Crucible: Kirk

by David R. George III

  “I think you do trust me,” the other Kirk said. “I think you know who I am. I think you know that I’m you.”

  Kirk nodded, unable to do anything but agree. He looked away, toward the beautiful city of Mojave off in the distance, then back at his other self. “What if I don’t want to leave the nexus?” he said, choosing to speak more plainly. He remembered refusing and then acquiescing to Picard’s request for assistance in stopping Soran, but he also recalled all of the joyous times of his life that he had lived and relived here, mostly before that, but also afterward. He had agreed to exit the nexus with Picard, but then he hadn’t done so, instead experiencing that first meeting with Antonia all over again.

  “What can you tell me that I haven’t already thought of myself?” the other Kirk said. “We both know that none of this—” He spread his arms wide, taking in the extent of their surroundings. “—is real. We’ve been through the same events here.”

  “Not all the same events,” Kirk said. “I got to meet Antonia for the first time again, and it was different. I made it different. I can go back to our relationship and this time make it work.”

  The other Kirk walked over to him. “You made it different how?” he asked, his tone almost combative. “You know, because I know, that no matter what you did, no matter what you changed, it would still never work out.”

  “I told her who I was,” Kirk said. “This time, I didn’t hide my identity from her.” In the real universe, Kirk had simply given Antonia his name, but here in the nexus, he had also mentioned that he’d retired from Starfleet. “I told her flatly that very first time that my life in the space service was over,” Kirk continued. “I didn’t wait until later, and this time, I won’t act in a way that allows her to doubt my commitment to her. This time, I’ll keep all of those implicit and explicit promises I made and I’ll stay with her. This time, I won’t let myself desire a return to Starfleet.”

  “‘Desire a return to Starfleet?’” said the other Kirk. “Jim,” he went on, the name sounding odd coming from his lips, “you know you didn’t leave Antonia because you wanted to go back to Starfleet. You went back to Starfleet so that Antonia would leave you.”

  Kirk said nothing, recognizing the hard truth of the other Kirk’s words.

  “You lied to her—we lied to her—from the beginning,” the other Kirk continued. “But then, we lied to ourselves too.”

  A deep sense of shame threatened to overwhelm Kirk because he knew that his counterpart was right. He had lied to Antonia, even when she had pleaded with him for honesty. No matter what he did here in the nexus, he would not be able to alter the reality of what had really happened between them.

  And although he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help remembering the day that he’d first begun to betray her.

  Outside, snow dusted the Idaho hills. Kirk stood at the window in his living room, holding open the curtain with one hand as he gazed into the night. He squinted out at the darkness, unable to see past the reflections in the glass. Cupping his free hand over his eyes, he leaned in to the windowpane, which felt cold to the touch. His vision now shielded from the indoor lighting, he saw snowflakes still drifting lazily down from the autumnal sky, as though the heavens had chosen to sprinkle the stars down upon the Earth.

  He heard footsteps behind him and knew that Antonia had returned from her self-appointed task in the kitchen. “Here we go,” she said as she came up behind him. He turned to see her holding two ceramic mugs, steam curling up from each. “My famous hot-buttered rum to go with the first snow of the season.”

  Kirk accepted the mug Antonia offered and sipped at the concoction within. The sweet scent of the drink gave way to a taste that seemed almost like apple pie, though with a kick he hadn’t expected. He pursed his lips at the strong flavor of the rum. “You make drinks like a ship’s chief medical officer,” he said.

  Antonia offered him a quizzical look. “All right,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure what that’s supposed to mean, so I’ll just choose to take it as a compliment.”

  “It means that some doctors love to kill the pain, no matter how much alcohol it takes,” Kirk joked. “My CMO on the Enterprise—”

  “Bones?” Antonia said.

  “Right,” Kirk said. “He made a drink called a Finagle’s Folly that he claimed was known all the way to Orion.” He sipped again at the rum. “Somehow I think they probably know Salvatori’s Hot-buttered Rum there too.”

  Antonia smiled at him, but quickly and thinly, as though filling a moment she didn’t particularly enjoy. It surprised him, but he decided not to address it. Perhaps he’d mischaracterized her expression, and if he hadn’t, if something troubled Antonia, he doubted that it had anything to do with him or their relationship, which seemed to be unfolding very well. If something weighed on her mind, though, she would tell him only when she felt ready to do so. If he’d learned one thing about her during the months that they’d been seeing each other, it had been that she couldn’t be pressured into doing anything she didn’t herself elect to do, even simply talking.

  Antonia moved away from the window and over to the sofa. She wore long dark slacks that flattered her athletic figure, and a red and blue sweater that reflected the onset of the wintry weather. She sat down on the sofa and peered at the crackling fire in the hearth.

  Kirk went over and settled in beside her in the cozy setting. She put down her mug on the end table, then wrapped her hands around his arm and leaned in against him. They sat that way for a while, quietly, comfortably—an apt description for all the time they had spent together in the spring and summer and now into the fall.

  After their initial meeting, Kirk had tracked her down through her veterinary practice to the nearby small town of—appropriately enough, given her profession—Antelope Brook. He’d made no pretext about visiting her office because his horses needed her care, but had instead simply gone there and asked her out, his impression being that Antonia would appreciate a forthright approach. She had, and they’d begun seeing each other once or twice a week, a frequency that had increased with time.

  They had spent many days together riding through the Idaho hills, occasionally taking in a film in town or heading into one of the bigger cities for dinner or a concert or a sporting event. Mostly, though, Antonia liked staying home, playing games or reading or making love. Their physical relationship had actually taken some time to progress, but once it had, they enjoyed each other fully. Kirk found her energetic and playful, both in bed and out. Though she took some things very seriously—such as her practice and the general good care of animals—Antonia for the most part maintained an air of lightness about her.

  As Kirk drank his rum with Antonia by his side, his gaze came to rest on the mantelpiece, atop which he had placed three handcrafted models of old sailing vessels. Several other antique pieces dressed the shelves he’d built on either side of the fireplace, including a clock that his uncle had left to him, a sextant, an orrery. On the very day he’d met Antonia, he’d vowed to himself that he would start living his life again, that he would do his best to forge past the memories of sadness and loss that for so long had held him back. With the personal adornments he’d added to the house and with his new romance, he felt that he had in large part succeeded in those efforts. He had even lately thought about taking the next step with Antonia.

  Kirk finished his rum, then reached past Antonia to set his mug down next to hers on the end table. Once he had, he didn’t lean back on the sofa, but remained leaning over her. Peering into her dark brown eyes, he said, “Doctor Salvatori, what would you think about moving in here?”

  Antonia wrinkled her brow. “Is that a hypothetical question,” she said, “or are you really asking me to move in with you?” She had a penchant for reacting to certain situations in a deliberately obtuse manner, but Kirk had learned to bully his way through such tactics.

  “I’m asking,” he said. He bent forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. “We’ve been see
ing each other for months now and things seem to be going well between us.”

  “Oh, you think so?” Antonia said, without any inflection to indicate a blithe spirit behind her remark.

  “Yes, I do,” Kirk said, refusing to be denied.

  “Well…yes,” Antonia finally agreed, but she appeared less than pleased by the admission. Abruptly she pushed past Kirk, stood up, and walked toward the corner of the room. “It’s been wonderful,” she said, facing him, but when she continued, she looked down at her hands, which she nervously twisted together. “It’s just that I’m not so sure that we have a future together.”

  “What?” Kirk said, unprepared for Antonia’s assessment. He rose from the sofa but did not try to approach her, instead gazing at her across the room. “I…I thought we were growing closer,” he said. “I thought we had a good thing going and that we were moving forward together.” It had been some time since he’d been seriously involved with a woman, but it shocked him that he could have been so mistaken in his evaluation of their relationship. With Edith it had been so easy—

  Kirk cut himself off in midthought, wanting to prevent himself from comparing Antonia to Edith. Besides being unfair to Antonia, it also did him no good. Edith was gone, and she always would be.

  Across the room, Antonia raised her eyes and looked at him. “We have grown closer,” she said. “We do have a good thing going. I really enjoy your company and we always have a fine time with each other, but…I’m just not sure that we’re moving forward together.”

  Kirk looked away from Antonia and over at the logs burning in the fireplace. He didn’t know what to say or think, and he told her so. “I’m shocked,” he said, “but I guess maybe that just illustrates how badly I misjudged our relationship.”

  “No, no, you didn’t,” Antonia said. “But…tell me, what were you looking at through the window before?”

  “What?” Kirk said, completely nonplussed by the question. “I was just looking to see if it was still snowing.” The more he considered what she’d asked, the less sense it made to him. “Why?” he said. “Is there something else you thought I was looking at?”

  “Another woman,” Antonia said.

  “What?” Kirk couldn’t believe her claim. He had been seeing no one but her, though he now felt a pang of guilt for his errant thought of Edith.

  “The stars,” Antonia said.

  Kirk shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. Antonia couldn’t possibly know about Edith. Other than Spock and Bones, he didn’t think anybody did. Even when he’d sought counseling after Sam and Aurelan’s deaths, which had immediately followed his loss of Edith, he hadn’t spoken of her to his psychiatrist.

  “I think you do understand,” Antonia said. She took a step toward him, but then seemed to consciously stop herself from coming any closer. “Jim, I really have enjoyed being with you. You’re fun and funny, a good companion and an interesting man. Certainly you’ve lived an interesting life.” She paused, then added, “Maybe too interesting.”

  “What does that mean?” Kirk wanted to know.

  “It means that I don’t want to get too involved with a man who’s eventually going to leave me,” Antonia said. She spoke without anger or bitterness, but with a conviction that suggested she believed her opinion of their future to be fact, not conjecture.

  “I have no intention of leaving you,” Kirk said. “Why would you think that I would?”

  “Tell me when you were at the window that you weren’t looking at the stars,” she said.

  “Honestly, no, I wasn’t,” Kirk said. He recalled comparing in his mind the snowflakes to the pinpoints of light in the sky, but that seemed immaterial. “I was just looking out at the snow.”

  “I believe you,” Antonia allowed. “But I have seen you looking at the stars.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” he said. “Doesn’t everybody? Don’t you?”

  “Sure, but not in the same way that you do,” she said. “When I look at the stars, all I see is a beautiful night sky. When you look, I can tell that you’re remembering alien worlds you’ve already visited and imagining the exotic places you’ve yet to explore.”

  “Antonia,” he said. He started to move toward her, but she held her hand up, and he halted a few steps from her. “Yes, I admit that I can recall the different planets I’ve been to, the strange landscapes I’ve walked, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to leave you.”

  “It also doesn’t mean that you’re going to stay,” she noted. “That you won’t decide at some point to go back to Starfleet.”

  “I’ve been retired for two and a half years now,” Kirk said. “Why do you think I’m suddenly going to want to return to space? Have I ever given you any indication of that? Other than looking at the stars, which as you said, you do yourself?”

  Antonia did not answer immediately, and Kirk suspected that when she did, the future of their relationship—or the lack of a future—would turn on her answer. Finally, she said, “No, you haven’t acted like you want to go back to Starfleet. But when you do look up at the stars, it just seems like we don’t connect.”

  “Then that’s my fault,” Kirk told her. “I never meant to make you feel disconnected from me. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

  “It’s all right,” Antonia said. “I don’t want to change who you are. I like who you are. I just don’t want to be involved in a long-distance, part-time relationship. I’ve had a couple of those in my life and I don’t like them. I want a partner who will be here with me.”

  “Antonia,” Kirk said, and this time when he went to her, she didn’t try to stop him. When he reached her, he put his hands on her arms and looked her directly in the eyes. “I’m not asking you to be in a relationship while I board a starship and go running off through the galaxy. I’m asking you to move into my house with me, right here in Idaho.”

  “And what happens when you go back to Starfleet?” she asked quietly.

  “That’s not going to happen,” he promised her.

  “How can I be sure of that?” she asked him. “How can you be sure of that?”

  Kirk chuckled. “Next year I’ll have lived half a century,” he said. “I think by now I ought to know myself.”

  “You ought to,” Antonia said, peering at him in an almost pleading way. “But do you?”

  “Yes,” he told her. “I think I do.”

  Antonia nodded, and then she actually smiled. She moved to the side, and Kirk let his hands drop from her arms. She passed him and crossed the room, back over to the window. Holding the curtains open, she looked outside. “I like it when it snows,” she said. “When there’s an accumulation, there’s a surreal quiet, like a thick blanket’s been draped over the land.”

  Kirk walked over to Antonia and sent his arms around her midsection, hugging her to him. “I told you that I’ve got a house up in the Canadian Rockies,” he said. “We should go. Lots of snow up there.”

  Antonia let the curtains fall back into place and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Are you trying to bribe me to move in with you?” she said, her tone now playful.

  “If that’s what it takes,” Kirk said.

  She turned in his arms to face him, reaching up and putting her own hands on his shoulders. “Jim, I’m serious about this,” she said. “I like being with you and I can even see us together in the future, but I don’t want to get completely involved only to have that taken away from me.”

  “I’m not going back to Starfleet,” Kirk said. “I love you, Antonia.” And he did love her, even if she was not the love of his life—

  Once more, he put a quick end to such thoughts.

  “I love you too, Jim,” Antonia said. She kissed him, and he kissed her back.

  Later, he would try to tell himself that he had never lied to her, not really, because at the time, he really hadn’t planned on going back to Starfleet. But then, that hadn’t been the worst of his lies.

  SEVEN

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  Jim Kirk looked at his bloodied counterpart, the city of Mojave in the background, and he found that he couldn’t argue anymore. On a superficial level, on a selfish level, he wanted to remain here in the nexus. He wanted to undo the pain that he had caused Antonia, wanted to find happiness with her.

  But the other Kirk had been right. Anything he did here would not be real. More than that, though, even if he could change the past that he had shared with Antonia, even if he could prevent himself from returning to Starfleet, it would make no difference. Starfleet had indeed been his excuse to break off his relationship with Antonia—to compel her to break it off with him—but there had been another reason that he hadn’t been able to stay with her: she wasn’t Edith.

  “I’ll go,” Kirk said. “I’ll try to stop the converging temporal loop.”

  “Thank you,” the other Kirk said.

  He would try to stop the loop, but he also knew that he would need to do more than that. In addition to traveling back in time to attempt to prevent the shock wave, he would also have to ensure that the Enterprise-B still escaped the energy ribbon, and that Picard still managed to stop Soran from wiping out the population of Veridian IV—and he would have to accomplish all of that without altering the timeline. He understood the plan that the other Kirk had devised, but not the logistics of how to accomplish all of it. “When I leave the nexus,” he asked, “how do I reenter it?”

  “You don’t,” the other Kirk said. “I only ended up here again by chance.”

  “But your plan involves me taking action in twenty-two ninety-three and twenty-three seventy-one,” Kirk said. “If I can only exit the nexus once—”

  “You’ll have to use another means to move safely and surreptitiously through time,” the other Kirk said.

  “But how?” he asked. He had traveled in time on a number of occasions, most often by employing the light-speed breakaway factor, taking a starship racing at excessive speed toward a star, circling around it deep within its gravity well, and then pulling away from it in a slingshot-like movement. Even if after leaving the nexus Kirk could somehow acquire a vessel powerful and strong enough to achieve such a maneuver, he could hardly do all of that with any realistic expectation of remaining unobserved. The only other means he had used to travel through time—