Chapter 11: Rhyme and Reason
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The dream.
It starts, as it always does, with the explosion.
The sonic grenade rocks the conference building and people in the large banquet hall are tossed out of their chairs screaming. Glass breaks. Somewhere in the distance a siren wails.
Particles of plaster begin drifting down from the ceiling, and once again Spock recalls a singular snowstorm he witnessed as a child, standing in the middle of his grandmother's backyard in Seattle, his head tilted up to trace the progress of spiraling, whirling individual flakes until his neck ached; shivering, runny-nosed with chill until his mother insisted that he come inside. The rest of the afternoon he sat at the window watching the snow collecting in watery clumps. By the next morning it was gone.
Another explosion, and there is Captain Pike, his hands upraised as the five attackers burst through the double doors, their weapons aimed at the crowd of Feynman Conference attendees.
"Are you in charge?" Captain Pike says over the shouts and moans of the crowd, corralling the attention of the attackers. Spock watches as the captain inches forward.
"Don't move!" one man yells, and Pike stops and lowers his hands.
"Listen," Pike says, gently waving to indicate the crowd around him, "if you want to have your say, you need to let these people go first."
Spock feels himself take a step forward, parting the crowd with his shoulder, sidling past a woman holding her hand to her bleeding cheek, skirting an overturned table, scuffing one boot against a tray on the ground.
Captain Pike looks up as the tray skitters a few inches—drawn to the noise in a way that Spock later finds remarkable.
Looking up at the same moment, Spock meets the captain's gaze.
And in that moment he knows exactly what Captain Pike wants to him to—as if Pike had shouted across the room to him. The communion is as electric as it is unmistakable.
"I've already had my say," the attacker yells. "Now I want action! We're tired of talking. We want—"
By this time Spock has circled behind the shouting man, and in two more steps he is able to reach out and press his thumb and forefinger on the nerve running through the man's trapezius.
As he always does, the attacker falls to the ground, and Captain Pike rushes the second attacker and wrestles a firearm from him.
And at that moment Spock knows—again—that one of the other men has armed a sonic grenade and dropped it into the middle of the milling crowd.
There is no choice, not really.
Scooping up the grenade, Spock hurtles past the people at the door and makes his way into the corridor.
A large window at the end of the hall is his first destination, but through the glass he sees people standing in the conference courtyard—more Earth United protestors like the attackers inside. If he throws the grenade there, they will be hurt or killed.
Three doors loom to the right—two ornate wooden ones and a metal service area entrance—and Spock weighs his choices, which one will have the fewest people behind it, which one will contain the impending explosion and protect the large crowd beginning to exit the banquet hall behind him.
"Give it to me," he hears a voice say, and he pivots around and sees a young Vulcan man standing in the haze of the smoky corridor.
Turel—his thin wrists stretching out the end of his sleeves, his hair cut unevenly across his brow—and suddenly Spock knows that this time the dream is different, that this time it is not, as the healer suggested, just a normal reaction to the trauma of the bombing at the Feynman Conference several months ago—his mind forcing him to relive it, to work through the emotions that still, if he is honest, roil underneath the surface every time he hears about the upcoming trial of the attackers.
Which, he realizes with a start, is why the frequency and intensity of the dreams have increased lately. He and Captain Pike are scheduled to testify in the first of several pre-trial hearings in The Hague this week.
And it is why Turel is here now, in the dream, when Spock has neither seen him nor thought about him for years.
…Until yesterday when his mother called with the news that his old schoolmate Turel was listed as a passenger on the Vulcan merchant ship that went missing two days ago in the Adriana nebula.
His fevered imagination has cobbled the two events together the way dreams sometimes do.
"Give it to me," Turel says, pointing to the grenade. "I'm already lost."
For a moment Spock looks down at his hands, his fingers curled around the dull metal of the grenade, the countdown screen blinking, his own heartbeat so loud that that all other noise is washed away—
"Hurry!" Turel says, and as he did during the actual attack two months ago, Spock fills in the calculus of gain and loss, the probability that he can buy the safety of the people in the building with his own death—feels again the sorrow of leaving Nyota, thinks of the pain his mother will feel, and his father—
"I'm already lost," Turel says again, reaching for the grenade, and Spock considers how logical, how reasonable, it would be to give it to him, to let him carry it, cradling it in his arms like fragile china, ready to muffle the explosion with his own body—
He wills his hands to rise, to place the grenade in Turel's outstretched fingers, but he is unable to move—
With a gasp, he wakes.
Nyota is curled in the bed beside him, asleep, her hands tucked under her chin.
0124. He needs to rouse her so she can get back to her dorm before too much later.
He hadn't intended to fall asleep—is frankly surprised that he has. His exhaustion, then. Grading the entrance exams for new recruits has been more tiring than he imagined it would be, particularly since he has reread the young Russian applicant's tests twice, searching for the key to the unique answers there.
Unique and wrong, but fascinating. Clearly the young man is intelligent, even gifted—but his written explanations are a shambles, his Standard so garbled that twice Spock has asked Nyota to help decipher the meaning.
He looks over at her now, the way her breathing is slow and steady, untroubled. If he mentions the dream to her—tells her that it shatters his rest more frequently now that the pre-trial hearings are on the news vids almost daily—she will take his pain on as her own—that peculiar human trait that both endears her to him and makes him more cautious when they speak.
As if she can sense his thoughts, she blinks twice and is awake, her hand darting out almost immediately to touch him.
"What are you doing?" she says sleepily, and almost as a reflex, he slides his fingers onto hers, letting his mood slip across their link.
"What's happened?" she says, pushing herself upright on one elbow. For a moment he considers deflecting her question but it's too late. He should have been more careful.
"An old friend," he says, "or rather, a classmate. Turel. He was on the Soran."
"That Vulcan ship that was destroyed?"
"Disappeared," Spock corrects her. "Though in all likelihood, destroyed. My mother told me yesterday that his name was on the manifest."
Nyota is peering at him intently, her expression troubled, so he isn't surprised at her next question.
"Were you close?"
"Somewhat close in age," he says, knowing that is not what she is asking. He hurries on. "Turel was four years ahead of me in school, but we shared few interests. Sometimes he came to our house for tutoring, though in the end it did him little good."
"What do you mean?"
"Turel found school…challenging. Although he claimed he had no aptitude for most academic subjects, I believe his lack of interest was his real handicap. As a poet, he was exceptional. Or could have been, had he been allowed to continue his education."
Nyota lowers her head to the pillow and pulls the heavy duvet up around her shoulders.
"This sounds like a story that needs to be told," she says, and he pauses, considering.
Is it? Is that why Turel has resurfaced after all this time in his dreams? What was it the healer had told him the last time he saw her? That dreams were a way to deal with unresolved emotions?
On one hand it would be a relief to put his musings into words, to share them with Nyota. On the other hand, he doesn't want to burden her.
"Well?" she says, tugging his arm until he slides back down under the duvet beside her, resting his arm across her waist.
"It is late," he says, "and the story is long."
"It's not that late—" she protests, but he tilts his head to contradict her. "Well, okay, it's late, but I'm not tired."
"You are certain?"
"Hurry up already," she says, laughing, and he does.
X X X X X X
"K'hlor T'nia Turel," Stonn said loudly one afternoon on the exercise yard. "Look at me when I address you."
From the corner of the swept dirt rectangle that served as the sparring ring for the boys studying suus mahna, Spock watched Stonn advance toward Turel. Shorter than Turel and stockier, Stonn clenched his fists as he walked, reminding Spock of a belligerent Terran canine. Three of his friends followed a few feet behind him.
Around the yard, children paused in their conversations and turned to where Turel stood, his arms at his side, his expression impassive.
"What do you require?" Turel said evenly.
Glancing around, Stonn said, "The district-wide school comparisons have been posted. If we did not have to average in your performance, we would have been ranked top tier. As it is, our standing fell this term because of you."
"You have not answered my query," Turel said. "What do you require?" Murmurs of agreement—or amusement—rippled through the crowd. Spock began moving to the edge of the practice yard.
Stonn heard them as well. Raising his fist a fraction, he took another step toward Turel.
"What I require is that you leave this school."
"I assure you," Turel said, sounding reasonable and cool, "that nothing would please me more. However," he said, looking past Stonn's shoulder to the group of children in the yard, "you do not have the authority to ask me to leave."
Even from where he stood, Spock could see Turel's expression shift from neutral to something far more complex, more mischievous.
"However," the taller boy added, leaning forward as if to impart some quiet secret, "you could leave and enroll in a school that would better appreciate your contributions."
The wave of murmurs in the crowd grew louder. As Stonn rushed forward toward Turel, Spock turned toward the exit and saw Master Kisar entering the enclosure, carrying two practice lirpas with blunted blades.
"What does this mean?" the Vulcan suus mahna instructor asked, his voice rising above the noise in the yard. The scuffle in the corner died at once.
"Turel," Master Kisar said, "explain."
Lowering his gaze, Turel said, "A misunderstanding, Teacher."
Master Kisar looked around at Stonn and his circle.
"Very well," he said, handing Turel one of the practice lirpas. "Choose your sparring partner and begin."
No one moved. Here was Turel's chance to humiliate the bully who made Spock's and so many other children's lives miserable. With a lirpa in hand, a taller opponent had a decided advantage—everyone knew that.
Stonn evidently did, too. In the pale afternoon sunlight, he blanched.
"Stivak," Turel said, naming an older boy Spock didn't know well.
Spock's disappointment was almost palpable.
Stonn flashed an unmistakable look of triumph to the boys who followed him to the outer ring of the yard to observe.
The bullying, Spock knew, would continue.
Of course it had, against anyone who stood out in any way—not just from Stonn, and not so blatantly—but a persistent, wearying, enforced conformity that too few Vulcans questioned.
Indeed, the first time Spock heard the Earth maxim "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down," he was astonished that it had not originated on Vulcan.
His own reasons for being bullied were clear. Turel's were less so.
Tall and thin and from a family of agricultural workers, Turel was oddly self-contained compared to other 12-year-olds, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that his school uniform was worn, his hair disheveled, his parents absent during the ordinary quarterly assemblies to showcase the children's achievements.
In the lecture and debate classes he often faltered when called on, was remiss about completing assignments, and once was widely rumored to have fallen asleep at his desk. In the individualized learning spheres he moved slowly and deliberately through the assigned curriculum until he was doing the same lessons as Spock, despite being four years older.
That was when Amanda came into the picture.
Her work as an educator was usually more supervisory than practical, mentoring a group of trainee teachers each year, observing them as they taught in the research school and meeting regularly with them to discuss their pedagogical progress.
When Turel failed his second advanced calculus class, however, the headmaster at his school approached Amanda about finding a tutor for him.
One evening at dinner she broached the subject with Sybok, who at 16 was close to graduating, asking if he would be willing to spend several afternoons a week with Turel.
"You can meet here if it's more comfortable," she said. From across the table, Spock watched as Sybok dipped his spoon into the fori stew and took a careful bite.
For a moment Spock was afraid that Sybok would refuse his mother outright, offended somehow, or annoyed, perhaps leaving again for another extended stay with his aunt and his grandmother. Almost eight, Spock had lived with Sybok less time than they had lived apart.
As intuitive as Spock was about math—as easily as he picked it up and felt comfortable with it—Sybok was more so, filling old-fashioned parchment notebooks with his careful, detailed equations, diagrams, and original theorems. More than one mathematics instructor had urged him to spend his final year of school specializing in number theory, but Sybok had resisted, taking instead a wide range of subjects Spock heard Sarek dismiss as trivial.
"Music has mathematical applications," Sarek said, "but speculative fiction serves no purpose other than to distract you from your studies."
Sybok hadn't argued—but he hadn't agreed, either, and Spock sometimes overheard his mother and Sybok discussing the literature he was reading for school.
Sybok set his spoon down on the lip of his bowl as Amanda leaned forward slightly at the table.
"If you'd rather not—" she said, sounding disappointed, and Sybok shifted in his seat and glanced up at her. Before he could reply, however, Sarek spoke.
"Sybok needs to spend his free time preparing his application," he said. It was a topic that came up regularly—Sybok's apparent unwillingness to navigate the complexities of the Vulcan Science Academy application. More than once Sarek had spoken so sharply to his older son that Spock had retreated to his room, shutting the door against the brewing argument.
The mood around the dining table grew uneasy.
"I will speak to Turel tomorrow," Sybok said, looking up at Amanda. She darted a glance at Sarek. For an instance Spock saw annoyance darken his father's expression.
"Very well," he said, and Amanda nodded at Sybok.
"And maybe you can get started on your application in the meantime?"
Picking his spoon back up, Sybok quirked one corner of his mouth and said, "For you, absolutely."
Spock looked away quickly, but not before he saw the hurt in his father's face.
By the next week Turel was a regular fixture in the afternoons, either walking home with Sybok and Spock on the days when Amanda had the hovercar or catching a ride when Sybok was allowed to fly. On those latter occasions when Turel was with them, Spock noticed a decided increase in risk-taking on Sybok's part—sudden accelerations and spins, and once, a heady dash toward a large rock outcropping that made Spock gasp and Turel whoop out loud.
By some unspoken complicity, neither Turel nor Spock chastised Sybok for it nor mentioned it to anyone. If the truth were told, Spock realized later, he had found the danger stimulating. Worrisome, of course, but an undeniable rush.
The tutoring sessions themselves were quiet, steady, even boring—at least from Spock's point of view. Once he had finished his own school work, he would wander through the kitchen where Turel sat at the table, Sybok at his elbow prompting him through a series of lessons Spock himself could have taught. When Amanda was home she made tea and insisted that the boys stop for snacks, something she rarely did when Turel wasn't there.
"It's just that I don't know how much he gets to eat at home," she explained when Spock asked her about it. "He's much too thin."
That anyone might not get as much to eat as required was a mystifying idea. Surely his mother was mistaken.
On the first cold morning of winter when a hard frost covered the ground like furry lichen, Spock saw his mother do something else as surprising.
"I have a meeting this afternoon at the university," she told him as she served his breakfast, "so I want you to give this to Turel when he gets here."
On the sideboard she placed a folded cloak, one of Sybok's older ones. Spock recognized it at once, despite the fact that someone—presumably his mother—had removed the decorative family signet that normally scrolled down the front lapels.
"What's this doing here?" his mother asked that night when she came home and saw the cloak still on the sideboard. Sarek had already finished his evening soup and retired to his study, but Sybok and Spock lingered at the table—their half-eaten meal a silent referendum on their father's cooking.
Picking up the cloak, Amanda held it in front of her and said, "I told you to give this to Turel when he came for tutoring this afternoon. Did something happen?"
From the corner of his eye, Spock saw Sybok look pointedly down at the table. An evasion? Spock couldn't imagine why.
"Turel was already wearing a cloak," Spock said promptly. "I saw no need for him to have another."
"That wasn't your decision to make!" Amanda said, an unmistakable note of anger in her voice. "Turel's cloak is too small for someone his height, and it's too torn to be mended."
"But Mother," Spock said, baffled, "this cloak belongs to Sybok."
"He has two others!" Amanda said. "He doesn't mind giving this one away!"
She gathered up the cloak in her arms and stormed out of the kitchen. Spock turned to Sybok for an explanation.
"You should have done what she told you, little brother," Sybok said, shrugging his shoulders. "Now you and I are both in hot water."
This was one of Amanda's metaphors that had inadvertent comical overtones for Vulcans who were almost never too hot and for whom water was a luxury—but rather than being amused as he usually was when Sybok used it, Spock frowned.
"You did nothing wrong," he said, sliding his fingers around his bowl as he stood up. "I will tell Mother that the fault was mine alone."
Sybok's hand snaked out and grabbed Spock's tunic playfully, almost causing him to drop his soup bowl.
"Do not worry yourself," Sybok said, meeting Spock's eyes before letting him go. It was the kind of tussle—and the reassuring words—that Spock missed most when Sybok was away too long at his aunt's house.
In some part of his brain, Spock was always bracing himself for the moments—irregular and unwanted—when he would pass by Sybok's room and see him packing for an extended stay with his mother's family.
And Spock flinched—not physically, but psychologically, emotionally—whenever the tensions between his brother and his father surfaced, the discord in the family bond like a gnawing, relentless pain in his chest.
If his mother was angry, too—would Sybok decide to leave for good? The thought was too much to bear.
In spite of Sybok's words, Spock walked down the corridor to his mother's bedroom and tapped lightly at her door.
It opened at once, his mother still holding the folded cloak.
"I apologize," Spock said, using the phrase Sybok had taught him to say when Amanda showed visible signs of being irritated. "Please forgive me."
And also as Sybok had coached him, he looked down at the ground for a beat before daring to lift his gaze.
To his relief, his mother seemed mollified. He heard her sigh and she reached out to ruffle his hair, something he tolerated with as good a grace as he muster rather than give her reason to take offense again.
"I know this is hard to understand," she began, and Spock was suddenly wary, alerted by the distress in her tone, "but Turel doesn't have all the advantages you have. We have a responsibility to help him when we can."
Frowning, Spock said, "But Turel's parents are responsible for him, not you and Father."
Amanda sighed and stepped over to the bed, perching on the edge and motioning to him to sit beside her.
"That's true," she said. "But if you know that Turel is going hungry because his parents either can't or won't feed him, would you refuse him something to eat if you had something to share? Or that extra cloak? Through no fault of his own, Turel has to wear a cloak that doesn't fit him. I don't know why. But for me it doesn't matter. He needs one and we have an extra. The kind thing—the moral thing—to do is to include him in our circle of concern."
Spock said nothing, not willing to upset his mother again. She wasn't speaking logically or even just emotionally, but with a conviction and forcefulness that was puzzling.
The next afternoon when Turel sat with Sybok struggling to solve what anyone could see was a simple derivative, Spock pulled out a platter of sliced kaasa and set it on the table. Sybok sent some message with his eyes, though Spock wasn't quite sure what it was. Surprise? No, approval.
"If you are still hungry," Spock said to Turel, "there is more in the cooler."
An odd expression flashed across Turel's normally placid face.
"I am not in need of sustenance," he said, his cheeks flushing.
"My mother says that you exhibit signs of being underweight," Spock said. To his astonishment, Turel stood up so suddenly that his chair flipped over backward. Without a word he rushed from the kitchen. A moment later, the front door slammed.
When Amanda arrived home later that afternoon, Spock met her at the door and recounted what had happened.
"You embarrassed him," she said as she put away the groceries she carried in. "I know you meant well, but you offended his dignity."
"But if he needs food," Spock argued, "he should be willing to accept it."
"Food is only part of what he needs," she said, handing Spock some asparagus-like vegetables to place in the stasis unit. "He also needs to be treated with respect."
"I was not disrespectful," Spock said, shocked at his mother's suggestion. He began to feel a tendril of resentment toward Turel—it was concern for his well-being, after all, that had gotten Spock in trouble.
"No," Amanda said, pausing long enough to look at him closely, "I know you weren't."
That night after the evening meal, she came into Spock's room where he was reclining on his bed reading and said, "I have a job for you."
Usually what his mother called a job was some bit of housework that she could have performed on her own if so inclined—watering the garden, dusting the sitting room—so Spock set his reader down and prepared to stand up. His mother stopped him with a wave of her hand.
"No," she said, "stay there. I need you to think of something Turel does better than anyone else—"
She held her hand up as he started to protest that Turel, in fact, did nothing well at all, much less better than his peers.
"Everyone has something they do well. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean Turel doesn't excel at something," she said. "You figure out what."
"That will require observing him closely," Spock said, and his mother said, "Exactly," as she left his room, shutting the door behind her.
Observing Turel was harder than Spock thought it would be. They shared no lecture sessions together, and most of the time Turel worked alone in a practice sphere. Master Kisar had recently pulled out the 7 and 8 year olds for additional physical training before their upcoming kahs-wans, leaving Turel and Stonn and the older children to organize their own sparring matches.
That left only the mid-day break—and although most of the children chose to eat and socialize then, Spock usually played chess with the elderly grandmaster, Truvik, or wandered alone in the herbarium. Occasionally he ran into Turel outside in the garden, and sure enough, the next day he found the older boy there sitting on a bench, a PADD and stylus in his hand.
"I wish to apologize for upsetting you yesterday," Spock said, dimly aware that Turel might be further insulted by being called out being upset, for exhibiting emotion. Turel, however, looked unconcerned.
"I was not upset," he said, returning his attention to his PADD. It was such a fabrication that for a moment, Spock wasn't sure how to proceed. Should he refute the obvious lie? Or would it be better to pretend that he believed it, as a way to avoid embarrassing Turel further?
But wouldn't such a pretense be a lie in itself?
As Spock faltered, not knowing what to say, Turel glanced back up at him.
"Or to be more precise," Turel said, "I am not upset now. Do not concern yourself further."
Again Spock paused. His mother had declared Turel part of her circle of concern—which required action on his part, no matter what Turel said.
"Then you will resume the tutorials with Sybok?" he asked, and Turel nodded.
Feeling a rush of relief, Spock said, "My mother will be glad," to which Turel gave him an odd look.
Turning to head back to the school building, Spock stopped and said, "Would you care for a game of chess? Master Truvik keeps a set in his office."
Again the odd expression Spock couldn't identify rippled across Turel's face—not quite a scowl but close enough to put Spock on guard.
Then just as suddenly, Turel's eyes brightened and he said, "You would not want to play chess with me. I am quite deficient in that area."
"Indeed," Spock said, and then seeing an opportunity to follow his mother's instructions, he hurried on. "What are you skilled at doing?"
This time Turel looked amused.
"I am not skilled at much," he said, and Spock said, "My mother says everyone is skilled at something."
"Your mother—" Turel began, and Spock felt his heart leap into his throat. He knew what the other boys said about his mother when they were sure he would overhear them. He couldn't imagine what they said about her when he was out of their hearing. Unconsciously he clenched his fists at his side.
"—has the most interesting ideas," Turel said.
Did she? Spock had never thought about it before. Even now he had trouble seeing her objectively, as anyone other than the woman who both exasperated him and soothed him, often in the same moment.
"She is just a teacher," Spock said, and Turel narrowed his gaze, hunched his shoulder, and turned back to his PADD, blocking Spock from his field of vision.
A dismissal, clearly, though Spock couldn't see what he had done to deserve it.
The next day he tried again. As he had the day before, Turel sat under a small tree at the far end of the garden. When Spock walked up, Turel glanced up briefly and then continued writing on his PADD.
Asking Turel directly about his abilities had not gotten him the information his mother requested. Another approach was called for.
"Are you doing school work?" he asked, and Turel shook his head but didn't look up. "May I inquire as to what you are doing?"
Because he was watching him so carefully, Spock saw something he would have missed otherwise. Turel closed his eyes briefly before looking back at Spock—almost as if he was calling on some inner resource before he spoke. When he did speak, his words were characteristically slow and deliberate.
"You would not find it interesting," Turel said.
Spock was at a loss as to how to respond. Turel didn't know him well enough to be able to judge what he would and would not find interesting. He told Turel so.
"Very well," Turel said. "Although I will be surprised if I am wrong. Here."
With a sudden motion, he handed the PADD to Spock. Tilting the screen to minimize the glare from the overhead sunlight, Spock saw a slender row of words written in Turel's spidery scrawl.
"A poem," Spock said in sudden understanding. Turel nodded and Spock looked back to the PADD, reading.
"It is a description of the desert," Spock said in a moment, handing the PADD back to Turel.
"Is that all?" Turel said, the same mischievous look on his face Spock had noted the afternoon Stonn goaded him in the exercise yard.
"There are 26 words arranged in nine lines."
Turel didn't bother to hide his amusement.
"You counted them!"
Faintly Spock felt that Turel was gently mocking him, that he was missing some critical piece of information. That the poem was a description of the desert was self-evident. It mentioned heat, wilted plants, a dry riverbed, thirst.
He gave Turel a quizzical look.
"It is a poem, Spock," Turel said with the same measured tone the teachers used with the slowest students. Spock was mortified. "It speaks of many things at once."
"That is neither logical nor efficient," Spock said quickly. "And it could lead to misunderstanding."
"It is not an equation," Turel said. "It can have more than one meaning and still be correct."
That evening as his mother was preparing to retire to her bedroom, Spock told her about the confusing conversation with Turel. After he recited Turel's poem for her, Amanda was quiet—either because she was thoughtful or distressed; Spock wasn't sure which.
Finally she sighed and said, "It's a very good poem, but a sad one," and Spock resisted the urge to ask her to explain. Sometimes when his mother was quiet this way, she became irritated with him when he talked.
Sybok wasn't much help, either. When Spock recited the poem for him and told him that Amanda had pronounced it sad, Sybok agreed.
"But it is about the desert," Spock protested, to which Sybok said, "It is about Turel."
"Spock tells me that you are a gifted poet," Amanda said the next time Turel came to the house for a tutorial. She darted a warning glance at Spock just as he was about to contradict her. Turel looked up in surprise at her words, blinking and glancing down at the cup of tea she placed in front of him. "I would enjoy reading some of your poems," she added, and Spock saw Turel blink again.
"Spock is mistaken," Turel said. "I am not a good poet."
"Spock is rarely mistaken about anything," Amanda said, grinning at Spock to let him know he was being chaffed. "But why don't you let me read them so I can decide for myself."
From then on whenever Turel came over in the afternoons, Amanda made a point of being home, ready with a snack for the boys, taking time to chat with Turel about his day, reading his poetry and making suggestions.
At some level Spock found her attention to Turel—or rather, the loss of her attention to him—annoying, something he hardly confessed to himself.
Not long afterwards, Sybok and his father quarreled so bitterly that Sybok left home for good, abandoning any plans to apply to the VSA. For weeks the family grieved, individually and collectively, like people in shock, which, of course, they were.
At first Amanda tried to press Spock into tutoring Turel but his instruction was perfunctory, his resentment of Turel barely contained. Soon Turel dropped out of the sessions and then out of school, saying his parents needed him on their farm.
And that was the last time Spock thought about him—until his mother called with the news that Turel had been a passenger on the Soran when it disappeared into the Adriana nebula, everyone aboard presumed lost.
X X X X
"How very sad," Nyota says as Spock finishes his story, tracing her finger along his arm, apparently unaware of the effect her touch has on him. He rolls to the side to hide his arousal and says, "0157."
"I know," she sighs, slipping out of the bed and bending down to pick up her hastily discarded uniform. With another sigh she tugs on the high-necked sweater and slides her arms into the jumper.
With a start he realizes that he has been lying immobile, watching her, instead of dressing so he can walk her back across campus.
As she zips up her boots he dresses quickly and is ready by the time she is at the door.
"You don't have to," she says, and for a moment he considers. She's certainly capable of walking herself back to her dorm safely—and not just because the campus is enclosed. When the corps' physical training competition results were posted last week, Nyota scored third in the overall fitness assessments.
If he stays here in his apartment, he can check the news vids for information about the Soran, can send notes to his contacts in the Beta Quadrant asking for real time updates on the search and rescue operations underway, can find a few moments to sit quietly in front of his asenoi and plumb the unexpected sorrow he feels, the sense of loss, his deepening conviction that the ship won't be found—or if it is, survivors won't be.
If he stays here he can finish marking the entrance examinations, maybe even going over the Russian applicant's physics essay again. How frustrating not to be able to interview the young man personally. This written language barrier, Spock suspects, is hiding an intellect worth cultivating at the Academy.
He might be able to get permission from Dean Richardson to travel to London next week to the Federation Worlds' Chess Championship; the Russian applicant is scheduled to compete.
On the other hand, such a trip is contingent on the pre-trial hearings in Leiden where he and Captain Pike will testify in a few days. Working out a visit to London at the same time is problematic, impractical. The easiest course of action is to focus on the hearings and not concern himself further with a single struggling applicant.
Mr. Chekov can, after all, reapply at a later time if he is truly committed to Starfleet.
That's decided, then.
Except…
"I want to," he says, answering Nyota's implied question and his own internal musings, his single phrase doing double duty.
The way a poem can speak of more than one thing at a time, Spock thinks.
It has taken him many years and much poetry to have learned this.
Clearly pleased, Nyota leans into him and gives him a kiss before they walk out into the dark, and that, too, is a poem.
A/N: The bombing of the Feynman Conference is told in "The Interview" and "People Will Say." Spock's visit to London to offer Chekov another chance to apply to the Academy is in "Crossing the Equator."
This chapter deviates slightly in the center section—instead of Amanda telling her own story there, 8 year old Spock is our witness.
As always, thank you for reading, and when you leave a review, you keep me writing.