Duty, Honor, Redemption

by Novelization by Vonda N. McIntyre

  A moment later Chekov appeared beside her, carrying the photon collector. He started to speak. She gestured for silence. Her tricorder suggested the presence of one human being and a dog on the other side of the door to the access corridor, and many other people in the close to intermediate range. Many were pacing in back-and-forth patterns that suggested guard duty.

  The dog’s sharp single bark startled her. The door transmitted the sound clearly.

  “Oh, come on, Narc, there’s nothing in there.” On the other side of the door, the guard chuckled. “If anybody did stow dope in the reactor room, they deserve whatever they get back out.” His voice faded as he continued his patrol along the outer corridor. “That’s a good one. Radioactive coke. New street sensation. Snort it and your nose glows. Come on, Narc.”

  Uhura could even hear the tapping of toenails on the deck as the dog trotted away. She wondered what in the world the security officer had been talking to his dog about.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  As she and Pavel headed deeper into the reactor area, the tricorder’s readings grew more erratic. The only steady information it could give her concerned radiation. The shielding was less efficient than she would have liked. She and Pavel should not have to remain within the reactor’s influence long enough to be in danger. But fission reactors had caused Earth so many problems, some of which persisted even till her time, that she could not be comfortable around one.

  A flashing reddish light reflected rhythmically through the corridor. Uhura rounded a bend. Above the reactor room door, a red warning light blinked on and off, on and off.

  A large bright sign reading “DANGER” did not increase Uhura’s confidence one bit.

  Seeking the highest radiation flux with her tricorder, she found the spot and pointed it out to Pavel. He attached the collector to the wall. The field it created would increase the tunneling coefficient of the reactor shielding, causing the radiation to leak out at an abnormally high rate. It was a sort of vacuum cleaner for high-energy photons, and it could vacuum them up through a wall.

  Pavel turned the collector on. It settled; it hummed.

  “How long?” Uhura whispered.

  Pavel studied the collector’s readout. “Depends on amount of shielding, depends on molecular structure of reactor wall.”

  Uhura hoped the patrol would not come into the reactor looking for coke, whatever that was, radioactive or not.

  Gillian parked the Land Rover on a bluff above the sea. The tide was out. The rocky beach gleamed in starlight.

  Gillian ate pizza and listened to Kirk James’s wild story. He had invented all sorts of details that sounded great. If they had been in a novel, she would have suspended her disbelief willingly.

  The only trouble is, she thought, this is reality. He hasn’t offered me anything to check the details against. And with this baloney about not leaving anachronistic traces in the past, he has a perfect excuse.

  “So, you see,” Kirk said at the end of his tale, “Spock doesn’t want to take your whales home with him. I want to take your whales home with me.”

  Gillian handed Kirk a slice of pizza. The corner drooped over his fingers. He bit a chunk from the outer edge. Cheese strings stretched from his mouth to the piece of pizza.

  He’s never eaten pizza before, that’s for sure, Gillian thought. Whoever heard of somebody who doesn’t know you eat the point first? Maybe he really is from Iowa. Via Mars.

  “Are you familiar with Occam’s Razor?” she said.

  “Yes,” Kirk said. “It’s just as true in the twenty-third century as it is now. If two explanations are possible, the simpler is likely to be true.”

  “Right. Do you know what that means in your case?”

  His shoulders slumped. He put down the half-eaten piece of pizza and scrubbed at the cheese on his fingers with a shredding paper napkin.

  “I’m afraid so.” He raised his head.

  Gillian liked his eyes, and his intensity attracted her. The trouble was, he kept offering evidence that it was the intensity of madness.

  “Let me tell you a little more,” he said.

  One of her professors in graduate school preferred another theory over Occam’s Razor for sorting out competing hypotheses. “Gillie,” she always said, “if you’ve got two possibilities, go with the beautiful one, the aesthetically pleasing one.” The possibility Kirk wanted her to believe was certainly the aesthetically pleasing one. His stories were almost as good as the stories her grandfather used to tell her when she was little, before.

  “Do they have Alzheimer’s disease in the twenty-third century?” she asked.

  “What’s Alzheimer’s disease?” Kirk said.

  “Never mind.” She started the Land Rover and headed back into Golden Gate Park. She wished she could believe in his universe. It sounded like a great place to live.

  “Tell me about marine biology in the twenty-third century,” she said.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Why? Because you spend all your time in space?”

  “No. Because when I spend time on boats, it’s for recreation.”

  Gillian chuckled. “You’re good. You’re really good. Smart, too. Most people, when they try to take somebody in, they try to snow you too far and they catch themselves up. If they thought it’d help, they’d claim to be a marine biologist.”

  “I don’t even know any marine biologists. My mother’s a xenobiologist, and so was my brother.”

  “Was?”

  “He…died,” Kirk said.

  “Then there’s no immortality in your universe, either.”

  “No,” he said, smiling sadly. “Not for human beings, anyway.”

  “Let me tell you some more about whales,” Gillian said.

  “I’d like to hear anything you’ve got to tell me,” he said. “But if you won’t help me, then I’m a little pressed for time.”

  “People have had killer whales in captivity for a couple of decades,” she said. “Do you have killer whales in your world? Orcas?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, no. All the larger species are extinct.”

  “Orcas are predators. They swim fifty miles a day, easy. They have an incredible repertoire of sounds they can make. They talk to each other. A lot. That’s what it sounds like they’re doing, anyway. But when you put them in a tank, they change. They haven’t got anywhere to go. They’re kept in a deprived environment. After a couple of years, their range of sounds shrinks. Then they become aphasic—they stop talking at all. They get apathetic. And then…they die.”

  Gillian turned in at the parking lot.

  “Gillian, that’s a shame. But I don’t understand—”

  She turned off the engine and stared out into the darkness and the silence.

  “George didn’t sing this spring.”

  Kirk reached out, touched her shoulder, and gripped it gently.

  “Kirk, humpback whales are meant to be wild. They migrate thousands of miles every year. They’re part of an incredibly rich, incredibly complex ecosystem. They have the whole ocean, and a thousand other species to interact with. I was up in Alaska last summer, on a research trip observing humpbacks. We were watching a pod, and a sea lion swam right in beside one of them and dived and flipped and wiggled his flippers. The whale rolled over and waved her pectoral fin in the air, and she dove and surfaced and slapped her flukes on the water—she was playing, Kirk. We had a tape deck on the boat, we were listening to some music. When we put on Emmylou Harris, one of the whales swam within twenty feet of the boat—wild humpbacks just don’t come that close—and dove underneath us and came up on the other side and put her head out of water, to listen. I swear, she liked it.” She shivered, remembering her own wonder and joy and apprehension when the whale glided beneath her, a darkness against darkness, the long white pectoral fins gleaming on either side, their reach nearly spanning the boat’s length. “I’m afraid for George and Gracie,
Kirk. I’m afraid the same thing will happen to them that happens to orcas. George didn’t sing. Maybe soon they’ll both stop playing. And then…” Her voice was shaking. She fell silent and looked away.

  “We’d take good care of them. They’ll be safe.”

  “I want them safe! But I can keep them safe at the Institute. Till they die. It’s freedom that they need most. I like you, Kirk, God knows why. And I’d like to believe you. But, you see, if you’re going to keep them safe—imprisoned—it doesn’t matter whether they’re here at the Institute or with you…wherever. Whenever.”

  “Gillian, if their well-being depends on freedom, I swear to you they’ll be free. And safe. There are no whale hunters in my time, and the ocean isn’t polluted. There aren’t any great whales anymore, no orcas, but there are still sea lions to play with. I’ll even play country-western music to them, if you think it would make them happy.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not. Believe me, I’m not.”

  He tempted her. Oh, he tempted her. “If you could prove what you’ve told me—”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I was afraid of that.” She reached over him and opened the door. “Admiral,” she said, “this has been the strangest dinner of my life. And the biggest cockamamie fish story I ever heard.”

  “You did ask,” he replied. “Now, will you tell me something?”

  She waited.

  “George and Gracie’s transmitters,” Kirk said. “What frequencies are you using?”

  She sighed. He never gave up. “Sorry,” she said. “That’s—classified.”

  “That’s a strange thing to hear from somebody who accused me of being in military intelligence.”

  “I still don’t have a clue who you are!” she said angrily. “You wouldn’t want to show me around your spaceship, would you?”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice, no.”

  “So. There we are.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Kirk said, his voice suddenly hard. “I’m here to bring two humpback whales into the twenty-third century. If I have to, I’ll go to the open sea to get them. But I’d just as soon take yours. It’d be better for me, better for you…and better for them.”

  “I bet you’re a damn good poker player,” Gillian said.

  “Think about it,” Kirk said. “But don’t take too long, because we’re out of time when they take your whales away. If you change your mind, this is where I’ll be.”

  “Here? In the park?”

  “Right.”

  He kissed her, a quick, light touch of his lips to hers.

  “I don’t know what else to say to convince you.”

  “Say good-night, Kirk.”

  “Good-night.” He left the Land Rover and strode through the harsh circle of illumination cast by the street lamp.

  Gillian hesitated. She wanted to believe him; she almost wanted to join in his attractive craziness and turn it into a folie à deux. Instead, she sensibly shoved the Land Rover into gear and stepped on the gas.

  A strange shimmery light reflected from her rearview mirror. She braked and glanced out the back window, wondering what she had seen.

  The street lamp must have flickered, for it cast the only illumination over the meadow. Whatever had caused the shimmery effect had disappeared.

  And so had Kirk. The meadow was empty.

  Ten

  Spock watched Admiral Kirk re-form on the transporter platform.

  “Did you accomplish your aims in your discussion with Doctor Taylor, Admiral?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Admiral Kirk said. “I told her the truth, but she doesn’t believe me. Maybe you should try to talk to her. Without your disguise.”

  “Do you think that wise, Admiral?”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference. She’d just explain you away with plastic surgery,” he said with an ironic smile. “I wish she’d stop explaining me away. As it is, when we beam the whales on board, all Gillian will ever be sure of is that they’ve disappeared. She won’t know if they lost their transmitters, or if they died, or if the whalers killed them.” He blew out his breath in frustration. “What’s our status?”

  “The tank will be finished by morning.”

  “That’s cutting it closer than you know. What about team two?”

  “We have received no word since their beam-in. We can only wait for their call.”

  “Damn!” Kirk said. “Dammit!”

  Spock wondered why Kirk employed two similar words of profanity, rather than repeating the same one twice or using two entirely different ones. No doubt the admiral had been correct in his statement that Spock did not yet know how to hang that part of the language.

  “We’ve been so lucky!” Kirk said. “We have the two perfect whales in our hands, but if we don’t move quickly, we’ll lose them.”

  “Admiral,” Spock said, “Doctor Taylor’s whales understand our plans. I made certain promises to them, and they agreed to help us. But if we cannot locate them, my calculations reveal that neither the tank nor the Bounty can withstand the power of a frightened wild whale. In that event, the probability is that our mission will fail.”

  “Our mission!” Admiral Kirk shouted. He swung toward Spock, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched.

  Spock drew back, startled.

  “Our mission! Goddamn it, Spock, you’re talking about the end of life on Earth! That includes your father’s life! You’re half human—haven’t you got any goddamn feelings about that?” He glared at Spock, then turned, infuriated, and strode down the corridor.

  Spock lunged one step after him. “Jim—!” He halted abruptly. The admiral vanished around a corner. He had not heard Spock’s protest, and for that Spock felt grateful. He did not understand why he had made it. Spock did not understand the terribly un-Vulcan impulse within him that had led him to make it. He should have repressed it almost before he became aware of it. That was the Vulcan way. James Kirk’s anger should have no effect on Spock of Vulcan, for anger was illogical. More than that, it was useless. It led to confusion and misunderstanding and inefficiency.

  He knew all that as well as he knew anything. Why, then, did he himself feel anger toward the admiral? How could James Kirk’s reaction cause a Vulcan so much pain?

  He sought some explanation for Kirk’s fury. Worrying about what would happen to Earth if the Bounty did not return could have no effect on the fate of the planet; nor could worrying about Sarek’s fate save the elder Vulcan. What did Kirk expect him to do? Even if he did feel concern and anguish, what possible benefit could be extracted from revealing the emotions to his superior officer, and humiliating himself with his lack of control?

  Spock drew a deep breath, trying to calm himself, wrestling with his confusion and the emotions he could not continue to deny. He wanted to return to his quarters; he wanted to meditate and concentrate until he drew himself completely back into control. But he could not. Too much work remained to be done.

  Trying to pretend nothing had happened, or at least that Kirk’s outburst had not affected him, Spock squared his shoulders, slipped his hands inside the wide sleeves of his robe, and followed the admiral toward the engine room.

  Uhura kept her eye on the tricorder readings as Pavel took a readout on the collector’s charge for the tenth time in as many minutes. The process was taking far longer than Mister Scott had estimated. Uhura and Pavel had been at the reactor for nearly an hour. If their luck held for another ten minutes…

  In the radar room of the aircraft carrier Enterprise, the radar operator started a routine equipment test. The image on the screen broke up. Frowning, he fiddled with the controls. He managed to get a clear screen for a moment, then lost it.

  “What the hell—? Say, Commander?”

  The duty officer joined him. When he saw the screen, he, too, frowned. “I thought you were just running a test program.”

  “Aye, sir. But we’re getting a power drain t
hrough the module. It’s coming from somewhere in the ship.”

  The operator kept trying to track down the problem. The duty officer hung over his shoulder until the phone rang and he had to go answer it.

  “CIC, Rogerson…. Yes, Chief, we’re tracking it here, too. What do you make of it?” When he spoke again, his voice was tight. “You sure? Check the videoscan. I need a confirm.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “He thinks there’s an intruder in one of the MMRs.”

  In the reactor access room, the collector’s hum rose in pitch and suddenly ceased.

  “Hah!” Pavel said. “Finished.” He detached the machine from the wall.

  Uhura opened her communicator. “Scotty, we’re ready to beam out.” Static replied to her message. “Scotty? Uhura here, come in please.” She waited. “Come in please. Scotty, do you read?”

  “Aye, lass.” Static blurred the response. “I hear ye. My transporter power’s down to minimum. I must bring ye in one at a time. I’ll take you first. Stand by.”

  Pavel shoved the collector into Uhura’s hands.

  The beam surrounded her. Its frequency sounded wrong. The usual cool tingle felt like thousands of pinpricks. Finally she vanished.

  Pavel waited patiently for the Bounty’s transporter to recharge and sweep him from this place. Silence, after the constant high-pitched hum of the energy collector, made him nervous. The reactor’s flashing red light gave him a headache.

  He started at the sudden shrill of a Klaxon alarm. People shouted between its bleats. Pavel snapped open his communicator.

  “Mister Scott,” he said, “how soon will transporter be ready? Mister Scott? Hello?”

  “Chekov, can ye hear me?” Scott’s voice was all but unintelligible through the static.

  “Mister Scott, now would be good time—”

  The hatch clanged open. A large man leaped into the doorway, an equally large weapon held at the ready and pointing at Pavel. He entered the access chamber. Other large men, all in camouflage uniforms, came in after him.