Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (61 page)

“At this juncture, Admiral James T. Kirk returned to Genesis at the request of Sarek of Vulcan, to recover the body of Captain Spock. Commander Kruge, of the expeditionary party, demanded the Genesis equations of Admiral Kirk, and threatened him with the deaths of the hostages if he did not comply. To prove his determination, Kruge ordered a death…. He ordered my death. Doctor David Marcus, protesting, drew the attack to himself. He was unarmed. He was murdered. The killing was unprovoked.”

Saavik’s hesitation lasted only the blink of an eye, but during that moment, she reexperienced David’s death. He should not have died. Saavik had the training and the responsibility to protect civilians. But he had interfered before she could stop him. She felt the warmth of his blood on her hands as she tried to save him by giving him some of her own strength. The Klingon war party forced her away from him and permitted him to die.

“Admiral Kirk and his companions escaped from the
Enterprise.
The majority of the Klingon warriors sought him on board the starship. It self-destructed, destroying them. On the Genesis world, Admiral Kirk fought Commander Kruge in hand-to-hand combat, defeated him, and tried to persuade him to surrender. Kruge preferred to perish with Genesis.

“I have no doubt,” Saavik said, “that at the least Admiral Kirk’s actions prevented two deaths: Captain Spock’s, and mine. I believe it probable that he prevented Genesis from falling into the hands of an opposing power. Though the ideals of Genesis failed, Admiral Kirk prevented them from being perverted into a most terrible weapon.

“I am Saavik of Starfleet,” she said again. “I have been assigned to Vulcan at the request of Doctor Amanda Grayson, but I will return to Earth willingly to testify on behalf of Admiral Kirk and his companions. I swear on my oath as a Starfleet officer that the words I have spoken are true. End recording.”

“Recording ended,” the computer replied.

“Electronic copy.”

The computer obediently created an electronically readable copy of her testimony and delivered it to her chamber. Saavik slipped the memory chip into her pocket and hurried to the landing field.

James Kirk raised a hand in greeting.

“You have decided,” Saavik said.

Kirk nodded. “We lift off tomorrow.”

“To Earth?” Saavik had always believed the admiral and his friends would choose to face their accusers.

“Yes.”

“Admiral, I would like to continue my work on the ship until you leave.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Saavik.”

She drew the memory chip from her pocket. “I have made a deposition.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” He accepted the chip.

“If it is insufficient, I will return to Earth to testify.”

“Is Vulcan a disappointment, Saavik? Do you want to leave?”

“No, sir!” She collected herself once more. On Vulcan she felt strong and powerful; she felt completely in control of her life for the first time since she could remember. And this reaction struck her as very strange and wonderful, for she had no idea what the future would bring to her.

Saavik wanted to explain all this to Admiral Kirk, but the words were far too emotional.

“No, sir,” she said again. “Amanda has made me welcome. She is teaching me many things.”

“And Spock?”

“Mister Spock…is in the hands of the student-adepts,” Saavik said. “I have not spoken with him. I cannot help him here.”

“You aren’t alone,” the admiral said. “No, Saavik. I appreciate your offer. But I think you should stay on Vulcan.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She climbed the
Bounty
’s landing ladder, taking the rungs two at a time. At the hatch, she glanced back at the admiral.

James Kirk stood alone in the dusk, gazing up at Mt. Seleya, his expression suddenly uncertain.

The traveler called, but it no longer expected any reply. The pain of the loss had begun to fade. The traveler brought other programs into play as it approached the insignificant blue planet. Because it had fallen silent, the traveler could act upon it. The world that had appeared so promising had proved inhospitable, and so must be changed. When the traveler had completed its work, the world would be ready for a rebirth of intelligent life.

The traveler ranged closer to the planet, plowing through the electromagnetic flux of the yellow star’s spectrum. Other stray waves of radiation passed across the traveler, but it had been designed to withstand such energy, not to attend to it.

Soon its work would begin. The possibilities of the future began to wipe away the disappointment of loss.

From a balcony carved into the living rock of Mt. Seleya, Spock could see a great distance across the plains of his chosen homeworld. As the huge red sun set and twilight gathered, his attention focused on the landing field at the foot of the mountain. He watched as the small party of human beings who had brought him to Vulcan gathered beneath the battered wings of their Klingon warship. He deduced the purpose of their meeting; when they parted, he deduced their decision.

The Starfleet lieutenant who had also accompanied them to Vulcan joined Admiral Kirk and spoke to him briefly. Spock knew that she had been on the Genesis world, and he knew she had been instrumental in saving his life. But he knew very little else about her. This troubled him, for each time he saw her, he thought he knew everything about her. Then the knowledge faded, as unrecoverable as the memory of a dream. She became a stranger again.

Spock raised the hood of his heavy white robe and let the fabric settle around his face. During the past three months of intensive memory retraining, he should have recovered or relearned all the information he needed to conduct his life and his career. When he looked down the mountainside into the twilight and saw James Kirk, he could bring into his conscious memory an enormous amount of data about the man. He had first met James Kirk on the occasion of Kirk’s taking over command of the starship
Enterprise
from Captain Christopher Pike. No Starfleet officer had ever attained the rank of captain at a younger age than James Kirk. His rate of promotion to flag rank had been similarly precocious. That much was in the records. But Spock also knew that at first he had doubted his ability to work with James Kirk, and the captain had a similar reaction to his new science officer. That was true memory, recovered from the
katra
left in McCoy’s keeping when Spock died.

Only experience would reveal where Spock’s true memory required more augmentation. It was time to complete his final testing.

On the landing field below, Admiral James Kirk looked upward, as if seeking Spock out. Without acknowledging him, Spock turned away and entered the domain of the student-adepts of the Vulcan discipline of ancient thought.

He paused in the entrance of the testing chamber. The computer had frozen all three screens: “MEMORY TESTING INTERRUPTED.” Spock entered the chamber, sat before the screens, and composed himself.

“Resume.”

Three problems appeared simultaneously. The computer demanded the chemical formula for yominium sulfide crystals; asked, “What significant legal precedent arose from the peace pact between Argus and Rigel IV?”; and presented him with a challenge in three-dimensional chess. He wrote the formula with one hand; replied, “It is not the province of justice to determine whether all sentient beings are created equal, but to ensure that all such beings are given equal opportunity and treatment under the law”; and moved his queen. White queen took the black knight. “Check,” he said. The first screen demanded the electron structure of the normal state of gadolinium; the second requested an outline of the principal historical incidents on the planet Earth in the year 1987; the third remained static. He typed “1s
²
2s
²
2p
⁶
3s
²
3p
⁶
3d
¹⁰
4s
²
4p
⁶
4d
¹⁰
4f
⁷
5s
²
5p
⁶
5d
¹
6s
²
” and recited the watershed events of Earth, 1987, old dating system. He glanced at the chess screen. The computer had not yet answered his challenge. “You are in check,” he said. The computer replied by presenting him with an image to identify. The second screen demanded, “Who made the first advances on toroidal space-time distortion, and where?” “The image is a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional theoretical representation of a four-dimensional time gate as proposed by the Andorian scientist, Shres; Ralph Seron did the original toroid work at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Earth, in 2069, and you are still in check.” The computer’s rook took Spock’s queen. Spock instantly moved his white pawn and captured the black rook.

“Checkmate.”

All questions ceased. All three screens cleared. A legend appeared, in triplicate: “MEMORY TESTING SATISFACTORY.”

The central screen dissolved and reformed: “READY FOR FINAL QUESTION?”

“I am ready,” Spock said.

The question appeared before him and to either side, filling his vision, central and peripheral.

“HOW DO YOU FEEL?”

Confused, Spock gazed at the central screen. He drew his eyebrows together in thought. The screen flashed the question at him, urging him to reply.

“I do not understand,” Spock said.

The screen continued to flash, demanding an answer.

Spock heard the faint rustle of soft fabric against stone. He glanced over his shoulder.

Amanda, student-adept of the Vulcan discipline of ancient thought, Spock’s human mother, stood in the doorway.

“I do not understand the final question,” Spock said.

“You are half human,” Amanda said. She crossed the room, stopped beside him, and put her hand on his shoulder. “The computer knows that.”

“The question is irrelevant.”

“Spock…the retraining of your mind has been in the Vulcan way, so you may not understand feelings. But you are my son. You have them. They will surface.”

Spock found this statement difficult to accept, for he could recall no evidence that what she said was true, no occasion when he had reacted as she said he must. Yet he trusted her judgment.

“As you wish,” he said, “since you deem feelings of value. But…I cannot wait here to find them.”

“Where must you go?” Amanda said.

“To Earth. To offer testimony.”

“You do this—for friendship?”

“I do this because I was there.”

She touched his cheek. “Spock, does the good of the many outweigh the good of the one?”

“I would accept that as an axiom,” Spock replied. Her touch revealed her concern, her disquiet, and her love.

“Then you stand here alive because of a mistake,” Amanda said. “A mistake made by your flawed, feeling, human friends. They have sacrificed their futures because they believed that the good of the
one
—you—was more important to them.”

Spock considered. “Humans make illogical decisions.”

She looked at him, sadly, patiently; she shook her head slightly. “They do, indeed.”

Spock raised one eyebrow, trying to understand the incomprehensible motives of human beings.

Doctor Leonard McCoy let the door of the
Bounty
’s sickbay close behind him. He sagged into a chair designed for someone of entirely different build. The ship, particularly his cabin, felt completely alien. He had managed to bring some familiarity to sickbay alone. He had begged, borrowed, and scrounged medical equipment and supplies on Vulcan. However short and safe the trip, he would not go into space without medical capabilities. Some of the
Bounty
’s instruments he had been able to adapt to humans and Vulcans; others he had found useless or incomprehensible.

He had had neither opportunity nor desire to make his sleeping quarters feel more homelike. He did not expect to spend much time on this alien ship. But where he would be spending his time in the future, he did not know.

He rubbed his temples, wishing away the persistent headache. Wishing had about as much effect on it as the medications he had tried and given up on.

McCoy was troubled. Despite T’Lar’s assurances, McCoy still felt the presence of Spock in his mind. He hoped it was just a shadow, a memory of the memories he had carried during those few interminable days. Though he did not believe that he and Spock were entirely separate, he had said nothing. He did not want to go through any more facilitation sessions. They delved too deeply; they made him face parts of himself he preferred not to acknowledge. They opened him up to the Vulcans as surely as if he were being dissected. And the Vulcans could not understand. After each session they withdrew from him farther and farther, as if he were some experimental animal gone wrong, some freak of nature. Even Spock withdrew, never speaking to him before or after the sessions, though he should have understood McCoy better than any other being in the universe.

McCoy certainly understood Spock. That was one of the things that troubled him. He could understand how appalled and repelled the Vulcans were when they stripped the civilized veneer from McCoy’s emotions and left his psychic nerve endings bare. He could even understand their cold curiosity about him. The Vulcans had given him the ability to stand aside from his own being and act as an objective observer. It was not an ability he had ever encouraged in himself. He knew far too many doctors who prided themselves on their objectivity, who could separate themselves completely from a patient in pain. They might be technically competent, even brilliant; technically they might even be far better doctors than McCoy. But he could not work like that, and he had never wanted to. There was more to being a doctor than technical expertise. Now, though, McCoy felt as if he might be forced into such a mold. If he could no longer understand the feelings of his patients, he was worse than useless as a doctor.

McCoy could find only one defense, and that was to accentuate his reactions, both positive and negative, to let them loose instead of putting them under any restraints.

If Spock and the other Vulcans thought he was emotional before, just wait.

After a long night, Jim Kirk climbed down from
H.M.S. Bounty.
He breathed deeply of the cool thin air, trying to escape his persistent light-headedness. The little ship hunched over him, ungainly on the ground, but spaceworthy again.

Vulcan’s harsh and elegant dawn surrounded him. The cloudless sky turned scarlet and purple as the sun’s edge curved over the horizon. Light reflected from the atmosphere’s permanent faint haze of dust.

High above, a shape glided into sunlight from Mt. Seleya’s shadows. Jim watched in amazement as the wind-rider soared and circled. Few humans—indeed, few Vulcans—ever saw the rare creature. Too delicate to bear any touch less gentle than air, it lived always in the sky, hunting, mating, giving birth, and dying without ever touching the ground. Even after death it flew, until the winds dissociated its body into molecules, into elements.

It spiraled upward, directly over the
Bounty.
Vulcan’s sun, low on the horizon, illuminated the wind-rider from below. Jim realized that at any other sun angle, the translucent creature would be nearly invisible. But with the light reflecting off the undersides of its wings, he could see the tracing of its glassy hollow bones beneath a tissue-thin skin covered with transparent fur. The creature soared spiraling to a peak. It arched over backward and dove straight toward him, its brilliant gold eyes glittering. Jim caught his breath, afraid the ground would smash it or the turbulence of the air rip it apart. Twenty meters overhead it swooped upward again. It sailed away.

Jim did not understand how a beast of such delicacy had survived the fall; but Jim Kirk was not the first person to be mystified by a wind-rider. No one, not even Vulcans, claimed to understand how they withstood the violent wind and sandstorms that sometimes racked the world.

Jim wondered if seeing a wind-rider meant good luck in Vulcan mythology; he wondered if any Vulcan would admit an omen of luck existed. For while Vulcans preserved their ancient myths, modern Vulcans were far too rational to believe in luck.

What Vulcans believed did not matter. Jim felt as if seeing a wind-rider meant good luck in his own mythology. He climbed back into the
Bounty,
heartened.

Sulu and Scott had directed the repair of the worst of the damage the
Enterprise
had done. Admiral James Kirk took his place in the control chamber of the Klingon fighter, doubting he would ever feel comfortable in the commander’s seat. It had been designed for a member of a species that averaged rather larger than human beings.

“Systems report,” he said. “Communications?”

“Communications systems ready,” Uhura replied. “Communications officer—ready as she’ll ever be.”

“Mister Sulu?”

“Guidance is functional. I’ve modified the protocols of the onboard computer for a better interface with Federation memory banks.”