” murmured McCoy, thinking that over.
A nice mess the Argoans had gotten themselves into with their hypocrisy and greed. Either they dealt with Starfleet or made their money off the local interplanetary trade. Local trade meant Orions, and possibly Klingons, unhampered by anything but Argo’s own inadequate space-force and police. Starfleet meant money and protection, but its personnel would also demand services that the Argo government didn’t want to admit existed. That façade of Respectability would create a huge criminal underclass, with all that implied.
The only possible solution was to get rid of the hypocrisy, blast the façade of Respectability to smithereens, make Argo publicly face its realities.
Of course, nobody from Starfleet could do that for them; it would be a breach of the Prime Directive.
But the natives themselves could pull it off, if they had the right tactics…
McCoy fell asleep pondering tactics.
In the morning, he woke up with an idea. He went to find Scott, and had a long talk with him.
* * *
The first step in the plot required calling up everyone Scott knew in the Undernet, and there they got a surprise. Every live visual transmission on Argo showed people with their clothes missing: nothing else, just the clothes. Everyone in the Undernet Underground knew about it – even hinted that they knew who had done it – and took care to appear on-screen only from the neck up.
The rest of Argo was just waking up to the phenomenon, and reactions were spectacular. News reporters (visible from the neck up) chattered endlessly about the ‘prank’. Public officials (from the neck up) thundered outrage about the ‘sabotage’, threatened ferocious punishments for the ‘subversives’, and promised arrests ‘at any moment now’. Talk-show hosts (carefully posed behind large viewscreens and desks) invited comments from listeners, and got an earful.
The officials were horrified, but plainly the rest of the Argoans were laughing their heads off. As cultural sabotage, it was a howling success.
“Weel, Bones,” said Scott, turning off his screen, “It appears ta me thot we’d best strike while th’ iron is hot – I mean, today.”
“Right,” said McCoy. “Once we’ve talked to everyone we can reach, we’ll have the girls call their friends, and—” Just then he was struck by a vision that made him laugh so hard he almost fell off his chair.
“Eh, are ye a’right, Doctor?” Scott worried.
“I’m fine. *Hyuck!* I just thought-- Heh! Scotty, imagine how this is going to look on the news reports!”
Scott thought about that for all of five seconds before he started laughing too.
* * *
The word went out: from Maryanne and her friends to all of their friends, to the Bolt-Hole and everyone anyone in the Bolt-Hole knew, from an anonymous caller to the Althashayn and from there to friends on other orbiting ships, to the Flower Market, to the survivors of Baxter’s, to the Undernet and everyone on it and all of their friends. Massive numbers of students called in sick and were absent from school. Disturbing numbers of adults called in sick and were absent from work. News media commented briefly about a new but mild virus making the rounds.
At half an hour before noon, all the telemedia stations in Argo Port City received anonymous calls advising them to have camera crews at the east side of the port by noon. Several stations were curious enough to send reporters and cameras.
At noon, the crowd assembled on the east side of the port was enormous, milling about, uncertain what to do next. At various spaces were piles of picket-signs. Maryanne and her friends were having second thoughts.
“Honestly, I’ve never done anything like this before,” Maryanne was babbling tearfully, “And neither has anybody else, and I just don’t know if I can go through with it. I honestly don’t know what to do.”
Seeing that somebody would have to take the next step, McCoy drew a deep breath and picked up one of the picket-signs. “Just do what I’m doing,” he said, and stepped out into the street. Maryanne and friends hastily followed suit. Everybody else followed them. Out they marched, into the main road leading toward City Hall.
At first the crowd was quiet, save for the low thunder of thousands of marching feet and the mutter of quiet voices. Then an incredibly old woman, recognizable only to patrons of the Flower Market, began chanting: “No More Raids! No More Raids!” Everyone could agree on that, and thousands of voices took up the chant. By the time the crowd reached the first intersection – and the first of the news cameras – the sound of their voices was shaking windows a block away.
Impressed, the reporters trained their cameras on the picket-signs, noting the slogans: “No More Hypocrisy!” “Open Port!” “Legalize the Joy-Houses!” “Legalize Safe Drugs!” “No More Censorship!” and, most telling of all: “Tell Starfleet the Truth!”
For obvious security reasons, most reporters in the field – even knowing about the Nude Problem with video transmissions – carried transmitting, not recording, cameras. The whole jolly parade was transmitted live to the nearest repeater-antenna. From there, the transmissions went to recorders at the various media stations – and also to anyone who tuned in directly on that frequency. Viewers groundside and in space were treated to the sight of a parade of thousands – all of them stark naked.
Only a few of the marchers remembered to hold their picket-signs low enough to screen their bodies from the cameras.
McCoy, worried about legal repercussions and the Prime Directive, held his sign high enough to hide his face and nothing else.
Maryanne and her friends proudly held their signs high.
Within ten minutes, everyone on the planet who had any kind of video receiver was tuned in to the parade. So, for that matter, was everyone in local space. Countless receivers and computer-banks recorded the event for posterity.
It took another fifteen minutes for the Argo government to recover from its collective fit of apoplexy, and respond.
McCoy, seeing that the march was well under way and would continue under its own power, was about to reach for his communicator, step to one side and beam safely away, when he saw another crowd running into the street ahead of him. It took him a second to realize that this crowd was made up of city police, armed with clubs and stunguns, covered with shields and body-armor.
Why armor? was McCoy’s first thought. Nobody here is armed…
Then the police fired into the crowd.
McCoy yelled in shock as he saw Maryanne go down. He dropped his sign and crouched beside her, checking for vital signs. Above him, the crowd screamed and milled about, and the stun-beams whistled. One of them grazed his back, dropping him, conscious but paralyzed, to the ground. He had a good view of what came next.
The front line of marchers went down, bodies dropping all over the street, but the massive crowd behind only heard the noise and pressed ahead faster to see what was happening. The sheer mass of flesh was too big, and coming too fast, for the stun-beams to stop. Worse, as people saw their friends being shot down, they began to throw things. Most of what they threw were bottles of water, or other drinks, that they’d brought along for the march. Most of the bottles were open, and their contents spewed all over the police and the ground in front of them. The first stungun shorted out before the crowd reached the police line, neatly zapping the cop who held it.
Then some quick-thinking Argoans got to a fire-extinguisher outlet, and opened it. Water sprayed out all over the street, the cops and the charging crowd.
At that point the police had the sense to holster their stunguns and pull out their clubs. They laid about wildly, not bothering to aim for safe targets, and McCoy winced as he heard the sound of metalized plastic hitting bone.
Even so, the crowd was simply too big to stop. Outraged marchers jumped over the bodies of the fallen, threw themselves three-deep at the police shields, and bore the badgemen down by sheer weight. After that, the noise changed to the sound of metalized clubs striking police helmets.
The remaining police backed up, backed some more, then turned around and ran. The crowd ran after them, closed in behind, and dragged them down like wolves chasing deer. The rest of the crowd paused to strip the fallen police of shields, stunguns, clubs, armor, helmets, wallets and boots before hurrying on.
McCoy, still lying helpless among the limp bodies in the street, couldn’t help sympathizing. He also noticed the camera crews, still on their feet, transmitting all of this before they ran on, following the crowd.
How long before the stun-shock wears off? he wondered, vainly trying to make his paralyzed hand reach into his pocket for the hidden communicator.
Crowd and camera-crews were gone now, and a few of the former marchers were dragging off their stunned friends, when squealing tires and sirens came sounding up the cross-street.
Ambulances?McCoy hoped.
No, it was a fleet of Argo Port Citypaddy-wagons. They came whooping to a stop, their doors opened, and out sprang several more local badges. They began grabbing up the fallen bodies and throwing them into the waiting wagons.
Dammit, that’s dangerous! McCoy thought, watching them. These people were limp and helpless; they could be badly injured being thrown around like that. He wished there was just one reporter left, recording this. Someone had to get proof, show it to the world.
As two badges picked him up by the arms, McCoy got a quick glimpse of the building across the street. The windows were packed full of watchers, several of them with cameras.
* * *
The stun-shock didn’t wear off until McCoy was inside a cell, along with several other limp bodies, many of them female and familiar. McCoy shook the last pins-and-needles feeling out of his hands, and went to examine the wounded. He saw bruises, cuts, swellings, possible broken bones, probable concussions, and muttered some unprintable things about the Argo police.
His communicator was gone, and his wallet too. He remembered a pudgy badge at the station patting over the bodies as they were unloaded, removing any goodies he found, including jewelry and money – and McCoy took care to remember his face. He had a sore shoulder himself, from where he’d landed hard on the floor, and he wasn’t going to forget that, either.
Meanwhile, nobody except possibly Scotty even knew he was here.
Maybe that thieving badge would see his Starfleet ID, get worried, and report it to his superiors. Then again, maybe not; how would the man explain getting the wallet in the first place? McCoy’s best hope was that stripping prisoners of their valuables was standard legal practice here, so the badge would have to share the wealth, and somebody would see the Starfleet ID. If not, he’d have to trust that Scotty would come looking for him.
At any rate, what he had to do now was tend the wounded. Some of them were beginning to wake up, and were groaning with pain. McCoy tried yelling for a guard, but none came. With an oath, he made his way to the crowded cell’s lone faucet, hoping at least to wash the wounds clean. He had nothing else to work with, and too much to do.
* * *
As soon as Scott materialized, he hurried off the transporter platform and went straight to the console. Yeoman Rand made way for him.
“Lass,” he said, working the viewscreen controls, “Did ye see whot hoppened doon at th’ portside?”
“You mean the riot?” said Rand. “Sir, I not only watched; I recorded it.”
She jabbed buttons on the console. The small screen blossomed into a professional- cameraman’s-eye-view of the march – and then the attack. Whatever had been done to Argo’s communications system to make clothes vanish, it didn’t include the metallized plastic of police armor. To the camera’s eye, armored police had fired into a crowd of naked – and obviously unarmed – civilians.
Scott stared, his jaw dropping, as the scene unfolded. He saw nude bodies falling, then others fighting back – and winning – with nothing but water and the weight of their bare bodies. It occurred to him that, taken purely as a battle scene, this was a legend in the making.
Just then a light on the small comm-board flashed. “Incoming call, sir,” said Rand, pressing another button.
“This is Commander Thelin, of the Althashayn,” said a vaguely familiar voice. “Enterprise, who’s receiving?”
“Er, Commander Scott here.”
“Ah, Kirk’s friend. Sir, have you received the current news broadcast from Argo Port City? Have you seen what I’ve seen?”
“Aye, seen it a’,” said Scott, snapping back to his immediate problem. “Mr. Thelin, there’s no Communications Officer aboord. I’ll need yer help analyzin’ a’ th’ broadcasts ye can find. I’m tryin’ ta locate an’ individual fro’ ma crew…”
* * *
Everyone in the cell was awake now, and in the adjoining cells as well. The background chorus of groans and curses made McCoy think of the waiting room of Hell. Thanks to the number of prisoners, there was at least one person with some medical training in each cell; McCoy communicated with them by shouting into the corridor. Nobody had anything more to work with than water and spare clothes, but at least none of the injured was getting any worse at the moment.
“But some of them will get worse without treatment,” McCoy muttered angrily. “How long before they send food, supplies, a doctor, anything?”
His temporary assistant, an Argo woman with training as a shipyard nurse, crouched over one of the patients and peered worriedly into the man’s eyes. “Doc,” she said, “I’m worried about this concussion. His eyes are still wrong.”
“Keep him warm and still.” McCoy ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Has anyone here ever been in this hellhole before?”
Maryanne, holding her sprained wrist in her lap, raised the other hand. “I have,” she said. “The guards come at regular times, about four hours apart. With this big a crowd, though… I just don’t know.”
“Four hours?! These people need help right now!”
“Hey, we’ll last, Doc,” mumbled one of the concussion cases. “Hell, I’ve taken worse’n this in bar-fights. I ‘member one time—“
“Shh. Not now. Rest,” the nurse shushed him.
“Hey, Doc,” Maryanne smiled hopefully at him, “It was worth it. We wanted to make a big public stink, and we sure did.”
“Yes, we did,” McCoy had to agree. “Bigger and much badder than I expected. But who would have thought civilized people would react like this? It’s barbaric!”
Right then, a familiar blue glow formed around him. McCoy gasped in recognition, barely had time to hear the startled shouts around him—
--and then he was standing on the Enterprise’s transporter pad, looking straight at Scotty and Yeoman Rand behind the console.
“Are ye a’ right?” Scott called hurrying toward him.
“Nothing worse than bruises,” snapped McCoy, hopping off the platform. “But I’ve got to get to Sickbay, fast. Keep those coordinates, and try to locate the other cells. I’ve got to beam them some medicine, bandages—“
“Bones, I dinna think thot’d be a guid idea.”
“What do you mean, not a good idea?! There are injured people down there!”
“Weel, I mean, we beamed ye oot on th’ sly. ‘Tisna exactly legal ta slip prisoners oot o’ planetary jail, ye know. If we sent supplies doon, someone official might see it an’ make a guid guess.”
“They already know they caught a Starfleet officer, unless that badge kept my wallet for himself. We send the supplies. Yeoman Rand, can you come along and help me?”
“Yessir. Uh, Mr. Scott, I guess you have the console.”
McCoy didn’t exactly run all the way to Sickbay, but Randhad to trot to keep up with him. Once there, McCoy began hauling containers out of cabinets and loading a grav-cart with them. He was bending over to reach into a lower shelf when Rand saw the bruise on his head.
“Sir, you have a head-wound,” she pointed out. “It’s not bad; it looks no worse than a hickey.”
McCoy patted his head and found the bruise. “I didn’t even notice it before,” he marveled. “Too busy, I suppose.”
“Sir, shouldn’t you check yourself further before handling the sterile bandages?”
That made McCoy stop and think. “You’re right, I should. Hmm, I’ll step over here under the scanner, you poke that button and then hit ‘hold’ when the words stop showing up on the screen.”
Yeoman Rand dutifully did so, and frowned at what the screen displayed. “Sir,” she said carefully, “I really think you’d better look at this.”
Puzzled, McCoy got up and peered at the screen. He stared. Then he howled.
“Ye gods, all that and lice too?! Dammit, Maryanne!”
He dived for another cabinet and began pulling out more containers.
