Star Trek: Unspoken Truth

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  His message had ended abruptly and, more concerning, her attempt to reply had bounced back almost immediately, indicating that the problem was not one of distance—the squirt should have taken days to reach its intended recipients, as its predecessors had—but that the transmitter Tolek had sent from had been terminated.

  It might signify nothing. Perhaps he had been traveling and used a one-time server. Or it might signify that the transmitter was not the only thing terminated.

  She had stayed up most of the night perusing the attached documents—such personal information on Saya and Grelek as was available, medical reports indicating “cause of death unknown,” even a smattering of local newsfeeds remarking on the deaths and, for the first time, mentioning that the two had not been born on Vulcan but “on a distant colony world destroyed by seismic phenomena.”

  That last part had given her pause. Had it taken five deaths for at least some acknowledgment that Vulcan was not all logic and truthfulness and respect for diversity, however achieved? Or had regional media simply noted some anomaly in the birth records and remarked on it without realizing its implications?

  Whatever sleep she might have gotten for the rest of the night was disturbed by her own knowledge of those implications. In comparison, Mikal’s petulance over not being allowed to chat up the Deemanot (yet, she reminded herself, growing more angry as she thought about it, yet; it was not as if he was being forbidden altogether) seemed most extraordinarily trivial.

  In the meantime, there was work. Saavik set down her collecting kit and began to scrape away a thin layer of topsoil in search of the underlying strata.

  But Mikal had more to say. “Nice of you to have my back up there.”

  Saavik sat back on her heels and suppressed a sigh. “Your back? I do not understand.”

  Mikal crouched beside her, his eyes intense. “It’s one thing for us to have scientific differences. That’s part of the process, and we can hammer those out on our own. But the minute Galina told you to seal off those rips you complied, without so much as—”

  “It was my assessment at the time that—”

  “So what we shared the night before meant nothing?”

  “‘What we shared’?” Saavik echoed him, on her feet. “If you are suggesting that our acquaintance should in any way influence our scientific judgment—”

  “‘Acquaintance’?” Mikal leaped to his feet as well. “Is that what you call it?”

  They stood toe to toe, their faces inches from each other. The proximity and the violation of her personal space may have been what distracted her, or she most certainly would have felt the rumbling sooner. She whipped around and retrieved the tricorder from her kit.

  “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not going to duck this and go all scientific on me now!” Mikal, oblivious to anything but his anger, misinterpreted her gesture. “We’re going to have this out once and for all!”

  “Mikal, this may not be the time …” Saavik started to say, but Mironova’s voice cut across both of them.

  “What are you two squabbling about now?”

  There was an awkward silence. Still unaccustomed to the newer communicators, Mikal had left his open since they’d beamed down. Their conversation had apparently been broadcast on the bridge, quite possibly throughout the entire ship.

  Beyond embarrassment at the best of times, Mikal was too preoccupied with what was happening around him at the moment to care who’d overheard what. Finally he managed to clear his throat and say, “Squabbling? Us? Not at all, Chaffee. Not at all.”

  This time, there had to be a hundred of them. Some had emerged from the soil in a several-meter-wide circle around the visitors, others were literally shaking the sand off their upper bodies at the two scientists’ feet.

  As a gesture of politeness, Saavik put the tricorder away. It had already recorded the presence of the newly arrived Deemanot and the maze of tunnels they had created to get here. As if their presence, towering above their visitors, their shimmering bodies showing subtle color variations that might denote thought or mood, were not fascinating enough, she made note of the fact that their nearest metropolis was more than five thousand kilometers distant. How had they been able to get here so quickly?

  “Captain,” Saavik said with remarkable calm, “I believe we no longer need to wait for Starfleet to answer at least one of our questions.”

  Nine

  “Someday,” Mironova said quietly, pulling a reluctant Mikal out of the center of the circle, leaving Saavik alone in the midst of the Deemanot, “someone will develop a universal translator sophisticated enough to read brainwaves. Until then, there’s a reason why all Starfleet officers, even scientists, need to be diplomats.”

  She had beamed down alone and at a distance as soon as she understood what was going on, showing up on the scene with as little fanfare as possible, wisely intuiting that her mind and particularly Mikal’s would only serve as a disturbance in any telepathic encounter, and removing him from harm’s way.

  Now the Deemanot began gathering closer around Saavik—slowly, unthreateningly, in a rocking, shuffling almost-dance, the lower portion of their gleaming bodies making a sound against the dry soil like fabric rubbing together—until they were all touching. Some draped over each other, others intertwined, but even if it was only the tips of their tails touching, the proximity seemed necessary in order to pass thought from one to the next.

  The one who had caressed Saavik’s face in the shelter the day before—she was not certain how she was able to distinguish it from the others, but she did—gradually wound itself around her and eased her back until it was completely supporting her weight, its body essentially one extended muscle, undulating gently (“Like a massage chair?” Mikal would ask later, unable to keep the envy out of his voice).

  Saavik was only vaguely aware of Mikal and Mironova standing off at a distance, their minds far away, as she gave her own over to the Deemanot mind, recalling what she had learned—in theory, at least—about how to explain herself to beings who could neither see nor hear.

  “As you gain experience, Saavik-kam, you will find that life-forms that lack certain senses often have remarkably sophisticated enhanced or alternative senses that compensate,” Spock had said as they began their instruction. “Taste, vibration, magnetism, electricity—all are potential avenues of exploration. Intelligent life cannot evolve to a level of sophistication in the absence of sensory input. You may in fact find that it is you whose senses are limited …”

  Being Saavik, she had at first balked at mastering more than the most rudimentary telesper skills that were part of every Vulcan schoolchild’s curriculum. She had known too many forms of violation to welcome the notion of allowing anyone else to have access to her thoughts. As head of the household, it had fallen to Sarek to attempt to reason with her.

  “As Vulcans, we are innate telepaths, Saavik. Your mind must be trained, lest you intrude unwittingly into that of another.”

  “What if I promise that I will not?”

  Saavik no longer found the senior member of her adopted family as daunting as she once had, but his frequent absences on diplomatic missions made her seek his approval in subtle ways whenever he was around. When Sarek spoke, she listened. Nevertheless, she would not be Saavik if she did not raise objections, at least occasionally.

  “Do you think it so simple a matter to block one untrained mind with another, my child?” the ambassador had said with not a little tenderness. What he could not show to his own flesh and blood, he could to her. It was not logical, but it was true. “It is not always possible to control one’s circumstances. The touch of another is often inadvertent and can bring with it unwelcome thoughts if one is not prepared.”

  This earned him the characteristic jut of her chin. “Then I will not touch anyone.”

  It was then that Sarek reached to brush a wayward curl off her brow. “Even as you say this, you know it is not possible,” he suggested.

  The tips of her ea
rs burned, but she tamped down her anger, and considered.

  “Blocking out thoughts I will learn,” she offered charily, somewhere between barter and compromise. “It is allowing thoughts to enter that I do not wish.”

  The slightest trace of a smile softened Sarek’s eyes. “One does not always have the luxury of choosing.”

  Saavik was losing ground and she knew it. Not fair! she thought. He is older, wiser, trained at this and …

  … and you are essentially making Sarek’s argument for him!

  Flummoxed, but still unwilling to give in, she tried one more ploy. “Maybe I don’t need to learn the discipline. Maybe I’m not a telepath at all.”

  Because I am half Romulan, she thought but would not say, and no one knows what skills the Romulans lost in the Sundering.

  Sarek did not need telepathy to see that this road led over a cliff. He would save further discussion for another time.

  Nevertheless, though he spent considerable time explaining, bargaining, reasoning on several more occasions, the senior diplomat made no headway. Apparently in his recalcitrant foster daughter he had found at least one being in the universe more stubborn than a Tellarite. And his attempt to bring Amanda into the discussion was equally unsuccessful.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” was her response to his request. “I have come by my own very small esper skills only after many years of practice. They are not innate to me, and I’m in no position to judge their rightness in another. Keep me out of this!”

  Sarek sighed. He was needed for another round of talks between Eminiar VII and Vendikar and would be leaving in a few days. Even after nearly a decade, negotiations between these two contentious sibling planets could go on for months. The child—more a young woman now than a child—would have passed another birthday by the time he returned home, something he regretted enough in and of itself. He had hoped to win her over before then. But this particular negotiation would have to remain open-ended until his return, unless …

  Fortunately, Spock was home on leave following Enterprise’s second five-year mission under James T. Kirk. Had Sarek not hoped that his son would one day follow in his footsteps? If negotiating with Saavik was not proper training for a diplomat, what was? Was it weakness to ask for his assistance?

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, swallow your pride and ask him!” Amanda had said, seeing the struggle on his to-anyone-else-impassive face and nudging him toward the study where Spock was overseeing Saavik’s schoolwork.

  “‘Very small esper skills,’ my wife?”

  “Oh, I’ve always been able to read you.”

  Spock did not lecture; he did not try to persuade. He simply drew upon the range of his experiences and told Saavik about the Horta.

  “Truly?” She had sat up straighter, her dark eyes wide. “A creature resembling living rock? It communicated with you?”

  It had been a given since he’d left her with his parents that they would always stay in communication, no matter where his mission took him, and that even as she reported on her schoolwork and the thousand little events that made up her day, he would tell her of his travels and the beings he had encountered without her having to ask. This particular instance was enhanced by his presence in the room with her instead of on a screen. He savored the wonder on her face, which no attempt at Vulcan discipline could obscure.

  “Indeed. It said ‘No kill I.’”

  He watched her arrive at the same questions that Kirk had arrived at at the time.

  “But did it mean ‘Do not kill me’ or ‘I will not kill you’?”

  “We were uncertain at first,” Spock said, holding fast to his own sense of wonder. How bright the child was, how full of promise! “But we had communicated on a common ground. The details could be clarified later. What mattered at that moment was that the killing stopped, on both sides.”

  Again he waited for her to think it through. Having chanced upon the conversation, perhaps not entirely by chance, Sarek observed unseen from the hall. There was pride and not a little envy in his demeanor. The best teacher hopes his student will surpass him. Spock’s methods were not Sarek’s. Nevertheless, his father was certain at that moment Spock would choose the path of diplomacy someday, if he had not already begun.

  “But what if it was a trick?” Saavik asked. “What if it meant to fool you into touching it so it could kill you?”

  “A chance I deemed worth taking at the time.”

  “And if you hadn’t …” Saavik said cautiously.

  “I might not be here to speak to you today. The Horta might have gone on killing, beginning with Captain Kirk and myself. She and her children would most likely have been destroyed as well.”

  “But instead, they became members of the Federation!” Saavik said brightly. One thing her childhood had not succeeded in destroying—if anything it had honed it all the more sharply—was her need for justice, and a happy ending.

  “Indeed.”

  Sarek smiled faintly and went on his way.

  “So a mind-meld can be a weapon … more powerful than a starship.”

  Spock kept his face under more careful control than ever. “Think of it rather as a Rosetta stone, and—”

  “—and my next assignment is to look up this term and study its origin,” Saavik finished for him, accustomed by now to the drill. With a great sigh, she yielded. “I will continue to study and practice mind-meld. But not because you or my foster father wish it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Because I wish it!”

  Now it was Spock’s turn to allow himself the smallest suggestion of a smile. “As it always should be.”

  So it was that all these years later, covered with slime, cradled in the embrace of a three-meter-tall annelid and surrounded by a hundred of its peers, she offered herself as a Rosetta stone and wondered where to begin.

  Given their need to commune by touch, she anticipated that the Deemanot would share a group mind, at least on some levels, and there was a suggestion of that. But as she entered the realm where there were no words, she realized that this was no collective. Even as she touched only one being, who touched the others, she could “hear” their individual voices.

  Feel … sun is warmth, energizing. But sun can burn, endangering. Skin is breathing, sensing. Slime is comfort, mobility against friction, sharing with another. Soil is nutrient, shelter, safety, tunnel medium, separation. Touch is thought, sharing. Universe is those-not-like-us. Like you … who are Saavik.

  Yes, I am Saavik. Do you have a name?

  Several. Perhaps too deep in my mind for your primitive skills. You may call me Worm.

  Mikal will be pleased …

  Observing, Mikal and Mironova at first saw only a great stillness. Every one of the creatures, however busy they had been in shuffling about and intertwining in the beginning, stood motionless now, an extraordinary feat if one considered that, if they truly were highly evolved annelids, they had no lungs but breathed through their skin. Were they breathing? If they were, it was so subtle it was not visible. Outwardly, they were a single unmoving entity, with Saavik at their center.

  “Jealous, Mikal?” Mironova couldn’t resist tweaking him. It might go down in the scientific annals as his first contact, but he was not the one being contacted.

  “A little,” he admitted, arms folded over his chest in a pose that suggested he was making a mighty effort to control himself.

  But what the captain saw on his face was not jealousy. It was an expression she remembered all too well.

  • • •

  “We’re impossible,” she’d said, raising herself on one elbow and tracing the tattoos on his chest with one finger. “You know that, don’t you?”

  He’d yawned and stretched, taking her hand and kissing the palm before he answered. “Of course. That’s why we were drawn together. Neither of us can stand the thought of permanence, even if our careers allowed it. Still …” He’d sat up and taken both of her hands. “I adore you, Galina. You
have to know that.”

  “What I know,” she said, sitting up as well and pulling away, if gently, “is that you are wedded to hyperbole, hate to be alone, and are looking for a mum.”

  “Relationships are built on less than that,” he said, denying none of it.

  “True, but then the question becomes, What’s in it for me? Aside from the occasional glorious shag. And don’t mistake me, they are wonderful, but not wonderful enough to make me want to mother you, Mikal, much as the thought appeals. You’ll have to do your growing up on someone else’s watch.”

  That made him angry, as she’d known it would, and he’d scrambled out of bed. “Maybe if you’d occasionally find a man your own age—”

  “Oh, cruel!” she’d vamped. Yes, this was going well.

  “As if what you said wasn’t!”

  “Truth hurts.”

  “Yes. Yes, it does!”

  They’d glared at each other for a long moment across the great expanse of the bed they’d just shared, two bits of flotsam on the solar wind, neither capable of permanence or of anchoring the other. Mironova broke the glare first, pursing her lips, sweeping the silver hair up off her brow.

  “Right, then.” She’d made a shooing motion. “Off you go. I’m due on the bridge in an hour, anyway.”

  It took him only a moment to slip his rainbow robe over his head and find his sandals where he’d kicked them under the bed in his eagerness the night before. He stopped just short of where the cabin door would have sensed his presence and opened automatically, looking back for one last moment.

  “But I still adore you.”

  Mironova had twinkled at him, her smile like a girl’s. “Of course you do, darling. No hard feelings?”

  Yes, Galina Mironova thought, watching Mikal watching Saavik. You do adore women, Mikal, one at a time or as a species. Will this one be enough for you?

  Deep in her meld with Worm, Saavik nevertheless felt something tickling at the edges of her consciousness, something that took the shape of the two humanoids watching and waiting for the outcome of the meld. Not for the first time wishing she had studied the disciplines of the mind more thoroughly, she tried to concentrate, only to discover that it was Worm’s curiosity about them that had brought them into the conversation.