"Spock?" His voice was so quiet Picard could hardly hear him. "Yes. He"s missing."
There was a flicker in Sarek"s eyes. Picard hoped he was moving into the reality of the present from wherever he had been. "Is that you, Picard?" "Yes, my friend." Sarek looked at him like a bewildered child. "You came here... to Vulcan... "I need your help. I must find Spock."
Tears sprang to Sarek"s eyes. Picard realized that his emotions were so volatile, so fragile, that they could overwhelm him at any time. A strangled sob emerged from Sarek"s throat as he struggled for the control that was so elusive. "He is not here." "I know. He is reported on Romulus."
Now Sarek"s eyes focused on Picard. He was summoning concentration from some reserve deep with-in; the effort was considerable but he seemed determined to achieve it. "On Romulus. Why?"
"That"s what I hope to find out from you."
"On Romulus."
Sarek fell silent again, as though musing. But this time Picard did not sense a retreat from reality but rather a contemplation of the situation. When he looked at Picard again, his eyes were clear. It was remarkable. Picard was staring not at a feeble old man but at the legendary Sarek, a man in control of his faculties, mind strong and nimble. What did it cost him to achieve that control at this point in his disease?
"You"re going there, aren"t you?" Sarek queried. "To find him." "Yes."
Sarek brought himself upright. Purpose had given him strength and it was beginning to course through his veins. Picard felt as though he were watching someone awakening from the dead.
"Have you any idea what might have taken him to Romulus?"
"No."
"Is there anyone on Romulus whom he might knowor choose to contact?"
A vague memory seemed to stir within Sarek. "Pardek," he whispered. "Who is Pardek?"
"It could be Pardek..."
"Who is Pardek?"
Now Sarek was getting out of bed. His robe fell in folds around him, billowing around his legs as he began to pace.
Picard stared at him, not believing this transforma-tion.
"He is a Romulan senator. Spock has maintained a relationship with him over the years. I don"t know where they met. The Khitomer Conference, I"d imagine."
"Pardek represented Romulus?"
"Yes. Yes, I"m quite certain he did."
Sarek was striding around the room, leonine and magnificent, as lucid as he had been in his prime. Picard didn"t know quite how to handle this situation. He had no idea if Sarek could go on like this for hours or if he might collapse at any moment.
"In fact, I recall Spock coming to me with optimism about a continuing dialogue with the Romulans at one point. And I told him it was clearly an illogical expectation." Sarek smiled slightly and said, as though in an aside, "Spock is always so impressionable."
He walked to his magnificent wall of windows and gazed out at the Vulcan gardens, at the tan-and-ocher sweep of the desert to the red mountains in the distance. "This Romulan Pardek had no support at home. And of course, in the end, I was proven correct."
He turned and looked at Picard with a shrug, as though to say, How do you tell a child what to do?
"I tried to give him the benefit of experience, of logic," he said mildly, "but he never listened. He never listened..."
Picard saw Sarek losing the train of thought .as though it were a whiff of smoke rising in the air. He couldn"t be sure how much more he would get from the man. Clearly his lucidity was fragmentary at best. But he had to try. "It has been suggested that he may have defected."
Sarek fixed him with a stern glare. "Never. I can accept many things, but never that."
"But you believe he might be there to see Pardek?"
Sarek looked puzzled. "The Romulan senator? How do you know Pardek?"
"I"ve heard of him." Picard figured it wasn"t worth trying to retrace Sarek"s tortured steps. The old man was nodding, still pacing.
"That"s what he"s done. Gone to see Pardek."
"Do you know what business they could have together?"
"No." Sarek turned away and walked toward the bed, showing signs of exhaustion. "I never knew what Spock was doing. When he was a boy, he would disappear for days at a time. He would take his pet sehlat, I-Chaya, and climb into the mountains. His mother would be beside herself."
Sarek turned back toward Picard, who couldn"t tell if the man was recollecting the past or creating it. But Sarek seemed to have an urgent need to reveal what he was saying.
"I asked him where he had gone, what he did... he refused to answer. I insisted he tell me, but he would not. I forbade him to go~.. he ignored me. I punished him... he endured it silently. And always, he returned to the mountains."
His eyes sought Picard"s. "One might as well tell the river not to flow."
Picard saw that Sarek"s eyes were wet once more, tears welling up, threatening to overwhelm him. But still he needed to speak. "Secretly, I admired him... that proud core of him that would not yield..."
And then he was silent, tears coursing a path down his cheeks. Picard was incredibly moved. It was as though Sarek"s anguish were his own, and he was suffering as Sarek suffered. He even felt tears beginning to sting his eyes.
"Sarek, we are a part of each other. I know Spock has caused you pain. But I also know you love him." A cry burst from Sarek at this and he looked imploringly at Picard.
"Tell him, Picard..."
Then his eyes began to glaze over slightly, and Picard sensed a slight panic in the man as he struggled to maintain control for a moment longer. He looked toward his hand, lifted it, and tried to form the Vulcan salute. But his fingers wouldn"t obey. They trembled and shifted position and refused to go where they should. Gently, Picard reached over to him and put the fingers right. Sarek smiled and held the hand toward him. Picard formed the salute himselfi "Peace and long life, Sarek."
"Live long and... and..." He stopped, confused, his mind drifting. "Live long and..." His voice trailed off vaguely, his hand losing the salute and his mind losing reality. Sobs welled up in him and he turned away, stooped and frail, rampant emotions claiming him once more.
"Spock... my son..." He cried softly, choking with ineffable sadness and longing.
Picard felt a chill as he watched Sarek cry like a child, the name of his son occasionally punctuating his sobs. He knew it would be the last time he saw this man.
"And prosper," he whispered.
Chapter Four.
It is WRONO. A lifetime of discipline washed away, and in its place, bedlam... nothing but bedlam. And I am helpless to prevent it/I am old/Nothing left but dry bones and dead friends. Weary, so weary...
Picard"s eyes snapped open and inexplicably he found himself in his own bed in his quarters on the Enterprise. His heart was hammering in his chest and he could feel dampness on his cheeks from tears.
Slowly, he sat up, eyes adjusting in the darkness. It was his quarters, all right; the padd he had been using earlier was on the bedside stand where he had left it, with a half cup of now-cold tea nearby. Where had he been in his dream?
The memory was slipping away even now, an elusive wisp dancing just ahead of his grasp. He remembered being cold, unbearably cold... there was a sensation of torment and misery... overwhelming pa.s.sions crowding in on him, suffocating himm Sarek. That was it; he had revisited the mind meld.
Picard sat up in bed, far from sleep now. It was his habit to dissect disturbing dreams like this, to attack them head-on and process them completely. He believed that was the way to deal with these unbidden denizens of the night: haul them up into consciousness, look at them, explore them, probe them, make them such a part of the rational mind that they could never again descend into the depths of the unconscious.
That he was connected to Sarek in some profound, indescribable way he did not doubt. That this connection should invade his dreams did not seem odd. What it portended for his encounter with Spock, should that occur, he did not know. That realization made him uneasy. Picard preferred to feel certainty, and there was almost nothing in this mission that allowed him that luxury. He was afloat in a landscape of strange, mystic possibilities that his mind could not even grasp, much less control. That wasn"t the way he liked to do things.
He sat up in bed and reached for the padd. He needed to focus his mind, to deal with realities- things precise and tangible. He worked for a few moments, refining the plan he had concocted. He thought it workable, though risky. The most difficult part of it would probably be in persuading Admiral Brackett to approve it.
But he did have a few ideas about that.
His face on her viewscreen was affable and confident. To Admiral Brackett, that meant he was about to present her with some proposition that was dangerous, unwieldy, intractable-or some combination of all three.
She adored this man.
"Yes, Jean-Luc"-she smiled, in her most earnest manner-"how can I help you?"
"Admiral." He smiled. "I have visited Vulcan, and talked with Spock"s father and stepmother."
"Yes?"
"They were unable to give me any real insight into Spock"s motives for going to Vulcan. However, I learned from Sarek the name of a Romulan senator with whom he might have been in contact."
"Who is that?"
"His name is Pardek."
"Yes. Pardek."
"You know of him?"
"A senator... he has the reputation of being a moderate."
"So I gather."
"Then-you would make contact with Pardek?"
"Yes. Admiral... getting through the Neutral Zone and to Romulus is not a simple task." "Of course not." "I have a plan, but you will need to approve it." Every finely honed instinct in Admiral Brackett went on alert with that statement. Even though Picard tried to speak of it casually, this "plan" sounded alarming. "Let me outline it for you," continued Picard. "Please don"t," replied Brackett. Picard"s face on the viewscreen was quizzical.
"Jean-Luc-I very strongly suspect I don"t want to know this plan of yours." "But, Admiral, I must have your approval." "You have it." "Pardon me?" "My approval. You have it." "I see." "Any further questions?"
There was a long moment, and Brackett held his look imperturbably. Picard was no fool. He realized that her blanket approval also meant that if anything were to go wrong, she would disavow the entire mission. But she was sure it was the only way she could give him the freedom he needed to complete this most delicate of a.s.signments.
Was that a faint smile she saw on his lips? Maybe, maybe not. But finally, he responded in the most even of tones. "No, Admiral, no more questions. I think we understand each other perfectly."
She nodded toward him and the transmission ended. Have a safe journey, Jean-Luc. I wouM miss you terribly if you did not return.
Picard"s spirits lifted as soon as he entered the small, private room just off the bridge that served as his office. He knew there were many on board who were uncomfortable here; it could be a bit claustro-phobic, especially when the captain"s will (or the captain"s ire) was at its most potent. It had been described to him by Will Riker as an experience in which all the available oxygen in the room seemed to have been absorbed by the captain"s forcefulhess, leaving the recipient literally struggling to breathe. Picard had smiled at this, not displeased.
To him, the ready room was sanctuary. It reminded him of his mother"s closet at home in France, near the village of Labarre. He had discovered that room as a very young boy; it was large for a closet, and for some reason possessed a window high on one wall. It provided enough light for reading, and young Jean-Luc would spend hours in there, safely nestled behind the rack of clothing, reading books and fantasizing about his future.
Often, as he hid there, he would hear his father or his older brother, Robert, calling for him. They wanted him to help in the vineyards, of course, but Jean-Luc"s dreams were not of earth but of the stars. He would be up there one day, he was sure of it, riding the heavens in a s.p.a.ceship. What purpose would it serve now to tend the grapes?
His father had plenty of answers to that question, and whenever Jean-Luc reappeared his father would be irate, demanding to know where he had been. But he never told. He would no longer have had his sanctuary if he had.
I asked him where he had gone... he refused to answer. I insisted he tell me... but he would not. And always, he returned to the mountains.
Sarek"s words flashed into his mind and Picard drew an involuntary gulp of air as he realized the parallel. Spock and Sarek, he and his father... fathers and sons...
The door chimed and Picard was drawn out of his reverie. "Come," he said.
Lieutenant Commander Data entered. "You wanted to see me, sir?" he asked, waiting patiently for the captain"s orders.
Picard turned to his second officer. The pale android gazed calmly at him through his golden eyes; Picard realized he had been in a momentary reverie and had quite forgotten that he had requested Data"s presence. That wasn"t like him. He worked to clear his mind, address the matters at hand.
"I"d like your help, Mr. Data, in preparing for my journey to Romulus." "I would be happy to be of a.s.sistance, sir." Picard could do all of this himself, of course. But he enjoyed sharing sessions of information retrieval. He often summoned Will Riker for that purpose, and as frequently turned to Data. He found the android officer an ideal backboard off which to bounce ideas, theories, hypotheses. The fact that Data was a synthetic rather than a biological being meant that his responses came uncluttered with human emotion. That gave them a purity of reason that was usually helpful and, on occasion, stunningly insightful.
"I"d like you to access Starfleet records on Romulan legislators."
"Yes, sir. Anyone in particular?"
"His name is Pardek. He"s a senator."
"Sir, I believe I know why our messages are not being answered."
Picard frowned slightly at this statement from his Klingon chief of security, Lieutenant Worf, standing now at his tactical station on the bridge. Picard had come to an aft station to review the material Data had acc.u.mulated.
For three days now, as they had been warping toward the Klingon home world-the first phase of his plan to get to Romulus-they had been trying to reach Gowron, head of the High Council. In that Picard and his crew were directly responsible for Gowron"s coming to power, he doubted that the Klingon chief was ignoring him. He had his hands full, no doubt, since seizing the reins after the disastrous civil war that had rent the Empire. In a nation where treachery and a.s.sa.s.sination were a matter of course, any leader needed to keep his wits about him and his eyes on his back.
The tumultuous days of the Klingon strife came flooding over Picard, and for a moment he felt as though he were once again ensnared in the political machinations of the Klingon Empire.
And once again as though he were confronting the Romulan known as Sela.
This woman had haunted his memories ever since their encounter near the Klingon home world-this apparition, this inexplicable creature. She was the adroit and skillful commander of a Romulan fleet which had attempted to influence the outcome of the Klingon war, and had almost succeeded.
More incredibly, she claimed to be the daughter of Tasha Yar, Picard"s chief of security who had died on an away mission some years ago-and who certainly died without ever having had a daughter.
But Sela looked exactly like Tasha. Her hair was close-cropped and shaped in the Romulan fashion, but it was the same honey blond as Tasha"s, and the jewel-blue eyes were uncomfortably familiar. It was Tasha"s face staring at him from the viewscreen, and Tasha"s long-limbed body which had paced restlessly around his ready room.