Chapter 16

McCoy headed for the Bridge. He should have informed Spock before that Kirk was on the loose, and he had better do it now and face the Vulcan music in person.

McCoy should never have let Kirk up at all, and he was kicking himself for it. But he had seen catastrophe gaining on them from all directions, and there was no denying that Kirk was the master of the impossible solution.

McCoy would have told Spock sooner, but the Catullan biochemist, Vrrr, had staggered into Sickbay with unexplained symptoms, and McCoy had put her on the brain-scan. This time he caught the pattern he had learned to recognize as the Zaran Totality before it had disappeared. Apparently, the attempt by the Totality to take over Vrrr had produced some near-fatal conflict with the notoriously independent Catullan mind. For a while McCoy thought he would lose her, and he labored to stabilize her from symptoms of deep shock. Eventually, the Totality pattern faded, she breathed evenly, then suddenly looked at McCoy with apparent sanity out of her great cat-eyes. But he was not certain whether Vrrr had won-or lost finally.

His gut-hunch was that she had lost. He put her under guard-not that he could tell whether the guard was reliable. There was no way to detect possession by either the Totality or Gailbraith’s Oneness. And there was no way for McCoy to fight it. He felt certain that large numbers of crew people were being taken. And it had occurred to him, belatedly, that Kirk would go to confront the problem in the person of Gailbraith.

McCoy went to tell Spock. But it was all four of them he found as the turbolift decanted him on the Bridge simultaneously with the other one bearing Spock, Sola, Kirk, and Gailbraith. McCoy found that the Ambassador made his own hackles inexplicably rise, the short hairs standing up quite literally at the back of his neck, as if he faced not a civilized man but some ancient jungle enemy.

Maybe he did, McCoy thought. Maybe long ago-perhaps there was an earlier battle between Oneness and individuality, and somewhere some last battle had decided it, at least for a time. And at that moment perhaps the loneliness, the splendor, the love, were born-and the occasional longing for some lost Eden of Oneness.

Now the tribal Oneness rose again in a new form, and McCoy stood at bay against it, as doctor and as man. His medicine was unable to reclaim its victims. He saw the look on Spock’s face and knew that Gailbraith’s Oneness must have touched Kirk…. Then McCoy took one look at Kirk, who looked as if he had been freshly overhauled-unless you noticed the strain around the eyes. McCoy ran the scanner over him. Then he ran it again, not believing the readings.

“What in God’s name have you done?” he demanded. The scanner showed perfect health-except for traces of some new shock which would have stopped most men cold.

Kirk had a slightly stunned look behind the eyes, but he managed to focus on McCoy. “It’s all right, Bones. I struck-a kind of bargain with the Devil.”

“I believe it,” McCoy said sourly. He peeled Kirk’s sleeve up and saw the newly healed flesh. Perfect. Impossible. And McCoy didn’t like it.

“It’s a healing concentration of the force of Gailbraith’s Oneness, Bones,” Kirk said. “Don’t worry, I haven’t been absorbed. Yet. Although it may be that Mr. Spock pulled me out just in time.” His eyes looked haunted, but he snapped himself into the command mode and faced all of them.

“We have no knowledge or technology with which to fight the attempt by the Totality to take over this ship. The Zaran Totality is the most dangerous form of Oneness which the galaxy faces. Sola believes the Totality is using the psionic powers of mate-bonded females of her species to weld larger and larger groups together. She does not know how to stop it. It has taken every ship it has attacked in this sector. If it gets the Enterprise, it can wipe out the physical resistance of Sola’s resistance movement on Zaran. And it can destroy other planets if they offer resistance. If the Totality gets Sola as a bonded female, it may not even need to use much physical force. None of us knows anything about Oneness. Gailbraith does. There is a saying about the only way to fight fire. I have adopted the principle. I will use Gailbraith’s Oneness against the Totality. Gailbraith offered certain assistance.”

“At what price?” Spock asked suddenly, and McCoy saw that the Vulcan’s hackles were up, too, probably worse than his own. God knew what the Vulcan had pulled Kirk out of. A mind-link with Gailbraith?

Kirk faced Spock squarely. “I have agreed to experience the Oneness, and to-consider the alternative.”

“There is no alternative,” Spock said. “You are what you are, and your essence cannot endure any surrender to Oneness. There is an adage also about playing with fire-and getting burned. We must solve this apart from Gailbraith, or we will have surrendered the prime target in advance. You.” Spock turned to Gailbraith. “His sacrifice is not acceptable to any of us. You will consider it the gallant offer of a man medically unfit to make it, and you will withdraw.”

“No, Mr. Spock,” Gailbraith said quietly. “I will not.”

Spock turned to Kirk. “Withdraw the offer.”

Kirk looked at the Vulcan gravely. “I’m sorry, Mr. Spock. I can’t do that.”

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock said, “the Captain is medically unfit for command following severe injury and an intense form of alien mind contact which may have rendered him the captive of an inimical alien power. I must insist that you certify him medically unfit to command.”

“Spock,” McCoy said, “I couldn’t agree more.” He saw the Vulcan’s look of gratitude and quickly shook his head. “I can’t do it, Spock. No evidence. He checks out in perfect health. And I can’t detect the effects of Oneness-in anybody. You could be captive, too, for all I know. I don’t like his bargain, either. But I have no medical authority to stop him.”

“Thank you, Bones,” Kirk said. He reached for a moment and put a hand on McCoy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Let’s get on with it.”

Then Kirk dropped down the stairs to the command chair. It was Sola who followed him.

“You are not to consider it,” she said very quietly.

“What?” Kirk asked.

“Going off into the night-or the Oneness. It will not solve our problem.”

He looked up at her. “At the moment I am primarily concerned with saving my ship. If you want to help me, continue as agreed.”

“The agreement did not include your bargain with the Devil.”

“Necessity makes strange bedfellows-as you know,” he said. “There are some prices which have to be paid, and this is one of them.”

He turned to Gailbraith. “Ambassador, can you detect the rate at which the Totality is gaining control of the Enterprise crew?”

“Yes,” Gailbraith said.

“How long do we have?” Kirk asked.

McCoy saw Spock turn from the science station. It was the question Kirk would normally have asked him.

Gailbraith shrugged. “They control key stations now. At the present rate they can have an effective majority in three hours, and the most resistant minds in six.”

“How can we fight it?” Kirk asked Gailbraith.

“You will not like either of the answers,” Gailbraith said. “I don’t like the questions,” Kirk said. “Say it.”

“My Oneness can contest for each soul. It has, in fact, been doing so. I control a number of your crew which I will not specify. At your order others would join without resistance. You could choose the Devil, you know-my Oneness rather than the Totality-and order your crew to do likewise.”

“You’re right, I don’t like it,” Kirk said. “What is the other answer?”

Gailbraith turned to look at Sola. “The Zaran female is amplifying the effect of the Totality, and to some extent even of my Oneness. The more she remains in your presence, Captain, the more she is drawn toward bonding and the more dangerous she becomes to all of you. You must choose between her and your ship.”

“I like that still less,” Kirk said. “Find a third choice.”

Gailbraith shrugged. “Accept the trial which the Totality sets as a challenge.”

“What trial?” McCoy interjected.

Gailbraith turned to indicate Sola. “In this rather interesting package, we have all of Zaran. She is the heart of Zaran resistance, and it would be her power which would give the Totality a psionic weapon to start a chain reaction of Oneness. As she goes, so goes her planet-and quite possibly the galaxy. Has it not occurred to any of you that we are all very conveniently met here?”

“It has occurred to me that you arranged it,” Kirk said. “You knew she would be here. And you brought me.”

“That is true, as far as it goes,” Gailbraith said. “Did it occur to you to wonder why?”

“To bring out my latent bonding-powers,” Sola said. “It has been tried before, but not effectually. Ambassador, was it you who chose to send Captain Kirk and the Enterprise?”

“Yes,” Gailbraith said. “With some knowledge of the Totality’s purpose.”

“The Ambassador is astute,” Sola said. “And he is right. We have been overreached, and I must leave the ship. I will take the scoutship.” She turned to go.

“No,” Kirk said flatly, and Spock did not move aside from blocking her path to the turbolift.

“It may be rather late even for that,” Gailbraith added. “I would expect that at any moment we may hear from the Totality with the terms of the challenge.”

“What else do they want from her?” McCoy grumbled. Gailbraith turned the steel-gray eyes on him and McCoy felt the sheer power of the man.

“She is their key to bringing Oneness to the galaxy in my lifetime, Doctor,” Gailbraith said.

“And you want to bring Oneness in your lifetime,” Kirk said to Gailbraith.

“Yes, Captain.”

“But at what cost?” Kirk protested. “If your goal is right, can it not win without force?”

Gailbraith shrugged. “That has been my belief. But to win without force may take a thousand years-or a million. Captain, if I could offer you, say, peace in your lifetime and forever, but at a cost-would you not be tempted?”

“I might be, Ambassador,” Kirk said, “but I have learned that some costs cannot be paid. The use of force destroys any benefit which can come from it.”

“I wish I were quite so certain, or so innocent.”

Kirk looked at him thoughtfully. “Is that the question you came here to answer, Gailbraith? You also are not here by accident. Is it that the Totality needs something from you? Or do you need something from the Totality?”

“How perceptive, Captain. Both.”

“And you both need something from me-from us!” Kirk divined.

Gailbraith nodded. “It is a triangle, Captain, a fateful triangle met here to decide the fate of the galaxy for a million years. We who have chosen Oneness cannot alone bring it to the galaxy in my lifetime. For that we would require the methods of the Totality. The Totality also requires our help-or our neutrality at least. Collectively those of us who have formed diverse kinds of Oneness by choice might stand against the Totality. We would be a plurality of Onenesses, against the single engulfing Totality. The conflict might last for millennia. And while it lasted you singletons would also find room to exist as amoebas. But if I become convinced that the Totality’s solution can work, and I decide to bring my kind to join it-we may spare the galaxy a million years of conflict and agony.”

Kirk shook his head. “You would extinguish greatness-and love. There is no room for diversity in Oneness, no spark which jumps across a gulf of difference to create…ecstasy.”

“That, Captain,” Gailbraith said, “may be the third point of the triangle-and the essence of the trial: love versus Oneness. Sola’s people have the capacity for Oneness-if any species does. You, your friends, your ship, are the distilled essence of the opposition. The test case is, perhaps, of the power of love.”

“It has won before,” Kirk said.

“And lost,” Gailbraith answered, “many times. I believe you will lose, Captain, for you are torn in two directions. The impossibility of your situation will, finally, bring you to me.”

“Gailbraith,” Kirk said, “you have promised to help me save my ship-at least until the final decision. I will hold you to that. And I charge you to make your decision carefully. For if you join the Totality, there is no turning back and no alternative. But if you resist and offer individuals the chance to choose your Oneness, or some other, or none, then you preserve your freedom-and ours. Now-how can I contact the Totality?”

“I expect that the Totality will contact you,” Gailbraith said in a tone of warning.