Chapter 16: The Ice Cream Solution
Disclaimer: Only for love, not for money.
"Is this is bad time?"
Chris Thomasson's still-boyish face looms on the subspace comm-screen, his light hair and blue eyes so unlike Spock's that Nyota understands why people have trouble believing they are cousins.
Twice in the past two days she's come back to her quarters on the Enterprise and found his ID in her caller queue. Something must be up. Now at the end of a long shift she's finally had time to call him back. Settling on the side of the bed, she slips off her boots and leans forward, tapping the comm controls to adjust the volume.
"Sorry I missed you!" Nyota says. Chris gives a rueful grin and says, "Just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Hope it's been a good one."
"I haven't even thought about it. Just another day!" Her tone is light and upbeat but Chris apparently isn't fooled. The smile disappears from Chris' face as he leans forward and his face looms larger on the screen. Before he can ask her anything else, Nyota says, "We've been incredibly busy here! Ran into some K'Normian pirates and had a little scuffle a week ago. All's well that ends well, though. Now we're doing some geologic surveys of some pre-industrial planets in the Cassiopeaia Sector. I won't bore you with the details."
"I'm not bored!" Chris says. His expression is so puppy-dog earnest that Nyota laughs.
"You would be if I bent your ear too long. I hardly think you want to hear about whether or not the Nibiruans have actual morphemes or if their writing is pictographic only."
"I've actually always wondered that! What do you think?"
Although she knows he's teasing her, Nyota warms to the topic, her tone of voice rising. "I think they are showing definite signs of preliterate ideography, but the long-range scans aren't clear enough to tell for certain. If we could only go into closer orbit—"
"Tell Spock to move the ship for you."
Nyota's cheerful mood collapses at once. "I can't tell Spock much these days."
At once she's abashed at herself. It isn't like her to speak ill of Spock to anyone, much less to his cousin. Chris, too, seems taken aback. For a moment an awkward silence stretches between them and then they start to speak at the same time.
"So how's—"
"When are you—"
"Sorry. You first," Chris says gallantly. Nyota shifts her position on the side of the bed and considers how much to say. She could do the easy thing—make pleasant chit chat for a few minutes, asking Chris about his psychiatry practice, about his new girlfriend he mentions from time to time.
Or she could talk frankly to one of the only people she knows who understands Spock—who's known him longer than she has, who might offer some insight into what she can do about the growing impasse in their ability to communicate.
She says slowly, "You know that things have been…difficult."
"I know," Chris says without missing a beat, and Nyota has a glimpse of what he must be like as a therapist—soothing, calm, focused.
"Did Spock tell you anything when you saw him last month? Anything about the nightmares? About us?"
Chris frowns slightly, as if casting about in his memory before answering. "Not in so many words. But I was alarmed that he came here alone—without you. Sarek thought that was odd, too."
"Sarek knew? That we spent our leave apart?"
"I told him," Chris says, his face coloring. "Should I have kept that a secret? He was leaving in a couple of days for New Vulcan and I thought he might be able to find a healer among the settlers."
Nyota frowns, a buzz of connections clicking into place. "Was Sarek traveling on a Starfleet ship? The Antares, maybe?"
"Isn't that your dad's ship? That's the one. Sarek said he'd spoken to your dad. Small world, hey?"
Her face flushing, Nyota lifts her hand to her cheek. So Chris had said something to Sarek, and Sarek spoke to her father, and her father showed up at her apartment before heading out….
She isn't sure whether to be annoyed or grateful. How like her dad to meddle this way—dropping by with words of serious advice disguised as offhand comments. She's just glad her mother was kept out of the loop.
Her expression must signal her dismay because Chris says, "If I shouldn't have said anything, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to violate your privacy—"
"No, it's okay!" Nyota says quickly. "Really. It's fine. In fact, I'm glad you did. I'm glad you know."
To her dismay she feels her throat constrict and her eyes grow hot with unshed tears.
"I know that Spock is suffering, but he doesn't seem to realize that we're all grieving, too." Nyota hurries on, "I mean, I lost friends that day. Lots of them. And my roommate—"
She gives a little hiccup as she swallows back Gaila's name, and this time the tears do spill over her lashes and slide down her cheeks. Chris nods, his face stricken—and Nyota remembers introducing him to Gaila on the day of Spock's fraternization hearing, back when the worst thing she could imagine was that he would be drummed out of the Academy and lose his commission in Starfleet. Chris and Gaila had been there in the chamber, partly to support her and Spock but also as a visible protest of the whole proceeding. When Admiral Edmonson had finally dismissed Spock with little more than a proverbial slap on the wrist, Chris and Gaila had been visibly jubilant—and the last thing Nyota remembers as she and Spock took off in Chris' borrowed flitter was looking back and seeing them raising their hands in farewell and celebration.
"What I mean," Nyota says, snuffling into the back of her hand, "is that I know Spock blames himself for what happened to his mother—but he's not the only one who's having a hard time. It doesn't do any good to tell him that. He hardly listens to me anymore."
"I'm sure he does," Chris says. Nyota feels a flash of anger, but it swiftly cools into something closer to sorrow.
"No, I don't think so. I'm tired of trying to figure out what to say, what to do. I'm tired of being misunderstood, of being shut out. Right after he came back from that weekend with you, I thought we were going to turn a corner. But, no. We're like two people who don't really know what to say to each other anymore, and I'm tired of it."
"Compassion fatigue," Chris intones. Nyota looks up. "Compassion fatigue," Chris says again. "That's what you're feeling. Tired of having to be the understanding one, tired of having your own needs shoved in the background."
"I feel so selfish—"
"Don't! No relationship can survive if it's all one-sided."
Nyota gives an audible sigh. "I keep hoping that he'll talk to me about what he's feeling, but he's afraid to, I think. Like talking will uncork something that he isn't sure he can put back. Some evil genie in a bottle." She laughs ruefully at her own metaphor and sits back, tucking her legs under her.
"I won't lie," Chris says. "I've never seen him like this, and I don't know what will happen, but I'm glad you are with him. I'd hate it if he was going through…all this…without you."
Nyota gives a sad smile. "That's sort of what my dad told me the last time I saw him. Just be here. Be present. I'm trying, but it's not easy."
They fall again into an awkward silence that stretches out a few moments past comfortable.
"So how's—"
"If you come—"
Their words tangle simultaneously, making Nyota giggle. It's a relief, laughing in this small way, and she gives Chris an appreciative grin.
"You first," she says.
"I was just going to say that the next time you are Earthside, let me take you to dinner. For your birthday." He waits a beat, grins, and adds, "You can bring Spock if you want to."
"That could be months away!"
Chris' eyes crinkle. "My aunt Amanda always used to say that you get to celebrate your birthday until the last card arrives. Consider that invitation your last card. Or a rain check. In the meantime, enjoy your boring work in the Calliope Sector."
"Cassiopeaia," Nyota corrects him fondly. "You know, with all those quiet little planets like Celtar and Jeminid 2 and Nibiru. You haven't already forgotten your geophysical astronomy, have you?"
"I think I skipped class that day," Chris parries. "And you? What were you going to tell me?"
Nyota pauses and tries to collect her thoughts, uncertain what she wants to say after all.
"It's nothing," she says, stumbling over her words like someone still learning the language. "Except, thank you. For wishing me a happy birthday."
# # #
If the chief steward is startled to see Spock standing in the doorway of the galley, he doesn't let on. Some humans, Spock has decided, are naturally gifted with maintaining equanimity under most conditions. Someone responsible for feeding a crew of 400 would have to be such a person—stoic, unflappable, pragmatic—someone like the chief steward of the Enterprise.
"Commander?" the steward says. Spock advances into the galley and looks around. The crew, busy with the mid-shift meal, barely register his presence. One dark-haired woman steps around him carrying a large flat baking pan. A man holding a bag of some sort of grain follows in her wake.
Clearly Spock is in the way.
"I came to inquire about the possibility of making some Vulcan plomeek soup," he says to the waiting steward. "For my personal consumption. I can provide a recipe—"
"That's not the problem," the steward says, his attention partly on a young crewman lifting a heavy pot from the stove. "I don't know where we'd find the ingredients. With our main suppliers gone—"
Stopping abruptly, the steward blinks, a concession to emotion. "I'm sorry, Commander. I didn't mean—"
"Understood," Spock says. Pivoting on his heel, he is out of the galley and halfway down the corridor towards his quarters before he allows the wave of grief to wash over him. Inconvenient, the way words can trigger such a response. Of course with Vulcan gone, the major Vulcan food producers are gone, too.
Illogical not to consider that before asking for plomeek soup. Just as illogical to feel such a need for a familiar comfort food. A human trait, a futile attempt to ease the strain of the current mission.
The Enterprise is in high orbit above Nibiru, a planet about to destroy itself from seismic pressures—an underground magma rift so massive that the entire planet will soon explode into rubble. The resulting destruction will be as total as that of Vulcan itself….
By the time Spock reaches his door he has regained a measure of control—but as it always does, it tires him and leaves him temporarily short of breath.
As soon as he enters his quarters he sees the red flashing light of his subspace comm. A message from his father? Lately they've spoken at odd times—his father calling to update him on the municipal building projects in New Shi'Kahr, for instance, when Spock had not requested any such information, almost as if his father were looking for an excuse to speak to him.
Checking the message queue, Spock notes with surprise the ID of his cousin Chris. They haven't spoken since Spock spent his two-day leave in Seattle with him, a visit characterized by more silence than is normal from Chris. Spock hadn't minded. In fact, until their last night together the two cousins had hardly spoken more than a few words at a time, and those simple and straightforward. Help yourself to some tea. If you need another blanket, look in the hall closet.
Spock had spent the time augmenting what he already knew about the Cassiopeaia System with some updated long-distance starship scans. Apparently none of the planets they were scheduled to survey had warp capability—or indeed, much technology at all. The first one, Nibiru, might even be pre-literate. So far none of the scans had picked up evidence suggesting a written or symbolic language. He tabbed several files to give to Nyota later.
He was stretched out on his bed reading a preliminary seismology report when Chris popped his head in the guest room and said, "Hey, since you're leaving in the morning, how 'bout we go out to get something to eat?"
Spock was poised to turn down his request—he wasn't particularly hungry, the weather outside was chilly and wet, the report he was reading was intriguing—but the look on Chris' face was set, and Spock realized that Chris' question had been perfunctory, the way humans often gave the illusion of choice when they had already decided the future. Not going out to dinner was not an option. Repressing a sigh, Spock sat up, grabbed his heavy ruana, wrapped it around his shoulders, and followed Chris to the flitter.
"I know it's not Vulcan cuisine," Chris said as he navigated the short distance to a small restaurant near the waterfront, "but they specialize in all sorts of Asian vegetables. Some of them are even hot enough for your taste buds."
It was an old joke between them—though in reality, lately food had no pleasurable dimensions at all, no matter how well it was prepared. Food was sustenance, nothing more. Eating was a chore to be gotten through. He told Chris as much.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Chris said. "Sharing a meal can be very healing."
Spock gave Chris his most jaundiced look but Chris wasn't deterred.
"Remember that double birthday party we had? You were what, 10? 11? I seem to remember you enjoyed the ice cream that day."
Despite himself, Spock felt the side of his mouth quirk up.
"I did not enjoy it," he corrected Chris. "I ate it to be polite, as my mother insisted."
"Oh, yeah, I could see that. You hated eating the whole thing, all the way to licking the bowl."
A lie, of course, told for Spock's amusement. He gifted Chris with a frown in return.
Chris adjusted the flitter's altitude and said, "You were never one for birthdays, though. Why is that?"
"Vulcans do not celebrate anniversaries of their birth. There is no logical reason to do so."
"They're fun! They're an excuse for a party!"
"As I said, no logical reason."
"They remind the people we love that we love them, that we are glad they are alive!"
At that Spock's expression had darkened as Chris parked the flitter next to the restaurant.
"Look," Chris said before Spock could open the flitter door, "I didn't mean to upset you—"
"I am not upset."
"Well, you're something."
"You are mistaken. I am fine."
Chris put out his hand and placed it on Spock's forearm. "I need to tell you something, and after that, I'll shut up about it. You aren't fine. You can't be fine. You might still be in shock—you might even convince yourself that you don't feel anything at all—but you aren't fine."
He paused and Spock could feel him looking at him intensely. "You are going to remind me that you are available should I need further conversation on this matter," Spock said dismissively. He reached his hand toward the door controls.
"I was going to remind you that sometimes, even for humans, actions can guide our emotions."
Spock lowered his hand from the door controls. "Explain."
"It's elementary psychology, really," Chris said. "Act as if you are happy, and you start to feel happy. Treat someone with kindness and you start to feel kindly toward them."
"Pretense," Spock said, and Chris laughed.
"Not exactly, though I can see why you'd think so. No, it's more like tricking your brain into a certain mood. We behave as we do because we feel a certain way, but the reverse is true, too. We can affect our emotions by what we do."
A counterintuitive construct—but Spock considered it carefully. Certainly his mother's conscious actions were later followed up with a change of emotion—an irritable moment shaken off with a forced smile and a vigorous walk in her garden, for instance.
Whether or not the same could be true for him—
"I'm not telling you to lie," Chris said, releasing the catch on the flitter doors, "but until you are ready to talk, you could at least act like you know that the people around you are suffering, too."
It was an odd comment—so much so that Spock has puzzled over it ever since. If he is reluctant to speak when his father calls, if he pulls an extra shift rather than spend an evening with Nyota, it is precisely because he knows they suffer. Rather than add to their pain, he stays away.
Flicking open the message queue, Spock tabs up Chris' recording.
Sorry I missed you! But really, I was looking for Lieutenant Uhura. She didn't answer her comm so I thought she might be with you. Just wanted to wish her a happy birthday! Hope you both are doing well. Get in touch soon!
The screen goes dark and Spock blinks for a moment, disoriented. At some level he's convinced that the short conversation has a subtext beyond the obvious—a call to action, perhaps, or a reminder of something outside his normal concern.
If the chief steward is surprised to see him twice in the same day, he doesn't show it. He does, however, react visibly when Spock asks about getting a bowl of ice cream.
"I'm sorry, Commander," he says, his expression betraying either confusion or something close to embarrassment, "but we only have chocolate. If you like, I can put in a requisition for another flavor the next time we are Spacedock—"
Of course the chief steward would be well acquainted with dietary restrictions for all of the crew. Hoping to put him at ease, Spock says swiftly, "It is not for my personal consumption. A bowl of chocolate is sufficient."
He turns to step out of the way of the bustling crew when the chief steward calls him back. "And Commander," he says, hesitation in his voice, "as for your earlier request—for the plomeek soup? I've put out a call to some exotic growers. In the meantime, I want to experiment with some substitutions—apples and beets have some of the same flavor signatures. It might be possible to come up with an acceptable alternative."
To his surprise, Spock feels a flood of something close to gratitude for the steward's efforts. Before he can reply, the steward flags down a passing crew member.
"Get one unit of chocolate ice cream from the cooler," he says to the young woman wearing an apron. Turning to Spock, he says, "You want to take this with you, right?"
Spock nods in the affirmative and the steward barks out, "And get one of those stasis ice cubes. The smallest one we have."
The young woman hurries off. "That will keep it cold, sort of. Ice cube is a misnomer, though. It doesn't keep things cold so much as it changes the molecular structure. Temporarily turns liquids to solids; makes it easier to ship them without spillage. When you're ready to consume it, you'll need to reset it to the original configuration or all you'll get is an inedible chocolate rock. Be right back."
He swivels around and starts after the retreating aproned woman.
A chocolate rock.
A stasis unit that turns liquids into solids.
On a larger scale, a cold fusion reactor could be reconfigured to solidify anything in its sphere of influence. Like molten magma at the core of Nibiru—
He'll need to run the numbers through the computer, of course, and set up a simulation in the engineering lab. Mr. Scott's shift ends in 34.5 minutes, but if heads to engineering now—
Exiting the galley he hears the chief steward calling behind him—"Commander?"—but he doesn't stop.
The odds are low—incalculable without more data—that a reactor can be placed in the necessary juncture to stop the imminent destruction—
Already the ionic disruption from the dust cloud accumulating in the planet's atmosphere is interfering with the sensors—
Controlling the reactor from the ship could be problematic. A closer proximity might be the only way to guarantee detonation, but that would require the operator to enter the volcano at the heart of the magma rift—
His thoughts whirling as he makes his way to the lift, Spock has the uneasy feeling that's he forgetting something crucial, that something important is sliding out of his view.
Later when he has time he will have to give this some consideration.
For now, though, he redoubles his focus on the task at hand, entering the lift daring to hope that there's a very real possibility he might be able to avert the looming destruction of a planet.
This time.
This time he has more tools at hand, and more forewarning.
A chance for redemption at last—or if not that entirely, a worthy attempt.
A/N: Thank you so much so staying with this story despite my going AWOL recently! Thanks, too, for all the encouraging reviews. You keep me going!
If you are interested in other parts of the Nibiru mission, "Deeper Into Darkness" is a "missing scenes" story that gives more context to the struggles between Spock and Uhura. It does not, however, include ice cream! The reference to the fraternization hearing is from the last chapter of "People Will Say."