Title: After the Rescue

Part: NEW 50/73

Author: Karmen Ghia, karmen_ghia@yahoo.com

Series: TOS

Romance Code: S/Mc and then some.

Rating: NC-17

Appendices: http://members.tripod.com/karmen_ghia/atrappendices.html

See part one for disclaimers, etc.

"Well done, Maja!" Was all SaBrzia had to say when the events of St. Gozine's trial were relayed to him.

"Indeed," SiJidi agreed. "I wonder if he will come here to collect the Commune? I understand that now they've been restored to their former position in the Empire, they can return there."

"I rather hope they finish refurbishing the house before they go." SaBrzia referred to the Commune's latest project: restoring the decrepit Sa mansion to its former glory.

Qhoshi had settled her charges as best she could. Jir's theater company was in a large house where they could make lots of noise and not annoy very many Vulcans. Hobie's shipbuilders were in a huge warehouse complex belonging to Talljet Inc. in the Port of Vulcan. Armed with a letter from Ling in hand, Qhoshi had gone to the Sa mansion and been completely stumped as to how to get inside. The front door of the mansion had been overgrown with thorny vines for as long as most Vulcans could remember. Everyone used the back gate and kitchen door to enter and exit, but one had to know this. Qhoshi, who'd never been on Vulcan in her life, of course didn't know this and so stood puzzling in the street for some time before an upper storey window opened.

"Are you lost, woman?" an elderly Vulcan man asked her.

"No, sir, I want to come in. I work for Ling Talljet. He sent me." Qhoshi scanned him but only got her scan bounced back off his shields.

Another window opened and another elderly Vulcan looked out at her.

"I say, aren't you Qhoshi? One of Ling's 'girls'?" The Vulcan studied her. "You vid-called here one day for him and I answered. Do you remember."

Qhoshi didn't but said she did: "Yes! Of course. But I've forgotten your name. My shocking memory."

"Oh, not so shocking since we were never introduced." The Vulcan leaned out the window and gestured to the door set inconspicuously in the wall. "Go in there and come round through the garden. We'll let you in."

Qhoshi heaved a small sigh of relief and stepped through the gate into an overgrown jungle. The Sas kept a narrow path to the back door cleared but the rest was impassable. Few beings were old enough to remember when it had been a very lovely garden.

Qhoshi followed the path around the side of the house and looked through a window into a deserted kitchen. She stood uncertainly by the door, waiting, as good manners dictated, to be asked in. She waited. She waited some more.

"Hello...?" the Yzreinaina called. No answer. Putting aside her manners she pushed the door open and stepped inside. No one in the kitchen. Feeling like a sneak thief, she crossed it and peeked into the next room. It was empty. Not quite empty; in the shadows of an alcove, Qhoshi could see another elderly Vulcan dozing by what must be, based on its position, the overgrown front door. Qhoshi, feeling nervous, an extremely unusual state for her, stepped into the room and looked around.

It was a good sized room. Stone floors and walls, a dark room where the outside light seemed to give up on it only a few feet from the windows, also overgrown with thorny vines. There were some lamps lit even though it was a typical blinding Shirkar midday. The furniture was an overstuffed variety and was scattered around the room in a nonsensical maze. Since it was impossible to cross in a straight line, Qhoshi found herself tripping over cushions, readers, musical instruments, plates, cups and bunched up rugs as she wended her way to the dozing old male.

'I feel I've entered another reality or something,' she thought. "Excuse me, sir," she said briskly.

"AHHHHHH!" The elderly Vulcan leapt to his feet.

Qhoshi, startled, tripped over a snarled up rug and landed on her back where she lay, looking up at the old man.

"Who are you?" he demanded, looming over her.

"I'm Qhoshi. I work for Ling, Ling Talljet...."

"Yes, yes yes. I know Ling - know him well." He looked up at the other old man who joined him.

"Who is this girl?"

"Says she's Qhoshi."

"Oh." And he stepped around her and walked away.

"I....." Qhoshi began.

"What goes on down here? I thought I heard a female." Another elderly Vulcan joined them.

"Yes, I too, thought I heard a female. Speaking Standard with a non Federation accent." A third male joined the group standing over Qhoshi.

"Sriri, I refuse to believe you can recognize every accent in the Federation."

"I can; I'll prove it. Girl, where are you from?"

"Yzreinaia."

"Is it in the Federation?"

"No."

"There!"

"Chance, that's all. There are more planets outside the Federation than in it."

"Nonsense."

"Excuse me, but...."

"What other languages do you speak, woman?"

"Ahm, Klingonese...."

"Good, very good."

"Deltan...."

"Lovely language."

"Rather useless, I think. Yes, what else?"

"Yzreinian...."

"A Rom based dialect."

"No, it's not," Qhoshi defended her mother tongue. "Cmovian..."

"What is that?"

"It's hard to describe...."

"Try."

"It's a telepathic language. More based on a rhythmic sequence drone sound than the psycho associations of word symbols."

"Fascinating."

"Remarkable."

"Is it similar to the Magidrian Patois?"

"No, it is not."

There was a silence as the old men waited for the supine woman to do what Patois speakers simply don't do: reveal something about the language to non Patois speakers.

"I see. Therefore you must speak the Patois if you can compare it to Cmovian. Correct?"

"Yes." Qhoshi had by this time decided to lie there as long a necessary.

"Any other languages?"

"Ocacatarian..."

"Unusual."

"... and a few dialects as well as a Rom Creole they speak out Xochian way."

"Is that all?"

"It's all I've ever needed."

"Then you've come to the right place."

"For what, sir?"

"To study the languages you lack."

"But I haven't come to study..."

"No? Why then are you here?"

Qhoshi drew a patient breath: "I work for Ling Talljet..."

"Oh? Are you one of his 'girls'?"

"Yes, and ....."

"We've never had one of those here before."

"I see, and...."

"Someone should let SaBrzia know one of Ling's 'girls' is here." No one, however, moved.

"That's whom I need to see..."

"SaBrzia? Why ever?"

"Ling sent me to...."

"Why is this lady lying on our floor, cousins?" asked a fourth elderly Vulcan just arriving on the scene.

"I found her this way."

"She tripped."

"Oh, there you are Qhoshi!" The Vulcan that had directed her to the garden door joined them. "Sorry to keep you waiting. I just wanted to finish the chapter before I came down. You know how an unfinished chapter haunts you. Well! Would you like to stand?" He offered her a hand up.

"Yes, thanks," she said, rising. "Look, Mr.... ah ...sir... I..."

"Please call me SaCriz."

"Mr. SaCriz...."

"No, no. Just SaCriz."

"Sir, I have come ...."

"And this is Sriri, SoLri, SerNera, and our doorkeeper, Svurek."

"Very nice to meet you all." Qhoshi waited politely to see if she would now be allowed to finish her message. "Ling sent me to ask if the Gozshedrefreingin Commune and his 'house' could stay here until things quiet down in non-aligned space and we can go home again?" came out in a rush.

"Hmmm." SaCriz studied her for a moment. "Wait here while I ask SaBrzia." He disappeared up a wide, cluttered staircase.

"If the Gozshedrefreingin Commune comes here, will Maja come home?" Sriri asked her.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what Mr. Talljet's plans are at this time." Qhoshi didn't want to discuss the Talljet's losing battles with their former territories. "I'm only responsible for settling the Talljet dependents in safety."

"How many in the Commune?" SoLri asked.

"Thirty-six."

"That's a lot," Svurek said, looking around the cramped room.

"We'll have to move a few things around," SerNera said, also eyeing the room.

"Not if they clean out the back of the house, no, not really." Sriri opined. "We've plenty of room here, we just haven't been in it for over a hundred Standard years."

"Why not?" Qhoshi asked.

"There are only nine of us left, ten if you count the SaBrzia. We don't need and can't maintain the entire house." He waved vaguely toward the debris strewn staircase.

Qhoshi took another look around her. In her initial consternation, she'd not really noticed much about the house. From the outside, it seemed to end in the vine covered hill behind it. Hard to tell from the overgrown garden. Looking around her, Qhoshi now realized the house was the hill and as she recalled, it was a very very big hill. She had also noticed that, unlike most houses in Shirkar, which were crammed together and shared garden walls, this one was on the outskirts of the center in a quasi industrial area with many decaying and abandoned buildings scattered in open fields. This seemed an odd thing for a city like Shirkar but Qhoshi could not know that the fashionable part of the city had migrated east a thousand years previously to intentionally leave the old families stranded in the west. What Qhoshi mistook for abandoned industrial buildings were actually the decaying fortress mansions of the Ser, Si, Su and So families, which, like the Sas, were left to the older generation to ramble in while the younger members made their way in modern Vulcan. Oddly, even the younger members migrated back to the old homes when they reached a certain age, as if drawn by history. Legend had it that the original cave and spring was beneath each house, that was how long the old families had held their turf. And since the advent of the Surakian dictatorship after the war of logical aggression, it was all the turf they had left.

But Qhoshi didn't know this and wouldn't know it until Ling told her much later.

She turned to see SaCriz coming down the stairs toward her, his face unreadable.

"He said yes."

* * *

'Oh, my Maja!' Sarek had thought, steepling his fingers over his chest in satisfaction. 'How well you know your Klingons.'

On his way home, Sarek was served a subpoena to appear in the Shirkar Federation Court #3 in the trial of Hobie Talljet. He was to be a witness for the defense.

* * *

Qhoshi had indeed settled the Gozshedrefreingin Commune, Hobie's children, Jir's children and her own colleagues into the old Sa mansion. Masters Whilla, Pzchaz and Khat immediately put the Commune to work clearing and cleaning the back part of the house. To alleviate their boredom, Qhoshi's colleagues helped out. Farro, who loved to garden, was put in charge of a band of vulcanoids to clean up the garden. It was Farro's kind of project - monumental and nearly hopeless.

Getting Malira on the planet had been more interesting. Ultimately they settled on making her a Nzrealian banker seeking development funding for infrastructure in the Tasilinian Association, a newer member of the Federation, for a consortium of unspecified business people. Malira played her part by keeping her mouth shut and everything seemed to be working out fairly well. She'd even gone brunette to be less conspicuous.

None of the Vulcans recognized Lady Amanda among the Commune. The old men were not interested in society and would not have known who the Lady Amanda was had not T'Pau arrived one day to speak to her.

"T'Pau! You're here, what a surprise. How'd you get in here?" SiRond went on at her. They had known each other in their youth.

"The kitchen garden, as usual." T'Pau dispensed with the traditional Vulcan greeting as the old families did not use it. They avoided anything developed by the followers of Surak or his descendants. They avoided his descendants unless they could not avoid them, like now. T'Pau knew this and tried to make her entry as gentle as possible. "I've come to speak to Lady Amanda."

"And who is she?"

T'Pau thought about this. Technically Lady Amanda was no longer part of the clan T'Pau but the old woman was not ready to forget her. "I understand she is with the Gozshedrefreingin Commune."

"Oh. They're all in the back, T'Pau. Can you find your way back there?"

"Back where, SiRond?"

"In or near the ballroom."

"Yes. I remember the way." She nodded to the old man and turned to go.

"Don't trip on anything, T'Pau." SiRond warned vaguely.

"I shall endeavor not to, SiRond."

T'Pau progressed her way into the house and met Amanda, brushing the dust out of some draperies, in one of the parlors half way to the back entrance of the ballroom. The front entrance had been impassable for longer than Sarek had been alive.

"Live long and prosper, Amanda."

"Peace and long life, T'Pau." Amanda waited for the older woman to open the conversation as was the custom in clan T'Pau.

"Are you well?"

"Yes. Will you sit down? I'll bring some tea." Amanda brushed off her hands and went in search of clean cups and fresh tea.

T'Pau looked around her. She hadn't been in this house since she was a little girl and her great-grandfather had come here to visit SaKoza the Beautiful. Ostensibly, T'Pau's great-grandfather visited SaKoza, who was fluent in old Vulcan, to learn that language from him. The reality was a little more complex. Except for now, with the Talljet money, and a small bump of prosperity a thousand years after the civil war, when they had sold the water rights and western end of Shirkar to the city, the Sa fortunes had been in decline. It was therefore the Sa's practice to more or less sell whatever talent and beauty their children possessed to the highest bidder. This was, in fact, a very subtle arrangement. For example, T'Pau's great-grandfather was once informed that SaKoza would be too busy to see him because he was at work on a translation that would be sold to pay off a lien on the country estate. This lien was immediately paid by T'Pau's great-grandfather and his thrice weekly visits to SaKoza resumed. Various wealthy clans had paid for the education of entire Sa generations. And so on. Usually the level of generosity extended to clothing, furniture, tasteful jewels and paying off the various accumulated debts the ancient threadbare clan ran up. SaKoza was hardly exploited. He'd been raised to respect his intelligence first and then his beauty and to make good use of both. T'Pau's great-grandfather had been raised to respect intelligence and beauty and further, to support it in all ways if necessary. Besides, what else was money for if not to propagate such worthy causes? It was unfortunate that he was the last of the House of Surak to act on these lofty ideals. The younger members, most notably T'Pau's aunt when she became matriarch, had a more hardheaded and practical approach to the arts and finance. Therefore the contact between the clans was discouraged after T'Pau's great-grandfather died. SaKoza taught the ancient language to a generation of Vulcans and later went off to study the pre-conquest architecture of the Ossipira tribe in the Porglosta system. Many years later T'Pau heard that he died peacefully in his sleep there. She remembered seeing a portrait of SaKoza somewhere in the house and wondered if it was still here. She would have liked to compare Hobie to the portrait of SaKoza. If memory served her, SaKoza was the greater beauty, but she had been a child last time she'd seen SaKoza and some of her ideas had changed since then.

"I was told you were here." Smvit broke into the old woman's reverie. "It's been a long time, T'Pau."

"Indeed, Smvit." She looked at her old playmate. They had run up and down these halls while her great-grandfather had his Old Vulcan lesson. "Are you well?"

"Yes, quite. You?"

"Yes."

"What brings you to us again?"

"The Lady Amanda."

"Who?"

"A member of my family."

"Oh. What's she doing here? Officially, we avoid your family because of Spock's mistreatment of Maja. Unofficially, if Maja was stupid enough to become entangled with a creature like Spock, he got whatever suffering he deserved and it's nothing to do with any of us."

T'Pau sighed in her mind. Nothing was ever simple, straightforward or black and white with the old families, especially the Sas. She briefly considered not telling Smvit that Amanda was Spock's mother but decided that it would be worse if he found out another way.

"In that case she should slap your face, old woman."

"Why, old man?"

"For trying to kill her son."

"'A creature like Spock'? I thought you held him in low esteem."

"I do, both he and Maja were, I assume still are, idiots. However, we Vulcans gave up the concept of living sacrifice to abstract concepts long before that parvenu Surak rolled into our midst."

"Clarify."

"Gladly. You were willing to let Spock die or let him kill that stupid Terran and then die merely to uphold the barbaric bonding practice you nouveau families enjoy so much."

"The bonding is a necessary part of the Surakian code."

"If you follow fads, yes."

"A FAD?"

"Yes, T'Pau, old girl, a fad. Your bonding, your truncated names, your cult of logic, your high council, your streamlined language, your obsession with sex, and your gauche little houses all shoved together in the west are a fad. It's impossible to take you new Vulcans seriously since StiSurak lopped the Sti off his name and destroyed his ancient clan. You can't just cut the past off like that. It's unnatural." Smvit folded his hands serenely.

This was an old argument and one T'Pau had with every member of the old families whenever she found herself trapped with them. There was only one way out - it was brutal, effective and necessary: "You old families do realize that you, in fact, lost the Vulcan civil war, do you not?"

"That, of course, was the official outcome. However, considering the quality of life we old families continue to enjoy, I would not be so sure we were entirely the losers of that conflict."

T'Pau looked carefully around the decaying room: "Indeed," she said coldly.

"I've brought the tea," Amanda, who'd never heard T'Pau speak to anyone like that in her life, said nervously from the door.

"So you have, girl," Smvit said pleasantly, taking the tray from her and setting it on the table. "I didn't know you were Spock's mama," he said waving the women to chairs and pouring for them.

"Oh, yes. You remember him here?"

"Oh, yes. Vividly."

T'Pau arched an eyebrow but remained silent.

"I understand Jir and Hobie will be arriving in a few days," she said to Amanda after a few sips of tea. "Storen, Jir's law partner, has served the Vulcan Interplanetary Ministry with a subpoena for classified documents regarding Sarek's negotiations in the Miska system. Apparently Jir intends to base part of his defense on the idea that Hobie was acting as Sarek's spy in non-aligned space."

"Is that impossible, T'Pau?" Smvit asked.

"No. But I find it distasteful and incredible that Sarek could require such actions as those of which Hobie is suspected. It will also be very difficult for the Vulcan Interplanetary Ministry to prove that it was not running Hobie as a spy through Sarek."

"Yes, indeed," Smvit said serenely. "Storen himself was here yesterday to warn us that there might be some unpleasantness brought up in the trial but he did not tell us what. How interesting that you should fill us in."

"I merely wish to inform Amanda of the possibility of, as you say, unpleasantness." T'Pau blandly informed him. "Not only for Sarek but also for Spock."

"How for Spock?" Amanda asked.

"The defense will try to prove that Hobie, accompanied by Maja, left Vulcan to spy for Sarek. The prosecution, however, will try to prove that Maja, accompanied by Hobie, left Vulcan because of Spock, thus disproving the spy defense. I do not know what measures will be taken to ascertain the latter case."

"I had hoped all the uproar about that was over and done with," Amanda said grimly. "I suppose it will all be dragged out again. Poor Maja."

"Yes, poor Maja," Smvit commiserated. "It must be dreadful to be the most powerful being in the Klingon Empire and have your youthful indiscretions blasted all over the Federation. Especially if they were as ridiculous as forming an intense but misguided attachment to Spock cha'Sarek."

"Yes, misguided." Amanda decided to ignore most of the insult to her son. "Poor Maja could certainly have benefited from closer supervision than he received in his youth."

"Yes, poor Maja," Smvit said coolly. "Bad luck he wound up in the same class as Spock."

"I understood poor Maja to be the aggressor in that relationship." Amanda mentally bared her teeth at him.

"And I understood that, yes, poor Maja pursued, however, Spock did not flee very quickly or efficiently." Smvit cursed mentally to find himself defending that idiotic Maja Talljet.

"But can you really blame Spock?" SuLorma, Maja's old art teacher, stood in the doorway. "After all, Maja is so talented and still has those big brown eyes and that lovely voice. Did you see the vid of his trial? A strange but well organized argument he presented to the Klingons, and convincingly, too. He was magnificent."

"Indeed he was, SuLorma." T'Pau, rose in the pause SuLorma's timely distraction afforded her. "I will leave you now. Do not fail to call on me for anything, Amanda." She turned to Smvit and raised her split fingers: "Live long and prosper, Smvit of Vulcan."

"Good-bye, T'Pau," he snapped. "You do know your way out, don't you? If not, it's this way." He strode from the room ahead of her, robes flying.

SuLorma and Amanda exchanged glances and then introduced themselves.

"I've come to meet the Commune and offer them any assistance I can." SuLorma said.

"They will be grateful," Amanda told him. "The painters are trying to understand the media of the murals in the ballroom so they can restore them. Perhaps you know; come, I'll show you."

"It will depend on the age of the work," SuLorma intoned as Amanda led him to the Gozshedrefreingin Commune, hard at work in the Sa mansion.

* * *

end of part 50

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Appendices: http://members.tripod.com/karmen_ghia/atrappendices.html