Chapter 21

McCoy turned on Gailbraith. He had brought the Ambassador to his own home turf, Sickbay, and now he meant to have an answer.

“Ambassador,” he said, “I’m not sure how much soul I own, and you are just about the last buyer I would sell it to. But I consider that I am now left in effective command of this ship. I cannot know whether Mr. Scott or any other crew member is free of either the Totality or your Oneness and therefore fit to command. I don’t know what you did to Jim Kirk in that link Spock pulled him out of. I don’t like what you have evidently cooked up with the Totality. But I have to hold this ship together and find its Captain and First Officer. And Sola. If your price is my soul, I will make you the same offer the Captain made. If he joins you, I will, too. But you must leave me clear until that time and help me to hold the ship and to find them.”

Gailbraith smiled. “That is rather a hard bargain, Doctor-considering that if I get your Captain’s soul, I would almost certainly get yours, too.”

McCoy faced him flatly. “Gailbraith, you don’t hold all the cards. Under Code Seven as Senior Medical Officer I am empowered to take certain steps-including, if necessary, a destruct sequence. And even if you could get your people off, your Oneness could not survive on that planet, either. I suggest you accept my bargain.”

McCoy did not describe the limits of his power or the depth of his reluctance to use it. He had played poker from Georgia to Jim Kirk.

Gailbraith smiled. “Doctor, you will never know whether it is to my immediate purpose to assist you, or whether I merely pretend to do so while waiting to take you off guard. However, within those limits-and in my own time-I will assist you for that price.”

McCoy took a deep breath. He wasn’t certain what you were supposed to do after you sold your soul to the Devil. But he had better get on with it.

“You will keep Mr. Scott and the command crew free of the Totality and your Oneness,” he began. “Scott, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, Chapel, a few others I’ll name.”

Gailbraith shook his head. “Three of those already belong to the Totality, or to me.”

McCoy felt his heart contract as if in a vise. Scotty? Chapel? Any of them. Dear God. Then, in fact, he was holding the fort, the last line of defense.

“You will tell me which ones,” he said. “And then you will help me find the Captain.”

Gailbraith shrugged. “Possibly. In my time.”

Kirk backed warily along a branch, holding the cat-bear with his eyes, feeling his way with feet and one hand, until he backed up against the trunk of a life-tree.

He braced the spear against the trunk, but he did not expect it to help him much. Even if it impaled the cat-bear, he would probably be crushed by the great beast’s weight and killed in its death-throes.

But it was the first rule of survival that you kept trying until you were already dead-and for some time after that.

The cat-bear looked at him as if at a rather interesting morsel, then charged.

He braced the spear, and as the point took the animal in the chest, he jumped. He was perhaps twenty feet off the ground, but he broke the fall slightly by grabbing at a branch or two on the way down.

He landed, hard, and rolled, and then the animal landed beside him, a snarling, spitting mass of claws and teeth, dying.

He scrambled away and backed up until he was trapped by the trunks of life-trees. He held the feeble short length of blue bamboo like a knife and waited while the animal towered up like a bear on two legs, twice his height.

Then as it reached him, it crumpled and he barely escaped its collapsing weight. He was surprised to find it dead at his feet.

He turned away, somehow shocked by the death of so large and beautiful a thing, and yet surprised to be alive.

He would not survive many more such encounters. And somewhere he had smashed the previously injured arm against a branch and knew that Gailbraith’s healing was not perfect. It had restored the essential function, but not the bone-deep healthy strength. He was in pain again, and he felt the deep shock lying in wait for him. One ankle was sprained, and he doubted that he could make it in the trees now.

He moved out on the ground, limping, looking for more of the scarce blue bamboo. An unarmed man could not last long on the ground, but he must find another weapon, and he must keep going.

Somehow what disturbed him most was the thought of Sola, or Spock, finding his body under some cat-bear or werewolf.

Or-not finding it…