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Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 05:03:04 -0500
Subject: [ASCEM-S] NEW TOS:  A Song of Distant 1/2 (K/S, K/f)[PG]
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Title: A Song of Distant Shores
Author: Lyrastar
Series: TOS
Pairings: K/S, K/Ciani
Rating: PG
Part: 1/2
Warnings: A parlous perfusion of purple prose with a hefty gob 'o goo
Contact: Lyrastarwatcher at yahoo dot com or 
www.geocities.com/lyrastarwatcher

Disclaimer: The characters and all things Trek belong to Paramount. 

Summary: The style and fairy tale frame is not mine, but 
Betas: Dina and Sara, to whom I owe many, many, many thanks.  




A SONG OF DISTANT SHORES



"I shall die," said the little mermaid, "and as the foam of the sea I 
shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or 
to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun. Is there anything I can 
do...?" 

"No," said the old woman, "unless a man were to love you so much 
that.... all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you...." 
      --Hans Christian Anderson, "The Little Mermaid"


Far, far out in the field of stars, where the void is black as the 
deepest eye and as cold as man can measure, it is very, very wide.  
So vast indeed that no sensor can sound its breadth and no probe can 
plumb its depth. We must not imagine that there is nothing out in 
space but barren, sterile planets.  Oh no! The galaxy teems with 
life!  The most singular minds and beings roam the cosmos, so far 
beyond our ken that we take them for but random flukes of nature.  
Twinkles, flares, meteors, quasars, and nebulae do we see.  But in 
the rampant haste of our ignorance, we fail to note the special 
signatures of life abundant--like ours, only different. There in the 
midst of that endless expanse, spins the planet Vulcan, burnished 
fiery hot in hues of purest cinnabar, home to a race of sentient men, 
like us, only not so very different at all.
  
In the roaring wilds of that vacuum of space, the planet Vulcan 
spawns the most extraordinary sights.  There are chasms leading down 
nigh to the molten core and pinnacles soaring close up to touch the 
heavens.  Exquisite forests of dry crystal, ancient as creation, 
shimmer delicate and inviolate beneath the baking sun.  Plants grow 
sinuous and supple, waving and dancing at nature's merest fancy, 
bending--never breaking--under the harshest storms of sand.   Birds 
of sparkling silver soar far above the ruddy crags, then dive deep 
into the roiling oceans to feed and sleep and breed.

On the surface of our distant sister planet, stands the city of 
ShiKahr. The race that lives there prides itself on clearest logic.  
A logic that would strive to pierce the starry veil of this grand 
universe and divine all its ancient secrets and immanent mysteries.  
And then to take those mysteries and to transform them to neat, 
precise, binary data, freely accessible to all.  

And in the center of all this logic resided Sar'ek, son of Skon, as 
cool and as stolid as the crystal gardens that surrounded him.  An 
Elder of his clan.  Father to two of the proposed Intended Heirs, 
begotten not elected, as it had been for untold centuries through in 
the planetary past.

Sar'ek had seen service as a Council Elder for many years. His wife 
was not of his world, and so he entrusted the rearing of his sons to 
T'Pau, the honored matriarch and Voice of the Council.  She was a 
wise woman, and exceedingly aware of her high status.  On that 
account she wore twelve Seeing Stones upon her garments. Others, 
including S'haile Sar'ek, were allowed to wear only six.  And the 
Seeing Stones served her well, and she used their power sparingly.

She was especially deserving of praise, however, for the rearing of 
the Intended Heirs.  They were four stalwart little minds and souls, 
but Spock was the stoutest of them all.  Outside, he was as austere 
and reserved as all the rest, but inside his hidden heart was torn 
between two worlds--between the soft, green grass of Earth, and the 
packed, red clay of Vulcan.   And yet, in an irony his young mind 
could not yet begin to comprehend, he was equally alien to both.  An 
unknown everywhere, even in his parents arms.  

In quiet defiance of the raging war within, as if to refuse to 
acknowledge its presence was to will it impossibly away, he locked 
his forbidden feelings deeper still inside, and tried with all his 
might and vigor to lose the key in some deep, bottomless pit.  But 
that deep pit was within him, you see, and so his task had failed 
before it had begun.  And so he cleaved fiercely unto the hostile 
world of Sar'ek, relegating those feelings to the pit as well, and 
his red-blooded mother wept alone in silence. 

>From the age of two, all day long he studied and meditated within the 
walls of his father's abode, much as we do from day to day at 
school.  And as the teachings of the learned pushed aside the 
traitorous emotions of the headstrong, he began to hear the Song of 
Vulcan inside his head. It started as faint and insubstantial as that 
glimpse that you catch in from the corner of your eye, so ethereal 
that the moment you turn to look, it vanishes forever.  Over time, 
the Song grew to an elemental hum, and then to weave itself into the 
basal cadence of his being.  By his seventeenth year he had achieved 
his goal.  He had become one with the Song.

He never failed to gasp in wonder as he allowed his mind to slip into 
the deepest levels of meditation and communion with the profusion of 
people in the world he had, by default, come to claim as his.  For 
even as an infant, he had sensed that though this Song might be in 
his mind, of his mind, through his mind, it was merely passing 
through.  A transient, a placeholder for a Song he had never heard, 
which would soothe his restive spirit with the lullaby of a home he 
had not yet come to know.   

Outside his body, the cinnabar world swung complacently on its axis, 
in syncopated time with the Song.  Since the time of Surak, it had 
offered order, security, belonging, repose and a chance to better the 
whole.  Everything a being of clearest logic should desire.

But inside, his heart cried for more.

Over time, the four Intended Heirs grew up together in location, but 
even more apart in vision. Within the walled garden of the enclave of 
the clan, each potential Heir was allotted a plot of fertile ground, 
wherein he might shape the dirt, a microcosm of his world, as he saw 
fit.  The eldest, S'ynet, son of Swan arranged his in symmetrical 
rows and columns of tender, newly sprouted life, precise to the 
millimeter, perfectly balanced in three dimensions. He thinned and 
weeded carefully, logically, selecting the strongest to live at the 
grave expense of the lives of their own kind. 

S'myn, son of Swan, husbanded no life, but arranged the soil of his 
plot into a pointed tower, a monument to greatness, power and 
supremacy.  But no matter how he moved earth and rock, his efforts 
stood cruelly dwarfed in the shadow of those soaring crystal arms 
that embraced the little alcove around all sides and held it in.

Sybok, son of Sar'ek went his own way entirely.  In his allotted land 
he rolled and wallowed in the clay, sensing every wild impulse of 
every available neuron, intent on experiencing every permutation of 
venal existence ever known to his people in the time of the Old 
Before.  He reveled in his body under the fierce regalia of sunlight, 
and communed with scents and sounds under the cloak of night.  It was 
said that he nurtured not the Song of Vulcan, but feelings--parlous, 
atavistic utterly taboo feelings. This was never said within the 
range of Sar'ek's listening ears.

But the youngest, S'pock, son of Sar'ek, did none of these things.  
He cared nothing for the empirical tenets of husbandry nor for the 
art of sculpting a world to the form of one's conceit.  Instead he 
tended and he fertilized and he sheltered the native seed that lay 
dormant within the sod, and watched with intent fascination and 
endless patience as the natural life force of the world revealed 
itself unto fruition before his eyes. He documented the objective 
with pedantic scientific precision, yet for as many measurements as 
he dutifully recorded, there was always something more, some 
wondrous, ineffable quality of life itself, which eluded any 
description.   And this fascinated him to no end.

S'pock cared for his family and for the plot of life that was 
dependent upon his succor, and for one other thing only.  It was a 
statue, carved of timeless m'rbyl stone, and placed in the cool of 
his mother's water garden, under the watchful arms of the Terran 
trees, planted there despite all illogic of time and expense.  

In ages past, but still recorded, the m'rbyl stone had fallen to 
Vulcan through a spacewreck.  A Terran ship, sent on a Maiden 
Reciprocity voyage, powered with a first generation warp reactor, 
charged more with ambition than with forethought, had imploded upon 
shutdown and martyred every member of the mission. But a few 
fragments of jetsam had survived the burn.  The planetary geologic 
experts had defined every parameter of the stone's structure and 
quantified every one of its properties to the last significant digit, 
but it was his own mother, Amanda of Earth, who had told those 
learned men its common name. Marble.  Recorded by the experts here 
forever after as m'rbyl.

Grinding off the char, and polishing it reverently down to its satiny 
center, the Vulcan master S'lyejah had carved a monument from the 
stone.  He had shaved away every unnecessary molecule of stone until 
all that was left was an immortal idol in the form of a rosy Terran 
man. A representation of Everyman and No-man, departed from Earth to 
enter the largess of the greater universe as a proxy for all his kind-
-and to succeed for his people, albeit to die, quite incidentally 
himself, in the process.

The form of Everyman was shaped in hues of pink and alabaster.  The 
lines and ripples of his torso fell as deceptively soft as syrup of 
P'petmah when it flowed just before the harvest.  But when they were 
touched, they were cool and harder than crystal, the matrix set fast 
in the heat-tempered solidity of the re-entry blasted m'rbyl stone.  
The daytime sun dressed Everyman in golden brilliance.  At nighttime 
the rusty rays from T'Khut shrouded his form, but he was always still 
unmistakably the epitome of Man himself, even under her bloody glow.

The statue was almost flawless in its glory, but for one single, 
blatant scar.  Across the middle of the curving breast, a charred 
seam of rock marred the perfect blend of rose and creamy stone.  The 
seam had blackened and widened in the violent fall to its foreign 
resting place, and seemed to threaten to split Everyman quite in 
two.  

S'pock accepted a kinship with this unfeeling effigy of his buried 
half-heritage, flung from Earth against its will.  By day he would 
sit by it and study the material that his father had selected with 
regard for his future.  He would run his fingers over the hard chest, 
the solid form, and last of all, the fatal crack.  By night he would 
go to his mother and hear her tales of the other world, which resided 
in his genes somewhere.  Surely it must, somewhere?

Nothing stirred his soul so much as to hear of this home that he had 
never known.  He entreated his mother to tell all she knew of its 
lands, its towns, its men and its beasts. She told tales as natural 
to us as breathing, as foreign to him as flying through the air.  She 
told tales of water falling from the sky and of a sun, which rose red 
as it should, but coyly, capriciously changed to yellows as soon as 
she reared her shining head.  Where the gravity was so light that 
walking seemed like skipping on springs and where laughter rang as 
loud as The Song and reigned as high and wafted as freely as logic 
and sobriety did here.  All of these magical mysteries of geophysics, 
S'pock could reduce to equations and finally comprehend.  But what he 
could not understand was how they endured without The Song.

For his mother was no cripple.  Humans were born without telepathy, 
sad creatures as they were.  But it seemed so incongruous that these 
wild, primal beings could live in their passions, extol the splendor 
of love and joy, without ever having known what it is for two to 
truly become one in a meld.  Or for billions to live as one in The 
Song that embraced his people.  

The MindSong encompassed the katra of every living Vulcan on this 
plane of existence, young or old, asleep or awake, on world or off.  
It was in constant flux, ebbing and swelling with each death and 
birth. Its pitch and hum were ever changing with the character of the 
thoughts and the essential nature of each of the katras that summed 
to make it whole. It could be ignored or amplified, and with training 
even focused and directed to bring two distant minds into resonant 
communication across great distances.  It could be blended into a 
meld or blasted into cacophony by disaster.  But while two or more 
Vulcans lived and breathed in the same universe, it could never, 
ever, ever be destroyed.

That S'pock had mastered the intricacies of The Song at an early age 
was a point of great significance to Sar'ek, for it had been a 
foremost concern.   His ability with The Song would be a measure of 
S'pock's very Vulcanness.  For was there anything more inherently 
Vulcan than to be one with The Song?  T'Pau had melded with S'pock 
and swiftly pronounced him A't'hye--in harmony, his humanity 
caressing, not bludgeoning The Song--and therefore ready for the Kahs-
wan preparation months before it would be time.  And Sar'ek was 
content with his youngest son, in a way in which he had not been 
before.

Humans had no ear for The Song and little unaugmented voice.  When 
all was still, The Song was serene, and they were very close, S'pock 
could barely discern the faint, foreign notes of his mother's mind, 
warbling in counterpoint within the matrix of The Song around her.  
But when he touched her skin, or better still, in private moments 
when he was allowed to touch her very mind, then he heard such a 
great, joyous symphony of vibrant thought and shameless emotion that 
he thought his katra would burst right then and shame them all.  When 
he removed his hand from her temple, each and every time he was left 
awed and alone to ponder the mystery of how he could possibly have 
been born of blood that lived these passions every day.

And he wondered if his mother of no psionic ability were able to move 
him so, how much grander would it be to feel the strength of his 
father's essence combining with his own?  This he would never know.

Only in those moments of meld with son or husband could Amanda hear 
The Song herself.  The Song for which she had left home and hearth 
and welded her deaf soul unto Sar'ek's, until the end of her time 
should come.

Yet, S'pock noted with interest, despite this lack, she seemed almost 
always--happy.

But as with all things, seasons age and die and pass each one unto 
the next.  And soon the other Intended Heirs would matriculate and be 
free to explore the universe beyond at will.  While excitement was a 
bane, scientific curiosity was to be endorsed, and so the four 
readily made a pact each to tell the others what he had seen and 
done.  

The first to go was S'ynet.  He left to learn the practicalities of 
dywnnbratach farming on Andor.  When he returned, he spoke at length 
of brilliant blues and deepest living greens, which colored every 
moment in the daylight.  He spoke of cutthroat violence, barely 
restrained, and illogic revered almost to the point of worship.  He 
spoke of cities of tunnels and habitats in the trees.  But he brought 
no news of Earth.

Next to leave was S'myn.  He left to conference with the dwellers in 
the clouds.  Upon his return he coolly pronounced Stratos much like 
Vulcan, but chillier in climate and less disciplined in spirit; 
devoted to form more than function; more serene than cerebral, too 
self-isolated to put to any greater use the lofty constructs that 
might be developed there.  S'myn saw no reason to return to space.  
And so he stayed, just as his fathers before him had.

Sybok left one day with no fanfare or plan.  For his part in the pact 
he sent one telemissive back.  "Question: Why didn't they tell us it 
could be like this?  Answer:  Perhaps they never knew."  And he never 
returned home.

At last the day came when S'pock received leave to journey from the 
world.  The old matriarch called him to her presence, and conferred 
upon him a robe smattered with polished stones, all symbolic of the 
clan and his place therein. 

"But this is too heavy to wear all day," said S'pock to T'Pau.

"Thou represents all Vulcan now; this no longer concerns thy whims.  
The greatest privilege suffers the greatest responsibilities," 
replied the matriarch.

Oh, how he willingly would have shaken off this robe and ritual and 
arrived in the vestments of his mother's home.  This onerous robe 
labeled him apart, foreign, segregated before he had even arrived.  
But T'Pau's command was law, and there was nothing more to be said.

There was no question of where he would go, only of what he would 
do.  He had chosen a field class in comparative anatomy and 
physiology, to be held in the Starfleet Headquarters Medical 
complex.  And so at the appointed hour, he bid good-bye to the 
lifeless statue of Everyman, the hard stone of the sculpture clacking 
against the harder stones on his robe, and traveled to meet the real 
thing, verbum caro factum.

The flight seemed interminable, yet he never slept.  He could not 
take his eyes from the view screen, anticipating the first glimpse of 
his unknown Earth.  When it finally appeared, softest azures and 
milky-whites swirled sharply against the starry field, the realized 
actuality almost startled him. 

He stared transfixed, as they sailed in to land.  The globe was lost 
in a haze of billowing white; then they broke through to a great, 
sweeping desert expanse of plains and mesas, not so very unlike the 
land that he had just left, he noted as they flew onward to the 
west.  They soared over a ridge of mountains.  On the other side the 
land was covered as far as the viewscreen could image in most 
directions with mortar and metal, glass and grids of the San 
Francisco metropolis.   But dead ahead the ocean lapped the land, 
blue and flat and dotted with countless little boats, each isolated, 
an island unto itself.  Thousands of flitters buzzed around in the 
sky in a dizzying dance of computer-choreographed routes.

An announcement came over the speaker, jolting him once again.  The 
port pilot would assume control and guide them into dock.  English 
not Vulcan.  Why hadn't he expected that? For all his logic, it was 
still a surprise.  And so the ship was drawn into the Starfleet 
civilian dock.

It had been a three-day voyage and he had slept none, but he couldn't 
peel his senses away from any experience of his alien home, which had 
not learned to know him yet.  When the door opened, it was not the 
cold that assaulted him; he had expected and prepared his body for 
that.  Instead it was the smell. The wet, cloying odor of salt and 
fuel and a billion particles he could not identify, born of so many 
aliens in so closed a space.  It was nothing like the smell of his 
mother as she held him against her in her lap, and he longed 
irrationally for something of home. The Song played in his mind, now 
a poignant reminder of how far his body was removed from what he had 
always known. He fingered the robe, felt the reassuring roughness of 
the familiar fabric under his touch and it seemed no longer quite so 
heavy on his shoulders.

No one paid him much heed; aliens were commonplace here.  As days 
went on, he thought to expect one of his so learned professors to 
turn to him in recognition and seize his jaw.  "Why look, class!  
This is no alien!  He is as human as vulcan.  See here, and here, and 
here in the cheekline.  He is one of us.  Spock, why didn't you tell 
us?  Welcome home, son!"  But no such thing ever happened and each 
day passed, much the same, unto the next. 

Until one day an alarm was raised.  A clever and troubled boy had 
escaped from the locked reintegration wing.  How was one mystery, but 
the more urgent one was to where he might have run.  The boy was 
disturbed, a traumatized survivor of Kodos, still stunned by the 
slaughter he had witnessed and the violence of the ego dissonance 
that forced cannibalism leads to in most moral men.  Visual and 
sensor sweeps showed nothing, so all available personnel were 
summoned for the search on foot, by sight, by Braille if necessary.  
All volunteers were gratefully accepted.  

It was S'pock who found the boy, almost on a hunch.  One of the 
perimeter electromag towers had a field frequency slightly off from 
the rest.  Only vulcan ears trained to perfect pitch could have heard 
the subtle difference.  He aimed his tricorder.  The readings were 
suspicious for something in the field queering the pitch, but the 
proximity to the electromag scrambled the data too badly to say what--
or who--it might be.  Any anomaly in an anomalous situation might be 
significant.  Resetting his tricorder, Spock confounded the lock with 
no difficulty and opened the gate to see the boy lying there. 

By human standards he was a boy.  And a thin and wasted one at that.  
On Vulcan he would have been charged as a man, expected to have 
passed the kahs-wan years ago.  But S'pock could barely credit that 
this fragile waif could have strolled a garden path unsupported, much 
less climbed, crawled and crept to evade the guards and travel this 
far.  He was naked, of course.  Hospital garb set off an alarm 
outside the walls, and there was a gash in his forearm where someone, 
presumably himself, had cut out the security implant.  But the 
largest gash was from his head. It ran out over his head of golden 
curls and covered one side of his scalp and it pooled and clotted on 
the ground.  S'pock swept the boy up in his arms. 

His skin was fair and creamy, but cool, much too cool even for a 
human.  He was light as a child's toy and as motionless as the statue 
in the garden, his beautiful eyes just as hauntedly unseeing.  But 
unlike the ghosts of dissipated human souls that swirled around the 
statue in the garden on any quiet night, this human must not die.  
Time was short. Spock shifted him for the carry.  The blood began to 
flow afresh, and S'pock clamped one hand to the wound.

As soon as he touched his hand down near the meld points, the boy's 
Song exploded into his head. The melody was alien, but the rhythm was 
one he thought he knew, although he could not say where he could have 
heard it before.  It sang of strength and valor, pain, and loss, joy 
and love, and of an indomitable will never to surrender.  A song in 
this world doomed to play forever to ears as deaf as stone.  He 
shifted his hand and the Song grew louder still, wailing in his head, 
is if intent to pour fourth now all the moods and thoughts and 
emotions it had ever known, which had been bottled up, awaiting the 
one who could appreciate its singular beauty.

Only when his lungs began to burn with need for breath did S'pock 
realize he had frozen in the moment.  Still rapt in the exotic siren 
song, he placed one foot in front of the other to carry the boy to 
safety.  

A buxom woman, a Betazoid, with unbroken black eyes took him from his 
arms and inside to the doctors. Only when the contact was lost and 
The Song was but a memory punctuated by the thick smear of blood over 
his robe and hands did Spock realize the second oddity.  He could 
hear the woman's Song too, although not in contact, although she had 
already left.  It was serene and soft, a maternal caress and a kindly 
caution.  Her voice cut into his head, as clearly as any vulcan 
Songmaster's.  "Careful, little one.  You know not what these humans 
can do to an ordered mind such as yours.  Drink deep or taste not, 
and in drinking deep, one must always be prepared to drown."  And 
then she was gone and only the Song of home remained.

As days turned into weeks, S'pock's body acclimatized to the Earth.  
His movements, once much too exaggerated in the lower gravity, flowed 
easily and normal once again.  His lungs adjusted to the denser air, 
and he habituated to the smells and the tastes of trace elements in 
the air and water until he noticed them as little as any human.  His 
accent diminished and he let his hair grow longer, over his ears, 
just the tips, that is. But it was clear to all, and most of all to 
himself, that this world was not to be his home.  Why then did the 
Song of one lost Terran youth resonate within him night and day?

Presently and too soon, S'pock returned to ShiKahr to discover that 
Vulcan had grown much smaller in his absence.  The deep, polished 
reds of the desert had paled anemic under the constant sun.  The 
towering pillars no longer inspired, but fenced. The wild beasts of 
land and air and childhood no longer seemed as exotic or intriguing 
as the potted Terran chrysanthemum with all its rings and layers and 
silken petals.  Even his mother's stories of the Earth that she had 
left held no more interest for him.  That was her Earth.  His Earth 
was but another foreign land.  And worst of all, the chiseled statute 
had changed as well.  It stood erect still, in the same spot of the 
same rocky garden, deaf and blind as always.  Its skin was still 
smooth and creamy, its lines still strong and fair.  In the sunlight 
it glowed in the same pinks and golds.  But now instead of whispering 
of things yet to come, it spoke only of the melancholy of thing that 
might have been.

But gardens and statues are not to be the sphere of Intended Heirs.  
The Vulcan Science Academy awaited his enrollment, and S'pock 
followed dutifully after S'myn and S'ynet. "You are the only one of 
my bloodline now," his father said as he left.  "You must devote 
yourself, not for yourself, but for me, for the one who was, but is 
no more your brother, as well as for the rest of the clan."

"But who will devote themselves for me?" Spock asked.

His father gave no answer, but turned away in silence with the 
traditional parting gesture. 

So S'pock went into the Academy for the good of the many. The others 
would ask him of what he had seen and done in his time on Earth.  He 
told them--when pressed--of Starfleet, the clinics, the city, the 
landscape, the water, but he told them nothing about the youth whose 
MindSong haunted his nights and pacified his days. He had always been 
silent and thoughtful, but now he was even more so.  Rather than the 
companionship of his peers he turned to the knowledge of machines.  

Through the silent, electrical brain of the great VSA computer banks, 
linked to those across the Federation, he was able to find and follow 
his young man--James Kirk, as it turned out--as he grew and developed 
far across the lightyears. He watched as James finished school and 
enlisted in the Starfleet that had rescued him from Tarsus so many 
years before.  

With his expert knowledge, S'pock could enter any databank. He 
started with the medical files and carried on from there.  He 
gathered data and demographics.  He viewed pictures, vids and holos.  
On one such clip he heard James speak for the first time, on others 
he heard the voice change from the wavering tones of adolescence to 
the confident tenor of manhood.  But none of this technology could 
return for him the beautiful MindSong he had heard in the fleeting 
touch of years long past.

Those who saw him at work, long after study hours had ended, took him 
for a student of unusual diligence.  "Look," they said, "how he 
commits himself to the pursuit of the applications of logic.  Truly 
he should be the one Appointed from among the Intended, for already 
he dedicates himself to our good."  And he could say nothing to 
correct them, for the emotion driving his obsession shamed him, but 
that was not the worst. The worst was when it occurred to him that he 
was most alone in this.  For James Kirk could know nothing of him, 
could know nothing of what they had shared.  James could not remember 
him, could not dream of him, could not ache for him as he ached for 
James.  And the pain that stemmed from that realization was one he 
could never, despite all his training, quite suppress.  What kind of 
vulcan was he then?

Such a question was not for him, but for the one from whom he could 
hide nothing.  As the Appointment Selection process progressed, T'Pau 
summoned S'pock once again.  The air was cold and dry, a bitter wind 
squalled through the rocks that night, making a sound that our human 
ears could not hear, when he came and knelt at her feet.  As she 
touched his mind this time, she saw and heard it all. He knew she 
must, but there was no way out for him. Her silent voice was as clear 
in his head as ever he had heard any in his ears.

"Thou art drawn to this human's Song."

She asked no question; S'pock gave no answer.

"There is no logic in following his movement, unless you intend to go 
back to him."

There could be no argument with that.  

T'Pau continued, "Thou art best qualified of all the Intendeds, 
S'pock.  Thy own kin require thy presence here.  And there is no 
logic behind leaving thy duty to hear the Song of one man.  The good 
of the many outweighs thy own desires. Thou hast claimed the rights 
and privileges of an Intended One of Vulcan.  With that comes 
obligation as well. Unless thou intend to relinquish thy position, 
pouring thy time into this vision is a waste like unto pouring 
precious water onto sand.  Nothing can grow from it. Nothing ever 
will."

"Can I do this?" Spock thought to her.  "Can I abdicate my position 
and go?"  

She dropped his head.  When she spoke next to him in vocal words, it 
sounded artificial, far less real than it had as pure energy within 
his mind.  The frailty and venerability of her body were as deceptive 
as the sly smile of the fox, for of all the minds of all the 
telepaths in the land, hers was among the most potent.  "I have the 
power to allow or disallow as I see fit.  

"But know this. Once surrendered, I will not restore thy place.  
Should thou do this, thou will no longer be thy father's son.  Thou 
will be from Vulcan, but not of Vulcan.  Thy intended would be within 
her rights to refuse you, to challenge and to allow thee to expire in 
pon farr, or at a stranger's hands.  This world will surrender thee 
as well."  

There are some moments when we can feel out lives change, almost see 
the cogs and gears and they grunt and grind to a halt, pause, and 
creak to turn in the other direction.  Perhaps it is not that way for 
all vulcans, but for S'pock of mixed blood, he could see those gears 
reverse in front of his eyes as clearly as he heard her mind voice. 
As clearly as he had heard James Kirk's MindSong. "What must I do to 
go to him?"

Because she was not of mixed blood, she did not react at all, but 
spoke dispassionately of his choice.  "Thou must surrender the 
harmonic of your resonance with his Song.  Thou knowst too much of 
our people, our secrets, to Sing with him."

"But if you take away our Song, what is left?  The Song is what 
cleaves us one to the other."

T'Pau answered,  "Thou wishes to live as a human, then thou must love 
as a human.  Thou wilst have whatever qualities of him that were so 
unique as to produce this special Song, which you cannot rend from 
thy soul.  They are still there.  They still create the same unique 
Song, only your mind will be deaf to it.  And as for how thou shalt 
win him, I cannot answer, for how humans choose their mates is 
shrouded in mystery, even to me." She gave no indication of finding 
any humor in this remark.

"And the rest of thy telepathy will remain unaffected.  Thou will 
hear the Song of your homeworld, but not the silent Song of him. And 
thou mayst meld with him, but he will find thee cold and clinical.  
He will hear no Song of what lies beneath.

"So think again, S'pock of Vulcan. Art thou prepared to discard all 
thee hast on a vision that walks your mind?  A vision who grows, and 
learns and dreams and knows not you?"

It stung, but the sting gave him strength he needed. "I am."

"And so it is done.  But know this, S'pock.  Should thou fail--should 
thou not win the love of this man so that he is willing to forsake 
all others and to love thee and only thee with his whole soul, so 
that he takes thee for his solace, his succor, his mate, then thou 
must die.  If there should come a time when he declares that he loves 
another above thee, and takes that other before thee, then thou shalt 
be dead by morning."

"Yes, I will," S'pock agreed quietly.

T'Pau thumped her staff twice on the ground.  She touched his mind 
and he felt nothing.  How odd that he should feel nothing from such a 
grievous loss.

She plucked the deepest, darkest Seeing Stone from her raiment and 
passed it to his hand.  "Then go, Spock, formerly of Vulcan but no 
more.  This stone be all you take from Vulcan, and all that shall 
ever be yours of it again should you fail. Go and do not return 
unless it be with him as thy mate."

He sewed the stone upon his clothing, and so, go he did.


~ end part 1 of 2



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