Chapter Eleven — CUE FOR NIGHTMARE

 

 

From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4198.0:

The very close, cooperative analysis of our present situation by Messrs. Scott, McCoy and Spock Two, and Lieutenant Uhura’s instant understanding of the necessity for thorough, unambiguous decoding of the message from Starfleet Command, seems to indicate that both morale and performance among the department heads is returning to normal levels. This is none too soon, for we are still in serious danger from at least three known directions, and the burden of ending the war rests squarely on US; Starfleet Command has discounted Spock Two’s analysis of Klingon Strategy, it seems, because of the possibility (still real to them) that he might be the replicate — and in consequence is still losing battles.

Mr. Scott and his staff have reconverted the transporter and we are now preparing to embark to Organia, as planned. From this hour until my return, this log will be kept by Mr. Sulu.

It took less than two hours to put the Enterprise into a standard orbit around Organia; but even at the maximum range beyond which the transporter would not function — sixteen thousand miles — the emotional effect of the thought-shield on the officers and crew was so profound that it took another forty-eight before anyone was working at even half his usual efficiency. And even this much would not have been possible had not McCoy, in a vast breach of his usual preference, doled out huge quantities of tranquillizer and antidepressant pills. These Spock Two refused to take except upon direct order from the Captain, but for everyone else they were an absolute necessity.

There were no new Klingon ships in the vicinity yet. Harsh, clacking calls on subspace radio, however, made it clear that they were on the way.

Nevertheless, the transporter room, once more its old familiar self, shimmered out of existence on schedule around Kirk, Scott and Spock Two. The transporter officer had set up the same coordinates that had been used for the very first visit to Organia. Then, the arrival site had looked quite like a rural, fourteenth-century English village, complete with thatched cottages, oxcarts and people in homespun in the streets, and a lowering, ruined castle as massive as Caernarvon in the distance. The village had turned out, by no accident, to contain the chambers of the planet’s Council of Elders; all this had actually been an illusion arranged by the Organians for the accommodation of their visitors and the preservation of their own peace. But it had been completely convincing — until Commander Kor and his Klingon occupation force had shown up, polite, mail-clad and utterly ruthless.

But there was nothing like that village here now. Instead, the three Starship officers seemed to have materialized in the midst of a vast tumble of raw, broken rock, stretching away to the horizon in all directions. Overhead, the sky was an even gray, without even a brighter spot to show where Organia’s sun might stand; and the air, although nearly motionless, was thin and bitingly cold. To Kirk, this wasteland was overwhelmingly depressing, like that of a planet which had lost its last beetle and shred of lichen a million years before.

As indeed it might have, for Organia’s sun was a first-generation star and the Organians themselves had evolved beyond the need of bodies or other physical comforts well before the Earth had even been born. As for the emotional depression, that might be a product of being under the thought-screen. If so, it was unexpectedly bearable, though decidedly unpleasant.

Kirk confirmed planetfall with Lieutenant Uhura, then turned to his companions. “It could have been worse,” he said in a low voice. “In fact, I think I feel a little more chipper down here than I did when we were aloft, though I can’t be sure. What are your reactions, gentlemen?”

“Gloom and doom,” Scott said in his most Caledonian tone. He too was unconsciously almost whispering. “But you’re right, Captain, it’s nae sa bad as I feared. But which way do we go frae here? There’s nary a landmark t’be seen from hell to breakfast — and my tricorder reports nothing at all in the way of electromagnetic activity. Stone-cold dead it all is.”

Spock Two slowly scanned the endless stretches of. worn and crushed stone with his own tricorder.

“Nothing registers,” he agreed. “But on our first visit, we found the Council chambers about two point two kilometers north-north-west of our present position. Since there is no visible reason to prefer any other heading, I suggest that we proceed in that direction, and see whether the Organians have left any marker or other clue to their whereabouts.”

“Whereabouts would a thought hide, anyhow?” Scott said. “But ‘tis doubtless as good as any other course.”

Kirk nodded, and took a step forward — and was instantly locked in the grip of nightmare.

The rocky desert rippled and flowed as though it were only a reflection on the surface of a disturbed pool, and then dissolved completely. In its place, there stood before Kirk a monstrous object, dull green in colour but with a lustrous surface, whose exact nature he found impossible to identify. It was at least as big as an Indian elephant and just as obviously alive, but he could not even be sure whether it was animal or vegetable. It had no head, and seemed to consist entirely of thick, bulbous tentacles — or shoots — which had been stuck onto each other at random, and which flexed and groped feebly. One portion of the thing’s haphazard anatomy was supported by a wooden crutch, a device Kirk had seen only once before in his life, and that in a museum.

The thing did not look dangerous — only, somehow, faintly obscene — but Kirk drew his phaser anyhow, on general principles. At the same moment, its uncertain movements dislodged the anomalous crutch, and the whole wretched construction collapsed into a slowly writhing puddle, like a potfull of broad-bean pods which had been simmered too long.

Behind it, Kirk now saw, stretched a long length of shell-littered, white-sanded beach, sweeping into the distance to a blue sea and a low line of chalk cliffs which blended into a beautifully blue sky. A sun shone brightly, and the temperature had become positively Mediterranean. There was no one else around him at all, unless he counted the fallen monster and a few far wheeling white specks in the sky which might have been gulls.

“Mr. Spock!” he shouted. “Scotty!”

Two tentacles thrust up from the dull green mass, thickened, grew two side tentacles, and then gourdlike knobs at their ends. Strange markings, almost like faces, grimaced along the surfaces of the gourds. Was the thing about to go to seed?

But simultaneously, the sunlight dimmed and went out. The landscape turned colorless. Everything but the two tentacles faded into a thick gray limbo.

The tentacles turned into Spock Two and Scott.

“Where were you?” Kirk demanded. “Did you see what I saw?”

“I doubt it,” Spock Two said. “Tell us what you saw, Captain.”

“I was on something that looked a lot like the southern seacoast of Spain. There was a huge biological sort of object in front of me, and I was just wondering whether or not to shoot it when I called your names. It turned into you two and the rest of the scene washed out.”

“Any emotional impression, Captain?”

“Yes, now that I come to think of it. There was an underlying feeling that something terrible was about to happen, though I couldn’t specify what. Nightmarish. What about you, Scotty?”

“I dinna see any monsters,” Scott said. “Everything around me suddenly turned into lines, black on white. It was a wirin’ diagram, and sair ancient, too, for there were symbols for thermionic valves — vacuum tubes — in it. An’ I was plugged into it, for I couldna move, an’ I had the feelin’ that if anybody turned up the gain I’d blow out. I just realized that all of the valve symbols were caricatures of faces I knew, when I heard you callin’ my name, Captain, and hey presto, here I was back — wherever this may be.”

“I saw no change at all, nor did either of you disappear,” Spock Two said. “You simply stopped walking, and you, Captain, drew your phaser and called out. Obviously this is an effect of the screen around the planet, and I am resisting it better than you are, thus far, as we thought might happen. Tell me, Captain, were you ever on the southern seacoast of Spain?”

“Yes, once, on holiday from the Academy.”

“And Mr. Scott was imprisoned in a student or antiquarian wiring diagram. Apparently we can expect these hallucinations to be projections of our own early experience; knowing this may be of some help to us in coping with them.”

The mist lifted abruptly, revealing the same rock-tumble into which they had first materialized.

“Have we made any progress?” Kirk asked.

Spock Two checked his tricorder. “Perhaps five or six meters, though I doubt that any of us has actually walked that far.”

“Then let’s move on. At this rate we’ve got a long trek ahead.”

But as he stepped forward again, the nightmare returned…

…with an utterly appalling clamor. He was surrounded by a jungle of primitive machinery. Trip hammers pounded away insanely at nothing; rocker arms squealed as if their fulcrums were beds of rust; plumes of steam shot up into the hot, oil-reeking air with scrannel shrieks; great gears clashed, and great wheels turned with ponderous groans; leather belts slapped and clicked; eccentrics scraped in their slots; a thousand spinning shafts whined up and down the scale, a thousand tappets raffled in as many tempos, and somewhere a piece of armor plate seemed to be being beaten out into what eventually would be thin foil. Over it all arched a leaden roof in which every sound was doubled and redoubled, like the ultimate metaphor for an apocalyptic headache.

And once more there was no other human being in sight — nor, this time, any sign of life at all.

Kirk found it impossible to imagine what part of his experience this mechanical hell could have been drawn from, and the din made coherant thought out of the question; it was not only literally, physically deafening, but very near the lethal level. All he could manage to do was take another step forward…

Splash!

He was swimming for his life in a freezing black sea, in the ghastly, flickering light of a night thunderstorm. Great combers lifted and dropped him sickeningly, and the howling air, when he could get any at all, stank peculiarly of a mixture of seaweed, formaldehyde and coffee. Yet despite the coldness of the water, he felt hot inside his uniform, almost sweaty.

The sense of unreality was very strong, and after a moment he recognized where he was: in a delirium he had had during a bout of Vegan rickettsial fever on his first training assignment. The odor was that of the medicine he had had to take, a local concoction which had been all the colonists had had to offer. Still, it had done the trick.

As the next wave heaved him up, he heard through the thunder an ominous booming sound: breakers, and not far away, either, pounding against rock. Illusion or no illusion, Kirk doubted that he could live through that. Yet clearly, no amount of physical motion was going to get him out of this one; he was already swimming as hard as he could. How…

…it had done the trick.

Holding his breath, Kirk gulped down a mouthful of the bitter waters. At once, his feet touched bottom; and a moment later, dry as a stick, he was standing in even gray light amidst the rock-tumble.

He was still alone, however; and calling produced no response. He took out his communicator. It too was quite dry, though that had not been a major worry anyhow; it was completely waterproof, and, for that matter, gas-tight.

“Mr. Spock. Mr. Scott. Come in, please.”

No answer.

“Kirk to Enterprise.”

“Uhura here, Captain,” the communicator said promptly.

“Can you give me a reading on the positions of Spock and Scott?”

“Why, they must be in sight of you, Captain. Their location pips on the board overlap yours.”

“No such luck, and they don’t answer my calls, either. Give them a buzz from up there, Lieutenant.”

“Right.” After a moment, she reported, “They answer right away, Captain. But they don’t see you and can’t raise you, either.”

She sounded decidedly puzzled, which made her in no way different from Kirk.

“Par for the course, I’m afraid,” he said. “Any Klingons yet?”

“No, sir, but there’s a lot of subspace radio jamming. That’s their usual opening gambit when they’re closing in.”

“Well, Mr. Sulu has his orders. Keep me posted. Kirk out.”

Clenching his teeth, he took another step…

The rock crumbled to rich loam, and around him rose the original pseudo-medieval village of the first expedition to Organia. But it was deserted. All the buildings seemed at least partially burned; and as for the castle in the distance, it looked more as if it had been bombarded. A skull grinned up at him from the long brown grass, and from almost infinitely far away, there came a sound like the hungry howling of a wild dog. The whole scene looked like the aftermath of a siege toward the end of the Thirty Years’ War.

Nevertheless, this might be progress. It was more like the “old” Organia than anything else he had experienced thus far, and just might mean that he was drawing closer to a real goal. What good it would do him, or all of them, to arrive there without his engineering officer, who alone had the key to the whole problem now, he did not know; he could only hope that Scotty was somehow making his own way through whatever hallucinations he was suffering. He was hardheaded and skeptical; that should help. But why was he also invisible?

“Never mind. First things first. Another step…”

The only permanent aspect of the landscape now around him was change. Through shifting mists, an occasional vague object loomed, only to melt into something else equally vague before it could be identified. The mists were varicolored, not only obstructing vision but destroying perspective, and tendrils of faint perfume lay across them like incense.

He moved tentatively forward. The scene remained as it was; he began to suspect that this hallucination was going to be permanent. As he progressed, hands outstretched in the multicolored fog, he began to encounter what he could only think of as tendrils of emotion, invisible but palpable. About half of these carried with them a murmur of not-quite-recognizable voices, or fragments of music; and almost all of them Were unpleasant.

How long this went on he had no idea. For that matter, he might well have been walking in a circle. At long last, however, one of the dark shapes that appeared ahead refused to melt, becoming instead more definite and familiar. Finally, he could see that it was his first officer.

“How did you manage to get here?”

“I have been here all the time, Captain, in the real world, so to speak. But I had no access to you because of your present hallucination, and finally I was reluctantly forced to meld my mind with yours — to enter your illusion, as it were.”

“Forced?”

“By circumstances. You are going the wrong way, Captain.”

“I half suspected it. Lead on, then.”

“This way.”

The first officer moved off. As he did so, he appeared to become oddly distorted; to Kirk, it was as though he were being seen from behind and in profile at the same time. Around him, the scene froze into prismatic, irregular polygons of pure color, like a stained-glass window, and all motion ceased.

“Mr. Spock?”

There was no answer. Kirk inspected the silent, motionless figure. There seemed to be something amiss about it besides its distortion, but he could not figure out what it was. Then, all at once, he saw it.

On its right hand was a cartoon image of Kirk’s class ring.

Kirk whipped out his communicator.

“Lieutenant Uhura, Kirk here. I’ve got Spock One suddenly on my hands, and he seems to be in much better command of the conditions here than I am. Have the transporter room yank us both out, grab him and imprison him securely, and then send me back pronto.”

“I’m sorry, Captain, but we can’t,” Uhura’s voice said. “A Klingon squadron has just this minute popped out at us and we’re under full deflector shield. Unless you want to change your previous orders, we’re probably going to have to make a run for it.”

“My orders,” Kirk said, “stand.”