Strangers from the Sky

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

Desert; I flew over it on the way here.

  PentaKrem records state everything ports

  ble's been removed, but there are still three

  DY-100 sleeper ships unaccounted for, and it's

  my guess that unless they've been stripped for parts,

  they're still down there. Not exactly your late-model

  heavy cruiser, but since I don't think we're

  likely to scrounge up any antimatter, much

  less

  dilithium his

  "Antimatter?" Jason Nyere frowned.

  "Di-who?"

  "Thank you, Mr. Mitchell," Kirk warned.

  "No need to get too technical. Or to give

  Captain Nyere too much to forget. What

  he's saying, Captain, is the same thing you and I

  discussed a few days ago: if we can get the

  Vulcans out of here, we can conceivably crank

  Imp one of those old sleepers and get them safely

  off the planet. Granted, it might take them ten

  years to get back home, but considering the

  alternatives his

  "You'll have my help, Kirk," Nyere

  promised. "'Captain Kirk. Although I don't

  know how much help that can be without my crew."

  "We're not inexperienced in running a ship,

  Cam lain." Kirk eyed Gary thoughtfully. "For the

  moment, I can at least scare you up a decent

  navigator. Under duress he's even been known

  to get his hands dirty."

  "Mr. Mitchell," Nyere said, shaking his hand

  incredulously. "Welcome aboard!"

  "Spock, help me!"

  This was not a voice Spock had ever heard before.

  It was not the dispassionate voice of a commander issuing

  an order, not the

  sarcasm-tinged tone of the sometime

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  martinet who had chewed him out on the

  bridge of the Enterprise in a time that had not yet

  happened, but the voice of a man who had been to the

  abyss and understood his chances of falling a man

  humbled, vulnerable, in need. To fail to respond

  to such need would be not only illogical, but cruel.

  "Help you, Captain? In what way?"

  "Instruct me," Kirk said. "Tell me what

  to say to T'Lera. Because I must go in there, Spock.

  I must know what to do, what to say to her. And I

  keep seeing blood on the walls if I fail."

  "Captain," Spock hesitated, not wishing

  to give offence, not knowing how to avoid it. "I do not

  think it is possible to teach you to

  fully understand, to counter T'Lera's

  reasoning to think his

  "Like a Vulcan?" Kirk finished, more

  frustrated than angry. Spock's long hoped-for

  reappearance had solved nothing. He must speak

  to T'Lera, but what could he say that he had not said

  already, and to no avail? He rose from his bunk, all

  but started out the door. "I have to do something!"

  Impatience serves no purpose, Spock

  thought, and considered what he might have done if Kirk

  were not here. Had T'Lera come from his own time, a

  victim of Parneb's tampering as he

  was, his choices would have been simpler.

  Nevertheless "There is an alternative.

  Logically, I am better able to persuade

  T'Lera to our ends. If I can do so without revealing

  my true identity you must permit me to go alone."

  "No!" A clatter of bootheels announced

  Elizabeth Dehner's return. "You cannot do it

  alone! Neither of you can! Don't you see? The risk

  is too great. T'Lera has to know what her actions

  will do to future history. There is no other way.

  The way she sees it now, she's caught between a

  rock and a hard place, and she's fully prepared

  to sacrifice two lives to what she believes must

  be done. And you two sit here squandering what little time

  you have left, perpetuating the myth that humans 368

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  and Vulcans are so different there can be no common

  understanding, when his

  "That's enough Doctor was Kirk began.

  "I don't think so!" she snapped, her pale

  hair flailing about her face in her intensity.

  "Haven't you learned' anything about trust,

  Captain? Or you, Mr. Spock? How can you

  expect to convince T'Lera that humans and

  Vulcans can work

  together if you don't believe it yourselves. You cannot do

  it alone," Dehner repeated.

  Kirk met Spock's eyes and held them.

  Both were silent for a moment.

  "Do we know where T'Lera is now?" Kirk

  asked of no one in particular. If what Dehner

  said was true, every second counted.

  "In her cabin," the psychiatrist reported.

  "Sorahl told Yoshi they would "await the

  Council's decision in their own privacy,"

  unquote."

  It was all Kirk needed to hear.

  "We go together then, Mr. Spock," he said. The

  Vulcan was already on his feet. "Together, or not at

  all."

  T'Lera stood alone in the darkness of her cabin,

  considering the hordes congregating outside the ship.

  Some, she thought, would put us on display, and

  Jason Nyere would permit them, for the sake of the

  greater good. Others would kill us merely because of our

  differences, and Melody Sawyer would join them.

  They are not ready, she thought. And we must not force

  them.

  Mine is the error, she thought, for not acting

  sooner. Now mine will be the solution.

  "Mother9" Sorahl stood uncertainly in the

  doorway, framed by the light from the hall.

  T'Lera's thoughts had summoned her son. She

  turned to face hirn.

  "Sorahl-kam . . ." she began.

  # * *

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  "She's unarmed," Kirk said as he and Spock

  hurried down the corridors. "Theoretically she

  could strangleSorahl with her bare hands, but his

  "No, Captain. That is not what she would do,"

  Spock said, well aware of what T'Lera would do.

  Tal-skaya for her son, having sought his permission

  in mind-meld, then a variation on the healing trance for

  herself a trance from which no one could waken her would be

  T'Lera's choice.

  Spock froze in mid-stride, staggered, winced

  as if in pain. "Captain!"

  They were just outside T'Lera's door. Kirk

  grabbed him.

  "What is it?"

  "I sense tilde aptain, it has already begun.

  T'Lera has his

  Kirk crashed through the door, groping for the

  lights. Spock was right behind him.

  Sorahl lay unmoving on the bunk. T'Lera

  had been seated beside him, her fingers at the reach

  centers of his face. She was on her feet at

  once.

  "I had forgotten humans lock their doors,"

  she said, her eyes darting from Kirk to his

  unidentified companion, lingering perhaps overlong on the

  stranger before fixing on Kirk. "You will leave us."

  "No, ma'am," Kirk said adamantly.

  "See if Sorahl is all right," he ordered

  Spock, his eyes never leaving T'Lera's.

  Spock moved, but T'Lera moved faster, stan
ding

  between her son and any outside force. Spock

  realized if he came any closer, if she touched

  him, she would know what he was.

  "I surmise Sorahl is as yet unharmed,"

  he said, "though in deep trance. We have not much time."

  His words, his voice, drew T'Lera's attention

  only for a moment.

  "Do not interfere," she said, her eyes still locked

  on

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Kirk's. "This is no longer any

  human thing. Your world is not ready for us. By my

  logic, there is no other way."

  "But there is to was Kirk said, and stopped himself. Was

  he out of his mind? Was the only answer to tell

  T'Lera the truth? Was violating a Prime

  Directive that did not yet exist the only way

  to guarantee a future in which it would?

  "Commander," he began, feeling his throat tighten

  around each word. A single wrong one would end everything.

  "What can I say to

  persuade you?"

  T'Lera studied him, the intensity of her eyes

  damped down so as not to intimidate him. How

  vulnerable these humans were! Was it logical, was it

  ethical, to leave them isolated in a galaxy

  fraught with unknowns? For the briefest moment she

  might have relented for this reason alone. But that

  decision was not for her tomake.

  "Do not think to persuade me with words, Mr.

  Kirk," she said slowly. "Bitt if you offer a

  perspective which outweighs mine . . ."

  Jim Kirk hesitated. And in that momentary

  nesitation, the burden fell to Spock

  who studied T'Lera, and considered. She looked,

  he thought, precisely as he had surmised

  she might, given what she was. Vulcan and

  commander, dweller in the void of space for more years

  than he had lived, she would no more be moved by mere

  dialectic than any Vulcan. Nor was she the

  only Vulcan caught between a rock and a hard

  place. Could his human captain possibly understand

  the moral implications of what they were about to do?

  For nothing less than absolute truth, Spock

  saw, would satisfy T'Lera. Nothing less than

  certain knowledge of the future would sway her from her present

  course. And once accepted, that truth, that knowledge would be

  hers to carry alone, unrelieved, and in unbroken

  silence for all time.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Neither word nor thou kit, neither mind-touch nor

  mere slip of tongue could reveal any portion of that

  truth to any other of her truth-seeking, telepathic

  kind. Self-exile would be T'Lera's choice an

  absolute solitude in which to preserve an

  absolute truth.

  Spock had no doubt T'Lera would consider such

  death-in-life an equitable exchange for the life of

  her son and the fate of two species. It was

  logical. But it was a bitter thing.

  T'Lera had been correct; this was no longer

  any human thing. Only a Vulcan could accept

  such responsibility. And only one neither human

  nor Vulcan could make it known to her.

  "Commander," Spock began, wondering for the first time

  in his life which of his worlds he spoke for. "What can

  I say to persuade you?"

  T'Lera now studied him, making no effort

  to mitigate her gaze. This one, whatever he was,

  did not fear her. She must know why.

  "Who are you?" she asked, slowly approaching

  him.

  Spock hesitated. Since he had entered the

  room, all his energy had been given to blocking her

  thoughts from his, preventing her from knowing this very thing. He

  had only to open his mind . . .

  "Who are you?" T'Lera said again, drawing very

  near. Somehow she sensed that her fate was in his hands,

  as his future was in hers. Yet she must know.

  He is the same as you! Jim Kirk wanted

  to cry out against the awful silence. As I am, as we

  all are more alike than different, stronger together than

  alone! Dehner's words echoed in his ears, haunted

  him.

  Kirk held his peace. Shouting would not

  serve. Mere words would not serve.

  A perspective which outweighed hers, T'Lera

  had said. There was no other way.

  Kirk looked at Spock, and knew his first

  officer had reached the same conclusion. Kirk nodded.

  "Do it," he said.

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  Slowly Spock removed his hat.

  T'Lera's gaze never faltered.

  Her far-searching eyes saw in Spock's the

  future that would form him haloing, hybrid, offspring

  of the best of both worlds, bridge between the world

  presently lost to both of them and the world on which they

  stood. She whom no planet could contain

  recognised one kindred soul.

  And another. T'Lera's gaze took in Kirk

  so obviously human and yet, she saw now, no

  Earthbound thing. In these two she beheld not one

  future but two a future that would give them life,

  and a future within that future which they themselves could not yet

  see, which would forge them, at each other's side, into a

  whole greater than the sum of its parts.

  T'Lera saw the future, and accepted the

  challenge.

  The blizzard had let up. The media people,

  frustrated in their efforts to cut in on

  Delphinus's silenced radio, had set up a

  loudspeaker system out of their pooled audio

  equipment, and

  mounted a continuous auditory assault upon the

  battened-down ship.

  "tilde Captain Nyere!" boomed out across the

  ice, penetrating the thick hull to where Nyere and

  Mitchell labored. "Captain Nyere! We

  demand to see the aliens! We demand to know who is

  responsible for the deaths of four citizens of

  Earth. We demand his

  "Citizens of Earthl" Nyere snorted, getting

  the bugs out of the sonar and checking his fuel consumption

  ratios.

  "Kind of clears your sinuses, doesn't it?"

  Mitchell mused, working with Yoshi to repair the

  stress fractures caused by the snowmobile's

  explosion.

  Tatya was manning the radio, jamming

  everything the media tried to ram through. Jason had

  drafted the twosome along with Mitchell. After some

  soulsearching, he'd told them why.

  "There's another Vulcan on board?"

  Tatya was over

  - STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  whelmed by this information; the fact that these were people from

  another century seemed to have gone right by her. "Can we

  see him, talk to him?"

  "Then what T'Lera and Dr. Bellero I

  mean, Dr. Dehner said was true," Yoshi

  marveled, staring at Mitchell as if he expected

  him to glow. "Someday we really will have an alliance with

  Vulcan."

  "And about five hundred other worlds, son,"

  Mitchell assured him. "But not unless you and I

  get this jury-rigging done right, and fast."

  "Gods!" Yoshi said, working faster.

  The noise
outside was, if possible, growing

  louder; some of the media types had gotten up the

  nerve to attempt a physical assault on the

  great ship, climbing the connimg tower and banging on the

  hatch as if they expected it to open magically for

  them.

  "Hey, Captain!" Mitchell yelled above the

  loud- speaker, the banging, and Yoshi's welding

  torch. "How soon before we can put some distance between us

  and them?"

  "Right now!" Jim Kirk announced, striding

  onto the bridge. T'Lera and Sorahl were with him,

  and Spock was at his side.

  A man couldn't ask for a better crew, Jason

  Nyere thought, quietly amazed at what he saw

  happening on his bridge.

  The virtually inseparable younger threesome was down in

  the engine room, the

  doctor whatever her real name was had gone to check

  on Melody and get some rest herself, and the bridge was

  still top-heavy with talent. Jason's helmsman, a

  starship captain in another life, sat at ease

  beside one of a plethora of navigators, and this new

  Vulcan, who in his quiet way seemed capable of

  handling any station, had his ears on, so to speak, at

  communications. Jason Nyere sat back in his command

  chair, utterly confident that they 374

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  would reach their destination, whether it was Fairbanks

  or Timbuktu.

  "A little closer to the latter, I think," Kirk

  had told him after conferring with Mitchell. "We'll

  know for sure as soon as we can open

  communications."

  Nyere watched, bemused and utterly

  calm. He'd used up about a year's worth of

  adrenaline in the past few days; calm was all he

  had left. Beside him, essence of calm, stood

  T'Lera watchful, certain, as if no ship's

  bridge were alien to her.

  They would be going under the ice.

  The racket outside had virtually ceased when a

  new storm front moved in, first scattering those

  pounding on the hull, then toppling audio equipment

  and sending everyone back to the helicopters or to the

  cold comfort of the complex from where, as Spock

  reported: "They are tapping our communications,

  Captain."

  It was never clear which captain he addressed; both

  turned their heads whenever he spoke.

  "Let them!" Jason Nyere said. "They'll

  get an earful in a moment. Engine room: stand by.

  I'll want full steam in five minutes mark."

  "Affirm, Captain," came Sorahl's

  crisp response.

  I could get used to this, Jason told himself.