Star Trek - Log 6 Read online

  He nodded toward the screen. "Ensign Walking Bear does not carry his information far enough, however." A quick glance at the readouts produced more startling information. "It seems that many other cultures besides the Indian of Central America include stories of a winged serpent in their mythologies. The Chinese, for example, and many African tribes. He is referred to most often as a wise but terrible god, a bringer of knowledge and . . ."

  "Myoka Mbowe."

  "What's that?" Kirk spun, to face the communications station.

  "Hmmm?" Uhura snapped out of her daydream. "Sorry, Captain. When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to tell me all the old handed-down fairy tales. Some of the stories revolved around the exploits of a god called Myoka Mbowe. It translates roughly from the Swahili as winged snake."

  "It is clear, Captain," Spock continued, "that such legends were abundant among Earth's primitive societies."

  "So that explains it," Kirk muttered, turning back to the viewscreen. "We've been attacked by a myth." His voice rose slightly, "A terran philosopher once said that there are no myths, only vague distortions of half-remembered truths.

  "We could be dealing here with the basis of all those legends, all those millennia-old stories—a space traveler who visited Earth in ancient times."

  Spock nodded. "Entirely possible."

  "It's not possible," objected Arex. "How can we be dealing with the same ship or traveler who forms the base for such legends? That would make the being in question many thousands of years old."

  "A possibility," Spock observed solemnly, "which cannot be discounted."

  "I'll even grant the chance of that, Spock," Kirk allowed, "if you'll tell me what all this business of destroying us, and failing, and ancestor ineffectuality is about? I just can't understand such naked hatred."

  Spock had turned back to the quiet scrutiny of his instruments. "I have no doubt that in time, we will be duly informed . . ."

  Soft sound heavy sound . . . the bass engine of a human heart. It sounded clear and regular from the sensor amplifier that was only a tiny part of the incredibly complex diagnostic bed.

  Always astonishing, that one muscle on which everything hinges, isn't it, Bones? He studied the figure prone before him.

  The sophisticated bed monitoring equipment needed little in the way of external confirmation, but playing safe as always, he passed the belt medicorder over the crewman's forehead. A quick check to insure that the readings matched, and then he laid it back on the nearby table.

  "You don't deserve it, specialist," he told the waiting youth gruffly, "but you're getting a few days bed rest."

  The security specialist managed a slight smile. One hand gingerly felt the ear McCoy had treated. "It's not necessary, Dr. McCoy. I can handle my duties."

  "Mine too? I'll do the prescribing around here. A few days bed rest. Remember, arguing with a superior officer is almost as bad as arguing with a doctor. And the next time you get the urge for some off-shift exercise, I suggest you try something besides high-diving into a minimum-level pool."

  "Don't worry, Doctor," the specialist cringed. "I had to learn the hard w—" His mouth opened wide.

  While the pain in his ear had abated under McCoy's skillful ministrations, it now seemed as if his other faculties had been affected for the worse.

  Certainly his eyes were hardest hit, because he could swear that McCoy had become enveloped in a stuttering, immobilizing light, as though attacked by a turquoise strobe. It froze McCoy next to the bed without touching his patient.

  It seemed that the flickering light appeared and died faster and faster. It seemed that McCoy was trying to say something. It seemed that Dr. McCoy had vanished.

  The . . .

  Scott was alone in the jeffries tube. He was inspecting the circuitry which ran from the great warp-drive engines to the engineering computer.

  Actually, it was a job any engineering tech could have handled. But when the usual twelve desperate crises weren't clamoring for his immediate attention, Scott always made time for carrying out some of the more routine tasks of engineering maintenance by himself. It was always beneficial, he felt, for an experienced engineer to immerse himself in the plebeian from time to time, to work with a fluid-state hydrometer instead of giving orders.

  And besides, he enjoyed it.

  Running the tricorder across yet another opened panel cover gave him the same feeling of aesthetic enjoyment, the same emotional satisfaction as he followed micro-chips and coupled modules, that another man might have found in a painting by Turner or a Brahms symphony. Such diffuse and openly gushing creations would have as little appeal to him as to Spock. Scott's artistic tastes were well suited to his profession—Escher for art, say, and Stockhausen in music.

  He refastened the panel and prepared to run the compact instrument over the next one. The radiance which enveloped him as he started upward was the blue of a Baja sky.

  Then he was gone, the tricorder crying out hollowly for him as it clattered and pinged its way down the open passage . . .

  The Four . . .

  Kirk paced the deck in front of the command chair. It was simplistic and unscientific; and like many simplistic and unscientific remedies, it worked. He wondered who the first human was who discovered that one of the better salves for the harried mind lay in the feet.

  "There's got to be a solution to this deadlock," he was mumbling. "Probably right in front of our eyes." He turned toward the helm. "Mr. Walking Bear, what do the legends say about . . ."

  Walking Bear dissolved in a rain of blue gas followed by a tiny bang as a puff of air rushed in to occupy the space formerly displaced by the ensign.

  As if he could snatch him back from an unknown fate, Kirk rushed the seat. But the helmsman was gone. To make sure, Kirk moved his hands through the air above the helm seat. No, the body of Walking Bear hadn't been made invisible—it had been made absent.

  The Four Are . . .

  "Captain," a hesitant voice called. Still dazed by this new development, Kirk turned to face Uhura. She sounded equally stunned, almost apologetic. "Security reports from both Sick Bay and Engineering. Both Dr. McCoy and Chief Engineer Scott have disappeared.

  "No one saw Mr. Scott vanish. We have a report on Dr. McCoy's disappearance, however. Apparently he was administering treatment to an injured security specialist . . ." she paused a moment to listen, "Jo van Dreenan, at the time. He claims that Dr. McCoy was held motionless within a blue haze, then he vanished, just like . . ." She nodded toward the now empty helm chair.

  Kirk turned to the main viewscreen, where the ghostly alien still hovered directly ahead. There was as much curiosity as anger in his question.

  "What are they, or it, doing to my crew?"

  A thorough visual demonstration negates the necessity for words. The pulsating blue amoeba ingested Kirk, flickered briefly, and took him, too.

  "Captain!" Spock shouted. There was no response. Now the first officer's gaze likewise turned to the viewscreen, and he thought things which, while not exactly emotional, were far from flattering.

  But though he wished it aloud among the imprecations, the blue light did not reappear to take him too . . .

  The Four Are Chosen.

  A vast, gray plain, open and desolate. Dull gray ground reaching to a featureless horizon, melting into a sky the color of antimony. Color began to brighten one tiny bit of it.

  The four did not appear simultaneously. And although McCoy was the first chosen, he was not the first to appear. That privilege was reserved for Walking Bear. He was followed by Scott, then Kirk, and the good doctor last of all.

  This sequence was intentional and proper. It was not, as a human observer might guess, executed at random. It was only that Kukulkan's science made use of space-time theorems that Scott would have sneered at.

  Lead landscape and dirty-cotton hills, rippling rain-laden sky without moisture. Gray pseudopods of rippling gray lakes. It was as drab as an idle thought.

  Each
man reacted with differing degrees of surprise and alarm as he rematerialized. No one stopped to analyze whether it was instinct or common sense that prompted them to move close to one another, their backs to a common center.

  Kirk was the first to recover and commence examining their surroundings. As soon as he had perceived that there was no immediate threat to their continued existence, his powerful curiosity had taken over. He was already gauging their chances for escape . . . even though he had no specific idea where they were.

  Generally, however, he felt safe in commenting: "We're somewhere inside the other ship." Silence from his three companions indicated they shared that opinion.

  It was absolutely silent in that unimaginative arena. No breeze ruffled the atmosphere.

  "No cover," Scott noted. "And us without a single phaser or communicator between us."

  "I have a suspicion neither would be of much use, Scotty."

  "That may be so, Captain, but I'd settle for a nice, ineffective laser cannon all the same. Purely as a psychological prop, of course."

  Kirk smiled faintly. "Me too, Scotty."

  McCoy was looking down at himself and patting his waist. "I've still got my belt medikit, for all the good that's worth."

  "I hope you won't have to use it, Bones."

  "Hold on." Scott looked puzzled. "I had an engineering tricorder with me. It must have remained behind on the ship when I was brought over. So why weren't Dr. McCoy's medical 'corder and supplies interfered with?"

  "Where was it, Scotty?"

  "Right in my fist, Captain. I was inspecting some circuitry with it."

  Kirk shrugged. "That might explain it. Probably the instruments that were monitoring our transport read Bones' kit as part of his clothing, whereas you were more noticeably employing yours as a tool. I don't think you'd find much use for it here."

  "Maybe not, Captain," Scott replied, "but then, I'm a full-time believer in the hairpin hypothesis."

  "Hairpin hypo . . . what's that?" McCoy wondered aloud.

  "An old engineer's adage that goes way back, Doctor," explained Scott. "It states that 'no tool is so useless that something can't be found it can be used to fix' . . . but I'd still rather have a phaser."

  "I'm beginning to believe Spock was right about the entity behind all this," Kirk allowed. "That drone probe was unlikely, this ship is unlikely, and its method of communication the most unlikely of all. So I suppose the possibility that we're dealing with a being thousands of years old is no more unlikely than the others have been. When it begins acting rationally, that's when I guess I'll start doubting this." He turned to the youngest of the four.

  "Mr. Walking Bear, do the legends say what eventually happened to this Kukulkan? Old cultures usually disposed of their gods neatly."

  "Only that he left and promised to return one day, sir."

  Kirk looked satisfied. "Sounds like all the promises ascribed to all the ancient gods of Earth." He looked from one to the other. "I don't think we need doubt that the drone probe was an information gatherer for this Kukulkan." He turned pensive.

  "I only wish I knew what it was in that information that's caused the receiver to act in such an unfriendly manner, without even giving us a chance to find out what's behind all this. I . . ." He hesitated.

  "What is it, Jim?" asked McCoy, sounding worried.

  "Listen." They fell silent. In the complete quiet a distant buzz became audible . . . muted but unmistakable. In grew louder, and then familiar.

  It was the sound of many tongues speaking simultaneously. It had overtones of pure alienness, which did not bother Kirk at all. It also hinted of expectancy, which did.

  "We're being watched, I think," commented McCoy, eyeing the gray bowl of sky uneasily.

  "When I was a child," Walking Bear murmured, "I used to hide in a hall closet when I was supposed to be asleep, so I could listen to the adults talking in the sitting room. There wasn't a minute when I wasn't afraid the door would fly open to show my foster mother standing there, glaring down at me, ready to send me to bed with a beating." He studied the featureless plain.

  "Strange how the earliest emotions linger the longest."

  Kirk faced his chief engineer. "Is there any way Spock could get through to us with a transporter beam?"

  "I don't think so, sir," Scott said, shaking his head in resignation. "Our sensors couldn't penetrate this ship's screens. And since our phasers couldn't break out of the energy bubble around the ship, I don't see a transporter beam doin' any better."

  The steady buzz intensified. The four men diligently searched the horizon, at once hoping to see something, and hoping not to. Then the insectlike hum seemed to coalesce. The resulting voice still had touches of many, but now the words were distinct—and comprehensible.

  "Now I will show to you the seeds that I have sown before," it pontificated. "Learn from them . . . find the purpose if you can. If you can do so, then and only then will I appear before you."

  The buzzing voice faded to nothingness. Even as it was dying away, it was drowned by a profound thunder, as though immense engines were stirring underfoot, in the air, in the gray walls enclosing them.

  As Kirk stared and tried not to sweat—there were less elaborate ways of killing four men, and anyway, the voice had said they had some seeds to inspect, whatever that meant—the landscape began to change color. Initially it shifted to an orange-gray. As the concussive rumble mounted, the gray gave way to a pure, almost blinding orange. Distances were indeterminate, but it seemed a sun appeared in open sky above. It was lambent orange. The rumbling reached a peak whereupon definite tones could be heard. They verged on music, but then so did the machinery of a kilometers-square factory. It was almost, McCoy thought, as if an enormous organ was playing somewhere—woodwind, violin, flute and chime pipes all weaving in and out among the deepest pedal notes. Everything participating, he mused, but a vox humana. He didn't expect to hear anything as comforting as that.

  The Ivesian mosaic softened and orange turned to blue. Apparently Kukulkan's usable spectrum differed from theirs.

  The result of all the activity began manifesting itself. First the familiar vegetation started to appear. Palm trees, huge ferns, vines and creepers lacing together a network of trees rose from the orange-blue ground. Dense undergrowth filled in the empty places like an afterthought.

  It surrounded them on three sides, leaving only the ground directly ahead still barren. A trickle of running water could be heard; but even so, the amazing simulacrum still lacked something.

  Kirk fixed on it a moment later. This was a curiously lifeless simulacrum. There were no animal sounds. No birds, no complaining primates . . . not even the addlepated hum of a hunting wasp. There were no smells, either, of hidden creatures. There should have been the musky odor of mobile life. Instead, there was only the oddly uninviting perfume of huge blossoms, the pungent miasma of steaming greenery.

  Nothing. For all its color this fabricated jungle was as dead as the gray womb they had just vacated.

  As if in anger, the rumbling sound returned. This time it was accompanied by a violent vibrating which rattled Kirk's teeth and pricked at his spine.

  Lines appeared in the open ground before them. This section was mostly lower than the slight rise they stood on, and Kirk could see rectangles and squares being laid out on the orange. Something was tracing a city there.

  It began to sprout, weedlike, from the porous ground.

  Had he overlooked the possibility that they had been transported to some far world, and there ensconced in a clay cavern? No . . . the structures forming in front of him were made of something similar to, but far more sophisticated than clay. Then he recognized it—the material was almost identical to the strange crystalline substance of the alien's hull.

  Hints of many cultures were embodied in those buildings: touches of Mayan architecture, Aztec edification, of Egyptian engineering and Southeast Asian religious construction and a host of a hundred others. Not all were extin
ct, but all were distinct. Yet they blended in a way which suggested that this fabrication and not the aged realities was the end to which they had all been striving.

  Fragmentary Sumer merged with oil-age New York baroque. Bits of Inca regularity were subsumed by the curves of dead Monomotapa. Everything was enmeshed in its neighbor, interwoven and entwined and interchanged.

  Despite this, the commandments of basic geometry held court, and somehow it all worked.

  The city seemed livable, if not downright inviting. Nor did it appear all that primitive. Some of the angles and reflective buttresses were unrecognizable even to Scott's experienced eye.

  The chief engineer was more interested in the material than in the method. It looked like ordinary stone . . . but when the sun struck a wall or parapet at a certain angle, the hard reflection that resulted was more suited to polished metal. And if you squinted a little with your eyes—and mind—various structures seemed built of opaque glass.

  What could only be the city's entrance lay immediately before them, an open gate flanked by two sleek cylindrical towers. They resembled Egyptian obelisks. Yet when the light changed a little it was clear they were akin to the great towers once raised by the mystic artist-architects of Mohenjo Daro.

  Just as Kirk was convinced the construction was complete, the persistent rumble rose almost painfully in volume. As the ground quaked underfoot, a single colossal structure leaped skyward from the city center. Dominating the skyline, it seemed to pull all the lines of each and every building, every tower and wall, together to form an unbreakable metropolitan whole. It was the highest facet on a well-cut gem.

  As the final block appeared, and the last decoration materialized on the walls, the rumbling sound died for the final time.

  The four officers were left to stand and wonder at a city at once alien and familiar. And no wonder, for it was the city man had almost raised half a hundred times, all across his world. The city that shows up in the corner of an architect's eye but never seems the same when committed to blueprint . . . the city men see in old dreams . . .