Vina Escaped II: Chaps 1 and 2

by Richard T. Green

Captain Kirk helps Star Trek's first mysterious beauty, as the keepers spread across the galaxy in this sequel.

1. Chapter 1

Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood

VINA ESCAPED II

"Green Blood, Red Blood"

By Richard T. Green

A Note From The Author

I've always felt a little sad that some of the most interesting characters in the 1960's TV series "Star Trek" always met endings that seemed less than happy, to me. Call it the "Tasha Yar Problem," if you like. Maybe brainy women, misfit captains and others were too far "ahead of their time," even for Star Trek.

Foremost among these unfortunates may have been Vina—the blond beauty from the original pilot episode, "The Cage" – whose dilemma was recycled into the two-part story, "The Menagerie," in the show's first season. I never understood why she stayed behind, on Talos IV, after the Enterprise answered that call for help.

This new book is "part two" of her return. She comes back (along with thousands of escaped telepaths) in an imaginary "fourth season," that might have aired in 1969-70, had the TV series not been cancelled of course. I can't swear this is the absolute conclusion of her saga, but you could say all the loose ends are pretty well tied-up (at least, implicitly) here.

In the first part, "Vina Escaped," (which was uploaded in 2012, at 229 pages) she went from vengeful ex-prisoner to someone with a relatively clear plan about what to do next, to complete her "escape" from a troubled past. That's where this story picks up, as she tries to put that plan into action. The Enterprise has ended up at Vulcan, after a great deal of trouble, and there seem to be serious questions about what, exactly, is really going on.

This book has not been professionally edited, so I hope you will forgive any rough spots.

RTG

July, 2013

Prolog

INTERROGATOR: Why did you stay behind, when the Starship Enterprise completed its investigation of Talos IV? Was it out of a greater loyalty to the beings there?

VINA: No. I don't know. There was nothing for me. Anywhere. I was ruined. Every dream was a lie. And every dream left me… weaker. When he came back again, at last, Chris was finally like me: ruined too. And when he died… well, that's when I finally learned what nothing really was.

INTERROGATOR: You refer to Captain Pike.

VINA: (Inaudible)

INTERROGATOR: And why have you come here now, to Vulcan?

VINA: To change the past… if I can. To make it… so I don't exist—so none of this happened. At least, not in this way.

INTERROGATOR: This is not a valid reason to undertake something as gravely serious as time-travel.

VINA: Well… I'm not entirely sure that's any of your business.

Chapter One

Jim Kirk kept looking for her.

The strange commons area was crowded with long, low white buildings, and farther-spread primordial-looking structures nearer to the desert, like mesas shimmering in the Vulcan heat—despite the cool, silvery fountains all up and down the plaza. Streams of clear water danced in the blazing light, sometimes bent into unexpected, flying loops (by small, hidden anti-grav generators)—glittering streams of water, suddenly dancing and shimmering, and twisting in to new shapes, as if to mock the grave, mirage-like buildings in the distance: the visible evidence of a harsh, primitive past.

Stately men and women with dark hair and pointed ears walked here and there, looking like great, unknown philosophers. A few humans were mixed in (along with a faintly glowing Organian, and a floating sphere that must have contained a Medusan) in their studies, or simply for a peaceful spell in the home of logic.

But Jim Kirk found no sign of Vina now. They'd met in their break-time each day, during the official inquiry… It might have been the heat, and the bright Vulcan sun, both so different to her from her many years of confinement in the dark tunnels of Talos IV—perhaps the relentless sun had finally forced her to burrow under this vastly different desert world, for relief from its pounding heat and light. But surely, he insisted to himself, the Vulcans wouldn't keep her under constant interrogation, after she'd fled her own decades of captivity, and had just begun recovery.

Like the spirit of Hope itself, she'd been one of the last to emerge, once all the keepers had fled Talos before her: unleashed invisibly into Federation space, after Vina and the dying Captain Pike had repaired their ancient machines.

Now, growing impatient, the captain finally stopped looking inside the entry to every building he passed, and pulled a communicator off the belt beneath his gold tunic.

"Kirk to Enterprise," he said quietly, not wanting to disturb the stillness all around.

"Go ahead Captain," Lt. Uhura said, sounding well rested after days of madness, which ultimately pitted four starships against each other, as the keepers ravaged the Federation.

"Any sign of Vina, the human female, down here?"

"Chekov here," the helmsman's voice came down to him, from up in orbit. "Sending her coordinates down to you now, Keptin."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Kirk said, tapping a blinking light on the inside of his communicator, and the little round mesh glowed like an old-fashioned radar screen, in the palm of his hand. He was the dot at the center, and another blinking dot showed up at the "one o'clock" position, almost straight ahead. Well, he consoled himself; at least he hadn't been on the wrong track altogether.

The dot moved around on the mesh screen as he got closer, until he was inside a cooler, modernistic building at the end of the square. A few minutes later he was in an elevator, tilting the communicator up and down, till he got a fix on her once more: once again, buried far below the surface, as if it were her only fate.

When the doors opened up, six floors below the surface, a blank-faced Vulcan stepped forward to greet him, and escorted him down to the fourth vault-like door on the left.

They passed through the heavy, bombproof doorway, into a darkened control room, with its medical monitors and a row of researchers at a wide console. And, beyond that board, through an equally wide and curving window, he could see a great surgical theater below: like the earliest hospitals on Earth, down in the shadows. And down in the middle of all of that, the lone figure of a tiny old woman, the great telepathic warrior, lay motionless on a gurney, bathed in a brilliant round spotlight. Her white sheets glowed like a Petrie dish in the surrounding darkness.

Two silent Vulcan researchers sat behind the curving glass at the controls: seeming neither interested nor disinterested, neither pleased nor displeased. There was absolutely no human chatter up there in the booth, giving the proceedings an eerie, portentous air.

Their patient lay immobile down there, theoretically harmless, theoretically at a safe distance, after years of emotional abuse: when aliens ransacked her brain and heart for colorful dreams to live in, when they'd lost everything else. Theoretically, her own recently-acquired telepathic powers must be as sound asleep as she was, and any Talosian contamination should likewise be held at bay, across the thick glass, behind bomb-proof walls, and far underground.

"Captain Kirk," a voice said behind him. He turned to see another stately humanoid, with his own set of perfectly pointed ears. This new Vulcan bowed with a sort of trained courtliness, as if he were speaking the body language of humans, which he might have learned from some foreign-language training program. Jim Kirk gave a slight head-bow, in return.

"I am Sylann," the Vulcan said, very quietly, as if trying not to wake the lonely old woman on the gurney, far down below them. "Do you require a tour of this facility, or perhaps some reassurance about the Earth female?"

"I just thought I'd see how she was… holding up, after all she's been through," Kirk said, turning back to see his own reflection in the glass, and the harsh blue-white light down below, beyond fifteen or twenty rows of seats that circled down in the amphitheater. Then, remembering the last few pleasant meetings they'd had together, he added, "I thought she might want to… go out for lunch."

The concept seemed utterly ridiculous, though, spoken aloud to these three non-humans. He tried to imagine any of them sitting at a little table at some Parisian sidewalk café, the kind you'd see at a colorful Renoir painting, sun-dappled and gay: full of exuberant couples from nearly 400 years ago… But it didn't quite work, in his own mind, with the Vulcans cast into the roles of French boulevardiers. Where was the singing? Where was the joie de vivre?

"Ah, yes, of course," Sylann said, and even managed a trained little smile. His head cocked slightly to one side, as if he were the perfect student, meticulously adding the proper inflection to every common, conversational word or phrase. It was strange to Kirk, to see a full-blooded Vulcan try to pull-off these tiny "human" affectations, after knowing his first officer so long: Spock, who was off visiting his human mother now, somewhere in the white city surrounded by the vast desert: Spock, who (it seemed, anyway) could scarcely be bothered to "fit in" anywhere.

"And," Kirk added, rubbing his left temple in renewed worry, "we've got one of her old captors up on the Enterprise. I hate to say we'd like to get rid of it, but…"

"Perfectly understandable," Sylann blinked, but without smiling, and also without cocking his head this time, or giving any sort of gesture that would indicate some kind of sympathy for the plight of the Enterprise. Evidently a keeper, like the ones that had suddenly spread all across the galaxy, was too dangerous even for a Vulcan to play around with.

"We've managed—we think—to keep it in a repressed, sedated state," Kirk folded his muscular arms, but still managing to look helpless, in spite of the pose.

"Perhaps," Sylann said, changing the subject from Kirk's unwanted passenger, and turning his attention to their reflections in the windows, "you would like to go down and… 'say hello' to your fellow Earth-person."

Kirk looked appraisingly at the Vulcan, as if something else must be going on. He guessed the team behind the glass might want to see how Vina reacted to his presence, upon waking. Then, as Sylann escorted him back out again, the captain glanced back at the control-room ceiling, and the dark walls behind him, as if to memorize the base-line colors reflected overhead, and the faintest glow of the instrument lights shining all around—as if he might possibly know, when he stood down there by her side, if the booth colors had all shifted along with some red alarm screens when he dared to wake her up. As if everything would change, upon the sight of another human… upon the sight of another starship captain.

Were the Vulcans merely curious about the damage done by decades of telepathic ravaging, and hopeful of learning what dire fate to expect for themselves, if the keepers actually gained control of the Federation? Perhaps Vina had just become something terrible herself, by association. Or were they just killing time, till the evil simply went away?

Sylann turned back to him, politely, a few steps farther down in the stairwell, waiting.

Then, as he followed the Vulcan down to the floor of the amphitheater, Kirk also had the bizarre notion that they might be detaining this renegade escapee, this elderly, hobbled woman, simply to prevent her from doing any more damage out on her own.

"I don't want to be late for my own next stage of de-briefing," he said quietly, though it was as plain-faced a lie as he'd ever told. He had a lot of work left to do up on the Enterprise, and only Starfleet knew what he'd be called to do next, as the keepers lay in hiding all across the galaxy—and perhaps beyond. He followed Sylann down between the circular rows of seats.

"I am quite sure this will only take a few minutes," Sylann said, almost seeming to affirm Kirk's notion that they were only using him to test her now.

He blinked, down in the harsh bright pool of surgical lighting, and instantly realized he'd never be able to see back up through the glare, back up into the dark control room, or through the black shadows between, if there really was any dramatic change in their readouts when she awoke.

"What are you testing her for," he said, quietly.

"Contamination," Sylann said, behind him on the edge of the light.

"Of course," Kirk nodded. The term had dogged him for nearly ten days—since the chief of Starfleet Intelligence first sent him back to Talos IV with Mr. Spock, for their second and third visits, respectively.

Kirk's hand brushed the immaculate white sheets by her arm, and she seemed startled, even with her eyes still closed, as if she'd been having another bad dream. As if she hadn't grown used to them, long ago. He knelt down by her side, even as Sylann backed away, as if some invisible violence might erupt.

"I thought I'd come down to see how you were doing," he said, very quietly, as the light shone right down through the outermost layers of her wrinkled skin.

After a moment, she turned over to face him, and the sheets around her seemed to sigh, as she opened her eyes.

"I forgot to put on my face," she whispered, looking up at him. And, just as she'd done before (by reading what was in his mind) she saw herself, and gradually became beautiful again. That horrible purple scar down the length of her face closed up like the last rays of a Rigelian sunset, and a hundred wrinkles smoothed out. Spots went away, and her sun-tanned glow returned, just as her hair turned to gold. Even her lips became like the lustrous pink inside a conch shell, and her eyes, at last, twinkled blue: youth, perfectly restored, on the outside.

Then she saw something else in his eyes: the wariness of the watched. And her own gaze swept down to her feet, toward where she seemed to know the control room was. Her eyes turned higher, and she squinted up into the brilliant glare of the crowded ring of surgical lights.

"We should go out. For a little bite to eat," she said, as if reading his mind again.

Kirk looked around for Sylann, who seemed to have wandered off at some point in the exercise—or, perhaps being tricked into seeing her beauty return was too much for him, and the danger of telepathic contamination had simply become too great.

She wove her hand through the crook in Kirk's arm, and they walked out, slowly but casually. It made him feel strangely wicked, walking out on a scientific inquiry like this, managed by the least offensive people in this part of the galaxy. But, walking around with a beautiful woman on his arm also made him feel a little better about things, and they found their way out of the amphitheater, to a tunnel and an elevator.

And, in any case, as they reached the surface he was fairly certain the Vulcans would be watching closely, whatever happened next.

He put it down to the Vulcan sense of order and simplicity, and their stoic acceptance of the Universe, as it must be. But that made him wary all over again. Because, as they set out for Vulcan a day and a half ago, Vina had planned to enlist their help, to undo what had already happened: climaxing with all those tens of thousands of lost lives in the Rigel system, when the keepers managed to take over three other starships, after he'd regained control of the Enterprise. He'd hit upon a way to see through their subterfuges, though it seemed impractical in the long run.

Now, if his reasoning was correct, these devoutly logical Vulcans were simply going to turn their backs on the whole galaxy at risk—and trudge forward as best they could, with or without the rest of the Federation: leaving Vina, and any other non-Vulcans to their chains of fantasy.

They found a set of outdoor tables near the long rows of fountains in the plaza, and he held a chair as she slowly sat down.

"Have you asked them for their help yet?" Kirk sat down himself, watching as she held a hand over her eyes to block the blinding sun.

"I've mentioned it a little, but they keep changing the subject." A little smile played across her lips, as if she was merely engaged some kind of flirtation with the Vulcans, and not the last, desperate attempt of an old woman to save herself—her younger self, from what she'd already become.

"They may not even be able to do it—they may not even have what we call 'an immortal soul,'" Kirk said, though he had to glance around to make sure he wasn't offending anyone who might be passing by. (It was still fourteen years before he'd learn of the Vulcan "katra.")

"Oh, they can do it," Vina sighed; waving the idea away with that same hand that had been blocking the glare.

"But they don't want to," Kirk concluded, for her.

"These first people I've mentioned it to," she sighed again, "they're just minor functionaries—strangers. There are still others down here I can go to for help."

He read the auto-menu on the table between them, and finally tapped the check box for a drink.

If nothing else, under the Vulcan sun, Vina did not seem cold any longer, the way she had, since he'd met her. She relaxed in the metal chair across from him, and her white jump suit seemed more appropriate: giving her the look of the scientist she'd been before Talos. Before she grew old, before her time. Still, he almost preferred her when they first they met face to face, in that huge fur coat that kept her warm: covering an odd series of black strings and triangles she wore underneath, and brazenly wearing the illusion of youth.

"You won't be here much longer," she said, appraising his practiced air of boyishness, as he looked into her clear blue eyes. It was a peculiar contest of appearances, in which his show of innocence was almost as perfect as her illusion of beauty.

"I really don't know," Kirk admitted. Certainly, a Starfleet de-briefing shouldn't take any more than a few days, under normal circumstances. But four starships had swept down to destroy three worlds in the Rigel system, and then there was whatever mayhem Vina could be linked to before that, in her own one-woman war. And, all of that, taken at face value, seemed like enough to land them both in some obscure penal colony for the rest of their lives. So these were far from normal circumstances. The cagey old red-head, Captain Safeer, must be going through the same questioning somewhere around here, while all four of their battle-scarred ships were being repaired in orbit.

"Assuming the Vulcans even believe our stories," she sighed, looking far off toward the desert cliffs beyond the city, wavering like the future, on the horizon.

"Assuming they can, or even wish, to do anything about it," Kirk added, looking down at his hands. They had become clenched together like fists of prayer.

"Why wouldn't they?" Vina said, seeming deeply puzzled, as she turned that faraway look on him.

"Maybe," Kirk shrugged, and managed a fretful little smile, "the Vulcans will decide we're just… reverting to type." A drinks trolley came humming out of the nearest building, with Kirk's glass on it, and stopped by his side. At least there was still a pretense of hospitality, regardless of how this planet really felt about humans and their vulnerability to the escaped keepers. But how low, how weak, were humans in the sight of the Vulcan high council? Could they be too low for redemption?

"You think they're supposing," she smiled, in spite of herself, "that humans, like me, shouldn't really expect to rise above our dreamy, romantic folly?"

"Something like that," Kirk said, remembering to smile one more time. It was a fairly bleak assessment, but not entirely outside of the realm of possibility.

"And just step aside while the whole galaxy plunges itself into a great Dark Ages? Because of an attack made possible by a Vulcan, himself?" She smiled at the strange, sad twist of fate. "When Mr. Spock brought Chris back to me, and we unleashed them all, as the price of our freedom?"

"A half-Vulcan," Kirk said, sipping the drink. The bitterness of the phrase that came out of his mouth soured the liquid noticeably.

But she had him there: Spock's returning Captain Christopher Pike to Talos IV, to be with her, made the whole disaster inevitable. And hideous madness had swept along in its wake, first in the Wrigley system, then around Saldana, and Rigel, and maybe farther by now. He wondered if the Vulcans suddenly regretted Spock, himself, for blending the two races together, and leading them all (however incidentally) into these dangerous new times.

"Ah, Captain Kirk," a now-familiar voice said, coming up behind him. He turned to see Sylann, approaching in the near-blinding light of day.

"Ready for me?"

"Yes, Captain," the Vulcan nodded, as Kirk rose from the little café table. Once again, Vina was being left on her own.

"Will you be all right?"

"I'm sure they won't forget about me," she smiled, not regarding the native Vulcan by Kirk's side. But then, she gave a little smile that seemed to say, "as much as they might like to forget about me." Then, as Kirk turned to leave with Sylann, he thought he heard her say something else.

I've got to be moving on.

"What's that?" he asked, turning back. Sylann stopped, politely, a pace or two away. Sensing something in her expression, the captain of the Enterprise came back to the little café table, and crouched by her side.

They don't want anything to do with me—with either of us, really, she added, her eyes narrowing slightly, as she gazed upon the very polite Vulcan nearby.

Why do you say that, he thought, assuming she'd be able to read his thoughts.

Add it up, she said, directly into his mind: with a faraway look that suggested she was halfway off the planet already. If you were under the control of the keepers, wouldn't Vulcan be one of the very first places you'd come, to crush their enemies for them? With me, a contaminated former prisoner, and even with a keeper, himself, up on board your powerful starship? They'd have to assume—logically—it's all just some clever trap, arranged by the keepers, to eradicate the telepathic Vulcans… or at least to get them out of the picture.

He didn't like the way it 'added up' at all and, based on his own experience, he couldn't believe the Vulcans were so fearful, or mistrustful. Meanwhile, Sylann waited a few meters away: seeming to patiently count every molecule of the unforgiving, thin air between his nose and some distant desert mesa.

"Contamination," Kirk sighed, as though the word had never really been very far from his lips all along. It dogged anyone who'd ever been to Talos IV. He remained there, like a trained animal by her side—though his mind had suddenly jumped halfway across the galaxy and back to Talos.

He remembered arriving there again, less than ten days ago, to find the planet nearly abandoned—just a few forgotten captives in the dank underground—slowly dying in the tunnels below the surface. And how angry, how hemmed-in, were their starving souls, after years of being milked dry of every last hope and dream.

Such a waste, she seemed to agree, though her lips never moved.

"Come on," he said, extending a hand toward her, and she slowly rose from the café chair. She had only just begun her joint regeneration therapy up on the Enterprise, and it would still be another few weeks before she was fully mobile again, in spite of her years.

"Did you ask anyone else about your plan?" he said, aloud, as Sylann walked just ahead, robes swaying.

She didn't even bother to "think" her words at him, only shaking her head in silence. It seemed too depressing to contemplate.

"You should," he insisted. "Tell… their higher-ups what's on your mind… or you'll never stand a chance of getting it." But, even to an eternal optimist like Kirk, his words sounded faintly idiotic.

"They don't want anything to do with me," she said, her voice sounding frail, even as she made herself to appear young and beautiful in the sunlight.

"Surely, the Vulcans you trained with, as a student," he said, disdaining her decades of learned fatalism: "they must be willing at least to see you again…" But he knew he was engaged in the hardest salesmanship of all now, convincing someone to do what was right for them, in spite of a lifetime of failed dreams.

"Doctor T'Mara was quite old when he advised me at Starfleet Academy," Vina said, looking down at the blinding white pavers at her feet as they walked slowly, "and Doctor T'Lan must be dead too, of course."

"Oh, but you are quite mistaken about that, Dr. Vina," Sylann said, stopping suddenly, ahead of them, and bowing his head as if asking forgiveness for eavesdropping. Both Kirk and Vina stared at the gracious man with the pointed ears, partly because it soothed the human eye: his dark robes relieving their retinae of the burning light all around.

"In what way," Kirk asked, as Vina watched, appraising their Vulcan escort.

"But Doctor T'Lan is quite alive," Sylann almost smiled. "For you see, I am her fifth-degree grand-cousin, on my mother's side."

"Oh," Kirk leapt at the opportunity, and the sudden warmth of their host. "Then you must take us to her right away! If it is permitted, of course."

"It is most permitted," the Vulcan nodded, even smiling. But the change of plans also seemed to confirm Vina's theory that they were all just killing time, while the high council tried to come to grips with the problem of these dream-addicted humans.

Sylann hitched his thumb down behind his belt, within his robes, like a cattle rancher at a saloon, just waiting for a drink. But it was only to signal an air-car, which descended quietly before them, out of the sky.

An hour passed, and many sand dunes raced below, as they traveled east. Many more dunes still stretched out before them. But it was all much more hopeful, somehow, instead of just being held for pointless questioning and study, day after day. In the meantime Kirk tried to explain Vina's plan, to go back and avoid the spread of the keepers across Federation space in the first place. Sylann kept his gaze out along the horizon during the flight, while Vina seemed withdrawn, in the back seat.

"Does that sound feasible to you?" Kirk asked, as they flew above the sands.

"Many beings perceive themselves as a constant, in the equation of their own lives," Sylann said, without seeming to endorse or condemn the idea. "But my grand-cousin is quite aged. And her patience… with more emotional beings, and perhaps with the strange contortions of the mind that you describe… may be rather limited."

"Well," Kirk sighed, seeming undeterred, "it… can't hurt to ask."

Sylann shifted in his seat, turning to the starship captain with a very particular kind of focus, a very direct look in his dark eyes, as the air-car raced above the sands.

"We have been very struck by the attacks on Rigel, and those that occurred before," he said, quietly, as if (even in the privacy of the air-car) the high council might be examining his every word. "If a race like the keepers of Talos IV can infiltrate even your own complex mind, with its many twists and turns, Captain Kirk, what hope is there for anyone less than a starship commander?"

"I don't know," Kirk admitted. "But we have to keep trying."

And, finally, the air-car descended again. They were on the outskirts of a much smaller city, whipped by wind and sand, far across the desert.

It was strangely epic—the sight of the beautiful Vina in her white jumpsuit, slowly crossing to a walled courtyard surrounding a private, stucco-covered home, to meet T'Lan, all draped in black. The elderly professor likewise inched closer from the other end of the quiet garden, from within high walls to keep out the sand. To Kirk, it seemed as if both women were crossing through the stubborn, invisible meshes of the years, or breaking through invisible cobwebs, as they reached toward one another.

Eventually they did met to clasp hands at the thick outer wall, and T'Lan led her visitors into the center of the courtyard, amidst the tall, dark plants she sheltered within. A strictly geometric stream flowed around the plants, rippling water set into the black-tiled floor, a floor that shone like slate, or waves frozen upon a dark sea. Kirk kept his distance, preferring a modest shady corner near the gate. He imagined it wouldn't do to for a pair of relatively young humans to go ganging-up on an old Vulcan, like a couple of eager Labradors.

There appeared to be a tiny Vulcan hummingbird, or perhaps a large insect, going from one desert flower to another, on invisibly fast little wings, as the sun set and shadows in the courtyard began to spread. It flew over and lit on T'Lan's iron-colored hair, fluttering before it came to rest like a glittering piece of jewelry.

For a long moment, the old Vulcan peered into the Earthwoman's eyes, like a very analytical mother, searching for signs of trouble or damage, before lifting her gaze to regard the starship captain.

"You are welcome, James T. Kirk," the ancient professor nodded—but he wondered if she was even seeing him. Or if, perhaps, she was "feeling" his presence with her mind, somewhere in the direction of the cool corner where he stood.

Then Sylann brought Kirk forward, toward the inner rooms of the house, into the quiet of a greeting hall. The black polished stones of the terrace continued inside, where the walls that stretched up were of the starkest white to a high, wood-beamed ceiling. The tiniest vertical textures of the stucco walls, and the stilled waves of the slate-like floor, seemed like many delicate, captured vibrations in the air, rather than the natural imperfections of thin plaster or stone: like fragmented winds, stilled after the final clash of some youthful, contradictory thoughts, long ago.

The two women sat down on a small bench in the entry hall. And Jim Kirk would have exhaled with relief, but he realized they were not being allowed any farther inside—which made him begin to doubt the intimacy he'd hoped for, between Vina and T'Lan: and now he momentarily despaired of any crucial alliance or friendship from long ago, that might help them going forward.

He also noticed there was something hunched about both women, sitting there on the bench: as if each carried some terrible private burden, some invisible workman's load, as they huddled together like a pair of ancient tortoises. Except that one projected a lovely youthful image, as gaudy as a counterfeit diamond necklace.

T'Lan could have been 175 for sure, or roughly twice as old as Vina, Kirk supposed. He studied her face, which was as steady and wrinkled as Sitting Bull's: catching the first glimpse of eternity beyond these fading dimensions. But the garden insect that landed on her straight gray hair was still there, as if lulled into sleep by her absolute self-possession, and her purely logical thoughts.

Finally, Vina touched the old Vulcan's hand with her own (seemingly) plump, spotlessly bronzed hand, and in leaned closer.

"I don't know if you would consider this to be 'safe,'" she began, casting her eyes down at the spindly old boots T'Lan wore below her dark, serious robes. "But I wanted to put a stop to something… something that's already happened…"

And, in an instant, T'Lan had thrown off Vina's hand and was standing with unexpected, imperious strength and energy. Startled by her rising, the humming-bug flew off her head and out into the sunset, as if alarmed by the approach of some unseen predator. T'Lan followed, hobbling back out to the walled garden.

"Do not come to me like this," she hissed, as Vina looked ashamed and covered her knees with her hands where she sat. "Such vanity. Such grandeur," T'Lan sighed angrily, or as close to anger as she could bring herself, after a lifetime of training in the study of self-restraint. God help them all, Kirk thought, if she ever allowed herself to be any more hot-blooded. Then, with an unaccountable disdain, the old Vulcan said through gritted teeth,

"It is the bell that rings itself!"

And before her strange words could fully die in the air, T'Lan had reached the doorway. Then, fully on the other side of the threshold, in the dusky half-light, the older scientist turned back to the beautiful blond one, as if to dismiss her.

"Please," Vina said, rising more slowly than T'Lan, and taking just a step forward from the bench.

"The past cannot be changed," T'Lan said flatly, as if issuing a great commandment—almost growling. "It is the legs we stand on, here in the present." And, to Kirk, it seemed that T'Lan was standing very firmly indeed, to show Vina the way out. A few embarrassing seconds passed, and something tired and bitter in her black, cold eyes seemed to suggest the past and present were now only points on a dry parchment map she'd soon be glad to roll up and leave behind.

"Telepathy can be used for evil or for good," Vina insisted, looking stricken as she took another few steps across the large front hall, out toward her mentor, out in the garden. "Your long life can be used to help the good stand up, or you can neglect the present danger, and weaken us all till the galaxy collapses into evil."

"Beauty can be used," T'Lan said, studying her severely, from nearly ten meters away. "The past can be used. Everything can be 'used' …even logic." But it was that last observation that seemed to change her mood from haughty defiance, to one of deep consternation. The two women looked past one another, strangely.

"I've got to stop the evil I helped release upon the galaxy," Vina said at last, growing harsh and insistent. She leaned forward, her forehead thrusting at T'Lan like some bony Klingon brow, as if in warning: with her own vast experience on the subject of evil, toward this tidy old rationalist.

A long silence ensued, as Vina made her way out to the garden doorway, clearly intending to walk right past her old professor in defeat. The earth woman now seethed with anger; and the Vulcan was equally fearsome with a kind of regal shock. Kirk remained off to one side, trying to come up with some argument to help Vina, and the Federation. But it was the elderly Vulcan woman who finally spoke.

"The past is used up," T'Lan said, almost too quiet to hear, leaning right in to Vina as she passed out of the entry hall. The blond only made it a few steps out into the dusk, halted by her former professor's question:

"What part of yourself would you be willing to give up, to change it?"

There was a bitter pause, in which Vina finally turned, alone in the garden now, and met T'Lan's stern gaze.

"My pain, my imprisonment," Vina said. "Everything, if necessary." From the look in her unflinching eyes, it was clear she could never reclaim all that had been stolen. And then, resignedly, Vina walked out into the desert again, as T'Lan slowly pursued. It was like a very slow-motion chase scene, and finally T'Lan called after her.

"You think you can escape from these things? From pain? From so-called 'imprisonment'?" At the Vulcan's words, Vina paused, on the path back to the air-car. And in a moment, the two women were silhouetted against the sunset, the desert wind yanking at their hair and their clothing.

But suddenly it was a different Vina: the aged, crash-scarred scientist, who had emerged: as if her beauty was eroded by the sand. It was hard for Kirk to see, with her face shadowed that way against the twilight. But the bad repair to her shoulder, and her frail, off-balance stance soon became obvious.

T'Lan simply waited, as if there were another, subtler transformation to come. But, in spite of her more vulnerable appearance, Vina seemed even more confident now that she'd dropped the mask of beauty. A sarcastic little smile played on her lips.

"What does it matter, if we change the present?" Vina said, nodding with a degree of irony, as if she understood T'Lan's disinterest; or perhaps her head had simply become too heavy for her neck to support any longer.

And, as the wind quieted down at last, Kirk could plainly hear the struggle in Vina's voice. The workings of her jaws and lungs deep inside had also seemingly decayed, and she spoke through clenched teeth. At first, it almost sounded like she was trying to find agreement with T'Lan, who looked perfectly content to surrender the rest of the galaxy to mad self-indulgence. Then, Vina added, even more ironically:

"What does it matter… if we change the future?" And, in the twilight, the captain could only assume her eyes were directed at the far more ancient Vulcan as she spoke. "The past is the only tool you and I have left, beyond our reason. It's the rock that breaks the future open."

Now, far from static or slow, watching the two old women swaying and breathing and staring at one another was almost as stressful as a fistfight between two young men. Kirk could hear, from Vina's rapid, shallow breathing and see, from T'Lan's stark, glaring eyes, that each woman's exertion was reaching its limit. Now and then, each reeled backward or forward, as if struggling for balance.

"You wish to abolish yourself… in the present… to make a sacrifice for yourself, in the past?" Somehow, everything these elderly Vulcans said sounded incredulous.

"It does seem rather backward, I admit," Vina said.

"You hope to send a message into the past: to a crossroads of decision, walking across my soul, as your own cobblestones," T'Lan nodded, suspiciously.

"What other choice do I have?" Vina shrugged, and Kirk's eyes had adapted to looking out into the evening to see a broken-hearted smile spread like a horizontal scar, across the grisly purple crash-mark that ran right down the middle of her face. But the smile seemed to unbalance her again, and her head wobbled over her white jumpsuit, now tinged with reddish sand, and pastel shadows of sunset.

"To accept things as they are is only logic," T'Lan said, and Vina bowed in defeat.

"Ma'am," Kirk spoke up, at last, "we've just spent ten days witnessing all sorts of violence, of innocent lives taken, and innocent people turned into murderers, because of… something that began with a few hopeful gestures of love: a love that reunited Vina with my predecessor, after a terrible accident; and his love, that finally set her free—along with her former captors. Now, we only want to set things back the way they were, before many more lives are ruined or destroyed."

"So much has been thrown into chaos. And perhaps you see yourselves as masters of this chaos?" It was a shocking accusation, but T'Lan only raised her eyebrows in an air of general inquiry. Then she glanced at Sylann, who had been standing by Kirk's side. Quickly, silently, the young grand-cousin escorted her back in to the garden, back within the safety of her own walls, to a bench beneath an arching tree.

Then, in a way so humble it left Jim Kirk feeling faintly horrified, Vina slowly followed back into the garden, revealing all of the neglect and violence against her, to sit down at her teacher's black boots, upon the black stone floor: the Earth woman in white huddled at the feet of the Vulcan in black.

"We squander our whole lives to bring you forward into rationalism," T'Lan lamented, almost smiling, "and you come to us only for sentimental reasons, still."

"If I am successful," Vina explained again, looking across T'Lan's robed knees, to the far shadows of the garden, "I shall have created a condition of complete self-denial—denying myself the love of my life, as well as my present suffering too."

"And in this way, you propose to save your fellow humans," T'Lan said, looking down at her severely, as if it must be a terribly foolish investment.

"If I can go back… and prevent the keepers from escaping their dead world, from gaining a foothold in my own people's minds, I will have gained far more than I could ever offer of myself. I thought I could go back, directly through one of my captors on the Enterprise. But it didn't seem to change anything, counseling them in their own distant past, through the mind-tunnel of their own greater powers."

"And you wish me to help you in this… suicide of yours… on behalf of so many hundreds of billions of ridiculous creatures? Beings who cannot control their perceptions—or even their dreams? To help one of my own students destroy all that I have worked to create within her? No. We must leave them to their dreams."

There was an awkward silence, and Vina tilted her battered head, remembering.

"It is because of what you have created within me, that I come to you now," Vina murmured. "I have seen the children, falling out of the sky," she said, of the madness over Wrigley II, "and the hated and despised: their bodies consumed in flame," she added quietly, speaking of Talos IV, 750,000 years ago, before the great war that destroyed that planet. The strange vision, of Talos' first, loathed telepaths, shrouded in flames had come to her, before they'd left for Vulcan, two days ago.

"Men and women, just shoving each other into purification vats, creating such wretchedness in their hearts, that they will never feel clean again," she added, remembering where she first met Kirk, on Saldana II, some eight days ago. Remembering another case of contamination in this strange new war.

T'Lan remained silent, which could have meant anything, Kirk supposed. Then, finally, she spoke.

"You must learn to accept these things as they are." There was only the slightest of pauses, before she changed gears again, becoming more serene. "Have you any other business to conduct with me?"

Kirk could only look away in private anguish, as Vina struggled to rise from the black slate floor, looking like she might just as easily collapse. T'Lan did not help her, and Sylann seemed responsive only to his living ancestor. If the old Vulcan felt any pity, she did not show it. It was a maddening display.

Finally, Vina walked across to the garden doorway again and Kirk followed, with a pained little nod to their host. In a moment, Sylann was coming up behind them too. The three returned to the air car without speaking.

"What will you do, now," Kirk asked quietly, sitting next to Vina in the back seat.

"What I have been doing," she said, not bothering to put on her youthful illusion anymore. It almost seemed that Vina had heeded T'Lan's stern advice, to accept her true self, and the terrible cost of her freedom. Then the dunes fell below, to a brown vista, and sped by: dimly lit by a trailing red asteroid above, which some called a moon. Now it dogged this cold, hot world like a beggar's soul.

"I suppose it doesn't really matter, when your days are numbered down so low," she sighed. Finally, she drew a peach-and-gold colored cigarette from her pocket, and a little matchstick shaped lighter. She expelled the first great breath of smoke like a simmering anger. Words quickly followed.

"I just hoped to stop them, before they turned the whole human race into… what I've become." Another ghostly cloud filled the backseat, as she exhaled again.

"Well," he said at last, as the endless desert sailed beneath them, and the glow of twilight reappeared in the west, up ahead, "every great journey begins with 'no.'"

Finally they rose to their full cruising altitude, ten kilometers up. And only then, the sun seemed to rise again, but this time out of the west: like one last chance at seizing the day.

Chapter Two

After all of that, it wasn't too hard for Captain Kirk to convince her to spend the night up on board the great starship. In fact, once the lights were down, Vina seemed to fall right to sleep in sickbay, as her joint-renewal therapy hummed over her hips and knees: round transducers, like old-style heat lamps, focusing on each of the largest weight-bearing joints; while nano-bots (injected a few days ago) did their corresponding work deep within her bones, activated by the transducers.

"I don't know, Jim," Dr. McCoy said, folding his arms, as they stood outside the wardroom, in his office. "A couple of weeks like that, at least."

"She seems so willing, all of a sudden, to just… give up and… die," Kirk shook his head, in spite of all their best efforts to keep her going, and renew her worn-out body.

"It's all she's been through: medical neglect; decades of poor nutrition; no exercise; and finally," McCoy squinted, shaking his head, "the loss of the great love of her life. And now this new disappointment, with her old professor down on Vulcan."

Something else seemed to turn McCoy's expression darker, still—and Kirk could only assume the doctor was estimating the added toll of an endless stream of dreams, cruelly turned against her, in which Vina was merely a puppet.

"And what about…" Kirk could only finish his question by nodding through the doorway, toward the keeper in the wardroom: two beds away from Vina, with its huge skull locked between a pair of brain-wave dampeners. It had been there for over three days now, accessible only through the strange massed telepathy of the elderly blond Earth scientist and Kirk's own science officer.

"So far, it seems fine," McCoy shrugged, his voice now scarcely audible at all, as if the formidable telepath might overhear. And, if it hadn't been for that bracket of energy-dampeners, putting the creature in a deep sleep-state, it probably could have sifted through every mind in the ship, and controlled at least a handful of the most important in very short order.

"But it would be nice to off-load… or, transfer it—him—off to some other authority," Kirk concluded, looking at the frail, tiny alien, in its silvery robe, lying there motionless. Both men seemed to feel safest on the other side of the doorframe.

"Well, sure," McCoy agreed. "But then she'll just need another one, or its blood, to maintain her borrowed telepathic powers. And, of course, her illusion of beauty—which, let's face it, probably helps her on some level of psychological healing."

"You could just take another vial, for safe-keeping," Kirk said, trying to sound as mild and inoffensive as he could. But the doctor had already expressed himself, before this visit to Vulcan, on the general subject of draining another sentient being, even a hostile one, as if it were a fountain of youth. There was a moment of silence.

"How long do you think we can just keep it like that," the doctor wondered. The screen over the keeper's head was still mostly blank, as it had been, since they'd regained control of the Enterprise.

"You mean," Kirk answered, as quietly as the chief medical officer, "how long do you think it'll stay alive? Or, how long do you think we can keep it… under control?"

McCoy only nodded to show that, at least, the questions were right. The answers were anybody's guess.

Two hours later, the lights were very dim in the sickbay wardroom, and Vina had grown restless watching her own heartbeat and pulse upside down in the red blinking lights above her pillow: on and off in the dark, as if that's all there was to life anymore. Not even a psychological experiment any more, as she'd been on Talos—now just a physical one; and only a bed away from one of her former enslavers.

And no matter how much she tried to put it out of her head, she couldn't give up her idea of sending a message back across the years, through some willing telepath, to his or her younger self: the dream of stopping her own self, before she made a terrible mistake. She'd just need another Vulcan, or perhaps another telepath of any description, who might have lived long enough to know her both then and now, and who could burrow back through their own soul, to just before her fateful voyage, 55 years ago…

The glowing hip and knee regenerators hummed quietly against her joints, like robotic painters' arms, brushing this way and that, as the bones beneath the skin knit stronger, microscopic layer-by-layer. But somehow the sheer boredom and helplessness of being bedridden finally compelled her to prop herself up on her elbows, and slip off the bed. When you're stuck in a hospital bed, she knew, all you ever really wanted was to get up and go for a walk. Anywhere.

She stopped a few meters away, at the foot of the keeper's bed: anxiously folding and unfolding her arms but, somehow, she couldn't possibly achieve a straightforward look of scientific detachment. The moment she'd composed herself in an attitude of harmless pondering (lest any night nurse should suddenly pop in) she began to feel awkward and artificial, as if she were forced to admit she was watching her former jailer with a very strange motive—and so she dropped her arms to her sides, only to raise them to the step-plate at the foot of its bed, till even that simple pose seemed entirely too contrived as well. Then she began all over again, folding her arms, exasperated at her own timidity.

"We had meant you no harm," its voice seemed to say, as she stood there watching the motionless little figure. Or was she imagining it? The voice, speaking plainly from inside her own head, 1/3rd the size, should have sounded perfectly clear. But there was some metallic strain in it, as if telepathy itself had finally become too challenging, in the grip of those brainwave dampeners, and the smallest escaping thoughts were somehow distressed and distorted.

Of course, her own mind was instantly filled with bitter memories of beautiful dreams, squeezed out of her like the toothpaste her grandmother used to use: dreams to keep the keepers alive themselves: that left her waking up after each golden moment, lying on a cold stone floor, dazed and embarrassed, and usually alone. Like waking up in some lonely Hell, after too good a time, over and over again. But then, as she stood there in the wardroom, her thoughts were interrupted.

"You are correct: your dreams kept us all alive. In fact, yours were so vibrant we eventually grafted them on to the weaker minds of many others who crashed on our world. It kept them alive far longer than we ever expected, given the extent of their injuries, and for far longer than those who crashed long before your arrival. You feel damaged… but you saved many lives, giving them hope and dreams they'd never had before."

Vina stood in silence for a moment, not hearing the distant beeping of computers and monitors in the sickbay at all. For now, she had to wonder: which was worse, dying quickly from your own crash-wounds, or being kept just barely alive with someone else's transplanted memories, so that in your own dying you were merely danced around like a marionette… on borrowed strings? She suddenly felt wretched, and complicit in the guilt of the keepers.

Finally a nurse did walk by, in the doctor's office, and Vina made herself invisible in the near-darkness. A vial of Talosian blood four or five days ago had made that possible again.

But instead of feeling grateful, she just wanted to beat her former captor to death, or perhaps slowly, ruthlessly squeeze it dry, as they had been doing to her, till the alien was as finally as dead as Chris. She oscillated back and forth from one violent emotion to the other, every ten or twenty seconds. And then she had to admit, from a purely scientific standpoint (which had eluded her till now), there must still be some use for a creature like this, besides the vain drawing of blood, for her power and beauty. Even after all its other victims had died, or been sorted out to their own home worlds, she was convinced she still had some business to conclude with it—this twig-like collection of bones, and that giant, Brussels sprout of a head. With dark cranial arteries pulsing quietly there on an orange-colored, metallic mesh pillow.

But soon that head, that giant Brussels sprout, seemed to vibrate like a great bulging flower blossom to her, full of poisonous potential, once the nurse had passed by—no longer a just a weirdly comical vegetable sprout: more like something about to open up and spread its pollen on whatever unwary creatures passed by. She regained her impulse was to smash it to bits, as Chris Pike had threatened to do, before his youthful escape. Before she'd followed her own strange impulse to stay behind.

And yet, this was also her whole family now, with Chris dead. Not even a boastful, foolish Telerite or dark and desperate cephalopod to stand with her against their shared misfortune, for those former prisoners had each found their own true homes once more.

There was also T'Lan, like a stern mother in some ways. But the ancient Vulcan seemed to have divorced her, or at least divorced herself from Vina's plan to rescue them all. There had also been old Professor T'Mara, old even when he taught Vina about space flight, and navigating the invisible dimensions of warp space, and all that went along with the earliest interstellar travel. Surely he was long dead by now…

But that's what she'd said about T'Lan. Maybe…

She walked back to her bed and pulled a viewscreen out from the wall, on a long segmented arm. She tapped in her search-terms on the screen, and… sure enough, T'Mara had been dead for nearly 40 years. Dead and gone.

Then, her eyes turned back in grim resignation to the keeper. She watched as the alien body on the pallet seemed to barely shake apart, silently, into a hundred vibrations of itself, just off-center from the actual keeper she saw before her: just for a moment, when that shuddering vibration took place, and then it was still once more. As if the whole of the tiny body in its robes was refracted into many other selves, and she could see all of them, almost blurred together, all of them from many other parallel universes, many other present moments, just a hairsbreadth apart from its exact placement there on the bed. Then, utterly still…

Or perhaps, she thought, as if it was already being erased from its own past?

But it still reminded her of a blooming bud: about to open into some ghastly, garish display above its brow at any moment. And how all the keepers had been joined together, mentally, for the last 750,000 years, after their war for freedom had finally destroyed their non-telepathic brethren. Her left hand reached out, toward the sleeping form, as if to strangle some invisible spirit that threatened to spread itself like contagion. But when she closed her fingers, her fist was empty.

She turned and walked out of the wardroom, stern with resolve. It barely occurred to her that she was walking more and more smoothly, thanks to the regenerative treatments. And then, Captain Kirk's hopeful words came back to her, once again:

Every great journey begins with "no."

But the whole track of her existence seemed utterly wrong to her: one great "no," in fact, for most of her life. And with that realization, she turned on her heel and walked out of sickbay, into the wide curving corridor of Deck Five. It was nearly empty at this "late" hour of the night.

She went around, to no apparent destination, and chanced to meet Mr. Spock, who paused in the middle of the corridor to greet her.

"Haven't seen you in a while," she smiled. There were only a few other crewmen passing up and down, disappearing around the bends, beyond either scientist's shoulder.

"I have been on the surface, visiting family," Spock answered, without any trace of the usual human emotions, pleasure, sadness, or at least exhaustion.

"Yes, well," she said, finding herself a little breathless, all of a sudden, "I've had a little family reunion of my own. To visit an old professor. A waste of time, I'm afraid."

"Ah," the first officer of the Enterprise nodded. "Your plan to re-connect with your younger self through a telepathic conduit, back through time."

"Yes."

"And this professor was your only living link?" He said it so matter-of-factly.

But suddenly she appraised Mr. Spock in an entirely new way, not as the man who brought her beloved Chris back to her on Talos; nor the man who possessed vast new library of untapped memories of Captain Pike in his own memory; but as a new connection with her own, long-buried past, before all of that. Finally, he had become her salvation, in a way she'd never imagined. There was a funny little pause.

"Perhaps not my only living link," she smiled.

It became an unexpectedly eventful night for them both.

Old Doctor T'Mara was in the middle of a lecture at Starfleet Academy, to what looked like an audience of about 200 young cadets, most of who seemed vaguely exasperated, or hopelessly confused. And, behind them all, behind the top-most row in the stadium-like auditorium, stood a little Vulcan boy with dark straight hair and elegantly pointed ears, but also chubby little Earth-boy cheeks—which his Earth-born relatives could hardly keep from pinching, for the last three days, on a rare visit to his human mother's world.

He stood alone, up at the top of the lecture hall. And far down below, Dr. T'Mara spoke plainly and without many gestures, as a huge hologram floated behind him, illustrating dodeca-dimensional physics on something like a giant, glowing soccer ball. The five-year old Spock listened politely, up above, trying to absorb as much of the lecture as he could, which was perhaps more than half. The other half, he stored up in his memory for later study.

His mother Amanda waited out in the hall, no longer surprised by anything her half-Vulcan son did anymore, though of course she insisted on coming with him, if only to gain him admittance. The serious little boy seemed quite convinced he would need an hour or less to conduct his business with this theoretical physicist and, from his mother's own past experience, there seemed little doubt he'd be as good as his word.

Finally the lecture came to an end, and the boy-Spock thought he could detect some minor impatience on the face of the full-blooded Vulcan professor down in the center of the hall, as the students filed-up the stairs, and out past this terribly serious child. Spock wore a Terran pair of overalls and cowboy boots, which his grandparents had enthusiastically pressed upon him at his arrival. Was it the business of every Earth family member to make each other look and feel as ridiculous as possible? Or was this merely his lot in life? He much preferred his sober Vulcan robes, though otherwise Earth seemed pleasant enough.

The lecture hall was nearly empty now, and, as if he'd done it a hundred times before, the little boy quickly made his way down the long steps to the dais, where Dr. T'Mara was putting a few memory plaques into a satchel that hung from his shoulder. Gone was the floating hologram, as glowing and hollow as the heads of the youthful academy students who'd fled as quickly as possible.

At the sight of a fellow Vulcan, and one so very young, the professor stopped completely, and gave a slight bow of respect. The five-year old did likewise.

"Please, gracious master," Spock began, "have you a student from Earth by the name of Vina Orwell?"

The professor squinted slightly, down at the little Vulcan cowboy.

"Not at this time," T'Mara said, glancing down, and then quickly turning to go.

"But," Spock insisted, "perhaps at any time?"

At this strange turn of phrase, T'Mara paused and faced the boy again, the old man's robes swirling as slightly as the change in the direction of their talk. In an instant, it seemed the stern professor had ascertained something unusual about this little visitor.

"You are not fully Vulcan," he said quietly. "Are you related to this person you seek?"

"It is not I who must seek her, learned one." And at this age, Spock was still entirely innocent, as he attempted to engage a potential ally. An older boy would have probably been more overtly humble, and less plainly outspoken. But artfulness might have looked suspicious to T'Mara, a philosopher of too many dimensions. And, as they stood facing each other on the lecture platform, the boy (who barely measured 65 centimeters in height) rubbed his nose unselfconsciously.

"I cannot help you, little one," T'Mara said, and strode off the platform toward a side door, leading to a tunnel beneath the seats. But the five-year-old was alert enough to know that he had touched off a strange alarm in the old man's head.

Spock hurried after him, recalling the strange echoing presence in his own mind—like his own thoughts, but not—in his own voice, but not—telling him to seek out this man, and (if possible) a young woman planning a very long voyage. And to stop her, at any cost: Find professor T'Mara at Starfleet… Stop his pupil Vina Orwell… from a journey that threatens the future of the galaxy. There were images, too.

He pulled the heavy tunnel door open, to catch sight of the Vulcan professor just disappearing into the network of hallways up ahead. And, of course, the boy scampered after him. His little boots made a loud clicking noise as he hurried along, and he paused only briefly to determine which way T'Mara might have gone, at this turn or that in the passageways. He jammed his pudgy little hands over his mouth, to dampen the sound of his own panting breath, and to listen with the greatest possible sensitivity, while his large dark eyes darted back and forth in the shadows.

He set out running again, as a little boy of that size and age could scarcely travel any other way but at full-speed, and finally came to a closed door. When he opened it, he looked down a busy hallway, and thought he saw the colorful reflection of Professor T'Mara's jeweled robes swaying against an office door. Once again, the five year old hurried after. Dozens of Starfleet cadets and their instructors barely noticed the little one, dashing around knots of people who were conversing or making their way to some chamber or hall or laboratory, in groups of two's and three's.

"She is a golden woman—a gold-headed woman," the little Spock blurted out, as soon as he grabbed the doorway where T'Mara had sought his escape, and now stood listening to another professor talk about some conference she'd just returned from. Both learned masters paused to glance down quizzically at the boy, before turning away again, ignoring him completely.

When T'Mara's colleague finally stopped, and seemed quite unsure about the little Vulcan boy who would not leave them alone, the small Spock heaved a great sigh, to catch his breath at last.

"Please excuse my unforgivable behavior, learned master," the little boy insisted, as the other professor quietly walked out into the corridor and disappearing, just as T'Mara himself would have liked to do, too. But, instead, the professor simply folded his hands in front of his robes and looked down without apparent condemnation.

"What is your interest in this golden woman?"

"Please, learned master," Spock gulped for breath once more, "she is embarking on a very dangerous expedition! I must stop her!"

If the old man could have laughed then and there, he would have. But in an instant his arched brows lowered again, and the wrinkles on his face rearranged themselves into more sedate vertical and horizontal lines.

"And why is this?"

The little boy glanced over his shoulder, as if he were being pursued.

"I am in receipt of a message of great importance," the five-year old said, as if starting all over again, with complete sincerity, and still a bit of breathless excitement.

"About this woman, this student of mine," T'Mara nodded.

"Yes."

"And what has this to do with me, perhaps?"

"This is as far back as I could go, to reach her. You must go the rest of the distance!"

At this, T'Mara stood up very straight and imposingly once more, his face becoming hard, almost angry. He swept past the boy without so much as a fare-thee-well. But, of course, the five-year-old Spock followed again.

"You must help. It is a matter of the utmost importance!"

"The bell does not ring itself, little one," was all the professor would say, as he disappeared into a throng of passing students, going in all different directions. The crowds of tall people seemed determined to block the boy no matter which way he went: left or right; and each interference demanded some new, skittering change of direction on those slippery boot heels. His face was constantly brushing against tall legs rushing or stopping arbitrarily, everywhere around him.

Somehow, the Vulcan child knew this "ringing bell" allusion was a remark of great significance: and that perhaps he had heard it before. Or, would hear it again, many years in the future. For time now revealed itself as the great forge, bending and hammering and folding and tempering us all, folding past and future together, tempering each one into something perfectly integrated across time; and pounding away all throughout one's life. From this moment on, he became aware that the hammering never fully ceased within his soul as he struggled to make peace, and a place, for himself.

"What does it mean," Spock insisted, tugging the professor's heavy robes, once he had darted between dozens of pairs of black cadet's trousers, which sliced his vision like dark scissors, until persistence stitched his path together once more.

"The bell does not ring itself?" T'Mara turned, in the midst of the rushing students, to look down on the little boy. "It means we can never trust our own motives—if you are acting on behalf of some strange voice you have heard, or expect me to change my own past to suit you, according to the will of some unknown person from many years in the future, you should wonder who is pulling the bell cord in summons, and why. And how undignified it is to serve any selfish desire."

The boy-Spock only furrowed his brow, for this was clearly a lot of grown-up nonsense.

Finally T'Mara sighed, picking up the little one in his arm, and proceeding down the hall to his next class. The old Vulcan kept his steely gaze straight ahead, as another thought occurred to him.

"There is another meaning, but it is not for children. Not even for children who may be… possessed… by their own future selves," he added, as he carried the boy along through the crowd.

Spock could only blink in polite disinterest at that observation, as he bounced against the professor's shoulder, swaying like a man riding a camel. The concept of possession, other than perhaps 'self-possession,' was fundamentally hostile to their shared heritage.

And soon they stood in another auditorium, with different colors of wood and carpet, but the same essential dimensions and raised platform, down at the bottom of the round hall. Apparently there was still time to talk, as the students had yet to arrive.

The little Spock wandered into the very center of the speaker's dais, and turned around to survey the still rows of seating, rising up all around. Clearly, he was too early for an audience. Or, too late, considering that the golden woman must have left on her doomed voyage, before he ever was born.

"Now," T'Mara sighed, his hands clasped over his waist, in a pose of patience, "perhaps you will tell me of this great, important message. And why you would attempt to turn back the expedition of my greatest human student."

And, in spite of himself, the half-Vulcan boy smiled, at being the center of attention, or at his sudden realization of the sheer improbability of it all. And then, unconsciously or not, he also clasped his hands over his waist, and cocked his head just so, like T'Mara.

"You heard a voice," the old man prompted, calmly.

The boy nodded, gazing out into the rows and rows of empty seats, rising high like stormy seas all around, frozen in place for a second before swallowing them up.

"It came to you, unbidden," T'Mara said. "It came from the center of your mind."

"Gently," Spock said, as if pondering something very still.

"And it spoke."

"Like it had always been there. But listening, till now."

T'Mara nodded. "Internal telepathy, some call it," he said, not entirely pleased by the idea. He spoke very gently, but authoritatively now: "One does not meddle in one's own past lightly."

"It was not a light thing, learned master!" The little Spock now dropped all pretense of being a grand lecturer himself.

"Continue."

"'Go and tell Professor T'Mara to stop Vina Orwell. She has embarked upon a doomed expedition, and it will doom many innocent lives, as well. Many!'" And, after repeating the words of that silent, steady voice in his head, the voice of immutable certainty, he turned to look the professor straight in the eye, in the usual Vulcan manner.

"But she has left, already. Fifteen years, eight months, and fourteen days ago," T'Mara said, without any particular sense of regret over the boy's bad timing. "I believe the additional mission count-up is six hours, thirty-seven minutes, fifty-one standard seconds. But I was not paying close attention."

At this, the little boy paused, trying to find something else to say, something else to ask, something else to do to be rid of that shocking sensation, waking up from sleep to an all-too-familiar voice, coming from within: so immediate and intimate, from the night before. His gaze wove its way across the hall, beseeching the empty seats all around, and he made a pensive gesture with his hands, fingers tying and untying in his little fists.

But he was stuck with this awful sense of obligation, and apparently could not give it away. He finally nodded a little, not particularly enjoying his first truly grown-up moment; and gradually seemed to become absorbed in some internal calculation, trying to pack it away, or accept it as a layer of his own mental geology, if he could. There was no one to help, and no one willing to understand. He would have to think upon it further.

Not long after, his eyes suddenly raced back to those of the old Vulcan physicist, with a sudden urgency, as if he realized there was another route to what the future demanded of him. Just as instantly, the professor's expression became hard again, quietly taking control of the situation.

"Do not trouble me with your inspirations, young one," was all T'Mara said, holding up a steady hand, with long fingers. Gradually, those fingers separated themselves between the middle and fourth digit, in the familiar Vulcan salute, as if to dismiss the child before the class had ever begun. But even as T'Mara silently wished him "long life and prosperity," a door far above them was thrown open with a youthful "bang" by the first cadets to enter the class.

"Perhaps the bell rings itself in warning," the boy said quietly, as both of them turned at the sudden intrusion from above. "Perhaps the bell falls from a burning tower, to sound its death knell across the times, learned master. Unto thee."

At this clever bit of imagery, T'Mara nodded slightly, and pursed his lips. Then, the little boy tilted his head and squinted.

"What does that mean, learned master?"

"The burning bell-tower?"

"Yes."

T'Mara gazed silently at the child, as more and more cadets came stomping in, all around the crown of the stadium-like room, and slowly descended the steps like candle wax, pouring gracelessly down the aisles, toward another impenetrable lecture in imaginary physics.

Now T'Mara turned his back on most of the students, and knelt to speak quietly, directly to the boy, down at his own eye-level.

"It means that some emergencies are so great, that some of the disastrous decisions we have lived with for many years will eventually, inevitably demand a very high cost of one's own descendants… that the very structures of our civilization must cry out a warning, like the bell of a burning public hall, as it finally crashes down upon the rocks and ruins from above: in the instant when it becomes the final realization of disaster."

For a strange instant, as T'Mara spoke, his own words seemed to convict him, and exonerate the little boy of the charge of meddling in future and past. The elderly professor's fierce expression wandered away slightly, as if he couldn't see the students filling the rows behind the boy, who had himself become the unexpected intersection of great events. And, after a moment's consideration, T'Mara returned his steady, challenging gaze to the child.

"Who has told you of the burning bell-tower?" Now the students up above them were sitting down, listening silently to the strange conversation.

"No one, learned master!"

"And who is Vina Orwell?"

"One of your students, learned master." The students continued to stream in, from the doors up above, filling more and more of the seats all around.

"And you suggest some… obligation, on my part, to prevent her from taking some action, or other…"

"From her terrible expedition," the boy Spock interrupted, innocent of any charge of over-dramatics—but merely describing the height of urgency of what he'd received in the middle of the night before.

T'Mara nodded, gracious in the chubby little face of correction. To all the students who now filled the auditorium, it must have looked very much like the professor had become the pupil of this tiny boy, who clasped his little hands over his Western attire, in an attitude of thoughtful repose. Then, just like that, the boy stepped backward and bowed to the master.

"But I must not intrude upon your patience any further," the little Spock said, as their moment on the platform had begun to seem embarrassing, somehow. "My mother will be expecting me in four point three one minutes."

"Ah, then you must be off." T'Mara nodded, instantly calculating the child must have taken that exact amount of time to search him out in the first place, given the length of their strange visit, fifty-one point four minutes all-told, including that ridiculous chase down a crowded corridor.

And then, with astonishing simplicity, the old Vulcan gave a slow, sweeping gesture around him and spoke plainly, barely acknowledging all the 250 cadets now seated above him: "class is dismissed for the day."

There was a gasp of surprise that echoed throughout the hall, and the small Vulcan and the great one both hurried down through the instructor's tunnel, one in little cowboy boots he would never wear again; and the other sweeping out of sight in a jeweled robe that might soon be taken from him, for what he was about to do. They disappeared behind another clanging door, down into the shadows, before parting to go their separate ways.

"Look, sir, I don't want to be rude," the bartender finally said, slinging his white towel over his shoulder, as if he'd made a great decision at last, "but if you don't want to buy a drink, you're gonna have to leave."

It was nearly sixteen years earlier now, and a somewhat less elderly Professor T'Mara stared at the barkeep, before ordering a full 10 ounce glass of vodka, neat: as plain and clear as logic itself, despite the usual effect of it on the pre-frontal cortex. The drink was also a good deal clearer than the strange message that had come to him the night before, in the absolute solitude of meditation.

Nearly everyone else in the bar had left, since he'd come in: cadets eager to blow-off steam after a long week of classes and studies, just downed their drinks and fled from the presence of one of a stern Vulcan professor. But he had still not seen the young woman he'd come looking for. And so he waited.

T'Mara had begun to notice bells, however, all around the Starfleet campus that he'd never quite seen before. The latest was a pair of them, carved on a wooden plaque above the tavern door. Earlier that night he'd passed a small white clapboard church building on campus, with a modest bell tower on the roof. Quite out of place, but charming nonetheless. He imagined thousands of people going in there, over the last hundreds of years, seeking ways to be merciful, and to pursue a simpler internal life, in their own ways, hoping to bundle all their human grievances off into some alternate locus of dimensions in some hoped-for afterlife.

And in spite of the strange warning he'd "received" the night before, to find one adventurous student, that church bell-tower had still not come crashing down to Earth. But in that flash he did see some barely discernable, hideous danger for the young Ms. Orwell, for herself and many others, should she embark on a long period of deep-space research.

Then, without showing any trace of surprise, he turned to see the familiar face of the blond Earth girl, right by his side, at last.

"They told me you were here! Is everything all right?" she asked, looking amused and quizzical all at the same time as she hopped up on a barstool.

"I am in the awkward position of making an argument that has nothing at all to do with logic, Dr. Orwell," he said, not seeming very pleased with the situation.

She cocked her head and squinted a bit, then burst out laughing.

"If it was anybody else, learned master, I'd say you were trying to pick me up!"

He looked at her with that strange male combination of woundedness and disdain, at being utterly misunderstood. Or perhaps Vulcan faces were just made that way.

She looked around again, at the bleak, but brightly lit bar.

"Wow, I've never seen it so dead on a Friday night."

"There were twenty seven people here, not including myself or the bartender, when I first arrived," T'Mara said, without any particular interest or sense of accountability.

"They must have seen you and run away like a bunch of mice under a big hungry owl," Vina smiled again, imagining the students trying to unwind, in the presence of a dour Vulcan.

Then she composed herself again, trying to forget they were essentially in a college town beer hall at all, for a moment. Then, in spite of her efforts, another handful of students came roaring in. They, in turn, fell utterly silent at the sight of the severe old professor. And, just like that, they turned and walked out as one, as if they'd accidentally crashed a funeral. The bartender finally slumped against the back shelf in utter defeat.

"Oh, may I have one of those, too," she said, feeling sorry for the man in the white apron, now left with just two very serious customers. The bartender started pouring, even as her old professor spoke very quietly, and his fierce countenance drew her full attention.

"A strange thing happened last night," he began; looking involuntarily at the full, clear glass of vodka in front of him. "I was 'spoken to' by what I believe to have been myself, from across time, from the future. We call it 'a shadow-reflection,' on Vulcan—an image of the self that is not there, by one's own construction or volition—but which is nevertheless a truer image of one's self than any outsider could ever hope to construct, for dark purposes of deceit."

It was exceedingly rare that a Vulcan would discuss the internal workings of his own mind with a human so, of course, Vina became even more engrossed in what he was saying, even as she reached out and took the glass of clear liquid the bartender had just set before her. She sipped, and swallowed, and then gave that familiar gasping cough, as the vodka stripped away all the natural lubricants of her esophagus.

"It is pure grain alcohol. Forgive me," T'Mara said, still looking pensively forward, as she turned and coughed louder and louder, face turning red. He agonized silently, now convinced that, somehow, none of this was in the proper time-line. He should have called her into his office the next day, but he really wasn't exactly sure how much longer she'd be on campus, or even if he might simply have talked himself out of the whole matter before he ever had a chance to meet her in time.

Finally, she turned back, wiping her eyes, and checking her hair in the mirror behind the bar, along the wall facing them. Her face was still red from coughing.

"You are about to embark upon a long voyage," he said, not knowing that every bad fortuneteller, throughout all of human history, had always begun the exact same way.

"Yes?" She hadn't told him yet. In fact, she'd only just received the confirmation a day before. But perhaps he'd had some favorable influence on the science-team's decision to include her on the expedition. She smiled knowingly, wanting to thank him for his kind intervention. But her wistful sense of gratitude was suddenly ripped away by his next words.

"You must not go."

Now she paused, furrowed her brow, and picked up the drink she'd just put down. And after a few nervous little sips, some unidentified rage within her wanted to throw the drink in his unapologetic Vulcan face. On top of that, at some point in the last minute or two, the jukebox had run out of music, and the gaudiness of the lights and the shining of the bottles all around seemed like part of a frightening carnival at night. And a queasiness in the pit of her stomach came from the sudden violation of all her years of hard work and planning.

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"This 'shadow-reflection' I spoke of," he said, looking directly into her clear blue eyes. "It is a thing of the utmost personal nature to my people, and can only be transferred, in an almost primordial manner, between one's own future and past selves, during periods of intense meditation."

"I—that sounds a little crazy." She lifted the vodka to her lips again, and took a slightly bigger sip. The glass stayed hovered there by her chin, in case she should need it again right away.

"Undoubtedly," T'Mara agreed.

"What possible reason could you give me for not going?" She was actually beginning to feel a little bit like crying, as unscientific as that might have been.

"Only the extreme urgency of the communication."

"From the past?"

"Into the past," T'Mara corrected her, simply, looking at his reflection, again, in the bar-back.

"Meaning, from the future," she prodded, trying not to sound impatient or contemptuous of his exactitude.

"That is the only possible explanation. It is such a deeply personal thing—"

"Now wait a minute," Vina shook her head. "It seems like everything is deeply personal to Vulcans. Anything I'd call normal and human, you'd call deeply personal and embarrassing. That doesn't make it any more valid or any less ridiculous than anything anybody else might throw out in some casual conversation." She was becoming more and more animated, after drinking an ounce or two.

"Perhaps. But if you were to delay your mission, or possibly take another direction in your research…"

"How is that going to change the future?" She was practically shouting now. "The future already has a shape, defined by everything that's come before—it may not be constant, but everyone's subject to the same laws of equal and opposite reactions! Every religion, every philosophy, bends its knee to the laws of thermodynamics! Karma, reciprocity, call it what you will!" She sounded like a Vulcan, even to her own rounded little ears.

T'Mara nodded very slightly, before speaking again. As usual, physics was also his own last resort for illustration, and he began with an analogy to quantum physics, which are the smallest, and the briefest interactions, between the tiniest particles and forces and waves.

"One must consider the very extreme conditions that can operate at exceedingly small levels, for very short periods of time. You and I are exceedingly small in the vast scope of the Universe. We are, in our day-to-day decision-making, the quantum mechanics of all creation.

"And, it is my firm belief," he continued, "that you are bound to face extreme conditions if you embark upon this journey, opening the path to a larger breakdown in what is otherwise the most logical shape of things to come. Extending far beyond your own personal dimensions, out to the very depth and breadth of the galaxy itself. Possibly for centuries to come: a quantum shift, if you will."

"That's pretty fancy talk, even for a Vulcan," she said quietly, with a note of bitterness in her voice, as he persisted in ripping her plans to shreds. And, almost mechanically, she took another sip of her drink. But, in spite of everything, she began to feel a strange sympathy for the poker-faced extraterrestrial, sadly possessed by his own strange demons.

"Look," she resumed, "I know you wouldn't go to all this trouble for no reason."

T'Mara nodded slightly, looking past her, to the bells over the front door of the bar.

"What if I promise to be very, very careful," she smiled.

"You would not be the first Earth woman ever to say that to me," the stern old professor said, with a grim little sigh, which was somehow irresistible to her.

"Yeah, I bet," she said, managing a laugh. Another gaggle of cadets burst in the door of the bar, and Vina tried not to jump at the explosion of youthful, undergrad noise. She glanced over her shoulder as casually as she could, embarrassed at the idea of being seen with one of her professors. But, considering his race, there could hardly be any scandal attached.

"Look I, uh, have to take a walk—and think this over," Vina sighed, slipping off the bar stool and passing by the younger students streaming in. T'Mara left a generous tip on the bar and followed her as the bartender heaved a sigh of relief, and started taking drink orders from this new crowd.

She knew T'Mara had followed her, like some lovesick freshman… except he wasn't a lovesick freshman, which made it all the more puzzling. She certainly didn't feel in any immediate danger, as she strode across the campus, barely sensing his silent pursuit.

Finally, in the midst of a wooded lawn between far-flung groups of great buildings, she stopped and waited for him to catch up.

"Why do I get the impression you'll follow me out into space, if I go through with this?" she smiled, into the darkness behind her. The Vulcan, in his robes, emerged from the shadows of the trees, stepping forward in a light mist from the nearby San Francisco bay.

"I do not wish to steal any of the adventure or even the human glory that is due to you," he said quietly, and the sound of his voice carried with almost no reverberation in the early fog: almost as if he were speaking quietly, directly, into her ear.

"Of course not," she said, even more quietly, looking off at the halos that were taking shape around the path lights amidst the trees. The softness of the air, and his new, gentler approach made the decision a bit more painful: forcing her to choose to abandon her mission, or to her mentor, all in one night.

"But there is something—many things—lurking out there, beyond the common dangers." He folded his hands across each other, till they disappeared in his huge sleeves.

"What of it? Has that ever stopped any Vulcan from his mission?"

"No." T'Mara said, now walking again, past Vina. "But to live without emotion is not to be a sociopath." He turned to face her again, as if addressing her from the future. "I would be derelict and depraved, were I not to tell you of the extreme danger I have seen."

"Ahead, for me," Vina said, looking down into the grass at her feet.

"Yes." He simply started walking again, and she hurried after.

"What have you seen?" It put crescents of tears in her eyes, like cold, curving scythes. Which ever she chose, for whatever reason, she realized, she was apt to feel a fool when the conversation was finally done. Though this was often the case, when Vulcans were involved.

She caught up, and could see the spreading fog had not yet softened his hawk-like stare.

"It is an intensely… embarrassing thing, this shadow-reflection," T'Mara said.

"Why?"

T'Mara only squinted slightly, not taking the bait. Finally, she nodded a bit.

"I used to have a boyfriend," she said, after this long standoff, "who liked to… enjoy himself… in front of a mirror."

T'Mara only looked away, suggesting there might indeed be a parallel between the two self-absorptions. His own version of private Vulcan shame gave her a moment to clear her mind. Then she spoke again.

"I suppose that you, or any race of telepaths must have to have some pretty high standards on privacy, if you're going to stay in existence for very long."

And just then, somehow, her words produced a stunning effect: totally unexpected to her. It was as if she'd added one benign liquid to another, and triggered a shocking explosion in her professor's head.

T'Mara stopped at once—and even seemed dizzy for a strange moment, as if Vina had said something that resonated across time, into the future—far off, beyond his encounter with the little half-human boy, some sixteen years later. It was a dizziness that had nothing to do with embarrassment or fog or self-absorption. She stepped forward, and he swayed again, in the misty commons.

"I see it now!" he said very quietly, filled with humble reckoning, his lips apart. His hands re-appeared from his sleeves, as he spread them in the thickening air. She led him to a bench under an ornamental street lamp where, finally, he spoke.

"You said it," he added, seeming strangely fragile, and even astonished—as if he were in the middle of a long, dense conversation that only he could hear, or trying to make sense of some cleverly written contract, which he could barely read himself. "Something that you will encounter on your expedition," he added.

"Telepathy… and privacy," she said, trying to remember what exact words had triggered this sudden spell.

"Yes," he said, slowly. It was as if he feared to speak—feared to lose the sudden insight into the future: like waking from a dream, and then going stock-still: beseeching the dream not to evaporate. She peered off, as well, into the mist, over his shoulder.

"I will 'encounter' something that involves those two things," she said.

"Yes," he nodded, furrowing his brow.

"But how can you tell this, just from a few dream-like images?"

"It is the context, as well as the content—telepathy is part of the meaning!" the professor snapped, as if suddenly impatient with an un-focused student. He had turned to her, emphatically, and gradually she picked up his train of thought again.

"Vulcan presents no danger because it has telepathy, but also values privacy," she said, slowly figuring it out—squinting out into the fog again, "but something out there involves telepathy, and… hates privacy. And that's what poses a great danger to me… and, apparently, to many other people as well."

"Evidently," the professor sighed quietly, as if finally exhaling his own vapor of alcohol, or a wraith of mysticism that disappeared in the mist.

"But why would any race of people, or entity, or even machine, want to get inside our thoughts, or impose its own thoughts, or…"

"Your own history is shot-through with examples of governments and belief systems that have done precisely this, usually for monetary gain, or sexual compulsion, or to stave off some sense of cultural failure," he said abruptly, almost angrily.

"But now, with the wealth of ten billion worlds out there," Vina shook her head, as if this dire oracle might be irrelevant to them in the present day—as if his insight was merely some dry old water pump in a long forgotten ghost town…

"The freedom of a wealthy Federation of Planets," T'Mara scowled, dismissing her modern economics at once, "is only relevant to the handful of races that can cross the vast distances between stars, in less than many lifetimes!" He wrinkled his nose, contemptuously, at all that "galactic empire of freedom" nonsense, and the danger she seemed to seek out in that contrary, human manner.

"But if a race of telepaths were unable to escape their own planet," she insisted, "all they'd have to do is attract a ship, somehow take it over, and—theoretically—gain immense power."

Finally, T'Mara turned and looked at her, with that withering Vulcan solemnity.

"'Somehow'?" He seemed aghast. "Is this the scientific training I imparted to you?" He grew impatient all over again, shifting around on the bench in the fog. "What if that ship must be your own," he asked. "What if the warning from the future demands you obey?"

She turned away, without speaking, and took a few steps into the mist.

"There is also an economy of the spirit: of vision; of dreams, beyond this 'wealth of ten billion worlds," he said quietly. "There is always the economy of spirit, we labor and spend our passions on, so recklessly."

He squinted a bit, seated on the bench, as if gazing through the mist toward the unspeakable wickedness of telepathy abused. "A poor man can be rich in spirit; just as a rich man may squander all his dreams, before he falls into darkness. A world that trades fantasy for spirit, and self-indulgence for vision, will collapse into itself, before it ever learns it must be constantly reaching out!"

His hands had grasped out into the fog, as if to catch some faint sprite, as she watched. It was the picture of a world that had lost its grip on reality.

"You're saying I end up… where the dreams—and even the dreamers themselves—have become the currency," she said, feeling strangely strangulated by the thought. "But how could that possibly be kept up? Their illusions would only starve them—"

"They could be sustained indefinitely, given the proper technology!" T'Mara spat, becoming adamant again; and Vina came and sat by his side, feeling confused.

"And this warning from the future: in it I end up as one of their… commodities? And somehow, this spreads across to many other worlds. Many other races? All just living somebody else's dreams?"

They sat there, in the wet white air, which grew more and more impenetrable, as if time and vision and even the future itself were being robbed from them. Buildings across the quadrangle were colorless, like sheets of paper in a heavy snow.

"But," she insisted, "shouldn't I try to engage them, if only to put a stop to them?"

"It would be foolish unto fatality," T'Mara whispered, shaking his head.

Now Vina stood again, wrapping her arms around herself, either for warmth or for protection. She was filled with nervousness, and a sense of being trapped.

"But what you're really saying is…" she began, trying not to let her anxiety get the better of her, despite the haunted-look of the empty campus, "is that I should never go out into space at all! That I should give up my hopes and dreams and ambitions, and training and preparation! That the entire fate of the galaxy just happens to depend on me, staying stuck down here like some mollusk, living in fear, to avoid opening a trap… for many others to fall into. When someone else is bound to do just exactly the same thing anyway, sooner or later!"

He would not look at her, and she would not stop trying to engage him, in her growing, frantic outrage.

"Even though you must know the galaxy is here for our exploration, you're sitting there, saying this is my only fate; my predetermined fate, out of a hundred billion stars? Does that even begin to sound 'logical' to you, in the smallest degree?"

Finally, he straightened his robes, as if he was about to stand and go.

"We are extrapolating far beyond the scope of my vision," he muttered.

But it was too late, and Vina had grown anguished—even horrified—at feeling hemmed-in by the unaccountable superstitions of those above her station. She stood there, half bending down over her learned master, her arms folded across her mid-section.

"Do you really think I could just give up on my studies, my research, my—my dreams, like that? Because of some hand-me-down Vulcan witchcraft?"

"Call it what you will," T'Mara said, unperturbed. Looking undeniably disappointed, or defeated, he finally got up from the bench and walked away, disappearing after only a few meters.

"Forewarned is forearmed," Vina insisted, as if she had somehow been magically alerted and inoculated by his warning, or as if she might suddenly have gained the knowledge to prevent any intrusive, telepathic evil from ever coming upon her.

But she really didn't feel any more forearmed than before.

Then she saw him again, or perhaps another figure in Vulcan robes, racing past. But it couldn't have been him, as this person was running too youthfully, too fluidly, and T'Mara was just a stately old man. In the confusion, Vina was lost in a fog of her own: for this new robed Vulcan, trailing rippling mists, was coming out of the wrong direction—southeast, opposite from the way T'Mara had just vanished, and seemed to be following him, quite rapidly indeed.

And as the unexpected figure went rushing by, the astonished Vina realized that it was another one of her Vulcan professors: her programming advisor, T'Lan. And that second Vulcan was carrying a phaser.

41

41

By Richard T. Green