T’Ria and the Rain Man, Part 2

Spock studied her curiously for a moment, his own emotions stirring
uncomfortably. “You never felt… sexual attraction… you never felt
love for your family… and you never felt friendship either?”
“How could I, when no one ever felt any of those for me?” Maria Susanne
began loading her pills back into their container. “Do you know what
childhood is like, for someone with autism? Do you know what it’s like
for someone with Tourette’s? For someone with OCD? With ADD? It was all
of that for me, and then some. Do you know what it’s like to be fifteen
years old and have a social worker–one, mind you, who spells `its’ with
an apostrophe in the possessive, `a lot’ as one word and `there’ in
whichever way it *isn’t* supposed to be spelled at the moment– come up
to you and criticize you for shutting your locker too loudly?” Maria’s
tone had never sounded more as though there ought to be emotion in it.
“Now before you answer, add this to the scenario: She doesn’t say,
`Maria, you shut your locker too loudly.’ She says…” and the human
affected a high-pitched, baby-talk voice. “`*Now how do we shut our
lockers, Maria*?'”
Spock raised the eyebrow again, hoping this version of his one facial
expression got across a sufficient amount of sympathy.
“It was like that all through school. Tourette’s and everything else
aside, when autism alone gets on the record, the student instantly loses
her identity. Do you know the 20th century? Movies they made back then?
You heard of Rain Man? That’s what happens when they know you have
autism. You become Rain Man. Or worse, the `mentally disabled child’
stereotype. You can be sixteen and they assume you have the mind of a
three-year-old. They ignore all evidence to the contrary. You can have
an IQ of 143, you can create languages and write books and sonnets and
draw pictures people mistake for photographs, it’s all the same. I
corrected my teachers’ grammar in kindergarten. Do you know what they
did? They *yelled* at me. They sent a referral to my parents. I never
missed a class, or a test, or a homework assignment my whole senior year
of high school. Do you know what they did? Every time they saw me come
in with my homework done? They said, `*Good choice, Maria*!'”
” `Good *choice*’?”
“That’s Special Ed’s idea of praise. They thought they had to hammer it
into our heads that we made `choices’ and they had
`consequences’–that’s what punishments were called, too, by the way,
‘consequences’–so everything we did was described as a `choice.’
Correcting the teacher is a `bad choice.’ Do you know what I told them,
in junior high? I said, `Every event in the space-time continuum is
affected by every previous event and affects every subsequent event, and
is the product of a chain of events leading back to the beginning of the
universe, and if the universe began all over again with all the same
matter in the same places, history would be identical; our actions are
a result of physical processes in our brains determined by the physical
effects of outside forces and the physical construction of our brains
themselves, both of which result from similar chains of events,
therefore, the choices we make are inevitable.'”
“You said that?”
“I said that. And do you know what they said that was?”
“A… bad choice?”
Maria Susanne nodded. “A bad choice.”
Spock picked up his tray, realizing that it was late and everyone else
in the mess had finished dinner long ago. “And this was childhood for
you?”
“A small slice of it, but representative of the whole.”
“And then it was New Symmetria.”
“And then it was New Symmetria. But in between, there was one thing
that made my life worth living.” She began gathering up the remains of
her meal, shoving the pill bottle back in her pocket. It made an
asymmetrical lump on one hip of her ugly pink pants.
“One thing?”
“My time as a cadet on the Enterprise.”
He finally caught her gaze, and once more, the rare moment of eye
contact was electric.
“I am glad that you enjoyed it,” he murmured.
“You will never know how much, Spock. For nine days I had a taste of
the life I wanted. It didn’t matter then, that my life up till then had
been horrible, and I didn’t know then, where I was going to spend the
rest of it. I was *happy*. I was learning how to use the communications
systems, I was showing off my talents and people were admiring me… and
Nyota was so nice, so kind to me. She introduced me to her friend
Christine. Christine was pretty nice too… except once she was really
worked up about something… snapped at me and made me go synthesize a
whole package of plomeek soup ingredients…”
If Maria Susanne was watching him, training all her limited skills on
gauging his reaction to what she said, Spock did not notice.
Because now he realized what Jim had meant when he said Spock could not
have been expected, at the time, to notice a new cadet…
And he realized for the first time how long it had been since then…
And for the first time he realized that time was dangerous.

* * *

Not as dangerous as it was now, with T’Ria looking at him over the
chessboard expecting him to make a move that his hands did not know how
to make… when there was only one thing his body could do, for which
the desire was raging so violently that the shreds of his mind that
remained could hardly hold it back… and he knew he must not allow
himself the release toward which his instincts drove him, even if it
meant that he would die when the chess game ended, die slowly,
painfully, and alone…
Even three months ago, with the threat of destruction and with Maria
Susanne’s insanity claiming her as his even now was claiming him, time
could never have been this dangerous…
And once more, memory of the past enveloped him in its deceptive
illusion of security, and three months dropped away as if they had never
been there.

* * *

To the past again, to the day he had discovered the feeling. Discovered
the woman who was now at his chessboard. Discovered understanding.

It had been half a year since the distress call. For half a year
Maria’s relocation to a new home had been postponed and postponed again,
Spock somehow always being the one to find an excuse for it. He studied
her and he was fascinated by her, too fascinated to relinquish his
new-found experiment. For she was an engrossing experiment, turning up
in every conversation a new set of clues to his studies of the human
psyche–and just as many new questions.
Half a year spent in silent dinners with Maria, eating and watching
her eat… in hours of conversation afterwards, reading her poetry and
her invented languages and mentoring her on human behavior… and in
solitary anguish in his quarters, trying to discover some means of
protection against the danger of time. His forty-second birthday had
come and gone, and he had told no one. It was as he was leaving for
another of the silent dinners he had come to enjoy that Uhura alerted
the bridge crew to the incoming communication.
They had just had a skirmish with a Klingon ship, some renegades afraid
of some distant prospect of alliance and going around stirring up
trouble between the Federation and the Empire. It had taken out their
shields and damaged the hull considerably, but they had retaliated with
a disabling shot at its weapons before it could take further advantage
of their vulnerability. Understandably, however, there was tension when
the communications officer announced, “Being hailed by an unknown
vessel, sir.”
Spock turned around and reentered the bridge as Kirk announced, “On
screen.”
The creature that flickered into view was humanoid, and an elderly
male, so the baldness did not seem out of place and it took Spock a few
seconds to identify it in his mind as a Deltan.
“I am Captain Aili of the Federation starship Natl’ed,” said the image.
“I recognize you, Captain James T. Kirk. My starbase has given me a
missile which I am under orders to fire through the hull of your
beautiful ship.”
There was a stunned silence.
Finally the captain broke it, saying in a faltering voice, “What is the
reason for this?”
“Dear sir, I have no idea. I was simply the only vessel between here
and the base that was going your way–and that, I believe, is why I was
chosen. I am not at all sure what the missile is for. I was only asked
to fire it at you.”
“We have done nothing to incite that kind of reaction in anyone,” said
Kirk in bewilderment, “let alone the Federation.”
“I believe it was decided as a result of your recent conflict with the
Klingon ship.”
“They attacked us first. We were fighting back. And we didn’t even hurt
them. We just took out their phasers.”
“But they damaged your vessel, I understand, which I believe is why it
was decided that you should receive the missile at this time. You are
very vulnerable to weapons at the moment. Please, sir, I must fire it
into your vessel. I have things of my own to do, you know.”
“Can we negotiate, at least?”
“We can negotiate the time,” acceded the Deltan, his good-natured look
not shifting a millimeter, “but according to my orders, the missile
must be fired today.”
Kirk turned and paced for a while, and finally said: “Then give me
eight hours to inform my crew.”
“Certainly, Captain Kirk,” said the smiling Aili, and the viewscreen
was shut off as Kirk moved to confer hastily with his officers.
“The Federation would never order anyone to shoot us!” objected
Chekov.
“Precisely. This is ridiculous. What do you think, Sulu?”
“Captain, I think the only choice is to fire and disable his weapons
before he gets the chance. With our shields out, plus the damage we just
sustained, I don’t think we can handle another fight.”
“But what if we miss? I don’t even think I know where the phaser banks
*are* on a ship like that one.”
A communication from the area of the mess hall interrupted before Spock
could voice his own opinion.
“Nurse Chapel to bridge. Passenger Maria Susanne Schmidt is
experiencing severe behavior problems. Thought we should inform you.”
And Spock did something very illogical.
For no sufficient reason, following no rational thought process, he
abandoned the bridge crew in a dangerous confrontation with an alien
ship…
…to make sure Maria was all right.

* * *

He found her standing on top of the table at which she usually ate,
surrounded by a crowd of crewmembers and passengers.
“I’m going to jump,” she called, through fits of laughter. “I’m
serious, I’m going to jump. Don’t think I won’t do it, `cause I will.”
Spock appraised the distance between her and the floor. It was little
more than a meter. He turned to Chapel, who was looking with concern at
Maria Susanne. “Nurse, what is the matter?”
“Well, you can see for yourself, Mr. Spock…”
“I meant, what is the probable cause of this lapse?” Spock could not
believe how harshly he was speaking, how fast his heart was beating…
“I think she forgot her medication, Mr. Spock. She refuses to come
down and take it. She says about once a minute that she wants to be
calm, that she will be calm, and then starts laughing hysterically
again.”
“I didn’t take my meds,” said Maria Susanne in a high sing-song voice.
“I’m going crazy. Dammit, Spock, help me, I’m going crazy.” She didn’t
seem to notice that Spock was there… seemed only to be calling to him
hypothetically in her own insanity.
And Spock ran to her side to catch her as she fell laughing
convulsively from the table.
His first impulse was merely to take her away, to remove her from the
sight of all the crewmembers who didn’t understand. Irrational anger
flared up… they could not see her like this, she would not want them
to. Seeing her dead would be better! Or unconscious… a nerve pinch?
Somehow he recoiled from the idea; it would be too much like restraint,
like something a social worker would do. He was painfully aware of how
ridiculous they both looked as they stood there, almost in each other’s
arms, Spock breathing heavily in near-panic, Maria laughing like a
maniac.
Gently he moved his hands to the meld points of her face. The chaos of
her unmedicated mind struck him unpleasantly as they met. *Maria. Calm.
Please.*
His mind touch sobered her considerably. *Oh, Spock, what did I do?
Oh, no… everyone’s looking at me, Spock, get me away from here.*
And all he could do was soothe her confusion, smooth down the remaining
madness as best he could. When it began to dissipate, he was startled by
the order and clarity of this mind he had never touched before. He ached
to explore it further…
A small thought of his ventured into the corridors of her psyche, a
disorganized thought, something about her, something about him,
something about time… something also about the situation on the
bridge, which must be getting desperate by now, and which he’d better go
check on before anything more went wrong.
Her mind explored his confused communication, caught out the part about
the bridge, which she examined with interest.
*You left that to check on me, Spock?*
*I was worried.*
*You were illogical. It happens a lot. It won’t kill me.*
*I am sorry I could not help you earlier. Before people saw you like
this.*
*Spock, go back there. Now. And take this. You’ll need it.*
Her mind shoved into his mind a tiny string of knowledge, wrapped up
neatly. *Language, it’s a mess. If only everyone could talk like this.
Go, Spock. Go on! Now!*
That was when Spock seemed for the first time to come to his senses.
*Forgive me. You have been logical, and I have not. Your mind is
fascinating, Maria. Fascinating. Remember that.*
And his thoughts were disconnected from hers, his hands from her face,
and she was standing there as calm as ever, watching him rush away to
where he was needed.

* * *

“Has the matter been decided, Captain?”
“We’ve decided Sulu’s right. Either way, the maniac is going to shoot
us, and if we get in the first shot, we’ve at least got a chance at
hitting his weapons.”
The memory of the Deltan on the viewscreen surfaced in Spock’s mind.
Maniac was the word for him… and yet he didn’t seem like a maniac at
all, in his look and mannerisms… a kind old man, excessively polite
perhaps…
The bundle of thoughts from Maria began to unfold itself. It opened
with rapid speed… the knowledge blared out at him, presented itself in
a blaze in front of his eyes…
“On screen!” called Spock suddenly.
The Deltan appeared, the same polite smile on his face. “Yes, officer?
Are you ready for our missile?”
“Quite ready, Captain Aili. Fire it immediately.”

* * *

Minutes later the confusion had cleared, the engineers were installing
the new replacement part that would restore the function of the shields,
and Spock was in the hall with Maria Susanne, walking her from the mess
to her quarters. When they passed the bridge, Maria paused to catch
what the captain was saying to Uhura as he walked out.
“…And send a communication as soon as possible to the translator
designers, Lieutenant, and tell them it’s all right if a language has
the same word for *some* things, but that a distinction between the
Deltan for `missile’ and `object which is delivered,’ not to mention
`to beam’ and `to fire,’ would be a useful upgrade.”
Maria laughed softly in satisfaction and walked on.
“I trust, Miss Schmidt, that this was not one of the translators that
you designed.”
“Spock, I was *eight years old.* How was I supposed to know–”
Kirk came up behind them at that moment, a grateful smile on his face.
“Spock, I can’t believe what you just stopped me from doing. We can
always rely on the infinite stores of information between those pointy
ears to save us in a crisis, can’t we?”
“Well, actually, it was…” began Spock, but Maria seized his hand in
an iron grip, sending a clear message: *this is your moment, Spock. You
deserve it.*
*I do not,* his mind replied through the touch. *You are responsible.*

But then he realized her implied meaning: *Do not discuss it. Do not
discuss the time when I gave you that information. Do not discuss what
was happening to me. It is a state of mind I do not like to think
about.*
And Spock understood, all too well.

* * *

At her door, he took his leave of her. “You have been most helpful
today, Miss Schmidt. I am grateful to you on behalf of the entire crew.”

“And I’m grateful to you, Spock. About what you did for me in the mess
hall. You’ll never know how embarrassed I get, after something like that
happens. Okay, I admit it, I do wish you’d gotten there earlier.”
“Did you receive sufficient nourishment during dinner?”
“I’m still a little hungry. But I think I can hold out till breakfast.
How many hours is it till then?”
“Till your customary morning mealtime? Eight point three six five
hours.”
“Rain Man,” she teased.
And then he realized just how well he understood her.

Because the words “Rain Man” had completed the connection.

* * *

The shield of not knowing how to express…

The shield put up to control the expression…

No one liked me… I was ruled by unspoken social decree not to be
human…

Running home crying from children in ShiKhar… You are not a true
Vulcan…

It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with people, it’s just that
they speak a language I don’t understand…

Human behavior is illogical…

I didn’t take my meds… Oh, no… everyone’s looking at me, Spock, get
me away from here…

Captain, lock me away. I do not wish to be seen…

Seems she was a prodigy…

Eight point three six five hours… Rain Man…

Could any understanding, between any two beings, ever have been so
great?

And he knew that it was 2274 and he knew how many years it was since
2267 and he knew that there was only one person by whom he was willing
to be helped.
And that she could from that moment no longer be Miss Schmidt, or
Maria, or Maria Susanne, but that his mind was even then giving her a
secret name that she could never hear, but that would be whispered to
her so often in his dreams…

T’Ria.

* * *

And he also knew, three months later as he sat across from her at the
chessboard in his quarters with time becoming more dangerous by the
minute, that he had no right to what he wanted from her. That she would
never understand what it was to be a social creature, of any race; that
she had no idea of the commitment she would be making. That he must let
her leave after the game was over, and die with her secret name on his
lips.

“YOUR TURN, SPOCK!”

Blindly he reached out a hand, pushing the first piece his fingers came
in contact with, hoping the direction in which he pushed it would turn
out, by pure chance, to be a valid move. Only to get the game over with,
to be alone, to be freed from this torment, this agonizing temptation!

A moment, a small motion, incomprehensible to his eyes, on the
chessboard.
“I can’t believe this, Spock,” said T’Ria. “Check.”
Spock stared straight ahead, his coordination capable of accomplishing
only one goal, and a forbidden one… the idea of moving another chess
piece at all, let alone getting his king out of danger, was ludicrous…

“Check,” repeated T’Ria, smiling deviously. “In fact,” she added,
lifting some unknown piece and setting it back down some unknown number
of spaces away, “check… and… *mate.*”
And that undid him.
There was no more control and Spock was pulling her across the
chessboard into his arms, their minds and bodies clasping each other in
passion, scattering the remains of their game all over the table, her
knight and his king falling across each other on the space they now
shared… and through the sudden contact his mind cried out to her,
using the secret name without thinking.

*Run away and leave me, T’Ria, before it is too late…*
*I want this.*
*I shall hurt you…*
*I want this.*
*Our minds will have to bond…*
*I want this.*
*T’Ria, you do not know the…*
*If you say the `consequences’ of my `choice,’ it is quite possible
that I shall scream.*

There was a glance between their souls, a mind’s eye contact.

*I know what I am doing and I have wanted it for a very long time,
Spock.*
*I thought you were asexual, Maria.*
*Call me T’Ria. I like it.*
*T’Ria. I thought you did not feel love.*
*I never felt sexual attraction. I never felt love for a family member.
I never felt friendship. But I have felt something that was all three.
There was one person I knew for a short time, long ago… one person I
felt could be a friend, a brother and a lover all at once.*

A smoke-wisp of confusion in the midst of the fire.

*One person in the whole galaxy I finally had something in common
with.*

Clouds of bewilderment, flickering wordless questions at her.

*Spock, do you know how many centuries I have waited for this?*
*Centuries?*
*Centuries.*
*How many?*
*Point zero seven.*

The eye contact of her mind was as thrilling as that of the eyes of her
face.

*That’s seven years.*

Then the confusion caught fire from an understanding spark.

*Do you have any idea how long that is? Seven years, Spock. Two of them
on Earth, studying day and night trying to qualify for being a real
officer on the Enterprise. Then another two on Symmetria, wishing my
parents were dead, until the war started and they were. Then two more,
hiding in bomb shelters every week and wondering how the human species
had made it this far when they were such lunatics. Then finally a year
with that damnable hailing device, trying to keep myself from smashing
it against a rock every time it told me a ship was coming over but it
wasn’t a Federation one. All the time hoping you’d at least have the
sense to get bonded before you’d need it, even if it wasn’t to me.
Frankly, I didn’t think I had much chance. But I waited. Seven damn long
years.*
*Seven years…*
*To the day. This is the septennial anniversary of you pasting
Christine with the soup she made out of the ingredients I synthesized,
and when I heard about that I would have laughed my butt off if I hadn’t
known you had a bondmate waiting for you down at Koon-ut-kahl-i-fee that
I was even more jealous of. Can you blame me for quitting my internship
early? How could I live with you, knowing you were hers? If I had to
identify the happiest day of my life, there wouldn’t be much
competition, but I’d have to place it about a week ago, when I was
finally sure that if she hadn’t divorced you seven years ago you’d
already be on Vulcan.*

His mind flinched, and she realized she’d said something wrong.

*Oh, Spock, I’m sorry. I’m an autistic bitch with no social skills. You
had to kill someone, didn’t you?*

* It is a long story. I will tell you someday. But she is no longer my
bondmate.*

Dimly at first, them with growing clarity, he became aware that his
mind was beginning to fuse together with hers… her thoughts, feelings,
memories, desires all becoming his own…

*You are my bondmate. We are joining. I cannot control it.*

*If you tried, I’d hit you.*

*Are you sure you are ready for this?*

*You can read my mind, can’t you?*

He explored her mind, the incredible mind that was now his mind too,
and found the thought, the burning desire, that was as urgent, in its
own way, as his.

*I want it as much as you do. And I know you do, Spock. You want to be
bonded to me. You want to know what I’m thinking all the time. Because
my mind is fascinating. You said so.*

*Stay with me. Please. Will you stay with me forever?*

*Of course. How can I not? We’ll be bonded. I may leave the Enterprise,
of course. I may go to the other end of the galaxy. I may become the
captain of another ship. I may defect to the Romulans for all I know. Or
I may go to Earth and stay there for the rest of my life. Which in fact
I consider a serious option at the moment.*

*Go to Earth?*

*I’ve been a translator since I was eight–helping communicate ideas
between the cultures of different planets. Now I think I’ll try helping
one species communicate with itself. There are people like me all over
Earth, people who were born on the wrong planet. Half-human-half-Vulcans
trapped in full-human bodies. With their Vulcan and human halves
constantly struggling inside them, a desire and its goal stuck in every
one of those heads with a wall between them, the side that needs to
interact with the rest of the world fighting to push past the side that
doesn’t know how. And they need someone to teach them the… patterns of
human illogic.*

*Do you consider yourself prepared for the task?*

*I learned from an expert. No–don’t raise your eyebrow at me, Spock.
You’re an expert on illogic. And no, that doesn’t mean you’re illogical.
Illogical people are never experts on illogic. You’ve got to be an
outsider to study something right. And you’ve got to be an insider to
relate to someone enough to really teach them what you’ve studied. I’m
an outsider to more than ninety per cent of the human race. I’m an
insider to a tiny minority –autistic, nerd, whatever. They need me. And
I’ll help them. But I’ll stay with you anyway, no matter how far away
from you I go. If I remember correctly, the phrase to describe our
present condition translates most accurately as “never and always
touching.”*

*Never and always…*

*I’ve waited seven years for this. To bond. To be never and always
touching you, parted and never parted, less than married, more than
betrothed, yours for ever and ever. And if that isn’t an emotional
enough declaration, I don’t know what is.*

*Seven years… how did you know? How did you know it, seven years ago?
Everyone promised not to tell…*

*And no one broke his promise. I recognized the symptoms.*

He could no longer tell where they were, or what they were doing, in
the universe outside their joined minds. The thoughts in that inner
universe held him captivated.

*Recognized…?*
*T’Pau’s archives on bonding rituals tell everything, Spock.*

The blue flame was clearing to a golden blaze of comprehension.

*A language interpreting device has to have at least some words about
marriage in it…*

Now he understood in blinding sunlight.

*But if you read up on them, if you go paging through Vulcan literature
figuring out from context the best translations for things like “never
and always touching,” you run across stuff in between them that your
parents might not want you to see…*

The fire of understanding was brightening like the rays of 40 Eridani
for the two spirits between whom it could most brightly blaze in all the
galaxy. And time was no longer dangerous.

*I know about this, Spock. I know every `choice’ I am making. There
were words they didn’t let me put in the first Vulcan/Standard
translator, you know.*
*Which you designed, T’Ria?*
*When I was eight point five years old, Rain Man.*

T’Ria and the Rain Man
by Saavant

Summary: A new arrival to the Enterprise discovers that she and Spock
have a lot in common.

PG13

Author’s Note: This is a story not just about Spock but, in a way, about
fans of Spock; it addresses the connections that I suspect bring many
of us to identify with him. It is also about one of the human species’
most illogical characteristics: unwillingness to accept those who are
different from them.

Disclaimer: I disclaim Star Trek characters. I disclaim having invented
them. I disclaim to be profiting monetarily from writing about them. I
am not Gene Roddenberry. I am not Paramount. I am Saavant. So There.

If you have comments, email me at hammersc@augsburg.edu

2274

“It’s your turn,” said T’Ria for the fifth time.
Spock struggled to focus on the next move, but the chess board was
reduced in his vision to a collection of shapes and outlines devoid of
meaning. He leaned his head back for a moment, as though hoping that
simple motion would restore his calm. The outlines moved and changed
slightly with the shift in the location of his eyes, and it startled
him.
*There are three dimensions,* he reminded himself.
But there were more than three. There were at least four… and the
fourth was to him the most dangerous.
*Time.*
*Time is about to kill me.*
“Your turn,” repeated T’Ria.
And the voice swept him back to the past.

* * *

To the past, to where time was no longer–or not yet–dangerous. To the
day when the transporter beam had brought up the confused and bedraggled
source of the distress call, moments before the last nuclear blast had
sent the violent remnants of Symmetrian
civilization to the only peace they had ever known.
The planet had been an experiment in a new form of government. “Why
should we celebrate diversity?” said Martha Colette, the leader of the
Symmetry movement, in her founding speech for the colony in 2263.
“What we need to celebrate is those qualities that make us the same.
That is the only way we can live together in peace.”
And it was almost exactly ten years later that, for no reason known to
the Federation, the colony of humans whose society was based on this
seemingly logical insight went up in a blaze of sundered atoms,driven by
their own hatred, that destroyed all the armies of haters and hated
while simultaneously quenching every other sign of life on New Symmetria
and sinking it deep into a nuclear winter that would render
it unlivable for many years to come.
The only survivor was a brown-haired, Caucasian-looking woman, by Earth
years in her early twenties, who materialized on the transporter pad
clutching a small red suitcase and the makeshift electronic device she
had used to send the single distress call that was all the Enterprise
knew of the planet’s sudden and unexpected death. The little beacon
looked a hundred years old, judging by its technological advancement,
and seemed to have been built in a hurry out of whatever could be found.
The suitcase had been monogrammed with a green marker, in large,
artistically drawn letters: “Maria Susanne Schmidt.”
In some cases, the captain would have demanded in a harsh voice for the
guest to identify itself, but a woman just beamed out of a nuclear war
instants before her planet was destroyed was in little need of being
further frightened. *Besides,* thought Spock critically from the science
station across the bridge, *she is female, and he is James T. Kirk.*
“Welcome…” Kirk spoke gently, and then, glancing at the suitcase and
hoping the name was hers, “…Maria Susanne?”
Yes, he could see that she was female, despite her muddy, torn clothes,
her dirt-streaked face, the matted and oily masses of her dark brown
hair. Not particularly attractive, but female.
“Bonehead,” she answered, her eyes firmly focused on a small stain in
the carpet.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I thought there might be someone in the galaxy who’d pronounce it
right,” she muttered. “But I suppose I must’ve been a little too
hopeful. That’s the curse in having a German name. You finally get a
language with a clear set of phonetics, and terminology that sticks to
it, and no, they go and base your stupid Standard on the one language
in the galaxy where words sound the least like the way they’re spelled.
Possibly excepting French. Let’s start with `Susanne.’ The first S is
said something between an S and a Z. The final E is *not* silent, you
say it the way you say the upside-down E in the phonetic alphabet. And
the A is pronounced `aah’, not `eahh’.” She retched the last syllable
in a grotesque caricature of the American pronunciation. “Plus, you roll
the R in `Maria.’ Not Spanish rolling with the tongue in the front of
your mouth. Rolling a German R is like this.” Maria opened her mouth
wide and made a noise remarkably similar to gargling.
“Ah, I see,” said the captain uncomfortably, looking at her with a
certain curiosity. “May I simply call you Miss Schmidt?”
“As long as you pronounce the M. I’ve had people not pronounce that M,
and it gets on my nerves. Name like mine, you really get to like the
letter M.”
There was some laughter on the bridge, but it was nervous. Except for
the minimal motion of her lips for speaking, and an occasional twitch of
her arms or neck, the new arrival had not moved at all since she had
been beamed aboard. Even her eyes remained stuck to that one stain on
the carpet.

* * *

Days later, in the mess hall, every table was filled except for one in
the corner. That table’s only occupant was a young human female, almost
unrecognizable as the dirt-encrusted, tangle-haired being on the
transporter pad a week ago. As soon as she had received guest quarters
she had begun a schedule of regular bathing (apparently not a frequent
opportunity on her previous war-torn world) which revealed the delicate,
almost greenish tints of her skin and the flecks of gold in her brown
hair.
All her attractive points contrasted sharply with her dress and
demeanor, however. The red suitcase had apparently contained the only
clothing she was willing to wear–today it was a close-fitting lacy
red-orange tank top, obviously several sizes too small for her, with
nothing underneath, and a pair of thick pink sweatpants stopping five
centimeters over white tennis shoes fastened with something like
Velcro. Her face had not touched makeup in all the time she’d been on
the Enterprise, and her hair had alternated from tight braided pigtails
to the thick frizzy waves that resulted when they were undone. Today it
was in braids, and she was bent over her pasta, consuming it at a rapid
rate and not seeming to care that she made conspicuous noises and that
her face and shirt and the tips of her pigtails were gathering smears of
Alfredo sauce rather quickly.
“Miss Schmidt,” Spock said as he approached her table.
She looked up, not seeming embarrassed that she’d been caught eating
like a wild animal. “Hi,” she said brightly, then returned her attention
to her pasta.
“May I seat myself here?” he asked mildly.
“Sure,” said Maria Susanne, pausing with a noodle halfway in her mouth.
Spock sat down in the chair directly across from her.
“The captain has asked me to speak with you.”
Maria swallowed the last bite of her food and looked up at the Vulcan.
Her eyes examined his bangs, the top of his head, and his eyebrows, then
came to rest on his left ear, from which they did not move for several
minutes. “Am I in trouble?”
“Not that we are aware of. It has merely been noticed that you seem to
avoid interaction with the crew, and I was selected to… `bring you out
of your shell,’ as the captain put it.”
The girl smiled slightly and picked up her fork, to which she
transferred her gaze from the pointed ear she had been observing. “No
offense, Spock,” she said, in an expressionless voice that should have
contained a tone of humor, “but… why you?”
“Others have attempted. I am the last resort.”
Maria narrowed her eyes in thought. “People have asked me questions,”
she murmured, as though thinking aloud. “I answered them. But nobody
mentioned my being in a `shell,’ as your captain put it.”
Spock looked at her curiously. She seemed, on the surface, nonchalant,
uninterested… as if someone else were being discussed… but whether
from his long study of human beings or through some unknown channel of
telepathy, Spock detected an element of deep concern and bewilderment
beneath her calm veneer. She cared, she just didn’t know how to express
it. “I would not expect them to have directly referred to your state of
introvertedness,” he said gently. “The traditional method of `bringing
someone out of her shell’ involves discussing numerous subjects
unrelated to the person’s condition itself, in an attempt to bring her
into a routine of casual conversation. The questions you were asked were
probably not intended to gain information but to engage you in
discussion as a form of entertainment. It is known among humans, I
believe, as `small talk.'”
“Wow,” said Maria, toying with her fork. “You know a lot more about
human behavior than I do.” The brown eyes once more appraised his ear,
the closest she had come to looking him in the eye. “Language was
designed to get across information,” she sighed, thinking aloud again.
“Why is there only one person on this whole ship who uses it for that
purpose? And the person, no less, that the captain considers a `last
resort.'” She ran the end of the fork down the back of her hand. “Small
talk…”
“You were not previously aware of this phenomenon? Are you not a
human?”
The girl sighed again. “You know, sometimes I think I’m not.”

* * *

They had spent nearly an hour talking.
“Out of my shell,” Maria mused. “*I’d* just been wondering what kind of
a shell *they* were in. I’ve been ignored here almost as much as at
home.”
“Did you not say that several people approached to ask you questions?”
“Yes… but when I answered them, they went away.”
“I believe one is expected to respond with questions of one’s own.”
“But there was nothing I wanted to find out…” Maria’s look of
confusion gradually turned to one of comprehension. “Oh, yeah. Small
talk.” She had begun to break the tines off her plastic fork and stick
them like little towers in the foam of her plate. “I’ll have to remember
that. It’s really not that I don’t want to be friends with people,
Spock. It’s just that they speak a language I don’t understand. Small
talk… Humor, too. It wasn’t too long ago I found out about humor. We
were expecting a bomb and I had to cramp myself into the shelter with
three sisters, a brother and eight cousins…”
“That does not sound humorous.”
“It wasn’t, but it happened so often, people had to come up with funny
things to do when we were there. Especially my brother Matt. And
Lily–she’s a cousin. This time I was talking about, Lily sneaked some
of Matt’s rations and Matt pointed his fork at her and said, `I’m gonna
kill you for that.’ I noticed I’d seen people saying things like that a
lot and it occurred to me that this was another of those secrets of
human interaction that nobody’d bothered to tell me about. But when *I*
tried it the next week, I got in trouble.”
“Possibly you did not correctly select the body language, voice tone
and context?”
“Probably not. I said it while jumping out from around a corner at Matt
as he walked by. I yelled it pretty loud, and I used a steak knife
instead of a fork.”
“I see the source of the difficulty,” said Spock. He watched her
dismember her fork in silence for a few moments more. “By any chance,
were you attempting humor when you instructed the captain on the
pronunciation of your name?”
“Yeah,” said Maria, blushing slightly. “I mean, I didn’t say anything
that wasn’t true, but I expected people to laugh.”
“And I believe they had similar expectations from you. One usually
smiles while one is making a joke. And…” he noticed that she was
looking at him again, but this time shifting her focus between his hair
and his right eyebrow. “…one makes much more eye contact, as a rule,
than I have observed you doing.”
Maria looked him straight in the eyes then, and the surprise of it…
it must have been the surprise… sent a sudden shiver through him.
“Fascinating,” said Maria Susanne.
Spock was sure she had never yet heard him use that word. And if she
had, would she have been able to grasp the humorous implications of
imitating him? It seemed quite likely that it was merely a favorite word
of her own.
“Fascinating. For someone who’s not a human, you sure know about them,
Spock. How do you do it?”
“I have had years of practice,” he answered her. “I am forty-one years
old. By the biology of my species, I am approximately the same age you
appear to be. But much of my life was spent among Vulcans whose behavior
did not at all resemble that of humans. When I first came to the
Enterprise, I found them as difficult to comprehend as you do. I still
encounter numerous difficulties.”
“But you’ve learned?”
“I have found them an interesting subject of study.”
“Thank you, Spock.” She was not smiling– perhaps she feared being
interpreted as trying to make a joke– but the genial warmth was
palpable. “You inspiration.”

* * *

Spock had gone from there to Kirk’s quarters, on hearing himself
summoned to discuss a matter of importance.
“What is the problem, captain?” he asked, when the door had been opened
to receive him.
“Not so much a problem,” said Jim, leading his first officer to the
computer terminal, “as a discovery. I’d been wondering about that girl
we beamed up–she seemed somehow–different. Almost sneaky. Because if
you’ve noticed, she never looks at your eyes. And she’s always alone,
avoids people–”
“I had noticed, Captain.”
“But there seemed to be something… familiar about her. I’ve seen lots
of sneaky people in my career, but her sneakiness has a uniqueness about
it. I can’t put my finger on it…”
“You would not be expected to. It is an abstract concept, and
impossible to come into physical contact with.”
“You know what I mean, dammit! I couldn’t quite identify what it *was*
about her, but I was sure this wasn’t like anyone else I’d known. Except
one. I was sure I’d seen *someone* who acted like her, sometime, that I
remembered just vaguely. And I searched the data banks, and look what I
came up with.”
Spock bent over the computer. “Maria Susanne Schmidt, youngest cadet
ever to serve on the Enterprise. Took an internship in 2267 from
stardate 3372.0 through 3372.8, when she was fourteen years of age. She
spent most of that time with Nyota Uhura, learning the basics of
running the communications console, as she was a language major and
interested in a job in that field; her parents, being wealthy and
influential, made sure she studied with the most highly acclaimed
professionals…”
“So you see,” said Kirk excitedly, “that we’ve got to figure out how
she got from being a student of language at the Academy and aspiring
communications officer to being twenty light-years away on a planet that
was for some reason destroying itself with atomic war… *and* being the
only one who sent us a distress call.”
“There is no more information on her in the data banks?”
“None. It stops there. There’s a brief mention of her under
`translators,’ down here–seems she was a child prodigy with a gift for
languages, and one of her parents was involved in building Federation
ships’ interpreting devices, and she was instrumental in some way at a
very young age…eight through thirteen, I think. She apparently helped
design some of the specific language translators that paved the way for
the Universal ones. But nothing about her after she ended her cadet
duties with us.”
“Strange,” remarked Spock. “I do not remember her as a cadet.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Kirk, smiling.
Spock raised an eyebrow. “What brings you to that conclusion, captain?”

“Never mind.”
They both paced the room for a moment more. “Spock, do you have *any*
insights on this young lady?” murmured Kirk impatiently. “Have you
learned *anything* about her?”
His first officer looked up abruptly. “I did have the discussion with
her that you had suggested to me.”
“Ah. Yes. Yes, Spock. What did she say?”
“I learned a great deal about her character. She is, like me, a
singularly logical person…”
“Like you, of course.” Kirk grinned.
“…but unlike me, she has had either a deficiency of opportunities
for, or a disinterest in, learning the patterns in human illogic.”
“You haven’t had a disinterest in that, Spock?”
“I have not had a deficiency of opportunities for it, captain.”
“All right, Spock.” Kirk sat down at the computer. “But Miss Schmidt is
the subject of conversation. While you were talking to her, did you
notice any irregularities in her behavior that I’ve missed?”
“No irregularities, captain. Her behavior appears to follow clear
patterns of its own… perhaps more efficient patterns than those of
most humans. I observed abnormalities… she failed to make eye
contact, exhibited unusual table manners, and called me `Spock’ instead
of `Mr. Spock’ or `Sir’… abnormalities, as you would call them, but I
suspect that they are normalities for *her* .”
“Thank you, Spock.” Kirk turned off his computer terminal. “You may
go.”
As Spock headed toward the door, a call from his captain made him turn
around.
“Spock, you seem to be on her side.”
“I was not aware that our interactions with Miss Schmidt were a
competition, captain.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do not.”
“I said she looked sneaky.”
“And I heard you.”
“And you didn’t seem to be of the same opinion. In fact, you seemed
distinctly fascinated by her, if not…fond of her.”
“Your perception is acute, captain.”
“You don’t agree with me that she looks like she ought to have an eye
kept on her?”
“If she does, it is for her own safety, and no one else’s.”
“What do you mean by that, Spock?”
But Spock was already gone.

* * *

From the bewildering chess board in the dangerous present, Spock looked
back to the slightly less dangerous past.

* * *

They had had dinner together after that conversation with Jim. Maria
made him promise to be quiet until they had finished eating.
“Or at least don’t ask me questions,” she had said. “I don’t do dinner
conversation. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense. Two activities
that involve the same orifice in your body ought to take place at
different times. Illogical otherwise.”
Spock raised a silent, admiring eyebrow. Apparently they had another
favorite word in common.
When their eating/communication orifices were no longer occupied by
the former, they turned to the latter.
“Tell me, Miss Schmidt,” said Spock as he saw her wash down the last of
her macaroni and cheese with a deep drink of milk, “about your planet.”

Maria Susanne lowered her brows at him. “Is this small talk?”
“Negative. I am genuinely interested. The entire crew is interested. We
know nothing about the cause of the Symmetrian nuclear wars, nothing
about your past and that of your people. Your apparent antisocial
tendencies are being perceived as a barrier to the acquisition of this
important knowledge.”
“Antisocial? I *told* you, Spock…”
“I know. But humans find it difficult to understand that one of their
species would not automatically be equipped with instinctive
understanding of their code of body language and social skills, and it
is assumed that one who does not observe these customs does not wish
to.”
“Spock.” Maria Susanne reached into the pocket of her sweatpants and
pulled out a thick cylindrical bottle that looked as though it had been
through as many years of hardship and violence as her clothes, her
suitcase and her. “Do you know what this is?”
“It appears to be a medicine container of archaic design.”
“And look what’s inside it.” She poured out into her palm a seemingly
endless series of small tablets and capsules, reciting their names as
she did so. “Mellaril. Paxil. Tegretol. Prozac. Clonidine. Klonipin.
Haldol. Rispradol. Dexedrine. Et cetera. Et cetera. Ad infinitum. Day
after day. Six of them in the morning. Eight in the evening. Do you
know how much this costs? Do you know how many neurons it takes to
remember how many I take, and when? Do you know how hard it is to
*swallow* all of these?” She poured half the heap of pills in her mouth
and downed them with another gulp of milk. “Do you think I’d still be
carrying around this archaic medicine container full of archaic medicine
if I didn’t *desperately* hope someday to be able to get along with my
species?”
Spock looked on in fascination. “What purpose do these medications
serve?”
“What I have,” said Maria Susanne, pouring the pills out onto the
table, “among several other things, is Asperger’s Syndrome–mild autism,
you know. We’re not like most autistics, we’re more verbal, we pass for
normal more easily, but we lack social skills almost completely. There’s
no medication for Asperger’s per se; they have to treat my symptoms
individually. As well as those of my other disorders.” She began to
divide her medicine into small piles. “These are for Tourette tics.
These are for depression. These are for hyperactivity. These are for
ADD…”
“Who prescribes these for you? Who buys them?”
“My psychiatrist and my aunt. Respectively. As part of their
Symmetrian celebration of the qualities that make us the same. Sure they
help–the pills, I mean–but they’re not really for my sake. An abnormal
child is a shame on the family. Of course, now that the planet’s been
blown up, I’ll have to buy them myself.” She continued categorizing
tablets. “These are for obsessive compulsions. These are for other
compulsions. Which you don’t want to know about.”
“Which I do not want to know about?”
Maria Susanne sighed. “I am the only person on New Symmetria who acts
as if she’s on drugs only when she is *not* .” She paused, then revised.
“I mean, I *was* . Now, of course, New Symmetria is gone, and I can be
the only such person on the Enterprise.”
Again, the nonchalant disinterestedness. Spock could sense little
hidden concern this time. “You seem surprisingly calm about the
destruction of your planet, Miss Schmidt.”
“It isn’t my planet. It’s a planet I was forced to move to, in a
conspiracy to make me normal.”
Spock raised an eyebrow.
“I was never normal. I never understood normal people. So what do my
parents do? They say, `Let’s move to a planet where people who aren’t
normal get ATOMIC BOMBS DROPPED ON THEM!'”
There was a stunned silence. Spock realized he was on the verge of
discovering New Symmetria’s violent fate, and he knew now that there
were discoveries it was more comfortable not to make. “I thought that
the Symmetrian society was dedicated to the proposition that the
universal similarities in human beings were to be celebrated.”
“Exactly. And that’s where they messed up. Because they didn’t reckon
with one thing.” Maria Susanne toyed with a Dexedrine capsule, pausing
for effect. “*There are no universal similarities in human beings* .”
The Vulcan eyebrows rose once more.
“Oh, of course there are some. The most basic physical structure and
such. But it doesn’t sound inspirational to say, `Let’s celebrate the
fact that each human is composed of cells containing nucleic acids with
the blueprints for his whole body!’ Oh, no, you have to say, `Let’s
celebrate the fact that everyone has a heart to feel love and
friendship!'”
“And that is not true of all humans?”
“Not all. Not of me.” Maria Susanne tried arranging some pills on the
table in a smiley face, then scattered them angrily. “I have never, for
example, felt love. Either familial love or sexual love. I am not
heterosexual, you know.”
Spock barely concealed his surprise at such a personal statement being
made so casually. He *hadn’t* known… and what was this unpleasant
response surfacing in him? If he were illogical, he would have
identified it as disappointment.
For which there was no reason. He was a Vulcan.
“But I’m not homosexual either. I’m sort of… asexual. I have simply
never experienced that kind of attraction. Nor any other kind. I never
loved my family. Probably because they never loved me. I was a kind of
trophy to them… a six-year-old who wrote sonnets, an eight-year-old
who drew like an artist, an eleven-year-old who’d taught herself to
speak five languages fluently and invented two more. They showed me
off. I was a trophy. A tool as well. Dad’s got the credit for five
translating machines that *I* invented.”
“You are mentioned in the data banks.”
“Excellent. I’d like to look through those sometime and see how far
they managed to get from the truth.” Maria Susanne began, slowly,
methodically, to sort her pills once more, this time by color. “But
being a prodigy wasn’t enough. I had to be normal as well. Finishing my
last year at the Academy, this close to graduation, and I do something
or say something that it turned out wasn’t the thing I was expected to
do or say or whatever, and they say, `Let’s go to New Symmetria. They’ll
teach you to be normal there.'”
“And it did not meet with your expectations?”
“Can’t say it didn’t. I expected it to be horrible and it was.”
“Horrible in what way?”
Maria Susanne paused, coming closer to showing emotion than Spock had
ever seen her. “They treated me beastly on Earth, of course. Absolutely
beastly. But this was beastly to the eighteenth power. Do you know what
`celebrate the things that make all humans the same’ really means? It
means, set up a planet where only humans are allowed–because even the
most idiotic of normal people can figure out there’s no way to come up
with anything all sentient beings have in common, or even to *define* a
sentient being, for that matter–and treat all those humans with equal
love and respect… *except* the humans who happen *not* to have
anything in common with anyone else. We become the outcasts. It was high
school, on a government level. Martha Colette’s founding speech became
their Bible. `Everyone knows what it is like to feel love and
friendship’–I’ve never liked anyone and no one’s ever liked me.
`Everyone grieves when a family member is lost’–my parents died in the
first bombing and I didn’t care. `A smile means friendship to
everyone’–I was sixteen years old before I’d figured out body language
that far. So I was ruled, by unspoken social decree, not to be human.”
“You mentioned a bombing?”
“There were several before war was finally declared.”
The war. He was finally getting to the bottom of this. “Yes?” Spock
encouraged.
“I think it took that long because the Symmetrians refused at first to
take the enemy seriously. By all the laws of our great society, they
didn’t even exist. Oh, in a few years they got taken seriously, all
right. But first it was them bombing us, and us bombing them, and
expecting the problem to go away, and then they bomb us again, and vice
versa, and so on. I think each side had dropped half a dozen bombs
before there was an official war.”
“Who was the enemy?”
Maria Susanne began building a little tower of Clonidine. It was eight
tablets high before she spoke again.
“They called themselves the New Lazarus society. Something about
`lazar’ being an early word for `leper.’ We called them the Nerds. They
called us the Jocks. *I* called them…” Maria showed no reaction as
her Clonidine tower toppled with the sixteenth pill. “…*I* called
them the people who had only one thing in common: that they had nothing
in common with us.”
“You do not identify yourself with them?” Spock mentally rebuked
himself for the question. When had the personal opinions of this young
outcast become a more important subject to him than the Symmetrian war?
The reaction was illogical, but he was not as surprised at the final
revelation of the identities of the warring parties as he was at Maria
Susanne’s use of the words “they” and “we.”
“I couldn’t. My family guarded me with an iron fist. I wasn’t allowed
to speak to them. They weren’t allowed to speak to me. My sister Billie
managed to run away and join them when I was about nineteen. I remember
her saying that it was the last straw…”
“What was?”
“Being drafted. There was never much of a supply of people who liked
dealing with electronics. Before the war, they were all forced to go
into the most vital computer engineering fields–regulating the water
supply, the energy, the transportation. When the war became more
important than that, they had to design missiles. Billie refused. Before
she ran away, she built me a beacon. I didn’t tell you this, but
contacting anyone off-planet was illegal, and the plans for hailing
devices had all been destroyed. She had to come up with the design on
her own. Invent it all over again. I remember the last thing she said to
me. Almost verbatim.”
The veneer of nonchalance was as thin as Spock had seen it. “What did
she say?”
“She said, `Look, Maria, I know we’ve never been close. You’re a
language nerd and I’m a computer nerd. But we both belong with people
like New Lazarus, and if you’ve got any right to that 143-point IQ of
yours, you’ll run away first chance you get. I’m staying here to fight
to the finish, but the best place for you is off-planet. When this thing
tells you a Federation ship is coming by, you call them, and best of
luck to you.”
“So it was your sister who was responsible for your distress call.”
“Yes. In effect, she saved my life.” The emotional shield was up
again–not a shield like Spock’s, put in place to hide feelings, but a
mere absence of the knowledge of emotional expression, through which
the emotions could be felt only by their sheer intensity within. It was
up–meaning the emotions were no longer strong enough to show through as
clearly–but her next words, if they had been spoken with the voice tone
that they clearly deserved, would have been as expressive as any tears.
“I wish she’d let me know earlier that she was the closest thing to a
friend I ever had.”