Star Trek: The Original Series: Seasons of Light and Darkness (2 page)

Spock had little doubt that this would be his last opportunity to meditate prior to his return to the vessel he now commanded in his capacity as an Academy educator—the starship that had been the focus of so much of his life and career.

Enterprise
.

It was illogical to speculate regarding the upcoming inspection's outcome. He'd already spent much of the day aboard the ship, overseeing the final preparations. Now was the time to let go, to allow his crew of untried trainees to succeed—or fail—on their own merits.

The external door chime intruded on Spock's carefully ordered thoughts. Snapping back to the here and now, the Vulcan rose to his feet in a single fluid motion and strode to the voice-activated pad that controlled the door.

“Open.”

A familiar slender form stood before him, swaying ever so slightly from side to side just beyond the cottage's threshold. The bottle that sloshed in the human's hand more than adequately explained his body's unsteadiness.

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock said with forced equanimity. “You are intoxicated.”

“You bet your pointed ears I am,” the doctor said. He stepped over the threshold, though
staggered
would have been a more apt verb. For an instant, Spock thought McCoy was about to walk right into him. But much to his well-concealed surprise, the human weaved nimbly past the Vulcan as he entered the cottage, demonstrating a degree of grace that belied his obvious inebriety.

“Do come in, Doctor,” Spock said, raising his right eyebrow.

McCoy wasted no time making himself comfortable on the low, angular sofa that represented one of Spock's very few concessions to creature comforts—a compromise with Vulcan asceticism he'd made purely out of consideration for his occasional visitors.

“So,” McCoy said as he took a moment to look around the sparsely appointed room. “This must be the Starfleet Academy party palace I keep hearing all the midshipmen raving about.”

Ignoring McCoy's jibe, Spock closed the door, crossed to the sofa, and stood with folded arms beside the reclining doctor. “I trust you have a compelling explanation, Doctor.”

“An explanation for why I'm drunk? Or for why I decided to make a surprise house call?”

“The two matters are almost certainly related.” Spock reached for McCoy's bottle, and the doctor relinquished it without a struggle.

McCoy grinned, but only for a moment. “Spock, you've lost none of your acumen.”

Spock examined the bottle's label. Once again, his right eyebrow vaulted skyward. The human predilection for the fermentation process made possible by the terrestrial yeast known as
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
was dubious enough. But ingesting the metabolic byproducts of
Saccharomyces romii
—the far hardier yeast-analog from Romulus whose voluminous alcohol output made Romulan ale more intoxicating than many distilled beverages—struck the Vulcan as the height of irresponsibility.

“Doctor,” Spock said, “you must be aware that this substance is—”

“—illegal, yeah, yeah,” McCoy interrupted. “Jim made the same observation.”

“You visited the admiral in this condition?” Spock set the bottle down on a nearby windowsill, handling the glass vessel with all the delicacy one might accord a slumbering but venomous serpent.

“No,” McCoy said. “My ‘condition' came on a little later. I dropped by Jim's apartment to pay my birthday respects.” The doctor nodded toward the bottle on the windowsill. “I brought the Romulan ale with me as a gift.”

“Indeed. You appear to have imbibed a considerable portion of the admiral's ‘gift' yourself.”

The doctor glowered. “Turned out he wasn't in the mood for a celebration. I gotta tell you, Spock—I'm worried about him.”

“Because he evidently lacks your penchant for self-destructive behavior?”

McCoy's graying eyebrows gathered into a jagged tangle. “He's decided to self-destruct in slow motion. Even you must have noticed how . . . somber Jim's been lately. His saying ‘galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young,' and that sort of thing.”

Spock had to concede that the doctor might have a point, his present neurochemical state notwithstanding. The admiral's fatalistic melancholy couldn't have been more apparent than it had been earlier in the day, during the immediate aftermath of Lieutenant Saavik's
Kobayashi Maru
examination. But the matter hadn't seemed especially noteworthy. The person in question, after all, was James Tiberius Kirk. This was a man who already had weathered many emotional storms, and yet had always emerged from even the most devastating tempests at least as strong as he'd been before.

Or so it had always seemed.

As he had done on several previous occasions, Spock wondered if the admiral's seeming invulnerability was merely a carefully constructed façade. Despite the doctor's compromised condition, his concerns couldn't be dismissed out of hand. In fact, they raised a serious question: Were the admiral ever to find himself truly in need of emotional support, would he actually reach out to anyone to obtain the assistance he required?

More specifically, would he ask even his closest and most valued friends for their help?

Spock had to admit that he wasn't altogether certain of the answer.
Have I somehow badly overestimated Jim's psychological resiliency?

“Are you concerned that he might do himself harm?” Spock said.

“As in deliberately? As in actual suicide?” McCoy shook his head. “If I believed that, I'd have him forcibly relieved of duty and placed under psychiatric observation faster than you could say ‘
Kolineer
.' ”

Ignoring the doctor's grating mispronunciation, Spock said, “Then I fail to see—”

McCoy interrupted again. “Spock, there are ways a man can kill himself without overdosing or turning a phaser on himself. Sometimes all he has to do is let himself get talked into leaving the bridge of his starship.”

The Vulcan contemplated the doctor's words. Though he had always harbored his own private reservations concerning James Kirk's decision to accept promotion—and thereby to leave starship command behind—Spock had never shared those misgivings with the admiral. It was simply not his prerogative to question the judgment of the man to whose authority he'd deferred for so many years.

Nor was it McCoy's.

“Perhaps you are in error, Doctor,” Spock said. “I find it curious that you've never before seen fit to bring this matter to my attention.”

McCoy flung his hands out to his sides, his fingers splayed. “Before today it'd never seemed necessary. You remember all the ups and downs of Jim's life just as well as I do. But tonight he was . . .
different
. Resigned. Fatalistic.”

“I have no doubt that you perceived those emotions,” Spock said. “But that might be explained by the pernicious effects of your excessive alcohol consumption.”

McCoy rose unsteadily to his feet. “You know what's
really
pernicious? A man's shortsighted view of his own duties and obligations, that's what.”

“Doctor, do you really believe you understand how the admiral perceives his own sense of duty?”

“I do,” McCoy said. He slowly moved toward the front windows and gazed out at the fog-swaddled Starfleet Headquarters complex. He picked up the bottle of Romulan ale that Spock had placed on the sill. “Because I've already been where Jim is right now. I've stared right into the very same abyss.”

After reclaiming his earlier position on the couch, McCoy paused just long enough to take another swig from the bottle. “And you know what, Spock? That experience damned near destroyed me. . . .”

One

STARFLEET MEDICAL

Stardate 605.2 (April 20, 2254)

Ignoring the gulls that wheeled across the office's panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay, Leonard McCoy sat spellbound by the image the desktop viewer displayed. Presenting itself as a narrow, sun-dappled crescent, the blue planet rotated serenely before him, silently beckoning.

McCoy tried to put the planet's tranquil beauty out of his mind, at least for the moment, forcing himself to concentrate on the immediate business at hand. Shifting in his seat, he focused on the silver-haired, blue-uniformed officer who faced him from behind the black oblong desk that dominated the small but tidy office. McCoy had long admired Doctor Rigby Wieland, whose groundbreaking research in the field of xenoimmunology had been required reading during his med-school years. Though his student days were now more than five years in the past, McCoy could scarcely believe that the Great Man was actually considering him for a slot as one of the physicians on his Alpha Aurigae field medical team.

Squinting at the data flimsy he was studying, Wieland leaned forward across the desktop and met McCoy's gaze squarely. “May I be candid with you, Doctor?” he said.

“Of course, sir,” McCoy said, suppressing an urge to tug at his uniform's black collar. This assignment was far too important to allow his own nervousness to trip him up.

Wieland studied the younger man. “For starters, your Starfleet service record is a pretty quick read.”

While considering his response, McCoy resumed staring at the planet on the screen. Most of the alien world's dayside was turned away, toward the two giant yellow stars it circled. The stygian darkness of the planet's nightward limb emphasized two distant, ruddy pinpoints—according to the text call-outs on the screen, they constituted Alpha Aurigae's secondary binary pair, twin red dwarf stars that circled the system's two far more luminous primaries at a distance of about six light-weeks.

But it was the azure planet in the screen's center that held McCoy transfixed.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” McCoy said.

“Granted.”

“I've been in Starfleet a little over a year, sir,” McCoy said, gambling on Wieland's reputation for good-natured quarrels. “I'll bet your record didn't look very different from mine when you were still a junior-grade lieutenant.”

Wieland chuckled gently as he continued to examine the flimsy. “Truth is, Doctor, your record
beats
mine. I didn't earn my first Gold Caduceus until I was nearly three years older than you are now. Well done.”

“Thank you, sir.” McCoy experienced an almost palpable sense of relief. He felt a broad smile spread across his face, defeating his best efforts to maintain a neutral demeanor.

“Don't pop any champagne corks just yet. I still have a few questions for you,” Wieland said.

His smile abruptly collapsing, McCoy nodded. “Of course.”

“You've been a practicing physician for five years longer than you've been in Starfleet,” Wieland said. “I joined the service right out of med school. Why the wait?”

Though he'd hoped the question wouldn't come up, McCoy had an answer prepared. “Until about a year ago, I was preoccupied with my family situation.”

Wieland looked down at McCoy's hands, and the younger man suddenly realized he'd been fidgeting with his wedding ring unconsciously. A veteran poker player would call it a “tell.” He wondered how long he'd been doing it.

“Seems to me you're
still
preoccupied,” Wieland said, nodding at McCoy's left hand before turning his attention back to the flimsy. “What's her name?”

“Jocelyn.”

“The two of you married six years ago.”

“Yes, sir. We separated last year, right before I joined Starfleet,” McCoy said. “Our daughter, Joanna, just turned five.”

She's with her mother.
Light-years away.
The thought was tinged with ache and longing.

Though his relationship with Nancy Bierce, an attractive young med-tech, had started after his separation from Jocelyn, the burgeoning romance still felt like a betrayal on his part. McCoy knew he had to cut his ties with Nancy soon, while he still had the strength to do it.

Leaving Earth behind entirely seemed like the best way to make a clean break.

“So you haven't entirely given up hope for a reconciliation?” Wieland said, gesturing at McCoy's ring-hand.

“Yes, sir,” McCoy said. “After Jocelyn's done taking the time she needs to work a few things out. But in the meantime . . .” He trailed off and nodded toward the planet on the screen.

“My Alpha Aurigae team isn't the French Foreign Legion, Doctor,” Wieland remarked.

McCoy blinked in confusion. “I don't understand.”

“I'm not taking on anybody whose main reason for going is to forget.”

McCoy allowed Doctor Wieland's implication to sink in. The older man's words ignited an anger deep within him.

“Doctor Wieland,” he replied, pointing at the planet on the screen. “Most people in the Federation live in a kind of paradise, medically speaking. Now you've shown me people who've never had access to modern medicine. My only reason for going is to help them. Because that's what doctors
do
.”

“And your family situation has nothing to do with it? Not even a little bit?”

McCoy mulled the question over. He couldn't deny that his regular Starfleet duties were rapidly becoming devoid of meaning. He couldn't deny that his separation from his family had helped motivate him to seek a position on Doctor Wieland's team. He couldn't deny that he was in pain.

“The last thing I want to do is forget about Joanna or Jocelyn,” McCoy said at last. “I can't do anything about their absence. But I
can
do what I was trained to do, wherever my skills are needed the most.”

“Fine. The conditions there will be primitive,” Wieland said. He set aside the flimsy as he got to his feet. “And we could be there for quite a while. Starfleet is stretched pretty thin out where we're headed. There's no guarantee that the
Yegorov
won't be called away to deal with some emergency or other.”

“That doesn't bother me,” McCoy said, rising from his chair.

Wieland extended his right hand; however, his tone remained tentative. “You realize our crew rotations could be several months apart.”

McCoy grasped the older man's hand tightly. “So when do we leave?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Wieland said with a broad smile. “We beam up to the
Yegorov
at oh-six-hundred. Welcome to the team, Doctor.”

“Thank you,” McCoy said, hoping he didn't look as relieved as he felt. He honestly wasn't sure what he would have done had Wieland rejected him.

Because
, he thought,
I've got no place else to go right now.