The Fire and the Rose

by David R. George III

  Keeler pushed through the door into a tiny vestibule, where a bare bulb hung down from the ceiling and shined on a row of metal boxes. Paint on the wall above and below peeled so badly that Kirk thought the bare spots outnumbered the beige chips that remained. Keeler flipped up the lid of the box marked 33, then closed it. “No mail,” she said. “Thankfully.”

  After Keeler opened the inner door, they all moved forward into a narrow hallway. Here, the walls had been better maintained, with only a few places that showed chipped paint. Red carpeting covered the floors. A stairway on the left side of the hall led up to the second floor, while several doors lined the other side. Keeler walked to the first one and knocked.

  “Are you sure it’s not too late?” Kirk asked.

  “I called Mister Dubinski earlier and told him we’d be coming,” Keeler said.

  Before long, Kirk heard movement within the apartment, and a moment later, the door opened. A heavyset man stood inside, a tattered red robe wrapped about him. It didn’t appear as though he’d shaved in several days, and the stub of an unlighted cigar peeked out from the corner of his mouth. “Miss Keeler,” he said, his accent swallowing the r: Keeluh. He gave Kirk and Spock a long look, then asked, “These the guys?”

  “Yes,” she said. “This is Mister Kirk and Mister Spock.”

  “They all right?” Dubinski asked.

  “If they weren’t,” Keeler said, “would I bring them to the building I live in?”

  “No, I guess not,” Dubinski allowed. Looking back at Kirk, he said, “That’s two dollars a week, in advance.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Kirk said, recalling the cash that Keeler had earlier given to him and Spock. He reached into the pocket of his denim pants, pulled out two bills, and offered them to Dubinski. The landlord snatched them like a mouse stealing a piece of cheese.

  “It’s number twenty-one,” he said, extracting a key from the pocket of his robe. “You need me to take ‘em up, or do you wanna show ‘em?” he asked Keeler.

  “That’s all right,” Keeler said, taking the key. “We’ve disturbed you enough tonight. Thank you.”

  Dubinski grunted an acknowledgment, then closed his door.

  “Charming fellow,” Kirk remarked.

  “Oh, he’s all right,” Keeler said as she walked back down the hall to the stairs. “A lot of places around here are charging two and a half and three dollars a week for a room.” At the top of the steps, she went to the first door, onto which the number 21 had been affixed. She used the key to unlock it, then opened the door and reached inside to turn on a light. Then she stepped aside, obviously to allow Kirk and Spock to enter.

  Inside, Kirk found himself in a single small room. The blue, patterned wallpaper looked old, but peeled in only a few places. He saw two narrow beds with their head-boards against the far wall, separated by a low dresser. A second, taller dresser stood to the right of the door, and a closet had been built into the corner to the left. A table sat against the left-hand wall, below windows covered by sheer brown curtains.

  “The loo is down at the end of the hall,” Keeler said, still standing outside the apartment.

  “The what?” Kirk asked.

  Keeler chuckled. “Sorry, that’s just my English showing,” she said. “I meant the bathroom.”

  “All right,” Kirk said.

  “Here,” she said, holding up the key that Dubinski had given her. “You’ll need this.”

  Kirk walked over to the door and peered down at Keeler. As he’d told Spock during the talk she’d given at their evening meal, he thought her uncommon. Now, he gazed into her hazel eyes and found himself almost transfixed by her beauty—a beauty clearly not limited to the physical. He reached up and took the key from her, feeling a jolt as his hand briefly touched hers. “Thank you, Miss Keeler,” he said.

  She smiled. “You are very welcome, Mister Kirk,” she said. “Good night.” She turned and headed down the hall, toward the staircase leading up to the next floor. Kirk watched her for a moment, then withdrew into the room and closed the door.

  “An interesting woman,” he told Spock.

  “Indeed,” Spock said. He unbuttoned his coat, then removed it to reveal the tricorder hanging by its strap from his shoulder. He took it off and set it down on the table.

  “We shouldn’t leave that here when we go out,” Kirk said. When they’d begun working at the mission that morning, they’d discussed searching the city tonight for shops that sold tools and equipment that Spock might be able to use to build a mnemonic memory circuit.

  “Captain, may I suggest that I venture out alone tonight,” Spock said. “You have been awake now for some time.”

  Spock needn’t have told him that. They’d both logged half a shift on the bridge before McCoy’s accident, and then had spent time down on the planet before leaping through the Guardian. They’d now been in the past for fourteen hours or so, which meant that they’d probably been awake for close to an entire day. But while Vulcans could do without sleep for protracted periods, human performance suffered without regular slumber. Still, the importance of their mission here provided him all the energy he needed right now.

  “It’s all right,” Kirk said. “I’ve got a few hours left in me.”

  “Very well,” Spock said. He picked up the tricorder from the table, hung it over his shoulder, and pulled his coat on again.

  Together, they went back out into the night.

  Spock sat at the table in the apartment, the late afternoon sun providing ample illumination for his work. Spread out in front of him, two dozen sheets of paper covered the tabletop, and another dozen lay atop the near bed. On each, he’d written a portion of the schematic he’d been designing in his head since their arrival in the past, four days ago. After the captain had acquired a sheaf of paper and two pencils from Edith Keeler yesterday, Spock had spent the night and all of today setting his plans down in writing.

  Now, he wrote down the final markings on the final sheet, then stood up to survey his work. He stepped over to the bed and found the graphic representation of the mnemonic memory circuit’s connections to the tricorder. From there, he traced his way through the entire diagram, verifying power requirements, confirming the logic flow of the data that would pass through it, and checking the overall integrity of the layout.

  Halfway through the process, as the afternoon gave way to the evening, Spock turned on both of the lights in the room, the one on the wall beside the door and the one on the wall opposite. By the time he’d worked his way through the whole schematic, night had fallen. His plan seemed sound, though whether or not it would actually function as he’d formulated it, he could not tell. In the few electrical components he and the captain had already purchased, he’d found some large variances from their stated ratings, making their usage problematic.

  Spock collected the pieces of paper, carefully labeling the position of each. He then sat back down at the table and began to page through every sheet, in order to make a list of all that he would need. As he did so, he wondered if the captain had made any progress in his quest today.

  Since their arrival in 1930, they had worked three full days at the 21st Street Mission, and a half day yesterday. While the captain had worked there this morning as well, Spock had taken the entire day to complete the design of the memory circuit. In the meantime, Captain Kirk had decided that, after putting in his time at the mission today, he would visit the New York Public Library. There, he would read through the city’s newspapers of the last few days, searching for any indication of Dr. McCoy’s presence in the past. It seemed like an effort unlikely to yield any results, but one worth making.

  When Spock finished compiling an inventory of everything that he would need, he considered the issue of how to mount the components to fix them in place. He would need a solid surface, preferably wood so that he could attach them using nails or staples. Looking around the room, he spied the two dressers, and he went to the smaller one. He removed one of the dra
wers, then began to pry the back from it.

  At that moment, somebody knocked on the door. Spock surmised that it must be either Edith Keeler or the landlord, Mr. Dubinski. He returned the drawer to the dresser, then donned his cap before crossing the room and opening the door. As he’d suspected, Keeler stood there.

  “Mister Spock,” she said. “If you’re interested, I’ve gotten work for you and Mister Kirk for the next two days. It’ll be ten hours work each day for twenty cents an hour. You’ll be loading and unloading boxes from trucks.”

  “The higher rate of pay would be helpful,” Spock said. Though he and the captain had already decided that they would steal the components for the mnemonic memory circuit if they needed to, they both much preferred the idea of simply purchasing them. In addition to the simple immorality of theft, they would risk arrest by committing a crime, as they had already learned from taking the clothes they still wore. Not only could the fact of their being taken into custody conceivably alter the timeline, but if McCoy then arrived in the past, they wouldn’t be able to stop him from changing history if they’d been taken to jail.

  “Good,” Keeler said. “Here, I’ve written down directions for you to get there.” She held out a torn piece of paper. Spock took the information and made sure that he could read it. “You need to be there at seven A.M.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Keeler glanced past him into the room, obviously looking for the captain. “Is Mister Kirk here?” she asked. The mutual attraction between Keeler and the captain seemed readily apparent to Spock, although the two had spent little time together.

  “He is not,” Spock said.

  Keeler smiled and nodded. “All right,” she said. “Well, good night, Mister Spock.”

  “Good night, Miss Keeler,” Spock said. As she headed down the hall, he closed the door. He then returned to the dresser, where he started to remove the wooden slats from the backs of the drawers.

  Within an hour, the captain returned. He brought a brown paper bag with him, in which he carried food that he had purchased. Until today, they had taken all of their meals at the 21st Street Mission, but they had both agreed that they could do with some more substantial sustenance. As they sat down at the table to eat—various fruits and vegetables for both of them, as well as some sliced meat for the captain—Kirk asked about Spock’s progress with the design for the mnemonic memory circuit.

  “I have completed it,” Spock said, “along with a list of all the components I will require.” He picked up the paper and handed it over to the captain.

  “There’s a lot here,” Kirk said.

  “It is the minimal amount of equipment needed,” Spock said.

  “All right,” Kirk said. “At midday tomorrow, we’ll go to one of the radio repair shops we saw the other night.”

  Spock informed the captain of the job that Keeler had found for them for the next two days, and Kirk revealed that he’d uncovered no references to McCoy anywhere within any of the newspapers that he’d read. “I had another thought, though,” Kirk said. “When McCoy arrives in the past, or if he’s arrived already, he’s still going to be under the influence of the cordrazine. If he runs through the streets screaming about being hunted by assassins, there’s a chance that he might be hospitalized, or maybe even arrested.”

  “That is true,” Spock said.

  “While you work on the memory circuit,” Kirk asked, “what do you think of me checking hospitals and police stations in the area?”

  Spock considered the idea. “It might be reasonable to check hospitals,” he said. “You could simply ask for Doctor McCoy by name, perhaps claiming to be his brother. I would be reluctant to approach the police, though. I am not sure how they would react to somebody asking about their arrest records or people they have in custody, and since we ourselves possess no identification—”

  “Right,” Kirk agreed. “Well, I’ll begin checking hospitals tomorrow.”

  The next night, as the captain walked the city in search of a patient named Leonard McCoy, Spock began his attempt at building a mnemonic memory circuit.

  Ten

  2293

  It had been a bittersweet afternoon. With the old crew congregated in Jim’s apartment, scattered on chairs about the den, McCoy realized that they hadn’t all been together in several years, at least not to speak of. They’d each ended up at Camp Khitomer at the same time four or five months ago, when they’d foiled the assassination of the Federation president, but those few minutes had been hectic and rushed, and there had been no opportunity even to talk.

  Today, though, there had hardly been a silent minute. But for Spock, who had stayed mostly quiet, they had all taken turns recollecting tales of their former captain. With the floor-to-ceiling windows of the den affording them a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay, tears and laughter had mixed throughout the course of the get-together.

  Uhura had remembered the grilling Jim had given her when, during the five-year mission, she’d requested reassignment from the command division to engineering and services. Captain Kirk had referred repeatedly to his belief in her leadership potential, and she’d come away from their meeting believing that his obvious disappointment in her choice would prevent him from authorizing a change to her classification. After her next shift, though, she’d found new uniforms in her quarters—new red uniforms, the color specifying the engineering and services division—along with a data slate containing the captain’s approval of her request.

  Pavel had given an uproarious account of the time he and Jim, during the Enterprise’s return voyage from the Aquarius Formation, had been stranded on the world of the libidinous Nelestra. The leaders of the humanlike civilization had presented each of them with half a dozen nubile and willing women. When the captain had explained that the women would not influence the establishment of diplomatic relations, the Nelestra leaders had misunderstood and bestowed upon Kirk and Chekov another dozen beauties.

  Hikaru had spoken of a number of his many hobbies that he’d somehow coerced the captain into trying, and Scotty had regaled them with a series of progressively more outrageous drinking stories that seemed to take him and the captain from one side of the galaxy to the other. McCoy himself had told many a tale about his old friend, from the very first time he’d met Jim to the last time they’d spoken, less than a week before the captain’s death.

  Underlying every anecdote, though, had been the reality of Jim’s absence. McCoy had enjoyed the reunion, but his happy observation that it had been a while since they’d all gotten together fell apart whenever he thought of the reason for it: Jim was missing, and he always would be. The apartment itself provided ready reminders, since much of it stood empty. McCoy had boxed up most of Jim’s belongings and recycled much of his furniture, though he’d been sure to leave enough for today’s gathering.

  As the day had worn on and the time had come for everybody to go their separate ways, McCoy had distributed the few items Jim had specified in his will. Spock had received a trio of historic hardbound volumes, one on logic, one on philosophy, and one a poetry anthology. Scotty had been given a set of collectible Saurian brandy bottles, Hikaru a small collection of antique firearms, Uhura a songbook of traditional Earth ballads, and Pavel a pair of replica Russian sailing vessels. Each of them—including Spock—had seemed touched by the thoughtful remembrances.

  Hikaru and Pavel departed first, followed by Scotty and Uhura. As Spock walked toward the door, McCoy reached for his elbow, finding it beneath the black folds of his Vulcan robes. “Would you mind staying a moment?” he asked. “I was hoping I could talk with you alone.” Spock stopped, and the door glided shut.

  “Yes, Doctor?” he asked. McCoy looked at Spock, but then suddenly could not bring himself to broach the issue of his nightmares.

  Suddenly? he asked himself. In truth, he had been suffering from the terrible dreams—and unwilling to talk about them—for years, ever since he’d traveled back in time through the Guardian
of Forever. Later, after Spock’s katra had been stored in McCoy’s brain, then removed and re-fused with Spock during the fal-tor-pan, the disturbing visions had intensified. Among other horrible scenes, he’d begun seeing images of his own death, as well as the hazy specter of a memorial service—a service held, he believed, for himself. Though McCoy’s subsequent encounter with Sybok had caused his fractured nights to ease, that had lasted only a short while. At some point, the nightmares had returned, and with them, the wildly unsettling notion that he foresaw the end of his life—an end rapidly approaching.

  “Spock, I wanted to…” he started, but again ran into difficulty actually putting his troubles into words. “I wanted to thank you for coming,” he said instead. “Not just to the memorial, but here to Jim’s apartment too.”

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Spock said.

  McCoy felt incredibly awkward, so much so that he considered not asking his friend for the help he so desperately needed. But he knew that he could avoid this no longer. “Spock, would you mind taking a walk?” he asked, thinking that perhaps being in motion might make it easier to unburden himself.

  “I was planning to go back to my apartment,” Spock said. “I had intended to do so earlier so that I could meditate this afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry, Spock,” McCoy said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to disrupt your—” He had been about to say grieving, but thought that the word might offend his Vulcan friend. “—your personal time,” he finished.

  “Not at all,” Spock said. “But unless there is something else you’d like to discuss, I will be leaving now.”

  “There is something,” McCoy said. “But I think I’d like to get out and get some air while we talk.”