Jenniver Aristeides strode in, carrying Spock. The Vulcan lay unconscious in her arms, his long hands limp, his head thrown back. Every few seconds a drop of blood spattered on the floor.
“He passed out just a minute ago.” Though the ensign loomed head and shoulders over McCoy, she spoke hesitantly. “I thought it was better to bring him than wait for a stretcher.”
“You showed good judgment.” McCoy sighed. “I was afraid of this, he’s worked himself right into a fit of the vapors.”
The quotation on page 47 is reprinted from The Iliad ofHomer , translated by Richmond Lattimore, by permission of The University of Chicago Press. Copyright 1951 by the University of Chicago.
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To Gene Roddenberry, for letting me into
his universe for a while,
and
To David Hartwell, a singular friend.
Jim Kirk sat by Spock’s bedside, turning the strangely shaped bit of broken equipment over and over in his hands. He had never seen anything remotely like it before and he could not figure out what it was—or what it had been. This was the only piece large enough to inspect; the other shattered fragments lay jumbled together in a box nearby.
McCoy came in and sat down, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
“Bones,” Jim said, “I’ll call you when he starts to wake up. Why don’t you go get some sleep?”
“That’s just the trouble, I’ve been trying,” McCoy said. “Whatever Spock did to himself so he wouldn’t need sleep, I think he gave it to me, too.”
Jim rubbed his fingertip along the smooth curved amber surface, stopping at a broken edge.
“I’ve felt uneasy for the last couple of days,” McCoy said. “As if something awful is about to happen, and I can’t do anything about it. Or it’s already happened, and I don’t even know about it.”
Kirk grinned. “You’ve only felt it for a couple of days? I’ve been like that since we got within grabbing distance of that damned singularity.” He glanced at Spock, who had not moved at all since Kirk had come into the room. “Is he going to be all right, Bones?”
“I think so.”
“Aren’t you certain?” Kirk asked, startled, for he had only asked the question to get a reassuring answer.
“I’m reasonably certain,” McCoy said, “but I don’t see how he got himself into this state to begin with. I’ve been expecting somebody to have to cart him in here with exhaustion for days—”
“You knew he was going without sleep—”
“Yeah.”
“—and you didn’t tell me?”
“What would you have done? Forbade it?” McCoy grinned. “I didn’t tell you because of medical ethics. Doctor-patient confidentiality. Not wanting to get my head bitten off by my captain.”
“All right, all right. But what’s wrong with him, if it isn’t exhaustion?”
“Itis exhaustion, but it’s the sort I’d expect if he’d been through tremendous physical exertion. A couple of Vulcan marathons, say—a hundred kilometres through the desert. The scalp wound is completely inexplicable. He didn’t get it when he fell—he reopened a graze that was already partly healed. And it was patched with hybrid skin synthetic. Spock knew I made some to match his genotype. He could have used it himself. Only he didn’t; the packet was still in storage, unopened.” He stopped, and shrugged. “Shall I go on?”
“No. I can do that myself. He was out of uniform—I’ve never seen him out of uniform on the ship.
And—” He hefted the weird piece of equipment—“this is nothing I’ve ever seen before. Scotty doesn’t know what it does. It’s mostly bioelectronics, which are so new they’re hard to come by. I’ve never signed a requisition for them, and there’s no record that we ever brought any on board the ship.”
Mr. Spock, his awareness rising slowly through the depths of sleep, gradually became aware of the voices around him. They were discussing him, but as yet he could make no sense of the individual words. He tried to concentrate.
“Something very strange is going on,” Jim Kirk said. “Something I don’t understand. And I don’t like that at all.”
“Jim!” Spock sat up so quickly that every muscle and joint and sinew shrieked: he was aware of the sensation but impervious to it, as he should be, but for all the wrong reasons. He grabbed Jim Kirk’s arm. It was solid and real. Relief, and, yes, joy, overwhelmed the Vulcan. He slid his hand up Jim’s arm; he started to reach up to him, to lay his hand along the side of his face to feel the unsettling energy of Jim’s undamaged mind.
He pulled back abruptly, shocked by his own impulses; he turned away, toward the wall, struggling to control himself.
“Spock, what’s wrong? Bones—”
“Well, you wanted him to wake up,” McCoy said drily.
“Nothing is wrong, Captain,” Spock said. He eased himself back down onto the bunk. His voice was steady enough not to reveal that he was on the brink of laughter, of tears. “I am merely ... very glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you, too.” Kirk’s expression was quizzical. “You’ve been out quite a while.”
“How long, Captain?” Spock asked urgently.
“A couple of hours. Why?”
Spock relaxed. “Because, sir, the singularity is in the process of converting itself into a very small black hole, what you would call, in Earth tradition, a Hawking black hole. When the conversion is complete, the system will explode.”
Kirk leaped to his feet and started out the door.
“Captain—” Spock said.
Kirk glanced back.
“TheEnterprise is in no danger,” the Vulcan said. “The process will continue for another six days at least.”
“Oh,” Kirk said. He returned to Spock’s side. “All right, Mr. Spock. What happened?”
Spock reached up and touched the bullet wound in his temple. It was barely perceptible, for McCoy had put more skin synthetic on the gash, and sealed it with transparent spray. His brown and gold silk shirt lay crumpled on
