Jim drew up close beside her, but he did not touch the moment, nor did the Vulcan, and James stayed quiet, trying to still even his mind, not to joggle her elbow.
The confusion of links and resonance was a distraction, full of pain and James’s sub-voice thoughts, in which the only hopeful theme was: Scotty. But she would not have given up one gossamer thread of the link for all the princelings in the Empire; the link might have to lead her to hers.
“You are the first,” she said to Omne. “The Phoenix. The Fire-Dragon.”
“Yes,” he said, accepting the acknowledgement, and then he swept it away with a slight ironic smile. “You discount James?”
“James did not die.”
“No.” The great dark eyes brooded for a moment over the memory; they were more unfathomable than ever, layer upon layer of depth, like obsidian gone transparent. Was there something new in the eyes, now—as if death had burned something to great clarity? “You were almost right, Commander. Of all men I would not die—and of all men, I was the only one who would, but I was not beaten. I was the man who would die first—and did.”
“So,” she said slowly, “you found a recording of our discussion in the control room?”
“Certainly, my dear. All of the monitor screens record automatically. This whole day is safe on storage cubes.”
She felt Jim stir uncomfortably beside her.
Well, it could not be helped. “I trust I did not omit too many possibilities?” she said with a trace of challenge.
“Dozens,” Omne said. “Hundreds.”
She smiled fractionally. “You will doubtless fill me in.”
Omne smiled, as if indulging her, as if he knew all about what she was up to, and could afford the luxury. And beneath the smile she saw suddenly the savage hate which had exploded in the fight and not been dissipated. It was leashed now. Omne had not forgiven them their victory, or his death.
You are seeing only the test of the process against love,” Omne said. “Consider the tests against hate, evil, weakness, power-lust, Human frailties. Consider even the test against strength and decency. You have had advantages, you know. Jim and James are quite extraordinary men—and they had quite extraordinary help.” Omne looked at her, at Spock. “But picture two kings, emperors, presidents waking up on any one day to find—two of them. One could not count on our two originals’ nobility. Even they barely made it. But consider: what if such a pair did not even know which was the original? Each would have to fight for his rightful place. The other would be an imposter—who was certain that he was real. What if there were no Vulcan friend, no telepath who knew them to establish identity? And what if there were such a friend? Which would he choose—and how? How would one of them choose to leave him? Suppose even today, my dear, that you had not been here to offer another path to James?”
“The thought has occurred,” she said with effort.
“It is only one possibility,” Omne said. “There are countless permutations, combinations, surprises, elemental uses. Possession. Exploration of metaphysical problems. There is simple personal survival.”
“At a price,” she said grimly. “Doubtless also surprising.” Where was Mr. Scott? How long could she stall?
“Certainly,” Omne said. “I am full of surprises. Are you trying to conceal from me one of your own? For example, that it is long past time for the Captain’s Mr. Scott to have sounded intruder alert, if he detected my transporter? Therefore he is either trying to take silent action, in the hope of which you are stalling, or I have yet another capability which will come as a surprise to you.”
She shrugged microscopically, not betraying the sinking sense that Omne was ahead of them on all points. Did Scott even know? “If you have named my game,” she said, “it is still the only game in town. Although we might still arrange one or two other surprises. But you have come. You wanted to say to us: I live. You might thank us for that—at least, thank the Captain. We did not destroy you when we could. You owe a debt.”
Omne shook his head. “I am not responsible for missed opportunities or misguided nobility—or, especially, for rationalizations of elemental needs.” He turned to Jim. “One innocent life, Captain? Shall I tell you the real reason why you did not destroy the planet?”
Kirk nodded. “I named it. But tell me what you think.”
“Because it is immortality, Captain. You could not bear to close the door on the defeat of death. You will find that you have sold your soul for it—and the galaxy.”
Kirk straightened, and she saw that it was true—on some deepest level, true. She could feel it in James’s mind, too. Kirk’s head lifted. ? “It is immortality,” he said. “You could have been honored for it forever. But it is you who have sold your soul. Yes, I want the defeat of death.” He gestured toward the stars. “What else are we out here for? To learn, to know, to push back the limits, to—love. Who would see love die? No, I didn’t close the door. I would be willing to live with Pandora’s box—and Hope. But not with immortality as a weapon in your hands. I have not sold the galaxy. We will fight you.”
“You have tried that, Captain,” Omne said, indicating their defeat.
“We are not finished. Who are you that we should quit against you?”
“Omne,” the giant said simply.
Kirk nodded. “You are that—and we have not quit. You have lost today. You met love, and you couldn’t break it.”
“It will break you,” Omne said. “Captain, you wanted the process, and you did not want it for the galaxy, but for yourself.”
Kirk stood very still. She could feel the effort in his body. “I wanted it,” he said. “But I have lived without it before.”
He stood as if waiting for a blow to fall; she saw the hate flare again in the obsidian eyes and the great arm tighten across James’s chest.
James gasped and Kirk set his teeth, and for a moment she thought that the giant would break from the pose of studied calm and come to smash—which was perhaps what Kirk had intended.
It would break the deadlock. Get Omne out of his secure position with his hostage and his back against the wall, commanding the doors.
Of course. Scott might be outside, monitoring, only waiting for a chance. And if not—she was not out of it, and Kirk would not count himself out, or James, even the Vulcan with his broken ribs.
She set herself to move.
But the giant was master of himself. He smiled the wolf smile. “I am not to be drawn, Captain. I chose you for that very capacity. It is what made you a fit subject for the first test. But you have lived without immortality when it did not exist. Now it does exist, and you have tasted it.”
There was a long moment of silence. She could feel the weight of it in the link. Each of them had lived for a long time on the final frontier of death, and still dared to love. It had been necessary. It was the nature of the universe, and what man, what all intelligent life had had to live with, always. And it had always been unendurable, and endured.
But now it was not the nature of the universe.
She undertook to speak for all. “We would give anything for it—except what we are.”
“So say you all? ” Omne said, and his eyes were darkly impressed as he felt the weight of common assent like a solid unity among them. Even McCoy lifted his head and met the black eyes with a searing look of loathing and icy, bleak pride—he who fought death on his own ground and too often lost, and would fight again.
Omne nodded “So you will not, after all, quite sell soul, flag, fortune, and sacred honor?”
“We will not sell what makes love possible,” the Commander said.
“But that is the price of the Phoenix,” Omne said. He laughed then, darkly. “And you will pay. Today your lambs speak together. Your wolves will come to me one by one, in silence, as will the wolves of the galaxy. You will come when the strain of living with death and love and the knowledge of eternal life becomes too much. Commander, you have touching plans for taking James into the Romulan Empire. What will you do on the day when your gorgeous, delicate princeling fails to bow his stiff neck and is discovered? Or perhaps even is betrayed—it could be arranged, you know—and is thrown into the dungeons of the Empire?”
Yes, what? She asked herself, fighting down the feeling of sickness. But aloud she focused only on the detail. “We have spoken of a princeling only here. Are we to assume that you have been following that conversation,
