“I didn’t go.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, wishing Janice would stop asking. If she [364] asked again Uhura would probably tell her the truth. The last thing Janice needed was to have to listen to anyone else’s troubles.
Besides, Uhura thought, I can hardly expect her to sympathize with my disappointment. It’s trivial compared to what she’s survived.
“Why were you looking for me?” Uhura asked gently. Maybe listening to someone else is exactly what I need, she thought. It will help me get things in perspective.
“I wanted to tell you,” Janice said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And I’ve decided you’re right.”
“Right about what?”
“About the commission. About testifying.”
“That’s wonderful, Janice,” Uhura said sincerely. “You should be very proud of yourself for making that decision. It took bravery.”
Janice blushed. “I don’t think I’m very brave.”
“Why did you change your mind?”
“Because of you. No, that’s not quite right,” Janice said quickly when she saw Uhura’s expression. “I don’t mean I’m going to testify because you think I should. I mean I’m going to testify because it’s the right thing to do. You stuck up for me, even though you could have gotten in trouble. Nobody ever, ever stuck up for me before. Nobody ever stuck up on Saweoure for people like me, either, but now I can. And I’m going to. I want to be as strong as you are. Someday. I’ll start by telling Captain Kirk what I told you. Every other place I’ve ever been, people used their power to make things easier for themselves. Even if it hurt someone else. But Captain Kirk is different. He’s like you. He does things because he thinks they’re right, even if they might hurt him.”
“You’re much stronger than you think, Janice,” Uhura said.
“It’s funny. I’m scared—but I’m happy, too. I feel like I can do anything!” She spread her arms as if to take in the whole universe. “Know what else?” she said in a conspiratorial voice.
“What else?”
“I’m going to let my hair grow. And then I’m going to do [365] something fancy with it. I was never allowed to, on Saweoure. But now I will.”
Despite herself, Uhura smiled.
On the worldship, the audience departed, the Enterprise beamed the props and equipment back on board, and cleaning servos and volunteers finished picking up the amphitheater. As the last robot, the last Enterprise crew member, the last stack of trash disappeared in the transporter beam, Spock reflected that the only sign left of the show was the sound of applause, still ringing in his ears.
He strolled through the backstage area, keeping an eye out for Lindy’s codepicker. Losing the piece of equipment had very much upset her. But Spock found nothing. He climbed the terraced stone platforms of the amphitheater.
At the top, James Kirk joined him.
“Hard to believe anything happened here at all,” the captain said.
A few flyers soared high above. Spock felt a moment’s regret that he could not join them.
“Commander Spock, I’ve been thinking about Lindy’s codepicker ... do you think Mr. Scott would ... er ... overlook regulations long enough to build her a new one?”
“The instrument is highly illegal, captain,” Spock said.
“I know that, commander.”
Spock realized Captain Kirk had asked him a question of fact, not posed him an ethical problem. “I believe, captain,” he said truthfully, “that under the current circumstances, Mr. Scott would carry out any task you set him.”
Scarlet swooped down and landed nearby. She greeted Spock with a translation of his personal name into her own language. Knowing his command of the flyers’ language to be pitiable, Spock did not attempt a suitable reply.
“I am glad to see you both one last time,” Scarlet said in Standard.
“One last time—? Scarlet, you mustn’t leave. Everything’s changed,” Captain Kirk said. “The Enterprise can stay near the worldship. We have so much to learn—”
“No. It is impossible. We’ve done you no service by coming here. We’ve incited you to violence, we’ve damaged you out of ignorance—”
[366] “Violence! You helped initiate peace!”
“It will not last, James. You know it.” She blinked. “You see—do you not?—the pattern is already changing.”
Captain Kirk flinched as if she had struck him. “It will last for a while ...” he said.
“If the universe remains as it is, your peace will last a shorter time than it might. The worldship will become a point of contention between your people. Its abilities are too tempting for those who solve their disputes with violence.”
“Koronin—”
“Koronin is not unique.”
Jim hesitated. “I know,” he said in a soft and regretful voice.
“Where is Uhura?” Scarlet said.
“She’s ... back on the Enterprise,” Jim said, surprised by what seemed to him an abrupt change of subject. Since Uhura herself could not explain why she chose not to see the flyers again, Jim could hardly explain for her. “Your language intrigued her, but the difficulties ...”
“I caused her great pain,” Scarlet said. “I nearly caused both of you to lose your lives. Someday your people may be ready to meet us. Someday worldship people may be wise enough to meet you without causing pain. But ... that is of the future.”
“What do you mean by someday? Will I meet you again? Will Spock?”
“No,” Scarlet said. “I will be gone, you will be gone. People live, and people die. Perhaps our children’s children’s children will greet each other.”
“I have no children,” Jim said bitterly.
Scarlet let her wings open; she reached out and enfolded Jim. The silky webbing slipped around his shoulders. “You are but young,” she said. Her other wing curved over Spock without touching him. “Good-bye, Spock.”
“Good-bye.”
“You’re going to move the worldship,” Jim said, not wanting to believe it.
She shook her head, and Jim felt a brief flash of hope that he had misunderstood her.
“I do not control the worldship, James,” Scarlet said. “I control the universe.”
Epilogue
THE WORLDSHIP GLOWED, a distant jewel. The Enterprise and the director’s fleet lay on opposite sides of it and a good distance from it, safely outside its vortex. From the bridge of the Enterprise, Jim watched it and regretted its imminent departure. Lindy and Dr. McCoy waited with him, and even Spock paused in his work to gaze at the viewscreen. Uhura was absent, and Jim worried about her.
Scarlet’s image shimmered into being on the viewscreen.
“I wanted to say good-bye,” she said. “To all of you. You won’t be forgotten.”
“You won’t change your mind?” Jim said.
“No. It is impossible.”
“I envy you the sights you’ll see, the distances that will pass.”
Scarlet blinked and touched her tongue to her sensory mustache. “You, too, will see many wonderful sights and pass great distances. Who knows? Perhaps the next time our people meet, you will seek us out.”
“Maybe we will,” Jim said.
“Lindy-magician ... I hope you find a sky for Athene.”
“So do I,” Lindy said. “Thanks, Scarlet—for everything.”
“May you fly with lightning.”
The turbo-lift doors swished open. Janice Rand came onto the bridge; to Jim’s surprise, Lieutenant Uhura followed. Rand took her place at the environmental systems station, but Uhura hesitated, watching the worldship.
“Uhura, singing one!” Scarlet said.
[368] “I couldn’t let you leave without seeing you again,” Uhura said. “It wouldn’t ... it wouldn’t be right. Scarlet, I’ll remember what you sang to me all my life.”
“I am glad. I feared—”
“I know.
So did I. But a glimpse of something beautiful is better than knowing nothing of it at all.” Her voice was steady.
“May the wind buoy you, and sing you to sleep.”
Uhura’s eyes glistened, but she never cried.
Last, Scarlet gazed at Spock.
From his reaction no one would ever suspect it, but he longed for the flying people to remain. Despite the danger of his communion with Scarlet, her experiences and her knowledge exhilarated him. If mind-melding were always such a challenge, he would seek out the experience as assiduously as Stephen did.
Scarlet sang his name, then spoke to him in Vulcan.
“Spock, you are the fixed point of the stories we will tell. The stories could not move, without you.”
“This part of the universe will never again pass the worldship,” Spock said. “I know that. Time is too short, the universe is too large, and there are too many other places to see. But I am glad we met, and I am glad you will not forget us. Nor will my people forget you.”
“Good-bye, Spock.”
Her image faded. The worldship glowed like a swarm of fireflies, like Stephen’s spinning torches, like a small hot nova.
The worldship vanished.
After a moment, Jim let out his breath. He had known that the worldship could move safely, but he had not believed it till now. It had gone, leaving nothing behind but a slowly spinning mass of wall-spheres, cast off and abandoned because they had solidified.
Inside Dionysus, Stephen watched through his ship’s wide viewports as the worldship vanished. He tried to recapture the brilliance of Scarlet’s thoughts and emotions. He tried to recreate the experience of the flyer’s world. But it had all faded. A powerful current dragged him farther and farther from a center he had been seeking. For a moment he had found it. He had felt it. He wondered if he would ever find it [369] again. He wondered if Lindy still felt willing to help him try.
On the bridge of the Enterprise, Uhura tried to make sense out of a translated cacophony of signals.
“Captain! Some kind of disturbance in the fleet—”
A tiny ship, an escape boat or a courier, sped away from the fleet and headed straight toward the Enterprise. It traveled quite a distance before the battle cruisers reacted and opened fire on it.
“Shields up! Hailing frequencies, Uhura! Director, what’s the meaning of this?”
The battle cruisers accelerated.
The director appeared on the viewscreen. His brow ridges had contracted and darkened, and he was enraged.
“Koronin!” he cried. “The traitor has escaped!”
“That’s no reason to blast my ship!” Jim said.
“Forgive me, captain. I must recapture—” The director’s image faded before he finished speaking.
The little ship evaded the photon torpedoes, veered toward the path the worldship had taken, dived straight between the dangerous pearls, and blasted one of the wall-spheres with its aft phaser. The explosion set off a chain reaction, an enormous burst of energy and light and luminous dust. With the spectral flash of a ship entering warp-speed, the courier vanished into warp space.
“Wow!” Lindy exclaimed.
The fleet ploughed forward. The roiling dust-cloud occasionally flashed with brilliant light as the remaining intact wall-spheres exploded. At the last moment the ships of the fleet veered aside. They twisted into their transition to warp space, producing a wild clash of interacting spectra, a pattern of darkness and brilliant multicolored light.
The Enterprise floated alone in silent space.
Jim heard laughter. He turned, looked up, looked around, and finally found Lindy doubled up on the deck behind his seat.
“Lindy, what are you doing?”
“Is he gone?”
“Who? The director? Yes.”
She rose, still chuckling. “I didn’t want to laugh in his face.”
“What are you laughing about?”
[370] “Koronin. I can’t help it, Jim, I know I ought to be glad she got caught and sorry she escaped—that was an escape worthy of Houdini!—but I feel exactly the opposite. And I know how she got free.”
“How?”
“She’s the one who stole my codepicker.”
“What? How? She was blindfolded!”
Lindy made a sound of amused contempt. “With a piece of cloth wrapped around her eyes? That’s no way to blindfold anybody.” She put her hands over Jim’s eyes. “Now look down the sides of your nose.”
“I see what you mean,” Jim said. “No pun intended. But if you didn’t want her to know how you did your escape, why didn’t you warn the director about the blindfold?”
“Because I was already showing him one trick—I didn’t want to show him two! Koronin must have palmed the codepicker when I put it down, and used it when they took her back to the flagship ...” Lindy whistled softly in appreciation. “Pretty good for a novice.”
“I suppose ...” Jim said. “I suppose the director will just catch her again.” Like Lindy, he felt a sneaky tendril of admiration for the renegade who had outsmarted the director and all his minions.
“I think her immediate recapture is unlikely,” Spock said. “She stole a courier, a craft designed for travel at high warp-speeds. In addition, the wall-spheres and their destruction formed a barrier to the larger ships. They could not follow her directly into warp space. By the time they discover her trail, she will have made her escape.”
McCoy looked quizzically at the science officer.
“Mr. Spock,” he said, “you sound like you’re happy that she got away.”
“I have no feelings in the matter at all,” Spock said. “I merely stated my analysis of the events.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have any feelings about it if she’d taken you back into the Klingon Empire and sold you to the oversight committee as a spy.”
“I would have no more feelings of hatred toward her than I do of happiness or gratitude now. I would hope that under the alternate circumstances you propose, I might be as adept at escape as Koronin.”
[371] “You would be,” Lindy said. “You’ve got the makings of a great illusionist.”
“I’m sure Lindy’s right, Mr. Spock,” Jim said. “You do a very convincing disappearing act onstage.”
“Thank you, captain,” Spock said.
“Hey, what about me?” McCoy said in a wounded tone. “I’m in the act, too, remember. Spock only has to vanish. I have to appear.”
Jim, who had indeed forgotten that McCoy was in the magic box illusion, maintained a discreet silence.
“It’s just that Mr. Spock has so much natural presence,” Lindy said, “that it’s a powerful effect when he vanishes.” At McCoy’s hurt expression she added quickly, “Not that you aren’t terrific in the illusion, too ...” Her voice trailed off as she realized she was getting herself in deeper.
“I believe that what Ms. Lukarian is trying to tell you,” Spock said to McCoy with his usual bluntness, “is that you are a doctor, not a magician.”
About the e-Book
(OCT, 2003)—Scanned, proofed, and formatted by Bibliophile.
STAR TREK: TOS - Enterprise, The First Adventure Page 41