All he remembered was a voice, female in
timbre and, to judge from its inflection and coloration,
probably human. It spoke a single phrase:
"You cannot do it alone."
There was nothing to which to attach that phrase, yet it
persisted, floating in his subconscious,
tantalising. Spock must find the answer.
Down he reached, searching.
Indeed? the mind voice demanded in its
language which owned no words. And what
precisely is the meaning of this?
The fire crackled primevally warm, comforting,
mesmerising. It had been a long day. Jim Kirk
fought to keep the words from dancing off the page.
One more chapter, he thought, yawning,
adjusting the comfort level of the chair, rubbing his
bleary eyes. Bones was right. This book is
fascinating; I can't put it down! One more chapter
and I'll . . .
He nodded, drowsing. The book tumbled from his
insensate fingers, over the arm of the chair onto the
floor, its impact softened by the thick carpeting so
that it made no sound. It landed spine upward,
several fragile pages creasing under its weight.
Jim Kirk slept and, perchance, he dreamed.
"Commander," he began, feeling his throat tighten
around each word. A single wrong one would end everything.
"What can I say to persuade you?"
T'Lera studied him, the intensity of her
eyes damped down so as not to intimidate him. How
vulnerable these humans were! Was it logical, was it
ethical, to leave them isolated in a galaxy
fraught with unknowns? For the briefest moment she
might have relented for this reason alone. But that
decision was not for her to make.
"Do not think to persuade me with words, Mr.
Kirk, was 78
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
she said slowly. "But if you offer a perspective
which outweighs mine . . ."
A log snapped in the fireplace. Kirk
jolted awake.
Huh? he thought, sitting upright and groping for the
book, finding it on the floor, annoyed with himself for
damaging it.
That was a strange one! he thought. When I was a
kid I used to act out whatever I'd watched on
vid the night before, tearing through the cornstalks, taking
all the parts at once, Good Guys vs. Bad
Guys back when I still believed there were such things,
running myself ragged until Sam and his friends jumped
me from behind the hayrick, laughing at me for a
gullible, wool-gathering fool and we'd end up
pushing each other into the creek.
And I'd dream about those silly 3-D
melodramas, too, reliving them all night
until I'd get tangled in the bedclothes or
fall out of bed, and Mom would threaten to deactivate
my viewer if I didn't calm down.
And God knows I've had nightmares aplenty
about the real horrors in my life, Kirk thought with a
shudder, now completely, coldly awake. The
Farragut incident, Kodos the Executioner . .
.
But this is the first time I've found myself playing a
character in a history book.
He banked the fire, dumped his unfinished
salad in the disposal, smoothed the pages of
Strangers from the Sky before setting it on his
nightstand, vibed his teeth clean, and went to bed.
And dreamed.
He staggered out of the room, slumped to the floor in
the anteroom, numb and in shock from what he'd just
witnessed. He'd thought he could stomach anything, but this
the horror!
Behind him, through the walls, a tumult of voices
an 79
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
shouting at once poured into the room where it
had happened, the noise of it drawing them like
vultures, furniture slamming against walls as
bodies shoved past each other in their haste to see.
Reporters, security guards, diplomats, and
their aides and hangers-on, pushed and jostled into a
mindless mob, enacting the very Babel T'Lera had
foreseen, a Babel of his, km Kirk's,
creation.
Kirk clutched his head, clamped his hands over his
chaos. He had done this thing, he! A world was
unraveling under him and billions yet unborn, and
it was all his fault!
"What is it? What happened?" voices demanded
in all the languages of Earth. "Where are they?
Where's Kirk? That stuff on the walls Good Lord,
it's everywhere! What is it?"
"it's blood, you idiots!" a woman's voice
shrieked above the others.
Kirk's scalp prickled; his skin crawled in
horror. Tatya, no! he wanted to cry.
Tatya, don't! Don't look, don't see
what I've done to your hopes, your dreams! It's
my fault, mine! I tried, but it wasn't good
enough! I'm sorry, Tatya, so sorry!
"Their blood is different from ours!" she was
shrieking, hysterical. "It's their blood, don't
you understand? You've killed them; we've all killed
them. It's on all of our hands, all of us!"
Kirk clutched his head and moaned. No, my
fault! Mine alone!
Behind him he heard the tattoo of bootheels, the
blond woman's voice: "I told you! You cannot do
it alone . . . his
"dis . . Alone!"
The bosun's whistle brought Spock back to the
here and now abruptly enough to let him hear that he had
spoken the word aloud and in
Standard.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Fascinating! he thought, affixing this datum to the
rest of the mystery he pondered even as he rose from his
meditative posture to attend to the matter at hand.
"Scott to Captain . . . Scott to Captain
. . ." re- sounded with unnecessary loudness in the utter
darkness of his cabin. Interesting how Scotty never
addressed him by name on the intership. For both of them
there was only one true captain of Enterpnse.
Spock pressed the intercom toggle.
"Spock here."
"I dinna wake ye, did I?" Scott's
voice was edged with its usual breathless anxiety.
"I am sorry, but ye asked to be informed his
"I was not sleeping, Mr. Scott. And, as I
requested, you are personally reminding me of the Red
Alert drill scheduled for 0601, so as not to breach
security by letting the cadets know."
"Aye. And I wouldna have bothered ye this early,
only there's a glitch in the readout on the intermix
feed chamber, and before ye go taking her into evasives
I'd like to take down to sublight for a wee bit and
see can I get the bugs out."
"A reasonable request, Mr. Scott. How
much of a "wee bit" will you require?"
"No more than half an hour, Mr. Spock."
"Very well. Reschedule drill for 0631, and
inform me when your exterminating operation is complete."
"When my what?" [t took Scott a moment
to get the joke. "Oh, aye, I'll
do that.
Scott out."
Alone, Spock pondered.
Alone. Why had he spoken the word aloud? From the
meditative depth he had engaged, the need to speak
aloud signified a matter of grave
seriousness. And why, out of all the languages he
knew, had he spoken it m Standard?
There existed in Modern Vulcan alone some
seven different words to describe varying states of
solitude, excluding telepathic words unspoken,
from "alone-not
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
alone" to ""alone by circumstance" through "alone
by need," each of which incorporated some seven further
concepts from Ancient Vulcan including "alone
by temperament" through "alone by
outca/s," which in turn incorporated the
"nonperson" modes. An etymological study
of the concept through a single one of his languages . .
.
But there was such a thing as being too thorough, and in the
wrong direction. Spock cleared his thoughts and began
again.
Solitude possesses many dimensions, the High
Master That'sai had thought to him. Consider.
She had been preparing him for first Kohl, where
solitude and the listening to one's own soul were All.
Perhaps few knew firsthand as many variations on
aloneness as he. Now, alone by his own choosing, he
considered.
He began from the beginning as was logical, with the
solitariness of the halfbreed child, alone by social
outca/s, alone in the universe as the first of his
kind. From such a beginning had he studied the alien
solitudes he had encountered in his travels. From the
loneliness of machine bereft of purpose and man
bereft of memory to the loneliness of woman exiled
in a world of ice, none knew as Spock did the
degrees and dimensions of what it was like to be alone.
It was the one whose greatest fear it was to be alone that
Spock considered last, for he knew this one so
well. All he'd asked for was a tall ship and a
star to steer her by, and the company of kindred souls in the
adventure that was his life. Having surrendered both
ship and adventure, Jim Kirk was nothing if not
alone.
"tilde Jim!"
This, too, Spock spoke aloud. Whatever it was
that beset his meditations had its origins with Jim
Kirk. But what was it? And who was the female whose
voice insisted "You cannot do it alone"? What
strange siren82
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
metaphor out of Earth's mythology threatened his
captain and his friend, and what could be done?
were he human and by nature impulsive,
Spock might almost have attempted to contact
Earth. From this distance
He considered. It would require nearly a full
solar day. Illogical. If there were real danger,
there was nothing he could do. Except . . .
Spock reached within, took up the silver thread that
linked his mind with Jim's. Those whose minds had touched
and been touched were given this.
Spock searched, found no immediate external danger
to the human he so valued. He might have probed
deeper to the unconscious levels, but to do so without
permission was a grave breach of Vulcan
privacy. were he needed, he would know. Jim
Kirk's voice had called to him from across a
galaxy once before, drawing him from the reaches of
Kohlinahr, and he had answered. He would do so
again.
But not now. Within moments Mr. Scott would
report that his readjustments were complete. The drill
would proceed apace; duty would occupy the
Vulcan's conscious mind for the present, perhaps
sufficiently to block the insistence of
disembodied female voices.
Further, Enterprise's diurnal rhythms had
been tied in with the Admiralty upon departure. It was
morning where Jim Kirk was as it was "morning"
aboard Enterprise. The admiral would still be
sleeping.
("Sleeps like a baby," McCoy had observed
once, having kept the vigil over a recuperating
Kirk yet another time.
"A sign of a clear conscience," Spock had
suggested dryly, having kept the same vigil,
though not for medical reasons.
"Or no conscience at all," Kirk had shot
back, yawning, embarrassed at all the attention,
grinning at both of them.)
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
The bosun's whistle sounded yet again. Mr.
Scott was nothing if not punctual. Spock roused
himself into full command mode, grateful that whatever
troubled his captain was at least held at bay
by sleep.
"No, don't go! Please, no!"
Jim Kirk shouted himself awake. He was sitting
bolt-upright in bed, clutching at something that
was no longer there, some fragment of the nightmare that had
jolted him from sleep. It was gone. A sudden
attack of vertigo made him lie back against the
pillow.
When his head cleared he glanced at the time:
0631. He didn't have to get up for another half
hour, but any attempt to go back to sleep would be a
joke. He sat up gingerly, wondering why the light
was so strange. A mournfulness of foghorns from the
bay below gave him his answer.
The penthouse was well above the fog line; Kirk
could have stepped out onto the balcony and let a
dazzling morning sun warm his face as he
contemplated a world lost in cottony opaqueness below
him. He did exactly that for a few minutes
until the undulating whiteness brought a return of the
vertigo and a touch of nausea.
So much for breakfast, he thought wryly as the
glass wall to the balcony slid shut behind him.
McCoy and his damned diets! To hell with green
leaves!
Green. Oh, God, green! Green blood,
Vulcan blood everywhere. The nightmare came
back to him in flashes. He could hear himself talking
to T'Lera, to Tatya, saw himself as part
of the horror that had caused the Vulcans' deaths,
heard a voice goading him or only warning hm$9
that he "could not do it alone." What in God's name
did it mean?
Kirk sat on the side of the bed for a moment,
thinking, mentally backing away from the
impressionistic chaos of his nightmares and trying
to find a different perspective.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Why was he rewriting history in his dreams, a
history he knew had turned out reasonably
successfully, but which he persisted in dreaming as a
disaster, with himself as the causative factor? And who
was the woman with the blond hair and the voice of doom?
She was always present in the recurring death dream,
first as a disembodied voice, later as a shadowy
female figure. Elusive, always just out of reach,
poised on the edge of memory, she was nothing mor
e than
a flash of pale hair, a tattoo of
bootheels, a single phrase repeated over and
over in a voice Kirk was certain he ought
to recognise. He never saw her face. Whenever
he turned to reach out for her, she was gone.
He picked up Strangers, intending
to search for her, but hesitated. Maybe he didn't
want to know. He started flipping pages.
If you'd gotten this on disk, you old
dinosaur, he chided himself, using McCoy's
phrase, running one broad finger down the index on
the odd chance that the word "blond" would pop out at him,
you'd be able to code in that one word and the computer would
present you with a list of every character in the book by hair
colon Now, without a name or anything else to go on,
you'll have to skim through the entire thing hoping to find her
....
He slammed the book shut. Or hoping not to find
her, he thought, because if he came to know her as
intimately as he knew the others, he might never
sleep undisturbed again. His nights would be daubed
with Vulcan blood and echoing with her voice for the rest
of his life.
Kirk shoved the book in the drawer of the nightstand
as if it might bite him, considered locking it in like
a poisonous snake except that he was beginning
to look foolish even to himself. He felt as if he
was regressing into a wild-eyed boy hiding in the
cornstalks. He
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
realised he was sweating, out of breath as if he'd
been running. In the dream he had been. The
blood, the shouting, his fault
I have to know, he thought.
He pulled the book out of the drawer and began
to read again.
FOUR
"Are you sure you've eaten enough? Are you sure
it's all right?"
"It is quite sufficient. Thank you, Tatiana."
She tried not to wince whenever he used her full
name. At least he didn't know enough to add the
patronymic; that would have driven her crazy.
He had made a meal of the bean curd and the steaming
rice, cutting the dates and dried apricots she'd
scrounged up into smaller
morsels and adding them to the mixture,
remarking on each item as he ate.
"We, too, cultivate a number of glycine
species. The dactylifera and prunes armeniaca
are also familiar," he reported solemnly. It
was to pale-eyed T'Syra, geographer and
botanist, that he owed his knowledge of Earth's flora.
Hers was yet another spirit to whom he would do