Текст книги "Gods Above"

Автор книги: Peter David

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He turned and found himself staring at the strangest individual he’d ever encountered. He seemed to defy the very concept of life, instead shrouding himself in darkness. He wore a cape with the hood pulled up, and sported a dark red beard with streaks of white and gray. Most strikingly, he had only his right eye. Where the left would have been was just darkness. A man, definitely a man, shrouded in darkness, with a single streak of what appeared to be blood in the right corner.

“Who are you?” demanded McHenry.

“Don’t you mean, Whatam I?” He spoke in a voice rich with amusement. Except McHenry was absolutely in no shape to be amused.

“I think I know the question I wanted to ask,” McHenry retorted.

“I don’t believe you do, actually,” said the old man, and his voice seemed vaguely patronizing, but also—strangely enough—comforting in a way. As if McHenry was talking to someone who really, truly comprehended all that was going on ... and that would be a nice change of pace. All too often, McHenry couldn’t shake the feeling that he was perpetually one step ahead of everything going on. “The ‘who’ of me is of so little importance,” the old man continued. “Of far greater concern to you—or, at least, it should be—is what sort of creature am I, where are we, and how do we get out?”

McHenry tried to come up with some snappy response, but none really suggested itself. His shoulders sagged in defeat as he said, “All right, fine. Any of those questions, then.”

“That would be acceptable. However, I think it would be best if we conducted our discussions in private.”

“Private?”said McHenry, stunned. “How much more private does it have to be? No one can freakin’ see us!”

“He can,” said the old man, indicating someone standing nearby. McHenry looked to see where he was pointing, and was surprised—but somehow not too surprised—to see a wide-eyed Moke standing and staring straight at him.

“How?” demanded McHenry. “How is he able to perceive us?”

“I told you your initial questions were worthless. Already you ask more interesting things. And you shall learn the truth of them ... but not here. Come.”

And without another word, the strange man walked straight through the nearest bulkhead.

McHenry did not hesitate to follow him, and found himself passing through an unoccupied quarters. The one-eyed man was just ahead of him, and McHenry said—to himself more than anything—“At least Moke will be able to tell them I’m all right. Not that I’m sure I amall right ...”

Immediately the old man turned to face him, and it seemed as if thunderheads were drawing in around him. The room appeared to darken, and even though McHenry was insubstantial, he still felt a sudden drop in temperature. There was a distant rumbling, and the old man said, “It’s too soon. Far too soon. Everyone is not in their ideal position yet. If he speaks of his prematurely, it could have dire consequences.”

McHenry had no reason to believe the man, and yet he instantly did. With but a thought, he slid his way back through the wall and saw that Moke was still standing there. “Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, Moke,” he said, and made a great show of giving the universal sign for keeping a secret.

Moke seemed not to comprehend, however, and McHenry repeated the gesture, this time with an even greater show of force. He only wished he could do more in terms of communication than this frustrating pantomime.

But then Moke nodded and clearly appeared to understand what it was that McHenry was trying to put across to him. McHenry grinned, nodded approvingly, said, “Thanks! Hope to see you later!,” and moved back through the bulkhead into the empty quarters.

As he did so, he heard a high-pitched “cawing” almost directly in his ear, and reflexively flinched as what appeared to be two powerfully built black birds—ravens, if he wasn’t mistaken—hurtled directly past him and landed on the shoulders of the old man. Insanely (as if this entire thing wasn’t insane already) they seemed to be whispering in his ear, their beaks clacking together as they “spoke.”

“I see,” said the old man, and “Good.”

“They talk?” asked a stunned McHenry.

The old man allowed a vaguely patronizing smile. “Yes. Just not to you. All right, my pets, well done. Go to, go to.” Obediently, the ravens lifted off his shoulders and flapped away, back out through the wall.

“You said you were going to tell me what’s happening. So fine. How am I walking through walls? Why can no one see you and me.”

Still smiling, the old man appeared to sit. There was no chair under him, but he adopted a distinctively reclining posture nevertheless. “You’ve been imprisoned,” he said, “trapped, as it were, in a sort of ... how best to put this? A sideways dimension. Some manner of psychic energy surge catapulted you here, would be the best way to describe it. There are other ways, but they’re far more technical and, frankly, quite boring.”

“All right ... that explains why I’m here. Actually, it doesn’t,” he realized, “but it’s probably as close as I’m going to get. But what about you? Why are you in this ‘sideways’ dimension?”

“Ah. I was incarcerated here by my fellow entities ... the race whom I believe you know as ‘the Beings.’ ”

“You’re one of them?”

“Not just one. The greatest of them!” he said with a grim smile that indicated massively wounded pride over having been cooped up in this semi-existence. “No one of them could possibly have overcome me and put me here. It took their combined efforts. It was quite a surprise, really. I’d never seen so many of them agree on something before. On the one hand, I should be angry over it. On the other ... it’s quite flattering, in a perverse sort of way.”

“You’re flattered that you’re imprisoned?”

“Well, I didsay perversely.” The old man chuckled. “We are a perverse lot, we gods ... or Beings, or whatever we’re calling ourselves now. Sex with siblings, sex with mortals, sniping and plotting against each other. And yet, despite all that, we were worshipped. Indeed, our sins were exalted, made the stuff of legend. I’ve always thought humans did so in order to make themselves feel better about their own shortcomings. They reasoned that if we, in our divinity, could be base in our actions, then that excused any sins they might commit. How could they reasonably expect more of themselves than they expected of us?”

“All right,” McHenry said slowly. “That makes sense ... even if none of the rest of this does. But that still doesn’t explain—”

“I was the last, you see,” the old man continued, as if McHenry hadn’t spoken.

“The last?”

“The last god to leave the Earth.” His voice seemed to carry the sadness of the ages in it. “I had different priorities, you see. To the rest of my kind ... it was all about them. It was all about having the humans of your world worshipping us. They felt that humans were there for us. Only I believed that we were to be there for them. The only one who was anywhere close to my view on the subjects was poor, tragic Apollo ... and even he had an ego that superseded his wisdom.

“Eventually, humans had less and less need for us. They turned their interests elsewhere. To gods who were more ... unknowable. Or gods who, if abominations were committed in their name, would not be inclined to come down to earth and destroy the perpetrator with bolts of lightning. Besides, I’ve always thought,” he said in amusement, “that they came to know us too well. You cannot worship that which you know; it’s antithetical. Familiarity breeds contempt, not adoration. Instead of being gods, we were more ... celebrities. And humans must always tear down their celebrities. It’s just the nature of the species.”

“And ... you were the last one to leave?”

“Yes,” the old man sighed. “Curiosity kept me, I suppose. That, and a desire to be a source of inspiration for humans rather than an object of reverence.” He looked to McHenry and amusement twinkled in his eye. “You still need to know who I am, don’t you. You humans—even half-humans, such as yourself. You still need to apply names to everything so you can comprehend it.”

He sagged heavily into a chair. How he could possibly do that, McHenry didn’t know. For that matter, McHenry had no clue why he wasn’t sinking through the floor if he was supposed to be without bodily form.

“I have a variety of names,” he said at last. “Some called me Zeus. Others, Jupiter. The Norse called me Woden. They named days after me, planets after me. Very flattering, actually. The Egyptians dubbed me Amen-Re. Takami-Musubi is what the Japanese called me. Elegant language, Japanese. Elegant people. Always liked them. And so many more, big and small. From nations to tribes, they all knew me.”

McHenry’s eyes widened. “You were ... you were a sky god? A creation god? But ... you were one of the greatest gods of all! You were ... you were big!”

“I’m still big,” rumbled the old man. “It’s creation that’s gotten small.”

“And ... how long did you stay around? After the others left?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “A while. For entities such as I, we don’t tend to pay all that much attention to the passage of time. Monitoring that is much more the province and interest of mortals than us. One century is like five is like ten. It matters little to me. Although I will say that in my last centuries on Earth, there was very little call for most of my incarnations. The name applied to me most often during that time was Klaus.”

“Klaus?” McHenry looked at him dubiously. “I don’t remember any god named Klaus.”

“I wasn’t seen as a ‘god,’ per se. More as a charitable sprite. I must say, I rather liked that time of my life. I dealt with children, mostly. Saint Klaus, I was. Those were good times.”

“Saint Klaus ... wait. Santa Claus?”he said suspiciously. “You’re telling me you were Santa Claus?”

“That was one version of it, yes.”

“Santa Claus. With the red suit and the presents and coming down the chimney? You must be joking.”

“Do you find that so difficult to believe?”

“Well ... yes! You’re Zeus and Odin and Santa Claus all rolled into one? How ridiculous is that?”

“I feel the need to point out,” the old man said airily, “that someone who is currently existing as a disembodied spirit is hardly in a position to question the little absurdities that life presents. All those names aside, I find that after all this time, I simply prefer to be called the Old Father. It’s certainly descriptive enough.”

“You know,” McHenry said at last, “I really, really hope I’m dreaming all this, because it’s too insane to cope with if I’m not.”

“You’re not,” the old man assured him, and he now had a grim demeanor to him. “Would that you were. But you’re not. This is the truth of it: My brethren, my ‘associates,’ shunt anyone to this dimension whom they believe can cause trouble. Then again,” he said reflectively, “I suppose it’s somehow appropriate that they keep me locked away like this ... considering that it was I who had kept themimprisoned for so long.”

“ Youdid?” McHenry began to pace, no longer dwelling on mundane matters such as how he was able to move about in relation to physical objects. “This isn’t exactly the story they were telling us.”

“Well, of course it wouldn’t be, would it.” He snorted derisively. “Do you think they would want you to know? Can’t blame them, really. More than a century, I kept them tightly bottled up, like the Earth legends of genies in lamps ... which originated with us, I might add.”

“Of course,” said McHenry with a helpless gesture. “I’m starting to think everything from the common cold to Fermat’s last theorem came from you people.”

“I would not call us ‘people,’ really.”

“It doesn’t matter,” McHenry told him, beginning to feel impatient. He didn’t know whyhe was impatient. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do or anyplace else to go. It was probably a holdover from his annoying human condition. “So why did you do that? Keep them under wraps?”

“They wanted revenge. For Apollo.”

“Revenge?”

“Understand, they thought him somewhat the fool,” said the Old Father. There was unmistakable sadness in his voice, although McHenry wasn’t entirely certain for whom the sadness was intended. “But they felt he was ill used by the crew of the Enterprise.However, they also saw opportunity presenting itself: opportunity in the form of Apollo’s assignation with the mortal woman, Carolyn, who was your ancestor. They saw you as a potential bridge to the status and power they once enjoyed. I endeavored to talk them out of it, but they would not listen to reason.

“I knew then what I had to do, in order to stave off potential disaster. I knew, however, I could not do it alone. After all these millennia, even I am not what I once was. I needed an ally ... and the only reasonable ally was someone whom the others felt antipathy for, and he for they. Someone who had no love lost between himself and his associates. Wisely or unwisely, I chose my son.”

“Let me guess: He has lots of names as well.”

The Old Father nodded. “Anubis, among the Egyptians. The Greeks called him Ares, the Norse knew him as Loki. Aborigine people called him the Coyote god. Ultimately, his forte was trickery, so really, who better?”

“I thought Anubis was the Egyptian god of death.”

“It’s much the same. Consider those who lie in agony, waiting for the release of death, yet it does not come. Meanwhile newborn infants lie asleep in their beds, just beginning their lives, and they are snuffed out for no apparent reason. Dictators and tyrants lead long, happy lives, while peacemakers and lovers of all who live are cut down in their prime. There is no greater perpetrator of morbid jests than death.”

“I’m living proof of that ... maybe,” said McHenry ruefully. “And in exchange for helping you, he was spared the indignity of being stuck away in some between dimension.”

“Exactly so. So I, with the aid of my trickster son, started gathering them up, one by one, shunting them away into another dimension, where they could cause no trouble. Artemis was the last of them ... and, damn my sentimentality, I was not able to complete the task I had set out to do.” He shook his head, clearly disgusted with himself. “She begged me, she pleaded. She swore to me that she had learned from observing her departed brother the foolishness of trying to thrust oneself into the affairs of mortals.”

“And so you spared her,” McHenry said tonelessly.

“Aye. I did.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “She can be very persuasive when she needs to be.”

“So I let her and Anubis wander free ... certain in my foolish confidence that I, ever vigilant, would be able to keep the rest of the beings contained. There is nothing so foolish as the pride of an old fool,” he added. “Although really, I should have known. When one has a son whose reputation is based upon trickery, what else can one expect but betrayal?”

“So Artemis pleaded her way out of exile. Hunh.” McHenry actually laughed at that. It was the first thing he’d found amusing about any of this insanity. “Boy. If Artemis had been penned up, my life would be very, very different. I’d be alive like a normal person, for starters. My parents wouldn’t have been driven insane by her presence in my life. ...”

“I am sorry, lad, for my misjudgment which brought her down upon you,” said the Old Father. “Unfortunately, I know that means very little.”

“No ... no, actually, it does mean something,” said McHenry, choosing to be philosophical about the matter. “Especially when you consider that, for centuries, peoples’ lives have been messed up by random calamities. At such times, they’ve always begged deities for enlightenment as to why these things happened. But they’re never really given any concrete answer. This may be the first time that a deity has actually stepped up and said, ‘My mistake. Sorry for the inconvenience.’ It’s appreciated. It doesn’t change anything, but it is appreciated.” McHenry pondered the situation a moment more and then asked, “How did he do it? Or I should say, how did theydo it?”

“How did they release the other Beings?” When McHenry nodded, the Old Father grunted in response. “Those damnable gateways.”

“The gateways?”McHenry remembered them all too well. Portals through time, through space, even—it was believed—into other dimensions. They had begun popping up all over the galaxy, like weeds, manipulated by an alien race as part of a galactic power play. One of the blasted gateways had even swallowed Calhoun and Shelby, necessitating their rescue from an ice world that had nearly been the death of them.

The Old Father simply nodded. “It did not occur to me that my wayward son would become bored with the absence of his sparring partners. Nor did it occur to me that Artemis, so humble in her pleadings to me to be spared, so truthful in nature, would be deceitful enough to seduce Anubis over to the idea of releasing the others and turning my punishment back upon me.”

“Wait a minute,” McHenry said, a thought occurring to him. “Anubis ... Loki ... whatever you call him ... is he a giant?”

“Not a colossus, certainly. But by the standards of your race—of most races—he stands far taller and wider than could remotely be considered the norm.” The Old Father looked slightly askance at him. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, during the gateways incident,” said McHenry, “according to Captain Calhoun’s write-up on the subject, the words ‘Giant Lied’ were etched in the snow on that ice world I mentioned before, by a dying member of one of the races caught up in the whole affair. Did that giant refer to Anubis?”

“Very likely.”

“What did he lie about?”

The Old Father shrugged. It seemed such an odd gesture for a god to make. “Specifically? I could not say. My ravens keep me apprised of much, but it is a vast cosmos to try and keep track of everything.”

“I thought gods were omniscient, all-knowing.”

“Don’t believe everything you read. In any event, although the details of Anubis’s ‘lies’ to this individual are lost, I have no doubt that he deceived the poor creature into taking actions that suited Anubis’s goals. Very likely he was instrumental in finding a way to utilize the gateway that released the other Beings into the world.”

“At which point they came looking for you.”

“And put me here,” said the Old Father sadly, but with the air of one who thought the outcome to be inevitable.

“So ...” It was quite possibly the question that McHenry most dreaded asking. “So ... what do we do now?”

“Now,” said the Old Father with one eyebrow raised. “Now we count on my son.”

“On your son? On Anubis? Excuse me if I wasn’t paying attention, but ... wasn’t he the one who put you into this situation in the first place?”

The Old Father shook his grayed head. “Not him. My other, far younger, half-mortal son. Oh, he does not have much in the way of abilities ... not anymore, not since the passing of his mother ... but at least he can perceive us, and possibly obtain help for us.”

“What? What are you ...”

And then, of course he understood.

“Moke,” he said.

The Old Father made a sour face. “I despise that name, I should make quite clear. His mother named him that. Hardly an appropriate name, particularly for one who so obviously took after his father. What with his storm-related abilities and such. Me ... I would have named him Thor.”

TRIDENT

I.

SHELBY KNEW SHE SHOULDN’T feel a chill when Ambassador Spock materialized on the transporter pad. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help it. She had encountered him before, but she found that her basic reaction to being in his presence was exactly the same. The man was, literally, a living legend. She had studied his exploits in Academy texts. How could one be undaunted in encountering such an individual?

When the shimmering of the transporter beams ended, she squared her shoulders and stepped forward. “Welcome aboard, Ambassador,” she said formally, and then correcting herself, said, “Ambassadors.” For standing directly behind Spock were Si Cwan and Kalinda, both looking none the worse for wear. Si Cwan’s face was an inscrutable mask that surpassed Spock’s for sheer unreadability, but if Shelby was going to guess at his mental state, it would be total chagrin.

Spock, meantime, inclined his head slightly and stepped down.

“May I present my executive officer, Commander Katerina Mueller. And I believe you already know Lieutenants Arex and M’Ress.”

“Indeed,” said Spock. “Lieutenants Shiboline M’Ress and Arex Na Eth, it would appear that the years have been far kinder to the two of you than to me.”

M’Ress looked as if she were fighting to avoid having an emotional breakdown, so clearly happy was she to reencounter this figure from her past. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Mr. Spock. You look wonderful. A sight for sore eyes.”

He frowned slightly. “If your eyes are sore, Lieutenant, might I suggest a simple medicinal wash easily available in sickbay.”

She smiled. “Thank you, sir. I’ll get right on that.”

“We’ve arranged quarters for you, Ambassador Spock,” said Mueller. “And your guest quarters are as you left them, Ambassadors Cwan and Kalinda.”

“Most considerate,” said Spock. “I think it would be best, however, if we proceed directly to the nearest briefing room so we may discuss the circumstances that have brought me here.”

Mueller looked blankly at Shelby. “Briefing room?”

“Conference lounge,” Arex said softly. “That’s what they call them now.”

“Of course,” said Spock. “I should have recalled. One of the disadvantages of age. That which is far distant is the most clear. The conference lounge, then, by all means.”

Shelby nodded and led the way as the small group emerged into the corridor. As they walked along, Shelby noticed the distinct change in the attitude of the Tridentcrew. Naturally they continued to conduct themselves as professionals; she would have expected nothing less. Still, there were all manner of double takes, lingering gazes, whispered conferences among crew members who walked past the Trident’snew guests.

She couldn’t really blame them. It wasn’t often that living history walked the corridors of the Trident.

Spock, meantime, seemed oblivious—the operative word most likely being “seemed”—of the stir he was creating. Instead he was having an animated discussion with M’Ress and Arex. “Your presence here is most unexpected. Did the two of you fall out of your own time together?”

“Totally separate circumstances, sir,” said M’Ress. “I came through a sort of time portal as a result of an ill-fated landing party ...”

“Which they call ‘away teams’ now, by the way, just to avoid further confusion,” Arex said. “And I was on a shuttle that fell through a wormhole.”

“I see,” said Spock. “And you both wound up in this time, serving together. It gives one cause to ponder.”

“Ponder what, Ambassador?” asked Mueller.

“The true nature of the universe, Commander.” He indicated M’Ress and Arex with a nod of his head. “The odds of the two of you, former shipmates, being hurled into the future to this particular time period, and serving together once more, are minuscule at best. One is almost inclined to perceive a divine plan.”

“A divine plan?” Mueller said skeptically. “Ambassador, I would think you, of all people, with your extensive science background, would be the ultimate supporter of rational matters in all things.”

“In my life, Commander, I have seen sufficient things to determine that the line between the rational and the irrational is not as strongly demarcated as you might think.”

“Meaning—?”

He cast her a sidelong glance. “I would have thought my meaning was clear enough,” he said, as they approached the turbolift. “I—as have all of you—have seen beings of such might that your ancestors considered them gods. I have seen beings who long ago surpassed the need for physical incarnation. There is a being named Q—with whom I have had some rather lively debates—who wields power bordering on the omnipotent. I had a half-brother who sought out what he believed to be God, and turned out to be anything but. That which some would term a Supreme Being may simply be an entity which we have neither encountered nor defined in terms that we could understand. To dismiss such a notion out of hand simply because we have not witnessed it firsthand would be highly illogical.”

They stepped into the turbolift and the doors closed behind them. “Deck three,” said Shelby, and as the lift moved off, she said, “I never looked at it in quite that way, Ambassador. Would you call yourself an agnostic?”

“I would call myself a Vulcan,” replied Spock. “I leave humans to apply other labels to me ... a pastime at which they have, historically, excelled.”

II.

Si Cwan was waiting for some sort of snide remark from Shelby. A contemptuous glance, a mocking sentiment. None was forthcoming. From the moment that they met in the transporter room to their sojourn to the conference lounge, Shelby—and Mueller, for that matter—were nothing but professional. In fact, Si Cwan was rather surprised when Mueller suggested a private dinner to him in a low voice for later that evening.

He received a further surprise when the turbolift opened on deck three, and a familiar, white-furred presence was standing there waiting to step in. “Ambassador Cwan!”

“Ensign Janos,” replied Si Cwan. “Aren’t you on the wrong ship?”

“There’s been some mixing of the crews,” Shelby told him. “The Excaliburhad some ... difficulties. She’s laid up in drydock, so we took on some of her crew.”

“Yes, I ... heard about that,” Si Cwan said.

“Terrible business,” said Janos in his cultured voice. “Simply terrible. I trust it will all be sorted out sooner rather than later, and retribution will be distributed all around.”

“One can only hope,” Kalinda spoke up.

Janos stepped aside, allowing everyone else to emerge from the turbolift before he stepped aboard. Si Cwan thought he might have imagined it, but he could have sworn he saw Janos’s furred hand brush against M’Ress’s as they stepped past each other, and she smiling to herself as a result. It was so fleeting a moment that it was hard to tell.

“Captain,” Mueller said, “if we’re going straight into conference, it might be best if Lieutenant Commander Gleau were present as well.”

This time Si Cwan was certain it was no fanciful notion on his part: He saw M’Ress stiffen slightly at the mention of Gleau’s name. He wondered why that would be, but wasn’t entirely certain that it was any of his business.

Shelby, meantime, nodded. “Yes, I think you’re right, XO.”

Mueller promptly tapped her combadge and summoned Gleau from the bridge as the small group walked into the conference lounge. Gleau arrived less than a minute later, and Si Cwan watched M’Ress carefully to see how she reacted. But there was no visible response from the Caitian aside from a slight inclination of her head in acknowledgment of Gleau’s presence. Still, Si Cwan sensed that something was most definitely wrong, and was beginning to think that rather than content himself that it was none of his affair he might instead want to consider ways to makeit his.

As if aware that something was up, Gleau looked at Si Cwan with an air of suspicion. But obviously Si Cwan wasn’t doing anything that Gleau could respond to, and so the Selelvian contented himself to take a seat after formally greeting the Vulcan ambassador.

Spock remained standing as he spoke, striking quite the impressive figure in his large, ridged traveling robes. “I am here,” he began without preamble, “at Starfleet’s request. Under ordinary circumstances, Captain, they would have communicated with you via normal sub-space transmissions. These are not, however, ordinary circumstances. Indeed, extreme caution is being dictated, since we do not yet fully comprehend the full scope of the situation presenting itself.”

“Meaning we don’t know what’s happening yet,” commented Mueller.

Spock looked at her with raised eyebrow. “I believe I just said that.”

“Yes, of course. Go ahead, Ambassador,” said Shelby, firing a mildly annoyed look at Mueller which amused the hell out of Si Cwan.

“As you know, individuals presenting themselves as ‘the Beings’ came to the planet Danter and have struck a bargain with the natives. In exchange for being worshipped, they will provide a substance they call ‘ambrosia’ to the Danteri. This substance, when ingested, is alleged to elevate the physical well-being of the consumers to previously unheard-of levels.”

“I can attest to that personally,” Si Cwan said immediately.

“You’ve eaten it?” asked Mueller.

“No. I did, however, get myself tossed around by someone who had. Someone whom I would have been able to break in half without much difficulty before that. Whatever their claims are that this stuff can do, I suspect it’s barely scratching the surface.”

“I don’t understand,” Gleau spoke up. “Did you say they will provide this stuff in exchange for ... being worshipped?”

“That is correct.”

“That’s exceedingly strange.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Spock, “but not out of the question as far as their psychopathology goes. I have encountered such creatures before, you see. That is why Starfleet brought me in from Romulus, asking me to delay my work on unification between the Vulcans and Romulans, and focus instead on this rather pressing question.”

“You did?” Shelby turned to M’Ress. “Have you as well, Lieutenant? Or you, Arex? You served with the Ambassador ...”

“It was before their time, Captain. The encounter involved an individual purporting to be Apollo, on Stardate ...” He paused half a moment, recalling information. “... 3468.1. In the vicinity of planet Pollux IV, the Enterprisewas accosted and held immobile in space through a rather unique method.”

“Did it involve a giant hand?” asked Shelby. “Because, if so, that’s what happened to Captain Calhoun as well.”

Spock blinked slightly. “Apparently it was not as unique as I had thought.”

“Obviously Apollo’s kind isn’t all that interested in coming up with new tricks,” said Arex.

“You stay with what works,” Mueller said with a shrug.

“In any event,” continued Spock, “Apollo’s obsession likewise involved being worshipped.”