The workers surrounded the flatbed as the assistant foreman climbed down from the running board and then up beside the tree. Edith didn’t see him pick up a knife, but the ropes holding the evergreen down along its length slackened as he moved from one to another. “C’mon, men,” the assistant foreman called, waving his hand toward the tree, but he needn’t have; already several men had begun crawling up onto the rear of the lorry, clearly intending to help unload its yuletide cargo.
“I’d better go help out,” Leonard said, his voice matter-of-fact, filled with neither satisfaction nor displeasure. Edith recalled making similar observations during the previous winter’s holiday season. While Leonard had helped with the mission’s meager decorations and taken part in Christmas Eve and Christmas Day observances there, he’d seemed to do so in a distant manner, different from his everyday reserve. Edith had wondered about his beliefs and on a couple of occasions had attempted to broach the subject, only to find her questions ultimately left unanswered.
“Thank you for this,” Leonard said, holding up his lunch, and after Edith acknowledged his gratitude, he hurried to join his fellow workmen as they dragged the evergreen from the lorry. Edith walked back along the fence toward the entrance, watching as Leonard found a place among the men and helped carry the tree. The assistant foreman jumped to the ground and hustled ahead of the workers. By the time Edith reached the street, the tree had been upended and its trunk pushed down into the mud. Despite the foul condition of the ground, several men crawled beneath the fir’s lowest branches, and Edith assumed that they were attempting to steady and secure this addition to their work site.
Even unadorned, the Christmas tree brought a wisp of joy to this desolate place, a welcome dash of color. Still, Edith thought that it could use something more. She wouldn’t want to remove any of the scant decorations at the mission, but she could part with the few shiny garlands bedecking her apartment. She resolved to take down her festoons tonight and to send them down here tomorrow with Leonard. Surely the men here would appreciate even that small embellishment of Christmas cheer.
With a spring in her step, Edith turned and headed back downtown to the mission.
McCoy wrapped his arms about his chest, tucked his hands beneath his biceps, and huddled against the wall of the building, trying to insulate himself against the cold. Although the temperature of the night air probably hovered north of freezing, the wind blustering through New York’s concrete canyons made it feel like ten below. Despite that, throngs of people still crowded about Times Square. The size of the multitude had surprised him when he and Edith had first arrived here, as he’d expected the prevailing climate of want and need to suppress the turnout at an event still celebrated in his own time. He supposed, though, that the great numbers of people here made sense: with conditions as dire as they had become for so many of them, they must all be looking to the coming year with hope for a better life.
Beside him on the sidewalk, Edith pushed her gloved hands into the pockets of her long winter coat, but she seemed otherwise unaffected by the weather conditions. She peered with evident anticipation toward the slender Times Tower, atop which a great lighted ball would soon descend, ushering in the new year. McCoy hadn’t wanted to attend these festivities, rejecting Edith’s invitation several times before ultimately relenting. He suspected that her goal had been to lift his flagging spirits.
McCoy watched her for a few seconds and felt grateful that upon arriving in the past, he had stumbled into the 21st Street Mission, and into Edith’s life. From that first day, she had helped him in so many ways, and he thought now that her friendship and support had actually allowed him to retain his sanity, even though she did not fully understand his circumstances. For all of that, though, McCoy still felt lost and alone. Even standing next to Edith, even crowded among the thousands upon thousands of revelers in Times Square, his continued presence in the past left him isolated. Some days, he found, he could almost forget about his plight, could almost become so caught up in the minutia of everyday life, that the dangers of his inadvertent time travel would slip away from him. He would for a short time shrug off his solitary existence and his growing sense of abandonment. But reality would never remain hidden for long. In a sudden memory of an event that had not yet occurred in this time, in the mere consideration of a morsel of information not yet known by the population of Earth, the enormity of McCoy’s situation would come back to him in a rush.
Around him now, the swell of people moved forward and back, moved side to side, like a living tide. Anticipation seemed to grow as the final minutes of the calendar year, and the first moment of the new year, approached. The wind carried the sounds of voices, but few distinct words. Everywhere, the bright lights of capitalism shined as though desperate to draw attention to themselves. Movie and burlesque houses advertised their wares with gusto, none more so than the marquee across the way that announced the premiere of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
McCoy knew the old Scottish tale and found it somehow apropos of his own circumstances. In some regards, his existence seemed dual in nature: future and past, doctor and civilian, extrovert and loner.
I’ve changed history, McCoy thought. Or I will. He must’ve done, or would do, what Spock had feared Captain Christopher would do: change the past, and thereby alter the future. Did Jim—would Jim—even be born in Iowa in 2233? Would he command the Enterprise? Would the ship even exist? Would Starfleet?
Whatever I’ve done, whatever I will do, McCoy forced himself to admit, it will make my recovery impossible. And on the heels of that came another unpleasant thought: I should kill myself.
Even in the cold weather, a greater chill shook McCoy. During the worst days of his father’s terrible illness and the black period after he’d finally succumbed, McCoy had never considered suicide. In the dark hours when he and Jocelyn had torn down whatever love they’d had for each other and had moved inexorably toward separation and divorce, taking his own life had never been an option. But now…now…might it actually provide a solution?
If, despite his efforts, he’d already modified the past, then he could do nothing now to change that. But if his history-altering transgression still lay before him, then perhaps his death could preserve the future. Would Jim and Spock then be able to retrieve him from an earlier point, prior to his suicide?
McCoy shook his head, as though doing so might clarify his thoughts. Time travel, temporal mechanics, causation and paradox, all confounded him. He knew better than to make such an important and irreversible decision when he felt as low as he did right now, but he also realized that he would have to seriously consider his own death as a legitimate option.
“Here it comes,” Edith said excitedly, grabbing his arm.
McCoy looked over and saw her pointing upward, and he followed her gaze over to the Times Tower. Atop the narrow front edge of the roughly triangular building, the illuminated ball had begun to descend. Around them, the collective voice of the crowd grew, screams and cheers rising in commingled expectancy. The wind, agonizingly constant all night, now seemed to recede, as though choosing to withdraw in deference to the moment at hand. McCoy watched the lighted sphere as it—
Suddenly, a rapid succession of reports rang out, evoking the recollection of the firearm Sulu had found on a planet in the Omicron Delta region. Reacting instinctively, McCoy turned away from the cruel sounds and spread his arms, shielding Edith’s body with his own. Bright flashes threw their shadows against the wall behind her as the blasts continued.
Around them, the noise of the crowd rose louder still, doubtless the knell of 1931. McCoy risked a look over his shoulder and saw people arrayed in a semicircle a few meters away, watching as charges continued to detonate before them. Blue smoke swirled upward from the sidewalk, where bits of paper danced about wildly. McCoy peered at the faces of the people ringing the spectacle and saw light flare across their features. For just an instant, they looked like the victims of phaser fire, targets who had been caug
ht by a weapon set to dematerialize.
Oh no, McCoy thought, even as he realized that the miniature explosions posed no danger. But in his mind, in his memory, he saw the face of another man, a small man, bald and unshaven, with a wide, misshapen nose, and clad in dirty clothing. McCoy knew at once where he’d previously seen the man with the rodent-like appearance: in the tortured dreams that still occasionally plagued his sleep. For the first time, though, McCoy remembered beyond that, to the frantic moments following his arrival in the past, the intense, chaotic moments from which those nightmares had been born. And he thought again: Oh no.
“Leonard?” Edith said, and then more insistently, “Leonard.” She took him by the arms and turned his body around, toward the place where the unexpected blasts now ceased their jarring addition to the clamor of the multitude. Edith stepped up beside him and said, “They’re just penny bangers.” She hesitated for a second, and then added, “Firecrackers.”
“Yes,” McCoy said, knowing that he needed to say something. “Yes, of course.” He turned away from the scene and moved to lean a hand against the wall. “They just startled me,” he explained. His words, surrounded by the uproar of Times Square, sounded to him as though they had been spoken by somebody else, and from a distance. He felt only peripherally aware of his environs, though, his thoughts instead fixed on the man from his dreams, the man from his first minutes in Earth’s past. McCoy had…what? He’d chased the man, believed him an ally against the assassins hunting them.
“Leonard?” Edith asked, concern coloring her tone. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I…I…” he began, struggling to respond at the same time he tried to latch on to his memories. “I was just startled, that’s all,” he repeated. Biped…small, he recalled himself saying, describing the phantom figure while standing before him.
“You don’t look well,” Edith went on. “Do you need to sit down?”
“No, I…I just need a minute,” he said. He moved forward to lay his forearm against the wall, and then rested his head against his sleave.
“All right,” Edith said, and McCoy felt her hand on his shoulder blade.
He closed his eyes, and the sights and sounds, the scents and textures of Times Square dissolved into nothingness. He saw his own hand clutching the small man’s bald pate, measuring, analyzing. Good cranial development, he recalled concluding. Considerable human ancestry.
McCoy had been in bad shape, paranoid and delusional from the cordrazine still coursing through his body. Had he talked to the little man about medicine in the twentieth century, about the barbaric state of health care and hospitals? He thought now that he had, images of physicians hacking and stitching their patients like garments occurring to him in a vague, slippery way, like a memory of memory or a dream of a dream.
And then you fell, he told himself, still fighting to summon the entire experience to mind. Elusive and paper-thin, the recollections threatened to skitter away like leaves upon the wind. With an effort, he tried to tighten his grip on the memory at hand. He concentrated on the remembered feel of the pavement against his back, the hardness of the surface, its cold dampness in the dark night. He had battled to remain conscious, fearful that if he passed out, the assassins pursuing him would track him down.
It was then, McCoy thought, horrified. As he had resisted the blackness that would have left him vulnerable, he’d heard it: the piercing whine of a phaser set to self-destruct—a phaser he now dimly recalled stealing from the Enterprise’s transporter chief. The shrill cry of the weapon had increased in pitch, higher and higher, reaching upward until it had become inaudible—or nonexistent. Did he imagine now the blue-white glare on his closed eyelids, or had the little man accidentally triggered the phaser to destroy itself?
“Leonard, I’m getting worried.” It took McCoy a moment to recognize Edith’s voice. He felt the pressure of her hand on his back.
“I’m all right,” he said without moving, and then he reached desperately for the last part of the memory. He’d regained consciousness in daylight, in an alleyway filled with antiquated machinery. He’d been shaky on his feet, and physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. But he’d awoken in that alley, and he’d looked all around there. There had been no dead or wounded bodies, no evidence of an explosion.
Soft self-destruct then, he thought. The small man had activated the phaser’s auto-dematerialization cycle, and the weapon had disintegrated itself—and him along with it. Had it not, had the phaser only destroyed itself, McCoy didn’t think the light he’d perceived through his closed eyelids would have been nearly as bright as it had been. Or was that all a dream? he asked himself. Am I making all of this up?
“Leonard?” Edith said.
“I’m all right,” he said again, pushing away from the wall and turning to face her. All about them, people continued to celebrate the new year, though the volume had decreased from the height it had reached at the end of ball’s drop. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think I need to go back to my apartment.”
Edith nodded, but asked, “Did something happen? I mean, besides the firecrackers? Are you feeling well?”
“It was just that,” McCoy maintained. “I’m also pretty tired. I worked very hard today.” Though a prevarication intended to avoid telling Edith the truth, he had labored at the Rockefeller site almost twelve hours today. “You don’t have to go with me.”
“Nonsense,” Edith said. “Of course I’ll go with you. Besides, we’ve seen what we came here to see.” She gestured in the general direction of the Times Tower.
“I know it’s cold,” McCoy said, “but do you mind walking for a while?” They’d taken the subway to get here, but McCoy wanted to avoid the crowds right now, wanted a chance to process what had come back to him tonight.
“Not at all,” Edith said, and they made their way over to Broadway and followed it south. For a few minutes, Edith spoke about the past year and the year to come, but soon enough, she seemed to understand McCoy’s desire for quiet. They walked together in silence after that, and McCoy returned to the matter of his phaser and its destruction.
Did I make all of that up? he asked himself again, realizing how much he wanted to believe that he had. At the same time, he knew that he hadn’t invented any of it—that he had purloined a phaser from the Enterprise, that it had been taken from him, and that the small man had vaporized himself. And he knew something more. Something worse.
That’s how I changed history, he thought. That’s how I changed the future. Jim wasn’t going to come to the twentieth century to find him and bring him back home. For all he knew, Jim would never even be born now. The circumstances that had led to McCoy’s travel back in time would never occur and so could never be undone. It seemed like a paradox, defying logic, but McCoy still understood the inevitable conclusion. He was trapped in the past, and there was nothing at all he could ever do about it.
Fourteen
2268
“Do I have to do this?” Chekov asked in his thick Russian accent. Changed out of his duty uniform and into a blue patient’s coverall, he stood poised to raise himself up onto a diagnostic pallet in the outer sickbay compartment. He’d stopped with his hands palm down on the pad, though, evidently in order to protest his pending examination.
Just like he always does, McCoy thought. Ever since their experience at Gamma Hydra IV, when every member of the landing party but Chekov had suffered a radiation sickness that resembled accelerated aging, the ensign had been reluctant to undergo any physical exams. At the time of that mission, more than six months ago, he’d been required to endure scores of tests, owing to his singular resistance to the affliction. McCoy understood the distaste Chekov had developed for being poked and prodded, injected and inspected, but the doctor had his orders.
“If you ever want to return to duty,” McCoy said, “then you’ll get up on that pallet and let me do what the captain told me to do.”
“But I’m obviously fine,” Chekov remonst
rated.
“You may think you’re fine, Ensign,” McCoy said, beginning to lose patience, “but I’ll be the judge of that.” To emphasize his point, McCoy activated the small portable scanner he held in his hand. The small, cylindrical device hummed quietly, its mesh-enclosed sensor dish spinning as it operated. “For all I know,” he added, “you’re still dead.” Earlier today, the Enterprise had ventured into the territory of the Melkotians on a first-contact mission ordered by Starfleet Command. McCoy and Chekov had transported down to the alien world with Jim, Spock, and Scotty—or at least they thought they had. In reality, the five of them hadn’t actually left the ship, but the Melkotians, powerful telepaths, had convinced them that they had, generating a collective virtual experience in which they’d all taken part.
The setting had been an oddly incomplete version of a nineteenth-century town in the American West, a surrealistic recreation of a place called, of all things, Tombstone, Arizona. McCoy and Chekov and the rest of the sham landing party had been cast in the roles of a group of men known as the Clanton gang, on the day in 1881 when they had fought—and lost—the so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Before they had even faced that deadly confrontation, though, Chekov, as gunslinger Billy Claiborne, had seemingly been shot and killed by a member of the Clantons’ rivals, the Earps. Only later, when Jim and the rest of the landing party had been given the opportunity—even the apparent necessity—to kill and had refused to do so, only then had all five men been released from the communal hallucination and found themselves still aboard the Enterprise, unharmed.
Crucible: McCoy Page 17
