A Mongol Among You

Posted on Mon 27th Jul, 2020 @ 6:02am by
Edited on on Tue 28th Jul, 2020 @ 12:37am

1,508 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Main Docking Bay, Deck 1551
Timeline: MD-20, 1630 hours

Temulun Monkhbatyn stepped from the airlock of the Disney-owned runabout and into the long tunnel inside the docking arm. From space, Starbase 109 had looked enormous, and that impression was not belied by the interior of the bay that she saw through the docking arm window. The bay was shaped like an immense, upside-down bowl, whose walls arched overhead like Tengri. It was said to be large enough to hold six Excelsior-class starships stacked in two groups of three in the docking truss along the central tram tube. Peering at the cavernous space in which her tiny runabout was docked, Temulun didn't doubt it. The scale was staggering. She remembered once thinking that the Space Mountain ride was huge. It was as nothing, compared to this. For a moment, Temulun let herself imagine a Spacedock-bay-sized Space Mountain ride. She grinned. That would be fun!

Before the bay's looming size could make her dizzy, Temulun turned away from the expanse of it and spoke to the people walking with her--Berke, Ogdei, and Solongo--who she'd hired to help her move.

"We'll take everything marked Ger to deck 1551, lot 22, in an area called Tiny House Hills," she told them in Mongolian. Her people were self-sufficient in many ways, but setting up a ger always required help, even when the ger was as small as hers. Usually, one had family--

Not going there, she told herself. Besides, even if she'd had brothers and sisters, it wouldn't have been fair to have asked them to drop everything and take time away from herding to travel halfway across Federation space just to do an afternoon of work. For that, you hired people.

She was not due to check in at her office in the Disney corporate complex until the following day, which would give her time to get the ger set up and herself moved in, Temulun thought. It wouldn't take more than a couple of hours, at most, as hers would be a summer-weight ger. She would treat her trio of guests to a home-cooked Mongolian meal and then release them to explore the starbase. She had told them they were welcome to sleep in her ger overnight or to find lodgings elsewhere in the starbase before returning to Earth the next day.

Temulun checked to ensure that her luggage was on the smaller of two anti-grav pallets that would be used for transport. Once satisfied that everything was secured, she put her travel bag with her other luggage, gave her people the go-ahead, and walked with them out of the docking arm tunnel and into the terminal lounge.

As they passed through the tunnel they were scanned for identity, though their credentials and transporter patterns had already been transmitted to the starbase on approach. They continued out of the lounge and into the bay wall itself. They walked along a curving corridor until they found a pair of turbolift tubes. They were closer to the top of the bay, so Temulun summoned an upward lift, and they piled in, lattice walls, felts, spoke poles, luggage, and all.

"It is a good thing we have no horses; they wouldn't fit," Solongo said, her dark eyes sparkling with merriment.

Temulun burst into giggles. "Can you imagine? And all the Starfleet people would stare."

Berke shrugged. "I'm used to it. I grew up herding tourists at a ger camp. Let them stare."

"Don't get him started," Ogdei warned. "Berke can tell 'silly tourist' stories until the sun rises, if you let him."

"And you've apparently let him a lot," Solongo replied. She looked at Berke. "Are the stories even true, or do you make them up?"

Berke clapped a hand to his chest. "You wound me! Of course my stories are true! Every bit of them! Really, tourists do the strangest things. Did I ever tell you about the time one of them tried to make airag?"

"That must have been fascinating," Temulun said. "How bad was it?"

"It was drinkable," Berke claimed as the lift halted and the doors hissed open. "He even milked the mare himself." Berke maneuvered his end of the larger anti-grav pallet out of the lift, and Temulun followed with the smaller one in Ogdei's footsteps. Solongo trailed with the other end of the smaller pallet. "It's hard to ruin airag."

"I'm guessing there is no such thing as undrinkable airag, to you," Ogdei said to Berke.

"I managed it, a time or two," Temulun admitted. "I used to get caught up in reading a book and forget to churn it enough. My eej would scold me for wasting good milk."

"So your favorite Disney character was Belle?" Ogdei asked.

"Eh, I liked Mulan much better," Temulun said. "Did I ever tell you I used to understudy for her at the Hong Kong park?"

Solongo looked interested. "I'd heard that. How was it?"

"It was much fun, but of course, I had to stay completely in character any time I was in public areas. I wanted to play her full-time, but I was studying for a business degree, so I couldn't. My uncle would've had a fit."

"Uncles. They are like that," Solongo said as the four of them and their cargo got out of the lift and walked the short distance to the tram station. As predicted, they were attracting stares.

"We will take this down to deck 1500, and then transfer to a turbolift down 51 decks from there," Temulun said. "It won't be long now."

Solongo shook her head. "I can't even imagine going down nearly 1500 decks, and the specs say there are a thousand more decks below that."

Berke nodded. "This thing is enormous. We could put on an entire Golden Eagle Festival in that docking bay."

"Or an archery competition," Temulun said.

"That would be much easier than transporting golden eagles out here," Ogdei agreed. "You can at least replicate bows and arrows." Thus ensued a lively debate over the merits of hand-made recurve bows using traditional raw materials, versus replicated ones, which lasted until the group reached deck 1500. There they disembarked from the tram and crowded into a couple of turbolifts for the brief trip downstation to deck 1551.

When she stepped out of the turbolift onto deck 1551, Temulun looked about her and stared. "I've read about Tivoli Gardens, even seen pictures, but I didn't quite believe," she admitted to the others. "The grass smells real. It is real, but I didn't expect it to smell like grass, somehow. This is amazing."

It wasn't her desert--not the Gobi, nor the Mongolian steppes. But it was a desert. Along with the grass, she could smell the dustiness of sand. For an instant she fought not to cry, then she blinked her eyes and consulted the map that hung on a wall by the turbolift entrance. "There it is--Tiny House Hills. I hope we don't have to climb up a hill to get to it." Temulun began to wonder if they should have just beamed onto the site directly from the runabout. But they'd all wanted to see the immense station, and beaming in would have precluded that. They headed toward Temulun's new neighborhood.

Soon, a green sign with whimsical white lettering in Federation Standard and Vulcan proclaimed that they had arrived at Tiny House Hills. Temulun walked up to the office, which itself was a tiny house, but a large one--about 12 meters long. She restrained herself from calling out for them to hold the dog and knocked on the door. "Hello? Anyone home?"

From inside an actual dog barked, and Temulun almost laughed. Someone called out to her to come in. She opened the door and stepped inside. A tall human sat at a desk built into the wall of the narrow building, scratching behind the ears of a boxer dog. "Hello. My name is Temulun Monkhbatyn. I'm looking for Brian--Mr. Langston--or Mr. Timmons."

The man sprang to his feet, curly ponytail flying, and extended a hand to her. "I'm Brian. It's so good to finally meet you, Temulun! I've been dying to see your ger."

Temulun shook his hand warmly and smiled. "You're welcome to watch us put it up, if you'd like."

"I can do more than watch," Brian told her. "I wasn't sure if you'd have any help. Marc and I have been holo-practicing--but he's out with a customer right now, so you're stuck with me."

"Then come with us and be welcome," Temulun said, smiling. "We're all out front."

Brian blinked. "You didn't beam in? That's a first! Well, let me show you where your lot is."

---

ger - Mongolian yurt
airag - Mongolian kumis, a mildly alcoholic drink made from fermented mare's milk
eej - mother

Period Mongolian Names

 

RSS Feed

Comments (2)