Your mind to my mind, mine to yours; we are one.
Fear; dissolving.
We are one. No separate self. We are I; I see what you see; you know what I know.
We are I.
I am not limited to the synapses of one brain only; I am you; I am we.
I am relieved, exhausted, I am confused and jubilant. I love you, but how can that be if we are one now?
We are one, we are I; this is beyond love. I am all we were when we were still two, not one.
My mind streams outward, streams outward in wide, flowing waves, whirling like the raked lines of a Japanese stone garden around the rocks, the condensed points of my most intense experiences; like the sea of sand around the islands of rock, my reminiscence flows around the islands of my memory.
I am in the stone garden, at the outskirts of ShiKahr. Red Vulcan sands draws its very Terran lines around red Vulcan stones; a bamboo fence the builder of this place brought all the way from Japan frees my view from all mundanity; frees me from the mundane glances of the world outside. I kneel on floor boards that have come the same long way, enclosing the remaining two sides of the garden. In my back, a red Vulcan drystone wall protects me, and a Japanese sliding door has let me in at the hind left corner. Many others kneel silently on the boards; but the builder, a Vulcan scientist who explored the "eastern" Terran tradition at the time of first contact, meant this place for meditation, and my culture demands of me to respect the privacy of the others so I as well can be alone with the stones, the lines in the sand, the bamboo fence and the mountains that rise wild and Vulcan behind it.
The wood under my hands is silvery grey, old and bleached from the heat of many summers. The reddish sunlight gives it a faint copper shimmer, and I feel the day's warmth under my fingers, stored in the boards.
I lift my eyes. Aeons ago, the earth has spat out pink rocks here, and pines and birch trees now have settled around them, wherever they found a free spot. My legs are dangling into the water; I sit at the end of the jetty beside the stairs; and my soul is exalted at the view of the reddening sun in the north nearing now the black trees, and at the view of the red sun-path running towards me, widening, from trees and rocks on the other side, broken by the wave-shadows black in the gold, and at the view of the denser, dark object coming towards me through sun-path and wave-shadows. It is midnight, and midsummer, and we are alone at the summer house belonging to Matti's family. It is Matti, my lover, who climbs from the water now beside me. He is silent. Happy and screeching we ran from the sauna, along the jetty, and jumped into the waters of the lake, but bathing in the sun-path has fundamentally changed our mood. Matti kneels beside the stairs and pulls up the piece of fishing line we've used to hang our bottles of after-sauna beer into the cooling lake. Black and red are shadow and light on his wet body. He takes the lowest two bottles from the line, openes them on a protruding nail, and gives one of them to me. He takes a sip of his and sinks down onto the wooden planks of the jetty beside me, stretching his limbs. Red and black define the contours of his torso. The emotions of the moment overwhelm me, and to lighten the mood I poor some of my beer onto his chest. He doesn't react. I lap the beer from the hollow between his chest and his belly, but he stays motionless. I leave him to his musings, respect his wish to be all alone with me and beside me. For Matti, the rhythm of sauna and cool water is a strict, almost meditative ritual; since I began loving him, I also began treasuring the traditions that my family thinks is just meaningless folklore. We are together, and both deeply alone in a quiet, unforced way. My eyes wander to the horizon, towards the red sun.
Towards the red sun above the mountains my eyes wander before my glance lowers again to the lines of the stone garden. I empty my consciousness for meditation, and yet I cannot reach the utter void, as one strand of my mind binds to the knowledge that I am not alone. I don't mind any teachers or fellow students of mine that might be here; but I cannot forget that Sadek kneels to my right, my best friend, my most important inspiration, and my deepest, most hidden pain. He is quiet as the wide desert, his calm is as deep as the sand. He is safely cradled in tradition which his family honours intensely, and he doesn't mind that there is a kind, warm aspect to his deep calm. My perfect control is the product of hard work that reins in the passions, the freedom, the unorthodox self-knowledge within me, that replaces the unquestioning security of tradition. He doesn't need to hide the gentleness of his character as it stems from a total inner calm. His clear mind has made him a computer specialist; but his hands have the ability to heal injured life. Scruffy grey plants flower in his care, and wounded animals trust him. In his garden there lives a chkariya, a small, wild creature that is deemed a pest by most people. You catch them with traps if they come to your garden and wreak havoc, and carry them back to the wild. This chkariya, a very young female, had broken a leg in a trap in its panic, and the owner of the trap had brought it to Sadek as he didn't want to leave it to certain death. When I see the chkariya for the first time, the small creature is sitting in Sadek's folded hands, quiet and protected. Its left hind leg is encased by a miniature cast, its tiny front paws grab Sadek's two index fingers; and from this safe haven it gazes curiously into the large, strange world. I suppress the impulse to let it smell my finger and to touch its fur; I cannot afford such gentleness. I greet Sadek and follow him inside. He offers me a fruit juice, and we sit down at his workstation to continue with our project on which we have been working for a long time. His calm and friendly nature never saw a reason to fight the affection between us; it was he who wooed for my freindship, it was he who called my T'hy'la first, while I fought my feelings for him with all the means of Vulcan mental dscipline, never quite successfully. Our work was exceptional, and it would have been illogical to curb down our connection because of some forbidden emotions on my part that I was, all in all, controlling very well. So I sit down beside him, and our endeavor at a common goal is quite sufficient to let me forget about my love for him. Few words we need for our work, and we are making progress with our data while the chkariya sits on Sadek's shoulder, holding on with its front paws, and its long, bushy tail hangs down my friend's back.
Through the half-open door of Sadek's room I hear movement in the house, and when I turn around, T'Daan enters, Sadek's younger sister. She studies education at the academy, and she is far more than a glorified babysitter; she is the kind of person Terrans that want to know what makes Vulcans Vulcan should talk to. But no offworlder ever gets to speak to a traditionalist of her ilk; her subject is the only one at the academy open only to Vulcans. As usual, some older children from the neighbourhood are following her around. Their sehlats trot after them; and the other animals are making the chkariya nervous. It tries to hide in Sadek's hands, and falls. Sadek catches it and turns to his sister.
"Take your sehlats out into the gardens", she orders the children. "I request that we may watch your work."
"Of course, you are welcome", her brother answers.
This isn't the first time; T'Daan's followers are interested and disciplined. T'Daans sits on the table at the wall behind us, and the children follow suit.
At first, Sadek had rebuked her; it was illogical, he said, to sit on a table when there were enough chairs in the house. If you could see the screen from the higher table, T'Daan had replied, it was illogical to sit on chairs and observe the backs of the heads in front of the screen, and her brother had agreed.
The chkariya is already accustomed to T'Daan; so Sadek stands for a moment to give it to her. Silently, the children watch the small animal. Sadek explains in simple terms the progress of our work, and I watch brother and sister. The tight traditions they are living in gives them the neccesssary calm for their respective tasks, and leaves no question open about their future. Of course they had been bonded as children; T'Daan's future husband is a geologist aboard a mining vessel plying th easteroid belt, and Sadek's fiancée is a musician from T'LingShahr. This is never spoken about; the future is safe and can take care of itself. I, in contrast, am given the freedom of individual choice as I wasn't betrothed as a child, and so I will have to see to my future myself; but there is no hurry. The correct criteria for my choice will present themselves when the time comes; but now my misguided emotion attaches itself to Sadek, and even if he will never be all mine in the way my daily rejected wishes demand, his part in my future is safe. We are colleagues, and we are friends; our lives will run side by side.
When Sadek's and T'Daan's parents return in the evening, our quiet idyll breaks up; T'Daan retreats with her followers, and I as well make my polite farewells out of respect for the other family's privacy. I step from the door into the unpaved streets between high adobe walls that are typical for ShiKahr's academic residential neighbourhoods, and walk home; from the safe shell of their traditions I return to my own, individual freedom.
It was my love of freedom that brought us into space. Matti was content to work in his father's workshop after we'd finished school and learn the traditional craft of a woodcarver. I knew that I was going to be a technician like my parents, but first I wanted to sate my curiosity for the wide world and for the worlds beyond before tying myself down to one place. I was mature enought to tie myself to one person; I kept insisting on that when Matti sulked and complained he wasn't enough for me. I took him in my arms and again and again reassured him I loved him; I never doubted our future together. Live was to short, he retorted, to spend it apart, him in Finland and me somewhere near the Neutral Zone. Life is is long, I contradict him; we can marry as soon as we reach the legal age, but I have to see the universe out there before I can decide to stay in Kemi forever. But there is no doubt about that decision, nor about my decision for him, forever. Life is short, Matti insists; and again I take him in my arms, implore him to come with me into space. Kemi's enough for him, Kemi and the summer house at the lake; he's going to stay the same person wherever he goes, so he can just as well stay here, where his home is and where he is rooted in culture and tradition.
Many times we repeat this discussion, and by the bye, our plans for the future take shape. We are going to finish school first, and then we're going to marry and join Starfleet as non-commissioned personnel, just for a few years, and then we're going to live in Kemi like our parents.
So we just get married without much fuss the summer after we finished school; in September, we move to Helsinki. We live for half a year in furnished room in an ancient house on the hill they call Linnulaulu; we walk every day to the southern harbour to take the hovercraft that goes to Suomenlinna. The simple, grey stone barracks of the old fortress now serve as the regional Starfleet training center for northern Europe. They've accepted us. Our compromise, in the end, had been both or none; but as Starfleet seems to have a use for the manual skills of my lover, who handles energy couplers just as competently as his father's woodcarving knives, Matti is bound to his promise; and as the months go by, his interest becomes deeper and more sincere.
In winter, when our course ends, we are assigned to the U.S.S. Roddenberry and simply beamed aboard, without any undue ceremony, detour to San Francisco or anything. We have no difficulty in adapting to life aboard, although we're the only Finns and stand out by being so young and yet married already. Our colleagues just accept us as we are. Matti, finally, enjoys being in space just as much as I do; and our future stretches out in front of us, safe and promising. We sometimes think about suitable spots in Kemi to build our house; but sometimes we consider staying one more year with Starfleet as an alternative.
In this peaceful timelessness, I am hit by the worst shock of my entire life, by the ultimate loss. While all this happens I can't think, can't feel, just act to save me and others. But on the long, long voyage back in our shuttle with the few other survivors, I finally realise that I am all alone now, expelled from our safe future together into a time scale that begins again from the beginning with the end of the Roddenberry, that is all open again; and suddenly it is my own responsibilty, and the only certainty I still have is that nothing of what I thought was certain is ever going to happen.
And my last look back at the dead body of my lover remains burned into my mind forever; the pain feels so fresh every time I think of that moment. Matti, on the engine room floor, his dark brown hair soaked with blood, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his head tilted to a cruel curve, his neck broken, his hands burned. His gentle hazel eyes extinct and glassy. A last look back before I run for my life, before the blue fire of the exploding dilithium chamber takes it all into itself. I see this moment again and again, and then the flood of bursting blue energy. I didn't see him die, I just saw him dead. One moment he was working feverishly beside me, the next he's dead on the floor and I run. Every time I see this moment I am forced to feel the same unbearable mixture of love and pain I didn't feel when it actually happened. I know I have lost him forever, and my life is over.
I know I have lost him forever, and my life is over, when he doesn't accept my amends, when he just turns away from me and leaves me to my own, worthless life.
It began on a terrible day that was too hot even for Vulcans. While we are walking over the desiccated courtyard between the cybernetics department and the cafeteria, I notice for the first time Sadek's body, his quiet grace, the contours of his limbs, the calm strength of his neck. I have always loved his inner nature; now suddenly I physically desire him, and I am gripped by anguish, as I know what this means. I make excuses, claim that the extraordinary heat is adversely affecting my constitution; as soon as I'm out of his view, I start running. I run through the shadowless streets; people are too discipline to stare at my unbecoming behaviour; or perhaps just too lethargic in the heat.
My mothers sits at home writing an article for some improtant scientific publicaiton off-world; she knows at once what is going on, makes me drink some herbal concoction and calls my father, who comes home at immediately. "You need a bride, at once; you're early", he tells me. I can only think of Sadek; I can't get my mind far away from him. "T'Daan", I say; it is only half a year after I said the appropriate phrases at the death of her fiancé, whose ship had collided with an asteroid. "A logical choice", my father says; he sits at his comm terminal and calls up his sister T'Pel who agrees to act as go-between between T'Daans traditionalist family and ours. Aunt T'Pel comes, has a look at me, and hurries off; my grandmother comes to see us and replicates some especially special herbal tea to calm me down. While she and my mother discuss all the potential alternatives, Aunt T'Pel returns with T'Daan's acceptance. The marriage date is set for the next day, with a view to my state.
That night I spend in unspeakable dreams. Sadeks nude body, well-known to me from the countless times we've bathed in the hot springs together, appears to me again and again; and yet the meaning has subtly shifted. My instinct tells me exactly what to do. I grab for him, but he dives into the opaque, muddy-red water; I can't reach him. The vision dissolves, and again I see him about to come into the water; and each time I desire him more urgently, but my need is left unsatisfied.
The next day, my wedding day, the day of my eternal shame, is just as hot as the one before. Our family makes up a huge convoy as they drive me towards the place intended for the ritual; my parents, my grandmother, my aunt, all my brothers and sisters and their spouses. They drive me before them, and I allow myself to be driven.
The bride's family expect us; it is their traditional place. T'Daan in the middle, and beside her, Sadek. I try not to look at him, and yet I can see nobody except him, wherever I turn my eyes. The challenge is spoken, but nobody takes it; the ceremony progresses to the bonding. I step towards T'Daan; between us stands an experienced healer from her family to help us with the bond.
In this moment, I break out. Sadek is standing just a yard away from his sister, and the knowledge that it's him I want, not her, burns in me, and then it burns through all my control, and I can't rein in my desires any longer, and I lunge for him, I grab him, take him in my arms, throw him down. Instinctively, my hands go for his temples; his mind can muster no resistance against the onslaught of my feelings in pon farr. In one moment's outbreak, I let him know everything, everything I ever felt for him, everything I dreamed of and suppressed all these years. His mind is defeated by my passion, and his body can't defend itself, doesn't want to; as I rape his body, my mind ravishes his personality. I don't remember any special details; we enmesh with each other, body and mind, in the madness that now, through the forced bond, has gripped him as well.
The others know there's nothing they could do to help; parting us now would kill us both. They erect a screen made from a metallic fabric purported to dampen telepathy, and everyone leaves apart from my mother, my grandmother, Sadek's mother and the healer. They close their well-trained, disciplined minds against our madness and wait until things quieten down behind the screen. We sink down together, utterly exhausted, then lift our heads again and stare at each other in mutual terror; most terrible the knowledge of mutuality, for the bond holds. Before we can say a word, or take any conscious decion of our own, the healer steps around the fabric screen; she melds her clear mind to our dazed ones and quickly and precisely severs our new bond. In icy silence my mother and grandmother take me home.
When I meet Sadek the next time, weeks later, at the academy, I have accepted that I am going to die in seven years; and I have accepted not to blame myself for what has happened. I was in pon farr; and I have a wild, uncontrollable nature that should and shall not survive. I will contibute whatever I have to give, and then I will die. Another, the Vulcan way might be punish with nothing but its feared deathly silence, but one from so prominent a family as mine it expects to go all the way as was done in the old days.
I meet Sadek in a corridor of the cybernetics department. His arms are loaded with data foils and data cubes; he's going away, and I know he's accepted a job in T'LingShahr, and he's going to marry there, soon, too. It is illogical to creep past him as if I were ashamed. No Vulcan will ever fully comprehend the human convention of apology. It is illogical to offer the useless emotions of rue and regret for some damage or misdemeanour, especially as this expects the utterance of another, mostly unsincere, emotion called forgiveness. This helps nobody and doesn't undo the damage. We Vulcans offer amends, and accept the punishment meted out by the other party, whatever that may be. The victim will doubtlessly ask an appropriate price, like repayment of material damages, or meditation against some character flaw.
I look Sadek straight into the eyes and say to him, "I have done you grave damage be my uncontrolled behaviour; tell me what I can do to amend my erroneous ways." I actually expect him to send me into deep meditation at the Gol monasteries for the rest of my worthless life; but he only looks at me, with barely contained pity, finally says, "There's nothing you could do", turns away and walks off.
This rejection, this denial of all possibilities to amend for what I have done according to Vulcan tradition forced me to begin again. I decided to fight for my life, to leave Vulcan, even, and to combat the tradition that sentenced me to a self-imposed, horrible death with all my personal, individual energy. If Sadek had asked amends of me, I would have been bound to him by it for the rest of my life; but by his rejection, I was suddenly, horribly free and responsible for myself. He hadn't sentenced but rejected me; and so I sentenced myself to life, to a life in cold and loneliness forever. I have lost him, and my life is over; all that remains is the self-discipline that painfully keeps the cold at bay.
But loneliness and pain are over now; my life begins again, and I am alone no longer. I will never forget what happened; I will always remember him whom I lost; but now I have found what I have always been looking for; love and contentment are mine again, for we are one in mind and in body.
A few days later, some lost deperadoes, a splinter group of former Khon Ma terrorists, came through the dense jungle towards the cave at the falls; but when their leader emerged from the foliage, she was met by the most unexpected view.
In the falls hiding the cave, there cavorted an unclad pair of lovers, so intent on each other and their joy in each other they didn't even notice the approaching weary fighters. Over the distance of the pool that separated the woods from the cave, and through the spray of the falls themselves, the terrorist leader couldn't discern their species or even their gender; but this beautiful and peaceful scene at a place that had belonged to the guerilla, this place where attacks had been planned and the wounded had been cared for, suddenly opened her darkened mind, and she realised that the times had gone right past her.
Without a word she turned around and led her group back into the woods. A few days later, she reached the next improvised, still half-destoyed city, where they all joined the majority to do some contructive work for all of Bajor for a change.
Fear; dissolving.
We are one. No separate self. We are I; I see what you see; you know what I know.
We are I.
I am not limited to the synapses of one brain only; I am you; I am we.
I am relieved, exhausted, I am confused and jubilant. I love you, but how can that be if we are one now?
We are one, we are I; this is beyond love. I am all we were when we were still two, not one.
My mind streams outward, streams outward in wide, flowing waves, whirling like the raked lines of a Japanese stone garden around the rocks, the condensed points of my most intense experiences; like the sea of sand around the islands of rock, my reminiscence flows around the islands of my memory.
I am in the stone garden, at the outskirts of ShiKahr. Red Vulcan sands draws its very Terran lines around red Vulcan stones; a bamboo fence the builder of this place brought all the way from Japan frees my view from all mundanity; frees me from the mundane glances of the world outside. I kneel on floor boards that have come the same long way, enclosing the remaining two sides of the garden. In my back, a red Vulcan drystone wall protects me, and a Japanese sliding door has let me in at the hind left corner. Many others kneel silently on the boards; but the builder, a Vulcan scientist who explored the "eastern" Terran tradition at the time of first contact, meant this place for meditation, and my culture demands of me to respect the privacy of the others so I as well can be alone with the stones, the lines in the sand, the bamboo fence and the mountains that rise wild and Vulcan behind it.
The wood under my hands is silvery grey, old and bleached from the heat of many summers. The reddish sunlight gives it a faint copper shimmer, and I feel the day's warmth under my fingers, stored in the boards.
I lift my eyes. Aeons ago, the earth has spat out pink rocks here, and pines and birch trees now have settled around them, wherever they found a free spot. My legs are dangling into the water; I sit at the end of the jetty beside the stairs; and my soul is exalted at the view of the reddening sun in the north nearing now the black trees, and at the view of the red sun-path running towards me, widening, from trees and rocks on the other side, broken by the wave-shadows black in the gold, and at the view of the denser, dark object coming towards me through sun-path and wave-shadows. It is midnight, and midsummer, and we are alone at the summer house belonging to Matti's family. It is Matti, my lover, who climbs from the water now beside me. He is silent. Happy and screeching we ran from the sauna, along the jetty, and jumped into the waters of the lake, but bathing in the sun-path has fundamentally changed our mood. Matti kneels beside the stairs and pulls up the piece of fishing line we've used to hang our bottles of after-sauna beer into the cooling lake. Black and red are shadow and light on his wet body. He takes the lowest two bottles from the line, openes them on a protruding nail, and gives one of them to me. He takes a sip of his and sinks down onto the wooden planks of the jetty beside me, stretching his limbs. Red and black define the contours of his torso. The emotions of the moment overwhelm me, and to lighten the mood I poor some of my beer onto his chest. He doesn't react. I lap the beer from the hollow between his chest and his belly, but he stays motionless. I leave him to his musings, respect his wish to be all alone with me and beside me. For Matti, the rhythm of sauna and cool water is a strict, almost meditative ritual; since I began loving him, I also began treasuring the traditions that my family thinks is just meaningless folklore. We are together, and both deeply alone in a quiet, unforced way. My eyes wander to the horizon, towards the red sun.
Towards the red sun above the mountains my eyes wander before my glance lowers again to the lines of the stone garden. I empty my consciousness for meditation, and yet I cannot reach the utter void, as one strand of my mind binds to the knowledge that I am not alone. I don't mind any teachers or fellow students of mine that might be here; but I cannot forget that Sadek kneels to my right, my best friend, my most important inspiration, and my deepest, most hidden pain. He is quiet as the wide desert, his calm is as deep as the sand. He is safely cradled in tradition which his family honours intensely, and he doesn't mind that there is a kind, warm aspect to his deep calm. My perfect control is the product of hard work that reins in the passions, the freedom, the unorthodox self-knowledge within me, that replaces the unquestioning security of tradition. He doesn't need to hide the gentleness of his character as it stems from a total inner calm. His clear mind has made him a computer specialist; but his hands have the ability to heal injured life. Scruffy grey plants flower in his care, and wounded animals trust him. In his garden there lives a chkariya, a small, wild creature that is deemed a pest by most people. You catch them with traps if they come to your garden and wreak havoc, and carry them back to the wild. This chkariya, a very young female, had broken a leg in a trap in its panic, and the owner of the trap had brought it to Sadek as he didn't want to leave it to certain death. When I see the chkariya for the first time, the small creature is sitting in Sadek's folded hands, quiet and protected. Its left hind leg is encased by a miniature cast, its tiny front paws grab Sadek's two index fingers; and from this safe haven it gazes curiously into the large, strange world. I suppress the impulse to let it smell my finger and to touch its fur; I cannot afford such gentleness. I greet Sadek and follow him inside. He offers me a fruit juice, and we sit down at his workstation to continue with our project on which we have been working for a long time. His calm and friendly nature never saw a reason to fight the affection between us; it was he who wooed for my freindship, it was he who called my T'hy'la first, while I fought my feelings for him with all the means of Vulcan mental dscipline, never quite successfully. Our work was exceptional, and it would have been illogical to curb down our connection because of some forbidden emotions on my part that I was, all in all, controlling very well. So I sit down beside him, and our endeavor at a common goal is quite sufficient to let me forget about my love for him. Few words we need for our work, and we are making progress with our data while the chkariya sits on Sadek's shoulder, holding on with its front paws, and its long, bushy tail hangs down my friend's back.
Through the half-open door of Sadek's room I hear movement in the house, and when I turn around, T'Daan enters, Sadek's younger sister. She studies education at the academy, and she is far more than a glorified babysitter; she is the kind of person Terrans that want to know what makes Vulcans Vulcan should talk to. But no offworlder ever gets to speak to a traditionalist of her ilk; her subject is the only one at the academy open only to Vulcans. As usual, some older children from the neighbourhood are following her around. Their sehlats trot after them; and the other animals are making the chkariya nervous. It tries to hide in Sadek's hands, and falls. Sadek catches it and turns to his sister.
"Take your sehlats out into the gardens", she orders the children. "I request that we may watch your work."
"Of course, you are welcome", her brother answers.
This isn't the first time; T'Daan's followers are interested and disciplined. T'Daans sits on the table at the wall behind us, and the children follow suit.
At first, Sadek had rebuked her; it was illogical, he said, to sit on a table when there were enough chairs in the house. If you could see the screen from the higher table, T'Daan had replied, it was illogical to sit on chairs and observe the backs of the heads in front of the screen, and her brother had agreed.
The chkariya is already accustomed to T'Daan; so Sadek stands for a moment to give it to her. Silently, the children watch the small animal. Sadek explains in simple terms the progress of our work, and I watch brother and sister. The tight traditions they are living in gives them the neccesssary calm for their respective tasks, and leaves no question open about their future. Of course they had been bonded as children; T'Daan's future husband is a geologist aboard a mining vessel plying th easteroid belt, and Sadek's fiancée is a musician from T'LingShahr. This is never spoken about; the future is safe and can take care of itself. I, in contrast, am given the freedom of individual choice as I wasn't betrothed as a child, and so I will have to see to my future myself; but there is no hurry. The correct criteria for my choice will present themselves when the time comes; but now my misguided emotion attaches itself to Sadek, and even if he will never be all mine in the way my daily rejected wishes demand, his part in my future is safe. We are colleagues, and we are friends; our lives will run side by side.
When Sadek's and T'Daan's parents return in the evening, our quiet idyll breaks up; T'Daan retreats with her followers, and I as well make my polite farewells out of respect for the other family's privacy. I step from the door into the unpaved streets between high adobe walls that are typical for ShiKahr's academic residential neighbourhoods, and walk home; from the safe shell of their traditions I return to my own, individual freedom.
It was my love of freedom that brought us into space. Matti was content to work in his father's workshop after we'd finished school and learn the traditional craft of a woodcarver. I knew that I was going to be a technician like my parents, but first I wanted to sate my curiosity for the wide world and for the worlds beyond before tying myself down to one place. I was mature enought to tie myself to one person; I kept insisting on that when Matti sulked and complained he wasn't enough for me. I took him in my arms and again and again reassured him I loved him; I never doubted our future together. Live was to short, he retorted, to spend it apart, him in Finland and me somewhere near the Neutral Zone. Life is is long, I contradict him; we can marry as soon as we reach the legal age, but I have to see the universe out there before I can decide to stay in Kemi forever. But there is no doubt about that decision, nor about my decision for him, forever. Life is short, Matti insists; and again I take him in my arms, implore him to come with me into space. Kemi's enough for him, Kemi and the summer house at the lake; he's going to stay the same person wherever he goes, so he can just as well stay here, where his home is and where he is rooted in culture and tradition.
Many times we repeat this discussion, and by the bye, our plans for the future take shape. We are going to finish school first, and then we're going to marry and join Starfleet as non-commissioned personnel, just for a few years, and then we're going to live in Kemi like our parents.
So we just get married without much fuss the summer after we finished school; in September, we move to Helsinki. We live for half a year in furnished room in an ancient house on the hill they call Linnulaulu; we walk every day to the southern harbour to take the hovercraft that goes to Suomenlinna. The simple, grey stone barracks of the old fortress now serve as the regional Starfleet training center for northern Europe. They've accepted us. Our compromise, in the end, had been both or none; but as Starfleet seems to have a use for the manual skills of my lover, who handles energy couplers just as competently as his father's woodcarving knives, Matti is bound to his promise; and as the months go by, his interest becomes deeper and more sincere.
In winter, when our course ends, we are assigned to the U.S.S. Roddenberry and simply beamed aboard, without any undue ceremony, detour to San Francisco or anything. We have no difficulty in adapting to life aboard, although we're the only Finns and stand out by being so young and yet married already. Our colleagues just accept us as we are. Matti, finally, enjoys being in space just as much as I do; and our future stretches out in front of us, safe and promising. We sometimes think about suitable spots in Kemi to build our house; but sometimes we consider staying one more year with Starfleet as an alternative.
In this peaceful timelessness, I am hit by the worst shock of my entire life, by the ultimate loss. While all this happens I can't think, can't feel, just act to save me and others. But on the long, long voyage back in our shuttle with the few other survivors, I finally realise that I am all alone now, expelled from our safe future together into a time scale that begins again from the beginning with the end of the Roddenberry, that is all open again; and suddenly it is my own responsibilty, and the only certainty I still have is that nothing of what I thought was certain is ever going to happen.
And my last look back at the dead body of my lover remains burned into my mind forever; the pain feels so fresh every time I think of that moment. Matti, on the engine room floor, his dark brown hair soaked with blood, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his head tilted to a cruel curve, his neck broken, his hands burned. His gentle hazel eyes extinct and glassy. A last look back before I run for my life, before the blue fire of the exploding dilithium chamber takes it all into itself. I see this moment again and again, and then the flood of bursting blue energy. I didn't see him die, I just saw him dead. One moment he was working feverishly beside me, the next he's dead on the floor and I run. Every time I see this moment I am forced to feel the same unbearable mixture of love and pain I didn't feel when it actually happened. I know I have lost him forever, and my life is over.
I know I have lost him forever, and my life is over, when he doesn't accept my amends, when he just turns away from me and leaves me to my own, worthless life.
It began on a terrible day that was too hot even for Vulcans. While we are walking over the desiccated courtyard between the cybernetics department and the cafeteria, I notice for the first time Sadek's body, his quiet grace, the contours of his limbs, the calm strength of his neck. I have always loved his inner nature; now suddenly I physically desire him, and I am gripped by anguish, as I know what this means. I make excuses, claim that the extraordinary heat is adversely affecting my constitution; as soon as I'm out of his view, I start running. I run through the shadowless streets; people are too discipline to stare at my unbecoming behaviour; or perhaps just too lethargic in the heat.
My mothers sits at home writing an article for some improtant scientific publicaiton off-world; she knows at once what is going on, makes me drink some herbal concoction and calls my father, who comes home at immediately. "You need a bride, at once; you're early", he tells me. I can only think of Sadek; I can't get my mind far away from him. "T'Daan", I say; it is only half a year after I said the appropriate phrases at the death of her fiancé, whose ship had collided with an asteroid. "A logical choice", my father says; he sits at his comm terminal and calls up his sister T'Pel who agrees to act as go-between between T'Daans traditionalist family and ours. Aunt T'Pel comes, has a look at me, and hurries off; my grandmother comes to see us and replicates some especially special herbal tea to calm me down. While she and my mother discuss all the potential alternatives, Aunt T'Pel returns with T'Daan's acceptance. The marriage date is set for the next day, with a view to my state.
That night I spend in unspeakable dreams. Sadeks nude body, well-known to me from the countless times we've bathed in the hot springs together, appears to me again and again; and yet the meaning has subtly shifted. My instinct tells me exactly what to do. I grab for him, but he dives into the opaque, muddy-red water; I can't reach him. The vision dissolves, and again I see him about to come into the water; and each time I desire him more urgently, but my need is left unsatisfied.
The next day, my wedding day, the day of my eternal shame, is just as hot as the one before. Our family makes up a huge convoy as they drive me towards the place intended for the ritual; my parents, my grandmother, my aunt, all my brothers and sisters and their spouses. They drive me before them, and I allow myself to be driven.
The bride's family expect us; it is their traditional place. T'Daan in the middle, and beside her, Sadek. I try not to look at him, and yet I can see nobody except him, wherever I turn my eyes. The challenge is spoken, but nobody takes it; the ceremony progresses to the bonding. I step towards T'Daan; between us stands an experienced healer from her family to help us with the bond.
In this moment, I break out. Sadek is standing just a yard away from his sister, and the knowledge that it's him I want, not her, burns in me, and then it burns through all my control, and I can't rein in my desires any longer, and I lunge for him, I grab him, take him in my arms, throw him down. Instinctively, my hands go for his temples; his mind can muster no resistance against the onslaught of my feelings in pon farr. In one moment's outbreak, I let him know everything, everything I ever felt for him, everything I dreamed of and suppressed all these years. His mind is defeated by my passion, and his body can't defend itself, doesn't want to; as I rape his body, my mind ravishes his personality. I don't remember any special details; we enmesh with each other, body and mind, in the madness that now, through the forced bond, has gripped him as well.
The others know there's nothing they could do to help; parting us now would kill us both. They erect a screen made from a metallic fabric purported to dampen telepathy, and everyone leaves apart from my mother, my grandmother, Sadek's mother and the healer. They close their well-trained, disciplined minds against our madness and wait until things quieten down behind the screen. We sink down together, utterly exhausted, then lift our heads again and stare at each other in mutual terror; most terrible the knowledge of mutuality, for the bond holds. Before we can say a word, or take any conscious decion of our own, the healer steps around the fabric screen; she melds her clear mind to our dazed ones and quickly and precisely severs our new bond. In icy silence my mother and grandmother take me home.
When I meet Sadek the next time, weeks later, at the academy, I have accepted that I am going to die in seven years; and I have accepted not to blame myself for what has happened. I was in pon farr; and I have a wild, uncontrollable nature that should and shall not survive. I will contibute whatever I have to give, and then I will die. Another, the Vulcan way might be punish with nothing but its feared deathly silence, but one from so prominent a family as mine it expects to go all the way as was done in the old days.
I meet Sadek in a corridor of the cybernetics department. His arms are loaded with data foils and data cubes; he's going away, and I know he's accepted a job in T'LingShahr, and he's going to marry there, soon, too. It is illogical to creep past him as if I were ashamed. No Vulcan will ever fully comprehend the human convention of apology. It is illogical to offer the useless emotions of rue and regret for some damage or misdemeanour, especially as this expects the utterance of another, mostly unsincere, emotion called forgiveness. This helps nobody and doesn't undo the damage. We Vulcans offer amends, and accept the punishment meted out by the other party, whatever that may be. The victim will doubtlessly ask an appropriate price, like repayment of material damages, or meditation against some character flaw.
I look Sadek straight into the eyes and say to him, "I have done you grave damage be my uncontrolled behaviour; tell me what I can do to amend my erroneous ways." I actually expect him to send me into deep meditation at the Gol monasteries for the rest of my worthless life; but he only looks at me, with barely contained pity, finally says, "There's nothing you could do", turns away and walks off.
This rejection, this denial of all possibilities to amend for what I have done according to Vulcan tradition forced me to begin again. I decided to fight for my life, to leave Vulcan, even, and to combat the tradition that sentenced me to a self-imposed, horrible death with all my personal, individual energy. If Sadek had asked amends of me, I would have been bound to him by it for the rest of my life; but by his rejection, I was suddenly, horribly free and responsible for myself. He hadn't sentenced but rejected me; and so I sentenced myself to life, to a life in cold and loneliness forever. I have lost him, and my life is over; all that remains is the self-discipline that painfully keeps the cold at bay.
But loneliness and pain are over now; my life begins again, and I am alone no longer. I will never forget what happened; I will always remember him whom I lost; but now I have found what I have always been looking for; love and contentment are mine again, for we are one in mind and in body.
A few days later, some lost deperadoes, a splinter group of former Khon Ma terrorists, came through the dense jungle towards the cave at the falls; but when their leader emerged from the foliage, she was met by the most unexpected view.
In the falls hiding the cave, there cavorted an unclad pair of lovers, so intent on each other and their joy in each other they didn't even notice the approaching weary fighters. Over the distance of the pool that separated the woods from the cave, and through the spray of the falls themselves, the terrorist leader couldn't discern their species or even their gender; but this beautiful and peaceful scene at a place that had belonged to the guerilla, this place where attacks had been planned and the wounded had been cared for, suddenly opened her darkened mind, and she realised that the times had gone right past her.
Without a word she turned around and led her group back into the woods. A few days later, she reached the next improvised, still half-destoyed city, where they all joined the majority to do some contructive work for all of Bajor for a change.