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.