Sand and Stars

by Diane Duane

  They went in through the massive gates, and McCoy looked mistrustfully at the huge holes in the ceiling of the vast passageway between the outer gates and the inner ones. The holes were perfect to dump large rocks down on the heads of a trapped enemy. And certainly enemies had been trapped here once or twice: the scars on the floor, where boulders had been dropped long ago, were many and deep.

  “Those gates are solid rock,” he muttered. “What are the hinges made of to support that weight?”

  “Titanium-steel alloys,” Spock said. “Our people discovered them some five thousand years ago, during weapons research.”

  “When else?” McCoy said softly, and walked on. There was a light ahead of them down the passage, and the echoing sound of conversation.

  They paused in the doorway, and not for effect, but because of it. The Hall of Pelasht is one of the largest rooms in the known worlds—nearly half a mile long, a quarter mile across, five hundred feet up to the roof, and all carved out of the living stone, an ancient volcanic basalt. The hundreds of lamps driven into the walls were tiny and distant as stars. It was rare to feel so oppressed, so dwarfed, by an empty space, but Jim did. He simply held still until his feelings calmed down somewhat, until he got over the feeling that that great roof, lost up there in the shadows, might take it into its mind to come down on him without warning. This was earthquake country, after all….

  Over some kind of annunciator system, a calm voice said, “Captain James T. Kirk. Doctor Leonard E. McCoy. Commander Spock.”

  They headed in, Jim doing his best to stroll and look unconcerned. It was a long walk. That hall was the sort that could have swallowed the largest party alive, and people were tending to congregate in small groups near the tables which had been set out in the center with food and drink.

  They made their way to the nearest of the tables, and there they found Sarek and Amanda and a great many Vulcans to which they were all introduced one by one. Jim swore quietly at himself one more time for not taking the time to get the NameFiler memory enhancement done to his translator…but things kept coming up, and he was forced simply to say the names as they were said to him and try to keep them all in order that way.

  There was this to be said, though: these Vulcans treated him with all the courtesy that Shath had not, and they talked to him as if he were an intelligent being. It was a pleasant relief, after that afternoon, when Jim had begun to wonder whether or not the whole planet might be in the mood to consider him a pariah.Paranoia, he thought, and got happily involved in small talk.

  As he chatted with them he was once again rather delighted that Vulcans were in fact different from one another. A lot of people had the idea that Vulcans were all tall, dark, and slender, men and women alike: but though a large percentage of them did indeed fit into those parameters, there were also short Vulcans, blond Vulcans, even a redhead over by one of the tables, talking earnestly to K’s’t’lk: there were delicate, light-boned men and ladies, and stocky ones, and Vulcans who had rather pleasantly ordinary faces, rather than the chiseled good looks that seemed to be the rule.They look like people, Jim thought, and then had to laugh a little at the idea.

  Jim got himself a drink—more of that pure water, which was highly prized hereabouts for its sweet taste—and went back to chatting with the group of Vulcans who had gathered around him. There was Sreil, the burly, brown-haired biologist from the Academy, and T’Madh, a little bright-eyed woman of great age and curiosity, a computer programmer; and her son Savesh, who when asked what he did, said, “I am a farmer,” with a sort of secret satisfaction that hinted he thought his job better than any of the more technical ones that the people around him held down. Jim had to smile; the thought of a Vulcan farmer was slightly funny, even though there naturally had tobe some. But the image of a Vulcan in coveralls, chewing on a stalk of hay, kept coming up and having to be repressed.

  Savesh turned out to be rather more than a someone who drove a tractor, “though I do that on occasion as well,” he said, as if that too was a matter of great pride. Savesh was involved in research on improving the yield of several of the breeds oftikh, a native grain-bearing grass that was a Vulcan staple, and one of the few things that would grow in plain sand without much added nutrient. The problem, it seemed, was that the plant’s biology would not stand much tinkering, in the way of genetic engineering or hormonal treatments; and if you added more nutrient to the soil in an attempt to get thetikh to grow faster, it would simply ignore the stuff. So some other solution had to be found.

  “It is rather important,” Savesh said. “Over the past three hundred years, the planet’s population has increased far beyond the self-sufficiency point. Perhaps an illogical outcome, but it must be handled soon. Already we import too much food, and there is no telling what will happen to our imports after the debates…. ”

  “Savesh,” Jim said, “may I ask you your opinion of something?” It was the standard courtesy, so Sarek had explained to him; the Vulcan to whom one spoke might then safely refuse if he thought his privacy might be breached by the answer.

  “Ask, please,” Savesh said.

  “What do you think about the secession? Is it something you personally would want?”

  Savesh frowned, and for a moment Jim wondered whether he should have asked at all.But I have to ask: I have to get a better feeling of these people…I can’t just stop at Shath. “If I’ve offended—” Jim started to say.

  “Offended? Indeed not,” Savesh said. “It is just that, Captain, you must forgive me, but I have never met an Earth person before this evening, and I begin to wonder now whether much of the data I have about your kind is hearsay evidence and no more.” He frowned again. “I am not sure how to explain this so that it will make sense for a person from a different cultural context, so you must bear with me. There is a word in our language,nehau —there are many translations, but usually they come out as ‘feeling,’ and the translation is inadequate—”

  “Araigh ’tha takh-ruuh ne nehauu vesh mekhezh’t-rrhew,”McCoy said quietly from behind Jim, and then coughed.

  Savesh and Sreil and T’Madh all looked at McCoy with astonishment. “Yes,” Savesh said, “that would be more like it. Doctor, where did you study Vulcan?”

  “Flat on my back,” McCoy said ruefully, “and then spent a week regretting it, usually in the bathroom.” Even the Vulcans smiled slightly at that. “Jim,” he said, “the best translation ofnehau would be an old word: ‘vibes.’ The feeling-in-your-bones that something gives you. It’s highly subjective.”

  “Right. Go on, Savesh.”

  “Well, Captain, I have heard numerous Vulcans say that losing the Federation and the Earth people would be no particular loss, because they had badnehau, and that could not fail to affect us sooner or later. But I must tell you that I find yournehau not objectionable at all; pleasant, even. And this being so, it makes me wonder whether many of the other things I have heard about Earth people are similarly inaccurate. I wonder where the other Vulcans have been getting their data; whether they have even met an Earth person, to make the decision.”

  Jim smiled a little. “They might not have. But for my own part, it might just be that I’m a nice Earth person; there have to be afew. Or perhaps I have goodnehau, but I’m not really as good as I feel.”

  “That might be,” Sreil said. “But usuallynehau is not that easy to deceive; it accurately reflects a being’s inner status. In any case, some of us perhaps will desire to revise our thinking. But whether those revisions will make a difference to the vote that will be taking place…that is impossible to predict, and the odds do not look promising.”

  Jim nodded. “Well, “he said, “I hope it may.”

  T’Madh looked at him out of her little bright eyes. “Hope is not usually logical,” she said, “but in your case, I would wish that matters go well for you, and for all of us. I for one would not care to lose the Federation; our differences are so great that we will never find such an opportunity to celebrate the
m on so grand a scale. But I wonder sometimes whether there are many of us who think ourselves unequal to the task…and so naturally become unequal to it.” She shook her head. “It is saddening. Nevertheless, let us see what can be made of tomorrow.”

  The conversation drifted to other things, and eventually Jim drifted along to other conversations. After an hour or so, he noticed that he was feeling curiously tired. It was probably the heavier gravity…it caught you behind the knees after a while, made you feel wobbly.

  “Running down a bit?” McCoy said in his ear.

  “A little, yes,” he said.

  McCoy gestured at one of the side doors. “Go have a bit of a walk in the fresh air. It’s actually cooling down out there; it helps a little.”

  “All right.”

  It was another long walk to the door. Jim paused in the doorway, looked around. He was standing on a sort of long balcony or gallery carved out of the stone of the side of the mountain; the cliff fell away sheer a hundred feet or so below him, and the Science Academy was laid out before him, all its graceful buildings glimmering in T’Khut’s coppery light. To left and right, the gallery stretched away, and railed stairs reached up from it, leading to other balconies on the mountain’s side.

  Jim picked a direction and began to stroll. The air was indeed getting cool, cooler than he had ever felt it; but this was a desert climate after all, probably the archetypal one.They should have called it Sahara or something, he thought to himself, amused, as he walked.Vulcan: why did they name it that? Unless it was a return to that habit the astronomers used to have, of naming the planets after the old gods…. Not a bad name, I suppose. The god of the forge—and if ever a planet has been thrust in the fire and hammered, this one was, to hear the paleontologists tell it….

  He went up one of the sets of stairs to better his view. The sky had become a most marvelous shade of purple blue, some light of the sun still lingering as twilight, and the desert glowed red beneath T’Khut. Jim leaned on his elbows on the railing and wondered how many balconies there were carved into this sheer wall, how many rooms inside the bulk of the fortress itself. To hear Spock tell it, the place was tunneled through and through like a Swiss cheese with strongrooms, living quarters, lesser halls, stores to hold food against siege…. Jim wondered what it would have been like to withstand a siege here, to look down and see those sands full of people shouting for your blood….

  History: he could never resist history. He hoped there would be time to see this place properly later.

  If there was a later. His own actions would help to determine that.

  Oh, please let it work out all right,he said to Someone Who might or might not be listening. Unlike Spock, he had no certainties on the subject.

  “…resist this,” a voice said, faintly, some distance away. “I resist this most strenuously. Why will you force me to this action?”

  “You know my reasons,” said a second voice: a little, thin, frail voice, but Jim thought he knew it from somewhere…and the hair rose on the back of his neck. “You know the work that other has done, to what purpose. Our people must voterightly, not because their prejudices are exploited. And indeed they have them.”

  “I would not argue that with you. But I resist this course nonetheless.”

  “I will tell thee again,” and Jim’s hackles rose once more at the suddenly formal turn of phrase. The voice was a little louder, as if its owner had come nearer.“Our people must vote rightly. It is disaster, it is the breaking ofcthia, if they do not. They must not be moved by their prejudices, or by the advertising campaign”—the words were almost spat out—“that those others conduct to sway the electorate. They must vote for secession because they think it is logical and necessary. And to do this, they must hear the truth. And no one is better qualified to tell them the truth than you are. They know it: the whole planet knows it. You are the keystone—or one of them.”

  There was a long silence. “I cannot help but think,” said the other voice, Sarek’s voice, low and rough, “that the matter of thine own honor is involved in this, madam.”

  “When has it not been?” The voice was cool. “I am the Eldest. I rule the Family; in some ways I rule the planet, and well I know it, and feel the weight of what I rule. Too long now I have felt it. I think I weary of it. But for the time being, I will not put down the burden, and neither will the Family.Cthia must be observed. The truth must be told. There is no one better to tell it. Eighty-six of their years, you have been ambassador to Earth; you have married a woman of Earth; you have sired a son of mixed parentage; you know the Terrans better than any other. And Terra is at the heart of the Federation, as well you know. We do not hear complaints about the Andorians, or Tellar, or the other worlds. The species that troubles us, the species whose policies determine those of the Federation, are the humans of Earth. Your course is laid out for you. You may resist it as you like. It will not avail you.”

  There was another silence. “And you, James?” the voice said, quite close. Jim turned around, shocked.

  There T’Pau stood, looking at him: and in the background, in the shadows, Sarek, looking somewhat diminished. But Jim had eyes only for T’Pau, frail and small, leaning on her carved stick, robed in plain dark robes now instead of the ceremonial splendor she had worn at the Place of Marriage and Challenge. Again Jim remembered the hot sand, and that regard, more scorching than the white sun, pinning him, examining him. It did so now, and the darkness did not blunt the edge of it. “You did not mean to overhear, I am sure,” T’Pau said. “We shall assume that this was intended.” Jim blinked:what does that mean? “But no matter. You know what Sarek will do?”

  “He will give testimony, and the intent of it will be that Vulcan should secede from the Federation,” Jim said.

  “Do you know why he will do this?”

  “Because you have told him to,” Jim said.

  T’Pau drew herself up a little taller, took a step forward. “Many will think that,” she said. “Certainly most folk of your people would think so. They look at me and see the powerful matriarch—” She snorted. The sound was so unexpected that Jim almost laughed at it. “They have no idea of the strictures that bind my power,” T’Pau said.“Cthia, cthia above all. But they do not understand it. If they did, secession would not be necessary.”

  “And perhaps if they did, their diversity from us would be diminished,” Sarek said. “What is the point of celebrating diversity if one tries to make all the elements of it the same?”

  T’Pau glanced at him, and then back at Jim. “James,” she said in that oddly accented voice, “there are forces working on this planet who desire this secession mightily. It is not in my right to stop them: they are a symptom of larger forces, they have a right to arise, and they must be allowed to work out the fate of the planet in the open air, under the sky and the regard of the One, without interference.”

  “But youare interfering. Or so it seems to me.”

  “I am,” she said, “but not in the way you think. The forces of which I speak are many, but some of them have been carrying on—the Earth phrase for it is ‘a hate-mongering campaign.’ They are inflaming Vulcans’ prejudices against Earth people, by inflaming their pride, their sense of superiority.” Jim looked surprised, and T’Pau said, “Oh, indeed, many of them would say that those are emotions, to be eschewed. And many of them have them, nonetheless. To combat such lies, the only weapon is the truth. Sarek has that truth. And he must tell it in full, no matter what the consequences.”

  Jim stood still a moment, and then nodded. “It had been my intention as well,” he said, “to tell the truth. Whatever the consequences.”

  “That itself,” T’Pau said, “is more powerful a weapon in your hands than any other. I counsel you, bear it as well as you can.” She looked a touch rueful at the martial metaphor. “For again we go to war, though all our philosophy counsels us otherwise. No physical weapons may be raised, but war it is nonetheless.” She cocked her head at Jim. “I am
relieved by what you say, however. I had thought perhaps you would desire to keep Vulcan in the Federation at any cost.”

  “I am not sure,” Jim said slowly, “that I would want to be in such a Federation, or to have on my head the Vulcan that would be in it, afterward.”

  T’Pau nodded. “Then we understand one another,” she said. Jim put an eyebrow up: he was far from understandingher, except in the most roundabout sort of way, and he was resigned to that.

  “And what will you do,” T’Pau said, “should the vote go for secession?”

  Jim gazed at her a moment, then shook his head and turned away. “Leave Vulcan,” he said; and it was all he could say. He had been refusing as much as possible to think about those consequences, except in the abstract.

  “Enough,” T’Pau said from behind him. “It is illogical to suffer consequences before they befall. Do what you must, James, and know that you are doing right. It is all any of us can do, I fear.”

  The silence grew long. When Jim turned around again, they were gone.

  He stood on the balcony until he got his composure back; and then he went back to the party.

  T’Khut set, dyeing the sands below with the tinct of alien blood.

  Vulcan: Three

  Kesh was her name. She had the Eye, but in all other things she was the least of them, and the rest of the clan brought her to remember this often. She swore, quite young, that they would regret this: but more came of her oaths, in the end, than regret.

  She was born among the stones around the pool, of a woman who had been called Tekav, but now had no name, being dead. No petty-house had yet housebound Tekav; their mothers were waiting to see if she would bear her child alive, and would thereafter be worth the binding. But the birthing killed her, and not even the Oldest Mother could save her when the womb-mooring tore loose untimely, and the blood burst forth.