Home Before Home

Their First Summer

They came out of hibernation in a misty early spring rain, blinking in the gray natural light and shivering a little, feeling shaved of their winter pelts. The sweaters and pants they had worn for three months lay in two piles on the damp floor of the cave. Spock was again in uniform, although his Starfleet-issue shirt and pants looked as though they had been cycled for a man who outweighed him by a dozen pounds. Sarah wore her travel jumpsuit, slightly stretched across breasts and belly, flapping everywhere else. Her shoes felt tight too, but looking up at real sky for the first time, she forgot about shoes. The wind was damp and cool, and even Spock was shivering a little. Above them, at last, was open sky.

They stood on the black rock shelf outside the cave, simply breathing. Spock had used the tricorder as soon as he cracked the door open, but now its warbling was silent. Sarah did not ask him if the radiation level was safe; she knew that he would not have allowed her outside the cave if it wasn't. Three months alone with him had taught her that unnecessary questions didn't get answers. Instead she said, "It smells wonderful," and accepted his silence as the heartfelt assent she knew he could not express in words.

After a time she said, "Let's go for a ride."

The hovercraft still sat on the ledge. And a good thing, she thought. It was difficult to imagine how they would have climbed down the Tower from this height.

He did not answer, but moved toward the vehicle and inspected it visually and with the tricorder, and then motioned her into it. Taking off, she experienced a moment of vertigo; she had never liked heights, and the valley floor and Tower's Ring seemed very far below--the one brown and sodden after weeks of winter rains, the other reflecting a woolly sky instead of the pale green one Sarah remembered so vividly from the day of the holocaust. As Spock steered the craft around the Tower, she made herself look down at the world. Spock showed no inclination to view the remains of Tower City even though they both knew it was near enough, and she was grateful. Later they would have to look at it and come to terms with it. But now they were free, more free than they had been in months. That was all she cared to think about at the moment--

"My God!" she gasped. "Is that a house down there?"

Looking down through the silvery curtain of light drizzle, she could make out the shape of a building near the beach that divided the lake from the surrounding forest. As Spock brought the craft lower she studied the structure intently, feeling her pulse race even as it once had when, as a child, she had spied a small, bright coin in the dirt at the edge of the pavement during a walk in a park. The building was indeed bright in comparison with its surroundings. Even in the rain, or perhaps because of it, the sides and roof looked smooth and shiny. Around it someone had planted a row of saplings, now trembling and bowing in the damp wind. There were two much smaller structures close by: one made of the same material as the larger building, the other of what appeared to be transparent aluminum.

"Fascinating." It was the first time Spock had made a sound since they had left the cave. Even in her excitement, Sarah was relieved to hear him speak at last. "They are porto-structures."

"Why would somebody build something out here? They could bubble it up faster and a lot cheaper."

"I do not know," he answered, sounding as though he did. But then, he always sounded that way, she thought, even when he didn't know diddly-squat.

"You don't suppose...." She left the question unfinished, not daring to voice her hope.

"Anyone who was not protected as we were would have long since died," Spock said flatly. He landed the craft on the beach just as a trickle of watery sunlight ventured through the clouds. Before them, the front of the porto gleamed slick in the faint sunlight. The structure was only one story high, although the roof came to a shallow peak. In the middle of the right-hand slope, an apparently hollow rectangle with no purpose that Sarah could divine projected upward toward the sky. The windows were shuttered and the door appeared to be firmly closed, perhaps even locked. "Remain here."

"But--"

He jumped lightly to the ground and spun to face her in one continuous motion. "Remain here." His gaze locked with hers. So seldom had their eyes met during their time in the cave that she was startled by the blackness of his. Or could he be angry?

"Don't give me orders," she said, her voice firm but with no particular emphasis. "I am not one of your crew."

"I will not debate with you. Remain here." And turning on his heel, he walked rapidly toward the porto.

My name is Sarah, she thought, shivering once more. My name is Sarah, damn you. But even in her thoughts she could not muster much irritation toward him anymore. Taciturn, uncommunicative, occasionally even sullen, he had helped her through the worst three months of her life, showing at times an impersonal but ongoing kindness that she had grown to appreciate more than she resented his detachment. Yet as the days and weeks passed, she had become more and more aware that he had never once called her by her given name....

The door had opened at a touch, and he now stood in the doorway, scanning with his tricorder. Finally, when she was almost unable to bear her newly aroused excitement and curiosity, he said, "Come, then." The warbling ceased and he stepped inside.

She scrambled out of the craft and stumbled in the soft white sand, mud-gray now from the rain. Muttering, "The hell with it," she kicked off the uncomfortable shoes and ran across the sand, loving the feel of something besides stone floor against her feet. Crossing the narrow porch that ran the width of the front of the building, she paused in the doorway. Spock was standing just inside, looking around. But the shuttered windows admitted none of the dull afternoon outside, and she could see very little of the room.

"Aren't there any lights?" Dumb question. If there were lights, they would have gone on as soon as Spock stepped inside.

He stood still for a moment longer, frowning slightly, apparently trying to remember something. Then he reached toward the wall beside the door. There was a faint click, and a bright globe appeared in the middle of the ceiling.

"What's that?" she blurted.

"That," he answered, "is an incandescent bulb."

"Electricity?"

"Indeed. The tricorder revealed the presence of a functioning solar generator at the rear of this structure." He pointed to the opposite wall of the room in which they stood. Looking in the direction he was pointing, she nodded absently and then caught her breath in delight.

In the few moments since she had entered the room, she had been subliminally aware that the whole place had an odd feel to it, as though everything in it were identifiable and yet different enough from what she had expected to appear marginally unfamiliar. The furniture looked serviceable, even comfortable, yet bulky and squared off, with little or no attempt of the part of its makers to conform to bodily contours. On a table to her left was a box-like object which at first glance she took to be a computer. But next to the darkened screen were three oddly placed knobs with worn legends underneath them, one of which read, "On-Off-Vol." Primitive holo imager? There was no chair pushed under the table; instead, there was a cabinet there, on top of which was another box, black this time, a flat rectangular cube the width of the table, with another legend stenciled along the front edge of the top: DOLBY STEREO PLAY AND RECORD. Some kind of an entertainment center, no doubt. She had been about to reach for the "On-Off-Vol." knob, certain that Spock would have warned her if the tricorder had indicated potential danger, when he had distracted her by pointing across the room.

There on a small round table was an antique lamp, its shade constructed of irregular pieces of stained glass that threw multi-shaped spots of color on the wall behind. In the long gray time she had lived on this world, the glowing artifact was the most beautiful thing she had seen since she arrived.

"A Tiffany lamp," she whispered, awed, and approached it with a reverence that the computer-box had completely failed to stir in her. "Oh, Spock--look!" Cupping her hands around the shade without touching it, she leaned over the glowing light to admire it more closely and then looked up at him. "Isn't it lovely?"

He was looking down, his face set. He said nothing.

Now what did I do? But it was useless to ask, she knew.

A moment later, she had forgotten her disappointment at being unable to share her pleasure with him. On the wall beside the door, between the two front windows, was a moon-faced electric clock with numbers around its perimeter. She had seen one like it only once before, on a cultural history tape, and she knew now what she suspected Spock had known all along.

"Where's the bathroom?" she asked, determined to verify her suspicion.

As she had expected, it bore little resemblance to the bathrooms she knew, with their recessed basins and other modern aesthetic and space-saving features. Instead, she saw a cramped room with a floor of motley tile, cold and faintly damp against her bare feet, and fixtures that loomed out of the walls like angular porcelain polar bears emerging from an ice age. At the top left side of the drum-like toilet tank, there was a small horizontal handle.

"They were Bounders!"

"So it would seem." But Spock appeared unaware of her mixed feelings of extreme relief that the habitat was functional and mild chagrin that whoever had built it was a member of an esoteric cult. Showing more enthusiasm than she had seen him express in three months, he approached the toilet, removed the heavy tank lid, and set it on the sink with a chilly clank. "Observe." She moved to stand next to him and peer down into the tank, telling herself that this had better be as fascinating as his demeanor suggested. The inside walls were streaked with slimy green, and an unpleasant black ball floated between them. But the pronouncement she had anticipated was indeed forthcoming, and she suppressed a sigh. "A machine with no power source," he continued, and flushed. The toilet made a sound like a large fish coughing, and the black ball sought the receding surface of the water with a small plop as the bowl began to fill. Clear water. Not the chemical muck that they had been one of their many mixed blessings in the cave.... Uh-oh.

"How did they clean the bowl?" she asked, and then noticed for the first time a long-handled brush standing in a holder on the floor. She glanced at Spock, who raised an eyebrow, replaced the tank lid on the now silent toilet, and walked out, leaving her alone with the polar bears and the brush. Oh, really? she thought. We'll see about that.

There were two small bedrooms, a relief to her as well as to him, she was sure; now they would both have the privacy that had been denied them in the cave. The first room contained two narrow cots, one mounted on top of the other by means of a wooden frame that included a ladder leading to the upper cot. Two thin mattresses were supported by metal springs that creaked when she pressed on the top mattress. Beats hell out of a sleeping bag, she thought, firmly rejecting the tactile image of a soft mattress that rose in her mind. When she came to the second bedroom, she thought for one giddy moment that her phantasm had become real; the bed, which filled most of the room, consisted of a sinfully thick mattress on a low wooden frame. Spock had paused in the doorway, eyeing the object she coveted with borderline distrust. Good. Maybe he'd prefer the other-- As she pressed her hand into the mattress, it sloshed audibly, and she squealed.

"There's water in there!"

"Indeed." Spock approached the bed and gave it a firmer squeeze than she had, causing an alarming undulation under the surface. "Do you wish to sleep in this room?" he asked hopefully.

"Um, no. No thanks." She smiled cheerily at him as she passed him on the way out. If I get to clean the head, chum, you get to sleep in the ocean.

As they returned to the living room, she said uneasily, "They must have been a family." She did not want to think about the personal things she had seen in the bedrooms: possessions, clothing, towels, toys, abandoned where they lay, as though their owners were only gone for the day. And yet the dust lay three months thick. Later, she thought. Later. Too much for now. "I wonder what they were doing out here. In space, I mean, if they were--are--were so crazy about the pre-space era." Later, she thought. Later I can handle it better. She glanced at him to see if he had noticed her stumbling over the verb tense, but he was oblivious. Looking in the direction of his gaze, she saw why.

"Computer," she commanded expectantly, moving across the room to join him in front of yet another darkened screen. Nothing happened. Spock reached around behind the screen and there was another click. After a few moments of examining the initial display, which looked to Sarah like the beginning of a child's game, he typed a few characters on the keyboard and murmured something uncomplimentary. Expecting, from what he had said, to see a graphic of stone knives and bear skins, she saw instead something far less amusing.

"It has to mean eighty gigs," she said incredulously.

"It is a computer--of sorts. Computers invariably mean precisely what they say."

"Eighty megs? But where are the memory banks?" He explained. "Hardisk? Hard disk? Where is it?" He explained again, typing as he talked. A database appeared, the data unimaginatively displayed in two-dimensional rectangles. Only peripherally aware of what they were doing, they both drew up chairs and sat in front of the screen as the watery sunlight dimmed and turned faintly gold where it slanted across the floor from the open door. Finally, she said, "Biological research station?" He nodded. New screens of the specimen catalog came and went as the sky darkened and the light on the floor grayed and then disappeared. The sky was almost black and the room swathed in shadow when she said, "They were scientists. How could they choose to work with this primitive equipment?"

"A specimen catalog does not require sophisticated equipment, and Earthbounders enjoy flaunting their convictions." He sighed. "They--I believe you might say that they make a career out of acting weird." The emphasis on you was faint but perceptible.

Hiding a smile, she rose, rotated her shoulders to ease the stiffness in her back, and went to the door, realizing as she did so that she had never before seen Tara at night. The rain had stopped and the clear sky was completely dark now, dotted by a few stars. Both moons had risen, one full and one a barely visible crescent, giving the scene an eerie unreality that bought a coldness to her spirit and the sting of tears to her eyes. She had occasionally been homesick on Vulcan, but on Vulcan home was only four days away and there was always someone to talk to, something interesting going on. Here.... She closed the door, and saw that a packet of paper was hanging on the back of it.

Someone had made the artifact by hand, sewing the sheets together with brightly colored variegated yarn. On the top sheet was a grid, seven squares wide. There were three squares in the first row, seven in each of the next four rows, and one lone square in the sixth, at the bottom left corner of the grid. The squares were numbered from one to thirty-one. Across the top of the sheet, someone had hand-lettered the word "November."

Old Calendar. But on Tara? "Spock, look at this."

He inspected, flipped pages, appeared to be doing calculations in his head. "It is a variation of the Gregorian calendar, but adjusted for the planetary year of 378 days. One day has been added to each month except February, which has thirty days. Ingenious."

"But it's the end of winter here. Not November."

"This calendar has not been used for three months," he said quietly, and pointed to a hand-written notation on the sixth. Leaning forward, she read it.

T. City.

Just gone for the day.

"Let's go back to the cave," she said. "Just for tonight. We can move here in the morning. When it's light?" It was a plea. "Let's--"

"Stop." He had never touched her before, but now he grasped both her arms and shook her a little. "There are no ghosts here." His dark eyes met hers directly now, and she saw no condescension, no censure, only something very like despair.

"But there are," she whispered.

"Are you afraid?"

"No." She bowed her head and the tears flowed silently. Feeling his hands tighten, she leaned her forehead against his chest and rested there until the tears stopped. "But I don't want to stay here tonight."

When she woke in the morning, she was alone in the cave for the first time since the holocaust.

No panic, she thought, forcing herself to walk, not run, to the entrance and push it open. Sunlight, and air clear and cool. She let out the breath she had been holding without realizing it, and looked around. Ledge empty. Hovercraft gone. What in the world could he be up to?

When he returned, he gave no explanation, and she did not ask him for one. If they were going to live together until they were rescued, they would have to do it with respect for one another's privacy. But--there was a subtle eagerness about him, an urgency quickly suppressed. Something he wanted her to see? "Do you wish to return to the porto now?" he asked as soon as they had had breakfast.

"Can't be too soon for me."

The place was truly beautiful, she decided as their craft settled onto the beach. Shelter that would allow them to see the sky, and the sun. The air was still cool, but the sun was warm and the forest was alive with sound. She did not want to go inside, but she knew that there was work to do before they made the house their own, and not very pleasant work.

But it had all been done.

No wrinkled towels hung in the bathroom now, and no toys littered the smaller bedroom where one cot hung above the other. The clothing was gone from the closets, and the family photographs that she had not wanted to examine closely had disappeared from the small bureau in the other bedroom. There must have been a broom somewhere, for the place had been swept. There was no dust anywhere.

Without looking at him, she went to the door and closed it halfway so that she could see the calendar. The top sheet said "February," and nothing was written in any of the squares.

"Thank you," she said, not turning, expecting an answer full of obligations. But when she looked around, he was gone.

There was no food in the house.

Distracted by the primitive quaintness of the Earthbounders' habitat, she had not at first realized that one thing they could not survive without simply did not exist there. The stores in the cave had been heavily depleted; most of the Thermocans were empty and buried, and the few that were left contained meat that she would need for its protein during her pregnancy, but that she was sure Spock would not touch. The rest was negligible: powdered milk that would last perhaps another month or two; packages of long, tasteless strings of pasta; the least appetizing of the vegetables; some dried fruit; a few sweets. And all of the food in the porto had been contaminated by radiation and had to be thrown away.

The small transparent structure was a greenhouse, but it was full of tangled weeds and dead flowers. There was real dirt there, however--black dirt that looked as though it had been brought from Earth. Outside, between the porto and the edge of the forest, was a plot of ground that had once been cleared but was now tangled and overgrown. They suspected that it had been a vegetable garden, and as soon as they had moved in they began to clear it. There were no uncontaminated seedlings in the house, but the governor's family had stored some in the cave--enough for one season's planting of a vegetable garden, and a few selected flower seeds and bulbs.

Spring came in with a rush of warm wind and an abundance of sunlight, and they made haste to take advantage of it. By an almost unspoken agreement, they decided that the greenhouse would be kept for flowers and the vegetables would be planted outside.

Sarah had expected Spock to argue with her about it. Knowing that starvation lurked just over their horizon, she nevertheless felt an unreasoning determination that the flowers would be a flash of pure extravagance in their otherwise need-driven lives. "I know they're impractical," she explained apologetically. "But with this weather, the vegetables are going to grow as fast as the weeds outside, and we really don't need the greenhouse for them." Spock merely nodded, and often in the evenings he would join her there, exhibiting an unexpected expertise and depth of knowledge. How had he learned so much about growing things, she wondered. Did they teach you how to grow flowers on starships? But still loath to question him unless it was necessary, she never asked.

The loose tunics and pants provided by the clothing cycler were more than enough protection against the increasingly balmy weather, and the machine also provided rough sheets and towels from the same recycled product. The Earthbounders, always careful not to let their personal enthusiasms pollute the environment, had also buried a solid waste reducer in the foundation beneath the bathroom; it and the recycler were their only concessions to technological progress, but they had made the right choices. And so the lake remained pristine, lapping clear and clean at the white beach that began a few feet from their door. "No suds in the surf, no poop in the pond," Sarah commented irreverently. No response from Spock, but that was not unusual. He spoke when spoken to but rarely spontaneously, remaining her willing coworker but almost never her companion.

Yet he did seem a bit more relaxed, she thought. When the waterbed had begun to leak several weeks after they arrived, he had promptly drained it with the garden hose and substituted a futon he had found rolled up in a closet. The change in his sleeping arrangement had been good for him; small talk was still beyond him, but when Sarah thought it necessary to brief him on his part in the coming delivery of the baby, he was more than willing to participate in that conversation. Reassured, she was grateful that he was quite able to listen attentively when the situation demanded it. He now knew what to expect, and what was expected of him.

As spring moved into summer, her child grew and became increasingly active within her. Doing regular self-scans, Sarah knew that her own body was borderline malnourished because of the small amount that she ate; it sometimes seemed that she thought of nothing but food, for both she and Spock were now carefully rationing their supplies until their garden yielded its first crop. But the baby was reassuringly healthy, and the pregnancy uneventful. As balmy spring became white hot summer, Sarah was confined more often to the house, and her boredom became exquisite.

The computer, its capabilities upgraded dramatically after Spock had cannibalized his communicator as well as the air purifier and the waste reducer from the cave, now provided access to a diverting array of games and recreational reading that Eustace George and his family had stored there on tape. But when Spock was in the house, she seldom had access to the computer. Doggedly, even obsessively, he continued to attempt to devise a communications program that would permit him to reach the starships he was sure must be within hailing distance. Knowing that their exile would not end until he was successful, Sarah tried to repress the impulse to inquire, "When do I get a turn?" as he spent hour after hour typing away in front of the console, which still would not answer to a vocal command. One positive result of his compulsive dialog with uncooperative technology was that he would occasionally talk to her about it afterwards. But she spent many a hot afternoon indolently watching the Earthbounders' tapes on their primitive equipment.

Believing him to be oblivious to her activities, she was surprised to see him turn from his work when she switched off the screen in disgust late one afternoon. Trying to think of something intellectual and uplifting that might start a conversation with him, she could only sigh and shake her head.

"Same stupid misunderstandings, same stock characters, practically the same story over and over. I don't know how anyone could watch these things, much less take them offworld for entertainment."

"There are many such tapes on the Enterprise as well."

"It must have cost a small fortune to have all these Two-D formatted like this. What do you suppose the attraction is?"

If she had intended to draw him out on the subject of human literary aberrations, she was unsuccessful. Instead, he frowned and said thoughtfully, "The males are all non-humans."

"It's just a convention. The romance novel, twenty-third-century style." Grimacing, Sarah abandoned her slumped position in the soft, enfolding couch, and pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the cushion instead. More and more of late, her backbone objected to the contours of the living room furniture. But it was no longer possible to pull her knees up under her chin as she watched. Half teasing, she went on: "Exotic alien worlds, alien lover, the basic metaphor of the genre for centuries. Goes all the way back to Jane Eyre."

"Mr. Rochester was not...alien."

"Oh--" Rubbing tired eyes, Sarah sighed and tried to fudge. "I don't know." Conversation or no, she did not feel up to explaining this particular metaphor to the literal Mr. Spock.

"Did you perceive Jim Kirk as alien?" he asked.

Jolted out of her lethargy, she dropped her hands from her face and returned his gaze. He did not appear self-conscious, only curious. It was the kind of question that one friend might ask another.

"No," she answered honestly, bemused by the glow of retrospective affection that the admission elicited in her. "Jim was...familiar."

She had intended no double entendre, and immediately wished she could take the word back. To her relief, he arched one eyebrow, and his eyes seemed to smile. But then he turned back to the computer and began to type again as though there had never been an interruption.

Let it go, she thought. Don't push your luck. The Taran equivalent of a housefly buzzed across her ear and settled on her arm. The lake murmured against the beach, a window shade flapped, the toilet was running again. The room was stifling. "Spock, talk to me. Please?" She slapped at the fly, but it flew away unscathed.

He stopped typing, but did not turn. She knew what he would say before he said it. "What do you wish to talk about?"

"Nothing in particular. I just feel so--isolated." Her voice broke.

"You are indulging in self-pity." She knew that he had half turned to face her, but she could not look at him now, although his tone was even and not accusatory. "That serves no purpose."

"I don't want sympathy."

"What, then?" Polite. Patient. Marginally condescending. Where was the friend she had glimpsed a moment ago?

"I don't know how to explain it." Tired, tired, tired. "Forget it."

"There is a significant probability that length of our isolation here is inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend attempting to communicate with a passing starship. If there is an urgent matter you wish to discuss--"

"I said forget it."

"Very well." He turned back to the keyboard.

"How often does a ship pass close enough to hear a signal from here?"

The tapping stopped. Silence. Then: "I have not been able to establish a viable communication channel."

"That makes two of us." She rose and moved toward her bedroom. He might not be all human, but he knew how to lay on the guilt.

It was late afternoon, the hottest part of the day. She lay on her side, too big these last few weeks to sleep on her stomach, wishing she could raise the shade and catch a vagrant breeze off the lake but knowing that the room would become a furnace if she did. Briefly she toyed with the idea of working in the greenhouse until she could justify eating again. But lately Spock had been working there in the evenings, and that joint endeavor appeared to be the only thing they could enjoy doing together. Even a lecture on companion planting was better than silence. And it was no longer a mystery to her that he knew so much about growing flowers. His human mother, he had told her one evening, had a greenhouse on Vulcan. Have to get him to talk more about his mother and how she coped with her isolation. Once they got off this godforsaken planet, some of it might be useful in patient counseling....

Only slightly tired, but having nothing better to do, she dozed, sweating, until the sun had set and it was time to prepare her meager meal. When she came again to the living room, Spock was still at the computer.

How often does a ship pass close enough...? Her own question echoed in her mind, and for the first time it occurred to her that he had not answered it. But this didn't seem like a good time to press the matter.

Later that evening, as they weeded together in the relative cool of the greenhouse, she said, "You didn't answer my question this afternoon. How often does a ship pass close enough to pick up a signal from here?"

"The proximity of the normal shipping lanes is insufficient for a weak signal to reach a merchant vessel from this sector."

"That's not what I asked." Twice, now. Dread touched her, black like space itself. "What about exploratory ships like the Enterprise?"

"There have been no Starfleet vessels within range for the past four point three Earth months."

"You mean...since you started monitoring, there hasn't been even one Starfleet vessel in this sector?" He nodded, his gaze still on his work. "But--this is the Centaurus system. We're practically on top of home plate. Where are they all?"

"I do not know." He looked up then, and the bleakness in his eyes surprised and horrified her.

"Jim will come back for you." She did not know where the words came from, but as soon as she said them, she knew that they were the right ones.

"That is not logical." Yet his despair was gone as quickly as it had come.

"Neither is he." The horror receded to a shadow, and then it was gone.

"I know." He smiled briefly, fleetingly, and then resumed his digging in home soil.

As the summer inferno roared on (White sky. Blistering winds. No clouds. Would it never rain again?), she realized that the greenhouse garden was their refuge from fear, their taste of home, while the vegetable garden was their albatross. The day that they tore July off the back of the door and saw August--the month of the impending birth--for the first time, they kept to the house all day and ventured out only at sunset to continue their endless hosing down of the fruits of their labors, the only assurance they had of surviving the drowning rains of winter if the mysterious absence of Starfleet from Federation Sector One continued indefinitely. Stupid, she thought, sweat streaming down her face even though the sun had fallen beneath the horizon. Stupid, stupid, stupid not to have used the greenhouse for something they could eat.

"Was that logical?" she demanded, wiping her forehead with her arm. "What in the world were you thinking of to let me talk you into planting flowers in there?" No answer. He seldom said a word while they were in the vegetable garden. His time to sulk, hers to shrill. "I'm sorry. I'm just so damn sick of not being able to bend over or lie on my stomach or see my feet. Too bad you got stuck with the baggage when it wasn't even your fault."

"That," he said stiffly, "is an interesting idiom. Were you forced?"

It took her a moment to recover from her surprise that he had answered her, and another to realize that he was needling her in his own incomparable way for suggesting that Jim was the sole cause of her current predicament. Fury seized her, and the accumulated resentments of more than eight months made her struggle to her feet with surprising physical agility. She had used a number of obscenities in her life, and heard a few more. Now she used them all, arms under her belly as though she were holding it up, sweat streaming from every pore. At that moment, there were not enough words in any language to tell him what she thought of him.

He dropped the hose and faced her in the lengthening shadows. Tall, slim, supple, and he wasn't even sweating.

"Go inside." Hostility verging on contempt, and his eyes were jet black.

"Don't give me orders, you bastard!"

"That is inaccurate, you are hysterical, and you are endangering your health and that of your child by remaining here." He picked up her and carried her into the house and to her room, surprising her so that she did not even struggle. "You are a physician, Sarah." At the word "physician," he dropped her several inches onto the lower cot, so hard that she bounced. "I suggest that you behave like one." And he stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.

She pulled herself up on her elbows, her misshapen body still awkwardly sprawled on the cot, and stared at the door, astounded, all her anger evaporated.

Sarah.

She lay down again, automatically turning on her side to support her protruding abdomen on the mattress, and contemplated the unexpected joy of being called by name for the first time in eight months. Nothing had changed, she knew. They were still stuck with each other, basically out of tune and maladjusted to one another's personalities, both raging silently against their isolation and their boredom and, yes, their fear that rescue would not come in time to save their lives. But she had a name now.

The sun had dropped beneath the horizon by the time she pulled herself to her feet and lumbered into the kitchen. A cool breeze was blowing through the house, stirring the curtains and making the rooms livable again after the intense heat of the day. Famished, but refreshed by the temperature change, she turned toward the small kitchen and stopped to contemplate the sight of treasure unearthed in two piles on the edge of the sink.

The seeds stored in the cave by the governor and his family had included growth-enhanced asparagus, able to be harvested the first season. Before their argument, Sarah and Spock had agreed that the some of the asparagus was ready to be picked, and that they might sample it that evening. She had heard Spock come into the house once while she lay on the bed contemplating intervening events, but had not remembered their joint decision until she saw the result of it on the drain board. About two pounds of it, she judged as she approached it--slowly, her excitement mounting as though she were a child again, contemplating her presents piled beneath the tree on Christmas morning. Scaly, unpeeled, and exuding a wet green smell that sent her senses reeling. Riches in the midst of poverty. She leaned close and inhaled as though she were gasping for air after nearly drowning.

Neither of them had ever prepared a meal for the other, and she smiled briefly as she noted that their treasure had been divided as evenly as if he had counted the stalks. Yet without hesitation she pushed the two verdant piles together. To peel or not to peel? Her lifelong friend Mary Jones enjoyed cooking and had taught Sarah much of what she knew about meal preparation. The stalks would cook more thoroughly if they were peeled, but she and Spock needed every bit of nourishment they could get. Not to peel, then. She washed each stalk carefully, resisting the temptation to sample them, found a steamer among the jumble of cooking utensils in the cupboards, and paused briefly, wondering how much asparagus one could expect to steam at once; Mary's instructions had been given on the fly, and her student had been polite but fundamentally uninterested. But did it matter? She herself could cheerfully have consumed all of it raw, and she suspected that Spock felt the same. And it would be full dark soon. He might stop work in the garden at any time.

While the vegetables steamed she set the table, now into the spirit of the occasion; until now, both of them had eaten when they were hungry, often out of the can, and simultaneously only when they happened to be hungry at the same time. Why? she wondered. Communal mealtimes are a social event, a time for the family.... She allowed the thought to trail off, standing still for a moment, gazing absently at the Tiffany lamp casting its multicolored glow over the waiting plates. If they were going to be marooned forever, it would make sense to establish communality and even ritual. Maybe they had both known that--and avoided it? Shaking herself out of her reverie, she moved back to the stove, wondering whether it was too soon to serve the food, when Spock appeared in the doorway.

He stood still for a moment, and she thought that, rather than slim and supple, he now looked gaunt and just plain hungry. Was he salivating as she was? she wondered, and smiled. What did it matter? Rejoice in our differences, even if they aren't.

"I accept your gift of self," he said quietly, in Vulcan, and she answered in kind.

"The obligation was mine." Her smile turned wry as she remembered her earlier behavior. "Shall we?" And she handed him his plate.

There were no uncontaminated seasonings or spices in the Earthbounders' habitat, much less anything resembling butter. And so they consumed the first fruit of their first harvest in its pristine state--stems, scales, and all. This required a good deal of chewing, but the results were so intensely pleasurable that Sarah had no regrets: it lasted longer this way. While they ate, Spock gave her one of his lectures, this time the one on canning and preserving, obviously long on theory supported by no practical experience at all. She listened, nodded from time to time, even asked a few questions. But knowing that he would be more than willing to repeat everything when the appropriate time came, she finally asked, "Don't you ever stay mad?"

As she had anticipated, he frowned, and then began to speak. Before he could say anything, she added hastily, "I know. You don't get mad. But don't you ever stay mad?" Regretfully, she put what was probably the second- or third-last bite of asparagus into her mouth and chewed slowly, trying to make it last as long as possible.

"That would be illogical." She sighed; there was, after all, no answer to that one. Then he went on without a pause. "Do you want to lose your child?"

"No!" Shocked out of her amused exasperation, she almost choked.

"Then perhaps you should discontinue working in the garden until after the child is born."

"That's nonsense," she answered more calmly, but indistinctly, since her mouth was still partially full. "I'm not going to let you do all the work around here, so forget that idea." She swallowed and went on, speaking clearly now. "I'm not ill, Spock, and it wasn't hot out there. I would have been fine if I hadn't worked myself up."

"Then why did you?"

"Self-pity. You called it, remember?" Frowning now, she turned her gaze to the darkened window. "My life is a mess...." There was no movement from him, but she shifted her gaze back to him. "I'm sorry. Yours is too." He looked down, again frowning. "You shouldn't have to put up with a bitchy pregnant woman when it's not even...." He looked up then, raising one eyebrow, and she could not help smiling. "I'm sorry."

His mild amusement vanished, and he sighed. "You have now said that twice in less than twelve point six seconds."

"Damn it, stop that!" She struck the table lightly, exasperated rather than angry, with her clenched fist, and then unclenched it. He was watching her, resigned, waiting. "Don't worry. I'm not going to apologize again. Does that make you happy? Never mind. Forget I asked."

"Do you expect either of us to be happy here?" There was nothing accusatory in his tone; rather, she thought she heard a note of incredulity.

"That would be totally illogical." Suddenly spent, she pushed her plate away and put her head down on her hands.

"You must eat."

"Don't give me...." Making herself stop, she sat up again and finished her asparagus. Just like a little kid, she thought. Finish you asparagus, Sarah. Now cold and stringy, it didn't taste as good as it had at first, possibly because, for the first time in days, she had had enough to satisfy her hunger. "Don't you resent this at all?"

"I will do what I must."

"That's not an answer. It's not even your child."

"I am here. He is not."

"That's an answer?"

"Indeed."

She tried to read his expression in the lamplight, sensing disapproval but suspecting that she was projecting. It was just a fun weekend, Spock. Nothing to get uptight about. In fantasy, she went on justifying, trying to explain how it was. But the words would not come, and eventually he rose, went to the sink, washed his own plate and cup, and returned to the computer. So much for communality. And why bother to explain? Even if she said nothing more, he would never think less of Jim. Only of her.

Sarah's labor began before dawn on a cool "August" morning, with Aldrin's full face just above the Tower's shoulder and Armstrong a pale crescent hovering near the lake's rim. It gave her some comfort, as she stood at her bedroom window and breathing deeply, that Aldrin cast very little light. The conflicting and overlapping shadows of the two moons were subtly disorienting, and she did not want to be disoriented now. When she had awakened with the first mild contraction, she had almost panicked because it was still night; the fear that her baby would be born in the dark was her irrational companion even after six months outside the cave. But now, looking out across the beach to the smooth surface of the lake, she laid her hand on her stomach and whispered, "It'll be light soon, little one. By the time you come, it'll be morning."

Morning struck hotter and more humid than it had been for the previous two weeks. When Spock joined her in the kitchen just before dawn, Sarah was already sweating, sitting at the table with a cup of the coldest water that the faucet would produce. When he saw her at the table, he paused fractionally in the doorway and then stepped resolutely into the kitchen. "Do you require any assistance at this time?" he asked, and Sarah was about to respond with a flip answer when she was suddenly inundated with fear so strong that she could scarcely refrain from gasping.

Fear?

But I'm not afraid, she thought, momentarily doubting her perceptions of her own feelings. And then she realized whose fear it was.

It was gone in less than a second, like a flash of lightning illuminating an entire landscape which then disappeared completely. But years of experience had taught her that she was a natural empath, and she had occasionally experienced other people's emotions so strongly that they appeared for the moment to be her own. Out of respect for Spock's privacy, she had never tried to read him, and indeed had tried not to. That she had perceived his emotion anyway was indication enough of its strength. And yet it now appeared to be gone. Controlled, of course. But what was he afraid of?

"No. I'm fine." Her first impulse was to give him a bright, falsely reassuring smile. But she knew at once that that would have been useless. Don't fake anything. He won't be fooled. Instead, she permitted herself the rueful grin that much more accurately revealed her true feelings. "Except I'm hungry." Slight frown. "No. I won't eat anything. But I have plenty to do. You remember. I told you how I was going to keep myself occupied while I'm in labor."

He smiled faintly--puzzled pixie, eyebrows on the rise. "Are you sure you are able?"

"Yes. Go on. Work on the computer. I'll show you what I've done when it's finished."

Relief. Unmistakable. What did you think? That I'd expect you to hold my hand all day?

Spock had disposed of every trace of the Earthbounders' domestic activities, and Sarah had never learned to sew anyway. The recycler would be the only source of clothing for the baby, and she had asked Spock to teach her how to reprogram it for size, knowing that the loose tunics they wore would be easily adapted for a newborn's clothing, and that miniature resized towels would provide an adequate diaper substitute. Spock's well-ordered mind had persuasively indicated that the preparations should be made ahead of time, but Sarah had refused. The reprogramming and actual production would only take a short time, and the activity seemed to her a most fitting way to occupy her own mind while she was in labor. And so she spent several hours absorbed in her task, using the preview screen to check the scale and shape of the tiny garment before she produced a prototype, taking her time adjusting the proportions of the gown before turning out an even dozen in a burst of pride at her accomplishment. Then two dozen diapers, and she was done, everything folded neatly on top of the recycler. More than enough to last until she was up and about again.

It was mid-morning, and she was sweating profusely and cramping regularly every five minutes when she finally turned to see the familiar sight of Spock's back as he sat at the computer.

"Look," she said, turning in her chair, unfolding one of the gowns and holding it up. He turned to face her, and across the room she felt another lightening stab of fear, quickly controlled. He nodded, face nearly expressionless, and turned back to the computer. And she thought, He isn't afraid of what's going to happen. He's afraid of how he might feel about it.

Turning back to the recycler, she rested an elbow on it and wiped her streaming face with her other arm. Adrenaline surged through her. Contractions every five minutes. She was at the starting gate now; the race was about to be run. And for the first time since they were marooned, she felt as though she were in charge. You help me, my friend, and I'll help you. Deal? He would never have agreed if he had known she perceived his fear, but that did not dampen her excitement. For the first time, she had something to contribute besides being a burden.

The thought exhilarated her, and the knowledge that hormones were fueling that exhilaration did not diminish it. Smiling a little, she rose to her feet, only then to discover that the wooden chair on which she had been sitting and the floor beneath it were both wet.

"I better go lie down," she announced matter-of-factly, "Water's broken. Have to keep the head off the cord." And without looking to see his reaction, she went off to follow her own advice.

During the next half hour, the contractions intensified and became much more frequent. Sarah concentrated on breathing and not pushing, taking frequent readings with her medical tricorder, and reporting dilation to the fraction of a centimeter. As she had hoped, the detailed reports appeared to reassure Spock, who at first sat on the floor beside the cot and then silently fetched a wet cloth to wipe her streaming face. If he was frightened now she did not perceive it, and once again she felt in control, competent, even prideful. Only once did he show emotion--when a particularly strong contraction caused her to groan aloud. Rising, he looked down at her for a moment and then extended his hands, which she grasped strongly and gratefully. It was only a few moments later that she gasped, "Now!" He pulled her to her feet, and squatting over the soft, clean place they had prepared, she gave birth--now grasping his shoulders while he received the child into his hands--knowing that there was no one else in the universe that she would rather have had with her at that moment.

"Is she all right?" she gasped.

"Perfect." His voiced seemed to come from very far away. Heat and exhaustion and the smell of blood rose up to enfold her, and she collapsed backwards onto the clean towel they had spread on the cot. He went on with his work, doing everything she had told him he must do for her and the child. When he finished, she was lying on the cot in a fresh tunic, with a clean towel between her legs. At her side, lying on another clean towel with her umbilical cord neatly cut and tied, was a very red baby girl squalling at the top of her lungs.

Spock was at the window, his back to the room.

It's all right, Sarah thought. You did good, Spock. You did real good. But she knew there was no point in saying it aloud. He was unreachable.

The deepest loneliness she had ever known threatened to engulf her, but she fought it back as she took her child in her arms for the first time.

"Hi, baby." Spock, ever the planner, had put her tunic on backwards so that the opening was down the front. "Hi, baby girl." Tears mingled with the sweat on her cheeks, she took the baby to her breast, crooning. As the infant began to suck strongly, Sarah wrapped the towel around her, never once thinking to check Spock's assertion that the child was perfect.

It would sooner have occurred to her to check the sky to see if it was green.

She slept, woke to nurse the baby, slept, woke, nursed, and slept again. Spock was always nearby, and once, late in the afternoon, he brought her a warm Thermocan of soup, one of the last. She drank it gratefully and nursed Jill again, peripherally aware that he averted his eyes when she partially bared her breast, but resigned herself to the inevitable. Some things you just can't do anything about, Spock. A sense of calm and well-being pervaded her consciousness. The job was done, and with Spock's help, she had done it well.

When she woke fully, it was dark. Armstrong and Aldrin were both out of phase, and she opened her eyes to the stars shining through her window. Simultaneously she realized that the baby was no longer at her side and that Spock was standing at the window, off-side so that the panorama of the sky was only partially eclipsed by his shadowy figure. He was holding something, and Sarah's lips parted silently, her exclamation of surprise quickly stifled, as she realized that the bundle he was holding against his shoulder was Jill.

Narrowing her eyes against the darkness in the room, she studied his face, which was visible to her in profile. It was far from expressionless, but the expression she saw there was at first unfathomable. Unaware of her scrutiny, he gazed up the stars with complete concentration. Yet his forehead was smooth, the expressive brows untroubled. Meditating? She had seen him in meditation many times, but now he gave no sign of being in a trance. Making a promise. Something to do with Jill. And Jim? The words sprang to mind from nowhere, as was often the case when she grasped something empathetically, and she accepted them without wondering how she knew. And with that acceptance came another.

We three will never leave this world, and he knows it.

And so do I.

No tears accompanied the realization. As soon as she came to it, a burden of denial fell from her spirit, leaving it as spent and flat-bellied as her body under the sheet. Knowing that all the energy that she, and perhaps Spock, had expended on denial of their reality could now be spent in accepting it, she closed her eyes and drifted off once again. Behind her lids, stars shone softly around a tall, silent shadow with a very small bundle held protectively against his shoulder.

Two weeks later, she and Spock flew over Tower City together.

When Jill was three days old, he had left them alone for the first time and flown away in the hovercraft without explanation. Preoccupied and more than a little afflicted with post-partum and post-denial depression, she did not question him when he returned. But his stiff, controlled expression told her more clearly than words what he had gone to see. She wondered if this could be the first time he had gone to see it, and if he, like most humans, found it necessary to view the body before accepting the death.

A few days later, she said, "I have to go and see Tower City too."

He had offered to accompany her on a short walk along the beach while they both listened for Jill to announce that it was time for her late-evening feeding. Suspecting that rather than seeking her company he simply wanted to keep an eye on her, Sarah had nevertheless acquiesced with suitably muted pleasure; a self-appointed security detail was better than no company at all. Yet his politely protective manner irritated her because of the ambivalent feelings it aroused. Part of her wanted desperately to be watched over and taken care of, and another part wanted to tell him to get the hell away and quit hovering; she could take care of herself just fine, thank you very much. The two were a dangerous mix, and the conflict between them potentially volatile. She was keeping an eye on the mix while he kept an eye on her, and with some success. But when the thought of Tower City occurred to her, she spoke without caution for the first time since the baby's birth. As soon as the words were out, she realized that although they were deeply sincere, her ulterior motive had been to get an emotional response from him. Any response at all, as long as it was genuine.

He continued to walk, hands still clasped behind his back. But his pace slowed, and she turned around to face him, feeling less guilty than awed. No control there. Simply a listening silence that she had never elicited from him before. His gaze met hers directly, in his eyes she saw nothing but understanding, empathy, and--could it be?--a hint of respect. In that moment, they were for the first time truly friends.

"Indeed," he said, and then the moment flew. Control banished understanding, and he was himself again. (Himself? And who might that be?) "When you are stronger." He moved past her and ahead of her, turned, and raised one eyebrow. "Do you wish to continue walking, or are you fatigued?"

"Oh, Spock." It was only a whisper, and she looked away to conceal her disappointment and hurt. How am I going to survive this? she thought. How am I going to survive him?

But before the conversation could continue, another of Jill's staccato awakenings split the air with unhappy demands for sustenance.

She knew that the scene would not be one of carnage, since the city had been incinerated. But the fused desolation skimmed by the shadow of their craft was worse than carnage. It was a mirror of hell, spitting infernal reflections back at the sun. She clung to the side of the craft, clutching her child with her other arm, wondering if she would vomit or faint, but aware that Spock, for once, was not hovering. He must have gone through it himself, alone, and he knew that she must go through it too in order to survive it. And yet, after what seemed like years but could only have been minutes, she heard him say tensely, "We must go now, Sarah," and realized that Jill was crying.

It was the most piteous, utterly demoralizing wail that Sarah had ever heard. No neonate that she had come in contact with had ever emitted such a sound. But then, no neonate that she had come in contact with had ever sung a dirge for twenty thousand souls.

"We have to get her out of here." Clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering, Sarah tried to nurse the baby as Spock turned the craft toward home. But Jill refused to take the breast and continued to wail until they reached the bungalow. Then she suckled briefly and fell into an exhausted sleep so deep that Sarah was loath to put her down. "What could have happened to her?" she asked, hugging the child to her, eyes raised beseechingly to Spock. "Could she possibly have sensed...their pain?"

"Or yours." But before she could catch his eye, he had left the room.

Aldrin hung high and Armstrong low as Sarah entered the living room late that evening, her travel jumpsuit over her arm--limp now, a dead thing that lived only in memory. Spock sat alone in the dark, the curled fingers of one hand resting against his mouth. But when she entered, he looked up at her and silently raised his eyebrows.

"I'm going to bury it," she said.

Without answering, he rose, went to his room, and returned with his Starfleet uniform--pants and underwear as black as the night, shirt the sickly gray-blue of a human corpse--folded with such loving precision that each perfect square was the same size. The sight of it was too much for Sarah, and the tears that had wanted to be shed all day poured down her cheeks. But she made no sound.

"I will go with you," he said in the gentlest tone she had ever heard him use.

They buried their former lives in a single shallow grave at the edge of the woods, the leaves casting flickering double-shadows in the overlapping light of the two moons. Then they sat for a long time, cross-legged on the ground, while Sarah wept silently, sustained only by the warm, strong fingers that encircled her arm.