God, how he wished he could! This time, McCoy didn't have the option. Or his captain. Or his favorite Vulcan.
Spock, you damn well better be all right.
Spock hadn't been himself long before Jim's death. He'd taken Lady Amanda's passing hard, harder than it looked on the surface, and McCoy knew he'd quarreled in that deadly silent, courteous Vulcan way with his father once again. Amanda had been the glue that held those two together.
McCoy had to admit that one reason he'd re-upped was to accompany Spock on the shakedown cruise on Intrepid II. With Jim . . . gone, Spock had no reason—logical or otherwise—to continue to refuse independent command; nevertheless, McCoy knew that the Vulcan fretted, in some deep recess of that incredibly brilliant, convoluted mind, about his ability to lead.
So, instead of a nice shakedown cruise, what would have to go and happen to Spock? A psychotic Vulcan and a planet at risk. Right on the edge of the Neutral Zone. If Spock failed, he not only lost the planet, he jeopardized the fragile entente between the Federation and Vulcan: not that the madman wasn't doing a perfectly wonderful job of that!
Spock needs me with him. All he's got is that Captain Rabin. Captain? He's a standup comic, not a captain!
In his mind's eye, he could see Spock raise an eyebrow at that. Why, Doctor, I did not know you were a theater critic.
He wasn't, of course. He was a doctor. And too good a psychiatrist not to know what else he was: angry. Oh, not at Rabin directly, and yet . . .
Dammit, there was just too much time to think. To analyze. McCoy admitted reluctantly that somehow, deep inside, he was feeling, stupidly, irrationally angry, that Spock was somehow betraying Jim's memory by reviving a friendship with another human friend.
Now isn't that a poison-mean nonsense? Just because Spock doesn't weep all over the place doesn't mean he can't feel grief. And just because he's glad to see someone from his childhood, it doesn't mean he's forgotten Jim.
McCoy sank down onto the floor beside one of his patients—ha! now that was a rotten joke—and sank his head in his hands.
Physician,
heal thyself Hell of it was that he kind of liked Rabin's irreverent cheerfulness. Yes, and the man made one fine officer, too, wisecracking joker or no.
Ah well, McCoy thought wryly, at least he knew one thing. He'd finally found where Spock had learned how to reply, deadpan, to human jokes. Rabin must have been quite a friend, or Spock wouldn't have been so pleased—oh, the fellow could put on his best Vulcan face, but McCoy knew when he was happy—to see him. And he wouldn't have been so willing to accept other humans as friends.
It's not like any of us have much else, McCoy thought. He himself had joined Starfleet after his divorce as a way of stopping the hurt. And what did gallivanting around the galaxy get me? Just more people to hurt about! Jim had lost most of his family. Spock was estranged from his father, while Rabin, for all his talk of a mother, a home back on Earth, was as much a rolling stone as the rest of them.
And then Jim Kirk just had to leave them and go on all by himself. Leading the way, not that death was a place McCoy wanted to head out for any time soon. He dashed his hand over his eyes and dared anyone to notice.
"Communicator's got to be around here somewhere," he growled, taking his frustration out on the air. "Where'd it go?"
A tug on his sleeve made him whirl around so fast that the woman who'd tried to attract his attention gasped and backed away. Her hands went to her mouth, and McCoy saw the blotches that disfigured them.
"It's all right." He made his voice gentle and extended his open hands, trying to reassure her. "I won't hurt you."
She glanced over at the Romulan, who had been reinforced by one of his companions. Both of them stood turned away from McCoy; both seemed heartily bored.
She gestured at McCoy, then pointed at a small pallet against the wall.
"Is that your child?" he asked, still in that gentle, patient voice, pointing from the pallet to the woman and back again. "Yours?"
She nodded—that being one gesture his folks and hers seemed to have in common—then bowed three times. McCoy imitated the gesture, much to her shock. She must not be used to much respect. Giving a little gasp of relief, she led him to the child, so wrapped up even here against Loki's deadly sun that McCoy couldn't tell from looking whether it was a boy or a girl. Whatever: the child was feverish.
"Water," McCoy ordered. When the mother blinked at him, he pantomimed drinking. She scurried off. Dammit, these people are parched, and it looks like I get to have all the water I want! Well, the Romulans had never signed the New Geneva Conventions, and the Master certainly hadn't given McCoy a clue that he respected anything beside his own delusions.
The woman returned with a water bottle. McCoy looked about for a bowl or even a deep dish. Pulling the swathings off the child—a boy, after all—he used them to sponge the child and took the opportunity to examine him. Not a single blemish on him—at least not yet.
He held out his hand for the woman's, marred as it was by large moles, uneven in shape, of colors strange even among aliens. One had cracked and was bleeding. She let him bind it.
"Ought to get you to the outpost med center," he muttered. "I wish there were more I could do. You've still got a chance, but . . ."
She pulled her hand back. He pointed at it, then at her child's body, and shook his head: no blemishes. A wide smile spread over her drawn face.
There must be something else I can do! McCoy thought, continuing to inspect the child. His eyes were almost covered by black crawling things that McCoy cleaned tenderly away.
"Look," he said. "See these? Bad! Watch me wash them away." The woman nodded. "Next time they come back, you do it." She nodded again. McCoy hoped she'd gotten the message.
He looked down. Sure enough, there was the cause of the trouble—a swollen foot. McCoy held it up, despite the child's feeble kicks. The boy had stepped on something that had broken off and gotten the foot infected, for certain.
And me without my kit, McCoy thought, longing for his laser scalpels and antibiotics. Scalpels. That reminded him. Here he was on a planet called Obsidian: why, the place was made of scalpels! He picked up a rock shard, one of the thousands that lay underfoot, and tapped it against the wall until he achieved a sharp edge.
An unpleasant few moments later, the bit of thorn causing the trouble had been removed, the child's foot was purged of the blood and matter that had collected in it, and McCoy was tying off as clean a bandage as the child's mother had managed to scrounge for him. Tears poured down her face.
So. Hadn't done all that badly after all, had he? Here was one child who wouldn't die. At least, not this time. Not today.
McCoy let himself grin at the woman: another gesture his and her races had in common. He realized that his stomach had stopped aching for the first time since he'd been brought here.
He poured more water over his hands (that was precaution, not waste) and dried them on a rag—not one of the ones belonging to the man he'd seen walk into the sun, he hoped! The woman seized his hand, kissed it with her cracked lips, and then tugged as if beckoning him to follow her.
Because she had no reason to wish him ill—Other than that no good deed goes unpunished, of course! McCoy thought dryly—he followed. Maybe she knew of other people he could help, even with the crude tools he could improvise. Maybe he could get her to show him some of the local herbs; there had to be herbs somewhere on this benighted planet, and from there . . .
She darted over to the rock wall, then glanced fearfully at the Romulans. They were so used to fear they didn't even notice. She's small, sick, no threat to them, McCoy realized. So she's a nonperson.
Long practice had taught McCoy not to make any such dumb mistakes. Or assumptions of any kind, as the woman returned, something hidden in her hands. She smiled at him again, a mother about to present a child with what it wanted most, and showed him what she held—his communicator.
"Where'd you find this?"
he demanded. She shook her head, her eyes fearful. Better not push too far, he warned himself. But it was difficult to stay calm. He gave her the triple bow that meant respect. He would have given her the world if he'd had title to it. His communicator! Why, he was halfway home already!
Concealing the precious gift, he retreated to a distant corner of the cave. He even reassured the Romulans from a distance by eating, genuinely hungry and thirsty for the first time in days. Then, he curled up, his back to his guards, against a nice, cozy boulder as if he were sleepy.
The Romulans nodded at each other and knelt, occupied by something on the bare rock of the cave's floor. Probably shooting craps, McCoy thought. He knew damn well they weren't playing fizzbin.
When he was certain they were totally distracted, he pulled out the communicator.
"McCoy to Intrepid," he whispered into it. "McCoy to Intrepid. Come in, Uhura, Come in!"
Only the frying-bacon sound of heavy static replied. Hastily, McCoy turned down the volume. That had to be a sound the Romulans would recognize. He'd been stupid. Uhura had probably shifted course for safety to put the planet between the ship and Loki. He could try to raise the ship until his communicator's duotronic circuits rusted and not hear a peep. Besides, he realized from the intensity of the static that the ionization was still too strong for Intrepid to beam anyone up or down without scattering his atoms all over the star system.
So much for the ship.
McCoy shut his eyes, reaching within as he'd learned how in the days he carried Spock's katra in his own consciousness. Spock, are you there?
He could gain only what he had before: Spock wasn't dead.
Sighing, McCoy again risked activating his communicator. "Spock . . . McCoy to Spock . . . are you there, Spock?"
More static, but alarmingly faint this time.
No, oh no. The power can't befading. The circuits can't be scrambled or—or whatever else it is could go wrong with these things.
McCoy quickly shut it off, glared at it helplessly, wishing he'd had more than basic training in communicator maintenance. But no, why would a doctor need a more intensive course? Besides, it's not as though I could get spare parts around here. Defiantly, McCoy activated the communitor again, trying to ignore the alarmingly faint crackling. No use conserving power. for all he knew, energy would keep draining even if the communicator wasn't on. He'd try again, and keep trying. And if the power died, well, at least he'd go down fighting!
FIFTEEN
Vulcan, The Womb of Fire
Day 6, Eighth Week of Tasmeen,
Year 2247
David, a half-unwrapped ration bar in one hand, glanced uneasily around the Womb of Fire. Spock and he had taken temporary sanctuary in one of the few spots that did not seem actively dangerous, although that meant that they were still surrounded by waves of heat and pools of bubbling water.
"Are you sure this place isn't radioactive?" he asked yet again. "It really does look like someone nuked it—maybe not long enough ago."
"The temperature here is not abnormal for Vulcan," Spock assured him patiently, "and we have had no nuclear wars nor major nuclear accidents. This is nothing more than a typically volcanic terrain."
"Typical in hell, maybe," David muttered.
Ignoring what was clearly an emotional reference to human religion, Spock scanned the crazed, cinder-covered ground, plotting their next move. As with the rest of the Womb of Fire, nothing grew here but the bright green hallucinogenic lichen and the bright yellow crusts of sulfur, garish against the black rock and gray cinders. Tiny plumes of steam puffed steadily up from the maze of fumaroles, warning of the even greater heat not far below the surface.
Without warning, those plumes wavered and the earth began to shake. A rumbling growl filled the air.
"Volcano!" David yelped, and fumbled the ration bar, which went flying.
"Geyser!" Spock snapped. "Get down!"
Not ten meters from them, an immense geyser spurted out of the blasted land, spraying them with hot, salty water. Spock dropped instantly, covering his hands and face. His desert gear should protect the rest of him from the live steam.
Nothing, however, could protect the ration bar, which sailed right into a shallow, steaming pool. David, peeking out from behind interlaced hands, muttered something in a language that Spock was certain was not Terran standard.
"There goes dinner, such as it was. Spock, if I poisoned your well, I'm sorry."
The geyser slowly subsided. Spock uncurled and peered warily over the edge of the pool. "It is not too deep. We can still retrieve the bar."
"And save the local ecology. Do you still have that collapsing rod?"
Spock passed it over. David extended the rod, then bound it to a pair of pincers also salvaged from the wrecked shuttle's emergency gear and dunked his makeshift device into the water, fishing about till he had hooked the ration bar and pulled it out.
"Would you look at this? The thing hasn't even started to dissolve!" David snorted. "Not that I'm surprised. I wonder if parboiling improves the taste." He waved the bar about to cool it, then saluted Spock with it. "What I do for science." Biting into the bar, he grimaced.
"Does that taste 'just like chicken,' too?" Spock asked without any inflection at all.
"Ha. And ha again. And they say Vulcans have no sense of humor. And no, to satisfy your curiosity, nothing helps this stuff."
David resolutely gnawed his way through the rest of his unpalatable meal. "I don't have to remind you this is almost the last of our rations. Either we add food to the growing checklist of things to steal from Sered, or we'll both be considerably hungrier before long. If we survive."
Spock knew that this was not merely human hyperbole. The Womb, contrary to its name, was so infertile a region that only the lichen could thrive. "We must continue. It will not grow more pleasant for the delay."
David and he edged past a roiling pool that reeked of sulfur and past a vent that belched fumes so vile it doubled David over gagging and Spock came close to coughing himself hoarse. The boys staggered away until they could sink down, hidden by a cluster of rocks like rotted fangs covered by a colorful white and yellow coating of dried salts.
" 'In the land of Mordor,' " David muttered. "If they could make it, so can I."
Spock raised an eyebrow, but did not question further. This was clearly yet another in David's never-ending string of literary or motion-picture quotes, and if obscure references helped the human, then obscure references were welcome. He lay flat, glad for the rest, grateful that the fitful play of fire and steam would camouflage their bodies' heat from any infrared sensors. Ahead, he could see the top of Sered's fortress, the small, partially collapsed caldera, roofed over with its own crumbled rock. A fortress—and yet Spock remembered from his escape how riddled it was with vents and lava tubes. Not an adequate fortress at all—more proof, if any were needed, of Sered's madness. Climbers skilled and foolhardy enough could slip into it and retreat without being noticed.
"Perhaps the hostages are not in quite as great discomfort as we anticipated," he said. "There are enough openings to provide adequate air circulation."
"This air's hardly worth circulating," David said. "Stinks of sulfur and who knows what else."
"Yes . . . but air shafts can carry information as well."
"Hey, right! All we have to do is find the way we got out, or some other way in."
"I strongly doubt it will be quite that simple. If we separate," Spock began, "we can cover twice as much ground and double our chances of finding a vantage point. However—"
"What if you fall and break a leg?" David asked.
Spock started to remind the human just who it was had fallen, had to have a thorn cut out, and soaked his rations in scalding water—no. Instead, he contented himself with a more controlled, "That is precisely the point I was about to make. The land is too perilous. Particularly," he couldn't resist adding, "for an outsider. We must stay together. Besides, I will welcome your
expertise with a sling."
What David called "all night later" but Spock knew was actually 6.235 hours Terran standard, the two boys had slid, clambered, or climbed over what felt, even to Spock, like half of the Womb of Fire. They had found plenty of openings down into the fortress, but none that led to any area they remembered or weren't outright dead ends.
Slumping on the rocks, the boys drank sparingly from their half-empty water bottles. One could fast a great deal longer than one could remain thirsty.
"We can wait no longer," Spock said at last.
"No, I guess not."
David got wearily to his feet, swaying a little. Spock reached out to steady him, but the human suddenly tensed. "Do you hear that?"
Spock tilted his head. His hearing was more sensitive than David's, yet the human clearly was listening to something that he had heard and Spock had not.
Fascinating.
"That's my mother," David whispered, his eyes glowing. "I'd know her voice anywhere!" Eagerly, he started forward.
This was going beyond fascinating to astonishing. Humans were not supposed to possess the talents of the Adepts of Gol. Was David hallucinating?
Or . . . am I? Spock glanced down at the rocks and their coating of lichen. Crushing the lichen—and possibly merely stepping on it might constitute crushing—could produce nausea, even vertigo in a Vulcan. He had not told David all: Ingesting it or breathing the fumes caused by its burning not only created hallucinations, it sometimes deranged the victim.
Permanently.
David! The human had nearly reached a vent in the rocks, and Spock hurried forward to block his path. "Careful! The rocks are coated with that lichen of yours"
David grimaced. His hands were covered with not yet healed cuts and scrapes, an ideal situation for infection. "I don't think I've touched any. If I have, it doesn't seem to work on humans. Besides," he added hotly, "right now I don't care. I have to hear what's going on down there."
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