While Qris was looking at the fingerboard, watching his fingers flay across the strings as B’arq’s bass thundered behind him, he quickly noticed it when B’arq stopped playing.
B’arq was standing with his mouth open in shock, looking at the door. What he saw was the unbelievable presence of an extremely dark skinned human with long, kinky strands of matted hair. The human was leaning against the open door of their rehearsal room watching Qris play, a smile on his lips. Two guards from the Diplomatic Corps stood behind him, just outside the door. They watched as well.
“What do you want?” bellowed B’arq in the tlhIngan fashion, looking straight into the puny human’s eyes.
“You be are the ones that playing human music,” replied the young human in badly accented tlhIngan.
“We be are the ones,” B’arq said mockingly.
“I be want to join your band.” said the human.
Qris walked over to the young human and asked, “Do you play?”
Ahmed asked in his best poker face, “What instrument?” He was bluffing, of course. But he was confident that the tlhIngan was none the wiser.
Before Qris could answer, he heard the unmistakable voiced bellow of Torn come from behind the Diplomat guards. “What is this?!”
Torn came through the door, pushing aside the guards to come face to forehead with the human. He stood above the compact human and said something to him in the stilted mish-mash Fed Standard. The human answered with a string of nonsense his own. Torn seemed to understand what the human was saying as they exchanged more gibberish. Qris recognized the human words ‘heavy metal’, but the rest sounded like pure nonsense.
After the dialog with the human, Torn laughed out loud. The human joined in with the laughter presently.
When the laughter died down, Torn turned and spoke to Qris and B’arq. “His name is A’meD, and he says that he knows about human music. He claims to be able to play the drums. He said that he would show you, but our drums are. . . . ” Torn spread his hands wide to indicate the obvious lack of drums. “And, his Father is the Federation Ambassador, which could be a good advantage in our endeavor. I told him that if he wanted to, he could join us.”
“But a human in a tlhIngan clan?!” protested B’arq.
Torn blabbered again with the human. The human answered. They both laughed. Torn said, “You forget that this is human music that we are playing.”
Ahmed spent the better part of two weeks learning how to play the drums using an illegal Romulan Sleep Learning device.
The Federation Ambassador was both annoyed and hopeful that his son had finally met some friends here on the tlhIngan Home-World. For two weeks he could hear the ‘boom,’ ‘snap’ and ‘crash’ of the drum set they had set up in the Ambassador’s anteroom. The drumset belonged to a diplomatic assistant, and he had happily loaned the kit to the Ambassador.
The muffled thumping distracted the Ambassador. It annoyed his tlhIngan Liaison during their weekly meeting.
“What’s this I hear about our fine tlhIngan youth’s involvement with your decadent culture?”
“Believe me, Chev’ral, I had nothing to do with this,” the Ambassador said. “I have no more idea than you how these tlhIngan youth managed to discover our ancient music.”
“You lie to me!”
“Now why would I lie to you, old friend?”
“Your Federation has been trying to undermine my People since we first met you humans.”
“That’s not true. You know that.”
“Bah, you insult me too now!”
“No, I do not. Look. This growing obsession of your fine tlhIngan youth to human heavy metal could be a start for your People and mine.”
“I do not believe you. Your human music will undermine our culture. Already some in the Warrior class have succumbed to its rot. They have embraced this awful music.”
“Yes, I know,” said the Ambassador. “I have seen your young warriors. Their fighting skills have improved dramatically since they started practicing their battle tactics to the human music. They are far more graceful and deadly. And they will come to have more respect for us. No, my old friend, this is a good thing. For both our people.”
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