for the unsettling effect her presence was having on him.
Saavik held out her hand to him, smiling in the private way reserved for Vulcan lovers. “You can experience it again.”
Spock fought the fire in his blood without giving visible sign. “I recall it perfectly,” he said. “And you were not my partner.”
“But later,” Saavik whispered, “when we had met, when we were free, did you not wish she had been me?”
“You are an illusion,” Spock stated. “I am on a holodeck.”
“How little you know,” Saavik replied as she began to spin on the ledge and her shawl dissolved and—
—as if he had been slapped again, Spock felt the startling onset of free fall, and once again floated. But this time, he was surrounded by stars in all directions.
He looked around, quickly identifying the constellations as they appeared from Vulcan: A’T’Pel, the sword; Stol, the chalice; Sarakin, the crossed daggers dripping with the glowing green nebulae of Plak Marn. All names from deep in Vulcan’s bloodstained history.
But he found no sign of Vulcan’s primary, no brilliant points of light to indicate Vulcan or her system’s planets.
And still he felt the breeze of his hands as he moved them before his eyes.
The holodeck had been transformed from a Vulcan mountainside to a planetarium.
“It is not a holodeck,” another voice said. Not Saavik’s, but the voice that had spoken earlier, from the all- enveloping darkness.
“If there is a point to all of this,” Spock said aloud, “it escapes me.”
He heard chiding laughter in reply.
“A Vulcan admitting defeat?”
“I admit nothing. Merely make an observation.”
“But you cannot draw a conclusion?”
“I can draw several.”
“Tell me.”
Spock was intrigued by the question. “Can’t you read my mind?”
“Telepathy is not at work here, Ambassador. Neither is a holodeck.”
“Then I am at a loss to understand my position, and your motives.”
“Very well, let us try another way.”
Spock braced himself for another abrupt transition, but when it came, it was gentle.
First the stars slowly rolled around him as he felt gravity begin to make its influence known, giving him the sensation that he was lying on his back on a soft surface.
Then the stars rippled and smeared as if they were going out of focus. Other shapes and lights overlaid them.
One shape became humanoid in form. The gravity grew stronger.
Harsh light glared down at Spock. He tried to raise his hand to shield his eyes and see the humanoid.
His hand wouldn’t move.
He was strapped to a diagnostic bed.
He looked around, moving only his eyes, saw the familiar green luminescence of a Romulan glow, decided he was in a Romulan medical facility.
He shifted against his restraints, felt a sharp pain in his inner thigh, looked down the length of his naked body to see an intravenous tube taped to his thigh. A much more primitive solution to nutrition than the transporter-based technique he had postulated.
“It is how we kept you fed,” the voice said.
For the first time, Spock could determine the position of the speaker, just behind him and to the right. The specificity of that knowledge made him accept that after all the illusions he had experienced, this was reality.
He tried to look in the direction of the speaker, but his head was even more firmly held in place than his arms and legs.
“The artificial environments you created for me,” Spock said. “Generated by neural pattern induction?”
He sensed movement to the left, shifted his eyes in that direction, and his eyesight had recovered enough to reveal that the humanoid standing over him was a Reman.
The pale, gray-skinned humanoid wore a red technician’s smock, and angled his head toward Spock, but where he actually looked was unknowable. His light-sensitive eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark data goggles. Spock could just make out the backscatter glow of the images projected on the circular lenses. He interpreted them as basic medical scans of his body.
“Are you a doctor?” Spock asked.
“There are no Reman doctors,” his unseen captor said from behind him. “At best, the Romulan Assessor allows certain trustees to be trained in basic medical procedures related to mining accidents and childbirth.”
Spock made the logical assumption. “Then this is a Reman medical facility.”
“To be accurate, it is a trauma care center. The only full medical facilities on Remus are for the exclusive use of the Romulan Assessors.”
Spock hid his reaction at the logical conclusion that he was now on Remus, and changed the subject. “Will you show yourself to me?”
Light footsteps moved around to his right, and a female Romulan stepped into view, dressed in simple Reman garb.
For a moment, Spock was so certain it was Marinta that he had to consciously fight to keep his expression neutral.
But when the young woman stopped moving, Spock could see that though there was a resemblance, it was only general.
The woman seemed to sense Spock’s misidentification. “Do I look familiar to you?” she asked.
Spock knew that whatever was going on, the Romulan was having this conversation only because she needed something from him. He decided to make her work for it.
“Should you look familiar?”
“We have met before.”
Spock blinked. Aside from the slight resemblance to Marinta, he was certain he had never seen this woman.
“I believe you are mistaken.”
“Never.”
“Then may I ask where and when we have met?”
The woman shook her head. “Better to concentrate on the present.”
Spock took her at her word, certain it would annoy her. “In that case, how is it that you read my thoughts without telepathy?”
His captor patted his hand. “Ambassador, you were never held prisoner in an antigrav chamber. You have been on this treatment bed for—since your capture.”
Spock noted that she didn’t wish to reveal how long he had been held. He set that question aside. “How is that conducive to reading one’s mind?”
“I stimulated the base of your brain, specifically, the pons. You spoke your thoughts aloud. All of them.”
Spock betrayed nothing of the outrage he felt. He decided that whatever was holding his head in position must be a type of induction helmet: a device capable of affecting his neural functions by focusing electrical fields at specific neurons. If any sensory input could be routed directly to the brain, then it was no surprise the false environments he had found himself in were so perfect.
“If you know everything I think, then why am I still alive?” Spock asked.
“Is that why you think I’ve brought you here?”
“It is obvious you require information from me.”
The woman nodded. “That is true.”
“Then have I not provided it?” Spock knew his thoughts had been far-ranging the past six days of his captivity.
