"We're picking up Scotty's spare parts, the gravity stabilizers, the replacement replicators and Uhura's new smell translator thingy…" Jim ticked off the items as he walked briskly towards the transporter room.
"The olfactorisemiotical board, Captain" supplied Spock stonily. Well look at that, mused the captain, he can talk after all. Now for the other one…
"Right, right." he continued. "And a medical researcher, what's his name…" he cast a glance at the doctor.
"Tennek" muttered McCoy "from the T'Hal research group." Uncharacteristically there was no dig at Tennek's Vulcan ancestry from the medical officer. Yet the walk from the bridge had all the tense silence that usually spoke of a more serious disagreement between Jim's friends. By now an expert in this dynamic, the captain decided to not stir this particular bee hive for the moment, though he reckoned he might have to later unless it resolved itself on its own.
"As you know, captain, the T'Hal research group is an institute under the Vulcan Science Academy. It has received many of the Federation's highest accolades for excellence in biochemistry, biophysiology and genetics" supplied Spock.
"Yes, well, as I would have known if I'd actually read the detailed background, but I'm afraid once I saw that he'll only be aboard for a few days I... didn't." They entered the transporter room and Jim nodded to the technician, a petite woman who was deeply focused on her conversation with the ground. "In my defense, Mr. Spock, I did read those two tellarite articles that you sent me on the physics behind the new gravity stabilizers. So I hope that makes up for it?" he made it into a question and smiled at his friend, but Spock's tolerance for human banter was clearly not high today. "Your prerogative, captain" was all the half-Vulcan replied as he stood stiffly by the console, hands behind his back and eyes fixed firmly on the platform.
Jim frowned, but nodded to the technician who was looking expectantly at him. "Energize."
Just as the transporter had begun to glow, the door whisked open and Uhura entered. The lieutenant had a communication ear extension in her ear and a rapidly updating clipboard in her hands, flashing with status reports. Her linguistics department was rewiring its backup circuits to allow for test of the new odor-sensing and emitting universal translator upgrade. Until now, the Enterprise had been using a home-made device of Uhura's own design when communicating with beings that used smells and pheromones. Starfleet's Vulcan labs had taken their design and had turned it into an official prototype. It had taken eight months, and Uhura had grumbled that there were few if any improvements.
Jim focused on the transporter platform, which now held three big crates and a Vulcan male with slightly darker skin tone than Spock and carefully groomed, close-cut hair. He was dressed in floor length, dark grey Vulcan robes, with some subtle dark grey embroidery on the sleeves that could be vines, or, Jim guessed, more probably a stylistic rendering of a verse from Surak in High Vulcan. Tennek threw a quick glance around the room and Jim thought he detected an uncertainty, maybe even a hostility behind the carefully neutral expression. The captain raised his hand in the ta'al salute and said in Vulcan "Dif tor heh smusma".
Tennek blinked at him and hesitated for a moment and then, in what could have been a polite gesture or, more likely, a dismissal of Jim's poor pronunciation responded in English. "Peace and long life."
"I'm James Kirk, captain of the Enterprise. It's an honor to have you aboard, Doctor Tennek. My more knowledgeable colleagues tell me that the work of the T'Hal research group is well respected." The Vulcan nodded and stepped carefully off the pad. "This is my chief medical officer, Dr. McCoy, also head of the Life Sciences Department." McCoy nodded stiffly, and Tennek returned a minuscule nod. He had his eyes fixed on Spock in an evaluating manner, the look of a scientist considering a specimen. He did not raise his hand to greet his fellow Vulcan, however, and instead looked over at Kirk and opened his mouth to say something. Kirk continued firmly "And this is my Science Officer, Spock ch'Sarek, whose work I'm sure you are familiar with." He was bending Starfleet protocol by using Spock's patronymic, instead of the regulation required standard titles, but mentioning Spock's father, might be good if the Vulcan scientist was going to be difficult. He knew that although Spock's relationship with his father had improved during the last few months, Spock still intensely disliked bringing up his powerful family. Kirk had no such compunctions.
Tennek considered him for a moment, nodded, and, finally, returned his gaze to Spock and brought his hands up into the ta'al. The two Vulcan exchanged quiet greetings, but then Tennek turned to the captain again. "It would be most efficient if I could be shown my lab space immediately."
Kirk had thought to ask Spock to get his countryman settled, but Tennek's odd behavior raised all sorts of warning bells. For all the pacifism, noble ethics and high minded reason that Vulcans were famous for, Jim had met a surprising number of racial purists, who disliked the hybrid nature of his first officer. If Tennek was one of those, Jim wasn't going to let Spock anywhere near him. With a glance he appropriated the transporter technician, who stepped smartly out from behind her console.
"Crew woman Jones will show you to your quarters, and then to…"
"I do not require quarters. This vessel will stop at Memory Prime in four days. I shall work until then."
"Nevertheless, as per regulations, you have been given quarters - to use or not as you see fit" he nodded at Jones who smiled at the Vulcan and pointed to the small silver-colored briefcase he carried "Can I help you with that, sir?" When Tennek merely looked at her, her smile faltered, but she stepped briskly between them and led the way out into the corridor. The Vulcan scientist followed.
When the doors had closed on them, Jim sighed and rubbed his forehead. On the platform, Uhura was unpacking her new hardware with enthusiasm, but she'd also noted their visitor's behavior. She threw a long displeased look after the Vulcan, and then a concerned one at Spock. Kirk gave her a tired smile and nodded at the corridor, and the communication's officer hefted the crate and took her unpacking elsewhere. "Good luck" she mimed at him before the doors closed behind her.
"Alright." Jim said with a frown, turning to his two companions. "Tennek seems a cold fish. And I'm guessing you know why" he stabbed a finger at Spock, "and so do you" he continued onto McCoy who kept a sullen silence.
"Spock, is this one of the racial purist fools?" he moved in front of Spock. His friend did not meet his eyes, and answered in measured tones.
"He is, as far as I know, not a conservative or an isolationist. Indeed, his work would make that difficult."
"Then what's with the… impolite behavior. Doctor, what do you know that I don't, that makes you act all stiff?" The Doctor snorted and said, darkly "Oh, I can't say a thing, captain."
"What do you mean, you can't, doctor" said Jim angrily. He was about to go on heatedly, when Spock's words registered with him and he continued in a more thoughtful manner. "And… what do you mean with his work, Spock? What is it that he does?"
He locked Spock's unwilling gaze with his own, and waited. It took a few moments, but finally Spock's shoulders dropped slightly in defeat. Jim practically saw his mental shields lowering slightly in the way his eyes regained some of their expressiveness. Jim didn't know if it was their shared mental link - the product of many mind melds - or just him having laboriously become an expert in his best friend's minimalist body language, but he knew Spock was embarrassed and defensive.
And he knew that knowing that, getting to be a person who knew that, was a rare gift.
He took a step backward and grimaced "Sorry, Spock. I shouldn't push. I don't like him because he doesn't like you, and I'd like to know why. But I only need to know what you want to tell me."
The doctor had watched their exchange intently, but kept uncharacteristically silent. Now that he knew better what to look for, Jim sensed Bones was both frustrated with, and concerned for, their friend - a common combination of opposing feelings for the doctor. Jim took another step backwards and lowered his eyes, waiting to see what Spock would decide.
"There is no reason for you to dislike Doctor Tennek, captain." Spock said finally, softly. "He is an outstanding scientist, and quite conscientious about his work." Jim looked up, questioningly, and Spock continued with some reluctance. "And at the moment, I am that work." Jim started. He hadn't expected this. Spock nodded to the glowering McCoy. "Doctor, I withdraw my request for doctor patient confidentiality in this matter. It is quite plain that you wish to discuss the situation."
"You bet I do!" exploded McCoy. "He has no business being here…"
"He has every business…"
"After what those people put you through…"
"'Those people' were my physicians, I owe them…"
"Nothing! Nothing! You owe them nothing, you…"
"Alright, ok" interrupted Jim holding out his hands in a mediating gesture "this went too quickly from no words to too many words. Spock..." he tentatively put a hand on Spock's arm. "Spock, who is this Tennek to you?"
"Doctor Tennek is a geneticist. He was one of the people who were consulted in my conception, and who worked... with me as I grew up." Jim nodded. Spock had been one of the first Vulcan-Human hybrids. "After I was eleven, there were no further biological and chemical interventions needed, but until I left Vulcan there were regular tests as part of their longitudinal study of my physiology."
"Spock, wait, what exactly does intervention mean here?" asked Jim, concerned. McCoy answered.
"Oh, it's kosher, Jim. Officially. This was pioneering cross-species work, they had to monitor him carefully, adjusting hormones and biochemistry. And they were very professional, careful records kept, very detailed. Very detailed articles too, in the Academy Medical Journals, subject GS-001."
"Your tone indicates your disapproval of this, Doctor. I should perhaps not be surprised…"
"Oh shut up, you idiot. They treated you like a damn lab specimen, Spock. And yeah, sure, they had to keep an eye on you, but you were also a child. A child!"
"I am a child no longer."
"But you still have the world's most carefully concealed panic attack whenever you enter my sickbay, Spock. After all these years."
Spock's eyes flashed, and the transporter room seemed steeped in dangerous darkness for a moment before the Vulcan, hands tightly gripped behind his back, turned on his heel and exited without a word. Jim exhaled, and had a momentary inner battle between following and staying, and settled on the latter when he heard Bones groan.
"Bones, what the hell!"
"What am I supposed to do? Huh? It's true. And I can't be silent, Jim, I just can't." he held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Look, they did nothing wrong, officially. He was never hurt, from what I can tell, not in any way a Vulcan would care. But until he finally got away from that place, to Starfleet, they regularly measured him onto their own Vulcan scales, and whenever he was below any growth curve, any test, they attributed it to his human side, and tried to fix it. And that was their job." The doctor's eyes flashed angrily. "And there's no human ethics board that would ever be ok with the constant testing that they did - but Vulcan medical ethics rules are different. No less stringent when it comes to the biological side, but with far less considerations for psychological trauma. They were less interested in him once he'd stopped growing, and once he'd gotten out of that… that place" he gestured angrily, and wrongly, at where he thought the planet Vulcan was outside the ship " they settled for him supplying them with his full medical evaluations. The last few years I've signed and sent them myself. I didn't think twice about it, until the Pon Farr, didn't know that it wasn't just Vulcan record keeping. But then, after he nearly died because I didn't know enough about him to do my damned job and see what he was going through, I bullied him into finally opening up his entire medical history to me. And I read all the careful articles, all the learned debates in black and white about how insufficient they thought him. And I finally got why his heart rate and adrenaline spikes at the beginning of those routine physicals that I eventually manage to force him to take." The Doctor took a deep breath. "Jim… Tennek didn't ignore Spock because he dislikes him. He did it because as a scientist, you don't want to have anything but controlled interactions with your lab rat."
Tennek waited within the doors of his quarters. He did not sit down. The human had said that she'd be along in another half hour, which now meant 17.3 minutes, to escort him to his lab space after "he'd had a chance to settle in". He'd made the conclusion that this was an important cultural obligation on the humans' part, and decided to comply.
He'd thought to occupy himself by reviewing his testing protocols, but found that he had to meditate for emotional control instead. He had trouble regulating his breathing and perspiration. The ship was as had been expected - Tennek had naturally called up its specifications before coming here and gone over them in detail with his bond mate, a micro-electricity specialist. She'd found the wiring interesting, and been forced to admit to some regret to not be able to experience the implementation of the cutting edge technology of the Federation flagship's famous engine room herself. Tennek did not fully understand this - surely the theoretical advances were the most important, and the only thing available for study here was whatever errors the human engineers had introduced in their implementation...
Tennek tried to trace the negative emotions that had disturbed his normally so ordered thought patterns, in order to deconstruct and eventually remove them in accordance with the Vulcan disciplines. He decided that surely their root must be a frustration with the suboptimal conditions of the study of GS-001. As long as the subject had been in ShiKahr, the number of influencing factors had been finite. Here - with strange radiation, injuries, alien flora and fauna on strange new worlds… How was he to account for all this, in his report on the biochemistry? And he had to - too many parameters were off. They had thought that the subject would not be able to enter Pon Farr, the Blood Fever, but that had been proven spectacularly wrong, and garnered the GS team an official request to add a research comment as an appendix to one of their 30 year old articles on the subject. Not a request for retraction. Not yet. That was what had finally led Tennek to conclude that he had to see the subject in person again. The Pon Farr was the second great error that had plagued the study that he had built his career on.
The first had been the rebellion.
The low emotional control of the subject had been a concern for the first few years. The mother's lack of proper parental care and discipline could not be seen as a defect - she was what she was, a human. That Ambassador Sarek had not been able to be enough of a stabilizing anchor to the hybrid had come as a surprise. Yet there had been a marked improvement in emotional control after 13.6 years - the chart was very clear, and the change was statistically significant and the projections for increased control steady. That was one of the reasons why the sudden wilful disappearance of the subject at the age of 20 had come as such a surprise. It had not been predicted by the team - but, fortunately and appropriately, it was largely seen as a failing of the house of Surak by the research community at large. After the subject had grown past the most important developmental thresholds, Sarek and Amanda had refused the team continuous access to their house for regular monitoring of the subject.
Without data, they could only do so much.
It was not their fault.
There. That would be the reason for his concern, his feeling of panic and helplessness, and the key to how to reassert control.
The emotions vanquished by steady control, Tennek continued standing with his eyes closed in the dark, small room, inside the small metal ship sailing through the vast, fatal vacuum of space, far, far from home.
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