"Music I Heard..."

Part 2 of 3

By the time he spied a familiar mane of glossy dark hair floating below him in the grav tube, he was in a mood to drink himself into oblivion even though it was barely 1030 hours. But then he remembered the transfer request that Morrow had mentioned, and his mind sped off on another path.

Until her transfer request was approved, Saavik was still officially assigned to the nonexistent Enterprise, with temporary duty on the equally nonexistent Grissom. And officially, he was still in command of the Enterprise. Morrow had used this technicality to justify letting Kirk and his crew remain on Vulcan on "special assignment." As Saavik's commanding officer, Kirk was responsible for her safety and well-being, and he was certain that her immediate transfer request was not an indication of well-being.

On Genesis, Spock had grown, mindless, from a small child to an adult male. L'nara? Kirk wondered. On the other hand....

On the other hand, if Saavik had been raped while on duty as a Starfleet officer, she was required by regulations to seek therapeutic counseling at the first possible opportunity. And her commanding officer was duty-bound to see that she got it, over her own objections if necessary. It was in The Book.

The only saving grace of the situation was that one of the more fascinating bits of information that Spock had passed along during their all-nighter was that Vulcan females felt none of the shame and anguish regarding pon farr that was the universal torment of the males of their race. We do not speak of it even among ourselves referred to males only; to a Vulcan female, pon farr was simply a part of life, to be dealt with as logically as the situation permitted. That revelation had finally explained T'Pau's heretofore inexplicable lack of reticence in discussing Spock's physical condition with two outworlders at a wedding. And it was that revelation that gave Saavik's nonexistent yet official commanding officer the hope that the necessary interview would not be as gut-wrenching as the two others he had had to initiate with violently traumatized human women in the course of his career as captain of the Enterprise. Those had been the only two occasions that he had wished that his first, best destiny had been to be a CPA.

"Lieutenant, can I have a word with you, please?"

At the sound of his voice, she turned, already halfway across the lobby of Con Tower. Only then did he realize that neither of them was in uniform.

He had already cycled a lightweight Vulcan tunic and trousers, and Saavik's attire was somewhat similar--the regulation leisurewear of female Starfleet officers. He remembered the first time he had seen her dressed like this, in the turbolift on the Enterprise. Life had seemed so simple then.

"Admiral." She appeared cool and composed rather than controlling, much as she had looked when she set the lift on hold to question him about the Kobayashi Maru test: dark hair smoothly center-parted and falling to her waist in back, chin lifted but not set in frustration as it had been after the test. Her wide-set gray eyes met his steadily, showing no emotion other than faint curiosity.

"Can I buy you a drink?" He gestured toward the small juice bar off the lobby, and Saavik nodded.

They took their fruit juice to a small table, where Kirk explained his agreement with Morrow. Saavik was pleased and relieved, but when he had finished, silence spun out between them.

"Lieutenant," he said quietly, "due to certain circumstances connected with your most recent mission, I am required by Starfleet regulation 68C to interview you at the first possible opportunity."

To his relief, her expression did not change. "I have not been raped, sir."

Kirk let out his breath, and thought he saw a glint of compassion in her eyes. "The circumstances--"

"Understood, sir. Captain Spock experienced an event that his--our people refer to as First Time. He recovered without complications." Her expression did not change.

"You were his l'nara?"

A hairline crack appeared in her composure. Still ultra-professional, but there was a tremor in her voice now. "Affirmative, sir."

"Saavik--I'm sorry. I didn't--I was led to believe that there was no taboo connected with--"

"That is correct, Admiral. The function of the l'nara may be discussed." She drew herself up, hands clasped in her lap. It was a textbook rendition of Vulcan control. Open the doors/ And out come the people.

Not rape, then. Something else. "How can I help?"

"You can't, sir." She looked down then, at her clasped hands. "What I did--it was not the Vulcan way. No true l'nara would risk what I risked. When he remembers...." She shook her head, wordless, humiliated. Like Spock so long ago, Kirk thought. "It's about...biology." So who said the women weren't affected?

"He's only half Vulcan, Saavik. Even he knows that now."

"His suffering was not half Vulcan. I was well taught, but when I was tested, I failed. Again. I could have driven him mad." She looked up then, and once again he followed his instincts rather than what his head was telling him.

"And hotshots never fail tests?"

Again surprised, he watched a weary smile creep into her eyes. "Not if they can rewrite them." And this, he thought, was the same Saavik who had once thought humor a difficult concept?

"Are we talking about a no-win scenario now?" he asked.

"You don't believe in the no-win scenario."

"He's alive, Saavik. Doesn't sound like no-win to me."

"Yes. But when he remembers--"

"That's why you've requested transfer?"

"I have cancelled that request, sir. It was an impulse of the moment--what you humans call a cop-out. But in the short while it was pending, I was offered a temporary assignment." Now, at last, a sparkle of life in those unhappy gray eyes. "A geological survey team is leaving for Cauldron tomorrow." Hellhole of the universe, Kirk thought. Nobody but a dedicated geologist would want to go there, much less work there. But the experience would be invaluable for her. "It is a two-month assignment. I--with your permission, sir, I'd really like to go." Her voice had taken on the same slight huskiness that it had held when she demanded, in the Genesis cave, Tell me what you did. I really want to know.

"Permission granted, Mister Saavik. We'll still be here when you get back."

"Yes, sir." She was calm again. "Please tell Captain Spock that I wish him well." He nodded, and she left him alone at the table.

Time to move on.

He set the juice cup in its wet ring on the table, picked it up and set it down again.

Please tell Captain Spock...that our ship is dead. Please tell Doctor Marcus that our son is dead.

Feeling as though he carried a thousand tons, he straightened his shoulders but remained at the table, trying to decide what had to be done next. Too hot to go look at the ship now. That damn sun.... But in his mind, he saw another sun, rising in hell.

Genesis.

Goodbye, David.

Dying star, streaking down the sky.

My God, Bones. What have I done?

He closed his eyes and massaged the lids, deliberately calling up the picture of Spock walking toward him, whole and reborn.

"At what cost?" Sarek had asked him. David would have died anyway, but....

But it was done. The price was paid.

"Your name is Jim."

He took a deep breath and rose, smiling a little. Time to be moving on. And if all of his burdens went with him, they were, for the moment, under maximum security guard.

Spock woke to a mind surrounded by invisible fog. Something deep inside him spoke in authoritative tones, telling him that it was illogical for a visually perceptible phenomenon to be conceptualized as invisible. But he could not envision it any more than he could penetrate it.

"It's nothing but invisible water." The remembered voice of a beloved child spoke within him. But when he reached for the full memory, it faded to nothing. Behind the fog, his past lay inaccessible by any direct route. If he reached for answers, they eluded him in the fog. But if he remained calm and unquesting, answers bloomed out of nothing, vivid with the colors of time out of mind.

Walking along a line of unfamiliar faces that morning, he had reached for their names and found nothing, although their expectations followed him like whispered pleas as he turned away. But a moment before, climbing steps with the ministers who had assisted in the refusion of his katra, an answer unsought had sped after him like a golden bird, making him turn.

Jim.

"You saved the ship. You saved us all. Don't you remember?"

Expectations. No whispered plea, this. What do you want of me? he had thought, knowing that he would do it even if it meant another death. And the answer had come without his reaching for it: "You at his side as though you had always been there." It was a woman's voice, but her face and her name were still lost in the fog.

He opened his eyes, and saw that the Father whose name he could not remember was still sitting beside the bed. And again the answer sped toward him unsought.

"Sarek," he said. He wanted to smile, but the authoritative one inside him said, Never smile at the Father.

The Father smiled at him.

"Spock," he said. He did not move, but remained sitting erect in the chair, his fingers steepled before him. "Did you sleep well?"

"I have been awake for two point two seven minutes," Spock informed him. Sarek nodded, still smiling. Did the Father know everything?

How long have I been asleep? But even as he thought the question, he knew the answer. Behind Sarek's head, the window was dark. He had been asleep since morning, when the ministers had brought him here to the hospital. The Vulcan Science Academy hospital, they had told him. At the time, there had been somewhere else he wanted to go, and quite urgently, but he had not been able to remember where it was, so he kept silent, listening and watching until exhaustion overcame him. His body ached as though it had been pulled and stretched, and his throat hurt as though he had been screaming for hours. So when they said, "Sleep now, Spock," he had slept. And now it was night, and he still could not remember where it was that he so urgently wanted to go. But he must get there. Someone was expecting him there.

"Your mother was here in my place for a time this afternoon," Sarek told him. "Sarah will come when she can."

Sarah.

He remembered kneeling beside her where she lay (Where? Where?) and laying his head on her breast. Expectations. Her expectations, unmet. And still she held him, stroking his hair, half asleep. "There is no time," he said to the Father, and sat up in bed. "It's all going to end in minutes. I must get there before--" Before what? He saw the startled look in Sarek's eyes, the dark brows rising. "I must go to Sarah before--" Only a memory. Whatever was going to happen, it had happened then, not now. But where was Sarah now? And the answer came. He saw the way clearly: up the hill to the wall at the foot of his mother's garden, then on past T'Sal and up to the house. He knew the way, and knowing it, he was filled with joy and longing. "I can find the way by myself," he assured the Father.

"Indeed." Sarek had not moved except to lower his hands and clasp them before him. "Sarah is asleep. She needs rest, as you do. Is it necessary that you go to her now?"

With a glance at the dark window, Spock controlled his disappointment. "No," he said. "But she will expect me when she wakes. And Jim expects--" He frowned. How could he do both? The question tore at him, and he looked at the Father, pleading. "How can I do both?" Only after he asked the question aloud did it occur to him that Sarek could not possibly know what he was talking about, since he did not know himself.

"Spock--" Sarek hesitated, but Spock did not.

"Speak, Father."

Sarek's lips curved in a faint smile, but he thought for a moment before he answered. "You are not here to fulfill their expectations. They are. You are here to fulfill your own."

"That is logical." Relieved and suddenly fatigued, Spock lay down again. "Did you teach me that, Father?"

There was a pause, and he thought perhaps Sarek would not answer him. When the answer came, there was an echo of sadness in it.

"No, my son. You taught me."

He dozed and woke again to find Sarek meditating. There was no light in the room except the firepot glowing in one corner. Watching the shadows dance along the walls, he reached for the memories of another place, his place among the stars. But the fog around his mind would not permit access to those memories now. Feeling stronger, he sat up, expecting Sarek to rouse and look at him. But the Father was deep in meditation, and Sarah needed him. Logic suggested that his contemplated action was inappropriate, but the sweet ache in his soul said Now.

Making no sound, he rose from the bed and went to the window. His room was on the first floor, and it was only a short drop to the ground. He stood looking up at the stars for a moment. Then he slipped over the sill and left the Father behind.

When Sarah woke, it was to silent, deep blue night. She lay still, trying to think what had awakened her. There was no sound anywhere. The sky was overcast again, and heat lightning flickered somewhere far away. But she could hear nothing. Now there was absolute silence. Yet a moment ago a sound had awakened her.

Closing her eyes, she drifted, seeing a clear mental image of Jim as he looked down at her in her dream and spoke so urgently to Amanda. She could see the bruise on his right cheek and the cut on the left side of his forehead, and his words were clear as light in her mind.

She has to know what to expect.

In that instant, she knew that she had not been dreaming. And in the next, she knew that she was not alone in her bedroom.

Between her and the open window, a shadow stood tall and still as death.

From deep in her mind came the throwback child's terror of ghostly apparitions, and her heart hammered in her ears. The shadow stood offside against the lighter rectangle of the window, its left side outlined clearly. The stance, the tilt of the head, even the outline of the ear were as familiar to her as her own self-image.

Spock.

Jim was here, on Vulcan. She knew that now. And if Jim was here....

Amanda, weighing alternatives, trying to make a decision. I hope you'll forgive me tomorrow....

She has to know what to expect.

And now it was night again. She had been asleep for over twelve hours. It was more than a day since a silent shadow had sped across a window.

A sense of supreme unreality overcame her, but now it did not isolate her. It was an infusion, bringing with it a great calm, a great sense of the rightness of the universe.

"Peace and long life, Spock," she whispered, and held out her arms.

His shadow moved, disappearing in the darkness next to the bed. There was no bonding link between them now. His death had severed them. But she knew intuitively what he would do.

She heard him go to his knees beside the bed as he had once, so long ago on Tara, and she put her arms around him as he laid his head on her breast.

As she traced the shape of his ear, she realized that the soft, roughened hair was longer than usual. His voice too sounded different--husky--as he whispered, "Who interrupted us then?"

"The landing party," she whispered, stroking his hair. "From the Enterprise."

A shock passed through him, and his entire body stiffened. "Jill screamed."

"She was frightened. She's all right now."

He relaxed again, sighing. "Oh, Sarah--where were we?"

She had believed that Sarek's warnings had prepared her, but she had been wrong. Keeping herself calm by an act of will, she answered in simple sentences, now moving her hand down over the light hospital garment he wore. How had he gotten out of the hospital? Wasn't anyone watching him? It was desert-night cold outside. Did they even know he was gone?

He was shivering--had been shivering slightly, she now realized, when she first took him in her arms. God damn!

He sensed her agitation, pulled back and raised his head--startled, tense.

"Here--get under the covers." She drew him close and pulled the bed coverings up around their necks as his arms went around her.

The physician in her said, Watch it. You have no idea what his condition is. But that admonition was less relevant than the memory of his voice long ago: You think too much about making mistakes.

His shivering diminished, and she knew even without being linked with him that he was already intensely aware of her nakedness. But this was not real time, and she could not relate what was happening to them to any reality but her body and his. For a moment another memory gave her pause; the only time they had ever made love without the mind link had been a disaster. But she knew that even if he remembered the link, he was not yet ready to seek it and did not even miss it. This was not a renewal. It was a celebration.

Moving a little away from him, she undid the tabs on his hospital gown, removed the gown with his ready assistance, and drew him against her once more.

Their usual pattern was reversed at first. Except for one intensely pleasurable episode that had surprised and delighted them both, he had always been her lover and she his eager and responsive beloved. Now, although his body remembered all that they had been to one another and needed no coaxing, he laid his hand on her breast as though he had never seen it there before. There was a shyness about him that was totally unfamiliar, at once disconcerting and deeply moving to her.

It changed when he entered her. She drew in her breath and cried out softly, her body moving beneath his and her head turning on the pillow. Within seconds all his shyness was gone. She was sure that her response to this most intimate touching had triggered his memories of their loving each other in another time and place. He kissed her throat and then her mouth--slowly, sweetly, but with a self-assured urgency that was as welcome as it was familiar. Exulting, she felt his smile against hers as he whispered, "Tell me 'I told you so.'" And she did that.

He had always lain with her until she slept, sometimes holding her and sometimes just being there, knowing how much it meant to her to have him close. But until this night he had seldom slept when she did; more often than not, she had awakened to find him meditating or working at the computer. And so she found it disturbing to feel him relax and fall deeply asleep in her arms.

Now the physician in her demanded acknowledgment. She eased him down beside her and checked his vital signs. Pulse and respiration were steady and within his familiar norm, and his skin was warm and dry. Yet she had never known him to sleep like this.

Her eyes now adjusted to the darkness, she lay watching him for a time, wondering with considerable apprehension exactly how he had been brought back to her arms alive. And still he slept, unmoving. Eventually, she lay down with her cheek touching his shoulder and fell asleep herself.

She woke to find him stirring, not yet fully awake. Heat lightning flashed across the sky, and thunder rumbled close by. Incredulous, she realized that it was the thunder that was disturbing him.

At a louder clap, he came awake, sitting straight up. "Sarah?"

"I'm here. It's all right. I'm right here." Spock? Afraid of thunder?

"What world is this?" he asked. "Are we on Tara now?"

"No. We're home. On Vulcan. See?" She pointed to the window, where reddish clouds piled against the black sky. Once more the lightning flashed, and thunder crashed around the house. To her horror, he covered his face with his hands.

"Spock, please. It's all r--"

"Wait," he whispered, hands still covering his face. "Please don't talk. Let me...." He lowered his hands, and holding them out in front of him, he examined them carefully, turned them over and examined them again. Then he raised them to his face once more and ran his fingers lightly over his features. His eyebrows almost vanished into his hair, and his expression.... Before he spoke, she knew what he would say.

"Fascinating."

Relief flooded her. But then he looked at her, his expression changing to painful confusion. "But why was it dying?"

"What was dying, Spock?"

He turned, pulled his pillow up, and leaned back against it, his eyes still seeing something that she could not even imagine. The thunder crashed again, but he barely flinched. She waited. He did not answer her question.

Finally he said, "I must have been dreaming. His mother would never have permitted it." Then, after a moment: "If she knew." Since Sarah could not think what to say to that, she remained silent, watching him with growing apprehension. Then, incredulously: "But if he did use protomatter, that is precisely how it would have ended."

"No one would use protomatter."

His head fell back against the pillow and his eyes closed. "Saavik has much to learn about spurious analogies," he murmured. "His father...never...cheats." He was asleep again.

She sat gazing at him for a while, and then shivered. Getting up, she covered Spock again and then put on a heavy robe, her mind reviewing what he had said when he woke to the thunder.

Sarek had told her the story of the most recent voyage of the Enterprise, filling in details that Jim had not shared with her and Amanda. All information on the Genesis project was tightly classified, but Sarek had been given access because of his diplomatic status.

David Marcus had built the Genesis torpedo. But with protomatter?

His mother would never have permitted it...if she knew...His father never cheats.

It had to be David.

She stood at the foot of the bed, staring at Spock. Could he be hallucinating? God damn, how could they let him wander around alone like this?

Deep in thought, she moved to the first-floor balcony outside the open window--the balcony that Spock had climbed, she was certain, in order to reach her. Couldn't remember Tara, or why they had been there together. Couldn't remember God-only knew what else. But....

As she came out on the balcony, a figure rose from a bench in the pre-dawn shadows at the other side of the garden below. And she knew then who it was who had watched over the son of Sarek on his first night home from the dead.

"Sarek," she said as he came close enough to hear her, "how did he get away from you?"

"I was in meditation. He was asleep. Or so I believed. When I roused, he was leaving the room."

"You followed him."

"Indeed. He must find his true memories, Sarah. I would not deny him that. But--" He sighed. "Such an incident must not be repeated. He must be watched at all times."

She shook her head. "Don't worry. He's--" Dead to the world. She bit her lip, hard. "He's exhausted. He won't be going anywhere for a while."

"I made the same assumption," Sarek reminded her. "He is not himself, but do not underestimate his"--ghost of a smile--"ingenuity. In that, at least, he is quite himself."

"Can you tell me what's happened?"

"I shall, but not now. I must sleep." He was ghastly pale. Probably hadn't slept since.... At the moment, she had no idea what day it was.

"Of course." She inclined her head, and he responded in kind and turned away. "Sarek--" He paused, turning back, and she continued in Vulcan: "I accept your gift of self, father of my husband."

He tipped his head back, a characteristic gesture of appraisal with which she had become familiar over the years. Again a smile touched his dark eyes, and she thought that objectively, he was better looking than his son was. Objectively. She was not in a mood to be objective. But the thought was there.

"The obligation was mine, wife of my son." He turned again and walked away toward the wing where he and Amanda lived.

Sunlight warmed the world once more, and again a bird was singing a greeting to the new day. Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, touching Spock's hair where it curled slightly over his ears. She had insisted that he put the hospital gown back on, and then tucked him in again. Now she could not get enough of looking at him.

"Do you remember what you said to me last night?" she asked.

He smiled. It was T'Ara's quiet, grave smile--except for his eyes.

"Yes," he said softly, joyfully.

"I don't mean then." She blushed a little, uncomfortably conscious of the fact that she had never blushed at anything he had said to her before. His intent, childlike gaze disconcerted her. "I mean when you woke up later."

The clear dark gaze still held hers, but the smile faded. "Later?"

"When the thunder woke you."

He frowned, pressing his lips together. "I do not remember that, Sarah." He sounded very much like a little boy caught without his homework done.

Keeping her voice steady, she said, "It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. It's not important." Please come back, she thought. Oh, my love, please come back.

"Then why did you ask me?" Literal. Almost plaintive.

Mother?

Sarah heard T'Ara's telepathic call across two intervening rooms as though it had come crashing against the walls of her mind.

T'Ara was alone.

Running through Shevek's room, she saw that the crib was empty. Amanda must have taken him up, believing that T'Ara's trance was still deep enough for it to be safe to leave her momentarily.

"I'm here, little one."

T'Ara was sitting up, her long dark hair hanging limply, her eyes half closed. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Sarah struck her child on the cheek, knowing that it was not a hard enough blow to rouse her from the healing trance. But a small green mark appeared on T'Ara's cheek.

Sarah raised her hand again, and then paused, reminding herself that T'Ara's Vulcan genes were physiologically dominant. Just hit her hard, she thought. This is not a human child. Just hit her really hard. But still she hesitated.

Strong, familiar hands grasped her shoulders from behind and moved her aside. Spock took her place on the edge of the bed and struck T'Ara once, twice, three times. They were sharp, firm blows, expertly delivered. Yet only one mark remained visible on T'Ara's cheek--the first one.

The child's eyes opened, and with one quick movement, she grasped her father's wrist. Then her green eyes widened, staring. Sarah tried to find her voice, but it was gone.

T'Ara controlled, still holding her father's wrist. Watching, Sarah could almost see the hypothalamic control mechanism come into action as the child's uneven breathing slowed toward normal. T'Ara and her father regarded one another in silence while the child controlled what could only have been traumatic shock: in a healing trance, she could not have known that the fal-tor-pan had been successful.

"Good morning, Father," she said, and smiled her grave smile.

"Good morning...."

Still smiling, T'Ara the healer inclined her head encouragingly.

"...T'Ara," Spock said softly -childlike, gentle, proud.

"Indeed," said T'Ara. She let go of his wrist and took his hand, put her feet over the edge of the bed, and stood up. "Come," she said firmly, brushing her lank hair behind her ear with her free hand. Her sleeping robe hung in folds around her thin body. Her face was pale, but there was a radiance about her that brought tears to Sarah's eyes. "You must eat, and so must I. Mother will make us tea and --" Her eyes met Sarah's, and now they sparkled. Pausing, she inclined her head toward Sarah as she had toward Spock a few moments before. Your turn, Mother.

"Tell you stories," Sarah said faintly. She had said it often when her children were ill: I'll make you tea and tell you stories....

"Indeed." And still holding her father by the hand, T'Ara led him off to breakfast as though she had done it every day of her life.

To Sarah's relief, Spock recognized his mother, and even responded to her tearful human embrace. Shevek, at whose birth he had been present three months before, was favored with an abstracted smile and a tentative touch on the cheek. But Spock's manner was passive and distracted. As they sat down to breakfast, he had turned to Sarah and asked, "Where is--?" But the question remained unfinished.

It soon became obvious to Sarah and his parents that there were too many people in the room for him to relate to all of them; the situation was confusing and perhaps even frightening him. In tacit agreement, they withdrew, leaving him with his daughter, the only one able to treat him as though his behavior were normal. By the time her mother and grandparents left the room, T'Ara was telling her father the first story he had ever told her--the story of his own kas-wahn.

"She is a child." Sarek took his wife's hand as they sat down together on the couch in Sarah's living room. Tears came to Amanda's eyes, and Sarah fought back her own tears, thinking of Spock's expression when he had tried to remember what he had said to her when he woke in the night.

When I was a child, I thought as a child.

"Tell me what's happened to him," she said, holding Shevek against her shoulder and absently patting his back.

Sarek gave her a detailed account of recent events, stressing the part that James Kirk and Leonard McCoy had played in Spock's return to life. Sarah listened, trying to take it all in, trying to save it in her memory. Only twice did she feel shock, and then painful empathy for Jim.

"David was killed?" And then, later: "But why did they they have to destroy the ship?" Again she listened, trying to grasp it all. But a part of her consciousness remained on the voice in the next room--T'Ara's voice.

He isn't asking questions, she thought in despair. He just listens.

"What is your impression of Spock's condition?" Sarek was asking.

"He remembers the people he's closest to, but not much else." She told them of Spock's words to her when he woke in the night. "He doesn't remember anything about Genesis consciously. But it's there. I can't tell you much more than that." She closed her eyes. "I don't know why I'm so tired. I just slept the clock around."

Amanda gave her an exasperated look that reminded her of Kim. "My dear, we're all exhausted. I think--" She glanced at Sarek. The two of them had apparently discussed this before. "Spock should be back in the hospital--"

"No." Sarah's arms tightened around her son, but in memory it was another baby she held as dark Vulcan eyes watched her, demanding their due. "I want him here."

Sarek rose and went to stand at the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Opting out? Controlling? Cradling the now drowsy Shevek more gently, Sarah took a deep breath.

"I scanned him this morning," she said, speaking more calmly now. "There's nothing physically wrong with him. He belongs here, with us." But in the next room, T'Ara's low, soothing voice went on and on, uninterrupted. Why didn't he ask any QUESTIONS?

"He is not himself," Sarek insisted. "Re-education is necessary."

"I know that. But keeping him a prisoner--"

Amanda's gaze flicked from her husband's back to Sarah, and she shook her head once.

"There are no prisons on Vulcan, Sarah," Sarek said softly, not turning.

"I'm s-- I regret that I said that." Sarah sighed, then smiled briefly and shook her head when Amanda gestured to her to give her the baby. "I'd be the last one to say that he doesn't need care. But I can take care of him, and he does remember--his true memories of me are intact."

"How can you be certain of that?" Sarek's voice was cold.

Sarah turned her gaze to Amanda, who smiled faintly. Still meeting her human mother-in-law's eyes, Sarah mouthed silently, He doesn't want to know.

"Sarek--" Amanda rose without haste, went and laid her hand on her husband's arm. Sarek turned his head to look at her. Their gaze held for a moment, and then Sarek raised his eyebrows. "This doesn't have to be settled today," Amanda went on smoothly. "Surely it won't hurt him to be here with his family for a few days before--" Now, for the first time, she hesitated, frowning a little.

"Before what?" Sarah asked.

But it was Sarek who answered. "He must be re-educated by Healers. It is the Vulcan way."

Right back where we began. Over my dead body. Sarah rose, still holding her son, and walked toward the two at the window. "That will be his decision, Sarek."

"He is not able to make decisions." He sounded stiff, controlled. Angry?

"Then we'll wait," said Sarah, "until he is." She paused as Sarek turned, withdrawing his arm from Amanda's hand, his dark eyes searching Sarah's--the luminous dark eyes of an intelligent humanoid in great pain.

Not anger. Fear. "You wish him to be not-Vulcan."

"No!" Horrified, Sarah cried out, and Shevek whimpered and wriggled. "I want him to be what he was!" Forgetting all she thought she knew about Sarek, she reached out and laid her free hand on his arm. "Please don't make us adversaries, Sarek. Is that what you think I want?"

Click on the right arrow below to go to Part 3 of "'Music I Heard"