Would you have failed to rescue those kids if you’d known what it would do to you?
The question wasn’t even a question. He could have done nothing else and remain who he was.
Good-bye, Christopher, the third voice said.
Good-bye, Siddhe…and thank you…for bringing me this far.
There was a fourth voice, which was many voices, only some of which he knew. And sometimes, especially at night, when the lights in the medical wing were darkened out of courtesy for those patients who could sleep, Pike imagined he could see her, too, but only if he closed his eyes.
Long after all the phantom sensations had passed and he had reconciled himself to the fact that, while his spirit was rubbed raw, his body would be forever numb, he could have sworn he’d felt the touch of a woman’s hand on his face. If he opened his eyes, she was gone.
Then Spock arrived, and everything changed.
“Why?” Commodore José Mendez demanded of no one in particular, and not for the first time. “Why Talos IV? Why would he take Pike there?”
“You saw the answer in the images the Talosians sent us,” Captain James T. Kirk explained. He had to keep reminding himself that it hadn’t really been Mendez in the shuttle with him or at Spock’s court-martial, but that the real commodore had been here all along, on Starbase 11, watching the images at the same time those aboard Enterprise were, silently fuming as he wondered what it was all about.
The illusion of Mendez had been perfect, uncannily so. The Talosians had somehow duplicated the irascible commodore to a hair, with all of his tics and short-tempered outbursts, even down to the scent of his aftershave, as “he” co-piloted the shuttle with Kirk until it ran out of fuel. Jim Kirk was still trying to wrap his brain around it when Enterprise, no longer ferrying Christopher Pike to Talos IV in violation of General Order 7, returned to the starbase to find an irate Mendez waiting for them.
“You know damn well that’s not all there was to it!” the real Mendez said now. He’d ordered a debriefing the minute Kirk’s boots touched ground. Spock and McCoy, as the other witness/participants in this little escapade, were cooling their heels in the anteroom and would be called in later. For now, Mendez wanted to talk to Kirk alone—informally, friend to friend, and both of them friends to the late and revered Christopher Pike (Mendez, having visited the injured Pike daily since the accident on the cadet ship, couldn’t shake the impression that the Pike he saw, trapped inside his own body, was more dead than alive). “I want to know how Spock could be so sure that was what Pike wanted.
“Oh, of course, you were the one who asked him that at the end of the ‘trial,’” Mendez went on, cutting across anything Kirk might have wanted to interject. Kirk exercised the greater part of valor and closed his mouth on his half-formed thoughts. “But what if Spock had guessed wrong? Risked his life, and your career, not to mention the entire crew? When Enterprise first arrived here, I’ll remind you, all Chris Pike kept telling us was ‘no.’”
Kirk remembered only too well, the light on the chair blinking repeatedly, twice for “no.” It had driven McCoy nuts. And whenever McCoy was disturbed about something, he felt he had to share.
“He keeps blinking ‘no,’” he’d growled, glowering at the viewscreen that monitored Pike’s activities around the clock. “‘No’ to what?”
Kirk hadn’t had an answer then. He wasn’t sure he had one now. He waited until he was sure Mendez had wound down. “José, I don’t know what to tell you. Vulcans don’t use words like ‘intuition,’ but if I had to guess, I’d say Spock knew something about Pike that even Pike himself didn’t know…
“…then again, maybe the only thing Pike was trying to tell us wasn’t even addressed to us,” he finished. “Maybe it was addressed to Spock alone. ‘No, don’t take me there. No, don’t risk your life for me.’ That would be in keeping with the Chris Pike we knew.”
“‘No, don’t take me there’? Because he didn’t want Spock to incur the death penalty, or because he wasn’t sure what he’d find on Talos when he arrived?” Mendez wondered. He sighed. “Well, too late now. It’s done. Jim, do you have any idea how they contacted Spock?”
“The Talosians?” Kirk thought about it for the first time. He’d been so wedded to the notion that Spock had in fact gotten a comm message. “It never occurred to me to ask.”
“Because if they can reach someone telepathically from that distance…” Mendez suppressed a shudder. “That’s the part that worries me the most. Minds that powerful, able to reach across distances. Touch telepaths are one thing, but this…What have we done, Jim? In letting Pike go there, waiving General Order 7, have we satisfied them, or only made them lust for more?”
It was a question Spock had pondered as well.
“How did you know, Spock?” McCoy asked him as they waited for Mendez to summon after he was finished grilling Kirk. “How could you be sure he’d want to go with you?”
“I knew Captain Pike,” Spock explained simply, as if it were that simple. “He was an active man—energetic, physical. For a man of that nature to be trapped in that way, when there was an alternative…the choice seemed logical.”
“Logical, my Aunt Fanny!” McCoy said skeptically. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Spock.”
“I also had reason to believe he would be pleased to see the woman Vina again.”
“Oh, well, now you’re talking. Nothing like a good romance.” McCoy grinned, then frowned. “Still, you took a helluva risk. And why do I get the feeling you’re still not telling me the whole story? Another one of those ‘it is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself’ deals?”
Spock merely looked at him. McCoy’s scowl deepened.
“That’s what I figured. Dammit…”
Spock could not have told McCoy the entire truth, because Pike had been correct. Once the Talosians entered your mind, they could always find you again. And there was an aspect to that which even the Talosians hadn’t reckoned on until it was too late.
No telepath has ever successfully explained telepathy to a non-telepath. One of the reasons why it is a skill beyond words is that it is, quite simply, beyond words.
Spock hadn’t lied when he informed Kirk he had received a message from Starbase 11 requesting Enterprise divert there for reasons unexplained until they were informed of Pike’s injury. The trace of the Talosian mind within his own was just powerful enough to make him believe he had actually seen such a message on his screen.
As for the rest, if he’d had to describe it to a human, he would have characterized it as a little voice in the back of his head, like a radio played at a subliminal level, informing him—as Enterprise headed toward Starbase 11 in answer to a summons that did not exist—of what the Talosians wanted him to do, and why. The conversation went something like this:
“In our initial arrogance,” the Magistrate explained, “we neglected to consider that so primitive a species as humans might possess a power of mind sufficient to penetrate ours. What the human mind lacks in telepathic power, it compensates for in, shall we say, strength of will. Christopher Pike is particularly strong of will. In short, he remained with us long after he had physically departed.”
“I am not certain I entirely understand.”
“He suspected that once we had made an incursion into his mind we would never entirely depart. You and he even discussed it as you concealed yourselves in a tree and waited for nightfall so as to elude the Kan’ess.”
“Indeed.”
“Pike’s suspicion was correct. The connection was tenuous, but it remained. What we did not understand until too late was that it was not unilateral.” The Magistrate waited for Spock to reply. When he did not, s/he completed the thought. “Christopher Pike’s mind remained within ours as well. The entire Talosian race has been…infected, if you will…with the virus of his consciousness. It has had some interesting ramifications.
“If you bring him to us, we can maintain him physically. We can nurture h
is thoughts and allow him to escape his physical reality within the power of dream. And perhaps he can also be of assistance to us.”
It was in Spock’s mind to ask, “Did Pike send the message from Starbase 11 or did you?” but he refrained. If the Magistrate confirmed what he suspected, he would have to lie to Kirk. He would not do that, not even to save Pike.
“Then you do not intend to imprison him as you attempted to do once before,” Spock said.
The Magistrate’s mind-voice was dry. “I believe we are all aware of how little success we had with that the first time. We do not wish to imprison him. We wish to set him free.”
Just as there had never been any question in Pike’s mind whether or not he would have rescued the cadets from the delta rays, so there was no question in Spock’s mind about what he was willing to do for Pike.
“Very well,” he replied. “I will endeavor to effect an outcome that will be of benefit to all concerned.”
The Magistrate’s mind-voice then was quizzical. “Excepting yourself? Is self-sacrifice a human characteristic or a Vulcan one?”
Spock’s meditation was broken then by a hail from the bridge. It was Lieutenant Hansen, letting him know that they were approaching Starbase 11, and Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy were waiting for him in the transporter room.
Had Kirk questioned Spock about the summons instead of simply taking his word and setting a course for the starbase, Spock would have been able to state unequivocally that the message did exist, even though he would have been unable to produce it after the fact.
But Kirk hadn’t questioned Spock’s word. He’d never had any reason to, though the events of the next few days had stretched his trust in his first officer to the extreme.
Jim Kirk couldn’t know that what drove Spock was contained in the words he said, against Pike’s protests (“No, no, no!”) when they were alone.
“I know,” he said, kneeling so that he would be on a level with Pike. “I know it is treachery, and it’s mutiny. But I must do this. I have no choice.”
He had waited then for Pike to grasp the full import of his words. The ensuing silence told him that he had.
“They know,” Spock said simply. “They are aware of everything that has occurred. They are aware of what your doctors will not tell you, which is that your condition is degenerative. While you may live out a certain number of years, your condition will only get worse. Unless you allow them to help.”
Briefly, then, because the success of his mission hinged on precise timing, Spock had told Pike of his “conversation” with the Magistrate. When he had done, Pike was silent, his head bowed, the prematurely white hair—a result of the profound shock to his system—obscuring his scarred and all but expressionless face from his former first officer.
“Will you allow me to help you, sir?” Spock asked softly.
When Pike didn’t answer, Spock realized he had slipped into what, in his condition, passed for sleep. This happened often, particularly when he was in a state of stress as he had been since Spock’s arrival. Before Pike could change his mind, Spock cued his communicator to interface with Enterprise’s transporter, and beamed them both aboard.
Now that it was all over but the shouting, as McCoy might say, Spock answered every question Mendez put to him at the debriefing. Yes, he had been led to believe that he was in fact in receipt of a message from Starbase 11. Yes, the Talosians indicated they were offering Pike a home, a place to be as free as his ruined body would allow him, and not the cage they’d tried to imprison him in before.
“Their brief exposure to Captain Pike’s dynamic personality, and the thirteen intervening years in which, having downloaded the contents of the Enterprise’s library computer, they embarked upon an in-depth study of the human species, gave the Talosians a greater understanding of why they had failed the first time,” Spock explained. “They were aware of the captain’s physical condition and that, if his mind was not stimulated, it would deteriorate over time, shortening his life span and condemning him to immobility for the years remaining to him. They offered an alternative.”
“And you believed them?” Mendez said, a little impatiently. All the pretty images of Pike and Vina he had seen still didn’t convince him there wasn’t some sinister motive.
Spock weighed the question thoughtfully. “In my experience, Commodore, the telepathic mind cannot lie.”
“The Talosians lied to get you here!” Mendez barked. “What was that spurious message from Starbase 11 if not a lie?”
“An obfuscation?” Spock suggested. Mendez glowered, and Spock tried to explain. “Sir, the kernel of truth was contained in the message. My presence was required on Starbase 11 in order to retrieve Captain Pike and bring him to Talos. That the message was not actually sent via comm from Starbase 11 was immaterial. The message was contained within Captain Pike’s desire to be freed from his disabled condition.”
“That’s supposition on your part!” Mendez roared, then stopped himself.
What the hell was he shouting about? Mendez wondered. Pike was free, as free as he ever would be in this life. Spock’s court-martial had been overturned, and Mendez no longer had to contemplate sending him to his death. The sight of Pike and Vina holding hands on Talos, walking toward the turbolift, was as close to a storybook ending as anyone could hope for, except for all the paperwork generated after the fact.
Mendez exhaled wearily. There was no question in his mind who would end up doing most of that paperwork. He passed a hand momentarily over his eyes and wondered aloud, “How am I supposed to explain this to his family?”
Even in the twenty-third century, rain in the California desert was a rare and welcome thing. The parkland surrounding the city of Mojave might benefit from the nightly shower provided by the orbital weather shields, but the desert beyond still relied on natural weather patterns. While it might rain anytime from November through March, the rains usually fell most heavily in January and February.
It was raining very hard when Siddhe stepped out of the ’car into the yard to see Hobelia once again waiting at the open ranch house door. Wind tore at the fan palms in the distance, and the surrounding hills were hidden by veils of sheeting water pouring unrelentingly out of a dark gray sky.
Charlie and Hobelia had been informed of Chris’s condition immediately after the accident. They also knew he’d left instructions that if he was ever seriously injured far from home, they were not to disrupt their lives to travel halfway across the quadrant to be with him. Knowing him, they knew this was as much about his pride as about any inconvenience to themselves. They had honored his wishes and waited, receiving weekly updates from Mendez, making arrangements, if Chris could be moved from the starbase and cleared for space travel, to bring him back to Earth if that was what he wanted.
Something about Siddhe’s arrival told Hobelia that Chris would not be coming home to them. The greatest gift Hobe could give to the motherless child she had raised as her own would be to let him go.
Hobelia watched the younger woman raise the hood of the practical slicker she wore against the downpour and start across the yard. But Siddhe was an Argelian and open to all sensual experience, including the pristine joy of nurturing rain. For a moment she stopped and lifted her face like a flower and the rain coursed down her cheeks like the tears she had not shed when her premonition about Chris’s fate had come to pass.
Those who had the gift knew they could not change what they foresaw. There were Argelian empaths who had walked knowingly into their own deaths in order to caution others. Physicists might talk of parallel universes and alternate time-lines, but an empath knew it was never quite that simple.
Mindful of her wet shoes and Hobelia’s immaculate floors, Siddhe came up only to the porch. Hobelia hugged her in spite of the sodden rain slicker.
“Charlie’s in the barn,” she said. “Let me get my poncho and I’ll walk with you. Tango…”
She didn’t have to finish. The rain drumming on the barn roof w
hen the women entered only partly masked the sound of labored breathing. Charlie sat in the straw of the box stall with Tango’s head in his lap.
The big bay was only thirty-six, not at all old for a horse in these times, but he had decided it was his time. The vet had come and gone, confirming what Charlie suspected, that there was nothing physically wrong with him. But the old devil was grieving. He knew.
Later that evening, when Tango was at peace and the rain no more than a memory dripping from the eaves under a cool and distant moon, the three sat before the hearth in the big comfortable living room and Siddhe told Charlie and Hobelia what José Mendez couldn’t find words for, that Chris was safe and whole and setting a course for the second half of his life, though none of them would ever see him more.
They didn’t ask how she knew. It didn’t seem strange to them that, while she didn’t know where he was, she knew this much. Some knowledge transcends even Starfleet secrets.
The room contained a listening quiet, punctuated by the snap of piñon logs and the sift of ashes in the grate, quiet but little grief. When humans grieve for someone they have lost, more often than not they are grieving not for the loved one but for themselves, for the absence of that person from their lives. Christopher Pike was as present that night as he was absent, as contained in the hearts of those who loved him as he was free in the realms of dream.
“Vina…” someone said.
Was that his voice? Pike wondered. He no longer remembered what it sounded like. He watched as if from a distance as he stood and walked and moved toward Vina to take her hands in his. Her hands were cool, small, and delicate, just as he remembered them; when he held them, they fit neatly into his, as if they were meant to be there.
“Christopher…” she said in return, her voice as sweet as he remembered, her small, heart-shaped face tilted up toward his, those feline eyes always a little sad, even when she smiled. “Chris…”
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