Title: Things that Never Happened I: Blue
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
Author's Note: I'm actually trying a sort of stark writing style that I've admired in another author (Greg von Eekhout). I thought the atmosphere it created felt right. Please tell me what you think.
oOo oOo oOo
Chapter 2: When the Floods Roll Back
Underground towns are giant caves. The brown of the dirt invades the people who live in these towns until they, too, are as brown as the earth. Being brown is a sure sign that you're part of the rebellion. They don't call themselves the underground. It's too obvious a joke.
The houses underground are little more than scrap-metal shacks. Since it never rains underground, the roofs are just tarps to keep any loose dirt from falling on people's heads. The streets are hard-packed earth and vendors line them in the little towns. They know that people need food, and if they grow it or if they are willing to sneak up top and forage, they will be paid good money.
That's one thing that the Pacifist revolution reintroduced: money. And if not money, then barter. Whichever it happens to be, a person always wants to be sure they have something on hand to trade. It's the smart thing to do.
The Vulcan and the human walk into town through one of three entrances. People recognize them as Uniforms, and that earns them some instant respect. Uniforms are getting scarce nowadays, and in the rebellion that's considered something sad. They're the remnants of freedom to the people who refused to be taken over by the Pacifists.
The people underground never say the word "Starfleet". It's something sacred and not to be profaned.
Spock and Len's first stop is the refinery. They want to sell off the shells of the fliers they scooped up. Len's already worked their nearly-full phaser cells free and slipped them into a pouch on his belt to be used later. The inner workings will be sold off next. The rest of a flier is almost pure aluminum, and the blacksmith is more than happy to melt government property. A pleasure, he says as he pays them what Spock mentally tells Len is a good price.
The next stop is the machinist. The tiny woman in this stall is known throughout the rebellion for her skill at making new machines from old ones. She makes home appliances, makeshift tricorders, but most especially weapons. That's what makes the big money underground.
She likes flier parts. They're easily reprogrammed and they're top-of-the-line government-issue. She also likes the Vulcan and human coming to her every few months. She's always talking to Spock as though he'll talk back, and she never takes offense when he doesn't. She just keeps on talking as she buys the parts they've scavenged from the fliers. She holds them under a homemade lamp and inspects them for the inevitable damage. Damage will bring down the price, but there's no way to get them without damaging them first.
She understands, and even comments that the harm isn't nearly as bad as some she's seen. Altogether, she likes what they've brought. More importantly, she likes them. She not only pays Spock and Len a god sum for the parts, but she gives them advice about who has the freshest and cheapest goods.
As they walk away, she looks at Spock wistfully. Women do that. Len glances at Spock out of the corner of his eye and tries to see what they see. Now that the two of them are in town, Spock stands straight. He doesn't trudge, but he still doesn't glide as he used to. He simply walks, like everyone else. He could be mistaken for human if it wasn't for the slanted eyebrows and the pointed ear he has. The other pointed tip was cut off by a Pacifist early in the collapse.
Pacifists hate aliens. They especially hate alien-human hybrids. There are wanted posters for Spock up in every single store on the surface. There are posters for Len, too, but not nearly as many and not nearly as prominent.
If he could, Len thinks, he would keep Spock underground all the time. He always worries when Spock goes up top.
The Vulcan meets his gaze.
Len looks for the preserved vendor.
The preserved vendor is the most expensive vendor in town. Getting non-perishables involves more risk than growing things. Non-perishables have to be made with more sophistication and more means than they possess underground. Non-perishables must be stolen from up top. Len examines a tin of beans and wonders how many people died to get that tin to this vendor. He puts the tin on the counter to buy.
He gets other tins: more beans, vegetables, fruits, everything they might need to stay healthy and stave off malnutrition. They also get dried meats and vegetables for later rehydration. They'll get some fresh produce because Len believes it has more nutritional value than even the artificially enhanced preserved foods. It's natural and Len likes that. Plus, fresh is cheaper.
They move to the clean water vendor. He's a Uniform. His brother and sister-in-law were too, only they were killed in the initial purges. He's always given a discount to other Uniforms, in their honor. It's not much of a discount, but Len is grateful for anything the man is willing to give. He shakes the vendor's hand when he buys the water. The vendor steps back, smiles in embarrassment, and then salutes them both. For an instant, it feels like everything is right again. Then the instant is over, and the vendor is just another man in a tattered uniform (red, Len thinks in disappointment. Most of the blues were killed off first). As he turns away from the vendor to move on, Len notices the man's eyes go to Spock's single pointed ear, and the man actually crosses himself. Ever since the purge, people do that. Aliens have become creatures of myth. The few children left haven't even seen one, and have only heard of them through vague and hushed description. To have Spock walk through your town is to touch the stars. Some regard it as a religious experience. Spock never even seems to notice.
Unfortunately, not everyone went underground because they treasure the alien element. "Look at the pointy-eared one," Len hears someone say. He stops, feeling a sudden tension in the air. He hates fighting two fronts at once, but some who went underground fell back on their darkest roots. They're stupid and ignorant. Before the collapse Doctor McCoy would have advocated education and patience. Times are different now, and Len advocates action and violence. He won't let anyone hurt Spock.
Another voice says, "He's a robot. That's what I heard. Vulcan's ain't even real. We made 'em, and they're robots."
Spock's eyebrow kicks up. Len grimaces. Humans creating Vulcans? That was a laugh. People didn't create machines better than they themselves were created. They were too afraid to do that. Too many consequences. Too much risk. Len knew what could happen. He'd seen it in another life.
"Only one way to be sure," the first voice says. "If he bleeds, he's a goddamn pointy-eared roach. If he doesn't, he's a robot."
The knife comes fast, and Len doesn't have time to turn. Spock does, and when he faces their attackers, he catches the knife-weilding arm by the wrist in a grip tight enough to break bone. The man gasps and stares at Spock in horror.
The Vulcan cocks his head and squeezes. Len hears a series of crackles. The man screams, twisting in Spock's grip. The knife glances across Spock's arm before falling to the ground and blood begins to drip from the wound it inflicts. Spock releases the man, who falls back and stares with wide eyes at the Vulcan's bright green blood. He's got the look of a man who feels sick when he sees vomit on the ground. To him, it probably isn't even blood. He thinks that Spock is some sort of demon.
His friend is larger than the man with the knife, and also stares at Spock. Len knows this look. It's the loathing of a man who sees vermin. Len's seen it on the faces of a thousand bigots in his lifetime, and it gets him angry. It's hard enough for his Vulcan to live on this planet, the only one left of his kind, without supposed allies looking at him like that. Len steps forward and gets in the man's face. The man shoves Len. Len hauls off and belts the man in the mouth. The man falls down, and glares up at Len from his sprawl.
"Next time, Son," Len says, "you mind your manners."
"Next time I'll stab you before I say anything."
"You try that, there'll be consequences. They'll send you back to your daddy in a box."
Len deliberately turns his back on the hoodlum. Spock watches him.
They move on to more fresh vendors (there are always more fresh vendors than preserved). There is an array of fruit and vegetables, with comparable prices. The meat is much rarer, and inevitably more expensive, but they get as much as they can. They hold just enough of their money back to cover an emergency.
Len finally hears the voice he's been waiting for. "Len? Lenny, is that you?"
He turns, and Spock does too. There she is, her once-carefully ironed hair long since gone kinky again. The waves surround her tiny face in a dark halo. It suits her, Len thinks. She's gained a sort of powerful beauty since the collapse. The beauty was there before, but the power was always muted. You can't mute things like that anymore if you want to survive.
"How ya doing, Ny?" he asks as she slams into him, arms wrapping around his body tightly. This close, he can smell the cinnamon and patchouli she wears to cover up odors. Deodorant is just a fond memory, and he knows that he must stink to high heaven.
"Surviving, Honey," she says. "You?"
"The same."
"What about . . ." she looks at Spock. "How are you, Sir?"
There is a flash in McCoy's mind and he says, "He's doing pretty well, all things considered."
She nods and a bittersweet smile crosses her face. "Just like the rest of us, then."
"Pretty damn near."
"Come on," she says, motioning. "I've got dinner."
"Knew I could count on you."
They walk through the town, and everyone nods in reverence to Nyota before eyeing Spock in either awe or veiled disgust. Len is generally ignored, but that doesn't bother him. He's used to it by now. He's just another dirty man amongst a hoard of dirty men. The uniform is one of only two noticeable signs of interest, but half the people can't even identify it as such, despite Len's best attempts to at least keep the Starfleet insignia free of dirt. The vast majority of people around here don't even know what the insignia stands for.
The other sign of interest is the brown leather belt slung around his middle, bedecked with pouches. It's the belt of a doctor, and the pouches are full of herbs and rubbing alcohol. Len hates it, but it's the best a doctor can do underground. Some towns understand that this sort of doctoring is outdated, that there used to be better treatments. The sort of things they think of as magic and miracles now. They don't call Len a doctor in those towns, because no such creature exists. They're as much a myth as Vulcans and space-travel.
To them, the belt is the sign of a shaman. Len thinks that they have it right, but there's no changing it. Better a shaman than nothing at all.
Nyota is in charge of this town, and her home is a larger shack than the others: it has two rooms. Spock and Len walk into the main room identified by a fire pit and a sort of chimney designed to vent into the deep woods above them. The trees will mask the output from aerial surveillance.
The surprise is the man sitting at the fire. Hikaru looks up and smiles at them, raising his single arm in greeting. The missing arm is something new since Len last saw him, but it doesn't make much of an impact. They're all bound to lose something during this war. An arm isn't so terrible. You can still run and shoot with only one arm. "When did you lose that?" Len asks.
Hikaru's smile fades. "Two weeks ago. It's why I'm here and not at the front."
"Have you had it looked at?"
"It's fine, Doc. No infection."
Len doesn't trust him and crouches down to make that call himself. Spock moves off to help Nyota with dinner. Hikaru's arm seems to have been a decently clean amputation. The bandages shape around the stump smoothly. No jags. "Who did this?" he asks.
"An exploding tanker."
"Shrapnel?"
"Yes, Sir."
Len sighs. If it wasn't done by human hands, there could be consequences. Where there's one piece of shrapnel, there are usually more. "Can I unwrap it and take a look?"
Sulu grimaces. Looks like he doesn't like the idea of exposing the stump. "It's a bit of a mess still, Sir," he says.
Len nods. He's guessed as much already. When Sulu nods in acquiescence, Len strips away the protective layers of cloth until nothing covers the mangled remains of the arm. The amputation is a single, clean slice, but the stump doesn't look as healthy as Len would like to see it. Len probes the stump with his fingers, trying to see if any fragments of shrapnel are lodged under the skin. He can't find any, and he's glad. The last thing either of them need is something metal festering in the tissues. He takes Hikaru's bandages, rummages in his pouches until he finds his rubbing alcohol, applies it to the cloth, and reties the bandages. Hikaru winces, but Len's confident he has a good chance of avoiding infection during the healing process now.
Len meets Sulu's eyes and conjures a smile. "You're fine. You'll be back at the front in no time."
Sulu nods. "I hate to think how my platoon is surviving without me."
"Tears every night, I'm sure," Len says.
It makes Sulu laugh, which is what Len was aiming for. The old country doctor is more effective now than ever. Remnants of happiness. "I'll ask them when I go back," Hikaru says.
Nyota calls them for dinner.
The meal starts with alcohol, which is something Len can appreciate. He doesn't drink much anymore. Liquor is too rare and too tempting when it is available. He nearly drowned in it right after the collapse, before Spock found him.
The Vulcan came, though, just as Len should have expected him to. The moment Spock walked into Len's hiding place was the moment Len stopped losing his mind. It was also the last night he went to sleep drunk.
Spock kept him away from alcohol for months after, telling him that he couldn't survive if he wasn't sober. At first, Len had been convinced that he couldn't survive if he was sober. There was too much awfulness. Too much death and loss for one ordinary man to take.
Spock had not accepted his belief. Len began to think that Spock needed him as much as he needed Spock. The Vulcan wouldn't have nagged him nearly as much if he didn't. Len went dry, went through withdrawl, and came out the other side something less than the man he had been.
Len only drinks one glass of Nyota's homebrew, and even this is under Spock's very sharp eye. When he finishes the drink (which whispers to him, urging him to consume just a little more, what will it hurt?) he switches to water and Spock relaxes fractionally. For Spock, it's as good as resting his feet on the table. If there were a table, which there isn't. Just a plank on the floor with a few rugs around it that function as chairs.
"You have a problem in my town, Len?" she asks. There's a knowing in her eyes. Len doesn't feel the need to lie. It isn't what she wants.
"You're getting bigots in," he says.
"They come through, but I don't let them stay. You know I screen my citizens."
McCoy nods. This town is Nyota's pride and her accomplishment. He mustn't disparage something like that.
She says, "I'll have my people keep an eye out. There'll be no more trouble from them."
"Thanks, Ny."
She shrugs. "It's what I do. My own bubble of civilization in a world of chaos."
Spock gives Len a flash, and he says, "Spock wants to know what's bringing them in to begin with. Bigots usually live further out in the frontier towns."
Nyota frowns and Sulu closes his eyes. "Pacifists got Prospect, Gold Earth, and Pangia, Len. People are scared of the fringes. They're running deeper into the maze. We're worried about overcrowding and looking for some new direction to expand."
Len nods. The news is grim, but doesn't surprise him. "What about the maze? Are we in danger of discovery?"
She shakes her head. "When the towns were raided, we put contingencies in place. They looked like isolated phenomena."
Spock gives him another flash. Mixed question and derision for their presumed safety. Spock doesn't underestimate the Pacifists. Doesn't think Nyota should, either. Len doubts she's as confident as she sounds. Spock concedes the point.
Len says, "Spock wants to know about the supply lines. You still having trouble with them?"
That seems to cheer her up a little. "Not nearly as much since the new tunnel was dug."
"Good. We were worried after the last bombing run. Especially about the small towns."
She sighs. "I'll admit, some of them were hit hard. We had to convert one of them into a hospital. It was a steady stream of people in for at least three days."
"I should have been there," Len says.
"You were busy on a mission, Len. No one expects you to do everything at once." Even now, Nyota is nothing if not conscientious. "You have your job. You don't need another."
She stands and walks over to the fire. Spock rises and joins her. Between the two of them, they bring over large pot of stir-fry. It's all fresh, except for the dried meat. It's the first decent meal Len can remember for just this side of forever.
He feels Nyota has something more to say. The food is a cushion to a blow neither he nor Spock will appreciate. Of course, it's possible that Spock already knows what it is and feels the need to hold out on him.
Len dishes up a bowl of stir-fry and digs in while it's hot. Nyota eats with grace, but just as much hunger, a woman who would like to deny her poverty but can't afford to. Hikaru manages his utensils with deft strokes, like a shovel: scoop, insert food, chew, swallow, repeat without pause.
Spock eats the food, meat and all. He stopped being a vegetarian when Len gave up drinking. Their silent pact of survival. If Nyota and Hikaru notice, they don't say anything.
For long mintues, they sit and eat. It's something you learned after the collapse: when anything edible was put in front of you, you kept you eyes on it and you ate it as fast as you could. There was a good chance you would lose it if you didn't obey those rules. Even in this setting, where there's enough stir-fry for them all, and they are no longer just huddled masses in the early refugee camps, they retain the habit. Food is not a luxury they can afford to savor.
Spock hands Len another glass of water without being asked, and their hands brush. Len sends his thanks over the tenuous thread, and he is given a flash of dismissal. Spock never likes gratitude.
"So, what's the job, Ny?" he asks when the tension gets too high and he can't enjoy his stir-fry without a straight answer.
To her credit, Nyota doesn't even act surprised that he asked. "Simple forage job," she says.
"You're sending us back to the surface so soon?" Len asks in dull anger. The rebellion is important, but this is a waste. He has his own life to worry about. He has Spock. They need to be fresh for forage jobs. They need time to regroup.
"Everyone with the training is already sent or dead," she says. "Desperate times, Len."
He gets a flash and turns to Spock. "No," he said, "I don't think it's a good idea. I think we need a few days." Flash. "I know, but we aren't—" he turns to Nyota. "We aren't needed immediately, are we? Can we have a few days to recuperate before going back out?"
She nods. "I have a shack set aside for you on the edge of town. Rest up while I get your equipment in."
Flash. "Equipment?" he asks for Spock. "What sort of mission is this?"
"Weapons," she says, her voice hard. "We're going to steal their weapons, and we're going to blow the armory on our way out. We're giving you demolitions, disguises, and fresh phaser-rifles."
"How many in our team?" he asks.
She doesn't answer.
"Me and Spock?"
"Resources are stretched very thin, Len. I'm sorry."
He looks over at the Vulcan and says, "Yeah. So am I."
Spock gives him a flash, and it's all the out he needs. He rises, and everyone else does the same. "I'm sorry to be abrupt," it's a lie, but who cares, "but Spock's tired. So'm I. If you'll point us in the direction of this hut, we'll get some sleep."
Nyota watches him. Len knows he's a lair, and he knows that she knows too. She won't talk about it. She knows her orders aren't fair. She knows it's a suicide mission, and she knows they'll do it. Duty before life always. When the future of the human race is at stake, you follow orders even unto death.
It doesn't mean you enjoy it or want to die. And it doesn't stop the feeling of being used which accompanies the order. It doesn't mean you don't wonder why you were picked and someone else was spared.
They get directions to their shack and leave. Len really does want sleep, especially in their own private shack. It's a luxury for the walking dead. An appeasement, an apology of sorts.
The shack is tiny, only one room, but it has rugs to sleep and sit on, and they're clean. The true marvel is the tub of cold water for bathing and rags for scrubbing. Nyota's practicality. Pacifists aren't dirty. If they're infiltrating, they have to be clean. They have to be presentable, or at least an approximation.
Len strips, dipping a rag into the water and washing himself off. The years have disposed of almost all their modesty, and Spock stands next to him as they wash. Once they're done, they take turns scrubbing each other's backs.
Len counts each of Spock's green scars as he ghosts the rag over them. They look a little better without the grime, and they aren't infected. Still, he hates seeing Spock scarred like that. He can look at the man's ear and not flinch, but the little scars get to him. They're signs of a sadism that even the ear can't touch.
Spock is thorough when he scrubs Len's back, and the human closes his eyes. Tactile pleasures are so very rare that they have to be savored. Gratification is fleeting and over too soon.
When Spock is finished, Len doesn't give a sign that he's disappointed. He just picks up his shirt, pants and underwear, and uses the rest of the water to rinse out his clothes. Spock does the same. The rags are used to wipe down their boots, and then everything is spread out on rugs next to the fire pit to dry.
They build a fire, spread the rugs and stretch out, falling asleep as they dry.