Unification - Jeri Taylor [7]
“Is it possible he was abducted?”
“No. He wrapped up his affairs very carefully. He knew he was going.” Looking back, in the weeks since his disappearance, Perrin had realized what a calculated move Spock’s departure had been. His estate, his lands had been provided for in the form of a manager; his diplomatic functions had been brought to resolution. It made his behavior even more reprehensible to her.
“Do you have any idea why he might have disappeared like this?”
Perrin drilled him with a look. How could one ever know why Spock did anything? A more closed and private man she had never met. Sarek, by comparison, was voluble and communicative. She strained to keep her voice dispassionate as she answered. “Captain, as far as I’m concerned he disappeared a long time ago.”
She saw Picard’s surprised look and realized the bitterness in her voice had suggested more harshness than she intended.
Everything had been difficult about her relationship with Spock, right from the beginning. She had frankly not been prepared for life among the Vulcans. She thought she knew them well; at Skidmore University in upper New York State, she had Vulcan friends and always found their cool reserve comforting. Her own mercurial personality was balanced by the unflappable calm of her Vulcan companions, and she found it a pleasurable combination.
She was still not prepared for the impact of Sarek upon her life. She had traveled to Vulcan as a youthful historian, eager to become his amanuensis. The morning she met him she fell in love with him, a great lion of a man, powerful and urgent. That he apparently felt the same way about her still seemed a miracle. When she married Sarek, his son Spock was approx-imately four times her age.
She had no idea what Spock thought about her. He was polite, solicitous, and deferential. He could not be faulted for any of his behavior toward her. Yet for all she knew he might loathe her, so absent of any emotion was he in her presence.
Did he feel resentful that she had taken his mother’s place? Amanda had died years before, in old age—her human life span woefully shorter than the Vulcans’. Any child feels the loss of a parent, and Perrin feared she might be the natural recipient of any residual feelings Spock might be carrying about the absence of his mother. She had even tried to talk to him about it, hoping to clear the air and pave the way for a relationship that was comfortable, if not warm. But Spock had shut her off, clearly unwilling to discuss such intimate matters with her—politely, of course, but definitively. It was the last time she tried to have a personal conversation with him.
She could never even define the role she might play with him. “Stepmother” seemed almost grotesque for a child so much older than she. “Friend” had seemed a worthwhile goal, but she felt Spock precluded that. In the end, there was no definition that suited whatever it was they were to each other; she was simply Sarek’s wife.
But when Spock had disappeared, a wellspring of anger within her was tapped. For she was left behind to see what that unexplained departure had done to Sarek.
As though reading her mind, Picard turned back to her and said, “Would it be inappropriate to ask what happened between you and Spock?” She stared at him, emotions surging, wondering if she should sim-ply stay silent and leave. Much more of this and she would be in tears. She drew hard for air.
“Not between us. Between Spock and his father. They had argued for years; that was family. But when the debates over the Cardassian War began, he attacked Sarek’s position—publicly. He showed no loyalty to his father.” It had been a terrible time. It all came back to her now, Sarek’s quiet pain, his refusal to condemn his son, her own anger toward Spock.
“I was not aware,” said Picard carefully, “that Sarek was offended by Spock’s position.”
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