Chapter Twenty-five

KIRK ARRIVED in the throne room. The place looked like a war zone, and in fact it was. The Prastorians had gutted it, set afire everything that would burn, and smashed the rest. The Grand General would be a long time rebuilding from this invasion.

If he was even alive. Was anybody left in the palace? It seemed deserted. “Hello!” Kirk called out, his voice echoing off the soot-blackened stone. He wished he had some kind of weapon to defend himself with in case the wrong people answered his call, but that fear vanished when a Distrellian soldier stepped into the throne room and immediately bowed low.

“My lord hero,” he said, still looking at the floor. “Welcome.”

Must be the rainbow robe, Kirk thought. They apparently didn’t see many of them around here. “I need to talk with the Grand General,” he said. “And with my—the Enterprise.”

“Yes, sir,” the guard said. “The Grand General is right this way. Unfortunately the Enterprise has gone away.”

Gone away? Had they given up searching for Kirk and the others already? That didn’t seem like Spock. Or McCoy. They would stick around until they were absolutely sure there was no hope that anyone had survived. Of course the evidence probably looked pretty overwhelming, but still.

He followed the soldier, who looked straight ahead as if afraid the sight of a genuine Arnhall Hero would blind him, through blast-pocked hallways to a much smaller throne room where the Grand General sat directing repairs to his palace. He looked up when Kirk entered the room, then scrambled to his feet.

“You’ve come! Thank the Gods. We…wait a minute.” Recognition wiped away his relief. “Captain Kirk?”

“The same,” Kirk said.

“But…are the comp—uh, the Gods awake again?”

“The computers?” Kirk asked.

“The, uh, the arbiters, yes.” He waved his hands toward the door and said to his court, “Leave us, please.”

Silently, everyone got up and walked out the door, and the soldier who had escorted Kirk there closed it behind him on his way out.

When they’d left, Kirk said, “You don’t want your people to know that their fates lie in the circuits of a computer in your basement? Why not?”

“Because I just learned of it myself, and I’m trying to decide what to do about it,” said the Grand General. “Sit, please.” He waved at a chair, and sat back down in his own. “I take it you have been to Arnhall, then. I hadn’t expected that, since you were killed trying to escape. When you didn’t reappear on Prastor, we assumed you were stuck in the—your Mr. Spock called it a ‘pattern buffer’—along with everyone else.”

“I was dragging Harry Mudd out of the line of fire when I got hit,” Kirk told him, settling down across from him. “Apparently your computer thought that was heroic enough to send me on.”

The Grand General nodded. “Yes, that would probably do it. And it must have happened just before the android ruined everything.” He looked a dozen years older than when Kirk had last seen him, but he brightened now and said, “The Heroes must know about it, though, mustn’t they? Did they send you back to fix the problem? Did they tell you how?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Kirk. “They want me to fix it, all right, but it’s pretty clear they don’t know how to do that. They don’t even know what happened to it. They just told me to undo whatever we’d done and get it working again.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Spock and the rest of your crew are trying to do just that, but it all seems very improbable to me. They need to find Harcourt’s wife—the real one—and bring her back here to fool the computer into thinking it has resurrected her.”

Kirk tried to picture it, but couldn’t. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What does Stella Mudd have to do with anything?”

“It’s a long story,” said the Grand General. “Perhaps it would be easier to just show you.”

He got up again and led Kirk into a back room, which turned out to be a local transporter that took them to the palace’s outer wall, where they stepped across the shield boundary into another transporter which took them to another one in a different city, which deposited them outside a bathhouse. Apparently only the resurrection system could beam through shields, thought Kirk. Transporters that weren’t hooked into the network had to do it the normal way.

Inside the bathhouse he saw the Stella android, still reappearing and disappearing in her dry hot tub every few minutes. Then they beamed back to the palace and went into the caverns, through the blind transporter in the hidden closet, to look at the computers. Kirk gazed down the seemingly endless line of memory banks, each one complex enough to store an entire person’s molecular pattern, and shook his head in amazement.

“Quite a setup,” he said. “But not quite the ‘gods’ you’d been led to believe in, eh?”

“No,” said the Grand General. He looked up at one of the flickering overhead lights. “It all seems a bit…tawdry compared to the legends.”

Kirk nodded. “The truth usually does. I guess that’s why legends are so popular among the masses.” He looked back at the computers. “Narine, one of the leaders of Arnhall, told me I should blow all this to bits.”

“I have considered it,” said the Grand General. “But I’m not sure if I want to take responsibility for ending a system that has served us for so long.”

“Served you, or enslaved you?” Kirk asked.

“That does seem to be the question, doesn’t it?” The Grand General shook his head. “But whatever else we may think about it, it has kept us from actually killing each other in warfare for millennia. And now with another battle waiting for the slightest pretext to erupt, I am reluctant to cast away that safety net.”

“It’s the safety net that keeps you fighting,” Kirk said.

“I wish it were so, but the Padishah threatens to attack us even though the…’Gods’ no longer protect our warriors. One final, glorious war to end all wars.”

Kirk sighed. “I’ve heard that phrase before. We number our ‘wars to end all wars’ nowadays. We’re up to three and still bickering.” Though he had to admit, war—on Earth, at least—was less likely now than ever before. Humanity finally seemed to be learning.

Unlike the Nevisians. They were an old enough race to be one of the galaxy’s wisest, but they had stagnated instead.

“Have you and the Padishah ever talked peace?” he asked.

The Grand General nodded. “Certainly. And you saw how well that worked.”

“Not that.” Kirk waved his hands dismissively. “I’m not talking about trade agreements; I mean have you ever talked peace because you don’t want to shoot at each other anymore?”

“That would have been against the will of the Gods.”

Kirk kicked at one of the metal consoles with his toe. The hollow bonk echoed down the corridor. “Yeah,” he said, “I know what you mean. It’s hard to buck authority. But sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do if you’re going to grow up.”

Ensign Lebrun stood just inside the door to Harry’s quarters, watching him pace nervously back and forth in front of the bed. He’d been fidgeting for hours. If he kept it up much longer he would wear through the deck plating—and through Lebrun’s patience.

“Would you calm down?” she said finally. “She’s not going to hurt you.”

Mudd stopped pacing, but didn’t sit down. “That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been married long enough to know all the ways a wo—a spouse can hurt another.”

“I’m learning,” Lebrun said. “But making up is half the fun. Heck, with Simon and me it’s all the fun.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Mudd. “I don’t believe Stella and I ever ‘made up.’”

“Well good grief, don’t you think it’s high time you tried?”

“No.” Mudd turned to his viewport and looked out at the stars. “In fact, I believe it’s time to move on. The Andromeda Galaxy might be far enough, though perhaps I should go for something on the other side of the Virgo cluster. What do you think?”

Lebrun laughed. “I think you’re being needlessly melodramatic. She’s a perfectly nice woman.”

“For a targ.”

“Harry, you’re impossible.”

“So I’ve been told. Repeatedly.”

“Sorry.” Lebrun realized she was browbeating him just as badly as anyone. She stepped toward him, but just then the door chimed.

“Don’t open it!” Harry said, shrinking back.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Lebrun turned toward the door. “Come.”

It slid aside to reveal Mudd’s worst fear: Stella, standing there and tapping her toe impatiently.

“Hello,” Lebrun began to say, but Stella spoke at the same time.

“There you are, Harcourt. Consorting with children again, I see. Well, First Officer Spock has just informed me that we’re approaching the Nevis system, and will be beaming down so I can save Captain Kirk and the other people trapped by your ridiculous android. Don’t ask me why, but he wants you to come along as well.”

“I’d just as soon not,” said Harry.

“That goes without saying,” said Stella. “Since it wasn’t your idea. But perhaps you had best listen to good advice for a change.”

“Oh, I would listen to it if I ever heard any. But good advice seems to be in such short supply in your vicinity.” Harry took a cautious step closer to her. “It’s almost as if the abundance of witchon particles in the air cause it to evanesce.”

“Witchon particles? Is that some kind of slur? Because if it is—” Stella took a step into the room.

“Please, stop it, both of you.” Lebrun held out her hands. “You don’t have to do this to each other.”

Stella looked as if she might bite Lebrun’s head off, and for a second Lebrun thought she might have to go for her phaser, but then Stella blinked and smiled. “You’re right, dear. We don’t. I’ve divorced the old windbag.”

“Windbag?” protested Harry. “Now just a minute.”

“No.” Stella turned to go. “I’m needed elsewhere. I’m appreciated elsewhere. Come watch or not; it’s up to you.” She looked back to Lebrun. “A word of advice, miss. Whatever he promises you, be sure you get it in writing.”

Lebrun blushed. “It’s not like that.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. Nothing with Harry is ever quite what it seems.”

“No, really, I’m already married and everything.” Lebrun held out her hand to show Stella her ring.

“More’s the pity,” Stella said, as she sashayed off toward the turbolift.

“But—”

Harry laughed. “Don’t even try,” he said. He watched Stella round the corner and disappear; then hitched up his pants and said, “You know, that was just like old times. And I’d forgotten how refreshing it is to watch her depart. Come on, let’s go watch her do it again.”