orders, and spies who sought my life, will have a salutary effect on my followers. I’U see you in a few hours.” He turned to go.
“Hold it,” Kirk snapped in an authoritative voice.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Killing us is pointless. Something has happened you don’t know about.”
“Yes?”
“Your clans may take Andros for you, but when you march against new cities, you are going to have to have other miraculous raisings of the dead to convince them you are what you say you are and sweep them up in your crusade.”
“A logical assumption, Captain. That’s why the gods have provided me with Afterbliss.”
Kirk studied the black-robed figure for a moment. So cool, so logical, and yet so crazy. There had to be a way of getting under that paranoid overlay to the original, clear-thinking mind. Emotional appeals were useless since, Kirk thought, they would drive the Messiah further into paranoia. But cold logic might yet somehow get through to the original mind and stir it to revolt against the madness that enchained it. With a tremendous effort, he forced himself to appear as cold and dispassionate as if he were discussing an intriguing new concept in theoretical astrophysics.
“Your mistake is in believing the Enterprise will continue to follow your orders,” he said quietly.
“Indeed? I’ve been careful to make only reasonable requests of Mr. Sulu. He complies because he thinks he’s buying the time necessary for you to recover the warp-drive modulators. I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to give him an order he’d have to refuse—such as using phasers against Andros.” He tapped the tricorder he was wearing under his robes. “As long as I have this, it is illogical to think the Enterprise will be uncooperative.”
“You can’t expect help from an abandoned, radioactive hulk,” Kirk replied. “And that’s what the Enterprise will be by this time tomorrow. Since you disabled our warp-drive and beamed down here eight days ago, something catastrophic has happened.” As precisely as if he were feeding data into a computer, Kirk described the rapidly peaking radiation storm and its inevitable effects on the helpless starship.
“Indeed,” the Messiah said when Kirk finished. “What you’ve told me correlates directly with the change in weather patterns and the auroral displays of the past several nights. As soon as I finish my mission down here, I’m looking forward to calculating the origin of the storm from the data in the ship’s computer. The sub-space manifestation is most intriguing. In fact,” he added, “once my campaign gathers enough momentum so that it no longer needs my personal supervision, I’m thinking of moving permanently to the Enterprise. I have no one to play chess with down here. What’s more,” he said with a sudden change in voice and manner, “Ensign George doesn’t have exclusive rights. I’m looking forward to brightening the nights of Nurse Chapel and a few of the others.”
Kirk’s control wavered. “Damn it, Spock!” he burst out, “can’t you understand that—”
“I am not Spock, I am the Messiah,” the other interrupted coldly.
“I don’t care what you call yourself,” Kirk replied hotly. “Can’t you get it through your thick head that the crew will have to abandon the Enterprise in less than twelve hours? You may have extraordinary powers of persuasion, but your voice alone can’t conquer a planet for you. There will be a group from the Enterprise in every city you attack; and General Order One or no General Order One, they’ll use every scrap of the knowledge they’ll bring with them against you! You may have a brilliant mind, but it doesn’t stand a chance against four hundred and twenty-five of the Federation’s best. You can kill us, you can conquer Andros, but after that, your movement is doomed to certain defeat. Nobody denies that the gods have touched you and that you have great work ahead, but it obviously isn’t to be done here. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent the radiation storm. Call the Enterprise—they have the coordinates of this spot—and have them beam all six of us up. The gods must have some other world in mind. Once our warp drive is operational again, we’ll take you there.”
The Messiah peered at Kirk through the night. The third moon had risen, and gleamed fitfully through the clouds that scudded overhead. The wind gusted higher, bringing with it bursts of cold, sleet-like rain.
“Perhaps the one who was known as Spock would have been convinced by your reasoning,” the black-robed figure said, “but his mind knew only a universe limited by cold, mechanical equations. I have been touched by powers beyond. When physical law and divine law conflict, there can be only one outcome. Since Afterbliss is important to my plans, the gods will not permit it to be destroyed. It would be illogical. And now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, Ensign George is waiting.” The Messiah turned and strode away into the night.
McCoy let out a long sigh. “Good try, Jim,” he said,
“but the input from Chag Gara has Speck’s mind so twisted that there’s no way you can make a dent in that crazy logic. A paranoid knows his beliefs are an accurate reflection of what really is.”
“I know,” Kirk said, “but I had to make the try. Are everybody’s hands tied as tightly as mine? If just one of us could get loose—”
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” McCoy said, “but I might as well be in a straightjacket.”
There was a long silence between the captives. The wind gusted around them. After a time, Chekov said somberly, “Poor Sara…”
“Poor Sara, my foot,” Scott grumbled. “She’ll still be alive come sunup, and that’s more than I can say for the rest of us. If we don’t freeze to death long before then,” he added, shaking with cold as another blast of frigid wind brought more drizzling rain. The guards who had been left behind cursed the downpour, turned their backs to the biting wind, and pulled their cloaks up over their heads.
“I wouldn’t bank too heavily on Sara’s lasting the night,” McCoy said. “Spock may kill her before morning.”
“Why?” Kirk asked.
“I’ve a hunch he’s not going to get the reception he’s expecting. Sara’s changed a lot in the last week, but she’s a far cry from the bitch in heat that Spock coupled with at the inn. Her dop’s no longer in control.”
“She might play along with him to save her own hide,” Scott said. “Anything’s better than burning.”
“Sara wouldn’t do that,” McCoy said. “Unless…” His voice trailed off.
“Unless what?” Kirk demanded.
“Unless the filter stage on her implant still isn’t working properly. When she was dancing, she seemed to really enjoy turning everybody on.”
“If that she-cat she’s linked to is still dominant,” Kirk said thoughtfully. “Maybe she’s been playing a game during the whole trip.”
“And maybe we’re both getting as paranoid as
Spock,” McCoy said. “If we keep it up, pretty soon we’ll be suspecting each other. Look, Jim, she tried to get to him with the nullifier. It’s not her fault the damn thing didn’t work. I can’t say I’m surprised it didn’t though,” he added gloomily. “Nothing’s been working right ever since we hit this planet. First the implants go haywire. Then we hit Spock with a dart that’s supposed to knock him out for a couple of hours, and he’s back on his feet in a matter of minutes. Then we take off on a crazy expedition whose only purpose is to get an electronic widget close enough to Spock’s implant to put it out of commission. And when we do—against odds so astronomical I don’t feel like trying to calculate them—nothing happens! But damn it, it should have. All the Vulcan variables were taken into account in its design.”
“There’s one thing you haven’t considered,” Kirk said.
“What’s that?”
“What if she turned the nullifier off before she started to dance?”
“Why should she?”
“If her dop is in control, she may have decided that being the mistress of the master of Kyros offers a way of life quite a bit superior to that led by an ensign on a starship.”
“I don’t know,” McCoy said, “I’m not sure of why anybody does what he does any longer.”
An irate mumbling came from Tram Bir, who was trussed to the post farthest from Kirk and McCoy.
“What’s he saying?” Kirk asked Chekov, who was bound to the stake nearest the hillman. “The wind is taking his words away.”
“He wants to know what the crazy gabble is that you’re talking. He says he never heard anything like it.”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I did tell you, chief,” Kirk called, switching to Tram Bir’s own tongue. Then he added, “I know an apology isn’t going to mean much, but we didn’t intend for things to end up this way.”
Tram Bir shouted something, but again the wind whipped his words away.
