“I’m not entirely sure why you find that funny,” she said.

“It’s a long story,” Kirk said. Really long, he thought, since Spock had served as his first officer for more than a dozen years. “For what it’s worth, though, I do appreciate your concern.”

“Remember,” the woman said, “my concern was for your horse.”

“That’s why I appreciate it,” Kirk said. “This is Tom Telegraph.” He brushed his fingers along the horse’s mane.

“Interesting name,” the woman observed.

“It has an old history,” Kirk said.

“Well, this is Romeo,” she said, gesturing to her own steed. “Also an old history.”

Kirk nodded in understanding. “The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” he said, naming Shakespeare’s play. Then, quoting when Romeo first laid eyes on Juliet, he added, “‘The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,/And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.’” He leaned forward in his saddle and offered his own hand to the woman. “I’m Jim- ” He hesitated, not wanting to reveal his renowned identity. Too often, people judged him by his reputation and not by their own experiences with him. Still, he had already started to introduce himself, and he would not lie. “Kirk,” he finished.

The woman reached over and shook his hand. “I’m Antonia…long pause…Salvatori,” she said.

“Sarcasm?” he said. “So early in our relationship?” He also noted with satisfaction that Ms. Salvatori didn’t seem to know who he was.

“Consider it a step up from scolding,” she said.

“I’ll do that,” Kirk said, realizing that he felt an attraction to this woman. “I take it that you live around here.”

“All right.”

Kirk blinked. “Uh, that was a question,” he said.

“Oh,” Salvatori said. “Well, then, yes I live around here.”

“What do you do?” Kirk asked.

“I live around here,” Salvatori said with what seemed like willful obtuseness.

“This conversation isn’t going well, is it?” Kirk said. “Why do I get the feeling I’d have more success chatting with your horse?”

Salvatori shrugged again, this time with just one shoulder. “It’s your choice,” she said. While her expression did not change, Kirk thought he detected a hint of mischief in her eyes.

“For now, I’ll stick with you,” he said. “So do you live a life of complete leisure, or do you provide some benefit to society other than with your beauty?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Salvatori told him. “But I’m a hippiater.” When he furrowed his brow at the word, she said, “It’s an old term for a horse doctor. I’m a veterinarian, but I specialize in our four-legged friends here.” She stroked the side of Romeo’s neck.

“No wonder you were worried about that jump,” Kirk said, motioning back toward the ravine. “You didn’t want another patient.”

Salvatori peered down the hill, her features tensing. “I hate to think what a fall into that gulch would’ve done to Tom Telegraph.”

“Not to mention to me,” Kirk teased.

“That jump was your choice, not the horse’s,” Salvatori said, seemingly serious again. She regarded Kirk for a long moment before working the reins and pulling Romeo around to her right, heading him away from the ravine. “Well, safe riding, Mister Kirk,” she said.

“Wait,” Kirk called, struck by the impulse that, beyond the attraction he felt for this woman, he actually wanted to get to know her. “You didn’t even tell me what town you live in.” Although this section of Idaho remained only moderately populated, a number of towns and small cities spread across the hills and plains within riding distance.

Salvatori peered back over her shoulder at Kirk. “No,” she said, at last offering him a smile. “I didn’t.” Then she took Romeo into a gallop and raced away.

For just a moment, Kirk considered riding after her. Her smile had given him the impression that, after he’d effectively proclaimed his interest in her, she had sped away as something of a challenge to him. He liked that. He liked challenges, but he also liked bending them to his own terms. If Dr. Salvatori did indeed practice veterinary medicine in the area, he should have no trouble locating her.

Kirk turned Tom Telegraph back the way he and the horse had come. It had been an interesting morning, and he found himself for the first time in a long time open to new possibilities-and not only open to new possibilities, but anxious for them.

Halfway down the hill, Kirk urged Tom Telegraph into a gallop. Once more, they successfully leaped the ravine. This time, Kirk’s heart beat faster not simply from fear, but from the memory of Antonia’s smile.

TWO

(2282/2267)

Kirk observed from the cover of the foliage as his other self descended the hill and jumped the ravine again atop Tom Telegraph. The horse and rider passed his location without taking any apparent notice of him-if he even could be noticed. Kirk still lacked an understanding of how the nexus functioned.

He moved to watch his alter ego gallop away, presumably back to the farmhouse, but as Kirk turned, his surroundings changed. Once more, he felt disoriented. As had been the case when he’d looked around from the door of his vacation home and suddenly found himself in his uncle’s barn, he experienced no transporter effect or anything that suggested a loss of consciousness, he spied no flashes of light or any morphing of objects. He simply no longer stood outside in the Idaho daylight. Instead, a white marble column rose before him, all the way up to an ornate ceiling. Reflexively, he looked back to where the ravine had been, but now he saw only a three-walled recess. A long, narrow table there contained a collection of busts carved from some dark green stone. Above the table hung a colorful tapestry depicting what appeared to be a chariot race, and to either side, in the corners of the space, statues perched atop pedestals. The column behind which Kirk stood paired with another to form an entrance to the recess.

The setting seemed familiar, though he could not quite place it. He peered cautiously out from behind the column to the rest of the room. At its center, five chairs encircled a small table, its surface covered with dishes of fruit and meat, golden goblets, and a gold-accented glass vessel containing a dark red liquid. The skins of animals spread across the floor, and artwork and plush red drapes provided additional ornamentation. A brace of columns had been erected at the center of each of the room’s other three walls; those to the left and right bordered double doors, while those on the far side led into a sleeping alcove.

But while Kirk’s location had changed, the presence of the other Kirk had not. He no longer rode Tom Telegraph, but instead sat on the bed in the alcove, still wearing his jacketless Starfleet uniform. Kirk decided to step out from behind the column and attempt to speak with his alternate self in an effort to determine the full nature of his-of their-circumstances. Before he could, though, he saw another person across the room. A woman with long blonde hair emerged from the alcove, wearing a gleaming gold outfit that covered only select portions of her anatomy.

Drusilla, Kirk recalled. She had been a slave on the fourth world of planetary system 892, where an industrialized version of the Roman Empire existed in a stunning instance of Hodgkins’s Law of Parallel Planet Development. Kirk and the Enterprise crew had tracked the debris of the long-missing survey vessel Beagle back to that world. There, Kirk had led Spock and McCoy on a landing party to the surface, where they had discovered that the ship’s captain, R. M. Merrick, had transported down his entire crew of forty-seven, where many of them had died in forced gladiatorial combat. In further violation of the Prime Directive, Merrick had also become a significant part of the planet’s pre-warp society, taking the position of first citizen.