I hear a door hiss open and footsteps again approach. "Spock, it is I,
Hiroko. I am so sorry. I never thought Ryu would do such a thing. He
was supposed to take care of you! I almost lost you..."
I hear her weep. Moisture for me?
"No, mistress." This cannot be allowed."Do not cry. It
was...unavoidable. You had no way of knowing, nor did I. I thank you
for taking my friends from that place. They will serve you well,
Mistress." I cannot help my coughing spasm. My lungs will not allow
long speech, apparently.
I hear Hiroko crouch by my head and she touches my face, gently."I can
only stay for a few moments, but I have an incentive for you to get
well, Spock. Come," she says to someone behind me and then she is gone,
and I feel fingers on my meld points.
//T'Pel!// Almost, I speak aloud. Can it be so?
//Husband. I am here. She has bought me, and brought me to you. And
more. We have a beautiful daughter, husband. I have named her
T'Amanda.//
A small hand brushes my face and I breathe in the scent of baby skin.
Coppery, clean, a scent of spice. Delightful. Illogical, but it smells
very good. "T'Amanda?" I speak aloud. "I am your father."
"Father!", a small voice cries. "My father. Hurt?"
T'Pel answers her."Yes, T'Amanda. Father hurt. Don't touch there." I
hear movement as she breaks the meld."Husband. We must go. T'Vela will
be very annoyed. I love you."
"T'Pel. I am ...gratified." I sleep, then.
After I come out of my healing trance and am able to sit up and rejoin
the household, Tes tells me that Hiroko has been beside herself with
worry. It is not logical. I am one out of millions of slaves, many kept
in intolerable conditions as I have found. It is not useful for her to
choose to just rescue one of us, or five, in our case. There are so
many others.
It is, however, pleasant to be in a place where I am warm and fed. I do not think I will take such for granted again.
T'Vela only allows me to stay up for limited times during the day. As
soon as she indicates that I can, I begin holding my daughter and
teaching her the Speech, admonishing her that she may not speak it
aloud. She has a fine mind. Her grasp of Standard is quite good; her
vocabulary grows daily. She is still in diapers, as her body is not yet
ready for control. I think as soon as her body catches up, this will
change. She does not like being dirty.
When I am confined to bed, T'Vela is aiding me in healing. When I am
judged strong enough, she uses a dermal regenerator set at deep healing
to mend the scar tissue so that I will suffer no permanent damage.
Hiroko insists that cosmetic healing be done as well. My body will show
no effect from the abuse it suffered. With the healing of the body,
though, the other hurt surfaces. Apparently I have not managed to deal
with it sufficiently.
It is Tes who notices first that my nightmares have returned, oddly
enough. He insisted on sleeping near my bed for the first weeks
while I healed, and no one was able to keep him away. So it is that
when I have the first dreams and wake sweating and crying out, he is
there.
Tes tells me that he too had been a victim of the gangs in his first
days, until he had acquired a friend. He had thought that the one who
protected him wanted some favors of his own at first; such was not
unknown in that population where women and men were kept separated
except for the mingling day. But his friend, who had been a gentle
Romulan, captured in one of the raids, had protected him purely out of
friendship. Both Rihannsu and Andor had been warrior peoples, now
brought down to the level of slaves in this
Empire. Both felt a kinship.
When his friend had died, Tes says he had been alone for a tenday. He
says he had been attacked again, and that Dezeen had helped him heal
within, in the mind.
He wants to talk.
I shrug."There is nothing about which to talk, Tes."
"Damn Vulcan pride. You think there aren't scars inside? You need to get it out."
"Tes. I am a Vulcan. I am healed."
"You can lie to the mistress. She doesn't know. You can lie to your
wife and that old woman. You can lie to the healer. But I'm your
friend. I know. Deezen, she knows. We healed each other. You must share
your pain, Spock. Only then can you know peace again."
I hold my face still. Is it so obvious? It was not what was done to my
body that has hurt. That is only the body and has healed. It is the
loss of control, the humiliation. Always before I had autonomy of
myself. It has been my choice, to submit or not to submit. I could not
fight back. I could not see my attackers. I could not guard against it
happening again. I was reliving it, day by day. And I did not know how
to change this. My tenuous hold on safety and stability, illusory
though it might be, had been thoroughly shaken.
And yes, I was having nightmares. I had done so as a child. It was made
clear to me that Vulcans do not dream. We do not have nightmares.
Always, this had been blamed on my human blood. It had taken me years
to master the disciplines enough to stop them. Now when I needed my
control most, it had slipped from me again.
Tes touches my arm."Spock. Share this pain with me. It will help you
move beyond it. Know that you're safe again. Don't let them destroy who
you are. They are bullies. They delight in the pain, but you must not
let them win."
My hand trembles again. I still it. "Logical. I have been...afraid. You
are quite perceptive, Tes. I had thought to deny that this happened,
but it is not logical to lie to myself. Nor is it logical to expect a
repeat. I think you have helped me more than you know. I must meditate,
learn to accept the pain, and move beyond it."
I hear a smile in Tes' voice."Yes. It takes time, but you just have to
deal with it. We're all safe now. It's the best situation a slave can
have. We can't be attacked here, and we're warm and fed well. And I am
with Deezen. I didn't think I'd be with her..or she with me. So you
must tell yourself you have more than your family to live for."
"I have never before known an Andorian whose logic was as well grounded
as yours, Tes. I will certainly spend time examining this memory and
removing the emotions associated with it."
"I think I learned from you, Spock," Tes answers in a somber voice."You
know, I helped you for selfish reasons. I knew the bullygangs go after
singletons like myself and like you. I reasoned that if they thought we
were together, we'd be less likely to be attacked. Either of us."
"Flawlessly logical, Tes. They did not attack until I was vulnerable and alone. You could not know this would happen."
"I should have warned you. I, too, was a coward. I didn't know it would
happen, but I knew it could have. You did not. I thought you had some
experience. You seemed so self-assured, except for not seeing what you
were doing or where you were going. In a way, I suppose it might be
considered my fault."
"No, Tes. If you had warned me, it would have made no difference. I had
no control over where I was put to heal. And you were working. You
could not guard me."
"Guard him from what?" Unseen by myself, unheard by either of us, Hiroko has entered the room. "Answer, Spock."
I shake my head slowly. "Please Mistress. It is over."
"What is over, Spock? What happened there that you aren't telling me?"
Tes speaks before I can formulate a denial. "Mistress. Things were not
easy in that place.It's not fit that you should know some of it."
"Hmph. I think I need to know. I know my brother is sometimes harsh,
but it doesn't make sense to mistreat workers. I've always been taught
that slaves are well-treated for the most part. I'm starting to think
most of what I've been taught about slaves is a lie. I can handle the
truth now. Tell me."
I take a deep breath. Perhaps it is time to shatter her illusions. I
sketch in my experiences in that place. Tes adds to my telling, letting
our mistress know that deaths are common in that place and a slave's
life is cheap.
She is quiet and I wonder what is in her face. Humans are normally so
expressive. It is useful to be able to see that in their
expressions.This is not possible for me now.
"I will need time to think about this. But both of you...Spock, are you all right?"
"I will be, Mistress.I will need to...disperse my anger. It will be
controlled."
"Controlled, or supressed?"
"Controlled, Mistress. It would hardly be logical to simply suppress
emotion. One embraces one's passions and moves beyond them, lest one increase entropy. There is a Vulcan word. "Kaiidth"
which means that what is, is. It is not logical to ignore facts simply because one does not like them."
What I do not tell her is that I myself am often guilty of doing just
that. It is a tendency I have fought all my life, thinking it is my
human half which causes me to falter in this most elementary of
disciplines. I often feel shame at this weakness, which is itself proof
of my failure, illogical though it is. I have not moved beyond it, and
I must.
I find that though it seems thoroughly illogical, to have spoken of
what transpired helps me to remove the emotions associated with it and
simply store the memory, clear as it is, without the fear and rage.
I have also spoken to T'Pel, wishing to find out what happened to her.
She tells me that everyone gathered in the kitchen for the first
night's meal spoke one by one of the kindnesses I had done for them.
They all seemed to miss me, she says, even the laundry workers. I had
not done so much that I expected gratitude of any type. It was logical
to reduce suffering where I could.
She tells me that although she continued doing her maid duties, that
her mistress seemed to feel guilty for something, and she often caught
her staring at her belly as it grew, when she thought T'Pel wasn't
looking. And she told of how one day she was summoned and told she was
being sold. She had wound up in another field and had delivered the
infant while working, bound her to her breast, and with a rag tied
around her middle to stop her
postpartum bleeding had gone back to work. While it had been winter she
had been put to work making slave garments, often having to have the
child next to her, calming her by mind touch. And one day, Hiroko had
found her and offered her owners twice what she knew she was worth to
secure her and the child. "She paid full price for T'Amanda, too,
husband. They were happy to have it. And here I am."
The Andorians, too, seem happy, as I understand the emotion. Deezen
says she wished to have a child at first, but without the other two
sexes, unavailable to either of them, it was impossible. Now, she is
happy she and Tes are alone. I cannot fault her. I would not have
allowed the conception of my daughter had I thought to control possible
fertility. I had been careless, and I should have instructed T'Pel in
ways to do this. Illogically, I am gratified I did not, however. My
daughter has become precious to me.
T'Vela has gone, pronouncing me healed, and Hiroko is allowing me
access to the computer again. I had thought that she might restrict me
now that we have found my wife, but evidentally she has decided that I
may make use of this most valuable resource. I do not know if she has
any inkling of what I am doing, or why. She has said she does not wish
me to tell her anything I
do not wish to. I take that to mean she does not wish to know if I do anything prohibited by law. I am careful.
Each day before I sit at the console, Hiroko unlocks my security
bracelet. I have two hours each day in which to do my
work—programming more worms and gaining access to more
datastreams. I am still alert for anyone with my level of expertise
finding any of my backdoors. So far none of the programmers seem to
understand this technology as well as I do, thankfully.
The computers themselves in this place are of Orion design, but whoever
the designer is, that person is no longer maintaining the software. I
do not relax my vigilance, however. So my methods are slow, but
careful. I cannot allow any of my work to fall into Imperial hands.
Nothing must point to its origin, and no work can stay on the machine.
This means out of two hours of work, fully two point five of it is
spent on encryptian and data destruction. If anything became traceable,
Hiroko's fortune would be subject
to confiscation, she would be imprisoned, and all of us would be destroyed. That cannot be allowed to happen.
So I will take as much time as I need to. What I plan is nothing less
than sedition, as well as an escape route to either get back home or
find an alternate place for all of us to live while we and our families
wait out the Empire's internal rot taking hold. Either is treason.
I have gleaned an internal map of the Empire. I have found where the
wars are, which borders are being defended, and which star systems are
unguarded. None of this is common knowledge. But it seems that while
the Empire's weapons technology is cutting edge, thanks in part to the
competition and sometimes grudging cooperation with Klinzhai and with
Orion's help, the
Empire is thinly stretched. Internally they are giving more
independence to the worlds under their rule, worlds which are dependant
on slave labor for their economy.
They cannot rely on cultural conditioning forever, nor are the collars
undefeatable. They can be removed with the proper tools. Those tools
are not generally freely available, but they can be found. And I have
found more evidence of rebellions here and there, even though they are
swiftly and unmercifully punished. This keeps slaves in line for a
time, but when faced with a worse alternative, even the most servile of
beings eventually fights
back.
And there are many more Andorian slaves than there are humans ruling
them. Andor itself was a warrior empire before it was conquered. If
those slaves rise up, the Empire will crumble even without the
compromise to its economy. There must be a way to apply a push. If a
way could be found to neutralize the collars, some device to jam the
frequencies used to apply the pain, then
any uprisings would stand a better chance of succeeding. I add another item to my agenda.
I pass this on to T'Pau. It is difficult to research without using any
machinery to develop prototypes. All we can do is test by theory. But it is necessity.
I believe it is time to also begin teaching the Andorians what I know.
It is regrettable that we cannot drill with weaponry. Andorians were
known for their skill in bladed weapons.
And such may someday be needed.