McCoy was not mollified. “But you developed your telepathy in childhood, Miranda. That means there had to be a Spectre occupying your brain before you were old enough to give consent!”
“Yes,” she replied, maintaining her cool reserve. Kirk wondered if it was really Miranda Jones who was speaking. “The Spectres are able to translocate within parent and child at the same time. It’s how they survive through the generations. My father’s Spectre passed to me when he died. My mother’s had also coexisted in me until then. Perhaps it was that combination of factors that endowed me with such strong telepathy.”
“Don’t you see how they used you, Miranda?” McCoy demanded. “Violated your mind, your body, without giving you a choice? My God, they’ve done this to dozens of generations of two different species that we know of!”
“Do you think they had a choice? They were hiding, desperate. They understood the ethical dilemma. They hated being forced to use the beings they had hoped to contact and befriend.
“And so they adopted their own version of the Prime Directive,” Jones continued. “To remain forever dormant within their hosts. To live passively, generation after generation … existing only as observers and never intervening directly in their hosts’ lives, except through the unavoidable psionic spillover.”
“Then that makes them voyeurs. Watching your entire lives unfold for their entertainment.”
The defiant anger she displayed was pure Miranda. “Do the natives of a pre-warp planet consent to being infiltrated and watched by Starfleet observation teams? At least the sleepers were forced to make this choice by the threat to their survival. But to avoid execution, they willingly accept imprisonment. They condemn themselves to an almost totally dormant existence, trapped inside shells of flesh, observing but never acting, rather than impose upon their hosts’ freedom to live their lives.
“Does that seem selfish or exploitative to you, Doctor McCoy? Could you condemn yourself to such an existence for centuries on end out of deference to others?”
McCoy, at last, had no reply. Jones looked around at the others. “It was when I melded with Kollos ten years ago that I finally became aware of the Spectre masked within my mind. Kollos informed me of its presence, and I allowed it to awaken, to communicate with it.” She smiled. “It was a shock at first, but I did not consider its presence a violation. Indeed, once I knew my … passenger … was there, I realized that I had always been subliminally aware of it. I just thought it was a part of me—a part I cannot imagine being without. Can something be an invasion if it’s always been a piece of who I am?”
Kirk leaned forward, catching her argent gaze. “You say Kollos informed you of the Spectre’s presence—not that he discovered it. Do you mean the ambassador was already aware that you had a Spectre within you?”
She nodded. “I have to confess another deception now, on the Medusans’ behalf.” She steepled her fingers on the table before her. “What you have to understand is that Medusans are also higher-dimensional beings. The part of them that exists in our three-dimensional space is just a cross section of their true selves.”
“Indeed,” Spock said, not sounding surprised. “That would explain much. If observers who witness a Medusan are perceiving a being of multiple dimensions, their brains would be unable to process the information.”
“That’s somewhat correct,” Jones said, “though it would take another hour and several hundred equations to put it more precisely.”
He raised a brow. “I look forward to that opportunity.”
Sulu looked equally intrigued, and he spoke up now. “It also explains the Medusans’ navigational expertise, doesn’t it?” he asked. “If they can perceive our three-D universe from a higher-dimensional level, it’s like … like being able to look at a garden maze from above and see the escape route in its entirety, while the people stuck inside it have to figure it out the hard way.”
“Exactly,” Jones replied. “And the Medusans were able to use that to their advantage. When they made contact with the Federation, they were able to sense the sleepers’ presence in certain humans, and in the Aenar as well. They sensed that the Spectres were in distress, and that they were occupying unknowing hosts in order to survive. So they wanted to find a way to reach out and offer them assistance.”
“The navigation program,” Spock said. “Their proposal to meld with humanoid telepaths for navigational purposes was a cover for making clandestine contact with the dormant Spectres. This is why they pursued the Aenar first, and then human telepaths.”
Scott gave a snort of frustration. “No wonder the program never panned out. No wonder we got the navigational advances with new equipment, no telepaths needed. It was never really about navigation in the first place.”
“That’s right, Mister Scott,” Jones said. “The Medusans’ goal, ideally, was to offer the refugees an alternative—a way they could be safe from the Lords’ hunters without having to settle for a waking death, to live openly and freely without needing to possess other beings. They wanted to free both the sleepers and their hosts. But they had to do it clandestinely, for fear of alerting the Naazh.”
“The Naazh are the agents of these Lords?” Captain nd’Omeshef asked.
“That’s right.” She grimaced. “The sheer hypocrisy of it is, while the Lords profess to despise Spectres who interact or merge with corporeal beings, they do the same thing themselves in order to hunt us down and murder us. They recruit humanoids who feel hostility toward telepaths—who see us as a threat, or who envy our advantage, or who believe that we’re an affront to their ideas of species purity. They play on these people’s xenophobia and insecurity, encourage their worst fears and resentments, and offer them the power to defeat what they fear.”
“So let me get this straight,” Sulu said. “The good Spectres are sleepers, and they’re inside the Aenar and New Humans. The bad Spectres are Lords, and they’re inside the Naazh.”
“Too many names,” Commander Vega said, getting up from the table. “Anyone else need more coffee?”
“It has to be more than simple recruitment,” Uhura said to Jones. “When T’Nalae was aboard, she expressed dislike for the New Humans, yes, but it wasn’t violent or extreme. She never would’ve passed her first Starfleet evaluation if she were that psychopathic.”
“Once the Lords possess their hosts and turn them into Naazh,” the telepath explained, “they manipulate their minds, their emotions. They amplify their fears … tease out their darkest hidden feelings of resentment and rage and unleash them. They destabilize their neurotransmitters, deaden their empathy and impulse control, intensify their paranoia and cruelty. They exploit and abuse their hosts in exactly the way the sleepers strive so hard to avoid.”
“And it comes with a cost, doesn’t it?” Kirk realized. He peered at Miranda’s gray hairs, remembering Gary’s. “It drains you. Ages you.”
She nodded. “It’s another reason the sleepers stay dormant. Having an active Spectre within you, using its powers to their full extent, takes its toll on the metabolism. It shortens your lifespan.” She paused, then went on with a grimace. “Yet another thing the Lords don’t tell their Naazh servants. They hate corporeal beings as much as they hate the refugees, so they see them only as tools to be used up.”
“Is that what happened to Gary and Doctor Dehner? Did the barrier … awaken their sleepers?”
“More than that,” she answered. “It supercharged them, caused their powers to escalate exponentially, beyond what was normal even for a Spectre.” She shook her head. “From what you tell me, the shock of the forced awakening must have deranged Mitchell’s Spectre, or Mitchell himself, or both. I doubt either of them can be considered responsible for their actions. Mitchell surely didn’t understand what was happening to him, hearing this other voice speaking ever more loudly inside his head. He didn’t have a Medusan to make the introduction for him.”
Kirk sat back, stunned. All these years, he’d believed Gary had simply been
drunk with power—that his own erratic personality, his hedonism and lack of discipline, had been corrupted into something far worse by the temptation of his growing abilities. He had resigned himself to the fact that the good in his friend had died before Kirk had been forced to kill what remained.
Had he been wrong? Had Gary been a victim all along, overwhelmed and in pain, asserting his power to compensate for his growing loss of control? Had he still been Kirk’s friend right to the end?
Jones looked at him sympathetically, no doubt sensing his emotions. She spoke gently. “Your official account wasn’t that far from the truth, Jim. Given enough time, with the way their Spectres were draining them, both Mitchell and Dehner would have burned out and died anyway. They probably would have suffered far worse madness and torment before the end, as would their Spectres.” Kirk held her gleaming gaze, nodding his thanks.
After a moment, Spock eased the conversation onto another tack. “I take it that we have finally arrived at the explanation for our entry into this pocket dimension.”
“Yes,” Jones said. “When Larry sent the Enterprise into—what did you call it—transwarp, we hadn’t reached the barrier yet, but we were heading faster and faster in its direction. Kollos had made enough contact with the Aenar’s Spectres that he knew what had happened with Mitchell and Dehner at the barrier. The psionic surge in their Spectres was powerful enough for the others to feel a thousand light-years away.
“So Kollos knew that he couldn’t allow me or my Spectre to pass through the barrier. Not to mention any other espers who might be on board, without the Kelvan shielding to protect them.”
“I take it Medusans don’t just sense higher dimensions,” Sulu said.
Jones nodded. “They manipulate them too. Kollos … ‘lifted’ the Enterprise out of normal space into another domain the Medusans have access to. He let you believe you’d entered some kind of pocket within the barrier, rather than reveal the full extent of his abilities.”
McCoy looked indignant. “You mean Kollos could’ve taken us back to normal space at any time? He didn’t need to meld with Spock and almost drive him permanently mad?”
“As I said, Doctor, Kollos greatly regretted the unintended consequences of his deception. But secrecy had to be maintained to protect the sleepers from annihilation—not to mention the threat to the Medusans if the Lords found out they were helping the sleepers. So Kollos had to go through with the charade that melding with a humanoid was necessary to navigate the ship to safety.”
“It is all right, Doctor McCoy,” Spock said. “I reconciled myself to the incident long ago. As I have remarked before, I consider the blame to be at least as much mine as Kollos’s. And I do not begrudge Kollos his decisions in the name of protecting a threatened people. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
“Only if you choose to be the one yourself,” McCoy countered, “instead of making it somebody else.” He turned back to Jones. “You talked about how the Lords use their hosts, age them and burn them out like riding a horse to death. Look at yourself, Miranda! How is what this Spectre’s doing to you any different?” He narrowed his eyes. “Or am I talking to the Spectre after all?”
She remained calm. “My Spectre and I have been one for as long as I can remember. I see even less of a distinction between us than I saw between myself and Kollos when we were melded.”
“So there were three of you in there all along?” Naomi Vega asked, her eyes wide. “That’s quite a party.”
“To answer your first question, Doctor McCoy,” Jones continued, “I’ve chosen to let my Spectre stay active for the duration of the crisis. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to protect my fellow New Humans. The Naazh attacks just keep getting more relentless, and I won’t drop my guard until the sleepers and their hosts are safe.”
Kirk saw a realization strike Spock. “The increase in New Human power levels over the past six years … the banding together of human telepaths to hone and strengthen their abilities … was it a response to the Naazh threat?” the Vulcan asked.
“In a way, yes. The belief that the power increase was triggered by V’Ger was indirectly true.” Jones spread her hands. “When V’Ger merged with Willard Decker and transcended our plane of existence, it was like a telepathic flare shining across the dimensions. The sleepers feared—correctly, as it turned out—that it would attract the Lords’ attention to Federation space, to the sectors containing Earth and Andoria. That forced them to—not to take control of their hosts, Doctor, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told McCoy preemptively. “But to stir themselves out of dormancy—put themselves on standby, if you will, so they’d be ready to awaken fully and respond if they were attacked. The incidental result of that was an increase in their hosts’ psionic powers. The Aenar had such an increase too, but they kept to themselves, so it went unnoticed.
“But the Aenar were found first, by unlucky chance. Or, more likely, the Naazh chose to attack them first because they were weaker and more isolated—because they wouldn’t fight back.
“Once the massacre happened, it was the New Humans’ own choice to band together and develop our defenses. I admit, I encouraged it, because I was aware of my Spectre and of the threat from the Naazh. I approached the strongest telepaths, like Arsène Xiang, and introduced them to their Spectres, as Kollos did for me. Although the sleepers’ secrecy needed to be maintained, we needed a few New Humans aware of the whole truth so we could ready the others.”
“If your Spectres were active all this time,” McCoy asked, “why didn’t your eyes start glowing until the fight?”
“Because they haven’t remained active. Once we made contact, they returned to relative dormancy so as not to place a strain on our bodies. They awaken fully only when we need to exert more psionic power than we can harness on our own—as we did down in the cargo bay.”
She sighed tiredly. “When I was with Kollos, I was able to coexist safely with my active Spectre, because Kollos was able to shoulder the burden and cushion me from its effects. It’s been a strain to carry it all by myself for the past year.
“But we’re safe in this pocket space, for now. The Medusans are protecting us.” She smiled. “Soon we’ll all be in a safe place. And then I—and my Spectre—can finally rest.”
* * *
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
Kirk and Jones were alone in the former’s quarters, letting him give voice at last to the feelings that had been churning inside him since he had first seen her silver eyes. Now those eyes remained unwavering as she faced him. “Surely you understand why I couldn’t.”
He stared at her. “All this time, I was worried about taking advantage of you. Now I find you’ve been the one lying to me.”
“Not ‘lying,’ Jim. Keeping secrets. There’s a difference.” Her gaze narrowed. “Are you shocked to learn that the woman you made love to had a nonhuman sentience sharing her body? I thought you’d grown past such small-mindedness with Kollos.”
“I’ve got nothing against … variations on the theme,” Kirk said. It certainly wasn’t his first time with two partners at once. “I do have a problem with not being asked for my consent first.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you hear me in the briefing room? My Spectre and I have been one person for as long as I can remember. To me—to us, if you prefer—the distinction between us is irrelevant, almost nonexistent. Perhaps that was why I took so readily to merging with Kollos.”
“Kollos already knew before you melded. Didn’t I deserve the same consideration?”
Her smile was sardonic. “Not to be indelicate, Jim, but what’s in my mind is rather less relevant to what you and I share.”
Kirk paced. “It’s about more than just you and me, Miranda. You say that Kollos told you about the Spectres ten years ago. That means you’ve known from the beginning who the Naazh were and why they were after the Aenar. You knew they would go after human telepaths next
. If you’d told us what you knew—”
“I couldn’t take that chance! We didn’t know for sure if the Naazh were aware of the sleepers’ presence in humans. If I’d told you, it could have exposed them to Naazh attack even sooner. The secret had to be kept, long enough to give us the chance to gather the New Humans and prepare them clandestinely for the coming assault.”
“You could have told me. I know how to keep classified information secure.”
“It wasn’t my secret to share. Not until I had to.”
“Didn’t you say your Spectre is as much a part of you as your human half?”
She winced, and the part of him that wasn’t angry at her regretted his pettiness. “My Spectre wasn’t the only one in danger,” she explained.
He couldn’t counter that, so things were quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Jim,” she finally said. “I never meant to mislead you or take advantage of you. I did what I had to—and between us, I did what felt right, what I thought we both needed. I take my Spectre side so much for granted that I didn’t consider it to be an issue. I failed to consider how you would see things differently.”
Kirk pondered her words for a time, and again it was Jones who broke the silence. “So where do you and I go from here?”
“I’m … not sure yet,” he said slowly. “We’ll have to wait and see.” He studied her silver-eyed visage. “But I need to know … is there anything else you’re not telling me?”
She smiled, as if remembering someone dear to her. “Well … there is one more secret I’ve been keeping. But I think you’re going to like this one.”
Sixteen
U.S.S. Reliant
“Still no word from the Enterprise and the other ships?”
The Higher Frontier Page 23
