“Miss Lincoln, if I can have your full attention.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking back at Mr. Spock. Forget the palace guards; suddenly he reminded her of her old high school principal. “You were saying something about difficult choices?”
“Indeed,” he confirmed. “I have reached just such a decision myself, which may help us to resolve this impasse, but I shall require your cooperation, as well as a considerable degree of trust.”
Something about his tone, which struck her as, if anything, even more somber and serious than usual, made her sit up straight. “What kind of trust?” she asked, not bothering to conceal her apprehension.
“There is a procedure known as the Vulcan mind meld,” he began.
* * *
Isis fumed within her cage. For a few moments there, it had looked like the human female had been about to open the carrier, but then the infuriating creature had changed her mind. She extended her claws in anger and hissed through the bars of the cage.
She had been separated from Gary Seven for too long; she was starting to get fretty. She knew that Seven could take care of himself, wherever he was, but it was that other one who worried her. The female. Isis was still not convinced that keeping her around was a good idea.
Who knew what kind of trouble she could be getting into now?
* * *
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You want me to say yes to some sort of Martian ESP thing?” Images from dozens of old Sci-Fi Theater horror flicks raced through Roberta’s memory: body snatchers and brain transplants and psychic, mind-controlled zombies. You know, the alien in The Brain Eaters even looked a bit like Mr. Spock. . . .
“I do not ask this lightly,” he said, “yet it seems to me that much of our conflict is based, as in our previous encounter, on mutual misunderstanding and suspicion. We are each seeing different aspects of the same puzzle and are uncertain as to the other’s motives. A mind meld might allow us to overcome the differences that are currently dividing us.”
The green cube spun rapidly in her hands as she mulled over Mr. Spock’s proposal. He certainly had a point when he talked about the differences between them; they came from different planets and centuries. Talk about a generation gap! And overcoming differences was supposed to be a good thing; that was a lot of what the whole youth movement of her own time was all about. Still, this was her own brain they were talking about now, and a mind was a terrible thing to waste. . . .
“How do I know you won’t use your telepathic powers to, well, brainwash me or something?” she asked.
Mr. Spock did not look offended by her question. “I assure you, Miss Lincoln, that is not my intent. I am proposing a simple exchange of information, conducted on a level so intimate that any deception or miscommunication will be impossible.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure.” A mind meld? Simply getting blasted by a laser beam was starting to sound a whole lot better. Ever since she’d hooked up with Gary Seven, she had taken to reading a lot of science fiction, so she thought she had some vague idea of what Mr. Spock was suggesting. Lord knows she’d read enough about strange alien beings with advanced mental abilities. The only problem was, she didn’t know what book Seven had dropped her into here. Was this Stranger in a Strange Land or The Puppet Masters?
Maybe she needed a second opinion, one from another human being. She looked over at Dr. McCoy. The medical officer stood just outside and above the command module, resting his bony elbows on the handrail. “What do you think about all this, Doctor?” she asked. Of all the future people on this spaceship, he seemed the most down-to-earth.
“Personally,” he said, “I wouldn’t want that green-blooded walking computer within spitting distance of my gray cells, but that’s just me.” He paused to give the matter further thought. “If you want my professional opinion, though, I have to admit that the Vulcan mind meld is just what he says it is. I’ve seen Spock meld with people before without inflicting any long-term psychological harm on the other person. To be honest, it usually seems hardest on Spock himself.”
“That is supposition, Doctor, and irrelevant,” Mr. Spock said curtly. Although the fixed expression on his face did not even flicker, Roberta thought she heard a trace of annoyance in his voice, as though he did not like the doctor’s implication of weakness or vulnerability. For the first time, it occurred to her that Mr. Spock might be experiencing some sort of anxiety over this proposed mind meld. Hadn’t he said something about a “difficult choice” before? I must seem just as alien to him as he is to me, she thought. Maybe even more so. How would I feel about sharing my brain with a prehistoric caveman? What sort of sacrifice was Mr. Spock willing to make in order to get through to her?
If he can put his innermost thoughts on the line, can I do any less? “Okay,” she said firmly, her decision made. “Let’s grok.”
Mr. Spock nodded solemnly. He stepped forward and gestured for her to stand up. What? Right here? Now? Roberta gulped nervously. Apparently Mr. Spock was not inclined to waste any time. Probably afraid I’ll have second thoughts if we wait any longer, she thought. He’s probably right. She rose slowly, relinquishing the captain’s chair, then placed the crystal cube gently down on the seat behind her. It should be safe enough there. After all, I’m not going anywhere . . . I think.
“Er, what do we do now?” she asked.
“It is not a complicated procedure,” he said. He stepped closer so that his face was only inches away from hers. She could see a faint green outline around the whites of his eyes. What had the doctor said before about green blood? The man on the computer screen back home had bled green. . . . “Simply stand where you are,” he spoke softly, “and listen to my words.”
Mr. Spock raised his hands, his fingers splayed apart, and gently placed them upon her temples. Despite her best intentions, she couldn’t help flinching a little when he touched her. She half-expected miniature stingers to emerge from his fingertips and burrow their way into her brain. Instead his touch was surprisingly warm, so much so that she wondered what the body temperature of a Vulcan was supposed to be. Warm hands, cold heart, I guess. “Your mind to mine,” he intoned. “My thoughts to yours.”
So far this was sounding more like a hypnotist’s spiel than she liked. Roberta wondered if it was too late to back out, change her mind. What if she had made a terrible mistake? Gary Seven would be lost forever and it would be all her fault, just because she had been naive and trusting and fallen for the oldest alien trick in the book. A harmless mind-merger? Yeah, right!
Then her fears dissolved, along with her identity. . . .
* * *
“Your mind to mine.” Spock experienced a minor tremor in his resolve as he felt the barriers between their minds beginning to blur. He acknowledged his qualms, analyzed them as he had been trained to do by his father, then placed them aside. Although he was glad to have avoided such an admission, he conceded that it was wise to have Dr. McCoy on hand to observe his contact with Miss Lincoln. Like any instance of delicate surgery, every mind meld contained an element of risk; it was only logical to have a trained medical practitioner watching over both participants in the meld.
Not that he truly feared any neurobiological complications; it was the exposure of his own deeply guarded emotions that always daunted him whenever he initiated a mind meld. Unfortunately, such exposure was unavoidable, given the intimate nature of the meld itself. Let it be so, he thought. There was too much at risk to let his private apprehensions deter him from a logical course of action.
“My thoughts to yours.” Her turbulent feelings lapped over the borders of his own mind like waves upon a beach. He sensed her agitation, her fears and doubts and inner strength. He closed his eyes and saw himself through her perceptions: strange, alien, intimidating. He saw his own face superimposed upon another’s. A male, of Vulcan or Romulan descent, blood streaming from a wound in his head. This image was prominent in her thoughts, but he did not understand it
yet. He had to press further, deepen their connection, become truly one mind, one spirit, one katra.
“My mind to yours.”
* * *
McCoy watched the meld proceed. Nothing appeared to be happening, just two people standing face-to-face, neither moving a centimeter, but he couldn’t take his eyes away. No matter how many times I see Spock do this, he thought, it always makes my skin crawl. He couldn’t help remembering the time another Spock, in a parallel dimension that creepily echoed their own, had ruthlessly raided McCoy’s thoughts to learn what the real Jim Kirk was up to. It had been a shocking and humiliating experience that was enough to turn one off Vulcans forever.
And yet, ironically, the genuine Spock seldom looked more human than when he was linked to another, more emotional being. McCoy would never forget the look upon Vulcan’s face when he merged with Kollos, the Medusan ambassador; Spock’s familiar features had been positively transformed by the other’s heartfelt sorrow and pity. It was like seeing an entirely different side of Spock. Maybe that’s what makes this mind meld business so creepy—and so compelling.
He didn’t need to glance around the bridge to know that everyone else was riveted by the same spectacle. Even Uhura seemed to have stopped trying to open hailing frequencies; he heard only a hushed silence behind him.
I hope this works, he thought. Was it possible that this slip of a girl held the key to Jim’s fate? It seemed unlikely, but she was their last hope. She’s certainly been full of surprises so far.
Spock and Roberta appeared cut off from the rest of them, isolated in their own private universe. They seemed connected by only the lightest of touches, yet he could sense the energy, the psychic current, flowing between them. Pulling them apart now would be like splitting an atom. There was a vibration, a power, uniting them that took McCoy’s breath away. With a momentary start, he suddenly remembered the medical tricorder hanging from his shoulder. He removed the instrument from its case and directed it first at Spock, then Roberta. Their lifesigns looked stable enough, though the tricorder detected a shocking amount of chemical pollutants in Roberta’s blood and tissues, even traces of asbestos and nicotine. That’s what living in the past will do to you, he groused silently. It was barbaric what people used to put up with.
Their brain activity seemed to be within their respective safety ranges. Roberta had attained a mental state approximating REM sleep, while Spock’s hyper-alert mind seemed to have slowed to a merely human level. The only problem was trying to distinguish her brainwaves from his. The more he monitored the phenomena, the harder it became to tell where Spock ended and Roberta began.
As he looked on, their faces gradually switched expressions. Spock’s stern features relaxed conspicuously, losing their rigorously inflexible lines. He looked open and unguarded, almost innocent. Angelic even. “Well, I’ll be,” McCoy muttered. In contrast, a spooky sort of calm came over Roberta’s face. She looked as cold and impervious as the sculpted face on an Egyptian sarcophagus. Like Spock, in other words.
“Brrrr,” McCoy whispered to himself. The temperature on the bridge was kept at a level comfortable to most humanoids. Nevertheless, a shudder ran through the doctor as he stared wide-eyed at the union of human and Vulcan.
He’s never going to do that to me again, he vowed. Never in a million years.
* * *
Her mind reeled beneath a flood of memories and sensations: The fierce glare of the Vulcan afternoon, the heat currents rising from the sun-baked desert floor. The rough, scratchy tongue of I-Chaya, her beloved sehlat, licking her face. Cold nights atop Mount Seleya, the light from nearby planets shining like moons in the sky, the wind keening through the rocky peaks. The spicy taste of fresh plomeek soup, hot from the nutrient processor. Salty, all-too-human tears drying on her cheeks as she ran home from school, unable to face the icy disdain of the real Vulcan children. A hug from her mother, irrational but reassuring . . .
His mind absorbed data faster than he could assimilate it, trying with only partial success to separate the information and impressions from their emotional content: Squatting on a blue shag carpet, watching black-and-white images on TV, Rod Serling intoning dourly against a background of flickering stars, Zorro on horseback, silhouetted against the night sky. More memories flashed across his mind: Swimming in the cool, refreshing waters off Puget Sound, digging for clams on the beach, white foam washing over his toes. Marshmallows toasted over a campfire, sticky and sweet with a slight taste of charcoal. Standing in the rain, damp and cold, waiting for the school bus. All the other kids are bigger than him; why’d he have to skip two grades anyway? Running after his older brothers and sisters, trying to keep up. Looking up “precocious” in the dictionary at Mirror Lake Elementary . . .
Her father looks on in stony silence as she leaves for Starfleet Academy. His mother fights back tears; how can he drop out of high school? She feels her bond with T’Pring, stretching across the light-years between San Francisco and Vulcan. The pained look in Kevin’s eyes when he gives him back his ring hurts almost too much to bear. The sudden acceleration of the shuttle, pressing her back into her seat, as it overcomes Earth’s gravity. Staring out the window of a Greyhound bus, watching the empty plains roll by on the way to New York. Her first glimpse of the Enterprise in spacedock. A want ad in the Village Voice, something about “encyclopedia research” . . . ?
Searing pain scorches every inch of her body as the Denevan neural parasites attack her nervous system. He hangs by his fingertips from a window ledge outside the Flatiron Building, dangling fourteen stories above Broadway; how in the world did Seven talk him into this, anyway? She feels her newfound happiness slipping away as the spores disappear from her bloodstream; cold logic reasserts itself. Isis stares at him with baleful yellow eyes, smug and superior as always. The Organians reveal their true form, and she must avert her eyes from the blinding light. He slides down a secret tunnel under the White House, hoping desperately that there’s still time to stop Professor Tepesch from brainwashing JFK and Jackie. Making love to Zarabeth in an ice cave. Sharing a joint with Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.
Now: The captain is missing. Seven is gone. What should they do? We are in the wrong sector. We are in the wrong time. McCoy wants to wait for Jim. Whatever happened to Isis? The doctor always disagrees with us. Where is that cat anyway? We have to do something. Why are we here? We came through a wormhole. We got a message in the past. Jim wanted to investigate the cloaked planet. Seven said we had to go into the future. The Romulans are up to something. They want to change history. The Romulans are dangerous. Romulans and Vulcans look the same. Vulcans and Romulans are not the same. He tried to warn us. They want to kill someone. They’re going to kill.
Spock.
Us.
I.
Chapter Fourteen
THE BODY OF the Romulan lay upon the floor of the command center, smoke rising from the gaping hole in his back. Supervisor 146, I presume, Kirk thought. Gary Seven appeared transfixed by the sight, frozen in place in the center of the room, between Kirk and the Romulan female who had just shot 146. Kirk still suspected that there was a lot more going on than Seven had admitted to, but he knew when a mission was going badly, and this one seemed to be heading straight to hell.
He was swinging his phaser toward the woman when several hundred kilograms of enraged feline barreled past him, knocking him to one side. Roaring like a thunderstorm, Osiris lunged at the woman who had just killed his—master? companion? partner?—before his eyes. The Romulan’s own eyes widened in alarm as she saw the emerald beast hurling at her, its vicious claws extended, its ivory horn spewing venom. Unable to fire her own weapon in time, she dived off the transporter platform toward the couch to her left, shoving the heavy piece of furniture away from the wall.
Osiris crashed into the platform, his claws gouging scratches in the floor where the woman had been standing only heartbeats before. Furious at the escape of his prey, he reared up on his hind legs, standing almost
eight meters high, the tip of his mighty horn brushing against the ceiling, and roared at the top of his lungs, his jaws opened wide to expose rows of ivory fangs. His roar reverberated against the walls of the chamber, deafening Kirk and jolting even Gary Seven from his agonized contemplation of the dead Romulan’s corpse. His mournful eyes turned toward the towering figure of Osiris.
It was an awe-inspiring display, but tragically short-lived. Recovering from her shock, crouched down between the couch and the wall, with one knee resting on the floor and the heavy tapestry rustling above her, the woman swung up her rifle and fired again. Kirk couldn’t hear the sound of the discharged weapon over Osiris’s mighty roar, but he saw the energy beam shoot across the room to strike the great cat just below his chin.
She must have adjusted the disruptor’s settings, because this bolt did more than simply burn its way through the cat’s furry hide. Instead, a burst of deadly radiation, even brighter and more green than Osiris’s own coat, suffused the cat from head to toe. For an instant, the glow surrounded Osiris like a halo, and, blinking his eyes, Kirk thought he saw the outline of a humanoid body briefly, almost subliminally, superimposed over the shape of the great cat, then the radiance faded away, taking Osiris with it. Within seconds, the fearsome creature had been completely disintegrated. Kirk felt an enormous sense of loss, surprised at the depth of the feeling; although he had known Osiris for barely more than an hour, he knew that a rare and noble creature had just been extinguished. He hoped that there were more of Osiris’s breed elsewhere in the galaxy, perhaps on this very planet.