Eight Days

Part I:

He is holding her down, pounding, driving into her.

She’s never felt anything so deeply. Never wanted anyone so much.

Above her, his pupils are so dilated there is little left of the iris. His expression is focused -- so intense it borders on feral. He is determined to take his pleasure, but at the same time to give. He needs to possess her.

Beneath him, she is a crucible, containing his fire, yet concentrating it as well. Each glimpse of her body -- her scattered hair, the hammering pulse in her throat, her nipples hard and straining, all of it serves to remind him that no amount of watching her will ever be enough.

She is lost. These feelings rippling up from between her legs, spreading out into her breasts, along her spine -- they’re too potent. She’s forced to close her eyes. But even behind her lids she is not alone.

His mind is inside of her, too.

She weeps with the joy of it.

“Kashkau, Nyota . . . wuhkuh eh teretuhr. “


I wake abruptly, with a gasp.

It’s morning, a half-minute before I normally get up. But I reach out and mute the alarm, needing time to breathe and just collect myself.

What the seven sectors was that about? Some guy making red-alert type love to me on a -- no, wait, I can’t even call it making love. That was sex. Out-and-out, don’t-even-know-your-last-name, horndog-type sex And yet . . .

I’d felt so close to him.

It’s also odd that he was familiar in the dream, yet now, not thirty seconds later, I can’t remember his face. And what was he saying? I dream in plenty of other languages, but never ones I don’t recognize.

I think about it for a minute longer, but the details are fading fast. All that’s left is a dull throb from the place that I sometimes jokingly refer to as my delta quadrant.

A glance at the clock shows me there’s no time to do anything about it, nor to even lie here thinking. Time to get up.

I swing my legs out of bed and head for the shower. Galia, my roommate, is fast asleep, visible only as a pile of red curls spilling out from underneath her blanket She doesn’t move an inch as I’m getting ready, in fact it’s not until I’m almost out the door that she exhibits any sign of being alive at all. Even then it’s only gentle snoring.

However, she’s awake and flirting by the time I get to Advanced Phonology. This is a seminar course for senior cadets and there are only six of us all together. Galia is tormenting our classmates Rudan and Surek, the only two men in the room at present.

“Hey Uhura.” Rudan shows me the chronometer at the top of his PADD. “Care to pick a time for today?”

“I still don’t see the point, you guys.” I sit down, straightening the front of my uniform. “It’s more like checking if your timer is off.”

“I’m for fifty-nine fifty-seven, “ Galia decides.

“Fifty-nine fifty-eight,” mumbles Surek from his hunched-over position across the table.

Rudan nails me with his pale blue eyes. “Fifty-nine fifty-five, for me. And that’ll be thirteen for twenty if I get it.”

I keep from rolling my eyes, but just barely.

Nevi comes in and records her time with Rudan. We ask after Kanaharr, but she just shrugs, indicating she didn't see him on the way in.

Then, true to form, Commander Spock enters the room at exactly two seconds to the hour.

Surek flashes his PADD at us with a grin. Our instructor can’t see from his position at the head of our conference table. But he does spare an impatient glance for Surek and his undignified behavior.

“Good morning everyone. We will continue today with our analysis of Talaxian consonant clusters, moving towards an understanding of why certain phonemes are have risen to such prominence in this language.”

We settle down pretty fast. It seems Commander Spock is in a no-nonsense frame of mind today.

He activates the holoprojector in the center of the table and starts lecturing. I’ve always liked the sound of his voice. Even back in my freshman year, in Interspecies Ethics, it had the power to make a dry topic interesting. But it’s even better in this class, with it’s emphasis on speech. He can do things with his vocal apparatus that amaze all of us -- even Surek, and both his parents are Viridian opera singers.

Of course, Nevi would be the one to speculate about how else he might use his tongue. When it comes to guys, she’s just as bad as Galia. And that day in the library, particularly frustrated by how much material we had to cover for the midterm, she didn’t stop with just that one comment.

“I hear Vulcans look pretty strange belowdecks, too.”

“He’s only half-Vulcan,” Surek reminded her.

“So that’s half a weird-looking dick?” Rudan had his chair tilted back and his booted feet up on the table.

“Nope,” Nevi tittered. “I heard it’s, like, bright green and built like a phase cannon.“

“Oh come on,” Surek chided.

“Seriously. My cousin’s boyfriend’s brother is in the MedAcad. He saw the records from Spock’s physical.”

The rest of us made derisive noises.

“Hey Uhura.” Rudan let the front two legs of his chair hit the floor. “You know Spock better than any of us. Got any intel?”

I pretended to snap out of a state of absentmindedness. “Oh sorry, what was that? Guess I was distracted. You know . . . “ and here my tone sharpened “by _studying_.”

He ignored the jab at his work habits. “So what’s the data, girlfriend?”

“Rudan, I’m just his assistant. I don’t get nasty with him.”

“Hey, maybe your roomie knows,” Kanaharr pipes up from the end of the table. “I hear she’s into the green.”

“Hey now.” I kept my voice light, trying to hide how annoyed I was. “We’re all just a rainbow of happy humanoids.”

“Couldn’t you just picture it though?” Rudan let his face go blank and his voice slip down into its lower registers, “Cadet Galia. Merely licking my trouser pickle is highly illogical.”

Nevi and Surek started laughing so loud a light came on at our table, warning us about excessive noise. This was lucky for me, since it distracted them and ended the conversation. Any more of that and I might have betrayed something very personal.

Because even though I’d never seen the appendage in question, I had wondered about it. Not all the time, and never when he was actually in the room -- Vulcans are telepaths, I’m not stupid -- but, yes, once or twice.

Okay, maybe more than once or twice. Maybe several times. Maybe one day I even got tired of wondering and went to the library to look it up. His mixed heritage still left some room for doubt, but I was pretty sure that --

Oh my God!

My thoughts freeze at the realization that I’m still in class. Talaxian consonants! I absorb myself in my notes.

Luckily, our instructor’s full attention seems to be on the holos in the middle of our table, where his hands are highlighting and repositioning symbols. He couldn’t have heard me think that, could he?

A late arrival startles us. It’s Kanaharr, twenty minutes after the hour. Where in the Federation has he been? But what happens next startles us even more.

“Your audacity,” says Spock, straightening from where he was leaning over the table. “is highly provoking.”

“I’m sorry, Commander, I --”

“Get out!“ Spock’s voice is thunderous in this tiny room.

Stunned, Kanaharr retreats. Now all that’s left is a sudden, eerie quiet and a kind of telepathy of my own. No doubt each and every one of us is thinking “What the - - ? “

Spock presses three fingers to the bridge of his nose, but says nothing. After a moment he resumes his lecture.

The rest of the class is just one awkward pause.


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