Crucible: Kirk (10 page)

Kirk stepped forward, interposing himself between Jim and the city. “Except that's not really Mojave,” he said, “and we're not really on Earth. We're in some type of—”

“Temporal nexus,” Jim said along with him. “Yes, I heard you.” He turned and paced away, but then peered back at Kirk. “I remember Picard,” he said. “I remember deciding to leave the nexus and help him, but then…then I didn't. I stayed, got caught up again in the events of my own life…” The realization appeared to agitate him.

“It's all right,” Kirk said. “But now I need your help.”

“You
need
my
help?” Jim said. “Here in the nexus?”

“No. Back in the real universe where we lived our life,” Kirk said. “When I left here with Picard, we were successful in stopping Soran, but then something else happened.”

“Something else?” Jim said.

“Something that I—that
we
—essentially caused,” Kirk said. “A phenomenon known as a converging temporal loop.” He explained what he had witnessed on Veridian Three, as well as the concept of the loop as described by Data. “It's destroyed a sizable volume of the space-time continuum and taken many lives, perhaps millions, perhaps even many more than that.”

Jim padded back across the grass until he stood directly in front of Kirk. It should've seemed like gazing into a mirror, Kirk thought, but it didn't. The image he always saw when he peered at his reflection showed him the reverse of his features, which didn't happen here as he looked at this echo of himself. “And you think what?” Jim asked. “That we can go back in time, somehow stop it from occurring.”

“Not we,” Kirk told him.
“You.”
And then he explained his plan.

(2271)/2282

Jim Kirk trod back and forth across the grass in the parkland adjoining the city of Mojave. He had just listened to—

Myself?
he thought, the very notion absurd on the face of it.
Except not all that absurd,
he amended, thinking of the incident back during the
Enterprise'
s five-year mission when a transporter malfunction had produced two versions of him.

And yet this doesn't seem like that,
Kirk thought. Back in orbit of Alfa 177, where the transporter accident had taken place, neither of the two Kirk identities that had been created—and he could still remember existing as each of them—had felt entirely like himself. Right now, though, he did feel whole, and he suspected that his doppelganger did as well.

Kirk glanced over at his double, who appeared to match him precisely, but for the visible effects of the fall he said he'd taken on Veridian Three. Both dirt and blood covered his hands and face as well as his uniform, which had been ripped in many places. According to him, he had been crushed by a metal bridge and on the verge of death when he had been swept back into the nexus. He also believed that he had beheld a powerful destructive force called a converging temporal loop. He now wanted to leave the nexus and go back in time to prevent the loop from ever developing, though he claimed that he could not do so himself as he would, upon exiting this timeless place, die as a result of his injuries.

As fantastic as Kirk found the collection of details he'd just been given, all of it seemed to make an internal kind of sense, but for one thing. He stopped pacing about and addressed that now. “You said that the convergence loop was caused by there being two large, identical sets of chronometric particles in our universe, connected by the conduit of the nexus,” he said.

“That's right,” the other, bloodied Kirk said, nodding.

“And that those particles were in our body,” Kirk said. Again, his duplicate nodded. “So if I leave the nexus, won't that unleash another temporal loop?”

“I was concerned about that myself,” the other Kirk said. “But right now, neither of those sets of chronometric particles exists in our universe because the converging loop destroyed them. If you leave and succeed in preventing the loop, then the conditions that caused it in the first place—the two sets of particles joined together by the nexus—will never arise.”

“Right,” Kirk said. He understood the logical argument that the other Kirk had just put forward, but thinking about these time-related concepts seemed dizzying.
It's more than dealing with time,
Kirk thought.
It's also about not wanting to leave the nexus.
“Why should I trust you?” he said, hunting for a reason to stay here, but as soon as the words had left his mouth, he knew they carried no weight.

“I think you
do
trust me,” the other Kirk said. “I think you know who I am. I think you know that I'm you.”

Kirk nodded, unable to do anything but agree. He looked away, toward the beautiful city of Mojave off in the distance, then back at his other self. “What if I don't want to leave the nexus?” he said, choosing to speak more plainly. He remembered refusing and then acquiescing to Picard's request for assistance in stopping Soran, but he also recalled all of the joyous times of his life that he had lived and relived here, mostly before that, but also afterward. He had agreed to exit the nexus with Picard, but then he hadn't done so, instead experiencing that first meeting with Antonia all over again.

“What can you tell me that I haven't already thought of myself?” the other Kirk said. “We both know that none of this—” He spread his arms wide, taking in the extent of their surroundings. “—is real. We've been through the same events here.”

“Not
all
the same events,” Kirk said. “I got to meet Antonia for the first time again, and it was different. I
made
it different. I can go back to our relationship and this time make it work.”

The other Kirk walked over to him. “You made it different how?” he asked, his tone almost combative. “You know, because
I
know, that no matter what you did, no matter what you changed, it would still never work out.”

“I told her who I was,” Kirk said. “This time, I didn't hide my identity from her.” In the real universe, Kirk had simply given Antonia his name, but here in the nexus, he had also mentioned that he'd retired from Starfleet. “I told her flatly that very first time that my life in the space service was over,” Kirk continued. “I didn't wait until later, and this time, I won't act in a way that allows her to doubt my commitment to her. This time, I'll keep all of those implicit and explicit promises I made and I'll stay with her. This time, I won't let myself desire a return to Starfleet.”

“‘Desire a return to Starfleet?'” said the other Kirk. “Jim,” he went on, the name sounding odd coming from his lips, “you know you didn't leave Antonia because you wanted to go back to Starfleet. You went back to Starfleet so that Antonia would leave you.”

Kirk said nothing, recognizing the hard truth of the other Kirk's words.

“You lied to her—
we
lied to her—from the beginning,” the other Kirk continued. “But then, we lied to ourselves too.”

A deep sense of shame threatened to overwhelm Kirk because he knew that his counterpart was right. He had lied to Antonia, even when she had pleaded with him for honesty. No matter what he did here in the nexus, he would not be able to alter the reality of what had really happened between them.

And although he didn't want to, he couldn't help remembering the day that he'd first begun to betray her.

Outside, snow dusted the Idaho hills. Kirk stood at the window in his living room, holding open the curtain with one hand as he gazed into the night. He squinted out at the darkness, unable to see past the reflections in the glass. Cupping his free hand over his eyes, he leaned in to the windowpane, which felt cold to the touch. His vision now shielded from the indoor lighting, he saw snowflakes still drifting lazily down from the autumnal sky, as though the heavens had chosen to sprinkle the stars down upon the Earth.

He heard footsteps behind him and knew that Antonia had returned from her self-appointed task in the kitchen. “Here we go,” she said as she came up behind him. He turned to see her holding two ceramic mugs, steam curling up from each. “My famous hot-buttered rum to go with the first snow of the season.”

Kirk accepted the mug Antonia offered and sipped at the concoction within. The sweet scent of the drink gave way to a taste that seemed almost like apple pie, though with a kick he hadn't expected. He pursed his lips at the strong flavor of the rum. “You make drinks like a ship's chief medical officer,” he said.

Antonia offered him a quizzical look. “All right,” she said. “I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean, so I'll just choose to take it as a compliment.”

“It means that some doctors love to kill the pain, no matter how much alcohol it takes,” Kirk joked. “My CMO on the
Enterprise
—”

“Bones?” Antonia said.

“Right,” Kirk said. “He made a drink called a Finagle's Folly that he claimed was known all the way to Orion.” He sipped again at the rum. “Somehow I think they probably know Salvatori's Hot-buttered Rum there too.”

Antonia smiled at him, but quickly and thinly, as though filling a moment she didn't particularly enjoy. It surprised him, but he decided not to address it. Perhaps he'd mischaracterized her expression, and if he hadn't, if something troubled Antonia, he doubted that it had anything to do with him or their relationship, which seemed to be unfolding very well. If something weighed on her mind, though, she would tell him only when she felt ready to do so. If he'd learned one thing about her during the months that they'd been seeing each other, it had been that she couldn't be pressured into doing anything she didn't herself elect to do, even simply talking.

Antonia moved away from the window and over to the sofa. She wore long dark slacks that flattered her athletic figure, and a red and blue sweater that reflected the onset of the wintry weather. She sat down on the sofa and peered at the crackling fire in the hearth.

Kirk went over and settled in beside her in the cozy setting. She put down her mug on the end table, then wrapped her hands around his arm and leaned in against him. They sat that way for a while, quietly, comfortably—an apt description for all the time they had spent together in the spring and summer and now into the fall.

After their initial meeting, Kirk had tracked her down through her veterinary practice to the nearby small town of—appropriately enough, given her profession—Antelope Brook. He'd made no pretext about visiting her office because his horses needed her care, but had instead simply gone there and asked her out, his impression being that Antonia would appreciate a forthright approach. She had, and they'd begun seeing each other once or twice a week, a frequency that had increased with time.

They had spent many days together riding through the Idaho hills, occasionally taking in a film in town or heading into one of the bigger cities for dinner or a concert or a sporting event. Mostly, though, Antonia liked staying home, playing games or reading or making love. Their physical relationship had actually taken some time to progress, but once it had, they enjoyed each other fully. Kirk found her energetic and playful, both in bed and out. Though she took some things very seriously—such as her practice and the general good care of animals—Antonia for the most part maintained an air of lightness about her.

As Kirk drank his rum with Antonia by his side, his gaze came to rest on the mantelpiece, atop which he had placed three handcrafted models of old sailing vessels. Several other antique pieces dressed the shelves he'd built on either side of the fireplace, including a clock that his uncle had left to him, a sextant, an orrery. On the very day he'd met Antonia, he'd vowed to himself that he would start living his life again, that he would do his best to forge past the memories of sadness and loss that for so long had held him back. With the personal adornments he'd added to the house and with his new romance, he felt that he had in large part succeeded in those efforts. He had even lately thought about taking the next step with Antonia.

Kirk finished his rum, then reached past Antonia to set his mug down next to hers on the end table. Once he had, he didn't lean back on the sofa, but remained leaning over her. Peering into her dark brown eyes, he said, “Doctor Salvatori, what would you think about moving in here?”

Antonia wrinkled her brow. “Is that a hypothetical question,” she said, “or are you really asking me to move in with you?” She had a penchant for reacting to certain situations in a deliberately obtuse manner, but Kirk had learned to bully his way through such tactics.

“I'm asking,” he said. He bent forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. “We've been seeing each other for months now and things seem to be going well between us.”

“Oh, you think so?” Antonia said, without any inflection to indicate a blithe spirit behind her remark.

“Yes, I do,” Kirk said, refusing to be denied.

“Well…yes,” Antonia finally agreed, but she appeared less than pleased by the admission. Abruptly she pushed past Kirk, stood up, and walked toward the corner of the room. “It's been wonderful,” she said, facing him, but when she continued, she looked down at her hands, which she nervously twisted together. “It's just that I'm not so sure that we have a future together.”

“What?” Kirk said, unprepared for Antonia's assessment. He rose from the sofa but did not try to approach her, instead gazing at her across the room. “I…I thought we were growing closer,” he said. “I thought we had a good thing going and that we were moving forward together.” It had been some time since he'd been seriously involved with a woman, but it shocked him that he could have been so mistaken in his evaluation of their relationship. With Edith it had been so easy—

Kirk cut himself off in midthought, wanting to prevent himself from comparing Antonia to Edith. Besides being unfair to Antonia, it also did him no good. Edith was gone, and she always would be.

Across the room, Antonia raised her eyes and looked at him. “We
have
grown closer,” she said. “We
do
have a good thing going. I really enjoy your company and we always have a fine time with each other, but…I'm just not sure that we're moving forward together.”

Kirk looked away from Antonia and over at the logs burning in the fireplace. He didn't know what to say or think, and he told her so. “I'm shocked,” he said, “but I guess maybe that just illustrates how badly I misjudged our relationship.”