Star Trek: Unspoken Truth

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  “Metana and Lerius,” Tolek said, though he knew Saavik remembered them. Metana had been one of her dorm mates; Lerius had often been paired with her during exercise drills. Tolek pocketed the small device as soon as he’d said the names. “These I know of. There may be more.”

  Again Saavik didn’t know what to ask first. How had Tolek come by this information? How did she know, in light of her recent experience with Kobayashi Maru scenarios real and imagined, that this wasn’t some sort of trap?

  “Would you like to know the official cause of death?” Tolek asked into her silence.

  Saavik sipped her tea, holding tight rein on her thoughts. “Doubtless you will tell me.”

  Tolek did not so much as lean toward her, yet his voice and manner became somehow more intimate, more urgent. They were back in the air ducts again, in danger if they were caught.

  “A committee of healers examined the bodies and concluded that all died of ‘unknown cause or causes, believed to be natural barring evidence to the contrary,’” he said carefully. “The one report I was able to read—Lerius’s—indicated an absence of external force or internal toxicity. There were no marks on the body, and the most detailed molecular scans revealed no poisons, no foreign objects, nothing but multiple organ failure. In other words, he simply died, in the way one might expect an elder of great age to die. The only hypothesis anyone could offer was that the deprivation of our early years might have caused some sort of accelerated aging, but not all of the healers agreed on even that much.”

  “Certainly it is true that what we endured on Hellguard took a certain toll on even the strongest of us,” Saavik reminded him, thinking of the many nutritional supplements and the several regen treatments she had needed following her rescue.

  “Of course!” Tolek said abruptly. “But as soon as the first healer made that statement, another healer disagreed. His argument was that if early deprivation were the cause, the younger rather than the older survivors would have been more profoundly affected, just as they were on Hellguard. His hypothesis was that our genetic ‘admixture’—his word—was the cause. In other words, he considers us congenitally defective. Both were overruled by a third healer, who said—”

  “‘Put two Vulcans in a room, and you initiate three arguments,’” Saavik said thoughtfully. “Something Spock, my mentor, would say … used to say,” she added over Tolek’s bemused look.

  Would she ever know that Spock again?

  Again, Tolek did not so much as sit back in his chair, yet he seemed to be distancing himself from her.

  “In short,” he said, “Vulcan authorities do not know the cause of death and do not wish to pursue the matter further.” He gulped the rest of his tea, then indicated with an eyebrow that he was going to get more, and did she want anything more?

  Saavik shook her head, waiting patiently until he returned to their table with tea and a second pastry before she asked, “How have you come to know all of this?”

  “Lerius and I became close in the … camp.” Saavik had never heard this particular word for the place where all of the survivors but she were at first repatriated. “Even after his family took him in, we remained in communication.” Saavik noted that Tolek gave no indication of whether his own family had claimed him. Why had she not attempted to communicate with him during all these years? It was a question she could not answer, and the lack of answer disturbed her. “He had a kinswoman who did not accept the official explanation for his death. It was thought I could be of help.”

  He devoured the pastry and gulped the second cup of tea, barely tasting it.

  “Why you?” she asked, expecting him to tell her he had some specialized expertise that might refute the healers.

  “Because she couldn’t think of anyone else. I know what you’re thinking,” he said so intensely Saavik wondered if he was reading the thoughts behind her eyes, or if he simply knew her too well, even after all this time. “I’m no one. A minor clerk in an adjudicator’s office in a minor city you’ve never heard of. Who I may or may not be has nothing to do with this.”

  Saavik’s tea had gone cold, but she sipped it anyway. “And you came to me with this because … ?”

  “Because you and I were once close, closer than I with Lerius,” Tolek said, and for the briefest moment Saavik wished for that closeness again, no matter the adversity that had forged it. “And I wanted to warn you.”

  “Warn me to … beware of death by unknown cause or causes?”

  “Vulcan wishes we had never existed!” Tolek said, remembering at the last moment to keep his voice down despite the sea of murmur that surrounded them in this public place. “They wanted to leave us to die on Hellguard. Vulcan will not be satisfied until we are all dead.”

  Saavik remembered all too well lurking near the Vulcan landing party’s tent where that argument had transpired. She didn’t need to understand the words to hear the disdain in the voices arguing to leave the children where they were. Only one had stood in opposition and eventually changed the others’ minds. That one was Spock.

  Still, once consensus had been reached, the children gathered and rescued and fed and clothed and healed of their physical suffering if not the psychological consequences of their ordeal, and thereafter brought to Vulcan, educated, most of them integrated into whatever families chose to claim them, was it logical to start killing them?

  Was murder ever logical?

  While she thought it through, Tolek had been absently capturing the last crumbs of his pastry on the tip of one finger and licking them off. When he was finished, the plate was so clean it might never have been used.

  “I have no doubt many on Vulcan wish we did not exist, but I cannot believe a Vulcan would murder.”

  Now he held out his hands, damaged and whole, in a plea for reason.

  “What other explanation is there? The deaths were reported, and supposedly investigated thoroughly, then dismissed with remarkable alacrity as ‘unexplained.’ It is that alacrity which concerns me.”

  Saavik frowned and pushed aside the remainder of her pastry, her appetite gone. Without a word, Tolek placed her plate on top of his and began to eat.

  It is a wonder, she thought, that he does not move about among the empty tables devouring everything the other patrons have left unfinished!

  “You are suggesting a cover-up,” she said.

  “At least a desire to make the matter go away.”

  “Each of the deaths occurred on Vulcan?”

  Tolek nodded. “The ones I know of, yes.”

  “Do you believe there may be more?”

  “Unknown at present.” He had finished the last pastry and was once again retrieving the crumbs. “I intended to contact all of the survivors, but I have come up against the unassailable wall of Vulcan silence. And now I have come to you.”

  Saavik raised an eyebrow. “To warn me, you said.”

  Tolek sighed. He had been unable to hide anything from her when they were children, either. “And to ask for your help. As a member of Starfleet, you have access to resources for which I cannot get clearance. I thought that the two of us together …”

  He left the thought unfinished, the silence filled with a dozen memories—of the time he’d helped her fight off an ambush by three other feral children, of the time they’d shared the last of the dried fruit she’d hoarded from the storehouse, even though they both knew there would never be any more, the time they’d diced for the last of the lizard eggs, and he’d let her win.

  That is not sufficient reason to trust him now! something said. You do not know who he is now, what he has become, whether what he has told you is true or even partly true. Do not let sentiment cloud your judgment!

  She found herself scanning the plaza, studying the faces of the passersby, seeing more import than usual in the stare-not-staring of a few. Was it only sentiment that made it seem as if she and Tolek were alone in the midst of this crowd, isolated by their difference, more kin to each other than to anyone els
e here?

  If she had not been heading offworld tomorrow, she might not have made the decision she made next.

  “Give me access to all of the data you have gathered so far,” she told him, explaining that she was off on a short-term assignment, though giving him no more detail than that. “We will remain in subspace communication while I am away. I make no promises, but I will see what I can do.”

  “Thank you!” he said, a glint of something like hope in his pale eyes for the first time.

  She retrieved her market basket and gestured to him to remain seated. Somehow it seemed necessary to make this appear as nothing more than a casual encounter. The stare-not-staring seemed intensified. More than ever, she was grateful to be leaving Vulcan.

  “Live long and prosper, Tolek.”

  The slight twist at the corner of his mouth suggested he had little faith in either prospect. Nevertheless, he managed to reply.

  “Peace and long life, Saavik.”

  She turned away before she could see him reach across the table to finish her half-drunk tea.

  Even before the Sundering, many Vulcans had ceased to eat animal flesh, and over the millennia they had developed an ability to absorb nutrients exclusively from plant life.

  Uncertain what this near-silent and profoundly malnourished half-Romulan child might need, however, Spock had taught her how to use a food slot, giving her free rein to choose whatever foods her body craved, and when the child came to live on Vulcan, Amanda had done the same. There would be time to discuss the philosophical reasons why even synthesized “meat” formed of basic protein molecules was something a Vulcan would philosophically refuse. As she grew to maturity and understood those reasons, Saavik had gradually adapted to the Vulcan way, so that by now the taste of even replicated meat was a distant memory.

  The house was empty when she returned from the market, and she immediately repaired to the kitchen, where she laid out her ingredients in their colors and abundance, and began to wash and pare and chop and season, in the hope that this simple task would occupy her hands and leave her mind clear.

  Instead, she found herself thinking of lizard eggs …

  They had been playing dice for the last of the food.

  There had been six of them at the outset. They had watched the first impatient few leave the compound in the beginning, never to return. Gone feral, or gone to dust? No one knew. But she and Tolek and the others had waited until it was clear that the adults were gone forever and, improvising carry bags for water and the last of the food from the storehouse, they’d split up into small bands of the most able-bodied, leaving the weak and the very young to languish in the echoing compound with promises that if they managed to find enough, they would bring some back for them.

  Thus a band of three males, three females, all within a year or two of the same age, set out together, instinctively collecting sharp stones for throwing or pounding, moving silently. Saavik stayed close to Tolek. Six began the journey, but one died a few nights later after blundering into a strangle-vine and choking to death before the others could cut her free, and there was conflict almost at once between the three who wished to cover her with rocks out of deference and the two who argued it wasn’t important, because if they found nothing else to eat they would have to come back here, because there was no sense in wasting fresh meat.

  Unaccustomed to desert travel, they would forget where the cairn was. Only Saavik would stumble on it quite by accident months later, desecrated, the bones scattered, cracked to get at the marrow by creatures that had used stones, not teeth, and anyway she knew by then that there was nothing larger than a lizard native to this world.

  But that was long after the night of the dice—polished, pretty things, probably left behind by one of the adults in their haste to flee—and no one asked how the elder of the two surviving girls knew how to use them, but she taught the others and they played, because except for roots and insects, the hunting had not been good. But they’d found a cache of lizard eggs just as the suns were coming up, meaning they would have to seek shelter soon.

  Nine eggs, five hunters. Someone would have to make due with one. They diced.

  When there were three eggs left and it was Tolek’s throw, he fumbled at the last minute and threw a loss. Saavik was the only one who saw he’d done it on purpose; the others were already retreating, sucking the ends out of their eggs, licking spatterings of yolk off filthy fingers. Grabbing the two eggs he had left her, she tried to go after him, to share one, but he cursed at her and stormed away, disappearing into the heat shimmer—she thought, for good.

  Seeing him again in the marketplace on Vulcan, surrounded by such largesse but still licking the crumbs off his plate and then hers … why hadn’t she at least thanked him for saving her life back then? Was her promise to help him now in what she thought a fool’s errand thanks enough?

  “Did she believe you?” T’Saan asked as soon as Tolek appeared in her office. V’Shar operatives were not known for wasting time on pleasantries.

  “My story was accepted,” Tolek replied. “There was just enough truth in it to make it plausible.”

  “I am constrained to disagree. What you told her was entirely true. You simply neglected to mention that Lerius’s kinswoman was an operative for the V’Shar. And as any Vulcan can tell you—”

  “—there is no such thing as the V’Shar,” Tolek finished for her.

  “Indeed. Unpleasant truths are best left unspoken. You will continue to supply Saavik with the data she requested. The rest will be up to her. I know—” She raised one hand in a gesture her mentor T’Pau was noted for, but T’Saan wore it more gently than the old aristocrat ever had. “Your concern for her safety is noted. You are as protective of her today as you were when you were children, and we have taken that into consideration. It was no accident that we arranged for you to contact her just prior to her departure on a Starfleet mission. The predator we seek is not aboard her vessel.”

  “If you know that …” Tolek began, as frustrated with the entire mission as he had been from the moment the V’Shar had recruited him. If it weren’t for his concerns for Saavik, he’d have refused, and T’Saan knew that, just as he knew she was using his emotions to her service’s advantage.

  “It is sometimes simpler to know who the suspect is not than who he or she—or they—might be.”

  Tolek sighed. “When Saavik’s mission is completed …”

  “It is our hope that we will have made an end of this.”

  It was the best answer he was going to get. “Then I shall have to perform my part with greater alacrity,” he said, resigned.

  Amanda made note of the depth of the silence as she and Saavik ate together that evening but did not remark on it. Saavik’s girlhood silences had been profound and often lasted for days.

  “Are you certain you need to leave again so soon?” was all she said.

  Saavik had made no mention of her encounter with Tolek in the market. His reappearance in her life had seemed less real than the heat shimmer in which he had vanished on Hellguard, leaving her holding two lizard eggs. Add him to the resonances of Genesis and everything else that beset her, and he seemed even more ephemeral. Let Amanda think she was merely preoccupied with her assignment on Chaffee.

  “It is essential that we return to normalcy as quickly as possible.”

  “‘We’?”

  “Earth, Starfleet, the Federation …”

  “You?”

  Tolek wasted no time in sending Saavik every fragment of data he had collected on their three dead comrades. Though she should have been sleeping, she read through it all but could see no correlation among the three dead. Each had been adopted, with whatever degree of reluctance, into their Vulcan kinship group, but except for the friendship between Tolek and Lerius, there appeared to be no points of contact among the three or between them and any of the other survivors thereafter.

  She was not alone in wanting to put that part of her life behind her.<
br />
  There were no connections or even similarities among their professions. Rajek had gone into business with a distant cousin, Metana had been pursuing a degree in microbiology, and Lerius, like Tolek, had worked in the public sector. Whatever they might have shared in interests, hobbies, avocations, travel, dreams, or desires was not contained in the records. Were they also haunted by what they had been through? Did they guard their plates while they ate to keep some unforeseen foe from snatching the food away? Did any sudden hissing sound remind them of the lizards whose bite was fatal? Did they dream?

  Unknown, unknown, unknown. The only data beyond these sketchy biographies were contained in the medical records, and there was as much similarity in death as there had been difference in life.

  Saavik read carefully through each medical chart. Age, height, weight, blood type (all different), medical history, known family history, genetic predispositions, separation of mitochondrial from nuclear DNA to determine which parent was of which subgroup …

  She stopped. Similar data were contained in her own medical chart, data that she steadfastly refused to access. If she were to die, that which she refused to know in life would be known only to medical personnel after her death.

  Why was she so resistant to that knowledge now? It was not logical. She was a scientist, fascinated by knowledge in all its forms, except for this.

  The answer she would not allow herself was that if she ever learned her parents’ identities, even to this extent, she would be forced to hate one of them. Hatred was even more illogical than denying oneself knowledge.

  Or so she told herself as she continued reading the autopsy reports. As Tolek had told her, all three had died of multiple organ failure, of the kind that might perhaps cause a frail Vulcan elder to simply fade away in the twenty-fifth decade of life, but to the best of her knowledge there was no precedent for it happening to an otherwise healthy Vulcan in the twenty-fifth year of life.