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  "I should have my head examined for even letting you think of getting up," McCoy said.

  "Have you examined mine?" Kirk asked.

  McCoy winced. "That was my second morsel of agony for you," he said. "After I checked Dobius, I ran the scanner tapes of your unconscious period. There were times in which both mental patterns—the Oneness and the Totality—started to displace your own."

  Kirk looked at him carefully. "Did one succeed?"

  McCoy shrugged. "No way to tell. It looked to me like maybe one held off the other. Maybe it was a stalemate. But I can't be sure. The readings are normal now—but so is Dobius. Jim—it's a second reason you shouldn't go running around the ship."

  "It's the first reason I have to, Bones," Kirk said. "What's my alternative? Lie there and be taken in my sleep—if I haven't been already?"

  McCoy looked at him gravely. "Jim, what if you have been?"

  Kirk moved down the corridor. Every step was an effort beyond his endurance.

  There was no answer to McCoy's question. Was it possible that Kirk already belonged to a Oneness—Gailbraith's, or the other, the Totality? He could detect no sign, but there was nothing to say that he would know. Suppose they were holding him on a long line, just waiting to pull the strings? Certainly he had had the feeling in his dream that two forces warred for him—and now all of McCoy's instruments agreed.

  Unless he could resolve that, Kirk could not command the ship. Nor could he be certain that anyone else could. If some power of Sola's people were the catalyst which the Totality could use—then was Spock in the most danger of all? The Vulcan also sailed perilously close to whatever unity bonding with her would require.

  Kirk turned into the Pool One area. Perhaps to come here was foolishness. He could have gone to the VIP Guest Quarters, bearded Gailbraith in his den. He wanted to try this.

  He stood by the pool, then finally had to sit down, projecting in some way he couldn't name "Here I am. Come!"

  It took less than one minute. Gailbraith entered through the door.

  Kirk started to stand up, had to think better of it. "Ambassador. So you do have the run of the ship?"

  "Did you expect otherwise?" The hard gray eyes inspected Kirk with a kind of reproach. "You came here for some more definite purpose than to establish that. I see you are aware you should not have stirred from bed."

  Kirk shrugged. "I have no choice. You have taken some of my people. How many? Whom?"

  "Would you expect me to answer?"

  "I expect you to release them."

  "Captain," Gailbraith said, "does it not occur to you that there must be a reason why all ships have been taken in this sector—and why yours, carrying us, is still free?"

  "Are you saying that you are fighting the Totality for us?"

  Gailbraith smiled. "No, Captain. Not for you."

  "But you are fighting it?"

  "Where the longing for Oneness exists, Captain, it is a vacuum which will be filled, one way or the other. That is where the takeover—of a ship or a galaxy—begins. At present I have filled some of your own voids with myself. Not all of them. And I have not saved all of your people."

  "The Totality has some of my crew?"

  Gailbraith nodded.

  "How can I stop it?"

  "You cannot."

  "You can?"

  "Conceivably. Not in any way you would care for."

  "Are you saying my choice is between possession by the Totality, or possession by you?"

  "That is crudely put, but essentially correct."

  "And if I won't be possessed?"

  "But you will be. Captain, a trial is in progress here. This ship, the planet below, do not necessarily look like the battlefield on which the fate of the galaxy will be decided. Nonetheless, that is what they are."

  "You are against the Totality?" Kirk asked.

  "Captain, I am for evolution. However, it remains to be seen what the essential direction of evolution is. As the man who condemned you to this trial has said, there are also blind alleys in evolution. One of us, Captain, is an amoeba—or a dinosaur. Here we will find out which."

  "And then?"

  "If you are the amoeba, you will come to me and become the future. And I will have decided that the turning point is here, and Oneness is to be loosed on the galaxy in my lifetime."

  "Do you mean—through the Totality?" Kirk asked.

  "The Totality has the means. I do not."

  "Force? If I know nothing else, I know that that is yesterday."

  "Is it force to offer tomorrow irresistibly?"

  "Tomorrow has been the excuse for every atrocity."

  "And the fuel of every advance to the stars. Now, perhaps, the direction of advance is—beyond love."

  "Is there no love in your Oneness?" Kirk asked.

  "There is the extension of self. All parts become valued, necessary. But that force of passion for the individual loved one who can see into our solitude and illuminate our sameness with his difference—that passion is not ours."

  "Why, then, should you want to bring any particular man or woman in?" Kirk asked.

  "There is—remembrance of individual choice, Captain. We are yet young in the universe. And there is power. Certain minds would add to our strength, perhaps decisively." Then he looked at Kirk, almost with amusement. "Apart from that, there is the Job factor."

  "What?"

  "You are the most faithful servant of the old order, Captain, and as in the original story, he whom you serve has delivered you into the hands of temptation. It always seemed to me a rather poor reward for virtue."

  Kirk nodded. "As I recall, Job lost his wife, family, flocks, herds, herdsmen, and his health, strength, friends, comforters. I don't think I care to apply for the part."

  Gailbraith shook his head. "You have been cast, Captain, long ago, as I have. The final trial must always be against the best."

  "And what is your role?"

  "I am the Devil," Gailbraith said. "Or else I am becoming a god."

  Kirk looked at Gailbraith very carefully. There was no madness in him. He was a new order of life, possibly even the new order of life, and whether he was the future or not, he was wholly committed to summoning the future. But he would decide here which future to summon.

  "Whichever you are—god or devil," Kirk said, "I have a proposition. I will consider your solution. I will experience it to such extent as I can without being captured. If I become convinced, I will be yours. But until I do, you will help me to protect me and mine from the Totality—advise, instruct, protect, block. You will not make your decision about the Totality until you have seen also, fully, the power of love, which exists on this ship. And you will, with your powers of god or devil—which I experienced today—help me with minor things. Such as being able to stand up."

  Gailbraith laughed. "What would have happened if Job had had the gall to ask the Devil to heal him of his boils—without even demanding his soul?"

  "If the Devil were smart," Kirk said, "he would have done it."

  Gailbraith nodded. "Yes. He would have. I accept your terms, Captain, until further notice—with the exception that I cannot guarantee that you will not be captured by our Oneness—or the Totality. You are vulnerable, especially now, and it is a tricky business. However, I will make no deliberate attempt to take you or keep you against your will—without giving warning first. Agreed?"

  Kirk nodded. "Agreed."

  Gailbraith came toward him. "Experience Oneness, then, at least the first level, and be whole." He put his powerful hands on contact points on Kirk's face and head, on reflex points on the injured arm.

  The boundaries of the me/not-me began to dissolve. Kirk sensed the magnitude of the man who had been able to absorb other "me's" and remain the head, the brain, the passion. Then even the boundaries of the body seemed to dissolve and he could feel the tremendous pouring of the wholeness of the One into his ravaged body. Tissues and cells were rebuilt; life-energy fields rebalanced; strength, h
ope, desire revitalized. He was One. He was god. They were together. They were born again, one and indivisible—

  Chapter 15

  Spock's head jerked up from the science station and turned to look at Sola. She was all right.

  Spock stood up, raggedly, and she followed him as he plunged into the turbolift.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Jim!" The word was a croak in his throat. "Pool One," he said to the turbolift.

  They arrived to find Gailbraith bending over Kirk. They both appeared to be locked into some abnormal state, some peculiar intensity. Spock did not stand on ceremony. He pulled Gailbraith's hands off the contact points and flung him halfway across the room. Kirk groaned. Spock put out his own hands to replace the touch. "We are one," he murmured in the old formula of the Vulcan mind-touch.

  But they were not one. He recoiled in shock from a presence he could barely recognize—a presence which was still Kirk, but which was almost over the edge into irrevocable Oneness. Slowly, with infinite patience and terror Spock reached out to draw his friend back from that edge. "T'hyla," he said, "Jim! Your path is here."

  He felt the wordless resistance, some part of which merely wanted to go and leave Spock what he most needed. There was an image of the woman whom Kirk had required to go back to Spock. There was still some large, stubborn remainder which was pure Starship Captain and which took this way to fight for all their lives and for his ship.

  It was to that part, finally, that Spock spoke. "The ship has been effectively sabotaged in vital systems. We cannot leave orbit. You are needed on the Bridge."

  He felt the mind snap back into the familiar pattern. "Spock?"

  "Captain."

  After a moment Spock released the meld. In that moment he saw in the Captain's mind the nature of the bargain Kirk had struck.

  He pulled back and looked hard into the Human's hazel eyes. "It is as close to selling your soul as you have ever come," Spock said.

  Kirk took a very deep breath. "It is as close to losing it. Thank you, Mr. Spock." He reached to feel the injured arm. "At least the Devil keeps his word," he said.

  He stood up then, and Spock looked at him in astonishment, seeing the old energy, the old sparkle.

  Spock reached and stripped back the sleeve over the injured arm. The spray dressing was peeling off of new, healthy skin. There were no scars.

  Spock turned to look at Gailbraith, who appeared to have recovered from the shock of separation. Gailbraith bowed faintly. "Mr. Spock, I believe I can advise even you on some of the finer points of resisting the Oneness of the Totality."

  "I require no instruction," Spock said coldly.

  "I do," Kirk said. "Let's see about those sabotaged systems, Mr. Spock."

  He led off with the old energy, and Gailbraith joined them.

  Chapter 16

  McCoy headed for the Bridge. He should have informed Spock before that Kirk was on the loose, and he had better do it now and face the Vulcan music in person.

  McCoy should never have let Kirk up at all, and he was kicking himself for it. But he had seen catastrophe gaining on them from all directions, and there was no denying that Kirk was the master of the impossible solution.

  McCoy would have told Spock sooner, but the Catullan biochemist, Vrrr, had staggered into Sickbay with unexplained symptoms, and McCoy had put her on the brain-scan. This time he caught the pattern he had learned to recognize as the Zaran Totality before it had disappeared. Apparently, the attempt by the Totality to take over Vrrr had produced some near-fatal conflict with the notoriously independent Catullan mind. For a while McCoy thought he would lose her, and he labored to stabilize her from symptoms of deep shock. Eventually, the Totality pattern faded, she breathed evenly, then suddenly looked at McCoy with apparent sanity out of her great cat-eyes. But he was not certain whether Vrrr had won—or lost finally.

  His gut-hunch was that she had lost. He put her under guard—not that he could tell whether the guard was reliable. There was no way to detect possession by either the Totality or Gailbraith's Oneness. And there was no way for McCoy to fight it. He felt certain that large numbers of crew people were being taken. And it had occurred to him, belatedly, that Kirk would go to confront the problem in the person of Gailbraith.

  McCoy went to tell Spock. But it was all four of them he found as the turbolift decanted him on the Bridge simultaneously with the other one bearing Spock, Sola, Kirk, and Gailbraith. McCoy found that the Ambassador made his own hackles inexplicably rise, the short hairs standing up quite literally at the back of his neck, as if he faced not a civilized man but some ancient jungle enemy.

  Maybe he did, McCoy thought. Maybe long ago—perhaps there was an earlier battle between Oneness and individuality, and somewhere some last battle had decided it, at least for a time. And at that moment perhaps the loneliness, the splendor, the love, were born—and the occasional longing for some lost Eden of Oneness.

  Now the tribal Oneness rose again in a new form, and McCoy stood at bay against it, as doctor and as man. His medicine was unable to reclaim its victims. He saw the look on Spock's face and knew that Gailbraith's Oneness must have touched Kirk. . . . Then McCoy took one look at Kirk, who looked as if he had been freshly overhauled—unless you noticed the strain around the eyes. McCoy ran the scanner over him. Then he ran it again, not believing the readings.

  "What in God's name have you done?" he demanded. The scanner showed perfect health—except for traces of some new shock which would have stopped most men cold.

  Kirk had a slightly stunned look behind the eyes, but he managed to focus on McCoy. "It's all right, Bones. I struck—a kind of bargain with the Devil."

  "I believe it," McCoy said sourly. He peeled Kirk's sleeve up and saw the newly healed flesh. Perfect. Impossible. And McCoy didn't like it.

  "It's a healing concentration of the force of Gailbraith's Oneness, Bones," Kirk said. "Don't worry, I haven't been absorbed. Yet. Although it may be that Mr. Spock pulled me out just in time." His eyes looked haunted, but he snapped himself into the command mode and faced all of them.

  "We have no knowledge or technology with which to fight the attempt by the Totality to take over this ship. The Zaran Totality is the most dangerous form of Oneness which the galaxy faces. Sola believes the Totality is using the psionic powers of mate-bonded females of her species to weld larger and larger groups together. She does not know how to stop it. It has taken every ship it has attacked in this sector. If it gets the Enterprise, it can wipe out the physical resistance of Sola's resistance movement on Zaran. And it can destroy other planets if they offer resistance. If the Totality gets Sola as a bonded female, it may not even need to use much physical force. None of us knows anything about Oneness. Gailbraith does. There is a saying about the only way to fight fire. I have adopted the principle. I will use Gailbraith's Oneness against the Totality. Gailbraith offered certain assistance."

  "At what price?" Spock asked suddenly, and McCoy saw that the Vulcan's hackles were up, too, probably worse than his own. God knew what the Vulcan had pulled Kirk out of. A mind-link with Gailbraith?

  Kirk faced Spock squarely. "I have agreed to experience the Oneness, and to—consider the alternative."

  "There is no alternative," Spock said. "You are what you are, and your essence cannot endure any surrender to Oneness. There is an adage also about playing with fire—and getting burned. We must solve this apart from Gailbraith, or we will have surrendered the prime target in advance. You." Spock turned to Gailbraith. "His sacrifice is not acceptable to any of us. You will consider it the gallant offer of a man medically unfit to make it, and you will withdraw."

  "No, Mr. Spock," Gailbraith said quietly. "I will not."

  Spock turned to Kirk. "Withdraw the offer."

  Kirk looked at the Vulcan gravely. "I'm sorry, Mr. Spock. I can't do that."

  "Doctor McCoy," Spock said, "the Captain is medically unfit for command following severe injury and an intense form of alien mind cont
act which may have rendered him the captive of an inimical alien power. I must insist that you certify him medically unfit to command."

  "Spock," McCoy said, "I couldn't agree more." He saw the Vulcan's look of gratitude and quickly shook his head. "I can't do it, Spock. No evidence. He checks out in perfect health. And I can't detect the effects of Oneness—in anybody. You could be captive, too, for all I know. I don't like his bargain, either. But I have no medical authority to stop him."

  "Thank you, Bones," Kirk said. He reached for a moment and put a hand on McCoy's shoulder. "Don't worry. Let's get on with it."

  Then Kirk dropped down the stairs to the command chair. It was Sola who followed him.

  "You are not to consider it," she said very quietly.

  "What?" Kirk asked.

  "Going off into the night—or the Oneness. It will not solve our problem."

  He looked up at her. "At the moment I am primarily concerned with saving my ship. If you want to help me, continue as agreed."

  "The agreement did not include your bargain with the Devil."

  "Necessity makes strange bedfellows—as you know," he said. "There are some prices which have to be paid, and this is one of them."

  He turned to Gailbraith. "Ambassador, can you detect the rate at which the Totality is gaining control of the Enterprise crew?"

  "Yes," Gailbraith said.

  "How long do we have?" Kirk asked.

  McCoy saw Spock turn from the science station. It was the question Kirk would normally have asked him.

  Gailbraith shrugged. "They control key stations now. At the present rate they can have an effective majority in three hours, and the most resistant minds in six."

  "How can we fight it?" Kirk asked Gailbraith.

  "You will not like either of the answers," Gailbraith said. "I don't like the questions," Kirk said. "Say it."

  "My Oneness can contest for each soul. It has, in fact, been doing so. I control a number of your crew which I will not specify. At your order others would join without resistance. You could choose the Devil, you know—my Oneness rather than the Totality—and order your crew to do likewise."