Celebrate the Earth and Sky (14/20)
Thanks to Kupo for the edits!
Interlude
Amanda paced the outer room of Sarek’s study. Her home-robe was near light enough to be scandalous anywhere outside of sleeping, but she was beyond caring. Its cool fabric did the job of keeping her temperature modulated enough for comfort, and she quite liked the delicate green embroidery down the front. Besides, the only one in the household who would have such ridiculous notions about propriety was Sarek himself, and he was not here to complain.
Sarek was out. He had been called to a meeting with the High Command and nothing short of the house literally being on fire would suffice as an excuse to not attend to them with all haste. Therefore, with a quick tap of the fingers and a meaningful look at Amanda, he had gathered up his data pad, straightened his robes, and swept out of the house. Amanda gazed after him forlornly, patting her own hair back down into place. She half expected violin music to start wailing in the background, before recalling that she lived on the planet Vulcan, and not in a period piece, and that Vulcans had opinions about things like wailing violins and forlorn wives.
Still, she had been waiting all week to get her hands on Sarek. What could she say? She was worried, and he was comforting. Also, he was warm, and didn’t seem to mind when she curled up next to him on the couch and shoved her cold feet under his form. Ah, the joys of matrimony, especially when they involved one’s personal space heater.
Her gaze drifted across the room, and the firmness around her mouth at Sarek’s abrupt departure, softened a little as she spotted the holo of Spock pushed up against the corner of a shelf.
She walked over and picked it up. Her boy was young - eleven, maybe twelve? His hair was shiny smooth and flat against his head, and his robes a bit dusty. He also had a smidgeon of dirt on his cheek. Sybok’s form next to him towered over his wiry frame.
Sarek’s firstborn had apparently been cajoling Spock into the line of the camera, for Spock would reluctantly be tugged into view by the arm, scowl at the camera without even twitching his mouth, then turn to the side to give Sybok - half in the picture and half out - a piece of his mind. Then the scene would freeze, and play again from the beginning.
She traced the outline of Spock’s face with the tip of her pinky finger. Where was he now, on her home planet? What did he think of it? Had his mission met with any success?
Had it met with failure?
She placed the holo back down again with a sigh. Spock was resourceful. He was Sarek’s son, and he was hers. If a matter had gone awry, he would fix it. She was his mother, and she would worry (and who, in their right mind, could not?) but he would be fine.
He would be fine.
This mantra was enough to placate her through the rest of the evening. It followed as she labored over some translations, and then went out to feed the sehlat. She had named the creature Floppy, much to Spock and Sarek’s chagrin. They had had more of those Vulcan feelings about using an adjective for a name, but she had pointed out that as Floppy was her sehlat, and not theirs, it hardly mattered what they thought. Also, Floppy was floppy, his too-large ears jolted this way and that as he bounded over to her, and his paws (the size of his head, at this point) skidded across the tile as he came to rest by her feet.
She fed him and, when he had finished his meal, buried her face and hands in his fur for comfort. It was wiry compared to, say, a cat’s fur, but she liked the way it curled. She also liked the way it did not shed on her.
When Sarek arrived home late that night, it was to the sight of his wife nestled next to an essentially unconscious young sehlat, still on the back patio. After a moment of contemplating the scene (and even considering fetching a camera-not for himself of course, but for Amanda) he knelt down next to the pair and nudged Floppy over so that he could gather Amanda in his arms.
Floppy growled a bit, but reluctantly allowed himself to be moved. Sarek straightened, Amanda held close to his chest, and strode back into the house on silent feet. He laid her in bed, still sleeping, and considered waking her.
She would not thank him if he did, and she would thank him even less for the news he bore. He decided to wait until morning, when calmer heads might prevail. Donning his own sleepwear, he stretched out beside her. He trailed a finger along her face, unknowingly imitating Amanda’s earlier movements with the old holo of Spock. With an exhale, he turned onto his back, placed his hands on his stomach, and closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
In the morning, Sarek woke to the smell of something frying.
Amanda. She had always been less than satisfied with simple plomeek broth for breakfast. As Sarek rolled to his feet, he took a deep sniff of the air. Pancakes, he decided, and did not wonder why, on this of all mornings, she had decided to make a dish from her home planet.
He entered the kitchen, bare feet soft on the cold stone floor. Despite his silence, Amanda stiffened for a moment as she sensed a presence, then relaxed her shoulders as she noted it to be his.
“Morning,” she said, turning around and giving him a faint smile. She turned back to the stove, and flipped something in the pan.
Smiles. So human. Sarek could not help but marvel, much as he had for these past thirty years.
Spock did not smile. But then, he had been raised in the Vulcan way. As a small child he had laughed, but he had grown out of showing it. (Of course Sybok, who had none of Spock’s excuses, laughed far more often than any Vulcan in his right mind).
Spock fancied himself like his father, Sarek knew; stern around the mouth, controlled, duty-bound. But Sarek knew him better. Sarek knew those brown eyes (Amanda’s) ached for the freedom of the stars, and those gentle hands, with their long fingers (Amanda’s) were better suited to soothing than chastising. In truth, Sarek knew neither of his sons resembled him (although Sybok was truly a mystery among mysteries. At least Spock’s characteristics were traceable). So be it. Perhaps it was better this way.
He sat at the table. Before long his wife, and their breakfast, joined him.
“So what did the Councilors have to say?”
Sarek glanced at her from under lowered eyes. He chewed, wondering if the pancakes on Sol III, made with different ingredients, from a different world, tasted like this. He remembered Amanda had gone through many incarnations of the food before declaring this one ‘acceptable.’ Sarek had not minded.
“Sarek?” Amanda was looking at him strangely now. She must have realized that he was stalling. Sarek made himself put down the utensils.
“The VSS Nirak has not been responding to hails,” he said.
“The VSS . . .” he watched as Amanda half-formed the words in her mouth, before making the connection. “That was that ship Spock was on.”
There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”
Her voice abruptly rose. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me yesterday?”
“You were asleep.” Sarek watched her closely. She appeared somewhat emotional. Humans were unpredictable when emotional.
“I don’t care,” she snapped. Without meaning to, Sarek flinched a little. Amanda so rarely raised her voice. She was upset, then. Clearly he had misstepped.
“I did not want to disturb your sleep when nothing could be accomplished but worry,” he attempted to explain.
She glared at him, then her shoulders slumped a little. “Are they sending out ships?”
Sarek shifted his feet underneath the table. “They are still attempting to re-establish contact,” he said. “If they cannot, they will send out a scout ship.”
“A scout ship?” her voice rose again. “A measly little scout ship? The VSS Nirak held two hundred passengers, I don’t think a scout ship is going to be enough to handle whatever happened to it!”
“We do not know that anything has happened to the Nirak,” Sarek reminded her. “We have merely conjecture. There are any number of causes that might affect a ship’s communications. There might be interference from the magnetic fields of the system’s gas planets. A wire may simply be crossed.”
“They might have been attacked by a Klingon war bird.”
“We cannot know. The High Command will not be moved on this. If the VSS Nirak continues to be unresponsive, they will send a scouting ship in two days.”
Amadna’s face turned red and she stood from the table. “Did you even try?” she demanded, placing her hands on the table and leaning towards Sarek. “Or was it all ‘yes Council, of course Council, never mind my son might be dying Council. Do what is logical, Council.’” She spat.
“Amanda,” Sarek said. Her words . . . stung. Yes, that was the term for it. They hurt.
Unwillingly she met his gaze. Though Sarek imagined his face to be as impenetrable as ever, she looked slightly ashamed by what she saw there. “You should have told me,” she said, folding her arms around her middle. But Spock was far gone from being in her womb. She could not protect him there. She sat down again.
“I tried,” he said. “I urged them to send a ship immediately, or to reroute one already nearby, but they would not listen.” Wryly he added, “I believe their exact refusal was stated along the terms of my being ‘emotionally compromised by the situation at hand.’”
“Assholes,” Amanda muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
Sarek could not find it in himself to disagree. “If-” he hesitated. “If something has happened to the Nirak, then it is unlikely Spock was there when it did. We had already received confirmation of his beamdown onto Sol III.”
“Earth,” said Amanda.
“Earth,” Sarek repeated.
She looked away, out the window at the desert cliffs and mountains. “That doesn’t really make me feel any better.”
Sarek did not know what to say. He watched with dark eyes as she turned back to him, her mouth fixed in a thin, decisive line.
“You have to go back.”
“Pardon?”
She nodded firmly. “You have to go back to the High Command. They’ll never listen to me - I’m too emotional, they’ll say.” She snorted. “But T’Pau can get you an audience. You have to go back. You have to convince them to send ships. Big ships, not a damn scout.”
Sarek closed his eyes and folded his hands in front of his face. “Amanda, the Council has decided. Any emotional pleading on my part will not change that.”
Amanda’s face took on an even more mulish cast. “You have to go, Sarek. You have to convince them.”
He looked at her, willing her to understand the illogic of her request. “It will do no good.”
“Are you a diplomat or aren’t you?” she retorted. “Make them listen!”
“Amanda-”
“Sarek, if you don’t move your butt out of this house and back over to the Command and go get them to rescue our son, then I may never forgive you. I’m serious.”
She was serious, too. Sarek could feel it in his mind, just as well as he could read it on her face. He exhaled. She glared at him, then raised one eyebrow.
“Well?”
He swallowed one last bite of pancake before scooting back his chair and standing. He adjusted the sleeves of his robes, and lamented that he had not thought to bathe before breakfast. “I will take my leave, then,” he said.
Amanda looked at him intently. “To the Councilors.”
He resisted the urge to grimace. It would be most unbecoming. “Yes,“ he said reluctantly, “to the Councilors of the High Command. I will petition them once more.”
Now she gifted him with a slight smile. “Thank you,” she said softly, reaching out to clasp his hand. He squeezed hers briefly in return, then let go.
“I do not know when I will return.”
“I understand,” she said.
He nodded.
After Sarek left, Amanda sat at the breakfast table for a long while, trying not to think of all the horrible things that might have befallen Spock. She was only marginally successful. She considered going back to her translation work, but knew that she would not be able to concentrate. Instead she did the dishes by hand, under the half-formed impression that some mindless manual labor would put her a bit more at ease.
It didn’t. But it did give her idea.
She stalked back over to Sarek’s study, and plunked herself down in front of his worktable. While the base of the table itself was imported wood from the forests of Andoria, the transparent aluminum-covered surface of it actually functioned as a computer. She ordered its boot sequence in a terse voice, and skimmed her hand lightly along the surface for it to analyze her accessing fingerprints.
That done, she set out to program a sub-space call to Romulus.
It took a minute or two for Sybok to pick up. With the video function on, Amanda fervently hoped that he had not been indulging in any of those rather un-Vulcan entertainments scattered throughout the seedier districts of Romulus. He had mentioned going to one previously, but Amanda had never been sure if that had been fact, or an exaggeration aimed to drive Sarek even more to his wits end.
Sybok finally picked up. “Amanda?” he questioned, blinking at her owlishly. She immediately felt bad. It must be night in Ki Baratan. On the other hand, what she could see of the room behind him didn’t look anything like a brothel, so that was a bit of a relief.
She faced her stepson and bit her lip, suddenly feeling the strongest urge to cry. Seeing her blink back tears, Sybok’s face took on a more alarmed cast.
“Is everything all right? Where’s- did something happen to my father?”
Mute, she shook her head, willing control over her voice. Finally she managed, “No, your father is fine. He’s just- he’s meeting with the High Command, right now.”
If possible, Sybok looked even more concerned. “And is there a problem?”
It felt as though there were a lump lodged in her throat. “It’s Spock,” she heard herself say, as if from a distance. “He-”
Sybok shook his head, reaching as if to touch through the screen and reassure her. He had always been an empathic child. “No, Amanda, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Spock is alive. If he were dead, I’d know. Father would know. You have a bond with him too, even if it’s small. He’s still there. Just- far away.”
She swallowed around her tears and allowed a small smile. “I know,” she said, voice soft. “But his ship hasn’t been responding to hails. Something may have happened. And the High Command . . .” she trailed off, and then anger made her sit up straighter. “The High Command isn’t even willing to send anything but a scout ship, and not for a few days. By that time, who knows?” She spread her hands. “Sarek’s gone back to try and get them to see sense, but you know what they’re like.”
Sybok nodded slowly. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with my father’s most illogical action, would you?”
She tilted her head. “Me? I’m just an illogical, overly emotional human. Me? Convince Ambassador Sarek himself to be illogical?”
“Right,” said Sybok dryly. He looked thoughtful for a moment, staring off the screen at something Amanda couldn’t see. “You don’t think the Councilors will do anything?”
“They’re bureaucrats,” she said bluntly. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to put Spock’s life in the hands of a vote.”
The corner of Sybok’s mouth contorted into a frown. He looked more intently at Amanda, the last of the sleepiness gone from his eyes. “What are you thinking?”
Amanda set her shoulders. “So about those . . . business associates of yours that Sarek never wants to hear about.”
Sybok raised an eyebrow at her, for a moment looking so like Spock that it made her heart clench.
“The ones that my father calls ‘degenerates’ and the Vulcan Customs Agency calls ‘Romulan dissidents?’” he asked after a moment’s consideration dedicated to denying anything of the sort.
Amanda relaxed her lips into the slightest of smirks. “Yeah, those ones. Any smugglers?”
Sybok leaned forward on his elbows. “Amanda,” he said, eyes gleaming, “if you weren’t my father’s wife who raised me from childhood, I’d marry you.”
She wrinkled her nose, laughing a little.
Sybok sat back with a decisive nod. “I’ll make some calls,” he said. “Try to figure if someone’s been making mischief in near-Vulcan space. And then see what we can do about it.”
“You’ll let me know?”
He gave her a look. “Of course! If father thinks that I came up with this, he’ll probably disown me. Better you get the credit for it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t make me send you in for extra meditation lessons.”
Sybok shuddered. “Anything but that,” he said. Then his face turned serious, and he lifted the ta’al to Amanda. “I’ll get to work,” he said. “Don’t worry yourself too much, or else Spock will use me for his next suss-mahn demonstration.”
“That was only the once,” said Amanda.
“Once was bad enough,” Sybok said. He reached to turn off the call. “I’ll let you know if I discover anything useful.”
“Thank you, Sybok,” she said.
“He’s important to me too,” Sybok said, serious for once. “I’ll let you know,” he said again.
She nodded, and the screen winked out.
Amanda stared down at the table, tapping her fingers, deep in thought. After a moment she sighed, turned off Sarek’s computer, and exited the room.
Previous Next
Interlude
Amanda paced the outer room of Sarek’s study. Her home-robe was near light enough to be scandalous anywhere outside of sleeping, but she was beyond caring. Its cool fabric did the job of keeping her temperature modulated enough for comfort, and she quite liked the delicate green embroidery down the front. Besides, the only one in the household who would have such ridiculous notions about propriety was Sarek himself, and he was not here to complain.
Sarek was out. He had been called to a meeting with the High Command and nothing short of the house literally being on fire would suffice as an excuse to not attend to them with all haste. Therefore, with a quick tap of the fingers and a meaningful look at Amanda, he had gathered up his data pad, straightened his robes, and swept out of the house. Amanda gazed after him forlornly, patting her own hair back down into place. She half expected violin music to start wailing in the background, before recalling that she lived on the planet Vulcan, and not in a period piece, and that Vulcans had opinions about things like wailing violins and forlorn wives.
Still, she had been waiting all week to get her hands on Sarek. What could she say? She was worried, and he was comforting. Also, he was warm, and didn’t seem to mind when she curled up next to him on the couch and shoved her cold feet under his form. Ah, the joys of matrimony, especially when they involved one’s personal space heater.
Her gaze drifted across the room, and the firmness around her mouth at Sarek’s abrupt departure, softened a little as she spotted the holo of Spock pushed up against the corner of a shelf.
She walked over and picked it up. Her boy was young - eleven, maybe twelve? His hair was shiny smooth and flat against his head, and his robes a bit dusty. He also had a smidgeon of dirt on his cheek. Sybok’s form next to him towered over his wiry frame.
Sarek’s firstborn had apparently been cajoling Spock into the line of the camera, for Spock would reluctantly be tugged into view by the arm, scowl at the camera without even twitching his mouth, then turn to the side to give Sybok - half in the picture and half out - a piece of his mind. Then the scene would freeze, and play again from the beginning.
She traced the outline of Spock’s face with the tip of her pinky finger. Where was he now, on her home planet? What did he think of it? Had his mission met with any success?
Had it met with failure?
She placed the holo back down again with a sigh. Spock was resourceful. He was Sarek’s son, and he was hers. If a matter had gone awry, he would fix it. She was his mother, and she would worry (and who, in their right mind, could not?) but he would be fine.
He would be fine.
This mantra was enough to placate her through the rest of the evening. It followed as she labored over some translations, and then went out to feed the sehlat. She had named the creature Floppy, much to Spock and Sarek’s chagrin. They had had more of those Vulcan feelings about using an adjective for a name, but she had pointed out that as Floppy was her sehlat, and not theirs, it hardly mattered what they thought. Also, Floppy was floppy, his too-large ears jolted this way and that as he bounded over to her, and his paws (the size of his head, at this point) skidded across the tile as he came to rest by her feet.
She fed him and, when he had finished his meal, buried her face and hands in his fur for comfort. It was wiry compared to, say, a cat’s fur, but she liked the way it curled. She also liked the way it did not shed on her.
When Sarek arrived home late that night, it was to the sight of his wife nestled next to an essentially unconscious young sehlat, still on the back patio. After a moment of contemplating the scene (and even considering fetching a camera-not for himself of course, but for Amanda) he knelt down next to the pair and nudged Floppy over so that he could gather Amanda in his arms.
Floppy growled a bit, but reluctantly allowed himself to be moved. Sarek straightened, Amanda held close to his chest, and strode back into the house on silent feet. He laid her in bed, still sleeping, and considered waking her.
She would not thank him if he did, and she would thank him even less for the news he bore. He decided to wait until morning, when calmer heads might prevail. Donning his own sleepwear, he stretched out beside her. He trailed a finger along her face, unknowingly imitating Amanda’s earlier movements with the old holo of Spock. With an exhale, he turned onto his back, placed his hands on his stomach, and closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
In the morning, Sarek woke to the smell of something frying.
Amanda. She had always been less than satisfied with simple plomeek broth for breakfast. As Sarek rolled to his feet, he took a deep sniff of the air. Pancakes, he decided, and did not wonder why, on this of all mornings, she had decided to make a dish from her home planet.
He entered the kitchen, bare feet soft on the cold stone floor. Despite his silence, Amanda stiffened for a moment as she sensed a presence, then relaxed her shoulders as she noted it to be his.
“Morning,” she said, turning around and giving him a faint smile. She turned back to the stove, and flipped something in the pan.
Smiles. So human. Sarek could not help but marvel, much as he had for these past thirty years.
Spock did not smile. But then, he had been raised in the Vulcan way. As a small child he had laughed, but he had grown out of showing it. (Of course Sybok, who had none of Spock’s excuses, laughed far more often than any Vulcan in his right mind).
Spock fancied himself like his father, Sarek knew; stern around the mouth, controlled, duty-bound. But Sarek knew him better. Sarek knew those brown eyes (Amanda’s) ached for the freedom of the stars, and those gentle hands, with their long fingers (Amanda’s) were better suited to soothing than chastising. In truth, Sarek knew neither of his sons resembled him (although Sybok was truly a mystery among mysteries. At least Spock’s characteristics were traceable). So be it. Perhaps it was better this way.
He sat at the table. Before long his wife, and their breakfast, joined him.
“So what did the Councilors have to say?”
Sarek glanced at her from under lowered eyes. He chewed, wondering if the pancakes on Sol III, made with different ingredients, from a different world, tasted like this. He remembered Amanda had gone through many incarnations of the food before declaring this one ‘acceptable.’ Sarek had not minded.
“Sarek?” Amanda was looking at him strangely now. She must have realized that he was stalling. Sarek made himself put down the utensils.
“The VSS Nirak has not been responding to hails,” he said.
“The VSS . . .” he watched as Amanda half-formed the words in her mouth, before making the connection. “That was that ship Spock was on.”
There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”
Her voice abruptly rose. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me yesterday?”
“You were asleep.” Sarek watched her closely. She appeared somewhat emotional. Humans were unpredictable when emotional.
“I don’t care,” she snapped. Without meaning to, Sarek flinched a little. Amanda so rarely raised her voice. She was upset, then. Clearly he had misstepped.
“I did not want to disturb your sleep when nothing could be accomplished but worry,” he attempted to explain.
She glared at him, then her shoulders slumped a little. “Are they sending out ships?”
Sarek shifted his feet underneath the table. “They are still attempting to re-establish contact,” he said. “If they cannot, they will send out a scout ship.”
“A scout ship?” her voice rose again. “A measly little scout ship? The VSS Nirak held two hundred passengers, I don’t think a scout ship is going to be enough to handle whatever happened to it!”
“We do not know that anything has happened to the Nirak,” Sarek reminded her. “We have merely conjecture. There are any number of causes that might affect a ship’s communications. There might be interference from the magnetic fields of the system’s gas planets. A wire may simply be crossed.”
“They might have been attacked by a Klingon war bird.”
“We cannot know. The High Command will not be moved on this. If the VSS Nirak continues to be unresponsive, they will send a scouting ship in two days.”
Amadna’s face turned red and she stood from the table. “Did you even try?” she demanded, placing her hands on the table and leaning towards Sarek. “Or was it all ‘yes Council, of course Council, never mind my son might be dying Council. Do what is logical, Council.’” She spat.
“Amanda,” Sarek said. Her words . . . stung. Yes, that was the term for it. They hurt.
Unwillingly she met his gaze. Though Sarek imagined his face to be as impenetrable as ever, she looked slightly ashamed by what she saw there. “You should have told me,” she said, folding her arms around her middle. But Spock was far gone from being in her womb. She could not protect him there. She sat down again.
“I tried,” he said. “I urged them to send a ship immediately, or to reroute one already nearby, but they would not listen.” Wryly he added, “I believe their exact refusal was stated along the terms of my being ‘emotionally compromised by the situation at hand.’”
“Assholes,” Amanda muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
Sarek could not find it in himself to disagree. “If-” he hesitated. “If something has happened to the Nirak, then it is unlikely Spock was there when it did. We had already received confirmation of his beamdown onto Sol III.”
“Earth,” said Amanda.
“Earth,” Sarek repeated.
She looked away, out the window at the desert cliffs and mountains. “That doesn’t really make me feel any better.”
Sarek did not know what to say. He watched with dark eyes as she turned back to him, her mouth fixed in a thin, decisive line.
“You have to go back.”
“Pardon?”
She nodded firmly. “You have to go back to the High Command. They’ll never listen to me - I’m too emotional, they’ll say.” She snorted. “But T’Pau can get you an audience. You have to go back. You have to convince them to send ships. Big ships, not a damn scout.”
Sarek closed his eyes and folded his hands in front of his face. “Amanda, the Council has decided. Any emotional pleading on my part will not change that.”
Amanda’s face took on an even more mulish cast. “You have to go, Sarek. You have to convince them.”
He looked at her, willing her to understand the illogic of her request. “It will do no good.”
“Are you a diplomat or aren’t you?” she retorted. “Make them listen!”
“Amanda-”
“Sarek, if you don’t move your butt out of this house and back over to the Command and go get them to rescue our son, then I may never forgive you. I’m serious.”
She was serious, too. Sarek could feel it in his mind, just as well as he could read it on her face. He exhaled. She glared at him, then raised one eyebrow.
“Well?”
He swallowed one last bite of pancake before scooting back his chair and standing. He adjusted the sleeves of his robes, and lamented that he had not thought to bathe before breakfast. “I will take my leave, then,” he said.
Amanda looked at him intently. “To the Councilors.”
He resisted the urge to grimace. It would be most unbecoming. “Yes,“ he said reluctantly, “to the Councilors of the High Command. I will petition them once more.”
Now she gifted him with a slight smile. “Thank you,” she said softly, reaching out to clasp his hand. He squeezed hers briefly in return, then let go.
“I do not know when I will return.”
“I understand,” she said.
He nodded.
After Sarek left, Amanda sat at the breakfast table for a long while, trying not to think of all the horrible things that might have befallen Spock. She was only marginally successful. She considered going back to her translation work, but knew that she would not be able to concentrate. Instead she did the dishes by hand, under the half-formed impression that some mindless manual labor would put her a bit more at ease.
It didn’t. But it did give her idea.
She stalked back over to Sarek’s study, and plunked herself down in front of his worktable. While the base of the table itself was imported wood from the forests of Andoria, the transparent aluminum-covered surface of it actually functioned as a computer. She ordered its boot sequence in a terse voice, and skimmed her hand lightly along the surface for it to analyze her accessing fingerprints.
That done, she set out to program a sub-space call to Romulus.
It took a minute or two for Sybok to pick up. With the video function on, Amanda fervently hoped that he had not been indulging in any of those rather un-Vulcan entertainments scattered throughout the seedier districts of Romulus. He had mentioned going to one previously, but Amanda had never been sure if that had been fact, or an exaggeration aimed to drive Sarek even more to his wits end.
Sybok finally picked up. “Amanda?” he questioned, blinking at her owlishly. She immediately felt bad. It must be night in Ki Baratan. On the other hand, what she could see of the room behind him didn’t look anything like a brothel, so that was a bit of a relief.
She faced her stepson and bit her lip, suddenly feeling the strongest urge to cry. Seeing her blink back tears, Sybok’s face took on a more alarmed cast.
“Is everything all right? Where’s- did something happen to my father?”
Mute, she shook her head, willing control over her voice. Finally she managed, “No, your father is fine. He’s just- he’s meeting with the High Command, right now.”
If possible, Sybok looked even more concerned. “And is there a problem?”
It felt as though there were a lump lodged in her throat. “It’s Spock,” she heard herself say, as if from a distance. “He-”
Sybok shook his head, reaching as if to touch through the screen and reassure her. He had always been an empathic child. “No, Amanda, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Spock is alive. If he were dead, I’d know. Father would know. You have a bond with him too, even if it’s small. He’s still there. Just- far away.”
She swallowed around her tears and allowed a small smile. “I know,” she said, voice soft. “But his ship hasn’t been responding to hails. Something may have happened. And the High Command . . .” she trailed off, and then anger made her sit up straighter. “The High Command isn’t even willing to send anything but a scout ship, and not for a few days. By that time, who knows?” She spread her hands. “Sarek’s gone back to try and get them to see sense, but you know what they’re like.”
Sybok nodded slowly. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with my father’s most illogical action, would you?”
She tilted her head. “Me? I’m just an illogical, overly emotional human. Me? Convince Ambassador Sarek himself to be illogical?”
“Right,” said Sybok dryly. He looked thoughtful for a moment, staring off the screen at something Amanda couldn’t see. “You don’t think the Councilors will do anything?”
“They’re bureaucrats,” she said bluntly. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to put Spock’s life in the hands of a vote.”
The corner of Sybok’s mouth contorted into a frown. He looked more intently at Amanda, the last of the sleepiness gone from his eyes. “What are you thinking?”
Amanda set her shoulders. “So about those . . . business associates of yours that Sarek never wants to hear about.”
Sybok raised an eyebrow at her, for a moment looking so like Spock that it made her heart clench.
“The ones that my father calls ‘degenerates’ and the Vulcan Customs Agency calls ‘Romulan dissidents?’” he asked after a moment’s consideration dedicated to denying anything of the sort.
Amanda relaxed her lips into the slightest of smirks. “Yeah, those ones. Any smugglers?”
Sybok leaned forward on his elbows. “Amanda,” he said, eyes gleaming, “if you weren’t my father’s wife who raised me from childhood, I’d marry you.”
She wrinkled her nose, laughing a little.
Sybok sat back with a decisive nod. “I’ll make some calls,” he said. “Try to figure if someone’s been making mischief in near-Vulcan space. And then see what we can do about it.”
“You’ll let me know?”
He gave her a look. “Of course! If father thinks that I came up with this, he’ll probably disown me. Better you get the credit for it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t make me send you in for extra meditation lessons.”
Sybok shuddered. “Anything but that,” he said. Then his face turned serious, and he lifted the ta’al to Amanda. “I’ll get to work,” he said. “Don’t worry yourself too much, or else Spock will use me for his next suss-mahn demonstration.”
“That was only the once,” said Amanda.
“Once was bad enough,” Sybok said. He reached to turn off the call. “I’ll let you know if I discover anything useful.”
“Thank you, Sybok,” she said.
“He’s important to me too,” Sybok said, serious for once. “I’ll let you know,” he said again.
She nodded, and the screen winked out.
Amanda stared down at the table, tapping her fingers, deep in thought. After a moment she sighed, turned off Sarek’s computer, and exited the room.
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