Worlds in Collision (44 page)

Gauvreau put her hand on his shoulder as he guided the first crates around the hold. “Don't worry about the credits for this job.” Kirk was surprised at how well she read him. “If you're interested, the
Shelton
needs a supercargo.”

Kirk hesitated at the controls long enough for the computer to divert a crate to a holding pattern. “This ship's only a few years old, fully automated. I'm surprised she even needs a captain.”

“Like I said, Leonard. She's my ship. I
own
her.”

Kirk was impressed. For an individual to own and operate a warp-capable ship as large and as expensive as the
Shelton
was quite an accomplishment. Usually ships of this class were the property of interstellar consortiums who spread the cost and the risk through the financial networks of four or five worlds.

“But still,” Kirk said, “with tractor webs to keep everything secure, you only need a supercargo when you're in port. And there are lots around to hire.” He knew. He had spent five days waiting for employment in the dockworkers' pool at Intrator II's spacedock, suffering the indignity of paying for food, water, and oxygen.

“Look, Leonard, I'm not used to trying to talk anyone into a job on the
Shelton.
Usually I'm in the position of telling people like you why I
don't
want to sign them onboard.”

Kirk could believe it. But still, there was something about her. Young for a freighter captain. Was familiar with the Siryk Variations. Knew that he had pushed too hard to handle the cargo. There were few places from which people that sharp could come. He was almost surprised that he had never heard of her before today.
Of course, she thinks my name is Leonard Scott. Who knows what her real name might be?

“Leonard, the next stop is Hanover. Two and a half light-years toward the Arms of Avalon. At warp four we can be there in just under fifteen days.”

“The
Shelton
can do warp four?”

Gauvreau looked impatient. “Yeah, and in addition to choosing my own engines, I got to pick the color of the bulkheads, too. Hanover, Leonard. Do you know it?”

Kirk thought for a moment, easily keeping up with the flow of crates into the hold. Two and a half light-years to Hanover would put him about a light-year closer to Starbase 29, without having to pay for passage. But there were still formalities, even on the frontier. “I don't have any commercial fleet certificates or proficiency papers.” Not ones without his real name, at least.

Gauvreau put her hands on her hips and stared at Kirk in amazement. “Did I ask to see papers?”

“No.”

“Then why be such a Herbert? Look, do you want the job or not?”

She didn't need him for the job she said she wanted him to do. But maybe it was just for the companionship. And a few games of chess. Whatever the reason, it would get him closer to where he had to go.

“I don't bite, Leonard, if that's what you're worried about.”

Kirk glanced at her.
I bet you do,
he thought.
I bet you tear apart anyone and anything you think might get in the way of what you want.
He understood that attitude. He felt he knew her already.

“All right. I'll take the job.”

“Well, all right.”

“All right.”

Gauvreau stalked to the control room doors and they opened before her. “Well, okay,” she said, then left before Kirk could try again to get the last word. It was going to be an interesting two weeks.

 

The
Ian Shelton
was little more than an unadorned cylindrical hull with a central bridge tower stuck amidships as if it had been no more than an afterthought. A small portion of the hull contained the warp and impulse propulsion systems. The rest of it was pressurized cargo area. Five crew and passenger cabins, the life-support system, and sensor and flight computers were crammed into the tower along with a bridge that was about the same size as Kirk's cabin had been on the
Enterprise.
But, still, he preferred being on the freighter's bridge to being in any of its cabins, each of which seemed to be the same size as his storage closet had been. At least on the bridge, no matter how cramped, he could see the stars move past the viewscreen. Even if he did have to put up with the ship's cats.

At the moment, one day out from Intrator II, cruising steadily under automatic pilot at warp four, two of Captain Gauvreau's orange and black cats were sleeping together on the chair by the impulse station. The third cat was somewhere else in the ship, all levels connected by open ladderways angled enough for the cats to use them. Kirk enjoyed the cats' noninterference, however temporary it might be, and sat at the engineering station, drinking coffee, watching the stars slip past. Talin's sun was outside the sweep of the forward sensors, but Kirk knew he was drawing closer. To the planet, and the answers.

He heard clanking footsteps behind him on the ladder leading up to the bridge. Unless the missing cat was like the one he had seen on Pyris VII and had suddenly gained a great deal of mass, then it was Gauvreau coming up. She was the only other person on board.

“Thought you might be interested in a game of chess,” she said as she walked onto the bridge, checking the readouts on the three crew stations. She was still wearing her flight jacket and comfortable tan and black fatigues. She also carried a small packet about the size of a book.

“We're coming up to the first course correction,” Kirk said. “Thought I'd check it out, and then…certainly.” Kirk swallowed the last of his coffee—something that had once been somewhere near a coffee bean, at least. It had come out of the galley dispenser as a small dry cube in a pressure skin and he had had to place it in a cup of hot water himself. He had never appreciated how good the synthesized blend on the
Enterprise
had been, either.

“Leonard, the computers have been making this run for the past year. If the course correction doesn't match the navigation computer's projection, then an alarm goes off. And out here, no matter which direction we go in, we're still at least a day away from hitting anything.”

Kirk nodded but he didn't leave his chair. “It's my way of doing something to earn my keep.”

Gauvreau shrugged, then crouched down by the chair with the cats to scratch their ears. One of the cats shifted its position to place a second ear beneath Gauvreau's fingers, but neither cat opened its eyes to acknowledge its benefactor.

Give me a dog any day,
Kirk thought. But still, he knew that one of the secrets of getting along with others was to take an interest in their interests. What made the approach so easy for Kirk was that he genuinely was interested in just about everything. Even, on a slow day, cats. “They're Earth cats, aren't they?” he asked.

“That's right,” Gauvreau answered, and Kirk could hear the enthusiasm in her voice. She must have clocked a lot of parsecs with her companions. “Used to be called housecats, or domestics.”

Kirk had heard of barn cats on Earth. There had been a couple on the farm in Iowa. But a housecat was something else again, he thought. “Aren't housecats those creatures on Meridian that, well…”

“No, no, the Meridian housecats got that name because that's how big they are. And because of the, uh, unusual symbiotic relationship they have with the smaller creatures who live inside them and are necessary…for their…reproduction.” One of the cats wrapped its paws around Gauvreau's hand and gave it an experimental chew. “But anyway, that's why the boys here are called Earth cats these days, to distinguish them from all the other catlike creatures everywhere else.”

“Are they any particular breed or clone branch?” As a child, Kirk and his brother, Sam, had had a Golden Lab named Lady and he had always told himself that someday, when he retired, he was going to get another. Though, now, even after resigning he still woke up mornings not feeling as if he had actually left Starfleet. He wondered if he would ever feel that he had.

“No,” Gauvreau said. “That's the nice part. They're an old-fashioned, natural mix. Fairly hard to get these days.”

Kirk checked the navigation board. The course correction was three minutes away. “They look so much alike. That's why I thought they might have been clones.”

When Lady had become too old and the vet had been called, Kirk and Sam had pleaded with their parents to clone the dog so they could have another just like her. But George Kirk had refused. Cloning was fine for livestock cultures and transplant parts, he had told his sons, but an individual couldn't be treated like property. Their pet must be respected, and mourning her death would show that respect. The vet had eased Lady's discomfort and let her slip peacefully beyond all pain. Both boys had cried off and on for days.

It had been years before Kirk had realized what his father had been trying to teach him that day—how the fact that each person's life will end in death made life so precious. Since there could be no ultimate victory, Kirk had finally understood that what gave life meaning was the struggle. What few victories might come along the way could only be brief respites.

Fifteen years ago, on the
Farragut,
Captain Garrovick and more than two hundred crew had died horribly, red blood cells drained from their bodies, because of what Kirk had believed to have been a mistake on his part. It was remembering what his father had said the night Lady had died that had, in part, given him the strength he had needed not to leave Starfleet then, overcome by personal failure. The past must be accepted, the dead remembered, but the mission must always continue.

More than a decade later, on the
Enterprise,
Kirk had finally realized that he had not contributed to the
Farragut'
s tragedy. His only regret about the incident now was that his understanding of his father's lesson had come too late for him to thank George Kirk. But he could accept that situation, with sadness certainly, but without guilt or regret, because it was in the past. It was the present he was at war with, and always would be.

Gauvreau hit a spot on one of the cat's sides which made him roll onto his back, paws kneading the air. “You can't clone a pet,” she said, and her voice was wistful, almost as if she also shared a moment like Kirk's in her past.

“What are their names?” Kirk asked, trying to break the solemn mood they had both succumbed to.

“Ah, this is Komack, this is Fitzpatrick, and Nogura is below decks sleeping on the mass converter.”

Kirk stopped to play the names back for himself again, to be certain he had heard them correctly. “Komack, Fitzpatrick…and Nogura?”

Gauvreau smiled, one of her secrets revealed.

Kirk realized that one of his secrets had been revealed as well because of the way he had reacted to the names. “How long were you in Starfleet?” The cats were each named after an admiral.

“Twenty-one years,” Gauvreau said, a hint of sadness returning to her voice.

“Twenty-
one?”
Kirk asked. Full retirement benefits were available after twenty years of service. Personnel generally retired then or not at all.

“Took me an extra year to figure out that I wasn't going to get what I wanted.”

Kirk looked into Gauvreau's eyes. He didn't have to ask the next question. He knew the answer.

“One of these,” she said, tapping her fist against the impulse control console. “Of my own.”

“So you bought one.”

Gauvreau nodded. “Not quite what I had in mind back when I was eight years old and decided what I wanted to do with my life. But at least she's mine. And Komack, Fitzpatrick, and Nogura can't say a thing about it.”

“What was your rank?” Kirk asked. He found it surprising that a person with Gauvreau's qualities hadn't made it to command rank. He realized that's why he found her so familiar. She reminded him of himself.

“Commander.”

Kirk was puzzled. She
had
made it to command rank. “There are more than a thousand ships in Starfleet.” Why wasn't she given one?

Gauvreau stood up beside the cats. “At the time I left, there were only thirteen that mattered.”

“Ahh,” Kirk said. She was
exactly
like him.

“I exec-ed on the
Yorktown
for Decker. That gave me a taste of it. When he transferred to the
Constellation,
I was certain I'd get his chair. I knew the ship, had the ratings, the recs, and the experience. But they brought in von Holtzbrinck. They offered me the
Hawking,
instead.”

Kirk nodded in understanding. The
Hawking
was a science vessel with a crew of just over one hundred and, as such, its mission was restricted to worlds without intelligent life, or which had already been exposed to the Federation. Science vessels either withdrew from critical situations so a starship could take over, or came in to complete follow-up studies of what a starship had already discovered. For a scientist or technical specialist, it was a near-perfect posting, offering the chance for lengthy and detailed analysis. But for an explorer, it was equivalent to being condemned to perpetual second place.