The captain rose and stepped over to the ruined components. “How bad?” he asked.
“Bad enough,” Spock told him.
The captain seemed to think for a moment, and then as he crossed the room, he said, “The President and Edith Keeler—”
“It would seem unlikely, Jim,” Spock said, knowing that he must tell him of the other possibility. “A few moments ago, I read a nineteen thirty newspaper article.”
“We know her future,” the captain said, excited. “Within six years from now, she’ll become very important, nationally famous.”
“Or Captain,” Spock said, “Edith Keeler will die… this year.”
Jim’s expression grew hard.
“I saw her obituary,” Spock said. “Some sort of traffic accident.”
“You must be mistaken,” the captain said, though without conviction. “They both can’t be true.”
Spock knew that, and he believed that the captain must know it as well. Again, he felt sorrow for his friend, and he covered it with action. He moved to the portion of the memory circuit that had just been destroyed. “Captain,” he said, “Edith Keeler is the focal point in time we’ve been looking for.” As he sat down on the bed, he picked up a new vacuum tube, then reached to remove one of those just overheated. “The point in time to which both we and Doctor McCoy have been drawn.”
“She has two possible futures then,” the captain said. “And depending on whether she lives or dies, all of history will be changed. And McCoy…”
“Is the random element,” Spock said.
“In his condition, what does he do?” the captain asked. “Does he kill her?”
“Or perhaps he prevents her from being killed,” Spock said. “We don’t know which.”
“Get this thing fixed,” the captain said. “We must find out before McCoy arrives.” He turned and headed toward the door. Without his coat, Spock could only surmise that he intended to go upstairs, to visit Keeler.
“Captain,” Spock said, standing, “suppose we discover that in order to set things straight again Edith Keeler must die?”
The captain had opened the door, and now he closed it again. “Spock,” he said, “we’ll find McCoy, and we’ll stop him from doing whatever it is he did—whatever he will do—to change history. That’s why we’re here. But in order to stop McCoy, we must know what action to take, and when.”
“I’m afraid we just might have lost the ability to do that,” Spock said. “I believe we lost some of the data we recorded from the Guardian. Once I repair the mnemonic memory circuit, I may be able to reconstruct the remaining information enough to estimate general happenings, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to isolate precisely what McCoy did.”
“Do your best, Spock,” the captain said. “In the meantime, if Edith Keeler is the focal point in time, then one of us should endeavor to be near her as much a possible.”
“Agreed,” Spock said. He did not feel the need to point out that the captain already spent a great deal of time with her.
Sixteen
2294
Amanda circled the piece as though stalking it, examining it from every angle, alert for any weakness. She paid attention to the textures of the materials and to the shadows the various components cast. Not dissatisfied with any of the details, she stepped back and regarded the work as a whole.
Upright blocks of dark clay bounded either side of a lighter, horizontal surface, which spread past the blocks into several other layers of different hues. The sculpture appeared abstract at first glance, which had been her aim. In reality, she had labored to create an impressionistic work not obviously so, in order to conduct her own personal experiment into the nature of visual art, words, and communication. She would display the piece with and without its title—The End of the Maze—and collect the interpretations of those who viewed it in each mode.
With her hands on her hips, Amanda stood alone in her studio, a geodesic structure attached to the house and with transparent walls that provided her the perfect light in which to ply her craft. She wore a ragged and very comfortable old dress and a white smock over it. The gray tones of wet clay covered her fingers, while other shades of gray, blue, and black streaked her smock.
Amanda walked over to the small table that contained the various materials with which she’d been working. One by one, she gathered them up and stored them in containers that would keep them fresh. After she’d put those away, she went to the small refresher at the rear of the room, where at the sink she began cleaning the tools she’d used and then her hands. When she finished, she would go find Sarek and Spock to ask them to come view her new piece.
As Amanda thought of her son, she smiled. He hadn’t spent this much time with her and Sarek since before he’d gone off to Starfleet more than forty years ago. He’d stayed here for almost three-quarters of a year now, and Amanda had enjoyed just about every minute of it. She and Sarek had traveled twice during that time on his diplomatic missions, but both times they’d come back to Vulcan to find Spock still at the house.
When Amanda had first learned that her son had returned to Vulcan for the purpose of carrying out the Kolinahr, she had been deeply upset. He had tried once before, two decades ago, to achieve the purging of his emotions, and she had privately rejoiced when he hadn’t succeeded. Even now, she remembered all too well when Spock, at the ages of five and six and seven, had come home after his schoolmates had accused him of not being truly Vulcan. Amanda had watched as only a mother could as he’d held his torment in, but she’d known how much the taunts had wounded him. But she also knew that the hurt he’d felt had its antithesis; not all emotions brought pain. Whether he wanted it to be true or not, Spock had human blood within him, and human feeling as well.
Her hands clean, Amanda dried them on a small towel hanging beside the sink. After untying her smock, she pulled it off and tossed it into a freestanding hamper. Then she went to look for Sarek and Spock.
As she reached the door of her son’s room on the second story, she saw him inside, his back to her. Before she could speak, he turned from the dresser with a stack of clothing in his hands. He walked over to the bed, where Amanda saw his duffel open atop it. “You’re leaving?” she asked, stating the obvious.
“Yes,” Spock said, glancing over at her.
Amanda felt disappointed, but also realized that this marked a positive moment for her son. When he’d first arrived here, he’d been in a state in which she’d rarely seen him as an adult. Though he had, as always, sought to hide his feelings, to control them, he’d been unable to do so very effectively—at least not in front of her. He’d been affected, emotive, obviously grieving for the loss of his friend, but also showing signs of being more deeply troubled than that. He’d withdrawn from the rest of his life in order to pursue the Kolinahr, but when he hadn’t been permitted to do that, he’d come here, back home, openly in search of an inner peace that eluded him. He had spent his days here quietly, contemplatively, reading, walking, sitting in meditation. Amanda had eventually begun to see him reassert his Vulcan poise, and more important, to deal with the troubles within him.
“Where will you be going?” she asked as he moved across the room to the closet. Amanda imagined that Spock would return to Starfleet, though in the past months he’d also spoken positively of his experiences as a Federation ambassador.
As Spock reached for the clothes hanging in the closet, he said, “I am headed to Gol.”
A knot of anxiety twisted within Amanda. Gol, the name of both an ancient Vulcan city and the high, fractured plain upon which it stood, remained the province of the Kolinahr masters. No, Amanda thought, willing back the tears that immediately threatened. “You’re going to study the—” she said, but she could not finish the statement.
Spock stopped and turned to face her. “I am going back to the Akrelt Refuge to petition once more for my entry into the Kolinahr,” he said.
“Does your father know about this?” Amanda asked. S
he and Sarek had spoken about this possibility, but over time had concluded that their son likely would not choose this path again.
“I have not told him,” Spock said. “I only came to this decision within the past week. I requested a time to restate my petition before a Vulcan master, and today I received word that I would be granted an audience at the Akrelt Refuge tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, Amanda echoed in her mind, the word almost as chilling to her as a death sentence. Still in the doorway to Spock’s room, she looked down the hall and called out Sarek’s name.
“Mother—” Spock began.
“You mustn’t do this,” she said, taking a step into the room. The terrible dread she felt came with a history. The time Spock had spent all those years ago undergoing the Kolinahr, working to rid himself of his human side, had been an agony for Amanda. And even though he’d failed to realize his goal, the experience had at first changed him. He had been more controlled, more distant, colder. It had felt sometimes as though she had lost her son, as though Spock had been taken away and a soulless replica left in his place.
But that had not lasted, and ultimately Spock had not only reverted to his distinctly Vulcan and human personality, but he had at last seemed to become comfortable with who he was. Now, though, if he managed to complete the Kolinahr-
“You called, my wife,” Sarek said, and Amanda looked around to see her husband in the doorway. Sarek peered from her to Spock, and then to the duffel on the bed. “You are departing, Spock?” he said.
“I am,” Spock said. He reached into the closet and gathered the few items of clothing hanging there. He took them to the bed, where he folded them over and loaded them into the duffel.
“Sarek, Spock is…” Amanda said, but she could not speak the words.
“I will be reapplying for the Kolinahr,” Spock said.
Amanda turned to her husband. “Sarek,” she said, “we can’t let him do that.”
“Mother,” Spock said, “this is the choice I have made for myself. I ask that you respect it. It is what is right for my life.”
“I can assure you that your mother and I do respect the choices you make,” Sarek said. “That does not mean that we always agree with them.”
“This isn’t the right choice for you,” Amanda said, peering back at Spock. “It is one thing for a full Vulcan to rid themselves of their emotions, but you are half human. If you do this, you’ll destroy a major part of who you are.”
“Mother, please,” Spock said. “Father, would you help explain why I must do this?”
“But your mother is correct,” Sarek said. Amanda felt relieved and grateful that he admitted this. It had taken him many years to appreciate Spock’s dichotomous character, and even longer to fully accept his son for the good person he’d become.
“Father,” Spock said, his surprise at Sarek’s declaration evident in his voice. “You have always supported me… in fact, have always urged me… to pursue a Vulcan way of life. The Kolinahr is considered to be our quintessential ritual, the achievement that allows but few Vulcans to reach a state of complete maturity.”
“I do not dispute that,” Sarek said. “But my son, you have already reached maturity.”
Amanda watched Spock look away, apparently unprepared for his father’s opposition. “There is no limitation on the age at which one may attempt the Kolinahr,” he said.
“Nor am I suggesting that there should be,” Sarek said. He walked into the room to stand beside Amanda. “What I am saying is that the battle you waged within yourself as a boy and as a young man has passed—has in fact been won.”
“I have won no battle,” Spock said, an assertion so preposterous that Amanda didn’t know if even her son believed it. That he could make such a claim perhaps spoke to why he sought at this stage of his life to change himself.
“Spock,” Sarek said, “when you were a boy of seven, in order to prove yourself as a ‘true’ Vulcan, you set out on your own, without preparation, for the Forge.” Amanda recalled when Spock had been approaching the time for his kahs-wan, a Vulcan test of survival. Badgered by his classmates about not being really Vulcan, Spock had left home a month before the proper time, without having learned all that he needed to know in order to endure out on the Forge. Fortunately a visiting older cousin had followed him and brought him home, though not before Spock had faced a different test of courage when his pet sehlat had been attacked by a le-matya. A month later, Spock had taken part in the kahs-wan, at which he had succeeded. “You proved yourself then,” Sarek told their son, “and you have continued to do so ever since.”
“I do not understand how you can tell me that,” Spock said. “You opposed my entry into Starfleet, in which I have spent a majority of my life, among humans. I failed the Kolinahr the first time and even failed the petition the second time.”
“You have become who you are,” Sarek said. “A good person born of a Vulcan father and a human mother. You practice Vulcan disciplines, honing your mind and your emotional restraint. You wear a truthful persona of logic and stoicism that covers a core of controlled feeling—controlled, but real feeling. Human feeling.”
Amanda peered up at Sarek, pleased not only that he had come to this estimation of their son, but that he would reveal it to Spock. Her heart swelled with the love she felt for her husband. Looking back over at Spock, she said, “This is who you are.”
“Yes,” Spock said, nodding, and the expression on his face hardened, as surely as if he’d pulled on a mask. He bent down to the bed, sealed his duffel, and quickly hoisted it onto his shoulder. “But this is not who I wish to be.” He strode purposefully across the room, past Amanda and Sarek, and out into the hall.
“Spock!” she called after him, but as she started forward, she felt Sarek’s hands around her arms.
“You cannot go after him,” he said. “We have told him what we could. Now he must find his own way.”
As she heard Spock’s footsteps descending the stairs, she knew that Sarek was right. And as she had all those years ago, when Spock had come home with a stiff upper lip, trying to hide his anguish at being deemed not truly a Vulcan, Amanda wept for her son. If he was accepted into the Kolinahr and completed it, she worried that, in a very real way, she would never see the Spock she knew ever again.
Beneath the stone countenance of T’Klass, Spock stood at the altar in the Akrelt Refuge. Unlike on his previous visit here, his thoughts did not race, his emotions did not whirl. The months of meditation and contemplation at his parents’ home had helped to settle his mind, though that time and effort had not obviated his need to actively follow this course.
“On the sands of our world, our ancestors cast out their animal passions, saving our race by the attainment of Kolinahr,” Spock said, declaiming the ritual statement. “It is that which I seek. I make my petition to you, T’Vora, asking you to guide me in my quest.” When he had reapplied for the Kolinahr, he had not known whether he would be directed to meet again with T’Vora or this time with a different master. It seemed most logical that, having heard his initial request, T’Vora would be best suited to evaluate his recent progress, and therefore his fitness for entry into the ancient practice.
“I hear what you ask,” the master pronounced opposite Spock, her lined face and dark hair illuminated from below by the orange flame of the candle sitting at the center of the altar. Behind her, hanging on either side of the T’Klass carving, a pair of torches gave humble view to this section of the sanctuary. “Spock, child of Sarek, child of Skon,” T’Vora said, “for the third time in your life you come before a master asking to partake of the ultimate Vulcan sacrament. For the second time, you stand before me, asking for that which you have already been denied. Tell me, is there not illogic in that?”
“There is not,” Spock declared. “To take the same action and expect a different result would be illogical only if the conditions surrounding that action remained static. In this case, though that which I seek has not changed, my circ
umstances have.”
“And how have your circumstances changed?” T’Vora asked. She spoke in a tone that somehow matched the shadowy environs, while still retaining an air of command.
“When last I stood before you, Master T’Vora,” Spock said, “you declared that the Kolinahr should not be employed as a haven in which to escape emotion. Since then, I have explored those feelings that in part drove me to the Akrelt Refuge nine months ago, and I have eliminated them as reasons for my return here now.”
“You have eliminated the impetus provided by those emotions,” T’Vora said, “but not the emotions themselves?”
“No,” Spock said. “I control them now as I have in the past and far more than I did during our previous meeting. But yes, the emotions are present within me.”
“If you can control your emotions as you say,” T’Vora asked, “then what need have you of the Kolinahr?”
At last, Spock had been posed a question similar to one he’d heard twenty-four years ago, when he had first pursued the Kolinahr. To this point, his experiences with T’Vora had been vastly different than his experiences with T’sai. “As I understand it,” he said, “the Kolinahr encompasses more than simple emotional control. As you yourself declared, Master T’Vora, it is a type of existence. I believe it is one to which I am well suited, and one that will best permit me to fulfill my potential.”
“And how do you see yourself fulfilling your potential?” T’Vora asked.
“As a functioning and responsible member of Vulcan society,” Spock said.
“Yet, you are also human,” T’Vora said. “The Kolinahr will not change that.”
“To expect so would be illogical,” Spock said. “But to accept that my being born of a human mother and a Vulcan father must define me or limit me in some way would also be illogical.” He paused, trying to find a way to formulate his response in terms that would support his candidacy. “For virtually all of my life,” he said at last, “I have viewed myself as Vulcan. I have come to realize that this perspective had not been entirely accurate. I wish to make it so.”
The Fire and the Rose Page 19