Chapter 4

Amanda sighed. The only thing her little chase had accomplished was that she was late to pick up Spock. She had been forced to ask for directions, but fortunately the inhabitants of ShiKahr were not entirely unused to alien tourists. In fact, it was her Vulcan attire that they found most peculiar.

Spock was waiting for her. He seemed, if not exactly worried, then at least impatient. "You are late," he said, greeting her.

Amanda wasn't sure how to answer that. What she was sure of was that she never wanted to mention that she stalked her colleagues on their way home. So she went for a half-truth. "I took a route through the Old City and lost my way. I had to ask directions."

Spock rolled his eyes. "You always lose your way."

"So I do. You've got a ditzy mother. Deal with it."

"Well, you are Human," he pronounced in his grand manner, as if that explained every misgiving. "It is easier to remember one route. That way you will always get where you want to go."

Great. Now he was parroting back Sarek's instructions to her. One more of those comments and Amanda would start considering some good old-fashioned methods for raising cheeky brats. She changed the topic. "So how was school today? Did you learn something interesting?"

"We learned some new dance moves."

"Really? Last time I saw, your dance looked pretty complete."

He rolled his eyes again. "Those were just the basic steps."

"Well, can you show me?"

Surprisingly enough, Spock didn't mind. He stopped in the middle of the street, went into the starting position and executed some very exotic moves. Then he looked up at her, proud and expectant.

"Oh, was that an Orion dance?"

Spock looked astonished. Clearly, the idea seemed quite impossible to him. "No. It is Vulcan."

"Are you sure? You danced just like those green women. Come to think of it, you are dressed like them, too." Amanda looked over her scantily dressed son, not really liking the comparison.

"You did not like it," Spock said rather decisively.

"I didn't say that. But maybe it's not meant to be danced outside on the street."

Spock nodded, not looking up.

"Or maybe... Well, are you sure you did it correctly?"

"Yes," cried Spock, and then he started to weep.

Instantly, Amanda felt bewildered stares from all directions. She could just imagine what they were thinking. Some weird alien making a perfectly nice little Vulcan boy cry. Some days...

She tried to calm him down, while simultaneously steering him home, away from the watching eyes. He stopped crying, but he still looked upset. Amanda put on her most cheerful look. "Oh, you can't look like that on a day like this! It's far too beautiful. What do you think, how many flowers will there be in our garden?"

"There is nothing special about today. The flowers are just there because of the rain."

"But the rain sure was special, and so are the flowers."

"The rain is not special. It is just water."

Amanda stared at her son, baffled. He had been even more thrilled about the rain than she. He had stayed outside as long as he could get away with, going as far as sneaking behind her back and discovering playing in the mud all on his own. Even that morning he had been watching the offshoots in their garden, touching them, trying to discover how they had grown so fast. But after a few hours spent in the company of his Vulcan peers and teachers he had adopted the Vulcan attitude towards rain.

They walked on in silence, Amanda thinking dark thoughts about Vulcans in general, and Spock's teachers in particular. Not for the first time did she wish he didn't have to go to Nursery School while he was still so impressionable, knowing that it was futile. He already stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter what he did. To not raise him like other Vulcan children and then expect him to live with them would just be cruel. But she dreaded the thought that some day he might become alien to her. She felt so helpless, so overwhelmed with the impossibility of the situation.

It was at this precise moment of inner unbalance that Sarek's image appeared, like a snap-shot, looking exactly as he did when they parted that morning, calm and grave. Even in her imagination she could never see him playful, smiling, or reckless, or carefree. This was how he always appeared to her, listening and waiting, detached, or sitting in meditation as a spectator.

Whenever Amanda felt either panic, or a shrinking, diminishing of her inner self, this image of Sarek would appear, and with it, her desire to return home.

Spock's reply only added to what had been a difficult day. Feeling lost and confused, everything seemed to become oppressive, every step heavy. She was only a few hundred metres away from home, yet the distance seemed enormous, the task of reaching home overwhelming.

She walked slowly. The house she reached was not striking, fitting in seamlessly with the landscape and the nearby architecture, tasteful, but by no means remarkable compared to its neighbouring houses. But it was surprisingly big on the inside, a little excessive for a couple with one small child, and quite luxurious.

She still had to prepare a meal and feed Spock before she could let go. It would drain the very last of her strength. But I have time, she thought. He will not be there yet. I will be free of all chaos when he returns, and he will be happy to see me.

Just before she reached the entrance she saw a thin ray of light under the door and she felt a warm joy fill her whole body. He was there and everything else she had experienced ceased to matter. This is happiness, she thought. What could possibly make me want to leave him?

Sarek must have heard them for he was the one who opened the door to the unchanging inner space of their home. He stood at the door and what she saw first of all was his almost-smile. It narrowed his eyes and blurred his features a little, making him look even more faun-like than he already did. He stood very erect with an almost military bearing, and being so much taller than her, his head bent down to look down on Amanda.

He always greeted her with a tenderness which seemed to assume she had been in some trouble. He automatically rushed to comfort and protect. The strange, continuous tension she had felt dissolved in his presence.

He guided them inside, closing the door carefully. "You have had a long day?" he asked, having noticed her slight delay.

For a moment, because of the caressing voice, the acceptance and the affection he showed, she was tempted to tell him that she didn't deserve all that; that the face she presented to him was carefully composed so that it wouldn't show what went on inside her; that she wanted, wanted... That she was too Human after all.

She held her breath. That was what she always did, held her breath so the truth would never come out. She could not bear to think that the trust she felt in his evenly modulated voice, in his harmonious manners never sudden or violent, in his thoughts which he weighed before articulating, in his opinions which were moderate, could be shattered. That the almost-smile would vanish from his face.