Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (20 page)

And then Mrs. Weisel’s eyelids fluttered and opened briefly before closing again. Her pupils, Sulu noted, were the size of pinpoints. A jagged edge of the metal shelving had left a deep gash in her forehead; the skin of her normally pink face was a pale, ugly shade of gray.

Do something!
Mr. Weisel screamed at Sulu.
Do something, she’s dying!

For a moment, Sulu could only stare at him in shock, until a courageous and previously unknown portion of his brain took control. He remembered the most basic parts of the first-aid course he’d been required to take in school. He removed his jacket and tucked it around Mrs. Weisel, then found the right-sized box of food packs and gently put them under her feet.

“Stay here,” he told Kumiko. “If the pirates come back, try to get into the shelter. I’m going to get help.”

She nodded vaguely.

Sulu ran toward the forest. He was not sure at first where he was running, or why. He knew only that he had to help Mrs. Weisel. Without making a conscious decision, he found that he was headed home, to find his parents. They had a skimmer; they would be able to travel into the next town for a doctor.

The late-afternoon sky was dark with thick black
smoke, but the orange-red glow that emanated from deep within the forest enabled Sulu to find his way along the pedestrian trail between his house and the Weisels’. Sulu ran hard along the path until a high wall of flame forced him to stop. The fire leapt atop the huge trees, consuming the high evergreen foliage before climbing down to the forest floor. The pirates’ phasers had seared the treetops; the forest was burning from the top down. The heat radiating from it held Sulu back; the smoke stung his eyes and throat and made him dizzy.

Beyond the column of fire, less than three kilometers away, stood his parents’ house. Had Sulu’s eyes not already been streaming from the smoke, he would have wept. For what seemed like a very long time, he stared, sobbing, at the wall of flame . . . then forced himself to calm.

Along with shrieking, panicked wildlife, Sulu left the trail to thrash through the undergrowth. The column of raging fire was at least a kilometer wide. The smoke thickened, making it more difficult for Sulu to find his way. He ran for several minutes until the column of fire grew small in the distance behind him and then disappeared altogether.

Sulu turned and headed toward what—he thought—was the direction of his house, but in the encroaching darkness and in thick smoke without the firelight to guide him, Sulu headed the wrong way.

A half-hour of frantic running found him in unfamiliar territory. His panic grew. The forest had become a ghoulish tangle of flickering dark red shadows and ominous black shapes. Sulu dropped to his knees
and sobbed, unable to guess which direction might lead home. He was utterly, miserably, alone and lost, and it struck him that perhaps
no
direction led homeward; perhaps home had been swallowed up by the fire, and there was no help for him, for Kumiko, for Mr. and Mrs. Weisel.

For a time—the boy could not have said how long—Sulu’s mind left him. He remembered nothing of that time save a bottomless void of dark fear. He lay with his face pressed against the pungent evergreen needles that carpeted the forest floor.

What finally made him conquer the terror and struggle to his feet was a single, wordless image: Mrs. Weisel, lying still and ashen-faced in the ruins of the store.

Sulu rose without feeling the sharp pine needles that clung to his clothing and hair. It seemed to him that he had somehow miraculously found the courage that Kumiko seemed to have lost. He began again to run—at a lope this time—steadily and with a sense of purpose. When he was once again forced to detour around the fire, he countered the building panic by conjuring Mrs. Weisel’s face in his imagination.

It worked. Sulu remained calm and after a while began to recognize where he was.

He arrived home at last and saw the building still standing and his mother climbing into the skimmer to search for her missing child. Sulu stopped in his tracks. He was several meters away, and with the roar from the burning forest, any sound he might have made was swallowed up.

Yet his mother sensed something. She froze an
instant before stepping into the vehicle, turned, and caught sight of her son, his cheeks streaked with soot, tears, and blood.

At the expression on her face, Sulu burst into tears. ...

Sulu’s father had been traveling to another town and was spared the attack; his mother had attempted to leave her son in the below-ground shelter, but he was too near shock to be left alone. There was nothing to do but take the boy with her.

They flew, skipping high above the flames, through the smoke, to the Weisels’ store. The trip had taken Sulu over an hour on foot; they arrived by skimmer in less than a minute.

Kumiko’s ankle was broken and she was in shock, but the cut on her head was tiny, not even requiring stitches. Except for the nightmares, which would last well into adulthood, Kumiko would be fine. Mr. Weisel had bruised ribs, and, like Kumiko, was dazed. He crouched, muttering, beside his wife, his voice at once soothing and slightly hysterical.

Mrs. Weisel, of course, was dead.

It was Sulu’s first encounter with the phenomenon on a personal level.

“No,”
Sulu whispered, staring down with revulsion at Mrs. Weisel’s body. The ugly cut on her forehead had stopped bleeding, and the blood had congealed, thick red-black. The area surrounding it was grotesquely swollen. Mrs. Weisel’s eyelids were not quite closed, so that a small strip of white could be seen; her lips were parted as well, and the very tip of her tongue protruded.

What was most horrible for young Sulu was that
Mrs. Weisel was no longer Mrs. Weisel at all. What remained of her was no longer a person at all, but a thing.

The guilt was too overwhelming for Sulu to cry. He simply stood and stared silently at Mrs. Weisel’s body until he felt very, very cold, and began to shiver. . ..

Suddenly Sulu realized that he was no longer a child at all, but an adult reliving the experience . . . and, strangest of all, this time he was not alone. Someone stood
with
him now, someone who was not his mother, not Kumiko, not Mr. Weisel. Sulu could not see the stranger who stood beside him, but he sensed him nonetheless.

The stranger spoke to him.

Look at her,
the stranger commanded.
Look at her, and don’t be afraid.

“I killed her!” Sulu cried, averting his face in disgust. “Don’t you understand? I killed her! I got lost, took too much time—”

Look at her.

“I can’t!” Sulu squeezed his eyes shut. “Please
don’t—’

She was dead before you even left,
the stranger said.

Sulu turned sharply in the direction of the stranger’s voice, and saw nothing but the night sky glowing a dull orange-red. He still felt the heat of the fire on his face. “What did you say?”

She was dead before you left. Look at her now.

Sulu closed his eyes and remembered . . . and saw Mrs. Weisel’s eyelids flutter once, and her chest sink with the expiration of breath. It did not rise again.

She was dead before you left,
the stranger repeated.
Even if you had made it home as swiftly as possible, she
would not have survived She was a casualty of the pirate attack not your childish terror.

“I shouldn’t have—” Sulu began, and broke off. He wanted to say that he shouldn’t have gotten lost anyway; a part of him wanted to cling irrationally to his guilt. . . but the stranger had cleanly excised it from him. There was no holding on to it. Sulu imagined it rising through the air, levitating beyond his grasp. . . .

You were a frightened child. Even so, you behaved bravely. You got help for the old man and your friend.

“I. . .” Sulu began, then trailed off helplessly. He stared down at Mrs. Weisel’s gray, pinched face. This time he felt only sorrow. She had been a kind person, and the pirates had killed her. It was a bitterly sad thing.

And then even the sorrow rose up and floated away. In its absence, Sulu experienced a deep sense of relief and an odd mixture of melancholy and euphoria. He looked at Mrs. Weisel’s body and wept tears that were cleansing and free from shame.

When he finished, he looked up and saw that the stranger’s features had become visible in the darkness. Sulu had never seen eyes full of such wisdom, such love.

“Thank you,” Sulu told him. “Please, let me repay you for your kindness. I will do whatever you ask.”

To Sulu’s delight, the stranger smiled.

I
N THE BRIG
, Spock struggled to master his guilt. Of all emotions, this one proved the most difficult to overcome. Most disturbing was the truth he had to admit to himself: He had not been able to kill Sybok, but it had little to do with Surakian pacifist philosophy . . . and everything to do with the adolescent adoration of a young Vulcan for his older brother. He had thought that, with time, such sensations would fade . . . that his only memories of Sybok would be limited to those of Sybok’s crime and banishment.

And yet the memory of Sybok’s kindness returned unbidden to Spock, awakening within him fondness and a deep gratitude.

He had been not quite thirteen in Earth terms when Sybok came to live with the family. Sybok was a total
stranger, and young Spock, though he tried not to admit it even to himself, was terrified of that first meeting.

For Sybok was a full Vulcan—the son that Sarek had always
really
wanted to have. After all, young Spock reasoned, Sybok was also an adept in the ways of kolinahr, the total transcendence of emotion, and here was Spock, half human, always struggling to master his feelings, already made keenly aware by his peers of his inferior heredity.

Spock fully expected Sybok to reject him as Sarek’s rightful heir. He was therefore quite unprepared for Sybok’s actual reaction. The older boy’s demeanor was far different from what Spock expected of one who had been raised since birth on Gol.

Upon being introduced to his younger sibling, Sybok raised his hand in the Vulcan salute and warmly proclaimed,
“Thyla
. . .” Brother. And with that single word, gained Spock’s eternal loyalty.

Spock blotted the image from his mind and forced himself back to the present, to the brig and to the confusing muddle of emotions that awaited him.

Clearly, the captain’s anger had in no way diminished. Kirk paced the length of the small cell while Spock and McCoy sat on the bunk and watched.

Kirk stopped abruptly in the middle of his pacing and wheeled around to confront his first officer. “Dammit! Goddammit! Spock, I simply can’t believe it!”

Spock did not pretend ignorance of the cause of the captain’s rage. He understood how inexplicable his failure to act must have seemed. As much as he dreaded providing an explanation, however, he knew
that now was the time for one. “Captain,” he began, calm in the face of Jim’s rage, “what I have done—”

“What you have done is betray everyone aboard this ship.”

“Worse,” Spock agreed before Jim could say more. “I have betrayed you. I do not expect you to forgive me—”

“Forgive you?” Jim lowered his voice and said, quite matter-of-factly, “I ought to knock you on your ass.”

“If you think that will help,” Spock answered agreeably.

“You want me to hold him, Jim?” McCoy blurted sarcastically. Spock was startled to find the doctor, of all people, defending him against Jim’s attack.

Kirk turned on McCoy. “Stay out of this, Bones!” He spoke to the Vulcan. “Spock . . . why? All you had to do was pull the trigger. I wasn’t asking you to kill him. I realize you find violence distasteful, but you could have shot him in the leg and stopped him that way. Whatever happened to the good of the many outweighing the good of the one? It’s appropriate in some cases!”

“Captain,” Spock said earnestly, “had I pulled the trigger, Sybok would now be dead.”

“Why?” Jim’s eyes were blazing. He waited, fists on hips, for an answer. “Explain.”

“As Sybok said himself, he would not stop until I killed him. Even wounded, he would have been a formidable opponent. He will not stop until he has control of the
Enterprise.
Perhaps you have noticed that Sybok is most. . . driven.”

Jim spread his hands helplessly. “Spock, we’re
talking two hundred lives against one. Whatever happened to the good of the many? Did we talk you out of it too thoroughly?”

“I know Sybok well. He would not kill. . . intentionally.”

“He’s a madman,” Jim said. “Spock, I ordered you to defend this ship.”

With regret, Spock realized that the time for total revelation had arrived. He shook his head. “No, Captain,” he said softly. “You ordered me to kill my brother.”

“The man may be a fellow Vulcan,” Kirk replied, “and maybe you were once friends. But frankly, there seemed to be no love lost between you—at least, on your part. That’s no reason to—”

Spock cut him off; there was no point in delaying the inevitable. “You did not hear me, Jim. Sybok, too, is a son of Sarek.”

McCoy, sitting next to Spock, nearly fell off the bunk.
“What?”

For a moment, Jim stared, thunderstruck, at his first officer. When he could speak, he said, “He’s your
brother
brother?”

Spock nodded.

“Spock, you’re joking!”

“I am not.”

“Spock, I know every piece of data in your file. Sybok couldn’t
possibly
be your brother, because I know for a fact you don’t
have
a brother. And giving false information in a personnel file is a Federation offense.”

“Technically, you are correct,” Spock conceded.
There was little to be gained from explaining that Sybok was
ktorr skann,
an outcast, considered dead by his family; his very existence had been expunged from all public records on Vulcan. “I do not have a brother.”

“Then what the hell
do
you mean?”

“I have a half brother.”

Jim’s anger surrendered to confusion. “I need to sit down.” He walked over to the bunk and plopped down heavily next to McCoy.