The Price of the Phoenix sttos(n-4

by Sondra Marshak

  The two square, slender glasses sat in forlorn confrontation. Hers also was untouched.

  She stood as he approached and faced him with the manner of the soldier, her eyes understanding that he would not drink with her, that it was an open question whether his first act would not be to kill her.

  “You did know,” he said.

  The soldier’s chin lifted. “Not the exact form. Not with certainty. But that there was some danger—yes.”

  “Specify,” Spock said evenly.

  She shook her soft hair back from the fine upswept ears. “Such warning as I gave was all that I had to offer—and more than I owed.”

  He heard her old question—What are you that you could do this to me?—and his answer, the only possible answer—First Officer of the Enterprise.

  If she had wanted her revenge, she had collected it, doubled and redoubled. And if she had wanted to warn him, it was a warning beyond price, and more than she had owed.

  The debt has been paid,” he said.

  I could wish that the price had not been so high,” she said, as if it were an answer. She shook back the hair again. “You may believe that, if you wish. In any case, the place I offered to make for you is still open. I urge you to take it. There is nothing here for you now. I do not even require your ship. Military hardware is of short-lived value, as we learned. I do not even require a public show. Resign and leave with me this minute.” For a moment the woman’s eyes looked out of the soldier’s face. “I do not claim that I have anything to offer you but refuge. But if you stay, I have reason to believe that you will face danger and grief you will not survive.”

  Spock shook his head. “There is no refuge. But there is one thing you have to offer which I can accept: that reason.

  She shrugged in a gesture of expected defeat. “I cannot tell you. You will have to see it. I wish only to say that Omne is a complex and subtle man. He is not my ally, but certain of our interests have been parallel.”

  “You believe that Omne murdered Jim Kirk,” Spock said, not as a question.

  “I perceive that you do—and our logic runs on much the same path.” She straightened her shoulders. “If it was not murder, it was exceedingly—convenient. Omne’s guards will come to escort you to him at any moment. I will go with you—unless you will come with me.”

  “That would be another decision you would not respect,” Spock said gravely.

  She sighed. “Mr. Spock, I cannot tell you how tired I am of respecting you.”

  He raised an eyebrow and turned away.

  Six men were approaching. He sheltered the Romulan Commander behind him, careful not to give the appearance of reaching for the Colt revolver Omne had provided him with.

  She stepped around him and spoke to the men. “He will come with us now. Fall in, in close order.” Her hand dropped to her sidearm, slung now in a gunbelt over her snort tunic. She had not been made to surrender her modern weapon. Omne’s guards accepted her authority without question, Spock noted. If she was not an ally, she was privileged to act like one. Was she using the privilege for him now? Or merely delivering him into captivity?

  It scarcely mattered. She was taking him where he wanted to go, and to the one man in the galaxy he wanted to see.

  The one living man.

  McCoy bolted into his office and moved blindly toward his chair, only after a long moment registering the presence of Scotty and a firm hand guiding him.

  “You here still?” he grumbled between irritation and gratitude.

  “Again,” Scott said. “Checked the bridge. All quiet. Too quiet. This time I’ll prescribe the drink.” He was putting one in McCoy’s hand. “You’re white to the eyes.”

  McCoy nodded, didn’t say that he had the right. Scotty would know where he had been and what he had been doing in the small, sterile room.

  “I suppose there’s no mistake,” Scotty said. “Androids, doubles, imposters, illusions…”

  McCoy looked up. God, there was little enough left, but it was only too real. “Not this time, Scotty. No mistake.”

  It had only been the faintest ember of hope, but he saw it die in the Scot’s eyes, as it had died in his own in the small room he used for autopsies.

  CHAPTER III

  Spock walked down the length of the great hall toward the figure in black.

  He ignored the guards and the Romulan Commander. He could not ignore the memory of Kirk making the same march at his side only this morning: Kirk’s little sideways look saying that he distrusted men who made guests make entrances, Kirk’s eyes running over the vast tiers of antique books, saying on the other hand that a man who loved books couldn’t be all bad, Kirk’s eyes noting Spock’s interest in a library computer and a sophisticated bank of data-processing equipment, Kirk’s eyes incredulous and amused at the bar occupying the back of the hall and outfitted like the Last Chance Saloon, Kirk’s eyes and even his body appraising the man in black who rested one foot on the brass rail until he slowly turned to meet them. Kirk knew in his bones and his body how to recognize another man who was born to command, how to estimate the other’s dangerousness. Spock knew the signs. Kirk had faced men of power before. Flint, the ageless man who had been Alexander, da Vinci, and all the names of power and mind. Spock’s own father, Sarek. Others—the best and the worst of a galaxy. And Kirk’s body had said, almost imperceptibly, that Omne was in a class by himself. Spock shook himself fractionally and faced the man in black again now. He felt that power in Omne himself, but he had long schooled the reaction out of his body, trained himself to stand at Kirk’s shoulder and back him without intruding, content to know that Kirk relied on that without question.

  So many things, great and small, which would not be again.

  Spock looked through the vision of flames to meet the eyes of the man in black and knew that Omne saw murder barely leashed and a challenge flung down. Spock set himself to maintain control sufficient to permit speech to this man.

  “My dear Spock,” Omne said in the heavy, low voice, “you are beside yourself.”

  “It suited me better to be beside him,” Spock said. “You have made that impossible.”

  “On the contrary,” Omne said with a cryptic smile on his sensual lips, and Spock thought he saw the Romulan Commander stiffen.

  “You have not done it?” she asked Omne hollowly.

  “My dear Commander, we speak in riddles, and Spock speaks of murder.”

  “Murder,” Spock said. “Answer that without riddle if you wish to have time for riddles.”

  “But it answers itself, Spock of Vulcan,” Omne said. “Your Captain acted on his own initiative and in accordance with his character, as you know best of all. Had I wished to murder him in so spectacular a fashion, I could not have done so without his spectacular cooperation.”

  “The moral question does not answer itself,” Spock said. “If you knew that he would do that—”

  “No,” Omne broke in, “the moral questions never answer themselves. Suppose that I knew. Suppose that I knew that he was quite splendid—and that he was what is destroying the galaxy? Creeping do-goodism. Maudlin meddlesomeness. Smothering benevolence. I have established a refuge here from goodness. Deliver us from virtue—especially the virtuous who prescribe virtue to others. On that young mother’s planet survival is bought at a price. A widow with a young child cannot survive, would be a burden on her family if she tried, would watch the child die of slow starvation. But your Captain did not have to know that. He knew only what he felt. He has done it before, is notorious for it. Was. He was a true son of the Federation. Its Prime Directive is written on the wind—and in a trail of blood. Cultures destroyed. Civil wars started. Populations shocked out of existence. Tasmanias—from one end of the galaxy to another—”

  “I have heard the view,” Spock cut in, knowing how close he had come to speaking it, part of it. But he was Kirk’s counterweight on the matter of the noninterference directive, as on other matters. That was both Spock’s functi
on and his right. “The argument is irrelevant to the question of murder,” he said.

  “It is not,” Omne answered. “I set him a test. He did not have to fail it—or die in failing. If he had passed, I would have let you both go free. There did not have to be intent to murder.”

  “You do not say that there was not,” Spock said.

  Omne raised a heavy eyebrow. “You notice that?” He shrugged. “I was willing to give a sporting chance, but I would not expect you to believe that when you hear the answer to the riddle.”

  “I will hear it now,” Spock said with finality.

  “You do not answer on the Prime Directive—do not defend him?” Omne said.

  “I do not answer murder with words,” Spock said, “or defend him to one not fit to have looked on him.” He heard the ancient madness in his voice and did not flinch from it.

  The Commander touched his arm, but Spock did not look at her. His eyes held Omne’s. “You nave declared no law here but challenge. State your riddle. Then, if you have the courage of your evils, answer me with your gun—or your body.”

  Omne laughed. “Behold the peaceable Vulcan!” He threw his head back. “I have found your price, Spock of Vulcan. That is my riddle. What buys the man without price?”

  “There is nothing you could offer which would buy me—or your life,” Spock said tonelessly.

  “Isn’t there?” Omne chuckled. His gloved hand brushed across a control stud on the bar. The great mirror behind it dissolved into a viewscreen and filled with the image of—James Kirk. Laid out on a bench. The naked body draped with a thin sheet. The face exposed. Unmarked. Sleeping with that vast innocence which was his alone. Breathing…

  Spock felt the Commander supporting his arm and straightened as the viewscreen winked out.

  “Illusion,” he said flatly. His mind saw again the vision of flames. Was there some way that Kirk could have been extracted alive? His mind would neither permit the hope nor confirm it. He had not taken his eyes from the spot, the ashes, the—removal. His hand found his communicator, flipped it before realization struck him.

  Omne smiled. “Behold Vulcan memory.” Again he touched a control stud. “Allow me to open a channel for you.”

  “Spock to McCoy,” Spock said as if there had been no interruption. There was not even the delay of relay, as if Omne had known Spock’s intention and tapped into the intercom.

  McCoy here.” The voice was tired beyond endurance, an answer in itself.

  “The—examination,” Spock said. “There was no doubt—of—the identity?”

  “Doubt?” The voice caught. “No, Spock. No doubt at all.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Spock out.”

  He faced Omne bleakly.

  “Quite right, Mr. Spock. The Sherlock Holmes maxim: Eliminate the impossible; whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.”

  Spock attempted a shrug. “Android,” he said. “Alien shape-changer. I could name half a dozen methods-most of them tried—on us.” And if it were an android, he caught himself thinking, say—a quasi-biological android like Flint’s Rayna, capable of thought, feeling, choice…

  “Not this one,” Omne said. “It is new. I will tell you a story, Mr. Spock—of a man whose planet was peaceably contacted by the Federation. Most peaceably. Most solicitously. Oh, a little bending of the Prime Directive here and there. Nothing major. Earthman’s burden. But it led to a civil war—Federation supporters against the old way. The man saw his life-mate killed, along with his sons—some on one side and some on the other. The planet was reduced to rubble and barbarism. The man conceived a hatred of Death. Before he loved again, there would be a way to defeat Death—for the dead to live again. Not his dead, perhaps. But it would be a purpose to keep going on, a kind of ideal.” He shrugged. “Ideals are fragile, but purposes endure. The perfect replica, Spock. Identical. Yours, if it is your price.”

  “Mine?” Spock heard himself saying, then pulled himself up short. “It’s not possible,” he said. “A ghost, a zombie, a pale imitation. Some obscene sorcery—”

  “Science, Mr. Spock.” Omne’s voice was cool, dispassionate. Only the black eyes guttered with the brightness of fixed purpose. “The final triumph. Immortality. The defeat of Death. Come, we have known for years that we were quite close with the transporter process. But it could only transmit life to life, not death to life. The vital spark was gone. We did not know how to capture it and reinfuse it—”

  “It has been tried,” Spock said doggedly.

  “Not properly.” Omne leaned back against the bar, his eyes focusing on some distance. “There are mental emanations, Mr. Spock. As a telepath, you should know. Particularly in a moment or extreme crisis-death, or the ultimate fear of it—they radiate beyond normal limits.”

  Spock felt the Commander tugging at his arm again and knew that he had swayed! Yes. Through the flames he had seen it, but more: felt it. Felt the “emanations.” The astonishment, the unbelief, and finally the belief.

  “The nature of such emanations has defeated science for centuries,” Omne continued, “but the phenomenon of projection of the whole personality at the moment of death or ultimate terror has been well known. How many fathers, mothers, brothers, mates have reported such a visitation—and from what distances? What is real can be studied. It merely required an approach without preconceptions, and an enduring purpose.”

  “It would require a whole new theory,” Spock said with a heavy effort to focus on the fact.

  “Yes,” Omne acknowledged. “After which the hardware was relatively easy—merely requiring some years of development. What is real can be recorded. It required only a new type of recorder, and a means of playing the recording back into combination with the basic biological matrix of a transporter scan.” He straightened and faced Spock gravely, for a moment without challenge or hostility, merely as if presenting the fruits of his work to a mind capable of understanding. “Every cell, every molecule. And now—every thought, every memory. Identity, Spock, indistinguishable identity. Immortality.”

  “There would be a difference,” Spock whispered, not as a scientist.

  “Illogical, Mr. Spock. A difference which makes no difference is no difference.” Omne moved, dismissing the moment of naked communication. “I do not speak of the philosophical problem, of course. A—replica—is a created object, and therefore property. My property, and it is for sale. Would you care to inspect the merchandise?”

  The Commander was suddenly in front of Spock, her hands on his shoulders. “Spock, don’t! He is dead. You must think of him as dead. One step and you are lost.”

  “Yes,” Spock said, to her or to Omne, and put her aside.

  Omne smiled and bowed Spock toward a door.

  CHAPTER IV

  Spock snapped to the discipline of logic. There was purpose again now. The door had to lead to the vast underground complex which his tricorder had detected on their first visit—detected but could not penetrate, any more than it could penetrate the outer shields or Omne’s whole compound with its huge gates, any more than the starship’s sensors or weapons could penetrate the shields of the whole planet.

  They moved through the door into corridors of a size to stretch for miles, but turning at odd intervals. There was a turbo-lift, with guards following them in. The lift answered to Omne’s voice, giving a number code. Spock’s memory took the code in, compared it against numbers he had seen in the short stretches of corridors they had traversed. There was something very odd about the numbering system. He set his senses and the sub-thought level of his mind to calculate acceleration, time, and distance in the turbo-lift. The calculations were accurate, of course.

  He did not expect them to do him any good.

  A hundred levels—his calculator methodically computed size of the complex and the number of places to hide a captive. He did not bother to reduce it to a number of sufficient accuracy to irritate a Human.

  He did not permit himself to hope that he would ever play
that game again with a certain Human.

  They stepped off the lift near a door.

  Omne opened the door and bowed Spock through, unctuously. Spock had expected a laboratory. It took him a moment to recognize the ancient Earth ritual of candles, flowers, and lying in state.

  A flame-pot, glowing coals, and a faint scent of incense: the Vulcan equivalent.

  Omne was trying to play on his nerves, Spock recognized with cold clarity, and succeeding. But nothing could divert his attention from the slow rise and fall of breath in the broad chest, the flicker under the eyelids in the peaceful, dreaming face.

  He moved to stand over the catafalque.

  “Sleeping beauty,” Omne said. “You may perform the awakening—in the traditional manner, if you like.”

  Spock shot him a savage look, but could not spare eyes for it for long.

  He looked down and was stopped for a moment. He could not use the name. If he used the name he was certainly lost. He unlocked a hand from behind his back and closed long fingers on the bare, warm shoulder.

  Surprise. And then a smile played on the still sleeping lips.

  Then Spock saw the face relive the moment of astonishment, unbelief, belief. Veins stood out in ridges. The lips formed “Spock!” Stomach muscles knotted and flung the wide shoulders up into arms which caught them. The hazel eyes snapped open.

  After a moment they focused! The waking voice whispered, “Spock?” The arms closed on Spock’s shoulders.

  “Shh—” Spock said and held for a moment, then disentangled and eased the shoulders down, pulled up the fallen sheet. “Rest.”

  “Rest?” The figure rolled up on an elbow, a sudden wry grin celebrating. But there was puzzlement around the eyes. “In peace—I thought. How—?” The keen eyes searched the room, took in the atmosphere, the two figures in the background, the pointed-eared Romulan guards. “Not a bad version of Hell.” The eyes looked back at Spock. “Or—Heaven.” A faintly mocking smile. “However, I take it, it is neither.”