The goofy card below reminded me of this scene, which I thought I might share with you folks while I’m working on finishing the book. (Yes, I really am finishing it.)
Let’s see if it posts properly this time. (There seemed to be some difficulty with quotes appearing at the beginning of the “description” field in the RSS feed.)
“…Use �em for diagnostic purposes,” McCoy said. “Like the chess cubic. Archetypes.”
“Human archetypes,” Ael said.
“Some,” McCoy said. “Among hominid species, though, there are a lot of similarities in the oldest myths.” He cut the deck, placed the top half face down on the desk, next to the lower one. “Life and death, creation and destruction: we do a lot of the same things, though the motives may change from species to species. These aren�t about motives. You supply those.”
He looked up at her. “Shall I take one?” she said.
“As many as you like.”
“Three, then. A beginning: a middle: an end.”
“Three is one of the ways it�s done,” McCoy said.
She eyed the decks. “Must they be meditated upon, or is there some other requirement?”
McCoy shook his head. “Any way you like. It�s just a game.”
She threw him an amused glance and turned over the top three cards of the left-hand deck, from right to left.
In the first card a man stood at the top of a tower, looking out over mountains and sea, into a clear sunset sky with stars showing in it, and a waxing crescent moon riding high. He was leaning on a tall staff: beside him, from another staff like the first, a banner hung limp. In his free hand, unregarded, he held a small crystalline globe which seemed, in the moonlight, to have the shapes of continents graven on it: but the globe was delicate, almost invisible in the uncertain light, like a bubble.
In the second, a young man in old-fashioned shorts and T-shirt, with a light pack slung over his back, walked toward the edge of a cliff. A small dog was bouncing along beside him, but the young man didn�t seem to notice ether dog or cliff. His gaze was directed upward into the mountain air, and the sun burning down on the mist of the mountains all around him whited out anything else that might have been seen.
In the third, a man sat on a low chair in front of a vista of stormclouds, from which a veil of rain trailed over another landscape mostly obscured by mist. He was dressed in some kind of plain uniform, dark-colored, and in one hand, resting on his knee, he held a sharp straight sword upright. His expression was dark and grave, not revealing much.
McCoy sucked in his breath as he took in the cards at a glance. Ael looked at him, and said, “I have heard that sound before from my Master Engineer, when he tells me that we must have spares that we cannot afford…or make repairs for which we have no time. So the news is bad: but not mortally so.” She peered down at the third card. “And this worthy: who may he be?”
McCoy grinned briefly, though the expression was sardonic. “The original reference says, �A doctor, lawyer, or senator.�”
“Indeed.” She put up an eyebrow. “Well, there are enough of the last of those wandering about the landscape back home on ch�Rihan, and most of them wish me ill. Doctors we have in plenty; and legists as well, though in wartime sometimes they are quieter than normal. But there is little here to tell me which one of these is meant, and which will do me harm — if this card is meant as a harbinger of the future coming.”
“No. This…” He nodded at the first card. “Been musing on the nature of empire, have we, Commander?”
The look she gave him back was as sardonic as his own. “It would hardly take cards to tell you that. Though it is interesting that this comes up.” She sat back, folded her arms. “Doubts and fears enough, I have had,” she said. “And much time for reflection in these months during which Bloodwing and I have lived the silent life. Much time to revolve in my mind, again and again, what might be done next: what is being done at home. But comes a time when such reflection must stop.”
“That�s why this card is where it is,” McCoy said, “in the past. If you believe in this kind of thing.”
That left him with the third card, which he was frankly unwilling to deal with. “And this fearless youth,” Ael said. “But it is something other than fearlessness.”
“The Fool,” McCoy said. “Folly, in the classic sense of the word. Choices badly made. Error…confusion…even madness.”
She leaned forward to look at it, shook her head. “I would not be sure how to read that.”
“Neither would I,” McCoy said. “Probably nothing to it, Ael, as I told you. Just a game.”
“But he seems more than just a fool,” Ael said. “See, this card is different from the other two. �Rods�, �swords�: I would guess these cards are each part of a class within the larger deck. But this young man is of another class.”
“A bigger set of symbols,” McCoy said, “yes. The beginning of that other class, in fact. He could mean the beginning of a journey — but one into danger. The disorganized, the unknown…”
“Every day is unknown until it is over,” Ael said. “And sometimes even then. If this means our present is filled with uncertainty, that too would hardly be news. And the uncertainty will get worse: if the warning is against letting its increase unseat our reason, then I take it as good sense.”
She picked up the cards, handed them back to McCoy. He shuffled them back into the deck. “I thank you for showing them to me,” Ael said, getting up. “I take it you do not do so often.”
“No,” McCoy said, “because people might get the wrong ideas. Spock thinks I�m a witch doctor half the time as it is.”
Ael blinked. “A doctor surely,” she said, “but what might a witch be? Surely nothing I have seen on the ship.”
McCoy laughed and got up. “Probably simpler that you didn’t,” he said. Ael gave him an amused look and went out.
McCoy watched her go, then looked down at the deck again and reached out to it to put it away. He paused, and on impulse made a bet with himself — then turned over the top card.
The card showed a robed woman seated on a throne, in profile, very erect and still, and crowned. In one hand, point up, she held a sword. Behind her, in a windy sky, stormclouds blew tattering past. At her feet sat a small black cat with a thoughtful look in its eyes: not in profile, but looking out of the card at the one who read.
Uh oh, McCoy thought, and looked at the Queen of Swords for a moment, as thoughtful as the cat. The card was replete with meaning, as all the cards were, from the superficial to the profound. Sorrow, mourning, separation, long absence — those were the general indications. But McCoy was tempted for the moment, however unusual it might be, to take the card literally at face value. The heart of the problem of the moment was a woman with a sword. The card�s usual meaning, when read in the personal mode, indicated a woman in a position of power — though not a position that would let her use it. More generally, it suggested that trouble was coming, and a bad time.
Didn�t need a piece of plastic to tell me that, McCoy thought, picking up the card to put it away.
