Chapter 14

Spock also was there in a moment to lift the Human back to the diagnostic bed.

“It’s all right, Spock,” Kirk murmured. “Just-legs wouldn’t hold me.”

“Be still,” Spock ordered. He signaled for McCoy.

Sola was putting her hands on Kirk’s face. McCoy came through the door as if he had already been under full warp drive. He did not even pause but ran a scanner over Kirk. Kirk waved them both away.

“First,” Kirk said, “check Gailbraith. It’s just coming to me, what I half-remembered in the dream. Gailbraith was out of isolation before. He warned me before we left the ship that I would find what I needed-on the planet. He came to me in the Pool One area.”

“Why did you not tell me this before?” Spock asked.

Kirk shook his head. “There was some form of mental contact. I believe that he blocked the memory. It began to come back while I was unconscious.”

“Why did the Ambassador come to you in Pool One?”

Kirk sighed rather reluctantly. “I was drowning, Mr. Spock.”

“I am a fool,” Spock said. He stepped to the intercom. “Security to Sickbay.”

“I’m all right, Mr. Spock. No damage done.”

Spock looked at him bleakly. “How would you know that? You were exposed in a vulnerable condition to an alien mind force of unknown powers-which was powerful enough to make you forget the incident. Moreover, the isolation-locks on the VIP Quarters cannot be released from the inside. Gailbraith must already have controlled some member of the Enterprise crew who unlocked them for him.”

Kirk grimaced. “You’re right. Run a full personnel check.”

“There is something else,” Spock said.

“There have been times when you have been in mortal danger and I have sensed it. This time I sensed nothing. But your distress was answered.”

Kirk frowned. “You are saying-I was in touch with Gailbraith’s Oneness more than with you. You believe I am being drawn into it?”

“If we are to fight it, we must, in logic, acknowledge the possibility.”

“It is possible to develop a certain taste for Oneness, Mr. Spock, as you know. However, I believe I am still-the last amoeba.”

“Captain,” Sola said, “I have become a danger to you and possibly to Spock.”

There still managed to be some trace of a wry amusement in Kirk’s eyes. “We’ll manage.”

She shook her head. “You do not understand. I am a Zaran female. If I am irrevocably drawn toward a lifebond commitment my powers become an unknown, not under my control. They may amplify any Oneness effect-draw you into it against your will. The Totality may be able to use me. I am a danger to the whole ship.”

The amusement left. Kirk looked at her gravely. “What can we do about that?”

She stood straighter. “I must leave the ship.”

“No,” Kirk said flatly. “Whatever we do, it will not be that.”

“Spock,” she said. “Logic. There is no alternative.”

“No,” Spock said. “Someone has been at some pains to arrange our encounter. If we attempt to evade the engagement, we will doubtless have to face the issue again in a form which may be still more dangerous.”

“In a word, Spock,” McCoy interpreted, “logic be hanged. You won’t let her go.”

“One cannot hang logic, Doctor,” Spock answered. “But one can be sorely tempted.”

“You won’t let her go?” McCoy persisted.

“No.”

“Spock is right,” Kirk said. “It is logic, even if it is also what we want. We have to make our stand-together.”

“You, too?” McCoy asked.

“Do you say ‘go,’ Bones?”

McCoy looked at Sola wryly, as if knowing how much simpler his life-and his job-could have been. “No, confound it,” he said.

Kirk smiled. “Mr. Spock, you will follow my original request. Sola, I will ask you to assist Mr. Spock in this crisis. Dismissed.”

Spock looked at Kirk and understood entirely.

“I do not require any-assistance,” Spock said.

Kirk’s gesture stressed that he was flat on his back. “You’re not getting any. I’ll take it up with you-later, Mr. Spock. Get going. That is an order.”

McCoy looked from one to the other and read them like a scanner. “One second,” he interposed. “While you have been dealing with-whatever- we’ve got more trouble. Mr. Dobius appears to have been taken over by a Oneness. Or, maybe-I may be going crazy-but I’d almost say he was taken over by two.”

“How, Bones?” Kirk shifted instantly back to the command mode.

“When I checked him-and went looking for Spock-one brain half was attuned to Gailbraith’s Oneness. The other showed some strange, similar pattern but not the same pattern. Maybe Sola’s Totality?”

“You may be right, Bones,” Kirk said. “Get everything you can on that second pattern.”

“I just tried. No luck. In those few minutes both strange brain patterns faded. Mr. Dobius now seems to be perfectly normal.”

“You believe the effect was temporary?” Sola asked.

“I wish I did,” McCoy said gloomily. “I think it’s still there-but with no visible symptoms now. It has-masked itself. I think even Mr. Dobius doesn’t know it-but I believe he still is or can be under someone’s control. And there is no way at all to detect it now.”

“Are you saying,” Kirk asked, “that if someone-say, me-was affected, he might not know it-and after some brief period it would not be detectable?”

“I believe,” McCoy said glumly, “that is what I said.”

Kirk again tried to move and knew the utter frustration of helplessness. His ship was under attack. Spock was facing perhaps the crisis of his life. They were quite possibly holding a finger in the dike which could crumble to engulf the galaxy in Oneness. He himself might already have started to crumble on that front.

“Bones,” he said, “you’d better give me whatever it takes to get me on my feet. I can’t sit this one out.”

“I’m a doctor, not a magician,” McCoy said. “You’re staying put.”

“Bones- ” Kirk said warningly.

McCoy was making adjustments on a spray hypo. “This may make you feel a little better. It’s not going to erase cumulative stress and near-fatal shock. And I don’t know a cure for what else ails you.” He flashed a glance at Sola.

“That’s all right, Bones.” Kirk started to sit up, but the room started to rotate.

“Mr. Spock,” he said, “you have your orders. Go check the crew by any means which you, Sola, or the medical department can devise. Set double watches, no one to perform a critical function alone. You and Sola check each other. Don’t come back, except in line of duty.”

Spock merely looked at him for a long moment, and Kirk thought for that moment that he would refuse. “Captain,” he said finally, and turned to go, gathering Sola up with him without touching her.

She looked back for a moment at Kirk, as if to acknowledge that she was obeying his choice. But he saw that the current was still there between her and Spock, regardless of any effort by either one of them to resist it. He knew then that he had been right. Before anything else, she had to finish with Spock, if she could…and he had to make certain that the pon farr was not merely eased but finished, and that Spock would live.

And-there was some subliminal thought which told Kirk that whoever had planned this for Kirk and Sola could not have reckoned with Spock. Did it give the three of them some subtle advantage if she was also drawn to both? Or did it double their danger?

The door closed behind Sola and Spock.

“What was that all about?” McCoy grumbled.

“What would you diagnose, Bones?”

McCoy snorted. “What I diagnose isn’t even conceivable.” He ran the scanner over Kirk. “If he weren’t a Vulcan…” McCoy shrugged.

“If he weren’t?”

“Love. Hate. Both. But he is, and you had better just tell me.”

“That’s close enough, Bones.”

“But she’s in love with you!” McCoy caught himself. “Sorry. But it was written all over her. And it looked to me like-you, too.”

Kirk sighed. “Bones, what if she is Spock’s first real love? I wish I didn’t think that she’s-my last.”

McCoy groaned. “I said it wasn’t even conceivable. That bad?”

“That bad.”

Kirk felt the stimulant working and moved more cautiously now to get to his feet. The weakness and pain settled on him like a weight of impossibility. He knew then that he should not get up, but he bit down on the agony and did not let McCoy see the extent of his weakness. He could move because he had to move. But he knew it could not last. He started to dress.

“I should have my head examined for even letting you think of getting up,” McCoy said.

“Have you examined mine?” Kirk asked.

McCoy winced. “That was my second morsel of agony for you,” he said. “After I checked Dobius, I ran the scanner tapes of your unconscious period. There were times in which both mental patterns-the Oneness and the Totality-started to displace your own.”

Kirk looked at him carefully. “Did one succeed?”

McCoy shrugged. “No way to tell. It looked to me like maybe one held off the other. Maybe it was a stalemate. But I can’t be sure. The readings are normal now-but so is Dobius. Jim-it’s a second reason you shouldn’t go running around the ship.”

“It’s the first reason I have to, Bones,” Kirk said. “What’s my alternative? Lie there and be taken in my sleep-if I haven’t been already?”

McCoy looked at him gravely. “Jim, what if you have been?”

Kirk moved down the corridor. Every step was an effort beyond his endurance.

There was no answer to McCoy’s question. Was it possible that Kirk already belonged to a Oneness-Gailbraith’s, or the other, the Totality? He could detect no sign, but there was nothing to say that he would know. Suppose they were holding him on a long line, just waiting to pull the strings? Certainly he had had the feeling in his dream that two forces warred for him-and now all of McCoy’s instruments agreed.

Unless he could resolve that, Kirk could not command the ship. Nor could he be certain that anyone else could. If some power of Sola’s people were the catalyst which the Totality could use-then was Spock in the most danger of all? The Vulcan also sailed perilously close to whatever unity bonding with her would require.

Kirk turned into the Pool One area. Perhaps to come here was foolishness. He could have gone to the VIP Guest Quarters, bearded Gailbraith in his den. He wanted to try this.

He stood by the pool, then finally had to sit down, projecting in some way he couldn’t name “Here I am. Come!”

It took less than one minute. Gailbraith entered through the door.

Kirk started to stand up, had to think better of it. “Ambassador. So you do have the run of the ship?”

“Did you expect otherwise?” The hard gray eyes inspected Kirk with a kind of reproach. “You came here for some more definite purpose than to establish that. I see you are aware you should not have stirred from bed.”

Kirk shrugged. “I have no choice. You have taken some of my people. How many? Whom?”

“Would you expect me to answer?”

“I expect you to release them.”

“Captain,” Gailbraith said, “does it not occur to you that there must be a reason why all ships have been taken in this sector-and why yours, carrying us, is still free?”

“Are you saying that you are fighting the Totality for us?”

Gailbraith smiled. “No, Captain. Not for you.”

“But you are fighting it?”

“Where the longing for Oneness exists, Captain, it is a vacuum which will be filled, one way or the other. That is where the takeover-of a ship or a galaxy-begins. At present I have filled some of your own voids with myself. Not all of them. And I have not saved all of your people.”

“The Totality has some of my crew?”

Gailbraith nodded.

“How can I stop it?”

“You cannot.”

“You can?”

“Conceivably. Not in any way you would care for.”

“Are you saying my choice is between possession by the Totality, or possession by you?”

“That is crudely put, but essentially correct.”

“And if I won’t be possessed?”

“But you will be. Captain, a trial is in progress here. This ship, the planet below, do not necessarily look like the battlefield on which the fate of the galaxy will be decided. Nonetheless, that is what they are.”

“You are against the Totality?” Kirk asked.

“Captain, I am for evolution. However, it remains to be seen what the essential direction of evolution is. As the man who condemned you to this trial has said, there are also blind alleys in evolution. One of us, Captain, is an amoeba-or a dinosaur. Here we will find out which.”

“And then?”

“If you are the amoeba, you will come to me and become the future. And I will have decided that the turning point is here, and Oneness is to be loosed on the galaxy in my lifetime.”

“Do you mean-through the Totality?” Kirk asked.

“The Totality has the means. I do not.”

“Force? If I know nothing else, I know that that is yesterday.”

“Is it force to offer tomorrow irresistibly?”

“Tomorrow has been the excuse for every atrocity.”

“And the fuel of every advance to the stars. Now, perhaps, the direction of advance is-beyond love.”

“Is there no love in your Oneness?” Kirk asked.

“There is the extension of self. All parts become valued, necessary. But that force of passion for the individual loved one who can see into our solitude and illuminate our sameness with his difference-that passion is not ours.”

“Why, then, should you want to bring any particular man or woman in?” Kirk asked.

“There is-remembrance of individual choice, Captain. We are yet young in the universe. And there is power. Certain minds would add to our strength, perhaps decisively.” Then he looked at Kirk, almost with amusement. “Apart from that, there is the Job factor.”

“What?”

“You are the most faithful servant of the old order, Captain, and as in the original story, he whom you serve has delivered you into the hands of temptation. It always seemed to me a rather poor reward for virtue.”

Kirk nodded. “As I recall, Job lost his wife, family, flocks, herds, herdsmen, and his health, strength, friends, comforters. I don’t think I care to apply for the part.”

Gailbraith shook his head. “You have been cast, Captain, long ago, as I have. The final trial must always be against the best.”

“And what is your role?”

“I am the Devil,” Gailbraith said. “Or else I am becoming a god.”

Kirk looked at Gailbraith very carefully. There was no madness in him. He was a new order of life, possibly even the new order of life, and whether he was the future or not, he was wholly committed to summoning the future. But he would decide here which future to summon.

“Whichever you are-god or devil,” Kirk said, “I have a proposition. I will consider your solution. I will experience it to such extent as I can without being captured. If I become convinced, I will be yours. But until I do, you will help me to protect me and mine from the Totality-advise, instruct, protect, block. You will not make your decision about the Totality until you have seen also, fully, the power of love, which exists on this ship. And you will, with your powers of god or devil-which I experienced today-help me with minor things. Such as being able to stand up.”

Gailbraith laughed. “What would have happened if Job had had the gall to ask the Devil to heal him of his boils-without even demanding his soul?”

“If the Devil were smart,” Kirk said, “he would have done it.”

Gailbraith nodded. “Yes. He would have. I accept your terms, Captain, until further notice-with the exception that I cannot guarantee that you will not be captured by our Oneness-or the Totality. You are vulnerable, especially now, and it is a tricky business. However, I will make no deliberate attempt to take you or keep you against your will-without giving warning first. Agreed?”

Kirk nodded. “Agreed.”

Gailbraith came toward him. “Experience Oneness, then, at least the first level, and be whole.” He put his powerful hands on contact points on Kirk’s face and head, on reflex points on the injured arm.

The boundaries of the me/not-me began to dissolve. Kirk sensed the magnitude of the man who had been able to absorb other “me’s” and remain the head, the brain, the passion. Then even the boundaries of the body seemed to dissolve and he could feel the tremendous pouring of the wholeness of the One into his ravaged body. Tissues and cells were rebuilt; life-energy fields rebalanced; strength, hope, desire revitalized. He was One. He was god. They were together. They were born again, one and indivisible-Chapter 15

Spock’s head jerked up from the science station and turned to look at Sola. She was all right.

Spock stood up, raggedly, and she followed him as he plunged into the turbolift.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Jim!” The word was a croak in his throat. “Pool One,” he said to the turbolift.

They arrived to find Gailbraith bending over Kirk. They both appeared to be locked into some abnormal state, some peculiar intensity. Spock did not stand on ceremony. He pulled Gailbraith’s hands off the contact points and flung him halfway across the room. Kirk groaned. Spock put out his own hands to replace the touch. “We are one,” he murmured in the old formula of the Vulcan mind-touch.

But they were not one. He recoiled in shock from a presence he could barely recognize-a presence which was still Kirk, but which was almost over the edge into irrevocable Oneness. Slowly, with infinite patience and terror Spock reached out to draw his friend back from that edge. “T’hyla,” he said, “Jim! Your path is here.”

He felt the wordless resistance, some part of which merely wanted to go and leave Spock what he most needed. There was an image of the woman whom Kirk had required to go back to Spock. There was still some large, stubborn remainder which was pure Starship Captain and which took this way to fight for all their lives and for his ship.

It was to that part, finally, that Spock spoke. “The ship has been effectively sabotaged in vital systems. We cannot leave orbit. You are needed on the Bridge.”

He felt the mind snap back into the familiar pattern. “Spock?”

“Captain.”

After a moment Spock released the meld. In that moment he saw in the Captain’s mind the nature of the bargain Kirk had struck.

He pulled back and looked hard into the Human’s hazel eyes. “It is as close to selling your soul as you have ever come,” Spock said.

Kirk took a very deep breath. “It is as close to losing it. Thank you, Mr. Spock.” He reached to feel the injured arm. “At least the Devil keeps his word,” he said.

He stood up then, and Spock looked at him in astonishment, seeing the old energy, the old sparkle.

Spock reached and stripped back the sleeve over the injured arm. The spray dressing was peeling off of new, healthy skin. There were no scars.

Spock turned to look at Gailbraith, who appeared to have recovered from the shock of separation. Gailbraith bowed faintly. “Mr. Spock, I believe I can advise even you on some of the finer points of resisting the Oneness of the Totality.”

“I require no instruction,” Spock said coldly.

“I do,” Kirk said. “Let’s see about those sabotaged systems, Mr. Spock.”

He led off with the old energy, and Gailbraith joined them.