Yesterday's Son

by A. C. Crispin

  The time portal did not speak this time. Instead of the usual vapor and swirling images, one picture sprang sharp and clear into its middle, holding steady. They could see mountains in the distance, and blue rivers running through meadows of the mossy aqua grass. Beta Niobe, no longer so angry-looking, was high, and they knew it was summer.

  Zar turned his head, addressed Spock one last time. "I leave you my pictures, past and future, as a symbol." Then he leaped, graceful as a cat, through the portal.

  They saw him land, watched him pull off his cloak and shake his head in the warmth, saw his nostrils expand as he sniffed the air. Kirk wondered if the younger man could see them, and thought that he probably couldn't—then there was a movement at his elbow. Spock, eyes fixed, was walking toward the Guardian. One step, two, three …

  And then Kirk, moving with a jerk that stabbed his ribs, caught his arm, his voice low, desperate. "Spock. He doesn't need you. " And he wondered if the Vulcan caught the unvoiced addition, And I … we … do.

  As they stood poised, the Vulcan's motion halted, suspended, the image flicked out forever.

  Epilogue

  "Night" aboard the huge starship. The lights were dimmed, the corridors quiet. Occasional crew members, returning to their quarters after late duty, or reporting for the early morning shift, moved soft-footed. Even the turbo-lift seemed hushed as Kirk left its small interior for the deck. He moved quietly to a door, hesitated, then flashed the signal. "Come," said a voice from within almost immediately.

  As he'd suspected, the Vulcan hadn't gone to bed. He was sitting at his deck, his micro-reader still on. Kirk sat down at his nod. "Greetings, Captain."

  "Greetings, Mr. Spock. Thought I'd drop by and see how you were doing." He stretched cautiously, still favoring his healing ribs. "Rough day."

  "Agreed." The Vulcan's eyes were hooded with fatigue, but shone with a tiny spark in their dark depths. "The memorial service you conducted today was … most fitting, Captain. I am sure the families of the archeologists as well as the crew would find it so."

  Kirk sighed. "The only thing that made it bearable was the knowledge that one of the names on that roster didn't belong there. Or did it? I'm not sure I know how to remember him. As someone alive, just on the other side of the centuries, or as someone who … died … 5,000 years ago." Spock didn't reply; his gaze was fixed again on the screen in front of him.

  "Did you notice how many friends he'd made, just in the short time he was with us, Spock? Christine Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu … even some crew I didn't recognize. That young Ensign—what's her name?"

  "McNair. Teresa McNair."

  "I wish I could tell them the truth. That would make it so much easier. Are those his paintings?" Kirk walked over to the canvases stacked against the screen, began, after a nod from the Vulcan, to look through them.

  "Yes." Spock said, watching him. "I thought I would give some of them to his friends. I believe they would like that. A gift, in lieu of the truth they cannot know."

  "That would be very generous, and I know it would mean a lot to them." Kirk bit his lip, gazing abstractedly at the last painting, then balled his fist suddenly and thumped it softly against the bulkhead. "Dammit! If only we were sure he made it! Doesn't that bother you, Spock? Wondering?"

  The Vulcan was looking at him with that spark again in his eyes, and Kirk heard exultation, triumph, in the normally flat voice. "He made it, Captain. I have my proof."

  Long fingers switched on the micro-reader, as Kirk walked over to the desk. "He left his pictures to me, remember? His pictures past and future, he said. Here it is, Jim. The symbol he found, the one that told him he had to go back. Here."

  Kirk looked into the reader, saw the image on the screen. One part of his mind automatically read the caption, something about "a frieze from a palace wall in the trade city of New Araen … believed to have some esoteric religious significance …" but his eyes were so filled with the picture that the words made little sense. They didn't need to.

  Against a dark background, white-flecked, loomed the familiar shape, the streamlined shapes of the power nacells surmounting the huge disk, somewhat distorted, but still unmistakable—caught in her passage through space.

  The ship, and beneath it a hand, open-palmed, the fingers spanning time and distance in the Vulcan salute.

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