Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation (26 page)

Sergei looked pained. “I took the wreck to the recycling depot,” Sergei said loudly, speaking too slowly and too precisely, as if talking to a child, or someone over eighty. Cochrane hated that kind of treatment. “To see if anything could be reclaimed.” “Of course you did,” Cochrane said, wishing the young man— Sergei was fifty—would get to the point. “Of course you did.

SOP.” “And Crombie—he’s the tech on duty when I went there~

Crombie takes one look at the engine hood and says some of those holes in it, well, sir, some of those holes aren’t from the flywheel fragments busting out. They’re from something else busting in.” Cochrane stared at the lawman who was really a power station technician, trying to comprehend what he was saying.

Monica had been driving their carrier back to the farm from Micah Town. The flywheel had slipped out of its capsule and ripped apart the engine compartment, sending shrapnel into the passenger area. It had been a tragedy. But tragedies still happened. Every once in a while, things just broke.

The carrier had been ripped in halfi The electrical system had ignited the fuel tanks. The storage batteries had exploded.

At the hospital, the medical team had not allowed Cochrane to view the body.

“I don’t understand,” Cochrane said. His heart fluttered in his chest.

“What I mean, sir, is that I think someone deliberately shot at your wife’s carrier.” “Shot?” Cochrane repeated. He felt Montcalm’s powerful arm move around him as his legs weakened.

“I had Crombie cut out those hood sections—you know, entry holes—took them to the metallurgical department at the Foundation. Ionized gas residue, sir. All around the metal.” Cochrane shook his head. This had no meaning for him.

“Whatever projectiles hit your car, they were propelled by a plasma burst.” The memories flooded back to Cochrane. “You mean, a fistgun?” Sergei shrugged, out of his league. “A military weapon of some sort. sir. But not a beam weapon. Projectiles absolutely. The Foundation’s going to go through the wreck again, see if they can find projectile fragments.” Cochrane gaped at the man without speaking. His pulse hammered in his eardrums, the roar of a distant dark wave sweeping forward, unstoppable, consuming all.

Sergei had wrung his hat into a cloth tube. “Sir, I’ve never handled a homicide case before. I mean, this whole entire colony’s never had a homicide case before. I’d like… I’d like to turn it over to the Orbital Defense Bureau. They’re the closest thing to military we’ve got around here. Maybe they can send a pouch to Earth. Get some lab there to identify the weapon.” Cochrane felt his chest continue to constrict. Could it be true?

Could someone have taken Monica from him? Deliberately?

“Is… is that all right, sir?” Sergei asked.

Cochrane nodded. Of course it was all right. Whoever did this must be found, must be punished, must be… He heard Monica’s words come back to him from so long ago, even as he was consumed by the desire for revenge. Tempting, she said, her voice so young, so sure, but then we wouM become him.

“Please do… whatever you must,” Cochrane choked out.

Sergei nodded grimly. He started to walk off. Then he stopped, turned back, one finger lifted. “Uh, sir, just one more thing. I know they’re going to ask me. I…” He looked embarrassed.

“Sir? Do you have any enemies? You know, someone who might have wished you harm?” “Enemies,” Cochrane said, thinking of ashes. “Let me bury my wife, Sergei. Then we can talk.” “Thank you, sir.” Sergei walked back to his carrier, smoothing his hat.

Montcalm escorted Cochrane around the house, toward the fig trees, where the guests were assembled by a simple grave. Sir John was buried nearby, out of the shade, so he could always be beneath the stars.

Throughout the service, Cochrane continued to feel as if each moment were happening to someone else. Just as he had felt that night on Earth, thirty-nine years ago, fleeing across the artificial turf of Battersea Stadium, the Optimum in its death throes all around him. The world hurtling toward the atomic horror.

London in flames.

He heard another, less welcome voice from his past, echoing from long-vanished stadium seats and walls, a face repeated an infinite number of times around him.

You will never escape the Optimum/that voice screamed. You will never escape your destiny/

Throughout the service, hearing nothing, Cochrane stared up at the fluttering leaves of the fig trees. But there was no enlightenment for him that day. Only his destiny, bleak and inescapable as it had always seemed to him.

Later that day, that night, it was difficult to tell under the lighting conditions of midpoint, Cochrane sat in his study, listening to patient young voices, and he knew it would take a lifetime to explain the truth behind what their words described.

Sergei was there, and Montcalm. Melanie Ark from the Foundation’s metallurgical department, quiet and intense. Sirah Chulski of Orbital Defense, massive enough to block an asteroid on her own.

Montcalm had put down a plate of sandwiches left over from the food the guests had brought. Cochrane wasn’t hungry.

Doubted he would be hungry ever again. But Ark went through them, one at a time, as methodically as she constructed superimpellor shielding, one molecular layer after another.

“There can be no doubt,” Chulski said. “It was a murder, Mr.

Cochrane.” Cochrane sat behind his desk and fingered a small metal medallion one of the Vulcans had given him years ago. It was a circle in which an off-center jewel served as the origin point of a triangle. The translation of what it represented had not been perfect. The linguists felt it would be many years still before communications were effortless. But the disk had held great meaning for the somber, pointed-ear aliens. Everyone fit within it, they had told him. But it was more than just a symbol of the universe; it meant behavior as well, as if they meant that all beliefs fit within it, too.

Cochrane decided the planet Vulcanis had never given birth to its own Optimum Movement.

He had no doubt that that was who had been behind the murder of his wife.

He just didn’t know if he could tell these young people the truth, without them discounting him because they thought that age had finally moved to claim his mind.

“But for us to be able to solve a murder,” Chulski said, “we need to know a motive.” Sergei looked more sorrowful than even Cochrane felt. “Who would want to kill Dr. Burke?” he asked.

Cochrane sighed. “I don’t think whoever did it cared whether or not Monica lived or died.” All eyes were on him. “They wanted to hurt me.” Chulski leaned forward. “Who did, sir?” Cochrane couldn’t bring himself to say it. But he had no other choice. In the end, what did it matter if anyone believed him or not?

“The Optimum,” Cochrane answered, and from the reaction of the people in the room, he might as well have said Jack the Ripper, as if that monster from old Earth could possibly be resurrected on another world.

“Sir,” Chulski said far too politely. “The Optimum Movement died a long time ago. And it was strictly an Earth-based aberra-tion.” “I’m from Earth,” Cochrane said, carefully putting the Vulcanian medallion down on the desk. “I had run-ins with the Optimum before the war. Colonel Adrik Thorsen in particular.” “Colonel Thorsen’s dead, sir. So’s Colonel Green. The whole cadre.” “‘The evil that men do lives after them,’” Cochrane said.

Ark took another sandwich from the plate on the small table beside her. She looked at it intently, as if wondering what an atomic reading might reveal about its contents. “I have heard stories of Optimum cells still functioning,” she admitted. “There have been so many rumors of war criminals escaping Earth to live under assumed names in the colonies… maybe some of them are true.” Sergei looked unconvinced. “You’re saying we have an Optimum cell on Alpha Centauri? C’mon, Melanie. They’d be reported so fast we’d be shipping them home before they had a second meeting.” Ark popped the sandwich into her mouth and chewed it methodically.

“Maybe someone just arrived?” Montcalm suggested hesitant—

Iv. ”’
bu know, there’s a cell somewhere else, and they sent someone here to… to you know.” Chulski shifted her impressive bulk in her chair, managing as al
a}s to make the others seem less significant. “We could check xvith immigration. Find out who’s come here in the past six months or so, and from where.” She glanced back at Cochrane.

..’
au sure there’s no one else you can think of, Mr. Cochrane?” “Of course there’s not,” Montcalm said, too forcefully. “He created the interstellar community single-handed. We owe our existence to him. Who could possibly want him dead?” The light bar on the desk communicator flashed. Cochrane watched it. The farmhouse system would pick it up in a moment.

But he nodded at Montcalm to answer.

The young man lifted the handset. The viewscreen remained dark. “Mr. Cochrane’s office,” he said. His eyes widened. He looked at Cochrane. “There’s been an accident, sir. At the Foundation.” He passed the handset to Sergei. “The fabrication cre is… dead, sir. All of them.” Cochrane slumped back in his chair. The students on the fabrication team were the ones who engineered the latest theories, hand-wrapped the coils. They were the Foundation’s best. The brightest. Already Cochrane knew that whatever happened, this, too. had been no accident.

Sergei listened to the details. The others stood in agitation.

Cochrane alone remained seated.

Sergei confirmed it. “It was a matter-antimatter blast,” he said.

Montcalm was confused. “They never have fuel in the fabrication facility.” Sergei looked to Cochrane for confirmation. “He’s right,” Cochrane said. He closed his eyes and saw the faces of the fabrication team. Saw their parents’ faces. Their children’s.

V~’as Micah Brack right? Did evil never die? Was the battle never over?

The communicator flashed again. Sergei grabbed it, identified himself’. After a moment, he passed the handset to Cochrane. The viewscreen was still blank. Cochrane wondered bitterly who had died IlOV,, “Cochrane here,” he said.

“You know what I want,” Adrik Thorsen answered. It had been thirty-nine years, but the voice, the tone, the cruelty were unmistakable. “You promised you’d use it against me if I came after you. And I am coming after you.” Cochrane wanted to drop the handset but his body was paralyzed with shock. “You’re dead,” he said, his voice sounding older than even his years.

“You’re confused,” Thorsen said. “It’s your wife who’s dead.

It’s your students who are dead. But you and I, we’re still alive.” Cochrane was aware of the others in the room watching him.

Sergei went to a home system panel and inserted his police ID card, punching numbers furiously into the keypad, trying to override the privacy circuits.

“One by one,” Thorsen said. “One by one, I promise you they’ll fall—until I have your attention.” “You’ve got my attention!” Cochrane said to stop that terrible voice.

“Then give me what I want.” “It doesn’t exist! It never has!” “I don’t believe you, Mr. Cochrane. But I’ll make certain that you believe me.” Cochrane stared at the handset. This couldn’t be happening again. It had ended in Battersea. In a blast of fusion fire. “You can’t…” he said, already knowing that if anyone could, it would be Thorsen.

“You’re weak, Mr. Cochrane. Weakness is not optimal. Perhaps I was weak to ever have admired you. But in—” Sergei ripped the handset from Cochrane’s rigid hand. “Who is this?!” he shouted into it.

But from Sergei’s expression, Cochrane could see that Thorsen had already broken the circuit.

“Mr. Cochrane?” Sergei demanded. “Do you know who that was?” “Could you leave, please,” Cochrane said. He felt exhausted.

But Sergei didn’t let go of the handset. “Does your home system automatically record calls?” It didn’t. Monica hadn’t thought that was right. Few systems on

Alpha Centauri were set for automatic record. But Cochrane didn’t say that. What was the point? “Leave,” he told his visitors.

“Except you.” He pointed a shaking finger at Montcalm.

No one made a move to the door. Cochrane grabbed the handset from Sergei and slammed it down on his desk. The VulcanJan medallion bounced up and rolled off onto the floor, M~ere it spun and clattered on the tile.

Sergei motioned to the others. Chulski and Ark followed him out. though both seemed uncertain it was the right thing to do.

Montcalm stood in front of CochranCs desk. The young man was tense. muscles bunched, ready to strike wherever his teacher directed. “Will you tell me who it was, sir?” Cochrane wondered what it would be like to have youth again.

He wondered what it would be like to have second chances. He wanted Montcalm to have a better life on Alpha Centauri. This horror pursuing him was something from the past. His past. It shouldn’t concern Montcalm or anyone here. “It was someone who… just wants me,” Cochrane said.

“There’re only two million people on this planet,” Montcalm answered earnestly. “We can find him. We can find anyone.” But Cochrane shook his head. The truth was that his own arrogance had caught up with him.

Arrogance, he thought with sorrow. That final word he had felt compelled to have with Thorsen in the stadium, thirty-nine years ago. Turning back in the doorway to say that he would use his warp bomb if Thorsen ever came after him. Just to torment him, to hurt him, to be better than Thorsen ever could be. Monica had been right. He had become Thorsen. And that transformation had cost him her life and others, just beginning their journey.

Cochrane felt so weary. Here he had hoped that his invention might someday let humanity leave the worst of its inner nature behind, yet he’himself was a repository for it. The cursed need [o
‘(‘ hcUer. He wondered if the Vulcans included that in their medallion.p>

“I want you to prep my ship,” Cochrane told Montcalm.

“You don’t have to run, sir. I can protect you. This whole world can Protect you.”

Cochrane shook his head, tried to smile reassuringly. No need to disturb another life. “I’m not running. I want to go to… Stapledon Center. They have a good fabrication shop there. We’re going to need new staff.” Montcalm studied Cochrane carefully. “Are you sure? What about that call? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?” “Life has to go on,” Cochrane lied. Monica had always told him that. He hadn’t believed her then, he didn’t believe her now. But it was important to the safety of everyone he cared for on this world that Montcalm believe him at this moment. “Send a message pouch to Stapledon. Let them know I’m coming.” “When do you want to go?” “Right away,” Cochrane said. “Look after it for me?” Montcalm nodded slowly, anxious to do something, anything, for his teacher. “Do you want to keep the trip a secret, sir? I mean, if there is someone after you…” “I have nothing to hide,” Cochrane said. “That call… it was just a crank.” He looked around his study, all the books, the fiche, the computer cards, the building blocks of his mind, no longer with purpose. “I‘1l feel better helping the Foundation. Really.” “Can I at least post some guards around the house? I know they keep some old rifles out at the landing facilities.” “That’s not necessary,” Cochrane said. “Increase security at the Foundation, that’s all. So there won’t be any more. accidents.” Cochrane was relieved to see that whatever Montcalm believed about his real motives, he headed dutifully for the door.