Within the ring of the Guardian, Kirk saw himself lying in a coma in the Enterprise’s sickbay, and then unconscious atop a diagnostic pallet in Starbase 10’s infirmary. It struck him that those times in his life had come after the Gr’oth had rammed into the Guardian of Forever. Or had it? Kirk thought. The recordings of the incident had shown the Klingon vessel as it had streaked through the atmosphere, and they had shown its intended target. But when the Gr’oth had gotten close to the planet’s surface, its mass had obscured the view of the Guardian. Could it be that the time vortex had during those last moments taken itself away, traveling through time to a place and time of safety? If the Guardian had been destroyed, Kirk asked himself, could it possibly be showing me events in my life that had taken place after that? Though he could not be sure, he didn’t think so.
As his life continued to unfurl within the Guardian, he said, “I will unintentionally cause the shock wave that will destroy a portion of the galaxy, and I need your help to keep that from happening.” When the Guardian did not respond, Kirk explained precisely how and why the converging temporal loop had developed, then detailed his plan to stop it from occurring.
“Do you understand?” he asked when he had finished.
No reply.
“Will you help me?” he tried.
Nothing.
“Will you save yourself from the starship in the way that I have requested?”
“I am my own beginning, my own ending,” repeated the Guardian. “Through me is eternity kept.”
Kirk could not determine whether that answered his question, but he also realized that he would likely receive no reply more explicit than that, no matter what he asked. Strictly speaking, other than the Guardian allowing him to travel back into his own life right now, its participation would not be crucial to Kirk’s efforts to avert the temporal loop. Being able to move through time via the vortex a second time would make it far easier to carry out his plan, but if necessary, he could succeed without that capability.
In the mists of the Guardian, moments from the Enterprise’s seven-and-a-half-year expedition to and from the Aquarius Formation flickered past. After that, he saw himself riding a horse on his uncle’s farm in Idaho, and he saw Antonia. He saw Khan Noonien Singh and Carol Marcus. He saw his son, David.
While the images continued to fade into and out of view, Kirk made additional attempts to converse with the Guardian. He tried to learn if it would indeed protect itself from Korax’s suicidal plunge to the planet, and if it would be available to Kirk in his attempt to thwart the emergence of the shock wave. The Guardian spoke little and revealed less.
In the end, recognizing that he would learn no more than he already had, Kirk decided to proceed. Either the Guardian would survive beyond 2270 or it would not, either it would assist him when the time came or it would not. No matter, Kirk would do whatever he could to prevent the converging temporal loop.
He waited quietly as the pictures within the vortex moved on, showing the days aboard his last command, the Enterprise-A. Eventually, he saw himself in retirement once more, this time not sequestering himself away in the hills of Idaho, but traveling the globe and the galaxy: rappelling the Crystalline Trench, climbing Mount Revek, diving the Alandros Caves, rafting the lava flows of the Valtarik volcano, and more. As he reflected on the feats of derring-do that he’d undertaken during his second retirement, he realized how much he had been motivated to engage in such dangerous activities by the general sadness that had settled over his life.
At last, the images within the vortex reached the days just before he had boarded the Enterprise-B for its maiden voyage. He quickly reiterated his requests of the Guardian, then took a step back with one foot, preparing himself to move quickly. When he saw himself walking along the streets of San Francisco, he knew that the moment had come.
Kirk sprang forward and leaped through the Guardian of Forever, back into his own past.
ELEVEN
2293
A cool breeze blew in from the bay and across the Presidio, hardly unusual weather for San Francisco late on a summer afternoon. As Jim Kirk walked alongside the facilities building on the Starfleet Headquarters campus, he glanced north, past the international-orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands. There, he saw fog already beginning to roll in from the Pacific. It would doubtless be a cold, damp night.
At the intersection with Robert April Way, Kirk turned onto the wide pedestrian thoroughfare, which led up to the main administration building in the center of the grounds. Hugging the wall a little too tightly, he nearly tripped over a low bench situated against the wall. He quickly jogged to his right and skirted both it and a potted bush beside it.
Several people strode along the gray paving stones and amid the scattered greenery, most of them in groups of two or three, and so far as Kirk could see, all of the them in uniform. Dressed himself in civilian attire-brown slacks and a jade-colored shirt-he felt out of place. Although he had spent more than half his life-Kirk heard a scuffling noise behind him and he looked around in that direction. Back past the bench he had almost fallen over, he saw disappearing behind the facilities building a black pant leg, its thin red stripe distinguishing it as part of a Starfleet uniform. Kirk turned around and continued on his way.
Although he’d officially retired from Starfleet only earlier in the year, it already seemed strange to be back here. He still lived close by, in Russian Hill Tower, and he could even see the Presidio campus from the windows of this apartment. But merely seeing this place did not equate with actually being here.
Twice, Kirk had declined this invitation. Fleet Captain Strnod had left messages asking to meet with him, both times when Kirk had been off world. Once, he’d been cliff diving into the garnet waters of the Canopus Planet, and the other time, employing artificial wings to fly in the low-gravity environment of Izar’s Shroud. On each occasion, after the message had been forwarded to him, he’d replied with the same simple rejection: “Whatever it is, no thanks. I’m retired.” He hadn’t even wanted to know why Starfleet had asked to see him. If their interest had related to the assassination of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon and the attempt on the life of Federation President Raghoratreii, if the admiralty had perhaps needed him to provide additional testimony about his role in unmasking the conspiracy, they would have made him aware of that. Since Strnod hadn’t specified the reason for calling him in for a meeting, though, Kirk had assumed that they’d merely wanted to try to coax him back into the fold.
He would never allow that to happen.
As he followed April Way around a curve that would bring the walkway across the front of the administration building, Kirk thought about the reasons he’d decided to leave Starfleet. In some ways, it had begun with the Enterprise-A, the ship he had commanded for eight years, and the namesake of which he had commanded for a dozen more. When Starfleet had decided to decommission the vessel after its decades of service-the ship had first seen duty as the Yorktown prior to its rechristening, when Kirk had been posted as its captain-the time had seemed right to step away. Many of the senior command crew with whom he had for so long served had aspirations beyond starship duty. Spock had initially returned to training cadets, but then he’d accepted an appointment as a full-fledged ambassador. McCoy had gone back to medical research, Uhura had taken a position with Starfleet Intelligence, and Scotty had retired. Kirk certainly could have assumed the captaincy of another ship, but he’d found little desire to command a vessel other than the Enterprise, and even less to do so without his friends by his side.
In addition to all of that, the space service in his estimation had become overly political in recent years. With so many interstellar tensions-with the Klingons, the Romulans, the Tholians, and others-missions of exploration had frequently given way to missions of diplomacy. Kirk understood and agreed with the efforts to maintain peace throughout the quadrant, but when he’d peered up at the stars as a boy, it had not been with the dream that he would one day mediate.