The Wrath of Khan Page 2

McCoy gave him a hurt look. "Is that all you've got to say?"

  "I'm a Starfleet officer, not a drama critic," Kirk replied.

  "Hmph."

  "It's too bad you're not a cook," Mr. Sulu said to the admiral.

  "A cook? Why a cook?"

  "You could make fried ham," Sulu said, deadpan.

  Jim Kirk started to laugh.

  "Fried ham?" Dr. McCoy exclaimed. "I'll have you know I was the best Prince Charming in second grade!"

  "And as a side dish," Sulu said in the tones of an obsequious waiter, "perhaps a little sautéed scenery? When it's cooked it's much easier to chew." In an uncanny imitation of Dr. McCoy, he cried, "Mr. Sulu! Mr. Sulu! Oh, gods, Spock, he's dead!"

  McCoy glanced at the ceiling in supplication, but then he could not stand it any longer. He began to laugh, too. From the upper bridge, Spock watched them, his arms folded.

  McCoy wiped tears from his eyes. "Mr. Sulu, you exaggerate."

  "Poetic license," Sulu said.

  "Speaking of poetic license, or dramatic realism, or whatever," McCoy said, serious for a moment, "you hit the floor pretty hard. Are you all right?"

  "I am, yes, but did they reprogram that simulation? I don't remember its knocking us around quite so badly before killing us."

  "We added a few frills," Kirk said. "For effect." He turned toward Saavik, who had watched their interplay as dispassionately as Spock. "Well, Lieutenant, are you going down with the sinking ship?"

  He had the feeling she had to draw herself from deep thought before she replied. She did not answer his question, but, then, his question had after all been purely rhetorical.

  "The simulation is extremely effective," Saavik said.

  "It's meant to be." Kirk noticed, though, that she appeared as self-possessed and collected now as when she entered the simulator, unlike most of the other trainees, who came out sweating and unkempt.

  "But I question its realism."

  "You think it's an effective simulation, and you think it's unrealistic?" Kirk asked.

  "Yes, sir." Her imperturbability was not as complete as she pretended; Kirk could see the anger building up. "In your experience, how often have the Klingons sent ten cruisers after a single Starfleet vessel?"

  "Lieutenant," Kirk said with an edge in his voice, "are you implying that the training simulation is unfair?"

  She took a deep breath and did not flinch from his gaze. "Yes, I should have been more direct. I do not think the simulation is a fair test of command capabilities."

  "Why?"

  "The circumstances allow no possibility of success."

  Jim Kirk smiled. "Lieutenant Saavik, do you think no one who worked on the simulation, and no one who ever took it before, ever noticed that the odds couldn't be beaten?"

  She started to reply, stopped, and frowned. "No, Admiral," she said slowly. "I admit I had not considered that possibility."

  "You were given a no-win situation. That's something any commander may have to face at any time."

  She looked away. "I had not considered that, either." She made the admission only with difficulty.

  "By now you know pretty well how you deal with life, Lieutenant. But how you deal with death is important, too, wouldn't you agree?"

  "I—" She cut herself off as if she would not trust herself to answer.

  "Think about it, Lieutenant," Kirk said. "Just think about it. Carry on." He turned to leave. At the top of the stairs, he came face-to-face with Dr. McCoy. "What's the matter with you?"

  "You don't think you could manage to push just a little bit harder, do you?" McCoy said softly.

  Kirk scowled. "They've got to learn, Doctor. We can't keep the reins forever. Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young."

  He crunched through the debris on the floor and disappeared down the corridor.

  Sounding miffed, Uhura said, "What was that supposed to mean?"

  McCoy shrugged, and shook his head. He and Commander Uhura left together.

  Saavik sat alone in the ruins of her first command. She knew she must go to debriefing immediately … but she had many things to consider.

  Jim Kirk trudged toward the debriefing room. He felt tired, and depressed: and oppressed, by the shining self-confidence of the young people he had been observing. Or perhaps it was by the circumstances of fate that made him the instrument for shaking and scarring that self-confidence. But McCoy was right: he had been too hard on Lieutenant Saavik.

  He turned the corner and came face-to-face with Spock, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

  "Didn't you die?" Kirk asked.

  He thought for an instant that Spock was going to smile. But Spock recovered himself in time.

  "Do you want to know your cadets' efficiency rating—or are you just loitering?"

  "Vulcans are not renowned for their ability to loiter," Spock said.

  "Or for their ability to admit terrible character flaws, such as that they're curious."

  "Indeed, Admiral? If it will raise your opinion of my character, I suppose I must admit to some curiosity."

  "I haven't even got to the debriefing room yet, and you want an opinion." He started down the corridor again, and Spock strode along beside him.

  "I seem to recall a Starfleet admiral who referred to this particular set of debriefings as 'a damned waste of time,'" Spock said. "He had a very strong belief that actions were more important than words."

  "Did he?" Kirk said. "I don't believe I know him. Sounds like a hothead to me."

  "Yes," Spock said slowly. "Yes, at times he was known as a hothead."

  Kirk winced at Spock's use of the past tense. "Spock, those trainees of yours destroyed the simulator and you along with it."

  "Complete havoc is the usual result when Kobayashi Maru comes upon the scene." He paused, glanced at Kirk, and continued. "You yourself took the test three times."

  "No!" Kirk said with mock horror. "Did I?"

  "Indeed. And with a resolution that was, to put it politely, unique."

  "It was unique when I did it," Kirk said. "But I think a number of people have tried it since."

  "Without success you should add. It was a solution that would not have occurred to a Vulcan."

  Jim Kirk suddenly felt sick of talking over old times. He changed the subject abruptly. "Speaking of Vulcans, your protégée's first-rate. A little emotional, maybe—"

  "You must consider her heritage, Jim—and, more important, her background. She is quite naturally somewhat more volatile than—than I, for instance."

  Kirk could not help laughing. "I'm sorry, Spock. The lieutenant is remarkably self-possessed for someone of her age and experience. I was trying to make a joke. It was pretty feeble, I'll admit it, but that seems to be about all I'm up to these days." He sighed. "You know, her tactic might even have worked if we hadn't added the extra Klingon attack group." He stopped at the debriefing room. "Well."

  Spock reached out as Kirk started to go in. He stopped before his hand touched Jim Kirk's shoulder, but the gesture was enough. Kirk glanced back.

  "Something oppresses you," Spock said.

  Kirk felt moved by Spock's concern.

  "Something …" he said. He wanted to talk to Spock, to someone. But he did not know how to begin. And he had the debriefing to conduct. No, this was not the time. He turned away and went into the debriefing room.

  All those kids.

  They waited for Admiral Kirk in silence, anxious yet eager. Lieutenant Saavik arrived a moment after Kirk sat down; Spock, his usual emotionless self once more, came in quietly and sat at the very back of the room. Jim Kirk was tempted to declare the discussion over before it had begun, but regulations required a debriefing; he had to fill out a report afterward—

  That's all I ever pay attention to anymore, he thought. Regulations and paperwork.

  He opened the meeting. He had been through it all a hundred times. The usual protocol was to discuss with each student, in reverse order of seniority, w
hat they would have done had they been in command of the ship. Today was no different, and Kirk had heard all the answers before. One would have stuck to regulations and remained outside the Neutral Zone. Another would have sent in a shuttle for reconnaissance.

  Kirk stifled a yawn.

  "Lieutenant Saavik," he said finally, "have you anything to add? Second thoughts?"

  "No, sir."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "Were I confronted with the same events, I would react in the same manner. The details might be different. I see no point to increasing your boredom with trivia."

  Kirk felt embarrassed to have shown his disinterest so clearly. He reacted rather harshly. "You'd do the same thing, despite knowing it would mean the destruction of your ship and crew?"

  "I would know that it might mean the destruction of my ship and crew, Admiral. If I could not prove that Kobayashi Maru were an illusion, I would answer its distress call."

  "Lieutenant, are you familiar with Rickoverian paradoxes?"

  "No, sir, I am not."

  "Let me tell you the prototype. You are on a ship—a sailing ship, an oceangoing vessel. It sinks. You find yourself in a life raft with one other person. The life raft is damaged. It might support one person, but not two. How would you go about persuading the other person to let you have the raft?"

  "I would not," she said.

  "No? Why?"

  "For one thing, sir, I am an excellent swimmer."

  One of the other students giggled. The sound broke off sharply when a classmate elbowed him in the ribs.

  "The water," Kirk said with some asperity, "is crowded with extremely carnivorous sharks."

  "Sharks, Admiral?"

  "Terran," Spock said from the back of the room. "Order Selachii."

  "Right," Kirk said. "And they are very, very hungry."

  "My answer is the same."

  "Oh, really? You're a highly educated Starfleet officer. Suppose the other person was completely illiterate, had no family, spent most of the time getting thrown in jail, and never held any job a low-level robot couldn't do. Then what?"

  "I would neither request nor attempt to order or persuade any civilian to sacrifice their life for mine."

  "But a lot of resources are invested in your training. Don't you think you owe it to society to preserve yourself so you can carry out your responsibilities?"

  Her high-arched eyebrows drew together. "Is this what you believe, Admiral?"

  "I'm not being rated, Lieutenant. You are. I've asked you a serious question, and you've replied with what could be considered appalling false modesty."

  Saavik stood up angrily. "You ask me if I should not preserve myself so I can carry out my responsibilities. Then I ask you, what are my responsibilities? By the criteria you have named, my responsibilities are to preserve myself so I can carry out my responsibilities! This is a circular and self-justifying argument. It is immoral in the extreme! A just society—and if I am not mistaken, the Federation considers itself to be just—employs a military for one reason alone: to protect its civilians. If we decide to judge that some civilians are 'worth' protecting, and some are not, if we decide we are too important to be risked, then we destroy our own purpose. We cease to be the servants of our society. We become its tyrants!"

  She was leaning forward with her fingers clenched around the back of a chair in the next row.

  "You feel strongly about this, don't you, Lieutenant?"

  She straightened up, and her fair skin colored to a nearly Vulcan hue.

  "That is my opinion on the subject, sir."

  Kirk smiled for the first time during the meeting: this was the first time he had felt thoroughly pleased in far too long.

  "And you make an elegant defense of your opinion, too, Lieutenant. I don't believe I've ever heard that problem quite so effectively turned turtle."

  She frowned again, weighing the ambiguous statement. Then, clearly, she decided to take it as a compliment. "Thank you, sir." She sat down again.

  Kirk settled back in his chair and addressed the whole class. "This is the last of the simulation exams. If the office is as efficient as usual, your grades won't be posted till tomorrow. But I think it's only fair to let you know … none of you has any reason to worry. Dismissed."

  After a moment of silence the whole bunch of them leaped to their feet and, in an outburst of talk and laughter, they all rushed out the door.

  "My god," Jim Kirk said under his breath. "They're like a tide."

  All, that is, except Saavik. Aloof and alone, she stood up and strode away.

  Spock watched his class go.

  "You're right, Spock," Kirk said. "She is more volatile than a Vulcan."

  "She has reason to be. Under the circumstances, she showed admirable restraint."

  The one thing Spock did not expect of Lieutenant Saavik was self-control as complete as his own. He believed that only a vanishingly small difference existed between humans and Romulans when it came to the ability to indulge in emotional outbursts. But Spock had had the benefit of growing up among Vulcans. He had learned self-control early. Saavik had spent the first ten years of her life fighting to survive in the most brutal underclass of a Romulan colony world.

  "Don't tell me you're angry that I needled her so hard," Kirk said.

  Spock merely arched one eyebrow.

  "No, of course you're not angry," Kirk said. "What a silly question."

  "Are you familiar with Lieutenant Saavik's background, Admiral?" He wondered how Kirk had come to pose her the particular problem that he had. He could hardly have made a more significant choice, whether it was deliberate or random. The colony world Saavik had lived on was declared a failure; the Romulan military (which was indistinguishable from the Romulan government) made the decision to abandon it. They carried out the evacuation as well. They rescued everyone.

  Everyone, that is, except the elderly, the crippled, the disturbed … and a small band of half-caste children whose very existence they denied.

  The official Romulan position was that Vulcans and Romulans could not interbreed without technological intervention. Therefore, the abandoned children could not exist. That was a political judgment which, like so many political judgments, had nothing to do with reality.

  The reality was that the evolution of Romulans and Vulcans had diverged only a few thousand years before the present. The genetic differences were utterly trivial. But a few thousand years of cultural divergence formed a chasm that appeared unbridgeable.

  "She's half Vulcan and half Romulan," Kirk said. "Is there more I should know?"

  "No, that is sufficient. My question was an idle one, nothing more." Kirk had shaken her, but she had recovered well. Spock saw no point in telling Kirk things which Saavik herself seldom discussed, even with Spock. If she chose to put her past aside completely, he must respect her decision. She had declined her right to an antigen-scan, which would have identified her Vulcan parent. This was a highly honorable action, but it meant that she had no family, that in fact she did not even know which of her parents was Vulcan and which Romulan.

  No Vulcan family had offered to claim her.

  Under the circumstances, Spock could only admire the competent and self-controlled person Saavik had created out of the half-starved and violent barbarian child she had been. And he certainly could not blame her for rejecting her parents as completely as they had abandoned her. He wondered if she understood why she drove herself so hard, for she was trying to prove herself to people who would never know her accomplishments, and never care. Perhaps some day she would prove herself to herself and be free of the last shackles binding her to her past.

  "Hmm, yes," Kirk said, pulling Spock back from his reflections. "I do recall that Vulcans are renowned for their ability to be idle."

  Spock decided to change the subject himself. He picked up the package he had retrieved before coming into the debriefing room. Feeling somewhat awkward, he offered it to Kirk.

  "What's this?" Ji
m asked.

  "It is," Spock said, "a birthday present."

  Jim took the gift and turned it over in his hands. "How in the world did you know it was my birthday?"

  "The date is not difficult to ascertain."

  "I mean, why—? No, never mind, another silly question. Thank you, Spock."

  "Perhaps you should open it before you thank me; it may not strike your fancy."

  "I'm sure it will—but you know what they say: It's the thought that counts." He slid his fingers beneath the outside edge of the elegantly folded paper.

  "I have indeed heard the saying, and I have always wanted to ask," Spock said, with honest curiosity, "if it is the thought that counts, why do humans bother with the gift?"

  Jim laughed. "There's no good answer to that. I guess it's just an example of the distance between our ideals and reality."

  The parcel was wrapped in paper only, with no adhesive or ties. After purchasing the gift, Spock had passed a small booth at which an elderly woman created simple, striking packages with nothing but folded paper. Fascinated by the geometry and topology of what she was doing, Spock watched for some time, and then had her wrap Jim's birthday present.

  At a touch, the wrapping fanned away untorn.

  Jim saw what was inside and sat down heavily.

  "Perhaps … it is the thought that counts," Spock said.

  "No, Spock, good Lord, it's beautiful." He touched the leather binding with one finger; he picked the book up in both hands and opened it gently, slowly, being careful of its spine.

  "I only recently became aware of your fondness for antiques," Spock said. It was a liking he had begun to believe he understood, in an odd way, once he paid attention to it. The book, for example, combined the flaws and perfections of something handmade; it was curiously satisfying.

  "Thank you, Spock. I like it very much." He let a few pages flip past and read the novel's first line. "'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …' Hmm, are you trying to tell me something?"

  "Not from the text," Spock said, "and with the book itself, only happy birthday. Does that not qualify as 'the best of times'?"

  Jim looked uncomfortable, and he avoided Spock's gaze. Spock wondered how a gift that had at first brought pleasure could so quickly turn into a matter of awkwardness. Once again he had the feeling that Jim Kirk was deeply unhappy about something.