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James Kirk, like most people who have spent considerable time in deep space, has come across things far weirder than most planetbound minds could credit. But this…
The young captain took another look around his quarters, taking it all in, remembering…No, not exactly remembering. Wondering just how he had forgotten all this. It was somewhat close to terrifying, how swiftly and efficiently his life had been erased from his mind.
“You know what the worst of it is? Miramanee. “
“Of course, Captain…”
“No.” Kirk shook his head. “Not the way you think, Spock. It isn’t that it hurts. It’s that…it doesn’t hurt enough. Hurt the way it should.”
Spock gave no response. At the best of times, human emotions were a puzzle to him, and right now, he was so exhausted that he had to put in considerable effort to actually follow the conversation.
It was just as well that Jim was understandably pre occupied by personal problems, or he would certainly have noted how pale, gaunt, his friend looked, and Spock had no intention of offering any explanations at this point. He was not sure he was capable of offering explanations at this point. The effort of the past months, the exhaustion, was beginning to catch up to him, not gradually as it should have done, but crashing over him in an overwhelming tide.
“It doesn’t feel like it happened to me. That is it. It’s..too far away. I owe her more than this. She loved me, I loved her. I should be mourning her. Mourning my…my child. My wife and child.”
Jim sounded like the last two concepts were totally alien to him. In a way, they were.
“ I do grieve for her, but like…like it happened years ago. The pain is dull, not the way it should be. It’s like it all happened to someone else.”
He laughed a little, with just the tiniest trace of hysteria in it.
”Come to think of it, it did, didn’t it? To someone else. To Kirok, the god-shaman. What was he like, Spock? Was it really me?”
“It was not a shadow personality, if that is what you are asking. The Kirok persona was completely yourself, only with your memories wiped clean. As for the detachment you are experiencing…It is more Dr McCoy’s province than mine, but I would say it is simply the natural result of your memories re asserting themselves.”
For a moment Spock was afraid his words had slurred a little. He needed rest, and probably shouldn’t have accompanied Jim to his quarters – it would have been easy enough to make an excuse, Jim understood (at least as much as a human could) how much a mindmeld taxed him.
But some much too human instinct had been unable to postpone the chance to be next to his friend once again, to just listen, watch. To know that he was back where he belonged. To know that his own mistake had not done irreversible damage…
But it had, had it not ? The young woman, Miranwee.. She would have been alive, happy in her world, her life. Or would it have been the same, when the other shaman, the one Jim unintentionally replaced, tried and failed to calm the sky? Would she have run to die with him?
The doorbell chimed. A welcome interruption, for once.
“Jim? “
“Come on in, Bones” Kirk called out, and the door slid open.
The doctor marched in, armed with a smile and what looked like a bottle of saurian brandy. Spock took the opportunity to escape. The doctor was far better equipped to provide the emotional comfort Jim needed right now. Nor would either notice anything too out of the ordinary in his somewhat abrupt departure.
He had little liking for either the company of the doctor or alcoholic beverages, even at the best of times. A combination of both was more than he was willing to accommodate, and both humans knew this well enough.
Finally, he was in the privacy of his quarters again. Never before had the Vulcan-normal environment settings felt so welcome.
He practically fell into his chair, trying unsuccessfully to get the lightheadedness under control. His two-month long vigil had sapped much of his strength, but that had not been as debilitating as the good doctor genuinely believed.
Vulcans have the ability to put their metabolism into what could be called Wartime Footing, able to function without any distractions (including things like food and sleep, somewhat to the doctor’s – and Mr Scott’s - alarm).
But that state of perfect control is not compatible with a mindmeld – a process that requires lowering of almost all your mental barriers. Especially when the mind you seek is one that exists, thrives, in a state of organized chaos.
To become one with such a mind, a mind completely alien to yours no matter how beloved, to find within it the one you seek, the part of it you need to revive…It had taken far more strength than he could have spared safely.
All Vulcans who have an above average telepathic capability receive training in the techniques of Sha-Hakeya, Mind Healing, whether or not they actually choose a career in medicine. The necessity of this is manifold in the case of a Vulcan venturing into Deep Space, considering the sort of things they and their shipmates are likely to encounter out there.
Spock knew perfectly well how to heal a wounded mind, and in this case, his familiarity with the mind in question helped. But as any medical professional (human or Vulcan or whatever else) can tell you, knowledge is only part of the game – experience is the other part.
This was not the first time he had melded with a human, but this was the deepest healing meld he had had to conduct. Dangerous, both to the healer and the patient. Spock, well aware of this complication, had done enough to shield Jim’s mind from any possible backlash.
But unlike a professional healer, he lacked the experience to judge just how well his own mind should have been braced against that inevitable backlash – it could, after all, only be redirected from the patient to the healer, not completely eliminated.
Worse, he also lacked the experience to recognize the danger signs – he blamed his current condition on simple exhaustion, something which could be remedied easily enough with rest and time.
Even as he felt himself losing consciousness, he reacted more with embarrassment than alarm, not noticing that his heart rate was slowing, his overworked metabolism beginning to crash.
…………………………………………………….
“She was beloved while she lived” McCoy said. “That’s really all that any of us can ask for.”
He was glad to find Jim was very much his normal self, issues with muted emotions aside. Of course, he had expected that, more or less. It was one of the side effects of temporary amnesia, at least when caused by…unusual circumstances. Often all memories of the intervening period – the fugue state – is lost. When they are retained, they lose the emotional coloring.
Meaning, he realized with a pang, that Miramanee died for a man who would never fully recollect what he had felt for her, what she had been for him. At least, Jim was spared the worst of the pain. Miramanee was dead. Jim was not. He still had his life, his real life, to lead, and he had come through unscarred. McCoy supposed he could be forgiven for feeling thankful for that.
Jim frowned.
“Bones, how did she die? She was injured, I saw that…But..It didn’t look fatal. “
McCoy sighed.
“Her wounds weren’t fatal. But she was ill, Jim. Had been, for a long while, by my reckoning. Weak cardiac system. These people…They look like Terran Native Americans, and they are transplanted from that bloodline, according to our geneticists and Spock’s Preserver theory. But they’ve been here for millennia, long enough for evolutionary divergence to set in. And something happened to seriously weaken their immune systems and physiology in general. She wouldn’t have survived childbirth. The trauma of the injury only served as catalyst. Any serious trauma, or exceptionally hard work, would have killed her.”
“She was their priestess.”
“And as such, mostly exempted from manual labor?”
“Not all of it, but the more demanding parts were done by the other women – her handmaidens.”
Probably the only reason she lived as long as she did, McCoy supposed.
“Terran Native American cultures… That doesn’t ring quite true either, Bones. In some ways, yes, they’re close to identical. But these people were much more…backward. Irrigation, food preservation methods, all the so called gifts from god-Kirok.. The Terran tribes had all of that by the time they reached the stage of development these people seem to be in. They had to, considering where they lived. “
“ The anthropology departments came up with about a hundred other differences. Some can be accounted for by mixing cultures – the feathered cloak thing was Aztec, not Navajo. They probably didn’t have temples either…Wait, some did..”
“South American. Different culture altogether. These people are developing at a far slower rate than they ought to.”
“Something to do with the preservers, you think?”
“I don’t know…Maybe. We don’t know just how much the Preservers were actually engaged in. that asteroid deflector may not have been their only tech. The elders mentioned other gods, saviors, being sent in the past. Maybe just legends, but maybe…”
“Maybe these Preserver folks played helicopter parent, slowed the natural culture growth ?”
Kirk nodded.
“Maybe they never had to try that hard to adapt, to evolve. That’s changing now. With the Preservers gone..”
Kirk had been about to take another sip, then stopped.
“Bones. What did you put in this?”
McCoy frowned, puzzled. “What?”
Jim glared at him somewhat dazedly.
“You trying to tell me it’s just the brandy that’s hitting so hard? I can barely keep my eyes open!”
McCoy, now slightly alarmed, got to his feet.
“I didn’t put anything in! “
Jim moaned softly, clutching at the edge of the desk to steady himself.
“Jim! What’s wrong? What do you feel?”
The medscanner, already in his hand by reflex, claimed that Jim was perfectly alright, physically and (as far as the scanner could tell) mentally. But that was belied by the evidence of his eyes – Jim was almost fainting.
Kirk was aware of McCoy’s alarmed queries, but could not respond.
At first he felt only weakness. The bone deep weariness of a body pushed beyond its endurance, now beginning to give up. No pain, only a deadening heaviness of the limbs which refused to move, refused to obey the commands of a mind that was, itself, too sluggish at the moment to exert the accustomed control. His heartbeat was slowing…But not in his chest…Lower down..
With a start, Jim realized he was perfectly alright. It wasn’t his exhaustion he was feeling, but another’s..
“Spock!”
McCoy, who had been bending over him, stepped back in a startled hurry as Kirk sat up abruptly.
“Jim, let me-“
“I’m okay, Bones, it’s Spock! I’m feeling what he’s feeling…That meld’s aftereffect..” His eyes widened in horror. “Bones! He’s dying!”
Before McCoy could make sense of what exactly Jim was babbling about, he was being pulled along the corridor by the very alarmed looking captain. The cabin door (unlocked, of course – another Vulcan habit) slid open as they arrived at a run – Jim frantic, McCoy baffled.
“Spock!”
The Vulcan was lying slumped against his desk. McCoy’s face turned grim as he checked the medscanner readings.
“Jim, comm. sickbay.”
The CMO was already pulling out a hypo from the modified first aid kit he always carried, on or off duty.
……………………………………………
“What the hell were you thinking of?”
Kirk was trying to look stern and furious, but he looked much too relieved to actually pull off the intended effect.
“I assure you, captain, had I been aware of the seriousness of the backlash, I would certainly have reported to the sickbay-“
“You know I’m not talking about just last night. I’m talking about the last two months!”
Spock would have tried to offer explanations for his conduct (which had, after all, been perfectly logical under the circumstances…Or so he would continue to insist) but recognized that any non-emotional explanation would have to wait till the young human had calmed down. Misdirection would serve well enough, for the time being.
“Dr McCoy claims that you…sensed my distress yesterday.”
“You aren’t changing the subject that easily.”
“This is important, Captain. The after effects of a meld as deep as the one we shared can be complicated.”
“Well, this after effect came in useful.”
Jim had to suppress a shudder as he pictured what could have happened if they had been even a few minutes late.
“This time, yes. But if it continues, the effects may not be quite so fortunate.” He frowned slightly. “Can you still sense the link?”
Kirk closed his eyes, trying to recapture that connection. A few moments later, he had to accept surrender.
“No. It’s…faded. Nearly gone.”
The captain looked somewhat forlorn at that realization. Spock, on the other hand, looked as relieved as a Vulcan could.
“Good. Then it would completely dissipate naturally, over time. “
At least, so he hoped. With this human, things were rarely so predictable.
“A pity” McCoy, who had been hovering like a very grumpy mother hen, commented. “Considering the sort of things the pair of you get into, would’ve been useful to have a built in baby monitor tuned in to each other. Would’ve made my job a bit easier.”