by Jerry Oltion
Scotty nodded. "Aye, that makes sense. But that still doesn't answer my original objection. This can't be the first time it's lost a patient."
"No," said Spock. "But I am willing to bet this is the first time a patient, as you call it, has turned into a robot."
Scotty laughed softly. "It probably thinks it got an order for a gods' eye confused with a person."
"Actually," said Mudd, "that's not a bad description of the original Stella."
Spock looked up at him, unsure what he meant. He had the uncomfortable suspicion that he was missing something obvious, but only to a human. "How is that a good description of your wife?" he asked.
Mudd rolled his eyes upward in their sockets. "It was a joke," he said, confirming Spock's guess. "I just meant that she certainly thought she was God."
"Ah." Spock turned back to the computer with his tricorder. It didn't take long to confirm his other suspicion as well: the computer thought that the android was a mistake. He couldn't tell that directly, but the evidence seemed overwhelming. It kept running a self-check, and finding nothing wrong with its programming or hardware, it attempted another resurrection. But the pattern stored in the buffer could produce only an android, which triggered the self-check routine again. It was caught in an endless loop.
"Can't you bypass it somehow?" Mudd asked when he heard Spock and Scotty discussing the situation.
Spock tried to mimic the expression Mudd had worn earlier when Spock had failed to get his joke. It seemed to be the appropriate expression here as well. "There is no provision for input," Spock told him. "The computer was hard wired for this task and no other. And even if there were an input device, we do not understand the programming language. Nor would we know how to alter it without causing conflict with other subroutines, of which I identify at least twenty-five. Plus there is the matter of—"
"All right, all right," Mudd said, holding out his hands. "I get the picture. So if we can't bypass it, how can we convince it to give up?"
How indeed? Spock shook his head. "I do not believe the original programmers considered giving up to be an option."
"Then what do you suggest?"
He examined the possibilities. Logically, there was only one good alternative. "I suggest we convince it that it has succeeded."
Mudd had his hands on his hips, clearly enjoying the game of baiting Spock. "How do you plan to do that?" he asked.
"By providing it with the real Stella," Spock said. "We will have to find her and bring her back here for the computer to scan the moment after it resurrects another copy of the android."
He was embarrassed to admit that he derived some small satisfaction from watching Mudd turn absolutely white.
The argument burst onto the bridge with the suddenness and fury of a thunderstorm. A Harry Mudd-sized thunderstorm, to be sure, but in an enclosed space he was more than enough to rattle the furniture. Sulu winced as the turbolift doors slid open and Spock stepped out, chased by Mudd in mid-rant.
"…won't cooperate for a minute!" Mudd was saying. "She's a witch and a shrew and I have no intention of getting within ten parsecs of her ever again."
"Not even to save the lives of everyone caught in the Nevisian computer's pattern buffers?" Spock asked him.
"They put themselves there," Mudd protested. "I stopped the war; I didn't start it again."
"No, but you brought the android that locked up the computer. An interplanetery court would no doubt find you responsible for their deaths."
That made Mudd pause. Even if the Prime Directive didn't apply to him, murder was a capital crime no matter where it took place.
"All right," he said, "I'll tell you where she is, but only if you promise to drop me off somewhere else along the way."
"I make no such promise," said Spock. "You could lie to us about Stella's location. And until we know if bringing her here will work, you are responsible for the situation down there." He sat in the command chair and swiveled it sideways toward Mudd. "Captain Kirk's death will no doubt be the first one prosecuted, and that will be done in a military court."
Sulu heard Uhura gasp, and felt his heart skip a beat. "The captain is dead? I thought—"
"Unless he was resurrected before the android was damaged," said Spock, "which seems unlikely since we have not yet found him on either planet, then he is apparently in a state of suspended animation, stored as data encoded in the computer system that has, unfortunately, locked up."
"And bringing Stella Mudd here will unlock it?" Sulu asked.
"It might," said Spock. "We have no way of knowing for certain without testing the hypothesis directly. Unfortunately, we require Harry's cooperation, which he is reluctant to give."
Mudd laughed shrilly. "'Reluctant' isn't the word for it, Spock old boy. I'm not going back to her, and that's that."
Spock frowned. "You are not being logical." He said it as if he expected Mudd to collapse in shame at the accusation, but Mudd merely snorted.
Sulu saw the problem here: Spock was arguing like a Vulcan and trying to appeal to Harry's sense of responsibility. But Harry had no sense of responsibility. Only self-preservation.
"Mr. Spock," Sulu said, standing up from his duty station. "With all due respect, let me show you a better method of getting what we need."
Spock looked at him quizzically, one eyebrow raised, then said, "Proceed."
Sulu stepped closer to Mudd, who backed warily away, but he wasn't nearly quick enough. Sulu grabbed his right arm and spun him around to face the wall, yanking upward on it just as he had done with the Nevisian who had shot Chekov. Mudd yowled inarticulate protest, but Sulu didn't stop until he heard bones creak under the strain.
"Where is she, Harry?" he asked quietly.
"Spock! You can't allow this!" Harry screeched, trying to turn his head to catch Spock's eye, but Sulu kept him facing the wall. "This is an outrage!"
Spock did indeed seem uncomfortable with the spectacle of a Starfleet officer manhandling a civilian on the bridge of a starship, but Sulu held up his free hand, palm out, and shook his head. I won't hurt him, he mouthed silently.
Much, he added to himself.
He turned back to Mudd, who was flailing about ineffectually with his free hand. "The coordinates, Harry," he said, adding a bit more strain on his arm.
Uhura snickered.
"I'll file a protest! You'll be the ones facing the court-martial!"
"You'll be signing the papers with two broken arms and ten broken fingers," Sulu told him, never raising his voice. "Or you can give us the coordinates." He yanked upward again on Mudd's arm.
"Ow! You're—ow! All right, all right, but I demand—ow! I mean it. I demand separate quarters, and an armed guard for me at all times. If you don't promise me that much, I'll take the broken arms and fingers, because Stella will give me worse than that."
By the quaver in his voice, Sulu wondered if he was exaggerating. He must be…mustn't he? But they would provide Mudd with a guard anyway, just to make sure he didn't skip out, so it really didn't matter one way or the other. Sulu lightened up the pressure on his arm. "Deal," he said. "Now where do we find her?"
"The Hoffman system," Mudd said resignedly. "She's on York Three in the Hoffman system."
"Very good," said Spock. "Lieutenant Uhura, recall Ensign Chekov from his search. We will leave as soon as he arrives."
"Yes, sir," she said, but she hesitated before turning back to her comm panel. "Mr. Spock? While you were gone, our new orders came in from Admiral Tyers. We're supposed to rendezvous with the U.S.S. O'Halloran in the Duval system."
Spock nodded. "I see. I'm afraid we will have to miss that rendezvous. I will send her an explanation en route, but for now we will proceed to the Hoffman system."
Chapter Twenty-three
KIRK RECOILED WILDLY,trying to keep his balance. What had happened? A second ago he had been dragging Harry Mudd to safety, and now—
Water sprayed everywhere with the force of his reaction. Water. D
ammit, he had been killed again!
He spluttered as he slipped under the surface, then he found his footing and stood up, shaking wet hair from his eyes. "All right," he said, looking around for the naked ladies, "where am I this time?"
"Arnhall," said a voice off to his left. He looked through the steamy air and saw what he had expected, but then the word she had said struck home.
"Where exactly is that?" he asked. "In relation to Distrel."
"Certainly that's not the most important question you—oh." She stopped as the mist parted and she saw who had arrived. "You're one of the aliens," she said after a moment.
"James Kirk, captain of the Enterprise," he told her. He climbed out of the pool and walked toward her. Other Nevisians in the tubs all around him stared openly, but he ignored them. "I don't care where Arnhall is, I just want to go back to my ship. And I'm not taking no for an answer."
"I, um, you'll have to talk to the Council of Heroes about that," she said.
"Fine. Let's go."
She didn't move. "Don't you want to relax first? After their second death, most people need some time to think things over and consider the changes in their lives."
"That's just it," said Kirk. "My life isn't going to change. I'm going back to the Enterprise and gather up my people and we're leaving you and your silly war behind."
"I don't think going back is allowed."
"Then you'd better change your rules, because that's just what I'm going to do."
She took a deep breath. "You definitely need to talk to the Council of Heroes." This time she turned away and led him past the other attendants who were waiting for more people to appear, and on out of the bath chamber.
Ten minutes later, clothed in a soft rainbow-colored sweat suit and his hair still damp, he was ushered into the council chamber. It was more of a council cottage, actually, with the transporter in the front hallway and a living room to one side and a dining room on the other. He had no idea where it was on the planet; he and his bathhouse guide had made three transporter jumps to get here. It was not close to the equator, judging by the angle of the sun and the cool air, but that was about all he could guess. It really didn't matter, because he still had no idea which planet he was on. The gravity seemed lighter than either Prastor's or Distrel's, but it was hard to judge for sure. He was still on an adrenaline rush.
The Council turned out to be three white-haired Nevisians, two women and a man, who sat in soft chairs around a fireplace in which a couple of burning logs gave off a sweet aroma and enough heat to knock the chill out of the air. A wide window in the wall to the right of the fireplace provided a wonderful view of a lake and snowcapped mountains off in the distance. Off to the side a pile of old masonry might have been the remains of an ancient castle. Only portions of two walls still stood, and trees growing inside its perimeter sent branches out through the windows.
"Welcome to Arnhall," the woman in the middle said.
"Thanks." There was a fourth chair by the fire, obviously for Kirk, but he didn't sit down. "I'd love to stay and visit, but I've got pressing business back home."
The man on her right laughed softly. "This is your home now. What's behind you is behind you. That's the whole point of the war, you know."
Kirk disliked this guy immediately. "Is it? Looks to me more like you're training an army. What's the plan? Galactic conquest? Or just this quadrant?"
The man laughed again. "I'm afraid we would make rather poor warriors. People who have died twice already are much less willing to do it a third time, especially when they know it would be permanent. That, too, is the point of the war."
"I've heard people talk about fighting for peace before," Kirk told him. "Usually right before they invade their neighbors."
The woman in the middle said, "We already tried that, millennia ago. We discovered that once you start fighting, you never stop. There's always someone else to attack or defend against, some ideological struggle or another to whip people into a frenzy. As a people we realized it was a pointless way to live, but as individuals we each still yearned for glory."
"So you went to war with yourselves?"
"Exactly. We learned that people can outgrow their violent tendencies, but they need a defining event in their lives. A redefining event. We found that death works quite well in that regard." She nodded toward the empty chair. "Sit."
Kirk sat. His chair was next to the other woman's, the one who had not said anything. She nodded to him, but remained silent.
"It's really the loss of everything a person holds dear that matters," said the first woman. "It gets them to thinking. We try to spread the fighting around to give them time to establish a second life before we send them into battle again, so they have even more to lose. We hardly ever have to send someone back for a third life."
"That's…a pretty harsh system," Kirk said, trying to be diplomatic.
"Life is harsh. And it gets worse the more you give in to violence. Unfortunately most beings don't have a chance to learn that until they've already squandered most of their time."
"That still looks like the case," Kirk observed, noting the white hair and wrinkled skin on all three of the Nevisians—or was it Arnhallians now?
That drew a response from the quiet woman. She tilted back her head and laughed, not the soft chuckle of the other two, but a loud, raucous laugh that set Kirk's teeth on edge. "Score one for the alien," she said. "He saw through you two relics in a flash."
Kirk said to her, "I take it you disagree with their assessment of the situation."
"Slightly." She held out her hand. "I'm Narine, the First Advocate. They keep me around for laughs."
Kirk gripped her forearm in the fashion he had learned from the Grand General of Distrel. She seemed pleased that he knew the gesture.
She pointed to the man. "This is Kenan, Second Advocate, and beside him is Hadock, Third Advocate."
"What's the significance of first, second, and third?" Kirk asked.
"Stages of life," Narine said. "I speak for the people who haven't died yet. Kenan speaks for those living their second life, and Hadock speaks for those who have come to Arnhall."
Kirk felt a bit surprised. "Yet you're the one who doesn't like this system? From what you've told me, the young are the most aggressive. And from what I saw, they certainly looked like they enjoyed the war."
"The young are the most impressionable. They also have the most to lose. I was nine when I came here. That was seventy years ago, and I still miss my mother."
Kenan said, "Oh, don't go on about your mother. She was here on Arnhall for years. You could go see her any time you wanted to all that time."
Narine frowned. "And she didn't care a bit whether I did or not. By the time she got here she had brought up a second family—and lost that one, too. She didn't want to form any more close attachments. That's what your precious resurrection system creates: coldhearted fatalists who don't want to be hurt again. Sure they don't fight anymore. They don't live anymore."
"Yes, yes, that's what Ginn Donan said five millennia ago, but it's better than the alternative."
It sounded like they'd argued this out many times before. They might have gone on at length rehashing it again, but there was a knock at the door and the bathhouse guard who had escorted Kirk there stepped into the room. "Excuse me," she said, "but we seem to have a problem. There've been no more resurrections since the alien arrived."
The Council of Heroes all turned toward Kirk. "Did your people talk ours into peace again?" asked Hadock. "I thought we'd convinced them it was against the will of the Gods."
"As far as I know, they still think so," Kirk said. "The war was still going on strong when I left."
"Then one of your people has interfered with the machinery," said Kenan. "That's the only other explanation."
"What machinery?" Kirk asked.
Narine laughed, then told him about the cavern beneath the Grand General's palace on Distrel and the transporter buffers and comput
ers there that revived people killed in the war. Kirk wasn't surprised to learn about them; he had suspected something of the sort. And if someone had tinkered with them, he could just imagine who it had been.
"My first officer, Mr. Spock, might know something about it," he said. "If you would let me use a communicator I could contact him and find out for you."
Kenan and Hadock exchanged a glance, and Hadock said, "I believe it would be more efficient to simply send you back. You or your first officer can undo whatever you have done to our resurrection machinery; it doesn't matter to us which of you restarts it."
"Could you let me talk with him first anyway?" asked Kirk. "He probably doesn't even know I'm still alive."
"No," said Hadock. "We can't do that."
"Can't, or won't?" asked Kirk.
Narine laughed again, and said, "Gods, but you're a refreshing voice. I'd like to keep you here just to hear you question authority. But in this case, Hadock is telling the truth. We have no subspace radio, and through normal communications channels it would take several years for your message to reach your ship."
"Years?" asked Kirk. That would put Arnhall in a completely different star system. Could that be possible? He had arrived here by transporter, and that usually had a very limited range. This was alien technology; there was no telling what it could do, but to have that sort of transport capability and no subspace radio seemed a bit fishy. Something wasn't adding up here.
"Why don't you have subspace radio?" he asked.
"We never needed it," Hadock replied. "We can go anywhere we want instantaneously."
Kirk looked over at Narine, and she nodded. "True enough. But an equally true answer would be that we don't have a clue how to build it. If our ancestors didn't leave us a template for something, we don't have it."
"That's enough," Kenan said sternly. "You disapprove of everything we stand for; fine. But you don't control this council. Captain, it's time for you to go." He nodded to the woman who had brought the message. "Send him back to the Grand General's palace on Distrel. And Captain, when you get there, see that you restore our computer just the way it was before you arrived. We may not be members of your Federation, but we know of it, and we will make our presence known in a most unpleasant fashion if you violate your Prime Directive."