Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (41 page)

She understood why he had lurked in the grove during the funeral, and why he had not shown himself. She did not understand why he was still here.

“Get out of here,” she said. “Why don’t you just go home?”

His shoulders slumped. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m AWOL, for one thing…and I used up all my money getting here. I don’t know how to get back.”

“That shows great foresight,” Dannan said. “Is that what they teach you at the Academy these days?” She sighed. “You’d better come with me.”

Dannan took Grenni back to her mother’s house, wondering what the devil to do with him.

Uncle Montgomery had not moved from his place in the corner when Dannan returned, and the door to the pottery studio still was closed.

“I believe you know this gentleman,” Dannan said sarcastically to her uncle as Grenni followed her into the living room. “He came…for Peter’s funeral.”

Uncle Montgomery greeted Grenni with every indication of pleasure and gratitude for his presence.

“ ’Tis good o’ ye to come pay thy respects to our bairn—”

“Stop it!” Grenni cried. “Why do you keep being so nice to me? You know where my station was—you must know Pres is dead because of me!”

Scott stared at him.

“You know he was the only one in our section who held his post! I was cadet commander, I should have ordered him out of danger!”

“He’d no’ ha’ gone,” Scott said.

“Then neither should I.”

“Perhaps not,” Scott said. “Then we would have two funerals to attend today, instead o’ one.” He rose and approached the boy, took him by the shoulders, and looked him in the eye. “Dinna get me wrong, boy. Ye did a cowardly thing. Now ye must decide if ye are fit for the career ye’ve chosen. If this is thy character—”

“It isn’t!” Grenni said. “I don’t know what happened—I don’t understand why it happened. I never did anything like that before in my life!”

Montgomery Scott nodded. “Ye hadna been properly prepared for what we faced. ’Tis at least as much my fault.”

“Are you saying—you forgive me?”

“Aye.”

Grenni looked at Dannan. “Do you forgive me too, Commander?”

“Not bloody likely,” Dannan said.

Her uncle and the cadet both looked at her, shocked.

“Dannan—” her uncle said, raising his voice in protest.

“But I’m sorry!” Grenni cried. “I didn’t mean it! If I could make it up—”

“Make it up? Make up for the death of my brother?” Her voice was cold with contempt. “I don’t think so.”

“I know there’s nothing I can do, that’s what makes it so awful—”

“Ye dinna want to be vengeful, Dannan,” her uncle said.

“No,” she said, surprised to find that vengeance was not what she wanted. “You’re right, Uncle. But so are you, Cadet. There’s nothing you can do….”

Uncle Montgomery stood up angrily. “Ye always were a cold-hearted little—”

“…and that’s what makes it so hard,” Dannan said.

Her uncle put his arm over the boy’s shoulders. “Come along, Cadet. ’Tis time to go home.” He sent one quick glare at Dannan. “Tell thy mother farewell, I canna wait any longer for her to come out.”

He and Grenni left the house. A moment later Dannan heard the electric sparkle of a transporter beam. The window next to the front door glowed briefly, and then turned dark again.

Jim Kirk stared out the window of his apartment at the night and at the bridges on the bay, lines of light leading out of and into an infinity of fog. Reflections overlaid the distant city. Jim turned to them and raised his glass.

“To absent friends,” he said.

Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu raised their glasses in response. They all drank.

“Admiral, is it certain?” Hikaru said. “What’s going to happen to the
Enterprise—?
”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s to be decommissioned.”

“Will we get another ship?” Pavel said.

We?
Jim thought.
Is there a “we” anymore? The ship to be dismantled, the crew dispersed, McCoy in shock and doped to the gills, and…Spock dead.

“I can’t get an answer,” he said. “Starfleet is up to its brass in galactic conference. No one has time for those who only stand…and wait.”

“How is Doctor McCoy, sir?” Uhura said.

“That’s the ‘good’ news,” Jim said dryly. “He’s home in bed, full of tranquilizers. He promised me he’d
stay
there. They say it’s exhaustion.” He sighed. “We’ll see.”

His doorbell chimed.

“Ah,” Jim said. “It must be Mister Scott, fresh from the world of transwarp drive. Come!”

The door responded to his voice and whirred open.

Expecting Scott, Jim started at the sight of a much taller figure standing cloaked and hooded in a Vulcan robe, half hidden by the shadows in his foyer. Jim felt panic brush against him, bringing the fear of madness. He thought for an instant that, like Leonard McCoy, he was beginning to perceive the ghost of Spock in every patch of darkness, in dreams and wakefulness alike.

The figure reached up and drew back its hood.

“Sarek!” Jim exclaimed.

Ambassador Sarek strode into the light. He looked as he did the first time Jim had met him, well over a decade before. He had not aged in that time. He would by now, Jim reflected, be nearly one hundred twenty years old. He looked like a vigorous man of middle age, which, of course, was precisely what he was. But a Vulcan of middle age, not a human being. He had many years left to look forward to, just as Spock, his son, should have had over a century.

“Ambassador,” Jim said, feeling flustered, “I—I had no idea you were on Earth…” His words trailed off. Sarek said nothing. “You know my officers, I believe,” Kirk said.

Sarek showed no inclination to acknowledge the others. He moved to the window and stared out, his back to the room.

“I will speak with you alone, Kirk,” he said.

Kirk turned toward his friends. They regarded him with questioning expressions, each clearly uneasy about leaving him alone in Sarek’s intimidating presence.

“Uhura, Pavel, Hikaru—perhaps we’d better get together again another evening.” Kirk put into his tone a confidence of which he was far from certain. With a gesture he silenced Pavel’s hotheaded objection before it started; he shook Hikaru’s hand, appreciating his equanimity, and he returned Uhura’s embrace as he showed his three compatriots to the door.

“We’re here,” she said, “when you need us.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’m grateful.”

He let them out, watched the door close behind them, and turned back to Sarek with considerable apprehension.

Sarek remained at the window, silhouetted black against black. Kirk approached him. He stopped a pace behind him, and the silence stretched on.

“How…is Amanda, sir?” Kirk asked.

“She is a human being, Kirk. Consequently, she is in mourning for our son. She is on Vulcan.”

“Sarek, I’m bound here to testify, or I would have come to Vulcan, to express my deepest sympathies. To her,
and
to you—”

Sarek cut off Kirk’s explanation and his sympathy with a peremptory gesture. “Spare me your platitudes, Kirk. I have been to your government. I have seen the Genesis information, and your own report.”

“Then you know how bravely your son met his death.”

“ ‘Met his death’?” Sarek faced Kirk, and the cold expressionlessness of his eyes was more powerful than any grief or fury. “How could you, who claim to be his friend, assume that? Why did you not bring him back to Vulcan?”

“Because he asked me not to!” Kirk said, rising to the provocation.

“He
asked
you not to? I find that unlikely in the extreme.”

Sarek stopped just short of calling Kirk a liar, which did not serve to improve the admiral’s temper.

“His will states quite clearly that he did not wish to be returned to Vulcan, should he die in the service of Starfleet. You can view it—I’ll even give you his serial number.”

“I am aware of his serial number,” Sarek said with contempt. “I am also aware that Starfleet regulations specifically require that any Vulcan’s body be returned to the homeworld. Surely this would override the dictates of a will.”

“The trivial personal wishes of an individual?” Kirk did not give Sarek a chance to reply to his barb. “I’ll tell you why I followed Spock’s request rather than the rules of Starfleet,” he said bitterly. “It’s because in all the years I knew Spock, never once did you or any Vulcan treat him with the respect and the regard that he deserved. You never even treated him with the simple courtesy one sentient being owes another. He spent his life living up to Vulcan ideals—and he came a whole hell of a lot closer to succeeding than a lot of Vulcans I’ve met. But he made one choice of his own—Starfleet instead of the Vulcan Academy—and you cut him off!”

He stopped to catch his breath.

“My son and I resolved our disagreement on that subject many years ago, Kirk,” Sarek said mildly.

Kirk ignored the overture. “For nearly twenty years I watched him endure the slights and the subtle bigotry of Vulcans! When he died, I was damned if I would take him back to Vulcan and give him over to you so you could put him in the ground and wash your hands of him! He deserved a hero’s burial and that’s what I gave him—the fires of space!” He stopped, his anger burned to ashes, yet he thought,
And I can think of a few dogs I would have liked to put at his feet.

Sarek behaved as if Kirk’s outburst had never occurred, as if he believed that by refusing to acknowledge it, he caused it not to exist.

“Why did you leave him behind? Spock trusted you. You denied him his
future.
”

Jim felt entirely off balance and defensive. He had no idea what Sarek was talking about. If Kirk had hoped to accomplish anything by exposing to Sarek the anger he had built up over the years, he had failed, miserably, spectacularly, completely.

“I—I saw no future!”

“You missed the point, then and now. Only his body was in death, Kirk. And
you
were the last one to be with him.”

“Yes, I was…”
My gods,
Jim thought,
is Sarek trying to tell me that if I had behaved differently—Spock might still be alive?

“Then you must have known that you should have come with him back to Vulcan.”

“But—why?”

“Because he asked you to! He entrusted you with…with his very essence, with everything that was not of his body. He asked you to bring him to us, and to bring that which he gave you, his
katra,
his living spirit.”

Sarek spoke with intensity and urgency that served merely to disguise, not to hide, his deep pain and his loss. Jim had received the response he intended to provoke. He wished he had been gentler.

“Sir,” he said quietly, “your son meant more to me than you can know. I’d have given my life if it would have saved his. You must believe me when I tell you he made no request of me.” If there was a chance for him to live, Kirk cried out in his mind, why
didn’t
Spock ask me for help?

“He would not have spoken of it openly.”

“Then, how—”

Sarek cut him off. “Kirk, I must have your thoughts.”

Jim frowned.

“May I join your mind, Kirk?”

Jim hesitated, for the Vulcan mind-meld was not the most pleasant of experiences. The human perception was trivial, Vulcans claimed, compared to the discomfort Vulcans underwent in order to mingle their refined psyches with the disorganized thought processes of human beings. It was clear, however, that Sarek needed information that Jim did not possess in his own conscious mind. Acceding to the mind-meld was the one thing Jim could do, perhaps the only thing, that might give Sarek some peace.

“Of course,” he said.

Sarek approached him and placed his hands on Jim’s face, the long forefingers probing at his temples. His gaze never met Kirk’s. He seemed to be looking straight through him. Kirk closed his eyes, but Sarek’s image remained.

The sensation was as if Sarek’s slender, powerful hands reached straight into his brain.

Kirk traveled back through time. The recent message from
Grissom
brought a strong resonance of hope from Sarek: My son’s body may yet exist—perhaps there is still time! Time to save him for the Hall of Ancient Thought….

And James Kirk understood that even if Sarek found what he sought, Spock was lost to the world he had lived in. Only a few individuals, trained for years in Vulcan philosophic discipline, could communicate with the presences that existed in the Hall of Ancient Thought. If Sarek found what he was looking for, he would give Spock a chance at immortality…but not another chance at life.

Sarek’s powerful mind forced Jim farther back in time. Jim’s memories of Spock’s death, which had barely begun to ease, returned with the cruel clarity of dream.