A temple sponsor's private aircar ferried Spock and Zienn to Spock's family estate, a ride arranged by the porters who supplied the temple. Zienn did not understand messaging ahead and Spock followed his cue to act the high priest and not speak to the pilot who, with great deference, kept his eyes down and did not speak to them. Spock estimated that his parents were at the embassy on earth as they were 82% of the time. But resting in a ramp area for long-range private ships at the base of the Shikahr plateau sat Sarek's personal ship. And the gardens around the estate had the neatness that only his mother's hand could bring.
The vines bracketing the house's entryway hung unusually lush with tiny folded leaves and the air felt heavy and rich as if oxygenated by the offworld greenery. The two of them entered just as Sgroud approached the door to open it from the inside.
Sground set his feet and formally greeted the two of them.
"I suppose we must suffer honorifics again," Zienn said.
"Spock." Sarek came to the edge of the decorative stone entryway. He straightened inside his robes and clasped his hands loosely before himself.
Spock bowed his head.
Sarek said, "We will arrange the guest room for… Healer Zienn."
Zienn bowed as well.
Sarek tilted his head in invitation. "Come in. Your mother will return within half an hour."
They trailed red dust across the dark floor. Zienn's threadbare robes had grown worse, were now studded with small knots to hold the fabric together.
Sarek glanced backward at the floor. "It is no matter. Come and refresh yourself. Sground, since my wife is not here, do the honors."
Spock sat, noticing for the first time how cushioned the chairs were. He watched the tea being poured, completely at ease in his body and in the space of his father's house. Spock accepted a cup and cradled it in his hands by habit; he was already warmed through by the lower altitude heat.
After the required half a cup, Sarek said, "I am concerned there is a difficulty."
"It is only that Spock requires time to physically recover," Zienn said. "Immersive training is taxing."
Sarek's gaze took in Spock. Spock's robes fell loosely around him, even though Zienn had insisted he eat hardily and perform calisthenics for three days before their departure from the temple.
"Your training is proceeding well?" This question was aimed at Spock.
"I am learning what is put before me."
"That is pleasing to know. I concluded from your lack of return that your presence was acceptable."
Spock listened with full calm, answered smoothly. The hollow strain of the past seemed like another life. "I am in isolation primarily, immersed in mental exercise."
Sarek dropped his hands from the table and clasped them in his lap. "And these exercises are useful to you?"
Spock nodded.
After a lengthy pause, Sarek said, "These exercises are of what type … ?"
Zienn focussed on his tea as if it were juice after a long meld. Spock said, "I was assigned a goal of meeting the requirements for observing temple activities. Not full joint explorations, just those that take the form of experimental exercises. To do so it was required that I be capable of relaxing into a divested state where the body can be automated, but redirected as needed."
Spock heard a rasp to his own underused voice, and reached for his tea, which Sgroud intercepted to refill. Spock watched the steam flow out during the pour, inhaled the renewed scent: biting, piney, and acidic. He waited patiently through the abbreviated ritual pouring and accepted his cup back. Spock did not feel proud, or relieved, but he could logically compare the past in which he never imagined such ease to the present as it existed now and estimated those would have been his current experience had all things remained the same.
Sarek said, "You found this … easy. If I am understanding you."
Spock wetted his throat before replying. "I would not summarize it thusly. It was many hours with repeated demonstration of varied technique. It was my singular task to complete, helping making it achievable. Narrowly focused rote disciplines requiring mental attributes that I do not possess have not served me. But these exercises did. If that answers your query."
Sarek straightened one side of his robe over his lap then sat back. "I am seeking reassurance, I suppose, that your training is pleasing enough. Given your previous concerns."
Spock stared off through the windows into the garden. A breeze had captured the plants, setting them to bowing, pulling them from their stakes. He looked back at Sarek, at the lines around his eyes and the unusually deep color of his skin, an indication that he, and likely Amanda, had spent more time on Vulcan recently. "To your question, father: pleasing is not relevant."
Sarek slowly nodded in acknowledgement.
Zienn took up a cake before Sgroud finished setting down the tray of them. "Now that he is oriented, Spock is not disruptive. His natural abilities are serving him better than expected in the temple environment The goal is to impart to him a few raw skills, fully attained, that he can adapt to his needs in the future."
Sarek seemed to ignore this, said to Spock, "You have quite a number of messages in queue, including a scroll from earth that I placed in your room."
Spock nodded. "Thank you, Father. I will attend to them."
Sarek's eyes moved between the two of them. "What are your plans, Healer? If I may inquire?"
Zienn adjusted his ragged robes. "Spock can continue strengthening his skills without me for a time. I am again curious about things outside the giant rock that is Vulcan. I with to again explore how warped our supposedly universal view of the universe may be. I am curious to compare Vulcan to another world in terms of how a planet anchors the energy of thought. If you would see your way to assisting in a journey of this sort, I would be grateful."
"Gratitude is unnecessary, if not awkward for us. We are at your disposal. Healer. Always."
Zienn stood and tossed what was left of his robes straight so his knees no longer showed through.
Between sips of tea, Sarek said, "My son, perhaps you can gift the healer one of your lighter robes."
"Yes, Father."
"Spock." Amanda's voice cut across the hall. Spock turned as she was midway through composing herself. She carefully removed her headwear and folded it neatly, as if to buy time.
Spock stood and awaited her approach. She touched his upper arms and dropped her hands. Her face was composed but her words were warm. "How are you?"
"I am well, Mother. I am progressing sufficiently."
Sgroud moved her place setting to the one Zienn just vacated so the two of them could both sit beside Spock.
She almost touched Spock's arm again. "It is very good to see you."
After a glance at Sarek, she sat back more properly. Sarek sat staring at his clasped hands, a pose he sometimes took up to give Amanda space for emotional expression. She saw this and brushed her fingers over Spock's right sleeve.
"It is pleasing you are doing so well. It was difficult not to worry."
"Your concern was unfounded, Mother," Spock said.
She smiled with her eyes, lips tight to keep it from spreading there. "I am so glad."
Spock nodded deeply. The two of them had been absent from his thoughts, but of course that did not mean he was not in theirs.
"We'll have a bit of a feast tomorrow in celebration. Make all of your favorites."
"I am instructed to physically recover and that would be in the further interest of that."
She kept down another smile, hid it by sipping her tea.
- 8888 -
It was just before midnight when Spock's mother relinquished her welcoming hold on him. Unusually, Sarek had not once signalled his wife to step back and give Spock space. Perhaps Sarek had deemed Spock old enough to manage his mother on his own, or strong enough to avoid the confusion it caused when he was younger.
Spock's room was not as quiet as he remembered. The low drone of the city penetrated the stone, as did the background noise of so many minds. He better walled his mind off and studied the narrow table where incoming objects were placed.
Three padds lay in a row, including a brand new one with a cylindrical case down one side of the transparent display. He had observed this style of padd in use in engineering and sciences where additional probes and circuits were frequently necessary and could be cumbersome dangling off an ordinary padd. Here they could be kept neatly tucked away, and the cylinder used as a grip while wearing gloves.
A Vulcan scroll of sorts lay beside the padds, but not an ordinary one. Clan messages would be transported in a hand carved scroll case and impactful non-clan messages in a biometric encoded electronic mimic of an ancient hand carved scroll case. But this was neither of those. It was lightweight, and covered in a mix of Vulcan phrases from poetry, with one misspelling, a tourist item perhaps.
The brand new padd came alive when he lifted it. He wished to credit his mother for the padd, but could not be certain given his father's changing behavior toward him. Yet again, Spock experienced not emotion, but the cold echo of it as the situation matched up with memory and brought forth a knowledge of what his past reaction had been. He estimated he should express gratitude at the next opportunity to account for social expectations.
The upper right corner of the display indicated three waiting messages from James and below that a cascade of thousands of messages and notices in shifting categories that scrolled off the bottom. He touched the display and it halted in a mode of categorizing by project but with James's messages still pinned at the top. Spock found earpieces in a drawer and sat down with the padd in his childhood reading chair.
The first message was 148 days old. James sounded distracted as if he were focusing on something in the distance as he spoke.
"I assume you are still at the temple since there aren't any messages. I'm realizing how long this is really going to be without any communication. It's good to have something to look forward too when we're back on base. Otherwise, being in a lull is actually harder than being out on a run. I'll try not to send you too many so I don't overwhelm you when you do get them.
"I can't talk about what's happening here and can't talk about what's happening there, but I really badly want to talk to you. I can't just keep telling you I hope you're all right. But I do hope you are all right.
"They've given me more units. Told me I've proven I won't completely screw up. I guess that's good. When I get reviews it is all detailed criticism. I guess that's a kind of efficiency at many levels. No time wasted on niceties."
Kirk went on in this vein. Spock listened to every aspect of the recording with rapt attention, treating it as an aural window on another world. He listened to the words, to the timbre of Kirk's voice, to the background noise of an artificial air supply. The only emotions that would normally rise to meet these sounds and meanings would be stressful ones.
The second message was only text. The date had been obscured on it. A code in the header indicated it had been held until the content was no longer relevant.
"Waiting for another team right now. Bay screwed up and we have to swap supplies enroute. Kind of liking this break. This planet is something else. Like a mindscape of its own. It's bright but with a constant feel of sunset but not. There are so many thin layers of gas, each with an unnatural glowing color. If you look out at it from any altitude, you feel like you are falling into the horizon. No one should want this planet. And fortunately, it's hard to damage. There's too much damage everywhere and impossible to not create more.
"I don't mean to use you are a diary. I have my own personal log. In some odd way I've come to miss everything so much I don't miss anything anymore. Maybe you're in the same place. I'd like to think we're doing something together."
The third was 28 days old. It was also a recording. Kirk's voice sounded softened as though by the lethargy of lengthy exercise.
"This place is both the most stunning and hardest to clear of all of them. I won't describe it so this message doesn't get caught like the last one did. There are a lot more reasons to want a world than I ever imagined. Everyone back in the core lives in a kind of delusion where everything is just so. I wish there was a way to make more beings appreciate that.
"Teams are going well. At least." There was a long pause. "I've got to try and not settle though. Comfortable is dangerous, as nice as it feels.
"I've been warned six months is the point at which this routine makes or breaks you. I completely believe that right now. I feel like I'm coming up to the edge of something. Like it takes that long for the mind to take it all in and fully understand the longer term and only then do you know who you are with regard to what is happening. Then what do you do with that when you have that knowledge? Who knows.
"I want to be strong enough for anything. That's why I'm here. And I'm still getting pushed to grow, learning to adapt. Every time we move I get better at making the best use of a new environment. But that edge is coming up. Something about finally getting good at enough at it, one can spare the mental labor to see the bigger picture. Before then it's just survival."
There was an audible sigh. "I'm trying not to hope that you can send a reply before a year is up. Of course, I also can't believe how much time has passed. It will be up at some point, just as suddenly."
Spock listened to the rest of the rambling message, to the long sign off. The words and voice reminded him of nights together with James. Spock put the padd down. He had increasingly divested his mind from his body as he listened, and now floated in the past, examining it with precision. From this viewpoint, companionship and physical intimacy were strange activities, possibly illogical, but he did not know how to measure that. He had spent the last months perfecting mental powers absent the rigors of logic, something his teachers prior to this had never separated. But they separated cleanly. Logic might require a lack of emotion but lack of emotion did not require logic. Zienn believed that emotion had its own logic. Spock re-examined these past intimacies in that light, found it fitted better than applying no logic to it. But absent emotion, many things in this world lost their meaning and perhaps never had any logic to begin with.
After a space of time that Spock had to consciously choose to measure as forty four minutes and six seconds, he rose up out of the reading chair and took up the scroll. A vacancy had remained in his mind awaiting further understanding of it.
Inside the hollow case was a letter in Standard, hand written by someone who had perhaps never before written with an ink pen on paper. The letters were singular and cramped with extra hooks and curls inside them.
Hiyo. I made five letters before this one. I asked the Super to look at the last, best one, and he binned it for me and said to just write 'from the heart' but to a Vulcan that sounds an odd choice, doesn't it? So, I'm just following orders now. This is the heart of it. I didn't mean to do anything that would chase you out. I learned a hell of a lot from what happened and Sup says that's why we're here and I'm better for it. But that just means Starfleet traded you for my learning and that seems wrong and I don't like that way of thinking about it.
So, I wanted to write to you, which would be presumably ABOUT you, but I'm talking about myself again. But, I can't talk about you because I don't know you. And that's another thing I've learned (Still talking about me here. It's hopeless.) is that everyone is different and what worked for me might backfire on someone else. See, I learned how to not be a knob by getting knocked down. You wouldn't believe what a idiotic shithead I was my first year. I was so amazing. I was doing everyone a favor just being here. And every time I acted like that and failed to take others into account, it came back and hit me. HARD. It took so many rounds to get it through my thick head. Like Chanel's class or Absom's, but the upper classmates putting my ego over the coals too, just to make sure I don't forget it. I want Starfleet to be the best possible place. That's what I was thinking, Or thought I was thinking.
But that all sounds like a lame excuse now. And since I don't even know you that makes it more of a huge mistake taking such big steps to change you with no info. Overlearning is as deadly as overconfidence. Sure I learned that. I thought. But no. And I looked up that temple you are at and now I feel like the same idiotic shithead I was in first year. Which is probably for the best as I'm going to be a NUB in short order here and might as well get a jump on that feeling. Wasn't looking forward to it, but now think I deserve it.
IN CONCLUSION I hope you can read this because I barely can. But you're smarter than me by lightyears so I'm just going to trust you can. You need to come back so this isn't so screwed up. It's the only thing that can fix it. Your loss is not worth my stupid need to learn the obvious. If you come back Starfleet will be a much better place. It would be pretty hollow, in fact if you don't. Super definitely agrees too given he keeps trying to help with these letters. Feel free to write back and yell at me as much as you like. But COME BACK. Okay?
The letter made Spock understand that he had divested not just his body from his mind, but his current mind from his past mind, as if emotion was the most substantial tether between the past and the present. This was unexpected. At the temple, he had avoided the past and any notion of the present outside his immediate training. He had not comprehended what was happening to him. He flattened the paper and placed it with his old collection of non-clan correspondence, mostly letters regarding his tutors or classmates instructed to practice calligraphy.
Spock could reverse it all by dropping this divesting of his mind, but based on correlations with the past, a great number of things lurked there, things that would lead to confused thinking, subconscious avoidance, distraction from his goals, if not just outright pain. He waved the lights down and lay on his back upon his bed to consider this further in the many leisurely hours he had before dawn.
- 8888 -
The ancient meditation room had streaks of sunlight leaking through cracks in the stone wall. It smelled of dried mud and old insects. It had never been reworked due to a need to retain something of the First House. Ancestors had chosen this place to be the old room and that decision could not be reversed at this point.
Sarek stood in the crooked doorway, heaved sideways by a thousand years of settling.
"I require speech with you, Honored High Priest."
Zienn looked up from his kneeling position. He had finally given into his instinct to isolate himself, only to be hunted down before settling into level three meditation.
"Fascinating. When you say it in that manner, my title is essentially an insult. So I won't complain of you overly honoring me." He stood. Spock's teenaged walking robes settled gently around him.
Sarek entered, feet scuffing. He walked the perimeter of the room, twice, stopped to examine the dust floating in the leaking light, curling like ghostly flames in an unfelt wind.
Zienn said, "I am curious to hear you speak."
Sarek did not face him. He put his fingers together before his chest and composed himself. "You took my son away, Honored High Priest. And in a mere six months returned to me a Kolinahr acolyte."
Zienn's brows twitched. "Have you adopted the human penchant for exaggeration as part of a means of accenting a point?"
Sarek turned to him. "No."
"I see." Zienn appeared to give this due consideration. "I disagree with your assessment."
Sarek raised his chin and peered down his nose at Zienn.
Zienn said, "Unless you consider a student taught to perfectly tune three strings to be a lyre master."
Sarek spoke slowly, "How long of a time home do you foresee for Spock, Honored High Priest? Absent your own plans."
"I would prefer long enough to know how firmly his new skills take hold in him absent a continuous need for them."
Sarek reset his latched hands. Nodded. "And how many more temple residencies do you foresee him requiring?"
"There is no concept at Kipraro of Elevating. Until now he has learned two things: to live with us and to manage his most crucial ability. This regime does not correspond to basic high priesthood skills. Nor will it in the future. He responds far better to learning customized for him."
"So this change in him will only become more pronounced?"
Zienn tilted his head. "At the end of my time with him, you will have a fully realized Vulcan son, unperturbed by his manifesting priestly abilities. You judge that prospect quite harshly. Which I find unexpected."
"I find myself concerned that more easily than I previously deemed possible, he has become very much not his mother's son."
Zienn stood with head bowed for a time. "I did not sense your wife experienced anything other than pleasure at Spock's company. Are you concerned how she will judge Spock? Otherwise, I do not see the logic in your concern."
Sarek turned away, paced to the darkened corner carved out of solid rock. "My wife always accepts Spock as he is, except when she attempts to gently guide him to suit me."
Zienn refused to be waylaid by revelation. "His time with me has not changing Spock in any fundamental way."
Sarek placed his fingertips against each other and scuffed his feet as he turned. "I usually sense. Something. In him. His mother's penchant for romantic notions poorly suppressed, or his ill ease at fitting an expected mold. I find all of it absent."
Zienn drew in a slow breath. "If you would, Sarek of Shikahr, do not intimate to Spock that you are anything less than pleased with his progress. He has a newly acquired and deeply held satisfaction that he is finally capable of being what you always wanted. He finally views himself as Vulcan to the core rather than a mimicry of Vulcan."
Sarek continued to stare at nothing.
"What do humans say?" Zienn said. "Be careful what you wish for?"
Zienn waited for a response but there wasn't one. He lowered his voice as if regretting those last words. "Spock is more aware than he was of both his inner and outer worlds. He can keep his mental energies to himself as well as access those beneath the physical world. He can narrow his focus at will onto any aspect of that internal or external. That is all. He is just as he was when you gave him over to me. He is not as naturally adept as an established priest would be at these skills and as such was exhausting himself. Hence the break he is being given."
Sarek finally turned. "I do not see any hint of his mother in him, let alone any wavering of his thoughts. I am not priest-blind, High Priest. Just not formally trained. He is changed within. I am certain that I am capable of judging this."
Zienn raised one of his palms to take the conversation back on himself. "Spock can detach his mind and body to act independently. As an indirect consequence of this he is also able to fully disregard his emotions. For him emotions are more a part of who he physically is. This is where his childhood training went awry. His emotions are much less a part of his mind. That skill of detachment and informal lessons in managing realms is all I have done with him. He has worked tirelessly on everything put before him. Do you not honor this effort?"
"That effort is irrelevant to my concerns. I am displeased to find my son absent even when he is present."
Zienn stood taller, seemed to expand inside his robes. "If. You. Ever. So much as imply to Spock that you have altered what you expect from him as an ideal, I fear you will irrevocably break something in him." Zienn's face grew stony, leaner, predatory. "And if you do that, Sarek of Shikahr, you will face my unbridled wrath. It is one thing to set seemingly unachievable goals, as most do for their offspring, and another to capriciously change those expectations once a child is well on the path toward them."
Sarek bowed, held his head down longer than necessary. "I will be nothing but pleased with him, Honored High Priest. But I will ask him if he is open to moving to another temple. One where his training is more in line with standard Elevation."
"You may, of course, do so. He may go elsewhere anytime he pleases. He cannot be a pledged acolyte of ours as we do not have such. I only wish for him to be under me if that is his preference."
Sarek's voice grew low and rough. "I estimate, Honored High Priest, that you have waylaid me from a grievous error."
"I am unspeakably relieved that you spoke to me first."
"Relieved?" Sarek said this then appeared to regret it.
Zienn relaxed, stood with arms loose. "Spock has grown distant from romantic notions while I have chosen to embrace select ones of them. As a result I care deeply how he fares and find that energy useful to managing events. I do not intend to relinquish this mode of thinking until Spock is fully on his own, if at all."
Sarek considered him. "Fascinating."
Zienn tilted his head to the side. Shrugged.