The Fire and the Rose
Page 22
And then remembrance broke like a wave on the shores of time, bringing forth from the deep a clarity of perception.
In the desert of Gol, a sound broke the stillness. The touch of Sokel’s bridge against his mind fled, and with it, Spock’s connection to T’Vora. In the silence that ensued, he opened his eyes.
The day had faded, the Vulcan sun invisible beyond the rim of the canyon. The red sky had dimmed to a burnt orange. A light breeze had picked up.
Spock heard the movement in the dust and peered over to see Sokel scrambling to his feet, the elder’s attention firmly on T’Vora. Spock looked at his Kolinahr master and saw her still on her knees, but doubled over, her palms to the ground, her arms trembling. As Sokel reached her, she gazed upward. To Spock’s astonishment, she appeared dazed, and a trickle of blood flowed from her nose.
“Master, are you all right?” Sokel asked, taking hold of T’Vora’s upper arms, steadying her. Spock pushed himself up from the ground and quickly found himself lightheaded. He reached up to his face, and when he pulled his hand away, he saw the green of his own blood on his fingers.
“Yes,” T’Vora responded. “Yes, I’m all right.” Recovering his stability, Spock walked over as T’Vora breathed in heavily, then exhaled slowly. Extricating herself from Sokel’s grasp, she straightened up onto her knees. Sokel reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out several cloths.
“Your nose is bleeding, Master,” he said, handing it to T’Vora. She accepted it and dabbed at her philtrum as Sokel offered a cloth to Spock. He took it and wiped at his own face, then at his hands.
Carefully, T’Vora stood up and regarded Spock. “I congratulate you,” she said. “Rarely are aspirants so successful in recalling the emotions they have controlled, or in allowing me—or even themselves—access to them.”
“It is that which I wish to purge,” Spock said. “Without my recollections, without opening them up to scrutiny, how could I hope to do so?”
“What you say is logical,” T’Vora said. “Nevertheless, it is uncommon. Perhaps it is due to your human extraction, or to your ability to emote, or to the uniqueness and intensity of your experiences.”
Whatever the reason, Spock understood why masters conducted such efforts via a mind bridge and not a mind meld. A direct connection between Spock and T’Vora during such a powerful experience could have caused damage to either or both of their minds. Nothing such as this had happened during his first Kolinahr, but then, at the time, he had never before “died.”
“Regardless of the reason,” T’Vora continued, “this has been a very useful step in this process. Tomorrow, Spock, you and I will discuss what we experienced. This night and morning next, I wish you to contemplate all that we visited today. I must do the same.”
“Yes, Master,” Spock said.
“I will call upon you in the afternoon then,” she said. “We will now return to the sanctuary.”
Together, the three started through the canyon, back toward the Akrelt Refuge. As they walked, the stars began to appear overhead. They did not speak again that night, parting in front of the altar nearly an hour later.
In his room, Spock lighted a candle. He lay down on his bed, holding his fingers steepled together above him. Cautiously, he allowed into his thoughts some of the images and feelings that he had called to mind that day. As he reflected on all that he had been able to reveal to Master T’Vora, he suddenly realized why he had so readily been able to recollect emotions that, when they’d first occurred, he had suppressed. It was because this was not the only time he had remembered and experienced those emotions. Since Jim had died, much of this had filled his dreams.
Nineteen
1930
“This is how history went after McCoy changed it,” Spock said. Kirk sat beside him in the middle of their apartment, the two of them hunched over the nightstand and the tricorder atop it. Spock pointed to the small display. “Here, in the late nineteen thirties,” he said as a crowd scene appeared. A pair of cable cars seemed to identify the setting as San Francisco; the venerable vehicles still ran there in the twenty-third century. “A growing pacifist movement,” Spock went on, “whose influence delayed the United States’ entry into the second world war.” On the screen, the scene shifted to a large, elegant room, in which men appeared to deliberate. “While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.”
“Germany,” Kirk said, trying to recall the Earth history he’d learned in school, and at the same time trying to avoid any thoughts of Edith. “Fascism,” he said. “Hitler.” As though matching his words, the scene on the tricorder display shifted again, to images of brownshirts… Nazis… arrayed in great numbers and saluting, marching. Kirk heard somebody intoning their call to arms: Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! And Germany…“Won the second world war,” he said.
“Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first,” Spock confirmed, again pointing at the display.
A heavy breath escaped Kirk as the implications of it all threatened to suffocate him. And Edith…
“There’s no mistake, Captain,” Spock said. “Let me run it again.” He worked the tricorder’s controls. The image of the display rolled, then stopped on a newspaper article. Kirk read the title:
PACIFIST LEADER KEELER TO SPEAK IN ATLANTA.
“Edith Keeler,” Spock said. “Founder of the peace movement.”
“But she was right,” Kirk said, recalling more recent history, the great strides that peace had brought to humanity after World War III. “Peace was the way.”
“She was right,” Spock agreed, “but at the wrong time.”
Can there be a “wrong time” for peace? Kirk thought, but he knew the answer to that from firsthand experience. Peace was the way, but sometimes, as a last resort, force had to be used.
“With the A-bomb,” Spock continued, “and with their V-2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.”
“No,” Kirk said, the agony in his voice plain even to him. With Nazism ruling the world, would Zefram Cochrane even live, and if so, would he still create humanity’s first warp drive? Would there be first contact with Vulcans? Would there be a Federation?
“And all this,” Spock said, “because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying in a street accident as she was meant to.”
As she was meant to, Kirk thought. How could that be? How could such a wonderful, loving woman be meant to die? It only reinforced the uncaring nature of the universe. And to use Bones as the instrument of her salvation and death…
“We must stop him, Jim,” Spock said, his tone grave.
Kirk glanced at his friend, then slowly stood up. He felt the urge to flee, to find Edith and take her and run from this place—but he settled for pacing across the room. “How did she die?” he asked. “What day?” Would it be better to know, or not to know, he wondered.
“We can estimate general happenings from these images,” Spock said, “but I can’t trace precise actions at exact moments, Captain.” Yes, Spock had already told him that. They’d lost some of the 1930 data from the tricorder. “I’m sorry,” Spock finished.
“Spock,” Kirk said, knowing that he needed help, that he needed his friend to say the words. “I believe… I’m in love with Edith Keeler.” Spock already knew that, of course. Though he suppressed his own emotions, he could still see them in others.
“Jim,” he said, “Edith Keeler must die.”
Kirk felt as though a fist clenched around his heart. Really, he had known this for days, but to actually hear Spock say it, to utter it so declaratively…
“Spock,” he said, “I’m… going to do what has to be done. When the time comes, we’ll stop McCoy, but…” He hesitated, as though he had a decision to make, but in truth, he had known this for days as well. “I’m going to spend whatever time I can with Edith.”
“I understand,” Spock said.
Kirk felt grateful for Spock’s trust, but he also wondered if t
he Vulcan truly did understand, if he even could. Kirk knew that Spock had emotions, but that he held them hidden inside and tightly controlled. Strangely, considering the circumstances, he found himself feeling sorry for his stoic friend.
Kirk picked up his coat and headed for the door. “I’ll be back later,” he said. Then he went out to find whatever moments he could with the woman he loved.
Spock thought he heard something at the apartment door as he pulled on his coat and cap. He knew that the captain would be back soon from the mission, escorting Keeler home after the day’s work there. Then, as the captain slept, Spock would move outside to patrol the building through the night. Now that they had extracted as definitive an answer as they could from the tricorder, they’d taken to doing this each night. When McCoy arrived in the past, they intended to find him before he could inadvertently alter the timeline.
Of course, another possibility had occurred to Spock. As the captain had suggested when they’d first traveled through the Guardian, McCoy could still appear in any part of the world. Perhaps, in his cordrazine-induced madness, he would kill or injure somebody, a person who then failed to telephone a friend or relative in New York. Perhaps when that person in New York did not receive that call, they would then wait by the phone instead of going out and driving through the city. Perhaps that person would then fail to meet Edith Keeler in that fatal traffic accident, and history would still be changed.
The possibilities were infinite, Spock knew, and he could only continue to hope that time did indeed turn out to be fluid, and that they would have the opportunity to set the timeline right. If not, if time passed and Keeler did not die, if it became apparent that events had begun to enfold such that the Axis powers would win the second world war, what would he and the captain do? What could they do? Could they find a way to stop Keeler from founding the peace movement? Would that work to restore time, or would that simply complicate the alterations to it?
As Spock pondered the situation, he crossed the room and opened the door. He stepped out into the hall, intending to head to the mission, but then he heard Keeler’s voice to his left. He looked over to see the captain ascending the stairs toward her, where she stood on the third-story landing. As she spoke, she took a step down and then fell forward. The captain reached out and caught her.
“How stupid,” Keeler said. “I’ve been up and down those stairs a thousand times. I ought to have broken my neck.”
The captain stared at her, and Spock surmised what he must be thinking. Although an injury or her death here did not match the obituary Spock had read about Keeler dying in a street accident, it seemed noteworthy that the captain may have just prevented her from falling down a flight of stairs. Of course, had the captain not been here, then Keeler might not have started back down the stairs in the first place.
As she leaned in toward the captain and kissed him, Spock quietly opened the apartment door and stepped back inside. He waited just inside for a few seconds, until he heard the captain descend the stairs and walk down the hall. Then Spock opened the door again and went out to join him.
“Captain,” he said, “I did not plan to eavesdrop.”
“No, of course you didn’t,” Kirk said quietly, evidently shaken by what had just occurred with Keeler on the steps. He moved slowly past Spock to the stairs.
“I must point out that, when she stumbled, she might’ve died right there had you not caught her.”
The captain stood still for a moment on the top step, then gazed up at Spock. “It’s not yet time,” he said, as though begging for that to be true. “McCoy isn’t here.”
“We’re not that sure of our facts,” Spock told him. “Who’s to say when the exact time will come?” Spock trusted the captain to take the proper action when the time came, but he also wanted to ensure that his first reaction would not be as Edith Keeler’s lover, but as the commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise and a citizen of twenty-third-century Earth. “Save her,” Spock said, “do as your heart tells you to do, and millions will die who did not die before.”
The captain simply looked at him and said nothing. Then he continued on down the stairs. The hour had grown late, and the captain had been scheduled to sleep now, but Spock listened as Kirk walked through the vestibule and out the front door.
Spock turned around and went back into the apartment. There, he waited for the captain to return, and beyond that, for the tragic events that he knew would soon follow.
Twenty
2295/2285/2269
The two of them had climbed the Two Thousand Steps and now stood atop the plateau, gazing out at the canyon from its edge. The ascent had tired T’Vora. At one hundred thirty-five years of age, both her physical and mental vitality had begun to erode. She still felt strong, but not as strong as she once had. Though time itself had doubtless taken its toll, T’Vora knew too that her station in Vulcan society had added to the normal deterioration of her body and mind. The rigors of the Kolinahr did not confine themselves to aspirants; masters too paid their price. And while an aspirant endured the Kolinahr once—or sometimes two or even three times—masters in some regard went through it time and again as they guided others on their paths.
T’Vora looked from the canyon and over at Spock. He stared out across the landscape, but she could discern that he did not see it. He looked not outward, but inward, as he most often did these days. In the year since he had taken up residence in the Akrelt Refuge and begun the Kolinahr under her auspices, Spock had been perhaps the most dedicated of the many aspirants who had ever come to her. Initially, and in some sense antithetically, his desire to purge his emotions had been extremely powerful. T’Vora had thought that this might be a consequence of his human heritage, but once they had started to move beyond his feelings, once they had delved deeply into the rational portion of his mind and peeled away his sentiment, his logical need to achieve the Kolinahr had been as great.
Because of this, T’Vora’s interactions with Spock had paradoxically been both undemanding and incredibly arduous. In terms of her bridging to his experiences, thoughts, memories, and emotions, his intense commitment to the course he’d chosen had provided an openness, a willingness to lower his mental barriers to allow her access. Again, T’Vora had at first believed that her ability to so easily observe the core of his mind had been due to his human genetics, but she had come to see that Spock possessed highly developed defenses, as strong or stronger than any full Vulcan she had encountered, for as much as he permitted her to see, he still held some things sequestered away from her.
At the same time, her virtually unrestricted view into Spock came with a cost. The force of so many of his experiences, from an emotional and a rational standpoint, made even bridging to them an onerous undertaking. More than with any other aspirant she had ever conducted through the Kolinahr, T’Vora had found it necessary to take time away in order to process what she had learned of him, and also simply to renew her own strength through meditation and rest.
Now, as she regarded him on the high plateau of Gol, at the edge of the Akrelt Canyon, she could see that this process had not been easy for Spock either. She understood well the severity of the Kolinahr to even the most prepared, best inclined aspirants. In this case, the lines in Spock’s face had grown noticeably deeper; at the sides of his head, silver had begun to show in his hair, which had grown down past his shoulders; and his overall carriage reflected a weariness not present when first he had arrived here.
Of course, T’Vora had watched her own appearance begin to show similar signs during the past year. She supposed that, like other more traditional measures, the changes to their bodies could be used as a means of assessing the efforts she and Spock had so far put forth. Since the first time Sokel had initiated a mind bridge between them, those efforts had been significant. Month after month, T’Vora and Spock had explored Spock’s emotional existence, from the impact caused by his father’s disapproval of his human side to the loss he’d felt at the death of his closest
friend.
They had begun with the unique, peering into his “death” and “rebirth,” and it had proven a wise choice. From the moments leading up to his physical death through the fal-tor-pan that had reunited his katra with his restored body, Spock had experienced a plethora of different emotions, many of them relating to other times and events in his life. Analyzing and deconstructing these emotions, T’Vora and Spock had worked to recast all that he had felt in terms of logic. All living things must die. Spock had made a reasonable and reasoned choice to forfeit his life to save those of his crewmates. He had reinforced the reintegration of his mind and body via logical Vulcan methods. Under her direction, Spock had extracted his emotions from his memories, leaving behind an untainted canvas of fact.
But not completely untainted yet, T’Vora thought. For as much progress as Spock had made, he had yet a longer road to travel. Through their mind bridges, T’Vora had perceived in Spock a reservoir of remorse, collecting a series of regrets formed throughout the course of his life. As a boy, disappointing his father with his decidedly human behavior. As a man, realizing that he had hurt his mother, never telling her that he loved her. As a friend, failing Jim Kirk at the end of his life, allowing the captain’s final months to pass without contacting him when his pursuit of dangerous avocations clearly indicated his unhappiness. Spock had permitted T’Vora to see these and other instances of his shame, and with her help, he had worked his way through them.
And yet remorse remained within him, T’Vora was sure. Again and again during her interaction with Spock, it had hung in the distance, an island to which she could find no bridge. With so many other issues, she had not addressed it to this point. But with Spock making such major strides, the time had come at last.