Zar let him sprawl in the dust as he pulled himself to a kneeling position, leaning heavily on a nearby boulder. The young man’s breathing was a ragged sob ... the only sound in the stillness.
McCoy moved to the Romulan and turned him over, then stared in surprise as his hands came away unstained. Kirk joined him, and both men looked up at Zar’s words to Spock—formal, almost ritualistic.
[183] “Just as I have shadowed thy life, thy shadow now lies over me.” Zar straightened, his mouth a grim slash. “I hit him with the butt ... not the blade.”
Tal gasped, moaned, and McCoy hastily took out a charge for his hypo, pressed it into the Commander’s shoulder. The Romulan sagged again. “That should hold him, Bones,” Kirk said. “We’ll take him with us when we beam up.”
“How did you find him, Zar?” asked the Doctor, standing up. “And where did you get the uniform?”
“I came back here to make sure nobody would tamper with the Guardian.” Zar replied. “Then I saw him, digging around the unit we installed. I was able to get close enough wearing the uniform to jump him. I ‘borrowed’ the uniform from one of the sentries before I planted my phaser to overload.”
“And to think we didn’t want you to come with us because Spock was worried you’d get hurt.” Kirk lowered himself gingerly onto a fallen column, shaking his head. “Tell me, have you ever considered joining Star Fleet? We could use someone with talents like yours.”
Zar started to say something, then bit his lip. As they watched, his expression changed, became shadowed, remote. “I’m afraid not, Captain.” He turned to McCoy. “Did you bring along that duffle bag from my quarters I mentioned?”
McCoy pointed. “Over there. What’s in it, anyhow?”
“Clothes.” Zar said shortly, stooping to pick up the bundle, then continuing out of sight behind a large boulder.
The Doctor looked puzzled, then glanced back at the time portal, quiescent, grimly lifeless. “Helluva lot of trouble over a big stone doughnut, wasn’t it, Jim?”
Kirk nodded, an echo of old sadness in his voice, “But still worth it, Bones. Always worth it.”
It was Spock who saw Zar return from changing [184] his clothes, and the other officers turned at his indrawn breath.
The leather tunic was tight, now, and the rough breeches pulled taut around hard-muscled legs above the fur mukluks. Only the gray fur cloak, sweeping the ground, fit the same as it had seven weeks ago. Zar stooped, gathered up the hide bag that contained his few possessions from the past, and slung it across his back, fastened it with thongs. Then he faced them, head up, his expression calm but watchful.
Spock was the first of them to find his voice, and it was incongruously normal-sounding. “You are going back?”
“Yes.” The remoteness faded he met Spock’s eyes, watched his father get up, walk over to face him. “I have to. We’ve all risked our lives to make sure history isn’t changed, and I have reason to believe it will be if I don’t return. I’m needed there ...” His mouth softened into what was almost a wry smile. “Needed there, as I’d never be here—despite the Captain’s kind remark. McCoy was right. Two of us is two too many. I don’t want to spend my life trying to stay out of your shadow. ... And I would. So I’m leaving. What better place to go than a planet where my skills, what I have to offer ... teach ... are needed desperately?” His voice softened. “After all, it’s my home.”
“What makes you think you’ll change history if you don’t return? Living in that arctic wilderness alone—” Spock half-protested.
“I’m not going to be alone. Instead of the Northern hemisphere of Sarpeidon, I’m going to the Southern one ... to the Lakreo Valley.” Zar watched recognition dawn in Spock’s eyes as he mentioned his destination.
“The Lakreo Valley 5,000 years ago?” Kirk frowned. “I ... what’s the significance of that?”
“Ask Mr. Sp—” Zar hesitated and his shoulders straightened even more. “Ask my father. I can tell he remembers.”
[185] “The Lakreo Valley ... the Sarpeidon equivalent of the Tigris-Euphrates civilization on Earth ... or the Khal at R’sev on Vulcan. A remarkable cultural awakening. Within a comparatively short span of time, the backward hunting and gathering tribesmen developed many of the basics of civilization. A spoken and written language—the zero—agriculture—” The Vulcan’s dry recitation paused, and Zar took up the list, eyes shining.
“Domestication of animals—smelting metal—architecture. More than that. All within a very short span of time. An unprecedented development in a people’s history. Such rapid growth logically indicates that they had help. I have strong evidence to indicate that help was me.”
“But Beta Niobe ...” McCoy began, and stopped. Zar nodded gravely.
“Oh, it will still blow up. But my people will have had 5,000 years of civilization that they might not otherwise have. Five thousand years is a respectable time span for anyone—especially when you think about the fact that the culture didn’t die. It’s all there, the important things, in the computer banks of the Federation, where we both saw them.” He took a deep breath. “I know this is what I must do—without me, there won’t be any cultural awakening. Or maybe a different one, and that would change history.”
Some of the tension in the air eased suddenly as Zar’s teeth flashed in a wry grin. “The entire notion sounds incredibly arrogant when I hear it out loud.”
McCoy cleared his throat gruffly. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You come by it honestly.” He watched a suggestion of that same smile soften the Vulcan’s hard mouth for a second at his words, and wasn’t sure he’d seen it until Spock nodded.
“I first realized the truth the other day, just before the landing party died. I was studying the tapes Spock had been looking at, plus some others I found in the library. Things started to add up.” He shrugged one shoulder in the old self-deprecating way. “Hadn’t [186] any of you ever wondered why my mother spoke English?”
Zar started to turn away, toward the time portal. Spock’s voice stopped him. “Wait.” The Vulcan cleared his throat, and his words were soft, but perfectly distinct. “I have been ... planning. Thinking. Before you mentioned leaving, that is. I would like you to accompany me to Vulcan, to meet ... the Family. Are you sure you must go?”
Zar nodded without speaking.
Spock took a deep breath. “You must do what you have decided is right, then. But first ...” He moved toward the younger man, stretching out his hand, fingers reaching for his head. Zar stiffened, then relaxed visibly as the older man’s lean fingertips pressed lightly between the slanting brows so like the Vulcan’s own. The two stood, eyes closed, for long moments.
Kirk had never seen two telepaths mind-meld, and hadn’t realized that the tension-filled contact points of spread fingers weren’t necessary. This contact was quiet, undramatic, almost gentle. Finally Spock dropped his hand, and weariness seemed to settle over him like a cloak.
Zar’s eyes opened and he took a deep breath, blinking. “The meld ...” He was clearly shaken. “The truth ... is a great gift. ...”
“No one has a greater right to know.” Spock’s voice was deeper than usual, and the expression in his eyes mirrored the warmth in Zar’s.
The younger man turned away after a moment, moved to clasp hands with Kirk. “Captain, it would be better if they think I died—in the explosion, or the fight with Tal. Nobody has to know I used the time portal.” He looked over at the gigantic rocky oval. “I have a feeling that nobody will ever be allowed to use it again. We came too close to disaster this time.”
“Admiral Komack seemed to be thinking along those same lines, so you’re probably right, Zar. You [187] know that means you can’t change your mind. Besides, there’s no portal on the other side. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure, Captain. This is the right thing for me.”
“I wish you luck, then. How will the Guardian know where to put you?”
“It will know.” Zar sounded so confiden
t that Kirk didn’t argue with him. They shook hands again, and the younger man frowned. “One thing worries me, Captain. Will you get in trouble for breaking General Order Nine?”
Kirk chuckled weakly, then stopped as his ribs protested. “It’s been logged that you volunteered, and you’re an adult. Under the circumstances, I suppose they’ll have to overlook it. After all, you did save the whole show.”
Zar raised an eyebrow. “I had some help, Captain. ...” The laughter in the gray eyes died, as he leaned close and whispered, “Take care of him, please.”
Kirk nodded.
McCoy’s voice was gruff as they shook hands. “Take care of yourself, son. Remember, never draw from an inside straight.”
“I’ll remember. I’ll have to teach my people how to play poker, though, before I’ll get a chance to put all you taught me into practice. But think of the advantage I’ll have!” The gray eyes belied the light words. “I’ll miss you. You know, indirectly, you’re to blame for my decision.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You were the one who told me to grow up. And I knew when I saw those history pages that it wasn’t going to be easy. But I’m trying.”
“You’re doing fine.” McCoy took a deep breath, tried to smile.
Zar walked over to the Guardian, reached down and removed the last wire from the force field unit. Straightening, he looked at Spock, and voiced a phrase in Vulcan. The other replied briefly in the [188] same language. Turning, Zar placed a hand on the blue-gray rock and stood silently, head bowed, for a long moment.
The time portal did not speak this time. Instead of the usual vapor and swirling images, one picture sprang sharp and clear into its middle, holding steady. They could see mountains in the distance, and blue rivers running through meadows of the mossy aqua grass. Beta Niobe, no longer so angry-looking, was high, and they knew it was summer.
Zar turned his head, addressed Spock one last time. “I leave you my pictures, past and future, as a symbol.” Then he leaped, graceful as a cat, through the portal.
They saw him land, watched him pull off his cloak and shake his head in the warmth, saw his nostrils expand as he sniffed the air. Kirk wondered if the younger man could see them, and thought that he probably couldn’t—then there was a movement at his elbow. Spock, eyes fixed, was walking toward the Guardian. One step, two, three ...
And then Kirk, moving with a jerk that stabbed his ribs, caught his arm, his voice low, desperate. “Spock. He doesn’t need you.” And he wondered if the Vulcan caught the unvoiced addition, And I ... we ... do.
As they stood poised, the Vulcan’s motion halted, suspended, the image flicked out forever.
Epilogue
“Night” aboard the huge starship. The lights were dimmed, the corridors quiet. Occasional crew members, returning to their quarters after late duty, or reporting for the early morning shift, moved soft-footed. Even the turbo-lift seemed hushed as Kirk left its small interior for the deck. He moved quietly to a door, hesitated, then flashed the signal. “Come,” said a voice from within almost immediately.
As he’d suspected, the Vulcan hadn’t gone to bed. He was sitting at his deck, his micro-reader still on. Kirk sat down at his nod. “Greetings, Captain.”
“Greetings, Mr. Spock. Thought I’d drop by and see how you were doing.” He stretched cautiously, still favoring his healing ribs. “Rough day.”
“Agreed.” The Vulcan’s eyes were hooded with fatigue, but shone with a tiny spark in their dark depths. “The memorial service you conducted today was ... most fitting, Captain. I am sure the families of the archeologists as well as the crew would find it so.”
Kirk sighed. “The only thing that made it bearable was the knowledge that one of the names on that roster didn’t belong there. Or did it? I’m not sure I know how to remember him. As someone alive, just on the other side of the centuries, or as someone who ... died ... 5,000 years ago.” Spock didn’t reply; his gaze was fixed again on the screen in front of him.
[190] “Did you notice how many friends he’d made, just in the short time he was with us, Spock? Christine Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu ... even some crew I didn’t recognize. That young Ensign—what’s her name?”
“McNair. Teresa McNair.”
“I wish I could tell them the truth. That would make it so much easier. Are those his paintings?” Kirk walked over to the canvases stacked against the screen, began, after a nod from the Vulcan, to look through them.
“Yes.” Spock said, watching him. “I thought I would give some of them to his friends. I believe they would like that. A gift, in lieu of the truth they cannot know.”
“That would be very generous, and I know it would mean a lot to them.” Kirk bit his lip, gazing abstractedly at the last painting, then balled his fist suddenly and thumped it softly against the bulkhead. “Dammit! If only we were sure he made it! Doesn’t that bother you, Spock? Wondering?”
The Vulcan was looking at him with that spark again in his eyes, and Kirk heard exultation, triumph, in the normally flat voice. “He made it, Captain. I have my proof.”
Long fingers switched on the micro-reader, as Kirk walked over to the desk. “He left his pictures to me, remember? His pictures past and future, he said. Here it is, Jim. The symbol he found, the one that told him he had to go back. Here.”
Kirk looked into the reader, saw the image on the screen. One part of his mind automatically read the caption, something about “a frieze from a palace wall in the trade city of New Araen ... believed to have some esoteric religious significance ...” but his eyes were so filled with the picture that the words made little sense. They didn’t need to.
Against a dark background, white-flecked, loomed the familiar shape, the streamlined shapes of the [191] power nacells surmounting the huge disk, somewhat distorted, but still unmistakable—caught in her passage through space.
The ship, and beneath it a hand, open-palmed, the fingers spanning time and distance in the Vulcan salute.
About the Author
Ann Crispin, 33, was born in Connecticut and has lived primarily in Maryland, near Washington, D.C. She received a B.A. in English from the University of Maryland in 1972. She is employed by the United States Census Bureau, and in her eight years there has held a number of positions, mostly as a writer and trainer about census data. Her former occupations include: training horses, managing swimming pools, teaching writing and horseback riding, processing mortgage loans, and selling lamps (no Genies, unfortunately).
Ann is married, she has a three-year-old son, two horses, three cats, and an eleven-percent mortgage (the acquisition of which she considers one of her major accomplishments). A lifelong Star Trek fan, her hobbies are reading, horseback riding, and attending science fiction conventions. She has just sold a second, non-Star Trek sf novel entitled Suncastle.
About the e-Book
(AUGUST, 2003)—Scanned, proofed, and formatted by Bibliophile.
STAR TREK: TOS #11 - The Yesterday Saga I - Yesterday's Son Page 17
