HUMAN VOICES

It was hot in the courtyard, for the sun had barely dropped below the roof of the house and it was still a long time until evening. It had been a rather stupid idea, she realized, for her and Charlie to practice their weaponless hand-to-hand combat techniques outside before sunset. Even though she had lived on Vulcan for two-thirds of her twelve years and Charlie for all of his, human kids at the Federation school still popped over from heat exhaustion occasionally. If her mother or Amanda were home, one of them would probably send them inside, or down to the greenhouse to work on their chess game.

But nobody else was home except T'Ara, who was playing the piano just inside the open window a few meters away. As Jill and Charlie circled one another warily, she knew that her sister was working on a new piece, and that the next step was going to be more than Jill could handle at the moment, when she had to concentrate on Charlie and not her telepathic shields. T'Ara had already sight-read the piece forward once, played it backwards once, then played it forward from memory. That had been relatively easy to shut out, even though T'Ara had let her own shields slip as she became engrossed in the music. What was really hard to handle was the job that T'Ara was now doing on the sonatina, pulling out all the sixteenth notes to see what kind of a melody they would make all by themselves....

"You're telegraphing, Charlie," Jill said aloud, remembering what J.T. had told her about watching the eyes. Then, aside to her sister: "Stop it, shadow. You're not shielding at all."

T'Ara glanced at her briefly, apologetically, and the contact between them blanked.

Jill's concentration returned to Charlie, who was starting to really sweat, his sandy hair matted to his forehead. He was bigger and stronger than she was, but he couldn't seem to figure out what she was going to do next. She had already dumped him twice. Now she moved in quickly, faster than he could respond, and dumped him for the third time. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and came to his feet puffing a little.

"Let's quit," he said, giving her a look that reminded her of the way he used to say You're just a girl until she'd made him stop saying it. "You want to work on the game for a while?"

"All right." She was sweating herself, and now she rubbed her arm across her forehead, then ran her hand under her hair in the back, flipping the long fair mantle away from her neck for a moment. "T'Ara, Mother's on duty until tomorrow morning. Tell Amanda where I am when she gets home, okay?"

T'Ara raised her eyes briefly from the piano keys, where she was now patterning the eighth notes. She did not answer aloud, and was still thoroughly screening her mind. Her green eyes were abstracted, but she nodded; obviously she had heard them, even though she had not seemed to be listening.

They went out the gate, Charlie still glowering. Today might be a total loss, and not only because she had dumped him. As they started down the hill to the greenhouse in silence, she tried to remember how long it had been since they had really been best friends like they used to be.

When she had come to Vulcan eight years ago, she had not been able to play with other offworld children at first. Their voices shouted, their bodies jostled, and their minds all seemed to scream at her at once. It was only after her mother had helped her to shield them out that she had been able to tolerate the idea of going to school.

One day about that time, when she was sitting alone on the playground, just watching, a little boy her own age had left the group, come over to where she was sitting, squatted down and held out his hand. "You can play too," he had said, smiling at her. She had taken his hand and gone back with him, and that had been the first day of her belonging.

Later she had found out that his father was a colleague of her mother's at the Science Academy hospital. For a while, the two families had been friends, and her friendship with Charlie had become closer because of it. But then something about their families had changed. She had asked her mother why, and that had been the first and only time in her life that her mother had not answered a question of hers directly.

"Why do you call her 'shadow'?" The same little boy, half grown now, was looking at her sideways as they walked. His blue eyes were puzzled, faintly hostile, even though he was affecting a nonchalant grin. More and more lately, it was as though most of what she said and did was alien to him.

"Because she is. Mine."

"Why don't you tell her to get lost?" Idly, as though he really didn't care.

But she was used to that. He acted as though he didn't care about anything lately except winning games and adding to his collection of words for "copulation" from every known language. Yet she knew that he did care that something was going wrong with their friendship, cared as much as she did. She had been taught to control her telepathic powers, but she could not help sensing the feelings of those she was close to. And she had been close to Charlie for much too long to be able to shut him out completely.

He was looking at her sideways again, and she realized that she had not answered his question: Why don't you tell her to get lost? How to answer? Mother had told her that if she didn't want T'Ara following her around, Mother or Sarek would do something about it. Her answer then had been "It's okay."

Her answer now was "I don't know."

Both answers were true.

The chess game had been going on for several weeks. They were both determined to win it.

She was always surprised at how cool it was in the greenhouse. Her mother had been surprised when she mentioned that once. On Earth, apparently, the greenhouse would have seemed hot. But since she had never been to Earth, it was hard to imagine a place where this would seem hot. Tall plants, greener than any she had ever seen, formed the first row on all four sides of the room; it was almost like walking around in a cool green basket, its bottom spattered with color except for the aisles. Only one of the flower beds, next to the aisle where their game was set up, looked empty. The evening before, she and T'Ara and Amanda had planted a variety of Earthborn seeds there and then added water; Amanda never used chemicals on anything growing. Now the rectangular bed lay wet and black, blacker than any stretch of ground that she had ever seen.

Remembering what Amanda had called it, she giggled as she sat down next to the chessboard. "Guess what that's called."

Charlie, who had stretched out half reclining opposite her, his back to the empty flower bed, glanced over his shoulder. "I give up." Idly, as though it didn't matter to anybody as grown-up as he thought he was.

"Mud." She could barely keep from giggling again.

Charlie's mouth twitched. He was trying really hard, but she knew him too well. There had been a time when they had been able to send each other into helpless laughter with new words like "potato" and "bubblegum."

"Mud?" His voice cracked on the word, and that did it. It was like old times, she told herself even as they broke up together, laughing helplessly. But it didn't last long, just as she knew it wouldn't. It never did anymore.

As they settled down to the game again, she with her knees pulled up and her chin resting on them, he reclining on his elbow next to the empty flower bed, he asked, "Doesn't the old man care if you give her a nickname?"

Why did almost everything he said lately sound so...hard?

"He's not a 'man,'" she answered patiently, making a chess move. "And it's not a nickname. I don't capitalize 'shadow' in my mind." Then, hoping for something she couldn't define: "He even calls her 'small' once in a while."

No use. Charlie stirred uneasily, glancing at her and then away. "You sound just like them sometimes."

He seemed to use "them" an awful lot lately.

"That's dumb," she said, trying not to sound like she was getting mad at him. She didn't want to get mad at him. "No Vulcan would ever say 'I don't capitalize it in my mind.'"

"Well, you sound dumb lately." He looked up for a moment, directly at her, and she realized for the first time that the things she said these days sounded as unfamiliar to him as the things he said sounded to her. She looked back at him silently, not knowing what to say. And he looked away.

They played in silence for a while, and then he asked "Does she ever talk?" His tone was the same as it had been when he had asked Doesn't the old man....

Determined to ignore it, she imagined Charlie trying to decompress one of T'Ara's sentences, and smiled a little.

The silence lasted a moment longer. Then Charlie said softly: "My dad says they aren't really much like us at all. He says they don't even do it like we do."

With her chin still on her knees, she raised her eyes to his. They had been this route before, but never like this. Nowhere near like this. "Or maybe we just don't do it like they do, huh?" Some small part of her listened to her own voice and thought: I sound like I don't even like him anymore.

"You think I'm lying?" His turn to smile a little.

"No," she answered calmly. She got up then, knowing that she could not stand one more conversation like this, or one more line of this one. "I think you're sick." The chess board flew into the air, lifted quickly, lightly by the toe of her sandal--scattering their game over the spatters of color, over the mud, some of the pieces even flying through the tall green plants that lined the room. "Go home, Charlie. I have to practice." She turned and started for the door, not wanting to look back.

"Why'd you do that? His voice cracked again on the last word, and she turned reluctantly, knowing that she had to.

"And don't come back." But it wasn't ending now, she knew. It had started to end a long time ago. Maybe a year. Maybe longer. She couldn't even remember when it wasn't starting to end. "I don't like being with you anymore. You're father's a stupid man, and you're getting to think just like he does." How do I know how his father thinks? she wondered, beginning to feel a little sick. I hardly ever see his father. And she tensed, wondering for the first time if Charlie might be mad enough to want to fight with her again, this time for real.

He lay half reclining on his elbow, again smiling a little as he had when he asked You think I'm lying?. And when he spoke, it was for real.

"Not stupid enough to fuck animals." The verb was a Rigellian obscenity with an analogue in almost every known language. It was the newest addition to his collection.

Because she was standing and he reclining, she literally got the drop on him before he realized she was there. She landed squarely on his midsection, and heard the air go out of his lungs. Odd noise. Like something exploding.

It seemed that she couldn't see quite clearly; everything was a little blurred, and there was something pounding rhythmically inside her head. She seemed to be a lot stronger than she usually was, and a lot faster. In an instant she had rolled him over, pinning one arm beneath him and twisting the other behind his back, holding his wrist there with one of her hands while her other hand grasped him by the hair. The mud that they had laughed at together made a pleasant sound as she rubbed his face in it, hard. She kept on doing it, harder now, thinking how nice it sounded and wondering how soon she would have to stop so that he could start breathing again. The mud was spattering all over her hair now, and her tunic. But she could clean that up later, she decided.

He had struggled a little at first, but he was barely struggling now. Couldn't get his breath, she supposed. Reluctantly, she let go and sprang away from him.

He was up on his hands and knees now, choking, spitting out mud, gasping for air, choking again, spitting out more mud. She backed away, toward the side of the room opposite the door. She wanted him out the door, but she didn't particularly want to be in his way while he was getting there.

Breathing hard, still on hands and knees, he turned his head to look at her. "You're cr-- crazy!" His voice sounded funny, as though it had permanently cracked. He began to get to his feet, and she moved a little farther away from him.

"Sure I am." Her voice sounded funny too, she noticed. It was so calm, as though there were nothing pounding inside her head at all. "Bye, Charlie."

He was on his feet now, but he didn't seem to be going to want to fight her after all. Slowly he backed away from her toward the door. Watch the eyes, J.T. had said. But there was nothing in his eyes except fear.

He stood still for a moment more, and it came to her that he thought she was going to attack him again if he turned his back.

"Go home," she said quietly. "And don't come back here. Ever."

A moment more of hesitation, and then he cut and ran for the door, slamming it behind him.

In the silence, she realized that something was happening to her arms.

She put her hands in the pockets of her tunic and straightened her arms against the shaking. Her legs were starting to shake too. The whole place was a mess, mud and chessmen all over the floor, mud even on some of the flowers. She would come back and clean it up later. After she stopped shaking.

Slowly she went toward the door.

But how would she get the mud off the flowers?

There was a chessman directly in front of her on the floor, between her and the door. Savagely, violently, she kicked it--sideways, out of her way, along the aisle that ran between the translucent greenhouse wall and the tall green plants. The chessman skipped up the aisle, skipping and skimming along the floor, and she watched it go, skipping and skimming up the aisle away from her, coming to rest finally near the small figure who sat with her arms around her knees, hidden from the center of the room by the tall green plants that were only a few shades darker than her eyes.

That's just the way Mother sits, Jill thought abstractedly, when she's sitting on the floor. She began to walk slowly up the aisle, thinking, I do it too. I never noticed that she does it, though. And she thought, Somebody's going to cry. It must be me. She never cries. And she thought, WHY DIDN'T I KNOW SHE WAS HERE?

"Why are you shielding?" she asked aloud. And then she remembered.

Her sister's face was impassive, but her eyes looked twice as big as they usually did.

Leaning over, Jill took her hand and pulled her to her feet, leading her back toward the door. At the moment, nothing in the universe was as important as getting T'Ara out of that greenhouse. It didn't make much sense. But then, nothing was making much sense right now.

The sun had dropped completely behind the house as they began to climb the hill together, T'Ara's hand still in hers. The wind was up too, blowing her hair and T'Ara's back and then forward and then from side to side; back like a jet-black plume and another sun-bleached almost white, then forward and to the side, straggling across their faces and into their eyes. Red shadows reached down the hill, across the Vulcan garden. Here, at least, there was no mud on the flowers....

"Didn't that bother you at all, shadow?"

She looked over at the child--this child-sister now barely a head shorter than she was. T'Ara looked back, her eyebrows rising slightly. When she had nothing to say, she invariably said nothing. She does it physically, her mother had explained once. She's not holding anything back, the way you and I would have to. She makes the feelings go away. That's why she has to be with Sarek most of the time until she's grown up. He's teaching her how to control....

They were halfway up the hill before T'Ara spoke.

"Why do you want me to want to show him what he is?" she asked softly--so softly that Jill could barely hear her over the hot, dry wind. "You did that for both of us."

I'm the one, Jill thought, her throat beginning to ache. I'm the one who's going to cry. She dropped T'Ara's hand and sat down beside the path, crossed her legs lotus-like and put her hands on her ankles, leaning forward slightly. Her chest was starting to ache too. She let go of her ankle with one hand and struck the fist against her knee. "Damn!" But it didn't help. Whatever it was that had made her stronger than Charlie was gone now. The pounding in her head had stopped too, but everything inside the rest of her seemed to be falling apart at the same time. Folding her arms across her chest, she began to rock back and forth slightly, her head bent. "It's not fair!" It seemed that she could feel Spock's hand on her hair, that she could almost hear his voice in a sweet waking dream: "Goodnight, Jill Kirk. Sleep well." The tears seemed to be everywhere, even in her mouth, and no matter how she hugged herself and rocked, the pain just got worse. "It's not fair it's not fair it's not fair...."

Dimly she realized that T'Ara was kneeling in front of her, and that she was not shielding anymore. She was partially controlling and yet not completely; the pain she felt was not hers, but her sister's. Jill felt the child's hand on the side of her head, fingers reaching out, but not far enough. Because T'Ara was not shielding now, it was clear what she was trying to do, although Jill could not begin to understand why at any level that she could have verbalized. It was clear that T'Ara's hands were not large enough, her fingers not long enough to reach the points that she seemed to be able to sense were there without knowing they were there. She was eight years old, and as their mother had once remarked, her bone structure was her grandmother's. She knew almost instinctively what it was that she so desperately wanted to do, but she was physically unable to do it.

Her frustration was so intense that Jill sobbed once in sympathy, her sister's pain compounding hers. Then, before Jill could raise her head and beg her to spare herself, T'Ara leaned her forehead against her sister's temple and the circuit she had been trying so desperately to establish was complete.

In her one contact with Spock four years before, Jill had learned for the first time what it was like to communicate with a highly skilled telepath. The experience had been painful because of the content; she had been unintentionally violating T'Ara's mental privacy and threatening her very identity, and that realization had horrified and frightened her in spite of Spock's reassurance and comfort. But she had also been intensely aware of how very good he was at what he was doing, how well he had learned the skills he was now called upon to use: communicating with her without violating her privacy. It awed her whenever she remembered it, and she had often thought that she would never be that good, that she could never hope to learn all that he had learned of the art he practiced.

T'Ara had never learned any of it. And yet she practiced the telepath's art as though she had been born knowing it.

Where Spock's mind had run, surefooted, his daughter's flew as though on wings made of air and sunlight. Involuntarily touching T'Ara's childish memories and then veering quickly away from them, Jill understood instantly that Sarek already knew exactly what the child was capable of, but had not attempted to instruct or train her in the art of the healer because he believed that she was still too young; he had, in fact, told T'Ara as much in words spoken aloud. That memory was clear enough for Jill to perceive it before she could retreat. But whether she was old enough or not, whether she was trained or not, was of no concern to T'Ara at the moment. She was concerned only with the banishing the almost unendurable agony of the sister she loved.

And banish it she did, leaving Jill with a verbal message: He cannot defile your memories unless you let him. The English "defile" was not in T'Ara's conscious vocabulary. Yet the message was there.

Jill's first coherent thought was The flowers'll be fine. T'Ara's forehead still rested against her temple, although the child's hand had fallen to her side. Jill thought tiredly, Can I give you a hug, just this once? T'Ara allowed that the experience would be pleasant, put her arms lightly around Jill's waist, and got hugged as she had never been except by her mother. They remained so for a moment, the hot Vulcan wind blowing their hair around their shoulders, mingling the light with the dark.

As they approached the house a few minutes later, again hand in hand, Jill said quietly, "You won't tell Mother what he said." It was not a question.

"Indeed," T'Ara agreed, impassive. "That would be most illogical."

After T'Ara was in bed, Jill decided that she would share her Hollowbox with Amanda this evening. J.T. had sent it to her several months ago, and she had watched the holo several times alone. Amanda was almost as good company as Mother was, and she felt like she wanted somebody's good company tonight.

She sat on her bed, looking down at the outside of the small box in her lap. "Hollowbox," she knew now, was something called a brand name; J.T. had explained about brand names as soon as he realized she had no idea what they were. The box was indeed hollow, with all the transceivers hidden in the inside wall; you could even keep something in it if you wanted to. But there were also other manufacturers who expanded embrittled antique films into holograms. The process had once been an art form, J.T. had told her. But in the past two decades "hollowing" films had become Big Business--a term he had also had to explain. The one she held in her hands, though, was about thirty or forty years old--itself almost an antique.HOLLOWBOX #12 The Red Shoes 1948, O.C.

"I feel so dumb," she had told him once on a tape, before she had the Hollowbox. "It takes so much time to stay in shape, and I don't even want to be a ballerina. But it feels so great doing it. Do you think I ought to get another hobby and quit wasting my time? Once I get to PREPDIV, I won't have time for kid stuff like this."

In his answering tape, he had said: "What makes you think Starfleet cadets all have to jog or shoot baskets for exercise? And"--grinning now--"I have it from an unimpeachable source that on Vulcan there's time enough for everything." She had liked the bit about being a Starfleet cadet. PREPDIV wasn't exactly the Academy, after all. Just almost. But he had seemed tired and preoccupied on that tape, not like himself at all. Since he had been at Operations, you never could tell what kind of a mood he'd be in when he taped. Sometimes he'd talk about the boat for minutes on end, and you could tell he was excited about having one and being near enough to the ocean to sail again. Other times, the tape wasn't even five minutes long, and he seemed to have nothing much to say.

A few months later she had received the Hollowbox; it took forever to get anything from Earth to Vulcan that couldn't relay through subspace like a tape. She had watched the holofilm, fascinated, until the end, where the ballerina had died because she couldn't choose between her dancing and the man she loved. It was not the sadness of the ending that was disturbing; it was the idea that there was some sort of choice that had to be made, and that the ballerina had made the wrong choice because she wanted to dance instead of staying where her composer husband was living. Even more disturbing was the possibility that J.T. had been trying to tell her something when he sent her this particular holo.

She thought about talking it over with Mother. But since it was not Mother who might be trying to tell her something she didn't want to hear, she decided to write J.T. a note about it. Peter wrote him letters all the time, he said, and he seemed to think that was nice. And somehow this wasn't the kind of thing you asked somebody on a tape. So she got a piece of paper and wrote two questions on it.

Why did you send me this story? 

Why couldn't she have both?

Then she sent it off in the mail, just like people had to do in 1948, O.C.

Months passed, and neither of them mentioned the note when they taped. Either he had not gotten his note, or he was answering her questions in the same way she had asked them.

Finally the answer arrived, wrapped in another sheet of paper with a flap folded over and sealed, and her name on the outside of it. (She had simply folded hers over on itself and addressed the outside.) It was a funny feeling to look at that sealed up thing and know there was no tape inside, just writing. She almost wished she had asked him on a visual after all. When she unsealed it, she could see through the paper that he had written two lines, just as she had. Turning it over, she read them.

Because she  loves to dance.

Because she thought she couldn't.

Rereading the note now, she looked up at Who, who was perched on the head of the bed as usual.

"Who," said Who.

"That's my father," she told him, and for once Who seemed to have nothing more to say.

Amanda seemed to enjoy the holo. But she seemed to enjoy the story about the notes even more.

"I could like that man," she said, smiling a little. "If I ever got to see him long enough." But when Jill put the box under her arm and came over for a goodnight hug, Amanda took her hand instead. "Sit down here a minute," she said quietly. And Jill realized that she had seemed slightly preoccupied all evening, and had smiled only a little about the note from J.T.

They were in the living room, where it was cool with the windows open now that the sun had gone down and the night breeze was coming in from the Forge. Amanda never went anywhere but the living room and the kitchen when she was over in this wing. When T'Ara had asked her why, she had said, "If I were your mother, I wouldn't want me anywhere but the living room or the kitchen unless I was here." She had lost T'Ara in the middle of it, but Jill had smiled, and she smiled now, remembering, as she dropped down at Amanda's feet.

"Charlie's father called while you were getting the holofilm," Amanda said, still speaking quietly. For a moment Jill felt as though she were going to be sick right there on the floor, but the moment passed. She was already aware that T'Ara had left something in her mind for later, much like a long-lasting medicine. "He says there's some kind of a grainy residue in Charlie's nose and throat that his father can't identify."

I bet he can't. But she did not say it aloud.

"Is that funny?" Amanda asked, frowning a little.

"Not very."

"Then why did you smile?"

Jill looked back at her, not smiling, not answering.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Amanda went on slowly. "Charlie won't tell him what it is. He seems upset, but he won't tell his parents why. Do you know why?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me?"

"No." She answered in the same quiet tone that Amanda had used when she asked the question.

"Why?"

"I don't want you to hear what he said." Kneeling up, she laid her hand on Amanda's where it rested on the arm of her chair. She realized that Amanda was having a very hard time trying to keep from reading her, so she shielded carefully, as T'Rue had taught her to do. But she did not remove her hand.

"Hear?" They looked at one another for a long moment, and then it seemed to Jill that Amanda's eyes began to shine just a little. It could have been tears. Or something else. She couldn't tell. "You"--she pointed at Jill--"don't want me...?" Slowly she pointed back at herself.

"It's okay." Jill patted her hand. "He won't say it anymore. Not around here, anyway."

"Was it about your mother," Amanda asked almost casually, "or about Spock?" Still with that funny brightness in her eyes.

Damn. Jill dropped back on her heels. She should have known better. "Both. But I'm not going to tell you what he said."

"All right."

Jill stared.

"I'd rather you told me what the grainy substance in his throat is," Amanda said, again almost casually.

"I squshed his face in your flower bed." For a moment she thought Amanda's face twitched, but she could have imagined it. "It didn't hurt him."

"You overpowered him?" Amanda asked faintly.

"I surprised him. Otherwise he's almost too big."

Amanda stared now, as though she were trying to get a picture in her mind of what had happened. Then, suddenly, she leaned forward and spoke quickly, her voice hushed. "T'Ara wasn't there, was she?"

"She heard it. She was hiding."

"Oh, Jill." It was only a whisper. Slowly, Amanda sat back in her chair. "Why didn't you know she was there?"

For the first time since Amanda had begun the conversation, Jill felt a slight wave of nausea. Again, the moment passed. "I told her to shield before Charlie and I went down to play chess. She was doing that thing they...." They. "She was doing that thing Vulcans can do with the notes."

Amanda smiled faintly, almost painfully. "Which one?"

"Pulling out the ones that are alike."

Amanda sighed. "Be grateful you weren't sitting next to her at a concert while she was doing that. Did she have to control?"

"Oh, sure. But it wasn't hurting her. She wasn't fighting anything. You know." Amanda nodded. "Do you have to tell Mother about this?"

Amanda rose, pulled Jill to her feet, and hugged her goodnight.

"You know I do. If I were she and I didn't tell me, I'd never forgive me. Would you?"

Sarah realized that she was clenching her teeth, and forced herself to relax.

It was barely dawn, but she had been on duty all night and part of the previous day. As long as she was healthy, she told herself, it was better this way. Exhausted, she could fall into bed and not dream. Or think.

But now this. If Amanda were not here with her, Jill would have had no one. Sitting on the broad windowsill in Amanda's bedroom, she looked out at the dawn and found that she was clenching her teeth again as a long-forgotten quotation came to her mind.

"'Till human voices wake us, and we drown,'" she said aloud.

"But she didn't."

Sarah looked around then, and smiled. But they did have Amanda....

"Somebody must be doing something right," Amanda went on affectionately. And Sarah heard a faint echo across the years: You think too much about making mistakes.

"There must have been some reaction," she said. "Are you sure she's all right?"

"Absolutely. The only thing that bothered her was that T'Ara heard it all, but she had that in perspective too. If you'd seen her, you wouldn't ask."

"I wonder if T'Ara helped her."

"I don't see how she could have. Her hands are too small."

"I know. But...." Sarah turned to look out of the window again. There must have been some reaction. There must have been.

"I'd give a lot to know," Amanda said quietly, "exactly what he said."

"I know what he said."

She heard a startled motion from the bed, where Amanda sat propped up against her pillows, still wearing her robe from the night she had spent in the other wing of the house. Sarah did not look around, and after a moment she began to speak, wondering at the lack of emotion in her voice.

"His father was on staff in H.O. when I came back to the Academy after Tara. He was very helpful to me while I was catching up. I couldn't sense any of his feelings. He's all closed up. But he was pleasant and helpful and I liked him. I thought we were friends. One night we both worked late, and I found out what his idea of friendship is. He told me exactly what kind of comfort and solace he thought I needed with my husband away so much. I'm afraid I put the man down rather badly. We had words. It got very, very unpleasant. Charles is a brilliant man, but to him anything not human is an animal."

Silence. She knew it must be obvious to her listener that the story was not finished.

"I played God, Amanda. I could not stand to think of that man treating our patients or...." For the first time, her voice faltered. "...Or their babies. I told him if he didn't resign immediately, I'd bring charges against him."

"My dear, there is no such thing as sexual harassment on this planet."

"There is now." Silence. "T'Loreth would have believed me. He knew that."

"That's why he went to Salk, then," Amanda said softly, incredulously. "Why in the universe does he want to stay on Vulcan?"

"Credit balance. His wife is a Federation translator. She freelances at all the embassies. It's extremely lucrative, I understand."

"Why would he let Charlie continue to associate with Jill?"

"I like to think it's for the same reason I do. Did. He wanted them to stay innocent. Ironic, isn't it?" Sarah got up from the windowsill and walked partway across the room, pausing at the foot of the bed, her head tilted slightly sideways. "What was it she did with his face?"

"Squshed it. In the flower bed."

"Ah." It was almost a sigh. "And--um--you forgot to tell her that squshing isn't ladylike?"

Amanda smiled a little. "That's it. I forgot. I'll have to remember to tell her that." Still smiling. "Sometime."

Sarah nodded, but her answering smile was clouded. Slowly she moved to sit on the edge of the bed. "I need to talk to you. About Spock. Are you very tired?" Amanda held out her hand, and then flinched involuntarily as Sarah laid hers in it.

"Sarah, your hand is like ice!"

"I'm scared." It was only a whisper. "I've been through an atomic explosion and an attempted rape, and I've never been this scared in my life. Why is it taking this long? He's been gone almost a year."

Amanda did not answer immediately, and Sarah realized that she was contemplating asking a question that she thought she should not ask. Then, carefully: "How much can you tell me about this--this disintegration that he went through two years ago?"

"Only that it happened. Sarek knows. He saw...Spock when he came home...by himself." After all this time, it was still like some unbelievable horror story. "You're linked to Sarek. You're together most of the time. You must know everything he knows about it. He investigated it, didn't he?" Amanda nodded, tight-lipped. "There's really not much more that I can tell you. He was two people for almost a month. It was an infinite diversity that he could not rejoice in." She looked down at her hand, clutching Amanda's, and loosened her grip. "Both parts of him were suffering so. They just couldn't...." Her voice trailed off.

"And you ask me," Amanda said softly, "why he's been gone so long. Surely you know that the physical reintegration was only--"

"A patch job." Sarah shuddered. "But this--this kolinahr sounds so-- How can it help him to be gutted like that?"

"My dear, I don't think you've been listening to Sarek. Achieving kolinahr is only the first half of the process. It's a little like--" She hesitated.

"Go on." Sarah smiled thinly. "If a metaphor will do it, then use one. I can take it."

"Centuries ago, on Earth, when furniture was made by real people out of real wood instead of by computers out of God knows what, they used to strip down to the bare--I'm sorry, but you said--"

"Go on."

"They used to do that when they wanted to refinish a valuable piece. It was the only way to preserve the integrity of the original. The alternative was simply layering on more finish over what was already there, until you couldn't see the beauty of the original anymore. They stripped it, and then they sealed it, and then spent days, sometimes weeks, putting on the new finish so that the wood would show through but still be protected." Amanda paused. "Do you think he wasn't in his right mind when he went there?"

"Oh, he knew what he was doing. But if he hadn't lost Jim so soon after--the other thing, I think it might have been a lot different for him."

"I think you're right. Do you think Jim realized what was going to happen to Spock?"

"Oh, no. It was too soon. Everybody still thought he was fine." Sarah rose and began to pace. "I keep going over and over it. What could Spock have done differently, what could Jim have done differently, what could I have done differently. I keep coming up with the same answers. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."

"Sarah, stop that pacing, will you please?" Amanda held out both hands this time, and Sarah returned to sit next to her on the edge of the bed. "Listen to me, now. The kolinahr is a centuries-old ritual, dating back to the days when Vulcans thought that purging all emotions was the high road to logical thinking. You know enough history to know what a tragic mistake that was." Sarah nodded. "Emotions are to be controlled, not purged or repressed. But sometimes there comes a time when a person has to...start over from scratch."

"It all sounds a little like shock treatment to me. Or maybe a lobotomy?"

Amanda was silent, gazing at her sadly. Then: "You just don't trust any of this, do you?"

"I don't understand it, Amanda! You can talk all you want to about refinishing fine furniture, but Spock isn't a piece of wood!" They looked at one another in silence for a moment, and then Sarah sighed. "All right. I asked for it. But what if something goes wrong before they get him...refinished?"

"Such as?"

"I don't know! The first part of it just seems so--mutilating."

"T'Sai couldn't have done anything for him without kolinahr. It just has to happen first."

"I'm not sure," Sarah said carefully, "that I think T'Sai can do all that much for him anyway. I met her once. It was a conference on the psychic and telepathic problems of Vulcan/human children. She was supposed to be the expert on therapeutic possibilities. She contributed very little, nothing of value. I had the impression that she doesn't like the idea of half human hybrids."

"You sensed her feelings?"

"No," Sarah admitted reluctantly. "She was closed. I couldn't sense anything. It was just a hunch I had about her."

"No one else can do what she does. She's the best therapeutic telepath on this planet. Spock knows that. Sarek knows it. And she's had a great deal of success with this procedure."

"On full Vulcans." Sarah stood up again, but this time she did not pace. Walking to the window, she stood looking out at the red-gold dawn. "There was a laboratory session at the conference. One-way mirrors, so we could observe the children playing without their knowing it. I happened to look at T'Sai while we were in there. She was looking through that mirror at those kids, and there wasn't any expression on her face at all. But there was something in her eyes. It was as though she were on Earth, in a petting zoo, looking at the baby...animals."

After a moment, Amanda said softly, "Now you're beginning to scare me." Then she shook her head. "Spock would perceive that in her. The rapport is extremely close. She couldn't hide it from him. And if she couldn't hide it, she couldn't use it. His mind would flinch away. Defend itself. It's instinctive."

"But what if something happened--something she could use without either of them realizing that was what she was doing? That's what prejudiced people do. They use things to justify their actions, and then they can say 'I did the best I could but.' Fill in the blank."

"Spock would know what she was up to. She couldn't hide anything from him."

"Amanda, Spock doesn't think like that! If he were confused or distracted by what was happening--" She covered her face with her hands. "I sound just like one of my own patients. What if the GS fails, what if the baby this, what if the baby that." She dropped her hands. "He was gone for four years the first time, and I never worried like this. When he went back split in half and I didn't hear anything for days, I didn't worry like this."

"Do you know why?"

"I don't know why. I feel why. It was because he was with people who love him." She sighed. "God, I'm so tired I'm not even making sense. A whole galaxy full of unknown dangers and I'm worried about one beautiful Vulcan bitch who talked about those babies as though their 'human blood' was some kind of dirty water. Maybe I'm the one who needs a therapist."

"You're so tired." Amanda got up, came to her and put her arm around her, guiding her toward the bedroom door. "It's this thing with Jill and T'Ara. I know how you feel, but if they can survive Charlie, maybe we can too."

Sarah paused and looked directly at her. "Do you think Charles Harris, M.D. and his darling little boy are the only ones with that problem?"

"Of course not. I've never met T'Sai, and I trust your instincts about her. But barring some very unnatural disaster, I think Spock is quite capable of psyching out a bigot. Even now. After all, he's had lots of practice." Amanda squeezed her arm. "You're exhausted. Why don't you take some time off? T'Loreth wouldn't mind, and I'm sure the girls would love it."

"I can't do it this tenday. Maybe next."

"Sarah--" Amanda hesitated. "Jill talked to me about her father last night. About a holofilm he sent her, and how she got a wrong message, and how he straightened it all out. It was quite a story. If you'd been there, she would have told it to you." When Sarah simply stared at her, she went on gently, "I'm supposed to set up a three-day seminar on polyphony and tak-sheen at the Academy of Music sometime this season. It'll be an all-day-all-evening affair. I've been putting them off for some time. Shall I wait until Sarek comes back?"

Sarah shook her head slowly. "No. I'll talk to T'Loreth tomorrow."

"I thought you would."

They held each other silently for a moment, and then Sarah said wryly, "If I were you and I'd been pulling this on me for as long as I have, I'd tell me to go and find somebody else besides me to take care of my k-- now, don't laugh, Amanda. I was doing just fine until you started...."