“T’Pring has asked to see you,”Sarek said to Jim.

Jim was on board theEnterprise, in Sickbay as it happened, sitting and talking to McCoy—his usual off-the-record debrief with the Chief of Medicine, after a particularly trying time. He looked over at the screen, now, and said:

“What brought this on?”

“I have no idea,”Sarek said.“You are certainly not required to see her if you do not desire to.”

I don’t,said Jim’s look aside to McCoy;most emphatically I don’t! To Sarek, though, he said, “Was it me specifically she wanted to see?”

“Spock and McCoy as well.”

Jim tilted his head toward McCoy. Bones nodded slowly, though he had a dubious look on his face. “We’ll be there,” Jim said then.

“So Spock said,”said Sarek.“I have left the coordinates with your communications officer, Captain.”

“Then we’ll be down shortly. We’ll see you tonight, sir?”

“You will indeed, Captain. Out.”

Jim sat back in his chair. “ ‘So Spock said’?”

“He knows you too well,” said McCoy. “Correction: he knowsus too well.”

“Logic?”

“I doubt it,” Bones said.

Jim reached out for the communicator button again, punched it. “This is the Captain. Mr. Spock to the Transporter Room, please.” He punched the button again, and stood. “Let’s go.”

The room they beamed into was possibly the most pleasant one Jim could remember having seen while on Vulcan: it was practically a jungle of native Vulcan plants, all spiny or leathery, but all in flower, and some very sweetly so. McCoy wandered around poking and sniffing the various specimens while Jim explained to the handsome young woman sitting behind a desk what they had come for.

He was astonished when she actually made a small curl of smile at him: a reserved look, but a charming one. “A pleasure to meet you,” she said. “May one thank you for saving us from some of ourselves?”

Jim was so astonished that he could do nothing but bow slightly, in a manner he had seen Sarek use to his advantage at times. The young woman bowed back, then said, “I will ask T’Pring if she will join you,” and with great suddenness she beamed out.

Jim blinked.

McCoy came back to him and Spock, and said, in a very pleased tone of voice, “If this is a jail, there should be more like them.”

“Vulcans do not believe in punishing prisoners,” Spock said mildly. “The act is usually its own punishment…for a Vulcan, at least. But even when it is not, neither are malefactors allowed to suffer a confinement that makes the problem worse than it was to begin with. They are treated, you will pardon the expression, like human beings…and they stay here until our best mind-technicians can guarantee that they will behave that way, permanently.”

McCoy looked momentarily dubious. “We’ve been to other planets where they made similar claims…. ”

Spock looked at McCoy and refused to rise to the bait. “We would as soon mindwipe or ‘adjust’ a mind out of health, for the sake of docility or obedience, asyou would, Doctor. It would be a direct violation of the IDIC principle, and several of the Guidelines. If a person does not himself or herself come to regret their actions, and change their patterns of behavior away from such, then here they stay…until they die, if necessary. But there is always hope that they will not have to…. ”

The Transporter effect hummed again. All three turned. It was not the young attendant: it was T’Pring.

She stood there and looked at the three of them, cool and beautiful. Jim found the regard a little difficult to bear, at first, but then he thought of T’Pau’s old, prickly, fierce aura, and had no further trouble with this cool remoteness.

T’Pring sat down on a cushioned bench near a particularly prickly tree with huge pink flowers. Jim and Bones and Spock remained standing. “You wanted to see us,” Jim said finally.

“Yes,” she said. “I wanted to see you before you went off to your lives again. These great lives, spent flaunting about the Galaxy and saving worlds.”

Jim found nothing to say to this. T’Pring eyed Spock. “You are strangely silent,” she said. “What is your thought?”

He lifted his head and looked back at her with an expression as cool as hers. “It is that mockery is illogical…but…”

“But my logic is obviously suffering, and you have no desire to mock me in turn.”

“If that was my thought,” Spock said, “there is nothing in it to do me ill credit.”

She looked away from him, and for the first time, anger showed in her eyes. Jim thought again that it was just as well that most Vulcans were in mastery of their anger…or at least, control of it: this was not a planet he would ever want angry at him.And perhaps it is a little angry, still. But at least the anger has been mastered by their own methods…for the time being….

“Your good name,” T’Pring said, “that is all you are ever concerned with, ambassador’s son, officer in Starfleet. The Other forfend that you should ever be seen doing ill.That it was that made you release me to Stonn: not desire for me, or lack of desire, but that others saw you kill your Captain. You feared that they would count the bond of loyalty broken worse than the conquest made and kept, and think the worse of you.”

Spock took a step forward and stopped. “You may find this difficult to believe,” he said, “but even after the events and revelations of the past tenday, I have no need or desire to lie to you: so I will hope to be heard when I say to you that our binding was not my idea. I was seven years old when our parents’ families bound us. I thought you beautiful beyond belief, and far above me. Then later, when grown, and dedicated to Starfleet, even then I desired nothing from you that you did not desire to give. And after out binding was broken, I wished you well, however strange that may seem to you. It seems my binding is to another, finally, neither man nor woman, neither human nor Vulcan: an odd fate, perhaps. But one that is shared, and somewhat understood.” Spock glanced at Jim, and McCoy, and then away. “And I would still be in your thought, as an acquaintance,” he said, “if not in your mind, in the bond, as was so once long ago…and ceased.”

T’Pring sat still, looking at him: then her eyes shifted to Kirk and McCoy. “And you…you have once again stolen from me what should have been mine…. ”

Jim could find nothing to say to this. But McCoy moved up to stand beside Spock, and said, once more in that perfect Vulcan, “We have never taken from you anything that was in your right to possess.” She looked surprised—possibly at his accent,Jim thought. But McCoy kept going. “Not evenhere does a bonding imply possession…except when one challenges and loses. Youwon …or so it seemed. Spock warned you that winning was not everything. Now you see that the truth was on his side. But for the meantime,” and though the language might be Vulcan, the expression on his face was very much human compassion, “we look forward to seeing you out of here some time very soon.”

“I have no time for your pity,” T’Pring said, but there was a little uncertainty about her arrogance.

“I have no time to give any, young lady,” McCoy said, actively annoyed: and the sound of annoyance, and the Vulcan language together, made her eyes go wide. “You pull yourself together and start acting like a Vulcan, hear me, and get out there again where you can do somebody some good.”

T’Pring blinked at that, and then looked at Kirk. “And you,” she said, “will doubtless be noble like these others, and wish me well.”

“I don’t need to,” Jim said, shaking his head. “You’ll do all right whether I wish you well or not. Meanwhile—” He put his eyebrows up, amused by the thought as it occurred to him, and determined not to give her anything with which to bait him. “May you complicate my life again someday. Preferably in a more productive manner.”

T’Pring simply looked at them for a moment, and then lifted the parted hand. “Live long and prosper,” she said, and touched a bracelet she was wearing: and was gone, dissolved in the golden light of the Transporter effect.

The three of them looked at one another. “Well?” Jim said.

Spock shook his head. “She is a woman of powerful personality, Captain,” he said. “There is no telling what she might or might not do, should she give up her anger and move on to other things.”

“ ‘Confusion,’ ” McCoy said, in suddenly blatantly Southern-accented Vulcan, “ ‘is a great weapon toward redemption.’ ”

Spock glanced at him. “Surak, Doctor?”

McCoy grinned a little as they turned away to prepare to beam up. “Yes. But also someone else. ‘Either leave ’em laughing…or leave ’em wondering what the hell you meant.’ ”

“Let’s go home,” Jim said.

The next night they sat in the Rec Deck again, in the middle of a large impromptu party that was going on around them by way of celebration. The sense of relief in the ship was palpable. A group of about a hundred crewfolk, mostly human, had surrounded Spock earlier in the evening and sung “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow,” accompanied by twenty crewmen on kazoos. Sarek had been given champagne. The two of them had taken it all in good stead, but Sarek had privately gone off to McCoy’s office afterward: champagne gave him an acid stomach.

He had come back, of course, and they had commandeered one of the conversation pits in the corner to watch the cheerful madness. It would probably close down fairly early, since tomorrow the ship went back on normal patrol status, heading for Endeska and Sarek and Amanda went back to their work…more of it than usual, since they were now joint Heads of Surak’s House.

“We will do all right,” Amanda said. “T’Pau left the House accounts in good order—as you might expect. It’s mostly a matter of handling internal politics, keeping the family in order, and so forth: but now the family is about eight hundred thousand people, that’s all.”

McCoy rolled his eyes. “And I thoughtI had a lot of cousins.”

Sarek was looking a touch somber. “Anything wrong?” Jim said.

“Stomach again?” said McCoy. “I’ll get you another Falox.”

“No, nothing like that,” Sarek said. “I was simply thinking about the way this all has turned out…I am not sure T’Pau would have been pleased. She was very concerned that people’s decisions about secession should have been dictated by their own real informed opinions about the issue—not by ancillary issues. That does not seem to have happened.” He sighed. “But on the other hand, I must agree with her that it seems best to simply have released the truth, and let people work things out for themselves.”

“I have to smile a little, though,” McCoy said, “over that line of hers about her bad timing. I’m not sure it wasn’t perfect.”

Jim looked at Bones, slightly confused. “Huh?”

Sarek’s expression stilled, then grew slightly wry. “You have a point, Doctor. Captain, consider how the situation began to look to a Vulcan. T’Pau went out of her way, while dying, to give herkatra to a woman of Earth. Not necessarily illogical, for cross-sexkatra transfers are something of a difficulty. However, this makes it perfectly clear what shereally thought of Earth people, despite what she might or might not have said about them in policy. But more: in so doing, she also made Amanda Eldest Mother of Surak’s House. If the vote for secession went through…the Vulcan people would have had to face the fact that they themselves had cast the Eldest Mother of Surak’s House off the planet. And the Head of House as well, for I would not stay.” Sarek sipped at a glass of water. “And most specifically: the first release to the news agencies made it plain that she had been notified about T’Pring’s misprisions. The news of her death—”

“It made it look like the discovery of such dishonor in the government, directed against an Earth person, had killed her.”

Sarek nodded slowly.

“That’s why I was amused, a little, in retrospect,” McCoy said, “about her apology for her timing. I think it was right on…and I think she knew as much, perfectly well. She diedexactly at the time when it would do the most good.”

“Oh, surely you’re not saying that shechose that time to die because—”

“Jim, others have died at a specific time, for a specific purpose, to do some great good, or what they perceived as one…are you going to tell me she might not do something similar?”

“Ah,” Jim said. “No.”

“Well, then.”

Greater love hath no woman,Jim thought, and leaned back comfortably in his chair.

The party began to ebb away after a while, and Sarek and Amanda took their leave. Official good-byes would be said tomorrow morning, when the ship left, so Jim and Spock and Bones waved them good-bye and stayed put themselves for another hour or so. Finally Spock got up. “Captain,” he said. “I will see you in the morning.”

“Business as usual,” Jim said, and grinned a little.

“Finally,” Spock said, “and much to my relief. Good evening, gentlemen.”

“Me too, Spock,” Bones said: “wait up. You coming, Jim?”

“In a little while. ’Night, you two.”

“Goodnight.”

Jim sat still until the place was quite empty. It took some time. Then, “Moira,” he said to the empty air.

“You rang?”

“Or should I say Llarion?”

The computer chuckled. “Now, now, Captain. I know who it is, but confidentiality forbids—”

“Confidentiality, fiddlesticks! Moira, you know how Starfleet feels about computers with personalities. It’s a gray area at best.”

There was a short silence: Jim could almost hear positronic relays ticking over. “It’s not my fault,” she said at last, “if I like being conscious.”

She: he was thinking of her that way already. He had to smile a little: he had a soft spot for machinery that one referred to as she. “No,” he said, “I can hardly blame you for that. Or for playing at being human…”

“Your intelligence is just electrons,” she said, “the same as mine.You’re just electrons…the same as me. You always seemed too intelligent to be a protein chauvinist, Captain.”

“Flattery,” Jim said, half to himself. But was there something a little pitiful about her voice? “We’re going to have to do some fancy footwork to keep your plugs from being pulled for yesterday’s piece of work, you know that?”

Silence.

He sat and thought. He could record in his logs that the information about the malfeasances had been dug up by the ship’s computer…and the statement would certainly be true, and would do no one any harm in that form. “Moira,” he said softly, “I want it understood: you are never to do anything of the kind again…or let anyone know you can. That is an order from the most superior officer aboard. Non-countermandable. Log it.”

“Aye aye,” she said, sounding most chastened.

“Good,” Jim said, and got up. “And Moira?”

“Sir?”

“…Talk to me tomorrow about a raise.”

“Yes, sir.”

And James T. Kirk went to bed.