“Come with me, Micah,” Cochrane said impulsively, as if the two of them were still alone. “See what I’ve seen.”
Brack smiled with no hidden meanings. “Soon, but not now.” He gestured to the bare soil around them. “I’ve still a lot of work to finish here before I move on”—he waved his hand at the dome and what lay above it—”out there.”
“What kind of work?”
For a moment, the weariness left Brack’s eyes. “I want to see the grass grow here, Zefram. A billion kilometers from where it evolved.” He patted his friend’s arm, almost in a gesture of farewell. “And then, I want to plant a fig tree.”
Someone handed Cochrane a drink. He felt hands on his arms and back. Conversation, a dozen questions, flew around him. But he looked over at Brack and asked, “A fig tree?”
Brack looked almost sheepish, being parted from Cochrane by the throng that gathered. “From which the Buddha drew enlightenment. It reminds me of home,” he explained. He touched his fist to his heart. “A man’s entitled to that.”
Brack nodded once, then stepped aside with an expression of finality as the crowd bore Cochrane away in triumph, as if he had safely tossed Cochrane into the currents of history but must himself forever remain on the shore.
Through the long hours that passed that night, until he stood at the airlock doors of Shuttlebay 4, Cochrane thought of all that Brack had told him, and of Colonel Thorsen hurtling toward him with a technology that had not existed a year ago. But most of all, he thought of Brack’s final words.
What more could any person want than a home? And what was the purpose of Cochrane’s work if not to make the entire universe humanity’s home?
The thought of home brought back memories of the small house outside London where he had lived with his parents on their last posting. Sitting in the back garden, a few days after his eleventh birthday, playing with a simple plastic wand and tub of soap solution, he had cast shimmering bubbles into the air. The colors had transfixed him that day, along with the reflections caught within reflections when one bubble formed within another. And for some reason he still did not understand, his mind’s eye had suddenly conjured an image of a different sort of bubble twisting around another so that they both popped up in a somewhere-else his young mind could see but not describe.
It had taken Cochrane twenty years to work backward from that moment of intuition and create the technology that could do what he had seen so clearly. All because he had sat beneath a tree.
Cochrane thought of fig trees then, as Brack’s yacht was buffeted by Titan’s winds, lifting through them. As the clouds were left behind, Cochrane stared out a porthole to see a distant star, brighter than any other but a star nonetheless, not easily resolved into a disk. Somewhere near it, too faint to be seen, was the home of all soap bubbles, all fig trees. Cochrane’s home. Planet Earth. It would be seventeen years before he returned to it, and he would never see Micah Brack again.
The ancient race humanity ran to escape its own worst attributes continued, but on this day, unlike any other in human history, for the first time the race’s destination was in sight. And though he had not yet fully grasped his position in what would unfold, it was now up to Zefram Cochrane to lead the way.
TWO
U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 IN TRANSIT TO BABEL
Stardate 3849.8
Earth Standard: ≈ November 2267
Kirk knew the inevitable could be avoided no longer. There was no time left to consider the odds, to devise strategies, or even to change the rules. He had to take action and he had to take action now.
His opponents stared at him, their thoughts unreadable. All Kirk could hear was the faint hum of the environmental system’s fans, the slow sighs of his ship while she slept, late on the midnight shift. Kirk allowed no emotion to show on his face as he reached forward. All eyes were on his hand.
He dropped five tongue depressors onto the pile on the shimmering fabric of the medical diagnostic bed, and in his most authoritative voice, he said, “I’ll see your five.”
Without expression, Sarek of Vulcan, son of Skon and grandson of Solkar, turned over his cards.
Kirk lost control of his own expression as he stared at the ambassador’s poker hand.
A pair of sixes.
Kirk sat back in the chair he had set up beside the ambassador’s bed in the Enterprise’s sickbay. “You were bluffing,” he said.
Sarek blinked. He looked over at Spock, who sat placidly in a second chair, wearing his blue medical jumpsuit and black tunic as if they were a formal uniform. “It is the nature of the game, is it not?” Sarek asked.
Spock nodded sagely. “Indeed.”
Kirk didn’t like the sound of that. There was something wrong here. “Spock, I thought Vulcans couldn’t lie.”
“Though we are capable of it,” Spock explained, “we choose not to. In most circumstances.”
Kirk narrowed his eyes at Sarek. “But isn’t bluffing a form of lying?”
Sarek’s expression remained bland, though Kirk was certain that something in it had changed. The more time he spent around Spock, the more he had convinced himself that Vulcans betrayed just as much emotional information in their faces as humans did, though in a much subtler fashion.
“In this case, Captain, bluffing is an expected strategy of the game. Indeed, it is encouraged. Therefore, by betting in a manner inconsistent with the actual value of my cards, I am, in fact, following the true intent of the game, which therefore, by definition, cannot be false.”
Spock nodded thoughtfully. “Well put, Father.”
Sarek lay back against his pillows. “Thank you, my son.”
Kirk wrinkled his brow. Not two days ago he had heard Sarek tell his wife Amanda that it was not necessary to thank logic. He didn’t know how, but something told Kirk his leg was being pulled. Perhaps being cooped up in sickbay with him for two days was beginning to take its toll on the Vulcans.
“So this isn’t the first time you’ve played poker?” Kirk asked accusingly. Chess was more his game, and he enjoyed the never-ending tournament he and Spock had fallen into. But with three players to account for, poker had seemed a better way to socialize with his fellow patients. To Kirk’s chagrin, however, the pile of tongue depressors was deepest on the blanket beside Sarek.
Sarek maintained his maddening composure. “My wife taught me many years ago, after Spock joined Starfleet. The insights it afforded me have been beneficial in certain negotiations with … certain species.”
I bet they have, Kirk thought. “Coridan’s going to be admitted to the Federation, isn’t it.” He made it a statement. If Sarek negotiated as well as he played poker, the other delegates to the Babel Conference didn’t stand a chance against him.
“I will argue for admission,” Sarek acknowledged, “but my wishes are in no way an indication of what the result of the final vote will be.”
“With that much dilithium on the planet,” Kirk continued, “how could Coridan not be admitted? The Orions were willing to start an interplanetary war over it.” The knife wound in Kirk’s back was a direct result of Coridan’s dilithium. Orion smugglers had conspired to prevent the planet’s admission to the Federation in order to maintain their illegal mining and smuggling operations and profit from supplying both sides with dilithium in the war to come.
But Sarek did not agree. “It is true that dilithium is the lifeblood of any interstellar political association. Without it, warp drive can never be exploited to its full potential. But, it has been my experience that wars are seldom fought over resources. At the time, the question of resources may appear to be a valid excuse for hostilities, indeed, a rallying cry. But upon reflection, most conflict is inevitably based in emotion.” Sarek fixed Kirk with a steady gaze—an emotional signal of some sort, Kirk was certain. “I mean no disrespect,” Sarek concluded.
Kirk mulled over that last statement, which from anyone else would have meant the opposite of what it appeared to mean, and de
spite the ambassador’s recent heart attacks and cryogenic open-heart procedure, Sarek had never once lost his mental edge. Kirk wondered if there was such a thing as Vulcan humor. He looked back at Spock, trying to detect any sign of hidden Vulcan laughter.
But Spock merely raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You have a question, Captain?”
Kirk couldn’t bring himself to ask the obvious. He knew he could talk with Spock about Vulcan emotions, but it might be too embarrassing a topic for Spock to discuss in front of his father. If Spock could feel embarrassment, that is. Kirk decided that changing the subject was a better tactic. “Did your mother teach you how to play poker, too?”
Spock shook his head. “Dr. McCoy did, after our encounter with the First Federation ship.”
“Actually,” Sarek volunteered, “I have often thought poker would be a useful exercise for Vulcan children, to help them learn to control the display of their emotions.”
Kirk saw his opening and pounced. “Gentlemen, it sounds as if you’re suggesting that the famed Vulcan reticence to display emotion is nothing more than a prolonged bluff itself. In fact, it could be said that for a people who pride themselves on choosing never to lie, their whole demeanor is, in fact, just that.” Feeling proud of himself, Kirk folded his arms.
Sarek and Spock exchanged a look. Spock spoke first. “Captain, what you have suggested is not logical.”
Kirk didn’t understand. “Yes, it is.”
Spock was about to reply when Sarek interrupted. “Captain, the ’pot’ is still unclaimed. We have yet to see your hand.”
Damn, Kirk thought. He had hoped they had forgotten. He turned over his cards. A pair of fives.
“It would appear you were bluffing, as well,” Sarek said, with just the slightest hint of smugness in his tone.
“He is quite good at it,” Spock offered.
“Indeed.”
Kirk looked from father to son, realizing that they had successfully changed the topic on him. Kirk decided that whatever effect the past two days were having on Sarek and Spock, they were certainly beginning to take their toll on him.
Sarek reached out to scoop up the tongue depressors. “I believe the cultural incantation required at this time is ‘Come to poppa.’ ”
“That is correct,” Spock said.
At the sound of those words coming from the revered Vulcan diplomat, Kirk clamped his hand to his mouth to try and contain his laughter, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. It erupted from him with a barely contained snort. He tried to cover his unfortunate reaction with a series of coughs, but that just made the knife wound in his back flare with sharp pain, bringing tears to his eyes.
In their most subdued Vulcan manner, Spock and Sarek looked alarmed.
“The incantation is not ‘Come to poppa’?” Sarek asked.
Kirk waved his hand. If he even tried to open his mouth, he’d go on a laughing jag that could set Earth-Vulcan relations back by a decade.
“Captain?” Spock said with Vulcan concern. “Are you all right?”
Kirk nodded. He wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Water,” he gasped in what he hoped was a convincing simulation of something caught in his throat. He started to get up from his chair.
The door to the examination room puffed open, taking Kirk by surprise. It was too early for Nurse Chapel and far too late for Dr. McCoy.
But it was McCoy who entered, eyes bleary, hair mussed, uniform obviously just thrown on. Kirk instantly knew that whatever had brought McCoy to sickbay at this hour, it had also wakened him unexpectedly.
The ship’s surgeon came to a stop in the middle of the ward. He stared at his three patients with an open mouth. “What in God’s name are you two doing out of bed?!”
Sarek folded his hands in his lap. It was clear the doctor was referring to Kirk and Spock.
Spock answered the question. “Playing poker.”
McCoy’s eyes dropped to Sarek’s bed, took in the deck of cards, the piles of tongue depressors. “So help me, I’ll sedate the lot of you! Put you in … restraints!”
Kirk finished getting to his feet. “Bones, it’s all right. Your treatment made us feel better even faster….” But then he winced. The knife wound in his back seemed to twist in place, as if the knife were still in it. He felt the blood leave his face. From the look on McCoy’s face, it was an alarming departure.
Kirk suddenly felt Spock’s arm slip under his, steadying him. But McCoy disapproved of that, too. He grabbed Kirk away from the science officer and manhandled the captain across the ward, telling Spock to get back to bed before he was put into isolation.
Kirk flopped back on the medical diagnostic bed and felt his breath escape him. McCoy activated the diagnostic board and Kirk heard his own heartbeat racing. “I told you this could happen,” McCoy snapped as he held a whirring medical scanner over Kirk’s chest.
Kirk mouthed the words “What could happen?” Now he really couldn’t talk. He felt as if the bandages around his chest were solid duranium, slowly constricting, cutting off any chance he had of breathing again.
“The knife was treated with a protein inhibitor.” McCoy deftly clicked a drug ampule into a hypospray. Kirk heard his heartbeat accelerating. “It’s an old Orion trick. Keeps the wound open and bleeding with no poison to show up in an autopsy. Makes sure there’s no blood left on the weapon, either.” The cold tip of the hypo pushed against Kirk’s shoulder and he felt the sudden pinch of its high-pressure infusion. “Fortunately, you were lucky enough to get in here before you needed an autopsy. Barely.” Though Kirk didn’t feel as if his condition had changed, the sudden caustic tone in McCoy’s delivery told him he was going to be all right. He felt his breathing ease. His heartbeat began to slow. He recognized the effect from his last visit to Vulcan. “Tri-ox?” he whispered.
McCoy glared down at him. “When I hear that you’ve earned your medical degree, I’d be happy to discuss drug therapies, Captain. Now stay put.”
“Yes, sir,” Kirk whispered. He squinted to the side as McCoy spun around and advanced on Spock. “And as for you,” the doctor began.
Kirk closed his eyes and smiled as McCoy’s tirade continued. Sometimes he thought the doctor was only happy when he had something to complain about, and Finagle knew Kirk and Spock went out of their way to oblige him.
The pain in his back began to lessen, and Kirk guessed that McCoy had included something else with the tri-ox compound without telling him. Just as he hadn’t mentioned anything about the protein inhibitor on the knife.
Probably didn’t want to worry me, Kirk thought, feeling himself beginning to drift as McCoy and Spock argued over medical procedures, and Sarek maintained an appropriately diplomatic silence.
Kirk slipped back to three days earlier, walking near his quarters on Deck 5. An Andorian had passed him: Thelev, a minor member of Ambassador Shras’s staff. Thelev had nodded in greeting. Kirk had nodded in return, eager to get back to the bridge, eager to continue the investigation into the murder of Ambassador Gav—the murder for which Sarek was prime suspect.
In retrospect, Kirk decided it was his eagerness that led him to ignore Thelev’s unexpected change in pace. In retrospect, he knew he had distinctly heard Thelev stop, turn, and start again, walking behind him. At the time, Kirk had worried that the Andorian was going to raise yet another matter of concern to the ambassador, as if having 114 dignitaries on board for the past two weeks hadn’t given Kirk his fill of ambassadorial concerns. Part of him was still hoping he could make it to the turbolift before Thelev called his name when he felt the first blow to the back of his neck.
Starfleet training had taken over then, diplomatic immunity be damned. But the first blow Kirk had taken had dulled his reflexes, and just as he thought Thelev was finished, he felt the long narrow blade of the Andorian ceremonial dagger rip into his back, grating against bone, igniting shocking streamers of pain like lava through his chest.
What had happened next, Kirk still wasn’t too certain. What
ever had transpired, he had ended up in sickbay and Thelev had been taken to the brig.
But the threat to the Enterprise hadn’t ended with the Andorian’s arrest. An unknown vessel was still pacing them. Thirty-two ambassadors whose loss could mean an interplanetary war were its probable target. And Sarek was only hours from death, unless McCoy could operate. Which he couldn’t do without Spock’s cooperation in providing a transfusion. Which Spock wouldn’t provide while Kirk was in sickbay and the Enterprise was being followed by an unidentified vessel.
In the end, Kirk and McCoy had convinced Spock that the captain’s wound was minor. Spock had relinquished command, donated blood, and Sarek’s operation had been a success.
No, Kirk suddenly thought, jerking awake from his reverie. It was too soon to think of success. Thelev had turned out to be a surgically altered Orion. The pursuing ship, also Orion, had destroyed itself when the Enterprise had disabled it. But the Babel Conference had yet to take place. Coridan’s fate was still in question. What if the Orions had a contingency plan? For all the effort they had put into placing Thelev on the Andorian ambassador’s staff, into reengineering one of their vessels for a suicide mission, into sanctioning Gav’s murder—it just wouldn’t be like the Orions to give up after a single attempt.
I have to talk to Spock about this, Kirk thought. He opened his eyes. McCoy was standing above him. Kirk had a sudden feeling of panic that he had slept. That he had missed something. But McCoy was in as much disarray as he had been when he had caught his patients at their midnight poker game.
“Can you breathe now?” McCoy asked. It wasn’t a friendly question.
“Yes,” Kirk said. His throat felt normal. The pain of the knife wound throbbed with each heartbeat, but it was dulled.
“Good,” McCoy said. “Then get up.”
“Up?” Kirk felt a rush of adrenaline as he connected McCoy’s command to his unexpected presence here. Something had woken him up. Something had brought him to sickbay to waken the captain. Knowing that, Kirk was instantly alert, the knife wound a memory. “What is it, Bones?”
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