The Judgment of Solomon

by

Pat Foley

Chapter 11

When Sarek returned from Council, Spock was still up, but barely, being sung to sleep. Sarek paused in the corridor outside his son's bedroom just to enjoy, for a few indulgent moments, the sound of his wife's voice raised in song. He listened appreciatively as she sang their son a lullaby, Sarek's own eyes half closed, letting his barriers drop reflexively in relaxation after his own long, stressful day.

"Sing the spider song," Spock said, sleepily in his croaky little voice, when she had finished.

Amanda did, the sing-song tale of a determined spider, climbing a spout only to be washed away by rain and adversity, and rising again with the sun. Spock joined drowsily into it. His voice might be on pitch, but his toddler's cadence added nothing to his mother's sweet soprano. The incongruity of a Vulcan child, singing about creatures that didn't exist on Vulcan, being washed away by a rain that Spock had never seen, seemed lost to Amanda.

But Sarek had other pressing reasons to be concerned over his son engaging in such human behavior.

The spell thus broken for Sarek, he chose that moment to quietly enter. And fell under a different spell again. Amanda was sitting in her rocking chair, the one piece of furniture that she insisted be shipped from Terra when she had discovered she was pregnant.

Sarek himself had thought the chair an odd construction. A more unsteady, wobbly, rickety, shaky, ill-balanced, unstable piece of furniture, particularly when one was burdened with the additional weight of an infant, Sarek could not imagine. He had tried it once, and failed to appreciate its alleged charms. But Amanda favored it above any other spot when nursing or tending her infant. And Spock seemed to like the rocking motion, too, regardless of his father's opinion. Though Sarek thought him too old now to be rocked to sleep.

But with breath in his lungs ready to remind Amanda of that fact, Sarek fell under the spell of his wife's face, softened with love, arms curled around Spock, cradling him close as she rocked and they sang. Next to them lay I-Chiya, his huge bulk curled into an impossibly small ball, apparently also enjoying the impromptu concert. The sight of his little family in this peaceful moment, after his stressful day, literally took Sarek's breath away, as well as all thought of the opinion he had been about to relate.

With the resilience of youth, and long familiarity making him less susceptible to the emotional spell that had captivated Sarek, Spock noticed his father. He shook off his drowsiness and his mother's arms in the same instant. Small and warm, clean in fuzzy sleepers, with silken hair and clutching hands, he launched himself at his father. It did cost Sarek an unVulcan something not to embrace his child in kind.

But unlike Amanda, he had gone through rigorous training as a Vulcan youth. It had forged him as it did all Vulcans. And as he had done before, Sarek deflected this enthusiastic human embrace, changing it to an appropriate familial Vulcan one, and saying the ritual Vulcanur words in turn.

Spock looked up at him, puzzled and confused.

I-Chiya whined in protest, and his stubby tail, which had been thumping in greeting, went still.

"It is time for you to retire, Spock," Sarek said, deliberately overlooking his son's disappointed reaction. "You require your rest."

"Want to sing," Spock said truculently in English, dropping his hands. Turning away from his father, he went back to his mother, climbing back up into her lap and her waiting arms.

"It is long past time for you to be singing," Sarek said to him.

Spock looked at him, stubborn in spite of fighting sleep. "Want to sing."

"Your father's right," Amanda said, "It's time for bed, darling," She picked him up in spite of Sarek's aborted protest, put him in his crib, kissed him. "We'll sing tomorrow," she promised.

"Amanda," Sarek began.

She glanced at him, a brief inquiring look, before turning back to her son. Spock had fallen asleep even before Amanda finished drawing up his blankets.

"That child is much too heavy for you to carry now," Sarek said as he followed Amanda through the connecting door into their own suite, I-Chiya, rising with a grunt, trailing at his heels. "It is time for him to have a low bed he does not need to be lifted into."

"Oh, not so soon," Amanda protested. "He can climb out of the crib, of course. But he knows he's not supposed to. If I don't make him wait too long, he sort of respects his crib as a place where he stays, after a nap or in the morning, until I come get him. With a low bed, he'll be too tempted, and he'll be all over the house, into all sorts of mischief, before I know it. I need that crib a while yet. He's not ready for that responsibility. And he's not too heavy for me to lift."

"It's past time for him to learn the discipline of obedience, so that he doesn't fall into mischief when he is not being watched."

"Good luck with that," Amanda with feeling, glancing back at him as she stepped toward their bath. "I'm just going to take a quick shower before dinner. You haven't eaten, have you? Are you hungry?"

"No. Yes," Sarek said, watching as she fastidiously stripped off her t-shirt and shorts with a mincing grimace.

"I meant to take one before you got home," she explained, "but Spock was so fussy being given his dinner, and then didn't want to go to sleep that I ran out of time. I feel so grubby after an afternoon of chasing after him." She tossed her abandoned clothes at the clothes fresher.

Sarek picked them up reflexively and put them in the machine. Rose scented steam wafted from the bath as Amanda started her shower. I-Chiya started instinctively and eagerly toward the damp air, before Sarek caught him repressively by the ruff.

"You do not need a shower," Sarek told him.

"Rouwf," I-Chiya disagreed.

Amanda came out, belted in a short terry robe, just as the clothes fresher chimed. Sarek offered her the cleaned and folded garments but she grimaced, and waved them away. "No. I'm done with dressing like a camp counselor for the day. I want something pretty."

I-Chiya moved in front of her, catching her robe in his fangs, giving her a grumbled complaint, but she prodded him away with a bare toe. "No comments from you, you walking rug. I'll feed you in a minute." Scrutinizing her closet, she came out wearing an embroidered sundress, she unbraided and brushed out her long hair, and finally gave her reflection a satisfied glance. "I needed that. I feel much more human now."

"Did you feel Vulcan before?" Sarek asked, curious in spite of himself.

"More like a child-care automaton," Amanda said ruefully, "I was a little tired. Your son can wear me out."

Sarek wondered how she could consider the emotional scene he had walked in on presided over by an automaton.

"But I am refreshed now," she said, and gave him a relieved smile. "How about dinner?"

I-Chiya roared at that.

"Yes, you're next," Amanda said. "And I'm starving too," she said to Sarek, following I-Chiya as he trooped down the stairs. "What was that thing you did with your hands when you came home?"

"Excuse me?" Sarek asked, not quite believing what he had heard.

"Some secret Vulcan handshake?" She asked, with a slight smile.

Sarek was shocked enough that his surprise filtered across his face. "That is a Vulcan familial embrace. Appropriate between family members. How can you not know of it?"

"The more pertinent question is how could I?" Amanda asked wryly. "I know this," she waved her hand with two fingers extended. "Because you taught it to me. It's not likely I'd have another reason to know it. I don't have any other family on Vulcan."

"I am sure you must have seen it before," Sarek ventured, searching his memory for where she might have, and coming up blank.

"Sarek, I am a human in an entirely alien culture," she said, rolling her eyes. "I see a lot that I have never seen before. If I asked you every day about all of the things that I don't understand, that are unfamiliar to me, you would never have a moment to work, or sleep, or do anything else."

"I had not considered that," Sarek said, troubled anew.

"If I saw that embrace before, it was in the context of so much other that was unfamiliar, that it didn't seem worth your time to ask. I save my questions for things that seem relevant to me. As," she gave him a flashing look from her blue eyes, "in when you use it with my son."

I-Chiya roared impatiently,

"Oh, yes, you're relevant too." Amanda ferreted out the sehlat's dinner from the stasis unit, and stood aside to let the creature carry it off.

Meanwhile, Sarek sat down at the kitchen table almost as if he needed to, and rubbed his forehead meditatively with two fingers.

"What?" Amanda asked, turning and seeing him distressed.

"I am beginning to comprehend the difficulty of raising Spock as a Vulcan child," he said dryly, steepling his fingers.

"And when did we decide on that?" Amanda asked, brows raised in astonishment.

The steepled fingers moved to rub his temples. "Perhaps that was another assumption of mine."

Amanda sat across from him. "I mean, yes, of course we are going to raise him as Vulcan. To respect Vulcan ways. But that doesn't mean he can't be raised to respect and practice human ways as well, even if only at home, or among humans, or cosmopolitan Vulcans or other groups."

Sarek eyed her between steepled fingers. "That simply will not work, Amanda. The training of Vulcan youth in the disciplines is rigorous. And inflexible."

"Where does IDIC fit in that?" Amanda wanted to know.

Sarek let out a brief sigh of exasperation. He was suddenly beginning to understand some of T'Pau's concerns. "IDIC is a highly respected philosophy, revered among Vulcans. But it is practiced in conjunction with and after the inflexible mastery of the disciplines."

Amanda considered that for a beat and then pronounced. "That's illogical."

"Not for Vulcans," Sarek said tersely. "Amanda, you can't argue about this."

"Can't I?" she asked startled. "Why ever not?"

"Because you cannot," Sarek said, beginning to feel frustrated.

'Just watch me," she answered, her brows knitting together.

"Because it is traditional," Sarek continued with some heat. "Because Spock will never be accepted otherwise. Because Spock is Vulcan enough, in physiology, in breeding, in temperament, to require that his emotions, his passions, be contained by a full mastery of the disciplines. And all the rigorous training that entails."

Amanda shook her head. "Sarek, six months ago, we were considering if he might need remedial special education, perhaps in the Terran Enclave schools. I can't even begin to take in what you are proposing now."

"I am simply discussing raising Spock as the Vulcan that he is."

"But he's not Vulcan."

"He is."

Amanda blew out a frustrated breath. "That is so illogical, I don't even know how to address this with you."

"What you perceive as human elements in his behavior are simply uncontrolled Vulcan emotions. Ones that Spock is now of an age to master."

"But you don't know that," Amanda argued. "You just think that."

"His educational testing has convinced me."

She sat back and crossed her arms, frowning. "Oh, forgive me for not immediately falling into the corollary that because he's smart that must mean he is all Vulcan," she said with elaborate irony. "I'm just such a dumb human that I missed that inevitable logical chain."

"I did not mean that," Sarek said coldly.

She leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "Yes, you did. Sometimes, Sarek, you can be an elitist Vulcan prig. You absolutely did."

"I did not," he countered with some heat.

"And don't you yell at me," she came back, to his raised brows, since his voice had been no louder in volume than hers. "I'm not the one being stupidly prejudiced here. And I don't want to talk about Spock's education now. I want to talk about your behavior."

"Mine?" Sarek asked, all injured Vulcan innocence.

"You turned away from Spock. You turned him away from you. And you've been doing that for the last week. When you first started, I thought it was because he was sticky or sandy. Or dirty. That you didn't want to get muck over your precious Vulcan clan tunics." She brushed her own dress off in reflexive memory. "I could understand that, sort of. He can be a walking dirt devil."

"Forgive me," Sarek said, caustic in turn. "We cannot all dress in attire that proclaims one a Vulcan love slave."

"But now I see that wasn't it. Tonight he'd just had a bath; he was perfectly clean, in clean sleepers. I was the grubby one. And you still did it. You wouldn't even give him a hug and a kiss before he went to bed."

"Spock has to learn proper Vulcan behavior. Vulcans do not greet that way. Nor do they kiss."

"You kiss me."

"That's irrelevant," Sarek dismissed, with his irritating ability to discount facts that didn't fit his hypothesis. "You are human. Humans require touch."

"And he doesn't?" Amanda asked in astonishment.

"He will by necessity learn otherwise."

She stared at him, her jaw dropping. "Well, I don't like the sound of that."

"It's time for me to begin to show Spock proper behavior."

"Teach him, yes," she said. "But don't cut him off from you emotionally."

"I know of no other way to teach him."

"Well, think of one," she said exasperated. "Because the way you are going around it isn't going to work. You've got a half human child, here. You did realize that meant you'd have to do some thinking outside of the box," she added sarcastically.

"Not this box," Sarek said darkly.

"Sarek, what you are planning is doomed to failure. Don't think he is going to notice, and resent you?"

Sarek drew back, baffled. "Why should he? How could he? Amanda, this is how all Vulcans are raised. I am merely giving my son his heritage, a Vulcan heritage, as I was given it. I am doing this for Spock. It is the ultimate gift from a Vulcan parent to a child, to lift them above our violent emotional past."

"We're talking about Spock, not five thousand years of pre-Reform Vulcans."

"There is no difference."

Amanda stood up frustrated, and paced around the kitchen. "Oh, that's nonsense! He's affectionate. He loves you. He's going to see that you treat him differently than I do. Even differently than how you treat me. And he's going to think, at least in part, that you're rejecting him. How can he not resent that?"

"I will see that he understands."

"How much can so young a child understand? And understand it or not, he's still going to feel it, like he did tonight. Feel hurt every time you turn away from his embrace, and deny him yours. And comes back to me for comfort."

"But of course you must revise your behavior as well," Sarek said, reasonably. "Then there will be no confusing discrepancy."

She stared at him in shock. "Me? You have got to be kidding."

"Amanda," Sarek raised a brow. "I am quite serious."

"You never told me about this."

"I did not think I needed to."

"Stop saying that. In this context, it is totally ridiculous."

"Very well, I was remiss. Nevertheless, it is so."

"Sarek, he's my child! And I'm human. I'm not going to keep my baby at arms' length."

"You have a parental bond with him," Sarek insisted. "You do not need touch to express affection."

"It's not the same. It's not enough."

"For you or for him?"

"He is way too young to understand such a radical change in my behavior, even if I could do it. And I can't. And as for enough, how would you like it if I treated you that way? And you are an adult." Amanda countered.

Sarek bridled at this. For a moment had no answer.

"I don't think you'd like it much," she said knowingly.

"This is different."

"Maybe T'Pau didn't cuddle you-"

"Amanda, that is quite enough," Sarek warned. "Do not ascribe human psychology to Vulcans."

"Maybe not. But I know you can't treat a baby in a way that you would never treat an adult."

"This discussion is pointless," Sarek said. "Because Spock's training is inevitable by virtue of his own biology. You have been resident on Vulcan for some time now. You are well aware that normal Vulcan relationships do not involve physical gestures of affection, beyond traditional familial greetings and the touch appropriate between bondmates in public. You must have understood that Spock would undergo similar training. He will not be treated differently than any other Vulcan child in that respect. Your emotional over-reactions aside, he will survive it. And if you do as I do, he will have no contradictions to reconcile."

"Sarek," Amanda shook her head. "I don't care what normal Vulcans do. I won't do it. I just can't." She stared at him, drawing a standoff line. "You know how some things, you really, really can't do? Like forestall that juggernaut of inherited Surakian will once you have determined a course of action? Well, I can't do this. And you can try to roll over me like a juggernaut, but I still can't do it. You're pushing me again, and I'm not ready for this. I won't do it."

Sarek let out a half breath of impatience, indicative of the stress of the last few weeks. "Amanda, I beg you to reconsider."

"Maybe when he is older." She temporized.

"To begin later is to begin too late. He must begin to learn now, Amanda. One must begin to master the disciplines young."

"I can't and I won't!" she stormed.

He stared across at her, dumbfounded.

The silence stretched between them, long enough that Amanda became uncomfortable. "Sarek, you can't expect me to agree on something you spring on me like this. Something so alien to my own nature."

"We are bonded, Amanda," Sarek sounded weary; "We cannot be alien to one another's nature. We simply cannot."

"That's a pretty sentiment, but this whole thing demonstrates bonding doesn't mean I can ever fully understand you, or you understand me. And you always seem to expect that when it comes to me accepting Vulcan culture, and rarely the reverse."

"Do not say that," Sarek said. "That I cannot bear. I have done my best to ensure you are comfortable, and…and happy on Vulcan. I have taken into account your emotional needs, however alien I tend to find them."

"I'm not talking about how you treat me, but how you are proposing to treat Spock. And how you expect me to treat him."

"Spock is Vulcan. Amanda, you must do this for him. And for me."

"Oh, Sarek," Amanda put her own face in her hands for a moment. "You are tearing me apart, tearing me between my husband and my child. " She drew a shuddering breath. "I can't say yes. I will only say that I'll think about it. I'll promise you that much. But right now, that is all I will promise."

"That is insufficient for the present need." Sarek turned away from her, just a bit, his voice controlled in a way that suggested he was suppressing strong emotions. "You leave me no choice. I must endeavor to teach him solely by myself."

She shook her head slowly. "I didn't say that. I just need some time. "

"There is no time."

"He's still so young."

"There is no time, Amanda. He must learn now."

"I don't understand. And nothing you are saying explains to me why this is so urgent now. Is this one of those biological windows Subor had spoken of? Because he didn't mention it in relation to this."

"Not exactly," Sarek said. He considered and still refused to tell her of his problems in Council.

"Well, Spock won't like it. He's very stubborn. I'm not sure you realize how very stubborn he can be. You haven't worked with him as much. And I confess I have spoiled him a little. Maybe a lot."

Sarek's face set. "I must necessarily be less concerned with what he likes, than what is expected of him in Vulcan society."

She looked at him. "He won't understand either. If you can't explain it in simple terms to me, I don't see how you can explain it to him. Sarek, you should have told me this, a long, long time ago."

"I didn't think I needed to. This is common knowledge, for Vulcans." He raised an ironic brow, looking at her. "And yes, you are not. But I did not think about that. And like you, I have been more recently concerned with his more immediate viability. But you must see, Amanda, that he is Vulcan. His recent educational tests prove that, far more than even I realized. He must be trained in the disciplines. I must endeavor to help him to understand. And you must support me in that, Amanda, if I am going to succeed. You must."

Amanda looked at him, and looked away, "I don't think I am going to like this."

"That attitude is not good enough. You must accept this necessity. I am Vulcan. Spock is Vulcan. You must trust that I know what is best for him. You are my wife. We are bonded. If that means anything to you, then you must trust me."

"Oh," she sighed. "How can I refuse you when you put it that way? I'll try, all right? All I can do is try to understand. I'll promise you that much. And if I can't do it myself, I'll try to help explain it to Spock. I'll do my best to not undermine you."

"That is not sufficient."

"Right now, it's the best compromise I can give," She reached out with two fingers in the standard touch between bondmates. They used it occasionally in public, but rarely in private.

For a moment, still scarred by her tacit betrayal, Sarek just looked at her hand, unmoved.

"I'm trying," Amanda said. "You asked me to try."

Sarek let out a sigh again and touched his fingers to hers.

"It's not as good as a kiss," she said, looking up at him. "Or some other things I could mention. But I daren't, of course, risk such an emotional, unVulcan gesture before this son or Surak, Head of the High Council and Ruler of all the Clans of Vulcan." She sighed. "Why couldn't I have married just an ordinary Vulcan? One of those Council Keep guards, for example. I mean what woman wouldn't have her head turned by a uniform like that? Or even a lowly university professor? Say in astrophysics?"

"You are wicked, my wife," Sarek said. In spite of himself, his lips twitched in the briefest of Vulcan smiles. And then his hand folded around hers and he did kiss her.

"I think I'd take that university professor," she said, when he drew back. "In a heartbeat. See how fast I would."

"Quite incorrigible."

"That's my charm, my husband. I have to do something to bring back your sense of humor. You've been absolutely grim these last few days."

"I have been weary," Sarek admitted.

"And it's nothing you can share?" she asked.

Sarek looked at her. "Not yet."

Amanda's own mouth set. "I wish you'd tell your mother, if she is the reason behind this mood of yours, to go to-" Amanda stopped herself. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that." She looked up at her husband. "And if it is Federation business under some high security clearance, well, to hell with them. I'm weary of all this too, my husband. And based on your grim face lately, I feel like I am going to get wearier. Can't we run away, together? You and I and Spock? Can't we simply find a place where we can live in peace, and even IDIC, regardless of how old we are, or aren't, and just leave all these cares behind?"

"You may get your wish," Sarek said.

She sighed too. "But would they let us go?"

"An excellent question," Sarek said. "And perhaps we shall discover the answer."

To be continued….