In truth, he had no idea which Vulcan female in all the universe had borne this extraordinary child. He’d claimed that knowledge only in the hope that Saavik would seek him out when this was over and ask to know.
If that time came, what would he tell her? He had no idea. But he would accept whatever consequences of his lie, if only to see that exquisite face, even contorted in rage, one more time.
Was that love? Romulan literature was replete with as many poems and songs and sagas about the love between parent and child as about more conventional types of love. It was almost as if, as much as its institutional forms strove mightily to destroy that bond—encouraging children to spy on their parents and report unpatriotic thoughts, parents to hand their children over to the authorities to be banished for crimes as grave a threat to the state as minor vandalism or breaking curfew—something in the Romulan heart still craved it.
No wonder Vulcan had been glad to see the back of them during the Sundering, Narak thought. Perhaps the distant brothers had not so secretly hoped the contentious ones would all be swallowed up by a nebula or destroy each other with bickering.
Yes, if it was possible to love, he had come to love this stranger, this alien, offspring or not, for being what he could not be—too honest for her own good and as free as any thinking being could be within the constraints she had set for herself. And having spent mere moments with her, he did not want to lose her.
He’d goaded her during her hegira from ShiKahr to the desert as much in fear for her safety as in a need to impress those listening to him. If it had been up to him, he’d have found an easier way.
He might have lost her at every step of the way then, and might lose her still, and thus he wept in anticipation of that loss. Were he to ask for a little time to spend with her before the end, his masters would know how much he desired it and deny it to him just because they could. Perhaps he could find something else to bargain with at least to spare her life if not his own, but if there were such a thing, he had not found it yet.
As precipitously as the mood had come upon him, so it ended. The desert air of Vulcan dried his tears as if they had never been, leaving only a trace of bitterness at the corners of his mouth.
• • •
In its way, returning to Sarek’s household, recommitting herself to that way of life, was more dangerous, Saavik thought, than anything that had gone before.
The trick was to embed the false data in Sarek’s personal files, then activate the triggers she had planted in the files in the Enclave. Backtracking would make it appear as if everything—memos, notes, subspace communiqués with sources within both empires—had in fact originated from Sarek’s home and, by implication, had originated with Sarek himself.
All of that would take considerably more time than infiltrating the Enclave, and with no burn identity to mask her intentions. And while Sarek might be offworld, Amanda was here. And she was not alone.
“Saavik!” Amanda cried, making no secret of her joy at the sight of the prodigal. “Child, you’ve come home. Let me look at you!”
She had been reading, curled up on a divan in the main parlor, a pair of half-glasses perched on the bridge of her small human nose. Like Admiral Kirk, Saavik recalled, Amanda was allergic to Retnax and needed the glasses for close work. They made her fine-boned face seem vulnerable, until she glanced over the tops of them, her face lit up, and she was on her feet at once, the glasses and the padd set aside.
Rapid steps brought her across the room, her hands on Saavik’s shoulders, the closest she dared to an embrace. There were no questions, no accusations—“Why didn’t you contact us first? How could you have gone off into the desert without letting us know? We were so worried about you!”—only warmth and welcome.
Which made what Saavik was about to do all the more difficult.
The exchange of pleasantries, the obligatory tea and small talk, would forever remain a blur in her memory. Only when she and Amanda walked in the garden afterward did her focus come clear.
“… and the echinopsis cacti bloomed last month,” Amanda was saying beside her. “I’m sorry you missed them! But I’ve started a bed of mosses on one side of the fountain that … what is it, dear?”
They were making the circuit of the garden arm in arm, the only sounds the trilling of lizards—safe from predators here, they were free to trill; in the desert they had been silent—and the sough of the midday breeze. As they neared the open casements of Sarek’s study, Saavik’s steps faltered, a look of alarm flitting briefly across her face. A moment later Amanda heard what had drawn her attention.
“Yes.” The human beamed. “Spock is here. I’m not entirely certain of the circumstances, but he’s on leave and so much improved since the last time you saw him! He and Sarek have been on a conference call all morning; don’t ask me what about …”
Her human ears heard only the tone of her son’s voice, not the words, and she wouldn’t have eavesdropped if she could, but Saavik had heard the words “Klingons” and “peace feelers” well before they turned away from the house and continued down the path toward the fountain. The colors of the multiple varieties of mosses from a dozen worlds that Amanda had planted where the prevailing breeze sent the mist from the fountain wafting over the soil so that it never needed watering swam before her eyes.
No! Not Spock! Do not force me to enmesh him in this thing as well!
How could she have forgotten that for years Sarek had been cultivating his son’s natural gift for diplomacy? Whether or not Spock chose to follow in his father’s footsteps someday, the pursuit of such knowledge for its own sake, and as a useful skill for the first officer of a starship that was often the first ambassador to new species, was always desirable.
Saavik had simply not expected Spock to be directly involved in Sarek’s interactions with the Klingons so soon. Whatever false information she sowed about Sarek would embroil him as well.
Little wonder she had no appetite for the extraordinary midday meal that Amanda had prepared. As if it were not difficult enough to sit across the table from the adult avatar of the Spock she had known on Genesis, this new dimension only made matters worse.
Surely by now he remembers everything! she thought, her eyes on her plate as Spock took his place at the table. And while surely he will no more speak of it than I will, it will always remain an unspoken truth between us!
Which matters little now, in view of what you must do, whether or not he is here and, more likely than not, in conversation with Sarek, in Sarek’s study, for as long as he is here. If you thought the process of planting data undetected was daunting before, to do so without arousing the suspicions of an A7 computer expert …
“How long will you be on leave, Captain?” she managed to say as Spock reached for the basket of krei’la at the center of the table. Her question evoked one of his milder expressions.
“Surely we need not rely on Starfleet formalities here, Saavik-kam.” As always with her, his face was somber, but his tone was mild. “Or would you be more at ease if I addressed you as ‘Lieutenant’?”
This was the Spock she knew, recalled to life in time for her to betray him. “As you wish, C—Spock.”
Spock’s eyes danced. “Because I am your superior officer, or because it is what you wish as well?”
“Stop teasing her!” Amanda said sharply, taking the basket from his hands and serving herself. She knew him too well.
“Mother—” Saavik started to say, but Amanda cut her off.
“No, if the two of you are going to be under my roof, I need to say this.” She turned to Spock. “You have no idea how pleased I am that your sense of humor has returned as well, but you might remember where Saavik has been since you’ve been away. Attention must be paid.”
With that she summoned soft string music from the sound system to punctuate the silence that ensued for the rest of the meal.
“Macbeth, Act one, Scene seven, the soliloquy,” she heard Spock say, followed by
Amanda’s laughter.
“You’re too good! All right, now it’s your turn …”
Lurking like an assassin—was she not?—Saavik slipped past the parlor where the two were playing a familiar game. Amanda had used it as a teaching tool to expand her own knowledge when she was a child, as she no doubt had when Spock was small, and later to fill in the gaps in his memory when she visited Mount Seleya following the fal-tor-pan. Now it served as a pastime in which mother and son could savor each other’s company, and it could go on for hours.
Time enough, Saavik hoped, to set the first of the trails of cyber breadcrumbs that would connect Sarek with agents inside both the empires.
Breadcrumbs … Hansel and Gretel, she recalled involuntarily, courtesy of Amanda and a childhood that had informed a certain respect for the two resourceful human children who had vanquished the wicked witch. Perhaps, she had thought at the time, if she’d been strong enough to heave the proctor into an oven before she’d crushed Tolek’s fingers …
Enough! she chided herself as she crept into Sarek’s study and went to work.
There was only so much she could do in a single night, meticulously deleting the signatures once she had done so, then forcing herself to sit with her hands in her lap and listen carefully to every sound in the house before retracing her steps. Narak had said to take her time. Part of her wished her role were ended, that she might begin to face the lifetime of regret that would follow.
The house was silent. She rose from the chair, returning it to precisely the position Spock had left it in hours earlier. A small device that Narak had provided removed all trace of her DNA from the room while somehow leaving Spock’s. Too clean a removal of fingerprints from the toggles, the chair arms, the desktop, a complete absence of hairs or fibers would have been suspicious … if anyone for any reason happened to be suspicious enough to gather forensic evidence. Doubtless the inquest that would follow Sarek’s detainment would include such a gathering.
By the time she passed the parlor a second time, Spock and Amanda had abandoned their game and were having a very different conversation indeed.
“… spoken to her about this?” she heard Spock ask.
“She’s only been back for a day,” Amanda answered. “I didn’t want her to feel as if she was being interrogated.”
Hidden, Saavik could not see either of them, but she imagined Spock nodding. “That is wise. She is still on leave. There is plenty of time.”
“I wonder.” Amanda’s tone was wistful. “I wonder if it isn’t too late after all. We tried, your father and I, when you brought her to us, but nothing will ever compensate for those early years. The studies—”
“Studies done on human children,” Spock interjected. “A Vulcan child—”
“Is still a child. We’re all mammals at base. A kitten needs more nurture than a turtle.”
“Mother—”
“Am I wrong?”
How many times had she overheard some variation on this conversation? Saavik found herself shivering. It was all so wrong, so very wrong, and yet …
She heard Spock sigh. “You are not wrong. Hyperbolic, but not wrong.”
Amanda’s all too human laughter was the last sound in her ears as Saavik crept back to her part of the house, dreading the dawn.
Over the course of the next several nights, she completed her task. The false trails were laid in, the triggers set to cascade. Now all she had to do was wait for Narak to give her the go-ahead for the final phase. The waiting proved the most difficult part of all.
Daily Spock conferred with Sarek, repairing to the senior diplomat’s study at a prearranged time that fit with Sarek’s travel schedule, and for the hour precisely that they spoke, Saavik lived in agony. Spock frequently referred to Sarek’s files as they compared knowledge and strategy for the basic overtures they would make to certain officials within the Klingon Empire, with the Federation’s sanction, but on an entirely deniable basis, should things go wrong.
That those same files were adjacent to, sometimes even referenced by and interwoven with, the false data Saavik had implanted increased the likelihood that either her tampering would be discovered, or at least one of the triggers would activate too soon, with each passing day. Once again torn between wishing to be found out so as to end this, regardless of the cost to herself, and the knowledge that only she could prevent worse consequences, she had never had need to act more Vulcan—not even Spock, especially not Spock, could be allowed to sense the internal turmoil she struggled with—while at the same time feeling less.
Life had become an elaborate game of kal-toh, the outcome of failure quite literally the collapse of the sphere around her. Starship captains might save planets; she could not save a single being.
So she lurked, seeing Sarek’s face on the comscreen, hearing his voice, certain that the next time they met face-to-face, the face he turned to her, the voice with which he addressed her, would no longer have the calm and confidence he exuded now. She lurked, thinking, illogically,’ Twere well it were done quickly!
But Spock and Sarek completed their daily meetings, and on the day Spock got back into uniform and returned to duty, Narak’s voice in Saavik’s ear, silent since the shrine, now asked a single question.
“You know what to do next?”
As before, she had no way of answering him, but of course he knew she knew. Even as the official Starfleet air car whisked Spock away, she slipped into Sarek’s study for the final time and, by remote, activated the triggers she had embedded in the files in the Enclave.
Even as the data flew through cyberspace, Saavik put her travel cloak on over her Starfleet uniform and set about enacting the final phase.
Seventeen
She passed Mikal by without seeing him.
He stood like a forlorn troubadour in the pedestrian street across the way from the high wall surrounding Sarek’s household, lacking the courage to take the next step. Chaffee, her mission to Deema III completed, had made orbit around Vulcan some days ago, and as a civilian with no orders once he’d filed all the data they’d gathered, he’d been the first one off the ship.
Impulsive, he had no plan beyond announcing himself and hoping someone was at home who could tell him Saavik’s whereabouts, or at least get a message to her. He’d had plenty of opportunity to follow the rumors, had in fact had to bellow at Cheung and Jaoui more than once for gossiping in the labs, but true or false, there were details he simply did not want to know.
Some scientist you are! he chided himself as he shifted his feet and wondered if it was too early to knock on the door. Only the last words Worm had said to him prevented him from giving up and walking away.
As reluctant as ever to communicate with the Deemanot without Saavik with him, he’d left all that to the Betazoid, Gwailim Loth, and to Captain Mironova, who enjoyed visiting with their newfound friends as often as she could. But the day before they were due to leave orbit, Worm had requested his presence specifically.
Before, he’d required Loth to serve as go-between, but on this day, Worm bypassed the Betazoid and wound hirself solely around Mikal.
You will not be returning to this place, s/he began, there is too much else in the universe that needs your attention.
Mikal had not been overly surprised that the being knew this much about him. He still wasn’t entirely sure how telepathy worked but figured anyone who’d accessed his mind for more than a moment could see his thoughts simmering right on the surface.
“Then I guess this is farewell,” he’d said. He always spoke aloud, even with the Deemanot voice in his mind. He might have learned some esper skills but didn’t really trust his thoughts to convey themselves clearly without the spoken word.
But it need not be sad, Worm pointed out. All works out as it should, even you and Saavik.
Tensing, Mikal wanted to pull away. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that!” he said a little too loudly. Around him, the scie
nce team was packing up, having done a final survey and collection in the Deemanot metropolis, and Esparza, for one, had looked at him oddly. Perhaps a dozen of Scolex and Cina’s children were quite literally underfoot as well, and Mikal could swear he heard them making giggling noises in his head. At least, unlike the humans, they could hear both sides of the conversation. Surrounded, defeated, Mikal sighed.
“All right, you win. Tell me what you know.”
Only that. It is all interconnected. You and she will meet again, and it will be as it should.
With that Worm had withdrawn hir embrace and, the children in hir train, moved on to say hir farewells to Mironova and the rest. Feeling dismissed, Mikal had beamed up alone.
Now he stood in the Vulcan street, passed by pedestrians who glanced at him without comment, finding nothing untoward, in this cosmopolitan city, at the sight of a bald and tattooed Tiburonian waiting outside Ambassador Sarek’s house.
He’d almost found the courage to cross the street and announce himself, when the door in the wall opened, and the last person he’d expected to see emerged. He’d blurted her name before he could stop himself.
“Saavik?”
But, head down, the hood of her cloak limiting her vision, she did not look up or sideways but only at the cobbles at her feet, and kept walking as if she did not hear.
Mikal started to move toward her, started to shout her name, but stopped himself on both counts. She had to have seen him, had to have heard him speak. She had chosen not to acknowledge him, and that was the end of it.
At a loss to know what to do with himself, he too began to walk, in the opposite direction from where she had vanished around a corner. He did not know where he was going and did not care.
One might expect the offices of the intelligence service of a world as wrapped around in propriety and protocol as Vulcan to be all but impenetrable, but Saavik found her access to the head of station unimpeded. T’Saan had prepared tea and gestured her toward a seating area of low, comfortable chairs before Saavik even identified herself.
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