Chapter Text
Starbase Seven, on the planet Mjolnir
The wine tasted like vinegar.
Shurochka sat on the grey stone floor of the prison cell, with the dying Vulcan just out of arms’-reach, sipping her sour wine and failing to keep her mind from looping through the past, over and over.
How long had it been since she first noticed he seemed -- irritable? A month? Three months? Time. She and Siran had worked together for five years. Not a long time, as Vulcan lifetimes went. Not a long time, in terms of Starfleet assignments. Time. Five years. Long enough.
Easing herself forward, she reached out to brush the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead. His skin burned like hot coals.
The grip on her wrist, so sudden, was not strong enough to hold her. The dying mind of the Vulcan, linked with her by the physical contact, caught hers in mind-meld. Their years together, through his eyes, dragged her into the past.
...“Aleksandra Rakoczi, called Shura,” she said. “Lieutenant Commander, Judge Advocate General’s office. I’m the new kid on the block.”
A peculiarly Human phrase. He questioned the idiom to himself, and dissected it for denotation and connotation. In the Federation lingua franca, it offered certain interesting implications: an irony between proper usage and slang... “This is not, I presume, to suggest that I am an old goat.”
The light veil of cheerful neutrality blew aside; the Human humor bubbled up under the shield, and he caught the sensation of Joy, if not the thought that provoked it.
A Vulcan who makes puns? Shura fought the smile, struggling for manners, catching all but the corners. “Certainly not. In Vulcan years, you’re not more than middle-aged – maybe – and a goat is –”
“A four-footed Terran mammal with horns, long fur, and a tendency to exude an odiferous scent,” he said solemnly. He held up a hand in greeting. “Peace and long life, Shura Rakoczi. I am Siran, Commander – Judge Advocate General’s Counsel.”
She had expected that. Hefting her duffel, she said, “I appreciate your meeting me. Is Starbase Seven – and Mjolnir – large enough to warrant two of us?”
He paused a fraction of a second, then took the second case before she could lift it.
That is a Human way of requesting information regarding one’s circumstances.
“This is a frequent stop for R&R on Starfleet and trade routes, and we also have many tourists. The – downport of the galaxy – I believe it is said. There is enough work to warrant more than yourself and I. We have minor statuatory infringements. More important, however, are the treaties and various contracts difficulties we are asked to opine upon. This is merely civil, not criminal jurisprudence. Our criminal jurisprudence is very rare.”
Shura nodded. “I am used to research. And I read a little Vulcan. Low Vulcan, of course.”
“I am more interested in your Tellarite linguistic skills. Your previous assignment speaks highly of your abilities.”
“Oh, no. Commander –”
“Siran,” he interrupted. “It will be necessary for us to work in close proximity, and I have observed that Humans frequently perform better under conditions of informality. Unless you prefer formality – Lieutenant Commander.”
“Shura is fine.” She shifted the duffel and lengthened her stride to keep up with him. “Tellerites are more litigious than Humans, Siran.”
“You state the obvious.”
“If I had a credit for every nuisance suit filed by a Tellarite against, on behalf of, or under Starfleet jurisprudence, I could retire.”
“It is entirely possible,” he agreed. “However, I lack statistics with which to substantiate your hyperbole.”
They stopped at the elevated platform, high above ground, with the levels of the Base stacked like opaqued plexiglass spirals below them...
The touch faded. She started to draw her hand from his limp fingers, then felt them spasm. His lips moved without sound.
Shura. Stay with me.
“I won’t let you die alone,” she said.
The hand, still hot as banked flames, relaxed in hers.
When she inched further forward, she spilled some of the wine across her thigh, and the acid scent of the wine made her blink. Made her eyes water.
“I have an appointment,” she said to him. He glanced up from the papers. Even though they had worked together for only three standard months, he knew it was unusual for her to reject staying late to work on an interesting problem. He caught the slight Human pink in her face, watching as the flush deepened, darkening the skin, which under normal circumstances, was nearly as pale as her hair.
“An appointment?”
Definitely a flush. Definitely overtones of Human emotion, embarrassment in her voice when she spoke, a brief whiff of something half-defiant and half-exhilarated that woke echoes in him and made him draw away.
“I have a date.”
A date. A Human male-female encounter, usually for companionship, occasionally resulting in physical intimacy. “In that case, you should leave.”
She hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other. “It’s a fascinating problem,” she said. “I can’t be sure either if there is anything defensible in the plaintiff’s position, but my instincts support him.”
“It is a pity the law does not seem to agree with you.” He set the reader aside. “It will wait until the morning. You should go.”
“Thank you.”
He realized that for the first time since her arrival on Starbase Seven, she had taken the opportunity to change out of uniform.
Human clothing did not interest him, usually, unless it were truly bizarre or truly obscene. She wore an unusual dress, the hem nearly to her ankles, with a slit neckline and a high waist, composed from panels of several different fabrics and colors, in a variety pleasing to the eye. The long sleeves were clasped at the wrists, and the back of the dress had two gathered panels, one below the other, again in differing colors and fabrics. Her sand-white hair hung in a long braid down her back, as an unmarried Vulcan woman would wear her hair.
If she had been Vulcan, he would have known whether or not she was unmarried. He knew little or nothing about her private life. She had never questioned him on his.
Had she no family to protect her, to guide her steps? Humans had families: chaotic knots of alliances, feuds, but still knit, if only by emotion and not by Vulcan tradition.
He sat for a long time in his quarters that night, staring at the patterns the unfamiliar stars made in the sky. T’Kaliyah lay as a faint presence in his mind. On Vulcan, it would be day. She would be in the offices of her family’s business, checking invoices, arranging shipments, managing the flow of Vulcan exports and Human imports with expected efficiency.
Shura felt much younger than T’Kaliyah. He thought that his fellow advocate must be nearly the age of his oldest daughter, T’Akhtenat. T’Akhtenat was a Daughter of the Tradition, a gift a father could be proud to offer to Vulcan.
He followed the progress of the affair, caught through glimpses of Shura’s behaviour, her rare com calls to or from the young man. Domnall Llhainnan. He met him once, and was surprised by a flare of insight into the personality of a spoilt Human man, five years older than Shura, pleasure-loving, slow-moving, uncommitted, attractive.
It lasted nine months. The com calls ceased. He saw her glance wistfully at the com ten or twelve times a working day, for fifteen days, and then she stopped looking at the com.
He did not ask. He found his curiosity unsettling, an appalling desire to violate another’s privacy. He could not ask. He did not.
Twelve days later, he saw the young Human male with another Human female, this one younger and superficially more Human-delicate, while he and Shura paused in the public park for a quick meal of falafel and salad. Her eyes showed sadness; he caught none in her demeanor.
“You have been questioning me regarding the nuances of the higher Vulcan forms,” he said. “Perhaps you would care to take up study?”
The sadness vanished. “Do you think it’s possible for me to learn?”
“If you can grasp the difference between a spoken sentence and one that is graphically rendered, it is possible. Very few Humans who have not spoken and written the more complex forms from childhood can learn them, but I think you have the focus.”
She suddenly smiled. Not at him, but at something. “There’s a phrase from a Terran book, a very old one my father read to me. In it, a wise old man tells a boy that the best cure for sadness is to learn something.”
“He was a wise old man, indeed.”
They did not speak of Domnall Llhainnan again. Only later did he suspect why the relationship ended.
Shura took her prescribed cure with the serious intentness of a Vulcan child working her way into the beginning subtleties of language. The day she correctly constructed a motet graphically, without needing to resort to the verbal language, he felt her second burst of Joy, and the fading of the sorrow that haunted her.
..A year later...
She took her turn at the routine of collecting daily mail. Starbase Seven was far enough from Federation Central that mail tended to be dropped off by any ship, commercial or Fleet, landing in their locale. Urgent things, of course, came by facsimile or squirt.
“Letter for you,” she said, and handed him the flimsy. “Just came in on the hard copy.”
He opened it, and then stopped, his eyes fixed on the thin plastic.
“Siran?”
“It is from – she-who-is-my-wife.”
She put the stylus down. No emotion echoed in his voice, as was only to be expected, but something about the timbre struck her as not-good.
“It is my daughter T’szin,” he said. “She has been ill. T’Kaliyah writes to tell me the illness is finished.”
“I don’t understand.”
He looked at her with well-deep eyes. “My daughter has died.”
“You’ll need to get a transport –”
He made the very slight shake of his head that meant ‘no’. “The rites will be over before I arrive. The permission for compassionate leave would take a month from here to Headquarters and back. We – do not leave bodies to endure corruption on Vulcan.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and spent the rest of the day trying not to say or do anything to make her sympathy more obvious.
...Another year later...
It was the scent off his skin, that alien acid perfume, not so much unpleasant as unhuman, with the hormones all different, that told her who’d slipped into the booth across from her.
She waited for an opening remark.
What do Vulcans say to co-workers who are busy getting drunk?
The barmaid, a solid mixed-race woman of indeterminate age, with the tangy burnt-iron smell of Klingon musk and green Orion skin, paused at their booth.
“Same again,” said Shura.
“Prashiqi dohn’mie.” Siran’s voice seemed to echo hers, his deep vibrato rumbling across the space between them.
The waiter clicked away on her pattens, then returned with a Xanai-vodka doorbanger and a flowery-scented concotion in a bell-shaped glass. Shura glanced at Siran’s unlined face, and his eyes met hers at once, as if he’d been waiting. She dropped her gaze to the purple-tinted fluid in her glass and raised the glass to her lips. By now, the Xanai liquor had numbed her tongue to the point where the drink tasted like nothing more than pungent lemon-flavored water.
“It’s my day off,” she said.
He inclined his head. “As is tomorrow.”
“I’ve only had a couple.”
Under her lashes, she saw him lift an eyebrow in that quintessential Vulcan silent comment.
Siran took one precise swallow of his rainbow-shaded drink. “Human dialects have many ambiguities in them. I have noticed, for instance, that you occasionally find the imprecision of certain words useful for avoidance. If you do not wish my presence, it is not necessary that I disturb you.”
“No –” she stopped, then said more firmly, “That’s all right. I don’t want to – Isn’t it impolite to impose one’s emotions on another?” She thought, but did not say,
Aren’t sex and love two of those things you do not discuss with Vulcans?
He steepled his fingers and gazed at them thoughtfully. “It is not precisely the image a Vulcan would use. In the human phrase, your mind has been elsewhere of late.”
“Yes.” She stirred the mixture in her glass with one finger. “I’m celebrating.”
“Celebrating.” He said it as if contemplating the word.
“I have been divorced six years, two hours, and about thirty-nine minutes – allowing for the difference in planetary rotation.” And I can still use all of my body. Unlike my mother. Even if some men think I’m not completely female. To say that to him would be crossing the bounds of Vulcan etiquette. And of Human.
Siran took another measured dose from his glass. “We have been colleagues now for twenty-three Standard months.” He did not qualify or quantify the time in detail. “Family, on Vulcan, means more – and less – than it does among most major Human cultural groups. Family may be those biologically akin to you. Glossed in another way, it may be a group of individuals who work and share life experiences – share reality, you might say. It is not a concept simple to explain. Things that cannot be discussed with acquaintances can be discussed in the family.” He hesitated. “I would like to teach you a phrase in Vulcanar. Low Vulcan.”
She felt dizzy from the liquor, and she read Vulcanar more easily than she spoke it. “Agreed.”
“Pah’inym yiv nomahk.”
She repeated it five times before he accepted her pronounciation.
“In less-precise English or Standard,” he said, “you might say, ‘this is my heart’, or ‘these are my private thoughts.’ Among the family, we may discuss anything without shame.”
The words floated above the table. Shura pushed her half-full drink away. “Thank you.”
Vulcans don’t say thank you.
“I’m not ready yet. I can’t. Maybe – someday...”
"I will still be ready to listen."
He sipped his drink while she slowed down on hers. By the time she finished this fourth drink, she felt peace stealing over her, the way it usually did when they sat together in silence. He allowed her to pay for his drink as well as hers, then walked her back to her quarters.
She was a little unsteady. It was a good idea. Walking with him in the green, tornado-shaded sunset of Mjolnir, with its double stars gleaming blue and gold above the horizon, Shura relaxed in the mutual silence. Working with Siran was so fulfilling, so rewarding in the breadth and depth of the things she learned, the peace he worked in. She might get to work on Mjolnir another three years, but Siran had been here longer, and few assignments lasted longer than five years. "You know," she said, "We've worked together for two years."
"Two point three six nine Standard years. Yes."
"I--" She paused. "I'm not going to bleed all emotional over you. But every day I learn something new from working with you. I do know I'm not supposed to say 'thank you', so I won't. Instead, I'm going to go inside and sleep this off. And I'll see you on Monday. Or whatever it is here."
"It is no great difficulty to teach a willing pupil. I will see you Monday."
In the third year of their association...
They had progressed to his participation in ‘small talk’, for which few Vulcans had any real tolerance, but which he found increased her efficiency. Her comments on material, events, and philosophy were interesting, thoughtful, and showing a grasp of irony and symbolism, demonstrating that not all Human culture subscribed to the same patterns. Evidence of diversity. He found her lovers disturbing – they affected her in ways he could not clearly describe, and the majority seemed to end inconclusively. He thought she might not be sharing physical contact with them, but Human women were difficult to comprehend. The idea that she might share herself with successive male partners sent him home to meditate, to feel satisfaction in his relationship with T’Kaliyah.
He wrote his impressions daily in the log he kept. The Daughters had sent him to observe the workings of Federation law. They also wished impressions of Humans.
On occasion, he wondered if Shura — Shurochka; she had offered him the right to call her the family-intimate version of the formal Aleksandra — were indeed representative of Humans. She seemed to understand some of the subtleties of his conversation, when other Humans did not.
Perhaps Vulcans might affect Humans, even as Human society seemed, as Stovam had suggested years ago, to affect Vulcan.
Another time of that third year explained much…
“There’s a Human saying – well, North American Terran, anyway – that work is 98% boredom and 2% sheer terror.” Shura closed the last file on the thumbdisk, lifted the holder out of her reader, and dropped it next to the “Closed” rack.
She wiped her face with one of the ‘cool-cloths’ sold to Humans on hotter planets. The air in the office seemed hotter than usual… she was sweating.
Siran’s attention ostensibly stayed on the litigation opinion he was outlining on his pocket holo-computer. He reached over and set the holder into the proper alphabetic slot in the “Closed” rack, as he had done with the last twenty files she’d previously dropped on the pile.
It occurred to her that if any of her previous Human superiors had performed that action twenty times over, she would have found an excuse to go into another room. Or screamed. Or committed assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
She picked up a new datafile and fitted it into the reader. This one held only two short letters, requiring a drafted answer and a forward to Records at Starfleet Headquarters. This time, she looked at the holder after she lifted it out, then put it in the proper place in the “Closed” rack.
“I am not familiar with that statement.” He made three further scribings in Middle Vulcan, notations looking like a cross between a set of mathematical equations and a fractal design, then looked up at her. “I do not feel terror at this work, nor do I sense terror from you.”
In other words, take a break and explain yourself. Shura laid her scriber down, stretched, then propped her chin on her hand. “It’s similar to ‘when it rains, it pours’.” The sweat collected on her scalp; the small hairs stuck to the nape of her neck, pulling as she turned her head.
“Ah.”
“Some North American and British Union news logs refer to times like these as the ‘silly season’.”
Arrested, he lifted one eyebrow. “Silly season?”
“Not enough real news to keep their tapes and videos full, so they hunt for anything that might catch the audience’s attention. You know – ‘Ancient Klingon warrior reincarnated as eight-year-old Human twins’,” she said, reciting one of last week’s Galactic Enquisitor headlines.
Siran closed his eyes and pressed his lips together – as close to looking pained as he ever did. “I trust that sort of – news item – is not common to all your news logs.”
“No, no, certainly not. I was simply drawing an analogy between those sorts of stories and these sorts of cases.”
“Ah.” He paused a moment, then racked up the stack of his and her files with one sweeping glance. “In this case, I believe your hyperbole correct.” He eyed the stack again, eyed his pocket computer, and shook his head infinitesimally. “It might not even be hyperbole.”
“Coming from one who doesn’t understand the human emotions connected with the word, I take that as a compliment.”
He made that slight mouè which served him for a frown, and said, “And you are being deliberately imprecise. Do you require a resting period?”
Shura hesitated, then realized just how tired she was. Her joints ached. Her back ached. “Yes, as a matter-of-fact.” She pushed her chair back from the table and started to stretch.
The stretch only went half-way. Shura doubled up, clutching her gut against the shock of pain.
It felt like... it felt like... it had happened before...
Something fever-hot wrapped her in heat. The heat burnt her up inside, burning through her outside, and a cool sharp wind blew through her hair, chilling the sweat on the back of her neck. A steady jarring pulse aggravated the pain.
At some point, she dropped over into darkness.
When she came up out of the dark, the quality of the pain differed. Shura moved the hand not inserted in the IV sleeve and felt across her abdomen. Lasers and sonics left only faint scars. Now she had a matched set.
Shura endured Dr. Chapel’s tongue-lashing. The doctor’s reprimand, however, was followed by Siran.
He said nothing, at first, and she had forgotten how impassive and stony he could be when it suited him.
She pleated the bed sheet with her free hand. “That Vulcan phrase you taught me – how do you say it?”
“Pah’inym yiv nomahk.”
She got it nearly correct on the second attempt, then went on in English. “This was an etopic pregnancy. My second. That takes out the other ovary.”
It seemed unnecessary to use the contraceptive implants. Even Dr. Chapel didn’t suggest it. She only suggested I shouldn’t have blown off my last medical exam.
His frown arrowed his brows downward. He came one step closer to the bed. “There are a range of implants –”
“I had a hysterectomy when I was eighteen. My mother was one of the Quaavonerol-affected. She was pregnant with me at the time.”
“ALS,” he said. “One of the most recent class action suits. It took more than twenty-five years to settle.”
“Twenty-six years, four months, twenty-nine days.” Quaavonerol had, in fact, been discovered by a Vulcan scientist, in the process of finding a chemical which could produce the sort of bioelectric changes in Humans that Vulcan medicine could produce in Vulcans. Shura remembered that, all at once, and wished she hadn’t mentioned it – Quaavonerol was hardly Siran’s fault.
Hardly anyone’s fault. No one's fault that there will never be a little brown baby in my arms, maybe even with my green eyes.
One eyebrow lifted. “I stand corrected.”
“They thought the damage might be carried in the mitochondria. They still aren’t certain. I wanted to keep my ovaries – the hormones make me sick. I’m allergic to the synthetics and the cloned human just give me hot flashes.”
I wonder if they could have saved the embryo – no. If it carried the disease, then it’s better off dead.
Another bleak corner of her mind whispered,
I wanted a child. I want a child. I want....
“It does not change what you are.”
The bed sheet ripped under her fingers. “What I am is sterile. Neuter.”
“You are female. The chromosomes are not changed by an operation.”
“I don’t register as female. Not to men. Not to you.”
“Is that how Humans define sexual attractiveness? Fertility?”
“Chris did,” she said, hearing herself blurt out the damning words.
“Chris.”
“My ex-husband.” She paused. “When I told Domnall, he patted me on the shoulder. And didn’t call again. And Vadyim. And most of the others. Men want children.”
So do I....
“Among tsaichrani, our sterile females are mothers to us all; we call them the Daughters of the Tradition.” He pulled the chair next to the bed around so that he could sit and look into her face. He sat easily, straightly, with his hands clasped in front of him. His voice deepened in pitch, but changed in tone, flattening into a cool reserve, as if he were speaking about a legal case, or a scientist commenting on the interesting behaviour of amoebæ. “Our society is more – disciplined than Human society. One Human male should not be the basis of all Human male attitudes. I have seen – recently – Human males observe you with Human sexual interest. Your ability to conceive surely should not affect all of them.”
Shura laid her head back on the pillow. “You make sex sound so logical.”
“And it is not logical, for either of our cultures. I know this. I am kataytikh, even if only of the Ninth Realm.” Siran turned away from her, then back, as if he would stand up and pace. “Many partnerships exist in life. Humans require emotions in theirs, in the relationships I have observed – but not all human marriages produce children. Not all human marriages, nor relationships, require sex for satisfaction and fulfillment. You limit yourself, Shurochka.”
She lay paralyzed, astounded at the tone and the words. None of the Vulcans she had encountered, in law school, or in Starfleet, mentioned sex. The attitude had said very clearly that to broach the subject would be insulting. Yet now...
“You are more than an ability to bear children, or the lack thereof. You have an intelligent and ready mind, a strong Human wit, a pleasing Human form. You must accept yourself as you are, and not judge yourself as you are not.”
Tears prickled at her eyes. “Compliments – ”
“I,” he said with hauteur, “am tsaichrani. I do not offer compliments; I state the facts as they are presented to me.”
The tears began to burn, like the touch of his hands had burned against her skin. He must have run with her, carried her to Casualty. She blinked, and blinked hard a second time, trying to force back the tears.
Siran stopped completely a moment, a statue in the chair. Then he stood, and said with only the faintest reluctance, “Humans also require touch.” As calmly as if sitting down at his desk, he sat down on the side of the bed and slid his arms around her stiff unyielding form, and held her while she soaked his shirt-sleeve with cold Human tears.
And that had been two years before...
Three months. Three months ago, he had suddenly and without warning broken a data reader that had been on the fritz for months and which he had suddenly and without warning decided to repair himself.
She froze at her desk, looking across at the scraps of metal, plastic, and silicone scattered across his desk. “Siran?”
His eyes met hers. He looked--shattered, like the reader. He turned his gaze to his hands, as if they were new-fitted to his wrists, things he had never seen before and knew not at all how to use.
“Are you ill?” Siran was never ill. She was the one with allergies to half the plants in the galaxy.
“No.”
“Siran, if you’re not ill, then what happened? Have you cut yourself?”
“There is nothing wrong with me!” Heat rose out of him in a tangible wave.
“You are not telling me the entire truth. There is something going on, whether it’s wrong or whether it’s right. You helped me. Won’t you let me help you??”
“You cannot help me.”
“How can you be sure?”
The dark Vulcan eyes, beneath the thick wavy hair, looked deeper and more impenetrable. She studied the face, square-jawed and pitted with the evidence of some childhood illness.
“You cannot,” Siran said, as if the words were dragged out of him. “You yourself know you are not physically capable.” He shuddered, a full-body shake like a nightloper coming out of a river. “I will be in my quarters. Sign me out as sick.”
It took her forty-eight hours of digging through files, laying out the bits and pieces into, of all things, Vulcanir, building the sculpture through the graphical representations, the recordings, trying to grasp the subject which eluded her.
At last, she added the extra words of his rejection of her assistance. The final element snapped into place on the acasomy. The elegant alien concept sat in front of her, on her personal desk, the explanation of his sudden snap.
She switched the field to lock the diagram in place, and went to take a shower. When dealing with Tellurites, she used a particular cleanser that she and Christine Chapel had perfected, designed to dissolve any hormonal or emotional scents left on human skin.
At first, he wouldn't let her in. When she invoked Starfleet rules and threatened to call Security to force the door, Siran opened it and permitted her to enter.
She set the field-protected acasomy arrangement on the low table in the center of the room, then looked up at him. "I know."
GAP
"I can't look at this the way you do." She held up a hand. "Wait. I know it's because you're Vulcan and I'm Selene. I know my emotions get in the way."
GAP
Two months while the papers circled various Starfleet offices. Two months. Sanity had come back to him at last, for all the good it would do now, and yesterday – was it just yesterday? Yes, yesterday, she had said, “Why is it taking so long?”
And the man, dying, had answered her. “I am a strong man.” Matter-of-fact, logical. “Starfleet bureaucracy requires time.” His great green-black eyes had closed then – the thick silky lashes so incongruous on the stern Vulcan face fluttered once and lay still.
He lay still now, only his chest rising to catch breath, then shuddering as if the air resisted him. The heavy bones distorted the sallow skin stretched over wasted muscles. His lips parted; she thought she saw them form words.
She woke suddenly to the grey light filtering in from the one-way windows, the chilly morning breeze sneaking through the vents. In her hand, his fingers twitched and shuddered with fever-chills. His hand seemed so pale next to her dark skin.
If there were any compassion in this system, he’d be in a hospital, not this primitive jail-cell. But he fell under local law, not Starfleet...
If there were compassion in the system, Siran would be on a ship to Vulcan. Would have been three months ago. But the kind of compassion that her Vulcan superior showed her was something unwritten in the Federation’s rule book. The Federation dealt with justice. Vulcans would not call Siran’s behavior compassion. Shura tried to think, out of all of the information she’d gleaned over the last five years of her association with her partner, exactly what a Vulcan would have called Siran’s actions.
He felt cold, even to her. She laid down beside him on the pallet, with the chill of the prison stone seeping through the quilts, and covered him with an arm, trying to give him a little warmth.
He gave me touch. He gave me the limits and beyond of his Vulcan privacy, and I couldn’t even help when....
She finally got Dr. Chapel to come to his apartment. Chapel took one look and left, after saying something in Vulcan that did not seem to make sense, and listening to Siran’s response with something akin to horror.
“I can’t do anything for him,” the Federation doctor said. “There’s no Vulcan embassy near here, and he’s too far gone to get back to Vulcan now.”
“What do you mean he’s too far gone?”
“I’d have to get him back to Vulcan in three days. It’s a month-long trip at warp 10, and I can’t see any way around it.” Chapel sounded furious. “He’s been requesting leave for three months.”
“Why can’t he get it?”
“You’re short-handed.”
“But if there’s something medically wrong –“
“The Federation doesn’t recognize something the Vulcans can’t explain. Or won’t explain.” The doctor sounded bitter. She put a hand on Shura’s shoulder. “And you can’t help him. If you hadn’t had that second etopic, you might be able to. But not now.”
Shura didn’t know why the civilian doctor insisted on seeing him. Possibly to score off the Federation by proving Federation medicine incompetent. If she had known, she would have stopped the woman.
I tried to send her away. She forced her way in – not forced. She came in, and my mind was too weak by this time to stop her. The other Human – Chapel – she understood. She did not come near me once she saw the progress of the pon farr. This one – I never knew her name – stood so close. And she smelt alien. Alien. Female. Fertile. Ready. Plak tow...
The police called her to report that her superior had just killed a civilian woman. Rape interrupted when her broken spine resulted in a near-immediate death.
Shura felt the intrusion. She sat up, shifting herself, and realized, upon seeing Christine Chapel, that she had moved to place herself between any intruder and Siran.
Almost simultaneously, they said, “How did you get them to let you in here?”
In the shadows, the words bounced off the stone walls and echoed. With the same thought, they looked at the Vulcan, who lay unmoving, his hand still interlaced with Shura’s. The echoes could not reach far enough to reach him.
Shura eased herself towards him, and rested their clasped hands on her thigh. “I asked first,” she said.
The doctor ran a hand through her loose dark hair. “I’m the Station doctor,” she said. “I have a right to check on Starfleet personnel.”
“Nice work, if you can get it.”
Chapel waited, then nudged. “Your turn.”
“I’m his attorney. They can’t deny him access to his attorney, by their own laws.”
The doctor pulled out her scanner and a data pad. She clipped the scanner into the pad and tapped in a series of calibrations, then moved the scanner across his supine form. Her lips pursed, then thinned. Her upper lip might even have curled back from her teeth briefly.
Shura was reading her eyes.
Human eyes... So much of what they think is evident in their eyes, in those sweeping moves they make to express themselves, even though they think themselves ‘poker-faced’....
Dizziness swept over her, and her skin prickled, at once cold and sweaty. When had she heard Siran say those words? She could hear them so clearly now.
But he was right. The doctor’s eyes told the story.
“How much longer?” she said.
In an absent voice, as if half-speaking to herself, Christine said, “It’s hard to be sure. The will is so strong in them... Not long, I think. You should get some sleep, Commander. You’ve been in here for days.”
A line of old poetry slipped through her mind: ‘The flesh is bruckle, the Fiend is slee… Timor mortis conturbat me.’ “I’ve slept,” Shura said. “I sleep well enough. I eat.”
“What?”
“Whatever they put in here for me,” she said, indifferently. “The last – no, I didn’t eat the last bit. It didn’t taste good.”
“They gave you that slop they reserve for themselves, I suppose,” was the dry response. Christine took out an air-hypo and checked its coding, dialed a dosage, and pressed it against Shura’s bare arm. “That’ll boost you a little. I’ll get you something decent in here to eat in about fifteen minutes, or as soon as I get someone from the lab up here.”
Shura nodded.
“He wouldn’t thank you if you killed yourself over this,” Chapel said.
“He wouldn’t thank me anyway,” the other woman replied.
Chapel’s eyes unfocussed; in a just-audible tone, she said, “One does not thank logic.”
“I’ve spent my career pursuing justice, not logic.” Shura stared off into the distance, and Justice rose up blind before her. “My mother’s mother was a lawyer. She helped design the Selene Colony Charter. She was old when I was young, but even as blind as she was, if we started to scuffle – we’d hear her coming, and we’d sit down. She could find even a child holding its breath. I think she did it by heat-sensing. Or some sort of bat radar. It was a joke, you see – her father’d been a lawyer, and her mother named her Justice. People would say to me in law school, ‘Justice is blind’, and I’d say, ‘But she can hear.’ Maybe it wasn’t as silly a joke as I thought.” Stop. You’re babbling.
Christine pinched her upper lip. “Wait a moment. I’ll be right back.”
Settling her back against the cool stone wall, Shura closed her eyes. She could call all the faces up when she shut her eyes: Daddy, and Mama, and Greatma’s wrinkled sightless face wise with the stored years, and her younger brother (dead now in one of those quick clashes with the Klingons that the Organians no longer seemed to care to stop), and her sisters.
T’Kaliyah in the silence of the early morning, her skin glowing red in the first rising of the sun. Father and his meticulous briefs, Mother intent over her plants, Grandfather watching me practice with the ahn woon. T’Akhtenat, Samhuri and T’Litha – so much alike in build, the twins, but so different in attitude. Little T’szin, asleep with her ancestors. Sefik, now his Grandfather’s hope. T’Mejha, with all her questions. A family any man would be proud to have. Kataytikh, if only of the Ninth Realm. T’Kaliyah. It is not logical to wish... T’Kaliyah, if I were not leaving you with this disgrace....
Then let me do my job! Shura flared at him, sure in her passion, sure of her position. Let me make this stop! How many of you have died because the Federation doesn’t understand? This is something I know how to handle!
The heart of Vulcan should not be shown to Outworlders.
One who does not know that he does not know....
It does not apply here. It is a Human saying. Privacy is worth more than life.
Yes.
You agree? Then –
I agree that privacy is worth more than life. But is it worth more than your children’s lives?
You have no children.
No. Nor will I ever have children. Shura said to him, still not aware that not a word had passed between them verbally, And for that reason I can tell you that I would sacrifice privacy, dignity, and life itself to save my children and my children’s children. And I would do the same for your children and your children’s children. She smiled a little, to herself, thinking of an old school roommate. To the seventh generation.
But it is not your sacrifice. It will be Vulcan’s.
You and I, we worked for justice. Is this justice?
I killed.
You reacted. This isn’t your fault, anymore than Quaaronveral was the fault of that Vulcan scientist, anymore than my losing my ability to have children was his or her fault. This is the fault of a system that isn’t built on true justice.
Define justice.
Fair treatment and due rewards in accordance with the law. If the law does not apply, then the law must be made to apply.
He fell back on the previous argument. There is nothing you can do.
I can stop this from happening again, by suing the Federation for your wrongful death.
How can you sue the organization for which you work?
I won’t be working for them. I’ll resign.
Starfleet was your calling – Vulcans did not sound shaken; but Siran did.
I took an oath, when I passed the bar, to uphold justice. I joined Starfleet because I believed Starfleet upheld justice. I can’t work for what I can’t believe in.
You will destroy your career with this.
Siran, this is my career.
For a moment, she thought he had left her, gone ahead into the darkness. But then, reluctant, and yet convinced, he answered her.
I gave my life to justice, as well, and now I see that Stovam had strength in his reasonings. He did not fully understand the results, it seems... But I cannot make this decision for Vulcan... If my wife agrees, should she survive me. If the Daughters agree with you. Do as you think justice bids you.
The contact faded. She thought perhaps he pulled away from her. Do you want me to go away?
No! He seemed instantly ashamed of his cry.
I don’t want to disturb your privacy... but I don’t want you to die alone in here.
Stay with me. For a moment, the fingers tightened.
Of course.
There was silence.
Chapel came back with food, and Shura ate the fruit and the bread, drank water with the sudden realization of how good clear water tasted. The doctor said, in the tones of a doctor misliking her duties, “I’ll leave you a while. I have to do clinic. I’ll see you in three hours.”
Two hours later, Shura woke from a doze cluttered with strange images and nightmares, to his voice. She thought, for a minute, that he stood, arms outstretched, before turning away.
T’Kaliyah – always and never touching and touched – parted from me and never parting –
She thought she stood herself, separated from the two of them, standing under the hot sun, red light glaring down on them, an intruder, unwelcome.
Wife – this is my friend. I regret I will never meet you with her. Siran turned and stretched out a hand. Hands: delicate and veined with green like spring leaves, harder darker hands with broad-tipped fingers, Human hands flushed with pink like a Vulcan sunrise, met and dissolved into each other. Two women looked at each other over the mind of a man, and understood.
Siran looked at her for the last time. It was the first time again, and the second, and all the minutes and hours spent in close work, close thought, teaching and learning.
Shurochka – live long and prosper.
Vulcans do not cry. She fell through the red mist, fell through the sunrise, and woke in the grey filtered light of the prison.
Alone.
The constable called Dr. Chapel, concerned because his prisoner was most certainly dead, and the prisoner’s attorney sat motionless and glazed-eyed, gripping the cold lifeless hand in hers and refusing to release it.
On Vulcan
The water tasted of strange copper salts.
Shura drank it anyway, though it was warm, and the metallic undertaste stung in her mouth. On Vulcan, water was not to be rejected unless actually tainted.
The young Vulcan man who had gotten her the water watched her with the same sort of non-expression Siran had usually worn. “I regret that it is not –” he paused, then pulled out the phrase with the air of a magician pulling out a rabbit. “– Iced.”
She managed not to smile, and remembered not to thank him. That, at least, is in all the literature. Very cautiously, she tried a little of her Vulcan, knowing that she was probably mangling the pronounciation. “It’s very refreshing. When it’s this hot, I prefer it not-cold. It’s closer to body heat.”
He cocked his head a little to one side, and then nodded. “It is less strain on the system. Is it possible that I can help you in any other way?”
Shura had a sudden cowardly desire to get back on the shuttle and back out to the next passing ship. She braced herself. It wouldn’t be –
“Madam?”
She shook her head. “I have come to ask for speech with the wife of Siran, T’Kaliyah.” She had practiced that last sentence, with the assistance of a tape-recorder and subliminal hypnosis from Christine Chapel, until saying it as closely to Vulcanir pronounciation as possible seemed natural. Only about twice as difficult as Mandarin. Maybe three times. Maybe four.
He blinked, then turned to consult a directory on a nearby wall. When the scrolling stopped, he copied the address to her pad. “I can order a car to take you to this address. It is in the mountains, and the air is thinner than most Humans are used to; in addition, it is some distance from here. As an alternative, you could take the train to R’lin ni H’Valdeij and walk from there.”
It depends, she translated the possible implications, on how humanly proud you want to be about this. “I think a car would be more sensible.”
The car was programmed with the route, of course, so she needed only to sit in the front and relax. He had offered her a Vulcan driver, as well, but she wanted time to think. A Vulcan driver would not, of course, chatter at her like a Marsport cabbie, but the presence would be distracting.
Along with the other human comforts, the car had pre-programmed air-conditioning, which she turned down to the lowest level. She had thought this all out, indulged herself by working it out on paper with old-fashioned pencil, but she went over it again in her mind, blocking out the sections where she could list only possible alternatives.
The tinted windows still let in more sun than was comfortable. Mid-summer Vulcan was not meant to be tolerated by Humans, even in the mountains. Shura pulled the hood of her burnoose over her hair, and felt much of the heat cut off, radiated back from the thick material. Traditional clothing, she thought, and smiled to herself. And completely non-Starfleet. And non-Vulcan.
That, too, seemed comforting. Layers of materials, spidersilk, Earth-silk, Andorian-colony cotton, and reflective wool from Alphae, insulated her from the Vulcan sun and from Starfleet. Odd how a uniform can cut off the human brain.
Siran had been dead nine months. Vulcan months, not Standard, not Earth nor Selene. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Nine months of study, trying to decide what tactics might work. Hardest brief I ever wrote.
Not as hard as resigning from the Fleet...
“I knew your Grandmother,” Admiral Thurnaqq said, his withered blue antennæ trembling above his darkened forelock. “And your Father. I find it hard to believe this that you hand me.” He poked at the hard copy, sending the thick sheet of official parchment, with its neat inscriptions, skittering across the table.
“It’s a resignation letter, Admiral.” She had taken his order to sit with reluctance. Thurnaqq’s brilliant judiciary career matched his strength of will and the overbearing quality of his personality.
The antennæ stiffened, and his sunken eyes almost started out of their sockets. “Know I well enough what is it!”
Whoops. For him to drop out of Standard syntax means he’s well and truly pissed.
She shoved her shoulders back into brace and waited for the roof to fall in on her.
Thurnaqq took a very long breath, and then exhaled, his antennæ drooping slightly. “What I want from you is why.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked the question. Shura suspected it was not going to be the last. She took a deep breath herself.
“Simply,” the Judge Advocate General said.
She expelled the breath and stared at him. In spite of the fact that Andorians – polite ones, well-bred – did not stare, Thurnaqq stared back at her.
“Because I believe in justice,” she said. “I believed in Starfleet because I believed in justice. I can’t work for something I no longer believe in. I may be a commissioned officer, but I do have the right to resign.”
“I have the right to refuse your resignation,” he said, just as icily.
“I can get myself cashiered. It’s not that difficult.”
“Would you ruin your career?”
“Rather than be forced to support something I can’t philosophically support any more – yes.” Her own words to Siran came back to her. This is my career.
Thurnaqq’s antennæ twitched like a cat with fleas. “Explain what brought about this extraordinary change in attitude.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she said.
“Try.”
It wasn’t a request. But Vulcans could be so touchy... “Did you know,” she said, “that although there is a regulation in the Starfleet Officer’s Code covering alternate customs, that nine out of ten Starfleet captains will insist that a Duranian cut his – or her – honour lock? In spite of the documented fact that said Duranian will lose family and home if this is done? The Starfleet Journal of Sociological Studies, date 5434.29, questions why the Duranians, who are regarded as superb tacticians and navigators, never make it into Starfleet, but only into the merchant vessels and private lines, where I might add, they are not required to cut off the piece of hair that they believe ties their souls to earth and connects them to their communities. Were you also aware that Schillians are not permitted to command vessels because their physical and mental requirement for telepathic contact is considered to make them unstable? Or that we cannot recruit Omegan women to serve on Starfleet ships as medical personnel – it’s the only planet in the known worlds where only women are trained in the medical field – because their taboos will not permit them to wear the Starfleet uniform? They consider it immodest.”
“You’re leading the witness,” Thurnaqq said, dryly. “But I admit that I had heard those facts. Not put so closely together.” He looked at her, and one antenna dipped forward. “What does this have to do with Vulcans?”
“Vul –” her voice squeaked a little, and she cleared her throat. “Vulcans?”
“Your resignation has come on the heels of Commander Siran’s death. You and he worked together for five years. He died after committing an act of unspeakable violence – more than unspeakable, senseless and unbelievable. One might even say he must have gone suddenly mad.”
Not suddenly. “His request for leave was denied. On the grounds that we were short-handed, and that he had been home less than a year before his request was posted.”
“And?”
“That’s a Vulcan reason. They don’t wish to have it discussed.”
“Then how can I understand it?”
“That’s exactly the point. Why should you have to understand it?” Shura frowned. His question made sense. The Vulcan attitude also made sense. She met Thurnaqq’s unwinking gaze. “I don’t know if I can answer you. Take the evidence. He requests leave, is not given it, apparently goes mad, commits – as you yourself have said – a brutal and completely uncharacteristic act resulting in murder, and dies. And the Vulcans do not want this thing discussed.”
Thurnaqq leaned back in his chair and veiled his eyes with his eyelids. He rested clasped hands on his thighs, and appeared to fall asleep for a minute.
She knew better.
After a moment, his antennæ lifted and swayed, as if searching for sound or scent. “Tell me,” as if she had not spoken, “what will you do after your resignation?”
“Go client-chasing.”
“What?”
“Sorry. Not seriously.” She took a deep breath. “As I said, it’s not a subject the Vulcans wish to have discussed.”
Thurnaqq shifted in his chair and lowered his antennæ. “As I have also heard you say, drop the other shoe.”
“Only a fool has himself for a client –”
“Shurochka –”
“I need to get permission from Siran’s widow, and from the Vulcan authorities, to sue Starfleet for wrongful death.” She spread her hands. “How can I, as a Starfleet officer, sue my superiors?”
Thurnaqq’s antennæ almost touched his skull. He did not look at her now. “You have made up your mind?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the letter, put out a hand, and took the parchment. After a moment, he reached for a scriber, and wrote something neatly at the bottom. “You are hereby placed on detached duty, leave of absence, for a period of time, length of which will be determined at a later date.” He leaned forward and rested one blue hand on the desk top. “Matters may change, Lieutenant Commander. I would not want to think of you needing Starfleet at a later date. Take as much time as you need. The only case in which I can see a problem will be if my successor should have to take up this problem.”
She smiled a little at that. Thurnaqq would not want her to make any protests regarding his possible demise – but she could see the age in him. I may never see him again.
He stood, and she stood after him. He held out a hand, and she took it.
“Make your case the best possible,” he said. “I want you to win this one.”
“Thank you.”
The car stopped. She blinked, startled out of the doze she’d fallen into from the heat. That might be a problem. She reached for the thermos, and drank more of the local water, grimacing again at the coppery taste. From the car, she could see the plaque next to the front door of the sprawling house. This was less like a museum than many old Vulcan estates; the house, though, still looked somehow wrong – she corrected herself. Different. Not like what she was used to.
She used the amplifier from the car to bring a picture of the house plaque up onto the interior screen.
Siran. T’Kaliyah. T’Aktenaht. That would be their daughter, the oldest one.
Her mother’s voice, in her head, said, “Make up your mind, girl.”
Well, I have, haven’t I? If she says no, that’s that. If she says yes, then I have to go to the Daughters. If they say no, that’s that, as well. After a moment, her mind brought up the question of what she would do in that case. She dismissed the question. Time enough to worry about that later.
She took another drink of water and moved the car over to the side of the road, out of the way. After shutting it off, and noticing with interest and an odd amusement, that there were no locks on the doors, she stepped out of the car. The heat struck her in the face. She pulled the face-veil up over her nose and mouth, cutting the heat and dryness. The air here was thinner. She took her time to walk the few steps across the road and down the shallow steps to the door.
Fear kept sifting up through her muscles, churning in her guts, fighting its way up through her control. She stood in front of the house, in front of the door, and took a moment to get back the control. Dissect it. Understand it.
A Human widow might embarrass her. Might curse her. Might accuse her of obscene desires and possibly immoral acts. Siran’s wife would not be Human.
But she might still resent my presence. My – disruption of her privacy.
She closed her eyes and felt the hot weight of the medal between her breasts. Greatma’s legacy: a St. Jude medal. The patron saint of hopeless causes. She pressed the indentation below the plaque and heard, far-off behind the thick walls, an echo of bells.
The solid door moved weightlessly on unseen hinges. It swung back into the hall, into dim light, and a tall young man – possibly eighteen, possibly twenty – but that’s a Human estimate; a Vulcan might be older or younger – stood on the doorstep and looked at her.
“My name is Aleksandra Rakoczi, called Shura,” she said, and paused, trying to remember how she had planned to introduce herself.
“You were my father’s colleague,” he said. “I am Samhuri.”
“You are his eldest son, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes.” He seemed to recollect himself. “Please excuse me. We did not expect you. Please be welcome to our dwelling.” He stepped aside, and she walked into the darkness of the hall.
Blocks of reddish stone, each one taller than she was, rose upward on either side. The inside of the house felt much cooler than the outside. She slipped the burnoose back from her hair. Samhuri’s slanted eyes rested on her outfit with – interest? – curiosity? – amusement? She couldn’t be sure. She had known what each of Siran’s infintesimal changes of expression had indicated, what an indrawn breath meant in one context and what it meant in another.
“My mother is still at work,” he said. His English was careful, as if he searched for precision in that usually imprecise language. “Please come and sit in the lower hall, by the fountain. You will find it more comfortable.”
She almost said ‘thank you’ again, but caught herself, and substituted a nod. How many times do I normally say ‘thank you’ during a day?
A copper-scented mist hung in the lower hall. Water gurgled as it spilled down the stones into a trench winding through the hall. In the artifical light, augmented by the reflections from polished walls, an intricate rock garden, filled with unusual plants, surrounded stone benches and odd chairs carved into the wall.
“That’s a Mjolnir succulent,” she said, stooping to examine a particularly gaudy specimen of violet and orange. “A ‘lover’s-chain’ is the local name, I think. I never knew the proper names.”
“This was my father’s collection. None of them are native. He had them screened for possibly harmful effects, and then gathered them here.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, and settled into a nook nearest the fountain.
“May I bring you a drink?”
“Water would be welcome.”
She sat in contemplation of the garden, the fountain, her request, and Siran himself, sipping the water. After some time, she felt the vibration of steps against the stone floor, and she turned.
The Vulcan woman was not young. She was not as tall as Shura, though more slender, and she wore her black hair in a wrapped coronet of braids. “I am T’Kaliyah.”
The face blurred for a second, superimposed over a memory, or a dream-image, or something out of her head – or someone else’s? Shura shook herself and stood. “I am honoured to meet you.”
“I must disagree with you,” said the Vulcan. Her face relaxed. “I must admit it mine to be honoured to at last greet the person of whom I have heard so much.” She held out one thin green-veined hand.
Shura touched the hand with hesitation, felt the brief sharp tingle and felt a curtain drop into place between them. How did I learn to do that? I’m not sensitive.
“I see you have learned as much from Siran as you taught him,” T’Kaliyah said. “Please, let us sit. I find this a pleasant spot to rest in.”
“I would think it a little cold for you?”
“I have learned to appreciate the shades of temperature available.” T’Kaliyah settled herself on a low rock in front of Shura’s seat.
“Siran used to say that I used words to avoid saying what I wanted to say,” Shura said. “It’s possible to do that in English. It’s possible to do that in most Human languages. Maybe because so much of our cultures are based on saving face, on ‘softening a blow’...” She paused and considered that a moment. “T’Kaliyah, I do not want to intrude on your privacy. I have come here to ask you to be my client.”
“As I understand the judicial system, that is not the usual procedure.”
“No. In fact, I suppose many lawyers might consider it unethical. My – logical – client is dead.”
“I see. And what do you want to do if I agree to become your client?”
“I want to sue Starfleet for Siran’s wrongful death.”
T’Kaliyah said nothing for several minutes, though her face remained serene.
Shura remembered Siran doing the same thing, and settled back to wait.
Finally, T’Kaliyah said, “I must assume you understand the reasons behind my husband’s death.”
“Yes.”
“How did you obtain this knowledge?”
“Deduction. And some computer work.”
“This information is usually classified.”
“Yes. That is true.” Shura frowned, not willing to go into the ways in which she had gotten the information that made all of the manner of death clear. “If a person knows that information must exist, and knows the steps to go through to obtain that knowledge, then no information can be classified or unavailable.”
“I see.”
“I, however, consider that to be attorney-client communication, and therefore not to be discussed with anyone else.”
“It would be likely to come out at a trial.”
“Yes. I can’t deny that. It would also be impossible to guarantee that it could be kept from the public records. And any such suit might gather headlines and breathless reporters throughout the Known Worlds. That’s why I’m here.”
Now T’Kaliyah’s thin black brows drew down. “I fail to understand.”
“I have permission from Siran to approach you regarding this. If you wish me to not to pursue a case, then I will not. If you agree, then I have to approach the Daughters. If they refuse permission, then, again, I will not pursue a case.”
“And your reasons for pursuing this?”
“Justice.”
Again that brief frown. “Again, I fail to comprehend.”
“I took an oath, when I passed the Bar, to uphold justice, to fairly and equitably apply the law. If a law is a bad law, then it has to be changed. If the law does not fairly apply, then again, it has to be changed. I want justice. Not just for Vulcan, but for all the planets in the Federation. I think – without changes in attitude, that the Federation cannot survive.” She shifted uncomfortably in the niche, and said, “Please excuse me. It’s a bad habit, orating. I get in the habit and everything I say turns into the speech for the defense or the prosecution.”
T’Kaliyah nodded. “I need to consider this.”
“Of course.”
“It might take several days before I can decide. Please consider yourself our guest.”
That stopped her in her tracks. She went back over, in her mind, the rules of etiquette she’d gleaned from too many hours of eyestrain over a v-screen. “I realize that it is considered impolite to refuse an invitation of hospitality, on Vulcan. There’s a similar feeling on my world. However, with my request, I would not want to feel that my presence might cause a disturbance in the peace of your household.”
“It would not,” the Vulcan said, quietly and calmly. “Again, please consider yourself our guest. We are not as well-suited here for outworld guests as some of the other households, but I believe we can make you comfortable.”
“I would be honoured.” Notation: jot down all the times you want to say thank you. Interesting study for the diary.
“My second daughter should have dinner prepared by this time. If you would accompany me, I will show you to your room so that you may refresh yourself before dinner.”
They walked back up through the rock garden and out of the veil of mist.
“You said ‘my world’,” T’Kaliyah said, as they ascended the stairs. “Are you then not from Earth?”
“No – actually, I’m from one of the lunar colonies. Selene Colony.”
“I am not familiar with it.”
“It was settled about a hundred and fifty years ago, mostly by a mixture of Russian and Native American colonists. There was, briefly, a Pan-Lunar Alliance, between Luna Colony, Kuai Hua Spaceport, Niew Zuide Afrika, and Selene Colony. That fell apart, but we keep working towards a new coalition. Our philosophies are so different, though…” Shura shrugged and let the sentence drop.
“You are interested in politics, then?”
“My grandmother was one of Selene’s founders. She wrote the original draft of the Selene charter. I have it among my possessions, the original holograph. I’m probably too proud of it, but she was someone I admired very much.”
“Have you other family?”
“My father is on a deep-space probe mission – he won’t be back to this sector for another twenty-five years. I have a sister serving on the Potemkin. My mother is in a terminal-care facility on Selene.”
T’Kaliyah nodded. “Are you on leave of absence at this time?”
Shura paused a moment in her climb up the stairs. She took a deeper breath, and then let it out slowly. “No. I’ve resigned.”
The Vulcan turned to look at her, a long look with her dark eyes wide and unfathomable. “That was not necessary.”
“I disagree.”
“If I refuse you permission...”
“Then the Federation will go on as it has, Starfleet will go on as it has, and as matters stand, I cannot work for Starfleet any longer.” For the first time since coming to Vulcan, she smiled, one brief fleeting second of memory layered with humor. “That doesn’t worry me.”
“You will need to work.”
“There will be something. If I wanted to, I could go and dig turnips on Mjolnir.” Shura smiled again. “It might be good for me, digging turnips. Step out of the ivory tower.”
T’Kaliyah’s hand came to rest lightly on her arm, with no more weight than a butterfly’s wing. “You are very young to sound so bitter.”
“Bitterness is an emotion,” Shura said, and measured the amount of venom left in her. The outburst had taken so much of it away. “I was rude. Please excuse me.”
“Siran mentioned you were Quaavonerol-affected.”
“I’m sterile,” Shura said. “I lost my reproductive ability because of Quaavonerol. All that I regret about that is that – there was no way I could help Siran. I don’t think I would have been afraid to help him.”
The dark eyes seemed a little warmer, less distant. “It is difficult to fear what you do not know to fear. It is not your fault that Siran died.”
“I know that, T’Kaliyah. I don’t feel guilt, or responsibility, except — except that I am a lawyer, and I never saw how inequitable Starfleet was. I feel – anger. Siran was too important to be lost because of a rule that purported to be equitable and wasn’t.”
“Siran was one Vulcan.”
Shura stopped at the head of the stairs and turned, speaking faster, almost running her words together, wanting somehow to make someone else see. “But that’s it. He was one man. One Vulcan. He could have been anyone and he would have been too important to lose this way. Life is too precious.”
T’Kaliyah’s eyelids veiled her eyes a moment. “I see.” The lids lifted, and she met Shura’s gaze directly. “But privacy is more important than life.”
“How important? How many lives is it more important than? How many children have been lost because their fathers – or mothers – died because of the law?”
“Another researcher – Stovam – suggested that the Federation might be so disruptive to Vulcan privacy that it might be better to secede and isolate ourselves.”
“That’s one solution. It would probably result in Vulcans like me.”
“I do not understand.”
“Sterility. A philosopher once said that anything carried to an extreme caused either sterility or cancer.”
The fine black Vulcan brows drew down again, but not in anger. T’Kaliyah led the way into the dining room, and introduced those of her family who were at home.
One of the etiquette books, something for diplomats, mentioned that Vulcans did not talk during meals. Shura slipped off the heavy burnoose and sat in her layers of silk and cotton, eating unfamiliar food and trying to decide whether she liked it or not. She also, under her lashes, catalogued her company with the unconscious analysis that had become habit throughout her twenty years of law study.
The food was different. Occasionally she came across a bit that startled her, either by spicing or by bitterness, but she ate what T’Kaliyah silently suggested.
Two of the children, a boy and a girl, looked to be the same age. The one was Samhuri; the other must be his twin, T’Litha. They should be – twenty, according to Siran’s occasional words about his family. His oldest daughter was not present. T’Akhtenat was a – Daughter of the Tradition. And Daughters of the Tradition are sterile females… She would have been just about Shura’s age, somewhere between thirty-five and forty. And one of the people I have to convince. The younger boy, Sefik, was fourteen, thinner than his other siblings, not frail, but slender like a metal rod. The youngest of the children was T’Mejha, and she was the surviving twin, seven years old, with T’szin the child who had died. An enormous family, by Vulcan standards.
After the meal, the family broke off into groups.
Sefik left for his grandparents’. T’Litha sat down in a corner of the main room with her lytherette and struggled with what seemed to be a fairly complex piece of music, just as Shura remembered from her childhood piano lessons. Samhuri coached T’Mejha through a math assignment.
T’Kaliyah rummaged through a shelf and brought down several map disks and a guidebook. “There are several places nearby you might find of interest.” She sat down beside Shura and opened the guidebook.
The small virtual screen flickered into life. Vulcan words spilled out into the air. T’Kaliyah said something in Vulcan, and the language turned to English. She demonstrated the navigating tools, and the built-in notepad, then offered to let Shura study the material in the privacy of her rooms.
Rooms it was; the suite came with a sleeping area carved back into the rock and shielded with hangings that held in the coolness of a cave, a washroom and toilet area which contained both water and alternative showers, a sitting room set six low steps above the sleeping area and a short staircase that led up and out to a patio.
“The water systems in Pherith are recycled; you need not be concerned about using the water shower,” T’Kaliyah assured her.
This time, Shura said, “Thank you,” and meant it.
“Did you bring your belongings with you?”
“I left them at the port, until I knew what I was doing.”
T’Kaliyah nodded. “You are a little taller than my eldest daughter, but I think her broader in the shoulders. I’ll bring you some garments to use until the port delivers your luggage.”
“I appreciate that.” The layers kept the moisture in her skin, but she couldn’t count on wearing them much longer before human perspiration would take on enough strength to knock a Klingon down at arms’-reach. “Perhaps I could get these,” indicating her robes, “cleaned?”
T’Kaliyah nodded, and demonstrated the cleaning unit installed in the corner of the washroom. With all of the amenities complete, she said good night and left Shura to her own devices.
The sitting room had, along with a comfortable couch, an entertainment unit, and a communication screen, a small kitchen area and processor. Marked in Vulcan, of course… but appropriately, Low Vulcan, which she read much more easily than she had five and a half years ago.
Pa’thalsta. There was one she recognized: a chilled herbal drink, something like hibiscus tea. She dialed a glass, settled down on the couch, and browsed the guidebook.
First, determine range. Staying away from the home during the day might be the politest option; simply because she’d been offered hospitality didn’t mean she should take advantage of her host. She chose a range that would let her use the aircar to optimum distance, then surveyed the choices.
An hour into her hunt, Shura noted the fading light and turned on reading lights. Turning them on meant nothing more than a verbal, “Lights, half,” as if she were back on Selene. But the act broke her concentration, and she got up for another glass of pa’thalsta. A flare of color caught her eye, and she followed vision: a bundle of cloth. Shaken out, the folded pieces revealed themselves: a gown, Vulcan-sun crimson, gossamer in feel but opaque, probably for sleeping; a set of towels and face cloth, white; a white tunic, with a tabard and drawstring pants in dull blue, muslin-weight but as opaque as the gown; and a long white scarf to cover hair and face. At least, probably meant for hair and face, Shura amended, reminding herself to check the guidebook for possible hints of proper dress.
She yawned, then shut her mouth with a snap, startled at the exhaustion washing over her. Vulcan’s day was a half-rotation off Mjolnir’s and three-quarters off Selene’s — and she had been on a commercial flight for the last month, with half of that in warp. And that entire route spent in study and worry. No wonder the exhaustion. Nothing now to do but relax and wait.
The clothes had appeared in silence — presumably whomever had dropped them off had recognized signs of study. How many times had she looked up from a viewscreen to find that Siran had deposited a cheese sandwich or a pita stuffed with falafel and a glass of iced tea in front of her and settled into his own work? For that matter, how many late nights had she paused in front of his office because the light was still on, seen him engrossed in work, and gone to warm two or three squares of prookle, pour a glass of juice, set them on the desk, and left without expecting acknowledgment?
And how often could she have done that for a Human partner without gossip erupting throughout Starbase corridors and cubicles?
Assuming, of course, that gossip hadn’t erupted anyway. Talk enough after Siran’s death. In the month before she left Mjolnir, she marked a hundred times the small clusters muttering to each other fell silent when she approached, the chatter resuming when she was not quite out of earshot. Her hearing seemed keener of late, picking up phrases and linkages of speech that should have been too faint for her to hear.
With the red gown hung on the back of the bathroom door, Shura took a quick cool water shower, using the gel provided to clean her hair and her body. Habit and conscience limited her to five minutes, long enough to lather and rinse. Cooled to ambient temperature, she slipped on the gown and took the guidebook into the sleeping area. Pushing the bedcurtains aside, she crawled under the sheets, feeling a surprising chill from the insulating curtains.
At some point, the guidebook slipped from her fingers and shut itself off as the cover closed. Shura rolled over away from it and dropped off into the most peaceful sleep she’d known in nine months.
Vulcan’s Forge
The kivas juice tasted like sparkling wine, with complex notes of blackberry and jasmine, a lime tang in the flavor, mint topnotes, sweet without sugary thickness, refreshing as iced tea on a hot day. And Vulcan’s Forge, in the depth of cold season, was hotter than high summer in the Sahara.
Her mother had taken a guided tour of Vulcan’s Forge, some twenty-five years earlier, and brought back pictures. Shura could have taken pictures now and thought them duplicates. From the computer histories and the guidebook, Vulcan’s Forge seemed not to have changed throughout the previous millenium.
The woman lying in the bed could move only her eyes. The sisters at Saint Mary Bogoroditsa Home used both the latest technologies and the time-honored TLC of all nursing sisters: air re-circulating mattresses to keep one spot from remaining too long in contact with the body plus turning the patient every two hours. This period Anastasia Theriault rested on her back, eyes open. On the ceiling overhead, a virtual screen offered the novelle, Les Perdus de Nom, that Anastasia had followed since she was a teenager, bracketed by fifteen minutes of local news and fifteen minutes of Federation news.
“
Privyet, Maman
,” Shura said.
The eyes flicked towards her, and the lines around them crinkled with pleasure. This far advanced into the paralysis, the side-effects of Quaaveronal on a human system, the larynx produced no sound. The lips moved silently, Hello, Shurochka-duscha. The eyes shifted to the bed, to the chair sitting beside the bed.
Shura eased herself into the chair. “Oh, Mama. So much has happened since I saw you last, and I hardly know where to start.”
They read your letters to me. I know about your friend. Tell me what the problem is.
Dizziness washed over her. Shura shut her eyes, breathing slowly, sucking oxygen deep into her lungs. Had she seen her mother’s lips move? Or had the words been like Siran’s voice, speaking to her in her head? Of itself, her hand slid over the sheet, found her mother’s hand, and folded itself over the familiar fingers. Mama’s fingers spasmed in hers: probably no more than an artifact of reflex; the loss of muscular control was, according to all the doctors, irreversible. Her skin, the color of aged mahogany, had acquired an ashey sheen.
Did Shura speak then? Or did the memories, the talk with Thurnaqq, the digging through ambiguous computer records and old textbooks on comparative biology, the study of existing Fleet law and public records, all the reports available to her, stream out of her mind, bits and bytes of neuron-encoded information passing through whatever ether separated minds? Shura remembered the taste of talking dry in her throat, but according to her chronometer, less than a half-hour had passed.
“Maman, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know if I know what I’m doing.”
What does your head tell you?
“That there is no other way to stop this from happening again.”
And your heart?
“Says how can I tell these people that they have to bring this out in the open?”
Is that what you’re going to do?
“No. I’m going to ask them to let me start the suit. If they say no, then I leave it at that. But what…” Shura rubbed her mother’s palm. She stared up at the screen overhead, the show’s Selene patois of Québécois, Russian, Navaho, Sioux and English a pleasantly familiar background, the sounds of home. Home had never been a place; it had been a sound, a dialect that not more than five million people spoke, but any of those five million could recognize a landsman from no more than a sentence. Maybe no more than two or three words. “What words can I use, Mama? What can I say to them?”
You’ll find the words. Or they’ll come to you. The eyes flickered again. Les Perdus du Nom was winding up to its daily serial peak. Kiss me goodbye, duscha, and go. You’ll miss your flight.
How odd that Mama should have known what flight she was to take.
Shura dialed the air-conditioning down to a dull hum, trying to keep from straining the batteries. Even solar batteries, even on Vulcan, needed some consideration.
The grand desert spread out before her, its alien bristling plants and rusty sand-dunes lacking Selene’s curvature, troubling her inner eye. She cateqorized the problem, and nodded to herself. Larger planet, wrong feel to the horizon.
Fumbling in the knapsack she’d brought, she found the book by touch and pulled it out. The paper felt smooth under her fingers, cool as water streaming in one of Mjolnir’s mountain streams. If Vulcan had been a hundred degrees cooler, it would have felt like Selene. Like home.
The black and white of the paper blurred into the black, the white, the greys of the lunar surface. There was no single black to human eyes there, not an absence of colors, but mixtures of black and white that made Cardassian ships and stations look monochromatic.