HARRY HAD DIED and gone to Heaven. He was sure of it. He remembered dying clearly enough, although the last few moments of it were mercifully elusive from recollection, and this place where he found himself now was certainly Heaven. If it wasn't, he didn't care; it was good enough for him.
He had awakened in a pool of warm water. Rather hot water, in fact. The heat had concerned him for a few seconds until he realized that the temperature was just right for relaxing in, and that the jets of bubbles that shot out from the sides were already beginning to soothe the aches and pains from his recent exertion. Then when he looked up and saw the two Nevisian women standing at the foot of his bath, wearing only their smiles, he knew for certain he had gone to the right place.
Especially when the one on the left, light-haired and humanoid in all the right places, said, "Welcome to your new life. I am Aludra."
"And I am Cipriana," said her dark-haired companion.
"And I'm enchanted," Mudd said, sitting up and looking around.
Heaven appeared to be a large building filled with row upon row of tiled pools like the one he rested in. There were no windows, but skylights all along the ceiling let out steam and let in sunlight, which illuminated a multicolored tile mosaic landscape on the walls. There wasn't a stitch of clothing among the hundreds of people he saw soaking in the pools or standing beside them—a delightful sight even for a veteran spacehand who had seen similar situations many times before.
The only disconcerting sight was that everyone here was Nevisian. Their hair had the same hemispherical static-charge look common to Prastorians and Distrellians alike, and though the dampness had taken much of the stiffness out and made everyone appear a great deal more human at the moment, it was obvious that they weren't. And the tiled room echoed with the voices of people conversing in the Nevisian language.
As he watched, two more very surprised-looking people—both Nevisian—materialized in pools down the row from him, and attendants moved to welcome them.
Mudd had never been particularly religious. And it did seem a bit odd that everyone in Heaven spoke Nevisian. But then, he reasoned, he had died in the Nevis system, and the operative word was "died." This was somebody's afterlife, no matter what they called it. He was just glad it existed at all. If he wanted to find the human area he would probably have to take a celestial shuttle of some sort.
All in due time. He was in no hurry to go anywhere. Especially when the dark-haired woman at the foot of his pool, Cipriana, said, "We're here to give you a hero's welcome to your new home. Would you like us to bathe you?"
A hero's welcome, eh? Where he came from, that meant considerably more than just a bath, but he had to admit that would certainly make a good start. He lay back in the pool and smiled wide. "My dears, that would be divine."
They both bent down and slipped into the pool with him. From an alcove above his head they took thick padded mitts and drew them onto their hands, then began rubbing his chest and back and sides with the scratchy fabric.
"Oh yes," Mudd sighed, closing his eyes and letting them work their magic. "For this, I would die again and again."
The blond woman, Aludra, giggled. "Silly. If you die a second heroic death, you'll go straight to Arnhall; you know that."
"No, actually, I didn't," said Mudd. "Where's Arnhall? And do they have women as beautiful as you there?"
They both smiled, and Cipriana said, "When we finish our own heroic doublets they will."
"Ah, certainly." Mudd turned to put an itchy shoulder blade under Aludra's mitt. "How do you know I died heroically, anyway? I could have tripped on a stairway, couldn't I, and wound up here just the same?"
Aludra laughed, a high-pitched, musical sound that echoed on the tile walls. "It would have to be a pretty spectacular fall. Only heroes appear in the baths. Accident victims generally get a second chance on their homeworld. And of course cowards are dumped on the street."
"Of course," said Mudd.
She looked at him quizzically, then said, "You really didn't know, did you?"
"No," Mudd admitted.
"That's two of them," Cipriana said to Aludra. "I thought we might have this sort of problem when we started allowing aliens to join us." She said to Mudd, "Do you know Leslie Lebrun Ensign Three Two Seven Five Six Oh?"
"No," said Mudd. "At least I don't think so. Why?"
"Because she arrived just a few minutes ago, and she didn't know where she was, either." Cipriana pointed to Mudd's left. "She's right down there." Aside to Aludra she whispered, "So many names! She must have incredible stories to tell!"
Mudd squinted through the steam. He saw a few heads bobbing above the water, and attendants, both male and female, scrubbing away on their bodies.
And about five pools away he saw a woman with hair hanging down into eyes that were much deeper in their sockets than everyone else's here. Her face was much wider than usual and her ears were rounded on the edges rather than made of overlapping petals. She was, in short, human. Mudd recognized her as the security officer who had accompanied Kirk—and who had been vaporized in the crossfire only a minute or two before Mudd himself had been hit.
That clinched it. If she was here, then this was indeed the afterlife, for he had watched her die.
She didn't seem nearly as happy as he was about winding up here. She held her arms around her knees and her head bowed. Rather than bathing her, her attendants—a muscular young man and an older, motherly woman—sat on the edge of her pool with their feet dangling into the water and simply talked with her.
"Leslie?" Mudd said. "Miss Lebrun?"
She looked up, and her eyes lit with recognition. "Harry Mudd!" Then her brows furrowed and she said, "You didn't make it either."
"No," Mudd told her, "but I believe your sacrifice did save the lives of your crewmates." He couldn't know that for certain, but their absence from the baths seemed fair evidence. Kirk would, of course, go straight to Hell for his crimes, but certainly McCoy wouldn't, nor Spock or the other young security officer.
"I guess that's some consolation." She unwrapped her arms from her knees. "Could I…join you over there? No offense," she said to her attendants, "but I could use the human contact right now."
"Certainly, my dear," Mudd said. "I would be delighted."
The older woman said, "Of course you may. That's why people who fought together arrive here together, so you can talk about what happened before you go on to start life anew. Here." She and the man helped Lebrun out of her pool and over to Mudd's. Harry moved aside to give her room on the underwater bench, surprised to realize he was averting his eyes to protect her modesty. Death had apparently affected him as well, or perhaps it was merely the plethora of other delights to occupy his attention, but whatever the cause, she seemed too innocent and upset for him to add to her troubles by ogling her naked body.
Her attendants helped her into the pool, then left to help another person who materialized in a pool nearby. Cipriana and Aludra stayed in the water, though four bodies nearly made it overflow.
When Lebrun had slipped into the water and the jets once again veiled her in bubbles, Mudd smiled at her and said, "I must thank you for your bravery and courage in attempting to rescue me—and I fear I must apologize as well for delaying our departure. I allowed my…ah…my natural attraction for precious treasures to cloud my judgment."
"Your greed, you mean?" Lebrun said, a trace of a smile on her lips.
Mudd laughed. "You and your captain were cut from the same mold. He always preferred such terms as well. But really, I believe life is what you make of it, and what you call a thing says a great deal about your attitude toward it."
"Life. Right. And what do you call this?" Lebrun held her arms out to include the whole building, and by implication the whole situation that had brought them here.
"An opportunity," said Mudd. "For one, I have escaped that damnable android chaperone of mine. For another, we do seem to have physical bodies again, which is more than I was led to expect. We might even be able to contact our former companions in life and continue our business as usual if we wished, though—"
"No communication is permitted with those you left behind," said Cipriana. "You must leave your former life in the past."
"As I was saying," Mudd finished, "given the circumstances, I for one am glad to be quit of it. A fresh start, that's what I call this."
"I was married the day before yesterday," Lebrun said quietly. "I'm not quite so eager to give that up."
Mudd snorted. "Believe me, if your marriage was anything like mine, another day or two would have been all it would take to change your opinion."
Aludra looked puzzled. "What is marriage?"
"It's when two people agree to share everything, and spend the rest of their lives together," said Lebrun.
"In theory," Mudd corrected. "In practice, it's when two people agree to make life miserable for each other."
Cipriana frowned. "How could you agree to spend your lives together?" she asked Lebrun. "You know you'll be separated the first time one of you is killed."
"I…I didn't expect to be…killed," Lebrun said. She sniffed, and wiped at her eyes with a wet hand. Cipriana wrung out her bath mitt and handed it to her to dry her eyes with.
"Nobody does, the first time," Aludra said. "But it eventually happens to all of us. It can be very difficult if you've formed strong attachments, but you always have a happy reunion in Arnhall to look forward to."
"That's the second time I've heard you mention—" Mudd began, but a sudden commotion far down toward the other end of the building stopped him in mid question. It sounded as if someone was banging on a door. Banging hard. Had they locked an avenging angel out by mistake?
Perhaps they had, for a second later a bright rectangle of light appeared in the wall as the door burst inward. People shouted in alarm, and the blue bolts of disruptor fire speared outward through the sudden gap.
Disruptors in Heaven? That shocked Mudd more than anything he had seen or heard so far.
The shooting died down, and a babble of voices rose to replace its noise. It was difficult to see clearly through the steam, but Mudd thought he could see five or six clothed people near the door—all wearing red.
An ugly suspicion rose in his mind. "Just a minute," he said, turning to Aludra. "Where are we, exactly?"
"Exactly?" Aludra asked, reluctantly looking away from the commotion. "We're in pool seventy-three in hero's reception hall nine, in the city of Novanar, on the southern continent of Kelso. On Prastor," she added helpfully.
"On Prastor," Mudd repeated. He could actually feel his worldview reorient itself to accommodate the news that he hadn't gone to Heaven. It felt a bit like going into warp drive with a badly tuned engine.
Somehow he was still alive, miraculously healed of his disruptor wounds—and back in the same universe he had thought was safely behind him. "Dammit," he said, then, embarrassed at having sworn in the presence of three ladies, he said, "Pardon my Klingon, but I believe our troubles are not over after all."
"Are you kidding?" Lebrun said excitedly. "If this is Prastor, then we can get back in touch with the Enterprise. And I can join my husband again."
"That's precisely what I was talking about," Mudd said. He leaned back in the water and let the jets work the renewed tension from his muscles. He had the unpleasant suspicion that he would need all the relaxation he could store up to get through the days ahead.