Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (5 page)

In a moment he recognized that she was doing a
shoulder stand. What he did not know was why. Her recent near-fatal illness had reminded him forcefully
of Amanda’s ephemeral humanity. Why should she
now be forcing her fragile body into such contortions?

After a few seconds, she rolled smoothly out of her inverted position, to lie flat on her back, her blue eyes
twinkling up at him as the flush left her face. “No,
Spock, your mother has not taken leave of her senses.
I’m under doctor’s orders to do a series of simple
exercises each day, to tone my body after the time I spent in stasis.”

“I
…
have never seen you do them before,” he
said, for she must have started them at home, while he was visiting.

“No, I did them at the Academy gym.” She smiled
as she sat up, got onto her knees, and began stretching
to right and left. “I didn’t want my son to see me
looking so silly.”

“You do not look … silly,” he replied. As a matter
of fact, she looked fit, her dark blue leotard revealing a
slender but healthy figure. Spock had never thought of his mother as having a figure, slender or otherwise, for
she always dressed in flowing garments of bright colors, not exactly of Vulcan design, but modestly
concealing in the same fashion.

“I have a message for you and Father,” Spock continued. “Starfleet has ordered the
Enterprise
to
divert to Vulcan and then Nisus before proceeding to Coriolanus.”

Amanda’s blue eyes studied her son. “How late will
we be?”

“Six days.”

“Not six-point-one-three-seven?”

“Six-point-two-five-two. Mother, is it not illogical
to be annoyed when Father or I give you a precise
figure yet ask for such precision when we do not?”

“No,” she replied with a shrug, “just Human.
There.” She stood and put on her shoes, then took one
of her usual flowing robes off a bench and wrapped
herself in the voluminous folds.

With that, Amanda was Spock’s mother as he was
accustomed to her. With her silver hair piled atop her
head, the heels of her shoes giving her added height,
and the robe falling in vertical folds, she was once
again tall, stately, dignified.

“Sarek is in the computer lab,” Amanda told Spock, “helping one of the crew prepare for her
astrophysicist’s examination.”

“I know,” Spock said. It was the one thing he understood that his parents had in common. Both
were teachers. Give either a willing student, and Sarek
or Amanda would work patiently for hours, in perfect
contentment.

As Spock and Amanda left the exercise room, she asked, “I suppose you’ve already checked to see
whether there is a way for us to get to Coriolanus on
schedule?”

“There is not.”

Amanda smiled up at her son. “Then we shall
simply enjoy a brief extension of your vacation with
us. Why has the
Enterprise
been rerouted?”

When Spock explained the medical crisis, she so
bered. “Experts in interspecies medicine? Spock,
what’s wrong?”

“An epidemic. Dr. McCoy will brief command
personnel in forty-one-point-seven minutes.”

“Very well,” said Amanda. “I will send the news of
our delay to Coriolanus. There is no reason to disturb
your father until we know more.”

Spock’s mother was not a telepath, but living on
Vulcan she had had to learn to shield lest she broad
cast her emotions to everyone in her vicinity.

Even so, as Spock felt her mental shields shut him out, he knew exactly what she must be thinking.

The intermingling of species, people living on plan
ets they were not native to, even living in the artificial
environments of starships and starbases, was some
thing still new in the history of intelligent life in this
galaxy. No one could predict the long-term effects;
many of them were only now beginning to show
themselves.

Spock’s own mother, today the picture of health,
had only a few months ago been dying of degenerative
xenosis, a condition associated with leaving her native
Earth and living for many years on Vulcan. The precise causes of the disease were not fully under
stood, but at last there was a treatment for it. Aman
da had been cured—permanently, they hoped—by Sorel and Corrigan, the Science Academy’s brilliant
Vulcan/Human medical team.

Spock had known the Vulcan healer and the Human doctor all his life, for he, the first Vulcan/ Human hybrid, had been the occasion of their first
working together. They, like Spock, like his parents,
like the Federation and Starfleet itself, were examples
of what could be achieved when intelligent species
learned to work together and rejoice in their differ
ences.

But only too often it appeared that nature objected.
How many times had the
Enterprise
found empty outposts, like Psi 2000, where the entire research party had gone mad, killing themselves and one another? When the virus that had destroyed the
research party was accidentally brought on board the
Enterprise,
it appeared for a time that they were never
meant to go so far from the worlds where nature had
first placed them.

But the ingenuity of the
Enterprise
crew had saved
them that time, and every other time
…
so far. That
crew was assembled from all parts of the Federation.

The silence between mother and son stretched all
the way down the corridor. When they reached the
turbolift, however, Amanda paused, saying, “Spock
… you are worried.”

“Worry is illogical,” he replied automatically.

His mother turned to face him, blocking his way and remaining out of the turbolift doors’ sensor
range. She gave him a knowing smile. “Concerned,
then. But with medical experts from all over the Federation, surely this plague will quickly be contained.”

“Mother,” he reminded her, “Nisus already
has
experts from all over the Federation—and some from
outside it. Even Klingon and Orion scientists are part
of the cooperative effort there, as well as researchers
in every branch of science from every Federation culture.”

“I know,” Amanda replied. “Nisus has existed for three generations—I remember learning about it in school when I was a little girl on Earth. ‘The finest
example in the galaxy of cooperation among intelli
gent life forms.’ There was a time when I thought I would apply to do linguistic research on Nisus—the effects of all those varied languages spoken in one small area—but then I met your father … and decided to practice a different form of cooperation
between intelligent life forms.”

He knew she wished to coax a smile from him
—that her statement would easily have won one from
Sarek. But Spock’s mind was on the connections
Amanda refused to make: the scientists of Nisus could
not stop the epidemic—for it was probably their own
work that had caused it, their cooperation between
species that spread it.

The concept at least of tolerance was universal among intelligent species that had reached a certain
level of civilization, although some practiced it with
greater diligence than others. Spock, grown up on
Vulcan, knew the ideal as IDIC, Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination.

IDIC was a sacred concept to Vulcans—yet logic
required recognition of fact. It appeared that just as
nature had attacked Spock’s mother for daring to live
where humans were never meant to, now the scientists of Nisus were suffering for living the ideal of
IDIC.

Insufficient data to form a hypothesis,
Spock told
himself. Surely, as had happened with his mother, the
combined medical wisdom of many worlds would
unite to preserve Nisus.

Chapter Four

The healer Sorel returned from surgery to his office
at the Vulcan Academy of Sciences. He had two more
patients scheduled that day: T’Kar and her daughter
T’Pina, for routine examinations before leaving Vul
can to return to the science colony on Nisus.

Just as he reached the door to the reception area,
his paging signal sounded. He continued inside, asking T’Sel, “Why are you paging me?”

“Vulcan Space Central is calling.”

Space Central? “I’ll take it in my office.”

All Vulcans practiced emotional control, but Sorel
now knew from long experience what he had been told when he began his training many years ago: “A
healer,” his master teacher Svan had explained, “is a
paradox. While he must keep the strictest emotional control of any Vulcan, for the sake of his patients’ health and his own sanity, he has also chosen a
profession which, above all, provokes the universal
Vulcan failing: curiosity.”

Indeed, by the time he reached the console in his
inner office, Sorel was nearly consumed with curiosi
ty. His daughter was safely home now; there was no
member of his family off-planet. So his curiosity was
unmixed with concern as he wondered what Space
Central could possibly want with him.

The moment he pressed the switch, his screen was
filled with the image of a Human male in the uniform
of a Starfleet commodore. “Greetings, Healer. I am
Vincent Bright, director of Starfleet activities in this
sector. Vulcan Space Central is patching this message
through to you. Starfleet Command requests the aid of you and your associate, Dr. Daniel Corrigan.”

Long years of training automatically suppressed Sorel’s concern that the
Enterprise,
which had left Vulcan only two days previously, had a medical
emergency. If Dr. Leonard McCoy, whose skills he
had recently come to know and respect, had to call for
help, the situation must be dire indeed.

With complete calm he replied, “I am here to serve,
Commodore. What aid does Starfleet seek?”

“There’s an epidemic out of control on the science
colony Nisus. The residents request medical person
nel with knowledge of interspecies medicine. You and
Dr. Corrigan are specifically named in the request, as
is your daughter, the xenobiologist T’Mir. The USS
Enterprise
will return to Vulcan for you in two-point-
seven days. I have been able to contact all Vulcan medical personnel that Starfleet has requested, with the exception of Lady T’Mir and Dr. Corrigan. Do
you know their whereabouts?”

“I do.”

“Excellent. Please give me their communications
codes.”

“That is not possible,” Sorel replied.

“What? It has to be possible! Corrigan’s a doctor;
he has to be reached in emergencies. And surely you
can contact your daughter.”