Of Two Worlds

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 3

"This tape will self-destruct in five seconds…"

The perfect catalyst crossed her arms and glared at the Vulcan security forces surrounding her. Right now she would have traded any one of them for a wicked witch, or brother of the same. At least then they could be melted. Though on Vulcan, enough pails of water to melt all those around her weren't always easy to come by. And given they weren't Oz witches, but very real Vulcans, she had no chance of escape. This Dorothy had to surrender.

She sighed and tried again to satisfy her questioners. "How many times do I have to say it?" She strove to keep her voice Vulcan calm, but her frustration showed. Forces had converged on her almost as soon as her flyer had been discovered. She'd been rushed first to the Terran Emergency Center associated with the Terran Embassy in Shikhar. But when it had been discovered that her "accident" had been no accident but sabotage, she'd been hustled out of there to the Healer's Enclave. As if even the Terrans at the Embassy couldn't be trusted. She didn't see why they hadn't just let her go home. There was nothing they could do for her here.

She was largely acclimated to Vulcan, but Healers believed in warmth in cases of injury. The Enclave's hot and stuffy rooms compared unfavorably to the cool mountain breezes of her Fortress home. Vulcans had little concept of painkillers, nor were there any healer's tricks for a concussion, so she was under no particular treatment. Yet her entreaties to go home had been deferred and her guardians had been distinctly...nervous...for Vulcans. They'd allowed her human physician to see her, but strictly supervised, barely even allowing him to speak to her or her to him. They had not allowed him to administer anything, even though she'd known him for nearly forty years, and he had even treated Sarek once, though for a some purely superficial scrapes.

Not that she wanted any more noxious drugs for herself. She still had a hangover from the ones she'd been given at the Terran Emergency Center. But between the drug hangover, the concussion, her various aches and pains, the stuffy room and the overbearing manners of the guard surrounding her, she was not in the best of tempers for all this cloak and dagger nonsense.

So someone had taken a shot at her, figuratively speaking. It had happened before and would no doubt happen again. And yes, she was grateful the guard was going all out to catch them, but Vulcans always went so overboard on their ...efficiency. And she was getting weary of it. Had she had a pail of water in her hand, she would have tried for some witch-melting and made good her escape. As it was, this Dorothy was definitely out-maneuvered.

She sighed and yielded to the Vulcans waiting for her response. "It was a perfectly ordinary day," she said for what felt like the dozenth time. "I went to work. I taught classes. I held office hours. I went home. I crashed in the desert. Wait – let me think – that wasn't part of an ordinary day."

"But if you would attempt to recollect, Lady Amanda," Stdar said patiently. "For anything out of the ordinary."

Amanda rubbed her temples. Her head was aching from the concussion and it was hard to think clearly at all. Harder still with all these Vulcan guards standing around her making her nervous. Not that she didn't know them all. Stdar served as the head of T'Pau's Palace guard and essentially supervised all security forces on Vulcan. Stdent led the Fortress guard and specifically Sarek's detail, coordinating all the high security required of a Federation level ambassador, off and on his home planet. And the burly Sascek was normally in charge of her detail when Federation tempers were running high and even she, a lowly teacher, had to suffer under extra security. Sascek looked, for a Vulcan, shamefaced and frustrated. He was, under all the ancient traditions, sworn to protect her with his life. But that was only tradition. In reality, things had been relatively quiet on Vulcan. There had been nothing ominous in the area of Federation threats. Nothing new had turned up in Federation intelligence or in the standard visa reviews of any outworlders newly come to Vulcan. So she'd been living happily free of the overbearing presence of security for some time. And Sascek had been peacefully harvesting plomeek on his farm in the Llangon foothills with his two sons and his wife T'Jar when his Lady had been attacked. It was difficult to believe that Vulcan had been at peace for thousand of years when you looked at Sascek now.

While crime was virtually unknown on Vulcan, the ancient traditions of a warrior race still allowed for a clan guard. Between the time of Surak's reforms and Vulcan's entrance to the Federation, the Guard had held a partially ceremonial position, trotted out for state occasions and the yearly resealing of the council to Surak's philosophies. The former armies, the palace, fortress and clan guards had also turned to peacekeeping functions. It was they who patrolled the sky and spacelanes and responded to signals of distress. Traffic accidents such as were common with humans were rare and almost unheard of on Vulcan, but illness, unforeseen weather disruptions, sudden vicious sandstorms or desert deluges and the even rarer operator or vehicle error required regular patrols. There were weather and terrain related accidents -- travelers or tourists would go out on the forge at the most unpropitious times and get caught in sandstorms, deluges and sandslides in the mountains.

The guard also manned the spaceports and customs offices, where they scrutinized visas, did background checks and escorted troublemakers off planet. With the entrance of Vulcan into the Federation, and Vulcan's prominence in the Federation, the port traffic and security risks were considerable, especially when Federation tempers were running high over some issue.

The guard's cruisers also patrolled the systems of Vulcan's ancient planetary alliances, rendering aid, and keeping a watchful sensor trained on the sectors of space across which Vulcan warriors had long ago beaten back the Romulans.

Vulcans did believe peace should not depend on force. But that didn't mean they didn't fail to understand the use of it when it did. They simply profoundly regretted the necessity on the rare times it was needed. In a related way Vulcans did not believe in destroying the many dangerous predators that comprised Vulcan fauna and flora. But if a lematya should think to attack a person, the guard went on the hunt, expert with stun gun and tranquilizer dart, and that lematya woke up with a headache, far in the mountains away from civilization.

The guard employed the same methods across all their purview, be it the foothills of the Llangdon mountains or their quadrant of space. And whether the perpetrator of violence was a rogue lematya, an anti-Federation or anti-Vulcan terrorist, or a fleet of Romulan incursionists, the result was the same.

Vulcans were bred to peace but they'd been firstborn to war, and they understood well how to give a lesson in deterrence. In fact they understood it so well, and executed it with such dispatch, they rarely had to give it twice. To the extent that even their long estranged Romulan brothers, who had eschewed the teachings of Surak for warrior ways, never put a toe over the Vulcan side of the Neutral Zone, choosing to foray and skirmish on boundaries that bordered Terran colonies. It was that Romulan threat that had made the Federation so diligently pursue the first Federation/Vulcan alliance that had brought Sarek to Terra. And raised the guard from its largely ceremonial to its presently more active role.

But as to crime? On Vulcan? Apart from the rare outworlder instances, all of whom were swiftly expelled back off world, it was virtually unheard of. So no real detective force existed on Vulcan, pointless in a society where crime was virtually unknown. In the rare instances where crimes occurred, the forces that handled it were those who handled all security, the ancient remnants of the hereditary palace guardsmen, the former warriors of Vulcan.

So those that stood around her were those she was all familiar with and accustomed to from years of one clan or Federation function after another. In this case, familiarity bred, if not contempt than a sense of frustration. For Amanda, these were the people who tagged her steps when she was offworld. Whose security constraints restricted her freedom, even with the best of intentions. And who were the first and most constant reminder that there was a whole Federation out there who weren't all pleased that Vulcan was a member and that she was the human half of a very public Vulcan/Terran alliance.

It wasn't that she was ungrateful for the guard's care. But there were times when gratitude was harder to come by than others. And she was coming to the slow and painful (in more ways than one) realization that this latest attack probably meant another long tedious period where once again she'd be "escorted" by guards wherever she went, even on Vulcan. It wasn't improving her temper.

Amanda drew a deep breath. "Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Your flyer was brought down by a coded signal," Stdar reminded her. "Such could not have come from outside the craft. The normal security measures would have prevented it."

Amanda looked up at them. "You mean I brought whatever sabotaged my flyer into it with me? When? Have I been carrying it around all this time?" A look of alarm crossed her face. "Is Sarek--"

"There has been an extensive search," Stdar said. "We have found nothing similar in Sarek's possessions."

"So I was the chosen one," Amanda muttered. "Didn't you find anything when you searched the remains of my flyer?"

Stdar hesitated and glanced at Sarek. After a moment, Sarek took his wife's hand. "Amanda, there was a fire in the interior of the cabin."

"But I thought you said--"

"You were – fortunately – thrown clear on impact. The craft's mechanical systems were essentially intact – enough to show us the means of sabotage was a coded transmitter. The computers were shielded and were likewise functional and showed only the receipt of a coded transmission. You must have brought that transmitter on board. But there was nothing in the possessions thrown clear with you that evidenced such a device. Of course, there was the fire. No doubt the transmitter was meant to self destruct. Such a device would be very small. The fire, however, was quite extensive. You were …fortunate…to have been thrown clear."

"The party," she said suddenly.

"My wife?"

"There was something out of the ordinary. At the end of the day, my department gave me a party." She looked at Sarek. "For the Zi. Nothing special. A cake." She thought laboriously back to that innocent moment. "A holo banner."

Sarek perked up. "Did you bring it with you? The banner? It might have contained a signal in its programming."

"Are you accusing my colleagues?" Amanda looked up in astonishment. "Sarek, I've known all those people for years. They've all been security cleared."

"Amanda, I am not accusing anyone. The perpetrator could have infiltrated this device into your possessions in any number of ways. I am merely seeking data."

"Data." She rubbed her aching temples again. "I didn't bring the holo banner home. It is still probably hanging in my office. But I did bring…Was the sculpture thrown clear?"

"Sculpture?"

"My students made a sculpture. An awful hideous statue of me. It deserved burning is all I can say. It was meant as a joke."

"A joke," Sarek repeated, with no expression in his voice, as if the concept was completely unfamiliar.

"Yes, a joke! Don't go all Vulcan on me now, you know what a joke is. Oh, my head is splitting." She drew a deep breath, calming herself. "I didn't bring the sculpture in myself, but Tony put it in the back of the aircar. In the cargo section. I'd forgotten about it. They all insisted I should bring it home, for you to see." She looked at Sarek. "It was made of old data cartridges."

There was a telling silence from the Vulcans in the room. Then Stdar said. "Data cartridges. Which they insisted that you bring home. Lady Amanda. Do you not realize the profound security risk in accepting such a--"

"It was just a joke. From friends." They looked at her, unmoved. Unyielding. "Do you know how many times a colleague or student will hand me a data cartridge – something to review or analyze? Do I have to be searched now every time I leave my office for home? "

The silence in return to that question was telling.

And ever the diplomat, Sarek quickly headed off that dangerous discussion. To fight that battle another day, under more propitious circumstances. Not for nothing was he reckoned a canny opponent. "There was no sculpture in the aircar ruins."

"No doubt it had a mechanism to ignite after activation," Stdar said.

"So you're saying this…destruct sequence was in the sculpture?" Amanda's eyes widened. "Was I meant to bring it to Sarek?"

Stdar shook his head. "No, Lady Amanda. The transmission received by your aircar computers – from inside the craft – was to override all normal failsafes and shut down all systems for full maintenance. There would have been no harm to Sarek. Unless he were with you and that obviously was not the case. It seems this message – and the intent -- was specifically to …kill… you. And so they would have succeeded had you not jettisoned the fuel cells and used the baffles as a type of …unusual parachute. Very ingenious."

"But who would do such a thing?" Amanda said. "And why?"

"Both excellent questions. And do not be concerned, my lady. We will discover the answers to both with all due dispatch."

"But--" Amanda stared but she was looking at the retreating backs of the guardsmen filing out of the room, her husband with them, all deep in conversation. She rose and attempted to follow but the door closed behind them, showing her a glimpse of further guards outside her door. "I want to get out of here," she complained. The two guards merely raised a dismissive brow and closed the door to her face. Nor did it open to her palm.

She gave it a kick and regretted that as her bare foot came in contact with unyielding stone. And hobbled back to a chair. The table next to it held a round crystal of the type Vulcans sometimes used in meditation to aid their healing trances. She could just imagine Aunty Em's face in the stone. "All I'm missing is the hourglass. And Toto," she muttered to the empty room. And without that resourceful little dog, or a pair of ruby slippers, it looked like she was trapped here, at least for the immediate future. She let her aching head drop to her arms and finally, still affected by the Terran painkillers she'd been given at the Emergency Center, fell into a drug laced sleep, head pillowed next to the meditation crystal, dreaming of fleeing from armies of flying monkeys, all with surprisingly human faces.