I have no information on the immediate aftermath of this decision. I have no cause or grounds to approach T’Rea’s family to ask, nor would I presume. Since my father was traditional in outlook, we might logically assume that he now considered himself widowed, and his son motherless. He never spoke to me of this time, of course, and even Perrin, to whom he showed more open emotion than any other living being, was not made privy to his thoughts during this time period. If there was any grief at the loss of his wife, or pride at the convictions that led her to make this choice, I do not know. Perhaps this seemed to him a logical step for her. Everyone concerned is now dead, including Perrin, and their reflections on this time have gone with them into the red dust. I can offer only the facts of what happened next, conjecture on what this might have meant to Sybok, and offer my child’s eye view of the young man that emerged from these early years. What I do know is that following T’Rea’s departure, my father took a diplomatic post off-world, and Sybok remained with his mother’s family. My father saw him intermittently over the following years, but he did not spend a substantial amount of time with our father until after I was born, and the time came for him to complete the kahs-wan. At this point—I must have been four or five, and Sybok a decade older—he came to live with us, to prepare for this important ritual. I remember him as playful, boisterous, and patient with a much younger sibling who was dumbstruck by this lively presence in his usually sedate home. We never mind-melded, to my regret, Sybok and I, but I was very comfortable in his presence. He was strongly intuitive and empathic, and, when I was with him, I had a sense of being completely understood (a rarity in my confusing childhood). My older brother, I could see even at this relatively young age, was manifestly blessed with many gifts, which his homeworld never found a way to nurture.
The kahs-wan is a punishing trial, undertaken most usually between the ages of nine and eleven, in which participants must survive ten days in the wilderness, without even the most basic of survival equipment. They must find food and water, in an unrelenting landscape, and defend themselves against whatever wild animals must cross their path. At fourteen or fifteen, this was late in life for Sybok to be taking on this challenge, and my understanding is that there had been two previous and unsuccessful attempts. This third attempt would be the last; further attempts were unheard of, and thus there was an unspoken air of finality about these proceedings. My mother suggested to my father that we go out to our home in the L’langon Mountains, where she might help him prepare for his ordeal, and my father consented. I do not know what Sybok’s other family thought of the human wife attempting to help; perhaps they did not know what else was to be done and accepted the necessity of her involvement.
My mother attempted many times to reach Sybok, and I believe that, as far as it was possible, a bond formed between them. News of his death—and the manner of his death—hit her very hard. One of our last conversations concerned how bitterly she regretted her failure to establish a connection with him. She had tried on occasion to persuade him to study on Earth, but to no avail. To be fully accepted as Vulcan was what Sybok desired. I cannot see what more my mother could have done; nor, indeed, can I see what more Sybok might have done in his turn. With my mother he was always courteous and measured; there was never the undercurrent of anger and, latterly, suppressed violence that one sensed when he was near our father. At Sybok’s own request, she took on the task of tutoring him through his last attempt at the kahs-wan. My mother was, by this point in her life, an adept at the fourth level of kolinahr, that level before one enters seclusion. She had come as far as she might come without leaving us behind, which we knew she would never do, and yet much further than anyone believed a human could come. Perhaps this was one reason that my brother’s grandparents were willing to entrust him to her, and she did everything that she could.
I recall how my mother spent hour after hour in Sybok’s company, in quiet discussion, in meditation. I recall them now, as if it were yesterday, sitting together in a quiet corner of the villa in the mountains, by the flickering light of the meditation lamps. The sharp fierce angles of his face; the gentle patient curves of hers. I recall her voice, quiet and steady, chanting along with his, hoarse and halting, guiding him through the recitations, the mantras, the disciplines that would guide him in the wilderness. When the day came for him to begin the ritual, she traveled with him to the edge of the wilderness, and saw him on his way.
We did not expect to hear from him for the full ten days. My mother seemed quietly confident that he would succeed. Still, seven days after his departure, while I sat with my mother in the garden by the fountain, we heard footsteps hurrying toward us. A rough and dirty figure, still covered in the dust of the desert, sweat streaking his brow, ran into the courtyard. Sybok had returned, three days early.
“Sybok,” said my mother, coming to her feet, her face turning white. “What has happened?”
“Where is he?” said my brother. “Where’s Father? Oh, Amanda, wait until he hears what I have seen!” There was a wildness about him, not simply his appearance, but in his eyes. I do not think it is imagination speaking when I say that I recall his hands were trembling. “Amanda! I must speak to Father immediately!”
My father, who had been in his study, came out in the court: he must have been disturbed by the noise. He saw Sybok, and… Jean-Luc, let us say that I shall not easily forget my father’s face the moment he saw his older son, returned too soon yet again from the kahs-wan. For a brief second, a fire seemed to stir in my father’s eyes—and then this was quenched, completely quenched. It was as if his flesh petrified, in the true sense of the word, as if he became as stony as the statues of our ancestors. His son had failed.
“Sybok,” he said softly. “Why are you here?”
My brother, hurrying toward him, reached out to clasp his shoulders. “Father!” he said. “I’ve seen something great! I have to tell you—”
“We have spoken,” said my father, detaching himself from his son’s embrace, “about what might happen should you fail the kahs-wan yet again—”
“I have not failed!” said my brother. “I have seen everything I need to see! I have seen Sha Ka Ree!”
There was a silence. My father bowed his head. “Sybok—”
My mother stepped forward. “Let us go inside,” she said, her voice low and calm, her hand upon her husband’s arm. She looked back over her shoulder to me. “Stay here, Spock,” she said, and she made sure to be smiling. “You need not worry.”
So she said, but while I did not hear the substance of the argument that followed, I heard how Sybok’s voice became ever more raised until, at last, I heard his footsteps echoing down the corridor again, and the door to the house slam. Not an hour had passed since his return. Later, when my mother settled me in bed, I asked her, “What is Sha Ka Ree?”
“A fantasy,” she said. “A made-up place.”
“Why would someone believe they had seen a made-up place?” I asked.
“Because they feel some lack,” she said.
“I do not understand what that means.”
“Sybok has lost a great deal in his life,” my mother said. “Sometimes, when people lose something, they look for replacements. They reach for things that do not exist.”
“That seems illogical,” I replied.
“Yes,” she said, and kissed me on the forehead. “But understandable.”
Sha Ka Ree, Jean-Luc, is a place in Vulcan mythology, of a kind that appears in the mythologies of many worlds, the source of life and knowledge. The Klingons call it Qui’Tu, the Romulans Vorta Vor. You might refer to it as Eden. My poor brother, wandering alone through the wilderness, in what state of mind I cannot conjecture, believed he had glimpsed Paradise. A vision, indeed, and one that seemed to precipitate some breakdown in him. It is no surprise, on reflection, that, only a few years later, my claims to have been visited by a Red Angel caused such alarm, that I kept my conviction of their reality to myself, and allowed my
parents to believe that some other, more easily rationalized explanation, lay behind my ability to pinpoint my lost sister’s whereabouts.
I have observed, over the years, that those who lose a parent when they are children seem to experience this as an expulsion from a perfect world, and often seek some kind of return to a place of imagined bliss. Sybok’s mother was, in effect, dead; his father was, as I had cause to know, often unreachable. This might explain some of what compelled Sybok, what made him obsessed with finding Sha Ka Ree. That is, after all, what happened, as we know now. In the years that followed his last, failed attempt at kahs-wan, he did not mention Sha Ka Ree. We saw him, on occasion, when he came to visit us at the house in ShiKahr (he did not come to the mountains again). He had eschewed both a scientific and a diplomatic career, and was instead pursuing a scholarly route, tracing the use of the mind-melding techniques throughout Vulcan history. He was often to be found in the archives of remote monasteries or near-forgotten shrines. In fact, as we know now, this archival work masked the truth that his obsession with Sha Ka Ree was growing. He never forgot the vision that came to him in the desert, that apparent glimpse of a heavenly place where he could be at peace. My father, it transpired, grew concerned about the direction of his studies, to the extent that he asked Sybok to abandon them. Sybok refused, and they cut off contact with each other. This was shortly after Michael left for the Science Academy.
I did not see my brother again in the flesh for many years. Shortly after I arrived at Starfleet Academy, however, Sybok contacted me. By this point, he had become involved with a group inspired by the teachings of the V’tosh ka’tur, a defunct sect who tried to find a middle ground between logic and emotion. He was entering a retreat on the Bacchus Plateau, and he asked me to join him there for a while when next I visited Vulcan. I said no. Relations between myself and my father were strained, to say the least, about my decision to enter Starfleet Academy, and becoming involved with such a group might well have turned our estrangement into a complete break. That was my last direct contact with my brother for more than thirty years. I learned not long afterward from my mother that he had abandoned even the V’tosh ka’tur and their teachings and was taking a path that not only intensified his emotional experiences, but which encouraged the pursuit of visions and revelations.
Might my acceptance of his offer at this time have altered the course of his later life? Such questions are, of course, impossible to answer, but, after considerable reflection, I must conclude not. For one thing, I was much younger, at the start of my career, still uncertain of my own path, and hardly likely to have been able to influence him. The effects upon my own life—not least the severance of ties with my father that surely would have followed had any close contact with my brother at this time been discovered—would undoubtedly have been greater. But the fault, I believe, did not lie in either of us. My brother’s gifts—empathy, a visionary nature—were always going to be at odds with the mainstream of Vulcan philosophy. (One must conjecture, indeed, whether being in possession of such gifts was one reason that T’Rea voluntarily excluded herself from society.) On another world, one more able to understand the nature of his talents, he might well have flourished. On Vulcan, there was no path he could find to follow. In the end, of course, he was banished—although his story did not end there. Later, much later, Sybok made a reappearance in my life. All his gifts were still intact, but he used them to sway people to his cause—his quest to find Sha Ka Ree. The tragedy of my brother’s life was that his need for understanding made him easy prey in his turn; his talents misused by a malevolent alien intelligence that had persuaded my brother of its divinity. In the end, coming to understand that he had been tricked, my brother sacrificed himself to save me and my friends. I wish it had not come to that. I wish he had found purpose. I wish that Vulcan had nurtured his gifts.
* * *
Perhaps now you see that, from my perspective, two great shadows loomed over my later adolescence. The dreadful failure of my older brother, and the impossible success of my older sister. My hope was that I would find a way somewhere between the two; my fear that I was expected to find a path that soared to greater heights even than my sister. Logic suggested to me that the latter was not likely; it further suggested that I should try to strike out on a path that meant such comparisons were unlikely to be drawn. For this reason, as I have indicated, I began privately to consider options other than the Science Academy. I reached out to my family on Earth, and, with their assistance, spoke to friends with experience of Starfleet, and collected advice on how one might approach an application to Starfleet Academy. I shall not say that I concealed this from my parents; rather, let us say that since they did not ask, I did not tell.
Ultimately, a decision had to be made. Perhaps it was the growing realization that I would never be satisfactory, that the simple fact of my half-humanity would always be seen as a flaw. Or perhaps—and here I must be honest with myself—I had simply always been looking for a reason to refuse, a way to reject the ambitions which my father had long held for me. I am not proud of this, and perhaps you may see now how the long rift between my father and myself occurred. But in that moment, I have never felt so sure of myself, and, in retrospect, I have never felt so free. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from me. I knew now that I had never wanted this. What I wanted was to leave Vulcan. What I wanted, was to find my own way. Starfleet seemed to offer this.
There was one more nerve-wracking interview to be endured, however: the one that followed with my father. As it turned out, and as is so often the case, this confrontation was less terrible than imagination had made it.
“This is disappointing, Spock,” said my father. “But all is not lost. I believe that with some intervention on my part, you may yet be able to enter the academy this year.”
“Father,” I said. “I have made my decision. I shall not attend the Science Academy.”
“Spock,” he replied, “attendance there is a necessary precondition to joining the Expeditionary Group—”
“Which I do not intend to join. For you to intervene would therefore be unnecessary, and illogical.”
My mother, presumably detecting warning signs that even after many years I could not see, said, “Spock, this is a great change of heart—”
“Mother,” I said. “I have doubted for some time that my path lay in that direction.”
“What alternative is there?” said my father.
“It is my intention to go to Starfleet Academy, and pursue my scientific career within Starfleet,” I said.
“But there is no family tradition of Starfleet,” said my father.
“No,” I agreed. “Or, perhaps we might say—not yet.”
“Spock,” said my father. “I do not wish you to join Starfleet.”
“Father, my decision is made. In two months, I shall leave for Earth—”
“If it were not for your mother,” my father said, “I should tell you not to return.”
“If it were not for my mother,” I replied, “I should not wish to return.”
I am not proud of this conversation. Privately, I knew that I was enjoying the sense of exhilaration that came from going directly against my father’s wishes, and I was somewhat ashamed by what amounted to an emotional outburst. But my father’s palpable sense of anger and grievance were, at the time, incomprehensible to me. I could not understand the depth of his response. Of course, I knew nothing about what had occurred over my sister’s failed entry to the Science Academy. All I knew was that, once again, I was proving a disappointment and that, given my human heritage, perhaps this was no more than could have been expected. I know now, having mind-melded with you, Jean-Luc, that this was not the case—that, by the end of his life, at least, my father had come to accept me for who I was. Not the person that he had anticipated, perhaps, but myself, in my own right. At the time, however, I was convinced of his disapprobation, and he was certainly in no hurry to disabuse me of this notion.
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br /> “Don’t be too angry with him, Spock,” my mother said to me later. “He is proud of you.”
“I have no evidence to support that statement, Mother.”
“He’ll come round, in time. Give him time.”
My father, having made his position clear, had nothing more to say. A week later, he left Vulcan for a long-planned diplomatic mission to Arderia IV, taking my mother with him. They would not be returning until long after I had left for Earth to take up my place at Starfleet Academy. Before leaving for Earth, I therefore found myself with a period of a month or two alone in ShiKahr, free of any obligations, perhaps for the first time in my life. I had no studies, no tests, no requirement to do anything other than what I pleased. I could have prepared for the classes in which I was enrolled on my first semester, but I did not. (My mother, checking in on me, gently encouraged this truancy.) Instead, I spent those weeks revisiting all the places that I loved best in and around my home city, places that we had often visited together, and said my farewells.
One afternoon, I took a private gondola down the Sirakal canal, and found the spot where my mother and I had often gone when I was a child. Here, at last, swimming with the o’ktath, I kept a promise that I had made myself long ago and mind-melded with them. For the first time since I had met T’Pring, I reached out to experience in full the mind of another living being, and that of a species very different from my own. It was an exhilarating experience, to immerse myself in their gentle, inquisitive minds; to swim with them sensing what they sensed, the joy of diving through the water, of meeting their own kind, of swimming alongside other creatures. And yet, behind this, I sensed the melancholy of their extinction. They knew, somehow, that they were creatures brought back from death; that they lived now only because of the twists and turns of our history, because of our desire to make amends. They knew. And I would have cause to remember this, one day.
The Autobiography of Mr. Spock Page 7