“Check my logic, Doctor,” he said, “I am not fully-functional.”
“Check your logic?”
The Vulcan looked at McCoy gravely. “I do not believe that we will need his last orders—this time. Do you?”
“No, Spock. Not this time.”
Spock nodded. ‘Then hear me.” He drew back his shoulders until they crackled. “Point one: It is possible that I am being paranoid, but I do not think so. My intuition senses a deeper plot than we knew. Of course, we have confirmed the suspicion that brought us here—that this whole conference of strange delegates, outlaws, renegades, revolutionaries, governments in exile, dissident factions is aimed at breaking up the Federation, perhaps taking many planets into an alliance with the Romulans and enabling them to go to war again. Omne makes no bones about favoring that, nor about his contempt for the Federation. Yet you recall that he greeted us on the viewscreen saving that he was pleased that we had ‘accepted his invitation’—implying that he had carefully arranged things so that we would try, as the Captain said, to ‘crash the party.’ You could not see his first curiously excessive cordiality to the Captain and myself, but when he finally beamed you down to join us on our private tour at the hospital—” Spock cut himself off. What do you make of him, Doctor?”
“Medical opinion?” McCoy frowned, sourly remembering how he had been left standing foolishly on the transporter while the other two shimmered out and how he had spent a frantic time with Scott while the Engineer determined that the transporter which took them was actually on the planet, working right through the impenetrable shields, and working as if it were the Enterprise transporter and responded to its controls. But it was not and did not, and would not take McCoy until he was summoned. Then he saw Omne in the flesh.
“First thought: madman,” McCoy said. “Megalomaniac. Delusions of omnipotence. Maybe where he gets the name.” He shook his head. “Second thought: not crazy. I know the place is all laid out with the trappings of melodrama and legend, but it has a weird kind of point to it. All the Wild West stuff-” he pointed to the six-shooters on Spock’s hip and his own—”but it’s ‘check your guns at the door’—only equal guns cheerfully provided by the host. Makes for polite society, he says. No law but challenge, and the old equalizers; no back-shooting and the Romulan guards to keep everybody honest. But there are alien enclaves where no guns are allowed, customs strictly their own business. And more than one legend. I saw an ancient Greek section, something that looked Renaissance, the Great Age of Deneb Five.”
Pre-Reform Vulcan,” Spock added. “And the time of Surak.”
“Looks to me like the old idea of a proprietary community,” McCoy said. “Minimum order provided by the host, protection against outside force—the shields. There doesn’t seem to be offensive armament on the same scale or a space navy, but the stories have it that a ship cutting up trouble within fifty thousand miles buys the farm. So now it’s a free port, a stone’s throw from the Romulan neutral zone. Look at us. Three Romulan ships in orbit, and we haven’t shot each other up yet. And nearly a hundred other alien ships bringing delegates from three times that many planets.”
Ninety-three. Three-point-two times, the Vulcan corrected automatically.
McCoy nodded. “The man who can do that is taken seriously—and is a serious man. And that hospital—I saw things there I’d give my eyeteeth for—things that don’t exist yet in the civilized galaxy. That implies a research capability of a high order. Omne doesn’t give himself any title, but he has to be an M.D.”
“And a Ph.D. in several scientific fields,” Spock added.
“Linguist. Galactic man. Steeped in the languages and literatures of Lord knows how many worlds. Knows colloquial English and slang as well as you do—but he admits it.”
Spock raised an eyebrow, but it looked impatient. “Also he speaks Vulcan like a Vulcan. But where does that leave us? A man of power, but to what purpose?”
McCoy remembered the fear which had made him try to keep Jim and Spock from going back for the second meeting, to which he was pointedly not invited. It was almost a physical fear, caused by the mere physical presence of the giant in black, against the costumed and painted backdrop of the private world he had created. The plain black jumpsuit, boots, gloves; the black hair and the unfathomable black eyes; the massive muscle and almost overpowering masculinity. Omne looked Human, but there was something alien under the layers of galactic man. The man was ageless. And there was some aura of brooding, black grief and rage, decades deep.
McCoy shook his head. “Omne scares hell out of me, Spock. He’s not crazy, but there’s a fixed purpose that’s almost as bad. He’s—an owner, Spock. He wants to own his world, his way, price no object. Whatever he wants, he’d destroy himself or the galaxy to get it.”
Spock nodded. “Poetic, Doctor, but my impression as well.”
“Something else, Spock. He’s—an alpha male. You know the idea of ranking the dominant males in a primate group alpha, beta, gamma. Jim and I always figured it works for men, too. But this Omne—he’s so alpha he’d have a tough time even finding a contest. Maybe I’m crazy, and that doesn’t have anything to do with it, But I had the feeling he wanted to take us on.”
The—Captain,” Spock said with effort.
“And maybe you. Or what you both stand for, the Federation. He has that fixed idea about trampling customs. It seems to be the key issue of the conference. You’ve even had trouble with it on Vulcan. And that semiofficial Vulcan delegation here—”
“My thought also, Doctor. If a Federation Starship Captain were killed seeming to violate the Prime Directive—”
McCoy drew a deep breath. “But, it didn’t have to be murder. A test, a trap, but—” He shook his head. “We’d never be able to prove it. Yes, I think Omne could kill. But did be?”
“That,” Spock said, “is what I have to find out.” He stood up abruptly and McCoy went on Red Alert
“Wait, Spock. HOW?”
Spock paused with the look of barely leashed restraint. “There is more, Doctor. No time to tell you since—the last beam down. The three Romulan ships are, indeed, commanded by our old—friend—the Fleet Commander. She has not forgotten us, nor forgiven.
But she—renewed her offer to me, with variations. Wanting me to defect—and to bring the Captain. I believe that she was trying to warn me of something, as if she knew of it, but could not—or would not—stop it.” Spock stopped and the Vulcan jaw set “Kirks murder,” he said flatly, and there was murder in his eyes.
He turned on his heel and strode through the door.
After a stunned moment McCoy heaved himself up to go after him. But Spock had reached the turbo-lift.
By the time McCoy skated into the transporter room, Scotty was watching a shimmer and turning to say to McCoy, “Would you credit that he left me in command?”
McCoy nodded heavily. “Aye, Mr. Scott, and I wish you joy of it.” He slammed his hand on the console. Damn it to hell, Scotty!”
“Aye,” Scott said. “Doctor, is he all right?”
“Are any of us?” McCoy straightened and mounted the transporter. “Give it a try, Scotty.” But it was obstinately silent. Spock must have been expected, he thought, and didn’t like the thought. He climbed down slowly and collected Scott with a nod. “Come on. I’ll prescribe a drink for you. You’ll need one. We both will.”
CHAPTER II
Spock stepped off the transporter platform where they had first beamed down—in the Wild West section. The Romulan guards in their incongruous black levis and low-slung six-shooters looked at him balefully. One reported into a communicator, but they did not try to stop him as he moved off down Front Street.
It was Dodge City with aircars. It was a dozen legends from a dozen worlds, legends of outlaws and outcasts, hole-in-the-wall gangs and embittered survivors of forgotten wars.
Spock had rated it fascinating and rather pathetic when he first saw it, and had known that it was no less dangerous for all its pathos. Later, seeing Omne, seeing the other legends and the real power, he had seen it as more sinister than pathetic.
He did not see it now; what he saw was a consuming vision of flames, a face, lips which did not scream, but
