The Charm

Sarah woke just before dawn, the last of many such awakenings-- how many she had no idea. Each time she had dozed from sheer exhaustion, telling herself over and over He only lived a few minutes like that. Jim said it was only a few minutes. And each time she woke sobbing. For the first time since she had become a physician, her professional knowledge repeatedly violated her soul, whispering obscenities.

As the horizon grew light, she wept silently, grateful for Amanda's presence in her life, and hers in Amanda's.

Still wearing the tunic and loose trousers in which she had lain down on the couch, her hair still tangled on her shoulders, she stepped though one of the long living room windows into the courtyard where Jim had fallen into an exhausted sleep almost two hours before.

One moment he had rested his head on the back of the chair, and the next moment he was sleeping as though drugged.

Amanda sat opposite him, as though she were keeping vigil. Over the dead, Sarah thought irrationally. But it might as well be. Whatever Jim was, it could hardly be called alive.

Amanda sat with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her hand shading her eyes. Sarah went to her and put her arms over the other woman's shoulders from behind. "I'm sorry I had to run and hide," she said softly, laying her cheek against Amanda's hair. "Have you been here all the time?"

Amanda nodded, took her hands and held them tightly for a moment, then turned and looked up. For the first time since Sarah had known her, she looked old. But she was obviously not thinking of Spock now. "It's a good thing they didn't expect him back on the Enterprise for several hours. I don't think he's stirred."

"It's probably the first time he's slept." Sarah straightened, her eyes still on Jim. "Damn McCoy." She struck the back of Amanda's chair with her fist. It was good to be able to hit something. "How can he let Jim walk around in this condition? He has every resource of twenty- third-century psychomed at his command. What can the man be thinking of?"

"Judge not." Amanda sighed. "My dear, Jim doesn't need every resource of twenty-third-century psychomed. He needs to cry."

"But he--he must have. Spock all but d-died in his arms."

"No," Amanda said softly. "He didn't."

Sarah felt her own tears begin again, even as Amanda's did. Moving to her mother-in-law's side, she dropped to her knees, laid her arms across Amanda's lap and hid her face in them. "Oh, God, when will it stop?" In her mind, she saw the only visual detail that Jim had shared with them: two hands, fingers spread in Vulcan leave-taking--one on one side of a transparent partition, one on the other. "Will it ever stop?"

"It hasn't even started--for him. He's still denying. He couldn't even touch him, Sarah. Put yourself in his place."

"I have." She drew a deep, shuddering breath and raised her head. "Believe me, I have. But--what can we do? He's only going to be here a few minutes, once he wakes up. I can't treat him as my patient."

"Then treat him as your friend. Get him talking. It works that way sometimes. Some memory--something they shared--"

"Amanda, they were together for years on the Enterprise. He must have a thousand memories of Spock that I know nothing about."

"And you'll only need one of them," Amanda insisted quietly. "Try. Please. In this case, the first time is the charm."

It was, as Sarah had anticipated, almost impossible to get him talking.

Watching him walk toward her from across the court where he had gone to use his communicator, she marveled that he was walking at all. He had always moved so quickly, and with such energy. Pace, turn, gesture, even his smile--always quick. Now it was as though there were no energy in him. And his eyes....

"Did you get any sleep?" Compassion. The only emotion she had seen him show since he had beamed down was compassion for her and Amanda. But even that barely showed in his voice.

"A little." They held each other silently, her head on his shoulder. There was no tension in him. His body was almost as limp as it had been when she touched his shoulder to awaken him. "Do you have to go back now?"

"We left it that I'll get back to them when I'm ready." He stroked her hair lightly. "Saavik says they got a subspace message off to Sarek on Altair. They told him I'm here with you." Even his speech was half a beat slower than she remembered it.

"Jim, sit down." She drew him to a high-backed bench facing the fountain in the center of the courtyard. Get him talking, Amanda had said. One subject was a good as another, and this was one that she had once wanted to know more about--once, in another life now ended. "Tell me about Saavik."

He hesitated. Everything he said was half a beat behind. "She's good." He sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them. "In about five years, she'll be great. Why do you ask?" Listless. Dry.

"I'm--I was jealous of her."

That startled him. "Oh, Sarah! He was just--"

"Oh, not for me. His daughter was growing up here, light years away, but the best of him was going to Saavik. Every tape this past year had something about her. There was one--" The last one. The last one ever. But she put that thought out of her mind. "Some test that she thought she didn't do well on?"

"Kobayashi Maru," Jim said softly, looking down at his clasped hands. "It's a no-win scenario. A sim. Everybody ends up...." Inexplicably, he stopped. It was as if the word up were the last word in the sentence.

"That might have been it." She went on, not knowing where. Perhaps nowhere. "You were there, he said. You were the examiner?"

"Yes."

Something in the sound of that one word alerted her. She turned slightly to look at him, but his head was still bent, and she could not see his face.

His hands were locked together so tightly that the knuckles were white.

She kept her voice calm, knowing that if she moved too soon, she would lose him. "He said he waited to talk to you afterward. He thought you were pleased--"

"Don't."

It was barely a whisper.

She went to her knees beside him then, laying one of her hands on his, the other gently kneading his shoulder.

He had raised his eyes to hers, the tears standing in them, still unable to fall. "This doesn't make sense."

"Tell me."

"He was waiting when I came out. And I said 'Aren't you d-d--- Aren't you dead?" He closed his eyes, and the tears covered his cheeks in an instant. "And he sm...his eyes...."

"I know," she whispered, her arm around his shoulders now, her forehead against his cheek.

"And it was funny...because...because he was so...oh, God, Sarah--he was so safe." He broke then, reaching out, and she pulled herself up to the bench and held him close as he hid his face against her shoulder.

And she wept yet another time. But not, this time, for herself.

"I asked him if he was waiting to find out how they did." His voice shook now, and there was nothing in his eyes but pain. The tears still wet his cheeks as he rested his head against her arm, now lying along the high back of the bench. "Or if he was just loitering. And he--he teased me right back. He said...." He turned his head a little, looking at her. Lifting his hand, he touched her cheek lightly. "One guess."

She hesitated only momentarily, and then whispered, "'Vulcans do not loiter.'"

"'Are not renowned,'" he quoted softly, "'for their ability to.'"

"Of course." Their gaze held, and a ghost of a smile passed between them.

Then he dropped his hand and let his head fall back to rest on her arm once more. His face was gray now, and still the tears came. But the hand did not fall to his side. Instead, he clenched his fist, and began to beat rhythmically against his leg. "Oh, Sarah, what wouldn't I give. What wouldn't I give." And still the tears came.

Walking together, they paused on the steps near T'Sal, looking down at the dawn and up at the dawn, now barely yellow in the violet sky.

"What did you use?" she asked finally.

"A photon tube. It's standard." The tears had stopped, but there was still no color in his face.

"How long will it last...in space?"

He turned a little to look at her. "Sarah--"

"I'm not being morbid, Jim. I don't think he told his parents, but I know that's what he wanted." Then she realized that he had not been answering her question.

"It's not in space. I--it soft-landed on the planet."

"What planet?" And when he told her, she could not answer at first. "My God," she whispered finally, staring at him. "Don't do this to yourself. You can't believe--"

"No. But if you could have seen it forming...." His breathing was too shallow, but he did not look irrational. He looked as though he were going to be sick. "When I gave the eulogy, I said he gave his life to protect it. That was bullshit." He swayed a little.

"Sit down. No--Jim, sit down." He sat on the step, arms crossed on his knees, forehead resting against them. He was sweating. Knowing that she must, she forced herself to go on. "You would have done the same for him--"

"I didn't. He did."

In a voice like muted wind chimes, T'Sal began to sing.

Sitting between Sarah and the singer, he raised his head slowly and looked at T'Sal. "What's doing that?" he asked, dazed. "There's no wind."

"She's singing to you," Sarah answered faintly.

"She?"

"She's a pet." Fighting a wave of hysteria, Sarah laid her hand on his shoulder. "She was Spock's. Now she's T'Ara's."

He did not answer, but simply continued to stare, his face still turned away. Finally he said softly, "That's why he smiled. On Talos IV."

The allusion called up a rush of Spock's memories, buried until now in her unconscious mind. "You weren't with him on Talos IV."

"I saw it on the screen." He still sounded dazed, but he was no longer whispering. "We were judge and jury--Deadman, Noman, and James T. Kirk." She drew in her breath, and he laid his hand over hers on his shoulder. Cool, but not cold. "I'm all right, Sarah. I'm just not censoring. Do you mind?" She shook her head, but could not answer aloud. He turned his head to look at her. "You're not all right."

"There was a man." Finally she managed to find her voice. This had never happened before, and she wondered if she were losing her mind. "Latin type. Deep voice. I can see him. I can hear his voice. But Spock's memory says...said...that he wasn't there." Is this what it feels like to lose your mind?

"It was an illusion," he said quietly, turning to face her. "Spock's idea of busywork ..." His voice died away. Finally he whispered, "Do you have all of his memories?" Not censoring. It sounded like an accusation.

Part of her soul seemed to split open, and what came flowing out tasted like poison.

"Want to trade, Jim?" Her voice rose, thin and cracking, and she tried to control the rising and the thinness of it. "I'll trade you. I'll trade you every one of his memories for one year of his everydays. Six months? One month? No deal? Because you can't, damn you!" She struck both fists against his shoulders. "I want them back, and you can't! They'll always be yours!" She was wailing. He took hold of her upper arms, but did not restrain her. "Damn you! Damn you!" She struck his shoulders as hard as she could, and still he was not restraining her. He was holding her together, keeping her from tearing into too many tiny, jagged pieces to ever fit together again. "Damn you--don't be good to me!" She twisted her shoulders and wrenched away from him, hugging her knees and hiding her face against them, her fists still clenched. Strange, whimpering sounds that she did not recognize as her own voice seemed to be coming from somewhere. Still facing her, he took her right hand in his left and used his other hand to pry her fist open, then grasped her hand with his. He did not have to pry open her other hand. She clung to his hands as she had once clung to Spock's--squatting then, giving birth on Tara. Now I'm giving death, she thought, and as she began to sob at last, she felt him lay his cheek against her hair. The sobbing went on and on, destroying her and healing her, and still his hands held hers. She thought that she ought to warn him that it would never stop, that no matter how much she cried away, there would always be more and it would never stop. But she could not speak, could only go on crying--until slowly, slowly the sobs died away. And still his hands held hers, more gently now, as hers held his.

"Thank you for not saying 'I'm sorry,'" she whispered, and his hands tightened on hers once more.

"I'm not," he said.

"That's all that saves it," she said, and realized that T'Sal was still singing softly to them both.

"Can I tell you a story?" she asked.

Yellow dawn had turned to gold, and the violet was almost gone. He had half turned to face T'Sal again, and she had laid her right arm across his shoulders and rested her forehead against it. His left hand still held hers.

He nodded.

"After Jill was born, I slept for a while. When I woke up, it was dark. The stars were out. It was always clear at night." She stopped and waited for her voice to steady. "He was standing at the window, holding her against his shoulder. She was asleep. He was looking up at the...." She could not go on.

After a while, he said, "I can't see it. How did he look?"

"Far away." When it was clear that he was not going to answer, she asked, "How did he look when he smiled at the singing?"

He sighed deeply, and for the first time since he had wept in her arms, his shoulders relaxed.

"Young," he said.

"Kirk to Enterprise.... Beam me up on my command." He closed the communicator and turned to face her. It was a quick turn, almost as soon as she expected it. And when he hugged her, he held her close. "Promise me something?"

"What?"

"Don't ever tell Jill anything about the Kobayashi Maru test. Just in case." It was the first time he had mentioned Jill since his arrival.

"What do you mean, 'just in case'? I think she keeps her application for the Academy under her pillow."

He pulled away a little, and she raised her face from his shoulder.

"You've never minded seeing her in my world?" he asked.

"As long as it's her world." Then, seeing that he was touched by her words: "What's all this about his-and-hers worlds? I never heard you talk like this before."

"It's--a long story, and I only knew the beginning of it before. I'll tell you about it next time." Quick tears came to his eyes again, and she knew he was thinking that, until now, he and Spock had always come here together. That kind of "next time" was but one of the times that would never come again.

He looked down, and when the tears slipped silently from beneath his lashes, she wiped them away with her fingers as though they were Jill's.

When he had gone, she went to wake her children, vowing to share her memories and their father's with the one who had so few of her own, and the other who would now have none.

She had left her vidpage in her room. Passing her door now, she saw a pulsing red glow spread across the walls. She had deactivated the sound alarm. But the urgent light was flashing, and she immediately illuminated the tiny output screen. Other than her medservice network, only her daughters and Spock's parents had access to this readpad. And she had informed the network that she was unavailable until further notice.

The message was from Sarek's access code--by subspace relay via Starfleet.

She stood immobile, wondering which of the two of them had gone mad.

KEEP KIRK ON VULCAN. The letters seemed to burn across the vid. SPOCK'S LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.