Chapter 32 - Message
Spock entered Med One's office tower and waited while his padd updated to give him the location of his appointment. A group of doctors waited at the lifts in shiny white double breasted jackets buttoned all the way up to the shoulder. One of them looked up and down at Spock's cadet uniform.
Spock's padd updated to show room 5405. He moved to the lifts, keeping a few meters back as if the doctors were officers. The lift arrived and those waiting turned to Spock as if to check that he was joining them.
Spock stood with his back to the wall of the lift. He appreciated at that moment how much he fit in at the Academy. The doctors' discussion continued unabated.
"They were ready to remove the whole organ. Grow a transplant. But there's no unmutated cells left to do that with. You still need to splice in a donor. Why not just use a donor in the first place and crisp in compatible types like we used to? Odds of cleaning out all the mutations? Seems like zero to me."
All but two got off at the forty seventh floor and the lift grew quiet. Then it stopped at fifty four.
"You visiting Leonard?"
"Dr. McCoy. Yes."
"Len gets all the publishable cases." One said to the other.
Up here the corridors were stylish and quieted electronically to a hush. At the indicated suite, McCoy was talking to someone else beside the domed reception kiosk. He looked up with a gaze that seemed to take in more than was available visually.
Spock sat on the examination table as instructed. McCoy made him follow a pin light, checked his reflexes. He picked up a hand scanner and adjusted the settings. "Headaches?"
"Minor ones, but not in the last sixteen hours."
Spock turned his head as instructed to be scanned. The device was snapped closed and put aside.
"Good. Any real doozies?"
"If by that colloquialism you mean extremely painful, no. But I cannot block the pain of them."
"Put your head down for a moment so I can check how the portals are healing."
Spock bent over and rested his head on his arm propped on the table, waited while fingers moved through his hair, touching sensitive flesh.
"Sit up. Unzip your top so I can get that monitor off you. I'll give you a smaller one that doesn't dispense." McCoy busied himself with things sealed in bags that were clear on one side and heavy plasticized cloth on the other.
"Am I a publishable case?" Spock said.
McCoy looked up but his hands kept working, peeling things back, pulling activation tabs. "I would say no." He came back over. "Why? Do you want to be?"
"No."
Spock pulled his arms free of his sleeves so he could slip his thermal shirt off. Each section of the long band on his chest glowed green. The third section to the right was a little heavier to allow for loading a drug cartridge, the fourth was a comm unity. He sat and waited while McCoy considered him.
"Something you want to talk about?"
Spock didn't know the answer to this. He had spoken without forethought from some well of annoyance he'd apparently not acknowledged nor meditated upon. He felt an intense sadness wash through him like a wave of inky water.
"Let's get you off those meds, okay?" This was stated with great gentleness.
Spock held himself steady and did not respond.
"They'll be a prick when this comes off." McCoy tugged the monitor off, section by section, put it aside. He passed a sterile field over Spock's chest and aligned the new one, which was only a finger wide and barely heavier than tape except on the end which held the comm unit.
"You can get dressed. But stay put." The last was snapped out.
McCoy put things in a neat stack in two racks and came back, rested one hand on the table beside Spock. "Catching up in your studies?"
"Yes. Slowly."
"Doing okay with being around the kinds of students who attacked you?"
Spock hesitated. "It is getting better. The first day was the most uncertain. But illogically so. There is no reason to expect a repeat of events."
"Okay. Let's see. Your parents weren't putting on an act, I didn't sense. But are they supporting you? Not blaming you for what happened?"
"My father wishes I would do something other than attend Starfleet Academy, but he stands by his word that I can attend."
"That doesn't answer the question."
"I do not wish to mislead you. My presence at the Academy is my choice. He has not explicitly disavowed my responsibility, but he also has not reminded me unnecessarily of said connection to my decisions."
McCoy's face strained for a moment. "Right." He raised his chin, propped his free hand on his hip. "How's that boyfriend of yours doing?"
"According to his messages, well enough."
There was a long pause. Spock was certain he'd answered this equitably.
McCoy frowned. "You're not allowing yourself to miss him. Are you?"
Spock hesitated, but eventually shook his head. He dared not speak while the center of his chest was this malleable and fragile.
"The meds are still in your bloodstream but they aren't inventing this emotion," McCoy waited, face set.
Spock's feet were dangling off the table. He resisted moving his toes to seek out a footing. "I do not know what you intend for me to say."
"This is the trouble with being a hybrid raised without consideration to that hybridity. You've never learned to cope back when it would have been easier to learn it."
"That is untrue. I have coped with a similar emotion most of my childhood."
"If you've been lonely long enough to get used to it then what's wrong now?"
Spock stared at the silvery cabinet behind the doctor. "I do not know."
"Well, I think I do. You are reaching the age where you are supposed to get serious about pairing off."
"I am a Vulcan. Instinct is not supposed to rule me."
"Biology usually wins, I find. Mind over matter is a lie."
Spock breathed slowly instead of sighing.
McCoy patted Spock's arm. "Sighing IS a valid outlet, my boy. But you are going to suffer if you don't at least figure out what's what. Okay? You'll feel better in about twelve hours when the meds have worn off, but that's not an excuse to keep ignoring what's going on here. Understand?" McCoy waited with the same hard expression as before.
"Understood."
"You're allowed to miss someone you care about, you know. What you do with the emotion is what matters."
"It will be at least a year before I see him."
"And so? Then you really better figure out what to do with it. No way you can ignore it that long."
"I am trained to put everything aside."
"Yeah. And how's that working for you? At the very least, understand it before you do that. For example, I can only assume you asked that question about being a publishable case because you're feeling vulnerable."
Spock looked away. "I do not know why I asked. But I do not like being an experimental subject."
"Understandable. But that's not the point. Everything else gets ten times harder if you feel vulnerable. And if you can't recognize that's part of the problem . . ." He poked Spock in the chest. "Then you are in trouble. Understand?"
Spock breathed in and held it. "Yes."
McCoy patted Spock's knee and stepped back and Spock slid down off the table.
"I'll see you in a week. Any headaches, or anything odd with your vision, or your memory, you call me immediately. I don't like emergency calls. Even though I realize that's how we met. You show up in Med One's Trauma Unit again without warning me, forget your head, there's going to be trouble, with me. Got it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes sir . . ." He huffed, rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me, Cadet. Dismissed. I guess."
"Maybe there is some reason I hadn't considered before why you don't want to tell me what's going on with you."
Spock stared at the message from Kirk. He'd given Kirk a full accounting of his meeting with the Academy Superintendent. Kirk had assured him that hard-nosed was standard all around when things went wrong and that Justin's verifying Spock's upcoming temple training and age meant he would use that to try and shut down any organizational trouble for Spock over the psychic attack. Spock did not see any other immediate concern for himself that warranted Kirk's time.
Spock could hear Kirk's voice in the words of the text. "Spock. Damn it. I wish I could talk to you live. Look. I worry that if you can't open up to me, you can't open up to anyone. And since what's happened is already isolating, I don't want you feeling more alone by choice. Reply. Right now. And tell me what you don't want me to know."
Spock's chest tightened. He needed to depart soon for his session with Zienn, but this sounded akin to an order.
The medication was still degrading in Spock's bloodstream and he didn't want to hear his own voice. He tapped out a response.
"I do not know what you wish me to say. You have far greater concerns." Spock's fingers stopped. He'd rephrased this sentiment every message that week. Spock had a number of people looking after him, and Kirk was solely in charge of many lives. It was not logical that Kirk expend energy on events occurring on earth. Bue Spock had been commanded to usurp that clear logic.
Heat built beneath Spock's ribs. He started the message over again. "What purpose does it serve for me to burden you? What shall I say? That I feel instinctively, illogically uneasy at the Academy. That I must reduce my estimation of fitting in to a level that displeases me. That I miss physical contact with you to a point of experiencing the effects of a severe lack of food or water?"
The heat in his gut became a slowly rotating ache.
"Do you wish to hear these things for your own reasons that I cannot see the logic in? My interactions with you are a world apart from the others around me. I still do not understand what we have such that I can understand what I am missing in its absence. It is safer for me not to consider it at all, as I have been trained to do since I was very young. You wish me to overcome that for what end purpose when you are not even here to assist with the aftermath of having done so."
Spock's breathing had sped up. He calmed it and the other reactions, and lacking the anger, felt empty. The anger certainly was more satisfying. McCoy's advice, cynically delivered, had been working upon him.
He typed more slowly. "I am incomplete right now, in a new way that I cannot understand. You are correct that I need time away from you to comprehend this. But it does not make that time pleasing, nor does it make me wish to expound upon the process. But since you insist, I have done so. If I continue in this manner, I risk giving in to anger with no outlet for it. And I must depart or be late for my clearly much needed training in mental control."
Spock sent the message without rereading it, felt both satisfied and alarmed at having done so.
At Overlander's apartment, Zienn opened the door. He tilted his head and spoke softly. "I sensed you in the lift coming up."
Spock remained outside. He clasped his hands before himself and said in formal Vulcan, "I apologize for my appalling state of control, honored teacher."
"Come in. You are not so offensive as to need to remain outside."
Spock kept his head down. Overlander was leaning on the counter. He greeted her quietly and waited to be invited in farther.
"Everything all right, Spock?"
Spock forced his shoulders to relax. He was reminded that losing control gained him nothing but additionally dismaying emotions. Better to remain locked down in the first place.
"I fully expect things will be all right in time," Spock said.
"James asked me to give you a message."
Spock raised his head. "Did he?"
She strode forward and put her long arms around him. Spock lowered his head until his nose just touched her shoulder. Her arms tightened, then patted him on the back. He was released just as suddenly and held at arms length and inspected.
"This was the message?" Spock asked.
"He thought you needed a hug."
Spock looked down, felt warmth on his cheeks. "I see."
"Better?"
"Yes and no."
She grinned. He could feel her sympathetic amusement through her touch even through his robes.
Zienn was standing off to the side, the picture of patience. Spock felt another flush of embarrassment, which was better than the hurt anger it had replaced. She let him go and busied herself with making juice.
Spock stood before Zienn and waited as if for a verdict. The juicer ran, three times.
Zienn said, "Surak instructed us to rule our emotions not only for our own sake."
Spock looked up. He hadn't believed he'd lost track of that.
"Anger is very dangerous. Anger at the self becomes anger at others when the self tries to wall itself away from it. Far better to release the reason for it until one has control again and can re-approach the problem with logic. A given situation is never more important than control. Understand?"
Spock knew all this, but he nodded. If Zienn had concluded that Spock needed reminding than he must accept that he did.
Zienn's hard-set face relaxed. "Very good. Why don't we have juice and then repeat your last exercises so I can assess if your injury is causing you difficulty."
Spock nodded, found profound relief in obediently giving himself over for two hours.
"We're ordered to stay put until we have no choice otherwise."
The debris shook loose by the latest explosion two klicks away continued to slide and settle into lower spots around the towering rocks.
"They know we're here," Ranran said. His tall body leaned awkwardly backward so he could glance between rocks with his helmeted head. Not everyone had donned full armor when the blasts started. Before it got worse, they expected to load into armored skuttles and could move faster bare-limbed.
The next shell sent debris fountaining up farther away and the next still farther.
"Risk a scan, sir?" Ranran again.
Lt. Uirik answered for Kirk. "Not while we're squatting quiet."
Uirik was Kirk's second, and Kirk didn't want to undermine her, but he did which she'd cover that red hair with a helmet. Some of the team wore camo bandannas that appeared to bend light, pulling in the colors around them.
"They're too close not to triangulate on it," Kirk said. "The target progression might be a trick to make us think they are looking elsewhere for us. We sit for the moment. But be ready to move." Pointless to say. They would be ready to move from a dead sleep.
"Give me a map on a shielded device, someone," Kirk said.
Scanner pulled out a hardened padd and held it out. Red bars flashed around the perimeter, indicating one or more data source was out of date by more than an hour. There was better cover to the southeast. Sort of obviously better cover. If he were the enemy, he'd suspect himself of being there even if the firing wasn't aimed there. If he were the enemy and knew he was smart and had good discipline, he'd know he'd never be there. Unless both of them knew they were smart, in which case, he might again suspect it as a location.
Kirk pushed up and peered between the rocks at one end of the camp, walked to the next and the next, plotted the incoming strike locations visually, roughly.
"I have them more precisely, sir," Hummer said holding up a scanner. "We don't need to cast a beam or our own to measure something emitting."
Kirk stared out. "Understood, Ensign." He blindly held out the screen in Hummer's direction eyes fixed on the landscape. "Mark them on there."
Kirk's marks were overlaid with new marks. "You were pretty close, sir. Perhaps I shouldn't have interrupted your thoughts."
"It's okay. Glad to have it confirmed." Kirk rubbed grit from his left eye, held up the screen and thought about the firing pattern. The ordinance came in shielded, silent. But the gaps in the terrain and the shape of the blast put some limits on the angle of attack. "I think they're here." Kirk circled an area behind the distant high ground. A spot almost too obvious.
"Are they smart or stupid?" Kirk asked no one in particular.
"They're here in the first place, fighting over nothing."
"Some people like a good fight," Kirk had to keep himself from smiling.
"You amused, sir?"
Head's turned, lifted from awkward positions where they'd taken cover.
"Would I rather be sitting on the edge of a nebula sending probes in to collect data on star formation, absolutely? Do I like a good game of strategy? Also absolutely."
Kirk held out the screen and pointed. "Let's move out along this shallow valley. It will put us behind this far too excellent cover, but not for long. And I think they think we're only average intelligence, so we'll be okay to cross through there. The skuttles will fly wide, low and shielded. Three crew each. Wait to take off until a large blast is filling their sensors with noise so we don't give away where we've been skulking this whole time. Skuttles will provide diversion, give away their position once they're four hundred klicks away, make it look like we've decamped a great distance, then a stealthy return to just beyond the horizon, and covering fire only if called in. Right? Pack up."
There was a second of recognition of the meaning of his words, then everyone went into motion. Kirk felt good. It was time to do something, especially something unexpected.