Chapter 10

Sola Thane matched the Vulcan’s stride through the corridors of the Enterprise, and she was perhaps the only female aboard who could have matched his pace. He was an aimed bullet. Certainly she was the only being aboard who could meet his strength in what was to come. Humans were far too fragile. She recoiled from the thought of what his strength, unleashed, in his present state, would do to fragile Human flesh. She wanted to back away from what it would do to her own.

Worse, she knew that what the Humans would have called her heart was not here. It was back in Sickbay with the man who had won a still-fragile victory over death-perhaps for her. She wanted nothing more than to go to him. But she had wanted nothing more than that for years.

It had not been possible. She was not Human, at least not in those vital respects which could make her a danger to him unless she won her own fight. Strictly speaking, it was not possible now. But she had felt her years-long resolve to stay away from him crumble when she faced him in the clearing. If the chemistry she had long expected had not materialized, they could have backed away. As it was, he would not back off. Nor would she.

Except that what neither of them had expected was Spock.

That had been an error in her own philosophy.

She looked at him now, hard, taut, angry with her for the danger she had allowed to Kirk and for the death sentence she had sealed for Spock himself. She was probably the only non-Vulcan in the galaxy who could understand that completely. Her training on Vulcan and her need for help with her own powers had led her finally to a link with T’Pau of Vulcan.

Spock reached a door and stepped into the field to open it for her. She stepped through, the moment when she met his eyes stressing that she did not hesitate. The turbolift had deposited them in officers’ country. The door opened on Vulcan-a red weapon wall, a demonic looking flame-idol.

He engaged the privacy lock, not offering explanation. He had brought her to his quarters. She wondered whether he had already reached the stage where the life force took over in a last effort to save his life and he would not be able to control his actions-or even to remember them. If so, things would move very quickly. And she found that she was not prepared.

“Free Agent Thane,” he said in the strained tone of cracking discipline, “you are of command rank and the ship has been placed at your disposal. You will now assume command and have me locked away.”

“No, Mr. Spock,” she said. “I will not.”

“You have no alternative. I cannot be responsible for my actions. I will not explain, and an explanation would be unavailing. Lock me away. It is my right.”

“No, Spock. It is not. You have an obligation-to the man whose life we just fought for.”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “I do.” He said it as a sentence of doom.

“To die nobly?” She shook her head fiercely. “It is not going to be that way, Spock.”

“You do not understand.”

“On the contrary, I do. I did not study on Vulcan for nothing. Yours is perhaps the only free species which shares some of my Zaran half’s ferocity and powers. But we do not try to suppress emotion to the point where it must explode-fatally. What you do not wish to tell me is that your mating bond was challenged and broken, and you have spent years attempting to get out of that box, before your control broke and sent you amok on a ship of Humans.”

He looked as if she had hit him. She had read the secret he had defended even from Kirk. And she knew that she had to hammer through the rest of his defenses while he was still vulnerable, and still in control. “What did you plan to do, Spock-if it hit you between the stars? Perhaps it would hit when you were alone with one or two Humans, then what? Lock yourself away? But you would break any lock when control broke. What would you do then?”

Spock looked at her without flinching. “Die,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s not going to be that easy, Spock.”

“Free Agent Thane, there exists on this ship a powerful collective mind which was already eroding mental barriers-mine, his, doubtless others. For a Vulcan the link between mind and body is strong. Under normal circumstances perhaps I would have retained the capacity to resist. My circumstances have not been normal for some time. I do not expect or require that you understand.”

“You went home to Vulcan,” she divined, “and tried to pay the price of Kolinahr-of total non-emotion- for the safety of the Humans who had come to mean too much to you.”

His eyes narrowed and she saw the fever flare in them. “Do not understand me too well,” he warned.

She did not back off. “You knew there would come a day when Uhura or Christine Chapel or someone else would pay a price to save your life. How could anyone who knew your value, who loved you, not save you? But the price paid would be too high. So you went. But there was a catch in that theory, too, Spock. If you loved them enough to leave them and to lock yourself into the straightjacket of Kolinahr, then any claim to non-emotion you ever had was a fraud and Kolinahr was forever beyond your reach.”

His eyes were lethal now. “I do not require you to give me a lesson in philosophy.”

“Spock, I am a lesson in philosophy. I am possibly the only lesson you still needed to learn. That was what your body knew in the clearing. That is what it knows now. And that is what will kill you if you do not finally break out of that box.”

He moved suddenly and she thought he would take her throat in his hands. But he lifted her chin with one hand, not gently, his fingers biting into her. “Do not patronize me. Do you wish me to admit that I see you match my logic without giving up emotion? Very well. I see it. Do you wish me to admit that you were the straw which broke a Vulcan’s back? I admit it. I am far beyond the point where admissions can harm me-or help me. I require nothing of you, except that you leave now and set an interlock I cannot break. Go!”

She shook her head.

His hand tightened on her face, making her realize that his steel strength could break bones, even hers. “I have already lost physiological control in one significant respect,” he grated. “Go now!”

She did not move. “I said it would take more than words to save you, Spock. There is only one thing which will. We both know that I am not going.”

Through his hand she felt him caught by a sudden uncontrollable shudder. She knew that some deep part of him fought for the life she offered. But he shook his head. “Even if I would and you would-we could not. You do not belong to me. You belong to him. We both know that you always have. No. He is my friend.”

She let her own temper flare. “Whereas your death of course will solve his problem!” Her tone was fierce now and she let him see that she would fight for his life, even against him. “And of course it will solve mine,” she continued scathingly. “I will go to him over your dead body, and we will live happily ever after!”

Her hunting blood was up and she could see that his blood burned. His eyes were flame. His grip tightened on her and then flung her back as if in a last effort to save both of them.

“Fine,” she said. “You have given him a taste of unity-and withdrawn it. Die now and you will drive him into the arms of Oneness. He will have nowhere else to go. But spare yourself, Mr. Spock. Don’t bother to fight for your life. Or-your love. It is much easier to crawl off into your own old pattern and die than to break out of all boxes and live.”

He took a step toward her as if he would break her neck. Suddenly she did not care if he tried. And she knew that she had succeeded not only in rousing him to fight her. She had summoned her own Zaran half to meet him, as she had intended. She lived in her Human half a good deal around Humans. But the Zaran in her was neither safe nor civil. It did not, in hot blood, know the meaning of fear-although she knew fear still as a kind of swift undercurrent which was almost a pleasure. Here was jungle to match her jungle, the desert-bred Vulcan who would match wit and muscle against a le matya the size of Tyrannosaurus Rex. He was entitled to the ferocity of his passion. And her Zaran was entitled to the ferocity of her own. Her Zaran did not so much love the sunlit wholeness of Kirk which another part of her worshipped. Her Zaran was drawn to the ragged and monumental effort at wholeness which was Spock. She had seen it in the clearing and known that life would never be simple again. If there was an error in his philosophy, and there was, it was a giant error, possible only to a giant. And she must be making an error of a similar size-because she knew now that it was not for his sake, nor even for Kirk’s that she would take him on. It was for herself…

He stopped himself and his voice was so harsh and shaken that it came out barely above a whisper. “I would not choose to die-now. I am Vulcan enough to have no choice.”

“You are more than Vulcan. You are Spock. You have a choice. And I have one. I have made it.”

“You made your choice in the clearing.”

“That was a choice I had made long ago-before I knew how much you were Spock.”

She moved toward him slowly, deliberately, letting her eyes tell him that she had no pity for him and no mercy. She knew it would have been easier for him in many ways to be allowed to crawl off and die in the dignity of his own custom, even if it meant the agony of pon farr.

“I will not permit you the luxury of dying, Spock,” she said aloud, moving almost to touch him with her body. She could feel the heat of his.

He raised a hand as if to strike her. “I do not require or accept any charity!”

She lifted her head. “I do not give any.”

He locked her arms behind her and pulled her against him, and for a moment he thought he would break her with his strength. She did not break, nor flinch. He started to break away from her and found that he could not, would not.

Spock of Vulcan felt the world dissolve in flame.