Chapter 29

At a psi-marked junction in a corridor Sola stopped Spock. “This is as far as you can go.”

“Indeed?” the Vulcan said, and she saw the stubbornness of all Vulcan settle into his face. “On what do you base that conclusion?”

“This is a Focal Center of the Totality,” she said. “Beyond this point there is no functioning as a semi-independent unit. Here the powers of Zaran females are focused on some physical-psionic device to give total control over all who enter. By mind-to-mind contact the smallest intention to act outside the demands of Totality is known and is met by instant punishment. Obedience is rewarded. Reward and punishment are transmitted directly to the brain’s pain and pleasure centers, psionically. It is as if an electrical signal stimulated direct pain and direct pleasure.”

Spock’s mouth was tight. “That has been done by direct electrical stimulation-long before Soljenov left Earth, in the twentieth century. Rats would press a lever for direct pleasure, ignoring food, sleep, sex, until they starved to death.”

Sola nodded. “No one has broken the control of a Focal Center. They are used wherever total security or total obedience is required. On ships. In critical installations. In battle. Men will march into the jaws of death rather than face direct pain. And direct pleasure is, if anything, more insidious.

“Mr. Spock, picture the Enterprise controlled by an obscenity of this kind. Picture its Captain, also controlled. You might conceivably die before being absorbed. He would not. And perhaps you would not, either, knowing whom you would leave to what fate.” She leveled her shoulders. “This must stop here, Spock, and I must stop it. If I can break the psionic control, then some of those who see me do it may be able to do the same. Zaran females may break free. Some Zaran may put his hand with mine to smash this place.”

“May,” Spock said. “Until that point, every man’s hand will be against you-and every mind of the Totality.”

She nodded. “Spock, it is a method of control developed and tested on rats. There is a flaw in that theory.”

He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“A man,” she said, “is not a rat. Nor am I.”

For a moment his eyes approved her. “Agreed. Very well. We go together.”

She shook her head. “Even the disciplines of Vulcan are no protection here. As a male you are more vulnerable. As a male to whom I am drawn, you would make it impossible for me. They would use that against me in the first instant. The one thing you can do for me is to remain out here, as my life-line, so that I will know I must make it back out here to you. Nothing else would bring me out.”

“No one else?” Spock asked.

She met his eyes. “Him. But they may use him against me in any case. In that event, you will be the only anchor-for both of us.”

He was silent for a very long space of heartbeats. She saw whole empires of Vulcan theory rise and fall behind his eyes, and then he rebuilt in an architecture which was purely his own. “If I were not a Vulcan,” he said, “perhaps I would know how to tell you how much I need to be a Vulcan, now.”

She laughed silently. “Another non-Vulcan thing you’ve managed very well, Mr. Spock.” She reached up and for one moment brushed her lips against his. “If I do not return in thirty minutes, Spock, find him and get out of the mountain. Do not look or wait for me. The inner chambers of the tree-caves may survive.”

“We will not go without you.”

Her eyes went hard. “You will, or you will reckon with me.

I will have my own means.”

“Shall I live-knowing that you lied?”

Yes, Mr. Spock, she said. But aloud she lied without reservation, even on the unspoken levels between them. “If I am not back, I will have failed, and I will be in no great danger. The Totality has use for me. Go.”

Then she turned and went, not giving him further chance to protest, or to detect a lie.

Spock watched her move down the corridor, head high, and only the knowledge of the use they would make of him against her held him.

Even of that he was not certain. There were the disciplines of Vulcan. He reached deep within himself in the manner of everything which he had been taught or had ever learned, summoning the strength of Vulcan against everything here which conspired to erode it. I am Vulcan. I control.

He saw Sola shudder, as if buffeted by invisible forces. He moved forward until he felt the psionic field, like a palpable entity. He could touch it with his hands. He put his hands against it, into it, and let his mind reach out, cautiously.

Entity, one entity. Yes. Millions in One. Now the One was aware of the tiny female one who came to challenge, and of the alien who reached out and sought to send her his strength.

In a sudden wrench of perspective, Spock looked out from Sola’s eyes, aware both of himself and of her inner battle. She moved by an effort of will. Tendrils of the Oneness reached out insidiously to penetrate her mind, to reach down into the nerve centers of her brain. No armoring would stand against them, and she had known that. Resistance delayed the full effect, but would not stop it.

Spock sensed, abruptly, that the tendrils which reached for the direct pain centers were as she had described, but even more appalling than he had contemplated.

But it was the tendrils which reached for the pleasure centers which were far more insidious even than he had conceived. They searched now for every exquisite center of being, every sensation, every enjoyment, every delight ever known or desired or beyond daring to desire. Then he saw that it was not even merely the physical which they reached for. Somewhere deep within was that most guarded center by which the Zaran female would bond in a Oneness beyond other species, and by which Sola, with her inheritance and her outworld training, would bond in a way known to no other Zaran female.

Spock could sense that bonding center now, open and vulnerable, and stretched taut by a pull of two longings, for which it had never been designed. That divided heart was her weakness now, the weakness for which she had never trained, which she could never have expected. She had armored herself against every ordinary temptation, and her particular devil had found the one man, one temptation, against which she was not proof-and then by luck or oversight had found also the Vulcan who had never expected to be her second temptation.

Spock moved instinctively to offer some protection for that vulnerability, throwing his own resistance against the tendril which reached down into her mind to search it out.

The tendril paused-and then the great Oneness behind it sensed the Vulcan mind and split off an electrifying tendril to search it out. Suddenly, Spock sensed it reaching far down into his own mind, toward the Vulcan center which was also a bonding center, also open and vulnerable now.

In a moment the electric connection would be made between them-under the control of the Totality.

Spock flung himself bodily back out of the field. It was all he could do. He felt the connection snap at the last instant with a wrench which crumpled him to the floor and left him alone in his own body.

He saw Sola, far down the corridor, sag to her knees. Then after a very long space, she lifted her head. She turned to look back at him, and he saw no reproach in her eyes, as if she knew he had had to test it. Now they both knew: he could not be with her in this.

She made it to her feet and disappeared around the corner.

Spock stood up more slowly. The wrench of contradiction was still pulling at him. He was forbidden to feel what he did, in fact, feel. And this time it could not be covered or denied or merely lived with, as he had done with other forbidden feelings, all those years.

Nor could this feeling be permitted.

He performed the discipline of control again, for all the good it did him. And this time he set himself to look for Kirk. Spock could not be with Sola, but he had tasted the power of what she went against. If it were used against Kirk, or if Kirk were used against her-there would be no hope, unless Spock could find him.

Spock moved off down the corridor, setting himself into that state in which he moved almost beyond the direction of his own will, following some instinct by which he had once or twice been able to find what he needed to find.

The search assumed that Kirk had not already been absorbed by-or given himself to-the Totality.

It was an assumption not in evidence, Spock warned himself sternly. He knew only too well what bargain Kirk would have tried to make, for his ship and for the two lives he thought he would set free.

Spock permitted himself to hope that the Human could feel the force of Vulcan anger from here….