Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  McCoy had gone back home, finishing his leave and beginning his new research position at Starfleet Medical. Among other projects upon which he hoped to embark, he counted the continuing study of the Fabrini medical database and the eventual completion of his text on comparative alien physiology. He didn’t hear from Uhura for ten days.

  When finally the commander did contact him, she could tell him only that she’d confirmed the existence of a copy of the tricorder readings he wished to review. She had yet to determine where Starfleet Intelligence held those records, or what access to them they allowed. She also confided her belief that, had McCoy gone through “proper channels” in his quest to find and examine this information, he more likely than not would have found himself stymied in his efforts.

  Three weeks later, Uhura reached him with a request that he return to her office in Lubyanka Square. He did, and there she gave him the news that she had located a copy of Spock’s tricorder readings in a secret, high-security repository named Memory Apsû. Located on Colony Alpha V, the facility—as well as the information it housed—normally remained off-limits to all but upper-echelon Intelligence personnel. Uhura, though, had obtained special dispensation for McCoy to visit the data warehouse, subject to specific and very strict regulations.

  Now, the sound of the turbolift changed as it decelerated. When finally it came to a stop, the single-paneled door swept open with a loud squeak to reveal a high-ceilinged chamber. Security guards stood at the ready within, and a uniformed Starfleet officer sat behind a tall desk directly ahead. A door that appeared to be the room’s only other exit stood closed behind her. The air smelled stale.

  McCoy stepped forward, a bit disconcerted to see that the guards had drawn their weapons. As he had at each of the three previous checkpoints, McCoy identified himself, presented his encoded ID, and submitted to hand and retina scans. The officer, a nondescript Ilyran woman who identified herself implausibly but expectedly as Commander Delta—the officers in charge at the other checkpoints had distinguished themselves as Commanders Alpha, Beta, and Gamma—detailed for him the strictures of his visit to Memory Apsû. Consent had been granted for McCoy to enter the facility precisely one time, and to remain there for no more than twenty-four hours. He would be given the means to search through only the indexed information recorded by Spock during their first encounter with the Guardian of Forever. None of that data could be transcribed in any way, and because all of it remained highly classified, he could never speak to anybody of what he learned.

  Finally, Commander Delta asked McCoy to wait while she summoned an escort for him. A moment later, the door behind the desk opened, revealing a long corridor beyond, from which another Starfleet officer emerged. The Tellarite predictably called himself Commander Epsilon and told McCoy to follow him.

  Along both sides of the corridor stood numerous doors, all with control panels set into the walls beside them, but none of them labeled in any way that McCoy could see. Above the fifth door on the left, though, a small light blinked yellow. Commander Epsilon took him there, worked the controls, then removed a small cylindrical device from a pocket and slipped it into a tiny slot. After requiring McCoy to submit to one more set of hand and retina scans, the door opened into another long corridor, this one completely featureless beyond the overhead lighting panels. The Tellarite commander led the way inside, turning to the right around a corner when they reached it. At the end of yet another corridor, at which Epsilon worked another control panel, a final door led into a small, plain room. Inside, McCoy saw only a single wall-mounted workstation, a chair, a built-in bunk, and an open door that led to a refresher.

  “Once this door closes,” Epsilon said, indicating the entryway through which they had just passed, “you will have twenty-four hours before you will have to vacate the facility. If you should have questions or wish to leave before then, you can use the intercom on the console.”

  “Thank you,” McCoy said.

  He didn’t expect a response—everybody he’d encountered here had been quite laconic—but the commander actually said, “You’re welcome, Doctor McCoy.” He then spun crisply on his heel and departed, the door whisking closed after him.

  McCoy crossed the narrow room and sat down at the workstation. On the display, he saw the names of two data files, and a heading above them that indicated their mutual source. According to the descriptive information, both files had been gathered twenty-six years earlier, by the first officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, on a planet whose designation and spatial coordinates had been redacted. The names of the data files themselves contained no useful information, called simply TIMELINE 1 and TIMELINE 2.

  After examining the basic controls of the workstation, McCoy accessed the first of the two files and executed a search for the name Edith Keeler. The display filled at once with a list of entries. McCoy scrolled down through additional screens, finding scores of references. Many had calendrical designations beside them, and so he refined his search by looking for entries dated on or after 1 January 1930. The list shortened considerably, and McCoy opened one of the latest, from March 1930, entitled SLUM AREA WORKER KILLED. In a newspaper, beneath a small photograph of Miss Keeler, he read the first few sentences of the accompanying article.

  New York, NY—Last night, social worker Edith Keeler was killed in a traffic accident on 21st Street. Miss Keeler, a social worker who ran a soup kitchen in that section of the city, was struck by a delivery truck while she was crossing the street. Eyewitnesses say that the truck skidded to a stop and did not run over the victim, but that she was thrown to the ground and struck her head. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

  Based upon the article, and since McCoy had traveled back in time through the Guardian to March 1930, he assumed that the file dubbed TIMELINE 1 therefore corresponded to Earth’s unaltered history. He closed it and opened the second file, in which he initiated a search for Leonard McCoy. Once more, the display filled with entries, and a tally at the top right corner of the screen indicated that they numbered in the thousands. As he peered through the list, he could see right away that some seemed unlikely to refer to him, but with many others, he could not tell. He examined the contents of the first few entries, finding birth and death certificates, driver’s licenses, police and hospital records, marriage licenses, newspaper articles, and numerous other pieces of information, but none seeming to relate to him. Apparently Leonard McCoy had not been an uncommon name in America during the twentieth century.

  McCoy attempted several other searches, employing the strings Leonard H. McCoy, Leonard Horatio McCoy, L.H. McCoy, and other variations. He found fewer entries, but again, none that appeared to have anything to do with him. Having little choice and not wanting to overlook anything, he decided to return to the longer list, through which he began hunting one entry at a time. Ninety minutes later, he found a short item in a New York City newspaper, The Star Dispatch.

  Looking for James T. Kirk. Contact Leonard McCoy. 21st Street Mission, New York City. March 1930.

  He stared at the image of the newspaper page, a strong sense of familiarity washing over him. He understood at once what he had done in this other life, in this other timeline, placing information in public documents in the hopes that they would survive to the twenty-third century, pointing the way so that Jim could find him and bring him back home. McCoy could almost recall actually doing so, could almost remember sitting down and writing the words now showing on the display before him…but not quite. Closing his eyes, he concentrated, trying to dredge up a memory not exactly his own and not exactly somebody else’s. Like an elusive word on the tip of his tongue, it evaded him, maddeningly.

  Opening his eyes, he checked the date of the newspaper and saw that it had been published on 22 February 1931. That likely confirmed that he had lived on Earth for almost a year after traveling back in time, though he supposed that he could’ve arranged for the newspaper item in advance. Quickly, McCoy blanked the display and started another search of the fi
le, this time for the terms James T. Kirk and Leonard McCoy. The screen again filled, and the tally indicated that hundreds of entries had been found. McCoy began looking through them and saw in each the same few lines of text as in The Star Dispatch item, though sometimes in different languages. None had dates earlier than April 1930, and none later than March 1932.

  What happened then? McCoy thought. Had he died after spending just two years in the past, at the age of forty-two? If so, then it seemed to him that the fears that had brought him here, to Memory Apsû, were unfounded. Even if he’d died in that other timeline of natural causes, he’d survived those causes in this timeline; on his next birthday, he would turn sixty-seven.

  Feeling a little better but not completely satisfied about his conclusions, McCoy went back to his original search results and continued looking through them. After a while, it occurred to him to search for his name along with the terms Doctor or Dr. or Physician. He did so, and fewer than fifty entries were returned this time. He began opening them one by one.

  In the ninth entry, he found a front-page newspaper article in the Greenville Journal Gazette, dated 8 September 1955 and headlined NAZI PLANE SHOT DOWN IN UPCOUNTRY. Below, a subheading read GUNNER KILLS TOWN DOCTOR. McCoy started to read.

  Hayden, SC—Yesterday in the small upcountry town of Hayden, west of Greenville, a German Messerschmitt fighter plane was shot down by American forces as they pursued a squadron of twenty Axis aircraft. Military sources believe that the enemy planes were brought to the United States on the aircraft carrier KMS Seydlitz, from which they flew to one of the many deserted regions of Georgia. It is not known at the current time how many Nazi aircraft are in the American South, but thirteen of the twenty planes discovered yesterday were shot from the sky, most of them in Tennessee, and the remaining seven were forced to land and the airmen aboard captured.

  The German plane shot down in Hayden crashed in a cotton field, killing the pilot and seriously wounding the gunner. A local doctor, Leonard McCoy, attempted to treat the injured German, but the airman stabbed him twice, killing him. Dr. McCoy, 65, is survived by his wife of one year, Lynn—

  Lynn!

  McCoy shot to his feet, toppling the chair in which he’d been sitting. Lynn! he thought again. Lynn Dickinson.

  Lynn McCoy.

  Memory rushed at him, the mass of previously unknown years bearing down on him like an avalanche, threatening to bury him with the sheer weight of their existence. He staggered backwards, his legs tangling with those of the chair, and he fell down hard onto the floor. He heard himself grunt as he struck the solid surface, landing on his right shoulder. Rolling onto his back, he looked up at the workstation display. “Lynn,” he said aloud, his voice filled with more emotions than he could name.

  The room around him faded from view, replaced by the visions of lost remembrances. He saw Lynn in her wide straw hat, waving to him from beside her house—her and Phil’s house!—as he walked up the road. He saw her walking down the steps of the church, saw her walking through the town commons. Saw her opening a present in the parlor.

  And he saw other people and other places too. Gregg Anderson sweeping up at the Seed and Feed. Turner Robinson selling him a newspaper at the General Store. Bo Bartell preparing to shoot Benny Russell out on Church Street.

  And he saw still other people, other places. Danny Johnson choking, needing an emergency tracheotomy down at the mill. Doc Lyles unresponsive to cardiopulmonary resuscitation, dead on the floor of his office. Phil Dickinson standing in line to go to war, and then his casket waiting to be placed in the ground.

  And through it all, one constant: Lynn Dickinson. She appeared in his mind’s eye as though she stood here in this underground room on Colony V. Her slender, fit figure, the large auburn curls of her hair, her striking blue eyes, her elegant facial features: high cheekbones, full lips—

  My god! McCoy thought. She looked liked Natira. Or Natira looked like her. The sequence of the events of his life—of his lives—seemed impossible to reconcile. But he remembered clearly that moment when he had first seen Natira on the surface of Yonada, how he’d frozen, feeling some nonexistent familiarity with her.

  Except maybe not so nonexistent after all, he thought now.

  McCoy pushed himself up from the floor, righted his chair, and sat back down before the workstation. Rather than looking at the display again, though, he tried to sort through the profusion of memories vying for his attention. The scene of the downed German airplane out in the field blossomed in his thoughts as though it had always been there, capable of being recalled with the slightest effort.

  I tried to help him, he thought, seeing himself reach into the rear seat of the broken fuselage. I tried to help him and he killed me. Disturbing though it was to suddenly remember a knife being plunged into his heart, it also meant that his fears that he’d died prematurely of some natural cause in that other timeline were unfounded. Any concern he’d had that some disease or condition had struck him down in the twentieth century and would therefore do the same in the twenty-third century now vanished.

  I wanted to treat his wounds, McCoy thought again of the German airman, seeing the scene in his mind once more. He dimly recalled a loud report, and then another, and screams too—

  Lynn, he thought. She’d been there and seen him get stabbed.

  Lynn Dickinson.

  Lynn McCoy.

  We got married, he thought, picturing her in her wedding gown, amazed. He’d sworn that he would never marry again. More than that, he knew that he’d never marry. He simply didn’t have it in him—hadn’t even really had it in him when he’d married Jocelyn, and certainly not when he’d fled from Tonia’s proposal.

  Then why—? McCoy wondered, but then he knew, the massive collection of knowledge of his other life magically opening up to him as he thought about it. He could feel Lynn holding him in her arms, and asking, “Is that why you left those other women?” Asking him, “Was it because you wanted to leave them before they left you, just as your parents left you?”

  “My parents didn’t leave me,” he’d told her.

  “They did, Leonard,” Lynn had insisted. “They didn’t want to, but they did. They died and abandoned you.”

  Now other memories—real memories, of this life—and the guilt they carried came hurtling down on him. He’d killed his mother, he’d killed his father. Alone deep in the Memory Apsû complex, he groaned as though he’d been struck. He stood up again, slowly this time. “I can’t deal with this,” he said aloud, and that fast, he recognized the theme that had informed all his days. Once, for a short time, Sybok had taken away some of his pain, had allowed him to see a glimmer of possibility, but it had only been one portion of his agony, and the rest of it had soon reasserted itself. Even partially relieved of his guilt, he hadn’t been able to move forward, so how could he possibly do so now?

  “I cannot deal with this,” he said again, and he closed his eyes. When too many unwelcome images appeared, he opened his eyes and peered instead at the workstation monitor. McCoy took a long, deep breath, and then another. He focused on why he’d come here, thinking that he should read through the rest of the entries he’d found in the altered timeline, but then realized that he had no more reason to do so.

  Leaning heavily on the workstation, McCoy blanked the screen, then looked for the intercom. When he found it, he activated it with a touch. “This is Doctor McCoy,” he said.

  “Yes, Doctor,” came the response. “This is Commander Epsilon.”

  “I’ve finished my research,” McCoy said. “I’m ready to leave.”

  “Very well, Doctor,” Epsilon said. “I will be there shortly to escort you from the facility. Epsilon out.”

  McCoy closed the channel, then sat back down and turned toward the door to wait. He endeavored not to think about anything at all, concentrating instead on his surroundings. But by degrees, the anguish of the loss of his parents reasserted itself. From virtually the moment he’d been born, that
sense of abandonment had been there, certainly from the first conscious memories he retained. The death of his father had only reinforced that, and he now realized that so had the romantic losses of Jocelyn and Nancy and Natira and Tonia, despite that he’d been responsible himself for those breakups.

  McCoy sat slumped in the chair, defeated, resolved to his guilt and loneliness. He knew that he could never sustain love in the face of his terrible fears. It had always been this way, and it always would be.

  Except—

  The door panel opened to show Commander Epsilon standing in the corridor beyond it. “Are you ready, Doctor?” the Tellarite said.

  “I am,” McCoy replied as he got to his feet. He started for the door, following the commander back out to the turbolift. As McCoy rose through the Memory Apsû complex, heading for the surface and a voyage back to Earth, one thought began to assert itself in his mind. For all of his pain, for all of his guilt, for all of the losses—self-inflicted and not—that he’d suffered in his life—in his lives—Lynn Dickinson had somehow helped him make peace with his demons.

  The question was, could he do it again?

  Fifty-Four

  2294/2299

  For some reason, she couldn’t get her hair to do what she wanted it to do. “I should never have grown it long again,” Barrows scolded herself as she attempted again to style the waves of her shoulder-length locks. She glanced at her silver and gold wristwatch—a gift from her aunt—and saw that Ricardo wouldn’t be here for half an hour, so at least she still had time to tame her unruly mane.

  But three minutes later, the door signal chimed through her apartment. Her hair still not quite the way she wanted it, Barrows grunted in disgust—He’s early! she thought—then tapped at the button on the leftmost drawer of her vanity. It opened, and she hunted through it until she found a jar of styling gel. As quickly as she could, she twisted off the cap, dipped the tips of her fingers inside, and dabbed gingerly at her wild tresses.