he could take. It had never broken him.
The physical pain was as bad as any he had ever taken, but it was not worse.
But this time he had met his match.
His breath caught and he made himself say it. No. It was worse than that. Omne had said it, and it was true.
This man had played with him, overreaching him in every direction—mind, body, will. So easily. Lazily. Beyond possibility of resistance.
And Kirk had almost felt some ancient jungle law telling him that this man was his natural master, this man had, even, the right.
It was what Omne had wanted him to feel and why the giant had done it.
He could see it now in the black eyes, see them reading him, too, and knowing that he felt it.
“No, he said aloud. “I do not live in the jungle. No man is my master.”
“I am, Omne said. “By the most ancient law of all, I am. That was what you could not take.”
“I—took it,” Kirk said with bleak pride.
Omne nodded. “And you did not surrender. But the jungle in you did. You feel it now. You want to obey. You will always want to, and always want to fight. But you know me. You know me as master. Sometime in a thousand years you will find that compliance has become obedience—and that you never knew the moment when it happened.” He smiled. “Perhaps this moment.”
“No,” Kirk whispered, but he saw the thousand years in Omne’s eyes.
“No?” Omne said softly. “But you will comply now. You will tell yourself that it is for others, but it will be for yourself. Or you will find the honesty to know it. Lie down now. You do not have to look at me.”
Omne’s hand caught the back of Kirk’s neck, lightly, but turning his face down. And it was too much. The quivering arm would not hold. Perhaps—something else would not hold.
Kirk let his shoulders down, let himself bury his face. Yes, just let it happen. God, he was so tired.
He lifted his head and turned his face to one side against the knotted neck muscles and Omne’s light touch to look up and meet the eyes. It was all he could do, but it was enough.
“Not just yet,” he whispered. “See you in hell first.”
Omne smiled with that look of having invented him. “That’s my original,” he said. “I could not have chosen better.”
Kirk felt the odd jolt of pride again, but set himself against it. He would not let that matter, either. No, it would matter, but it would not stop him. He would set hate against it and control and cool logic.
It would be a long thousand years.
Omne released his neck and took up the spray can.
The spray drifted down onto Kirk’s back, a coolness of flowing mist and drifting foam, cooling flame. Then Omne’s hands were busy through the coolness, easing cuts together where flesh had split over bone, smoothing the foam to where it was most needed.
Kirk set his teeth against the touch, and against fighting it.
But he felt pain die slowly down the length of his body, finally even in deep bruises and final knotted lumps of resistance. The relief was almost an agony in itself, and he felt himself clutching for the last of the pain like an anchor. He was beginning to—drift. The shock he had held at bay was catching up with him. The last of the sobs were dying down to the tiny jerks of a cried-out child sinking into sleep. The Starship Captain’s eyes were dry now, but he was crying himself to sleep. At least Spock did not know. The Vulcan would never know…
Kirk flickered his eyes open for a second to look at Omne. The big man’s rough-carved face was almost gentle. So many facets to the man. So many faces. No one would ever find this place, and in a thousand years Kirk would not know all the faces. But he would remember always the face of the wolf…
CHAPTER XIV
The Commander was not accustomed to feeling helpless.
Her Kirk pressed the stained white velvet, the bloodstained hands, his face, against the blank wall “I—can’t —” he murmured, “I’m losing—I’ve lost—the signal.”
His shoulders shuddered under Spock’s hands, and the Vulcan’s stoned-carved face set harder, but his voice was gentle, saying, “It’s all right. It will be better for you now. For him.”
The shaking figure pried itself away from the wall, twisted; the raw hands seized Spocks arms. “Better! The—pain—the feeling—gone. I’ve lost him. Don’t you understand? We can’t get to him, even now. And now Omne could take him anywhere.”
“I know,” Spock said very quietly, looking down into the tormented eyes as if to give support.
They were locked away from her in some world she could not reach, had been, since Spock had led her to the one he called James. She could not quite bring herself to adopt the name. How, really, had they exchanged it? And what had it meant to them? Spock had not spoken it but once, minutes ago, when they found—the other—trying to get through a blank wall. There was evidently some kind of link still persisting. She did not think, somehow, that she liked that, although it had undoubtedly saved such sanity as remained to any of them by leading Spock to him. She did not fully understand it, did not understand at all the mechanism by which they both seemed to be feeling what Kirk felt. Spock controlled it better, but she could see it in his rock-steady face, too. Yet the—connection—did not seem to be through Spock.
They had checked the adjoining rooms, her Kirk persistently indicating that he—felt—Kirk in a direction where it did not seem that he could be, and which Spock could evidently not sense. They had tried to check for secret panels, secret passageways, with the helpless feeling that a secret hidden by Omne could elude them for hours.
They had ducked guards.
And finally her Kirk had fetched up against the blank wall again, going rigid, then whispering, “Some land of —medical—attention,” but not relaxing. And Spock had supported the rigid shoulders, also looking like grim death.
Now he said, “James…”
But her Kirk’s chin line was already firming, the eyes steadying as if to return support, the hands squeezing and releasing the Vulcan’s arms. “Thank you, Spock. Of course, we just have to get to him.” He turned to the wall appraisingly. “We know the direction right now. Omne presumably will be getting reorganized in a moment—move him—rally the troops, whatever. Perhaps a time for direct action. Do you think that a couple of Vulcanoids could start taking that paneling apart?” He flashed a look at the Commander, including her in.
She stepped forward, casting a pointed look at his raw hands, scalded on an ordinary slide-pole. “So long as the Humanoid doesn’t try to.”
Spock touched the Human’s shoulder aside with the delicacy of moving a child, and slammed his fist through the wall.
He stood frozen for a moment looking as if he had been needing to do that for a long time. Then he put his forearm in through the cleanly fractured hole in the heavy composition paneling, hauled back on it, and pulled it free with a sound of fasteners snapping like the rattle of ancient weapons.
But there was only solid stone a few inches behind it. She started on the edge of the next sheet with not much less delicacy.
“That will do, Omne said, and they looked up to see him with a sudden arm around James Kirk’s neck and a gun leveled at them past his waist.
He nodded pleasantly. It is as simple as that,” he said. “And it is just as well that I took a look at the monitor screens. Good afternoon, Mr. Spock. I observe the meaning of your word.”
Spock freed his hand from the paneling and let it fall against the wall. There could be no question of trying to draw. “I have observed the meaning of yours.”
“As a matter of fact,” Omne said, I gave you no word not to do anything which I have done—not even about ‘damaged merchandise.’ You made assumptions.” He shrugged. “But then, I never claimed to be a man of
