Breathes there the Boy
By
Pat Foley
Amanda waved, fractionally, as Spock came through the shuttle doors. She couldn't help it, even though she knew it was an embarrassingly Terran thing to do. Spock would see her without the need for her waving. As the only Terran in this part of the spaceport, given it was restricted to personnel from Vulcan Space Central, she was conspicuous enough. She hadn't needed a special clearance to get in here, but she suspected that was only due to Vulcan efficiency. And because her husband had made a call.
She saw Spock noticed her even before her wave. A young Vulcan separating himself from a knot of other Vulcans, distinguished only because he was shorter than most of them, he veered toward her.
"You look like you've grown," she said, peering doubtfully at him.
"It has only been three weeks, Mother," Spock said, patiently.
"Well you look taller. It must be the uniform," she said, giving it a look askance.
She had yet to get used to it, nor her son being put to this danger. But still, he might have grown. At fifteen, he was finally starting his adolescent growth spurt, now taller than her, giving every indication that the healers had been right about him ultimately being taller than his father.
Spock returned the look with forbearance, knowing her attitude. He could hardly fail to be unaware. She had engaged in several loud arguments with his father when she understood that another Vulcan tradition was putting her son in danger. Vulcan tradition had won again. At least, for the present. But she was hardly reconciled. "The patrol was entirely uneventful," Spock said, reassuring her. "Not a sign of a Romulan."
"I suppose they are out harassing the Federation side of the Neutral Zone. But I don't see why your father's supposedly peaceful society has to send a fifteen year old to man his battle lines."
"There is no battle. We are in truce. And Father explained that it is a tradition for the heir to-."
"I don't need the argument repeated. I just don't think it's logical, tradition or not. And let's not get into my opinions of your Vulcan traditions," she sighed. "Well, at least you're safe home now. And you're going to stay home, right? You're not going out on patrol again soon?"
Spock tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug. "I haven't been given word of any future assignment. But I have to attend Council in a week. So I'd estimate not."
"And your next Academy session starts not long after," she said hopefully. "So you probably won't. You'll stay home."
"Yes," Spock said neutrally, not sounding entirely enthusiastic.
"At least it's computer sciences this time," Amanda looked at him. "You preferred that over astrophysics."
"Yes."
"You can't hate the Academy that much," she said, exasperated.
"There is no need to be insulting, Mother. I neither hate nor consider the Academy in any emotional way. My attendance there is simply a fact of my existence."
"People from all over the Federation compete to get into it. It's a premier school."
"I'm aware of that."
Amanda sighed. "Well you could appear as if it is something less than a prison sentence to be returning there. And to be home. You were happier to go on this ridiculous patrol than you appear to be starting your second degree at the VSA."
"I refute being 'happy'."
Amanda sighed. "Oh, let's drop it. I have to make a stop on the way home – is that a problem? You don't have anything else scheduled, do you? Audience with T'Pau? Address to Council from their heir? A coronation?"
"Mother," Spock said, giving her a warning look.
"Sorry." She shook her head. "I am sorry. You are a most dutiful son of Surak. I henceforth will stop being resentful of your myriad traditional duties. At least for the next ten minutes." She gave him a wicked glance. "At least with your devotion to duty no one can ever say that the heir to Surak will 'return to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, unhonor'd and unsung'"
Spock winced a little as if that hit a nerve, then raised a brow. "Sir Walter Scott."
"Very good. You have been secretly reading."
Spock met her eyes for a moment as if caught. "Only a little."
"It's all right," Amanda said. "I won't tell. It doesn't make you a 'wretch' to deviate just a little from Vulcan, or your father's, dictates."
"I trust not," Spock said, relaxing from his inadvertent tension, even though a line remained between his brows. "And no, I have nothing scheduled." They cleared the secure area, and walked toward the main part of the spaceport to where the desert outside was visible, complete with sand-moving machines.
"Was the storm very damaging?" Spock asked. Due to a large sandstorm predicted in the area during his patrol duty, rather than leave his flyer exposed at Sirakvui spaceport while he was on patrol, Spock had left it under cover at home. Hence his mother picking him up.
"It was a bad one," Amanda admitted, as they walked out into Eridani's ruby sunlight. She coughed slightly. The air still bore the faint traces of ozone laden with suspended grit. "The worst I've ever seen. We dug out in a day or so at home. Of course we don't get as much sand movement out in the foothills; the mountains block some of it. Shikahr received the brunt of the storm. And what a brunt!"
"How long for Shikahr to be cleared?"
"Over three days to bulldoze and teleport the sand off the city force shields and back out into the desert. The force shields are open now. The land entrances in and out, for those that use terrain vehicles, are just now passable, if a little rough."
"And yet Sirakvui is still not fully cleared?" Spock asked frowning. "It is not as extensive as Shikahr."
"It became a question of scheduling the equipment and manpower. They concentrated on opening Shikahr first. They diverted Sirakvui's equipment there. It's just now come back."
"What about the liners scheduled to arrive and unload passengers?" Spock asked. "Were they held in orbit that long? That would be a first."
"Yes, and how the tourists complained! You would think they never had adverse weather anywhere else in the Federation. We've actually opened the gardens this morning for those tourists that missed their tour dates due to the storm. I'm glad you weren't delayed."
"It seems a tremendous storm, as predicted. I am rather sorry to have missed it."
"Days of being buried in sand were hardly all that exciting. Just trapped inside with nothing but whirled sand out the windows."
"Nevertheless it seems to have been unprecedented."
"Maybe. Between the storm repairs and the Council opening ceremonies, the Academy has decided to stay closed through the rest of the week." She looked at him. "I suppose you won't be disappointed over that."
"It's a reading period anyway," Spock said, dismissively.
"Well, it's nice for me not to have any faculty meetings," Amanda said. "Or research consultations with students. Oh!" she stepped back as Spock commandeered the pilot's chair in her aircar. "You could ask," she said tartly. "I have a perfect safety record."
"So do I. At warp speed."
"Very funny," she said and sank down in the opposite chair. "I was warp cleared for your father's flyer, too you know. For when we are traveling and he needs a relief pilot for a few hours, to rest."
"And when was the last time you piloted it?" Spock asked, with a raised brow, standing over her.
"If we were going out on some marching order, I'd get a refresher. Oh, go ahead," she said, gesturing to the pilot's chair. "I suppose you are teenager and boy enough that the very idea of being chauffeured by your mother is a fate worse than death."
"Not quite. Where is your errand?" Spock asked with Vulcan patience.
"Federation Plaza. I have to pick something up for your father.
"Father has innumerable aides to run and fetch for him," Spock said with a disapproving frown. "You shouldn't be tasked to carry out his errands."
"Well, we are going practically right past it," Amanda said. "Nothing was moving in or out of Shikahr, because of the storm. And then every able bodied person has been either shoveling sand or directing robots to displace it. Given that, it seemed rather churlish not to volunteer."
They landed in a lay by of the Plaza. Spock sent the flyer up to wait in the sky for them.
"What is all this?" he asked bemusedly. Every few yards was suspended a blue and white Federation banner. "It looks like Council Keep before Council reconvenes, except with Federation banners instead of clan ones. Is this some countering move before Council Day?"
"Maybe they took the idea from that. When in Rome… They are holding a big party for Federation Day here in the Plaza. Your father has been asked to say a few words."
Spock raised a brow at that. "I don't know why Terrans insist on calling this area Federation Plaza," he said. "That is not its real name."
"Most Terrans couldn't pronounce the Vulcan name."
"That doesn't give them license to rename it."
"Well, they have to call it something," Amanda said, mildly exasperated.
"It seems rather encroaching."
"You sound more and more like your father," Amanda said.
Spock was nonplussed at that. "Do I?" he asked, half hopeful, half appalled.
"Yes, you do. Anyway, why shouldn't they call it that? This is pretty much the Terran enclave part of the city." She gestured to their surroundings. Across from the Federation Center, with its blue and white Federation symbol sculptured in imported marble, squatted the Terran Embassy, its Earth emblem fronted by a pair of bored and hot looking guards. Kitty-cornered from that the Shikahr Hilton rose in creamy sandstone, with its ubiquitous fountain in front. The Federation Trade and Customs bureau, busy in greedily gathering the Federation's tax revenue was down the block, across from the headquarters of the Vulcan Alliance – still an active governing and legislative body in spite of being absorbed, like Vulcan, into the Federation. The Federation Center School, catering to embassy and off-worlder children, sat across from a small park. The Terran Medical Center rose in a spire across from the school, its roof flattened for emergency aircar landings, giving it a truncated appearance. Around all this were sandwiched shops and restaurants for the office workers, as well as some minor embassies. Most of the major embassies for the Vulcan Alliance sensibly located themselves in the Llangon foothills, where it was cooler, and merely kept an office cubby in the Alliance Headquarters. Only Terrans and the Federation seemed to believe their position required they build a major complex smack dab in the heart of Vulcan's capital city. As Spock had said, as if they were claiming turf.
"I'm going in here," Amanda said, gesturing to the Federation Center.
"I will wait for you outside," Spock said, now eying the Terran Embassy broodingly.
"You won't be contaminated just by going inside with me," Amanda said, then sighed. "All right, stay here if you want. I shouldn't be long."
Spock waited till she was in the building, then, as if drawn by a thread, he approached the Terran Embassy. The guards outside braced from their slouching position as he approached. He let the automatic scanners sniff him for weapons and explosives, then stepped forward when the light above signaled green. How strange, he thought, that the color for clearance to Terrans was the color of Vulcan blood, and the warning for them was the color of their own. It was the opposite on Vulcan.
"You have business here, sonny boy?"
Spock ignored the insulting address. "I might."
"He's clean," the other guard said, disinterestedly. "Let the kid go. I think he's the son of one of the techs. Maybe that's where he got that faux Vulcan Space Central uniform. Anyway, I know I've seen him somewhere."
"How can you tell, they all look alike?" the other said.
Spock raised a brow but let it go as he was allowed to pass.
He'd been in the building before in his somewhat ignominious past, and might be again if his tentative plans came to fruition. But not recently. Hence his attempt to reconnoiter, given this fortuitous opportunity. Being here with his mother when he had been wanting to ask a question of embassy personnel, that was a coincidence he had not expected.
At the reception desk ahead, across a spacious marble lobby set with the Terran planetary insignia, two different parties were occupying the reception desk, a woman complaining about her travel assignment, and a family with several children who were playing leapfrog across the lobby. In the tumult of their noise and movement, he went unobserved. Spock glanced around and seeing a hallway leading to office areas, faded down that. Here in the less public area of the Embassy, it devolved from trying to impress to trying to function. In spite of a noisy air conditioning unit that blasted what seemed to Spock like frigid air, there were water coolers stationed at regular intervals in the hallway. With signs on them warning staff not to waste the water. The walls were papered with notices as if it were a Terran pre-school, everything from Vulcan attractions to language lessons, to offers for and request of services, to items for sale and solicitations for social activities and intramural sports teams. He even saw a flyer from a tour agency for his own mother's garden tour. Someone had underlined on it that visitors received a gift of fruit and flowers and added a penned note that occasionally one could get a glimpse of the family and even the son. He raised a brow at that.
"Can I help you?"
Spock whirled from his study of the walls to find a young woman approaching him.
"Specify," he said, flustered and retreating to Vulcan formality.
"Have you taken the garden tour?" she nodded at the notice he had been studying. "I took home two oranges. It was well worth it. Didn't see the family, though. Just guards."
"Indeed," he was wondering what she would think if she knew she was seeing one of 'the family' now. "I have seen the gardens," he added with typical Vulcan understatement.
"What can I help you with?"
"I was wondering how one claimed Terran citizenship."
"You mean a visa to travel there?"
"No, citizenship."
"Well you have to be Terran. Be born on Terra. Or have a parent with Terran citizenship."
"Indeed," Spock said. "Interesting. This confirms my preliminary investigations."
"Is this a project? For school?" she asked smiling. "You speak Standard very well."
"Yes," Spock said, after a moment's pause. "Thank you. Is there an application?"
"Well, I can give you a form," she said doubtfully. "Naturally everyone would like to have Terran citizenship. It does convey some advantages, but actually -"
"It would aide my research," he said, restraining an eye roll at her assumptions by main force of his Vulcan training.
She smiled as if humoring him. "Okay. Just follow me." She led him into a shabby office area, crowded with what seemed to Spock to be a huge amount of paper – how much of it Terrans must import, since they so resolutely seemed to reject the Vulcan equivalent of hardcopy when such was needed.
"I have a brother in the Federation school," she said, her eyes still puzzled as she looked at him. "He said there were a few Vulcans there. Though I'm surprised they let you wear that," she nodded at his Patrol uniform. "It looks so much like what a Vulcan guard at Space Central would wear."
"Not quite exactly like that, however," he said, thinking of the differences between the uniforms for Vulcan Space Central personnel and those of the Fleet patrol. Interesting that so many Terrans noted and seemed to object to Vulcan Space Central personnel. Perhaps because it wasn't Federation Starfleet personnel handling the space security?
"No, of course not." She handed him a form. "Good luck on your project."
Remembering his Terran manners, he again gravely thanked her. Then, tucking the form inside his tunic, he gratefully went out of the frigid cold dank air into the warmth and dryness of a Vulcan day.
He nosed along the shops lining the Federation Plaza, largely carrying Terran centered merchandise – sunglasses filtered for the rays of the Vulcan sun, sun shades, vendors offering iced drinks and frozen snacks. He was hungry, but he didn't want to eat here, not in the street like a vagrant. And none of this food was probably real anyway. No doubt it originated in a food processor. He would wait till he returned home.
Periodically a tour bus landed in front of the Shikahr Hilton and discharged passengers, some of whom came down to browse the shops too, or buy iced confections. A few were holding roses that he recognized came from his mother's gardens. Presently Spock saw his mother exit the Federation Center building. He summoned the aircar down for landing. She was carrying a flat box and clearing her throat from the grit still suspended in the air. He took it from her.
"Tour buses are running from the Hilton to the Fortress," he said. "I just saw some tourists return from the garden tour. Now that the city is open could they not have couriered this box over? Even taken it to the Shikahr Hilton and given it to a bus operator?" He was distressed by her still coughing, and also he felt that a little complaining was good cover for his other activities. The paper concealed against his chest felt heavy as lead and obvious as a sign.
"Like I said, they offered to courier it, but I was going right by," Amanda said, exasperated. "Honestly, Spock, I don't think you've been contaminated by breathing the air in Federation Plaza for this short a time. And it's not like the Federation Undersecretary would take kindly to something for your father being trundled over on a tour bus and handed to a Fortress guard."
"Perhaps not, though it would have been more practical," Spock said and handed his mother into the aircar.
"You have Terran citizenship still, don't you, Mother?" he asked her, as he engaged the engines and discreetly set the air flow to cool her side of the vehicle. He nodded at the Terran Embassy to underscore his point.
"Yes. Vulcan too of course, now that I've married your father. It was something he insisted on putting in the treaty, that dual citizenship was allowed."
"Indeed," Spock said.
"I suppose he was thinking of me," Amanda said, and brushed her hair back from her neck. In spite of Spock's surreptitious attempt to make her more comfortable, her vehicle was Vulcan. Air flow aside, it had no air conditioning that functioned at Terran levels of comfort. "I'll be glad to get home. The Terrans were foolish to put their government buildings right in the heart of Shikahr, don't you think? Much more sensible to locate them in the foothills, like so many of the Alliance members did. Anyway, you could have dual citizenship too. Except that I'm sure you would shudder at the thought. And your father and Council would consider it heretical. But it might come in handy someday. You never know. Having lots of options is always useful."
"Indeed," Spock said. "There are always possibilities."
"Though in that Vulcan Space Forcer uniform, you've never looked more Vulcan," she teased.
"I am sure you are correct," Spock said, "that Father would not approve. Nor would Council, I suspect."
"I think you should try, though," she said blithely. "Someday. When you are older. When your father is less …well, temperamental… over your acceptance of the Vulcan Way. Then you could apply. It can't really hurt. You could consider it a tribute to IDIC."
"I suppose that is one way to regard it," he mused. "And one to you?" he half teased.
She laughed. Coming back as he just had from a solely Vulcan society, he never failed to be amazed by her light, unselfconscious laughter. "I never thought of that. Why not?"
"Perhaps I shall," Spock said. She is so Terran, he thought. And given that, what am I?
She smiled at him. "I would like that."
"If I ever do so," Spock said, regarding her calmly, "I certainly hope you shall."
"That's sounds ominous. And would you watch the sky?" Amanda complained. "If I took my eyes off what was in front of me when I was piloting, I'd never hear the end of it. But you, and your father, you both think you are inviolate."
Spock rolled his eyes. "Mother, there are collision warnings. Sensors."
"Including those two sensors in front of your head called eyes. Watch the sky, please, collision warnings or not. Or I will pilot myself."
"Yes, Mother."
"Teen-age drivers." She looked sideways at him and smiled. "I really am happy you're home, honey."
For once, Spock didn't object to the nonsense name. "I know," he said broodingly. He thought of Sarek, of Council, of his degree in computer science that he needed to complete. Of his patrols on the Neutral Zone. The Vulcan Space Service was preferable, he thought, to the Science Academy. As his mother had said, Vulcan or human, faculty infighting, egos and petty squabblings for power and position really differed very little across species lines. And he had three years of that at the Academy yet to go. But even the Space Service, though tempered by warrior discipline, was still not home to him. For him, home was the Fortress. His mother and father. He had come to realize that nothing else like it existed, or could ever compare. At least, nothing yet that he had seen. And yet he could not stay forever a child in his parents' home.
He thought of collision warnings to come. Whatever this paper in his tunic said now, laws could change in three years. Or something could change. He looked across at his mother, her smiling and happy to be at his side. "I know."
"You could be a little happy too," she said, frowning at his brooding face. "We'll have a week before Council opens and then the Academy. A week of peace."
"Yes, Mother."
"The storm is over," she said. "And we're going home. Try to be happy."
"I will try," he said, thinking of the paper, crackling so loudly in his pocket he wondered that his mother did not notice it and ask him about it. Wondering if even considering such an action damned him to be, as the poet said, unwept, unhonored and unsung. Or if it could, somehow, be a celebration of IDIC. He had so much to consider. And no one to give him counsel, not on these personal matters.
"We can go home. And you can eat roses," she said. "Or raspberries – there are some ripe. You must be hungry, living for three weeks on ships' fare."
"What?" he asked, startled from his reverie.
"I said, now that you're going home, you can eat some of your favorite foods," she said, well aware that a Vulcan in a reverie was no doubt thinking deep thoughts. "You must not have gotten some of them on patrol. But now that you're home, perhaps for tea you'd like-"
"The Fortress is home," he said.
She frowned, puzzled. "Well, of course."
He landed the aircar. "I'll get the box cleared and take it to father's office," he said, relieving her of it.
"I'll see you in a few minutes, for tea?"
"Yes." He nodded abstractedly to the guard who tacitly braced at his Fleet uniform. Stood by while they cleared the foreign item for entry into the Fortress. He noted, as if seeing it for the first time the Federation seal on the top of the box. Eyed the building quizzically as he entered. Vulcan everywhere, of course. And yet there were outworlder touches – the Federation emblem on the box he carried to Sarek's office, the ornamental fish in the fountains, the scent of roses and honeysuckle from the Terraformed gardens.
"It's not just Vulcan that is home," he said to himself standing outside the Armory with its Alliance sigil. "Even the Fortress has human elements, Alliance elements, Federation elements too. Even Vulcan does." He thought of the Federation banners on the Federation Plaza in the heart of Shikahr. "I won't be a wretch. Because this, all of this, is my native land too," he said.
He let out a relieved sigh.
And then, he went to meet his human mother for tea. And rose petals.
-fini-
Here's a little Thanksgiving present. Please, remember to review and return the favor.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
Sir Walter Scott
Breathes There the Boy
By
Pat Foley
November 2018
Part of the Holography Series