The Judgment of Solomon
By
Pat Foley
Chapter 4
One good thing about the Vulcan parental bond. It provides an unreasoning child with an undercurrent of emotional security that generally precludes the kind of hysterical tantrums common to human children when their usual caretaker is momentarily away. Spock did not yet pay any more overdue attention to Amanda's walking out the garden court door than he had when she went up to recycle his laundry. Sarek was too Vulcan to even consider the alternatives should Spock had been more human, but had he done so, he would have been grateful.
With Amanda gone, Sarek forwarded the recording of Spock's puzzle activities to Subor. Then he was determined to replace Spock's heretical Harvard class t-shirt with suitable Vulcan attire.
This seemingly innocuous action precipitated a momentary crisis. Sarek was not very experienced with shirts that required being pulled over the head rather than unfastening at the seams. Or how one removes them from children. He made the mistake of pulling the shirt up before taking Spock's arms out of it, and suddenly discovered how many arms a squirming two year old buried in an upended t-shirt could have. Spock didn't help the matter, wriggling and howling "Too early! Too early!" in Vulcanur by which Sarek deduced meant that Spock was both not quite ready for the operation and too stressed out from being buried alive to remember 'all his words'.
Alerted by Spock's distress, I-Chiya came bounding through the garden court doors into the house, hot-footed it up the stairs, panting heavily, and charged into Spock's room, pushing his big head between Sarek and Spock to determine what was wrong.
"Kroykah, I-Chiya," Sarek said, over-stressed himself.
The sehlat settled a few feet away, whining uneasily.
In spite of the shouting and the squirming, Sarek managed to recover his Vulcan calm enough to think the problem through logically, pull the shirt down, take Spock's arms out of the sleeves, and then pull the shirt back up over his head.
Spock sputtered as his head came free, and he shook his tousled feather-straight hair, so different from his father's curls and waves, back into pristine lines. He glared at his father through slitted black eyes, his faced still flushed green from his exhortations and said.
"Mother knows how to undress me! I want her."
Sarek found himself a little short of breath after that operation as well. He refrained from expressing the heretical truth that, at the moment, he wanted her too. "Indeed she does. But you are undressed now. She'll be back shortly," Sarek said. "Now, as soon as you dress, we are going for a walk. You would like that, would you not, Spock?"
"So long as you don't take any more shirts off me," Spock huffed, still raggedly trying to catch his breath. He tugged at the one in Sarek's hands. "I do it myself!"
"By all means," Sarek agreed, surrendering it quickly. He didn't even comment on the fact that Spock's lineup of the seams left something of Vulcan precision to be desired. I-Chiya's nosing himself into the operation didn't help either.
One advantage of being a Vulcan, on Vulcan. In spite of his lack of skill dealing with treacherous human t-shirts, Sarek was perfectly adapted for taking a small Vulcan child out on the Forge, particularly when accompanied by a sehlat protector. He could thoroughly wear Spock out in a way that his human mother never could.
Once past the garden walls, outside on the Forge where Amanda never took him, Spock stood transfixed by the wide sweep of the desert stretching out to nearly every horizon.
And for the first time, meeting Spock's amazed and awed eyes, Sarek felt what it was like to share the Forge with his son, indeed to experience Spock not as an infant, or a baby, someone to care for and watch over, but as someone to associate and share things with. For the first time, he felt not so much that he had a child, but rather a son to follow in his footsteps.
"Where does it end?" Spock asked, staring around him, stunned and amazed.
"It does not," Sarek said, surveying it with similar pride. "This is your heritage, Spock."
Spock considered this. "I-Chiya is mine. He is hairy," he concluded. "Don't have no tage."
Brought back to Vulcan, as it were, Sarek clarified his comments for the level of a toddler. "I meant that the Forge belongs to you, and you to it."
Spock now looked around the Forge like a farmer considering a plot of land, evaluated this grandiose statement and rejected it on practical means. "It is too big," he said. "I can't take it home with me."
"The Forge is your home."
"Am I going to sleep here?" Spock asked, wide-eyed.
"I meant the Forge is the true home of every real Vulcan. And you will sleep here. When you are five, you will spend ten days and nights on the Forge, all by yourself."
Spock shook his head, human-style, except that he refined the negative by adding his shoulders down to his whole body, in a violent dervish that was his alone. "No."
"You will," Sarek said. "You must. And Spock, Vulcans do not shake their heads, much less their bodies when saying no."
"Why not?" Spock asked, pausing in his refutation dance.
"A simple negative statement is more than sufficient. Regardless, all Vulcan boys complete their Kahs Wan when they are five."
Spock thought about that. "Can I take I-Chiya?"
The sehlat roared in assent and nearly butted the boy off his feet with his huge head.
"You will go alone," Sarek proclaimed.
I-Chiya whined in protest.
Spock started to shake his head, his shoulders, then abruptly stopped at Sarek's raised brow. "Not me, then. I'll stay with I-Chiya," Spock said. "You can go," he offered generously.
"I have already done so when I was five," Sarek said.
"All alone?" Spock asked skeptically.
"The Kahs-Wan is a test that is traditionally performed alone."
"No tests for me," Spock concluded with the negative jerk of his chin to the left, expressing his "no" in true Vulcan style in spite of his next words. "I will stay with I-Chiya and Mother. They like me to stay with them. They don't like to be alone. Not like you."
"What do you mean, Spock?" Sarek asked, surprised by this.
"You go away every morning, alone. You don't come home till night. By yourself. Mother and I-Chiya and me, we stay together. In the house and the gar - den. You can go on a Kahs-Wan by yourself, on this Forge. Because you like that best."
Sarek blinked at that. "You don't like the Forge, Spock? It is most beautiful when enjoyed in solitary."
"With you and I-Chiya," Spock said, and hugged his pet. "It's s'kay. But lone, no."
"Speak Vulcanur," Sarek said.
"Why?"
"Because I am Vulcan, and you are Vulcan, and we are on Vulcan. And Vulcanur is our language.
"Mother speaks English. Standard."
"She speaks Vulcanur too."
"She sings in English," Spock said, as if this were the material point.
Sarek gave his son a sharp look. "Yes, she does," he said. "But Vulcans do not sing."
"Why not?"
"It's illogical."
"I like to sing."
"When you adopt the Vulcan way, you will not," Sarek said.
"Then I won't. You don't have to sing," Spock said generously. "Me and Mother, we will sing."
Sarek drew a breath, reminded himself he was dealing with a two-year old, and said with admirably measured calm, given the circumstances. "You will reevaluate your position when you are older, Spock. Let us go on."
"So long as I don't go alone," Spock said. And with a firm grip on I-Chiya's ruff to be sure of that, they set off.
He soon relaxed and began to explore the desert, delighting in its freedom and beauty, qualities that even Sarek could not deny. When Spock grew tired from running and chasing I-Chiya, Sarek lifted him to I-Chiya's massive neck and Spock rode him elephant style. Then the boy climbed down, swinging on his tusks, to run and romp again. Finally, he grew too tired even to ride. Warned by I-Chiya's waffling growl, Sarek caught him before Spock slid from the sehlat's neck. Sarek walked the rest of the way home through the Vulcan twilight, in peaceful meditation, Spock folded asleep in one arm, I-Chiya at his side, gazing at the stars twinkling overhead.
Amanda was looking for them by sweep gates.
"Are you crazy, being outside the gates at sunset?" she complained as Sarek came through the sweep gates. "How are you going to fend off lematya with a baby in tow?"
"There are no lematya in the immediate area," Sarek said. "And I-Chiya was with us. No harm can come to us, with I-Chiya nearby."
"Even I-Chiya can't fend off a pride of lematya, hunting in a pack."
I-Chiya roared his refutation of that insult.
"You hush, you walking carpet," Amanda said. "You'll wake the baby. I can't believe he's asleep. You're a miracle worker," she said to Sarek.
I-Chiya growled his own complaint that he was largely responsible for Spock's exhaustion but both adults ignored him.
Sarek preened just a little, in spite of all Vulcan control. "I told you he would be no problem."
"Did you have fun?" Amanda asked.
"It was...satisfying...to introduce Spock to the Forge for his first time," Sarek admitted.
"I'm glad you two had a real father-son moment. But I'm also glad you're home."
Sarek raised a brow in surprise as Amanda moved to take Spock from him. "I can put the child to bed. Amanda, he has grown much too heavy for you to carry."
"Oh, of course he's not," she said, her face softening as she gazed at her child he had reluctantly transferred into her arms. He realized his own was slightly numb from carrying Spock's weight. Then her eyes widened. "How in the world did you get his shirt on in such a completely screwed up way?"
Sarek flushed, then decided distraction was the better part of valor. "Did you have a pleasant afternoon?" he asked, shaking out his numbed arm surreptitiously and watching her as she cradled her sleeping son close.
She gave him a rueful smile. "I rushed home to rescue you, and you didn't need me at all. I missed him terribly," she said. She hugged Spock tight, and bending down, kissed his cheek. "How you Vulcans get under my skin."
Sarek eyed his son, decided he was well asleep, and leaned down to kiss his wife, moving to transfer the child back from her arms. "I'll take him upstairs," Sarek said. "You don't need to carry his weight."
"If you knew how often I lug him up and down," Amanda said, but she let him have Spock, taking his arm as they went upstairs. "I don't suppose you gave him an afternoon snack?"
"No," Sarek admitted.
"And no dinner?" Amanda asked and shrugged. "You get points for wearing him out, but no points for dressing, feeding or bathing. He's crusted with sand," she said, as Sarek laid him in his bed.
"Sand is natural to Vulcans," Sarek said, watching her deftly undress him, brush as much of the sand off him as she could, and redress him in nightclothes. "He will survive until morning."
She drew the blankets up over him, tucked him in and kissed his cheek.
"Amanda," Sarek said. He had not watched this procedure since Spock's early infancy. "You are…too demonstrative."
"How can you say that?" Amanda asked, still distracted in gazing at her child. She smoothed his tousled bangs.
"You can't hug and kiss him like that …not for much longer."
"What do you mean?" she asked, turning to him. "I hug and kiss you." She punctuated that statement by doing so.
"You are my bondmate."
"Well, I'm his mother." Amanda said as if that settled that. They flicked out the lights and filed out of the room.
Sarek shook his head. "We'll discuss it later."
"There's nothing to discuss," Amanda said, and then added, "Oh, no." In the kitchen below, I-Chiya was roaring insistently, demanding his dinner. "That monster. He's going to wake the baby." She hurried down the stairs.
"Spock will not wake. And he's not a baby any longer my wife."
"Oh, one thing you men never understand, Vulcan or human," she said over her shoulder. "He'll always be my baby." Sarek raised a brow at that, but Amanda was entering the kitchen, scolding the sehlat who was still howling insistently before the stasis door. "Hush up, you overgrown teddy bear. You're the biggest baby of them all. And Sarek may have forgotten to feed you but you know I haven't."
"I did not forget," Sarek said, nettled.
"Wuff," I-Chiya said, refuting that. He swatted at the stasis door open with one enormous paw, crowding in behind Amanda as she handed over his dinner, mindful of his tusks. Growling pleasurably he carried his prize away.
Amanda peered into the stasis unit. "Are you hungry?"
"Very. Always," he said, watching her, and thinking of something else entirely.
She looked up at him inquiringly and then smiled. "You could always give me another baby," she suggested. "Then I might be willing to let the one we have grow up a little sooner."
The doctors had warned Sarek that was unlikely. But then, Spock himself had been a miracle. Sarek was willing to try for two. "A tempting prospect," he said, and bent to kiss her.
When I-Chiya came back to see if there were leftovers, he discovered that no further dinner was in progress at all. If he had possessed words of his own, he might have snorted and said, "Lovebirds." As it was, he just snorted, and went out into the desert night, where the temperature was a little cooler. A lot cooler.
To be continued…