Chapter 39 - Just a Kid
At the apartment door, Spock was assailed by the closed in scent of strangers. He followed Lt. Carrom into a glass-lined living space marked off with tubular floor to ceiling partitions. The apartment occupied half the forty-first floor of a building in American Canyon, north of San Francisco along the sinuous waterways.
Carrom's small wife came around a partition from a dining area, bowed in the way of humans who don't do so normally. She had pale brassy hair that hung in a curtain of waves. Spock returned an abbreviated Vulcan greeting since something cultural was expected, and she smiled while studying his face too closely.
"Come in," Carrom said. "The processor is handling most of dinner. Olga thought it safer than trying to cook for you, since you can just tell the thing requirements and it always meets them without making a mistake."
The far end of the apartment was dominated by a large room surrounded on two sides by matching tube-framed windows. Two small children were playing, the smaller one dragging an oversized brown toy bear around with her, leaving only one hand free to grab at a leaping, buzzing toy resembling a giant grasshopper. The slightly older toddler squatted, giggling, trying to catch the toy, too late by half a second each leap it made.
A slightly older girl, the one Spock frequently saw on Carrom's phone, stared sulkily at them all from a low chair nearby. She made a long low humming noise through her nose and propped her chin on the high side of the chair to watch them.
"Do you drink?" Carrom asked Spock.
"It is not my preference."
"That's an interesting answer," Olga said. She moved to sit down, then waited, fixed halfway until Spock settled in.
The shelving mounted to the partition behind them was stuffed with toys and games. Spock had worn a set of moderately fancy robes and had perhaps misjudged the occasion.
"You're in your first year?" Olga asked. She was leaning her small face on her hand on her elbow propped on her knee. It made her appear overly interested. "That's unusual, right? For this kind of extra course?" She looked back and forth between Spock and Carrom as she talked.
"That is my understanding," Spock said. "I am not familiar with any but this one instance of the advanced course offerings."
Her brows came together as if wanting to be amused, or bemused.
"You like earth?" she asked.
Spock fell back on the reply that had garnered the best response to this question in the past. "When it is warm, yes."
Carrom returned with a beverage that smelled like bread. Spock assumed it was beer. He hiked up his uniform and sat down and sank back. "Spock here's pretty smart, but very stubborn."
Olga's lips pinched into the first smile that made it to her eyes. "That must cause problems with the project." She said this while looking straight at Carrom.
Carrom lifted a hand in a shrug.
"I estimate that we will complete the project two days ahead of schedule at our current trajectory of progress."
As they talked, the smaller toddler curled up on the floor on her bear, using it as a bed and pillow. It made Spock miss I-Chaya in a way he had not in several years. He continued to answer questions by rote.
"Maybe we should eat?" Olga said without warning.
Spock drew his attention back to them, forced discipline on his thoughts.
"We can feed the kids in here?" Carrom said.
Spock followed Carrom to the dining room. And waited as his host took his time lighting three candles sitting deep inside ceramic vessels. He carried these to the table and positioned them down the center of it. He went out. Olga and he shared low conversation in the kitchen as Spock waited, watching the welcoming, fluttering glow inside the abstract cylinders.
Carrom returned with aromatic serving dishes from the kitchen and placed them on top of each candle vessel. The fork edged spoons that he hooked onto the handles of each vessel were unfamiliar to Spock. It reminded him that this household was of mixed homeworld, although generations ago.
"Sit." Carrom sounded like a Lieutenant.
Spock obeyed.
The older girl, about eight years old, stepped in behind Olga, knees and chin high, pulled out the chair on the far end, beside Spock, with some effort given its heft.
"Eating with us?" Olga's surprise was clear.
When the girl had levered herself up on the chair, Spock said, "We have not been introduced, I am Spock."
The girl blinked at him as if serious thought were required. "Lareqa. With a CUE thank YOU."
Carrom shook his head, sighed quietly enough only Spock would have heard it. Carrom sat back, shook a cloth onto his lap and gestured in Spock's direction at the serving dishes.
"I'll serve," Olga said, and held out her hand for Spock's plate.
Lareqa put her elbow on the table beside her plate and angled her head up at Spock. "Do your ears hurt?"
"Lar…" Olga said.
"It is an acceptable question," Spock said gently, but waited for a nod from her before turning back to the child.
Olga made a face as she spooned from a second vessel onto Spock's plate. "Lar, think ahead about what you say. Please."
"Mmmm . . . but they look like they hurt." Lareqa said with a whine.
"They do not." Spock said pleasantly. "They were this way when I was born." Lareqa had her father's hair, but none of his vaguely Cardassian features. Human dilution had overwhelmed that heritage, apparently.
"Do you have a room to yourself or do you have to share?" Lareqa said. "Mmmm…I have to share."
"He has to share," Carrom said between bites. "Ships are like apartments, there isn't a lot of space. They make them share at school too. Sometimes three to a room."
"Do you have to share with your brother like I do?" Lareqa said.
"No. Not any longer. I. Was. Assigned a roommate by the Academy."
Carrom looked up at this, possibly spotting the lie. His angular brows stayed up for a time.
The meal went on, small talk from the adults gradually gave way to nonstop questions from the daughter. Spock sensed that her behavior was perhaps novel and despite the social awkwardness, desirable. The plates were taken away and a basket of hot towels were brought in scented with citrus.
Lareqa wiped her hands viciously and tossed the towel onto the table, then leaned forward, fingers hooked on the table edge. "We get pear tartan, cuz you're here."
"Pear tarte tartin, my dear," Olga said. She put small silver sporks before each of them. "Tartan is a pattern of plaid used by the Scots to denote their clan."
"Mmmmm. Yum. Yum. Yum." Lareqa said, swinging her feet.
"Stubborn like her dad," Olga said.
Carrom came in, handed out bowls lined with desert and topped with ice cream. The scent of sublimating deep freeze forced Spock to suppress a flinch.
Lareqa spooned voraciously at her bowl, barely chewing, scraped repeatedly before giving up. Bored then, she propped her head on her hand again and watched Spock eat his small careful bites. "Your mom have pointed ears too?"
"Lar . . ." Olga began.
"No, she does not." Spock said.
Olga looked up, wiped her mouth and fell silent.
"My mother is a human like yours," Spock said.
Olga and Carrom exchanged a glance.
"She? Mmmmmrm. She make you eat your peas?"
"We do not eat peas, thankfully. They do not grow on Vulcan."
"Let's move to Vulcan," the girl said.
Olga pretended not to smile, took the bowls away.
"You should come see my planetoid. Dad can I show him. Please?"
The pause was brief. Again Spock sensed an undercurrent, as if this was novel and the adults wanted to act as if it were normal. "Sure," Olga said.
Lareqa wriggled to the side of the large heavy chair and jumped down. Leapt away out the door.
"You don't mind?" Olga asked as Spock stood.
"In our culture childhood inquisition is to be encouraged."
Carrom had a fresh beer in his hand sending up a fizzy aura of yeast output. "Vulcan children use that to their advantage?"
Spock nodded. "Of course."
Carrom smiled and shook his head.
Spock sat cross legged on the floor beside a hologram of an astroid station projected inside an inexpensive transparent dome. Lareqa was using a pair of squishy knobs to move it in four dimensions, turning it as well as accelerating time passing.
"I put in a dog shop. See? Now everyone wants a dog."
The asteroid station's living space was indeed dominated by a pet store full of dogs as well as a dress shop and a toy store. There was a fountain in the middle of the elevators with an alligator living in it. Tiny figures moved through the spaces, buying dogs and dresses, walking far around the fountain. Spock found the bald illogic of it oddly liberating to the mind.
"This is me." She pointed at a large-headed figure in a short little pink dress. "I run the astronomy lab on the planetoid. This is my room over here."
Spock sensed a silent conversation going on between Carrom and Olga, but kept his attention on the tour, on the changing out of dress store stock to a new set of colors and styles on an asteroid tumbling through space. Lareqa put things in, took them out again. Her extra vocalizations of stress came and went as she manipulated the simulation.
Lareqa leaned forward to peer at the details. "They're talking about my bedtime. I have a super, stupid early bedtime. Mmmmrm. Ridiculous."
Carrom and Olga collected up the two fussing toddlers and with minutes of patient placation, took them off.
"Own room," Lareqa said. "I wish I had my own room."
"I understand," Spock said. Despite having his own, he had too many unsavory moments of Sybok invading it to make it feel possessed by him in memory.
"Your mom make you go to bed really really early?"
"When I was your age, certainly. Now I do so because it makes my day more efficient. More pleasing."
"That's boring."
"Yes."
Conversation was happening outside the partition. Spock tried not to listen in. He found himself uncaring of the undercurrents, but could not tune them out. Apparently the child didn't interact successfully much. Perhaps she didn't find it logical to, Spock thought.
"Mom and dad have a nice room, with real walls. Like on my planetoid. See. I have a door into the dog shop so I can herd all the dogs into my room. And I can put them out again when I feel like it."
Spock looked beyond the lights reflecting on the glass around them at the thickly standing buildings of Lombard and American Canyon. Aircars flitted by, their lights drawing streaks on the retina.
"You do not like your apartment here on earth?" Spock asked.
She made her odd noises for a time and kept working at changing things on the simulation.
Carrom and Olga returned, sat on the far end of the long couch. They seemed to be waiting for a cue, perhaps from Spock.
"Everyone needs a dog," Lareqa said. "I think. Do you have a dog?"
"I am not allowed pets at the Academy."
"That's mean of them. Everyone needs a dog."
"I am too busy for a dog."
"Adults are always too busy. Too busy for this. Too busy for that. Busy Mmmmmrm busy." She frowned and sighed, sat back and watched the simulation running at normal speed. Her hands were more like that of a toddler than a teen. Spock had no idea how humans developed or at what rate.
"You have a girlfriend?" she asked.
"I have a boyfriend."
"You do?" Her face went from hopeful to sly.
Spock nodded.
"Where is he?"
Spock saw no logical purpose in the truth. "He's on a ship. Exploring."
"He cute?"
"I cannot judge that."
"I'll tell you if he's cute." She tapped the side of Spock's knee repeatedly with the back of her hand. "Let me see him. Let me see."
Spock took out his small Academy padd and pulled up a picture of Kirk from a hike. The breeze filled his hair from the side and the sun was having trouble competing with his smile. Spock held himself, with great effort, from falling into that place. He remained present, unemotional.
Lareqa squealed at a frequency dangerous to Spock's hearing. He angled his head away and she took the padd from his hands while he was distracted.
"He's really cute. Look at him, mom." She held the padd up crooked to show them.
Olga stood up and came over. "He is cute."
Lareqa swept through the pictures, stopped at one of Kirk in uniform. "Look. Look. Can I have a boyfriend?"
"Yes, I see. When you're a little older. I think it's time for bed now, though."
Spock sensed a recoiling, an acidic shifting of muscle and skin, not in Olga or Lareqa, who were right beside him. He turned his head partway. Carrom was staring at the padd from the couch, face fixed and drained of color.
"Mrrmmm. Mrrrm. MRRRRM." Lareqa noises grew acute. She stomped off with a hand leading her away by the shoulder.
Carrom stood in a rush and stalked off as well.
Spock rested his hands in his lap as if just terminating meditation. He sat alone, feeling the tail end of his host's bristling alarm. He picked up his padd where it had dropped and shut it off without studying the photo still showing. He could hear muffled anger from beyond a door designed to cut it out entirely for human ears.
Carrom strode back into the room midway putting on an old style landing party coat. "Out. Come on."
Carrom walked like a crewmember during red alert, long strides and snapping boot soles. He barely waited long enough for the doors to slide open ahead of him.
In the elevator, Carrom spoke the level where he'd parked the aircar they'd arrived in, three floors from the top of the building. He tapped his fingers on his leg with some violence. His emotions were wiring the space of the elevator car enough it raised the hair on Spock's neck.
"It is unnecessary for you to provide transportation back to the Academy, sir," Spock said.
Carrom didn't reply, but his fingers stopped drumming. The elevator stopped, opened. He resumed his rapid stride and Spock followed to the silver aircar parked three vehicles from the light-framed doorway leading to open air and a seventy-eight story drop.
Spock stopped beside the passenger door while Carrom went around, movements increasingly indicative of controlled violence.
Spock said, "I can procure an aircab home, sir. Or a transporter. It is no issue."
Carrom signaled the aircar doors to open with a wave. "Get in."
Spock obeyed. He hooked the safety harness and sat back. During the pre-flight checks he found an emotionless center that he felt certain would hold for the twenty six minute flight.
The car lifted off, swept back and then sideways, then forward out of the building through the flashing opening and out into the canyons between the night-lit buildings.
"I don't believe this." Carrom sat with shoulders bunched up. "A Militant of all the . . . Jesus, I left you alone with my girls. I'm sick just to think about it." He glared forward out the windscreen. "Chanel is going to answer for this."
A longer pause.
"Nothing to say for yourself?" His voice was as electric as his body.
"It is only logical that you wish to protect your offspring."
"Yeah, only logical." He looked Spock up and down. "How the hell did you get into the Academy? That's what I want to know."
Spock spoke from inside his intent calm. "I was cleared by both Starfleet Security and Starfleet Intelligence and my application was processed with their files attached."
"Oh. Those idiots," Carrom muttered. He hit his thigh with his hand. "What the hell was Chanel doing setting me up like this with no warning?" He snorted. "You're like her pet."
"I have observed that."
Carrom stared out the side window with his jaw working. "Does security or intel even know how easy it is for you people to fool a truthteller?"
Spock wanted to ask why he was willing to be in the same vehicle, but saw no productive end to such a question. "Yes. Starfleet Intelligence used an experimental intravenously fed microbot neuro network on me for six hours."
"Well, that's reassuring."
The silence didn't last. "I don't get it. Why'd the Academy let a Militant apply at all? It's nuts."
Spock turned to him. Humans became distorted in unique ways when angry. Vulcans all grew angry in roughly the same way.
"I did not want a war that would severely damage my world. I joined the Militants to sabotage them. And that is what I did."
A long pause. The darkened bay opened up beneath the aircar which banked gradually to stay distant from the high buildings. "Yeah?" Carrom's jaw worked. "You can prove that?"
"I have done so already. As you repeatedly assert, sir, otherwise I would not have been allowed to apply to Starfleet."
The aircar moved through a layer of fog hanging over the cooler parts of the bay.
"But you were willing to join the Militants. To be with them."
Spock contemplated this statement. It was true that he'd have a harder time doing so now. "That was the only way." And he could not bear to remain at home for his own reasons. But he did not add that.
Carrom looked out the side window. "How were they? Lovely beings, I suppose?"
This was clearly mocking, and Spock wondered about the purpose behind the question. "They were less predictable than average Vulcans."
"They were murderous. Violently murderous." Carrom's face and his upper body warped again with rage as he spoke. He seemed to expect a response even though it wasn't stated as a question.
"It took time for me to arrange a successful plan of sabotage."
Spock also turned away, remembering the desperate break periods where he buried himself in previously useless meditation techniques to avoid succumbing to frustration and fear.
He looked forward again, face neutral. "I wanted to make more than one Militant ship vulnerable to Starfleet attack when I did risk my position. I had to wait." Spock's control suddenly had all the substance of the fog they passed through. He focused on the next words to cover for it. "I had no choice but to remain quietly aside and undetected and allow others to be harmed."
It was as if the reaction Spock should have had then had tunneled through time to the present moment. He was awash with hopelessness, the long wearing tedium and stress, the sound of shattering spinal bones, the fleeting panic of a confused soul.
Spock looked away again, fixed his gaze beyond the dizzying fog banks looming then whisking by. He had no center to anchor on. He had gone hollow. He could barely perceive his own alarm at his exposed state. He clung to Kirk's warning of this as a remote means of understanding and accepting this weakness. If it were predictable it was therefore normal and therefore could not be hopeless.
Carrom bent forward, put his hand on top of his head, held that way.
Spock pulled control around himself. His core was useless still, but he fixed an emotionless mask in place and breathed normally again.
Carrom still stared at the aircar floor. The wall of high buildings on the far side of the bay rose higher ahead of them, reflected on the water, blurred in places by fog.
"I need to get away from things," Carrom said. "That's why I'm in this class. I need to get transferred to earth permanently." He faintly shook his head then bowed it more, almost putting his chin to his chest. "Chanel put me with you to help my grade, I'm certain."
Spock found that highly unlikely, but he understood too little to assert this.
"She said to be nice to you because you're just a kid."
"That is an unnecessary concern, sir."
"You charmed the socks off my daughter who barely wants anyone to talk to her. You really seemed too good to be true." He sat up straight, head forward. "I have a hard time believing anyone could join the Militants for innocent reasons. It would be too awful to be there."
"That is your prerogative, Lieutenant."
"It sure as hell is."
The aircar began steering itself inland, joining a stream of other vehicles. The buzz of the antigrav cooling fans became the only noise for seven minutes.
Carrom pinched his bottom lip. "Maybe talking to Commander Kirk would help, since he apparently knows you well. Right?" He slapped his hand down. "I can't believe Chanel would do this without saying a word. But she is getting old. Maybe you can warn Commander Kirk I'm going to message him?"
The hollow opened up again. Spock was gutted so easily by the past because there was less of him in the present.
"Cadet?" the voice was sharp.
"Commander Kirk is stationed in Lohanna Sector, sir. He has been radio silent for thirty one days during a great deal of fierce action. You may attempt to contact him if you wish. You are as likely to get a message through as I am."
"Why's he in Lohanna? He could have gotten any assignment."
"He volunteered."
"You lied to Lareqa." His face distorted again. "You can lie."
"You must agree that the truth would serve no purpose to a child of that age. And I have the same ability to lie as any human."
Four minutes passed.
"I just don't know what to think," Carrom said.
"Your distrust is perfectly logical, sir."
Carrom stared out the window, spoke fast, "You know, there's a lot of confusion when things get messy. Good chance Kirk's just has to stay EM silent or at minimal tightcast until an operation wraps up. Until they get reinforcements, or the upper hand, but he's probably fine, just laying low."
"I am aware of that possibility, sir."
"You need to worry less or you won't make it on this end."
Spock's voice was hushed. "I did not expect to experience this level of concern."
Carrom sniffed. The aircar was slowing, peeling off for the sprawling blocks containing the Academy.
"How'd you meet?" This was a completely different tone of voice.
"He was rescued from Wolfram Thesus V by my family's ship after the Sanchez was captured. He was taken to my parent's home on Vulcan where I was living at the time."
"That's not a little strange?"
"My father is the ambassador to the Federation and my family home akin to an embassy at times. He could not be taken to earth or her stations due to concern that our ship might be embargoed."
"Oh."
The car settled onto the airdeck on top of the Academy Support building. Carrom pressed a button and air hissed, equalizing pressure.
"I don't know what to think, Cadet." His steely gaze remained averted, but the energy of his body spoke of exhausted emotion.
Spock unhooked the safety harness but remained in place. The airdeck sat in quiet, just the wind indicators fluttering, the laser guides glowing in the fog. "It is certainly within your purvey to change project partners, sir."
"Before we left I sent a rant to Chanel that I can't unsend. And you could do this project alone, easily."
"I believe Captain Chanel stated that working with another was an essential component of the assignment."
"Yes."
Carrom leaned forward against his harness, fiddled with the controls for the routing back to his building.
"Am I dismissed, sir?"
"Yeah." Carrom frowned more deeply.
Spock swung out of the aircar and stood beside the open door. The wind buffeted him. The shields to dampen it must have been disabled for some reason.
"Look. I hope Kirk's okay." Carrom finally looked up at Spock. He shook his head and waved the doors to close.
Spock stepped back. The antigrav cooling blowers started up and the aircar rose and banked away.
