Crucible: Kirk Page 5

  Behind the column, Kirk remembered how Drusilla had wanted to pass the time with him, claiming that she had been told to act as his slave. The sensitivity the proconsul tried to project seemed overdone and even juvenile.

  As Kirk had all those years ago, the other Kirk said, “Nothing, except perhaps an explanation.”

  “Because you’re a man, I owe you that,” the proconsul said. “You must die shortly, and because you are a man.” He peered up at the first citizen and said, “Would you leave us, Merrick? The thoughts of one man to another cannot possibly interest you.” Although Claudius Marcus had evidently received help from Merrick during the former Federation captain’s six years on the planet, the proconsul’s words clearly indicated his contempt for him.

  As Merrick turned to go, the other Kirk shifted his weight and seemed to accidentally brush against him. The Enterprise captain appeared to reach up automatically to steady himself, his hands briefly touching the first citizen. Though from his vantage behind the column, Kirk could not see it, he had no doubt that his alter ego had just passed his note to Merrick.

  As the old Beagle captain departed, the other Kirk looked after him. “Because you are a man, I gave you some last hours as a man,” Claudius Marcus said, obviously explaining the rationale for Drusilla’s presence during Kirk’s detention here.

  “I appreciate that,” the other Kirk said.

  “Unfortunately, we must demonstrate defiance is intolerable,” the proconsul said.

  “Of course,” the other Kirk said.

  “But I’ve learned to respect you,” Claudius Marcus told him. “I promise you, you will die easily, quickly.”

  “I thank you,” the other Kirk said. “And my friends?” Kirk recalled that Spock and McCoy had been taken back to a jail cell after surviving a turn in the gladiatorial arena.

  “When their time comes, the same, of course,” the proconsul said. He held his goblet up to the other Kirk as though offering him a toast, then drank from it. “Guards!” he called. The two uniformed, helmeted men marched from the door to stand on either side of the other Kirk. They both carried automatic projectile weapons. Claudius Marcus rose from his chair. “Take him to the arena,” he said. “Oh, we’ve preempted fifteen minutes on the early show for you, in full color. We guarantee you a splendid audience.”

  “Before I go,” the other Kirk said, “may I have a few moments to myself, to make peace with my god?” Still observing from behind the column, Kirk recognized the ploy, which likely confirmed the nature of what his counterpart had written to Merrick.

  “Your god, Kirk?” said the proconsul. “I must confess to surprise. The gods are simply tools we use to manipulate the masses. Haven’t your people advanced beyond the need for religion?”

  “So much for respecting me as a man,” the other Kirk said. The words and tone had been perfectly delivered, Kirk thought, to exact the action needed of the proconsul.

  “Very well,” Claudius Marcus said. “I grant you your time.” He gestured toward the sleeping alcove, and the other Kirk started toward it. “You have a few moments only,” the proconsul said, “so speak to your god quickly.”

  The other Kirk acknowledged Claudius Marcus with a nod before stepping over beside the bed. There, he kneeled down and folded his hands together, bowing his head as though in prayer. The proconsul and his two guards waited, speaking among themselves as seconds passed, then a minute, then two. Kirk thought that perhaps the other Kirk’s plan had failed, but then he heard the telltale whine of the transporter beam. Clearly Merrick had followed the instructions he’d been passed, which doubtless had told him to use the purloined communicator to contact the Enterprise and provide Scotty with the relative locations of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in order to beam them all up to the ship.

  Kirk watched as his alter ego’s image sparkled gold with the transporter effect. “Guards!” Claudius Marcus yelled, pointing, but too late. As the armed men moved into position and raised their weapons, the outline of the other Kirk had already begun to fade.

  And then with it, so too did the entire scene, a different setting gradually starting to appear in its place. It felt to Kirk as though his surroundings had begun to dissolve about him and then re-form. In an instant, he recalled the first time he had ever beamed anywhere, and how, as a child, he’d actually believed that the transporter had functioned by breaking down the universe, moving it, then reconstituting it about him. With reminiscence came memories of his parents, still a force in his life despite having died so many years ago.

  As the next reproduced locale within the nexus solidified into existence, Kirk expected to see the family farm where he’d grown up in Iowa, or maybe the scene of his grandfather’s funeral, the event that had necessitated his first trip by transporter. But Kirk clearly no longer controlled what he experienced within the nexus, if he even ever had. Rather, as he shook his head in an attempt to clear it, he saw lush vegetation forming all around him. Through it, at the edge of a clearing, he saw the other Kirk—still in his crimson uniform, still without his jacket—along with Spock, Pavel Chekov, Yeoman Landon, and security guards Marple and Kaplan. All those members of the landing party wore the uniforms Starfleet had issued them during Kirk’s original command of the Enterprise, Spock in the blue of the sciences division, Chekov in the gold of command, and the others in the red of engineering and services.

  In the clearing, the hum of the transporter grew once more, and then McCoy materialized, along with two more security officers, Hendorf and Mallory. As they approached the first group, Kirk looked away. What is this? he thought. More mistakes that I’ve made in my life? He recollected very well this mission to Gamma Trianguli VI, when all four of the security guards had been killed, when Spock had very nearly lost his own life when he’d been struck by a directed bolt of lightning, and when Kirk, in order to save the ship and crew, had been forced to deactivate the machine that had ruled and supported the native population. Before that, planet 892-IV, where although he’d managed to escape with the lives of the members of the landing party, he’d failed to bring Merrick back to the Federation and to justice. And before that, in his previous time in the nexus, the day he’d broken off his relationship with Antonia, and before that—

  How long has this been going on? he wondered. How long have I been in the nexus trying to “fix” my life?

  As he heard the other Kirk talking with the members of his crew, he turned away and walked deeper into the tropical landscape, out of earshot of the landing party. He did not wish to see how this re-created sequence would allow his alternate self to undo the mistakes he’d made in his career, in his life, because it achieved nothing. No matter if Hendorf and Kaplan, Mallory and Marple survived this replayed incident, they had not survived in the real universe. Whatever happened here, Kirk could not obviate his role in their deaths.

  And yet, when he had previously been in the nexus, when he had himself experienced these repeated incidents from his life rather than just observing them, he had taken solace, even happiness, in reliving them and being able to alter the outcomes. But even so, he asked himself now, what point had there been to that? Kirk had hardly lived a perfect existence, but in carrying out the many missions he had been assigned, he had always striven to protect the lives of his crew, even though he had not always been successful in doing so. Despite his failures, he knew that he had accomplished a great deal in his years. Beyond the value of the many exploratory, first contact, and diplomatic missions he’d led aboard the Enterprise, Kirk had helped to protect the Federation and to foster peace throughout the quadrant. On quite a few occasions, he had saved lives—sometimes many lives, even whole populations. He had lived an existence that had mattered not only to himself, but to others.

  Whole populations, Kirk thought. He recalled the threats to Deneva and Ariannus, and those posed by Lazarus and Gary Seven, Nomad and the doomsday machine, the Guardian of Forever and V’Ger and the probe that had wanted to communicate with humpback whales. Kirk ha
dn’t acted alone, but he had acted.

  He also remembered another population and another world that had been at risk: the more than two hundred million of Veridian IV. Kirk believed that he had left the nexus and worked with Picard to defeat Soran and prevent the annihilation of the Veridian star and its planets. But then the ribbon of energy had reappeared in the sky, bearing with it utter devastation. Had that been confined to the third world in the system, or had it spread farther and imperiled the fourth as well? He assumed that he’d been spared the destruction expanding into space and raining down on the planet because he’d been pulled back into the nexus an instant before it had reached him. Had that destruction ended, or did it continue even now back in the “real” universe?

  In the middle of the jungle on this imaginary Gamma Trianguli VI, Kirk questioned whether the term now actually carried any meaning here. He had seen only the past, repeated—and sometimes altered—again and again, but Picard had spoken of being from the future. Once more, Kirk wondered just how long he had been in the nexus.

  “You’ve been here a long time,” a voice said behind him.

  Kirk spun around, startled, his arm rushing through the fronds of a tall plant as he did so. As he heard an explosion somewhere in the distance, he saw somebody standing before him—somebody not a member of the Enterprise landing party or a native of this world. “Guinan?” he said even before he realized he would speak. He didn’t consciously recognize the woman he addressed, though clearly he must have known her on some level.

  “We’ve met before,” she said. She possessed a distinctive appearance: rich, chocolate skin; dark eyes; a wide nose; and prominent, rounded cheeks. Black braids emerged from beneath a violet cloth headdress that had a thick, flat brim at its crown. She wore a long, sleeveless robe, also violet, atop an auburn gown.

  “Are you reading my mind?” Kirk asked. The two statements she’d made had seemed to speak directly to what he’d been thinking.

  “No,” Guinan said. “I’m just very…intuitive.”

  “And you know where we are?” Kirk said. “You know what’s going on here?”

  “You know where we are too,” Guinan told him. “You’ve been here before.”

  “In the nexus,” Kirk replied.

  “Yes.”

  Kirk attempted to puzzle it all out. He glanced past Guinan and into the distance, back toward the clearing where he’d seen the Enterprise landing party, though he could see them no longer. He felt the need to move, and so he took a few paces away, pushing through the tropical greenery. “I was here before,” he said. “And then I left the nexus.”

  “Yes,” Guinan confirmed. “You left and you returned.”

  “Is that why there seem to be two of me here?” Kirk asked.

  Guinan furrowed her brow, as though in thought. “Do you remember where you and I met?” she asked him at last.

  “No,” Kirk admitted.

  “Right here,” she said, raising her arms in an inclusive motion.

  “On Gamma Trianguli Six?”

  “In the nexus,” Guinan said. “I was onboard the transport ship Lakul when it became trapped in the energy ribbon. That was when I was drawn into this place.”

  Kirk looked down for a second, reminded again of another failure. Peering back up at Guinan, he said, “We didn’t rescue you,” he said. “I’m sorry. We tried.”

  “But you did rescue me,” Guinan said.

  Kirk stared at her without comprehension. He felt as though he had missed some fundamental piece of information. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I was one of those transported safely aboard the Enterprise,” Guinan said.

  “But you’re still here,” Kirk said, feeling as though he had stated the obvious.

  “I think of myself as an echo of the person who was pulled off the Lakul and out of the nexus,” she said. “I was beamed back into the universe you and I know, but the essence of who I am also remained here, duplicated in some way.”

  “And that’s what I am?” Kirk asked. “An echo?” That didn’t seem quite right to him.

  “In some ways, we’re all echoes, reverberations one moment of who we were in the previous moment,” Guinan said. “But you are James T. Kirk. You entered the nexus when the energy ribbon penetrated the hull of the Enterprise-B, and when you left to go to Veridian Three with Captain Picard, an echo of you remained behind. When you returned to the nexus, that echo was still here.”

  Kirk felt his mouth open as a sense of realization washed over him. “That’s who I’ve been watching,” he said. “An echo of myself.”

  “That is how I see it, although you and he are both as real as the other,” Guinan said. “But while he has accepted being here, has even experienced great joy from being here, you have not.”

  “I did,” Kirk said. “When I first entered the nexus.”

  “Yes,” Guinan agreed. “But not now. Why?”

  Kirk considered that. As best he could recall, when he’d initially come into this temporal other-space, he’d immediately begun reliving and remaking the events of his life. When he’d reentered the nexus, though, he hadn’t attempted to prevent himself from existing in some remembered or imagined moment; he’d simply found himself observing one of those moments rather than participating in it. He supposed that he could even now select some blissful event to experience again, remake some painful incident into something positive, or invent some wonderful new circumstance for himself, but—

  “Guinan, just before I returned to the nexus, something happened to the energy ribbon,” he said. “It moved at much greater speed than when I’d previously seen it, and it appeared to expand in a way that destroyed the universe all around it. I’m concerned about the population of a world that might be in its path. Millions of lives may be at risk.” He paused, wanting to emphasize the importance of his next question. “Do you know what happened to the energy ribbon?”

  A pall seemed to pass over Guinan’s visage. “Yes, I do,” she said. “You happened to it.”

  THREE

  (2371/2235)

  “There,” Guinan said, pointing past Kirk. He turned to follow her gesture, and once again, everything changed. Where he had one moment been standing amid the lush growth of a jungle, he now stood on a rocky mountaintop. The still, temperate climes of Gamma Trianguli VI had given way here to a cool, blustery wind.

  Kirk waited for his sense of dislocation to pass as he peered down from the high tor across a wide, wooded plain. At first, he neither saw nor heard the object of Guinan’s attention, but then a growing roar reached his ears. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, and in the distance, he spied something that he could not immediately identify. A flat, circular object glided low over the land, headed in their direction. As it drew nearer, Kirk realized that he had underestimated its size, and as the noise increased in volume, he also understood that the object did not fly above the ground, but slid across it. Trees splintered in its path and vanished beneath its mass as—

  Kirk felt a surge of emotion course through him as he recognized the object: the saucer section of a Starfleet vessel. “Where are we?” Kirk asked Guinan, unable to take his gaze from the disaster playing out before him. “What is this?” He could hear the dismay in his own voice.

  “We’re still in the nexus,” Guinan said. “This is Veridian Three. And that’s the Enterprise. Picard’s Enterprise. While you and he fought Soran, the ship was attacked by rogue Klingons and suffered a warp-core breach. The Enterprise crew separated the saucer, but the explosion of the core forced them down.”

  Now Kirk turned to Guinan. “How do you know this?” he asked her.

  “All of this exists within the nexus,” Guinan said, regarding him levelly. “But I was also on the ship.”

  “You—?” Kirk started, but so many questions occurred to him that he allowed the single word to convey his perplexity.

  “I was just one of a number of civilians aboard who worked in a capacity to support
the crew and their families,” Guinan explained.

  “Civilians?” Kirk said, stunned. “Families?” He looked back at the saucer as it continued crashing across the planet’s surface.

  “Yes,” Guinan said. “The ship carried the families of some of the crew.”

  Kirk felt a twist in the pit of his stomach as he watched the great hull grind past the mountain atop which he and Guinan stood. Bad enough for the crew to be placed in harm’s way, but for civilians—families!—to be there with them…Kirk shook his head. He didn’t know if he could’ve commanded effectively in such an environment, and he had no idea how Picard managed to do so.

  Down just past the base of the mountain, the saucer finally came to rest, close enough that Kirk could just make out the letters and numbers of its designation: NCC-1701-D. The vast hull had to be at least four hundred meters across, greater than the entire length of any of the ships that Kirk in his day had commanded. In the vessel’s wake, it had left a wide swath of destruction, a long, dark trench that stretched back as far as Kirk could see, and about which the remnants of trees had been strewn like brittle twigs.

  “They managed to level off during their descent,” Guinan said. “Amazingly, their casualties were light.”

  “That is amazing,” Kirk said. He looked over at her again. “And you obviously survived.”

  An expression appeared on Guinan’s face that Kirk could not read. He could not tell whether in that moment she felt peace or sorrow, acceptance or resignation, or something else altogether. “No,” she told him. “I died shortly after the crash.”

  Kirk didn’t think he would’ve felt more surprised if Guinan had reached out and pushed him from the mountaintop. Not having any notion of how to respond, he peered back down at the saucer. Dust billowed up from the edges of the disc, but he saw no smoke from fires. Still, the ship appeared inert, and even if most of its crew had endured the downing of their vessel, it seemed obvious that this Enterprise would never journey through space again. He could not help remembering standing on the Genesis Planet with Bones and Scotty, Hikaru and Pavel, watching his own Enterprise plummet through the atmosphere in the last blazing throes of its existence. “Why are you showing me this?” he asked Guinan.