Biology
By
Pat Foley
Chapter 2
When Spock came back from the garden staggering under a laden basket, his hair and clothes damp from having indeed gotten caught in a mist cycle, his mother was employed in her usual pre-dinner preparations. To him, these always seemed to involve an inordinate amount of labor for the task involved, a scandalous use of water by Vulcan standards, and a lot of noise. When she wasn't exclaiming over nicked fingers, or berating the sacrificial produce for not being more Terran-like, she was singing arcane Terran songs, occasionally in unknown languages, writing parts of academic papers, correcting student work, or listening to newsnet broadcasts, all in-between kitchen chores. Sometimes all these activities at once. With such very unVulcan distractions going on, it could be difficult for Spock to concentrate on his studies. Particularly since his mother had a very pleasant singing voice. And when she wasn't singing, she often made very interesting comments – though not necessarily to him.
For example, at present, she had the communications console in the kitchen tuned to a major Federation newsnet provider – slightly too loud for Vulcan ears, though perhaps necessary for her over the splashing and chopping noises she was making -- and was punctuating the newsnet commentators remarks with pungent ones of her own.
"Today, the Federation Undersecretary March signed the charter for twelve more Terran colonies in the Pan-Andes system, over strong opposition from Federation Andorian Ambassador Thonset," the newscaster reported.
"And there goes old Manifest Destiny March marching out again," Amanda muttered half under her breath, but clearly audible to her son's ears. She split open a spaghetti squash with a resounding thwack.
" who claims Andoria holds title to that system. With two colonies already in situ, Andoria complained of rampant Terran expansionism in colonization requests. March defended that the Terran applicants--"
"No doubt saw the Holy Grail out there in the system, and were irresistibly drawn to it." Amanda disemboweled the squash of its seeds and set them aside for replanting. "Swallows to Capistrano."
"Had demonstrated a greater need, and a more encompassing system plan for the quadrant."
"Or perhaps a very large credit sign, in lieu of a Grail." Amanda said ironically. She slammed the oven door on the forlorn squash.
"Thonset charged he would submit a formal protest to the Federation to be called into general question over the Terran majority in the board which approves the Federation space charter system, and prejudice and favoritism in the application process. March protested that Andoria is trying to derail normal Federation procedures for its own special interests."
"Of course it never hurts to set up a human system, with human judges, and then wonder why all the other species complain of a lack of level playing field." She put the seeds in the drying rack for eventual replanting.
"Representatives of the Federation High Council, when asked if there would be a general session on the Andorian question, had no comment."
"Naturally. The collective Federation would fall down in shock if they did. Heaven forbid that the High Council dirty their hands in actual politics. Us do anything about it? Us rabbits?" She scrubbed the counter clear of squash guts. "Not that Andoria didn't set up those squatter colonies in advance of the Federation decision, just to have the excuse to raise this very question," Amanda snorted, and tossed the detritus into the recycler.
"What's a Grail?" Spock asked curiously, interrupting this interesting if singular discourse.
"What?" Amanda turned toward him. "When did you come back in?"
"When Manifest Destiny March was marching out again. Does he really march? He seemed to walk quite normally when he was here last month at your dinner party for the Vulcan Alliance conference."
"It's just an expression," Amanda said. "But don't mention that name to him if he comes back here."
"What if I meet him somewhere else?" Spock asked slyly.
"You little devil! Don't you dare!"
"I'm not a devil." Spock flicked a brow. "Though I do have pointed ears. Consquently--"
"You'll have a sore bottom if you use them to listen to things you're not supposed to."
"I hear a lot. I just don't understand everything you say. It's very unfair. I always understand Father."
"Well, you're one up on me then," Amanda said, amused. "I don't think I ever will."
"It's because you're Human," Spock said. Amanda raised her brows in astonishment at this callous dismissal, but Spock was continuing, "I know what a credit is. It's what Vulcan pays its Federation taxes in. Is a Grail some sort of currency?" He detoured from his original question to a recently discovered point of interest. "Did you know people pay five Federation credits just to see our gardens?"
"Yes. And cheap at the price, considering the havoc they raise."
"They steal things too," Spock confided. "There's one lady, who comes twice a month, with a big pocket in her tunic, and she hides ever so much fruit in it. I've seen it."
"You what? How?" Amanda asked, more shocked at that than the theft. "You aren't allowed, you aren't even supposed to be in the gardens when tourists come through. You know that. And you'd have to play hooky from school to see them anyway."
"I didn't see her in person," Spock defended. "I saw the security surveillance tapes. The Guard came in to show them to Father just before my lyre lesson."
"Why would the Guard bother your father with something as trivial as that?"
"Because she works at the Terran embassy. They were concerned that confronting her or refusing her admittance would cause a diplomatic incident. But she should be deported off -planet, you know," Spock said, with the self righteous relish of youth. "She's a real thief."
"A true desperado, hmmm?" Amanda supposed that on Vulcan, even a petty thief was so rare a character that it had the glamour of novelty. "I just hope she got her five credits worth," Amanda said dubiously. "What did your father say?"
Spock made a minute face of disappointment. "He sent me out of the room. I always get sent out of the room when anything fascinating is happening. But she should be deported," he decreed. "That's the punishment when outworlders break Vulcan law. And if I went to the Terran Embassy and stole things, I --"
"I'd spank you so that you couldn't sit down for a month."
"I didn't say that I would. I said if I did," Spock was offended. "And if I did, I'd be subject to Terran laws, because it is Terran ground, even if on Vulcan."
"Don't even think about it. You, my son, have no excuse for stealing. Ever."
"I wasn't thinking about it, I was just pointing out that she broke our laws on our grounds and therefore--"
"Never mind. If you father sent you out of the room, you shouldn't be discussing it with me."
"Don't you want to know who it was?"
"Certainly not. That's the last thing I would countenance. I have to deal with those people, you know. If your father wants to tell me, he will. But he won't."
Spock abandoned this now unpropitious subject in view of this deplorable lack of curiosity about a fellow human being. "I still want to know what a Grail is."
"Oh, that." Amanda looked exasperated. "It's a Terran religious symbol too often used to justify a lot of war and conquest."
"How did it get in the Pan Andes system?"
"By metaphor," she said ironically.
Forgetting himself, Spock wrinkled his brow in puzzlement. "That doesn't make--"
"Anyway, it's not your concern either." Amanda approached the table, looking at his basket. "So you survived your expedition? Let's see what you got. Why did you bring back all these lemons, when I only asked for a couple?"
"You said to bring back what we would use," Spock said primly. "And I want some hot lemonade."
"'I want' is not a very gentlemanly expression," Amanda countered. 'May I please have some'," she corrected, "is more to the point."
"May I please," Spock rephrased with a trace of impatience. "Isn't it inefficient for me to request something you know you will grant?"
"You don't know I'm going to grant it." Amanda pointed out, tumbling the produce out on the table and taking the vegetables she wanted.
"Untrue." Spock struggled to corral the lemons set into motion by her actions, forced to throw his arms wide to encompass them. "Based on past statistical behavior, you will. In the past 114 times I've requested it, you have. In fact, you have never not granted it. Therefore--"
"Don't throw your statistics at me. It doesn't impress me in the slightest. And if you want to make it 115, as well as keep that perfect record, you'll say please."
"But logic dictates--" Spock missed a lemon, which dropped to the floor. Reaching to grab it, a half dozen more fell, rolling in all directions.
"Logic can dictate all it wants. There's a more suitable Terran expression your mother dictates which goes along the lines of, "don't push your luck'. And wash the lemons, please, before squeezing them," she said, stepping around them.
"You didn't say that I could have it."
"Yes, you may. But wash them first."
"They were already wet in the garden," Spock grumbled, now on his hands and knees going after them. "Why should they need to be washed?"
"Half of them are on the floor."
"That's not my fault." Spock rose up indignantly to put some on the table and nearly bumped his head. "Anyway, the floor is sanitized regularly."
"Wash them."
"I can just sonic them. Washing them is an illogical waste of water. And Vulcans never waste wa--"
"Just do it."
"But I'm not going to eat the skins," Spock pointed out, chasing around the lemons that had escaped into odd corners. "Therefore it's even more illogical--"
"Just do it – you're not going to melt."
"But I'm already wet." Spock shivered, a bit theatrically, to make his point, his arms full of lemons, juggling them to keep them from falling again. "And water is cold."
"Then use warm water."
"It's an illogical waste of energy."
"Look, I've said it four times--"
"Five," Spock rolled his eyes, just a trifle, at his evidence of his father's often stated opinion that his mother could barely count. And although she just as often took umbrage at it, it was clearly true and here was the evidence of it.
"Very well, five," Amanda said, undrawn. "When three, as you well know, Mr. Statistic – and don't think I didn't see you roll your eyes -- is my limit. Don't play those games with me. My kitchen is not a negotiating table. Is it logical to drive your mother crazy?"
"My not washing lemons would cause you an emotional imbalance?"
"Honey, please. Practice your inherited debating skills on somebody else. I'm trying to listen to the news." Amanda threw him a towel, turning back to her own work. It landed on his head, since he wasn't going to let go of his armful to catch it. She missed that, as she was setting back the feed on the newscast to replay what else she had missed. "Dry yourself off, wash the lemons in hot water," she said, over her shoulder at him. "And not another word for the next fifteen minutes."
Spock lowered his burden carefully into the basket, removing the towel from his head, his dignity severely injured, and toweled his hair dry. Then he washed and juiced the lemons he'd chosen, and finally settled down at the kitchen table with his hot lemonade watching his mother curiously as she prepared dinner and simultaneously listened to the end of a news report, noting her expression went grave as the newscast went on. While he did have schoolwork, a private research project of his own caused him to delay it, surveying his mother with a judicial gaze when she switched to another Federation newsfeed and listened to the same story, her head tilted in a manner Spock knew meant she was thinking seriously, comparing the two. After listening to the same story on yet a third newsfeed she took a pad out of a drawer and made some notes on it, nibbling her lower lip as she did so. Then, shaking her head as if shaking off thoughts, she switched to the local planetary newsfeed with an air of relief.
Not a second after the requisite fifteen minutes were up, Spock interrupted this local newscaster, who was giving nothing more than a tedious report of the current weather forecast with his own question. "Why were you listening to the same news story on three different newsfeeds?"
Amanda gave him a sharp look. "Aren't you the observant one?"
"Was it something for your work?" Spock persisted, in spite of his own, near heretical suppositions that he'd lately been forming.
"Perhaps I was just curious about it," Amanda said non-committally.
Spock gave her a suspicious look. When his mother said perhaps in that diffident way, he'd come to recognize it as code. Either she was offering an alternative interpretation to her behavior, or simply not telling him the whole truth. On the other hand, he wasn't really entitled to quiz her about her activities, so he had to be content with what truths, however limited, she told him. These limitations on his research could be frustrating. When he'd been younger, he had been content with the face value of things. His father was an ambassador. His mother was a teacher. But now that he was older, and trying to make sense of his often very contradictory world, some things didn't quite fit.
He would have welcomed some straight answers to some of the puzzling questions of his life, but his parents were not always forthcoming. At the top of his list, of course, was the question of why his parents had married. Now that he was old enough to have been taught some facts about Vulcan biology, he'd have liked to know why his mother seemed so unaffected, unawed, by something so alien to her, and so upsetting to Vulcans that they did not discuss it at all, outside of the little training he'd had in it. Surely if Vulcans were undone by their own biology, humans must be desolated. But his mother was clearly not, and as clearly, to his discerning eyes, she loved his father anyway. How she could was a question too dangerous for Spock to think, let alone ask. So he concentrated on lesser ones.
The fact that his mother always traveled with his father on his ambassadorial trips, for example. When the Thendaran Ambassador to the Federation as well as to Vulcan traveled to those same Federation conferences, his wife often stayed on Vulcan with her children. But his mother had never stayed home with him – not that he could remember. Sometimes he'd traveled with them, when he was very young, but once he was old enough to go to school, away to boarding school he went. Of course, now that he was preadolescent , he understood why bondmates didn't care to be separated for any lengthy distance. But even on short trips, where that shouldn't be an issue, his mother always went. He found it odd that no matter how his mother had to juggle and rearrange her teaching schedule to fit his father's diplomatic one, sometimes complaining bitterly about having to do so, she never raised the question of why she should.
And then there were the conversations his parents had, usually cryptic and over his head, about Federation events. And the reporters, including one of those whose commentary she had just listened to, who always clustered around his mother and asked her political questions, even though she held no diplomatic position or official post. Even Manifest Destiny March had hung around her, at the social event he'd attended, flattering her and courting her good opinion so assiduously his father had stepped between them and very pointedly took his Mother's hand. Though a clear breach of Vulcan propriety, even Spock understood it as as a signal from one Vulcan male to a rival that he had been too attentive.
When, as a very young child, he'd asked his parents why the press clustered around his mother nearly as much as his father, though he was the Ambassador and she held no post, his mother had just smiled at his father and answered, "Because I speak their language." When Spock pointed out that his father spoke English equally fluently, Sarek had made some excuse to send him from the room. And that was code too, his father's code for 'don't ask that question again'. It wasn't long after that that he'd stopped going away with them to conferences. Of course, he had grown old enough to go away to school then. Spock couldn't fault his father for putting a Vulcan priority on education. But still, he'd remembered the incident. Spock had lately been trying to decide if his mother had more to do with his father's work than merely giving dinner parties and talking to the press on an unofficial basis. He wasn't sure what he thought of that possibility. And his parents didn't seem too interested in explaining things to him.
He only knew that as he grew, he had become less convinced that he could make himself fully Vulcan merely by following his father's precepts and saying he was so. So his mother's place in his father's world was of more interest to him. Spock was of an age when he was able to not only see puzzles, but search for answers. And his dual nature was the most pressing question of his existence.
Unfortunately the questions often could never be asked. And the answers were quite as elusive. He turned his attention back to his mother.
"Anyway, it's not your concern," Amanda continued. "But if your schoolwork isn't pressing, you can help with dinner. You might as well help anyway, because we'll be eating soon and it's too late to get embroiled in homework now."
"What do you want me to do?" Spock asked, a bit reluctantly. He wasn't terribly fond of kitchen chores.
"You can make the salad, while I make the sauce for the spaghetti. She gave him back the washed lettuce and vegetables and a bowl. Spock resigned himself to work and sniffed appreciatively as she took down the spices she was going to use in the sauce. He began to tear the lettuces into smaller pieces.
Soon the kitchen was full of good smells. The sauce was bubbling, the spaghetti squash was nearly baked and Spock had almost completed chopping the vegetables for a salad, even though he was using his mother's preferred method, a knife, rather than the faster food processors. His stomach was growling pleasurably in anticipation of dinner when he saw the flash of orange that was his father's flyer through the windows that looked on the hanger court, preceded by his father soon walking through the door.
Not yet eighty, his father was in the prime of young Vulcan adulthood, with a look of eagles in his eyes and a sheer strength of manner that lesser beings, Spock included, could find daunting. His mother, oddly enough, didn't seem to find him so. Perhaps, at least in that respect they were well matched, however untraditional their alliance was otherwise.
Spock didn't look up as his parents greeted each other. He found his mother's affection embarrassing even directed toward himself, much less his father. And his father's toward his mother he just found confusing, given his father's Vulcan nature. He concentrated on his chopping while his parents quietly traded sentences about their respective days, Sarek meanwhile turning down the audio of the Vulcan newsnet broadcast to something more in keeping with Vulcan hearing. As he did so, he asked Amanda, rather pointedly, "Did you…?"
"I did. My notes are on the pad there."
Spock raised his head abruptly at that, his suspicious confirmed, watching curiously while his father picked up the pad. So she hadn't been listening for her own work. The action caught his father's attention and their eyes met. Sarek raised a brow and putting down the pad, greeted him, adding, "What are you doing there?"
Spock felt that was somewhat obvious a question for his father to ask, but he answered anyway. "Making a salad."
"So I can see. Wouldn't your time be more appropriately spent studying?"
Spock glanced from his father to his mother. When he was younger, such reproofs sometimes made him feel a trace of shame. Now, that he had better control of his emotions, and a broader view of things, he only allowed himself, at best, a touch of exasperation. Wasn't he his mother's child, as well as his father's? And if she made a request of him, or required him to do something, however human or illogical or even inappropriate, didn't he have as much of an obligation to obey her as his father, provided it was no serious transgression from his Vulcan training? His father certainly would not be pleased with him if he did disobey her. Nor, needless to say, would his mother at being disobeyed. Being placed in such a no-gain situation didn't please Spock. He'd just become prescient enough to wonder why his father, such a renowned diplomat abroad, seemed to frequently place his family in situations where no one could be pleased.
That Sarek, in making such comments, apparently didn't always trust his human wife to raise his Vulcan son was one thing, and between them. But when Sarek seemed to expect him to, in effect, raise himself above her authority, to reject his mother's guidance, in however trivial a matter, and hold himself only to some imagined ideal of Vulcanness, in effect to raise himself without a mother, Spock felt that was unfair. Though he wasn't mature enough to be able to articulate such feelings, certainly not to Sarek, still he felt that Sarek was asking too much of him as a child. Spock no longer felt torn to pieces by such reproofs, as he occasionally had when he was younger. But he still found them uncomfortable. He was spared a reply, however, because his mother answered for him, as he knew she would if he gave her half a chance.
"He's just helping me for a few minutes, Sarek. His education isn't going to collapse from that."
Spock spared a glance from under his lashes to see how his father took that reply, but instead of being displeased, Sarek seemed merely mildly amused. Spock had long noticed his father was usually indulgent to her mother's humanity, if not to his son's. And it was clear, since he had picked up the pad again, his attention was more on it than his son's minor transgressions. "It's one thing for you to unnecessarily delegate yourself as a kitchen maid in lieu, of or in addition to your other myriad duties, my wife. I accept that, even though it does seem a waste of your valuable time. But I see no need for our son to sacrifice his education to be so employed."
"A sacrifice of his education. Oh, my. What a terrible prospect." Amanda paused. "How many levels are you ahead of your average age group in school?" Amanda asked Spock, rhetorically, for he knew she knew the answer as well as himself.
"Three," Spock said. Not without the barest trace of well deserved smugness. He worked hard enough that he felt justified in it.
"There," Amanda shook her head in mock disgust. "I can see how his education is suffering. Spock, didn't you know your father expected you to graduate the VSA tomorrow?"
"Not at all, " Sarek said easily, still reading through the notes on the pad. "Merely to do his assigned schoolwork this evening," he continued, unphased by her teasing.
"It won't do him any harm to spend a few minutes with his nose outside of a text. Anyway," Amanda glanced at her son, to let him know she was teasing him now, "hard work builds character."
"I have character," Spock dared to inject. He rarely interfered in these mock "arguments" between his parents, but her glance, to him, seemed to imply an invitation to play. And Sarek appeared to be in an indulgent enough mood, and clearly distracted by whatever he was reading, that Spock decided to see how far it could be taken.
"You are a character," Amanda said fondly. "Keep chopping. I need that stuff, or we'll never eat."
Finishing Amanda's notes, Sarek glanced up to gaze disapprovingly at his son's efforts as he noisily resumed his chopping. "I don't understand this predilection for rudimentary kitchen utensils over the food processors." He took the knife out of his son's hands and pointed him to the device.
Amanda let out a breath of exasperation. "Since when are you the expert on food preparation? I've never known you even to boil water. In more than a dozen years of marriage."
"Precisely why I have a wife," Sarek said dryly.
"Don't you listen to him, Spock," Amanda said, unwittingly brandishing the bread knife at her husband in punctuation to her statement. "This is one area in which I am determined you are not to follow in your father's footsteps."
"I am bonded as well," Spock said, with a child's instinct for playing one parent off another, watching in private amusement as his father raised a brow, both at her statement, and her inadvertent action. There were times when even Spock considered his mother somewhat of a barbarian.
Amanda huffed. "Take that attitude with T'Pring, Spock, and just see how she responds."
"Spock, I am sure you have done enough for the present," Sarek said, effectively taking control of the situation and effecting, as well, to carefully disarm his wife. "You are dismissed."
It was his father's warning that he'd crossed one of those forbidden lines. Or that his parents had crossed one of theirs, revealing too much of themselves to him. Part of him was disappointed; the other was examining curiously what and where all these forbidden lines were in their relationships. He sometimes felt that however wrong, or even dangerous, it might be to push, at times it was the most empirical way to discover the answers that he couldn't divine any other way.
"Oh," Amanda shook her head in exasperation and capitulated. "But it's too late for Spock to start his homework now. We'll be eating in a few minutes. Why don't you ….go out and fill the garden feeders," she told her son. "And then wash up for dinner."
"Yes, mother," Spock said, bringing the salad bowl over to his mother. He added, in a precocious parting shot to his father, as he walked out the door, "I know something is to be discussed, because I'm being sent away."
"He knows too much; we must get rid of him," Amanda said in German, as he walked out the door. It was the language his parents had switched to when they had realized he was understanding them in French. Spock had, however, innocently come across a German grammar and dictionary in his entirely casual perusals of his mother's Terran library, searching for something else of course. Thanks to eidetic memory, with one reading he had made himself near perfect in the language. But this time he'd gotten good enough at the emotional control of his expression that his parents had yet to divine his comprehension. Though he made sure to keep his head down when listening in his father's presence, so the minute expressions he could not control would not betray him. Words aside, even in a language foreign to him, the lilt in his mother's amused voice, and something in her tone told Spock that she was not only teasing, but her words were something in the nature of one of her interminable quotes. Nevertheless, on stark meaning alone, they struck a little chord in his heart and caused his feet to pause in the passage. More so when his father replied, in a voice utterly serious, and made more ominous by the odd language. "He ought to go away to school."
Without conscious thought, he lingered in the garden hall, to hear his mother's answer.
"Absolutely not." His mother forgot herself enough that she said that in English. And in a manner that if English had an emphatic mode, this would be it. "We already had that fight. Let's not resurrect it."
"That was four years ago." Sarek had automatically followed her into English, so Spock didn't even have to struggle to translate the unfamiliar German. He stood stock still, head raised high to catch their slightly lowered voices, filtering out the Vulcan newscaster who still nattered on.
"Four years or four days, it doesn't matter to me."
"He is getting older. And as you have pointed out, more aware."
"What are you afraid of? It seems to me he's mastering your disciplines very well."
"That's debatable."
"Sarek. You know that his reports from his instructors are excellent. I see them too, you know."
"Yes, they always are," his father said. "But I no longer necessarily trust them."
"Aren't they the teachers you chose?" Amanda asked, sounding frustrated. "The best, the most prestigious schools, experts in the fields of all his advanced subjects. And in the Vulcan disciplines too. I don't understand you. First you were concerned he wouldn't master these disciplines. And then, when he does, both academic and in Vulcan controls, you still aren't satisfied."
"In essential nature, no, I'm not."
"Sarek, your essential nature isn't all that pristinely Vulcan. Take it from your wife, the woman who sleeps--"
"Amanda!" Sarek cut her off, and switched back to German. "He'll be coming back soon."
Spock came back to himself and realizing what he was doing, he hastened out the garden hall, letting himself quietly out the courtyard door. He ran to fill the bird feeders, and came as quickly back. He didn't seem to have missed much of the argument, though this time, he felt a bit ashamed for this more deliberate eavesdropping as he came back in and stood hesitant in the hallway.
"I just sometimes wonder whose nature you're trying to protect him from," Amanda was saying tartly, slamming a cabinet door. Spock could hear the thumps of china as she set the table. "Mine or yours. I'm beginning to think it's the latter."
"That is quite enough, my wife," Sarek said, and the tone in his voice was one which, when Spock was on the receiving end, made him inwardly shiver. It didn't seem to daunt his mother, however, who came back equally chilly.
"I quite agree. No, no and no, Sarek. Don't ask me again. He already goes away to school every time we have to travel. And remember what happened before, when that off-world epidemic ran rampant through his boarding school. If it wasn't for T'Pau, he might have died."
"That was an exceptional situation. The virulent agent was a rare mutation, but it was quickly isolated and an antiviral vaccine prepared. It is not likely to happen again."
"I'm not going to risk it happening again when we can help it. I endure enough separations from my only child in the name of your duty. I do agree with you that taking him with us, in some of the situations we encounter, is even more risky than boarding school, and I put up with those separations for that reason, and that alone. But I won't endure any more, neither of separations nor of risk. When we are on planet, he stays here with us. Don't even bring the subject up. It's closed. Verboten. He stays."
Spock took that as his cue to come forward both because his father had no doubt calculated the time and was expecting to hear him and because, in secret alliance with his mother, he didn't want to give his father the opportunity to reply. He let the garden court door close unnecessarily loudly, and for good measure, made a little too much noise on the passage.
"He is coming," Amanda said, sotto voice. "Even I can hear him. And good thing too. Half the time he walks like Natty Bumppo, but the rest--"
"Indeed," Sarek said, giving him a sharp look when he entered the room, making Spock wonder if he had perhaps been somewhat too obvious. It was never wise to underestimate his father.
"I filled the feeders," Spock announced unnecessarily, striving for a diversion, meanwhile making a mental note to check the library computer and find out who this Natty Bumppo was.
"Thank you, honey," Amanda said, distracted enough to be humanly polite even though common Vulcan discourse required no such statements and her use of endearments was something that Vulcan dignity would object to.
"Thanks are illogical," Spock informed her loftily, in his best imitation of his father's Vulcan manner. "And I am not the byproduct of an insect's metabolism."
Amanda bit her lip on a smile. "Et tu, Brute," she murmured, presumably for his father's ears alone, though Spock, of course, could hear her clearly.
"There's no need to be impolite, Spock," Sarek said, ignoring his mother's irreverent comment, his sharp eyes still dissecting his son.
This was exactly the sort of thing that frustrated Spock, and made him feel like he couldn't win.
Seeing his father's too discerning eyes on him, Spock ducked his head as he went to wash his hands, though he doubted that Sarek missed the flash of rebellious emotion in his own. In the brief silence that ensured, the Vulcan newscaster rattled on unexpectedly loudly in the momentary quiet, giving the latest actuarial news, ending with the phrase, "including three deaths, two male, one female, from an unspecified fever."
"There, you see," Amanda said, looking up from her work, still upset enough to take up again this aspect of their conversation, even with Spock present. "you say there's no danger. But there's always that footnote in the news. And always associated with deaths. I don't understand why, with all Vulcan's diagnostic abilities, they can't figure out what that unspecified fever is and do something about it."
Spock stared at his mother, jaw dropping for once in unVulcan surprise. "But mother," he said, before he collected himself.
Sarek turned to him abruptly. "Spock!" he said, more sharply than he usually spoke.
Spock drew himself up and stared at his father, realizing abruptly what this meant. He got hold of his first astonishment. And now had no intention of raising or ever speaking more on the subject to his clueless mother. But he couldn't prevent himself from meeting his father's repressive gaze with his own amazement. They shared a wordless look, even while Spock's astonishment faded under his control, while Amanda, puzzled, looked from one to the other of them.
"What?" she said impatiently.
"I…I..have schoolwork," Spock stuttered.
"Yes. It is well past time you attended your studies," Sarek said, staring him down repressively.
"We'll be eating dinner in five minutes," Amanda said.
"I have to go…and wash up." Spock said, and used that excuse to this time exit the room post haste.
"That's the first time that child has willingly suggested contact with soap and water," Amanda said behind him. "And what were you so sharp about?"
"We'll discuss it later," Sarek said. And then he left the room too.
Spock climbed the stairs to his personal suite, hoping to escape long enough to master his composure and understand the scope of what he had just discovered, so that he could face his parents again with some semblance of control. But before he even had that necessary respite, he heard his father's voice lasso him.
"Spock."
Spock swallowed hard and straightened his shoulders. He slowly turned around. "Yes, sir?"
"Come with me."
Spock tightened his already straight shoulders and let out the breath he'd drawn in as noiselessly as possible. He had, obviously, gotten himself in trouble again. He followed Sarek into his study and stood before his desk. But for once, Sarek seemed at a loss for words. Spock watched him narrowly as Sarek looked out the long windows of his study that faced the formal gardens. Spock used a long established method of counting seconds till Sarek spoke. Usually the longer his father took to begin, the more upset he was with him, though Sarek no doubt would refute ever having his mental state so characterized. Spock didn't know how else to think of it, since clearly at times his father wasn't pleased with him. He stood face forward, waiting. This time, it took 46 long seconds – and based on personal experience, however illogical, seconds spent standing before Sarek were longer than others – before his father spoke again.
"When you reached the age of twelve, you were deemed mature enough by your instructors," a tone in Sarek's voice implied to Spock that his own father had not necessarily found him so, "to be introduced to the basic facts of Vulcan biology. Inherent in that training was the understanding that, once given, it was not to be discussed. Not with your fellow students. Not with younger children. And certainly not with…outworlders."
Spock's initial resolve that he would show no reaction to anything his father said went abruptly by the wayside. He couldn't stop his eyes from widening and his gaze from going immediately to his father's face, and a slight gasp to escape his lungs. Never would he have thought he'd hear his father call his own mother, Sarek's own bondmate, the mother of his child, the woman they'd both lived with for a dozen years an outworlder. Not just the word, contemptuous in its general use, but the implications of that which had first occurred to Spock in the kitchen, and that he had yet to contemplate well enough to come to grips with, stunned him so completely his eyes unfocused as he struggled to process what this all implied.
"Do you understand?" Sarek asked insistently, when he failed to respond. "These things are not to be spoken of."
"I wasn't," Spock protested.
"You were about to, had I not stopped you," Sarek accused.
Spock swallowed hard again. "No, I wouldn't have. It was, that -- just for a moment -- I was…startled," he admitted. Even though he felt, however outlawed feeling was, that he'd had every right to be startled. He knew the basic facts of life. He had not, to use one of his mother's euphemisms, appeared one day in their cabbage patch. Or even in a plomeek patch. He was not so blind that he couldn't see the intimacy between his parents, nor the incipient signs of pon far before that state overtook his father and Spock himself was banished to stay with T'Pau. "I was surprised that she-- That she didn't know --" He met his father's eyes uneasily, a question he couldn't help forming in them, one Sarek ruthlessly repressed.
"It is not your place to consider the matter at all. Let alone have any emotional response to it."
Sarek was absolutely right. Spock couldn't agree more that this subject was one that should only be discussed between his parents and that he had no place in it. But the way his father said 'emotional' made it clear Sarek considered that the worst of crimes. Yet it seemed to Spock, if he allowed himself to consider it, that his father was behaving the most emotionally of all. While Vulcans never discussed Pon Far, there were inevitable casualties of that state, both natural and from challenges and the consequences of the rare and unmentioned Vulcan divorce. They were always listed in actuarial reports, or in newscasts or obituaries as being the result of an 'unspecified fever'. Every adult Vulcan understood why the specific fever in question was left unspecified – because it was not to be spoken of. It was the practical way to report the deaths – the visible loss of individuals from society -- from an situation that in itself could not be candidly discussed. That his mother was ignorant of this common euphemism, particularly considering her position as a wife, implied that his father, at least, had been very remiss in acquainting her with some basic facts of Vulcan life, facts her own preadolescent son had possession of.
Yet that heretical thought Spock could not allow himself to consider. At least, not at twelve, faced with this subject. It was easier to banish the subject from his thoughts and he did so with ruthless Vulcan control. "Yes, sir," Spock said. "No, sir." Now that he understood the situation, his surprise aside, there was nothing more to be said. And he'd long discovered that when in doubt, or in trouble, it was always safe just to agree with his father and hope, as his mother might characterize, to get the hell out.
Sarek, just barely, shook his head in almost human exasperation. "Go and prepare yourself for--"
"Sarek! Spock!" Amanda called, sounding more like a Terran farmwife than her alter ego as the poised and cultured Ambassador's wife, or the consort to the clan leader of the heir to Surak. "Dinner!"
Spock met his father's eyes, and took the brief hesitation in them as dismissal. As Spock fled out the office door, his relieved feet not pacing with full Vulcan stateliness since he was so grateful to make good his escape, he heard his father let out his own exasperated breath. It punctuated with a final note a universal lack of Vulcan control in this purportedly oh-so-Vulcan family.
To be continued and completed in chapter 3
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