Summary: AU. The year is 2052. For over a decade, a group of Anglo-American elitists known as the Enforcers have controlled most of the English-speaking world, trying to stamp out anyone different. Mankind's only hope is in the warp-capable starship recently invented and kept quiet. But can a group of rebels living in a basement build a starship, unlock the secrets of the galaxy, and save Earth from corruption and destruction? Rated for disturbing elements including torture and racism.
Categories: Original Series, Alternate Universes Characters: Ensemble Cast - TOS
Genre: Alternate Universe
Warnings: Violence
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 13 Completed: No
Word count: 28436 Read: 45661
Published: 01 Jul 2009 Updated: 09 Feb 2011
1. Part One, Chapter One by Firefly
2. Part One, Chapter Two by Firefly
3. Part One, Chapter Three by Firefly
4. Part Two, Chapter One by Firefly
5. Part Two, Chapter Two by Firefly
6. Part Two, Chapter Three by Firefly
7. Part Two, Chapter Four by Firefly
8. Part Two, Chapter Five by Firefly
9. Part Two, Chapter Six by Firefly
10. Part Two, Chapter Seven by Firefly
11. Part Two, Chapter Eight by Firefly
12. Part Two, Chapter Nine by Firefly
13. Part Two, Chapter Ten by Firefly
Part One, Chapter One by Firefly
February, Year 16 of the Anglo-American Alliance
The wide brim of a straw hat concealed the face of the tall man who stole through the shadows like a ghost, keeping close to the brick walls of the narrow back alley. The night was quiet and still, the small town seemingly deserted. But safe as it seemed, the man was not willing to take any chances. Though he wore hard-soled shoes and though the ground was scattered with broken glass and debris, his footsteps made no sound, nor, though he was moving quickly, did his breathing.
The alley connected with two others, and at the corner the man stopped, pressing himself flat against the wall as he waited. He did not wait long. Before a minute was up, four short knocks sounded on the wall.
The man answered with three of his own, then stepped out into the half-light provided by the bright moon. Another figure also detached itself from the shadows; his companion had arrived as silently as he himself. Good.
“Is it safe?” asked a woman’s low-pitched voice.
“It is safe,” the man replied, his own voice soft and husky. “You learn quickly, Number One.”
The woman moved closer. She was very nearly as tall as him, and around the same age, but the light of the moon picked up premature strands of silver in her long, dark hair.
“I brought it,” she said in that curious low voice. “What you asked for. I didn’t have the money, so I had to steal it.” She scowled. “I don’t like stealing.”
“We don’t much,” Pike said, “don’t worry. But personally, I don’t feel many qualms about stealing from these inhuman Enforcers.”
Number One’s dark eyebrows shot up, but her expression otherwise remained the same. “They seem human enough. All this devastation is very human.”
The man, Pike, stepped closer and put his hands on either side of her waist, leaning in. “I’m human,” he said. “And you’re human too “ and sooner or later you’re going to remember it.”
She gave him a cold glare, then put both hands on his chest and pushed, sending him reeling. The slender woman was much stronger than she looked. “I’m not interested, Pike,” she said.
He shrugged, smiling affably. Maybe she wasn’t “ not yet.
“So let’s see the goods,” Pike said, leaning against the wall. Reaching inside her dark cloak, the woman brought out a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough twine. As he took it from her, he noted that it was heavy and that the contents felt hard and lumpy. Grinning, he unwrapped the package and took out two gorgeous necklaces, both studded with diamonds the size of coins. His grin broadened as he clapped Number One on the shoulder a bit harder than necessary.
“Hey! Good work.”
She did not smile or even bat an eye at his praise. Her voice soft and clipped, she said, “What about your side of the bargain, Pike? Do you plan on holding that up?”
He put an arm around her shoulders, squeezed. “Of course I do, sweetheart! Just come right this way.”
She extricated herself from his grip and followed two paces behind him as he again slipped through the shadows, moving quickly and silently. Number One was just as proficient as the man was at the time-honored art of sneaking around, and the two made a good pace through the deserted back alleyways. Pike was pleased more than he could say to have found such an excellent thief for his little project.
Pike barely looked around as he went, so familiar was he with the area. However, he occasionally glanced back to check that Number One was still following him; it was like being followed by a ghost. But she was always there, her hair swishing around her shoulders, her eyes hard and cold.
He stopped suddenly outside a small set of steps that led up to a back door. An overflowing trash bin stood next to the rusted railing, and some of its former contents lay scattered across the roughly-paved ground. Pike took the steps two at a time, Number One following.
“You live here?” she asked softly. “But it looks so normal!”
“And I don’t?” he said in mock affront. He rummaged in the pocket of his trousers for a key, then he unlocked the faded, peeling door and pushed it open.
He held the door for Number One, who stepped inside, peering around. Once the door was safely closed and locked, he flicked on the electric light and blinked in the sudden brightness. His companion, however, seemed unperturbed; she looked around the cellar, her eyes flicking over the furnace, the dusty old piano, the writing desk with its neatly piled papers, the three large trunks, and the large, lumpy object covered with a plaid blanket.
“What is this place?” she asked quietly, unfastening her cloak and draping it over her arm. For a moment Pike was more interested in looking at her than answering her question “ she was wearing a very pretty if very simple blue dress with a rather low-cut neck. But then he cleared his throat and gestured around.
“Welcome to the 21st Street Mission,” he said cheerily. “This place has been around for decades. Now I rent it.”
“Rent it? With what money?”
“Sharp as a tack, aren’t you, Number One? I help out here, and the lovely Mrs. Keeler gives me leave to do whatever I please in her basement, so long as I take out the trash and keep the furnace running in winter.”
The woman looked around, her eyebrows meeting. “But there is nowhere to sleep “ “
“Ah, that’s what you think,” Pike said, taking her elbow and guiding her over to the wall, which was covered with a large and ancient tapestry. Or at least, that was how it looked. He pushed aside the tapestry, and they entered another section of the basement.
She looked back at the room they had just left, then into this one. A tiny smile touched her lips. “It is larger than it seems at first,” she said.
“You have a firm grasp of the obvious.”
The small side room was filled with cots and piles and heaps of blankets. Two young men and a young woman sat in the center of all this, playing cards and arguing fiercely in hushed voices. When they noticed Pike and Number One, they stopped and looked up. Pike was watching Number One for her reaction to seeing a black girl and an Asian boy in the room, but again, she seemed totally unperturbed. That was good. There was no place for racism in his basement.
“Who’s she, sir?” asked the Asian. Pike smiled and stepped further into the room, letting the tapestry fall closed behind him.
“She’s new,” he said. “Her name’s Number One. Number One, Mr. Sulu, Mr. Scott, and Miss Uhura.”
“Trust her that much, do ye?” Scott muttered in his thick Scottish accent.
Pike clapped the thickset young man on the shoulder. “Scotty, Number One has brought us those diamonds you requested.”
Scott leaped up. “Ye did?” he demanded. “Good! Now at least we’ve a fightin’ chance!”
“A fighting chance to do what?” Number One asked.
“Sir!” the girl, Uhura, cried, her tone one of protest. “You didn’t tell her the plan?”
Pike shrugged, sitting down on a cot. “I picked her up outside the XP. She was desperate, so I offered her food and shelter if she’d get me some diamonds. Here’s the shelter, and Piper should be back soon with the food.” He took his straw hat off and tossed it neatly onto Sulu’s head. The four of them laughed, and Pike turned to Number One.
“Siddown.”
She did so, stiffly upright, and Pike repressed the urge to roll his eyes at her formality. He didn’t know much about the woman, only that she had been at the experimental facility for years. And although he wondered why “ she wasn’t a foreigner, that was for sure, and she had no obvious disabilities or differences “ he knew better than to ask. That sort of thing just wasn’t discussed.
To take his mind off the subject, Pike took out the brown paper parcel and passed it to Scott, who ripped it open eagerly. “Diamonds!” he murmured, his voice hushed, reverent. “Real diamonds! Sir, may I -- ?”
“No,” Pike said firmly. Scotty was a good kid, but he could be obsessively workaholic. “We’ll work on it tomorrow. It’s late.”
As a matter of fact, not only was the hour late, but the final member of their little group was late as well. Pike stood up and began to pace the empty space in the center of the room, his hands behind his back, glancing at the small clock they had up on the wall. “Where’s Piper?” he muttered at last. “He should have been back by now.”
“The “ the Enforcers couldn’t have captured him, sir?” Sulu ventured.
Pike shrugged. Dr. Mark Piper wasn’t the type to have been caught doing something illegal, and he wasn’t foreign. That said, the Enforcers seemed to be on the brink of passing a law against breathing. With a heavy sigh, Pike sat down again on his cot, folding his arms before him. He had to stop worrying.
There was a long silence, alleviated only by the ticking of the clock. After a moment, Uhura began to gather up the playing cards, straightening the haphazard heap into a neat pile. Number One looked from one face to the other, finally getting to her feet.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Mr. Sulu and Miss Uhura are obviously foreign. How do you live here? What did you need diamonds for? What’s all this about a fighting chance? Doesn’t your landlady know that she could be arrested for harboring foreigners? It’s not that I agree with the Enforcers; I just don’t understand.”
One by one, Scott, Sulu and Uhura looked at Pike, who sighed, trying to get more comfortable. “You’ll laugh,” he said.
“I do not laugh,” Number One stated coldly.
Pike believed her. “Okay, then. We’re trying to build a spaceship.”
“Not just any spaceship,” Scott added. “A starship. Faster-’n-light travel.”
Number One did not laugh. She said, “You are mad. Faster-than-light travel is a myth. A fairy tale.”
“It’s been done,” Sulu said.
“It was a hoax.”
“It’s been done!” Sulu repeated. “The man who did it is in a prison camp now, of course.”
Pike blinked as Number One rounded on him. “Feeding those lies to a bunch of teenagers?” she said coldly. “Giving them false hope?”
“They’re not teenagers, sweetheart,” he said. “And they’re not lies.”
“You actually believe “ ”
Pike held up a finger for silence. His head cocked, he heard a key turn in the lock, and then the door opened and closed. A moment later, the tapestry was pushed aside and a heavyset man dressed all in black entered, several large bundles in his arms.
“Piper,” Pike sighed, relieved. Then he turned to Number One. “Oh “ Number One, Dr. Mark Piper “ Doc, Number One. She’s new.”
“Fresh from the XP, eh?” Piper said, shifting the bundles to shake hands with the woman. “I’ll have to check for any residual toxins from the food. And congratulations on the escape, ma’am. We all know what it’s like in there.”
Was it Pike’s imagination, or did a shudder cross Number One’s pretty face?
“Heya, kids,” Piper said, dropping the packages on the floor and removing his hat and scarf. His careworn face broke out into a cheerful smile. “Supper.”
--
Number One sat on the edge of her cot, her head in her hands. This place, these people, were not what she had expected. For one thing, the men had insisted that she and Uhura sleep in the two cots, while they made use of the piles of blankets and sheets. Scott and Pike had even moved the cots to the other end of the room. And Dr. Piper had brought home a complete and healthy supper, though she didn’t want to think about how he had procured it.
Dressed in a castoff nightshirt far too big for her and listening to the snores of four men, Number One allowed her thoughts to drift to the “project”.
It was clear that every member of the little group believed whole-heartedly in the project. Scott had tried to explain to Piper over dinner how the first man to achieve faster-than-light travel, Zefram Cochrane, had used some kind of antimatter, channeled through a crystal. He was hoping he could achieve the same effect with magnets and diamonds. Number One had not listened closely to his theory, but whether or not it was accurate, the idea was still absurd. They lived in a basement. How did they expect to get the sheer amount of material necessary to build a craft “ any craft “ large enough to hold someone? And how did they expect to get it off the ground? Besides, there was a far more immediate concern “ the Enforcers.
Number One shuddered and lay back on her cot. She didn’t want to think about the Enforcers. Rolling over, she came face to face with Uhura, whose bright dark eyes were still open.
“Ma’am?” Uhura whispered shyly.
Number One nodded.
“I just wanted to tell you… it’ll be awfully nice to have another woman here.”
“You haven’t been hurt in any way?” Number One whispered suspiciously.
“Oh, no! Not since I came here.” Uhura lapsed into silence, turning away slightly.
Number One looked up at the ceiling. Perhaps there were worse places she could be. After all, she was comfortable and warm, and surrounded by people who hated the Enforcers.
She had long ago disassociated herself from the human race. But it was just possible that these people weren’t so bad.
Part One, Chapter Two by Firefly
Author's Notes:
Chapter two of my lovely story. Unfortunately, things are going to be pretty slow for a couple chapters until I finish introducing the characters... why does Star Trek have to have so many characters anyway?
May, Year 16 of the Anglo-American Alliance
It was Pike’s turn on XP duty.
He, Piper, Number One and Scotty were the only ones who could go outside during the day, and Scotty was on shaky ground because of his accent. Although Scotland was technically part of the UK, and the UK was part of the Anglo-American Alliance along with the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, these days anyone with an accent could be picked up.
The local Enforcers’ Experimental Facility, or XP, was located just a few blocks away from the 21st Street Mission. A squat, ugly gray building, it looked innocent enough, but although Pike had never set foot inside, he knew from the stories told by Sulu, Uhura and Piper what went on in there. Number One was closed-mouthed about the subject.
Piper was the most vehement of the three in his condemnation of the facility. The medical business was a rare one nowadays, and the Enforcers had been drafting doctors. Piper himself had been forced to work in the facility for five years, until he had grown old enough to retire.
Now, Pike lounged casually on a park bench, smoking a cigarette and pretending to enjoy the scenery. What he called XP duty was quite simply looking for newly escaped prisoners wandering the streets near the XP. There were actually a surprising number of people who managed to escape “ unfortunately, because they were easy to recognize, most of them were recaptured, which was what Pike was there to prevent. There were several safe places where they could be sent, and the precious few who displayed extraordinary intelligence and drive he took home with him to help with the project. Pike estimated that he had saved about fifty people so far “ not many, perhaps, compared to the thousands who still languished in the XP, but something.
Pike took a drag of his cigarette, tilting his head back and blowing smoke straight up into the air. Number One hated tobacco smoke, and so Pike no longer smoked in the basement of the 21st Street Mission. After three months of working with her, he was really growing to like Number One, despite her coldness and professed hatred of the human race. Certainly she was the most intelligent person he had ever met, and he wondered if her brilliance was what had landed her in the XP, since she was otherwise a normal American.
A cluster of off-duty Enforcers, still wearing their rust-colored uniform jackets tied around their waists, strolled by, and Pike stiffened automatically, eyeing the men. They were heading toward the nearby bar, paying no attention to passersby. He relaxed, letting out a whoosh of air and smoke, then stiffened again as he saw movement in a nearby bush.
Stubbing out his cigarette, Pike stood up casually and strolled over to the bush. The movement stopped. He paused for a moment, looked around to make sure there was no one looking, then swooped down quickly and grabbed an arm. Instantly he was pulled to the ground and pinned there behind the bush with a surprisingly strong grip.
He looked up into the face of the person who held him down. It was a young man, a knit cap pulled low on his head, his unlined face as smoothly expressionless as Number One’s.
Pike blinked and tried to free himself. He could not. The man held him down firmly. Instead, Pike occupied himself by studying the face that hovered inches above his own. Though it was hard to take in the whole picture from this angle, Pike thought that the boy might be Chinese or Spanish “ definitely foreign, ergo, definitely an escaped prisoner. He smiled as reassuring a smile as he could muster.
“If you’d let me up,” he whispered, “I’d like to help you.”
Slowly, the younger man pulled Pike into a sitting position, though he did not relax his grip. Pike rolled his neck around to ease a kink he had just acquired, then squinted at the young man’s face again, seeing that he had been wrong in his initial assumption about his race.
“A Jew, are you?” he asked softly.
Hesitantly, the young man nodded.
“For God’s sake, let me go. I’m not an Enforcer, and I’m not going to turn you over to them.”
The viselike grip relaxed slowly, and the young man sat back, his emotionless expression that again reminded Pike irresistibly of Number One’s remaining the same. For the first time, the young man spoke, his voice low and flat.
“What do you want with me?”
“I want to help you,” Pike whispered again. “You’ve escaped from the XP, obviously, and I hate to say it, but you don’t look Anglo-American. So I’d recommend you come with me into hiding.”
“Oh? And who are you that you would help me?”
“I’m a philanthropist “ and an American, a real one. This country was founded on principles of acceptance and freedom, and no so called Anglo-American Enforcers can change that.” He was still whispering, sitting behind a bush, and though the humor of the situation struck him, he kept his voice and face serious as he stuck out his hand. “Christopher Pike.”
The young man did not take the proffered hand. “Spock. How do I know you aren’t lying?”
“Son, you can’t hide behind a box hedge for the rest of your Earthly tenure.”
The man “ Spock “ inclined his head solemnly as if conceding a point. Pike fought the urge to laugh, raising his eyebrows as he stood up and began to stroll casually toward the place where the street met the alleyway. Spock followed him, keeping his head down, and no one spared them a glance.
“Interesting name,” Pike said as they entered the alley. “Spock. It doesn’t sound Jewish, or Anglo-American for that matter.”
“It’s not.”
“But “ ”
“I suppose I must have another name, but if I do I don’t know it,” Spock said unwillingly. “I’ve always been Spock. They never bothered to find out my real name in the facility.”
“Why?”
“Who knows why the Enforcers do anything?”
Pike grinned wryly. “That’s a point. This way.” He took Spock’s elbow and steered him around a corner, but the young man jerked out of Pike’s grasp. Aversion to touch, check; emotional withdrawal, check; enough desperation to go with a virtual stranger after exchanging only a few words, check. This kid had been through the mill.
“Excuse me, Mr. Pike,” Spock said after a moment. “But the name Christopher is forbidden, is it not?”
“Legally, I’m Roger,” Pike said, smiling slightly. This kid was sharp; hardly anyone caught the fact that he had a forbidden name when he mentioned it so casually. “But my mother always called me Chris, after my dad.”
“What happened to your father?”
Pike hesitated, then shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “Well, his legal name was Christopher, and when it became forbidden, he refused to change it.”
Spock nodded his understanding. “In the facility, there were several Anglo-Americans named Christopher and Christine or Christina, even a few named Christian. And two men “ best friends “ named Jesus and Mohammed. But they were Hispanic and Middle Eastern, respectively; they would have been in there no matter what their names.”
Pike looked down at Spock. “Best friends, you say?” He shook his head. “Even the ancient hatred between Christians and Muslims has broken down in face of the Enforcers. It’s a good thing “ but what a pity it only happened under such awful circumstances!”
Spock only nodded.
Again seeing the humorous side to discussing this with a boy he had barely met, Pike suppressed a smile and considered his options. He found himself inexplicably drawn to the young man, against all reason, and besides, it was still daytime “ too early to take Spock to any safe house but his own. He glanced sideways at Spock, who was looking straight ahead, providing Pike with an excellent profile view of his not unhandsome features. He had not yet shown any sign of brilliance or drive, but his physical strength at least would be an asset, and perhaps he would get along with Number One, who was just as emotionless as he seemed to be. Granted, a lot of people tended to be withdrawn just after escaping from the XP, but…
“Here we are, Spock,” Pike said at last, stopping outside his place. He ran up the steps, then unlocked the door and stepped inside.
As he had expected, the room was empty but for Uhura, Sulu and Piper, who were arguing yet again. Their project was covered by a cloth, for which Pike was grateful; it took some explaining. Spock glanced around, his eyes settling on the piano, then jerking back to the three occupants of the room.
Pike shut the door and locked it. “Doc, are you being insufferable?” he asked cheerily.
“No, Sulu and I are trying to explain to Uhura why magnets work better than chemicals.”
Pike raised his eyebrows. “Why’s that?”
“We actually have magnets,” Sulu said, rolling his eyes. Then he glanced at Spock. “Who’s your friend, sir?”
“Another?” Piper asked. “Two in three months, Chris?”
Pike shrugged. “I’ve been sending them all to Carrie Johnson and Jack Dewey lately. Besides, I like him.” He gestured to the three. “Hikaru Sulu, Nyota Uhura, Dr. Mark Piper “ meet Spock.”
“Just Spock?” Uhura asked. Spock nodded briefly.
Piper and Sulu smiled in welcome. “Take off your hat, kid,” Piper said. “I’m hot just looking at you.” It was, in fact, a hot day. The doctor reached over as if to yank off the knit cap, but Spock stepped back.
“No.”
“What is it, Mr. Spock?” Uhura asked in concern, stepping forward. Spock just shook his head.
Pike sighed mentally. Poor kid. He really had been through the mill. Crossing over to the tapestry, he pushed it back, letting Spock peer in. “We sleep in there,” he said. “There are six of us altogether “ seven counting you. Miss Uhura and Mr. Sulu, Dr. Piper, Montgomery Scott, and Number One.”
“Number One?” Spock asked, glancing sharply at Pike.
“If she’s got another name, I don’t know it.”
“No, I mean “ tall, dark hair, blue eyes. She… she would not show emotion.”
“That’s Number One. You know her? From the XP?”
“Yes,” Spock said shortly, and Pike let it go.
The other three had joined them, and Spock turned to face them. “It is most kind of you… all of you… to let me stay,” he said stiffly.
Pike grinned. “It’s our business.”
Part One, Chapter Three by Firefly
May, Year 16 of the Anglo-American Alliance
The rain lashed heavily against the windows of every building on 21st Street, providing a welcome respite from the many weeks of sweltering heat every inhabitant of the city had suffered through. Even that day had been hot and miserable, and now all of a sudden at five in the evening there was blessed rain.
Inside the 21st Street Mission, the usual clamor of homeless men eating, talking and laughing seemed louder than usual to the eighteen-year-old girl sitting curled up on a window seat in the empty social room, gazing out at the driving rain. Her hands were pressed flat against the glass as if she were subconsciously trying to escape through it, and her pretty face was drawn and troubled.
The sound of a few notes being picked out on a piano drifted up from the cellar and drew Edith Keeler out of her reverie. The music stopped abruptly, then changed into something by Beethoven… or perhaps Bach. She always got them confused; music, while not forbidden, was discouraged, and Edith was not exactly musical.
Edith moved away from the window and crept away. She opened the door at the top of the cellar stairs and went slowly down about halfway, then stood on a step, leaning against the wall, listening. Again the music stopped, and a man’s voice hissed, “Are you crazy, Mr. Spock? Do you want people to hear you?”
“Who would hear but your landlady?”
“Mission, Mr. Spock, mission. They provide help to the poor and homeless. Mrs. Keeler’s late husband’s family has been running this place for “ for a very long time.”
“And it has not yet been shut down by the Enforcers?”
“Not yet.”
Edith sighed. She and her mother lived in fear of their life, their mission, being shut down by the Enforcers. She also knew that her mother was harboring a man who helped escaped prisoners from the XP, Christopher Pike. Edith admired Pike, though she had only spoken to him twice and only saw him occasionally “ sweeping the floor, dusting bookshelves, making coffee. For one thing, he used a forbidden name, though it wasn’t his legal name. For another, he helped those in even more dire straits than the poor who came to the mission, inspiring Edith to help other people despite the constant danger.
Edith again focused on the muffled conversation. “You can play the piano on Sundays, when the mission’s closed “ unless Mrs. Keeler complains. But for now you could come help. We are trying to build “ “
“It will never work.”
“That’s what Number One said at first. It’s only your first day. You’ll come around.”
There was the sound of a hand clapping a shoulder, and then what sounded like the old piano bench being knocked over. “Sorry,” said Pike’s voice.
Edith stole back upstairs before anyone could miss her, thinking with sorrow about the men and women who were still trapped in the experimental facility. Helping them: that was what she wanted to do. She was sure of it.
“Let me help,” she whispered, and a small smile crept over her pretty face.
--
Amanda Grayson lay sprawled on her small bed, her limbs stretched out awkwardly and her tangled, graying brown hair fanning out to cover most of her back and arms. Her eyes shut, she breathed heavily for several seconds before a strong hand grabbed her arm and hauled her upright, spinning her around to face her interrogator.
“Admit it,” said the man, blowing his foul breath in her face. “You helped your son to escape.”
“No,” she gasped. “I didn’t know he was going to. I never “ “
He took her shoulders, shook her. “Spock is an inferior life-form, an animal! He did not have the intelligence necessary to escape from us! You must have helped him!”
She swept her hair out of her eyes, glaring at the man. “My son is a brilliant man.”
“He’s subhuman,” the only other Enforcer in the room said matter-of-factly, folding his arms across his chest. “A dangerous mutation. That’s why we discourage interbreeding between Anglo-Americans and foreigners; it results in deformed freaks.”
The Enforcer who held her threw her to the floor. “Tell us about your mate, treacherous swine. He was a foreigner, a Jew.”
“Y-yes.”
“His name?”
Amanda bit her lip, looking down. “My husband’s name was Sarek.”
The Enforcers looked at each other. “Sarek? That’s no kind of a name,” one said.
“Are you lying?” The other man seized Amanda and slammed her into the ground. “What was your mate’s name really? First and last!”
“My husband’s name was Sarek,” she repeated stubbornly. “You… could not pronounce the last.”
The Enforcer again put his face very close to Amanda’s. “Listen, traitor, he wasn’t your husband, because Anglo-Americans can’t marry foreigners. You could be sitting pretty in a little bungalow with your husband and kids right now if you’d just married a normal person.”
“I loved Sarek…”
“Oh, sure,” said the Enforcer in a tone of great disgust. “You make me sick, Grayson. But your mate’s name doesn’t matter “ only that he was a foreigner.”
The other Enforcer crossed over to Amanda and hauled her to her feet again. “Did Sarek have pointy ears and slanted eyebrows? Did Sarek bleed green?”
Amanda dropped her gaze. “Uh “ no.”
“The devil himself came to mock a union between you and a subhuman foreigner,” one of the Enforcers sneered. Amanda covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand there and bear it any longer, even with the limited mental techniques she had learned from her husband and had tried to teach to her son. It wasn’t even the physical discomfort so much as the fact that she was unable to help Spock, unable to stop this slander of her husband’s people. Spock was not a deformed half-foreigner, nor was he the devil, but she was sure it would have been worse if the Enforcers “ or indeed Spock himself “ knew the truth.
Dimly Amanda was aware of hands striking her, but she remained limp, her eyes half-lidded. There was nothing they could force from her, even if she had known anything. She was the wife of Sarek, whether or not he still lived, and that thought was enough to sustain her until the darkness clouded her vision and welcomed her into its soothing embrace. At last, Amanda gladly surrendered herself to the blissful peace of unconsciousness.
Part Two, Chapter One by Firefly
December, Year 19 of the Anglo-American Alliance
Three and a half years had passed in the small California town once named after a Catholic saint since a young man called Spock had escaped from the local experimental facility. The rain drubbed against the pavement on that late afternoon, the eve of the holiday once widely known as Christmas “ also, this year, the fifth day of Hanukkah. The whole week was now called “Winter Festival”.
But no Enforcers or laws could stop the many private, solemn religious ceremonies held around the country, several right there in the California town. Priests, ministers and rabbis who had been smart and lucky enough to keep a low profile held Masses and services in private homes, and those who hadn’t gathered their fellow prisoners in the XP together and led prayers.
The 21st Street Mission still stood, but no lights burned in the windows this evening, and every door was locked tight. Mrs. Mary Keeler and her twenty-one-year-old daughter Edith, returned from university for Winter Break, had removed themselves to the cellar to share Christmas with those of their “tenants” who were celebrating it at home. The Protestant Uhura and the agnostic Sulu could not go out anywhere, and the Methodist Dr. Piper had decided to stay and keep them company.
Scotty and Pike, however, had left to attend a Presbyterian service, and Kevin Riley and Janice Rand, the only new people to join their group for the past three years, had gone to a Catholic Mass. The fact that Janice was not religious hadn’t seemed to matter. The only two who had elected not to attend any service at all were Number One and Spock, who now walked down a side street together.
“Are you sure you don’t want to find some family to celebrate Hanukkah with?” Number One asked for the twelfth time.
“I do not celebrate Hanukkah.”
“You are Jewish.”
“I am Jewish by race. Or half-Jewish, rather. But I have told you many times that while logic suggests that there is indeed a God, to speculate on the specific nature of that God is not logical. You used to agree with me.”
“I do agree with you, Spock.” Number One lifted her face to the dark sky, allowing the rain to hit her squarely. “It’s just that it might be good for you to see more people.”
“I am constantly inundated with people, Number One. We are now nine people living in a cellar and attempting to build a warp-capable spaceship.” Spock shook his head, shoving his hands into the pockets of his thick coat. “What do we expect to find out there? Space aliens? A habitable planet?”
“You’re being very fatalistic, Spock. It’s Christmas.”
“And you are acting very illogically, Number One.” He glanced at her. “Do you remember my mother?”
“Amanda? Of course.”
“I am… concerned about her,” he admitted. “I have not been in contact with her in three years, and…” He exhaled heavily. “The XP…”
“I understand,” Number One said quietly. The XP was not a pleasant place, and Amanda Grayson was not young. But it was honestly easier to escape from the facility than to sneak in to rescue someone, illogical though that was.
Number One glanced at her wristwatch, illuminated by the weak light of a streetlamp and blurred by the water falling on it. “It’s quarter to eleven,” she said. “They said they’d patrol at eleven to make sure nobody’s having an illegal Christmas service, so they’ll start patrolling at ten to, to catch people. You’re not safe out here “ no one is.” She turned and started back down the road, turning onto 21st Street. Spock followed after a moment’s delay and jogged to catch up.
“Number One?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you embrace logic?”
She blinked up at him. “Because it’s something the human race needs more of. Why do you?”
“I don’t know,” Spock said. “I… I always have.” His dark eyes were narrowed, squinting, and he looked suddenly as though he were in pain. Number One stopped, laying a hand on his arm.
“Are you all right, Spock?”
He stepped away from her touch. “Yes.” Now it was his turn to stride purposefully up 21st Street, her turn to jog to catch up.
They slipped into the alley that ran behind the street, counting doors until they reached the mission. Spock unlocked the door and held it open for Number One, then entered after her and shut the door. Everyone else was already there.
“Thank God you’re here,” Pike said, stepping forward and almost unconsciously taking Number One’s wet hand. “We were just starting to worry. They said they would patrol at eleven, so they’ll start to patrol at 10:50.”
“We know,” Spock said, moving further into the room and dripping on the carpet. “Were your religious observances well-attended?”
“Very,” said Kevin Riley, who was sitting on the edge of the desk. “Seems everybody’s going to church now that there’s no church to go to.”
“People need hope,” Uhura said softly.
Mary Keeler stepped forward. “Well, Edith and I had better be going to bed. Thank you, everyone.”
“No, thank you,” Pike said at once, stepping forward. “Mrs. Keeler, Miss Edith, we can’t do much to repay you, but here’s a Christmas present from all of us.” He handed Mrs. Keeler a neat parcel wrapped in brown paper.
The two women glanced at each other, and Mrs. Keeler carefully opened the package. Inside was a copy of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, all three books in one large, hardbound volume.
“Mr. Pike!” Edith cried, and flung her arms around his neck. “This is a banned book! Fantasy is banned!”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you so much! I’ve always wanted to read Lord of the Rings!” She looked around. “Thank you all!”
“Thank you so much,” Mrs. Keeler said. “This was my favorite as a child. But how -- ?”
“Ask us no questions,” said Sulu, “and we’ll tell you no lies.”
“Merry Christmas,” Dr. Piper said sincerely.
Tears in their eyes, mother and daughter said their goodbyes and disappeared upstairs to their rooms. The remaining inhabitants of the cellar all sat down on whatever surfaces were available, wrapped in their own thoughts. Spock removed his customary knit cap and stuffed it in his coat pocket; by now, his companions were all used to the unusual physical deformity that made his ears pointed and his eyebrows oddly slanted and that had earned him the names of “freak”, “subhuman mutant”, and “devil’s child” in the XP. Also, for reasons no one could explain, his blood was green and his internal organs were arranged somewhat differently from most people’s. All Dr. Piper had been able to offer was “Something went seriously askew when you were in your mother’s womb, Spock, and it’s a miracle you even exist”.
Which was, of course, very comforting.
Scotty sighed. “The Enforcers…” he began suddenly. “How could they have corrupted so much o’ this country? Of England, and Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and Australia and New Zealand?”
“Their leader was a very charismatic and very disturbed man,” Pike said wearily. “We’ve been over and over this, Scotty. Can’t we give it a rest? It’s Christmas Eve.”
Janice Rand stood up, twirling a strand of her blonde hair around her finger and looking at the ground. She was the newest addition to their little group, having been previously a secretary in the mansion of a high-ranking Enforcer. Though she was Anglo-American and though all her family were sympathetic to the Enforcers, she had lost her job for spurning her employer’s advances and had ended up on the street, where she had seen firsthand the horrors of the Enforcers. Even now that she was friends with several “foreigners”, she was sometimes plagued with doubts about which side was right.
Kevin Riley went and put a hand on her shoulder. He hailed from South Ireland, the only English-speaking country apart from Canada that had refused to join the AAA, and as a “foreigner” and a staunch Catholic Christian had been locked in the XP for two years. He was Rand’s best friend and the primary reason she was still part of their group. As he patted her shoulder, communicating without words, her worried expression changed to a small smile and she went to sit with Uhura.
They had no Christmas tree, no menorah, no lights or decorations. No one was laughing or even talking. But slowly, one by one, faces broke into smiles, no doubt triggered by private thoughts. Rand, Riley, Sulu, Uhura, Scotty, Piper, Pike… even Number One allowed herself a small quirk of the lips.
Only Spock didn’t. And when the smiles turned into giggles, and then laughs and hugs, he quietly slipped into the next room.
Part Two, Chapter Two by Firefly
December, Year 19 of the Anglo-American Alliance
The knife gleamed cold and silver in the half-light.
Amanda Grayson marked days off religiously on the wall of her cell, and she had a good sense of time. She knew that it was early on the morning after Christmas, but that date had little meaning outside, and even less inside the walls of the experimental facility.
The place, though its main function was a prison for anyone who was different, was not called an experimental facility for nothing. Although they hadn’t explained anything to Amanda when they had locked her with a pretty young woman who appeared Anglo-American in a room empty but for a large knife hanging on the wall, this experiment would seem to be about suicide. No doubt they were testing rates of suicide across the ranges of male and female, young and old, alone and in pairs, with and without food, as well as “ of course “ by race.
Amanda had been in the room, with plenty of water but very little food, for five days now, and neither she nor the young woman had used the knife yet. They had developed a routine of talking together, then sitting in silence, then sleeping, then talking again. Amanda had learned that the young woman’s name was Christine Chapel and that she was in the XP because she had refused to change her forbidden name. In turn, Amanda had explained that she was there because she had married a foreigner and given birth to a son with certain physical deformities. While this was not exactly true, it was close enough.
Now, Amanda stood up, sweeping her lank, wavy hair “ more gray than brown now “ out of her face and moving closer to the knife. It was large, very shiny, and quite sharp. Interesting choice of weapon to provide the two with, but perhaps that too changed from test subject to test subject “ one more variable in this equation of death, Amanda thought, and derived grim pleasure from the metaphor. She was, after all, a writer… or she had been once. Gazing at her distorted reflection in the knife, she wondered how that elegant writer could have become the grimy, wild-haired woman she saw now…
“Amanda, no,” said a now-familiar voice behind her, and Amanda turned to find Christine standing there. The young woman was stretching her arms as if she had just woken up, but her blue eyes were sharp and alert. “Don’t do it.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Amanda said. “Just looking.” She turned back to the knife.
Christine reached past Amanda and took the knife off its hook, hefting it experimentally. “Heavy,” she commented, then turned it over. “You could do quite a bit of damage with this.”
Amanda raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“I should know,” Christine said, carefully replacing the knife. “I am “ I was “ a nurse.”
“You never mentioned that.”
A smile spread over Christine’s lovely face. “What else haven’t I mentioned?” she teased.
Amanda squinted as if trying to remember. In fact, Christine had mentioned quite a lot. She had told Amanda about her former fiancé, Roger Korby, a brilliant scientist who had joined the Enforcers and turned Christine in. She had talked in depth about her childhood and about the psychology of why the Enforcers did what they did, and Amanda had been amazed at how quietly intelligent the girl of only twenty-four was.
Amanda herself had taught not only English but general psychology at a college before the Alliance had taken over, and she had jumped eagerly into the conversation, not thinking where Christine might have learned it all. But if she was a nurse, studying to become a doctor… medical doctors were taught advanced psychology, especially in places where the Enforcers had little influence, like Christine’s home state of Tennessee.
Amanda and Christine looked up at the sound of bolts being drawn back and of a key in the lock. Together both women moved toward the thick metal door as it was pulled back, scraping harshly against the stone floor.
After a moment, a man who appeared to be in his early to mid thirties entered, carrying a large black bag. He wore a rust-colored Enforcer uniform, and he had an unpleasant scowl on his face as he came toward Amanda and Christine.
Taking a notepad and pencil out of his bag, he muttered as he wrote. “Test 46… neither committed suicide or harmed the other…” With a touch of sarcasm in his voice, he said, “Happy Winter Festival, ladies.”
“Merry Christmas,” Christine rejoined, and the man’s lips turned up slightly at the corners.
“You must be Nurse Christine Chapel,” he said, “which makes you Amanda Grayson, doctor of linguistics and psychology.” He stuffed the pad and paper back in his bag, sticking out a large hand. “Leonard McCoy, MD.”
Neither woman took the hand, and he sighed, taking them both by the elbows and steering them out the door. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m a doctor, not a prison guard, and it’s time for your annual physicals.”
Amanda caught Christine’s eye, and Christine raised an eyebrow at her. The man certainly didn’t act like an Enforcer, but Amanda had an idea about that. The Enforcers often drafted doctors, since it was a rare profession these days and since few doctors would join the Enforcers willingly. This man, Leonard McCoy, had probably only responded to the draft to save himself and his family from death or, worse, imprisonment in the XP.
“So, Dr. Grayson,” said McCoy, “I hear your son had some interesting physical differences. Escaped three years ago, right? Good for him.”
“How can you talk like that out here in the open?” Amanda hissed.
McCoy shrugged. “I’m not under surveillance. I’m a doctor, remember? There are so few of us we get special treatment. Right in here, Dr. Grayson, Miss Chapel.” He propelled them into a small doctor’s office and let go of their elbows to close the door.
“Now,” he said cheerily, clapping his hands together. “If you two could escape from here, what would be the first thing you’d do?”
“Take a shower,” said Amanda.
“Get some clean clothes.”
“Find my son.”
“Dye my hair.” When the other two looked at her, Christine shrugged. “I’m sick of this color.” Her hair, though wavy and thick, was plain, mousy brown.
“Okay,” said McCoy. “I’m supposed to be examining you, so I actually don’t have time to examine you. There are shower stalls through that door.” He pointed. “You’ll find clean clothes in your size, and though I haven’t got any hair dye, Miss Chapel, I’m sure you can do that once you’re out.”
“What do you mean?” Christine demanded.
“Dammit, I’m helping you escape,” McCoy snapped. “But you can’t escape looking like you’ve just escaped, so go get cleaned up!” He spun them both around, placed a hand on each of their backs, and pushed them in the direction of the door to the shower stalls.
--
An approving smile spread over the face of Dr. Leonard McCoy as he surveyed the two women. Both clean and dressed in clean civilian clothes, Amanda’s hair in a long braid and Christine’s in a long ponytail, the women looked perfectly normal. Also, they were both Anglo-Americans, which would make it that much easier for McCoy’s friend and former coworker to take them to a safe house.
“All right, come on,” McCoy said. “But quietly! You don’t want them hearing you.”
He led the women out through the shower area and down a disused side passage. Dr. Mark Piper would be waiting for them outside; he was to take Amanda and Christine to his home, where the former would be reunited with her son and where the latter, an excellent scientist, could help with the mysterious “project” that Piper constantly alluded to.
McCoy’s eyes clouded over as he thought about Amanda, her missing husband and her escaped son. He had once had a family too, but Jocelyn had divorced him when he had accepted the commission offered by the Enforcers. Jocelyn had never seemed to realize that he was only doing it because the Enforcers would kill her and their daughter Joanna if he refused. Besides, from this position he could help people escape… as he was doing now.
McCoy turned down a hallway and slid his access card through a slot by the door. The door slid open, and he led the women through into another, dimly lit stone corridor. There was a large door at the end, with the large, glowing red letters EMERGENCY EXIT above it.
McCoy hurried over to the keypad next to the door and tapped in four numbers. “That disables the alarm,” he told them, and pushed open the door, flooding the hall with brilliant sunlight.
Immediately, a loud, screeching alarm began. His heart suddenly racing, McCoy shoved the women through the door and into the sunlight. “Go! Run, run, run!” he yelled. “Piper! PIPER!”
A middle-aged, gray-haired man who had been lounging casually near the door jumped up. “You idiot!” he roared. “They change the code on major holidays!”
McCoy bit his lip. Hard. Then he noticed that the women were still standing there as if frozen to the spot. “Run!” he yelled, as Enforcers began to pour out of the building.
“Get them!” someone shouted, and “It’s McCoy!” Cursing, McCoy seized Christine’s arm and dragged her along as he dashed through the courtyard. Seconds behind him, Piper grabbed Amanda and ran with her. As they reached the fence surrounding the XP, the Enforcers not far behind, Amanda stumbled and fell with a cry.
“My ankle!”
“Amanda!” Christine shrieked, half-turning, but McCoy kept a firm grip on her and kept running, diving through the gap under the fence and pulling her after him.
“We can’t “ save “ Amanda,” McCoy panted. “That’s Piper’s job.”
But he spared a glance behind him, to see that Piper had picked Amanda up and was carrying her, trying to climb the fence at the same time. He vaulted over the top and jumped the rest of the way down, displaying remarkable agility for a man of his age and weight “ but then, in an instant, there was the awful crack of a gunshot, and Piper was down. One of the Enforcers had shot neatly between the bars of the fence.
As one, McCoy and Christine turned, but Amanda shouted, “No! Go, leave!”
“Amanda!” Christine cried, but McCoy saw that the Enforcers had already overtaken the woman. There was no chance.
“C’mon, Christine,” he said, dragging her behind him as he ran. They barreled around a corner and McCoy yanked Christine into someone’s front patio, shutting the solid wooden gate moments before the Enforcers turned onto the street.
Christine’s thin form was shaking like a leaf. “Amanda…” she whispered. “Doctor, what if they kill her?”
“They won’t. They’ll just put her under tighter surveillance. But Piper…” McCoy shut his eyes and shook his head. “He’s dead already. I should have… I should have…”
The footsteps of the Enforcers faded into the distance, and Christine cautiously stood up, peering over the gate. “They’re gone,” she said quietly, and then glanced back when McCoy didn’t move. “Doctor?” She hurried to his side, touching his shoulder tentatively. “Doctor?”
McCoy looked up at the girl, his eyes wide. “Yes “ yes, of course.” He allowed her to help him to his feet, then led her out through the gate and down the road. After the darkness of the XP, the cold, bright winter sun looked bright and beautiful, gleaming on every surface, but the light and the sharp, fresh air were lost on McCoy.
Almost without thinking, he turned into an alley; though he had never been to the 21st Street Mission, Piper (no, no, don’t think about Piper) had given him very detailed instructions, and McCoy had a good sense of direction. He navigated the complex network of alleys, counting corners and doors, finally arriving outside a peeling door with an overflowing trash can beside it.
“This is it, I think,” he said dully. He glanced at Christine, who shrugged and climbed the stairs, knocking on the door.
They both leaned back against the railings, and in a moment the door was opened by a tall, dark-haired man. His pale eyes widened fractionally at the sight of McCoy’s Enforcer uniform, but McCoy shook his head quickly.
“I’m a friend,” he said. “I’m Dr. Leonard McCoy.”
“Where’s Dr. Piper?” the man demanded, still holding the door firmly.
Piper. God above, Piper. McCoy looked away, shutting his eyes against the tears that threatened to well up. “He’s… dead, sir.”
“No!” The man stared at McCoy, then silently opened the door all the way, letting McCoy and Christine in. The small room was filled with people who looked to be from all over the globe. One young black woman jumped up with a cry, pointing at McCoy, but the man who had answered the door waved a hand, and she sank back into her chair.
“Where’s Dr. Piper?” asked a young man with an Irish accent.
“He’s… d-dead,” McCoy said, stumbling over the words. He knew Piper was gone, but his tongue did not seem to agree. “The Enforcers caught us escaping, and “ “ He fell silent as a tall, thin man, a knit cap pulled over his head, pushed his way to the front of the group.
“Where is Amanda? Where is my mother? You and Dr. Piper were to bring her back.”
McCoy hesitated, chomping down on his lower lip. Finally he said, “She’s alive, but she… she didn’t make it out either.” This must be Dr. Grayson’s son, then.
An awful silence filled the room, until the first man sighed and stepped forward, clapping McCoy on the shoulder.
“Chris Pike. I guess you’ll be staying, then. You can’t go back now “ not if they’ve seen you.” Pike turned to Christine. “And who are you?”
“Nurse Christine Chapel, Mr. Pike,” she said smartly.
“Well, I guess you can stay too.” Pike turned to the group. “I… can’t really say anything that can sum up Mark. You all knew him; you’ll each have to mourn him in… in your own way.”
An Asian man put a hand on a young blonde woman’s shoulder. The black girl gripped the hand of the thickset, dark-haired man next to her. And Amanda’s son walked calmly over to a tapestry on the wall and went through it, disappearing into some kind of side room.
Part Two, Chapter Three by Firefly
January, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
January 2nd.
For a week now he had remained here in this room, sitting on the bed or pacing the floor, eating nothing, sleeping rarely, and drinking only what was brought to him by Christine Chapel or Kevin Riley. He was utterly conflicted, and no amount of meditation and logical reasoning seemed to have any effect.
Spock was thirty years old. He only remembered half of those years. For some reason, he had woken up one morning at the age of fifteen with absolutely no personal memory.
The only person he remembered was his mother, Amanda, who had told him that his name was Spock. When he had assumed that his last name was Grayson, she had said no, he had no last name. He had found that for some reason, he thought logically and almost instinctively suppressed and let go of all emotion. When he had questioned his mother about this, she had simply replied that she would tell him when he was older and that he had better just continue to do so.
Amanda had told Spock that his father had been a foreigner, and that he had loved him, loved them both. She had never gone further than this. Spock had extrapolated that his father had been captured and/or killed by the Enforcers.
Spock loved his mother, though he had always felt that it was taboo to tell her so or to show it. He trusted her judgment in not telling him about himself and had simply suppressed the curiosity about who he was as he did sorrow and anger and joy. For five years he had lived with the uncertainty of his past, instead burying himself in the study of science and music. And then the Enforcers had heard about him.
For reasons no doctors had been able to explain, Spock had been born with strange deformities, from pointed ears to green blood to a completely different arrangement of his internal organs. Scientist though he was, Spock himself had been as yet unable to find an answer to the mystery of his existence. But the Enforcers had abruptly cut his research and education short when they had heard about the freak who bled green and had taken Spock and his mother to the experimental facility. For seven years he had been a prisoner there, subject to many torturous experiments to try and discover how he existed “ all with no result, of course “ until he had been given a perfect chance to escape. Though he had wanted to take his mother, there had simply been no time, no opportunity. And now, three years later, he had failed to recover her, and a man had died for nothing.
Spock did not know why the news of Piper’s death had thrown his mind and emotions into turmoil, but it had. He had tried everything “ breathing exercises, meditation, reciting poetry “ but his mind seemed split in two. Logically, analytically, he could think that he was suffering from some kind of emotional withdrawal; but he could not snap out of it. He could not will himself to stand up and walk out of the room.
As he sat on the pile of blankets he called a bed, looking down as his steepled fingers, he heard the tapestry rustle as it was pushed back. The tall, beautiful woman who entered hesitated, then crossed over to him.
“Spock?”
He did not answer, did not look up at her.
“Spock,” Number One said, crouching down before him. He flicked his gaze up from the floor to her face, then back down. “Spock, if you don’t snap out of it, I’m going to hit you.”
The words washed over him like water. He did not answer.
She raised a hand and struck him full across the face. It stung, but pain was nothing. Pain was clean, controllable.
“Spock,” she snarled, grabbing his jaw and forcing his face up. Shocked, he stared into her eyes, which glittered suspiciously. As he watched, her face contorted, and the tears simply spilled over, running down her cheeks as she gasped, “Look at me! Look what you’ve been d-doing to us “ us all…”
“Number One?” he whispered, his voice raspy with disuse. Her fingers were digging into his chin, but he did not care. He frowned, reaching out, taking her shoulders. Number One crying, of all people…
“Shh,” he said automatically, “don’t cry.” And suddenly she was sobbing into his shoulder, her arms tight around him.
“You’ve b-been in a trance for a week,” she choked out. “Spock, I’m w-worried about you “ everyone is “ Christine Ch-Chapel and Leonard Mc-McCoy are worried about you, and they don’t even “ even “ even know you!”
Spock patted her awkwardly on the back, his unwashed, greasy hair falling into his eyes as he tilted his head forward. “I regret “ I am sorry,” he whispered. “Number One… I’m sorry.”
She seemed to have stopped crying; she pulled back from him, her eyes and nose red and puffy. “I don’t understand, Spock,” she said. “You of all people “ is this just about Piper?”
“Piper… my mother… I am confused, Number One.” He looked down. “I am unsure… what to do… I believe I am sad, but… well…”
“We’re all sad. We’re all confused. The Enforcers still run the country. But listen, Spock, listen. You need a shower. You need to wake up and get to know McCoy and Christine. You need to carry on with life. I’m all for logic and nonemotion, but you can’t just shut down!”
Spock closed his eyes. “I do not understand why I am what I am, Number One.” He reached out, touched her arm. “It is enough to be a foreigner. To be a half-foreigner is worse. But I am so different as to not be human.”
She patted his shoulder. “You’re human, Spock. So am I. So are we all. I know Piper’s dead, and I know you’re wondering about your past and if there’s a point to the universe, but life goes on.”
He stood up, actually stood up of his own accord. The detached, analytical part of his brain was surprised and pleased. He stumbled for a moment, trying to get his bearings, then stepped away from her and into the small room. The sleeves of his sweater fell around his elbows as he gestured around, saying, “This cellar, this place… it is like another prison. What do we think we can do to stop the insanity of the world?”
“Build a spaceship,” she suggested. “The project has been suffering without you, Spock. Christine Chapel is wonderful, but she is far from your equal.”
The corners of his mouth flicked upward for a fraction of a second, and he stepped over the piled sheets and blankets all over the floor. “Perhaps before rejoining the group I should, as you suggest, take a shower,” he said gravely.
“Perhaps you should,” she agreed. And, though he was still confused, still conflicted, Spock was able once more to suppress his emotions as he headed for the shower.
--
Not too far from the 21st Street Mission, huddled behind a large dumpster, two young men counted the pennies in a large pile spread between them.
“Four hundred eleven,” one of the men said quietly.
“Three hundred forty-six.”
They looked at each other, silently adding. At the same time, both said, “Seven dollars fifty-seven cents.”
“That’s nothing!” the taller and older of the two snapped, tossing his cigarette on the ground and grinding it out underneath his boot. “Jimmy, we’ve got to do better.”
“What do you expect?” the younger man asked bitterly, running a hand through his golden-brown hair and making it stand on end. “People don’t drop that many coins, and rarely anything but pennies. Seven bucks in a week is more than I expected.”
“Seven bucks in a week? That’s fifty cents a day. Each. We can’t live on fifty cents a day.”
“We have to.”
The two men, friends from childhood, had recently run away from the prestigious university that was growing more and more Enforcer-sympathetic. Neither had been willing to sacrifice their principals for safety.
University and grad school attendance were now mandatory, and if you couldn’t afford a good school, you were put in a bad one by the government. So when their master’s degree government and sociology class had announced a mandatory trip to the XP to help the Enforcers with the experiments a week ago, James Kirk and Gary Mitchell had had no choice but to run. They had brought enough food for a week, and had been collecting what money they could find on the ground. Both brought up in well-to-do, Enforcer-neutral homes, neither knew how to live on the streets, nor did they know anything about the various resistance groups they could have stayed with.
Now, Jim Kirk, the younger man, stared down at the pile of pennies as if the power of his gaze could make them multiply. Gary Mitchell, the elder, wished he hadn’t put out his cigarette; it had been the last, and on fifty cents a day…
“Hey Jim?”
“Hey Gary?”
“Do you ever get sick of it?”
“What “ sleeping on the ground and having awful cricks in the back when I wake up? Hiding every time someone comes by? Yeah. Sort of. Pandering to the so-called Enforcers? Endorsing the murder and incarceration of innocent people? You bet.”
Gary sighed and left their hidey-hole behind the dumpster, Kirk following after scooping their pennies back up into the bag that had once held their food. They had chosen a practically deserted side alley “ the two had only seen three people walk by in the entire week they had been there “ and made a little nest behind the dumpster of blankets pilfered from their dorms at the university. It wasn’t much, but it was home, at least for a while. Gary stepped away from the dumpster, folding his arms across his chest. “Jimmy, why couldn’t we have just withdrawn from school?”
“You know perfectly well that’s illegal without a good reason. We would’ve had to run anyway.”
Restlessly, Gary fidgeted with his sweater, looking around as if for something to do. Kirk leaned against the dumpster and watched detachedly as his friend picked up a piece of gravel and began to scratch on the concrete ground, meaningless lines and symbols.
“God, Jim, I can’t live this way,” Gary snapped at last, hurling his gravel down at the ground and stomping on it, scuffing out the marks he had made with his booted toe. “I just can’t.”
“C’mon, Gary,” Kirk said quietly. Soothingly. “What choice do you have?”
There was a beat. Puffing out a short, irritated breath, the dark-haired man muttered grudgingly, “None.” But he kicked a pebble savagely nevertheless.
Kirk decided not to press the subject, instead ducking back behind the dumpster to get his coat. It was early January, and while there was no snow here in Southern California, the wind was plenty cold. There was, after all, no central heating in their new home.
“I’m going to go see if I can find anything else,” Kirk said. “There’s no point sitting around here.”
“Sure.” Gary looked like his best friend had just died. Which, Kirk reminded himself firmly, he had not. Not yet.
Clapping his friend, who was now staring glumly at the ground, on the shoulder, Kirk shoved his hands in his pockets and started out, eyes raking the ground. In the week he had been there, he had found out that the best place to find pennies and sometimes even nickels was around the stalls of street vendors, or around automatic teller machines. But though there were none for blocks, it never hurt to keep an eye open, even in alleyways.
Kirk learned quickly, and he hadn’t gotten lost in the labyrinth of streets since the third day he had been there. He found his way out of the alleys and onto the street “ 20th Street. He had thoroughly canvassed 20th and 19th earlier that day, but for some reason, he realized as he reached the end of the street and the next street sign, he had never set foot on 21st.
An oversight on his part? Kirk was not in the habit of making oversights. Shrugging, he pulled his coat tighter around him and turned the corner.
The first thing that caught his eye was the monstrosity on the other end of the street. Most of the houses were normal, but the one on the far end looked as though a deranged builder had knocked three of them together. The building was so weird and so ugly that Kirk was drawn to it at once, walking down the street quickly and then finally breaking into a run.
There was a large sign on the building: 21ST STREET MISSION. Under that, a smaller sign read: Helping the poor and homeless since before the Alliance.
For a stunned moment, Kirk stared at the sign. Then he began to run with all the speed of his track-and-field training in high school, running back along 21st Street, back along 20th, back through the alleys. He flashed by houses without seeing them, his feet pounding on the rough ground until at last he came to his alley. Making a beeline for the dumpster, he shouted, “Gary!”
Part Two, Chapter Four by Firefly
January, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
Balancing a hot, fragrant bowl of soup in one hand and a large plate of salad in the other, the young woman slowly made her way through the crowded mess hall, ignoring the whistles and catcalls of the men. Finding the two young men who had just entered the room, she set the soup and salad down in front of one of them.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to the second, but he shook his head.
“I’m not hungry,” he muttered.
The one with the food grinned wryly at her. “Don’t mind my friend. He’s not used to the situation yet.”
Edith nodded, smiling back. She understood.
Turning, she began to make her way back through the hall, but something made her turn around and look back at the young man. He grinned at her again, lifting his hand in a short wave before attacking his soup. Poor man, he ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days… after he ate, she would tell him about the shower facilities. He and his friend smelled like they had been living in a landfill.
Edith was almost back to the kitchen when she saw the clock out of the corner of her eye; already? Where had the time gone? Glancing around at the crowd, Edith noted nervously that they all seemed to be having a good time, laughing, talking… how could she interrupt that? Normally her mother gave the address, but Mary Keeler had bronchitis, and it was up to Edith…
Smoothing out the long skirt of her dress, Edith climbed up on the podium and stood in front of the microphone, clearing her throat, holding her shaking hands stiffly by her side. A hush fell over the hall. The young woman swallowed hard, then plunged ahead.
“Is everyone having a good supper?”
There was a murmur of assent.
“Well, I know you’ve all heard this before, but we do not expect you to see this as a free meal. Perhaps you have no money, but you can repay us by living good lives and by helping other people you meet. Remember that there are many less fortunate than you. You have been given food and other comforts; so if you have shelter, share it with those who do not. If you have an extra sweater, give it to someone who’s cold. Somebody once said that whatever you give will come back to you a hundredfold.” She knew she was venturing into dangerous ground by quoting the Bible, but she honestly did not care. “Th-thank you.”
Well, that had been short, but the men preferred it short, she was sure. She stepped off the podium, and the young man she had spoken to earlier gave an enthusiastic cheer among the polite clapping.
As she hurried into the kitchen, Christopher Pike stopped her. He was washing dishes, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows.
“Miss Keeler, that was risky.”
“I know.”
“Well done.” He smiled at her. “Your father would be proud.”
The meal was ending; men were coming to the window to drop off their plates and bowls. As Edith accepted them, she caught the eye of the one young man…
He sidled up to the window, his friend looking bored behind him. “Good speech,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr…?”
“Jim Kirk.”
“Mr. Kirk.” She took his dish, but he lingered, reading the sign that said ‘Please place silverware in cup’.
“So what’s a beautiful girl like you doing working in a mission?”
“My mother runs it.”
“Oh. So you’re done with college?”
“It’s still winter break,” she said. “I graduate early, though “ in February.”
“Very exciting.”
“Come on, Jim,” his friend muttered, tugging on his arm. “I need a shower and so do you.”
“Showers are right through there,” Edith said, pointing. “You’ll have to wait in line, and you’re limited to five minutes each.”
“Thank you,” Jim Kirk said with apparent sincerity. “Oh “ what’s your name?”
“Edith,” she said, looking up into his hazel eyes. “Edith Keeler.”
And then he was gone, pulled away by his friend, but not before he gave her a little two-fingered salute. She smiled after him, slightly dazed, before snapping out of it to take the next plate and hand it to Pike.
Later, after she and Pike had finished the dishes, Edith walked with him to the stairs that led to the basement. As they went through the door at the top of the stairs, she once again heard piano music, this time combined with a woman’s voice singing. Edith raised her eyebrows at Pike, who rolled his eyes and started down the stairs.
“Spock! Uhura! Quit it!”
“Mr. Pike “ “ the woman began.
“There are people up there! Do you want to get busted? Do you want the Keelers to get busted?”
“I made him play, sir “ “ That was the woman.
“I asked her to sing, sir “ “ That was a new voice, a man’s voice.
“I’m not interested in who’s to blame. The point is that you need to not do it! We have a project to work on! We don’t need music distracting two of our people!”
Edith had meant to go back to the social hall, but at the mention of a project she stayed, curious.
“Miss Keeler?”
She whirled around, coming face to face with Jim Kirk, whose hair was wet and clinging to his face.
“I was looking for you. I “ “
He broke off, frowning. “Is someone down there?”
“No. No. There’s no one down there.” Her voice came out squeaky and high-pitched.
Kirk started down the stairs, but Edith stopped him. “Really, Mr. Kirk. There are rats down there. It hasn’t been cleaned out for years “ “
“I could help you clean it out,” he said cheerily. “To repay you for that wonderful meal.”
He started walking again. She flung herself in front of him.
“Mr. Kirk, don’t do it “ don’t go down there “ “
“What is it, Edith?” Frowning again, he brushed her aside and ran down the rest of the way.
Edith followed, fearing the worst. The room was deserted. No doubt they had all gone to hide in the bedroom. A very old, worn plaid blanket had obviously been hastily thrown over that mysterious object in the center of the room, which was now much larger than it had been two years ago when she had last noticed it. This, she knew, was their “project” “ the “project” of which, despite years of listening at the top of the stairs whenever she was home, she had not been able to puzzle out the nature.
It was this that drew Jim Kirk. Going over to it, he pulled the blanket off, and gasped in shock. Edith looked over his shoulder; it was big, made of metal, electronic-looking, with flashing lights and all kinds of buttons. In the center of a glass case were several crystals “ diamonds, Edith realized.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Warp drive,” he said, running his fingers over it gently, lovingly. “The beginnings of one, anyway.”
There was a scuffle and a commotion from behind the tapestry, and Edith and Kirk turned as one to look at it. After a moment, a big young man with dark hair and an expression of shock on his face stepped out.
“Now how the hell did ye know that?” he demanded in a thick Scottish accent.
There was a moan of despair from behind the tapestry. Ignoring it, Kirk said calmly, “My father worked with Zefram Cochrane to develop the first warp-capable starship. No one knew my dad was involved but Cochrane himself, and fortunately he didn’t talk in the prison camp.”
Edith stared from Kirk to Scott, utterly confused. “Warp-capable? What?”
The tapestry was pushed back again, and Chris Pike emerged. “Faster-than-light travel, Miss Keeler. That’s our project.” He turned to Kirk. “You won’t talk, will you?”
“Then I guess you’re hiding from the Enforcers?”
“Well, yes.”
“So am I, so don’t worry. I won’t talk.”
Kirk turned back to the metal thing as Pike called behind the tapestry, “It’s all right.” The woman they called Number One and the black woman Uhura clambered out from the other room, along with Sulu, the Asian man who had been with Pike from the time he had moved in.
Uhura looked excited. “So you know how to construct a warp drive?”
Examining the object, running his fingertips over it, Kirk said, “It looks like you’ve got it right. Mind you, I’m not an engineer or a scientist, but it looks about right.”
“This is wonderful,” Scott said, clapping Kirk on the shoulder. “Ye’ll stay with us, o’ course “ “
“Hey, hey, hey,” Kirk objected. “I don’t know who you people are. I’ve got a friend I’m staying with “ “
“Is he trustworthy?” Pike asked at once.
“He’s not sympathetic to the Enforcers, if that’s what you mean,” Kirk said stiffly. “As for warp-capable starships…” But he trailed off.
Edith went over to the thing, examining it. How strange it was… strange and alien… and beautiful, after a fashion, despite its clunky look of old things thrown together. How she wished…
Glancing up, she caught sight of the clock on the wall. “Goodness!” she said at once. “I have to go! And Mother sick… Mr. Kirk, you had better come too, or your friend will worry.”
“Oh “ right, of course,” Kirk said with a guilty start. “I won’t say anything, you know…”
Pike nodded briefly, but Edith was already running up the stairs, hardly looking back to see if Kirk was following her. Too much, too much to do…
“Edith!”
She stopped at the top of the stairs, and Kirk stopped beside her. “Edith, do you take boarders?”
“No, but they do,” she said, pointing down. She shut the door between the hall and the stairs. “Why?”
“Well…”
“Do you need a job?” she asked suddenly. “Money?”
“Er…”
“You could help out, like Christopher Pike does. Wash the dishes, sweep the floor.”
“Edith…” he hesitated. “My friend Gary and I “ we’re sort of on the run. We left grad school halfway through.”
“So you can’t get a real job. That’s why I’m offering.” She smiled up at him. “I am not unintelligent, Mr. Kirk.”
“I could tell.”
“Then do we have a deal?”
“Yeah.” He held out his hand, and she met it with her own. His grasp was firm and warm and he was smiling brightly and…
Breaking the contact, Edith hurried off down the green-carpeted hall to see to her guests.
Part Two, Chapter Five by Firefly
January, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
“Another beautiful day in Paradise,” Gary Mitchell muttered, throwing himself onto his bed with a dull thump.
The 17th Street Boarding House was hardly paradise, and the room Gary shared with Jim Kirk was not beautiful, with its chipped dull-white paint and its faded brownish carpet. But it was better by far than the dumpster, and Gary knew he should be grateful to Edith Keeler for giving them a job so they could rent a room here.
Then why did he only resent her?
Maybe it was because Kirk was spending so much time with her. Yes, the girl was pretty, but she wasn’t that pretty. And she was such a “ such a goody-goody, making those speeches about turning your life around, serving everyone soup with that vapid little smile on her face.
Gary sighed and rolled over on his bed, looking at the dusty old clock sitting on the bedside table. Kirk was late again “ no doubt canoodling with That Girl, or else holding a whispered conversation with the other man who did odd jobs around the mission. Roger Pike, he had introduced himself, but Gary was sure he had heard Edith Keeler’s mother call him Chris. He was always pulling Kirk aside and asking him questions that Gary could just barely not make out, and Kirk was always answering them in an equally low voice. These little meetings invariably ended with Pike whispering something and Kirk shaking his head regretfully, saying that he couldn’t. He was sorry, but he couldn’t.
Well, Gary was tired of it, and when Kirk got here, he was going to ask him straight out what that was all about.
If Kirk ever got here. How long had it been? Putting in extra time was all well and good, but they got paid by the job, not by the hour, so what was the point in prolonging it? Really, Kirk could be incredibly stupid for a man with a degree in political science. Not that the course was totally unbiased these days “ in fact, it was extremely biased “ but that was another story.
Gary swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. That did it. He was going to find Kirk and made him talk. After all, Gary didn’t keep secrets from his friend, so why should his friend keep secrets from Gary?
--
Kirk leaned against his broom, glancing up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was late, and the man had been working for ten minutes past the agreed time allotted for the job, but the kitchen floor had still needed sweeping, and what was a few minutes more or less?
Now, though, as he surveyed the sparkling clean result of his handiwork, Kirk felt more than ready to collect his pay and go home. “Home” being a relative term, of course. He leaned the broom against the wall, conscientiously removing clinging pieces of dust from the brush part of the broom and dropping them into the dustbin.
The mission had closed half an hour ago, and it felt awfully empty without everyone. Even Gary had gone back to their little rented room, and Edith was tidying up upstairs.
Edith. He had only met her two weeks ago, but there was an indefinable something about the girl that was just… well, indefinable. Lost in a daydream about her big eyes and creamy skin and smooth, dark hair, Kirk walked right past the person standing by the kitchen door without paying any attention to him.
After about three steps, Kirk realized that there was someone there and stopped, turning around. The someone was a man perhaps a little older than Kirk, wrapped from chin to toe in thick, uncomfortable-looking clothing, a knit cap pulled low over his head, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded.
“The mission’s closed “ “
“I am aware of that.”
The man straightened, unfolding his arms and clasping his hands behind his back. Kirk studied his long, pale, oddly expressionless face and realized that it didn’t look Anglo-American. Not at all.
“Who are you?”
“I live downstairs. Mr. Pike sent me to convince you to accompany me to our rooms to assist us with the project. He seemed to be under the impression that you were aware of the project and would not report us to the authorities.” The man’s voice was flat.
“Right, well, I won’t. But now’s not the greatest time… I really can’t go down there. My friend will be expecting me…”
“Mr. Pike informed me that you would say this, and asked me to prepare a logical set of arguments to persuade you to help us. Item a: you alone of anyone we know have actual experience in this area. Item b: our basement is much more comfortable than the 17th Street Boarding House. Item c “ “
“My friend “ “
“As both you and your friend are hiding from the authorities, neither of you can approach the authorities; therefore, neither of you can report us; therefore, there is no need to worry about your friend not approving of our project; therefore, you may bring your friend with you.”
“Look,” Kirk began, frustrated, “I don’t know who you are, but “ “
“My name is Spock.”
Kirk stared at him for a moment. Well, he was foreign, so he guessed Spock might not be a strange name where he was from. “Right. Well, look, uh, Spock, your arguments are logical and everything, but… well…”
He couldn’t think of a single argument to counter Spock’s, and so said, “I just don’t feel like going down there.”
“Feelings.” The man bit the word out, his face still devoid of expression. “Emotionalism is an unnecessary weakness.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about “ “ Or on “ “ “ but I’m going to be late. My friend “ “
“Your friend,” the man said, “can wait. However, Mr. Scott has instructed me to inform you, and I quote, ‘This place will blow sky-high if I put the two magnets an inch closer together or farther apart than they should be’. And he does not know how much distance is supposed to be between them.”
Kirk slammed his fist against the wall. “I’m not an engineer! I don’t know how far apart two magnets are supposed to be from each other! I didn’t even know there were magnets in a warp drive!”
“I do not believe there were in Cochrane’s warp drive. We have been forced by circumstance to… improvise.”
“Then how does, does Mr. Scott expect me to know where to put magnets in a thing when the only one I’ve seen didn’t have magnets?” Kirk was getting angry now, and he started to walk away, but the man blocked his way, one hand resting on each wall of the corridor.
“That was, indeed, my query,” he said conversationally. “Mr. Scott and Mr. Pike just told me to go before you left for the day. I believe they were attempting to evade the question.”
Casting his eyes up to the ceiling, Kirk said a silent word of prayer to whatever deity might be listening, then looked back at the man. Someone familiar with James Tiberius Kirk might have seen the glint of steel in his eyes and backed away hastily, but Spock was not yet one of those privileged few, and he stayed where he was.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stand aside,” Kirk said firmly.
“The thought of doing so fills me with gratification,” the man said, deadpan. “However, my orders are to the contrary.”
Closing his eyes, Kirk took a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly. Then, without warning, he lifted his fist and swung at the man’s jaw “ and hit it with a satisfying thwack. Amazingly, he elicited no reaction from his opponent, only a raised eyebrow “ and his knuckles ached.
“Okay,” Kirk said, and tackled the man, knocking him easily to the ground. The two grappled for a moment, the other man flipping Kirk over easily and pinning his wrists to the green carpet, whereupon Kirk kicked him as hard as he could in the stomach, sending him flying “ he really was amazingly light for all his strength. Kirk got up quickly, rushing over to his adversary, who had cracked his head against the wall.
“Are you “ “
But Kirk broke off. The man’s knit cap had fallen off, and sticking out from his short dark hair were two undeniably pointed ears. Kirk blinked, shook his head, looked again. Definitely pointed. And his eyebrows slanted unnaturally, and… Kirk was not religious, but he remembered an old picture in an art book he had read long ago, maybe even before the Anglo-American Alliance: a picture of the devil.
“What are you?” he asked in horrified fascination.
The man let out a barely audible sigh, his eyes fluttering closed. Concerned, Kirk bent as if to check his pulse, but he was stopped by a raised hand.
“You have not seriously injured me, Mr. Kirk. Please do not touch me.”
“Ah “ okay.”
“To answer your question, I do not know what I am.”
Kirk couldn’t stop staring at the ears. He knew that it must be a perfectly natural condition (wasn’t there a disease that resulted in pointed ears…?), but Kirk was still irresistibly reminded of Satan “ or perhaps one of the faerie folk of now-forbidden myth.
The man stood up, bending to retrieve his cap and replacing it on his head. He brushed off the sleeves of his coat and straightened his scarf as if he couldn’t bear to be even a little untidy.
“I do not understand why you attacked me.”
“You were blocking my way.”
“I am still blocking your way.”
“The idea is that I already beat you up once, so you’re supposed to move out of my way.”
“You did not ‘beat me up’, and even if you had, I fail to see the logic of your statement.”
“What are you, a robot?”
“That is inaccurate. A robot is a synthetic, man-made “ “
Kirk shook his head. This one was hopeless. “No, figuratively! You know. Logic. Robots use logic. Besides, you “ “
“Jim?”
Neither of them had heard the front door open, but Gary Mitchell stood in the hallway, looking from one to the other with a strange expression on his face.
“I must go,” said the strange man. “James Kirk “ come.” And he vanished down the corridor.
Kirk turned to face Gary, whose expression had turned hostile.
“Jim, what was that all about?”
Part Two, Chapter Six by Firefly
January, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
Montgomery Scott had worked with Christopher Pike for seven years. He had seen the man in all his moods, or so he thought. Joy, grief, triumph, contentment, despair, frustration…
But now, as he bent studiously over his calculations and pretended not to exist, Scotty realized that he had never seen Chris Pike angry, really, furiously angry, nor did he ever want to again. And somehow it made it worse that the object of his anger was Spock “ Spock, who had never in all of Scotty’s memory done anything wrong “ Spock, who only stood there with his hands clasped behind his back and did not try to defend himself.
“AND YOU LET SOME KID WITH HALF YOUR STRENGTH WALK ALL OVER YOU! WHY DIDN’T YOU DEFEND YOURSELF? I TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE TO PUNCH THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF HIM BEFORE YOU LET HIM SEE YOUR EARS!”
“Christopher,” Number One tried.
“AND EVEN IF KIRK IS TRUSTWORTHY, WHICH I SUPPOSE HE IS, HIS FRIEND SAW YOU AND WE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HIS FRIEND! WHAT IF HE REPORTS US? BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE FORGOTTEN, SPOCK, BUT YOU’RE NOT ANGLO-AMERICAN!”
“Mr. Pike,” Uhura attempted.
“YOU’VE JEOPARDIZED THE PROJECT, YOU’VE JEOPARDIZED THE MISSION, YOU’VE JEOPARDIZED ALL OUR LIVES “ ”
Christine Chapel crept over to Scotty. “Does this happen often?” she whispered.
“Never,” he whispered back.
She was looking past him, and he followed her gaze to Spock, who held himself almost painfully still. “He’s so brave…”
“ “ BUT NO, YOUR PRECIOUS LITTLE PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE WON’T LET YOU HIT SOME SNOT-NOSED KID! WELL, MAYBE IN YOUR HEAD PEACE IS A GOOD WAY OF LIFE, BUT WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, SPOCK! YOU LIVE UNDER MY PROTECTION, BUT GO OUT THERE AND LET’S SEE YOU SURVIVE PEACEFULLY! OUT THERE, THEY AREN’T AS ACCEPTING OF POINTY-EARED HALF-BREED FREAKS AS WE ARE!”
“MR. PIKE!”
Chris Pike was loud, but Leonard McCoy was louder. Scotty froze in shock, and beside him Chapel jumped about a foot.
“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Pike, but you’re going to have an aneurysm if you keep shouting like that,” McCoy said lightly, “and that wouldn’t be very good for you or me.” The whole room watching, he moved past Pike and laid a hand on Spock’s shoulder. Spock tensed, his back straightening even more “ if that was possible “ and his face growing even blanker.
“Just where’d the kid hit you again?”
“I am uninjured.”
“The hell you are, son. Feet are not good for ribcages, nor are fists for jaws.”
“I am not your son, nor are you remotely old enough to be my father.”
McCoy took Spock’s arm. “Come on.”
Spock stepped away from him, breaking his grip. “Why?”
“Examination.”
“I am “ “
“ “ uninjured, I know. But I’m the doctor, so come on, Mr. Spock.” McCoy led him through the tapestry, into the other room.
Spock might not pick up on it, but Scotty had to admire the skillful way McCoy had stopped Pike’s one-sided shouting match. He turned back to his sheet of scratch paper with a small smile, and lost himself in numbers and diagrams at once, scribbling and crossing out for what seemed a very long time…
“What are you doing?” Christine Chapel asked quietly, and Scotty jumped again; he had forgotten she was there.
“Tryin’ to figure out how far apart to put the magnets without the whole configuration blowin’ up.”
“Is this the same problem you were working on yesterday?” she asked, peering over his shoulder, the long ends of her brown hair tickling his hands, which lay on the table. He quickly removed them and folded them in his lap.
“Aye. If I canna get this right, the whole project is useless “ “
“WHAT ARE YOU TWO WHISPERING ABOUT?” Pike bellowed, and Scotty and Christine jumped.
--
“Sweater off, Mr. Spock.”
“It is cold.”
“Take your sweater off.”
Leonard Horatio McCoy, MD, crouched down by his bed, sorting through the medical kit he had inherited from Dr. Piper. His own had been left at the XP, and bitterly did McCoy mourn its loss.
“I resist this examination,” said the precise, measured voice behind him. Mediscanner in hand, McCoy rounded on Spock, who sat stiffly upright on his own bed. His oversized gray sweater was still on “ indeed, McCoy had never seen him without it, and wondered if perhaps it was part of the man’s skin.
McCoy had never really interacted with Spock. One was a doctor, the other a scientist, and while McCoy dealt with cuts and scrapes and tried to comprehend Christopher Pike’s “project”, Spock spewed jargon at Montgomery Scott and Hikaru Sulu and carefully screwed tiny pieces of metal together. Truth be told, McCoy was slightly apprehensive of the quiet, emotionless man, who had spent the first week of their acquaintance in a trancelike silence. But that would not and could not stop the doctor from tending to a patient by whatever means.
“Take off your sweater,” McCoy said grimly, “before I knock you out and take it off myself.”
“You neither would nor could.”
The doctor held up a syringe threateningly. It was full of disinfectant at the moment “ apparently Piper had been cleaning it out “ and there was no way McCoy would inject that into anyone, except maybe the head of the XP. But Spock wasn’t to know that, and after a moment he pulled the sweater over his head, his face utterly devoid of expression. Without the bulky sweater, he looked almost too thin.
“Good for you! Now take off your shirt.” McCoy smiled sweetly, waggling the syringe.
“I believe you are bluffing.” But Spock unbuttoned his dark blue shirt, folded it neatly, and placed it on top of his sweater.
“Undershirt, Mr. Spock.”
Off came the black T-shirt, and McCoy had to suppress a wince. Never mind almost; the man was too thin. McCoy could see all Spock’s ribs, as well as a nasty greenish bruise spreading across his stomach. The doctor assessed it at once, noting that it was remarkably big and definite considering how much thick clothing had been between Spock and the kid’s boot. And the color… “Ouch! What did he do? Poison you? No way that could have gotten infected like “ ”
“My blood is green.”
“What?”
They stared at each other for a moment. Then McCoy came forward with the mediscanner, placing the tin can-sized, rubber-and-metal cylinder over the bruise and turning it on.
“Oh my God,” he said in actual reverence, looking at the readout. “It’s picking up your heartbeat.”
“My heart is in the general vicinity of your liver.”
“Oh, my God,” he repeated. “Your body temperature… blood pressure…” He hastily recalibrated the scanner. “Hormone levels… hormones themselves!.... What are you?”
“I am a few grains of dust in a universe full of infinite possibilities.”
Was that a joke? Shaking his head slightly, McCoy busied himself pushing buttons on the scanner, trying to convince it that the copper count was normal. After a moment, he tried to read the bruise again.
“How is that possible?” he muttered. “How is that possible…?”
“Doctor,” Spock said, and McCoy thought that for a moment his voice sounded weary, strained. But it must have been his imagination, for Spock continued without any inflection at all. “The bruise is entirely superficial, and the readings are normal for me. Are you quite done?”
“No I’m not,” McCoy snapped, furiously twisting a dial on the scanner. “This is useless.”
“I agree.”
The doctor removed the scanner from Spock’s stomach, almost throwing it back into his medical kit. “You shouldn’t even exist,” he informed Spock.
“Really.”
“Oh, not like that! You “ never mind.” McCoy flexed his fingers and placed them on the bruise.
“What are you doing?”
McCoy glared. “Look, whatever color it should be, that looks nasty. I’m not going to risk you bleeding to death from internal injuries. So just sit tight “ in fact, lie down, will you? “ and shut your mouth, and I’ll be done in a jiffy.”
“A ‘jiffy’ is hardly a precise unit of time,” said Spock; and then, having lodged his complaint, he lay back.
McCoy probed the bruise gently, trying not to cause the man any more pain. To his intense relief, it did appear to be wholly superficial “ how would he have treated it if it wasn’t? But it was a bit close to the man’s heart for comfort. His heart! And why was his heart there? How could he have been born, how could he have lived with his heart there? It was incredible. Unbelievable.
“How on Earth did you ever escape the XP, Mr. Spock?” McCoy asked in wonder, letting his hand linger just to feel the too-fast heartbeat coming from so strange a place. “I would have thought they’d keep you under close guard. I heard you were different, but this… this is a phenomenon! A miracle!”
“I am qualified to pronounce on neither the existence of miracles nor on whether or not my condition constitutes one.” His voice was icy. “As to how I escaped the XP…”
There was a shout of “WHAT ARE YOU TWO WHISPERING ABOUT?” from the next room. McCoy jumped and removed his hand, fumbling in the medical kit for the salve that had been there, a moment ago…
“Here,” he said at last, and Spock sat up, taking the metal jar. “Rub this on the bruise, and…” He caught Spock’s face and turned it toward the light. Pressing lightly on the faint mark on his strong jawbone, he asked, “Does that hurt?”
“No.”
“Well, rub this on it anyway. And you can get dressed. I’m done.”
McCoy turned away to pack up his kit, then left the room, navigating around piles of blankets to get to the tapestry. He rejoined the rest of the group, noticing at once that Pike still looked murderous and that Montgomery Scott and Christine Chapel looked cowed. McCoy sidled over instead to the beautiful dark-haired woman watching Pike.
“Miss van Oldenmark?”
“It’s Number One, doctor.” Her voice was as flat as Spock’s, but at least she sounded like she could show emotion if she wanted to. McCoy remembered reading her files in the XP after Dr. Piper had told him about her: a brilliant woman “ her IQ was ridiculously high “ locked up from the age of sixteen, when a paper outlining a perfectly logical, perfectly feasible plan of hers to overthrow the Enforcers had been discovered lying around. The Enforcers had traced the handwriting, and the girl had been carted off from her government orphanage to the XP.
“Number One?” he amended.
“Doctor?”
“About Spock… is he “ hell, I don’t know. Is he all right?”
“Specify.”
“Well, psychologically speaking. I can’t imagine what someone like him must have gone through in the XP, and if I’d gone through life “ like that, I’d be one seriously messed up puppy.”
“I see.”
There was a long silence, broken only by Pike’s pacing, Scotty’s pencil scratching, and the whispers of everyone else’s quiet conversations. McCoy fidgeted on the upturned wooden crate he had sat down on, wondering if Number One had simply decided not to answer. But just as he opened his mouth, she said, “Spock is not… messed up in the sense that he would kill someone or betray us to the Enforcers… he is not insane. But “ and Dr. McCoy, I am only saying this because you are by default his personal physician, and he will never admit to anything.”
“I understand.”
She took a deep breath as if to steady herself. “Spock “ “
There were three knocks on the door. The room fell utterly silent.
“Move, move, move!” Pike hissed, and Uhura, Sulu, and Riley dove behind the tapestry. Janice Rand affixed a smile to her face and went to open the cellar door.
“Hello?”
“Uh, I’m Jim Kirk. Mr. Pike and “ and someone else asked me to come…”
“Kirk!” Beaming suddenly, Pike strode forward. “Come in, come in!”
McCoy craned his neck, getting his first glimpse of the infamous James Kirk. And he frowned. Because he knew that boy’s face from somewhere…
And that, of course, was his friend. Dark-haired and handsome, he kept darting little glances around the room and flashing charming little grins at Number One. McCoy eyeballed him and decided to reserve judgment. After all, Number One was certainly pretty enough to warrant charming grins thrown in her direction.
“And your name is…?” Pike was asking Kirk’s friend.
“Gary Mitchell.”
“Mr. Kirk has told you everything, I suppose?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Jim’s told me. I mean, I guess he’s told me everything.”
Christine Chapel ran to the tapestry, but Spock had already pushed it aside and come into the room, still holding “ to McCoy’s amusement “ the jar of salve. He had put his T-shirt back on, but a great expanse of green-tinged arm was still visible, as well as his ears and eyebrows. Gary Mitchell gaped. Kirk stepped forward.
“Look, sorry I hit you.”
“It is of no consequence.”
“I’m sorry anyway.”
McCoy watched incredulously as Spock tilted his head to the side and lifted a slender hand, brushing his fingertips lightly across Kirk’s shoulder. Kirk blinked and then stood still, and after a moment they stepped away from each other.
“I ask forgiveness,” Spock said formally.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kirk said casually.
McCoy shivered involuntarily. “Someone just walked over your grave,” his grandmother used to say. Well, McCoy wasn’t superstitious, but something had passed between the two men, and the doctor had felt it like an electrical current in the air.
And then the moment passed; all around the dimly lit room, shoulders relaxed, people slumped back into chairs. Still grinning broadly, Pike made the necessary introductions, calling out Uhura, Sulu and Riley, making everyone shake hands except Spock, who stuck his hands behind his back as Gary Mitchell approached and inclined his head politely. Mitchell looked, if anything, relieved. McCoy could sympathize; Spock looked downright forbidding, and he wouldn’t have wanted to shake his hand either. But when Kirk came by, McCoy studied his face closely before taking the hand.
“You seem so familiar, Mr. Kirk,” McCoy said slowly, tugging self-consciously on the ill-fitting sweater Pike had lent him. “I don’t suppose you were ever at the XP…?”
“No, I’m Anglo-American and I’ve never done… been caught doing…”
McCoy gave an undignified snort of laughter, and Kirk grinned.
“…anything to incriminate me.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
Kirk moved on, and McCoy was left looking after him. The impression that the man was familiar had not faded, but it was probably just that McCoy had seen someone who looked like him in the XP or somewhere. Kirk’s features, while handsome and even, were not distinctive. No doubt there were plenty of people “
“Doctor?”
McCoy jumped, pressing a hand to his thudding heart. “Spock! Scare me half to death, why don’t you!”
The man’s hands were clasped behind his rigidly straight back, and he looked for all the world like a soldier about to deliver a report, albeit a soldier with pointed ears. “Guilty conscience?” he asked, deadpan, and McCoy almost laughed. Sulu had told McCoy that Spock didn’t have a sense of humor. McCoy was beginning to suspect that Sulu was wrong.
“Just wondering how it’s gonna work out,” McCoy said, nodding in the direction of Kirk and Mitchell, who were, respectively, talking very seriously with Kevin Riley and ogling Janice Rand. He looked back at Spock in time to see one slanted eyebrow lift.
“Indeed. It should be… fascinating.”
As McCoy would often think over the next few months, to say that “fascinating” was an understatement would be an understatement.
Part Two, Chapter Seven by Firefly
February, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
Christopher Pike did not often think what a wonderful group of people he had, but when he did, he thought so fervently and with all his soul. As he stepped off the stairs and into the basement he called home, he realized that this was one of those times.
For once, they were all home “ no one was out looking for parts to beg or steal, no one was trying to get a bit of money through some honest employment. As the little band of rebels had grown throughout the years, the basement of the 21st Street Mission had felt progressively smaller and smaller, and with the addition of Jim Kirk and Gary Mitchell it felt smaller than ever, but no one complained. They all sat on upturned boxes, on chairs, on the floor, on whatever they could find, arguing and figuring and discussing in intense, hushed voices. Pike’s eyes fell on The Project, as he thought of it “ the diamonds he had made Number One steal so long ago still at its center, with tubes and wires connecting pieces of metal scrounged from dumpsters and landfills, electric lights rigged up, circuits and conduits carefully fused together and magnets glued in place with home-made paste… that would not exist but for the men and women who sat poring over technical manuals and taking motorcar engines apart and endlessly calculating distances and variables.
Next to The Project, cautiously screwing something in place, knelt Scotty, squinting in concentration while Kirk handed him tiny metal pieces. Dark heads bent together, Spock, Sulu and Number One argued quietly just beyond Scotty while Kevin Riley and Uhura sat on the sofa and pored together over a large manual, Uhura occasionally pointing things out for Riley to underline with his pencil. Her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration, Christine Chapel lay stretched out as far as she could on the floor, working sums on scraps of paper and handing them to Dr. McCoy, who checked them briefly before passing them on to Kirk, who told the results to Scotty, who accordingly adjusted his wires. And Gary Mitchell quietly helped Janice Rand to make and hand out sandwiches and coffee to everyone.
Pike allowed a broad smile to cross his face before going to collect a sandwich. Rand and Mitchell both smiled at him, Mitchell a bit nervously.
“You two are doing the best work of all,” he told them. They both nodded pleasantly, and he sat down to eat his sandwich, stretching out his stiff legs. He had just been on his hands and knees helping Mrs. Keeler scrub the floor for most of the morning, and he wasn’t as young as he had used to be… Pike remembered stories of the good old days in which people didn’t get arthritis until much later in life, but since the Alliance, all the pollution in the air had shortened the average lifespan by quite a bit. Not that Pike was about to die anytime soon, but he was aging. He could feel it.
Mitchell and Rand had gone back to making sandwiches, and Pike was amused to notice that Mitchell kept making their hands brush on purpose. Every time this happened, Rand would snatch hers back as if burned. Poor girl. Well, at least now Pike understood why Mitchell had been content to make food and not help Scotty or Number One.
Speaking of Number One, her voice was growing steadily louder, and Pike glanced over at her. Number One embraced logic, eschewed emotion, and tried to distance herself from the human race, but when she got angry… Pike rose and casually strolled over to stop the confrontation before it began.
“How’s it going, Number One? Sulu, Spock?”
Spock kept his mouth shut. Sulu pointed a finger at Number One and said, “She thinks that we would have to use a giant big tube to add steering power to a starship “ “
“To channel the antimatter flow, one would necessarily “ “
Pike held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, calm down! We haven’t even finished the engine yet! Can’t you wait until we have an engine and a ship to put it in before we start figuring out the particulars?”
Number One and Sulu looked at each other rather foolishly, and Sulu gave a small chuckle. “Sorry, Number One.”
“Quite all right, Mr. Sulu.”
Pike rolled his eyes at Spock, who raised an eyebrow and said in an undertone, “I attempted to point this out, but they will not listen to me as they listen to you.” Pike shrugged and moved on to Uhura and Riley, leaving Spock, Sulu and Number One to continue the discussion.
“There,” Uhura said quietly, pointing, and Riley circled a phrase in the manual they were reading. Really it was about rocket ships, and the principles were different “ rocket power as opposed to matter/antimatter fusion “ but according to Scotty, some of the ideas were transferable, and it was Uhura and Riley’s job to find those ideas.
Pike leaned over the back of the sofa to read over Uhura’s shoulder. In the sentence Riley had circled, Pike understood the words “the”, “and”, “should”, and “converter”. Pike shook his head. He was an excellent organizer, good at conflict resolution, morale-boosting, and balancing checkbooks, but he was not and would never be a scientist.
Pike moved on to Christine Chapel, who looked so focused that he didn’t dare disturb her. Besides, he was still angry with her; she had gone for a food run yesterday and come back with her long, wavy brown hair short, wavy and blonde. Pike hadn’t noticed until Number One had pointed it out, but then he had been forced to shout for the second time in a week. Their funds were precious enough, and never mind that Chapel had paid for the hairdo with money that she had herself honestly earned by returning a family’s lost dog three days ago; it was the principle of the thing. He passed over the young woman, turning instead to McCoy and Kirk. Kirk was currently showing McCoy something on a sheet of paper, talking quietly.
“This is wrong.”
“Well, excuse me.”
“I’m just saying “ “
“I know. Lemme see.”
McCoy moved his finger down the column of figures.
“Christine must’ve added it wrong, and I didn’t catch it. Sorry, Kirk.”
“Jim.”
“Sorry, Jim.”
Kirk grinned and patted McCoy on the back. “It’s okay, no harm done. But stick to your day job, sawbones.”
McCoy laughed, making everybody look up at him. “Sorry,” he said, and after a beat everyone looked back down at their work. It was quite funny, actually, almost synchronized. Pike had to suppress a chuckle himself as he crouched down next to Scotty, who alone had not looked up.
“How’s it going?” Pike asked softly.
“Shut up!”
His eyebrows shooting up, Pike stood and stepped back. All right then. He picked his way through carefully laid out tools and parts, going back to get the sandwich he had neglected.
As he went back over to McCoy, intending to help him check the important calculations himself, Rand followed him with some sandwiches. She tried to give one to Scotty and was rebuffed the same way Pike had been, and then went over to Kirk. Pike suddenly remembered a look she had given the young man and became very interested in the calculations.
“Mr. Kirk “ why don’t you eat something?” she whispered. “You’ve been working very hard.”
“Thanks, I’m not hungry.” Kirk slapped a wrench into Scotty’s open hand.
“You need to keep up your strength. You didn’t eat breakfast either “ you’re starting to get like Mr. Spock!”
“She’s right, Jim,” McCoy whispered absently. “The human body needs nourishment in order to… Christine, I can’t read your handwriting. What’s this say?”
The young woman looked up in surprise, blinking in disorientation. “What?”
McCoy sighed and scooted over to her to explain, and Pike went back to pretending he wasn’t listening to Rand and Kirk.
“I made them myself,” she wheedled.
“I’ll have one later. Thank you, though.” Kirk passed Scotty a piece of copper wire and what appeared to be a computer chip.
“Coffee, then?”
“Miss Rand “ Janice “ I am in the middle of “ “
Something sparked and fizzled on the warp drive. Scotty yelped. White smoke billowed in the room. Everyone stood up and began talking at once.
“Fire!” Riley said, losing his head.
“My papers!” Christine cried.
Pike ran to open the door to the alley, passersby be damned, and tried to waft the smoke out with his hands. After a moment, it became obvious that there was no fire; the smoke smelled nasty, but there were no flames and no heat.
When the room cleared, they found that Scotty’s dark hair was sticking straight up, but he was grinning from ear to ear. When Uhura rushed forward to see if he was all right, he pointed to The Project.
A low humming came from the device; a faint blue light seemed to pulse in one of the Plexiglass tubes, almost as if it was moving through the tube. Holding his breath, Pike crept closer, his eyes wide.
“Scotty…” he breathed.
“Aye, sir?”
“Scotty!”
Pike seized Scotty’s shoulders, shaking him wildly. “Is it done? Is it done?”
“Sir!” Half-laughing, the engineer pulled free of Pike’s grasp. “I wouldna say done. It should work, but it isn’t safe “ I’ll need time to reinforce it, clean it up, find a way to safely combine the matter and antimatter “ “
“Scotty,” Pike said weakly, falling into a chair, “you’re a genius.”
“Aye, sir. Thank you, sir.”
And then suddenly Spock had closed the door, and everyone started to cheer and laugh and congratulate each other, and Pike didn’t have the heart to tell them to be quiet. After all, it was a Sunday, and the mission was closed.
Number One fought her way through everybody and stood beside him. Her lips curved upward in a small smile as she looked down at him.
“Christopher, are you all right?”
“I’m fine… just overwhelmed. I never really thought about what we would do when it was done.”
“It’s not done, not yet. We need to make it safe, make it clean, find a way to put it into an actual ship “ “
He cut her off abruptly. “I know.” But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was sitting down on the arm of his chair and smiling at him.
“I never told you my name, did I?”
“Nope.”
She glanced at the others, and Pike followed her gaze, but they were still talking excitedly, eating sandwiches, clapping each other on the back “ except for Spock, of course, who was eyeing The Project closely. Pike grinned fondly at the sight of them, his people who had worked so hard…
“It’s Jemima,” Number One said suddenly. “Jemima Hortense van Oldenmark.”
He looked back at her, still grinning as he took her hand. For once she didn’t object.
“You know what? That’s a beautiful name.”
--
Amanda…
Amanda…
How many times had she heard his voice in her mind?
Amanda…
But it was never anything more than her name, though she thought at him with all her might. Come for me, my love. Save me, for I am lost…
Amanda…
She was never sure if it was actually him calling her or if it was her own mind supplying his voice. She wondered if she was finally going insane.
Beloved, she had heard him say once, but that didn’t count; that was just her name translated. T’hy’la, she thought she heard him say, but again, it was still her name… if the word “t’hy’la” had any English equivalent, it would be “beloved”, whether or not the love was romantic. In her case, she hoped very much that it was. She hoped also that she was not dreaming, that his voice was really his voice and not her mind trying to comfort itself as she languished in her heavily guarded, solitary-confinement cell.
Languished! What a wonderful word that was! “It sounds like what it is,” she had often told her parents when she was small. She had said that of words like “balloon”, “chatter”, “poison”… though not all words sounded like what they were… in fact, she remembered the first time her father had told her that they were having company over for dinner, she had supposed that “Company” was the name of a woman.
And she was going insane. Of all the things to think of, why that silly memory?
Well, why not? It was dark. It was boring. It was, quite frankly, smelly, though the writer in her protested that it was effluvial. And the psychologist in her again insisted that she was going insane.
Restlessly, she paced the cell. She had tried breaking out. She had tried communicating with the prisoner in the next cell. She had tried faking sickness in the hope that she would be taken to another sympathetic doctor, but the rather unsympathetic doctor who had come to her had seen through that. She wished she could really get sick. She yearned even for the torture of the awful experiments “ anything to break the monotony of sitting in this dark, boring, effluvial cell.
My husband, she called with all her strength, praying that by some accident of fate he was near. My love.
Amanda-Beloved-T’hy’la, she heard “ her name, why was it only ever her name? “ and then one word, one word she may or may not have thought herself.
Soon.
Part Two, Chapter Eight by Firefly
February, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
For the next week, the piano music that played in the evenings in the cellar of the 21st Street Mission was lovely “ none of the haunting minor chords that had plagued Mary Keeler for so long. It was sweet and pretty, filled with hope and happiness that its player would not show in the open.
Relationships among the people Pike was starting to think of as his “crew” “ after all, they would eventually be his crew aboard the starship! “ flourished and grew. Upon learning that Spock played the piano and Uhura sang, Kirk, Mitchell and McCoy assailed them with requests ranging from Row, Row, Row Your Boat to Stravinsky’s Firebird. Everyone joined in the former and listened raptly to the latter as Spock’s long fingers danced deftly over the keys. Even Pike gave up telling him to stop, as long as he limited his playing to times when the mission was closed.
He would sit there, swaying, so he believed, in time with the music, and really about half a beat off. But he would sit, in any case, and watch his crew watch other members of his crew.
Gary Mitchell watched Janice Rand, and Janice Rand watched Jim Kirk. Jim Kirk occasionally watched Uhura along with Kevin Riley, but Pike suspected he really liked Edith Keeler, who was back at university and would graduate soon. Uhura had been known to watch both Scotty and Sulu, and Sulu was prone to watching Christine Chapel, who watched Spock constantly. Spock himself watched Number One, though in a controlled, logical sort of way.
And Number One? Well, she didn’t watch anyone, exactly, but Pike often met her clear blue eyes, and she would seem to smile ever-so-slightly. Jemima, he called her in his thoughts, though he knew she would not thank him for saying that out loud. Beautiful Jemima.
The Project itself was going well, according to Scotty and Spock “ apparently it would take at least another month, but they were confident of success, and all Pike had to do was find a way to steal and launch a rocket ship, please and thank you. Oh, and they would need to work on the rocket ship itself for a few weeks without the Enforcers seeing to hook up the engine to the controls and sensors, but that shouldn’t be a problem, should it, Mr. Pike, sir?
Still, it was impossible to be angry with his crew; they were truly wonderful, running about finding things and taking things apart and cleaning things and, of course, helping out in the mission itself. Pike had organized a kind of duty roster; every day, two of those who were Anglo-American and therefore safe went upstairs to do whatever Mrs. Keeler needed, while another two went out into the city to get supplies and food. Whoever was left worked on The Project feverishly, barking orders at each other, dashing around in a kind of cautious frenzy. The Project grew larger and cleaner and more complex every day.
It had been four years since he had started this with just Sulu and Scotty. Now, finally, it seemed to be paying off.
So (logically, of course) delighted was Number One that she forgot about not liking cigarette smoke, and Pike happily puffed away in the basement until Scotty objected, saying that the smoke was getting into the Project. Pike obligingly moved outside, followed by Kirk and Mitchell, who borrowed his lighter and sat on the steps with him.
“So how’d you get the idea in the first place?” Mitchell asked.
Pike exhaled thoughtfully. “It was after I met Sulu, after he’d escaped from the XP. He was born an American citizen, you know, before… and I realized just how far we’d sunk, and figured it was time to clear out.”
“Why not steal an airplane and move to a different country?”
“What country? Half of them are oppressed by the Enforcers, and the other half quite rightly don’t trust Anglo-Americans. Besides, we need a permanent solution. With warp speed, we might find a habitable planet… we might find intelligent life to help us…”
“What are the chances?” Kirk asked skeptically.
Pike leaned in very close. “When Zefram Cochrane flew the very first warp-capable starship, his sensors picked up what might well have been another vessel just before a malfunction forced him to go back and land.”
They both stared at him, wide-eyed. There. That little tidbit from the Enforcers’ confidential files he had stolen should fix them for a while. Fortunately, Cochrane’s warp drive had exploded before the Enforcers had been able to figure out how it worked, the signal on the sensors had been too faint for the Enforcers to trace whatever it was, and the man himself had remained close-mouthed “ but his log had mentioned it, and said that he thought it was a vessel.
Kirk put out his cigarette first. “If we ever go into space, we won’t be able to smoke,” he said slightly regretfully. Pike grimaced, but followed suit. The boy was right.
Mitchell scowled and stood up. “I don’t know if I want to go into space.”
Pike opened his mouth, but Kirk beat him to it. “Better than staying here.”
“I guess.”
The door opened, and Janice Rand came out, holding a sheaf of paper. “They need you, Mr. Pike.”
Pike sighed and took the paper from Rand. Never a moment’s peace “ that was the price he paid. As he nodded briefly to Kirk and Mitchell and went back inside, he thought he heard Mitchell greet Rand warmly.
Pike shook his head, then put it out of his mind and went over to Spock, who was leaning over Sulu’s shoulder and talking quickly in his ear. He straightened at once on seeing Pike, his hands moving from the surface of the table to their customary position behind his back.
“Care to explain this, Spock?” Pike said, shoving the papers at him. Spock flipped through them, his eyes scanning them with inhuman speed, and then looked up at Pike, his eyebrows raised.
“It is quite self-explanatory, sir. To ensure the safety of the warp engine, Mr. Scott requires these supplies.”
Pike passed a hand over his eyes, collapsing into a chair. “Spock “ copper wire, fine. The filaments from five electric lightbulbs, fine. Wires from a high-end computer, difficult, but fine. But platinum, Spock? Really?”
Spock closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as if preparing to shout, then letting it out slowly.
“Chris,” he said quietly, opening his eyes and locking them with Pike’s. “We need this.”
Pike was quite unable to look away. Of course, of course they needed the platinum. They couldn’t succeed without it.
“We need the platinum. There is no other way.”
“I’ll get you your platinum,” Pike found himself saying.
“Thank you.” Spock broke the eye contact and turned back to Sulu, and Pike blinked, left with the strangest feeling that he had agreed to something he hadn’t meant to agree to. But the sensation passed quickly, and Pike moved on.
--
“So how do you like it here so far?”
“It’s good. I feel useful for once.” Kirk glanced up at Rand, who was staring at him, her green eyes wide and rapt with attention. His gaze flicked to Gary, who was watching Rand with equal intensity.
“Gary, don’t you like it?” he asked pointedly, and Rand turned politely to Gary, who took the cigarette out of his mouth and put on his most charming smile.
“Yeah. It’s great. I mean, we’re making a difference and everything “ I can’t wait to actually get into space.”
Kirk went to sit down on the steps next to his friend, propping his chin in his hands and trying to stifle a smirk. That was a different tune than Gary had been singing earlier.
But Rand was not interested in Gary. She turned back to Kirk. “You are really helping, you know. We never dreamed we’d get anyone who had seen a real warp drive. We wouldn’t have gotten here without you.”
“I don’t know. Scotty is really good “ and so is everyone else. Number One, Spock…”
Gary seized on that topic of conversation at once. “Miss Rand “ Janice “ you know Number One and Spock, they’re both so…”
“Cold? Yes, well, I haven’t been able to puzzle Spock out, but Number One keeps making disparaging remarks about the human race. I’m pretty sure she thinks emotion led to the Alliance.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Kirk cried. “Negative emotion maybe, but what about good emotions? Friendship? Joy? Love?”
He felt Gary’s hand on his shoulder and shut his mouth. “Calm down, Jim. Jim gets overexcited,” he added to Rand.
“But he’s right,” Rand said quickly. “Those are the things we need more of. I can’t understand Number One or Spock at all.”
Kirk exchanged a glance with Gary, then they both looked back at Rand, who was standing before them, still watching Kirk. After a moment, Rand sighed.
“You know, sometimes I wonder if it’s really possible.”
“What “ getting into space?” Gary said. “I wonder that too. I wonder if it’s worth it. I mean, I know the Enforcers are terrible, but…” He shrugged and tossed his cigarette butt on the ground, stamping on it with his heel. “I just wonder.”
Rand wrapped her arms around herself, looking down. “Everyone wonders when they first join us. I’m worried because I still wonder.”
“Hey, don’t be. Don’t worry, Janice,” Gary said hastily. “I mean, it’ll work, of course, but it is a pretty out-there idea. I mean “ you know what I mean.”
She smiled noncommittally and turned back to Kirk, who was tugging on the collar of his shirt uncomfortably. It wasn’t that Rand wasn’t pretty, but… thoughts of Edith, of Edith’s lovely smile, of her sleek dark hair and wide eyes came to mind, and he looked down, not meeting Rand’s eyes.
“I’ve got to go,” he said automatically, and stood up, hurrying back into the basement.
Part Two, Chapter Nine by Firefly
February, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
Her nose pressed to the window of the train, the young woman waited as it ever-so-slowly grew slower and slower. Though she willed herself to be calm, the girl could feel her heart pounding in her chest and could not stop her breath from quickening as she stared out at the familiar sights of her own town.
It was still oppressed by the Enforcers “ they still dictated everything that went on. But it was home. Peering out of the window, Edith Keeler saw the old library “ which, if you knew the right people, could occasionally lend you forbidden books “ and the mall where Edith had bought all her clothes since she was very young, though her mother bemoaned what the prices had become since the Anglo-American Alliance. And, with a shiver of distaste, Edith saw the gray, institutional roof of the experimental facility.
The XP reminded her of the escaped prisoners her mother was sheltering in the basement, which reminded her of one reason she was so excited to be finally coming home from university “ namely, James Kirk. For once she was glad that she had been on the accelerated program, graduating in February rather than August. It had been more work “ but now she could see Jim again. And her mother, of course. And it would be good to resume full-time work at the mission.
As her train finally came to a halt and the conductor’s voice came blaring out of the loudspeaker, made tinny and unintelligible by the static. Edith only caught one word in three, but he seemed to be welcoming them all to the town and warning them to abide by the law. Edith rolled her eyes in the privacy of her seat and stood up, drawing her sky-blue cape tighter around her and bending down to pick up her luggage. Before she could, a large hand grabbed her suitcase handle, and she looked up to see a tall, handsome young man, grinning at her widely.
“Thank you,” she said coldly, snatching her suitcase. He tipped his hat and let her pass, still grinning broadly, the idiot.
Edith gave the conductor her ticket, and he ran a scanner over it, then over the ID chip she handed him. “Nice day, Miss Keeler,” he grunted, and she moved on, taking a deep breath of the not-quite-fresh air before strolling off down the concrete sidewalk. She did take one look back at the train, hovering in midair between its magnetic posts, but then she began to walk with her head held high.
“Edith darling!” someone called from her left, and Edith whirled around.
“Mother!”
She dropped her bags and threw her arms around her mother. “Mother, it’s so good to be back! There’s nothing like knowing it’s all behind you, knowing you can work full time now, earn money, make something of yourself “ “
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t come to your graduation, darling, but I couldn’t just leave Mr. Pike and his merry band of thieves, they might blow up the house!”
“I understand, Mother “ it wasn’t much. A little dry man gave a long dry speech and we all nearly fell asleep, and then we got our little certificates and were told we had served the Alliance well. There wasn’t even a reception.” Edith shrugged and picked up her bags. “I’m much happier being home. How is everyone?”
“Actually, Jim Kirk insisted on driving me here. He should be bringing the car around now “ see, there.” Mary pointed, and pulled her daughter toward the old, faded aircar, skimming the ground by a few inches.
Edith pulled the door open and poked her head in, smiling when she saw the man in the driver’s seat. “Jim!”
“Edith! Congratulations.” He flashed his bright, charming smile. “I thought I would come pick you up in person.”
Edith clambered into the car, smoothing her skirt around her legs as she sat down. Mary got in the back with Edith’s luggage, and Kirk revved the aircar.
“So how is everyone? Mr. Pike, Mr. Spock?”
“Same as ever. And Edith, we’ve done it. We’ve made a warp drive. Scotty’s just cleaning it up now “ you know, making sure it’s safe and it won’t explode.”
“Oh my goodness!” Edith squealed. “Mother, do you hear “ “
“Hear what? I haven’t heard a thing. I haven’t the foggiest clue what’s going on in my basement, Edith, remember?”
“Oh “ right, right, of course,” Edith said, and then turned back to Kirk, her eyes wide. “So you won’t be staying long?”
“I guess not. I guess we’ll have to go find a starship to put the warp drive in.” Kirk fell silent for a moment, and Edith watched him drive, his hands gripping the controls. “I don’t know if it’ll work,” he muttered, as if to himself.
“Just as long as you remain quiet, dear,” Mary said laughingly. “I don’t want the people we help to get suspicious.”
Edith didn’t smile; she was half-frowning, looking at Kirk. “Why don’t you think it’ll work?”
He shrugged. “It might. Scotty and Spock are good.”
She looked back out at the road, still frowning. There was something in his tone she didn’t like. If he didn’t believe they could do it, they probably couldn’t.
Kirk maneuvered the aircar around the familiar twisty bend that led to 21st Street, and Edith leaned forward. There it was, the mission itself, sitting there at the end of the road as big and shiny as the day she had left. Which was not very big, or shiny. But after all, it was home, and Edith couldn’t suppress her happiness as she opened the door of the aircar almost before it had landed in the garage, running out the garage door, up the walk and to the front door, hastily unlocking it and slipping in even before her mother and Kirk had gotten out of the car. It was a Sunday, so the mission was closed; it would be empty; she would have it all to herself…
She ran lightly into the sitting room, then stopped dead. Chris Pike and the tall dark-haired woman whose name Edith had never been able to catch stood between the sofa and the coffee table, dustcloths lying forgotten on the floor, locked together in a passionate embrace.
The separated as soon as she entered; Pike looked almost as embarrassed as Edith felt, and the woman’s face was suddenly devoid of expression. “I’m sorry,” Edith said, stepping back. “I didn’t…”
“Miss Keeler. Ah… welcome home,” Pike said weakly. “I… er… congratulations on your graduation.”
“Yes, we heard that you graduated,” the woman said, nodding. “Christopher, I think I had better go make sure that Scott isn’t overworking himself.”
“Good idea, Jemma “ er, Number One.”
Number One, that was what everyone called her. She vanished through the side door, her face still completely blank, and Pike smiled brightly at Edith as Kirk and Mary came in, Mary carrying Edith’s bags.
“Mrs. Keeler, hello,” he said, reaching down to pick up the dustcloths. “Kirk, McCoy wants you for a checkup.”
“A what?” Kirk demanded, outraged.
“A checkup. You know, to make sure you aren’t sick? Apparently you haven’t had a checkup in two years, and you were living on the streets for a while, and he wants you to have a checkup.”
“Sadistic old sawbones,” Kirk muttered. “Catch you later, Edith. Bye, Mrs. Keeler.”
“Thank you for driving!” Mary said cheerily. Edith simply met Kirk’s eyes and smiled at him. He blinked at her for a moment, then grinned back before disappearing down the same path as Number One. Edith stared after him for a moment. His smile was still lovely… still bright and charming…
“Edith? Should you get unpacked?” Mary said gently, and Edith jumped.
“Oh! Yes!” With a last nod to Pike, she took her bags and left for her room, walking slowly up the dark-carpeted stairs, taking everything in as if for the first time.
But her mind was still on Jim Kirk.
--
“What?”
Spock opened his mouth patiently, but the young man cut him off. His arms were folded across his chest, and if Spock was any judge of body language and facial expression, he looked positively furious.
“Why do I have to cook? I mean, sandwiches, fine, but cooking? I can’t cook. Why don’t they get the girls to do that? That one black girl? Why can’t she do the cooking?”
Spock raised an eyebrow.
“Surely by know you know her name, Mr. Mitchell. Miss Uhura is trained in physics and in mechanical engineering and is therefore valuable to the project at this time. You are not.”
They stood in the bedroom, on opposite sides of the room, Mitchell glaring at Spock and Spock looking back at him. Both ignored the tangle of blankets and pillows on the floor, which looked as though ten young girls had just had a slumber party.
“So now you’re telling me I’m not valuable?” Mitchell demanded.
“Well, you are not.”
“Right. It’s not like I do all the dirty work around here. It’s not like Pike’s always telling me to make beds, or help make sandwiches, or sweep the floor “ “
“You do not do all of the dirty work here. We all rotate tasks. It is merely that you cannot help with the hands-on modification of our warp drive, and therefore you are convenient for the household chores.”
“Convenient.” Mitchell scowled and kicked at the pillow near his foot. “Yeah, that’s me. Gary the housewife.”
Spock stepped closer to the man, frowning slightly. “Mr. Mitchell “ I do not understand your hostility. I have merely been sent to inform you that Mr. Pike requires you to make supper. Have I done something to offend you?”
“I’m not valuable. I’m convenient. You really are a computer.”
Ah, so he had hurt the man’s feelings. Everyone’s feelings were so easily hurt. Spock always found it most tiresome trying to find words that would convey his meaning without giving offense, and too often he failed.
“I ask forgiveness,” he said, and again stepped closer. “I did not intend to insult you. You must understand that I do not feel emotion…” This was not precisely true, but close enough. “And I have difficulty understanding what may offend others.”
Mitchell’s expression, which had been hostile, was now oddly closed. “Spock, if you don’t feel emotion, I can’t offend you?”
“Correct.”
“Good “ look, are you human?”
Spock raised an eyebrow. Most interesting.
“What else would I be?” he asked gravely. “Mr. Mitchell, you are required to cook supper for us in the mission’s kitchen. Mrs. Keeler has given us permission, provided we use our own ingredients.” His voice was firm; he tried to make it clear that the conversation was closed.
“Spock,” said Mitchell, stepping forward, looking up at him. “If you don’t feel emotion… why are you always looking at Number One?”
Spock stiffened as if Mitchell had hit him. Never ask intrusive questions, Spock, the distant memory of a man’s voice whispered in the back of his mind, but he ignored it, too preoccupied with Mitchell. Pulling his sweater down automatically to straighten it, he said coldly, “Mr. Mitchell, you are required to report to the kitchen at once.”
Mitchell smirked “ positively smirked. “Do you know Pike and Number One are together? I can see that and I’ve only been here for a month. I heard him call her Jemma the other day, and Kevin Riley said that he saw them “ “
“Mr. Mitchell, will you go to the kitchen, or shall I carry you?”
“I’ve really hit a nerve, haven’t I,” Mitchell said, grinning. “Mr. Logical Spock “ “
Spock closed his eyes briefly, then reached out and picked Mitchell up, slinging him over his shoulder. The man gave a cry of protest, pounding at Spock’s back with his fists, but Spock walked out of the bedroom door, through the main room (where everybody stared at the two of them), and up the stairs into the main house. He navigated the deserted halls of the mission, ignoring Mitchell’s yells and kicking, and only let the man down when they were outside the kitchen door.
“Mr. Mitchell, you have been behaving childishly,” Spock said quietly. “Go into the kitchen, please, and cook supper.”
Mitchell glared at Spock for a moment, then wrenched the door open. As he did, Edith Keeler and Jim Kirk turned and fell silent; they had been standing about three feet apart, talking earnestly.
“Well “ ‘bye, Jim,” Edith said, her gaze flitting around as she walked quickly out of the kitchen, passing Spock and Mitchell without even looking at them. Spock flicked an eyebrow up, but refrained from comment. James Kirk’s extracurricular activities were not his concern. Still, he couldn’t help but picture Number One and Chris Pike, in a kitchen alone together…
And then he banished the thought. He felt nothing. There was no emotion. Only logic, only control, the control that he knew nothing about, the control that he wasn’t even certain he should employ.
“Mr. Mitchell,” he said, his voice seeming detached, as if someone else were speaking through him, possessing him. “Please proceed. Mr. Kirk “ “
“Uh, Spock, could I have a word?” Kirk asked quickly.
Spock was surprised, but the person controlling his voice and body didn’t show it. “Certainly,” he said, and turned smoothly, walking out of the kitchen. He strode down the hall and around the corner, stopping and waiting for Kirk to catch up. Kirk leaned against the cream-painted wall, biting his lip.
“Mr. Spock,” he began hesitantly. “I, er… I know this is a very personal question.”
Spock could guess what it would be about. His ears; his blood; his lack of emotion; the XP; his mother; Number One…
“Uhura. Are you and she… you know? Together?”
Spock raised both eyebrows.
“No. Why would you think that?” And why is everyone so concerned with romance? Mitchell and Rand, Rand and Kirk, Kirk and Miss Keeler, Number One and Pike, Number One and I, now Uhura and I?
“Well, you play and… and she sings, and “ the way she looks at you. I’m sorry.” Kirk shrugged apologetically, awkwardly.
“I hear you were a victim of Dr. McCoy’s today,” Spock said to try and put him at his ease.
“Bones? Yep. Great, isn’t he? ‘Dammit, Jim, sit on the bed or I’ll stick this stethoscope up your “ ‘ Well, you know what he’s like.” Kirk flashed a real smile, friendly and charming, and then hurried off with a mumbled word of farewell.
As Kirk disappeared around a corner, Spock wondered how on Earth they were going to finish the warp drive if the love triangles and squares and pentagons grew any more complex. No matter why or how, he was right to stay far away from emotionalism. Then and there, walking back to the stairs, he resolved to forget about his illogical attraction to Number One.
If they were ever to win the stars, to find out more about that universe of infinite possibilities, he would have to.
Part Two, Chapter Ten by Firefly
February, Year 20 of the Anglo-American Alliance
“I believe I over-reacted. Should I have treated him like a child? He is a grown man.”
“Spock, you said it. He was acting like a child. You acted like an adult. Whatever your feelings or lack thereof toward Miss van Olde “ Number One, rather, he had no right to goad you.”
“But I am not even sure he was, as you put it, ‘goading’ me. Are you certain my actions were not inappropriate?”
“Look, assuming we’re a crew here, you’re definitely his superior officer, and he was definitely goading you. You don’t dig a man about a woman unless you’re trying to push his buttons.”
“Push his -- ?”
“Grind his gears. Grate on his nerves. Wave a red flag in front of a bull. Make him mad.”
“Ah. Then carrying him up the stairs was not an improper -- ?”
“Spock, if it were me, I woulda given him the whaling of his life. It’s a good thing for him it was you.”
“Whaling?”
“Beating. Whipping. Spanking. Hide-tanning. Corporal punishment.”
“Ah.” Pause. “Thank you, doctor. I appreciate your assistance.”
“Anytime, Spock.”
Gary rolled his eyes and moved away from the tapestry, where he had been listening, his ear pressed to the hole in the middle of a large fleur-de-lys. Spock and McCoy had been holed up in there for the better part of an hour, talking about several things including the weather, the Enforcers, and Gary.
Scowling, Gary went over to Uhura, who was polishing the rust away from some metal parts they had. She worked carefully and thoroughly, seeming to enjoy her work, and Gary hated it.
Gary hated all of it. He couldn’t see what was so bad about the Enforcers. When Jimmy had dragged him out of school, he had only gone because it was Jimmy, and Jimmy was… well, Jimmy; impulsive and reckless sometimes, but a good, fun, dependable friend.
But now Jimmy had disappeared into this Mr. Kirk persona who had words with green-blooded freaks and coolly debated astrophysics with Scottish engineers. And Gary felt so alone in this happy family of nuts, as if by being normal, sane, he automatically made himself “convenient” or “not valuable”.
He kicked the wall, and Uhura and Sulu looked up at him, pressing fingers to their lips. The mission was open, and they couldn’t risk anyone hearing…
Gary knew this, but he wanted to scream, to shout, to fling himself down on the floor and throw a temper tantrum. He would leave them in a moment if he only had someone else with him, but they all seemed so happy here. Well, he wasn’t; and the hell of it was that he didn’t have anywhere better to go.
Suddenly, he could hear Janice Rand’s voice on the stairs. “Maybe I don’t want to anymore, Kevin!” she snapped. “Maybe I’m sick and tired of this. Maybe I wish I’d never come here!”
“Janice, you don’t mean that “ Janice.”
Rand came running down the stairs, followed by Kevin Riley. As she did, Spock and McCoy came out from behind the tapestry to see what the commotion was about, and Rand ran right into McCoy’s arms.
“Sorry,” she said, and Gary realized that she was crying.
McCoy patted her gently on the back and took her by arm, speaking to her in a low voice as he led her into the other room. Gary scowled, wishing that he were in McCoy’s place, then turned to Riley in order to ask him what that had been all about. But Riley had already stormed over to Uhura, and was busy helping her take the rust off a thin metal rod, scrubbing so hard he almost broke the thing. Gary decided this was not the time, and sat down on the piano bench instead, staring at the keys.
So Rand was discontented too? Interesting. If only she weren’t so interested in Jim, maybe she would leave with him. Anyway, Gary was certain that Rand stood no chance with Jim. His friend was altogether too taken with Edith Keeler. Gary swiped his fingers over the piano keys, accidentally pressing one down. The high, clear note seemed to linger in the air.
“Might I, Mr. Mitchell?”
Gary jumped and whirled around to see Spock standing behind him, his dark hair and dark clothes blending into the shadows. Gary scooted off the piano bench at once, and Spock sat down, flexing long, thin fingers before placing them on the piano. Somehow, he pressed the keys down without making any sound at all, and after a minute he stopped, his fingers resting lightly on the keys.
“Where did you learn to play?” Gary asked, attempting to make conversation.
“Books,” Spock replied brusquely.
“In the XP?”
Spock’s shoulders tensed, and Gary smiled slightly. So much for no emotion. Mention of the XP made everyone flinch, without exception.
“I heard that they sometimes put you under less guard in the XP if you do, uh, favors for the Enforcers,” Gary whispered, keeping his voice and manner casual. “You must have gotten really good if you were able to escape.”
It was really, really fun to needle the man, even if the last time he had done it he had ended up being carried to the kitchen. Gary leaned forward and savored every moment as Spock’s hands began to shake.
“Or maybe it was just luck,” he continued, softly, making sure no one could hear him but Spock. “After all, I can’t see any but the most twisted of Enforcers coming within five feet of a freak like “ “
The lid of the piano was slammed down hard, making everyone jump and look up. Spock rose to his feet, his hands clasped behind his back.
“That is enough, Mr. Mitchell,” he said coldly, his face masklike.
Gary made his eyes big and wide and innocent, stepping back. “I only wanted to “ “
Spock brushed past Gary, grabbing his knit cap from the table and pulling it over his head as he began to climb up the stairs.
“What’s his deal?” Gary asked Uhura and Riley, blinking at them in a bewildered manner.
Riley shrugged, and Uhura merely sighed. The tapestry was pushed back and McCoy stuck his head out.
“Can’t a doctor get any peace in this dump?” he groused.
--
They sat together on a bench in the park outside the XP, no different from the dozen-odd couples sitting and canoodling in the cool weather. There was no snow, of course “ it was Southern California, and even in the winter the landscape was not touched with white. But even if there had been snow and sub-zero temperatures, the couples would still have been there on this day.
“Do you know it’s Love Day?”
“You mean Valentine’s Day.”
“Hush!” She pressed a finger to his lips. “We’re in public. Valentine was a saint.”
“Oh, oh right. Love Day. February 28.”
“Do you know it used to be the fourteenth?”
“Huh. Why’d they change it?”
“The fourteenth was the birthday of the founder of the Alliance, and he didn’t want to have to give flowers to his wife on his special day.”
“Shh!” But Kirk couldn’t stifle a laugh. “Is that really true?”
Edith nodded seriously, then looked around, crossing her legs and folding her arms. “I feel so exposed out here. What are we doing again?”
Kirk sighed and just put an arm around her shoulders. He had explained it to her six times at last count, and he knew she understood perfectly well what exactly “XP duty” was. She was just nervous, and it was understandable. Come to think of it, he was nervous too. It was the first time he had been here without Pike or Number One, not to mention the first time he had been really alone with Edith.
They sat side by side and gazed out at the busy street, her head drifting onto his shoulder. “Look,” she murmured, “look at the lady in the blue scarf. I wonder if she made it herself.”
He ran a hand through her hair, which was loose today, falling in glossy dark waves around her face. It was beautiful. She was beautiful, and he told her so.
She laughed and nestled in closer to his side. Life was wonderful.
“When you go into space,” she whispered in his ear, “will you take me?”
He blinked, startled. “Of course, Edith. We’re always going to be together.”
“Always is a strong word, Jim.” She pulled back slightly, but he encircled her waist with his arms, trapping her in his embrace.
“Edith, darling. What’s wrong?”
She shrugged and laughed slightly. “Nothing. It’s just… I have the strangest feeling… as if you’re going to leave.”
He frowned, taking her shoulders, turning her to face him. “Why do you think that?” he asked softly. “You’re a part of the project, just like Spock or Sulu or me “ more than me. You’ve been with them longer.”
“That’s not it,” she said, and looked down. “I know you’re not going to leave. It’s just a feeling.”
Suddenly, seeming to appear from thin air, a tall, rust-clad Enforcer loomed over them. Edith clutched Kirk’s arm and shrank back slightly, but Kirk, who knew how to deal with these people, gave the man a charming smile.
“Can I help you, Officer?”
“I’ll need to ask your name.”
“Kerr,” Kirk said at once. “David Kerr.”
The Enforcer held up a small personal digipad and tapped something in with two large fingers. After a moment he looked up, his eyes hard. “There’s no record of a David Kerr living in this town.”
“Oh, oh, no!” Kirk grinned and laughed slightly. “No, no, I don’t live here. I’m just passing through.”
“Passport, please?”
Kirk furrowed his brow. “Passport…?”
“As of Tuesday, it is illegal to travel interstate without a passport.”
“Oh, I’ve been here longer than Tuesday.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Private residence, with the family of my good friend Miss Keeler.”
The Enforcer looked at Edith. “Is this true?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned back to Kirk. “I’ll need to see some ID.”
Kirk nodded and stuck his hands in his pockets, feeling around. Frowning, he slapped his pockets. “Damn! Don’t have it on me.”
The Enforcer turned to Edith. “ID,” he said grimly.
She handed over her card, and he examined it, then passed it face-down over his digipad. “This seems to be in order,” he said grudgingly. “Sorry for the inconvenience “ standard procedure and all that.” He shrugged apologetically.
“I understand completely, sir. Following the law.” Kirk grinned at the Enforcer, who walked off into the midst of the people milling around in the little park by the XP, muttering into his communicator. As he disappeared behind a crowd of schoolchildren coming on a field trip, Kirk and Edith relaxed, letting out twin sighs of relief.
“That was close,” Edith whispered to Kirk, who nodded fervently and glanced around.
“Maybe we should go home, darling. We’ve been on XP duty long enough.”
She shook her head and held him down. “Wait ‘til the Enforcer leaves. He might follow us.”
He nodded. That was good thinking, and he settled back on the bench, making himself as comfortable as possible.
They sat in silence for a few moments, simply watching the people. The schoolchildren were being herded by their teachers in through the visitors’ gate to the XP, and Kirk scowled in disgust. They couldn’t be older than eight or nine…
Edith clutched his arm, and he jumped. “What?” he hissed, looking around for the Enforcer. He didn’t seem to be nearby, but “
“It’s not that, Jim,” Edith said, and there was a strange note in her voice. “I just felt funny for a moment… I thought for a second something was about to happen or the world was about to end or “ or something, but nothing happened.”
Kirk stared at her for a moment. There was an odd, faraway look in her eyes. “Edith, are you all right?”
Her expression cleared, and she laughed. “You must think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said seriously, leaning in. She was no longer laughing. Reaching up, she pressed her lips to his, taking his face in her hands as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
They broke apart after an instant and looked at each other.
“Edith,” he murmured.
“Jim.”
She turned away at once and stood up, gathering up her blue cape and her purse, buttoning her gloves, fixing her hat. He stood up, too, and took her wrist.
“Darling?”
Still with her back to him, she looked down briefly, then turned around, her face alight with happiness as her eyes met his. She leaned in and kissed him again, and he closed his eyes, kissing her back.
After a moment she pulled away. “Let’s go home, dearest,” she whispered, taking his hand and squeezing it. Nodding, he fell into step beside her, and they began to walk in silence, basking in the warmth and joy of each other’s company.
They left the park outside the XP without looking back.
--
“So Riley will do it.”
“That does seem to be the most logical course of action.”
Pike nodded and gave a long, heartfelt sigh, leaning his elbow on the side of his chair and his head on his hand. His face was puffy and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot with dark circles under them, and he slouched in his chair, looking exhausted. Spock, on the other hand, was perfectly upright, inscrutable as ever, his dark eyes shadowed.
They sat together in a corner of the basement, apart from the work going on in the center as Scotty, Uhura, Number One and Sulu fixed the warp drive. It was really coming along, Pike thought with pride. Scotty had predicted that at the back-breaking, sleepless rate they were going, it would only be another week or so before they could begin phase two. Of course, phase two would be, in a way, far more difficult than phase one, but he was sure his crew was equal to the task. Exhausted though he was, he was happy.
Spock had no such assurances of the crew’s ability, nor did he take particular pride in their accomplishment so far. To him, entering phase two was not a graduation from phase one, but merely a continuation of essentially the same work under a different name. He felt no sense of having completed something, nor would he until they were safely off the planet.
“We should tell them,” Pike mumbled through his hand. “Tell Riley, and the others.” He made as if to get up, shifting slightly in his seat.
“I will tell them, sir,” Spock said at once, rising. “Remain seated. You ought to get more sleep.” Pike stayed up later than anyone else making sure everything was in order.
Pike shrugged, but let Spock go over to the little group, staying in his chair. Spock cleared his throat, and the four working on the project, as well as Gary Mitchell, who was sorting rusted metal parts from good ones, looked up.
“It has been decided,” Spock said. “As you are all aware, to complete our project we require a very specialized kind of wire found only in government and very expensive computers, as well as access codes to a privately owned jet large enough to transport all of us and the project and sophisticated enough to hide us from government sensors. Both of these things can be found at the personal residence of Thomas Williams, the director of the XP.”
Dead silence. Williams was famous for his cruelty and evil.
“It has taken much deliberation,” Spock said, “but at last, we have decided that the best man for the job “ namely, breaking into the Williams residence and taking the materials we require “ is Mr. Riley.”
Number One nodded; it had been she who had suggested Riley in the first place. The young man had been with them for some time, but he had not really been given the opportunity to do much for the project. Scotty went back to working on the project. Mitchell scowled. Uhura and Sulu looked at Riley, whose expression was a mixture of excitement and terror.
“It’ll be an honor,” he said.
Spock nodded once, briefly. “It will be tomorrow night. We will make all necessary arrangements.” With that, he turned back to Pike, only to find that the man was slumped sideways in his chair, his head lolling, fast asleep.
Number One jumped up from where she sat on the ground and came forward. “I’ll take care of Christopher,” she told Spock quietly. “You help Scott.”
He went at once to take her place, but couldn’t help watching with a twinge of something (it could not possible be jealousy) as she gently shook Pike awake and lifted him to his feet, guiding him into the other room.
Such tenderness, such love. But none but the most twisted would come within five feet of a freak like him.
And he had vowed not to wallow in self-pity, in needless emotionalism. Turning to the slight modifications they were performing, he lost himself in the work. There was no emotion, no jealousy, no bitterness, and the words of Gary Mitchell were only empty words spoken by foolish tongue.
There was nothing.
--
The two drunks really had no idea what the consequences of their actions would be in the not-so-distant future. For them, it was a perfectly ordinary day. They squandered what little money they had earned that day on alcohol, consumed it, and stumbled into the 21st Street Mission for food to accompany it.
Today was a bit different, though. Today, Mrs. Mary Keeler turned the two drunks away. “If you can afford drink, you could afford food,” she said firmly. “If you really wanted it.”
Whereupon the drunks, just outside the mission, had argued about which one of them had been so obvious about his drunkenness that even Mrs. Keeler could tell. Each blamed the other, naturally; and quite unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, the disagreement escalated into an extremely loud fistfight which drew several people from surrounding houses, including Leonard McCoy and Janice Rand, who had been helping in the kitchen of the 21st Street Mission.
Jim Kirk and Edith Keeler were just walking onto 21st Street when they saw the commotion; both thought of Enforcers and the project being discovered, and looked at each other fearfully. Kirk hesitated for a second, then leaned down and kissed Edith.
“Stay here,” he murmured when they had broken apart. “Let me go see.”
She nodded and obediently stayed put as Kirk ran across the street and, seeing the problem at once, tried to insert himself between the combatants. He had always been rather good at breaking up barroom brawls.
Across the street, the strange, otherworldly sensation that something terrible was going to happen fell once more upon Edith. Almost in a trancelike state, she saw a blow fall upon Jim, saw McCoy shouting “ but she could hear nothing but the roaring of the blood in her own ears. Jim fell to the ground “ something terrible was about to happen - if Jim died it really would be the end of the world -
Not hurriedly at first, but picking up speed until she was practically running, she began to cross the street without looking, without hearing, without seeing anything but the image of Jim dead “ Jim beaten and broken. But he got to his feet just then, quite uninjured, and she reached out toward him, overjoyed that her feeling of foreboding had been false. But why then was there a look of terror on his face? Why was his mouth open in warning?
The driver of the aircar was too low to the ground and he was speeding, and Edith was drectly in his path. He slammed the brakes, but too late. At last Edith understood the meaning of her premonition.
The last words on her lips, spoken far too softly for even herself to hear, spoken far too early for anyone to have reached her and far too late for Jim to know, were “I love you…”
--
Jim stared in shock, shock and shock and shock, horror and more horror, convinced he was dreaming. But it was not a dream. “I love you,” he whispered, knowing it was too late for her to ever hear. “I love you, I love you, I love you…”
He felt a strong hand at his elbow, and turned to see McCoy, saying nothing, just offering support. Jim turned away from the horrific scene where people were screaming and crowding around Edith, wrapping his arms instinctively around McCoy, burying his face in the older man’s chest.
Had Edith lived, a certain chain of events would never have been set into motion, and the Enforcers would have searched the still-occupied mission and discovered the project within the week, stopping it once and for all. But Jim was not to know this. All he knew was that the woman he loved, the woman he had been prepared to spend his life with, the woman whose mere look or smile had given him the strength to keep going, was gone forever.
He began to cry into McCoy’s shirt, his body shaking, his shoulders heaving. It was terrible to watch, but McCoy simply stood there and let him cry.
And when at last his sobs quieted, and he began to pull the doctor across the pavement to Edith, McCoy went with him, his hand wrapped tight around Jim’s.
Pushing aside the people “ the drunks, the driver of the car, the inhabitants of the other houses on 21st Street, Janice Rand “ Jim fell to his knees beside Edith’s mangled, bleeding body. He knelt and stared for a very long time, his eyes dry, and then bent and unhooked a plain silver bracelet, which had miraculously remained unharmed, from around her slim wrist. He clasped it around his own wrist “ it barely fit “ and then leaned in and placed a tender kiss on her cold lips.
Rand saw all this and realized, with a terrible clarity, that Jim Kirk would never return her feelings. They were all liars and cheats, and she had no reason for staying with them. It had taken Edith’s death for her to realize it, but she was sure, certain it was true. Standing, she ran back across the street and into the front door of the mission, through the hallways, through the parlor where men sat and talked, through the kitchen where Mrs. Keeler, oblivious, was washing dishes, through more hallways and down the stairs of the cellar. She ran past Scotty, past Uhura and Sulu, past Spock, past Number One. She ran into the bedroom, past Pike, who lay snoring loudly, and stopped in front of Gary Mitchell, who was sitting on his bed flipping through one of Scotty’s technical manuals with a bemused expression on his face.
The expression grew even more bemused as he looked up and saw her. Breathlessly, she whispered, “You want to leave them too.”
He nodded.
“We’re on the run,” she said. “We can’t go anywhere else.”
He nodded.
“Unless,” she concluded, her whisper triumphant, “we bring them information.”
His eyes widened in comprehension, and he leaned in close. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “Tomorrow night Riley is going to break into Cullen’s house.”
“Perfect.” She smiled, a brilliant smile of exultation. “Just volunteer for XP duty tomorrow, and we can tell the authorities when we’re away from them. They’ll never suspect.”
And the two smiled at each other, well-pleased.
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