Vulcans and Northern Skalds
McCoy's burst of glee at the notion that Selina might be favorably inclined toward doctors dissipated with the sudden chill that seemed to emanate from her following Sorenson's comment. At least Jim was a little shaken, even if Spock looked considerably more amused than a Vulcan ought to.
"It would appear that you may be free of obligation this Halloween Cmdr. Sorenson," Spock observed.
"Yes," Fafhrd agreed. "But I'm a bit worried about you. Both your Captain and your CMO are clearly insane. How do you manage?"
Spock folded his arms. "It has proven to be challenging upon occasion."
"Challenging?" McCoy snorted. He looked at Sorenson, but nodded toward Spock. "Listen, if I ever really do lose my marbles, it'll be because of the over-grown elf here."
Sorenson grinned at Spock. "How do you do that? He sounds exactly like the one from the infirmary."
"On the contrary, Dr. McCoy's facility with colorful description far exceeds what I recall of Dr. Galen," Spock replied smoothly. " 'Over-grown elf' is actually one of his less imaginative contributions."
"Really?" Sorenson asked, watching Spock carefully. "And Ms. Uhura lets him get away with that?"
Spock's eyebrows rose and Jim and Bones both laughed at his look of surprise.
"He guessed right off," Uhura said. "I thought you'd told him."
"That's pretty good," McCoy drawled. "Must come of working with computers so much."
"Spock is lot of things, but a computer he is not." Sorenson paused a beat. "I can get computers to do anything."
Jim pantomimed a rim-shot while Bones and Uhura laughed. Selina and Spock shared the look of people who have heard a particular punch line at least once too often.
For all his focus on Selina, Jim had been watching the other man's easy camaraderie with Spock. It hinted at something like the potential friendship he'd caught a taste of during the elder Spock's mind meld. "So how did you get to know him so well?" Jim asked.
Sorenson hesitated, glancing at Selina.
"No," she said firmly. "I will not let you get away with your usual throw-away line, Sigurhjörtur."
He winced. "My real first name - I usually say that Spock and I bonded over hearing our names mercilessly butchered in roll call."
"Sigurhjörtur" Uhura repeated, trilling the r's perfectly. "I think it's rather nice. Old Norse: sigur indicates victory and hjörtur shares a root with the English word 'hart'."
"Signifying a buck with a particularly hard head," Selina observed with a thin smile. "Although 'Bambi' is considerably easier to say."
Sea green eyes widened at her in disbelief. "If you are quite finished?"
She waved a hand. "I believe that may suffice. Please proceed."
"Spock and I got to know each other when we wound up stuck together in a small space after an accident in a training exercise," he began. "How long were we in there Spock?"
"38 hours, 23 minutes and 47 seconds," Spock recalled.
"You can see it was memorable," Sorenson chuckled. "He still has it down to the second. Of course, considering that I was delirious and babbling incoherently for a good part of that time, it's a testament to Vulcan control that he not only never laughed at me, but refrained from bashing my brains in to shut me up."
"Cmdr. Sorenson was only delirious because he had interposed himself between me and a poisonous life form," Spock clarified.
"You see, he has more in common with Fafhrd than he admits," Selina remarked. "He cannot resist the occasional impulse toward ill-advised heroism."
"That sounds that real heroism to me." Uhura was looking at him with new respect, even affection. She remembered the way most students had viewed Spock. Not many humans she knew would have risked themselves for him that way.
"Thank you, but she's only right about the ill-advised part," Fafhrd said looking a little embarrassed. "Had I been paying attention in xenobiology, I'd have known that letting it bite Spock would have resulted in nothing worse than the nasty thing curling up and dying of copper poisoning. Instead I wound up about useless, even though Spock killed it before I got a full dose." He gave a wry smile. "Just a good thing I seem to be descended from rime giants, so there wasn't enough poison to do any serious damage to someone with my body mass."
"I don't know," Bones commented. "Sounds to me like you contracted a near terminal case of modesty. Uhura's right. Most people wouldn't risk themselves for a stranger, even if he's another human, let alone someone from another species."
"This is why I prefer the throw-away line," he sighed. "It wasn't like that. Even if we didn't know each other except by sight, we'd been in classes and drills together before. And we'd already spent half a day in that hole trying to cobble together a way to boost our communicator signals, so Spock was hardly a stranger." He quirked a smile. "And he is certainly no stranger than I am. If you want to pin a medal on someone, it should be Spock. He's the one who was trapped listening to not only god-knows-what idiocy and my garbled renditions of everything from Gilbert & Sullivan to Zenon5 for 20 odd hours. And he carried me out of there anyway."
"For the record," Spock stated. "The Gilbert & Sullivan was not entirely unpleasant. However, I did briefly consider leaving him behind during one of the musical pieces that involved 'air guitar'."
"Spock!" Jim said with a widening smile. "Did you just crack a joke?"
Spock's left eyebrow ascended slowly. "I do not understand why that statement is always assumed to be a jest."
"Because," Bones said with a grin. "You may be a cold-bloodedly logical stone-faced gargoyle, but we all know you'd chew off your own arm before you'd leave anyone behind like that."
Spock's right eyebrow joined his left and Sorenson lifted his glass to McCoy. "Spock's right. You've got Galen beat by a mile."
"You should hear him when's had more than ice tea to drink," Jim advised.
Selina raised an eyebrow. "In any case, Spock apparently decided to overlook Fafhrd's fondness for 'air guitar'. They had developed a cordial relationship by the time I met him."
"In the bar, right?" Jim said with a sly grin toward Sorenson. "You tried to pick her up too, didn't you?"
"Gods no." He looked aghast. "I may look like a big dumb barbarian, but I'm not that stupid."
Bones and Uhura both broke down laughing. "Don't say it," Jim warned.
Selina was merely smiling, but the laughter was clear in her eyes. "In fact," she said. "When I first encountered him, he assumed that I was part of Spock's fan club."
"Oh no," Uhura said. "You weren't the guy who whistled when she walked in the bar, were you?"
Fafhrd nearly choked. "Again, not that stupid. Plus, while my mom is not in fact an ice witch, I'm reasonably certain that if I whistled at a lady like that, she'd find a way to materialize on the spot and smack me in the back of the head."
"The sign of a good mother," Selina said with an approving nod. "She was once a nanny, you know. If you ever decide to have children Nyota, I still retain her number."
"You don't," Sorenson said.
Selina gave him a smug smile.
He took a deep breath and continued. "In any case, I did not meet her in the bar. She came over and just sat down next to Spock while we were playing chess on the quad. Since it had apparently never occurred to him to mention that this woman he'd known since childhood had turned up in the last couple weeks, what was I supposed to think?"
"Do you know what he did?" Selina asked. "He looked at me and said, 'Hit on him later. Can't you see we're in the middle of a game?'." She smiled fondly at the memory. "I liked him immediately."
"So you basically told her to go away?" Jim asked, amazed.
"Well, it was near certain she hadn't come over to hit on me." Sorenson rolled his eyes. "I'd stopped going by the bar shortly after the fan club formed. Do you have any idea how depressing it is to watch a bunch of women throw themselves at your friend while you're sitting right there - especially when he'd like nothing better than to avoid the lot of them entirely?"
"Except for the part about him wanting to avoid them, I'm right with you on that one," Bones said lifting his glass. "I'd drink a toast in sympathy, but ice tea just isn't strong enough."
"Speaking of which, since we're done eating, maybe we should retire to my quarters for a drink?" Jim suggested.
Sorenson shook his head. "Thank you, Captain-"
"Jim." Kirk insisted.
"Thank you, Captain Jim," he continued. "But while I've got traps in place on the casino systems, I'll feel better if I'm watching them in person when they raid the place at 03:00. So I think it's time I returned to the Aldrin for a bit of rest."
"You don't need to shuttle back and forth," Jim offered. "We could find a place for you to crash here."
"With the whole of a trade conference already housed aboard? No. And while I've crashed on Spock's couch before, I won't inflict that on him without cause." He nodded toward Selina, with a teasing grin. "I snore worse than she does."
"I do not snore," she said firmly.
"Right," he said looking skyward. "The fact that you imitate an angry grizzly when you sleep is just some sort of innate defense mechanism."
He looked down and laughed when he noticed the expressions on the two men across from him. "Not what you're thinking. We three went camping together once - separate tents I assure you - and woke to find we'd driven Spock into the wilderness to escape the noise. But I woke up first. Believe me, she does snore."
Selina just looked at him and set her mouth in a stubborn line.
"You actually do a bit," Jim said with a grin, earning a stunned look from Bones. Spock and Sorenson had both raised an eyebrow, but they each, in their own way, looked far more entertained than alarmed.
"Just stop it." Uhura scolded. "He only knows that because we both found her asleep in the observatory."
"You see," Spock said. "We have additional witnesses."
"Well, I, for one, think you're all joking." Bones turned to Selina with a kindly smile. "You were quiet as a mouse the whole time while you were out in sickbay, m'dear."
Uhura clamped her hand across her mouth, preventing the thought 'a very loud mouse' from escaping her lips. (If the competition between Jim and Len was back on, she had her own favorite, even if Spock didn't approve).
"Thank you, Len," Selina said, favoring the Doctor with a smile before looking back at Spock and Fafhrd. "You see, I have medical certification."
.
Although Bones seemed to have scored a few more points than Jim by the time they left 10 Forward, Selina declined to take either man's arm, saying she would at least see Fafhrd off in case he found a way to disappear again before morning.
"I will not disappear," he protested as they headed toward the shuttle bay. "After all, I believe I am owed a game of chess."
"Which you might have had already, had you not been hiding," she countered.
"If I'd hung around and been the one to play you in sickbay, you'd have been there a lot longer. Then the whole ship might have been deprived of the story of one of your legendary stings."
"The whole ship?" Jim asked, exchanging an uneasy look with Bones.
"Oh yes. You walked in on Ms. Chapel giving me the first cut, but I'm sure she's improved upon the tale by now." Fafhrd grinned. "If I were really a Northern Skald, I might hang around to turn it into a ballad. However, as Spock can attest, my musical skills are limited at best. So you will have to wait and see what Ms. Uhura produces from the record feeds."
Uhura smirked. "It'll be good. I promise."
"Remember to put me on the distribution list," Sorenson said as they reached the turbolift. "For now, I think I'll say good night. It's been good to meet all of you - especially you, Ms. Uhura. I'll see you when I come back tomorrow morning to check the last diagnostic on your ship. Spock, there's probably no point in telling you not to show up at 03:00, so I'll see you then." He grinned. "And have someone tie Grey here down so she doesn't follow you. From the sound of things, she's already way above par on trying to get herself killed."
Selina shoved his arm and stepped into the lift after him, turning to block the others. "If you will excuse us, I would have a private word with Fafhrd before he leaves."
They watched the door close on the peculiar version of The Twain.
A sly grin lit Jim's face. "Tie her down?" he said. "I don't suppose you'd let me volunteer?"
McCoy snorted. "Just don't ask me to stitch you back together if you try it."
AN: I reiterate that one of Spock's characteristics is a +10 ability to annoy physicians. Nevertheless, McCoy seems to be pulling ahead with Selina. Not just because he has the intelligence to fib about whether she snores, but also because he senses that while Spock may never approve, being nice to her other male friend is probably a good move.
Sigurhjörtur is an Old Norse first name. There is an Icelandic soccer player with the name and in my head Sorenson inherited it from his mother's grandfather. In Leiber's books, Fafhrd's mother was an ice witch, and a considerably less pleasant person than Ms. Sorenson. (And yes, Selina just might be hinting that she'd like to be an aunt).
Fafhrd and Grey Mouser are in later stories referred to as The Twain. The literary Fafhrd was also a Skald, which is basically a Nordic bard, hence Sorenson's reference to composing a ballad. Sorenson may not sing well, but like a lot of us tech geeks, he listens to music constantly while working and has fairly eclectic tastes. And I made up Zenon5 - there have to be 23rd century groups after all.
