Chapter One

Insistent chiming dragged Kirk from an erotic, brandy-laced dream. No deadly urgency in the nagging sound, no intercom whistle or whooping alert siren—shipboard noises that always brought him wide awake, heart pumping adrenaline. Even half asleep, Kirk sensed the planetary stillness and pulled the covers over his head.

The chiming continued. With a bearish growl, he tossed back the blankets, stumbled to the bedroom door, and opened it. Chatter from a 24-hour video link mingled crazily with the phone. Squinting into the brightly lit living area, he hollered, "Bones!"

There was no reply.

Kirk shut off the video and grumbled his way to the phone. Out of habit he leaned over and reached for the view button, but realizing that he was clad only in underclothes, hit audio instead.

"Yes, who is it?" he snapped. Slow static-like waves of sound hissed from the speaker. Someone breathing? Thoroughly annoyed, he demanded, "Who's there?"

Somewhere distant, a throat cleared. "Admiral," came the faint but oh-so-familiar voice.

"Spock?" Kirk was instantly alert. Why would his second-in-command be using a ground line? Why wasn't he aboard ship? "Mister Spock, where are you?"

More silence. Then, "Shir…sir…I have been…unexpectedly dechained. I meant to say…detained."

"Detained where? Spock, I left you in command."

"Jim, I…" Spock's words were so faint that Kirk bent closer to the phone. "I…am in Wrigley's port dishtrict. In…jail."

Kirk sank into the phone chair and activated video. He scarcely recognized the man who appeared on the small screen. Spock's left eye was badly swollen, as ugly a shiner as Kirk had ever seen. Green blood seeped from a split at the left corner of Spock's fiercely controlled mouth. Kirk stared with disbelief at the rumpled Vulcan bangs and the downcast but uninjured right eye.

"What the blazes," spoke another familiar someone, standing directly behind Kirk.

He whirled as Doctor McCoy's hand met his shoulder. "Bones, where have you…?" Then he saw the green-skinned, scantily clad female settling into a nearby chair with typical Orion languor. "So that's where you've been," he muttered lamely.

Turning back to the comset, he found the screen going dark.

oooo

"Your time is up," announced a polite computer voice. "For additional service, please insert another token."

As Kirk's image faded from the screen, Spock reached for a pocket and found none. His hand fumbled over rum-soaked fabric, aggravating the deep ache in his right side. He vaguely remembered being kicked.

"C'mon Dad," ordered his boyish police escort.

Spock made no attempt to analyze the remark. Just walking in a fairly straight line demanded all his concentration as they moved past the admittance desk, to a corridor of dreary cells, mostly occupied.

An authoritative voice called after them, "Put that Vulcan in the transient section!"

This necessitated a turn into yet another corridor, where they passed by a cell crowded with rough-looking humanoids. The sight of Spock's disheveled Starfleet uniform drew a flurry of catcalls and rude comments. A gloating Belsarian rose to his full, impressive height and pushed aside his weaker cellmates for a closer look at Spock.

"C'mere, little buddy," he rumbled. "I'm not done with you yet." His hairy arm thrust toward Spock and was promptly stung by an invisible security field. The Belsarian howled with pain.

"There you go," said the policeman, indicating a blessedly empty cell farther down the corridor.

Spock weaved into the assigned space. He looked at the stained bunk, at the dirty toilet bowl, and the stench of excrement and stale sweat threatened his unsettled stomach. As the guard activated a force field, a wave of dizziness sank Spock to the cold cement floor. He drew up his knees against his chest and nearly gagged on the added odor of his liquor-drenched uniform. Orion pirate's rum, as black as the L-langa Mountains near his childhood home.

A stream of peculiar impressions teased through his thoughts—frost-beaded goblets, pulsing music, painted women. A red-haired dancer, naked flesh pale as moonlight. And her name…her name. It somehow eluded him. After a time he surrendered to the intoxicating effects of the alcohol and lay flat on his back, letting his thoughts drift free of the prison cell, far from this dark, miserably place, high above a pleasant beach washed by lavender waves…

A firm voice roused him. Flooded with unreasoning shame, he whimpered and curled onto his side.

"Spock."

The peculiar name sent a chill straight through him. But as he huddled on the damp, rough floor, something shifted in his mind. "Jim?" he asked, not daring to look.

Shoes scraped over the cement and came into view. A Starfleet officer knelt beside him, waving a pocket medscanner. After a moment, the man grunted. "I don't believe it. Drunk as a skunk."

Doctor McCoy?

"Looks like he picked the sleaziest hole in Port District." Looking only mildly amused, Admiral Kirk grabbed Spock under the armpits and muscled him upright.

"Whew!" McCoy sniffed as he helped steady him. "Did he drink it or wear it?"

The mildewed jailhouse walls began to pitch dangerously, and Spock realized there was no controlling the urge this time. He was going to throw up.

oooo

"Feeling better?"

Spock opened his eyes, and squinting, raised a hand to block the painful glare. He was lying in sickbay, clad in temperature-regulating pajamas. Every inch of his body warned him to lie still.

"Doctor," he rasped, mentally groping through a strange tangle of thoughts.

"Feeling like hell," McCoy answered himself. "And I filled you with enough Counternol to sober a snarth."

"Counternol!" Swallowing a bitter surge of stomach acid, Spock reared up from the sickbay mattress. "Why," he demanded, "would you inject me with an anti-ethanol drug?"

McCoy broke into a lopsided grin. "Well now, Doctor Chapel performed the actual rite. I was too busy holding down a snookered Vulcan. Bombed. Sloshed to the gills. Falling down drunk. Got it now?"

Spock searched his shipmate's weathered face, wanting badly to disbelieve the absurd statement, but there was no denying the unpleasant aftertaste of liquor in his mouth. Without further comment, he settled down on the bed.

McCoy looked intolerably pleased. "Well, that's more like it. Just rest easy. What you're feeling is no doubt uncomfortable, but seldom fatal. The correct medical term is 'the morning after'."

Spock closed his eyes, one of which was swollen and sore, but the weird blur of memories were even more painful. Unable to deal with them just now, he swept the tangle into a deep corner of his mind. The room grew so quiet that he thought the doctor had left.

Then, still quite close, McCoy asked, "Would you care for a drink?" With an annoying chuckle he quickly clarified, "Water? Juice?"

As Spock accepted a swallow of water, he noticed a wall chronometer and gave a start. "I am late for duty," he said, attempting to rise again.

McCoy placed both hands on his chest and laid him flat. "My Vulcan friend, you are currently relieved of duty…on Admiral Kirk's orders. What happened last night is just a little more serious than spoiling our tour of the town. Jim is…." He must have seen the questions forming. "You don't remember, do you? At least not all of it."

Spock raised his right hand and stared at the splayed fingers. He was not sure why he had even moved it, but the action triggered a sharp recollection—clasping Kirk's hand while struggling to describe his life-changing meld with the machine-entity, V'Ger. And then another, more recent meld came to mind. Direct mental contact could be most disconcerting…

Wearily he admitted, "My…memory is…uncertain."

McCoy gave a nod. "Well, try and get some sleep. Your head will clear up when you feel better."

oooo

All that day, McCoy kept Spock shut away in sickbay. No one entered the private room without clearance, and that meant no one…including Admiral Kirk. Twice Kirk stopped by to rail at that "groundless, arbitrary restriction", but McCoy held firm. Over the years he had become an expert at pulling medical rank, and at his age, he was not easily intimidated. There was good reason to keep Spock secluded. By nature, Vulcans craved privacy, even in the best of times. Any Vulcan who had lapsed as badly as Spock deserved a chance to get a grip on himself before facing the world again. He had probably needed a blowout after three rugged years pursuing the discipline of Kolinahr. Three years away from family and friends, holed up in some Vulcan wasteland. Whatever Spock had been trying to prove, he had failed, returning to the Enterprise newly fallen from the esteemed pinnacle of Vulcan logic.

More than once, McCoy had felt like walloping that fiercely insular Spock. But then, whether through heroism or self-interest, the Vulcan had risked his fool neck to join minds with a machine entity that was endangering Earth. And what Spock found in that solitary meld changed him, for V'Ger's barren intellect showed him the value of emotions—the very humanness he had always fought so hard to repress.

But now was Spock becoming too human? Perhaps the recent episode at Helexia had been more of a shock to him than McCoy had realized. Dorian Wren's unethical experiment. The sight of his dying replicate. Since that wrenching day, the Vulcan had not been the same.

Corridors were dimming for the ship's night cycle when a clean set of clothes arrived in sickbay. McCoy delivered the underwear, pale blue tunic and trousers to Spock, who had emerged from his shower clad only in a towel.

"Boring color," McCoy said, tossing everything on a chair. "And the tan's just as bland."

"We are not dressing for aesthetic effect," Spock reminded him.

"The designer must've been color blind," McCoy muttered, looking down at his own plain white outfit. "Admit it, Spock. You hate these new uniforms, too." The Vulcan clothed himself in noncommittal silence. Noticing that Spock had to suck in his stomach in order to fasten his trousers, McCoy said, "So the readings didn't lie—you are putting on weight. I thought I've seen you going for second helpings."

Spock gave him an icy glare, and then reached for his tunic. The black eye and bruised lip served to accentuate the overall satanic effect.

"Never mind, you look just fine," McCoy said, deadpan. "For Halloween."

It was a very tired joke, and not deserving of a comment. Yet as Spock went out the door, he could not resist saying to the doctor, "Trick or treat."

Once beyond sickbay, his pace quickened. Everyone who caught sight of him, lapsed into staring—at a wall, at the deck—anywhere but the source of their astonishment, Spock's battered face. He felt their eyes boring into his back as he walked the corridors, pretending indifference. No doubt the crew was already gossiping, trading stories about the humiliating behavior that he only vaguely remembered. He longed for the privacy of his cabin, but Kirk might seek him there and demand answers he could not give.

In those troubled days after returning from Gol, Spock had occasionally sought meditation in the private cubicles nested between the ship's inner and outer hulls. Now the interhull seemed like the perfect retreat. As he roamed through the skeletal maze, past occupied cubicles, his sensitive ears overheard sounds of human sex play. He should have been able to ignore it. Instead, his footsteps slowed and he found himself actively listening and responding to the sensual pleasures that the sounds evoked. His right hand was on a door, his mind voyeuristically seeking beyond the barrier, when approaching footsteps startled him. Guiltily he jerked away from the cubicle and prepared to bolt, but found himself trapped amidst frightening shadows.

Nowhere to run, no escaping the punishment…

Hurried steps bore down on him. Firm fingers clamped over his shoulder. Crying out, he wrenched free and fled deep into the strange, dusky world.

oooo

Perhaps instinct had led Kirk to the interhull, or perhaps the bond that had grown between him and Spock over the years. Whatever the cause, he came away stunned at what he found. Was that cringing, frightened creature really Spock? It hardly seemed possible, yet Kirk had been close enough to touch him. Even in the shadows, there had been no mistaking those pointed ears and that smooth dark hair. Yes, Spock. The same man who recently shrank from him in a squalid jail cell, drunk. The same man who now stood before him, as rigid as Vulcan granite.

"Sit down," Kirk said, indicating an office chair.

With the Vulcan obediently seated, Kirk settled behind his desk. The hour was late, but Spock had finally responded to a thrice-repeated intercom summons and presented himself. Kirk glanced over the list of complaints on his monitor, and silently wondered how he would get through this. There were official formulas meant to ease such situations and keep them on a professional level. He knew the words by heart. For that matter, so did Spock. But Kirk realized there was no way to detach himself from his personal feelings for this man.

"Spock," he said as a friend. "Why did you run from me tonight?"

Emotions stirred the usually impassive features, but Spock quickly recovered his composure. "Admiral," he replied in a formal tone, "I cannot answer that question."

Kirk was both mystified and annoyed. "You can't…or you won't?"

Spock averted his eyes, coldly silent. Here was the Vulcan deep freeze all over again, and Kirk was not about to let him get away with it.

"Never," Kirk snapped, "not once in all your years of service have you ever abdicated a command. Yet last night you beamed off this ship without assigning the conn, without so much as logging your departure." He gestured at the screen. "It's all here. Dereliction of duty…absent without leave…public drunkenness…disorderly conduct…" He paused in the litany to take a breath and found a look of controlled horror in Spock's eyes. "Not to mention the various assault charges, including those on the arresting officers. It was no easy task settling all this with the local authorities. Now, Mister Spock, you must settle with me."

Spock spread his hands on his thighs and stared down at them. "I…remember little of it. Music. Colors. Faces."

"Nothing else?"

One slender hand rose to his discolored eye. He frowned slightly. "You say there are assault charges. Are any of them…sexual in nature?"

Kirk was only mildly surprised by the query, for three years earlier Spock had seriously injured a female shipmate while in the throes of pon farr. Was that what this was all about? Was he still struggling with the aftermath of that terrible time?

"There was a woman involved," Kirk told him, "though not directly. You tangled with a Belsarian over some exotic dancer, but apparently you were both too drunk to inflict any serious damage." Spock was visibly relieved. Though it was none of his business, Kirk wondered, "Were you meeting a woman at the interhull tonight?" Those secretive compartments were popular for intimate rendezvous among the crew, and contrary to popular belief, Vulcans were quite capable of mating at any time.

Spock gave him a strangely guarded look. "I was seeking meditation. There are cubicles reserved for that purpose."

Though not entirely convinced, Kirk let the matter drop. "Irrelevant, in any case. What concerns me most is your conduct last night. You left the Enterprise without putting an officer in command." Beaming aboard ship with vomit on his shoes had dampened his initial twinge of amusement. Discovering that Spock abdicated his duty had wiped the smile permanently from Kirk's face. "Why?" he demanded. "Just tell me why."

"I…do not know," Spock replied after a moment of thought. "The memories are clouded."

"Were you drinking before you left the ship?"

Spock's distant, haunted eyes turned from his. If ever there was guilty-looking man, this was it. Swallowing his person feelings, Kirk stood, and the Vulcan rose respectfully to attention. But the eyes, the fathomless brown eyes remained fixed on some faraway point.

Kirk broke the silence with an admiral's well-seasoned authority. "No man, Mister Spock, no one is so valuable that I will place him above the welfare of this ship. No one who fails in his duty to this ship and crew will go unpunished." He paused, a frown of doubt creasing his brow. These past years had brought pressures on Spock that might have broken a lesser man. The Vulcan was not indestructible. Relenting a bit, he continued, "For now, you are suspended from duty and confined to the ship. I'm postponing a formal captain's mast until you submit to a psychological examination."

Spock stirred. "Permission to speak, Admiral?"

"Go ahead."

"Sir, Doctor McCoy has released me from medical care."

"Nevertheless, Mister Spock, you will present yourself for examination first thing tomorrow. Those are Doctor McCoy's orders…and my own."

The Vulcan bowed his head in apparent acceptance. Kirk dismissed him before personal interest won out over his own responsibility as ship's commander. He had meant every aching word about duty. Yes, he may have used the V'Ger crisis to regain command of the refurbished Enterprise, but that command was now temporarily his, and he would not compromise it. But his private wish to install Spock as the new captain now seemed but a distant hope.

Glancing at his wrist chronometer, he sighed. He must get some sleep if was going to function tomorrow. Correction: today. Warp out in five hours, a new course to of all places, Mason's Resolve, where they would take on a medical team bound for a conference on Vulcan. It would be his first visit to Mason's since Spock's ill-fated pon farr, and the timing could not be worse.

oooo

In the rational portion of his mind, Spock knew there were not many paces separating the turbolift from his quarters, but tonight it seemed uncomfortably far in the night-dimmed corridor. He covered the distance quickly. Even so, his heart was pounding by the time he reached his door. For a moment he stared at the smooth metallic surface, not quite remembering how it opened. Then the door sensed his presence, opened of its own accord, and he was safely inside.

The cabin was swathed in deep shadows. A single flame guttered near his meditation alcove, in peril from stray air currents and neglect. Its hypnotic writhing briefly held his attention before he turned to the room's control panel and abruptly switched on every light. Yet somehow it still seemed wrong.

He closed his eyes, and a dreamlike wraith seemed to reach for him, tender and inviting with her promises of sensual pleasure. So near. So very near. A delicious yearning was rapidly overtaking him when he abruptly came to himself and ended the troubling fantasy. It was not the first seductive episode of this type, and they were becoming harder to resist.

I am Vulcan. I am in control.

Carefully regulating his thoughts, he made his way to his bed, but the mere sight of the narrow bunk was enough to set him burning again. A pon farr image of Ensign Orella rose in his mind, and was instantly superimposed with that of a red-haired human female. He turned away. Confused, he reached out, and his fingers rammed into an unexpected surface.

He stared steadily at the partition until it became familiar again. Then slowly he sat on the bed, watching his spectral reflection move in a nearby mirror, and it was as if he were viewing a stranger. Hardly logical, but there was little logic in seductive visions…or in recurring dreams full of desperate, unanswered pleas.

Let me go! Let me out!

"Who are you?" Spock asked the entrapped image.

In the silence that followed, his shoulders slumped and he made no effort to straighten. There would be little rest tonight. Even if he forced sleep on himself, the dreams would come again. At last he rose, put on a meditation robe, and assumed the traditional posture. He would try to empty his mind and open himself to a'Tha, using the ancient Way of Kril'es, or harmony with One and All. It differed from any exercises of the Kolinahru, and even those he had practiced in earlier years, for since V'Ger, he had begun to seek a more personal relationship with the Creator and Sustainer of all things. Perhaps there he would find the strength he needed.

oooo

"Conscience can be a marvelous rudder," McCoy said as he bit into his toast, "guiding an individual along on an even moral keel."

"Through life's ocean of good and evil," Kirk finished with a wry grin. He swallowed some hot black coffee and glanced once around the officer's lounge. Though no one was near enough to overhear them, he lowered his voice. "But Bones, Spock is a Vulcan, not a boat."

"Spock is Spock." Scowling, the doctor scooped up a forkful of scrambled eggs. "He's not any more Vulcan than human, despite his physical appearance."

"And you think he's suffering an attack of conscience?"

McCoy nodded.

Kirk shifted in his seat. "Hell, we've all done things that we're not particularly proud of. With Ensign Orella, pon farr gave him little choice. And with Tobias, he had no culpability at all."

"True," McCoy said, "but the way Tobias died still concerns me. Spock in there all alone with him…"

Kirk stiffened. "Surely you aren't suggesting that Spock…"

"Did him in?" McCoy waved the thought aside. "Of course not, but Spock has been acting mighty strange since that night on Helexia. I'm going to put him through every test in the book."

Kirk pushed up from the table. "When is he due in sickbay?"

"Thirty minutes. I'd like you there, if possible."

Kirk managed a wan smile. "Reinforcements?"

"I'll take all I can get."

oooo

Kirk was in sickbay nursing a second mug of coffee when Spock punctually arrived. The Vulcan looked as if he had spent the night in an anteroom of hell.

McCoy dropped any semblance of a professional manner, took Spock by the shoulders and said, "This has gone about far enough, my friend."

The alien eyes shifted to some terribly neutral point between the two humans. "I do not understand your meaning, Doctor."

"Oh, I think you do," McCoy countered. "I think you understand with painful clarity. Self-recrimination. Gut-wrenching guilt. I've heard tell that Vulcans consider such things illogical…like other bothersome emotions they sweep under the rug. Don't they?" Spock remained stock-still, yet there was a sense of something stirring beneath that rigid exterior as McCoy pressed on. "A man…a feeling man can only operate like that for so long. Then the pressures make themselves known in unpleasant ways."

Looking coldly at McCoy, the Vulcan said, "Remove your hands."

With an angry little shake, McCoy released him and went over beside Kirk. "Jim was there, we both were. Friends. Remember the word? We cared enough to stand with you on Helexia, but you stayed behind in that basement...and you came out a changed man."

Kirk set down his mug. "McCoy is right. At first the difference in you was so slight that I wrote it off as a contemplative mood. Understandable for someone who'd met and lost his double in the space of an hour. But since then you've grown steadily more withdrawn, and now this destructive binge. It's all connected, isn't it?" Rising to his feet, he promised, "Nothing you say will go beyond this room. Let's have the truth. What went on between you and Tobias?"

Spock's gaze dropped. After a silent moment, his hands began fidgeting and he glanced around the deck as if wrestling some private sin. "I…I won't be punished?" he asked in an uncertain voice.

Kirk cast the doctor a startled look, then said, "Let's hear it."

Now Spock's normally composed features shifted into a nervous mask. "I was so sick…when the other came. Somehow I thought I knew him…and then when he touched my face..."

Kirk opened his mouth to speak, but a meaningful glance from McCoy silenced him.

Facing Spock, the doctor gently asked, "He touched you?"

"Yes. He was…in my thoughts. I begged him to help me."

"Tobias," Kirk said.

Spock turned suddenly to Kirk, eyes brimming with anguished tears. A shiver began in the admiral's back and swiftly chased over his entire body. This was not Spock. This could not be Spock. He had responded to Kirk's voice as if Tobias were his name!

McCoy had reached the same conclusion. "So you begged Spock to help you. And then what?"

Tobias/Spock repressed a sob. "I could feel his disgust. He…he…didn't like me."

McCoy shot Kirk a worried glance, then went over and put an arm around his troubled patient. This time Tobias/Spock seemed to take comfort in the touch.

"Well now," McCoy said, lapsing into his country doctor drawl. "There's no need to get upset." He gently guided the Vulcan to the diagnostic table. "Just wait here a minute and Doctor Chapel will see what's ailin' you."

"I'm not sick anymore," Tobias/Spock insisted, but nevertheless he obeyed.

McCoy stepped out of the room with Kirk. Grim as death, he waved Christine Chapel through the sliding doors. "Give him a preliminary exam, Chris. And don't be surprised if you find his behavior…a little odd."

oooo

No need to tell me that, thought Chapel as the door sealed her and the patient in privacy. Since V'Ger she had seen many new sides of Spock: laughter, exhilaration, tears. Yesterday she had even seen him drunk and helped nurse him through a Vulcan-sized hangover. At this point, very little would surprise her.

Businesslike, she strode to the diagnostic bed and set its programming as she chatted. "I could tell you this isn't going to hurt a bit, Mister Spock, but neither of us would believe that. Just consider it payment for all the trouble you caused around here yesterday."

She paused in her work to glance over at him. Spock's eyes were on her. Oh, but he was handsome—shiner, banged lip, and all. Another kailoscopic treatment would help bring down the last of the swelling.

With a gentle smile she said, "Please slip out of your tunic and undershirt, then lie down."

Once he settled on the diagnostic bed, she studied the readings displayed on the wall monitor. Autonomic functions were a little high for his hybrid physiology, but within acceptable limits. After entering a notation on his chart, she turned to find all the readings at peak level.

Her heart gave a lurch. What was going on? Taking the Vulcan's wrist, she searched out his elusive, racing pulse. His skin felt burning hot. His bare chest rose and fell too rapidly.

Suddenly he asked, "Will it really hurt?"

"What?" Chapel laughed uneasily. "Of course not. I was only…" Dragging her eyes away, she tried to focus on the examination.

"You are quite beautiful," he told her.

For an instant she doubted her hearing, but then her gaze locked with his. Clearly, he had meant it. And in those smoldering eyes, she read a great deal more. Stunned, she released his wrist, but he immediately seized her arms and brought her down firmly against him. She was too shocked to resist as his fingers slid into her hair, forcing her nearer and nearer, until their lips touched.

No, her mind cried, this is wrong! But she could not hide the feelings he aroused in her as the kiss deepened and their thoughts brushed.

Not here, she objected. Not like this.

But I want you, he answered.

Yes, and almost from the beginning, she had wanted this man. Despite all his repressive ways, she had loved him, even knowing that he could never behave differently, never return even a small part of her affection. In the interest of sanity, she had refined her hopeless passion into friendship. But the tinder was still there.

Somehow she pulled away from the seductive lips, and with his hands still on her, looked down at him. Yes, she reassured herself, this really is Spock. A Spock she had seen only in dreams, breathless with lust and damnably desirable. Here was the secret face had always longed to uncover. Spock, wanting her shamelessly.

"Let me…let me lock the door," she managed to rasp.

Yes, his mind answered, but come back. Come back quickly.

Burning with need, she hurried to the control panel.