Collision Course

by William Shatner

  “New semester, new Zee,” Elissa’s dormmate said. “I’ve learned my lessons.”

  Elissa was thinking, furiously. Three days to go. Will I be able to say the same?

  17

  “How can you and your brother live like this?”

  “For one thing, Dad, it’s cheap. For another, if you look around, we’re not in Iowa anymore.”

  Kirk opened the cooler door, then wondered why. Of course, there was nothing edible in it. He’d been gone for a few days. And he was the shopper.

  His father’s tall figure blocked most of one window. Joe Kirk was staring out at the equally old and decrepit apartment building across the street. “That’s not you, Jimmy. That’s George talking.”

  Kirk took a deep breath to calm himself. “C’mon, Dad. His name is Sam.”

  “I know what your brother’s name is. I gave it to him.”

  “And he doesn’t want it. You’re George Joseph Kirk. He wants to be his own man.”

  “Men don’t run away from their obligations.”

  Almost of its own accord, Kirk’s hand slammed shut the cooler door, nearly rocking the old appliance off its base. He turned to face Joe Kirk, angry with his father, but angrier with the heaviness of the tracking module fastened around his right wrist. “Let him go, Dad. He has no obligations—none that have anything to do with you.”

  “The farm!” Joe Kirk turned from the window, his bulk now silhouetted against the dirty panes. He was a big man, fifty-five, still strong, still powerful. He kept his hair in a crew cut, and two years out of Starfleet he still wore his service sideburns with laser-sharp points.

  Kirk’s eyes locked on his father’s. “It’s your farm,” he said carefully, for what felt like the hundredth time. “Yours and Mom’s. Not Sam’s. Not mine.”

  “Ah, Jimmy…” Kirk’s father spread his enormous hands as if they no longer had the strength to do anything. “Why are we like this?”

  There were so many answers Kirk wanted to give his father, but he finally settled on the one that made most sense to him, and Sam. Something he’d never had the courage to say before, so simply. “Because you keep trying to run our lives.”

  His father’s shock looked genuine. “You’re seventeen! You’re not old enough to know how to run your life!”

  “Who says? I’m doing fine!”

  “Jimmy! You just got arrested by Starfleet for vehicle theft! Do you know how that reflects on me? On your mother?”

  Kirk struggled to control himself. “Will you listen to yourself? Somehow, what Starfleet thinks I did—something they can’t prove, by the way—reflects on you—and Mom! Dad, you’ve gotta stop this!”

  The sudden silence made the cramped and dismal room seem even smaller.

  Kirk could hear his father working hard to keep his voice down. “I know you didn’t steal anything. You’re not that kind of kid.”

  “Thank you,” Kirk said flatly. “But I’m not a kid anymore.”

  Joe pressed his lips together, shook his head as if he were counting to ten. “Okay. Whatever you say. A young man. Whatever you want. But, I know that if a Starfleet car’s been stolen, then somehow, your brother George—Sam—is behind it.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Let me finish,” Joe said sharply. “I know you don’t agree, but give me some credit for understanding my boys. Your brother has always looked for the easy way, and it’s always been in your nature to take care of him. Your mother says you’d take care of everybody, if you could.”

  “Sam doesn’t need my help.”

  Joe regarded his younger son with pity. “Is there food in the cooler? I don’t even have to look to confirm that. Because you’ve been in custody all night and Sam probably doesn’t even know where to find the market. We both know he’s got better things to do with whatever money he gets. However he gets it.”

  This argument was too old, too familiar, and wouldn’t be settled soon. “Look, Dad, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” Kirk headed toward the door to the apartment’s single bedroom.

  His father reached out to catch his son’s arm. “We need to talk.”

  “In the morning.”

  “At least call your mother, to explain.”

  Kirk pulled away from Joe. “Why don’t you do that. You seem to know it all.” He threw the door shut behind him.

  The cramped bedroom was gloomy, and little bigger than the narrow cot that ran along one pockmarked wall. Kirk collapsed on it, his entire body trembling in the aftermath of all that had happened, his mind all the while searching to understand why he had behaved the way he had, afraid to find the answer.

  What if that answer dragged him back to the killing ground of Tarsus IV? To the screams from those the hunters found? To the certainty of death, not just for him, but for the children who looked up to him, who trusted him to save them all?

  Even as he closed his eyes, he sensed his father’s solid presence outside his door. He knew his father’s code would prevent him from entering. Not even to reassure his son.

  A part of Kirk wished desperately that just this once his father would break his rule, do exactly that, and as if he was small again and lost in the fields of corn, his father would gather him up into his arms and tell him that everything was all right and that everything would always be all right.

  Kirk opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, dry-eyed. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was a man. And nothing would ever be all right, ever. Because no matter how much he did, it would never be enough.

  For anyone.

  Or for himself.

  “The paragon of virtue was nicked?!” Griffyn’s explosive laughter rattled the metal walls of his denlike office. It was a claustrophobic, mean room, with a low overhead, sited eight meters above the main deck of the Pacific Rome’s main cargo hold. Through its narrow, outward-slanting windows, Griffyn could look down over his burgeoning enterprise and the underage workers who served it and him.

  Sam stood nervously in front of the single, battered desk. He had tried to play an angle that he thought would free him from Griffyn’s demand to meet his younger brother. But from Griffyn’s delighted response, he had failed.

  Griffyn caught his breath, directed his attention to the young woman gracefully arranged in a corner of an old sofa draped with what appeared to be dusty, antique tapestries. Her head was bent over a news padd, her legs tucked up under her. Sam knew her as Dala, Griffyn’s sometime girlfriend.

  “You’ve heard of this kid, right?” Griffyn asked her.

  When she didn’t respond, he snagged a thermal cup from his desk and threw it at the wall above her. It twanged off the metal and bounced onto the carpet-covered deck, finally rolling between two tall stacks of small shipping containers.

  Dala looked up from her padd, unimpressed. She had painted iridescent blue butterfly wings around her eyes, and Sam thought the glistening indigo jumpsuit she wore fit her like a second skin. “I heard you.”

  “Who am I talking about?”

  “Jimmy Kirk,” Dala rolled her eyes. “It’s always Jimmy Kirk with you.”

  Sam frowned, wondering what she meant, but he knew he didn’t have the stomach to question Griffyn about it, or about anything. All he had to think about was how to keep Jimmy out of this.

  Griffyn put his feet back up on his desk, roughly, and in the same movement grabbed a small clay object to avoid knocking it over.

  The squat figurine looked old to Sam, but that was all he thought, because Griffyn’s strange eyes were on him, now.

  “So, Georgie, what do you think we should do?”

  Sam mustered all his courage. “Well, if Starfleet thinks Jimmy’s involved in stealing cars, then he’s probably going to be under surveillance, right? So…maybe it’d be better if you weren’t seen with him?”

  “You let me worry about that.” Griffyn held up the clay figure and squinted at it with a frown. “But here’s something you can worry about.”

  “Yeah?”
>
  “Your little brother’s a regular Star Cadet. You really think he’s going to be able to keep his mouth shut when they start asking him questions?”

  “What…what kind of questions?”

  “Georgie…Georgie…he’s going to give you up. He won’t be able to help himself. They’ll ask who stole the car, and he’ll tell them.”

  Sam had never thought of that. “But, Griff, they think he stole it. So they won’t ask him. And Jimmy won’t do anything that’ll hurt me. I mean, he wanted to fly the car last night because he knew if I got caught, my probation’s over.”

  Griffyn swung his feet down, leaned forward, hands cupped around the figurine. “Exactly. They come for you, you’re facing a few years of rehabilitation. Maybe send you off to one of those penal colonies where they rewire your brain. Unless…” Griffyn dragged out the moment. “…you cut a deal.”

  Sam suddenly grasped what Griffyn was implying and began speaking so quickly that his panicked words ran together. “Griff, no! No way. I’d never give you up. Never. No matter what they offered me.”

  Griffyn’s grin was unnerving. “Guess what? I believe you. Because if you ever did anything that stupid, they’d find you gutted like a Tellarite on Andoria.”

  Dala snickered without looking up from the news.

  “So, Georgie boy, if you don’t think Jimmy’s going to rat you out, and I know you won’t rat me out, why do you think I said you have something to worry about?”

  Sam nervously shook his head. He knew that half of whatever Griffyn said to him was just to keep him off balance. But he couldn’t conceive of any way to talk back. Jimmy would know, he thought. He can handle creeps like Griffyn.

  “Who’s missing from the equation?” Griffyn prompted.

  Sam stared at him blankly.

  Griffyn counted ostentatiously on the fingers of one hand. “Let’s see…there was Kirk brother number one…Kirk brother number two…and…”

  “Elissa?” The name shot out of Sam with geyser force.

  Griffyn smiled approval. “Now you’re firing on all thrusters. Consider this—she’s a Starfleet midshipman, so she’s committed to the truth. I could hold a knife to her throat to keep her quiet and she’d still tell me exactly what happened. Jimmy might not give you up, but his little playmate won’t even think twice about it. Hell, she won’t even think once. She’ll just spill her guts. Which brings me back to you and your desire to not have your guts spilled.”

  Dala laughed softly to herself.

  Sam could feel the sweat trickle down his forehead. “But, Griff, she was just along for the ride. Jimmy’ll never mention her. Starfleet will never know about her.”

  “So let’s keep it that way. She’s a sweet little Risan girl; we don’t need to bring her into this at all. That means I let you keep your finder’s fee.”

  The thousand-cee wafer was still in Sam’s hand. He had just tried to return it to Griffyn, but his offer had been refused.

  “That means,” Griffyn added, “I still expect you to get your brother here—so I can fill him in on what’s expected of him. Before he gets it into his head to do the right thing.”

  Somehow, from somewhere, without even weighing the risk of what he was about to do, Sam found the unexpected strength to stand up for his brother. “Jimmy’s not involved in any of this. I don’t want him hurt.”

  Griffyn rocked back in his chair, mouth open in mock surprise. “I’m impressed.” His eyes went cold. “But I’m also disappointed.”

  Sam had trouble breathing as Griffyn got up, walked around from his desk until he was centimeters from Sam.

  “Your little car theft stunt left a lot of dominoes out there that could start falling any second.”

  Griffyn leaned in closer to Sam’s face, flicked his fingers to the left and right, as he described the consequences of those dominoes falling over.

  “Oops, there’s Jimmy blabbing, leading back to you, leading back to me. Oops, there’s the girlfriend, trying to help Jimmy, leading back to you, leading back to me. You get it, Georgie? All those falling dominoes end up on me.”

  Griffyn’s last gesture was to flick Sam’s nose. Sam flinched, but made no protest.

  “So I want you to ask yourself this question: Will I wait around for that to happen? Or will I destroy those other dominoes before they even fall?”

  “I’ll get him here,” Sam croaked.

  Griffyn patted him on the cheek like a dog. “Good boy.”

  When Sam left the Pacific Rome that night, he stopped on the pier only long enough to retch up everything in his stomach. He had never felt so frightened or so trapped, and he feared that this time not even Jimmy could make things right.

  Spock stood in the center of the main room in his family quarters, calmly, because there was no other way for a Vulcan to stand.

  His mother was near, her face taut with human worry.

  His father’s image gazed out at him from a wall-mounted viewscreen. Sarek was on a commercial flight to Titan to meet with a scientific delegation from Nren Prime—a Class-P world whose inhabitants felt more at home on that frozen moon than on Earth.

  “Explain to me why you must return to Starfleet Headquarters,” Spock’s father said.

  Spock looked down at the tracking module he wore. “I must appear for my hearing.”

  “But you told them that you did not steal the car.”

  “Correct,” Spock said. “They did not believe me.”

  Sarek raised an eyebrow by an infinitesimal degree, signifying his great surprise. “But you are a Vulcan, Spock. You would not lie in a matter such as that.”

  “No,” Spock agreed, “I would not.”

  Amanda touched her son’s arm. “Spock, if the authorities need proof of your innocence, then surely you can provide them with an alibi. Since they know exactly when the car was stolen, all you have to do is tell them where you were when it happened.”

  “Her logic is flawless,” Sarek said with Vulcan pride.

  Spock agreed with a nod.

  “Where were you?” Sarek asked.

  Spock kept his attention fixed on his father’s image because a perverse part of him—which he assumed was some last vestige of his human heritage he had successfully put aside—wanted to see Sarek’s reaction to what his son was about to say.

  “I was in the Garden of Venus—what humans refer to as a ‘love bar.’ ”

  Sarek nodded sagely. “An establishment for social gathering in which patrons celebrate and/or arrange various permutations of sexual assignations, typically to be explored at other, more private locations.”

  “Typically,” Spock agreed, noting that his father’s statement was word for word the definition from the embassy’s briefing papers.

  “What was the purpose of your presence there?”

  Amanda interrupted. “Sarek, perhaps that’s too personal a question.”

  Sarek looked puzzled, though only his closest family members would have known it. “Spock is not yet ready for his next pon farr. Therefore, he was not in the ‘love bar’ for the typical reason. Is that not correct, Spock?”

  “Indeed, it is.”

  “Your purpose, then.”

  “At the time the car was stolen, I was engaged in selling a pre-Enlightenment seleth figurine to what is known as a ‘fence’—that is, a dealer in stolen goods.”

  Amanda reacted with uncharacteristic shock. “Spock!”

  Sarek, though, gave no reaction at all. “I see. The figurine was a forgery, of course.”

  “It was,” Spock confirmed.

  “What?” Amanda looked to the viewscreen. “How could you know that?”

  “The only source of such figurines on Earth is the display of cultural artifacts in the Vulcan Embassy’s reception hall. The value of such items is incalculable, and Spock would no more steal one than he would a Starfleet car.”

  Amanda shook her head in abject puzzlement. “Then why…?”

  “I am certain Father can explain t
he rest more succinctly than I,” Spock said blandly. He had never spoken to Sarek so confrontationally.

  “Sarek…” Amanda said, making no attempt to hide her confusion.

  “Over the past forty-two days, Spock has come to me with what he believes is evidence that the most valuable items in the reception hall’s display cases are being stolen and replaced with forgeries.”

  “And are they?” Amanda asked, still shocked.

  Sarek said nothing.

  Spock was not about to let his father continue with his denial of the problem. “Father…?”

  Finally, Sarek must have realized he had been outmaneuvered. “What I tell you now must remain in the strictest confidence.”

  Finally, Spock thought with an embarrassing sense of triumph over his father. He quickly suppressed it.

  “The embassy staff is aware of the situation Spock deduced.”

  After a few moments of expectant silence, Amanda said, “That’s all?”

  Sarek reluctantly continued. “For reasons, quite logical, which I cannot discuss, the staff does not wish to stop the thefts at this time. That is all I will say on the matter.”

  Amanda’s shoulders stiffened, and Spock realized he knew exactly how she felt.

  “That is an unacceptable answer,” Spock said, surprising himself as much as his parents with his rebellious attitude. “It is one thing to know that the embassy staff does not trust me, as if they think I am something other than Vulcan. But when you, my own father, treat me with a similar level of distrust…” He then delivered the harshest assessment any Vulcan son could make of his father. “I find your behavior toward me unsatisfactory.”

  Amanda was steeped enough in Vulcan ways to put her hand over her mouth in stunned silence.

  The charged moment became worse as Sarek replied to the outburst, treating his son as harshly in turn. “I find your statement disrespectful.”

  “Stop it, you two!” Amanda said urgently. “I will not stand by and have you say such hurtful things to each other!”

  “My father has the means to change the impasse he has created.”