She felt her body shake as with some dreadful neurological disease, a palsied, paralyzed state which could only stand—stopped and defeated.
She felt Argunov hold her shoulders, sensed his young despair. For a moment he had believed in her.
She summoned his face before her blinded eyes, and then another face, Vulcan—Vulcan eyes, Vulcan arms …
Sola opened her eyes and took a step forward. She moved like a stroke victim learning how to walk, moving over and beyond the messages scrambled by a ravaged brain. But she moved.
Jim! Human eyes. Human lips, and the taste of his fight with fire-dragons and his own demons of jealousy—and sacrifice.
She moved.
Now she saw Z'Ehlah, all but paralyzed with the effort to stop her, and by an almost metaphysical dread which said that Sola could not do this. For if she could, then Z'Ehlah could perhaps have broken the control, long ago. Her mate could have been free—
Sola moved past the shaken Z'Ehlah suddenly, in one lunge, and reached the control panel. She slashed her hand down across switches to cut out safety overrides, then shorted out the panel.
She heard a Zaran transporter hum behind her.
She was just touching the large purple lever which was the main power overload, when a hand fell on her and flung her away from the panel.
It was Soljenov.
"You were faster than I thought, my dear," he said tightly. He started to reach for the panel to undo the worst damage. Young Argunov dived past him and pulled down the purple lever.
Flames shot up, and something rumbled suddenly, ominously, within the crater. Half the lights flared high and then blacked out. The floor shook.
Soljenov turned on the young Watcher in astonishment. Then he himself focused a burn-out intensity of the direct pleasure on Argunov. The youngster stiffened and started to crumple, but Sola was suddenly there, catching his shoulders and looking into his eyes.
"Argunov!" she said. "Come. Break it."
Slowly the blue-gray eyes focused on her. Argunov fought to move and the palsy caught him. He shook under her hands. Then his eyes flamed up in one savage blast of fury at a long captivity which he knew suddenly held him only by his compliance.
He took a step forward, almost into her arms, and she held him for one instant and then turned with him to face Soljenov.
She could feel the shock spreading in ripples through the Totality Focal Center. For the first time the units had seen someone defy the unity. There was a young Zaran woman bent over a communications panel nearby. Suddenly she stood up and moved toward Argunov and Sola.
Z'Ehlah rallied to turn the pleasure signal on the young communications technician. She looked straight at Sola as the shaking nearly pulled her down—but she kept moving.
Sola turned back to Soljenov. But he did not look as worried as he should have. Indeed, he looked as if he held his quarry in his hand.
Suddenly the ground shifted and a crack opened in the floor. It belched sudden heat and an ominous steam.
Soljenov looked almost pleased. "I am finished with this installation, my dear—and with all who do not stand with me. I am taking the starship. You have now set yourself a time-limit for solving a certain problem."
He stepped to the communications panel and threw switches.
The holo-spaces above the console filled with life-size figures. Then backed up to show that each of them was stranded on two separate ledges divided by a chasm too wide to jump—and by a slowly rising flow of lava which eroded their ledges.
The Human figure was only partly conscious. But the Vulcan was fully conscious—of his own helplessness. He could not reach the Human. And if he had wanted to escape alone, his way back out was blocked by the psionic field of the Totality Focal Center. Not even Spock, much less Kirk, could have moved through it unaided.
And in minutes their ledges would collapse into the lava flow—if another quake did not get them first.
"So there it is, my dear," Soljenov said. "You may save one of them, but only one, for it can only be done by bonding with one of them. Bonded, you might bring him through the Focal Field, alive. No other way."
She did not pause to listen. She ran. The Totality Field could not stop her now, and she had the thread of direction, two threads.
It was not far to go, but it was the longest trip she had made. She dodged through breathless, airless corridors, reeking with steam and sulfur like the pits of the Human's Hell—or of parts of the Vulcan's home planet.
But it was Hell, here. She knew there was no salvation, for any of them. In moments she arrived on a third tongue of ledge, almost directly between them, the lava flow dividing around her ledge, almost at her feet.
Kirk was conscious now, and she was the first thing he saw. "Sola, get out of here!" He was all but naked and looked as if he had been dragged through jungle.
Then he caught the direction of her other look and looked over his shoulder to see Spock. He swore, once, short and sharp.
"Take him out," Spock said. "He can reach you along that ledge when you have bonded with him." Spock pointed out a toehold ledge of collapsed corridor, with a few handholds above, which an extremely active man might have made with no interference and every assistance. It might as well have been sealed off from Kirk by a wall. In fact, it was. The moment he moved toward it he would hit the Totality Focal Field.
If he were bonded with her, she might conceivably shield him enough for him to make it. She could not shield both of them. Spock did not point it out, but she saw a slender conduit which sagged out from Spock's ledge to within fifteen feet of her own. If it would hold his weight and he made no false move, there was some possibility that he could tightrope-walk it and jump far enough. But the Focal Field would get him, too, before he had gone two steps.
Kirk saw it, too. "Spock can make it along that conduit. Get him first." He crawled closer to the edge of his ledge—and hit the field. Then he understood. He flung himself back out of it and looked at her. "So—that's it." His eyes narrowed. "What Spock said—does that mean you could get him out by bonding with him?"
She looked at him bleakly. "I could bring one of you out, or try to. Only one. By bonding."
"Then it must be Spock," Kirk said immediately.
"It cannot be," Spock interposed. "We established that, long ago." To Sola he said, "You must take him and go. While you occupy the attention of the Focal Field, I will be able to move by my own Vulcan powers. Go."
It was a good try, and a refutation in itself of the legend that Vulcans cannot lie. She did not immediately dispute the point. If she chose Kirk, his belief in that lie was the only possible chance that she could get Kirk to move.
"Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "is lying in his Vulcan teeth. It won't work. I won't budge. But if you two will get the hell out in time, I may stand a good chance." He turned to the Vulcan. "Mr. Spock, you are to proceed out of here immediately by the means available, without argument. That is an order."
Spock looked at him for what seemed a long time. "I am unable to comply, Captain," he said. "Some things transcend the discipline of the service."
Sola looked from one to the other. It was in her hands now. Her choice—with finality.
She knew then that she could not choose. She would have traded places with either of them, not to have to choose. And if she did not choose, both would die. And she with them, for she would not leave.
Yet there was no way to choose. Stray bits of memory kept coming back to her: her first sight of Kirk in the clearing, his white face and look of keeping on keeping on—and the sudden look of that strain lifting as he learned what, and who, she was … Kirk, coming back essentially from death in the scoutship, because she would not let him go … Kirk sending her back to unlock the chains and scatter the vultures until Spock was truly free … Kirk in the tree-cave of the fire-dragon … Kirk jumping down beside them into the midst of the ten-foot manlings, with his puny club—going to fight the leopard. And Kirk—coming here, to offer
himself to the Totality, for the freedom and happiness of his friend, with the woman he loved. . . .
But there was Spock. She also had seen him dragging chains, rock, vultures, and all, and she had seen him break free, if only for a moment. In that moment he had been open and vulnerable, and in her hands. And he had not taken refuge behind the great wall of Vulcan and gone quietly off to die in the face of his contradiction. He had faced it, and her, head-on. And he had never for a moment forgotten Kirk or what price Kirk had been willing to pay for Spock's freedom.
It came to her suddenly that there was no way to choose between two such men. Any choice was treason to the value of the other one. Worse, the one she did not choose would know that she had not chosen him. And the one she chose would hate her for the death of the other half of himself.
Yet to refuse to choose was treason to both.
She would have to choose—now. And do it quickly before the one she chose could stop her. . . .
Then a voice spoke in her mind. 'So. You perceive the difficulty of the problem.' It was Soljenov.
'Yes,' she said silently. Then his image formed in a one-way hologram in front of her. Kirk and Spock would not see or hear him.
Soljenov laughed silently. 'This is the true Devil's dilemma, my dear. You had thought Gailbraith was your personal Devil. You were wrong. I am. What would you pay never to have them know your choice—because you would not have to make it?'
She felt her throat tighten. 'What are you asking?'
'More than your soul.'
McCoy struggled with a nightmare sense of Oneness. He had gotten what he had bargained for, in spades.
They had reached the point where McCoy and Dobius could no longer proceed. There was some kind of psionic field which did not register on McCoy's scanners, but gave him the personal collywobbles. Whatever that was. In this case, his legs wouldn't track.
Neither would the long legs of Mr. Dobius. They were caught somewhere between right brain and left brain. The big Tanian stalled out and stood numbly.
Gailbraith possibly could have moved into the field, but he stopped for them. "You were to experience Oneness," he said to McCoy. "It is time."
He reached out to touch McCoy's face and McCoy clamped his jaw and didn't fight it. "Get them out," he said.
"We must first get in—through Mr. Dobius," Gailbraith said.
Then his mind reached out and dissolved McCoy's consciousness into the edges of Oneness. It was terrifying, but not unpleasant. He found he could look through Gailbraith's eyes, sense the big man's body, sense his intentness on a purpose. Then he gathered McCoy up with him and both of them looked out of one of Mr. Dobius' eyes. They must be in his brain-half which was controlled by Gailbraith's Oneness.
Then they shifted across into the other half of the brain, and McCoy knew suddenly that they were within the Totality. He felt the enormous flowing of mental force—and then he sensed sudden eddies, torrents, confusion, even rebellion.
The Totality was in an uproar. And it knew in every individual cell that the volcano was giving way. But the individual cells were held to their posts by Soljenov.
Then abruptly, they were in Soljenov's perspective. He seemed to be hanging in space over a torrent of fire—facing Sola Thane, who was standing on a ledge above molten lava.
Then Soljenov became aware of Gailbraith and company. Soljenov turned around and his holographic perspective turned with him until McCoy could see through his eyes. The two men trapped on separate ledges: Kirk and Spock. Soljenov seemed to speak aloud for their benefit. And McCoy caught the flash of a thought which ordered a hologram of Gailbraith, McCoy, and Dobius to be found through the monitors and projected to face his own. In moments, as he spoke, it was done, and McCoy saw Kirk, Sola, and Spock see himself and Gailbraith in the new hologram. McCoy could still sense dimly the thoughts of Gailbraith and his One, and of Soljenov, but now he also seemed to see with his own eyes.
"You will note, Gailbraith, Doctor, and associate," Soljenov said to them, "that a trial has been set. The only means of saving either man is for Sola to bond with one of them, and in either case, I will then have my bonded-female as weapon—the culmination of the Z line of descent of Zaran females, bonded strongly to a male in a life-or-death choice. With Sola Thane, Ambassador Gailbraith, Oneness comes to the galaxy in both our lifetimes. War ends. All of the concerns of singletons become old and void. The galaxy becomes new—the playground of the new multicellular life."
"If I also join you," Gailbraith said. "Otherwise it becomes a contest for the survival of the fittest multicellular life. That would push evolution still further, perhaps. Or it would create a struggle of Titans to make all of the singleton struggles of all time look puny and bloodless."
Soljenov smiled grimly. "Precisely. That war of Titans would make Armageddon look like a preliminary event. There is no compromise, Gailbraith. Your fine vision of a plurality of Onenesses will not work. There must be one Total entity. Ultimately it must be galaxywide, or there will be a war of all against all. And only the Totality, with the final power which Sola Thane will bring it, can become that entity."
"Why?" Kirk asked suddenly from his ledge. He had a bone-white look which McCoy didn't like, but Kirk found strength somewhere for that flare of passionate thought which had turned tides for them before. "Why should plurality and diversity mean enmity? Even we singletons have learned friendship, love—a oneness which does not have to mean Oneness. For us, at least, Oneness means the end of the unique entity—dehumanizing, depersonalizing loss of identity. But our kind of oneness"—he gestured toward Sola and Spock—"is a celebration of individual identity, of difference. There is no love, no passion, no friendship, no ultimate personal choice which does not depend on the unique, irreplaceable one. It is what we would miss in Oneness, and why we have fought against you with our lives. But why shouldn't two diverse Onenesses also begin to find that in each other? What would prevent friendship between the unique entities of Oneness—friendship, perhaps even love?"
"Power prevents," Soljenov said. "An entity grows. Or dies."
"Infants and children grow," Kirk said. "Adults—love."
Soljenov shrugged. "You may have the good fortune to be an adult of your species, Captain. I am an infant of mine. The adult form of my species is not yet known. Does the caterpillar envision the butterfly? Yet the caterpillar must spin its cocoon. And I must spin mine." He looked at Sola. "We digress. You have not much time, and they"—he indicated Kirk and Spock—"have less. Your decision?"
"Sola," Kirk said urgently, "make no bargains. Take Spock. I will be all right."
She turned to him. "What bargain would you then make, and with whom? No. If I refuse Soljenov, he will let you die. And do you suppose there would be anything left for the other two of us then?"
"That is right," Spock said. "Get the Captain out. I shall make it under my own power."
"'And shall I live knowing that you lied,' Spock?" Sola said, as if it were a quotation between them.
Spock's eyes went bleak. "If necessary. But live. Get him out."
She turned to Soljenov. "I will not choose between them," she said.
"Then you choose the death of both," Soljenov said. "Or you accept my terms."
"I—" Sola began.
"No!" Kirk thundered. "Soljenov, you wanted a soul. All right. You have found my price. I won't promise not to fight you from within. But you will have me where you wanted me. I will become part of the Totality, or of Gailbraith's One—or perhaps the bridge to join both. I suspect that might influence Gailbraith to join you. My ship, Sola, and Spock are to go free—whether they like it or not."
Soljenov smiled. "Interesting, Captain. Do you believe that your soul is so valuable to me?"
"Yes," Kirk said.
"Gailbraith," Soljenov asked, "is it true that you would welcome the Captain as a bridge between us?"
"Possibly," Gailbraith said, "if he becomes part of my Oneness first."
"And if you t
hen fail to join me?" Soljenov asked.
"I am weighing a question," Gailbraith said. "When it is answered, I will tell you what it was—and name my decision."
Soljenov laughed. "When I have answered a question of my own, and if I accept the Captain's as the best offer—I might let you have him."
Spock turned to Kirk across the gulf and the Vulcan's eyes were hard. "I do not require or accept sacrifice."
Kirk met his eyes across the gulf. "I do not make one. I have—acquired a taste for oneness. Or Oneness. It is an elegant solution to an otherwise insoluble problem, Spock. The three of us have struggled with that problem, to no solution. There is no solution within our normal parameters. I cannot take her from you—or see her with you. I can't leave. You can't. She can't. Impasse. But nothing is won without cost. I will free the ship and settle with the question of Oneness. I do not think the Totality can continue its present course if I am in it. And this way—I will not be alone. Nor will you."
Spock stepped to the edge of his ledge. "At the first attempt to implement such a decision, Jim," he said levelly, "I will make it a null solution." He looked down into the flowing lava below.
"Spock!" Kirk yelled.
"That option is closed," Sola said quickly, stepping to the edge of her own ledge. "Soljenov, neither one of them can be yours." She lifted her head, and McCoy knew that he would remember that look forever. "Nor—mine," she said.
"Sola—" Spock said. It was the first time McCoy remembered hearing Spock speak that name. He wondered if it would be the last …?
"They both have their mission and life-path," Sola said. "And I have mine. Our paths have intersected—and now must diverge again. I could not stay—with one of them. Nor—leave with one of them. Nor present one with the other's dead body. I have known from the beginning that there could be no life for any two of us—over the other's pain. I will remain with you, Soljenov, not as your bonded-weapon, but with that bonding capacity now aroused. That will be my problem. And perhaps—yours. You will let the Enterprise go—and you will allow the Argunovs and Z'Ehlahs to go. Then you and I will argue out the shape of our adult, until the butterfly is ready to emerge from the chrysalis."
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