Star Trek Into Darkness Page 0,11

their love held strong. If love could fix the present situation, all would have been well and done with months ago. But what they faced could not be healed by love.

It’s all in the hands of others, he thought morosely.

Where his eyes flashed impotent rage, hers revealed a lack of sleep. Plainly she had been awake much of the night. Watching him, perhaps. Or staring off into the distance, hoping to see a savior and finding instead only four walls on which was painted nothing but desperation.

He shambled slowly to the bathroom. Like the rest of the apartment, it was modern yet comfortable, clean of line without being stark. He performed the usual ablutions. He treated his teeth. In the mirror, a half-dead man stared back at him.

Have to do better than this, he told himself. For her, if not for yourself. Appearances. Morale. Pull it together, man.

He splashed water on his face, and the cold shock helped. So did the attentive presence of the dog that watched and wondered and, by his casual canine indifference, helped to remind his master that the world outside had concerns that went beyond his own.

A glance through the window restated the dog’s assertion. The towers of London soared skyward in the soft light of early morning. Some were of recent vintage, reflecting advances in building materials as well as shifts in architectural taste. Others lingered from earlier eras, refurbished to contemporary standards or preserved as structures of historical importance. Aircars both public and private soared between the towers. The Celts would not have recognized the skyline, nor would the Romans or the Vikings or any of their successors. London was every bit as much an eternal city as Athens or Rome. Bustling with triumphs and tragedies, it would go on no matter what.

As he headed back to the bedroom and to his waiting, silent wife, the man was not at all sure the same could be said of himself.

The rural thoroughfare down which the sleek silver hovercar hummed was not equipped with a guide strip embedded in the surface, thus forcing the man to do his own driving. The effect of the lush English countryside through which he and his wife were speeding did everything to try and improve their mood, and failed. Actually there were three passengers, if one counted the plush bunny that reposed in his wife’s lap. The gentle permanent smile on its fuzzy face was not replicated on the visages of the two human passengers. In the distance behind them, loops of suburban London sprawl curled across the green hillsides.

By now the turnoff among the trees was all too familiar to them, as was the sign they whipped past: ROYAL CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL.

The original Victorian estate was well preserved and the extensive modern additions indistinguishable from their architecturally important predecessor. After parking underground, the couple made their way up to a corridor with which they had also become far too familiar. Alerted to their arrival, Dr. Ainsworth was waiting for them. He glanced at the bunny that the woman clutched to her chest like a plate of medieval armor, and began to speak. Softly, knowingly, but not reassuringly. He desperately wanted there to be a surrogate for the truth. That was something all physicians had wished for since the beginning of time. For this couple, he had none. No substitutes for a harsh and uncaring reality.

As he spoke, air gurneys driven by hospital attendants drifted quietly past them while nurses moved from room to room. His calm but unyielding words were, unfortunately, nothing new to both of them. Occasionally they nodded without comment as they listened, long since numbed to what had become a sorrowful, unyielding litany. No change. No improvement. There being nothing more he could do, the doctor left them to their grief. There is a point in medicine when more words become not only useless, but counterproductive. Experienced as he was, the doctor knew that point had been reached.

The girl on the bed was eight years old. Cocooned by the most up-to-date equipment at the disposal of modern medicine, she lay motionless, breathing slowly and evenly, her eyes closed. Her skin was soft and the color of fine cocoa. What remained of her long black hair was combed neatly away from her face. The disease that was devouring the raven strands along with the rest of her body had rendered her even more slender than usual. She was barely clinging to life. She would not see her