2: Meeting a Human
Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and Kirk could only meet up for a few hours each day to work on their project together, the rest had to be done individually. They needed to meet up without arousing suspicion. On Wednesday, their cover was crashing at Scotty's after a morning a jog.
Well, it had been a jog when they'd moved here, several days apart, a month ago. Scotty, Chekov and Uhura still set a comfortable pace, enjoying the scenery in the meantime.
Kirk tried to outrun his demons. Sweat stung his eyes and his emotions flowed through his veins, unlocked and funneled into physicial activity and out, out before it drove him over the brink.
Sulu kept up with him, as the only one who could.
By the time they'd hopped the fence to the backyard, Sulu knew enough to brace himself. Kirk took two breaths to regain himself and then bowled Sulu over with a shoulder to his solar plexus. They rolled together over the grass. They had learned, the hard way, not to use fists, instead they grappled in complex holds that smeared their faces with mud and their clothes with grass-stains.
Kirk had laundry duty on Wednesdays.
After an hour, they called a halt. Sulu refused the glass of lemonade Chekov held out. "I'm gonna hop into the shower immediately. That was a dick move, Kirk." He stalked off.
"He ees mad with you." Chekov looked at Kirk, who lay panting in the grass. "He did not help you up."
"Funny, how his face is still so pleasant looking," Kirk rubbed hands over his face and rolled to his feet until he was crouched and rose. He hopped on one foot while he shook the other one. "He took revenge, too. Bent my ankle beyond comfortable."
"Is from Asian descent, you never really loos zat." Chekov shrugged. "What made him mad?"
Kirk grinned up from between his legs while he stretched. "I shoved mud down the front of his pants."
"Do you ever stop being a two-year-old?" Uhura asked, who was sipping her own glass and had already changed into a fleece sweater that came up to her nose.
"Not really." He wiped a runny nose on his sleeve in front of her to demonstrate and took his glass form Scotty with a nod of thanks. After a long swallow, he wiped his soothed throat in satisfaction.
"Still feeling that cold, are ye?" Scotty put the back of his hand on Kirk's forehead. "No temperature."
"'Course not, we don't have the time."
Uhura snorted. "We've been working on this thing for years, Kirk, and will be for many more. You can take a day off to get better before you're moaning and delirious in bed for a week." She pointed at him. "You will change out of those clothes and take the laundry bag home, operate the washing machine, and take the rest of the day off."
He wrinkled his forehead. "Who's the big bad leader here?"
"Not you." Uhura took his glass. "Change and go home, Kirk."
He did not call her his mother, because that would have ended his life painfully.
/`/`/`/`/`
By the time he let himself into his house, a pale yellow number almost as dilapidated as Uhura's, he could add a beginning cough to his list of complaints.
He drank a bit of the cough syrup his neighbour was kind enough to give him, with an unnecessary hip-thrust and fluffing of bleached hair. He thanked her kindly and went away, biting his lip to hold in the comments he wished to make at her pout.
Several hours later, he found himself actually climbing the tree in his front yard after an idle thought on the effects of blood flow to the head in various positions.
His inhibitions had gone. He wondered where they went while he hung down from his legs. Wow, he'd last done this when he was eight. He hadn't had a drop of alcohol. Might've been the syrup, then. Funny thing, medicine.
He heard footsteps and opened his eyes to wide brown eyes in a pale face. Nice cheekbones. Weird eyebrows.
/'/'/'/'/'
When the transporter beam let Spock go, he took a few seconds to acclimatise.
For one breath, Spock opened his mind to his senses. The rise in humidity allowed him to stop hydration of his skin so the veins in his limbs could narrow and his core temperature was more easily preserved. His heart sped up six beats per minute. The rise in oxygen levels was beneficial to the higher burn of fuel in his body and the maintenance of his homeostasis. He would need to increase the intake of food by 12.9 percent.
The instant change of environment was still something he was learning to regulate. He had joined the Seleya's crew on four missions, one for a more detailed starmapping of the territory around one of the Federation's new member planets. Some data could only be picked up by close-range scanners. The other three had taken him to inhabited worlds, all of them colder than Vulcan by a temperature average of 193 Chules.
To undergo an experience was to gather altogether different information than to study it in a report after the fact. The boy who had studied everything in earnest and as much detail as he could find, believing he could understand the world from that position, who had proved himself in the most difficult exam known to Vulcan and, indeed, the Federation, had disappeared. In his stead stood someone who could appreciate the visceral knowledge that came from devising and executing his own experiments, touching objects with his own hands and seeing a star's sunspots with his own eyes.
He had been deposited in a field.
As he took in the sight of his mother's planet of origin, he observed a startling diversity of flora. Between his feet alone grew five types of grass. He did not scan it, but his fingertips brushed the edge of the sweater that hid his tricorder, communicator and two phasers.
That he might be redirected if the materialisation security protocols detected a solid object at his coordinates was not out of the ordinary. That his destination was out of sight was highly irregular.
He saw a road in the distance. He followed it.
After three miles it brought him to a store. When he mentioned the settlement that had been listed as John Smith's place of residence in the file attached to his DNA profile, he was told to return in the direction he had come.
A systematic search of the town brought him nothing and he considered breaking the radio silence Sarek had ordered as soon as they entered the Sol system. He was only to contact him in case of succes or failure.
Questioning the locals proved more fruitful. In return for carrying food a female had collected from a local store, he was taken to her residence and received confirmation John Smith existed and a means of contacting him.
Since it had been four point seven harrowing hours since he had beamed down, Spock could perhaps be excused for not observing local rituals of politeness.
/`/`/`/`/`
He succeeded in connecting his communicator to a dismantled phone in an empty residence. He entered the identifying number after it showed he'd been connecting to a local rerouting centre.
"Hello?" a female voice on the other end of the line asked.
"Greetings. I am searching for a man by the name of John Smith," Spock said.
"Oh, go ride a donkey till the cows come home. I am not his secretary." Agitation coloured the voice.
"I see. Could you tell me where I might find him?"
"Oh fine, fine! Just tell me where you got this number so I know who to strangle."
Spock hesitated before deciding it seemed to be the only course of action in obtaining John Smith's location. Unfortunately, this information was lacking from the man's file. They had planned simply to beam him down close to the human. "I received this number from a Doctor Leonard McCoy, but he did not seem to be a malicious individual. Strangulation without sufficient cause seems inadvisable."
A growl could be heard, but no further death threats followed. "John Smith lives on Rosemary Drive. The number's 178." He thanked her for articulating the sentence slowly, clearly and precisely and ended the call.
He restored the machine he had pulled apart to its original state and set off to find the street.
/`/`/`/`/`
The first thought Spock had upon seeing a blonde human hanging upside-down from his knees from a branch of a Magnolia tree was, "I want that."
Or it would have been, had the burst of lust been verbal. It was produced by his hindbrain and immediately shunted aside in favour of the second thought, which was, "Illogical."
"Huh?" the human said, stared at Spock and forgot to clench his knees for a moment. He fell down. "Ow." He rubbed his head, but held up a hand when Spock attempted to approach him.
The human stood. He was unsteady. "Can I help you?"
The dust that flew up from the sleeves the human brushed with his hands made Spock sneeze. "Oh not you too," he said and offered Spock a scrap of fabric he used to wipe his face.
"I am searching for a man called John Smith."
The human threw his arms wide. "You found him."
"Ah, excellent. I am Spock." He offered his hand and it was shaken. He sensed willingness, but also a great deal of suspicion and dizziness. "Perhaps we could retire somewhere more private where you could sit down. You are not stable." Amusement flitted through the touch before the human retrieved his hand.
"Yeah...uh, it's kind of a mess inside, is the backyard alright?"
"It will suffice."
When the human was seated, he seemed more alert. "So, Spock." He drew out the final consonant. "Why were you looking for me?"
Spock settled into parade rest and clasped his hands at his back. The human was apparently easily amused, for his lips curled up again. "It's not a report you're giving me, you know."
"No. I have come to you because you are related to a woman my father met. Her name was Winona-" the change in the human's body language was drastic enough that Spock stopped speaking.
In two strides that belied his earlier wobbling, the human had approached him and torn off his beanie. He held it in his hand, lips drawn in a straight line and eyes as blank as a Vulcan's. "Pointed ears.You are an alien."
It seemed Winona Harolds had indeed remembered her encounter with Sarek and passed it on to her children. "I am. I have come to-"
"I am not interested in your reasons for coming over to Earth. I know what you did. You kidnapped her, subdued her and did something to her before dumping her back on Earth." He leaned in, the hatred emanating from him strongly enough to break through Spock's shield. "The only reason you're not dead yet is because you're not as green as the bastards that killed my father."
He flung the beanie back at Spock. "You're lucky I'm not armed and feeling merciful today, so leave, and never come back to Earth unless you want to end up at the business end of my gun."
Spock opened his mouth to attempt to reason with him.
"Leave!" The command was in the tone, in every line of the man's body and even in his unconscious mental projection.
Spock could appreciate why his father had asked him to recruit this man. It seemed he should have requested a more complete account of what had transpired during the meeting between his father and John Smith's mother.
He retreated until he was out of the backyard and in the street. He would make sure to leave the town before beaming back up. It seemed the humans were not ready to make contact with outworlders.
When he found himself away from the town, he walked into long rows of stalks of a local vegetable the humans grew, perpendicular to the road. Spock opened his communicator and hailed the Seleya.
/`/`/`/`/`
When the alien was out of sight, Kirk gave into his screwed-up sense of balance and sat on his butt, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
He'd survived. He'd met an alien, looked it in the face and survived to tell the tale, not a scratch on him. It should count as an accomplishment.
Instead, Kirk was shocked and full of questions as to why someone from a different planet had come down, worn scruffy clothes, sought him out by his false name, and known he was Winona's son.
How had he even known where to find him.
Well... that was perhaps a question Uhura could find him an answer to. If he had left a trail behind, she could find it for him.
He rolled himself back to his feet.
His head hurt and was probably bleeding, but that was not an urgent problem, as long as he survived.
He went inside to grab a hoodie.
/`/`/`/`/`
Uhura heard the back door to her house open. Only one person she knew was rude enough to walk in without knocking. "I will kill you so slowly you will beg for death," she drawled in the honeyed voice that promised an eternity of sweet, sweet torture.
When he stepped from the kitchen into the living room, however, he had the face on of Lieutenant Kirk on a mission. She dropped the tablet she'd been clicking away on. "Sir?"
"Uhura, I need your talent in communications. Someone came to find me-"
"-yeah, I know, this guy called me-"
"WHAT!"
She swallowed. "He said he got the number from that doctor you pranked, Leonard McCoy, and I thought you were pulling someone else's leg."
He stood frozen, a dog at point, before he heaved a breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Okay, that makes things a lot simpler."
Only now did she notice the hoodie. "Are you cold?"
He shook his head. "Irrelevant. I need you to find the current location of Leonard McCoy." It was an order.
"Aye, sir." She retrieved her tablet and set to work. In two minutes, she'd found his profile and his schedule of the clinic. The security was minimal. She handed it to Kirk, who glanced it over to burn it into that agile brain of his and nodded.
"Alright. Inform the others of the possibility of a security breach and check everyone's tablets. Go to the bunker and wait for my sign. I'm going to talk to the doctor and see what comes out of it."
Uhura only stopped him long enough to ask who should secure his house. He told her to have Sulu go over there while Chekov secured his and Sulu's apartment.
/`/`/`/`/`
After Kirk had spoken to Leonard McCoy, he still felt restless. The dizziness had receded. He refused the doctor's offer of a lift home and ran several miles.
He walked the last block and almost felt good when he was searching for his keys. The sweat evaporating into the night air cooled him off pleasantly.
The last thing he expected was the alien sitting like lost puppy on his doorstep, beanie back in place on his head.