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I took her for a Vulcan when I first saw her. She was walking past the Pentacrest, head bowed against the wind; and I watched her as my flitter passed over her head, trying to work out where I knew her from-- my Fulbright year at the VSA, maybe? But a moment later the traffic control grid had brought me down behind Van Allen Hall, and she was forgotten as quickly as she'd appeared, as I gathered my lecture notes and walked to the Biology Building. I didn't normally flit to class, even to this Friday xeno lecture across the river from the medical school and my office, but I was meeting Leonard after class today, and giving him a lift to the dedication. But I didn't want to think about that.
All through my lecture, though, I seemed to think of nothing else. I'd taken it hard when Kirk was lost, harder than I'd expected to-- after all, I hadn't worked with the man for almost twenty years. But he'd died as he had lived, and I honored that, and grieved him, and then had thought that the grief was over and the wound healed. But Scotty's loss had opened that wound again as if the intervening year had never been. And with that grief still raw, we would all -- all of us who were left-- have to face the dedication of the Kirk Memorial Library in Riverside. I didn't want to talk to the media. I didn't want to talk to Kirk's old friends and neighbors, who hadn't known Scotty, whose grief had faded. I didn't want to talk to Starfleet brass and Federation dignitaries, for whom the real Kirk had already been replaced by the legend, and for whom Scotty's disappearance would seem as natural as the withering of a leaf when the vine is uprooted: the Kirk years were over, let those who served with him fade into history.
Somehow I finished my lecture. One of my undergraduates stayed behind to talk about her research paper, a girl who reminds me so strongly of myself that I have to bite my tongue to keep from giving her advice. This time I didn't quite succeed. "Gretchen, there's a difference between wanting to be thorough and, and niggling. You don't have to explore every possible avenue of investigation before coming to a conclusion." She clutched protectively at her notes, clearly not really understanding, any more than I had at her age, while I reeled through aphorisms. Finally I told her to come to my office hour and started packing up my own notes.
"What did you tell that young woman about paving stones?"
"Leonard. I didn't hear you come in." I squared my shoulders, ready to look strong and unafraid, but he had pulled me into a bear hug before I had a chance. "That the scholars of the future would prefer a single guidepost in the wilderness to a few meters of perfectly laid pavement on a well-trodden path. It's something Spock told me once."
"Figures. I tried to tell you the same thing I don't know how many times, but it's the Vulcan you quote." He pulled back and looked me over clinically. "Ah, Christine, you look like hell."
"Glad to see you, too. Have you gotten any sleep at all this week?"
"Probably about as much as you have. Have you eaten anything today?"
"I was about to ask you the same question, Len." We both laughed, then, though it wasn't funny. For each of us, other people's pain has always been easier to confront than our own. "Tell you what, I promise to eat if you will."
We walked down the block to the Airliner; neither of us had the energy to look further afield for lunch. Across the street, the Pentacrest lawns were a sea of mud; the flag on the Old Capitol dome flapped desultorily in the damp wind. We settled into a booth riddled with ancient graffiti and placed our orders.
"How is Spock doing? When we talked, it was all about Scotty; I didn't really get to ask him about himself."
"The healers have done just about all they can for him."
"Is it enough?"
"They say the damage of the severed Bond was repaired, and I believe them. But a year is not a long time to recover from that sort of loss. If a person ever recovers."
I looked at the table. I've never known that sort of loss; by the time Roger had died he'd been a stranger to me, if indeed he'd ever been anything else. And as for Anselm-- perhaps I had loved him, and perhaps I'd merely respected him. Either way it hadn't been enough to keep our marriage from collapsing into a mire of good intentions. I'd thought I was beyond my regret for lost opportunities, lost loves, but somehow grief had brought it back, as strong as ever.
Our sandwiches arrived, and we ate, each of us keeping a watchful eye on the other's plate. My mind kept turning back to my conversation with Spock, three weeks before, replaying it over and over.
"Spock!" I wave to him across the lobby of the university hospital. He's been back on Earth for over a month, but I haven't seen him since he went to Vulcan, more than a year ago.
"Are you here to see Dr. Sevel?" Spock's old healer from San Francisco teaches at the University of Iowa medical school now. Spock nods, but before he can speak I blurt out, "Spock, you look terrible." I blush as soon as I say it, but it's true: he's paler than he should be, and his shoulders have that tense, high set they get when his control is taxed. "Leonard told me the healers on Vulcan had said you were recovered." It turns into a question by the time it leaves my mouth.
"I am well, Christine." At his use of my first name, warning bells go off in my mind. "But I take it that you have not yet heard the news."
I sit down next to him. "Tell me."
"The U.S.S Jenolan lost all contact with Starfleet two days ago. One of her passengers was Captain Scott."
"Scotty. Oh dear gods." I haven't spoken to him in months. Kirk's death had hit him hard. He'd scoured space for the body, refusing to believe Kirk dead until it was found; and when Spock had finally convinced him to give up the search, he'd withdrawn into himself.
"Do you know if anyone was there to see him off, when he left?" I'd been glad to hear of his move to Norpin, hoping it might help him to start over, but I didn't go to wish him luck. It seems suddenly very important.
And Spock understands, for he answers, "McCoy and Uhura, and Chekov also, I believe. He was not alone."
"I'm very glad to hear that, Spock. I'm glad to know that someone had a chance to say goodbye to him." I realize that I'm assuming the worst; it feels like a betrayal somehow. "Is Starfleet still searching?"
"Officially, yes. But Nyota informs me that they do not expect the search to yield any positive result. The ship is presumed lost."
"Oh dear gods." I notice my hands are tangled in my hair, lay them in my lap, stare at them dumbly. "Spock, I'm glad it was you that I heard this from." I say at last.
I expect a raised eyebrow at that, but he only nods slowly. "As am I. It lessens the grief, to speak of it."
I must be gaping at him, because his eyebrow does go up at that. "I'm surprised to hear you say that," I finally answer. "The Spock I knew on the Enterprise would never have admitted such a thing."
For a moment he seems to look right through me. "The Spock you knew on the Enterprise had much to learn of grief."
Leonard's voice brought me back to the present.
"I said, what time is it?"
"One forty-five." The dedication was at three.
"I should probably head back the hotel and get my uniform on. Where do you want to meet?"
"My flitter's behind Van Allen. Why don't you come find me at Prairie Lights when you're ready to go."
We paid and left and parted. I'd offered Leonard my spare room, but he'd insisted on staying at a hotel. I knew that his old insomnia had probably returned, that he didn't want to wake me by pacing all night, and I hadn't pressed him. Not that he would have had to worry-- we could have paced together-- but I was no more willing to admit my insomnia to him than he was to admit his to me. No use in giving a friend something else to worry about.
I still found it hard to believe that Leonard was the one who had stayed in Starfleet. I had been ready to resign when Spock died. After Kirk brought him back, against all odds, and was sent out as captain of the Enterprise again, I'd stayed at Command chiefly for his sake-- if Kirk was a captain again, an old-fashioned starship captain in a changing galaxy, it was best that someone in San Francisco was loyal to him, that someone could play the political games on his behalf that he would never play for himself. Kirk, the few times I saw him during those years, affected not to notice how many of his former crew took positions at HQ after he began his third and last mission. He wasn't comfortable knowing that reports of his adventures were filtered first through us, the old guard; that we defended him, obliquely, to the Admiralty. Not that any of us-- myself, Riley, Kyle, Leslie, and Rand, until she left to become Sulu's exec-- would ever have admitted as much. But those who write the reports and make the recommendations that the admirals deal with have a certain power over their opinions. And the tide of opinion was rapidly turning against Kirk's breed of commander.
After Kirk's retirement, and Admiral Cartwright's disgrace, there was nothing to keep us at HQ anymore, and we dispersed, the others back into space, and I to a xenobiology professorship at the University of Iowa medical school. I'd been there for nearly a year when the Enterprise-B was launched, long enough for me to have settled into the academic routine. And long enough to have started to drift out of touch with my friends and former crewmates. We hadn't all been together since Kirk's memorial service. When we met for the dedication today, Scotty would not be there. And somehow I knew that from now on, we would never meet all at once, except to mourn the loss of another of our number.
It had started to drizzle during lunch. Prairie Lights was crowded; the old bookstore is the most comfortable place in Iowa City to wait out a rainy afternoon, and readers occupied all the leather chairs. I browsed, aimlessly, through a table of new hardbounds. Gold gothic lettering on a rich cloth binding caught my eye: Le Morte D'Arthur. I almost laughed; it fit the tenor of my thoughts too perfectly. But the book was beautifully bound, and, when I opened it, lavishly illustrated in ink and watercolor. If you're going to wallow, then wallow properly, I thought, and headed upstairs to the cafe with the book under my arm.
I'd been sitting there with my coffee, perusing the illustrations, for about ten minutes when the scent of cardamom wafted into my nostrils. I looked up. Standing across the table, holding a steaming mug, was the woman I'd glimpsed on the street that morning. Not a Vulcan. And looking scarcely any different than when we'd left her at the starbase, twenty-six years before.
I had known she was on Earth, a military attache to the new Romulan ambassador, come in after Ambassador Nanclus and most of his staff were implicated in Admiral Cartwright's conspiracy. Leonard had met her, he and Spock and Kirk, at a reception for the new ambassador, two years before. And of course I'd heard, mostly from Leonard, how she had been dispatched by the Romulan government to resolve the hostage crisis on Psi Trianguli Twelve, just inside the neutral zone. Spock had been sent along as a Federation observer. It had kept him from attending the launching of the Enterprise-B.
She was looking at me. I met her eyes, nodded at the empty chair across from me. She sat down, sipped her tea, still looking at me over the rim of the mug.
"Ms. Chapel, if I remember correctly. I would do you the courtesy of a title if I knew which was appropriate; I doubt whether 'lieutenant' still is."
"It was 'commander'; I retired from Starfleet two years ago. It's 'doctor' now, or 'professor.'" I smiled. "Or Christine."
She didn't offer me a title, and I knew better than to ask for her name. "Doctor." She curved her hands around the mug as if to warm them. "You are going to the dedication this afternoon."
"Yes."
"And Mr. Spock?" I couldn't tell what emotion invested the name with such intensity.
"He'll be there."
"As will I, as a representative of my government." She looked at me steadily, a slight furrow between her upswept brows. "Have you seen him since his return?"
"Yes, three weeks ago," I said.
"And how is he?"
"The healers say he's recovered, mentally and physically." Relief showed on her face for a moment. "He seems to have regained some of his, his balance."
"I am glad to hear it." Another sip of tea. "Do you know why Spock should refuse to meet with me?"
It was not a request for information, but a straightforward assay of the level of my ignorance. "No, I don't."
"Then it is not my place to enlighten you, I fear."
I wasn't in any mood to play games. "Commander, or whatever your title is these days, is there a reason we're having this conversation?"
"There is indeed. I want you to relay a message to Spock for me." Coffee splashed in my cup. "And 'Commander' will do nicely."
Without planning to, I asked "What sort of message?"
"Spock has been back on this world for two months." Her grip on the mug tightened and relaxed. "He has refused my request for a meeting, and I dare not press him; it would invite attention. There are things I must say to him that I will not speak of over comm channels. If I can speak with him alone today, I will do so. If he will not... these things must be said. By someone." She blew over the mug, sending a long eddy of spice-laden steam across the table.
"What would you have me tell him?"
"That I have not betrayed him, and that I will not. That I have not betrayed his friend, and that I will not. That I give my word that all I may have...seen, I will keep in my heart unless he should give me that knowledge freely. And that if he fears my revenge, he need not; after what I have seen I find I no longer desire it."
"You stabilized the broken Bond." For the first time, she looked away. "You melded with him, at Psi Trianguli."
"I did what had to be done, Doctor. But I am not so adept as to be able to spare all his secret knowledge in the meld." She took a long drink of tea.
I was suddenly and unaccountably angry at her for making this request of me, and then at myself for my anger. I took a deep breath. "I'll give him your message, and do my best to make sure that he speaks with you."
Her eyes searched my face, seemed to find something there that satisfied her. She nodded brusquely, then drank down the rest of her tea at a draft and stood. "I thank you, Doctor Chapel." As she crossed behind me she paused to look at the Malory, open to a branch-crowded drawing of Bedyvere watching Arthur's funeral barge drift away downstream. Her alien-warm touch fell on my shoulder, searing even through my wool blazer. "I grieve with thee." And then she was gone.
Leonard came in a few minutes later as I was paying for the book. "I'll be damned." He shook the rain from his hair. "Chris, you'll never guess who I just saw."
"The Romulan Commander; she just left here. Didn't you think to bring an umbrella?"
"It's gonna stop any minute now. What the hell is she doing in Iowa City?"
"Getting ready to attend the dedication. Leonard, you never told me that she-- what she did for Spock."
That provoked a double-take. "What?"
"You never told me--"
"Christ, Chris, I thought it was obvious. He never would have survived it if someone hadn't waded into his mind and grabbed a hold of him." He frowned, as if at the image he'd called up, and then at me. "Spock wasn't exactly thrilled that she was the one to do it. I don't know just how much history there is between those two, but whatever happened all those years ago, it didn't leave him too eager to share his memories with her. Hell, he was almost angry at having to share a scoutship with her."
"Hmm." We walked through the rain to my flitter. After I'd locked us into the traffic control grid, Leonard laid a hand on my arm. "You want to tell me what the two of you talked about?"
"Not just yet, I think."
Kirk had bequeathed his personal library to the University of Iowa, including all his correspondence, and copies of logs, reports, everything he'd written for Starfleet that wasn't classified. The collection provided, the archivists said, an irreplaceable perspective on forty years of space exploration and galactic politics. Kirk had left the family farm to Spock, but Spock had given that to the university as well, together with an even larger collection of documents chronicling his own Starfleet career. That seed was already drawing other donations and bequests of spacers' records, and the University, in partnership with Starfleet, had built a new satellite library on the Kirk farmstead to house the collection. The James T. Kirk Memorial Library for the History of Space Exploration promised to become a center of scholarship for the subject; and the Board of Regents and the Admiralty, seeing an opportunity for good publicity, had planned a lavish dedication ceremony.
We covered the twenty kilometers to Riverside in silence. I keyed us out of the grid after we crossed the fairgrounds and flew in manually, following the valley of the Iowa River. It had been a muddy spring, but from above the countryside was pleasant, shoots of young corn scoring the fields in pale green stripes. The Iowa was still high with meltwater, bluer and quicker than it would be come summer, and along its valley the trees were in full leaf. We veered east above the confluence of the Iowa and the English and followed the smaller river a short distance upstream. It meandered before us in tight loops like fingerprint whorls, so narrow only glints of the water showed between the overhanging branches, but directly below us the English valley widened into a flat and grassy floodplain. On the north bank was Riverside, these days a bedroom community for the university, the old farm-town center giving way to tidy acreages further downhill. The Kirk Library was on the south bank, screened from town by a thin strip of greenbelt, but connected by a street and footbridge with new-looking pavement. I set us down behind the blue ribbon marking the reserved spaces. Leonard and I got out and stood for a moment with the flitter between us and the library, looking away south.
"You were right," I said. "The rain stopped." In fact, the weather had turned beautiful: the air was clear and still and smelled of moist earth and wet grass. The clouds were beginning to break up, and patches of sunlight fell in the distance, spotlighting here a silo, there a few meters of barbed-wire fence, farther away a low glacial hill crowned with trees, all of them beaded and glistening with rain. Leonard breathed deeply. "Lilacs," he said.
"Still? They should have been and gone by now." I said, but then I smelled them too, faint and sweet. Leonard was smiling now, a smile I recognized; it was the one he used when he thought someone else might burst into tears. "Len, do I really look bad enough to rate that look?"
The smile vanished, but some of its warmth lingered around his eyes. "No, Christine, you're doing fine. But I suppose everyone else'll see through me just as quickly, won't they?"
"Everyone who matters." He squeezed my shoulder affectionately, and we crossed the graveled landing area, stepping gingerly around the puddles.
The library was a handsome structure, faced with local limestone. It had been planned to allow for expansion; the garden that lay before the main building was flanked by two one-story wings. Someday, the fourth side of the quadrangle would be closed off by a new wing, but for now the wide main doors looked across the garden to the limestone-paved walkway that led to the footbridge, and beyond that to pasture, a creek, and a tree-lined bend of the river. On the limestone pavement, knots of media people clustered around their quarry; I saw Admiral Morrow speaking to a woman from FNN, and reporters from the local holo channels thronging two Klingon diplomats, but there was no sign of the Commander. Nor, I noted with relief, of anyone from the Enterprise.
"Looks like our people have managed to escape," I said, and was more surprised than I should have been to hear myself say it. Our people. In the eighteen years since I had last served on the Enterprise, I'd had other friends, other colleagues, even a husband, but my old shipmates were still family.
A few reporters wavered at the edge of the pack, contemplating pursuit, but we forged ahead into the garden and were well into the crowd before any could break away and follow. We found Nyota and Pavel before the front row of folding chairs, and by the time that round of hugs was over Hikaru and Janice had materialized in a shimmer in front of us, and there were more embraces, though few words. Someone shouldered past us to the podium and tested the microphone, and someone else whisked away the 'reserved' ribbon across our chairs, and we took our seats. By unspoken agreement we left the empty seat for Spock in the middle, to save him from the stares and the emotions of strangers. Nyota sat next to it on one side, and Leonard on the other, and I sat next to Leonard, with Janice to my right on the aisle.
"Do you think he got-- second thoughts?" she asked.
"You mean 'cold feet'?" I said, and she blushed. "Probably, but he'll be here all the same. This was his doing, after all." The scent of lilacs was even stronger here; I swiveled in my seat trying to trace it. "Speak of the devil."
Spock strode down the aisle, the sleeves of his black robe flapping, hooded eyes focused on nothing. Pavel snapped to his feet and the rest of us followed suit, and only then did he seem to see us. How can anyone express so much with just that minute lifting of the head, I wondered. He walked to his place and gave a deep nod, almost a bow, that included all of us, before he sat.
I studied him out of the corner of my eye. At Kirk's memorial service, he had looked half a madman, and by Vulcan standards probably had been; he had been gaunt, his eyes alternately dull and flat, and flashing with a feverish light. The meld with the Commander had saved his life, but only just.
His time on Vulcan had clearly brought Spock some measure of healing. There were lines in his face that had not been there before, indelible marks of grief, but he had regained some of the old balance, the calm that he had radiated ever since his return from death. And at that thought my throat tightened and the tears that had threatened all day finally spilled. Spock was alive, against all hope, against all logic. But after all that Kirk had dared and risked and lost to bring him back, Spock had not been there to do the same for Kirk. Guilt may be illogical, but it is no less powerful for Vulcans than for humans.
No wonder he doesn't want to see the Commander, I thought. Janice squeezed my hand.
A string quartet played, something by Dvorak, and then the speeches started. We had all been asked to say a few words at the dedication, of course, and had all refused; our words would have been superfluous if Spock spoke and presumptuous if he didn't. As it was, Spock had elected to speak, last. I scarcely heard the other speeches, none of them long, mercifully, but the cumulative effect was still numbing: the mayor of Riverside, the head librarian, the president of the state Board of Regents, the president of the University, the lieutenant governor; the senior member of the Federation Council Contacts Committee (U of I class of 2259); the author of Pax Organia. Admiral Morrow gave a brief string of platitudes, including the one about "those who do not remember history," but he also recounted several of the times when Kirk's memory of history had served him well: fighting the Gorn, confronting John Gill, all his trips into the past-- had there really been so many? It seemed unbelievable.
Morrow finished to polite applause and Spock took the podium. He stood for several breaths without speaking, hands clasped behind him, eyes cast down, seemingly unaware of the crowd. In the silence I heard Nyota draw a deep, shaky breath, and my own tears were threatening to return. But Spock's face, when he looked up at last, was calm, and his voice was steady.
"Others have described, more eloquently than I could, what this archive will mean to scholars of history, and I will not repeat what they have said. Nor will I repeat the Admiral's comments about the value of this institution to Starfleet.
"Instead, I wish to speak of James Kirk.
"Kirk was throughout his life a student of history. Admiral Morrow has spoken of the many occasions on which that study allowed Kirk to solve a crisis, or to save lives. But this demonstrates only the utility of history. Mere utility is a poor reason for any study--" Leonard's eyebrow lifted at that-- "and it was never Kirk's reason for pursuing a knowledge of the past. History afforded him-- affords us all-- a mirror, in which the folly and the greatness of the human spirit, or the Vulcan, are magnified and made clear. It would have been his hope, and it is mine, that in time this archive will hold that mirror up for other students of the past, and allow them to see Jim's life, more clearly, perhaps, than we who shared it with him ever shall."
He was halfway down the steps of the dais when the applause began. He stopped there for a moment to acknowledge it with a grave nod. As he lifted his head I saw him freeze, and following his eyes saw the Commander sitting on the other side of the aisle, a few rows back. She kept her eyes on Spock as he returned to his seat, and her level gaze crossed mine. Her expression was schooled to a more-than-Vulcan blankness, but through it I sensed the entreaty that she was too proud to wear on her face.
I nodded, very slightly, and she gave me the ghost of a smile before she turned away. I had given her my word; I would do my best to keep it.
The ribbon had been cut, and most of the VIP guests, the Commander included, had been shepherded into the library for the tour. Spock was talking with-- or rather listening to-- the author of Pax Organia. I paced the courtyard, drinking Altair water and pretending to examine the lilac bushes, waiting for a chance to speak with him. Memories of the first five-year mission circled through my mind.
The Enterprise is docked at Starbase Ten, undergoing repairs after tangling with the Romulans at Gamma Hydra. I am still working with Spock and Dr. Wallace on the adrenaline serum we used against the radiation poisoning the landing party suffered there. Our research was hasty, overly reliant on guesswork-- there was not time to use proper controls, to run an adequate number of tests and simulations, and while the serum we devised has successfully reversed the rapid aging, we cannot publish until we fill in the gaps in our research.
So I am surprised when Spock takes me to task for wasting my time. "Ms. Chapel, there is no need to analyze all negative results in this level of detail. The tests show no evidence that these concentrations of the serum affect glucocorticoid secretion. We did not expect that they would. It is sufficient to state this, and to move on."
"Mr. Spock. You're the last person I would have expected to look down on thoroughness as mere academic brickmaking." I wince as soon as the words leave my mouth; I'm quoting a professor of mine who used to dismiss my work as just that.
Spock looks at me quizzically. "Ms. Chapel. You have a bachelor's degree in archaeology, do you not?"
I'm surprised he's read my records so closely; I was pre-med as an undergrad, with a second major in archaeology, but my master's was in biochemistry. "Yes, that's how I met Roger."
"It is a most rigorous field of study. I suspect, however, that its habits of mind may be detrimental, when applied to other disciplines."
"I don't understand," I say, though really I do; and judging from the angle of his eyebrow, Spock knows it.
"The methods of archaeology," he says patiently, "are most informative where they are most destructive. It is the only science that kills its informants, so to speak. Since no excavation may be repeated, the archaeologist must record every detail--" he sweeps his gaze across my notes-- "whether it is germane to the research at hand or not."
I feel that gaze on my face, now, but I can't meet it. My cheeks are burning. I steel myself for a rebuke, but it doesn't come, and Spock's next words are spoken gently, almost warmly: "I do not disparage 'mere academic brickmaking,' if by that you refer to thorough and well-documented basic research, nor do I find it a waste of a scholar's talents; it is necessary. But I do question the uses to which you have put these particular bricks of your manufacture, Ms. Chapel. I submit that the scholars of the future will find their path made easier by one guidepost in the wilderness, than by a few meters of pavement, however carefully laid, on a well-trodden path."
It takes a moment to sink in. When I look up, Spock hands me a padd, scrolled to a passage from my notes. "You mention a possible correlation between the serum's rate of absorption and the concentration of chromium. I realize that the evidence for this is still fragmentary, but further inquiry might well prove fruitful."
My face is still hot, but otherwise my composure is Vulcan-steady as I take the padd from him. "I'll look into it at once, Mr. Spock."
After Gamma Hydra, Spock and I had settled into a fairly comfortable working relationship. We hadn't really been friends, but I'd come to understand him better, I thought, then most of his shipmates ever did; maybe even better than Leonard, who was his friend even then. I saw a lot of myself in Spock, both good and bad. His fascination with detail was at least as great as mine, but he was much better at avoiding the trap of endless niggling and mere butterfly collecting. I'd tried to emulate his focus, and in the years we worked together some of it seemed to rub off. Or perhaps my own confidence grew, for I came to realize, on the Enterprise, that my problem with research had always been one of fear-- fear that, when I finally organized all my notes, presented all my data, and finally had to say something, it wouldn't be good enough to meet the high expectations of my teachers and professors, or my own, even higher expectations.
That fear had led me to dilettantism-- I'd put aside both med school, and the archaeology which I'd enjoyed, to start almost from scratch on biochem in Vienna; finished a master's in that, somehow, but left to take a Fulbright year on Vulcan to avoid thinking about my dissertation. And when, during that year, Roger's team on Exo III had fallen silent, I'd seized the excuse to start from scratch again, enlisting in Starfleet on my return to Earth. Nursing was the fastest way to get onto a starship, a two-year course, since I'd already covered most of the anatomy and all of the chemistry. I did well, and to my surprise I found that I enjoyed nursing. It was challenging work, never predictable, and for the first time in my life I was forced to finish what I started-- you can't be a dilettante when someone else's pain, or health, or life is on the line. I learned focus. I came to enjoy shipboard life, the company of my shipmates, so much that when we finally found Roger, or what he had become, part of me was relieved to see the circuits under his torn skin, because they meant I had an excuse to stay on the Enterprise.
And to stay near Spock, though of course I knew that it was hopeless, for any number of reasons, not the least of them being that we were far too much alike, and in all the wrong ways-- both introverts, both too ready to analyze our thoughts and feelings half to death, to seek a remove from the press of our lives, and our own hearts, in that abstraction. But the similarities that would have made us ill-suited as lovers made him a good mentor to me; I learned far more about research by working with Spock than I ever had in grad school, even though I could never quell the tremor along my spine whenever he spoke to me, even though a full day in the lab with him meant an evening of swimming laps until my body was exhausted enough to let me sleep without dreams. But I didn't speak of my feelings to him again, or let them affect my demeanor.
I'd heard the rumors, of course, about Spock and the captain. And at some point-- Gamma Trianguli VI? the Babel conference? the loss of the Intrepid?-- I'd started assuming they were true. It had come as a shock to learn otherwise.
The captain is in Sickbay, having his ears bobbed. It's a simple enough procedure, and Dr. McCoy doesn't need my assistance; he's sent me to look in on the Romulan Commander. She and the guard are gone when I reach her quarters, but before I can activate the wall comm they emerge from the turbolift. "It's all right, Lieutenant. The Commander wanted to check on her officers." The two Romulan hostages, I remember.
"Lieutenant? Is anything the matter?" the Commander asks me.
"That's supposed to be my question. My name is Christine Chapel, I'm from the Medical department. I'm here to make sure you're well, and see if you need anything."
"Of course, Lieutenant Chapel." She gestures for me to precede her into her quarters. "As per section sixteen of the Argelian Accord, if I'm not mistaken." Section 16 bans torture; it permits interrogation under verifier scan and truth drug only with trained medical personnel present. She casts a glance at my medical kit, then lifts her chin in challenge. "Of course, the Empire has not yet signed the Accord."
"I'm really not here to interrogate you, Commander." I take out the scanner but leave it off, lying in the palm of my hand. "We just need a baseline on you in case you should become ill or injured between here and Starbase Ten."
She gives me a look of what feels like disgust. "Of course. I commend your captain for his consideration. Or perhaps the odds of my becoming injured aboard a starship are rather greater than the Federation would have one believe? Proceed." I do, and when I put the scanner away and seal the medkit, surprise shows briefly on her face.
I show her how to work the food synthesizer and the climate controls, and she listens silently. "Is there anything you need, Commander?"
She gives another glance to the medkit; a longer, more speculative look to my face. "Yes. Information. If you are truly not going to question me, Lieutenant, perhaps you will permit me to ask a question of you."
"I don't know whether I can answer--"
"--Nor do I, until I ask." She considers me for a moment, looking very like Spock, with her fine-boned hands just touching at the fingertips. "How well do you know Spock?"
"Well, I've...worked with him for over two years...I suppose I know him as well as most of his shipmates do..."
"So. Not nearly as well as you would like to. Oh, don't try to hide your blush, Lieutenant; it's quite fetching." She stands and begins to pace. "Captain Kirk's reputation is known even in the Romulan Empire."
"Reputation?"
"For his charm. And his willingness to use it, to achieve his goals." Two steps to the door, two steps to the desk. The patterned dress swirls. "If Spock has a similar reputation, it has not reached us." She stops short, right in front of me, the skirt breaking like a wave against her ankles. "Has he?"
I open my mouth to say I'm sure I don't know what she means, but there is a dangerous light in her eyes; this is a woman not easily lied to. "No."
"He is known as a man of honor, a man of integrity?"
"I have never known him to be anything else."
"You have never known him to use his... charisma... as your Captain does?"
I remember his fever-hot hand brushing the tears from my face. He had asked me to make him plomeek soup. If I hadn't told him we were bound for Vulcan there's no telling what he might have asked of me. No. I do know what he would have asked, what I would have given.
"No," I tell her, looking down into her eyes-- how can someone so forceful be so small? "Never."
"You are a poor liar, Lieutenant Chapel. You could learn from Mr. Spock." She backs a step away. "Let me give you a word of advice. Popular belief to the contrary, Vulcans are quite capable of lying. Never let anyone convince you otherwise." She smoothes the skirt against her hips. No starship commander would wear that dress to interrogate a prisoner. I will not ask her what Spock did. It's none of my business what Spock did, what Spock had to do. Espionage isn't supposed to be pretty.
"Is there anything else?"
"Another answer, if you can provide it." She studies her hands, turning them over, brushes the palm of the left with the fingers of the right, stares at them for a long moment, as though they belonged to somebody else. "Why aren't Spock and his captain lovers?"
The first coherent thing I manage to say is, "They're not?"
She laughs, then, loud and long, finally falling back into a chair. "My apologies," she gasps. "It was not my intention to make sport of you." She brushes her hair out of her eyes. "No, Lieutenant, Captain Kirk and Commander Spock are not lovers, of this I am quite sure. I take it that you cannot tell me why this should be so?"
"How do you know it's so?" I'm desperate to believe her wrong.
"I am a strong telepath, for one of my people. I can sense impressions, surface thoughts, from a simple touch." And then she stands, and reaches for my face with a split-fingered hand, and lays a line of fire down my cheek. "From some touches, I can sense even more." She takes my right hand in her left and begins to caress it, her other hand, searingly hot, skimming over my face and neck all the while. I am flayed under her touch, my mind laid open, my nerves raw. A shock seems to leap from her hand at my carotid artery, through my body, to my left hand, which has somehow moved to cover hers. She lays one open palm against mine, cups the other beneath my head-- the heat of it is almost too much to bear-- and then I am bereft, cold, and her hands are at her sides. "His thoughts were all of his captain as he touched me."
I'm shivering at the loss of her hands, of their warmth. She looks me up and down, her gray-brown eyes flaying me as surely as her hands had done. "Ah, yes, Lieutenant; there is one thing you can do for me."
I swallow. "Yes?"
"Might you procure a change of clothing for me? As you can see, I'm not properly clad for the chill of your vessel." She sits down, chin lifted imperiously.
My shivering abruptly stops. "No, I can see that you're not." I follow the sweep of the close-fitted gown with my eyes. "I'll see that you're brought something a little more practical." And with that, I am dismissed.
When I leave her quarters, alpha shift is over. I go back to Sickbay and leave the medkit, and instructions for the quartermaster to provide fatigues and thermals for the Commander, and then, before I can impress on myself what a bad idea this is, I'm outside Spock's quarters, pressing the buzzer.
"Come." He looks up from his terminal, surprised to see me. "Ms. Chapel?"
"Mr. Spock." I'm surprised to hear the anger in my voice. "I've just had the most fascinating conversation with the Romulan Commander."
The blood drains from his face. "Indeed?"
"Indeed. She asked me the most startling question I've heard in a very long time."
Spock still looks like he's seen a ghost, but I've piqued his curiosity. "And what question was that, Ms. Chapel?"
"'Why aren't Spock and his captain lovers?'"
And now the blood rushes back into his face, a green-bronze flush lighting his patrician cheeks. "I am...quite curious as to how you answered her."
"I couldn't. I didn't even believe her at first." I lean against the mesh screen of his office, fold my arms across my chest, astonished at myself for daring to come in and bully him like this. "I would very much like to know the answer to her question, Mr. Spock. Why aren't you and the captain lovers?"
Silence.
"*Are* you lovers?" Spock must be as shocked at my boldness as I am, but to my surprise, he answers.
"No. No, we are not. And I do not know that I can explain why, save to say that I have never approached him."
There is sorrow in his voice, and a bewilderment that I've never heard from him. It doesn't quite douse my anger-- and why am I so angry? Surely this is more than just jealousy-- but it does evoke my sympathy.
"Afraid that he'll say no? That just for asking, you'll lose him?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps afraid of losing myself." He shakes his head. "I do not know. I have struggled with this question for a long time, and I am afraid I have no good answer."
"Spock..." I realize now why I am angry. I had come to terms with not having Spock when I thought that the captain-- that *someone*-- did. But the thought of his brilliant mind, lonely and solitary, of his beautiful body untouched and celibate-- the *waste* is more than I can bear. And the thought of that loneliness being broken only by an enemy's touch, for duty, not for love... "Spock, if there's one thing I've learned from you, or tried to at least, it's persistence. Dedication. Surely you're not going to give up."
"I have tried to learn from you as well, Christine." I almost don't recognize my own name on his lips. "Your control is admirable. I have wished that I could have--" he swallows-- "your equanimity, in working next to the one I desire."
And remembering all those laps across the pool, I laugh, as hard as the Commander had laughed before, grasping at the mesh screen to keep from doubling over. Spock stares at me.
"Ms. Chapel? Christine?"
"Spock," I gasp, "If you've been emulating my control no wonder you have it so bad." Good god, I can't believe I said that to him.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, straighten my uniform. "Spock," I say, when I can keep my voice steady, "I'm gratified that you think so highly of my control. I'm glad that we have such a good working relationship. But we built that relationship after you turned me down. I told you how I feel at the outset." And I leave, without looking at his face.
"I had occasion to quote you today, to one of my students."
"Indeed. In what context?" The author of Pax Organia had gone in search of fresh prey, and Spock and I were walking to the new footbridge.
"The dangers of niggling. I told her what you told me when we were writing up the Gamma Hydra adrenaline research."
"Ah. Judging from your accomplishments in the years since then, it is a lesson you took to heart."
How was it that this man's praise could still make my heart pound, after all this time? "Thank you. I only hope my student doesn't take as long to learn it as I did." I kicked a loose fragment of limestone across the pale yellow slabs. It skipped and caught on the rings, smoother and grayer, in the surface of the stone: fossil crinoid stems, in cross-section. "That's not the only discussion of ours that I've been reminded of today. This afternoon at Prairie Lights, I had a...fascinating conversation...with the Romulan Commander."
Spock's face went unnaturally still, even his eyebrows level and motionless. "Indeed. Dare I ask the subject of this conversation?"
"She wants to speak with you. She asked me to assure you that she will not betray you, or your friend, that she will keep what she has seen to herself, and that she no longer desires revenge." I didn't know what she might have seen in Spock's mind, to speak of betrayal, but then Spock is privy to more secrets, more confidences, than almost anyone else I've met. And I had no right to ask.
Spock kept walking, faster than I could easily keep up. At last he stopped in the middle of the bridge and leaned heavily against the rail. The narrow stream was rain-swollen and clamorous. Spock stared into it for a long space of time. "Did she tell you what she might once have desired revenge for?"
"No, she didn't."
"But you have guessed."
"The theft of the cloaking device comes to mind."
He did raise an eyebrow, at that. "Indeed. I used her ill, Doctor Chapel. I allowed her to believe she would have of me things I could not give. You could say I seduced her, for though I never shared her bed, I would have, if the deception had continued. She has much to blame me for."
"You were under Starfleet orders--"
"--which should never have been given, or obeyed. I have replayed the entire scenario in my mind many times, and always the fact remains that I was ordered to do what I knew to be wrong, and I did not question that order." He leaned against the rail again, looking away upstream. "If it is so important to the Commander, I will see her and accept her assurances in person. But you may tell her that I had no fear she would betray my secrets. I have kept... confidences... of hers for far longer." I opened my mouth, closed it again as quickly. That was something I had even less right to ask. Spock, still staring into the water, didn't seem to notice. "And she has had as certain a revenge as she might ever have wished for."
I couldn't let that go by. "What do you mean?"
When he finally spoke, I could barely hear him above the hiss and thrum of the water. "If she had not touched my mind, at Psi Trianguli, I would have followed Jim."
Oh, Spock. I didn't know what to say to him. If I were Leonard, perhaps I would have dared to touch his hand, clutched tightly around the railing, but I'm not, and I couldn't. "Spock... We need you here. All of us."
He looked up in surprise. "I assure you, Doctor, I am not suicidal. I state a fact. I would have followed Jim. That I will not now do so is, equally, a fact."
However much I might wish to. The words, unspoken, seemed to hang in the air between us.
"Look at it, in the sunlight." I nodded to where the library stood at the end of the footpath, the limestone facade glowing yellow in the afternoon light. "You've made something good of your grief, Spock. Something remarkable."
"Planning this--" the wave of his hand seemed to take in more than just the library-- "was all that kept me sane, for a time--"
"--I'm glad of it--"
"--And yet, now that it is done..." He turned away, back to the river.
"Now that it's done, you've realized it's not going to work."
The eyebrow lifted again; curiosity, always, if I could pique his curiosity, I could make him listen. "Work to what purpose, Doctor?"
"His whole life, your life together, is within those walls, Spock. And it's still not enough to pin him down, and it never will be. You could spend the rest of your life analyzing him, what he was to you, and never quite succeed."
With genuine interest, he asked, "Is that what you believe my purpose to be, in this?" Again, that all-inclusive motion of the long fingers.
"It would have been mine, whether I acknowledged it or not. And I know that's one area where you and I are very much alike." I joined him at the rail, looking down into the water, dappled now with sun and the shadows of leaves.
"Spock, what you and James Kirk had, most people never find. It was something vast and intricate and wonderful, and you could spend a lifetime trying to understand it. But no amount of understanding is going to let you recapture that, or to preserve it unchanged." I kicked a loose stone into the water, watched the ripples spread out, pulled and distorted by the current into tendrils and knots, like the grain of polished wood, like the almost imperceptible hills and valleys of this glacier-scoured land, that snap into sharp relief when seen from high above.
A cloud covered the sun, and we walked back to the library. Just before we reached the courtyard, Spock turned the full intensity of his dark eyes on me. "Christine. Once again I must thank you for your words. I shall remember them." And then the main doors opened; the tour was over. Spock, with a final nod to me, strode into the crowd in search of the Commander.
The Commander looked past Spock's shoulder and met my eyes for an instant. There was gratitude in them, and I nodded to acknowledge that, but it was only one of many emotions in her face, and not the strongest. I walked back out to the limestone pavement, where I wouldn't be tempted to stare. Once again I must thank you, he'd said. He'd thanked me before, for my utterly inappropriate remarks after my first conversation with the Commander, though the thanks had not come until some weeks later, after a confrontation with the Tholians.
Spock is scheduled to work in the bio lab; McCoy's theragan derivative has countered the effects of the space-time rift, but its very effectiveness has raised some fascinating questions that will keep Spock and myself occupied for some time. I expected that Spock would want to lose no time starting his investigations-- but Spock, for the first time I can recall, is late.
Ensign Gudbjarnardottir is surprised. But I was in Sickbay, when Spock came to see the captain. I saw the look that passed between them. And I am not at all surprised when Spock walks in, four minutes late, with the closest thing to a spring in his step that I've ever seen. Spock works all morning with his customary focus-- *I'm* the one who keeps getting distracted by inappropriate mental images.
After the ensign has gone to lunch, when we're alone in the lab, Spock turns to me and says, "I must thank you, for your words of fifty-seven days ago." It takes me a moment to figure out which words he's referring to. "I gave them a great deal of consideration. They were...quite valuable, Christine."
I'm blushing and smiling and afraid I might start to cry, because I know that this is his way of telling me what he's told to no one else yet, what he may never acknowledge to anyone except McCoy, and maybe Nyota. But he knows he's just dashed my last hopes-- hopes I had tried to kill long ago, but without success-- and he's offered me, in their place, his gratitude. And with it, perhaps, his friendship.
It's the kindest offer anyone has ever made me. "You're very welcome, Mr. Spock. And I'm happy for you. I really am."
We say no more about it that day, but there is a greater ease in his manner around me than there has ever been. At shift's end he leaves, as punctual as he had not been that morning. McCoy comes in looking for him a few minutes later, and as soon as the door shuts behind him it opens again for the captain. "Is Spock around?"
"Sorry, Captain, you just missed him." I'm smiling again; I can't help it. "You might look for him in his quarters; he said that's where he'd be."
"Thank you, Nurse. Bones." He stops just inside the door, swivels back, does a double-take at my smile. "Is there some problem, Lieutenant?"
My smile grows even broader. "None that I know of, Captain. Have a good evening." And I swear, he blushes.
"I'm sure I will. If you'll excuse me." The doors hiss shut.
McCoy is staring at me. "Now what the hell was that all about?"
All I can do is laugh, but somewhere in the middle of it a sob comes out, and then I'm shaking, whether with tears or laughter I can't tell. "It's nothing, Doctor. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing."
"Do you remember the Kelvans?" Dinner had turned into an impromptu wake. I'd known it would; that's why I'd suggested we eat at the Sanctuary. That, and their pizza.
A shudder went around the table. "Afraid I wasn't around for that one," Nyota said.
Leonard was undeterred. "Spock, you were there. Remember, how we finally found Scotty passed out with that box in his hand?"
"I believe that it was you who found him, Doctor."
"Was it?" Leonard wasn't wasting any time getting drunk tonight. "Maybe Jim was there. Well, it was pretty funny, I remember that."
"*I* remember that creature that took over the ship at Beta XII-A, when we had the Klingons aboard," said Hikaru. "Scotty kept the claymore the entity produced. I always told him he should take up fencing, get some use out of it."
"I remember Psi 2000," said Janice. "I'm surprised you had the gall to suggest fencing lessons to anyone, after that."
I glanced up, saw Spock looking at me and blushed deeply. The memory of the things I said to him then has never grown less painful.
"I believe we are none of us likely to forget Psi 2000. Certainly, it was one of Mr. Scott's proudest moments." Spock raised a contemplative eyebrow. "Second only, perhaps, to his solution to the problem of the tribbles."
"*His* solution?" Leonard grinned. "Spock, that idea was all you, and probably the most devious idea you've ever had."
"Not so, Doctor; merely the most devious that I have put into practice." He said it so flatly that Leonard took almost a full minute to react, but when he did I had to pound him on the back.
Pavel came back from the bar with the next round, replacing the beer that McCoy had sprayed out his nose. "Ah yes, I remember the tribbles. And I remember Mr. Scott starting the fight in the bar."
"Pavel, remind me," Hikaru said, "What was it the Klingons said again?"
"About the captain, or about the Enterprise?" we chorus. The old punchline; Chekov has told the story in the same words ever since it happened.
"Do you remember, Leonard, the ion storm that sent us into a parallel universe? You, me, Scotty, and the captain?"
"I remember that. It's a miracle we got back at all, with me helping Scotty hotwire the transporters."
"You jury-rigged the transporter?" Janice shook her head. "I don't know which surprises me more, that Scotty let you do it or that you were willing to step onto the platform afterwards."
"Well, I told him I was a doctor--"
"--not an engineer--" Even Spock joined in.
"--but he... now come on, y'all, I'm not getting predictable in my old age, am I?"
"Predictable?" I said. "Never. Do you remember the look on Scotty's face when you showed him your handiwork on the captain's ears?"
"Never seen a smile that big in my life. Well, except maybe once." He looked pointedly at Spock, who didn't react. I tried to suppress my own smile; I don't think either of them knows that I witnessed that smile and I'd like to keep it that way. "'Course, it was probably less admiration for my handiwork and more the fact that Jim was alive..." He trailed off. "Dammit, Spock, I'm sorry."
"There is no need for apologies, Doctor. I am sure we all agree that that fact was sufficient cause for rejoicing." I excused myself and fled into the women's restroom; my eyes had filled with tears. To hear Spock admit to that smile, even so obliquely, even just to Leonard, had been more than I could bear. I dried my eyes, splashed cold water on my face. My reflection looked back at me from the mirror. Yes, it really has been that many years. They hadn't been as hard on me as they might have; the women in my family all have good bones, and the new hair color suited me-- I'd gone back to blonde, though a darker shade than I'd favored back on the Enterprise-- but however gentle they'd been to my features, they were gone beyond recall, twenty-eight years since Exo III, since I'd put Roger behind me, since I'd decided to stay with Starfleet.
And now Starfleet was behind me, too, and my shipmates would go too, one by one.
Ah, well. I was alive and planned to stay that way for a long time yet, and my friends were still here, celebrating without me, on the other side of the door. I nodded to my reflection and went back to join them.
We left before the Sanctuary closed, though not that long before. No one needed a ride anywhere; I'd offered my flitter, but Sulu had offered the Excelsior's transporters. Not much of a choice there. Except for Leonard, of course, who was staying in Iowa City overnight-- he was meeting old colleagues at the med school in the morning-- but he insisted on walking back to his hotel. "It'll help me sleep," he said, and I remembered his insomnia and didn't press him.
So I promised McCoy that I'd let the grid drive for me, though I hadn't drunk all that much, said good night, hugged everyone except Spock. Spock surprised me, though, by briefly taking my hand in both of his, something he'd never done before. "Good night, Christine," he said, looking me in the eye. And then he let go, and the Excelsior's transporter took him, and I headed down the block to where I'd left the flitter.
As I opened the flitter door, something stirred behind me, and I spun to see a mass of shadows detach themselves from the night and take on the form of a hooded figure. "Who's there?"
"I." She lowered the hood. The moonlight sheeted off the planes of her face like water, picked out the sweep of a brow, the delicate point of an ear.
"Commander." My heartbeat sounded in my ears, loud and fast. "You startled me."
"My apologies, Doctor Chapel. I wondered if I might have a word with you."
I laughed, once. She raised a brow in query but I didn't explain. Every conversation I'd had with this woman-- all two of them-- had been bizarre from start to finish; why should I have expected that to change? I opened the passenger door and removed my new book from the seat. "Sit down, Commander."
She hesitated very briefly, and then sat, not even asking whether we were going anywhere. Evidently, I was not a threat. I had a sudden wild impulse to lift the flitter and crash it into the Iowa River, kidnap the Commander for ransom, anything to prove myself dangerous. But the thought passed, as of course she'd known it would. Damn. I felt completely transparent to her.
I didn't start the flitter. "Well, Commander?"
She met my gaze levelly. "Doctor, this may be a rather long conversation. Perhaps this is not the most comfortable place for it. The night has become rather chill." She folded her hands on her knee, small hands, well-shaped.
I was the first to look away. "Fine, then. It's a pity it's so late; I think the Java House closed ten minutes ago." I powered up the flitter and locked it into the grid. "Home."
It was only a four-minute flit. I have a small house in University Heights, on the west side of the river, not far from the med school. "How did you find me?"
"You made the arrangements to meet your shipmates here quite publicly, Doctor. My hearing is rather better then humans tend to assume."
I almost asked her how long she'd been waiting, but I decided I really didn't want to know.
We landed and went inside. The Commander made no move to take off her cloak and I didn't offer to take it. "Sit down, Commander; make yourself at home." She took my armchair. I perched on the edge of the couch, elbows on my knees. "Now, Commander, maybe you'll tell me what this is all about."
She took Le Morte D'Arthur from the coffee table where I'd set it, flipped through it, set it down. "Will you tell me about Spock and Captain Kirk?"
I was taken aback. "Tell you..."
"About how they came together, about their lives. I saw..." She spread her fingers. "What I saw in the meld with Spock, it was... fragmentary. I know details, some very specific. I don't know how to sew them together. It's difficult, having memories that aren't mine, that I can't integrate. I'm not a trained esper. If I knew more, if I had a story to organize it..."
Some lingering malice made me say, "Why don't you ask Spock?"
"What do you think I said to him today? I don't want to cause him pain, not after everything that I went through to save his life, but I've been living with this for a year. It's become rather disturbing." She ran a finger along the gilt edges of the Malory. "He tried to talk to me today. He couldn't. He said that he thought you might be willing to tell me what you know."
Oh, Spock. I shook my head. Did he even know how awkward a request this was, how hard I would find this? I remembered that clasp of his hand, outside the Sanctuary. Yes, of course he knew. And he knew that I still couldn't refuse him anything. Especially when he turned his... charisma... to full intensity.
"Let me take your cloak, Commander," I said. "And let me make some coffee; I have a feeling this is going to be a long conversation."
"Maybe you should start by just telling me what you remember. Anything you think you can place." I settled back onto the couch with my coffee.
"Placement, Doctor Chapel, is precisely my difficulty." She thought for a moment. "I remember Captain Kirk throwing back at Spock words he had spoken to me, when we first met: 'It is not a lie to keep the truth to one's self.'"
"How old is he?"
"Young. Just as he was during our first encounter." She warmed her hands on her own mug, but did not drink.
"Throwing the words back," I repeated. "Challenging him?"
"I... yes. Yes. Challenging him to speak some unspoken truth."
"And did he? Speak that truth?"
"I don't..." She stared at the rug for a moment, then shook her head. "There is a great upwelling of emotion. Every memory I have seems to lead into what comes next. It's too strong, too much to get a hold of without some structure for it." She met my eyes. "This is why I need your help, Doctor. I need the story that will let me make sense of this." She took a sip of her coffee, grimaced slightly without seeming to notice. "Tell me how they first came together."
I didn't know where to begin; my own version of that story was probably less complete than hers. "It was late in our first mission. After an encounter with the Tholians." I frowned, thinking. "It only just occurred to me, I know that something changed for them then, but I don't know if they first shared their bodies then, or spoke their hearts, or maybe something else entirely."
"Perhaps we'll find out." She set down the mug and folded her hands. "What happened, with the Tholians?"
"A skirmish. While we were investigating the loss of a starship." I remembered Chekov, screaming himself hoarse in the sickbay. "Space was unstable, there. The crew were being driven insane, one by one. The captain was lost, for a while, in a different universe."
She sat up very straight. "And did Spock declare him dead?"
"Yes, he did. Do you have memories of it?"
"Bits and pieces." Her eyes focused on nothing. "I remember the bridge. McCoy is there. Lying. Lying to the captain."
"About Kirk's last orders." I tried to remember what Leonard had told me. "He told Kirk they'd never watched them, and Spock went along with it. I don't know whether Kirk believed them or not."
"No, he didn't." She spoke with certainty.
"What do you remember?"
"Kirk asked Spock... later, Kirk asked him why he was so pensive. He said, 'I hope you're not racked with guilt over trying to deceive me.' His tone was light-- jovial-- but those words burned in Spock's memory."
That didn't quite mesh with what Leonard had told me. "I thought Spock knew, that the deception was a joke."
"And Kirk knew it too, he told Spock he didn't mind him 'pulling his leg.' Spock said he knew, that it wasn't that. And Kirk asked, then what?"
"And what did Spock say?"
The Commander's words had come fast and sure, but now they slowed, her voice becoming distant. "'I declared you dead.' Kirk doesn't understand, he says 'I wish you hadn't had to, but you couldn't have known.' But he knew. Spock knew, that he was alive, in the other universe."
"Did he tell the captain that?" The story was drawing me in, irresistibly; and the Commander now seemed unaware of anything except my voice.
"Yes, he does. And Kirk smiles. Even though Spock has just admitted this terrible knowledge, Kirk smiles at him." And in the captain's cadences, she said, "'Intuition, Spock?'" Then her voice changed timbre again, and I heard Spock's memories speaking through her. "'Certainty, Captain.'"
I dared not ask anything now, fearful of breaking the spell of memory that held her. "'I knew that you were alive, running out of air, and time, but still alive. I allowed the doctor to convince me to say otherwise in the hope that I might so convince myself. So that if I could not recover you before your oxygen ran out, or if I were forced to leave without making the attempt...'"
She trailed off, swallowed, as he did when fighting strong emotions. "'I could not abandon you, Jim, knowing you were still alive.' Ah, I cannot meet his eyes." The last words caught me by surprise; was I to hear all Spock's thoughts, even those never spoken? I was suddenly angry at Spock, for asking me to hear, now, in such a way, confidences that he had never, in all the years of our friendship, deigned to share with me. But I couldn't stay angry after hearing the next words, spoken in a voice still like his, but quiet and bleak. "'I do not know which offense deserves your anger the more: that I put your ship and crew at unjustifiable risk for your sake, or that I tried, with the full strength of my will, to force myself to leave you to die.'
"I must see his face, I must know-- Ah, Jim, you do not judge me?" she said, her eyes widening, as I'd seen his do, many times, when he looked at the captain. I might as well not have been there. "'Spock. I'm the last person who has the right to be angry at you for taking risks. I've certainly taken my share, for your sake. And as for the other...' Always, that lock of hair will fall across his eyes; I long to brush it aside. 'Spock, I've even less of a right to be angry at you for that.' If he will forgive me even this, then perhaps-- no, I cannot. 'Just promise me one thing, Spock.'
"What could I ever deny this man? I shall promise him anything. 'If you ever do have to make that choice--' no, never, it must never come to that-- 'and I know, that if the situation were truly that dire, you could, and would, make the logical decision--' Jim, it is too late for that, logic does not avail me where you are concerned-- 'promise me, that you won't spend the rest of your life reproaching yourself for it."
I was rapt, following her monologue. Dialog? Certainly, there were no more than two voices speaking; the Commander herself was lost in the memories.
"'Jim... I give my word.' How I will keep it, I do not know. I will make sure I need never find out. The light of the firepot gilds his hair as he paces. 'The hardest thing about thinking I might die was worrying you'd punish yourself for it.' I would not need to, t'hy'la. To have abandoned you would be punishment enough for six lifetimes. 'How did you know, Spock?'
"I can only say his name. 'Jim?'
"'That I was still alive? If it wasn't intuition, then how?'
"I cannot lie to him again. I cannot keep this from him any longer. 'I sensed your thoughts.' He becomes so still, he is waiting. 'It seems that there is a mental link between us.' There, I have said it. I have said it.
"'What sort of... link?'
"Not the sort I most desire, t'hy'la. 'Not one that could permit any true communication. A sympathy, no more.'
"His body is like a spring released, he paces again. He is turning to causes, reasons. 'From our recent mind-melds?'
"'Strengthened by them, no doubt. But I believe that it must have begun forming some time ago.' There is no help for it, his eyes will not release me until I speak of it. 'Perhaps during...during the Challenge.'
"He is angry, as I knew he would be. 'Spock. That was more than a year ago. Why didn't you tell me about this, if you knew?'"
I could well imagine why. A mental link of that sort would have been a small comfort, but almost enough. A sop to his passions. Some part of the beloved that was his alone, always. It would gall him, reminding him how much more they could have, if he would risk it-- but the link itself might well seem too dear a thing to risk.
The Commander's voice was growing hoarse, whether from her own exertions, or remembering Spock's difficulty in saying the next words, I didn't know. "'If it had been only this, I would have.' But it has never been only that; since I have known him there has been more. 'Jim, your initial assessment of my mental state was quite correct.'
"That has startled him; I cannot withstand his eyes. 'That you were guilty about deceiving me? Spock, have you been lying to me?'
"'No, Captain.'
"'But..."it is not a lie, to keep the truth to one's self."'"
I sat up straight, recognizing the first words the Commander had offered from Spock's memories. She continued, oblivious.
"'What--truth--have you kept to yourself, Mr. Spock?'
"I must answer. I must tell him. Even if Jim accepts me, what I offer, it will be fraught with difficulty. How can I serve with this man, watch him risk himself, if we are Bonded? But how could I lie with him, and not give in to the desire to Bond us? Jim waits. I must speak.
"'For a long time I did not realize it myself. Only after-- after the pon farr--'" the Commander swallows-- "'did I come to understand my-- feelings. But they had been present long before.'
"I cannot read Jim's eyes. His mind, the same. 'What-- feelings? Spock?'
"I am lost. Whatever happens now, my life is changed, irrevocably, from this moment. Jim's skin is smooth and cool. Wonder in his mind, and-- hope? Can it be? 'Desire.' I cannot content myself with this touch, I must have more. 'Longing.' His lips are soft, they yield to mine.
"'Spock. For me, Spock?' And now he is kissing me, ah, this touch will consume me, it is too much, I cannot breathe. 'Love.' I hide my face against his neck, I will fly apart from these emotions, and he knows it, he holds me, tightly, my name on his lips, over and again, ah Jim, t'hy'la, t'hy'la!"
She gave a sound like a sob and fell back into the armchair. "Commander!" Her pulse was racing, her pupils dilated wide. "Commander, are you all right?"
She stared at me for a moment before she recognized me. "Doctor Chapel. Forgive me. The emotional content of the memories is... somewhat intense, for one not trained in the Vulcan disciplines." She shook my hand off her wrist and sat up, took a drink of the now-cold coffee. "That's become vile. Was I speaking?"
"A running commentary. I never knew how it happened, between them."
"I hadn't either. Those memories... I'd had them, a sentence here, a glance there. They didn't connect until I had some way in to the whole experience." She was still breathing hard, her face slightly flushed. She laid her hand on my arm, very lightly. "Doctor. Now that you know what's going to be involved, are you willing to continue? I fear the memories will not become less intense."
I laid my hand over hers. "Don't worry about me. Are you ready to go on?"
"Yes. Yes, I believe so." She toed her low shoes off and curled her feet under her in the armchair; I settled back onto the couch. "I have a very curious and very vivid fragment of memory involving you, Doctor Chapel. And a bowl of soup." She grinned wickedly. "What can you tell me about that incident?"
"I'm just realizing how little I know the man." It was nearly dawn; we were sitting in my kitchen now, the coffeepot between us. "I'd thought we'd come to be friends over the years, but there's so much of him I've never seen."
"On the contrary, Doctor, I would say you know him quite well. Or at least, you understand him." The Commander had scarcely touched the coffee, but was still wide awake, her eyes still bright and quick-changing.
"What's the difference?" I hated to imagine what my eyes looked like, after as much coffee as I'd drunk and as long as I'd been awake.
"You are like him. You think much the way he does. You do not need to know every detail of his life to understand why he does a certain thing, makes a certain choice. You know how his mind works."
"I've got most his flaws, that's true." I drained my mug, refilled it. There was only half a cup left and that was cold. "You're the one who has his strengths, as far as I can see. You have his conviction."
"You mean his stubbornness." She laughed. "I think he has my temper, though, and I'm sorry for him if he does." The rose-colored light from the east window played over her face. "But you, Doctor, share his intellect. I've listened to you try to reason through these memories of his all night; you clearly have an exceptionally analytic mind. I envy you that."
"But you're the one who's made all the great leaps. You have his intuition, which he does have, and it's pretty impressive." I frowned; that hadn't made a lot of sense.
"Perhaps, but I do not have your rigor in following through on those intuitions. You are the one who shares his focus, Doctor."
My shadow fell across her face, suddenly black; the sun had risen behind me. "That's the one trait of his I've always most wished I had."
"Believe me in this, Doctor Chapel, you do." She tilted her head, and I could see her face again, bathed in gold light. Her eyes hooded, so much like his. Two small suns burned under her upswept brows.
"My name is Christine." I remembered saying that to him, the same words, the same inflection.
"I have a first name too," she said. "Would you like to hear it?" She moved around the table to stand behind me, and spoke it into my ear.
"That's beautiful," I said, and then gasped, as her fingers traced the line of my skull, in searing, fever-heat. The sun's light was hotter every place she had touched.
"I believe I owe you an apology, Christine." My skin was transparent to the sunlight, it poured into my veins in her fingers' wake.
"For what?" I whispered, perfectly still.
"For the first time we ever spoke. I was angry at Spock. I took that out on you." Now her other hand had snaked under my hair, was cupping the back of my skull. "It was too demeaning to think that it had all been pretense. I had to prove to myself that my own... charm... was not lacking. That I could make a stranger desire me." She pulled away; the sun's light fell cold and watery where the heat of her hands had been. "I had no right to touch you so, then."
A small shiver raced across my skin. "And now?"
She looked down at me, eyes unreadable. "One trait I had thought you shared with Spock-- neither of you has a strong preference for women."
Yellow light slanted across the point of one ear, the plane of her cheek, making a mask of her face. "One trait I do share with Spock-- we're both quite adaptable."
She took my face in both her hands, the heat of it making me gasp. "Understand this, Christine. I am not he, no more than you are. If we are to do this, it will be as you and I. If you do not want me as myself, I will have none of this."
I stood up, slowly, took her chin in my hand, and turned her head until the sun was lighting every contour, every hollow of her face; she could have shaken my hand off in an instant, but she was calm, her skin warm under my touch. "I know you aren't him." I traced the line of her brow. "You are still a stranger to me-- even knowing your name doesn't change that." I leaned in and kissed her, very lightly, on the cheek. "I would like that to change."
She smiled, very slowly. "I believe I may have underestimated you." She brought her hands to my temples, cupped my skull, and slowly carded her fingers out through my hair. She repeated the caress, once, and then again, twining and knotting with her hands, and I leaned in to kiss her mouth. She allowed the touch but did not return it-- Vulcans, I knew, did not generally kiss, and it would seem Romulans did not either. But her skin under my lips was too compelling to draw away; I left her mouth, but kissed and gently licked at her jaw and down her throat. Her skin was dry, but as smooth and close-grained as fine linen paper, hot under my tongue and lips. I found the pulse point below her ear, licked it experimentally, and felt her hands tighten in my hair. I did it again and was rewarded with a faint sound, so deep in her throat I would not have heard it if my ear had been any farther from her larynx. I lapped at the spot, her pulse racing vulcanoid-fast under my tongue, her faint taste, sweet-sour, cidery, growing stronger.
I felt a touch under my own ear then, almost imperceptibly faint. It was repeated, a light, circling touch, and I pulled away a little. Her hands were still full of my hair, now grown warm from their heat, brushing it across my skin. She switched the lock against the back of my neck, and I gasped. She smiled very widely at that. "You are ticklish, Christine?" Again, even slower, that distant touch at my nape, and I couldn't help squirming into her embrace.
And then we were pressing close together, touching everywhere we could reach. Her hands had gotten under my blouse somehow, and were circling my back, my shoulders, branding me, setting all my nerves alight. I took the tip of one ear into my mouth. I'd intended to take this slowly, to learn her body as thoroughly as she would allow, but my resolve was melted under the heat of her hands. I could only lean into her caress like a cat as she released the seam of my blouse, then unfastened my bra and dropped it to the floor as well.
"Mmm. Bed. Upstairs." Her hands were under the waistband of my trousers now.
"Most inconvenient." She ran her hands up my sides, just brushing my aching nipples. "It hardly seems worth the bother." Her hands moved lightly along my neck, and I dropped my head back, stretching my throat to her touch.
"You may come of that longeval vulcanoid stock," I managed to say "but I'm too old to do this on the floor."
She laughed, redoubling her caresses. "I wonder just what it takes to rob you of your vocabulary, dear professor. 'Longeval'-- she raked her nails up my back-- "indeed."
With that my knees gave way, and I grasped her shoulders tightly. She pulled me to my feet. "I thought you preferred the comfort of a bed. Lead the way."
We somehow got to the top of the stairs and through the bedroom door without incident, but when we reached the bed--still unmade, some part of me noticed-- we collapsed onto it in a tangle of arms and legs. She peeled my trousers off in one swift motion, like shucking corn, and my underpants and socks quickly joined them on the floor. Then she was straddling me, drawing circles over my belly and thighs, lines up over my breasts and down my arms. My skin was covered now with a thin film of sweat; it seemed to conduct the heat of her touch deep into my flesh. "You're still dressed," I gasped. "That's not right."
She shifted her hips, and the wool of her trousers was an unbearably powerful stimulus against the skin of my thighs. "Would you like me to do something about that?" She drew off the charcoal-colored tunic, the white camisole she wore underneath. I ran my hands over her hips, searching for the fastening of the trousers. She unsealed the seams, rose to her knees, and let me pull trousers and underwear down over her thighs. I drew a hand down her belly, to the triangle of dark, straight hair. She parted her thighs, let me explore the center of that intense heat for a moment, before she kicked off the trousers with a groan and leaned down onto her elbows, bringing her naked skin against mine.
The heat of that contact overwhelmed me; I writhed under her hands, bringing my hips up into her caress as she parted my legs. And then there was nothing else in the world but that searing touch at my center. My clitoris was the center of a spider's web of slowly tightening cords, drawing my nipples taut, pulling at my belly from within, making my back arch and my hand on her shoulder grasp at nothing as I came. She didn't stop, and the second orgasm was even more powerful than the first. When I could breathe again I took her hand in mine, brought it to my lips, licked my own taste from her fingers. Her throaty laugh turned into a moan as I drew first one finger, than the next, deeper into my mouth, suckling them, licking at the joints, at the webbing of her thumb, at the lines of her palm.
"Such sensitive hands," I murmured against her wrist. She began stroking my shoulder again with the other hand, but after stretching luxuriously into that touch, I rolled over, pinning her beneath me; I felt her struggle briefly, but she seemed reluctant to use her full strength against me, and lay still. "My turn." I leaned in to lick again at the base of her ear. "Every time," I said, punctuating my words with kisses to that rapid pulse, "I get you. To react. You. Have to go. And touch me. With those beautiful hands. And drive. Me. Wild." I clasped her hands in mine, lacing our fingers tight. "So now it's my turn." I brought my lips to the point of her ear, suckled it, then did the same for the other ear, tracing its curves, nipping at the lobe. "Why do you think you should get all the fun?" I anointed the nerve bundle at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and felt her hands writhe in mine. "Do you think you're the only one," my lips found one bronze nipple, "who likes to see a perfect composure," I squeezed her hands, "shattered?"
She tensed beneath me for a moment, then, but I continued my attentions to her nipples, and she threw back her head. "Not for a moment." By the time I abandoned her breasts and moved to lap at her navel, to trace hieroglyphs over her belly, there was a sheen of sweat on her skin, more sweet than salty, intoxicating. I kept my hands twined with hers, moving down her body with my mouth, following the heat to its source.
Her folds were slick, engorged with blood and flushed a deep bronze-green. Not salty, either, this taste, but sour-sweet and pungent: suddenly I remembered the apricot/poppy seed/cider vinegar smell of my Austrian grandmother's kitchen on a holiday, and laughed at the juxtaposition of images, but my breath huffing against her thigh made her moan. I blew my cool breath against her warm skin, watching the short dark hairs tremble, and she writhed and squeezed my hands painfully hard. I began to use my mouth in earnest, then, suckling her erect green clitoris, thrusting my tongue deep inside her, remembering everything I'd ever enjoyed having done to me. Her taste and scent grew stronger, her hands began to press mine rhythmically, and then locked, her nails biting into the backs of my knuckles. I lifted my head to see her face contorted in pleasure, a bead of sweat running down the taut cord of her neck to lie in the hollow of her throat.
I lay down beside her. The sun had climbed past the neighbor's roof, and light fell in gold parallelograms across the bed. I spoke her name into her ear, just to hear it again.
"Christine." She brought my hands up to examine the marks she had made. "I regret that I seem to have injured you." In truth, she didn't sound the least bit regretful.
"It was worth it, seeing you let go like that. You're so beautiful," I said, and she was, lying in my bed, a box of clear morning light across her legs, another across her shoulders, her skin fairly glowing, green-bronze.
For a moment she just lay still, basking. "Mmm." She said. "Your skin changes color so dramatically. To watch you blush red is like watching fruit ripen all in an instant."
And I felt myself blushing all over again, hearing that. I'd been expecting her say, 'So are you.' The specificity of her remark, fanciful but precise, made it seem a much greater compliment. And made me think that, whatever game we were playing, she'd just won this round. But I didn't much care.
I yawned. "Do you have to be anywhere anytime soon?"
She raised herself on an elbow. "Have I overstayed my welcome? You need not resort to hints, if that is the case."
I pulled her back down beside me. "I do not need to be anywhere at all today. I just want to know whether you'll be here when I wake up."
She blinked, looked away, and I realized that she hadn't intended to be. But as I opened my mouth to tell her it was all right, she didn't have to stay, she laid two fingers on my lips. "I can be. If you want."
I kissed her fingers. "I do want."
She molded her body to mine, and pulled the coverlet over us. "Though I should warn you, I've been known to snore."
"Then it's a good thing you wore me out as thoroughly as you did," I said, and fell asleep to the sound of her laughter.
I woke to the touch of the Commander's fingers in my hair. She sat cross-legged on the bed beside me, half-dressed in her trousers and camisole. I had some vague memory of waking to the sound of the shower running.
"I don't suppose there's a chance that 'Good morning' is still applicable?"
"I'm afraid not." She squeezed my shoulder. "I'm sorry to wake you, but it seemed the only way to keep my promise. I must go."
"It's all right. I shouldn't sleep any longer anyway, or I won't sleep tonight." Her eyes were unreadable. I touched her hand, then got up and shrugged into my bathrobe, not knowing what else to say-- I realized that I really hadn't expected her to be here when I woke. That she had stayed touched me, but didn't clarify things for me. She put on her tunic and socks.
"Christine. We spoke last night about focus."
Whatever I'd expected her to say, it wasn't that. "Yes?"
She closed the distance between us and took one of my hands in hers. "I am a touch-telepath, though I don't pick up much from non-espers. I could see enough, though, that first time I touched you on the Enterprise, to know that the warmth of my hands filled your mind with thoughts of Spock." She lay her other hand along the side of my face. "Last night, or rather this morning, I saw myself in your mind. No one else. Just myself, and you, through an intensity of concentration that is quite rare. Believe me, Christine, you do possess remarkable focus."
"Thank you," I said, though it seemed an inadequate answer. I turned my head to kiss her palm. "For everything." She didn't answer, just looked at me intently; it flustered me a little. "If you can wait for me to throw on some clothes, I can drive you to the transport terminal."
"No need; it will be a pleasant walk, with the sun out." We went downstairs. She put on her shoes. We stood just inside the door staring at each other for a long moment. To my surprise, she was the first to look away, though after a brief glance at the wall behind my head she met my gaze again. "I know you had not intended any of this."
"No, I hadn't. It came as quite a surprise." I smiled. "But a very pleasant one." Now it was my turn to glance away. "I know you had not intended to stay here long enough to have this conversation."
"I had not." I heard her inhale sharply. "But I have few enough friends on this world that I cannot afford to discard one, merely because I was rash enough to seduce her." At that I looked up, knowing surprise was showing on my face. Would this woman always confound my expectations?
I suddenly wanted very much to have the chance to find out. "You have a friend," I said. "And though I understand if you don't want to risk it, I don't think another seduction would change that."
She didn't smile, but it would have been redundant; her eyes glowed. "I have never been one to shy away from risks, Doctor." I kissed her cheek, she touched mine, and then she was outside in the sun, not looking back, but walking as though she knew my eyes were following her.
After she turned the corner I went up to the bathroom and examined my hands. The marks of her nails were minor and already beginning to heal; there was no need to regenerate the skin. No one had proven a link between carcinoma and excessive dermal regenerator use, but the evidence warranted caution, at least. Though I suspected that if she had been gone when I'd awakened, I would have erased the tiny wounds and consequences be damned. I turned on the shower, and had barely gotten the temperature adjusted for a non-vulcanoid's comfort when the doorbell rang. Swearing and re-tying my robe, I went back downstairs to answer it.
"Leonard, hi, I wasn't expecting to see you..."
"Obviously not." He grinned. "I was worried it might be too late to take you to lunch, but it seems like I had nothing to worry about."
I grinned back; the thought of food made me realize I was starving. "I would love to go to lunch with you, Leonard. Just give me a few minutes to get ready." The door fell shut, and I gestured absently at the living room. "Make yourself at home."
I was already back in the shower when I remembered my blouse and bra, abandoned somewhere between the couch and the kitchen door. And remembered that Leonard tends to take 'make yourself at home' rather literally. Damn. I made a half-hearted effort to stop giggling, but after a moment gave up, leaned my head on my arm, and let the laughter flow. I never had been able to keep a secret from the man anyway.
When I reappeared downstairs, Leonard was settled on the couch with a strange expression on his face. "Christine, do you know who I ran into on the way here?"
"I've no idea."
He gave me a look that said, liar. "The Romulan Commander. You know, you never did tell me what you and she talked about at the bookstore yesterday."
"No, I never did. Where do you want to have lunch? I could take you to Givanni's, my treat." I opened the door. "After you."
"Christine." He took hold of my biceps and studied my face. "You're blushing."
"Well, I'm told it can be quite fetching. Do you mind walking? It's too nice a day to flit."
"Christine," he said again, as I locked the door. "Is there anything going on you want to tell me about?" I had opened my mouth to say, no, not that I want to tell you about, but his look of concern made me close it again. "Chris?"
I took his arm. "Actually, I might like to talk about it--"
"--So, talk."
"...in time, Doctor." We walked out into the day, and I stood there for a moment, face turned to the sky, feeling the sun's warmth seep into my veins and diffuse all through my body. "All in good time."