She found herself breaking into a smile. “You’ll do, James,” she said, nodding. “I wonder if Jim could do as well? Let’s go.”
He did not even say, “Where?” He followed her through the door.
Kirk thrashed in nightmare, knew it was nightmare, would not permit himself to dream it.
He twisted and rolled up, clawing his way to his knees, two nightmares mingling. Omne—No, that was the old nightmare. Reach for the new one, the quiet, bitter one. The one with the knowledge that Spock was dying at Omne’s hands-Kirk snapped his eyes open with a convulsion of his whole body.
He was in the study. No, some other room. Darker. There was some flicker of light. The surface under him was a broad leather bench.
The second nightmare—where had it come from? It seemed to be with him still, and he couldn’t shake it. He pried himself up and leaned his hands on his thighs. A natural enough fear, he supposed. Spock and Omne. Yet Spock could not be in here. But it had seemed so vivid, not a fear but a fact. Leaden, in the pit of his stomach. Burning in his scalded thighs and raw hands. What?
He snatched his hands up to examine them, put them down to touch the insides of his thighs, the aching ankle-No. That was not the pain of his own body. There was no pain in his own body. Well, damn little, considering. And yet the pain was there. And the grief in his mind. How-Did it matter?
Spock—
He dragged himself off the bench, fighting unutterable weariness but calling on some last reserve. Get moving. Find out. He saw that the flicker of light was from a Dank of monitor screens. Good.
He tottered a little but did not sag—until his eyes froze on the two figures in black, locked in primordial combat Omne and—dear God—Spock.
CHAPTER XVII
Spock kept moving.
They were both barely moving now, but he must not be caught by the bull rush or the bear hug. His broken ribs would not take it. Nor would the battered muscles, torn tendons, screaming nerves, gashed flesh. The Vulcan capacity against pain had long since been used and exceeded. He moved on nerve.
Omne’s arms reached for him with the slowness of his own deadly weariness and pain. The black silk hung in rags and the bared arms, shoulders, stomach, were green with Spock’s blood and blue-green with his own.
Omne was not merely a Vulcanoid, Spock thought again, slashing up at the reaching arms and throwing the giant off balance. He was of a related species, possibly. But he was in a class by himself. Spock knew that he had never met such a fighter in his life.
Omne swung back and Spock ducked, came up with his hands locked together and slashed at the bloody, heathen-idol face with great double-handed cleaver strokes.
He had to finish him.
Omne reeled, backpedaled, turned, and fled, staggering, lurching around the end of another lab bench.
Spock followed grimly, knowing that the giant had been looking for the fallen gun for some time. The search for the gun was a measure of the fact that Omne had never met such a man as the Vulcan, either, but Spock took small satisfaction in that.
He launched himself in a flat dive as he saw that this time the gun was there and Omne was going for it.
They fell and rolled, short of the gun. But Spock knew that this was final. He could not withstand the brute strength more than seconds.
And this time the knowledge drove his hands unerringly and unstoppably to the nerve pinch centers in both massive shoulders. He knew already that the centers were incredibly resistant, the nerves shielded by corded muscles like cabled steel. But the nerves were not invulnerable, and Spock’s hands were dura-steel forged in fire of purpose.
The giant’s arms locked around Spock’s broken ribs. Green haze blurred Spock’s vision and blood pounded in his temples. But his hands were inexorable.
He saw white agony in the black eyes, and saw consciousness fading in them. He saw astonishment and black rebellion in the eyes which had never been defeated. Fear. But no surrender.
Creeping paralysis loosened the great muscles. The arms fell away and the corded abdomen went soft under Spock’s. And still the black eyes did not yield the last shred of consciousness.
And—they must not, Spock realized suddenly. He needed the man’s consciousness—as guide, as map to the labyrinth of mind, else Spock could grope forever in the darkness of inert memories for the one memory he needed.
Worse, he wanted the man to know what was happening, wanted him to feel the violation of his mind. And there was another memory which Spock wanted to rip out by the roots.
It was a thing no Vulcan could do, violating the deepest prohibition of a telepathic race—the forcing of a mind…
Spock loosened his hands. There was a time for breaking rules.
The black eyes cleared a little in the astonishment of a new terror, as if Omne could read an intention worse than murder in Spock’s face.
Spock locked his left hand again into the nerve center and unlocked his right to reach for the mind-hold on the battered face.
“What—” the puffed lips said almost silently, then more strongly, “—what are you going to do?”
Spock cracked blood loose from his own lips and knew that he had bared his teeth. “I am going to take him from you,” he said, “all of him and both of him—the memory of him. I will find the memory and know it, all of it, and then I will take it away, bit by bit, and you will feel it going and know that it will be as if he had never been for you—never been seen, known, hurt-“
Omne’s breath caught “That is—worse than what I did.”
“Yes,” Spock said. “Would you care to beg?”
The lips twisted in a terrible grin. “Would it do me any good?”
No,” Spock answered, and he was certainly not smiling. “Would it have for him?”
Omne’s laugh rumbled faintly in his throat “No,” he said, and the black eyes were unrepentant and unyielding, setting themselves to fight on the level of mind.
Spock went for the link, thrusting in with one single, tearing, unstoppable stroke and for one single objective: the one memory he had to know first before anything might stop him.
He found it by the very force of Omne’s resistance, and then it was etched in Spock’s brain: the route to Kirk, to Jim. And—the way out.
So much for business. Now for—Spock turned to reach for the other memory. And he met the shocking vitality of the dark mind, now past the first shock and mobilized against him.
It was another fight such as there had never been, and another one Spock would win because he had to.
He tore along the memory as on a trail of fire, letting it burn into his brain too fast for full comprehension. But it would be there later, and would never be erased. He let the great, dark mind batter at his own with savage, flailing blows, trying to reduce him to quivering pain with the sheer power of its black essence.
He knew that he would feel the pain, even absorb the essence, and not be reduced.
“Say good-by to it,” he snarled aloud.
The black eyes locked with his in ultimate resistance.
And the great muscles heaved in convulsion. Pain hit Spock from directions he could not name—in body, in mind—but he held on.
The giant’s great legs bucked and heaved his bulk backward, dragging Spock along.
Omne’s hand reached the gun, and Spock’s hands abandoned all else to lock on the thick wrist.
“Die, Vulcan,” the black fury breathed.
The gun barrel shuddered by millimeters toward Spock’s head, and he forced it away with all his strength, began to force it down towards Omne’s head.