Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain (6 page)

“What is it you wish to ask me?” asked Kirk after he was settled beside Hannah.

Hannah did not answer at first. She merely held his hand and gazed up into the evergreen foliage of
the tree. “We call this the Beginning Tree,” she said. “It was planted as a memorial to the first generation of children of this colony.”

“So it is a symbol of hope for your people?” Kirk asked.

Hannah shook her head. “No, it is not. This is a place of mourning.”

“Mourning? How so?” said Kirk. He looked over at her and saw that she had tears in her eyes.

“You see, Jim, the whole first generation of children on Vesbius, all of them—they all died. It was as if the planet had an immune reaction against them and they against it. I had an older sister, Sarah. I never knew her. She was one of those children who succumbed.”

“Why didn’t this affect the adults?” asked Kirk.

“It would have, eventually. We didn’t know at first,” said Hannah. “We’re still not completely sure, but after studying the planet for many years now, we believe that there is a quantum interaction, an entanglement, of some sort that the planet engages in with all the life forms that inhabit it. This process initially affects the young, but it eventually pervades the biology of everything on the planet. We do not fully understand the science—no one does—but we needed to replicate this effect. Many of the original settlers were biologists. My father is a xenobiologist by training. They knew what they had to do. They also knew it was forbidden within the Federation.”

“For good reason,” Kirk said. “If you’re talking about human genetic engineering—hadn’t they ever heard of the Eugenics Wars?”

“Of course they had,” Hannah said dismissively. “This was an entirely different circumstance. The aim was not to create a race of supermen like the Augments. On the contrary, the purpose was to survive.”

“They could have left, found another world.”

“Yes, they could have,” Hannah said. “They might have left behind the graves of their children and moved on. But they did not wish to, or perhaps they could not bear to do it. That was the choice they made. The fateful choice. Without it, I wouldn’t have existed.”

“No, I suppose not.” Kirk considered the shadows formed by moonlight through the branches of the tree above him. Lovely. Also a trifle unsettling, almost supernatural. “And I presume that’s also why Vesbius left the Federation.”

“Yes, Jim.”

“And then they genetically modified themselves and all new children who were born.”

“That’s correct.”

“You aren’t human.”

“Not fully, no.”

“Better?”

“Hardly,” said Hannah. “You might even say our ambition proved our doom.” Hannah turned
to the captain, her eyes blazing with both sadness and determination. “This is what I want to ask you,” she said. “You and Spock are friends. I have heard rumors of a ritual that the Vulcans must undergo every seven years. It is much like the return of the salmon to their native creeks on old Earth. What I have heard is that a Vulcan is bonded at a young age with another Vulcan, and that no matter how far they are separated, he or she cannot resist the urge, the necessity, to return and consummate this pair bond when directed by instinct. In fact, my information tells me that if they do not do it, they will die. Is this true, Jim?”

“I know these rumors,” Kirk replied carefully. “I can tell you that nothing you told me seems to me to be preposterous or inconceivable. But I cannot speak more on the matter, for I have given my word.”

Hannah nodded and smiled knowingly. “It is as I suspected then,” she said. “This ritual, this
pon farr,
is real.”

Kirk did not reply, but he did not deny it. Hannah leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then leaned back and gazed into his eyes. “Now I will tell you a secret, Captain Jim Kirk. I would like you to treat it with a similar delicacy.”

“I will,” said Kirk.

“You see, we Vesbians who were conceived and born on this planet are tied to this world with more
than emotional ties. A Vesbian must not be away from the local ecology for more than a few weeks. If one of us is, he or she will develop a rapid autoimmune collapse that will bring on death within days. And it is not a pretty death, Jim. We are writhing in agony as our bodies reject our own cellular structure. We need the biosphere of this world. We are genetically engineered to need it, and this process is irreversible. We are part of Vesbius, and Vesbius is part of us.”

“But surely you can take a portion of Vesbius with you, in greenhouses, in ships’ stores?” Kirk said.

“It has been tried. We have also experimented with vaccines. Nothing has worked for long,” Hannah replied. “It is the whole planet that we Vesbians need, the ecology itself.”

“But that ecology will soon be gone.”

“We hope to preserve what is necessary to start again. It doesn’t matter if most of us die in our self-dug caves. What matters is that life on this planet survives.”

“But how can you know it will be enough?” Kirk said. “You’re taking an enormous gamble with existence itself.”

“Yes, we understand this,” said Hannah. “We are very good biologists and genetic engineers here on Vesbius. I myself followed in my father’s footsteps and took xenobiology as my study. That
is why we know that there is so much more to learn about the universe and about life itself. But if there is any of Vesbius left after this disaster, we have a chance.” Hannah turned from the tree and pointed to the stars in the night sky. “Out there, we have
no
chance.”

Once again she turned and kissed Kirk, and this time the kiss became more fervent, a need that Kirk felt he must answer. The captain allowed her to draw him farther along into the double-moonlit glade, where a small stream ran and the grass was soft and fragrant. They made love in this meadow. And then, when they were finished, Hannah, as if rejuvenated by contact with him and by contact with her native ground, demanded that he do it again. Kirk gladly complied.

It was very late when Kirk returned to his quarters that evening, and he fell into bed both satisfied and perplexed. He wanted to help Hannah now more than ever. Nevertheless, he fell into a peaceful sleep, and he dreamed of her breath upon his face and her skin—alien, and yet not so far from human—upon his skin.

Four

Kirk awoke the next morning to the smell of coffee. McCoy had ordered a big pot for all of them. Kirk joined McCoy and Spock at the table in the common room that adjoined their quarters.

“Have a good time last night?” asked McCoy. “I mean,
after
the dance?” He smiled wryly at Kirk.

He knows exactly what I was up to last night,
Kirk thought.
I should know to never try to hide anything from Bones
.

“Yes, we missed you on our return,” Spock said. “I was prepared to go and search for you, but the doctor convinced me this would not be the wisest of courses.”

Kirk nodded. “Bones was right.”

“I presume you were after facts that might better serve us in completing the mission?”

“Something like that, Spock,” said Kirk. He stretched himself out, loosened his muscles, then sat down and poured himself a cup of coffee. “As a matter of fact, I
did
find out something. The Vesbians are not only genetically engineered, they’re like
salmon or . . . like other species that are bonded to their place of origin.” Kirk glanced at Spock. Even though McCoy was as fully knowledgeable of
pon farr,
as was Kirk, each of them had agreed to speak of it as little as possible. It was a matter of intense privacy to Vulcans, seeing as the
pon farr
stripped Vulcans of their treasured logic and left them at the mercy of their emotions. “In any case,” Kirk continued, “if they leave this planet, in less than three to four standard weeks—they will die.”

“Remarkable,” said Spock. “This no doubt explains why they removed themselves from the Federation.”

“Correct,” said Kirk. “At least that’s what Hannah told me.”

“I wonder what else they’ve done to themselves,” said McCoy, almost to himself.

“What do you mean, Doctor?” asked Kirk.

McCoy stood up from his chair and began to pace around the room. Kirk knew this was McCoy’s way of working out a problem—his emotional, and often highly effective, manner of thinking things through.

“What I mean is that when you open Pandora’s box, who knows what will come out?” said McCoy. “Do you suppose they stopped at merely adapting themselves to the planet? Wouldn’t there be a great temptation to continue onward with their experiments, supposedly to make things better? I mean,
you’ve seen this place, Jim. They’re master geneticists. Wouldn’t the temptation be to take themselves beyond their human limitations? That’s what Khan and his people did, as you well know. And what they made themselves into was a caricature of what it means to be human.”

Kirk got up, went to McCoy, and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve seen the Vesbians, Bones,” he said. “Do you think they bear the slightest resemblance to that madman Khan?”

McCoy met his gaze for a moment, but Kirk could see the fire dying down in the doctor’s eyes. “No,” McCoy admitted, “not most of them.” He nodded toward Spock. “But there is that ugly prejudice half the population seems to have toward Vulcans.”

“A prejudice Spock went a long way toward dissipating last night, at least among those he met at the dance.” Kirk turned to his first officer. “That was quite a display you put on, Mister Spock.”

“Thank you, Captain. It is always gratifying to find the opportunity to make use of one’s studies and long hours spent with the briefing files.”

“Indeed.” Kirk let go of McCoy and returned to the table, determined to finish the most excellent Vesbian coffee. “Besides, Bones, while prejudice may be an ugly emotion, you have to admit—it’s very human.”

“Yes,” McCoy said. “Unfortunately.”

“So we’re left with a dilemma, gentlemen,” Kirk said. “The Vesbians must leave this planet. The caverns they’ve dug are a fool’s hope, are they not, Spock?”

“I would put the chances for the Vesbian plan succeeding at one in 93.275,” Spock answered. “The ecological damage from the asteroid strike will likely be an extinction-level event.”

“Nearly a hundred to one. Earth has recovered. It recovered when the dinosaurs died out.”

“The recovery took thousands, if not millions, of years.”

“So . . . not impossible, but—”

“A long shot.”

“A
very
long shot. But if the Vesbians evacuate—assuming we are able to convince them and then get twenty thousand people off this world inside a month, which is a very big ‘if’—then they’ll all die.”

McCoy sat down next to Kirk and looked him in the eye. “So what do we do, Captain?”

Kirk shook his head. “I’m . . . open to suggestions,” he replied. “But we have to come up with something.” Kirk drained the rest of his coffee. It, as all things Vesbian were beginning to do, reminded him of
her.

“I will give the matter some consideration, Captain,” said Spock. “I—

BWAAA AAAH!

The unmistakable sound of an alarm klaxon cut through the air.

“What the devil—” said McCoy.

The ground began to tremble under their feet, as if an earthquake were hitting the complex. The walls shook, and a nearby tapestry fell, exposing a bare section of wall.

As quickly as it had come, the rumbling subsided.

“Earthquake?” said Kirk.

“Doubtful,” Spock replied. He checked his tricorder readings, rechecked them for certainty, and then said, “I believe the origin of the disturbance was technologically created. The shock waves the tricorder is displaying in feedback have a familiar signature—that of high-yield explosives.” Spock looked up from his tricorder display and caught both Kirk and McCoy in his cold Vulcan gaze. “That, gentlemen, was a bomb going off.”

“A bomb? Purpose?” asked Kirk.

“Unknown.”

“Let’s go find out, then.” Kirk got up grabbing his phaser and communicator, as the others did the same.

They followed Kirk out the door and into chaos.

Bureaucrats darted hither and yon, attempting to find out what had happened and what to do about it. Kirk found the chancellor in his office, monitoring vid feeds.

Kirk noticed that the electronic equipment in the office was not up to date but was at least twenty
years behind the times. The Vesbians may be some of the best biologists in the sector, but they had not kept up on the technological front. Data was flooding in from all sectors. Beside the chancellor was Hannah, looking as if she’d slept the sleep of the absolutely innocent—although Kirk knew better.

The chancellor turned to Kirk. “It appears to be a terrorist attack, Captain,” he said. “It seems to have been a coordinated attack across the settlement. We’re just awaiting word on—”

An intercom whistled and the chancellor keyed it on. He listened carefully to what the voice on the other end said, then leaned back, shook his head, and sighed.

“Tunnels five and seven are lost,” he said, to no one in particular. “That’s one third of our capacity.”

“How many were killed?” Kirk asked.

The chancellor looked shell-shocked. He answered without outward emotion: “Hundreds, I’m told.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Yes,” said the chancellor.

Hannah moved to stand beside him. She put a comforting hand on her father’s shoulder. “It was the Exos, Father. You know it was.”

Suddenly Major Merling burst into the room. “I came as soon as I heard, Mister Chancellor. This is deplorable, but as I’ve repeatedly warned you, the Exos will stop at nothing—” He cut himself off
when he saw that the
Enterprise
landing party was on hand.

Too late to put that cat back in the bag,
Kirk thought. “The Exos, what’s that?” he asked.

“You may think we are simple brewers and fermenters of beverages, Captain, and in most ways we are,” said Chancellor Faber. He seemed on the verge of tears and averted his eyes downward. Kirk had seen this before. Shame. “I am sorry to say that we also seem to have grown our own version of a terrorist supremacist movement.”