That left Kirk free to do what he had to do. Seeing he had a clear shot at the Oracle’s main console, he thumbed his phaser to disrupt and aimed.
But suddenly Spock surged forward into his path. “No, Jim!”
“Spock, get out of the way!”
“I’m sorry, Captain, I can’t allow you to destroy the Oracle.”
As he spoke, the men who’d been guarding him had time to aim their crossbows at Kirk. Their leader—Dovraku, no doubt—spoke in stentorian tones. “Drop your weapons, or the captain dies!”
Kirk gauged the options. He would have gone ahead and blasted the Oracle anyway, trading his life for those of the Lorini. But Spock stood in the way, and apparently had his reasons for doing so. McCoy’s words from weeks ago flitted through his mind: “How can we be sure of any of us?” At the time it hadn’t been clear where Spock’s loyalties lay, or what he might do if it suited his personal quest for answers. Spock had been unsure of himself lately, questioning, searching; what if he’d found something he thought he needed?
No. Whatever agenda Spock might follow, it would never entail allowing a world to die. Maybe he had changed, but he was still Spock.
Besides, as long as Kirk was alive, there were still options—for another nine or ten minutes, anyway. He dropped his phaser, nodding to Chekov and the others to follow suit. Dovraku’s remaining guards retrieved the phasers and herded the prisoners together—except for Spock. Dovraku seemed to have a special interest in him. “At last, the triad is complete,” he said. “You, Kirk, McCoy—the three who witnessed the rebirth of the god V’Ger.” Thank God—Bones was still alive. “Do you see now, Spock? All is unfolding as it must. You must meld us together now—it is your destiny.”
“I do not believe in destiny, Dovraku.”
“Then believe in this: there is no one left to save you. And I have abundant hostages to kill if you refuse.”
A look passed between Spock and Kirk, and the captain was pleased to discover that he could read the Vulcan as well as ever, as if they hadn’t spent three years apart. Once in the meld, Spock would have a better chance of stopping Dovraku than he could out here in the physical world. It might be their only shot. Kirk nodded fractionally.
“Very well,” Spock said to Dovraku. “I shall comply.”
“Excellent.” The fanatic turned to his henchmen. “Bring McCoy. The three should be together to behold this birth as well.”
* * *
Soreth was quickly discovering that Dr. McCoy was even more unpleasantly emotional than Mr. Lindstrom. Since Dovraku had taken Spock back to the control complex, the Enterprise doctor had been alternating between pleading fruitlessly with the fanatics to submit themselves to medical attention and engaging in a running monologue of complaints about his current situation and, apparently, the entire lifelong string of decisions and circumstances which had led up to it. At the moment he was back in the former mode, which was somewhat less irritating. At least Soreth could share, in principle, the doctor’s wish to see these Lorini receive medical treatment before their condition became fatal. “You must be feeling it by now,” the doctor went on relentlessly to the guards. “The dizziness, the loss of coordination. The burning sores on your skin. You must taste the blood in your mouths. Trust me, it’s only gonna get worse.”
One of the guards broke, but not in the way the doctor evidently wished. “Silence!” the man cried, striding forward and striking McCoy across the face. The doctor looked up at him with an odd mixture of anger and a healer’s concern, but remained quiet. Soreth could only hope it would be for a longer interval this time than it had been before.
Ensign Nizhoni leaned over and spoke softly to the doctor. “Believe me, Doc, I hate to see these guys suffer, but are we sure we want to talk them into getting help? I mean, pretty soon they’re gonna be too weak to fight back.”
“Which probably means,” Soreth interjected, “that they expect Dovraku’s mission to be completed before that time comes… and it is questionable whether they expect anyone here to survive beyond that point.”
“You Vulcans,” McCoy muttered, “always the optimists.”
Soreth ignored him, but found his attention drawn to the noises being made by Lindstrom on his other side. The impetuous young human was struggling to free his hands from their bonds, and making an inordinate amount of noise and movement in doing so. “Please subsist, Mr. Lindstrom,” he advised in a sharp whisper. “Such an attempt will be fruitless if you advertise it.”
The sociologist halted his efforts but couldn’t resist saying, “Well, I don’t see you trying anything useful.”
Soreth raised a scathing eyebrow. “That, young man, is precisely the point.” He angled his body so that Lindstrom could see his hands, which by now were nearly free of their restraints. Lindstrom stared at him with puzzlement, which Soreth saw no need to satisfy. Informing the human of his years with the Vulcan High Command, serving on the Andorian front and coping with their frequent treachery, would contribute nothing to their escape from the current situation.
“Great hands think alike,” Nizhoni whispered, and Soreth turned to see her waving at him behind her back with completely unbound hands. “Now we just need a handy diversion.”
McCoy and Lindstrom looked nonplussed. But the other human, Uhura, appeared quite disturbed. “Someone, please,” she called in a quavering voice. “I’m frightened.” Soreth was concerned. Was her emotional frailty about to jeopardize their escape attempt? “If I’m going to die for your Oracle,” she went on, “please, can someone tell me what it is I’m dying for? Priestess Rishala, one of you, can you please reassure me, is there something beyond?”
So she only sought the irrational retreat into denial that religion offered. And naturally the high priestess could not resist taking advantage of her frailty in order to spread her deceit to one more mind, even knowing that death was highly likely for them both. “Beyond this world lies the love of the Creators,” Rishala said. “In their embrace we will find the Truth and be freed of the illusions of the material world.”
“Tell me more.”
Rishala smiled. “I will tell you the tale of how fire came to the People. At first, the People only knew warmth in the day, under the light of the sun. For the sun was the face of Nidra, ruddy with her blood, and blood is warmth. At night, the people grew cold and huddled together in dark and fear, and were often taken by wild beasts or froze to death. One day the leader of the first village had an idea: that if the sun could always be with the People, then they would never want for warmth. So he prayed to Nidra, asking her to allow the sun to remain forever in the sky.
“ ‘That cannot be,’ Nidra whispered in the headman’s ear. ‘For I grow tired, holding the sun in the sky all day, and need my rest. But I weep for those of you who are taken by wild beasts or freeze to death, and I wish nothing more than to help you. So I will give you drops of my blood, which will warm you so long as you feed them and keep them alive.’
“And so Nidra sent out a flare from the sun, which brushed the top of an old, tall tree and made it burst into flame. Its branches fell to the ground, burning, and the people gathered around in awe and gratitude. They gathered up the branches and praised Nidra, thanking her for her benevolence. But one boy stood by and asked, ‘But what about the tree? It shaded us for as long as I can remember. I liked to climb in its branches. And now it’s dead.’ The villagers told him not to worry, for it was a small price to pay for eternal warmth.”
Soreth had taken little interest in the tale, but after a time it registered with him that more and more of the guards were turning to pay attention to her, and thus paying less attention to him and the Starfleet prisoners. And once their backs were turned, Uhura showed no trace of the fear she’d evinced before, instead watching the guards keenly as she presented her wrists for Nizhoni to untie. Indeed, Soreth realized, Rishala was a master at using religion to deceive and blind the populace. He supposed he could excuse it this once, in a good cause.
As Soreth finished freeing himself and went to work on Lindstrom, Rishala continued her tale. It involved the young boy’s house erupting into flames, apparently with the boy inside. The incident brought all the villagers out of their homes, which proceeded to go up in flames themselves one by one. Once all their homes were gone, the boy reappeared, unscathed, and clearly responsible for the mass conflagration. The villagers wished to do harm to the boy, but the headman stopped them. “ ‘But why?’ he asked the boy. ‘Why have you burned down everything we had?’
“ ‘I? Burn things?’ the boy asked. ‘How can I burn anything? I’m not fire. Fire is what burns things. I wanted to see if there was anything it couldn’t burn. And you know what? There’s nothing. Fire burns everything, right down to the ground.’
“And the villagers saw the trick Nidra had played on them,” Rishala went on. “Her promise of eternal warmth had been a trap, intended to burn the careless people to feed her fire, to nourish her blood. They were saved only because a small boy had questioned the bright, beautiful promises that Nidra had held out to them. And so the villagers knew that Dedi the Questioner had walked among them, playing his own trick on his sister Nidra, the Deceiver.” Soreth had to wonder how they could know the identity of Dedi and yet be unfamiliar with Nidra’s mythological role. Still, he recognized the applicability of the tale to the current circumstances. Apparently she was attempting to create doubt in the guards’ minds, as well as distracting their attention.
It struck Soreth that Surak had done much the same, seeking to win over his enemies with reason and peaceful words. Of course, such a correlation was irrelevant, given their profoundly dissimilar ideologies. Still, it was… interesting.
“ ‘But how can we live without fire?’ the villagers asked. ‘How can we cook our food, smelt our metals, protect ourselves from wild beasts?’
“ ‘We cannot,’ the headman said. ‘Only with fire can we do these things, just as we can only live with the warmth of the sun. But we must never forget that sooner or later the fire will burn everything, right down to the ground.’
“ ‘And what of the sun?’ asked the boy, asked Dedi. ‘The sun is made of fire. Will it burn everything down to the ground? Will it even burn the ground itself?’ ”
But the question would remain unanswered in this iteration of the tale, for just then the freed captives jumped the guards. In moments, they had neutralized the terrorists and begun to free the other prisoners. “What was that?” Nizhoni asked Uhura with a laugh. “ ‘I’m frightened’?”
Uhura winked. “Something I use on the captain sometimes. Having a damsel to protect really motivates him. I figured the guards would fall for it too.”
“Men are so easy,” Nizhoni sighed.
“And don’t you dare tell him, Leonard!” Uhura said to the doctor.
“Oh, no. We men have to stick together. Your secret’s out, young lady.”
Just then another guard emerged from behind the altar. On seeing the freed prisoners, who were now armed and greatly outnumbered her, she promptly retreated and called a warning to Dovraku. The Starfleet party rushed for the altar, but it slid shut before they could reach it. “Damn!” McCoy cried.
Lindstrom hopped up on the altar and pressed the sunburst with his hand. Meeting with no success, he jabbed it several times more. “Do not waste your energy,” Soreth said. “There is an override on the inside.”
“So what do we do?” Rishala asked.
“We trust in Jim and Spock,” said McCoy.
“Is that all?” Soreth said contemptuously.
McCoy glared at him. “It’s enough.”
* * *
“It would appear,” Spock said as Dovraku glared at the closed altar, “that not everything is going according to your view of destiny after all.”
“It matters not. All three are still present, whether you are in the same room or not. It is time!”
Spock recognized that his options were exhausted. He was pleased that the captives had freed themselves, but Dovraku’s swift action in closing the altar had rendered their efforts irrelevant to the larger problem. There was not sufficient time for them to make their way around to the entrance Kirk had used, even if they could find it. And the guards on Kirk and Chekov had been alert, not letting them take advantage of the diversion. If there was anything to be done now, it would probably depend on the mind-meld.
He took a moment to prepare himself mentally. Fortunately, he belonged to that segment of the Vulcan population for whom melding was a natural ability; otherwise, he would have required hours of meditation to prepare, had he been trained in the discipline at all. And meditation was not something that came easily to him of late. He had his concerns about whether he could accomplish this at all.
For one thing, what Dovraku was asking for—a technique known as the bridging of minds, wherein he served as a conduit for linking two others’ consciousnesses—was not something he had much experience with. For another, he doubted that the Oracle even had a consciousness in any meaningful sense, and was unconvinced it would even be possible to join with it. Spock had successfully melded with artificial intelligences on two previous occasions: his recent meld with V’Ger and the one he had performed 5.8 years ago with the Nomad/Tan Ru hybrid probe (two situations which, come to think of it, had possessed some startling similarities). The principle was essentially the same as joining with an organic mind; both were electrically based systems, and the Vulcan nervous system was capable of interfacing with them through induction. With organic minds there was a psionic-field component as well, but the EM interface alone had proved sufficient for joining with advanced AIs. But if an AI were below a certain threshold level of complexity, or lacked the sort of neural-network architecture with which an organic Vulcan brain could resonate, there was simply nothing comprehensible to read. This was why he had never attempted to interface with the Enterprise computer in this way—though he sometimes wondered if the common Vulcan knack for computer sciences might be a manifestation of some subliminal telepathic rapport with information systems. In any case, Spock’s attempt to meld with an android on Mudd’s Planet had failed totally, due to the extremely simple and subsentient nature of their control computer. He believed the Oracle possessed a more sophisticated artificial intelligence than that mechanism, but was it sophisticated enough? In some ways it was less advanced than the Enterprise computer, but it had been designed for more autonomous function and decision-making. That might be sufficient.
Another concern was that in both those previous melds with AIs, Spock had been overwhelmed. Nomad/Tan Ru’s rigid thought processes had imposed themselves on his own, its programmed imperatives drowning out all other thought. In V’Ger’s case it had been due more to sheer data overload, but there had been the same sense of being absorbed within the AI’s mechanistic worldview, unable to break free. He hoped that he had gained enough experience from those melds to resist it this time.
Additionally, there were the security concerns. Technically, it was a serious security breach for a Starfleet officer to meld minds with an enemy, giving him access to sensitive information. But Spock had trained himself to compartmentalize such knowledge behind strong mental shields, in the event of being subjected to invasive probes. Those shields had served him well against the Klingon mind-sifter on Organia and in other instances. But he took a moment to shore them up before he proceeded.
At last, he opened his eyes. “I am ready,” he told Dovraku, and moved over to the central console. “I must open this panel to touch the computer core directly.”
“Very well.”
Spock did so, placing his left hand upon its warm metal shell, his fingers feeling their way to the optimal induction points. Then he placed his right hand on Dovraku’s face, accessing the oculomotor, olfactory, and trigeminal nerves, the closest neural access points to the surface—what ancient Vulcan poets had called the portals to the mind. Having found the pathways, it was now simply a matter of broadening h
is awareness through them, beyond them—to feel the new additions to his nervous system and make them part of himself.
Yes, came a new thought, at last it begins! Suddenly he craved this, needed this. At last I begin to leave myself. Soon I will be free of this filthy cage of flesh! But where is my Oracle?
Patience, his other self responded. This will be difficult. There may be very little there…. But then he was filled with an absolute certainty of success—the certainty of the fanatic. This would happen, because it was meant to happen. And that very certainty made it a reality. He teased out the fragile thread of connection to that other appendage, willed himself to feel it as he would a sleep-paralyzed limb. And then it opened up and surged over him.
It was jarring/ecstatic. He was overpowered by a wave of sensation—not thought, but awareness, impulse, instinct. He had a stony body hundreds of kilometers wide, and was aware of every aspect of its circulation, respiration, metabolism. (Familiar? Had he experienced such before?) He had senses across the electromagnetic spectrum, and dozens of appendages, flying through space (missiles!), which he guided toward preprogrammed positions. Destroy them, came an impulse from a part of himself. But the sheer weight of his instincts overrode the urge. This was reflex, imperative, a near-involuntary function. There was a purity to it, a certainty that made conscious effort unnecessary, unwelcome. This was what a part of him aspired to in meditation. This was what another part craved as a release. This was all that another part had ever known.
There were intruders nearby, moving bits of space debris. One of them was of special interest to him. It was his ship, his home—no, it was the instrument of his destiny! And he had the knowledge to control it, to use it for that divine purpose, if only he could remember it. The knowledge was blocked… he strove to retrieve it. No—a part of him fought the impulse. But that part was shaken, dazed by the sensory onslaught. And now the fanatical part pushed back, determined to get at this memory—knowing that he must have it, that he would have it, for it simply had to be.
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