Sondra Marshak: The Price of the Phoenix

Spock stepped off the transporter platform where they had first beamed down—in the Wild West section. The Romulan guards in their incongruous black levis and low-slung six-shooters looked at him balefully. One reported into a communicator, but they did not try to stop him as he moved off down Front Street.

It was Dodge City with aircars. It was a dozen legends from a dozen worlds, legends of outlaws and outcasts, hole-in-the-wall gangs and embittered survivors of forgotten wars.

Spock had rated it fascinating and rather pathetic when he first saw it, and had known that it was no less dangerous for all its pathos. Later, seeing Omne, seeing the other legends and the real power, he had seen it as more sinister than pathetic.

He did not see it now; what he saw was a consuming vision of flames, a face, lips which did not scream, but formed the word Spock!

Spock raised his left hand to his temple. It was necessary to drive the vision down and back, although he knew that he would see it always. Some such vision in a thousand variations he had seen in nightmares for years.

He reached for the Vulcan technique of discipline and mastery. He was a Vulcan. This was his heritage. There must not be concession to blind emotion, most especially not when the temptation was greatest.

He performed the steps. He concentrated the power and the pride…

After a time he took the hand down.

He knew then that he had not expected it to work.

He leveled his shoulders and turned into the conference pavilion. There was still the Human way. He was, after all, half-Human. It would have to do.

The pavilion was a concession to modern technology, providing life-support quarters for a variety of aliens, meeting places for disparate life forms, food and recreation facilities for a number of races. Here in a no-man’s-land, Omne had created arrangements rivaling those of the official interstellar meeting place at Babel.

Spock found her in the Romulan bar.

There was a drink poured for him. The same orange nectar she had shared with him once on her flagship—once when he lied to her and made her want him, stealing her secret and possibly her heart.

The two square, slender glasses sat in forlorn confrontation. Hers also was untouched.

She stood as he approached and faced him with the manner of the soldier, her eyes understanding that he would not drink with her, that it was an open question whether his first act would not be to kill her.

“You did know,” he said.

The soldier’s chin lifted. “Not the exact form. Not with certainty. But that there was some danger—yes.”

“Specify,” Spock said evenly.

She shook her soft hair back from the fine upswept ears. “Such warning as I gave was all that I had to offer—and more than I owed.”

He heard her old question—What are you that you could do this to me?—and his answer, the only possible answer—First Officer of the Enterprise.

If she had wanted her revenge, she had collected it, doubled and redoubled. And if she had wanted to warn him, it was a warning beyond price, and more than she had owed.

The debt has been paid,” he said.

I could wish that the price had not been so high,” she said, as if it were an answer. She shook back the hair again. “You may believe that, if you wish. In any case, the place I offered to make for you is still open. I urge you to take it. There is nothing here for you now. I do not even require your ship. Military hardware is of short-lived value, as we learned. I do not even require a public show. Resign and leave with me this minute.” For a moment the woman’s eyes looked out of the soldier’s face. “I do not claim that I have anything to offer you but refuge. But if you stay, I have reason to believe that you will face danger and grief you will not survive.”

Spock shook his head. “There is no refuge. But there is one thing you have to offer which I can accept: that reason.

She shrugged in a gesture of expected defeat. “I cannot tell you. You will have to see it. I wish only to say that Omne is a complex and subtle man. He is not my ally, but certain of our interests have been parallel.”

“You believe that Omne murdered Jim Kirk,” Spock said, not as a question.

“I perceive that you do—and our logic runs on much the same path.” She straightened her shoulders. “If it was not murder, it was exceedingly—convenient. Omne’s guards will come to escort you to him at any moment. I will go with you—unless you will come with me.”

“That would be another decision you would not respect,” Spock said gravely.

She sighed. “Mr. Spock, I cannot tell you how tired I am of respecting you.”

He raised an eyebrow and turned away.

Six men were approaching. He sheltered the Romulan Commander behind him, careful not to give the appearance of reaching for the Colt revolver Omne had provided him with.

She stepped around him and spoke to the men. “He will come with us now. Fall in, in close order.” Her hand dropped to her sidearm, slung now in a gunbelt over her snort tunic. She had not been made to surrender her modern weapon. Omne’s guards accepted her authority without question, Spock noted. If she was not an ally, she was privileged to act like one. Was she using the privilege for him now? Or merely delivering him into captivity?

It scarcely mattered. She was taking him where he wanted to go, and to the one man in the galaxy he wanted to see.

The one living man.

McCoy bolted into his office and moved blindly toward his chair, only after a long moment registering the presence of Scotty and a firm hand guiding him.

“You here still?” he grumbled between irritation and gratitude.

“Again,” Scott said. “Checked the bridge. All quiet. Too quiet. This time I’ll prescribe the drink.” He was putting one in McCoy’s hand. “You’re white to the eyes.”

McCoy nodded, didn’t say that he had the right. Scotty would know where he had been and what he had been doing in the small, sterile room.

“I suppose there’s no mistake,” Scotty said. “Androids, doubles, imposters, illusions…”

McCoy looked up. God, there was little enough left, but it was only too real. “Not this time, Scotty. No mistake.”

It had only been the faintest ember of hope, but he saw it die in the Scot’s eyes, as it had died in his own in the small room he used for autopsies.

Spock walked down the length of the great hall toward the figure in black.

He ignored the guards and the Romulan Commander. He could not ignore the memory of Kirk making the same march at his side only this morning: Kirk’s little sideways look saying that he distrusted men who made guests make entrances, Kirk’s eyes running over the vast tiers of antique books, saying on the other hand that a man who loved books couldn’t be all bad, Kirk’s eyes noting Spock’s interest in a library computer and a sophisticated bank of data-processing equipment, Kirk’s eyes incredulous and amused at the bar occupying the back of the hall and outfitted like the Last Chance Saloon, Kirk’s eyes and even his body appraising the man in black who rested one foot on the brass rail until he slowly turned to meet them. Kirk knew in his bones and his body how to recognize another man who was born to command, how to estimate the other’s dangerousness. Spock knew the signs. Kirk had faced men of power before. Flint, the ageless man who had been Alexander, da Vinci, and all the names of power and mind. Spock’s own father, Sarek. Others—the best and the worst of a galaxy. And Kirk’s body had said, almost imperceptibly, that Omne was in a class by himself. Spock shook himself fractionally and faced the man in black again now. He felt that power in Omne himself, but he had long schooled the reaction out of his body, trained himself to stand at Kirk’s shoulder and back him without intruding, content to know that Kirk relied on that without question.