Star Trek - Blish, James - 11

by 11(lit)

  Trelane screamed. He ran to the spark-showering mirror, screaming, "What have you done? What have you done?"

  "The machine of power," Spock said very quietly.

  It burned out quickly. Above their heads, the rows of candles in the chandelier flickered and died. A grayish, bleak twilight crept into the room. In the grate, the heatless fire was extinct, its passing marked only by a puff of evil-smelling smoke.

  Trelane shrieked at the sight of the suddenly dead room. "You've ruined everything!" He sank down on the harpsichord bench; and his elbows, leaned back against its keyboard, evoked a hideously discordant jangle, shrill, ear-splitting.

  Beside Kirk, struggling with his communicator, De Salle said, "Captain, subspace interference is clearing..."

  "Contact the ship!"

  Trelane had partially recovered himself. Still torn be-tween contempt for Kirk and admiration, the Squire of Gothos indulged himself in an objective comment. "The re-markable treachery of the human species," he said-and getting up, walked over to the wall bedecked with the blackened ruins of the mirror. Watching him, Kirk said, "Go on, Trelane! Look at it! It's over! Your power is blanked out! You're finished?"

  For the first time, genuine feeling triumphed over the emotional theatricality of the Squire of Gothos. He looked somberly at Kirk. "You have earned my wrath," he said. "Go back to your ship! Go back to it! Then prepare. All of you, you are dead men... you in particular, Captain Kirk!"

  He had begun to move toward the burnt space which had held the wall mirror. As he reached it, he was gone. Kirk, just a step behind him, was brought up against a blank wall. He stepped back from it, turning to his people. "Everyone! We're getting out of here-and now!"

  His voice was hoarse as he spoke into his communica-tor. "This is the captain, Enterprise! Commence beaming us up! Make it maximum speed!"

  Scott gave their beam-up maximum speed. Kirk left the Transporter Room for the bridge with the same variety of leg haste. In his chair, he quickly reached for the inter-com. "Scotty, full power acceleration from orbit!"

  "Full power, sir."

  The ship leaped forward, and on the viewing screen the crescent-shaped bulk that was Gothos began to dwindle in size.

  Kirk said, "Set course for Colony Beta Six, Mr. Sulu."

  "Laid in, sir."

  "Warp Factor One at the earliest possible moment."

  Sulu said, "Standing by to warp, sir."

  Uhura, back with her panels, turned. "Shall I send a full report to Space Fleet Command, Captain?"

  Kirk frowned. "Not yet. Not until we're well out of his range. Our beam might be traced."

  Spock spoke from his computer post. "Can we know what his range is, sir?"

  "We can make an educated guess. At this point-" Kirk had strode over to Spock's assortment of star maps and was directing a forefinger at a spot on one of them. "This is where we first detected the solar system." He was about to return to his chair when he noted Teresa, still wearing the panniered gown of flowered silk. His look of admiration roused her to the realization of its incongruity.

  "Sir," she said, "may I take a moment to change, now that the ball is over?"

  Kirk smiled at her. "You may-but you'll have to give up that highly becoming garment for scientific analysis, Yeoman Ross."

  She flushed. And he tore his eyes away from the vi-sion she made to look back at the viewing screen. Gothos had grown smaller and smaller. Even as he watched, it was lost to sight.

  Uhura, the relaxation of her relief in her voice, said, "Still no sign of pursuit, sir. Instruments clear."

  Sulu, turning his head, said, "Captain, we are about to warp"-and at the same moment De Salle gave a shout.

  "Screen, sir! Large body ahead!"

  Just a moment ago the screen had been empty. Kirk stared at its new inhabitant; and De Salle, jumping to his feet, yelled, "Collision course, sir!"

  Tight-lipped, Kirk said, "Helm hard to port!"

  The bridge crew staggered under the push by the sharp turn. All eyes were fixed on the screen where the crescent-shaped image loomed larger and larger. Then the Enterprise had veered away from it. A mutter came from the stunned De Salle. "That was the planet Gothos," he said.

  Kirk whirled to Sulu. "Mr. Sulu, have we been going in a circle?"

  "No, sir! All instruments show on course..."

  De Salle gave another yell. "It's Gothos again, Cap-tain!"

  The planet had once more appeared on the screen. Kirk barked the evasive order-and again people staggered under the centrifugal force of the ship's abrupt turn. The image of the planet, shrunken on the screen, suddenly enlarged once again. Without order, Sulu put the ship into a vertiginous turn-maneuver. As they came out of it, Spock said, "Cat and mouse game."

  "With Trelane the cat," Kirk said tightly.

  De Salle, his capacity for intense reaction exhausted, said, low-voiced, "There it is, sir-dead ahead..."

  On the screen the planet showed red, wreathed by fiery mists. It seemed to boil, noxious, hideously ulcerous, with its eruptive skin. Kirk, his jaw set, spoke, "Ninety de-grees starboard, Mr. Sulu!"

  But though Sulu moved his helm controls, the planet held its place on the screen, always increasing its size.

  "We're turning, Captain," Sulu cried. "We're turning -but we're not veering away from it!"

  Kirk shouted. "Ninety subport, Mr. Sulu. Adjust!"

  What was happening on the screen continued to hap-pen on it. Desperate, Sulu cried, "A complete turn, sir- and we're still accelerating toward the planet!"

  Dry as dust, Spock said, "Or it toward us."

  Kirk was staring in silence at the screen. "That's it!" he said. He wheeled his chair around. "We will decelerate into orbit! We will return to orbit! Prepare the Transport-er Room!"

  McCoy spoke for the first time. "You're not going down there, Captain! You can't do it, Jim!"

  Kirk got up. "I am going down, Doctor McCoy. And I am going to delight my eyes again with the sight of our whimsical General Trelane. And if it takes wringing his neck to make him let my ship go..." He was at the bridge elevator. "Mr. Spock, stand by communicators. If you receive no message from me in one hour, leave this vicinity. At once. Without any sentimental turning back for me."

  There was comfort in Spock's quiet nod. No heroics, no weakening sympathy. Just the perception of a reality, a necessity clear to each of them. Spock, his friend.

  On a wall in Trelane's drawing room was the shadow of a gallows, dark, implicating. Kirk ignored it. For other-wise, the room was unchanged. Logs burned in the fire-place. The light of candles was refracted from the crystals of its chandelier. The mirror on the wall had been restored, its glass now protected by a heavy wire-mesh shield.

  A heavily portentous voice said, "The prisoner may approach the bench."

  It was Trelane. He had doffed his military glories for the graver garb of Law's upholders. He wore the white peri-wig of England's servants of jurisprudence, the black silk robes of a high court judge. He was writing something with a goose-quill pen on some parchment-looking document. The gallows noose-shadow or substance?-seemed to droop over Kirk.

  "Trelane... !" Kirk said.

  Nobody can be so solemn as an idiot. And Trelane, an essential idiot, was very solemn. Solemn and danger-ous. In a voice that dripped with unction, he said, "Any at-tempt at demonstrations will weigh against you with the court. And this time my instrumentality is unbreakable, Captain Kirk."

  "My neck seems to be threatened by your court, Tre-lane. And your neck-is it so very safe?"

  A flicker of irritation passed over the heavy-jowled face.

  "The absurdity of inferior beings!" said Trelane. He picked up the parchment. "And now, Captain James Kirk, you stand accused of the high crimes of treason, of conspir acy, of attempt to foment insurrection." His periwig must have itched him for he pushed it up, giving himself the look of a slighly drunken, white-haired Silenus. "How do you plead?" he said.

  "I haven't come here to plead in your
'court,' Tre-lane.."

  The Squire of Gothos sat back, tapping his quill pen against his table. "I must warn you that anything you say has already been taken down in evidence against you."

  It was like Alice in Wonderland. It was like Looking-Glass Land, where what seems to be is not and what is not appears to be the fact. Reaching for sanity, Kirk said, "I came here for one purpose. I want my ship returned to me."

  "Irrelevant," Trelane said, giving his periwig an irri-tated push.

  "We made you angry by our will to survive. Is that it?" Kirk said.

  Trelane drew a tremulous finger across his upper lip. "Irrelevant," he said. "A comment entirely uncalled for."

  "Sure, that's it," Kirk retorted. "Then vent your anger on me alone! I was the one who led the others-and I was the one who shot out your mirror machine..."

  For the first time, rage seemed to overwhelm vanity in Trelane. His voice thickened. "And did you really think I wouldn't have more mediums of instrumentality at my command?"

  "I took that chance. And I'll accept the price of chancing wrong-"

  Trelane rose. "Then you do admit the charges. This court has no choice in fixing punishment. You will hang by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead. Have you any last request?"

  Kirk gave a great shout of laughter. "If you think I'm going to stick my head in that noose..."

  Trelane's hand moved-and Kirk found himself standing under the gallows, its noose, real, heavy, rough around his throat. Trelane, reaching for a black execution-er's mask, regarded him plaintively. "This really is becoming tiresome. It's much too easy."

  Kirk freed himself from the noose. "Easy!" he yelled. "That's your whole problem, Trelane! Everything comes too easy to you! You don't ever have to think! So you lose opportunities. You're enjoying your sense of power right now-but the chance to experience something really unique? You're wasting it! Where's the sport in a simple hanging? In making a rope do your killing for you?"

  "Sport?" Trelane echoed. Suddenly his face cleared. He clapped his hands. "Oh, I am intrigued! Go on, Captain! What do you suggest?"

  "A personal conflict between us... with the stakes a human life-mine!"

  "What an inspired idea! We need something more fanciful-a truly royal hunt, maybe." He gestured toward the windows. "You go out and hide from me. In the forest... anywhere you like... and I will seek you out with-this!" He wrenched a sword from the scabbard in front of him, brandishing it ferociously. "How does that strike you, Captain? Truly sporting?"

  "Yes," Kirk said. "But you must make the game worth my while. While we play it, free my ship."

  Trelane sniffed. "Always back to your ship. Oh, very well. If it will lend spice to the pursuit..."

  Kirk broke into a run, making a dash for a window. He brought up in a copse of vividly green bushes. With desperate haste, he flipped open his communicator. "Enter-prise! Enterprise, can you hear me? Get the ship away fast! Fast as you can! I'll try to gain you the time you need-"

  He stopped. Trelane had burst through the copse, slashing at leaves with his sword. "Ah, ha!" he screamed, "I see you!" But Kirk, diving, had rolled down the slant of a small knoll. Trelane's sword flashed over his head-and in his frantic scramble for the shelter of a heavy-trunked tree, he dropped his communicator.

  "You must try harder, Captain!" The sword-point pricked Kirk's arm. He rose from his crouch behind the tree to tear a branch away from it. It struck straight and true on Trelane's sword arm. The weapon flew out of his hand; and Kirk, grabbing it up, slashed at Trelane with all his two-handed strength.

  It cut right through him, leaving no sign of wound or of blood. Horrified, Kirk stared-but Trelane, still playing the role of gallant sportsman, merely said, "Touch‚, Captain. I confess you've scored first. But after all, I've never played this game before..."

  He vanished. Kirk, still shaking, ducked behind a screen of brush. Under it, he saw the gleaming metal of his dropped communicator. "Enterprise... !"

  "En garde!"

  Trelane had reappeared, sword lifted. Barely in time, Kirk broke for cover behind a hedge. Then, stooping, he burst out of its shelter to make for the door between the two stone griffins.

  "Tallyho!"

  The fatuous Squire of Gothos had spotted him. Kirk wheeled to his right-and a stone wall erected itself before him. He whirled to his left; and another blocked bis way. Trapped, he backed up against the door of Trelane Hall; and its proprietor, triumph giving his face a look of gorged repletion, said, "Ah, Captain, you made a noble fight of it!" A dribble of saliva issued from the thick lips. "But you are beaten. Down, Captain. Down to me on your knees."

  Kirk spoke, the sword against his throat. "You have won nothing."

  "I have! I could run you through! I order you to your knees. I order it!" Trelane lunged with his sword; but Kirk, seizing it, tore it out of his hand; and in one snap over his knee, broke it. He tossed the pieces aside.

  "You broke it!" Trelane wailed. "You broke my sword! But I won't have it. I'll blast you out of existence with a wave of my hand!"

  Kirk struck him sharply across the face; and Trelane, shrieking, "I'll fix you for that!" squeezed the trigger of the phaser that had suddenly appeared in his hand. A murder-ously disintegrating ray darted from its muzzle-and at the same moment a woman's voice called "Trelane!"

  "No! No!" Trelane howled, running down the steps of his Hall's entrance. Two globes of light hung in the air at their foot. "No! Go away!" he yelled. "You said I could have this planet for my own!" The spheres of light, one slightly smaller than the other, sparkled with an irides-cence of rainbow colors.

  Trelane was shouting at them. "You always stop me just when I'm having fun!"

  "If you cannot take proper care of your pets, you can-not have any pets," said the female voice.

  Trelane burst into tears. "But you saw! I was win-ning! I would have won. I would, I would, I would." But even as he wept, he was dwindling, a shape losing sub-stance, collapsing in on itself. Then he was only an empti-ness in the air.

  Kirk looked skyward as though seeking an explana-tion of the inexplicable. "Where are you?" he cried. "Who is Trelane and who are you?"

  "You must forgive our child," said the woman's voice. "The fault is ours for overindulging him. He will be pun-ished."

  A stern male voice spoke. "We would not have let him intercept you had we realized your vulnerability. For-give us, Captain. We will maintain your life-support condi-tions while you return to your ship. Please accept our apol-ogies."

  Kirk flung out his hands toward the two spheres. "Can't you tell me... ?" Then, like Trelane, they were gone. After a long moment, he broke out his communica-tor. "Captain to Enterprise. Captain calling the Enterprise..."

  He shut his eyes at the sound-the familiar sound of Spock's voice. "Captain, we are receiving you-"

  Kirk gave a last look around him at Trelane's domain -its greenery, the two stone griffins, the appalling solitude of its loneliness in the midst of the Gothos hell. "Beam me up," he said. "Mr. Spock, we're free to leave here."

  It was a singularly thoughtful Kirk who gave the order for normal approach procedures to Colony Beta 6. He was glad when Spock left his station to come to the command chair. Somehow he'd known that Spock alone could recon-cile him to the paradoxes of his recent encounter with the Squire of Gothos.

  "I am entering," Spock said, "our recent... uh... interesting experience into the library computer banks, Captain. But I am puzzled."

  "Puzzled-you, Mr. Spock?" For a moment the old quizzicalness played across Kirk's face. "I am surprised. I am amazed that you admit it. Explanation, please..."

  Spock said, "General, or Squire Trelane, Captain. How do we describe him? Pure mentality? A force of in-tellect? Embodied energy? Superbeing? He must be classi-fied, sir."

  Kirk stared unseeingly at his board. "Of course, Mr. Spock. Certainly, he must be classified. Everything must be classified-or where would we be?"

  "But I am somewhat at a loss..." Spock said.
>
  "A god of war, Mr. Spock?"

  "I hardly think..."

  "Or... a small boy, Mr. Spock. And a very naughty one at that."

  "It will make a strange entry in the library banks, sir."

  "He was a very strange small boy. But on the other hand, he probably was doing things comparable, in their way, to the same mischievous pranks you played when you were a boy."