Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  On the floor beside him, she saw the piece of paper Jake and Annabelle had come to deliver. “Read it to me,” she said softly.

  Leonard looked as though he might object, but then he reached down and picked up the telegram. “May Twenty-Sixth, four-fifty P.M., Washington, D.C.,” he said. “Mrs. Lynn J. Dickinson, RFD One, Tindal’s Lane, Hayden, South Carolina. The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your husband, Private First Class Dickinson, Philip W., was killed in action—”

  Lynn closed her eyes and wailed. Phil, she thought. Phil! He had gone to protect their country, to protect South Carolina and Hayden and to protect her, and now he would not be coming home. She could not imagine it and knew that clearly somebody had made a mistake, that Phil couldn’t possibly have died.

  Except she also knew that no mistake had been made. She gazed up at Leonard again. “Finish it,” she said.

  “Lynn—” Leonard protested, but she screamed at him.

  “Finish it!”

  He read from the telegram once more. “Was killed in action in Ireland, Eleven May Forty-six. Confirming letter follows. Signed, G.A. Stacy, the Adjutant General.”

  Lynn reached out and swiped the paper from Leonard’s hands. She brought it up in front of her face and tried to read it herself, but tears blurred her vision. She crumpled the paper and dropped it to the floor. “Oh, Phil,” she said.

  Leonard moved in front of her, leaned in, and put his arms around her, pulling her head onto his shoulder. He held her as she wept. She could think only about the impossible fact that her husband would never come home again.

  The day had dawned heavy and gray, providing an apt setting for the service, McCoy thought, but the early mists had evaporated by midmorning. Now, as most of the town congregated in Hayden’s small cemetery, the sun shined brightly. Pastor Gallagher stood at one end of the open grave, where a headstone would be set once the appropriate words had been carved into it.

  McCoy stood beside the casket, along with the other five pallbearers: Gregg Anderson, Ducky Jensen, Steve and Ford King, and Phil’s brother, Roger. The rest of the mourners ringed the grave, with Phil’s Aunt Lee and Uncle Scott standing on either side of Lynn. Wearing a black dress and a wide hat with a veil, Lynn kept her eyes cast downward. McCoy had seen her crying during the funeral service in church earlier—she’d been crying for the past week—but right now he saw no tears.

  “Philip perhaps need not have made this great sacrifice,” the pastor intoned. “He could have waited to see if he would be drafted, but he did not. With bravery and fortitude, he was the first man in Hayden to go.”

  Within hours of Japan’s attack on the country and America’s subsequent declaration of war, McCoy had driven Phil to Greenville to enlist. But in the weeks and months that followed, other men from Hayden had joined the armed forces as well. Some, like Ray Peavey, Randy Denton, Jefferson Donner, and the Palmer boys, Justin and Henry, had signed up of their own volition. Others, like Bo Bartell and Billy Fuster, had been conscripted.

  “In Philip’s name, we say: ‘the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,’ ” Pastor Gallagher said, reading from the bible he held open in his hands. “ ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.’ ”

  McCoy heard the words, but paid them little heed. He hoped only that what the pastor said would bring some added measure of solace to Lynn. Since she’d received the telegram informing her of Phil’s death, McCoy had watched her cycle through the traditionally accepted stages of grief, but again and again, he’d watched her draw herself up, calling upon a well of strength he had been a little surprised to see. Lynn and Phil had been married for twenty-three years, living a simple life in a community they rarely left. As well, Lynn had lost both of her parents quite some time ago and had no family other than that of her husband. It would have been easy for her to succumb completely to the enormity of her loss, but though she had grieved and would no doubt continue to do so, she had also fortified herself with her faith. She missed Phil, she’d told McCoy, but she’d gotten used to missing him over the past two years. Now, at least, he didn’t labor day after day to harden his body and mind for battle, nor throw himself into actual combat, filled with the fear of death or injury; rather, Lynn believed, he lived in the kingdom of God, apart from her, yes, but in peace and bliss. She said she could live with that.

  “ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ ” the pastor said, “ ‘I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.’ ”

  In the days immediately following word of Phil’s death, Lynn hadn’t gone to work at the mill, and McCoy hadn’t either. He’d stayed with her almost constantly, though occasionally she had sought solitude, isolating herself in her bedroom or walking alone through the fields, among the cotton plants climbing skyward from the earth. Whatever she needed him to do, whether it be to comfort her or to leave her alone, he’d tried to do.

  Two years ago, when he had driven his friend all the way to Greenville and then had stood with him waiting to enter the army recruiting station, Phil had exacted a promise from McCoy to take care of Lynn if the worst happened. He needn’t have. Though McCoy had been troubled by Phil’s racist attitudes—and even, to a lesser extent, Lynn’s—he still cared for both of them. He’d also understood the source of their beliefs, and so had sought to cast a positive influence on his friends in order to help them relieve themselves of their prejudices. Regardless, he certainly would not have abandoned Lynn in the time of her greatest need.

  “ ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,’ ” Gallagher said, “ ‘and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’ ”

  The assemblage concluded with a chorus of “Amen,” and then Gregg Anderson, wearing his uniform from World War I, stepped toward the head of the casket. Audie Glaston, also in uniform, moved forward at the other end. Together they picked up the American flag draped over the coffin. The flag had been sent to Lynn a few days ago, along with Phil’s bible, wedding band, and the army identification—dog tags, folks called them—that he had worn into battle. Phil’s remains had not been returned to the United States, nor would they be; he had been interred close to where he had fallen in battle.

  As Gregg and Audie held the flag waist high and parallel to the ground, Danny Johnson moved to stand between them, then lifted his trumpet and played a slow, haunting melody. Lynn began to cry, McCoy saw, as did many others present. When Danny had finished playing, Gregg and Audie doubled the flag lengthwise twice. Audie then folded the striped end into a triangle, and repeated the process again and again, until only the blue canton of stars remained visible. Gregg then folded down his end of the flag and tucked it into Audie’s triangle, leaving a blue, three-sided shape with white stars that resembled a cocked hat. Slowly, Gregg marched around the grave and handed it to Lynn. “On behalf of a grateful nation,” he said. Lynn thanked him and accepted the flag, taking it between her hands.

  “We will now consecrate the memory of our brother unto the earth,” the pastor said. With the other pallbearers, McCoy lifted the casket—nothing more than a pine box, containing only Phil’s dog tags and his bible—and carried it over the open grave. Slowly, the six men lowered the coffin into the ground, then stepped back.

  Gallagher nodded to Lynn, and she turned to McCoy and handed him the folded flag. Then she bent down, grabbed up a handful of dirt, and threw it into the grave. It struck the top of the casket with a short, harsh sound, like a sudden burst of rain. “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  It all comes down to that, McCoy thought. Dust to dust. He hoped that his friend’s sacrifice had not been in vain. Phil had fought and died not only in the service of his country, but in an effort to stop the spread of fascism across the world—and whether he knew it or not, in an attempt to restore
the history of Earth, or at least to liberate it from the terrible path down which McCoy had inadvertently sent it.

  Had Phil’s efforts helped? McCoy had long ago accepted that whatever changes he had made to the past had also altered his own future such that he would never be rescued from the twentieth century. Still, he clung to the hope that America and the Allies ultimately would not suffer defeat in this war.

  The pastor concluded speaking, and one by one, the people of Hayden approached Lynn. They hugged her, kissed her, offered consoling words for her loss. Afterward, they drifted away, walking out past the two pillars that marked the entrance to the cemetery, heading back down Church Street and toward the center of town. Later, once everybody had left, McCoy knew, the pastor would return to the grave with Ducky Jensen and Woody Palmer, and the three men would shovel the earth back into the hole.

  Finally, only McCoy and Gallagher remained with Lynn. “Shall we go?” McCoy asked gently.

  “Not yet,” Lynn said, staring down at the casket. “Actually, I think I’d like to be alone for a bit.”

  “Of course,” McCoy said. He looked over at Gallagher, and together the two men began toward the cemetery entrance. When they reached the two pillars, the pastor continued on, but McCoy turned back and waited.

  Lynn remained at the gravesite for another thirty minutes. When at last she turned and left the cemetery, McCoy was there for her.

  Forty-Three

  2285

  “Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we’re all dead.”

  Spock sat at his sciences station on the bridge and listened for a response to Admiral Kirk. Just minutes ago, Commander Scott had reported the need to take the main engines off-line because of radiation, doubtless an issue with the plasma injector. The component had performed at only marginally acceptable levels recently, Spock knew, and he calculated that it easily could have overloaded as a result of the phaser strikes the ship had just sustained. After Mr. Scott’s stated assessment of the warp drive, though, Dr. McCoy—apparently down in the engine room to see to crewmembers wounded during the Enterprise’s second battle with the Reliant—had reported the engineer on the verge of unconsciousness. Scott had then denied it, though he hadn’t sounded well. Now, he did not answer the urgent call from the bridge.

  “No response, Admiral,” Uhura confirmed from her communications console.

  Trainees, Spock thought. They’re almost all trainees. Before Admiral Kirk had received an emergency message from Space Lab Regula I and, responding, the Enterprise had subsequently been attacked by the Starfleet vessel that Khan Noonien Singh had seized, the ship had set out from Earth on a three-week training cruise. As a result, cadets currently composed the majority of the crew.

  “Scotty!” the admiral called into the intercom as Spock concluded what action he must take. With Mr. Scott apparently incapacitated and engineering peopled by trainees, few would realize what needed to be done—or if they realized what needed to be done, then they would likely not consider doing it, given the danger involved. “Mister Sulu, get us out of here,” the admiral said as Spock stood and headed for the turbolift. “Best possible speed.”

  “Aye, sir,” Sulu acknowledged.

  Spock stepped into the waiting car and ordered it to take him aft to C deck, below which the lifts currently did not operate. In the two hours since the Reliant’s previous attack, the crew had been able to restore only partial main power to the Enterprise. Even traveling on foot, though, Spock estimated that he could still reach the engine room within forty-five seconds. That would leave him enough time to enter the containment chamber and reset the plasma injector manually, if indeed that turned out to be the problem. Either way, Spock knew that he likely had only a few minutes left to live. If he could not restore the warp drive, then the impending detonation of the genesis device aboard the Reliant would destroy the Enterprise and its crew; if he could, then the Enterprise might escape the effects of the genesis wave, but his presence in the containment chamber would expose him to lethal doses of radiation. Illogically, he decided that he preferred for his death to satisfy a purpose.

  It’s not illogical, he corrected himself. As he’d told Jim, the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few—or as the admiral had noted, of the one. As an axiom, the statement depended on the equality of individual needs, so that the aggregate accrued a greater significance than the singular. In this case, that happened to be true, the need for everybody aboard the Enterprise being the ability to stay alive.

  The turbolift stopped at C deck and Spock raced from it to the nearest vertical access tube. He stepped inside and started down toward engineering. In his mind, his sense of time ticked off the seconds: three minutes, one second remaining…three minutes…two minutes, fifty-nine seconds.

  Mother, Spock thought suddenly, and he regretted the reaction she would suffer upon learning the news of his death. If he succeeded in saving the rest of the Enterprise crew, his father would understand his reasoning, but his mother would not. Or even if she did, even if she took pride in the sacrifice her son had made for his crewmates and friends, she would still feel the pain of losing him. Sarek’s logical discipline would spare him, but Amanda’s humanity would bring her great distress.

  And Jim, Spock thought. What about Jim? In the admiral’s life, bereavement had become all too present a companion. Beyond the crew who had perished under his command, and for whom Jim felt absolute responsibility, his grandparents had died in his youth, and his parents after that. He had seen Gary Mitchell, his closest friend at the time, mutate into something sinister and dangerous, and Jim had been forced to kill Mitchell himself. He had found his only sibling, his brother Sam, dead on Deneva, and had watched his sister-in-law die in agony not long afterward. Miramanee, carrying his unborn child, had been stoned to death, and another love, Rayna Kapec, had essentially committed suicide.

  And then there had been Edith Keeler, the woman Jim had loved like no other. At Spock’s urging, for the sake of maintaining the timeline of historical events, he had allowed her to die, had taken action to ensure that she died. In some ways, Spock thought that Jim had never recovered from that.

  Spock’s own death, he knew, would be another terrible blow for the admiral.

  He reached the upper deck of engineering and felt the heat of overworked equipment, smelled the bitter whiff of perspiration and fear. He sprinted toward the top of the ladder that led down to the section housing the containment chamber. With less than two and a half minutes left now, he thought again of the likelihood of his impending death. This time, though, he considered something he had not before: his katra. With so little time, how could he ensure the return of the essence of his being, the vitality of his mind, to Mount Seleya on Vulcan, where it could be interred in an ark?

  Spock arrived at the lower engineering level, where several cadets still worked and several others lay scattered about, injured, unconscious, or both. Dr. McCoy treated one crewmember, he saw, while Commander Scott sat on the deck, slumped back against a post. The engineer’s head lolled and his eyelids fluttered as he obviously fought to regain alertness.

  Hastening to the warp monitoring console, Spock queried the status of the plasma injector. As he’d hypothesized, the component had overloaded, flooding the containment chamber with lethal radiation. He tried to reset it from the panel, something Mr. Scott would no doubt have done as well, and indeed, Spock’s attempt failed. As he’d expected, though, he saw that he could reset the injector manually.

  Moving away from the station, Spock started toward both the containment chamber and Dr. McCoy. Already preparing to transfer his katra, he intended to ask McCoy both to meld with him and to contact Sarek about a trip to Mount Seleya. Spock’s father would understand what had happened and would take action accordingly. But before he could turn toward the doctor, McCoy interposed himself between Spock and the chamber.

  “Are you outta your Vulcan mind?” he said. “No human can tolerate the radiation that�
��s in there.”

  “As you are so fond of pointing out, Doctor, I am not human,” Spock said. He started forward, prepared to ask McCoy to meld with him, but the doctor raised a hand to his shoulder and forcibly stopped him.

  “You’re not going in there,” McCoy insisted.

  Two minutes, one second. Spock had no time for this. Quickly, he formulated another plan. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said, then turned toward where Mr. Scott still sat on the deck, struggling to come fully awake. “What is Mister Scott’s condition?”

  McCoy stepped past Spock, toward the engineer. “Well, I don’t think that he—” The doctor stiffened as Spock’s fingers tightened about his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” Spock said as he lowered McCoy to the deck. “I have no time to discuss this logically.” He hurriedly reached toward Mr. Scott and pulled off the protective gloves of the commander’s engineering suit. Then, presuming greatly on his friendship with McCoy but having few other choices, Spock raised his hand to the doctor’s face. As swiftly as he could, he established a mental link, then concentrated. “Remember,” he said, and he knew that in the unused portion of McCoy’s brain, neurons fired, initiating action potentials and causing communication across synapses. In an instant, the constituents of one section of the doctor’s gray matter—axons, dendrites, soma, terminal buttons, myelin sheaths, nodes of Ranvier, Schwann cells—all aligned their states to mirror the corresponding constituents in Spock’s own brain.

  The process complete, he headed for the containment chamber. Pulling on his gloves as he entered, he saw Mr. Scott gaze up at him, his surprise at Spock crossing the threshold into the radiation field apparently shocking him into full consciousness. McCoy also seemed to be coming to already, the effects of the nerve pinch on him probably overwhelmed by the power of the katra transfer.