Star Trek-TOS-027-Mindshadow

by Kevin Underwood

  all-Baslama himself. This brig was absolutely

  secure."

  Up to this time Emma and McCoy had been standing

  silently nearby; when Emma spoke, Kirk and

  Tomson turned quickly to look at her. "If the

  pirates

  could get through the protective shield on

  Aritani, why

  should it be impossible for one of them to get past a

  small force field?"

  "A good question," said Kirk. "But we didn't

  find

  anything resembling a shield neutralizer on

  their

  ship."

  Tomson took the question as an insult to her

  professional

  competence. "The prisoner didn't have any

  type of device on him when we put him in the

  brig,

  ma'am. My people are very thorough when it comes to

  searching prisoners." Tall and pale,

  she stared coldly

  down at small, dark Emma; McCoy thought

  they

  looked for all the worlds like two exact

  opposites.

  Emma persisted. "But you just said there weren't

  any other fingerprints on the phaser except the

  guard's

  and the prisoner's."

  "I don't have to explain to you how easy it is to

  avoid getting fingerprints on something, do I,

  ma'am?" Tomson's tone was less than

  charitable.

  Emma almost seemed to enjoy Tomson's

  disgruntlement.

  "Maybe the prisoner did escape, and planted

  the phaser to throw us off."

  Tomson's cheeks slowly turned pink. "First

  off,

  MINDSHADOW

  Ensign all-Baslama swears that he was fired

  at from the

  corridor, not from the brig. Secondly, we've

  already

  searched this ship, and there aren't any Romulans

  aboard. Thirdly, the prisoner didn't leave

  via the

  transporter or a hijacked shuttlecraft.

  Would you like

  to suggest just how he managed to get off this ship?"

  Emma raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

  One of the security men walked over and displayed

  a tricorder reading to Tomson. "That confirms

  it," she

  said, pleased. "Someone was recently vaporized in

  this room. Unless you're missing any crewmen,

  Captain,

  we'll assume it was the prisoner." She smiled

  coldly down at Emma. "I'm afraid your

  Romulan

  didn't escape, ma'am."

  "My Romulan?" Emma muttered so that only

  McCoy

  could hear. "I didn't realize I owned one."

  "I'm aware that suicide is a favorite

  pastime of

  captured Romulans," McCoy said aloud,

  "but who on

  this ship would attack a security guard

  to bring the

  prisoner a suicide weapon?"

  "Maybe not to bring a suicide weapon,"

  Tomson

  answered.

  "Murder," Kirk said softly.

  Tomson nodded. "It's the only good explanation

  I

  can come up with to fit the facts. Of course,

  I'll know

  more when I get the results of all the tests."

  "But who---" Kirk began, and stopped

  abruptly.

  McCoy finished for him. "Who on this ship would

  have a-motive?"

  Tomson looked down at him grimly. "Are you

  forgetting,

  Doctor, how many of the crew have suffered

  at the hands of the pirates? They all have a

  motive."

  More than enough, Kirk thought, remembering Ensign

  Lanz. "I'll be in my quarters," he told

  Tomson.

  "Notify me when you get the results."

  "Come on," said Uhura, "see if you

  can play

  along." She had just finished singing a song from the

  heartland of Africa. Her forehead glistened with

  perspiration,

  and she thoughtlessly ran the back of her

  hand across it. Spock was sorry that he had not

  properly adjusted the temperature in his cabin

  to accommodate

  her; he had thought it should be tolerable

  for humans, since it felt chilly to him.

  "Come on," she urged, and Spock joined in with his

  harp, the instrument blending with Uhura's voice in

  an

  eerily beautiful harmony.

  Uhura nodded, smiling, and Spock nodded

  back.

  His physical injuries were now almost

  unnoticeable

  except for a slight limp. At Saenz's

  urging, he had

  moved back into his quarters. His Speech had

  improved

  as well, although at times he found himself at a

  humiliating loss for a word, a situation that caused

  great awkwardness for himself and his visitor.

  Even

  worse was his almost total loss of recent

  memory; he

  was unable to converse about anything save the

  present and the far-distant past. Kirk, who had

  at first

  come the most often, now visited him hardly at

  all, for

  there was little else on Kirk's mind these days besides

  Aritani, a word which held no significance for

  Spock.

  Dr. Saenz, on the other hand, came to see him

  almost every day, and her visits did not trouble him

  much, but they always left him with a vague sense of

  uneasiness and he could never recall the sessions

  clearly afterwards. Even so, her controlled thoughts

  were a relief after being bombarded with the emotions

  of the others.

  Especially those of Christine Chapel; her

  visits were

  most distressing. She came to give him

  physical therapy

  for his left arm and leg and to encourage him to

  speak. The physical contact between them during the

  therapy session was almost unbearable for

  Spock, a

  MIN-DO DSHADOW

  touch-telepath. Her emotions were violent and

  disconcerting;

  the overwhelming one was pity for him, which

  shamed him. Her pathetic struggle to hide her

  emotional

  attachment for him made Spock in turn feel

  pity

  for her. It also reminded him pointedly of his own

  pathetic efforts to deal with his own surging emotions:

  frustration, anger, self-pity.

  Ironically, it was his human side that now

  struggled

  to control his emotions, guarding them until his

  Vulcan

  control could be restored; but it was a tenuous

  control,

  one which could break easily at the first critical

  moment.

  The only visitor he did not dread was

  Uhura, for he

  did not have to speak and be reminded of the words

  and incidents he could not remember;

  instead, he

  could let the music flow from him and forget for a

  moment that things were not as they had always been.

  "That was great, Spock," Uhura said. The beads

  of

  sweat on her brow had become small rivulets

  and she

  tried again to inconspicuously w
ipe them away.

  Spock

  laid his harp aside and walked stiffly to the

  temperature

  control. He'd lowered it already to a temperature

  he thought a human should find comfortable, but his

  memory was not reliable these days; he turned it

  down

  another ten degrees.

  Uhura sighed gratefully. "Bless you."

  At the same time as her sigh, Spock heard a

  shuffling

  sound outside the door to his cabin.

  "What's wrong?" Uhura asked. "I didn't

  hear anything.

  Come on, let me teach you another song."

  The sound of Leonard McCoy emitting a

  monstrous

  sneeze just outside the door was unmistakable.

  Spock rose.

  "Someone just passing by," Uhura said quickly, her

  soft brown eyes wide.

  If someone had told Spock that his expression was

  one of affectionate exasperation, he would have denied

  it. "Uhura," he said disapprovingly. He could

  never seem to remember her rank.

  She giggled. "Oh, what the hell," she said, and

  went

  to open the door.

  "Surprise," the crowd in the doorway chorused

  weakly.

  "Not much of a surprise," Uhura said.

  "Really,

  Doctor."

  ,I think I may be coming down with something,"

  McCoy ShUffled. "They can transport a

  man's molecules

  across space, but they can't prevent the common

  cold." Standing beside him was the captain, Dr.

  Saenz, M'Benga, and Christine Chapel.

  Spock regarded them with curiosity as they

  trooped

  into his cabin. The conflicting thoughts were

  reeling;

  he couldn't sort them out to interpret the reason for

  the mass visit. They stood nervously around the

  captain,

  who was holding a small square object in his

  hand.

  He smiled at Spock. "I have a little something for

  you from Star Fleet Command, Mr. Spock." He

  held

  out the small dark box and opened it.

  Neatly arranged within the box, the shiny silver

  medallion hung from a dark blue ribbon.

  Spock held it

  up to the light; it was inscribed on the back with his

  name and the date of his injury in Vulcan script;

  on the

  front was the Federation logo, the Roman letters

  UFP enclosed in a shield.

  He did not remember what the captain said to him

  afterwards; nor did he remember thanking the

  captain

  or watching everyone leave. But after they were gone,

  Spock sat in the traditional posture before the

  stone

  meditation statue in his room. He could

  remember the

  posture, and the purpose and symbolism of the

  small

  stone statue with the throbbing flame in its belly, for

  MINDSHADOW

  his earlier memories, especially those of

  Vulcan, had

  not been lost--if anything, they had become

  stronger.

  Yet he was unable to summon the discipline of

  meditation;

  a part of him was gone, a part without which he

  could not function as Spock.

  He drew the silver medal from the box--the Award

  of Valor, the Federation's highest decoration for the

  wounded--comand turned it over in his hand. The date

  meant nothing to him; he could not even vaguely

  remember the incident for which he had been

  decorated.

  His hand closed over the medal.

  For a long time, he sat before the statue, his eyes

  wide and unseeing, and in his mind one word pulsed

  like the flame: Remember.

  Kirk was back on the bridge when Tomson

  called

  with the report from forensics.

  She sounded quite pleased with herself. "I think

  you'll find this interesting, Captain. Ensign

  all-Basla-ma's

  phaser was fired twice--once on stun and once

  to

  kill."

  "That's what you expected, isn't it?

  Also-Baslama

  was stunned, then the prisoner--"

  "Remember, sir, all-Baslama was not stunned

  with

  his own phaser. He was wearing it at the time he was

  stunned."

  "Of course. So it means---"

  "It means that all-Baslama was stunned with someone

  else's phaser, of course; then that person took

  all-Baslama's

  phaser and stunned the prisoner with it,

  then put the prisoner's fingerprints on it, then-

  --"

  "Then murdered him." It was not what Kirk had

  hoped to hear. "A very good attempt to make it

  look

  like suicide. Now what?"

  "I'm afraid we're going to have to start an

  investigation

  of our own personnel, sir. I suggest we start

  with

  those who were wounded down on the planet surface.

  Do you have any idea who might have had a

  particularly strong motive for killing the

  Romulan?"

  "No," Kirk lied.

  "Well, sir, I'm afraid that leaves me with the

  very

  unpleasant task of finding out which of our crewmen

  is

  a murderer."

  It was Christine Chapel who found Spock

  unconscious

  on his bed; his wrists had been slashed with the

  ceremonial dagger taken from his wall.

  Emma and McCoy hovered over Spock in

  sick bay,

  but there was nothing more they could do except wait

  for Spock's body to heal itself. Slender green

  tubing

  ran from the crook in Spock's right

  elbow to a packet

  above his bed; to one side lay Spock's harp--

  McCoy

  could not remember who had thought to bring it in all

  the confusion.

  Emma spoke barely above a whisper. "He

  seemed

  to be doing so well. I should have noticed the warning

  symptoms."

  "No one can believe it." McCoy's eyes were

  fixed

  on the life monitor. Spock, as always, would

  survive.

  That Vulcan had the toughest hide... "I just

  don't

  understand what prompted him to do it."

  "We shouldn't have left him alone in his quarters.

  It's my fault. I've seen enough of these cases

  to know

  better. Rational one moment, psychotic the

  next. I

  should have insisted he be under constant watch."

  McCoy looked at her tenderly. "I thought you

  were

  a psychologist, Doctor. Are you

  really going to try to

  take all the blame?"

  She smiled at him, a small, unhappy

  smile.

  "Maybe instead of trying to figure out what we

  did

  wrong," McCoy said, "we should try to figure

  out

  what to do right."

  MINDSHADOW

  "Okay." She straightened and squared her

  shoulders.

  "Let's put him on that neurotransmitter and

  see


  if it helps."

  "Sounds like a step in the right direction. What's

  the

  name of the medication?"

  "Neodopazine."

  His eyebrows flew upwards. "Neodopazine?

  That's

  very experimental stuff."

  "I know. I was one of the first to work with it. I've

  used it very successfully with the violent."

  "It's never been tested on Vulcans,

  has it?"

  Emma gazed back down at Spock; the

  Vulcan's

  breathing was slow and regular. Her voice sounded

  very far away.

  "Would you prefer Spock try to kill himself again?"

  "Of course not, Emma, but I want to know what

  other alternatives we have."

  "We can send him away. To a star base

  hospital if they'd take him--comif he becomes

  more violent, to Ebla Two."

  Ebla II was a maximum security

  sanitorium for the

  violently insane. McCoy closed his eyes

  briefly and

  shuddered.

  "Let's start the medication, then."

  McCoy had not expected to sleep well that

  night,

  but the last thing he had counted on was a call from

  sick bay rousing him from deep slumber. Spock

  had

  torn the transfusion tubes from his arms. The

  medic

  had replaced them at once, noting that

  they had not

  been out long, and gone about his rounds. Now they

  were out again. Did McCoy want the patient

  restrained?

  Reluctantly, McCoy ordered the

  restraints. But he

  could not return to sleep after that, and. when the

  Vulcan finally awoke, McCoy was watching

  by his

  bedside as he had been for the past several hours.

  The

  confusion in Spock's eyes cleared gradually as

  he

  came to realize where he was, and turned

  to irritation

  at the sight of the tube in his arm and the restraint.

  "Spock?" McCoy spoke gently. "Do you

  remember

  what happened?"

  Spock frowned.

  "Nurse Chapel found you in your quarters.

  Spock

  .. it seems you tried to kill yourself."

  Spock tried to sit up, but the restraints held

  him

  back. "No," he said. "That's impossible."

  It was the answer McCoy most wanted to hear; it

  was the answer he wanted desperately to believe.

  "Then suppose you tell me what happened."

  "I don't remember," Spock said

  vehemently. "But

  it was not I... it was someone else."

  "I want to believe, Spock, God knows,

  but--"

  "Then believe," said Spock, with such conviction

  and so much like the old Spock that McCoy

  believed.

  He leaned over to loosen the Vulcan's

  restraints out

  of pity. "But who would try to kill you, Spock?"