Sand and Stars

by Diane Duane

  The machine thought about this for a second, then brought up a picture of the Place of Marriage and Challenge: Spock, McCoy, and Kirk in the background, T’Pau on her litter, and an assortment of spear carriers and extras with bell-banners and various implements of destruction. McCoy shivered at the sight of the place, and was surprised at his own reaction.What a horrendous day that was…and what a naughty thing I did. He smiled a little.And worth it. “Confirmed,” McCoy said. “Display list of participants.”

  Obediently it did so. And there it was: Shath cha’Stelen hei-Nekhlavah, age 43 standard years.How about that, McCoy thought:I hit his age right on. Maybe Spock is teaching me something after all. “Query,” he said. “General information, Shath cha’Stelen.”

  Another page of information came up. Most of it was not very interesting: information about education, occupation, a commcode.Not that I’d want to call him up and invite him on a night out: no indeed. But at the bottom was a little list of Affiliated Organizations. McCoy had the carrel’s printer note them all down, and then he began to go through the files and pull down some of the organizations’ most recent publications. The names were mostly very innocent: the Institute for Interworld Studies, the Study Group on Nonvulcanoid Species, names like that. But what McCoy noticed, as he began reading their newsletters and papers, was that none of the organizations Shath belonged to liked humans very much. One of them was of the condescending let-them-swing-in-their-trees sort: the others were outright smear rags—there was no kinder word for them.

  McCoy sat back after about half an hour of reading, very upset, actually shaking a little.This is not something I wanted to find out about Vulcans, he thought.There are Vulcan bigots. Right here where Surak taught, and died. He shook his head. “Damn.”

  “Null input,” the computer said politely in Vulcan.

  “Sorry. Cross-reference. Lists of membership of all the above organizations. Star or otherwise indicate members who are also members of other listed organizations.”

  “Working,” said the machine. “Output?”

  “Print.”

  “Acknowledged,” said the machine, and began spitting out truly astonishing amounts of the fine thin plastic that Vulcans used for printout. McCoy watched with amazement as it piled up.

  The printing did not stop for nearly twenty minutes. When it did, there was a stack of printout some three inches thick, all in very tiny print, and McCoy shook his head. “Solid duplication also,” he said.

  “Working,” said the computer, and after about three seconds spat out a data solid at him.

  “End.”

  “Credit authorization, please,” the machine said sweetly.

  McCoy rolled his eyes, felt around for his down-planet “cash” solid, stuck it in the slot, let the machine click and whirr and deduct however much money from it. It spat the solid back at him almost with the air of a machine unsatisfied with the amount of money spent. “Hmf,” McCoy said to it, pocketed the solid, picked up the printout, and headed out.

  He made his way to the little restaurant where they had been before. It was open early, as most Vulcan restaurants and refectories were, for the day-meal. “Lasagna, please,” he said to the waiter, and started going through the printout. It was going to be a long morning.

  Or so he thought. Five minutes into his reading, he found a name that brought him bolt upright in his chair. Very soon thereafter he found it again, and again.

  “Damn,” he said. “Damn.Damn.”

  After a long time he put the printout aside and ate his lasagna, even though he wasn’t sure he had the appetite for it anymore.

  The world dissolved from sparkle to solidity around Jim as he beamed down. He found himself in a little park, like many he and Spock and McCoy had seen the day before. This one Spock had described to him in detail: there were three paths that wound out of it, and Jim was to take the one that led off to the left, toward the old city wall.

  He took that path, walking slowly. It was a pleasant park: the “grass” was some sort of tough dun-colored growth, broken with tiny, delicate trees with feathery maroon-colored leaves. They looked, in fact, almost exactly like giant feather-dusters. Out of curiosity Jim went over to one and touched it…and was very surprised when the entire branch folded its leaves away and rolled itself into a tight spiral.

  “Sorry,” he said, and then laughed at himself.Do Vulcans talk to trees, I wonder?

  Slowly the branch unrolled and unfurled its leaves once more. Jim restrained himself from touching it again—no reason to make a plant crazy—and headed down the path that led toward the old city wall. It curved broadly, to parallel the wall. Now he recognized where he was: he followed the curve of the path, and sheltered from view by an outcropping of rock, he saw the house.

  It was fairly large by Vulcan standards, though not as large as one might expect the house of the Ambassador Extraordinary to Terra to be. It was built all on one level, as most of the houses here seemed to be: Vulcans seemed to have an aversion to blocking away others’ view of the sky. The place, in fact, with its surrounding wall just higher than eye-height, looked rather like something one of the old “post-modern” architects might have built, with curves rather than sharp corners. But at the same time it had a look about it of the old Roman villas: a house that looked inward, rather than outward, and kept its secrets and its privacies to itself.

  He went up to the gate in the wall and touched the annunciator plate. “James Kirk,” he said when it glowed.

  “Jim,” came Amanda’s voice, very cheerful, “come on in.” The gate swung open for him.

  A narrow path bordered with stones led to the front door of the house. It opened as he stepped toward it, and there was Amanda, wearing a coverall, rather stained around the knees, with a pair of pruning shears in her hand. “Welcome!” she said. “Come in and see the garden! I’ll give you the two-credit tour later. Or Sarek can do it when he gets back from town. Would you like something cold to drink?”

  “Yes, please,” Jim said. Amanda guided him in through the front hall. It was large, and the rooms were built on the open plan: the living area and dining area and kitchen were all one clean, beautiful sprawl of rough or polished black stone, and the rear wall was one large window with dilating panels that gave on the garden.

  “Here,” Amanda said, stopping by the drinks dispenser in the kitchen. “Water? Something carbonated?”

  “Soda water would be fine.”

  “I’ll join you.” Two glasses slid out from behind a panel. “Cheers,” she said, lifting one of them in salute, handing him the other.

  They both drank thirstily. “Oh, that’s much better,” Amanda said. “I worked up such a thirst. Come on this way.” She led him out the dilation, into the garden. Most of it was raked sand and gravel, but one patch about thirty feet square was given over to rosebushes. Several were in profuse bloom: some had no bloom at all, having been cut back.

  “That’s amazing,” Jim said. “I’m still astonished those things will even grow here.”

  “Oh, they do well enough,” Amanda said. “It’s no worse than, say, Arizona would be, as long as you keep them watered. And they seem to like the spectrum of a white sun a little better than a yellow one. You know what will really grow wonderfully here?” She pointed off to one side, where some small new plants had been set in. “Tomatoes. They’re pigs for water in this climate; they need a soaker at their roots all day. But you should see how they look after a couple of months. I have to hand-pollinate them, but I don’t mind that.”

  Jim shook his head. “You’ve been pruning the roses back pretty hard,” he said.

  Amanda nodded. “We haven’t been here for two years, remember,” she said. “We have a gardener who comes in and takes care of things, but he’s best with the native Vulcan plants, the succulents over there, and the sandplants. I don’t think Vulcans really understand about roses: they think they’re delicate. But to bring out the best in them, you have to be mean to them.” She clic
ked the shears meaningfully.

  “I have trouble believing you could be mean to anything,” Jim said.

  Amanda looked at him kindly. “Flatterer,” she said. “Come here and sit down in the shade.”

  They went over to a bench under a pergola smothered with some kind of leafy vine. Amanda settled herself on it and looked out at the garden. “You know,” she said after a moment, “there were a lot of times when we were raising Spock that I felt I was being mean to him. At the same time I felt I had to: Sarek and I agreed that Spock needed to grow up as a normal Vulcan child, with the disciplines that Vulcan children have to deal with. If we had been on Earth, it might have been different. Earth people are a little more flexible about such things. But Vulcans expect…” She broke off, then looked a little bemused. “They expect you to be very conservative. Everything has to meet the status quo…everything has to be the same.”

  And Amanda smiled. “It doesn’t make much sense in terms of the IDIC, does it? Sometimes I think things have slipped a little.”

  Jim nodded. “I can see your point.”

  They sat there in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the wind, which was not too hot to be unpleasant as yet, and much softened by the wall around the garden. “May I ask you something?” Jim said.

  “Ask.”

  He gestured at the garden. “You’re pruning the roses as if everything was going to turn out all right, later this week…. ”

  She gazed at the roses and then let out a long breath. “Well,” she said, “I’m a gardener. No matter what happens, the roses need pruning.”

  Jim smiled.

  “But you’re right,” she said. “I’m worried.” She turned the shears over in her hand, studying the blades. “If the vote for secession goes through,” she said, “the ban will certainly fall on me. The government will certainly not be in a mood to allow exceptions—certainly not at the highest levels: it would be seen in some quarters as nepotism, favoritism. I will have to leave Vulcan—or Sarek will.”

  Jim shook his head. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing fair about it,” Amanda said, “but if the vote goes for secession—” She sighed and looked around at the garden and the house. “I gave up one home, a long time ago,” she said softly. “I suppose I can manage it again.”

  “Giving up a home isn’t the same as giving up a husband, though.”

  She nodded. “We will find somewhere else, I suppose,” she said. “The Federation would be glad to have Sarek. And Spock certainly is in no danger of losing his present job.”

  “Lord, no.”

  “But at the same time,” Amanda said, “think of it from Sarek’s point of view. To have to leave your homeworld forever: never again to see the rest of your family: to be an exile on cold damp worlds, never to feel a sun that’s warm enough—or if you do, to have it shining on you in a strange sky—” She shook her head.

  “You must excuse my wife, Captain,” said Sarek, coming into the garden and slipping out of his over-tunic: “she is obviously exercising the Scots part of her heritage, which she has described to me as ‘predicting gloom an’ doom.’ ” He laid the overtunic neatly over the back of another bench nearby and sat down.

  “Did your business go well?” Amanda said.

  Sarek nodded. “As well as could be expected. The town is becoming positively tense. At least, so I would describe the atmosphere, having seen it on Earth many times: I have never seen the like here before. But then, the like has never happened.”

  “Tomorrow we start debate?” Jim said.

  “Tomorrow. Some of the less, shall we say, ‘loaded’ testimonies will come first. K’s’t’lk, various other scientists, economists, and so forth. Then the people arguing for ethical reasons. Then the professional liaisons—such as ambassadors and starship captains.”

  “Sarek,” Jim said, “about last night—”

  “It happened,” Sarek said, “but I would not advise you to tell anyone else about it, save for Spock and the doctor. That one prefers to keep her doings quiet, and it is usually wise to respect her wishes.”

  There was a soft chime from inside the house, and an amplified voice said, “It’s McCoy.”

  “Speak of the devil and you see his horns,” Jim said.

  “Let us not get intothat again,” Sarek said, rather emphatically.

  “Doctor, come in!” Amanda said, and got up to greet him at the door.

  “The doctor sounds winded,” Sarek said. “I hope he is not unwell. The heat can take people by surprise here.”

  Amanda ushered McCoy in a few moments later. He was sweating and was wearing an expression that Jim had seen on him before—a combination of excitement and dread. “Bones, are you all right?” Jim said.

  “No,” McCoy said, and handed Jim a thick printout. “Look through that.”

  Jim did, mystified. McCoy turned to Sarek. “I was out following up a hunch I’d had,” he said. “These anti-Federation, anti-Terran organizations that have been around the past century or so: I was doing some reading of their latest publications this morning.”

  “No wonder you look distressed,” Sarek said, with an expression of distaste.

  “It gets worse. I pulled their membership lists and did some correlation. Shath,” McCoy said to Jim, “he’s prominent. But you know who else is?”

  Jim stared at the printout, looking at a circled name on one list. “T’Pring,” he said. And turned several pages. “T’Pring. T’Pring.”

  He riffled through the rest of the printout, then folded it back up and laid it aside. They all looked at one another: Sarek looking nonplussed, Amanda amazed and angry, McCoy apprehensive, Jim simply astonished.

  “I think we’d better call Spock and let him in on this,” McCoy said.

  Jim nodded while Bones got out his communicator.

  Dear Lord,he thought.T’Pring.

  Hell hath no fury…

  Vulcan: Four

  The old woman sat by her window, looking down on the spires of the city, and sighed, stirring uncomfortably on her bench covered with furs. The silences of the evening were falling: past the edge of the lands, her lands, T’Khut was sliding toward the edge of the sky, her bright crescent a rusty sickle holding darkness between its downpointing horns, and a sprinkling of wildfire sparks: so she looked, and for the time being, that was appropriate. Doings were toward that would release those fires at last, and the woman leaned on her windowsill and waited. There was no need to send her mind out on quest, to touch and pry. Soon enough, those she desired would come to her. There was nothing to do but wait, now.

  Mind had made Vulcan different from the start. How many thousands of years, now, since the arts of mind had begun to spring up among men in earnest? They had made all the difference, for without them there would have been no taming the terrible place. It was one of their names for the world,ah’Hrak, the Forge. The name would have been an irony, nothing more, despite the melted mountaintops that one could still see in places, if it had not been for the arts of the mind, the inner magics that could draw things from the stubborn crust of the world that no tool could.

  Vulcan was metal-poor. Or rather, most of its metals were trapped well below the crust, in the mantle that no one knew yet how to tap, and in the seething core. No tool that men could make, in those first days, could dig deep enough to find metal in any great amount. The smiths of ancient days, when they came to invent their craft, might have to spend years wandering the world, scratching at its surface, gathering enough ore to make one sword, one spear, and never another again. So matters remained for a long time. Stone was cut only with stone: a house might be a life’s work: a plough was a precious commodity that a whole community would finance together and take turns using. And even then, frequently all they had to plough was sand.

  But it all changed. Mind changed everything. To the first arts—the bonding of mind to mind, the touch that incapacitates, speech-without-words—others slowly began to be added. Sometime
s they occurred naturally and spread themselves through the gene pool on their own, like the internal corneal nictitating membrane that protected the eye from excessive light. But some were sports, and the houses in which they sprang up cultivated them and made them a source of power or wealth. To one of the ancient houses, for example, was born a child who could feel where metal was. That house secretly hired every smith they could find, and after some small number of years—a hundred or so—had massed enough metal weapons to take thousands of acres for their own, while most houses had to be content with several hundred. Another house had produced a child with an even more precious gift—the ability to feel water. When this was discovered, the child was fought over, kidnapped back and forth, and finally died many years later, in misery, an old and broken man. But the trait bred true in the children he was forced to sire, and soon spread through the gene pool; now it was a poor sort of house that did not have a waterseer, and enough water for all its needs. One had to dig deep, but the water was there. It had opened the way for technology: for enough food and enough time to do something besides hunt and survive. Vulcan became civilized, began to pursue pleasure and exploration: began to practice war as an art form, rather than the rather sordid necessity it had always been until natural resources began to be more easily available. And of course there were forays, as one House decided another had something it needed or wanted. Rarely did patience last through much in the way of negotiation: that was not how Vulcan had become what it had become. The occasional war broke out over the theft of a well-drilling technique or the kidnapping of an adept of one of the more useful mindsciences; the rich and powerful raided one another’s people as the tribal chiefs had raided one another’s herdbeasts in the longago. These days, at best a stolen talent could make one’s fortune. At worst, it was something to pass the time.

  The woman stirred again on her couch, then stood up and began to walk to and fro. She had no eyes for the rich appointments of the room, the tapestries and carpets, the rare treasures of art in stone and carved bone and bright metal. Her reflection in the mirror—a sheet of polished bronze that would have been the price of a kingdom, once—she passed again and again, taking no heed of it.The waiting is hard, she thought. No matter that she had become expert at it, these many years past. This particular prize she had waited for for a long, long time, moving subtly toward it, never being seen to be too hungry, too eager. And now everything was ripe, and tonight, perhaps, or tomorrow, it would come to her of her own free will. She turned her eyes again to the sickle of T’Khut, and lust glittered in them.Soon, she thought.Quite soon.