Chapter 30

Sola confronted the young Watcher at the door. “Take me to your Center,” she said.

The young man was golden and fair-and he was very young and very earnest. He roused from some inner control by the Totality to look at her for a moment with his own eyes. They were grave, blue-gray eyes which, in other circumstances, would have taken responsibility for his actions, and he attempted to do so even here.

“I do not anticipate you here,” he said. “What is your errand?”

She smiled into the grave young eyes. “I will tell you, presently. What is your name?”

The youngster looked as if he had forgotten how to hear that question. But her asking it reminded him of a time and life in which his name had been important. And he knew that her asking made it important again. The question acknowledged what she saw in him not as unit but as one special entity, one man.

“Argunov,” he said.

Some warning clouded behind his eyes as if the Totality sensed that this unit was about to malfunction. He shook it off and looked into her eyes directly. “What is your name?” he managed.

“Sola Thane,” she said, and saw his eyes light for an instant.

“Here?” he said.

Then the pain struck him, driving him to the floor. It reached for her, too, but the searing tendrils were not fully set yet, and she was able to set her teeth and kneel down to hold his shoulders.

After a time the worst of it left him, and he looked up into her eyes. “You moved against the pain,” he said, astonished. “And-you held me.”

She stood up and gave him her hand, helping him to his feet. “And you,” she said, “knew my name, even here. Come, Argunov.”

He debated it with himself. “I must know your purpose.”

“To prove that what it meant when I asked your name is real.”

“I have no power to help you,” he said. “But it is considered my function to bring the unexpected to my Central. I will do so.”

She let her eyes acknowledge his meaning. “That is all I asked.”

He moved with her through the corridors, for that moment recovering the easy, confident stride of his young manhood. He was of Human descent, she saw, born on Zaran to its conquerors, but now himself finding the Totality an uneasy home.

It was for the Argunovs that she had come back from Starfleet and the stars.

Now she felt the solid core of the Totality’s Focal Center focusing its resistance on her, until the psionic field was like a thick molasses, slowing their movement. The probing tendrils moved deeper into her mind, and she knew that she would no longer escape the worst which the pain-or pleasure-could do.

Then the corridor opened out into a great lava vault, now honeycombed with machinery and the activity of controlled Workers servicing it.

In the center of it all stood a Zaran woman. She was as tall as Sola, lithe and strong, but her hair was beginning to show the white-gold of age.

Her green-gold eyes looked older than her hair.

In the thick psionic field of the Focal Center, Sola could sense the tie which bound this woman here. Once she had resisted the Humans, then she had loved one-and come to believe in the Totality, in the Oneness. Perhaps she still believed in its goal. What she believed had become irrelevant. She was mate-bonded. Her mate was of the Totality, and he was in its power.

“I bring the unknown,” Argunov said to her.

The older Zaran’s eyes conceded nothing. “You have troubled yourself to learn the name of the unknown, Watcher,” she said.

Argunov met the eyes. “That is true. She has troubled herself to know mine.”

“That is not merely trouble, Watcher,” the Zaran Center said. “It is a breach of One-spirit. Your service does not require the distinction of a name.” She turned to Sola. “Your name is known to me, and it is the name of a traitor. You have brought other-worlders here, and your intent is to destroy the Totality which serves your people.”

“My intent, Z’Ehlah,” Sola said, “is to free my people. If that be treason, you are welcome to make the most of it. I have come here to the Center of your power. Treason cannot live here. But I can.”

“So you also know my name, So’lathane. Then you know that I will oppose you. You can live here only as One.”

“I know that you defend your mate, Z’Ehlah. But you do it at the cost of the Argunovs, and now of the galaxy. You will take no more ships. And you will release the Enterprise. I also know defense of mate.”

“Of which mate?” Z’Ehlah asked. “You attempt to walk in two directions. It is the formula for a fall.”

“Then I will fall,” Sola said. “But I will take all of this down with me.” She gestured to the whole installation. Then she turned to Argunov. “Argunov, you knew my name before I came. You chafe at Totality. Why have you never moved against it?”

Argunov stood straight. “I have believed, or tried to believe, that the Oneness was right, or was at least necessary. And in any moment when I could not believe it-I knew there was no possibility of resistance.”

She turned back to Z’Ehlah. “I will not ask you why. I know why. I will not ask you to stand aside. But I must go through you.”

Beyond Z’Ehlah was the control panel for the geo-thermal units. “Then that is what you will have to do,” the Zaran woman said.

Z’Ehlah set herself, physically and psionically. Sola could feel the force flowing through the Zaran woman, and now she could see the thin gold band of electrodes which was almost hidden by the other woman’s white-gold mane. It must focus broadcast power to amplify the Zaran’s bonding capacity to bring the hunting band together. Now it hunted ships-and souls. And it hunted the soul of So’lathane of Zaran.

Sola felt Z’Ehlah reach out and gather up the force of countless minds, then direct it at her in one blow of crushing force.

Sola stood under it, not as if it did not touch her, but as if it could not matter that it did. She had known it would come, the full trial against direct pain, and now it was here….

Kirk sank to his knees as if poleaxed, his body suddenly a mass of pain. It was all he could do not to scream. He was not certain that he would not-nor that he had not.

Soljenov bent down and pulled him roughly to his feet. “Do you still wish to mate-bond with a Zaran?”

Kirk did not answer. He knew now that it was Sola’s pain he felt. She was dying-No, it was worse than that, for this mortal agony could be prolonged forever, and never broken. “Let her go!” he whispered harshly.

Soljenov smiled bitterly. “She challenges the Totality. We are expected to see the error of our ways and desist. Not so, Captain. You will presently participate in a small experiment in incorruptibility of soul. If any.”

He caught Kirk’s arm and propelled him through the corridors toward the interior of the crater.

Spock sagged against the wall. The pain was an overload even for his Vulcan capacity to control. He tried to send his control to her, but he knew that nothing could reach her. This was her fight, alone.

And somewhere ahead, clearly now, as if by a three-way circuit, he sensed Kirk, also caught in the transference of Sola’s trial by fire.

Spock moved ahead while he had the direction.

Argunov stepped forward and held Sola as she sagged. He caught her against his body and held her as if he could absorb her pain into his own body.

He could not, and the Center did not even divert force to send him his own punishment. It would come. He saw other Watchers, Workers, Joiners, turn to look at him as if he had taken leave of his senses-and at her as if she had never had any.

They sensed in the thick psionic field the titanic effort to take over So’lathane’s mind. Z’Ehlah would not yield, could not.

Yet neither could Sola.

Close as he was, Argunov sensed even the fine threads of contact which stretched to the two off-world men. For a moment he felt the stab of a fierce possessiveness, as if he would hold her even against that pull.

But it was those threads which anchored her.

‘Yield,’ Z’Ehlah demanded silently.

No one spoke by voice or mind-speech under the punishment. One yielded by yielding. There was no alternative.

Argunov felt Sola’s head lift slowly from his shoulder.

‘No,’ she said.

Argunov sensed Z’Ehlah’s shock. Resistance was not possible. And the force of the punishment was already at a level beyond increase. In a matter of seconds it would build to the point of irreversible shock and death…

“Let her go,” Kirk grated. “Take me.”

From somewhere he sensed a ‘No!’ in a mind-voice he knew. Spock! Then he was alive, near. Kirk tried to warn him off.

‘Soljenov!’ the silent voice projected. ‘A Vulcan to serve you would challenge you. Let them both go.’

Soljenov laughed. “Such nobility.”

“She’s dying,” Kirk whispered. He himself was held up only by some stubborness-and Soljenov’s hand.

Soljenov shrugged. “That is not my plan.”

Kirk sensed an order go out-and suddenly his pain stopped, so abruptly that he sagged with relief.