A ripple crested through the fabric of the mindspace around Spock. Zienn's boney fingers lifted him by the arm and held him up. Spock's legs carried him over crumbling steps, through tunneled corridors, across walled courtyards, while his mind floated far inside himself, free to expand infinitely. This duality of function was a necessary skill to attending temple functions. From within and without this state, Spock felt no pride in his achievement and promotion to observer, he only rode along with the currents of his own existence as though this had always been his mode of being.
He was steered through the darkness to a domed cave and urged to kneel between iron stained spires. He could only visually perceive one other figure, a priestess with a headdress containing a single central crystal. With a whisper of robe, Zienn moved away out of sight. Spock remained as he'd been previously instructed: with his mental force outside the near existence.
There was quiet for a time, then a falling away of that quiet for something yet more profoundly still. The cave withered away. The energy around him shifted as minds joined together. Zienn's energy vibrated near Spock as if to help wall him off, then that faded into the larger sphere, leaving him alone. The joined minds resolved into structures that teased with larger meaning and purpose, formed and reformed in a musical-like patterns over and over again.
Spock easily held himself apart as part of his newly effortless practice. Control itself was anathema to mastery. One had to be naturally apart or naturally one with the flow. The effort of control itself would break the synergy seething around him.
But he had to repeatedly suppress his curiosity. Knowledge would come. He need not seek it, need not invite it in, need not prepare a place in his mind for it. It would always come. He had not mastered this Empty Seeking yet. He instead banked his curiosity by relying on faith in the world around him coming to him eventually.
Decaying and mutating structures, gray spaces yearning for stars, balls of not-light, filaments of unwinding.
Curiosity again dogged Spock and he tired with his undisciplined effort to control it, which meant he was failing. He avoided measuring the time, focussed on floating in lieu of control. Struggled even with this, but refused to mark the time of this struggle as he stubbornly refused to fail farther.
A hand settled on his shoulder, fingers touched his face, a mind that knew no fatigue wove forcefully through his own. He struggled against the intrusion despite his will to sit passively and the other mind halted. A sense of failure coiled and burned inside Spock, alive despite every separation he'd made from emotion.
He felt a shifting and then surprise and confusion in equal measure, then something that could be affection but it was too fleeting to be clear. He was admonished, instructed to breathe in and out over and over, then was raised up and led out.
Spock was lowered to a stone seat in a courtyard. He leaned back against a black peak intruding into the full glow of the stars, as bright as on any spaceship observation deck. The freezing air hung still and caressing.
Zienn's low voice was like a breath from the Milky Way's frozen billow overhead. "The synergy exercise was completed successfully."
Spock shook himself. He cleared his throat and said, "I am relieved. I cannot function well without landmarks."
"Ah, yes." Zienn sat back against the cliff face and stared upward.
Spock did the same. Out there was everyone else. He just barely avoided wondering in detail about them. Instead he closed his eyes and sought out those billions upon billions of sparks of life energy, even though it was unlikely he could sense them at this distance.
Zienn touched his wrist. "You are getting ahead of our lessons."
"I am trying to avoid degrading into the habits of an undisciplined mind that thinks in detail of what may be elsewhere."
"It was instructive to observe you alone hovering in the limbo of a project. I have planned what we should work on next."
"I have not displeased you?"
Zienn turned to Spock, his face barely discernible in the starlight. "What answer would you like?"
"None. Actually."
"You are learning."
- - - 8 - - -
"There's that 'fleet headset signal again," Hummer said. He was aiming a scanner toward the far side of the canyon where it was criss-crossed with tall crevices.
Their unit were positioned on a wide ledge, a rarity on this world. Veils of mist floated around them, rivulets up top that couldn't survive the drop as a stream. The air was crisp, the light cut into slices by the shape of the planet's surface far above.
Kirk raised his phaser rifle. "That must be the signal that lured the enemy in here. Uirik on her way back?"
"She reported in. They're bringing in five. One non-ambulatory."
"That should be the last. Can we make some room in this skuttle?"
Jon was in the middle of their quick encampment, tagging captured equipment. "If they are good friends, yup," he said.
"Visitors," Hummer announced.
Behind Kirk, Jon stood up. Kirk assumed he had his rifle, or some kind of rifle given he had a pile of them.
"Humanoids on the scan."
A skuttle appeared from the craggy depths of a side canyon and was lit up by a shaft of sunlight.
"That's not ours," Kirk said.
"It's answering coded hail as Portage," Hummer said. "Team J who shouldn't be in this area."
Kirk relaxed marginally. The skuttle tilted to a precarious landing, gunned nose forward to flatten a spot of foliage, then settled to rest.
Personnel in battle dulled armor swung lazily out of the skuttle. "Nice spot," the first said, picking his way through the flora by pushing it aside with a rifle emitter. "Like eden," another said. They were bulky beings with non regulation helmets and guns decorated in tribalistic symbols. A last wiry humanoid wearing an articulated suit hung in the skuttle doorway, studying the surroundings as if just waking up. The four of them pointedly disregarded Kirk and company, who took this as an excuse to not introduce themselves as required by protocol.
Kirk waved that Jon and Hummer should continue with inventory and securing while he remained in point position. The three newcomers set up a quick camp of sorts, began dipping into rations.
Uirik returned, hovered a skuttle and dropped half the prisoners half a meter out the door. Jon and Hummer dragged them to the other skuttle, secured them inside.
"Got a nice bit of prize there," the first visitor said. "Funny thing for pansy newcomers like you to manage. Unbelievable, really." He pulled off his helmet and set it beside himself, revealing his lieutenant commander collar insignia and crowded row of deployment badges.
Hummer came up beside Kirk, who waved him back. Hummer resisted obeying and Kirk gave him a friendly disbelieving look to get him to comply.
Kirk thought he recognized the leader of the invading group and as curious as he was to confirm it, he also thought retreat was in order. No good would come of continued interaction with someone keen on picking a fight. Kirk's other two skuttles were flying patrol out in the main canyon, already loaded with prisoners and captured equipment. Perhaps this skuttle from J didn't know that, and believed Kirk had only two units.
Uirik came back to the door of her hovering skuttle and said, "That's the leaky headset." She was speaking to the visitors.
"What of it, Red Moon Witch?" This was the figure still hanging in the door of the skuttle. It was clear now he wore an accentuation suit, a robot skin.
Uirik blinked in surprise, looked to Kirk. Kirk tossed his head that she should continue as she was, settling things up so they could depart. A Team J skuttle shouldn't be so far out of their zone. There were no good excuses for that. The nonregulation equipment upped the estimate that they were operating outside of regulation in other areas as well.
Jon came up beside Kirk. "Everything's tagged, sir. Load it even if we don't have space?"
"Load it."
The suited figure jumped down from the hatchway with the lightness of someone at a fraction of normal gravity. "You can load it up in ours, actually. We'll take it off your hands. Save you the trouble. That way you won't be overloaded either."
Everything settled heavily and precariously around Kirk. Alone, he would retreat. As a leader he couldn't. He would lose a lot he'd never get back.
Kirk waved Hummer back when he tried to join him and stepped closer to the strangers. "What can I do for you?" he said to the Lt. Commander.
A sneer. "Now that you mention it. We could take a few of your prisoners off your hands too. Make it look more believable. It'll be suspicious the way you have it."
"No need. It'll be fine. I'm certain." Kirk said.
"They order your armor out of the kids' catalog?" one of the other Team J said.
Jon stepped forward. "I'll have you know this is the Hero of W—" Kirk caught him short with a grab at the strap of his loose armor. "Everyone, load up. Everyone. I'll be right there."
A stillness fell on the outcropping. "Sir?"
"Go." At least show them we are a disciplined team that operates with easy camaraderie, Kirk thought. Show them we aren't them.
Jon puffed up his chest, but seemed to read Kirk's expression. He turned abruptly, reluctance in his body. He and Hummer tossed the carefully sorted captured gear into Uirick's skuttle and boarded the other. Both skuttles whined to a low hover.
Kirk stood alone, projecting an air of unconcern. The Team J party turned their gazes to Kirk. At least he'd gotten their attention with this move. And now he would roll the dice.
"You the one they call Opal?" Kirk said.
One of the visitors turned sharply to the leader.
The leader said, "No one dares call me that anymore." Then hard, "You going to make that mistake?"
Kirk kicked one toe at a divot in the dirt. "Well, I owe him a drink. From a long time ago. Wanted a chance to even up."
"I don't know you. I'm sure I don't."
"You've probably forgotten. Understandable actually. But I still owe him a drink."
The leader's face flushed and his jaw worked from one side to the other. "Okay."
One of them leaned in to whisper but Joplin waved him off. "Sure. When I get back to base, we drink at the Jump Jet. K? Look for us."
Kirk tipped his head. "Thank you. I like to even up."
He took two steps backwards, then two more sideways to swing into Uirick's skuttle. It was going to be very crowded, but it was closer.
Kirk rested in a sideways jump seat that was used for equipment, which meant he was sitting on top of equipment. The prisoners had been stacked like cordwood. There was an uneasy stillness in the skuttle.
As they cleared the planet surface, Uirick said, "Commander sir, may I humbly ask what the hell that was about?"
"I really do owe him a drink. But I also didn't like the look of things down there."
"What are they doing out of their zone?" Uirick asked.
"Nothing good," Kirk replied. "One assumes."
"Yeah." Uirick snorted. "There've been accusations of teams double dealing. Selling captured weapons back to the enemy. Enemies. If only there were only one." Her piloting remained unaffected as she spoke, something that hadn't been true previously. She'd learned to rant without incidentally steering.
"Maybe it wasn't an accidental killbox due to faulty equipment," Kirk said. "Maybe they were using the headset as a beacon."
"You going to report this?" Uirick sounded wonderfully conversational.
"What's to report?" someone asked. "They didn't do anything. Really."
Uirick, did finally turn her head and the steering suffered. "Yeah, they were smart enough not to push too far. Leave you looking like a dipstick for complaining about them."
All eyes came up to Kirk. He weighed how fraught this could be. How they could be labeled as bad team players. How that could be deadly if backup so much as hesitated in a situation.
"It potentially impacts everyone. We should talk about it. As a team." He stared out the front display and wondered at himself, that this was even to be debated. Maybe he was tired of making so many life or death decisions for so many others. Maybe six months really was the moment of truth, as he'd been told. This place either chewed you up in that time or you found out you were someone else all along and you pushed through.
"I'd hate myself for not speaking up, though," Kirk said. "They aren't the Starfleet I want to belong to."
He was pleased there was mumbling that sounded like agreement.
"Could have just let 'em have it. We outnumbered them." This from someone farther in the back.
"Infighting would get us nowhere," Kirk said.
"It'd be viewed better by other teams," Uirick said. "We are a team down here, the captains safe at base don't need to be involved. If we can deal with it ourselves, we should. That's the thinking."
Kirk would previously have thought that too, but something in him had fundamentally changed. He'd try to unofficially get someone's ear on base before they turned around. Get a feel for the larger situation before talking with his own team.
Once in orbit, they were redirected to the USS Sheriden which was acting as an auxiliary base and had more room for prisoners. Kirk jumped out of the skuttle into the Sheriden's hanger bay. A lieutenant strode up to Kirk after searching each half armored uniform in turn for the highest rank.
"You Kirk? Lieutenant Goom, how many still able to fly?"
Kirk looked behind him at his four skuttles which had easily made it home.
Goom said, "Unload and resupply stat, we have a few teams pinned down and we're sending in everything we've got." She walked away.
"No one leaves the hanger," Kirk announced. "We're turning right around."
Sighs and grumbles, and Kirk was certain the prisoners paid the price for the annoyance with being dragged off even less sympathetically.
- - - 8 - - -
Zienn visited every time the sun came straight down through the skylights, when Spock's room was warmest.
"You have recovered?"
He asked this each time. Spock answered "yes" each time. And each time, Zienn would contemplate in silence and depart.
Spock ate well, and meditated at will. He watched the light play across the mountains. He anticipated the shifting scent of the rising winds as the sun heated each slope in turn. The downtime risked him thinking of those he would experience the pain of absence for if he allowed it. He avoided this, but could sense it costing him, as if a well were draining lower each time.
The next visit, Zienn said, "You need to understand realms. It was the immediate need for this learning that drove you here. And it should be prioritized if not already completed. You created and hid within a realm of your own to avoid interrupting the synergy experiment. I believe because you were fatigued, not because you intentionally disobeyed me."
"I did not intend to disobey, Teacher. I indeed did not realize."
Zienn did not look at Spock as he spoke. "If you are rested, we can begin with a familiar exercise."
Spock considered this. Zienn had already been reassured that Spock believed himself rested.
"My apologies, Teacher. I do not understand."
"When we are finished with the basics of realms, when I am certain you understand and fully control your instinct for them, we will take a break. We will take you home to your family for a time. I am not caring for you well and your body is suffering for it." Zienn finally looked Spock's way. "Would you like that?"
Given this outright permission to feel, Spock allowed emotion an entrance to his thoughts. His gut warmed. His being buoyed up above a pleasant roiling. He anticipated the pride he'd experience standing before his father, thoroughly ruling his own mind and body, truly Vulcan for the first time in his life. Confused more, Spock nodded rather than speak.
"Very good." Zienn slowly clasped his hands. "At one time I showed you how to step into the realm of the dead and close and open your experience of it. Let's review your skill at that as a starting point." His hand came up and Spock bowed his head to aquiesce to a meld.
Tediously, Spock demonstrated he could step over the threshold. A quarter of a world away someone was ushering a cold and confused spirit to dwell in the company of other spirits. Upon sensing this, Spock hesitated, recoiled back into the natural realm.
"It is unlikely they sense you as you sense them. Your natural skill is greater than theirs. Most priests do this by rote and in near mind-blindness. The world of the dead is a large realm and you may practice thusly with no concern of being in the way. Please show me again."
Spock repeated the process again and again. He could now sense the seams of that realm even when it was closed off to him, as though he now had an inner eye facing the membrane of it. He grew fatigued and still stepped in partway again, sensed the familiar ashy otherness. He then understood that this fatigue was the point. It was how fine technique was built. He ceased trying and instead used practice memory for the next round, with far less fatigue. He was tapped on the wrist that he could return to the present world. Spock brought himself back to his room.
It was difficult to ignore the passing of the sun into a pink and purple blaze in the vertical windows.
"I regret I am so slow, Teacher."
Zienn stood. "I do not know if you are slow or not. I am not a teacher. Witness that I force you to learn on your own by following an example and with little other guidance. There are others here who are far more skilled in this ability although they are no more teachers than I am. One of them is willing to instruct you in the ways of their personal practice. I promised to see you through this myself, but do not I have a moral right to limit your training. Nor can I truly judge your skills in this given your raw ability exceeds mine."
Spock thought he now understood the undercurrents of Zienn's behavior. "If you estimate that my best care in this lies with another then I will withstand a meld with that being." Spock stated this easily, because he wished that ease to be true.
"Rest additionally and I will fetch you to her."
Zienn returned the next time the sun was at its zenith. Spock was led up and down and out across the temple's main courtyard. Chanting floated on the wind, fading in and out of hearing. In a large hall off an outside staircase, deep in the cool heart of the mountain, Spock was instructed to kneel on a pad and wait.
"Do not expect T'Rio to be as gentle. But expect her to make no judgement. I sense that you find the prospect of judgment to be at least equal to other reasons for wishing to keep to yourself."
"If I do, that is illogical. Judgement is useful for improvement."
Zienn touched Spock's chin to raise it. "That does not sound like you."
"Emotion has no place in logic."
"Emotion has a logic of its own," Zienn said. "You taught me that. And suffering is an indispensable context for existence. Your world taught me that." With a last long grim scrutiny of Spock, he departed.
Spock dispensed with renewed confusion and floated outside of time until his mind was wholly rested. The high priestess from the synergy experiment stepped into the hall wearing desert walking robes and no headdress. She was perhaps thirty years older than Zienn, but high mountain living had carved her face the way the wind carves rock. She did not speak, simply knelt before Spock on another pad. Spock felt much a much younger echo of himself trying to be frantic. T'Rio closed her eyes and steepled just her index and middle fingers, the others vibrated faintly.
Spock waited, drifted uncaring.
She separated her hands and held two fingers out, almost as an invitation from a mate, but Spock assumed she meant to touch his temple. He bowed his head and nodded. He was strong enough for this, even if he strongly preferred to remain apart from her.
Her mind was a thorn bush in a breeze slipping through the limbs of his mind, but as their thoughts overlapped further, this new touch responded to his pain and softened, too knowingly. So much power in one mind, but not controlled and walled in as Spock had been taught to be strong, instead a mind of vast breadth into unknowable dimensions. Spock floated as a mote of flickering light rather than risk emotion. The two of them floated together, with only the faintest movement around the edges of Spock's small thoughts.
Gradually, as if to not startle him, she moved the two of them along a dimension Spock could not comprehend. A bubble formed from their movement, as if, like the realm of the dead, there was a membrane there, or what the mind perceived as one. With great effort, T'Rio pressed this distortion along until it nearly closed over the other side into a completed bubble. But the closer it came to sealing, the greater the resistance, until it seemed an impossible task. With intense long effort and the swirling of other disturbed dimensions, the bubble finally snapped closed.
Spock sensed the absolute peace of being wholly alone in the universe. T'Rio's shifting thoughts broke this sense and the meld loosened. Her consciousness shifted again, almost a shaking, as if encouraging Spock to pull away.
Spock, as unskilled at melding as untangling a meld, did the best he could at backing out of her thoughts. He had been assured there would be no judgement, but this paltry effort elicited mystification at his poor skill. There was nothing in all existence but Spock and T'Rio, but Spock refused to relax the past, to let her see why he disliked this so. His pride came up like a wedge between them, putting them apart, and as they slid apart, he sensed her confirming something within her own thoughts, as though nodding to herself.
Spock forced his body to breathe. He could access that other place that contained his body, was familiar with reaching to it. He was familiar with finding the way back and even to managing others he'd pulled into his own realm. He'd learned this by necessity. He released these realizations as unimportant. To go farther, to bring to mind his mother or Kirk, would finish him, and his pride would be the least of his concerns.
T'Rio moved together again, overlapping their thoughts enough to show him how to turn the realm around and examine its qualities, showed him her sense of what intersected the shell of it beyond. The realm dissolved along one side, opened into the universe and ceased to exist. The mindspace of the normal universe buzzed and hummed against their minds, then became normal, seemingly quiet. He knew from her that was why certain group mind explorations happened in and out of realms, where the mindquiet was complete. He knew more then that in a rush, how realms and dimensions were not the same thing, but two key aspects of the way the energy of the universe functioned. She waited while he pieced the new knowledge into his own mind. He felt anticipation from her that was quickly veiled from his full understanding. Then he felt a prodding: she wanted him to create a realm so she could observe it from the inside.
Spock forced his body to breathe, but this time there was no relief filtering back to him from the effort. Melding with T'Rio more exhausting than with Zienn. Again, he sensed judgement of a sort. But then acceptance that this was how things were. But unlike Zienn, no affection, just a placement of thoughts into an understanding of reality. The meld faded and he was held up by her hand on his elbow to keep him from toppling. Spock put his hands down and remained that way, on all fours, breathing rapidly without it giving him relief.
"I was warned you would have difficulty if the meld were not fully supported by me at all times. But I wished to see your understanding of what had come to be."
Her voice was unexpectedly musical, not at all harsh from disuse.
Spock nodded from where he stared at the pad under his hands, as though in supplication. He had no idea what protocol applied here. "I regret my weakness, Exalted High Priestess."
"That will not do. I promised to not allow you to declare yourself less than. Can you sit up?"
Spock sat back on his feet. Sighed. The room swayed. He put a hand down to steady it again.
"I have misused you against my promise otherwise."
"I do not feel misused."
"We will have another session when your teacher deems you rested." She rose in a smooth motion and departed with rapid movements, or perhaps Spock's mind was slow, there was no telling which.
Spock gave into instinct and curled up on the pair of pads. The one she'd knelt on was pleasantly warm.
"Did you learn enough to make the discomfort worthwhile?"
Zienn's voice came out of the light of the rising sun through the one window at the end of the disused temple hall.
It was dawn, of which day, Spock did not know. He'd been dreaming, flying through a muddle of city towers from around the galaxy. Flying without a craft, just with his arms out, rocking his body to steer as best he could, seeking in vain with growing panic for the distinctive tower of Starfleet Academy. Spock sniffled, settled his mind, but the emotion stubbornly remained, had infused his chest.
"I learned a great deal, Teacher. My poor skills at melding were at fault."
Spock sat up, pleased to find he did not grow dizzy doing so.
"T'Rio estimates three more sessions to communicate her full understanding."
Spock nodded and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
"You only have this to accomplish. I will leave you to fine tuning your other new skills on your own."
Spock considered that meant he would miss the melds with Zienn. Then considered that he better learn to miss them.
"Go and eat and rest," Zienn said. "And eat."
Spock was left to make his own way down out of the hall to the half-exposed stairs leading to the courtyard. From the porch of the disused side temple, he could see across the stone bridge to where the gatekeeper sat on the edge of the flat top of the adjoining peak. The morning sun cast the crags and the temple structures into a stark relief of yellow-pink and deep maroon. A handful of devotees were sitting and kneeling in the public area. Spock saw himself as though through their eyes and wondered at himself there: an acolyte in an exalted place that did not have acolytes; an otherworlder in a place so deeply Vulcan it built upon the spiritual strength of the stone composing the world. His consciousness caught a remnant wisp of T'Rio's intentions as if she were still in his mind. She wanted him to remain. She wanted his raw talent for forming a realm without effort. Would make a place for him here.
The dream of flying had put Spock's mind back together for him. He felt clearheaded and wondered at the strange newness of it. Meditation was supposed to be more clearheaded than random thought. But Spock was not like others. Perhaps that was not true for him. Perhaps very little was true for him.