Someone knocked on his door.
He did not answer.
A pause. The knock again, a little louder.
“What do you want?” he cried. “Leave me alone!”
The door opened, and Carol stood silhouetted in the light from the corridor outside. She came in and closed the door.
“No, Jim,” she said. “I won’t leave you alone. Not this time.” She knelt before him and took his hands in hers.
He slumped down; his forehead rested on their clasped hands.
“Carol, I just don’t…I keep thinking, there must be something I could have done, that I should have done—” He shuddered and caught his breath, fighting the tears.
“I know,” Carol said. “Oh, Jim, I know.” She put her arms around him. As Jim had held her when she grieved for her friends, she held him.
When he slipped into an exhausted, troubled sleep, she eased him down on the couch, took off his boots, and covered him with a blanket from his bed. She kissed him lightly. Then, since there was nothing else she could do for him, she did leave him alone.
When morning came, Saavik rose smoothly from her place in the corner of the stasis room. She had found a measure of serenity in her vigil, a counterweight to her grief. She bid a final farewell to her teacher, and to her student, and left the stasis room. She had many duties to take care of, duties to the ship, and to Mister Spock.
The ship’s company assembled, in full dress, at 0800 hours. Saavik took her place at the torpedo guidance console and programmed in the course she had selected.
Accompanied by Carol Marcus and David Marcus and Doctor McCoy, Admiral Kirk came in last.
The ship’s veterans, the people who had known Mister Spock best, stood together in a small group: Mister Sulu, Commander Uhura, Doctor Chapel, Mister Chekov, Mister Scott. They all watched the admiral, who looked tired and drawn. He stood before the crew of the Enterprise, staring at the deck, not speaking.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and faced them.
“We have assembled here,” he said, “in accordance with Starfleet traditions, to pay final respects to one of our own. To honor our dead…” He paused a long time. “…and to grieve for a beloved comrade who gave his life in place of ours. He did not think his sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we cannot question his choice, in these proceedings.
“He died in the shadow of a new world, a world he had hoped to see. He lived just long enough to know it had come into being.”
Beside Admiral Kirk, Doctor McCoy tried to keep from breaking down, but failed. He stared straight ahead, with tears spilling down his cheeks.
“Of my friend,” Admiral Kirk said, “I can only say that of all the souls I have encountered his was—” he looked from face to face around the company of old friends, new ones, strangers; he saw Doctor McCoy crying, “—the most human.”
Admiral Kirk’s voice faltered. He paused a moment, tried to continue, but could not go on. “Lieutenant Saavik,” he said softly.
Saavik armed the torpedo guidance control with the course she had so carefully worked out, and moved forward.
“We embrace the memory of our brother, our teacher.” Her words were inadequate, and she knew it. “With love, we commit his body to the depths of space.”
Commander Sulu moved from the line. “Honors: hut.”
The ship’s company saluted. Mister Scott began to play his strange musical instrument. It filled the chamber with a plaintive wail, a dirge that was all too appropriate.
The pallbearers lifted Spock’s black coffin into the launching chamber. It hummed closed, and the aiming lock snapped into place.
Saavik nodded an order to the torpedo officer. He fired the missile.
With a great roar of igniting propellant, the chamber reverberated. The bagpipes stopped. Silence, eerie and complete, settled over the room. The company watched the dark torpedo streak away against the silver-blue shimmer of the new world, until the coffin shrank and vanished.
Sulu waited; then said, “Return: hut.”
Saavik and the rest returned to attention.
“Lieutenant,” the admiral said.
“Yes, sir.”
“The watch is yours,” he said quietly. “Set a course for Alpha Ceti V to pick up Reliant’s survivors.”
“Aye, sir.”
“I’ll be in my quarters. But unless it’s an emergency…”
“Understood, sir.”
“Dismiss the company.”
He started out of the room. He saw Carol, but he could not say to her what he wanted to—not here, not now; he saw David, watching him intently. The young man took a step toward him.
Jim Kirk turned on his heel and left.
Saavik dismissed the company. She gazed one last time at the new planet.
“Lieutenant—”
She turned. David Marcus had hung back from the others, waiting for her.
“Yes, Doctor Marcus?”
“Can we stop the formality? My name’s David. Can I call you Saavik?”
“If you wish.”
“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about Mister Spock.”
“I, too,” she said.
“When we talked the other day—I could tell how much you cared about him. I’m sorry it sounded like I was insulting him. I didn’t mean it that way. To him or to you.”
“I know,” she said. “I was very harsh to you, and I regret it. Starfleet has brought you only grief and tragedy….”
David, too, glanced at the new planet, which his friends on Spacelab had helped to design.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’ll miss those folks, a lot. It was such a damned waste….”
“They sacrificed themselves for your life, as Spock gave himself for us. When I took the Kobayashi Maru test—” She paused to see if David remembered the conversation, back on Regulus I. He nodded. “—Admiral Kirk told me that the way one faces death is at least as important as how one faces life.”
David looked thoughtful, and glanced the way James Kirk had gone, but of course his father had long since departed.
“Do you believe, now, that he is your father?” Saavik asked.
He started. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Saavik smiled. “We perhaps have something in common, David. Do you remember what you said to him?”
“When?”
“When you tried to kill him. You called him, if my memory serves me properly, a ‘dumb bastard.’ ”
“I guess I did. So?”
“He is not—to my knowledge—a bastard. But I am. And if Admiral Kirk is your father, then I believe the terminology, in its traditional sense, fits you as well.”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “I’m beginning to think the ‘dumb’ part fits me even better.”
He reached out quickly and touched her hand.
“I really want to talk to you some more,” he said suddenly. “But there’s something I have to do first.”
“I must return to the bridge,” Saavik said. “It is my watch.”
“Later on—can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“That would be difficult: one cannot buy anything on board the Enterprise.”
“Sorry. That was kind of a joke.”
“Oh,” Saavik said, not understanding.
“I just meant, can we get together in a while? When you’re free?”
“I would like that,” Saavik said, rather surprised at her own reply and remembering what Mister Spock had said about making her own choices.
“Great. See you soon.”
He hurried down the corridor, and Saavik returned to the bridge.
The admiral closed the door of his cabin behind him and leaned against it, desperately grateful that the ceremony was over. He wondered what Spock would have thought of it all: the ritual, the speeches…. He would have said it was illogical, no doubt.
Jim Kirk unfastened his dress jacket, pulled it off, and pitched it angrily across the room. He dragge
d a bottle of brandy off the shelf and poured himself a shot. He glared at the amber liquor for a while, then shoved it away.
Too many ghosts hovered around him, and he did not want to draw them any closer by lowering his defenses with alcohol. He flung himself down on the couch. The blanket Carol had tucked around him the night before lay crumpled on the floor.
He smelled the pleasant, musty odor of old paper. He tried to ignore it, failed, and reached for the book Spock had given him. It was heavy and solid in his hands, the leather binding a little scuffed, the cut edges of the pages softly rough in his hands. Jim let it fall open. The print blurred.
He dug into his pockets for his glasses. When he finally found them, one of the lenses was shattered. Jim stared at the cracked, spidery pattern.
“Damn!” he said. “Damn—” He laid the book very carefully on the table; he laid the glasses, half-folded, on top of it.
He covered his eyes.
The door chimed. At first he did not move; then he sat up, rubbed his face with both hands, and cleared his throat.
“Yes,” he said. “Come.”
The door opened. David Marcus came in, and the door slid closed behind him. Jim stood up, but then he had nowhere to go.
“Look, I don’t mean to intrude—” David said.
“Uh, no, that’s all right, it’s just that I ought to be on the bridge.”
David let him pass, but before Jim got to the door his son said, “Are you running away from me?”
Jim stopped and faced David again.
“Yes,” he said. “I guess I am.” He gestured for him to sit. David sat on the couch, and Jim sat in the chair angled toward it. They looked at each other uncomfortably for a while.
“Would you like a drink?” Jim asked.
David glanced at the abandoned snifter of brandy on the table; Jim realized how odd it must look.
“No,” David said. “But thanks, anyway.”
Jim tried to think of something to say to the stranger in his sitting room.
“I’m not exactly what you expected, am I?” David said.
“I didn’t expect anything,” Jim told him ruefully.
David’s grin was crooked, a little embarrassed. “That makes two of us.” His grin faded. “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Lieutenant Saavik was right…You’ve never faced death.”
“Not like this,” Jim admitted reluctantly. “I never faced it—I cheated it; I played a trick and felt proud of myself for it and got rewarded for my ingenuity.” He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I know nothing,” he said.
“You told Saavik that how we face death is at least as important as how we face life.”
Jim frowned. “How do you know that?”
“She told me.”
“It was just words.”
“Maybe you ought to listen to them.”
“I’m trying, David.”
“So am I. The people who died on Spacelab were friends of mine.”
“I know,” Jim said. “David, I’m truly sorry.”
The uncomfortable silence crept over them again. David stood up.
“I want to apologize,” he said. “I misjudged you. And yesterday, when you tried to thank me—” He shrugged, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Jim said. “You were perfectly correct. Being proud of someone is like taking some of the credit for what they do or how they act. I have no right to take any of the credit for you.”
He, too, stood up, as David appeared to be leaving.
“Then maybe I shouldn’t—” David stopped. Then he said, very fast, “What I really came here to say is that I’m proud—proud to be your son.”
Jim was too startled to reply. David shrugged and strode toward the door.
“David—”
The young man swung abruptly back. “What?” he said with a harsh note in his voice.
Jim grabbed him and hugged him hard. After a moment, David returned the embrace.
Epilogue
On the bridge of the Enterprise, Lieutenant Saavik checked their course and prepared for warp speed. The viewscreen showed the Genesis world slowly shrinking behind them. Doctor McCoy and Doctor Marcus, senior, watched it and spoke together in low tones. Saavik worked at concentrating hard enough not to notice what they were saying. They were discussing the admiral, and it was quite clearly intended to be a private conversation.
The bridge doors opened. Saavik, in the captain’s chair, glanced around. She stood up.
“Admiral on the bridge!”
“At ease,” Jim Kirk said quickly. David Marcus followed him out of the turbolift.
Doctor McCoy and Carol Marcus glanced at each other. McCoy raised one eyebrow, and Carol gave him a quick smile.
“Hello, Bones,” Kirk said. “Hi, Carol….” He took her hand and squeezed it gently.
“On course to Alpha Ceti, Admiral,” Saavik said. “All is well.”
“Good.” He sat down. “Lieutenant, I believe you’re acquainted with my…my son.”
“Yes, sir.” She caught David’s gaze. He blushed a little; to Saavik’s surprise, she did too.
“Would you show him around, please?”
“Certainly, sir.” She ushered David to the upper level of the bridge. When they reached the science officer’s station, she said to him, softly, straight-faced, “I see that you did, after all, turn out to be a bastard.”
James Kirk heard her and stared at her, shocked.
“That is a…‘little joke,’ ” she said.
“A private one,” David added. “And the operative word is ‘dumb.’ ”
Saavik smiled; David laughed.
Jim Kirk smiled, too, if a bit quizzically.
McCoy leaned on the back of the captain’s chair, gazing at the viewscreen.
“Will you look at that,” he said. “It’s incredible. Think they’ll name it after you, Doctor Marcus?”
“Not if I can help it,” she said. “We’ll name it. For our friends.”
Jim thought about the book Spock had given him. He was remembering a line at the end: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” He could not quite imagine Spock’s questing spirit finally at rest.
Carol put her hand on his. “Jim—?”
“I was just thinking of something…. Something Spock tried to tell me on my birthday.”
“Jim, are you okay?” McCoy asked. “How do you feel?”
“I feel…” He thought for a moment. The grief would be with him a long time, but there were a lot of good memories, too. “I feel young, Doctor, believe it or not. Reborn. As young as Carol’s new world.”
He glanced back at Lieutenant Saavik and at David.
“Set our course for the second star to the right, Lieutenant. ‘The second star to the right, and straight on till morning.’ ”
He was ready to explain that that, too, was a little joke, but she surprised him.
“Aye, sir.” Saavik sounded not the least bit perplexed. She changed the viewscreen; it sparkled into an image of the dense starfield ahead. “Warp factor three, Helm Officer.”
“Warp three, aye.”
The Enterprise leaped toward the distant stars.
The Search for Spock
The needs of the one
One
Spock was dead.
The company of the Enterprise gathered together on the recreation deck to remember their friend.
Doctor Leonard McCoy, ship’s surgeon, moved half a pace into the circle. As he raised his glass in a final toast, he glanced at each of his compatriots in turn.
Admiral James Kirk and Doctor Carol Marcus stood on either side of Carol’s grown son, David Marcus. David was Jim’s son, as well, unknown until now, but now acknowledged.
Commander Uhura, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Commander Pavel Chekov, and Hikaru Sulu, recently promoted to commander, had clust
ered together along one arc of the circle. Every member of the ship’s company showed the strain of the harrowing past few days, except Lieutenant Saavik. Her Vulcan training required her to be imperturbable, and so she appeared. If her Romulan upbringing gave her the capacity to feel grief or loss or anger at the death of Spock, her teacher, McCoy could see no shadow of the emotions.
McCoy had known the rest of the ship’s company, the trainees, only a short time, not even long enough to learn their names. He knew for sure only that they were terribly young.
“To Spock,” McCoy said. “He gave his life for ours.”
“To Spock,” they replied in unison, except for Jim, who brought his attention back to the ship from some other time, some other place, a thousand light-years distant.
A moment after the others had spoken, he said, “To Spock.”
Everyone else drank. McCoy put his glass to his lips. The pungent odor of Kentucky bourbon rose around his face. He grimaced. The liquor was raw and new, straight out of the ship’s synthesizer. He had nothing better. The Enterprise’s mission had been an emergency, an unexpected voyage into tragedy, and Leonard McCoy had come most poorly prepared.
He lowered the drink without tasting it.
“To Peter,” Montgomery Scott said. His young nephew, Cadet Peter Preston, had also died in the battle that took Spock’s life. Scott made as if to say more, could not get out the words, and instead drained his glass in one gulp. Again, McCoy could not bring himself to choke down any liquor.
When all the glasses had been refilled, David Marcus stepped forward.
“To our friends on Spacelab,” he said.
McCoy pretended to drink. He felt as if the alcohol fumes alone were making him drunk.
When no one else came forward to propose a toast, the quiet circle dissolved into small groups. Almost everyone had begun to feel the effects of the liquor, but the drinking was a futile effort to numb their grief.
Whose stupid idea was it to have a wake, anyway? McCoy wondered. Who thought this would help? And then he remembered, Oh, right, it was me and Scott.
Duty, Honor, Redemption Page 21
