Nobody answered him.
Spock stood at the board with his back to the room. Uhura looked at Spock. McCoy looked at Uhura. Galloway, by the door, looked at all of them.
And Montgomery Scott, who had asked the question because somebody had to, and because an engineer's whole profession is asking what happens to the part nobody is looking at, watched three officers not answer him and understood.
"Ye know," he said.
"Yes," said Spock.
"How long have ye known?"
"Fourteen months."
Scotty sat back. "Say it," said McCoy.
Spock turned around.
"In the corrected timeline, Christopher Pike is promoted to fleet captain within two years of the transfer of command. In that capacity he conducts an inspection of a Class J training vessel. There is a baffle plate failure. There are cadets on the other side of a bulkhead, and he goes through it, and he gets them out."
He put his hands behind his back.
"He survives. He is not killed. He is burned across the whole of his body and sustains catastrophic damage to the central nervous system, and he does not recover, and he does not die, and he lives for a very long time. He cannot walk. He cannot speak. And his mind is entirely unimpaired.
"He is in that condition because he chose to be. He does the arithmetic, and goes through the door, and saves eleven cadets, and pays for it with his body, knowingly, and does not hesitate. And there is not one officer in this room who is surprised.
"And in this universe he is fifty-four years old, and asleep two decks above us, and whole. And he is whole because James Kirk fell out of the world."
* *
"So that is the arithmetic," Spock said. "I will state it plainly, and then I will ask for your views, and then I am going to decide, because it is my decision, and I am not going to permit any of you to take it from me.
"If we do nothing, this universe continues. It is a good universe. The war ended on time. The Federation stands. Christopher Pike commands this ship, and will command it another decade, and will retire to Mojave and ride horses and be happy. And James Kirk is a radio repairman in Brooklyn who will die in about 1973, and be buried, and be mourned by his family, and never once be known by anybody who understood what he was.
"If we act, then history is restored. And James Kirk gets his life, and this ship, and the whole of it. And Christopher Pike burns.
"Those are the two doors. There is no third. I have looked for a third for fourteen months, with everything I have."
"Jim," said McCoy.
"That is not an argument, Doctor."
"The hell it isn't." He was on his feet. "I did this. My hand. My hypospray. And every day we leave him down there, I am the man who erased his best friend. You can call that emotional if it makes you comfortable, but it is also true, and you have not answered it in two years."
"It is true," said Spock, "and it is not sufficient. Because Christopher Pike did not administer that drug either. And if the standard is that a man may not be spent for another man's accident, then the standard protects him too. And it protects him more, because he is here, and he is real, and he is asleep two decks above us, and I have taken his coffee out of his hand."
McCoy stopped. Nobody said anything.
"You want to know what I think?" said Scotty. He had not moved from his chair. "I think ye're all askin' the wrong man. Ye're standin' here workin' out whether ye have the right to spend Christopher Pike, and it's a fine debate, and I've enjoyed it. And the man himself is asleep two decks up, and not one of ye has thought to go knock on the door."
"We cannot tell him," said Spock.
"Why not?"
"Because he would say yes."
The room went absolutely still.
"He would say yes, and he would say it in under four seconds, and he would not require a briefing, and he would not ask what the cadets' names were. And every person in this room knows that. Which is precisely why not one of you has suggested asking him. We have not been protecting him from the knowledge. We have been protecting ourselves from his answer."
Nobody said anything at all.
And then Nyota Uhura, who had not spoken in four hours, said:
"Then do not go to him for permission."
Spock turned. "Lieutenant?"
"You are all talking about consent as though it were a shield. As though if he says yes, it's clean, and if we don't ask, it's murder. And it is neither. It is the same act either way. It costs the same man the same body. And the only thing his permission buys is that you get to feel better about it."
She looked at Spock. "You don't get to feel better, sir. That's the price. You are going to condemn a good man to a chair, and you are going to do it because it is right, and you are going to carry it alone, and you are not going to be allowed to feel clean about it, not even if he gives you his blessing, because a blessing does not unspend a man. That is what command is.
"You told me that. Or he told me that. One of you told me that, sir, and I wrote it down, and there is no attribution, and I cannot remember which of you it was. And I have decided it does not matter, because it is true either way, and because both of you would have said it."
* *
Spock stood in the middle of the science lab at 0400 and looked at his officers.
McCoy, on his feet, gray, twenty-six months without a full night's sleep. Scott, in a chair, with a boot on the floor beside him. Uhura, standing. And Galloway, by the door, who had not been asked and had not spoken, and who was watching him, and who nodded, very slightly, once.
"Very well," said Spock. His voice did not change at all.
"We will take the ship. And we will tell the captain."
END OF PART TWO