She knows what is forbidden: her slow-blinking eyes tell me so as she deliberately pads over to the end of the bed and ascends it in one fluid motion. If I needed proof that her species originated on Terra, this action would be enough. How like a Terran to defiantly do the forbidden. How like a Terran to somehow escape punishment for same, instead engendering a response closer toÉlove.
I could never be a Terran among Terrans, but for a time I found companionship among them. For a time. There was always a barrier I could not breach, a veil of alienness I could not draw back.
Tonight I feel as if I have only just come among them. I am a new alien, just created. For what humanity I could claim is gone, and I am left, merely Vulcan, to stand alone among strangers I once called friends.
James Kirk, who was my link with the human side of myself, my greatest and truest friend and the finest commander I ever served, has returned to Earth to accept a bitter destiny. He does not even realize how bitter, and I find irony in that.
Not many weeks ago, we were recalled to Earth, our five-year mission officially ended. Five years had somehow stretched, through extended tours of duty, to eight years, and the crew was tired. Starfleet held a day of celebration: Enterprise had earned the dubious distinction of being the only ship ever to return from her third five-year mission.
Starfleet also took the opportunity to make my captain an admiral. A great honor for a man just turned forty, if one were to believe all the news transmissions. A great honor that weighed more heavily on him than any trouble I have seen him bear.
The truth is that Starfleet has taken from him the one thing I never thought to see him lose. They have snatched the deck from under his feet, and in so doing, taken his sense of self. And with it, our life among the stars. It is Jim's complicity in the crime that troubles me most. He persuades himself that his new duties will be satisfactory, but I know that is because he thinks he has nowhere else to go.
The cat has assumed the posture of the Sphinx, forelegs tucked under her. Her ears are alert, her gold-coin eyes watchful.
The crew thought her an appropriate companion for me. She was a gift from Lieutenant Uhura, the day before she left for the Command Academy. The cat's name is Furaha, which is Swahili for "joy." Uhura said joy is her wish for me, but I did not sadden her by reminding her that I am unlikely to find it. I will not rename my sleek companion, but I find myself wondering what the Swahili word for "duty" or "obligation" or "necessity" is. One of those would have been more appropriate.
Furaha and I were already known to each other. During our music rehearsals--what Uhura called our "jam sessions"--Furaha would sit curled on Uhura's bunk, blinking sleepily at us, licking her forepaws. Sometimes she climbed into my lap while I played the lyre.
Uhura could not keep the cat at the Academy. The commander of a starship, on the other hand, is allowed some small privileges. For I am in command nowÉ for the duration.
Like me, Enterprise has not yet been permitted to rest. Persuaded by her public relations value, Starfleet has assigned the ship to ferry personnel and diplomats between Federation planets during the few weeks remaining until her scheduled refit.
The last of these journeys takes us to Vulcan, where I will disembark. Mr. Sulu, newly promoted to commander, will lead the Enterprise home to Earth orbit to be refitted for her new captain and crew.
During the three-year refit, Starfleet would have assigned me to a research post on the far side of the galaxy, and then would have had me board her again as her captain for an unprecedented fourth mission. It would be my third tour of duty aboard a Constitution-class starship; an accomplishment no other Starfleet officer can claim.
I rejected the offer out of hand; I am not swayed by such arguments. I never wished for command and I do not want it now. Once I might have accepted the research post, but now I care nothing for that, either.
The universe has reversed its polarity; it has turned sickeningly upside-down. All the stars have shifted their positions. Or so it seems to one whose logic is uncertain and whose humanity is equally lost.
I no longer know who I am. How strange: I came to Starfleet to find my identity, free of what Vulcans and humans alike would have me be, and I found it, only to have it torn away. I can say the words: I am a scientist; I am a Starfleet officer--but the words turn to dust in my mouth.
Twenty-five times the planet Earth has circled its sun since I joined Starfleet, and that time is but a short interlude in the long life of a Vulcan. I am young for my kind, yet I feel old as the craggy L-langon hills, bleak as the desert surrounding ShiKahr.
It is, of course, illogical. But I am not yet on Vulcan. I can still indulge a few feelings before I kneel on the sands of my ancestors and yield up my self.
As I must do, for this wound within me cries out for healing, and there is only one place for a Vulcan soul to be healed.
What will Sarek say when I appear at his door after so long, the prodigal returned? What will he think of the news that I have come home to be shriven in the high places of Vulcan?
My father will be pleased that I reclaim the planet that gave me life and the benefits of logic. Will he be pleased when I take the sand-colored robes of Gol and climb to the top of the mountain to request a place there as an acolyte? I suspect not--he mistrusts the kolinahru--but I must go anyway.
Sand and wind will purge me, leaving in place of pain a blessed emptiness.
Humans say that to know pain, one must have known joy; to know desolation, one must have known belonging.
I do not know whether it was curiosity or loneliness that opened my alien heart to humans. Perhaps it was the easy acceptance, friendship--even love--they offered so guilelessly.
Whatever the cause, I did open my heart, and that is how it came to be in such a state.
I had often wondered if emotions were worth the price. McCoy always said yes, embraced even the pain. I suppose it works for humans.
But I, not human . . . I should not have tried. I opened a heart that should have remained shuttered, and I have dearly bought the result.
For when you know what it is possible to gain, losing that becomes a tragedy. And I know what that thing is for me, what I would have sold my katra to obtain, and it cannot be had for any price.
There is freedom in finding one's niche, that exact center where one functions in complete harmony with the universe. Sometimes it's finding your life's work. Sometimes, your life's companion. Rarely, if you are very fortunate, you may find both together, inextricably entwined. This was the temptation that proved too great for the Vulcan soul. It cast me over the edge into the abyss, and I did not care how far I fell, because such harmony--such love--was eminently worth the fall.
Love. I still do not fully grasp the concept. My mother has tried to teach me the meaning of the word, which she says does not translate accurately into Vulcan. In its highest form, it is something approaching N˜m, she says.
At Babel I most emphatically did not understand, but I remembered moments when I thought, for a second, that I might have. And during one of them I had sworn to myself to say to my mother the words she had longed to hear for thirty-seven years, whether I understood the concept or not. So I told Mother I loved her. I have never regretted it.
With Jim, it was different. I never had the right thing to give him, the right words to say. Our journey together is ended and I never did find the right course.
I spoke to Jim of loyalty and friendship; he gave his readily to me from the first, and after years of Vulcan posturing I finally dared expose my feelings before him. But I think I was too late, and he was beyond hearing.
For when our minds touched, he did not hear love.
Or maybe the concept truly did not translate and I was a fool to try. Maybe it was I who did not hear.
Some things Jim understood. When my devotion took a turn for the physical, as it had always threatened to, he did not shy away. That language he understood. So he took me into his arms, into his bed.
"Is this love?" I asked him once as he lay full length on me, the warmth of his body augmenting mine, his lips sending flame along the webwork of my nerves, his hands gently tearing away uncounted centuries of Vulcan conditioning.
"It's what I've always called love, Spock," he answered. "The only kind I know." And he drew me down into the furnace of passion and silence.
I should have seen my undoing in that silence. For in the end, how easily he gave up everything he should have fought for. The ship, his command. Me.
"We can be together on Earth," he said.
"I cannot live with a shadow of the man I knew," I told him.
"It must not be love, then," he said.
Understand it or no, share it or no, I did love. I learned love from him and it has been my undoing, my terrible, unspeakable secret. Now I return to Vulcan, where aside from Amanda's there is no human love, and I will be better off not wishing in vain for it.
There is no place for me among the stars as there once was, for a Vulcan without control is like a mad animal, too dangerous to let loose among civilized people.
When the kolinahr masters ask me why I have come to them, what will I say? That I am broken apart and wish to repair myself, rebuild the fortress I once maintained around a too-vulnerable heart?
They will shake their heads and think to themselves that this is what comes of living among humans. It is fine for humans, but deadly for us.
And they will wonder what stone in the Vulcan wall finally fell that I was able to love.
I could tell the masters that there is a human who makes the winds on the Karenhetha plain seem feeble, for the force he can bring to bear on the edifice of a Vulcan heart. I could tell them he stalked and paced and waited me out, and when I was weakened, razed my fortress stone by stone.
Thus besieged, what could I do but yield?
Now even that surrender has gone for nothing. See how I am betrayed! Jim has been worn down himself under all the pressure Starfleet could bring to bear, an Admiral's uniform and privilege the only exchange for a starship and crew that were once the finest in the Fleet--and for a friend who would have given his life for him . . . if it would have been enough.
Jim has believed the bureaucracy that says he is too old to dare the unknown. That says galactic heroes are shooting stars, beautiful and bright, vanishing in an instant, and his time had come to burn.
He was always stubborn when he'd made up his mind. But even now, I worry the thought over and over: why didn't he listen to me? Where did I fail him that he believed Starfleet and not me?
Sickened, I know the answer, and knowing it does not lessen pain. In the name of our grand career, we refused each other the one solace that would have prevented this outcome: the forever-meld, the bond, tong koon. Maybe he truly would not, could not marry; the bond would be too much like being tethered to a planet, and such limitation was never in his nature.
"Let's not complicate a good thing, Spock," he'd said once, his eyes haunted as he laid me down on his bunk, crushing me with his human sweetness. I could never refuse him anything.
But he had no such compunctions, and when I asked "why not?" he was silent. His mind, when he finally allowed me to touch it, refused me access to the answer.
So I sought my own answers and I sought to forget, losing my questions in the brilliance of physical love with him. Losing whatever logical perspective I had once had. A debauched Vulcan.
And he? I visited his apartment in San Francisco once, before I left; it was full of ancient things, relics. Not decorated with them for their beauty and history, as a Vulcan home might be, but filled with them, like a museum. I remember in particular a small ship, a perfect scale model of an ancient Earth clipper ship in full sail, and I hear again the words my captain often quoted softly to himself, or to me, as he looked out at the stars:
I must go down to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship,
And a star to steer her by.
Some dark nebula now lies between James Kirk and his Polaris. He lives like a man who has lost himself and does not know it. I know that he throws himself relentlessly into his work and then comes home to an empty apartment to stare in silence across the dark waters of the bay. I can see him in my mind's eye, standing there, alone, the reflections from the far shore inscribing light and shadow on his features.
I can feel, through whatever lasting bond still stretches taut between us, that this is so. Part of me wants to go to him and try yet again to shake him awake from this dark dream, but it is not the logical part of me. Logic tells me he must discover his truth on his own, and even I, his brother, his t'hy'la, cannot do it for him. I cannot help him as a human or as a Vulcan, for at the moment I am neither. In losing him, I have lost myself.
McCoy is angry with Jim and cannot conceal it. I told him I understand. Jim's promotion is a shameful waste of his abilities, and a most illogical, if predictable, move by Starfleet. McCoy rebuked me gruffly for mentioning logic, but I heard his voice break as he did so.
We shook hands when we parted, then McCoy called after me. I turned. He was holding up the ta'al, his fingers separated in the Vulcan gesture that he finds both difficult and painful. His lips quirked a crooked smile, and his eyes were damp. I regarded him steadily for a moment, then bowed my head in acknowledgment and went my way. It was a good thing I did not speak.
Now I lean back from my desk and regard the bare walls of my cabin.
Most of the possessions I once kept here are dispersed. A sculpture that once stood here, the Warrior, now stands in Jim's apartment, a little apart from the other antiques. It has been in my family for generations; my grandfather, Skon, gave it to me the day I passed the Kahs-Wan test. It was all I had left of myself to give to the man I called t'hy'la.
The Watcher statue must come to Vulcan with me; besides, no human would have a use for it, but the incense bowl and the Vulcan incense I have given to Christine. She always appreciated its scent, and since scent calls memory so accurately, perhaps it will remind her of the distant Vulcan she once thought she loved.
My Vulcan lyre went with Uhura, who has mastered the instrument as few humans have. Without her voice the lyre would make sounds, but not music. At any rate, I shall not need the instrument where I am going. The music I once heard is stilled within me.
My thoughts turn increasingly to silence, the silence of a mountaintop and the contemplation of silver birds against a red sky. I shall watch the silver birds and remember them as he saw them, my human t'hy'la, when I brought him to Vulcan for healing after the Guardian of Forever.
He will be with me even in the height and desolation of Gol. Even in the shadow of the Great Surak, that ageless statue hewn from Gol's scarlet rock, Jim will be there. If I am able to forget--his smile, his private glance on the bridge that was for me alone, his hands on my body, his mind and body entwined with mine---a part of my soul will have left me, never to return.
It is possible they will ask that of me, the priests of Gol.
But I am already committed to this course. Gol draws me as inexorably to itself as a bride draws her mate at his Time. I go to be washed clean in its sand and scorching winds.
Once there, I shall be so far removed from my former life that it will be as though someone else had lived it. The Spock my human friends once knew will be no more; an unbridgeable chasm will stretch between me and the rest of the galaxy. Therein lies another irony: I, whose name means "bridge," "to stand astride"--I cannot stand astride even the spaces in my own heart.
Christine has somehow guessed my intentions. She wishes to tell Kirk, McCoy, and my other human friends so they may say goodbye with the knowledge that we are not likely to meet again. "Goodbye" is such an important word to humans. Christine has not said that word to me; she withholds it, like a blessing.
But she keeps her silence. She would make an excellent Vulcan, I have caught myself thinking of late. If I have taught her that, it is yet another grief I shall give up on Gol. She is more Vulcan than I am, at this moment: This tight feeling in my chest is emotion, I know. I have neither the Vulcan strength to make it subside nor the human strength to release it. It crushes me.
Is this what being human is like? Subject to the wearying force of one's emotions, powerless in their grip? Love, hate, happiness, grief, horror, joy--they are more than I can control.
Father was right. Life among humans has worn out my Vulcan soul. More accurately, life with one particular human--and the fact that I can no longer share that life--has finally dismantled my carefully erected facade of logic.
Sarek married a human, but he never lived among humans, so I do not expect him to understand. He certainly does not know that I have lain many nights in Jim's arms wishing in vain that Jim would find a way to keep us together, all three: him, and me, and Enterprise. In the end, he did not even try.
The cat can have the bed. Soon enough we will both be on Vulcan, and anyway my fatigue is not the kind that yields to sleep. I shall sleep tomorrow night, or perhaps the next. Tonight I shall concentrate on achieving an outward measure of calm, for tomorrow I will have to play commander again.
The crew, unaware of the charade, awaits my guidance. They will have it for a little while, no longer. In my mind's eye already I can see the sands of home.