Sand and Stars

by Diane Duane

  Cthiaeventually killed Surak, of course, as he had long before seen it would do. It was the Yhri faction who killed him, a Vulcan international terrorist group that saw its business being destroyed by nations that no longer desired to undermine one another’s frontiers, or economies, or leaders. The other nations united so far—almost three-quarters of the nations on the planet—had asked Surak to deal peace with the Yhri on their behalf. They welcomed him graciously, for the cameras: and then they took him away and killed him. When this was discovered, the outrage was terrible at first: but then a strange sort of calm descended, and one by one emissaries from the major nations went to the Yhri and asked to deal peace with them on their own behalf. Many died: the emissaries mostly, at first. But eventually—after about a year during which several governments fell with the deaths of their leaders, gone dealing peace—the Yhri’s heart simply seemed to go out of them. There has never been any satisfactory explanation of it, not even afterward, when some of the Yhri talked at length about Surak, before going into self-exile or ending themselves. They said they could never shake the feeling that no matter what they did, something associated with this man knew their deepest secrets, and all the evils they had ever done, and still forgave them.

  And to this day much has been written about it—many commentaries on Surak’s writings, many independent works. But then as now, there are some things that logic is not good for. People still go out to the sands of Vulcan’s Forge and sit there, looking out and waiting. But the sands keep their own counsel, as T’Khut looks over the shoulder of Seleya, with only an occasional flicker of fire….

  Enterprise: Seven

  “Doctor,” Sarek had said, sounding quite severe, “I am ready to hear the substantiation of your claim.” They were standing outside the Hall of the Voice, in the great entry hall. Vulcans were milling about everywhere, media people were running for the commlinks, and their little group was getting some very strange and hostile looks indeed from some of the Vulcans passing.

  “I’m ready to give it to you,” McCoy said, “but I don’t have the hard copy with me. Also I need to satisfy you as to thebona fides of the source. For both purposes, we need to be up on theEnterprise.” McCoy cocked an eye at Jim.

  Slightly nettled, Jim flipped his communicator open. “Kirk toEnterprise,” he said, “four to beam up.”

  “Make that five,” Amanda’s voice said from behind them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to sit with you this morning. But at least I didn’t miss any of the excitement.”

  “Five,” Jim said, and shut his communicator again. “You know,” he said to McCoy, “you might tell me that you have these things up your sleeve. It would make my life a little calmer.”

  “I didn’t know until this morning,” Bones said, “and I was wondering how and when to break the information. But that moment seemed perfect to me…so Icarpe’d thediem, as we used to say in medical school.”

  The transporter effect set in, and the hall went away, to be replaced by the transporter room. They all got down off the pads and headed for the turbolift. “I must admit,” Sarek said, “that I admire your timing…if this data is accurate.”

  “You’ll judge for yourself. But I had to do something. You’re so damned sincere, even when you hate what you’re saying.”

  Sarek looked rueful. “Was it that obvious?”

  “To a human?” Jim laughed. “It was rather noticeable.”

  “I have said distasteful things on behalf of my government before,” Sarek said, “but never one quite so much so. Still, that is no excuse—”

  “There’s no excuse for not telling me what you were going to do, either,” Amanda said, rather tartly.

  “Peace, my wife.I did not know either, until I had finished the statement.Cthia rose up and demanded the truth, whatever else happened.”

  “If it wascthia,” Amanda said, “then I don’t mind what you told me, or didn’t. I ask forgiveness, my husband.”

  Sarek bowed his head to her and reached her two fingers as the group came to the turbolift. She touched his fingers with hers with a gentle look. “Forgiven,” he said. “But I fear my reputation for professionalism in embassage is done.”

  “For acting, you mean,” McCoy snorted. “Never mind. Rec One,” he said to the lift, as its doors closed.

  “Doctor,” Spock said, “this is no time for a game of tennis.”

  “As foryou,” McCoy said mildly, leaning against the wall of the lift with his arms folded, “you’ve been royally had, Spock old son. I will remember this day with delight every time you out-data me from now on.”

  “ ‘Had’?” Spock looked indignant, and one eyebrow attempted to ascend above his hairline.

  “I want to thank you for taking the time last night to tell me about your conversation with T’Pring,” McCoy said, “because something occurred to me about three in the morning.” The lift slid to a stop: they got out and walked down the corridor.

  “She talks a good game, does T’Pring,” McCoy said as they went. “But not quite good enough.Nobody makes that much money, just like that. But at any rate, consider thekind of money T’Pring has needed to do the kinds of dirty deeds she was discussing with you yesterday. She couldn’t have openly made that much without being noticed. No, indeed. So as regards her explanation, it is incomplete, to put it mildly. Though you bought it.” McCoy looked at Spock with cheerful reproach. “I have a bridge on Earth I want to sell you. Very nice view of Brooklyn.”

  Spock looked both annoyed and sheepish, though he covered the expression over quickly enough. “I fear my logic is not clear where T’Pring is concerned.”

  “And why should it be, for pity’s sake? You’re angry at her! Or if you were in your right mind, you’d admit that you are. No harm in that. It’s hiding the fact from yourself that makes trouble. But I’m not interested in psychoanalyzing you except in the line of duty. I’m more interested in getting to the bottom of all this. Come on.”

  The Rec Deck doors slid open for them. There was no one there, rather odd at that time of day. Harb Tanzer came out to meet them. “Doctor,” he said, “I cleared the place, as you asked.”

  “Good. Let’s use the little tank, the one with the printout.”

  Harb led them over to the smaller 3D tank. “You might as well sit,” McCoy said as they came to it. “The printouts will probably take some time. Harb, now you’re going to find out what I was up to last night.”

  “This should be interesting,” Harb said, and sat down himself.

  McCoy perched on the arm of Sarek’s chair. “Moira!”

  “Good afternoon, Doctor,” said the Games computer’s voice out of the middle of the air.

  “Would you do me a favor and print me out the goodies you retrieved last night?”

  “Code authorization, please.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, girl, don’t get started with me. Check my voiceprint.”

  “Code, or nothing.”

  McCoy sighed. “ ‘If blood be the price of Admiralty, / Lord God, we ha’ paid it in full!’ ”

  “Correct. You romantic.” The printer began to silently spit out pages.

  “When I realized that T’Pring had to be getting her money from somewhere else, and quite a lot of it,” McCoy said, “I sat down and began to think about where she might lay hands on so much. Gifts seemed unlikely. She couldn’t have multiplied the little amount she got from Stonn into so much. Where did it all come from? Or wherecould it all come from?

  “Then something occurred to me. What happens when the Federation is kicked off Vulcan?”

  His audience looked at him somewhat blankly. “Well, we all have to leave—” Amanda said.

  “Ah, but private persons can take their property with them, or sell it. Property held by the Federation, though, is another matter. It was never sold to us, only leased for ‘good and proper considerations’—usually trade agreements—and it reverts to the Vulcan government, which may then dispose of it however it pleases. They wo
n’t want to keep all of it: especially the quasi-defense installations—those would be dismantled, and the land used for other purposes. Yes?”

  Sarek nodded. “It would be logical. And equally logical to suppose that it would be sold off, for the government will be looking to raise some money to replace the various lost revenues.”

  “That’s right. Well, consider. Someone who wanted to make some money off the deal, and knew that the secession issue would come up, could easily go to various interests that have had an eye on that land, and offer to make sure it was offered to them before anyone else. For a consideration, that person would bribe a government official in a high place to see to it. The bribe would come from what that person was paid, of course: they would skim off the rest for themselves, as their ‘finders’ fee’ for managing the business. The business of the bribery could be highly lucrative, for the Federation has a lot of property on Vulcan, all highly developed, all very useful for industrial exploitation.”

  Sarek’s eyes were hooded: he was beginning to look angry. McCoy said, “If the industrial contacts knew, as well, how their money was being used—to run ‘advertising campaigns’ and propaganda that would ensure the secession—it would likely make them donate a little extra to the cause. More than enough to keep it ticking along nicely. And so the racket would go, one side of it feeding the other. The person managing it from behind could stand to make a pretty packet. So could the government contact.”

  Sarek said, “Will you hand me some of that printout, Doctor?”

  “My pleasure. You will note,” McCoy said, “that the bank account numbers are all in place, and all the corporate and private transactions are cross-indexed by their Central Clearing Bank reference numbers.”

  Sarek looked up in shock from the printouts. “Doctor, the ‘satchel’ format for the access codes to the Central Clearing computers is printed here!” He went as close to ashen as a Vulcan can get. “And the trigger codes for the satcheling process!”

  “Yes, I thought you would recognize them,” McCoy said. “You designed them, didn’t you?”

  Sarek was shaking his head. “However useful this information is, Doctor, I want to know how you laid your hands on it! The confidentiality of this system should have been unbreachable! There should have been no way to break this pattern!”

  “There isn’t…not unless you have a friend in high places.” McCoy gestured with one thumb at the middle of the air.

  Harb stared at him.“Moira?? You’ve got my Games machine hacking into strange computers and stealing data??”

  “Harb, Harb! ‘Borrowing.’ ”

  “But you cannot do that, Doctor,” Spock said, looking rather distressed. “I am not speaking in the ethical mode, but in terms of possibility. The Games computer does not have outside access, does not have any of the access or authorization codes you need, does not have—”

  “Spock,” McCoy said, “there’s one thing this computer definitelydoes have. A personality. And you know who put it there.”

  Sarek looked at Spock, very surprised. “I did not know you were doing recreational programming, my son.”

  Harb looked from Spock to Sarek. “I asked him to, sir. It’s easier for me to work with a machine that has some flexibility in its programming ability. The ‘personality’ overlays have that: they’re effectively self-programming. I had a personality program in here before that was a great joy to work with—the For Argument’s Sake personality generator—but it was a little limited. So I asked Spock if in his spare time, he would add some memory to it, and increase the number of associational connections.”

  Sarek looked at Spock. “You surpassed the critical number, did you not? And the machine—”

  “ ‘Woke up’ has always been an anthropomorphism,” Spock said, a little defensively, “and at any rate there is no evidence that—”

  “The point is that a computer that’s had that done to itacts alive,” Jim said, “and some of them have created problems. That way lies M5, for example.”

  “I would never do any such thing,” Moira’s voice said reproachfully, “and you know it. My ethical parameters are very stringent.”

  “Not stringent enough to keep you from calling a system that should be locked up tighter than the Bank of Switzerland,” Jim said, “prying it open, and yanking out reams of confidential material that—”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Moira said. “Dr. McCoy explained the situation to me. And heis my superior officer, Captain, after Mr. Tanzer. Programming requires me to obey a commanding officer’s orders. So I asked the bridge computers to handle the downlink, and as for the satchel codes, they appear in various altered forms in my own programming, because it was Spock who designed them—”

  “Frommy algorithms,” Sarek said, very quietly, paging through the printout.

  “Yes, well, Father, they were the best and most complex available—” Spock looked nonplussed.

  “Like father, like son,” McCoy said. “And a starship’s computers have more problem-solving power per gig than any other computer, groundbound or loose. They’re built that way. The Clearing computers never had a chance, poor things. Sarek, does the data bear out my allegations?”

  “It more than bears them out,” Sarek said, “and it adds some most interesting data.” He tapped one sheet. “The government connection.”

  “Shath,” McCoy said. “Yes. And a few others on his payroll: and several people in the Expunging Group: and one of the High Councilors. It’s a pretty can of worms, isn’t it?”

  “That does not begin to describe it,” Sarek said, passing the sheets on to Amanda.

  “So as usual,” McCoy said,“cthia operates to take care of itself. Here is a very interesting weapon, put in your hands at a very interesting time. The only question becomes, are you going to use it? You don’t want to create the effect of making it look like some Federation operation to sabotage the secession vote.”

  “Not that that’s not what itis,” Sarek said, bemused, going through another pile of printout.

  McCoy shook his head. “No, it certainly was not, and is not. Just an old country doctor in search of the truth…which is what all this is about, supposedly.” McCoy smiled. “I seem to have found more of it than usual, though.”

  Sarek looked up with something like hope in his eyes. “I must say,” he said, “I am impressed. You are quite a detective, Doctor.”

  “Alldoctors are detectives. All the ones worth their salt, anyway…. ”

  “I will get you as much salt as you want, Doctor,” Sarek said, piling all the printout together. “T’Pau must see these. After that—we shall see. I would recommend to her that we confidentially send copies to the guilty parties and then give them a chance to ‘come clean’ about the attempts to bribe them. As regards the government officials…” He shook his head. “Fortunately it is not many people. But corruption at these levels is a dreadful thing. I must see T’Pau.” He stood up. “If I might use your transporter?”

  “Of course.” The others rose to see him out. Sarek paused in the Rec Room doors as they opened. “In the meantime, Captain,” he said, “you are speaking this afternoon, are you not?”

  Jim nodded. “As well as Bones, I hope.”

  “I hope so too.” Sarek hefted the papers. “You know, of course, there is a strong possibility that not even this will do us any good.”

  “ ‘Us’?” Amanda said, sounding innocent.

  Sarek’s eyes crinkled. “It is interesting to be a private person again, though I have no idea whether it will last. Come, my wife. We must not keep T’Pau waiting.”

  “Number eighteen,” said the Vulcan who was doing the introductions. For some reason, it was not Shath.

  “My name is James T. Kirk,” he said, standing calmly under the great skylights. “I hold the permanent rank of Captain in the Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets. To the proposition, I say nay.”

  He was shaking all over inside—worse than he would have done
on the bridge, where he knew which orders to shout, which way to turn, what to do. Fighting with words he understood as well, but fighting in this particular arena was still intimidating. There was so much to lose.

  “I am not very sure which ‘mode’ to work in,” he said. “There are several which appeal to me—the exploratory, the purely ethical. The emotional, certainly. For my people, that’s considered a valid mode.”

  He walked around a bit, wanting to be as easy on the stage as McCoy had seemed. “Perhaps I should start with that,” he said. “The first time I came to this planet, it was to attend a wedding…I thought. It was something of a shock to find that I was one of the intended, and those of you who know about the circumstances under which I left will suspect that I was glad to get away from the place again.” There was a murmur of rather restrained amusement. Spock had warned him to tread lightly on this subject: it was delicate. But on the other hand, it could hardly be ignored.

  “It was rather a shame,” he said. “I had been looking forward to seeing Vulcan. This planet is one of the first places a schoolchild on Earth learns about that’s not in Sol system: right after the Alphacent worlds. There is a perception on Earth of Vulcan as a neighbor—even more so, for some reason, than the Cetians. Maybe it’s because they’re more like us. Maybe the neighbor we finally notice is the one who’s a little different.” The thought amused him, and some of them as well. “But neighbors you are. In this big galaxy, what’s twelve light-years among friends?…”

  He paced a little more. “We would be sorry to lose you,” he said. “I think that’s one of the first things that needs to be said. Sorrow is certainly an emotion, and one that a person prefers to avoid if he can. But I think we are sufficiently alike to be familiar with it, nonetheless, and when one sees it coming, certainly there’s some logic in trying to avert it. There’s no way to explain, in logic,precisely what it is about you that we’d be sorry to lose. Some of the characteristics are ones, perhaps, that you don’t like. But I’ll try a little.