The Fire and the Rose Page 3

  “I see,” Kirk said. He swung back around his desk and sat down again. “When we were on Delta Vega, I asked you why you thought you were right about Gary’s mind-set when Doctor Dehner, a trained psychiatrist, had come to a different conclusion. You contended that it was because she had feelings and you don’t, that all you know is logic.”

  “I do believe that Doctor Dehner’s emotions clouded her professional judgment,” Spock said.

  “As do I,” the captain said. “But my point isn’t about the doctor; it’s about you. After I returned to the ship from Delta Vega, after Gary had been killed, you told me that you felt for him.” The captain paused, seemingly to emphasize what he said next. “’Felt,’ Mister Spock. That was the word you used.”

  The captain’s display of logic—deftly linking together two incidents years apart, presumably in order to draw a conclusion—startled Spock. He could not deny Kirk’s observation, but neither did he wish to discuss it. The captain must have perceived Spock’s reticence on the subject as he did not pursue an explanation for the latter behavior.

  “I don’t need to know why you said what you did the other day,” Kirk told him, “but I want you to know that on this ship, under my command, you never need to pretend that you’re something you’re not. I know that during this incident I urged you to try to feel for Gary, or at least act like you did. For that, I apologize.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Spock said. Once again, Kirk had surprised him. Though a decisive, action-oriented commander, he also appeared capable of balanced self-examination.

  “I might still joke with you about emotions, Mister Spock,” Kirk went on, “but I expect nothing from you other than that you prosecute your responsibilities to the best of your abilities.” The captain leaned forward on the desk, once more plucking the stylus from atop the slate. “To that end, I want to recognize and thank you for your recent efforts. I didn’t want to hear your recommendations about Gary, but they were the right ones. If you hadn’t made them when you did, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to… to do what had to be done when the time came.”

  “I did not make those recommendations lightly,” Spock said, essentially pointing out that a lack of emotion did not imply a lack of consideration.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Kirk said. “We’ve served together long enough for me to know that you perform your duties with great care.” He leaned back in his chair, tossing the stylus back up onto the desk. “In fact, I’m going to need a good first officer now more than ever. Being as close to Gary as I was, I used to talk to him a great deal. Even if he didn’t have your scientific acumen or the ability to provide insight on as wide a range of subjects as you, he did know me. And sometimes I didn’t need his counsel anyway; just talking with him allowed me to better observe my own decisions, to pinpoint their weaknesses or confirm their strengths, but now…” He shrugged.

  “I will endeavor to provide whatever support you need,” Spock said. In his time aboard the Enterprise under Kirk’s command, he had witnessed firsthand the friendship between the captain and Gary Mitchell. While Spock had never judged himself underutilized as the ship’s second-in-command, he’d always understood that Mitchell afforded Kirk a valuable resource. It made sense from a command perspective that, with his friend now gone, the captain would look elsewhere to replace that presence.

  “Thank you, Mister Spock,” Kirk said.

  “Is there anything else, Captain?” Spock asked.

  “Not unless you want to write to Gary’s parents for me,” Kirk said, tapping the base of the slate with one finger.

  “If you would like me to compose a draft,” Spock said, “I can certainly do so.”

  “No,” the captain said. “Thank you, but no. I wasn’t serious.”

  “I see,” Spock said, then added, “I did not understand.”

  “Yes, well, that’ll be all then,” Kirk said.

  Spock rose from his chair and strode out of the captain’s cabin. As he headed to find Mr. Scott, he considered all that Captain Kirk had just said to him. During the thirteen months they’d so far served together aboard the Enterprise, the two men had, in Spock’s estimation, worked well together. With recent events, though, and in light of the conversation just past, Spock thought that perhaps he and the captain had now come to a deeper understanding of each other, and to a deeper trust.

  So thinking, he entered a turbolift on deck five, on his way to main engineering.

  Chapter One

  The Unimaginable Zero

  Midwinter spring is its own season

  Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

  Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

  When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

  The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

  In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,

  Reflecting in a watery mirror

  A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

  And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,

  Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire

  In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing

  The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell

  Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time

  But not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerow

  Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom

  Of snow, a bloom more sudden

  Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,

  Not in the scheme of generation.

  Where is the summer, the unimaginable

  Zero summer?

  —T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, I

  Two

  2293

  The transparent-sided lift glided soundlessly upward along an outer wall of the steel and glass tower. About the gleaming edifice sprawled Pil Stornom, the second most populous city on Rigel IV and the seat of the planetary government. High—and low-rise buildings vied with each other for their footings amid abundant parklands, all surrounding the red-tinted waters of the lake situated at the center of the modern metropolis. Under a heavy sky, citizens and visitors strode along pedestrian thoroughfares, while airpods darted about over their heads.

  Spock had traveled here from Earth aboard the U.S.S. Farragut. He’d arrived yesterday, in time for a meeting today with Lanitow Irizal, the director of the Federation’s Bureau of Interplanetary Affairs. Irizal himself had requested Spock’s presence at the agency’s headquarters, presumably so that the Vulcan could clarify or expand his testimony regarding the recent plot to assassinate the heads of state of both the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets. Together with Captains Kirk and Sulu and the crews of the Enterprise and the Excelsior, Spock had helped thwart the conspiracy ultimately intended to maintain military tensions in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. He had already been debriefed on several occasions by members of Starfleet Command and the Federation Council, with and without various combinations of his former shipmates by his side.

  As rain began to spatter against the sides of the lift, Spock thought of his old crewmates—and in particular of Captain Kirk. After the Khitomer affair, the decades-old Enterprise had been decommissioned, at which time its command crew had stood down from the ship together. Most of them had then moved on to other tours of duty: Dr. McCoy to Starfleet Medical, Uhura to Starfleet Intelligence, and Chekov to a ground assignment while awaiting an opening for a ship’s first officer. Mr. Scott had decided to retire, acquiring a boat with the intention of leaving Earth and settling in the Norpin Colony. And Captain Kirk… to the surprise of virtually all of the captain’s friends, he too had chosen to retire. He’d spoken of the overpoliticization of Starfleet, an opinion that Spock himself had fomented by volunteering the captain to meet the Klingon chancellor’s ship and accompany it into Federation space.

  Jim had left Starfleet once before, thirteen years ago, after the completion of the Enterprise’s mission to the Aquarius Form
ation. Back then, none of the people who’d known the captain had completely understood his purported reasons for retirement, nor had they believed that it would last. It had taken four years and a failed romance, but Jim had returned to the service, and eventually to the bridge of a starship. Now, many of the captain’s friends believed that pattern would repeat, but such certainty did not infuse Spock. The last time he’d seen Jim, at a hearing last month before a trio of admirals investigating the conspiracy, Spock had perceived in his friend a deep and abiding melancholy. Such an emotion had long been an aspect of the captain’s personality—and another thing to which Spock had long ago contributed—but Dr. McCoy had recently revealed that Jim had begun engaging in extremely hazardous pursuits: rappelling the Crystalline Trench, diving the Alandros Caves, rafting down lava flows. The combination of despondence and daredevilry concerned Spock. Though he didn’t know right now what he would say, he thought that he should seek Jim out soon and speak with him.

  Outside the lift, Spock saw that the dark clouds that had blown in over the city this morning had fully opened up. Drops of precipitation beat down on the roof with a staccato rhythm as the car finally eased to a halt at the seventy-eighth floor, just three stories shy of the observation deck that topped the skyscraper. After straightening his uniform, Spock stepped out of the lift into a large reception area, the space decorated in earthy tones and adorned with numerous sculptures and paintings. He recognized the style of one carving as that of the artists in the New Dakar settlement on Ophiuchus III, and distinguished a canvas executed in oils as the work of Lura bn Zel from the planet Pandro. Spock gathered that all of the art had been collected from a variety of worlds, a symbolic expression of the BIA’s charter to foster interaction and cooperation among far-flung civilizations.

  At the far end of the side walls, doorways opened into corridors leading away from the foyer. Between them, opposite the lift, arced a large desk of ash-colored wood, behind which perched a Rigelian Chelonoid. Spock approached the bipedal reptilian, who had the gray-green hide, a blunt beak, and large, dark eyes characteristic of the species. Behind the Chelonoid hung a pair of banners. The one on the left displayed the seal of the Federation, a brace of stylized wheat stalks bracketing a circular starfield, white symbols on a navy blue background. On the right, a burgundy extent carried the emblem of the Bureau of Interplanetary Affairs, yellow-orange stars interconnected by a lattice of elegant, tapering curves.

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked in a low, hissing voice, nictitating membranes sweeping across his eyes as he peered up at Spock. At the front of the desk, what appeared to be a block of murinite had been engraved with the name:

  TELSK.

  Spock identified himself and the object of his visit, then submitted to security scans of both his retina and his palm. After verifying his appointment, Telsk contacted Irizal’s assistant, Rinsit. Another Chelonoid, Rinsit appeared in the reception area a moment later and ushered Spock through several corridors to the director’s office.

  Inside, Irizal stood from where he sat at a large desk, atop which lay the slender forms of half a dozen data slates, as well as a bulky tome spread open to a pair of densely printed pages. Past him, a glass wall presented an impressive vista of the city, currently shrouded in gray by the day’s weather. Bookshelves lined the other three sides of the office, and Spock noted a sizable number of the bindings lettered in languages other than Federation Standard.

  Irizal strode out from behind the desk to greet Spock, offering a bow of his head as he stopped before him. “Thank you so much for coming, Captain Spock,” the director said. Though small in stature, he spoke with a deep, resonant voice. A native of Altair VI, he could be visually discriminated from a human only by the number of digits—six—on each hand.

  Spock bowed his head in return. “It is my duty as a Federation citizen, and I am gratified to provide whatever assistance the Bureau of Interplanetary Affairs requests of me,” he said.

  The director laughed, a sharp, loud sound—“Ha!”—and said, “I certainly hope that’s true.”

  “Indeed,” Spock said, somewhat nonplussed by Irizal’s reaction. “I would not have made the journey here otherwise.”

  “Of course, of course,” the director said. “But you might want to wait to find out what the BIA is asking of you before you agree to it.”

  “Given the present situation between Earth and Qo’noS, and the diplomatic nature of the bureau’s work,” Spock said, “I surmised that I was invited here to provide further context and detail about the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon and the attempt on President Ra-ghoratreii.”

  “Ah, I see,” Irizal said. “That makes sense.” He waved a hand toward an inner corner of the office, to a circular table surrounded by a quartet of chairs. “Why don’t we have a seat and I can explain my reason for asking you here?”

  Spock padded across the room and sat down. As he did so, he examined a platter perched on the tabletop, and which contained an assortment of sliced fruits and cheeses. He saw hourglass-shaped wedges of soltar, a red-skinned stone fruit indigenous to Vulcan, as well as prepared rolls of gespar, a traditional staple of Vulcan morning meals. Beside the platter, a ceramic pot offered up the scent of spice tea, yet another fare of his world.

  “Please help yourself, Captain,” Irizal said. He picked up a pair of small plates and placed one before Spock and the other before himself. “May I offer you a cup of tea?”

  “Please,” Spock said. He had stayed overnight at the Starfleet facility in the prefecture of Ankanner and it had taken him longer than he’d expected this morning to find a suitable location for his outdoor meditation, leaving him no time for a meal. As Irizal poured out two cups of the steaming russet-hued beverage, Spock reached to the platter and selected several pieces of fruit for his plate. Even if he had not just been told that he had been called here for a reason other than to discuss the recent conspiracy, he would have understood that now. Though he had never been ill-treated when speaking as a witness to those events, neither had he been indulged so.

  After the director had finished serving the tea and taking some victuals for himself, he sat down and faced Spock. “I have to tell you, Captain, that I and others here at the BIA were most impressed by your performance as a Federation special envoy.” Several months ago, a combination of over-production and insufficient safety standards at the Klingons’ primary energy production facility on Praxis had resulted in a massive explosion. Half of the moon had been obliterated, sending poisonous fallout into the atmosphere of Qo’noS, the Klingon homeworld. With so much of the empire’s resources committed to military operations, it did not possess the means to combat the calamity. At the urging of his father—who happened to be the Vulcan ambassador—and authorized by both the Federation Council and Starfleet Command, Spock had succeeded in initiating a dialogue with Chancellor Gorkon. Ultimately, the goal had been the negotiation of a lasting peace between the two powers, thus allowing the Klingons to manage the consequences wrought by the destruction of Praxis without having to sacrifice their security. Even after all that had subsequently taken place, those talks continued, driven by the empire’s new chancellor, Azetbur.

  “I was fortunate to find in Gorkon a receptive audience,” Spock said. “He was a leader who comprehended and appreciated the value of peaceful coexistence even to the warrior culture of his people.”

  “Yes, I’ve read your reports about him,” Irizal said. “Gorkon seemed like a remarkable figure. Nevertheless, your own efforts should not be minimized.”

  “Nor have they been,” Spock said. As he sipped at his tea—slightly sweet, with a satisfying graininess to it—he recalled the commendation bestowed upon him by the Federation Council for his efforts, and the personal gratitude extended to him by the Federation president.

  Irizal popped a cube of pale yellow cheese into his mouth. After he swallowed it, he said, “I understand that, after serving as envoy and completing your service aboard the Ente
rprise, you accepted a position with Starfleet Academy.”

  “I train cadets in certain areas of shipboard duty,” Spock explained, “but my position as instructor falls under the aegis of Starfleet proper.”

  “I see,” Irizal said. “I know that you’ve been a member of Starfleet for many years, Captain, but have you ever considered moving on from there, taking on new responsibilities and new challenges?”

  “I have,” Spock said. “I am continually reflecting on the choices I have made and the actions I have taken in my life. For right now, obviously, I have decided on this course.”

  Irizal nodded and took a bite out of a section of soltar. Spock chose an item from his own plate and ate it. “You are clearly satisfied with your current position,” the director said after a moment, “but I’ve invited you here to Rigel to offer you an alternative.”

  “That has become clear to me,” Spock said. “In what post do you envision me?”

  “Federation ambassador,” Irizal said.

  The proposal intrigued Spock, but it also surprised him. Though he acknowledged that he had conducted himself proficiently during his brief tenure as a special envoy, and that he had accomplished the objective of opening peace talks with the notably recalcitrant Klingon authorities, he also knew that his education and experience had come in other areas. “I am a scientist and a Starfleet officer,” he told Irizal. “I am not a diplomat.”

  “Aren’t you?” the director asked. “I know that you’ve never formally trained in interplanetary relations, but after your commerce with Gorkon, I requested your service record from Starfleet. In the more than three decades you spent aboard the Enterprise, you participated in quite a number of diplomatic affairs, including the most demanding of such efforts, first contact.”