The Autobiography of Mr. Spock

by Una McCormack

  From the perspective of Michael and myself, there were direct improvements in our daily life too. My father, with the support of other parents at the Learning Center, exerted his considerable influence to ensure that greater attention was paid to the specific requirements of his two children, and that the principle of Kol-Ut-Shan was scrupulously upheld within the establishment. I recall that around this time the morning reflections with which we opened each day at the Learning Center contained many exhortations and injunctions to look for and accept the diversity we could find around us. I am glad to say that most of our fellow students took these messages to heart, and there were fewer remarks about the humans and half-humans in their midst, and thus little cause for anger from either my sister or herself. With less strife in her day-to-day life, Michael began to find some much-needed peace of mind and was able to focus her attention increasingly on her studies. She was soon excelling—alas for her younger brother, several years behind! But there were changes in my own life at this time too, when the question of my apparent slow-wittedness with the written word was at last resolved.

  My mother had always maintained that there would be a rational explanation for my struggles; my father tended, I know, to assume that my dual background was the reason that I lagged behind my peers. Once Michael began to settle, her evident success in her schooling disproved this hypothesis completely, and my father—ever-logical—agreed to support my mother in her push to have my needs fully addressed. I find myself marveling at how focused and driven she was over this: she was barely thirty years old, a young woman living on an alien world whose inhabitants were confident—often over-confident—in their assertions, and yet she was not daunted. My mother was not satisfied that the Center was doing all that it could to help me. My father handed this battle over chiefly to her, but the Center was left under no illusion that she had his complete support. And, as Michael blossomed, they too had to grudgingly accept that perhaps there were other reasons for my troubles beyond being partly human. Still, it took my mother several months working through an extensive technical literature to come up with a diagnosis: l’tak terai, a learning disorder that affected my ability to process text upon the page. Dyslexia would be the closest human equivalent, with which my mother was herself diagnosed as a child; but l’tak terai is extremely uncommon on Vulcan, and teachers are therefore less skilled in recognizing the signs. With this information in hand, and full understanding of all that could be done arising from her own experience, my mother was unstoppable in securing the adjustments that I needed in order to be able to process information more easily. And slowly, painstakingly, she worked alongside me, helping me learn to read and restoring my confidence in my own abilities. All these strategies of my mother’s soon began to have their effect. The confusion of information around me began to take on some order. I began to believe myself capable.

  After this, my time at the Learning Center became steadily more satisfactory. Before long, I began to relish my time at school. I was deeply stimulated by the acquisition of new data and delighted at last to have access to this world which had hitherto seemed inaccessible to me. More particularly, I loved detecting patterns that connected the facts which we received. I know that many people look at the methods of education which are used on Vulcan with skepticism, believing that what they are seeing is children force-fed information. This was not how I experienced my time in the study domes. Each day brought some new insight, some new fact, that helped me further expand my understanding of the universe. I thrived in the routine and discipline that the domes offered. I enjoyed demonstrating not only my knowledge, but the increasing speed with which I could access information to answer questions and make logical deductions to solve complex problems. My memory—which was already very good—became excellent. For the first time in my life, I felt competent in my academic studies and, encouraged by my rapid improvement, now felt joy rather than dread at the prospect of a day’s learning.

  External perception of our educational methods also places too much emphasis on the learning domes. The curriculum would not be so illogically narrow. We meditated, we played music, we practiced martial arts. My preferred instrument was the ka’athyra: at my mother’s insistence, I also learned the piano. Perhaps predictably, I found respite in the complex patterns of Bach, but quietly, privately, I was fascinated by the technical excellence and emotional intensity required to perform Chopin. Like all students at the Center, I studied suus mahna, that martial art which requires a clear and disciplined mind, allowing instinct to be harnessed to the intellect. Later in life, observing a display of judo by my colleague and comrade Hikaru Sulu, I was fascinated to see many similarities between our practices. Watching him, I saw yet again how much congruence there was between the dual parts of my heritage. We often took the chance to challenge each other at our respective arts. I have no particular taste for hand-to-hand combat, even though my way of life has meant that I have frequently been called upon to use these skills. But any martial art teaches you two things: the best way to win a fight is not to start one, but that if another starts a fight, you should always end it as the victor. A precisely placed neck pinch can put an end to many problems before they have a chance to arise.

  My parents’ relief at the changes in me was almost tangible. My mother smiled more. My father quizzed me on an almost daily basis about what I was learning, and I often detected satisfaction in his expression. At the Learning Center too I received greater acceptance from my peers than ever before. My academic abilities were no longer in doubt; my physical capability was a deterrent to bullying. Moreover, the new confidence that I acquired as a result led me to be calmer, more able to respond to provocation by ignoring it, or, better still, with a curt dismissal. I began to spend more time with my peers. Two comrades in particular proved to be good company at this time: Sukat, who was happy to spend many long hours at kal’toh and showed an interest in the puzzle games regularly sent from Earth by my human relatives; and Suleh, who, like myself, found the long hikes and walks in the mountains beyond the city stimulating, and taught me more about the geology and local flora and fauna of my home than I had taught myself. It is a great gift of friendship, I believe, to be shown the world through the eyes of an intelligent observer, to see what they see. With Sukat, the world seemed to comprise of deep patterns below the surface that could be perceived and mobilized to one’s benefit; with Suleh, the landscape which I knew so well became even more detailed, even more fine-grained. I have never asked what benefits they acquired from their association with me, but it has continued well beyond school days, into our middle years, and well into old age. We were a tight band. There were still troubles, of course. A boy named Stonn, for example, continued to take exception to the presence of humans—whether full or in part—at the Center. I ignored him entirely: a mistake, perhaps, in retrospect, but one which I have survived.

  Our practice of martial arts was considerably enlivened by our first use of weapons. These were naturally introduced with great ceremony and ritual, and with admonitions about taking their use very seriously. I, like many others, was permitted access to family heirlooms of great antiquity in order to begin this training. In a quiet but more solemn than usual ceremony, attended only by me and my father, I received the lirpa, the metal staff, and the ahn-woon, which is a long and weighted strip of leather that can be used as a whip or a noose. Each of these had belonged to those ancestors whose names were engraved on my memory, stretching back even beyond my great-grandfather. My father was at pains to impress this long history upon me.

  “I cannot in all certainty say,” he told me, “that these were ever used in battle. Those tales are lost in the mists of time. In any event, that is most certainly not their purpose now. They are to remind us of the bloodshed in our past, and thus to ensure that each generation of us makes the commitment to discipline mind and body to prevent such violence ever mastering us again.”

  Ritual weapons, then, reminders of the bloody history we had le
ft behind—but weapons in which we had to demonstrate skill. I remember, after these gifts were given, I took them to the safety of my room. There were several further rituals associated with their care—keeping the blades sharp, the metal bright, the leather supple—and when these were done, I put them carefully away, and came downstairs. My mother was waiting for me. I remember her placing her hand upon my cheek, and I saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes. “So young to learn to fight,” she said, and I thought for a moment that she was going to say more. But she did not. Instead, she kissed me and let me go on my way.

  I believe, in retrospect, that this rare doubt showed by my mother toward my Vulcan upbringing was less associated with the martial arts in which I was being trained, and more in what else these artefacts symbolized. The lirpa, the ahn-woon—these are the weapons used in the kal-if-fee, the ritual combat that, should a challenge arise, form part of the marriage ceremony, koon-ut-kal-if-fee. My father (with what I was to learn later were considerable misgivings on the part of my mother) had determined that I, like him, should enter into a traditional betrothal arrangement. The negotiations for this began not long after my birth. I do not have children, and, therefore, have not, myself, been required to carry out this particular kind of high-level diplomacy. There are many nuances involved: families whom one may approach; families where an overture would be considered inappropriate or in bad taste. By the time that I was three, my intended had been identified, and over the course of the following few years, both families monitored the development of the other child, to determine whether the first meeting would take place.

  I am aware that there must have been many concerns over suitability as a potential husband. My dual heritage, my apparent difficulties with the written word, the arrival of Michael presumably cementing our family’s reputation for unorthodoxy. Yet, we were a very ancient family, one with a long and venerable history, one with whom an association was still a great honor. As the various troubles which had beset our family gradually dissipated, the benefits of continuing with the agreement clearly won out, and preparations began for the betrothal ceremony. We returned to our ancestral lands in the L’langon Mountains, there to await my wife-to-be and her family.

  The day of the ceremony is long for a child, since it begins, perhaps inevitably, before sunrise and involves no small amount of meditation and fasting. But the moment of the betrothal itself is surprisingly brief and intense. We were brought together, both cowled to hide our features, and then revealed to each other.

  “I am Spock,” I told her.

  “I am T’Pring,” she said. It was the first time I heard her name. I remember a sweet-faced and serious girl; no doubt I too looked very serious. My father guided my hand to her cheek; her mother guided her hand to mine. And then, the mind-meld—my first; the touch of our thoughts and wishes and hopes and fears. We both learned that we were as frightened as the other, as sincerely worried at what we might learn or give away. I experienced a cool and clever intelligence, a logical mind, but one that met me with interest and curiosity. We were, in many ways, very similar, T’Pring and I. I saw her blink, felt her surprise—and relief—that she had experienced common ground between us. I felt the same way, and she, of course, knew this. We shared our desire to excel, and to make our families and our ancestors proud. And then, we drew apart, and there our families, newly linked, ate a quiet meal together. The next day, she and her family departed, and I took heart from our first meeting, and looked forward to our future encounters before the arrangement was fully formalized. My mother, too, was much relieved.

  I know that to alien eyes, the practice of arranged marriage causes great alarm, on the basis that the children concerned cannot consent. My upbringing meant that I did not ask such questions. I knew from studying family history that my grandparents and my great-grandparents, and no doubt as far back as I might look, had entered into such marriages and that they had well served the families concerned. I knew from observing friends of my parents, and the parents of my friends, that such arrangements were not inevitably unhappy, but were partnerships between people whose values and backgrounds were deeply congruent. Bear in mind our history of violence, Jean-Luc, and our fear of a collapse back into such barbarism. Caution in matters of the heart, where passions might threaten the balance of our society, was a natural outcome of our turn to logic. Deep satisfaction was to be achieved from knowing that one’s life partnership contributed significantly to the continued stability of our society. When I first met T’Pring, I had no reason to believe that our partnership would be any different.

  I will not enter this debate further other than to say that, at the time, I did not feel that I was under any compulsion to marry T’Pring. Two families, congruent in their values and beliefs, came together to reaffirm these, and to offer each other the possibility of closer involvement in the future. I have no doubt that if either I or T’Pring had been unhappy with what we found during that meeting of minds, then the betrothal would have gone no further, with no blame or reproach implied. Some of these ceremonies do not end with a betrothal; some of the marriage ceremonies instead become a challenge; and some of our marriages do not last the course. There is no marriage if there is not consent on both sides.

  But what I shall say is that, had I ever had a child of my own, I would not have pursued this course for them, and there, perhaps, I might have caused a further disappointment in my father’s eyes. It is possible that I do him an injustice here. At the time, though, there were many questions in my mind. Having now participated in this ritual, and knowing, as I did, the great solemnity with which these promises are made, I wondered increasingly about my father’s first marriage. My half-brother, Sybok, had been an occasional presence during my early childhood, but was now barely mentioned. I shall write about him more fully later in this book, Jean-Luc. At the time, I knew little more than that, before marrying my mother, my father had been married to a woman from an aristocratic family, and that this marriage ended shortly after the birth of Sybok. It was not until much later that I pieced together the story, and I am still not sure that I am in possession of all the facts. I still must conjecture as to what the ending of this marriage meant for my father’s decisions when it came to my future. Was it possible that my father—scion himself of an ancient and venerated family—was considered to have broken with convention when that first marriage ended? Was this reputation for nonconformity cemented when he chose to marry a second time, and a non-Vulcan at that?

  I have wondered many times whether the emphasis which my father placed on my Vulcan heritage arose in part from a desire to protect me from the judgment of others. That he knew that I would have to prove myself again and again, demonstrating myself more Vulcan than every other Vulcan around me. In this respect, his wish for me to enter into a traditional marriage makes great sense. My acceptance by a family such as T’Pring’s would be considered evidence that I was to be considered truly Vulcan, that this curious half-human child was able to integrate completely into Vulcan culture and society. My father—who was widely traveled and hugely well-informed, a diplomat with experience of dozens of different civilizations—nonetheless like many others from his homeworld believed that the Vulcan way of life was without peer, that a more stable, harmonious, and successful civilization was not to be found. Naturally, he would want me to enjoy all the benefits that would arise from this. Naturally, he would choose the more traditional path for me. The ending of the arrangement between myself and T’Pring I hesitate to discuss further: this is her story as much as mine and should not be told without full consent. Time, distance, and circumstance brought us both to a very different place. What I will say is that as I grew older, and grew wearier of my homeworld, I chafed at the doubts and constraints that surrounded me, and I grew increasingly keen to leave, to see more of the diversity of the universe which I had been taught to honor. By the time I left for Starfleet Academy, much about Vulcan had lost its appeal. I wanted more than I had; after all, as perhaps T�
�Pring herself discovered in time, having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.

  * * *

  One unalloyed pleasure at this time was the arrival on Vulcan of my mother’s family. Both my maternal grandparents, as well as my mother’s older brother, his husband, and their son came for their first extended visit to Vulcan since my parents’ marriage. This cousin, in particular, I found a most intriguing individual. Disheveled, eccentric, brilliant, and buzzing with intense enthusiasms that seemed to propel him through the day, Andrew Grayson was, at fifteen years old, interested in everything that crossed his path. Mathematics, physics, music, art, literature, anything that moved, made a sound, crept, flew, or exploded—whatever his eye fell upon Andrew grabbed hold and did not let go until the phenomenon was fully explored and understood. On arrival at our home, he looked vaguely at my father, my mother, and at us two children, then his eye fell upon my ka’athyra, abandoned on a nearby chair when our guests arrived.

  “Ah!” he said. “I was hoping to try my hand at this!”

  He wandered off, ka’athyra in hand, and settled himself in the nearest chair, long legs thrown over the arm, already picking out a series of tuneful notes. My uncle said, “That’s Andrew. I don’t know who brought him up. They should be ashamed.” But there was no doubting his love. Michael and I exchanged a look and, as soon as we could, sidled away from the grown-ups to observe this unusual specimen at close range, as he plucked at and roundly cursed the instrument. We were both of course besotted. The three of us, throughout that extended holiday, were almost a pod of o’ktath, the smaller two dipping and diving in the wake of their senior, as each new interest of his was explored to its full.