This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #31Double Double (6) by: Seuzz   Chapter 6
ADMIRAL STRAUSS HAD SAID NOTHING about keeping his orders close to the chest. So hardly had Kirk closed the channel to Starbase Three when he summoned Spock to his quarters.
His first officer listened closely as Kirk laid out the news from Starfleet, and the orders he had been given to proceed to Tranquility Seven, there to give the crew shore leave, and from where they could be summoned at a moment's notice without jeopardizing any actual assignment. When he was done, Spock merely said, "You do not seem surprised, captain."
That remark did surprise Kirk, and he showed it.
"Well, no, I'm not," he admitted. "The fact is, I was warned that something like this was coming."
Spock cocked his head. "By Doctor Maddox?"
Now Kirk felt worse than surprised. He felt wrong-footed.
"Mr. Spock," he said, "may I suggest we schedule a magic show on the entertainment deck, so that you may astonish the crew with your acts of clairvoyance?"
Now it was Spock's turn to look startled.
"I would not make any claim to clairvoyance, captain," he protested. "Only an ability to make reasonable surmises from available evidence."
"That evidence being?"
"First, your lack of reaction to the orders from Starfleet. Though you are very good at cloaking your emotional reactions—"
"Why thank you, Mr. Spock, that is high praise coming from you."
"I was going to add, 'when you want to'," Spock corrected him primly. "But your instant command of the situation was exemplary even by your standards, suggesting to me that you already knew of and had processed the news."
"And your deduction about Doctor Maddox?"
"Only a guess, though a shrewd one, I'd hazard. There have been no privileged communications from Starfleet in the last few weeks, and to my knowledge the only person to whom you have spoken who is not a member of the crew was Doctor Maddox. I therefore surmised that he was the channel by which you received the news."
"Doctor Maddox would not be pleased to hear your analysis, Mr. Spock," Kirk said. "He thought he was being very clever and careful. He is, after all, a spy."
"A spy, captain?"
"Starfleet Intelligence, operating under cover as a medical archaeologist. My God, I hope most of them are more capable than he is."
"I see. Operating this close to the Neutral Zone, I infer the Romulans are his specialty."
"They are. He's on his way to Gamma Hydra IV, ostensibly to look into the ... incident ... there." Kirk's lips compressed at the memory. "In fact, it's in connection with the Romulan task force. He slipped up, though, when talking to me on the station, and felt he had to come aboard and privately make a clean breast of the whole thing. He knows the situation, knew what my orders would be."
Kirk pulled at his nose. "He was surprised that I hadn't heard from Starfleet yet."
The two officers fell silent, seemingly caught in separate reveries. Spock it was who spoke next.
"You said that he knew Nurse Chapel, and that he came aboard to speak to her."
"Yes. That was the excuse he used to come aboard so he could see me privately."
"He did not have a genuine interest in Nurse Chapel?"
"I don't know if he did or not." Kirk sat back and gave his first officer a very direct look. "What are you implying, Mr. Spock?"
"Nothing that I know of, sir. I am merely trying to understand and appreciate events from all possible angles."
"Well, you've made your point. You may return to your station now."
"I am off duty."
"Then as you were."
Spock hesitated, then turned on his heel and left.
Kirk let him get good and far down the corridor before he exited his quarters to head for sickbay.
He would have made the trip before, if Maddox hadn't left him with the impression of being a blithering jackaninny. Well, he still impressed Kirk as a blithering jackaninny, but one with unexpected facets. Kirk had been content to let him make a fool of himself with Christine Chapel when he thought that's all the man had threatened. But Spock had reminded him that he might have made a fool of himself with her merely as a convenient deception. And somehow, that felt worse.
As a courtesy, Kirk glanced into McCoy's office, but the doctor was out. Christine was in, though, sorting through some files. She did a double-take when she saw the captain enter.
"Nurse Chapel," he said. "I meant to look in on you earlier, but I was distracted. You had a visitor before we left Deep Space One."
She returned this news with a puzzled expression. "I did?"
"Didn't you? Brody Maddox?"
"Who?"
Kirk stared. It took him some time—such was the contempt he felt for the intelligence officer—to realize that even the man's visit to Christine must have been feigned.
"Never mind," he said. "I was misinformed, or I misunderstood something." He turned to go.
"Captain!" she called, and he turned back. "If you're talking about Brian Caplan—" She trailed off.
"Now it's my turn to ask, 'Who'?" Kirk replied.
Christine's eyes darted. "Brian Caplan. He called me from the station." She hesitated. "I think you met him on Vulcan a few years ago."
"I knew him as Brody Maddox. Then and now."
"Yes, he would have been using a different name on Vulcan."
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place for Kirk. "Was he with Starfleet Intelligence even back then?"
Palpable relief flooded the nurse's face. "He told you that?"
"While we were at Deep Space One. I didn't know he was with intelligence on Vulcan."
"Well, he was." She bit her lip. "He tried recruiting me while we were both there."
"I thought he was trying to recruit you into doing something else," Kirk dryly confessed.
She turned a little pink. "Well, he tried that too—"
Kirk raised his hand. "Look, it's none of my business. I only know that he came aboard before we left, saying that he wanted to talk to you, to reconnect. I just wanted to check on you, to make sure he hadn't ... reopened old wounds or anything."
Christine smiled.
"There were no old wounds to reopen, captain. We were friends, is all. I was still devoted to ... Roger."
Kirk nodded. "But he only called you from the station."
"Yes, just to say hello. He knew I was on the Enterprise, and he said he was on his way to Gamma Hydra IV. So he just told me he had been thinking about me."
Well, Brody or Brian or whatever your name is, thought Kirk, I underestimated you here as well. But now I'm glad.
"You know he is still operating under cover as a medical archaeologist," Christine said.
"Yes, I know. I thought that's what he really was, until he told me."
"Well, it makes you think," Christine said. "He might have been with us when we went to look for Roger."
Kirk stiffened. "Not unless he had been assigned to the ship," he said. "Remember, that was not an official mission."
"Oh, I know. I was just thinking. Given his cover, and given what his actual position is, I wonder what he would have made of it all."
He would have made no good of it at all, Kirk thought. Aloud, he only said, "It would have been interesting. Well, I'm sorry to have troubled you."
"It was no trouble, captain," she replied. "In fact, I'm touched that you took some trouble yourself."
Kirk smiled, apologized again for intruding, and left. McCoy was still not in his office, but that was just as well, for Kirk was preoccupied as he made his way back to his cabin.
No, it would not have been good for an intelligence officer to have been with them on Exo III.
Even if he had not been duplicated and replaced by an android, as Kirk himself almost had been—
Even if things had gone exactly as they actually had, only with an intelligence officer on board to file a separate report—
Because then Kirk would have had to be truthful in his own report.
There was no sign of Doctor Korby or his expedition on Exo III. That had been all Kirk had said. He had made no mention of his narrow escape from the planet. No mention of the machinery and the facilities that Korby had found and repaired. Above all, no mention of the androids.
He had done so, he told himself, out of respect for Christine Chapel and the memory of a great scientist. In fact, his gut told him, it was because he didn't trust anybody, not even Starfleet, with the technology they had uncovered.
Certainly, there were benign uses to which it could have been turned. And yet the history of the planet, as recounted by Ruk, and the malign intentions of the android Korby, had demonstrated how easily that technology could be perverted or escape control.
No, it was best that the secrets of Exo III be left buried forever under its frozen crust.
And there was no way they would have been left there had an intelligence officer been along.
"Jim!"
Kirk was startled out of these dark thoughts by the voice and bright smile of "Bones" McCoy, whom he had nearly run over as he barreled down the corridor. "Coming back from trying to see me?" the doctor asked.
"Actually," Kirk began to say.
Then he caught himself, and smiled in relief.
"Actually, yes," he said. "Buy you a drink?"
"I'm on duty in twenty minutes, but I'll keep you company if you'd like."
"I would like, Bones," Kirk said.
Smiling, the two officers made their way to the recreation deck.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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