Star Trek - Pandora Principle

by Pandora Principle

  "Oh, yes, that student of yours. I'll be back in a few hours. If there's time, I'd like to meet him."

  "Why, that would be. most interesting. Thank you."

  "Thank you, Spock."

  "Not necessary, Captain. I simply assisted you in carrying out your orders. That, of course, is my function."

  "Of course." And some things, thought Kirk gratefully, like the sun and the moon and Spock just never change-and whatever would I do if they did?" So how about seeing me off? Or do you need to get back to the bridge?"

  "I think not," said Spock, relieved to avoid conditions that had likely deteriorated in his absence. "I shall join you on the hangar deck. And if I may express an opinion, I am gratified that your prompt compliance with the admiral's directive will prevent unwarranted disruption in our routine. The loss of efficiency would be regrettable. Now, if you will excuse me, Captain."

  "Why certainly, Mr. Spock." Kirk watched the door close, then laughed aloud. Don't worry, I won't tell a soul-no one would believe me anyway. but for just a second there, he was positive that he'd seen his efficient, logical, imperturbable Mr. Spock. calmly pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat.

  When Spock called the bridge moments later, Uhura answered breezily: "Bridge, and I still don't know!"

  "Spock here. Commander, are you quite well?"

  "Just fine, Mr. Spock! No problems here!" There was a chorus of guffaws in the background. Prudently, he chose to ignore them.

  "Very well. The shore leave schedule is appearing now on all displays. You may wish to inform the crew."

  "Why, Mr. Spock! Has anyone ever told you you're a wizard?"

  "Certainly not, Commander. That would be preposterous." There was no magic involved in making a request of the ship's computer or in the one point five minutes it required to comply, without misunderstandings, temper tantrums, or exhausting exuberance. "Dismiss bridge personnel and yourself when your relief arrives."

  "Oh, I'll stay on, sir. I would 't wish this on anyone-and I feel fine now, really I do. Just fi-"

  "Indeed. How very commendable. I am expecting an arrival in twenty-six minutes. Please inform me when it signals and direct it to the hangar deck. Immediately, however, the captain requires transport planetside. When is the first shuttle available?"

  "About ten minutes, sir, but. it's on order for Dr. McCoy."

  "In that case it will do nicely. Direct it to the hangar deck as well and divert all other craft to airlocks."

  "Aye, sir. But, uh, what should I tell the doctor?"

  "You may tell him, Commander, that he is." the pause was filled with possibilities, ". outranked. Spock out."

  Fortunately, he never heard the doctor's response.

  Harper and DiMuro stood on the Romulan bridge, rereading the dispatch order and inspecting two bright objects placed side by side on the navigation station. The boxes looked identical: the same weaving lights in spiral patterns, the same changing rainbow hues, the same transparent surface.

  "Beats me, Fred. I've never seen anything like it."

  "Me neither. Does Mr. Spock say which one he wants?"

  "Nope. Just one, delivered by hand to Exo-Sci down at HQ-all the off-world artifacts get analyzed there. Most of this order deals with the transport specs: antigravs, no pressure changes, no transporter beams. He doesn't know what these are any more than we do."

  "Sure is picky, isn't he," DiMuro grumbled.

  "So I hear, but picky is Standard Operating Procedure when you don't know what you're dealing with." Harper activated the air cushion in a shipping container, lowered in a box on antigravs, sealed the lid and tagged it. Then he stared into the remaining one, wondering what was in there. "Wish Mom could see this. Due respect to Mr. Spock, but she's the specialist. It ticks her off how Starfleet gets first crack at things. Say, maybe-" He reached for his communicator.

  "C'mon, Harper, all the action's down in engineering!"

  "Take it easy, Fred-Commander Dorish? Harper here, sir. Mr. Spock's cargo's ready for the courier. We found four. They look like some sort of art form, but it's kinda hard to say without-"

  "Not our department, Harper. I need you boys down here-and that fellow with all the fingers."

  "Yes, sir. But could Life City take a look at one of these?"

  "Drumming up business for your mother, eh, Harper?"

  "Well, sir, she'd be happy to, and she has clearance. Should I check with Mr. Spock? It'll only take a minute."

  "No, I cleared his request, guess I can clear yours. If she doesn't mind, what could it hurt? I'll call it in. Your courier's docking now, so finish up and get down here."

  "Aye, sir-thank you, sir! Harper out. good old Dorish!" He began working on another container as he snapped his communicator shut. "Didn't go all regulation on me. Could've, too, because-"

  "Come on. You heard what the man said."

  "Slack off, Fred, we're waiting on that courier." He sealed the second box. Hi, Mom! he keyed on its tag, Fresh from the Romulan Empire! He didn't notice the ensign who strolled onto the bridge. But DiMuro perked up immediately.

  "Hello there! Can I help you?"

  Harper turned-and found himself staring at a young woman, his age (or maybe a year or two older), medium height, with a trim figure, soft brown curls, and a winsome face. Right now, the ensign was all business as she consulted the orders in her hand.

  "Yes, if you're Mr. Harper. I'm Korbet, and I'm supposed to. wow!" She peered around the dingy bridge. "A real live Romulan warship-what a hunk of junk!"

  "Sure is. Those Romulans are very predatory, you know. Now what's a nice girl like you doing on a bridge like-"

  "Fred. hi, I'm Harper. Don't mind him. Someone must've let him off his leash." She's pretty, he thought as she smiled. I'll bet she gets this all the time. At least she thinks it's funny.

  "That's okay." Korbet grinned. "Lots of people get affected by their surroundings." She and Harper laughed together, enjoying the joke. Then their eyes met, and they kept smiling at each other for no reason at all. Finally, blushing, Korbet collected herself. ". um. these go down to HQ? What are they?"

  "Huh? Oh, nobody knows. This one to HQ." How could anyone's eyes be that blue? ". and this one goes out to Life City. Dorish is calling in your orders now. Gee, I'm sorry about the extra trip." his voice trailed away. He couldn't stop smiling, and she kept smiling back.

  "No problem. They're predicting storms over 'Frisco tonight, but the desert'll be real nice flying." Very slowly, she checked the tags and transport specs; they took some time examining each other's duty logs. "Well, um. will that be all. Mr. Harper?"

  "Bobby. Yeah, I'm afraid. I mean, thanks, uh."

  "Jessie." The blue eyes twinkled. "You're welcome."

  Harper bent down to switch on the containers' antigravs, and DiMuro salvaged what was left of his ego for a parting shot.

  "You be careful with 'em, Korbet-or Mr. Spock'll get you."

  "I'm always careful," she said, guiding her cargo into the lift. "So tell him not to worry, whoever he is." She waved at Harper through the closing doors. He turned to DiMuro, smitten.

  "Oh. she's the one, Fred! She's perfect! She's smart, she's beautiful-she likes me! She'll even like Obo, I can tell-don't ask me how, but. oh, no!" Harper snapped back to reality. "Where is Obo? I haven't seen it since-oh, this is awful."

  "We'll be on report, that's what's awful!"

  ". could be anywhere by now! Aw, I told it not to wander off. Obo?" He searched frantically, hoping it was somewhere on the bridge. At last he heard a faint, miserable hiccup.

  Obo sat in a disconsolate heap, wedged under the comm station, arms wrapped around itself and eyes blinking distrustfully. "We go hhhome, Bobby!" it whimpered fretfully.

  "No, we just got here. Hey, what's wrong? You sick or something?" He knelt to take a closer look.

  "Bbbad place, Bobby! Go home nnnow!"

  DiMuro groaned. "Jeez, this is all we need-Obo with a case of the vapors. Can you imagine on a ship under fi
re-"

  "Stuff it, Fred. Listen, Obo, we can't go home. We've got work to do. Now, do you want to stay here? All by yourself?"

  "No!" it wailed, terrified. "Stay with you!"

  Obo extended an arm out to Harper, who pulled it to its feet. The Belandrid was scared, Harper realized. "Wonder what's bothering it," he wondered out loud as the three of them piled into the lift. "There's always a reason-"

  "Who cares? This whole thing's been a big waste of time."

  "No it wasn't, Fred. We were just doing a favor-and like Dorish said, what could it hurt?"

  It is illogical, mused Spock, to look forward to events. They seldom unfold as planned. But as he watched his captain's shuttle depart and contemplated the empty landing bay before him, Spock admitted that he was looking forward to this night.

  It was a long way from the dust of Hellguard to the hangar deck of the Enterprise. Only he and Saavik knew how far. Tonight people would meet a cadet on her first tour of a Federation starship, find nothing unusual except that she was a Vulcan, and never know why their easy assumptions were the highest form of praise. And even as he looked forward, Spock couldn't help looking back-to a very different night, only six years ago.

  She had dismantled his computer that morning and broken his last padd and stylus that afternoon. Believing himself prepared for this occasion, Spock produced a large stack of paper, a box of graphite pencils, and a hand-drawn chart of intricate runes. The evening lesson was a single sentence:

  My name is Saavik, written in Vulcan.

  The pencils snapped. The papers tore. Spock's parentage was maligned, and the gods were invoked with increasing venom. Unaware that these were merely storm warnings, he met each outburst serenely with a fresh pencil, a fresh piece of paper, and implacable encouragement.

  "You can make your name on the computer, Saavikam. Now you are learning to write it yourself. Do not be impatient. For everything, there is a-"

  "HATES YOU FIRSTTIMES!" she shrieked, unleashing a barrage of pencils, papers, fists and screams. "HATES YOU STUPID SONABASTARD WORDS! HATES YOU!" She hurled the chart across the room and knocked its stand to the floor. "GO, SPOCK! GO A-WAY!"

  "Saavik. You are overtired, and I believe that-" the pencil box whizzed past his head, shattered against the wall, "-has made you cross. Come along now. It is time to go to sleep."

  "NOT! NOTSLEEPS!" Her eyes went wild with fear, and she scrambled over the table out of reach, poised to run the opposite way if he came after her. "YOUGO STUPID SLEEPS! YOUGO WRITES YOU STUPID SELF! YOUGO A-WAY, SPOCK! GO A-WAY!"

  "Very well, Saavik, there is no need for further damage." He eyed the armchair she was swinging above her head. "Our lesson is over." He turned, dignity unruffled, and left; the chair sailed across the room and splintered as it smashed against the closing door. It was a long night. Silences were punctuated by spates of cursing and bashing, followed by more silence. Spock lay on his bed, staring into the dark and wondering where he had gone wrong.

  In the morning he opened her door to a scene of devastation, amazed there could have been so many breakable objects in one room. He waded through the ankle-deep debris and shreds of crumpled paper to the table on which Saavik was curled asleep, clutching a mangled page in her hand. He eased it from her fingers. The words were malformed, torturously carved, but they were legible and correctly spelled: SPOCK NOTGO MY NAME IS SAAVIK.

  He looked at the words and at the permanent frown on Saavik's sleeping face. He looked at the room. He wondered where they would be living after Saavik was required to write a paragraph. And he folded the paper carefully and put it away.

  Spock knew nothing of children, except that he had once been one, had managed to get over it, and saw no need to dwell upon things that could not be helped. It was one thing to save a life, quite another to undertake its education-for a reason he could never explain to anyone, least of all to himself: the deep and disturbing conviction that this small destiny must not be left to chance. More to the point, Saavik would tolerate no one else, and no one else would tolerate her. At Gamma Eri she refused to claim her Vulcan kin and attacked other children at every opportunity. So Spock took a year's leave (time to make her presentable, make her change her mind-a very long time) and took Saavik elsewhere.

  Dantria IV, a remote, bucolic world, was ideally suited to his purpose. Its gentle, gray-skinned inhabitants seldom wondered at the tall man and darting child who lived in a house beyond the forest. Spock wondered a great deal. Unaccustomed to proceeding without theory or expertise, he had the sensation of teetering constantly on the brink of disaster. Knowing about children would not have helped in this case, so he applied himself to knowing about Saavik-and took life one crisis at a time.

  She often demanded to see her knife, particularly when being chided for some offense, and she knew exactly where it was kept: in a box, high up on a shelf. Spock always showed it to her, reminded her she must never use it, and tried not to think what would happen if she did. But he could never bring himself to lock the box. In fact, he treated Saavik the same way he treated everyone else-with kindness, dignity, and respect. And in time a curious thing began to happen: Saavik began trying to imitate his courteous approach. She even began to obey him, in her own fashion and after exhausting all the whys, which seemed to him a fair exchange. If that did not exactly serve the cause of Vulcan propriety, it served Spock and Saavik well enough. And she kept her word: she didn't kill again, but she didn't give up hunting either. Not for food-now there was more than she could be coaxed to eat-but this planet teemed with creatures she'd never seen before, and Saavik took to bringing them home alive. She led a steady procession of Dantrian wildlife in and out of the house: rodents, reptiles, birds-and, one harrowing morning, a child.

  Hearing her voice, Spock stepped outside and stared at what he saw: a gray-skinned, wispy-haired Dantrian infant (of indeterminate gender and no verbal skills) tethered firmly to a tree by a rope around its waist. It sat bewildered and sucking on its fingers, while Saavik (hands clasped behind her back) paced to-and-fro, instructing it in the rudiments of behavior.

  ". and now I tells how you be a Vul-can! Notkills anyones anymore! Noteats lit-tul an-ni-mals! Stops you cur-sings! Wears you shoes! Trynot in-ta-rupt! Be la-gee-kal, like Spock! Notnot! You stupid! Noteats own fin-gers!" she cried, exasperated, and plucked them none too gently from its mouth. "Not la-gee-kal! You eats someones else's!" Deprived of its only sustenance, the child began to wail, and Spock hastily intervened.

  "Where did you get this, Saavik?"

  "Finds it! Bro-ken!" she complained, as would any aggrieved consumer who had acquired a faulty product. "And stupid! It eat on own fin-gers!" she shouted over the screams.

  "Allow it to do so," he advised, wincing at the intolerable sound, "so it will stop making that noise." She pried open a tiny fist, located the appropriate digits, and stuck them back in its mouth where they lay ignored, while the cries grew shriller and more insistent. Spock and Saavik stared at each other in mutual dismay. "Perhaps it is hungry. We must ascertain where it belongs and return it-immediately. And carefully, Saavik! Do not damage it!" Abduction, kidnapping. how would he explain-"No, no! Not upside down, Saavik! I am sure that is not correct!" But given this new perspective on life, the child ceased crying and began to squeal and chortle with delight.

  At that propitious moment the search party arrived: two small guilty boys and a frazzled mother, all delirious with relief. Grasping the infant firmly by its ankles, Saavik started forward.

  "Saavik, let me-" but a joyful reunion was in progress.

  "Oh, look, they found Baby! And Baby is all right! Baby is so happy! Isn't that wonderful!"

  "I do it! I finds it!" Saavik presented Baby, drew herself up proudly, and ignored Spock's quelling glare.

  "My, wasn't that clever! Aren't you a clever little girl!"

  "Yes I are! It notgo a-way! I tells it things and-"

  "She meant no harm, Madam. She brought your child home to-"


  "I ties it on a rope and tells it things and-"

  "What a good idea! Better than trusting the Boys! The Boys took Baby out in the woods! The Boys went off and forgot it! The Boys just would be boys, wouldn't they!" The Boys were prodded forward and dolefully agreed. Saavik was bursting with her news.

  "And you knows what it do? It eat on own-"

  "Excuse me, Saavik. Madam, your child appeared hungry, but-"

  "IT EAT ON OWN FIN-GERS!"

  "Yes, dear, a Very Bad Habit, and Baby must be made to stop. So sorry for the trouble! So grateful! What can ever repay-"

  "Nothing, nothing at all, Madam-truly."

  "Why, the nice little girl must come for a visit! Would the nice little girl like that? A nice little visit?"