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SEARCH FOR SPOCK

VONDA MCINTYRE

Paramount Pictures Presents a Harve

Bennett Production

STAR TREKS iii THE SEARCH FOR

SPOCK Starring WILLIAM SHATNER DEFOREST

KELLEY Co-Starring

JAMES DOOHAN GEORGE TAKEI

WALTER KOENIG NICHELLE NICHOLS

MERRITT BUTRICK CHRISTOPHER LLOYD

Executive Consultant GENE RODDENBERRY

Music by JAMES HORNER

, Executive Producer GARY

NARDINO

Visual Effects by INDUSTRIAL LIGHT and

MAGIC

Based on STAR TREK Created by GENE

RODDENBERRY Written and Produced by HARVE

BENN-THAT I I Directed by LEONARD NIMOY

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tilde betilde THE BERRY 5PO[N

Chapter 1

Spock was dead.

The company of the Enterprtse gathered together on the

recreation deck to remember their friend.

Dr. Leonard McCoy, ship's surgeon,

moved half a pace into the circle. As he raised

his glass in a final toast, he glanced at each of

his compatriots in turn.

Admiral James Kirk and Dr. Carol

Marcus stood on either side of Carol's grown

son, David Marcus. David was Jim's son,

as well, unknown until now, but now acknowledged.

Commander Uhura, Chief Engineer Montgomery

Scott, Commander Pavel Chekov, and Hikaru

Sulu, recently promoted to captain, had

clustered together along one arc of the circle. Every

member of the ship's company showed the strain of the harrowing

past few days, except Lieutenant Saavik.

Her Vulcan training required her to be

imperturbable, and so she appeared. If her

Romulan upbringing gave her the capacity to feel

STAR TREK 111

grief or loss or anger at the death of

Spock, her teacher, McCoy could see no shadow

of the emotions.

McCoy had known the rest of the ship's company, the

trainees, only a short time, not even long enough

to learn their names. He knew for sure only that they

were terribly young.

"To Spock," McCoy said. "He gave his

life for ours."

"To Spock," they replied in unison, except

for Jim, who brought his attention back to the ship from

some other time, some other place, a thousand

light-years distant.

A moment after the others had spoken, he said,

"To Spock."

Everyone else drank. McCoy put his glass

to his lips. The pungent odor of Kentucky

bourbon rose around his face. He grimaced. The

liquor was raw and new, straight out of the ship's

synthesiser. He had nothing better. The Enterpr

tilde se's mission had been an emergency, an

unexpected voyage into tragedy, and Leonard

McCoy had come most poorly prepared.

He lowered the drink without tasting it.

"To Peter," Montgomery Scott said.

His young nephew, Cadet Peter Preston, had

also died in the battle that took Spock's life.

Scott made as if to say more, could not get out the

words, and instead drained his glass in one gulp.

Again, McCoy could not bring himself to choke down any

liquor.

When all the glasses had been refilled,

David Marcus stepped forward.

"To our friends on Spacelab," he said.

McCoy pretended to drink. He felt as if the

alcohol fumes alone were making him drunk.

When no one else came forwardto propose a

toast, the quiet circle dissolved into small

groups. Almost everyone had begun to feel the effects

of the liquor, but the drinking was a futile effort

to numb their grief.

The Search For Spock

Whose stupid idea was it to have a wake, anyway?

McCoy wondered. Who thought this

would help? And then he remembered, Oh, right, it

was me and Scott.

He orbited the serving table. It gleamed with an

array of bottles. He picked one up, paying little

attention to what it was, and filled another

glass. McCoy and Scott had spent all day

preparing for the wake. The synthesiser had tried

to keep up with their programming, but it was badly

overloaded. Ethyl alcohol was a simple enough

chemical, but the congeners any decent liquor

required were foreign to the ship's data banks.

Everything smelled the same strong and rough.

Montgomery Scott beetled toward McCoy,

stopped, and gazed blankly at the table full of

half-emptied bottles. McCoy picked one at

random and handed it to the ships chief engineer.

"That's scotch," he said. "Or anyway,

close enough."

Scott's eyes were glazed with exhaustion and

grief.

"I recall a time, when the lad was nobbut a

bairn, that he. . ." Scott stopped, unable

to continue the story. "I recall a time when Mr.

Spock..." He stopped again and drank straight from

the bottle, choking on the first gulp, but swallowing and

swallowing again. Obsession and compulsion drove him.

He and McCoy had

planned the wake and insisted on holding it, though

it was foreign to the traditions of most of the people on board

and quite alien to the traditions of one of its

subjects.

"This isna helping, doctor," Scotty said.

"I canna bear it any longer."

McCoy climbed onto a chair. Looking

down, he hesitated. The deck lay

ridiculously far away and at a strange angle,

as if the artificial gravity had gone on the

blink. McCoy steadied himself and stepped up on the

table, placing his feet carefully between bottles bright

STAR TREK 111

with amber. Then he remembered an alien liquor

called "amber" by Earth people. He had not ordered it from

the synthesiser because it required the inclusion of an

alien insect to bring out its fullest flavor, like

wormwood in absinthe. McCoy felt vaguely

sick.

His foot brushed one of the bottles quite gently,

he thought and the bottle crashed onto its side. It

spun around and its contents gurgled out, spilling across

the table, splashing on the floor. McCoy ignored

it.

"This is a wake, not a funeral!" he said, then

stopped, confused. Somehow that sounded wrong. He

started again. "We're here to celebrate the lives of

our friends not to mourn their deaths!" Everyone was

looking at him. That bothered him until he thought,

Why did you get up on the table, if you didn't

want everyone to look at you?

"Grief," McCoy said slowly, "is not

logical."

"Bones," Jim Kirk said from below and slightly

behind him, "come down from there."

Even in his odd mental state, McCoy could

hear the edge in Kirk's voice. I backslash

venty years of friendship, and Kirk was still perfectly

capable of pulling rank. McCoy turned and

staggered. Jim grabbed his forearm and tightened his grip

more than necessary.

"Whatever possessed you to say such a thing?"

Kirk said angrily. Even the anger was

insufficient to hide the pain.

"Don't know what you mean," McCoy said.

Permitting Admiral Kirk to help him, he

stepped down from the table with careful dignity.

David Marcus had inherited his mother's tolerance

for alcohol. He had drunk several shots of some

concoction as powerful and as tasteless as everclear.

Despite a certain remoteness to his perceptions,

he felt

The Search For Spock

desperately sober. His hands remained

rock-steady, and his step was sure.

McCoy and Scott had insisted, cajoled,

ordered, and bullied until nearly the whole ship's

company congregated in the recreation hall for this

ridiculous wake. Alone or in pairs, people stood

scattered throughout the enormous chamber. Across the

room, Dr. McCoy and Admiral Kirk

exchanged words. Kirk looked both angry and

concerned. McCoy adopted a belligerent air.

They're both completely pickled, David

thought. Fixed like microscope slides. James

T. Kirk, hero of the galaxy, is drunk. My

illegitimate father is drunk.

David had not yet quite come to terms with the recent

revelation of his parentage.

"Dr. Marcus his

David started. He had been so deep in thought that

he had-not noticed Captain Sulu's approach.

"It'd probably be easier if everybody just

called me David," he said.

"David, then," Sulu said. "I understand that I

owe you some thanks."

David looked at him blankly.

"For saving my life?" Sulu said, with a

bit of a smile.

David blushed. He automatically glanced at

Sulu's hands, which had been badly seared by the

electrical shock from which David had revived him.

The artificial skin covering the burns glistened

slightly.

Sulu turned his hands palm-up. "This comes off

in a couple of days there won't even be any

scars."

"I almost killed you," David said.

'iWhat?"

"It's true I did resuscitation o n you.

It's also true that I did it wrong. I'd never

done it before. I'm not a medical doctor, I'm

only a biochemist."

"Nevertheless, I'm alive because of what you did.

STAR TREK 111

Whether you erred or not, you kept me from death or

brain damage."

"I still screwed up." Like I may have screwed

up everything I've done for the last two years,

David thought.

"It might not matter to you," Sulu said. "But it

makes some difference to me." He turned

away.

David blushed again, realising how churlish and

self-cantered he had sounded. "Captain . . .

uh . . ." He had no idea how to apologise.

Sulu stopped and faced David again.

"David," he said, carefully and kindly, "I

want to give you some advice. When we get back

to Earth, you and your mother are going to be the center of some

very concentrated attention. Some of it will be critical,

some of it will be flattering. At first you'll think the

abuse is the hardest thing to take. But after a while,

you'll see that handling compliments gracefully is an

order of magnitude more difficult." He paused.

David looked at the floor, then raised his

head and met Sulu's gaze.

"But I need to learn to do it?" David asked.

"Yes," Sulu said. "You do."

"I'm sorry," David said. "I really am

glad you're okay. I didn't mean to sound

indifferent. After they took you to sick bay I

realised I'd done the procedure wrong. I

didn't know if you'd make it."

"Dr. Chapel assures me that I'll make

it."

David noticed that Sulu avoided

mentioning McCoy, but thought better of saying so. He

had stuck his foot in his mouth far enough for one day.

"I'm glad I could do something," David said.

Sulu nodded and walked away. David had not

noticed if Sulu drank during the toasts, but the

young captain appeared to be completely sober.

The Search For Spock

He might be the only sober person on the ship

right now, David thought.

But then David saw Lieutenant Saavik,

all alone, watching the party without expression. He

watched her, in turn, for several minutes. Back

on Regulus I, she had told him that Spock was

the most important influence in her life. He had

rescued her from the short, brutal life that a

halfbreedchild on an abandoned Romulan

colony world could look forward to. Spock had

overseen her education. He had nominated her to a

place in the Starfleet Academy. He was,

David sup- posed, the nearest thing she had to a

family. That was a delicate subject. She

seldom discussed how the cross that produced her must

have come about.

David walked up quietly behind her.

"Hello, David," she said, without

turning, as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Hi," he said, trying to pretend she had not

startled him with her preternatural senses. "Can I

get you a drink?"

"No. I never drink alcohol."

"Why not?"

"It has an unfortunate effect on me."

"But that's the whole point. It would help you

loosen up. It would help you forget."

"Forget what?"

"Grief. Sadness. Mr. Spock's death."

"I am a Vulcan. I experience neither grief

nor sadness."

"You're not all Vulcan."

She ignored the comment. "In order to forget Mr.

Spock's death, David, I would have to forget Mr.

Spock. That, I cannot do. I do not wish to.

Memories of him are all around me. At times it

is as if he was She stopped. "I will not forget

him," she said.

STAR TREK 111

"I didn't mean you should try. I just meant that a

drink might make you feel better."

"As I explained, its effects on me

are not salutary."

"What happens?"

"You do not want to know."

"Sure I do. I'm a scientist, remember?

Always on the lookout for something to investigate."

She looked him in the eye and said,

straight-faced, "It causes me to regress.

It permits the Romulan elements of my character to

predominate."

David grinned. "Oh, yeah? Sounds interesting

to me."

"You would not like it."

"Never know until you try."

"Have you ever met a Romulan?"

"Nope."

"You are," she said drily, "quite fortunate."

Carol Marcus felt very much alone at Mr.

Spock's wake. She sat on the arm of a couch,

concealed by the subdued light and shadows of a corner of the

room. She felt grateful for the translucent

wall that alcohol put between her and the other people, between her

and her own emotions. She knew that the purpose of a

wake was to release emotions, but she held her

grief in tight check. If she loosed it, she was

afraid she would go mad.

The pitiful gathering insulted the memory of her

friends more than exalting it. Perhaps Mr. Scott and

Dr. McCoy believed it adequate for Captain

Spock and Mr. Scott's young nephew. But the

mourning of a few veteran Starfleet members and a

surreptitiously drunken class of cadets,

barely more than children, gave Carol no comfort for the

loss of her friends on the Spacelab team. She

kept expecting to hear Del March's

The Search For Spock

cheerful profanity, or Zinaida

Chitirih-Ra-Payjh's soft and musical

laugh. She expected Jedda Adzhin-Dall

to stride past, cloaked in the glow of a Deltan's

unavoidable sexual attraction. And she expected

at every moment to hear Vance

Madison's low, beautiful voice, or to glance

across the room and meet his gaze, or to reach out and

touch his gentle hand.

None of those things would ever happen again. Her

collaborators, her friends, were dead, murdered in

vengeance for someone else's error.

Jim Kirk managed to get McCoy down from the

table and away from the center of attention before the

doctor had made too much of a fuss, and, Kirk

hoped, without making a fool of either of them.

"I think you've drunk too much, Bones," he

said.

"Me?" McCoy said. "I haven't had nearly

enough."

Kirk tried to restrain his anger at McCoy's

juvenile behavior. "Why don't you get some

sleep? You'll feel better in the moming."

"I'll feel awful in the morning, Jim-boy.

And the morning after that, and his

"You'll feel worse if you have to deal with a

hangover and the results of a big mouth."

McCoy frowned at him blearily, obviously

not understanding. Kirk felt a twinge of unease.

McCoy generally made sense, even when he had had

a few too many. In fact, his usual reaction

to tipsiness was to become more direct and pithier.

Kirk glanced around, seeking Chris Chapel. He

hoped that between them they might get McCoy either

sobered up or asleep. Chapel was nowhere to be

seen. He could hardly blame her for avoiding the

wake. He wished he were somewhere else himself. He

had come only because McCoy insisted. Jim

supposed Chris had decided that the hard time

STAR TREK In

McCoy and Scotty would give her for absenting

herself would be less unpleasant than attending. Jim

suspected she was right.

"Come on, Bones," he said. Back in sick

bay, the doctor might be persuaded to prescribe

himself a hangover remedy and go to bed.

"Not going anywhere," McCoy said. He

shrugged his arm from Kirk's grasp. "Going over

there." He walked slowly and carefully to an

armchair and settled into it as if he planned

to remain till dawn. Getting him to his cabin now

would create a major scene. On the other hand,

McCoy no longer looked in the mood to make

proclamations. Jim sighed and left him where he

was.

Jim wandered over to Carol. She was alone,

surrounded by shadows. They had barely had time to talk

since meeting again. Jim was not

altogether sure she wanted to talk to him. He did

want to talk to her, though, about her life since they

last had seen each other, twenty years ago. But

mostly he wanted to talk to her about David. Jim

was getting used to the idea of having a grown

son. He was beginning to like the idea of coming to know the young

man.

"Hi, Carol," he said.

"Jim."

Her voice was calm and controlled. He

remembered that she had always been able to drink

everybody under the table and never even show it.

"I was thinking about Spacelab," she said. "And the

people I left behind. Especially his

"You did fantastic work there, you and David."

"It wasn't just us, it was the whole team. I never

worked with such an incredible group before. We got

intoxicated on each other's ideas. I could guide

it, but Vance was the catalyst. He was extraordinary

his

"Spock spoke highly of them all," Jim

said. It

The Search For Spock

surprised him, to be able to say his friend's name so

easily.

"dance was the only one who could keep his partner from

going off the deep end. He had a sort of inner

stillness and calm that his

"They were the ones who designed computer

games on the side? A couple of the cadets were

talking about them."

"dis . . that affected us all."

"David and our Lieutenant Saavik seem

to be hitting it off pretty well," Jim said.

David and Saavik stood together on the other side

of the recreation hall, talking quietly.

"I suppose so," Carol said without expression.

"She has a lot of promise Spock had great

confidence in her."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry I had to meet David and you and

I had to meet again in such unhappy

circumstances," he said.

The look in her eyes was cold and bitter and

full of pain.

"That's one way to put it," she said.

"Carol his

"I'm going to bed," she said abruptly. She

stood up and strode out of the recreation room.

Jim followed her. "I'll walk you to your

cabin," he said. He took her silence for

acquiescence.

With some curiosity, Saavik watched Admiral

Kirk and Dr. Marcus leave together. Of

course she knew that they had been intimate many

years before. She wondered if they intended to resume

their relationship. She had observed the customs of

younger humans, students, while she was in the

Academy, however, and

STAR TREK 111

she now noted the absence of any indication of strong

attraction between Marcus and Kirk. Perhaps older

humans observed different customs, or perhaps these

two individuals were simply shy. Mr. Spock

had told her that she must learn to understand human beings.

As a project for her continuing education in their

comprehension, she resolved to study the admiral and the

doctor closely and see what transpired.

After Dr. Marcus and the admiral left the

recreation hall, Saavik returned her attention

to the gathering as a whole. She wondered if there were

something in particular she was supposed to do. Keeping

her own customs after the deaths of Mr. Spock and

Peter Preston, she had watched over their bodies

the night before Mr. Spock's funeral. Only

yesterday morning she stood with the rest of the ship's

company and sent his coffin accelerating toward the

Genesis planet. She wished she could have

sent young Peter's body into space, too. He had

loved the stars, and Saavik believed it would have

pleased him to become star-stuff. But his body was the

responsibility of Chief Engineer Scott,

who had decreed he must be taken back to Earth and

buried in the family plot.

Everyone assumed Captain Spock's casket

would burn up in the outer atmosphere of the Genesis

world. So Admiral Kirk had intended. But

Saavik had disobeyed his order. Instead, she

programmed a course that intersected the last fading

resonance of the Genesis effect. When the coffin

encountered the edge of the wave, matter had exploded

into energy. Within the wave, the energy that had been

Spock's body coalesced into sub-quarkian

particles, thence, in almost unmea- surable fractions

of a second, to normal atomic matter. He was

now a part of that distant world. He was gone. She would

never see him again.

The Search For Spock

She wondered how long she would be affected by the

persistent, illogical certainty that he remained

nearby.

"David," she said suddenly, "what is

the purpose of this gathering?"

David hesitated, wondering if he understood it

well enough to explain it to anyone else. "It's a

tradition," he said. "It's like Dr. McCoy said

a while ago, it's to celebrate the lives of people

who have died."

"Would it not make more sense to celebrate while a

person is still living?"

"How would you know when to have the

celebration?"

"You would have it whenever you liked. Then no death would

be necessary. The person being celebrated could attend the

party, and no one would have to feel sad."

David wondered if she were pulling his leg. He

decided that was an unworthy suspicion. Besides,

he could see her point.

"The thing is," he said, "the funeral yesterday,

and the wake today . . . they aren't really for the people who

died."

"I do not understand."

"They're for the people who are left behind. People humans,

I mean need to express their feelings. Otherwise

we bottle them up inside and they make us sick."

This sounded like the purest hocus-pocus

to Saavik, who had spent half her life

learning to control her emotions.

"You mean," she said" "this procedure is meant

to make people feel better?"

"That's right."

STAR TREK 111

"Then why does everyone look so unhappy?"

David could not help it. He laughed.

The door to Carol's cabin sensed her and slid

open. She stopped. Jim stopped. Carol said

nothing. Jim tried to decide on exactly the right

words.

"Carom"

"Good night, Jim."

"But his

"Leave me alone!" she said. The evenness of her

voice dissolved in anger.

"I thought . . ."

"What? That you could come along after twenty years and

pick up again right where you left off?"

"I was thinking more in terms of "we.""

"Oh, that's cute there never was any

"we!"""

"There's David."

"Do you think you're so great in bed that no

woman would ever want another man after you? Do you

think I've spent all these years just waiting for you

to come back?"

"NO, of course not. But was He stopped. That

she might be involved with someone else simply had not

occurred to him, and he was embarrassed to admit it.

"Of course I didn't mean that," he said. "But

we were good together, once, and we're both alone his

"Alone!" Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Carol, I don't understand."

"dance Madison and I were lovers!"

"I didn't realise," he said lamely.

"You would have, if you'd listened. I've been trying

to talk about him. I just wanted to talk about him

to somebody. Even to you. I want people to remember what

he was like. He

deserves to be remembered. I dream about

him I dream about the way he died his

The Search For Spock

Jim took a step backward, retreating from the

fury and accusation in her voice. His old enemy,

Khan Singh, had murdered all the members of the

Genesis team except Carol and David. The people

he captured refused to give him the information

he demanded, so he killed them. He opened a vein

in Madison's throat and let him slowly bleed

to death.

Carol flung herself into her cabin. The door

slid shut behind her, cutting Jim Kirk off, all

alone, in the passageway outside.

David finally stopped laughing. He wiped his

eyes. Saavik hoped he would explain to her what

he found so funny.

She watched him intently. He looked up. Their

gazes met.

He glanced quickly away, then back again.

David's eyes were a clear, intense blue.

She reached toward him, realised what she was doing,

and froze. David touched her before she could draw

away.

"What is it?" he said. He wrapped his fingers

around her hand in an easy grip.

He could not hold her hand without her

acquiescence, for she could crush his bones with a

single clenching of her fist. This she had no intention of

doing.

"For many years," Saavik said, "I have tried

to be Vulcan."

"I know."

David was one of the few people with whom she had ever

discussed her background. Though she had learned

to control her strongest emotions most of the time, she

never pretended to herself that they were nonexistent.

"But I am not all Vulcan, and I will never

be," she

STAR TREK 111

said, "any more than Mr. Spock. He said to me

. . ." She paused, uncertain how David would

react. "He said I was unique, and that I must

find my own path."

"Good advice for anybody," David said.

Saavik drew her hand from David's grasp and

picked up his drink. She barely tasted it. The

raw, unaged alcohol slid fiery across her

tongue, and the potent fumes seemed to go straight

to her brain. She put down the glass. David

watched her curiously.

"David," she said hesitantly, "I am under

the im- pression that you have positive feelings toward

me. Is that true?"

"It's very true," he said.

"Will you help me find my path?"

"If I can."

"Will you come to my cabin with me?"

"Yes," he said. "I will."

"Now?"

In reply, he put his hand in hers again, and they

walked together from the recreation hall.

Jim Kirk strode down the corridor,

upset, angry, embarrassed.

He nearly ran into his son and Lieutenant

Saavik.

"Oh Hi, kids." He collected himself

quickly. Long years of experience had made him an

expert at hiding distress from subordinates.

"Uh . . . hi," David said. Saavik said

nothing; she simply gazed at him with her cool

imperturbability.

"Got to be too much for you in there?" Kirk said,

nodding toward the rec hall behind them. "I never should have

let McCoy and Scott have their way about it."

They looked at him without replying. After a long

hesitation, Saavik finally spoke.

The Search For Spock

"Indeed," she said, -- "it is not a ceremony

Captain Spock would have approved. It is neither

logical nor rational."

Kirk flinched at the echoes of Spock's

voice in Saavik's words. He had known Spock

longer than she had, but she had spent more time working with the

Vulcan in the past few years, when Kirk was tied

to a desk by an unbreakable chain of paperwork.

"Perhaps you're right," he said. "But funerals and

wakes aren't for the person who is dead, they're for the

people left behind."

"It is interesting," Saavik said, "that David

said precisely the same thing. I fail, however,

to grasp this explanation."

"It isn't easily explained," Kirk said.

"And I can understand why you wouldn't think of Spock in

relation to a gathering where everybody was doing their best

to get drunk. I was going to go to the observation deck,

instead. Have either of you been up there? David,

surely you haven't had a chance to see it. Would you like

to come along?"

"I am familiar with the observation deck,"

Saavik said.

"I'd sure like to see it," David said, "any

other time. But Lieutenant Saavik wanted

to check some readings on the bridge."

Kirk glanced from David, to Saavik, and

back. Saavik started to say something, but

stopped. A blush colored David's

transparently fair

complexion. Kirk realised that he had put his

foot in his mouth for the second time in ten minutes.

He, too, began to blush.

"I see," he said. "Important work. Carry

on, then." He turned and strode quickly away.

Saavik watched him until he had passed out of

sight around a corner.

STAR TREK lll

"Nothing needs to be checked on the bridge,

David," she said.

"I had to say something," David said. "I

didn't want to discuss our personal affairs with

him. It isn't any of his business."

"But why did he not remind you that the computer would

announce any change in the ship's status?"

"I don't know," David said, though he knew

perfectly well.

"He has not commanded a starship in a long time,"

she said. "Perhaps he forgot."

"That must be it."

They continued down the corridor to Saavik's

cabin. Inside, David blinked, waiting

for his eyes to accustom themselves to the low light. The

room held no decorations, only the severe

furnishings standard issue in Starfleet, but the warm

and very dry air carried a hot, resiny scent, like the

sunbaked pitch of pine trees at high noon in

summer.

Saavik stopped with her back to David.

"Saavik," David said, "I just want you to know

maybe we don't need to worry, but where I was

raised it's good manners to tell you I passed all

my exams in biocontrol. his

"I, too," she said softly. "I always regarded

learning to regulate the reproductive ability

merely as an interesting exercise. Until now . .

Her voice trailed off.

David realised that she was trembling. He put

his hands gently on her shoulders.

"I have traveled far, and I have seen much,"

Saavik said. "I have studied.... But study and

action are very different."

"I know," David said. "It's all right, it will

be all right."

Saavik reached up, and her hair fell free

around her

The Search For Spock

shoulders. It was thick and soft and dark, and it

smelled of evergreens.

Jim Kirk did go to the observation deck. He

opened the portals and spent a long time staring at the

stars. After a while, the romantic in his soul

overcame the admiral in his mind. The pain and

grief surrounding Spock's death eased, the

embarrassing encounter with David and Saavik began

to seem humorous, and even his

misunderstanding of Carol's wishes became less

lacerating in his memory. The whole galaxy lay

around hirn.

He fancied he could still see the star of the Genesis

world, far behind, a hot white star red-shifted toward

yellow as the Enterprise raced away, an

unimposing young star made fuzzy by the planetary

nebula that surrounded it, by the remnants of the

Mutara Nebula. The matter in the nebula had

been blasted apart by the Genesis wave, blasted beyond

atoms, beyond subatomic particles, beyond quarks,

down to the sub- elementary particles that Vance

Madison and his partner Del March had whimsically

named

"sparks" and "boojums."

Khan Singh had set off the Genesis wave in

an attempt to destroy Jim Kirk, an

attempt that had very nearly succeeded. Thus he set

motion what? Even Carol could not say. The

resonances in the wave were designed to work upon a very

different environment. No one could know what had come

into existence on the

Genesis world without going back and exploring it.

Jim Kirk had many reasons for wanting to see that

done and, what was more, for wanting to do it himself.

First he had to return to Earth. To accomplish that,

he needed a crew that in the morning would be able to think

of something other than their hangovers. Realiz

STAR TREK 111

ing that he had been up here all alone for nearly

an hour, he decided it was about time to go back to the

recreation deck and shut things down.

He closed the portals against the stars.

David dozed in the intoxicating warmth of

Saavik's body. Vulcans and, David

supposed, Romulans, too had a body

temperature several degrees above that of

human beings.

"Lying next to you is like Iying in the shade on a

hot summer's day," Saavik said.

David chuckled sleepily. "You must be

psychic."

"Only slightly," she said. "Vulcans and

Romulans both have the ability in some measure.

My talent for it is quite limited. But why do you say

so now?"

"I was just thinking that Iying next to you is like being in

the sun on the first warm day of spring."

She turned suddenly toward him and hugged him

close. Her hair fell across his shoulders. He

put his arms around her and held her. She had been

raised first among Romulans who rejected her,

then in the Vulcan tradition which denied any need for

closeness or passion. He wondered if anyone had

ever held her before.

She drew back and lay beside him, barely touching

him, as if ashamed of her instant's impulse.

David was not so ready to ignore the intimacy.

He traced the smooth, strong line of

Saavik's collarbone with the tip of one finger. He

had never been with anyone like her in his life. He

caressed the hollow of her throat and cupped

his hand around the point of her left shoulder. He had

felt the scar on her smooth skin earlier, but just then

the time had been wrong for questions. Now, though, he

touched the scar in the dark and found it to be a complex,

regular pattern.

"How'd you get that?" he asked.

She said nothing for so long that David wondered if

The Search For Spock

his bad habit of asking questions off the top of his

head had got him into trouble again.

"Sorry," he said. "Idle curiosity it's

none of my business."

"It is a Romulan family mark," Saavik

said.

"A family mark!" She had told him that she

did not know the identity of either of her parents, that she

did not even know which parent was Vulcan and which

Romulan. "Does that mean you could find your

family?"

"David," she said, and he thought he could detect

a hint of dry humor in her voice, "why would I

want to find my Romulan family?"

Since the likelihood was that a Romulan had

borne or sired her in order

to demonstrate complete power over a Vulcan

prisoner, David could see her point.

"I never heard of family marks," he said.

"That is not surprising. Information about them may

only be passed on orally. It is a capital

crime in the Romulan empire to make permanent

records of them. his

"Why don't you have the mark removed?

Doesn't it remind you of unpleasant times?"

"I do not wish to forget those times," Saavik said,

"any more than I wish to forget Mr. Spock.

All those memories are important to me. Besides,

it may have its use, someday."

"How?"

"Should I have the misfortune to encounter my

Romulan parent, it is absolute proof of our

relationship."

"But if you don't want to know your Romulan

parent . . ."

"The family mark permits me to demand

certain rights," Saavik said. "It would be

considered very bad manners to refuse a family

member's challenge to a death-duel."

STAR TREK 111

"A duel!"

"Yes. How else avenge myself? How else

avenge my Vulcan parent, who surely died with

my birth?"

David lay back on the narrow bunk, stunned

by Saavik's matter-of-fact discussion of deep,

implacable hatred.

"I never thought of Vulcans as demanding an eye

for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

"But I am not as Vulcans never cease to remind

me a proper Vulcan."

"Wouldn't it be easier, wouldn't it be safer, to I

don't know, sue the Romulans for

reparations?"

"Spoken like a truly civilised human,"

Saavik said. "But if I am only half a

Vulcan, I am in no part human. Mr.

Spock was right I must follow my own path."

David moved his hand from her shoulder. The intensity

of her feelings surprised him, though it should not, not

any more, not after tonight.

"Don't worry, David," Saavik said, in

response to his unease. "I am hardly going

to defect to the Romulan empire in order to find a

creature I have no real wish to meet. The

chance of my ever meeting my Romulan parent is

vanishingly small."

"I guess," David said. The Federation had,

at best, fragile diplomatic relations with the

Romulans. It was a connection like a fuse,

continually threatening to burst into flame and ignite a more

serious conflagration.

Saavik guided his hand back to her shoulder.

"It feels good when you touch it," she said. "The

coolness of your hand is soothing."

"Were you born with it? Or is it a tattoo?"

"Neither. It is a brand."

"A brand!"

"They apply it soon after one is out of the womb."

"Gods, what a thing to do to a little baby. Good thing

you can't remember it."

The Search For Spock

"What makes you think I cannot remember it?"

Horrified, David said, "You mean you can?"

"Of course. The white glow is the first beautiful

thing I ever encountered, and its touch was the first pain. Do

you not remember your own birth?"

"No, not at all. I don't have any reliable

memories before I was two or three. Most

people don't."

"But most people do, David," Saavik said. "At

least, in my experience. Perhaps you mean most humans

do not?"

"Yeah," David said. "Sorry. Bad

habit."

"No offence taken. I am always glad to learn

something new about a fellow intelligent species.

The last few hours have been very rewarding. I have

learned a great deal."

David did not know quite how to take that, so he

replied with an inarticulate "Hmm?"

"Yes," Saavik said. "I feel that my

experiments have been most instructive."

"Is that all I am to you?" David said. "An

experiment?" He suddenly felt very hurt and

disappointed, and he realised that his attraction toward

Saavik was a great deal more than

physical, something much deeper and much

stronger.

"That is one of the things you are to me," she said in an

even tone. "'And not the least. But not the most, either.

You have helped me learn that I have capabilities

I believed I did not possess."

"Like the capacity to love?"

"I . . . I am unprepared to make that

claim. I do not even comprehend the concept."

David laughed softly. "Neither does anybody

else."

"Indeed? My research is unfinished I thought

I simply had not encountered a satisfactory

definition."

"It isn't something you can quantify."

"Someone should conduct experiments."

STAR TREK 111

"Experiments!" David said, slightly shocked.

"Certainly. Perhaps we might collaborate on

a paper.

"Saavik his

"I have heard a speculation. I am curious

to know whether it is true, or merely

apocryphal."

"All right," David said, beyond surprise.

"What speculation is that?"

Saavik turned toward him, propped herself

tilde up on one elbow, and let her hair spill

over his shoulder and across his chest.

"It is," she said, "that Romulans are

insatiable. Would you care to test this

hypothesis?"

David laughed. He reached up and touched her

face in the dark. He traced the lines of her

lips, and found that she was smiling. She had just

discovered another capability that few people would

suspect her of possess- ing. She had a

terrific sense of humor.

"Why don't we do that?" David sai d.

- Jim Kirk strode into the recreation hall.

The wake had deteriorated even further.

Cadets stood alone or in small groups, sinking

into silent depression. Scott clutched a drink and

talked continuously and intensely to a single captive

trainee. McCoy lay sprawled in his chair. As

a catharsis, this gathering was a wretched failure.

It succeeded only in intensifying everyone's feelings

of pain and loss and guilt. Kirk stopped by a

small group of cadets.

"I think it's about time to pack it in for the night,"

he said. "You're all dismissed."

"Yessir," one of the cadets said. Her

relieved smile, quick, and quickly hidden, was the first

smile Kirk had seen all day.

The cadets, just waiting for an excuse to escape

The Search For Spock

sepulchral atmosphere, all accepted his order

without objection or argument. The trainees still sober

enough to be ambulatory helped their friends who had

overin- dulged. Within a few minutes, the only

cadet left was the one listening to Mr. Scott's

tirade. Kirk joined them. The cadet looked

pale and drawn.

"Scatty was Kirk said, when Scott paused for

breath.

"Aye, Captain, life doesna make sense

sometimes, I was just sayin" to Grenni here, "tie the

good ones go before their time his

"Mr. Scott his

was there's no denyin" it. The boy had guts.

He had potential his

"Commander Scott!"

"Aye, sir? What's wrong, Admiral? Why

are ye soundin' so perturbed?"

Kirk sighed. "Perturbed, Mr. Scott?

Whatever makes you think I'm perturbed? You're

dismissed,

cadet." still

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." The

cadet's voice shook. still He fled.

"Mr. Scott, we'll reach Regulus tomorrow, and

I need a coherent crew. Go to bed."

"But my poor bairn I wished to have all o' us

sing a song for him. Do ye know "Danny Boy,"

Captain?"

"That's an order, Mr. Scott."

"Aye, sir." Scott commenced to sing. ""O

Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

?"'

"Mister Scott!"

Scott stopped singing and gazed at him blearily,

blinking and confused, as Kirk's tone finally got through

to him.

""Sing "Danny Boy"" is not an order.

"Go to bed" is an order."

"Oh. Begging your pardon, sir. Aye, sir."

STAR TREK 111

Scott glanced around him, as if searching for some-

thing. Suddenly he looked very tired and old. He

trudged away.

McCoy was the last member of the wake remaining.

Jim sat on his heels beside McCoy's chair.

The doctor snored softly.

"Bones," Jim said, shaking him softly.

"Bones, wake up."

McCoy flinched, muttered something incomprehen-

sible, and lapsed back into snoring.

"Come on, old friend." Jim dragged McCoy's

arm across his shoulder and hoisted him to his feet.

McCoy sagged against him and muttered a few more

words. Jim froze.

"What?"',

McCoy straightened up, swaying, and looked

Kirk directly in the eye.

"Using a metabolic poison as a recreational

drug is totally illogical."

McCoy collapsed.

Chapter 2

Dr. Christine Chapel watched herself function

efficiently. She felt very much like two different people,

one performing as she should, the other separated from the world

by shock. She felt numb and clumsy. That she could

function at all astonished her. Yet she did

what needed to be done, caring for the crew members,

mostly young cadets, who had been injured during

Khan

Singh's attacks; dispensing hangover remedies

to those who had neglected to take a preventive after

Mr. Spock's wake; and looking in

occasionally on Leonard McCoy. She was

extremely concerned about him.

She paused in the doorway of the cubicle in which

she and Admiral Kirk had put him the night before.

She left the lights on very low. She suspected that

when Leonard woke, his headache would be a credit

to its species.

He moaned and muttered something. Chris

moved

STAR TREK 111

farther into the small room, squinting to see better

in the dim light. Leonard tossed on the bunk, his

face shining with sweat. His tunic was soaked. Chris

felt his forehead. His temperature was elevated, not

yet dangerously so, but certainly enough to make him

uncomfortable.

"Leonard," she said softly.

He sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead.

Slowly he turned to look at her. He moved in

a way she had never seen him move before, but in a

way that was eerily familiar.

"Vulcans," he said, in a voice much lower

than his own, "do not love."

Chris took an involuntary step backward.

"How dare you say that to me?" she said, in a

quiet, angry voice. The pain pierced through the

numbness to her enclosed, repressed grief and

spread like fire through her. She turned, hiding her

face in her hands. She could not break down now. The

ship had to have a doctor, and McCoy was in no

shape to take over.

The obsession she had had with Spock for so long still

embarrassed her, though it had burned out years before.

She had forced herself beyond it by sheer determination and by the

power of the knowledge that what she desired from him, he simply

could not give. His inability to respond to her had

nothing to do with Christine Chapel. He had never had

the choice between "interested" and "uninterested." All his

training and experience required him to be disinterested,

and so he had behaved.

Once Chris accepted that, she began to

appreciate his unique integrity. It took a

long time for her to get over her youthful fantasies,

but once she did, her fondness for Spock

strengthened. Losing a friend, she had discovered in the

past few days, was much worse 28

The Search For Spock

than losing a remotely potential and

unrequiting lover. Accepting Spock's death, she

thought, would be an even longer and more difficult task

than persuading herself not that he never would love her, but

that he never could.

She took her hands from her face and

straightened up, under control again. This was a bad

time to cry. Leonard McCoy's sense of humor

was quirky, but not cruel. For him to say what he

had said to her meant either that something was seriously wrong

or the simplest, if least flattering, possibility

that he was still intoxicated.

Saavik woke suddenly and sat up, startled.

Mr. Spock was speaking to her. His deep voice still

echoed in her cabin. Saavik was not prepared

to answer hm.she was dazzled by strange dreams and

fantasies.

"But I am not a Vulcan," she said. "You said

to me his

She stopped. He was not here he had never been

here. Spock was gone.

Spock's voice had sounded so real . . . but

what she thought was reality was a cruel dream, and what

for a moment had seemed impossible

fantasy was real.

David lay sleeping beside her, cool and fair.

She touched his shoulder lightly. He stirred gently

but did not wake. Saavik wondered if she could be

going mad with grief, or with guilt. She did not

feel mad.

But Spock's voice had seemed so real . . .

Delicately, Farrendahl nibbled at the

fur-covered web of skin at the base of the first and

second fingers of her right paw. A bad habit,

she knew it, one-she had picked up from a human

shipmate who bit his nails. A human's nails

were such flimsy things that it hardly 29

STAR TREK 111

mattered whether they were damaged or properly

sharp, but Farrendahl would never sink so low as to bite

her claws. They were far too useful.

At times like these, though, she needed a nervous

habit to fall back on. Her primate-type

crewmates either objected to or thought amusing the more

obvious forms of grooming. Never mind that she found

them soothing. Farrendahl did not like to be laughed

at. Primates, humanoids as they preferred

to call themselves in Standard, could be astonishingly

repellent when they laughed.

Farrendahl sat on her haunches in the

navigator's hammock, chewing on her paw and

blinking at the unfamiliar stars. Having passed out

of Federation space and into the grey area between set

borders some hours before, the ship now fell under the

protection of no one. It had become potential

prey to all. This, Farrendahl disliked intensely.

A signal came through her console. She blinked

at it, too, then in response to the new order

changed the course of the ship for the third time in a single

circadian. The resulting course, if left

unchanged, would bring the ship face to face with the

Klingons. This, Farrendahl disliked even more.

No wonder their mysterious passenger was unwilling

to name a destination. No wonder the ship's grapevine

sprouted rumors of an enormous payment to the

captain. Great wonder, though, if the captain

passed on part of his largesse in the crew's

bonuses without a confrontation.

"I dislike the scent of this," Farrendahl said.

She growled softly in irritation. "It smelled

bad when we began, and its odor has become

progressively more putrid."

Her compatriot bared his teeth in that offensive

The Search For Spock

primate way, and an intermittent choking noise

came from his throat. In short, he laughed.

"Since when do cats learn anything useful from their

sense of smell?" he said.

Compatriot to A high-class word to apply

to any member of this ship's crew of ill-mannered,

poorly reared mercenaries.

"Since when," Farrendahl said to Tran, "have I

been a cat?" Instead of baring her teeth, which another

member of her own species would have recognised as a

threat, she placed her paw on the scarred control

panel. She stretched out her fingers so her paw

became a hand, then slowly extended her claws. The

sharp tips scratched the panel with a gradual,

hair-raising shriek.

"A cat?" Tran exclaimed. "Did I

call you a cat? Who in their right mind would call you

a cat?"

"I saw a cat once," Farrendahl said

matter-of-factly. "It was digging through a garbage

heap in a back alley on Amenhotep IX. I

disliked it. Please explain the similarities between

it and me."

"Don't push it , Farrendahl."

"But I desire to be enlightened."

"All right. Both of you were in the back alley,

weren't you?"

Farrendahl leapt, knocking Tran to the deck.

The artificial gravity, set for economy's

sake at an annoyingly low intensity, turned her

attack and Tran's fall into a most

unsatisfactory series of slow bounces. But they

ended up as Farrendahl planned, with the human on the

floor and her claws and teeth at his throat. This was

a main reason she never bit her claws.

"And was there not an ugly monkey-looking

creature in that same back alley, only insensible

from noxious recreational drugs?"

"Probably there was," Tran said, laughing

again. 31

STAR TREK 111

Farrendahl bristled her whiskers out,

acknowledging Tran's good-humored surrender.

She was about to release him when the captain walked in

on them. He stopped, folded his arms across his chest,

and glared at the crew members.

"If you two haven't any work, I can find

some," he said. "We don't have time for your continual

horsing around."

Farrendahl growled softly and rose, extending

her hand to Tran to help him rise. He leaped

to his feet like a gymnast in the low gravity.

"A cat, a monkey, now a horse,"

Farrendahl said in a low voice. "Perhaps our

mysterious mission is to transport a menagerie."

Tran chuckled and returned to his place at the

control console.

"I heard that," the captain said. "Ten

demerits."

"You're in a charming mood today, Captain,"

Farrendahl said. She ignored the threat of

demerits. She had already earned so many that ten more

scarcely counted. Demerits were a source of great

hilarity among the crew, ever since the time they

precipitated a minor mutiny. One

planetfall, on a more or less civilised world and

after a long, boring journey, the captain forbade

Farrendahl, Tran, and several others to leave the

ship. Too many demerits, he said. Farrendahl

said nothing. She simply ignored him, and she and the

others went out anyway.

He could have left while they were rousting around. He

could have locked them off the ship and hired another

crew. But he stayed where he was, leaving the

ship open to them when they returned. Apparently he

preferred his tried and semi-competent, if

insolent, people to a new bunch that he would have to have

trained.

The Search For Spock

He continued to assign demerits, but that was the

only time he ever referred to them, and he never again

tried to use them for anything.

The captain ignored Farrendahl's smart

remark and paused at the control console.

Farrendahl despised him on every possible level.

possessed power and the title of captain not because he

deserved them or had earned them but simply because he

owned the ship. He knew little about running it and less

about the comput- ers that formed its guts.

"Perhaps you are concerned that we will discover what you are

being paid for this trip," Farrendahl said, putting him

on notice that they all did know and that they all

expected their cut.

He glared at her as she slipped smoothly into the

navigator's hammock. He kept his silence.

He was a bully, but he was also a coward, and he

avoided any serious confrontation with

Farrendahl.

"When do we find out where we are really

going?"

"When you need to know," he said.

"Waste of fuel," Farrendahl said just loudly enough

for him to hear. It amused her that he would worry the

comment around in his mind, trying to find a way to conserve

the fuel wasted by their roundabout route. If he had ever

learned to pilot his ship himself, he would not have to depend

on Farrendahl. She supposed she should be

grateful for his lack of application.

The contempt in which she held him was

diluted by her awareness of her own failings and

limitations. She had been disappointed when, after the

"mutiny," the captain capitulated to his

impertinent crew. But she might have found another

berth whatever else she was, she was an able

navigator, and nabled tilde and then a shipmaster

turned up who was willing to waive small matters

like papers and background. She could have

STAR TREK 111

found another place, but she did not. Inertia

kept her in the same, riskless position. Beneath her

contempt for the captain lurked a certain

contempt for herself. Perhaps they deserved each other.

The captain remained by the console, his attitude

that of one studying the readings, his eyes with the blank

stare of someone who had no idea what he was looking

at.

"We're on course," Farrendahl said, "as

long as you don't have any more changes in mind.

Unless you do, I am going to sleep."

Lacking any reply, she slid from the hammock

and padded away toward her cabin.

David stepped out of the turbo-lift, onto the

bridge. Saavik, already on duty, glanced over

her shoulder at him. A look passed between them that they

innocently assumed no one else noticed or

understood. Saavik returned her attention to her work

as if it were easy for her. David wrestled himself

back to this morning and away from last night.

It must be nice, David thought, to have the ability

to control your feelings so completely. Being able

to focus one's attention on a single subject

gave remarkable results.

"Good morning, David," James Kirk said.

"Uh, hi." David could not bring himself to call

Kirk "father." More than twenty years lay between them,

years during which they could have known each other.

David wondered what he would be like if he had known

James Kirk as his father when it might have made a

difference. He had found some reason to respect the

Starfleet officer. Affection would take longer.

Kirk responded to David's unease. "How

would you feel about calling me 'Jim"?" 34

The Search For Spock

"Okay, I guess."

Kirk paused for a moment, then turned away again.

David realised had hurt the admiral's feelings

with his lukewarm response.

"This is going to take some getting used to," he

said.

"Yes," Kirk said. "For me, too. We need

to talk about it. In private." coma

David took the hint and kept the personal

matters to himself, saving them for someplace other than the

bridge of the Enterprise.

"There it is," Kirk said.

In the viewscreen, Regulus I hung dark and

mysterious before them. The barren worldlet had always given

David an eerie feeling. It had never evolved

life. It had never had a chance of evolving life.

It had no water and no air and too little gravity

to hold either one. But Genesis had changed

all that. The planetoid's interior had been

turned into an entire, new, inside-out world, one with

an ecosystem designed from scratch by Carol

Marcus' team. It was like a Jules Verne novel

brought to reality, and David was proud of his part in

creating it. The memory of the short time he had spent

beneath the surface of the world remained as a warm glow of

pride and power. He wanted to go back inside and

explore. No experiment ever turned out

precisely as one planned. David wanted

to discover the

unexpected results. They were always the most

interesting.

Spacelab drifted in its orbit, a shadowed

silver flash against the limb of the planetoid. The

Starfleet science ship Grissom lay in a

matching orbit, waiting for the Enterprise. The ship

and the laboratory satellite gradually entered the

shadow of their primary, vanishing into the featureless

darkness. David shivered. He had lived and worked

on the research station for two years. He had called

it home. Now it felt alien and threatening. If

STAR TREK 111

hauntings were possible, it must be haunted.

On Spacelab, no one was left alive. The

bodies of the people Khan Singh had murdered lay

waiting to be returned to Earth and to their graves.

As the transporter beam faded from the newly

materialised form of Captain J.t. Esteban,

James Kirk waited to greet him. Esteban

stepped down. They shook hands.

"Welcome aboard, J.t.," Kirk said.

"It's been a while."

"It has that," Esteban said. "An eventful

while, too. You folks have things in quite a tizzy,

back home."

Kirk led Esteban to the nearest turbo-lift.

"I don't believe I follow you," he said.

"Will Dr. Marcus-be available, Jim?"

J.t. said. "I need to talk to the both of you."

They stepped into the lift. "Officer's lounge,"

Jim said, and felt the faint acceleration as the lift

whisked them toward their destination. "I'll have Dr.

Marcus paged." Kirk contacted Uhura.

"Uhura, Kirk here. Would you ask Dr.

Marcus to meet Captain Esteban and me in the

officer's lounge?"

"Certainly, Admiral."

"Thanks. Kirk out. was He turned off

the

intercom. He could sense the tension in the captain

of the Grissom. "What's going on, J.t.?"

"I just think it would save time to talk to you both at

once." Esteban was deliberately

misunderstanding the question, and Jim did not push it. They

tried to make small talk, but it was strained.

"The galaxy ships are already paying off,"

Esteban said. "Have you heard?"

"We've been out of touch," Jim said drily.

"Of course. But a subspace transmission just

came 36

The Search For Spock

through it made all the news services.

Magellan is in Andromeda. It just completed the first

close-range observation of a supernova."

"That's very impressive," Jim said. And for all

his offhandedness, he was impressed. Andromeda!

Another galaxy, millions and millions of

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