Star Trek - Pandora Principle

by Pandora Principle

"NO!" Saavik scowled and ducked behind Spock, narrowly escaping a pat on the head. The Boys looked on enviously.

  "Shy little thing, isn't she!"

  "Not. precisely."

  "But so good with babies! Just a little visit? Not today? Well, then soon." At last they departed, taking turns holding, hugging, and kissing Baby, whose gender was never alluded to.

  Spock took a moment to recover from the encounter, then turned to Saavik with a number of things on his mind. He began with the easiest. "You were interrupting, Saavik."

  "I spea-kings first. You in-ta-rup-tings me! They wants it, Spock, and it so stupid." Puzzled, she watched until they were out of sight.

  "They are its own people. The child belongs with them. and you have people of your own. On Vulcan. Do you want to find them too?"

  "Why?" she asked suspiciously. "Theygo lost?"

  "No. But you belong together."

  "They notfinds me. I notgo lost." She gazed at him, eyes dark and solemn. "You notwants me too, Spock? Be-cause I in-ta-rupt? Be-cause I makes you tells me things? You wants mego a-way?"

  "No, Saavikam. We need not speak of it again."

  "If Igo lost, yougo finds me?"

  "Yes, Saavikam. I will."

  "Well, if yougo lost, Igo finds you too. But you trynot go lost, Spock. And I trynot in-ta-rupt anymore. Tells me somethings new now! Firsttime!"

  "Indeed. You have expressed a wish to join Starfleet, so-"

  "Not a wish! It what I do! Ex-cuse me."

  "So you must learn to follow our most important rule. Now listen carefully, Saavikam. It is called the Prime Directive."

  Spock's sense of impending doom gradually gave way to the daily marathon of life with Saavik. She was energy in constant motion. She possessed formidable intelligence, acute perception, and a ruthlessly logical mind. Her moods were turbulent, her attention span exhausting, and she was even more compulsively curious than himself. He found he enjoyed her company. He hadn't expected that. Or to begin telling tales of his captain and his ship and all the worlds and peoples he had seen, night after night as they watched the stars. To teach her, he told himself. And had he admitted it, to see-just once-if she would smile. But Saavik never smiled. And if she cried, he never saw it.

  And Spock found something else, which he didn't examine too closely: the respect and trust of someone who needed him, who needed precisely what he had to offer, who never asked for what he could not give. Sympathy and sentiment were of no use to her at all. Saavik required information-constant, endless, complete information-and Spock possessed an inexhaustible supply of that. Saavik gave him something in return, a thing so simple, so rare that he had never found it in his life: acceptance. Unemotional, matter-of-fact acceptance of himself exactly as he was. She never judged him as the Vulcans did (and as Spock judged himself) by a rigid code of correct behavior. She never watched and waited as the humans did for him to slip, to betray a trace of feeling, to "be human". to fail. What did she know of humans or of Vulcans? She was only Saavik, and Spock was only Spock, who answered questions. Spock always answered. He found he couldn't help it.

  But once he did come very close. Near the end of that year one quiet afternoon in the country, Saavik glanced up from her tricorder, pointed out across the field, and said:

  "Look, Spock! Rabbits!"

  "Yes," he murmured, eyes on his journal, "introduced for the predators after the drought. Terran, Oryctolagus cuniculus; family Leporidae, order Lagomorpha, class Mammalia, subphylum-"

  "What are they doing?"

  ". mating, Saavik. Subphylum Vertebrata, phylum-"

  "To make more rabbits? But they have too many already!" She frowned, propped her chin on her hands, and observed the process critically. Spock contemplated the cloud formations and wished for rain. "Vulcans do mating. Are there too many Vulcans, Spock?"

  "No, Saavik.". and no rain in sight.

  "Why are there too many rabbits, but not too many Vulcans?"

  Yes, a logical mind. Spock addressed himself at length to various species' population problems: gestation periods, number of young at each birth, and frequency of mating. "Rabbits," he concluded, returning to his journal, "mate as often as every six weeks, whereas Vulcans must mate only once every seven years."

  "Must?" she fastened on the word like a bad taste in her mouth. A poor choice; she had never cared for it. "Must?"

  ". Vulcan males. must. Yes."

  "But that might be inconvenient!" This word, however, was her current favorite. "What if they don't want to? What if they're busy doing something else? What if." Spock put it as gently as he could, but Saavik's face went pale. ". Die? We will die if-"

  "Not unless, that is. females. seldom die. Do not distress yourself, Saavikam. It is. different for you." I am doing this badly, he thought. Perhaps a study tape, at a more appropriate-

  "Then you go do that mating right away, Spock! So you won't die! When did you do it last? What kind of Vulcans did you make? And where are they?" She looked about as if they might appear in the field along with the rabbits. Spock got to his feet abruptly.

  "Saavik, we must go now. It is growing late."

  "No it isn't. And this is important. I want to know-"

  "Do not argue, Saavik," said Commander Spock of the starship Enterprise. "Now put on your shoes and come along."

  "No. I prefer not to put on my shoes and come along," she informed him, scowling. "That would be inconvenient. I want to know about making Vulcans-and what you did with yours!" She sat on the ground glaring up at him. Spock glared back.

  "You are being deliberately difficult, Saavik!" The instant he said it, he knew it wasn't true. She was deeply frightened.

  "You say I am a Vulcan, but-" her voice shook, "-but you won't say what will happen to me! Why is that a bad question?"

  And then it all came back to him, another afternoon seen through seven-year-old eyes: hot Vulcan sun streaming in the window, sand outside shimmering in the heat, the strangeness in his father's voice. Tomorrow Spock must go to see T'Pring; it was all arranged. They would touch each other's minds; they would meet again someday. and then, Sarek told him why. Motes of dust had floated, trapped in their sunbeams. The sand outside still shimmered in the heat, but it would never be the same again. The sand, the sun, his father. after that day, nothing was the same.

  Spock knelt down beside her. "There are no bad questions, Saavikam, only complicated ones. And personal ones, which we shall discuss tomorrow. I do not know how it will be for you. I only know how it was for me. If I tell you," he bargained patiently, "will you promise not to argue and come home now?"

  Wide-eyed, she scrambled to her feet. "Must I wear my shoes?"

  "No, just. try not to interrupt." They left the field and walked along the lane in the deepening shadows of late afternoon. And very quietly, as though it all happened to someone else a long time ago, Spock told her the truth. Saavik didn't interrupt once. She walked beside him in troubled silence for a while.

  "I am glad you did not die, Spock. You or your captain."

  "I, too, Saavikam."

  "She was a bitch!"

  "That is, among other things, inaccurate. The term refers-"

  "Oh, I know what it refers-and that's what she was!

  What she did was bad!" Saavik stopped in the lane and stamped her foot, temper brewing. "You say it is bad to hurt people, but she made people hurt each other! That is much badder! She was a bitch!" Spock didn't trust himself to comment; he came perilously close to agreeing with her. "And why didn't she do her own fighting?"

  "Because. it is not allowed. Men do not fight women."

  "Why not? That's stupid! I would have fought you myself! I can fight anyone-kill them, too! Except," she added virtuously, "I don't do killing anymore. And I won't do that mating either!"

  "I quite understand. You have a long time to decide." Shadows were gathering in the lane as they started off once more. Saavik walked closer beside him, kicking her toes in the dust.

  "I
just decided, Spock. My Vulcans would not be good ones."

  "Now why is that, Saavikam?" he asked in spite of himself.

  She began counting reasons on her fingers. "They would argue. And be deliberately difficult. And interrupt, and curse, and hate to wear their shoes. And ask com-pli-ca-ted questions." She looked up at him wisely. "They would be very inconvenient, you know."

  Spock's eyebrow actually ached, and it was a long moment before he spoke. "Not. necessarily," he said.

  But through that year of Saavik's questions, some complicated questions of his own went unanswered-even more puzzling than how he could "recognize" this child he never saw before. And the most baffling question of all was Saavik herself. On that world where children killed to save themselves, why had she killed to save a stranger? Who taught her those words in Vulcan? Why her constant obsession with the stars? And now, despite his sincere approval of her progress, why did she attack her studies with such driven fierceness, as if the unknown were the enemy itself? And why, when she prowled the woods at night unafraid, why did terror leap into her eyes at any mention of the word sleep? Saavik would recount her discoveries to him in relentless detail, admit to him (with embarrassment) her uncertainties and failures, then trustingly follow his advice. She confided to him her troubles of the present and her aspirations for the future. But Saavik would never talk about her past. Never. And Spock would never insist.

  A year was not so long after all. He prepared her for the day when he would leave. But when the moment came, he found himself less prepared than she. For the first time in his life, Spock thought about returning from a mission, wondered whether or not he would survive. She had no one else, and that was a disturbing thought.

  Back on board the Enterprise, he opened his case to unpack his few belongings and found things not quite as he'd left them. Tucked in at the bottom under all the folded clothes, Saavik had hidden away her knife. Spock stood in the privacy of his cabin turning it in his hand, remembering every word of their good-bye.

  ". but why can't I come with you on your ship?"

  "Because you are still too little, Saavikam. You must attend the Academy first. We have discussed this many times."

  "I don't like being little!"

  "Then eat your food and learn your lessons. Time will do the rest. Send me your questions every day, so I can send you answers and study tapes. Soon you will travel on a ship-in the stars. When the time comes, I will tell you exactly what to do, and I shall be waiting for you. A new world, Saavikam, with a real school. You will like that."

  "Yes. But I don't need that family to take care of me."

  "We know that, but they do not. And it is only for a short while. So be polite. Those children respect you, Saavikam. You must remember to be gentle with them."

  "I will, Spock. I'll remember."

  "And time passes more quickly than you think. Until we meet again, Saavik-live long. And prosper."

  "Live long and prosper, Spock. I'll learn everything, I promise! And I'll stop being little! And someday I will come on your ship! I am going to do it, Spock! You will see."

  ". to Mr. Spock, bridge to Mr. Spock," the comm was saying.

  "Spock here."

  "Sir, a shuttle's asking to dock on your authority," Uhura said with a trace of amusement. "The pilot says a Cadet Saavik requests boarding permission."

  "Thank you, Commander," Spock replied, with grave formality and no amusement at all. "Please acknowledge. Say that permission is granted. And that Enterprise welcomes Cadet Saavik aboard."

  Chapter Four

  I AM HERE. really, truly, here! Saavik's pulse was racing.

  The moment she stepped onto the bridge, all Spock's stories came alive, in the very place they all began. It was here Spock watched the Tholians weave a web while his captain was trapped in nonexistence; here the doctor fell on his own hypo and nearly changed the Universe; here officers lay dying when Khan cut off their life-support; and here the captain played some high-stakes poker when his ship had only ten minutes to live. And hundreds of other things happened here, which Spock had told and (when she begged him) retold over the years. She knew them all by heart-and wanted to hear them all again. Once he even sent her a Starfleet training tape of this bridge on an uneventful day, and she played it over and over, memorizing every face, every inch of every panel she could see, longing to touch those consoles herself, to be one of those people, to belong on this ship in the stars.

  So it didn't matter now that the people were all gone and the viewscreens were all dark and they were hanging anchored in a berth in Spacedock. Just standing here at last, on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, Saavik might as well have been flying.

  An emotional reaction, she scolded herself, to the best first time I ever had! I won't show it. I belong to Starfleet now. I have my own number, my own uniform. I'll remember to say "Mister" Spock, and I'll do nothing to disgrace him, I swear. no, I won't do that either. and the people weren't all gone. Someone was sitting at the comm station, her chin resting on her hands. She appeared to be meditating, but Spock went over and spoke to her.

  "Commander Uhura. This is my student, Saavik. She is in her first term at the Academy. Saavik, this is Lieutenant-Commander Uhura, our chief communications officer."

  "Live long and prosper, Lieutenant-Commander Uhura."

  Uhura looked up into the most earnest, intense face she'd ever seen, and one of the most beautiful. Long, dark hair framed high cheekbones, upswept eyebrows, and curled behind delicate Vulcan ears. Black lashes fringed enormous eyes that were burning with curiosity and a very un-Vulcan excitement. The girl stood tall, thin, impeccably correct in the trousers and jacket of her red cadet's uniform; and the sturdy old tricorder she carried was in a brand-new case. Except for her solemn, aloof dignity she seemed very young. Her eyes widened in surprise and studied Uhura mercilessly. Uhura couldn't keep from smiling.

  "Welcome aboard, Saavik. First time on the Enterprise?"

  "Yes. You invented the Rosecrypt. It is remarkable. How did you think of it?"

  "Oh, well." Uhura found herself answering, "I got tired of the Romulans and Klingons breaking all our codes. It began as a game-but they don't teach that to cadets, do they?"

  "No. It was the subject of a study tape from Commander Spock, dealing with innovations in the encryption of secure transmissions over subspace frequencies and creative applications of computer logic. It was most informative." Saavik glanced at Spock; he was gazing calmly into the middle distance, so she pursued the subject. "What fascinates me is that I know precisely how it works, yet I cannot break the cipher."

  Uhura was dying to see that study tape.

  ". and it began as a game? Interesting. Games are considered 'fun,' are they not? I am studying that." Saavik frowned and continued her intense scrutiny. Uhura tried not to appear amused.

  "Well, games can be a lot of things. But yes, generally they're fun. Saavik? Is something wrong?" she asked gently, wondering if her hair had come undone.

  "No," said Saavik. "But I have never seen anyone so aesthetically pleasing. I was unaware of that quality in humans. Oh." She bit her lower lip, frowned, and looked to Spock again. "I believe that was a personal remark."

  "Several," he acknowledged.

  "I apologize," she said. "I did not mean to be impolite."

  "Don't worry, Saavik," Uhura beamed, delighted. "That's not impolite where I come from."

  "I dare say Commander Uhura will survive the experience," Spock murmured. "Shall we explore the rest of the bridge?"

  "Yes." Saavik nodded eagerly, then remembered something. "I appreciated our conversation, Lieutenant-Commander Uhura. I would like to speak with you further, if time permits. I have a number of questions. I shall be on board until tomorrow."

  "Good, Saavik, I'd like that too. Do you have a cabin assignment yet?"

  "No. A cabin is unnecessary, since I do not plan to sleep. That would be a waste of time."

  "I see." Uhura gave Spock a sympat
hetic grin, but he seemed to find nothing out of the ordinary. "Then I'll see you later-and Saavik, have you ever looked in a mirror?"

  "Yes," she answered, obviously puzzled.

  "Well," smiled Uhura, "maybe you should look again."

  "I. shall." Saavik turned away in confusion to follow Spock around the bridge.

  At the science station she peered over Spock's shoulder as he demonstrated the sensors, then sat down to operate them herself, scanning ships in the dock and traffic patterns outside. Uhura overheard snatches of their conversation, which was conducted in low voices and in Vulcan.

  ". but what did she mean, Mr. Spock? Why should I look in a mirror? Is my appearance incorrect?"