by Diane Carey
“Or recognition,” Spock added.
“Jim—Jim, what’s bothering you?” The doctor stepped toward Kirk, ignoring their commander’s attempt at solitude. “Jim, don’t let him get to you. This man’s psychological profile isn’t any different from the one you handed me on board the ship. He hasn’t changed in almost five decades. He’s a textbook example of Huerta’s Emperor Syndrome, and even that wasn’t enough for him. He’d become an emperor, then spend all his riches trying to become a deity. I should write a dissertation on him! McCoy’s Pharaoh Syndrome.”
“If we survive, you can write a book.” Kirk turned to Spock and said, “What do you think?”
“A long-distance transporter is a fabulous advancement, if he can indeed do it,” the Vulcan said fluidly as he picked through the ancient library. “No more death, no danger, no risk of travel at warp speeds . . . there could be instant exploration, far less cost and loss of life in the name of a single look at a new place or a contact with a new race—”
“I don’t trust him.” McCoy pushed between them. “Jim, how thorough could he have been? As critical as you were to the turns in his life, he didn’t even remember you!”
“The incident meant a lot more to me, Bones,” Kirk said. “All he remembers is that he lost. He’s completely wrapped up in himself. That’s the scary part. Roy Moss doesn’t think about people. If this thing works, even a little bit, even if it costs the lives of everyone on board Bill of Rights to find out how to operate it, he thinks the Federation will forget about those lives eventually and honor him for the discovery. And he’s much more dangerous at sixty-five than he was at nineteen.”
“This man,” Spock said, “does not seem to consider the reality of probability, Captain. He accepts a ninety-percent chance of success, but not the ten-percent chance of failure. There are no allowances for failures of machines, failures of others, failure of himself. Yet—”
“Yes, he bets everything on every spin of the wheel,” McCoy finished. “The hole in his plan is that he never sees the hole in his plan.”
Kirk pushed his way out from between them so he could pretend to be alone again. “The Bill of Rights’ crew and all the Faramond archaeologists might fall through that hole. The entire ship may die.”
Kirk’s thoughts were now with the Enterprise. The original.
But now that first ship was gone, burned up, sacrificed, and there was a replica in her place. A model of her, a tribute, yes, but not the original ship that had taken them through voyage after voyage, danger upon danger, and somehow survived. An incredible feat, considering that even poor docking could rip a hull apart.
The same style of ship, the same kind of hull structure, the same interior structure, the same mass to thrust, and all those other same things that Roy Moss had so casually tossed off. But it wasn’t the same ship. This one hadn’t earned her stripes. She hadn’t been given a chance.
That was the miracle of the old ship . . . that she had survived all those dangers, all those storms, all those attacks, all those hands at her helm, all the brand-new things that no other ship had encountered because no other ship had gone out so far, and all the little mistakes that might have been made by whoever was at the controls from moment to moment—a compilation of survival and skill and luck that only old ships could show off.
She’d been lucky, the old Enterprise. This new ship was a tribute, yes, but she hadn’t paid her way yet.
And now she wouldn’t get the chance.
Starfleet had apparently already made that decision.
Spock and McCoy could see the gravestone sitting on Jim Kirk’s shoulders, tooled with an inscription dictated by Roy John Moss. An era about to pass. Even the tribute was being decommissioned.
McCoy maneuvered closer, just to Kirk’s periphery. “Moss has managed to incapacitate the Bill of Rights and the Enterprise, but he didn’t count on the wild card . . . he didn’t count on Jim Kirk being here again.”
“Just as well,” the captain said. “I’m tired of people counting on me.”
The captain’s voice lacked its old burn. A lot was missing that could be painted in colors of fire. Was this why men chose to retire? When the fire washed away?
If the pond bed had had bars, Jim Kirk’s hands would have been wrapped around them. He would have been staring between them, the cold metal pressed against his face and blood running to his cheeks. His eyes would have been fixed upon the landscape, if there were one.
There was nothing in his eyes that had been there four or five decades ago. Today he wasn’t the bulldoggish James Kirk he’d been on the bridge of his command ship, who flourished during danger, gone on the hunt for it, who tasted adventure on the tip of his tongue and had to bite.
He wasn’t even the Jimmy Kirk he’d been on the bridge of the Shark, secretly enjoying the sensation that rashness had provided to a goalless teenager. That was the time he’d first learned that spunk could be put to a valiant purpose.
His dad had taught him that. . . .
All the red-blooded overzeal was gone from him now. He kept waiting for the valor to arise as it had in every other situation, but nothing came this time.
He had lost more than years when the first Enterprise went down, for he’d failed to go down with her. He was tied to his ship by the captain’s string—and when a ship dies unhelmed by its master, the string draws tight and kinks the captain’s spine for the rest of his life. He may never again walk as tall, move as swiftly, glare as fiercely.
Such was the portrait here. The captain without his ship. The mind without its heart. James Kirk without his Enterprise.
“My ship is gone,” he murmured. “My career is ending. Maybe this is my best destiny, Bones. My full circle . . . from Roy Moss to Roy Moss. This is where it began . . . maybe this is where it’s meant to end.”
Usually an ardent man whose short words were delivered sharply, McCoy barely moved behind his shoulder this time, and had the good sense not to touch him.
Seconds whispered past.
The captain’s phrases roamed and settled without really having anywhere to go. No one in here wanted them. McCoy didn’t even have to glance over his own shoulder to Spock to know their thoughts were consonant.
“Spit in the eye of ‘meant to,’ Jim,” the doctor said gently. “You always have before . . . why not this time?”
THIRTY-FOUR
Like boys telling ghost stories in a tent deep in the alien night, they kept their voices low.
“Is he right, Bones?” Kirk didn’t look at him. “Did I prevent something from happening that could’ve kept thousands of people alive over the years? Of all the decisions I’ve had to make in my career . . . how many have been wrong—and I’ll never know? Have I done more harm than good in my life?”
He turned and watched Spock move from the control bubbles to pick through the ancient volumes, as he had for what seemed much longer than twenty or thirty minutes since Roy left them here alone. Spock was working, yes, but he was watching Kirk too. And he was hearing.
“Oh, Jim, for cryin’ out loud,” McCoy muttered, carrying it on a sigh. “How much do you have to see?”
“I see,” the captain snapped. “If Moss hadn’t been smart enough to pursue power, he would’ve been frustratingly torturing little animals to get an illusion of power. If he’d gained power, he’d have found out it wasn’t enough and would’ve had to blame somebody and started killing millions of people. That’s how it starts—how do I know I’m any different? What would I have become if his father’s ship hadn’t attacked my father’s ship that day? I was a frustrated boy, enticing others to follow me on crazy chances, making decisions they should’ve been making for their own lives, and that’s what I kept doing for the rest of my life.”
McCoy shook his head as though somebody had hit him. “Now, you know that’s not what I was getting at—”
“Yes, you did.” Kirk nailed him down.
“Jim,” the somber Captain Spock interrupted a
s he looked up from his instant education about the alien machine. He stood still, one hand holding a volume, the other on a bubble. “The past cannot be redrawn,” he said quietly, “nor can the future be drawn in advance. You learned from your experience with Roy Moss. He failed to learn. He continues to underestimate those who are his equals or his betters.”
Supplanted by the hum of the dome above them, his voice was the bass chord of a cello—soothing and simple.
“It is a classic error of military history. Disaster after disaster,” he said, “because generals underestimate. Overestimate and be timid, underestimate and be destroyed. All leaders march that line . . . all captains sail it.”
Though he paused, from experience the other two knew he wasn’t finished.
“I have been content these many years,” he said, “to march that line at James Kirk’s shoulder.”
Spock wasn’t prudent about sentimentality as he had been when they’d first struck out together in the dawn of Federation long-distance exploring. In fact, now he was proud of it. How many Vulcans could be sentimental and still be Vulcan?
Kirk gazed at him, and for a flash saw the younger Spock. Then the flash ended, and Spock gazed back at him without the veil of embarrassment they had over the years torn down.
Moderately Kirk grinned at him with one side of his mouth. “How do you always know the right thing to say?”
“I do not,” Spock said. “I merely estimate very well.”
“What should we do, Jim?” McCoy asked. “Jump him?”
Kirk shook his head. “If this machine is on some kind of buildup, jumping him won’t stop it,” he said. “Spock . . . is he demented? Or is there something to all this—stuff?”
Spock frowned, still pressing and feeling his way across the floatless gray balloons. They knew from his expression that in a few short minutes he had analyzed Moss’s data as Moss had failed to do in fifty years.
“It definitely is a computer,” he confirmed. “I can deduce from this information here that Roy Moss is right.”
“Ouch,” McCoy said.
Spock looked up, then stepped to the racks of books or pamphlets or whatever they were, pulled one out, and showed them what looked like hieroglyphics with ink and fish soup splattered on it. “Fabrini, intermingled with a language I do not recognize. However, I can tell that he is right. This is a long-distance transporter . . . on the order of light-millennia.”
McCoy turned serious and stepped closer. “Good Lord.”
“I estimate that beaming the Bill of Rights back to Starbase One,” Spock went on, “would barely warm up the machine.”
Though he was impressed, though his iron eyes flashed with a scientific fascination that didn’t come along very often these days, Spock’s voice carried something that Kirk pounced on.
“But it’s not going to work, is it, Spock?” he asked intuitively—not really a question.
Seeming relieved, Spock put the book in its place, then paused with his back to them and his hand on the rack.
“These books are scientific logs, and I do not believe they were left by the Old Culture originally at all. They were left by following visitors, and are purposely made in a low-tech way, so others would not be saddled with incompatible communication technology.”
“Brother,” McCoy drawled, “would I like to get a gander at your idea of ‘low-tech.’”
“Not now, Bones,” Kirk admonished. “Spock, go on.”
“Thank you. The logs seem to have been begun by the Fabrini, but were added to by other races. None is complete, and each subsequent race apparently abandoned the attempt to use this machine.”
“Why would they abandon it?” the captain persisted. “If it was so valuable?”
“Because,” Spock said, “it seems to be missing a central connection. This is the terminal . . . but there is no core.”
Kirk stepped away, then circled the leathery collection of bubbles. “Are you telling me this is a hulk? A shell?”
Spock turned around. “Yes, Captain. It will accept commands,” he said, “but it has no place to send them.”
He drew a long breath, knowing he was speaking to intelligent men, but attempting to put across a concept meant only for scientists who had no other life or concern than science.
“Moss is correct that if an old airplane were dropped into the Middle Ages, a clever individual could deduce how it may have steered and flown, but he may not realize it has no engine. What lies before us, a hundred sixty miles under the ground, and all that extends to the planet’s core, is essentially a computer without software. The shell of the machine remains here, but the Old Culture took the important parts with them in case they should want to move again, or to prevent others from following, I would surmise. In our lifetimes, it will never work as a long-distance transporter.”
“They didn’t want us to come walking in their back door!” McCoy said excitedly.
Taking the Vulcan’s nod as encouragement, Kirk empathized with those he would never meet. “So Roy decided what it was, then never considered that the people who built it were smarter than he was. I find it damned impolite to look back on the past and be arrogant toward those who invented our advancement.”
“Well said,” Spock commented as though they were sitting in front of a fire.
Then—maybe they were.
The captain spun toward him. “Is it useless, Spock?”
“Not at all.” Spock raised his voice, his scientist’s passion shooting through the sobriety. He yanked control back, but he was still excited. “Not at all—the remnants themselves can give our science tremendous direction, sir—”
“Jim, think about it!” McCoy interrupted. “We can analyze the metallurgy, the control techniques, the directional power transfers, the molecular structure—”
Kirk blinked at him for a moment, and realized how easy it was to forget that McCoy was very much a scientist, if a scientist of nature more than mechanics.
“Moss’s shields from forty-five years ago are an excellent example,” Spock said. “The technology Starfleet developed from their principles has given us nearly a half-century of relatively safe space exploration and battle survival rates.” His large, elegant hands swept the gray control center, then the racks of volumes, then all of Faramond. “This can be a leap in technology to rival the Theory of Relativity or the discovery of the space warp. Captain, think of it.” He stepped forward, as close to excited as the Vulcan ever became. “The Old Culture used this single compact mechanism to beam their entire civilization countless billions of miles from here—what can we learn from what they left behind?”
“Yes . . . ” the captain said. “Yes, but, Spock . . . if the Fabrini and others got to a certain point, then stopped . . . what will happen when he puts power to a mechanism that was meant never to be used again?”
There was a pause, then McCoy was the one to answer.
“Probably the same thing that happens to the medieval guy when he tries to fly that biplane off a mountainside.”
THIRTY-FIVE
“My God, that’s the scariest thing I’ve heard in—hell, must be a half-hour . . . ”
McCoy echoed his own grumbles and paced, but there was real fear in his voice and no one attempted to scold him for making a joke.
In fact, Kirk wheeled toward him and spoke with zeal under his own dread. “The entire civilization just picked up and beamed out of here together?”
“Millions of people,” Spock agreed, “billions of miles away, thousands of years ago. They are, as you say . . . long gone.”
McCoy scowled at him. “Why? Why would a whole culture want to beam across the galaxy?”
At his side, the captain yanked attention back to himself, and to the glitter in his eyes. “Why would a man get in a reed boat and try to cross an ocean? Why sit on top of a Roman candle and try to break out of a planet’s gravitational pull? Why are you and I here today? Why, Bones! Because the whole culture wanted to go look . . . go see wh
at it’s like in another place . . . think of it—an entire culture that said, ‘Let’s go!’”
He found himself staring upward and wishing the dome would go away so he could look at the stars and think about what was beyond them. His entire body pushed upward, his arms, his shoulders, his chin and thighs, and one foot even went up on a toe.
McCoy winced, then ambulated his brows and said, “I’d’ve liked to see that ballot.”
But the captain had already moved away a few steps, though the ground shuddered and made a rumbling growl beneath his feet, still looking up. In his eyes a hunger began to reignite even as they watched. In a moment he began to speak, and there was something in his voice that neither of his closest companions had heard in a decade.
Maybe two.
“Bones . . . it’s us. It’s humanity. We said, ‘Let’s go!’ And so did they!”
Paces away, McCoy was poking Spock in the shoulder with a long forefinger and holding very still, hoping Spock was looking too and would be a witness.
James Kirk gazed up at the atmospheric dome as it turned nauseating colors above him, yet saw not a bit of it.
“Think about that,” he murmured. “Think how far there must still be to go . . . what must still be out there. . . . I haven’t thought about it in years! He asked me what we get out of what we do, but he doesn’t understand it’s not like looking for gold. Exploration is an end in itself! That is what we get!”
As he was gazing upward, the poison came back into his periphery.
Roy Moss, back on the promontory in front of the projection of Bill of Rights on the rock wall, was annoyed and bitching.
He pointed at the projection.
“They’re finding little ways around my damper! Why do people even try? What’s this guy’s name? What’s he doing?”
“As if we’d tell you,” McCoy high-browed.