First kiss does the trick. The propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. ~ James Joyce
With the surveillance footage transferred to a tricorder, Kirk marked the missing block of time as precisely five minutes and forty-seven seconds. Spock would be so proud. The tendency to round up or down depending on the favorability of an outcome had long been a bone of contention between them.
Still, it was technically closer to six minutes than five. And (as a younger, drunk version of himself knew well), plenty of time to have sex on that conveniently arranged stack of crates, or up against the side of that building. Spock and Uhura could have sucked face for two minutes, knocked boots for three and a half minutes, and been calmly chatting each other up seventeen seconds later when the cameras were on them again.
Of course, Kirk couldn't envision Spock being drunk enough to do anything like that. Or drunk. Or doing anything like that ever. And Uhura was far too classy for frantic coupling in an alley. Yet scenarios kept popping into his head featuring two exemplary officers in varied states of horny pantslessness.
He didn't want to think about it, but just knowing they were on the Enterprise that very moment, in one or the other's bed, trying to boink the brains back into their heads made it hard not to. It was like some weird game of whack-a-mole he was playing with his imagination.
His finger hovered over an image on the screen, a smooth patch of wall nestled in shadows beneath a stretch of opaque windows and his mind rushed to fill in the blanks. A shiver coursed through him, its locus a telling buzz between his legs. He squeezed his eyes shut, counted breathes in and out for a few seconds until some measure of equilibrium was restored. A quick glance sideways caught Himli Sabanci eyeing him in bemusement.
Kirk nodded curtly, squared his shoulders and turned his complete focus to the time before and after those missing few minutes.
Three surveillance cameras were trained on the alley. He noted their physical locations one more time then proceeded to shift perspectives between the images gathered by each. From the camera above the door, he watched his officers exit the building into the alley, watched Uhura walk towards Integrity Boulevard then Spock move quickly to her side, grab her arm, and hustle her around the corner. He watched their actions again from the cameras at each end of the alley.
To anyone who didn't know Spock, the Vulcan's behavior might have seemed typical of his species –quick but not rushed, all purpose and economy of motion. But Kirk could tell by the set of Spock's shoulders, the angle of his head, that he was uneasy, his senses on alert, scanning, assessing, anticipating trouble—
"They ran from the security guard," Sabanci said. Right next to him now, glancing over his shoulder.
Kirk refrained from a childish impulse to turn away and cover the screen. "They had their reasons."
"And that's part of the problem, Captain. Their reasons seem a little suspect given they were being escorted to secure transporters for their own safety at the time."
"Which, you'll pardon my frankness, suggests the chancellor felt it politically expedient to make sure they didn't leave by the front door."
"Well, it wouldn't have looked good if your officers were torn limb from limb by an anti-Federation mob."
Kirk swallowed a hasty response. Spock had thought frustration from some of the protestors might have turned against the two of them, but the protests themselves hadn't gotten dangerous until the Sheriff gassed the participants. And then it was the danger of being trampled and crushed rather than torn limb from limb.
"And," Sabanci continued, "doesn't detract from how suspicious it looked in retrospect, considering the witness accounts and the accusations that were made against them."
Witness accounts.
Kirk skimmed quickly past the scattered pixilation of the blanked-out minutes to view the pandemonium of the actual arrests. A few locals milled as close to the police cordon as they could. He counted sixteen police in riot gear crowding the alley itself, hopped up on adrenalin, looking for threats everywhere, and seeing resistance where none was offered. There were far too many of them in that narrow space. A sniper could have picked them off easily, with half his work done for him by their own crossfire.
"Who trained these idiots?" he said.
Sabanci snorted. "Most of the idiots are Pinochette's." Off Kirk's look he added, "The sheriff. Most of them are new. We haven't needed them until recently." He gestured to other figures on the screen. "Those four there? The very professional looking ones? Staff security for the chancellery building."
"Oh. Is-is, that, uh, is that the guy…?"
"—your officers ran from? Yes."
Face not hidden behind a gas mask and protective goggles like most of the sheriff's deputies, the man's state of mind was clear even without enlarging the image. He was righteously pissed off at the two Starfleet officers. But unlike the local police he wasn't posturing aggressively and yelling contradictory orders at them.
For their part, Uhura and Spock looked painfully vulnerable in that moment, like small children awakened from a nap – by a bunch of strangers with weapons.
Some of the deputies were shouting "don't move!" Others, that they should put their hands up NOW. And still others that they should get on their knees, hands behind their heads. Spock's blinking confusion, Uhura's obvious alarm and the general sluggishness of their responses only served to ramp up the aggression. The fact that they'd been drugged couldn't have been more obvious.
Uhura, forced to her knees, hit the pavement hard and cried out. Spock reached to steady her only to be rammed in the gut with a baton. Kirk's hold on the tricorder went white-knuckled.
It had already happened. He couldn't change it. He banked the fire of his outrage and turned his attention to the bystanders at the periphery. Witnesses supposedly.
Aside from the usual lookie-loos, there was one local man who appeared to be giving a lively account to a chancellery guard. Kirk couldn't make out what he was saying – too much ambient noise – but there was a lot of urgent gesticulating and dramatic facial expressions. The man pointed at the Starfleet officers, both on their knees by then with hands dutifully at the backs of their heads.
"That's the, uh, 'concerned citizen' guy who claimed he saw your officers with an incendiary device," Sabanci noted quietly.
Kirk watched the guard stiffen then move swiftly toward his fellow chancellery officers. one of whom immediately pressed the communication device attached to his collar. Information (about the presumed bomb Kirk figured) was then relayed to the deputies and seconds later everyone scrambled to get out of the alley. Spock and Uhura were hauled to their feet and led away.
"Unfortunately," Sabanci said, "the contact information the man gave was fake. We haven't been able to locate him."
Ah. Well then...
"We might be able to help you out there." Kirk gestured to Lt. Mero, overseeing the Enterprise's forensic investigation. "This guy?" he said, drawing a circle around the man's face. "Find him."
"Aye sir." Mero took a moment to note the timestamp on the recording before accessing it on their own tricorder. "Locate? Or locate and detain?"
Kirk glanced at Sanbanci who said, "Both please."
Mero opened a communicator and started making calls.
Although Spock subscribes to the theory that macroscopic objects (such as himself) cannot be in a state of superposition, he must acknowledge that kissing or not kissing Uhura is itself a kind of quantum system.
If he squints.
Ignorance is bliss, his mother once said. It was one of many ludicrous Human sayings she'd spout to get a rise out of him. He recalls how calm she could remain in the face of his increasingly strident, fervently logical rebuttals.
Ignorance could only be bliss if one is not intentionally ignoring something.
Uncertainty of outcome is safe. Freeing. If they never kiss, that radioactive atom never decays. The mythical cat is both alive and dead, and his personal motivations can never be questioned. Whatever he had done to them on Caishen (and he's increasingly certain it was his doing) would never be revealed. A perpetual mystery even to himself. The fact that everything else they needed to know might also remain a mystery is where his reasoning falls apart. Idle contemplation of quantum states and superpositions merely delays the inevitable. Their sexual experiment had failed to bring about the intended result. And somewhere, deep within, he knew it would fail.
Uhura sits on the edge of the bed, arms heavy, legs heavy, suffused with languorous apathy, her thoughts caught between post coital bliss and searing disappointment. The blank spot in her memory is still blank. The insides of her thighs are sticky. Her tender lady parts twitch and spasm as reproductive biology tries its best to get sperm to ovum, unaware of the traps set by modern contraceptives.
Beside her, Spock gazes into the middle distance, contemplating failure she assumes, both utter and inevitable. She can almost feel his detachment harden around him like a shell. He's going to say or do something insensitive in a moment, and yet she hasn't the wherewithal to don armor of her own. She isn't even sure she can stand up.
He takes a breath. His lips part—
Fight or flee overcomes inertia and she's on her feet and two steps to the bathroom. His hand catches her wrist. Her legs wobble but she remains standing with her back to him, her arm caught behind her in the noose of his fingers.
"Our experiment has failed to produce the anticipated results," he says. "I'm – I –"
"If you apologize, I'm going to scream." Behind her, his fingers lose their hold and he's silent for so long she has to turn around just to make sure he's still there.
He's staring at his lap. She's pretty sure he's not contemplating his genitals. She takes a deep breath. The room stinks richly of sex. "What do we do now?"
He gazes up at her. "We return to the colony and assist in the investigation on site. The environment may prove more efficacious in triggering memories." His words are sanguine. His demeanor, not so much.
"Isn't that what I suggested several sexy fun-times ago?"
His head shoots up at the creative vernacular. "Yes. It is."
"Do you respect me at all?"
"Of course. Always." He doesn't ask her for the same reassurance. She doesn't offer.
"I'll need an hour to compose myself."
They agree to meet in Transporter Room 4 at 21:30 hours.
The first thing he heard on entering the transporter room was, "Your presence was not requested, Doctor."
For a scant unguarded second, Spock had looked practically Byronic standing on the transporter platform, alone, with storm clouds around his head. The effect dissipated quick enough that McCoy wondered if he'd seen it at all.
"I know. But when Jim told me y'all were headed down, I thought I'd tag along anyway. Just in case."
Spock's mouth tightened. "It is not necessary."
Yup. Someone's definitely in a mood. McCoy had learned long ago (from Spock himself) that when opponents got blustery, their hackles up, or feathers ruffled, the best tactical maneuver was to be infuriatingly calm.
"Eh," he grunted with a vague shrug. "We'll see."
The doors opened and Uhura marched in, ready to take on the universe, garbed in the battle armor of her most professional self.
Or, he thought, squinting closer, maybe a caricature of her most professional self – hair extra smooth but with extra pouf on top, makeup immaculate but with extra-extra-long eyelashes, lips bright ruby, really bright, like all you could focus on after a while bright. Her earrings were dramatic hoops of jade and her fingernails were long and sharp and dazzling gold.
She stepped onto a transporter pad without a word. McCoy followed.
"Mr. Kyle," Spock said. The chief nodded and a few seconds later they were standing in the alley behind the chancellery building in Superlative City on Caishen.
At the sight of the local constabulary, Uhura spun on her heel and took several swift steps toward a street intersecting the alley before Spock caught her arm. She whirled on him, furious. "I am not spending another day in a jail cell," she hissed at him. Then to McCoy, "They never gave me back my earrings and these are much nicer."
"I do not believe they are here to arrest us," Spock said. Though it looked like he'd been ready to make a run for it himself.
"Captain's not going to let that happen," McCoy assured her.
There was equipment everywhere, bleeping and whirring, and the hydraulic lift Spock had described was high above the pavement with all its engineering exposed to the elements. Besides the people from the Enterprise there were quite a few uniformed officers standing around looking dour. And one tall fellow sporting, of all things, a classic beige Cattleman's cowboy hat.
Kirk spotted them and headed over.
"What's going on?" McCoy asked before Kirk came to a stop.
"Sheriff Pinochette got a wild hair. Made a personal appearance to complain about us overstepping his jurisdiction."
McCoy barked a laugh so loud it ricocheted off the alley's walls. He pressed his hands to his mouth to stifle the very unprofessional giggles that followed. "Pinochette? Seriously?"
"Ye-es." Kirk crossed his arms over his chest, waiting irritably for the doctor to get it together.
"Sorry. Sorry. Gimme a sec here."
The sheriff's nickname was not even a nickname really. Pinoche. Pinochet. Pinochette. A variation on an old Terran word that meant "small penis."
Spock and Uhura were looking at him, one vaguely concerned and one sullen.
"Okay—" he started, then held up a hand again. After choking back another fit of giggles, he wiped his eyes, said "Whew," and waved at the captain to continue.
Kirk bestowed a sour look and gestured that they should move to a reasonably private area. It was near the very door where his two officers had made their questionable escape. He quickly summarized what they knew so far finishing with Lt. Mero's belief that the fake concerned citizen was on one of two merchant vessels due to leave port in an hour. "But," Kirk said, "it's also possible the guy left on a transport yesterday." At Uhura's crestfallen look, he added, "We're on it though."
As they were both here and not offering detailed information that could assist the inquiry, McCoy figured it was a safe bet the alternative to kissing had failed spectacularly. If they were hoping to jog their memories they'd need to do it quick.
Uhura crossed her arms, fingers paddling her elbows as she looked around the alley for anything that might provide a trigger. The three men knew enough to keep their mouths shut, and after a few moments she looked at Spock and declared, "This is ridiculous."
She grabbed fistfuls of Spock's shirt front and shoved him back two steps until he hit the wall – a feat that wouldn't even have been possible if not for his utter surprise at the fact of her doing it. Her knuckles dug into his chest as she went up on her tiptoes, pushing her mouth onto his so hard his head jerked back and knocked a little plaster loose. But her lips did not break contact.
Kirk and McCoy watched like bystanders at a shuttle crash as the kiss deepened until a few beats later Spock's arm went around her lower back and pulled her closer. A few seconds after that the captain and the doctor were trying hard to find anything else to look at. There was… a lot of tongue.
"Omigod," Kirk gulped, hand shielding his eyes.
"If this goes any farther," McCoy said, "we'll have to bring out the hose."
They didn't have to. After a very long, excruciating minute the kissing and groping tapered off. Their lips parted with a sloppy squelch. Uhura pulled her head back. The two locked eyes. Spock blinked first.
"Oh," he exclaimed like a man with an epiphany.
"Oh?" she said, then again louder, "Oh?" She smacked him hard on the chest.
He snatched her wrist before she could do it again.
"Spock! What have you done to us?"