by James Gunn
As soon as they had prepared the schedule for their attack on the Joy Machine, Kirk asked to be taken to the radio so that he could record a message.
Linda got up and Kirk followed her, putting on a heavy coat that she took from a peg by the door. It was lined with some kind of alien animal fur. Linda put on another, and they moved quickly through the doorway. The wind was biting from the north, and the glacier was groaning behind them. The sun was still well above the horizon, but it felt late to Kirk. They had been talking a long time, and even had paused for a second, smaller meal while their discussions had continued.
“What is the time?” Kirk asked. “I don’t have a chronometer. Marouk took everything from me that might conceal a beacon.”
Linda said, “It’s almost midnight. In the summer the sun sets for only a couple of hours.”
“What I need is exact Federation Standard Time,” Kirk said.
“Precision chronometers are available in the labs,” Linda said.
They headed across paths slickened by snow, their heads down against the wind. Linda passed by one hut to reach another. Behind it, Kirk could see as the view opened between the huts, was a dish antenna.
Inside was an electronics laboratory with tools and working parts and gauges scattered around on benches or hung neatly on panels. Radio equipment was tucked away in a far corner like an afterthought. [137] When they had removed their coats and hung them on pegs beside the door, Linda introduced Kirk to a technician named Sam Chang and explained what they wanted. The next few minutes Kirk spent recording his voice message: “This is Captain James Kirk, using this method of communication because my primary system has been destroyed. It is now”—he looked at Linda, who conferred with Chang—“11:59:57, on the mark, Federation Standard Time. Exactly ten hours from now, beam me aboard from a location that will be revealed to you thirty seconds before that mark. Use all caution. Ultimate danger. Please confirm. Four-Whiskey-six-Alpha-one-Charlie-seven-Alpha.” He put down the microphone. “Now broadcast that in a form as compact as you can make it and in short bursts of no more than one second in duration.”
Chang nodded and turned to his equipment.
“Now,” Kirk said, “we have nothing to do but wait.”
Linda turned toward the door. “Then you’d better get some rest. I’ll show you where you can sleep.”
As they put on their coats again, Linda said, “What was that at the end? Those numbers and words.”
“An authenticating code to use in case of nonstandard communication emergency.”
“Aren’t you concerned that someone might intercept the message and send another with your code?”
“It changes with every message,” Kirk said.
Once more they went into the cold, clutching their coats around them. At the next hut Linda paused. “This is it,” she said. “You’ll find bunks and restroom facilities and someone to help you with bedding and whatever else you need. We have sleep schedules to conserve space and energy. Half sleep; half work. If anything happens, we’ll wake you.”
Kirk put his hand on the door and turned. “Linda,” he said.
[138] “Yes?”
“I want you to know,” Kirk said, and thought of Dannie, the woman he had come to Timshel, in part, to rescue, “that I will do everything I can to help you and Johannsen and Timshel.”
“I know you will, Jim,” she said, and turned toward a hut still farther on.
Behind, as Kirk lingered for a moment, watching her bundled figure walking away from him, the glacier groaned once more. Kirk thought he could never get used to living with happiness or destruction always imminent.
[subspace carrier wave transmission]
>not wanting anything = human state: death<
>life in death interrogate<
Chapter Ten
What Rough Beast
KIRK AWOKE FROM a dream about a reunion with Dannie. Not the Dannie he had met on Timshel but the Dannie he had come to love before they were separated by duty and then by the Joy Machine. The Dannie he imagined she might be once again. The experience was joyous and sensual and perfect in every way. Then, inexplicably, as Kirk drew Dannie close, she changed into Linda, and, although the pleasure of the moment continued unabated, the Dannie-Linda image became tinged with regret and loss, as if something dark and dangerous lurked behind the woman he held in his arms. Something that would break through if he embraced her without reservation. And then Dannie-Linda had turned into a robot, metallic and yet obscenely human, and the human part looked womanly, and the woman looked like Dannie.
Kirk sat up, bumping his head on the bunk above. He swore softly so as not to rouse the other men sleeping in the room. He rubbed his head and wondered what had awakened him, the way his body felt, [141] from a sleep only half completed. The glacier rumbled, and Kirk remembered. He had heard an explosion. The noise had been muffled by distance and bigger, therefore, than if it had been close. Something had exploded near the mountains that encircled the base.
Kirk got to his feet in the chilly room, trying to identify more accurately the noise that had broken into his sleep. He had slipped into his Timshel workshirt and jeans when the door opened, letting in a flood of sunlight. Linda stood at the door, back lit in the darkness, searching for him.
“What is it?” Kirk whispered.
Linda moved toward him. “We have recorded a curious reply from the Enterprise.”
Kirk worked his feet into his shoes and walked to Linda’s side. “What was the sound I heard in my sleep? Like an explosion. Loud but distant.”
“We get meteorite strikes here with some frequency,” Linda said. “The soil here is littered with metallic pellets, and the surface of the glacier is pitted with holes left behind when hot fragments burn their way down.”
Linda handed a jacket to Kirk, who shrugged into it as they left the hut. The wind outside was filled with ice pellets blowing from the north. “What time is it?” Kirk asked as they made their way to the next hut, bending against the wind.
“About five in the morning, here,” Linda said. “Still five hours until your scheduled departure.”
“Still time enough to make adjustments,” Kirk said, “if adjustments are necessary.”
Another man was on duty in the electronics hut. He was a large, bearded fellow with blue eyes. He was working on an electronic circuit at one of the benches. “This is Gregor Zworykin,” Linda said.
“We picked up this message a few minutes ago,” Zworykin said. He walked to the corner where the radio equipment was stacked and pressed a button.
A voice said, “Federation policy requires starships [142] to refrain from interference in planetary affairs. Captain Kirk would know this. Identification rejected.”
“That sounds like the Enterprise computer,” Kirk said, irritated. “It knows better than to screen communications. It has never done anything like that before.”
“A malfunction?” Linda asked in a tone that suggested “what else can happen to us?”
“That’s hard to believe. Let me send another message.” Kirk picked up the microphone while Zworykin prepared the recorder. “Imperative this message be delivered to Chief Engineer and Acting Commanding Officer Montgomery Scott: Beam Captain Kirk aboard at 09:59:57 Federation Standard Time, at a location to be communicated thirty seconds before. Use utmost caution. Extreme emergency. Seven-Zulu-four-Papa-Mike-one-Bravo.” He turned to Zworykin. “Condense that message and send it out again in a short burst, repeated until you get a response.”
He turned to Linda again. “Now we wait. I guess there’s no use trying to get some more sleep.” They walked toward the door.
“I’ve got a little real coffee put away for a special occasion,” Linda said. “Maybe this is it.”
“Timshel coffee?”
“Why would Timshel import coffee?”
“Let’s go.”
“Gregor, we’ll be in the commons if you get anything,” Linda called over her shoulder. And as they sealed their coats and headed out the door into the chill wind of the arctic early morning, she said to Kirk, “We’ll have to go to the women’s quarters to pick up my hidden treasure.”
“Brotherhood has its limits?” Kirk asked.
“We all have our areas of privacy, even in these communal circumstances.”
“Would it be invading your privacy if I asked how three dozen men and half a dozen women get along?” Kirk asked.
[143] They were moving rapidly past the hut in which Kirk had slept to the hut just beyond. “How does a starship crew get along when it is predominantly male?” she asked in return.
Kirk smiled. “With difficulty,” he admitted. “But we have discipline, and this group isn’t a military unit.”
“It has the same dedication to a goal. Anyway,” she said, opening the door to the hut, “we have divided the sleeping quarters. Not that some of the men and women don’t get together, in some of the less-used huts, at odd hours. But as long as it isn’t excessive or doesn’t interfere with assigned tasks, a bit of fraternizing is overlooked.”
“And you?” Kirk asked. “Do you fraternize?”
Linda gave him a quick, hard glance. “Why do you ask?”
Kirk shrugged.
“Wait here,” she said. She opened the door to the hut, slipped through into the darkness beyond, and returned a few moments later with a half-liter jar in her hands. As they headed toward the commons hut, Linda said, “I hope I haven’t done or said anything that would encourage you.”
“Not really,” Kirk said.
Kirk stopped before they reached the commons. He looked down at his feet. “What’s this?” he asked. A stream of water was flowing between the huts toward the ocean. “This wasn’t there before.”
The commons was deserted. Linda put beans into a machine that ground them and then started the brewing process. She went to wake Johannsen. By the time they returned, the odor of freshly made coffee had turned the hut into something wonderful.
Johannsen sniffed the air. He turned to Linda. “You’ve been holding out on us.”
“Actually I swiped a package from Marouk’s kitchen as we left,” Linda said.
[144] “What was that remark about a special occasion?” Kirk asked.
“That, too,” Linda said. “I was going to save them for a special occasion, but I decided this was it.”
“Kirk is leaving?” Johannsen asked.
“If I can get through the ship’s computer,” Kirk said.
“There’s a problem?”
“I don’t understand it,” Kirk said. “One would say, on the face of it, that it is impossible for the computer to question the transmission.”
“But it happened,” Johannsen said flatly.
“So did that stream of water,” Kirk said. “And that, too, ought to be impossible.”
“Let’s take a look at it,” Johannsen said.
Kirk put on the coat that he had taken off in the warmth of the commons, and they moved outside to look at the water flowing where everything else was frozen. The stream seemed larger, and, turning, Kirk pointed to another small stream on the other side of the commons hut.
“That’s never happened before either,” Johannsen said. “We’ll have to wake the geologists.” He nodded at Linda, who turned toward the men’s quarters.
“Do you suppose it could be related to the explosion a half hour ago?” Kirk asked.
Johannsen looked thoughtful. “We’ll have to put some people on the glacier in tracked vehicles to check it out.”
When Linda returned with two men, one short and thin, one short and fat, they traced the streams to their source. They were emerging from underneath the foot of the glacier, and here, it could be seen, several more rivulets were starting to trickle toward the pebbled ocean edge.
The short, thin geologist looked toward the short, fat geologist, and then they both turned toward Johannsen. “There’s melting somewhere.”
“I can see that,” Johannsen said. “But why?”
[145] The short, fat geologist shrugged. “Volcanic activity? A hot spring?”
“That it would happen just now seems like too much of a coincidence,” Johannsen said. “The explosion?”
“Hard to imagine how an explosion could trigger melting like this,” the short, thin geologist said. “It’s probably only a meteorite. But maybe we should take a look.”
“I think you should,” Johannsen said.
As the two geologists began toiling up a path that Kirk could now see had been carved into the face of the glacier, Johannsen turned and led them back into the commons. Linda poured each of them a mug of coffee while Johannsen removed a bowl of leftover fish stew and put it into a microwave.
“I hope you aren’t particular about breakfast,” Johannsen said. “We may need all the strength we can muster before this day is over.”
Kirk shook his head. “Food is food. You think the melting is serious?” he asked.
“Why should something like this happen so soon after your arrival?”
Kirk nodded. “The circumstances are suspicious.”
“But we will have to wait until Frank and Paco return with their report. That gives us a few hours to wait.”
Behind the hut the glacier made a sound like a giant grinding its teeth. “If the ice allows us the time,” Linda said.
“You think it might start moving?” Kirk asked. “You said it hadn’t moved in ten million years.”
“It hadn’t had any melting either,” Linda said.
“The water might act as a lubricant,” Kirk said. “I think you should be prepared to move out of here if that becomes necessary.”
Johannsen removed the stew from the oven and they settled down to their meal. The food tasted as good as it had the day before, but it did not sit easily [146] in Kirk’s stomach. Events were too unsettled, and he couldn’t easily dismiss the inexplicable behavior of the Enterprise’s computer. Too much that went on in the starship was controlled automatically, like a person’s autonomic nervous system. Trying to perform by hand the calculations and microadjustments of the ship’s functions would be like trying to will the flow of bile or adrenaline, or the blood’s exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen in the lungs.
If the computer was untrustworthy, the Enterprise was crippled. And he was stuck here on Timshel with a dedicated band of revolutionaries, an atomic bomb, a crazed, nearly omnipotent machine, and an unstable glacier.
By the time they had finished and were on their second mug of coffee, Zworykin was in the doorway. “We have another strange message,” he said to Kirk.
In the electronics hut, the four of them stood listening to a disembodied voice recorded minutes earlier “The future of the human species remains to be determined. Philosophers across the ages have debated the purpose and goal of existence. None of them has convinced the others. Interference in an attempt to test one hypothesis is inappropriate. Access denied.”
They looked at each other. “What do you make of that?” Johannsen asked Kirk.
“We forget about it aboard the Enterprise, but the computer is always listening,” Kirk said. “It overhears everything, but this is the first time it has put information together into a new configuration. It does learn, of course, but within limitations that include obedience to commands authenticated by voiceprint or code.”
“What are you going to do?” Linda asked.
“I’ll be damned,” Kirk said, “if I’ll tolerate insubordination from a machine.” He clenched his jaw. “It [147] may take a while to whip this thing into obedience. I’d better stay here and wait for a message.”
Linda and Johannsen nodded and turned toward the door, talking quietly as they left. Kirk sat down at the radio and pressed the button that by now he had learned started the recording.
“Code Two-Mike-five-Sierra-three-Charlie-eight-Quebec. Command clearance, Ca
ptain James T. Kirk,” he said firmly and clearly. “Deliver the following message to Chief Engineer and Acting Commanding Officer Montgomery Scott: Transport Captain James Kirk aboard at 09:59:57 Federation Standard Time, from a location to be broadcast thirty seconds before. Urgent. Extreme caution required. Confirm.”
After instructing Zworykin to compact the message and broadcast it continuously, Kirk sat back to wait while he listened to the glacier shifting behind him. “What rough beast,” he said.
“What was that?” Zworykin asked.
“It’s a poem, by a man named Yeats, from centuries back,” Kirk said. “ ‘Somewhere ... a shape with lion body and the head of a man is moving its slow thighs. ... And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.’ ”
“That’s like music,” Zworykin said. “What does it mean?”
Kirk tried to explain the references to him for a moment, and then, seeing the incomprehension on the electronics expert’s face, settled for, “There’s the glacier. Moving its slow thighs, see? Like the Sphinx in Egypt, that in one myth asked deadly riddles of passersby, a gigantic stone figure come to life. And the Joy Machine is like the birth of Christ, or the Antichrist, promising salvation or damnation, but probably damnation, considering the implications of ‘rough’ and ‘beast’ and ‘slouches.’ ”
“Why didn’t he just come out and say that?” Zworykin asked.
[148] “He was discussing something else,” Kirk said, “but we have these images from the past that we apply, as Yeats did, to our understanding of the present. That’s what poetry is all about, juxtaposing unlike images so that we can see how they fit together and how they make a greater picture that tells us more about the present—and ourselves—than we knew before.”
Zworykin stared at Kirk as if he were speaking a foreign language.
“Well,” Kirk said, “that’s how it’s supposed to work.”