by Jeri Taylor
“I must rest,” said Tuvok. “You must be weary, as well. Let us sleep now, and proceed again at nightfall.”
The beast eyed him briefly, then dropped on his stomach and began digging in a curious fashion in the sand. Presently his body was submerged, except for his nose, which extruded from the sand, barely noticeable. Tuvok wondered how many sleeping sehlats he might have walked near, or over, without realizing it.
Now a dilemma presented itself. He was thirsty and hungry. The sehlat would make several meals, and its blood would slake his thirst. Now was the time to creep up upon it, to plunge his knife into its skull. That was the logical course of action.
But something stayed his hand. He did not actually think the animal capable of thought, or decision, or loyalty, and yet it had not attacked him, had traveled with him for most of the night, and now seemed content to bed down in the sand while Tuvok himself slept. He didn’t intend to romanticize the situation, but he couldn’t avoid the sense that they had bonded, the sehlat and he, and that to kill it now was to violate some canon of the desert. And surely that would doom his venture.
And so he lay down behind his berm and closed his eyes against the sun, and trusted that he would be alive when the sun set.
For four days he and the sehlat traveled together, sleeping by day and walking by night. It was another mystery with which the desert had presented him, but Tuvok found that he no longer cared to struggle to solve these conundrums. Why the sehlat had chosen to accompany him might remain an unanswerable question, and here in the unfathomed expanse of white sand, that seemed perfectly acceptable. It simply was.
There was a growing problem, however: he had seen no signs of other animal life, and the need for food and fluid was becoming urgent. “We are both growing weaker, sehlat,” Tuvok said, and the effort hurt his parched throat and lips. “This is your domain. I ask your help.”
This was as he lay down behind the berm he had created and closed his eyes. Sleep came more easily every day.
When he woke it was from a dream that had promised to show him the answers to his questions: a dark presence, a black form, shapeless, hovered in his dream, the repository of knowledge. Tuvok longed to plunge within its depths, to know the unknowable, to be lost forever in its tenebrous folds. But the more he struggled toward it, the more quickly it receded, until it was gone like a shadow dissolving in the morning sun.
His eyes opened and the sehlat was standing over him, snout dripping with blood, and Tuvok startled awake, jumping to his feet.
Lying in the sand near him was the half-eaten body of a lematya, blood still unclotted and dripping onto the sand. Tuvok took it quickly and sliced other veins, drinking greedily of the thick liquid which poured out, thinking he had never tasted anything so sweet. He then devoured the flesh, ripping meat from the bones without using his knife, even as the sehlat had fed.
When he was done, his face was covered in blood, and he suddenly felt the overpowering need to cry out, to howl at the setting sun, and he did, an ancient baying that took flight on the still desert air and disappeared into its depths.
The sehlat cocked its head and regarded him; had Tuvok not known better, he would have thought the creature was mocking him.
On the fifth day of their communal adventure, Tuvok thought he saw something in the dawning sun: the tiny tip of something—a mountaintop?—on the horizon. He blinked again and again, trying to determine whether it was merely a shimmer of heat or actually was what he had been seeking all these weeks, sacred Seleya, most holy place on all of Vulcan.
Even if it were the mountaintop that he saw in the distance, he knew the end of his quest was not near; it would take weeks more to cross the sands that lay between him (and the sehlat) and the mountain.
But his heart felt lighter, nonetheless. He had survived what he was sure was the worst of the journey, and now Seleya was in sight. That thought would sustain him.
One day after that, the Winds arrived.
Every Vulcan child had heard of these fierce desert gales, the stuff of legend and myth. Winds that whipped the sands into billowing, rasping clouds, turning the desert dark for days on end, swallowing men and beasts whole like a gluttonous leviathan. It was a thrilling legend, told in the safety of warm sleeping rooms, and children shivered at the tale, then snuggled under soft covers and dreamt of desert adventures and conquering heroes.
The sehlat was the first to detect the oncoming gusts. He was restless, pawing in the sand with his claws as Tuvok prepared his berm for the day, raising his nose to sniff the wind, uttering a mewling cry, and then beginning the whole process again.
Tuvok lifted his head from his endeavors and saw, behind him, what appeared to be a puff of dust in the distance, too far away to be of any concern. He resumed his digging, only to feel the sehlat’s strangely cold nose under his hands, lifting them from the task. Tuvok stood, and looked again at the puff of dust.
It was more than a puff now, rolling like a fog bank on the horizon, far across the sands over which he had traveled, but moving inexorably closer.
“The Winds?” he murmured, and then realized there would be no sleeping today. They must keep moving, try to stay ahead of this murderous storm. He glanced at the sehlat and then began moving forward with quick, purposeful strides, only occasionally looking back over his shoulder.
Each time, the dust cloud was gaining on them.
It made a noise like animals screaming, a chilling, unnatural sound, spirits wailing from the terrible underworld, tormented and suffering. That sound gradually overwhelmed Tuvok. He wanted to stay ahead of that bestial cry, which seemed more ominous even than the punishing grinding of the sand.
Neither, of course, was to be avoided. The Winds arrived by midday with a howling cry, a bray of triumph. The sands exploded on him and the sehlat, drilling them with millions of tiny needles which stung as though tipped with acid. Tuvok was thrown to his knees, and as he fell he grabbed one corner of his robe and covered his face with it, filtering the sand. The sehlat inched toward him, face wrinkled in misery, pitiful bleats emitting from his clenched jaw. Tuvok pulled the muscular beast in close to him and covered it with the other side of his robe. There, the two of them huddled, waiting out the storm.
But the winds of Vulcan are not so easily endured. Tuvok and his companion crouched in the vortex of sand for hours, tens of hours, days, and still the storm lashed at them. It had no beginning, it had no ending, it simply was, eternal, the only reality that existed: the noise, the stinging needles, the nut-colored mist of particulates comprised the totality of their universe.
Tuvok had no idea how long they had crouched like that when he began to hallucinate. First he detected a decrease in the noise level, as though a dampener had suddenly been applied, and he lifted his head to peer out. Utter silence then descended on him, and the swirling sands took on a diaphanous quality, a luminous shimmering which was utterly beguiling.
Then he was ascending through this sparkling mist, rising above the desert floor, looking down at his crouched body and that of the sehlat, far below. He hovered there, drifting in the vaporous winds—breezes, really, just gentle breezes—turning slowly and languidly above his own figure.
Curious. What was he to make of this? It was certainly pleasant up here, far more so than down in the roaring, rasping Winds, but there was something amiss about it. How could he reach Seleya like this? Was it possible to fly? The idea held a certain appeal, but he was definitely not in control of his path and was not moving in any direction— just drifting, languorous.
He tried to make himself heavy, so he would float downward, but his efforts accomplished nothing. He summoned all the concentration of his mind’s powers he could, and willed himself to return to his body.
But still he wafted, effortlessly, suspended in this strange union with his body, equally unable to move from, or return to, the prostrate form.
It occurred to him that he might be dead.
Such experiences had been
recounted by some who had experienced death, only to be snatched back through medical intervention or sheer happenstance: this same watching from above, seeing one’s inert body below, a condition which existed until the fact of death was accepted and one’s katra moved on to—wherever it went. There were, of course, no accounts of where that was, for the reporters had, by definition, returned before getting there.
Tuvok considered the possibility of his death, and was not inclined to accept it. He had come too far and endured too much to countenance failure this close to realizing his quest. “I am not yet done,” his mind said to whatever forces might be at play here. “I must finish the journey to Seleya.”
Below, he saw the sehlat move its nose to his face and snuffle at it for a moment, then begin to lick at his cheeks, his mouth, his eyes. He pondered the improbability of this particular sehlat’s nature. The beasts were known to be vicious and cunning, driven by predatory instincts and primal urges. In their feral state they did not behave as house pets, docilely trotting alongside a master and snuggling up to him in times of strife. Nor were they known to procure food for anyone other than themselves. This sehlat was indeed puzzling.
How to explain that? Several options came to mind: perhaps it was simply his good fortune to have encountered an animal with domesticated tendencies. Or it may be that he had simply hallucinated the beast, even as he now seemed to be hallucinating this strange hovering above himself. It was even possible that the sehlat was, in some way, divine, a messenger sent to him from some unknown dimension, in order to impart—
—an unpleasant odor assaulted his nose, and his skin was being grated with an abrasive object, over and over. He frowned and struggled upright, opening his eyes slightly.
The sandstorm wailed around him, fierce and biting as ever. But he was safely returned to his own body, a fact which was a source of surprising comfort to him. The sehlat crouched over him, peering at him with what Tuvok might—had he chosen to anthropomorphize this animal even further—term anxiety. Some instinct made him reach out and scratch the sehlat gratefully on the head.
“We must leave this place,” Tuvok announced, voice raised against the shriek of the Winds. “We must keep moving. We will die if we stay here.” He struggled uncertainly to his feet (how much easier it had been to hover, weightless, in the air) and forced his body forward, driving it against the formidable resistance of the swirling sand. The sehlat followed and, step by difficult step, they proceeded, Tuvok hoping that whatever providence had sent him the animal would also guide him in the right direction.
In what seemed one more day the gale began to diminish, the sound abating first; then the swirling sand began to lose some of its sting, and gradually it passed by them, roaring off across the desert and leaving him and the sehlat exhausted, covered in sand, and desperately thirsty. Tuvok brushed what sand he could from his face, dusted the sehlat’s with the hem of his robe, and looked around.
Seleya was a triangle on the horizon, white and tiny, but most definitely there. Tuvok’s heart quickened, and he turned to look down at his companion. “Look—our destination . . .” he began, but then he realized something was very wrong with the animal.
It lay on its side, tongue lolling out, eyes blank and staring, rib cage heaving rapidly as it panted desperately. Tuvok knelt quickly and felt the nose, which was warm and dry. The rugged beast had pushed itself to its limit, but now it could go no further; it was dying.
Tuvok looked off to Seleya in the distance, the longed-for goal now manifest. He was weak and thirsty, but he knew he could go on, lured by the proximity of the sacred mountain. It was the logical course, to continue his march and accomplish what he had set out to do. Sehlats were born in the desert and died in the desert; it was the natural order of things.
But he could not bring himself to abandon the beast. He assured himself it was not an emotional decision, but an unwillingness to offend whatever spirits might be at play in this vast expanse. Inexplicable things had happened to him during this remarkable sojourn, and he felt the power of mysterious forces all about him. Things unknown were present here, and it was therefore not possible to act according to any prior set of expectations. With imperfect knowledge, one could not be in control of one’s fate.
The appearance of the sehlat, his unusual behavior, his loyalty—all seemed to point to a guiding presence, and to affront that presence might be to invite disaster. To turn one’s back on a benefactor was surely an insult to any being, corporeal or not.
And so he sat down beside the sehlat and stroked his head. “I can see the mountain. It gains me nothing simply to see more of it. I deem my journey over.” The sehlat made no response.
They sat like that for a long, uncounted time, Tuvok keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the faraway triangle, wondering if in fact he had accomplished anything. The vague questions with which he started had not been answered nor even clarified, and new questions had been added along the way. And the sight of the mountain—the tip of the mountain—brought him no relief, no fulfillment. To what end, then, had he endured this travail?
He thought about that for a long time, worrying the idea like a fine point of logical debate, and had lost himself in a serpentine series of possible deductions when he realized he heard something—had been hearing something for a while, in fact, without its having registered on his conscious mind. It was a low, rumbling sound and it seemed to be coming from all around him.
He looked up and realized the sky had darkened, even though it was, by his reckoning, midday. Shadowy yellow clouds sagged above him, ominous and foreboding. In a second’s astonishment, he understood that he was hearing something Vulcans heard only rarely: thunder. As the rumbling grew louder, the saffron clouds were illuminated from within by flashes of light. A rainstorm was approaching.
Rainfall was scant on Vulcan, and almost unheard of in the desert. There were stories of torrential downpours that erupted only a few times each century, but were leviathan in their immensity. Tuvok acknowledged a palpable sense of awe that he was about to witness one of these legendary events, and stood as though to greet it with proper reverence.
The air temperature had dropped quickly and a cooling breeze began to stir. It was utterly unlike the punishing winds they had recently survived, and was refreshing in its chilliness. It caressed Tuvok’s body gently, as though assuaging a fever, and he shivered as he had not since his last Pon farr.
The rumbling of thunder now became louder, and assumed the form of discrete claps, which resonated through the clouds with the sound of the most powerful photon cannon, and were followed by a sharp brightening of the clouds, turning them from yellow-brown to a brilliant gold. Tuvok studied the changing palette of the sky as though evaluating a colossal painting, then he felt the strange oppressiveness of humidity in the air, and smelled the scent of moisture.
Presently, the first drops of water fell.
He turned his face toward the sky and felt the liquid plash of rainfall on his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids, a balm of wetness that soothed and healed. He opened his mouth as the rainfall became more intense, and gulped mouthful after mouthful of the sweet liquid.
He then turned to the sehlat, who had lifted his snout as though he, too, were trying to lick at the falling rain. Tuvok cupped his hands until they filled with water, then tilted them so the liquid ran down the animal’s throat. He repeated this over and over, until finally the animal rose shakily to its feet.
The rain had turned the desert sand to a caked mass; Tuvok began digging a series of bowl-like indentations, which quickly filled with water and made drinking much easier. The sehlat lapped at the puddles and Tuvok scooped handful after handful until he had drunk so much he felt ready to burst.
Another bounty was provided by the rainstorm: small, sand-burrowing animals came scrambling to the surface, lizards and voles and others Tuvok had never seen before, trying to escape the sudden flood of their burrows. Both he and the sehlat became ardent hunters, and ate ra
paciously until their hunger was as slaked as their thirst.
And still the rains fell, not in a lashing, brutal attack, but in a steady torrent, a powerful cascade of water from above, cleansing, healing. When Tuvok had eaten and drunk his fill, he removed his robe and stood naked in the downpour, feeling the drenching caress of the deluge; something primal, something elemental stirred in him. His most ancient ancestors had lived in these deserts, unfettered by clothing, unabetted by technology, living a hardscrabble life of deprivation and thirst, occasionally indulging in an unexpected bounty of nature like this thunderstorm. He felt a palpable link to those ancient people, a connection that stretched over millennia, and with that joining came a sense of intensity and might, a tapping into elements of himself that he had never known existed, much less accessed.
Powerful, endowed, he turned like a dancer on the desert floor, lifting his arms to the skies in an impromptu paean to Vulcan’s past and the way in which it validated him. Nearby, the sehlat sat contentedly, wet coat matting around him, regarding the strange undulations of the naked man as he paid homage to the rain.
Four nights later, the euphoria of the rainstorm had evaporated like the moisture on the desert floor. He was not hungry or thirsty; there was still an abundance of small creatures who had not yet returned to their underground existence, and he and the sehlat fed well.
But T’Khut had returned to loom above him in the night sky, and with its portentous appearance Tuvok’s doubts returned. He had spent a great deal of time walking across the desert—exactly how much time he didn’t know, but he was sure it was at least several months—and he had yet to feel any genuine sense of accomplishment. Seleya was there, growing larger with each night’s walk, but he could only think of what he had said to the sehlat as it lay dying: what difference did it make if he got closer to it, if he got all the way to its base? He would see more of it, of course, and he could make the claim that he had endured long enough to bring his journey to completion. But what, ultimately, did that matter? Had all his effort, all this risk of his very life, been for no purpose other than to say he had completed what he started out to do?
