Uhura frowns at her view. The real San Francisco has made an appearance– the one that lurks in the shadows of the sunniest of programmed days. The campus is quiet. It looks deserted. A nasty breeze slices through the open window, striking at Uhura's bones.
Uhura's got time. She solders it out of other people's slack and resonant opportunities. Her initiative serves her well. Fifteen minutes here, two there. Completing tasks correctly so she needn't rectify mistakes upon checking her work means that when she does take time for self-indulgence, the moments are truly her own.
She fans her ten fingers in front of her, notes the roughness of her cuticles, the dull finish on the nail of her left index finger, the incipient hang-nail on her right thumb. She bends to scrutinize her feet and finds her toes cannot bear close examination. Uhura pulls up her schedule on her padd and sees she can afford three hours. Uhura has time, but knows herself well enough to agree with her inner Gaila: it's possible she can talk herself out of fun way too easily.
Taking this into account, Nyota picks up her pace.
She toggles off the padd, scoots the seat back from the desk, neatens the workspace, and ducks into her washroom. Therein, Nyota checks her teeth, running a tongue over them while grinning at their whiteness. She pulls faces at her reflection while swinging her hair into a high fall from the top of her head. She pulls the many horn teeth of her fine-toothed comb from her hairline to her top knot, pulling the delicate hairs smooth.
She hums. She gives her head a pat.
She exits the washroom at a trot, grabs up a pair of neatly lined-up boots from beneath her bed and steps into them between dance moves. Step, ball, change. Once outside, she continues to feel like music despite the mist and the gray. Humming, free-styling from key-change to key-change, Nyota heads for what she sometimes calls the summerlands. Her boots barely touch the ground.
Once across the bay, Nyota unfastens her jacket. It's so far beyond warm it's hot. With the mists behind her and the sun shining bright above her, California feels less and less like a sentence to a Blixen Coffee Garden social and more like another sky in which to soar.
While crossing the bay, Nyota calls ahead and makes arrangements. She has an appointment. The nails that really bother her are hidden from view and she's surrounded by humans more like the ones she left in the USA. Most of them are American, but still, by their looks and physical grace, for all that diversity, many of them are possibly cousins a variety-of-times removed. These are a beautiful people, skin every shade of ultra-violet radiation does not scare us and ageless despite the variety of years.
In counterpoint with the spoken Standard vibrating in the warm air are harmonies that hint of Yoruba and Igbo, Portuguese and Arabic. So evocative. Of course, there's that specific density of languages mixed with Spanishes and Mayan dialects that's particularly northwestern United States. Nyota doesn't hear the kiSwahili of her families' kitchens nor the Bantu flavored Standard of her first school's rooms but, at that moment, nearly close enough.
She's an all-African girl, blessed by its citizens' dynamic creativity and (long crafted) golden opportunities. Like millions, Nyota was raised on the happy marriage of modern and ancient technology. The bounty of her grandmothers' fields and the vigor of her grandfathers' livestock have grounded her in faith and rooted her in song. She grew up safe, honored, rich. Normal. Gold is more common than the cold and diamonds are thicker on the ground, everywhere, than they were back home at the pale advent of the Scramble.
Earth is good all over, for nearly every one, but occasionally Starbase's flagship campus tends toward cold and damp and the Presidio doesn't feel, smell, sound, or look remotely like the home parts of Earth. Atmosphere control only does so much when she's more reminded of the differences between her and the majority of enrolled humans than the similarities.
When so much isn't enough, she crosses the bay.
Thank God for Oakland. Black and shining like a diamond in the sun.
Nyota ducks into an attractive coffee shop. It's older than she is and nearly as smart. She reads the menu, spotting several Kenyan varieties and reading them aloud in rhythm with one of the songs that's been in her head since she left San Francisco. She hums while in line and stops when it's her turn.
"You're not going to sing me your order?" says the barista with an obvious twinkle in his teeth and eyes. Rather than roll her eyes or cover her teeth with set lips, Nyota resumes humming. She prints her order on a piece of scrap paper, hands it to him, and punctuates the whole thing with a smile.
The man behind Nyota snorts. His shoulders are still shaking when she turns from the till after paying for her drink.
While her coffee is readied, she visits the washroom. Just because.
By the toilet close to the wall, stands a slender spouted watering can. Shiny and slim lined, it matches the decor. She lifts it by the handle, testing the weight. It is full. Reflexively, impishly, she pours a short stream of water into the bowl and laughs. She keeps a pitcher in the 'fresher she shares with Gaila. When Gaila asked her what was it for, Uhura told her, "It's a human thing." Nyota puts the watering can back down with a smile.
On the way to pick up her order, Nyota stops and greets friends she didn't treat as such in her rush to the loo. She smiles and she touches, her head tilting apologetically with one person, her eyes radiating warmth at another. It's really better to do something right the first time around, but in socializing, sometimes catch-up is its own reward— and she still has nearly two hours to call her own.
Nyota's momentum carries her forward to where her two cups of Molokai-Kona blend, from a drip and not a replicator, await.
She takes her order. "Thank you," she breathes, tilting her chin at the barista and leans door-ward. The barista smiles back and shoots her a thumbs up. He says, "J'ai une question a vous poser." His is a warming accent, though it's more immortel than Dakar.
Shaking her head, Nyota continues to turn away, but grins over her shoulder at him. He mouths, "D'ou venez vous?" He tilts his head. "Mes rêves?"
Laughing, Nyota says, "Les Etats Unis d'Afrique."
He claps his hands, "J'en étais sûr!"
And Nyota Uhura laughs because there is more than one united states of Africa. She tips him a wave that becomes a gleeful fist. He makes two, holding one over his heart and lightly punching the air with the other.
His hands have their appeal but she can't afford the time.
With an extra snap in her hips, she turns her back on him and nearly stumbles over a pair of lovers. She steps around the kissing couple, her trajectory slows. They are, temporarily, magnetic. Nyota stops suddenly, rising on the balls of her feet to allow a careening toddler safe passage. Then, she is out the door and basking in the hot light. She pauses to taste the coffee. Her eyes close as she savors the smooth, satiny finish of beans that have never gone rancid.
Now the warmth on her face goes deeper into her flesh. She reseals her drink. What feels like it could be a beautiful hand closes around her arm, she pivots with a cautionary lift to her eyebrows. "Excuse me," says the barista attached to the hand. "I must have your name."
Nyota's eyes narrow. She covers his hand with hers. She says, "Nyota."
"How beautiful," he says. "nigh-YO-ta."
"No," she says sadly and pulls his hand from her arm. "Good coffee, though."
She leaves without a backward glance, the snap of her hips only slightly compromised. Heat and overheard speech lend her back some of her ease. By the time she's neared her destination, she's close to dancing again. She thinks she can hear Toisanese, Xhosa, and AAVE maneuvering around each other. The melange closely approximates her associations with languages closest to her heart. One day, Nyota Uhura of the starship Enterprise will be far out in the glittering black, where no Bantu girl has gone before, but for now, it's almost like she can smell her grandfather's kitchen just around the corner and she's just about to be greeted by her by name said iright/i.
Nyota's stride loosens further when her destination comes into view: a covered doorway set into a wall covered by a smoked glass and quartz mosaic laid out in a dense, mutable pattern of flowing circles and polygons. Eyes averted, Nyota hurries past the algorithmic reiterations of colorful platonic ideals which follow her around the corner of the wall and into the covered walkway. Just above the door opening, the triangles, spheres and squares mix with shards of white stone and swirls of bronze. Read one way the shards spell iGedi/i. Followed another, the bronze reads iEl Em/i.
Nyota crosses the threshold. It's like she's pushed through a force shield and left the street noise outside. Unobtrusive music settles in quiet spaces between her thoughts. She stands within the cozy confines of a circular room. To her right is a shadowed doorway. To her left, a low ramp curves to a lower level. Opposite Nyota, behind a tall counter bearing an acacia branch in a blue vase, stands an extravagantly dimpled woman of indeterminate age and lush proportions dressed in the colors of sea and fog. Nyota takes a deep breath, her shoulders lifting, her eyes closing as she inhales a fragrance that's redolent of health and cleanliness, strong like honey and pure as gin, as salt.
"It always smells so good in here," Nyota says.
The woman smiles in response. "Thank you." She has soft, round features. Long, old locs grow from her immaculate scalp and are braided together with algebraic precision. If they remind Nyota of the mosaic on the front of the building, it's because some things are obvious to the educated. The lady radiates calm dignity despite the sharp pleasure in her voice when she says, "You've brought me coffee."
"Yes, Bennet, I have. iGreat/i coffee," replies Nyota handing over the cup. "Won't you tell me what makes it smell so good in here?"
Bennet unseals her coffee and smiles down at the heart discernible in the foam. "I would never deprive you of the pleasure of discovery."
"I'll manage. Give me a hint."
Bennett smiles, a teasing glint in her eye. "The hidden treasures of darkness brought to light." Bennet wafts the cup under her nose. "Not unlike this coffee. Or yourself."
Nyota laughs, "A different riddle from last time. More clues for me. Thank you. It'd be so much easier if you'd just tell me what I'm smelling."
"You. Me. Coffee. A little of this, a little of that. A lot like sea air."
"You're never going to tell me."
"There's so much more other available information. Though I regret to tell you that the archives, for the moment, are full."
Bennett then informs Nyota that if she wishes to have her name placed on a waiting list Bennett will be glad to accommodate her. Maybe Miss Uhura would care to meet with an available aesthetic consultant in the meanwhile for, as Miss Uhura may be already be aware, walk-ins for non-salon services are welcome. Particularly when the archives are fully occupied.
"I'm not here for research," says Nyota. She shakes her head and closes her eyes, "And if a spot downstairs opens up iplease/i don't tell me."
"Not even if we have new additions related to your listed lines of inquiry?"
Her eyes still closed, Nyota shakes her head and says, "Especially not even."
"You do tend to linger. And three minutes can throw off an entire day."
"You understand me exactly. I have a nail appointment. Esadri is expecting me."
Raising lush eyebrows over artfully painted eyes, Bennett invites Nyota to drink fruit-infused water or proprietary non-tea, while she waits.
Nyota leans against a wall with her legs crossed at the ankle rather than sink into a comfortable gel chair. Standing, she can ignore the rail that borders the ramp leading to the archives. Nyota sips at her water and tries to get a sense of the latest styles from the other people in the room.
Each person Nyota's eyes falls upon is better looking than the last, and if Nyota is discomfited by the array and depth of beauty present, her carriage and easy acknowledgment of the other beings- prolonged eye contact, a brief smile, or some variation thereof- gives no evidence of this.
Nyota sees tall humans and short humans; fat and deep-eyed fair women, thin and light-eyed dark women. Fractal arrays of braids pre-dominate but some have silken cropped hair no thicker than a cobweb shadowing perfectly shaped heads; others sport cataracts of crinky hair that tumbles past shoulders, elbows, and in one impressive instance, hips. Several beings wear their hair like Nyota's, long and smooth. Unlike Nyota, these women's tresses are woven in gravity defying constructions that compel mental tracery. Nyota is nearly moved to envy by their height and complexity.
Nyota's longing must show on her face and in the way she tugs at the tip of her pony-tail because elegant, near-black and rose-peach fingers snap just beyond Nyota's peripheral vision and a crisp voice says, "Those don't work well for space-bound engineers."
Nyota whips her gaze to the speaker so quickly the leaves of her earrings click. "Esadri!" Nyota says. "You look beautiful."
The smile of the woman in question travels to include her mouth at the compliment. She is a classic American beauty– fit and well-dressed. Yellow gold bands her elegant arms and dangles from her ears to her supple shoulders; it circles her narrow waist emphasizing the difference between its tight span and the width of her hips. The absolute darkness of Esadri's irises and skin diverge. While her eyes gleam with cut and color coveted by jewelers the world over, her skin soaks up light, holding it closer than a lover. Like Nyota, Esadri wears her hair in a fall gathered high on her head, but beyond the gathering at the crown of her head it is as branching, textured, and colorful as living coral. As usual, she smells like a party: raspberries and rum.
"It's good to see you too, Cadet. But if you want my opinion, you can forget about any of those styles today or any other day. Unless you're planning on staying here with your Oxford Linguistics Invitational gold rating."
Nyota's radiance dims. "You heard about that?"
"We could hear the crowing from Sunset." Esadri tilts her head, shifting light with her jewelry and eyes, "Why didn't tell us you were going?"
"She is a delicate flower that doesn't like to brag," says Miss Bennet dryly, just over Nyota's shoulder. "Stop embarrassing her." She hands Nyota a cloth wrapped package.
"I can't accept-"
"You can. It's yours or no one else's. You did very well. I'm proud to know you." Bennet ripples her fingers at Nyota and glides down the ramp out of view.
Nyota sighs wistfully and pins her attention on Esadri. "I didn't think you'd be interested," she says off of Esadri's narrow look.
"We're always interested in your triumphs. Many as they are. To the stars then?"
"Yes!"
"Then that ponytail's days are numbered." Esadri presents a hand, manicure side up, for Nyota's consideration. "This however, does travel..."
Nyota reaches for Esadri's hand. "What is this?" she exclaims over the glittering material affixed to Esadri's nails.
Esadri simpers and steps backward, toward the shadowed doorway opposite the sunken ramp leading to the archives. Nyota doesn't even give the ramp a glance. She is caught by the shine, color, and extravagance of Esadri's manicure. The women enter a hallway lined on either side with aquariums bisecting both walls. Live fishes, of greater variety than would naturally appear in either salt or fresh water, appear to swim in one another's company. They present a riot of pattern and color, but Nyota pays them as little mind as she just did the stairs to the archives.
It is cool in the hall, the only light coming only from the aquariums. In that subtle light, Esadri's nails still gleam with a fierce fire. Esadri stops so that Uhura can admire their gleam in the dimness.
"It's beautiful."
"It's chocolate diamond dust, embedded in an alloy matrix." Esadri lifts her other hand. Nyota takes that hand. The ladies resume walking. "We have it in brown gold, which means pink gold and red gold, too. Either would coordinate well with your academy uniforms. But..."
Nyota completes the sentence with, "Inadvisable."
"The conductivity."
Nyota nearly moans. "Do you have it in titanium?"
"No."
"Then why show me?"
"Because when I offer you a possibility that suits your raised expectations, your pleasure will be all the greater."
"That's logical," Nyota shrugs and releases Esadri's hand.
Esadri brings her hands together at her heart. She bows her head. Her thin locs shimmer. It occurs to Nyota that Esadri has impregnated the blonde locs with gold. Heartened by the loveliness, Nyota smiles. Esadri lifts her head and executes a three-point turn. The caftan Esadri wears billows yellow and white around her. Nyota performs a golf clap, her smile so wide her eyes nearly close.
"We have this in several combinations of your colors and I have it on very good authority that these do well for space-farers such as yourself."
"Wonderful. Now let's get my nails did."
Esadri leads. The hall opens into a high-ceilinged vault. It's soft with diffuse light and layered scent. Eleven sentients, nearly all human, nearly all of them sexually mature, sit at deep, cushioned chairs while their feet soak in millefiori glass basins filled with milky liquid topped with glimmering foam. Sitting atop ergonomic stools at these women's feet are eleven consultants dressed in shades of sky, sea, and sun.
Esadri directs Nyota to an empty station, holding Nyota's hand as Nyota climbs the stairs leading to the only empty gel chair. Nyota groans blissfully as the chair conforms to her body, sections of it cooling and warming at strategic points of contact. Nyota hums softly, a meandering tune that slides slowly and almost randomly from one note to another. Esadri slips a lab smock over her caftan and sinks gracefully to the stool. Nobody's looking, not even Nyota, but if they were they'd gasp at Esadri's grace.
Nyota has reached for a periodical and flicks it on with a touch. "New feature," says Esadri. "Archive additions relevant to your interests available should you key in your access code. Premises access only."
"I see that," Nyota says. "But I've got another appointment later today."
Esadri removes Nyota's boots and gives Nyota the side-eye. "You have bruised nail beds."
"Yes."
"And one of your ankles is swollen."
"Slightly."
Esadri pokes it. Hard. Nyota says, "Ah!"
"Tender for slightly," says Esadri and twists the rose-shaped glass taps. She selects stoppered tubes from a small cedar chest and pours unguents into the water. The result is glittering foam. Nyota bends forward, inhaling blissfully.
"Don't you want to know what's in here?" Esadri asks.
"And ruin the mystery?"
Together, they laugh.
When Esadri asks, "How is it that you come here with your feet beat all to hell but your hair looking great?" Nyota rolls her eyes and quips. "Priorities. I suspect you've heard of them."
Esadri snorts, delicately, and says, "I've also heard of sparring that can lead to permanent injury."
"There's that."
Esadri sighs and purses her lips in disapproval. "Did you bother to go to the clinic?"
Nyota tilts her head, her pony-tail swings as she scrunches her face, "I was counting on you."
"My dear," says the older woman. "You will always be beautiful but you will not always be young." She covers the arches of Nyota's feet with her hands. "I charge you to treat this body kindly. And not to presume too much on life's love for you."
Closing her eyes, Nyota Uhura resists the urge to splash suds in Esadri's lap. Nyota says, "Does that mean I can keep the hair?"
"You can try. It might snag in a circuit board or catch fire while you're welding something."
"But not if it's hanging on your wall with Makeda's wigs, right."
At that Esadri closes her eyes and giggles.
And though it is impolite in this latitude, Nyota waits for Esadri to open her wide-spaced American eyes and offers Esadri the sight of her tongue. Esadri opens her eyes. Nyota sticks out her tongue. Esadri chuckles and says with gravity, "How rude. Thank you."
They share laughter and knowledge until Esadri says, "I so enjoy your visits, Nee-neeyota." Esadri's tongue trips lightly on Nyota's name, and it is an acceptable pronunciation, but it isn't Nyota's mother's or her father's or any of the rest of her blood kin's way of addressing her. It's not close enough. With a suppressed little sigh, Nyota says, "I enjoy them too." After that, Nyota barely speaks another word.
Nor does she hum.
*
Nyota has paid for services and stands in open toed slippers with her boots in a bag. She has diamonds on her toes. Her feet fairly gleam.
She is chatting with Bennett while someone ascends the archive slope. Nyota spies a glossy dark head framed by the pointed tips of alien ears and stops mid-breath. Nyota says, "Commander. Spock." While he says, "Nyota."
Nyota gives him a fixed look, and wraps the tail of her hair around her beautifully manicured finger.
Bennet looks from one person to the other and excuses herself without a word.
Nyota takes a mental step back, then a physical one. "What did you call me?"
"I meant no liberties. Cadet Uhura, I am sorry if I did not pronounce your name correctly. Did I not pronounce it correctly?"
"Yes. Yes, you did."
*
"Why languages?" Spock asks.
"You can't guess, Mr. Spock?"
"A woman of your intellect could study and excel in any discipline."
She preens. But her inner Bennet and Esadri are having their says. "Surely you've formulated a hypothesis."
"As a scientist, hypotheses are my stock in trade to utilize an old Earth idiom."
Nyota's lips twitch. She will not giggle. There is no reason for her to giggle. Why would she want to laugh at that.
"I confess that the possibilities far outstrip my powers of deduction."
A tiny v pleats itself between Nyota's slim brows.
"You pose more than a small mystery." Then, "Nyota."
She draws in a breath at the pronunciation of her name.
She takes her eyes away from him and schools her features into a semblance of calm. Her partially lowered lashes do not hide that her eyes move from side to side.
She exhales through her nostrils, leaning hard on breath control. She is so hot all of a sudden and it is not the weather.
Spock clasps his hands together. He clears his throat. He unclasps his hands and reclasps them. He frowns. His eyes are fixed on her face, but he's not staring at her lips? Is he?
She licks hers. He grasps his chin. His index finger strokes his cheek.
"I like mysteries," she admits and smiles as if she weren't a mystery herself. Or if she were.
Spock tugs at his shirt collar. "Your human linguist, Weinreich, hypothesized that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. It would appear that, broadly, the mystery is solved."
Nyota takes up the stylus and begins to draw upon the padd. "No matter the sociolect, no matter the language, some expressions are ungrammatical for every speaker of that… tongue." While she speaks, she draws two points, one above the other on the padd. With a flick of her thumb, she sets the stylus to compass and describes perfect circles of equal diameters around each point. These are well-practiced, fluid movements. She has done this before. "What if, ungrammatical constructions violate…" She looks up from the padd. Oh, what does she know? This man is brilliant. She's no slouch but this is the man who turned down a spot in the Vulcan Science Academy. Starfleet Academy was his safety school! "Maybe I like good ideas too much."
"Your meaning is imprecise."
"…Hardly, Mr. Spock."
"Explain."
"Likability," she says, confounding him anew.
He lifts an eyebrow and clasps his hands behind his back though he is sitting. Has she amused him?
"Ah emotion. Quite logical."
Score. "Absolutely, Commander-and don't think I can't hear you laughing at me—a good idea may carry weight for longer than an unlikable or bad idea because of likability."
"Likability poses something of a mystery to me," Spock admits. "And what of implicational scaling?"
"I like hanging out in bars."
That brings Spock's eyebrow up hard and fast. "Really?"
"While Vulcans may not lie, it is generally considered impolite to imply otherwise about humans to humans.
"Drunks tend to speak slowly and with exaggerated care."
"All across the galaxy."
"All across the galaxy. You're aware that of the theory that Vulcan is notoriously difficult to learn? I suspect it's because Vulcans don't drink."
"On the contrary, Cadet Uhura. Vulcans do drink. They do not, however, get drunk from alcohol."
"Vulcans get drunk."
Instead of reminding her that Vulcans do not lie and that it is generally considered illogical to imply otherwise, Spock says, "Indeed. Or they can become intoxicated." His pause is dangerous. "You are familiar with the substance, I assure you."
"What could it be-" Her eyes study their table, then the surrounding tables, then her cup. "Coffee?"
"No."
"Chocolate!"
His mouth and eyes soften.
She beams in return.
"Where does one go to find drunk Vulcans?" Nyota muses.
Spock calls for a server.
*
She has the sudden sense impression of clutching ropey shoulders, hanging on for dear sanity while he sings into her, like the tongue of some great bell and as he surges into her, again and again and again, it's like he strikes a note that echoes and rolls inside them, inside her—perfect and sustained and just as it's about to fade into silence, it is joined by another note, struck from his deep colliding with her deep, and on and on. His narrow, knobby, gracefully jointed body hot as summer above and inside her.
He will be thorough.
She will be thorough. She will afford the time.
"Yes."
"Nyota?"
"We should be alone."
"That would be logical."
"Take me where we can be that."
Spock does.
In the dark, his hands feel like sunlight.
When dawn breaks, they are more dazzling still.
-0-
Math from shadowfae, Ron Englash, and Charles Gilchrist. Linguistics from Derek Bickerton, ciderpress, and my love of Creoles. Summerlands from yeloson. Hair lore from many, among whom are shadowfae, Louise Marie, Ron Englash, and Oyin. brightfame beta'd and came up with grounded in faith/rooted in song. bravecows rocked my world with her take on the ethnocentrism of the Human contingent of Starfleet with her wonderful The First Time. Please forgive any and all of my mistakes.