Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [44]
The doctor located Spock’s reports from the Enterprise’s encounter with the negative energy field that had killed the nine espers at the beginning of the ship’s five-year mission. Sensors hadn’t been able to detect it, but Spock had noted a complete lack of energy, a presence of something that somehow gave off no readings at all. But here, there wasn’t even that. Just these… bumps in the fabric of space. Starfleet records were no help at all, he found. Plenty of spaceships had encountered patches of subspace rougher than this without there being any kind of psychic phenomena. However, those hadn’t led to other universes with totally different physical laws.
He wished he knew more about spatial distortions, or extrasensory perception. Despite his early-career success with partial grafts of neural tissue, he had a generalist’s knowledge of the human brain and its abilities, and a specialist’s was required here. He wished M’Benga wasn’t off with the landing party; he’d interned in a Vulcan ward, and knew about telepathy.
Hell, he wished Spock was here. Although… maybe he didn’t need him, just the medicines his people used. Vulcans had to have experience with disorders of the telepathic mind. It stood to reason that they knew how to treat them.
McCoy checked the medical database for information. Maybe there was something in the Vulcans’ arsenal that would let him suppress the espers’ abilities, allowing him to reduce the stress on their brains. He navigated through directories and subdirectories, occasionally reading an article only to find out that it wasn’t at all what he was looking for. But Vulcan telepaths had to have gone through similar ordeals; the doctor refused to believe they didn’t have anything that could help.
He’d keep searching for answers, even if that meant he wouldn’t get much sleep. His own needs were the least important right now.
Anything to save these patients.
Anything except actually being the capable, experienced doctor they need. Ever since you joined Starfleet to avoid your problems, you’ve been moving. You stay somewhere too long, and you move again. You’ve served in so many different places, always just for a short time. And then you started to feel comfortable here. You liked Kirk, you liked Chapel, you liked Scotty, you even got invited to Spock’s wedding.
He tried to push the voice aside and focus on the data in front of him, but he couldn’t. The voice insisted. It kept on speaking. He knew it somehow; it was familiar.
You stayed here too long, and now it’s caught up to you. Your ignorance, your lack of training, everything. You’re a ship’s surgeon not because it’s the right thing to do, you’re a ship’s surgeon because it lets you ignore all your other problems. Until now, that is. Now you’ve hit a situation outside of your abilities—and five innocent people are going to die as a result.
I hope you feel good about this, at least.
McCoy suddenly recognized the voice.
It was his ex-wife’s.
SIX
Twenty-one Years Ago
Leonard McCoy sits in the back of Doctor Ducey’s philosophy class and complains a lot. He doesn’t think he’s complaining loudly—just loud enough for Kotchian next to him to laugh at every one of his jokes. However, four weeks into the class a girl three rows in front of him turns around and says, “What is your problem?” She is a bit shorter than Leonard, with shoulder-length brown hair and a round face. Pretty cute.
“My problem,” Leonard says, “is that I have to take Introduction to Extraterrestrial Philosophy. If I wanted to know what The First Song of S’task was, I’d buy the album.” Leonard hopes she’s not a philosophy major, because then she’s only going to become more annoyed with him.
“It’s not that kind of song!” she hisses back. “It’s a long-form philosophic poem that tells—”
“And if I’d wanted to know all that,” replies Leonard, “I’d be paying attention instead of complaining.”
Kotchian