Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

Which makes appear the songs I made

  As echoes out of weaker times,

  As half but idle brawling rhymes,

  The sport of random sun and shade.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson,

  In Memoriam A.H.H.,

  “O true and tried”

  Fifty-Three

  2293

  As they approached the property, set amid crops of cornstalks that rose two and a half meters above the soil, Spock peered at the farmhouse and didn’t know what to think. The one-story building sat approximately twenty-five meters away, set off from the dirt road by a spread of green grass. A pair of very tall trees rose in front of the house, and as a breeze stirred their five-lobed, palmate leaves, flickers of red-orange light showed through them, the setting sun reflecting off of solar panels lining the roof.

  Why am I here? Spock asked himself, and even if he didn’t know what to think right now, at least he could answer that question: because Dr. McCoy had invited him to come here. After this morning’s memorial services for Captain Kirk on the Starfleet Academy campus—at which Spock and McCoy and many others had spoken—the doctor and the rest of the Enterprise’s longtime command crew—Captains Scott and Sulu, and Commanders Uhura and Chekov—had gathered at what had been Jim’s apartment. There, as executor of the captain’s estate, Dr. McCoy had given to each of those assembled special gifts that Jim had left for each of them. From his friend, Spock had received a trio of centuries-old hardcover volumes: The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, by Diogenes Laërtius, which included a section on Zeno, generally considered the father of Stoic philosophy on Earth; Aristotle’s Organon, a collection of his six seminal treatises on logic; and an anthology of poetry.

  During the many years of their friendship, Spock had on several occasions made gifts of various written works to the captain, who often had inquired whether Spock had intended any message by his selection of those works. In this case, he thought he understood the significance of Jim’s bequeathal: the Zeno and logic texts spoke to Spock’s stoical Vulcan nature, and the poetry to his emotional human side. Collectively, the books appeared to indicate Jim’s appreciation for both aspects of his friend’s personality, and possibly to underscore the comfort Spock had gained over time with his dual character—a comfort that he at the moment no longer felt.

  Spock and McCoy stopped walking as they reached the property, then simply stood quietly regarding the land and the structure on it. The doctor had not immediately identified this place when he had asked Spock to come here. After the former Enterprise crewmates had spent the afternoon at Jim’s apartment reminiscing about their fallen comrade—during which time Spock had largely remained quiet—McCoy had suggested that the two of them take a walk together. Spock had been reluctant at first, but had relented when it had become apparent that something troubled the doctor—perhaps even something besides Jim’s death.

  To his surprise, though, they had not simply taken their walk in the captain’s Russian Hill neighborhood. Instead, McCoy had led him to a nearby transporter station, where the two had beamed to Riverside, Iowa—a place Spock had never visited, but which he knew to be Jim’s birthplace. The doctor had secured an airpod and had programmed it to bring them here, where it had set down at the periphery of the farm. As they’d walked down the road, McCoy had explained that this had been Jim’s childhood home, and he’d talked about their lost friend, remembering him through their shared experiences. He’d spoken irreverently of some events—such as when a malfunction had caused the Enterprise’s main computer to perpetrate practical jokes on the crew—and seriously of others—such as when the captain had stood court-martial for his apparent negligence in causing the apparent—and ultimately falsified—death of the ship’s records officer. Spock had commented when necessary, but had mostly kept silent.

  “I’ve never been here,” McCoy said now, standing in the road and gazing at the house that had once been the residence of the Kirk family. “And I take it that you haven’t either.”

  “No, I have not,” Spock said. “Doctor, it is unclear to me why you have chosen to come here now, and why you have chosen to bring me along.”

  “I’m not really sure myself,” McCoy said, looking over at him. “I found this address when I was cataloguing Jim’s belongings in order to deal with his estate. I guess I thought that coming here might…I don’t know…might somehow bring us closer to Jim.”

  “That is not logical,” Spock said, and before the doctor could protest, added, “but I do understand the sentiment.” In fact, he understood more than he wished to. Jim’s death had not only impacted him emotionally, but it had once more called into question some of the decisions Spock had made in his life—decisions which had adversely impacted the captain. The pain Spock now attempted to suppress, and the guilt that exacerbated that pain, continued to cause him debilitating distress.

  “It occurred to me that our visit here would be our own little memorial to Jim,” McCoy said. “There’s something sort of heroic and melancholic about it. Since Jim was nothing if not a romantic, I think he would’ve appreciated the gesture.”

  “Indeed,” Spock said, agreeing about Jim’s temperament and pushing away his familiarity with it at the same time. He and McCoy stood without speaking for a while, and then Spock asked, “Do you intend to do more than this?”

  “What do you mean?” McCoy said.

  “Do you, for example, plan to ask whoever resides here now if they will permit you to go inside the house?”

  “No,” McCoy said. “No, I don’t think so. This is sufficient, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I concur,” Spock said.

  Together, they started back down the road toward the airpod, both of them quiet once more. About them, the light of day faded toward darkness as the sun set. Eventually, McCoy broke the silence. “To tell you the truth, Spock, I did intend to do more than simply see this place,” he said. “I wanted to talk with you about a problem I’ve been having.”

  “I perceived that something in addition to the captain’s death troubled you,” Spock said.

  “I’ve been having some very unsettling dreams,” McCoy said. “Dreams about me dying.”

  Spock considered this. “I would suggest that such a reaction to the death of a close friend is not uncommon,” he said, even as he realized that the doctor must know that himself.

  “You’re right, Spock, but I’ve been having these dreams since before Jim died,” McCoy said. “I’ve experienced these death dreams since…well, since the fal-tor-pan.”

  “The ancient ritual,” Spock said. The dangerous procedure had been utilized by High Priestess T’Lar to remove his katra from Dr. McCoy’s brain and re-fuse it with Spock’s own. Yes, he thought as the fog of vague remembrance drifted through his consciousness. He pored through a swirl of shapes and colors from that experience and saw shifting scenes of his friends mourning at what he understood to be a memorial service held for him in the Enterprise’s torpedo room, his corpse interred in a weapons casing. Mingling with the images of that event came those of another, with humans Spock did not recognize grieving at another funeral, the deceased in a closed coffin beside a waiting grave, in what appeared to be a rural setting. He did not know if the second set of dim visualizations represented McCoy’s death, or if it corresponded to the dreams about which the doctor spoke. “Have you sought counseling?” Spock asked.

  “I haven’t,” McCoy said. “I haven’t really wanted to because I don’t think that would help.”

  “But if these dreams are disturbing to you,” Spock said, “would it not be appropriate to seek the services of a mental-health professional?”

  “It would be if these were merely dreams,” McCoy said. “But I think that they’re memories.”

  “I do not understand,” Spock said. “How can you have a memory of an occurrence—your own death—that has not yet happened? Unless you refer to the incident on the planet in the Omicron Delta region, when the knight on hor
seback attacked you with a lance.” At the time of that assault, McCoy’s heart had been damaged and had stopped beating.

  “Sometimes I dream of that incident, but I understand that, and it’s not really what I’m talking about,” McCoy said. “Sometimes it’s a wounded man stabbing me. Recently, though, I mostly see a funeral in a cemetery, and I have the feeling that my dead body is in the casket.”

  “But why would you categorize your own funeral as a memory?” Spock asked. “Clearly that has never happened, nor if it had, would you be able to recall it.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” McCoy said. “I suspect that you can remember your memorial service aboard the Enterprise.”

  “Yes,” Spock said. “But those were singular circumstances. With my katra held within you, and you perceiving the memorial service, ultimately those memories were transferred to me via the re-fusion. Surely nothing like that pertains to what you are experiencing.”

  “No,” McCoy agreed. They stopped walking as they reached the airpod. The small, two-person craft stood barely taller than Spock himself. “But I began having nightmares more than twenty-five years ago. For a long time, they filled me with dread, but the images I perceived remained indistinct, out of focus, and they didn’t seem to be about my death. After the fal-tor-pan, though, they became clearer, enough for me to make out the images I described.”

  The longevity of the doctor’s dream troubles surprised Spock. “Do you know precisely when you began experiencing these nightmares?” he asked.

  “I do,” McCoy said. Before continuing, he looked around, then said, “We should get back. It’s getting dark.” He reached toward the airpod and pressed the glossy green control set into the hull. The gull-wing door in the side of the craft swiveled open, and the doctor ducked into the dark interior. Spock followed, touching one button that closed the hatch, and another that activated the overhead lighting panel.

  Once they had both taken the airpod’s only two seats, the doctor went on. “I started having these dreams immediately after you and Jim brought me back from the past through the Guardian of Forever.”

  “Am I to take it that you believe that there is a direct correlation between the two?” Spock asked.

  “Yes,” McCoy said. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, his arms akimbo. “Spock, when I first went back in time through the Guardian, before you and Jim followed me, your present changed, indicating that I had somehow altered history.” The doctor seemed to invite a response with his statement.

  “That is correct,” Spock confirmed.

  “And once you and Jim traveled back to 1930 Earth,” McCoy said, “you determined that the way I had altered history was by preventing the death of Edith Keeler.”

  Spock had a physical reaction to the name, a sudden discomfort he understood had been brought about by the guilt newly reawakened within him after Jim’s death. For the doctor’s sake—and perhaps for his own—he refused to give it any thought right now. Instead, he said, “Again, your description of events is accurate.”

  McCoy straightened and sat back in his chair. “But does that mean that, after I kept Miss Keeler from dying,” he asked, “I then lived out the rest of my life on Earth, three hundred years ago?”

  Spock arched an eyebrow. He had never given the matter any thought. “Presumably so,” he said now. “But because of the actions the captain and I subsequently took, that timeline no longer exists.” Again, Spock felt regret as he pictured Edith Keeler dying in the street.

  “But it did exist,” McCoy said. “And I think I remember some of it. Or at least I have these impressions, these visions of incidents that have never happened in my own life, here and now, in our timeline.”

  “Indeed,” Spock said. “What you describe, though—impressions of events that never occurred—does that not adequately express the nature of dreams?”

  “I suppose so,” McCoy said. “I know this is hardly scientific, Spock, but my dreams simply don’t feel like dreams; they feel like memories.”

  “Doctor,” Spock said, “how would it be possible for you to recall the events of a life that you did not live?”

  “I don’t know,” McCoy said. He turned away from Spock and toward the front of the airpod. Spock followed his gaze, past their shallow reflections on the window, and saw the dirt road down which the two of them had walked, the rows upon rows of cornstalks on either side growing indistinguishable in the waning light. “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe these are just dreams,” McCoy said. “But let’s assume for a moment that they’re not, that they are memories of that other life I lived. Nobody ever really learned much about the Guardian of Forever or how it operated. Maybe the way it sent me through time is responsible for what I’m experiencing. Or maybe that other timeline does still exist somewhere, in some other reality, and I’m somehow connected to it subconsciously.” As much as Spock doubted those scenarios, neither could he completely discount them. “If I am remembering that other life, then I’m worried that I’m also remembering my death in that timeline.”

  Spock thought of the tableau he had earlier recalled and believed that the doctor must have been its source, the images transferred between them during the fal-tor-pan. “Even if you are remembering your alternate life,” he asked, “how could you witness your own funeral?” It occurred to Spock that perhaps the doctor had seen somebody else’s funeral and now errantly believed it to be his own.

  “I don’t know,” McCoy said, “but I have the terrible feeling that I died prematurely. Maybe I was stabbed to death, but I find myself more and more concerned that I died from some disease or condition.” McCoy turned from the window to face Spock, an expression of dread on his face. “I get regular Starfleet physicals and nothing has shown up, but I’m plagued by this horrible uncertainty. If I can, I just want to make sure that whatever happened to me in the other timeline won’t happen to me here. I came to you, Spock, because I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “I see,” he said. Logical or not, reasonable or not, McCoy’s fears were real, and Spock wanted to aid his friend however he could. But how? he asked himself, and he thought that perhaps he had a solution after all. “Would it suffice, then, for you to know the cause of your death in the other timeline?”

  “Yes, I think it would,” McCoy said.

  “Such information may exist and may be accessible,” Spock said. “I took tricorder readings of the Guardian while it displayed both our own, unaltered timeline, and the altered timeline caused by your saving Edith Keeler. Those recorded readings may still exist.”

  “They ‘may’ still exist?” McCoy said.

  “It is my understanding that the original recordings were stored at the Einstein research facility,” Spock said. He did not have to tell the doctor that Station Einstein had been destroyed during the battle that the crews of the Minerva, the Clemson, and the Enterprise had waged to prevent the Klingons from gaining control of the Guardian. “It would seem likely, though, that Starfleet would have kept at least one other copy of those recordings in a separate location.”

  “Do you think they’ll allow me to review them?” McCoy asked.

  “Considering that you took part in those events and that you have a high security clearance,” Spock reasoned, “I believe they will.”

  “Who do you think I should approach about it?” McCoy wanted to know.

  “I believe that copies of those tricorder readings would probably fall under the aegis of Starfleet Intelligence,” Spock said. “I’m aware of at least one officer within that organization that you know quite well.”

  “Uhura,” McCoy said.

  “Commander Uhura,” Spock said.

  McCoy offered Spock a thin but seemingly genuine smile. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” Spock said. He turned his attention to the airpod’s control panel, which he then programmed to take them back to Riverside. They arrived there in short order, where they made their way to a transporter station. From there, Dr. McCoy t
ransported home to Atlanta and Spock to San Francisco.

  In his apartment, Spock for a time continued to consider the doctor’s dilemma, curious about what McCoy would find if he was able to review the tricorder readings taken at the Guardian of Forever. After a time, though, Spock could no longer keep his own problems at bay. For while Dr. McCoy had been experiencing troubling dreams, so too had Spock, though his had begun only after Jim’s death. Despite the relative newness of those dreams, though, they threatened to undermine the balance between logic and emotion that Spock had finally found in his life.

  And the time had come for him to do something about it.

  The third turbolift zoomed down the shaft, a high-pitched whine accompanying its rapid descent. The car brought McCoy deeper and deeper below the planet’s surface, and through what he hoped would be the final leg of Memory Apsû’s security gauntlet. Ill at ease from a mixture of anxiety and anticipation, he looked forward to unearthing the information he sought and returning home to Atlanta—with, he hoped, a resolution to his concerns.

  After traveling with Spock to Riverside, Iowa, and learning of the possible existence of records relating to the “other” life he believed that he—or some version of him—had lived in an alternate timeline, McCoy had contacted Uhura, seeking to meet with her. They’d scheduled an appointment so that she could provide her undivided attention, and three days later, he’d traveled to Moskva, Russia, to her office at Starfleet Intelligence Headquarters in Lubyanka Square. There, he explained to Uhura what troubled him and requested access to the records of the Enterprise crew’s first encounter with the Guardian of Forever—specifically to the readings of the altered and unaltered timelines that Spock had taken. At the time of their meeting, Uhura had no idea whether copies of those now-lost original records had been made, or if they had, if McCoy would be permitted access to them. But the commander had promised to find out all she could, and if the information McCoy needed did exist, then she pledged to do everything she could to obtain authorization for him to see it.