Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (17 page)

“Yes, I know,” Kirk said grimly. “The latest discov
ery concerning the Nisus plague. We knew it kept mutating, becoming more severe with each new
strain. What we have just learned is that the deadlier
strains develop… when it attacks people of mixed
heritage.”

Sarek and Amanda looked at one another and then
at Spock. Sarek raised his hand, and Amanda touched
her first two fingers to his. Daniel Corrigan also reached for his wife’s hand, but gripped it in the
Human fashion.

And Satat continued triumphantly, “This disease is
only the latest symptom of the corruption spread
from Earth and Vulcan to every world which has
allowed high-sounding ideals to overpower fact. Give
the plague its proper name now, for its true source.
Call it the IDIC Epidemic!”

Chapter Sixteen

Korsal
awoke to bitter cold and pain. He did not
know where he was. Everything was a white and gray
blur. When his eyes focused, he recognized that the
white was snow, falling all around him so thickly that
he could make out nothing more than a few meters
away. The gray shapes were rocks and trees.

Memory returned. Kevin!

He tried to sit up, and pain stabbed through his
right side. He tried to take a deep breath, to call his
son’s name, but again the sharp pain stopped him.

“Father?”

The voice was faint, blown away by the wind. But
Kevin was alive!

Despite the pain, he drew breath and tried to shout.
It came out a croak. “Kevin!”

“Father? Are you all right?”

Again he tried to answer, managing only a gasping
wheeze.

But there was a faint shape out there in the white
ness now. Was it just a tree branch blown by the wind?
No! Something moving toward him—

“Father!” Kevin knelt beside him. “You’re hurt!”

“Just… broken ribs,” Korsal got out.

“Lie still, then,” said Kevin, and delved into
Korsal’s pockets for his gloves, which he had taken off
inside the hoverer. Kevin helped his father put them
on over shaking hands. “The antigrav engines ex
ploded.”

“I know. Are you hurt?”

“No. I was thrown clear. Lost my glasses, though.
Don’t try to talk. I know what to do; we just have to
survive till the storm’s over. They’ll send a search party. The fire in the hoverer is almost out. In this
snow it’ll cool off quickly, and then I’ll see what I can
salvage.”

“Not
…
in the blizzard,” Korsal gasped. “Lucky
you found me.”

“We make our own luck,” Kevin said. It was a Human saying, but it could as easily have been
Klingon. “You can’t move around to keep warm, so I’m going to build a shelter and start a fire.” He took
off his jacket and laid it over Korsal. “Exercise will
keep me warm till I get the fire going.”

Kevin and Korsal both wore heavy utility knives
inside their boots—badge of manhood, earned at Survival, but also an all-purpose instrument that
served as well in a fight as it did now. Kevin cut a
low-hanging limb from a pine tree and used it first as a
broom to clear the snow away from where Korsal lay.

He made a bed of pine boughs to insulate them
from the frozen ground, and with great care helped
his father onto it. Korsal felt odd, being supported
and cared for by his son—as if they had suddenly
changed places. He was deeply proud of the boy. In a
genuine emergency, Kevin was reacting calmly and
competently. Because of that, they would probably
survive.

Kevin constructed a lean-to, Korsal unable to con
tribute more than the effort of putting points on the
limbs before Kevin drove them into the packed snow.

Fortunately, the boy did not have to search far for
wood, as the snow was falling ever more thickly, the
wind howling. Korsal watched him strip wet bark back, shred the dry inside of a limb into tinder. “Now,” he said, “how do we light it? I have a
magnifying glass but no sun, steel but no flint—there will be firestarters in the hoverer’s emergency kit, if it
wasn’t blown up.”

“There’ve been no secondary explosions,” said
Korsal. “I think you dare go to the hoverer to get the
kit.”

But the snow was now falling so thick and fast that I
although it was noonday, darkness had settled over f
them. Korsal peered out of the shelter and decided, “No sign of stopping. In that you could get lost and
freeze to death not ten meters away. It’s getting
colder. We’ll have to start the fire by friction.”

It was not an easy task in the cold, damp air, but Kevin worked diligently, spinning a stick amid the
tinder he had created. “At least my hands are getting
warm,” he joked. “I can’t feel my feet anymore.”

Nor could Korsal feel his. In fact, his whole body
was getting numb. Perhaps the best thing would be
just to go to sleep, let his body heal—

“Father! Father, wake up!”

He was hauled to a sitting position, gasping at the pain in his broken ribs.

“Wake up!” Kevin demanded. “I won’t let you
freeze to death!”

“Snowing
…
not cold enough—” Korsal mut
tered.

“The wind chill is!” said Kevin. “Stay
awake,
Father. Talk to me!”

“What?” He cracked open one eye, to find his son
peering myopically at him.

“Talk to me!” Kevin demanded again. “Tell me … tell me about the empire. What if I go there
someday? What will I have to do to be accepted?”

“Fight,” Korsal said groggily.

“In the military. Yes—but what else? I want to be a
scientist, like you, not a soldier.”

“They want… weapons.”

Kevin picked up his tinder and spinning stick again. “Tell me about families. What was it like
growing up in the Klingon Empire?”

“Like here. Passed Survival … went to school.
Always good in school, better than my brothers, but
they were bigger, stronger. Krel—he was the oldest. I
remember
…
he taught me
klin zha.
By the time I
was eight I always won. And he always challenged again… .”

“Father?” sharply from Kevin.

“I couldn’t win at wrestling, shooting, running.
None of the others would game with me. But Krel
—he always … always gave me the chance to do
what I was good at.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Kevin. “Karl’s much
better at
klin zha
than I am. I should play with him
anyway.”

“No need,” Korsal said softly. “He’s better than I
am too—and I taught him.” He opened his eyes as a
smell of smoke teased his nostrils, saw Kevin leaning over, gently blowing on a tiny wisp of flame.

“Stel says that’s the sign of a good teacher—when
the student outperforms him.”

Korsal’s foggy mind had to grope for the name. His
eyes drifted shut again. Stel. Kevin’s mathematics teacher. Starfleet. Kevin’s score on the Academy
entrance exam must have been higher than his teach
er’s.

“Stel is wise,” said Korsal.

“Lots of Vulcans are—or seem to be,” said Kevin.
“Sometimes I think it’s because they never say very
much, so what they do say sounds profound.”

Korsal smiled at his son’s astuteness. Warmth was
beginning to coax him back to life, and he opened his eyes to see Kevin feeding a cozy little fire.

They talked, and Kevin packed snow up the sides of their shelter, the fire creating a little ice cave for them.
“Kai Kevin,” said his father. “We can hold on until
rescue comes.”

After a time there was a break in the whirling snow,
and Kevin said, “I’m going to see if I can get the
emergency kit out of the hoverer. Then I’ll get some
more firewood.”

“It’s warm in here now,” said Korsal. “Put my
jacket over yours—and my gloves too.”

Kevin accepted without protest and went out into
the snowy dimness. Korsal watched him go, hoping
the thick low clouds would not start dumping their
burden again before Kevin could finish his tasks. He
^;
fed the fire sparingly, hoping Kevin would soon have |
the hatchet from the emergency kit. The threatening
snow would not allow the boy to forage very far, and
at the same time it was covering fallen limbs and
making walking nearly impossible.

It seemed a very long time before Kevin returned
with an armload of snowy branches, breathless from I the effort simply of struggling through the knee-deep f
snow.

Hunkering down before the fire, Kevin took off his |
gloves and spread his fingers to the flames. “I’ll go
back for more wood as soon as I warm up,” he said.
Then, “Father … the hoverer is gone.”

“… gone?”

“The heat of the thrusters must have melted
through the layers of ice and snow on the canyon rim,
and that tilted it. The wind probably helped it along.
You can see the path where it slid, and fell down into
the river.”

Korsal’s broken ribs stabbed as he drew a sharp
breath. No emergency kit meant no hatchet, no food,
no blanket, no light, no medical supplies. “It’s all
right,” he said. “All we have to do is stay alive until
rescue comes—and surely that will be by morning.”

“Yes, Father. Surely by morning,” said Kevin.
Korsal realized he was being humored. “I’ll get more
wood now,” said Kevin, “so I can make another trip
before night falls.”

Again Korsal looked outside, up at the sky. The
clouds were solid, black, snow-filled. The snow began
again before Kevin returned, and a raging wind had
the blizzard howling around their shelter until long
after night fell. Kevin could not go out again for
wood, even if there was a chance of finding it under the layers of snow. They fed the fire as sparingly as
possible to try to make the wood last until daybreak,
melted snow in one of the helmets, and drank the hot
water in an attempt to keep warm from inside.