Strange New Worlds IV Read online

  Like my father, Kirk thought miserably. He hated himself for the shred of pride he felt at that revelation. He had always longed for George Kirk’s approval, never his mother’s. Yet she had nurtured him all those years her husband was gone. She bore her solitary burden with grace, uncomplaining. She taught her sons invaluable life lessons, mended their defeats with words of wisdom, nourished their bodies and souls, and cherished them. She was both mother and father out of necessity. And when she disciplined them, Jim knew it truly hurt her worse than it did them. He cradled his forehead in his hand. So why was it so hard for him to honor her? Why hadn’t he been more grateful?

  The answer rose like an accusation: because Jim Kirk always wanted what he couldn’t have. That was the ambition that drove him, and the curse that haunted him. He would kill himself to get what he craved, even if it wasn’t real. But he never had to yearn for his mother; she had stayed, while his father left. It was as if, by her loyalty, she became devalued. It was utterly unfair, yet he couldn’t help himself.

  Gone for months at a time, George Kirk had been almost a myth; a hero who outshone the sun on his rare visits home, then disappeared without warning. As a boy, Jim used to lie awake and search the night sky, trying to locate his absent father among those sparkling motes. He was dazzled by the stars, yet envious of them for possessing what he couldn’t. He vowed to someday sail that other ocean at his father’s side.

  But after the holocaust on Tarsus IV, his adoration for his father soured. Jim returned to Earth damaged and withdrawn, deeply disturbed but still unable to compete with the stars for his father’s attention. George Kirk was home on emergency leave less than a week before being called back to duty, and he left at once. Rejected, Jim turned on his fallen hero with a rage neither of them could comprehend or control; hating him for loving Starfleet more than his son. Daring him, ultimately, to stay.

  Instead, perplexed by Jim’s behavior and blind to his scars, George Kirk’s absences only became more frequent, their duration longer. Soon there was nothing left that he and Jim wouldn’t say to wound each other, neither aware that the end was quickly overtaking them.

  Kirk remembered the last time he saw his father alive. The memory of that day was like a thorn in his heart. At the launchport, the two of them quarreled bitterly over nothing. After his father’s ship left, Jim’s mother turned to him and slapped his face in public, marching away as though revolted by his presence. Six months later, an official stargram arrived. Bottomless space had swallowed George Kirk’s vessel whole. There wasn’t even any debris. He simply vanished, leaving his son to wonder if he’d ever been there at all.

  In less than a year, Jim was gone, too. He never looked back, never considered what his abrupt departure meant to his mother. She remained alone, married to a ghost, and she began to take her meals in the kitchen, surrounded by the phantoms of her family. Accustomed to being abandoned, she never spoke of her loneliness, and she certainly never condemned her husband and sons for their callous disregard of her needs. Yet even now, seventeen years later, Jim could still feel the sting of that slap.

  A noise roused Kirk from his recriminations. He looked up, somehow expecting to see his mother framed in the decrepit doorway. He heard the sound again. The soft words were almost snatched away by the breeze. “Are you … are you Captain Kirk?”

  Kirk rose to his knees and peered down from his perch. Below, a boy of perhaps four or five stared up at the treehouse and its occupant.

  “Are you Captain Kirk?” the boy repeated shyly, tracing a line in the dirt with his toe.

  Kirk blinked at him. Where had the child come from? “Who are you?”

  “Dylan,” the boy said with more confidence. He gazed up at Kirk with big hazel eyes. “I live across the road.” He pointed a finger at a farmhouse beyond the wheat field. “I saw you drive up. I don’t have anyone to play with. Can I play with you?”

  Kirk hesitated, not wanting to be disturbed, yet mindful of the lonesome little boy’s feelings. And, to be honest, he was lonely, too. “Okay.”

  He waited as the youngster scrambled into the treehouse. Dylan was flushed and excited, his face beaming with innocent joy. “Is this your starship?”

  “What? Oh … yes. Yes it is.” Kirk rearranged his legs to let the boy sit next to him. Then he regarded the drafty walls with a slight smile. “This is the bridge, and those are the control panels.” He swept his arm in an arc, indicating several dusty orchard crates. “That’s the helm and navigation console, the science station, and over there is where I fire the phasers at bad guys.”

  “Gee!”

  Kirk studied the boy with mild amusement. Dylan resembled himself at that age. “Do you want to be a starship captain when you grow up?”

  The boy tilted his head and squinted in thought. “I don’t think so. I’d miss my mom.” Unbalanced by the sudden reminder, Kirk fell silent. With the intuition of a sage, the boy saw a shadow of sorrow cross Kirk’s face. “Do you miss your mom?”

  “Yes,” Kirk said quietly.

  “She tells everyone about you.”

  “She does?” Kirk’s brows lifted in surprise. Dylan nodded with immense pride.

  “Yeah, my mom says you’re a hero! My middle name is James, after you.”

  Kirk’s laugh was soft, but a faint blush crept up from the collar of his tunic. “Well, that’s very nice, but …”

  “I’ve got a dog. His name is Thor. He barks all the time, but your mom doesn’t yell at him like everybody else. She lets us play in her yard. Your mom is nice. She gives me cake. If you took her away, I’d miss her.” In a swift course change, Dylan raced across the splintered planks and reverently caressed an apple crate with both hands. “When you go, can I play in your starship? I’ll take care of it, I promise.”

  Almost swept away by the rushing tide of information, Kirk rubbed his chin with one hand and gave an odd little laugh. “Sure.”

  “Wow! Gee, thanks!”

  In the settling twilight, a distant call echoed across the field. It was a refrain familiar to children everywhere: a summons to return home for the evening.

  The boy sprang to his feet like an earnest pup. “I gotta go. My mom’s calling me!” He climbed down the ladder, then dashed across the yard. But just before he plunged into the rippling sea of wheat, he turned and shouted at his new friend. “Bye!”

  Kirk smiled as the boy skipped home. Across the field, he saw a mother waiting on the porch of a farmhouse. With a pang of nostalgia, he watched them until she greeted her young adventurer in a loving embrace.

  Dusk drew over the plain. A drowsy prairie draft swept memories through Kirk’s mind like autumn leaves. The field undulated in moonlight, fireflies glowing like constellations among the grain. Kirk sat spellbound by the vision, amazed that he’d never appreciated it before. In his haste to leave this whispering land, he’d neglected to see something priceless. What else had he overlooked?

  He glanced at the house, now only a blur in the shadows. A wooden porch swing creaked in the breeze. A pearl moon drifted in the warm summer sky. The Iowa night was tranquil and eternal, but in his heart, Kirk knew it didn’t belong to him, anymore. Even if he resigned from Starfleet, his mother would know his sacrifice wasn’t genuine, and she would never allow it. She had always encouraged Jim to follow his dreams; any other path would be false. Yet in his quest to grasp the stars, he had almost let the ribbon of her remarkable love slip from his fingers.

  Reaching a decision, he took a deep breath. He would spend the night here, and in the morning, he would preside over a fleet of carpenters and contractors. Over the next few weeks he would erase all traces of the fire, even as the doctors erased the horrors of his mother’s disfiguring accident. And he vowed that, before the bewitching stars beckoned him home, he would stay until he had repaid a portion of the debt he owed her. He doubted he could ever match the devotion she had shown him, but he would try.

  His communicator chirped, interrupting his plans. Kirk sighed;
he’d asked not to be disturbed. Assuming it was only a routine status report, he answered reluctantly. “Kirk, here.”

  “It’s me, Jim.”

  At the sound of McCoy’s voice, Kirk sat straighter. Without being asked, McCoy had promised to visit the hospital. Whatever the verdict, he would be the one to deliver it. Kirk swallowed to keep the wobble of trepidation from his tone. “What is it, Bones?”

  “Good news. Your mother woke up about ten minutes ago. She’s asking for you.”

  Kirk’s eyes sank shut in relief. He didn’t trust himself to speak, and in the silence the doctor’s voice was gentle. “You okay, Jim? You want me to come get you?” The comforting warmth of McCoy’s concern gathered him in fatherly arms. Kirk bit his lip; there wasn’t a more compassionate friend in the galaxy.

  Kirk felt a pressure in his throat, and his voice was rough. “No, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Have Scotty beam me to those coordinates.”

  There was a slight pause. “Which treehouse are you in?” McCoy inquired in a gentle Dixie drawl. In his way, he was letting Jim know that everything was going to be all right. The doctor only tormented people he loved.

  Despite himself, Kirk laughed. It never felt so good. “The little one with the phaser banks. Kirk, out.” Flipping the device shut, he stood in the cramped quarters and waited for the cold fire of the transporter effect. Moments before it whisked him away, he gazed up at the indigo sky.

  “I found her, Dad,” he told the misty, twinkling stars. “And I’ll take care of her, I promise.”

  Scotty’s Song

  Michael J. Jasper

  After his fourth straight night without sleep, Montgomery Scott could hear the music throbbing in his bones and echoing in his ears. It filled his chest with both sorrow and the too-familiar tightness of unrelenting stress. The recorded song, piped into the makeshift operations center Scotty had set up in the Enterprise’s cargo bay, rose to a sudden crescendo. He looked up from the mess of sensors, gauges, and readouts in the cargo bay and fervently wished he were somewhere else.

  The big engineer touched the wall of transparent aluminum in front of him, the material stretched to the point of breaking. If only the song playing now was the real thing, he thought. If only I could figure out what was making their life signs fade. If only I had some kind of song I could play for them to make their own songs return. But I’ve got nothing.

  George and Gracie were dying, and there was nothing Scotty could do to stop it.

  His problems began almost as soon as the Enterprise 1704-A had docked after its maiden joyride. Just moments earlier they had been warping through space, stars blurred through the viewscreen. Scotty had to admit that he’d had a blast along with the others when the captain had taken the ship for a spin. Just like old times.

  “She showed us what she’s got, all right,” Scotty muttered with a grin, on his way to the engine room. He was looking for his new recruit, Ensign Coletti. In typical Federation style, the builders of the new ship had spared no expense in installing together the finest, most efficient warp drive into the heart of the Enterprise, along with the most beautiful hull he’d ever seen. But while Federation engineers had gotten those two things right—a wondrous engine and a sleek body—they’d more or less forgotten everything else. Scotty was in charge of the fastest, most technically advanced ship in Starfleet, but he’d be damned if he could get the turbolift to take him where he’d commanded it, or get the circadian lighting system to follow a standard twenty-four-hour day. He was having trouble sleeping as a result, and just this morning his shower had refused to function. With a to-do list bigger than his arm and growing by the second, Scotty was tired, slightly stale-smelling, and happier than he could remember.

  When he finally found the new engine room, after two wrong turns, he was ready to begin teaching his ensign—the only other engineer on the skeleton crew in spacedock above Earth—how to recalibrate the system dampeners. After only five minutes of enthusiastic lecturing, his lesson was interrupted by a call from Dr. Gillian Taylor. Ensign Coletti was visibly relieved.

  “Why lassie!” Scotty said, a smile lighting up his face as he called up her visual on the engine room’s viewscreen. He kept an eye on Ensign Coletti, working at the dampeners, while he spoke. “I thought you’d be on the other side of the galaxy, studying new life-forms on that science vessel of yours.”

  “I was, actually,” Gillian said. She was standing in front of a choppy ocean under a cloudy sky, the image slowly swaying up and down. In the water behind her, all sizes of boats had gathered together, filled with onlookers crowding together. “But I missed my babies so much I took a three-month sabbatical. And I wanted to see if—”

  “Not that one!” Scotty screamed, his brogue thickening. Coletti’s hand froze above the dampener board. “Do ye want to blow the ship’s entire life-support system? Green is go, yellow means no. How many times do I have to tell ye? I canna believe—”

  “Scotty!” Gillian shouted.

  He cleared his throat and turned back to the viewscreen. “Sorry, lassie. Just doing some, ah, training, up here. Our new ship is less than satisfactory.”

  “Scotty. We have a serious problem here on Earth. Is Jim there? I need his help, and probably Spock’s as well.”

  “Captain’s off at the Academy lecturing, and Spock’s at Federation headquarters. They’re both scheduled for shore leave in four days, so the bosses are getting all the work out of them they can before they leave for California.” Scotty stood, fumbling absently with the tools in his belt. “What is it? There’s not something wrong with the beasties, is there?”

  After a long pause, Gillian spoke again. “There is. They’ve contracted some kind of disease, and as a result, they’ve attracted a massive crowd here in the Pacific. Every environmentalist and ecologist is out trying to figure out what’s wrong with George and Gracie. It’s a madhouse.” The visual on the viewscreen switched to an external view from Gillian’s boat.

  Scotty watched, feeling a slight sense of nausea at the rocking of the Pacific. He didn’t see a whale, but he did see close to thirty boats of all sizes filling the viewscreen. As he watched, a sailboat ran into a yacht, threatening to capsize the smaller vessel. The visual flickered into black-and-white for a moment, then returned to normal after a quick blow from Scotty’s hand. The largest ship was an ancient Greenpeace vessel with an equally ancient SAVE THE WHALES banner fluttering from its side.

  Then, in the midst of the boats of well-wishers, Scotty saw the whale.

  Poking up from the choppy water like a small island forming, the head grew as the whale rose. Forgetting his nausea, Scotty felt his mouth drop open as the whale rose and rose, the smooth black back filling his vision. The whale breached, lifting almost completely out of the water. It stopped for a split second before falling, and in that frozen moment, Scotty saw two unbelievable aspects of the humpback. Then the whale fell back into the ocean with a deafening crash, sending salty spray onto the multitude of boats surrounding him.

  “We’ve got to get them out of here,” Gillian said, still watching the ocean while the viewscreen returned to her. “I won’t be able to do anything with all the activists and whale-watchers around. Some of them have a bone to pick with the Federation anyway for even bringing the whales to this time. The Federation has given me permission to move them where I deem necessary. I’d like to use the Enterprise.”

  “Aye,” Scotty said. Ignoring the flickering of the malfunctioning viewscreen for a moment, he rubbed his chin and nodded. He was still thinking about the whale leaping out of the ocean. That must have been George, he thought.

  In that frozen instant at the top of George’s breaching, when the massive whale was twenty-five feet in the air, Scotty had seen the perfect black circle of the whale’s eye. He’d also seen the brown streaks running down the whale’s massive back. As George fell onto his back, Scotty saw that the streaks covered the whale, front and back.

  “Aye,” he repeated.


  After an unending day of transporting and installing new walls of transparent aluminum, made in this century instead of the twentieth century, Scotty was ready to once again transport four hundred tons of whales and water. Even if his ship was falling to pieces around him.

  “Ensign!” he boomed on his way to the refitted cargo bay. A part of him was disheartened to see that his loud voice wasn’t making the lanky Ensign Coletti flinch as much as it had only a week ago. “Let’s go pick up some whales.”

  Gillian, dressed in her well-worn lab coat from the Cetacean Institute, stood waiting at the transporter. She gave him a nervous smile. “They’ll be fine, coming up here, right?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Scotty said, hoping the brand-new ship wouldn’t make a liar out of him. He slid the transporter buttons forward. With an ominous rumbling somewhere above him, the transportation process began. Red light filled the walled-in bay. Outlines of two massive creatures shimmered into view.

  “Come on, ship,” he said. “Cooperate with me now.”

  As a control panel above his head flew open, showering them both with sparks, the whales arrived on the Enterprise. Scotty reached behind him and pushed the panel closed again. “Check that, Coletti. We don’t need a fire today.”

  As Coletti worked on the control panel, Gillian hurried over to the whales. She ran her hand across the transparent wall as if trying to touch their flippers or run her hands across their massive flukes, twitching in the cramped confines of the bay.

  “Hi guys,” she whispered. “I hope all the activists and ecoterrorists down there aren’t going to miss you for a day or two.”

  Scotty walked to the readout in front of the bay and checked their vital signs from where he had rerouted Spock’s science station. “Okay, beasties,” he said, hands moving across the console like a magician in his element. “Let’s see what’s causing you so much grief.”