“That’s all I’m going to get from you, isn’t it? You’re discreet; I like that. All the same, if I weren’t shorthanded, I’d throw you back in the pond. But if you must go back out again this soon, this promises to be a very tame mission. You’re correct; I do need a science officer. And my civilian scientist needs a babysitter. You’ll do just fine in both capacities.”
Before Saavik could ask what she meant, Mironova stood up abruptly, causing her to do the same. The interview was apparently over, and Mironova had made her decision. Based on what precisely, Saavik did not know.
“Right, then. We’re cleared to leave orbit in three days. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant!”
Two
To someone who has known dire need, the sights and smells and sounds of a typical Vulcan market could be all but overwhelming. Saavik was here on the eve of her departure to purchase the ingredients for a special dinner—a peace offering, really. Amanda had been disappointed with her decision to ship out again so soon but knew her well enough not to try to talk her out of it.
The first time she had come here as a child, she had clung to Amanda’s hand and dug in her heels.
“What is it, dear?”
“Staring!” the girl said, jutting her chin at the passersby moving among the stalls in the open-air market, some of whom had indeed glanced at her with passing curiosity, if only because they had not seen her with the ambassador and his human wife before. “Staring-not-staring!” she clarified.
Amanda had smiled and squeezed her hand; she knew exactly what she meant. Vulcans never stared per se, but they had a way of looking while not looking, and she knew it well.
“They’re admiring you,” she said. “Appreciating you and how well you carry yourself.”
The girl had glanced up at her skeptically, her sullen expression deepening.
“Besides,” Amanda continued, “it’s not really you they’re staring at. It’s me.”
The expression on Saavik’s face verged on serious disbelief now. Only the little bits of decorum Spock had managed to teach her—most of them having to do with not blurting out whatever was on her mind the instant it occurred to her—coupled with a deep respect for Amanda kept Saavik from speaking.
“You don’t believe me,” Amanda said lightly, looking off into the distance to keep from smiling. How young this one was, in spite of everything! “That’s understandable. You can’t know what it’s like to be a human on a Vulcan world.”
Saavik considered this. “Don’t know what it’s like … to be human … anywhere,” she decided finally.
Amanda beamed at her. “Then you do understand!”
Even more confused, Saavik studied her feet in their unaccustomed sandals—less uncomfortable than shoes, in any event. Amanda leaned down to whisper to her.
“I’ll tell you a secret. When you feel them not-staring at you, hold your head up. Walk proudly, as if to say, ‘Thank you for appreciating me.’”
“But—”
“Will you at least try?” Amanda asked.
The girl nodded and allowed Amanda to lead her into the crowd.
Having observed this exchange in silence, Sarek had finally trusted himself to speak. “My wife—?”
“You’re about to say you’d have handled this differently?” Amanda asked playfully.
“It would never have occurred to me.”
• • •
As an adult, Saavik experienced only a twinge of memory as she noted the glances of a few passersby who did not cut their eyes away in time. She returned those glances mildly, eyebrows arched only slightly—less than a challenge, more than passive acceptance—then set about buying the ingredients to prepare a special meal for herself and Amanda that, she hoped, would take some of the sting out of her abrupt departure.
Her thoughts were as tranquil as they could be under the circumstances. At 0600 tomorrow, she would report to the Chaffee and, she told herself, the chronic unease she felt (Spock is safe, Sarek is safe, the crew of Enterprise is safe, Earth is safe her constant silent mantra) would dissipate. She would be back in uniform, have a set schedule and specific duties to perform, her life ruled by a chronometer, not by the passage of sun across sky, the very model of Vulcan decorum, accepted as a Starfleet officer and a valued member of the science team. No one would stare-not-stare at her where she was going.
A planet did not have to be a Hellguard or a Genesis to be alien and potentially dangerous. Planets were not safe for her—not now, possibly not ever. On a ship in deep space, she would have the structure she craved.
The market was busy as always. Although it was a simple matter to replicate everything one ate from the essential nutrients without ever leaving one’s residence, and even if one wanted fresh ingredients, one need only order them delivered to one’s doorstep, there was something about choosing them by hand, appreciating the colors, the textures, the aromas, selecting the individual fruits and vegetables and spices, seeing the various grains and tubers weighed out and saying, “No, not that one, but this one, and three of those, rather than two, and a pinch more of this and less of that …”
And thus was she occupied, her mind in fact almost tranquil, when he spoke to her.
Would I have known you? he wondered. If they had not told me where to find you, would I have recognized you after all this time?
Yes, he thought, the eyes. I’d have known you by the fire in the deep dark pools of your eyes, no matter how much the rest of you has altered. Can I accomplish what I have been sent to do? Have I any choice?
She did not recognize him at first. The context was wrong, for one thing. For another, he did something no Vulcan would do—called to her by name.
“Saavik? It is you. I dared not hope—!”
She spun around before she remembered where she was. To cover her indiscretion, she allowed two yonsavas to tumble from her market basket, using the excuse of retrieving them from the cobbles to disguise the abruptness of her movement.
At least, she managed to retrieve one of them. The second rolled to his feet, and he stooped to pick it up and present it to her. Covering his own indiscretion as well?
His hair, she remembered, was curly like hers, another aspect of her appearance that caused Vulcans to stare-not-stare. On Hellguard he had worn it tied back with a thong and halfway down his back; now it was cropped close and combed over his brow in the Vulcan fashion. His pale eyes with their thick fringe of lashes were the same, as were the two crushed fingertips on his left hand. Without those clues, would she have seen the hollow-cheeked, gangling boy within the handsome confident adult who had spoken her name?
“Tolek,” she said, finding her voice as the fingertips of his good hand brushed hers when he handed her the bruised fruit and she returned it to the basket. “I had not thought to see you again.”
“Nor I you.” His voice, which the last time they had spoken had been reedy with a starving boy’s arrested adolescence, had grown deeper with adulthood, pleasant to the ear. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
The truth of Hellguard was that the Romulans had abandoned their eugenics experiment gone awry and left its outcome to fend for themselves on that barren and inhospitable world. The myth that grew around that truth was that a horde of feral children had somehow survived from toddlerhood through intertribal war and cannibalism until a Vulcan science team rescued them. As with most myths, this one was both oversimplified and grossly exaggerated.
In fact, when the Romulans departed, they left everything behind, including stores of food that the children, ranging in age from perhaps two or three up to the cusp of adolescence, had doled out fairly in the beginning. The eldest took charge, seeing that the youngest were fed first, as they had been trained to do in the communal facility where they’d been warehoused—fed, sheltered, taught the rudiments of language, subjected to a regimentation that governed every waking moment and often spilled over into their dreams.
But as supplies dwindled and it was clear that the adults w
ho had heretofore controlled every aspect of their lives were not coming back, there was hoarding, theft, the formation of loose alliances conspiring to steal back what had been stolen from them, outright brawls in defense of the shrinking stores. These alliances evolved into tribes staking claim to territory and waging guerrilla wars where not a few died. Those who were wounded were often abandoned, and if their bones were picked clean afterward, none could say if it had been by the opportunistic insect life that swarmed out of underground burrows with nightfall (What had they fed on before there were Romulans? Saavik wondered to this day) or by larger, bipedal scavengers.
Why should children be expected to have any more compassion in time of war and famine than adults?
She recalled with painful clarity the first time she encountered the world beyond the walls.
Was it possible to rear children in a completely enclosed environment, without any awareness that there was a world beyond the classrooms, the corridors, the dorms, the refectory and the exercise hall, the domed atrium where a few trees struggled toward the light, the recreation hall where propaganda films were shown nightly, the only form of entertainment permitted? Of course it was.
Preflight civilizations had cloistered segments of their population with varying degrees of success. Children had come of age on space stations and multigeneration ships without ever feeling the sun on their faces, the breeze in their hair. The Sundered who left Vulcan had done this, and theories abounded that the journey had somehow marked the Romulan soul for all time, imbuing the Vulcan passion for freedom with an even greater ferocity.
Some who come of age in enclosed environments choose to extend that lifestyle into adulthood, safe in the familiar. Many in Starfleet were such “lifers,” more comfortable within the confines of a vessel than beneath the open sky. But the majority preferred to plant their feet on real soil and watch the stars pass over their heads, hungry for something embedded at the genetic level that no artificial environment can satisfy.
Perhaps some few have had their hermetically sealed world snatched away from them to find a Hellguard beyond the threshold, but there is no record of such, at least not within the Federation.
In the dorms late at night, there were rumors of a world beyond, the regimented speak-when-spoken-to silence broken by the more rebellious regardless of punishment. Children will be children, in spite of the adults who attempt to dissuade them.
“Must go somewhere, them,” Tolek insisted, meaning the proctors who supervised them, some who disappeared (“on leave,” whatever that meant) for brief periods, others going away and never coming back. The numerals on his uniform (loose-fitting dun-colored unisex jumpsuit, the child’s date of birth, genotype, and optimal breeding matches emblazoned in a string of numerals on the breast pocket, marking each child at all times for the adults’ convenience) specified that he was one year and seventy-three days Saavik’s elder. “There must be other places.”
Saavik, six years old and possessed of the universal omniscience of all children at that age, had rolled her eyes at him.
“Course they do, stupid head!” she’d scolded in the patois they spoke among themselves, no matter how often they were punished for it. “They has their rooms where they lives.”
“Not just rooms, drool-baby. Other places,” Tolek insisted. “Away. Outside.”
“Outside?” Saavik had repeated, too loud. The two were crouched in an air duct between the male and female dorms, one of their secret hiding places, with no guarantee, judging from the scratches on the walls (coded messages from one child or group of children to another), that they were the only ones who frequented it. They listened for a moment to what might have been the scuff of jumpsuit-clad knees crawling toward them but decided it was only the flutter of their hearts. In any event, she lowered her voice. “What means ‘outside’?”
Tolek tapped lightly on the metal floor. “Walls are insides and outsides. Where do proctors go when they go away?”
Saavik thought about it, came up with nothing, scratched one shin, and shrugged. “Sleep, maybe?”
“Sleep!” Tolek shook his head, pitying her youth and innocence. “Can’t sleep forever. There’s outside. Maybe even away-away.”
Saavik looked at him blankly.
“Where does food come from?” he prompted her.
Now she knew he was teasing her. “Machine, dummy. Babies know that!”
“But where does machine come from?” Tolek demanded. “And clothes and shoes and en-ter-tain-ment?” Even as circumscribed as their knowledge base was, the propaganda films struck the brighter ones as nonsense. “En-ter-tain-ment is other places. Where?”
This one Saavik could answer. “Romulus!” she said smugly, though she had no idea where that was or even what it was. Another complex of buildings like the one they lived in? A garden, perhaps, nicer than the atrium? She’d heard the word “planet” but had no context for it. All she knew about this mythic Romulus was that it was where they’d been told, from the time they first learned to speak, that the more fortunate among them might be permitted to visit someday if they were very, very good.
Saavik and Tolek had parted soon after that, crawling back along the ducts to their respective dorms, and she lay awake most of the night listening to the sighs of the other girls sleeping in the long rows of cots, wondering.
She was still wondering two years later when the adults abruptly disappeared.
• • •
At first the children had kept to the regimen, the eldest taking the place of the proctors, overseeing meals and exercise and bedtimes, though they made no attempt to maintain the schoolrooms, and they released the handful of the recalcitrant confined in solitary for crimes real and imagined. Volunteers oversaw the laundry and housekeeping chores and prepared meals, just as they had when they were assigned to by the proctors. But when the food in the refectory ran out, and after a lot of disagreement about whether they should or shouldn’t, some of the bolder ones disabled the locks and broke into the larder.
When the food in the larder ran out, someone remembered the kitchen staff talking about other storage areas on the grounds. It was time to put Tolek’s theory to the test and step Outside.
The first time they did so—Saavik among the youngest in the party, driven by curiosity and perhaps a desire to prove Tolek wrong—a lifetime of skirting the proctors and sneaking about at night held them in good stead. It was night when they ventured beyond the portal they’d been told all their lives was off-limits. Not that other children hadn’t tried it in the past, but when they did alarms went off, and punishment was swift and often permanent. Transgressors were never seen again, and while the youngest comforted themselves with the thought that they were merely in solitary or sent to another dormitory, the elder ones narrowed their eyes and said nothing.
But with the proctors gone, so were the alarms. In recent days there had been power outages—there was no one left who knew how to maintain the generators—and places and things that had heretofore shrieked at anyone who ventured too close without proper authorization now sat silent, vulnerable. A handful of the braver children dared to push open the tall double doors and found starlight.
Desert as far as the eye could see, shifting sand and scrub and the distant cries of things, a few scraggly mountains in the distance, and a coolness in the air that was deceiving. Still, it was all so alien to children who had never before been outdoors that they clung together as a group, Saavik bringing up the rear, and skirted the high walls of the complex where they had lived all their lives, one hand holding on to the wall as if the ground might shift beneath them or swallow them up, until they found the outbuildings where the stores were kept.
That wasn’t so bad! Saavik thought once they were safely back inside, bragging to the less brave about how they’d found “enough food to last forever.”
But even that began to run out eventually. And when the power failed permanently and the atmospheric controls that kept the compound temperate no
longer functioned, the heat of the planet’s twin suns burned their confidence away.
How could light be so hostile? Some of the fairer-skinned children—possessors of rare recessive genes mutated in the milder climes of the homeworlds once the Sundered left Vulcan—literally died of sun exposure. The rest built up a gradual resistance, but one learned to seek shelter as long as there was sunlight and, despite the dangers, to move about only at night.
One learned the hard way which plants were edible, which not, which somewhere in between—fruit or leaves deadly, roots tough but digestible. One learned to trap rodents and small reptiles, and not to turn one’s nose up at eating insects, grubs, worms, anything. Stagnant water might make one’s gut rumble and swell, but it was better than no water at all.
The youngest and the weakest often simply stopped, lay down in the dust, and didn’t get up, their breath growing shallower until it ceased, their matted hair and ragged scraps of clothing the only things that moved in the arid breeze and heat shimmer beneath the unforgiving suns. If there were instances of cannibalism then, none of the survivors ever spoke of it, regardless of the intensity of questioning. Years later, a poem titled “Communion” entered the public consciousness; it spoke of feeding on a dead friend as the ultimate expression of love. Its authorship was never determined, its point of origin obscured, and it was brief enough to suggest it might be pure fantasy, or addressing some other tragedy, but the survivors of Hellguard knew.
When Saavik was of an age to undergo the Vulcan kahs-wan, the ten days in the desert that marked passage into adulthood, she learned to her fury that Spock had made a request she be permitted to forgo the ritual on the Forge, arguing that she had already endured far more in surviving thus far. The requirement was waived. Saavik was outraged and said as much.
“Could have done it!” she shouted, fists clenched, stamping her feet, falling back on the clipped cadences of Hellguard when she was upset. She hadn’t been this angry with Spock since that first year. “Deaf, blind, hobbled, survive better than sissy Vul-cans!”
Star Trek: Unspoken Truth Page 3
