The Price of the Phoenix

CHAPTER XXIV

McCoy turned to the four.

There was only one question in all the eyes, Vulcan, Romulan, Human.

Is it final?

Nightmare, McCoy thought.

“He was dead,” he said aloud. “I’d swear it. Final”

“Logic, Doctor,” the Vulcan said, not as baiting but with the tone of an old nightmare, or a new one. He bent stiffly to pick up the small device which had dropped from Omne’s belt. “The process works from a transporter effect. We do not know that the ‘emanations’ cannot also be beamed as transporter-coded information. It would be the logical solution.”

“But—he was already dead,” McCoy said doggedly.

“Was he?” Spock was examining the device.

“Spock—it’s not—a belt recorder?” Kirk said rather hollowly, looking at the little device as if it might contain the soul of Black Omne.

“No,” the Vulcan said, “although he might have worn one—clipped to the back of his belt, concealed in a boot. We do not know how far he had gone with miniaturization. But it may have been simpler than that. He could easily devise an open transporter tracer-beam, a signaling device—”

“Spock,” McCoy said irritably, “what the devil are you getting at? And what is that you’ve got there?”

Spock looked up with bland Vulcan innocence. “Doctor, it is—a dead-man switch.”

“What?”

“A device which depends upon the continuing life of its user for its operation, Spock explained patiently. “The earliest mechancial versions stopped a steam locomotive if its operator died. Considering Omne’s strength, this one did approximately the same.”

“Spock, will you talk English?” McCoy grumbled.

“I believe I did, Doctor. Spock’s tone was infinite weariness.

The Commander took the open device from the Vulcan’s nerveless hands, looked at it. “Gravity operated with a drop of mercury,” she translated. “Simple. So long as Omne stayed alive and on his feet, it sent out a signal to the transporter beam not to take him. If he died—or even if we had overpowered him or stunned him—it would signal the beam to lock on.” She looked at Kirk, at the others.

“He left it for us,” Kirk said slowly, “to raise the question: Is it?”

“Precisely,” Spock said.

“So,” James said, “We have to face that question again.”

“Not quite,” Kirk said. “There was no question before. He would not have killed himself if he were not virtually certain. But we did surprise him. Here, at the edge or his transporter range, away from his equipment, dead, we believe, before the beam took him—” He straightened. “We might just have done it.”

“Or might not,” McCoy murmured, looking at the four and seeing a long vista. Never look behind you. Something might be gaining on you.

Omne.

“We will not know,” Spock said, “until and unless he is ready—if he does live. This time he will go to ground. The delegates’ commission reported only moments before he came; they verify the death of Omne; his estate is in the hands of trustees; he is mourned by those to whom he gave refuge, and in some quarters, where short memories will forget or disbelieve small matters like kidnapping, he may yet be mourned as a martyr to freedom.

Kirk frowned. “But you said you would mourn Omnedon. What was all that, Spock?”

“One day I will tell you all of it,” Spock said. “Omne wanted to be known, to the last. Omnedon was his name. It unlocked a memory I did not know I had from him. It must have been part of the final exchange at the moment of death—a memory he had virtually locked away from himself.” Spock’s eyes looked distant. “There was a time when Omnedon laughed, not with the sound of the wolf. He was a man of power, but not of force. A giant—not only of size, and not of evil. He was—the Alexander of his world, but not by conquest—almost—the Surak, uniting warring realms under a philosophy of peace and freedom. When the Federation came—a very early contact—he embraced it. The science, the technology, the diversity, the chance at the stars. He became a leading scientific mind, and the first advocate of bringing the benefits of change to his people. He ran into the stone wall of custom. Finally it broke him, and his world, and he never forgave himself. It was he who was the leading breaker of the Prime Directive.”

Spock returned as if from a distance. He looked at Kirk. “But what he did not forgive himself—or you, was that he reached a point when he—quit.”

Kirk was silent for a long moment. He has learned that lesson,” he said finally. “He didn’t quit today, even against death. He will not quit again.”

“No, Spock agreed. “Perhaps that is what he wanted to learn from you.”

“You’re talking about him as if he didn’t die,” McCoy said.

Kirk almost smiled. “Even if he did, he didn’t quit. I wish we could go back and reach—Omnedon. The man was a giant Or—is. There aren’t very many of them.”

“He was a monster,” McCoy growled.

“That, too.” Kirk made a small movement, as if to shake something off. “All right,” he said in the command tone, “we just have to get on with it. If he lives, he is a more serious enemy even than we knew. A conqueror with designs on dictatorship we might more easily fight. But the most sinister swindle in all history has always been to claim to advocate freedom—at the point of a gun. And the most dangerous man is the man who believes in his own swindle. Now we have a man who believes, and a man who will cram his version of freedom down the galaxy’s throat—at the point of his process. Moreover, now he has Spock’s powers. Superlatively dangerous. We must do what we planned—but in spades, and never knowing fully whether we may find Omne around any corner. The alliance—”

“You have betrayed it at the first opportunity,” the Commander said savagely. “Secrets. By what right did you risk James’s life without my knowledge or consent?”

Kirk turned to her wearily but solidly. “Commander, you are absolutely right. We had not that right, nor the right to act without James’s consent. I undertook to answer for his, and I—usurped, if you like—the right to answer for yours, temporarily. To set the trap, we had to stay within reach. It was always possible that he would grab one of us and go—or grab one of us and hold him, as he did James. If we could not stop him or stun him in the first moment, as we hoped, we had to be able to keep the secret from him, keep him talking, until Scotty had time. Spock recognized the possibility that Omne had acquired some of his knowledge and powers. If he had read one of us too soon—However, it was our intention to tell you, as soon as the trap was fully set and Spock had a chance to link with you without arousing suspicion.”

“Sometime next year?” she said unforgivingly.

Kirk smiled ruefully. “In fact, we might already have done it if you hadn’t mixed up my head with that business about the princeling. Now, was that anything to drop on a poor dear Human male?”

McCoy watched Kirk smile the smile that charmed birds out of the trees, but the Commander remained stony. Finally Kirk sobered again. “I do apologize, Commander. Most seriously and in dead earnest. Will you forgive me?”

Finally she nodded. “Let us not use metaphors like “dead earnest” We have had quite enough of death.”

“Yes,” Kirk said. “Friends?”

She nodded and offered him the Romulan gesture of crossed wrists. “And allies. But should you ever do anything of the sort again, I will make you wish that you only had to worry about being a princeling—poor dear.”

Finally Kirk laughed, but it was a little shaky. “Understood,” he said—and swayed a little.

James went Romulan pale and was suddenly at Tim’s elbow, moving him to a bed, the Vulcan joining him on the other elbow, and McCoy was across the distance practically in a standing jump with his scanner. But as far as he could tell it was just cumulative shock—God, Jim was entitled, and he wouldn’t rest—and a couple of new crunches from the fight. That—and it took a lot out of him to kill. Let alone to kill Omne.

“Get out of here and let me get to my patient,” McCoy said flatly, and looked at the Vulcan. “Patients. Later for the galaxy.”

James nodded. “Exactly,” he said in the command tone. “Bones, take over. Sit on ‘em if you have to. Jim, Spock, in bed. Long rest. That’s an order.” He moved to the intercom. “Scotty?”

“Aye, Captain!”

James raised a Romulan eyebrow which said: close enough. Thanks, Scotty. Beautiful job.”

“Mr. Spock’s idea. He said you wanted a way to shoot a gun out of a man’s hand. Just a wee tuning up of the antibiological circuit we use to rid cargo of rats and other vermin. Sort of the opposite problem.”

“Not so opposite,” James said thoughtfully. “It got rid of a—wolf.

Did it? McCoy thought, working over Kirk.

“Aye, sir,” Scott said, a little doubtfully.

“Mr. Scott, prepare to head out, warp factor seven-Lay in a course to resume our interrupted mission. Prepare for intra-ship beaming. The Commander will give you the coordinates. Take the con until further notice. Kirk out.” There was just the faintest hesitation on the name.

“Aye, sir.”

James turned to the couches and came to stand beside the Commander. He took her hand—it looked for a moment rather more like she took his. He looked down at Kirk and across at Spock, who had made it as far as sitting on a couch.

“It won’t get any easier,” James said, glancing at the door. “And it can’t get much harder. But—it won’t be good-bye.”

It finally came home to McCoy that they were really going to go—that he was: James. But dear God, it was still James T. Kirk.

How could they let him go?

And then it came back to McCoy in what way he and the Vulcan had had to be prepared to let James T. Kirk go, only a few hours ago.

Dear God, that had been the nightmare.

He looked at Spock and caught the same thought in the Vulcan’s eyes. For a moment they shared a silent exchange which spoke of what they two alone had been through and shared, and of such comfort as McCoy could offer against the loss they would have to share now. But this loss they could bear. It would not be good-bye.

McCoy tried to send that certainty to the Vulcan.

“Thank you, Leonard,” the Vulcan said without apology or explanation. He turned to James. “Gates of Hell, James.”

McCoy completed the quotation in his mind. Yes.

James stood solemnly. Then his mouth flickered in the smile which had not changed. “We’ve broken out of worse places, Spock. Today.”

The valley of the shadow of death…” Spock said, looking at James as if he were a triumph. “That is what we broke out of today—if it takes years to recapture the victory and make it final.”

Spock looked at Jim Kirk, too, and Kirk nodded. “We have years. And we have—James. New friends—” He looked at the Commander. If you don’t get him out of here this minute, I’m going to start to worry about the princeling again.”

“I’ll worry about the princeling,” James said.

The Commander shook her head. “I will.”

McCoy sighed. “So say we all,” he said.

And he saw that he had done it again as the Commander and James made it out the door.