by 07(lit)
"I don't wish to strike anybody dead," Kirk said. But Salish jumped him. Kirk sidestepped the lunge; and Salish, rushing him again, scraped the knife across his cheek.
"You bleed, Kirok! Gods do not bleed!" He drove at Kirk with the knife, murder in his eyes. They grappled; and Kirk wrenched the knife from his grasp. Salish flung himself to the ground. "Kill me, Kirok! Kill me now! And I will return from the dead to prove to the people you are no god!"
Kirk looked at the maddened face at his feet. Plac-ing the knife in his belt, he stepped over the prone body and moved on down the path. This imposed god-role of his had its liabilities. On the other hand it had brought him Miramanee. At the thought of her he hastened his stride toward the lodge.
Two braves greeted him at its entrance. A magnificent feathered cloak was placed around his shoulders. Miramanee moved to him; and on instruction, he en-folded her in the cloak to signify the oneness of mar-riage. Goro struck a stone chime with a mallet. There were shouts of delight from the people. Beads rattled in gourds, tom-toms beat louder and louder-and Miramanee, slipping from under the cloak, ran from the lodge. At the entrance, she paused to look back at him, her flower-crowned face bright with inviting laughter. This time Kirk didn't need instruction. He sped after her, the feathered cloak flying behind him.
She'd reached the pine woods when he caught her. She fell to the soft bed of scented needles and he flung himself down beside her.
He grew to love the pine woods. It was pure happiness to help Miramanee gather their fragrant boughs for the fire pit in their Medicine lodge. He loved Miramanee, too; but sometimes her black eyes saw too deeply.
They were lying, embraced, beside the fire pit when she lifted her head from his shoulder. "Each time you hold me is more joyous than it was on our Joining Day. But you-"
He kissed her eyelids. "It's the dreams," he said.
"I thought they had gone. I thought you no longer looked for the strange lodge in the sky."
He released her. "The dreams have returned. I see faces, too. Even in daylight, I see faces. They're dim- but I feel that I know them. I-I feel my place is where they are. Not here-not here. I have no right to all this happiness..."
She smiled down into his troubled face. "I have a gift for you." She reached her hand under the blanket they lay on and withdrew the papoose board she'd hidden under it. She knelt to lay it at his feet.
"I carry your child, my Kirok."
Kirk was swept by a sense of almost intolerable tenderness. The lines of anxiety in his face softened. He drew her head back to his shoulder.
Again without knocking, McCoy entered Spock's quar-ters.
"I thought I told you to report to Sickbay," he said belligerently.
Spock didn't so much as glance up from his small cabin computer. "There isn't time," he said. "I've got to decipher those obelisk symbols. I judge them to be a highly advanced form of coding."
"You've been trying to do that ever since we started back to the planet! That's fifty-eight days ago!"
Spock passed a hand over his tired eyes as though to wipe a mist away from them. He had grown gaunt from fatigue. "I'm aware of that, Doctor. I'm also aware that we'll have barely four hours to effect rescue when we reach the planet. I feel those symbols are the key."
"You won't decipher them by killing yourself!" Mc-Coy adopted the equable tone of reason. "Spock, you've hardly eaten or slept for weeks now. If you don't let up on yourself, it is rational to expect collapse."
"I am not hungry, Doctor. And under stress we Vulcans can do without sleep for weeks."
McCoy aimed his medical tricorder at him. Peering at it, he said, "Well, I can tell you your Vulcan me-tabolism is so low it can hardly be measured. And as for the pressure of that green ice water in your veins you call blood-"
To straighten Spock had to support himself by clutch-ing his console. "My physical condition is not impor-tant. That obelisk is."
"My diagnosis is exhaustion caused by overwork and guilt. Yes, guilt. You're blaming yourself for crippling the ship." McCoy shook Spock's shoulder. "Listen to me! You made a command decision. Jim would have made the same one. My prescription is rest. Do I have to call the Security Guards to enforce it?"
Spock shook his head. He moved unsteadily to his bunk and lay down. No sooner had McCoy, satisfied, closed the door behind him than he got up again-and returned to his viewer.
Kirk was trying to improve the lighting of his lodge by constructing a crude lamp. But Miramanee could not grasp the function of the wick.
"It will make night into day?" she said wonderingly. "And I can cook more and pre-pre..."
"Preserve food," Kirk said.
"For times of famine." They smiled at each other. "Ah," she said, "that is why you are making the lamp, Kirok. So I shall be forever cooking."
His laugh ended abruptly. Miramanee's face had gone tight with terror. A gust of wind pulled at the lodge's hide door. "There is nothing to fear," he said. "It is just wind."
"Miramanee is a stupid child," she said. "No, there is nothing to fear. You are here." But she had moved to the lodge door to look nervously up at the sky. She turned. "It is time to go to the temple, Kirok. The people will be there waiting for you."
"Why?"
"To save them," she said simply.
"Wind can't harm them." But the gravity in her face didn't lighten. "The wind is just the beginning," she said. "Soon the lake will go wild, the river will grow big. Then the sky will darken and the earth will shake. Only you can save us."
"I can't do anything about the wind and the sky."
She removed the lamp from his hand, seized his arm pleadingly to pull Mm toward the door. "Come, Kirok. You must come."
A sense of threat suddenly oppressed him. "Mirama-nee, wait-"
She pulled harder at him, her panic mounting. "We must go before it is too late! You must go inside the temple and make the blue flame shine!"
Kirk stared at her, helpless to reach her understand-ing. "I don't know how to get inside the temple!"
"You are a god!"
He grabbed her shoulders roughly. I am not a god. I am a man-just a man."
She shrank from him. "No! No! You are a god, Kirok!"
"Look at me," he said. "And listen. I am not a god. If you can only love a god, you cannot love me. I say it again- I am a man!"
She flung her arms about his neck, covering his face with frantic kisses. "It must be kept secret, then! If you are not a god, the people will kill you!"
A fiercer gust of wind shook the poles of the lodge. Miramanee screamed. "You must speak to the people- or they will say you are not a god. Come, Kirok, come!"
The tribe had gathered in the central lodge. Under the onslaught of the rising wind, shields, spears, knives had been torn from their places on the hide walls. Women were screaming, pulling at children, shoving them under heaps of skins. Salish fought his way through the maddened crowd to confront Kirk.
"Why are you not at the temple, Kirok? Soon the ground will begin to tremble!"
"We shall all go to the caves," Kirk said.
"The caves!" Salish shouted. "Is that the best a god can do for his people?"
Goro spoke. "When the ground trembles, even the caves are unsafe, Kirok. You must rouse the spirit of the temple-or we will all die!"
"What are you waiting for, god?" Salish said.
Kirk unclasped Miramanee's arms from his neck and placed her hand in Goro's. "Take care of her," he said. "I will go to the temple."
Outside, the gale tore his breath from his lungs. Somewhere to his left a pine tree crashed. Thunder rumbled along the horizon in a constant cannonade. And the sky was darkening. Boughs whipped across his face as he groped his half-blind way down the worn trail to the obelisk. The enigmatic tower told him noth-ing. Its inscrutable symbols held their secret as re-morselessly as ever. Kirk beat at the hard metal with his fists, shouting, screaming at it, "I am Kirok! I have come! Open to me!"
The words were drowned by the s
creams of the ungearing wind.
McCoy stopped dead at the door of Spock's quarters.
Strains of unearthly music were coming from the cabin. Maybe I've broken," McCoy thought. "Maybe I've died, gone to heaven and am hearing the music of the spheres." It wasn't music of the spheres. It was music got from an oddly shaped Vulcan harp. Spock, huddled over his computer, was strumming it, his face tight with concentration.
"I prescribed sleep," McCoy said.
"Inaccurate, Doctor. You prescribed rest." The mu-sician looked up from his instrument. "The obelisk symbols are not letters. They are musical notes."
"You mean a song?"
"In a way. Certain cultures, offshoots of our Vulcan one, use musical notes as words. The tones correspond roughly to an alphabet." He laid the harp aside. "The obelisk is a marker left by a super race on that planet. Apparently, they passed through the galaxy, rescuing primitive cultures threatened by extinction-and 'seeded' them, so to speak, where they could live and grow."
"Well," said McCoy. "I must admit I've wondered why so many humanoids were scattered through this galaxy."
"So have I. I judge the Preservers account for a number of them."
"Then these 'Preservers' must have left that obelisk on the planet as an asteroid-deflector."
Spock nodded. "It's become defective."
"So we have to put it back in working order. Other-wise..."
"Precisely, Doctor."
The earth around the obelisk was shaking. Villagers, panicked to the point of madness, had fled to their temple in a last hope of salvation. Kirk, backed against it, wiped blood from his cheek where one of their stones had gashed it.
"False god, die!"
It was Salish. As though his cry of hate were the words they had been waiting to hear spoken, the crowd broke out into roars of accusation. Women screamed the enormity of their sense of betrayal. "Die, liar, die! Die as we all will die!" Men stooped for rocks. Goro shrieked, "Impostor! Liar!"
Miramanee flung herself before Kirk, her arms spread wide. "No! No! You are wrong! He can save us!"
Kirk pushed her away. "You cannot help me. Go back to them, Miramanee! Go back to them!" Salish burst from the crowd and seized her.
"Kirok! Kirok! I belong to you!" She wrenched free of Salish and flew back to Kirk.
"Then you die, too! With your false god!"
His rock struck her. She fell. There was a hail of stones; she elbowed up and crawled to Kirk. Before he could lift her to shield her with his body, Salish hurled another rock. It caught her in the abdomen.
"Miramanee..." Kirk was on his knees beside her. The crowd closed in for the kill when there came a shimmer of luminescence on the obelisk pediment. The Indians fell back, their stones still in their hands-and Spock and McCoy, in their Enterprise uniforms, ma-terialized on each side of the kneeling Kirk.
"Kirok... Kirok..."
McCoy stooped over Miramanee. "I need Nurse Chapel," he told Spock shortly. The Vulcan had his communicator ready. "Beam down Nurse Chapel with a supplementary surgical kit, Mr. Scott."
Kirk tried to rise and was pushed gently back by McCoy. "Easy, Jim. Take it easy."
"My wife.... my wife-is she all right?"
"Wife?" Spock looked at McCoy. "Hallucinations, Doctor?"
"Jim..."
"Miramanee," Kirk whispered. He looked at her face and closed his eyes.
The Enterprise nurse rose from the Indian girl's crumpled body. She joined McCoy who was making a last diagnostic pass over Kirk's unmoving form. "He hasn't recognized us," she said.
Spock was with Miramanee. "The nurse has given you medicine to ease the pain. Why were the people stoning you?"
"Kirok did not know how to get back into the temple."
"Naturally," Spock said. "He didn't come from there."
She lifted her head. "He did. I saw him come out of the temple."
Spock looked at her thoughtfully. Then he spoke to McCoy.
"The Captain, Doctor?"
"His brain is undamaged. Everything's functioning but his memory."
"Can you help him?"
"It will take time."
"Time, Doctor, is the one thing we do not have." He spoke into his communicator. "Spock here. Mr. Sulu?"
"Tracking report, sir. Sixty-five minutes to end of safety margin."
"Report noted." He returned to Kirk. "Do you think he's strong enough for a Vulcan mind fusion, Doctor?"
"We have no choice," McCoy said.
Spock stooped to place a hand on each side of Kirk's head. He spoke very slowly, with repressed intensity, his eyes boring into Kirk's closed ones. "I am Spock," he said with great distinctness. "You are James Kirk. Our minds are moving toward each other, closer..." His face was strained with such concentration, he seemed to be in pain. "Closer, James Kirk... closer... closer..."
Kirk moaned. "No... no... Miramanee..."
Spock increased the pressure against Kirk's temples as he fought to reach the lost memory. He shut his eyes, all his powers centered on the struggle. "Closer, James Kirk, closer..."
He gave a sudden hoarse cry of agony and Kirk's body galvanized. Spock was breathing heavily, his voice assuming the entranced tone of one possessed. "I am Kirok... I am the god of the metal tower." Spock's agonized voice deepened. "I am Kirok... I am Kiro- I am Kir- I am Spock! Spock!"
He jerked his hands away from Kirk's temples, his face tortured. Kirk lay still, his eyes closed.
"What's wrong?"
"He-he is an extremely dynamic personality, Doc-tor."
"So it didn't work," McCoy said hopelessly. He shook his head-and Kirk's eyes opened, full awareness in them.
He sat up. "It did work. Thank you, Mr. Spock."
"Captain, were you inside that obelisk?"
"Yes. It seemed to be loaded with scientific equip-ment."
"It's a huge deflecting mechanism, Captain. It is imperative that we get inside it at once."
"The key may be hi those symbols," Kirk said. "If we could only decipher them."
"They are musical notes, Captain."
"You mean entry can be gained by playing notes on some musical instrument?"
"That's one method. Another would be placement of tonal qualities stated in a proper sequence."
Kirk said, "Give me your communicator, Mr. Spock." He paused a moment. "Total control! Consonants and vowels. I must have hit the control accidentally when I contacted the ship to ask Scotty for beam-up!"
"If you could remember your exact words, Cap-tain..."
"Let's see if I can. They were 'Kirk to Enterprise'. Then Scotty said, 'Aye, Captain' ".
The carefully smoothed panel in the obelisk slid open. As Spock stepped into it with him, Kirk looked back at Miramanee. "Stay with her, Bones."
The silence within the obelisk was absolute. As they examined the buttoned panel, Spock said, "From its position this button should activate the deflection mechanism."
"Careful!" Kirk warned. "I hit one and the beam it emitted was what paralyzed my memory."
"Probably an information beam activated out of se-quence."
"Look, Spock. Over there-the other side of the vault. More symbols; and like those on the outside of the tower. Can you read them?"
Spock nodded. "I have an excellent eye for musical notes, Captain."
"Then activate, Mr. Spock!"
The Vulcan pressed three lower buttons in swift succession. Above them the wind-swept darkness was sliced by a wide streak of rainbow-colored flame that sprang from the tower's peak like a giant's sword blade. There was a screaming explosion that deafened them even in their underground insulation.
"That was the sound of deflection impact, Captain. The asteroid has been diverted."
Spock was right. They emerged from the obelisk into calm air, fresh but windless. The sky had lightened to pure blue.
Kirk dropped to his knees beside Miramanee. "How is she, Bones?"
"She was pregnant and there were bad internal in-juries, Jim."
McCoy's face was his answer. Kirk swayed, fighting for control. Miramanee, her face bloodless under the high cheekbones he loved, opened her eyes and recog-nized him.
"Kirok. It is-true. You are safe."
"And so are your people," Kirk said.
"I knew you would save them, my chief. We... we will live long and happily. I will... bear you many strong sons. And love you always."
