The Fire and the Rose

by David R. George III

Spock stared at him with an appraising look, then said, “Very well.” He set down the volumes Jim had left to him while McCoy pulled on his dress uniform jacket, which he’d doffed after the memorial. Then he and McCoy exited the apartment.

  They rode a turbolift down to the lobby of Russian Hill Tower, then emerged into the late afternoon sun. As McCoy composed his thoughts about what he would say, he strode in the direction of the marina, and Spock followed along beside him. As they neared a public transporter station, though, the doctor remembered a place he’d recently learned of and that he’d thought about visiting. Although he loathed traveling by transporter—for the memorial, he’d journeyed from Atlanta to San Francisco by tube—he made exceptions in exigent circumstances. Considering his current state of mind, having his molecules scrambled across half a continent didn’t seem nearly as troubling to him as it usually did.

  A few minutes later, McCoy and Spock stepped out of another public transporter and into a summer evening in Riverside, Iowa. The doctor had never been here before and didn’t know if Spock had either, though surely it was no mystery that Jim had been born in the small farming community. McCoy quickly obtained an airpod and programmed it to take them to the address he’d found among Jim’s papers.

  After a short jaunt to the south of the town, the compact craft put down at the edge of a farm, where the paved thoroughfare that the airpod had followed met a dirt road at a T intersection. McCoy and Spock disembarked the pod, and beneath scattered clouds blushing reddish orange in the setting sun, they set off along the unsurfaced path. Rows of corn grew to either side, standing much taller than either one of them and lending the setting a claustrophobic feel.

  “Jim spent most of his childhood here,” McCoy said as they walked, dirt crunching beneath the soles of their boots.

  “I knew that he’d been born in Riverside,” Spock said, and McCoy inferred that he knew little else about Jim’s early life.

  “He didn’t really talk much about it, did he?” McCoy asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Spock said.

  “I always had the feeling that Jim had a good childhood,” McCoy said, “but that it ended far sooner than it should have. His parents died when he was a boy, and then when he lived on Tarsus Four, he witnessed that madman executing four thousand colonists.” He paused at the recollection of the tragedy, and at the thought of the horrific scars it must have left on Jim.

  After a moment, trying to lighten the mood, McCoy said, “Not exactly something out of Mother Goose.” He’d expected Spock to respond in his typical humorless but still amusing way, perhaps inquiring about what the female parent of an aquatic fowl had to do with anything. But Spock had been unusually reticent throughout the day—mourning in his own, Vulcan way, McCoy supposed—and he said nothing now.

  They walked quietly for a few moments, and McCoy’s thoughts drifted from the horror of Tarsus IV and the deaths of Jim’s parents to the many other losses that Jim had suffered in his life. The young Lieutenant Kirk had idolized his commanding officer aboard the Farragut, but had seen Captain Garrovick and two hundred other crew members die when attacked by a strange gaseous creature. His best friend out of the academy, Gary Mitchell, had died during his service aboard the Enterprise. His brother and sister-in-law had perished on Deneva. His son had been murdered by a ruthless Klingon commander. Edith Keeler had died, and Miramanee and Rayna Kapec-

  McCoy shook his head, stunned as he realized the scope of what Jim had endured in his personal life, which did not even account for those Starfleet officers who had lost their lives while serving under his command. When Jim had mentioned knowing that he would die alone, had he felt that, by the end of his own life, everybody he cared about would already have passed away before him? How difficult it must have been for him to have so many of those closest to him leave.

  Even some of those who didn’t die left him, McCoy thought. Carol Marcus. Janet Wallace. And-

  “Do you remember Ben Finney?” he asked, recalling the friend of Jim’s who’d named his daughter, Jamie, after him.

  “Yes,” Spock said. “The Enterprise’s records officer for seven months during the five-year mission.” Finney had been an instructor at the academy when he and Jim had become friends, and they’d later served together aboard the Republic. Finney’s career aspirations of command had been dashed when he’d left open a circuit to the ship’s atomic-matter piles, a blunder that could’ve led to a massive explosion that would have ripped through the Republic in just another few minutes. Jim, an ensign at the time, had discovered the mistake and corrected it, and bound by regulations, had logged the incident. Finney had been reprimanded and dropped to the bottom of the promotions list.

  “He tried to destroy Jim’s career,” McCoy said. Years after the incident aboard the Republic, Finney had been assigned to the Enterprise, where he had faked his own death and framed the captain for it. “Jim faced charges of culpable negligence and could’ve been drummed out of the service,” McCoy said, “maybe even done time in a Starfleet prison.” During the captain’s court martial, though, Finney had been found alive, hiding belowdecks aboard the Enterprise. “And yet when Finney stood trial for his own crimes, Jim gave testimony as a character witness on his behalf.”

  “Yes,” Spock said. “Captain Kirk was… extraordinary.”

  “He really was,” McCoy agreed.

  They walked without speaking for a while, and up ahead, McCoy saw the solar-panel-covered roof of a house come into view above the corn. The sight of Jim’s childhood home proved a powerful reminder that McCoy had said good-bye to his friend today, something he had not been seeking when he’d decided to visit this place.

  He attempted to push away his cheerless thoughts, and in their stead, he tried to call to mind some of the lighter moments he’d shared with Jim and Spock aboard the Enterprise. Once, when the ship had put in for repairs at Cygnet XIV, the local technicians had programmed the library-computer with an affectionate and distinctly female personality, with a tendency to address the captain as “dear.” Another time, they’d traveled to Sigma Iotia II, where Jim and Spock had improbably ended up posing as gangsters. And then there had been their visit to Space Station K-7, where the ship had become overrun by those highly prolific tribbles. McCoy mentioned all of those incidents to Spock, and then remembered another. “How about the time the computer started playing practical jokes on the crew?” he asked. Again he anticipated a dry retort, maybe something about there being nothing practical about jokes, but Spock simply acknowledged the comment and said nothing more.

  At last, they reached the break in the cornfield where the farmhouse had been built. Between the one-story structure and the road stretched a large lawn. In the middle of the green span, two old trees stood guard, their leaves fluttering gently.

  Jim grew up here, McCoy thought as he peered at the house. It seemed somehow inconceivable that the illustrious Captain James T. Kirk had ever been a carefree boy, running across the grass in his bare feet. It also seemed impossible and cruel that he was now gone.

  “I’ve never been here,” McCoy said. “And I take it that you haven’t either.”

  “No, I have not,” Spock said. Some quality in the Vulcan’s voice suggested great emotion behind it. “Doctor, it is unclear to me why you have chosen to come here now, and why you have chosen to bring me along.”

  “I’m not really sure myself,” McCoy admitted, looking over at Spock. “I found this address when I was cataloguing Jim’s belongings in order to deal with his estate. I guess I thought that coming here might… I don’t know… might somehow bring us closer to Jim.” He knew that the explanation would hold no weight for Spock, and his next words confirmed that fact.

  “That is not logical,” he said, but then to McCoy’s surprise, he added, “but I do understand the sentiment.” The declaration served to underscore the grief that Spock must be feeling, Vulcan or not.

  “It occurred to me that our visit here would be our own little me
morial to Jim,” McCoy said. “There’s something sort of heroic and melancholic about it. Since Jim was nothing if not a romantic, I think he would’ve appreciated the gesture.”

  “Indeed,” Spock said in obvious agreement, which pleased McCoy. The doctor stood silently with his friend for a few minutes, simply gazing at the farmhouse. He saw no movement in or around it, other than that of the trees and corn, occasionally nudged by a puff of evening air. Finally, Spock said, “Do you intend to do more than this?”

  “What do you mean?” McCoy said.

  “Do you, for example, plan to ask whoever resides here now if they will permit you to go inside the house?”

  “No,” McCoy said after a moment’s thought. It had been hard enough this morning and this afternoon giving voice to his sorrow, first at the memorial and then with his friends in Jim’s apartment. He did not wish to do so with strangers. “No, I don’t think so,” he continued. “This is sufficient, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Spock said. “I concur.”

  McCoy turned to face back the way they’d come, and together, they headed for the airpod. They walked without speaking for a time as the curtain of night drew down around them. Soon enough, McCoy knew, he and Spock would reach the pod and take it back to Riverside. From there, they would presumably go to their respective homes. Spock had wanted to be alone ever since the memorial this morning—and perhaps even during the memorial. If McCoy wanted his assistance, he would have to look for it now; he could not burden his friend further by continuing to tell him he needed to speak with him, but then delaying actually doing so.

  “To tell you the truth, Spock,” he said at last, “I did intend to do more than simply see this place. I wanted to talk with you about a problem I’ve been having.”

  “I perceived that something in addition to the captain’s death troubled you,” Spock said.

  “I’ve been having some very unsettling dreams,” McCoy said. “Dreams about me dying.” Several years ago, his nightmares had disturbed his sleep so much that he’d thought about asking Spock to teach him the methods of Vulcan meditation, but had resisted when his research had revealed the intimacy it would require. He felt it too much to ask of Spock.

  “I would suggest that such a reaction to the death of a close friend is not uncommon,” the Vulcan said.

  “You’re right, Spock,” McCoy said, understanding that he had not made himself clear enough. “But I’ve been having these dreams since before Jim died. I’ve experienced these death dreams since… well, since the fal-tor-pan.”

  “The ancient ritual,” Spock said, as though by rote. He said nothing more for a few seconds and then asked, “Have you consulted a psychiatrist?”

  “I haven’t,” McCoy said. Several years ago, aboard the Enterprise, he actually had seen a psychiatrist, though not enough to mention to Spock. At that time, Sybok’s calming influence had faded and McCoy’s dreams had grown particularly troubling, a good night’s sleep often impossible for him. But he’d attended only two sessions with Dr. Smitonick before walking out of the third. With seemingly no other recourse, McCoy had accepted Michal’s prescription for pills that suppressed the storage of dreams in long-term memory. He’d used them with some success, but he did not like being medicated and so resisted using the pills on a regular basis. “I haven’t really wanted to,” he said, regarding psychiatric help, “because I don’t think that would do me any good.”

  “But if these dreams are disturbing to you,” Spock said, “would it not be appropriate to seek the services of a mental-health professional?”

  “It would be if these were merely dreams,” McCoy said, finally coming to the crux of his problem. “But I think they’re memories.”

  “I do not understand,” Spock said. “How can you have a memory of an occurrence—your own death—that has not yet happened? Unless you refer to the incident on the planet in the Omicron Delta region, when the knight on horseback attacked you with a lance.”

  “Sometimes I dream of that incident,” McCoy said, recalling well the agony he’d experienced when his heart had been pierced and stopped beating. The advanced technology in use on the planet had been employed to repair his wounds and resuscitate him. “But I understand that, and it’s not really what I’m talking about,” he told Spock. “Sometimes it’s a wounded man stabbing me. Recently, though, I mostly see a funeral in a cemetery, and I have the feeling that my dead body is in the casket.” The image had caused him severe emotional distress, not least of all because it had convinced him of his impending death.

  “But why would you categorize your own funeral as a memory?” Spock asked. “Clearly that has never happened, nor if it had, would you be able to recall it.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” McCoy said as they neared the airpod. “I suspect that you can remember your memorial service aboard the Enterprise.” Before Spock’s body had been regenerated by the Genesis Device, before his mind had been re-fused with his brain, he had been dead, killed by radiation when he’d saved the ship from Khan. His sacrifice had been afforded full honors by Captain Kirk and the rest of the crew—a memory that McCoy knew Spock himself retained.

  “Yes, but those were singular circumstances,” Spock said. “With my katra held within you, and you perceiving the memorial service, ultimately those memories were transferred to me via the re-fusion. Surely nothing like that pertains to what you are experiencing.”

  “No,” McCoy said. They reached the two-person airpod and stopped before it. “But I began having nightmares more than twenty-five years ago. For a long time, they filled me with dread, but the images I perceived remained indistinct, out of focus, and they didn’t seem to be about my death. After the fal-tor-pan, though, they became clearer, enough for me to make out the images I described.”

  “Do you know precisely when you began experiencing these nightmares?” Spock asked. McCoy appreciated the question, suggesting as it did his consideration of his problem.

  “I do,” he said. Around them, dusk had faded almost completely. “We should get back,” he said, thinking that he and Spock could talk in the airpod. “It’s getting dark.” He pushed the glossy green touch pad set into the pod’s hull, and it’s gull-wing door swung upward. McCoy darted inside and Spock followed, working a couple of controls to close the hatch and turn on the interior lighting.

  After they’d both taken their seats, McCoy said, “I started having these dreams immediately after you and Jim brought me back from the past through the Guardian of Forever.”

  “Am I to take it that you believe that there is a direct correlation between the two?” Spock asked.

  “Yes,” McCoy said, and it gave him hope simply to admit his suspicions out loud. He put his hands on his knees, elbows splayed, and leaned forward. “Spock, when I first went back in time through the Guardian, before you and Jim followed me, your present changed, indicating that I had somehow altered history.”

  “That is correct,” Spock said.

  “And once you and Jim traveled back to nineteen-thirty Earth,” McCoy went on, “you determined that the way I had altered history was by preventing the death of Edith Keeler.”

  Spock’s expression shifted for an instant, almost as though he had winced, but he said only, “Again, your description of events is accurate.”

  McCoy sat back in his chair. “But does that mean that, after I kept Miss Keeler from dying, I then lived out the rest of my life on Earth, three hundred years ago?”

  One of Spock’s eyebrows rose on his forehead. “Presumably so,” he said, in a way that indicated the newness of the idea to him. “But because of the actions the captain and I subsequently took, that timeline no longer exists.”

  “But it did exist,” McCoy insisted. “And I think I remember some of it. Or at least I have these impressions, these visions of incidents that have never happened in my own life, here and now, in our timeline.”

  “That is interesting, Doctor,” Spock said, clearly giving McCoy’s claims som
e thought. “What you describe, though—impressions of events that never occurred—does that not adequately express the nature of dreams?”

  “I suppose so,” McCoy said, disappointed by the observation, but committed to making Spock understand. “I know this is hardly scientific, Spock,” he said, “but my dreams simply don’t feel like dreams; they feel like memories.”

  “Doctor, how would it be possible for you to recall the events of a life that you did not live?”

  “I don’t know,” McCoy said. He turned and looked out through the front viewport of the airpod, frustrated. He’d often asked himself these same questions, and so far he’d found no answers. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said, peering out at the cornfields, barely visible now in the darkness. “Maybe these are just dreams. But let’s assume for a moment that they’re not, that they are memories of that other life I lived.” In Spock’s reflection in the port, McCoy thought he saw skepticism. “Nobody ever really learned much about the Guardian of Forever or how it operated,” McCoy argued. “Maybe the way it sent me through time is responsible for what I’m experiencing. Or maybe that other timeline does still exist somewhere, in some other reality, and I’m somehow connected to it subconsciously.” He knew it all must sound preposterous, but also knew what he continued to go through. “If I am remembering that other life, then I’m worried that I’m also remembering my death in that timeline. Sometimes in my dreams I see a wounded man stabbing me, but I also see a funeral that I think is my own.”

  “Even if you are remembering your alternate life,” Spock said, “how could you witness your own funeral?”

  McCoy had thought of this himself, but he’d still been unable to dismiss his concerns. “I don’t know, but I have the terrible feeling that I died prematurely,” he said. “Maybe I was stabbed to death, but I find myself more and more concerned that I died from some disease or condition.” Though it had happened many years before and he’d been completely cured, McCoy recalled well when he’d contracted xenopolycythemia and had been given a prognosis of one year left to live. He swiveled in his chair to face Spock again, trying to impress upon him the importance of all this. “I get regular Starfleet physicals and nothing has shown up, but I’m plagued by this horrible uncertainty. If I can, I just want to make sure that whatever happened to me in the other timeline won’t happen to me here. I came to you, Spock, because I thought you might be able to help me.” Extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, Spock also knew about the Guardian of Forever and the events that had taken place there.