Authors note: If you don't know Lily-Lee, you can picture her as an Australopithecus with a good brain and a four-nostriled sense of chemical analysis. If you want more details, you can read some of my other stories. She's in all of them.

Now with stunning art by Karl Johnsson.

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Chapter 1 - Stolen Dirty Memory

During beta shift down in the laboratory, Spock and Lily-Lee were trying to figure out what caused the pH to shift so suddenly in the south pole ocean of O345. They tested everything from plankton ecosystems to sea floor hot vents to atmospheric gas pressure. No answer yet. There was no hurry, so they went over one thing at a time. Lily-Lee was standing on a chair, analysing some mineral deposits and tried to start a conversation.

"Sooo, getting anywhere with the captain?"

"Why would I have any plans concerning the captain?"

"Oh come on, you don't have to wear that stone face around me. I already know you want him."

"That is of no importance. What I want and what I will are two different things. Captain Kirk is my superior officer."

"Does this have something to do with your long life span? I was thinking that you take forever to get around to do something, but maybe it's just that you have so many more years to do things in. I'm used to rushing things. Here today, eaten tomorrow, as we say back home."

"I assure you that I have no intention to make any advances towards the captain, as I have no reason to believe he is interested in anything except women."

"Oh now, I wouldn't say that. Last time I saw him he looked pretty i..." Lily-Lee put her hands over her mouth. "I'm not supposed to talk about that, right? This discretion thing is difficult."

"Then I suggest that you stop mentioning it." He looked pretty what? WHAT? Interested? Into it? Infatuated with someone else? What have you been doing with the captain and WHO ELSE was there?

"Can you break this pebble for me?" Lily-Lee handed him a small stone and Spock broke it in halves with two fingers. "I meant with the chisel, Spock, but this works fine." She took it and put one half in a cuvette with liquid and half in her mouth. No pH change could be detected. "I guess that wasn't it, either. Have they had any earthquakes recently that may have released something? Or O345-quakes."

"We have no data on that. Here, these would be the zones with the highest probability." Spock plotted coordinates on a map in his padd.

"I'll take this over to Chekov and ask him to scan for geodynamic activity in the mid-ocean rift."

"You had better stay with him and wait for the results. He may need additional details as the scan progresses."

"Will do, Spock." Lily-Lee walked out with the padd under her arm.

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Spock decided to indulge once more in the stolen memory of Jim*. How many times had he done that? He didn't want to acknowledge the number but he knew. He always wanted it to be the last time. This behaviour was undignified and he should be able to control himself better. Just one more time and then he would stop. Spock sat down and focused inward, allowed the memory to move through him. He felt cold stone slabs against the soles of her bare feet. His bare feet. Her small hands unbuttoning Kirk's fly and pulling down both trousers and underwear. He was inside those hands, feeling the metal and fabric. He even felt her papillose tongue running across the protruding lower canines in her mouth. He was there when she closed her lips around the tip and kept the teeth away. She took a taste of Jim. This part of the memory was muddled with chemical details that Lily-Lee had absorbed to analyse later, but it was all an unstructured mass to Spock. In the background there were tactile signals from the tongue and hands. Now he saw himself out of the corner or her eye. He was chained to the wall next to Jim and looked at his captain. And Jim, he... this was the climax and Spock remembered it over and over, not reaching the end just yet.

As Jim lifted his head and looked at Spock, he...

When their eyes met, he...

When he caught Jim's gaze, Jim...

Time to let the memory run to its end. As Spock looked directly into the eyes of Jim, Jim gasped and came. In the memory, Spock was in two places at once. Chained against the wall looking at Jim but also down between his legs, taking him all in. The flow of chemical details overshadowed all other impressions but Spock was already done so it didn't matter. This was the last time, this must not be repeated. Discipline.

"Spock, I forgot to..." Lily-Lee came in through the door and stopped in the middle of a step. Her eyebrows shot up to what would have been her hairline, had she not been so all-over hairy. "What is that smell?" Spock got out of the chair and walked over to the other side of the bench but said nothing.

"Yeah, you don't have to answer that. Wow, is that... ammonium chloride? And I can't detect any gamma-glutamyltransferase like the humans have, but acid phosphatase is there. Does it show up in blacklight? The basic amines are there, all of them."

"Get out."

"Oh no, I'm not leaving this until I'm done. Where is the stain?"

"OUT!" Spock caught Lily-Lee with a hand around her wrist and held her dangling high in the air. He threw her out into the corridor and locked the door.

"Hey, where's your sense of science, Spock?" Lily-Lee waited outside the door. She checked her sleeve but there was no stain on it. He must have used his other hand, bad luck. Sure, she could figure out that he was embarrassed, but he was never very emotional, so he would probably let her in when he calmed down. Should be any minute now. But the door did not open, instead there was a hissing sound. The hissing increased and sounded like sprinklers and vapour spray.

"Spock, what are you doing? Did you start the emergency decontamination program? Are you crazy or something?" She kicked at the door but only managed to get a cracked toenail.

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* See "Getting Medieval on Your Ape" chapter 3. s/8986332/1/Getting-Medieval-on-Your-Ape