Chapter 10

Taking one look at Skon was enough to assure Amanda that getting him off her case would not be that easy.

Skon took a deep breath - his version of a sigh - and turned his full attention to her. "Obviously, there is something the matter with you -" He raised his hands to forestall her instinctual protest, then went on. "But first, what I wanted to tell you about -"

Amanda could not help her look of surprise and had to sink her eyes in shame at his eyebrow rising in indignation. Of course he had something to tell her. To assume that he would have lied to Sonak...

Skon took another breath. This time it was almost a human sigh. "It concerns the commemoration this evening. T'Lin informed me a short while ago that the council meeting is going to end sooner than anticipated and the commemoration will have to start directly after that. There is no time for you to go home. We will go from here directly and meet T'Lin and Sarek there."

"When do we leave?"

"After my last lecture. That will give us adequate time to prepare before the main guests arrive."

"All right, then. I'll meet you -"

"And now maybe you could tell me what Sonak was talking about?"

Amanda bit her lip. It still surprised her how easily Skon could turn her into a stuttering school girl. The way he questioned her always had the feel of an exam. She felt compelled to give the right answers, for surely she would be found out if she tried to lie.

"Is he causing you trouble?" Skon's tone barely changed from his usual unemotional one, and yet Amanda could clearly hear the difference. There was genuine concern in it, and that protectiveness had numerous times before led her to confide her problems to him.

He did not take her side when the staff of the academy, only used to aliens in the form of students, treated her as an outsider. He was the head of the department, and in true Vulcan fashion, his relationship to her was irrelevant. But whenever she told him of her problems at work, he found a way for her to solve them. This time she was sure he would help her, as well. A part of her wanted that, wanted others to take care of her problems.

Being alien, she had soon found that it always seemed better to ask for advice on how to behave correctly, and instead of discouraging such dependence, Sarek and his family had fully supported it. Being so much younger than her bondmate, not to mention his parents, this did not seem like such a bad thing at the beginning. Now, both Skon and T'Lin were treating her like a child, and Sarek was keeping things from her.

Amanda took a deep breath. "Yes, there is something, but I think I better take care of it myself."

"Are you certain it is nothing serious?"

"Yes. Yes, I can deal with it." Amanda was surprised how good it felt to say that. Mostly because she felt she could do it.

Skon looked at her thoughtfully, then tilted his head. "Yes, I suppose that is for the best. You should talk to me if the problem persists, though."

"Thank you, I will."

"Then I will see you in my office after the lecture."

Amanda agreed and Skon left.

A moment later it hit her that she had just lost the easiest opportunity to finally learn the big secret everyone was keeping from her. But she supposed it was for the best. Sonak, for all his enjoyment of telling his acquaintances of her ignorance, had avoided any reference to the goings-on of the last days while in Skon's presence. Maybe he just thought Skon would take her side, but there was another possibility. Judging from the last Vulcan secret she had encountered, this probably was not something discussed in polite society, and even Sonak respected that.

Also, asking Skon would mean that T'Lin would find out. Her mother-in-law already thought her spineless and immature. Adding to that the fact that Sarek kept secrets from her really would not help.

There was no helping it. She had said she would deal with it on her own, and that is what she would do. If she ever wanted to change how people were seeing her, she should start facing her insecurities.

She would start with her phantom in the library. She was on Vulcan. She had considered herself a rational person even before coming to live on Vulcan, and the influence of its logical, unemotional inhabitants over the years would only have added to that. She knew there had to be a rational explanation for what had happened. Besides, looking into those books was still the best lead she had in solving her main mystery.

The room looked just as she had left it, just as dark and abandoned. The automated door, indirect lighting, temperature control, did nothing to dispel the phantoms of the past.

There was no obvious hint as to what had happened, and Amanda did not feel like exhausting all possible explanations. Instead, she went to a shelf that held old history books and picked up something to read, if only to ignore the flutter in the pit of her stomach.

It was marvellous, the difference between modern Vulcans and their ancestors. History books written in her lifetime were collections of facts, designed to pass on information about the past. Whoever had written the book she was reading, however, had not bothered with too much objectivity. The text was judgemental, opinionated, and read like a scandalous book of fiction. In short, it was interesting; entertaining, even.

The old writing, the smell of the organic material the book was made of, the older form of the language that she still had problems understanding, together with the dark and quiet room that had probably existed since before the book had been written, drew her into their world.

She came across an account of a war she had previously read about. She almost laughed about the author's obvious siding with one of the factions. T'Lin had wanted her to read about Vulcan history after she demonstrated her complete lack of knowledge about the subject at their initial meeting. She had gone as far as recommending a dozen books, and Amanda, who had been trying very hard to fit in, had looked through them.

Of course there had been nothing there about what was happening around her now. Although... Amanda stopped mid-thought. She remembered one single mention of rain in all Vulcan history she had ever read. And that had been so peculiar that she still recalled it.

It was mentioned in the accounts of the Hair Dispute. Ah yes, that history-shaping question about who was allowed to have the longest hair.

It did not take her long to find books about the topic, and one that had a detailed description of the Tal-Shanar ceremony. Disappointment filled her when she came to the last part. "Empress T'Mir blamed it on the rain." No further details, just the one sentence. There was a hint of mocking disbelief, but other than that, not too different from modern history books.

T'Mir the Vain, the first empress to have longer hair than the reldai. Amanda had tried to be objective about it and not find it a little ridiculous. It was certainly an alien concept, something outside of her world view.

It all began with the reldai, of course. On Vulcan, recorded history itself began with the Age of the Reldai. These were priestesses that had an ability to extinguish the frequent and devastating fires that broke out in the desert with the power of their minds - they were the most powerful telepaths, now just as in ancient times. Times had changed, religious and philosophical views had come and gone, together with various sorts of priestesses and priests, but the reldai had remained.

Even in modern times, the first exercise for telekinetically-gifted individuals was to control a fire. Though, curiously, one started by increasing the flame of a lamp.

Back then, people used to believe the power came from the gods, and obediently accepted the reign of the reldai, who did not have to work, did not have to fight in battles, and could afford to wear extravagant clothes and grow their hair. Why it should have been the long hair of all things that became associated with high status would probably forever remain a mystery to Amanda, but soon other high-born women started to grow their hair as well.

The reldai invented different things to cement their power, for example ceremonies like the Tal-Shanar that was still observed in modern day. And they came up with the law that they should be the ones allowed to have the longest hair. All through the Age of the Reldai that law stayed unchallenged.

Then the Age of the Queens began, which brought a different way of thinking. The new age began when the queens gained more power and challenged the total reign of the reldai. From then on, when it came to worldly matters, the queens held the highest power.

They went to battle and had to travel constantly all over the territory they ruled to make their presence known and their power felt. They had to work, and relied on their physical endurance. To show this difference between themselves and the reldai, that had ultimately led to their gaining power, they cut off their hair. It was at that time that the elaborate headdresses were invented and worn on official business so the queens could differentiate themselves from commoners.

Amanda could follow the story up to that point. It was more difficult to accept what had happened during the Age of the Empresses.

The wars had lessened and Vulcans had become, for the better part, civilized. The empresses no longer had to lead the hard life of the queens of past ages, and with their more and more extravagant lifestyle, their rule had become increasingly absolute, until the idea of bowing down to anyone became unacceptable.

Why it was necessarily the longer hair of the reldai that they had such a problem with, Amanda could not tell, but the empresses pushed that point until T'Pel of the Desert finally changed the law, so that the empresses would be allowed the longest hair.

There was another empress before her, though, who, if not changed, then at least broke the rule. T'Mir would forever be remembered for the scandalous Tal-Shanar ceremony, where she had shown up, her hair undone and quite clearly longer than that of the reldai presiding over the ceremony. Later, she had explained her faux-pas by blaming it on the rain that had stopped only a few days before the ceremony.

No other explanation was given. Not in all the works Amanda had seen it mentioned, historical or otherwise, was there an explanation as to why a few days of rain would justify completely ignoring standard rules of behaviour.

More interestingly, this was quite clearly the only mention of rain she had ever come across. This instance was unavoidable, as it concerned a major point in Vulcan history, but all other instances seemed to have been deliberately left out. It could not be unintentional. It was not possible that sudden rain did not affect harvest, or interrupt some battle plans, or give rise to expressions in art. Yet, no references to rain were to be found.

Amanda turned her attention back to the book she had been reading. There was a reference to a source book right after the rain was mentioned. With no great hope that it would lead her to anything, she looked it up on the computer. It was owned by the library. In fact, it was in the same location, just on a different shelf. She went to look for it. And looked, and looked...

The problem was not that the book was not there. It was the shelf that was missing. But that was impossible. The Ancient Vulcan Sources had only one room allocated, she was sure of that. Exasperated, she went back to the farthest corner of the room. She would look over every shelf in hopes that something might be mislabelled. As if that could ever happen on Vulcan. But she felt so frustrated. Everywhere she seemed to be faced by an impenetrable wall, unable to get hold of any helpful information.

Amanda heard the voice-controlled door lock activate, shortly followed by a voice that she most definitely had heard enough of these past two days. She pressed herself against the shelf, desperate to avoid another confrontation with Sonak.

"... ignores her role in the ceremony," he could be heard saying to his colleague from before, their discussion apparently having been continued after he left her.

"I do not deny that. However, the significance of Tal-Shanar, especially after the rain, far outweighs all other explanations. T'Mir clearly wished to show that the reldai were no longer essential. The scientific and technological achievements that had been made..."

"That is a biased view of our technology-obsessed ancestors that should have disappeared after the Awakening. If, indeed, T'Mir had shown the reldai to be insignificant, the Hair Dispute..."

The voices were coming closer. Amanda went around the shelf, out of their path, not wanting to be seen hiding from them.

"...in her lifetime. Not to mention the illogic of using rain as a symbol for the so-called scientific and..." They moved past her shelf without noticing her, right up to the wall behind the last shelf. She could see them quite clearly between the books.

Sonak went to a particularly grotesque statue and turned it to the side. The wall opened up and the two men walked through, still continuing their discussion. "...quite a different view on the subject during their lifetime, as I am going to show you..."

Amanda walked up to the wall that had so noiselessly slid away to reveal a rather dark staircase leading down. The even walls of the building stopped at the entrance. The tunnel looked like it had been cut out from solid rock. The voices of the two men could still be heard, albeit distorted, bouncing off the walls. A moment later, the wall slid back into place, and the statue was again facing forward.

Well, at least she had an explanation for her phantom now. Whoever had closed the window had probably come and left through this door.