Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (23 page)

Satat stepped forward. “Isolate him,” he directed the other Vulcans, who came into monitor range.
“Don’t touch him. Snil, rig a filter for the room you
put him in—”

“You’re too late,” said Kirk. “You’re all exposed.”

“Not necessarily,” Satat replied. “Sendet, you had
the sense to disinfect yourself as soon as you returned
to the
Enterprise,
didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Sendet replied.

“So, unless you have become contagious already,
we may not have been exposed.”

“Satat, you’re dreaming,” said Kirk. “Sendet has seen to it that we need do nothing about getting you out of engineering. The
Enterprise
cannot go anywhere until a cure for the plague is found. Except to
make certain you cannot leave orbit, we can just leave
you in engineering until you open those doors of your
own accord, to ask for medical help.”

Chapter Twenty-three

T’Pina
was working in the isolation ward where all
Nisus citizens of mixed heritage were housed, away
from the rest of the population. As many of them were
ill as was true among the population in general. While
her mother had been assigned nursing duty among those who were stricken, T’Pina’s job was to try to
keep the many healthy children occupied.

It was not easy. They had been isolated for more than three days now, occupying the entire medical residence and attached minimal-care facility. Even so, they had three to four people in each room intended for two. In the daytime, the adults tried to
entertain the children in the game and viewing rooms,
the solarium, or the cafeteria area where T’Pina was
assigned today.

All the children were restless; most were frightened.
A number had become ill during their confinement
and been taken away, and the older children inevita
bly talked about their friends dying, frightening the
younger children even further.

There were, of course, adults of mixed heritage in
the isolation ward as well, but they were so outnum
bered by the children that even with help from
volunteers like T’Pina they were constantly occupied,
teaching lessons, organizing games, and explaining
over and over why the children could not go home, or
even outside, and why their parents could not come to
see them.

It was equally difficult to explain why T’Pina and
the other volunteers wore protective clothing, masks,
and gloves.

“Why are you hiding from me?” demanded Ziona,
a tiny, usually charming girl who was half Rigellian,
half Hemanite. Today, though, she was close to hyster
ics, for she missed her family and was too young to
understand what was happening.

“Why can’t I see your face?” Ziona demanded
fitfully of T’Pina, making a grab for her mask that the
young Vulcan woman was only narrowly able to
evade.

“Why, if this lady of the lovely eyes showed ‘er entire face, you might not be the prettiest girl here
anymore,” answered a male voice, speaking English
with an accent that reminded T’Pina slightly of Dr.
Corrigan’s, but yet was not the same.

“Then how could you be my best girl?” the voice
continued. T’Pina turned as Ziona shot past her to jump into the arms of a man who appeared to be
Human, but …

He was not quite a head taller than T’Pina, somewhere around average for a Human male. His hair was black, close-cropped, but thick and fine—as if,
were she to touch it, it would feel like fur. His face was
rather ordinary, except for his eyes, which were the
darkest, most vivid blue she had ever seen, and
fringed with thick black lashes.

It was his skin that suggested he was not fully
Human; he was clearly not ill, and yet his skin was
pale, utterly unblemished, almost translucent, with
just the slightest hint of green.

Then he smiled, and his face was no longer ordi
nary at all, but mobile and charming. “Beau Deaver,”
he introduced himself, “and unlike you, I’m in here because I have to be.” At her raised eyebrow, he
laughed. “Half Human, half Orion, and how me mum
‘n dad arranged the technology for that’s such a well-kept secret even
I
don’t know. But here I am. There’s them as say I’m the worst of both worlds,
especially when it comes to a weakness for beautiful
women.”

“I am T’Pina,” she replied, uncertain how to re
spond to his strange introduction, “and I am Vulcan,
although I have lived most of my life on Nisus. How is
it I have not met you before?” she asked, certain she would not have forgotten such a unique individual.

“Only been here two years,” he replied, sitting
down at one of the tables, Ziona on his lap. “Bumped
all over the Federation as a boy. Me dad was a free
trader.”

T’Pina understood that common euphemism:
smuggler. “But you are a scientist,” she said, taking
the opportunity to sit for a moment. Why else would
he be on Nisus?

“Mathematician—inherited me dad’s ability to juggle numbers, it seems. Woulda followed in his
footsteps, ‘cept that when I was fourteen or so we had
an unexpectedly protracted stay on the planet Sofia.
You know Sofia? You wouldn’t
want
to know Sofia,”
he continued, not giving her a chance to reply.

As Ziona was now sitting happily on Deaver’s lap,
listening to him in fascination, T’Pina did not at
tempt to interrupt his monologue. It was the first time
the child had stopped crying all morning.

“Me mum got work as a dancer,” Deaver contin
ued, making T’Pina realize that “protracted stay” meant his father had been incarcerated, “but the truant officers rounded me up and made me go to
school—first time in me life, an’ a grand time I had of
it too! Not that my teachers had such a good time,
mind you. But me mum and dad had only taught me
to read an’ count an’ inveigle whatever I wanted out
of a computer. On Sofia I found great stuff to learn
—’specially numbers.”

As he spoke, Deaver bounced Ziona on his knee,
making her giggle. Other children were watching now
as he told her, “That’s right—found out numbers are
fun. Want me to show you?”

“Yes!” said the little girl, nodding her head vigor
ously.

Deaver held up his hands. “How many fingers do I have, Ziona?”

“Ten,” she responded, “same as me!”

“No,” he said, “I have eleven fingers.”

“Do not!” Ziona protested.

“Yes I do.”

“Do
not!”
Ziona insisted. “I c’n count that good!”

“I can prove it. Shall I show you?”

“Yeah!”

First Deaver counted all his fingers, starting with his right-hand thumb and ending with his left-hand
smallest finger. “—eight, nine, ten. You see ten fin
gers, right?”

“Right!” Ziona nodded eager agreement. By this
time there was an audience of boys and girls gathered
around them. T’Pina realized that Deaver was well
known and popular with all the children.

Now he held up his right hand. “How many fingers
on this one?”

“Five!” Ziona said triumphantly.

“All right. Now, we just counted the ones on the
other hand—but let’s make sure.” This time he began
with the small finger. “Ten … nine … eight…
seven … six”—which brought him back to his
thumb—”and five on this one.” He held up his right
hand again. “How much is six and five?”

Ziona’s eyes widened in utter bewilderment.
“Eleven!”

“What did I tell you?” Deaver asked.

“How did you
do
that?” Ziona demanded, her bewilderment turning to delight. She grasped his
hands, examining them as if she truly expected to find
an eleventh finger lurking somewhere.

“Here,” Deaver replied, “I’ll teach you on your
hands, and then when you go home you can tell your
mum and dad that while you were in hospital you
grew an extra finger.”

It took Ziona three tries before she got the trick
right, but when she did she burst into a fit of giggles.
“I gotta show Dominic!” she said, sliding off Deaver’s
lap and running off to find her friend. The other
children who had been watching also hurried away,
and T’Pina knew the trick would be played on every
child there before evening.

When the children had scattered, T’Pina asked, “Is
that what you learned on Sofia—children’s games
with numbers?”

“Nah, that was one of me dad’s old tricks. On Sofia
I discovered mathematics—the inside of everything in the universe. By the time I got into calculus and quantum mechanics, I didn’t have time for pickin’ locks or booby-trappin’ the principal’s desk chair anymore. We was stuck there for two years—nor nobody was as surprised as me when I won the quadrant maths prize! Got me a full scholarship to any university in the Federation; they was fightin’
over me!” He laughed. “You coulda knocked me dad
over with a feather. He always said I’d amount to nothin’, that I was just something to keep me mum
occupied.”

“What university did you choose?” T’Pina asked.

“Always wanted t’see Earth—me dad had enemies
in that neck of the Federation—so I tried MIT first.
Spent two years there, one term at Oxford, where the
tutors kep’ raisin’ objections to the way I talk, an’ then
I went off to Corona, to the Royal Academy, where I
finished my degree—to me own surprise as much as
the faculty’s!”

T’Pina was impressed: if there was any institution
in the Federation to rival the Vulcan Academy in the
areas of science and mathematics, it was the Royal
Academy of Corona.

But Deaver was saying, “Beware of mathematics,
Lady T’Pina. Tis an addiction gets in yer blood and
don’t let go. I find a corollary to T’Prol’s Functions —just playin’ around for me own amusement, you
understand—and next thing I know I’ve got a teach
ing fellowship at the Vulcan Academy!”

“You’ve taught at the Vulcan Academy?” T’Pina
suddenly wondered if he was lying—perhaps every
thing he had said was a lie, or a trick of language such
as he had shown Ziona.

But Deaver answered her question. “For a year.
Kinda fun bein’ on the other side of the desk.”

“I have been at the Vulcan Academy for the past
three years,” said T’Pina. “I just graduated.”

“It was before your time, then—seven Federation Standard Years ago. I liked the people there—you
Vulcans keep a man on his toes, and there were folks
from all over the galaxy, just like here. Tell me
something,” he added, looking her up and down as if
he could tell all about her appearance, swathed as she
was in protective gear, “does the Vulcan Academy
have a beauty requirement for the women it admits?”