Pathways - Jeri Taylor [231]
With an enormous hiss, the Underlier began to sink beneath the sands once more. It happened remarkably quickly as the great being sank down, down, down, to the black depths where there was no light, no air, nothing but the crushing weight of the sand.
Seleya and T’Khut were in their rightful place once more, stately and serene, as though a miracle had not just taken place.
The sehlat had disappeared.
Tuvok stood alone in the darkness, trying to hold on to what he had just experienced, but everything was dancing away from him, sparkling motes in the air that he tried to grasp but which eluded him and then dissolved into nothingness.
The silence was monstrous. He put his hand on his chest and felt his heart thundering against his ribs, and he took several deep breaths in an automatic response to bring it under control. Then he sat down to contemplate what had happened.
The vast insights of his experience had vanished. He no longer understood the universe, he no longer knew infinite truth. He couldn’t summon up the face of the Other. All that knowledge had been his for the briefest of instances, and then it disappeared beneath the sands with the Underlier.
But one thing that was revealed, he retained: the reason he had undertaken his journey. Though he hadn’t known it at the time, it was to see the Underlier, a’kweth, the repository of all knowledge. For one brief and transcendent moment, he, too, had possessed that knowledge, and if he no longer did, that was as it should be; man is too flimsy to bear the weight of that much wisdom. A half-second’s insight is almost too overwhelming, and one would surely perish if required to retain it any longer.
He had touched something holy, and he was fulfilled. He rose to his feet and continued marching resolutely toward Seleya, but in fact his passage was complete. He had held the infinite in his mind and no one could ask more than that.
Two days after that, when he emerged from the desert wilderness and came to the base of Seleya, he was greeted by a group of Vulcans who stared at him with barely concealed curiosity. He couldn’t imagine how he must look after having lived in the desert for months, but it was a sight that obviously had an impact on his normally stoic countrymen, who spoke to him uncertainly, as though believing he must be a madman. They seemed relieved when he responded lucidly, and when he related his adventure they were almost reverent in their awe, recognizing his feat as something unique and wondrous, something they would never attempt. They arranged for him to transport back to his home as soon as he had paid whatever obeisance he had planned to the sacred mountain.
But that was now irrelevant to him. Tuvok had made decisions. He could no longer live the life of an ascetic, and he must give something back to the universe in return for the gift it had shared with him. He would never abandon his family, for they completed him, but he would petition to rejoin Starfleet, and pledge his life toward exploration and investigation. A debt must be paid.
His reinstatement as an ensign might have been difficult for some people of his age to accept, but Tuvok saw it as a just decision. He had made his choice years ago to leave Starfleet; it should be he, not Starfleet, who paid the consequences.
His only impatience came with the schedule of his return to deep-space duty. Starfleet had seen fit to assign him to Headquarters, to serve on the review board as tactical officer, and he had spent months evaluating captains’ procedures with regard to weapons and tactics, a task requiring meticulous attention to detail, which suited his skills well. But it was also a limited and repetitive chore with little of particular challenge