“My god,” said McCoy.
Across the street, two people walked by—two ordinary people who had never heard of Gary Mitchell. They would never know how narrowly they had escaped his godlike attentions.
“At first,” Kirk told him, “I rejected both those options. Spock told me that was probably what the captain of the Valiant had said at first. As you can imagine, that put things in perspective for me. Reluctantly, I had Kelso chart a course for Delta Vega.
“But when we got there,” the captain went on, “Gary knew what we were up to. By then, he was able to read people’s minds almost effortlessly. Still, we got him to drop his guard long enough for us to sedate him, then beam him down to the planet.”
“And you left him there?” asked the biologist, understandably horrified by the prospect.
Kirk shook his head. “Don’t forget, our warp drive was in need of repair. We imprisoned Gary behind a forcefield while we cannibalized some of the station’s hardware to fix the drive.” He swallowed. “It turned out to be a mistake. We shouldn’t have lingered there, no matter what.”
“Something went wrong,” McCoy divined.
“Very wrong,” the captain admitted. “We—or rather, I—misjudged the rate at which Gary’s power was growing. As we were getting ready to leave, he [26] reached out with his mind and strangled Kelso with a power cable. Then he burst free of the prison we’d made for him, knocked us unconscious and took Dehner with him.”
“Poor girl,” said his friend, perhaps thinking of his daughter.
“That’s what I thought,” Kirk recalled, “when I woke up some time later. And I couldn’t help thinking it was my fault Gary had taken her, my fault he had gotten so far.”
He looked down and saw that his fingers had curled into fists. With a conscious effort, he relaxed them.
“I left orders for Spock,” the captain said. “If I didn’t contact the ship in the next twelve hours, he was to take the Enterprise out of orbit—and then irradiate Delta Vega with full-intensity neutron beams. Then I picked up a phaser rifle Spock had brought down with him and went after Gary ... as if I were some kind of big game hunter.”
“You were taking quite a chance,” McCoy observed.
“I thought I had to,” Kirk told him. “He had Dehner at his mercy—or so I believed. As it happened, I was wrong again.”
“How’s that?” asked his companion.
Kirk sighed. He told McCoy how he had heard Gary’s voice in his head, assuring him that he would find his friend if he took the right path—and how, a moment later, he had turned around and seen Dehner standing there.
“She had changed, too, Bones,” he related. “Her eyes ... they were glowing just like Gary’s.”
[27] McCoy muttered a curse. It drifted away on the warm air.
“Pretty soon, I realized, Dehner would be just as powerful as he was, just as evolved. And I wouldn’t have a chance against two of them. Hell, I might not have a chance against one.”
“What did you do?” asked his friend.
The captain shrugged. “I tried to enlist her help—tried to appeal to her humanity. It wasn’t easy. She was already thinking like Gary, already talking like him. But I played on her fear of him, and then on her pride in her abilities as a psychiatrist, and little by little I started to get somewhere. I started to wear her down.
“But before I could get her to help me,” he said, “Gary himself showed up. He had changed even in the short time since I had seen him last. His hair was graying at the temples and his eyes seemed dreamier, somehow, more alien even than before. He scrutinized me as if I were some kind of insect, barely worth his notice.”
McCoy shook his head, but he didn’t say anything. He seemed to have his hands full just taking it all in.
“I fired at him,” Kirk remembered, “for all the good it did. As far as I could tell, Gary didn’t even feel it. With a gesture, he disarmed me. Then he dug me a grave.”
“Dug ... ?” said his friend.
“With a blast of his power,” the captain explained. “He even made me a headstone with James R. Kirk inscribed on it.”
“But your middle name is—”
“Tiberius,” Kirk acknowledged. “It was a joke [28] between Gary and me. He never forgot it—not even when he was about to kill me.”
“But he didn’t kill you,” McCoy pointed out. “Or we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”
“He didn’t,” the captain agreed, “but only because Dehner saw what was happening. She saw that Gary was becoming colder and crueler with each passing moment, just as I had told her he would. So, before he could put the finishing touches on my demise, she sent him staggering backward with a bolt of pure white energy.”
“One titan attacking the other,” the biologist breathed, his eyes losing their focus as he tried to picture the majesty of it.
“It was something to see, all right,” Kirk conceded. “A battle for the ages. Either one of them was powerful enough to rip a hole in a starship, if he or she wanted to. But for the moment, thankfully, all they wanted to do was rip holes in each other.
“Back and forth they went, sending bolt after bolt at each other, weakening each other more and more. Dehner, unfortunately, hadn’t evolved as quickly as Gary had. In the end, she couldn’t stand up to him. The last blow she took was a mortal one.
“But she hadn’t given her life in vain,” the captain said. “Gary was drained by the exchange, exhausted—so much so that the light had gone out of his eyes. I knew it was the last chance I would have to stop him ... and I took advantage of it.”
McCoy’s Adam’s apple climbed his throat. “You tried to kill him.”
[29] Kirk nodded grimly. “I did. But I had no choice, Bones. He wasn’t Gary anymore. He was something so monstrous, so dangerous—”
The other man waved away the explanation. “You don’t have to excuse what you did, Jim. At least, not to me. I know you would never have hurt Gary if there were any other way.”
“Never,” the captain responded. “That’s the truth. But there was no other way. So, while he was weakened, vulnerable, I battered him with my fists as hard as I could. Eventually, I knocked him off his feet. I straddled him, found a boulder ... and raised it over my head.”
Even now, light-years removed from the experience, Kirk could feel his heart race. Even in this beautiful city by the bay, he could feel the soreness of his limbs and the lethal weight of the boulder in his hands.
“Then he looked up at me,” he said, “and I hesitated. After all, it wasn’t a monster I was looking at. For a moment, at least, it was Gary again, dazed and innocent looking—and there was at least a possibility that his power had abandoned him for good.”
The captain frowned. “So I hesitated ... and it was almost the end of me. Gary’s power returned and he flung me away, almost breaking my neck in the process.
“I tried to grapple with him some more,” he said, “but I knew I didn’t really have a chance. I was just hanging in there as long as I could, hoping against hope that another opportunity would present itself. And to my amazement, it did.
[30] “Gary picked up a boulder about as tall as he was and prepared to crush me with it. But he underestimated how much steam I had left. I moved quickly enough to tackle him around the knees and send us tumbling into the grave he had dug for me.
“Certainly,” said Kirk, “Gary was much more powerful than before. His strength was immense, greater than anything I had ever seen. But he wasn’t any quicker than the average human being. I, on the other hand, was propelled by fear—not only for myself, but for the four hundred men and women orbiting the planet above us, and beyond that, for the rest of the galaxy.
“With the help of that fear, I climbed out of the grave first and spotted my phaser rifle. It was only a few meters away at the bottom of a rocky slope. I slid down the incline as quickly as I could, grabbed the thing and whipped it around. And as Gary began climbing out of the grave aft
er me, I tried to think of a way to beat him.
“I knew it wouldn’t help to hit him with a barrage,” the captain recalled, adjusting his cast again. “He’d already shrugged off my phaser beam. Then I caught sight of a huge hunk of rock in the cliff face above him—a hunk of rock he had begun to loosen a few moments earlier.
“Taking aim, I fired at it. It fell on Gary, appearing to crush him, driving him into the grave meant for me.” The captain took a breath, let it out. “I waited, half expecting him to obliterate the rock and come climbing out of the grave again. But he didn’t.
“Unbelievably,” said Kirk, “my friend Gary was dead. And against all odds, I had survived.”
[31] McCoy swore beneath his breath. “It’s unbelievable, all right.”
The captain searched his friend’s face. “You mean what Gary became? Or the fact that I killed him?”
The biologist shrugged. “Both, I suppose.” He glanced at Kirk’s wrist. “And that’s how you hurt yourself? Tussling with Gary?”
“With what he’d become,” the captain insisted.
High overhead, a hovercar skimmed the tops of the buildings, twisting in the bright sunlight. Somewhere down the hill, beyond the Academy, the surf pounded the Pacific shore.
“So ... are you all right with all this?” McCoy asked finally.
Kirk made a bitter sound deep in his throat. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem real, you know? Those are the good times, the times when I can go about my business. Then I remember the way Gary looked up at me when I was holding that boulder over him, as if he couldn’t believe I would have the heart to do him in. I guess you’d say those are the bad times.”
A couple of birds alighted on the neatly cut grass in front of them and began pecking for worms. Somewhere in the distance, someone was playing the upbeat music of an ancient orchestra.
“Come on,” said McCoy. “Sal’s expecting us.”
The captain nodded. “It’ll be good to see him,” he replied, though he had a feeling he had mentioned that already.
Then the two of them got up from their marble benches, took a last look at the spire dedicated to those who had died fighting the Klingons, and resumed their trek up the hill.
Chapter Three
KIRK WAS GLAD he had told his friend about Gary’s death before they got to the restaurant. It enabled them to leave the horror of what happened to Gary outside the place—to cleanse themselves, in a way, before they sat down at their table.
Besides, Velluto’s wasn’t a place where one went to mourn. It was a place where one went to celebrate life.
It made that statement with its light and airy Mediterranean decor, with its immense skylights, with colorful pottery and paintings scattered about the place with apparent abandon. It made that statement with its menu, a wild collection of dishes that mixed the daring with the traditional.
But most of all, it made that statement through its host, the effervescent and omnipresent Sal, who hadn’t changed one iota since the captain [33] frequented Velluto’s a decade earlier. The man was as energetic as ever behind his thick, dark mustache, moving from table to table to make sure his guests were all being taken care of.
When the restaurant owner set his eyes on Kirk, they crinkled at the corners for a moment. Then recognition seemed to set in and a smile spread across his face.
“Jim!” he said, grabbing the captain’s hand and squeezing it with unexpected strength. “Jim Kirk! How long’s it been?”
“Ten years,” the captain estimated, smiling back despite his somber mood. “Maybe as many as eleven.”
“And look how you’ve come up in the world!” Sal exclaimed, stepping back to admire Kirk’s uniform and the bars on his sleeve. “I guess you’ve got your own ship now, eh?”
The captain nodded. “The Enterprise. Constitution-class.”
The man’s eyes widened. “The Enterprise ... that’s you? I’ve heard a lot about that ship.”
Kirk shrugged. “Nothing bad, I hope.”
“Bad?” Sal echoed incredulously. “She’s the pride of the fleet. If I’d known, I would’ve sent you some tiramisu to congratulate you. You always liked my tiramisu, eh, Jim?”
“Yes,” the captain conceded. “I did, indeed.”
The restaurant owner turned to McCoy. “And you ... how do you know this guy? You serve on a ship together or something?”
“That’s it, exactly,” said the biologist. “On the Constitution.”
[34] Sal nodded. “I’ve heard of that ship, too. It’s not a bad one, either, from what I understand.” He glanced slyly at Kirk. “Of course, it’s no Enterprise, but it’s not bad.”
The captain couldn’t help chuckling a little. “You’re too kind,” he told the restaurateur.
“No,” Sal told him, “I’m just kind enough.” The skin around his eyes crinkled again. “And your friend,” he said, “the one who used to win all those drinks at my bar ... what was his name again?”
The captain felt a cold shadow fall over him, even in the midst of all that filtered sunlight. “You mean Gary,” he answered, adjusting his cast again. “Gary Mitchell.”
The restaurateur laughed. “Gary ... yes, of course. How is he, anyway, bless his thieving heart?”
Kirk frowned. “Sal, he—”
Suddenly, the proprietor’s eyes brightened and he held up a forefinger, cutting the captain off. Reaching over to the next table, he secured a cloth napkin and brought it over. Then he wrapped the thing around the top of Kirk’s slender water glass.
Using the napkin like an old-fashioned measuring tape, Sal touched its corner to its hem to mark the length of the glass’s circumference. Then, grasping that same spot on the hem between thumb and forefinger, he let the rest of the napkin dangle.
The restaurant owner looked up at them, an antic expression on his face. “Your friend Gary, he would ask people which was greater, the height of their glass or the measurement around it. And they would look at him like he was crazy. After all, with a tall, [35] thin glass in front of them, everyone figures it’s going to be the height, right?
“But he would say no,” Sal went on. “The measurement around, he would say, is greater. And he would bet them a drink that he could prove it.”
The restaurateur lowered the napkin next to Kirk’s glass until its corner was just brushing the table. Of course, the spot between his thumb and his forefinger was higher than the glass’s lip.
The captain wasn’t surprised. Like Sal, he had seen Gary perform the same trick a hundred times.
“Then,” said their host, “he would show them he was right. The way around really was greater. And they would curse themselves for being so stupid and buy him a drink.”
Sal shook his head and stuck the napkin in his pocket. “Those were the days,” he chuckled, “eh, Jim?”
“They were,” Kirk agreed.
“So where is he?” asked the restaurateur. “Gary, I mean? What’s he doing these days?”
The captain sighed. “I hate to be the one to tell you this,” he replied, “but Gary died recently.”
The color drained from Sal’s face. “No ... you’re kidding me, right? You’re pulling my leg?”
Kirk shook his head. “Believe me, I wish I were. He was killed on a world called Delta Vega just a few days ago.”
“My god,” said the restaurant owner, “I’m so sorry.” Suddenly, it all came together for him. “That’s why you’re here on Earth ... isn’t it? For your friend’s funeral?”
[36] The captain nodded. “That’s right.” Apparently, he wasn’t the first Starfleet officer who had passed through San Francisco on his way to a colleague’s memorial service.
Sal regarded the two of them for a moment. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to send a bottle of wine over to your table. On the house, of course. So you can toast your friend Gary’s memory.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said McCoy, “but—”
The restaurant owner held up his
hand. “I insist, Doctor. A toast to Gary Mitchell. It’s the least I can do.”
Kirk smiled. “Thank you, Sal.”
The man dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “As I said,” he replied, “it’s the least I can do. Bon appétit, gentlemen.”
As Sal withdrew, McCoy chuckled softly. “I think you caught him off-guard, Jim. Did you see the look on his face?”
“I tried not to embarrass him,” the captain noted. “Unfortunately, he walked right into it.”
“Unfortunately.” The biologist leaned back in his chair. “So, you haven’t told me ... when and where?”
Kirk looked at him for a second, wondering what he meant. Then it hit him. “The funeral, you mean. It’s tomorrow, in New York.”
“I’m going with you, of course,” said his friend.
The captain smiled. “I figured you would want to.”
He paused for a moment, asking himself if this was the best time to ask McCoy what he needed to [37] ask. In the end, he decided it was probably as good a time as any.
“Bones,” Kirk began, “I’ve got a bit of a problem. I believe you can solve it for me.”
The biologist eyed him suspiciously. “A problem? You mean, beyond what happened to Gary?”
“That’s right.”
McCoy shrugged. “Tell me about it and I’ll see what I can do.”
“All right,” said the captain. “You know Mark Piper, don’t you? The CMO on the Enterprise?”
“Not well,” said his friend, “but I know him by reputation. An old buddy of mine has spoken rather highly of him.”
Kirk understood the reference. “I guess I have, at that. But then, the man has served me well for the last year or more. The problem is Piper’s leaving. Retiring from Starfleet.”
McCoy grunted. “Good for him. He’s earned it.” Then he added, “Who have you gotten to replace him?”
The captain looked at him. “I haven’t gotten anyone yet, Bones. But I have my eye on a pretty talented candidate. Someone I’ve worked with before, as a matter of fact.”
STAR TREK: TOS #87 - My Brother's Keeper, Book Three - Enterprise Page 3