But he didn’t feel weak, he realized. He felt…free. Free to reveal to Edith-to share with her-his deepest wounds, his greatest fears, his most desperate hopes and desires. He would be utterly vulnerable to her, and yet he found that he trusted her so completely that he had not the slightest doubt that she would never betray his faith in her. He knew that, for all her days, she would love and nurture and even protect him.
A tear spilled from his eye and down the side of his face. Kirk didn’t know how she knew, but Edith reached up and gently traced one finger along his cheek. “It’s all right, Jim,” she said. “I understand.”
He knew that she did understand-what he felt for his lost parents, what he saw when he peered up at the stars, what he wanted and worked to make happen for the human race. Edith understood that and more, much more. “I get through my days by not thinking about it,” Kirk admitted, “but I miss my mom and dad.”
“I know,” Edith said, placing her hand lightly against the side of his face. “But they would want you to go on. They would be proud of you for doing so.” The words could have sounded like a hopeful fantasy or even a sort of appeasement, but delivered by Edith, they rang true.
Kirk reached up and took Edith’s hand in his own, squeezing it in a wordless display of the emotion he felt for her. She squeezed back, then pushed up from bed. Before he knew what she was doing, her lips brushed tenderly against his own.
Tonight, after he had walked her home from the mission, she had invited him here, into her one-room apartment. They had swept easily, naturally into each other’s arms, their movements sure and effortless, like those of longtime dance partners. Their lovemaking had developed at its own pace, by turns languorous and slow, then fevered and full of energy. She could not have been more right for him, nor he for her.
In the darkness, Edith lowered herself back to his side, back into arms. She again rested her head on his shoulder. After a moment, she said, “Do you have any sisters or brothers?”
“I do,” Kirk said. “I have an older brother, Sam. He and his wife have also given me three nephews.”
“That’s wonderful,” Edith said, and Kirk perceived in the assessment the sense that she had no family of her own left to her.
“They’re good boys,” Kirk said, though Sam’s two older sons had both reached their twenties. “I haven’t seen my brother and his family in almost two years.” He could hear the wistfulness in his own voice. It had been just before Kirk had taken command of the Enterprise that Sam and Aurelan had brought their family on a surprise visit to see him off on his first captaincy. He had been deeply touched by their gesture, and he realized now how much he missed them all-especially Sam. “I’d love for you to meet them,” he said without thinking.
“I’d like that too,” Edith said.
For a moment, Kirk cursed himself for his foolishness, but he could not maintain his anger. Even though he knew that Edith would never meet Sam, that she would never be more a part of his life than she was right now, his sentiment remained true: he would love for her to meet his brother. In fact, he wanted to share all of his life with her.
Edith raised herself up again, this time onto her elbows, her hands resting on Kirk’s chest. “Where is your brother?” she asked. “What does he do?”
“He’s a scientist,” Kirk said with the exuberant pride of a younger brother. “He’s- ” On Deneva, Kirk thought, but he knew he could not say that. “- out of the country doing research right now,” he finished, prevaricating but not actually lying. He didn’t think that he could lie to Edith.
“Well, when he gets back,” Edith said, “I’ll have to ask him about you…perhaps about what you were like as a boy.”
“Whatever he tells you, don’t believe it,” Kirk joked, despite the impossibility of such a meeting ever occurring. “They’ll just be the musings of a man jealous of his younger brother.”
“Oh, I see,” Edith said. “And what reason does Sam have to be jealous of you?”
Kirk felt the smile on his lips fade as he stared up into the darkness where he knew Edith’s face to be. “For one thing, because I have you.” He knew that this relationship with Edith would end, that it must end, and yet in this isolated time with her, none of that mattered. “The entire universe should envy me because I have you in my life.” Even though his time with her would end up measured merely in days, he still believed that.
“You are very sweet, Mister Kirk,” Edith whispered. Again, he felt her lips touch his. They kissed slowly, passionately.
When at last their lips parted, Kirk said, “I love you.”
“And I love you,” Edith responded.
Kirk’s heart had never been so full, and even though he knew that it never would be again, right now, he didn’t care. If he could freeze time, preserve this moment in amber, he would, but he ignored the fact that he couldn’t. He threw himself wholly into this instant, opened himself up to experience every trace of emotion within him.
“Edith,” he said, loving even the sound of her name. He pulled her down on top of him, and once more, they moved together in the darkness of her room. He wished the night would last forever.
NINE
(2271/2276)
In the parkland outside Mojave, California, Jim Kirk peered at the other version of himself and wondered which one of them had gone mad. His wounded double had suggested a plan to prevent the converging temporal loop by using the Guardian of Forever in the year 2293, despite that the mysterious artifact had been annihilated in 2270 when Korax had crashed his battle cruiser into it. “Yes,” Kirk said, agreeing with his bloodied counterpart about the flaw in the plan. “The Klingons.”
“I’m hoping it won’t matter,” said the other Kirk.
“Hoping?” Kirk said, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving anything to chance. But then his alter ego explained why he believed that his plan would work, despite-perhaps even because of-Korax’s final destructive act. It would require an action, the success of which could not be guaranteed, but Kirk also felt confident that it could be achieved. If not, then there would be one other possibility for success, though it would be arduous and risky. Of course, all of this posed a risk.
“So where do I begin?” he asked. “How do I leave the nexus?”
“Here,” the other Kirk said, and he held out his arm as though ushering Kirk into a room.
Kirk looked to where his counterpart motioned, and there he saw not the spires and edifices of Mojave, but a dim, open plain. Above, a sunless sky provided only the faint illumination of the stars. He peered about and saw only a flat, empty expanse stretching away in every direction. It took him a moment, but then he recognized their location: one of the artificial worlds of the Otevrel.
He gazed over at the other Kirk and noticed him bathed in the yellow glow of the old self-contained life support belts. Glancing down, he saw a similar radiance about his own body, one of the belts encircling his own waist. He knew that by the time the Enterprise had encountered the Otevrel, the life support belts had fallen out of use in Starfleet because of health concerns, but then he had already learned well that what had occurred in the real, physical universe often did not get reproduced precisely in the nexus.
“Why are we here?” he asked.
The other Kirk shrugged. “This seems to be the place from which you or I can leave the nexus,” he said. “I’m sure it doesn’t have to be this place, but this is what my mind conjured up when I first intended to depart.”
Kirk nodded. That explanation made no more or less sense than anything else within this timeless, unreal domain. “So where should I begin?” he asked. “And when?”
“You remember the historical research done on the Guardian’s world, the efforts made to identify the origin of the time vortex,” the other Kirk said. Though he had offered a statement of fact rather than asking a question, his tone invited a response.