Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (31 page)

“T’Pina, I need you!” The young Vulcan’s voice
was suddenly hoarse. Then, more calmly, as if he had grasped control. “It is my time, T’Pina. You are one of
us, young and strong, from good family stock. You
must beam aboard and bond with me. It is my life, T’Pina.”

It was the final blow to T’Pina’s control. Sorel saw her cheeks flush green, and the—she laughed!

The laugh was harsh, bitter, edged with tears. Sorel
moved toward her, but T’Pina raised a hand and
straightened, forcing herself to tenuous control.

She breathed deeply, twice, and then said into the wall unit, “Other lives than yours depend on me, Sendet, and you have other choices. Make one. And when the madness passes, consider this: you think yourself a judge over other Vulcans. You judge by
such things as strength and ancestry—but T’Kar and
Sevel are my
adopted
parents. Until today I did not
know my ancestry, but, unlike you, my parents did
not care. They judged me for what I am, not whose
blood flows in my veins.”

“As I will, T’Pina,” Sendet pleaded. “It doesn’t matter—you are strong and intelligent and pure
Vulcan—”

“Fool!” the ‘girl exclaimed. “If I were pure Vulcan,
there would be no way to stop this plague! Meditate
upon the irony, Sendet: I carry the cure for Vulcans in
my blood … because I am Romulan!”

There was silence from the wall unit. Then, in the
background a voice said, “Sendet, what are you—?”

There was the sound of a chair overturning, an
animal growl, and the noise of a struggle.

Those sounds cut off, and Uhura’s voice said, “Dr.
McCoy?”

“McCoy here, Uhura. What’s going on up there?”

“The rebels—perhaps just Sendet—overrode com
munications from engineering, and blasted through
all the safeguards on Nisus. Everyone who was any
where near a communications console must have
heard all that.”

Kirk’s voice cut in. “We’ve got it under control
now. Scotty got the doors open, and security’s escort
ing the rebels to the brig.”

“That’s a relief,” said McCoy. “Uh, about
Sendet—”

“I know what’s wrong with him, Bones. Or what he
thinks is wrong. I’ll have him taken to sickbay. You
want to come up and examine him?”

“Is M’Benga aboard? He can handle it. We’re about
to administer the blood stimulant to T’Pina, and I want to monitor her personally until I’m sure it’s
going right.”

“Good work,” said the captain. “T’Pina?”

“Yes, Captain Kirk?” the girl managed to say
calmly.

“On behalf of all those whose lives you have already
saved, and those you are about to—thank you.”

T’Pina’s upbringing among the diverse cultures of
Nisus showed in her automatic, “You are welcome.”

As Kirk signed off, though, a weary voice spoke from behind them. “T’Pina?”

“Mother!” The girl hurried to T’Kar’s side.

Weakly, T’Kar raised her hands, crossed at the wrists. T’Pina echoed the gesture, touching palms
with her mother in Vulcan greeting, parent to child.
Then, “You heard?” T’Pina asked warily.

“It was … very loud,” T’Kar said. “It is true? You
are—?”

“Romulan.”

T’Kar frowned. “How can that be?”

T’Pina straightened. “I do not know,” she said flatly. “I must go now, Mother.”

“T’Pina, no—we must talk,” T’Kar pleaded.

“Others have need of my blood,” T’Pina said stiffly.
“Healer, Doctor—”

Sorel said, “Please take her and start the process, Leonard. T’Pina is right: we cannot delay further. There are lives at stake.”

As the Starfleet surgeon escorted T’Pina out, Sorel
turned to T’Kar, who was trying feebly to sit up. He
pressed her back against the pillows, saying, “Rest.
T’Pina is safe with Dr. McCoy. He has performed this
procedure before.”

T’Kar lay for a moment with her eyes closed. Then
she opened them and said, “I failed her. I could not tell her she is my daughter, no matter what blood
flows in her veins.”

“You’ll tell her tomorrow,” Sorel assured her. “T’Pina has experienced a great shock and not had
time to meditate and come to terms with it. Nor have
you, T’Kar. These are the times we must use the
techniques we learn as children.”

“
I must talk with her.”

Sorel looked into the guileless blue eyes. “You will.
After you have rested. I recommend that you try a
meditation trance, T’Kar. I will help you if you wish.”

“No, Healer,” she replied as coldly as her daughter,
“I remember the technique.” And she composed
herself and closed her eyes.

Sorel straightened, rebuffed. T’Kar had been calling
him by name for days now. He had thought—

I
also need to meditate,
he told himself. T’Kar had been critically ill, and awakened to discover that her
cherished daughter was a Romulan. There was no wonder that at this moment she should not have a thought for anything or anyone other than
T’Pina
.

Chapter Thirty-three

KORSAL woke from restless sleep to find Arthur, the mop-headed med tech, removing the tube through
which his blood had flowed into waiting containers.
The apparatus that fed the blood stimulant into his
arm was already gone. “What are you doing?” he
asked.

“Doc Gardens says ya gotta recover fer a coupla
days,” the young Human replied. “Can’t keep you
goin’ forever on that stuff. We took you off it last
night; most of it’s out of you by now, but you’ll be
knackered for a bit.”

“Surely you don’t have enough serum!” Korsal
protested.

“An’ if you go and die on us we’ll be in a pretty fix,
won’t we?”

The Klingon knew the
Enterprise
medical staff were
correct. As a matter of fact, he felt miserable: mouth
dry and foul-tasting, muscles stiff, head in a delicate
balance with the rest of his body, threatening to float
away if he lay still, but punishing him with dull,
pounding pain if he moved.

“Drink this,” Arthur told him, handing him some
blue liquid in the bottom of a plastic sickbay tumbler.

Korsal sniffed it. “What is it?”

“Cure fer what ails ya. Ol’ blue eyes’ private stock,
so taste it on the way down!”

It was, indeed, a very fine brandy. “Ol’ blue-eyes,”
Korsal surmised, was Chief Medical Officer McCoy.
He did not ask how Arthur had gained access to his
private stock.

The brandy helped, but still wisps of a headache
blurred the edges of his perception. He saw that
Kevin’s bed was empty, but it wasn’t long before his
son returned, greeted his father, and turned on his
computer terminal.

Korsal didn’t feel like talking, either. People were
dying because he and Kevin and Karl simply could not give enough blood. Karl was in the third bed in
the room, still on the drug because he had gone on it later than his father and his older brother. Kevin had
not been able to stay on it as long as Korsal, and it was
clear of his system now. He was studying the assign
ment Captain Kirk had given him.

It wasn’t long before the captain appeared to check
his student’s progress. Korsal was still too weary to
think about his own work, so he sat and listened as his son drew an analogy between fourteenth-century En
glishmen and the population of Nisus.

“So the Canterbury Pilgrims come from all differ
ent classes except the ruling class, and all different
occupations. Some of them are pretty despicable characters too. But although they quarrel among
themselves, they are together for a common purpose:
to travel to Canterbury and back safely. If they were
to meet bandits, they’d band together to fight them
off—only they didn’t meet any,” Kevin said in disap
pointment.

“Chaucer died before he finished the work,” said Captain Kirk. “I’ve always thought that if he’d fin
ished it, there would have been bandits. And probably
a sixth husband for the Wife of Bath. Go on.”

“They’re like us because they have a common purpose, and they can only achieve it by working together, no matter how different they are in their
views and values.”

Kirk grinned and looked over at Korsal. “Bright
boy you’ve got here.”

“He does me honor,” Korsal replied. But he could
not confide his deep concerns about his son, both his
sons. Lying here with nothing to do, not yet strong
enough to concentrate on the plans he was drawing up
for better safeties above the dam on Nisus, the thought preyed on his mind: now that Korsal was
exiled, what would happen to his sons?

Soon after Kirk left, Arthur came around the parti
tion to ask, “You feelin’ up t’ visitors?”

“That depends on who they are,” he replied.

“Yer wife an’ her uncle, they say.”

Then it was true: he had half wakened from his
drug-fogged state to sounds of happy excitement in
sickbay, and half understood that there was now a way
to protect people with copper-based blood from the
plague. If Seela and Borth were allowed aboard ship,
it must be true.

Korsal closed his eyes. “Because I wish to see my wife, I suppose I shall have to suffer Berth’s com
pany.”

Seela came to hug Korsal, nothing more. When she
went to greet Kevin, Korsal looked up at the unwel
come visitor she had brought with her. “What are you
doing here? And how did you get aboard?”

“We’ve been inoculated—all Orions on Nisus
have,” Borth replied. “Diplomatic courtesy to non-
Federation citizens.”

And you would use that leverage, wouldn’t you,
Korsal thought viciously,
while Vulcans and
Rigellians die because there’s not enough serum to go
around!
But he didn’t voice his anger. Borth was here
for a reason.