Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (77 page)

“Doctor McCoy…?
Zdrastvuyte!
”

“And hello to you, too, Chekov,” McCoy said.

Jim drew out his communicator. He was about to call Scott and have them beamed out when McCoy elbowed him and gestured toward the slagged door. The groggy doctor appeared at the window.

“Let me out of here!” he yelled.

He could not have seen too much of McCoy’s operation, and even if he had it would not have been obvious what he was doing; but beaming out in plain sight would be too much.

“Let’s go.” Jim helped Chekov onto the gurney, threw a surgical drape over him, and pushed the gurney through the double doors and past the two policemen.

“How’s the patient?” one of them asked.

“He’s going to make it!” Jim exclaimed, hurrying on without pause. Gillian and McCoy followed. As he rounded the corner, Jim began to think they would get away clean.

“He?” one of the officers said. “They went in with a she!”

“One little mistake!” Jim said with disgust. He started running, pushing the gurney before him.

A moment later the loudspeakers blared with alarms. Jim cursed. At an intersection he turned one way, saw dark uniforms through the windows of a set of doors, slid to a halt, spun the gurney around, and headed in the other direction. Gillian and McCoy dodged and followed him as he pelted down the opposite corridor. At the next set of doors he dragged the gurney to a more normal pace and pushed it through. Gillian and McCoy followed sedately.

Before them, an elderly woman sat smiling in a wheelchair. Two doctors conferred intently just behind her. As Jim passed, one said to the other, “So? How do you explain it?”

“According to the CAT scan,” the other replied, “she’s growing a new kidney!”

Jim glanced back. The elderly woman saw McCoy, reached out, grasped his hand, and held it.

“Doctor, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am.”

The doors burst open behind them. Hospital security and police officers crowded the corridor. Jim plunged into a run.

“Freeze! Stop, or I’ll—” The voice cut itself off. Jim trusted that nobody would be stupid enough to shoot in a hallway full of people. But then they passed into a deserted corridor. The pursuers began to close on them. Jim kept going. Gillian and McCoy ran alongside. Still confused and a little groggy, Chekov raised his head. McCoy reached out and pushed him back down. They were only twenty meters from the elevator. Its doors opened as if Jim had called to them.

Suddenly a guard stepped out of a cross-corridor and barred their way. Jim did not even pause. Pushing the gurney like a battering ram before him he flung himself at the guard. The guard backed up fast and stumbled. Jim plunged into the elevator. Gillian and McCoy piled in after him. He slammed his hand on the “up” button and sagged back against the wall, gasping for breath. The doors closed.

The elevator rose.

“If we keep going up, they’ll catch us!” Gillian said.

“Calm yourself, Doctor Taylor,” Kirk said. He pulled out his communicator and opened it. “Scotty, get us out of here!”

In the corridor outside, the guard hoisted himself off the floor and grabbed at the edges of the elevator doors just as they closed. He heard the elevator cage moving away. Cursing, he kicked the doors. The indicator light flicked to the next floor. Most of hospital security and a dozen uniformed police officers clattered down the corridor.

“Come on! They’re in the elevator!” He headed for the stairs and mounted them three at a time. The others followed, a few stopping at each floor to keep the fugitives from escaping. Walkie-talkies began to buzz and rasp: “They didn’t get out. The elevator’s still going up.”

At the top floor, he raced for the elevator. It had not yet reached this floor. It rose without stopping. He drew his gun.

The elevator doors opened.

“All right—” he said. And stopped.

The elevator was empty.

Gillian reappeared on board the
Bounty.
Again the transporter gave her a feeling of exultation. Kirk and McCoy, supporting Chekov, solidified beside her. Another member of the spaceship crew, an Asian man she had not met before, joined McCoy and helped him take Chekov away. Kirk stayed with Gillian. They walked along the oddly proportioned corridor. Before Gillian realized what was happening, the corridor extended into a ramp and Kirk led her onto the terraced bank beneath the ship. The ramp rose and disappeared behind them. Gillian looked back, but nothing remained of the spaceship. It was as if it had never existed.

“Gillian, would the whales be at sea by now?”

“Yes.” Gillian turned eagerly toward the spaceship. “If you’ve got a chart on board, I can show you.”

“All I need is the radio frequency to track them.”

“What are you talking about? I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t. Our next stop is the twenty-third century.”

“What do I care? I’ve got nobody but those whales!”

“Maybe the whales here in the twentieth century need you, too. You can work for their preservation. Maybe they don’t have to become extinct.”

“And what happens then? Does that mean you won’t have to come back, and I never will have met you?” She stopped, tangled in the time paradoxes. “Kirk, don’t you understand? There are hundreds—thousands—of people working for the preservation of whales! If Mister Spock is right, nothing they do makes any difference. I can’t do anything more. What do you think I’d say? How about, ‘I met a man in an invisible alien spaceship from the twenty-third century, and his greenish friend with the pointy ears told me whales were about to become extinct.’ Do you think anybody would listen to me? They’d throw me in the loony bin and throw the key into San Francisco Bay!”

“Gillian, I’m sorry. I don’t have time to argue. I don’t even have time to tell you how much you’ve meant to us. To me. Please.
The frequency.
”

“All right. The frequency is 401 megahertz.”

“Thank you.” He hesitated. “For everything.” He pulled out his communicator and flipped it open. “Beam me up, Scotty.”

The familiar sound whined. A faint glittery haze gathered around Kirk’s body. He started to disappear.

Not knowing what would happen, not caring, Gillian flung herself into the beam and grabbed Kirk around the waist. She felt him dissolving in her hands.

She felt herself dissolving.

They reappeared in the transporter room.

“Surprise!” Gillian said.

Kirk glared at her. “Do you know how dangerous—no, how could you? You could have killed both of us. Never mind. Come on, you’ll just have to leave again.”

“Hai!”
She jumped into a karate crouch, both hands raised. “You’ll have to fight me to get me out of here.”

He put his hands on his hips and appraised her stance. “You don’t know the first thing about karate, do you?”

“Maybe not,” she said, without backing down. “But you don’t know the first thing about whales. I won’t let you take George and Gracie and not take me!”

“Gillian, we could all die trying to get home! The whales, my officers, me…you.”

He made her pause, but he did not change her mind. “So much for your promise to keep my whales safe,” she said. “I’m staying.”

He sighed, raised his hands above his shoulders, and let them fall to his sides.

“Suit yourself.” He strode away.

She followed him through the amazing ship of odd color combinations, odd intersections, odd angles. Finally he reached a room full of controls and computer screens and instruments, all with the same unfamiliar proportions and unusual colors as the transporter room. Here, too, the controls had been relabeled.

Mister Spock stood nearby.

“Mister Spock,” Kirk said, “where the hell is the power you promised me?”

“Admiral,” Mister Spock said, “you must wait one damn minute.”

A black woman glanced up from her console, saw Gillian, and smiled at her. The Asian man who had helped Chekov entered and took his place at another control console. Gillian stared around in wonder. She was in a spaceship that could travel from star to star, among a group of people who lived and worked together without being concerned about race or gender, among people from Earth and a person from another planet. Gillian broke into a grin. Probably a silly grin, she thought, and she did not care.

“I’m ready, Mister Spock,” Mister Scott said over the intercom. “Let’s go find George and Gracie.”

“Mister Sulu?” Kirk said.

Mister Sulu, the slender, good-looking Asian man, touched the controls. “I’m trying to remember how this works,” he said with a smile. “I got used to a Huey.”

Gillian felt a hint of vibration beneath her feet. Kirk faced her, frowning.

“That was a lousy trick,” he said.

“You need me,” Gillian replied.

“Ready, sir,” Sulu said.

“Go, Mister Sulu.”

The alien ship’s vibration increased to a roar. On the viewscreen before Gillian, dust and leaves and fallen blossoms swirled in a cloud.

Javy felt awful. He should have stayed awake all night instead of tossing and turning and finally dropping off and then oversleeping. Ben had been bitching at him all day for being late to work. He did not stop griping till they reached the line of trash cans near the meadow in Golden Gate Park. At the entrance to the parking lot Ben hesitated, cursed, and lurched the truck into the lot. They both got down and started unloading the cans.

Trying to pretend it was still a regular spot, Ben started griping again.

“Jeez, Javy, we’ve hardly made up any time at all. We’re three, four hours behind. We’re not gonna get done till I don’t know when—”

“I already told you thanks for covering for me,” Javy said. “Look, you take off at noon like always, and I’ll finish the route myself.”

Ben immediately demurred, which was worse than if he had accepted Javy’s offer. Javy knew Ben just wanted to be persuaded some more, so he started persuading him. But his gaze kept being drawn to the meadow, to the place where he had seen the man disappear. He replaced the last can.

“Hang on a minute, I’ll be right back.”

“Javy, dammit—”

Javy found nothing in the meadow, no seared spot on the ground, not even any footprints. Maybe he remembered it wrong. He walked in a spiral around the most likely place.

“Javy, if you don’t hurry up—!”

An enormous roar vibrated the ground. A wind from nowhere blew downward. Crumpled paper and leaves and brilliant pink rhododendron blossoms whipped around Javy’s feet. He looked up. The roar intensified and a wave of heat blasted past.

A huge birdlike shadow cut off the sunlight, moved slowly over him, accelerated across the meadow, and vanished over the trees.

The shadow had come from the direction of a terraced bank and the wind had ripped blossoms from the bushes planted there. Javy sprinted up the hill, slipping between branches of dense foliage. Ben followed, crashing through the plants and yelling at him.

He reached the terrace, pushing past wilted vegetation. The heat surrounded him with a strange pungent odor. Whatever had been here had vanished into the sky.

“Javy, dammit, I think you’ve gone straight around the bend—Jeez Louise.”

Ben stopped at the edge of the terrace, staring. Javy looked down.

Around his feet lay a circle of scorched ground.

Immersed in time-warp calculations, Spock could spare only a minimum of attention for the operation of the
Bounty
or the sight of the receding Earth. He did note that the ship’s controls answered Sulu’s demands with a slight hesitation. Far below, a green stripe led from the western edge of the city toward its center: Golden Gate Park, its details obscured by distance. San Francisco reached across the water with its tentacles of bridges.

“Cloaking device is stable,” Chekov said. “All systems normal.”

“Stabilize energy reserve,” Admiral Kirk said. “Report, helm.”

“Maintaining impulse climb,” Sulu said. “Wing five by zero, helm steady.”

“Advise reaching ten thousand. Steer three-one-zero.”

“Three-one-zero, aye,” Sulu replied.

“Uhura, scan for the whales: 401 megahertz.”

“Scanning, sir.”

“Ten thousand MSL, Admiral,” Mister Sulu said.

“Wings to cruise configuration. Full impulse power.”

“Aye, sir. Three-one-zero to the Bering Sea. ETA twelve minutes.”

The California coast sped beneath them and vanished behind them and they soared over the open sea.

Admiral Kirk opened an intercom channel. “Scotty, are the whale tanks secure?”

“ ’Twould be better to give the epoxy more time to cure, but there’s no help for it. Maybe ’twill hold, but I’d give my eyeteeth for a force field. Admiral, I’ve never beamed up four hundred tons before.”

“
Four hundred
tons?” Kirk exclaimed.

“It ain’t just the whales, it’s the water.”

“Oh,” Kirk said. “Yes. Of course.”

Spock gazed at the unfinished equations, troubled.

“Uhura,” Admiral Kirk said, “any contact with the whales yet?”

Spock took note of her negative gesture as he continued to puzzle out the formulae. The doors of the control chamber slid open. Doctor McCoy entered. He stopped beside Spock and observed him for some moments.

“You…er…” McCoy hesitated, then continued in a diplomatic tone. “You present the appearance of a man with a problem.”

“Your perception is correct, Doctor,” Spock said. “In order to return us to the exact moment at which we left the twenty-third century, I have used our journey back through time as a referent, calculating the coefficient of elapsed time in relation to the deceleration curve.”

“Naturally,” McCoy said, with apparent comprehension.

Spock raised one eyebrow. Perhaps the doctor’s connection with Vulcan rationality had benefited him after all.

“So…” McCoy said, “what is your problem?”

“The ship’s mass has not remained constant. This will affect our acceleration.”

“You’re going to have to take your best shot,” McCoy said.

“My best shot?”

“
Guess,
Spock. Your best guess.”

Spock experienced distress at the idea. “Guessing is not in my nature,” he said.

McCoy suddenly grinned. “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

The speakers produced a noise unfamiliar to Spock.

“That’s it!” Gillian Taylor exclaimed.

The sound was more than familiar to Gillian. It was the transponder pattern assigned to Gracie.

“Affirmative,” Uhura said. “Contact with the whales.”

“Bearing?” Kirk said.

“Bearing three-twenty-seven, range one thousand kilometers.”

“Put them on-screen.”

“On-screen!” Gillian said. “How can you do that? It’s radio!”

Uhura smiled at her. Gillian blushed. She had a lot to learn. She hoped she had a chance to learn it.

“Image translation on-screen,” Uhura said.

A faint image appeared and gradually gained resolution. Gillian gasped. George and Gracie swam in the open sea, breaching and playing. Kirk gave an exclamation of triumph.

“Vessyl kit,”
Chekov whispered.

Under the surface, they swam as eagles flew. Until now, Gillian had seen them only as falcons in hoods and jesses.

“Admiral,” Uhura said, “I have a signal closing on the whales. Bearing three-twenty-eight degrees.”

“On-screen,” Kirk said.

A blurrier image appeared. Gillian froze in disbelief.

“What kind of a ship is that?” Doctor McCoy asked.

“It’s a whaling ship, Doctor,” Gillian whispered.

“Estimate range, whaler to whales.”

“Range two kilometers, Admiral,” Uhura said.

“Oh my God,” Gillian said, “we’re too late!”

“Mister Sulu! Full-power descent!”

The ship tilted and the acceleration increased for an instant before another force—artificial gravity?—compensated for it. Gillian barely noticed the roller-coaster effect. On the screen, the modern ship roared toward the whales, an explosive-powered harpoon gun looming on its bow. These whalers would hardly ever lose their prey.

George and Gracie had no way of knowing they should turn and flee.

“Dive speed is three hundred kilometers per minute. Five kilometers per second,” Mister Sulu said. “Estimate reaching whales in one point two minutes.”

Gillian knew the routine on the whaler all too well. She had seen the films a hundred, a thousand times. The blurry image cleared to a crystalline intensity. The crew sighted their quarry and prepared their weapons. The whale boat collected itself and surged forward on powerful engines. Its deep wake cut the ocean. Gillian stared at the image as if she could communicate with the whales by will.

The image changed: wispy clouds parted before the alien ship’s bow. The open ocean stretched out before it. Far ahead, George and Gracie played. The whale boat sped closer.

“Range to whales,” Sulu said, “thirty seconds.”

The image was so clear that Gillian could see the whalers loading the harpoon gun and preparing to fire. George and Gracie noticed the ship. They stopped playing and floated in the sea. Gillian urged them in her mind to take fright and swim away.

With a languid stroke of his flukes, George propelled himself toward the whale boat.

Laughing, the whalers aimed.

“Ten seconds, sir!”

“Hover on my mark, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said. “Mister Chekov, stand by decloaking. Scotty, ready for power buildup.” He paused. “Mark, Mister Sulu.”

The
Bounty
shot ahead of the whales and dropped between them and the whaling vessel. The harpoon gun emitted a cloud of gunpowder smoke. The harpoon moved too fast to see.

The
Bounty
reverberated with a tremendous
clang!
The spent harpoon tumbled away from the viewscreen and splashed into the ocean. Beyond it, the whale hunters stared in confusion and disbelief.

“Scotty,” Kirk said. “Disengage cloaking device.”

“Aye, sir.”

Gillian felt a shimmery shiver around her. The walls of the ship flickered so quickly she was not sure she had really seen any change. A wash of light flashed over the whalers and they reacted in terror as Kirk’s invisible spaceship became visible. The gunner jerked back from the harpoon cannon, flinging up his hands to protect his eyes. The ship lost way, pitching the gunnery crew forward against the rail, then sideways as the pilot spun the wheel and slewed the boat around so sharply that he nearly swamped it. The boat yawed, straightened, fled.

Sulu let out a whoop of triumph, and the others all cheered. Gillian tried to join them. She gasped. She had been holding her breath.

“Mister Scott,” Kirk said. Everyone in the control room fell silent, but the exultation remained. “It’s up to you now. Commence buildup for transporter beam.”

“I’ll give it me best, sir,” Scott said. He tried to conceal the concern in his voice. “ ’Twould be a right mess if we came all this way and got this far, only to lose Doctor Taylor’s wee beasties in a weak transporter beam.”