Star Trek - Blish, James - 01

  Star Trek - Blish, James - 01

  Author's Note

  The plots and the characters in these stories are adapted from individual scripts for the television series Star Trek. Hence, although I am the only author of record for this book, each story in it is in effect a collaboration with a different script-writer.

  JAMES BLISH Alexandria, Va. 1966

  Charlie's Law

  Though as Captain of the starship Enterprise James Kirk had the final authority over four hundred officers and crewmen, plus a small and constantly shifting popula-tion of passengers, and though in well more than twenty years in space he had had his share of narrow squeaks, he was firmly of the opinion that no single person ever gave him more trouble than one seventeen-year-old boy.

  Charles Evans had been picked up from a planet called Thasus after having been marooned there for fourteen years, the sole survivor of the crash of his parents' research vessel. He was rescued by the survey ship Antares, a transport about a tenth of the size of the Enterprise, and subsequently transferred to Kirk's ship, wearing hand-me-down clothes and carrying all the rest of his possessions in a dufflebag.

  The officers of the Antares who brought him aboard the Enterprise spoke highly of Charlie's intelligence, eagerness to learn, intuitive grasp of engineering mat-ters-"He could run the Antares himself if he had to"- and his sweetness of character; but it struck Kirk that they were almost elbowing each other aside to praise him, and that they were in an unprecedented hurry to get back to their own cramped ship, without even so much as begging a bottle of brandy.

  Charlie's curiosity had certainly been obvious from those first moments, though he showed some trepidation, too-which was not surprising, considering his long and lonely exile. Kirk assigned Yeoman Rand to take him to his quarters. It was at this point that Charlie stunned her and everyone else present by asking Kirk honestly:

  "Is that a girl?"

  Leonard McCoy, the ship's surgeon, checked Charlie from top to toe and found him in excellent physical condition: no traces of malnutrition, of exposure, of hard-ship of any sort; truly remarkable for a boy who'd had to fend for himself on a strange world from the age of three. On the other hand, it was reasonable to suppose that fourteen years later, Charlie would either be in good shape, or dead; he would have had to come to terms with his environment within the first few years.

  Charlie was not very communicative about this puz-zle, though he asked plenty of questions himself-he seemed earnestly to want to know all the right things to do, and even more urgently, to be liked, but the purport of some of McCoy's questions apparently baffled him.

  No, nobody had survived the crash. He had learned English by talking to the memory banks on the ship; they still worked. No, the Thasians hadn't helped him; there were no Thasians. At first he had eaten stores from the wreck; then he had found some other... things, growing around.

  Charlie then asked to see the ship's rule book. On the Antares, he said, he hadn't done or said all the right things. When that happened, people got angry; he got angry, too. He didn't like making the same mistake twice.

  "I feel the same way," McCoy told him. "But you can't rush such matters. Just keep your eyes open, and when in doubt, smile and say nothing. It works very nicely."

  Charlie returned McCoy's grin, and McCoy dismissed him with a swat on the rump, to Charlie's obvious aston-ishment.

  McCoy brought the problem up again on the bridge with Kirk and his second-in-command, Mr. Spock. Yeoman Rand was there working on a duty roster, and at once volunteered to leave; but since she had seen as much of Charlie as anyone had, Kirk asked her to stay. Besides, Kirk was fond of her, though he fondly imagined that to be a secret even from her.

  "Earth history is full of cases where a small child managed to survive in a wilderness," McCoy went on.

  "I've read some of your legends," said Spock, who was native to a nonsolar planet confusingly called Vulcan. "They all seem to require a wolf to look after the infants."

  "What reason would the boy have to lie, if there were Thasians?"

  "Nevertheless there's some evidence that there were, at least millennia ago," Spock said. "The first survey reported some highly sophisticated artifacts. And condi-tions haven't changed on Thasus for at least three million years. There might well be some survivors."

  "Charlie says there aren't," Kirk said.

  "His very survival argues that there are. I've checked the library computer record on Thasus. There isn't much, but one thing it does say: 'No edible plant life.' He simply had to have had some kind of help."

  "I think you're giving him less credit than he de-serves," McCoy said.

  "For the moment let's go on that assumption," Kirk said. "Mr. Spock, work out a briefing program for young Charlie. Give him things to do-places to be. If we keep him busy until we get to Colony Five, experienced educators will take him over, and in the meantime, he should leave us with relative calm aboard... Yeoman Rand, what do you think of our problem child?"

  "Wellll," she said. "Maybe I'm prejudiced. I wasn't going to mention this, but... he followed me down the corridor yesterday and offered me a vial of perfume. My favorite, too; I don't know how he knew it. There's none in the ship's stores, I'm sure of that."

  "Hmm," McCoy said.

  "I was just going to ask him where he got it, when he swatted me on the rump. After that I made it my business to be someplace else."

  There was an outburst of surprised laughter, quickly suppressed.

  "Anything else?" Kirk said.

  "Nothing important. Did you know that he can do card tricks?"

  "Now, where would he have learned that?" Spock de-manded.

  "I don't know, but he's very good. I was playing soli-taire in the rec room when he came in. Lieutenant Uhura was playing 'Charlie is my darling' and singing, and at first he seemed to think she was mocking him. When he saw she didn't mean it personally, he came over to watch me, and he seemed to be puzzled that I couldn't make the game come out. So he made it come out for me- without even touching the cards, I'd swear to that. When I showed I was surprised, he picked up the cards and did a whole series of tricks with them, good ones. The best sleight-of-hand I've ever seen. He said one of the men on the Antares taught him how. He was enjoying all the attention, I could tell that, but I didn't want to encourage him too much myself. Not after the swatting incident."

  "He got that trick from me, I'm afraid," McCoy said.

  "No doubt he did," Kirk said. "But I think I'd better talk to him, anyhow."

  "Fatherhood becomes you, Jim," McCoy said, grinning.

  "Dry up, Bones. I just don't want him getting out of hand, that's all."

  Charlie shot to his feet the moment Kirk entered his cabin; all his fingers, elbows, and knees seemed to bend the wrong way. Kirk had barely managed to nod when he burst out: "I didn't do anything!"

  "Relax, Charlie. Just wanted to find out how you're getting along."

  "Fine. I... I'm supposed to ask you why I shouldn't- I don't know how to explain it."

  "Try saying it straight out, Charlie," Kirk said. "That usually works."

  "Well, in the corridor... I talked to... when Janice... when Yeoman Rand was..." Abruptly, setting his face, he took a quick step forward and slapped Kirk on the seat. "I did that and she didn't like it. She said you'd explain it to me."

  "Well," Kirk said, trying hard not to smile, "it's that there are things you can do with a lady, and things you can't. Uh, the fact is, there's no right way to hit a lady. Man to man is one thing, man to woman is some-thing else. Do you understand?"

  "I don't know. I guess so."

  "If you don't, you'll just have to take my word for it for the time being. In the meantime, I'm having
a sched-ule worked out for you, Charlie. Things to do, to help you learn all the things you missed while you were ma-rooned on Thasus."

  "That's very nice, for you to do that for me," Charlie said. He seemed genuinely pleased. "Do you like me?"

  That flat question took Kirk off guard. "I don't know," he said equally flatly. "Learning to like people takes time. You have to watch what they do, try to under-stand them. It doesn't happen all at once."

  "Oh," Charlie said.

  "Captain Kirk," Lieutenant Uhura's voice broke in over the intercom.

  "Excuse me, Charlie... Kirk here."

  "Captain Ramart of the Antares is on D channel. Must speak to you directly."

  "Right. I'll come up to the bridge."

  "Can I come too?" Charlie said as Kirk switched out.

  "I'm afraid not, Charlie. This is strictly ship's busi-ness."

  "I won't disturb anybody," Charlie said. "I'll stay out of the way."

  The boy's need for human company was touching, no matter how awkwardly he went about it. There were, many years of solitude to be made up for. "Well, all right," Kirk said. "But only when you have my permis-sion. Agreed?"

  "Agreed," Charlie said eagerly. He followed Kirk out like a puppy.

  On the bridge, Lieutenant Uhura, her Bantu face intent as a tribal statue's, was asking the microphone: "Can you boost your power, Antares? We are barely reading your transmission."

  "We are at full output, Enterprise" Ramart's voice said, very distant and hashy. "I must speak with Captain Kirk at once."

  Kirk stepped up to the station and picked up the mike. "Kirk here, Captain Ramart."

  "Captain, thank goodness. We're just barely in range. I've got to warn-"

  His voice stopped. There was nothing to be heard from the speaker now but stellar static-not even a carrier wave.

  "See if you can get them back," Kirk said.

  "There's nothing to get, Captain," Lieutenant Uhura said, baffled. "They aren't transmitting any more."

  "Keep the channel open."

  Behind Kirk, Charlie said quietly: "That was an old ship. It wasn't very well constructed."

  Kirk stared at him, and then swung toward Spock's station.

  "Mr. Spock, sweep the transmission area with probe sensors."

  "I've got it," Spock said promptly. "But it's fuzzy. Unusually so even for this distance."

  Kirk turned back to the boy. "What happened, Char-lie? Do you know?"

  Charlie stared back at him, with what seemed to be uneasy defiance. "I don't know," he said.

  "The fuzzy area is spreading out," Spock reported."I'm getting some distinct pips now along the edges. Debris, undoubtedly."

  "But no Antares?"

  "Captain Kirk, that is the Antares," Spock said quietly. "No other interpretation is possible. Clearly, she blew up."

  Kirk continued to hold Charlie's eye. The boy looked back.

  "I'm sorry it blew up," Charlie said. He seemed uneasy, but nothing more than that. "But I won't miss them. They weren't very nice. They didn't like me. I could tell."

  There was a long, terribly tense silence. At last Kirk carefully unclenched his fists.

  "Charlie," he said, "one of the first things you're going to have to get rid of is that damned cold-bloodedness. Or self-centeredness, or whatever it is. Until that gets under control, you're going to be less than half human."

  And then, he stopped. To his embarrassed amazement, Charlie was crying.

  "He what?" Kirk said, looking up from his office chair at Yeoman Rand. She was vastly uncomfortable, but she stuck to her guns.

  "He made a pass at me," she repeated. "Not in so many words, no. But he made me a long, stumbling speech. He wants me."

  "Yeoman, he's a seventeen-year-old boy."

  "Exactly," the girl said.

  "All this because of a swat?"

  "No, sir," she said. "Because of the speech. Captain, I've seen that look before; I'm not seventeen. And if something isn't done, sooner or later I'm going to have to hold Charlie off, maybe even swat him myself, and not on the fanny, either. That wouldn't be good for him. I'm his first love and his first crush and the first woman he ever saw and..." She caught her breath. "Captain, that's a great deal for anyone to have to handle, even one item at a time. All at once, it's murder. And he doesn't understand the usual put-offs. If I have to push him off in a way he does understand, there may be trouble. Do you follow me?"

  "I think so, Yeoman," Kirk said. He still could not quite take the situation seriously. "Though I never thought I'd wind up explaining the birds and the bees to anybody, not at my age. But I'll send for him right now."

  "Thank you, sir." She went out. Kirk buzzed for Charlie. He appeared almost at once, as though he had been expecting something of the sort.

  "Come in, Charlie, sit down."

  The boy moved to the chair opposite Kirk's desk and sat down, as if settling into a bear trap. As before, he beat Kirk to the opening line.

  "Janice," he said. "Yeoman Rand. It's about her, isn't it?"

  Damn the kid's quickness! "More or less. Though it's more about you."

  "I won't hit her like that any more. I promised."

  "There's more to it than that," Kirk said. "You've got some things to learn."

  "Everything I do or say is wrong," Charlie said des-perately. "I'm in the way. Dr. McCoy won't show me the rules. I don't know what I am or what I'm supposed to be, or even who. And I don't know why I hurt so much inside all the time-"

  "I do, and you'll live," Kirk said. "There's nothing wrong with you that hasn't gone haywire inside every human male since the model came out. There's no way to get over it, around it, or under it; you just have to live through it, Charlie."

  "But, it's like I'm wearing my insides outside. I go around bent over all the tune. Janice-Yeoman Rand- she wants to give me away to someone else. Yeoman Lawton. But she's just a, just a, well, she doesn't even smell like a girl. Nobody else on the ship is like Janice. I don't want anybody else."

  "It's normal," Kirk said gently. "Charlie, there are a million things in the universe you can have. There are also about a hundred million that you can't. There's no fun in learning to face that, but you've got to do it. That's how things are."

  "I don't like it," Charlie said, as if that explained everything.

  "I don't blame you. But you have to hang on tight and survive. Which reminds me: the next thing on your schedule is unarmed defense. Come along to the gym with me and we'll try a few falls. Way back in Victorian England, centuries ago, they had a legend that violent exercise helped keep one's mind off women. I've never known it to work, myself, but anyhow let's give it a try."

  Charlie was incredibly clumsy, but perhaps no more so than any other beginner. Ship's Officer Sam Ellis, a member of McCoy's staff, clad like Kirk and Charlie in work-out clothes, was patient with him.

  "That's better. Slap the mat when you go down, Charlie. It absorbs the shock. Now, again."

  Ellis dropped of his own initiative to the mat, slapped it, and rolled gracefully up onto his feet. "Like that."

  "I'll never learn," Charlie said.

  "Sure you will," Kirk said. "Go ahead."

  Charlie managed an awkward drop. He forgot to slap until almost the last minute, so that quite a thud accompanied the slap.

  "Well, that's an improvement," Kirk said. "Like every-thing else, it takes practice. Once more."

  This time was better. Kirk said, "That's it. Okay, Sam, show him a shoulder roll."

  Ellis hit the mat, and was at once on his feet again, cleanly and easily.

  "I don't want to do that," Charlie said.

  "It's part of the course," Kirk said. "It's not hard. Look." He did a roll himself. "Try it."

  "No. You were going to teach me to fight, not roll around on the floor."

  "You have to learn to take falls without hurting your-self before we can do that. Sam, maybe we'd better demonstrate. A couple of easy throws."

  "Sure," Ellis said. T
he two officers grappled, and Ellis, who was in much better shape than the Captain, let Kirk throw him. Then, as Kirk got to his feet, Ellis flipped him like a poker chip. Kirk rolled and bounced, glad of the exercise.

  "See what I mean?" Kirk said.

  "I guess so," Charlie said. "It doesn't look hard."

  He moved in and grappled with Kirk, trying for the hold he had seen Ellis use. He was strong, but he had no leverage. Kirk took a counter-hold and threw him. It was not a hard throw, but Charlie again forgot to slap the mat. He jumped to his feet flaming mad, glar-ing at Kirk.