Title: The Desert Children (3/5)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Abandoned to a dire fate in the wilds, McCoy learns that every tale has a dark origin.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2

Part Three

twelve days prior

“What’s the point in dropping off medical supplies if no one down there knows how to use them? It’s a colony of farmers!”

“Bones,” Jim sighs, “we aren’t authorized to intervene.”

Doctor McCoy catches the Captain’s arm. They come to a halt in the corridor, neither man paying attention to any onlookers. “Do you know why the Federation is sending them supplies? Did you even read the full report?”

Stung, Jim snaps back, “I read the report, Doctor McCoy—and I also read and fully comprehended the Enterprise’s orders. As the closest, fully stocked vessel, we are to deliver supplies to the colony. A delivery, no more.”

“Thirty-two dead children in eight years, Jim! Thirty-two, of a disease their parents can’t even describe on paper! Thirty-two children compared to five adults… doesn’t that strike you as odd? Is the bureaucracy so cold-hearted they think that’s not worth sending one man to investigate? We can’t simply ignore people who need our help!”

Jim closes his hands on McCoy’s arms and gives him a light shake. “I know that, Bones. I know, and I asked, believe me, but we aren’t authorized—”

“I swear to God, Jim, if you say that one more time…”

Jim drops his hands and steps back from the other man, drawing his mantle of authority about himself once more. This isn’t the place to argue, and Jim is late for his meeting with Chief Engineer Scott. “The matter is closed for discussion, Doctor. I suggest you return to Sickbay and focus on the patients you are already have.”

The CMO rocks back on his heels, clearly gritting his teeth. Leonard isn’t happy, and he isn’t ready to give up the fight. That much Jim can see. And if Jim is honest with himself, which he tries to be as he enters a turbolift alone, he may soon cave to his friend’s demand. Why shouldn’t they, as sworn Starfleet officers, determine if additional help is needed? Could he truly take the Enterprise back into the depths of space with that unanswered question on his conscience?

“Not authorized, my sainted aunt!” McCoy snarls, slamming into his office. “That stubborn-headed, egotistical—”

“Might I suggest that you do not finish that insult, Doctor McCoy? I will be obligated to report it.”

“Spock!” Leonard’s surprise quickly turns to a scold. “You’re late. In fact, you’re three months late.”

“There have been… unforeseen complications with my schedule.”

“Excuses, excuses—I don’t have use for them, Commander,” the doctor says, approaching the Vulcan, “nor want to hear ’em. I’ll call Chapel and have her prepare an exam room.”

Spock remains unmoving. “I would like to address your outburst in the briefing yesterday.”

Leonard props a hip on the corner of his desk and folds his arms. “Fine. But don’t think you’re walking out of my bay without that physical, Mr. Spock.”

“I am aware of that,” the First Officer murmurs lightly. Then, “Doctor McCoy, while your behavior was not becoming of an officer given your rank and title—”

“Get to the point.”

“—you had a valid argument.”

There is a heartbeat of silence. “Wait,” Leonard says incredulously, raising his hand to forestall any other speech, “are you saying you agree with me?”

“I implied it.”

McCoy cannot help but grin a little. “Spock, I’m touched. I guess there’s some merit to that Vulcan sense of yours after all!”

“If I may continue?” is the bland reply.

He nods, his grin settling into a satisfied smile.

“I have conducted a careful study of the colony’s history and outlined certain risk factors. However, the projected risk is negligible if you follow protocol. It can be argued that, circumstances permitting, Medical would benefit from a short case study of the colonists’ plight. If you wish so, I could speak to the Captain on your behalf.”

Leonard dabs theatrically at the corner of his eye. “Aw, I’m gonna cry!”

“Pardon me?” Spock straightens, the only hint of his alarm.

He rolls his eyes heavenward. “It’s an expression, you emotionally constipated hobgoblin.” His blue eyes twinkle merrily. “This is great, Spock. How soon can you convince Jim?”

A pause. “If I was not detained by an appointment with Sickbay, I would be able to speak with him immediately.”

“You sneaky—! Well,” the man says grudgingly, “guess I walked into that.” He stands up. “Well-played, Mr. Spock. You’ve got your pass. For now.”

Spock dips his head, the acknowledgement of one devious mind to another. “Then if you will excuse me, Doctor McCoy, I shall locate Captain Kirk. ” He adds, almost as an afterthought, “And as humans are so fond of saying, good luck.”

Leonard laughs and waves him away. “Good luck’s what you’ll need when I come back from the colony!” he calls merrily to the Vulcan’s retreating back.

present

Spock shoots Jim an easily interpretable, bland look, and Jim nods slightly in response. Without fuss, the Vulcan exits the building. Instantly the screaming dies into a mixture of whimpers and stifled distress. Jim takes a moment to look over the crowd of children before departing to join his First Officer.

“That,” he says helplessly to the Vulcan, “was unexpected.”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

“Are you all right?”

Spock simply looks at him.

“Okay, okay. I know—an illogical question. Forgive me, Mr. Spock, I just… have no idea what is going on here. What have they done with McCoy, and why is everyone so frightened?” His eyes track back to the doorway and linger there. He mutters, “I feel like the bogeyman.”

“Though the reference ‘bogeyman’ eludes me, Captain, I comprehend your meaning. I shall remain at a distance, but available to assist, while you attempt to discover the answers to your questions.”

“I will ask Jackson to team up with you,” Jim advises. “Find the medical facility—and hopefully answers to those questions we haven’t yet learned to ask.” He steps up to the entrance again, pausing only to say, “Good luck, Spock.”

“Captain,” Spock acknowledges in return.

“Wake up. Hey, Dinner, wake up!”

The command is hard to ignore, particularly in conjunction with the finger prodding sharply into Leonard’s ribcage. The human’s head jerks upward as he snaps from sleep. Squatted a few hand-spans from him is the little man, who eyes Leonard in satisfaction for a brief moment before waddling away, grumbling as he goes. Standing a farther distance away, at the threshold of the tree’s reach, the shape of the woman can be seen as she looks out over the land. Groggily, Leonard realizes it’s far beyond afternoon and he has slept most of the day with his back to the wide oak. He leans forward and scratches at his shoulder blades, feeling the ache of the hard bark that had been pressed into his skin. Without thought, his fingers seek out the water bottle and shake it to confirm that it’s still full.

Leonard drops back against the tree and sighs, a hand falling to his leg. His thumb strokes the edge of the tattered binding. He watches as the man wanders over to Gram and make a shooing motion.

“Scat!” she is told, like she is a vagabond hanging around his tree.

Gram turns her head and, of all things, growls at him.

“None of that now,” the strange, small man reprimands her. “Sun’s coming down ‘gain, and our deal’s run its course. Take your human and go—or give him to the Tree. It doesn’t matter a bird’s bone to me!”

She stares at the man for a long minute before beckoning Leonard to his feet. “Come now,” she calls.

Leonard would rather stay sitting in the only shade in the entire desert. And who’s she to order him around? He lifts an eyebrow at her. “How about this: you tell me where we’re going, and I’ll decide if I want to get up or not.”

Gram says nothing for a moment, seemingly uncaring of his rebellion, but Leonard still tenses as she silently approaches him and kneels at his side. Her hand covers his resting on his injured leg, a lean, long-boned contrast to the blunt shape of his masculine hand. He thinks she is going to softly persuade him to leave the tree; Leonard is therefore shocked when her fingers crush his hand in an unnaturally strong grip and bite down into the flesh of his wound.

The pain is awful, perhaps more terrible than what he had initially felt in the first minutes of his injury. His body automatically seizes, arching upward from the electric sensation, and Leonard tries desperately to pull her hand away from his leg. It’s like stone.

“Please!” he gasps. “Stop it!”

“Your leg is not healed.”

“’N you’re making it worse! Dear God, STOP IT!”

She must hear an appropriate begging quality to his voice, one she had been waiting for, because shelets him go. For a second or two, Leonard concentrates on breathing, on calming his body’s response to the severe pain. Though the pain finally settles into a deep ache, the memory of it stays fresh in his mind.

Shaking, he asks, “How could you…but w-why did you do that?” He holds Gram’s gaze, the expression in his eyes warring between fierce and abhorred.

“To remind you,” she replies evenly. “Will you come now?”

He shudders. “Do I have a choice?”

“There is a choice. You could stay. With the Tree and its keeper.”

Leonard’s eyes flick over to the unusually silent man observing them. He almost thinks he should do exactly that—stay. Clearly this woman, this strange person (a beast after all?), has no qualm about causing him pain. Is she even trying to help him? He doesn’t know.

“And if I stay?” Leonard asks softly, directing his question to the designated keeper of the Tree. “What happens to me then?”

The man bares his pointed teeth. “You become like me.”

He tries to find the joke in the flat words. “Not literally, I hope!”

The man’s chortle is sharp and high-pitched, a bird’s whistle. He says, tinged with bitterness, “Do you think I was always this shriveled and ugly? That I wasn’t a being such as you? Fool!” He turns away and scrambles up the great tree; a spiderweb of darkness seems to coalesce into oddly well-placed footholds to aid the ascent. Leonard shakes away the fanciful image in his mind, barely catching a warning as it echoes down to him, coupled with laughter:

“Stay and become like me. Magic it gives and on magic it feeds, always taking, taking, taking from those who dwell in the Tree!”

The singsong dies with a sudden rush of wind, and high above Leonard’s head, the thinnest branches of the tree rattle. Leafless as they are, they twitch back and forth in an awkward dance, growing more violent as if they desire to become hands and swoop down to snatch someone up. Leonard, choice made, pushes himself away from his spot of repose between trunk and roots and forces his stiff legs to start walking. Gram follows at his heels, wordless, the perfect picture of obedience.

Leonard pauses to linger some safe distance away, at first in curiosity then to watch in disbelief as a strange transformation overtakes the solitary, ancient tree. Shafts of soft sunlight run straight through the stitchery of its branches, unmindful of the heavily shadowed boughs, until at last the light fades along with the grey oak, leaving an evening dusk to settle over an empty stretch of desert. Leonard wonders in that moment if the tree was ever truly rooted in reality, or simply a mirage he and the woman had conjured in passing.

After some minutes, he cannot help but ask, thinking of the squat, slightly ghoulish man who had vanished, “What was he?”

“Nothing,” Gram murmurs. “A trader.”

“But why did we stop there in the first place?” Leonard presses.

Her eyes fix on some destination only she can see. “To rest.”

Leonard considers this, and how it sings of an untold truth. “I know there was another reason,” he challenges her, determined to gain insight into his situation. “I’m trying to trust you, but I can’t if you don’t own up to a bit of the mystery.”

“I needed to know,” she explains, finally breaking the beat of silence between them, “about you.”

Leonard waits for the rest.

“Trolls can smell dreams, even the dreams you dream before you are born. He would know the scent of yours and, as a trader, each dream’s worth.”

Only half of that explanation makes any sense to a rational man like Leonard McCoy, and even then it’s too fantastical for him to believe. Leonard pinches the bridge of his nose and asks a question, one not quite sane to his ears but hoping perhaps it might make sense to her. “Why do my dreams matter to you?”

“Dreams,” is her answer, “are everything. Without them, you would have died long before I found you.”

“Mr. Spock!”

Lieutenant Jackson, a fellow scientist from Spock’s department, crouches down and fishes something small and innocuous to the eye from between a cabinet and a wall. Upon inspection, the object proves to be what he suspected: a broken medical tricorder. Spock takes it with gentle fingers from his hand and holds it up to the light filtering through the window. They’ve already discovered Doctor McCoy’s abandoned trunk of supplies overturned in an adjoining room, next to a neatly made cot.

This isn’t good at all, Jackson thinks. The Captain will be livid when he finds out.

The scenario is obvious: there had been a struggle of some kind, which left the small facility designated as McCoy’s workspace in shambles. The colonists hadn’t even bothered to hide the evidence of the altercation. The only question left to answer is a frightening one: is the CMO alive or dead?

He looks to his commanding officer for further instructions. Mr. Spock, however, is unnervingly quiet, the dark set of his face unreadable and very alien.

“Sir,” the young man says tentatively, softly, “shall we report to Captain Kirk now?”

Spock lowers the tricorder and returns it to Jackson. “You may do so at this time, Lieutenant” is his flat response. “I will continue to gather information. It is likely there will be a trial.”

Which can only mean Spock fears the worst. Jackson can think of no comforting words, not for himself or the Vulcan who had, in many people’s opinions including Jackson’s, been a friend of Doctor Leonard McCoy.

Later, when he realizes how he had been thinking of Doctor McCoy in the past tense, he will berate himself it. Until found or declared dead, it isn’t anyone’s place to give up hope on one of the Enterprise’s own. He can see the Captain feels the same way behind the stoicism with which he receives and accepts Jackson’s blunt report of the remnants of McCoy’s belongings that had been discovered—and of the unchanged fact the location of McCoy himself is still unknown.

“You,” Kirk tells the colonist that had escaped their grasp and led them to the children, who is currently under the watchful eyes of the security officer and has been playing at a stubborn silence, “will explain everything to me, or I am charging you with the abduction of a Starfleet officer.”

That prompts the accused to speak. “We’ve done nothing wrong!”

Captain Kirk makes a sharp movement which is quickly repressed. Jackson observes the tremor in one of Kirk’s fists and sympathizes that the man cannot simply punch the idiot. He isn’t normally a violent person, but he would take a swing at the young man too. Why is this person so tight-lipped?

“My officer is missing,” the Captain says in a no-nonsense tone which hints at a quiet fury. “Is he dead?”

The colonist pales and shakes his head wildly. “We’re not responsible! We’re trying to survive!”

“Explain.”

“I-I can’t tell you more. I can’t.”

Kirk paces like a tiger circling a cage. Jackson spares a glance for the children in the room, who are seated (still in pairs, how strange) on the floor and listening in rapt attention. Except, he notices, for one girl-child. Jackson eases into his Captain’s path. “Sir,” he murmurs, and tips his head in the girl’s direction.

Kirk rounds on the colonist. “Is that your sister?” he asks mildly, indicating the child staring resolutely at the floor. “Perhaps she will tell us the story you are so reluctant to share.”

The young man leaps away from the security officer the moment the Captain moves in her direction. “Don’t!” he snaps in fear. “Leave her alone!”

Kirk says almost gently, “I can’t do that. I must have answers.”

Jackson notices the girl drags her knees to her chest in a basic instinct to shield herself. Does she think they are monsters of some kind like the children had automatically assumed of Mr. Spock? What is going on to create such a deep-seated fear of strangers?

The colonist draws his gaze from the quiet mouse-like child, a defeated look on his face. To Captain Kirk, he explains without preamble, “The doctor wasn’t dead when I last saw him. He was nice, even, to my cousin—to all of the children. But it couldn’t be helped, what we had to do. I’m sorry.” His shoulders sag suddenly. “The man will be gone now. We cannot get him back.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” the Captain questions. “Where would he go? To another city, off-world?”

“To the Others.”

“And who,” a new voice asks, “are the Others?” Mr. Spock is a quiet shadow inside the doorway.

Jackson hadn’t realized the First Officer was there. What surprises him even more is that none of the children scream again; in fact, one of them—the colonist’s cousin—lifts her head and speaks for the first time. “It’s my fault,” she says sadly. “It was my turn and I was too afraid to go.” She implores of the Vulcan, “Can’t you ask Them to give him back? I won’t be afraid anymore, I promise.”

Spock steps into the room, and his dark eyes move from the child to the colonist, resting heavily upon the latter. “You spoke of a tithe. The doctor was the tithe.” It isn’t a question.

The colonist nods. “We thought… because of the man, the children could be spared. The doctor is fully grown; our tithe will be paid for seven years.”

A horrified realization dawns in Captain Kirk’s eyes. Jackson is certain it is identical to what must be apparent upon his own face. Paying a tithe… in people? What sort of barbaric culture is this? And why does it sound like Doctor McCoy is never coming back?

“Where did you take McCoy? ” Kirk asks a final time.

Nervous but resigned, the young man confesses, “To the desert…Their home. “

Next Part

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• The Desert Children (6/6) – from May 21, 2012
• The Desert Children (5/6) – from May 14, 2012
• The Desert Children (4/6) – from May 10, 2012
• The Desert Children (2/5) – from May 2, 2012
• The Desert Children (1/?) – from April 30, 2012