THE VISIT

Part 1 of 2

"The Visit" is a substory to a novella of mine called "Ni Var," in which Spock becomes two entities, one Vulcan and one human. It should be emphasized that neither Spock is an android, just as neither Kirk was an android in "The Enemy Within." The procedure that separated the two Spocks involved the actual duplication of matter while in the form of energy. Thus both Spocks are the "real" Spock, but one is all Vulcan and the other all human.

The Vulcan made a slight movement--almost the restless, uneasy movement of an embarrassed human. Then he turned toward the figure on the bed and placed his hands behind his back.

"It serves no purpose," he said expressionlessly, "to encourage human interaction with the captain."

The human glanced at him, smiling faintly, but did not answer. The melody went on, sweetly haunting, speaking of many memories.

"Or with Sarah," the Vulcan finished.

One of the strings gave a discordant plunk, abruptly silenced by the human's hand. There was no sound in the room as he returned the Vulcan's gaze without blinking.

In the midst of his conflict with the captain, orders had been received: the Enterprise was to divert briefly to Vulcan to pick up a new crew member. The ship would go into orbit in less than one Standard day. It would be late evening in ShiKahr when they reached Vulcan, but the new crewman would not come aboard until morning.

"You intend to beam down," the Vulcan said quietly. It was not a question.

"I want to see Sarah," the human answered evenly.

"See?" The Vulcan's eyebrows rose slightly.

"I want to make love to my wife," the human continued without raising his voice, willing to maintain his tenuous control. "You've stopped me before, but you won't--"

"I have not prevented you," the Vulcan answered coldly. "I have made it possible for us to remain in control until...." He hesitated.

"Until hell freezes over?" The human sat up, the harp still in his hands. When his alter did not answer, the human went on, his voice ragged. "You're very glib about being in control, my...friend? The one time I really needed you...." He could not go on, and the Vulcan's gaze shifted away as they both remembered Sarah's eyes in the mirror, recklessly inviting an embrace that had become mindless copulation. "Forget it," the human said thickly, and then gave a half sob of mirthless laughter. How easily that most inappropriate of human idioms had come to mind. "Until when?" he asked, again in partial control.

"Until we can find a solution to this problem of ours that is in harmony with both our natures."

"That's impossible." The human lay back on the bed once more and closed his eyes.

"Then why have we tried?"

"I don't know."

The harp strings murmured again. Even with his eyes closed, the human could tell that his alter was motionless, and he ruefully began to understand how that still figure, standing with his hands behind his back, might drive most humans up the walls, as McCoy would say....

"I recall a Terran fable that we puzzled over as a child."

The human opened his eyes, and again the strings were silent. "Fable?" But he knew, just as each of them invariably knew what the other was thinking. "'The Shadow,'" he said softly, fascinated. "Hans Christian Andersen."

"Indeed."

Almost as though they again shared one mind, both recalled that the Shadow had separated itself from its master and eventually convinced the Princess that it was real and that its master was a shadow.

The human smiled a little. "Do you think I could?" Then the smile died. "Do you think I'd try?"

"No. I recalled the story because of the Shadow's first act as a separate entity."

They stared at each other. The Shadow's first act had been to hide beneath the skirts of a woman.

Moved by an emotion so strong that he could not begin to control it, the human sent the harp crashing against the bulkhead, directly behind where the Vulcan's head had been an instant before.

"You're jealous!" The human's voice contained a unique blend of incredulity, triumph and anguish that neither of them paused to analyze.

"That," his alter informed him impassively, "would be most illogical."

The human's one-syllable answer was lost to their ears as he rose abruptly and knelt to inspect the smashed harp. The strings were intact, but the smooth, polished wood was cracked and broken in a dozen places.

He looked up, numb. "I'm sorry."

The Vulcan sighed. "That too is totally illogical. The emotion that caused this did in fact exist. To deny that--"

"I deny nothing." The human shook his head hopelessly. "But I was wrong, and I am sorry. It would be illogical to deny that, wouldn't it?" He picked up a loose fragment of wood and gazed at it with pain. "This was yours too. I had no right...." His voice trailed off into horrified silence as he stared up at his alter. This is yours too. I had no right. And for a moment the image of Sarah seemed to stand between them.

For the first time since the harp had flown at him, the Vulcan averted his eyes, his face rigid with his effort at control. Finally he spoke carefully, as though the words themselves were fragile. "I shall not prevent you from going to her. But you must know that nothing you do alone will resolve the conflict that has existed in this marriage from the beginning."

"I want her to know," the human said softly, "how much I want her. I know that's not logical. But I want her to know."

"You will regret this," his alter answered, speaking no louder than the human had spoken. It was not a threat. It was simply a statement of fact. "As will she."

The human made himself ask: "And you?"

Finally he rose to his feet and faced his Vulcan half squarely, wondering that the other was able to look directly at him without apparent pain. And he thought: Could he know her better than I do?

"Go if you must," the Vulcan said quietly, sadly. If he were in fact jealous, he was controlling it well. "But as my research continues, the probabilities increase that we will soon be one again. Then--" He hesitated almost imperceptibly. "Then, Spock, all our regrets will be one as well."

At noon the following day, ship's time, the human Spock stood with his captain in the transporter room. They were alone there.

"Give Jill my love."

Spock hesitated only an instant--Kirk had to give him that. Less than two weeks as a human, and he'd already learned how to make a gesture. "You could come with me."

"Thanks, but...no thanks." Kirk repressed a rueful smile at the expression of all too human relief that flitted across Spock's face.

"But how can I explain to her why you aren't coming too?"

"You'll think of something," Kirk answered quietly.

"I don't understand," Spock said slowly, frowning, "why you should have that much confidence in me--now."

"So what do you want--a logical explanation?" In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Kirk could not help grinning a little, and even Spock smiled faintly. "She's probably asleep already, and I saw her six months ago. I know she's happy now."

The Enterprise had been on patrol when the first officer had sought out his captain and announced with relative calm that it was necessary that he be on Vulcan within ten days. In the years since the near tragedy enroute to Altair, Starfleet had made provisions for just such a situation, and arrangements had been made for the Enterprise to rendezvous with a smaller military vessel on patrol in the same sector. The Enterprise itself had been close enough to pick Spock up when he was able to return to duty, and it was then that Kirk had been able to spend several hours with Jill, shortly after her tenth birthday. He remembered those hours now with a mixture of tenderness, pride, and embarrassment. With typically Kirkian disdain for bureaucracy, Jill had obtained an all-school clearance and proudly dragged him to meet each of her teachers: "This is my father, Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise...."

"I think you should go alone," he repeated, still smiling, but thinking now of his other reason for wanting to remain on board. Gesturing toward the transporter platform, he moved toward the console. "Dismissed, Mr. Spock. Get the hell out of here. Your wife's waiting for you."

Many members of the crew had requested eight-hour passes on the Vulcan Federation Preserve. The corridors were almost deserted as Kirk left the transporter room. Sulu had the con, and the bridge was now manned by a skeleton crew. Kirk had allowed everyone to assume that he too would beam down, and had a tentative date to meet McCoy at the Officers' Club. But he did not intend to beam down right away, and perhaps not at all.

His chronometer said 1206:46 as he entered his quarters, although he knew it was late evening at Spock's home. Those who knew that the first officer would be home overnight had had varying reactions, ranging from Uhura's affectionate "Maybe you'll get there before your little girl goes to bed, Mr. Spock," to a few snickers among the junior officers. But the captain knew that there was one member of the crew for whom the next eight hours would be very long indeed--one who was used to being alone, but whose aloneness on this occasion could not help but be compounded by the fact that almost nobody knew he was there.

On Kirk's desk was a flat carton about half a meter long and a quarter of a meter wide. Last evening, after granting the human Spock's request for leave, he had thought for a while and then gone to one of the recreation areas, found the carton in a cupboard, and packed it in full view of four young ensigns from Engineering who were playing poker nearby. If any of them had wondered why the captain was dismantling a three-dimensional chess set and packing it away, none of them had asked. One of the indisputable advantages of command.

Now, with the long, flat carton under his arm and a stack of short, flat packages in the other hand, he moved though the corridor toward the first officer's quarters. Hoping he would not be seen and prepared to circle back if he were, he tapped lightly on Spock's door, using the latest top-secret Federation code, known only to command personnel: Kirk here.

After a moment, a voice within answered softly, "Come."

The Vulcan, as Kirk had expected, was working at his desk computer. His eyebrows rose as Kirk displayed his wares and said lightly, "Lunch break, Mr. Spock. I thought you might like to have a bite to eat and play a little chess for a while." He handed the Vulcan one of the smaller packages, standard rations for isolated maneuvers and almost solid vegetable protein, and looked around the room for a small contrivance that could be converted easily into an extra chair, a cabinet, a free standing clothes-hanger, or a small game table. "Where's your four-in-one?"

"Captain," the Vulcan began," there is no necessity--"

"Do you want me to leave?" Kirk asked quietly, looking straight at him.

Their gaze held, and the Vulcan said softly, "No."

"Fine." Kirk smiled easily. "Then will you do me the courtesy, Mr. Spock, of telling me where the devil you keep your four-in-one?"

Silently, the Vulcan turned off his viewer, rose, and produced his four-in-one from a storage compartment. Where it belonged.

When Ambassador Sarek was offworld on official business, his wife and daughter-in-law would sometimes have a late dinner together after Jill and T'Ara were in bed. The ostensible reason would always be that Sarah was delayed at the hospital and Amanda had chosen to wait and eat with her so that she would not have to eat alone.

This particular evening, Sarah knew without even mentioning it that she was not expected to have eaten when she got home. Tired as she was, it was comforting to know that Amanda would have put the girls to bed and arranged what the two of them had long since begun to refer to as a tea party. They both drank coffee, and their simple meal was hardly party fare. The foods that Amanda cycled on these occasions were Vulcan foods, but only those that visually resembled Terran foods. They were served in the courtyard rather than in the dining room, and eaten with the accompaniment of real conversation. Neither of them had ever verbalized aloud exactly what they were doing. Sarah privately considered it a harmless kind of cheating.

Before she left the hospital, she took time to check on one more patient--a Terran woman about her own age who was two-thirds of the way through her second pregnancy. Her Vulcan husband was in the diplomatic service, and she had conceived a dozen light years from home but had managed to maintain her health and that of her unborn child throughout several months on an alien planet. Now the husband had been called home, and the wife had entered the hospital for two days of routine tests. So far the results had been excellent, and Sarah found her patient in good spirits, anticipating being allowed to go home in the morning. A pleasant way for a physician to end a long day.

And yet, as Sarah began to walk across the hospital grounds, a mild depression settled over her like a faint mist. It was not unfamiliar in recent months, and she knew that it would pass. But the sight of her patient's ripening body had filled her with a wistful envy that was not easily banished: There but for some lousy luck go I.

She knew that her feelings were totally illogical in a very human and personal sense. A pregnancy at this time would have meant enforced moderation in her activities just when her professional life was more demanding and rewarding than ever before. Knowing herself, she knew that she would have been impatient, frustrated, perhaps even resentful from time to time were she now spending the better part of a year as a patient was well as a doctor.

And yet she had activated her synthesizer implant when she knew, six months ago, that Spock would be returning to her in the throes of pon farr. For part of the elemental longing that flashed across light years to link their minds with fire had been the need to perpetuate the race--the deep, instinctive drive of every Vulcan ever born to grasp the rare moments of possible procreation and seed them with potential.

She had once been appalled by the sheer desperation of the Vulcan drive toward self-perpetuation. Perceiving it telepathically for the first time, on Tara, she had at first been unable to distinguish it from the Vulcan male's primal fear of being left to die alone in agony. The two were almost indistinguishable from one another, the second reinforcing the first as nature intended. Initially she had tried to mitigate the desperation through the mind link, only to realize that her own temporarily insatiable body was working against her in ways that were all too evident. While the fever raged, the spectre of death--his own, and the death of his race--terrified him on a level more profound than thought. Eventually she had come to understand that the exhausting demands of plak tow were nature's way of ensuring that the Vulcan male would make the best of the little time he had, and that her own almost mindless physical response was part of nature's plan as well, kindling and rekindling his need, ensuring the continuation of the race in spite of the rare season of male fertility.

She knew that her present feelings were also part of that instinctive response--a lingering sense of loss, of emptiness. Vulcans had perfected the synthesizer to a point where there was a probability of 91.28 percent that conception would occur during pon farr. But because of a minor malfunction that she could have corrected easily had she been aware of it, the synthesizer had failed to provide sufficient hormonal stimulation to trigger ovulation, one of the device's many functions.

Like most women psychologically primed for pregnancy and failing to achieve it, she had experienced an emotional let down. But as she walked up the hill toward her tea party with Amanda, Sarah knew there was more to it than that. Logically, it made no sense. She had already borne her husband a healthy child, and in a few years she would have another chance. Even emotionally, her Earth-bred fear of overpopulation chided her subliminally for her regrets. But although she was not Vulcan, she was a Vulcan's wife; something deep within her stirred with a bittersweet longing for that missed chance, that precious potential that would now never be actualized.

And so she walked home with her mind totally occupied with the incredible phenomenon of an instinct so strong as to be trans-racially communicated, never remembering until she was about to enter the courtyard that, after a long day almost totally away from her office, she had neglected to check her vidcom for incoming messages before she left the hospital.

She hesitated for a moment, obscurely uneasy. Any emergency would have been relayed to her. Yet for an instant she almost turned back, drawn as though by a psychic magnet.

Then the feeling was gone. There was only the light, hot breeze off the Vulcan garden on the hill--a breeze smelling faintly of jasmine even though she knew that no Earth flower could grow there.

Any messages not relayed to her could wait until morning.

She had always been aware that Amanda was a telepath too. Her own sensitivity was still carefully shielded; well-learned habits were easily maintained outside the bonding link, and Amanda respected her privacy as she did Amanda's. But two telepathic women living congenially together in the same house cannot fail to perceive one another from time to time. Their contacts had always been brief, broken with affectionate firmness, by mutual consent and without apology as soon as awareness dawned. The information gained was minimal, very like a snatch of overhead conversation, although non-verbal. Each knew what the other thought and felt about her without telepathic contact, and so there were no unwelcome surprises.

But as they lingered over their coffee this evening, Sarah found herself deeply en rapport with Amanda before she was aware that her barriers were down. A companionable silence had fallen between them, and Sarah--her hair down and her hospital tunic replaced by a loose-fitting lounging robe--had been staring pensively into her cup, her mind drifting back to the patient she had envied so much only an hour ago.

Suddenly, she saw her own feelings superimposed on those of another, like a double exposure on a blurred piece of film. That other was younger than she, perhaps in her mid-twenties. She sat alone in the courtyard, almost in the same spot where Sarah now sat, watching a dusty, half naked toddler at play with his sehlat--an old sehlat, with one broken fang and a dry, patchy coat. The image was so vivid that it seemed for a moment that the tiny boy was playing here even now--so vivid that Sarah's professional sense registered automatically: Pre-control phase. Twenty-four to thirty months, Standard.

Then it came to her who it was who played there with I-Chaya's predecessor, dead so many years, and a wave of tenderness nearly obscured the double exposure: the young Amanda, watching her son at play, knowing that she would never bear another child because her body had paid too dearly for the first. The same longing that had overtaken Sarah earlier now rose within the young Amanda until the two seemed almost as one, except that Sarah had hope and Amanda had none.

Then the vision blurred and dissolved, leaving Sarah with a piercing sense of the other's resigned acceptance forever entwined with deep regret, all kept hidden because the young Amanda had no friend who might understand.

Shaken and close to tears, Sarah hid her face in her hands for a moment, only half hearing Amanda's whispered, "Oh, Sarah, I'm so sorry. I should be more careful." Sarah shook her head sharply, but Amanda reached across the table and laid a gentle but insistent hand on hers. "Please. That was so long ago. I was just...remembering. I'm sorry you got the full brunt of it. I was trying to break the contact before it made you even more depressed than you are, but I guess it got out of hand."

"I'm glad." Briefly, Sarah laid her cheek against the hand on hers, took a deep breath and smiled, no longer in danger of breaking down. "I don't think I'm really depressed. It comes and goes. And now you know that somebody does understand, even if it's years too late." Their gaze held as the hand on hers tightened. Then Sarah asked quietly, "Am I broadcasting to every telepath around?"

"No. I don't think anybody but an Earthwoman married to a Vulcan would be able to tell what's bothering you. But you triggered some very vivid memories." Amanda sighed, patted Sarah's hand and then sat back, withdrawing her own hand. "Enough of that. For a little while we'll be supersensitized to each other. Sarah, fight this. Get perspective on it. I don't believe that a Vulcan woman would feel this way. The emptiness. We feel defective, lacking in so many ways." She smiled tenderly. "Being not-pregnant is not the end of the world, emotional Earther. It's just being not-pregnant."

Sarah could not help smiling. "In other words, my behavior is totally illogical."

Trying hard to look solemn, Amanda inclined her head slightly. "Indeed."

And then, freezing Sarah's irrepressible giggle before it was audible, Amanda half rose in her chair, her eyes shining in sudden joy as she looked beyond Sarah's shoulder toward the gate.

"Oh, my dear," she said softly, "why didn't you let us know?" Before Sarah could turn, Amanda leaned forward and took her face between her hands. "No--don't look yet. Make a wish, my darling, and then turn around." But Sarah turned, not daring to wish.

Later she would wonder why she did what she did then. Still later she would know, remembering with painful vividness that her reaction at that moment had less relationship to her years of memories of her husband than to the indefinable aura he now projected. It simply never occurred to her to greet him as she always had, her two fingers extended to meet his. Here, for once, was simply a man in desperate need of being held in his woman's arms, of being welcomed home with every part of her. And so Sarah welcomed him home, her response to him limited only by her awareness that they were not alone.

Then she went stiff with terror. Who are you? The insane question screamed in her mind. WHO ARE YOU? The body that moved and breathed against hers was as familiar as her own. But the mind that touched hers now was very nearly the mind of a stranger.

She pulled back, grasping his shoulders, almost shaking him, her eyes wide and terrified. "Are you--what's the matter with--?"

Nothing to fear, not a scrap of malice in him, virtually incapable of intentional injury to anyone. Loving, desiring her with a total abandon that brought tears to her eyes. And yet--Somebody took him apart, she thought. Somebody took him apart and put him back together all wrong. But it wasn't that. What was still there fit. It was what was missing that terrified her, although she could not have explained why, let alone what it was that was missing.

"Stop." He pulled her close once more, his mouth almost touching her ear. "Sarah--" He hid his face in her shoulder, and she could feel his heart pounding. (Slow? Why should his heart be beating so slowly?) "Please, not now. I am as I have always been." He raised his head and took her face gently between his hands. So gently. So much love in those dark eyes. And she thought, Oh, my love--forgive me. "I'm very tired," he went on softly, but a little louder than his previous words had been--loud enough now for his mother to hear. "But I'm not ill. Don't worry." Slowly, deliberately, he ran his forefinger over her lips, his eyes now shining softly, denying his claim of fatigue. "I'm quite all right." He released her slowly, his gaze still lingering on hers, and went to greet his mother.

Sarah now realized that Amanda had walked a little way across the court and was standing with her back to them, examining a flowering hedge with a great deal of apparent interest. At her son's approach, she turned and they exchanged the ritual Vulcan embrace, greeting each other verbally as well. Amanda seemed to scan her son's face with unusual intensity. But she had barely touched him and was, no doubt, scrupulously shielding out his thoughts--as he no doubt was shielding himself. Eventually she smiled, apparently satisfied that all was well with him after all, and asked as they walked back toward Sarah: "Why didn't you tell us you were coming? We could have kept the girls up."

He explained that he had sent a message to Sarah at the hospital, but waved away her apologies abstractedly, having noticed the remains of the tea party on the table. The arrangement of the dinner service was obviously as Terran as the food was meant to look, and his eyebrows rose in a way that was as Vulcan as his faint smile was human.

"Ah--we --," Amanda began, and stopped. "This is--well--we like to--when Sarah is--" She sighed. "Oh, Spock, it's perfectly obvious--"

"Indeed." It seemed to Sarah that he was gently mocking himself. His Vulcan self. "Interesting."

"No doubt," Amanda said wryly. But she was obviously relieved that he did not seem to disapprove. "Haven't you any luggage? How long can you stay? I don't expect your father back until tomorrow."

"I know." It was quiet statement of fact. But before Sarah could ask how he knew his father was offworld (Had he checked somehow? And if so, why?), he went on: "I regret that I shall be here only until early tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow morning?" Amanda stared. Her eyes flicked to Sarah and then back to her son. "Well--I'll say goodnight then."

Instead of making a protest that would not have fooled anyone, Sarah went to her and embraced her silently. Deeply moved as she was, she was aware that Spock was watching them embrace, and was perhaps more deeply moved than she.

"Mother--" He stood as usual, hands behind his back. But the tenderness in his eyes was most unusual. "May I see you to your door?" And he bowed slightly, a courtly little bow with one eyebrow askew and a hint of a very un-Vulcan smile in his eyes.

Sarah could not help staring at the image of her Vulcan husband deliberately playing the gallant knight. But Amanda recovered more quickly.

"I'd like that very much," she said softly. "Goodnight, Sarah." Her lips brushed Sarah's cheek and then she moved toward her son. For an instant Sarah thought he would offer his mother his arm, and it seemed to her that Amanda's hand moved expectantly. But he did not offer his arm, and as he and Amanda moved away from her, Sarah thought she knew why: Spock did not want his telepathic mother in prolonged physical contact with him tonight.

She turned to the table and began to clear it while she waited, her mind in chaos even as her body swelled and softened with anticipation--a painfully urgent anticipation about which, she was sure, the divided spirit who was her mate was not even remotely divided.

Spock and his mother walked in silence until they reached the entrance to the north wing, now open to the evening breeze. There they paused, and Amanda turned her face to the stars. "On nights like this," she said softly, "I often think of Mimbi, going home." They both smiled a little, but sadly. "I've always been sorry that you were alone with Mimbi when it died. A child of eleven isn't equipped to lose a friend when he's all by himself in the desert, let alone lose it in such an alien way."

Spock lowered his eyes. "You tried to comfort me," he said almost in a whisper. "I rejected you."

"Oh, Spock--"

"I didn't want to." He gazed at her now, pleading. "Mother, you know that there have always been...two of me."

"I understand. I told you I did, even then. Don't you remember?"

"Yes." But his voice was ragged with disbelief. "How could you understand?" he burst out finally. "A human woman among Vulcans. You needed me and I--"

"No," she said quietly, but with great compassion. "I was never alone, Spock. And I'm not alone now. You couldn't understand then. But I think you can now that you have Sarah."

Their gaze held for a moment and then Spock looked away. A casual observer would have had trouble judging whether he was moved or embarrassed. But his mother knew that he never lowered his eyes in precisely that way out of simple embarrassment.

"I wish I could talk to you. But I can't. Not even now."

"Perhaps you will someday," she answered, not giving herself time to puzzle about his meaning lest she be tempted to pry into his life. "But even if you can't--" She paused, searching for words. "There is a part of me in you. I feel it so very strongly tonight. I'm sorry I ever doubted that."

"Mother," he answered softly, "it's over. Long ago."

"But I slapped you."

"It's over." And he smiled at her--a smile that she had never seen before.

For a long moment she stood gazing up at him, speechless. But when she did speak, her voice was quite steady. "Thank you for that," she said. She stood on tiptoe and lightly brushed his cheek with her lips as she had done with Sarah. "I don't think I'll ever forget it. Goodnight, my son." And she was gone, her footsteps dying away in the shadows.

Spock stood looking after her for a few moments. Then he turned away --and looked into two large yellow eyes staring at him without blinking from the darkness beneath the dining room window. "You too, old friend?" he asked softly. "You want to know who I am too." He sighed deeply. "I-Chaya, if I really knew that, I'd tell you. And Sarah." Silence. "Goodnight, old friend. Take care of my people." He walked away, and the sehlat watched him, still unblinking. There had been no move to attack. But the man who moved slowly away from him across the courtyard was not familiar, and I-Chaya knew it without question. 

The courtyard was deserted except for I-Chaya, the table now cleared of the revealing remains of the supper that Sarah and his mother had shared there. Remembering, he smiled briefly and then grew serious again, attempting to ignore, since he could not control, the sweet, insistent ache that invaded his body whenever he thought of his wife. He had a message to deliver before he could join her.

The door to Jill's room was open, and he saw at once that she had fallen asleep while reading. She lay on her stomach under a light covering, her cheek pillowed on her hands. A tape viewer stood on the mattress a short distance from her head, almost like a watching eye, its screen still lighted. The room was fairly neat, but a dusty coverall and a pair of even dustier desert boots lay in a pile near the foot of the bed. They contrasted sharply with the feminine garb of ageless design draped over a nearby chair: a black leotard and a pair of once-pink ballet slippers, their crumpled ribbons mute testimony to the number of times they had been tied and untied.

On the head of the bed, a creature perched. Of late, it seemed that Jill always had a small animal with her, and this one was a particular pet; because it was so silent and relatively clean, she was permitted to bring it to her room. The nearest Terran analogue was an owl. The night-flying creature was a quadruped, but with relatively large wings, now folded over its sides. It had no beak; its head looked rather like the head of a cat, and its eyes were as round as I-Chaya's and as blue as Earth's sky. The sound it made was the name Jill had given it. Spock and the creature stared at one another in silence, and then it spoke softly.

"Who," said Who.

"That," Spock whispered gravely, "would seem to be the hot topic of the evening."

"Who," the creature agreed, blinking once. But unlike I-Chaya, it did not know Spock as Spock, and it did not seem in the least disturbed at his presence.

He shut off the viewer and removed it to the bedside table, reluctant to disturb the child's sleep and yet unable to bring himself to leave without speaking to her. As he turned off the reading light, she stirred and half woke, sleepily sliding her cramped hands out from under her face until her cheek rested on the sheet. As she yawned, eyelids fluttering, he leaned over and gently stroked her hair.

She turned on her side and looked up at him, heavy-lidded, smiling drowsily. "Spock?" Half asleep still, in a pleasant waking dream where all things were possible. "Is J.T. here too?"

Even all human, he could not help but disapprove of the name (if one could call it that) by which Jill had elected to call her father. And yet he could not help but empathize with the problem she had finally solved in a manner that seemed to please her and apparently pleased as well as amused her father. She had not discussed her dilemma with Spock, and he had it only through Sarah's tapes to him that Jill had been unable to bring herself to address her father either conventionally or by his given name. "I'd feel funny," had been her summing up of the situation. And so she had decided to call her father something that no one else called him. It was, Spock had to admit, rather symbolic, since Jill's relationship with Jim was not quite like any that either of them had ever known. And so he tried to ignore the fact that both his aesthetic sensibilities and his Vulcan-bred sense of propriety were mildly disturbed every time Jill called her father "J.T."

"No," he answered gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "But he asked me to give you his love."

He noted with relief that she was too sleepy to question him very much. Instead, she smiled in drowsy delight. "Did he really say that?"

Spock nodded, again touching her hair in a light caress.

She seemed to rouse a little. "You're different this time."

He almost held his breath, but resisted the impulse to withdraw his hand abruptly.

"Have you seen T'Ara yet?" she asked, obviously confused by something she could not define.

"No. I had a message to deliver first." He stroked her hair lightly once more and then withdrew his hand.

Surprising him completely, she sat up and put her arms around him, laying her cheek against his shoulder. Wide awake, she might not have taken such a liberty even now, responding instinctively as she was to another human being who loved her. But when she yawned again, he realized that she was still far from awake, and permitted himself to hold her gently.

"Goodnight, Jill Kirk," he said softly. "Sleep well."

He had been concentrating on shielding his thoughts from a possible telepathic probe, knowing that Jill was quite capable of breaching his unreliable barriers in her present drowsy state, even though she had been schooled in recent years to avoid the uncontrolled use of her talents. Now he realized belatedly that the words he had just said to her, preoccupied, had revealed more of how he thought of her than he had ever revealed before.

After a moment of silence, she said slowly, "That's not my name." But she was not reproving him. In her voice was only a confused wistfulness that touched him deeply.

"Yes," he said quietly. "It is."

She did not answer, and after a moment he realized that she was again more than half asleep, her head still on his shoulder.

Gently he laid her down again, pulled the covers up to her neck, and tucked them around her shoulders. Her eyelids fluttered, but she could not keep them open. "See you tomorrow," she murmured, turned over, and was asleep. Even if he had had the heart to tell her she was wrong, she would not have heard him.

He stood looking down at her in silence for a moment, then glanced at Who, who had apparently gone to sleep too. And then, drawn almost against his will, he opened the connecting door to the room that was between Jill's and Sarah's, slipped through it and closed it silently behind him. 

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