In his will, Leonard McCoy left me two things: his “special” recipe for beans, and his own mix for mint juleps. His instructions to me were to: “Really try to push the boat out, dammit.” I bequeath these gifts to you now, Jean-Luc, in the same spirit, and with a similar injunction. Remember him—remember all of them. My absent friends.
Saavik
IF I WERE ABLE TO GO BACK IN TIME AND TELL MY YOUNGER SELF that the reunification of the Vulcan and Romulan people should so come to dominate my later years, I remain convinced that my younger self would not believe me. Even after my Starfleet career was over, and my diplomatic career underway, I would have said to my future self that the matter of Federation-Klingon relations, or even, perhaps, the interstellar ramifications of Cardassian aggression and their disastrous alliance with the Dominion would have been the defining issues of my day, the questions to which I would have to dedicate my time and energy. And they did require time and energy, but they will not be what defines me.
No, I would not have expected this future for myself: to spend years living on Romulus, among Romulan people, learning their languages, their hopes and their ever-present, all-consuming fears, and wholly immersing myself in the attempt to find some common ground between us. In writing this t’san a’lat, I must move carefully between presenting the story of my life as it seemed to be at the time, and looking back with the benefit of hindsight, implying that there was some inevitability to the course that it took. There was no inevitability to this. There was a series of choices, yes, and many of these had deep roots in past experiences. But there was no predestination. The universe does not always reveal itself to us in ways that are immediately explicable, Jean-Luc, but I remain firm in my belief that it is, ultimately, explicable. No destiny propelled me toward Romulus, merely the facts of shared history and the immediate requirements of each present moment.
In my youth on Vulcan, it was by no means commonly known that Romulans were a splinter group from far back in our history. Even their resemblance to us was unknown until our own mission on the Enterprise while Kirk was captain. A very few, at the highest levels of our government, had been privy to the information for many years, but with limited contact with our brothers and sisters in the Star Empire, and little desire on their part for amity, successive administrations on Vulcan had been cautious in revealing this information. I believe they were unsure about how to act or how the news would be received, and what the results of any revelation would be. Vulcan society, after all, greatly values its stability and its consistency. My father, I know, was caught entirely by surprise that the mysterious and threatening civilization beyond the Neutral Zone was so closely related to us. I believe that despite the shock, he preferred to have been kept in the dark, since this meant that he had at no point been called upon to lie to colleagues on Earth. Even so, this was not an easy diplomatic situation for him, and the ramifications of this, both personal and political, would play out through the rest of his life. The complication of the Romulans was something he would gladly have done without, particularly toward the end of his career, and toward the end of my mother’s life.
For my own part, still on active duty in Starfleet, the immediate results of these revelations were often more concrete. One mission in particular left us with a difficult conundrum. The Vulcan government, having learning that a group of half-Vulcan children had been left to fend for themselves on an abandoned Romulan colony, asked Starfleet for assistance in retrieving these children, and bringing them home. Starfleet agreed to provide personnel for the mission. I, as an active serving Vulcan officer, was naturally asked to participate, and I did not hesitate to agree. A more tragic place it would be hard to imagine—I believe you do not need to imagine such sights, Jean-Luc, having seen many similar planets during your own relief mission. The locals called it Hellguard.
Captains kirk and Pike surprising with his promotion to Executive Officer, immediately prior to Kirk taking command of the Enterprise. Image courtesy Starfleet Command.
General Order VII, prohibiting all Federation vessels from traveling to Talos IV, a place Spock nevertheless visited three times during his career in Starfleet. Image courtesy Starfleet Command.
Ambassador Spock with Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Romulus. Bio-scan image compiled by Commonder Data. Image courtesy Starfleet Command.
Ambassador Spock’s library, as it appeared when he left Vulcan for the final time. The top book is Amanda’s copy of Through The tooking Glass, a novel meaningful to both Spock and his sister, Michael Burnham. Image courtesy Jean-Luc Picard.
Ambassador Spock in front a holo-portrait of the Enterprise crew as it looked under Kirk’s command at the commencement of their five year mission. Image courtesy Pavel Chekov estate.
“When I close my eyes, I do not see a blank page with a small mark, held steady. I see drops of vibrant color, always moving in time. I see the flickering light of a campfire, and for a moment my friends do not seem so very absent.”
Portrait by Russell Walks. Image courtesy Jean-Luc Picard.
This world, like many under Romulan jurisdiction, had been seized in a spasm of imperial expansionism. The pattern was tragically familiar. The subject people were brought low, the infrastructure brought to the brink of collapse. Like much Romulan strategy, the whole reason for taking this world in the first place remains opaque, and subject to the whims of internal politics. Hellguard was suddenly, and without warning, abandoned. Presumably, whichever official who had called for its conquest had been removed from power back on Romulus, and this poor world suffered the consequences. The Romulans had been on this world for less than twenty years, and yet left it utterly ruined. They also left behind this group of children.
We have no idea why these children had been brought into existence. From the rather tattered uniforms that they wore, and the fact that they seemed all to know each other as a cohort of some kind, we assumed that they were not simply individual products of rape, but part of a specific clandestine project. My own suspicion is that the children were intended to be used to blackmail specific Vulcan parents, or else trained and placed as agents on Vulcan. Whatever the original plan, the project was abandoned, as were the children, when the Romulans withdrew. The remaining residents of Hellguard, the unlucky survivors of the multiple traumas of invasion, aggressive colonization, and then abandonment, were struggling to eke out a living on their ruined world. They did not have the time, resources, or inclination to assist these children, who were, by the time Starfleet arrived, scratching for food in the rubble and the ruins. Our presence on Hellguard was met initially with caution by the residents, suspicious that perhaps we were the prelude to yet another devastating invasion. This was replaced by cautious interest when we made several replicators available to them with the promise of more aid forthcoming. All we asked for in return was the children, who were naturally quickly surrendered.
There were forty-seven of them altogether, ranging in age from eight to fifteen. On the journey back to Vulcan, we identified for many of them direct relatives who were prepared to receive them. For others, there were families on Vulcan who agreed to foster and take on the considerable burden involved in caring for such traumatized children. In the end, we were left with one child for whom no family, either blood or foster, could be found. This was a small, feral, angry girl, aged perhaps nine or ten, whose behavior made her particularly difficult to place. Anyone who came close ran the risk of being bitten and, by this point, very few people were willing to try. I decided that someone should and must. For the duration of the voyage back to Vulcan, I took it upon myself to try to make some connection with her. I would go and sit near her. I did not try to speak to her, but I would sit and work, and offer her the chance to observe me or speak to me, if she so desired. One morning, she came to stand near me, and stared.
“What is your name?” I asked her. She spat at me. The next day, I came back, and asked the question again, and the next day, and the next day. At last, she spoke. Her name,
she told me, was Saavik. She did not want to go to Vulcan. She hated Vulcans. She hated Romulans. She hated me.
“You do not know me,” I replied. She spat at me again. The next day, when I went to sit near her, I said, “Good morning, Saavik. I am Spock.”
And so we continued, with some steps forward, and many steps back. Sometimes she attacked me; I was bitten many times. Her rage would emerge suddenly, violently, as if a switch had been thrown. I began to identify what might trigger these episodes. She did not like anyone touching her face. She did not like you to approach her from the left-hand side. I remember her once, beating her arms against me in a red haze of fury, until, exhausted, she fell against me, and allowed me to put my arm around her. We sat then, side by side, on the floor, until she fell asleep, her head upon me. When she woke, she cried.
At last, we reached Vulcan. The other children were taken to their new homes, and only Saavik remained. “What is going to happen to me?” she said.
“You are coming with me,” I replied. “To Earth.”
I took her to what had been my grandparents’ home. The house was now shared between my cousin Andrew and myself; he and his wife were not there at that time, and Saavik and I were alone for a little while. During this time, she allowed me to mind-meld with her. I remind you again of her dislike of having a hand near her face, the courage that she showed in allowing me to touch her cheek. She shared her fears of abandonment and her terror at what the Romulan side of her might mean. I shared my own childhood troubles arising from the fact of my dual nature, the fears that had dogged my early years that this might cost me my sanity. I shared with her the equilibrium that I now felt. I sensed her relief that this was possible.
“Remember,” I said to her, as we drew apart, “that to be Romulan is already to be Vulcan; to be Vulcan is already to be Romulan. These parts of you arise from a common source, Saavik. You have the courage and the intelligence to bring them together. To live peacefully with yourself.”
A little after this, and, at my request, my mother came to join us from Vulcan. My mother spent many hours with the girl (remember, Jean-Luc, that she had, after all, some prior experience of raising traumatized children). Saavik responded immediately to her gentleness and calm, and they spent many hours together in the quiet of the house and garden.
My mother did suggest to me that she might adopt Saavik, and take her back to Vulcan, but this was plainly not in the best interests of either of them. My mother and father were now elderly, and I did not believe that my father, at least, was the best person with whom this difficult and angry child could find herself. Perhaps I do him an injustice here; perhaps not. But I had other concerns. Most particularly, I did not want Saavik to become in some way a replacement for Michael. There were many parallels. Saavik was about the age that Michael had been when she came into our lives; they had both experienced trauma (although Saavik’s was of a longer, more enduring nature, which required its own forms of care). Most of all, Saavik was a person in her own right, and she deserved to find her own way.
“Mother,” I said to her one night, after the child was asleep, “you understand that Saavik is not an opportunity to put right what went wrong with Michael? She has not arrived in your life so that you can make good past mistakes.”
At first, my mother was shocked. Firstly, that I had said Michael’s name, since she was so rarely mentioned these days, even in private, but also that I had so confronted her with motivations that she had perhaps not yet herself realized. For a moment, she was plainly angry with me. This was itself so rare, so unlike her, that I was more fascinated than anything else. She had been angry with me before, once most memorably going so far as to strike me, but I could never be afraid of her. I watched as her cheeks went violently red. I saw that her hands were trembling. After a moment, she took a deep breath, and controlled herself. She even began to smile; she was herself again. She said, “And when did you become so wise?”
“Whatever wisdom I have learned comes from you.”
“That might be charming, Spock,” she said, “but it is not true.”
“You know as well as I do that a Vulcan does not lie.”
She laughed at me. “You’re right, of course. I do see something of Michael in this child—and you’re right that I should not be guided by that, or guided carefully, at least. But perhaps I can give you a warning in turn. I know that when you look at this child, you recognize a fellow traveler—someone torn between two worlds. I know that you see some kind of future in which a great wound is healed. But remember that she is not you, Spock, and that whatever disconnection you still feel between the parts of your own nature, you have to resolve this for yourself. Saavik’s path is not and cannot be yours.”
“You are right to some extent,” I admitted. “But the unity between Romulus and Vulcan does not simply exist in my imagination, mother. The two civilizations spring from a common source—”
“Your father would disagree,” she said. “I think that he would say that whatever makes you Vulcan is precisely that which makes you not Romulan. That the split is definitional.”
“Words can be redefined,” I said.
“But facts cannot,” she answered. “You’ve been away from Vulcan for a long time, Spock. Perhaps you have forgotten more than you realize.”
We asked Saavik what she wanted to do, and she told us that she wished to stay on Earth. Above all, she feared rejection, and perhaps she had learned more in our mind-meld than I had intended (this is so often the case). Perhaps she was left with some sense that her Romulan heritage might be a barrier to full acceptance on Vulcan. I would have liked to be able to say in good conscience that she was wrong. We had been working closely with the team of psychologists responsible for helping the children of Hellguard to settle, and they identified a couple, a Vulcan woman and her human husband, who were willing to foster Saavik. They came to visit for a while, to get to know her, and eventually took her home to New York. I remained nearby for some months, and my mother stayed too. When we were satisfied that Saavik was settled, my mother prepared to return to Vulcan. I told her of my intention to return with her. Her remark that I had been away for a long time had stuck in my mind, and I believed she was correct.
“I thought you might,” she said, and took my hand. “Time to come home, Spock.”
This was, for the time being at least, the end of my career in Starfleet. I could see no continuing role for me, and I needed time to reflect. This, ultimately, led to my decision to attempt to achieve kolinahr. As you will recall, a little over two years after starting this process, I left Vulcan, having failed to achieve kolinahr, to rejoin my friends on the Enterprise to assist with the V’Ger crisis. It was clear to me afterwards that I would not be returning to Vulcan. The insights that mission had given me were so profound, so altering to my worldview, that I knew now that not only was the process impossible for me to achieve, but that I no longer found it desirable. A world governed entirely by logic was now revealed to me as barren, empty. That was not how I wished to live. The goal which had so dominated my life for the previous two years disappeared almost overnight. I had returned to the land of the living. I will not say that this time was wasted. On the contrary—the solitude, the peace, the time for self-reflection that formed such an important part of the discipline of kolinahr had allowed me for the first time in many years to stop, to take stock, to listen to myself. But I knew now, more profoundly than ever, that I was not simply Vulcan. I was something else—but not diminished. I was enriched, and enhanced. I was ready for a new task in life.
When the offer to teach at the academy was made, I accepted with alacrity. This seemed to be an ideal role for me, suiting talent, temperament, and interests. Both my mother and my grandmother had been experts in education. I had mentored many junior personnel over the years, most notably during our most recent mission. Watching my younger colleagues increase in confidence and capability under my direction had been one of the quieter pleasures of the v
oyage. My own experience of teaching and learning had involved many diverse methods: the intensity of the learning domes, the disciplined chaos of the academy, the hands-on fact of being a Starfleet officer, the cool and relentless self-examination of kolinahr. How did people succeed? What conditions did they need in order to excel? These were the questions that now interested me, and the academy offered the ideal place to ask them.
This work was both fascinating and deeply rewarding. If there was an aspect to teaching that I found most satisfactory, it would be watching a student make the transition from being a vessel for the acquisition of information to achieving their first synthesis and deeper understanding of what they have learned. We give students a great deal of information at the academy, and it is not always while they study with us that students transmute this information into knowledge. This is most usually learned during the first few years of experience as an officer. Yet sometimes, in the most gifted of students, you may see this transformation occur directly in front of you. You see the student move, jump out of their seat perhaps, their body mirroring the intellectual leap which has just been made. You are seeing synapses fire; you are seeing new pathways being laid. You see that deeper patterns have been formed in their minds and brains. You have seen an upgrade occur. Who would deny themselves the pleasure of watching this happen? Who would not want to contribute in some way, providing some stimulus that allows someone to excel? Walking away from the solitary introspection of kolinahr was one of my wiser decisions; embracing the collaborative environment of the academy was another.
The Autobiography of Mr. Spock Page 14