Pathways - Jeri Taylor [211]
“I don’t understand,” she said, and her voice was hoarse from her crying. “Vulcans become intimate. They mate, and have children. Don’t you ever . . . have such urges?”
He stared at her, uncertain how to answer the question. It was as though she were speaking in an alien language that the Universal Translator couldn’t translate. “I have assumed,” he stated carefully, “that one day I would have a wife and family. I have never associated that decision with . . . urges. I don’t believe I can answer a question which I fundamentally don’t understand.”
Her hair was damp at her temples, and he noticed the tendrils had a tendency to curl, ringing her face in a delicate frame. She looked quite young and vulnerable in the growing dusk of the evening, and Tuvok was suddenly struck with insight into the inevitable outcome of this extraordinary situation. She was moving toward him through the growing shadows, fragile and ethereal. “I love you, Tuvok. I’ve never felt this way before. I want to be with you always . . . and . . . I want intimacy. It’s part of life . . . can’t we have that?”
A calm settled over Tuvok as he saw his course with clarity and precision. He experienced a gratitude for the teachings of Surak, for they always proved reliable, leading the way from any entangled situation into lucidity.
“Do you remember,” he said firmly, “the initial notes Surak made as he was developing cthia?”
She looked at him, smoky eyes a deeper gray in the growing darkness. He could detect disappointment in them, but he continued nonetheless. “Ideally, do no harm,” he intoned, on surer ground now. “Harm no one’s internal, invisible integrities. Leave others the privacy of their minds and lives. Intimacy remains precious only insofar as it is inviolate: invading it turns it to torment.”
He looked at her, trying to discern what impact these words had on her. Would she understand what he was trying to say? “I wish you no harm, Sophie,” he assured her, “and it becomes clear that our being together does you great harm. Surely that violates the integrities of both of us, and is therefore an intolerable situation.”
“Don’t leave me,” she breathed, voice barely audible, as though the sound were dampened and absorbed by the evening shadows that were enveloping the gazebo. “Please.”
To his satisfaction, he found he was not disquieted by what he could only describe as her unseemly groveling. The universe was ordered, and he had rediscovered order after having lost sight of it for a moment. That was the effect humans had had on him, and he must find a way to disengage that effect.
“If I am to follow Surak, I must be true to his teachings. I must not harm another, must not cause another pain, for such actions speed entropy, the heat death of the universe.”
Her slender body began to tremble, and he sensed a fierce struggle within her, a concentrated effort to achieve mastery over her ragged emotions. Finally she drew three deep breaths and lifted her eyes to him.
“I offer you peace,” she said, quoting Surak, “and peace again until I die.”
“And in this way you will find peace,” he intoned. Then he turned and left the gazebo, never looking back. It was his last encounter with her.
“I can no longer live among humans. They hasten the heat death of the universe.”
Six years had passed since his graduation from the Academy, and he was standing in the formal room of his parents’ home on Vulcan, feeling the comforting familiarity of the intense heat, and the lightness of spirit that came from returning to one’s origins. T’Khut was high in the sky, looming menacingly above them, volcanoes visible and smoking. But to Tuvok, the huge disk was calming in its familiarity.
After graduation, he had taken an advanced degree in Tactical Strategies and Weaponry, and served a three-year tour of duty aboard the U.S.S. Excelsior