Captain's Glory

29

S.S. BELLE REVE

STARDATE 58571.1

When Kirk had had the Belle Reve refit at Admiral Janeway’s expense, he had equipped four small cabins with workbenches, computer consoles, and universal equipment racks, turning them into labs. They had become a favorite of the researchers he invited aboard, not the least reason being that the cabins he had chosen all had forward-facing viewports.

Eight hours out from Vulcan, Kirk found Spock in the largest of the four. He wasn’t surprised. It was the best lab, with the best view, and even after a lifetime of serving in Starfleet, Spock was looking out the viewport at the stars.

“Will we ever get tired of them?” Kirk asked as he entered.

Spock stood with his hands behind his back, kept staring ahead as the stars streamed by above and below and to each side. “In the past, I found them peaceful.”

Kirk stood beside Spock, puzzled by what his friend had left unsaid. “But not anymore?”

Spock angled his head, pursed his lips in consideration. “I spent a year within the Totality. They see stars differently-the equivalent of death. I still have echoes of that perception. It is an intriguing dichotomy, to be drawn to something, yet fear it.”

Kirk smiled. “I can think of a great many things that fit that description.” He looked away from the stars for a moment. “What does the Totality know of death?”

Spock didn’t answer at once, and Kirk didn’t hurry him. Spock had explained that he found it difficult to put into words what he had experienced during his time in that other realm.

“They do know of nonexistence,” Spock finally said. “Not as a life-force overall, but as projections.”

“Projections? That’s their equivalent of individuals?” Kirk asked. “So they do know personal death?”

Spock nodded, eyes still fixed on the stars. “The projections do take on individual attributes, especially the more time they spend apart from their realm. Some become bolder than others. Some more thoughtful.”

“Did you interact with any?”

“A few,” Spock said, “though it was difficult. We had no real points of reference in common. Most times, I felt them around me, observing me as I interacted with other personalities that had been drawn into their realm.”

“The people they had captured?” Kirk asked.

“Abductees, yes. As well as those they had replaced.” Spock turned to Kirk, and as he spoke Kirk felt it was almost as if Spock was still trying to make sense of what he had experienced. “I found the range of their reactions to be… surprising.”

“How so?”

“For some, there was a great deal of fear. The Totality took images from our memories, to create illusory environments that they hoped would put us at our ease. But the settings that resulted were far too confusing. A disturbing blend of places the abductees had been in the past, mixed with places they had only dreamed of, or imagined.”

“Did you experience anything like that?”

Spock nodded. “My first experience of the Totality took place in a reconstruction of the mountains overlooking my family’s estate. I was a teenager, and Norinda appeared to me as… someone I knew.”

Kirk heard the hesitation in Spock’s voice, and as a friend, he understood it was a memory Spock didn’t want to discuss.

“Of the people you encountered,” Kirk asked instead, “were there any who weren’t afraid?”

“Some felt they were in an afterlife that corresponded to their religious beliefs. Most of those were surprised, but content. But others… as I said, there was always that presence, unseen, unfelt, but trying to pull us further into the experience. Out of our reconstructed environments and deeper into the Totality.”

Kirk knew Spock well enough to understand what he wasn’t saying.

“You were tempted,” Kirk said.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Spock gestured to the viewport. “It was much like these stars, Jim. Peace. Understanding. Belonging.”

Kirk found that unexpectedly amusing. He turned away from the viewport, found a place to sit on one of the consoles. “How many worlds have you and I visited where the leaders told us they had the secret of a perfect society?” He laughed. “And all we had to do to achieve perfection is not ask any questions.”

Spock kept his attention on the stars. “This wasn’t the same.”

Kirk didn’t like the sound of that.

“You… believed it?”

Spock looked at Kirk with an almost apologetic expression. “I felt it. I felt… there was something more to understand, if only I would let down my guard and accept what they offered.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kirk asked.

Spock didn’t answer.

“Spock?”

Spock bowed his head. “I don’t know.”

Kirk got up, moved closer to his friend. “Were you afraid?”

But Spock shook his head. “Not in the way you might think.” He turned away from the stars then, as if he had seen enough. “Others went.”

“Went?” Kirk asked. He didn’t understand.

“Deeper into the Totality,” Spock answered. “Some of the crew of the Monitor. Some of the scientists who had been kidnapped, the Starfleet personnel who had been replaced. They felt the pull of the Totality and… they embraced it.”

“What happened to them?” Kirk asked.

“That is the question,” Spock said. “There is no way to know. Their minds… vanished from my awareness.”

“You think they were killed?”

“No,” Spock said with certainty. “I think they simply moved on to a realm of existence that we can know nothing about.”

Kirk found that idea disturbing. “The ultimate reality of existence.”

Spock nodded sagely.

Kirk was loath to ask his next question, but he knew he must.

“Do you think it’s true?”

Spock shook his head. “You said it yourself. How many worlds have we visited where someone claimed to have that ultimate truth?”

Kirk sensed the hesitation in his friend, as if Spock didn’t want to say anything to upset him.

“The Totality’s not a world,” Kirk said. “From everything you’ve told us, the nature of the universe makes the Totality inevitable.”

Spock nodded. “But the nature of the universe also makes biological life inevitable, wherever conditions are suitable.”

“A handful of planets,” Kirk said. “A few moons. Places where the temperature is warm enough and wet enough long enough for chemistry to become biology. But for the Totality… it’s the very structure of space and time that creates it. Everywhere.”

Spock nodded slowly, as if Kirk were saying everything he dared not say himself.

Kirk looked at the stars through the viewport, anxiety growing. “What is life but the search for answers?”

Spock’s words were quiet, measured, shocking. “In the Totality, we may have found them.”

Long moments passed.

And then Kirk said, “I can’t accept that.”

Spock gave no indication that he was ready to argue the point. “You weren’t there.”

“That’s what I mean,” Kirk said. “According to what you’ve told me, you weren’t there, either. Not where the ‘truth’ was being revealed. You said you felt the invitation. You saw or experienced people who accepted it. But they disappeared. If there is an ultimate truth, don’t you think it’d be something that could be shared? Don’t you think someone should be able to come back and explain it to us?

“But if it’s like passing through the subspace event horizon in a black hole… a boundary from which no information can ever return… it might as well be death.”

“Still,” Spock said softly, “I wonder.”

“That’s the difference between the life we are and the life the Totality represents. We don’t know the answers, so we go looking for them. The Totality claims to have the answers, but the only way we can hear them is by stepping into a black hole and hoping the Totality was telling the truth.”

Spock looked at Kirk, and Kirk could see the wry humor in his friend, invisible to anyone else. “Ah, but why would Norinda start telling the truth now?”

But Kirk didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile.

“Was it hard to resist?” he asked.

“Yes,” Spock said.

Kirk looked at the stars, wanted them to move faster.

If Spock found the Totality hard to resist, then what chance did a child have?