What was the source of the oddly overt response that women of all ages and degrees of experience seemed to feel toward Spock? Kirk had no answer, but he had two theories, switching from one to the other according to his mood. One was that it was a simple challenge-and-response situation: he may be cold and unresponsive to other women, but if I had the chance, I could get through to him! The other, more complex theory seemed more plausible to Kirk only in his moments of depression: that most white crewwomen, still the inheritors after two centuries of vestiges of the shameful racial prejudices of their largely Anglo-American forebears, saw in the Vulcan half-breed — who after all had not sprung from any Earthly colored stock — a “safe” way of breaking with those vestigial prejudices — and at the same time, perhaps, satisfying the sexual curiosity which had probably been at the bottom of them from the beginning.
McCoy, once Kirk had broached both these notions to him — on shore leave, after several drinks — had said, “You parlor psychologists are all alike — constantly seeking for complexities and dark, hidden motives where none probably exist. Most people are simpler than that, Jim. Our Mr. Spock, much though I hate to admit it, is a thoroughly superior specimen of the male animal — brave, intelligent, prudent, loyal, highly placed in his society — you name it, he’s got it. What sensible woman wouldn’t want such a man? But women are also practical creatures, and skeptical about men. They can see that Spock’s not a whole man. That compulsive inability of his to show his emotions cripples him, and they want to try to free him of it. Little do they know what a fearful task it would be.”
“Oh. So in part it’s the mother instinct, too?”
McCoy made an impatient face. “There you go again, applying tags you don’t understand. I wish you’d leave the psychology to me — what’s the Service paying me for, anyhow, if you can do it? Oh well, never mind. Jim, if you’re really puzzled about this, watch the women for once! You’ll see for yourself that mothering Spock is the last thing they have in mind. No — they want to free him to be the whole, grownup, near-superman he hasn’t quite become, and make themselves good enough for that man. And as I said before, they don’t know how much they’d have to bite off before they could chew it.”
“The Vulcan cultural background?” Kirk said.
“Yes, for a starter. But there’s a lot more. Did you know, Jim, that if Spock weren’t half Vulcan, I’d be watching him now every day for signs of cancer?”
“I thought that had been licked a hundred years ago.”
“No, some kinds still show up. And men of one hundred per cent Earth stock, who have avenues for emotional discharge as inadequate as Mr. Spock’s are terribly susceptible to it in their middle years. Nobody knows why.”
The conversation continued to branch off, leaving Kirk, as usual, with most of his questions unanswered. Nor had McCoy been half as positive about his chances for setting up suitable physiological tests to distinguish between the duplicate Spocks.
“I don’t know how the replication happened, so I don’t know where to begin. And I was never trained in the details of Vulcanian biochemistry. I read up on it after Spock first came aboard, but most of what I know about it from experience I learned from monitoring him; and he’s a mixture, a hybrid, and hence a law Unto himself. Oh, of course I’ll try to think of something, but dammitall, this is really a problem in physics — I need Scotty for the whats, hows and whys of the accident to get even a start on it!”
“I was afraid of that,” Kirk said.
“There’s something else you ought to watch out for, though.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a psychological problem — this business of being identical twins. Even under ordinary, biological circumstances, being an identical twin is a hard row to hoe. You’re constantly having identity trouble; mothers think it’s cute to dress the kids alike, teachers have trouble keeping their records straight, friends can’t tell them apart or think it’s funny to pretend they can’t. It all usually comes to a head in puberty, which is when the who-am-I problem becomes acute for everyone, but for identical twins it’s hell. If they get through that period without becoming neurotic or worse, they’re usually all right from then on.
“But Spock didn’t go through it, and furthermore he has been emotionally isolated almost all his life, by his own choice. Now, suddenly, he has been twinned as an adult, and it’s a situation he has had no chance to adjust to, as the natural twin has. The strain is going to be considerable.”
Kirk spread his hands. “Help him if he’ll let you, of course, Doc, and I’ll try to take it into account myself. But it seems to me that the adjustment is almost wholly something he’ll have to arrive at by himself. And bear in mind that he has had a lifetime of training in controlling his own emotions.”
“Not controlling them — suppressing them,” McCoy said. “The two are very different. But of course he’ll have to handle it by himself. One thing laymen never understand about psychotherapy is that no doctor has ever cured an emotional or mental upset, or ever will; the best he can do is to show the patient how he might cure himself.
“But Jim, don’t minimize this — it’s no small consideration. In my judgment, there’s likely to be a real emotional crisis, and sooner rather than later. I’ve already noticed that one of them’s gone considerably off his feed. Won’t hurt him for a while — Vulcans can fast a long time — but anorexia is almost always the first sign of an emotional upset.”
“Thanks,” Kirk said grimly. “I’ll be on my guard. And in the meantime, let’s see if Scotty’s thought of any tests yet.”
He left the sick bay and went to the engineering bridge.
“Scotty, I hate to keep taxing you with the same old question, but Doc says he can’t get anywhere on setting up a test for the real Spock, or the replicate, until he has at least some sort of idea of how the duplication happened. Any clues yet?”
Scott said miserably, “Ah dinna ken, Captain. Ah dinna oonderstahnd it at all.”
There were blue-black isometric smudges under his eyes, and it was obvious that he had not slept at all since the start of the botched transporter experiment. Kirk stopped pressing him at once; clearly he was doing his best, and his performance wouldn’t be improved by distracting him.
Then everybody, not just Scott, was interrupted by the call to Battle Stations.
Kirk’s immediate assumption — that Uhura’s sensors had picked up something that might be another ship — proved to be true, but he was no sooner on the bridge than he became aware that this was only a small part of the story. For one thing, the automatic drive log on his control console showed that the Enterprise had been off warp flight for a split second before the alarm had sounded. She was now back in subspace, of course, but the trace the sensors had picked up was that of an object so small that if it had really been a Klingon ship it would have been incapable of detecting the Enterprise in subspace over the distance involved.
“What,” Kirk demanded grimly, “were we doing off warp drive?”
“The computer took us off,” Sulu said, with the justifiable irritation of the helmsman who has had control snatched away from him by a brainless mechanism. “It still seems to be operating on the old benchmarking schedule. Maybe in all the subsequent confusion, nobody ever told it we were going to Organia.”
“That’s flatly impossible,” Kirk said. “I logged that order myself. Somebody had to countermand it. Mr. Spock, ask the machine who did.”
The First Officer — it was Spock Two who was on duty — turned to the console, and then said, “The computer reports that I gave the order, Captain, as is only logical. But in point of fact I deny doing so — and I strongly suspect that my counterpart will also deny it.”