Fic: The Plebe, Chapter 9

[elliewood]

 

The Plebe, Chapter 9
Debriefing -- A Game of Chess -- Mitch Reads a Book

“How was your weekend, boys?”

The innocent question from Gaila was met with a smirk and a toss of Mitchell's dark head. “Fucking awesome, if you like buying old shit nobody wants anymore.”

She put her bag down and settled into her seat, her sidelong glance at once teasing and mildly wounded. “You went shopping? And you didn’t ask me to come along?”

“He went shopping. For antique crap. Baby girl, you should be thanking me that you weren't there. It was awful.”

Jim forced a smile through the familiar flush of defensiveness; Saturday’s pleasure of digging through the endless stacks of old books with Finn had been tempered by Mitchell’s hovering over them like some dour duenna. “You didn’t have to come," he said in what he hoped was an even tone. "I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

"Ah, hell no. Wouldn't have missed it for the world." He reached into his own bag and pulled out a battered, old-style paperback book. "How else would I have found this gem?"

Gaila plucked the book from Mitchell's hand, a moue of distaste on her face at its stale odor. "Jungle King Tar-chan. Really, Mitch?" she accused as she squinted at the cover. "An old cartoon book?"

"Yeah, but check out the middle. My man is getting head from a fucking chimp." He cackled with delight as Gaila flipped through its pages to inspect the bawdy centerfold for a moment before tossing the book onto the table with mild contempt. "Speaking of old shit nobody wants anymore," she sniffed as she took her seat, "you could at least have found something a little less tasteless. And smelly."

"Describes him perfectly." Nyota had come up behind Mitchell who now twisted in his seat to greet her with an awkward hug, his face burrowing happily into the side of her right breast. She smiled at Jim over the top of Mitchell's head and nodded at the bag that rested on the table next to him, its sides bulging more than usual. "Did you have better luck?"

"Oh yeah," Mitchell interrupted, his voice muffled by the soft flesh. "He got lucky all right."

She disentangled herself from Mitchell's embrace to seat herself next to Jim, her voice playful as she pulled out her PADD. "Really? Do tell!"

"He's just being a jerk." He tried to ignore Mitchell's poorly suppressed snicker. "Nothing happened."

Across the table, Gaila stared at him with guileless interest. "Nothing happened with who?"

"Whom," Nyota responded automatically, but her eyes were on Jim. "Nothing happened with whom? Tella?"

"No, God no. We just got a few books, that's all. It doesn't mean anything."

"'We...?!'"

The single word hung in the air between them, its unison utterance matched by the eager inquiry on both female faces. Mitchell leaned back in his chair, arms folded, and watched Jim's silent struggle with an almost ferocious glee before answering for him.

"Our boy," he announced, "has reeled in the biggest fish in our little pond." He paused to ensure that every eye at the table was fixed on him before continuing. "Mr. Finnegan himself, Cadet First Class. Got him trailing around like a bitch in heat."

"You mean, Finn? But he..." The look on Gaila's face as she stared at Jim was now one of mild shock.

Nyota nodded at her in understanding before turning back toward Jim, concern evident in the eyes that now inspected his flushed countenance. "Is that true? Finn's interested in you?"

Their own level of interest was beyond uncomfortable; Jim dropped his gaze to his hands and folded them together to keep from nervously picking at the callus on his palm. "No. He's just my tutor. We went out looking for books, that's all."

"My ass." Mitchell heaved forward to reach for Jim's bag and upend it. "Look at all this shit he bought him."

Jim gritted his teeth as several volumes spilled out onto the table, the clatter of the slide rule jarring in the sudden silence as it fell with them. The shock deepened on Gaila's face. "There must be...this must have cost a lot," she said at last, the eyes that she raised to Jim's wide with disbelief.

"Especially this." Nyota's slender fingers plucked the slide rule out of the jumble of books; she handed it back to Jim, her expression gentle but steady in its questioning as she swiveled in her chair to face him. "He must think a lot of you."

Gaila's chair rattled as she began to bounce with excitement, her hand gripping Mitchell's forearm. "Oh my God, Jim" she breathed, her blue eyes even wider, "you are so lucky."

"Luck has nothing to do with it," Mitchell pronounced as he leaned back again, his glib cheer grating in Jim's ear. "He bats those pretty eyes and Finn rolls over. It's fucking brilliant."

Nyota frowned at his needling. "Don't be an ass," she snapped at him over her shoulder, her eyes not leaving Jim's face. "You need to be careful," she said, her tone intense despite its softness. "Finn's not..."

"Please excuse the interruption."

The women started as Mitchell rocked forward abruptly to straighten in his seat; none of them had sensed Spock's approach. Jim's fingers tightened on the slide rule.

"Cadet Kirk. Perhaps you will be so kind as to accompany me to my office immediately following today's class."

It occurred to Jim that the worst thing about having an emotionless Vulcan for an instructor was the utter lack of concern about embarrassing him in front of his classmates. The best thing was that he didn’t appear, from the smooth serenity of his tone, to hold a grudge over the acrimony of their last meeting. He managed a smile and nodded up at Spock, ignoring the curious eyes that had all swiveled to goggle at him and their instructor.

“Sure, no problem.”

***

“I have a prior engagement after class on Wednesday. I trust it does not inconvenience you unduly to meet today instead.”

It must have been the cooler fall weather, Jim thought, or perhaps the required compulsory physical conditioning unit that Mitchell, in moments of sarcastic exhaustion, referred to as Phys Dead. Whatever the reason, it was noticeably easier to keep up with Spock's efficient strides as they proceeded across the campus toward the library annex after class. He was pleased that he could answer without panting.

"No, it's fine."

It was indeed no inconvenience; Jim had already made plans to meet up with Finn Wednesday afternoon to celebrate what they predicted would be solid success on that day's exam. A twinge of guilt accompanied the silent acknowledgment that he would prefer, having made no further progress toward identifying any persons of interest as potential Klingon operatives, not to spend the hour beforehand in uncomfortable silence in Spock's tiny office merely to keep up the appearance of a weekly tutorial.

That Spock too might find their time together tedious had never occurred to him until Spock opened his office door, gesturing for Jim to enter in front of him. The room was so spare that it was easy to recognize the smallest change to its decor, in this case the fact that Spock's computer had been pushed to one side of his narrow desk to accommodate the central placement of a familiar object.

"A chess board!"

"Indeed." Spock motioned for Jim to take the side chair as he poured him a cup of coffee from the freshly brewed pot, placing it by the ranks of white pieces before attending to his own cup of tea. He took his seat across the desk and watched Jim examine the figures for a moment before continuing.

"The board itself is 21st century Earth, crafted in the Italian region of Old Europe. It was my mother's; she had a fondness for vintage items such as this. The matching pieces were lost, so my father commissioned a new set that represents figures from Vulcan history." One thin finger brushed lightly over a pawn, a fierce-looking male warrior brandishing a shovel-like weapon. "Do you play?"

He could see the motes of hay dust swirling lazily in the slanting beams of sunlight that breached the high shuttered windows to escape, as they had, from the heat of the afternoon outside, could feel the trickle of sweat down the front of his neck as he frowned at the yellowed synthetic pieces perched on the edge of Sam's side of the board, a carefully arranged taunt. Come on, dumbass, Sam had muttered, eager to finish him off, move already. He shook his head.

"No, not really. I mean, I know the goal and how the pieces are supposed to move, but I never learned any real strategy."

"I daresay you will find that experience is the best teacher." Spock unclasped one hand from his tea cup to gesture at Jim's side of the board. "Please."

Jim hesitated briefly -- Pawn's first move, one or two-ve, Sam laughed -- before moving his queen's shovel-wielding pawn two spaces forward to begin the game. Spock's unhurried counter with the exact same move, one that allowed the easy capture of the black pawn, planted a seed of bewilderment in Jim's mind that bloomed a few moves later into the unsatisfying certainty that Spock was setting him up to win.

Maybe he's never actually played. Or he thinks I haven't. Jim's bemusement grew as Spock either ignored or failed to recognize his pawn's dogged march down the board in favor of maneuvering his own rook to take Jim's queen. But Jim had already calculated that the king would fall to him unless Spock changed tack to defend it. Which he did not.

There was no response to the threat of his untouched pawn as it finally reached Spock's second rank to rest directly in front of his king's bishop, nor to his tentative murmur of "Check," other than the advance of the queen's rook to the open file, a move that caused Jim to chew the inside of one cheek in consternation. He leaned back and gestured at the largely undisturbed ranks of pieces.

"I can just take your king now, so I win. Right?"

He expected a raised eyebrow of surprise, perhaps a grudging acknowledgment of defeat. But Spock's response was coolly placid.

“Indeed, not. Your last move has in fact ceded the game to me.”

"Why?" More argumentative than he intended, he realized too late, but Spock was unruffled.

"You see with your eyes, but you do not perceive with your mind. Look carefully."

There wasn't much to look at. "I'm sorry, but I don't see that I've missed anything."

Spock clasped both hands around his tea cup and leaned back in his chair. “You have made three errors. The first of these is that you were single-minded in your pursuit of my king to the extent that you did not attend to the protection of your own. Observe my next move." He swept his rook down the board and captured the white queen, enfolding it deftly in his fingers as he released the rook to replace it. "Chess requires a certain amount of four-dimensional thinking, the anticipation of myriad possibilities that unfold with the movement of each piece. One cannot merely attack without considering the outcome of one's failure to defend."

"But I'm only sacrificing one piece," Jim protested. "If you didn't move your king, I'd take it on the next move and win, so losing my queen doesn't matter."

"On the contrary, it matters immensely. That is your second error. By opening his rank, you have just lost your king, not your queen." He released the white piece to his side of the board but kept one finger lightly resting upon its base. "And the quarry that you have been so relentlessly pursuing throughout this game is in fact my queen."

Surely he couldn't have been mistaken about such a simple identification. Jim felt the prickle of anxious perspiration on his scalp as he peered closely at the pieces. The figure that Spock's finger now rested upon bore neither weaponry nor ferocity but rather an ornate scroll and a placid, almost contemplative, expression on a face crowned with an elaborately coiffed head of hair.

"But...I mean, I'm not an expert on Vulcan dress and whatnot, but this looks very much like a woman to me."

"It is. Vulcan society has a strong matriarchal tradition; the metalsmith who crafted these pieces honored that tradition by making the king female. A feminine figure, true, but fulfilling the king's role nonetheless."

A spike of familiar resentment at Spock's condescension pierced the confusion. "Well, I don't know how I was supposed to know that," he replied truculently,  "You could have told me."

Spock took a sip of his tea, his eyes on Jim's over the rim of the cup. "You could have divined that fact for yourself," he remarked. "Look at your own pieces. On what color did your king reside?"

He shifted his eyes away from Spock's hand to the square his rook now rested upon. "Black."

"And your queen?"

"White."

"Just so. My rank is the opposite. My queen begins the game on a black square." Spock leaned back, his hands with the half-empty cup between them lowering to his lap. "You can see that the king's identity was plainly before you, had you taken care to examine the board at the start. The queen is always true to her own color. It is the king who is false."

The inside of his cheek was a salty pulp. "What was the third mistake?"

The dark head inclined toward him, eyes lowered, in a gesture that resembled an apology before he raised his eyes once again to Jim's. "You were aware, were you not, that the contest appeared too elementary. You were correct on that score but did not attend to your own misgivings.  Your third error was in not examining your own suspicions more carefully; had you done so, you doubtless would have discovered the existence of the first two."
 

 

***

 

Sleep usually came easily to Jim, the deep, unguarded slumber of the young reinforced by years of rising before dawn. But it eluded him that night as his thoughts refused to settle, flooding his mind instead with visions of the chess games they had played over the course of nearly two hours in Spock's office, each of the three games that followed the initial failure presenting itself to him again for an unprompted analysis. The last of these had ended, as had the three before it, with his own king in checkmate, but not until each side had been decimated by the other, the field of play barren, the desktop beside it littered with captured pieces of both colors. Spock had, finally, raised that eyebrow.

"Had I known that you would be such an apt pupil, I should never have engaged you in play," he had said as he began to remove the pieces to the safety of their box. "I fear the next encounter would result in my defeat and must therefore devise some other enterprise for our next meeting."

Jim smiled at the recollection of the tiny quirk of the corner of Spock's mouth that had accompanied his unexpected glint of humor, his version of laughter now aimed at himself. It wasn't just the memories of that afternoon that now prevented him from sleeping, he realized; it was also a surprising urge to spring out of bed, activate the selfishly sleeping computer terminal on the small desk opposite, and research technique and strategy, maybe even play against the computer. But a live opponent on which to practice would be preferable.

He rolled over onto his stomach, his face half-buried in the pillow as he looked across the darkness of their narrow room to where Mitchell lay, his body disdaining its habitual sprawl to huddle beneath the blankets, his normally even snoring now an odd stutter. It took Jim a few minutes to recognize that sound as suppressed laughter; the occasional flash of light that penetrated the fabric of his sheets confirmed that, for the first time that semester, and perhaps ever, his roommate was reading in bed.

"Mitch, do you play chess?"

The covers were flung back to reveal Mitchell, the third of six volumes of the redoubtable Jungle King Tar-Chan in one hand, the gentle glow of his open communicator in the other.  He fixed Jim with a glare that pierced the dark.

"Fuck no, I'm not into that longhair shit. Go ask your boyfriend. And don't tell me he's not," he went on, sensing Jim's unspoken protest, "because he sure as fuck thinks he is, whatever you say."

Jim fought back the urge to sigh. "What about what I say?"

"God, you're an idiot. The guy's crazy about you and everyone knows it but you. Figure out if you like him back and either make it official or cut him loose." Mitchell flipped onto his back and aimed the communicator back at his book to illuminate the pages, the conversation plainly over in his mind.

The images of prancing chess pieces were replaced by a pair of smoke-grey eyes and a wide grin of triumph as Finn held up the volume of Seneca he had found among the stacks of ancient books. Here, he had said, pressing the book into Jim's hand, I think this is something you'd like.

"What did they mean, the girls, when they were talking about him in class today? Nyota said I had to be careful, but she didn't say why."

A snort of exasperation accompanied the sound of the book and communicator hitting the bed as Mitch tossed them aside to roll over and peer at Jim across the space that separated their bunks. "I don't know, dumbfuck, I don't have any goddamned ESP. All I know is what everyone knows about Finn. Model citizen and all that. Beats me why he's into you, but he is, and you're gonna have to deal with that sooner or later, because I can't be shadowing you on every date to make sure you don't get raped in the ass."

Jim was glad of the darkness that hid his flush of anger. "I didn't ask you to shadow me. And they're not dates."

"You just don't get it, do you?" Mitchell's tone surprised him with its own temper. "Look, maybe he's a good guy and maybe he's not, but either way, you're playing him for a sucker. As far as he knows, you do have a date on Wednesday, and you're gonna have to set him straight if that's not what you think too. Now go the fuck to sleep and let me read." He rolled away from Jim, his back a rounded barricade against the light that shone again under the blankets he pulled firmly back over his head.

The pleasure of seeing Finn again in a few days was mitigated by his own uncertainty at Mitchell's directive. Jim pressed his entire face into his pillow, blocking out the bluish glow of Mitchell's communicator as he forced himself to envision the two of them on a date, Finn's hand reaching for his in affection, his arm reaching down to wrap itself around Jim's waist. But the image refused to form as the tall pale figure blurred and split into two dark ones, Barnett's arm now around Spock's waist, his hand first resting on Spock's hip, then dropping lower to the upper thigh before slowly sweeping back to brush one buttock over the black robes that covered it.

You see with your eyes, but you do not perceive with your mind.

The queen remains true to her color. It is the king who is false.

Attend to your own misgivings.

It came to him then, his eyes snapping open against the warmth of the pillowcase, his waking gasp of realization eliciting an irritated grunt from across the narrow room.

"Easy there, Master Bator. Settle down."

"Just dreaming. Sorry." He turned onto his side to face the wall and forced his breathing to slow.

He's known all along he's been trying to tell me it's the king who is false the king

It's Barnett



 

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