Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  Angry, depressed, and emotionally exhausted, McCoy drove on.

  Thirty-Nine

  2283/2284

  As she walked down from the monorail station hand-in-hand with Leonard, Barrows could feel her heart racing. She’d never done anything like this before, and she almost couldn’t contain either her anxiety about whether or not this would succeed, or her excitement about the approaching moment. Almost everything had gone as planned over the last couple of days, but the last she’d heard this morning, a couple of people still hadn’t arrived.

  She and Leonard reached the midpoint of the hill and turned onto the street where she lived. The breeze blew in off San Francisco Bay, a bit cool, but as the afternoon had arrived, the temperature had climbed above fifteen degrees, unseasonably warm for January. From their elevation, she could see Angel Island in the distance and numerous boats out on the water.

  They arrived at the duplex where she lived, and Barrows prepared for what she considered the diciest part of her entire scheme: her acting. At the front door, she identified herself and stood before the retina scanner, then placed her hand atop the sensor plate. Leonard could have done so as well—they’d long ago programmed the system to allow him entry to her home—but it would have seemed suspicious if she’d asked him to do so.

  When the entry light flashed green, Barrows played the lines she’d written for herself. “Oh, you know what?” she said. “I forgot to check the mail yesterday. I’ll be right in.” She started back down the front walk, toward her mailbox, where she’d actually left a couple of items that had been transported there yesterday. When she heard Leonard open the front door, though, she quickly turned and quietly followed him inside. She only regretted that she wouldn’t be able to see his face at the moment of his surprise, but she’d made some of the guests swear that they would take holos for her.

  “Surprise!” everybody yelled as Leonard stepped through the entryway and into the living room. He stopped in front of her, and she saw past him that Admiral Kirk and his significant other had arrived, as had Commander Chekov and several other Starfleet officers whose duties might easily have kept them away. She’d been planning this for months, though, and that had obviously provided all of these people enough time to arrange their leave. Barrows marveled at the number of people who cared so deeply for Leonard.

  She moved forward and threw her arms around Leonard from behind. A number of holocams flashed and then people started moving forward. “Happy birthday,” Barrows said, and Leonard looked at her with an expression of such love and delight that all her months of planning and work to make this happen suddenly seemed like too small a price to pay for such a moment. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you,” Leonard said, and he leaned in and kissed her.

  “Well, Bones,” said Admiral Kirk, “I have to say you look good for a man twice your age.”

  “’Tis a pity that retirement has not allowed you the time to improve either your eye for beauty or your sense of humor,” Leonard said. He and the admiral—former admiral, Barrows reminded herself—opened their arms and hugged each other. When they stepped back, Kirk took the hand of the woman at his side. Statuesque, with long, dark hair that flowed down past her shoulders, she stood a few centimeters taller than her partner.

  “This,” Kirk said, “is Antonia Salvatori.”

  Leonard reached forward and took her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said.

  “I’m delighted to meet you,” Antonia said. “Jim has told me so much about you.”

  “Don’t believe a word of it,” he said with a smile. “He still resents me for all the times I certified him unfit for command.”

  Antonia leaned in toward Leonard and in a stage whisper said, “That’s one of the things he told me.”

  Everybody laughed, and then Kirk and Antonia moved out of the way so that other people could greet Leonard. Captain Spock offered low-key but seemingly genuine regards, while everybody else showed their enthusiasm, including many of the men and women with whom he’d served in Starfleet: Scotty, Hikaru Sulu, Uhura, Pavel Chekov, Christine Chapel, Jabilo M’Benga, M’Ress, and others. Their colleagues from the lab, Dorsant and Olga Zhuravlova, had also come by; Olga had done a great deal of work this morning for the party, since Barrows had to be out with Leonard, keeping him away from her home until the proper time. Hoping that her last guest had managed to arrive, Barrows glanced questioningly at Olga, who returned a surreptitious smile.

  Slowly, everybody made their way deeper into the apartment. The caterers had arrived to set up early this morning and they emerged now from the kitchen bearing platters of food and drink. On the dining room table, people had deposited birthday gifts, the wrapped presents forming what looked like a miniature and very festive skyline. A large box, nearly a meter wide and deep, and half again as tall, stood to one side of the table, covered in blue and silver paper and with an enormous sparkling bow on top.

  “You brought me presents?” Leonard said as he peered into the dining room. “I knew I liked you for some reason.”

  All at once, guests called for Leonard to open one of the gifts. He said that they could do that later, but Tonia urged him to unwrap at least one. “Here,” she said, walking over to the large box. “Why not start with the best?”

  Leonard followed her over. “Is this from you?” he asked her.

  “More or less,” Barrows said, and Leonard looked perplexed by the answer. He began to ask questions, but she said, “Just open it.”

  Leonard pulled off the bow and set it aside, then tore through the wrapping paper to reveal a plain, unadorned box beneath. He pulled the top flaps open and peered inside. Barrows watched his jaw drop and his eyes widen. He gazed over at her with an expression that mixed surprise and appreciation. For a moment, silence descended on the party, and then from within the box, a voice said, “Well, hurry up and get me out of here!” Barrows reached forward, grabbed the box, and lifted it up; with no bottom—she’d removed it earlier—the box came up and over the head of the person within it.

  Joanna McCoy stood up and opened her arms to her father. “Happy birthday, Dad,” she said. Leonard gathered her into his arms and squeezed her tightly. Barrows had never met Leonard’s daughter in person, but the two had spoken many times in the last few months. Joanna had decided to take a short leave from her nursing position on Mantilles and book passage to Earth so that she could be here for her father’s party. She had been scheduled to arrive two days ago, but had missed a connection with a civilian transport traveling out of Dramia II. She’d subsequently made other arrangements, but her new arrival time had been after Barrows had left this morning to meet Leonard. Obviously nothing else had gone wrong and Joanna had managed to get here prior to the party.

  Over Joanna’s shoulder, Barrows saw tears in Leonard’s eyes. “Oh, honey,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re here.” Spontaneously, all of the guests began to applaud.

  The party lasted well into the night, filled with good food and good cheer, stories and laughter, music and dancing. Admiral Kirk—Barrows still found it difficult to call him “Jim,” though he’d asked her to—and Antonia left last, despite that they didn’t intend to stay in San Francisco, but to travel back to Idaho. They departed after midnight, leaving Barrows alone with Leonard and Joanna. The three of them talked for another hour, until Barrows said, “Since you two show no signs of being tired, I’m going to let you have some time to yourselves.” She told Leonard that she didn’t know if he planned on taking Joanna back to his place in Potrero Hill tonight, but that she’d made up the guest room for his daughter if she wanted it.

  “We’ll stay here tonight,” Leonard said. “I’ll probably be in before too long.”

  Barrows bade them good night and went into her room. Though she felt drained, she found herself lying awake in bed, reliving the excitement and joy of the day. Occasionally, the lilt of Joanna’s laughter would reach her from the living room, and once or twice, she heard
the deeper tone of Leonard’s voice, though she could not make out his words.

  In the darkness, Barrows smiled widely. She didn’t know if she’d ever been happier.

  McCoy held the door open for Tonia, then followed her out into the night. A bluster of cold air swept past and he pulled his jacket tight around his neck and dug his hands into his pockets. “Nothing like a summer night in San Francisco to cool you off,” he said. “It’s nights like this when I really miss Atlanta.”

  He caught up to Tonia as she pulled a pair of gloves from her coat pockets, obviously prepared for the weather. “What was that old quote?” she said. “That the coldest winter anybody ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?” She slipped the gloves onto her slender hands.

  “No kidding,” McCoy said. “That one’s often misattributed to Mark Twain, but whoever said it, they sure knew what they were talking about.” As Tonia slipped her arm through Leonard’s, he asked, “So did we decide that we’re heading up to your place tonight?”

  “That was my plan,” she said.

  “It’s working out so far,” McCoy said as they started walking down the street in the direction of the monorail station. “Madame Chang’s was a good idea. We hadn’t been there in quite a while. The food is delicious.”

  “And,” Tonia said, squeezing his arm, “we had our first date there.”

  McCoy looked over at her. “Did we?” he said. He saw that the cold air had turned Tonia’s nose and cheeks bright red.

  “Well, we had our second first date at Madame Chang’s,” she said. “Our first first date was in the mess hall on the Enterprise.”

  “Now hold on,” McCoy said. “I thought our first date aboard the Enterprise was in the arboretum.” He recalled asking Tonia if she’d like to take a stroll with him through the botanical garden maintained on the ship for both scientific endeavors and the enjoyment of the crew.

  “That was later in the date,” Tonia said, speaking with absolute certainty. “But earlier, in the mess hall, I took a seat at a small table in the corner, and before I could even lift my fork off my tray, the gallant Doctor McCoy appeared and asked if I minded if he sat down with me.”

  “You call that a date?” McCoy said as they turned a corner. Up ahead, he could see the bright lights of the open-air monorail station. “All I wanted was a place to sit and enjoy my dinner,” he teased. He did remember that meal with Tonia, and also that he’d noticed her well before that. If he’d seen her in the mess hall and all of the other tables had been unoccupied, he probably still would’ve asked to sit with her.

  “Yes, well, you enjoyed your dinner because you had it with me,” Tonia said.

  “That I’m sure of,” McCoy said. “But as far as our second first date goes, if I remember correctly, we arrived at Madame Chang’s, and left, as colleagues. We didn’t kiss until you were on the way home.”

  “At the monorail station right there,” Tonia said, pointing ahead of them. “And you kissed me.”

  “Hmmm,” McCoy said, as though giving the matter some serious thought. “Are you sure that’s right? Are you sure you didn’t kiss me?”

  “Oh,” Tonia, said, slapping playfully at his arm. “You know what happened. You always want to kiss me.”

  “I’ll plead guilty to that,” McCoy said, stopping in his tracks and turning to face Tonia. He leaned in and softly touched his lips to hers. They kissed long and deeply.

  When they parted, Tonia looked up at him and fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Why, Doctor McCoy,” she said in a mock southern accent. “I do declare, I think I may be coming down with a case of the vapors.” She fanned herself with her gloved hand.

  “You know what I recommend for that, don’tcha, ma’am?” McCoy said, allowing his Georgia origins to color his own words.

  “Bed rest?” Tonia said.

  “Well, now,” McCoy said with a grin, “I sure wasn’t going to say nothing ’bout ‘rest.’ ”

  “Why, Doctor McCoy,” Tonia said. “You’re turning my head.”

  “That’s my plan,” he said. He held his arm out to her and she took it once more. “Shall we?” Tonia nodded, and they started on their way again.

  Two blocks later, they climbed the stairs to the monorail station. Several other people stood on the platform, including one poor soul in shirtsleeves wrapping his arms about himself. McCoy glanced up at the display and saw that the next monorail would arrive in five minutes.

  “Leonard,” Tonia said, extricating her arm from his and moving to stand in front of him. “We’ve been seeing each other for almost two years now,” she said quietly. McCoy looked at her and sensed that something had suddenly gone wrong.

  “Almost two years, that’s right,” he said, wondering what had happened, wondering what transition he had missed.

  “It began right here on this spot,” Tonia said, pointing with both hands down at the platform. “You kissed me right here, and since then, you’ve come to mean a great deal to me.” She gazed up at him, and he actually saw the crescent of the moon reflected in her eyes. “You’re a wonderful physician and a brilliant researcher, you’re a kind, compassionate man. You make me smile and laugh, you comfort me when I need it, you enjoy life with me, you make life more enjoyable for me. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” McCoy said.

  Strangely, Tonia started taking the gloves from her hands. “You’re my colleague and my friend and my lover,” she said, then reached into her jacket pocket and lowered herself down to one knee. McCoy still didn’t realize what she was doing even as she pulled out a jeweled ring and held it up before her. “Now, Leonard,” Tonia said, “will you be my husband?”

  Forty

  1944

  Static burst from the radio and Phil adjusted the dial. “There must be a storm nearby,” he said as he tried to tune in the evening news program. Over on the davenport, Lynn nodded, and in one of the tub chairs, so did Len.

  This had become their ritual. Most nights, the three would gather at the end of the day, sometimes at Len’s, but most times at Phil and Lynn’s, and listen to reports from Europe and the Pacific about the war. A lot of folks in town did the same thing, Phil knew.

  As he worked the radio dial, trying to find the setting of least interference, he fought his ever-increasing despair. During the difficult days of the 1930s, when the country had faced economic depression, widespread unemployment, and a terrible drought throughout the middle west, people had rallied around the idea that the United States needed to isolate itself from the hostilities breaking out in the rest of the world. The memories of several hundred thousand American casualties in the Great War—among thirty-seven million casualties worldwide—remained strong. During the last decade, rolls in pacifist movements had swelled and popular opinion had regarded the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as natural barriers that would allow the nation to keep itself safe by not getting involved.

  At the time, Phil hadn’t thought much about it—he and Lynn had their own problems to deal with here in Hayden—but when he had, it had sounded good to him. He’d barely avoided the draft himself during the Great War, too young by only a few months, but his brother, older by four years, had come back from Europe missing three fingers on his right hand, and his cousin Billy hadn’t come back at all. Now, though, as they listened each day to reports of the Axis powers roaring through country after country in Europe and across the Pacific, Phil had begun to wonder how safe the United States would continue to be. He also thought about the people in those conquered nations, many of them simple farmers and mill workers like Lynn and himself. The more he’d thought about it, the more it had driven down his mood.

  A voice emerged from the radio and then faded back into cracks and hisses. Phil shifted the radio around on its little table, then moved the table itself around. Finally, the voice returned, still wrapped in interference, but they could hear it clearly enough.

  Phil waited for a few seconds to make sure of the reception, then walked over to the davenport
and sat beside Lynn. She reached over and took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. They listened in silence as an announcer proclaimed the health and beauty benefits of Palmolive soap, and after that, the strength of new Ajax cleanser. At last, the nightly program News Here and Abroad began.

  The reports could not have been worse.

  After years of battle, the United Kingdom had finally and completely fallen, taking with it the last real hope for success against Germany and Italy and the totalitarian regimes that supported them. Today, Nazi soldiers had descended on London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Dublin, and other sites in the British Isles, occupying forces that met little resistance after the English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish peoples had been bombarded in recent months by Germany’s V-2 rockets.

  But the bad news didn’t stop there. In Russia, Leningrad threatened to fall too as the Nazi bombs rained down on the city, unstoppable. And in the Pacific, Japan, already occupying New Zealand, had completed takeovers of the Australian cities of Brisbane and Sydney, and now lay siege to Melbourne and the country’s capital, Canberra.

  Phil and Lynn and Len didn’t speak throughout the entire broadcast. When the program had ended—followed by a sickeningly upbeat ad for a soft drink—Phil crossed the parlor and turned off the radio. He stood there, not saying anything, as he considered what he’d just heard. Five years ago, when Germany had invaded Poland, the fighting had seemed so far away, but now felt like a noose tightening about the nation’s neck. With all of Asia and Europe under Axis control, with Australia and northern Africa obviously next to follow, what would come after that? Would Germany and Italy and Japan and their allies be satisfied with what they had taken, or would they set their sights on North and South America?

  “They’re coming here next,” Phil said.

  “I fear you’re right,” Len said. “It might not happen tomorrow or the next day, but Hitler wants to conquer the world.”