"I'll take care of her," said Arios softly, and Darthanian concealed a smile.
"I think it far likelier that she'll take care of you, my son," he said, the soft whistle of his voice like a mourning bird behind the clipped words of the translator. "Only, if you can, keep her from killing herself until her anger is all spent. In three hundred years, when you find and speak to the descendents of our race on Brigadoon, she can be a witness to what you say."
Iriane opened her mouth, her yellow eyes filled with sudden grief, and her grandfather made a wry smile. "Really, child," he said—to her alone, but the translator picked it up anyway. "Can you really see me leaping about with pistols in three hands and a flaming torch in the fourth? Now I must go, and prepare myself for my own part in this little masquerade."
Arios winced, put his hand to his temple. At the same moment Kirk felt a wash of dizziness pass over him that then retreated—only not completely. The huge chamber, with its thick shadows and resin-sticky machinery, was already hot, and now the heat seemed to condense around him, drawing the air from his lungs, and behind him in the darkness one of the wounded redshirts gasped in pain.
"Spock," said Kirk softly. "You're on first beam-over. Whatever happens, keep the ship between the Savasci and the Nautilus. . . ."
"Understood, Captain," replied Spock. "On the other hand, since their computer has replaced eighty percent of its functions by now I feel it my duty to point out that the probability is very high that no one will beam over at all."
"Spock," said Arios, his breath laboring with the effort of breaking up the psionic resonance congealing almost palpably in the room, "you really are a wet blanket, you know that?"
The Savasci yagghorth lifted its head, all its sensors turning toward the doors, listening like a lover for some voice from outside.
The sharp clap of shorting electricity was unmistakable, even through walls; a vicious sizzle and a man's muffled cry. Lao whirled as if the current had gone through his own body. "What's that?" he cried, and then flung himself across to the subsystems monitor, slapping visuals to life.
Chapel's first blinding thought had been, That's it, that's the transporter …even as she saw past the young man's shoulder the in-ship screen, the image of Ensign Miller scrambling out of a service hatch amid a tangle of cable and sparks and a patched-in monitor screen.
The next instant she thought, He's away from the weapons station. Even as she thought it she was on her feet, running at him like a tigress, her mind blocking everything but that broad gold back, the man turning toward her with his phaser in his hand. . . .
"Go!" yelled Sulu.
Chapel didn't even hear the bridge door cave open, but Lao did, and his head swung around in that direction just as Chapel collided with his gun arm. He'd already pressed the trigger, and the nimbus of the shot caught her, an icy emptiness in her chest and her knees turning to water. Somewhere she heard voices shouting, and the whirring of phasers on stun, meaningless over the terrible pressure she felt, the terrible light. . . .
With a faint, grating whine the engine-room door moved, a slit of cold light appearing. The Savasci yagghorth hissed again, head moving heavily, snakewise, and with a movement that seemed like a horrible sort of echo, the Romulan woman Karetha eeled through the red metal of the doorway and stood, her head bobbing from side to side, at the top of the steps. Her dark eyes were perfectly blank.
After a moment she, too, opened her mouth and hissed.
Kirk flattened back against the tank, phaser held ready. Behind the swaying Romulan woman on the steps appeared the slim shadow of Germaine McKennon, and, cold-faced as stone, Captain Varos, and one by one a slow, careful line of Specials who dropped over the platform railing to the deck, fanning outward in both directions with barely a sound.
"Whatever you do," said Arios softly, "don't shoot the empath. We can't …"
His words were cut off by a faint electronic twitter, and Kirk felt against his face the startled whoosh and stir of air into momentary vacuum. He heard one of the security guards say "Boy howdy," and Mr. Scott add, "Thank God!"
Kirk stepped back toward the shadow, readying himself for transport, noting as he did so that Nemo, too, had vanished, presumably back to the Nautilus as soon as he realized his nestmates were no longer in danger. McKennon looked momentarily startled, then said, "Take them."
Kirk ducked behind the tank as a phaser bolt whined off the metal, returned fire, wondering if Karetha the Romulan would send the yagghorth against them, as Nemo had gone after McKennon's guards. Wondering how long it would be before Kyle reset the transporter coordinates. Come on, he thought, as the headache, the sense of breathlessness that had been building in his chest since Arios's disappearance, mounted unbearably. Come on, Spock said those programs were eighty percent fixed, time's running out. . . .
Scott and the two remaining redshirts crouched at his side, taking it in turns to keep up a covering fire as the Specials closed in around them. The cramped darkness between the tanks was like the resonating columns of the gangways on the Enterprise, like the vent shafts where Arios had been able to set up fields of psychic interference. Kirk flipped open his communicator, said desperately, "Mr. Kyle? What's…"
"Their transporter shields are up again, Captain," said the transport chief in a frantic voice. "We can't get through."
"Beam Arios and his crew back to the Nautilus and tell them to get out of here," said Kirk. "Mr. Spock…"
"Here, Captain." Of course Spock would still be in the transporter room.
Kirk flinched a little at the sound of Mr. Scott's grunt of pain, and turning his head saw the chief engineer collapse against the tank, slide to the floor.
"Keep the Enterprise in line-of-fire between the Nautilus and the Savasci until the Nautilus goes back into the Crossroad Nebula and through the Anomaly there. And if…"
He glanced back again at the sound of one of the redshirts cursing. The man was clutching his numbed arm, gasping with pain, and in the red glare of the engine room past him, Kirk could see the ring of Specials moving closer: identical, flawless, dead-eyed.
Controlled by McKennon's will. Thinking only what she wished them to think.
"When we come back on board, Spock, I want you to be ready to do a mind-meld with me and possibly with all of us still here, even against my direct orders. If you deem it necessary, I hereby authorize you to remove me from command and place me in solitary confinement in the brig until end of mission. Understood?"
"Understood, Captain," said Spock softly.
"We'll hold them as long as we can. Kirk out."
He flipped the communicator closed, the pain in his skull suddenly blinding. No wonder Scott hadn't been able to keep cover in this ideal hidey-hole, with that hammering in his skull, that sense of not being able to breathe. He staggered to the narrow slit between the tanks, fumbling with his phaser, his hands barely able to move now.
The red light in the room seemed to thicken to blood in front of his eyes, and he felt his vision tunneling to gray. He was conscious of the yagghorth, still crouched, motionless now, between the resin-webbed hole of its cavern and the bubble where Karetha slept during the psion jumps. Conscious of Karetha herself, equally still, her face frozen in an expression only marginally human.
McKennon stood beside her on the steps, her pointed, childlike features wearing an expression of smug triumph, and behind her Captain Varos no more than a shadow in the doorway, his brown face like something wrought of boiled leather, the red light of loss and grief and bitter hatred in his eyes.
It was an effort to draw enough air to remain conscious, to remain standing. . . .
When the Specials sprang forward, like wolves around a dying deer, he found he could only watch them with a curious blank disinterest through sheets and curtains of pain. His hand would not respond on the trigger—the phaser slipped from his fingers as his knees buckled.
He thought, I guess now I'll find out how long I can hold against her. . . .
More of them were dragging out the other redshirts from among the tanks, pulling Scotty's limp form from shelter. Even in unconsciousness the engineer wore a faint, desperate expression of pain.
McKennon came slowly down the steps, the long, smooth-fitting dress she wore whispering around her like a black silk flower. If the Specials hadn't been holding him up Kirk thought he would have fainted, but fought unconsciousness as he had fought his way toward the shuttle hangar, desperately, knowing he must not give in. The green eyes met his, and like looking into a well of cold water, clear so that he could see to its very bottom, he knew that everything Arios had said about this woman, about the Consilium, was true.
From the darkness among the tanks the guards dragged out Cymris Darthanian, his hands bound with makeshift spancels of wire. The old Yoon sobbed piteously as he was untied, "My granddaughter! My beloved Iriane! They took her aboard the small ship, took her far away!"
McKennon stepped forward, and rested her hand gently on the bowed, silky head. Her lips were taut and there was a white look around her nostrils, and her eyes narrowed to slits of vicious fury.
"My lady," whispered Darthanian, his voice a dove flutter of pathos, "my lady, they have hurt me. . . ."
"And they will pay," said McKennon, with aconite softness in her voice. "They will pay."
But not, thought Kirk, for hurting an old creature whom McKennon considered her ally. Arios would pay—or she would try to make Arios pay—for thwarting Germaine McKennon.
The comm link chirped beside the door. McKennon turned, strode to touch the square, bright-colored panel, while two Specials came up and pulled Kirk's hands behind him, clipping them together with something that felt seamless and flexible and fitted like a strip of tape. Karetha had descended the steps and stood beside the yagghorth, and yes, Kirk saw with a feeling of queasy horror, the yagghorth did play-bite, nipping and nibbling at the woman's hands and nose.
And Karetha, shaking back her graying masses of hair, nipped and nibbled back.
Would that happen to Sharnas? Kirk wondered. Would he slowly sink into the mind of the creature he had been wired, trained, given to from earliest childhood, becoming less and less human until he was only able to associate with that strange, empathic partner? Until there was nothing left of his life but the yagghorth and the dreaming of the psion jumps?
Or was that something that happened to empaths who did not have human friends?
Over the comm link, a voice said, "Nautilus moving off, Domina. Bearing on the Crossroad Nebula. Estimate time to Anomaly, forty minutes. No sign of the shuttle."
"Where is the Enterprise?"
"Same bearing, Domina. Line of sight."
Up in the darkness of the doorway, Kirk thought he saw Varos move and start to speak, but in fact the Romulan did not.
"Downward five degrees," said McKennon coldly. "Prepare to open fire. Maximum burst."
"Yes, Domina."
Kirk looked down at Mr. Scott's unconscious form, the dark brows still drawn in pain, then back at McKennon. And here's the proof of the pudding. . . . He realized that in the confused scramble of the running fight to the storage hold, the slither down the venting to this red-lit hell that was the heart of the Consilium's power, he hadn't even asked Scotty if he had, in fact, managed to accomplish his goal in the engine room. If he hadn't…
If he hadn't, what? There would be no consequences whatsoever for him, at least not any that he'd remember. With a little tracking they could probably even locate the Yoons' shuttle: pick them up, take them back through the Anomaly. It would all be as if it never happened.
Except that there'd be some order, some directive, from Germaine McKennon, sleeping forever in the back of his brain.
The comm link chirped again. "Domina?" The navigator was trying to conceal it, but Kirk knew the voice of a man badly frightened. That, too, told its story. Sulu might moan, The captain'll kill me if anything happens to his ship. . . . But Sulu would never think, The captain will hurt me. . . .
"The helm isn't responding, Domina. Power isn't getting through to the engines. Mr…Mr. Jarmeen is in sickbay—they found him in the engine room unconscious. . . ."
McKennon said a word Kirk hadn't heard since his teenage days in survival training camp.
Her green eyes cold and furious with a will that had never been thwarted, she turned and struck him across the face.
Kirk smiled.
She slapped him again, harder, and by the look in her face he knew this was a habit with her, when she did not get her way.
"You think you've won your little victory," said McKennon savagely. "You won't remember any of this afterward, so I'll tell you now: once I've finished ripping the destination of that shuttle out of your brain—and believe me, Captain, it'll take a lot longer than it has to—I'll install such a set of commands in your brain that not only will you work for the Consilium's good in your own time, but you'll never be able to love again, you'll never be able to lie with a woman again, you'll never be able to sleep again. That I promise you."
"I would not advise that, Lady." Cymris Darthanian reached up with touching respect to tug the Domina's hand. "Not any of it."
Her head snapped around, her eyes celadon fire. "And what do you know about it?"
Darthanian bowed, four hands folded, somehow looking far older and meeker than he had when he was scrambling down the steps to help Spock hold off the attacking Specials. "It is our study, my lady. The futures—all possible futures—and all the various pasts. It is what the savants of Yoondri were known for. If, as I understand, this man stands close to some cusp of time—some event, or person, necessary to your present—any tampering with his mind as it exists, any whatsoever, even to question him, or alter in the slightest the process by which he makes decisions, can serve to undo all that you have worked to achieve."
"Even if he's just programmed to…" She hesitated.
"Programmed to what, Domina?" inquired the sage. "We do not know—none of us knows—exactly what causes a decision to be reached. What causes an event to unfold in one way or another. What causes a man to turn right instead of left, just at the time when it is needed; a woman to say yes instead of no; a child to laugh at something instead of running away in fear. Just because we never invented spaceflight does not mean we haven't studied chaos theory. If you plan to step twice into the same river, you had best not do anything to alter, even in the slightest, the flow or composition of its stream."
McKennon stared at Kirk with eyes that would have frozen mercury.
"Better to let the shuttle go for now, my lady," said Darthanian softly. "My misguided friends spoke of the stars that were their destination. With a chart, I can find them for you in your own time. But without tools, without equipment, without the instruments of teaching or the mechanisms of survival, even if they reach their destination I cannot see how they will survive."
She swung sharply away, jerked her hand toward Mr. Scott. "Give him an injection of anticane," she ordered one of the Specials. "I take it," she added venomously, looking back to Kirk, "that you'll order him to repair the damage he has done, if for no other reason to enable us to get back through the Crossroads Anomaly as well?"
"If for no other reason," said Kirk politely.
He thought McKennon was going to spit in his face. But she only turned on her heel and stalked back up the stairs; a slip of white skin and black silk and hair the color of embers. She quite clearly did not see the silent form of Captain Varos, still standing, like a shadow in the door, watching her out of sight.
It was the last Kirk ever saw of her.
Mr. Scott took his time fixing the Savasci's engines. "We wouldna want to do a poor job on 'em, seein' as how they're goin' back through the Anomaly. Accordin' to the Master—er, Captain Arios—ships ta
ke a hell of a poundin' in the energy fields there."
He spoke to Kirk and Mr. Palahnuk, the assistant engineer, and the two flinty-eyed Specials who stood guard over him while he worked. Not that they, or Mr. Palahnuk, had any idea of whether the engines were being repaired correctly or not. Owing to the shortness of voyages with the psion jump, the engineer had been relegated to an almost custodial position, responsible for the vestigial impulse engines and warp drive that were only required to get the ship from one jump point to the next.
Palahnuk had already tried to fix the elegantly subtle havoc Scott had wrought, and had done a fair job on what of it he could find. But the ship still hadn't moved a single degree. On the small engine-room viewscreen, Kirk could see the dwindling yellow flare of the Nautilus's warp engine like a tiny star in the center of the triangular window formed by the Enterprise's engineering hull and nacelles. On the readouts, which he tapped into idly while watching Scott work, he could see the digitalized shapes of the three ships as points in a steadily lengthening line whose end aimed straight toward the heart of the Crossroad Nebula.
Despite the racking numbness still plaguing his right leg and right shoulder—in a burst of spite McKennon had forbidden the medics to give him any anticane—Kirk felt conscious of a job well done.
Mr. Scott was still working on the engines when Cymris Darthanian and Captain Varos came onto the small upper engine deck.
Kirk rose to his feet, uneasy in the presence of the Romulan captain. He had made sure that yeomen Chavez, Watanabe, and Wolfman, the remaining security guards, had not been out of his sight since their capture. Watanabe had been given a partial dose of anticane, which left him groggy and clumsy-handed but no longer in pain, and Chavez had stuck close by his side, ready to resist any attempt to get any of them alone. But none had been made.
It was Darthanian who stepped forward, bowed, and spoke, the soft whistling voice flowing into the words of the translator and beginning now to mimic their form.
"Captain Kirk," he said. His palate could not form the hard "K" and the sound was a sort of buzzing whine. "Domina McKennon has agreed that any attempt to interfere to the smallest degree in matters touching this branch of the time stream would be extremely ill-advised. By the same token, however, we realize that interference has already occurred—massive interference. Hope and despair are factors like any others; knowledge is a factor.
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