Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (70 page)

“What possessed you to swim with damned whales?” Jim exclaimed.

Spock considered. “It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.”

“In front of fifty people? Where’s your judgment, Spock?”

Spock hesitated. “It is perhaps not at its peak at the moment, Admiral. Sucrose has been known the hell to have this effect on Vulcans. I do not usually indulge.”

“Indulge? Spock, do you mean to tell me you’re
drunk?
”

“In a manner of speaking, Admiral.” He sounded embarrassed.

“Where did you get it? Why did you eat it?”

“You gave it to me. I did not realize that the wafer’s main constituent was sucrose until I had damned already ingested it.”

Jim abandoned that line of conversation. “Listen, Spock,” he said.

“Yes?”

“About those colorful idioms we discussed. I don’t think you should try to use them.”

“Why not?” Spock said.

“For one thing, you haven’t quite got the hang of it.”

“I see,” Spock said stiffly.

“Another thing,” Jim said. “It isn’t always necessary to tell the truth.”

“I cannot tell a lie.”

“You don’t have to lie. You could keep your mouth shut.”

“You yourself instructed me to speak up.”

“Never mind that! You could understate. Or you could exaggerate.”

“Exaggerate,” Spock said in a thoughtful tone.

“You’ve done it before,” Jim said. “Can’t you remember?”

“The hell I can’t,” Spock said.

Jim sighed. “All right, never mind that, either. You mind-melded with the whale, obviously. What else did you learn?”

“They are very unhappy about the way their species has been treated by humanity.”

“They have a right to be,” Jim said. “Is there any chance they’ll help us?”

“I believe I was successful,” Spock said, “in communicating our intentions.”

With that, Spock fell silent.

“I see,” Jim said.

Gillian tried not to be too obvious about hurrying the audience along, but as soon as the last of them finally disappeared through the museum doors, she ran through the lobby, up the spiral staircase, and out onto the deck around the whale tank. George and Gracie sounded and swam toward her, their pectoral fins ghostly white brush strokes beneath the surface. Gillian kicked off her shoes and sat down with her feet in the water. Gracie made a leisurely turn, rolled sideways, and stroked the bottom of Gillian’s foot with her long fin. Her movement set up a wave that sloshed against the side of the tank and splashed over the other side.

Both whales rose and blew, showering Gillian with the fine mist of their breath. Gracie lifted her great head, breaking the surface with her knobby rostrum, her forehead and upper jaw. Unlike wild humpbacks, Gracie and George would come close enough to be touched. Gillian stroked Gracie’s warm black skin. Underwater, the whale’s eye blinked. She blew again, rolled, raised her flukes, and lobbed them into the water. Gillian was used to being splashed.

Both whales seemed upset to Gillian, not agitated but anxious. She had never seen them act like this before. Of course, this was the first time a stranger had ever actually dived in with them, which was probably lucky. Heaven knows enough nuts picked whales to fixate on.

Maybe,
Gillian thought,
I ought to be surprised nobody ever got in the tank before now. But I should have realized something odd was going on with those two guys, the way they were dressed, and the one so quiet, the other so intense and with so many questions.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Yes, I know.” George nuzzled her leg with one of the sensory bristles on his chin. “It’s okay. They didn’t mean any harm.”

At the sound of footsteps she turned quickly, wondering if the two strangers had returned.

Instead, the director of the Cetacean Institute looked down at her and grinned sympathetically.

“Heard there was some excitement.” Bob Briggs kicked off his shoes and rolled up his slacks too. He sat beside her and eased his feet into the cold water.

“Just a couple of kooks,” Gillian said.
But if they were only harmless kooks,
she thought,
why were they so interested in when we’re letting the whales free?

Gillian wished Bob would leave her alone with George and Gracie. With some effort, she could get along all right with her boss. He was not deliberately malicious, but his offhand condescension annoyed the hell out of her.

“How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

“Don’t tell me fish stories, kiddo. I’ve known you too long.”

“It’s tearing me apart!” she snapped.

Damn!
she thought.
Suckered in again.

“Want to talk about it? It’ll help to get your problems out in the open.”

“You’ve been in California too long,” she said.

She stared at the water and at the two whales drifting just under the surface at her feet. Every few minutes one would rise above the glimmer of water, exhale noisily, inhale softly, and sink again.

“I know how you feel,” Bob said. “I feel the same. But we’re between a rock and a hard place, Gill. We can’t keep them without risking their lives and we can’t let them go without taking the same chance.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why are you lecturing me about this? It was my idea to free them in the first place! I had to fight—”

“I’m lecturing you,” he said, “to help you get over your second thoughts.”

“I’m not having any second thoughts!” she snapped. She immediately regretted her outburst. “I want them to be free. I want them to be safe, too, but there isn’t any place in the world where that can happen. And…I’ll miss them.”

“Gill, they aren’t human beings! You keep looking for evidence that they’re as smart as we are. I’d be
delighted
if they were as smart as we are. But there isn’t any proof—”

“I don’t know about you, but my compassion for someone isn’t limited to my estimate of their intelligence!” She glared at him angrily. “Maybe they didn’t paint the
Mona Lisa
or invent the dirt bike. But they didn’t ravish the world, either. And they’ve never driven another species to extinction!” Water splashed as she rose. Gracie and George moved away from the noise and swam to the center of the tank. “Sorry if I spoke out of turn,” Gillian said bitterly.

“Not at all,” Bob said. He never lost his temper. That was one of the reasons he was director, and one of the ways he made Gillian so mad. “You always give me things to think about. Gillian, why don’t you go home early? You sound pretty wrecked.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” she said.

“Come on. You know what I mean. Really. Why don’t you go home? Stare at the ceiling for a while.”

“Yeah,” Gillian said. “Why don’t I?” She picked up her shoes and walked away.

Gillian flung her shoes into the back of her Land Rover, cranked the ignition, shoved a Waylon Jennings tape into the tape deck, and drove out of the parking lot faster than she should have. The speed helped, though she could not run from the dilemma of the whales. She did not want to run from it. She only wanted to let it blow away with the wind for a little while.

The incident with the two strangers refused to blow away with the wind. Why had the one in the tank referred to George and Gracie as extinct? Endangered, sure. Maybe he was just sloppy with his word choice.

But he sounded like he knew what he was talking about,
Gillian thought.
Just what the hell does he know that I don’t?

Waylon was singing “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean.” Gillian turned the volume up too loud and put her attention to driving, to the speed and the road and the blast of hot autumn air.

Back at the Institute, Bob Briggs watched the two whales surface and blow at the far end of the tank. With everyone but Gillian, George and Gracie acted like wild whales, coming close enough to watch but not to touch.

The track of Gillian’s small wet footprints had begun to dry. He was worried about her. When she left the whales, she always looked as if she feared she would never see them again. And this time…

He shrugged off his doubts. He knew he had made the right decision. Gillian would be grateful to him later.

His assistant came out of the museum, blinking in the sunshine, and joined him on the deck.

“All squared away?”

“Looks like it,” Bob said.

“She’s gonna go berserk.”

“It’s for her own good,” Bob said. “It’s the only way. She’ll call me names for a while, but then she’ll calm down. She’ll understand.”

“Alameda Naval Base!” Pavel Chekov exclaimed. “Finally!”

“No thanks to our helpful friend,” Uhura said. She glanced around.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing. I just keep expecting to see him again. Lurking. Hiding behind a bush or a shrub.”

“I am sure he just made mistake,” Pavel said.

“Maybe.”

“It was coincidence to see him on train. He realized he gave us incorrect directions. He was embarrassed. He has no earthly reason to feel suspicion.”

“No earthly reason?” Uhura said. Pavel grinned.

The trees parted before them. Sunlight glittered off the water of the harbor.

Uhura saw the ship.
Enterprise,
CVN 65.

She stopped. She shivered suddenly; the last time she had seen the huge craft, it was in a photo displayed on board the
Starship Enterprise.

Through generations of ships, from space shuttle to system explorer to early star voyager, the name descended to the starship on which Uhura had spent most of her adult life. In this time and this place, the name belonged to an aircraft carrier. She moved toward it, awed by its size, fascinated by the destructive power it represented. In Uhura’s time, structures much larger than this were commonplace, but they were built in space, without the restrictions of gravity and air and water pressure. This century’s
Enterprise
existed in spite of those factors. The hull swept upward, then flared out to accommodate the landing deck. Uhura and Pavel entered the shadow of its curving side.

Pavel gestured toward the name. Uhura nodded. Pavel opened his communicator; Uhura set to work with her tricorder.

Pavel transmitted the communicator code. “Team leader, this is team two. Come in please…”

Uhura studied the readings. “I have the coordinates of the reactor. Or, anyway, coordinates that will have to do.”

Pavel gazed at the carrier. “This gives me great sense of history.”

“It gives me a great sense of danger.” The emissions from the reactor added distortion to Uhura’s information, making it impossible to get a precise idea of the layout of the ship. “We have to beam in
next
to the reactor room, not
in
it.”

“Team leader,” Pavel repeated, “this is team two. Come in please…”

On the other side of the bay, Jim trudged down the road leading from the Cetacean Institute. Several buses had passed them by, despite Jim’s waving whenever he saw one coming. Public transportation must stop only at spots marked by shelters like the one in the city, but he had not yet found one on this road. He still wished he had brought a pair of walking shoes. Spock, of course, made no complaint; he simply strode along nearby as if they were on a field trip. Every so often he stopped to inspect some dusty plant by the side of the road. More often than not he would nod and murmur, “Fascinating. An extinct species.”

“Spock, dammit!” Jim said. “If you keep referring to plants and animals in this world as extinct, somebody is going to start wondering about you.”

“I think it unlikely that anyone will reach the proper conclusion about my origin,” Spock said.

“You’re probably right. But they might reach an improper conclusion about your sanity, and that could cause us trouble.”

“Very well,” Spock said. “I shall endeavor to contain my enthusiasm. But are you aware, Admiral, that during this period of humanity’s history, your species managed to eradicate at least one other species of plant or animal life each day? That frequency increased considerably before it decreased.”

“Fascinating,” Jim said grimly. “It’s your species, too. In case you’ve forgotten.”

“I have not forgotten,” Spock said. “But it is a fact on which I prefer not to dwell.”

“You ignore everything about Earth and about humans that you possibly can, yet it was you who recognized the humpback’s song! Why
you,
Spock?”

“I believe…” Spock hesitated. “I remember…I have told you that I taught myself to swim, many years ago on Earth. Once, I swam too far. The current caught me. Its force overcame me. When I had nearly lost myself, I felt a creature nearby. I expected a shark to tear my flesh, to kill me. But when the creature touched me, I felt the warmth of a mammal, and I discerned a young and bright intelligence. A dolphin swam beneath me. She supported me and helped me toward shore. One reads of such behavior in mythology, but I had never given the tales credence. We…communicated.” Spock reached down and touched a dusty, nondescript plant by the side of the road. “This species, too, is extinct in our time. Like the great whales. But the smaller cetaceans, the dolphins, survive. They preserve the memories of their vanished cousins. They remember—they tell stories, in pictures created of sound—the songs of the humpback. They hold themselves aloof from humans, and who can blame them? But I am not a human being. Not entirely. The dolphin sang to me.”

In his imagination, Jim could see the endless ocean and feel the depths of its cold; he could feel the supple warmth of the dolphin and hear its echo of the humpback’s call.

“I see, Spock,” he said softly. “I understand.”

Jim’s communicator beeped the signal code. He started, pulled it out, and opened it.

“This is team two. Come in please.”

“Team two, Kirk here.”

“Admiral,” Chekov said, “we have found nuclear vessel.”

“Well done, team two.”

“And, Admiral, this ship is aircraft carrier…
Enterprise.
”

Jim felt a pang of regret for his own ship. He kept his voice carefully controlled. “Understood. What is your plan?”

“We will beam in tonight, collect photons, and beam out. No one will ever know we were there.”

“Understood and approved,” Jim said. “Keep me informed. Kirk out.”

He started to call in to Scott, but heard a vehicle speeding down the road behind him. He quickly put away his communicator.

The ground car screeched to a halt behind them, passed them slowly, and stopped again.

Jim kept walking at a steady pace.

“It’s her,” he said sidelong to Spock. “Taylor, from the Institute. Spock, if we play our cards right, we may learn when those whales are really leaving.”

Spock glanced at him. Jim knew he had one eyebrow quirked, even though the headband obscured it.