Chapter 9
Spock is eleven years old, and he knows when his mother is lying.
"It is not logical to interrupt my studies at this time," he repeats.
"Yes, dear," says his mother from deep inside his closet, in the voice she uses when she's not really listening. "It's only for a few days."
"The duration of the interruption is of little consequence, Mother," he says. He is supposed to be folding the robes that she has laid out on his bed, but, since the underlying enterprise is manifestly without logic, it follows that it would be illogical to expend energy that's better diverted to explaining to Amanda why he can't simply up and leave for a vacation of indeterminate length at his grandparents' house. "It is the fact of the interruption itself that will be traumatic to the learning arc." She knows this. He knows she knows this.
Amanda steps out of the closet with three tunics, assorted undergarments, and a travelling cloak slung over her arm and rolls her eyes in impatience when she sees him sitting placidly on his bed, hands folded in his lap.
"I asked you to pack these, Spock!" she says, crossing quickly to his side and decanting layers of clothing onto his mattress. They settle into a neat fabric-strata with a billowing puff of must-scented air.
"Yes, Mother," he says, but makes no move to begin.
Amanda moves like a Terran swan – stillness and economy of motion belying a furiously-working mind and a capacity for industry entirely at odds with the face she presents to the world at large. This makes it all the more disjunctive when extreme emotion disrupts her typical air of unruffled contentment – like now, when her eyes widen and her mouth tightens into a thin line of anger.
"It was not a request, Spock!" she snaps. "You know better than to disobey me. Do it now!"
"But, Mother – " he begins, but she cuts him off.
"No 'buts'! You don't have to like it. You don't even have to understand it. You just do it, Spock, do you understand me?"
He has never seen her angry. He has overheard whispered arguments with his father – generally concerning some aspect of Spock's development and parenting requirements – and he's seen her face glaze with the icy, frozen smile that she reserves for the parents of children who torment him, when they are foolish enough to underestimate the Human wife of the Terran Ambassador and her capacity for maternal defence. Sarek seems to spend half his life at some level of disappointment with his son, but Amanda has never lost her temper in his presence. If he didn't know she was lying before, he's certain of it now.
He offers a meek, "Yes, Mother," and sets to folding his robes.
-o-o-o-
She doesn't travel with him. Taaval takes him to the transport station, and Spock finds that his controls are faltering. He has spent enough time on Earth to understand that a full Human boy of his age might be tempted to give in to tears at this point, so it's some kind of grim satisfaction that the Vulcan in him is dominant, even today, and that Taaval, who shares no bond with his employer's son, cannot see the struggle that rages behind Spock's impassive eyes.
A porter takes his trunk at the gates, and Spock turns to his companion, sucking in a breath that puffs out his chest and straightens his spine, buying him perhaps half an inch of extra height. It's decorative rather than demonstrative, but it helps to settle his tremulous anxiety as he says, "Please let my parents know that I will communicate with them on my arrival at the house of Skon and T'Rama."
But Taaval simply inclines his head and says, "I will be receiving all communications on your parents' behalf, Spock. I will be glad to know of your safe arrival."
Taaval is Sarek's man, and even at eleven Spock has not yet decided where he sits on the complicated continuum of friend to enemy. If he has an opinion on the Ambassador's choice of wife or his half-breed son, he's far too clever to let it show. Spock swallows his rising agitation and says, "Please give them my regards."
Taaval nods again and raises his hand in the ta'al. Spock mirrors the gesture, and it takes some considerable effort to ensure that his fingers do not shake.
-o-o-o-
While Skon is occupied at the Academy in ShiKahr, T'Rama typically absents herself to their summer home outside Kir, close to the shores of the Thanar Sea. It is a modest, comfortable villa, cooled by the ocean winds and built around a pleasant, leafy courtyard in which she spends at least half of her day in pursuit of Golic meditation. After a brief interview on his arrival, Spock has found himself conscripted to a mat by her side for four hours of every day; clearly, whatever she found in the meld has convinced her that his parents are woefully remiss in their instructions in the Vulcan disciplines.
He has no logical objection. The courtyard is almost completely canopied by the heavy, spreading branches of four ancient trees, and the sunlight that streaks through their leaf-blanket is tepid, dilute, like a high summer day in San Francisco. Salt breezes sweeten the air and the sand beneath his mat is comfortably warm, like a pot that has been left in the morning sun. And his grandmother is easy company – disturbed, perhaps, by the dissolution of traditional values in the younger generation, and possessed of priorities that are not precisely consonant with Spock's scientific leanings, but quiet and undemanding, and not noticeably inconvenienced by his company. His objection, therefore, is not logical; it is emotional.
Meditation is ointment to his troubled mind, but a true kohl-tor is impossible to achieve in his current state, and hours of silence and struggle are entirely too conducive to a runaway thought-train of panic. He made the promised call to his home immediately upon arrival, and to his grandmother's tight-lipped disapproval, and Taaval was blandly impassive, thanking him for his trouble and assuring him that it would comfort his parents to hear of his safe arrival, while making no actual promise to convey the news. Since then, Spock has attempted to convince T'Rama on four separate occasions to allow him to try again, and she has acceded once, this morning, and then only hesitantly. Taaval thanked him again for his efforts and dodged every question about his parents' presence, welfare and health, before nodding unctuously and signing off before Spock could reciprocate the closing salutation.
It has been five days since Spock was unceremoniously ejected from his home. Even accounting for the vagaries of Standard, he is certain that constitutes more than a few, and yet there has been no mention of making arrangements for his return. His studies are suffering and, worse, he can no longer suppress the niggling doubt that there is no home for him to return to. Why else the secrecy?
"Spock," says T'Rama by his side, "You will never achieve s'thaupi if you continue to fidget so. Be still."
He stomps on the billowing adrenal spike that her sudden words have startled out of his restless brain and says, "I apologize, Grandmother."
"Apologies are unnecessary. Stillness is necessary. Be silent, and be still."
Invisible above the tree-blanket, marine birds trace their path on soaring thermals in the rise and fall of their mournful cries. He forces his Self inside, into the quiet place of darkness and knowledge, and reaches for peace even as logic shakes its metaphorical head and whispers that peace cannot be grasped at, that it shrinks from the clutch of desperation. In this shadowed anteroom, the meditative trance is a locked door for which he has no key, but thoughts play like an ancient Terran film strip across the whitewashed walls of his mind. He sees the night that he returned from his abortive pre-kahs wan adventure, the night that he almost died, and he sees his mother's face: white and tightly-drawn as she processes the knowledge of her almost-loss. Fear is instinct rather than pure emotion; it's a life-sustaining state of being, and it is simply the external manifestations and their restrictive chokehold that the Vulcan way seeks to repress. He understands fear well enough, and it is fear that inscribes the bloodless wash of grey across his mother's features that night.
It was fear he saw behind her eyes as she hurried him out the door five days ago.
Meditation spits him violently back into the lazy sunlight of the courtyard, gasping for breath, and his spine sags his neck forward, crushing his head towards his chest.
"Spock!" says T'Rama sharply, and then, more evenly, "Spock?"
For a moment he cannot speak, and he turns his head towards her and knows that he stares at her with Human eyes, in which she reads entirely too much. She stands abruptly in one easy, fluid motion and he hears the soft clip of her footsteps on flagstones as she disappears into the house. He is left alone in the shade of the in-du-ka, beating ineffectually at a hurricane of panic and confusion, belly and cheeks burning with a furious shame.
Why was she afraid? Why was she afraid?
His thoughts are spinning so riotously that he does not hear his grandmother's return until she is almost behind him, stepping onto the sand with a brittle crunch and kneeling elegantly beside him. "Drink this," she says, pressing an earthenware beaker into his line of sight and folding her hands neatly into her lap as he takes it from her and risks raising his head a fraction.
He doesn't ask what it is, simply raises it to his lips and tastes cold water, sweet and freshly pumped from the villa's underground spring. "Thank you, Grandmother," he says.
"I wonder what your instructors are teaching you," she says. "A simple kohl-tor ought not to be so difficult to achieve at your age."
He expects her to make some reference to his lineage. It's what his tutors would do at this point. But she only fixes him with an unwavering stare – a stare that has, sadly, passed unaltered to his father and has been regularly employed in lieu of words in those long, uncomfortable interviews that inevitably follow any kind of misdeed – and waits for him to speak.
He says, "I was unable to achieve the requisite level of mental clarity."
"That much was obvious," she says. "Is your mind troubled, Spock?"
Amanda has asked him the same question more times than he can count, and the sudden association forces another frantic wave of agitation to swirl in his belly. But he is gaining control of himself at last, and he says, "I am experiencing concern as to the welfare of my parents."
"Your parents are well, Spock," she says. "You must learn to trust those whose knowledge eclipses yours."
He hesitates. "Perhaps if I might share in that knowledge…?"
"One day," she says. "For now, you must only trust." She stands abruptly, and when he tilts his head to follow her, her face is haloed by a shaft of molten white sunlight. "Come. There is clearly nothing to be gained by pursuing tvi-sochya this morning. We will turn to your studies for now."
-o-o-o-
Samaris is a young woman from the coastal village of S'Sharan V'Kir-kal, the closest township to his grandparents' villa, and she arrives in the evenings to help T'Rama with those tasks that her advancing age has complicated. Her second daughter is only months older than Spock, so she has always tended to treat him as though he were an extension of her own family, watching him with the inscrutable, all-seeing eye of Vulcan matriarchy. It ought to be cloistering and offensive, but instead it's oddly reassuring. She knocks on his door in the hours after dinner and says, "Your mother has arrived from ShiKahr, Spock. Your grandmother is talking to her now."
For a moment he can't properly process the words, and then joy spikes in his chest and lifts him from his seat before he's aware that he's moving. Samaris watches impassively as he scrambles to compose himself, straightening his back and folding his hands in front of him, viciously suppressing a rising tide of emotion. "Thank you," he says. "In which room is my mother waiting?"
"They are in Madam's study," she says. "I am instructed to supervise your packing."
It's clearly an injunction against interrupting his elders, but Samaris says nothing as he strides rapidly across the room and passes her in the doorway. She swivels to follow his movement and raises a meaningful eyebrow as he hesitates in the corridor.
"I will return shortly," he says, stripping – with effort – every interrogative inflection from his tone so that it doesn't sound as though he's asking permission. "I wish to greet my mother first."
She allows her silence to register her disapproval for one long moment, and then nods. "Quickly, please. There is much to do."
It is difficult to suppress the urge to tear haphazardly along the short corridor and down the stairs. His grandmother's study is close to the main entrance and he sees from the lobby that the door is closed, but as he approaches and raises his hand to knock he hears T'Rama's voice through the heavy panelling.
"You are clearly insufficiently recovered for travel, Amanda," she says. "You ought to have rested another night."
"I am well enough, thank you," is her answer, and the elation that threatened to expose him a moment earlier skips painfully again against his heart. It is her. It is her. He grips his hands tightly behind his back, feeling his fingernails bite deeply into his palms, and acknowledges at last the prickling dread that had wondered if he would ever hear that voice again.
"There is nothing to be gained in risking your health," says his grandmother now. "Spock is welcome to remain for as long as necessary."
A small, self-deprecating laugh. It's not likely to go over well with T'Rama. Amanda says, "I wanted to see him."
There is a significant pause, and Spock can imagine the look on his grandmother's face. She says, slowly, "This is more difficult for you, Amanda. The risks to your wellbeing are… immoderate. I am surprised Sarek agreed to your departure."
Tightly: "He did not."
"You ought not to treat these matters so lightly. Your Human physiology is not compatible with…"
"We have been married for twelve years, T'Rama. It is sufficiently compatible."
In the loaded silence that follows, Spock is abruptly aware that he is eavesdropping. Quickly, he raises his hand and knocks on the door. The pause that follows is so pronounced he can practically feel the consternation from inside the room.
At length, T'Rama's voice calls, "Enter."
Amanda is seated in the occasional chair by the door, while T'Rama stands by the window, framed by the setting sun. "Spock," she says as Amanda stands quickly and visibly suppresses the urge to run to her son and wrap her arms around him. "I sent Samaris to help you pack. Why are you not upstairs?"
"Forgive me, Grandmother," he says. "I wished to greet my mother."
A beatific smile splits Amanda's face and she clasps her hands in front of her chest, manifestly as a last resort. She says, "Spock. It's so good to see you."
He turns towards her, and registers her appearance for the first time. Amanda has always been small, sparsely proportioned and almost bird-like against the strong, robust lines of her Vulcan contemporaries. He has always been aware of her relative fragility, and he has seen the way his father instinctively hovers close by her side, as though he can surround her with his superior strength like a forcefield. But five days' absence has stripped the healthy glow from her skin and she stands awkwardly, as though her body is trying to bend in on itself. Her eyes are bright, but too-bright, and there is something buried behind them that she doesn't want him to see.
The knowledge strikes him, violent and visceral as a punch: she is in pain.
"Mother…" he says, and he sees the exact moment she realizes that he knows. The smile wilts on her face.
"I've come to take you home, dear," she says.
"Amanda, please sit," says T'Rama. "Spock, you should be packing."
His mother lowers herself back into her chair with a valiant effort at insouciance, but her movements are too practiced, too pronounced, too performative, and he does not miss the tiny grimace that escapes her before she can suppress it. Spock says, "Mother, are you unwell?"
"No, dear," she says, and turns a smile on him that is very nearly convincing. "Just a little tired. Run along and do as your grandmother says."
"Is my father well?" he says quickly, on the crest of a sudden wave of nameless fear.
"He's well, dear," she says. "He's looking forward to seeing you."
"Spock!" says T'Rama sharply. He glances up, and she's using the Stare.
"Yes, Grandmother," he says softly.
"I'll be waiting right here," says Amanda. "It's so good to see you, dear."
Spock leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind him, and waits for a moment in the corridor outside. But they have either finished speaking or else they distrust his easy acquiescence, because no sound escapes the electric silence in the room beyond.
Something is wrong; that much is clear. He turns and crosses to the stairs, but a lingering unease is worrying a hole in his belly and spreading little tendrils of doubt into his disordered thoughts. For now, there is only confusion, but in years to come, Spock will look back at this moment and realize that this is the first time he begins to understand that his parents' marriage is a terrible mistake.