Chapter Ten: Gone Fishin'
Disclaimer: Do not own, do not profit. Wish I did on both accounts!
"If your nose gets any lower, you'll be breathing your breakfast."
When he wants to, Leonard McCoy can make his voice as silky as a Georgia peach. Nyota grins and lifts her chin from her hand and slides her elbow from the cafeteria table where she has been slumped over a cooling bowl of lumpy oatmeal.
"What are you doing in this neck of the woods?" she asks with an exaggerated drawl. He laughs at her gentle mockery.
"Some people are actually happy to see me," McCoy says. "They invite me to be a guest lecturer, for instance. Or they take me out for a drink after work. Or they let me win at cards once in awhile."
Nyota gives him a jaundiced look.
"They let you win?"
"The ones who love me do."
"As I recall, the last time I saw you playing poker, you were losing. Badly."
"Exactly," McCoy says, sliding into the chair next to Nyota. "You weren't being very friendly that night, letting me lose that way. And you haven't been back since! Where have you been? Not playing cards, that's for sure."
"Working," Nyota says, tipping the last of her juice glass up and draining it.
"Everybody works," McCoy says. "You are doing something else, too, that's taking all your free time."
She shivers as she sets her glass down on her tray. A joke? A guess?
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," McCoy says, leaning a fraction closer, "there's not a cadet here who isn't busting ass. But they manage to find time to party occasionally. I never see you out at all. What happened to that spunky cadet who whooped me silly in Professor Aiker's military history class every week and then took all my poker money on the weekends?"
Nyota traces her finger on the tray and takes a breath.
"I told you," she says, "I'm busy. Advanced xenolinguistics isn't the cakewalk military history was—"
"Huh!"
"—and I'm doing an internship this year that's taking a lot of time."
"Yeah," McCoy says, "with that Andorian professor."
"What? No, with Commander Spock. He's Vulcan, not Andorian."
She sees McCoy's gaze become unfocused, as if he is trying to remember something.
"A Vulcan? You sure?"
"You're crazy!" Nyota says fondly. He doesn't know anything after all.
"Could be," he says, grinning. "But you're the one practically sleeping in your oatmeal. You look tired to me. Sure you aren't coming down with something? That weird flu you had before, maybe? Could be a relapse."
"I'm fine," she says, putting her hand on his arm and giving a squeeze. "I told you, I'm just busy."
"Well," McCoy says, sitting up and waving to someone in the morning crowd milling about inside the cafeteria, "mystery solved then. If you are working for a Vulcan, then of course you don't have any time to spare. I've only met a few in my rotations but they were all impossible to work with. Persnickety and controlling to a fault…Okay, I gotta run."
He stands and looks down at Nyota. "But don't stay away so long. The poker buddies have been asking about you. Tell that Vulcan of yours to lighten up. Starfleet doesn't condone slavery."
And with that he is gone. Nyota lets her spoon drop back into her bowl and waits for her heart to slow down. McCoy had scared her there for a moment with his insinuations about her free time.
Although if the truth is known, she's had more free time this past week than she would have liked, even with the extra duty of helping Professor Carter and Janna prepare their presentation for the Feynman Conference.
Twice she has met with them at Professor Carter's apartment, helping set up language samples for the experimental scanner. Janna has done the bulk of the work, but Nyota's contribution is valuable.
And valued. Professor Carter thanks her for her work every time she sees her. And Janna, too, in her own way, seems to enjoy Nyota's company. It is nice—and different—to get so much praise.
Both times that she worked at Professor Carter's place, Nyota had expected Spock to show up, or at least to leave her an invitation to stop at his apartment before heading back to the dorm. But he hadn't. Later she commented on it, telling him she was sorry he wasn't at home when she was working so close.
"I was home," he said, "but I was occupied."
From anyone else, the words would have been hurtful or inconsiderate. From Spock, they were simple facts.
Occupied with what? she wanted to ask. Since the morning Andrea had seen her at his apartment, Spock has been…not distant, exactly, but more contained, more reserved. She knows they have to be careful—that if Andrea has said anything to anyone, the brass will get wind of it soon enough.
But her schedule this week included almost no time when she and Spock were working together. When she was running the lab, he was in conference with his computer science students in the computer building. While she worked in his office, he upgraded the lab stations.
And so on. At first she thought it was an odd coincidence. By Thursday she knew it was deliberate.
Finally she asked him about it when she made tea and took him a cup while he read computer messages at his desk. Looking up when she put the cup beside him, Spock raised his eyebrow as she stepped to the door and shut it.
"Are you upset with me about anything?" she said without preamble. She knew him well enough to recognize the importance of the sudden widening of his eyes and the flush at the tips of his ears. He was surprised.
"Negative," he said. "Why would you assume—"
"You've been…hard to reach. I've hardly seen you since…you know."
"I am being cautious."
She stood by his desk and looked at him sitting stiffly in his chair, his hands folded in front of him, his eyes on hers. Anyone looking at them would think they barely knew each other, so blank was his expression, so awkward was her stance.
"I know we need to be careful," she said, suddenly very tired, looking down at her hands. In her own ears her voice sounded petulant and self-absorbed. "It's just that I…miss you."
At that she had looked into his face and was shocked at what she saw—not the blankness of a moment ago but sorrow and longing so palpable that she felt her hand lifting to him of its own accord.
"Nyota," he said quietly, and that one word—the sounding of her name—was enough to reassure her that this emotional desert was not his choice.
It made the rest of the morning more bearable. He left for an hour during their usual lunch time and then returned to work alone in his office.
She knows he is standing in the doorway of the lab even though her back is turned by the reaction of the students, shifting in their chairs and hazarding glances over their shoulders. When she looks up, sure enough he is there, startling her by beckoning her over.
"My mother's shuttle arrives in 24 minutes," he says, "so I am leaving for the transport station now."
"Your mother? She's coming here? Is she okay?"
As he speaks, Spock flicks his eyes from her to the students working in the lab and back again.
"Her regular radiation treatment," he says.
His voice is soft and measured—not just to keep their conversation private, but because he often adopts this tone when he talks about his mother. He rarely says much about his family at all, but his features brighten when he tells stories of working with his mother in her garden or recounts her admonitions to him and his father.
"Do you need anything?" Nyota asks, but Spock shakes his head and she feels a wave of disappointment.
"I can think of nothing. My mother's treatment is in the morning and then she will fly to Seattle to spend a few days with Aunt Cecilia."
Her heart in her throat, Nyota considers how to phrase her next question. Every word, every nuance, is fraught with the possibility of being misunderstood.
Can I meet her?
A simple request, really. Can I meet your mother?
And not so simple either. Can I meet your mother? Will you grant me entrance into this most intimate part of your life?
She could try to sound humorous or amused—your mother? Can I meet her? I'll bet she has funny stories to tell about you!
Or formal, using a high Vulcan dialect, confounding any eavesdropping students sitting with their backs turned resolutely away.
Coming from anyone other than her, the question would be innocuous. From her, it is loaded with subtext, even when she tries to strip it down to a single layer of meaning.
"Can I meet her?"
Before he says a word, she knows his answer. His telltale glance to the side gives him away.
"Another time, perhaps," he says, and she nods. He's right. They do have to be careful or people will talk.
She accepts this.
But she doesn't have to like it.
"Of course, Commander," she says, turning back to the students who have been patiently waiting for what suddenly feels like forever.
X X X X X X X
As soon as Amanda sees him, she knows something is up. When she disembarks from the shuttle she senses where he is in the crowd and looks in his direction, catching a glimpse of his dark hair, his squared shoulders tipped back, his eyes seeking out hers.
Here I am, Mother, and she beams back her happiness.
Before she can make her way forward he is there in front of her, taking her small travel bag from her hand. They have this routine down pat—her regular trips for radiation therapy necessitated by living in the imperfect—at least, from a human point of view—light wavelengths of Vulcan. The treatment isn't pleasant but it isn't all that onerous either. A few hours of lying beneath a pulsating radiation lamp, and then a few days of exhaustion and queasiness. If nothing else, it gives her a chance to visit with Spock before heading to Seattle to catch up with her sister Cecilia.
As they ride a ground car to the Academy grounds and Spock's apartment, Amanda tries to sort out what is different. Some hesitation in his manner, some deflection when she bumps up against his mind.
"What are you up to?" she asks aloud but Spock merely raises an eyebrow.
"And don't pretend you don't know what I mean," she says, training her gaze on him.
Spock is prevented from having to answer by a lurch. The ground car stops suddenly—the automatic driving system beeping a warning too late to be much help to the passengers who are thrown forward. Amanda sees several cadets in their telltale red uniforms darting across the street in front of the car.
"Perhaps we should exit here," Spock says, unlatching the door.
"Warning," the automated voice intones. "Door open."
Spock steps outside and reaches back towards his mother to help her navigate the low opening. As she places her hand in his, she sends out a question through her touch. Are you okay?
"Why do you ask?" he says out loud. The sound of his voice is almost a rebuff. And that, she realizes, is what she is feeling—his deliberate distance, an evasion that sends an unmistakable signal: My thoughts are my own.
"You always were the master of misdirection," she says. "A question is not an answer. I ask because your father said you have been ill—and you do look thin."
"You often think I look thin," Spock says, taking her by the elbow and leading her to the sidewalk. "And I was not ill for long."
"The soup helped?"
She hazards a glance at him. They both know what she is really asking. The teaching assistant, the one who ended up eating the soup. What about her?
The ground traffic is particularly noisy this afternoon, and a hover bus swishes to a stop at the corner, forcing them to detour around the crowd of people waiting to board. Amanda has the impression that Spock welcomes the diversion.
They don't speak again until they reach the east gate of the Academy. The faculty apartment building is just inside, and within a few minutes Spock is opening the door to his apartment and setting her travel bag on the sofa beside her.
As he moves to the kitchen to turn on the kettle, Amanda notes his silhouette, sunlight streaming around him like a corona. He is thin—and he has dark smudges under his eyes. She starts to say so but hesitates.
If she asks outright, he will deny it—or get prickly with her.
She'll have to outlogic him into revealing anything.
A daunting task—but she hasn't lived for years on Vulcan without learning a few tricks.
For a few minutes as Spock busies himself in the kitchen, she leans back against the sofa and lets her eye rove around the living area. It looks as it always does—as his room back home on Vulcan always did when he was living there—spare and neat and organized. The only personal touches are several holos tucked among the shelving lined with PADDs and books.
"I need to send you some new pictures," Amanda calls. "I have a lovely one of this year's garden."
Spock says nothing but she doesn't expect him to. What is there, after all, to say? She will send the pictures and he will display them if he wishes. After so many years of conversations with Vulcans, Amanda appreciates the silences as much as the carefully chosen words. Human chatter, by contrast, is just that…too much noise.
When he returns with the tea, Amanda notices immediately that the mug is one she has never seen before, an oddly satisfying lumpy one with an almost gritty feel to the glaze. Spock holds another like it.
"These are new," she says and is startled to see him color. Why would that embarrass him? A gift from someone? They are certainly handmade, decorative, not something she would expect him to buy. Almost everything else he owns is utilitarian to a fault.
She decides to go fishing.
"They remind me of a set I used to have," Amanda says, watching Spock over the rim of the mug as she takes a tentative sip. "Where did you get them?"
So sure is she that someone gave them to him that she is nonplussed when he says, "I bought them."
"You did!"
"A local potter made them."
This is new. Purchasing something from a potter—overlooking an ordinary replicated mug in favor of something with more aesthetic flair.
"I didn't realize you had such a deep appreciation for the arts," she says, smiling to let him see that she is not judging him.
"Vulcans generally do," Spock says, his voice level.
"Well, yes," Amanda says, putting the mug on the small table beside the sofa, "Vulcans do. I just didn't realize that you do."
Even though he tries to keep her gently walled out, she feels his understanding that he is being chaffed.
"And how fortunate," she adds, "that you had the foresight to buy two."
She meets his gaze then and is rewarded with a definite flush creeping up around his ears.
Trying to keep secrets from his mother, indeed.
A soft chiming from his pocket—Spock pulls out his comm and scrolls quickly through a message.
"Something you need to take care of?" Amanda asks when he places his comm back in his pocket.
"A note from Admiral Keening," Spock says, standing and picking up the now empty tea mugs from the table. "The lab tutorial my colleague and I instituted has been approved for a presentation at the Feynman Conference. The Admiral wants us to attend."
Suddenly he is all business, dispatching the mugs to the kitchen and pacing briskly around the room, gathering PADDs from the bookshelf into a pile on the loveseat, fetching a duffel from his bedroom down the hall, and stacking folded clothes beside it, all while dialing his comm.
Amanda sits back and watches in amusement, like someone in the eye of the storm.
"When do you have to leave?"
"Tomorrow," he says, and before she can reply he says into the comm, "A message from Spock. Please return my call as soon as convenient."
"My colleague," he says to his mother's unspoken question. "Dr. Artura. He had plans to attend a memorial service this weekend on Andoria. In light of the Admiral's request, he may wish to stay here instead."
"That seems unlikely," Amanda says, and Spock stops moving and peers at her intensely.
"Explain," he says, and Amanda shakes her head.
"I can't really," she says. "I mean, I don't know your colleague, but if he is Andorian, they take their memorial services very seriously. At least the Andorians your father and I have known over the years. Did this professor—"
"Artura."
"—Artura lose someone close to him?"
She sees Spock considering, his head tilted slightly to the side, his eyes briefly unfocused. He would not answer the way a human would, quickly, intuitively, but only after consulting his memory, flipping through his interactions with the Andorian professor like shuffling a stack of cards.
"If he has," Spock says at last, "he has not mentioned it to me."
"Then I may be wrong," Amanda says, shrugging.
But in fact, when the comm chimes soon afterward, she overhears Spock's conversation with the professor and surmises that his plans are immutable, that he is annoyed at being asked to consider changing them.
"If you do not mind a short walk," Spock says when he ends the call, "I need to get some files from my office. We can leave from there for dinner if you are hungry."
The walk across the campus is not as short as Spock made it sound—but Amanda uses the opportunity to rest her hand on his forearm as they walk. He doesn't, as he has in the past, pull away or stiffen at her touch, a change she noticed first when he visited on Vulcan several months ago.
That memory stirs up her anger and she struggles not to think about that visit—about T'Pring's refusal to communicate when Spock contacted her, about Sarek's employing a healer to sever their bond. That Spock seemed relieved afterward does not mitigate Amanda's fury.
As if he senses her inner turmoil, Spock lets his arm drift down and Amanda drops her hand.
"Is your assistant working this evening?" she says as they start up the steps of the language building.
By the time she reaches the top of the steps, Spock is waiting with the door open.
"I'd like to meet her," Amanda says as she steps over the door sill, watching Spock from the corner of her eye. "That is, if you don't mind."
"She closed the lab and left before your arrival," he says, not meeting her gaze.
The master of misdirection.
Amanda smiles to herself.
Spock pulls out a chair beside a small table against one wall in his office and motions for her to sit while he turns on the terminal at his desk and begins calling up files. Something about the table and the equipment on it catches Amanda's attention. The arrangement of the stacked PADDs, the way the monitor is tipped forward, the choice of styluses and markers lined in a row along one side are obvious indications that a mind other than her son's has set this up. The teaching assistant then. This is her work station.
Sitting here with her back to Spock, she wonders what he sees when he works at his desk, whether or not the assistant works here at the same time, what kind of a distraction she must be…or they must be to each other.
The way she herself and Sarek are unable to work in the same room when they are home together—the hum of their bond somehow louder when she can look up at any time and see him bent over a keyboard, puzzling through Federation reports or writing up his observations from a diplomatic mission.
Or working nearby when she is in the garden, rerouting the irrigation tubing or priming the reluctant pump. Even when her back is turned, a trowel in one hand, her fingers red with dust and soil, she knows when he is watching her.
Is that what Spock feels when he sits at his desk, his gaze trained on the computer monitor, his attention elsewhere?
She glances at him now, his head tilted to the left, a crease between his brows. More and more he looks like his father—not in build or even in coloring but in the intensity of his expression, the cant of his head when he concentrates.
She's seen only a few pictures of Sarek at this age. His parents had one that sat on a shelf in their living area for years, of Sarek two years older than Spock is now, stockier, his hair rucked up and coarser than his son's, with more gravity to his stance, more self-assurance.
And another one, of Sarek shortly before Spock's birth, and his father, Skon, standing stiffly beside each other. Skon already slightly stooped and white-haired, the telltale tremor in his hands an early sign of Bendii Syndrome, though no one voiced that aloud until later.
The last time she had seen him she had been shocked at how much he had deteriorated, how thin and bowed, his face drawn up so tightly his skin looked shiny and his breathing was raspy. Even so he had beckoned to her to stand beside him for a few moments and she had led Spock—three or four years old at the time—to his bedside, Sarek and his mother hovering close by to shield her from Skon's emotional projections.
The most insidious part of the disease—and the most ironic one—was the affected person's loss of emotional control. Not only did someone with Bendii lose his ability to keep his feelings private, he sent them onto others. As the disease progressed, friends fell away, unwilling to be buffeted by the storm of emotions. Even family members had been known to abandon a sufferer.
When Skon died at last, Sarek's mother didn't last long. Weakened by the loss of her bond and tired by the strain of caring for her ill husband, she died six months later.
Sarek's equanimity through it all sometimes confounded Amanda.
"You should visit your father more often," she had said early in the course of the disease before she understood how shaming it was to Skon to have them there. After his death she encouraged Sarek to spend more time with his mother but this he also resisted.
"If my mother wishes for my company," he said one evening as they cleared away the remnants of their meal, "she will let me know."
"But she's not doing well," Amanda had protested, and Sarek had nodded briefly.
"Indeed, she is not," he said, "but my presence will not alter anything."
Amanda had huffed at him and said, "You make it sound like you don't matter, like you can't do anything at all."
"Because I cannot," Sarek replied.
"She's grieving herself to death, Sarek. You might make her less lonely."
"Perhaps," he said, though she could tell that he was skeptical, that his comment was meant simply to reassure her that he was listening.
Was it then that Sarek had first broached the topic of genetic testing, or after his mother's death? She can't recall.
What she does recall is how she felt when he told her that he had scheduled testing for himself and his sons.
Like most people, she knew that Bendii Syndrome ran in families, sometimes appearing in successive generations and sometimes not. Caused by the mutation of a single gene, any child of an affected parent had a 50% risk of inheriting the disease.
Vaguely she had considered the possibility that Sarek might be affected—had considered it and dismissed it.
According to Sarek, Skon had shown symptoms years earlier—a marked sensitivity to sound and light, for instance, and a shambling gait that he passed off as tendon strain. Sarek had none of those symptoms, was, in fact, a picture of health.
She stated those reasons now.
"You can't have it," she said, certain, reaching out to touch his warm hand, his vibrantly alive, healthy hand.
But when she did, a wash of his concern flashed through her and she almost gasped.
"If I do," he said, "it will not concern you."
There it was, the unspoken truth that reared it head from time to time like a sleeping animal—the unassailable truth that Sarek would outlive her by many years. If he was struck down by Bendii—a disease of the elderly—she would have been long dead already.
From anyone else, the words would have been hurtful or inconsiderate. From Sarek they were simple facts.
There was no question that she wanted to know whether Spock or Sybok were also affected—though in reality if they were, they would not exhibit any signs for a century, maybe two. Such a time scale was unreal to her, and she comforted herself with the idea that scientists or healers might discover a cure by then.
"Yes," she said calmly when Sarek asked if she wanted him to read the results to her.
"Once you know," he said, "you cannot unknow. Consider well."
At that she paused. What if her son was fated by the hand of genetic chance to face a future of increasing physical weakness and emotional unmooring? Would she tell him? Would it change how she treated him now, still a very young child? Maybe not consciously, but in some way shifting for him differently, expecting less or giving more?
She had to know. She could not bear not to know something that important about Spock.
"Yes," she said again, surprised that Sarek was able to wall her out of his thoughts so easily—and disturbed by this, too, and determined to speak to him about it later.
"Spock does not carry the gene," he said, his eyes steady on her face.
Her relief washed over her like a tsunami and she pressed her palms together and raised them to her face like a supplicant.
"And Sybok?" she said when she trusted herself to speak.
"I have already spoken to him," Sarek said. "Naturally he is disappointed."
The weight of his words crashed into her and for a moment she couldn't catch her breath.
A young teenager—in many ways a haunted boy—and now he would be haunted by more than just the memories of his dead mother and the peripatetic life of moving back and forth between his father and his mother's relatives.
She loved him deeply, dearly, would adopt him as her own if Vulcan law would allow it—or rather, if his maternal grandmother would give up her rights to him.
With the fingers of her left hand she pressed her collarbone to try to ease the ache there. Poor Sybok, more open and affectionate than most Vulcan children. If she hadn't loved him for himself, she would have loved him for his tenderness with Spock.
Would this knowledge stifle him, make him more hesitant? Or the opposite, send him reeling and reckless and heedless against an unfair future?
"I am sorry, Amanda," Sarek said, and she lifted her gaze and met his own—the bond between them once more full and uncensored.
And then she knew.
Sarek had the gene, too.
"No!"
She thought she might faint but Sarek was there immediately in her mind, comforting her. We will have many years. You need not cry.
He took her into his arms then and she wept until her head was throbbing.
"I'm not crying because you have this," she said when she could speak again, her words punctuated with hiccups and pauses. "I'm crying because I won't be there with you."
That must have been before Sarek's mother died, Amanda realizes as she sits at the little table in Spock's office. She remembers his decision not to tell his mother about his and Sybok's diagnosis—a choice not many Vulcans would have made with their unblinking devotion to the truth.
"It will add to her grief," he said, and Amanda had thought, And once you know, you can't unknow.
Perhaps she needs to consider that now, as she pokes around for information about what Spock is up to these days. According to Sarek, Spock would be breaking Starfleet regulations if he is involved with his teaching assistant. Not that she thinks much of Starfleet regulations—too many of the brass she's known over the years are hidebound bureaucrats who have trouble seeing the forest for the trees.
If she knows something for certain—but she doesn't. Not at all. She's never been one to believe in anything like mother's intuition. If anything, Spock has often been able to dodge her so completely that when she heard stories of his actions from others—his chess teacher, for example, praising his skill, or the headmaster suggesting that Spock's scuff-up with that bully was completely justified—she felt that she was hearing about a stranger.
My son? Beating the chess master at his own game?
My son? Beating the bully senseless?
Soon enough Spock powers down his computer and gathers up some loose flimplasts and papers. Turning off the light, he shepherds her out into the hall and locks the door behind him. In the distance she hears an odd sound, a rhythmic, echoing shuffle in the stairwell.
Beside her she feels Spock react.
An electricity buzzes through their bond and she turns to stare at him.
He is looking straight ahead at the figure coming into view, a young woman climbing the stairs. For a moment he is nailed to the floor, his surprise and hesitation clear.
Suddenly she feels his hand on her elbow—not quite steadying himself but almost. He begins piloting her down the hall.
The young woman is striking, even in the imperfect light of the shadowed hallway. Dark and as lithe as a dancer when she walks forward, her long hair pulled up and back, swaying behind her. The expression on her face is tentative, anxious, hopeful—all at once.
"Cadet Uhura," Spock says, "I didn't expect to see you here."
"Yes, I—" the cadet stammers, "I have some research I need to do for a paper—and I wanted to get these last assignments graded before tomorrow. Your students have been asking for them."
So this is the teaching assistant, the young woman who merits homemade plomeek soup.
The cadet's bright brown eyes search Spock's face intently. Something in Spock's posture shifts and the cadet relaxes visibly.
"Please," he says, "let me introduce you to my mother. Mother, this is my teaching assistant, Cadet Uhura."
"Amanda," she says quickly, reaching out her hand.
"Nyota," the cadet says, pressing her fingers into Amanda's palm, the edges of her mouth curling into a smile.
She cannot unknow something once she knows it.
On the other hand, fishing expeditions aren't always successful—particularly when the men in her life want to keep something from her.
"We're on our way to dinner," Amanda says, looking up at Spock and then back. "Would you care to join us?"
"Mother," Spock says quietly, "another time, perhaps. Cadet Uhura has said that she has work she must do tonight."
The cadet's smile fades as suddenly as it bloomed. Disappointment, obviously—and more?
"Thank you, but….that's right. I really have to finish—"
"Another time then," Amanda says, careful not to upset Spock by pressing further.
Giving a small smile, Spock's assistant turns to walk towards the lab.
"Let me know when you have a chance to check your messages," Spock says, stopping her in her tracks.
"My messages?"
"I forwarded a note to you from Admiral Keening," he says, "though you may have already gotten another notification."
"I don't think so," the young woman says.
The conversation Amanda had overheard earlier in Spock's apartment—the upcoming trip. This must be what he is referring to.
"The Academy is being recognized for the language tutorial program," he says, "at the Feynman Conference in Amsterdam this weekend. Admiral Keening wants someone to represent the department. Professor Artura is visiting Andoria at the moment—though his aide has expressed an interest in attending."
"That's wonderful! Are you going? Do you have to make a talk?"
Any disappointment she had been feeling earlier seems to have evaporated. The cadet fairly bounces on her toes—a dancer for sure, Amanda thinks—and beams at Spock.
"I have no choice," Spock says, "though your participation is optional. The presentation will be minimal—though you are, of course, welcome to come. Some of the other workshops may be of interest to you."
Even a stranger would see how pleasing the idea is to the two of them. From the side Amanda watches them make eye contact. Something is definitely being said.
"Yes, I want to go!" the cadet says, and Spock tilts his head slightly and nods. He takes Amanda's arm again and they head down the hall toward the lift.
"Good night," Amanda calls over her shoulder, but the cadet has already disappeared into the lab.
No matter. They will be together this weekend.
Tomorrow after her radiation treatment, Amanda can scurry out of the way, catching a mid-morning shuttle to Seattle. Chris has offered to pick her up since Cecilia will be at work until later in the afternoon.
Then Spock and his assistant can go to the conference. Where did he say it was? Amsterdam? No, Leiden, a smaller university town nearby. She remembers visiting a friend there once in college and seeing an ancient windmill still in operation, its long, tubular metal arms whirling on top of a turbine like a fan.
Thinking of Chris reminds her that she hasn't asked about Spock's visit to Seattle earlier in the week, and she asks about the visit to the lawyer as they wait for the lift.
"It was satisfactory," he says curtly, their bond trickling down in wattage as he does. Something unpleasant then—though Amanda can't imagine what. An argument about the will? Perhaps one of Cecilia's daughters was unhappy with turning Aunt Matilda's bequest into a land trust.
Rachel, most likely—the one with drama in her veins.
Asking anything further will get her nowhere. She sees that determined look in his eye, the one that means he is closed for business.
Chris will tell her. Or Cecilia. She'll know soon enough.
Everything.
Or maybe not. What does she know, really? That his teaching assistant, that lovely young woman, was as bright and warm as a flame as she spoke. That Spock was a candle flickering in her eddy.
Fanciful imaginings. Nothing of real substance, as Sarek would say.
When they exit the building Spock leads the way to the nearest campus gate, their plan to find a place close by to eat before heading back to his apartment for the night. As they draw closer, she can see some disturbance at the gate, some gathering of people on the sidewalk outside.
Spock slows and then stops.
"Mother—" he says, but someone in the crowd catches sight of him and yells.
"Go home!"
Two guards at the entrance swivel in unison and see Amanda and Spock standing there.
"Commander," one guard says over the noise of the crowd. "You might want to exit by another route."
Amanda watches Spock's face cloud over.
"What is it?"
But he doesn't answer, and the guard says, "They have permission to demonstrate at this gate only."
"Who? Who has permission?"
"Come on, Mother," Spock says tersely, taking her by the arm.
"Who are they?" she says, looking up at his profile as they head back across the campus. "Why are they here?"
Spock's stride is so long that Amanda has to take two steps for each of his—and her breathing quickly becomes labored. Finally Spock slows and she asks again, "Who are they?"
His cheek twitching, he says, "They call themselves Earth United. Recently they staged protests here and in other major cities."
"But who are they?" Amanda says, confused. "What do they want?"
"They want me," Spock says, looking straight ahead, "and others like me to go away."
That familiar ache—the one she knows has dogged him all his life—of being at home nowhere. At moments like this she feels the guilt of giving him his otherness.
They are almost across campus before she dares to break the silence.
"Would it be alright," she says, "if we grab something quick to eat? Maybe even just take it back to the apartment?"
She hears him breathe deeply and he nods. A single guard stands at the east gate and they pass through it quickly, darting together across the street to a nondescript building with a few small tables and chairs outside.
Pushing open the door, Amanda hears a bell and sees a young dark-skinned man with a shock of black hair leaning on the counter. He gives her a hesitant smile and she returns it—and his smile broadens.
"Good evening, Commander," the young man says. Spock doesn't look back as he makes his way to a lighted cooler in the rear of the store. Despite herself, Amanda sighs. So much for instilling those social niceties.
The cooler is surprisingly well-stocked to be so small, with various sandwiches and wraps and even, she notes with surprise, containers of kaasa juice for sale. When she puts her hand out to pick up a sandwich, Spock startles her by speaking quietly at her ear.
"Nyota says the wraps are superior to the other sandwiches."
"Oh," she says, putting the sandwich back and leaning forward over the cooler. "Which ones—"
"Her preference is for the spinach and tomato," he says.
"I see," Amanda says, taking the wrap Spock hands her.
And she does see. Nyota, not Cadet Uhura. Meals shared, preferences noted.
Her clueless son. Look what he has let slip.
The intimate marriage of courtship and food. She thinks fondly of a little restaurant nearby where she and Sarek had innocently consumed a meal seasoned with cinnamon. Afterwards she had vowed to replicate it and had bought a red tagine just so she could.
The red tagine that she had given to Spock when he first left home for San Francisco. She wonders if he still has it, if he's ever used it.
It might be interesting to find out.
She cannot unknow about the protesters at the gate, cannot unremember them—even with her human ability for denial—but she can forget them for the rest of the evening and think about other things she doesn't know for certain but would like to find out.
Placing her hand lightly on his forearm, she lets him lead her up the aisle to the counter up front, like a fisherman letting the trout think he is heading to safe waters, waiting to reel him in.
X X X X X X X
For as long as he can remember, his mother has loved tomatoes—eating them raw with salt or pepper or even sugar or mayonnaise; adding them to stews; slicing them into small cubes and baking them until they are sweet and dry and adding them to salads or gathering up a handful like popped Terran corn.
Spock, on the other hand, has never cared for them very much. Compared to Vulcan vegetables they are mushy, water-logged and bland. Their flavor, if they can be said to have any, is indeterminate, too mildly acidic to have much bite against the hot peppers and sharp herbs his Vulcan palate prefers.
His father's reaction when Amanda serves tomatoes is polite and distant. He eats them but rarely comments on them.
The only one who shares her enthusiasm is Sybok.
Or did.
As they walk to the market deli, Spock wonders idly as he often does where his brother is now—where he has been for more than a dozen years. Reaching out he tries to sense him but doesn't. There is his mother, her emotions as incandescent as a light bulb, and his father's quiet presence. And nothing more.
Yet he is certain that Sybok is alive—somewhere.
"Do you genuinely enjoy tomatoes?" Spock had asked him once after Sybok had eaten two portions at the mid-day meal.
His brother had eyed him carefully and said, "It makes your mother happy if I do," which, Spock realized later, was not an answer.
Amanda's search for a variety that could grow in the desert climate of Vulcan was ongoing and serious. Each year before the growing season she ordered seeds, read journals, conferred on subspace and in person with other gardeners. The summer that Spock turned 12 she was busy with an experimental hybrid that was less of a "water hog" than other varieties and which was reputed to be especially flavorful.
Spock was not enthused but he helped his mother regularly in the garden.
Setting out the plants in orderly rows was satisfying, though pinching off the suckers and trimming the weaker branches was less so.
Still, it was time with his mother. Lately he had been more involved with his school work, and chess lessons with the chess master Truvik took a great deal of energy.
And then there was Stonn. The relentless bullying was frightening at first and then wearying, mostly because he had to struggle to hide it from his mother. Through their bond he sensed her concern when he came home bruised or scuffed or later than expected, and he learned to winnow down their connection until it was a mere thread of what it had been before, keeping her at a distance.
"It is to be expected," he overhead his father tell her one night as he sat up late reading in his bed. "Spock is at the age when he needs more privacy."
"But I'm his mother," Amanda had protested, and his father had said in his rumbling baritone, "Exactly."
He overheard them again, this time arguing, the night after the headmaster called and had them take him home.
"Several of the children who witnessed the altercation say that Spock was provoked," the headmaster said, explaining why Spock was being suspended for several days instead of being expelled after beating Stonn so badly that he required medical attention. "Nevertheless, his lack of control—"
"Understood," Sarek said, and beside him Amanda had sniffed loudly enough to catch both men's attention.
Her fury did not abate when they got home, though Spock had the uncanny feeling that she was not mad at him but at his father, or at the headmaster—or perhaps at Stonn himself.
After she sent him to his room she rounded on Sarek with such force that Spock closed his door and sat on his bed, his hands holding a PADD, his eyes wandering over the page without comprehending anything.
The door effectively muffled his mother's words but her tone was unmistakable.
The next morning his father was gone before sunrise and his mother cracked his door and told him that she would be back at mid-day after she finished her tutorials at the local elementary school. He was free to come out of his room but not to go anywhere else—was that clear?
It was.
After foraging for some fruit he wandered out into the early morning cool into the garden. There was the row of hybrid tomatoes, most of them flowering profusely, a few already sporting small green tomatoes the size of marbles.
A gift for his mother—he would weed the garden and trim the tomatoes. He finished his fruit quickly and picked up the garden hoe.
The soil at the base of the tomato plants was packed from the steady watering and he attacked that first. High in silicates, the soil had a glittering quality to it that he had not fully appreciated before—as the sun rose it alternated hues from rose to orange to pink. With his garden hoe he chopped at the packed dirt so that more water could seep down. Then he moved up the row of plants and snipped away the withered leaves and dried stems.
By the time his mother returned he had finished and showered and was reading an assignment from his biology teacher. He heard her pass through the house and open the door from the kitchen to the outside portico, allowing the early afternoon wind to cool the house.
And then he heard her scream.
Dropping his PADD on the floor and dashing down the hall, he saw her re-entering from the back door.
"What did you do!"
He knew at once that she meant the garden. In a flash he broadcast what he had spent the last few hours doing—showed her the hoe in his hands, the way he had broken up the clumps of soil at the base of the plants.
"Come look!" she said out loud and he followed her onto the portico. Even from here he could see that the tomato plants were drooping and drying in the sun.
"Look what you did," she said, her voice sadder and less angry now—less shocked.
What could he say?
"That was not my intention."
With a huff she said, "Of course it wasn't!"
Sometimes when his mother was angry she said things that sounded factual but were meant to provoke an emotional response in him. Was this one of those comments?
With a sigh she turned around and went back inside. In a minute he followed her, uncertain what to do. For a few moments he stood in the doorway, watching her as she filled the kettle and put on tea. Not once did she look at him, and finally he went back to his room and shut the door.
"Such excitement," Sybok said later that evening when he came home and sat on the edge of Spock's bed. "First getting yourself tossed out of school for the week, and now getting rid of the vegetables you despise."
"I really did not intend to harm the tomatoes," Spock said, and Sybok said, "And the boy at school? Did you intend to harm him?"
Spock had looked down, convinced that Sybok would chastise him for losing his temper.
But his brother surprised him, tapping him gently on the nose, the way he had teased him when he was very small.
"You could replant them," Sybok said, and for a moment Spock was confused. "Amanda still has some of the seeds left."
"The growing season is too far advanced," Spock said. "They would not have time to mature."
Sybok had leaned back, one hand bracing himself on the bed.
"True," he said, "but that does not mean you should not do it. It would make your mother happy."
"But there will be no time to get any tomatoes—"
"She will be glad that you tried anyway."
Even as he planted the seeds he knew his attempt would be futile, that nothing would come of all his efforts.
For the rest of his suspension he labored in the garden, pulling out the dead plants and watering the seeds until they germinated. By the time he returned to school, little seedlings were poking up through the dusty soil.
As he predicted, the plants set almost no fruit at all—though as Sybok had predicted, his mother didn't seem to mind. She seemed, in fact, happy with him.
Right before the first frost he noticed one tomato and pointed it out to his mother. Only one in an entire row of bushy plants—but it was something.
Two days later all of the plants were dead, beheaded by the ice crystals that made the desert nights such a danger. At the evening meal, Amanda served him sliced tomato, red on the outside but still pale green in the middle.
Surprised, Spock looked across the table, first at his father whose mild gaze gave nothing away, and then at Sybok, who nodded so slightly that Spock almost missed it.
She would enjoy it more than I will, he thought, but Sybok shook his head.
She prefers giving it to you.
One glance at his mother and he knew this was true. He ate the tomato, all of it.
She's been nudging him all evening for information that he isn't sure he wants to give. The earlier encounter with the woman down the hall has spooked him in a way that is unexpected.
All week he has countered his anxiety with rigorous exercise and meditation and music, sometimes getting so little sleep that his focus drifts during his working hours. Inexcusable. Even rearranging his schedule so that he has far less contact with Nyota has not been of any benefit. Instead of feeling less drawn to her, he feels himself pulled harder in her absence, like being sucked into a vacuum.
So this is what humans mean when they say they are miserable.
"Nyota says the wraps are superior to the other sandwiches."
"Oh," his mother says, putting the sandwich back and leaning forward over the cooler. "Which ones—"
"Her preference is for the spinach and tomato," he says.
"I see," she says, her voice throaty and full of unspoken emotion. He lets her have a glimmer—as brief as lightning—of himself and Nyota sitting right here at this small round table, eating a meal.
A gift for his mother—this little morsel—an offering of sorts.
Her obvious happiness lifts his misery.
A/N: Thanks to all readers, but double thanks to those of you who take the time and make the effort to review. Your helpful words are the only payment we receive!
Thanks to StarTrekFanWriter for her support. Check out her gender-bender fic "The Appearance of Impropriety" for an interesting view of our couple!
This story weaves in and out of the other stories I have written. This particular chapter and the following one bob in and out of the action of "The Inverview." Thanks for overlooking any inconsistencies! If I were smarter I would have written them in order!