Crossroad

by Barbara Hambly

  "They said that you had done it," said Spock, after a glance at the captain. McKennon's face twisted in appalled disgust.

  "According to Arios," said Kirk, "the Tau Lyrans were a psychically adept race whose help he was trying to recruit for the rebels."

  "The Tau Lyrans?" McKennon stared at him. "The…what did they call themselves? The Yoons?" She shook her head, closed her eyes in disbelief. "No, Captain," she said softly. "Yes, the Yoons had a certain level of psychic connection, mostly in language, but they were…exactly what they appeared to be. A simple culture who had managed to invent the radio but never got as far as bombs. Believe me, the Institute has records of every psychically active culture, past and present, in the known galaxy. We're always on the lookout for further possibilities of refinement of our own teaching, our own technique. We would never have committed such an act of…of waste."

  She passed her hand across her brow, her mouth taut, as if she had tasted poison. "I can only guess," she went on after a long moment, "that the location of Tau Lyra Three itself was the reason. We knew the planet was a wasteland, of course. Our records showed it as having been destroyed by solar flares sometime in this period. Having discovered a way to make the psion jump through the Crossroad Anomaly, Arios may have been seeking to set up some kind of…of safe base in this time period. Either for the Schismatics in the Fleet, or for reasons of his own. I have no proof of that, but it's the way he thinks."

  "You sound as if you know him very well," said Kirk.

  Her jaw tightened, and for a moment the dark lashes veiled her eyes. "Yes," she said softly. "I know him." There was a world of unspoken past, of bitter experience, in the sudden, careful blankness of her face as she looked down at her hands, the determined smoothness to the set of her lips.

  Silence lay for a moment in the room, like a spot of light in water.

  Then McKennon said, "You'll want to speak formally with the captain of the Savasci, Captain Rial Varos."

  Kirk raised an eyebrow, but did not comment on the Romulan name. So in two hundred years the Romulans would be part of the Federation?

  McKennon went on, "Nominally I'm in charge of this mission—of bringing Dylan Arios and his crew to justice—but it is Captain Varos and his men with whom you'll be dealing. I admit," she added with her fleeting smile, "that I wanted to…to see how the land lay here first. Like any of the Consilium Masters, I am more expendable than a Fleet captain or ship. For all I knew—for all Varos knew—Arios could have gained control of this vessel by this time. Knowing Arios, that isn't an impossibility." The dryness of experience touched her voice.

  "No," said Kirk consideringly. "No, it isn't."

  The Domina hesitated, studying his face with a trace of anxiety in those beautiful green eyes. "Are you…satisfied with our bona fides?" she asked after a moment. "I know Dylan Arios. I know he's probably told you something that makes you unwilling simply to hand him and his crew over to us… that's his style. Something with just enough truth in it to be convincing. And got you to put modern shielding on your own ship. Whatever proofs you require, Captain, I shall try to provide, to the best of my ability."

  "Thank you," said Kirk. He wondered if her pleasantly conciliating attitude had anything to do with the fact that she couldn't simply beam Arios and his crew off the Enterprise, or beam her own strike force on. He rose. "Mr. Spock…a word with you. Please excuse us for one moment, Domina McKennon."

  "Captain," said Mr. Spock in a severe undervoice as they crossed from the briefing room to the turbolift, "in the course of that conversation you told quite an alarming number of untruths."

  "Deck Three," said Kirk to the lift, and a single bar of green light passed down the black slit of glass. Hands behind his back, Mr. Spock followed his commander interestedly into the physics lab, at the moment occupied only by Dr. Maynooth, deep in an analysis of digitalizations of the records of the Tau Lyra solar flares. Like Lao, the physicist had the appearance of a man who hadn't slept in three days, but in his case he still retained his usual maniac buoyance: what had kept him awake was fascination, not despair. He didn't even glance up as the captain and first officer crossed through the lab to the small, heavily shielded utility room at the rear.

  "I presume eavesdropping technology will improve in the upcoming centuries," said Kirk quietly, "so we can only hope the shielding around this room is sufficient. I'm going to ask Domina McKennon to remain on the Enterprise for drinks in the officers' lounge. During that time, I'd like you and Captain Arios to spacewalk—in blacked-out survival suits, since I also presume the Savasci is monitoring ship's transmissions—across to the Nautilus, where I'd like you to have a look at the floor of the hangar deck, and the hangar doors themselves. You said in your report the whole place was caked with moss and the resins extruded by the yagghorth. A missile like that would have left a mark, where they dogged it down at least. If you find anything—scratches on the floor, makeshift dogging clamps, scraping where the doors were opened, anything—I'd like an explanation from him."

  Spock inclined his head.

  "You'll have to go without a guard," said Kirk. "Two spacewalkers won't be noticed—more might be."

  "I assume that even if Captain Arios is the villain Domina McKennon portrays, he still has sufficient logic to know that he cannot operate the Nautilus himself. And even a guard of six or seven would be insufficient protection, should he summon the yagghorth Nemo to overpower me."

  Spock had a point. It was just as well, thought Kirk, that none of the security officers who had escorted Spock and Scotty in their repair trips to the Nautilus had known of the existence of the yagghorth.

  Kirk started toward the door.

  "Captain?"

  He raised an eyebrow.

  "I have frequently attempted to study the operation of subliminal cues in human motivation. Was the origin of your distrust her choice of repulsion, rather than the more obvious attraction, as a demonstration of a Consiliar Master's power?"

  Kirk smiled crookedly. "You mean, she didn't want to make us 'fall madly in love' with her because that's what she was already trying—very subtly—to do?"

  If Spock had not been Vulcan he would have smiled. "Indeed," he said.

  "Nothing that rational, I'm afraid, Mr. Spock. So I may be wrong. But in the face of this level of lying—on one side or the other—I'd feel better if I had a little firsthand empirical evidence. Now McKennon has committed herself on how she says the missiles were launched…but I'll bet you three moves in our next chess game she doesn't know the state of housekeeping in that ship. And I'll bet you, too, that the faking of visual transmissions will improve a lot in three hundred years."

  And he crossed back through the lab to the lift, to return to the briefing room and his lovely red-haired guest.

  "It's aye a bit small, for a deep-space vessel." Engineer Montgomery Scott helped Mr. Spock on with his gloves, dogged the seals tight, and cast an inquiring glance over at Dylan Arios, just wriggling his thin form into the blacked-out survival suit.

  "You don't need much of a crew in a jumpship," pointed out the Master. "That's a big ship, huge for what they need. Nobody gets tired of each other on a two-week mission from Earth to Rigel and back again, including travel time. You don't even need laundry facilities. Just take your underwear home and have your mother do it."

  Mr. Spock looked puzzled at Scott's laughter, but did not inquire. The three men worked quickly in the small chamber beneath the hangar deck's control tower, adjusting the roomy helmets and affixing the jet packs to their backs. Spock had worked in open space before and, moreover, had the physical strength of a Vulcan; he observed from the labored way Arios moved that the Master had not.

  "The packs work on the principle of action-reaction," he explained. "Control stick on the front points in the direction you wish to go to change direction. Sharp pressure to stop, pressure again to start, though on this occasion I advise simply thrusting off from the hangar doors in the direction of the Nautilus to m
inimize light flashes visible from the Savasci."

  "Understood," said Arios's light voice in the helmet mike. Scott was dogging down the Master's helmet, and through the smoky one-way visibility of Spock's faceplate Arios was nothing, now, but a vaguely humanoid shape in matte, nonreflective black. "We'll make for the main tractor-beam hatch. I can get that open from the outside, and it's in a part of the ship where we shouldn't lose too much atmosphere before we can seal it again behind us."

  Spock and Arios ran through the check sequence of their seals while Scott climbed to the control tower above, the hatchway sighing as it sealed behind him. In order to minimize the possibilities of temporal paradox, the engineer had cleared the area through the simple expedient of inventing a shiftlong make-work project in the main hull, and assigning to it everyone who ordinarily would be in this section.

  Spock turned to the visual pickup, signaled an affirmative. The lights in the shuttlebay cut out, leaving only the small glow of a single emergency lamp in the tower's shelter. As they crossed toward the vast curve of the outer bay doors, the line of amber signals above the tower transformed one by one to blinking red, then to solid red as oxygen evacuated; a moment later the floor vibrated softly beneath their clumsy boots. In darkness before them, where the hangar doors loomed huge, a slit of more profound darkness appeared, sugared with isolated light.

  Logically, Spock was aware that stepping from the thick lip of the hangar deck into space was no more dangerous than stepping from the edge of the ship's swimming pool into water. Less dangerous, in fact, because sometimes one did sink in water. At some distance to starboard the Nautilus hung in the night distance, lightlessly brooding against the smoky glow of the Crossroad. If all its ships were painted so, no wonder the rebels were called the Shadow Fleet.

  To port, and above the level of the Enterprise, the Savasci lay, like the detached saucer of a starship but somewhat smaller, its metal smooth as glass, without visible plate joins and without windows, seeming to shine faintly in the reflected shimmer of the stars.

  Their navigator had positioned her so that whatever serial numbers she bore would be out of sight of the Enterprise, either by visual pickup or by line-of-sight from the observation lounges. She hung like a pearlized moon, her smooth perfection the absolute antithesis of the age-scarred black junker she pursued.

  Hands resting on the door metal on either side of him—the slit was less than four feet across—Spock turned his attention to the Nautilus, gauging the distance for what was, in vacuum, one single, springing jump across nearly a terrestrial mile of space, over the fathomless infinities of eternity.

  To regard the literally bottomless space beyond the lip of the hangar deck as anything other than perfectly safe in weightlessness would have been illogical, so Spock did not. He knew it was impossible to fall, and stepped from the edge and into the sensation of falling with the equanimity of perfect knowledge. He braced himself against the lip of the deck like a swimmer treading water, orienting himself toward his target. The expression on the face of Dylan Arios was, of course, completely invisible behind the matte plex of his blacked-out helmet, but Spock noticed that he hesitated a long time before following into the void.

  "I've given every crewman aboard orders not to address you with more than 'Good day, Domina,' and remarks about the weather in this part of space," Kirk assured McKennon, who turned back to him with a startled look and then laughed like a delighted girl. The double handful of junior officers in the Deck Five lounge did their best not to look like they were staring, but Kirk was aware of being the cynosure of a score of surreptitious eyes. McKennon would have to be blind not to miss it, too.

  "And I can't even respond, 'Oh, in my time it's so much starrier,' for fear of telling someone something that will change history and make me—and the Savasci and Captain Varos—all disappear."

  "Well, you haven't disappeared, so I guess you said the right thing." Kirk guided her to the section of the lounge usually kept clear for the entertainment of guests. It was well clear, now; a conversation square of slightly depressing blue-ray Starfleet couches and a low table had been enlivened by a silver-gray Starfleet-issue bowl containing some of the calmer inhabitants of the Botany section. As Kirk seated McKennon, the yeoman on shift for that purpose came over and asked what they'd like to drink.

  "Sparkling water," smiled McKennon. Kirk asked for a beer. The food synthesizers on the Enterprise had the usual consistency problems with such systems, but thanks to the disreputable Yeoman Brunowski's tinkering, the quality of the beer was in general pretty high.

  "Yet another temporal paradox," sighed the Domina comically. "Romulan ale hasn't yet been introduced, has it? I probably shouldn't even have asked you that, lest the information that the Romulans are going to enter the Federation one day somehow prevent that event from happening, or change how it happens…"

  She shifted her position on the couch, and Kirk felt again, a little stronger, that urge of protectiveness toward her, and that sense of nostalgia. He found himself thinking how much she reminded him of Ruth, the woman he had loved at the Academy.

  And he found himself, very slightly, annoyed. Did she really think he was that simple?

  "I'm surprised Arios didn't try to reprogram your mixer to produce it anyway," she went on, smiling up enchantingly at the yeoman who brought them their drinks. "He has that arrogance. He'd say it was for your own good."

  She sighed and shook her head just slightly. Past her, Kirk saw Mr. Sulu stand up from the table where he was having dinner and put a hand on the yeoman's arm. There were quiet questions and more stealthy glances from Uhura, Organa, and Chekov, who were with him, all clothed in off-shift gear of varying levels of informality—the prize for the evening definitely going to Chekov's startlingly embroidered Cossak shirt. They all saw that they had Kirk's attention and immediately became absorbed in their dinners, like children caught peeking through the potted palms.

  Kirk mentally rolled his eyes. Everyone on the Enterprise had been consumed with curiosity about the crew of the black starship from the moment it had been sighted, and subsequent events had only fostered the growth of some of the most startling scuttlebutt Kirk had ever heard.

  Kirk had refuted none of it. Not even after Maynooth and Miller had talked about the characteristics of the systems override Raksha had put through the central computer, or Yeoman Paxson had described what her lab reports had turned up about medical scans on Cooper and Sharnas. Better, he had reasoned, to let the occasional true guesses be buried under the avalanche of speculation.

  But it was impossible, he knew, to keep the secret for long, There were too many clues, too many people who had worked on one aspect or another of the dilemma of the black ship. Maynooth and Miller had been ordered individually to keep their mouths shut about the incredibly complex systems that had broken the Enterprise's defense codes, but everyone in the Deck Nineteen auxiliary computer room had had a crack at getting through the locks, had seen what they were up against.

  It would only be a matter of time before someone else would guess, as he had guessed, as Spock had guessed, as Lao had guessed. They had to admit Mr. Scott to the circle, and though the chief engineer could be trusted, it would only be a matter of time before one person too many had to be told. Before someone asked the question he himself was itching, fidgeting to ask: What happens to me in the future?

  Do I bring the Enterprise in safe? Do I get myself—my crew—my friends—killed in month, or a year? How long do I live, and when, and under what circumstances, do I die?

  The person who, somehow, started the Consilium was aboard his ship.

  No wonder McKennon hadn't attacked them; wouldn't try to take Arios off by violence if there was the smallest chance that there would be a fight. Even if that single person—that unknown X—survived, and for all Kirk knew it might be some minor clerk in Stores, the death of friends, the disruption of environment, might easily influence X's decision to…do whatever it was he—or she—later di
d.

  "Captain." McKennon's soft voice brought him back to the present. Her eyes had followed his, watching the little group at the table clearly engaged in another bout of speculation among themselves while the yeoman went to the wet bar in quest of hand-mixed drinks.

  "You know—I know—that a temporal paradox must be avoided at all costs." She laid a cool little hand on his wrist. "If I know Arios, he's told you—things—about the Consilium, things about what he believes is going to be your future. Maybe things about—someone—on board your ship."

  Kirk thought, Ah. He said nothing. The green eyes gazed up into his, searching his with a desperate earnestness, trying to make him understand.

  "Captain," she said softly, "you must believe me. In spite of what Arios has told you, the Consilium is not some monster conspiracy that's taken over the Federation. We're an independent research and communications corporation contracted to assist with astrogation and the operation of psion jumpships. If it were not for the Consilium—actually, for the research organization that preceeded us, which was called Starfield—civilization in the Federation—in most of known space—would have been wiped out by the plague."

  "I understand that," said Kirk, wondering if the pleading in her face was genuine, if his own belief was real, or if it was all something emanating from her wired and augmented brainstem as a series of submedullar cues.

  "Did Arios ask you to—do anything—to some member of your crew? Or display any kind of specific interest in someone on the ship? Try to get them alone?"

  Kirk was silent for a moment, thinking about temporal paradox.

  About Edith Keeler, stepping off the curb into a New York street.

  The person who started the Consilium…

  About sheets of rain-pounded gray water, floating with crude electronics and round bubbles of melted plastic. About digitalized readouts of frantic radio calls, wondering in baffled horror what was happening to the sun. About charred corpses in a bunker, fallen where they were trying to carry all the treasures of their culture to a safety they could never reach.