Star Trek: TOS - Unspoken Truth

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  T’Vaakis, knowing she was meant to convey these thoughts to their mutual handler, declined to answer. She was more intent on gathering a datapadd, several garments from the wardrobe, and some toiletries, which she placed in a small travel bag, the better to appear authentic in her resumed identity if she were questioned for any reason. Saavik could almost admire her.

  Doubtless, Saavik thought, Narak will transport her out of the city the same way he had brought her in. Without the corneal implants, Narak could no longer see what she saw. If she were to follow the real T’Vaakis from a discreet distance …

  “You’re to remain in the flat until your twin is safely on her way,” Narak said even as she considered it. “I may not be able to see through your eyes, but there are others watching.”

  Was he still watching and listening somehow? Perhaps the real T’Vaakis had also been transformed into a seeing and listening device.

  “Tell your father I am most impressed,” Saavik said as her twin prepared to leave.

  There was no indication that Narak had overheard. But T’Vaakis, who had been almost out the door, went motionless. Then she turned, slowly, as if to counter with some snide remark, but physiology did not lie. The dark eyes had widened perceptibly, a quick flick of the tongue over dry lips revealed the truth—at least as T’Vaakis knew it. Saavik had succeeded in startling her, and now she was trying to think. The physical resemblance was deliberate, in order to make it possible for her to pass herself off as Saavik’s twin, but now she was wondering how Saavik had guessed so accurately.

  If she wasn’t just bluffing. If it was even true. If T’Vaakis knew one way or the other. Had Narak also appeared in her life out of nowhere with a similar sorry tale designed to win her over?

  T’Vaakis processed all of these options, then chose to answer by not answering, merely raising an eyebrow as any Vulcan might, an expression that could mean anything in context, and took her leave as if she had never been there.

  Well? What if she was your half sibling? Saavik thought. Nothing else to do but wait here until Narak gave her further instructions. Examine this from every possible angle. Say Narak is your father. Say you have at least one half sibling, raised within the empire. Would she not, out of some adulation for a father who gave the pretense of loving her, as well as her sense of duty as a loyal Romulan, go along with this charade?

  The scientist’s impulse was to scan the room for any trace of the interloper—a strand of hair, a remnant of a fingerprint (no need to search for the latter; were there not sufficient objects that Saavik-as-T’Vaakis had touched before the false palm prints had been removed?)—that could be used to verify whether or not this startlingly familiar avatar was in fact connected to her by genetics, if nothing else.

  But the damaged child of Hellguard stopped the scientist in her tracks. If you do not wish to know who your father was, you must not seek to know this answer, either.

  What was the last thing he had said before taking his leave of her?

  “Disavow me if you wish. But I can tell you who your mother is.”

  He had brought the skimmer to rest on one of the numerous landing pads in the park ring encircling the city of ShiKahr, indicating that she was to walk from there to the flat he had arranged for her near the Enclave. Before he released the door lock to allow her to depart, he had secured her promise that she would do as he had instructed.

  “Though unwillingly,” she added.

  “I’d be disappointed if it were otherwise,” he’d said. “If you gave in too easily, it would mean I couldn’t trust you.”

  He seemed to be searching for something more to say. The expression on his face was that of someone struggling with irreconcilable emotions. Saavik knew it well. She had seen it in the mirror on the rare occasions when she looked there. Again his sheer effrontery made her seethe inside, though nothing showed on her carefully controlled face. If he wasn’t her father, he was a damn good actor. The gestures, the facial expressions were hers, and if she had subscribed to a belief in nature versus nurture, she would have to concede that there was a kinship here. On some wordless level, she recognized him. Still, there was no way of knowing how long he and his kind had had her under observation. Easy enough to study her gestures and emulate them.

  She had sat in the skimmer with him, hearing the seconds tick by as he seemed to be searching for the right words. But even this could have been feigned.

  “When this is done, it would please me to get to know you under less … expedient circumstances.”

  She stopped herself from lashing out at him. “That opportunity is lost to the childhood I never had,” she said, her own poetry surprising her.

  “I cannot say I blame you for such an emotional response,” he said, as if to try her patience. “Disavow me if you wish. But I can tell you who your mother is.”

  Is? Meaning that she still lives? No, that I will not accept!

  Silently, she had sat with her hands in her lap and stared him down until he yielded and unlocked the door. She strode away from the skimmer without looking back.

  How much of that had been the truth? Everything he’d told her to this point had had the ring of truth, but she was so unused to duplicity she could not know for sure.

  Once again, the memory of Spock served as her touchstone.

  “You lied,” she had accused him even in the midst of crisis as he beamed Admiral Kirk and the survivors up from the space station at Regula I, Khan Noonien Singh’s need for vengeance making every second count.

  Spock’s expression had been benign. Who, me? “I exaggerated.”

  In retrospect, she could certainly understand the need for duplicity. How else could Enterprise have bought time in order to escape from Khan and his intentions? Her reaction at the time—yes, a purely emotional reaction—had been anger, and hurt, hurt that her mentor had not told her the truth.

  Later, when she’d calmed down, she’d recalled the knowing looks of the rest of the bridge crew and realized that it was not only old familiarity with the ways of their commanding officers but also an intimate knowledge of the ship and its engineering crew that made it possible for them to retranslate days into hours.

  Had Saavik been less emotional at the time, she might have done the same calculations and arrived at the same conclusions. The event taught her one thing: Never take anything on face value, not even a Vulcan’s word.

  It had also reminded her, as if she needed reminding, of just how naïve she truly was.

  How simple life had seemed then, nothing but one Kobayashi Maru scenario after another to be solved and encapsulated, the time between filled with duties to perform and expectations to be met. The days and weeks and months that followed had taught her otherwise.

  So T’Vaakis would rendezvous with Narak and return to wherever she had come from, and Saavik would wait, an interloper in the very place where only moments ago she had belonged, awaiting further instructions. The waiting gave her time to think and to entertain a fleeting regret.

  Say T’Vaakis really was her sister, or not. Would it have cost her anything to make conversation, form a bond, perhaps ask her in some coded way, whether Narak could hear them or not, if she was happy with the role assigned her, if she ever had doubts, if in a different reality they could have called each other friend?

  One thought led to another. Mikal, alone in all the universe, denying the family he had left behind on Tiburon, even those who had shown him kindness, seeking temporary solace in the arms of women, the morning light leaving him with the taste of ashes.

  At least, she thought, angry with him, he had had the luxury of a family to turn away from. She had been denied that. Even if Narak truly was her father, he had not troubled himself with paternal responsibility until he wanted something. Better to have no family at all.

  Mikal. Don’t distract yourself with thoughts of Mikal now. He is lost to you. Even if you were ever to meet again, what could you possibly say to him?

  Captain’s Personal
Log, Galina Mironova reporting. Data gathering’s almost complete, and we’ll soon be on our way home. Meanwhile, my chief scientist looks like hell. Maybe it’s not just lovesickness after all. If I can’t goad him into shaping up, I’ll have to remand him to sickbay for a thorough going-over.

  • • •

  “How much longer, Mikal?” Mironova asked, studying the most recent data on the padd in front of her to avoid looking at him.

  “We’re moving out of that part of the sky,” was Mikal’s answer.

  Poetry, Mironova thought, glancing up at him with a worried frown. This is new!

  “What I mean is …” he began, reading her mind out of long habit, perhaps augmented by his telepathic interactions with Worm and Gwailim Loth, “… the rifts occur only in this region of near space. Deema III’s orbit took it out of their path three days ago. There won’t be any new appearances or disappearances until this time next year.”

  “Deema III’s ‘year’ being four hundred seventeen days and change, am I correct?” Mironova said.

  “Exactly. So we’ve located them, counted them, and gathered as much telemetry as we can on the stable ones. The astrometric data’s complete, unless we want to wait around for a very long year.”

  “So that leaves only the work downplanet to complete. Estimate?”

  “Since I put Palousek in charge of the base camp, the kids have been doing a bang-up job. Between Esparza’s obsessive-compulsiveness and Jaoui’s hyperfocus and Cheung’s determination to be better than either of them, they’ve probably cataloged every blade of grass in the designated biomes.”

  “Clever of you to put someone else in charge so all you have to do is drop by and oversee every few days,” Mironova teased him, but he wasn’t playing.

  “I’m just saying, since there probably won’t be anything new suddenly appearing on the surface, we can probably wrap up the geosciences surveys in another few days,” he reported humorlessly. “Look, Galina—”

  “Which leaves only the interpersonal interaction,” Mironova said pointedly, folding her hands on the desktop and holding Mikal’s gaze. “Call it sociology, call it diplomacy, call it making friends. How’s it going?”

  “You’d have to ask Loth,” Mikal said a little too quickly.

  “So you’ve been slacking off on that as well.” It was a statement, not a question. “Remind me exactly what it is you’re doing on this mission? Aside from hogging the glory when it comes to awards and additional entries in your CV, I mean.”

  “I’m doing what I signed on to do—supervising. Loth’s the telepath; I’m only in the way. Things go much more smoothly when I’m not around. He says my ‘vibe is disruptive,’ whatever that means.”

  “I could have told him that,” Mironova said sotto voce. Before Mikal could use his civilian prerogative to bark at her, she added. “So I guess I’m to consult with Loth about linguistics and that sort of thing before I put in an appearance and start nation building?”

  “Please,” Mikal suggested. “He’ll tell you he’s been compiling a linguistics database in order to construct a lexicon before the diplomats are sent here.”

  “Are they wanted here, though?” Mironova asked incisively. “The diplomats, I mean? As part of the first-contact team for Worm and the others, it was incumbent upon you to determine that.”

  “Loth can just as easily—”

  “Practically speaking, yes. Loth can, but it was understood that you would participate. It’s a matter of protocol, if not basic good manners. Worm’s expecting you. If you offend hir, you could jeopardize everything else.”

  Mikal shifted his feet. Strictly speaking, Mironova couldn’t order him to talk to Worm and the others, but he’d have to do some fancy tap dancing to explain why he was loath to do so.

  Every time we speak, s/he asks about Saavik, and I have no answer. That would be bad enough if it were just Worm and me talking, but with Loth and half the planet listening in, it’s … embarrassing. I haven’t felt this vulnerable since … since the old man beat me and sent me packing when I was barely old enough to shave. Is that sufficient reason to risk losing the Deemanot’s trust?

  The scientist knew the answer. Mikal sighed.

  “I’ll talk to them,” he said.

  Mironova beamed at him. “I thought you might.”

  “What does it say about my confidence in you if I make it too easy for you?” Narak’s voice insinuated in Saavik’s ear. “Surely a survivor like you can find a way to return to the desert undetected?”

  She had managed to leave the flat near the Enclave and make her way to the park ring, blending in with the foot traffic along the pedestrian streets, as nervous about being recognized now as she had been undercover. By all accounts she was still at Amorak, half a continent away. While the citizens of ShiKahr might have been kept from the knowledge of her sudden departure from that shrine, her seeming sudden reappearance in the city would stir rumor. Vulcans did not subscribe to gossip per se, but somehow they knew things. Thus by managing to be invisible in her very visibility, Saavik had reached the outskirts without running into anyone who knew her.

  She wore the same desert robe and sandals she had arrived in several weeks earlier. She had also had the presence of mind to eat and drink before leaving the flat since she had no means with which to buy food. It had never before occurred to her that it was actually easier, lacking credits, to find sustenance in the desert than in the heart of civilization.

  “Good choice of location,” Narak said in her ear, letting her know that at least one of his watchers was watching her. “I’d wondered if you’d choose a little-trafficked point at which to slip back into the desert or a busy thoroughfare where you’d as likely go unnoticed. My instinct would have been the latter, but it’s intriguing that you chose the former. Fortunately, there were enough watchers to watch both.”

  Did that minuscule difference in their approach signify? Saavik wondered. What she wouldn’t give to be able to answer him in language he would understand …

  “Oh, and there’s no need to rush,” he went on, sounding a little too confident. “Sarek’s offworld at the moment. Ostensibly on a routine visit to Coridan, but we have reason to believe he’ll manage to make contact with his Klingon masters at the same time.”

  His words were deliberate. Sarek had no masters, Klingon or otherwise, but the false clues Saavik was planting would make it seem as if he was taking bribes from certain interested Klingon parties as well as Romulans. Whoever had planned this operation had been judicious. The charges leveled against Sarek would be just outrageous enough to destroy his career and, with it, any trust between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, but not so outrageous as to lack credibility.

  Saavik scanned the few passersby in this part of the ring, not expecting any to stand out as a watcher but curious whether one of them would give something away. None did. She waited.

  Did she hear Narak yawn? “Feel free to improvise. Take as much time as you need, but don’t make it obvious that you’re dragging your heels. Prolonging this will neither make it easier nor increase your chances of detection.”

  So he still assumed she would run to the Vulcan authorities, given the opportunity. Which meant she should assume she was under surveillance at all times, even in the desert. Just how many sleepers had been assigned to this operation? That knowledge might tell her how important it was to them and, more to the point, how important her part of it. If there were any way she could make herself expendable without making matters worse …

  Focus! she told herself, not for the first time. If only doing were as easy as saying.

  She had taken refuge in a grove of trees, one of many in the park ring where one could meditate or simply savor the surrounding beauty. Here she would remain until nightfall, knowing none would presume to disturb her, before making her move. The night would be especially dark during this season, the sister planet remaining below the ecliptic, hiding her light. Narak or his masters had thought of ever
ything. While Vulcans had excellent night vision, this little detail would make it that much easier for her to move about undetected.

  As the traditional tocsin sounded from temple to temple throughout the city, signaling that the majority of citizens would by habit be off the streets and in their dwellings or, if they worked at night, reporting to their place of business, Saavik approached a place on the outer ring where the motion sensors faced outward toward the desert to warn of predators, and slipped through.

  One would have to be a citizen of ShiKahr to be familiar with the fact that only the major thoroughfares were marked by sensors facing inward, many of them centuries old, from a time when smuggling was commonplace, designed to detect anyone leaving the city without official sanction. At least, Saavik had assumed only a citizen would know, but apparently Narak’s sleepers did as well. In any event, it pleased her that there was at least one thing about her he hadn’t known. She would avoid the inward-looking sensors and slip through where she would go unnoticed, as long as she kept to a straight path between two outward-looking sensors until she was beyond their range.

  Vulcan had indeed grown soft, assuming that the only predators who might enter from the desert would have more than two legs. Purposefully, Saavik walked. Her destination was at some distance, and she needed to be there before sunrise, not only to avoid the heat.

  “This may have been unwise,” the figure in the shadows murmured as a momentary image of Saavik, really only a nanosecond’s glimpse of the top of her head and one ear tip where she had been less than perfect in eluding one of the corridor sensors, flashed on the screen in T’Saan’s private office. “Are we certain she will not succumb under the pressure?”

  “In her former life, she was Vulcan disciplined and Starfleet trained,” T’Saan replied. “We are confident she will lead us to the others.”