by David Mack
“Not ignorant, madam. Unfazed.”
“Touché,” she said. Lifting her chin toward the bartender, she instructed the young man, “Put his water on my tab, Roy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said with a grin.
The lady extended her hand to Spock. He clutched it gingerly between his fingertips, hesitant to grasp it fully because of the potential for unwanted telepathic contact…and because of the length and apparent sharpness of her curved fingernails. She shot him an unflinchingly provocative stare and introduced herself. “Manón.”
“Spock.” He released her hand. “I do not believe I have ever met one of your species before.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “Only a few Silgov have traveled this far from the homeworld. Exploration is not what one might call a ‘cultural imperative’ for my people.”
Intrigued, Spock said, “And yourself?”
“Call it wanderlust,” she said with a seductive grin.
An excited buzz of discussion rippled through the crowd. Spock turned to see the cause of the sudden hubbub. Crossing the room, from the front entrance to the slightly elevated main stage at the rear of the room, was a tall, young Vulcan woman. He noted that her crimson uniform was of the new miniskirt variety, and that its sleeve cuffs bore the stripes of a lieutenant commander. She ascended the stairs to the stage and seated herself in front of the baby grand piano.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Manón nod to someone. A moment later, a soft spotlight affixed itself to the woman onstage. She sat patiently—waiting, Spock surmised, for the silence that spread quickly across the room. A few dozen people shushed his shipmates at their table. Seconds later the room fell quiet with anticipation.
Manón leaned over and whispered confidentially to Spock, “You’re in for a treat. T’Prynn doesn’t do this often.”
After the briefest hesitation, T’Prynn’s fingers danced in a flurry across the keys, building into a classical crescendo that just as quickly melted away into a few slow, melancholy notes that fell like rain. As she segued into a gently flowing jazz measure, Spock marveled at the fluidity of her performance style, which was riddled with breaks, tiny flourishes and hints of influence as disparate as Terran blues and gospel. Even simple measures took on unexpected complexity as she counterpoised mellow bass lines with up-tempo melodies, demonstrating a pianist’s natural gift for harboring and reconciling two seemingly contradictory musical ideas at once. Around the room, her audience bobbed in unison, tapped their feet, and seemed to surrender themselves to the unmistakable passion that infused T’Prynn’s music.
The tempo increased as she played, subtly at first, then with greater assertiveness after she crossed a musical bridge into a more robust passage of the tune. Then, like turning a corner, she doubled back into quieter territory—only to reverse herself again, leading her performance and the audience into a decidedly muscular, bluesy barnstorm of a run that shook the tables, chairs, and even the bar itself with its simple ferocity. It was several seconds before Spock was able to divert his attention to realize that almost everyone in the room was clapping in tempo with T’Prynn’s music, providing her with joyous and completely spontaneous percussion.
A sudden break from the surging of major chords and she was into a series of rapid, virtuoso solos across the right side of the keyboard, each separated by a majestic thumping of the baby grand’s lower-register keys. Nearly seven minutes after she began, she prolonged the inevitable with a brazen parade of chords punctuated by witty solo asides, and then sailed to a finish with a few graceful—if theatrical—sweepings of her hand across all the white keys from right to left, and a final proud slam of a note.
The room erupted with applause, a standing ovation that was deafening in its exultation. T’Prynn remained seated for a few moments, then she stood and nodded politely to the audience before demurely stepping down off the stage. Spock watched her approach the bar, and he realized that from the moment she had entered the lounge, and even through the duration of her performance, her facial expression had not seemed to change. If one had not seen her hands, she would have appeared to be the very portrait of calm. Her hands, however, had belied her quiet composure, attacking the keys with an intense, ferocious, and sometimes deftly playful quality that Spock could not remember ever seeing in another Vulcan musician. By almost any standard, she had rendered a remarkable performance, but Spock could think of only one adjective that, in his opinion, best described his impression of T’Prynn’s musical style: human.
As she neared the bar, the low undercurrent of conversation returned to the nightclub. A handful of patrons stepped away from the counter, ostensibly as a gesture of respect for T’Prynn. She took a freshly vacated seat between Manón and Spock. “Thank you,” she said to Manón, “for the use of your piano.”
“I should be thanking you for the free entertainment.” With a small gesture in Spock’s direction, she added, “T’Prynn, this is Mr. Spock.”
T’Prynn turned her head and regarded Spock with a neutral expression. “Commander.”
“Your performance was impressive,” Spock said.
She seemed unmoved by his praise. “Most kind.” Lifting her hand, she summoned the bartender. “Green tea, please.”
“Where did you study?”
She seemed reluctant to answer, then saw that Manón had already moved away. Looking back at Spock, she said, “Earth.”
He hazarded a guess. “At the Academy?”
“During those years, yes. But not at the Academy proper.”
“Your interpretation of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ was most…emphatic.”
“It was not my interpretation.” The bartender delivered her drink, and she nodded her thanks. “The arrangement was by a twentieth-century jazz pianist named Gene Harris. I merely emulated his approach.”
“Regardless, the result was profoundly affecting.”
“Are you saying that you felt an emotional response to my music, Mr. Spock?”
“Not at all,” he said. “But many in the audience clearly did. Indeed, the profusion of raw emotion in your performance—”
“I permitted myself no such indulgence.”
Spock realized that he had misspoken. “Forgive me. I meant no offense. Perhaps it would be more correct for me to speak of the emotional impact of your music.”
“Such is in the ear of the listener,” T’Prynn said. “Logic would suggest that music is applied mathematics coupled with digital coordination and acoustic manipulation.”
His right eyebrow arched with suspicion. “As a fellow-musician, I cannot agree with your definition of music.” He noted that she seemed to deliberately break eye contact and turn slightly away from him. He continued, “If your hypothesis is valid, it begs the question, Why have I never heard another Vulcan musician perform in such a style?”
“Perhaps because the majority of them play only for Vulcan listeners,” she said. “I doubt that a recital audience in Vulcana Regar would respond to the music I performed tonight with the same approval I received here.” She sipped her tea, then added, “Always know your audience.”
“There is another possible explanation.” He waited until she resumed eye contact with him before he continued. “Perhaps you have found a way to use music as a clever circumvention of the Dictums of Logic.”
Now it was her turn to lift an eyebrow at him. “A peculiar notion, Spock. Why would a Vulcan do such a thing?”
He met her stare. “That is an interesting question.”
“One that I am certain you will ponder in exhaustive detail,” she said. “Please share your eventual conclusions with me. I will be most curious to see where your speculations lead.” Standing and facing him, she lifted her hand in the Vulcan salute. “Peace and long life, Spock.”
Returning the gesture, he said, “Live long and prosper, T’Prynn.” He watched her walk away, moving through the crowd with the grace of a dancer. Without succumbing to emotion, he savored
the irony that, after all his decades serving aside several perplexing individuals of many different species, he should find a fellow-Vulcan so utterly foreign.
Picking up his ice water and feeling the cool drops of condensation on its exterior trickle over his fingers, he considered that perhaps he had been away from home for too long. Then he thought of his father, Sarek…and banished all thought of a homecoming from his mind.
He looked across the room at his laughing, illogical, inscrutably human friends and knew that, as alien as it might once have seemed—and likely would feel again, from time to time—the Enterprise was his home.
Though he had nothing to add to their conversation, he returned to the table with his shipmates. Kirk slapped his shoulder. “I saw you chatting up that piano player, Spock. I also saw her leave alone. No sparks?”
“If you are referring to a romantic attraction, Captain, then no. Our conversation was…professional in nature.”
Kirk didn’t look convinced. He smiled at Sulu and Scotty, then said to Spock, “So you’re not interested in her, then?”
“Quite the contrary,” Spock said. “I found her—and her music—extremely interesting.”
8
Tim Pennington watched from the observation deck above the Bay Two airlock as the Starship Bombay was guided in reverse out the open spacedock doors. It was just after midnight, station time. As he had suspected from the flurry of activity that had surrounded the ship all day long, its three-day shore leave had been canceled, though he did not yet know why.
He felt melancholy. The Bombay’s early departure—and the continued presence of the Enterprise—had prevented him from bidding farewell to Oriana. She had spent what little free time had remained to her with her husband, Robert.
Adding insult to injury, Robert D’Amato stood only a few meters to Pennington’s left, watching the Bombay’s departure with a sad but wistful expression. Pennington worked very hard to avoid making even accidental eye contact.
The ship’s primary hull cleared the spacedock doors. Now under its own power, it initiated a graceful pivot-and-roll maneuver away from Vanguard, the domes of its warp nacelles glowing brightly. As it slowly accelerated away, the spacedock doors drifted gradually toward each other. A vibration on Pennington’s wrist drew his hand to his pager. He pushed back his sleeve and read the incoming message.
It was from his editor—a simple heads-up to say that the story Pennington had filed about the deaths of Enterprise officers Mitchell and Dehner had gone live network-wide. Pennington authorized the message’s return receipt and pulled his sleeve back over the pager. He smiled to himself as he anticipated the response the story might provoke. Nothing to do now but wait for it to hit the fan with Kirk, he mused.
Outside the spacedock doors, the Bombay was little more now than a distant speck of shimmering silver-white against the stars. Godspeed, Oriana. Be safe until we say hello again.
When he turned to walk away, D’Amato was standing right next to him. “My wife’s on the Bombay,” the officer said. “First time I’ve seen her in almost a year, and we got less than six hours together.”
“Rotten luck,” Pennington said, not quite masking his discomfort over talking to the man he had been cuckolding for three months.
D’Amato nodded. “Life in Starfleet, I guess.” He tilted his head in the direction of the departed starship. “Who do you know on the Bombay?”
“No one.” It was a clumsy, amateurish lie. He realized only after he’d uttered it that he could name at least half a dozen casual acquaintances on the Miranda-class vessel. “No one special, anyway,” he amended.
“Oh.” Robert shrugged. “I just figured because you were watching her ship out—”
“I watch all the Starfleet ships come and go. Kinda goes with the job.”
Only now did D’Amato seem to take notice of the laminated FNS credentials strung on a lanyard around Pennington’s neck. His tone instantly became one of suspicion. “Journalist, huh?”
“I prefer to think of myself as an investigative reporter.”
“What scoop are you hoping for here?”
“You never know.”
“Get anything good lately?”
It took all of Pennington’s willpower not to blurt out, Your wife. “Actually, I just did a story about a pair of suspicious deaths on the Enterprise.”
D’Amato’s suspicion turned into outright hostility. “Oh, really? And what would you know about it? I didn’t see you there.” He advanced toward Pennington, who backed up a few steps. “Do you like making up sleaze about good people who died in the line of duty?”
He stopped and let D’Amato come nose-to-nose with him. “Listen up.” Pennington poked his index finger into the Starfleet officer’s chest. “Don’t call my work sleaze. I’m not some hack working for a gossip sheet, I’m a reporter for FNS. I’m a pro. Try reading my story before you bash it.”
Tension lingered hot and thick for several moments while the two men stared each other down. D’Amato backed off but kept a cautious eye on Pennington. “Your story better check out,” he said. “Or else.”
Nothing that Pennington could think to say would sound less than provocative, so he kept quiet and watched D’Amato walk away. Glancing out into the main spacedock, Pennington noted that the Bay Two doors were once again closed. He thought of Oriana, then about her husband. Confronting him had not been part of Pennington’s agenda, and letting the guy have the last word had been particularly galling.
Consolation would come soon enough, Pennington knew: When he’s on his way back to Earth, he gloated, and Oriana’s back here with me.
Dr. Mark Piper had expected to find a large, well-supplied infirmary on a station as large as Vanguard. His expectations had been far exceeded when he followed the station map to the medical center to find an entire hospital, still sparkling new and as antiseptic-smelling as a freshly sanitized scalpel. Nestled deep within the station, the heavily shielded complex occupied levels twenty-one through twenty-five, near the core.
The range of its facilities impressed Piper. Vanguard Hospital included a fully staffed emergency room; an infectious-disease ward with an isolation wing; intensive-care units; dozens of specialty units such as pediatrics, obstetrics, physical therapy, and biosynthetics; suites of surgical theaters; a trio of operating rooms that could be reconfigured for various xenophysiologies; eight medical laboratories; a pharmacy; and even a separate dentistry office.
By the time Piper had finished wandering through the multilevel maze of the hospital’s many wards and labs and arrived in the waiting room outside CMO Fisher’s office, he was, as his father would have said, “plum tuckered out.” Eager to finish his business, he headed for the fanciest-looking door in the room.
From an adjacent office, a young human man wearing a short-sleeved blue physician’s tunic called out to Piper before he could knock on Fisher’s door. “I’m sorry, sir, Dr. Fisher has left for the day.”
“Serves me right for going sight-seeing,” Piper said. “I wanted to see what medical miracles had been invented since I last made port. Should’ve figured he wouldn’t wait up for me.”
The young doctor had risen from his desk and joined Piper in the waiting room. “Dr. Fisher waits for no man.” He offered his hand to Piper. “Jabilo M’Benga.”
He shook M’Benga’s hand. “Mark Piper, Enterprise. Pleased to meet you.” Jerking a thumb toward Fisher’s office, he added, “Your boss told me he could resupply my sickbay.”
“Did he have you submit a requisition?”
“On paper. In triplicate.”
M’Benga chortled. “That sounds like Dr. Fisher, all right.” He guided Piper to follow him out the door. “If it was approved, it’ll be on file in the pharmacy. You’ll just need to come down and sign some forms…. In triplicate.”
“Great,” Piper said, walking beside M’Benga into the corridor. “Nothing screams efficiency like red tape.”
“New regulations,” M’B
enga said. “I agree with you, they can be ridiculous. But what can we do? It’s this or private practice.” He stopped in front of a pair of turbolift doors and pressed the call button.
“Funny you should mention that,” Piper said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing when I get back to Earth.”
Curiosity animated M’Benga’s boyish features. “Really? You’re not happy aboard the Enterprise?”
“My retirement has nothing to do with the Enterprise,” Piper said. “If you ask me, she’s one of the best damned ships in the fleet, and her captain is first-rate.”
The turbolift doors opened, and the two physicians stepped inside next to a pair of nurses. M’Benga gave the throttle a twist as the doors closed. “Level twenty-four, pharmacy.” The turbolift thrummed as it began its swift, smooth descent.
“So, if it’s not the ship or her captain…?”
“I’m just getting old,” Piper said. “I’ve been in uniform a long time, and I’ve seen a good chunk of today’s Federation take shape…. I’d like to spend what time I have left thinking about the shape of my own life.”
M’Benga nodded. “Yes, I can see how you might feel that way. I imagine one gets a very different perspective on life serving aboard a starship.”
“A more claustrophobic one, that’s for sure.”
As the turbolift shifted to horizontal movement, M’Benga asked, “Do you know yet who’ll be taking your place on the Enterprise?”
Piper nodded. “A surgeon named McCoy. We already have orders to pick him up at Earth.” The turbolift stopped, and Piper followed M’Benga out into the corridor. “As I understand it,” Piper continued, “we’ll also be replacing a few nurses and a full shift of lab technicians.” Keeping an eye on M’Benga’s reaction, he added, “I’ve also heard that Starfleet is planning on adding a few more staff physicians to the Enterprise next year.” Just as Piper had suspected, M’Benga’s attention intensified at the news. “If you like, I could put in a good word for you before I leave.”
M’Benga stopped outside the door to the pharmacy. “That’s very kind of you, Dr. Piper, but I’m not sure the Enterprise would have much need of a doctor who served his internship in a Vulcan medical ward.”