Sound of a ship's tocsin, strident warning of danger and death. Half-rising to consciousness, I struggle not to fall into the recurring dream I thought I'd exorcised. But the beeping noise persists, and it's another moment before I realize that it signals not a shuttle crash to be endlessly relived but merely an incoming communication. I stumble out of bed and stab my finger in the direction of the terminal's commlink.
Once decrypted, the text-only message is terse: Picard and Data are remaining aboard Kruge to continue their research, and Spock is ready to transport to the surface. But the coordinates embedded in the message aren't those of the wardroom across the corridor from me, nor yet of the transit hub in the Krocton segment. Spock wants to be beamed to the center of the arcology--directly to the transporter platform in the harborfront tower that houses Neral's office. He plans to meet with Neral; afterwards, he'll proceed on foot to the hydroelectric tunnel, where he will report to his followers on the outcome of his meeting. I'm to stay where I am so that I can transport him from the tunnel to Kruge, where he and Data will continue their research.
Site-to-site beaming is hazardous even under optimal conditions; given our present time and security constraints, it's far more than that. Spock's molecular information must be collected in the transporter's pattern buffer, resolved, and then sent on--forwarded, as it were--to its ultimate destination. The process takes only an extra millisecond or two, but it may as well take minutes or even hours for all the danger of detection it exposes us to.
Is there any point in my trying to change his mind? I could argue forcefully for the wisdom of his transporting here, and then some time later--or never, if I have my way--to Neral's office. But a prolonged exchange of messages between surface and ship presents almost as great a risk as a site-to-site transport. And I know from experience how stubborn Spock can be when he's made up his mind to do a thing. He would simply assert, as he did before, that he was in no danger: In full daylight, in the company of a senator, in a government office open to the public, how likely is it that the Tal Shiar will act against me?
Defeated before I've even begun to fight, I transmit the brief communication that signals readiness for transport. Then I lower the forcefields around the house and energize the transporter. In a period of time that can't be measured by eye or brain, the stream of information that comprises Spock is collected, assembled, disassembled, and redirected to the Senate offices, where a bored technician is even now controlling the rematerialization of one more traveler among the hundreds and thousands that throng the city center ...
Transport complete, says the console. As I raise the shields around the house once again, it occurs to me that when this is over--whatever "this" is and whenever "over" arrives--I'll have to find a way to ensure that Fleet Intelligence closes the technological loopholes that permit a cloaked enemy warship to hide in orbit, and a fugitive to transport to and from it with no apparent difficulty.
* * *
How strange to be alone in the house.
Once I would have welcomed the silence. Once the solitude would have seemed normal, right, the ordinary state of my life. But Spock's absence is deeply disquieting, and not only because of the danger he's in.
I should be with him! By disposition as well as training I'm in the habit of controlling events around me: to wait impotently for the commlink to signal Spock's safety is intolerable. But thanks to Stilpa's penchant for stealth and secrecy, I can't risk doing the wrong thing, and I have no idea what the right thing is. So until someone--Spock or Picard, Stilpa or Venn--decides to enable me to act, I can only roam the house like a captive animal, searching room after empty room for something I can't describe or define.
In the sacrarium the little arc lights burn, faithful to the memories they mark. In the library the books and folios lie open on the table, just as Spock and Picard left them, half-read and waiting. In the atrium the goddess Caltha, judge and avenger, guards home and homeworlds against those who would dishonor them. And in the far wing of the house, overlooking trees and river and distant ocean, lies the still, silent heart of this place, shielded from time and entropy by stasis fields and remembrance.
These family rooms are vacant now. Except for the built-in fittings of window-seats and benches, the furnishings have all been ritually stripped and stored or given away, even down to the draperies and rugs. My parents' marriage-bed, my sister's chimeboard, my brother's glassrod geodesics: all gone. No ghosts walk here, either. Anyone who wishes to pay reverence to the souls that once animated these rooms must seek them in the sacrarium, where their representations will evoke a richer memory.
Long ago, on Earth, Spock had seen my family--so very unlike his--in the mindlink. He'd been fascinated, but also shocked, as any Vulcan would be, at such easy and open affection, such loud quarrels, so much laughter. And Spock, an only child or as good as one, whose parents had neither understood nor appreciated his duality and his uniqueness, was less likely than most to have had any experience of unquestioning love and approval.
On my last day on Earth, when, for a few short hours, it looked as though a way truly had been opened to us, I'd daydreamed of a life on neutral Kaferia, where my family would visit us and where Spock, at last, could learn what it felt like to be accepted for exactly who and what he was. I'd told myself that my family would come to love him, and he them, and that trivial philosophical and political differences would melt away in the warm glow of amity.
That was the least of my illusions.
I close my eyes and hold myself still, trying to determine whether I can perceive the slightest trace of Spock's thoughts and feelings at this moment.
Nothing.
Oh, my imagination is active enough: I can envision a serious and wary Spock, sitting in Neral's office, watching the hard thin mouth that smiles so readily and the eyes that never do, weighing promises against probabilities, wanting to believe and yet unable completely to suspend disbelief. But that picture is drawn from my own mind, not from Spock's.
I try again to focus and direct my thoughts. Go carefully, beloved. Don't trust anyone, and least of all Neral. Leave him now. Call me and let me bring you home.
Nothing.
Even if Spock did somehow hear my plea, would he heed it? He came to this world in the hope of finding me; I've seen that truth in his mind. But he's on a mission, too--a historic, world-changing mission that, if it succeeds, may indeed redraw the face of the quadrant. Quadrants, I correct myself; for if Spock somehow achieves the reunion of Vulcan and Romulus, the eventual corollary can be nothing less than the similar union of Federation and Empire--the creation of an entity whose hegemony will encompass half the galaxy. And when the other quadrants enter the fold, when the entire Milky Way stands as a united whole, as one day in the far future it must, Spock will be hailed throughout the centuries and the millennia as much more than the second Surak. Spock, the visionary. Spock, the peacemaker. Spock, the uniter of worlds. Because of him, all the humanities may someday turn their eyes--or the analogues thereof--and their hopes and dreams and starships outward to the near and distant galaxies, and far beyond ...
The thought makes me acutely uncomfortable.
Did the first Surak have a bondmate, I wonder? If so, did she share his vision of a world devoid of passion and affect, ruled only by logic and detachment? Did she watch some of her own kinsmen--my ancestors--board those primitive generation ships and launch themselves into the unknown, preparing to risk death in the black void of space rather than renounce their traditions, their beliefs, their very identity? Did she ever lie awake at night and wonder how she had come to be t'hy'la to a man of destiny whose high ascetic ideals were, perhaps, not her own? Or was she like Hadrea, wholly committed to the cold splendor of the vision, untroubled by doubts and fears and, yes, the illogic of it all?
I've never tried to hide my opinion of reunification from Spock. Oddly, he appears not to be disturbed by my thoughts. I have the sense that he's waiting patiently, as though if he gives me enough time I'll come around to--well, not to his way of thinking, exactly. Rather, he seems to expect me to make a connection, to tie up loose threads of information and knowledge, to follow a series of premises to their logical conclusion. So far, evidently, I haven't succeeded.
Call me, beloved. Leave Neral now. Let me bring you home.
Nothing.
And nothing to do, then, except bathe and dress and wait to hear from Spock. I set the commlink on allcall, so that I can hear it if it should signal while I'm in the shower.
* * *
An hour later, when the commlink finally condescends to make a sound, the face on the monitor isn't the one I want to see.
"Your signal is breaking up," I say to the wavering image. "Speak quickly or transmit your message in text."
"We've found something," says Picard. "I need to talk to the ambassador. Can you transport us directly to the meeting-place?"
I'm dying to ask him what he's found, but even on a scrambled channel I can't risk a specific question. "The meeting-place? Not the transit hub?"
"No. We've no time to--to change clothes. We'll get back up to the ship as quickly as we can."
"All right," I say, wondering why I'm acting against both Picard's interest and my own good judgment. "Are you ready to go?"
"Affirmative."
This time I don't even bother worrying about the dangers of site-to-site beaming. Gauging the tunnel's coordinates as closely as I can from the position of the transit hub, I lower the forcefields around the house and energize the transporter. I barely spare a glance for the console's reassuring message: Transport complete. Either Picard and Data have materialized safely beneath ground or they haven't; there's nothing more I can do for them.
There is, however, something I can do for myself, and for Spock: I can cease waiting helplessly and begin to apply my wandering mind to something productive. My autoagent should have had ample opportunity to gather some more useful data; perhaps by the time Spock leaves Neral's office I'll have deciphered the meaning of a Barolian freighter, surplus parts from a Vulcan ship, and Stilpa's hasty voyage to Galorndon Core.
* * *
The first thing I see on the screen is my name.
Once again, my clever little bot has used an evasive maneuver to obtain a Tal Shiar document from somewhere other than the Tal Shiar database. This time it's secured a list of names--my own, unsettlingly, at the very top.
The routing information is in an unfamiliar code. The autoagent reports only that it obtained a copy of the list from the portmaster's files at Principia Base, the Romulan Fleet's main spacedock. If the shiar'rim are somehow in league with the administrator of Principia, that's cause for concern. But it's even more important to know what the list signifies, and why I have the honor of gracing it.
Of the ten names, only my own and Venn's are familiar. No titles or honorifics are appended, so I can't tell whether these people are shiar'rim or private citizens. But it's certain that they figure somehow in Stilpa's plan, just as Venn and I do. I key in a quick command to the autoagent, instructing it to find out who they are. While I'm waiting for its reply, I study the other three documents it's offered up.
The first is no more than a routine log entry from a communications hub approximately halfway between here and the Neutral Zone: twelve hours ago a coded transmission bearing a Tal Shiar prefix passed through the hub on its way from the surface of Romulus to Galorndon Core. So Stilpa has at least one confederate still on Romulus. That could be anyone--Sela or Neral or someone else I haven't even heard of. The autoagent tells me only that the message consists of an alphanumeric string, which it regrets it has not yet been able to decode. I order it to try harder.
The second document is a credit draft to a private-sector ship's provisioner. That, by itself, isn't much of a mystery. Even the shiar'rim must purchase such mundane goods as food, furnishings, and computer equipment from somewhere. The Fleet is reluctant to supply them, but many businesses don't care where their custom comes from so long as the bills are paid. What sets this document apart is that the draft was signed by Stilpa in his personal capacity and drawn against his private credit balance. That's fortunate for me, because otherwise my autoagent wouldn't have flagged it. But why would Stilpa pay such a large sum out of his own pocket, and what for? Doubting my chances of success, I order the autoagent to see whether it can find out exactly what goods or services all this money has purchased.
The third document is less arcane and much more interesting. It's a duty roster, distributed unencoded--stupidly so, for this is what's allowed me to retrieve it--to the personal mailboxes of the "officers," as Stilpa likes to call his senior functionaries. The roster has the quasi-military appearance that so pleases the would-be soldiers of the Tal Shiar. On the surface, its only claim to distinction is its size, as though Stilpa has decided to effect a major reorganization and reassignment of personnel. Only when one takes the trouble to read the entire file does it become clear that almost all these people--nearly two thousand, fully one-half of Stilpa's force--are being reassigned to a single destination: Galorndon Core.
I stare at the screen for some time, lost in thought. The duty roster seems to support the theory that Stilpa is planning to assemble a rebel army and overthrow the praetor and the Senate. But if that's really his intention, he couldn't have picked a worse base of operations than Galorndon Core: far from the homeworld, dangerously close to the narrowest point of the Neutral Zone, easily isolated and surrounded by Romulan or Federation troops--even Stilpa couldn't be so thickheaded. And that still doesn't explain the list of names--
As if on cue, the autoagent greets me cordially and offers me some of the additional information I've requested.
I've overseen the outfitting of enough ships in my time to know when preparations for an expedition are being made. But the ship's provisioner has supplied Stilpa with goods sufficient not just for an expedition but for a siege. Maybe he really is that thickheaded ... I put the provisioner's manifest aside for later consideration, and turn my attention to the list of names. Most of the ten entries now have descriptive phrases appended to them. I'm identified as "diplomat, senior military officer, specialist in colonial administration and security." Apparently my time on Hellguard qualifies as someone's idea of specialization. Venn is "intercessor, advocate, specialist in treaty and legislative drafting and conflicts of laws." We're followed by "penologist, criminologist, specialist in prison administration and offender rehabilitation," meaning, probably, specialized in the technology of brainwashing; "psychologist, behaviorist, specialist in quantifying public opinion," or, in other words, a propagandist; and more variations on the same.
There's a fundamental cognitive dissonance to all this. Now I'm ready to believe Stilpa is not just thickheaded but insane. No rational person could expect to overthrow an imperial government, not to mention thousands of legions and hundreds of starships, with a battalion of half-trained troops and a few conscripted civilians, no matter how impressively credentialed. And what is all the invective and plotting about Spock and the unificationists in aid of? Stilpa's scheme obviously has nothing to do with them; he is, simply put, out of his mind, and these documents are merely the trappings of madness.
And yet.
I can't escape the feeling that I'm missing some vital piece of information, some link that would bring everything into focus. Put yourself in Stilpa's place. Think as he thinks ...
Sighing, I turn the autoagent loose again and move on to the one personal message that awaits me. My friend Toreth is pleased to hear that I'll be remaining on Romulus for a while. So will she--Khazara, the Warbird she commands, is undergoing routine maintenance and systems upgrades. She hopes that I'll be able to spend some time with her and her family soon.
What a relief it would be, what a profound and simple pleasure, to confide in Toreth. To lay all the pieces of the puzzle before her, to analyze possibilities and strategies together until suddenly the answer reveals itself and the course of action becomes clear. If I only I could trust her not to betray Spock.
Like many officers and soldiers of the Romulan Fleet, Toreth has good reason to hate the Tal Shiar. Less than a year ago Stilpa's terrorist thugs came to her father's house in the middle of the night and arrested the old man. No formal charges were ever filed, though in answer to High Command's outraged protests the shiar'rim had made unspecific noises about treason and sedition, offering, as usual, no evidence. Toreth's father, whose only crime was to discuss in the presence of the wrong people the possible merits of peace and rapprochement with the Empire's enemies, died while in the custody of the Tal Shiar. The cause of death was said to be heart failure, which of course meant torture.
Toreth, then, might be the very person to call upon for assistance in defeating Stilpa's scheme. But she's a soldier and a patriot above all; while that attribute will work to my advantage in trying to prevent a coup, it won't help me to save Spock and his political dissidents from arrest. And because both missions are equally important, Toreth will have to remain out of the picture. For the time being, at least ...
The terminal's chrono tells me that Spock ought to be finishing his meeting with Neral soon. His report to the unificationists shouldn't take long. All I can do is wait. Sighing, I apply myself once again to the riddle of the Tal Shiar's duty roster, the Vulcan ship and the Barolian freighter, and the two names at the very top of Stilpa's list.
© 1999, 2000 Kathleen Dailey. All rights reserved.