Spock nodded. “Essentially correct, Doctor. It is still theoretically possible to divert this timestream back toward its original course. If we are very, very fortunate, we might yet succeed in creating a distant future where the Enterprise exists once more—for some other Spock, some other McCoy, some other James Kirk.”
McCoy instinctively looked to his captain, but all he saw in Jim’s face was the same bulldog resoluteness the man always showed when the going got toughest. Kirk put a hand on McCoy’s arm, the grip strong and sure. “The Guardian [11] gave us one chance, and we failed.” Spock started to say something, but Kirk shook his head sharply, cutting him off. “We. Both of us, Mister Spock.” His tone gentled. “I’m sorry, Bones. We’re trapped here, in this time, this place. We can try all we want to change our own future, but we’ll never know if we succeeded, and we’ll never get back to the Enterprise.”
Across a gray plain scattered with the ruins of a dead world, a steady wind mourned the lost millennia.
Uhura ran through the frequencies, as carefully as she had the first two times. She was excruciatingly aware of the three men’s eyes on her. At last, as she reached the top of the band again, one of them broke the tense silence.
“Anything?”
She looked up, trying not to let her despair get the better of her. “I’m sorry, Mister Scott. No response on any frequency.”
He met her eyes for a long moment. At last, straightening his shoulders as if to bear an unexpected weight, he nodded. “That’s it, then. We have to assume that the captain and Mister Spock have failed.”
Michael Jameson, security officer and ensign of only two months, had the look of a young man who was scared to death and trying not to show it. “How do we know if we’ve waited long enough? Maybe—”
Scott shook his head sharply. “No maybe about it, lad. When McCoy went through, the change was instantaneous. If they’d succeeded, the Enterprise would be up there right now.” He met their eyes in turn, weighing responsibility and choosing in the space of a few seconds. “The captain’s [12] orders were very clear.” His gaze settled at last on Uhura, whose courage was contagious. “I’ll go next, and I’ll take Ensign Jameson with me. Lieutenant Uhura, you’re to continue monitoring for fifteen minutes. If we don’t reappear in that time, then you and Ensign Worsley will try.”
Her gaze met his steadily, and Scott wished for a moment that he could take her with him. If they were to be exiles, then at least it might be exile shared with a friend. But she must know as well as he that splitting up the officers in the party would increase their chances if he, too, should fail.
She nodded, showing nothing but confidence. “Yes, sir. I understand.” She wanted to wish him luck, but it stuck in her throat, an unwelcome reminder of his words to Kirk only a few minutes before. “When you’re ready,” she said instead.
He turned to the youngest member of the landing party. “Ensign?”
“Ready, sir.” The young man’s voice betrayed him, but he stepped forward and locked his hand around Scott’s wrist. As the captain had not, they said no farewells.
“Time it for us, lass?”
She did, counting down for them, her eyes on the tiny display screen of her tricorder. In another moment, the four Enterprise crewmen were only two.
II
Kirk squinted at his handiwork. The leaky pipe seemed to have stopped dripping, so he put the tools away, dusted himself off, and went to find Edith.
As he climbed the steps to the second floor, he tried to make himself believe that tonight would be the night Spock [13] would finish, the night they would know for certain what to do. He tried to hope that they still had a chance. But they had been in the city almost a month, and Kirk’s confidence in Spock’s “river of time” theory was wearing thin. There had been no sign of McCoy.
He found the two of them conferring over a ledger in Edith’s office. The Vulcan straightened, seeing Kirk in the doorway. “Shall we continue in the morning, Miss Keeler?” At her bemused nod, Spock made himself scarce.
Kirk came into the room, moving to the narrow window that overlooked Twenty-first Street. Outside, the streetlamps were just coming on.
“He’s such an enigma,” Keeler said, coming to stand beside him.
Kirk had to smile. “He is that.”
“To you, too?”
“As long as I’ve known him.”
She folded her arms beneath her bosom and tilted her head, a self-conscious gesture that touched him with a little pang. It kept taking him by surprise, that feeling. “Have you known each other a long time, then?”
He realized it had been less than two years. “Not really. But we’ve been through a great deal together.”
“It shows. He worries about you, you know.”
“Why do you say that?” Kirk wasn’t used to anyone noticing that but him.
She turned to put away the ledgers. “Oh, just a feeling I get.” The questions she never asked were between them, filling quiet spaces. “Whatever you’re hiding from ... I feel better knowing you have him to look out for you,” she said seriously. “It eases my mind.”
[14] “Mine too,” he admitted.
And again, she didn’t ask, only smiled and came to put her hand into his. “Let me buy you dinner?”
As if they had ever gone to a restaurant, as if either of them could have afforded it. As if they were just a man and a woman who could share dinner and maybe a life together. As if.
He made himself answer her smile with one of his own. “What did you have in mind?”
He was just about to bring her hand to his lips when Spock reappeared in the doorway, wearing a look as troubled as any Kirk had ever seen on that impassive face.
The chief engineer of the Enterprise was with him.
An hour later found the four Starfleet officers gathered around the makeshift computer in the cramped one-room flat. The newcomers had been briefed on the situation, including the likelihood that Edith Keeler was the focal point in time they had been looking for. Spock and the engineer worked on the burned-out interface as they talked, installing the newly purchased replacement components.
Some whim of Fate had landed Scott and Jameson in the city three days before the arrival of Kirk and Spock. It had taken Scott a month to find them; he had been systematically searching the shelters and soup kitchens for McCoy, and tonight, it had paid off. Kirk was still finding the enormity of failure difficult to grasp. Every time he looked at Scotty or the Jameson boy, it hit him again what was at stake here, and how insignificant their chances really were. The fact that he’d overlooked something so stunningly obvious as searching the city’s soup kitchens brought home how easily failure could [15] come again. He couldn’t let himself think about the scope of it for too long, or he’d drive himself to distraction for sure.
Just then Scott looked up from the tangle of tubes and wires. His amazement at Spock’s synthesis of stone knives and bear skins had done a great deal to erase his obvious fatigue. “Captain, I’d not have believed this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
Kirk managed a grin for him. “Makes the case for Vulcan ingenuity, doesn’t it?”
“Aye. So you think I did right, leavin’ the other tricorder with Lieutenant Uhura?”
“Yes, I do, Scotty. Let’s just hope she doesn’t have to use it.” Kirk included young Jameson in his look. “Each one of us has got to be ready to act at any moment.”
Scott nodded, securing a last connection. “There, that’s got it. Are ye ready to give it a try, Mister Spock?”
“Affirmative. Captain, I believe we shall have our answer on this screen. ...”
The answer was plain enough, but two days later they were no closer to knowing when the moment would come. And so they waited, tension mounting by the day while, for Keeler’s benefit, they pretended business as usual. One of them remained in her presence as much as possible.
This afternoon Scott had stayed with her at the mission, ostensibly repairi
ng the cranky boiler, which was acting up again. He had helped design antimatter warp engines, but this was the first time he’d ever laid hands on a vintage 20C boiler, not to mention one with an attitude like this one. It was with no small satisfaction that he coaxed the old dinosaur back to life.
[16] Keeler appeared at the top of the stairs just as he was wiping his hands on a rag. “Well, well! It seems you’ve earned your right to the name ‘miracle worker.’ ”
“You flatter me, madam. But she seems to be obliging, for the moment.”
“You have my sincere thanks. And anything else I can offer you—which at the moment is a hot meal and not much else, I’m afraid.” She glanced at her watch, a small frown gathering on her face. “Have you seen our Mister Kirk, by any chance? I’d hoped we might make the seven o’clock show.”
He started up toward her, looking apologetic. “I havena seen him, nor Mister Spock.”
She sighed. “Well, I suppose they’ll turn up eventually.” A smile. “Don’t suppose you’d care to keep me company while I wait?”
Beaming, he reached the top of the stairs and offered his arm, which she took. “It would be my pleasure, lass.”
In the front room, she sat with him while he ate. He longed for a hot shower, but coal dust and grease would have to be scrubbed off. Hot water was not easy to come by. Self-conscious, he apologized for his appearance.
She scolded him. “I won’t have any of that, Mister Scott. You look just fine.”
He chuckled. “Aye, for a coal miner. I’m not fit to be seen with.”
“And here I was thinking chivalry was dead.”
“Never in the presence of a true lady, Miss Keeler.”
“Now I think you are flattering me, sir.”
He pretended outrage. “Not a bit of it.”
[17] She grinned ruefully. “I can see I’m going to have to watch my step around here. Between you and Doctor McCoy, a girl could easily—”
The spoon fell out of Scott’s hand with a clatter. “What did you say?”
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“McCoy!” He’d risen to his feet before he knew he’d done it. “Miss Keeler—where is he?”
She started to rise, too, expression bemused and questioning. “He’s upstairs, in the back room. But what—?”
Scott was temporarily frozen to the spot with uncertainty. How had this fallen to him? His eyes went to the front window. Across the street, the glow of a streetlamp and a gleam of fair hair caught his gaze. As if in answer to his panic, the captain and Mr. Spock were standing on the curb, waiting to cross.
Scott stumbled for the door, leaving a surprised Edith Keeler in his wake.
“Captain!” The door slammed back with the force of his exit.
On the opposite curb, Kirk’s head snapped up. “Scotty?” His voice was small over the rush-hour traffic.
“Doctor McCoy—he’s here!”
Shock flickered briefly over his captain’s face, then froze into grim determination as Kirk started toward him.
He never saw the truck. It came around the corner, too fast—and Spock, slow by seconds, was too late to shout a warning.
Spock is supremely aware of just how late he is. He perceives the rumble of the oncoming vehicle, the chaos of [18] sound and motion, the flash of red beside him, with perfect clarity. And then the woman’s scream.
Spock believes he has moved, or cried the name. But all he hears is that last, surprised intake of breath and then the other sound, the one he knows he will hear for all the rest of his life: the smack of steel impacting flesh and bone.
The truck roars past and skids with a screech of tires. Slides sideways and slams into a parked car not ten feet from where Edith Keeler stands, frozen, unable to scream again because her lungs and heart have seized in clenching horror. The car rocks against the curb, squealing. Strikes the pavement with a screech of metal on metal. The track shudders to a halt and then is still.
More brakes squealing, as cars stop to avoid the crumpled form in the middle of the street. Angry drivers shouting—but her gaze is riveted to James Kirk, fallen and not moving, his neck twisted at an angle she does not want to see, cannot bear to see—
The one called Spock kneels beside him, his face telling everything she needs to know. She turns away, the warning she cried too late cooling to ash in her throat. It is at that moment that Leonard McCoy appears in the doorway, in time only to witness the unraveling of all that he knows.
Too much blood—far too much. Spock knew before he saw the angle of the neck, but he knelt anyway. Hands reached out, seized the broken form, and pulled it into his lap. Were they his hands?
He saw the open eyes then, the absolute surprise.
“No—”
Spock doubled over, instinctively sheltering Kirk with [19] his body though it was all too clear that no one could protect him now. Faced with that truth, he made a second, wordless sound of denial, and hid his face against the dead man’s hair.
It seemed the longest fifteen minutes of Uhura’s life. She and Worsley watched history flicker like hypnotic dream images in the mist, both their communicator channels open, both sounding only silence. At the end of the designated waiting period, she scanned once more with her tricorder and ran through the whole band one last time.
There didn’t seem to be anything that needed to be said, so when she shook her head and held out her hand, the young Enterprise crewman took it wordlessly. In another moment, only footprints in the dust remained.
III
There’d been no work at the docks that morning. Kirk had let Edith convince him she needed more help at the mission, even though he knew that she could ill afford even the meager wage she paid him. But Spock needed five more meters of wire and a number of other bits and pieces, so he’d let himself be convinced. The downside was that after last night, after what Spock had shown him, he had found it nearly impossible to face her and smile as if everything were fine.
After the evening meal they walked as usual, but tonight the air felt pleasantly mild, and they didn’t stop at their usual corner. Tonight they kept going past Seventeenth Street and Sixteenth, and after a while she started to tell him about the neighborhood before the war, about ragtime in its heyday, [20] about Tin Pan Alley as it had been before the music and the glitter had moved north to Broadway.
Her voice sounded wistful, and he asked how long she had lived in Manhattan.
“Oh, since before the war. That reminds me—” She stopped under a streetlamp and patted her pockets, coming up with a soft bundle of fabric. “I almost forgot. I thought you might have a use for these.”
He looked at what she’d handed him, smiling quizzically. Gloves, a good pair made of tightly knitted wool, and a soft matching scarf.
“For your friend. I noticed he doesn’t stand the cold well. The gloves should be an improvement over the ones he has, yes?”
They were lined, he saw, hand sewn, and almost new. “A considerable improvement.” They had to have cost dearly.
“They were my brother’s. He had musician’s hands, like Spock’s. They should be a good fit.”
He searched her gray eyes, understanding now a part of the sorrow he had seen there so many times. “The war?” he asked softly.
She sighed, confirming his guess. “Stephen loved his music. He was never meant for guns, and killing.” She curled her fingers around his, closing the material in his hand.
“I ... don’t know what to say.”
“Thank you is more than enough.”
“Thank you, then. From both of us.” He tried to find something more. “I have a brother who ... I haven’t seen in a very long time. I’m sorry, Edith.”
She just patted his hand and nodded, letting him go. “So am I.” And just then, the wind off the river changed direction [21] slightly, and the sound of lively music drifted to them from what sounded like the next block over.
A delighted smile lit Keeler’s face, and it was catching. K
irk held his elbow out for her to take. “Shall we?”
“Let’s!”
They followed the music until they saw a set of stairs leading down to an open door. A sign over the door proclaimed the name of the club, After the Ball, and as they drew near they could hear the rich mezzo tones of a woman’s voice singing, “To my heart, he carries, the key. Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed. ...”
To Kirk’s surprise, Edith gave him an uncharacteristically impish grin and pulled him along the sidewalk. She sang along with the next line, “Follow my lead, oh how I need ... someone to watch over me.” Her off-key, accented rendition was so charming he had to laugh, though his heart hurt with the irony.
They were halfway down the steps when it hit him that, as impossible as it seemed, he recognized the singer’s voice.
When Kirk saw her, crooning on the tiny stage in a white evening gown that almost did her justice, he couldn’t hide his shock. He could only stare, as his communications officer finished the song and the audience erupted in noisy appreciation.
“What is it?” Edith cried over the noise. “What’s wrong?”
“I know her!” he yelled back, when he could find the words. Oblivious to the jostling of the club’s patrons, he stood on tiptoe and tried to catch Uhura’s eye. For a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to, and he’d have to force his way through the crowd, or wait until the set was over. But finally, [22] thankfully, she saw him, her shocked recognition as obvious as his own. Backstage, she mouthed at him, and he nodded and grabbed Edith’s hand, pulling her toward the side door.
Kirk tried to think logically, tried to come up with some explanation he could give Edith for how he and Uhura knew one another. Tried to think what it could mean, that she was here, and what was to be done about it. But when they found her pacing nervously backstage, logic deserted him and he found himself throwing his arms around her, selfishly glad to see her no matter what it might mean. After a startled moment and out of sheer relief, she hugged him back.
STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II Page 2
