I derive satisfaction from swimming. It is good exercise, and for a Vulcan it is astonishing luxury. To immerse oneself in water, not even for the sake of becoming clean... two hundred years ago it would have been entirely unbelievable. Not even at the great oasis of Pelasht is there such decadence.
Humans do it all the time.
Swimming may be the greatest example of disparity between Human and Vulcan that exists. For them, water is so abundant that it can be a danger, and they have mastered this danger so well that the defiance of it has become recreational. To us, the offer of a small glass of it is the greatest hospitality a host can provide. They immerse themselves in water for sport, mostly naked. If any of us were to immerse ourselves in water, it would be for bathing, and we would bring our clothes in with us for the sake of efficiency. Even for bathing it is practically inconceivable. Who would soil a water source for such little purpose? Before sonics, we used sand. After all, Vulcans do not perspire.
And there he was, frolicking as innocently as though it were not degenerate, throwing a garishly colored ball into the air and at small children who seemed to share his mindset. He was almost entirely naked.
He glowed under the water, a molten heat of white skin darkening vividly at the extremities, liquid metal cooling from the water at the edges. Having thoroughly examined his chess game, I did not retreat from the metaphor: it was appropriate to more than his body.
He saw me, and the blue water paled before his smile. He called out to me, asking me if I swam, and on my affirmative reply insisted that I join them. He accepted no excuses, and ruthlessly used the disappointment of the children as arsenal.
I slipped into the water.
We played a game similar to one I was familiar with. In that game, a child stood in the middle of a circle and attempted to catch an object thrown back and forth between any number of other children. This game differed from that only in one aspect, but it was a significant one: this game was fair. When the child, or 'monkey,' in the middle of the circle caught the object (which, instead of my schoolbag, was a light, colorful ball) the 'monkey' and the child who had made the unlucky throw switched places.
I did not fare well at first, for I was not as comfortable in the water as the rest of them and the ball was an added distraction. I was simian for quite some time. However, after perhaps five minutes, I suddenly achieved coordination. I flung myself at the ball and caught it.
In the process of this, I knocked into Jim. Hard. He went under. For a moment, all I could see was rose-gold hair. It was not so very long, dry; it reached perhaps his jaw, and waved slightly. Under the water, though, it billowed and streamed and seemed at least shoulder-length.
Alarmed, I started to plunge in to rescue him, but he came up very close to me, and clapped me reassuringly on the upper arm. Then he put his hands together under the water, and brought them up. Water issued from them into my open mouth. I swallowed automatically as I stared at him, astonished. The water was sweet, and fresh, and clean. His eyes flashed devilment, eclipsing his smile. "That," he said in a severe tone that warred with his expression, "was for not looking where you're going." Then he turned from me and announced, "Okay, Kheplor, you're in the middle!"
There were happy shrieks as the small Tellarite was induced to take my place, and the game continued.
A very strange thing happened during that game. I have no proof, but I am quite sure that Jim deliberately tripped over me. His overall grace and his distance from me at the time were such that it could not have been other than deliberate. I do not understand why he did that. Certainly it was not beneficial to him, for in doing so he fumbled the ball. The current simian, an Andorian who had been in the center for some minutes, was able to secure it easily. As Jim moved to the middle of the circle, to the laughter of his cabal, he winked at me.
It was extremely peculiar and I cannot explain it. I asked him about it, once the children had tired and he had shooed them to the freshers. He laughed in a light manner which told me that no information was forthcoming, and swam for the diving board with more speed than I could have mustered.
I stood for a while in the shallow end of the pool, watching him dive. At first he attempted to slide into the water without a ripple. At this, naturally, he failed. When he had, I suppose, done as well as he thought he could, he changed his purpose. His new goal was to soak me with his splash. In this he was more successful. At last I resolved to foil him by ducking under water.
If Humans were telepaths, I would think he had read my mind. That time, he did a curved dive and resurrected his trick of coming up close to me and anointing me with his hands. I thought of asking whether his people had any concept of personal space, but decided against it. Instead, having suspected his intent and observed more closely, I squirted water back at him. I suspected that the trick with the hands would take practice, so instead I used my mouth.
He dove to avoid it, and surfaced with an approving smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He also headed at once for the ladder. I trailed after him. I said, "You are angry."
"Angry?" He looked genuinely startled. "No!"
"Repelled," I surmised.
He laughed a little, climbing. "Well, at home the water doesn't have a cleansing field, and there are fish in it, so what you did would have been a little unsanitary, but it's all right here, I guess."
"Upset then," I said, mildly exasperated. I could see from his expression that something was wrong. If it was powerful enough to touch his face, why would he not confess?
"Spock," he returned, exasperated himself, "will you lay off? I'm just done for the day. I've had my half hour and now Aunt Sarah will get off my back."
"Aunt Sarah? Do you mean Dr. Poole?"
"Yeah. She wants me to do a little of this every day. She says I did, and I quote, 'obscene things' to some of my muscles and she wants me to do some low-gravity exercise."
"I see. How did you--"
"I don't want to talk about it," he cut me off shortly, his eyes, which had gleamed yellowish brown, clouding over to become a hard grey.
"How--" I began again, fascinated by the phenomenon.
"I said," he said in a harder voice yet, "that I don't care to discuss the matter."
"But you--" I began, about to point out that he had not let me finish my sentence and had thus mistaken my subject.
"Spock," he ordered softly. "Let it go."
I found my mouth closing, and myself staring at his back as he stalked to the fresher. That le-matya's grace had closed up, become economical and stiff. His shoulders had tightened and hunched slightly forward, and he did not look back at me.
"I'll see you tonight," he told me, but he did not turn his head or stop his advance. I hoped that his chosen fresher was unoccupied, because I did not think he would stop or turn away under any circumstances. His steady charge was too direct.
I realized that I was dripping all over the poolside, and hurried to dry and change.
He took longer about it than I did. Perhaps it was his hair. He had more of it than I did, and seemed to have paused to comb it. Regardless of the reason, I was waiting for him when he came out. He looked thoughtfully somewhere above my eyes for a moment, with an odd smile pinching his mouth. He said nothing, however. The fresher seemed to have restored his temper.
"Why," I inquired, "did you not wish me to mention studies in the presence of your father?"
"I really don't think that's any of your business," he announced mildly. "Do you?"
I hesitated, looking for a claim. "Perhaps not," I conceded.
"I'm glad you agree."
"However," I began. It was more of a detainment than a beginning, really, and he must have heard that in my voice. He turned and glared at me. I tilted an eyebrow defiantly at him, resolving to personally offer T'Pau water at her next visit. "I do not understand your objection. Surely no one with your acuity at chess can have trouble with ordinary--"
He gave a long sigh, interrupting me, and leaned against the wall. He regarded me for some moments with an utterly indecipherable expression. It was not the face of Vulcan; there was emotion there. There were, in fact, many emotions there, so many and varied that I could not identify them all. He shook his head, perplexity rising for a moment above the rest, and his shoulder pressed against the wall. I do not think he was aware of this, but his hand was stroking the bulkhead. "Trouble," he said finally, giving in, "is not the issue."
I waited.
"You're right, I don't have 'trouble' with my schoolwork. As a matter of fact," he confided in a burst of frankness, "it bores me stiff."
His other shoulder and the back of his head settled against the bulkhead. He was looking at the light fixtures, his lids half-closed, and then his eyes speared me. "Do you have any idea how mind-numbingly boring the stuff we're supposed to be learning is? All the other kids in my class are expected to be farmers. They do not need higher math, or literature, or any science outside the almanac. At least, that's what their parents say; I personally think this is why so many of the adults in my town are out of their tiny little minds. I mean, my god, Reuven just lights up when he sees a computer. And Lysse--all her poetry books fall apart in two years. You can't take away, not and give them nothing but cows in return. It's cruel! They'd go crazy, for pity's sake, just like their idiot parents. But no, sir! They 'need' religion and Latin and ecology and a little basic algebra and loads and loads of history. So they probably will. Go crazy, I mean."
His eyes closed all the way, and opened again. He looked slightly sheepish now. "Actually, I don't mind the history so much, but they cover really stupid areas over and over again, and most of the time they get it wrong, and every year we have Praise Columbus Day. Let's all kowtow before the greedy genocidal plague-spreading coward! You know how many of my ancestors died because of the attitude he brought to the exploration of my continent? I wouldn't really mind the theology classes, either, except that it's all Christianity and we get it all over again in church anyway. And I do like Latin. It's just it's all so g--so easy!
"It was okay for my brother; he's always been real specific in what he was interested in, and he was interested in Acceptable Things. His take's a little weird, for Riverside, but biology is close to husbandry, and therefore Acceptable. So he got to Concentrate--am I capitalizing?"
"Yes."
"Sorry. Bad habit. What I mean is, nobody in Riverside can see any use for the kinds of things I like. Military strategy?" His voice changed, rising a quarter-octave and going flat, sour and arrogant. "Who needs it? Ain't like Iowa's gettin' invaded anytime soon. Periods of history I'm interested in? Bunch of uncivilized savages and pagans--and dis-si-pated, too, some of 'em. Engineering? Boy, all you need to know's how to patch up a tractor or a broken rah-dio transmitter. Astronomy? Navigational calculus? Sociology? Exoculture? You better figger on keepin' your feet on the ground where they belong, less'n you want to end up like yo' daddy, doin' grunt work where there ain't no sky'n makin' some woman and her kids miserable cuz you ain't ever there.
"You know what really gets me?" he burst out after a short interlude which I utilized in trying to translate his brief, bitter bursts of dialect. Not waiting for me to reply, he stormed on, "They think I read fiction 'cause I got nothin' better to do.' Nothing better! Do you have any idea how desperate I've been to know about people who don't think like them? To meet aliens--in the earliest sense of the word, I mean. Do you know," he finished angrily, "I was actually eager to get to Tarsus! Just to get out. I don't care about the chores; I like animals and it's actually kind of satisfying to watch things you've planted grow, but these hicks, my god, they've got their collective mind stuck in the in the Dark Ages!"
"So," I summarized after his breathing had calmed slightly. "You feel that your studies are uninspiring."
He blinked at me for a moment and inquired, quite calmly, "Will you be my new best friend?"
"I believe," I returned dryly, "that I am honored. However, I must inform you that 'friendship' as you know it is not a thing Vulcans practice."
He smirked at me. It was only somewhat unattractive.
In the face of his open disbelief, I pressed on. "Could you not take correspondence courses?"
"That," he said darkly, "requires money. My father's salary and my mother's royalties are all tied up in my brother's college tuition, and we're living on the money from the farm. Anyway, I'd still have to sleep--uh, I mean sit through classes at school."
"It does seem problematic," I acknowledged, shoving the question to the back of my mind for subconscious analysis.
His eyes closed again, and he deflated slightly. Then he turned a tired, warm smile on me. I resolved to have my vision checked, because I was entirely positive that nothing in the room was glowing. "I'm sorry, Spock." He did, indeed, sound contrite. "I didn't mean to dump my little problems on you."
"It was I who asked," I reminded him. "Repeatedly, if I recall correctly."
The smile grew slightly. He conceded, "So you did."
"I face a similar problem," I confided.
Two low-ranking crew members entered the locker room and stared curiously at us. One of them murmured something to the other, making a quiet, subtle gesture at Jim. Jim stared coolly back, and suddenly his presence intensified. His coloring was more vivid, his position leaning against the bulkhead gained a strong grace, and nothing could have been more solid than those half-grown shoulders. I would not have wanted such a gaze directed at me. When their eyes dropped, he announced, "We'll talk about it over the game," and left the room.
I found myself following, no more than a step behind.
When the doors closed behind us, he turned to me with hazel mischief sparkling and a wicked smile. I was so close that I felt the faint tingle of his thoughts, and a fainter warmth. He did not retreat, but imitated the stance the two had shared, exaggerating their body language into arrant, intrusive nosiness. He held the pose for a moment, eyes bulging eagerly and nostrils flared, then dropped it and grinned at me. My eyebrow went up as I rolled my eyes slightly, but I felt the corners of my lips curving upwards.
He laughed aloud and clapped me on the shoulder again. "I'll see you later, Spock," he said cheerfully. "Same time, your quarters."
"Jim," I returned, tugging unsuccessfully at my wayward mouth.
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