broke ranks and began to press closer.
On the platform, a sudden sparkle of shimmering light made them freeze in place. A tall, white-robed apparition with slanted eyebrows and pointed, alien ears appeared next to the Messiah.
The Messiah backed up a step, throwing up his arms as if to protect himself. His wail of distress and loss was cut off as a hand shot out and gripped him where his shoulder met his neck. He slumped to the platform, a puppet without strings.
The white-clad figure faced the stunned, silent crowd and began to speak in a powerful, resonant voice.
“Do not fear. The gods have not sent me to bring you harm. And they have only pity for this poor, mad creature here whom demons used to work their will. Do not wait again for Afterbliss; there never was a golden city for the dead. You were tricked by an empty ball of light set burning in the sky by demons’ spells.”
“But our dead? We saw them rise!” a clansman cried, his voice shaking.
“But not to a new life. Once a spirit sinks into the ground, it cannot return. The demons took the dead you brought and hid them in the clouds, so you would believe their false messiah’s lies. Behold.”
Heads craned upward as he pointed into the sky. High up, like distant birds, white specks began to descend, circling, floating lower and lower until, as gently as snowftakes, rigid, white-swathed bodies came to rest in the circle from where they had been lifted the night before.
“Return to your old ways. If you change them, let it be because you, yourselves, have decided that they should be, not because some evil magician has dazzled your eyes. Will you obey?”
All heads bowed in assent.
“See that you do. The gods have one more command. The chief Tram Bir has been ill used. Restore him to his place. Henceforth he shall sit first among the chiefs.”
Again heads bowed.
“I go,” the figure said and then added a warning. “If you again heed evil voices calling you to war, I may return.” The voice softened. “And now, disperse. Go back to your hills and be at peace among yourselves and with the people of the plains.”
The figure raised his right hand, thumb extended and middle and fourth fingers spread in a vee.
“Live long and prosper.”
Then, the hum muted by the open air, the flickering carrier wave of an Enterprise transporter surrounded the two men and they slowly, slowly disappeared.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Where is Mr. Spock?”
Kirk smiled at McCoy’s question. “He said he saw no reason for wasting time on postmortems. When I left the bridge, he had every computer bank tied into the science console and was punching up a storm. If it were anybody else, I’d say he was ducking this meeting because of embarrassment.”
“I wouldn’t rule that out entirely, sir,” Ensign George said with a sly grin. “When I passed him in the corridor, he gave me an awfully cool nod.”
Kirk looked down at a yellow pad on which he had jotted some notes. “Let’s get to work,” he said. “We’ll be in contact with Starfleet Command before too long, and I’ve been trying to pull together a preliminary report. I think I have everything down, but I wanted to check with all of you to be sure I haven’t left out anything important.”
“I’m afraid Uhura and I can’t be of much help, sir,” Sulu said. “There was so much to do between the time we beamed you up from the burning wagon and the time we sent Mr. Spock down to get the Messiah—along with lowering the bodies from their orbit—that nobody had the tune to fill us in on what’s been going on down there. About all I’ve been able to figure out is that the Messiah was Chag Gara all the time, and that for the last ten days Mr. Spock has been in a catatonic state.”
“You’re right with two exceptions,” Kirk said. “One when Spock, controlled by Gara, stole the crystals; and the second explains why our kidnapping attempt in Andros failed. The paralysis drug worked, but it was Chag Gara that was paralyzed. He had no control over his own body, so he brought Spock out of suspended animation and sent him through the trap door on the roof of that closed cart, to put McCoy and I out of operation so he—Gara—could escape.”
“But was Mr. Spock unconscious all that time?” Uhura asked.
“Except for those two times, yes,” Kirk replied. “Spock explained it to me on the bridge. The melded minds could only control one body at a time. When Spock was linked to Gara, two things happened simultaneously. First, the emotional input was so strong that it overwhelmed the filter stage of the implant and established a two-way link so that Chag Gara had immediate access to Spock’s mind. Secondly, the emotional impact from his dop caused Spock such intense psychic pain that his will went into a state of shock. He was aware of what was happening, but there was nothing he could do about it; he was a marionette with Gara pulling the strings.”
“No wonder he acted so strangely when he beamed up the first day,” Uhura said. “It must have taken Chag Gara a while to get used to controlling somebody else’s body.”
Kirk nodded. “The instant the link was established, Gara found himself hooked into a fantastic organic computer. With his new-found intelligence and the ability to use it logically, he immediately saw how he could use the Enterprise to further his crazy plans.”
“So that’s how he recognized Ensign George in the plaza,” Sulu said. “Since Mr. Spock was Gara’s dop rather than vice versa, he had complete access to his memory.”
“Right,” Kirk said. “Obviously, he realized immediately that if we found out where he lived, we’d head there, which was the last thing he wanted since that’s where he kept Spock. Losing him would have meant losing his new-found power, so he made a beeline home, wrapped our unconscious first officer in a blanket, and hauled him off to a safe place. I imagine he had a bad moment when the neighbors tried to stop him, but knowing precisely how to give the neck-pinch got him out of that one.”
“There’s still one mystery left,” Uhura said. “How did Sara realize that the messiah wasn’t Commander Spock?”
“His ears,” Ensign George said. “Chag Gara had one thing planned, but I had another. Mine was to grab the communicator and the tricorder, sneak out of camp, and then call the Enterprise and hide until a rescue party was sent down.”
“And what was the messiah supposed to be doing all that time?” Sulu asked.
“Nothing. I was going to sell him the idea that a willing partner was more fun than an unwilling one so he’d untie me. Then, when he had other things on his mind, I was going to bop him on the head with the lamp beside the bed. But before I could knock him out, I had to get that hood off; that hardened leather cap it goes with makes a darn good helmet.”
“What about the hill taboo against exposing the face?” Uhura asked.
“He evidently thought that what he had in mind was more fun in the dark, and blew the lamp out. While I was taking off the hood, my fingers encountered some singularly unpointed ears. ‘If this ain’t Spock, then that must be Spock,’ sez I to myself, thinking about the figure on the floor. So I waited until Chag was completely preoccupied with what he was doing, and then let him have it on the back of the head. Then I hoped over and slapped the nullifier bracelet on Spock’s wrist. Once the link was broken, he snapped out of his catatonia and took over immediately. Since the locator circuit on the communicator was out, he came up with the idea of setting the van on fire so the Enterprise could get an infra-red fix and determine our beam-up coordinates—just as it did when Chag Gara lit that flaming cross to indicate the location of the bodies to be beamed up.”
Ensign George made a wry face. “We intended to get far enough from the camp so the blaze wouldn’t be seen, but I mustn’t have hit Gara hard enough. We were barely out when he and his men were swarming after us like hornets. I thought we’d had it when Gara speared that neelot and we went over, but—”
She was interrupted by a call from the bridge.
“We’re ready to warp, Captain, the crystals are installed.”
“Good, I’ll be right up. Mr. Sulu…”
“Warp Six, if you please, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said as he settled down in his command chair.
