Deep Elem Blues (TOS, 1/2) for Greywolf
Aleph Press
This is being posted for Greywolf (ze...@snowcrest.net), and I'm posting
it from here rather than my new archive account because of tech
difficulties with my newsreader.
From: ze...@snowcrest.net (Zepp)
To: al...@netcom.com
Subject: NEW: TOS A/U, K/S, h/c, "Deep Elem Blues", 1/2
All Praise to the Archivist, the Poster of Stories! ;-)>
This is the first of what may or may not turn into a series. It isn't
sure yet what it wants to do... It's an idea that's been kicking
around in my head forever and a day, kind of a "Well, Elements Forbid
this should actually *happen* to them -- but what if it did?" sort of
story. So I'm a bent little nutter -- so, nu, this is news?
Actually, when I first read "Beside the Wells", with Jess's eloquent
description of why she thought *no-one* would ever tame a Certain
Captain of our mutual acquaintance, a wee voice in the back of my head
muttered, "well, never, *unless*... " And I was off and running.
There aren't any naughty bits here, yet; sorry! I will call it PG-13,
though, for violence and Other Unpleasantness...
ObDisclaimer: Paramount is God, Most Mighty and Puissant of Deities,
and will squish us all flat if we piss 'em off enough. So don't. ;-)>
In case of glass, break fire. The Trek Multiverse, and the characters
of Kirk and Spock, belong to Paramount, and no infringement is
intended; I just found these toys lyin' here, see -- I'll put 'em
back, honest, Officer! This may be archived, if this disclaimer and
the name of Greywolf the Wanderer is kept attached. It may not be
sold for money in any way. Comments in NG or email are welcome;
flames divert to alt.dev.null. Eris Protect and Pooh Ignore!
(This is for Jess, for writing "Beside the Wells", thereby
giving me the balls to finally write *this* one down.)
Deep Elem Blues 1/2
(TOS A/U; K/S; h/c; PG13 for violence, mostly))
Eyes opened, to darkness and pain. It was nothing new; he was
in the world of pain now, and had been for a long time.
Sometimes he still dreamed of bright-lit rooms, where it was
always warm, and there was always enough to eat. He'd had a
name, then, and duties. He'd still had pride, then, and
strength to spare for other things besides simple existence.
That world was his home; he remembered that, sometimes -- but
when he opened his eyes, it was always this one that he saw.
He hadn't always been alone like this. There had been
companions, once, comrades -- one he called t'hy'la -- but that
was long ago, and now he was no longer entirely certain that any
of it had been real. In that world he was whole, and healthy;
he walked easily on strong, undamaged legs. In that world, he
was a free man, among free men. In that world, the light didn't
burn his eyes. In that world, pain was a stranger, seldom seen
and easily vanquished. Surely that last was only a dream. How
could the pain be vanquished, when it reached to the very core
of his bones? It was the first thing he knew each morning, and
the last he knew each night. Its continued presence reassured
him that he yet lived.
It was himself, his own dark twin, bound to him more strongly
than battlesteel to a hull, closer than any lover; deeper than
life itself. He would never be free of it; he no longer even
dreamed of that. The cost of such dreams was simply too high.
There were times when he doubted that any of it had been real.
The face he saw in dreams was that of a stranger; it bore little
resemblance to his own haggard visage -- only the eyes were the
same. That man's nose had never been broken, his cheekbones
never shattered. He had all his teeth. His hair was pure
black, unmarked by time or toil. He stood straight and unbowed,
and ducked his head to no man.
But that was in another world; it was nothing that was any
part of this life. In this world, he dropped his eyes before the
masters, just as the others did, for to refuse was costly -- he
had paid dearly for that knowledge. In this world, he hauled
rocks, dug holes, made and stacked bricks, side by side with the
small brown people whose place this was. The masters were tall
-- even his own height seemed lacking, compared to theirs. He
barely came up to the chin of the shortest of them. Their skin
was velvet-furred, black as space itself; their hair and eyes
were silver. He had never seen anyone like them before he came
to this place. They commanded, and he worked, long and hard,
forcing his damaged body to obey his will. The work was heavy,
the conditions harsh -- they lacked even the simplest
conveniences that might have eased the load. The masters
allowed them no powered tools at all, and very few hand tools.
Such things belonged to another world than this.
It didn't matter; what was, was.
Sometimes something went wrong in his head; he would fall,
then, and lie insensible for a time. Sometimes the veterinarian
would put him into the animal hospital. Then he would curl up
in his cage, either to heal or to die as best he might. But
that didn't matter, either. He survived, because it was all he
knew to do.
It was always cold here, to him. He wore as many layers of
clothes as he could scavenge, but he could never really get
warm. The cold, like the pain, lived in the core of his bones.
Only so did he sometimes remember that he didn't belong here,
for at the height of mid-day, when the little brown people shed
all but a breechclout, he still shivered, unable to get warm.
To the masters, this world was too hot. They wore insulated
clothing, and clever devices chilled the air in their homes and
conveyances. On the rare occasions when they remembered him,
and had him brought before them, it was all he could do to stand
up, where every nerve and muscle protested against the cold. He
couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, and the cold iron of
the collar burned against his flesh like fire, drawing from him
heat he could ill afford to spare. They would stare at him
then, with their cold silver eyes, poking at him with bored,
disinterested fingers, and he could see in their thoughts that
he was less than an animal to them. If they had known that he
could see it, they would have put him to death in an instant.
He put that knowledge away, as he had put so much else away
already.
At times the overseers came and took him, back to the place
where the questioners were. Those times were the worst. They
had devices which could fill a man's nerves with pain; they
could make him feel it, running like liquid fire in his veins,
and burning his bones to ash. Yet it was all a trick of some
sort, for afterwards, when he curled, shaking, sweat-soaked, in
his bunk, there were no marks upon his flesh, no sign that any
of it had happened at all. There were only the memories of
pain, the bruises where he'd fought, without success, against
the restraints that held him captive, and the tremors, that
never completely went away any more. He could not answer their
questions, and he didn't understand what they wanted of him --
and the questioners could not, or would not, accept that. At
those times, the prospect of death took on new meaning -- that
of peace, and freedom from the pain. But his body wouldn't let
him die; it clung, fiercely, to life. He no longer really knew
why.
He did not let himself dream very often. What was the point?
Here he was, and here he would eventually die, and although he
knew that he had once had a reason for clinging so hard to life,
he no longer remembered what it might have been. He didn't
remember how he came to be here, or why he'd come, or when.
There was only this life, and the vague recollection of another,
long ago. Everything else he had had to put behind him, for in
this place, merely surviving demanded his full attention.
No one here spoke his language, and he could speak theirs only
a little. The masters' speech had a much higher pitch than his,
and although he could hear it well enough, his voice could not
repeat it. Attempts to speak it in his own vocal range brought
only scorn, and punishment. Among themselves, the small dark
people spoke a chirping, twittering language, sounding more like
birds than people, and that speech he could not reproduce at
all, nor did he understand it. So he used the signed speech,
which the others had taught him, when he had to communicate.
That, the masters accepted. It would have surprised him to know
that when he slept, his hands moaned and wept and cried out, in
lieu of the voice that he never used any more. The others never
mentioned it, for so it was with many in this place. It was the
only privacy they could give to one another, and so, precious
beyond any price.
It was less cruel when the overseers grew angry and beat him,
for the mercy of shock eventually put an end to that pain. He
could seek refuge then, in blessed oblivion, a release that the
questioners' machines denied to him. But best of all were those
times when it seemed that they had forgotten he existed. Then
he did his work, ate his meagre rations, and slept, as much as
he could -- not seeking dreams, but rather nothingness, simply
not-being. Only then did he feel any real peace.
Days were much alike here; it was easy to lose the flow of
time, in this place where nothing ever changed. There were no
seasons; once, he had known what it meant when that was so, but
he didn't remember it now. He knew that he had been here a long
time, some years perhaps -- but he had no idea how long. He had
no way to keep track.
It felt doubly strange, therefore, to awaken, one morning,
hours before sunrise, with a man's face held clearly in his mind
-- a face he once had known, though he had forgotten about it,
over the years. It had surely been a dream. And yet...
And yet, it had not. As he lay there, trying to think, he
found himself, more and more, believing that it hadn't been a
dream. That face... unruly sand-brown hair and hazel eyes, that
lazy cat-smile -- that face was a part of his other life, that
life he'd sometimes doubted ever was. Once, he had known that
face as well as he knew his own. That was all he remembered,
but it stayed with him all that day, making him sleepy and
distracted. He almost died that morning, stepping unaware into
the path of an overseer's ground car; the only thing that saved
him was his bad leg, giving way and pitching him to the ground.
He missed the mid-day ration, too, for by the time he got there
the food was all gone.
He couldn't afford to do that; he didn't have the strength to
keep working, without food. Desperate, he tried once more to
push it all away, back into his mind. Best to forget such
things here, where a moment's distraction was often fatal.
But that night he saw that face again, saw worry in the hazel
eyes, saw the lips forming words that he could not hear. In his
sleep, his hands moved, crying out words he no longer remembered
how to say. He tossed and turned, but every time he fell asleep
again, the face returned to haunt him. Even in his dreams, his
head ached, and confusion dogged his thoughts.
He saw it again the next night, and the next; the following
day he slipped and fell, from a roof he was helping to patch,
wrenching his knee and breaking one wrist.
The same veterinarian who doctored the other livestock treated
him, brusquely cleaning the scrapes and scratches from his fall,
then setting and splinting his arm. He ran the regrower over it
once or twice -- it didn't work very well on him, but it helped.
The man's thoughts were neither kind nor hateful; it was only
important to him that a useful piece of property not be
permitted to die. He lay quietly, offering no resistance; he'd
hit his head when he fell, and that, plus the shot the vet gave
him, had left him semiconscious at best. Once again he lay in a
cage, among the other animals. He stayed curled in a ball, and
dozed, slipping fitfully in and out of strange and disturbing
dreams. Eventually he saw the hazel-eyed face again, but this
time, he could hear the man's words. He didn't understand them
at first, but as the face kept speaking, old memories began to
surface, memories he hadn't known were there, hadn't thought of
in years...
<<Spock!! It's me, it's Jim! I can feel you; I know you're
there. Can you hear me? You have to remember, please -- listen
to me. It's Jim!! Spock, can you hear me?>>
His head hurt, a bright fierce pain behind his eyes. There
was something -- almost, he knew what it was... In his sleep his
hands reached out, trembling, trying to touch -- and there was
nothing and no-one there. Again he reached, and something
slipped and twisted, inside his head, one sharp hot spike of
pain, an instant of release -- and then he was reaching out in
another way, a way he had forgotten that he knew.
<<...Jim?>> He *did* know that name. It came from the time
before this place, the time he couldn't remember very well...
<<Jim... t'hy'la?>> Was any of this real?
A quick, light touch, of joy, then, before the other veiled
his thoughts again.
<<Yes! It's me -- you *do* remember... Ye Gods, I thought --
I thought they'd killed you... It's been years, since I could
feel your thoughts -- not since that day...>> A flash of image
came to him, then -- of a stranger that he somehow knew was
himself, still proud, then, unbroken, fighting off a full hand
of swaggering, green-skinned assailants. His body was straight
and strong, his muscles powerful. He fought like someone
trained as a warrior, quick and lethal in his moves. Three
previous opponents lay crumpled on the ground. Another came up
behind him, with a shockrod upraised; there was a fat blue
spark, a loud "crack!" -- and the man with the smooth olive skin
and the straight black hair convulsed, and fell. He dropped
limply to the floor, and his skull struck it with a sharp,
hollow thud. A thread of green trickled from his mouth, and
stopped. The green-skinned ones closed in around him, kicking,
hitting... The searing memory of grief, then -- grief, and rage
-- and hopelessness, for no-one knew that they were here, or
even that they still lived at all. Hands kept the hazel-eyed
one away; he watched, helpless, as the other was dragged from
the room, hanging limp and lifeless from the enemy's hands, a
wide smear of blood trailed green across the floor. In his mind
were only emptiness; darkness, and the knowledge that he was
alone, now.
The flow of memory began, then, to show him other things --
and was abruptly veiled once more. The other's thoughts were tinged
now with shame, though he did not understand why. There was an
odd quality to those thoughts, a peculiar sort of clarity that
he didn't recognize. He let it pass. There were many things
here that he did not understand.
<<Gods... I can't believe you're still alive,>> came the
thought. <<All this time, I never found a trace of you. I've
been trying for so long... I thought it was a dream, when I
felt your thoughts the other night.>> The face in his mind
shone with tears, now, the taste of them an undercurrent in the
man's thoughts. He reached again, feeling something long unused
somehow stretch, growing more limber with this use.
<<...Jim? >> Even in thought, his words, long unused, failed
him. He frowned, and in both their minds came flashing images,
in quick succession -- a star-filled sky, turning suddenly to
rainbow streaks; a third man, dark-haired and smiling. A ship,
gleaming whitely, floating out of spacedock... Laying curled in
the cage, still he had to grip the bars tightly, lest he fall --
dizziness swooped and roared about him, as memory, long
neglected, began to return...
Though he did not know it, a voice gone harsh and rusty with
disuse whispered the name, even as his thoughts framed it.
<< ...Enterprise... I -- remember.>>
Enterprise -- she was Jim's ship -- no. She was *their* ship.
She was -- home.
And she was far away, years gone, beyond their reach. But
even so, he *remembered* her now; he had snatched back that much, of
what he had lost. He wasn't just dreaming. This was *real*.
That ship -- was real.
Her name was Enterprise. His was Spock. And he had belonged
there, once, at this one's side. He remembered...
-----///-----
Part 2 follows...
Greywolf the Wanderer, borrowing zepp's account
Ding Dong, the Deng is Dead!
--
"These are only my opinions. If they were the gospel truth, your bushes
would be burning." -- Nancy Lebowitz button
"Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion." -- My favorite
bumper sticker
-- Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
al...@netcom.com
All Aleph Press stories are available at ftp.netcom.com /pub/al/aleph.