The Folded World (11 page)

He was most of the way down the hill before one of the newcomers trained a purple light on him.

As his body tumbled down the slope, the woman at the front spoke up again. “We don't want to hurt anybody,” she said. “We've just come to collect you. You're going on a little trip. You might even find it fun.”

“Fun?” Margyan echoed. “Not likely.”

“No!” Aleshia cried. “Not you, Margyan!”

“We've little choice, girl,” Margyan replied. “Die now or go along with them. I know my druthers.”

“But—”

Margyan couldn't hear Aleshia's objection, though; she drowned it out with her own ululating cry as she rushed toward those who had once stayed away, but did no longer, and then her screams as the purple light took her, too, and the handful who tried to join her.

When that died down, it was quiet. Tears rolled down Aleshia's cheeks, and most others' that she saw, as she and the other villagers allowed themselves to be herded, like so much livestock, toward the flying wagons. She took Gillayne's hand in hers, looked back at her house one last time, realized
that although there were many things she would miss, that wasn't one of them. Could wherever they would be taken be any worse than home? She stepped up a ramp into the flying wagon's sleek interior.

It was like nothing she had ever imagined.

At the top of the next ladder the
Enterprise
crew found another, wider corridor, with arched passageways instead of closed doors leading to spaces that contained all manner of instrumentation. The length of the corridor seemed endless; Kirk thought he could see it curving downward, like the curvature of the Earth, then thought briefly that it was an optical illusion, an impossibility. Then he reminded himself where he was, and that what was impossible in other places was commonplace here. So maybe he did see the ship reach a distant horizon and dip away, and maybe it cycled back beyond that point and continued on. The thing seemed to stretch practically forever.

“Fascinating,” Spock muttered, breaking Kirk's reverie.

“What is?”

“This seems to be the bridge,” Spock said. “We are used to a ship's bridge being a confined space where the command crew can communicate and access the instrumentation necessary to pilot the vessel.”

“That is the definition of a bridge, more or less,” Kirk said.

“And yet, here are instrument clusters that, upon brief inspection, appear to fulfill those functions.”

“You can tell what these gadgets do?” McCoy asked.

“Not precisely, no. There is writing on some of them, which I believe to be Ixtoldan.”

“Ixtoldan?” Kirk echoed. “Really?”

“Again, I am not certain, but I think it is. I have been studying Ixtoldan culture and history en route. There are other, similar written languages, and I do not read Ixtoldan, but it looks Ixtoldan to me.”

“Fascinating.”

“Indeed. Perhaps more so because none of the Ixtoldan histories mention a ship like this. Interstellar travel is relatively new to them, and this ship appears to be ancient.”

“Excuse me, Mister Spock,” Ensign Bunker said. “Couldn't that be an effect of what you called the dimensional folding?”

“It could indeed. But even if the apparent age of the ship were disguised by that, the very existence of such an enormous ship, obviously intended to carry a huge passenger load, considerable cargo, or both, should have been reported somewhere. I have seen no reference to it in any history of their space program.”

“So we're on a ship that might be Ixtoldan,” Kirk said, “which we found while traveling to Ixtolde, carrying a delegation of Ixtoldan diplomats, none of
whom wanted us to explore this ship. Curiouser and curiouser.”

“It's more than just curious,” McCoy said. “It's damn fishy, if you ask me.”

“Especially,” Kirk said, “if you add the fact that one of the ships connected to it was carrying our ambassador-to-be to Ixtolde.”

“What do you make of it, Captain?” a security team member named Aldous Beachwood asked. He had strawberry blond hair, clear gray eyes, and a disarmingly gentle manner. Kirk had seen him in action, and he knew that the gentleness went away fast under the right circumstances.

“I'm not at all sure yet,” Kirk said. “But I recommend that we maintain our vigilance. Something doesn't add up about all of this.” He eyed the instruments around them, the control panels that followed no pattern he could discern. “What's your take on the ship's controls, Mister Spock? Does the scattered nature of them mean anything to you?”

“Crew communication was performed in some fashion other than verbal,” Spock said. “Or, if verbal, then through electronic means. Possibly through telepathic means; I see nothing that appears to be a microphone or a speaker, although it is possible that those were attached via cables that have been removed or deteriorated in place.”

“So you're just guessing,” McCoy said.

“I am engaging in informed speculation, yes.” He
stepped over to an instrument cluster, studied it up close for a few moments, then turned back toward the others. He took two steps, then seemed to be jostled aside. “Excuse me,” he said. He looked toward where whatever he had bumped into would have been, but there was nothing there. When he faced Kirk again, he looked puzzled.

“Something wrong?” Kirk asked.

“I was certain that I ran into someone,” Spock replied. “I saw no one as I approached, but I distinctly felt a solid object touch my shoulder. So I apologized, believing that I had not seen somebody.”

“There's nobody there.”

“Indeed.”

“You bumped into empty air?” McCoy said. “That's rich. I could do some informed speculatin' about that.”

“No,” Spock corrected. “I did not bump into empty air. I bumped into something presently unseen. I encountered something.”

“It's this ship,” Bunker said anxiously. “There's something wrong with it. Captain, I think we ought to get out of here.”

“In due time, Mister Bunker.”

“Yes, sir.” He was gripping his phaser so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

Kirk stepped past where Spock had been, bracing himself for a physical encounter with an invisible object. It didn't happen, and he reached the instrument panel without incident. Above it was a viewport
looking out toward the jumble of ships surrounding the possibly Ixtoldan vessel. He was swiveling away from the port when the ship gave a sudden jerk, like an aircraft flying in atmosphere encountering the wake of another, or an air pocket. He caught himself on the instrument console; others threw out their arms to brace themselves or spread their feet wider. A few of the crew members chuckled nervously.

“That was interesting,” McCoy said. “Felt like we were rammed.”

Kirk looked out the viewport again, in case any of the ships outside had shifted position and collided with the big one.

Nothing had changed, that he could determine.

But reflected in the glass—as if standing right behind him—he saw something else that startled him, making him spin around.

“Jim?” McCoy said. “What is it?”

Nobody there but the landing party. Kirk shook his head. “Nothing, Bones. My mistake.”

“You look like you've seen a ghost, man. You're white as a sheet.”

“Maybe I have.” He looked out the viewport again, only not out, but in: at the reflection of the corridor behind him, which Spock had identified as one large, spread-out bridge.

And there he was again. Uncle Frank, standing over Kirk's left shoulder. His cheeks were stubbled with the growth of several days, his eyes half-hooded
from a lifetime spent squinting against the sun, his mouth set in a grimly determined line. Just the way Kirk had known him. Even his smell was there, that particular combination of sweat, horse, and campfire that Kirk had always associated with the man. He could almost hear his name, “
Jim
my-boy,” floating in the air like something somebody had said, realized only in retrospect.

But that had been decades ago. Uncle Frank had died since then. And during his lifetime, he had never left Earth.

Another impossibility. Uncle Frank wasn't here, couldn't be here. It was nothing but a figment, a hallucination brought on by—what? By the unknown, maybe unknowable nature of the anomaly? Or something else?

McCoy would press him on it, would ask him what he had seen, try to psychoanalyze him on the spot. He didn't want that. At this moment, Kirk wanted the same thing Bunker did—to get the hell off this ship and back to the
Enterprise
. There was nobody left here. The ambassador was dead, as was the
McRaven
's crew. He started trying to compose a story for Bones, something that would deter him from pushing for more.

But even as he faced the doctor, opening his mouth to spin some sort of nonsense, the ship jolted once again, and emergency klaxons began to sound.

Was this yet another example of the impossible?
The ship's systems didn't appear to be operational, or only barely so. The artificial gravity was fully functional, lighting was minimal, the
Enterprise
crew could survive in the environment. But the emergency alert system seemed, by all deafening indications, to be performing at full capacity.

“What in the hell?” McCoy asked.

“I don't know,” Kirk said. “But I—”

A shout cut him off, loud enough to be heard despite the ongoing blare of the klaxons, and seemingly fraught with emotion, with anguish. It was Bunker, and when Kirk spotted him, he was racing toward a corner—a corner Kirk didn't remember seeing before—phaser in his hand. “Come back!” Bunker cried.

“Bunker, wait!” Kirk called out.

Bunker ignored him and vanished around the corner.

“Who's he chasing?” Kirk asked of no one in particular.

“I didn't see anyone, sir,” Tikolo said. “I was right next to him. Anything he saw, I would have seen, but I didn't.”

Kirk did a quick head count. Bunker was the only one of their party missing. “All right,” he said. He pointed to four other members of the security team. “You go with Tikolo. Bring Bunker back. Petty Officer Tikolo, you're in charge.”

“Yes, sir,” Tikolo said. She and the other four raced off, around the corner and out of sight.

And in their wake, Kirk hoped that this somewhat unorthodox rescue mission had not just become a major disaster.

•   •   •

“They'll be fine, Jim,” McCoy said. He didn't sound convinced, much less convincing. The klaxons had stopped, so that was a relief. “And I'm not sure there's anything this damn ship can throw at Miranda Tikolo that she hasn't already seen.”

“You're right, Bones. I just hate to split up.”

“I understand. Now, before you stall me again, what did you see out that port?”

Kirk gave McCoy and Spock a barely perceptible nod, and both men stepped closer to him. “I saw my uncle Frank,” he said quietly. “He was standing right behind me, as surely as you're in front of me.”

“He is dead, Captain. And has been, for many years.”

“I know that, Spock. Of course he is. It was an optical illusion, a—”

“A figment of your imagination?” McCoy finished for him. “Like whatever Bunker's chasing?”

“It's this ship,” Kirk said. “It's playing tricks on us.”

“We can get off it any time.”

“Can we access its memory banks, Spock? Try to find out what happened to everybody?”

“This ship has less available power than the
McRaven,
” Spock replied. “Enough to power very basic systems, but nothing complicated. I do not believe we would be able to power the memory banks,
if we could even determine how they work, and I do not believe that even if we could do that, we would understand what they showed us.”

“So we may never know what happened here,” Kirk said.

“There are some mysteries that will never be solved,” McCoy said. “Anyway, what fun would the universe be if every question had an answer?”

Spock stared at Bones, a quizzical look on his face. “What?” McCoy asked.

“I do not understand your question.”

“It was rhetorical,” McCoy said. “You understand rhetorical, don't you?”

“I do.”

“Do you understand this? Go jump in a lake.”

“If there were a lake present, I would understand it literally,” Spock said. “Since there is not, I understand it rhetorically. And—”

“And what?”

“And, Doctor McCoy, I believe the correct response is, the same to you.”

Bones appeared to be composing a retort, but before he had a chance to deliver it, the ship was shaken by another powerful jolt. “What in the blazes is going on here?” he demanded.

“We've landed!” Ensign Romer cried. She was standing near one of the round viewports installed above the instrument panels. “Look! I know this place!”

Kirk stepped back to the port he had just used.
They had not been close to any planets at that point, only moments before. Then again, Uncle Frank had not really been standing behind him, so any evidence provided by his eyes was not to be trusted.

They appeared to have touched down on a planetary surface. A green-tinged light washed over a rugged, boulder-strewn landscape, barren of life. The landing spot was in a valley, ringed by jagged cliffs. “Where is it, Ensign?” he asked.

“It looks like an asteroid I visited during my first posting after the Academy,” she said. “It had a number, not a name.”

“And was it close by?”

“Well . . . no, now that you mention it. But . . .”

“Yes?”

“But, weren't we told that the normal rules of time and space don't necessarily apply here?”

“That's right.”