Chapter 9

Kirk’s consciousness seemed to float somewhere above his body, as if he could look down and see competent, swift hands bind up his bleeding arm, press a spray hypo home, then hold a pressure-point again as even the dressing did not fully stop the bleeding.

All of that seemed to have nothing to do with him.

He was vastly remote from it all, unconcerned.

It came to him rather quietly that this fit the descriptions of the death experience. Somewhere he rebelled against that, but even the rebellion remained remote, and he knew he did not give it the vital force he would have given it-had given it, many times. Once too often, possibly.

“The animal’s fangs injected some systemic poison,” the woman’s voice said. “I’ve given him everything I could against the poison and shock, but in his weakened condition-it could kill him.”

“We have killed him,” Spock’s voice said. “Emotions have killed him. We knew the danger. We stood there talking like children. I do not exempt myself. Least of all myself.”

“And me,” she said, not evading the tone of accusation.

“Yes.” The Vulcan spoke in a tone of barely leashed ferocity.

“It is not logic to ignore what is real, Mr. Spock. Including emotions. But it is true that I miscalculated, seriously.”

“How?”

“I had thought you would still be locked into your Vulcan pattern.”

“Hope that I am. And that he does not die.”

“It is too late for you, Mr. Spock. If he lives, you will have to acknowledge what it means to you that I exist.”

“It can mean nothing,” Spock said harshly. “Not if he dies. And not if he lives. In either case, I am a dea-” The Vulcan’s voice broke off. “I am-a Vulcan,” he amended, but Kirk still felt that he heard the Vulcan’s voice saying “I am a dead man.”

Kirk felt himself jerked back toward his body as if his soul were on a string. Once, on Vulcan, when Spock had thought Kirk was dead, Kirk knew that the Vulcan had answered T’Pau’s “Live long and prosper, Spock,” with “I shall do neither, for I have killed my Captain, and my friend.” That knowledge had pulled Kirk through a tough one once or twice. But what could the Vulcan mean now-that he was dead even if Kirk lived? Something to do with Sola? From some strange perspective Kirk could look down to see Spock’s hands go white on the controls. But the Vulcan’s face was drawn and faintly flushed, as if with some fever.

“He will not die, Spock,” Sola said. “And-neither will you.”

“What do you count on to save him?” Spock asked. “That he saw you? That he-loved you?”

“Partly,” she said. “But chiefly, that he knew you saw me. I do not think he would miss that. Nor leave you now. He would rise from the dead, if necessary. Which it may be…”

She bent over Kirk then and took his face between her hands. “I do not give you permission to go. No one here gives you permission.”

He knew already that he could not go. For the white hands on the controls, if nothing else, he could not go. But there was else: the hands which held his face, and a universe which could still deliver such a surprise package…

He had been tired for a moment. That was all.

He felt a kind of rushing sensation, and once more his consciousness seemed to be at home in the body. There was pain now, but also he could feel the touch of Sola’s hands as if a current flowed from them.

He opened his eyes and looked up into her face. He could hold to consciousness only for a moment, but he saw that she knew he had come back, and from how far.

Then he drifted down into ordinary darkness, but from somewhere he thought he heard Sola say, “He will live, Spock. And you will have no excuse not to deal with what I am.”

“What you are-is his.”

“Spock, I may be the only non-Vulcan who would know why it will take more than words to save you. There is only one act which will.”

Spock spoke then in the tone of murder. “Do not presume to pity me!”

“Never, Spock. But I do not give you permission to go, either.”

Kirk tried fitfully to stir, alarm bells going off in his head. It was always a mistake to think of the Vulcan as if he were Human. He was not. What deadly Vulcanism did Sola and Spock know about, which Kirk did not? Something which was triggered by what Spock could not deny he had felt for Sola? And something which Spock could not have, because he counted her as belonging to Kirk…?

Abruptly Kirk knew that he had seen Spock’s stressed, fevered look before, long ago on Vulcan. It was the pon farr-the time of mating, the madness which Spock had dreaded and hoped to be spared.

Kirk fought for consciousness, but he could not make it. And would she know what she had to do…?

McCoy stirred and opened his eyes. His own pain was blinding, but he held the dislocated arm to his side and hitched himself over to where Sola worked over Kirk. He read the settings she had used on the spray hypo and looked at her with a new professional respect. But when he ran the scanner over Kirk, he scowled. “He’s hanging by a thread,” he said under his breath to Sola. But Spock heard. McCoy saw the look on his face and wished he had kept his mouth shut.

In moments Spock was signaling the Enterprise and matching velocity to settle them into the landing bay.

“Full medical team to the landing bay,” Spock ordered. “The Captain’s condition is critical.”

Then they were in and the landing deck was pressurizing around them. The moment it was pressurized, Chapel, M’Benga, and a medical team were swarming toward the scoutship, guiding null-grav stretchers.

But Spock turned from the controls without a word and came and took Kirk up in his arms. Sola surrendered him without comment, but kept her hand on her pressure-hold which was still stopping the bleeding.

McCoy thought that the look in the Vulcan’s eyes warned of some dangerous Vulcan state. Spock carried Kirk out into the landing bay and walked through the medical team without pause.

McCoy signaled the stretchers aside. It was quicker, even easier, to use the Vulcan’s strength and move Kirk directly to Sickbay. And there was something to be said for being carried by a living presence rather than a grav-stretcher. Especially if it was by the Vulcan, who had carried his Captain off of more than one battlefield. That presence and the touch of Sola’s hand might well register with Kirk wherever he was, and keep him somewhere within reach of coming back.

Chapel inspected McCoy’s dangling right arm as they moved to the turbolift. “What do you think you’re doing moving around with that, Doctor?” she asked.

McCoy shook his head. “That’s the least of my worries.”

In the turbolift Chapel shot McCoy’s shoulder joint full of neo-procaine and the pain eased. But McCoy would not take time to have the dislocated arm put back in place.

They were arriving at Sickbay. Spock put Kirk down carefully on the main diagnostic table. The life-sign readouts were shockingly low. At McCoy’s signal Dr. M’Benga brought an instant IV to replace blood. Chapel moved in with a pressure clip to replace Sola’s hold.

Sola had to pry her fingers loose, McCoy saw, and did so, not paying attention to it. McCoy reached over and caught her left hand with his. “Muscle spasms,” he said. “You must have been holding on to him as if your life depended on it.”

She looked up quietly and nodded. “That’s right, Doctor.”

The Vulcan stood by without expression, looking down at Kirk.

Then Sola turned to Kirk, and while Chapel and McCoy checked the readouts, the Zaran seemed to do her own evaluation-or perhaps treatment. She put a hand on Kirk’s forehead, on his temples, on the injured arm.

It was Chapel who pointed out that where Sola touched him there was electrical activity registering on some of the instruments. “Like the old Kirlian patterns,” Christine Chapel said to McCoy, “which were said to show results of psychic healing.”

“What are you?” McCoy asked Sola.

“A female of my species,” she said. “Unfortunately an unbonded one. Therefore of erratic powers. But it should be of some help.”

“Psychic healing?”

Sola shook her head. “Not precisely. It is a Zaran psionic technology for the transfer of life-energy.”

She stood then at Kirk’s head, letting her hands rest on his temples, and McCoy could almost see the life-energy flowing out of her and into Kirk. McCoy saw no harm in it. There was not much harm anyone could do him, now. The vital signs showed that Kirk was dying.

Then even the instruments began to agree. The computer display showed a flow of warmth, energy, circulation. McCoy saw Christine Chapel’s eyes riveted to the computer readouts. “Vital signs improving, Doctor,” she said.

McCoy saw Spock’s face, the Vulcan control eroded almost completely. “He is still critical, Spock,” McCoy said. “But she’s giving him a chance.”

“Still critical?” Spock asked. He scanned the life signs. “There is,” he conceded, “visible improvement.”

McCoy nodded. “I’m saying it’s still touch and go. The cumulative stress-and some kind of pretty virulent poison. But you know him, Spock. He’ll fight.”

“With what, Doctor?” Spock asked with what sounded like bitterness. “How many times?”

Sola swayed fractionally, and McCoy saw that her face was drained. He moved toward her. “You have to stop now,” he said.

But she shook her head microscopically and continued, going suddenly white to the bone. Then Spock stepped behind her and put one hand on her shoulder, one into the mane of tawny hair, the long Vulcan fingers seeking contact points known to Spock’s own psionic technology. “Let her continue,” Spock said. He seemed to make some massive effort, and McCoy had the sudden feeling that it was at the expense of the last of his mental reserves or controls.

McCoy started to protest, but there was a new flow of life-force to Kirk, as if she could draw it from the Vulcan and pass it on.

The Vulcan must have divined that it would work, and it did.

They kept at it until Spock also looked drained white, and McCoy feared for the Vulcan, whom they all tended to think of as indestructible. He was not, as McCoy very well knew, and he knew that Spock would drain the last drop of his own life-force for this.

But Kirk’s vital signs were beginning to move toward the low normal range, and his face even had a touch of color. On McCoy’s signal Chapel had given Kirk another powerful detoxicant against the poison and sealed up the bleeding arm. It would have to do.

McCoy moved in and took one of Sola’s hands where it touched Kirk’s temples. He could almost feel the flow of something himself-a tingle in his hand. “That’s enough. Stop now.”

Slowly she opened her eyes and focused on McCoy.

“You’ve done the job,” McCoy said. “Stop before I have two more patients.”

She started to look over her shoulder at Spock, but the movement overstrained some precariously maintained balance, and she swayed. Spock held her and reached down himself to pull her hands away. Finally she let go.

After a moment she straightened and took her own weight, then turned to face Spock. “Thank you, Mr. Spock.”

Spock shook his head. “Necessary.” He still looked at her stonily.

“Spock,” McCoy protested, “she almost certainly saved his life.”

Spock turned to him bleakly. “She was the cause of his danger. As I was.”

“Those overgrown werewolves were the cause of his danger, Spock,” McCoy said impatiently. “Not to mention a few kinds of hell he’s been through lately. And what did she-or you-do? Take a few seconds to deal with the unprecedented?”

“With emotions, Doctor. Mine,” Spock said.

Abruptly McCoy felt his medical alarms going off. When the Platonians had tortured and humiliated Kirk, Spock had actually admitted to emotions for the first time, but only to insist that “You must express your emotions-and I must master mine.” Over the years Spock had perhaps lost that battle in certain crucial respects, but he had never surrendered.

But now what kind of Vulcanism would it touch off if Spock could neither master nor deny what McCoy had seen in the clearing? And what was Spock supposed to do about it if he had also seen what Kirk felt? Just when you thought you had Spock figured, there would be some Vulcan booby trap opening under all their feet-swift, and probably lethal.

“Mr. Spock, I want to examine you,” McCoy said.

“Doctor,” the Vulcan snapped, “you will not pull medical rank on me now. I suffer from no condition which you could detect or correct.”

“Do you suffer from a condition which I could not detect or correct?” McCoy demanded.

“Physician,” Spock said, “heal thyself. I have duties.” He turned on a heel and stepped to the intercom. “Bridge. Maintain survey orbit. Assume attempt at concealment of starship trap. Maintain increased security on the ship. Spock out.”

McCoy was about to start in again when he felt Sola attach herself to his injured shoulder. The agony had come back. Before he could protest a further draining of her power, she slipped a hand under his armpit, and by some swift move of strength and precision, she slipped the bone back into its socket. There was a moment of blinding pain-and then under her hands the pain left as if it had never been-and he felt healed in more than the shoulder. McCoy looked at her incredulously. “Who’s the doctor around here?” he complained.

She smiled. “You are, Doctor. That is merely the trail skill of a huntress.”

“Or a miracle,” McCoy muttered.

But Spock cut him off. “Will the Captain die?” he asked Sola.

She turned and met Spock’s eyes. “No. Not again.”

“Come with me,” Spock ordered.

Her eyes seemed to take up some challenge. “Yes, Mr. Spock,” she said, and turned to obey.