CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A faint touch of gray appeared in the eastern sky as the clans assembled before the torch-ringed platform in front of the black pavilion and waited silently for the command that would send them flooding down upon Andros. There was a snarl of hill horns.
A black-robed, black-and-red-hooded figure appeared, walked slowly to the platform, and climbed the stairs heavily.
A roar went up from the thousands assembled and they pounded their spear butts in unison on the hard-packed earth.
“Messiah! Messiah!”
He stood staring out into the pre-dawn darkness for a moment, as if oblivious to the frenzy of his followers, and then, with an obvious effort, raised one hand jerkily in a plea for silence. His voice was strained, and cracked as he spoke.
“With the rising of our heavenly home, we ride against the godless. The gods send Afterbliss at my command. Behold!”
The clans pivoted as one when he turned to the east and threw out his arms.
The magic moment came—and passed.
A growing uneasiness began to run through the crowd as no glowing sign rose above the distant mountaintops. Minutes dragged by, and the eastern sky grew lighter as high, floating clouds turned molten red in the first rays of the rising sun.
A querulous muttering began, first hushed and then louder and more demanding. The figure on the platform dropped his arms at last and tried to speak. His faltering words were drowned in shouted questions as warriors broke ranks and began to press closer.
On the platform, a sudden sparkle of shimmering light made them freeze in place. A tall, white-robed apparition with slanted eyebrows and pointed, alien ears appeared next to the Messiah.
The Messiah backed up a step, throwing up his arms as if to protect himself. His wail of distress and loss was cut off as a hand shot out and gripped him where his shoulder met his neck. He slumped to the platform, a puppet without strings.
The white-clad figure faced the stunned, silent crowd and began to speak in a powerful, resonant voice.
“Do not fear. The gods have not sent me to bring you harm. And they have only pity for this poor, mad creature here whom demons used to work their will. Do not wait again for Afterbliss; there never was a golden city for the dead. You were tricked by an empty ball of light set burning in the sky by demons’ spells.”
“But our dead? We saw them rise!” a clansman cried, his voice shaking.
“But not to a new life. Once a spirit sinks into the ground, it cannot return. The demons took the dead you brought and hid them in the clouds, so you would believe their false messiah’s lies. Behold.”
Heads craned upward as he pointed into the sky. High up, like distant birds, white specks began to descend, circling, floating lower and lower until, as gently as snowftakes, rigid, white-swathed bodies came to rest in the circle from where they had been lifted the night before.
“Return to your old ways. If you change them, let it be because you, yourselves, have decided that they should be, not because some evil magician has dazzled your eyes. Will you obey?”
All heads bowed in assent.
“See that you do. The gods have one more command. The chief Tram Bir has been ill used. Restore him to his place. Henceforth he shall sit first among the chiefs.”
Again heads bowed.
“I go,” the figure said and then added a warning. “If you again heed evil voices calling you to war, I may return.” The voice softened. “And now, disperse. Go back to your hills and be at peace among yourselves and with the people of the plains.”
The figure raised his right hand, thumb extended and middle and fourth fingers spread in a vee.
“Live long and prosper.”
Then, the hum muted by the open air, the flickering carrier wave of an Enterprise transporter surrounded the two men and they slowly, slowly disappeared.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Where is Mr. Spock?”
Kirk smiled at McCoy’s question. “He said he saw no reason for wasting time on postmortems. When I left the bridge, he had every computer bank tied into the science console and was punching up a storm. If it were anybody else, I’d say he was ducking this meeting because of embarrassment.”
“I wouldn’t rule that out entirely, sir,” Ensign George said with a sly grin. “When I passed him in the corridor, he gave me an awfully cool nod.”
Kirk looked down at a yellow pad on which he had jotted some notes. “Let’s get to work,” he said. “We’ll be in contact with Starfleet Command before too long, and I’ve been trying to pull together a preliminary report. I think I have everything down, but I wanted to check with all of you to be sure I haven’t left out anything important.”
“I’m afraid Uhura and I can’t be of much help, sir,” Sulu said. “There was so much to do between the time we beamed you up from the burning wagon and the time we sent Mr. Spock down to get the Messiah—along with lowering the bodies from their orbit—that nobody had the tune to fill us in on what’s been going on down there. About all I’ve been able to figure out is that the Messiah was Chag Gara all the time, and that for the last ten days Mr. Spock has been in a catatonic state.”
“You’re right with two exceptions,” Kirk said. “One when Spock, controlled by Gara, stole the crystals; and the second explains why our kidnapping attempt in Andros failed. The paralysis drug worked, but it was Chag Gara that was paralyzed. He had no control over his own body, so he brought Spock out of suspended animation and sent him through the trap door on the roof of that closed cart, to put McCoy and I out of operation so he—Gara—could escape.”
“But was Mr. Spock unconscious all that time?” Uhura asked.
“Except for those two times, yes,” Kirk replied. “Spock explained it to me on the bridge. The melded minds could only control one body at a time. When Spock was linked to Gara, two things happened simultaneously. First, the emotional input was so strong that it overwhelmed the filter stage of the implant and established a two-way link so that Chag Gara had immediate access to Spock’s mind. Secondly, the emotional impact from his dop caused Spock such intense psychic pain that his will went into a state of shock. He was aware of what was happening, but there was nothing he could do about it; he was a marionette with Gara pulling the strings.”
“No wonder he acted so strangely when he beamed up the first day,” Uhura said. “It must have taken Chag Gara a while to get used to controlling somebody else’s body.”
Kirk nodded. “The instant the link was established, Gara found himself hooked into a fantastic organic computer. With his new-found intelligence and the ability to use it logically, he immediately saw how he could use the Enterprise to further his crazy plans.”
“So that’s how he recognized Ensign George in the plaza,” Sulu said. “Since Mr. Spock was Gara’s dop rather than vice versa, he had complete access to his memory.”
“Right,” Kirk said. “Obviously, he realized immediately that if we found out where he lived, we’d head there, which was the last thing he wanted since that’s where he kept Spock. Losing him would have meant losing his new-found power, so he made a beeline home, wrapped our unconscious first officer in a blanket, and hauled him off to a safe place. I imagine he had a bad moment when the neighbors tried to stop him, but knowing precisely how to give the neck-pinch got him out of that one.”
“There’s still one mystery left,” Uhura said. “How did Sara realize that the messiah wasn’t Commander Spock?”
“His ears,” Ensign George said. “Chag Gara had one thing planned, but I had another. Mine was to grab the communicator and the tricorder, sneak out of camp, and then call the Enterprise and hide until a rescue party was sent down.”
“And what was the messiah supposed to be doing all that time?” Sulu asked.
“Nothing. I was going to sell him the idea that a willing partner was more fun than an unwilling one so he’d untie me. Then, when he had other things on his mind, I was going to bop him on the head with the l
amp beside the bed. But before I could knock him out, I had to get that hood off; that hardened leather cap it goes with makes a darn good helmet.”
“What about the hill taboo against exposing the face?” Uhura asked.
“He evidently thought that what he had in mind was more fun in the dark, and blew the lamp out. While I was taking off the hood, my fingers encountered some singularly unpointed ears. ‘If this ain’t Spock, then that must be Spock,’ sez I to myself, thinking about the figure on the floor. So I waited until Chag was completely preoccupied with what he was doing, and then let him have it on the back of the head. Then I hoped over and slapped the nullifier bracelet on Spock’s wrist. Once the link was broken, he snapped out of his catatonia and took over immediately. Since the locator circuit on the communicator was out, he came up with the idea of setting the van on fire so the Enterprise could get an infra-red fix and determine our beam-up coordinates—just as it did when Chag Gara lit that flaming cross to indicate the location of the bodies to be beamed up.”
Ensign George made a wry face. “We intended to get far enough from the camp so the blaze wouldn’t be seen, but I mustn’t have hit Gara hard enough. We were barely out when he and his men were swarming after us like hornets. I thought we’d had it when Gara speared that neelot and we went over, but—”
She was interrupted by a call from the bridge.
“We’re ready to warp, Captain, the crystals are installed.”
“Good, I’ll be right up. Mr. Sulu…”
“Warp Six, if you please, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said as he settled down in his command chair.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Sulu replied crisply, and punched in the command.
“Mr. Spock—” Kirk turned toward the science officer.
“Have you ever thought of going on the stage?”
“No, sir. Why?”
“Your performance last night was superb: all the emotional nuances were just right. You played the role of Chag Gara so convincingly that I had no reason not to continue to believe you were Spock.”
“But I was, Captain,” Spock said blandly.
“I mean Messiah Spock.”
“But I wasn’t. Chag Gara was the Messiah.”
“I know that now,” Kirk said defensively. “All I was trying to say was… Oh, to hell with it. I’m glad you’re back and everything finally got ironed out, though I’ll admit that I got confused when the messiah on horseback—or neelot-back as the case may be—rode up alongside the messiah driving the caravan.”
The turbo-lift doors hissed open and McCoy stepped out. Kirk broke off his conversation with his first officer with a distinct feeling of relief.
“That was a little too close for comfort, Jim,” he said.
Kirk nodded. “But we beat radiation redline by several hours. Once we’re out of the storm area we’ll contact Starfleet and feed them our data. Maybe they can figure out where it’s coming from.”
“That won’t be necessary, Captain. The answer is quite obvious.”
Kirk turned and looked at his science officer. “Is it, Mr. Spock? Would you enlighten us, please?”
“I believe that is my usual function,” Spock said, cocking an eyebrow. “The storm is corning from Epsilon lonis, a black-hole binary.”
“We considered that, but it’s impossible. That double is thirty light years away. If the companion star has novaed since we checked it out last month, it will still be three decades before radiation from the explosion could reach Kyros. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.”
“That’s interesting, Captain,” Spock said. “I was under the impression that we were exceeding that by two hundred and sixteen times at this very moment.”
“I was talking about normal space, Mr. Spock. Sub-space is quite a different matter.”
“Indeed it is,” the Vulcan replied, “and the storm is coming through it from lonis at Warp Ten.”
“But how?”
“We have a fascinating situation here, sir,” Spock explained. “With lonis we have a black hole going around a recent nova in a highly elliptical orbit. During the last several weeks it’s been rushing toward perihelion, scooping up more and more radiation as it accelerates hi. Since the gravitational field of a black hole is so intense that radiation cannot escape, internal pressure built up to the point where the space-time continuum itself warped and the energy pouring in from the nova primary is spouting into sub-space like water from a giant fire hose. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the other side of the warp is in the area around Kyr. It’s really quite simple, Captain—if, of course, you stop to think about it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “I’m happy to see that your recent messianic activities haven’t impaired your analytical ability. One more question: how long before that black hole will be far enough along from perihelion so that its energy output will no longer be a problem?”
“Not more than two weeks, sir,” Spock replied.
“Good. We’ll return to Kyros then and complete our survey.” He turned to McCoy and said in a voice loud enough to be heard by Spock, “I understand that Mr. Spock has withdrawn from the survey team. Pity. For a while there he seemed almost human.”
Not giving the first officer a chance to reply, Kirk went on, “By the time we get back, Bones, you should have all of Gara’s paranoid kinks straightened out We’ll block all memory of what happened up here. When he goes back to preaching, he’ll be able to use that power of his to heal wounds instead of making them.” He stretched luxuriously. “You know, Bones, I think before we leave Kyros for good, you and I have a bit of shore leave coming after our hair grows back.” Kirk brushed his fingers along the Beshwa cut he still had.
“Sounds good,” McCoy said. “I’d like to see how Ker Kaseme is getting along.”
“That isn’t quite what I had in mind,” Kirk said.
“It surely isn’t vris—is it? I’ve had enough of that—”
Kirk replied loudly in a vigorous negative, cutting the doctor off.
“But why else would you want to visit? Sara’s dop couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it?”
“Why, Bones, you know me better than that.”
McCoy grinned. “Do I, Jim?” He turned to go and then paused. “Shall I drop by your quarters a little later? We still have some unfinished business—namely, an almost full bottle of Canopian brandy.”
Kirk nodded. It was going to be a good evening—an hour or so with an old friend, and then to bed, to march once again through the mountains of Persia with Xenophon and his beleaguered hoplitcs.
“Would you care to join us, Mr. Spock?”
The Vulcan looked up from the science console, lifted an eyebrow, and said, “If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I already have my evening scheduled. My inside look at the depths of emotion has merely added another datum to my conviction that the Vulcan way of programming leisure time is much more logical.”
“Three-dimensional chess, Mr. Spock?”
“Of course, Captain.”
“With Ensign George, perhaps, Mr. Spock?”
“With the ship’s computer, sir. I prefer an opponent who can keep its mind on the game.”
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Spock Messiah sttos(n-3 Page 18
