mixture
of anger and shame.
"Why do you trouble me here?" she hissed in
English, her expression only thinly masking her
turmoil.
"I have promised to do as you requested."
Spock could not have responded at that moment
even-if he had known the answer to her question.
She studied him suspiciously for a
moment before
her expression became completely calm. "Who
are
you?" she demanded in Vulcan.
He was too taken aback to have the presence of
mind not to answer her question. "Spock."
Even in the darkness, the striking elegance of her
features was visible; shining black hair fell in
soft,
thick folds to her waist. She blinked at him as
though
trying to decide if she were dreaming.
A horrible, humiliating thought struck Spock:
he
had entered the wrong house, and had been so stupid
as to give her his name. By tomorrow evening, his
awkward intrusion would be known to all in
ShiKahr.
Logic fled in the face of the situation, and he could
think of nothing to say to the young woman save a
phrase taught him by his mother, an English
expression
that had no counterpart in Vulcan.
"Excuse me." Spock backed out of the
room
swiftly, a flurry of archaic Vulcan
curses chattering in
the back of his mind at the cruel trick his
memory had
played on him. Had he mistakenly read the
hieroglyph
on the front door? And if his perceptions could not
be
trusted, how would he ever find his father's house?
He staggered, numbed by confusion, down the hall
and back toward the front door, but the sight of the
main room stopped him. It, too, was as
unarguably
familiar as his bedroom had been. In one corner
sat his
father's harp--in another, his mother's piano. His
eyes
were drawn to something above the piano: an
old-fashioned
family portrait, painted by a well-known
Terran artist.
A woman sat, erect and gracious, her
honey-colored
hair piled on top of her head in the
Vulcan fashion, the
slightest smile playing at the corners of her
mouth.
Behind and to one side of her chair, not quite close
enough to be touching, stiff and solemn, stood a
ten-year-old
boy. He was small for his age; that fact,
combined with his mixed parentage, made him the
favorite of bullies. Brown-black hair
hung in his eyes
(it always grew too fast, much to the consternation of
his mother) and the ears were ridiculously large for the
narrow, fine-featured face.
MINDSHADOW
Amanda had been right--he had grown into them.
It had always been Spock's contention that the boy
did not resemble his mother in the slightest. However,
studying the portrait now, it seemed that there was
something, perhaps in the eyes...
He sat heavily on the comfortable, overstuffed
sofa.
The girl-woman had been no more than an
illusion, a
trick of his overloaded faculties,
brought on by exhaustion.
Perhaps the trip had been too much for him. It
occurred to him that he should return to his room, to
prove to himself that the girl had been an illusion,
and
to sleep in his own bed, but instead he sank back
into
the comfortingly familiar softness of the couch.
"Spock."
He raised his eyelids at the soft, warm sound,
unsure for a moment where he was.
Amanda stood with her back to the large picture
window that overlooked the garden. The rising sun
outlined her in a halo of dazzling white light;
Spock
could not see her face. He pushed against the
yielding
softness of the sofa, struggling to rise, but she sat
down next to him.
She was older than the woman in the portrait,
now;
the golden hair was mostly silver, and the lines about
her eyes were etched more deeply by the harshness of
life on Vulcan. She reached a hand toward him
in the
ritual embrace: index and middle fingers
extended
tightly together, the thumb folded over the remaining
fingers, a symbol that these two were forever tied by
marriage or by blood. Amanda Grayson had for
so
long suppressed the urge to encircle a loved
one with
her arms that the impulse rarely occurred to her
anymore;
it had taken many years.
The small hint of a smile that curved the corners
of
her mouth upward was still exactly the same. What-
ever anxiety she might have felt for her son was
carefully shielded, a skill acquired from years
of living
with Sarek.
"I thought I heard someone come in last night. I
thought it might be your father coming home early.
Please don't tell me you walked from the
capital."
Very well, thought Spock. "Father is not here?" he
asked in English. He and his father always addressed
her in her native tongue; she did
speak Vulcan, after a
fashion, as she put it--but the sibilants were
impossible
for her to produce, in spite of her training as a
linguist.
"He's at an emergency Council meeting in the
capital.
I expect him back sometime tomorrow evening."
Spock's sense of relief was so deep that he was
almost ashamed of it. His greatest concern upon arriving
home had been the effect that his lack of mental
shields would have upon Sarek; surely his father
would find the chaos of Spock's mental
processes
offensive. About Amanda, he did not worry. Not
being
a telepath, she would never know of his mental
infirmities,
nor judge his actions against the harsh standards
of logic. She would only encourage and try
to understand,
virtues of which Sarek seemed incapable. Perhaps
she was why Spock had never minded working
with humans, why he had volunteered for duty on
the Enterprise.
"I've been in contact with Dr. McCoy," she
continued
gently, "and he tells me that you're taking a
certain medication... if you could give it to me,
I'll
see that you receive it on the proper schedule."
Spock's head turned sharply, but not at
Amanda's
words.
His peripheral vision caught a glimpse of
movement,
a flash of white and black in the hallway. It
was the
MINDSHADOW
apparition, the vision that had appeared
in his bed the
night before. He'd had no intention of mentioning it
to
Amanda, so convinced was he that her existence was
illusory...
The vision stood hesitantly in the hallway,
apparently
afraid of intruding. She was clothed, now, in a
simple white dress that fell in a straight
line to her
ankles, and the cascading black hair was now
braided
and pinned securely to the crown of her head. Although
her physical features marked her as a
Vulcan,
there was something slightly incongruous about her
demeanor--an openness, a hint of volatility--
some-thing
that a human would never perceive, something
that a Vulcan could not help but notice. The
fleeting
impression that Spock had formed of her during their
brief encounter was quite accurate: she was very
young, perhaps nineteen, and very beautiful.
From the warmth of Amanda's response to her,
Spock assumed she was a relative of whom he
had
been unaware. "T'Pala," Amanda said.
"Please, come
in. I'd like for you to meet Spock."
There was something about Amanda's tone that
made Spock distinctly uncomfortable; he knew
that he
had heard her use that tone before. He searched his
memory.
The first time she had introduced him to his former
fiance, T'Pring. He rose stiffly.
T'Pala carried herself into the room with effortless
grace and stopped below the portrait. "Your
son," she
said, with a solemn nod to Spock, but did not
succeed
in completely concealing her shy eagerness. "I
recognized
you from your picture. I have heard of your
many accomplishments." She addressed herself to
Amanda. "We have already met--but I did not
extend
the courtesy of introducing myself."
Amanda's eyes were questioning; Spock sensed a
glimmer of amusement from T'Pala. "Last
night," he
said in a low voice.
Amanda must have imagined the circumstances, for
she tactfully did not pursue the subject.
"T'Pala is our
house guest," she said to Spock. "She's
finishing up
her studies at the ShanaiKahr General
Academy."
"Your parents have been most kind," T'Pala
said.
"By offering me their home, they have made it possible
for me to continue my studies without interruption."
Spock harbored no desire to pursue small
talk with
this young creature, but for Amanda's sake he
feigned
polite interest. "Your family is not living in
ShiKahr,
then?" Obviously not, else she would not be staying
here. It was not an uncommon arrangement for
students
attending faraway academies to live with a
family in order to save the cost of staying in the
dormitory.
T'Pala lowered her eyes. "My parents are
deceased.
If you will excuse me, I must hurry to catch the
shuttle. I have two oral exams today at the
Academy."
She was gone before Spock could think of a reply.
"Well?" Amanda asked.
Spock raised an eyebrow in the expression his
mother knew so well. "I scarcely know
her well
enough to make an assessment--"
"But?"
Spock frowned. "Her demeanor is somewhat
inconsistent
with her... physical appearance."
"I knew you'd notice. Her father was an
attache to
the Terran embassy in ShanaiKahr. He
married a
Vulcan while there, and they returned to Earth
shortly
after the child was born. She grew up there."
"Half human," Spock said softly. A
rarity, but more
likely to occur when a member of the diplomatic
MINDSHADOW
service was involved, perhaps because interracial
marriages
required exceptional members of each species
to tolerate the strain imposed by cultural
differences.
"She's been with us a couple of months, since
her
father died. I take it you noticed she's been
staying in your room." It was not in the form of a question and
Spock did not feel the need to respond.
"I hope you don't mind staying in the guest
room"
Amanda continued. "We could have asked her to
move--"
"It would have been highly improper." That was
true; the comfort of house-guests
took precedence over
that of family, regardless of circumstances.
Amanda rose. "I doubt that the couch was very
comfortable last night. Let me help you put your
things in the guest room, and you can try to get some
more sleep."
He let her lead him to the guest room, but he
doubted that he would sleep--he was already thinking
of his first encounter with Sarek . . . and of the
troubling impressions he had received from the
house-guest.
It was early afternoon when Spock emerged again
from the guest room. Amanda was in the main room,
seated on the sofa, next to her small pupil--a
six-year-old
Andorian child, bluish pale and atennaed.
He was
looking up at Amanda with childlike adoration, and
speaking very quickly. Something he said must have
been quite amusing, for Amanda let forth with a burst
of laughter that startled and embarrassed Spock,
who
stood unnoticed in the hallway. He had never
heard
his mother make such a sound. The Andorian child,
however, seemed pleased by it; he chimed in with a
shy, feeble chuckle.
Amanda had been teaching at home ever since her
arrival on Vulcan. Possessing a
doctorate in English
literature and a master's degree in linguistics,
she
tutored both adults and children in English grammar
and literature. It was for this precise reason that
she
had frequented the Vulcan embassy on Earth,
where
she met Sarek. On Vulcan, however, very few
natives
were problem students, and most of Amanda's
tutorials
were children of embassy workers in ShanaiKahr,
some of them from Terra, sent to study their own
culture and literature.
Amanda's love for her profession had led her to
acquire one of the finest collections of Old
Earth
literature in the civilized galaxy. Spock
faced the
shelves of books that lined the hallway; the
unmistakable
smell of old paper brought back pleasant
memories.
He picked out a childhood favorite, a
priceless
volume over four hundred years old, and opened
> it to the frontispiece, a lithograph. The paper
pages had
yellowed long before the preservative with which they
were now treated had been developed, and the leather
cover (a barbaric, but valued material in those
times)
was cracked and mended in several places. Spock
closed the book silently and stole to the safety
of the
garden, to await Sarek's return.
Amanda did not notice; she continued with her
lesson, an affectionate hand laid lightly on
the Andorian's
shoulder. -
Eridani was setting when Sarek returned home
from
the capital. Spock was still in the garden, watching
the
sunset, but he sensed his father's presence even before
Sarek came out to greet him.
The meeting was uneventful; Sarek was kind, but
distant. Perhaps the distance was intended to protect
both of them.
"It has been too long since your mother and I
last
MINDSHADOW
saw you. Perhaps you will visit again under more
pleasant circumstances."
"Perhaps," Spock said.
"I have arranged for a tutor... Tela'at
Stalik will
come tomorrow for the first lesson."
Spock did not ask the subject; Stalik was
well
known, a follower of Kohlinahr, the
discipline of total
nonemotion. He had achieved the title of
Tela'at, Elder, and that, along with his greatly
advanced age,
entitled him to much respect. Sarek could have
scarcely chosen a more qualified instructor
to teach
Spock the mind rules. Spock bowed his head
to indicate
his acceptance and appreciation of his father's
choice.
The evening meal proceeded without too much discomfort,
and afterward, as was the custom, the family
sat in the main room. Spock noticed the
conspicuous
absence of the house guest, but restrained his
curiosity.
He sat on the sofa next to Amanda and fingered
Sarek's harp softly. The instrument Was well
over three hundred years old, older than a
Vulcan lifetime,
and its sound was richer and more resonant than that
of Spock's harp. It had belonged to Sarek's
father, and
the wood from which it was hewn was no longer
widely available. Spock thought of his own harp
with
shame, and wondered if the damage could ever be
repaired.
There was the sound of a door opening and closing,
and T'Pala appeared, wearing a black cape
with the
hood thrown back. She spoke breathlessly, as
though
she had been running.
"Forgive me," she said to the three of them. "The
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