Chapter 12

Spock watched Sola emerge from the lounge fresher. The fabricators had provided clothing to replace the coppery bodysuit.

She had programmed a simple close-fitting coverall, almost absurdly demure, zipped to the throat and plain enough for a nunnery-except that the fabric was meant to be felt with the fingertips, and any abbot would have admitted her at his peril….

Spock found that he took some satisfaction in every privacy the outfit afforded, and every inch which would remain-the phrase came unbidden-for his eyes only.

Perhaps she saw the look. She came and stood close to him, not touching him, her eyes reading him as if to see whether she had bought life, or merely time.

He was not certain. Somewhere he felt his need to possess her threatening to close down on his heart again. But for the moment he could breathe.

“I shall be in Sickbay,” he said.

She shook her head. “It is for me to go.”

“Better if he does not see you now. When he is strong enough, I will answer for what I permitted myself. Now he is fighting for more than his life.”

“His love?” she asked.

“Wasn’t that what you counted on to save him?” Spock heard the harshness in his voice and knew that it was for himself. “Wasn’t that what you promised him?”

She lifted her head and met his eyes. “Spock, that is a promise I will still keep, if he will let me.”

Spock looked at her in simple astonishment. Whatever he had expected, it was not that. “How?” he asked.

She reached out to touch him. “Spock, I do not know how I will walk out of this door now. But I will, and you will let me.”

“Will I?”

She smiled ruefully. “Right now I wish you would not. But I knew that risk. Spock, could you value him less because you have known me?”

“No.”

“Then could I value him less?”

After a moment he said, “No.”

“I do not know where it will lead, Spock, but I will not pretend that either of you does not exist.”

He felt again the stirring of something which was not logic. “Go, then. You should have locked me away. If you were going to go to him, by what right do you bring him this?”

Her eyes flared. “What right did I need? Should I have brought him your dead body?”

“If that was your only reason…” he began harshly. Then his own sense of justice stopped him. “If that was your reason, it was sufficient. My life is yours. Do not concern yourself with it or me again. Go.”

“Stubborn Vulcan,” she said. “I would have done it for that. Are you too blind to see that I did not? Or that I cannot move to go?”

For the first time he saw her falter.

He pulled her to him then, and for a long moment she allowed herself to rest against his strength. Then she straightened. “Send me to him, Spock. I have no power to go.” Then she shook her head. “That is not true, either, Spock. I do. And I will.”

She started to turn. He stopped her with a touch. “Go as you were in the moment you saw him. My weakness cannot be an argument against his strength.”

“No,” she said, “but your strength can.”

She looked at him as if the sight would have to last her forever. Then she turned and did not look back.

“Sola,” he said as she reached the door. He had not used the name, not any name.

She turned and saw that he had merely wanted to say it. Her tawny eyes laughed then, and he saw that some effort had dropped away from her.

“Spock,” she said, and went out.

He stayed for a moment attempting to recapture the disciplines of Vulcan, without entire success. He was not certain whether he was guilty of treason, or of loyalty. But he lived, and he knew that the man who was fighting his solitary battle in Sickbay would not be left to fight it alone.

Then with the return of clarity Spock realized that something had been nagging at him somewhere below the level of logic, on that level which the Human would have called intuition.

Was it not exceedingly convenient that they had arrived at the mathematical center of nowhere to find a Free Agent of the Federation-and the one woman in the galaxy who could have been expected to have this effect on Captain James T. Kirk? Not to mention on-But perhaps that effect on Spock had not been expected.

Was there someone who could have predicted from the record at least the first effect? Someone who could have arranged their rendezvous with the inevitable? Someone who could have arranged to have the Enterprise come here?

There were at least two logical answers to that. He liked neither of them.

Spock stepped to the intercom. “Spock to Bridge. Check the status of the isolation-locks confining Ambassador Gailbraith and party.”

Uhura’s voice came back. “Mr. Spock, I was about to trace you. Doctor McCoy called urgently but left no message. Sir, we are running computer checks which indicate that warning sensors have been shut off throughout the ship-including some to the isolation-locks. We can no longer verify that the Ambassador’s party has been isolated.”

“Post guards,” Spock said immediately.

“I have, sir. But, sir-those locks could not have been opened, nor the sensors disconnected-from the inside.”

“Precisely,” Spock said. “Condition Seven. Assume that one or more Enterprise personnel are, or may be, under alien mental control.”

“Sir, Condition Seven requires me to assume even that you are, or may be.”

“That is correct. Proceed on that assumption. Spock out.”

In fact, Condition Seven required him to assume the same of Uhura and all others, and not to discount the possibility that he himself was affected without his knowledge.

In fact, he might have been one of two prime targets, and the one most closely exposed…

Gailbraith was one possible answer to who might have predicted and arranged. There was, in logic, a possible answer which Spock liked still less: Sola Thane.

Spock was already moving out the door on the run.