The Folded World (3 page)

•   •   •

By the time he and McCoy reached the bridge, Gonzales and a couple of the other diplomats, Perkins and Rinaldo, were already there. So were Minister
Chan'ya and three additional members of her party. Ixtoldans were generally humanoid in appearance, but with skin that appeared at most times to have been dusted with gold. The colors of the crystalline matter creating that impression could change, under intense emotional stimulus, turning a glowering purple when an Ixtoldan was angry and a deep sea green, according to reports, when sexually aroused. Chan'ya's had been a pale gold as long as Kirk had known her, although he noticed as he stepped off the turbolift that it was slightly more pronounced than usual.

The minister was shorter than Kirk and broader through the shoulders, with thick arms and legs and a sturdy torso. She wore a floor-length dress that appeared to be composed of a series of ribbons partially interwoven and wrapped tightly around her, in various shades of red and yellow. Her hair was pulled back off her face and braided into shoulder-length coils, each braid comprising white, gold, and silver strands. Kirk had not spent a lot of time with her, but he knew her well enough to realize that although her even-featured, seemingly guileless face appeared to betray an utter lack of sophistication, that was an illusion. She was not to be underestimated.

The other two Ixtoldans were even taller than Gonzales, towering over their minister, and both thin as rails. This told Kirk that Ixtoldans were a physically diverse people, similar in coloration but not necessarily in size and build.

Chan'ya greeted Kirk with a challenge. “Are we to understand, Captain, that our arrival at Ixtolde is to be delayed?” She spoke in a low, throaty mumble, hard to hear, but with each word distinctly pronounced. Her English was almost without accent.

“I'm not sure yet,” Kirk replied. “A Federation starship is in some sort of trouble. We've increased our speed, and since the
McRaven
was following what appears to be the same course that we are, we are not necessarily losing any time. But it depends on what we find when we reach her.”

“Still, we must register a protest. Our schedule is inviolate.”

“Surely you understand, Captain Kirk,” Gonzales added. “We've been invited as guests to their planet, and the schedule was established well before we left.”

“I do understand,” Kirk said. Turning to the Ixtoldan, he said, “I'm sorry, Minister Chan'ya. This can't be helped. I know you're not suggesting that we ignore a distress call.”

“We suppose that we cannot,” Chan'ya said with resignation. “But we expect that the utmost haste will be expended in addressing the situation, whatever it might be.”

“Believe me,” Kirk said, “if the
McRaven
's in trouble and there's something we can do to help, we won't waste any time.” He glanced toward Gonzales. “I'd expect Federation personnel to understand
that
.”

“Oh, of course,” Gonzales said quickly. “Obviously,
the safety of the ship and crew are the first priority. All I'm saying is, let's keep our mission schedule in mind.”

Kirk held his tongue. What he wanted to say would not have been at all diplomatic. Finally, he trusted himself to speak again. “Of course.”

“Very well, then.”

Chan'ya gave Kirk a look that he couldn't quite read. She might have been wishing some painful and long-lasting death for him, or she could simply have been checking the color of his eyes. Or searching for that damn twinkle. During the time she'd been on the ship, he'd had a hard time reading her moods or her body language. But her skin turned slightly rosy, almost like a blush, and she pressed her hands against her sides and rushed from the bridge. Her retinue followed just as swiftly. None of them had uttered a word, but as the turbolift doors closed, the tallest of them shot Kirk an angry glare. His skin darkened, his lips drew back to expose a row of sharp yellow teeth, and his nostrils flared.

There was no mistaking the meaning of that.

Doctor McCoy escorted the Federation delegation off the bridge as the captain took his seat, for the moment content to watch his crew do what they did so well. They were seasoned professionals and they worked with the crisp efficiency that he enjoyed, the way that some people did a well-choreographed ballet.

After a few minutes he heard his first officer punching buttons. “Is everything okay, Mister Spock?” he asked.

“We appear to be having an instrument malfunction, Captain. I am unable to determine the cause.”

“It's here too, Captain,” Chekov said anxiously. “Either we're spinning in circles, or my instruments are completely haywire.”

Kirk stood up, leaning forward to check Chekov's display panel. “Mister Sulu?” he asked.

“Aye, Captain,” Sulu reported. “I believe our systems are still functional at this point, and we remain on a steady course. But you wouldn't know it from the readings I'm getting.”

“Captain?” Uhura said.

“Yes?”

“When you asked me about the
McRaven
's course, she was following the same course that we had observed, until about this point. Then she diverted, rather markedly.”

“So you're thinking there's something about this location that interferes with a ship's instrumentation. And when the
McRaven
went off course, it ran into trouble.”

“It's a theory, sir.”

“One with which I concur, Captain,” Spock said. He was bent over his console, trying to rein in his instruments. From what Kirk could tell, without notable success.

“
Engineering to bridge!
” The voice over the intercom belonged to Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. “
Captain! I dinna know what's goin' on with the instruments here, but I'm losin' all control of the engines!
”

“Full stop,” Kirk instructed.

“Full stop,” Sulu repeated, already moving to implement the command.

“
Far as I can tell, Captain, we're stopped,
” Scotty said a moment later. “
It's hard t' know for certain.
”

Kirk rose from his chair and went to the viewscreen. Even in the depths of space, with all the starship's environmental controls and artificial gravity fully functional, there was a faint but constant sensation of motion. He didn't sense it now. “I believe we are,” he said. “Now, reverse thrusters. Slow and steady. Let's back out to where things started going haywire.”

The slightest lurch indicated that the
Enterprise
was once again in motion. Most people—those not as attuned to the rhythms of the vessel as he was—would not have felt it. Even Kirk couldn't have said definitively whether they were moving forward or back. He trusted his crew, though, and both Scotty and Sulu had said they were
losing
control, not that control had already been lost. Given that, he believed a controlled reverse was achievable, and if Spock was right about the source of the instrument trouble, then getting out of range of whatever had caused it might set things straight.

He returned to his chair, but he didn't have to wait long for the answer. “Instruments normal,” Sulu said after a few minutes.

“Here too, Captain,” Uhura added.

Kirk touched his intercom controls. “Kirk to engineering,” he said. “What about you, Mister Scott? Back to normal?”

“
Aye, Captain, it seems so,
” Scotty said.

“We're going to stay put and try to figure out what's going on,” Kirk said. “We'll probe the vicinity from here and see what we find.” He rose from the chair again. “Call me when you learn something,” he added. “I've got to pay someone a visit.”

•   •   •

He found Miranda Tikolo in her shared quarters. When she called out for him to enter, her voice sounded far away. He went in and she was sitting on
the edge of her bed, her eyes vacant. After he stood there a moment, she focused on him.

“Captain,” she said. “This is . . . a surprise.”

“I just wanted to drop in, see how you're doing,” he said.

She smiled. He had heard that the petty officer was the subject of possible romantic interest from more than one member of the ship's crew, and seeing the way her smile lit the room, he understood why. “Okay,” she said. Her tone was sincere, in his judgment. And a person didn't become a starship captain without plenty of experience reading other people. “Captain, I want to thank you again for making me part of your crew.”

“No thanks necessary,” he said. “You earned that.”

“Still, I—”

“Miranda,” he interrupted. “I know you've been talking with Doctor McCoy, and that's good. What you've been through isn't easy, but it's a load you don't have to carry alone. I want you to understand that you can talk to Bones, you can talk to me—this ship is full of sympathetic ears.”

“Thank you, sir. I understand.”

He wasn't sure he was making himself clear. Tikolo's verbal responses seemed to indicate that he was getting through, but her facial expression hadn't changed. She looked like someone pretending to appreciate her gifts at a party, where the givers were watching her open every package. “There will be
plenty of times when others are counting on you. You just need to know—”

She started to reply, but the intercom system cut her off. “
Bridge to Captain Kirk,
” Uhura said.

He went to the wall unit and activated it. “Kirk here.”

“
Captain, I think we've found something.
”

“What is it?”

Instead of Uhura's voice, he heard the first officer's. “
You need to see this for yourself, Captain,
” Spock answered. “
It is most unusual.
”

When Kirk stepped onto the bridge, everybody was staring at the viewscreen. It only took him an instant to understand why.

“The anomaly you see, Captain,” Spock explained, “is what we believe to be the cause of our instrument malfunction.”

“We were heading straight for it, Captain,” Sulu said. “See that speck near the center? That's the
McRaven
.”

“Enlarge,” Kirk said.

“Aye, sir.” Sulu touched a button and the image on the screen was magnified. It looked like nothing Kirk had ever seen. What should have been the black emptiness of deep space was instead shot through with jagged strands of green light that were constantly shifting. It reminded Kirk of nothing so much as electricity arcing from one point to another. The stars on the far side of the strange energy field behaved oddly, too—instead of giving off their usual brittle glow, they seemed to pulse, appearing to grow and shrink, and at the same time becoming more and less distinct.

As the captain watched, the scene changed. The electrical green ribbons grew wider, their edges less distinct, until the entire field of view was a brilliant green. Blue-white lightning-like bolts shot across the screen, connecting with one another in an almost web-like construction, then faded out, leaving ghost-images burned onto the screen. That blue-white light spread until it was the dominant color; as soon as it was, it began to darken toward something more like traditional deep-space black, with pinpoints of light behind it. Then the process began again.

In the center of it all was the
McRaven
. Kirk still couldn't make out anything more than a smudge on the screen. “Enlarge again,” he ordered. The captain settled into his seat, right elbow on the armrest, chin on his fist, as he watched the image seem to grow closer.

This time, he could barely make out the
McRaven
. She was a
Constitution
-class ship, like the
Enterprise
.

And she wasn't alone.

The
McRaven
was jammed into a conglomeration of spacegoing vessels, like part of a puzzle where the goal was to take apart the seemingly inextricably linked objects. All of them were clustered around another ship, one bigger than any Kirk had ever seen, as if it had attracted them with its own gravitational field.

“That's not possible,” Kirk said.

“It is the
McRaven,
” Spock assured him. “We have positively identified it.”

“We're still picking up its distress beacon,” Uhura said.

“But it looks like it's been there for decades.”

“Indeed,” Spock said.

“And it's only been days, if that.”

“Correct.”

Kirk swiveled to look at Spock. The Vulcan sat at his station with a slightly annoyed expression. Spock didn't like not being able to explain something, but it was clear that this fell into the category of things he had not figured out.
Yet,
Kirk knew.
Give him time.

“Any sign of life?” Kirk asked.

“We've been scanning, sir,” Spock reported. “No carbon-based life that we can detect from here. And none of the systems on any of those ships appear to be functioning. It is possible that our distance, combined with the unknown qualities of the anomalous region, is skewing our readings, though.”

“So we won't really know anything until we get closer. And we can't get closer.”

“It would be inadvisable,” Spock stated.

“It may be,” Kirk said. “But that's a Starfleet ship out there. Unless we know beyond any doubt that there are no living beings on board, we're going to act as though there are. This has just become
a rescue mission. I want every effort put toward figuring out what that anomalous region is, and how we can get to the
McRaven
.” He paused a moment, knowing that his crew would understand the unspoken coda. Then he said it anyway, because sometimes it was better to make sure everybody heard the same thing in the captain's own voice. “And I want it done fast. Lives are on the line, and every minute counts.”