Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  “Maybe I will,” McCoy lied again. He could not imagine a turn of events in this time in which he’d seek out people in positions of authority. “But I think that two of my friends will come looking for me. Since this is the first place I remember being after the accident, I figured that they’d most likely be able to track me down here.”

  Keeler walked back over to the desk chair, sat down again, and leaned toward McCoy. “I want to believe you,” she claimed. “But could it be that you don’t want to go to the police because you intentionally injected yourself?” McCoy sensed that their conversation had reached a decisive point, and he thought he saw a means of regaining Keeler’s trust.

  “No, the injection was accidental,” he said unequivocally. “I remember that very clearly. I just can’t recall anything that happened between then and when I showed up here.” He paused, waiting for Keeler to draw the obvious conclusion.

  “But then you don’t know whether you’ve done anything wrong,” she said.

  “No, I suppose I don’t,” McCoy admitted. “In normal situations, I’m not the sort of person who would get into trouble, but under the influence of the drug…I don’t know.”

  Keeler straightened and leaned back in her chair. “All right, Doctor,” she said, with an intonation that conveyed at least a conditional acceptance of what he’d told her. “You may stay here for the time being.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Keeler stood up and moved to the door. “But if your friends don’t find you here before too long,” she said, “and if you still can’t recall where your home is, then I think you should reconsider going to the police. Even if you have done something wrong, that would be the proper thing to do.”

  “I will,” he said as positively as he could, though he knew he would never take any such action.

  Keeler seemed to accept this, then said, “You should come out and get something to eat.”

  McCoy nodded. “After I change out of these dirty clothes,” he said. Keeler left the office, closing the door behind her.

  McCoy sat quietly for several minutes, pondering his dilemma. After a while, he got to his feet and removed his Starfleet uniform, dropping the soiled garments onto the floor. Then he pulled on the clothes he’d gotten from Keeler.

  As he buttoned the shirt, he wandered over toward the window. He split the pair of plain brown curtains hanging there, sweeping them open, the rings from which they hung rattling along a metal rod. A narrow alley bordered this side of the mission, leaving only the brick wall of the neighboring building visible through the window.

  McCoy looked out on the limited vista for a while, then headed out of the office to once more take his place among the homeless.

  Five

  2267

  The mist enfolded him, promising concealment and a soft embrace, but delivering neither. Time stopped as tendrils of the living cloud twined through the universe and held it fast. Flowing, gray-white wisps constricted everywhere, every when, squeezing and then strangling each glimmer of existence. Irony steeped the crystallized moment: he’d slipped into the fog to escape the raging murderers, only to find death lurking there as well. Helpless,he waited for eternity to collapse and crush him with the weight of centuries.

  And then time exploded, spewing days and decades, minutes and millennia, instants and eons. Thrown back into being, he found himself in a netherworld, dark and hard. Sinister shapes moved in the blackness, and though the demon mist had gone for now, the killers had returned to pursue him. Panic filled his soul, providing an adrenaline surge that got his feet moving. He hastened through the night, searching for others in his position, seeking out allies.

  And found one: a bald little man, desperation dripping from him like sweat. He grilled the man, demanding to know how they’d been trapped here. They needed to escape before the assassins found them again.

  But already it was too late. The murderers had closed in, encircling them. He wouldn’t surrender, though, wouldn’t let them simply take him down.

  He whirled, the sleek, hot steel of a blade suddenly in his hand. The killers dispensed death, and he would bring it back to them. He thrust the knife forward, plunging it into yielding flesh and breaking bone. The mangled body fell, done, its life force pouring onto the pavement in crimson rivulets. He looked at the face of his enemy, at the one he had vanquished, and saw the little bald man, his only ally, now dead. He threw his head back and—

  McCoy awoke with a start, the echoes of his own agonized voice still alive in his ears. He lay on his back, in darkness, his muscles taut. Disoriented, he couldn’t remember falling asleep or where he had done so. The phantom figures that had haunted the periphery of his dreams, though still unseen, now seemed unsettlingly close, as though pushing in on him through the surrounding black.

  In silence, McCoy waited and listened, trying to attune himself to his setting. He detected nothing at first, no sounds, no movement, until at last he became aware of a low vibration—a familiar vibration—thrumming beneath his hands. He flexed his fingers and felt fabric clutched in his fists. I’m in my bed, he thought. In my cabin, aboard the Enterprise.

  Leaning on his side, McCoy reached blindly for the lighting control in the nearby bulkhead. He found it and brought the overhead panels up one-quarter. The illumination, though muted, pushed away the artificial night, and with it, the specters that had accompanied his slumber.

  McCoy swung his feet over and onto the deck, sitting up on the edge of his bed. He peered about this half of the cabin and saw nothing out of the ordinary, but only the few items with which he’d adorned his sleeping area. Centered on the shelf above the bed sat eight volumes of ancient medical texts he’d brought with him from Earth, bookended by a pair of even older rintu carvings from Capella IV. On the end of the same shelf stood three vintage apothecary bottles—cobalt blue, sky blue, and yellow—that his daughter had given him a few years ago. A Kaferian dieffenbachia, with purple-patterned white leaves, decorated the corner, reaching up more than a meter from the deck.

  Everything in its place, McCoy thought, and then archly realized, Everything but me. Since returning to the ship after his sojourn into the past, he’d spent most of the succeeding six days here in his quarters, visiting sickbay only so that Dr. Sanchez could monitor his recovery. Ignacio had cleared all the members of the landing party—but for the captain, who’d so far refused to report for examination—of any medical effects of having been down on the planet, or in his and Spock’s case, of having traveled through the portal and back in time. But though McCoy had been issued a clean bill of health in that regard, Dr. Sanchez had detected trace amounts of cordrazine still in his body. Ignacio’s prognosis had been that it would require a total of seven to ten days for the drug to fully flush from his system, and for its aftereffects to diminish completely.

  McCoy glanced at the chronometer atop the half-wall separating the two sections of his cabin. The first shift had just ended, he saw, which meant that he’d fallen asleep for about an hour. He now recalled lying down, though he hadn’t initially intended to doze. He’d been resting all week, though, and his long walk in the arboretum this afternoon had been the first significant exercise he’d had in that time; the stroll had tired him out more than he’d expected. Still, he felt good, and—

  The door signal buzzed, and McCoy automatically looked again at the chronometer. The time told him who waited in the corridor: Tonia. Since his cordrazine ordeal and her visit to see him in sickbay, she’d stopped by his quarters often. McCoy appreciated her concern, but worried that her feelings for him had deepened so much that she would end up getting hurt. While he cared a great deal for Tonia, he knew that they wouldn’t stay together long-term, that they ultimately weren’t well matched. Yes, they enjoyed each other’s company, shared similar views and a common sense of humor, communicated easily and well with each other, and took pleasure in many of the same pursuits, but…well, he simply knew that he wasn’t the right man for her. Almost a decade
younger, Tonia needed a man closer to her own age, even if she didn’t realize that yet. He suspected that she might finally be coming to that awareness, though, since her stops in to see him during the last couple of days had become shorter and less frequent. Still, she hadn’t failed to come by his cabin each day immediately after the end of her duty shift, and so she obviously waited outside right now for him to answer the door.

  McCoy stood up from the bed, noticing that he still wore the black exercise pants and short-sleeved pullover he’d thrown on before his excursion to the arboretum. He quickly reached for the lighting control and brought the level up fully. “Come in,” he called, gazing through the decorative red lattice that reached from the top of the half-wall up to the overhead. The door withdrew into the bulkhead, revealing not Tonia standing beyond it, but Spock. He carried a data slate in one hand.

  “Spock,” McCoy said as the first officer entered the cabin. The tall, lean Vulcan stopped just inside the door, which eased closed behind him. “I hope you’re here to tell me I can finally go back to being a doctor aboard this ship.”

  “In part, yes, I am,” Spock said. “Doctor Sanchez reports that his examination today revealed your body to be completely free of cordrazine. Based on the rest of your readings, he concludes that you have recovered sufficiently to warrant a return to your duties.”

  “Good,” McCoy said, emerging from the sleeping area and into the other section of the cabin. He swung around the half-wall and over to his desk. “I was starting to go a little stir-crazy from spending so much time in here.” He raised both hands to indicate the confines of his quarters. Spock said nothing, and McCoy saw that the reserved expression he normally wore appeared more serious than usual. “Is there something else you wanted to talk to me about?” McCoy asked, suspecting that Spock might want to discuss the captain’s seclusion since their time in Earth’s past.

  “There is, Doctor,” Spock said. He walked deeper into the room, until he stood across the desk from McCoy. The first officer peered down at his slate for a moment. “I’ve been studying the region of space through which our upcoming course will take us.” McCoy recalled the vibration he’d felt when he’d woken up a few minutes ago, which he’d recognized as an effect of the Enterprise’s warp drive, but only now did he consider that the ship must have departed the Guardian’s world. He knew that the Appomattox had arrived there earlier today, to provide the military presence Captain Kirk had requested from Starfleet. “While doing so,” Spock continued, “I encountered a reference to the Levinius star system.”

  “I’m not familiar with it,” McCoy said.

  “Nor was I,” Spock said. “Two centuries ago, the civilization on the fifth planet was completely destroyed, with evidence suggesting that the population had been swept by a form of mass insanity. Several decades later, a similar event appears to have occurred on Theta Cygni Twelve, wiping out that society.”

  “What?” McCoy said. He sat down at his desk, considering the information Spock had brought to him. The destruction of an entire civilization—let alone two—shocked him, despite that he’d never even been aware of their existences until now. Still, the accounts seemed reminiscent of another, more recent incident. “I don’t know anything about Theta Cygni Twelve either,” he said, “but what you’re describing sounds a lot like what Starfleet Medical believes happened not that long ago on…was it Ingraham B?”

  “Yes,” Spock said. He turned the slate around, set it down on the desk in front of McCoy, then sat down opposite him. Paragraphs of text marched down the screen, inset with a picture of a cloud-covered, blue-green world, all beneath the heading REPORT ON LOSS OF INGRAHAM B COLONY. “Two years ago, the settlement there went silent. It was thought that their communications equipment had failed, but when a freighter crew arrived several months later, they found half of the colonists missing and the other half murdered.”

  “I remember reading a précis of Starfleet Medical’s findings,” McCoy said. “Necropsies revealed nothing unusual about the dead, but the variety and brutality of the murders, coupled with the physical state of the colony and the number of missing, led to the conclusion of collective psychosis.”

  “Affirmative,” Spock said. “All records at the settlement had been destroyed, so there could be no direct confirmation, but the verdict of mass insanity is supported by the known facts.”

  McCoy took in this data and tried to process it all into a narrative. “Are you suggesting that the destruction on the three planets is related?” he asked.

  “I am,” Spock said. “But not only on those three planets.” He reached forward and plucked a long metal stylus from where it attached magnetically to the front of the slate. Leaning over the desk, he tapped at a series of menus along the top of the screen, until another page of text appeared. McCoy read the title: ARCHEOLOGICAL FINDINGS IN THE BETA PORTOLAN SYSTEM. “Scientists have recently uncovered the ruins of ancient civilizations on two planets there. Although the archeologists offered no reasons for the losses of those societies, I have reviewed records of the excavations, and they are consistent with those of Levinius Five, Theta Cygni Twelve, and Ingraham B.”

  “And all in this same region of space?” McCoy asked.

  “Yes,” Spock said, “but not just in this region.” Again, Spock touched the stylus to the menus at the top of the slate’s screen. This time, an image of a star field appeared. On it, labels identified the four star systems about which Spock had spoken.

  “They’re virtually in a straight line,” McCoy noted, a knot of anxiety forming in his stomach. “Is there another inhabited world along that route?” But he knew that Spock wouldn’t have come to him had that not been the case.

  “Deneva,” Spock said. The name struck a chord with McCoy, though he could not quite place it. “It is an Earth colony, established a century ago, originally as a freighting-line base. It has a population of more than one million.”

  “My god,” McCoy said. “And you think that whatever caused the mass insanity on those other worlds will also strike Deneva.”

  “It would be imprudent not to consider the possibility,” Spock said.

  “Have you told Jim about this?” McCoy asked.

  “Yes,” Spock said. “He immediately attempted to contact the colony, without result. The Enterprise is headed there now.”

  “I see,” McCoy said, the terrible details Spock had revealed to him now swirling through his mind, along with the frightening prospect that another civilization might be facing the same danger.

  “While we travel to Deneva,” Spock said, “the captain wants the medical department to evaluate the data we have, and to determine any possible causes.”

  McCoy nodded. “Of course,” he said. “But the notion of collective psychosis isn’t rooted in biology, but in psychosocial forces: the political situation in Germany leading to Earth’s second world war, for example, or the suicide attacks on Catulla. For there to be a single cause for something like this, that happened over such a long period of time and to disparate societies, doesn’t make sense.”

  “And so we must work to formulate a scientific theory that does,” Spock said.

  “Of course,” McCoy said. He laid a hand alongside the data slate. “I’ll review all of the details and get the medical staff working on it right away.”

  “I’ll inform the captain,” Spock said, rising to his feet. “Perhaps our efforts will help prevent a disaster from befalling the inhabitants of Deneva.”

  After the first officer had gone, McCoy looked down again at the image of the star field. Deneva, he thought, the name still seeming familiar to him. And then he thought he remembered: Isn’t Jim’s brother stationed on Deneva?

  As he lifted the stylus and began to study the information Spock had collected, a chill shook him.

  Six

  1930

  “McCoy,” she repeated. “Leonard McCoy.” Edith leaned forward in the unsteady chair, its uneven legs causing it to teeter slightly as she shifte
d her weight. She looked at the policeman on the other side of the desk and waited as he shuffled through a sheaf of papers. Around her, a cacophony of voices fell and rose, ebbing and flowing like a tide of sound in this large, desk-filled room at the 13th Precinct.

  “No, ma’am,” the officer said at last. A tall man, with broad shoulders and a square jaw, he wore not a uniform, but street clothes. He’d introduced himself as Detective Wright when the desk sergeant had brought Edith over from the police office’s entrance hall. “There’s no report of a ‘Leonard McCoy’ goin’ missin’.” His New York City accent dropped the rs in the second syllables of report and Leonard.

  Edith leaned back in the chair, and it wobbled in that direction. It had been more than two weeks now since Dr. McCoy had first shown up at the mission, and though Edith had spoken with him often, she still knew virtually nothing about him. He answered almost every question of a personal nature with a claim not to remember the details of his life, although he’d steadfastly maintained his recollection of his accidental drug overdose. Together with McCoy’s unwillingness to move out of the mission or to go to the police for help, as well as his conviction that friends would arrive to bring him back home, what little Edith had learned of the doctor did not seem quite right. She did not even know whether to believe his assertion of being a physician, which seemed like such an outrageous contention for a man in his circumstances. And yet his obvious intelligence and knowledge, and his gentle, caring manner, bespoke a man who indeed could have received medical training.

  “Are there any doctors who are missing?” Edith asked the detective.

  The burly policeman looked at her with undisguised annoyance. “This man’s a doctor?” Wright asked.

  “Yes, I believe so,” Edith said. She could hear the uncertainty in her own voice.

  Detective Wright dropped his hands onto his desk, the stack of papers he’d been perusing still held between them. “Ma’am,” he said, the single word spoken with exaggerated patience, “if you want me to help you, you need to give me all the information you have about this ‘McCoy’ fella.”