Red Mountain
Epsilon Eridani's red light filled the looming face of the mountain. The high peak rose out of a curved bowl of lower mountains glowing in hazy graduated shades of umber, puce, and vermillion. The high air stood clear, and the crags at the very peak showed crisp and stark where the temple walls organically emerged and reached higher still.
Spock and Zienn stood in the shadow of Spock's family ship, beneath the still humming engines. Zienn's threadbare robes were now the practical ones. Spock's fine set were already powdered by the fine, hovering dust.
Zienn nodded at a structure half a klick away across the bowl of the valley. "We will ride up with the supplies. Only residents may do so."
The temple supplies were lifted up the mountain by cable in a suspended car. The cable was anchored in a stone hut sitting alone on the stark valley floor. A motor spun the loop of cable that reached out of the haze of the valley and far up the cliff face. Spock had to crane his neck to see where the wires anchored, at a tiny dark opening in the sheer wall.
They waited with the light breeze relieving the intense heat while the pair of cars, mere smudges on the lines, passed each other and one gradually sank toward then and became better defined as an elongated egg shaped pod.
Zienn, who had spent the warp voyage with his eyes closed, who refused to accept any explanation for the function of a transporter, arrested the swinging of the wind-stained car with his rail-thin corded leg and swung himself aboard as if settling into his natural element.
Spock was clearly meant to follow. He stepped rapidly alongside the car, tried to step into the center of the car's floor to avoid the violent swing his higher mass would set off, but he lost his footing and had to be set forcibly into place on a crate of water jugs by his mentor. Zienn held firm for many seconds as if to verify Spock would not move unexpectedly again. Spock relaxed and settled back against a stack of crates as if to prove Zienn's concern unwarranted.
The car lifted away from the high plain on a the path appropriate to a launching aircraft. Zienn turned to the dusty window, slid it open to better see out. They rose into glaring sunlight. The wind whistled through the window, tilted the car and held it at that crooked angle.
The top arrived without warning, just darkness and the humming run of the cable through a narrow cavity. Spock copied Zienn's movements precisely to exit in time in a crowded storage area. He followed out of this, up long staircases that were sometimes carved inside, straight through the rock, sometimes outside on a natural cleft of the rock face.
The air continued to thin. At the top, Eridani glazed every surface with fire. Spock's inner eyelid snapped closed. He followed Zienn's thin silhouette across a naturally formed courtyard and through an archway into darkness. His inner eyelid did not retract once inside. He put out a hand and dragged it along the rock wall as he went, listening to where he should follow. He heard Zienn's feet pad up four steps and estimated where they might be, only fumbling once before his feet encountered the same steps.
"This is the common area for visitors," Zienn said. "Individual rooms are that way along the face to catch the wind for cooling and to put more mountain between this these rooms and the central temple where it must remain mind-quiet."
Spock could see none of this. He stared straight ahead, waiting for his eyelids to behave as they should.
"Rarely do we have more than four or five visitors. And these rooms are considered too cool for their comfort so they go unused. Given your excessive time on earth, I hope you will find them more comfortable than most visitors do."
Spock felt a touch on his upper arm.
"You are trying too hard already," Zienn said. He sounded concerned.
Spock rubbed his eyes even though it would not have any impact on his vision. "I am not accustomed to the unfiltered light."
"You will be."
There was a pause. Spock waited behind the darkness of his vision.
"Spock," Zienn sounded displeased. "I expect you to inform me if you are having difficulty."
"I understand," Spock said. "This was not a difficulty."
Zienn took his arm and led him a few paces. "Come. Step down. I will show you to the room I think best suits."
Spock felt air on his face carrying the scent of stone rich in iron and copper warmed until one could taste it.
"Sit."
Spock found a stone surface behind him. He lowered himself onto it.
"I will leave you to recover and adapt. Food and refreshments are brought to the common area twice a day by the porters who handle the supplies. They are instructed to not speak to the priests. They will not realize you are not one. Just so you understand."
Spock rubbed his eyes again, still to no effect. Fingers touched his cheek and he reacted inward only, as discipline dictated. But it likely wasn't a test.
"I will return. Rest here in this section until I do." There was a shuffling sound of departure.
"May I ask how long?" Spock said before the footsteps fully receded.
"You need to cease thinking in such terms. But this one time I will respond in the way you requested. Four or five days."
"Thank you, Honored Teacher." Spock couldn't keep the emotion from reaching out of the darkness of his vision toward the presence he was now relying on.
"Rest and adapt to this place. I ask this and only this of you right now."
They'd rehearsed this. Spock was to clear his thoughts and drain himself of his Academy concerns, put his mind fully into a state of relaxed control. "Yes, Teacher."
Spock was alone. His vision slowly returned, as three spires of light like a stalled beam-in cycle, then as squared off narrow windows overlooking the valley they'd come up in the cable car.
Spock approached the windows. The Kipran'nu Mountain range forked, tumbled and spread itself away from the temple in a sinuous spine, bolstered by lower mountains and accented by sharp spires and hanging valleys cradling smudges of blue and green growth.
Spock drank in the view for a time he strictly banned himself from measuring. He watched the shifting light as the sun moved higher in the sky. Spotlights appeared on the wall of his room as slivers, then shining coins, sunlight projected through holes in the ceiling and directed by glass lenses. The room began to warm. He estimated that the roof would receive three hours of full light, and therefore only acquire limited heat which would have to suffice for the remaining hours of the day. There was no way to close or even shield the windows so the wind direction would determine the temperature outside the period of solar load.
The view continued to shift, growing less starkly shadowed. Spock could no longer force himself to be sated by it when he had not explored his immediate surroundings. He went quietly up to the common room. The area was empty. He found water and juice, fruits and seeds. He stacked food in one of the small baskets under the table, filled one of several jugs and carried these back down to his room. He went out again, exploring the length of the visitor area, creeping about on soundless footsteps. At the end of the corridor he found a storage area with sleeping pads and, since they were alarmingly thin, procured two for himself.
He returned to his room and the magnificent view. The mountains beyond had flattened with the sun directly behind him. He nibbled on seeds and steered his mind away from the concerns that had defined him for months: his courses, Kirk, his father. He closed his eyes, felt the dulled pulsing of the temple's grouped minds on the far side of the mountain peak. His inner mind was no better than his inner eyelid; it too needed to be exercised to best serve him.
He put his things aside and posed himself for meditation, fell deeply into it with unexpected abandon.
- 8888 -
"Where's your friend?"
P'Losiwst looked up from her lunch tray at Cadet Jaek. He was alone, which was unusual. He stood with his arms pinned to his sides, his senior uniform fitting perfectly. It was unusually quiet in the break area and there was no one looking their way.
"He's on Vulcan, sir."
Jaek's brows lowered. "Classes started today."
"I'm sure he's aware."
Jaek shifted his left shoulder. "When's he coming back?"
P'Losiwst kept her antenna fixed to avoid giving away that she was excited to be engaged in trickery. "It's not been determined, sir, when he'll return. Not this term for certain. Maybe not the next. He got permission to take at least a year off."
"A year off?" Jaek's eyes grew distant, looked away. He looked back, "You can message him? Tell him he's supposed to come back?"
"No."
"No, Plebe?"
She shrugged. "He's at some ancient mountaintop monastery place that doesn't have any technology. At all. Not even lights let alone a comm unit."
"There really are places like that in the Federation core?"
"Yes. It's been around for like six thousand years and hasn't changed at all in that time."
Jaek looked like he wanted to disbelieve her. He breathed in and out. "What's he doing there?"
"He's learning to be a perfect Vulcan so he can better withstand humans. He's being mentored under some important Vulcan priest guy."
Jaek thought this over. "He's coming back, right?"
P'Losiwst fixed her antenna with all her might. "I don't know, sir. Maybe we'll know in a year."
Jaek pursed his lips. "Kay." He stalked off.
At the entrance to the break area a pair of third years were criticizing the hairstyles of students trying to get to the tables. They were doling out sit ups and wall stands to those students whose hairstyles were deemed too fussy.
"Poppy, Itzy, knock it off. Do something useful for a change," Jaek said as he passed, bumping both their shoulders and knocking them aside.
- 8888 -
Kirk reviewed his last message to Spock. He wondered who'd written it.
He was back on a mission, was just then sitting in the co-pilot's seat of a Skuttle while the pilot handled routine comm with another team. They'd been put on hold, were supposed to sit tight. Apparently this was how most missions went.
Kirk rubbed his right eye. The message he'd sent rang with confidence that seemed ridiculously misplaced. How in the galaxy had he managed to treat a potential silence of an entire year so casually? He'd been hell-bent on reassuring Spock, on assuring that he himself would not be a distraction to Spock. Nothing else had mattered. He knew that, even now. Could remember explicitly focusing on that. But even so. He must have been mad sending something so professional, so strong. He hadn't even closed with "I'll miss you" let alone what he'd close with now: "I'll miss you painfully and hungrily, my dear Vulcan love."
Kirk closed out his messages and put his padd into its belt pouch, turned his attention to the displays on the console. Trouble was, nothing on the sensors had changed. Nothing would change until it all went to hell.
Kirk rubbed his hair back, scratched viciously at his scalp.
"Sir?"
Kirk dropped his arms, sat heavily back in the seat. "I could use some action. Better yet, a fight."
The Ensign's voice significantly rose in anticipation, voice laden with a grin. "Yes, sir."
- 8888 -
"Mr. Jaek, please make it quick. New term fills my calendar enough that me and a platoon of clones couldn't do it all."
Jaek stepped inside the Superintendent's office. The art had been rearranged, the desk shifted to one side. It upset the balance of the room. "I wanted to talk to you if I may, sir, about Cadet Spock."
Justin put down his sheaf of electronic paper. "Interesting. I would have assumed you wanted to talk about Mr. Horton." Justin gave Jaek his full attention. "Go on."
Jaek's face heated. He tried to drop his gaze, pulled it up square instead. He put his hands behind his back. "I didn't intend to chase Cadet Spock out of the program, sir."
Justin stared for a time without a twitch in his expression. "No?"
"No, sir. I . . . I wouldn't want Starfleet to lose him. I just thought he needed to, you know, get clearer with what was expected of him."
Justin spoke slowly. "As a commander, you need to be adaptive to your people. There's more than one way to accomplish something. The method that worked the previous time isn't necessarily the best solution for the next situation. It's important to remember that and not just keep using a hammer when you have an entire toolbox. And if you don't have a toolbox, someone's failed along the way."
Jaek considered that, guessed at how that might be relevant. "Yes sir. I would obviously do things differently if I had a chance. Ribbing and the risk of getting pranked is how I was taught what was at stake . . . It made me realize how much I need people on my side . . . That I can't disregard anyone." Jaek wanted to gesture with his arms, gripped his hands together firmly to avoid it. "I . . . talked to Cadet Spock late last term. Personably. Had a good conversation. I didn't see this coming. If I'd seen this coming, I'd have talked to him more for certain, sir."
Justin was quiet too long. "You regret Cadet Spock's departure, you are saying."
"Yes sir. I didn't mean for that to happen." He felt the pain of regret more acutely, knew it was coming through in his expression.
"I see. Acknowledged, Cadet." Justin took a seat behind his desk, pulled his documents over in front of himself.
"That's it? Admiral, sir?"
"I believe so."
"I'd like to write Cadet Spock a letter. But his friend said that wasn't possible. I thought perhaps you would be better informed on that point."
"Cadet. You may write Cadet Spock a letter. You can give it to me. I'll see what can be done about delivering it."
"Is he really at some remote temple with no technology? Or was Cadet Jlowisam lying to me. It occurs to me now, she might have been. Her antenna were off."
"He really is. It is called South Kipraro High Temple if you want to look it up. Read the history. Might be a good idea before you draft that letter. And you are dismissed."
"All right, sir. Thank you. I will do that."
"You're going to do fine, Cadet," Justin said to Jaek's departing back.
Jaek turned on his toes and settled into parade rest. He was feeling down and this comment made his lungs fill with unexpectedly fresh air. "Thank you, Admiral."
-8888-
Author's Note: Oddest thing's been messing with my productivity. I've been hating my writing lately. I reread it and it's actively painful and I rework over and over again. I've heard other writers say this and always thought it seems over dramatic or something, but here I am. I'm going to chock it up to whatever I've been reading, and I've been reading a lot of fairly highbrow stuff that I've put off reading for a lifetime. I hadn't considered the hazard of that before. It's shut down both my fanfiction writing and my original stuff, except for one short story idea I had to jot down, and managed to easily, mostly because it was a draft and I wasn't trying to make it anything above cringeworthy anyway.
I'm really glad I have this to push out to the world because I think it may have broken the log-jam in my head. We'll see. I'm going to post… without rereading. Yet. Again. LOL.
