Star Trek - Blish, James - 07

by 07(lit)

  "You will gather laurel leaves! You will light the ancient fires! You will slay a deer-and make your sacrifice to me!"

  Kirk roared with laughter. "Gather laurel leaves? Listen to him!"

  "It's warm enough without lighting fires!" shouted McCoy.

  Chekov chuckled. "Maybe we should dance around a Maypole."

  Apollo rose. "You shall reap the reward of this ar-rogance."

  "Spread out. Get ready," Kirk said quietly. Then he turned, shouting, "We are tired of you and your phony fireworks!"

  "You have earned this-"

  Apollo had lifted an arm when Carolyn's "No!" came in a scream. "No, please, no! A father does not destroy his children! You are gentle! You love them! How can they worship you if you hurt them? Mortals make mis-takes. You know us!"

  "Shsssh," Kirk hissed. She didn't so much as glance at him. She was on her knees now before the throne. "Please-you know so much of love. Don't hurt them!"

  The raised arm lowered. Apollo stepped from the dais and bent to lift her in his arms. Then he placed her on his throne. His hand on her neck, he turned to face them.

  "She is my love of ten thousand years," he said. "In her name I shall be lenient with you. Bring the rest of your people down to me. They will need homes. Tell your artisans to bring axes."

  Kirk's voice was acid with disappointment. "And you'll supply the sheep we herd and the pipes we'll play."

  Apollo took Carolyn in his arms. The sunny radiance gathered around them. They dissolved into it-and were gone.

  "Captain, we must do something!"

  Kirk strode over to Scott's bench. "We were doing something until that girl of yours interfered with it! All right, she stopped him this time! How long do you think her influence will last?"

  It was a question Carolyn was asking herself.

  Gods were notoriously unfaithful lovers. Now the summer grass in the olive-groved glade was still green beneath her sandals. But autumn and winter? They would come in their seasons. Summer would pass... and when it went, she would know. Catastrophe-or glory. Now there was no knowing, no knowing of anything but the warmth of his arm around her shoulder.

  "They are fools," he was saying. "They think they have progressed. They are wrong. They have forgotten all that gives life meaning-meaning to the life of gods or of mortals."

  "They are my friends," she said.

  "They will be with you," he said. "I will cause them to stay with you-with us. It is for you that I shall care for them. I shall cherish them and provide for them all the days that they live."

  She was trembling uncontrollably. She wrung her hands to still their shaking. He took them in his.

  "No dream of love you have ever dreamed is I," he said. "You have completed me. You and I-we are both immortal now."

  His mouth was on hers. She swayed and his kiss grew deeper. Then her arms reached for his neck. "Yes, it is true," she whispered. "Yes, yes, yes..."

  Kirk glanced at her sharply as she re-entered the temple.

  "Lieutenant, where is he?"

  She didn't answer; and Scott, raising his head pain-fully from his bench, saw her face. "What's happened to her? If he-"

  She passed him to move on toward the throne. Her look was the absent look of a woman who has just discovered she is one. It was clear that the men of the Enterprise had ceased to exist for her.

  "She can't talk," Scott said bewilderedly. "He's struck her dumb."

  "Easy does it, Scotty," Kirk said. "She won't talk to you. You're too involved. But she'll talk to me."

  "Want some assistance, Captain?" Chekov asked.

  "How old are you, Ensign Chekov?"

  "Twenty-two, sir."

  "Then stay where you are," Kirk said. He walked over to the girl. "Are you all right, Lieutenant Palamas?"

  She stepped down from the dais. "What?"

  "I asked if you are all right."

  "All right? Oh yes. I-am all right. I have a message for you."

  "Sit down," Kirk said. "Here on this bench. Beside me-here."

  She swallowed. "He-he wants us to live in eternal joy. He wants to guard... and provide for us for the rest of our lives. He can do it."

  Kirk got up. "All right, Lieutenant, come back from where you are. You've got work to do."

  "Work?"

  "He thrives on love, on worship. They're his meat."

  "He gives so much," she said. "He gives-"

  "We can't give him worship. None of us, especially you."

  "What?"

  "Reject him. You must!"

  "I love him," she said.

  Kirk rubbed a hand up his cheek. "All our lives, here and on the ship, depend on you."

  "No! Not on me. Please, not on me!"

  "On you, Lieutenant. Accept him-and you condemn the crew of the Enterprise to slavery. Do you hear me? Slavery!"

  The slate-gray eyes were uncomprehending. "He wants the best for us. And he is so alone, so... so gentle." Her voice broke. "What you want me to do would break his heart. How can I? How can I?" She burst into passionate weeping.

  "Give me your hand, Lieutenant."

  "What?"

  He seized her hand. "Feel mine? Human flesh against human flesh. It is flesh born of the same time. The same century begot us, you and I. We are contemporaries, Lieutenant!"

  All sympathy had left his voice. "You are to remem-ber what you are! A bit of flesh and blood afloat in illimitable space. The only thing that is truly yours is this small moment of time you share with a humanity that belongs to the present. That's where your duty lies. He is the past. His moment in time is not our moment. Do you understand me?"

  The slate-gray eyes were anguished. But he sustained the iron in his face until she whispered, "Yes-I under-stand." She rose, left him, bent distractedly to pick up a tricorder; and half-turning, looked up at the temple's ceiling as though she were listening.

  "He's-calling me," she faltered.

  "I hear nothing," he said.

  She didn't reply. The iron in his face was steel now. Desperate, he grabbed her shoulders. As he touched them, their bone, their flesh seemed to be losing solidity. She grew misty, fading. Kirk was alone with the echo of his own word "nothing".

  Sinking down on the bench, he put his head in his hands. Slavery. It would claim all of them, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov. And up on the ship, they, too, would be enslaved to the whims of this god of the past. Sulu, Uhura, Spock...

  "Spock here, Captain! Enterprise to Captain Kirk! Enterprise calling Captain Kirk! Come in, Captain!"

  "I've gone mad," Kirk said to his hands. His useless communicator beeped again. "Communication re-stored, Captain! Come in, Captain. First Officer Spock calling Captain Kirk..."

  "Kirk here, Mr. Spock."

  "Are you all right, sir?"

  "All right, Mr. Spock."

  "We have pinpointed a power source on the planet that may have some connection with the force field. Is there a structure of some sort near you?"

  Kirk had a crazy impulse to laugh. "Indeed there is, Mr. Spock. I'm in it."

  "The power definitely emanates from there."

  "Good. How are you coming with the force field?"

  "Nuclear electronics believes we can drive holes through it by synchronization with all phaser banks. We aim the phasers-and there'll be gaps in the field ahead of them."

  Kirk drew a deep lungful of air. "That ought to do it, Mr. Spock. Have Sulu lock in every phaser bank we've got on this structure. Fire on my signal-but cut it fine. We'll need time to get out of here."

  "I would recommend a discreet distance for all of you, Captain."

  "Believe me, Mr. Spock, we'd like to oblige but we're not all together. One of us is hostage to the Greek god Apollo. This marble temple is bis power source. I want to know where he is. when we attack it. Kirk out."

  "I seem to have lost touch with reality." McCoy was looking curiously at Kirk. "Or maybe you have. Was that Spock you were talking to on that broken com-municator-or the spirit world?"
<
br />   "Function has been restored to it. Don't ask me how. Ask Spock when you see him again. Now we have to get out of here. All phaser banks on the Enterprise are about to attack this place. I'll give you a hand with Scotty."

  Scott said, "I won't leave, sir." Then his anxiety burst out of him. "Captain, we've got to wait till Carolyn comes back before you fire on the temple. We don't know what he'll do to her if he's suddenly attacked."

  "I know," Kirk said. "We'll wait, Scotty."

  As he arranged the paralyzed arm around his shoul-der, he said, "That mysterious organ in the gorgeous chest, Bones-could it have anything to do with his energy transmissions?"

  "I can't think of any other meaning it could have, Jim."

  The gorgeous chest, its extra organ notwithstanding, had another meaning for Carolyn Palamas. Its existence had plunged her into the battle of her life. Walking beside her god in the olive-groved glade, her eyes were blank with the battle's torture. It centered itself on one thought alone. She must not let him touch her. If he touched her...

  "You gave them my message," he said. "Were they persuaded?"

  They'd said he was the source of mysterious power. He was not. He was the source of mysterious rapture. People, millions of them, shared her moment of time.

  They crowded it with her. But not one of them could evoke the ecstasy this being of a different time could bring to birth in her just by the sound of his voice.

  "You persuaded them," he said. "Who could deny you anything?"

  His eyes were the night sky, starred. He caught her in his arms; and not for her soul's sake or humanity's either, could she deny him her mouth. She flung her -arms around his neck, returned his kiss-and pushed him away.

  "I must say that the way you ape human behavior is quite remarkable," she said. "Your evolutionary pattern must be-"

  "My what?"

  "I'm sure it's unique. I've never encountered any specimen like you before."

  "Haven't you?" he said. Running laughter sparkled in the dark eyes as he reached for her again. She held herself rigid, tight, withdrawn. The sparkle flamed into anger. "I am Apollo! I have chosen you!"

  "I have work to do."

  "Work? You?"

  "I am a scientist. My specialty is relics-outworn objects of the past." She managed a shaken laugh. "Now you know why I have been studying you." She unslung her tricorder, aiming it at him. "I'd appreciate your telling me how you stole that temple artifact from Greece."

  He knocked the tricorder out of her hand. "You can-not talk like this! You love me! You think I do not know when love is returned to me?"

  "You confuse me with a shepherd girl. I could no more love you than I could love a new species of bacteria." Lifting the hem of her golden robe, she left him to climb back up the gladed hill. Then he was be-side her. Anguish struggled with fury in his face.

  "Carolyn, what have you said to me? I forbid you to go! I command you to return to me!"

  "I am dying," was what she thought. What she said was: "Is this rage the thunderbolt that dropped your frightened nymphs to their knees?"

  An eternity passed. His hand fell from her shoulder.

  Then a wild cry broke from him. He raised an arm and shook a fist at the sky. The air in the glade went sud-dently sultry, oppressive. The sun disappeared. A chill breeze fluttered her robe as she began to run up the glade's incline.

  It did more than flutter Kirk's jacket. A fierce gust of wind blew it half off his shoulders. Under its increasing howl his communicator beeped feebly. "Spock, Captain. Sensors are reporting intense atmospheric disturbance in your area."

  The sensors hadn't exaggerated. The clouds over Kirk's head darkened to a sickly, yellowish blackness that hid the glimmer of the temple's marble. It was cleaved by a three-pronged snake of lightning before it flooded in again. There followed a crack of thunder; and another lightning flash struck from the sky. Kirk heard the sound of splitting wood-and an olive tree not five feet away burst into flame. Grabbing his communicator, he shouted into it. "Stand by, phaser banks! Mr. Spock, prepare to fire at my signal!"

  Scott rushed to him. "Captain, we've got to go and find her!"

  "Here is where we stay, Mr. Scott. When he comes back-" The wind took the words from his mouth.

  "What if he doesn't, sir?"

  "We'll bring him back. When that temple is-"

  There was no need to bring him back.

  He was back. The God of Storms himself. He topped the olive trees. A Goliath of power, Apollo of Olympus had returned in his gigantic avatar. The great head was flung back in agony, the vast mouth open, both giant fists lifted, clenched against the sky. It obeyed him. It gave him livid lightning forks to hurl earthward and filled his mouth with rolling thunder. Leaves shriveled. The tree trunk beside Kirk began to smoke. Then it flared into fire-and the black sky gave its God of Storms the lash of rain.

  Stumbling toward the temple, Carolyn Palamas screamed. The gale's winds tore at her drenched robe. She screamed again as the bush she clung to was whipped from the ground, its branches clawing at her face. Apollo had found her. He was all around her, the blaze of his eyes in the lightning's blaze, in the rain that streamed down her body, the wild cry of the wind in the ears he had kissed. The she saw him. The God of Storms stooped from his height above the trees to show her his maddened face. He brought it closer to her, closer until she shrieked, "Forgive me! Forgive me!-" and lay still.

  "Captain, you heard her! She screamed!"

  "Now, Mr. Spock," Kirk said into his communicator.

  The incandescing phaser beams struck the temple squarely in its central roof.

  "No! No! No!"

  The god who had appeared before the temple dwarfed it. He had unclenched his fists to spread his hands wide on his up-flung arms. Bolts of blue-hot fire streamed from his fingers.

  "Oh, stop it, stop it, please!"

  Carolyn, running to Apollo, halted. Behind him the temple was wavering, going indistinct. It winked out- and was gone.

  She fell to her knees before the man-size being who stood in its place.

  He spoke brokenly. "I would have loved you as a father his children. Did I ask so much of you?"

  The grief-ravaged face moved Kirk to a strange pity. "We have outgrown you," he said gently. "You asked for what we can no longer give."

  Apollo looked down at the girl at his feet. "I showed you my heart. See what you've done to me."

  She saw a slight wind stir his hair. She kissed his feet-but she knew. The flesh under her lips, his body was losing substance. Kirk made no move; but he had noted that the arms were spreading wide.

  "Zeus, my father, you were right. Hera, you were wise. Our time is gone. Take me home to the stars on the wind..." The words seemed to come from a great distance.

  It was very still in the empty space before the ruined temple. "I-I wish we hadn't had to do that," McCoy said.

  "So do I, Bones." Kirk's voice was somber. "Everything grew from the worship of those gods of Greece- philosophy, culture. Would it hurt us, I wonder, to gather a few laurel leaves?"

  He shook his head, looking skyward.

  There were only the sounds of a woman's sobbing and the drip of raindrops from olive trees.

  McCoy, sauntering into the Enterprise bridge, strolled over to Kirk and Spock at the computer station.

  "Yes, Bones? Somebody ill?"

  "Carolyn Palamas rejected her breakfast this morn-in'."

  "Some bug going around?"

  "She's pregnant, Jim. I've just examined her."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "Apollo?"

  "Yes."

  "Bones, it's impossible!"

  McCoy leaned an arm on the hood of the computer.

  "Spock," he said, "may I put a question to this gadget of yours? I'd like to ask it if I'm to turn my Sickbay into a delivery room for a human child-or a god. My medical courses did not include obstetrics for infant gods."

  THE CHANGELING

  (John
Meredyth Lucas)

  The last census had shown the Malurian system, which had two habitable planets, to have a population of over four billion; and only a week ago, the Enterprise had received a routine report from the head of the Federa-tion investigating team there, asking to be picked up. Yet now there was no response from either planet, on any channel-and a long-range sensor sweep of the system revealed no sign of life at all.