Library Pass
By
Pat Foley
Chapter 6
Beneath the trees where nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
Cause that's the way the teddy bears have their picnic.
I can't believe you are hungry after all that food floating around at the party," Amanda said. "How could you do that to T'Rueth, who has been cooking up a storm for days? I thought I was the one who never ate at parties?" She opened the stasis unit and poked her head inside.
"Like you, I was too engaged keeping our guests in temper." Looking over her shoulder as she rummaged around, Sarek absently twisted a curl loosened from her hairstyle, and then drew it aside. "Hurry, my wife. I am very hungry." He nuzzled her neck. "I am half tempted to begin on you."
"I can see your hunger knows no bounds." She hunched her shoulders. "If you are thinking of giving up your vegetarianism," she teased.
"Only for a certain special dish."
"That tickles – and my hands are full. Could you please wait until after you've eaten? You don't want me to drop your dinner, do you?"
Sarek let her go. "You are quite a tyrant, my wife. Very well, I will desist."
"Next time, take a few minutes to eat something. Our guests can handle that much neglect. Do you want some chaja? There's plenty here."
"Even you were forced to police our guests."
"A little. But even Legate Gordon didn't manage to get into too much trouble."
"I suppose they were agreeable enough. But I am pleased, very pleased, to have our household back as our own, quiet and private once again."
"As Jane says, it is always best not to have ones acquaintances very agreeable, as it saves one the trouble of liking them a great deal."1
"If not liking them a great deal means that we can wait a reasonable time before hosting another such gathering then I concur."
"I think T'Rueth won't approve. Her dishes were praised to the skies and she's already planning to repeat her success." She turned, half a dozen stasis boxes in her hands. "She wrapped everything up before she retired. But I can have this ready in a jiffy."
"I will comment on the dishes after I have eaten. But given our guests left with the same number of limbs and eyes as they arrived with, and in reasonable temper, I would tend to concur the party was a success."
"No one has ever brawled at our parties. You wouldn't let them." She laughed and tumbled the boxes on a counter. "I wouldn't let them."
"No, you would not," Sarek said knowingly. "Yet it is hardly unknown at diplomatic functions. But given the level of security I provide, I trust no one ever will."
"Umm, the protector of the peace."
Sarek began to open boxes himself. "Upholding Surak's constructs is part of my role as clan leader. Isn't there any nakir?"
"I wish I could say the role suits you well, but I think you really are a Vulcan warrior at heart. I could see you holding back, just itching to give Malkinson what for when he was prating on about Terra's Manifest Destiny. Which is when the nakir disappeared. You missed out on it. It's gone. Malkinson went back at least three times, didn't you notice?"
"I was busy refuting his arguments. He is somewhat sententious."
"Is he?" She tossed him a knowing look. "Perhaps. But he at least took time from refuting yours to eat. And that's why he's going to bed with a full stomach, and you're hungry. You may have won the argument, Sarek, but you lost the nakir. Is their logic in that? This was a dinner, not a debate."
"Not all debates are on the Council floor. And now I find he is not merely grasping in sectors of space, but greedy in personal habits as well." Amanda laughed again, and Sarek amused as well, half turned to take something from her hand, and caught out of the corner of his eyes the barest flicker of movement, of shadow across the long floor from something hidden behind the door. He went from ease to alertness in a microsecond. He stepped between Amanda and the closed door and for a moment, every muscle tense, he was silent, listening acutely, nostrils flaring, every sense keen, easily blocking Amanda's oblivious prattling response, one of his hands straying almost absently, instinctively toward T'Rueth's rack of cleavers. Then as T'Jar, peering though the door crack, half gasped at that warrior stance, and Sascek froze, recognizing it in turn, Sarek straightened, looking both relieved and puzzled. For a moment, the elder Vulcan stood uncertain, his shoulders relaxing from their previous battle posture, considering the situation. And then he frowned, shaking himself back down from that reflexive battlemode to practical consideration. Shaking his head as well, in almost human exasperation at his own too readily instinctive reflexes in spite of millennia of learned and bred peace. Then shrugging a brow, he caught his wife's hand, interrupting her in mid-word. "Amanda, I believe it is time to retire."
"But you just said you were hungry!" she exclaimed.
"You misunderstood me."
"I did not! How can you say--"
"Amanda," Sarek put a finger to her lips, as if to shush her. "It is…well past time…to retire."
Her eyes widened. She looked at him a moment, then down at the meal she'd half prepared. "Well…. just let me put this away--"
"Amanda." Sarek shook his head slightly, in gentle reproof. But though his voice was mild, he said it in the emphatic mode. "Now."
"Now?" She stared at him astounded.
"Now." He held out a hand.
She looked at him, shaking her own head in astonishment, but gave him her hand and let him draw her from the room.
On his way out the door, Sarek caught the door handle with his other hand and tugged it, peremptorily and pointedly closed. With just the barest trace of reproof in the near bang of that portal.
On the other side, the two in hiding jumped as the door closed with an audible snap quite unlike their normal clan leader's behavior.
But when the door closed behind him, the pair, freed from their hiding place, if not undetected, then at least undisclosed, looked at each other and as one, released a mutual sigh of relief.
All Vulcan controls to the contrary.
Continued…
1 Austen, Jane, Collected Letters, December 24, 1798
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