“That’s what I thought, for a long while. After the first time they asked me, I thought nothing had changed. Hunter and I were so close for so long .. . But she was growing up and I was still treating everything as nothing more than play. Play is fine up to a point. Play is why the partnership isn’t exclusive. But for me and Hunter— especially after the second invitation into the partnership—it was like I was teasing her, all the time, as if I were willing to go just so far but no farther in trusting her, but expected her to trust me completely. She even told me her dream-name. Do you know what that means?”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“Either did I, at the time. It’s hard to explain, but it’s something even deeper than trusting another person with your life.”
Kirk paused again, and McCoy waited for him to continue, knowing how hard it was for Jim to speak of such personal matters.
“We had a lot of serious misunderstandings,” Jim said. “So much so that when they offered me the invitation for the third time, I was surprised. And when I said no the third time, she was surprised. And hurt. I think she very nearly stopped trusting me at all, then. It’s probably a good thing that she got sent one direction and I got sent the other and we didn’t see each other again for a couple of years.”
McCoy listened to a side of his friend that he seldom saw, realizing that all too often he let the clear and hearty surface obscure the depths. Kirk almost never let anyone detect even a hint of private pain; and he had learned a few things from Spock about concealing it, even as he teased the Vulcan about really being human underneath. Truth to tell, Kirk himself was more deeply human underneath than he cared to admit. McCoy wished he could think of something to say that would help.
Kirk took a deep breath and let it out fast and hard. “Jim,” McCoy said carefully, hoping, as he did so, that he was not pushing even their friendship too far, “couldn’t you say to Hunter what you just said to me—about thinking you made a mistake? That wouldn’t be the same as asking to join the partnership, would it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know anymore if she wants to hear that. Why should she? And even if she does, it would put her in an uncomfortable position. What if the rest of the group said no? Bones, what if they said yes and I got cold feet at the last minute? That would be nothing less than a deliberate insult. It’s the only strain I don’t think our friendship could survive. Not again.”
“You don’t ordinarily change your mind once you’ve made it up.”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
Kirk shrugged. “It just is.”
Ten hundred hours. Sulu set his duffel bag and his box of irregularly shaped oddments on one of the transporter platforms, then turned back to all his friends. Word of his transfer had spread almost instantaneously, it appeared, and for once he was glad of the highly efficient ship’s grapevine. He would never have had time to find all his friends, much less his acquaintances. But here they were, crowded into the transporter room to wish him well: the members of his beginning fencing class; Pavel Chekov and Janice Rand and Christine Chapel; the elderly yogi of the Enterprise , Beatrice Smith; Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy and Uhura. Even Mr. Spock was there. As Sulu bid them all goodbye, he had a sudden, frightening feeling of apprehension, the conviction that there was something very wrong with what was happening, even though he wanted it, and that the pendulum would swing back very soon, with force and speed enough to crush him. He shrugged off the experience as understandable anxiety; besides, he had never had a prophetic flash before, and his ESP rating was no better than average.
He did not shake hands with Mr. Spock, as he did with Captain Kirk, certainly did not embrace him, as he hugged Uhura, and, then, Dr. McCoy. Instead, Sulu bowed solemnly to the science officer. Spock raised his hand in the Vulcan equivalent.
“Live long and prosper, Mr. Sulu,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Spock.”
Sulu turned. “Mandala...”
She put her arms around him. “We were right, Hikaru,” she said, too softly for anyone else to hear. “But even that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No,” he said. His vision blurred; he was embarrassed by the tears.
“Take care of yourself,” she said.
“You, too.”
He turned abruptly and bounded up onto the transporter platform. He could not stand to remain in Mandala’s arms in a place so public. They had said their goodbyes in private.
She raised her hand in a gesture of farewell. Sulu returned it, then glanced at Spock, behind the console, and nodded. The flickering coldness of the beam engulfed him, and he disappeared.
After Sulu had left, the transporter room slowly cleared out. The mood was one of general depression, to which Mandala Flynn was far more than ordinarily susceptible. She gave herself a good mental shake and forcibly turned her attention to her job. In a few minutes their prisoner would arrive. She felt uneasy about the whole assignment, and she knew something unusual was going on. The captain and the science officer knew what it was, but neither had taken her into his confidence.
‘Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason why,/ Theirs but to do and die’: Flynn thought the line in the same cynical tone in which Tennyson had written it, not with the nonsensical approval or unquestioning attention to obedience that had encrusted it more and more thickly as the centuries passed.
The more she knew about an assignment, the better she could carry it out: she had never encountered an exception to that proposition. But the senior officers of the Enterprise did not know her well enough to know how far they could trust her; she wondered if Captain Kirk would ever trust her. He had shown no sign of being willing to do so yet.
Without explanation, he had told her straight out that he did not expect their carrier’s mission to pose much challenge. But he had asked her to arrange an impressive security force. And there was clearly no arguing with Mr. Spock about the use of the guest cabin. So the inexplicable Mister Mordreaux would be hermetically secure from the transporter to his cabin—but after that, Flynn could not be so confident, even putting him under twenty-four-hour guard, even with the new security door on the cabin and the energy-screens around it.
Who, Flynn wondered, is putting on a show for whom? Who is fooling whom? And, more important, why?
Kirk glanced at her.
“We’re about ready to receive the prisoner, Commander Flynn.”
“Yes, sir. The guard detail is due here at 1015 hours, as you requested.” She could hear their footsteps in the corridor.
She could not repress a smile when the team came in. She hoped they did not feel ridiculous, but they knew why they had been chosen: she had thought it best to tell them what little she knew. Each of the five carried a phaser rifle, but the weapons paled before the physical presence of the security officers themselves.
Beranardi al Auriga, her second in command, stood over two meters tall and was as blocky and solid as collapsed matter, black-skinned, fire-eyed, with a bushy red beard and flame-colored hair in all shades of red and orange and blond.
Neon, despite iridescent scales and a long tail spiked like a stegosaurus’, most resembled an economy-sized Tyrannosaurus rex. Human beings often thought of her in dinosaur terms: strong and dangerous but slow and stupid. She was quick as electricity and the facets of her I.Q. that Starfleet could measure started at 200 and went up from there.
Snnanagfashtalli and Jenniver Aristeides had been obvious choices for the team. Jenniver towered over even Barry al Auriga. She was like a steel statue. Flynn had, at first, thought Aristeides the most grotesquely ugly human creature she had ever seen, but after a few weeks she began to feel that the quiet woman had a strange, stony, sculptural beauty.
Snnanagfashtalli was the only truly vicious member of the team. After seeing her in action the day before, Flynn had decided to use her only on assignments when she was sure nothing would happen, or when she was certain something would. Snarl did not attack for no reason, and she attacked ferociously when she had cause, but she was not good in the middle ground when restraint and discipline were called for. She possessed neither. Under stress she was more likely to use her ruby fangs than her phaser.
Maximo Alisaunder Arrunja, the last member of the team, had a talent for blending into crowds. He was a
