“A what?”
“Ataractic. It’s a powerful tranquilizer that will temporarily depress the substrates of the midbrain that control emotional responses. My hunch is that once Sara is her normal cool, cerebral self, she’ll be able to tell us what happened.”
At his words, Ensign George stood up. Idly, she wandered toward the briefing room door just as Dr. Mbenga came in to hand McCoy the hypo. She slammed into him, trying to get out.
“Grab her!” McCoy shouted.
Kirk jumped, throwing his arms about her. She struggled fiercely, clawing and screaming. McCoy dashed to her side, slapped the end of the hypo against her arm and pressed. There was a low hiss as the spray penetrated to her skin. Kirk held onto her as she stiffened, then collapsed.
“Put her in that chair, Jim,” McCoy said. “She isn’t unconscious, but she isn’t able to stand by herself.”
As the two officers stood looking down at her, the girl’s face began to change. The look of sullen defiance drained away to be replaced by an expressionless mask.
“All right, Sara,” McCoy said, “how did it happen?”
When she answered, her voice was as flat and toneless as the ship’s computer.
“My life has always been my work; I refused to allow myself to get entangled in emotional relationships. I considered them disruptive and counterproductive. When I met Mr. Spock, all that changed. I found him strangely attractive. I was conscious of his maleness—something that never happened to me before—but I controlled that easily. I was determined to let nothing interfere with my work. But when I beamed up with that batch of native profiles and checked through them, I found one so unlike my own that I was filled with an intense curiosity. I wondered what it would be like to be that person, to feel the way she felt. For once in my life I gave in to temptation and acted on impulse. At any rate, I tuned my telescan link to that profile and let it be implanted. Since I was in charge of that much of the experiment, they didn’t think to check on the one I chose. Dr. McCoy and the rest assumed I would follow normal procedure.”
The woman, in spite of the drug, squirmed in her seat.
“The instant the linkage was established,” she said, “I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I found myself in the grip of emotional forces I couldn’t control. It was too late to do anything about it. From then on, I knew what I was doing, and I hated myself for it, hated those feelings, but I couldn’t… couldn’t stop.”
“Can you say why?” McCoy asked softly.
“I think because I had repressed my own emotions for so long, refusing to deal with them, trying only to deny them. When my dop’s feelings came surging across. I couldn’t handle them,” the ensign went on, her voice flat and objective. “When I was assigned to the Enterprise and learned of Lieutenant Chapel’s feelings about Spock, I thought, how illogical. I had nothing but contempt for her. I couldn’t conceive of a mind fine enough to be a Starfleet officer and earn a doctorate in bio-research and medicine, letting itself be disturbed by such a futile hope and childish infatuation. But like Spock, I denied my own humanity. Unlike him, however, I am human, and humans are sexual beings. The ordinary linkage allows just enough emotion to make the observer authentic to a native; but, like Spock, I became my dop. If you will examine her profile you will see.”
McCoy gave the necessary commands to the computer, and when the personality profile appeared on the screen, he whistled in astonishment.
“Good Lord, Jim, look at that!”
“You know I can’t read those wiggles, Bones,” Kirk said. “What does it mean?”
“It means that Sara has hooked herself into a walking sex machine with as many inhibitions as a green Orion slave girl—namely, none! This profile’s only purpose in life seems to be immediate and frequent gratification of her desires of the moment.” McCoy looked at the woman sprawled in the chair.
“What do you know about her, Sara?”
“Not much. When I was collecting the profiles, I tried to get as much diversity as possible. She seemed a good candidate because of her beauty and an aura of sexual magnetism around her. As she went through the plaza that day, nearly every male gawked at her. She was obviously lower-class, but I thought her behavioral characteristics might be useful if a mission required a female officer with those characteristics.” She paused.
“Go on, Ensign,” Kirk prompted.
“Yes, sir,” Ensign George replied. “Once the link was established, it wasn’t long before I had convinced myself that linking Mr. Spock with an equally emotional native might have the same effect on him as it did on me. Being half-human, his long frigid periods could be as much the result of psychological conditioning as of physiological factors. So I switched profiles.”
“And found you were right,” McCoy murmured.
“Yes,” she confirmed in an unemotional voice. “When we beamed down with the rest of the party that first morning, it just took an exchange of glances to communicate what we both had in mind. As soon as the others left…”
“You don’t have to go on, Sara,” McCoy interrupted.
“Your injection is still blocking my sub-cortical structures, Doctor,” she said. “At the moment, I have no feelings about it. It is of clinical interest only.”
In spite of her words, she paused. Her face worked slightly, twitching with shame, alternating with a smile.
“We took off our clothes and made love. We were like two rutting cats. My old self looked on in horror and disgust at my body’s violation; but my new self reveled in it, craved it, and was satisfied.” Her voice lowered as she paused again.
“I would suggest, Captain,” she began again after a moment, “that my implant be removed as soon as possible. Otherwise, I will find some way to get back down to Kyros and find Mr. Spock. I want…” Her voice suddenly trailed off and she slumped forward.
McCoy made a quick check. “Respiration and pulse normal,” he announced. “I gave her a high dose and it’s finally hit her central nervous system. No harm done, but she’ll be out for an hour or so.” McCoy went to the intraship communicator, called sickbay and ordered a stretcher party to the briefing room. As the unconscious woman was borne away a few minutes later, and when the captain and doctor were alone, Kirk turned a shocked face to McCoy.
“Bones, she had to be hallucinating! Spock and I have served together for years. He could no more behave in the way she described than he could fly!”
“Our Mr. Spock couldn’t,” McCoy agreed. “The creature that now inhabits his body is a different matter.”
The reconvened emergency council had come to an end. Kirk rose from his chair and looked soberly around the conference table.
“It is agreed, then, that since Mr. Spock has disappeared, our only chance is to locate Chag Gara. If we can get him up here, Dr. McCoy assures me that electronically augmented crash psycho-therapy can erase his delusional patterns in hours. Once they stop feeding across the link, Spock will return to normal and, realizing what he has done, rejoin the ship immediately with the trilithium modules.”
“Somewhat abashed, I imagine,” McCoy said dryly. “It’s going to be most interesting to hear him comment on his recent behavior.”
“Finding Chag Gara shouldn’t be too difficult,” Kirk continued. “He’s conspicuous, and is unaware of what has been going on. Since his main weakness is women, we’ll lure him to the inn with Ensign George. McCoy will inject him and we’ll beam up.”
Lieutenant Uhura raised her hand. “But Captain,” she said, “you told us that Sara admitted she would have one thought in mind when Dr. McCoy’s injection wore off; she’d want to get back to Kyros and resume her—” the black officer paused a moment—“‘relationship’ with Mr. Spock. How do you expect her to follow your orders and not her new feelings?”