Nightfall's Nest: Skylight

Elucidated
part six: dichotomy
by Nightfall

I regarded the note blurrily for a moment. The letters were well formed, long and slanting far off to the right. The lines tilted up, and in the sprawling signature the pen had nearly gone through the paper before jumping off enthusiastically. I decided that it was a typical effort. After putting it in my suitcase, I dressed and went to the gym as ordered.

He was hanging upside down by his feet from a pair of circles suspended in midair, in the blue clothes I had last seen him not wearing. His face was dark with the blood that had rushed to it. I found the sight disturbing. He grinned and waved vigorously, nearly upsetting his balance. I winced, visions of him falling plaguing my closed eyes. "Please come down from there."

I did not watch him descend; I did not open my eyes until I felt him before me. "I take it Vulcans don't do acrobatics?"

"No. There are no trees in our recent past."

He laughed. Inexplicably, my irritation was subdued. "All right, we'll work out on the ground, then."

"Together?" I surveyed the equipment lining the room, and the mat. "You mean, against one another?"

"Why not?"

"I am Vulcan. You are Human. It would not be fair."

"I'll be easy on you."

"Jim!"

"What?"

"How much do you weigh?"

"I don't know. I haven't weighed myself since I was home."

"How much did you weigh then?"

He shrugged, puzzled. "Hundred ten, twenty pounds?"

"Has your weight since then remained constant, would you say?"

His mouth twisted, and he stared at me incredulously. "After Tarsus? There was a famine!"

"As I thought. I am twice your weight. I am ten centimeters taller than you. As a Vulcan I am physically swifter and mass more solidly. This is not a good idea."

His eyes narrowed at me and were cold, a very grey bronze. I stepped backward slightly. "Do you not remember," I added hastily, "my lifting you yesterday?"

His eyes relaxed, and flickered briefly green. He smiled. "Yeah," he said. "I remember that. Okay. Well... I'm pretty fast, myself. There's a net with various kinds of racquets over there, we could play with projectiles. I assume Vulcans have good hand-eye coordination?"

"Naturally," I said, lifting an eyebrow in acceptance.

He trounced me. Naturally. I did get him to adjust my stance once or twice. He was being insufferably smug again as we went to the freshers. He was trying so hard not to be, though, that I was tolerant. By unspoken consent, we showered apart.

"Do you prefer water or sonic showers?" he asked from his stall.

"Immersion is pleasant," I called back, "but one must not become accustomed to luxuries which are not consistently available."

"Desert planet, right." Steam was steadily escaping from his shower, creeping above the curtain to float on the air and mist the mirrors. I thought of water heating his skin, and closed my eyes to the vibration of the sonics. "How did you guys wash before sonics," he interrupted my reverie, "if water's so scarce? Sand-scrubs?"

"Yes," I agreed shortly, my attention more inside my mind than out.

"Yech." When I did not respond, he lapsed into silence. I was just as pleased about that.

I finished my shower, with some regret, when the facilities had finished freshening my clothes. I dressed, and went over to stand by his stall, prepared to wait for him to emerge, perhaps to assist him in drying himself.

A dull bang issued from his stall, and a thud and a large splash. There was no outcry. There was, however, a tight clenching under my lung, and sudden numb pain all along my right side, bursting into thick brightness at the side of my head. I looked around quickly. We were alone. I pulled open the curtain.

He was huddled at the bottom of the fresher, the water washing away the blood from his temple as it leaned against the wall, washing away the trail that led down to him. His eyes were closed, his face slack, gone strangely pure again without the goad of consciousness. My first thought was that he had tripped over the slippery soap, but the only tension in his body was his fist clenched tight about the white bar. He had not been made to lose consciousness, then; it had simply happened. That frightened me more than the blood.

I reached in to slap my hand against the control pad, finding the off button. I pressed down on it, hard. The water stopped. I debated for a moment the advisability of carrying him to sickbay. I went to the intercom. "Spock to Dr. Poole."

The answer was a long moment in coming, and sleepy. "Poole here, Spock, is something wrong?"

"I am in the freshener-room of the ship's gymnasium. I am calling on Jim's behalf. He has fallen in the shower. He is unconscious and bleeding from the head. I do not believe that his fall had an external cause. I have turned off the water. I do not know whether to move him."

They came and took him away and I did not speak with him again. Dehydration, the doctor told me as I sat next to his bed. Malnutrition, exhaustion, much-delayed post-traumatic shock, now complicated by concussion. "Stubborn pig-headed idiot," his father grumbled, and ruffled his hair, and jiggled his knee, and went away. He did not awaken.

I was with him as they injected him with a glucose shot, a vitamin shot, and a sedative, as they put a drip with saline solution into his wrist. They would not let me assist, but I was there. When they had finished, they brought me a chair and permitted me to use the library computer hookup. After a time, my father came in.

"I have had a message from your betrothed, my son," he informed me.

Jim stirred uneasily, but did not wake.

"From T'Pring?"

"Have you another?"

I closed my mouth tightly.

"She wishes to see you. She believes that you wish to discuss something with her."

I was blank for a moment. Then it came together. My impulsive behavior over the chessboard. My sudden awareness of the link with her, at a time when I should have been aware of nothing but Jim. That crass, warped, ugly ear over his, and the surge of smugness. Not mine, none of it mine. My body had followed hers, taken me over. Was that a shadow of the plak tow? Was that what it would be like?

My mind flashed an image of being with her, as with Jim, of holding close a mind who despised me enough to keep me out except when triumphing over her conquest of another. Was it because that ear was so unlike mine, I wondered, that she focused on it so intently? The thought felt right. With whom had she caused our mutual infidelity? I wondered whether she had let the thought slip, or sent it to me deliberately, to taunt me. I thought of touching her, as Jim had touched me, and had to fight down a wave of illness.

"Have you transgressed?" my father was asking. "Has this boy--"

"The transgression is hers," I interrupted him, anger staining my ears. A cold silence stabbed at me. "Forgive me, Father. I will make the appointment. Now, I must meditate. Please excuse me."

"This boy disturbs your control, my son, and you his rest. You will meditate in your own quarters until we have reached Vulcan."

I bowed my head, and stood. "Yes, Father." I could not touch Jim in front of him, or write a note. I could not. He would not leave. I exited, and obeyed.