Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  “I believe it too,” McCoy said.

  Edith turned back toward the counter and resumed unloading the coffee cups from the wire rack, wanting to hide her sudden sorrow and to find her way past it. “It’s a nice thought,” she said, trying not to think about her father, “but there’s quite a difference between what Gandhi does and what I do.”

  “Maybe,” McCoy said. “Maybe not as much as you think. But what really matters is that you do change the world, even if it’s one person at a time.”

  “I don’t need to change the world, Doctor,” she said. “I just want to help people survive it so that when one day it does change, they’ll be here to live in it.”

  McCoy didn’t respond, and when Edith set the last cup down on the counter, silence filled the kitchen. She quickly picked up the wire rack and dropped it back below the sink, where it briefly clattered before coming to a rest. Edith wanted the noise, wanted to fill the soundless moment with something, so that the doctor wouldn’t offer his thanks to her. You don’t help people to earn their gratitude, her father had taught her. You help people because it’s the right thing to do.

  Edith pulled out the rack of plates and hefted it up onto the counter. As she did, she spared a glance at McCoy. The doctor looked back at her with a small, closed-mouth smile, but he said nothing and instead turned back to the coffee grinder. Edith began stacking the plates beside the coffee cups

  No, she thought, satisfied. I don’t need to change the world.

  McCoy stood in the shadows and stared across the street at the three-story brick building. A narrow band of red ran along the base of the rectangular edifice, reaching up about a meter and a quarter from the sidewalk. Above the unpainted brick, the rest of the wall had been whitewashed all the way up to the peaked façade that crowned the roof. Windows lined the upper floors, and dark architectural molding spanned the breadth of the structure below the second story and above the third.

  At ground level, arches built into the wall marched across the front of the building, most of them framing windows. In one of the central arches, light fixtures bracketed the main entrance. Gold letters decorated the glass transom, reflecting the bright glow of the lamps and spelling out 13TH PRECINCT.

  McCoy hovered in the darkness, cautiously eyeing the police station. For the moment, this short segment of the street, on this one block, belonged to him, and to him alone. Disrupted earlier by pedestrians and automobiles, the night had now drawn still, the sky moonless to this point, and deep.

  McCoy had arrived here nearly thirty minutes ago. He’d come with a purpose, but once he’d reached this section of Sheriff Street, he’d begun questioning his choice. Two weeks ago, while walking on the Brooklyn Bridge, he’d decided that he needed to dispatch a message that would somehow reach Jim Kirk in the future. The idea had energized him at the time, providing him an opportunity to do something more than merely wait for rescue. But as he’d had cast about for a means of accomplishing his aim, the problem had proven intractable.

  From somewhere in the distance, the rhythmic beat of shoes against pavement reached the doctor, and he shrank back against the wall of the building opposite the precinct house. The steps grew louder, and a few seconds later, McCoy watched as a uniformed patrolman emerged from around the corner. The officer passed beneath a street lamp, his lean, lined face becoming briefly visible. Taking no apparent notice of the doctor, he headed for the main entrance of the police station and disappeared through it, leaving McCoy once more alone on the street.

  Alone with my decision, he thought, struggling to determine what he should do, and what he should not.

  McCoy had initially considered attempting to locate Captain Kirk’s ancestors. He thought that he could present them with a sealed letter, and ask them to pass it down through the generations, ultimately delivering it to Jim on a specified date, sometime after the events that had brought the doctor to New York in the twentieth century. The idea even held a note of romance about it, he thought, like some grand and unlikely scheme out of myth.

  As he’d contemplated the particulars of his plan, though, he’d quickly found it unworkable. While he recalled where Jim had been born and raised, as well as the names of his parents, he knew few other concrete details about the Kirk family. How then could he hope to conclusively find any of the captain’s forebears? How could he possibly trace Jim’s lineage back through a dozen or more generations that, in 1930, had not yet come into existence?

  The doctor had thought about trying to track down his own relatives, but while he had more information about his kin than about Jim’s, he still had no notion who they were or where he could find them three centuries before he’d been born. Even if he could definitively identify members of the McCoy or Kirk clans, and even if he could convince somebody to begin the long chain of delivery, what real chance would there be for success? He also worried that such actions could themselves disrupt the flow of history. McCoy believed that he could prepare an innocuous enough note—“March 1930. 21st Street Mission. New York City. McCoy.”—that would be meaningless to anybody besides the captain, but might simply receiving, storing, or transferring such a missive alter a person’s life? Could a small, seemingly harmless change in 1930 propagate over time, creating a major disturbance sometime in the future?

  After a great deal of thought, McCoy had abandoned any such plans. Instead, he’d focused on the reason he’d conceived them in the first place: namely, the fact of the unbroken link that his and Jim’s families provided between today and tomorrow. What other continuous chains, he’d asked himself, connected the present with the future? He’d answered the question readily enough—Earth itself; the human race; natural formations, such as Victoria Falls and the Grand Canyon; manmade structures, like the Eiffel Tower and the Gotthard Base Tunnel—but none of those provided a reliable means of getting a message to the captain. Even if McCoy could figure out how to secrete away a letter somewhere on the Brooklyn Bridge so that it would last into the twenty-third century, how could he ensure that it would get to Jim?

  It had occurred to him then that documents from this period had survived into his own time. He’d thought at once of even older works, including the Magna Carta and the United States Declaration of Independence, but other, less profound items, such as census files, had also been preserved. And then he’d thought of two even more mundane types of documents: hospital and police records.

  If Jim and Spock didn’t know that he’d traveled into Earth’s past, McCoy had little potential for recovery. If they did, though, then he had no doubt that they would scour every available historical database for any sign of his presence in another time. Computers hadn’t been in use in 1930, but as the decades passed after that, not only would they become common and be utilized to store newly created records, but they would also be loaded with older, existing records. McCoy himself had occasionally studied digitized, indexed versions of medical data from this time period and earlier. If he could insinuate himself into such files, then Jim and Spock would have a means of finding him, his message to them, in effect, a simple Here I am.

  The doctor had contemplated injuring himself in some fashion and then visiting a hospital for treatment. As a physician, he knew that he could wound himself or generate symptoms of some disease safely enough, but the idea confronted his training and mind-set. He’d also thought about going to the police, confessing to the perpetration of some illegal act, or just claiming to be the victim of a crime. The more he’d considered the matter, the more he’d leaned toward the latter course of action.

  Now, though, as he lingered across from the 13th Precinct, he reassessed that decision. He didn’t feel especially confident that these particular paper files, created and stored in a 1930s police station, would be transferred at some point in the future to computer memory—or if committed to digital storage, that they would necessarily endure. While many older records had been preserved electronically, many had not, and of those that had, not all had survived the many
disasters, conflicts, and wars that had riddled the globe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. More than the doctor’s uncertain expectation, though, the prospect of involving himself with any sorts of authorities concerned him. While he could not concretize his apprehension, he feared that his contact with the medical establishment or law enforcement would pose a significant risk of impacting the timeline.

  Across the street, the front door of the police station swung open, and two uniformed officers walked out into the night. Both of them, McCoy saw, carried short but menacing clubs. The sight induced him to move. After watching the patrolmen head off to the left, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his pea coat and started away in the opposite direction.

  As the doctor’s boots thudded along the sidewalk, joined now and then by the footsteps of others, as well as the sounds of passing automobiles, he attempted to reformulate his dilemma in the most basic terms. He hoped that doing so would lead him to as simple, and therefore as achievable, a plan of action as possible. As the old medical-school saw stated, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” He began by generalizing his terms: he needed to send a message to friends that would reach them at a certain place and time, and that would provide them his own spatial and temporal location. Too complicated, he thought, and tried again.

  I need to contact friends to let them know where I am. Simple enough, but that expression of his plight omitted critical details, and so he gave it another attempt. My friends are looking for me somewhere, and I need to draw their attention to me.

  McCoy thought about that for a moment, and then stopped walking. That statement still left out the explicit mention of his travel through time, but he realized that it might capture enough of his problem to be of use. In this form, he could ask the question, not of himself, but of somebody familiar with life in 1930 New York City.

  The doctor peered in both directions, waited for a couple of automobiles to pass, and then trotted across the street, a new destination in mind. He weaved his way through neighborhoods now familiar to him from his nightly strolls, until he arrived at a familiar four-story walk-up. He mounted the front stoop and entered the building, where a handwritten tag on one of the mailboxes told him which apartment he wanted. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, where he knocked on the door marked with the number 33.

  “Who is it?” asked a voice from within, clearly surprised, if not suspicious, at having a visitor this late. McCoy didn’t have a timepiece, but estimated that it must be between ten and eleven o’clock.

  “It’s Leonard McCoy, ma’am,” he said. He heard the click of a latch, and then the door swung inward.

  “Doctor, this is a surprise,” she said. “It’s late.” Despite the hour, though, he noticed that she hadn’t yet changed into nightclothes, but stood clad in the same outfit that he’d seen her in at the mission today: a calf-length gray skirt, topped by a short-sleeved brown knit sweater. A golden locket, which McCoy had often seen her wear, hung on a matching chain around her neck. “Is something wrong?” she asked, obviously concerned by the unexpected visit.

  “No, no, not at all,” he said, wanting to put Keeler’s mind at ease. “I was just out for a walk and I guess I didn’t realize the time.”

  “I see,” she said, her tone level and unreadable. “Is there something you need?”

  “As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask your advice about something,” he told her.

  Keeler did not respond right away, but finally gave a quick nod. “All right,” she said. “Come in.” She reached forward and switched on a light hanging on the wall beside the door. Then she stepped aside, opening a path so that McCoy could enter. He walked past her, and she closed the door behind him.

  Inside, the doctor unbuttoned his coat, though he left the garment on. He found himself in a one-room apartment not much larger than the space where he stayed in the rear of the mission. It also resembled the backroom office in other ways, he thought, with a narrow bed in place of his cot, and a nightstand beside it instead of the diminutive typing table. A larger table stood in for the office’s desk, and a dresser for the filing cabinets. The apartment also sported a single, curtained window, though an open door in one corner revealed a small closet, a feature McCoy’s room lacked.

  Atop the table and dresser sat a few framed photographs, and he thought he recognized some of the faces from pictures in Keeler’s office. He also saw books scattered about the flat surfaces in the room, as well as some magazines. The lamp on the nightstand threw a circle of light across the bed, where a newspaper had been spread. A pair of pillows pushed up against the headboard still retained the rough outline of a person, revealing where Keeler had just been sitting.

  “So what can I help you with, Doctor?” she asked behind him.

  “As I mentioned, I wanted to get your advice,” he said, still looking about the apartment. Though neatly kept, the room appeared rundown. The wallpaper, patterned in boxes and vertical strips of several shades of blue, had browned from age in places and peeled away from the wall in others. The reddish floor covering, some sort of resilient sheet material, looked worn and faded. The furniture too appeared old and dilapidated, covered with nicks and scratches. A number of runs marred the sheer fabric of the tan curtains.

  Finally, McCoy turned his full attention back to Keeler. “You know that I’m staying in the mission because I’m waiting for my friends to find me there,” he said. Though not a question, he spoke in a manner that invited a response.

  “Yes,” Keeler said.

  “It’s taken longer than I expected it to,” McCoy said. “I thought they would have come to get me by now.”

  “I don’t mean to be pessimistic,” Keeler said, walking across the room, past the foot of the bed, “but perhaps they’re not coming.”

  “Perhaps not,” McCoy admitted. “But I really believe that they are. I just think they might be having difficulty finding me.”

  “Oh,” Keeler said. She absently grabbed the finial adorning the top of the footboard’s leg nearest her. “But you seemed so sure that they would show up at the mission.”

  “Maybe I was overly optimistic,” he said, facing Edith across the width of the bed. “I know you wanted me to think about going to the police, but—”

  “You needn’t do that, Doctor,” Keeler interrupted. She looked down at where both of her hands now fiddled with the finial. “I already—” She stopped, and with what seemed a conscious effort, she dropped her hands to her sides and lifted her gaze to peer over at McCoy. “I already went to the police about you,” she admitted. “Two weeks ago.”

  With his decision earlier tonight to avoid contact with the police still fresh in his mind, McCoy felt a rush of momentary panic. He realized at once, though, that nothing had come of Keeler’s visit to law enforcement. She confirmed that, describing to him her meeting with a detective at the 13th Precinct, who could find no information about the doctor or any indication that he might have perpetrated a crime. Given that he’d traveled here from the future, McCoy would have expected that no data about him could have been found, but since the memory of his arrival in this time remained clouded, it relieved him to hear that the police did not believe that he had committed any offenses.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” Keeler said. “I’m afraid I didn’t completely trust you.”

  “I can’t say I blame you,” McCoy told her. “I didn’t exactly show up at the mission under the best of circumstances or with a very believable story.”

  “I’m still not sure how believable your story is,” Keeler said, “but I do believe you. Since you first came to the mission, you’ve shown that I can trust you.”

  “Thank you, Miss Keeler,” McCoy said. “I appreciate that.” Then, returning to the reason for his coming here tonight, he went on. “Anyway, it occurred to me that if my friends can’t find me, maybe I can somehow send them a message. The problem is that I don’t know where they are either, and so I’m not sure how I can do that. I
thought you might have some ideas.”

  “I see,” Keeler said, and she seemed to give the matter some thought. Almost at once, she offered a suggestion. “How about the classifieds?”

  “‘The classifieds,’” McCoy repeated, careful to keep hidden his lack of understanding.

  “Yes, of course,” Keeler said. She moved to the head of the bed, where she leaned down and searched through the various sections of the newspaper lying there. At last, she stood back up, holding a portion of the paper. “Here,” she said, turning it around and holding it out to him.

  McCoy took the newspaper section from her and examined the first page. Under the masthead, he saw columns of text, divided into paragraphs separated by small amounts of white space. He read through a few of them, then paged through the paper and read a few more. He saw headings like HELP WANTED and FOR SALE. Each entry, he realized, in some way mimicked his need to get a message to Jim and Spock: employers sought employees, workers sought jobs, sellers sought buyers. He also saw social announcements and personal messages. The common denominator appeared to be one person seeking another, without knowing the location of that other person.

  “This is perfect,” he said, understanding that if he placed an appropriate classified ad in a newspaper, and that newspaper later got transferred to computer storage, then there would be something pointing to his whereabouts that Jim and Spock could find. Closing the paper and studying the first page of the section again, McCoy saw a table of contents and instructions about purchasing an ad. “May I have this when you’re finished with it?” he asked.

  “You may take it now,” Keeler said.

  “Thank you,” McCoy said. He folded up the newspaper and moved toward the door. “And again, I apologize for calling on you so late.”

  “Think nothing of it, Doctor,” Keeler said. “I just hope that you’re able to get in touch with your friends now.”

  “I hope so too,” he said, and left.