Star Trek: The Rings of Time (16 page)

“That will not be necessary, Nurse. I require only a few moments of mental preparation and perhaps a degree of privacy.”

Despite his assurances to McCoy, a mind-meld was never to be entered into lightly. The lowering of one’s psychic barriers to achieve telepathic communion with another was a profoundly intimate—and often shattering—experience. One he had no desire to share with an audience.

To his credit, McCoy seemed to grasp this. “That will be all, Christine,” he said softly. “I can take it from here.”

“All right, Doctor.” She retreated from the ward, glancing back over her shoulder as she did so. Concern and compassion were evident in her voice. “Be careful, Mr. Spock. I hope you find the captain.”

“That is my hope as well,” Spock said.

McCoy remained behind. Spock did not object. It was only logical to have a physician overseeing the meld in the event that unexpected complications arose. They could not fully predict the effect the meld might have on their patient—or on Spock himself.

“Please do not interfere, Doctor,” he instructed. “Unless you deem it absolutely imperative.”

“Just get on with it.” A shiver ran down McCoy’s body. “This whole thing always gives me the creeps.”

Spock recalled that McCoy had once been subjected to a forced mind-meld by an alternate-universe version of Spock himself. It was small wonder that McCoy regarded such invasions with distaste.

“If it is any consolation, Doctor, I would also avoid this if I could.”

He took a moment to brace himself. Time-honored meditative techniques, passed down for generations, prepared his mind for the task at hand. He put aside any fears or misgivings; it would not do to sabotage the meld by clinging instinctively to his mental defenses. To carry out the meld, he had to make himself more vulnerable than any human could possibly imagine.

I have no choice,
he reminded himself.
I must do this—for the ship and the mission.

And for Jim.

He leaned over Kirk. Using both hands, he splayed his fingers against the sides of Kirk’s face. It was a delicate touch, barely grazing the skin, but sufficient to anchor the neural connection. Kirk’s flesh was cool to the touch compared with his own. Spock closed his eyes and concentrated on achieving the meld.

“My mind to your mind,” he intoned. “My thoughts to your thoughts.”

A minor tremor threatened his resolve as their individual minds began to blur together, but he took a deep breath and pushed past his natural impulse to protect his own identity. He had melded with Kirk before, on several occasions, so he reached out for the familiar signposts he had come to expect. Boyhood memories in Iowa. His proud parents, George and Winona. Older brother Sam. The massacre on Tarsus IV. Starfleet Academy. Carol Marcus. Ruth. The
U.S.S. Republic.
The attack on the
Farragut.
The launch of the
Enterprise
under his command. Gary Mitchell, his eyes
glowing like pulsars. Sam Kirk’s death on Deneva. Klingons. Romulans. Edith Keeler. Miramanee . . .

But instead, he found himself lost in an unfamiliar psychic landscape. Strange memories that had nothing to do with James Tiberius Kirk flooded his mind:

Earth, more than two centuries ago. Smoggy skies. Automobiles clogging endless highways. Television. Video games. High school. Making Eagle Scout. His first car. College. Marrying Debbie Lauderdale. Babies being born, then growing up right before his eyes. Kevin. Katie. Rory. Air Force training, just like Dad. Area 51. The DY-100. Shannon O’Donnell. NASA. The divorce. Docking with the
Lewis & Clark.
Months in zero gravity. Fontana. O’Herlihy. A stowaway? Saturn looming in the distance, growing nearer by the day. The probe, floating in space. His hand reaching out to touch it—

A blinding flash lit up Spock’s synapses. The shock jolted him from the meld, and he staggered backward, reeling from the sudden dislocation. For a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure who or where he was. Foreign memories and emotions fogged his mind.

“Fontana,” he murmured. “Alice . . .”

“Spock!” McCoy rushed toward him. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“A moment, Doctor. Please.”

Spock struggled to regain his composure and sense of self. He placed a hand against a wall to steady himself. The borrowed memories began to recede. Years of mental discipline and training restored order to his thoughts.

I am Spock, son of Sarek and Amanda. My mind is my own.

“Talk to me, Spock!” McCoy pleaded. He took hold of Spock’s arm. “What happened?”

“Forgive me, Doctor.” He straightened and stepped away from the wall. He politely but firmly removed his arm from McCoy’s grip. “The meld was broken abruptly, and the transition back to myself was rather more jarring than I would have preferred.”

McCoy examined Spock with a palm-sized medical scanner. “Well, you seem to be more or less normal. Your blood pressure, heart rate, and neural activity are a bit elevated, even for a Vulcan, but they seem to be dropping back to their usual freakish levels.” He lowered the scanner. “So, what did you find in there? What’s wrong with Jim?”

The anachronistic memories lingered at the back of Spock’s mind. The evidence was irrefutable; there could be only one conclusion. He turned toward their unconscious patient, who twitched and murmured in his sleep. The man’s fingers drummed restlessly.

“That, Doctor, is
not
James T. Kirk.”

McCoy gaped in astonishment, but the truth had to be faced.

“Despite all outward appearances, that is Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher.”

“I can’t believe it,” McCoy murmured. He sank into the chair in his office, still trying to process the astounding diagnosis Spock had just delivered. He had no reason
to doubt Spock; the Vulcan usually had his precious facts in order. It was just a lot to take in. “This is insane.”

Spock remained standing, seemingly unshaken by his discovery. “At least we now know that the captain is
not
insane,” he pointed out. “Merely . . . dispossessed.”

That was small comfort.

“Dammit, Spock,” McCoy cursed. “I’m a doctor, not an exorcist. What are we supposed to do now?” An urgent question came to mind. “What about Jim? Is he still in there somewhere? Beneath Shaun Christopher’s memories?”

“Negative,” Spock said. “I regret to say that I found no traces of the captain’s consciousness still remaining within his body. His mind appears to be entirely absent.”

“Good God,” McCoy said. “You don’t think it’s been . . . erased?”

The thought that all of Jim Kirk’s personality and life experiences—everything that had made him who he was—might have been wiped away forever filled McCoy with despair. It would be the same as if their friend had been vaporized by a Klingon disruptor. He would be gone for good.

“Or perhaps merely displaced,” Spock suggested. “It could be that Colonel Christopher’s memories were not simply copied into the captain’s brain. There might have been a two-way transference instead.”

“Across time?” McCoy’s mind boggled at the notion. “Is that even possible?”

“There are always possibilities, Doctor. Some are simply more probable than others.”

McCoy wanted to believe him but had his doubts. “But isn’t it more likely that the probe simply replaced Jim’s mind with a copy of Shaun Christopher’s? I mean, I hate to be the one citing logic here, but what about Occam’s Razor? Isn’t that a simpler and more plausible explanation than assuming that Jim and Shaun somehow switched minds over a span of centuries—and umpteen light-years to boot? What makes you think Jim’s mind is still around . . . somewhere?”

“A feeling, Doctor.” Spock grimaced, as though the admission pained him. “I cannot put it into words precisely, but what I sensed just now did not feel like a
copy
of Shaun Christopher’s memories but rather his actual living consciousness, somehow displaced in time and space. Which suggests that the same might have occurred to the captain’s mind.”

“A ‘feeling,’ you say.” McCoy couldn’t help being amused. “Look at us. I’m the one talking logic, and you’re relying on some vague impression you can’t really explain.” He snickered at the sheer irony of the moment. “Somebody check on Tartarus Prime. I think it may have frozen over.”

“Mind-melds do not lend themselves to spoken vocabulary,” Spock replied, perhaps a tad defensively, “let alone your own unsophisticated human languages.
I believe my reasoning is perfectly sound, given my observations during the course of the meld.”

“Uh-huh.” McCoy didn’t buy it. “Sounds more like wishful thinking to me. Not that I blame you. Anything’s better than thinking that Jim’s mind is lost for good.” He settled back into his chair and crossed his arms. “All right, then. Let’s run with that theory. What now? Where do you think Jim is?”

“If my hypothesis is correct,” Spock said, “then the captain’s mind may now occupy Shaun Christopher’s body, during the Saturn mission approximately two hundred fifty years ago.”

“Then let’s go find him!” McCoy urged. He seized on Spock’s theory as their last, best hope of getting Jim Kirk back. Hope flared inside him for the first time since Spock had revealed that Jim’s mind was truly absent. If there was even a chance that they could save Jim, they had to take it. “Saturn is a ways from here, but if we hurry at maximum warp, we can be there in a matter of weeks. And we’ve traveled back to that era before. More than once, actually. Jim’s probably wondering what’s keeping us!”

Of course, even if they did somehow miraculously locate Kirk’s mind in the past, they would still have to put it back into his body where it belonged, but McCoy was inclined to cross that bridge when they came to it. Another mind-mind, perhaps, or that alien machine Janice Lester had discovered. There had to be a way to put Jim back together.

We just have to find him first.

“Easier said than done, Doctor,” Spock observed. “While I appreciate your sense of urgency, the situation here in the Klondike system must take priority. We cannot abandon the Skagway colony to go searching the past for our lost captain.”

McCoy refused to accept that. “But what about Jim? He could be trapped in the past, waiting for us to rescue him!”

“If he is in the past, Doctor, then there is no hurry. Whatever might have become of the captain occurred centuries ago. Our present duty remains before us. Perhaps later, if and when the crisis here is resolved, we can follow up on my hypothesis.”

McCoy seethed in frustration. He knew from personal experience what it was like to be marooned in the past with little hope of rescue. How could Spock be so cool and analytical about the situation? “This is Jim we’re talking about!”

“I am fully aware of that, Doctor.” Spock’s voice held a hint of regret, although one probably had to know him well to hear it. “But I also know that the captain would want us to carry out our duties in his absence and not sacrifice the Skagway colony on the basis of a . . . supposition.”

“I know.” The hell of it was, Spock was absolutely right. McCoy’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He felt as though his hopes had been raised, only to be crushed beneath the combined weight of logic and duty. “That’s
what Jim would want, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Nor do I,” Spock admitted.

Sighing, McCoy nodded at the private exam room beyond. “In the meantime, what am I supposed to do with our misplaced friend there? It looks like he’s not going anywhere.”

“For the time being,” Spock advised, “it is probably best that we share the particulars of the captain’s condition with only select members of the crew. I suggest we keep Colonel Christopher confined to quarantine and limit any contact with him. As far as the rest of the crew and any civilians are concerned, the captain is simply recovering from his injuries—under doctor’s orders.”

McCoy didn’t have a better idea. “And what exactly do I tell my patient?”

“As little as possible,” Spock stated gravely. “If we do hope someday to return him to his own place in history, we must limit his exposure to the future—as we did with his father.”

McCoy nodded. “And just how long do you think we can keep him in the dark?”

“Long enough, Doctor. I hope, long enough.”

2020

Kirk examined his new face in a mirror. Only a couple of days had passed since he had found himself in Shaun Christopher’s body, and he was still getting used to it. He wondered if he ever would.

Oddly familiar blue eyes stared back at him. Shaun resembled his father, whom Kirk had met just a few years ago, although, paradoxically, Shaun was noticeably older than Captain John Christopher. Gray hair infiltrated his temples, and decades of experience had added both creases and character to his features. Kirk calculated that Shaun was probably in his early fifties, although it was hard to tell. People in the past tended to age faster than the humans of his era, where the life expectancy was considerably longer. Although he was in excellent shape for a man his age, Shaun’s body was still older than Kirk would have preferred. He felt as if he had aged thirty years overnight.

Not quite as bad as that time on Gamma Hydra IV but disturbing nonetheless.

The crew’s personal quarters were on the upper deck of the habitat module, above the gym and the
infirmary. He had been relieved to discover that NASA had been thoughtful enough to provide each of the astronauts with his or her own private compartment, probably not a bad idea on a flight of this duration. The small, rather monastic cell was only a fraction of the size of his stateroom back on the
Enterprise,
but that was made up for in part by making use of the walls and ceiling as well. A personal grooming area, complete with mirror, occupied one corner. A sleeping bag was tethered to a wall. A narrow corridor connected the compartments. Kirk kept his door open. He didn’t want to appear to be hiding.

Stubble dotted his cheek as he attempted to shave in zero gravity, which was trickier than he had anticipated. He carefully applied a dollop of water, procured from a wall dispenser, to his face, then squeezed a little NASA-approved shaving cream from a small tin-foil packet. In theory, the mixture would cling to his whiskers without floating away and would also stick to the razor blade. He would have to keep wiping the blade clean and roll up the hand towel to keep the shorn whiskers from getting loose. He started work on his chin but accidentally dislodged a tiny blob of shaving cream.