FIC: Speak Of Me In The Present Tense - 1/5
Title: Speak Of Me In The Present Tense
Author name: laughinggas13
Word Count: ~30 000
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Rating: R
Main Characters and/or pairings: Kirk/Spock. Lots of McCoy, cameos from Pike, Uhura, Gaila, Chapel and Scotty
Genre: Action/Adventure
Summary: A World War II AU in which Kirk, Spock and McCoy are agents working for SOE. Parachuted into Occupied France, they’re on a mission to foil plots, blow things up and hopefully make it home in one piece. Kirk is annoyingly persistent, Spock spends far too long analysing things, and McCoy would just like not to have to jump out of aeroplanes, please.
Warnings: Violence, implied off-screen torture.
Disclaimers: Um, yeah, not mine in any way, shape or form.
Author's Notes: Massive thanks to my beta, barrowjane . Also to amine_eyes for giving it a read-through and telling me it wasn't rubbish, for last-minute (by which I mean, 11 o'clock on the day the rough drafts were due) details on what the inside of a bomber plane would look like, and for history geek!squee. Also-also to kradie , again for the history squee. I'm just sorry Alan Turing only crops up as a passing reference. Also-also-also thanks to my fab artist melisus and fanmixer ninety6tears for bringing the awesome. There is an Epic Historical Note over here (which I'll probably keep sticking stuff onto as I remember more reasons why History Is Cool).
Art: Here
Mix: Here
The head of Spock’s section at Bletchley Park is at least nine inches shorter than Spock himself. As he speaks, he seems unable to raise his gaze to Spock’s face, instead fiddling with the blotter on his desk so that Spock is afforded an uninspiring view of the balding crown of his head.
“Your work here has been most exemplary, Spock,” he says. It’s the third time this sentiment has been expressed and Spock sincerely hopes that he will come to the point of this meeting soon or else allow Spock to return to his work. “Yes, most exemplary,” Portman mutters.
Spock waits.
“However, I - that is to say, we - do not feel that your prodigious talents are best served here at Bletchley.”
There’s a snide emphasis on prodigious that turns Spock’s instinctive reaction of blank shock to an anger that he will not show. He says blandly, “May I enquire as to your reasoning, sir?”
“My reasoning?” Portman’s fingers tighten convulsively on the blotter. “We, ah, thought that-there’s a new branch of Special Operations, you see. Make use of your background-a more active role in the war effort, you know. Would have thought you’d welcome a change. Can’t be much fun shut up in a tin can all day crunching numbers, haha.”
“I do not find my work unpleasant, sir,” Spock says.
“No, well, hah, not my idea of a good time, but de gustibus non est disputatum and all that. But come now, Spock, this job’s right up your street. Someone mentioned you had French citizenship…?”
Spock can make no sense of this last remark, but he says, “My father does. I do not, although I spent some time there as a child.”
Portman beams at his desk. “Splendid. Tu parles le français, bien sûr?”
Portman’s assumption of familiarity irritates Spock, as it has from their first meeting. Rather than respond in kind, he says shortly, “Yes.”
“Excellent, excellent. I think you’ll fit right in. Well, I’ll wire General Hardison this afternoon and tell him to expect you for interview tomorrow morning. Don’t let me detain you, now. I’m sure you’ll want to say goodbye to your colleagues and pack and…” He waves a hand vaguely. “Suchlike.” The blotter is relinquished and he takes Spock’s hand in a slightly sweaty grip, which Spock endures in silence. “I’m sure you will make an invaluable addition to SOE, Spock,” he says, finally looking him in the eye.
Spock discerns traces of relief that this interview is over as well as smug satisfaction that Portman has got his way. He wants to say On reflection, I would prefer to remain here, just to see Portman’s comfortable superiority crumble, but this is an illogical impulse. Bletchley Park has become stifling of late, the conversations with his colleagues as formulaic as the work.
“Thank you, sir,” he says. The door shuts behind him with a decisive click.
~
David Fellows finds him while Spock is packing the last of his shirts. He stands in uncomfortable silence just outside the door until Spock invites him in.
“I heard Portman’s given you the sack.”.
“I am assured my new position will make optimal use of my talents,” Spock says.
“But you’re still leaving, aren’t you? Well,” he gestures to the suitcase, “obviously you’re going, but Portman’s making you, isn’t he?”
“That would be an accurate assessment.”
Spock looks closely at Fellows. A leaking pen has left a trail of blue splatters down his starched white shirt and he hasn’t even tried to scrub them out, which is, in itself, unusual. Furthermore, his flushed face denotes some agitation. Then there is the fact that he is in Spock’s room at all. In the entirety of their acquaintance, Spock has visited Fellows’ room only twice and the reverse has never occurred.
Fellows kicks nervously at one ankle. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“I am uncertain--” How you reached that conclusion, is what Spock intends to say, but Fellows interrupts.
“It’s all right if you blame me - I blame myself.”
“I do not bear you any ill will,” Spock tells him firmly. “Portman’s decision is based entirely on his own caprices, not on any wrong-doing on my part or yours.”
“He doesn’t know?” Fellows looks up quickly, unabashed relief breaking out across his face.
“Not as far as I am aware.”
“Then why?”
“That is a personal matter between myself and Mr Portman.” Spock realises one hand is toying with the clasp of his suitcase and stills it.
There’s a silence of a few moments while Fellows makes the necessary leaps of deduction - he is, after all, the most perceptive of Spock’s colleagues. Then, “The bastard.”
This, while factually inaccurate, seems a fair assessment. As Fellows calls Portman every disgusting epithet he can think of, Spock stands impassively by his bed. There is something cathartic about seeing Fellows give free rein to the emotions Spock would like to express.
“He can’t get away with this! You should report him.”
Fellows’ unshakeable conviction that justice can be reached through the proper authorities is both endearing and exasperating. Spock shakes his head.
“It would serve no purpose. Portman is almost certainly perceived as vital to the war effort--” Fellows snorts viciously at this, “-and any accusation against him would only be stalled until forgotten about.” Besides which, my father would never forgive such a smear upon the family’s honour.
“So you’re really going?” Fellows looks a little lost at the prospect, which Spock finds disquieting. He is not used to forming attachments, has no idea how to react to the probable severance of this one.
“I am,” he says.
“If it’s any consolation, I’ll miss you like hell,” Fellows says with an awkward shrug of the left shoulder. “Only intelligent conversation I’ve had in months. And, you know.”
“I, too, found your company diverting.”
“Thank you. I try. Well…” He offers a hand for Spock to shake, then retreats from the room. Spock watches him go and considers that so-called ‘human interaction’ is considerably more complex than its prevalence would suggest.
~
As the train to London heaves and sways its way out of the station, Spock edges his way through the press of people in the corridor until he reaches a compartment with only two other occupants: a pair of young men engaged in a heated discussion about - as best he can tell - golf. Spock doesn’t think they will take much notice of him, and so it proves. He slides his suitcase into the overhead rack and takes the seat nearest the window. One man spares him a distracted nod; the other is too caught up in the argument even for that.
Spock is ejected into the bustle of Waterloo station seven minutes after midday and makes his way on foot to the Pall Mall club where he is to meet his potential employer.
In the vestibule, an impeccably dressed footman relieves him of his hat and overcoat and intimates in a conspiratorial murmur that General Hardison will be out as soon as no more affairs of State demand his presence.
Spock waits.
Hardison, when he emerges, is a heavyset, balding man, whose suit cannot disguise a military bearing. He greets Spock from halfway down the hall, a hoarse bellow that causes the footman to look round in some alarm. He comes to a halt in front of Spock in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a train pulling into a station and shakes Spock’s hand in a brisk, businesslike fashion.
“Good to meet you, Mr Spock, good to meet you. Portman’s told us all about you.”
He pauses expectantly and Spock realises that he’s waiting for some sort of response. “That is most gratifying to hear,” he says, and Hardison nods, as though confirming something to himself.
“If you’ll come with me…” He ushers Spock down a side passage and into a small room with a single dining table. “These things are so much more civilised over a bite to eat. Here.”
The menu he hands Spock is tastefully printed on a single side of postcard-sized paper. When Spock orders leek and potato soup as a main dish, Hardison eyes him doubtfully, but as Spock has learnt, a useful talent can make up for a great deal of eccentricity, and Hardison says nothing.
He continues to say nothing until four and a half minutes after the food has arrived, at which point he puts down his cutlery and, looking Spock in the eye, says, “Do you love your country?”
Spock considers the question. “To which country do you refer?”
Hardison smiles. “They said you were a clever one. Either would do, I suppose.”
Spock hesitates, knowing that the truth is perhaps not what this man wants to hear, but feeling compelled to tell it anyway. “I do not know. I know I do not feel the sentimental attachment to fields and country churches advocated by government propaganda.”
Hardison is watching him with some amusement; Spock fights the urge to look down at his soup and continues: “What I do think is that England stands as the best available check to the ambitions of the Third Reich, and to that end, I offer my wholehearted support.”
Hardison’s cool grey gaze doesn’t shift from Spock’s face. Spock meets his eyes, half-defiant. By his standards, the speech he’s just given was long and overly personal, but now he is beginning to regret not being more effusive. Finally, Hardison looks down at his wineglass, swirls its contents ruminatively.
“You seem a practical man, Mr Spock.” The wine in the glass makes five rotations as Spock waits for him to continue, unsure if he is being complimented or not. “Portman says you speak fluent French?”
“Yes.”
“And you picked it up from you mother?”
“Yes, though my father engaged a tutor for the purpose of teaching grammar and literature.”
“I see. And how long since you were last in France?”
Spock does not have to think hard: the summer before his mother died. “Eight years.”
“Any relatives there that you know of?”
“In theory my mother’s parents, though I have never met them and they may no longer be living.”
Hardison leans forward and says in a confidential tone, “Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell a Bletchley man how to keep secrets, but if you do come and work for us, you’ll be forbidden to tell anyone, even family, what you’re up to.”
Spock thinks of broken-off telephone calls and letters left unanswered. “That will not be a problem,” he tells Hardison.
Hardison beams and attacks his lamb chops with renewed vigour. “Excellent, excellent. Well, provided the psych boys okay you, we’ll be packing you off for training by the end of the week, and very glad to have you. Don’t know what Portman was thinking of, letting you go, but Bletchley’s loss is our gain and all that. Now, you’ll be staying in London for the next few days, correct?”
Spock commits all Hardison’s instructions to memory. Once the meal is over, the footman returns his hat and coat and guides him to a waiting car, suggesting in hushed tones that the Grenville Hotel is very nice.
Spock is not entirely surprised to find, upon arrival, that a room has already been reserved for him under a false name.
~
SOE’s psychologist is a smooth-faced man of indeterminate age who finds it hard to conceal his irritation as Spock patiently tells him that yes, the inkblots he is being shown really do look like inkblots.
“Perhaps if you were to relax a bit, Mr Spock?” he suggests. “It’s not a test, you know.”
It is, but Spock forbears to point this out.
Once he has exhausted his inkblots, the psychologist moves on to questions about Spock’s childhood (satisfactory), his relationship with his father (distant by mutual consent), his education (again, satisfactory), and his reaction to his mother’s death. This last occasions a pause as Spock searches for words that aren’t well rehearsed and impersonal. To his dismay, he can’t find any. Perhaps the efforts of the last eight years to bury such thoughts have been more successful than he’d supposed, he thinks bitterly.
The psychologist notes his lack of response with a gleam of triumph. “So you loved you mother more than your father?”
Spock says yes, because ‘love’ is not a word he has ever associated with Sarek. “What relevance does this have?”
The psychologist gives a tiny smile. “We like to know these things, Mr Spock. Now, on the subject of personal relationships…”
Spock is careful. He does not lie, but he leaves enough unsaid that the psychologist makes his own assumptions: a casual affaire de coeur at Bletchley, not allowed to interfere with his work, broken off to both parties’ relief. The psychologist nods and offers meaningless sympathy and writes it all down.
Shortly after this, Spock is released into the slightly damp, dirty air of London in the spring. Six minutes’ walk takes him to Embankment where he watches the Thames flow sluggishly by, a lacklustre brown. If he heads north, he could reach his father’s house in less than half an hour, though at this time in the morning, Sarek is most likely to be lecturing at the University. As far as Spock knows, his father’s routine has not varied in the slightest since he arrived in London sixteen years ago.
In any case, Spock has no reason to return to the house in Russell Square; he has not lived there for three years, two months and twenty-six days, when he accepted the job at Bletchley Park. He has not considered it home in eight years, not since he returned from school at Christmas to find his mother had died in November and no one had thought to write to him. (After several hours spent struggling just to commit to paper his desire to join GC&CS, Spock can understand the difficulty involved. He does not consider this a valid excuse.)
He doesn’t notice that it has begun to rain until he feels the drops start to trickle down his neck. The pavements are already dappled with dark spots, turning slicker underfoot as he makes his way back to the Grenville. From out towards the mouth of the river comes a dull rumble of thunder.
~
Through the train’s rain-streaked window, Spock watches as the neat rows of London’s brownstone terraces recede into the distance. Up ahead, the houses inch further away from the tracks until there’s a clear band of green on either side. Further out, the line dwindles to a single track and the stations they pass become little more than strips of paving with grass growing through the cracks, nameless and deserted.
The station at Beaulieu at least looks like it might have seen human life in the last month. Two women and a man, all in their early twenties, alight along with Spock. They’re herded towards a covered van by a soldier even younger than them - a private, not long joined up and not yet seen active service, judging by the state of his uniform. Spock takes this in, as well as the fact that one of the women is cheating on the clothing coupons - her skirt is newly made, with more pleats than government guidelines allow. He does not say anything; to be an observer requires distance.
In the van, he shuts his eyes against the dim, canvas-filtered light and the tentative conversation of his companions, and quietly tries to compile a map of the route the van takes. Country roads, he discovers, are harder to distinguish than the jumble of cobbles, asphalt and tarmac he was accustomed to in London.
Sixteen minutes and what Spock estimates as six miles later, the van rolls to a halt on a gravel driveway. He is the only one getting off here, and once the other three have given the house a cursory glance, they return to their conversation until the van moves off again. Spock picks up his suitcase and turns towards the house.
It’s a solid, turn-of-the-century production in redbrick. Ivy is making a half-hearted attempt to colonise the front wall, though it hasn’t been planted long enough to have fully taken hold. The hanging baskets on either side of the front door look badly in need of water. Spock supposes that since the house has been requisitioned, SOE has had better things to do than tend to the plants. He can picture his mother’s reaction to such neglect; with a practised effort, he forces the image from his mind.
Spock has just time to put his suitcase on the bed - he’s in the middle of undoing the catches when the orderly knocks - before he’s hustled down into the former drawing room to meet the man whom Spock supposes is now his commanding officer.
Colonel Christopher Pike rises to shake Spock’s hand, but most of his weight rests on the other hand, clamped on the edge of the desk. This done, he subsides back into his chair with a quickly-hidden grimace. Spock is not very good at reading other people’s emotions (if he concentrates, he can usually read the clues in their body language; intuitive interpretation is another matter entirely), but he thinks he sees self-disgust there and surmises a man unwillingly relegated to this desk job.
But Pike’s smile is friendly and his eyes shrewd. Spock has the feeling he’s just been scanned and catalogued. He doesn’t want to admit that it’s a little unnerving to be on the receiving end for once.
The conversation proceeds in an amiable fashion: Pike welcomes Spock to Beaulieu, enquires politely after his journey down here, asks a few general questions about life at Bletchley Park. Spock relaxes his guard somewhat.
“Working with Turing, I guess you’re pretty hot stuff with codes and ciphers and all?”
“I have a certain proficiency.”
“You wouldn’t mind helping us out, would you? We’re short one coding instructor.” He sees Spock’s slight frown and hastens to add: “It’s just a couple of hours a week, and there’s no sense in getting some amateur in to teach you it all over again, right?”
“It would seem the logical course of action,” Spock admits. Privately, he is nothing like so sure that it is; he has never taught anyone anything, suspects he will not be good at it.
But Pike is smiling. “Thank you, Mr Spock. We appreciate it.” And Spock is, oddly, reassured.
Pike winds up the meeting a few minutes later with a, “Well, mustn’t be keeping you.” Spock’s halfway to the door before he adds, “The rest of the group’s arriving this afternoon.”
“The…rest of the group?”
“Big house, Mr Spock. Got to make use of it. They’re Americans too.”
Spock shuts the door behind him feeling slightly uneasy. Pike should not know that. Sarek left Boston years before Spock was born, Spock has no legal ties to America, and he has fourteen years of private education to thank for erasing any trace of an accent. Pike should not know that, and Spock does not like to think what other information SOE may be keeping in his file.
~
Spock is alerted to the arrival of ‘the rest of the group’ by the crunch of gravel as the same van as before pulls into the driveway and two men get out. His bedroom window offers a view of the pair as they make their way to the door. He can hear them conversing in low tones.
He returns his attention to his newspaper; if they are to undergo training together, there will be adequate time for introductions later. Unfortunately, it appears the new arrivals are not of the same mind. Spock has barely read past the headlines when a clatter of footsteps in the corridor outside announces the approach of his… team-mates. The door handle rattles and there’s a thump as though someone has fallen against the door, then a voice with a pronounced Atlantan drawl says, “Normal people knock, Jim.”
Spock gets up and crosses the room to open the door, feeling that it is better to meet these men on his own terms.
The scene in the corridor is undignified: one man, the older of the two, is holding his companion in check with an arm flung across his chest. His fist is raised to rap on the door, but when he sees Spock standing there, he quickly converts it into a handshake.
“Leonard McCoy. And this one, who was clearly born in a barn -”
“Can make his own introductions. Jim Kirk. Hey.”
Kirk pushes against McCoy’s arm until he’s released. Spock stands aside to let both of them in.
“I am Spock.”
Kirk narrows his eyes at him suspiciously. “I thought this was an American school, but you sound like Jeeves.”
On his left, McCoy eyes him as though contemplating bodily harm. “Manners cost nothin’, Jim.”
“Sorry.” Kirk seems to make a physical effort to shake off his dark mood. He runs a hand over his hair and smiles suddenly and broadly at Spock. There’s a feral edge to it, Spock thinks, then decides that this is a needlessly dramatic interpretation. He doesn’t smile back.
Kirk appears possessed of a restless energy: he hovers by the mantelpiece for a few seconds, toying with the brass candlesticks on it, before crossing to the desk and thumbing idly through Spock’s papers. Spock wants to stop him, to tell him that these things are Spock’s and he has no right to touch them, but suspects this will only elicit the same supercilious smirk on Kirk’s face as it had on the boys at school. McCoy, by contrast, is content to stand just inside the door, unmoving.
Neither seems inclined to break the silence. Spock casts about for a suitable topic of conversation - small talk is not one of his skills - and settles on, “I hope your crossing was uneventful, Doctor McCoy?”
Kirk’s head whips round; McCoy looks at him in concern.
“How did you know he’s a doctor?” Kirk demands.
Spock is already regretting his slip. Kirk’s antagonistic tone only makes him surer that silence would have been the better policy. His hands clasped behind his back tighten their grip involuntarily. He says, “I observed when we shook hands that Doctor McCoy wears cufflinks in the shape of the caduceus - the symbol of the medical profession.”
“I know what it is,” Kirk snaps.
“Of course.”
“And what can you tell about me?”
Spock looks him over: close-cropped hair, parade ground stance tempered with a deliberate slouch, suit inexpensive and new. “I would say that you are a soldier, though not a very good one. From your accent, of Mid-Western origin, though it is no longer distinctive, therefore you have relocated several times since your childhood and -”
“Stop it.” It’s McCoy that speaks, not Kirk. Kirk is glaring, not at Spock, but through him. The front page of The Times is crumpled under his fingers. As though McCoy’s words bring him back to the present, he unclenches his hand and refocuses his gaze on Spock.
“That’s not funny,” he says.
“Hey now, Jim, you did ask.” McCoy’s voice is pitched low and concerned.
“I apologise if I have upset you,” Spock begins, but McCoy waves him quiet.
They both of them watch Kirk, who avoids their eyes. After a silence in which he attempts to smooth out the crumpled newspaper, he darts a quick look at Spock and mumbles, “Sorry.”
Spock nods, tight-lipped. He is already certain he will not find the company a Beaulieu half as convivial as a Bletchley, but is resolved not to let it trouble him. In the face of McCoy’s increasingly pathetic attempts at small talk, Spock maintains a distance and answers any questions put to him as succinctly as possible.
He suspects that he is not the only one to welcome the orderly’s knock.
~
“Thank you, Mr Spock.” Professor Uhura - though the way she holds herself suggests she’s not spent much time sitting behind a desk - smiles, and there’s a brief moment of interference while Spock’s neural pathways readjust to English. “Bilingual, I think Colonel Pike said?”
Spock nods, feeling himself subjected to a silent scrutiny. Finally, Uhura nods. “Well, you’re fluent enough, and technically perfect - if anything too perfect. It doesn’t sound natural somehow.”
Kirk looks up from spinning a pencil to say, “He sounds like a robot in English, so what do you expect?”
Uhura smiles far too sweetly. “I had no idea you were such an expert in linguistics, Mr Kirk.” She continues in French: “Perhaps you’d like to tell us a bit about your academic background in the subject? What do you think of de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics?”
“Haven’t read it,” Kirk retorts, also in French, “but I don’t need a linguistics degree to tell you that Mr Spock sounds like a book of grammar exercises, and if you think the Milice won’t spot that you’re a - sadly mistaken.”
“Not bad,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Your accent’s appalling though.”
“Québécois.”
“Appalling. You’ll stand out far more than Mr Spock.”
“You really think the Germans are going to pick up on regional accents?”
“Maybe not, but the first Frenchman you run into will see through you the moment you open your mouth.”
Kirk opens his mouth, but appears to concede the point and shuts it again. Uhura nods approvingly. “We can work on that.”
“Oh, good,” he mutters.
“Doctor McCoy, your turn. Just a few questions to answer, then I’ll let you go.”
McCoy sits up straighter and swallows as though preparing for an ordeal by fire. After the first question, Spock sees why: where he (and Kirk, he admits) slip easily into the language without needing to think, McCoy pauses every third word or so. When his answer necessitates a verb in the conditional, a look of sheer panic crosses his face. Uhura brings the interview to a conclusion as soon as is tactfully possible.
“Your accent’s very good,” she begins.
“Yeah, always been good at accents,” McCoy says, Southern drawl back thicker than ever. “Not so great at the grammar, though.”
“Hey, between us, we make one whole French-speaker.” Kirk gives them the same startlingly sudden smile as before, and Spock feels an eyebrow lift in involuntary response.
Uhura sighs. “Well, I suppose it will do wonders for your teamwork skills if it takes all three of you to order a coffee.”
~
They take their dinner in the smaller of the two dining rooms, but it’s still hard not to feel dwarfed by the vast expanse of the mahogany table. By common consent, they sit together at one end, McCoy at the head of the table ‘to stop you two pulling each other’s pigtails’. Spock cannot help but feel that he has not thought this through - Kirk is still in his line of sight and the table is not wide enough to prevent physical contact, if it comes to that. For the moment, though, Kirk seems content to concentrate on his food.
“Those carrots won’t run away if you eat them one at a time, Jim,” McCoy observes.
Kirk looks up with a somewhat guilty expression, quickly concealed behind a virtuous one that fools nobody. “Just trying to ward off scurvy, o Doctorly one.”
McCoy snorts, turning his attention to Spock. “And you’re as bad as he is - don’t think I can’t see that slice of ham under your knife.”
“I do not believe it is any of your business what I choose to eat, Doctor.”
“Vegetarian?” Kirk says.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
To Spock’s surprise, his tone is not confrontational, only curious, so that he finds himself answering as openly as he can. “I do not believe that the consumption of meat adds anything of value to my diet that cannot be obtained by other means. Therefore, there seems little point in continuing to eat it.”
“A vegetarian revolutionary,” McCoy murmurs. “God help us all.”
“Trade you for your ham? You can have my… I think they’re beans.” He prods doubtfully at the congealed mass of green.
“Oh no you don’t -” McCoy starts, but Spock has already passed his plate across to Kirk. Homegrown vegetables are possibly the only things not in short supply these days, but he appreciates the offer all the same.
Feeling it would be as well to further this spirit of co-operation, Spock tells him so. “Not a problem,” Kirk mutters, pushing the plate back.
“See, you can play nice,” McCoy says. Both Kirk and Spock turn to narrow their eyes at him.
After dinner, they adjourn to the library where Spock attempts to read in the face of Kirk’s voluble conversation with McCoy. By the time he has reached the third page, he has taken none of it in and has already forgotten the title.
A perfunctory knock, and the orderly’s head emerges round the door. “Post for you,” he says, tossing the envelopes down on a desk.
“Thanks, Jackson,” Kirk calls after him, making no movement to retrieve the letters. Seeing Spock’s look, he shrugs. “What? There are only two letters and I’ve got no one who’d write to me. Therefore, QED, they’re for you and Bones.”
“‘Bones’?”
McCoy pushes himself out of his armchair and makes his way over to the desk, calling back, “You do know I’m never forgiving you for that, right, Jim?”
“Ah, you love it really.” Kirk swivels in his chair until his legs are dangling over the side. “So, do tell, have the fabled Kirk family deigned to send their beloved son a letter? No? Oh, I am shocked.”
“Nope. One for you, though, Spock.”
The envelope and the single sheet of paper inside are both of good quality; the handwriting neat, uniform strokes in black ink. Spock can tell it’s from Sarek even before he’s read the stilted greeting: To My Son. Sarek does not believe in starting letters with Dear, except possibly billets-doux, though Spock would not swear to his even knowing such things exist.
He reads its contents swiftly - disapproval laced with concern lest Spock do even more to tarnish the family name than he already has - before slipping it back into its envelope and tucking it in his breast pocket. He looks up to find McCoy leafing through his own letter.
“Oh, you can tell it’s from Jocelyn all right,” McCoy says presently.
Kirk winces. “Bad, is it?”
“No, but my God can she write. It goes on for pages. All about how a little separation is good for the soul, and absence makes the heart grow fonder - I think she actually quotes that one word-for-word somewhere - and-Oh. She says Joanna misses me.” McCoy’s voice softens. “And Jo’s signed it too.”
“Hey, yeah? Let’s see.” He goes to lean over McCoy’s shoulder. “Got nicer writing than her mama.”
“Sweet as it is that you wanna do the knight in shining armour thing for me, Jim, please don’t. You don’t know me - and you certainly don’t know Jocelyn - well enough to be passing judgement. Anyway,” he adds, shuffling the pages into order, “who knows? Perhaps she’s right and this damn-fool war will be the saving of us.”
Kirk raises his eyebrows, but pats McCoy’s shoulder and says, “Perhaps.”
~
By the second day, whoever prepares their meals has worked out for themselves that Spock is vegetarian, and his arrangement with Kirk is rendered unfeasible. Kirk reacts to the news stoically: “Well, it was nice while it lasted.”
As well as undergoing lessons in ‘survival training’, Spock has his new role as instructor to contend with. Beaulieu, while theoretically under the same shadowy wing of government as Bletchley Park, is cast very much in the role of unwanted hanger-on, as Spock discovers when he hears Pike’s suggestions on what his lessons should cover. Coding methods looked on as quaint curiosities at Bletchley are here seen as the pinnacle of cryptographic achievement. It would be laughable if the situation were not so serious.
He also discovers that ‘short one coding instructor’ translates to ‘we don’t have a coding instructor at all’, because he finds himself teaching classes across the whole Beaulieu estate. He would not have thought it possible to keep so many people secret from each other, but each group seems convinced they are the only students there and makes the subsequent demands on his time. Spock feels it incumbent on him not to reveal Beaulieu’s secrets and answers evasively when his classes ask where he’s going.
On the third day, he realises, with a hastily repressed feeling of horror, that being the only coding instructor means he will have to teach Kirk and McCoy.
McCoy, who knows full well that he is only here because of his skills as a doctor, dislikes being forced to learn what he views as useless information. He grumbles almost continually, and has been known to launch into truly impressive rants at the dinner table, but Spock feels he can cope with this if he sets his mind to it.
Kirk is potentially more problematic. Spock foresees two outcomes: either Kirk will argue constantly with him and insist on finding ways to improve on what he’s been taught, as he does with Professor Uhura, or he will simply decide that the entire thing is a waste of time. Spock has seen the results of this, and they are not unpleasant for the instructors in question. Kirk merely listens to as little as he can get away with, then completes whatever task has been set with the minimum of fuss and effort.
Spock is unsure which outcome he dislikes most.
Part Two
Author name: laughinggas13
Word Count: ~30 000
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Rating: R
Main Characters and/or pairings: Kirk/Spock. Lots of McCoy, cameos from Pike, Uhura, Gaila, Chapel and Scotty
Genre: Action/Adventure
Summary: A World War II AU in which Kirk, Spock and McCoy are agents working for SOE. Parachuted into Occupied France, they’re on a mission to foil plots, blow things up and hopefully make it home in one piece. Kirk is annoyingly persistent, Spock spends far too long analysing things, and McCoy would just like not to have to jump out of aeroplanes, please.
Warnings: Violence, implied off-screen torture.
Disclaimers: Um, yeah, not mine in any way, shape or form.
Author's Notes: Massive thanks to my beta, barrowjane . Also to amine_eyes for giving it a read-through and telling me it wasn't rubbish, for last-minute (by which I mean, 11 o'clock on the day the rough drafts were due) details on what the inside of a bomber plane would look like, and for history geek!squee. Also-also to kradie , again for the history squee. I'm just sorry Alan Turing only crops up as a passing reference. Also-also-also thanks to my fab artist melisus and fanmixer ninety6tears for bringing the awesome. There is an Epic Historical Note over here (which I'll probably keep sticking stuff onto as I remember more reasons why History Is Cool).
Art: Here
Mix: Here
The head of Spock’s section at Bletchley Park is at least nine inches shorter than Spock himself. As he speaks, he seems unable to raise his gaze to Spock’s face, instead fiddling with the blotter on his desk so that Spock is afforded an uninspiring view of the balding crown of his head.
“Your work here has been most exemplary, Spock,” he says. It’s the third time this sentiment has been expressed and Spock sincerely hopes that he will come to the point of this meeting soon or else allow Spock to return to his work. “Yes, most exemplary,” Portman mutters.
Spock waits.
“However, I - that is to say, we - do not feel that your prodigious talents are best served here at Bletchley.”
There’s a snide emphasis on prodigious that turns Spock’s instinctive reaction of blank shock to an anger that he will not show. He says blandly, “May I enquire as to your reasoning, sir?”
“My reasoning?” Portman’s fingers tighten convulsively on the blotter. “We, ah, thought that-there’s a new branch of Special Operations, you see. Make use of your background-a more active role in the war effort, you know. Would have thought you’d welcome a change. Can’t be much fun shut up in a tin can all day crunching numbers, haha.”
“I do not find my work unpleasant, sir,” Spock says.
“No, well, hah, not my idea of a good time, but de gustibus non est disputatum and all that. But come now, Spock, this job’s right up your street. Someone mentioned you had French citizenship…?”
Spock can make no sense of this last remark, but he says, “My father does. I do not, although I spent some time there as a child.”
Portman beams at his desk. “Splendid. Tu parles le français, bien sûr?”
Portman’s assumption of familiarity irritates Spock, as it has from their first meeting. Rather than respond in kind, he says shortly, “Yes.”
“Excellent, excellent. I think you’ll fit right in. Well, I’ll wire General Hardison this afternoon and tell him to expect you for interview tomorrow morning. Don’t let me detain you, now. I’m sure you’ll want to say goodbye to your colleagues and pack and…” He waves a hand vaguely. “Suchlike.” The blotter is relinquished and he takes Spock’s hand in a slightly sweaty grip, which Spock endures in silence. “I’m sure you will make an invaluable addition to SOE, Spock,” he says, finally looking him in the eye.
Spock discerns traces of relief that this interview is over as well as smug satisfaction that Portman has got his way. He wants to say On reflection, I would prefer to remain here, just to see Portman’s comfortable superiority crumble, but this is an illogical impulse. Bletchley Park has become stifling of late, the conversations with his colleagues as formulaic as the work.
“Thank you, sir,” he says. The door shuts behind him with a decisive click.
~
David Fellows finds him while Spock is packing the last of his shirts. He stands in uncomfortable silence just outside the door until Spock invites him in.
“I heard Portman’s given you the sack.”.
“I am assured my new position will make optimal use of my talents,” Spock says.
“But you’re still leaving, aren’t you? Well,” he gestures to the suitcase, “obviously you’re going, but Portman’s making you, isn’t he?”
“That would be an accurate assessment.”
Spock looks closely at Fellows. A leaking pen has left a trail of blue splatters down his starched white shirt and he hasn’t even tried to scrub them out, which is, in itself, unusual. Furthermore, his flushed face denotes some agitation. Then there is the fact that he is in Spock’s room at all. In the entirety of their acquaintance, Spock has visited Fellows’ room only twice and the reverse has never occurred.
Fellows kicks nervously at one ankle. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“I am uncertain--” How you reached that conclusion, is what Spock intends to say, but Fellows interrupts.
“It’s all right if you blame me - I blame myself.”
“I do not bear you any ill will,” Spock tells him firmly. “Portman’s decision is based entirely on his own caprices, not on any wrong-doing on my part or yours.”
“He doesn’t know?” Fellows looks up quickly, unabashed relief breaking out across his face.
“Not as far as I am aware.”
“Then why?”
“That is a personal matter between myself and Mr Portman.” Spock realises one hand is toying with the clasp of his suitcase and stills it.
There’s a silence of a few moments while Fellows makes the necessary leaps of deduction - he is, after all, the most perceptive of Spock’s colleagues. Then, “The bastard.”
This, while factually inaccurate, seems a fair assessment. As Fellows calls Portman every disgusting epithet he can think of, Spock stands impassively by his bed. There is something cathartic about seeing Fellows give free rein to the emotions Spock would like to express.
“He can’t get away with this! You should report him.”
Fellows’ unshakeable conviction that justice can be reached through the proper authorities is both endearing and exasperating. Spock shakes his head.
“It would serve no purpose. Portman is almost certainly perceived as vital to the war effort--” Fellows snorts viciously at this, “-and any accusation against him would only be stalled until forgotten about.” Besides which, my father would never forgive such a smear upon the family’s honour.
“So you’re really going?” Fellows looks a little lost at the prospect, which Spock finds disquieting. He is not used to forming attachments, has no idea how to react to the probable severance of this one.
“I am,” he says.
“If it’s any consolation, I’ll miss you like hell,” Fellows says with an awkward shrug of the left shoulder. “Only intelligent conversation I’ve had in months. And, you know.”
“I, too, found your company diverting.”
“Thank you. I try. Well…” He offers a hand for Spock to shake, then retreats from the room. Spock watches him go and considers that so-called ‘human interaction’ is considerably more complex than its prevalence would suggest.
~
As the train to London heaves and sways its way out of the station, Spock edges his way through the press of people in the corridor until he reaches a compartment with only two other occupants: a pair of young men engaged in a heated discussion about - as best he can tell - golf. Spock doesn’t think they will take much notice of him, and so it proves. He slides his suitcase into the overhead rack and takes the seat nearest the window. One man spares him a distracted nod; the other is too caught up in the argument even for that.
Spock is ejected into the bustle of Waterloo station seven minutes after midday and makes his way on foot to the Pall Mall club where he is to meet his potential employer.
In the vestibule, an impeccably dressed footman relieves him of his hat and overcoat and intimates in a conspiratorial murmur that General Hardison will be out as soon as no more affairs of State demand his presence.
Spock waits.
Hardison, when he emerges, is a heavyset, balding man, whose suit cannot disguise a military bearing. He greets Spock from halfway down the hall, a hoarse bellow that causes the footman to look round in some alarm. He comes to a halt in front of Spock in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a train pulling into a station and shakes Spock’s hand in a brisk, businesslike fashion.
“Good to meet you, Mr Spock, good to meet you. Portman’s told us all about you.”
He pauses expectantly and Spock realises that he’s waiting for some sort of response. “That is most gratifying to hear,” he says, and Hardison nods, as though confirming something to himself.
“If you’ll come with me…” He ushers Spock down a side passage and into a small room with a single dining table. “These things are so much more civilised over a bite to eat. Here.”
The menu he hands Spock is tastefully printed on a single side of postcard-sized paper. When Spock orders leek and potato soup as a main dish, Hardison eyes him doubtfully, but as Spock has learnt, a useful talent can make up for a great deal of eccentricity, and Hardison says nothing.
He continues to say nothing until four and a half minutes after the food has arrived, at which point he puts down his cutlery and, looking Spock in the eye, says, “Do you love your country?”
Spock considers the question. “To which country do you refer?”
Hardison smiles. “They said you were a clever one. Either would do, I suppose.”
Spock hesitates, knowing that the truth is perhaps not what this man wants to hear, but feeling compelled to tell it anyway. “I do not know. I know I do not feel the sentimental attachment to fields and country churches advocated by government propaganda.”
Hardison is watching him with some amusement; Spock fights the urge to look down at his soup and continues: “What I do think is that England stands as the best available check to the ambitions of the Third Reich, and to that end, I offer my wholehearted support.”
Hardison’s cool grey gaze doesn’t shift from Spock’s face. Spock meets his eyes, half-defiant. By his standards, the speech he’s just given was long and overly personal, but now he is beginning to regret not being more effusive. Finally, Hardison looks down at his wineglass, swirls its contents ruminatively.
“You seem a practical man, Mr Spock.” The wine in the glass makes five rotations as Spock waits for him to continue, unsure if he is being complimented or not. “Portman says you speak fluent French?”
“Yes.”
“And you picked it up from you mother?”
“Yes, though my father engaged a tutor for the purpose of teaching grammar and literature.”
“I see. And how long since you were last in France?”
Spock does not have to think hard: the summer before his mother died. “Eight years.”
“Any relatives there that you know of?”
“In theory my mother’s parents, though I have never met them and they may no longer be living.”
Hardison leans forward and says in a confidential tone, “Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell a Bletchley man how to keep secrets, but if you do come and work for us, you’ll be forbidden to tell anyone, even family, what you’re up to.”
Spock thinks of broken-off telephone calls and letters left unanswered. “That will not be a problem,” he tells Hardison.
Hardison beams and attacks his lamb chops with renewed vigour. “Excellent, excellent. Well, provided the psych boys okay you, we’ll be packing you off for training by the end of the week, and very glad to have you. Don’t know what Portman was thinking of, letting you go, but Bletchley’s loss is our gain and all that. Now, you’ll be staying in London for the next few days, correct?”
Spock commits all Hardison’s instructions to memory. Once the meal is over, the footman returns his hat and coat and guides him to a waiting car, suggesting in hushed tones that the Grenville Hotel is very nice.
Spock is not entirely surprised to find, upon arrival, that a room has already been reserved for him under a false name.
~
SOE’s psychologist is a smooth-faced man of indeterminate age who finds it hard to conceal his irritation as Spock patiently tells him that yes, the inkblots he is being shown really do look like inkblots.
“Perhaps if you were to relax a bit, Mr Spock?” he suggests. “It’s not a test, you know.”
It is, but Spock forbears to point this out.
Once he has exhausted his inkblots, the psychologist moves on to questions about Spock’s childhood (satisfactory), his relationship with his father (distant by mutual consent), his education (again, satisfactory), and his reaction to his mother’s death. This last occasions a pause as Spock searches for words that aren’t well rehearsed and impersonal. To his dismay, he can’t find any. Perhaps the efforts of the last eight years to bury such thoughts have been more successful than he’d supposed, he thinks bitterly.
The psychologist notes his lack of response with a gleam of triumph. “So you loved you mother more than your father?”
Spock says yes, because ‘love’ is not a word he has ever associated with Sarek. “What relevance does this have?”
The psychologist gives a tiny smile. “We like to know these things, Mr Spock. Now, on the subject of personal relationships…”
Spock is careful. He does not lie, but he leaves enough unsaid that the psychologist makes his own assumptions: a casual affaire de coeur at Bletchley, not allowed to interfere with his work, broken off to both parties’ relief. The psychologist nods and offers meaningless sympathy and writes it all down.
Shortly after this, Spock is released into the slightly damp, dirty air of London in the spring. Six minutes’ walk takes him to Embankment where he watches the Thames flow sluggishly by, a lacklustre brown. If he heads north, he could reach his father’s house in less than half an hour, though at this time in the morning, Sarek is most likely to be lecturing at the University. As far as Spock knows, his father’s routine has not varied in the slightest since he arrived in London sixteen years ago.
In any case, Spock has no reason to return to the house in Russell Square; he has not lived there for three years, two months and twenty-six days, when he accepted the job at Bletchley Park. He has not considered it home in eight years, not since he returned from school at Christmas to find his mother had died in November and no one had thought to write to him. (After several hours spent struggling just to commit to paper his desire to join GC&CS, Spock can understand the difficulty involved. He does not consider this a valid excuse.)
He doesn’t notice that it has begun to rain until he feels the drops start to trickle down his neck. The pavements are already dappled with dark spots, turning slicker underfoot as he makes his way back to the Grenville. From out towards the mouth of the river comes a dull rumble of thunder.
~
Through the train’s rain-streaked window, Spock watches as the neat rows of London’s brownstone terraces recede into the distance. Up ahead, the houses inch further away from the tracks until there’s a clear band of green on either side. Further out, the line dwindles to a single track and the stations they pass become little more than strips of paving with grass growing through the cracks, nameless and deserted.
The station at Beaulieu at least looks like it might have seen human life in the last month. Two women and a man, all in their early twenties, alight along with Spock. They’re herded towards a covered van by a soldier even younger than them - a private, not long joined up and not yet seen active service, judging by the state of his uniform. Spock takes this in, as well as the fact that one of the women is cheating on the clothing coupons - her skirt is newly made, with more pleats than government guidelines allow. He does not say anything; to be an observer requires distance.
In the van, he shuts his eyes against the dim, canvas-filtered light and the tentative conversation of his companions, and quietly tries to compile a map of the route the van takes. Country roads, he discovers, are harder to distinguish than the jumble of cobbles, asphalt and tarmac he was accustomed to in London.
Sixteen minutes and what Spock estimates as six miles later, the van rolls to a halt on a gravel driveway. He is the only one getting off here, and once the other three have given the house a cursory glance, they return to their conversation until the van moves off again. Spock picks up his suitcase and turns towards the house.
It’s a solid, turn-of-the-century production in redbrick. Ivy is making a half-hearted attempt to colonise the front wall, though it hasn’t been planted long enough to have fully taken hold. The hanging baskets on either side of the front door look badly in need of water. Spock supposes that since the house has been requisitioned, SOE has had better things to do than tend to the plants. He can picture his mother’s reaction to such neglect; with a practised effort, he forces the image from his mind.
Spock has just time to put his suitcase on the bed - he’s in the middle of undoing the catches when the orderly knocks - before he’s hustled down into the former drawing room to meet the man whom Spock supposes is now his commanding officer.
Colonel Christopher Pike rises to shake Spock’s hand, but most of his weight rests on the other hand, clamped on the edge of the desk. This done, he subsides back into his chair with a quickly-hidden grimace. Spock is not very good at reading other people’s emotions (if he concentrates, he can usually read the clues in their body language; intuitive interpretation is another matter entirely), but he thinks he sees self-disgust there and surmises a man unwillingly relegated to this desk job.
But Pike’s smile is friendly and his eyes shrewd. Spock has the feeling he’s just been scanned and catalogued. He doesn’t want to admit that it’s a little unnerving to be on the receiving end for once.
The conversation proceeds in an amiable fashion: Pike welcomes Spock to Beaulieu, enquires politely after his journey down here, asks a few general questions about life at Bletchley Park. Spock relaxes his guard somewhat.
“Working with Turing, I guess you’re pretty hot stuff with codes and ciphers and all?”
“I have a certain proficiency.”
“You wouldn’t mind helping us out, would you? We’re short one coding instructor.” He sees Spock’s slight frown and hastens to add: “It’s just a couple of hours a week, and there’s no sense in getting some amateur in to teach you it all over again, right?”
“It would seem the logical course of action,” Spock admits. Privately, he is nothing like so sure that it is; he has never taught anyone anything, suspects he will not be good at it.
But Pike is smiling. “Thank you, Mr Spock. We appreciate it.” And Spock is, oddly, reassured.
Pike winds up the meeting a few minutes later with a, “Well, mustn’t be keeping you.” Spock’s halfway to the door before he adds, “The rest of the group’s arriving this afternoon.”
“The…rest of the group?”
“Big house, Mr Spock. Got to make use of it. They’re Americans too.”
Spock shuts the door behind him feeling slightly uneasy. Pike should not know that. Sarek left Boston years before Spock was born, Spock has no legal ties to America, and he has fourteen years of private education to thank for erasing any trace of an accent. Pike should not know that, and Spock does not like to think what other information SOE may be keeping in his file.
~
Spock is alerted to the arrival of ‘the rest of the group’ by the crunch of gravel as the same van as before pulls into the driveway and two men get out. His bedroom window offers a view of the pair as they make their way to the door. He can hear them conversing in low tones.
He returns his attention to his newspaper; if they are to undergo training together, there will be adequate time for introductions later. Unfortunately, it appears the new arrivals are not of the same mind. Spock has barely read past the headlines when a clatter of footsteps in the corridor outside announces the approach of his… team-mates. The door handle rattles and there’s a thump as though someone has fallen against the door, then a voice with a pronounced Atlantan drawl says, “Normal people knock, Jim.”
Spock gets up and crosses the room to open the door, feeling that it is better to meet these men on his own terms.
The scene in the corridor is undignified: one man, the older of the two, is holding his companion in check with an arm flung across his chest. His fist is raised to rap on the door, but when he sees Spock standing there, he quickly converts it into a handshake.
“Leonard McCoy. And this one, who was clearly born in a barn -”
“Can make his own introductions. Jim Kirk. Hey.”
Kirk pushes against McCoy’s arm until he’s released. Spock stands aside to let both of them in.
“I am Spock.”
Kirk narrows his eyes at him suspiciously. “I thought this was an American school, but you sound like Jeeves.”
On his left, McCoy eyes him as though contemplating bodily harm. “Manners cost nothin’, Jim.”
“Sorry.” Kirk seems to make a physical effort to shake off his dark mood. He runs a hand over his hair and smiles suddenly and broadly at Spock. There’s a feral edge to it, Spock thinks, then decides that this is a needlessly dramatic interpretation. He doesn’t smile back.
Kirk appears possessed of a restless energy: he hovers by the mantelpiece for a few seconds, toying with the brass candlesticks on it, before crossing to the desk and thumbing idly through Spock’s papers. Spock wants to stop him, to tell him that these things are Spock’s and he has no right to touch them, but suspects this will only elicit the same supercilious smirk on Kirk’s face as it had on the boys at school. McCoy, by contrast, is content to stand just inside the door, unmoving.
Neither seems inclined to break the silence. Spock casts about for a suitable topic of conversation - small talk is not one of his skills - and settles on, “I hope your crossing was uneventful, Doctor McCoy?”
Kirk’s head whips round; McCoy looks at him in concern.
“How did you know he’s a doctor?” Kirk demands.
Spock is already regretting his slip. Kirk’s antagonistic tone only makes him surer that silence would have been the better policy. His hands clasped behind his back tighten their grip involuntarily. He says, “I observed when we shook hands that Doctor McCoy wears cufflinks in the shape of the caduceus - the symbol of the medical profession.”
“I know what it is,” Kirk snaps.
“Of course.”
“And what can you tell about me?”
Spock looks him over: close-cropped hair, parade ground stance tempered with a deliberate slouch, suit inexpensive and new. “I would say that you are a soldier, though not a very good one. From your accent, of Mid-Western origin, though it is no longer distinctive, therefore you have relocated several times since your childhood and -”
“Stop it.” It’s McCoy that speaks, not Kirk. Kirk is glaring, not at Spock, but through him. The front page of The Times is crumpled under his fingers. As though McCoy’s words bring him back to the present, he unclenches his hand and refocuses his gaze on Spock.
“That’s not funny,” he says.
“Hey now, Jim, you did ask.” McCoy’s voice is pitched low and concerned.
“I apologise if I have upset you,” Spock begins, but McCoy waves him quiet.
They both of them watch Kirk, who avoids their eyes. After a silence in which he attempts to smooth out the crumpled newspaper, he darts a quick look at Spock and mumbles, “Sorry.”
Spock nods, tight-lipped. He is already certain he will not find the company a Beaulieu half as convivial as a Bletchley, but is resolved not to let it trouble him. In the face of McCoy’s increasingly pathetic attempts at small talk, Spock maintains a distance and answers any questions put to him as succinctly as possible.
He suspects that he is not the only one to welcome the orderly’s knock.
~
“Thank you, Mr Spock.” Professor Uhura - though the way she holds herself suggests she’s not spent much time sitting behind a desk - smiles, and there’s a brief moment of interference while Spock’s neural pathways readjust to English. “Bilingual, I think Colonel Pike said?”
Spock nods, feeling himself subjected to a silent scrutiny. Finally, Uhura nods. “Well, you’re fluent enough, and technically perfect - if anything too perfect. It doesn’t sound natural somehow.”
Kirk looks up from spinning a pencil to say, “He sounds like a robot in English, so what do you expect?”
Uhura smiles far too sweetly. “I had no idea you were such an expert in linguistics, Mr Kirk.” She continues in French: “Perhaps you’d like to tell us a bit about your academic background in the subject? What do you think of de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics?”
“Haven’t read it,” Kirk retorts, also in French, “but I don’t need a linguistics degree to tell you that Mr Spock sounds like a book of grammar exercises, and if you think the Milice won’t spot that you’re a - sadly mistaken.”
“Not bad,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Your accent’s appalling though.”
“Québécois.”
“Appalling. You’ll stand out far more than Mr Spock.”
“You really think the Germans are going to pick up on regional accents?”
“Maybe not, but the first Frenchman you run into will see through you the moment you open your mouth.”
Kirk opens his mouth, but appears to concede the point and shuts it again. Uhura nods approvingly. “We can work on that.”
“Oh, good,” he mutters.
“Doctor McCoy, your turn. Just a few questions to answer, then I’ll let you go.”
McCoy sits up straighter and swallows as though preparing for an ordeal by fire. After the first question, Spock sees why: where he (and Kirk, he admits) slip easily into the language without needing to think, McCoy pauses every third word or so. When his answer necessitates a verb in the conditional, a look of sheer panic crosses his face. Uhura brings the interview to a conclusion as soon as is tactfully possible.
“Your accent’s very good,” she begins.
“Yeah, always been good at accents,” McCoy says, Southern drawl back thicker than ever. “Not so great at the grammar, though.”
“Hey, between us, we make one whole French-speaker.” Kirk gives them the same startlingly sudden smile as before, and Spock feels an eyebrow lift in involuntary response.
Uhura sighs. “Well, I suppose it will do wonders for your teamwork skills if it takes all three of you to order a coffee.”
~
They take their dinner in the smaller of the two dining rooms, but it’s still hard not to feel dwarfed by the vast expanse of the mahogany table. By common consent, they sit together at one end, McCoy at the head of the table ‘to stop you two pulling each other’s pigtails’. Spock cannot help but feel that he has not thought this through - Kirk is still in his line of sight and the table is not wide enough to prevent physical contact, if it comes to that. For the moment, though, Kirk seems content to concentrate on his food.
“Those carrots won’t run away if you eat them one at a time, Jim,” McCoy observes.
Kirk looks up with a somewhat guilty expression, quickly concealed behind a virtuous one that fools nobody. “Just trying to ward off scurvy, o Doctorly one.”
McCoy snorts, turning his attention to Spock. “And you’re as bad as he is - don’t think I can’t see that slice of ham under your knife.”
“I do not believe it is any of your business what I choose to eat, Doctor.”
“Vegetarian?” Kirk says.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
To Spock’s surprise, his tone is not confrontational, only curious, so that he finds himself answering as openly as he can. “I do not believe that the consumption of meat adds anything of value to my diet that cannot be obtained by other means. Therefore, there seems little point in continuing to eat it.”
“A vegetarian revolutionary,” McCoy murmurs. “God help us all.”
“Trade you for your ham? You can have my… I think they’re beans.” He prods doubtfully at the congealed mass of green.
“Oh no you don’t -” McCoy starts, but Spock has already passed his plate across to Kirk. Homegrown vegetables are possibly the only things not in short supply these days, but he appreciates the offer all the same.
Feeling it would be as well to further this spirit of co-operation, Spock tells him so. “Not a problem,” Kirk mutters, pushing the plate back.
“See, you can play nice,” McCoy says. Both Kirk and Spock turn to narrow their eyes at him.
After dinner, they adjourn to the library where Spock attempts to read in the face of Kirk’s voluble conversation with McCoy. By the time he has reached the third page, he has taken none of it in and has already forgotten the title.
A perfunctory knock, and the orderly’s head emerges round the door. “Post for you,” he says, tossing the envelopes down on a desk.
“Thanks, Jackson,” Kirk calls after him, making no movement to retrieve the letters. Seeing Spock’s look, he shrugs. “What? There are only two letters and I’ve got no one who’d write to me. Therefore, QED, they’re for you and Bones.”
“‘Bones’?”
McCoy pushes himself out of his armchair and makes his way over to the desk, calling back, “You do know I’m never forgiving you for that, right, Jim?”
“Ah, you love it really.” Kirk swivels in his chair until his legs are dangling over the side. “So, do tell, have the fabled Kirk family deigned to send their beloved son a letter? No? Oh, I am shocked.”
“Nope. One for you, though, Spock.”
The envelope and the single sheet of paper inside are both of good quality; the handwriting neat, uniform strokes in black ink. Spock can tell it’s from Sarek even before he’s read the stilted greeting: To My Son. Sarek does not believe in starting letters with Dear, except possibly billets-doux, though Spock would not swear to his even knowing such things exist.
He reads its contents swiftly - disapproval laced with concern lest Spock do even more to tarnish the family name than he already has - before slipping it back into its envelope and tucking it in his breast pocket. He looks up to find McCoy leafing through his own letter.
“Oh, you can tell it’s from Jocelyn all right,” McCoy says presently.
Kirk winces. “Bad, is it?”
“No, but my God can she write. It goes on for pages. All about how a little separation is good for the soul, and absence makes the heart grow fonder - I think she actually quotes that one word-for-word somewhere - and-Oh. She says Joanna misses me.” McCoy’s voice softens. “And Jo’s signed it too.”
“Hey, yeah? Let’s see.” He goes to lean over McCoy’s shoulder. “Got nicer writing than her mama.”
“Sweet as it is that you wanna do the knight in shining armour thing for me, Jim, please don’t. You don’t know me - and you certainly don’t know Jocelyn - well enough to be passing judgement. Anyway,” he adds, shuffling the pages into order, “who knows? Perhaps she’s right and this damn-fool war will be the saving of us.”
Kirk raises his eyebrows, but pats McCoy’s shoulder and says, “Perhaps.”
~
By the second day, whoever prepares their meals has worked out for themselves that Spock is vegetarian, and his arrangement with Kirk is rendered unfeasible. Kirk reacts to the news stoically: “Well, it was nice while it lasted.”
As well as undergoing lessons in ‘survival training’, Spock has his new role as instructor to contend with. Beaulieu, while theoretically under the same shadowy wing of government as Bletchley Park, is cast very much in the role of unwanted hanger-on, as Spock discovers when he hears Pike’s suggestions on what his lessons should cover. Coding methods looked on as quaint curiosities at Bletchley are here seen as the pinnacle of cryptographic achievement. It would be laughable if the situation were not so serious.
He also discovers that ‘short one coding instructor’ translates to ‘we don’t have a coding instructor at all’, because he finds himself teaching classes across the whole Beaulieu estate. He would not have thought it possible to keep so many people secret from each other, but each group seems convinced they are the only students there and makes the subsequent demands on his time. Spock feels it incumbent on him not to reveal Beaulieu’s secrets and answers evasively when his classes ask where he’s going.
On the third day, he realises, with a hastily repressed feeling of horror, that being the only coding instructor means he will have to teach Kirk and McCoy.
McCoy, who knows full well that he is only here because of his skills as a doctor, dislikes being forced to learn what he views as useless information. He grumbles almost continually, and has been known to launch into truly impressive rants at the dinner table, but Spock feels he can cope with this if he sets his mind to it.
Kirk is potentially more problematic. Spock foresees two outcomes: either Kirk will argue constantly with him and insist on finding ways to improve on what he’s been taught, as he does with Professor Uhura, or he will simply decide that the entire thing is a waste of time. Spock has seen the results of this, and they are not unpleasant for the instructors in question. Kirk merely listens to as little as he can get away with, then completes whatever task has been set with the minimum of fuss and effort.
Spock is unsure which outcome he dislikes most.
Part Two