The Price of the Phoenix

CHAPTER XIII

Jim Kirk scrubbed at his eyes and tried to see, tried to breathe against the sobbing that racked him in uncontrollable spasms, tried somehow to ease the intolerable mass or pain that was his whole body.

It was only a little worse where the big arm crushed him against the massive chest, carrying him now like a child, the single arm looped around his chest and under his thighs, balancing him on one hip, while the other arm reached for something. He saw it find some hidden spot on a plain panel on a corridor wall. The panel slid back and in, then aside. Omne stepped through and turned to close it.

They were moving into some inner labyrinth, Kirk saw. There were tiny corridors, branching.

Fight. No one would ever find him here. Fight, he told himself.

And he knew suddenly that he could not.

Could not.

It was not in him, not even the will to fight. He could never remember a time when that had left him, that willingness to get up and make one more effort. There had been moments when muscle had failed, but never that. It was gone now, as if it had never been.

Abruptly he swung a leaden arm at the heathen-idol face. When muscle failed, will, nerve, guts—there still had to be something.

Omne only let the blow roll off the side of his head. And he looked down and smiled almost benignly, then finished closing the panel.

A sob racked Kirk’s chest and he fought then just not to close his eyes and huddle, not to crawl off into some corner of his mind and never look out of his eyes again, never try to meet the eyes of a man.

If you close your eyes, he told himself, you’re finally finished. Don’t think. You don’t have to think. Don’t feel. You can’t let yourself feel. Just look out of the eyes. Omne plunged into the inner labyrinth and Kirk made himself look at the way. It would not be a way out for him, but it was a way to keep himself looking.

They came to branches and to some land of baffle walls of paneling blocking the passages. Omne pressed at a spot on each panel, the fingers of his free hand twisting in a pattern to touch hidden electronic studs imbedded in the paneling. Another touch closed them behind.

Almost idly Kirk noted the pattern.

No, he must not permit himself to hope. Hope could be used against him. Had been; it was hope which had broken him. Hope, and the playing on it, and the slow, unrelenting destruction of it.

Omne stepped through a panel into a big room. Old books lined the walls.

A study, Kirk thought, as Omne put him down on the couch.

The big arms swung him down with surprising gentleness and rolled him onto his face. But he bolted up onto his side and onto an elbow, trying to ignore the convulsive shaking of his arm.

Look up and meet the eyes, meet them, damn it, or you never will.

The black eyes looked down, and something in them approved the man whose eyes could still meet them.

Omne nodded then, and turned and busied himself with the air of a man who had reached haven. He moved into an alcove and was back out momentarily, with the black jumpsuit smoothed down, rolling up a torn sleeve to reveal a bullet burn. It seemed to be the only damage he had suffered. And he had replaced the lost holster, dropped the gun into its twin.

He moved toward the couch.

“Why here?” Kirk said, discovering that he could, after all, speak.

Omne raised an eyebrow as if surprised that he could or would. “My safe-house,” he answered easily, as if he had no secrets left to hide from the eyes which could still meet his. “No other living soul knows that it is here. It needs no locks but silence and concealment. If the planet fell, the fortress, the underground, only a foot-by-foot measurement would find this inner complex. We could live here for decades on stored supplies.”

It came to Kirk suddenly through the calm words: Omne was that afraid of dying. His whole life was built around not dying. He had invented immortality, not to preserve someone loved, not really for a galactic purpose, not even for the pleasure of tormenting Kirk, but as a last defense against the fear of death.

“We?” Kirk said, realizing something else. “But why bring me to your last refuge?”

“You will be safe here.’ The black eyes glowed with a certain satisfaction.

“But why even run?” Kirk asked savagely. “From—a woman—and an unarmed man.” Twist the knife. Never mind that the Romulan cavalry looked pretty good. “You could have shot it out. Guards would come running. Were you scared of the ferocious opposition?” Make him admit the fear.

But Omne only looked startled, as if trying to trace down the reason for something which had struck him as self-evident. “I—” He hesitated, but the mood of self-revelation held. “I did not want you in the line of fire.”

Kirk felt an odd jolt on some level he couldn’t even name. Or—wouldn’t. Perhaps somewhere on the level of what he was refusing to name, even to himself. Let it be blunt, brute fact.

But this—

He had snapped out the questions as fury, as release, half-hoping to goad an admission of cowardice.

But what frightened him was to learn that the big man was not a coward. The man was pathological about death, he knew it, he didn’t let it stop him.

And yet—”At—any other time,” Kirk said carefully, “your only thought would have been for your life—or—some game.”

Omne smiled with the look of being understood. “Yes,” he said.

“And—this time—it didn’t even occur to you.”

Omne nodded gravely. “No.”

The jolt he had—it was something very like pride, Kirk realized, and was shocked on some deeper level. It was as if this man had said: What I did to you, what I made you show of what you are, makes you worth more than my life.

And it was as if that could matter to Kirk.

But that was what the man had said.

And it did matter.

In some terrible way, it did matter.

“But—you did break me,” he said against the tight agony in his chest. “I did—cry.”

“You cried,” Omne said. “You didn’t break.”

“How—do you know?” Kirk blurted. How do yon know—when I don’t? He choked back into his throat, but he thought that Omne heard it

“You never—begged,” Omne said.

Didn’t I? Somehow he still stopped the words in his throat. It could not be for this man to know. It could not be for Kirk to ask this man for confirmation, for—comfort.

“No,” Omne said, answering the unspoken question, giving the confirmation, perhaps even the comfort.

But wasn’t it begging? Kirk thought. The crying and the words which had screamed in his mind, even if he had somehow stopped them at his throat. Hadn’t he cried because he could not speak, would not—and wasn’t that a kind of begging, too?

No. He answered himself this time. No, it was not the same.

But the knowledge did not seem to help. Something had still broken, and he was not sure what. But—there was also something which had not.

Hold to that.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t beg. Does it matter?”

Omne nodded. “I never wanted to break you.”

Kirk laughed harshly, finding breath for it somewhere. “You did your damndest!”

“Certainly. How else would I know that I never can?” He smiled. “Or you—that you never will?”

“You said—any man can be broken.”

Omne shook his head. “I said—any man can cry. Until he does, he doesn’t know whether that will break him.”

“And if it doesn’t.” Kirk said bitterly, “then—you try again?”

Another shake of the massive head. “I will not have to try again. And—will never want to.”

Kirk frowned. “Never want to break me to play beta to your alpha?”

Omne’s smile held a hint of the wolf, but the eyes were grave, almost gentle. “Ah, but don’t you know? That was what you did lose tonight when you decided to live. But it wasn’t—breaking. You know what kind of victory it was.”

Omne smiled at him as if he had invented him, and said, “That is why a thousand years will not be long enough.”

Kirk felt his breath catch sharply. The black eyes glowed as if with banked flames.

The big man turned abruptly and took something from a drawer, a long, slender silver tube. Kirk thought finally that it might be some odd kind of spray can.

Omne came back to the couch.

“Turn over,” he ordered.

Kirk tried not to flinch away, tried not to ask. But he did ask. “What—what are you—?”

“I am going to fix your back.”

“What—?” Kirk found himself laughing on the edge of hysteria, the tears threatening to come again. “While your Wild West plays shoot-‘em-up over our heads? While your ally and your—replica—get hunted through the corridors? While the delegates wait and Spock waits, somewhere. And you are going to fix my back?”

“Among other things,” Omne said. “Turn over.”

“Go to hell.”

“As you please, Captain. I can begin on the front”

“I don’t want it. Go tend to your knitting.”

“If I do, it will be tended much more effectively. I will get the Commander. And my replica. The Wild West will, too. But it may take longer. That would give them some sporting chance. Spock will have a little longer to stall before his performance. They can all wait, while I restore the original.”

“You’d need a sickbay—not a spray can,” Kirk said bitterly, and knew that it was concession.

Omne sat down on the edge of the couch. “I have a sickbay—in the can,” he said. His hands ripped free the last fragments which held Kirk’s shirt, not asking permission. “A growth-forcer,” he continued dispassionately in the tone of a scientific dissertation. “Local metabolic accelerator. Antiseptic. Anesthetic, with deep-pain extensors. Cleansing. His hands unfastened the belt which still held what was left of the tough Star Fleet uniform. Kirk started to protest, realized that it was no use. “In a few seconds, you will be free of pain. There are no broken bones or grave internal injuries. I was careful. In a few more minutes there will be delicate new flesh and skin, swelling will go down, bruises clear, cuts and contusions begin to mend. In a few hours—you will be good as new.”

He finished with the clothes, boots and all, almost in the manner of a doctor. Kirk set his teeth and tried to take it as medical, wishing devoutly for Bones McCoy, then retracting the wish. Better Bones didn’t have to deal with this.

Omne picked up the spray can again. “This place is, among otter things, probably the finest research laboratory in the galaxy. You would be surprised to learn how many first-rate scientists from how many planets find refuge here. They are on holiday today in honor of the conference. Some of them are delegates.”

Kirk was surprised, and let it register a little. He had seen the place only as a great, empty setting for Omne’s evil.

“You would be shocked to learn how many new products we market through how many channels.” Omne hefted the can. “It pays the rent. This one happens to be one of mine. My—public—lab is not far from here. The private one—” he shrugged and smiled. “Lie down.”

Kirk caught his lip between his teeth. It was not that he wanted to obey, he told himself. It was only that his arm really wouldn’t hold him any longer. It was for the Commander, for—the other. Even for Spock. Buy time. That was it.

But he knew that he believed Omne even in his boast about his power for good. He knew why the man needed to make that boast now in the face of the evidence of his power for evil and to the man who had felt all his power.

Kirk knew. He knew this man very well.

With sudden, numbing force it came home to Kirk what had broken, and why he had cried.

He had been hurt before, terrified before. He had been terrified by experts. Tortured. Faced with more than he could take. It had never broken him.

The physical pain was as bad as any he had ever taken, but it was not worse.

But this time he had met his match.

His breath caught and he made himself say it. No. It was worse than that. Omne had said it, and it was true.

This man had played with him, overreaching him in every direction—mind, body, will. So easily. Lazily. Beyond possibility of resistance.

And Kirk had almost felt some ancient jungle law telling him that this man was his natural master, this man had, even, the right.

It was what Omne had wanted him to feel and why the giant had done it.

He could see it now in the black eyes, see them reading him, too, and knowing that he felt it.

“No, he said aloud. “I do not live in the jungle. No man is my master.”

“I am, Omne said. “By the most ancient law of all, I am. That was what you could not take.”

“I—took it,” Kirk said with bleak pride.

Omne nodded. “And you did not surrender. But the jungle in you did. You feel it now. You want to obey. You will always want to, and always want to fight. But you know me. You know me as master. Sometime in a thousand years you will find that compliance has become obedience—and that you never knew the moment when it happened.” He smiled. “Perhaps this moment.”

“No,” Kirk whispered, but he saw the thousand years in Omne’s eyes.

“No?” Omne said softly. “But you will comply now. You will tell yourself that it is for others, but it will be for yourself. Or you will find the honesty to know it. Lie down now. You do not have to look at me.”

Omne’s hand caught the back of Kirk’s neck, lightly, but turning his face down. And it was too much. The quivering arm would not hold. Perhaps—something else would not hold.

Kirk let his shoulders down, let himself bury his face. Yes, just let it happen. God, he was so tired.

He lifted his head and turned his face to one side against the knotted neck muscles and Omne’s light touch to look up and meet the eyes. It was all he could do, but it was enough.

“Not just yet,” he whispered. “See you in hell first.”

Omne smiled with that look of having invented him. “That’s my original,” he said. “I could not have chosen better.”

Kirk felt the odd jolt of pride again, but set himself against it. He would not let that matter, either. No, it would matter, but it would not stop him. He would set hate against it and control and cool logic.

It would be a long thousand years.

Omne released his neck and took up the spray can.

The spray drifted down onto Kirk’s back, a coolness of flowing mist and drifting foam, cooling flame. Then Omne’s hands were busy through the coolness, easing cuts together where flesh had split over bone, smoothing the foam to where it was most needed.

Kirk set his teeth against the touch, and against fighting it.

But he felt pain die slowly down the length of his body, finally even in deep bruises and final knotted lumps of resistance. The relief was almost an agony in itself, and he felt himself clutching for the last of the pain like an anchor. He was beginning to—drift. The shock he had held at bay was catching up with him. The last of the sobs were dying down to the tiny jerks of a cried-out child sinking into sleep. The Starship Captain’s eyes were dry now, but he was crying himself to sleep. At least Spock did not know. The Vulcan would never know…

Kirk flickered his eyes open for a second to look at Omne. The big man’s rough-carved face was almost gentle. So many facets to the man. So many faces. No one would ever find this place, and in a thousand years Kirk would not know all the faces. But he would remember always the face of the wolf…