Living Memory

by Christopher L. Bennett

  When she turned back, she saw tears glistening in Blake’s bright eyes. Spock and Scott both looked somber and respectful, though there was deeper emotion smoldering beneath Scott’s avuncular features.

  “Which creates a problem for us now,” Uhura said. “Because whatever it was I did on those shore leaves—whatever I might have done that triggered or attracted these vacuum flares—I have no way of remembering or reconstructing it. Whatever it was, I forgot about it after Nomad and haven’t done it since. Which must be why the earliest event was at Argelius. That was the last leave I took before Maluria.”

  Spock furrowed his brow. “If we presume you engaged in a consistent, repeated activity that connects in some way to the flares, then it follows that you were pursuing some project over a considerable span of time—at least two point four standard years. In that time, you must have spoken to someone about it.”

  “But if I’d told any of my crewmates, Captain Spock, they surely would have reminded me long ago. For some reason, I kept it secret for all that time.” She kneaded her hands. “Which, admittedly, does not look good for me. I can’t blame Starfleet Security for wanting to question me. I just wish I had something to tell them.”

  “Perhaps,” Spock said, rising, “we will be able to formulate a hypothesis by the time we return to Earth. For now, Captain Blake, I hereby request permission to transfer Commander Uhura to the Enterprise.”

  Blake shrugged. “It’s Starfleet Security’s orders, Captain Spock. Of course I have to grant your request.”

  Scott rose as well. “Captain… Captains… request permission to accompany Uhura to Earth.”

  Uhura turned to him in surprise. “Scotty, that’s not necessary. You have nothing to do with this.”

  “Yes,” Blake said, “and it’s bad enough I have to give up my science officer without losing my chief engineer too.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain, but…” Scott turned to Uhura. “Lass… I never knew you carried so much pain—so much loss from what that metal monstrosity did to you. You bounced back from it so well. You seemed so strong, so content.”

  She gave him a wistful smile. “I was—so long as I focused on the present, instead of what I’d lost.”

  “Still, I should’ve realized. If I’d paid more attention… I mean, we were the only two survivors of Nomad. I thought we were both the lucky ones—we got to be put back together, not like the Malurians or the four good security men it vaporized without a thought. But I was wrong. I got back everything I lost, but you… Oh, lass, I just didn’t think about it. I was too caught up in my own nightmares about that dark day, my own stubborn pride pretending I was fine.”

  She clasped his hand again. “I can’t blame you for trying to put it behind you, Scotty. I did the same.”

  “Aye, but now those times have come back to haunt us. Not Nomad itself, thank heaven, but some secret it took from you. I want to be there to help you figure all this out, lass—like I should’ve been back then.”

  “Oh, all right,” Blake said after a moment, wiping away more tears. “Just go already, both of you. It’s not good for a crew to see their captain get all blubbery.”

  Despite her words, she gave each commander a warm hug before letting them go. “Good luck, my friends. I really hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  I do too, Uhura thought. But first we have to figure out what that is.

  Chapter Nine

  Starfleet Security Headquarters

  San Francisco

  “So you admit this doesn’t look good for you, Commander.”

  Admiral Cartwright paced around the table in the sparse, windowless interview room. It was an intimidation tactic, but one that Uhura did not let herself be cowed by. Over her years as a starship communications officer, she’d been shouted at, browbeaten, and threatened by admirals, ambassadors, commissioners, warship commanders, planetary leaders, revolutionaries, pirate queens, and superbeings that defied classification. Cartwright had nothing to throw at her that she hadn’t seen before. Still, she drew some comfort from Captain Spock’s presence as he stood nearby, a pillar of stillness and serenity to counter the admiral’s storm-cloud intensity and thundering voice.

  “I only acknowledge the truth, Admiral. And the truth is that I have no answers for you.”

  “But don’t you see how that’s suspicious in itself?” Cartwright took a breath and went on more reasonably. “Look. I don’t question the reality of your memory loss. Your medical records provide ample confirmation. What’s strange is the lack of any other evidence of your activities on those planets.”

  “We may make certain deductions, Admiral,” Spock interposed. “The echoes of the commander’s voice patterns in the vacuum fluctuations imply that she was undertaking some form of communications experiment. Perhaps she was studying a natural subspace phenomenon that reflected the vocal and musical patterns she transmitted.”

  “Or maybe,” Cartwright countered, “she was in communication with some intelligence that’s beaming her singing back as a reply.”

  “That cannot be ruled out, no. Neither can it be supported.”

  “That’s the problem, Captain. A Starfleet communications officer conducting communications research on Federation worlds—why not do it in Starfleet facilities? There’s nothing in her records suggesting she’s ever conducted any research on vacuum fluctuations, micro-wormholes, quantum communication, or anything of the sort. Not using any Starfleet or official Federation resources, at least.”

  Cartwright turned back to Uhura. “Which means that whatever you were doing, Commander, it was on your own personal time, and you chose to conduct it at private, civilian research facilities.”

  “Which is within my rights, Admiral,” she said. “Being in Starfleet doesn’t prohibit having a life outside it.”

  The admiral leaned over her. “But you can’t remember what that life was. Who were you back then, Nyota Uhura? Do you even know? Do you know what you believed? What you stood for?”

  “I knew her at the time, Admiral,” Spock pointed out. “I never found her to be less than an exemplary officer.”

  “But what about off duty? What about that life beyond Starfleet she just talked about? Did she ever reveal anything about that to you?”

  “I respected her privacy. While she was outgoing and friendly toward her crewmates, she possessed a reserve regarding her personal life that, as a Vulcan, I understood and respected. She spoke freely of her family, evincing great pride in their accomplishments, but on the subject of her own off-duty activities, she was considerably more private. While she occasionally initiated interactions with me in a manner that my human colleagues perceived as flirtatious, I never took them to be seriously intended. After all, I was her superior officer.”

  Uhura blushed a bit. She had learned from the Enterprise crew about the teasing songs she’d infamously regaled Spock with in the rec room in those early years, and she preferred to think they had been the mere amusements that Spock had taken them to be. But how could she ever really know? How different a person had she been before Nomad?

  “In any case,” Spock went on, “she never gave me any reason to question her loyalties to the Federation or her commitment to Starfleet’s principles. I would assess the probability of her voluntary participation in anything harmful to innocent lives as negligible.”

  “People can hide their true selves, Captain. Put on a façade for their crewmates to cover their true goals.”

  “Theoretically. However, Admiral, if you are proposing that Commander Uhura’s younger self was complicit in some act of sabotage against the Federation, I would question why she would do so in a way that would take twelve to fourteen years to come to fruition.”

  Cartwright crossed his arms. “I’ve encountered spies and sleeper agents playing longer games than that.”

  Spock raised a brow. “Logically, any stratagem put into effect so far in advance would be meticulously planned and directed. It is inconsistent with the
haphazard nature of the vacuum flares.” He continued with what Uhura recognized as a hint of wry amusement. “Not to mention that any such devious spy or saboteur would surely take care not to encode her own voice in the disruptions.”

  The admiral hesitated, clearly unable to answer that. Uhura took the opportunity. “Permission to speak freely, Admiral?”

  “That’s what you’re here for, Commander.”

  “Then with respect, sir, may we cut to the chase? I can hear in your voice that you don’t actually believe I was some kind of saboteur or sleeper agent. You’re flailing for answers like the rest of us. You fall back on interrogation tactics like these because it’s what you know.”

  Not letting his glower affect her, she gestured at her longtime shipmate. “But Captain Spock here has been able to give you more answers about my activities and personality pre-Nomad than I have. If we want answers about my past, I’m clearly the wrong person to interview.”

  Uhura hesitated to follow that thought where it led. But Spock followed it through to its inevitable conclusion. “Logically, Admiral, we should consult with Ms. Uhura’s former commanding officers and shipmates. Whatever it was she kept from the crew of the Enterprise, perhaps she was less inclined to conceal it from previous crewmates, or less successful at doing so.”

  There it was. The answer was obvious, but it was one she’d resisted for a dozen years now. She had always been too afraid of what she might find—or what pain she might cause.

  * * *

  While speaking to Uhura’s former colleagues may have been the next logical step, the results proved that a logical process was only as good as the data fed into it. The interviews proved informative for Uhura, but not in the way Admiral Cartwright would have hoped.

  “No, Captain Spock, I don’t remember Uhura doing any personal research projects off-ship,” said Commander Vheman, a bronze-haired Arbazan woman who had been Uhura’s bunkmate on the U.S.S. Ahriman, the Saladin-class scout that had been her first posting out of Starfleet Academy. On the viewer in the Starfleet Security communications room, Vheman chewed thoughtfully on one tip of her writing stylus. The mannerism seemed vaguely familiar to Uhura, though she couldn’t be sure she didn’t just want to find it familiar. “Honestly, I don’t see how she would’ve had the time. She was very dedicated to learning the ropes, as humans call it. Mastering her responsibilities, the ship’s equipment and protocols, cross-training in science and navigation.” The commander shifted her gaze to Uhura and smiled. “Your enthusiasm was stimulating, but it could be exhausting trying to keep up with you.”

  “Was I that buried in my work?”

  “Oh, no, Nyota. You and your keen memory—you were such a swift learner that you needed little time to study, so you were able to make plenty of time for me and our other friends. We were pretty inseparable that year on the Ahriman.

  “That’s why I can’t see you having any chance to do any major research away from the ship. We generally spent our leave time together as a group—you, me, Tsukasa Komaki, and… oh, that Orion girl, what was her name?” Uhura could only shrug. “And we were pretty frank with each other about anything we did on our own, if you know what I mean.

  “Oh, you weren’t the type to keep secrets. You loved to talk about your family back home, your Academy friends… the only thing I ever knew you to be reticent about was your given name.”

  “My name?”

  Vheman chuckled. “You didn’t like to share it with people until they earned your trust. Apparently you were afraid of being teased because it meant ‘star’ and you were in Starfleet. Also it annoyed you when people mispronounced it.” The Arbazan shook her head. “I can’t believe you of all people lost your memory. I guess that’s why we fell out of touch, huh?”

  Uhura winced. “I’m sorry. It was—”

  “Don’t worry about it. People drift apart, even without such a good excuse.”

  Uhura’s crewmates aboard her second starship posting, the Azrael, gave much the same answers. Yongnian Shen, the retired commodore who had been Uhura’s commander during her stint in Starbase 32’s communications center, could offer little more despite beaming in personally from Shanghai for his interview. “No, Commander. While you did conduct various research projects under my command, they pertained more to practical matters like improving subspace signal range and clarity, or straightforward probing for subspace communications from uncontacted civilizations beyond known space. All properly logged and on the books, and too routine to warrant pursuing them privately as you’ve described.”

  The thin, wizened retiree paused to reflect, and Uhura wondered what he had been like as a commanding officer. When she had mentioned Shen in her personal logs, it had been with an air of disapproval and frustration, but as usual, she had recorded little detail, presuming her keen memory would fill in the blanks. Had she simply been dissatisfied at not being assigned more challenging and varied work, or had there been some more personal reason for her low opinion of the commodore?

  “As far as personal leave goes,” Shen went on, “Starbase 32 is parsecs away from any inhabited planet. There wasn’t really anywhere to go beyond the station’s own recreational facilities, or those of visiting ships.

  “When you took leave, Commander, you generally returned home to Earth. It was a fairly long trip, but you must have been very close to your family, from the way you spoke about them when you returned.” He smiled. “That must have been a blessing for you, to have your loved ones to fall back on after such a trauma. I would have found myself far more alone. But then, I had fewer memories I would have regretted losing.”

  Uhura was stunned and embarrassed by his words. She regretted having any doubts about his worth as a person.

  Something had evidently changed by the time Uhura transferred to the U.S.S. Potemkin “Yes, I do recall you going off on your own during several shore leaves,” said Commander Vintnef nd’Elogat, a bulbous-browed, slender-faced Arkenite who had been Uhura’s department head during her time as junior communications officer aboard that ship. “You did not discuss your activities, but I don’t believe they were work-related. On one occasion, I briefly glimpsed you meeting up with a human male, evidently a civilian, with whom you seemed quite familiar. I believe he would have been deemed attractive by human standards.”

  Uhura was surprised. Her personal logs and interviews with other crewmates had referenced various shipboard romances and the occasional shore leave fling, but gave no hint of an ongoing affair with a civilian. “Did I ever mention anything about him? Can you describe him?”

  Commander nd’Elogat shrugged. “Moderately taller than you, not significantly older, paler in complexion, though comparable in hair coloration. I recall no other distinctive features. I only glimpsed him briefly.”

  Uhura traded a dissatisfied look with Spock. The commander’s description would fit a high percentage of adult human males. This was compounded when nd’Elogat added, “Indeed, I can’t be entirely sure he was human. Your physiognomy is so… generic as humanoids go. No offense.”

  No one else they could reach from Uhura’s tenure on the Potemkin could add anything further, and that was her final posting before the Enterprise. “Whatever I was doing,” Uhura told Spock and Admiral Cartwright subsequently, “it apparently began by the time I boarded the Potemkin. If that’s true, then this might all fizzle out once the sequence reaches that point.”

  “You still took a fair number of leaves in the interim,” Cartwright countered. “With these flare outbursts getting bigger and lasting longer, the odds of serious loss of life are getting greater. We can’t just sit back and wait for them to die out.”

  “Nor can we conclusively state that your actions began at the time,” Spock said. “We can only say that is the earliest instance we have been able to track down through interviews with your Starfleet colleagues. There were occasions, during your starbase assignment and in between your early starship tours, when you spent significant amounts of time on Earth
. Your activities could have begun there. Indeed, they could have been ongoing for a number of years earlier than we have been able to trace.”

  Cartwright grimaced. “Which means that we could be heading for a series of repeated vacuum surges right here in the Sol system. This has to be stopped before that happens!”

  Spock raised a scathing brow. “That is axiomatic, Admiral. It would be more useful to discuss how that might be achieved.” Ignoring the admiral’s glower, Spock turned to Uhura. “If the next step of our investigation points toward Earth, then I recommend you contact your family and personal friends, Commander. To all accounts, you were quite close to your family before your memory loss. If anyone knew of any activities you chose not to discuss with Starfleet, it would probably be they.”

  Uhura had trouble meeting his calm, expectant gaze. What he asked was not as easy as he made it sound.

  Sulu residence

  “I do not see the problem,” Pavel Chekov said as he, Uhura, and Sulu took tea together in the living room of Sulu’s dwelling, which they had to themselves while Demora was on a sleepover at a friend’s home. “It’s not as if you’re estranged from your family or anything. Don’t I recall your mother helping out Admiral Kirk with an undercover investigation a few years back? Something about smuggling on Mestiko?”

  Uhura was glad that Chekov had returned to Earth while the Reliant was under repairs, for she could use the support of her closest friends through all this. But for all his good intentions, Pavel could be blunt and clueless at times. “Oh, yes, we’ve been in touch… at a comfortable distance. Everything’s perfectly… cordial between us.”

  Sulu leaned forward in his armchair. “But?”

  She shifted her weight uneasily, even though the couch cushion beneath her was quite comfortable. “But… I barely know them. All I know is what I’ve read about them in my logs, what they’ve said in their letters.”