McCoy flicked the PADD to standby and closed his eyes. He had always hated the way that resource restrictions on starships made it impossible to print out everything he had to read. The PADD might have been designed to copy, as close as was possible, the effect of print on paper but as far as McCoy was concerned it was like saying replicated coffee was as close as possible to freshly ground beans prepared in a cafe in New Orleans.
"Not even in hailing distance," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. He would, he knew, have felt less tired if his hours of reading had revealed any of the information he had been seeking. As far as starfleet medical resources were concerned, the Vocheron were a mystery. The Vulcan Academy of Sciences Database (abridged version) was no more informative, nor were the Federation Xenobiology Institute Abstracts.
"I'm just going off shift, doctor," Christine Chapel said from the doorway. "Anything I can get you on the way out?"
"A dead Vocheron!" McCoy growled, and she smiled.
"No luck?"
"No luck, bad luck, you name it. Come in for a moment, Chris. Want a drink?"
"Not really," she said, but she sat down opposite him. "There are other species with this kind of privacy taboo, Len. Don't take it so personally."
He poured himself a generous measure of bourbon, poured one for her as well. "I'll take it personally as long as they're on my ship! What am I supposed to do if one of them gets sick and refuses to let me use the medical tricorder on them?"
"You're an old fashioned country doctor," Chapel said with a smile, "I'm sure you'll think of something."
McCoy snorted, and then held out one hand as if taking the pulse of an invisible patient. 'Now tell me, Ambassador," he intoned, "just where does it hurt?"
Chapel laughed, and swirled the untasted bourbon around in her glass. "I was cross-referencing the crew efficiency reports today," she began, "and -"
"Oh, lord." McCoy interrupted. "Don't tell me, let me guess - my psychic powers tell me - " He covered his eyes with one hand, and flung the other out dramatically. "Science section has you concerned?"
"I'd be more impressed with your 'psychic powers' if your initials hadn't been all over the files," Chapel said dryly. "What's going on down there, Len?"
"Spock has a problem," McCoy said. "Spock has a problem, and it's not one he's going to be able to handle with logic."
"What problem?" Chapel asked, leaning forward with a frown.
"Spock's problem is about five foot one, with red hair and green eyes and a way with her staff that makes Ghengis Khan look like the model of a personnel manager." McCoy said sourly. "Spock's other problem is up on the bridge at the moment, sitting in the centre chair and generally running the ship. Between these two problems, Science Section is drifting further and further into a morale crisis. I can't butt in until the efficiency ratings reach the mandated point. Our illustrious leader doesn't know, or isn't asking, whether there's anything for him to butt *into*, and Spock the Inscrutable is trying to hold everything together without involving the captain or admitting that there just might be something a Vulcan Science Officer can't do. My personal impulse is to trot down to Science and turn the lovely and intelligent Ann Ridley over my knee, which if someone had done more regularly about thirty five years ago might have prevented this whole situation."
"Sounds like a fuck-up in process." said Chapel, and thought that she might have that drink after all. McCoy's eyes twinkled as she raised the glass.
"Don't hold back, Christine. Tell me what you really think"
She grinned at him. "I think we need a second drink."
McCoy poured it. "Do you think I should meddle?"
Chapel looked at him in blank amazement. 'Excuse me." she said. "I thought I heard you ask someone's opinion before you leapt into something with both feet."
"I said," McCoy repeated, "do you think I should meddle?"
"Who are you, and what have you done with the real Leonard McCoy?"
"Don't be sarcastic, Chris, it doesn't become you. I want your opinion. Your highly regarded, professional opinion."
"As opposed to-?"
"As opposed to something you came up with using a ouija board, of course."
"Nah," Chapel said. '*You're* the one with psychic powers. You know the captain better than I do." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was quieter,
and there was pain beneath the banter. "You know them both better than I do.
Wouldn't Mr Spock tell the captain if there was a serious problem?"
"With a crew member, yes. Hell, if it was a crew member, I'd tell Jim myself without a moment's thought. Jim and I both know Spock well enough to know that if someone has a problem with him, it isn't Spock that's causing it. But this woman... well. She stayed on the ship to be with him. It doesn't seem that casual."
"I heard she stayed on the ship because she was having so much progress with her work. And I've seen the output on that lab. The rest of science section may be lagging, but Lab Seven is extraordinary."
"Well, she isn't charming it out of her staff. And yes, maybe she did stay for her work, but she's with Jim more nights than not these days. And I don't know how things are going with them, but if my country doctor's intuition is worth a snowball in a supernova, it isn't quite wine and roses right now. *And* I'm guessing Spock has some idea of that as well. He watches Jim pretty closely."
"And so?" Chapel said.
"And so Ridley might just ask for reassignment any time now. Or Jim might have already spoken to her. Or he might speak to her off his own bat, and she might leave the ship. Or maybe they'll work it out and she'll get some sense of proportion. Or they'll work it out and he'll speak to her and she'll be all sweetness and light. I'm not sure I want to go stamping into Jim's love-life in my size fourteen meddler's boots when I don't quite known what I'm stamping into."
"Mr Spock... is he not mentioning it to the captain for the same reason?"
"Maybe. Add a dose of stiff-necked Vulcan pride to that, too... And -"
"And?"
McCoy looked at her, his fierce blue eyes suddenly soft with memory. "And neither of us will forget Edith in a hurry, Chris. Between us - what we did to him. Do you think that we'd stop short of anything if there's even a chance this woman could be what he needs?"
Ann Ridley tucked her hands into her pockets and paced. Only half past eight in the morning, or 830 hours as they said in this stupid space navy, and already she was pacing. She counted steps, seven, eight, nine across the lab, one, two, three back again, and she was doing quite well at concentrating on her feet and not on the Ensign at the lab bench until he made that annoying little sound with his tongue that he always did when he made a mistake, a sort of a click, a cross between a click and a snort...
She was halfway through the sentence before she realised she was shouting aloud.
"What the goddamn hell is it THIS time, huh? What have you done THIS time?"
Ensign Thoas cowered away from her, but she was too angry to feel anything but satisfaction. "Ma'am, ma'am, I'm sorry, I just - I just slipped the mu spectrum readings over the dionetrics line, I'm sorry, it'll just take a minute, I'll re-run -"
"No, you bloody well won't! You'll leave it alone. I don't have TIME for you to mess around with this series! Every time I ask you to do something it takes three times as long as if I'd just damn well done it myself! Just leave it,
leave it alone, I'll do it, get out, go on, leave!"
'Ma'am, I can fix it." he said shakily, and that was a mistake. The top blew off Ridley's temper like a volcano and she started forward, fists clenched. Thoas blenched, back away, and then turned and ran. Ridley threw a stool at the door as it closed behind him, slammed her fists on the bench and roared. The two crew members left in the lab sat very still, and that was good. If only they'd always sit still and work instead of messing up her experiments and making annoying little sounds to announce that they had, maybe she'd be able to concentrate on her job and not on riding herd on a crowd of Starfleet incompetents!
Ridley stood motionless at the bench until the knot in her gut loosened, and then with exaggerated care she fetched back the stool she'd thrown and seated herself at the bench. Soon, she was absorbed in rerunning Thoas' series,
flicking the readings through smoothly, sorting and registering at high speed. It was only when she was completely absorbed in work that she could forget her ongoing fury at having to put up with "Science Officer" Spock making decisions about how HER lab ran, could forget the continuing infuriating irritations of working with assistants who weren't trained for her type of research.
Could forget the thinness of the hull between her and the cold dark.
"Well, you can't say they *impose*," McCoy said, and it was half a complaint. "I haven't seen more than a glimpse of them since they came on board."
"They're probably afraid you'll come after them with your tricorder." Kirk said.
"Have you asked them about that?"
"Not yet, no. I'm waiting for a good time."
"Chicken." McCoy said.
"I fail to see," Spock said gravely, "how the captain's concern to avoid offending our guests makes him a terran avain."
"Oh, now, Spock, you're supposed to be on *my* side! Don't tell me you're not as curious as I am about their makeup. And I wouldn't do that if I were you." McCoy pointed at Spock's knight. "That's an accident waiting to happen, trust me, I'm a doctor."
"You're a doctor, Bones," Kirk said. "Not a chess grandmaster."
"Well, it's my professional opinion that moving that knight will be bad for Spock's mental health. I *really* wouldn't do that if I were you, Spock."
"Fortunately, doctor, that is a state of affairs unlikely to come to pass."
Spock said, and moved the knight. Kirk leaned forward, trying to see what move McCoy expected him to make.
"I'll tell you, Jim," McCoy said with a wicked grin, "if you promise to ask the Vouche *tomorrow* to let me have a look at them."
"No deal, Bones." Kirk said amiably.
"To seek out new life," McCoy said with mock sarcasm, "isn't that what we're doing? And there it is, in the guest quarters!" Then, realising he had pushed too far when Kirk lifted his head and gave him a blank stare, McCoy raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. Who wants another drink?"
Spock merely raised his eyebrow, not having had a first drink. Kirk shook his head.
"Not for me." He hesitated, moved his bishop. "I can't stay for another game."
McCoy squinted at the board. "The way you're playing, that's probably just as well. Going somewhere?"
"A late dinner with Ann." Kirk said. Concentrating on the chess board, he missed the glance McCoy shot at Spock and the way Spock suddenly became 'extra Vulcan'.
"How is Ann?" McCoy asked casually.
Kirk hesitated. Normally, these two men would be the ones he'd turn to for advice, or just for a friendly hearing, or to be told he was being a fool. The last fight he'd had with Ann, though, she'd let him know exactly what she thought of the idea of him discussing her with Spock and McCoy.
"- and don't think I wouldn't be able to tell from that Vulcan non-expression just what he thought! I have to *work* with those two, Jim!"
"She's fine." Kirk said now. "Fine."
"How's she adjusting to life on a starship?"
"Fine." Kirk said. "She's adjusting fine."
McCoy noted that the captain couldn't meet his eyes as he said it, however.
I'm going to have to raise it with him, McCoy thought. I'm going to have to,
or else Spock's refusal to will keep him from knowing about it until it's a formal disciplinary matter, and that'll look bad on Spock's record. Dammit!
"Is that all, doctor?"
McCoy focused on the PADD in front of him, and then looked up at Corrina Larssen, seated on the other side of the desk.
"Are you sure you're fit to be on active duty?" he asked abruptly.
"Yes, doctor." Larssen said calmly.
"Hmmph." McCoy studied the charts in front of him, although Larssen knew they showed she was physically fit and she also knew that McCoy himself had prepared them. "You know, Lieutenant, I used to quite enjoy the quartet."
Larssen blinked, and felt rueful respect for McCoy's deft blindside. "I'm glad to hear it." she said.
"I miss it, too. When are you guys going to get together again?"
"When the time is right," Larssen said.
"Your hands have healed."
"Yes, thanks to you."
"So why not now? The crew could use a little concert. It'd be good for morale."
"Perhaps we shall, Dr McCoy." She rose to her feet. "If that's all?"
"That's all," he said, and then suddenly reached out and grabbed her left hand.
Turning it palm up, he ran his thumb over the tips of her fingers, where new skin showed pink and soft. "I expect to see some calluses here next time,
Lieutenant. Or I'll have to reconsider my assessment of your fitness. You've been playing that thing, what, every day for 10 years?"
"Every second day or so for five," she corrected him, and pulled her hand away.
"Which does not mean that a break from playing indicates that I'm losing my marbles."
"Oh, no." he said. "No, it doesn't. But I like the crew to act the way I expect them to. If you want to give up the cello for good, I'd expect to hear a reason from you. See my point?"
"Yes." she said, and ducked out the door before he could go on.
She slipped in to the lab quietly, knowing that Spock would have seen her appointment with McCoy on her schedule when he drew up that week's roster, and knowing too that Commander Spock would have neither forgotten nor expect her to offer a reminder. Brand waggled his eyebrows at her as she came in, and took the first opportunity to ask her why she was late.
"Seeing the doctor," Larssen said breifly, and held out her hand with the faint tracing of scars still visible.
"What'd he say?"
"That I'm fit for full duty."
"Way to go," said Brand, and slapped her shoulder in congratulation. Larssen reflected, not the for the first time, that she didn't seem to have the knack of either forming close friendships with her fellow junior officers, or keeping them at a distance. Brand, for example, despite the fact that she outranked him, had a disconcerting tendency to treat her like a sister: that is, with complete familiarity when circumstances forced him into her company, and total avoidance when they were off duty.
A request from Commander Spock interrupted her train of thought, and for the next few hours she was very busy with a geospectral analysis of the latest lot of planet side samples. When all the samples were sorted, identified and logged, she tipped them into the disposal tray at the door. Attractive specimens might be souvenired by crew looking for something to send home - Dear Mom, thought you might like this, it came from Omicron Ceti IX, love, your offspring - and the rest would go to recycling to feed the ship's expensive mineral habit.
Larssen looked at the chrono and blinked. No wonder it was quiet. Alpha shift had ended hours earlier. Now that she thought about it, she had a vague recollection of Brand saying goodbye and taking off through the door as if he were late to dinner. The lighting had gone over the ship's night, that half-dimmed glow in between brighter spots along the way that, deliberately or not, echoed night-lit planetside streets. She took a deep breath, imagining as she often did at this time of day that the air itself tasted different during the night shifts, moister somehow as if the whole of life-support was in on a conspiracy to reproduce a diurnal cycle.
"Ms Larssen." said a voice behind her, and she turned. Commander Spock stood in the door to his office, backlit by his reading lamp. "Have you completed the geospec?"
"Yes, sir. I just dumped the samples, but if you'd like to check the results I can-"
"I am sure your analysis was thorough." he said, in that way he had which half-hinted that his confidence came from the knowledge that, now he had mentioned it, any crew with doubts about their concentration would make certain of each and every reading before they turned in their report. "I see Dr McCoy has pronounced you fully fit."
"Yes, sir, although he'll be calling me down again a few more times over my hand." Larssen said, mindful that Mr Spock would prefer not to be taken by surprise by the doctor's requests. There was a pause, and Larssen was not quite sure whether she had been dismissed or not. Just as she decided she had been,
and was about to finish clearing up before going off shift, Spock said, "Are you - well - Lieutenant?"
"I believe - as well as can be expected, sir." she said quietly. He was no McCoy, he would not press her, but she was also aware that Commander Spock was perhaps the only person on the Enterprise who knew the full extent of the healing she needed to do. And she could not lie to him. Not, so much, because he would be able to tell, but because it would be a betrayal of the understanding they had come to, down in the blizzard "Dr McCoy - wants to see calluses on my hand." She held her left hand out, fingertips up. "From the cello strings. Apart from that, he seemed pleased enough."
"Music is an excellent mental and physical discipline." Mr Spock said, and for a moment she thought he had not understood McCoy's meaning. Then he went on,
"Although many humans place unwarranted emphasis on the emotionalism of music,
on Vulcan it is considered as a training for the body and mind in concentration and precision."
"Yes, sir." said Larssen.
"Your shift is over, Lieutenant. You are free to leave." Spock said, and went back into his office.
"Yes, sir." Larssen said again, wondering if he'd just agreed or disagreed with McCoy.
Back in her quarters, she looked for a while at the cello case clipped to the wall. McCoy, much as she loathed to admit it, was somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. She felt a deep reluctance to touch the instrument, had done so since she found out Bob Grenwood had requested the string quartet to play at his service. There was no reason for it, she told herself. The cello, and the music, and herself, were the same whether Bob had wanted his crewmates to hear Bach as his coffin was fired out into space or not.
Beside the cello case was a dresser, and on the dresser sat a small, worn,
unidentifiable stuffed toy. Only an owner's loving eye could have discerned that it had once been a bear. Both eyes were missing, and one arm, and the ears were mere tattered stubs. Larssen picked it up. "Well, Coochie?" she said to it. "How silly, am I, eh?"
Coochie looked blindly back up at her, and Larssen rubbed her cheek against his remaining fur. Coochie had been the one thing she had taken with her from Initar to Starfleet Academy. She had felt stupid taking him out of her duffle and setting him on her bed in the Academy dorm, and while she was a cadet he had stayed hidden in a drawer. Arriving on the Enterprise, with the privilege of a junior officer's tiny but private quarters, Coochie had resumed pride of place on the dresser. Sometimes, after a particularly bad day, Larssen still took him to bed with her.
Look at you, she thought. Running the risk of a psyche exam with that perceptive meddler McCoy rather than standing up to your own idiocy, and talking to a decrepit old stuffed bear ... Is this the behaviour of an officer and a gentlebeing?
"Sorry, Coochie." she said, as if he could have heard her thoughts, and set him down on the dresser again.
The instrument felt wrong in her hands as she took it down and settled the scroll against her shoulder. What should she play? Bach? Dvorjak?
T'stlethsesan?
Scales, Larssen decided. Let's start with scales. She let her fingers find the familiar worn places on the neck, and began to play the simple progressions,
straining for precision, focusing on concentration, trying to play as a Vulcan would.