Joseph grinned back.
But as the turbolift door closed, Kirk looked again at the command-room door, wondering why Janeway had called his attention to it, and what other secrets she was hiding from him, what other secrets he was yet to discover.
7
COORDINATES UNKNOWN, STARDATE 57483.3
Spock floated in darkness, cloaked in the comfort of logic.
It was all he had left.
He had no concept of time. That had been stolen from him when the Reman attacker had strangled him into unconsciousness.
How long that oblivion had lasted, he did not know. But since his awareness had returned in this environment of sensory deprivation, he had counted out six standard days.
As the first webs of consciousness had been redrawn within him, he had briefly considered the possibility that he was a disembodied katra within the caves of Mount Seleya. But such a remnant of his personality would have no memory of his mode of death, only of the final moments leading up to the transfer of his katra to the chosen repository. He had undertaken such a transfer only twice. Once aboard the Enterprise, with McCoy, and what had transpired after he had placed that ineffable part of him within the doctor’s mind he had no knowledge of. His recollection consisted of melding with the doctor in the engine room, and then slowly awakening in the Temple of Logic, with the wisps of nonbeing slowly dissipating over the months of his recovery on Vulcan.
Of his second katric transfer, he had even less recollection.
But in this case, he remembered the shock of his hands on his attacker’s ears, the realization that the attacker was Reman, and the long fall from darkness into darkness as consciousness fled.
Yet though he floated free of gravity, without even the pressure of clothing around him, he could feel his pulse, hear his blood in his ears, sense the movement of air in and out of his mouth and nostrils. He swallowed saliva, fanned his face to feel a breeze, ran his fingers along his throat to feel swelling there, but no other sign of injury.
He was alive, mind and body joined.
Thus logic insisted that as dire as his current position was, it was not his captors’ intention to kill him.
Torture was a possibility, though most intelligent species had long ago learned that it had little effect on Vulcans.
As for sensory deprivation, Spock suspected that several years in this environment might be enough to induce signs of instability. But the lessons of extended meditation developed by the first wave of Vulcan’s interstellar explorers who had set out on decades-long, sublight voyages to distant stars, had been well learned by subsequent generations. Spock had more than enough accumulated data to keep his mind occupied for years, if that was what was necessary.
A more direct route to torture might simply have been removal of food and water. But Spock had yet to detect any sign of thirst or hunger, even though his body still excreted waste. Since he had no recollection of ingesting anything during the time he had been conscious in this void, logic dictated one of two possibilities: Either his captors had the ability to interrupt his awareness without his knowledge, and during those interruptions they forcefed him; or he was being constantly supplied with water and nutrients with techniques similar to the noninvasive medical-transporter drug-delivery systems being developed at Starfleet Medical.
The latter possibility was the simplest explanation, so Spock accepted it, and concluded that his captors were supported by sophisticated technology.
That conclusion implied that though it was a Reman who had captured Spock, the unknown planners who had set the Reman on his mission were likely not Reman.
After six days in the void, that was as far as logic had taken him: He was in no danger of death, little danger of torture, but with no idea why he had been abducted, or who was responsible.
The only aspect of emotion that Spock allowed himself to contain was his hope that whatever his fate, T’Vrel, T’Rem, Soral, and the others of his support group had been spared it; that he, Spock, alone had been the target of the raid. Unfortunately, given that he had heard disintegrations, Spock feared that if he was the target, then the others were already dead.
“Do I detect remorse, Ambassador?”
Spock listened carefully for the acoustical aftereffects of that question, to determine its likely origin point in relation to his position. At the same time, he created a logical decision tree, addressing the new issues raised. Did the question’s apt timing suggest he was in the hands of telepaths who could probe his mind without his awareness? Did that mention of remorse suggest that his assistant, Marinta, who was not present in the Soltoth Caverns, had also been captured and interrogated?
“It means everything and more, Ambassador.”
Spock calmly accepted that some form of telepathy was in use, and instantly began to employ basic blocking techniques, effective even against highly trained Betazoids.
“Blocking will not be effective.”
Spock decided to test the limits of his captors. He dropped into full meditation, an absolute cessation of all thought.
“I am disappointed, Ambassador. Thought never ends.”
Spock moved to a new technique, created a mindpicture of the mountains near his family estate, the same ones he so often had retreated to as a youth, after arguing with his father. That powerful, looming landscape had always offered comfort to him, and he sought its towering presence now, as a pathway to total peace.
But sudden cold wind shocked him from his meditation, and as abruptly as if he had been slapped, Spock found himself on a frost-rimed ledge of the mountains of his home. He could look down past the foothills and see his family compound, ringed by a low wall of ancient red sandstone blocks, smoke threads from the kitchen chimney untwining in the breeze. All around him were the lofty, shadowed peaks of the protective mountains.
Spock gasped in the cold air; the sudden shift in perspective, the pull of Vulcan gravity, the onslaught of daylight after so long in darkness, all sensations overwhelming the meditative calm he had sought.
“Bring back memories?” a pleasant, familiar voice asked.
Spock turned unsteadily on the ledge, became aware of sharp stones crunching under his bare feet. He glanced down to check his footing, then nearly lost his balance in surprise.
His body had been transformed.
He was a youth again, lean muscles, slight build, long dark hair fluttering across his eyes.
He had on blue denim trousers and a buttoned shirt like those he had seen worn by the humans of his mother’s family; an act of teenage rebellion that had inflamed his father.
“Do you know when you are?” the familiar voice asked.
Spock reclaimed his equanimity long enough to look up at the source of the voice, and even as he saw the Vulcan who stood with him on the ledge, he knew immediately that this was all an illusion.
“What if I said it was not an illusion?” Saavik asked.
Spock hesitated before answering. Illusory or not, Saavik’s beauty overwhelmed him. She appeared the same age as she had been when he had first met her, when she had been an instructor at Starfleet Academy. But instead of the uniform she had worn at the time, she stood before him now wrapped in a traditional Vulcan wedding shawl, as all brides did on the third day of the ceremony, when the couple was at last left to their privacy and the blood fever.
The delicate, transparent fabric flowed around her in the breeze, making it appear as if she floated in and out of Spock’s vision, here in detail, there in suggestion, alluring, enticing, shattering to all constraints of logic.
“I will ask you again,” the illusion of Saavik said. “Do you know when you are?”
Spock’s voice cracked like an adolescent’s as he answered. “My first Plak-tow.” It was the only explanation
