feelings is a liar. We are trained to suppress them, Amanda. We are
not born without them. But you must not expect Sarek to suddenly act
like a human male in love."
"No," she said. "Then he wouldn't be Sarek. But I worry that the
family wouldn't accept me ... and I worry what would happen if we had
children. ."
"The family will accept what Sarek tells them to accept," Silek said,
not without some irony. "And as for children .. . what two better
parents can you think of?"
Amanda smiled at him, suddenly radiant. "Silek, thank you. If I could
hug you, I would."
Silek straightened nervously in his chair. "That would be ...
inappropriate. Here. You'll need to know this soon enough anyway." He
stretched out his hand, two fingers extended, toward her. "For
family," he said. "Welcome."
Smiling, she touched her fingers to his.
Awkwardly, he joked, "Of course, you needn't tell Sarek where you
learned this."
Amanda laughed and turned back to her desk. "Red roses," she said, her
voice rising giddily, though she fought to keep it level. "Actually,
yellow are my favorite, but I'm glad he didn't send any."
"Is the color significant?"
"Yellow roses are for parting. Goodbyes."
"Interesting," Silek said noncommittally.
The day he returned to Vulcan, Amanda found a single yellow rose on her
desk.
Skon died soon after, and Silek's mother received her youngest son back
into the family, as was her right. Soon afterward, Silek's marriage to
another member of the expedition was arranged shortly before he and his
bride left for Hydrilla. So it was that Sarek, the conformist, took a
human wife, while his outcast
brother returned to Vulcan for the traditional bonding.
They sat in the large central room before dinner-Silek in Sarek's
favorite chair, Amanda on the sofa. Sarek had gone to retrieve Starnn
from the shuttle station. Silek was studying the portrait of mother
and son that hung above the piano.
"A very good likeness of you," Silek said. "How old was your son when
this was painted?"
"Ten," said Amanda. "It's a good likeness of him, too."
"I look forward to meeting my nephew someday. You say that he is in
Star Fleet?" Amanda nodded. "He's a commander on a starship."
"Commander. Then he has risen to a high rank in a very short time. No
doubt he will soon be a captain." Silek paused. "I must admit that I
am .. . somewhat impressed at Sarek's acceptance of his son's choice of
career. Vulcan fathers are not always tolerant of deviations from the
family pattern."
"Spock and his father have reached an understanding. I won't say that
it was easy." She smiled at him. "But you haven't spoken at all about
your expedition to the Hydrilla sector. And I'm very interested in
hearing about your experience as a linguist in the field."
Silek lifted one eyebrow a millimeter to indicate that he understood
her reason for changing the subject and respected her loyalty toward
Sarek. "The number of documents I was able to unearth and translate
was
staggering, but most of the work is behind me. Except --"
"Except?" asked Amanda.
"The brief inscription that appears on the unusual boxes we found. As
a matter of fact, your husband has one of the boxes here. The opinion
of another linguist is always helpful."
Silek disappeared for a few moments and returned with two items. He
held one of them out to Amanda. "I forgot to give this to you
earlier."
"What is this?" she asked with delight and opened the book. "Copyright
nineteen thirty-eight .. . "The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking
.. ." " She smiled up at him. "Silek, thank you, this is wonderful!
Where did you manage to find this?"
always remembered your fondness for them.... I saw you had amassed
quite a collection."
"I don't have it. And I love Twain. Thank you very much." She closed
the book lovingly and set it next to her on the couch. Silek ignored
the thanks and held the next item out to Amanda, who hesitated as
though she were afraid to touch it. "What is it?" she asked.
"My associate Starnn would tell you it's a work of art. I'm not so
certain. It is, however, shielded against scanners and protected
against opening by a force field. We found several others like this
one." He turned it over so that Amanda could see the inscription
etched into the smooth surface.
Amanda ran her fingers over it and shook her head. "I couldn't even
begin to guess its origin. There are no familiar points of references,
no similarities to any
thing I've ever seen." She looked up at him. "Have you considered
that it might simply be a meaningless decoration?"
"Yes. But the computer indicates that if it were simply a decorative
pattern, it would repeat its design more often. It has the mixture of
redundancy and novelty one expects to find in language. But it's quite
unlike any of the languages in the Hydrilla sector. I'm most familiar
with the Beekmanian languages, of course, and it's certainly not like
any of those. One of my theories is that it's an ancient script of
some proto Beekmanian language lost in some earlier global catastrophe
--a form of script which died out. My problem has been that there's
too small a sample of it for the computer to break the code."
"And how long ago did that civilization die out?"
" "Die out' is a misleading term. Roughly one thousand solar years
ago, the civilization destroyed itself."
"War?" Amanda asked.
"Perhaps you could call it that. In most cases, the population seems
to have brutally murdered each other. A plague of some type, probably.
Whatever happened, the destruction was sudden .. . and thorough. And
not just Beekman's Planet. All inhabited planets in the sector were
affected the same way, over a period of time."
"They must have been quite sophisticated to develop something like
this," Amanda mused, looking at the box.
"Our excavations don't give us much clue as to how they managed it.
Their technology was no more advanced than ours, yet we have nothing
like this. My guess is that this was left behind during a visit from
a
more advanced civilization; but as to who that might be, we have no
clue. All we know is that if such a visit took place, it was before
the destruction. Starnn unearthed these himself and verifies that they
had been buried for at least one thousand years. Therefore, it is
unlikely that the visit had anything to do with the destruction of the
planet." "Maybe they opened the box," Amanda joked.
Tomson was in the rec lounge drinking a solitary Scotch when al-Baslama
entered.
"Mind if I join you?" he asked. His expression was unusually
serious.
Tomson nodded at the chair next to her. Al-B sat in it.
"I got that promotion," he said. "I want you to know I appreciate
everything you'v
e done."
She forced a smile. "Moh, that's great! Congratulations!"
"Thank you," he said expressionlessly.
She quit smiling and frowned slightly. "You don't look too happy about
it, Lieutenant. I think we'd better do something about that. I've got
just the thing." She went over to the bar and programmed up another
Scotch. She brought it back and held it out to him. "To your
promotion," she said, smiling again. He took it slowly. Tomson held
up her glass encouragingly. "Cheers," she said.
Moh said nothing, but drank his Scotch, keeping his eyes on her the
whole time. When they put their glasses down, he said, "I report to
the Valor as the new security chief."
In spite of herself, she said quickly, "When?" "A week from
yesterday."
Tomson silently repeated this to herself. "That's great! I'm really
happy for you." She should be happy, she told herself, but still she
felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "The Valor's a good
ship. Chen Szu-Yi's an excellent captain."
Moh nodded. "Of course, the promotion is effective immediately. I'm a
full lieutenant as of today."
"Full lieutenant," Tomson said and swallowed her Scotch. "Well, since
we're equals, I suppose you can call me Ingrit."
"Ingrit," he said awkwardly. "I wonder, Ingrit.. ."
Tomson looked at him expectantly.
"We're equals now." Moh leaned forward across the table. "Does this
.. . change things?"
He was leaving in a week. Tomson threw her head back and finished her
Scotch. "I suppose it does," she said, meeting his eyes fearlessly.
They left the lounge together.
Sarek awoke with a gasp. He was in his bedroom, in the darkness, lying
next to his wife. He looked over at her to see if he had disturbed
her, but she lay on her side, breathing in soft, regular sighs.
He sat up in the bed and, with a great effort of will, ceased
trembling. He had had a dream--no, he had had a nightmare, an
experience quite alien to him. On a few occasions he had listened
tolerantly, almost smugly, to his wife as she recounted her own bad
dreams, and he had knowingly reassured her of their insignificance.
Vulcans dreamed, of course--most sapient creatures do--but Sarek's were
dreams of everyday occurrences, reflections of reality, the brain
playing
back the day's events to index what was important in the memory and
dispose of the rest. He had never before understood the depth of
terror such outwardly simple, even ridiculous images could evoke in the
night.
He closed his eyes and remembered. Jeweled insects --thousands of
them, flying and crawling. But something was amiss; the insects fell
from the air, their wings torn and missing, limbs pulled off, shells
crushed. They lay on their backs and waved their remaining legs in the
air in agony. The image was still capable of evoking horror in him,
but at the same time made absolutely no sense. He had encountered no
such insects nor had he seen anything mutilated recently. Yet the
dream disturbed him to the point that he found it impossible to return
to sleep.
He sat for a moment on the bed, listening to Aman da's breathing until
it became absolutely clear to him that he could no longer remain in
bed. He would go to his study and read. The idea made perfect sense,
but something in him quite illogically resisted. The notion persisted
until at last he rose, dressed himself and went into the central room.
In the darkness he imagined that he could see a faint blue glow
emanating from his study; but when he entered, he saw that the box was
not glowing. The force field had been lowered.
"Fascinating," he said and bent down to open the box.
In the bedroom, Amanda cried out softly in her sleep.
Chapter Two
it was crowded in the rec lounge, as was usual for the time of day
early evening, for those just coming off the first shift. Kirk had
joined the small group watching Spock and his opponent and had just
caught a glimpse of Tomson and al-Baslama surreptitiously gliding out
when McCoy wandered in with a bottle of beer in his hand.
"What's the matter, Bones?" Kirk asked. "Did the distillery finally
run dry?"
"God forbid," McCoy said fervently. "Can't a man do things a little
differently once in a while?"
"No law against it. But forgive me if I stick with my usual." Kirk
took another sip of his brandy.
"No law against that stuff--but there ought to be." McCoy sat down and
took a long pull on his bottle. "Well, I'll be damned. Looks like
Spock has a new protegee. When did she come on board?"
Kirk smiled tiredly. "Nearly a week ago. You haven't been paying
attention much lately, have you?"
"I guess not," McCoy said, staring quite openly at the woman who sat
across the chessboard from Spock.
The most striking thing about her was most likely her hair flame red,
thick and waving down her back, a startling contrast to her white
complexion. Her expression was far less exuberant than her hair. She
leaned forward, elbows on the board, resting a very sharp chin on one
fist, and the look on her face was a perfect reflection of Spock's.
Were it not for the ears and that hair, McCoy thought, you'd think she
was a Vulcan.
"Care to make a little wager? Two to one says Spock wins."
"What kind of odds are those?" McCoy complained. "Of course, he's
gonna win. But you can put me down for five credits just on principle
in favor of the young lady."
Kirk shrugged. "It's not that sure of a bet, Bones. That young lady
is Dr. Anitra Lanter."
McCoy groaned. "Doctor? I am getting old. She can't be more than
twenty years old."
"Twenty-four," Kirk said.
"Twenty-four," McCoy sighed and shook his head. "Twenty-four. I was
twenty-four once."
"You? You were never twenty-four."
"Ah .. ." McCoy turned his attention to his beer.
"So the name Lanter means nothing to you?"
"Should it?"
"Hermann Lanter, the famous physicist?"
"Oh, yeah," McCoy said without enthusiasm. "Wasn't he a genius or
something?" "Or something," Kirk said. "And that's his daughter."
"Well, dammit, Jim, why didn't you tell me sooner?
I'd have put ten credits on her." McCoy belched softly.
"What? And be out twenty credits?" Kirk said, smiling, as the
intercom whistled. He went over to it, and McCoy watched the captain's
expression turn sourer with each passing second as he listened and
argued by turns for a full minute.
"What is it?" McCoy asked when he returned. "You don't look too
pleased, Jim."
"Orders for shore leave." Kirk sat down abruptly and nursed his drink,
staring straight ahead at the chess game without really seeing it.
"Don't tell me. Canceled again."
"Not canceled--changed. Star Fleet figures that since we're dropping
off the last of the Hydrillan researchers on Vulcan, we can just .. .
take shore leave there."
"If that's supposed to be a joke, Jim, that's
not very funny."
Kirk did not smile. "Komack's orders."
"But Star Base Five is close enough and would be a hell of a lot more
fun. Why would they want to change our orders?"
"Ask Komack," Kirk said glumly.
"Komack's gone nuts," McCoy muttered into his beer. "Too bad I'm not
chief medical officer for the fleet. I'd have him certified unfit for
duty so fast.. .. Why would anyone in their right mind want to take
leave on Vulcan?"
Kirk sighed. "I can think of at least one person on board this ship
who would."
They watched in glum silence for a few more moments. It looked as
though Spock would easily rout the
young woman, until she looked up at him with a sudden, surprising
impishness, stuck out her tongue, and moved her queen.
McCoy sat forward, suddenly brightening. "Checkmate. Well, I'll be
... I think I'm in love. Hey, where're you going, Jim? You owe me ten
credits."
Later that evening, McCoy stopped by sickbay to check in with M'Benga
and very nearly collided with Anitra Lanter on the way out. She leaned
against the door, tightlipped and breathing heavily, one arm gripping