“Cher-wit! Yes, the death is indeed recorded.”
“How…” Kirk all but choked on the peculiar-sounding words, “how did he die?” He still found it hard to believe he was living this nightmare. It was no consolation to know that it must be a hundred times worse for Spock.
Again, Aleek-om checked the instrument readings.
“The child is recorded as dying during some form of… maturity test. Yes, that’s it. It is recorded only because the father was a notable figure in government and in Federation history.”
Spock spoke absently. “The Kahs-wan—a survival test for young males. It is traditional, a holdover from less peaceful, less civilized days.”
“The death is recorded as—” Aleek-om continued, but Spock finished it for him.
“…falling on the twentieth day of Tasmeen.” All but Kirk and Erickson looked at Spock in surprise.
“How do you know this?” asked Thelin. Spock paused, spoke slowly.
“That was the day my—my cousin saved my life when I was attacked in the desert by a wild animal.”
But how could Spock know that that was the particular day and that that incident was crucial?
Inspiration hit Kirk then, without warning—at warp-eight speed.
“This cousin, Spock, what was his name?” Spock frowned, shifted his position on the rocky surface underfoot.
“That I do not seem to recall clearly. I was very young. He called himself—yes, Selek. A common enough name in my father’s family. He was visiting us.” Spock frowned slightly. “Odd, but I never saw him again after that—though I wished to, many times. Nor, I believe, did any of my family.” The frown grew deeper.
“Captain, your expression, I believe you…” Spock seemed to hesitate.
Kirk looked directly at his first officer. Inside, Spock knew. But he was so close to the answer that it hadn’t yet come to him.
“Spock—this Selek—did he by any chance look like you do… now?”
Even then, Spock was reluctant to accept the idea. Alternative lines of possibility, however, suddenly looked more barren than ever. He nodded slowly.
“I believe he did, Captain. And I see what you are thinking. That other time, it wasn’t my ‘cousin’ who saved me—it was I. I saved myself.”
“But this time,” continued Kirk, pushing the thought forward, “you were in Orion’s past with Mr. Erickson and me. At the same time, Aleek-om and Grey were here, playing back that section of Vulcan history. You couldn’t exist in two time lines simultaneously, so you had to vanish from one of them. In other words, you had to die as a boy, since you couldn’t be there to save yourself.” He shook his head. Much more thinking along paradoxical lines like that and they’d all be candidates for the silly station. He spun to face the Gate.
“Guardian, did you hear that?”
The shifting colors seemed to flow a little faster, shine a touch brighter. When it spoke, the colors pulsed with internal light as each syllable was intoned. The words themselves were, as always, neither masculine nor feminine nor even machinelike—but instead a kind of strange sexless and timeless neuter.
“I HEAR ALL.”
“We could resort to the Enterprise’s computers,” Kirk murmured, as much to himself as to the Gate, “but in all the Universe, no one, nothing, knows as much about time as you. Tell me—is it possible for Spock the Vulcan to return to the period when he was not (God, this was insane!) and repair the broken time line so that all is the same as it was before our last journey?”
A pause, then, “IT IS POSSIBLE,” the Guardian boomed indifferently, “IF NO OTHER MAJOR FACTOR HAS BEEN CHANGED. OR IS CHANGED IN THE CHANGING.”
Kirk turned to his science officer.
“Do you remember enough, Spock? You heard the Guardian. You can’t risk changing anything when you go back. You’ve got to repeat what happened when you were seven years old.”
Spock shook his head slowly, the strain of recall showing plainly.
“I do not remember everything, Captain. There are vague memories, from a child’s point of view. But as is common to youthful memories, a child’s details are blurred and run together. The memory is there—but slightly out of focus.”
“You’ll have to try!” Kirk insisted. “For you—and your mother—to live.” Spock nodded slowly, considering.
“Yes. I will need the following items: a Vulcan desert soft-suit and boots, and a small selection of plain street-wear accessories circa—8877 Vulcan years. The matching obligatory carry-bag should be of the same period and look well used.”
“You’ve got them,” nodded Kirk quickly. “I’ll have quartermaster section drop whatever they’re doing and run them off now.” He flipped open his communicator and moved slightly to one side. The three historians were already engaged in animated discussion of what had become for them a fascinating socio-mathematical exercise in conflicting time lines.
This curiosity was touched with tragedy only for Erick-son, since among the arguing historians only he had been intimately involved with the actual expedition into Orion’s past. But his academic concern outweighed the desire to offer further consolation to Spock. He wasn’t very good at such things, anyway.
That left Spock alone with his quiet doppelganger—Thelin. The Andorian studied him closely.
“This proposed modification of time lines will put you in my place on a different plane… replace another Thelin somewhere.” He paused. “Yet, I am not aggrieved.”
“Andorians are noted for many things,” said Spock conversationally. “However, as you yourself admitted, sympathy is not one of them.”
“True,” Thelin nodded. “A warrior race has few sympathies and little time for same. Yet it is not a normal situation we find ourselves in. I, personally, do not feel threatened. Yet, in a way, I am actually contributing to the murder of a distant cousin.”
“Who should not be there in the first place,” concluded Spock evenly.
“Perhaps. Yet one empathy we Andorians do possess is for family. On this time plane, you will lose—and so would your mother. The knowledge that this will be prevented, at least, is acceptable mental compensation for me.”
He gave Spock a smart Vulcan hand salute. “Live long and prosper in your own world, Commander Spock—in your own time.” Spock returned the salute.
“And you in yours, Commander Thelin.”
There was nothing to do now but wait for Spock’s requested clothing and materials to be sent down from the Enterprise. There’d be no problem there—planetary defenses could recognize the difference between a suit of clothes and a photon torpedo. But it left them with nothing to do but think, and after a while that wasn’t too comfortable for the historians, either.
The little group spent several nervous, awkward minutes wandering around the base of the now familiar Guardian. Kirk studied it idly.
Certainly it possessed some strange unknown variety of organic/inorganic intelligence—witness its answers to questions in many languages. But no one knew if this intelligence lay dormant until evoked. Might it not be always alert, constantly observing? Was it even now looking down on them from some incomprehensible alien Olympus and musing on their problems? He could ask, of course.
But the Guardian of Forever did not deign to answer any questions about anything but time.
As for other sights to study, they were too far from Oyya for the city’s ancient and distant attractions to hold their interest for very long. The area around the Guardian itself was singularly barren.
Even the Time Gate was beginning to seem like no more than a pile of oddly hewn rocks and stone by the time a small transporter effect, a chromatic glow of atomic action, began to take shape nearby. As it faded, the glow congealed into the form of a Vulcan carry-all bag, a small pile of goods and knickknacks, boots, and a neatly tied bundle of sand-colored clothes.
“Nice to know that the crew in this time plane is efficient, too,” Kirk commented appreciatively. He hesitated, then held out a hand to
Spock. Words were unnecessary.
It took Spock a few moments to make the change of clothing. He stacked his uniform and boots neatly to one side, then turned and moved away from them, walking up to the base of the Gate itself.
Thelin moved to stand next to Kirk. Not wont to miss even a blurred glimpse of what might take place, the three historians activated their own special tricorders. Spock’s voice as he addressed the enigmatic intelligence known as the Guardian was clear and precise, as always.
“I wish to visit the planet Vulcan.”
“TIME?” rumbled the Guardian.
“Thirty Vulcan years past, the month of Tasmeen, before—before the twentieth day.”
There, that ought to provide a reasonable margin of time in which to get reacquainted with himself.
“LOCATION?”
“Just outside the border city of ShiKahr.”
By wav of reply, the pastel mists that filled the circular Gate started to swirl and boil, flowing slower and slower, until the blur of time pictures began to steady as the Guardian locked in to the requested time line. Then, abruptly, the Gate was filled with a view so familiar to Spock that it immediately relaxed all inner tensions.
A hot. dry, orange world—Vulcan.
“Yes,” was all Kirk heard him say—though there seemed to be other words, voiced too low to be understood.
“TIME AND PLACE,” the Guardian shouted in tones as stable and final as the Universe, “ARE READY TO RECEIVE YOU.”
“Yes,” Spock murmured again. One word worth a thousand pictures. Then he was running, running forward, and taking a short leap into the time portal.
His body faded from view as though he were slipping into a transparent sponge. As soon as he touched the field, the picture began to blur from the temporary distortion of the time vortex.
For several moments after he’d vanished, Kirk stood staring at the now resumed blur of time-patterns racing across the Gate. Then he turned to one side, where the blue uniform of a Starfleet commander, science section, and a pair of boots—Starfleet standard issue, officer’s—lay on the broken gravel, awaiting their owner’s return.
In another, unknown time line, another James T. Kirk was staring at another set of clothes, thinking the same thoughts, hoping the same hopes. And on a different line, perhaps, yet a different Kirk. And another, and another—an infinitude of Kirks waiting for the return of a billion Spocks in a million variations of a certain awkward second or two in time….
Spock stood on the sands of the world of his birth. Behind him, the land was desert, painted in harsh ocher-yellows and umber-browns—spotted only reluctantly here and there by an occasional winsome patch of greenery.
Further back, a range of forbidding black mountains clawed at the sky with great ragged talons of granite, basalt, and gneiss. The thin atmosphere inspired a roof of flinty orange-red instead of the soft blues of Earth. But the clouds that spotted it were just as cottony white.
Before him lay the city of ShiKahr, like a neat, orderly oasis in the wastes. A wide band of lush, landscaped parkland formed a civilizing barrier between urban environment and raw, arid sands. Flowers and other vegetation tended toward soft, warm hues of yellow and brown, with a few isolated sprinklings of pink or purple.
The park buffer zone was as modern as the rest of ShiKahr, which nevertheless was an old city. Buildings were geometric, regular, and aesthetically as well as architecturally sound. A logical city designed for relentlessly logical inhabitants.
A person standing next to Spock at that moment might have heard him mutter something vaguely like, “thirty years…” Or it might have been the wind rippling through a desert bush.
In any case, no one could have stood close enough to see what was going through Spock’s mind. That mind was considering. From here on, he was quite aware that his very continued existence depended on repeating with as much precision as possible events he could barely remember, events that had taken place thirty years ago—now.
He shifted the carry-bag higher on his shoulder, ran his right thumb underneath the strap, and started off towards the city. At the city gate he experienced an instant of apprehension. There was always an outside chance that something else about him, something unseen but vital, had been altered by the interlocution of time lines.
If the automatic sentry defense systems which were designed to keep out fierce desert carnivores sensed anything suspicious about him, he would be, not killed, but immobilized and held helplessly tranquilized until the arrival of a detention squad from the city reasoning force.
That wouldn’t be fatal. But subsequent questions and examinations could be embarrassing as well as time delaying. At the very least, serious alterations in this time line might be produced. That could jumble matters beyond repair.
They might be damaged beyond change already, but there was little benefit to that fine of thought. Besides, it was very depressing.
He needn’t have worried. Unseen radiation probed him, hidden sensors clucked approving mechanical tongues. His shape and composition were familiar—Vulcan. No challenge was offered as he walked through the park. No tranquilizing darts phocked out at him, no stun rays sought to bar his passage.
He experienced no difficulties whatsoever. His only barrier to progress was confusion of a mental variety. He’d forgotten the beauty of ShiKahr. The calm efficiency and palpable sense of security that made a Vulcan city so different from the hectic, albeit exciting urban hodgepodges of so many other humanoid worlds.
He passed by the last of the flowers, past a gentle fountain that dispensed a constant stream of fresh well water, and suddenly found himself on a walking street.
This pathway was broad and paved, but designed for pedestrian use only. It was quiet and tree-shaded. Every effort—every stone, every bush, all but the actual placement of the leaves on the branches—was predesigned and executed to enhance one’s serene appreciation of podal locomotion.
High walls kept homes and gardens discreetly secluded from passersby. Delicate symmetrical blossoms on creeping vines trailed over many of the stone walls and brightened the rustic scene even further. There was a main artery in the distance ahead, busy with ground-car activity. Old-style, outmoded ground-cars, he noted.
That mechanical sound was distant. But soon, another clamor reached his ears. A group of young voices—male. Their tone was biting and sarcastic—a near-emotion to which even Vulcan youth were not immune. The words matched the tone of delivery.
“Barbarian… Earther… throwback… emotional, squalling, uncontrolled Earther!”
He’d heard those same insults long ago, it seemed. Surprising how painful they could still be, after all those years. He moved to a corner, turned it, and looked ahead.
A high wall fronted on an intersection of several small pathways. He moved a few steps further, halting in front of a high, solid old gate of polished, engraved wood. Nearby, another lower gateway led to a nourishing garden. In front of this second gate stood a very young version of himself.
There was no question of who it was. Inwardly, he’d dreaded this moment—from an intellectual, not an emotional, standpoint. How would he react to the first sight of… himself? Kirk had equated it to an old terran expression—being, “on the outside looking in.” Now that Spock was actually confronted with the experience, the result proved anticlimactic.
There was no abrupt sundering of mind, no shattering of preconceived images. No, no emotional damage. This younger, smaller version of himself was only a young boy who looked somehow familiar. But another person entirely.
After all, he’d met a universe full of aliens—and to an adult, children are often the most alien of all.
He blinked. Three other Vulcan youngsters stood in front of young Spock, taunting him. Old memories came drifting back, long-lost little pains that made small wrenching tugs deep in his mind.
That one, there, with the light-colored hair—that must be Stark. Then Sofek, next to him, and the tallest one standing
between them had to be Sepek—a persistent childhood tormentor until later years, when they grew to become great friends.
But for now…
“You’re a terran, Spock,” shouted Stark. “You could never be a true Vulcan.”
“That’s not true!” yelled young Spock in reply, barely managing to keep a grip on his temper. “My father…”
Sepek’s reply touched each noun, each syllable, with contempt.
“Terran! Your father brought shame to Vulcan! Marrying an Earther worn—”
That was more than enough for young Spock. Sadly, his physical reaction was more emotional than reasoned. He rushed forward blindly, arms flailing, to crush and rend his tormentors. Old Spock’s first reaction was to observe that one against three—with one of the three much older, heavier, and more experienced—was an illogical arrangement to aggravate. Not to mention an unnecessary one.
But he’d been different as a youngster. Now the rather astonishing emotional outbursts of childhood rushed back to him. Had he really been so ready to react belligerently to mere words? Had he actually been so impulsive, so blind, so—so emotional? There was no denying the evidence of his eyes.
Any last concerns he might have felt about meeting his younger self disappeared. The child really was a different person.
Any mother could have told him that.
Sepek the nearest and strongest, easily dodged young Spock’s blind, angry punch. Sepek deftly tripped him backwards while avoiding the clumsy grab. Young Spock landed unceremoniously on his backside in the smooth dirt.
He didn’t appear to be hurt—not physically, anyway. Sepek’s voice dripped contempt.
“You haven’t even mastered a simple Vulcan neck pinch yet!” he said nastily, concluding with the ultimate insult, “Earther!” The three youths walked quietly away.
Young Spock sat there in the settling dust, alone and insulted and hurt, obviously trying to keep control of himself. Alas, he failed in this, too. Scrambling to his feet, he dashed into the nearby garden enclosure and slammed the gate heavily behind him.
He didn’t even have the satisfaction of a terran child, of hearing a loud slam behind him. The garden was designed as a place of peace and contemplation. The cushioned gate hinges automatically absorbed the shock of closing and snapped shut with a quiet click.