On this planet, all there is, is snow. There is no Hanukkah, no Christmas, no Diwali. There aren't twinkling lights threaded through trees, because tree is an alien concept here, and why would there be lights to celebrate when there is no Hanukkah, no Christmas, no Diwali? The days aren't shorter in the winter; there is no winter, because there is no summer. Just snow, fields of snow, plains of snow, undulating deserts of snow.
The charge goes off all of a sudden. To the humans, at least, it feels like all of a sudden. An explosion, even when you're expecting it, is always sudden.
To Spock it is utterly expected. He knew down to the half-second when it was going to occur, and that's close enough to stave off surprise. So, the charge goes off, and abruptly the air is a fountain of snow, surging up like water, spreading out into the air, dispersing beautifully with no wind to interfere with the mathematical perfection of the expected process.
Even at this safe distance, some flakes shower down. He holds out his hand, palm up, and watches as the white specks drift through the thick air. They settle on his skin, and melt. His hand is wet, and he lets the beads of water trickle to the ground.
He puts his glove back on before the humans notice his illogical action of deliberately feeling snowflakes on his palm. He couldn't defend that action in logic, because there is no logic to it. He knows the feeling of snow. He also knows that he's a warm-blooded being in the extreme, and that his life processes are not compatible with an environment this cold. That's why he has enough thermal layers to feel stiff when he walks, and why, once inside his gloves, his hands are hot as spring on Vulcan.
The humans are going back to the shelter, no doubt to feed their readings into the computer and make their calculations. Spock has no immediate need of the computer. When he looks at the tricorder readings his mind can make all the calculations necessary. That means he doesn't need to go back into that cramped space, where inevitably there is always someone bumping into one, apologising, trying to make space, and then bumping into someone else. He's made it the subject of abstract mental study a couple of times, observing the movement of humans around the small room like molecules submitting to Brownian motion. They get where they want to be, eventually, but not by the most direct route. At least molecules aren't required to apologise during their passage through space.
He stays outside because it's less cramped than in there, but also because it's beautiful. That's something else that he doesn't need to admit to the humans. Every undulation in the snow causes a deep blue shadow to lie in its lee, and gold light to shine on its crest. It's a most Earth-like sky here, a cold eggshell blue traced with high, thin clouds like the shredded remains of a muslin veil. The lowering sun casts most Earth-like pinks and golds into the atmosphere, which have a simple scientific explanation behind them, but are beautiful none the less.
'The one thing I miss about Earth is the snow, and the beautiful verdant spring,' his mother has told him.
At those times Spock has carefully resisted telling her that those are two things that she misses, not wanting to amplify her heartache.
'New England winters were something,' she told him once. 'Snow so thick it was thigh deep. Of course skimmers wouldn't leave a track on the roads, but people had to melt out their paths with low-power phasers. Children sledding on the drifts. One winter the snow was seven feet, and we walked everywhere in troughs, never seeing a thing but the sky and the upper storeys of houses. We had to use padds to be sure of where we were. It was like walking in a maze.'
'Inconvenient,' he had replied. 'Why not phase a wider area of ground?'
Her smile had been soft and understanding. 'Because no one wanted to destroy the beauty of all that snow.'
Standing on Vulcan ground, hot sand scudding about his ankles, it had been hard to imagine the brutal cold and the enveloping snow. It had been hard to imagine that simple whiteness could be beautiful. It sounded like a curious form of blindness. But he had nodded as if he had understood.
Now he understands. Everything is white, but it is not white. There are those tongues of blue, blue in varying shades. There are the crests of gold, warming to pinks as the sun lowers in the sky. Even where the charge went off there is nothing but the shades of snow, taking its colour from the atmosphere and reflected light. There's not a hint of the blackness of the explosive powder. It must have been lost in the scatter of the snow.
He wades closer to the site of the explosion. The hut grows smaller behind him, its windows golden with artificial light. There isn't really any need to inspect visually; the ship is monitoring from above and its images will be of a high enough resolution to spot anything larger than a centimetre in diameter. Still, he wades through the snow. There's no point in using his phaser to cut a path because the only thing below this snow, is more snow. He might come down to something more solid, compressed by the continual weight of more recent snowfalls, but he would be in the same situation as his mother in her New England winters; lost in a maze path with nothing visible but white walls and sky.
Here, he is walking on a glacier which is padded with snow. In the distance there are mountains rising, where the glaciers find their beginnings, before they merge into this great plateau of ice. Even in the mountains the only colours are the colours of snow. Nowhere does a bald shoulder press dark and rocky through the whiteness. They are just contours of snow. They were volcanic, long ago. He can tell that much from the shape, but a closer study of the planet's geology will show them more. That's what they're here to do.
The explosion site is a dimple in the snow, refilled by the plummet of what was blasted out. There's no chance of seeing the rock beneath, but he can tilt his tricorder towards the centre of that dimple and read the density of the backfill. If he stepped onto it, he would plummet down through that feather softness and be surrounded by snow. The reverberation from the explosion will still be travelling through the rock and magma beneath, making its way with amazing persistence towards the other side of the planet, where, when it arrives, it will let the team know much more about the density and composition of the planet than they knew before.
He's not really standing here for that, though. He's got all the readings he needs. He's standing here just because it's a long way from that hut, and the snow is all around him, and he can think of his mother's childhood winters and what they might have been like. She tried to hold onto something of Christmas on Vulcan, but it was never the same, she said. Santa Claus couldn't wear fur on Vulcan, even fake fur. It would be far too hot. It was hard to evince the reactions of joy and surprise through present giving in a people given to masking their emotions so deeply it was as if they didn't exist. There were a few Christmases, when Spock was small, but that was it.
He puts his hand deep into his pocket and takes out his communicator. Opening it, he says through the muffler across his mouth, 'Spock to Enterprise. Beam me to a suitable location in the mountains directly south-west of my position.'
'Into the mountains, sir? Are ye sure? A location suitable for what?'
Ah, that is Mr Scott. A quick run-through of the Enterprise crew schedules in his head tells him that Mr Scott should be on a break, but it's not unusual for him to shirk that responsibility. It's good. Although all transporter operators on the ship are well trained and qualified, Scott is undoubtedly one of the better there.
'Into the mountains, Mr Scott,' he says. 'I want to make a scan of the rock composition. I'm relying on your vantage point from the Enterprise to determine the best place.'
'Not too high?' Scott asks him anxiously.
Spock raises an eyebrow, although no one would be able to tell under his wrappings.
'Not too high,' he confirms. 'I don't want to be blown off, Mr Scott.'
He hears something that he deciphers as a chuckle. Then Scott says, 'A moment, Mr Spock. I'm just making the calculations.'
He indulges that chuckle by keeping his tone light. 'It is rather chilly, Mr Scott.'
'Aye, it'll be a site more chilly over yon, Mr Spock,' Scott replies. 'Windy, too. But I'm all ready for you now. Transporting.'
He feels the familiar sensation pressing through his body, a kind of tingling through every nerve. The view before him dissolves, but it doesn't ever exactly become dark. There have been many, many studies into the physical and psychological impact of transporting. Most agree that the brain hallucinates in those few seconds of transport, in order to make sense of the inexplicable. Spock would argue that Vulcans don't hallucinate, but he never becomes sightless, as one would expect for the slow seconds when one is mid-beam. Instead, there's something indefinable, a kind of light, which resolves loosely into a vision of the Enterprise transporter room, Scott at the controls. He even feels as if he can smell the scent of the transporter room; and that must be hallucination, because there is no breathing while held in the beam. That all fades into light again, which solidifies into a snow-covered slope. It's a moment before sensation really returns, and then he feels the strength of the wind, pressing against his side. It's strong enough that he has to hold out his arms momentarily, catching his balance. A moment later, his communicator warbles.
'Does that suit ye, Mr Spock?' Scott asks.
His voice is almost torn away by the wind.
'It seems adequate, Mr Scott,' Spock shouts into the delicate golden grille. 'I will call again when I want to be returned.'
He thinks he hears Scott say something about taxi drivers, but he can't connect those words with his current situation. He puts his communicator away and gets out his tricorder, because if he has gone to the trouble of getting here, first he should take the readings which are his excuse for the journey.
He turns the scanner towards the snow, and lets it read the rock composition some fifteen feet beneath the surface of the snow. The surfaces all around him seem to be largely composed of obsidian, indicating a swift chill from the heat of flowing lava to frozen stone. The rock age is three hundred and eighty-two thousand years. At that point in this planet's history, then, this area was also cold.
He lets the tricorder absorb the facts and figures. There's little he needs to do except hold the thing as it scans as deeply as it is able. So he stands in the howling, hollowing wind and looks around. The slopes are raggedly steep above him. Stripped of their snow, these mountains would look like black glass. The humans would make much of that. His mother, he knows, would be enchanted. There's nothing like this at home on Vulcan. There's nothing like this at home on Earth – not the black glass beneath his feet, in the quantity and purity that the tricorder records here. She will have seen snowy mountains much like this, though. Perhaps there are differences, but he can see a resemblance to some of the ranges of Earth.
He stands while the tricorder works, and absorbs his surroundings. The wind screams ceaselessly, and the air is a whip of grains of icy snow. Without his face coverings they might draw blood. Far, far in the distance is that little hut where the humans are working, but he can't see it. He can barely see the plain through the driving snow.
He's not entirely sure why he wanted to come up here, but perhaps it was something about stripping away that small speck of civilisation. This part of the planet has never been touched by any kind of life beyond the microbial. Here he is entirely divorced from the cluster of humans back there, from their gossip and their social lives, from their talk about the various religious revelries looming in the future, from the persistent music that sounds so often from the hut. Not a breath about a Christmas tree. Nothing about lighting the lamps.
It's good to be away from humanity for a while, but even as he stands there divorced from everything human, it is his mother in his thoughts. Perhaps it's because humanity is always with him, in the red cells in his blood, in the helixing strands of DNA that are entwined with the Vulcan ones. Humanity is inescapable, because it is inside him, in his memory, his loves, and his bones. It's his humanity, intertwined with his Vulcan curiosity, which has caused him to beam to this remote and dangerous location merely for the pleasure of being all alone in the palm of unsullied nature.
His communicator shrills. He considers not answering it. This world is so large and wild around him. The snow is so chaotic. The mountainsides and gasping winds are a perfect antidote to the straight and sterile interior of the ship. But there would be no excuse for not answering his communicator, and his hesitation only lasts a millisecond. He pulls out the device and says simply, 'Spock.'
'Spock, what on earth are you doing down there?'
The voice is being tugged this way and that by the wind, but it's easy enough to recognise.
'I was making a geological survey of the composition of this mountain range, Captain,' he says smoothly.
'You're aware that can be done much more precisely by one of our low-orbit drones?' Kirk asks.
'Yes, of course, sir,' Spock says. How else can he reply, since it is true?
'Stand by, Mr Spock,' Kirk replies.
Spock stands by. He knows the captain very, very well, and therefore he isn't surprised when he first feels, then sees the telltale distortion in the air nearby. The figure that forms would barely be recognisable as the captain, so muffled is he in winter gear, but Spock knows that it's him. He knows Jim's motivations. There was no reason at all for the captain to put himself at risk by beaming down to this ice ball, and there have been words from Command of late about senior officers entering dangerous situations. Therefore, logically, the captain would need to manufacture an excuse for beaming down. Spock has provided him with an excuse which, while not exactly perfect, will stand up to light scrutiny.
The first thing the captain says is, 'Oof!' as the wind nearly blows him off his feet.
Spock catches his arm with a strong hand, and holds him as he adjusts himself from the calm warmth of the transporter room to this exposed mountainside.
'Thanks, Spock,' Jim nods, and Spock lets go, but he keeps a wary eye on his captain. Vulcans are both denser and stronger than humans. He has more to anchor himself against the wind.
'Spock, what are you really doing down here?' Jim asks then, shouting over the wind.
Spock considers his answer. Making a geological survey won't work. He's already tried that.
'I was curious to see the mountains,' he says finally. Humans understand curiosity well enough.
Jim looks around at the thick blusters of white flakes. Sometimes the mountains are easy to see, then a moment later they're hidden in the flurries. Then they appear again, high and glorious, tinted by the sun setting on the far horizon.
'They're beautiful,' he says.
'Yes,' Spock agrees. There are few people he would say that in front of, but the captain is one of them.
The wind is too loud for proper conversation. Every word has to be shouted, and there's no room for tones of quiet reflection. The wind is whipping and fickle, first coming from one side and then another. Spock stumbles as a hard blast catches him from behind, and Jim lays an arm over his shoulders, steadying him. Jim is saying something, but his words are torn away.
Then, miraculously, the wind dies.
It's a strange moment, as if some god had decided from above that now is the time for silence to fall. The wind dies, and flusters of snowflakes drift softly to the ground. In the distance this planet's star has become a great red ball on the horizon. Ribbons of deep pink and gold are trailing along the undersides of the clouds. The sky seems to be on fire.
Jim tugs his muffler down, and Spock can see his face, glowing with the cold.
'Beautiful,' he says again.
'Yes,' Spock repeats, but this time he doesn't need to shout.
'What are you doing down here, Spock?' Jim asks him then.
Spock has already told him that he wanted to see the mountains, but there's more, of course, and Jim knows that there's more.
'My mother values snow,' he says. 'You must have experienced snow often at Christmas in Iowa?'
Jim's expression becomes wistful.
'Yes, often. It was flat land. Something like the land down there, when it was covered in snow,' he says, nodding towards the spreading plain. 'After I moved out to San Francisco it felt strange to have winters go by without snow.'
Spock had always thought it quite cold enough in San Francisco in winter, without snow. It was frigid, compared to Vulcan.
'You must have seen snow on Earth, as a child,' Jim says then. 'You visited quite a bit, didn't you? Did you ever play in the snow as a boy?'
Spock moves his boot in the soft white stuff around his feet, and remembers a winter with cousins. There had been a sled, and a moderately steep hill. A slope of virgin snow fringed with snow-covered trees. There had been other children too, and screaming and shouting, and Spock had remained calm and quiet, but he had taken his turn in towing the sled to the top of the slope, sitting astride it, and letting himself go.
The air had whooshed past him with merciless cold. Snow had kicked up and sprayed into his face and eyes. He had held on to the sled and guided it as it gathered momentum, gliding faster and faster down the slope, until the speed had been such that he had allowed his control to slip, and felt a thrill of excitement mixed with fear. The cold, the wind, the speed. It had felt as if he were really alive.
He had sledged again and again. In the evenings lamps had been brought out, and people had skated on the frozen lake just outside of the town. Their skates had cut whorls and lines across the ice, and Spock had stood there studying them, then strapped on his skates and mimicked their motions. He had absorbed the technique perfectly, and while his cousins had been tumbling over, laughing or crying depending on how hard they fell, he had moved with the utmost grace. That, too, had felt like something closer to being alive than everyday living.
'I knew snow as a child,' he admits to Jim, but that's as much as he admits.
Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. Thinking about the past is one thing, but longing for it is quite another. There is no way to revisit. Even time travel will not allow one to revisit the past, because it is one's past self that one misses, not the mundane physical surroundings.
He looks down at his tricorder. It has finished its survey and is digesting the data like a cow chewing cud. It will be some time before it has parsed all the information it has absorbed.
'I am done here, Captain,' he says, shutting the tricorder screen. 'Will you return to the ship?'
Jim sighs. For a moment there's something in his eyes, as if he, too, was thinking about his childhood in snow, or just of the freedom of standing in a place like this instead of being bound to the ship.
'Yes,' he says then. 'I'd better go back, and you need to rejoin the survey team.'
'It's quieter out here,' Spock says.
He meets Jim's eyes, finding a sparkle there that tells him they have just shared an unspoken joke. The survey hut is chaotic with human activity, and so is the ship. There are three different religious celebrations being planned for three different dates up there, plus an interfaith and atheist 'holiday' party which bewilders Spock, since on the ship there is neither winter nor any defined vacation at this time. Be that as it may, humans will grab at any chance for a celebration, especially if food and alcohol are involved.
'You'll be back in time for the party, won't you, Spock?' Jim asks.
Spock clears his throat and glances down at his tricorder. 'The schedule doesn't allow time for me to attend the first, certainly,' he says.
'You could do with coming to at least one of them,' Jim tells him.
He knows Spock doesn't see the point in parties, but still, he always tries to make him come.
'I will make space in my schedule for one of them,' Spock promises.
Jim claps a hand on his shoulder, and smiles. 'Make space for a quiet drink in my quarters, too,' he says, and his tone is almost an order.
Spock nods, and Jim nods back. Then he opens his communicator and orders beam-up. A moment later, he is dissolving in sparkles.
Spock stands there a moment, looking into the space left behind. There are deep marks in the snow where Jim's boots had sunk down. That is the only trace of him. He barely took a step between arriving and departing again.
Spock reaches into his pocket and takes out a stasis cube. The snow is starting to flurry down again. He opens up the cube and waits, then closes it with the deftness of a butterfly catcher around a single flake. The cube simultaneously puts the flake into perfect stasis, while the lensed substance of the surround shows a perfect magnification of what is inside. That snowflake is made up of many little crystals, each one unique. Even to a being as logical as Spock, it is incredible to think that in this entire planet of snow, in this vast galaxy with its millions of planets, each crystal is unique.
He slips the cube back into his pocket, and secures the flap. It will be the perfect gift.