Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (4 page)

He was tempted at first to curse the Vulcan for almost causing him to fall, but, as Spock would have pointed out, only Jim’s own fearful reaction could have done that. Besides, arguing would only cause more distraction, and so he swallowed his anger and relaxed against his place in the rock without allowing himself to forget exactly where he was. “Spock,” he said, deliberately casual. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“I have been monitoring your progress,” Spock said.

Kirk’s lips twisted wryly. “I’m flattered. Twelve hundred points of interest in Yosemite, and you pick me.”

It was a very broad hint to get lost; the Vulcan, as usual, failed to catch it. “I regret to inform you,” Spock said, “that the record time for free-climbing El Capitan is in no danger of being broken.”

Jim was unconcerned by this revelation; he frowned in his renewed attempt to concentrate.

“I’m not trying to break any records, Spock. I’m doing this because I enjoy it. Not to mention the most important reason for climbing a mountain ...”

Spock tilted his head, curious. “Which is?”

Jim smiled as he intently studied the rocky surface just above his eye level. “Because it’s there.” He found
the crevice he was looking for and reached up to probe it with his fingers. It was sound.

“Captain,” Spock said, “I do not think you realize the gravity of your situation.”

A few years ago, the Vulcan might have committed such an atrocious pun in all innocence; but lately Spock had devoted himself to understanding and—God help the rest of them—occasionally attempting Earth humor, with painful results for all concerned. Kirk groaned. As he did, his feet slipped; only his firm handhold saved him from falling. Beneath his feet, a small avalanche of rocks were dislodged and tumbled to the valley below. Alarmed, Spock hovered closer, but Jim found his footing again.

He glared over at Spock, no longer good-humored about the interruption. Another distraction like that, and . . . “On the contrary. Gravity is foremost on my mind. Look, I’m trying to make an ascent here. Why don’t you go pester Dr. McCoy for a while?”

“Dr. McCoy is not in the best of moods,” Spock confessed.

Spock’s observation was quite accurate—and becoming more so by the second. From his safe vantage point in the forest below, McCoy had witnessed Kirk’s near-accident with a wrenching spasm of fear that left him breathless. Once the doctor was sure Jim was all right, his terror subsided, leaving anger in its stead. McCoy’s grip on his binoculars tightened; he swore under his breath.

“Goddamn irresponsible . . . playing games with life . . .”

He hoped—foolishly, of course—that the near
tragedy would bring Jim to his senses, that the captain would latch on to Spock and take the safe way down. But from the looks of things, Jim was going to be pigheaded as usual and keep climbing.

And the doctor was unable to shake the premonition that something awful was about to happen.

Furious, terrified, mesmerized, McCoy peered through the binoculars.

Hovering next to the captain, Spock continued. “Besides, I have come here at his insistence.”

Kirk frowned. “McCoy put you up to this?”

Spock appeared unmoved by Jim’s indignation.

“He is concerned, as well he should be. Attempting to scale El Capitan without benefit of safety precautions is somewhat reckless.”

“So is distracting someone attempting to scale El Capitan,” Jim countered, but Spock, if he heard, ignored the remark and continued.

“Concentration is vital. You must become one with the mountain.”

“That’s very philosophical. Spock, I appreciate your concern, but”—he let the irritation creep into his tone and turned his face and thoughts back toward El Cap; there was a deep crevice several centimeters above his head that looked sound. Jim slipped his left hand in and tested it—“if you don’t stop distracting me, I’m liable to become one with the—”

The narrow ledge beneath his feet began to crumble. Jim tried to hold on with his left hand, but couldn’t get a solid enough grip in time. With a sickening awareness of what was about to happen, he lost his balance . . .and fell.

It was one hell of a dizzy ride. The stretch of mountainside that had cost him painstaking hours to climb now hurtled by at lightning speed. Jim thrashed and put his left hand out to try to catch hold of a ledge, a rock, anything—but the stone surface was maddeningly smooth; he succeeded only in bruising and scraping his hand. By this time he had somehow managed to get turned upside down, so that he was falling head first.

He would land in the forest of cedar and pine and juniper below, probably bouncing off a tree or two before it was all over. He was not all that far from the campsite and McCoy—who no doubt was watching, horrified.

Oddly, Jim didn’t feel that frightened. Even in the thrilling, disorienting throes of the fall, he was calmed by the thought that Spock and the doctor were nearby.

He heard the sound of boosters firing, then felt something clamp tightly on his right ankle and jerk, not at all gently, upward.

Spock.

Jim struggled to raise his head and peer up at his rescuer. Without releasing his grip on Jim’s ankle, the Vulcan said dryly, “Perhaps ’because it is there’ is insufficient reason for wanting to climb a mountain.”

The sudden release of tension made Kirk giddy, and the fact that he still dangled upside down made the blood pound against his ears. A part of him had actually enjoyed the fall and found it exhilarating. He grinned weakly, grateful for the Vulcan’s intervention. Spock
had
been a distraction, but the ledge had crumbled on its own. The fall had been no one’s fault. “I’m hardly in a position to disagree, Mr. Spock.”

There was a thrashing in the forest, like the sound of a wild beast on a rampage. Jim turned his head and watched McCoy tear through low branches and underbrush. Dangling from a strap around the doctor’s neck, a pair of binoculars swung from side to side.

Jim felt suddenly like laughing. Maybe it was the upside-down perspective: McCoy looked like a crazed, wild-eyed mountain man. “Hello, Bones. Mind if we drop in for dinner?”

But the doctor was as furious as Jim had ever seen him and would not be placated. He indignantly brushed stray twigs and pine needles from his plaid flannel shirt and glowered at Kirk. “That’s right, turn it all into one big joke. What the hell do you think would have happened if Spock hadn’t been there?” His voice shook.

“For God’s sake, take it easy, Bones. I’m all right.”

“What would have happened?”
McCoy demanded, as if Jim’s life depended on the answer. He gestured accusingly up at the mountain.

Jim didn’t want to surrender his sudden good humor. He lifted—or rather, lowered—his hands and shoulders in a sheepish gesture. His palms grazed the rocky ground. When McCoy folded his arms and intensified his glare, Jim answered: “All right, I would have been killed. Does that satisfy you? But I wasn’t. Spock caught me.”

Spock lowered himself and Kirk gently to the ground. Jim righted himself on the rocks and pine needles and sat, trying not to be too obvious about massaging his bruised right ankle. The backs and knuckles of his hands were skinned and bloody. He’d be sore as hell tomorrow.

“Dammit, Jim!” McCoy exploded. “What’s
with
you? Yesterday you tried to kill us both in the rapids—don’t deny it! And today you throw yourself off the side of a mountain. Are you really all that anxious to meet your Maker?”

He turned on the heel of his hiking boot and stomped angrily back into the forest. Spock gazed after him with a quizzical expression.

Jim wasn’t all that sure he knew the answer to McCoy’s question.

J’Onn was slightly breathless by the time he reached the top of the sand dune. He had crossed the desert during the most intense heat of the day, and the journey had been a long one. But J’Onn was not at all tired: he felt exhilarated and very young.

The desert was as grim and lifeless as ever, but today he saw only its stark beauty and its promise. For the first time in his life he had a purpose other than maintaining a meager existence. He smiled gratefully up at his benefactor.

The Vulcan had said his name was Sybok. Other than that, he would answer no questions about himself, about whether he had come here as a homesteader, about why he had chosen—if it was true that he was not an accused criminal—to come to Nimbus III.

Whatever the reason, J’Onn was glad the Vulcan had come. For if ever a place was in dire need of a messiah, it was Nimbus III, and if ever there was a messiah with the strength to save such a miserable planet, it was this Vulcan, Sybok.

Others, too, had recognized Sybok’s power and followed; as he had said, “There are more of us than
you know.” J’Onn had not climbed the dune alone. Beside him, behind him, marched at least a hundred homesteaders—like him, poor, ruined by the drought. The group comprised every possible alien race, all of them united by a common cause: their gratitude to Sybok.

The Vulcan reined in his steed; the two poised majestically at the crest of the highest dune. Behind him, the small ragged army of homesteaders kicked up dust. J’Onn stopped and gazed up expectantly at his master.

Sybok smiled down at him, then raised a powerful arm and pointed straight ahead into the distance. J’Onn squinted and saw nothing but black waves of heat rising from the yellow sand.

“My friends,” Sybok cried, his voice clear and ringing. “Behold Paradise!”

And then J’Onn saw: the high, worn walls of a ramshackle village, a single outpost rising up in the heart of the desert. For no reason he clearly understood, the sight brought him unutterable joy.

Sybok spurred his horse onward, and his army followed.

T
HE WOMAN PAUSED
at the entrance of the Paradise Saloon to gather herself. The front doors were oddly constructed—they came only as high as her collarbone and as low as her knees, so that her view of the saloon’s interior was unobstructed. And what she saw of it was daunting indeed.

The patrons were hostile-looking homesteaders, unwashed, dressed in rags, and conspicuously displaying illegal homemade weaponry. At least, the woman told herself, the composition of the crowd was laudably heterogeneous: Romulans, Klingons, humans, Andorians, Tellarites, and representatives of a dozen more races, all under one roof.

But they were scarcely achieving any minor victories for intragalactic peace. The different groups kept to themselves except when involved in arguments or
fistfights. She watched amazed as an Andorian—obviously chemically befuddled—leaned over to address a table of surly Klingons. Their response to the Andorian was a fist in the face. He staggered backwards several meters before falling unconscious across a table of disinterested humans, who promptly nudged him off onto the rough sand-covered floor.

Through it all could be heard a noise that she supposed was music, but it was harsh, strident, offensive to her delicately pointed ears.

Remember, Caithlin, you volunteered. ..
.

The air inside the bar was filmy. Perhaps it was full of dust, like the air outside. Once she was sure that all hostilities within the bar had temporarily come to a halt, the woman stepped inside. The double doors slid open before her, then snapped shut behind her with a fatalistic click. She drew in a breath through her breathing filter, then grimaced; the smell was pungent, decidedly unpleasant. The air wasn’t full of dust at all, but of some noxious substance, probably smoke from some illegal substance such as tobacco....

Or perhaps the vapor was generated by the homesteaders themselves.

Now is not the time for illusions of superiority. You volunteered. . . .

It took Caithlin a moment to realize that all conversation had stopped the moment she stepped inside. The entire population of the saloon had turned its attention on her; she straightened, drew herself up as tall as possible, and walked with fearless dignity through the very center of the crowd. As she came close to a low platform around which many patrons sat drinking, a barely clad felinoid female, who up to
that point had been entertaining the crowd with a seductive dance, growled low in her throat at the interruption and switched her long striped tail in the air. That growl was the only sound in the bar; no one, Caithlin knew, would dare try to stop her—unless they wished to incur the wrath of her entire government.

She was Romulan, though her given name was due to the unfortunate fact that her grandfather, Liam James O’Malley, was human. Caithlin had thus far spent her entire life trying to make amends for her ancestry. As soon as she was old enough, she had applied for the diplomatic service, making it immediately clear to the admissions board that she knew herself to be an exceptionally qualified candidate and that if she was turned down, she would not hesitate to take legal action.

In the end, she was accepted. Regardless of her family background, she was too bright, too skilled, too eager to succeed for them to turn her away. But she had known that, because of her heritage, she was unlikely to receive a good assignment; in fact, she was liable to be given the worst of them. And so she had asked for Nimbus III.

She knew what she was doing; she knew that Nimbus was considered a lost cause, a boondoggle, a joke, a failed experiment that nothing shy of a miracle would save. Which was precisely why she had applied for the job.

Caithlin paused momentarily in the dim, hazy bar; she did not see the two men she was searching for. The bartender, a grizzly Tellarite who could barely see
over the top of the bar, took pity on her and jerked an appendage in a specific direction. Deciding to follow his advice, she headed for the far corner of the saloon. In a dark recess, a narrow entryway opened onto an L-shaped foyer, so that Caithlin could not see inside. Even so, she stepped boldly into the foyer without knocking—given her current situation, an air of confidence was imperative—and walked into the room.

It was a dark, dingy storage area full of extra tables and damaged chairs. On one wall hung a large mirror with a huge diagonal crack. The floor was covered with the omnipresent gritty yellow sand. At one of the tables, in the only two chairs that were whole, the Nimbus representative of the United Federation of Planets sat conversing with the consul from the Imperial Klingon Empire.