A contest of principles, p.34
A Contest of Principles, page 34
“I think so,” Avomora said, putting on a brave face in anticipation of the mind-meld. “I mean, yes.”
At her request, the lights in the study had been dimmed to ease her eyes. McCoy and Chapel stood by to monitor the procedure. Although the nurse’s own medkit had been confiscated at the military base, McCoy was still in possession of his, so they were reasonably equipped to deal with any medical issues that might arise, despite the absence of a sickbay. Certainly, it was not the first time Spock had been required to perform a meld in less than ideal circumstances. He could only hope that there would be no unexpected complications, and that they would not be interrupted by palace guards in the process. The latter, unfortunately, was a distinct possibility.
“Let us proceed, then.”
He circled around Avomora’s chair until he was standing directly behind her. He took a deep breath to steady his thoughts even more than usual, then reached around to place his fingertips gently against her temples. She flinched at even the mild contact and a whimper of pain escaped her lips. That she was already in physical discomfort before the meld, due to her condition, concerned Spock, but as it was her recurring ailment that necessitated the procedure, they could hardly wait for her to recover before attempting it. The very goal of the meld was to discover what was preventing McCoy’s cure from working.
“My mind to your mind,” he intoned. “My thoughts to your thoughts.”
The traditional mantra aided his concentration as his consciousness reached out to Avomora’s. Making contact, he was immediately afflicted by a battery of torturous physical sensations that he now shared with the beset royal. Every sensory impression, from sight to sound to touch, became almost unbearably intense. Even the dimmest light stabbed his eyes, so that he squeezed them shut to keep out the piercing glare. The hum of McCoy’s medical tricorder, along with the rustle of Chapel’s uniform as she shifted her weight, grated on Spock’s ears. Chills ran up and down his body, triggering a bumpy pilomotor reflex along his skin, while a throbbing pain radiated outward from his spine to his extremities, growing perceptibly sharper by the moment. His right eye twitched.
Was this what Avomora experienced on a regular basis? Spock’s sympathy for the afflicted princess increased, as did his respect for her endurance.
She… I… we… hurt.
Rather than let the secondhand misery deter him, Spock probed deeper into Avomora’s psyche. Gritting his teeth against the pain, as she was doing, he sensed also her nervousness over the meld, her resentment of her condition, and her determination not to let her medical issues define her.
The pain will not defeat us.
But he sensed something else as well, lurking deeper within her unconscious mind, entangled with her autonomic cerebral functions. There was another presence, another link to a separate mind, not Avomora, not Spock, but…
Vumri.
Through Avomora, Spock connected with the notably unpopular healer. He felt her presence in the palace, none too far away. He received a vague impression of her stirring restlessly from sleep, which only confirmed McCoy’s suspicions: Vumri had indeed embedded a portion of her consciousness within Avomora’s mind, creating a psychic link between them that, in time, had fostered a dependency on the part of Avomora, whose brain was no longer accustomed to functioning properly on its own, but required Vumri’s telepathic assistance on a regular basis. Small wonder then that McCoy’s compound had failed; even after the doctor corrected the princess’s neurochemistry, her brain could not stabilize itself without Vumri’s direct intervention. The crutch was now obstructing the cure.
You don’t belong here, Vulcan.
Vumri’s thoughts assailed Spock. She had clearly been alerted to the meld via her own connection to Avomora. Her anger and ambition crashed against him, muffled only slightly by the buffer zone formed by the princess’s own consciousness. He sensed no genuine concern for Avomora’s well-being, only fury from Vumri at her own power and position being challenged.
“Neither do you,” he replied across their linked minds.
A cool anger, laced with Avomora’s own animosity toward the alleged healer, suffused his thoughts. What Vumri was doing to Avomora was both insidious and obscene. He took strong objection to it.
“Release Avomora’s mind. Sever your connection to her.”
Never, Vumri declared. The Heir is mine. Through her, I will shape the future of Ozalor.
“That is unacceptable. If you will not sever the link, I will.”
An empty threat, Vulcan. My hold on the Heir cannot be broken.
“We shall see.”
Keeping his principled indignation under tight rein, he applied his Vulcan training to trace the pernicious link to its roots deep within Avomora’s mind. Applied meditative techniques allowed him to visualize Vumri’s presence as a knot of inky tendrils, similar to the tattoos adorning the healer’s scalp, entangled with Avomora’s unconscious mind, which he imagined as a band of polished agate. Focusing his own awareness on the knot, he attempted to unravel the strands binding the two women’s minds to each other, as he might divorce his own mind from another’s, but this was not easily accomplished. The strands were too tightly entwined with the bracelet, so that untangling them was akin to performing actual neurosurgery upon an exposed brain. He was reluctant to proceed too hastily or too forcefully for fear of harming Avomora.
Give up, Vulcan, Vumri taunted. You cannot expel me from the Heir’s mind. She cannot endure without me.
Spock refused to believe that.
* * *
“What’s happening, Doctor?” Chapel asked anxiously.
“I wish I knew,” McCoy said. He’d witnessed mind-melds before, and always found them profoundly disturbing, but this one was obviously not going well.
Spock and Avomora were both shaking violently, so much so that McCoy marveled that Spock was still on his feet. Agony contorted their features, more or less in synch with each other. Avo’s facial tics and twitches were echoed on Spock’s usually stoic countenance. Veins and tendons bulged from the Vulcan’s neck. Avo’s trembling fingers dug into the armrests of her chair.
“His vitals are spiking!” Chapel monitored Spock with a whirring handheld scanner, calibrated to Vulcan physiology, while McCoy used his tricorder to track Avomora’s responses. “Heart rate, respiration, cerebral activity… they’re all going through the roof!”
“Same here.” His tricorder hummed as he scanned Avo, the readouts on the visual display panel setting his own pulse racing as well. There was nothing normal about a mind-meld at the best of times, yet Avo and Spock were both being put through a wringer to an alarming degree. He wasn’t sure how much longer their minds or bodies could endure the strain they were under.
“What should we do, Doctor?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” McCoy had a decent grasp of Ozalorian and Vulcan biology, but treating either species while they were telepathically linked to the other was not covered in medical school. He was just a simple country doctor at heart; he didn’t know if he should even try breaking the meld—or would that do more harm than good?
“Aaagggh.”
An anguished moan escaped Avomora as she went into full-scale convulsions, her arms and legs flailing wildly, her head snapping from side to side. Her eyes rolled back until only the whites could be seen. Froth bubbled from her lips.
“Damn it.” McCoy held her down to keep her from injuring herself. He kicked himself for not restraining her earlier, although he’d had no reason to expect this kind of violent reaction to the meld. Straining to contain her thrashing limbs, he shouted urgently at Chapel. “Five cc’s of dylamadon… stat!”
“On it, Doctor!”
She rushed to the medkit, which was laid out on a nearby shelf, and quickly prepared the injection. McCoy was reluctant to administer medication during the meld, but they would have to risk it. Hurrying back to the chair, Chapel applied the hypospray to the convulsing patient. It hissed as it delivered the sedative to Avo’s bloodstream. McCoy hoped the dosage would be enough—but not too much.
“Come on, Avo,” he urged her. “You’ve handled worse than this.”
The drug quieted her convulsions, but only to a degree. She was still shaking and groaning and grimacing, just less frenetically than before. McCoy let go of her arms and stepped back from the chair, breathing hard from the effort needed to restrain Avomora. His shin felt bruised from where she’d kicked him during her seizure. Consulting his tricorder, he was unsurprised to find her vital signs still alarmingly askew. Her entire metabolism was running itself ragged. He was tempted to prescribe a larger dose of the sedative, but he had no idea how that would affect her meld with Spock.
“Thank you, Nurse. Let’s hope that does the trick for now, or at least long enough for Spock to complete the meld.”
“What about Mister Spock?” Chapel cast a worried look at the first officer, who was clearly going through hell as well. “Should I prepare another sedative?”
“Not yet,” McCoy said. “From the looks of it, Spock needs all his faculties to cope with… whatever he’s encountered in there. I’m counting on his sheer Vulcan cussedness to get him through this.”
“Get him through what, Doctor?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? In theory, Spock was just going to poke around in Avo’s mind and determine what the problem was, but had he run into more than he could handle?
“Hell if I know.” McCoy stared helplessly at Spock, who was all too clearly wrestling with unseen tortures. Guilt plagued McCoy as he watched his friend and colleague suffer for the young royal’s sake. “I can’t believe this was my own fool idea!”
* * *
An alarm sounded, waking the palace.
“Uh-oh.” Levine looked at Godwin, who winced at the shrieking siren echoing off the walls of the antechamber. “Sounds like they’re onto us.”
“Saw this coming,” she replied. “I was hoping we could get clear of the palace before they let loose the hounds, but I guess that was just wishful thinking.”
The pair kept watch over the mirrored entrance to Avomora’s chambers. Their duty, as Levine understood it, was to allow Spock and McCoy to treat the sick princess without interruption. That assignment had just gotten a whole lot harder.
A stentorian voice, emanating from concealed speakers, replaced the siren:
“Attention: All staff and residents. Four alien intruders have escaped custody and are believed to be at large in the palace. Non–security personnel are urged to remain in their quarters and report any suspicious individuals to the palace guard immediately. Repeat: Four alien intruders…”
Godwin had her weapon ready. “How long before they sweep these chambers?”
“As soon as those guards we stunned don’t check in,” he guessed.
The guards, along with the governess, were locked inside a walk-in closet. In theory, they would be out for hours. Levine figured matters would be resolved, one way or another, before they woke up.
“Doesn’t give us much time,” Godwin said grimly.
Jemo sprinted into the antechamber from the hall outside the study. “We can’t keep them out, but we can slow them down.” She raised her voice while fixing her gaze on the mirror portal. “Initiate lockdown, priority level royal-slash-citrine. Authorization: YYVA-7191-Basalt.”
A shimmering force field crackled to life on their side of the mirror. Levine heard doors slamming shut elsewhere in the princess’s chambers. Closing off any back entrances, he assumed.
“There!” Jemo said. “We’re sealed off from the rest of the palace… for the Heir’s safety, of course. Couldn’t do that before without triggering an alarm, but I guess that’s academic now.” She shrugged in resignation. “The good news is that these chambers were fitted to keep any threats to the Yiyova out, not to allow armed forces in. The bad news is they’ll be banging on our door sooner rather than later.”
Levine grasped the trade-off and couldn’t argue with Jemo’s reasoning; “later” was going to be all too soon anyway.
“So how is it you know that authorization code anyway?” he asked.
“I’m Avo’s best friend. Who else is she going to trust with it?”
“And the king can’t override the code?” Godwin asked.
“Not at this setting,” Jemo said. “The idea is to protect the Heir even if the Yovode has been compromised.”
“Works for me.” Levine appreciated the irony of the palace’s security systems working to their benefit. “Nothing like having some healthy paranoia on your side.”
A gong sounded, as though someone was banging on the other side of the mirror. An amplified voice blared from the speakers:
“Open up… in the name of the Yovode!”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Jemo said.
Falling back on their training, Levine and Godwin took up defensive positions within two meters of the surrounding doorways, while Jemo headed back toward the study where the princess was being treated. Levine silently wished Spock and McCoy luck while wondering how exactly any of them were going to get out of this mess. At this point, he couldn’t imagine that Avomora’s father would be content to simply stick them back in the gym again. They were way beyond posing as the innocent victims of a forced landing. They were “alien intruders” and bound to be treated as such.
And to think that this all began with a bogus medical alert from Braco…
“Open up immediately. This is your last warning!”
“Not wasting any time, are they?” Godwin said.
“Would you?” he replied.
“Suit yourselves. We’re coming in!”
Squealing disruptors targeted the other side of the portal, producing an ear-piercing ringing as the energy beams struck the mirror. Levine didn’t need to see through the mirror to grasp that the guards were trying to blast their way past the chambers’ defenses. He mentally counted down the layers between them and their opponents: the mirror and the force field.
Only two.
Not nearly enough, he thought. “Any idea how long we can hold them off?”
“Don’t look at me,” Jemo said. “I’m a bodyguard, not an engineer. They can’t go all out without endangering the Heir, but—”
A harrowing cry came from the study. Jemo’s cocky attitude gave way to a look of dismay.
“Avo!”
She bolted from the antechamber, abandoning the two security officers.
* * *
“What’s wrong? What are you doing to her?”
Jemo charged into the study, drawn by Avomora’s heartrending cries and moans, which the sedative had failed to entirely suppress. McCoy couldn’t blame her for being alarmed, but he had enough on his plate without dealing with the agitated bodyguard too.
“Not now!” McCoy glanced back over his shoulder as he tended to his patients, despite the sirens and commotion coming from nearby. He barked brusquely at Jemo. “Let us handle this.”
“Forget it!” Jemo stared aghast at Avomora. She drew her ionic blade and activated it, so that it glowed white hot in the murky study. “I’m shutting this down, right this minute!”
Chapel gasped at the sight of the charged knife.
“Blast it, Jemo!” McCoy kept one eye on his tricorder readings while standing ready to restrain Avomora if she started convulsing again. “You and Rayob brought me here to help Avo. Don’t stop me now!”
Jemo faltered, her knife hand dipping. “But… she looks like she’s being tortured. Do you even know what you’re doing?”
I wish, McCoy thought. “No guarantees, but at this point all we can do is stay the course and hope for the best. We’re on the same side, Jemo. You need to trust me to do everything I can for Avo… and keep out of my way.”
Indecision showed on Jemo’s face before she clicked off her knife. “This had better be worth it, Doctor.”
From your lips to Spock’s pointed ears, McCoy thought.
* * *
The meld was taking its toll on Spock.
His suffering and Avomora’s were one and the same. Only his Vulcan stamina kept him standing despite the borrowed pain searing his nerve endings. Perspiration streamed from his pores as alternating fevers and chills lashed him. His fingers trembled as they remained pressed against Avomora’s temples. Both of his eyes twitched spasmodically, tortured by the light striking the young woman’s eyes, but he kept his inner vision focused on the task before him: dislodging Vumri’s unwanted presence from the princess’s mind. His extended consciousness, reaching deep into Avomora’s psyche, poked and tugged at the invasive tendrils, which seemed to twist and tighten the more he fought to peel them away.
Leave us, Vulcan. Your mind is strong, but not strong enough. Let go.
“You are correct,” Spock realized, “but mine is not the only mind opposing you.” He reached out to Avomora’s own consciousness, drawing her into the contest. His mind’s eye visualized the earpiece that still resided in his physical body, evoking it in order to speak to her, mind to mind. “Can you read me, Your Highness?”
Yes, Spock! I can hear you!
Her voice was faint but clear.
“Listen to me, Your Highness. Doctor McCoy was correct. Vumri has indeed infected your mind telepathically, but I cannot expel her on my own. I require your assistance. We must drive her from your mind together, combining my skill with your spirit. Two minds against her one. Do you understand me?”
I think so, Mister Spock, but… I’m too sick. I feel like I’m dying.
Spock knew what she meant, literally.
“I share your distress, but we must push past the pain to focus on what must be done. We can do this, Avomora. We can set you free.”
Don’t listen to him, Yiyova! Let me take away the pain, as only I can.
Spock grasped how tempting the healer’s offer had to be to Avomora. Their shared agonies cried out for relief. He was also all too aware that abruptly severing the link to Vumri was not without risks, considering how dependent Avomora’s brain and body had become on the telepathic connection. In an ideal world, the princess would be carefully weaned from Vumri’s influence under the supervision of skilled Vulcan adepts, but that option was not available under the circumstances. They could only uproot Vumri through sheer force of will—and trust in Doctor McCoy and Nurse Chapel to deal with the consequences.
