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Doctor McCoy had always suspected you couldn't really trust the transporters. And now that Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, and himself were being shoved along one of the ship's endless corridors and pushed into the brig, he was pretty damn sure about that.
The force field locked all four of them up, like beasts in a cage. The clean-shaved Vulcan was standing alert on the other side, hands clasped behind his back, his puzzlement showing only in the unmistakable eyebrow twitch. The intruders paced around the brig, flailed and bellowed at the Vulcan, demanding what the hell was going on – everyone but doctor McCoy. He just stood with his back in the corner, arms crossed, and watched the show. From the very moment he saw the Imperial insignia were missing, and that it was definitely cleaner and less smelly up here, he knew what it was all about.
He could get his twisted mind to work, when he really wanted to.
"Apparently, some kind of transposition has taken place," the Vulcan said, robotically, as usual, "I find it – extremely interesting."
He turned his back to the field and began his way off.
"Spock!" the Captain rushed forward, his fists pressed against the field, "What is it that will buy you? Power?"
The Vulcan stopped but never turned his head.
"Fascinating," he said, bemusedly, and exited the brig.
Kirk went on yelling for a while how he could get Spock power, and credits, and personal command, but there was no one to listen except for a couple of redshirts on-guard. He kicked at the walls a couple of times, and then went into an angry huddle with Scotty and Uhura. They broke off into exasperated whispers, trying to put their finger on what the smooth-faced Vulcan just said.
Doctor McCoy crouched and then slouched on the floor in his corner while the three were racking their brains. No one ever spoke to him unless absolutely necessary – they knew what he could be like when he had one of his fits, and no one wanted the trouble. Not that it bothered him much, quite on the contrary. Left alone, he could just sit there and think quietly to himself.
They beamed up at the wrong universe, you could bet your teeth on that. He'd heard vaguely about a universe on the other side of the mirror, but never gave it a second thought. Another technophile fairytale to boggle the minds of the homegrown philosophers – and now, turned out, it was real. With a mirrored I.S.S. Enterprise or whatever they called her, here. With mirrored people, who were technically, biologically the same as on the other side, and yet.
Take the Vulcan, for instance. He looked like Spock and talked like Spock alright, but without his Van Dyke beard, without the Imperial pins and sash and stuff, he seemed almost senilely harmless. Soft, lamb-like, perfectly innocuous.
Absently, doctor McCoy wiped at a bubble of saliva at the corner of his mouth as he mused at the thought. He toyed with the images of his Spock and that other one, adding and subtracting details like the clothing, the facial hair, the metallic tinge to the voice, the cold steel in the eyes. Both Spocks floated and danced just on the brink of his diluted perception as he tried to wrap his mind around it. That other one, the scraped-faced, was obviously the same, and so absurdly different at the same time – but how different? And, which was more troubling, exactly how was he the same?
"Sawbones! You alive down there or what?"
Doctor McCoy raised his head from the reverie. All three were looking at him expectantly.
"Ya, guess so. Why?"
"What do you think of all this?" Kirk demanded.
The doctor eyed the Captain, his expression nondescript.
"I don't."
"You don't – what?"
Doctor McCoy almost rolled his eyes.
"I don't, sir."
Alone, Spock entered the transporter room, opened the lid to expose the circuitry, and stopped. Worry. The all-too-human, insecure emotion was all but fogging his perfectly organized consciousness into irrationality. He took a deep breath, accepted the emotion and dismissed it as irrelevant. At times like this, feelings brought little more than a mental spasm that blocked the smooth workflow of the cortex – which he needed in perfect function just now. He studied the circuits and plunged into calculations and technical intricacies to reason his way out. His Captain, his engineer, his communications officer, and his doctor had to be retrieved from wherever it was that these savages belonged.
As he filled the blanks in the formulae, one after another, all spread out on a metaphysical blackboard before his inner eye, the doors to the transporter room slid open. Doctor M'Benga and nurse Chapel went in, looking concerned. The ion storm that transposed the landing party during the transportation caused some turbulence that shook the ship. There were several injuries that the medical team could safely deal with, but now that both the doctor and the nurse were here, hesitant, it didn't look as promising all of a sudden.
"It's Coupet, petty officer, second class," the doctor started, contritely, "Blunt aortic injury, hemorrhage from other organs. We keep her on full life support, but she's fading rapidly. We need a thoracotomy."
Spock knew they wouldn't have come to him if they could manage. An incision into an unstable patient's chest to reach the heart and patch up the aorta was a task that needed a surgeon. Or rather, the surgeon.
"You do realize that doctor McCoy is currently unavailable, do you not?"
"But when?"
"I cannot accurately forecast this, as yet."
"We can't just stand there and watch her die, either," the nurse said, "We need him here, now."
Spock could relate to this, although he did not see the point in restating the obvious. He had already tasked the engineering team and was personally doing the possible and impossible, but the fact was there – doctor McCoy was on the other side of reality. When, or whether at all, he could be brought back, was unknown.
Time was the luxury they didn't have. Spock, doctor M'Benga and the nurse looked at each other. Technically, there was –
"No, no way," the doctor said, aghast.
Spock observed the medics, thoughts twirling in his brain. The mirror-McCoy was there, and, by the logic of the mirror, he possessed the knowledge and talent equal to the original's. And yet, following the same logic, something must be twisted to the point of unrecognizability in this caricature version of the McCoy he knew. Something, but what exactly? The uncertainty made the mirrored doctor and the whole enterprise all the more unpredictable, which was, shamefully enough, quite irritating.
"From your presence here and not at the sickbay, I conclude that you are incapable of performing the operation yourself, doctor M'Benga," Spock stated.
"I don't dare," the doctor shook his head, radiating helplessness, "Too little experience at pleural surgery, and – "
"And doctor McCoy is known to have successfully performed several such operations, is it correct?"
"Yes, but this one's a brute! Go figure what's in his head – for all we know, he may just as well kill her."
But the officer's chances for longevity were faint all the same. And prolongating her biological functioning with artificial life support would turn her into a vegetable sooner than later. Since the original McCoy was out of immediate reach, the only logical solution to increase Coupet's chances for life was to let the mirror-doctor operate. Provided that he would oblige, of course. Doctor M'Benga and the nurse had to agree, although they hated the very thought.
Spock closed the panel lid and set off to follow the medics to the brig. Should that other McCoy comply, the operation had to go under surveillance – his personal surveillance, surely. He did not want the savage to run about the ship if he should break free. On their way, Spock went on with his calculations, empirically, but with his usual precision. All anticipations that tried to float to the surface of his attention from the depth of his being were acknowledged, labeled, and dismissed as inconsequent.