Star Trek 11

by James Blish

  It failed to soothe De Salle's temper. Low-voiced, he spoke to Kirk. "Captain, we've lost contact with the ship. We're trapped here."

  Overhearing, General Trelane rubbed his hands in exuberant pleasure. " 'Trapped here,'" he echoed. "I cannot tell you how it delights me—having visitors to this very planet I have made my hobby. From my observations I did not think you capable of such voyages."

  Jaeger, whispering to Kirk, gestured around them. "Captain, note the period—nine hundred light-years from Earth. This place and time fit what might have been seen if there were telescopes powerful enough to—"

  He was stopped by the smile on Trelane's full red lips. "Yes. I have been an interested witness of your lively little doings on your lively little Earth, sir . . ."

  "Then you've been witnessing its doings of nine hundred years past," Kirk said. "That's a long time."

  Trelane chuckled. "Good heavens, have I made a time error? How fallible of me!" Eyeing the stately room around him, he added, "I did so want to make you feel at home. In fact, I am quite proud of the detail."

  "General Trelane—" Kirk began; and stopped at the coyly cautionary finger that had been held up. "Tut-tut, a retired general, sir. Just Squire Trelane, now. You may call me 'Squire'—indeed, I rather fancy the title."

  In his career as a Starship captain, Kirk had encountered many oddments of galactic creation—oddments ranging from the ultimately hideous and alien, to a beauty that spoke with the final familiarity of wonder to the soul. At this moment, face to face with this self-styled squire of a self-chosen time of a Victorian England, chosen out of all the times offered by nine hundred years, he seemed to be face to face with the last anomaly—an X of mystery compounded simultaneously of innocence and guile. He looked at Squire Trelane. "For what purpose have you imprisoned us here?" he asked.

  Even as he spoke, he had the sense of spider-strands, sticky, well-woven, encompassing him. It was as though he had already heard what the too-rich voice was saying. "Imprisoned? Nonsense! You are my guests." His host's lower lip actually trembled with what suggested itself as the touching eagerness of hospitality. "You see, I was just completing my studies of your curious and fascinating society. You happened by at a most propitious moment." There was a low, carved, armless chair beside him and he flung himself into it. "Captain Kirk, you must tell me all about your campaigns—your battles—your missions of conquest . . ."

  For the first time, Kirk seemed to know where he was. For the first time since Sulu's disappearance from the Enterprise, he felt a sense of firm identity, of some unnamable stability back under his feet. "Our missions are peaceful," he said. "They are not for conquest. We battle only when we have no choice."

  Trelane winked ,at him. His left eyelid dropped and rose in inescapable suggestion of mutual, known, if unacknowledged awareness of perfidious doings in high places. "So that's the official story, eh, Captain?"

  Unobtrusively, McCoy had directed his tricorder at Trelane. Just as unobtrusively, Kirk had registered this fact. Now he stepped toward the low, armless chair. "Squire Trelane," he said, "I must ask you to let us return to our ship."

  What he got was a languid wave of a languid hand. "Wouldn't hear of it!" Trelane protested. "You will all join me in a repast. There is so much I must learn from you: your feelings about war . . . about killing . . . about conquest—that sort of thing." A finger of the languid hand became unlanguid. It stiffened, pointed, aiming at Kirk. "You are, you know," said Trelane, "one of the new predator species—species that preys even on itself."

  De Salle, beside Kirk, seemed to go suddenly thick in the neck. His hand darted to his phaser. "Sir?" he said, half in question, half in appeal.

  "On 'stun,' De Salle," Kirk said. "Don't kill him."

  What was it about this being that both repelled and at the same time broke your heart? A capacity for communicating loneliness, that burden of the solitary self-borne either in a conscious fortitude or in a necessity of unaware resentment and complaint? It was speaking, the strange being. "De Salle—is that his name, Captain Kirk?" In its eagerness it didn't wait for an answer but rushed on, crying to the navigator, "Vous etes un vrai francais?"

  "My ancestry is French . . . Yes . . ."

  "Ah, monsieur! Vive la gloire! Vive Napoleon! I admire your Napoleon very much, y'know."

  "Mr. De Salle is our navigator," Kirk said evenly. "This gentleman is our medical officer, Dr. McCoy—our helmsman, Sulu, and our meteorologist, Carl Jaeger . . ."

  Trelane acknowledged each introduction. "Welcome, good physicianer. All reverence to your ancestors, Honorable Sir . . ."

  Sulu flushed. "What's he doing—kidding?"

  But Trelane's interest had fixed on Jaeger. Clicking his heels, he cried, "Und Offizier Jaeger, die deutsche Soldat, nein?" Then stamping his feet in cadence to his words, he declaimed, "Eins, zwei, drei, vier! Gehen wir mit dem Schiessgewehr!"

  Jaeger's voice was dry as dead bone. "I am a scientist—not a military man."

  Trelane beamed at him. "Come now, we are all military men under the skin. And how we do love our uniforms!" He clearly loved his—and the sight of himself in it, epauletted, be-braided as the gilt-framed mirror that reflected it back to him flushed his face with self-admiring pride. He turned, preening to get a three-quarter view of his cuirass of shining buttons; and Kirk, under his breath, spoke to De Salle. "Now!" But as the phaser lifted to aim, Trelane wheeled, lifting his hand. At once, De Salle stiffened into immobility.

  "What is that interesting weapon you have there?" inquired the Squire of Gothos. He removed the phaser—and thaw replaced the frozen stillness of De Salle's figure. "Ah, yes, I see! That won't kill—but this will! The mechanism is now clear to me." Making an adjustment, he fired the phaser at the niche containing the lizard-like sculpture. It dematerialized. Trelane laughed with delight. "Oh, how marvelous!" Swinging the weapon around, he shot at all the statues set in their niches around the room, yelling as each disintegrated and vanished. "Devastating!" howled Trelane. "Why this could kill millions."

  Striding up to him, Kirk tore the phaser from his hand. "Beginning with whom, Trelane? My crew? Are we your next targets?"

  The full red lips pouted. "But how absolutely typical of your species, Captain! You don't understand, so you're angry." He pointed a gleeful finger at Kirk. "But do not be impatient. I have anticipated your next wish. You wish to know how I've managed all this, don't you?"

  He nodded in answer to his own question. Then, weaving his fingers together like a prissy English schoolmaster about to dissertate on Virgil's prosody, he said, "We—meaning others and myself—have, to state the matter briefly, perfected a system by which matter can be changed to energy . . . and then back to matter . . ."

  "Like the Transporter system aboard the Enterprise," Kirk said.

  "Oh, that's a crude example! Ours is an infinitely more sophisticated process. You see, we not only transport matter from place to place but we can alter its shape, too, at will."

  "This drawing room then," Kirk said. "You created it? By rearranging the existing matter of the planet?"

  "Quite," Trelane said.

  "But how—"

  The creature drew a soothing finger across a furrow of irritation that had appeared on its brow. "Dear Captain, your inquiries are becoming tiresome. Why? I want you to be happy—to free your mind of care. Let us enjoy ourselves in the spirit of martial good fellowship!"

  Kirk turned quietly to his men. "Let's go. We're getting out of here."

  "Naughty captain!" Trelane said. "Fie, you are quite rude. But you cannot leave here. What an admirably fiery look of protest! Upon my soul, I admire you, sir, though in mercy you seem to need another demonstration of my authority—"

  His right hand made a swift gesture; and where Kirk had stood was emptiness. Then he was back—but on his knees, racked by choking paroxysms of agony. Dismissed from the shelter of Trelane's domain, he had been exposed to the blasting effects of the planet's lethal atmosphere. In a moment it
s toxic gases had licked into his lungs. He coughed, doubled over, still tortured by their strangulating vapors—and the Squire of Gothos patted his bent head.

  "That was an example," he said, "of what can occur away from my kindly influence. I do hope that you will now behave yourself, Captain, not only for your own sake, but because, if you don't, I shall be very angry."

  Power. It had nothing to do with morality, with responsibility. Like Trelane's, it simply existed—a fact to which the body was obliged to bow but which the heart could continue to reject, to despise.

  "Let me hold on," Kirk thought.

  The sensors of the Enterprise had finally located Trelane's cool green oasis. Scott, staring at its tranquil trees on the bridge viewing screen, said, "An area as peaceful as Earth. But how do you explain it, Mr. Spock?"

  "I don't, Mr. Scott. It just is. Artificial, perhaps—a freak of nature. But the fact remains that life could exist in that space. See if you can tune the sensors down finer. See if you can pick up any sentient life forms in that area of Gothos."

  As Scott moved to obey, he said, "Even if we find any, it doesn't follow that it would be our people, sir."

  "No. But if the captain is alive and down there, he has to be there in that place. I shall try to transport up any thinking beings our sensors detect."

  "Shootin' in the dark, Mr. Spock."

  The retort was unanswerable. "Would you rather stand by and do nothing?"

  At the same moment, in the drawing room of Trelane Hall, Kirk and his men were being herded past a cabinet. "And in here," its owner was boasting, "is an array of your battle flags and pennants, some dating back to the Crusades, to Hannibal's invaders, the hordes of Persia!"

  Nobody looked at the display. Undaunted, the enthusiastic Trelane addressed Kirk. "Can you imagine it, Captain? The thousands—no, the millions—who have marched off to death singing beneath these banners! Doesn't it make your blood run swiftly to think of it?" In his exuberance, he rushed to the harpsichord to bang out some martial music. Under the cover of its noise, Sulu whispered, "Captain, where could he possibly come from? Who is this maniac?"

  McCoy, his voice lowered, said, "Better ask 'what' is he. I monitored him. What I found was unbelievable."

  Kirk was staring intently at the musician. Now he spoke, anticipating McCoy's news. "He's not alive."

  "No, Jim. Not as we define life. No trace. Zero."

  "You mean, your readings show he's dead?" Sulu asked.

  "They don't even show that he exists, either alive or dead."

  Jaeger pointed to the fireplace. "Notice that wood fire, Captain. Burning steadily—ember-bed red and glowing—yet it gives off no heat at all."

  Kirk, moving quietly the length of the room, opened his communicator. Briefly, his voice toneless, he brought Spock up-to-date on the current situation.

  "Fire without heat," Spock echoed reflectively. "It would seem, Captain, that the being mistakes all these things it has created for manifestations of present-day Earth. Apparently, it is oblivious of the time differential."

  "Yes, Mr. Spock. Whatever it is we are dealing with, it is certainly not all-knowledgeable. He makes mistakes."

  "And strangely simple ones. He has a flaw, sir."

  "We'll work on it, Mr. Spock. Kirk out." As he snapped off his communicator, he realized that the music had stopped; and that Trelane, turning, was smiling at him. It was a sly smile, its slyness at variance with the joviality of his tone. "Discussing deep-laid plans, I'll wager. Captain, I can't wait to see them unfold."

  Kirk took a firm step forward. "Trelane, I haven't planned any—"

  A reproving finger was coyly waggled at him. "Ah, you mustn't believe that I deplore your martial virtues of deception and stratagem! Quite the contrary—I have nothing but esteem for your whole species!"

  "If your esteem is genuine"—Kirk paused to draw a deep breath—"then you must respect our sense of duty, too. Our ship is in need of us—we have tasks to perform—schedules to honor . . ."

  "Oh, but I can't bear to let you go. I was getting a bit bored until you came." He whirled on his bench to run off a bragging cadenza on the harpsichord. "You'll have to stay. I insist."

  "For how long?"

  "Until it's over, of course," Trelane said.

  "Until what's over?"

  Trelane shrugged. "Dear Captain, so many questions . . . Why worry about an inevitably uncertain future? Enjoy yourself today, my good sir. Tomorrow—why, it may never come at all. Indeed, when it arrives, it has already become today."

  The phrase "slippery as an eel" suddenly occurred to Kirk. He made another try. "Trelane, even if we wanted to stay, our companions are missing us. They need us."

  "I must try to experience your sense of concern with you, your grief at the separation." The harpsichord wailed a mournful minor passage, sentimental, drippy.

  Kirk gritted his teeth. "There are four hundred men and women on board our ship waiting for—"

  "Women!" A discordant chord crashed from the instrument. "You don't actually mean members of the fair sex are among your crew! How charming! No doubt they are very beautiful!" Trelane, leaping to his feet, clapped his hands. "And I shall be so very gallant to them! Here, let me fetch them down to us at once!"

  He had lifted his arm when Kirk jumped forward, "Absolutely not!"

  "No?"

  "No!" Kirk shouted. "This game has gone far enough. Our feminine crew members are crucial operating personnel! You can't just remove them from—"

  Trelane stamped his foot. "I can do anything I like! I thought you would have realized that by now!"

  McCoy spoke. "Jim! I am receiving a Transporter signal!"

  Trelane started wringing his hands. "What does he mean? You must tell me!"

  "It means the party's over, thanks to Mr. Spock! That's what it means, Trelane"—and Kirk, signaling to his men, assumed the Transporting stance. As the others followed suit, Trelane hurried up to them. "Wait!" he screamed. "What are you doing? I haven't dismissed you. Stop! I won't have this!"

  The drawing room, the florid, furious face disappeared; and this time it was Spock who hurried up to them as they shimmered into full shape on the Transporter platform.

  "Captain! Are you all right?"

  Kirk stepped off the platform. "Report, Mr. Spock. How were the scanners able to penetrate that radiation field?"

  "They didn't, sir. Not clearly. We merely beamed up all the life forms within a given space."

  McCoy broke in. "Jim, that confirms what I said. Trelane is not a life form as we know it—or he'd be coming through the Transporter now."

  Kirk nodded. Then he snapped out orders. "Prepare to warp out at once! Maximum speed! Everyone to stations!"

  In the bridge, the substitute personnel quickly resigned their posts to Sulu and De Salle. The pretty yeoman on duty rushed up to Kirk. "Oh, Captain," cried Teresa Ross, "we were all so worried about you!" What she meant was, "I was worried about you, James Kirk"—and Kirk, gravely acknowledging her concern, said, "Thank you, Yeoman Ross." Then he was on the intercom. "Scotty! I want every ounce of power your engines have. We're going to put a hundred million miles between us and that madman down there."

  "Aye, sir. Welcome back, Captain."

  McCoy was staring at the hand he had extended. "I'm quaking," he said. "Jim, I'm quaking—but I don't know if it's with laughter or with terror!"

  Uhura looked away from her board, her eyes bright with curiosity. "What was it? What's down there on Gothos?" she asked.

  "Something I hope I forget to tell my grandchildren about . . ."

  Then McCoy noted the astounded expression on Teresa's face. "Look—!" she whispered. Spock had jumped to his feet, staring.

  Across the bridge in the angle made by its wall and elevator shaft, Trelane stood. He was uniformed, resplendent, a sabre scabbard attached to his cummerbund. His hands were clasped behind his back and he was looking the Enterprise bridge over. After a moment, he spoke. "But where are all the weapons
? Don't you display your weapons?"

  Kirk rose slowly to his feet. Trelane made a benevolently reassuring gesture. "Don't fret, Captain. I'm only a little upset with you." He was glancing around at the bridge people.

  He said, "This Mr. Spock you mentioned—the one responsible for the imprudent act of taking you from me. Which is he, Captain?"

  Spock said, "I am Mr. Spock."

  "Surely," said Trelane, "you are not an officer." He turned in amazement—real or feigned, who could know?—to Kirk. "He isn't quite human, is he?"

  "My father," Spock said, "is from the planet Vulcan."

  "Are its natives predatory?"

  "Not specifically," Spock said solemnly.

  Trelane made a dismissing gesture. "No. I should think not." He made an elaboration of turning to Kirk. "You will see to his punishment?"

  "On the contrary," Kirk said. "I commend his action."

  The full fed lips pursed in their habitual pout. "But I don't like him."

  Kirk won his battle for control. Tonelessly, he said, "Trelane, get off my ship! I've had enough of you!"

  "Nonsense, Captain. You're all coming back with me."

  The victory for control was abruptly lost. There was an obscenity about Trelane's middle-aged willfulness. Flaring, Kirk yelled, "We're not going anywhere! This ship is leaving here whether you—"

  "Fiddle-de-dee," Trelane retorted. "I have a perfectly enchanting sojourn on Gothos planned for you. And I won't have you spoil it."

  In a kind of prophetic awareness, Kirk knew what Trelane would do. He did it. Saying, "The decor of my drawing room is much more appropriate . . ." He raised his arm.

  And the Enterprise bridge was replaced by the drawing room. All that was different were the positions of the bridge people. De Salle and Sulu were seated at a dining table, laden with dishes of unidentifiable but delicious-looking foods. Uhura found herself on the bench before the harpsichord. And Trelane, completing the sentence spoken on the Enterprise, said, "And much more tasteful, don't you think?"