But Spock shook his head. “Not in the way you might think.” He turned away from the stars then, as if he had seen enough. “Others went.”
“Went?” Kirk asked. He didn’t understand.
“Deeper into the Totality,” Spock answered. “Some of the crew of the Monitor. Some of the scientists who had been kidnapped, the Starfleet personnel who had been replaced. They felt the pull of the Totality and… they embraced it.”
“What happened to them?” Kirk asked.
“That is the question,” Spock said. “There is no way to know. Their minds… vanished from my awareness.”
“You think they were killed?”
“No,” Spock said with certainty. “I think they simply moved on to a realm of existence that we can know nothing about.”
Kirk found that idea disturbing. “The ultimate reality of existence.”
Spock nodded sagely.
Kirk was loath to ask his next question, but he knew he must.
“Do you think it’s true?”
Spock shook his head. “You said it yourself. How many worlds have we visited where someone claimed to have that ultimate truth?”
Kirk sensed the hesitation in his friend, as if Spock didn’t want to say anything to upset him.
“The Totality’s not a world,” Kirk said. “From everything you’ve told us, the nature of the universe makes the Totality inevitable.”
Spock nodded. “But the nature of the universe also makes biological life inevitable, wherever conditions are suitable.”
“A handful of planets,” Kirk said. “A few moons. Places where the temperature is warm enough and wet enough long enough for chemistry to become biology. But for the Totality… it’s the very structure of space and time that creates it. Everywhere.”
Spock nodded slowly, as if Kirk were saying everything he dared not say himself.
Kirk looked at the stars through the viewport, anxiety growing. “What is life but the search for answers?”
Spock’s words were quiet, measured, shocking. “In the Totality, we may have found them.”
Long moments passed.
And then Kirk said, “I can’t accept that.”
Spock gave no indication that he was ready to argue the point. “You weren’t there.”
“That’s what I mean,” Kirk said. “According to what you’ve told me, you weren’t there, either. Not where the ‘truth’ was being revealed. You said you felt the invitation. You saw or experienced people who accepted it. But they disappeared. If there is an ultimate truth, don’t you think it’d be something that could be shared? Don’t you think someone should be able to come back and explain it to us?
“But if it’s like passing through the subspace event horizon in a black hole… a boundary from which no information can ever return… it might as well be death.”
“Still,” Spock said softly, “I wonder.”
“That’s the difference between the life we are and the life the Totality represents. We don’t know the answers, so we go looking for them. The Totality claims to have the answers, but the only way we can hear them is by stepping into a black hole and hoping the Totality was telling the truth.”
Spock looked at Kirk, and Kirk could see the wry humor in his friend, invisible to anyone else. “Ah, but why would Norinda start telling the truth now?”
But Kirk didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile.
“Was it hard to resist?” he asked.
“Yes,” Spock said.
Kirk looked at the stars, wanted them to move faster.
If Spock found the Totality hard to resist, then what chance did a child have?
30
S.S. BELLE REVE
STARDATE 58571.4
The Vulcan home system has no cloud of cometary debris. Over aeons, the gravitational dance of the Eridani stars has scattered all orbiting masses, except for the innermost planets that circled the largest of the three-Vulcan’s sun.
But like every other member of the Federation, in response to the threat of the Totality the Vulcans had established their own systemwide embargo. Thus, twelve light-hours out from its destination, the Belle Reve was challenged by Vulcan Space Central.
Kirk sat ready in his command chair as all eyes on the bridge turned to him, waiting for his reply, and his orders. Scott was at navigation, McCoy at tactical, Spock at Kirk’s side.
“What should I tell them?” Scott asked.
Kirk knew it didn’t matter what he said. The result would be the same no matter what reply he gave. “It’s been what, two hundred years or so since a Vulcan ship fired on an Earth vessel?”
Scott and McCoy looked alarmed, as if they expected Kirk to call for general quarters.
Spock replied with apparent disinterest. “Two hundred and twenty-seven point five seven years. It was at the time of the Vulcan Reformation.”
As always, even if he should be used to it by now, Kirk was in awe of Spock’s command of history.
“Let’s not have history repeat itself,” Kirk said. “Scotty, open a channel to Vulcan Space Central. Put it on the viewscreen.”
With relief, Scott acknowledged the order.
A reserved-looking Vulcan female with short white hair appeared on the screen. A moment later, she raised an eyebrow, high, which told Kirk he had shocked her.
“James T. Kirk?” the Vulcan inquired.
“Correct,” Kirk said. “I request passage for my ship and my crew.”
The Vulcan’s gaze shifted as she saw who else was on her screen. “Spock,” she said with a knowing edge.
Spock politely inclined his head to her, said nothing. Kirk had already let him know what he thought they’d be facing. Conversation was not required.
“Ultimate destination?” the Vulcan asked.
“What does logic tell you?” Kirk replied.
The Vulcan smiled then, confirming Kirk’s suspicions-she was no more a Vulcan than the security guards he had faced with Marinta.
“Drop out of warp at one million kilometers and continue at impulse,” she said. “You’ll be met by escort craft and directed to the proper coordinates.”
Kirk returned the woman’s smile. “Tell Norinda I’ll see her soon.”
The woman’s un-Vulcan smile faded. “She’ll be waiting, James. Vulcan Space Central, out.”
The viewscreen snapped back to a view of the stars at warp, one orange star at the center of the screen brighter than the others.
“Mister Scott,” Kirk said, “how long till we arrive?”
“Twenty-two minutes, sir.”
Kirk stood up from his chair, gave it a last look. “It’s fitting.”
Spock gave Kirk a curious look.
Kirk explained. “Passing command to Jean-Luc. From one captain of the Enterprise to another.”
