"Spock, have you even heard a single word I've said?"
"Yes, mother," he said, keeping a keen eye on the guest cottage. "You would find it pleasing for the children to stay on for a few days, which I would also find most agreeable. I would like to take Christine out hiking around Mount Selyna and perhaps camp there overnight. Father is not eating enough, a theory you have posited since before my birth and yet miraculously, contrary to all human logic, he still lives. I am in agreement that my wife works far too hard, but she is her own person and I make no claim to the necessary influence over her behavior to adjust her work schedule. I am pleased that Saavik'kam has been by so often to see you, and accept the inference that I, by default, have not been here to see you nearly so often.
"I have missed you as well, mother," he added with a faint trace of a smile. As if to underscore the sentiment he retrieved a pineapple scone from the platter and took a large bite. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of VSA green darting by the dining room window and rose to see T'Kirk marching briskly toward the front gate, a travel sack slung over one shoulder.
Christine was hot on her trail, calling angrily after their daughter. He hurried out the front door just in time to cut off T'Kirk's path as her mother came up from behind.
"Where do you think you're going?" Christine asked, trying to catch her breath.
"I need to talk to Stovan," she answered, hoisting up her bag and walking toward the gate.
"That is not, perhaps, a wise choice, my daughter," Spock said.
"What makes any one choice wiser than another, Father? I need to see him. I need to talk with him."
"There is a strong possibility that he will not wish to see you, T'Kirk."
"Then he can tell me that himself, Father."
Spock turned to Christine who simply shrugged her shoulders. "You are most certainly your mother's daughter, T'Kirk." He closed in on her and took the travel sack from her shoulder.
Spock turned to address his mother who was watching them from the front porch.
"We will be gone for an indeterminate amount of time. I trust that you will not mind caring for the needs of Seleek and T'Manda until our return?"
It was midday as Spock landed Sarek's sleek aircar onto the small parking lot near the faculty housing area. Few faculty members or students were in possession of private transportation and thus there were only a handful of parking areas in the compound. They would still have an appreciable walk to Stovan's cottage.
The heat was again in triple digits, and even Spock was uncomfortable as the trio proceeded along the stone path. Fortunately, they had paused long enough before leaving Keldeen to retrieve Christine's medical bag and clothing more suitable to the blistering afternoon winds.
They had formulated and agreed upon a plan for this questionable endeavor. More precisely, he had formulated a plan and the two women had been given the choice to accept the plan or the alternative, which was to be dropped off at the Vulcan Council quarters where he would install them under Sarek's watchful eyes while he proceeded without them.
Seeing the undeniable logic of the situation the two women had agreed, although rather unenthusiastically, to his terms. The plan was a simple one. The women would wait on the path, out of sight of the sandstone cottage. He would go on alone to call on Stovan and determine how far the Pon Farr had progressed. Based on the sketchy information T'Kirk had provided there was a good possibility that the young man was at least a day away from entering the Plak Tow and would not pose a serious threat to the women. If, however, Stovan had already entered the Plak Tow, it would be too dangerous to allow T'Kirk or even Christine to be in a confined space with the man, and they would return to ShiKahr.
T'Kirk pointed out Stovan's cabin and cast her father a withering look as he again admonished mother and daughter to remain where they were until he returned for them. He moved quickly along the path, realizing that the chances of his wife and daughter actually remaining there for any real length of time were too minute to bother computing.
Spock pressed the door chime, and looking back over his shoulder was pleasurably surprised to find neither Christine nor T'Kirk on his heels. He pressed the chime again, his inborn sense of Vulcan manners dictating that even in invading Stovan's privacy some amount of decorum must be maintained.
"Stovan" he said into the small speaker next to the chime. "I am Spock, the father of T'Kirk. It is imperative that I speak with you."
He sensed a presence on the other side of the door and sighed gratefully at the gentle scraping sound of the metal gliding over the sandpitted stone.
He steeled himself, knowing that if Stovan's mind had been claimed by the fires of the Plak Tow he would view another male as a rival and would in all likeliness attack him. An unsettling vision of his Captain's dark red blood staining the hot, white sands of the site of his failed koon-ut-kal-if-fee washed over him like a summer sandstorm. That first taste of the madness and the ultimate shame of his loss of control, though decades' old, still lingered in his soul, hot and bitter.
But it was not Stovan who appeared as the doors parted, and nothing could have possibly prepared him for the shock of what he saw beyond that door.
"Who is she?" T'Kirk asked, as she and her mother approached from behind him.
Spock grabbed at the door frame to steady himself. The woman stepped out onto the stone porch, regarding him with a look of icy distain.
Turning her gaze to Christine and T'Kirk she said simply.
"I am called T'Pring."
