Epilogue: In Galleons Lap

The song Jill hears in her mind is from Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti. The prose excerpts are taken from Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne.

Snow came to Iowa in early November. Jill saw the first great, ephemeral flakes melting on the skin of the red aircar just as she was about to slip into it for her trip to the Midcontinental Shuttleport a hundred kilometers distant at Omaha.

"You sure know when to head for the dunes." Barbara slid into the passenger seat and deftly sealed the craft for lift-off as Jill checked the instruments, forcing herself to concentrate on her work instead of on the snow. The forward viewscreen, designed as a windscreen analogue for those who enjoyed the illusion of being able to see where they were going, looked as though its outer surface were melting. Jill had used the vehicle in the rain, with water pouring down the screen, but this was so gentle, so tentative. Like kisses, she thought, enthralled, and realized that Barb was waiting for her to answer something.

"What?"

"I said too bad you aren't going to get much of a vacation there," Barb repeated amiably. "You've been working your butt off here, setting this place up, and now you're going all the way to Vulcan to play nanny for three weeks--"

"Two tendays," Jill said absently.

"--For two tendays to two kids you've never even met. If you worked it right, Prince Charming might not make you meet them until they're all grown up."

"He didn't make me. It was all my idea."

"Christ, Jill. He told you on the tape that his grandparents couldn't get a sitter when they go off-planet, didn't he?"

"He told me they were going off-planet, and when I taped back I asked who was going to stay with Seth and Amanda." They were rising higher now, above the clouds, and the sky was as blue as summer. Jill smiled. Let them have their stars and their black space. "He taped that it wasn't decided yet, and I taped that maybe his kids could use some cuddling."

"What did he tape to that?"

Jill shook her head, grinning. "Classified."

"A Vulcan?"

"Not right then, he wasn't."

"Bizarre." But Barb was smiling too. "When do I get to meet this dude?"

"Next July, give or take a week or two."

"What happens in July?"

After a moment's thought, Jill told her.

As the 'car dropped through the clouds toward the shuttle port twenty minutes later, Barb said thoughtfully, "A hell of a way to live. When does the shit hit the fan for Samal?"

"I don't know. But you can bet Samal does." There were only a few wispy clouds over the Iowa-Nebraska border, and Jill followed the brown ribbon of the Missouri River as it ambled toward the port. "They used to land airliners here," she commented as they flew over a small, clear lake in the middle of what appeared to be a park. The park had a barren, tawny look in the late afternoon sun. Last summer, it had been as green as the lawn at home. At home. She smiled again.

"Ain't she cool, though," Barb murmured with a trace of admiration. "You sure you really want to carry all that alien baggage?"

"Comes with the territory. Just like his kids do."

"And what do you have in mind," Barb asked carefully, "for those kids?"

"I want them to come and live here eventually. At least part of the time."

"Baby, those kids are Vulcan! You fixin' to bring up somebody else's Vulcan kids in an interplanetary zoo in the boonies?"

"One-quarter Vulcan. So are my brother and sister. You are looking at the experts' expert on little one-quarter Vulcan boys and girls."

"That boy is twelve years old," Barb said firmly. "He's old enough to remember his mother, an' I bet you a fat man that you're ridin' for a fall."

"You lose." Jill deftly guided the 'car to the ground. "I've picked up all kinds of stuff in my checkered career. My father taught me how to land a 'car when I was twelve. Except his was a boat."

"I didn't mean this. What you're headin' for is a lot more complicated than landin' a Red Hornet."

"We'll see," said Jill, and thumbed the door control. "You want to have a bite with me here, or do you have to get back right away?"

The 7:00 PM cross-country shuttle was cancelled, and the next one did not leave Midcontinental until eight. By the time it approached the west coast and began to decelerate toward one of the commercial berths on Spacedock's underside, it was dark in San Francisco as well. Looking down through the port next to her seat, Jill let go of the last vestiges of her impatience at the capriciousness of non-military shuttle scheduling. Seldom did a military flight approach docking this slowly, and she had never seen Earth at night from the lower reaches of space. In her mind, she heard a child's voice on one of Amanda's historical music tapes:

All its lanterns are lit,
all its torches are burning,
and its dark floor
is shining like crystal.

My world, she thought. I'm flying over my world. And not for the first time, she thought of her mindflight with Monica that final day on paradise.

No one had ever asked her about it. J.T. and Simon had both been more than willing to let her talk about the nightmare of her meld with Monica's flock, knowing that she needed to talk it out of her system. But no one had asked her about the mindflight. Maybe no one knew about it, she told herself. If anyone had guessed, it would be Spock, and he would refrain from asking her about it out of regard for her privacy.

But she wanted someone to ask. She wanted someone to tell it to. Just once.

When she thought of it, her heart broke with missing the alien companion whose brief presence in her life had once seemed such a burden. She had Simon's love, and her father's. She had Barb and her friends at the farm. She was a scientist and a woman of property. It was time for the last of the child in her (her father's child, no doubt) to forget about sailing around in the sky, and she knew that she would forget how it felt all too soon. Even now, the memory was less vivid than it had been a few months ago, and there were lengthening periods when it came to her only in joyful dreams. But once, just once before it faded away, she wanted to tell someone about it. She wanted someone to ask, "What was it like....?"

"Spacedock one minute," said the intercomputer. And she looked out and up, and smiled once more.

Hanging over our roof
There is a star as big as a window....

It was all so beautiful, as though she were seeing it all new. She was free, and she was home, and if she never got the chance to share one of her most precious memories, that was the way it would be. No one could have everything, and almost-everything was more than enough for anyone.

But if only someone would ask....

Great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here.

Stretching in bed on her second morning in Sarek's house, Jill giggled and yawned luxuriously. Barb was right. She did need a vacation, and this was it. No responsibilities for two whole days, with Mother and Amanda fussing over her as though she were a kid home from school. Sometimes, she was learning, even adults needed to be treated like children for a little while. But although this was a good place to be, it was not her place, and never really had been. It was pleasant to lie in bed with the window open to dry heat, and without the sheet sticking to you. But the verdent moistness of a summer morning in Iowa filled empty spaces in her spirit that she had never known were there.

"Who," said Who, greeting her from the windowsill where he had landed a moment before.

"Who yourself." Jill stretched again and then rose, put on a short robe and went to the window, smoothing the owlcat's feathers absently. T'Ara and Sember were on a bench in the courtyard below, having a morning chat, their heads close together. A lot of that going on lately, and on a very serious subject, judging by their expressions. T'Ara had finished the major portion of her training as a healer, and had more free time than she had had for several years. Sember didn't seem to be doing much of anything except playing chess and growing taller, and taller, and taller. He was the skinniest, boniest young Vulcan that Jill had ever seen, and he stooped even when he sat. T'Ara, on the other hand, lacked his unfinished look. Since her formal training had ended, she wore her hair down, sleek and shining, drawn back behind her ears where tiny flecks of gold caught the morning sun, a gift from Sember on the recent ninth anniversary of their bonding. Oddly enough, the simplicity of her hairdo and her lack of ornamentation made her look more mature instead of less so. Now, she was frowning a little, nodding at what Sember was saying, but not especially pleased to hear it, Jill sensed. "I wonder what's going on," she murmured aloud.

"Who," said Who.

"Oh, they know that already. I think it might be What. Or maybe When." Who had nothing further to contribute, and Jill went musing to the shower. Something on hold. Something waiting to happen. Damn. Sometimes she wished that she wasn't quite so privy to other people's feelings. If T'Ara wanted her to know what was up, she would have told her.

Later that morning, she came upon T'Ara and Shevek, sitting together in the shadows at the back of the house. To her surprise and delight, T'Ara was reading to the little boy, who sat close beside her, his gaze moving from the page to her face and back again. He wiggled, scratched his leg, wiggled some more, but T'Ara read on.

"...And all these lovely things were in pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you clicked it. And they were all for Pooh.

"'Oh!' said Pooh.

"'Oh, Pooh!' said everybody else except Eeyore.

"'Thank you,' growled Pooh.

"But Eeyore was saying to himself, 'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.'"

Shevek was staring very hard up into his sister's face. She stopped reading and raised her eyebrows at him.

"Is Eeyore really human?" Shevek asked.

Jill could see the word No forming on T'Ara's lips. But it never became audible. Instead, T'Ara smiled a small, thoughtful smile that reminded Jill of Saavik after Jill hugged her.

"Indeed," said T'Ara, and when Shevek snuggled against her, vindicated, she laid her arm lightly around his shoulders and went on reading to him.

Later that day, Jill asked her, "May I take Pooh when I go to stay with Seth and Amanda tomorrow?" The passage that T'Ara had been reading to Shevek was almost at the end of the book, she knew.

"If you wish." But T'Ara looked puzzled. "Seth is too old..." Then she smiled. "And too young."

"We'll see." said Jill.

When she'd gone to meet them, Simon's maternal grandparents, Sivor and T'Resh, had looked her over with borderline human curiosity, asked her a few questions, and apparently decided that she would do. Amanda, a petite, pale-green five-year-old, stared up at her solemnly with great dark eyes, but took her hand without urging as they walked to the gate together when Jill left. Seth was nowhere to be found, although he had apparently been in the vicinity when Jill arrived.

When she returned for her extended stay, Sivor and T'Resh were about to enter their aircar for their trip to the spaceport. Amanda was trying not to cry, and Jill noted with relief that T'Resh gave her a hug before she got in the 'car. It was a perfunctory hug by human standards. Yet paradoxically, both T'Resh and Amanda appeared comfortable with it, and the little girl took Jill's hand once more, dry-eyed, as her great-grandfather wished her a solemn farewell at considerably more than arm's length.

Seth stood slim and straight and unmoved as Sivor took leave of him. Jill could see the breadth of Simon's shoulders incipient in the boy's narrow ones, and there was much of Simon in the contours of his face. But he was controlling up a storm, and he had barely acknowledged her presence when they were introduced. That bad? she wondered. Maybe Barb was right.

But the aircar had barely left the ground when Jill learned with dismay why the boy was controlling.

The house was laid out much like Sarek's, with a courtyard between the two wings. In that area lived an ancient sehlat named Kola, and as soon as she neared him, Jill realized that the animal was nuur. It was impossible to tell whether death would claim him during the time Jill was in charge. But her kylh sensibilities told her that Kola had accepted death and was resigned to it. He raised his head when the boy came near, but then laid it on his paws again as Seth bent to gently stroke his ears, his back to Jill.

She drew in her breath sharply, and Seth stood upright, still facing away from her, his thin back stiff with tension.

"Do your grandparents know that Kola is nuur?" she asked.

"They are not kylh." The boy turned to face her, tight-lipped and resentful that she now shared the knowledge that had been his alone. "The healer told me there is nothing to be done for him. I can take care of him." Chin up, dark eyes daring her to challenge his judgment. "I'm old enough."

"All right. But why didn't you tell Sivor and T'Resh before they left?"

"It was between Kola and me." He was glaring at her now. Intruder. Busybody. Mind your own business. She was doing her best not to read him telepathically, but his emotions were as clear as words.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, and the boy's eyebrows rose. Surprise. Slight decrease in tension.

"What is this?" Amanda asked, fingering the book in Jill's hand.

"This is a book that my little brother likes." Jill deliberately focused her attention on the child; both she and Seth needed a breather. But when she sat down on a bench near the fountain and Amanda climbed eagerly into her lap, Seth turned away abruptly as though he had been excluded. "You might like to listen too, Seth," she said.

He turned back, gaze opaque, controlling. "You're not my mother." There was a curious lack of defiance in his tone. He was simply stating a fact, laying down ground rules. My mother is the one who read to me, and you are not my mother.

"I don't want to be your mother," Jill answered, equally matter-of-fact.

"I suppose you want to be my friend." There was a faint hint of mockery in his tone now.

"I want to be Jill."

The eyebrows again. Physiological reflex. Even Simon, who had been raised on Earth....

Amanda's attention span had been taxed by the conversation, and she had wriggled off Jill's lap and wandered toward the sehlat. Although the animal was not in pain and she sensed no danger, Jill nevertheless felt apprehensive. But Seth was more than equal to the situation.

"Tink," he said quietly. Then, when the child did not pause: "Tinker." With obvious affection, he scooped her up and, with her deft assistance, slung her around onto his back, her arms around his neck, legs around his waist. Together they regarded the old sehlat while Seth explained that Kola was tired and shouldn't be disturbed.

"He is always tired," Amanda complained, her cheek now resting against her brother's shoulder.

"When you are as old as he is, you will be tired too. Come." He carried her back to Jill and eased her off his back, and she climbed onto Jill's lap again.

"I have two names," she explained. "'Amanda' is for everybody and 'Tinkerbell' is just for Seth and me. It's a secret."

Damn. Moved by their display of affection for one another, Jill was doubly conscious of Seth's disappointment and anger as he stalked away, yet another confidence violated. To her surprise, he did not leave the courtyard, but sat down next to Kola instead--far enough away to convey the message that he wasn't the least bit interested in her reading, but well within earshot.

Satisfied that she was doing as well as could be expected, Jill opened the book and began to read it aloud.

During the next few days, she tried to be as pleasant to Seth as she could without overdoing it. The boy was polite enough, informing her when he was going to go off with his friends, asking permission to watch the Tri-D emanating from the offworld settlement, which diversion T'Resh had informed her was off limits except for one hour a day. Occasionally she caught him watching her speculatively, as though she were an enigma that he wished to understand but could not like. There must be a way, she thought. If she could figure out what his Gotcha was, she could take it from there. But since he barely spoke to her except out of necessity, that wasn't an easy task.

He was in school all day at the FSOC, where the little girl went only in the mornings. But one of Amanda's favorite things to do was to walk to school in the afternoon to meet Seth on his way home. At first Jill wondered how she had ever managed to take this walk twice a day herself, but after a few days she found herself accommodating to the hellish roasting that she had endured without thought as a child. Amanda chattered away, hopping, skipping, seldom behaving like the Vulcan child she appeared to be. One day on the way home, she asked, "How did you meet my father in Starfleet if you're not in Starfleet?"

"I was." Aware that Seth, ambling along behind them, was listening hard, Jill went on. "I graduated from Starfleet Academy, but I decided I belonged on Earth. My father is in Starfleet, though, just like yours."

Behind her, Seth asked, "Who is your father?" It was the first time he had spoken to her in days except for domestic amenities.

"My father," she answered with quiet joy, "is Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise." She had not said it out loud like that to a stranger since she was at FSOC herself, and it felt wonderful to do it again.

She heard Seth's footsteps pause, and turned to see him begin to move forward again, staring directly at her. "Do you know Spock?" It was almost a whisper.

Gotcha? "Uh-huh. He's been my mother's bondmate since I was four."

The boy looked away, out across the city toward the mountains. Mistake? A parent's bondmate who was not the other parent wasn't a favored topic of conversation, obviously. But they would have to get back to it sooner or later, and his curiosity was getting the best of him."Has he been a friend to you?"

"He's been Spock to me."

"I don't know what that means." For the first time, outright rude. Almost sneering. "You want to be you. Spock's been Spock to you. That's human doubletalk. What does it mean?"

"Well, Seth, if you'd give me half a chance, I might be able to show you."

He picked up a small stone and hurled it at the mountains, his expression the perfect duplicate of his father in sullen-Vulcan mode. Jill swallowed a grin and made herself keep silent. And silent they remained until they reached home.

On Tenthday afternoon, T'Ara and Shevek came for a visit, bringing The House at Pooh Corner, which they had finished reading together the night before. Seth was out with his friends, but Amanda and Shevek, who knew each other from school, found plenty to talk about as they made themselves grubby digging in the sand. As she and her sister sat watching, Jill asked, "Why are you sad, shadow?"

T'Ara sighed. "I can't tell you yet. I promised Sember I wouldn't tell anyone until he makes a decision."

"Okay. Can I help?"

Another sigh. "No."

"Let me know if you change your mind."

T'Ara nodded, smiling a little. For what it was worth, Jill thought, she certainly smiled a lot more than she had when she was Seth's age.

The evening before Sivor and T'Resh were scheduled to return, Kola died.

Seth had spent the late afternoon and the early part of the evening sitting on the ground with the sehlat's head in his lap. Jill, knowing what was to come but determined not to intrude again, read to Amanda and put her to bed. Then, as the sun disappeared and the breeze from the Forge turned cool, she took two blankets and returned to the courtyard.

As soon as she approached, she knew that the old animal was dead; that gentle, patient, resigned spirit simply was no more. Seth had laid Kola's head on the ground, but still sat close to the silent mound of patchy fur, lotus-like, his own head bowed. Jill paused several meters away, spread one blanket on the ground and sat down on it in the same position as Seth's. Red sky went to black, and still Seth had not moved.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" Jill asked finally.

There was a long silence, and then Seth said, "No."

"Will you take a blanket? It'll be cold out here soon."

He nodded, and she put the second blanket around his shoulders, moved away again, and put hers around her. The quiet sounds of a Vulcan city preparing for the night grew quieter, and then died away. The breeze calmed, sprang up more strongly, calmed again. Above, familiar constellations winked into view. Now that the sun was gone, it was not unlike a fall evening worlds away in Iowa. Some things are universal....

"Did you ever lose a friend like Kola?" Seth asked.

"Yes. Her name was...is Monica. She didn't die, though."

"What happened to her?"

She told him. Beginning at the beginning, with Monica Franklin's death, she told the whole story of the friend she had lost. At first she thought she was doing it for Seth, to take his mind off his grief. But then, as the story went on, she realized that she was doing it for herself as well. She had never told the whole story to anyone who had not been a part of it, straight through from beginning to end like this, with all the time she needed. Mother and Amanda and T'Ara had all listened that first night, but they were all busy and tired, and she had given them an expurgated version in deference to that. Seth had nowhere to go and nothing to do except mourn his friend under the Vulcan sky, and because she had time, Jill was able to tell it all. "Each of us was loyal to the other and to our own people too," she finished. "And we each gave the other a gift. I took her home, and she took me flying in my mind when she finally found her wings."

The boy turned slightly toward her, his pale, thin profile like a crescent moon against the darkness of the garden wall.

"What was that like?" he asked.

I accept your gift, Jill thought, swallowing the lump in her throat. "It was like climbing the sky," she said, and felt his smile in the dark. "It was like windflying, except higher and higher, up to the top of everything. She was so happy, Seth. She was where she really belongs for the first time in her life, and she was free."

"Kola is free too. Now."

"Yes."

"Don't you miss Monica?"

"Yes."

"Do you cry because you miss her?"

"I haven't yet. I don't know why."

"I haven't either." He sighed. "Would I feel better if I cried?"

"I don't know. You might." They were silent again for a long time. Then Seth said, "I'm ready for them to take him away now. Will you stay with him until I bring a healer?"

"Yes," she said. "I will."

Late the following afternoon, Jill finished reading The House at Pooh Corner to Amanda and her brother. This time, Seth made no effort to hide the fact that he wanted to hear the story. Or maybe, she thought, it was just that he wanted to sit on the ground with his back to the empty corner of the courtyard.

They were at the beginning of the last chapter when she realized that this might not be a good thing to be reading to this boy on this particular afternoon.

"Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody knew that Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow everybody in the Forest felt that it was happening at last...."

A little boy was growing up, taking leave of the things of childhood. They were only toys, but as Shevek had so rightly pointed out, they were much more--beloved friends that this child knew he would never see again through the same eyes. As Christopher Robin and Pooh took leave of one another in the enchanted place called Galleons Lap, Jill heard a thickness creeping into her voice. "So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way--" And her voice broke.

Amanda was looking up with her finger in her mouth. There were tears in Seth's eyes.

Taking a deep breath, Jill read on, climbing the sky with Monica once more in the eyes of her mind. Not once more, she knew now. Always. Whenever she wanted to go there. "But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place at the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

She closed the book and wiped the tears away. "And your father said," she finished shakily, "'Look, ma. No hands.'"

Seth laughed. It sounded like a hiccup. He blinked as though he were surprised, and tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks. Rejoicing, Jill realized that he was not trying to hide them.

"My father and I cried when my mother died," he said, again faintly challenging. But the healing tears continued.

"That's good," Jill said, and almost laughed herself when the eyebrows went.

High above them, an aircar circled and then dropped down to land.

Amanda had not cried at the end of The House at Pooh Corner, but she cried when Jill took her leave. Both Sivor and T'Resh took great pains not to notice.

"Goodbye, Tinkerbell." Hugging her, Jill made promises about visits to Iowa that she new she could keep, having briefly discussed the matter with T'Resh as she was getting her things together. Then, gently disentangling herself from the little girl, she smiled. "Goodbye, Seth."

"Goodbye...." Vulcan now, with his ancestors looking on in the flesh as well as in spirit. But in his eyes there was more of Simon than she had ever seen there before."...Jill."

When she climbed past Amanda's greenhouse at dusk, her mother and sister were sitting half way up the steps above her, close to T'Sal, who was chiming softly. Sarah was holding T'Ara's hand, and T'Ara was looking what her grandmother would have called a little bit peaked. As she neared them, Jill slowed her pace, waiting to hear the news, whatever it was.

Patting T'Ara's hand, their mother said, "Sember is going to Starfleet. He passed the sims, and they want him to start at prepdiv next term."

"Poor shadow." Jill leaned over and kissed her sister's cheek.

"It was meant to be," T'Ara said sturdily. Not controlling, Jill noticed. "It is his destiny. I shall find mine too. Perhaps--." She stopped, and Jill saw a wondrous thought begin to form. It was there in T'Ara's eyes, where a moment before there had been only sadness and resignation. Her gaze locked with Jill's, who realized that it must be more than clear to their mother where the idea had originated. "Perhaps I shall be the first Vulcan healer in Starfleet," T'Ara finished, her voice hushed with self-discovery. And Jill thought: She's the same age I was when I went to work at fml.

Their mother made a small, protesting sound, quickly stifled. Jill looked at her, and saw for the first time that there were fine threads of grey streaking away from Sarah's temples. But her eyes were the same--smiling ironically at Jill.

"Thanks a lot, little one," she said wryly. "Just what I always wanted."

"The obligation was mine." Taking a hand of each, Jill pulled them to their feet. "Mother, I think I'll make you tea and tell you stories. You're entitled."

T'Ara laughed. It was not a very loud laugh, but somehow it made both her mother and her sister laugh too.

Silent now, T'Sal watched them climb the steps together, arms linked--as she had watched them so many times before, but with a difference.

Now, the three of them were of a height.