Her first stop beyond the outskirts of the city had been an unmanned heavy-transport switching station that did not rise out of the sand so much as simply hunker in low profile on the horizon, unlit as well as unmanned. While most transport on the planet was airborne, large, bulky nonessentials were still moved about by ground transport via a network of transit stations like this one, designed to look like nothing so much as a natural rock formation, part of the landscape, obscuring the pneumatic tubes and even, in the case of some of the oldest nodes, like this one, monorail systems moving automated trams about the planet.
Unmanned, of course, did not mean unwatched and, lacking any opportunity to access the schematics beforehand (Some spy you are! she’d chided herself on the long walk here. You should have prevented T’Vaakis from taking that padd!), Saavik had approached the facility with caution, scanning for motion sensors in the outer structure, knowing that if detected she would not be stopped, but her presence would be recorded and questions would be raised.
As Narak had suggested, this would be a good place for her to risk detection, surrender, tell everything she knew. But by the time the automated system recorded her and the record reached an actual person who would listen to her story and accept its veracity despite its improbability, someone, perhaps even T’Vaakis, would have replaced her, and the mission would go forward.
Thus she took her time, skirting the perimeter, noting every crevice in the outer walls that might conceal a sensor, before she found a blind spot and walked a narrow tightrope between safety and detection. She could feel the rumble of incoming and outgoing trams beneath her feet, and made them her destination.
The interior of the station was much as she’d expected—sterile, almost airless, immaculately clean, echoingly empty. Atmospheric controls kept the temperature within the optimal range for cargo, but there was no need to consider the comfort of living beings, since ordinarily no one came here. Cargo was loaded and unloaded within cities. This place was a switching node, nothing more, the intersection of one set of transit tubes with another. Shunting and reloading were entirely automated, as was every other function. Sonic cyclers kept the long, dim, echoing corridors clean, using high-frequency sound waves to reduce the least amount of dust or debris to the molecular level, to be drawn away by pneumatic cyclers set into the floor. Saavik’s first step, upon reaching the interior, was to time the cyclers exactly, lest she be caught up in an active cycle and treated as so much debris.
Still another point at which I might end my participation in this charade, she thought, dismissing the notion immediately, not only because the idea of being shaken down to molecules and swept into oblivion was less than comforting. Again she was reminded of how much worse things could be if she did not follow through.
Hearing the cyclers whine down into the audible range and then turn off, she made her next move.
There were sensors only at the junctures of the corridors, fairly easy to elude if one could accurately gauge their range and possess the sangfroid to align oneself with the wall of the corridor and slip under them. After that, it was only a matter of bypassing the pneumatic tubes—where bulk cargo was shot through at speeds that would crush a living thing attempting to slip between them, though not before the absence of oxygen had collapsed his or her lungs—and locating the tramways.
The goal was to find a tram heading in approximately the direction she needed to go that was not, with typical Vulcan efficiency, packed so tightly that there wasn’t at least a little space for her to slip in and conceal herself. Several blind transfers later, if the combination of her innate geolocator ability and a schoolgirl’s memory of a lesson on planetary transportation was as accurate as she hoped, she would reach her desired destination.
A manned tram station would have a digital manifest at the access port to each tramway, indicating, for the convenience of its users, where the tram had originated and where it was bound. No such manifests were necessary here, since the trams themselves knew their destination. Saavik would have to call upon a Vulcan’s greatest weakness. She would have to guess.
For a second time, she cursed herself for not preventing T’Vaakis from walking off with her dataslate. Her doppelgänger hadn’t needed it as anything more than a prop. For Saavik, its absence could result in miscalculations that would leave her half a continent off course.
Doubtless Narak had thought of that. It was likely he had instructed T’Vaakis to take the slate. Surely he would not risk the mission’s going awry because his agent lost her way. His constant presence in the cochlear implant would no doubt provide the necessary direction … before the sonic cyclers cycled on again, she hoped.
Once again, as if reading her thoughts, he made himself known. “I have the tram schedule before me as we speak. I’ll be happy to share.”
As you speak! she thought, thinking of all the curses out of Hellguard she would rain down on him if he were here.
“Third corridor east, fifth corridor south,” he was saying. “A tram will arrive on the northbound track in approximately seven point four minutes. Cargo is predominantly surgical supplies, including containers of Hirudo medicinalis leeches and live beneficial bacteria for certain applications, meaning there will be atmosphere. Several cars, flex-couplings. You’re nimble; you can slip between cars and even find a way to poke into the onboard computer so you can find the rest of your way by yourself.”
She found the requisite corridor, with ample time to await the passing tram. Narak was still nattering in her ear.
“I must say you’ve made this entertaining. I hadn’t expected that. Truly, when we’ve finished, I would welcome the opportunity to know you better. I don’t expect it will compensate for your lost childhood, but I would enjoy it immeasurably …”
Was he trying to distract her? What if the cyclers turned on again before the tram arrived? Calm! she told herself. They won’t cycle on anywhere near the tram until after it passes. There are no passenger platforms here; you’ll have to stand on the clearance between the tram and the curve of the wall anyway. Do it now!
“Surely you realize that once Sarek is disgraced, everything you once knew as a family life will be no more?” Narak echoed in her head as she eased herself onto the narrow lip of clearance, barely wider than the length of her sandal, that a seldom-needed maintenance crew might stand on to lower themselves to the single track between passing trams. “Lady Amanda will no doubt accompany him into whatever fate awaits him …”
The rush of air ahead of the arriving tram brushed her face and ruffled her hair as she flattened herself against the side of the tunnel, readying herself to jump.
“And while Spock will be scrutinized, he will as usual escape unscathed, though I expect his relationship with you will be challenged by unfolding events. Perhaps then you’ll be more amenable to my presence in your life …”
Only long enough to rip your throat out so that I never need to hear your voice again!
The tram appeared at the turnout point in the tunnel, slowing as it entered the transfer node. Saavik called upon everything she had in terms of focus, timing, and reflexes and, in the space of a breath and with a leeway of only millimeters, she leaped from the narrow ledge and grabbed a tenuous purchase on one of the flexible junctures that allowed the cars to navigate turns, insinuating herself between two cars as Narak had suggested, and eventually inside the forward car.
Everything was as Narak had said it would be, and as she caught her breath and waited for her pulse to normalize, she was grudgingly impressed with the drill-down detail of his information. Was the entire planet riddled with Romulan watchers?
Narak had gone silent, for which she was grateful at first. As the journey progressed, however, the silence grew oppressive; the assumption that he could at any moment disrupt her thoughts with his pointless parentheticals kept her on edge.
As he’d suggested, she did in fact tap into the onboard computer, learn this tram’s ultimate destination and where and how to tran
sfer to the two subsequent trams she would need to get as close as possible to Amorak. This left her long hours between transfers to contemplate just how pervasive the Romulan presence on her world might be.
Her world? Only ever tenuously, and now perhaps nevermore.
It was night once more as she made her rather abrupt departure from the final tram. It had slowed enough before entering the tunnel beneath an ancient city on the outskirts of the desert for her to leap clear, landing in a tuck and roll down a gradually sloping embankment. Crouching low until she had ascertained that no one was observing her from the millennia-old city, whose cliff dwellings were still occupied, she shook the dust from the folds of her robe and set off once more in the direction of the shrine. The night wind erased her footprints even as she made them.
Sixteen
There had been an exercise at the Academy known as Blind Helm. Precursor to the Kobayashi Maru, a requirement for all third-year students, it was based on the premise that the candidate was the last able-bodied crewman on a vessel that had lost all visual and was running on sensors only. There were various scenarios—gravitic mine, asteroid field, enemy attack, and so on—and as the candidate survived each level, subsequent levels grew more challenging. The goal was as much to measure calm under duress as piloting skills.
Saavik had inevitably rated in the top two percent of her class. The test threw everything from meteors to wormholes to Klingon battleships at her, and she simply piloted her ship with the data she had and refused to flap.
She had departed the shrine some months ago via a seldom-used tunnel in an ancient part of the western wall, walking deliberately into the setting sun. Now as she approached the eastern gate, the rising sun at her back, she was mindful of the Academy and that test. Though the slanting sunlight made it difficult for those at the shrine to see her clearly, it was she who was flying blind.
Narak had said something about her “killing the old man.” She had shoved Simar aside when he’d tried to stop her from leaving, but only to make her rage and her departure seem authentic, in case the watchers were watching. She had not pushed him any harder than necessary, and she had surely never meant him any harm.
Now she had returned to face the consequences.
Had she been acting on her own, she was confident she’d have found some way to emerge from the desert and reclaim her place in Vulcan society without returning to the shrine, though even as she announced herself at the portal, she had no idea what that way might have been. But Narak had insisted she return to the shrine as part of his plan, and so she must face whatever awaited her there. Inadvertent Simar’s death may have been, but some accounting would have had to be made.
Not for the first time she thought, Perhaps this is how it will end. Narak doesn’t really need me anymore. The savants at the shrine will try me and require some atonement, even if it is only that I never leave the shrine again. Events will unfold without me, will I, nil I.
The portal opened to her voice, and without challenge she made her way to the chambers of the high priestess to request an audience. Though many passed her, raising their eyes momentarily from their thoughts, no one stopped her, no one questioned her right to be there and, once there, she was granted entrée without question.
“The old one had a premonition,” the high priestess T’Leng said mildly, contemplating the carefully tended garden beyond the tall window of her study. Many of those who devoted their lives to meditation had a kind of agelessness about them, and T’Leng was among them. The face she turned toward Saavik now could have been that of a young woman or an ancient. “There are meditative depths that are beyond the reach of logic. He knew the time of his own death. You were not the cause.”
Her wording seemed deliberately ambiguous, causing Saavik to frown and wonder what import lay behind them. But she suspected whatever questions she might ask would not be answered.
“What disposition is to be made of me now, Lady?” she asked.
T’Leng raised an eyebrow. “None. You are free to stay or go as you wish. This time none will attempt to dissuade you. One might suggest you rest for a time. Sleep, take sustenance, compose your thoughts. Your time away from us has not been kind to you.”
All was forgiven, just like that? It was too easy. Almost easy enough to make her wonder if T’Leng was part of Narak’s network. Glanced at in a certain light, did she not have a rather pronounced forehead, one that might have heretofore sported brow ridges?
Stop it! You’re exhausted. Your judgment cannot be trusted. You’re seeing shadows everywhere!
She was given a windowless cell with a shelf to sleep on, the same cell that had been hers when she first arrived, and an acolyte brought her refreshment there, lest she have to face a refectory where an empty space still marked Simar’s departure, though she suspected even there none would judge her by word or glance. Indeed, when, more exhausted than even she could have imagined, she’d slept through a day and a night to rise with the new day and bathe in the hot springs, she was greeted with mild expressions and no whisper of gossip spoken or even thought.
As she lowered herself to the earlobes in water that was almost painfully hot, she closed her eyes and sighed. Let me stay here this time! When is enough enough? But after a day and night of silence, there was still the voice in her ear.
“Three days, no more. You’ll hitch a ride on the weekly transport, and then back to civilization.”
Once a week, a great lumbering air car arrived at the shrine, bringing in the few necessities the savants could not provide for themselves, transporting out the surplus fruits of their fields and orchards, and a particular type of fine cloth woven on hand looms from the soft fibers of the a’morak bush that grew nowhere else and gave the place its name. Riding in the back with the cargo was an unconventional way to leave the shrine, but if she asked, it would be granted.
She wasn’t certain what she’d expected to find at the shrine, but this … anticlimax was not it.
“It must be the Vulcan part of her that has such patience. Were she wholly ours, she would have snapped by now.”
Narak too had a voice forever in his ear. This one came from far away, on the homeworld, and the
necessary coding and scrambling gave it a choppy, un-real-time quality. Unlike Saavik, he had the means to answer back, but it was time-consuming to wait until he was certain his source had finished speaking. In the beginning he’d made the mistake of interrupting, and it had cost him.
He was never quite sure who his source was. He’d guessed it was the one who’d interrogated him and offered him a chance to live, but he could not be sure. The processing that made it impossible to make a voiceprint rendered the voice in his ear genderless, mechanical; for all he knew it was completely artificial. The orders it gave, however, were not to be second-guessed.
“I haven’t snapped yet,” he presumed to remind it. “Despite what you’ve put me through. Perhaps it’s me she takes after.”
Was that a laugh? “You have one outstanding quality, Narak, and that is doggedness. You are not smart, nor even clever, but you are persistent. We have counted on that in the past. Don’t disappoint us now.”
Silence, ended, to be taken up again at probably the most awkward of times, when he was in a crowded place and his masters knew he could not answer. So even as he had Saavik watched, he was being watched, everyone testing everyone else. This was what it meant to be a Romulan.
As certain as he could be that, at the moment at least, his thoughts were his own, Narak allowed himself the luxury of a genuine emotion. He wept. Silently, all but motionlessly, he stared into the middle distance as tears flowed down a face that might otherwise have been stone, not for the first time regretting that it had come to this.
He had been halfway across the Outmarches on his way to Vulcan before it occurred to him that perhaps Saavik wasn’t his daughter after all. Perhaps he had been set up from the beginning. Had the ease with which his interrogator had acquiesced to showing hi
m the Y chromosome markers in the two samples, obviously identical even to his accountant’s eyes, been a trick? Did the “offspring match” in fact belong to Saavik, or to some other female, perhaps even the operative now going by the code name T’Vaakis? Ironic indeed if the “daughter” appointed to accompany him on his journey was genuine, and the one he had been sent to groom for treachery was false.
Unless both were false, and he had no offspring, or occult offspring he would never know, and all the data he had ostensibly stumbled upon had been planted expressly with the intention that he find it.
But the possibility that everything he knew was nothing but sham was not what made him weep. He did not mourn for the universe he had been given but for the one he had been denied.
Despite what he’d told Saavik, he doubted his masters would spare her life once she had done what he had directed her to do. The risk that the unspoken truth she carried would betray them both was too great. Once she had completed her mission, she was expendable and so, very likely, was he.
It was why he had tried to prolong their initial encounter, perhaps longer than was wise (the memory of her rising from the lake, water streaming from her hair, of the care with which she had dressed herself, offered him food, ritually cut her hair as if to confirm her purpose before setting off with him, her exquisite face in profile as she contemplated the view beyond the windscreen rather than make eye contact as she asked her careful questions, was bittersweet for its brevity and the likelihood that it would never recur), uncertain if he would ever find a way to see her face-to-face again. It was why he had told her one single, outright lie. Whatever else he’d said had contained at least a portion of embedded true, at least the truth as he knew it, considering who had told it to him in the first place. But in a desperate ploy that could yet harm them both, he had said, “I can tell you who your mother is.”
Star Trek: Unspoken Truth Page 24
