Strangers from the Sky

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Strangers from the Sky Page 13

by Margaret Wander Bonanno


  Krista shut off the viewer.

  "Left untreated," she said, toying with the fringe

  on one of the pillows she'd stitched herself but looking

  McCoy straight in the eye, "it can result in

  severe stress, increasing disorientation, instances of

  selective amnesia. It can indicate possible

  latent schizophrenia." She leaned toward

  McCoy, put one hand on his arm. "I couldn't be

  more reasonable than in suggesting that this man get immediate and

  concentrated help. In an enclosed environment."

  McCoy let it all sink in. How could a thing

  like this happen?

  "Leonard?" Krista Sivertsen dropped her

  profes- sional voice, exchanged it for a

  personal, caring one. Her hand was still on McCoy's

  arm. "I know he's a close friend of yours. I

  want to help."

  "I know you do, Krista." McCoy patted her

  hand absently, baffled. "I just don't understand it.

  What could cause something like this to happen to a man like

  Jim Kirk?"

  "We're not really sure," Krista said, back

  in her professional mode. "It's only recently

  been identified as a separate phenomenon. In the

  old days it was clumped in with all the other

  schizophrenias and treated with varying degrees of

  success. The only place I've ever encountered it

  these days is in certain kinds of drug addicts."

  She chose her next words carefully.

  "Sometimes a man like Jim Kirk, a man of

  great personal dynamism, finds it hard to adjust

  to a ground assignment. Is there any chance he might

  be experimenting with some of the new synthetic soporiffs

  the renegade labs have been peddling under the counter?"

  1 1 3

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "Of course not!" McCoy said. "I know the kind

  of dependence those alterants create as well as you

  do! Jim Kirk's not that kind of man!"

  "I'm sorry," Krista said sincerely. "But

  I wanted to eliminate that as a factor right off.

  There are so many variables to consider. I ran his

  medical history before I sent you the results of the

  scan. It's incredible how many times the man's mind

  has been tampered with in his deep-space years.

  It's quite possible that any one of those old

  traumas . . ."

  McCoy thought about it. From Sargon's initially

  benevolent "borrowing" to Parmen's literal mental

  cruelty to Janice Lester's outright theft, Jim

  Kirk had had more people poking around in his mind than any

  other ordinary mortal in history.

  "Even a Vulcan mind-meld can trigger

  erratics in certain unstable individuals,"

  Krista Sivertsen was saying. She had never met

  Kirk until he'd turned up in her office that

  morning, but the story of this human and a certain

  Vulcan was legend. "Do you understand what I'm

  saying, Leonard?"

  "Yes. Yes, I do. But I can't believe

  Krista, let me ask you: is it possible a

  Vulcan mind-meld could undo something this severe?"

  "Oh, no you don't!" She knew what it cost

  McCoy to ask this; the story of this human and a

  certain Vulcan was legend also. "If you'd thought

  that, you should have gone to a Vulcan healer first. You

  dropped this in my lap, and it's my

  responsibility. No band-aid therapy and no

  pointed-eared witch doctors allowed." She was

  trying to make him laugh, but McCoy was

  preoccupied, beyond humor. "Leonard,

  trust me. With today's techniques it'll be a

  matter of a week or two. He can take some

  vacation time, and I promise you we'll keep it off

  his record. But only if you do it my way."

  "How how soon?" McCoy asked vaguely.

  "As soon as possible. Tonight. I can free up a

  bed within the hour. Where is Admiral Kirk now?"

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "That's the problem," McCoy frowned. "I

  don't know."

  "Estimated arrival time Sol III?"

  Spock asked his navigator.

  "Seven solar days, Captain," Lieutenant

  Mathee reported. "Stardate 8097.4, as per your

  original log entry, sir."

  "Very well," Spock replied evenly, giving

  no evi- dence of how heavily that time would pass with

  him. "Helm, maintain warp two. We are going

  home."

  And none too soon, he thought.

  Rapa Nui. Easter Island. The World's

  Navel. It had many names. Kirk had of course

  heard of it, recognised the rows of solemn

  gargantuan statues facing out to sea,

  knew something of their history.

  He was not prepared to find that the entire island had

  been transformed into a museum, the Museum of the

  South Pacific, centered in the ultramodern

  glass-andrhodinium structure rising beside Rano

  Raraku, the volcanic crater lake near the

  island's eastern tip. Nor was he prepared for the

  museum's curator.

  Dr. Galarrwuy Nayingul was an Australian

  of the ancient races dark-skinned, deep-eyed,

  shorter than Kirk but solid, immutable, as if

  rooted in the Earth his people had inhabited perhaps longer

  than any others still living, his thick white hair and

  beard framing a face that was ageless. On this tiny

  island 9,000 kilometers from his birthplace near

  Darrinbandi, he was farther from home than Jim

  Kirk.

  "A pleasure, Admiral," he said warmly when

  Koro had introduced them, gripping Kirk's

  pale hand in both his dark ones as if he'd known him

  all his life. "What brings you to this part of our,

  you'll pardon the expression, mundane little world?"

  Kirk shared in his laughter, which was rich and deep and

  resonant with a more ancient, cosmic laughter.

  115

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "Curiosity, Dr Nayingul."

  "Galarrwuy, please. Or if that's too much

  of a mouthful, Galar will do."

  "Galarrwuy," Kirk said carefully. "I

  came looking for something Koro tells me is rarer

  than the American bison. An early kelp

  station."

  "Ah!" Galarrwuy said, leading Kirk and the

  suddenly diffident Koro down the aisles of the

  closed-for-theevening museum, its display cases

  filled with Micronesian artifacts and Maori

  bird masks lighting automatically as they passed.

  "You too have read The Book.

  "I don't mean to sound like a tourist," Kirk

  began. "I imagine you're swamped with them."

  "Only those I choose to see. And you would be one

  of them," Galarrwuy said, opening the door to his

  private office, offering his guests the comfort of low

  couches and freshly fermented pineapple juice.

  "Though not overmuch for you, boyo," he scolded

  Koro avuncularly. "You're going home soon."

  "Ah, Galar, serious!" the boy protested,

  looking from one to the other to see where best to plead his

  case. "Morla el do! Tomorrow's good enough!

  I've come for to have a listen. As part of my education,"

>   he added winningly.

  "Seriously," Galarrwuy corrected him,

  unimpressed. "Doubtless your kin know you're

  barbering with me yet again, but it does get wearisome

  having them ring me up every time you take a tail wind.

  Sit you down and finish your juice, then home for

  dinner. You can use my spare boat."

  "Ar!"

  The boy settled into silence in one corner, hoping

  they'd forget he was there.

  "You seek information about the old kelp stations,"

  Galarrwuy told Kirk rather than asking him. "In

  order to relive the experience of the young couple

  Tatya and Yoshi, all innocently tending their

  seaweed crop when,

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  on a crystalline night two hundred years

  ago, the Strangers from the Sky, our cosmic

  siblings the Vulcans, fell into their laps, so

  to speak."

  "It's curious you should use the term

  'relive,"" Kirk said sincerely. "Because in a

  peculiar way I feel I have lived the

  experience before."

  Galarrwuy's deep-set eyes grew intense.

  "Truly? Are you a reincarnationist, James

  Kirk?"

  "No. At least I don't think so. Didn't

  think so."

  Kirk held out his hands helplessly. "I'm not

  sure anymore."

  Then he told Galarrwuy about his dreams.

  There was an almost interminable silence.

  "Koro," Galarrwuy said at last. "It is

  time for you to go."

  "I'm troubling Cone here," the boy grumbled from

  his corner. He'd been listening, wide-eyed.

  "Please, Galar, let me stay?"

  Galarrwuy waited, as if he knew what the

  boy would say next.

  "You'll Dream-time with him, won't you? You said you

  would teach me, when I'm old enough. I'm old enough

  now. Why can't I stay?"

  "Koro," Galarrwuy said at last

  emphatically, unequivocally. "You will go. Now."

  Kirk felt the hair on the back of his neck

  prickle. He'd thought only Vulcans could do that

  with their voices.

  Whatever authority Galarrwuy had called upon,

  Koro obeyed. Within moments the sound of an

  aeroboat punctuated the island's uncanny

  silence. When it had faded to nothingness, Galarrwuy

  rose from his couch and went to the window, facing west,

  contemplating the darkness beyond. Kirk had not spoken

  since he'd told about his dreams.

  "He is young," Galarrwuy said of Koro, as

  if by way of apology. "And, as they say in the

  islands, eeyulla. Impressed with his own

  importance."

  "He's a boy," Kirk offered, excusing him.

  He'd

  1 1 7

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  grown awfully fond of the young sea urchin in a

  scant few hours.

  "In my ancestors' reckoning he'd be three

  years a man," Galarrwuy said sternly, his back

  still to Kirk. "If he survived the desert

  ordeals. The young today are spoiled.

  Undisciplined."

  "I believe that's endemic, Galarrwuy."

  Kirk smiled, thinking how Vulcan this human

  sounded. Here was one he could trust, whatever

  happened. "Didn't Socra- tes make the same

  complaint in his day?"

  Galarrwuy chuckled, relinquished the view at

  the wmdow.

  "So he did." He grew suddenly, deadly

  serious. "Do you know of Dream-time, James

  Kirk?"

  "I know it once comprised the whole of your people's

  oral history," Kirk ventured. "That there were

  songs that accurately predicted the future.

  Cave paintings that depicted airplanes a thousand

  years before they existed. I assumed there were rituals

  not accessible to outsiders."

  "You are partly correct," Galarrwuy said,

  showing no surprise at the extent of Kirk's knowledge.

  He would expect such a man to know as much.

  The room seemed darker than Kirk remembered,

  as if something were absorbing all the light and only

  Galarrwuy's eyes were clearly visible to him. Some

  of the artifacts displayed around the room seemed less

  than inanimate.

  - "By the end of the twentieth century,"

  Galarrwuy

  began, sitting across from Kirk again, "my people were

  almost extinct. They had lost their ways

  to the ways of

  the newcomers and no longer knew who they were.

  Only a few managed to preserve the old ways,

  and in time learned to use them in compatibility with the

  new.

  - "Today my people flourish, and Dream-time is

  recognized as being as "legitimate" as any of the

  other ways.

  humans attempt to touch the face of Creation.

  Never118

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  theless, to the uninformed the Singing still carries an aura

  of mumbo-jumbo."

  Kirk felt as if he were being offered a lifeline

  in this storm of recent origin. Could it work? Could a

  Dreamtime that could foretell the future also explain the

  past? He would try anything to exorcise the voices

  in his head.

  "Galarrwuy, I've been to many worlds," he said.

  "If I've learned nothing else, I have learned that

  one man's "mumbo-jumbo" is another's

  science and a third's religion. I have since tried

  to keep an open mind."

  Galarrwuy chuckled again, partaking of the cosmic

  laughter.

  "There is also an old saying from your part of Earth.

  "Don't keep your mind so open your brains fall

  out." I have never been to any world other than this," he

  said, serious again. "At least, not in tilde body.

  Yet my experience is much as yours, James

  Kirk. There is more to what troubles you than dream."

  "Galarrwuy, you sound like a Vulcan." Kirk

  smiled, trying to lighten things.

  "No, I do not. I sound like a human who has

  lived within the influence of Vulcans, as well as

  other admirable species. Do you see how

  interdependent we have become? Do you

  understand why, in whatever reality your

  experience took place, you must return to that

  reality, and be certain it conforms to history, and not to your

  dream?"

  Kirk struggled to comprehend exactly what

  Galarrwuy was suggesting.

  "You mean you don't think I'm crazy? That there

  is some alternate reality present in these dreams?"

  "I believe that you believe that," Galarrwuy said

  intently. "And you have far more experience with alternate

  realities than I. The logs you kept aboard the

  Enterprise are available in the archives at

  Memory Alpha. I have read them. Now,

  you tell me: what is reality?"

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Kirk shook his head, as if that would clear it of the

  confusion. He held out his hands in

  submission.

  "I don't know anymore. Will you help me?"

  "I will try. Yet what I am about to suggest

  may place you in greater danger than where you are

 
now."

  Why am I so hesitant? Kirk thought. He

  could feel the fear cold in his throat, hard in his

  stomach. Why is it so much easier to confront

  external terrors than the darker corners of the mind?

  If Spock were here, I would have no doubts. He

  struggled with his fear, wrestled it into submission

  until it was only confusion, only puzzlement, yet

  he could not make it go away. Not alone.

  Spock was still a hundred parsecs away; by the time

  he returned it might be too late. Kirk must

  trust in a human guide to take him where a

  Vulcan had walked with him before. To leave the matter

  unresolved, as Galarrwuy suggested, invited the

  greater danger.

  "I haven't gotten this far by ducking

  danger," Kirk said, hoping he sounded more certain

  than he felt.

  "I had assumed as much," Galarrwuy said,

  watching him intently. "Then Sing with me."

  The room grew suddenly dark, and filled with shad

  ows.

  FIVE

  Sorahi and T'Lera awaited the inevitable in the

  metaphorical shadow of an Earth ship, a

  seaship, a thing that had no counterpart on their

  oceanless world' named for a creature no longer extant

  on its own.

  "Delphinus," Sorahl said, reading it off the

  prow of the looming presence instrument of their fate which

  no doubt contained weapons sufficient to destroy

  whole cities, much less two unarmed outworlders,

  though no weapons were visible through the window port of the

  agrostation. "Named for the smaller

  cetaceans dolphins? The great whales are

  extinct, are they not?"

  "By the beginning of this century, as

  measured in their years," T'Lera replied, perhaps

  wondering at a species that could permit such things

  to happen, nay, could

  actively cause them to happen. She wondered

  also at her son. He knew the answer to the question he

  had asked. For what reason, after all the words that had

  poured from him at the Earthmen's behest while she lay

  helpless in healing trance, did he find it necessary

  to speak still? "You told them all?"

  Sorahl stopped looking at the great ship through the

  windowport but did not precisely look at his mother.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "I answered what they asked," he said, neither

  apology nor excuse, merely explanation. "And

  they asked much. I knew not what else to do, Mother.

  To speak half truth seemed neither ethical nor

  wise; its later contradiction might prove the more

  damaging. Yet to remain silent would only augment

 

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