Strangers from the Sky

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

distinctly out of place in the noisy, ill-mannered

  mob packed to the walls in the dank, windowless

  anteroom, the silent figure in the watchcap and

  heavy dark

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  overcoat simply awaited his turn. Near

  midnight, when even the most entrenched of the reporters

  had given up and gone to supper, Spock alone

  remained.

  An exhausted secretary was locking the inner

  offices when she found him.

  "Everyone's gone," she told him. "You'll have

  to come back tomorrow."

  "You are here," Spock pointed out reasonably.

  "Yeah, well, I'm going home. And even if

  I weren't, I'm not authorised to review travel

  applications."

  "But the assistant director is. If I am

  not mistaken, he is still in his office."

  The secretary eyed him warily. "Says who?"

  "Between seven A.m. and twelve noon today,"

  Spock said, "seven persons including yourself entered

  these offices. You are the sixth to leave. I believe

  the person remaining is qualified to issue

  travel permits."

  "How do you know who his

  "I was here," Spock said simply. "I watched

  them."

  "You've been here for over seventeen hours?"

  "Seventeen hours and twenty-one minutes."

  The girl nodded, amazed. "And I'll bet the

  next thing you're going to say is that you're not leaving

  until you speak to the assistant director."

  "Correct."

  "Okay!" She sighed, sat at the reception

  desk, reached for a stylus and a computer form.

  ""Let me have your name, Mr. his

  "Spock. his

  "First name?"

  He hesitated for only a moment. "Benjamin."

  "And which media service do you represent, Mr.

  Spock?"

  Spock shook his head slightly. "I am not a

  reporter. I have been sent by Professor Jeremy

  Grayson of the Peace Fellowship."

  He showed her the readout of the message from 333

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  Stockholm. Her manner toward him became

  suddenly deferential.

  "We were told to expect Professor

  Grayson himself."

  "The professor was taken ill," Spock said,

  wondering if that fact had altered radically during his

  travels. "I have been sent in his place."

  "I see," the secretary said. "Everything seems

  to be in order. I'll just need some identification,

  Mr. Spock."

  It was the one thing he had hoped to avoid. If the

  single item that had gotten him across borders and

  oceans alike to bring him here should fail him now, he

  could go no further. Reaching inside his collar and

  skipping the fine silver chain over his head, Spock

  cradled the symbol of peace in his hand.

  It hardly compared with navigating a starship through

  hyperspace, Gary Mitchell thought, checking his

  coordinates in the jouncing

  snowmobile, but it had its own excitement. With

  luck he would reach Byrd within the hour.

  Yoshi sat cross-legged on his bunk in total

  darkness, contemplating the rest of his life.

  He'd thought sleep would come easily after his long

  soul-searching talk with the psychiatrist, but her words

  had only replaced his old fears with new ones.

  If his small life was so profoundly

  affected by the presence of Vulcans, no wonder the

  rest of the world was hysterical.

  Suppose T'Lera was right, and Vulcans might

  have come to Earth within his Lifetime? Suppose Dr.

  BeRero was right, and there were things he could do to help?

  The least he could do was to go find Tatya and

  apologise for his caveman behavior, Yoshi

  decided, groping for his jeans in the dark. He would

  find her and Sorahl; he knew they'd be together,

  possibly for the last time; the council might decide

  as soon as tomorro tilde and tell her, tell

  them he was sorry.

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  Something fell out of his jeans pocket and brushed

  against his foot. Yoshi flicked on the reading lamp

  and retrieved it.

  "Stupid!" he chided himself aloud, unfolding the

  computer printout. Anyone else would have put it in a

  safe place before

  Before it fell into the hands of people who would try try

  to make him forget who had given it to him, Yoshi

  thought. He'd told Dr. Bellero he was no kind

  of hero, but maybe he could preserve something of

  value. With sudden determination he found a

  pencil, bracketed Sorahl's newly created

  enzyme off from the rest of the formula, and gave it a

  name. Then he refolded the printout and hid it in the

  bottom of his duffel bag, and went for a walk in the

  belly of the Whale.

  T'Lera took the first game, forty-love,

  She had come onto the court barefoot, her feet

  too narrow for human tennis shoes, yet another

  reminder of her difference.

  "Never mind!" Melody waved off any

  objection. "Some of the best of the Aussies play

  barefoot."

  Nevertheless, she kept staring at T'Lera's

  feet.

  "Quite within the norm of human acceptability,"

  T'Lera assured her, extending each foot in

  turn against the floor as if for inspection.

  "Unlike the ears."

  "Hey, I didn't mean ?"'

  "Perhaps if Earth is to be our final home, your

  surgeons might be called upon to remedy that

  defect, that we might be more pleasing to the eye of the

  beholder. was The T'Leran irony was

  radiating full strength. From his place on the

  sidelines, Jim Kirk could taste it; it

  made his back teeth ache. He wondered how

  Melody could

  withstand the full intensity. "Unless of course you

  prick us and we bleed . . ."

  Have they all read Shakespeare? Kirk

  wondered. And was there anything more than a difference in

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  degree between Sawyer's attitude toward

  Vulcan intel1ect and his own?

  "Your serve!" Melody barked from her side of the

  net.

  The human's sneakers made a great thumping,

  squeaking Earthbound protest against the surface of the

  indoor court, where the Vulcan seemed to float

  against a gravity lighter than that of her world.

  Melody's savage two-handed volleys were met with

  effortless agility, answered with lofting

  nonaggressive returns that gave no hint to the

  human opponent as to where they would vector off and

  descend. Jim Kirk's call of "Game!" in

  T'Lera's favor was merely salt in the wound,

  insult to injury.

  "A hundred and thirteen, huh?" Melody

  huffed, wiping her brow with the backs of her

  wrists.

  "Point-four-six," T'Lera replied.

  Jim Kirk found himself hoping she'd beat the

  pants off her.

  Yoshi's footsteps on the metal stairs to the

  bridge roused Jason Nyere from uneasy sleep.

  "Wha?" The ca
ptain pulled himself upright in his

  chair, instinctively going for the laser pistol he'd

  returned to the weapons locker eight days ago; his

  dreams had been that troubled.

  "Easy, Jason," Yoshi told him. "Just

  me. Not used to wearing shoes. Decks get cold

  at night."

  "Have to fix that," Nyere muttered, orienting himself,

  eyeing the void of the comm screen wi/lly. "The

  Vulcans his

  was are becoming acclimated to the cold,

  Captain," one of them assured him. More awake

  now, Jason noticed Sorahl and Tatya as

  well. "Please do not trouble yourself about that."

  was time is it?" Jason wondered, squinting at the

  chrono.

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  "Time for you to get some shut-eye."

  Yoshi tried to help the big man out of the chair.

  "You can keep the screen on in your quarters, can't

  you? Nothing's going to happen up here; they've

  probably sealed off the whole continent by now."

  "Ought to be on the bridge when it comes," Nyere

  said halfheartedly, easing himself up. He was getting

  too ol less-than like to sleep upright in a command

  chair. "Captain's duty to keep the watch . .

  ."

  He staggered. Yoshi supported him on one

  side, Sorahl on the other.

  "Want us to call Melody to the bridge?"

  Yoshi asked. He got no answer; Jason was

  asleep on his feet. Together Yoshi and Sorahl

  half carried him into the radio room where there was a

  daybed. Tatya removed Jason's boots and found

  a blanket.

  "Poor old man!" Yoshi mused as the three of

  them tiptoed out.

  Except for the stray monitor light, the bridge

  was in total darkness. Beyond its wraparound window lay

  a jumbled expanse of snow-covered pack ice,

  trampled and dirty around the buildings at Byrd,

  stretching as far as the rise of the glacial ridge that

  marked the beginnings of the mainland. Above the

  ice sprawled a breathlessness of stars.

  "I guess we can't see Vulcan from here,"

  Yoshi whispered as the threesome stood together on the

  tower. Whatever else he was made to forget, he must

  somehow condition himself to seek out the small red point of

  Epsilon Eridani for all his nights.

  "Only from your Northern Hemisphere,"

  Sorahl replied solemnly, "my friend."

  Had he sensed what emotions brought Yoshi here

  or, being a Vulcan and without such

  emotions as jealousy, did he simply disregard

  them in others? No one spoke, no one dared look

  anywhere but at the stars. Yoshi wrapped one long arm

  around Tatya.

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  She rested her head on his shoulder, recognising

  as if from long ago the familiar smell of him of

  sea breeze and sandalwood and something

  uniquely Yoshi, Earth things, human things and

  sighed, content.

  Yoshi's other hand went instinctively to push his

  lank hair out of his eyes, but stopped. Instead he

  tossed his head back and reached out to clasp the

  Vulcan's shoulder, gesture of

  fraternity in spite of difference.

  Sorahl accepted the gesture, and with it the un-

  shielded turmoil of a human mind. This would be the

  legacy of any Vulcan who dared call human

  friend. Perhaps it was not yet time. But he would devote

  whatever remained of his life to making it time.

  A metal-cold figure with infrared eyes

  picked out the three figures standing as one at the

  window of the conning tower, targets so easy even he

  was tempted. His weapon shifted and rose in his hands

  as if of its own volition; he sighted off the

  central figure and pondered whether it would be better

  to take him first, then sweep side to side to pick

  off the other two, or to start at either side and sweep

  straight across. Either way it was a matter of

  seconds. All three would be his.

  "Racher?" A voice behind him. "There's

  someone there. On the bridge."

  Racher lowered his weapon reluctantly.

  "Not yet." His breath made no vapor on the

  deadly cold air. "Not yet."

  "Game!" Jim Kirk called a second time,

  raising his hands at Melody and shrugging as if

  to say, What did you expect?

  "Three out of five!" Melody barked,

  though her sides were heaving and the sweat stung her eyes

  even under the sweatband.

  T'Lera seemed to weigh the dangers, if not the

  gratuitous violence, of trampling so fragile a

  human ego for the third time. Yet there was no question of

  holding

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  back. She had accepted the challenge; she would do

  what she must.

  "I said three out of five, goddammit!"

  Melody yelled across her hesitation, swinging wooden

  arms to keep them limber, bouncing on an ankle that

  hadn't hurt like this since Goddard.

  T'Lera gathered herself, her bare toes gripping

  the service line. "As you wish, Commander."

  "It's all over for you come morning!" Melody

  taunted her across the net as they played. "I hope

  you realise that!"

  "Indeed," was all T'Lera said.

  "I don't understand you people," Melody huffed,

  playing for her pride if not her planet. "Do not

  understand you at all! You could have grabbed Yoshi and

  Taty tilde and held us off. You could grab me

  and the cream puff

  here right now single-handed you're that strong. Take

  over the ship tilde old off the whole goddamn

  planet! What I don't understand is why you

  don't!"

  Jim Kirk had not cut across her monologue

  to tally T'Lera's points; it was about to be over and

  all he had done was witness. T'Lera's final

  return was a butterfly, a dove, whose wings

  lightly brushed the high ceiling of the gymnasium before

  floating slow-motion down with a precision beyond any

  human's saving. Jim Kirk would wonder forever after

  if T'Lera had intended it to be so flamboyantly

  poetic. As for him, he was speechless.

  "Must might always make right, Commander?" T'Lera

  wondered, becoming very still as the ball rolled

  unmolested across the floor. "Are there not sometimes

  greater considerations?"

  was 'Greater considerations"!" Melody snorted,

  at the net. There was no attempt to concede the match,

  no consideration of the traditional handshake. Shake

  hands with a Vulcan?

  Impossible! "Loeic and lofty ideals! You're

  all so noble, aren't you? You know, I think you could

  almost change my mind if you'd just 339

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  once admit to being a little less than perfect.

  if you'd show a little weakness, a little selfishness a little

  concern for your son if nothing else.

  "I have a daughter and a son not more than a year or

  two either side of your son's age," Melody

  finished. She was still out of breath, though no
t from tennis.

  "If I were in your place, I'd be on my knees

  begging for them!"

  It would require years under the tutelage of

  another Vulcan to teach Jim Kirk the constant

  tension in the Vulcan soul between the pull of diversity

  and the preservation of what it means to be a Vulcan.

  All he could think of now was that T'Lera had met

  her Vulcanian Expedition, and depending upon whether

  her response was seen as logic or compromise .

  . .

  "Would such a display gratify you,

  Commander?" There was Vulcan logic and a

  thousand years of peace in her voice, Vulcan

  pride and forty thousand prior years of ferocity in

  her eyes. "Is it my humility you require, or

  my humiliation?"

  Before Melody Sawyer could find words, before Jim

  Kirk could move, T'Lera of Vulcan, still somehow

  unridiculous in her borrowed tennis

  clothes, was on her knees at Melody's feet.

  What she might have said no one would ever know; the

  ship's loudspeaker shattered the silence before she could

  speak.

  "Red Alert! Red Alert!" it boomed throughout the

  huge empty ship in Jason Nyere's command

  voice. "Red Alert! First officer to the bridge!"

  Sawyer took a split second to throw down her

  racquet and grab a sweater. Jim Kirk was already

  running.

  Sorahl had heard the snowmobile first.

  Bundled in a heavy parka gift of the departed

  pacifist contingent, who had provided clothing for him

  and his mother, neglecting only tennis whites he'd

  opened the hatch to breathe the night air, marveling at

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  a cold so different from that of his world's desert

  nights. If he had been listening then, he might have

  sensed the shifting intensity of Racher's shadow

  troops, who, seeing him clearly

  silhouetted against the stars, could barely contain

  themselves. But Tatya had been on her way up to join

  him, and the sound of her footsteps

  distracted him until

  "What is it?" she asked, seeing his faraway

  look.

  "I hear something. An engine, perhaps."

  Tatya listened, shook her head in amazement.

  "Those ears! I don't hear anything!"

  But they remained very still, and after a moment she heard

  it too. So did Racher.

  "Shoot before my order," he whispered fiercely,

  to make certain everyone heard him, "and you are dead

  before the one you shoot at."

  He still somehow expected Easter's band to turn up