Holography 1: The Catalyst

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 10

The summons from T'Pau came to Amanda three days later, an innocuous message on her office computer terminal after returning from teaching her morning class. She stared at it, surprised even through the numb misery that had taken hold of her. T'Pau had never once issued an invitation, much less an order, to attend her. But that mattered little. As a tacit daughter, even one never previously recognized, she was as much a member of T'Pau's clan as any Vulcan. Unless she planned on getting Sarek to divorce her to get out of it, much as Spock had required his father to disown him to be allowed the freedom to disobey, she was obliged to yield to T'Pau's tacit order.

She wondered why T'Pau was suddenly recognizing her. Once it would have meant a great deal. But since Spock had gone, Sarek had shrouded himself in a distance she herself had made no effort to close. Nor was she sure she wanted to. He had not forgiven her for her lack of support, and she had not forgiven him for renouncing their son. They were not speaking. She had seen practically nothing of him since Spock had left home. She felt stale and weary from lack of sleep. And yes, from loneliness. Perhaps that was what T'Pau wish to speak of. Perhaps Sarek's silence and distance implied the dissolution of her marriage. She tried to feel something about that, but it all seemed so far removed.

As listless as she was, it felt easier to obey than not, and she posted herself out for afternoon office hours and nosed her flyer to T'Pau's palace. Palace was rather an extreme word; it was an ancient fortress of the same crumbling desert sandstone as her own home, and about the same age, meaning that in human terms it was ancient and impractical for anyone living in it, but used because of tradition. Someday, at T'Pau's death, she and Sarek would be required to move here, and Spock and T'Pring would take over his birth home, until the time it came for him and his children to move to the palace.

She was escorted by the uniformed ceremonial guards to an inner courtyard, still wearing her everyday attire, her hair up, not bothering to change into the long dress, sandals and artfully arranged hair that was customary for a formal family visit. The high stone walls and carefully cultivated trees offered shade. Various fountains and pools filled the air with humidity and her ears with sound of water, water as always the ultimate indication of wealth in a desert culture. A flock of birds was thoroughly enjoying themselves flying through one mist-filled fountain; in another pool, a large lizard like animal blinked solemnly at her before scuttling deeper into its depths.

It reminded her that Spock had lived here once, when she and Sarek had been off-planet, and the school where he'd been left had suffered an off-world epidemic. It had been particularly devastating to Vulcan children, many of whom had died. Spock had become ill himself, and T'Pau had removed him to her palace, had him nursed by the best Vulcan healers and human physicians on the planet. Not that T'Pau had ever shown any trace of emotion about it afterwards. No more than she showed now, raising her gaze from the table where she was reviewing a servant laying out tea things. Amanda reminded herself firmly that she had much to thank T'Pau for, and knelt obediently at the old woman's feet, bowing her head and offering her hands in the traditional embrace.

T'Pau took them lightly, her fingers cool in spite of her higher body temperature, no doubt due to an old woman's circulation. "It is past time you attended me, daughter," T'Pau said with asperity.

Amanda raised narrowed eyes to the matriarch's face, and then nodded coolly, giving as good as she received. "Only folly could have prevented me from more expeditious service." She left off the title, not quite believing T'Pau would countenance the family title a "daughter" was entitled to use and which T'Pau's form of address to her tacitly demanded.

T'Pau's face wrinkled like an old apple, and she gave a sniff that was closer to a snort. "Tactful as always, not to allude to whose folly it has long been. Get off your knees, child. You are hardly dressed for such ceremony and these stones are too rough for bare skin. And does not my son provide you with a more suitable wardrobe for waiting in attendance?"

Amanda swallowed a smile. Rocking back on her heels Vulcan-style, she rose gracefully, in spite of the heavy gravity, to the indicated chair. "Your summons said to attend you at once. I came from teaching and didn't take the liberty of changing."

T'Pau gave her a hawk-eyed look. "It is of change I wish to speak."

Amanda bowed her head, wondering what T'Pau had to say. The old matriarch snorted again. "How meek you look, daughter. You carry your role well."

Amanda looked at her askance from under her lashes. "My role?"

"Outcast."

The word carried the weight of twenty years of isolation on the fringes of T'Pau's inner circle, but Amanda merely inclined her chin a little more. She had to swallow hard at the callous challenge thrown at her, but her voice was even as she replied, "I am honored if it has pleased you, Mother." She used the title as deliberately as the sword thrown at her.

"Enough of this." T'Pau set a cup of tea before her. "Sit up, child. I did not come to converse with the nape of your neck, lovely though my son apparently finds it. Drink this. You should be serving me," she reproved caustically but waved Amanda's hands away. Never mind. We are not playing games before the court. I didn't call you before me to pour my tea badly, or to watch you lower your head in mock shame. We have business to discuss."

Amanda tasted the tea politely, as etiquette required, but her eyes were speculative, trying to imagine what T'Pau wanted. But she said merely, "I come to serve."

"That is what we are here to discuss. My son is in a bitter mood over his son's disobedience."

"I am not unaware."

"He has claimed, to me, that he has formerly disowned his child. And that you were witness."

Amanda breathed out slowly but answered. "Yes. I was witness."

"You were the only witness?"

Amanda tilted an eyebrow, not sure where this was leading. "Except for Spock."

"Whose idea was that?"

Amanda raised puzzled eyes. "Whose…idea? Sarek's of course."

"I know he planned to renounce his son as his heir. I meant who thought to choose you as witness?"

Amanda blinked, puzzled. "I don't know that it was so much chosen as happenstance. Sarek warned Spock if he left, he'd be disinherited. Spock--"

"Yes?"

Amanda shrugged. "Spock called him on it. He told Sarek to renounce him, that I was enough of a witness." She struggled to remember the exact words. "Something like custom didn't demand the witness be Vulcan, that no one could foresee this particular incident. He knew the form of the renouncement," she added. "He gave the text to Sarek."

T'Pau's eyes glittered. "Indeed."

"I don't understand."

The matriarch looked at her sharply. "Do you not? Were you not aware of Spock's intentions? Did he not obtain your aid and assistance?"

Amanda shook her head, numbly. "I only found out the day he told Sarek. I wish I had known."

"Indeed. And would you have stopped him had you known? Would you have told your husband – or me – of his intentions?"

Amanda clenched her fingers on the teacup. "I'm not sure. I would have tried to dissuade Spock. To compromise with his father, attend a school with which Sarek would not so strenuously object. Maybe I could have talked to them both, stopped Sarek from his action." She looked at T'Pau. "I know Sarek is very displeased with Spock, but I hope they can be reconciled. That Sarek can take back his renouncement."

"He cannot take it back."

Amanda lowered her eyes, not wanting T'Pau to see her distress. "I see."

"No, you do not. Sarek cannot take back what he has not yet done."

Amanda looked up. "I was there. I witnessed it."

"Did you indeed? Tell me, T'Amanda, do you relinquish you son?"

She drew back a little, at T'Pau's intensity. "Of course not."

"As both mother and wife to the clan heirs, are you aware you can not be forced to serve as witness to your own child's disinheritance? Unless you also chose to disown your son."

"I would never do that."

"Very well. Legally, your testimony to such a renunciation cannot be compelled."

Amanda bit her lip at this. "Naturally, I don't want to testify to it. But I accepted the role as witness. By not leaving or refusing I agreed to serve as such. It would be an injustice to both my son and my husband for me to refute that role now."

"If you choose to fulfill this role of witness, then the disownment must be joint. You are not a disinterested witness. You cannot witness a disinheritance of your own child unless you also disinherit him."

Amanda shook her head. "No. I won't do that."

"Then Sarek has not legally disowned him."

Amanda stared at T'Pau. "But Spock had to have known -- he looked up the law."

"It is an ancient, a very ancient codicil in our clan alone, applying only to the hereditary clan ruler, or his heir. A son in the direct line, an only son and heir, cannot be disowned and disinherited by one parent alone. To break the chain of hereditary rule the renouncement must be joint. The duty of the sole heir to the clan is too strong to be dissolved by a single parent's displeasure."

Amanda frowned, looking doubtful. "I'm sure Spock wasn't trying to mislead Sarek. It's also unlike him to not be thorough."

"T'Amanda…Spock was in the clan archives, researching these ancient texts, twice in the last year. Once many months ago. And again, the day before his announcement to Sarek."

Amanda met T'Pau's eyes, stricken.

"The means to understand his future actions and when he would take them, and the means to thwart him was there to be found and used if I wished it to be found," T'Pau said archly. "And if I did not wish it to be found…" T'Pau shrugged.

Amanda drew a shocked breath at the implication. "Why that little—"

"It is a very ancient codicil. Sarek would not, in the heat of his anger against his child, think to search for a reason to invalidate his disownment. I am not so blind. Naturally, I investigated what my heir was researching in the library. He left…" T'Pau paused, "a very plain trail … for one so otherwise circumspect with his plans. His second visit was obviously intended for me to understand the action was imminent."

Amanda didn't know what to say. She was beginning to think she'd never known her son.

"He knew to leave the decision to me." T'Pau said. "As it should be left. My son's heir is my heir. This is not Sarek's decision alone. I had the means to vest or invalidate Sarek's disownment, if I so chose. And I do not so choose, and have informed my son of such. Unless you agree to disinherit Spock as your child as his father has done, he is still in the hereditary line, and remains his father's heir. It requires one or the other of us to renounce him along with Sarek's renouncement for it to be official."

Amanda shook her head, still amazed at her quiet child's perfidy to do this right under his formidable father's and grandmother's nose. "The boy is a genius. He got what he wanted, off the planet, scott free. And still tied his father's hands in the bargain. Even if it isn't strictly legal, his father will never renounce what he has vowed. I would not have believed it of Spock."

"Perhaps not entirely what he wanted." T'Pau said.

Amanda nodded, remembering Sarek's fury. "I'm sure he didn't wish to defy his father."

"You think not? I consider it over-due. I had been expecting something of the sort for more than a year. But when he took a second mren-to, with not a flicker of resistance to his father's will, " T'Pau shook her head. "I considered that perhaps Sarek had broken his after all."

"He gave every impression of being broken, didn't he?" Amanda asked, grim and a little resentful.

"He played his role as well as his mother has played hers." T'Pau said richly. "So humble. My son has always claimed his wife is an excellent teacher. Apparently, your son has found it so."

Amanda ignored that. "I am glad his spirit wasn't broken, but I don't know if this isn't worse. I know Sarek never left him much choice, but I don't care for this… blatant manipulation. That is not the child I know."

"And tell me, what other choice of action would Sarek have allowed, other than the path he set for his son?"

Amanda shook her head and then glanced up at the woman. "I wonder, T'Pau, that you aren't displeased with Spock, that you countenance this…deception… so well."

"Do you? Tell me, T'Amanda, would you have married a man who dropped his head like a whipped sehlat at a parent's slightest displeasure?"

Amanda flushed. "No."

"My son has all the drawbacks of an excellent education, a fine intelligence, a strong will and indulgent parents. He is fearless, and believes victory is always his by right. He was an excellent choice to meet the Terrans on their own ground, and to fight for our planet's position in the Federation. And he has done so. But we are all," T'Pau tilted her head in amusement, "conquered by our children. It seems inevitable. I would not have a Terran as daughter, yet my son forced his choice on me. And Sarek would not have a son in this Starfleet. But his son has walked out and done that very thing, and Sarek will be forced to live with that. No, I am not displeased with Spock. I have had deep concern for some years that his father was intent on destroying the will of a prince in trade for a pawn as a son. If Spock had to be cunning to preserve himself from his father's grinding will, then I celebrate the wisdom and skill – and the discretion – with which he executed his plans. As for the deception," T'Pau shrugged. "Spock was correct in deducing that it is my decision as to whether his actions merit disinheritance, and he left it properly in my hands, to act as I choose. Spock did not deceive me – his research trail could not have been plainer. It was almost an insult to my intelligence. I believe your child thinks I am doddering."

Amanda gave the old woman a wary glance. "I don't believe so, T'Pau."

"As for Sarek, after years of such treatment as he has given Spock, I believe the father deserves what the son has dealt. If he has been deceived, it was his own arrogance that led him to it. Let the child, as the Terrans say, rub the father's nose in his very disaffection."

Amanda shrugged. "I am afraid, though, that Sarek will not take that well. He disinherited Spock, legally or not. I can't believe he'll let Spock thwart him in that."

"Aside from the three of us, no others know that Sarek denied Spock as heir. None know that Sarek opposed his son's plans. Nor will I allow it to go further. I consider the subject settled." She gave Amanda a cold look. "As I told my son, an heir can do worse things than attend a Terran school against his parent's wishes. He can take one to wife."

Amanda held herself against a sharp retort to that, then lowered her head and let the title she was entitled to use dig in return. "This is true, Mother."

T'Pau eyed her, seemingly satisfied. "Should you choose to disinherit as well, I would have greater lengths to go to retrieve the situation. I would have to act officially to reseal Spock as my heir against his parent's wishes. It would require a full Council session and open a debate I would not choose to have raised. As an obedient daughter, I expect you to assure me now that you will not tax me so."

Amanda smiled, still stinging from T'Pau's previous comment. "Have I been more of an obedient daughter than an obedient wife these many years?"

T'Pau gave her a shrewd look. "You have been both. Do you think I was so foolish as to shun you without reason? In the eyes of the council, your son has grown up little overshadowed by his mother's humanity."

"Out of sight, out of mind?"

T'Pau brushed the subject away. "That is past. Your child is grown. He has fulfilled all the requirements of his education. He has mastered our disciplines and earned two advanced degrees. And now he is gone, no longer here for comparisons to be made. He is sealed to the Council as my heir. No one – not even his father, can deny him this position now. Your role as outcast is no longer required."

Amanda blinked sudden tears out of her eyes, feeling the ache of Spock's departure all over again, magnified by Sarek's distance. "So now, with Spock gone, you can afford to acknowledge me?"

"Let us agree it is a luxury we now can both afford."

"So I have now traded your son's favor for your own?"

T'Pau frowned. "What does this mean?"

Amanda looked away, regretting her hasty words.

"So my son holds you responsible for Spock's actions? For refusing to refute the child along with the father?" T'Pau sounded displeased, if not overly surprised. Her sharp eyes lingered on the bruises on Amanda's wrists, bruises which extended up her arms, the legacy of their argument the night Spock had told them of his plans, when Sarek had forgotten his own strength in holding her to him.

Amanda shrugged, refusing to acknowledge the pointed direction of T'Pau's gaze, and the question inherent in it. It was extremely improper – an unheard of breach of all polite manners -- for her mother-in-law to even notice such things. That was between her and Sarek. "Not entirely. He is indiscriminate right now in his displeasure."

T'Pau looked vexed. "I have been aware of his anger, but not the full extent of its range. Though I have suspected. Another reason you attend me today. He was always a stubborn child, and his parents were over-indulgent. Unlike your son's."

Amanda said nothing, this being dangerous ground.

T'Pau eyed her shrewdly for a moment. "It will not last. He is a Vulcan. You are his wife. You have…" T'Pau hesitated, then shrugged delicately, "the ultimate advantage of gender. Provided you understand your role."

Meaning, Amanda supposed, that Sarek's relentless Vulcan biology would bring him back to her regardless. "I wouldn't want him on those terms."

T'Pau drew back a little, startled, as if considering her for the first time, eyeing the bruises anew. "You did not reject the father when he rejected the son." It was not a question.

The words flayed Amanda with guilt, and some of the pain of that conflict, renewed. She lowered her head. Her emotional pain over Spock's unfortunate departure didn't threaten to consume her, instead it had been making her angry. None of this conflict should be necessary, except for her stubborn husband and her equally stubborn son. Though as the adult, she held Sarek far more responsible than Spock. She retorted, meeting the matriarch's eyes. "Do you expect me to act the fool as well because my husband takes an ill considered action?"

T'Pau did not answer her, and after Amanda had regained control, she considered that perhaps the venerable matriarch was offended by the insult against her son from a barely acknowledged daughter-in-law. She flushed and looked away. She started at the touch of gentle fingers on her temple, and looked up, a bit warily, as the matriarch met her gaze evenly, and then drew her hand away, in a near caress.

"No. I would not expect it of thee, T'Amanda."

At this unexpected approval, the tears she'd been burying for days suddenly burst. Amanda was appropriately horrified by her own lack of control, in front of T'Pau, of all people. But T'Pau, of all things, poured her more tea.

"Drink, child. You have been in an unenviable position. Well am I aware that my son's disapproval can be punishing."

Amanda wiped her eyes. "So you called me here to make sure I wasn't going to walk out on him too?"

T'Pau's black eyes flashed. "Don't be impertinent, daughter. I would not attribute such a vile action even to a human. Certainly not to a daughter who has served my son well these many years."

Amanda swallowed back a caustic comment that a moment before T'Pau had implied nearly that very thing. In the family, all was silence, and she would not call attention to her mother-in-law's perhaps justifiable lack of total faith in the actions of her human daughter-in-law, particularly given the trouble her Vulcan son and grandson were presently giving her. Instead she picked up her teacup.

The matriarch studied her a moment then sighed. "But I acknowledge that you are human, and perhaps lack vital knowledge. Any time of trial engenders concern for one's family. Spock, I trust, will do well. He has, after all, achieved some long deserved freedom. Sarek, however, is unused to and unpredictable in defeat. Particularly one in which he has found no allies."

"I cannot ally him in that," Amanda said flatly.

"Nor did I. But you will forgive me, T'Amanda, if to ensure your son escaped with his freedom, I placed… certain ultimatums on the father."

Amanda met the matriarch's eyes. "And am I to know them?"

"Merely that if Sarek intended me to disown this son, he must present me with another heir, more worthy than the first." T'Pau studied her. "Sarek did not speak of it to you?"

"No."

"It was …" T'Pau hesitated, "a logical requirement. But I did not intend it to cause discord in your household."

Amanda pushed her tea away. "Did you think it would cause anything but?"

"Come, child. I know my son well enough to believe he would never give you up," T'Pau said simply. "Certainly not for his son's disobedience, as he viewed it. And, indeed, he refused, as I fully expected."

"Then why speak of it now, to me?" Amanda asked.

"He is yet angry."

'I can't help that."

"I do not wish him to take out such anger on you. Nor be influenced by…" T'Pau hesitated again, "as must now be said, an ill considered act on my part."

Amanda lowered her head. She must becoming Vulcan in some respect, because she understood what T'Pau was saying, in her roundabout way. The matriarch was actually concerned that an ill advised threat meant to consolidate Spock's position might actually drive Sarek to consider divorcing his human wife for a Vulcan one. And a Vulcan heir. It was a bit of a shock to her to realize T'Pau might now regard as undesirable something she had once demanded, but perhaps not all that much of a shock. Sarek and she were closely bonded. Death was not an unheard of consequence of divorce, in this society. "If he chooses that, there is nothing I can do." It amazed her how little she felt at the moment.

T'Pau narrowed her eyes. "T'Amanda, do not compound this folly by an ill considered act of your own. Sarek does not choose this. But he is at present, beleaguered. I would not have him fighting a battle on all fronts, especially if he has come to realize he cannot win against the son, and there is yet a war to be won against the mother. You must remember, under our veneer of civilization, Vulcans are a warrior race."

"What are you saying to me, T'Pau?"

"Only this. Sarek cannot fight me. Spock is gone. You are nearest to him. He is Vulcan. And he is angry. If you offer him a battle now, in his present state, he could well fight you."

"And you are saying he will win."

T'Pau shrugged. "You are only human. Little more than a child yourself. You do not understand. He would never win in this. But whatever would come of the conflict, he would defeat you. And in so doing, himself, for he does not truly want another."

Amanda was too tired to take offense at this perhaps unintended lack of faith in human ingenuity. "I should think the result would be welcome to you. My son, gone, and myself as well."

T'Pau's eyes flashed in anger of her own. "This is the folly of which I speak. This is not a personal conflict alone. Would you have your son bear the weight of his parent's dissolution? Or would you have it be the source of Sarek's bringing him to heel? Or worse, can you countenance the ultimate loss of his father in a fate worse than death?"

"Spock is not responsible for his parents' acts. This has nothing to do with him."

"Precisely. Your son is gone. And you are here. You are here by your husband's choice. And by your own."

Amanda said nothing.

"You are here, Amanda," T'Pau reiterated. "Your husband is here. You cannot reconcile the husband to the son – at least, not for the present. That will take time. But as you are here, reconciliation must be the order of the day – for you."

"I have been unable to reconcile Sarek to these events."

"No. But unless you wish to see Sarek further destroyed, you must reconcile yourself to him."

Amanda looked away, fighting away a surge of emotion.

"It is your duty," T'Pau said inexorably. "It cannot be escaped. You must accept it."

"I am not reconciled either, T'Pau." She deliberately did not use the family title.

The matriarch raised an imperious brow. "Why do you think you are here in my garden, daughter?"

"Do you think to command me to love him?" Amanda threw back at her. "With humans, that doesn't work."

"I do not need to command what exists. And thee well knows it, daughter. Nor do I need to remind thee of my son's desire for thee. He did not release thee, and thee have stayed even as your husband has renounced your child."

Amanda flushed and drew herself up, smarting at the bitter accusation, even more so because it was true.

"Have you not?"

"Yes!"

T'Pau flicked a brow, a Vulcan shrug. "That being the case, you have made your choice. There is no point in further acrimony."

"Except that he's acted like a jerk. I can't forgive him for that."

"Yes." T'Pau did not bother to misunderstand the idiom. "But his views have been unchanged for many years, and thee has stayed regardless. Thee thus bears some responsibility for the situation."

"Meaning I made my bed, and I must lie in it."

"Yes."

"T'Pau, I have tried my best all these years to keep the peace between my husband and my son. I will not deny that at times I sacrificed the son to the father in pursuit of that peace. Perhaps I have made poor choices in the past. Or made them without being aware of all the facts. But my son is now free. Whatever my past reasons and Spock's, for submission to my husband's sometimes unreasonable requirements, they are now past. If I was at fault for not raising this point before, how can I be at fault for doing so now? That is not logical."

"Come, child. My son has suffered a terrible loss. It is a loss we both agree he must suffer, for his own good, and for the good of your son and my heir. Must it be a loss he suffers alone?"

"He is not alone," Amanda said caustically. "Or if he is, it is by his choice."

"Alone in that he has no allies in his refutation of his child. I do not ask that you join him in that refutation, for that is not what either of us would wish. But you must not compound his grief by denying him his wife as well."

"I haven't," Amanda said truculently. "So far."

T'Pau eyed her meaningfully. "I speak of things normally left unsaid, but you are human. It is true I have indulged my own son perhaps too much in the past. That is an indulgence for which we both have paid. But I do not say this to indulge him now, but because there is danger. To you both. This is a fact of which you must be aware. He will not go to you now, no more than he will forgive his son. You know as well as I how my son is. He is stubborn and he is angry. I would not see that anger harden into something implacable, against his heir, his wife, and perhaps all of the humanity with whom he must deal. You are the key to prevent this. Vulcan cannot afford to risk lose his wisdom and intelligence in larger matters. Nor will I allow him to refute you against his own imperatives and risk his life. You are his bondmate and he will have need of thee. He has duties that take precedence over this petty dispute. You are here still. You have made your choice. Therefore, you must go to him and ease what you can of this situation, at least in relation to yourself. And if you can, after his anger has cooled, for your son and my heir. This is your duty as a Vulcan wife."

"I'm not a Vulcan, T'Pau."

"Yet you are wife to one. That is yet your choice, T'Amanda," T'Pau said. Her eyes fastened on Amanda, her meaning plain. "And your decision. I have heard much of you, from my son and others. But never heard it said that you were unwise."

Amanda bowed her head as custom demanded. "I am honored, Mother."

"Enough for now. I will not keep thee further from thy duties. Daughter." The matriarch rose, extending her hand. Amanda dropped automatically to her knees to accept the matriarch's formal familial embrace. She stayed there, staring unseeing after T'Pau left, until the feel of the cold stone under her bare knees finally registered, bringing her out of her reverie and to her feet.

To be continued….