Star Trek-TOS-027-Mindshadow

by Kevin Underwood

  mixture

  of anger and shame.

  "Why do you trouble me here?" she hissed in

  English, her expression only thinly masking her

  turmoil.

  "I have promised to do as you requested."

  Spock could not have responded at that moment

  even-if he had known the answer to her question.

  She studied him suspiciously for a

  moment before

  her expression became completely calm. "Who

  are

  you?" she demanded in Vulcan.

  He was too taken aback to have the presence of

  mind not to answer her question. "Spock."

  Even in the darkness, the striking elegance of her

  features was visible; shining black hair fell in

  soft,

  thick folds to her waist. She blinked at him as

  though

  trying to decide if she were dreaming.

  A horrible, humiliating thought struck Spock:

  he

  had entered the wrong house, and had been so stupid

  as to give her his name. By tomorrow evening, his

  awkward intrusion would be known to all in

  ShiKahr.

  Logic fled in the face of the situation, and he could

  think of nothing to say to the young woman save a

  phrase taught him by his mother, an English

  expression

  that had no counterpart in Vulcan.

  "Excuse me." Spock backed out of the

  room

  swiftly, a flurry of archaic Vulcan

  curses chattering in

  the back of his mind at the cruel trick his

  memory had

  played on him. Had he mistakenly read the

  hieroglyph

  on the front door? And if his perceptions could not

  be

  trusted, how would he ever find his father's house?

  He staggered, numbed by confusion, down the hall

  and back toward the front door, but the sight of the

  main room stopped him. It, too, was as

  unarguably

  familiar as his bedroom had been. In one corner

  sat his

  father's harp--in another, his mother's piano. His

  eyes

  were drawn to something above the piano: an

  old-fashioned

  family portrait, painted by a well-known

  Terran artist.

  A woman sat, erect and gracious, her

  honey-colored

  hair piled on top of her head in the

  Vulcan fashion, the

  slightest smile playing at the corners of her

  mouth.

  Behind and to one side of her chair, not quite close

  enough to be touching, stiff and solemn, stood a

  ten-year-old

  boy. He was small for his age; that fact,

  combined with his mixed parentage, made him the

  favorite of bullies. Brown-black hair

  hung in his eyes

  (it always grew too fast, much to the consternation of

  his mother) and the ears were ridiculously large for the

  narrow, fine-featured face.

  MINDSHADOW

  Amanda had been right--he had grown into them.

  It had always been Spock's contention that the boy

  did not resemble his mother in the slightest. However,

  studying the portrait now, it seemed that there was

  something, perhaps in the eyes...

  He sat heavily on the comfortable, overstuffed

  sofa.

  The girl-woman had been no more than an

  illusion, a

  trick of his overloaded faculties,

  brought on by exhaustion.

  Perhaps the trip had been too much for him. It

  occurred to him that he should return to his room, to

  prove to himself that the girl had been an illusion,

  and

  to sleep in his own bed, but instead he sank back

  into

  the comfortingly familiar softness of the couch.

  "Spock."

  He raised his eyelids at the soft, warm sound,

  unsure for a moment where he was.

  Amanda stood with her back to the large picture

  window that overlooked the garden. The rising sun

  outlined her in a halo of dazzling white light;

  Spock

  could not see her face. He pushed against the

  yielding

  softness of the sofa, struggling to rise, but she sat

  down next to him.

  She was older than the woman in the portrait,

  now;

  the golden hair was mostly silver, and the lines about

  her eyes were etched more deeply by the harshness of

  life on Vulcan. She reached a hand toward him

  in the

  ritual embrace: index and middle fingers

  extended

  tightly together, the thumb folded over the remaining

  fingers, a symbol that these two were forever tied by

  marriage or by blood. Amanda Grayson had for

  so

  long suppressed the urge to encircle a loved

  one with

  her arms that the impulse rarely occurred to her

  anymore;

  it had taken many years.

  The small hint of a smile that curved the corners

  of

  her mouth upward was still exactly the same. What-

  ever anxiety she might have felt for her son was

  carefully shielded, a skill acquired from years

  of living

  with Sarek.

  "I thought I heard someone come in last night. I

  thought it might be your father coming home early.

  Please don't tell me you walked from the

  capital."

  Very well, thought Spock. "Father is not here?" he

  asked in English. He and his father always addressed

  her in her native tongue; she did

  speak Vulcan, after a

  fashion, as she put it--but the sibilants were

  impossible

  for her to produce, in spite of her training as a

  linguist.

  "He's at an emergency Council meeting in the

  capital.

  I expect him back sometime tomorrow evening."

  Spock's sense of relief was so deep that he was

  almost ashamed of it. His greatest concern upon arriving

  home had been the effect that his lack of mental

  shields would have upon Sarek; surely his father

  would find the chaos of Spock's mental

  processes

  offensive. About Amanda, he did not worry. Not

  being

  a telepath, she would never know of his mental

  infirmities,

  nor judge his actions against the harsh standards

  of logic. She would only encourage and try

  to understand,

  virtues of which Sarek seemed incapable. Perhaps

  she was why Spock had never minded working

  with humans, why he had volunteered for duty on

  the Enterprise.

  "I've been in contact with Dr. McCoy," she

  continued

  gently, "and he tells me that you're taking a

  certain medication... if you could give it to me,

  I'll

  see that you receive it on the proper schedule."

  Spock's head turned sharply, but not at

  Amanda's

  words.

  His peripheral vision caught a glimpse of

  movement,

  a flash of white and black in the hallway. It

  was the

  MINDSHADOW

  apparition, the vision that had appeared
in his bed the

  night before. He'd had no intention of mentioning it

  to

  Amanda, so convinced was he that her existence was

  illusory...

  The vision stood hesitantly in the hallway,

  apparently

  afraid of intruding. She was clothed, now, in a

  simple white dress that fell in a straight

  line to her

  ankles, and the cascading black hair was now

  braided

  and pinned securely to the crown of her head. Although

  her physical features marked her as a

  Vulcan,

  there was something slightly incongruous about her

  demeanor--an openness, a hint of volatility--

  some-thing

  that a human would never perceive, something

  that a Vulcan could not help but notice. The

  fleeting

  impression that Spock had formed of her during their

  brief encounter was quite accurate: she was very

  young, perhaps nineteen, and very beautiful.

  From the warmth of Amanda's response to her,

  Spock assumed she was a relative of whom he

  had

  been unaware. "T'Pala," Amanda said.

  "Please, come

  in. I'd like for you to meet Spock."

  There was something about Amanda's tone that

  made Spock distinctly uncomfortable; he knew

  that he

  had heard her use that tone before. He searched his

  memory.

  The first time she had introduced him to his former

  fiance, T'Pring. He rose stiffly.

  T'Pala carried herself into the room with effortless

  grace and stopped below the portrait. "Your

  son," she

  said, with a solemn nod to Spock, but did not

  succeed

  in completely concealing her shy eagerness. "I

  recognized

  you from your picture. I have heard of your

  many accomplishments." She addressed herself to

  Amanda. "We have already met--but I did not

  extend

  the courtesy of introducing myself."

  Amanda's eyes were questioning; Spock sensed a

  glimmer of amusement from T'Pala. "Last

  night," he

  said in a low voice.

  Amanda must have imagined the circumstances, for

  she tactfully did not pursue the subject.

  "T'Pala is our

  house guest," she said to Spock. "She's

  finishing up

  her studies at the ShanaiKahr General

  Academy."

  "Your parents have been most kind," T'Pala

  said.

  "By offering me their home, they have made it possible

  for me to continue my studies without interruption."

  Spock harbored no desire to pursue small

  talk with

  this young creature, but for Amanda's sake he

  feigned

  polite interest. "Your family is not living in

  ShiKahr,

  then?" Obviously not, else she would not be staying

  here. It was not an uncommon arrangement for

  students

  attending faraway academies to live with a

  family in order to save the cost of staying in the

  dormitory.

  T'Pala lowered her eyes. "My parents are

  deceased.

  If you will excuse me, I must hurry to catch the

  shuttle. I have two oral exams today at the

  Academy."

  She was gone before Spock could think of a reply.

  "Well?" Amanda asked.

  Spock raised an eyebrow in the expression his

  mother knew so well. "I scarcely know

  her well

  enough to make an assessment--"

  "But?"

  Spock frowned. "Her demeanor is somewhat

  inconsistent

  with her... physical appearance."

  "I knew you'd notice. Her father was an

  attache to

  the Terran embassy in ShanaiKahr. He

  married a

  Vulcan while there, and they returned to Earth

  shortly

  after the child was born. She grew up there."

  "Half human," Spock said softly. A

  rarity, but more

  likely to occur when a member of the diplomatic

  MINDSHADOW

  service was involved, perhaps because interracial

  marriages

  required exceptional members of each species

  to tolerate the strain imposed by cultural

  differences.

  "She's been with us a couple of months, since

  her

  father died. I take it you noticed she's been

  staying in your room." It was not in the form of a question and

  Spock did not feel the need to respond.

  "I hope you don't mind staying in the guest

  room"

  Amanda continued. "We could have asked her to

  move--"

  "It would have been highly improper." That was

  true; the comfort of house-guests

  took precedence over

  that of family, regardless of circumstances.

  Amanda rose. "I doubt that the couch was very

  comfortable last night. Let me help you put your

  things in the guest room, and you can try to get some

  more sleep."

  He let her lead him to the guest room, but he

  doubted that he would sleep--he was already thinking

  of his first encounter with Sarek . . . and of the

  troubling impressions he had received from the

  house-guest.

  It was early afternoon when Spock emerged again

  from the guest room. Amanda was in the main room,

  seated on the sofa, next to her small pupil--a

  six-year-old

  Andorian child, bluish pale and atennaed.

  He was

  looking up at Amanda with childlike adoration, and

  speaking very quickly. Something he said must have

  been quite amusing, for Amanda let forth with a burst

  of laughter that startled and embarrassed Spock,

  who

  stood unnoticed in the hallway. He had never

  heard

  his mother make such a sound. The Andorian child,

  however, seemed pleased by it; he chimed in with a

  shy, feeble chuckle.

  Amanda had been teaching at home ever since her

  arrival on Vulcan. Possessing a

  doctorate in English

  literature and a master's degree in linguistics,

  she

  tutored both adults and children in English grammar

  and literature. It was for this precise reason that

  she

  had frequented the Vulcan embassy on Earth,

  where

  she met Sarek. On Vulcan, however, very few

  natives

  were problem students, and most of Amanda's

  tutorials

  were children of embassy workers in ShanaiKahr,

  some of them from Terra, sent to study their own

  culture and literature.

  Amanda's love for her profession had led her to

  acquire one of the finest collections of Old

  Earth

  literature in the civilized galaxy. Spock

  faced the

  shelves of books that lined the hallway; the

  unmistakable

  smell of old paper brought back pleasant

  memories.

  He picked out a childhood favorite, a

  priceless

  volume over four hundred years old, and opened

>   it to the frontispiece, a lithograph. The paper

  pages had

  yellowed long before the preservative with which they

  were now treated had been developed, and the leather

  cover (a barbaric, but valued material in those

  times)

  was cracked and mended in several places. Spock

  closed the book silently and stole to the safety

  of the

  garden, to await Sarek's return.

  Amanda did not notice; she continued with her

  lesson, an affectionate hand laid lightly on

  the Andorian's

  shoulder. -

  Eridani was setting when Sarek returned home

  from

  the capital. Spock was still in the garden, watching

  the

  sunset, but he sensed his father's presence even before

  Sarek came out to greet him.

  The meeting was uneventful; Sarek was kind, but

  distant. Perhaps the distance was intended to protect

  both of them.

  "It has been too long since your mother and I

  last

  MINDSHADOW

  saw you. Perhaps you will visit again under more

  pleasant circumstances."

  "Perhaps," Spock said.

  "I have arranged for a tutor... Tela'at

  Stalik will

  come tomorrow for the first lesson."

  Spock did not ask the subject; Stalik was

  well

  known, a follower of Kohlinahr, the

  discipline of total

  nonemotion. He had achieved the title of

  Tela'at, Elder, and that, along with his greatly

  advanced age,

  entitled him to much respect. Sarek could have

  scarcely chosen a more qualified instructor

  to teach

  Spock the mind rules. Spock bowed his head

  to indicate

  his acceptance and appreciation of his father's

  choice.

  The evening meal proceeded without too much discomfort,

  and afterward, as was the custom, the family

  sat in the main room. Spock noticed the

  conspicuous

  absence of the house guest, but restrained his

  curiosity.

  He sat on the sofa next to Amanda and fingered

  Sarek's harp softly. The instrument Was well

  over three hundred years old, older than a

  Vulcan lifetime,

  and its sound was richer and more resonant than that

  of Spock's harp. It had belonged to Sarek's

  father, and

  the wood from which it was hewn was no longer

  widely available. Spock thought of his own harp

  with

  shame, and wondered if the damage could ever be

  repaired.

  There was the sound of a door opening and closing,

  and T'Pala appeared, wearing a black cape

  with the

  hood thrown back. She spoke breathlessly, as

  though

  she had been running.

  "Forgive me," she said to the three of them. "The