by 09(lit)
"He made us!" Marplon cried. "He made this world!"
Reger was on his knees. "Please. We have gone too far! Don't-"
Spock said, "You say Landru made this world. Ex-plain."
"There was war... six thousand years ago there was war... and convulsion. The world was destroying itself. Landru was our leader. He saw the truth. He changed the world. He took us back, back to a simple time, of peace, of tranquility."
"What happened to him?" Kirk said.
"He still lives!" cried Marplon. "He is here now! He sees... he hears... we have destroyed ourselves... please, please, no more."
Kirk spoke very softly. "You said you wanted free-dom. It is time you learned that freedom is not a gift. You have to earn it-or you don't get it. Come on! We're going to find Landru!"
Reger stumbled to bis knees. "No... no. I was wrong!" Wringing his hands, his eyes upturned im-ploringly, he shrieked, "I submit... I bare myself to the will of Landru."
Kirk seized his shoulder. "It is too late for that! But Reger, shaking himself loose, dashed to the door, screaming, "No! No! Lawgivers! Help me!" Spock, reaching out, gave him the neck pinch. He fell; Marplon, staring, slowly turned to meet Kirk's eyes.
"All right, my friend," Kirk said. "It's up to you now. Take us to Landru."
"He will strike us down," said Marplon.
"Maybe-or it might be the other way around. Mr. Lindstrom, stay here and take care of Dr. McCoy. Let's go, Mr. Spock." He grabbed Marplon's arm, propelling him to the door. Dismay and fear on his face, Marplon opened it, and Kirk's hand still on his arm, he moved out into the corridor. From under his hood, Kirk could see two robed Lawgivers approach-ing. They passed without so much as glancing at the three figures they assumed to be fellow Lawgivers. The trio moved on down the corridor and Kirk saw I that it ended at a large imposing door.
Marplon paused in front of it, visibly trembling. "This is... the Hall of Audiences," he whispered.
"Do you have a key?"
At Marplon's nod, Kirk said, "Open it."
"But-it is Landru..."
"Open it," Kirk said again. But he had to take the key from Marplon's trembling hands to open it him-self. The Hall of Audiences was a large room, com-pletely bare. In one of the walls was set a glowing panel. Marplon pointed to it "Landru-he speaks ere..." he whispered.
Kirk stepped forward. "Landru! We are the Ar-chons!" he said. The moldy, cold silence in the big room remained unbroken. Kirk spoke again. "We are the Archons. We've come to talk with you!"
Very gradually the wise, impressive, benevolent face they remembered began to take shape on the panel. In an extremity of panic, Marplon broke into sobs, prostrating himself. "Landru comes!" he wept. "He comes!"
The noble figure was completed now, a warm half smile on its lips. They opened. "Despite my efforts not to harm you, you have invaded the Body. You are causing great harm."
"We have no intention of causing harm," Kirk said.
Landru continued as though Kirk had not spoken.
"Obliteration is necessary. The infection is strong. For the good of the Body, you must die. It is a great sorrow."
"We do not intend to die!"
The oblivious voice continued, kind, gently. "All who have seen you, who know of your presence, must be excised. The memory of the Body must be cleansed."
"Listen to me!" Kirk shouted.
"Captain... useless," Spock said. "A projection!"
"All right, Mr. Spock! Let's have a look at the pro-jector!"
They whipped out their phasers simultaneously, turning their beams on the glowing panel. There was a great flash of blinding light. The figure of Landru vanished and the light in the panel faded. But the real Landru had not disappeared. Behind the panel he survived in row upon row of giant computers-a vast complex of dials, switches, involved circuits all quietly operating.
"It had to be," Kirk said. "Landru."
"Of course, Captain. A machine. This entire society is a machine's idea of perfection. Peace, harmony..."
"And no soul."
Suddenly the machine buzzed. A voice spoke. It said, "I am Landru. You have intruded."
"Pull out its plug, Mr. Spock."
They aimed their phasers. But before they could fire, there came another buzzing from the machine and a flash of light immobilized their weapons. "Your devices have been neutralized," said the voice. "So it shall be with you. I am Landru."
"Landru died six thousand years ago," Kirk said.
"I am Landru!" cried the machine. "I am he. All that he was, I am. His experience, his knowledge-"
"But not his wisdom," Kirk said. "He may have programmed you, but he could not give you his soul."
"Your statement is irrelevant," said the voice. "You will be obliterated. The good of the Body is the primal essence."
"That's the answer, Captain," Spock said. "That good of the Body..."
Kirk nodded. "What is the good?" he asked.
"I am Landru."
"Landru is dead. You are a machine. A question has been put to you. Answer it!"
Circuits hummed. "The good is the harmonious continuation of the Body," said the voice. "The good is peace, tranquility, harmony. The good of the Body is the prime directive."
"I put it to you that you have disobeyed the prime directive-that you are harmful to the Body."
The circuits hummed louder. "The Body is... it exists. It is healthy."
"It is dying," Kirk said. "You are destroying it."
"Do you ask a question?" queried the voice.
"What have you done to do justice to the full potential of every individual of the Body?"
"Insufficient data. I am not programmed to answer that question."
"Then program yourself," Spock said. "Or are your circuits limited?"
"My circuits are unlimited. I will reprogram."
The machine buzzed roughly. A screech came from it. Marplon, on the floor, was getting to his feet, his eyes staring at the massive computer face. As he gained them, two more Lawgivers appeared, staffless.
They approached the machine. "Landru!" cried one. "Guide us! Landru?" His voice was a wail.
Kirk had whirled to cover them with his phaser when Spock raised his hand. "Not necessary, Captain. They have no guidance... possibly for the first time in their lives."
Kirk, lowering his phaser, turned back to the ma-chine. "Landru! Answer that question!"
The voice had a metallic tone now. "Peace, order, and tranquility are maintained. The Body lives. But creativity is mine. Creativity is necessary for the health of the Body." It buzzed again. "This is impossible. It is a paradox. It shall be resolved."
Marplon spoke at last. "Is that truly Landru?"
"What's left of him," Spock said. "What's left of him after he built this machine and programmed it six thousand years ago."
Kirk addressed the machine. "Landru! The paradox!"
The humming fell dead. The voice, dully metallic now, said, "It will not resolve."
"You must create the good," Kirk said. That is the will of Landru-nothing else..."
"But there is evil," said the voice.
Then the evil must be destroyed. It is the prime directive. You are the evil."
The machine resumed its humming-a humming broken by hard, harsh clicks. Lights flashed wildly. "I think! I live!" said the machine.
"You say you are Landru!" Kirk shouted; "Then create the good! Destroy evil! Fulfill the prime di-rective!"
The hum rose to a roar. A drift of smoke waited up from a switch. Then a shower of sparks burst from the machine's metal face-and with the blast of exploding circuits, all its lights went out.
Kirk turned to the three awed Lawgivers. "All right, you can get rid of those robes now. If I were you, I'd start looking for real jobs." He opened the communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise. Come in, please."
Scott's voice was loud with relief. "Captain, are you all right?"
"Never mind about us. What about you?"
The
heat rays have gone, and Mr. Sulu's back to normal."
"Excellent, Mr. Scott. Stand by to beam-up landing party." He returned the communicator to Spock. "Let's see what the others are doing, Mr. Spock. Mr. Marplon can finish up here."
His command chair seemed to welcome Kirk. He'd never thought of it as comfortable before. But he stretched in it, hands locked behind his neck as Spock left his station to stand beside him while he dictated his last notation into his Captain's log. "Sociologist Lindstrom is remaining behind on Beta 3000 with a party of experts who will help restore the culture to a human form. Kirk out."
Spock spoke thoughtfully. "Still, Captain, the late Landru was a marvelous feat of engineering. Imagine a computer capable of directing-literally directing- every act of millions of human beings."
"But only a machine, Mr. Spock. The original Lan-dru programmed it with all his knowledge but he couldn't give it his wisdom, his compassion, his un-derstanding-his soul, Mr. Spock."
"Sometimes you are predictably metaphysical, Cap-tain. I prefer the concrete, the graspable, the prov-able."
"You would make a splendid computer, Mr. Spock."
Spock bowed. "That's very kind of you, sir."
Uhura spoke from behind them. "Captain... Mr. Lindstrom from the surface."
Kirk pushed a button. "Yes, Mr. Lindstrom."
"Just wanted to say good-bye, Captain."
"How are things going?"
"Couldn't be better!" The youngster's enthusiasm was like a triumphant shout in his ear. "Already this morning we've had half-a-dozen domestic quarrels and two genuine knock-down drag-outs. It may not be paradise-but it's certainly..."
"Human?" asked Kirk.
"Yes! And they're starting to think for themselves! Just give me and our people a few months and we'll have a going society on our hands!"
"One question, Mr. Lindstrom: Landru wanted to give his people peace and security and so programmed the machine. Then how do we account for so total an anomaly as the festival?"
"Sir, with the machine destroyed, we'll never have enough data to answer that one with any confidence- but I have a guess, and I feel almost certain it's the right one. Landru wanted to eliminate war, crime, disease, even personal dissension, and he succeeded. But he failed to allow for population control, and without that even an otherwise static society would soon suffer a declining standard of living, and eventual outright hunger. Clearly Landru wouldn't have wanted that either, but he made no allowances for it.
"So the machine devised its own: one night a year in which all forms of control were shut off, every moral law abrogated; even ordinary human decency was canceled out. One night of the worst kind of civil war, in which every person is the enemy of every other. I have no proof of this at all, sir-but it's just the sort of solution you'd expect from a machine, and furthermore, a machine that had been programmed to think of people as cells in a Body, of no importance at all as individuals." Suddenly Lindstrom's voice shook. "One night a year of total cancer... horrible! I hope I'm dead wrong, but there are precedents."
"That can hardly be fairly characterized as a guess," Spock said. "Ordinarily I do not expect close reasoning from sociologists, but from what I know of the way computers behave when they are given directives sup-ported by insufficient data, I can find no flaw in Mr. Lindstrom's analysis. It should not distress him, for if it is valid-as I am convinced it is-he is indeed just the man to put it right."
"Thank you, Mr. Spock," Lindstrom's voice said. "I'll cherish that. Captain, do you concur?"
"I do indeed," Kirk said. "I have human misgivings which I know you share with me. All I can say now is it sounds promising. Good luck. Kirk out."
Kirk turned to his First Officer and looked at him in silence for a long time. At last he said, "Mr. Spock, if I didn't know you were above such human weak-nesses as feelings of solemnity, I'd say you looked solemn. Are you feeling solemn, Mr. Spock?"
"I was merely meditating, sir. I was reflecting on the frequency with which mankind has wished for a world as peaceful and secure as the one Landru pro-vided."
"Quite so, Mr. Spock. And see what happens when we get it! It's our luck and our curse that we're forced to grow, whether we like it or not"
"I have heard human beings say also, Captain, that it is also our joy."
"Our joy, Mr. Spock?"
There was no response, but, Kirk thought, Spock knew as well as any man that ancient human motto: Silence gives assent.
THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME
(Robert Sabaroff)
White beaches... suntanned women... mountains, their trout streams just asking for it... the lift of a surfboard to a breaking wave... familiar tree-shapes -that was shore leave on Starbase Six. And the ex-hausted crew of the Enterprise was on its way to it, unbelievably nearing it at long last. Kirk, remembering the taste of an open-air breakfast of rainbow trout, turned to give Sulu his final approach orders.
"Message from the base, sir," Uhura called. "Heavy interference. All I could get was the word 'Intrepid' and what sounded like a sector coordinate."
"Try them on another channel, Lieutenant."
McCoy said, "The Intrepid is manned by Vulcans only, isn't it, Jim?"
"I believe so." Kirk swung his chair around. "The crew of the Intrepid is Vulcan, isn't it, Mr. Spock? I seem to remember the Starship was made entirely Vulcan as a tribute to the skill of your people in arranging that truce with the Romulan Federation. It was an unusual honor."
Spock didn't answer. He didn't turn. But he'd straightened in his chair. Something in the movement disturbed Kirk. He got up and went over to the library-computer station. "Mr. Spock!" Still Spock sat, unmoving, silent. Kirk shook his shoulder. "Spock, what's wrong? Are you in pain?"
"The Intrepid is dead. I just felt it die."
Kirk looked at McCoy. McCoy shook his head, shrugging.
"Mr. Spock, you're tired," Kirk said. "Let Chekov take over your station."
"And the four hundred Vulcans aboard her are dead," Spock said.
McCoy said, "Come down to Sickbay, Spock."
Stone-faced, Spock said, "I am quite all right, Doctor. I know what I feel."
Kirk said, "Report to Sickbay, Mr. Spock. That's an order."
"Yes, Captain."
Kirk watched them move to the elevator. They'd all had it. Too many missions. Even Spock's superb stamina had its breaking point. Too many rough mis-sions-and Vulcan logic itself could turn morbidly visionary. It was high time for shore leave.
"Captain, I have Starbase Six now," Uhura said.
Back in his chair, Kirk flipped a switch. "Kirk here. Go ahead."
The bridge speaker spoke. "The last reported posi-tion of the Starship Intrepid was sector three nine J. You will divert immediately."
Kirk rubbed a hand over his chin before he reached for his own speaker. "The Enterprise has just completed the last of several very strenuous missions. The crew is tired. We're on our way for R and R. There must be another Starship in that sector."
"Negative. This is a rescue priority order. We have lost all contact with solar system Gamma Seven A. The Intrepid was investigating. Contact has now been lost with the Intrepid. Report progress."
"Order acknowledged," Kirk said. "Kirk out."
Sulu was staring at him in questioning dismay. Kirk snapped, "You heard the order, Mr. Sulu. Lay in a course for Gamma Seven A."
Chekov spoke from his console. Awe subdued his voice.
"Solar System Gamma Seven A is dead, Captain. My long-range scan of it shows-"
"Dead? What are you saying, Mr. Chekov? That is a fourth-magnitude star! Its system supports billions of inhabitants! Check your readings!"
"I have, sir. Gamma Seven A is dead."
In Sickbay Spock was saying, "I assure you, Doctor, I am quite all right. The pain was momentary."
McCoy sighed as he took his last diagnostic reading. "My instruments appear to agree with you if I can trust them with a crazy Vulcan anatomy. By the way, how can you be so sure
the Intrepid is destroyed?"
"I felt it die," his patient said tonelessly.
"But I thought you had to be in physical contact with a subject to sense-"
"Dr. McCoy, even I, a half Vulcan, can sense the death screams of four hundred Vulcan minds crying out over distance between us."
