“And they were connected by the nexus,” Guinan said, distinguishing the “conduit” that Data had mentioned. “Your departure with Captain Picard to Veridian Three then initiated the convergence loop.”
“But it didn’t happen right away,” Kirk noted.
“I’m sure it did,” Guinan said. “But it must have taken time for the loop to close across a span of seventy-eight years and scores of light-years.”
Kirk nodded his head as he tried to fathom the extent of the devastation about which he and Guinan spoke. “So every point in time and space between my location in twenty-two ninety-three on the Enterprise-B and my location in twenty-three seventy-one on Veridian Three- “
“And obviously in neighboring time and space,” Guinan pointed out.
“Was completely obliterated,” Kirk finished.
“Yes,” Guinan said.
The idea staggered Kirk. Not only had Veridian IV and its population likely been wiped out, but the same must have been true of other worlds, not to mention starships, beginning with and including the Enterprise-B. Kirk stood in silence as he tried to come to terms with the enormity of the situation.
Then, from the city below, the graceful sound of bells began to play. The gentle ringing seemed to Kirk an appropriate accompaniment to the fragile-looking structures from which it rose. He listened for a few moments, allowing the lilting notes to calm his troubled mind. But then something else occurred to him.
“Why me?” he asked Guinan. “Why couldn’t it have been Picard? He entered and exited the nexus too.”
“It was you,” Guinan said. “Data stated that the converging temporal loop required a significant set of identical chronometric particles.”
“Right,” Kirk said, not knowing how Guinan knew this about him, but comprehending the wealth of information available to her within the nexus. He recalled again his exceedingly high M’Benga numbers, and that Spock and McCoy had ultimately used that quantity to distinguish chronometric activity within his body. As far as Kirk knew, his numbers, which had grown sizably during his time in Starfleet, had been by far the highest ever recorded. Some of that had been attributable to his various travels through time, but his readings had always remained greater even than those of individuals who had time-traveled as much as he had. Bones had theorized that other unusual experiences must have contributed to his high numbers, possibly including some unexplained forms of instantaneous transport, such as when Trelane had whisked him from the Enterprise bridge or when the Providers of Triskelion had pulled him through space across more than eleven light-years; or possibly his exposure to other universes, such as when he had slipped through a place of interphase in Tholian space or when the ship had reached the “magical” realm of Megas-Tu; or possibly the transference of his mind out of his body, such as when he had permitted Sargon to switch consciousnesses with him or when Janice Lester had forced him to do so. Whatever the cause or causes, the chronometric activity within his body had been extremely high by the time he’d entered the nexus.
“Guinan,” Kirk said, “the crew aboard Picard’s Enterprise, were they pulled into the nexus?” He’d seen some of them vanish from the bridge when the bright light of the energy ribbon had touched them.
“Some of them were drawn into the nexus,” Guinan said, “but most were not.”
“Why?” Kirk asked. “Why not all of them?”
“It just depended on who was touched by the energy ribbon first,” she said, “and who was struck by the shock wave.”
Kirk nodded. The luck of the draw, he thought. He could just as easily have been ripped apart by the converging temporal loop as pulled back into the nexus.
But you didn’t die, he told himself. And that meant that he had a responsibility to do everything he could to find a way to undo the destruction that had been wrought on the universe. Many of the crew aboard Picard’s Enterprise had been killed, probably many of those aboard Harriman’s Enterprise as well, not to mention the hundreds of millions on Veridian IV and whatever other worlds had been impacted by the loop. “Guinan,” he said, “Picard left the nexus to go back to Veridian Three in the minutes before Soran launched his weapon. Where can I go?”
“Time has no meaning here,” Guinan said. “You can go anywhere, any time.” She paused, then asked, “But where would you go?”
Kirk looked at Guinan and asked himself the same question: Where would I go? But then he realized that he had asked the wrong question. He needed to determine not where he could go, and not even when, but what he could do.
Turning away from Guinan, Kirk peered out over the magnificent city below. The peal of the bells still drifted upward, a fragile melody that sounded almost as though the notes had been generated from the crystal buildings themselves. Now, though, Kirk stopped listening, stopped even seeing the great city, instead turning all of his senses inward.
After a few minutes, he bade Guinan good-bye.
FOUR
(2267/2276)
Kirk strode purposefully through the corridors of the Enterprise-his Enterprise. On the promontory overlooking the city of Lauresse, he had taken his leave of Guinan. He’d realized that she had come to him in order to help, and he’d told her how much he appreciated it. But as he’d begun to consider what actions he could take to reverse the devastation caused by the shock wave of the converging temporal loop, he’d discovered that he needed to do so alone. Guinan had understood, and she had reminded him that he had all of the nexus-essentially the entirety of his life, real or imagined-in which to find solitude.
When Kirk had reentered the nexus, he hadn’t chosen or participated in the events in which he’d then found himself: meeting Antonia for the first time, escaping the clutches of the proconsul on planet 892-IV, transporting down with a landing party to Gamma Trianguli VI. Prior to that, though, before he’d left the nexus with Picard, he had lived or relived much. Standing with Guinan above her city, he had harked back to those experiences, then turned from her-And stepped out of a turbolift and onto deck seventeen of the Enterprise.
Now, he walked among the crew of his first command, the familiar vibration of the ship telling him that it traveled at warp. Headed aft, he passed Yeoman Atkins and Ensign Nored, Crewman Moody and Lieutenant Leslie, offering each a curt nod. Nostalgia welled up within Kirk, along with the unexpected sentiment that these had been simpler, happier times in his life. He knew that hadn’t been the case, though. He remembered well the weight of responsibility that came with leading a crew, as well as the terrible cost that his position had claimed from him. He had loved Edith as he had loved no other woman, either before or after. For the most part, he had found fulfillment each day that he’d been able to step onto the bridge of the Enterprise or the Enterprise-A as its commanding officer, and he still felt that there had been something special about his first captaincy, but he could not deny the great scar it had placed permanently on his soul.
Kirk reached his destination and proceeded through the pale blue doors, which glided open at his approach. He marched down a short corridor, then turned right through a pair of irregularly shaped hexagonal entryways and onto the empty observation deck. Not wanting to deal with the more intense recollections that it might bring him if he spent time in his quarters, he had opted to come here, to this place he had occasionally visited during his years aboard ship. He’d selected this time, after the crew’s encounter with the Elluvex and before they reached the Pyris system, because he’d recalled having a few days of light duty. He also remembered coming here alone during that period and remaining undisturbed by any of the crew.