The Visit
by
Pat Foley
Chapter 2
Spock's tale
There is a Terran saying. "One can't go home again."
I thought about that, through the long journey home from Terra to Vulcan. Wondering if I was going to be Terran or Vulcan in this regard. The continual question of my life, rising anew like the dragons in the Terran fairy tales my mother once read to me, dragons who grew another head for each one that was lopped off by the hero. If there is a hero in my story, I don't know whom it might be. Vulcans always go home. We can't avoid it. For a Vulcan, the saying would be "One must go home again."
How huge, the gap between the species of which I am formed. And how contrary. Not merely different, but so often nearly in total opposition. Emotion and control. Passion and logic. Can't and must.
And here I am, caught again. No matter what steps I take in my life to reconcile the two sides of my nature, they are again in opposition.
I had no real wish to return home again, to raise the specter of that conflict, both internal and familial. But at my mother's insistence, and because of my promise, even if made under duress, I had thought it was probably best to try to go home. At least for this visit. Knowing sooner or later I would be forced to, that biology would require it, and that my stay in Starfleet was never meant to be more than temporary. To rebuild the roots of what, someday, must serve as my home.
For when I must go home again. To stay.
And yet, for all my hesitance, upon arriving home, it was as if I had never left. As if the months, the years on Terra were inconsequential. The welcome pull of Vulcan gravity, the dryness of the air, the scent of the wind off the Forge. And the warmth. I had not realized how much, how long, I had been holding myself against shivers until I stepped off the shuttle onto the hard packed sand of the spaceport ground and felt the heat of Vulcan envelope me like my mother's embrace. For the first time in two years, I was warm. I felt home, as if I had returned to my rightful place in the universe, as Terra could never be for me. I am Vulcan in that.
So far, my mother would say, so good.
I try not to let her human expressions creep into my thoughts, much less my speech. But it can be difficult. I am the child of a Terran woman, fanciful, beautiful, arch and amusing. As well that of a Vulcan male, steeped in logic and tradition, controlled, sometimes controlling. Often demanding. But my mother had her demands as well.
I feel my mother with me always, the more so since I left Vulcan. In part, the result of my parental bond, though it is not much of a link. At my age, I can shield fully against it. Perhaps I feel my mother more because, since I made the decision to leave Vulcan, I have not felt my father at all. Sarek. I must remember to use the given name, to guard against using the parental title, at least not unless he uses the equivalent to me. I have no idea whether he will or no, and I can't tell from my mother's words. She avoids specifics, with a deftness worthy of a Vulcan. But I suspect my father has little changed in his views.
She has not gone home again.
On Terra I was constantly reminded of my mother. Sometimes, walking through a crowd, I would see a figure ahead that looked like her, her shining hair, her slight stature, something of her walk. I would never see her like on Vulcan, except when it really was she. Humans there are so rare. Though even on Vulcan, she is rarely without a Vulcan escort, a guard, making a distinctive presence at her side. But still the expectation is there in me. So when I see a figure like her, my first thought is that it is her, despite the illogic of it. I would, even inadvertently, quicken my steps a moment, even knowing through the telepathic reverberations through the bond that it was not she. And when I had caught up, and caught the stranger's wondering gaze to find me, a Vulcan, behind this stranger, it would be a double blow to my senses. It took a while to realize that this trick of the senses meant that I missed my mother, that this was the emotional fall out from that state. No doubt very unVulcan of me. But as the half-human son of a very human mother, living on Terra as I was, going to a Federation school in preparation for a Federation military career, in violation of all my father's Vulcan sensibilities and the teachings of my clan, I wondered, really, how Vulcan I could expect myself to be?
I tell myself I am Vulcan. I always have. A mantra I have tried to live by, since my earliest years. At times it seems that I am Vulcan.
But it wasn't until this moment, when I returned home, to my planet of birth, even born of a human woman as I am, that I felt reaffirmed as a Vulcan. That Vulcan really is home. After a long absence, a self imposed exile, it claims me anew. My birthright. I draw the air of the Forge into my lungs and I quiet my metabolism after two years of shivering and I know it to be true. I am Vulcan. My mother is human and I may make a home elsewhere for a time, but I will always be Vulcan. I cannot be anything but Vulcan. Regardless of how far I stray. I suppose my father – Sarek – would be pleased at that.
And thus must go home is the thought that crosses my mind, a little ironic whisper, reminder, plaint.
The true test, of course, is to actually go home. To beard the lion in his den. To face Sarek.
I don't want to.
And that is the thought of a child. I have put childhood behind me in leaving Vulcan. Eschewed the long adolescence of a Vulcan, mentored and watched over by my elders, for a Terran adulthood. Some would say a premature adulthood. I try not to validate that view.
I collect my bag, find public transportation and watch the desert wheel and swing through the aircar screens as I fly toward that final destination. Feasting my eyes on the long missed desert. I must go and walk there. Perhaps tonight.
And then the house, the old Fortress, lived in by my family for millennia appears and I shiver anew, remembering my last leavetaking.
And I think I should not be here.
Yet, I promised. And a promise is a promise.
I had promised to grow up Vulcan, too.
The guard lets me through the forcefields, and in a moment, the gardens, the house, surrounds me. At one time in my life, I thought to never return here again. And yet, here I am.
And then, the woman who drew me back across lightyears, across my own convictions to stay away, against my father's desire to have me exiled comes toward me. And then stops.
I'm not sure what she sees in me, that transfixes her so.
Nor do I understand what my father sees in her.
She's not particularly prepossessing. One could lose her in a crowd on Terra, and not notice her. She is attractive, by Terran standards, but not a particular beauty. Small, not statuesque. Her coloring is favored by Terrans but not Vulcans. She is intelligent, but even the best of human intelligence has severe limitations compared to Vulcan abilities. Superficially, she looks and seems like any human, so ordinary she could be indented for.
In my Federation law class at Starfleet Academy, I was even told what the going rate might be. Humans are furious over the growing predilection for Orion slave dealers to trade in human as well as Orion females. Starfleet has been taxed with stopping the practice, but the Orions are not easily deterred. Humans are so numerous. When one shipment is confiscated, there are many others to make up the loss. According to our instructor, both a Starfleet Commander as well as a Federation judge, Orion traders even take special orders. He described one raid whose "cargo" included several different types of entertainers, two physicians, a prominent jurist that one of the smugglers had taken a fancy to in a previous court appearance, and a teacher, a university professor. He was particularly incensed over the jurist. But my attention was riveted by the reference to the latter captive.
My mother is a university professor.
It's rather disturbing to realize she could be kidnapped, sold, for a mere few thousand credits, far less than what my parents paid for a single quarter of my tuition at the VSA.
No wonder my father has her so closely guarded when she is off Vulcan. And even, at times, on Vulcan.
I listened uneasily to the class' discussion on the Orion problem, but the question foremost on my mind, and one that I never dare raise, was why? Why would Orion traders, who for centuries have practiced a lucrative, and legal, business in selling Orion females, branch out into the illegal selling of humans? Humans who, if based on my own limited knowledge of the species, or at least of one human woman, would make quite unsatisfactory slaves.
At the heart of this is my real question, one I've never had answered, that has nothing to do with Orion males or slavery. Why would my father, who could have had any eligible Vulcan female he wished, reject 5000 years of Vulcan tradition and choose a Terran for a wife?
I've asked my mother before. Periodically. And she always refuses to take my question seriously, as if it is the question of a child. She teases, or evades. I asked my father only once, and he pointedly ignored the question, a lesson in itself. When Sarek of Vulcan ignores a question, no one lightly raises it again.
Except, perhaps for my mother. She would dare anything. Her casual, irreverent, prosaic treatment of my father periodically awed me. In eighteen years on Vulcan, I saw him routinely deferred to by diplomats, High Council members, Federation officials, even T'Pau on most issues. When Sarek went away on Federation business, he almost always returned with his points secured. No one dared challenge him, few successfully opposed him for long. Except for my mother, who argued with him unimpressed by his superior skills in logic, teased him regardless of his Vulcan reserve, opposed him even when he stated his position plainly, even raised her voice to him in anger. She used all her skills, logic, humor, passion. Undaunted, unimpressed and unafraid.
I never saw anyone else like her. She amazed me. And intimidated me. I could not understand why my father tolerated this one sole irreverent voice in his distinguished existence. When they disagreed, and it was not uncommon that they did, opposites as they were, when my father was displeased with her and let her know it, she often tossed her head in defiance, narrowed her flashing blue eyes, and snapped right back at him.
And quite frequently, she won. Not always, but often enough that I used to look at her small frame, and wonder where she hid all that strength. And what bottomless source it welled from.
And if I possessed anything like it. If I am not my father's son, am I my mothers?
Oh, she often bowed her head with deference and obeyed him when he spoke to her in the emphatic mode. As I did. As I had to. But she did it when she chose to.
Hence the reasons I believe human females would be useless to the Orions.
And perhaps the reason why I, at eighteen years of age, chose not to obey my father. I am my mother's son as well. Or strive to be. At least in some respects.
And yet my question, the one that has plagued me all my life, remains unanswered. And it is not prurient interest on my part, but the riddle of my existence. Why would Sarek of Vulcan choose a human female? If the reason was logical, why would he not tell it?
And if the reason was not? I can hardly dare to think that.
And yet must.
If the reason was not logical, then the whole myth of Vulcans, my own personal struggle for perfect logic and non-emotion, the standards required of me, the Vulcan way I strive to emulate is simply… a farce. A lie. A misconception.
As I was?
Am I a product of logic, or emotion? I have a right to know.
A need to know.
A need that has made me leave Vulcan and go to Terra, to Starfleet. Because I must know more of my existence than logic and my parents will tell me.
And yet… here I am. Home again. Because my willful, teasing, imperious mother requires it of me. And like my father, I sometimes accede to her, even when logic might dictate otherwise. Let her hug me, hold me.
It isn't logical.
And yet at times, it seems logical, to cede to emotion.
The riddle of my existence, of life. My life.
A question that I seek an answer to.
And wonder if I will find the answer here, at home. At last.
To be continued…
