I: Earthrise

Part 2 of 2

At precisely 1600 hours, the first four graduates of this year's Starfleet Command School beamed down onto the four transporter pads in the dome. They continued to beam down and to walk past her in a groups of four, talking quietly among themselves, paying little or no attention to her. She and her classmates at the Academy referred to the Command School students as the Right Stuffs, but there was more envy than derogation in the nickname. Cream of the crop, best of the best, the men and women who had chosen and been chosen to be command-line officers on starships across the Federation and beyond. There was something about them, she thought, waiting in her seat, knowing that the one she waited for would see her without her drawing attention to herself. They walked differently, spoke differently, special to themselves as well as to everyone else in Starfleet. Each of them wore a fine white-gold class ring with a clear blue stone on the middle finger of the right hand. Someday, she thought, her spirits lifting at last. Someday she would be one of them....

As another group of four approached and passed her, one of them slowed her walk and turned, eyebrows rising in recognition. She didn't look any older, Jill thought, although five years had passed since they'd seen one another. Vulcans didn't age that fast, after all. Same steady gray eyes, same dark hair, center-parted and drawn back in a bun. But as she raised her hand in the Vulcan salute, the gray eyes smiled, and Jill wondered if one of the things they taught you in Command School was how to tease.

"Live long and prosper, humanchild. It pleases me to see thee well."

"Peace and long life, Saavikam." Now on her feet, Jill moved toward her friend. "I have an hour before beam-up. Do you have time to have a drink and watch Earthrise with me?"

Lunatime, it was four o'clock on a weekday afternoon, and so the cocktail lounge was nearly deserted. With the aid of the anti-gravs, Jill was easily able to negotiate Monica's cage to a position at the end of the bar without drawing the attention of the only other customers, a couple at a table by the window. The bartender, an Andorian, pointed his antennae at the cage and frowned a blue frown, but did not object. Score one for Cunningham, Jill thought. If Monica had been on the loose, she would not have been able to have a drink with Saavik, or to watch Earthrise one last time.

"Your mission is a difficult one," Saavik said when they were seated at the bar with their drinks. Her gazed had lingered on the cage several times, and each time she frowned a little.

"Can you sense her?" Jill asked, knowing that Saavik too was kylh.

"Remotely. I do not understand how you have been able to communicate with her."

"I can't now. She's withdrawn again." Jill looked into the cage, and Monica looked back and then closed her eyes. "She sleeps a lot more than she did. I'm worried about her."

"Worrying will not save her," Saavik said quietly. "You have done all that can be done for now. Come. Tell me about the Academy. Is Gort still at PREPDIV?" They talked of the Academy, and of PREPDIV, and Jill absently watched their reflections in the mirror above the bar. Their uniforms were deep red in this light, Saavik's hair black and Jill's red-gold. Saavik's face looked white and finely sculpted, Jill's white and round-cheeked. At least the freckles on her nose didn't show here. "You did not remain to teach, obviously."

"I was invited, but I decided to work at FML for a year instead. Then this came up. Would have been nice to come out a lieutenant like you did, though."

"Privilege hath its ranks," Saavik murmured, and smiled when Jill chuckled. "What was your strategy on the Kobayashi Maru?"

"If you can call it that. I blew up the ship." Saavik's eyebrows flew. "I dove zero mark zero at warp twelve."

"From a cold stop?" Saavik whispered, fascinated.

"Mmmm. We lasted nine nanoseconds from 'Execute.'" Jill grinned. "Klingons didn't get us, though." Saavik shook her head slowly, half smiling, half frowning. "What did you do?"

"In essence, the same thing," Saavik answered, and sighed. "The process was somewhat longer and more painful, however. That was...just before Genesis." She frowned then, but Jill immediately grasped the opportunity to ask the question that she had always wanted to ask.

"Saavik, how did my brother die?"

Saavik looked back at her for a long moment, appearing to consider alternatives. Then she said, "Bravely. He took the lethal blow that was meant for me. Has your father not told you this?"

"We've talked about David a lot, but not about how he died. I just never wanted to ask him, and he never brought it up either. It's...hard, I think."

"To lose one's child is always difficult. But death is to be--"

"More than that. J.T. deserves better."

"Deserves?"

"David should have been in Starfleet." Saavik looked back at her for a moment, and then simply shook her head. "Oh, I know. He wasn't cut out for it. But he should have been."

After a moment, Saavik said, "That is not logical, Jill."

"No. But it's proper. Philosophically."

"You mean 'rightly ordered.'" Jill nodded. "But not logical." Jill shook her head. "I do not understand."

"J.T. deserves it. Oh, never mind." Jill shifted on the bar stool, uneasy under Saavik's thoughtful stare. It would make perfect sense, she was sure, to anyone but a Vulcan. "May I see your Command ring?"

Saavik blinked once at the sudden change of subject, but laid her hand on the bar so that Jill could see the ring. No graduate ever wore a ring on active duty, but she knew that both her father and Spock had theirs in safekeeping. J.T. had shown his to her once. Proudly. One of his most prized possessions, he had said. Slim, silvery, with the blue, blue stone that symbolized the Starfleet seal. Blue as the sky above--

"Oh, look!" she exclaimed, turning toward the large window. "We almost missed it!"

Like a jewel on black velvet, she thought, her eyes moist. But they were good tears that would neither burn nor fall. Not a jewel, really. A Christmas ornament made of jade silk and brown velvet, trimmed in white lace. Hanging by nothing, against nothing, and yet always there.

"It's home," she said aloud. "And it's mine." Looking over at Saavik, she caught her smiling again. "I suppose that's crazy. I've never even lived there except to go to school."

"Nor I," said Saavik, "on Vulcan." But she was still smiling.

When they had been on Vulcan for two days, Jill was forced to admit to herself that there might be something seriously wrong with Monica. Yet she did not confide her worries to anyone. In another day, the Enterprise would arrive, and in a little over a week, Monica would be back on her home planet. She tried to convey that information to the Dac, and was sure that she had had some degree of success. Freed from her cage, Monica spent her time on the sandy hill directly behind Sarek's house, and the freedom to move around mitigated the dangerous lethargy that she had exhibited when she was caged aboard the LRS. The fact that she refused to fly, even when she was free to do so, did not necessarily mean that she couldn't do it.

So there was no reason to confide worries to anyone, or to ask for help. Who could help? Yet Jill felt an unreasoning desire to grab the Dac and fly off into space to meet the ship on the way in. She needed to talk to someone who would understand Monica's situation, and to someone who could do something about it. Spock always understood everything, and J.T. had spent most of his life doing something about one thing or another. If she could get the two of them working on this with her, good things were bound to happen. She recognized this line of thought as the childish self-reassurance that it was, and then permitted herself to enjoy it anyway.

On the last day before the arrival of the Enterprise, she made the mistake of taking Monica windflying.

Later, she realized that the fiasco that almost cost them both their lives was caused by a paradoxical combination of overconfidence and worry. Her rapport with Monica had deepened since the Dac was released from her cage. Monica was now able to remain alone for increasingly longer periods, even long enough for Jill to sleep all night in her own bed. The Dac trusted her to return simply because she promised she would. Taking that as a good sign, Jill determined that it would be salutary for Monica to have a real flight before she was again confined aboard the Enterprise, and that all she needed was a little moral support. That conviction was reinforced by a growing concern about the fact that Monica, a reptile born to the wind, had not yet flown. And so she took the Dac to the edge of the same cliff from which Spock had accompanied her on her own first windflight, activated the wingpack on her back, and glided off into space.

"C'mon in," she urged, making a slow gliding turn, once again giddy and exultant at the feel of a kilometer of empty air beneath her body and and wind beneath her wings. "The water's fi--"

Then Monica was on top of her, wings beating madly, one of them smacking one of Jill's so hard that the blow sent her head over heels. Suddenly the empty air between them and the desert was no longer exhilarating, but terrifying. Jill let her mind scream, and Monica flapped away a little, frantic, eyes bulging, beak open as though she were screaming too, but making no sound. She doesn't know how, Jill thought, fighting the panic. A flying creature who didn't know how to fly? She glided away on an updraft, and Monica stayed with her, her right wing directly beneath Jill's left.

Hold my hand, Jill imagined her saying. Hold my hand.

They circled and landed, Jill sticky with fear-sweat and stumbling a little as her feet touched solid sand. Monica glided to a perfect landing, folded her wings around her, and stared.

"I'm sorry, little one." Jill wiped her forehead with her wrist and took a deep, unsteady breath. "I could have gotten us both killed."

Monica stared. Jill walked over to her but did not kneel; Monica was now as high as her shoulder, and she could look into the Dac's eyes. "Let's go home." The black eyes stared back at her; behind them, Monica's mind was in turmoil. Whatwhatwhat? Utter confusion. Whatwhatwhatwhat? There were no words, but the question was clear. And Jill realized fully for the first time the lethal danger of trying to communicate humanoid warnings to a mind that did not think in humanoid terms.

She walked back to Sarek's house, with Monica gliding from rock to rock, always waiting until Jill came abreast of her before she moved forward again. Behind the house, Monica took up her usual position, hanging upside down from the lowest limb of a yellow tree. Jill sat on the ground, her back against the relatively cool red stone of the building. Lucky, she thought, that Monica's tree was also in the shade of the edge of the roof all day.

You're her territory now.

"This is all wrong," Jill said aloud, knowing that Monica could not understand the words but hoping that she could perceive Jill's wish to communicate. "You're too attached to me, but I can't do anything about it without abandoning you--" Around the corner of the house, a small foot scuffed in the sand, and Jill sighed. "Come out of there, Shev."

Silence.

"Come on. I know you're there."

One brown eye, a small slanted eyebrow, and black bangs appeared around the corner.

"Come on." Jill patted the ground beside her. "You can come and see her as long as I'm here."

Returning to Vulcan infrequently, she still could not get used to the idea that a soft, cuddly baby could become a skinny, hard-muscled, perennially dirty little boy in what seemed like only a few months. Shevek hated trousers, and wore only minuscule shorts beneath his tunic. Seated on the ground, Jill examined her brother's bare feet and legs as he ambled toward her. How, she wondered, could one small child manage to have at least one skinned knee all the time? And how could he have such filthy feet when there was nothing but clean sand and bare rock for miles around? There was a grape juice stain on the front of his tunic, and the smooth, soft skin around his mouth was faintly purple. Untidy black hair hid his pointed ears and covered his forehead; their mother would often mutter about haircuts when she tousled his hair, but Amanda derived some obscure enjoyment from Shevek's scruffy appearance, and Sarah was amiable about humoring her mother-in-law's harmless idiosyncrasies. His mother called him "little one," and his grandmother called him "bright eyes."

"Did Monica do something wrong?" he asked hopefully, and Jill felt a pang of empathy. In a household consisting of three adults and a teenaged sister who was training for an adult profession, five-year-old Shevek was inevitably cast in the role of the family black sheep, and he wanted company there.

"No. I did." Jill patted the ground again, but Shevek, ever on the move, circled around, eyeing Monica, who eyed him back, upside down. Neither appeared to be frightened of the other, and Jill, secure in her belief that Monica was dangerous to no one, had convinced her family that no harm would come to Shevek as long as he did not visit Monica alone. "I tried to teach a bird to fly, and I got what I deserved."

Shevek glanced at her alertly. "I thought you said she isn't a bird."

"That's right. She isn't. Shev, come here." Something in the way Monica was staring at the child disturbed Jill, although she could not identify what it was. And as soon as Shevek turned away and came to sit next to Jill, Monica closed her eyes and appeared to doze off.

Brother and sister sat in the shade of home and talked of the difference between a bird and a winged reptile, and then of family matters. "Don't you like T'Ara at all?" Jill asked finally.

"She who is our sister," Shevek replied in Vulcan, "is a condition of acute discomfort in the anal region."

During the second or two that it took Jill to translate non-idiomatic Vulcan into idiomatic English, she noted with rapidly rising annoyance that Shevek thought he was being cute and expected her to laugh. Her annoyance turned to anger, and she snapped, "Not funny" in a voice that was a little louder than she had intended. The child blinked at her, immediately sober if not contrite. "Nobody's going to talk about T'Ara like that to me," Jill continued in a more moderate tone. "Not even you, bright eyes." She smiled, but it was a forced smile. Little brat. Mother and Amanda should do something about this, and quick.

"I ask forgiveness." Serious now, Shevek was momentarily the grandson of Sarek of Vulcan--not the carbon copy that his father had once hopelessly striven to be, but a very small male child with an in-house male role model whom he loved, and who loved him. "I don't like T'Ara because she doesn't like me anymore." It was a matter-of-fact statement, but Shevek's voice quivered a little on the last word.

"I can't believe that." Jill shook her head, frowning. You probably shouldn't talk to kids as though they were grown up, but if you'd had had no experience talking to kids, there was no way to do this right, and it still had to be done. "She's so involved with her work that she doesn't know anything else exists right now. Some people get like that about their work." She thought of Samal, and then tried not to think of Samal. Thinking about FML now filled her with a sadness that she reluctantly identified as homesickness, and that was, as any good Vulcan knew, unproductive.

"How long will she be like that about her work?" Shevek asked wistfully.

"Until she's grown up, maybe. She's learning to be a healer, and it's all so...fascinating. I don't think she really knows the rest of us exist right now." Her own voice was wistful.

"Grown up like you?" Shevek asked, frowning. He was not entirely pleased with that idea.

"Is that bad?"

"Indeed," said Shevek, and this time Jill smiled spontaneously in spite of the context.

"Why?"

"Because being grown up like you means being sad."

"Oh, Shev! I'm not sad. I'm just worried about Monica, that's all." She put her arm around the child and drew him against her, partially out of genuine affection and the desire to reassure, and partly because his searching dark eyes made her feel obscurely uncomfortable.

The child snuggled against her, laying his grubby hand on her arm. "You feel sad to me," he said, and patted her arm as though to comfort her.

She could not think of an answer. Trying, she found no words. Instead, she said, "Who taught you that thing about the anal region?"

"Stan." Now there was admiration in his voice. "He taught me how to say some other human things in Vulcan too." Jill suppressed a sigh. Stan was the ten-year-old brother of T'Ara's bondmate, Sember, the son of family friends, a Vulcan and her human husband. "His father thinks it's funny."

"What about Mother? Does she think it's funny?"

"I don't tell Mother."

"Good. Don't." But maybe I better, she thought. She hugged the little boy to her, ruffling his hair with the other hand.

And Monica watched upside down, her gazed fixed on the child. A minute spasm passed across her wings, like ripples on a tissue-paper lake.

That evening, Jill sat with her mother and Amanda in the courtyard and recapitulated her conversation with Shevek. "He thinks it's cute because Mike think's it's cute when Stan does it. Do you think it's cute?" She heard the challenge in her voice, and wondered where it came from. I never used to talk like this....

"Not nearly as cute as it is inevitable," said Amanda, glancing over at Sarah. A faint, reminiscent smile passed between them.

"If he didn't get it from Stan, he'd get it at FSOC," Sarah strummed her guitar. She was referring to the Federation School for Offworld Children, which Jill had attended until she transferred to Starfleet Academy, Preparatory Division, when she was twelve. "So did you. In kindergarten. Or have you forgotten?"

"I don't think that's relevant."

"Oh?" Sarah frowned faintly.

"Shev is just a little kid. Little kids shouldn't talk like that."

"Jill--" Sarah laid her hand on the strings to silence them. "What is the matter with you this time?"

"There is nothing the matter with me, Mother." Jill rose, and looked from one to the other. "I just think somebody around here ought to pay a little more attention to Shevek, that's all." Without waiting for an answer she left the courtyard and descended the garden steps. The sky was post-sunset purple, and a cool breeze was already blowing in from the Forge as she sat down on the steps next to T'Sal.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," she told the plant, and T'Sal murmured an encouraging chime, bending her cactus-like head to one side as though listening hard. "Pretty soon I'm going to be just where I've always wanted to be, on the Enterprise, and I feel like shit." Plink, said T'Sal. "Will you sing to me?"

T'Sal sang a long, harp-like song, and by the time it ended, Jill felt calm and peaceful once again. Nothing's the matter, she thought, retracing her steps to the house.

What could be the matter?

On the last evening before the Enterprise was due to arrive, Jill and T'Ara climbed the steps of Mount Seleya together. They had been walking and talking for an hour, and yet they had said nothing of importance to one another. How could it be, Jill wondered disconsolately, that she and her shadow had grown so far apart? The young woman who walked beside her was a stranger--as tall as she, thin and austerely beautiful, dark hair elaborately braided around her head, clad in a simple white tunic-like robe that hid her body from throat to ankles. T'Ara's green eyes looked back at her with interest, occasionally with affection. But the interest verged on the merely polite, and the affection was abstracted and somewhat unfocused. No wonder Shev was unhappy with the person his sister had become. This would be enough to drive a little kid nuts, Jill thought.

By the time they finally stood looking up at the Hand of Life and Peace, Jill was sweating, but T'Ara still appeared cool, sleek and unruffled. Maybe what I need is some kind of refusion, Jill thought, her gaze now on the dias where Spock had received his katra from its keeper five years before. Can you bring me back my shadow, T'Lar? I miss her so much....

"Father had planned, with Mother, to be among the spectators at a healing ceremony in which I participated while he was on Vulcan," T'Ara was saying, referring to a time several months before when Spock had had several days of unscheduled home leave. "However, the Enterprisereturned for him before he was able to attend, so it was not to be."

Her disappointment was evident, but the formal cadence of her sentences irritated Jill immensely. And so she spoke the first words that came to mind, not realizing how mockingly flip they sounded until she heard herself saying them.

"Funny. I was betting they were going to make another baby. Looks like we both lost."

T'Ara looked back at her without answering. But she was focused now, no longer abstracted, her green eyes full of silent compassion.

"You must hate me sometimes," Jill blurted, hating herself.

"No." T'Ara glided across the ancient stones, hardly stirring the air as she moved, and took Jill in her arms. "I love you."

Jill closed her eyes against tears and hugged her sister back. "I'm sorry, shadow. I miss you so much. Come to PREPDIV. If you were in Starfleet, at least we'd have something in common." She giggled shakily. "You could be the first Vulcan healer in the fleet."

"My place is here." T'Ara's voice was low, confident.

"I know," Jill sighed. "Just like I know my place is in Starfleet."

"Then why does 'knowing' make you so unhappy?"

Jill pulled away a little and met her sister's gaze. "B-but, T'Ara, I'm not unhappy."

"You snap at Shevek," T'Ara said quietly, without accusation, simply reporting the facts. "You speak to Mother and even to Grandmother as though they were fools." The words dropped like pebbles into a pond--sharp-edged pebbles wrapped in silken sadness. "This is not the sister I remember."

Then it's me, Jill thought. I'm the one who's different. "But I don't want to change! I liked the way I was. Before--before--" Before what?

"Perhaps you are not simply changing, Jill. Perhaps you are becoming."

"Becoming what? Some smart-ass who snaps at babies?"

"He is not a baby," T'Ara reminded her with a trace of a wry smile. "But sometimes...sometimes I wish he were. He was so...." They smiled at each other. "Oh, Jill, he is such a pest!" The green eyes snapped, but she was still smiling, if a trifle grimly.

"Read to him." T'Ara's eyebrows rose. "Take him on your lap and read to him. He soaks it up like a sponge. All he wants is for you to pay attention to him."

"No. He wants me to love him. And sometimes I'm not sure I do." The green eyes were downcast now.

"You can't legislate love, shadow. And it's not logical."

"Indeed." T'Ara sighed, and Jill hugged her again. "I wish you were home more often."

Home, Jill thought. But it didn't feel like home anymore. It felt like a stopover on the way to somewhere else. On the way to where she really belonged. "I'll be okay," she said aloud. "Once I get on the Enterprise and get Monica back to her planet, I'll be fine."

Father was at Mother's computer in the study, reading something that Mother had had published on one of the nets. From where Shevek sat, watching, Father seemed as far away as when he really was far away, except this time Shevek could see him. That helped. When Shevek couldn't see Father for a long time, he sometimes couldn't remember exactly what Father looked like, and got Father mixed up with Grandfather in his mind. But when Father was here, it was much easier to remember what he looked like.

Yawning, he scratched his knee carefully, so as not to make the scab bleed. Then he picked at the scab, just the very edge, just to see if he could get his fingernail under it. Then slid down on his spine and wound his legs around each other and looked at his feet cross-eyed so that he had four blurry feet instead of two clear ones. Then he uncrossed his feet and looked at them cross-eyed again. While he was doing that, he realized that Father had turned to look at him with his eyebrows a little bit crooked.

"Is that necessary?" Father asked, his face looking smiley even though he wasn't smiling.

Shevek thought about the question, and decided that Father was asking if the wiggling was necessary.

"Yes," he said.

"Very well." Father turned back to the computer screen. Shevek wished he wouldn't, and began to pick at the scab again. He knew that he could go out and play if he wanted to. But he didn't want to just now. If he sat here and wiggled long enough, Father might come with him....

Mother came into the room with her hair down. Mother looked different when Father was home. Usually she never wore her hair down until she was ready for bed, but when Father was home, she looked like she was ready for bed all the time.

She went to stand next to Father, and Father leaned against her in a way that Grandfather never leaned against Grandmother, nodded at the screen and said, "Fascinating."

Mother felt happy to Shevek, but she said, "Maybe you could finish it later." She was facing away from Shevek, but Shevek saw Father's eyes flick toward him as though Mother's eyes had moved that way too.

"Will you join us?" Father asked her.

Mother shook her head, and Shevek and Father went for a walk alone together.

When they were together, he often thought that Father was looking for something to talk to him about. But one thing about Father: he never said anything unless he had something to say. That was peaceful. Father held his hand too. Grandfather never did that, and it felt good.

As they came out of the courtyard and to the top of the garden steps, Who swooped down behind them and perched on the gate.

"Who," said Who. It was a game they played, and Shevek was glad that Who was back to play with him again.

"SHEVEK!" he yelled. Who flew away again, and Father really smiled this time.

Shevek wondered if Father had ever played games like that when he was little. Father hadn't had any brothers. Not even a sister. When Jill was gone, it felt to Shevek as though he didn't have any sisters either.

"T'Ara doesn't like to play games anymore," Shevek said. There was something he needed to know about, and he decided to try it out on Father to see if he would say what Jill did. In Vulcan, he said, "She who is my sister is a condition of acute discomfort in the anal region."

He thought Father's foot slipped or something. But he kept on walking and didn't say anything.

"Is that funny or not?" Shevek asked.

"Not," said Father.

"Very well," said Shevek, satisfied. If two grownups thought it wasn't funny, then it probably wasn't. Not to grownups, anyway.

As they came back up the hill, Monica landed on the steps above them.

Monica wasn't supposed to be out here.

"Monica isn't supposed to be--" Shevek began, and then his father hurt him.

His head was clamped between Father's arm and side, with his face looking down toward the steps. The arm and the side were so hard and so close together that they hurt because there wasn't much room for Shevek's head between them. But he was much too scared to make any noise about it.

Father's whole body made a violent movement, and Shevek knew that Father had grabbed Monica one-handed and twisted her wing. He heard her flap-flapping away. She was moving very fast, toward the Forge, but it was a lopsided kind of flapping that he was hearing.

Then his father was picking him up and running with him. They were in the courtyard and inside the house before Shevek could catch his breath. And even then he couldn't really catch it because he was so scared.

Father didn't put him down. Shevek held onto him and Father held onto Shevek, and neither of them said anything for a while. Grandfather never held onto him like that, and it felt good. But he was crying anyway, and Father was shivering now, and just holding him.

"Are you hurt, Shevek?" he asked finally in a voice that didn't sound quite like his.

"No," Shevek gulped. "I'm scared!"

Father didn't say anything, just went on holding him and shivering.

"Weren't you scared?" Shevek asked.

"Not for myself."

Father certainly was somebody special. Here was this big scary thing, and he wasn't even scared for himself.

But then why was he still shivering?

"Mister Halsted," asked the captain of the Enterprise, "what were your orders from Admiral Cunningham regarding the transportation of the alien to Beta Canaris 12?"

She and J.T. were alone with Spock in the study. No, she reminded herself. She and the captain were alone with the first officer. She could not remember this room ever being so hot. But it was sunset, and the study windows faced west. The captain had asked her to sit down, and she had declined. She noticed that he had elected to do his pacing along the side of the room perpendicular to the windows, so that she could face him during the interview without having the sun in her eyes. This, she was sure, was the only consideration she would get from him. More, no doubt, than she deserved.

Her throat and the inside of her mouth were paper dry, but her voice came out surprisingly steady.

"'She goes in stasis, or she goes in a cage.'"

"That's a direct quote?"

"Yes, sir."

"You interpreted that order as applicable only while you were on the LRS?"

"And on the Enterprise Yes, sir."

"May I ask why you gave it that interpretation?" At the word why, he stopped in front of her and made a jabbing motion in her direction. His face was as flushed as Spock's was pale, and she wondered if he might be subject to heat exhaustion while he was on Vulcan. He is my superior officer, she reminded herself. His health isn't my concern at the moment.

"I--it didn't occur to me that I was supposed--that Admiral Cunningham intended me to keep Monica caged while we were on Vulcan."

"It didn't occur to you?"

"No, sir. It didn't."

They stood for a moment, gazes locked, and then he said very softly, "You saw this alien pierce a human brain when she was barely out of the egg, and it didn't occur to you that she might do it again?" Jill could not find the voice to point out that the question he was asking now was not the question she had answered. It didn't matter; the answer was the same. Even more softly: "May I ask why?"

"No explanation, sir."

His mouth dropped open slightly, and she suppressed a faint flash of pride that she had surprised him. Then she felt his agony, and drowned in it.

"Ensign, I hereby relieve--"

"Captain--"

Spock's voice was low, but they both started at the sound of it, having almost forgotten that he was there. He stood with his hands behind him, on the opposite side of the room from the captain. He hadn't gotten much of his color back, Jill noted. He still looked like a ghost of himself, but his eyes met hers intently.

"With your permission, sir," he said, still looking at Jill. The captain made a brief gesture of assent, and Spock went on. "Jill, why did Monica attack Shevek?"

"She was jealous of him," Jill whispered. He waited, unmoving, his gaze never leaving hers. "She's territorial, and I'm her territory right now. He's been with me several times when I was with her, and she saw me--" Her voice broke, and she steadied it. "She saw me hug him. When she saw Noah--one of my co-workers--hug me goodbye, she looked at Noah instead of at me, and she always looks at me. I didn't know what it meant." She heard herself begging, and smothered the begging from her voice. They would think she was begging for herself if she sounded like that.

"Why did she abandon her perch this afternoon?" Spock persisted.

"She was looking for me. I hadn't been to see her since this morning."

"How do you know she wasn't looking for Shevek?" asked the captain.

I just know. "I...don't, sir. But I don't believe she would have hunted Shev down like that."

"Because she's never done anything like that before?"

"Yes, sir." But even she could hear the lack of conviction in her voice.

"Dammit, Jill," said the captain. "Talk!"

"I don't want any special--"

"You're not getting any, mister. If I weren't your father, what would you say to me now?"

"I'd--I'd...." She closed her eyes momentarily, blocking out everything but the question, and then opened them. "Monica is not a vicious animal. She's not dangerous unless somebody invades her territory. I know that."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know her. I was there when she killed Monica Franklin. I know why she did it, because I could hear her." She turned to Spock. "You're kylh too, sir. Couldn't you hear her this afternoon?"

"I was...otherwise occupied." Spock's voice was flat, controlled. Then, in a more normal tone: "Perhaps the colonists on Beta Canaris 12 have invaded the aliens' territory there."

"The mining colony is a thousand kilometers from the nearest Dac roost." The captain made a dismissing motion. "Let's stick to the subject here. Jill--" He raised one hand as though in entreaty, then let it fall. "I keep asking myself what I'd do if you weren't my daughter. Do you believe that?" She nodded. "You appear to be the only one who can communicate with Monica's race. If you were a seasoned Starfleet officer, I'd have your head for this even so. Do you believe that?" She nodded again. "But a seasoned Starfleet officer wouldn't pull a stunt like this. And since nobody was hurt--" He glanced at Spock, who nodded fractionally. The captain took a deep breath and let it out. "Ensign Halsted, consider yourself on report. An official reprimand with all particulars included will be entered on your record. And from now on, anything that animal does is your responsibility--"

"It always has been, sir.

"Let...me...finish, please." Silence. "From now until we're rid of her, anything that animal does is your responsibility even if you're twenty parsecs away. Now let's get the hell out of here and cage her again before she makes somebody else her territory."

"Captain, request permission to go alone."

"Quit while you're ahead, mister. Permission denied."

They went southeast into the Forge, the setting sun at their backs. Jill led, her tricorder on and murmuring; the captain had permitted her that, at least. Behind her, he and the first officer remained several meters distant, covering her. But it was not their phasers that bothered her the most, for she knew that they were only on heavy stun. It was her father's shadow, stretching across the sand. No matter how fast she walked, she could not get out of his shadow.

"How badly was Monica injured?" she had asked Spock, and he had reported that her left wing was dragging when she limped away toward the Forge. So even if she would fly, she couldn't. And it would be dark in less than an hour. Without the force field deactivator that Spock carried, Monica would not be able to return to ShiKahr even if she wanted to. There was no doubt in Jill's mind that, crippled as she was, the Dac would not survive the night on the Forge alone.

Jill knew that Monica was near even before the tricorder announced her presence. Still trying to get out of her father's shadow, she ran, rounded a boulder, and faced the Dac, who was standing in the middle of a cleared space. As Jill approached her, she opened her beak in a soundless scream and raised both wings as though to engulf her, and Jill heard a quick movement close behind.

"Spock," she said without turning or raising her voice, "don't let him shoot. I'm not in danger."

The two long shadows merged, crossed, separated again. And still she was walking in one of them.

Approaching Monica more closely, she smelled a fresh kill on the Dac's breath and shuddered inwardly. Defending herself? Turned killer? Mad with fear? It was the fear that Jill sensed most strongly. She held her breath to avoid the smell, pushed Monica's beak aside and put her arms around the Dac, drawing the thinly furred head against her breast. "It's all right, little one" she murmured. "Nobody is going to hurt you again."

Terrified. Exhausted. In pain. And the creature who had hurt her was only a few meters away.

"He is of my flock," Jill soothed, stroking Monica's crest. "He was defending a hatchling." Terrified. Hurt. Hurthurthurt. "Let me see your wing." To Jill's relief, the wing was dented but not punctured. Anyone but Spock would have torn the membranes to shreds with his fingers. But even defending his child from death, he had managed to inflict no more pain than was necessary.

"Walk with me," she said, moving away a little. "Come on, Monica. He never meant to hurt you, and he won't hurt you again."

Again the open beak, the silent scream. Monica would not move.

Jill straightened her shoulders and turned. Peagreen on report she might be, but they were going to have to listen and obey or forfeit the mission.

"Captain." Approaching him at a slow, deliberate walk, she met his gaze directly. Then, taking her time, she did the same with Spock. "Mr. Spock." She moved forward, out of J.T.'s shadow and into the clear. The sun was in her eyes now, but it had sunk partially below the horizon, and she could see their eyes as she looked slowly and deliberately from one to the other, making direct eye contact a second time with each of them. "Please turn around and walk away. She won't come with me if you're facing her and close enough to cover me."

"We can stun her," said the captain. "She's not heavy--"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sir. If I lose contact with her now, she'll die."

"How do you know that?"

"I just know."

The sun was behind him, so it might have been her imagination that his mouth twitched. Before she could be sure, he turned and began to walk away from her, if not very quickly. Spock moved with him, and then, as though with one thought, they separated and angled away from one another and from her. She was familiar with the pattern, which would enable them to turn and fire instantly without danger of stunning one another. It was standard Academy drill. Satisfied, she waited until they were half a kilometer away and then set about persuading Monica to follow her.

It was a slow process, for Monica was so exhausted she could barely walk. But Jill felt that she had all the time in the world. Now, with the two of them moving separately, she was not walking in anyone's shadow, but between them.