STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II Read online

  I AM KLINGON

  Counselor Deanna Troi leaped around the corner, phaser ready, and blasted the Klingon by the door to engineering. The warrior fell, and his half-raised disruptor pistol flew from his grip, skittering down the corridor. An acrid stench filled the air of the Enterprise as the lavender blood flowed.

  “Freeze.” Deanna aimed her phaser at the other Klingon.

  This warrior had both hands buried in the ripped-open access panel, no doubt trying to rig a bypass to the computer-locked door. Caught with her disruptor bolstered, no weapon in hand, the warrior looked at first surprised, then angry. She growled, teeth bared and eyes blazing defiance at the phaser pointed at her five meters away ...

  POCKET BOOKS

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  The sale of this book without Its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  This book consists of works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Originally published in trade paperback in 1999 by Pocket Books

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1999 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-02693-3

  First Pocket Books mass-market paperback printing January 2000

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Triptych

  Melissa Dickinson

  I

  II

  III

  The Quick and the Dead

  Cathy Oltion

  The First Law of Metaphysics

  Michael S. Poteet

  The Hero of My Own Life

  Peg Robinson

  Doctors Three

  Charles Skaggs

  I Am Klingon

  Ken Rand

  Reciprocity

  Brad Curry

  Calculated Risk

  Christina F. York

  Gods, Fate, and Fractals

  William Leisner

  I Am Become Death

  Franklin Thatcher

  Research

  J. R. Rasmussen

  Change of Heart

  Steven Scott Ripley

  A Ribbon for Rosie

  Ilsa J. Bick

  Touched

  Kim Sheard

  Almost ... But Not Quite

  Dayton Ward

  The Healing Arts

  E. Cristy Ruteshouser and Lynda Martinez Foley

  Seventh Heaven

  Dustan Moon

  Afterword

  John J. Ordover

  Contest Rules

  Strange New Worlds IV

  About the Contributors

  About the e-Book

  Introduction

  Dean Wesley Smith

  It seems that in Star Trek, miracles just keep happening. You hold in your hand one of those miracles—volume two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. And coming next year is volume three, with submission rules here in this book. Let me give a little history of how these miracles came about.

  Last year, for the first volume, Executive Editor John Ordover and Paula Block at Viacom moved heaven and earth to get the approval for a fan-written anthology of Star Trek stories. There were more than a few hurdles to climb over, but they got it through, only to be faced with the next level of problems—would the fans respond, could we find enough good stories to fill the anthology, and ultimately would the book sell?

  I’m happy to report that combined with those business miracles pulled off by John and Paula, you fans did it again. Last year over three thousand stories poured in, making my job of picking the contents of the first volume both wonderful and painful at the same time. (If you want an outline of the process of picking the stories in that first book, find a copy and read my introduction. Then read the stories.)

  This year over four thousand stories came in for me to [x] consider for volume two. I somehow managed to get the stories down to a top twenty-five. So I sent to John and Paula the twenty-five stories I considered the best picks, and the three of us worked into a final shape the anthology you now hold in your hand. There are seventeen top-notch stories here. Five of the winners are returning authors from the first book, some making their final appearance in Strange New Worlds because they have now sold too many stories. (See the rules here in this book for qualifications.)

  As with the first volume, I am very proud of the content and professional level of this anthology. Not even the professional-writer fans who do the novels could have done such an original job, in my opinion.

  But there is one more part of the miracle that I haven’t touched on. On top of sending in stories—good stories, professional-level stories—you fans went out and bought the book, too. And because you did that, the final element of the miracle occurred. The anthology went to a second volume. And next year a third volume. And this wouldn’t have happened without the support of you, the fans and readers.

  So tell your friends to buy a copy of this book, and maybe even order a copy of volume one. Then sometime this year, before the October 1 deadline, sit down and write that Star Trek short-story idea you’ve always wanted to do, follow the rules, and mail it to us. Who knows? Just maybe next year you’ll hold in your hands a book with your story in it. A Star Trek story—and you will be a Star Trek author. Trust me, you will consider that a miracle, too.

  But in Star Trek, miracles happen.

  Triptych

  Melissa Dickinson

  [SECOND PRIZE]

  I

  Twilight, on the city’s lower east side.

  As the first stars appear in the eastern sky, a man and a woman in love cross a street. The two figures merge against the light of a streetlamp; a third watches them go, thinking of tragedy to come.

  It is an old story—perhaps the oldest story. Love binding, love wounding, the Fates watching: Clotho with her hand upon the wheel, Lachesis measuring, measuring the threads of lives inextricably woven, patient Atropos with her shining scissors poised to snip ...

  At the far curb, Edith Keeler turned toward the man she loved and spoke the words that would seal her fate. “If we hurry, maybe we can catch the Clark Gable movie at the Orpheum. I’d really love to see it.”

  Her companion gave a questioning look, as if not quite [4] sure he’d heard correctly over the bustle of the evening traffic. “The what?”

  “You know, Doctor McCoy said the same thing!”

  “McCoy—! Leonard McCoy?” As if the name were a curse, Kirk’s smile vanished, leaving a hunted look in its wake.

  His intensity was frightening. She fell back a step. “Well, yes. He’s in the mission—”

  At that, all the blood left his face. “Stay right here.” It was an order, and for an instant she froze in simple reflex.
His hands tightened painfully on her shoulders; he was already turning. “Spock!” He released her and started back across the street. “Stay right there—Spock!”

  The Vulcan had already turned and was hurrying back down the sidewalk. He reached the pool of lamplight even as Kirk did, and gripped the captain’s forearms to steady him. “What is it?”

  “McCoy!” A few feet away, the door of the mission opened. “He’s in—Bones!”

  “Jim!”

  The weeks of tense waiting broke in one joyful moment of recognition. Kirk pulled his old friend toward him, enveloping the doctor’s spare frame in an awkward bear hug. Even Spock could not quite stop himself from reaching out to confirm the reality. In their stunned delight, none of the three saw the woman start across the street.

  Then, one of them did.

  It was the look of alarm in the doctor’s face that reached Kirk first—but he knew, even before he turned, that it was now, this moment—that there would be no turning from his fate.

  [5] From hers.

  Spock’s “No, Jim!” followed the captain as he turned, as he took one reflexive step toward her. McCoy made an incoherent sound behind him, and Kirk met her eyes, and then everything began to move very slowly.

  Afterward, he would remember it in too much detail. Each stop-action flash of motion seemed to take a small forever, each frame imprinting in his memory with scarring, indelible accuracy. By the time he turned, she was already halfway across. Her eyes were asking him a question, a tiny, puzzled frown gathering between her brows.

  “Edith ...”

  She was looking at him. Right at him. He felt more than saw the truck, felt McCoy beside him and Spock at his back, the pressure nearly crushing his heart. The rumble of the oncoming vehicle came up through the pavement, the soles of his feet, rooting him in place. She was looking right at him.

  She would know.

  Kirk knew what he had to do. He knew it. But he had lost too many times, had made too many choices that had taken too much of his soul. Her eyes were on his, widening suddenly as at last she sensed the motion of the truck bearing down on her, perhaps seeing it out of the corner of her eye. She knew.

  Beside him, McCoy started forward.

  Unable to take his eyes from hers, Kirk moved. It cost something deep inside him, at the very heart of him, something that burned like acid. And still he paid the cost and moved.

  But Spock was already moving, and in his blind grief, Kirk was slower.

  * * *

  [6] Three men in motion—one in fear, one in sorrow, one in love—and it is Spock’s hand on the doctor’s arm, Spock’s grip that tries to catch him back, and in the end it is Spock who has miscalculated, underestimating the doctor’s determination and thus his inertia. A bare ripple in the flow of time, his miscalculation slows McCoy’s motion for a crucial instant.

  In one moment a few scant inches become an infinity; in the next McCoy has slipped past his friends, into the street.

  James Kirk was not in his body. He was somewhere outside himself, somewhere far away where this could not touch him. He heard Spock breathe, “No ...” from close by, and then reality came unglued.

  Edith in the street. The truck. And McCoy moving, moving fast with the surge of adrenaline, very fast, too fast—

  Fast enough. He plowed into Keeler full force, his momentum knocking her back, hard, carrying him with her to the pavement, out of the path of the grinning steel grille of the truck. It roared past and skidded with a screech of tires, slid sideways and slammed into a parked car not ten feet from where Kirk stood, frozen, his mouth open in what might have been a shout if there were any sound. The car rocked against the curb, squealing, struck the pavement with a screech of metal on metal. The truck shuddered to a halt, and then was still.

  For an instant nobody, and nothing, moved.

  That frozen moment made a snapshot in Kirk’s memory. Then time itself rushed forward, tidal surge through the keyhole of the present.

  [7] The street was suddenly full of people stepping forward from the curbs to see. More brakes squealing, as cars stopped to avoid the tableau in the middle of the street. Angry drivers shouting, a rising murmur of delayed reaction from the onlookers. Someone said, “Is she okay?”

  She was. McCoy rolled off her stiffly, and the two of them sat up, looking back across the street to where the truck had careened into the parked car. Kirk breathed again as he saw her move and realized that it was over, that she was all right, she was alive. McCoy had saved her.

  Which meant—

  “No ...” The sidewalk lurched under him, and suddenly there was a hand at his elbow, steadying him. Spock. Kirk turned instinctively toward the Vulcan, as he had in so many moments of crisis. Sick realization tightened in his stomach when he saw the answering dismay on Spock’s face.

  McCoy, reaching the curb, saw that look and knew that his attempt to prevent tragedy had somehow gone disastrously wrong.

  Kirk stood at the window of the cheerless little room, gaze fixed on the pool of yellow light cast by the streetlamp below. McCoy knew he wasn’t really seeing it. Kirk had alternated staring out into the night with bouts of viciously controlled pacing, leaving it to Spock to fill the doctor in on the havoc he’d inadvertently wreaked.

  “It’s not over yet,” McCoy said at last, feeling as if he had to say something to break Kirk’s fixed stare, his unnatural stillness. “We’re still here. ... There’s gotta be something we can do.” Captain and first officer exchanged a glance, and something in it chilled McCoy. “C’mon, Jim, we’re acting [8] like we’re helpless here. We can still change things. Spock said 1936. That means we’ve got six years before the headline you all saw about Edith and the president. So we can still change things, right?”

  Spock’s tone was patient. “I do not think you understand, Doctor.”

  “Well then, explain it to me, will you!”

  “Aside from other ... obstacles, there are very real practical difficulties involved in tampering with the subsequent timeline—”

  “Wait a minute, Spock. Pretend you’re talking to a regular human being. You know, words of less than four syllables.”

  Spock blinked at him. After a moment’s stare that managed to communicate the Vulcan’s opinion of his language skills quite eloquently, Spock went on.

  “In the flow of time, there are a billion possible futures, a billion points of decision. We have images in our tricorder of only one possible set of these divergent points—only one possible reality. The very fact of our presence here makes my tricorder’s data unreliable at best This unreliability will increase logarithmically as time passes.”

  As it often did when he was stressed, McCoy’s mouth got ahead of his brain. “No wonder you look so glum, Spock. All those little tubes and wires, and nothing but one poor confused tricorder to talk to!”

  Kirk shot him a quelling look, and McCoy managed to control the hysteria. “Well dammit, Jim, we’ve got to try at least.”

  “Of course we’ve got to try! Don’t you think I know that?” Kirk caught himself. McCoy looked from him to Spock, sensing something they weren’t telling him.

  [9] “All right, out with it, you two.”

  But Kirk pressed his lips together and turned away. At last Spock gave a nearly inaudible sigh and steepled his hands together. “There is another, more serious problem.” His eyes flicked briefly to McCoy’s, then away. “Perhaps you should be seated, Doctor.”

  McCoy knew he wasn’t going to like this, but he sat, on the edge of the bed that wasn’t covered by Spock’s homemade Frankenstein machine.

  “I’m listening.” Spock took a deep breath; McCoy forestalled him. “In English, if you don’t mind.”

  Perplexed, the Vulcan looked to Kirk for help. Kirk sighed and left the window at last, straddling a chair that faced the doctor. He pursed his lips as he searched for a way to explain.

  “You know the old story about the time traveler who goes back in time, meets his own grandmoth
er, and accidentally kills her?”

  McCoy nodded. “Sure. Go back in time, kill your own grandmother, thus assuring you’re never born. Paradox.”

  “Right. Logic says that killing your own grandmother is a paradox. It can’t happen. Unfortunately, when it comes to time travel, logic doesn’t apply.” Putting the problem into words seemed to provide Kirk with a focus he sorely needed, and he warmed to his task. “In the early days of speculation about time travel, scientists suspected that traveling into your own past might be impossible. Or that if you did travel into your own past, you’d find yourself unable to change anything of importance. But as it turns out, the universe has no problem at all with you killing your own grandmother.”

  [10] “Grandma might have a problem with it.”

  Kirk didn’t smile. “The real problem comes further down the line, when you find out that by killing her, by changing history, you’ve in effect put yourself into another timeline—with no way to get back to your own.”

  “This stuff makes my head hurt.”

  “Look, try thinking of time as a river. Each time a decision is made, another little stream splits off and goes its own way.” Kirk used his hands to illustrate. “The water itself keeps flowing, always in the same direction, and you can’t swim upstream, see. But you can climb out of the river, walk back up the bank, and jump in again. If you change something—say, if you knock off your own grandmother—you’ll find yourself swimming down a different branch of the river, with no way to get back into the first branch except to get out and walk back upstream to a spot before the split occurred. Time travel.”

  Kirk and Spock were watching him with identical expressions of sober intensity. Understanding began to gel, and a chill made McCoy’s short hairs stand up. “But we don’t have a Guardian here. We can’t get out of the river.”