The Fire and the Rose

by David R. George III

  “How long will you be staying for?” Amanda asked.

  Spock glanced over at Sarek, and then said, “For some time, I suspect.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Amanda said. She looked up at Sarek and lifted two fingers to him, which he met with his own. The touch lasted only an instant, a personal but not intimate greeting between partners. Gesturing back toward the sack she had left beside the front door, she said, “I just got some fresh fruit over at the market. I was going to prepare our midday meal. Will you dine with us?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Spock said. “Thank you.”

  “Good,” she said with a smile. She retrieved her canvas bag and headed toward the kitchen.

  “I am going to assist your mother,” Sarek said. “Why don’t you take your things up to one of the guest rooms?”

  “I will,” Spock said. “Thank you.”

  As Sarek followed Amanda toward the kitchen, Spock picked up his duffel and started toward the center of the house, where a winding staircase rose to the second floor. Upstairs, he entered the first room he came to—the room in which he had lived as a boy. It did not appear much different now than it had all those years ago, though it now lacked the few items with which he had adorned it back then.

  Spock set his duffel down on the bed and unpacked it. He put some of his clothes in the closet, some in the dresser, and he moved his toiletries into the refresher. After placing his personal data slate on the desk, he sat down on the edge of the bed and spent a few moments taking in his surroundings.

  It all seemed so familiar—in some ways, too familiar. He had lived here for years, but never had he felt completely at ease on Vulcan. Though born and raised here, he had always been an outsider. Now, sitting in the room in which he had spent so much time as a child, he felt anything but at home.

  Fifteen

  1930

  Kirk grabbed his coat and walked up the stairs after Miss Keeler, conflicted by what he felt. Her anger—unfairly directed at Spock for the theft of the tools, though she could not have known that—had wounded him. Regardless of her understanding of what he’d done, regardless of his justification for it, he had disappointed her, and that troubled him deeply. He and Spock had only been here in the past for three weeks, and yet in that time, Kirk had already developed strong emotions for this woman he barely knew.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw Edith waiting there with a small-framed man, perhaps in his forties, in a brown jacket. Kirk recognized him as one of the two watchmakers who’d been in the mission earlier. He must have returned here for some reason, and when he’d found his tools missing, he’d gone to Edith.

  “Mister McKenna,” Edith said, “this is Mister Kirk. It was his friend who took your tools, but they tell me that they did not intend to steal them, that they would have returned them in the morning.”

  “And you believe that?” McKenna said.

  “Actually, I very much do,” Edith replied, and then she turned to Kirk. “Mister McKenna lost his watch shop last month,” she said. “He’s working down at the docks now when he can, but he still does watchmaking on the side when he has a chance. He’s got no room where he lives, so I let him come here when the mission’s doors are closed.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” Kirk said.

  “Not at all,” Edith said. “It’s just something one does for a neighbor.” She turned back to the watchmaker. “Isn’t that right, Mister McKenna?”

  “Well, yes, of course,” he said. “And I’m much obliged to you, ma’am.”

  “You know,” she went on, “it might also be neighborly if you would allow Mister Kirk’s friend to borrow your tools overnight.”

  “Ma’am, I’d like to help but—”

  “You do your work here because you have no place to do it at home, isn’t that right?” Edith asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is,” McKenna said.

  “Well, then, you won’t miss your tools if Mister Kirk’s friend is using them at night,” Edith said. “That way you can keep doing your work here when you need to and everybody gets what they need.” Kirk perceived the implied threat in her words, that if McKenna didn’t permit Spock to borrow his tools, then she wouldn’t permit McKenna to use the mission. The watchmaker must have understood as well because he quickly relented.

  “Well, I suppose it’ll be all right,” he said. “Your friend’s going to be careful with them, isn’t he? Some of them are delicate.”

  “Which is precisely why my friend needs them,” Kirk said. “He’s doing radio work.”

  “I used to do that too,” McKenna said. “Still have some sources if you need any equipment.”

  “Actually, we don’t right now,” Kirk said, “but we might. I’ll let Miss Keeler know if we do and then she can let you know.”

  “All right then,” McKenna said. “Guess I’ll be on my way.” He started down the hall toward the mission’s main room, but then turned back. “I’ll see you here tomorrow afternoon then, Miss Keeler?” he asked.

  “You will indeed, Mister McKenna,” she said. Finally, the watchmaker departed.

  “Thank you,” Kirk told Edith.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “I just wish you’d come to me about borrowing the tools in the first place.”

  “My humble apologies,” Kirk said, bowing his head.

  “You can apologize all you want,” Edith said, “but you still promised to walk me home.”

  “I certainly did,” he said. “Shall we go?”

  “Let me get my cloak,” Edith said, pointing down to the door that opened into her office. “I also want to put on a longer shirt. It’s cooler out this afternoon than it was this morning.” At the moment, she wore a brown, lightweight knit sweater with short sleeves.

  She ducked into her office and closed the door. When she returned, Kirk saw that she had changed into a white blouse, and she held her purse in one hand. As they walked into the main room and over to the front doors, she set a white knit beret atop her head, then fastened her long, dark cloak about her. She told Rik that she would be going, but that Spock would help him with dinner for the men. Then she and Kirk stepped out into the late afternoon. Already the sun had begun to set.

  For a while, the two of them strolled along the sidewalk without talking. They walked side-by-side, and the silence felt comfortable to Kirk, as if he knew this woman so well, and she him, that they didn’t need to speak. The idea seemed absurd on the face of it, and yet he somehow sensed a connection with Edith.

  After a few blocks, she said, “So, Mister Kirk, are you going to tell me where you’re from and what you’re doing here, or are you going to make me figure it out on my own?”

  A smile played at the side of Kirk’s mouth. “Jim,” he said. “You can call me Jim.”

  Edith hesitated for a moment, and Kirk thought that she might protest. Then she said, “All right, Jim. And I’d like it if you called me Edith. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want to know about you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Kirk said. “Isn’t a little mystery good for the soul?”

  “So you enjoy taunting me,” Edith said.

  “No, I don’t,” Kirk said seriously. “But I think maybe you already know who I am.” He knew that she couldn’t possibly even imagine that he commanded a starship three hundred years in the future, but here in 1930, she looked to the stars in the same way that he had when he’d grown up on a farm in Iowa.

  “Maybe I already do know you,” Edith agreed. “Maybe a little bit. But do you know me?”

  “Maybe a little bit,” Kirk said with a chuckle. “But you’ve got a little mystery about you too. I could ask you some questions.”

  “Me?” Edith said in a surprised and obviously affected tone.

  “Oh, don’t give me that ‘questions about little old me’ look,” he said, essentially repeating what she’d said to him earlier.

  “Well, tell me, Jim,” she said, “what questions do you have for me?”

>   “Let me see,” Kirk said, trying to think of what he should ask. In truth, he wanted to know everything about her, but then something odd he’d noticed occurred to him. “You run the mission,” he said.

  “I try to,” Edith replied.

  “So you’re responsible for everything in it,” he went on.

  “Yes, as much as I can be.”

  “All right,” he said. “So why do you have an eight-year-old calendar hanging on the wall?” He’d noted it that first day he and Spock had been in the mission, and until he’d seen a newspaper, he’d thought they’d traveled back to 1922.

  Beside him, Edith looked down, and when she didn’t respond, he realized that something had happened.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “If I’ve asked something wrong—” He stopped walking and faced her.

  “No, no, not wrong, it’s just…” She peered up at him, as though forcing herself to face this moment. Finally, she started walking again. “I came with my father to this country almost eight years ago,” she said. “In June of nineteen twenty-two. He was having a difficult time in England… really, he had been for a long while, since my mother died when I was a girl. But he finally decided that he wanted to make a new start for himself, and he thought that the United States would give him an opportunity to do that.”

  They waited as an automobile passed in front of them, then crossed the street to the next block.

  “He also thought that this country would provide me more opportunities as well,” Edith went on. “Women had been given voting rights equal to men here in 1920, and that hadn’t happened yet in England. So he tried to convince me to come with him.” Edith got quiet again for a few seconds, and then said, “He needn’t have. I wouldn’t have wanted to live with an ocean between us. So I came with him.” Again, she looked up at Kirk with what seemed like great purpose. “He died only a few days after we arrived in New York.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kirk said, genuinely sad for what had been an obviously terrible loss for her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, that calendar was one of the first things we bought when we got here because it showed scenes of American history. I kept it because… I don’t know why. I suppose because it seemed for a while like time just stopped for me. I loved my father very much.”

  Kirk wanted to say something to comfort her, but he knew that no words could ease whatever pain she still felt. Rather, he simply continued walking beside her, offering his presence however she needed it. After a few minutes, as dusk rose, the streetlamps came on around them. Kirk glanced up at one and then over at Edith. She smiled sweetly at him, and he took her hand in his. Once more, he felt the connection between them.

  They passed a store selling radios, the strains of a song wafting out into the twilight. They came to another intersection and ran across the street in front of a horse-drawn carriage. Along the way, their hands parted, but it seemed natural. Everything seemed natural with Edith.

  As they walked along the next block, Edith suddenly asked, “Why does Spock call you ‘captain’? Were you in the war together?”

  “We… served together,” Kirk said, not wanting to lie to her.

  “And you, um, don’t want to talk about it?” she said. “Why?” She stopped and turned to face him. Kirk started to answer, but Edith continued to ask questions. “Did you—did you do something wrong? Are you afraid of something?”

  He gazed into her eyes and saw a depth of caring there—of caring for him—that he didn’t know if he’d ever seen in anyone’s eyes before. Then she placed a hand on his arm and said, “Whatever it is, let me help.”

  The words resonated for Kirk. His mother had instilled in him a love for reading at an early age, and he’d enjoyed books throughout his life. What Edith said brought one of his favorite tomes to mind. He put an arm around her back and started walking with her again. “’Let me help,’” he said. “A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme.” He felt her own arm around his back now. “He’ll recommend those three words even over ‘I love you.’”

  Edith stopped and looked at him again, a joyful smile on her lips. “Centuries from now?” she said. “Who—who is he? Where does he come from… um… where will he come from?”

  “Silly question,” Kirk said. “Want to hear a silly answer?”

  “Yes.”

  He peered up into the sky and immediately saw the constellation of Orion. “A planet,” he said, lifting his arm to point to the heavens, “circling that far left star in Orion’s Belt. See?”

  As Edith sent her gaze skyward, he dropped his hand back to his side and looked at her. After a few seconds, she turned to him. Slowly, they moved closer, and then their lips met, the touch of her flesh warm and soft and loving.

  When they pulled back from each other, he saw again her beauty. He also realized the depth of his foolishness. If he accomplished his mission, he would leave this place and this time, returning to a place where Edith could never come. He knew that he should not love her, that he should stop right now and walk away without looking back.

  Instead, he kissed her again.

  After weeks of effort and helped along by the nightly use of Mr. McKenna’s tools, Spock had finally completed a rudimentary mnemonic memory circuit. He had activated it a short time ago, executing a query both for any occurrences of the name Leonard McCoy in its various permutations, and for any discrepancies between the recordings of the two timelines. To minimize the volume of data searched, Spock limited it to the calendar year 1930. Now, at last, the tricorder signaled that some piece of information had been found.

  Spock sat down at the chair he’d placed in the middle of the room. Before it sat the nightstand, atop which he’d set the tricorder. All around the room, on both beds, on the short dresser, on the table, equipment buzzed and whined as the electrical components performed a task for which they had never been designed.

  On the tricorder’s small display, Spock saw a catalogue of data, each entry simply denoted:

  FILE.

  Knowing that he’d requested the list in chronological order, he selected the first one. For an instant, what appeared to be an image of a newspaper appeared on the screen, but then it blinked off. Spock touched a control, deactivating the display, then reached for one of McKenna’s tools. He raised it to the manual monitor adjustment he’d exposed at the top of the tricorder. He tuned the display, then reactivated it. A moment later, the image reappeared on the screen.

  It did, in fact, show a newspaper. Unexpectedly, an image of Edith Keeler appeared, her name spelled out in capital letters beneath it. Above, a banner read:

  SOCIAL WORKER KILLED.

  Below, the first few lines of her obituary stated that she had been killed in a traffic accident.

  A mixture of emotions rose within Spock. He at first tended toward disbelief, even as he understood that this identified discrepancy strongly supported the concept that he and the captain had been swept to the same focal point in time as McCoy. He also felt sadness for Jim; even though the captain would have had to leave Keeler when they returned to their own time, this turn of events would be more difficult for him to bear.

  But Spock had a job to do and he quickly settled his mind. He reached to the tricorder display controls to see if he could pan to the top of the newspaper page for a date. Slowly, the image began to move, but then he heard a sizzling sound in one section of the mnemonic memory circuit. A second later, the newspaper disappeared from the display in a coruscation of flashes and jagged lines.

  Spock exchanged one of McKenna’s tools for another, then stood and moved to the near bed, to the circuit components there. He reached down to where he believed the problem to be and made an adjustment. The sizzling stopped, and he returned to the tricorder. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that the data stored in the tricorder from 1930, from either one or both of the timelines, might have been lost. When he sat back down, he saw that his data sea
rch had resumed. For the moment, he let it run.

  As he watched the display, the door opened and the captain entered. He had spent the evening working at the mission. “How are the stone knives and bearskins?” he asked.

  “I may have found our focal point in time,” Spock said.

  Moving into the room and removing his coat, Kirk said, “I think you may also find you have a”—he sniffed at the air—“connection burning someplace.”

  “Yes, I’m overloading those lines,” Spock said. “I believe we’ll have our answer on this screen, Captain.”

  “Good,” Kirk said.

  “And Captain,” Spock warned, “you may find this a bit distressing.”

  Kirk brought over a wooden box to sit on. “All right, let’s see what you’ve got,” he said as he perched so that he too could see the tricorder display.

  Spock reached up with one of McKenna’s tools and tuned the display again, keying it to show one of the search results. “I’ve slowed down the recording we made from the time vortex.” Again, the image of a newspaper appeared.

  “February twenty-third, nineteen thirty-six,” the captain read. “Six years from now.”

  Spock knew at once that, in addition to losing data from the tricorder, he’d also lost part of the mnemonic memory circuit. He’d initially specified his search to include information only from 1930, but evidently that parameter had been lost when the search had resumed. Still, what appeared on the display confirmed his belief in the identity of the focal point in time to which they had been drawn. Beneath another labeled photograph of Edith Keeler, the headline read:

  F.D.R. CONFERS WITH SLUM AREA “ANGEL”.

  “The President and Edith Keeler,” read the captain, “conferred for some time today—”

  Suddenly the image began to roll, and then sparks shot from the components positioned atop the far bed. Flames flashed upward, and the vacuum tubes blackened. Spock stood and reached for the links to the tricorder, quickly disconnecting them.