The Face of the Unknown

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Uhura could not dispute her insights, but she still glanced back and forth between Nisu and Spock. Could he handle this woman without a chaperone? “If you think that would be all right, Commander?”

  Nisu turned to Spock as well . . . and she did not look away. Neither did he. After several moments, he turned back to Uhura. “Yes, Lieutenant, thank you. You may return to the Enterprise. I shall follow presently.”

  Uhura held his gaze for a moment, wishing it could do as much good for her as for a Kisaja. “All right, sir,” she finally said. “Thank you.” You’re a big boy. And it’s none of my business . . .

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Spock and Nisu stood atop a rocky crag overlooking a broad, flat expanse of desert terrain. Overhead, a thunderstorm bigger than the Earth poured torrents of rain upon the dome, surrounding them with a waterfall sky. But here inside Altecla, it was scorching hot and the air stole the moisture from their skin.

  The loose white attire Nisu had donned for their visit to Kisaja was suitable for this occasion as well, but Spock was in full uniform and experienced no discomfort. Altecla’s climate was much like the one in which his species had evolved. If anything, these were the most agreeable conditions he had experienced in months.

  The view down below was as extraordinary in its own way as that above. Approximately one hundred meters away, a creature like a cross between a sidewinder snake and a giant millipede was undulating across the hard ground at some speed, twisting its body so that only a few of its feet touched the burning surface at any moment. Through the binocular sensor device Nisu had provided, Spock could see that its feet were tapered to bifurcated points to minimize the contact area. What the creature fled from was even more remarkable. It looked like a cross between a lizard, a peacock, and a cross-country skier. Its hind limbs ended in elongated feet that were, to put it bluntly, organic roller blades. It spread its broad, feathery tail membranes to form a sail, adjusting its tack to change course as the wind blew it forward, and it used a pair of forelimbs that functioned like ski poles for maneuvering and extra speed. As it drew near the sidewinder, it used one of the forelimbs to stab at it, trying to pin it to the ground, but the sidewinder dodged and veered sideways, forcing the predator to change course, furl its sail, and rely on its forelimbs to push it forward. Even without the wind, it was able to get up considerable speed.

  “Fascinating,” Spock said. “Animals with rotary anatomical features are virtually unknown in nature, due to the difficulty of the neural and circulatory connections.”

  “The bearings in the sailskater’s feet,” Nisu explained, “are accretions of a chitinous material that grow into a spherical form.”

  “Indeed,” Spock said. “I am aware of similar such formations, such as the pearls secreted by Terran oysters to encase irritants.”

  The Kisaja continued. “They’re held in place within the foot hollows in which they grow; they’re slightly too large to fit through the opening.”

  “Are they lubricated?” Spock asked. “The expenditure of moisture in this environment would be untenable, I would think.”

  “The material forming the bearings and the groove surface is extremely low in friction.”

  “How do the creatures locomote in the absence of flat or stable surfaces?”

  “There are muscles that can compress to lock the bearings in place, allowing them to walk normally.”

  The wind had shifted, enabling the sailskater to overtake the sidewinder at last. Spock observed the violent scene with clinical detachment. “Indeed a remarkable find,” he told Nisu. “But why did you choose this biome to bring us to?”

  “You asked to visit a Linnik warren.”

  He turned to her. “I observed our course. We bypassed a number of other modules to reach this one. Statistically, it seems likely that there would have been a warren nearer to Kisaja than this.”

  She faced him without equivocation. “I wanted to bring you here, Spock.”

  “For what reason?”

  “You are from a desert world, are you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you might . . . appreciate the chance to visit a place that could feel like your home. I know that . . . you find a sense of belonging elusive. If you were—that is, if circumstances did not allow the Enterprise to leave anytime soon, then . . .”

  The first officer spoke uneasily. “Your people’s generosity is commendable, Nisu. Yet you need make no special ­effort on my behalf. The idea of ‘belonging’ is a sentimental one. It is not the Vulcan way to concern ourselves with such things.”

  Her gaze did not waver from his. “Uhura and I spoke of the limits on what words can convey. I know there is far more going on inside you than you are willing to speak of, Spock. I know you feel adrift. You sense no viable future path, and you are lost. As lost as any of the peoples who have come to Cherela seeking refuge.”

  He turned away. “Your compassion does you merit, Nisu. But my need is not so profound as that. I am merely experiencing a degree of uncertainty as to my long-term career prospects. The question of my ultimate goals in serving Starfleet has recently been raised, and I have found the answer elusive. It is a matter that requires further contemplation—that is all.”

  Her hand rested on his shoulder. With most others, he would have been reluctant to allow that, but for Nisu it was a less intimate gesture than the gaze they had already shared several times. He could not deny that there was an affinity between them, however hesitant he had been to acknowledge it. “Those words ring false against what I feel from within you. Perhaps you do not realize what is truly behind your sense of rootlessness. If you would allow me to look deeper . . .” He stepped away from her touch. “Please, Spock. It is my life’s work to protect . . . to help those who need me. I feel a need in you.”

  “I am a Vulcan. My only need is logic.”

  “No, Spock. That is your aspiration. And to achieve it, you need to face and overcome the emotions that hold you back from it. I only offer to help you understand what it is you need to face.”

  He turned to her again, though she kept her eyes lowered. “You offer far more than that, Nisu,” he told her bluntly.

  “I would be glad to give far more than that,” she acknowledged. “But I offer no more than you are willing to accept.”

  Spock considered it. Certainly being here, in this desert so much like home, had brought his uncertainties about his place in the universe closer to the forefront of his mind. While he was confident that he could control them with meditation, surely it was logical to avail himself of the assistance of another telepath—one who would not judge him as a Vulcan would.

  Rather than speaking, he touched his fingers to Nisu’s chin, tilting her face upward. Accepting the invitation, she raised her deep blue eyes to meet his.

  Spock did not perceive how much time passed before his clarity returned, but once it did, his face and Nisu’s were much closer than they had been before. The fabric of her light robes just barely brushed against the xenylon weave of his uniform tunic as they breathed in sync. “There,” Nisu said. “Koon-ut-kal-if-fee. A betrayal. A broken bond.”

  He stepped back, startled. It was not his proximity to Nisu that had troubled him, but rather the other connection that it—and her words—had just reminded him of. “T’Pring,” he said at length. “She was to be my wife—a marriage arranged from childhood. She . . . decided that my Starfleet career made me an unsuitable choice.”

  “And she compelled you to do something you hated in order to break that bond. Something that would have destroyed you.”

  “She evoked an ancient combat ritual that is rarely undertaken in these civilized times. She appointed Captain Kirk as the adversary I had to kill. For a brief period, I believed I had succeeded.”

  “At which point you wanted nothing to do with that . . . woman.” Nisu was quietly furious
. But Spock understood the cause of it, through the memories she had shared in exchange for his—memories of her own deep grief at being orphaned as a child, a grief that had compelled her to become a protector in hopes of sparing others from such sorrow. The death of others was something she took personally.

  “I am not vindictive toward T’Pring, Nisu. While her methods were deplorable, her reasons were understandable. As long as I am in Starfleet, I am an unsuitable bondmate for a Vulcan woman.”

  Nisu moved closer. “Yet you were bonded for most of your life. You grew up assuming that, in time, you would be wed. That you would have a family, a legacy among your people. I can tell that this is something the Vulcans prize highly.”

  “Yes,” Spock conceded. “Granted, my own experiences with family have been . . . turbulent. Divisive. Yet I had allowed myself to anticipate that, given the opportunity to raise children of my own one day, I might be able to avoid the mistakes made by my own father.”

  The Kisaja smiled. “Don’t we all?”

  “It was never a matter I considered at any length,” he protested. “My focus for the past two decades has been on my career as a scientist and a Starfleet officer.”

  “Yet the quiet certainty of the marriage bond was always there for you, so solid that you didn’t need to think of it. Now, though, it is gone . . . both the mental connection itself and your image of who T’Pring would turn out to be. And so you are alone, adrift. You wonder if you will ever find a bond to replace the one you lost. It may not be in the forefront of your thoughts, Spock, but it is there. An emptiness, a doubt in the back of your mind. A fear that you will never be able to leave the kind of legacy that is so important to your people.”

  Spock wanted to protest that fear was illogical. But it would be just as illogical to deny the validity of Nisu’s insights. She was no Leonard McCoy, seeing what he imagined he saw as filtered through the human prejudices he stubbornly cultivated. Spock had allowed her into his thoughts, and this was what she had found.

  As he considered her words, he realized that they could explain much. On several occasions within the past year, Spock had allowed himself to be drawn to a woman, perhaps more so than was wise or rational under the circumstances. With the Romulan commander Charvanek, it had been understandable that he would be drawn to a member of an offshoot culture of the Vulcans. With the Sarpeidon exile Zarabeth, his emotional control had been somehow compromised as a consequence of time travel. Yet how to explain his rather embarrassing flirtation with Droxine of Stratos, who had offered little of interest beyond her considerable aesthetic appeal? His reaction to her had been an anomaly he had struggled to reconcile for months now. Nisu’s hypothesis finally provided a logical explanation. A Vulcan male whose betrothal bond was severed as abruptly as his own had been might experience an instinctual urge to replace it. This urge could provoke a heightened interest in eligible members of his preferred sex, particularly if it went ­unrecognized.

  But none of those women had been suitable candidates for bonding, whether due to biology or to circumstance. Nisu was another matter. She was not Vulcan, but her telepathy might well make her compatible. She did not subscribe to the Vulcan way of life, but neither did his own mother. If marrying outside his species had worked for Sarek, then possibly . . .

  Spock shook himself and stepped away from Nisu. “You may well be right,” he told her in a rough voice. “The instinctive need to seek another bondmate may indeed be influencing my behavior. Yet if that is the case, it is all the more reason why I—why we must resist what is happening here. It would be unwise to give in to it recklessly, without due consideration.”

  She masked her regret well. “Of course. That is only reasonable. Now that we both know where things stand, we can take our time deciding what comes next.”

  “Moreover,” he reminded her, “it remains uncertain how long the Enterprise will be on Cherela. Once the Dassik siege is resolved, we will need to resume our ­mission.”

  This time, Nisu turned away, keeping her gaze from his. “Yes,” she said, her tone noncommittal. “Yes, the future does remain uncertain.” She turned back to him, only briefly catching his gaze. “But it is good that you know . . . that for as long as you are here, Spock, I will be here as well.”

  * * *

  Pavel Chekov tried not to scream as he fell from a ledge kilometers above the ground.

  He did this by codifying all the reasons he had for not screaming. One: He wasn’t falling very fast. The low gravity in this world module saw to that. But since he was falling, he was by definition in free fall, or at least nearly so due to air resistance, and thus it felt the same as a plummet under higher gravity. Since the air here was fairly dense, the slower wind against his face still felt strong.

  Two: In case of emergency, his wingsuit’s antigravs would stop his fall.

  Three: His wingsuit had wings. They weren’t very large, but they didn’t have to be in this gravity and atmosphere. All he needed to do was get them into the right orientation and he would be fine.

  Four: He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of Lieutenant Sulu.

  The helmsman was, in fact, yelling, but his were shouts of enthusiasm. He’d started out falling freely too, not because he didn’t know how to avoid it, but because he wanted to. His assurances that this would be fun—outright lies, Chekov now concluded—were the only reason the young ensign was in this situation in the first place. The Enterprise was trapped here for who knew how long, the Dassik were still lying in wait for them, and they were grossly outmatched if the Web denizens turned out to have ulterior motives; but Sulu was acting as if he were on shore leave, and somehow he’d managed to get Chekov roped into it too. Now Hikaru had spread his wings, effortlessly achieving the right configuration of this alien getup the first time out, and was soaring like a bird while Chekov still struggled to break his own fall.

  “Just relax!” Sulu called over the helmet comm. “Spread your arms and legs and let the wind do the rest!”

  Doing the former was out of the question, but Pavel could at least try the latter. He tumbled at first, but with his limbs spread-eagled, the membranes of the wingsuit—two on his sides, extending from the arms on short struts, and one between his legs—soon caught the wind and guided him into the correct position. He was gliding, and it actually felt pretty good—first from sheer relief, then from the realization of what it was he was doing. He tried flapping the wings to get some lift, but it seemed to make him sink again.

  “That won’t work!” Sulu called. “You’re just spilling wind when the wings are slanted. You need to use your hands and feet to adjust the membranes, like the flaps of an aircraft. Maneuver until you hit an updraft.”

  Sulu soared down to parallel Chekov’s glide path and showed him how to do it. Soon Chekov had enough control that he could follow Sulu to where the most likely updrafts were, given the architecture of this world module. It was a complicated and beautiful megastructure, which Chekov was able to admire now that he didn’t need to focus so much on not falling. The winged Fiilestii had built their module’s interior in a way that reflected their aspirations more than their origins. The whole place was open sky with vast towers spearing upward through it for kilometers. Each tower was shaped like a narrow conical shaft piercing the centers of multiple horizontal disks. But each disk was hundreds of meters in radius and dozens thick, getting larger as they descended. The Fiilestii’s homes, workplaces, and other buildings were within or atop the disks, each of which was surfaced with vegetation from the Fiilestii’s long-lost homeworld. While most of the Web’s world modules were like gigantic, flat stretches of planetary terrain that spread to the limits of vision, this was like a collection of miniature ones stored on giant spindles.

  In the air between the towers, hundreds of life-forms soared from disk to disk, some commuting, others strictly having fun. The Fiilestii population was comparatively small; as avian
predators, they needed large territories and couldn’t abide having too many of themselves in one place. They were almost outnumbered by the Linnik, Tessegri, and other tourists who came here from their own world modules—and now the Enterprise. Not tourists, Chekov reminded himself. Explorers. The captain ordered us to explore the Web and its customs. Just my luck I got assigned to the module where flying is the custom.

  The shape of the towers made the updrafts ­complicated, but Chekov did his best to follow Sulu’s lead. As usual, the helmsman steered him true. Pavel’s initial fear had mostly given way to exhilaration at being in flight, and the view was truly spectacular. He was glad Sulu had brought him here. Over the two years and change since Chekov had been promoted to bridge duty, the helmsman had done his best to broaden the young Russian’s horizons beyond his work. Sulu was so energetic and driven, with so many interests, that Chekov sometimes found it intimidating, but generally he was grateful to Sulu for pushing him to try new things. (All except food. He didn’t share the lieutenant’s interest in exotic cuisine, but Sulu kept up his urging.)

  Chekov overcorrected a turn and found himself flailing and sinking for a few moments before he caught himself. “You’re still too tense, Pavel!” Sulu called from some distance above him. “I brought you here to relax. You’ve been on edge for months, ever since your old girlfriend came aboard.”

  “I have not!” he said. “Well . . . I have been thinking about Irina lately. Whether I have become too fixated on work to have room for other things. Whether it might be possible—” He broke off. “No. I am dreaming! It would never work!”