This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #36Double Double (11) by: Seuzz   Chapter 11
BROWN OF THE MEADOWLARK was not a talkative man.
Normally this would have aggravated Grigory Zhironovsky, for he was a man who liked to talk, and he was sufficiently unnerved by Captain Grundfest's warnings that he wanted to question their guide closely. But given that their underground journey led them through winding, waterworn passages where the footing was treacherous, and down dark paths along the sides of deep chasms, and even over a natural-arch bridge that spanned a black, yawning abyss, he was glad not to be distracted. Not for an hour, then, until the ground became level and smooth, and Brown said they were approaching the base that the men of the Meadowlark had made for themselves, did Zhironovsky resume a conversation he had suspended more than an hour before.
But he was not given time to learn much more than the basics of Brown's story. That the Meadowlark, while searching for space wrecks, had found one on Exo III; that due to damage in an ion storm they had had to land instead of using their bulk transporters to bring it aboard; and that they had come to grief when trying to lift off again with the cargo they had recovered. Zhironovsky was just going to ask how they had managed to find this deeply buried shelter when they came to a diamond-shaped door of a design he had never seen before. Brown opened it by touching a pad on the wall.
The question died again on Zhironovsky's lips when he clapped eyes on the man waiting, expectantly, on the other side.
He had light brown hair with streaks of dark blonde, combed neatly over a firm and commanding brow. His jaw was also firmly set in a handsome face still youthful but hardened with experience and maturity.
But the real power was in the man's eyes. They were a warm hazel, but they flashed with a magnetic intensity. They flicked now over Zhironovsky's face; hooked and held his gaze; and a second later flashed over to Meisner's face, leaving Zhironovsky feeling dented and daunted.
So quick and crushing was his first sight of this new man that it took several seconds for Zhironovsky—Starfleet dropout—to realize that he recognized him. Knew exactly who he was.
And by that time, James T. Kirk, the most famous recent graduate of Starfleet, was already speaking.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Thank you for coming." His brow furrowed slightly. "Where is Captain Grundfest?"
"He's still on the ship," Meisner said with a slight stammer. "He sent us down to examine the— the cargo. I'm navigator and first officer Hans, uh, Meisner. This is—"
"Grigory Zhironovsky. I'm the— cargo manager." Zhironovsky hated the way that he, like Meisner, was stumbling over his words.
"What's your ship's complement?" Kirk asked.
"Five." The two crewman glanced at each others. "There's us," Zhironovsky said, feeling bewildered at the alacrity with which he was answering Kirk's questions. "The captain, the engineer and his mate."
"And your capacity is five-hundred thousand cubic meters?"
"Two million," Zhironovsky found himself blurting out.
Kirk looked amused.
"So your captain was lowballing me," he said. "I'm actually glad. As for what we want from you—"
He broke off with a cagey look, and glanced between the two men.
Zhironovsky felt himself being weighed and appraised. But it was no relief when Kirk settled his formidable attention upon him with something that looked like approval.
"It's best that I show it to you," Kirk said. "You will require a decontamination procedure first, however. Will you come with me please, Mr. Zhironovsky."
For the first time since meeting Kirk, Zhironovsky felt the stirrings of resistance. He felt himself being ordered around—bullied, almost—and he didn't know why or for what purpose. All he could guess was that Captain Grundfest had been right. This was not a space wreck, and there was certainly a Federation heavy cruiser poised nearby. If they had not actually walked into a trap of some kind—a police operation meant to entice and catch unscrupulous independent traders such as themselves—it was something much bigger. Either way, Zhironovsky felt very frightened.
But though he would very much have liked to punch Kirk in the back of the head and run, he knew it would be useless. Where could he and Meisner escape to? They had only made it through that maze of cliffs and caverns with the help of the man Brown, who was certainly also a Starfleet officer, and there were more men surely hidden away nearby. There was now probably also a starship security team blocking their way out.
No, the only way back was to go forward. He could only hope that what was in store for him would not be as bad as he feared.
With a heavy sense of dread, he followed Kirk.
So he found himself led him into a cavernous but not overwhelming chamber, in the middle of which stood a circular platform. There were two pairs of restraints on opposite sides of this disc. Inside one pair rested a mud-colored mass of vaguely humanoid shape.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to disrobe, Mr. Zhironovsky," Kirk said.
"Sir?" the cargo manager stammered.
"Your clothes must be decontaminated separately."
Zhironovsky finally bridled hard enough that it gave him the courage to challenge the man.
"May I ask you, sir," he said, "what this cargo is, and why I have to be decontaminated before I can be shown it?"
"They are archeological remains," Kirk said in a hard voice. "Organic, and very fragile."
"And why do I have to examine them?"
"In case they prove to be something that you and your captain do not want to touch." Kirk's eyes were bright and hard beneath a hooded brow. "Your clothes, Mister Zhironovsky."
And Zhironovsky's will crumpled. Turning his back to the other, he disrobed. Kirk then led him to the platform and buckled him into the empty pair of restraints. He didn't explain this action, but the cargo manager, now feeling hopeless, told himself it was to keep him from falling off the platform.
Kirk disappeared from view, and for a few minutes Zhironovsky was left alone with his thoughts. Then the platform began to spin. Slowly, at first, then faster and still faster. Zhironovsky gritted his teeth and willed himself not to flinch.
Then he was willing himself not to vomit.
Long it continued, and longer. Zhironovsky wondered if it would ever end, and his head was spinning still even after he felt the platform slow and stop; so dizzy was he that he wasn't sure the platform had in fact stopped, and that he wasn't hallucinating that it had come to rest. He fought to clear his mind.
But then the spiders came. That's what they felt like: electrical spiders skittering beneath his skin, dancing along his nerves like they were filaments of webbing. In his toes and fingertips they started, and ran up his legs and arms to meet at the base of his spinal column. Then down and up his spinal cord they crawled, a many-legged column of them, before wheeling to march up to and into the back and base of his brain. Zhironovsky's eyes bulged and his jaw worked as with prickling, dainty steps the chattering prickles of electricity plucked at the fibers of his mind. Unbidden, a welter of memories, desires, terrors, lusts, and dreams flickered to life like tongues of fire.
Is this the end? Zhironovsky wondered. Am I dying, and my life is flashing before my eyes? He felt as though he was being shown everything he was, everything he had been, and everything he had wanted to be. When the sensation finally died away, he lay limp and exhausted and sweating freely on the platform.
He hardly had the strength to turn his head when he heard Kirk step back into the room, and he watched dazedly as the man busied himself with something on the other side of the platform. But he did stir when Kirk came over to smile down into his face.
"And how are you feeling, Mr. Zhironovsky?" he asked.
"What the hell kind of a damned decontamination procedure was that?" Zhironovsky's voice was slurred.
"A necessary one, I'm afraid. Come on, get up." Kirk unbuckled the the restraints, and with a powerful hand gripped Zhironovsky by his arm and helped him up and onto his feet.
"I want you to see the results," Kirk said, and he tugged Zhironovsky around the platform to the other side. "I want you to have the honor of meeting the first citizen in a new, and better, galaxy."
Zhironovsky blinked stupidly down at the platform, and at the man who lay there in the other pair of restraints. There was something familiar about him. He had fine, blonde hair, already thinning at the front, though he didn't look much more than twenty years of age. But his beard was dark and heavy beneath his cheeks. He wasn't a bad looking specimen, as human males go, though his features were crusted across the forehead with a rosy crop of acne. They looked like the kind that itched and burned when even slightly irritated.
Zhironovsky knew the kind. He regularly suffered from the same kind of eruptions, was suffering from one now, and in the same place.
But so dizzy was he still from the procedure, that even when the man opened his eyes and shifted to look up at him, Zhironovsky could not give him a name, not even when the man's blue eyes crinkled over a thin smile.
"You don't seem to appreciate it," Kirk said from behind him. "But it doesn't matter."
Zhironovsky didn't turn around. He was too intent on the man on the platform, and on the dawning realization that he looked uncannily like himself.
So he didn't see the phaser that Kirk drew out. And the power beam that dissolved him into a subatomic foam felt no worse than the very brief touch of a very hot fingertip to the middle of his back.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"    indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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