BONDMATE

Part 2 of 2

Spock had already left, and most of the others were in bed for the day. But Kirk and McCoy were having coffee together in the office, and invited her to join them.

Jim appeared distracted, even tense. McCoy, on the other hand, had good color and looked rested and thoughtful--perhaps not quite at peace, but like a man with purgatories not of his own making. Spock had shielded most of his thoughts of McCoy from her these past weeks, but whatever the man's problem was, it did not appear to Sarah's trained physician's eye to be a serious one.

"Have you heard from Jill?" Jim asked after they had discussed the weather, the health of the crew, the furnishings of the bubble in general, and McCoy's medical computer in particular. "PREPDIV should be breaking for Christmas in a couple weeks." Sarah shook her head, and the words I'll let you know if I hear from her came to her lips. But she could not bring herself to say them.

She had never consciously resented Jill's relationship with her father. Yet at this moment she felt irritated, even threatened by Jim's wistful question. She wondered what vacuum her misdirected irritation was rushing in to fill--and realized that even though she had been there for almost fifteen minutes, Spock's name had not come up once in the conversation.

I'll let you know if I hear from Jill. Say it. Say it. But still the words would not come.

Jim made a restless movement, leaning forward in his chair with both hands around his coffee cup. Sit still, damn you, she thought--and realized that she had already overstayed her ability to be in the same room with the man and maintain her hard-won inner balance. So much for coffeetime congeniality. It was past time to be on her way.

She was about to voice that thought aloud when McCoy asked, "What do you think about this Vulcan re-education idea, Sarah?"

Jim, who had been gazing into his cup, looked up then. Their eyes met, and she knew that she should have left five minutes ago.

"I think it's too soon," she said, returning Jim's gaze.

"Do you know what the alternative is?" he asked.

He's trying, she thought. Just like I am. But the challenge was there, and they both heard it clearly. "Of course I do." She rose because she could not stay seated, and paced a little way down the room. Room? More like a cell. "I see it every day. So do you. He's doing wonderfully -"

"No, he isn't."

At Jim's words, she turned, about to answer, to object, to say something clever. But the words wouldn't come.

Jim too had risen, setting his cup on the desk. "He's come as far as he can without formal cognitive therapy. He has amnesia, Sarah. He's lost most of his scientific knowledge, all of his knowledge of Starfleet--"

"Starfleet is not the universe."

"It's a very important part of his past. If you--"

"Leave me out of it."

"I would be delighted--" He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. "I would be delighted to--if you weren't part of the problem."

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"I mean," he said, voice rising as hers had, "that you think you ought to be the one to make his decisions for him."

"I suppose you think you ought to?"

"Maybe Spock ought to," said McCoy.

He was sitting with his feet on the desk, his coffee cup still in his hands, gazing up at their flushed faces. "He's got all his marbles back," the doctor went on, the sarcasm now gone from his tone. "He just doesn't quite know where they all are yet. The one thing he doesn't need is to have the two people he loves most fighting over him as though he was a prize bone."

"Watch your tongue, Doctor," Jim snapped. And Sarah wondered how often that had happened. Talk about an innocent bystander.

"Yes, suh." Unimpressed, McCoy removed his feet from the desk, rose, and sketched a salute. "Admiral, suh." He bowed to Sarah, and there was the same hint of mockery in it as had been in the salute. "Ma'am." He looked from one to the other, sighed, shook his head, and left the room without another word.

Sarah turned away and half sat on the edge of the desk. After a few moments she heard Jim do the same, around the corner and at right angles to her. They were silent for a long time. Finally she said, "It's just that I'm scared." Odd. I could hate this man, and here I am telling him something I haven't even told Amanda.

She heard him turn to look at her, but she did not turn.

"Did it ever occur to you," he asked quietly, "that what we think of as the Vulcan in him may have been part of his personality even if he were all human?"

"No." She sighed. "Not 'til just this minute, anyway." After a moment: "Did it ever occur to you that he took over when they fought that fire because you weren't there for him to rely on?"

"How did you know about that?" he demanded.

"He told me. He doesn't know why himself. Did it ever occur to you?"

"Not then." He was still looking at her, but she did not return his gaze. "What do you want to happen, Sarah?"

"I want him to be what he was."

"Do you?"

He had not raised his voice, but she felt the challenge in it, and her hands went to fists in her lap. That's right. Go on beating on him for the rest of your life. Her future stretched before her, irretrievably bound up with this man as long as Spock or Jill existed. The burden of her anger expanded to fill the time available, and she felt herself being crushed beneath it. And she thought, I'm not burying it now, Zoe. It's burying me.

The need to be free overwhelmed her; if she could find her center again and keep it, that would free her. Slowly she let her hands relax, seeking within herself the precarious peace that she had brought here this morning only to have it wrenched away. Looking down at her hands, open now, palms up, she realized that Jim was looking down at them too, and that he had watched her open them.

"Why don't you fight?" he whispered, and she finally looked up to meet the blazing incredulity of his gaze.

"For what? What I'd win wouldn't be Spock anymore."

He continued to meet her gaze, but for the first time since she knew him, his was unreadable. After a moment, he asked, "How do you deal with that?"

Somehow the question was not intrusive, or even personal. She had information that he needed to understand the briefing she was giving him. If she had been one of his officers, he would have said Explain.

"Inside. Somewhere. I can't always find the place. Eliot called it 'the still point of the turning world.'"

He looked a tad apologetic, and more than a tad bewildered. "Can't help you," he said, smiling a little. "Never been there."

"I bet not." Trying to lessen the tension, she slid off the edge of the table and moved toward the recycler with her empty coffee cup. Hand raised, ready to throw the cup away, she paused, suspended over the rest of her life by a thought.

You turn out. Like he did.

You steal your own ship.

She lowered her hand toward the recycler and then paused again, eyes slightly narrowed, her concentration precluding even physical movement.

You find the still point, but you don't stay there. You turn out, and take yourself with you.

She dropped the cup into annihilation and turned. Jim too had risen. The smile was gone, but the question remained. How do you deal with that?

"Change what you can and accept what you can't." Like losing David, she thought. Like losing your ship. "You heard him say it. 'I am home, Jim.' There's no fighting that." When he did not move or answer, she added, "You're still not saying 'I'm sorry.'"

He said nothing. And she thought, Never been there, Jim? You're there now.

She felt her anger gathering for another strike, and thrust her hands into the pockets of her tunic. Decide, juggler. Drop the only ball you'll never miss, the only one that could destroy you all by itself. Turn out. Steal your own ship. Begin. Now.

"I'll let you know if I hear from Jill," she said.

He nodded, his head barely moving, his eyes still on hers. Feeling suspended again rather than released, she turned from that searching gaze and continued on her journey home.

Walking up the hill, she put the conversation with Jim aside until she could get perspective on it and thought instead about the two years at Starfleet Academy that were never going to happen.

She would have gone back to All Worlds Hospital in San Francisco for two years. They could have been together all that time. They could have been a family.

Why doesn't it hurt? she asked herself. Why doesn't it sound right?

Her steps slowed as she walked up the hill, listening within. Why doesn't it even sound like something I'd want?

She walked on, thinking of McCoy, gliding past Jim's anger as though he knew how temporary it would be. How familiar they are to each other, and to Spock. Not for the first time, she felt excluded, shut out. In her mind she saw them all as Spock held them dear in his deepest memories--a gallery of cameo portraits done in red and blue and gold. Sulu smiled over his shoulder at Spock's culled-out humanity, with Chekov as their delighted audience. And Uhura, smiling too at the entire Spock years rejoined: "Do we make your day, Mr. Spock? Just fractionally?" Scotty on Taurus II, the one solid supporter of an inexperienced, single-minded first officer with his first command. And McCoy in the lift aboard the Enterprise bound for Vulcan instead of Altair: "I would be honored, sir." His strongest memory of Jim was a smile, given in response to Spock's impulsive but deeply felt declaration that he would not want to serve under Richard Daystrom's ultimate computer. Their cameo portraits were a part of him that she could never share except in his memories. But if he were to go back to Starfleet Academy for retraining....

She climbed on up the hill. Above her, just outside the gate to the courtyard, a lacy yellow Vulcan tree grew tall, delicate, alien. She felt a pang of homesickness for Earth, and then thought of Amanda, just before Sarah and T'Ara had left for Earth over a year ago, speaking from sad experience: "If you think you're homesick now, wait until you get there." And her own answer: "You didn't have you to miss, but I will."

Circles. Everything going in circles, and always coming back to the same reality: without many of his human memories, could Spock survive Vulcan retraining intact and integrated? For there was no question in her mind that he would choose that path.

Necessary.

I want him to be what he was. And only one person could accomplish that, just as he had accomplished it before.

Necessary to both.

But still the fantasy of two years as a family in San Franciso floated on the edges of her mind, tantalizing and yet faintly repellent.

In the garden court, Amanda was going over her class notes for the day. As Sarah came near, the other looked up, smiling, her blue eyes catching the blue of her blouse. "T'Ara sent Sember on his way this morning. She and her father are doing decision trees in the study, and I guess it's fascinating enough that she can walk to school alone."

"How to you 'do' decision trees?" Sarah asked, dropping down on the lip of the fountain.

Amanda shrugged. "Something like doing lunch?"

Sarah laughed. "Sember's still around here all the time. Neither of them has any other close friends."

"I like the chess tournament idea, though, don't you? At least they're with other children." Sarah nodded. What with one thing and another, she had forgotten about the chess tournament, which seemed to be going on most of the time lately. "Sember does take me back, though," Amanda went on wistfully. "When I was T'Ara's age, there was a little boy who used to come around all the time. My father used to say, 'Doesn't he ever go home?'"

Sarah nodded again, thinking of her uncle, who had expressed the same idea now and then during her teen years, when her two girl cousins had also been teenagers. Passing Amanda on her way into the house, she pressed her arm, grateful for her presence as always.

Spock and T'Ara were still at the computer in the study. T'Ara gave her a brief smile, and Spock stroked her hand as it lay on his shoulder. But she was sure they hardly knew it when she left the room and went off to bed.

And dreamed.

A tree with lacy yellow branches grows in the dream, and on its branches are four cameos--pictures of people the dreamer does not recognize. A fifth frame, in the middle of the tree, is empty. "What is it?" she asks, pointing to the yellow lace where cameo portraits grow like leaves. And a voice answers, "It is a decision tree." It is a deep, quiet voice, totally familiar and dearly beloved--the voice of the one the dreamer loves best. She wonders who the people in the portraits are, one in blue and three in white, and why the frames looks so strange. "Why do all the frames have...?" But in the dream, she can't say what the frames all have. "It is necessary," answers the voice of the one she loves best. She begins to feel agitated, even frightened. She should know who these people are. This is her family tree. She thinks that she wants to steal a ship and go to Earth for a reason she can't remember. But if you think something in a dream, it might come true. And it does. The portraits inside the frames on the decision tree shrink backwards into blackness, speeding away into nothing. The dreamer tries to cry out, and can't, and does, and wakes.

No.

Lying on her back, still alone in bed, she wiped the tears away as the grief of the dream faded. Like Earth, she thought. Like Earth on the Enterprise viewscreen a year ago, speeding away into blackness. "What was it?" she asked half aloud, and the dream vanished. A few vague images remained--a tree with pictures on it.... Family tree? Something about a family tree, she was sure.

Sighing, she turned over and hugged the pillow. She should sit up and try to remember the dream, decide what it meant. But she drifted, listening for Spock's step. Blackness. The dream was disappearing into blackness like Earth on the viewscreen.

"Your grandmother warned me," she heard herself saying to T'Ara. "I miss her, and T'Loreth, and Zoe."

Kim was there too, now.

But before she could finish remembering, she was asleep again.

As Spock's Vulcan retraining got underway, Sarah was overjoyed to learn that they were not, as she had feared, back where they began. The integrity of his self-image as a Vulcan was clearly not an issue to him now, much less an impediment to his relationships.

Preoccupation was the impediment.

Linked to him as she was, she could rejoice with him as his Vulcan retraining brought dormant memories to light and his mind flicked with increasing speed from one to the other, greeting them like old friends. When he and Sarah were together, even the bonding link swarmed with equations and prehistory and Surak knew what else, taken in with huge gulps of mental activity that would have been impossible if he had been all human. Trying to make sense of it all did not daunt him. It flooded him with joy. Ever single-minded and task-oriented, he began to spend more and more of his free hours on his studies.

The first time he took a hand-held tape reader to bed with him, Sarah thought she might be in trouble. Half a tenday later, she knew she was.

"You look like you need a swim," Kim told her one morning as they finished their half hour overlap and briefing.

A swim, Sarah reflected, might do the trick, since there was no such thing as a cold shower on Vulcan. She and Zoe went off shift at the same time now. But they had not gone swimming together for many days.

"I should be getting home," she told Kim. "Now that Spock is being retrained, he leaves earlier, so we don't see as much of each other." Her throat closed a little on the euphemism.

"All work and no play, boss," Kim said, and motioned Sarah out the door. "You look like hell these last few mornings. Have you been exercising at all?"

"On my breaks."

"Great. Go see Nurse Keller. If she can cure a rainy day, she can probably do something for you." Kim was not a telepath, and Zoe's method of monitoring her charges in the neonatal nursery seemed unorthodox and chancy to her. Yet Sarah knew that in spite of their bickering, the researcher held Zoe in grudging respect, as did the Vulcans on staff. "So...." Again Kim gestured toward the door.

"You trying to get rid of me?"

"Sure. I love your job so much I can't wait to get at it." Kim glanced at the stack of tapes in her in-box. "One more month. Counting the days."

One more month.

Sarah rose, but she was in no hurry to leave. Not too long ago, she had invariably left the hospital in the morning high on anticipation. Now she felt apprehensive. A wrong move would not be held against her now, she knew. But in context, every move seemed wrong. "I think I'll go soak my head," she said. "Thanks for the suggestion."

Kim frowned. "Sarah, can I ask you something?" Sarah nodded. "Why do you like being with Zoe?"

"For the same reason I like being with you. Because she's so one of a kind." She clasped Kim's hand briefly, and felt the answering pressure in return. "Thanks again. I don't know what I'd--"

"You promised you wouldn't keep saying that," Kim reminded her.

"I think it all the time."

"Then think it someplace else." Smiling now, Kim gestured her toward the door, and this time Sarah went through it.

She and Zoe swam laps until they were tired, and then they floated on their backs, looking up at the tiled ceiling. The third-shift workers had all left, and the first shift was already on duty. The water lapped at the edges of the pool, and green shadows flickered over the IDIC symbol inlaid in the tile above them.

"Looks like an engagement ring from Woolworth's," Zoe said meditatively. "You know, the kind with the great big--" Sarah was forced to flip over and dog paddle to the edge of the pool to keep from sinking. Zoe followed her, and they floated their feet and legs, hanging onto the side. "So," Zoe continued, "is he getting recreated in Pop's image and likeness, or what?"

Sarah's spontaneous laughter died. "Am I that transparent?"

"Is he?"

"No." Sarah was silent for a moment, looking out across the rippling green water. "That's what I was afraid would happen, but...." She sighed. "There's so much for him to relearn, and it's all so fascinating."

"It wasn't fascinating the first time through?"

"He had years to learn it all the first time. Now he has weeks." Sarah was looking down now, but she knew that Zoe was gazing at her intently. "There isn't much room for him to have anything else on his mind."

"Oh, shit," said Zoe. "Join the club."

"Now?" Sarah was startled out of her discomfort. Zoe had been married for two years, and Sarah had had the impression that daily cohabitation had overcome whatever half Vulcan inhibitions Sedek had brought to the relationship.

"Now and then." Zoe grinned her wry grin. "Hey, I thought you were the one who knew all the answers."

"So did I."

"So jog his memory a little. He won't break. Retraining is the word of the day, right?"

"You've got to be kidding."

"Try it. You'll like it. So will he, once he gets over the shock."

"I can't--" Sarah began, and then stopped when Zoe laid the edge of her palm to the water.

"You want this right in the face?" Zoe asked amiably. Sarah set her mouth, realized that she probably looked prim, and smiled instead. After a moment, Zoe relaxed her hand. "Poor baby. Tell mama all about it." Her eyes sparkled, but the sarcasm in her voice was very faint.

"I can't make a move on him if he isn't interested."

Again Zoe's hand strayed toward the surface of the water. With thumb and forefinger, she flipped a few drops of water in Sarah's direction.

"Sure y'can," she said.

When she prepared for bed later that morning, Sarah put on a sleeping robe, then removed it in disgust and scooted into bed like a virgin bride.

He was sitting up against his pillow. Like her, he wore nothing but the sheet; the combination of closed blinds and nonexistent humidity made day-sleep tolerable, but wearing a sleeping robe was inappropriate in any circumstances. In the palm of his hand was the omnipresent reader. When she slid beneath the sheet and then remained sitting, sheet pulled up and arms around her knees, she felt rather than saw his gaze move from the reader to her bare back, then felt his hand there, stroking lightly, tenderly. Yet there was nothing else in him --no longing, no need. More than half his mind was still on the reader.

Then he perceived her thoughts, and his hand paused, resting on her shoulder.

"Zoe thinks I should try to seduce you," she said aloud, her voice muffled by the sheet and her knees.

His hand remained on her shoulder, and there was no appreciable change in his mood. But his mind was clearing and focusing, and after a moment she heard the reader click off. "That may be a viable alternative," he said drily, and when she turned and buried her face against his shoulder, his arms went around her.

"I don't know how," she whispered, still unable to look at him.

Drawing the sheet away, he took her hand in his and moved it downward. Touch me, he whispered through their link, and she shivered, feeling a warm wetness between her own thighs as he spread his. Gently freeing her hand, she found him soft, then not soft, then hard beneath her stroking fingers. She knew the terrain, having explored it more than once. A finger touch along this ridge brought a sigh that stirred her hair; across that velvet smoothness, and his body twisted a little, his hands grasping her arms, guiding her to straddle him. He was still barely reclining on a pillow propped against the head of the bed, and they embraced as their bodies joined--sweet merging, sweet melting, rising like a golden tide to engulf them both.

They slept then, and woke to love again in the late afternoon. When he left at sunset, he took the tape viewer with him, and it never appeared in their bedroom again.

The Vulcan holiday that occurred immediately before the Bounty's shakedown cruise gave Sarah a night away from work, but she took it with mixed feelings. Although turning night into day had solved more pressing problems, Spock's contacts with her and his children were far from normal. Now that he was working with the healers, both his shift on the Bounty and his time at home were truncated, and she herself was often at the hospital longer than the ten and a half hours she had originally cleared with T'Loreth. In theory, it shouldn't matter whether they worked at night or in the daytime. But in practice, they did little together but eat, sleep, and make love.

She had known that the holiday would change nothing, that he would simply work a full shift with his crewmates. But when she saw him go off with two wingpacks, the sense of being excluded again overcame her. There was no rational basis for it, she knew. She had no interest in windflying. And yet the resentment was there. For she had no doubt that Spock would be windflying at dawn with the captain of the Bounty.

Turn out, she thought, and went off with Zoe to a concert as she had planned. Zoe's husband, a staff physician at Salk Memorial, also worked nights, and Salk had a fine disregard for local holidays.

The outdoor concert was in the same park as the concert Sarah and Jim Kirk had attended the night they met. But this time the musicians were from Earth, and the two human women enjoyed an orchestral history of Terran music spanning five centuries. The audience was mostly human, and instead of sitting on the grass, listening intently, they sprawled and even slept under the Vulcan stars. Sarah and Zoe lay on their backs, heads pillowed in their hands.

The concert ended with the long night only half gone, and Sarah sighed.

"More problems?" Zoe asked. "Or maybe you can't stand prosperity?"

"I don't know if it's a problem. He's been on the fringes of the Time ever since the link was renewed. It's not going anywhere, but it's not going away either."

She felt rather than saw Zoe turn her head. "He's fighting it?"

"No. It's not that strong. He's ignoring it."

"Compulsively?"

"No. There are so many other things going on in him right now that it's easy to just--not think about it. He isn't even aroused all the time. You know about that. But it's there. I think it must be hormonal. He isn't quite--back on track. He isn't in any danger, but...."

"A little repression, maybe?"

"Maybe a little. From time to time."

"So unrepress him. Try something you're not doing."

"Like what?" Sarah asked smugly.

Zoe whistled. "Maybe you should be counseling me?"

"No, you were right. But that was different. Human."

"Why are you so worried?"

"He's going away again in two tendays, Zoe. What if he--"

"Oh, Christ." Zoe sat up, and Sarah turned her head to look at her. "Look, if he isn't into it by now, he's not going to be when he's away from you! Besides, he's just going to Earth, isn't he? Big trial coming, right? So he'll be there a while. How long would it take to get back here? Three or four days? I swear to God, Sarah--if you don't have something to worry about, you find something to worry about."

Zoe's uncomplicated objectivity had reassured her, but the night was still not over. At home in the silent house, she decided to try to catch up on her taping. She had owed Chris a tape for weeks.

In the months since her return to Vulcan and Shevek's birth, she and her cousin had re-established the rapport they had shared since they were children together. But Chris's last tape had disturbed her, and she had put off answering it. "I suppose you're right," he had said, looking down at something he was toying with on his desk. His mop of untidy dark hair was still untouched with gray, his thin face still unlined. But in his eyes there was a puzzled sadness that was all too familiar. "If I got to know Spock, I might feel differently about him. But I--" He sighed. "It's hard, Sarah, to think that I owe him for saving your life. That kind of a debt lies heavy on the heart when he took you away from us again, and always will."

Rerunning the tape now, she froze it on a still shot of Chris looking up at the monitor. Understand me, his gaze entreated. Please understand. And she thought about answering that she understood only too well. Instead she spent five minutes chatting about her work and her children, and then put the tape away unsent. Chris deserved better than to have his pain ignored, especially when she shared it in another context.

He took you away from us again, and always will.

"It's not Jim's fault," she whispered aloud, and went to find a book to read until morning. But when morning came, there was no respite from the envy gnawing within her.

It was full daylight, over an hour beyond the time Spock usually got home, when he finally appeared in the doorway of the study where she was still trying to read. There were times when she wished the link were less revealing. He simply stood there, hands behind his back, head tilted a little to the side, looking her over.

"I keep telling myself," she said, "that I've gone swimming with Zoe several times without letting you know that I was going to be late coming home."

"That is not the real problem."

"No."

They regarded one another in silence across the distance between them, and then he said, "If you had ever asked me to stay on Vulcan--"

"Don't." She rose, trying to keep her voice light. "Some other time, Spock. Please? I have to get Shevek now." She realized that she would have to pass him to get out of the room, and paused when he laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Do you wish to make peace now," he asked softly, "or wait until your resentment does serious damage?"

"It's not you I have to make peace with, my love. It's myself."

He sighed. "That is not quite correct." But when she pressed her cheek against his hand and then moved on, he did not attempt to detain her.

She did not get Shevek. She went out into the court, where she knew Amanda would be looking over her class notes for the day, as she invariably was in the morning. They greeted one another briefly, and Sarah went to sit on the lip of the fountain.

It was not that he was going away, she knew. It was that he wanted to go. No matter what, he always wanted to go.

"Sarah?" Amanda had spoken so softly that her voice was almost inaudible. Sarah nodded, still turned away.

"Could he love you more if he loved Jim less?"

Looking down into the fountain, Sarah saw the pain clear from her reflection's eyes, saw a smile form there. He's right, she told her image. You are beautiful. Leaning over, she drew her hand across the surface, back and forth until the reflection was gone, and all that remained was the intricate pattern of sunlight sparkling on water.

Shevek always took a morning nap, sleeping for an hour or two after breakfast, fueling up for the rest of the day during which he remained awake until after sundown. T'Ara left for school about the time the baby went back to bed, and when the house was quiet and empty except for Sarah and Spock, she sought him out in the study where she had been reading when he came in that morning.

He was sitting lotus-like at the potter's wheel, a therapeutic technique that his healers had recommended when he found himself unready for sleep. Of late, he and Sarah had had considerable success with another, very un-Vulcan technique for relaxing him into delicious semi-consciousness when his mind was overly active. But the wheel had a lulling effect on his mind that could not be duplicated. The apparatus was small, and the clay was too dry to cling to his hands and yet viscous enough to produce simple vases and pots, all perfectly symmetrical. The wheel was in fact a child's toy, far less complex than those used by adult professionals to create much more intricate artifacts. Because there were no components to splatter or spill, he was able to pursue this activity in the house.

Having no desire to interrupt him but wanting very much to be physically close, Sarah sat down on the floor behind him with her arms around her knees and leaned against his back, her cheek against his shoulder. Sensing the profound change in her mood, he half turned his head, fractionally checking the rotation of the wheel.

"Go on," she whispered. "We have time."

He went on, listening through their link, rejoicing with her, sharing her peace. The wheel hummed like a musical instrument, lulling her into a light sleep. She dreamed that they were making love on the surface of a clear-water lake, shimmering with blue and green and gold, the colors of the shawl that he had once sent to her from some far world, and woke to find him checking the wheel once more, this time more than fractionally. When it had spun itself silent, he whispered, "Fascinating."

Having shared her dream, he was moderately aroused, but also very much aware that they were not in a private area of the house; the open door of the study was only a few meters from the door to the courtyard, which was also open. Still leaning against him, she shared his reflexive consideration of the feasibility of controlling the physical manifestation of his human maleness, and then the mental shrug with which he abandoned that consideration.

"My husband, must you think about controlling even the thought?"

"My wife," he answered drily, "what you have observed can hardly be called a thought."

She knew that he was smiling, and wanting to see him smile, she turned a little and lowered herself to the floor, curved around him, only the upper part of her body visible to him. He smiled down at her, now wishing that they were in their bedroom with the door closed.

"We could do it right here," she said lazily, still not fully roused from her brief nap. And then they were both very much awake.

The last thing in the universe that either of them really wanted was to be caught in the act on the study floor. But with the incredible perversity of human reactions to danger, the awareness that they could be caught sent a jolt of desire through them both, each fanning the other's flame to such intense excitement that before they were aware of it, they were on the floor together with their tunics open down the front and their trousers around their knees. Within seconds, both experienced violent physical release that was like a cross between a cymbal crash and a sneeze, leaving little more satisfaction than it would have if it had been.

Resting momentarily, both tried to get their mental bearings. Then she touched his earlobe with her tongue, and felt a shiver pass the length of his body. Still lying on top of her, he glanced over his shoulder toward the open door. The sight intensified his arousal even as it did hers, and she touched his earlobe again, this time with her teeth.

Almost laughing now, he pulled himself up to kneel beside her, still half naked, still fully aroused. It could not be the Time, she knew. If it had been, he would have been incapable of speech or rational behavior by now. But she had never seen him hard again so soon except during the Time.

Taking her hands in his, he braced to pull her to a sitting position, his dark eyes still sparkling with suppressed laughter, his usually sallow cheeks pale green. "Come."

Instead of cooperating, she grinned. "I just d--"

"Sarah!" Pressing his lips together, his eyes crinkling at the corners, he grasped her wrists and pulled them both to their feet, tunics still hanging open, trousers now around their ankles. He glanced over his shoulder once again, and turning back, made the mistake of pausing and looking down to take in the view. Then the length of him was pressing against her once more, his mouth warm against her shoulder.

She murmured, "Nobody here yet. Are you sure you don't want to keep trying?"

"Enough!" He was smiling, but this time there was no dissuading him. He fastened his own trousers at the waist, and then, because she was not cooperating with hers, he simply pulled them up around her waist, picked her up, carried her to their bedroom and deposited her on the bed, forgetting to kick the door shut as he normally would have done.

Then he remembered. As he moved back toward her, his eyes drinking her in, she pulled her trousers down and her knees up, letting her knees fall apart as she drew her tunic back over her shoulders until she was fully exposed without destroying the perception of being half clothed that was driving them both wild. Still wearing his open tunic, he unfastened his trousers again, freed one leg and half knelt on the bed, leaning over her and supporting himself on one hand just above her shoulder.

"Why do you want this?" His voice was low, but his dark eyes shone with unbanked fires.

"Because you do."

"Your altruism...." Slowly, deliberately, he ran his hand down her body, caressing each naked breast with his fingertips and then squeezing it, thumb rubbing each erect nipple until she moaned, her head thrashing from side to side on the pillow. His hand continued downward, so slowly that she spread her thighs ever farther and raised her hips to meet it. Then his hand was making intimate love to her and she was rubbing herself against it, wishing this could last forever even as she knew it could not last more than a few seconds longer. She came writhing and twisting and crying out, her body arching as she heard him whisper, "...is commendable." Then he was on her and in her, thrusting uncontrollably, his fingers kneading her shoulders as hers kneaded his buttocks, nails digging into flesh as she pulled him deeper within her. All of it had happened before--three Times before. He was as aware of it as she was, and her soul sang with joy that that awareness did not bother him at all. Instead of hiding his face in shame, he rose on his elbows, fingers still kneading her shoulders, head thrown back a little, eyes closed now, lips parted, groaning deep in his throat as he poured himself into her, claiming the heart and soul of Vulcan with his head thrown back in triumph. At that moment, he was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen.

He collapsed against her, breathing deeply rather than in the shallow gasps that she had half expected. If this were really the beginning of the Time, instinct would have driven him to stimulate two or three more ejaculations before he lost consciousness from sheer exhaustion. Instead, he put his arms around her shoulders and pressed his face against her throat, breathing in her essence as she was breathing in his, her hands moving over his back.

She tried not to flinch, but his sweat and hers set the scratches on her shoulders stinging. Raising himself a little once again, he kissed both shoulders and then rose, stripping off his clothing as he moved purposefully toward the adjoining bath. He wouldn't know where she kept the salve, she thought, or even what it looked like. He had never been conscious when she went to get it. But even as she thought the thought, he proved her wrong. Returning, he stripped her as he had stripped himself, turned her until she was prone, and began to rub the healing salve into her shoulders with soothing movements of hand against skin. Always before she had done this for them both, and now she luxuriated in the fact that he was doing it for her, then made him lie down so that she could soothe his lacerated buttocks.

"I must have been asleep when you did this before," he said drowsily, his voice muffled against crossed arms.

"Yes." A mischievous impulse tempted her, and she gave into it, knowing that it could not cause him pain. "Are you that Spock now?"

"Perhaps." He turned his face against his arms so that he could look at her sideways, and she knew that she would get what she deserved, as she always did eventually. "Are you that Sarah?" he asked innocently, and she saw in his mind the memory of her writhing beneath him, wantonly inviting him deeper into her body just as she did during the Time.

She looked down, lowered her head fractionally and then looked up at him from beneath her lashes. "Perhaps," she agreed demurely.

He turned on his side and pulled her down against him, her back to him so that they could lie together as they did in sleep, his body curved around hers, their arms entwined in front of her, his cheek against her hair. As their minds drifted together, he shared her conversations with Zoe the night before and with his mother that morning, and she shared his with Jim. Understanding, she was tempted toward guilt at having resented his being with Jim at the very time that he was demonstrating the depth of his commitment to their bond. But it was done; guilt could not erase it, but only ensure that it would never happen again. And it was that very alienation, she knew, that had spawned the erotically exultant joining that had finally freed him from the lingering hormonal imbalance that had worried her until now.

"You wanted so much to go with him," she said, and felt his arms tighten around her.

"Yes. But this is necessary now. For both."

"When will you go back with him?"

"When he goes." He hesitated for a moment, but knowing that she could listen now, he went on. "Until he was in jeopardy, I would have stayed with you if you had ever asked me to."

"I know. That's why I never asked."

"I know." Sliding his hand between her cheek and the pillow, he buried his face in her hair, loving her with every part of him, body and soul. And for the first time, it came to her that if she had ever tried to hold him, they would never have come close to the relationship they now had.

She had never realized that any aspect of their lengthy separations could have had positive value. In the wake of that thought, she remembered how she had initially wanted them to go to Earth for two years, and of how inexplicably wrong for her it had been. And then the floodgates opened on the most incredible insight of her life, almost taking her breath away.

"That wouldn't have been us on Earth. This is us." She saw the Vulcan family tree of cameos in her dream, and they were Amanda, T'Loreth, Zoe, and Kim. The empty frame in the middle was no longer empty. It was a mind-wrought self-portrait. The cameos were not oval, but round--circles with tiny crosses at the bottom. "And your cameos...." She knew that he understood. It was all so clear in her mind now, and he was there too. "You at his side, and me here with them. Parted from me and never parted. It's...they are how we grow--how we learn to love. They're...our way."

It seemed that her heart would burst with joy, and yet she had never been further from tears. It was he who was almost weeping with joy for her, holding her as though he could not get her close enough.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, knowing at last who the voice in her dream had been, the one the dreamer loved best, saying It is a decision tree. That had not been the bonding link, she knew. Her own unconscious mind had provided the dream images, and even the voices. But she also knew that her insight was not new to him, just as she knew what his silent answer would be.

How?

She slept lightly for a time, and then woke with a start, turning to him in the yellow light of early afternoon, finding him awake but filled with a great and restful peace. "The shakedown will take a week. That means there's no work for you to do here."

"And you?" he asked.

"Kim can get along without me for two or three days." Kim. But Kim would understand, and it was necessary. "T'Ara's always wanted to explore the Forge at night, and Shev's happy anywhere."

"Sarah, they sleep at night." But she knew that her excitement had already caught him.

"Kids can adapt to anything. We could even take--" Too much? But he was smiling.

"The ubiquitous Sember."

"It would give you a chance to get to know him, and it would make T'Ara so happy, and they aren't so exclusive now, since the tournament, and--"

He laid his finger against her lips. "I have never seen you like this." But his eyes were shining.

"I know. But let's. Let's."

"Very well," he said, still smiling. "Let's."

They set out at sunset, high on adrenalin and low on encumbrances. "Take half the clothes and twice the money" was still an oft-repeated saying among humans. Vulcans, Sarah learned, took the clothes on their backs and no credits at all on an excursion such as this. The insulated desert suits they wore were of woven natural fiber, as was the special underwear beneath. Sarah's backpack was full of diaperpants, and Spock's was full of Shevek, who let it be known where he wanted to ride. The two children carried food, water, and extra underclothing for all. Hanging from all their belts were the weapons necessary for their protection, including a miniature force-field generator which would keep predators away during the sleeping hours of the day.

T'Ara and Sember were unable to believe their good fortune. Both kept their Vulcan dignity, but their fascination with every aspect of the journey was a joy to behold. The first night they walked for six hours before their energy flagged. The second, it was morning before it was necessary to make camp so that they could rest. Neither of them had ever undergone the ritual of kas-wahn, for it was now accepted among Vulcans that hybrid children of weaker species were often at risk. And so they listened with rapt attention to Spock's comments and explanations, reveling in the beauty of the desert night and in the undivided attention of T'Ara's parents. Le-matyas screamed in the distance but did not approach, and Spock took care to warn the children against other predatory fauna and flora that they encountered on their way. By the time they turned homeward and found safe haven in a cave for their second day of sleep, Sember had lost his shyness, and was questioning Spock as incessantly as T'Ara did. Throughout, Shevek behaved admirably, wiggling only now and then, and not crying at all.

"I wish he'd be able to remember it like the rest of us will," Sarah whispered when she and Spock finally bedded down beneath her blue and green shawl with the children near them on the cave floor. The children were all asleep and tired enough to remain so all day. But it was pleasant to whisper together under a shawl at the back of a cave, knowing that the entrance was well protected and that their everydays were still kilometers away. "I don't know when I've been so happy."

"Nor I." But although she knew he spoke the truth, she also knew that he was no more ready for sleep than she was, and was not surprised when his hands began to wander. They lay on their sides, facing one another, and she was the one who was facing the children. "Are you sure they're all asleep?" he asked.

"Mmm-hmm," she answered languidly, moving up against him--sweet touching, undershirts up to their armpits, briefs equally disarranged. They were silent for a time, rubbing slowly, sensuously against each other, then slowly joining. "We'll have to be very, very quiet, though," she whispered finally, solemnly, laying one leg over his hip.

"Then be quiet," he whispered back, and she was.

Their loving took a long time, their rhythm slow and gentle even to the end. When it was over, she whispered, "This is so much fun it might get to be a habit. Do you think we'll ever want to do it naked again?"

He made a sound between a chuckle and a sigh. "I would estimate that the probabilities are high."

That night, after they arrived back in ShiKahr and both T'Ara and Sember had accepted Spock and Sarah's gift of self with shining eyes, Spock proved once again to be an excellent estimator of probabilities.