Vulcan's Forge

by Josepha Sherman

  The doctor raised his glass in appreciation. "Absent friends." The old toast was the most military thing about him.

  Spock knew he must comply or risk a serious breach of custom. "Absent friends," he responded and took a meager sip of the burning ale.

  "I miss him too, Spock."

  A flash of memory: the sharp stab of grief, logical but no less painful, the memorial ceremony, with humans allowed to show that grief while he, he must keep his face forever properly impassive . . . Spock glanced up from his glass. "What would you have me say, Doctor? One cannot change the past."

  His cool tone, Spock thought, would surely provoke McCoy into a rant. But if the usual diatribe about Spock's coldness brought the doctor any ease of heart, he was welcome to it.

  But McCoy said nothing, and there was a suspicious warmth in his eyes that Spock recognized as human sympathy. "It grows late," Spock said. "This is not your watch. Should you not be sleeping?"

  "What about you? I've checked computer access, Spock. You haven't slept for—"

  "Ten days, fifteen hours, and thirty-five minutes—"

  "Stop!" McCoy flung up his free hand. "You haven't slept since we left Tarin Four."

  "Really, Doctor." Spock raised an eyebrow to the position his crew called (not to his face, though they never did realize the efficiency of Vulcan hearing) "eyebrow on stun." "I must protest your cross-training as a computer hacker. I had no idea you were so accomplished."

  McCoy flushed awkwardly. "Access time is tied to medical records," he admitted. "In case of obsessions, compulsions, people spending all their off-hours plugged in. Including," he reverted to his unwelcome subject with a vengeance, "this ship's captain. I remember the last time you played sleepless wonder."

  "We returned home safely then, did we not?"

  McCoy glared. "You're worried about this friend of yours."

  "David Rabin is a very distinguished officer. He was a capable individual even before he entered Starfleet. Did I ever tell you," Spock continued, calculatedly offering diversionary tactics, "of when I met him . . . and his mother, who was at that time a Starfleet captain as well?"

  He could all but feel McCoy restraining himself from chasing after the story. "Nevertheless," the doctor continued resolutely, "you're worried about him. Why, Spock?"

  "Because Captain Rabin is worried, and I trust him. Obsidian is of strategic importance because of its location on the border of the Neutral Zone."

  He called up the star map and turned the screen to allow McCoy to see it.

  "That star's got the jitters," McCoy grumbled. "Naming it Loki was bad cess. Do you have any idea of the incidence of lethal mutations on that planet?" he asked, almost accusingly. "Carcinomas? Melanomas? Place makes metastasis an occupational hazard."

  Wordlessly, Spock handed the physician the data he had downloaded. McCoy practically grabbed the printout from him. "A bribe, Spock?"

  "Data are never a bribe, Doctor. Let us call it a briefing."

  "Didn't have time to get this from Richards, though. Micromanaging, eh Spock? Science officer wouldn't thank you for stepping in. Oh well, every man—all right, every Vulcan—yields to temptation every now and then."

  "I judged that I could approximate your requirements more closely than Science Officer Richards. Please, examine the data."

  "This is another reason Rabin's worried, isn't it?" McCoy asked, looking up after a time, his voice compassionate. "Obsidian's a low-tech world. Only reason it tolerates a Federation outpost at all is for the medical technology. And maybe the water engineering and agronomy."

  Spock highlighted a graph on-screen. "In the generation since that outpost has been operational, the average age of the townspeople of Obsidian—we have no way of calculating population trends for the nomads—has risen two years. That is a significant change. Another generation or so . . ."

  "So it's not just tactics. It isn't even loss of face if the Romulans—"

  "No evidence of Romulan interference has been reported."

  "I don't believe in the tooth fairy, Spock!"

  Spock sipped his ale rather than pander to the doctor's improbabilities about dentition and the supernatural. "It would be a loss if the Federation were compelled to abandon the outpost."

  "It's the waste that's scaring your friend, isn't it, Spock? The loss of life. The children who will never have a chance at life, much less health. The people who will never be without misery." McCoy's voice thinned in pain.

  Spock turned away, remembering Rabin's mobile face, smeared with grit from Vulcan's deep desert, a trail of dried blood at one corner of his mouth, tears making clean streaks in the mess: "I cry because I'm relieved. I'm proud to care so much."

  McCoy poured himself more ale. "Spock, you're a phony. Don't tell me your heart doesn't bleed for these people."

  Spock glanced at him, face a cool mask. "In diagnosis, if nothing else, you are the logical peer of a Vulcan. However, if you seek to elicit a reaction for which I am not equipped, you are in error."

  "Tell it to the stars." McCoy drained his glass, then set it down with a bang. Spock lowered his own drink more gently. His aim, rather to his bemusement, was not as unerring as it should have been.

  "Function's deteriorating, Spock!" McCoy pounced. "Are you going to sleep? I'll make a bargain with you. You sleep now, and you can sleep here, not in sickbay. Though how you can sleep in this heat . . ."

  "One does not bargain with duty," Spock pointed out. "And you had best acclimatize yourself to 'this heat' if you are to accompany me to Obsidian's surface."

  "Try and keep me away," said McCoy, a hunter on the trail of his most hated quarry: suffering.

  "Doctor, I would never interfere in the performance of your duty."

  McCoy tentatively raised a hand, then let it fall back to his side.

  You almost forgot, did you not? Had I been Jim, you would have patted me on the shoulder.

  But one did not casually touch Vulcans. "It's okay, Spock," McCoy continued as though that awkward little moment had never occurred, "I won't tell anyone that your heart's in the right place. Assuming that the right place is where normal people have their livers."

  He rose. "Get some rest, Captain. We've got more work than any two men, or Vulcans, can handle facing us on Obsidian. Someone, I forget who, once said that 'the desert is a forge on which to try the' . . . hell, I forget. Soul, probably."

  A shock of memory surprised Spock. Forge, indeed. Long ago, he and Rabin had been hammered out on another such forge. "You have convinced me, Doctor. However, without belaboring the point, may I remind you that I am better able than you to tolerate extremes of heat—or of sleep deprivation?"

  "I'd like to see what your subconscious comes up with when you're really sleep-deprived," McCoy grumbled. Spock sat waiting. McCoy usually delivered his true message just when he seemed about to leave.

  "Spock, forget I'm your doctor for a minute. Pretend I'm your friend. I'm telling you, as a friend: Dammit, get some sleep."

  He slouched out, muttering to himself, "Hypertamoxifen, recombinant interferon, genetic splicing . . ."

  It would be profoundly tempting to anticipate McCoy's research. But McCoy's points about micromanaging and usurping his officers' functions had made sense, and Spock had given him what amounted to an implied promise that he would comply.

  Replacing the lytherette on its wall mount, Spock darkened the cabin and stretched out on his bed. If the bridge needed him, he was a signal away. He hoped—emotion though that was—that they would.

  And then, drifting at last into sleep, hoped that at least for a short while they would not.

  THREE

  Vulcan, Sarek's Estate

  Day 3, Fourth Week of Tasmeen,

  Year 2247

  The view from his father's estate was tranquil in Vulcan's early morning, the air still cool and sweet with the scent of desert vegetation, the vast red sweep of desert and mountains still blue with shadow. Spock, already nearly his father's heigh
t at seven Vulcan standard years—seventeen Terran years—though not yet grown out of a boy's gangliness, stood on the wide stone terrace trying to empty his mind of all but the tranquility before him . . . trying but not quite succeeding.

  This was illogical. He had survived his kahs-wan trial, proved himself a true Vulcan despite his mixed heritage. There should be no reason for doubt.

  And yet the question remained. Surely it was not illogical to wonder about himself? Spock had studied genetics as part of his schooling; he was quite well aware of his own hybrid complexity. But a reasoning being was more than a mere assemblage of genes.

  What, then, am I?

  His father would probably say that introspection was an interesting mental discipline only as long as it did not devolve into unseemly self-absorption. His mother would probably smile that cryptically amused human smile of hers and murmur in Earth English something about "teenage angst."

  Neither view was particularly helpful.

  So. The question should be, perhaps, less "What am I" than "What am I to be?" Spock was sure that he lacked the temperament to become a teacher as his mother had been, and while the thought of pure scientific research was intriguing, it did not seem right for him as a career, either. To be an ambassador like his father . . . again, intriguing—but that was Sarek's path, not his. A fact, Spock thought, that Sarek could not or would not see.

  No. Calmness. Anger is a dangerous emotion.

  A flash of color caught the young Vulcan's attention: a lara, a desert bird dazzlingly blue against the red sands, soared up into the brightening sky, racing upward on a thermal. Spock's gaze followed it up, up, climbing as though fleeing the known, the safe—

  Ridiculous fancy. Illogical.

  And yet, were it not illogical to do so, he might almost envy the bird its freedom. The thought of seeing strange new places—

  "Spock."

  He just barely managed to properly compose his face, to turn without unseemly haste. "Father. Is it time?"

  Sarek, an impressive figure in his somber red ambassadorial finery, nodded. "Come, my son."

  Private—and indeed often public—meetings were traditionally held in the early morning, one of the coolest parts of the desert day. Sered, Spock knew, had once been a classmate of his father's at the Vulcan Science Academy, though the two had never been close. Now Sered was Sarek's political antagonist, one who advocated Vulcan's withdrawal from the Federation.

  Withdrawal, Spock thought with the certainty of his nearly seventeen years, is hardly a wise or a logical position.

  But of course it was not his place to speak up. It was his place merely to watch and witness as Sered came to their home to debate with Sarek.

  Why? Sarek does not legally or morally require a witness. Does my father think me his ambassadorial apprentice? I am not, I will not be, that.

  As they reentered their home, Sarek commented, as though aware of his son's thoughts, "Sered always was a brilliant student, brilliant and philosophical. Quite charming. Deliberately so. Do not let him charm you, my son."

  "No."

  Sarek raised a wry brow but said nothing more. Spock stood politely to one side as Sered was ushered into his father's quiet, simply furnished study—a table, chairs, several cases holding books and scrolls and one elegant wall hanging in muted brown and sepia tones by the famous scholar-artist T'Resik. The young Vulcan, still keeping out of the way as was proper, listened to the two political rivals greet each other with just the proper amount of cool civility.

  They are saying a good deal in only a few words, yet at the same time never really saying anything. Spock marveled at that bizarre juggling-with-words skill, then reminded himself that of course they were masters at such. That was part of how the game of diplomacy was played.

  It is not my game. Despite what my father may believe.

  But one could learn from any experience, and Spock determined to learn what he could from this, all the while trying to study Sered without being noticed.

  Sered was worthy of study. He was a striking figure, taller than Sarek, lean almost to the point of thinness, with the clean, sharp features of a noble from Vulcan's distant past. He was dressed almost too austerely in a simple brown robe of archaic cut that emphasized the link with the past.

  Arrogance, Spock thought in disapproval, then chided himself: Illogical to judge merely on physical appearance.

  "Colleague Sered, this is my son, Spock. Spock, this is the scholar Sered."

  Spock started at hearing his name suddenly spoken. He bowed politely, then straightened to find himself caught by Sered's intense stare, a stare that seemed to sum up all he was and would ever be—and which found him lacking.

  "He does look truly of our people," Sered said after a moment. "I see nothing of humanity in his appearance."

  Sarek's almost imperceptible crook of a hand sent Spock back to his corner, struggling to keep his face impassive. What Sered had said had most definitely been intended as an insult. Why? The only logical reasons could be to force Sarek from his calm—or to display deliberate prejudice.

  Sarek never stirred. "There is no shame in my son's parentage," he said, totally without expression. "Nor is there shame in that of my lady wife."

  "A fine and sadly rare thing," Sered retorted. "To see so strong a bond, I mean. Even if perhaps it is—this is not meant as an insult, Sarek, but as simple fact—even if it is misplaced."

  "How so?"

  "Ah, Sarek, you know exactly what I mean. We have had similar discussions in the past."

  "And came to no satisfactory conclusions."

  "I grant that. But you cannot deny the truth: Ours is a long and proud heritage worthy of protection."

  "And I grant that. Your point, Sered?"

  "My point is that some of that precious heritage has already been lost."

  "Because of our alliance with the other Federation worlds."

  "In part, yes. And yes, of course we have debated this before. You cannot deny that diffusion and assimilation are both perils when one deals with outsiders."

  "We have, indeed, debated this before."

  "Of course. And I will not waste our time in going over old ground. More important for our people than outside influences is that we not let ouselves forget Surak's teachings." Sered gave the smallest hiss of disapproval, barely audible. "Too much has already been lost through misinterpretations and false doctrine. Yes, and almost worse than this warping of logic has been the sundering of our kind."

  "Those who abandoned Vulcan, you mean." In Sarek's voice was the faintest warning hint of we have been here before as well.

  "Exactly. Think of it, Sarek. Consider it well. Our own cousins are lost to us—unless we turn back from the treacherous path we walk."

  Sarek's slight lift of an eyebrow spoke volumes of skepticism. "To do what? Rejoin a people who have chosen the path of violence?"

  "Ah, my colleague, consider this: Our ways have become stale, rigid, far from the healthy whole proposed by Surak. Can you deny this?"

  "Yes."

  "You spend so much time in your ambassadorial duties—no shame in that, but you do not see, you do not know what happens outside the many embassies. Ours is, indeed, a stagnant culture. While who can say what our cousins have become?" Sered paused, the faintest hint of a charming smile barely touching his lips. "Can you honestly claim you are not curious? Come, Sarek, tell me: Do you not wish to see what glories our sundered cousins might have accomplished?"

  "Of course," Sarek retorted dryly, "but not if it involves surrendering all that we are and may become."

  Sered stepped back from the confrontation, turning to study the intricate wall hanging. "T'Resik's work, is it not?"

  "Indeed."

  "A most logically woven piece. See how the twist of fiber here leads the eye to follow it along till it joins this thread and becomes one with it. Stronger than before." He turned smoothly back to Sarek. "And that is exactly what I propose. We cannot survive as we are. Ultima
tely, there must be a merging of the sundered cultures, the two halves made whole. We must use the fierce, healthy—yes, the emotional strain to rejuvenate Vulcan's tired bloodlines." Sered's glance flicked to Spock, flicked away. "In a new joining, a new, better order, those of . . . lesser blood—" Again his glance flicked delicately to Spock, then away. "—those of lesser blood might be deemed less than worthy."

  " 'Lesser blood,' " Sarek said to the air. "There, I believe, is an illogical thought if ever there was such a thing. Blood is but a substance, in itself neither superior nor inferior. Odd that it, whether from one species or two commingled, should so often be used as an excuse for bias—even, it would seem, in these enlightened times. But of course," he added directly to Sered, "you would never stoop to employing such illogic. The fault must then be mine for misunderstanding you. If you wish to leave, Sered, after such a lack of communication, there is no loss of dignity in that."

  Sered, face a stony mask, dipped his head almost curtly to Sarek, ignored Spock completely, and left with precise, cold dignity.

  "That," Sarek said after Sered was gone, "is, alas, a sadly warped and dangerous being."

  "But . . ." Spock began tentatively. "He does seem to make some interesting points, Father."

  Sarek turned to him, revealing nothing at all of his thoughts. "And what points might those be, my son?"

  Spock hesitated, trying to focus, to put his thoughts into clear, concise order. "I must postulate that, since emotion and mystery are a part of the Vulcan soul—as T'Pau so eloquently put it—is it not illogical not to study such issues?"

  "Ah, my son waxes philosophical."

  "I merely meant—"

  "Spock, I did warn you. Sered can be totally charming to even one fully grown. And you are still far from that."

  Was his father trying to goad him? No, that would hardly be logical. A test, then, for him to prove his own logical thinking to Sarek. "I am not yet adult, Father. I admit that. But surely even a child may see the value of certain matters."