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Ghosts

© R. Shultz

Somewhere on the planet M-113 (Crater's World), it is approaching twilight. Temperature is predicted to drop to six degrees (C) overnight. Clear skies tomorrow. Humidity fifty-three percent, heavy concentrations of beryllium, rhodium, molybdenum, and niobium in the atmosphere is expected. Chance of rain is approximately forty percent. Be sure to wear your masks if you go outdoors.

He came upwards. Progressing in leisured crawls from the amber depths of his meditation state. Towards the russet lights of reality. As the world returned in him, Spock noted the arrays of flaming colors pigmenting the striated layers of skies visible outside his window.

Sunset viewed as spectacle, McCoy would no doubt say, Spock thought.

Outside this austere cubicle the thin atmosphere of Crater's World moved restlessly, murmuring its own words. Sunset winds, Spock finally reflected, terminator line temperature gradients producing movements of the atmosphere. Spock also noted the symmetry of thin grasses outside as they bent and flashed gray-green leaves before the pressures of the moving air. Easily viewed through the broad window, firm-set in one of the walls.

The builders of this small colony of scientists and technicians had aligned their housing and guest quarters toward either the glories of the local sunrises, or its sunsets. Though not an advocate of Terran preconceptions of what was beautiful, or aesthetic, Spock could admire without reservation the natural beauties of a world such as Crater's. The skies were an unending spectacle, when not hidden in some storm or dust front.

Such a storm front had passed over this colony site as the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE had entered the local stellar system. The sunrises and sunsets would be local wonders for some days to come. If he had been capable of it, Spock might have been made homesick by the similarity of these skies to those of Vulcan.

However, the dry atmosphere of Vulcan would not have killed him, as the poisoned airs of this world could. Nonetheless, the heavy metals and complex salts floating in this world's air made for truly unique twice-daily spectacles.

Alongside the window, the air cleansing unit managed a small and gentle purr, inaudible to most human ears, but not to those of the first officer of the USS-1701. Whether it digested grains of Norbium or stray molecules of Beryllium Fluoride, or mere plebeian 'dust', the air cleaner unit continued on its relentless task of removing all designated and 'tagged' substances from the air. Periodically a small lump of material would roll into a tray in its bottom. Out its side vents rolled an endless supply of breathable air cleansed of whatever the device identified as undesired chemicals, compounds, minerals and gasses. Every home on Vulcan had its ilk, and all had learned to silently welcome cleaner air. Logic dictated their use, for was not a modest increment of personal good health to be sought whenever possible?

Here, on Crater's World, all the atmosphere snarled with molecules inimical to humanoid life forms. Tenuously thin levels of toxins, true, after centuries of slow precipitation-out. But still poisonous and fatal, if ones lungs were not protected. Or periodically cleansed.

Here, on Crater's World, to ease their work, these archaeologists and technicians had opted for lung cleaning. Not for them the confinements of sealed buildings, masks, air units. Upon leaving the planet, or the passage of a few months time, they subjected themselves to an irritating, but short and painless procedure guaranteed to flush out their poisons. As would Spock. And Leonard McCoy, and Captain Kirk, and all of the others who had beamed down to the science colony.

All now resident on this colony deemed minor inconveniences such as the periodic lung flushing a small price to pay. For this was an archaeological colony, and they sought questions and answers.

Once this globe had held a planetary population, with its own unique melange of gifts, talents and faults. Today... Today heavy metals polluted a drastically thinned atmospheric envelope.

In what little light remained, Spock could still clearly see the circular caldera of one of the larger blast sites. Downslope of his present viewpoint.

Though many centuries old, nearby dusty swells still revealed some fractured ruin, or monument. The remains of a race which had preferred suicide over rational resolution of some, probably political, argument. Spock considered the original inhabitants to have been quite insane.

The blast site lay in what was once the middle of an immense city, enclosing a protected bay. Today polluted winds swept contaminated dust across the bowl. A crater left behind by the force of the lithium event detonated seven hundred meters high in the planet's air. Winds blew unimpeded over the city now, laden with subtle poisons. Heavy metals to be cleansed from many lungs. A nuisance now, nothing more. The most enduring legacy left behind by a race of high culture. A deadly nuisance. A civilization's epitaph.

It's bones were the errata, remains, daily, hourly, steadily, unearthed by the Federation's archaeologists.

Downslope he could see, even in this light, the specks, outlines, remnants, and irregularities of this vanished world-wide civilization.

Even today Spock could admire the sweep of what was still a graceful bay, once filled with water, motion and life, the oceanic traffic of a growing race. A world teeming with hundreds of millions of dominant life forms, humanoids, gender-divided, aggressive. Now quite dry, dead.

A reminder to all who came to Crater's World of how fragile and tenuous a hold life had. Mankind, political frameworks like the Federation, how vulnerable they all were. Even Vulcan, mighty Vulcan, gird about with its logic´s and its dreams.

Especially Vulcan. For a team had unearthed the bones of four Vulcan, or Romulan, genotypes. With no trace thus far of a space-going culture on this world, their apparent presence here was a great mystery.

A prehistoric embassy from the era of the parting of Romulan from Vulcan? Castaways? This planetary disaster had occurred at a time which allowed this as a possibility. But still, no one knew for sure. The mystery might necessitate generations of archaeological digging to determine, if then. Research performed not by Vulcan´s, but humans.

Only a few hundred meters away billowed the great greenish dome of one of the research sites. Thin plastic, fragile appearing, yet sturdy enough to protect a dig. Many machines were actually doing the digging, while seated in their thorax were the humans who guided each individual dig.

The typical Archaeological Habitat enclosed an uncovered locale. Greenish actinic lights glowing through the thin methane-plastic envelope. Winds gently rippled each pliable surface, movement inside indicating continual around-the-clock archaeological processes.

During the 22.18 hours-long T-day, teams of often bizarre-appearing humans pursued knowledge, insight, understanding of a vanished past. Clues to this planetary destruction. In each Dig Site the great bulk of a Master Spider unit shifted in that limited environment, appearing very much the giant arachnid from this distance. Secure within its capacious metallic thorax some human archaeologist directed the movements and actions of both the immense positronic construct, and its hundreds of tiny robotic slaves.

Delicately it shifted, its robotic grace displaying none of the clumsiness its size and appearance might have suggested. Digging, recording, storing, cataloging the trillions of bits of data. Weaving conjectures and computer images which might eventually write the story of the past of Crater's World.

Scattered about the Master Spider's feet could be dimly perceived the hordes of fist-sized metal spiders slaved to the master unit. The little robots were the tools employed by the Master Spider to actually perform its work. Never sleeping, never resting, these Master-Slave units might solve (eventually) the mystery of the Vulcan´s at City C. They, and their human directors, might discover why the salt-sucker creature, or creatures, were created. What the humanoids fought over. Why the culture on this globe seems not to have attempted journeying into space, to the other planets in their system. These archaeologists might discover new technology, new artforms, new philosophies. Truths. Someday.

As he watched the nearest dig, the immense machine within the dome delicately lifted a steel-and-composite leg into the air, and a dozen small replicas of itself burrowed into the area thus newly exposed. Dozens of cameras recorded what they unearthed, and exactly where, and at what level. Eventually more machines would visually recreate holograms of what had once stood there. They would show what once was, they would reveal pasts.

Inaudibly the precisely-controlled metal leg settled elsewhere, upon another surface. A line of little diggers began carrying away more material, to storage, to analysis, or study. Perhaps they had found another of the feathery silicon chairs; bent, but rarely shattered. Perhaps the bones of a child, a pet, an electronic cooking device, remnants of fabrics.

Perhaps yet another polished skull set in its (reverential?) bowl, yet another jewel set in forehead or cheek.

Spock could throw his memory back to this world as it had been a few years ago. An unknown wreck, a fitting setting for the tragedy of Crater, his wife, and the others dead at the touch of the salt creature. Now there lay an entire world to uncover, to comprehend. If he wished, he could call up holographic displays on the room computer, observe raw accumulations of data, make his own assumptions. Or simply watch dozens of reports on what had already been uncovered.

An entertainment composed of the thousands of successful excavations thus far. He could view holographic´s of how the Indigs had dressed themselves, slept, or ate breakfast (plus dinner and lunch). Their community transit system, and individual shopping modes. Possible sexual patterns and taboos. Attitudes towards child-birth deaths, prostitution, bribery, waste, environmental degradation, toys. He could spend much time viewing what they already knew about a race now dead, and preliminary suppositions of what might yet be. And through it all, still not a hint of why the Vulcan´s/Romulan´s were here, or how they had traveled. One young male adult, two older males, one mature but not elderly female.

So much to discover to explain a complete self-sufficient world. Ground transportation´s networks, common foods, furniture, clothing´s, reading matter, computer styles, recurring diseases, death rites, sea commerce. The making of false teeth, education patterns, fusion research, history, zoology, domesticated animals and pets, crime, old age, decoration and colors in home and public place. What made up an entire world, what made it unique.

Behind this building, behind these guest quarters and stretching to the low hills behind him, Spock knew other such domes stood. Night-shift lights glowed in those other Habitats as well, their graceful monsters of machines in unceasing labor. Guiding them were more of the humans, the oft unusual humans. They who had come to Crater's World seeking knowledge, understanding, even truth.

These Homo Sapiens often worked nude, or close to that state. Revealing their arrays of blazons of story and color to each other, and the universe.

They wore what was now termed Picts. Multicolored temporary tattoos adorned their skin, told stories, revealed beliefs and habits, proclaimed messages to those willing to see. Simple sprays of leafs and flowers on arms in the morning, they might be entire myths in the evening, every available centimeter of usable skin adorned with fantastic story and art. Bizarre, perhaps, to some eyes. To Spock, even after many years amongst humans, most of what humans did and why they did it remained as bizarre as ever. Picts were simply another passing human fad to him.

Electronically etched, they could be removed, or edited, in a minute. Or enhanced, added to, explained. As fashion, custom, or boredom dictated. In the small enclosed society of archaeologists here, humans had drifted to fashion extremes unheard of back on Terra. The Picts were a form of disguise, McCoy had stated. The bold might distract with a cacophony of colors, the shy might peer out from shields of myth and message and art.

Groups might identify its members, individualists their uniqueness. They could proclaim their celibate state, or their eagerness to engage in some form of the Terran mating rituals. Religious attitudes, or philosophic bents. But always the colors and images provided something behind which humans, forever insecure, might recoup strength or prepare sallies and journeys to those other unknowable creatures, their fellow humans.

Once again tribal forms were prompting a form of mass rebellion against the conformities of a stellar civilization, McCoy had added. And their radical individualism had created a new conformity behind which they might comfortably hide. On Crater's World they were no longer part of the conformities of mainstream Federation life. So they created a new individuality, and in so creating, a new conformity. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, he had murmured.

Spock was periodically amazed by the droll insights of the cantankerous Doctor. Of course, Spock had come to understand the image of the simple Terran sawbones was a total sham. Even so, Spock was still able to periodically find himself astonished by a chance observation or action.

Where, Spock wondered, was McCoy now? Somewhere in the night the Good Doctor was undoubtedly in the process of being -entertained? - by the three dusky-hued maidens dubbing themselves the Sisters Of Java. No doubt he was also introducing them to the joys of sour-mash bourbon. It was of a high order of probability unaccustomed sexual games were at this moment taking place wherever the three giggling women had led the overjoyed Doctor. That Doctor McCoy was deemed attractive and sensual (and virile) by the three short-saturated females did not surprise Spock. He had years before decided the Terran humans followed no pattern or logic in choosing lovers or life-mates. Therefore all pairings were possible, and none more, or less, unlikely than any other. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle with a vengeance.

As the other members of the landing party from the ENTERPRISE were undoubtedly being entertained by other members of the numerous (and obviously bored) Archaeological teams present on the planet. Some of the Away Team had simply found a new face to talk to. As Scotty had with a young couple whose Terran homes were two kilometres from his clan's primary home Castle.

Scotty was last seen in a small underground facility cafeteria, dug to hide and safeguard the archaeological Planetary Centre. Dug into areas clean of previous use by the planet's humanoids. Dug out carefully, dug to obtain clean lower strata, but underground now none the less. This trio of new friends were finding mutual acquaintances, and even a few relations in common. Scotty's home, rolling highland scree back of Ab'erdeen was not, after all, home to that many Terrans. Yet Scotty was able to find kin in blood or attitude in every T-type planet he went. The Great Diaspora, the flinging of mankind at the Universe.

Others of the Away Team had found compatible new lovers, of this Spock had no doubts. The Doctor had once stated just finding a new face could be a great aphrodisiac after too long a time on a ship.

As Ensign Kia probably spent the night with her new friend, the small, plump blond woman from Planetary Expedition XenoBiology. And another, happy to go away with his new male lover. That the Captain, and a few others, had allowed disapproval to show in their faces, only made Spock sigh again in acknowledgment of his lack of genuine understanding of Terrans. With all attractions of one T-type to another more in the realm of witchcraft and delusion, than logic to him, one type of sexual pairing was only minutely more understandable than another.

As a glaring example of illogically, most of the archaeologists wore colorful 'national' flags on their shoulders. With these bright blazons they identified themselves with some vanished ethnic or nationalistic grouping back on Terra. Illogical, of course.

The countries themselves were gone, except as political ghosts in the 'planetary' government on Old Earth.

In reality Terra's populations had been hopelessly and irretrievably intermixed and recombined in the Wars and Troubles, and in the Great Exodus afterwards. Yet each person was again seeking a group identify, a uniqueness, a co-holder of an ethnic heritage, or honor, or bloodline. A cursory study had shown Spock that many of these claims of ancestry or historical identity were fanciful, if not in complete error. To the humans it did not matter. For so long as humans wanted to identify themselves with some especial group, minority, history, they would do so, and logic be damned. It was another of the fantasies humanity allowed itself to be subject to. Illogical.

Thus even now the flags flashed on skin, a rainbow of colors proclaiming uniqueness as well as group identity, individuality mixed with peer conformity. Illogical they may be, but Spock had long since schooled himself to accept these passing fashions amongst humans as an acceptable insanity.

In truth most humans had difficulty tracing ancestors to a time before the Gene Wars, but they felt a need to pretend. Illogical. Only McCoy had pointed out that in a few hundred years they would BE what they wished to be. Bloodlines and all. Their descendants would accept these present-day delusions as fact, and thus reality would be bent to the demands of the dream.

Supremely illogical. Yet it fit what Spock understood of Terrans.

As for Captain Kirk, he had initially appeared more than a little degree dismayed at the speed with which the Away Team had disintegrated into a de facto shore-leave party. Kirk had also been upset at the abruptness with which a small black-haired engineer had switched her attentions to an Planetary Assets specialist among the archaeologists.

The new object of her attentions had been a stocky man with an Old Afghan flag on both shoulders, and a habit of indiscriminately expectorating, spitting, from a cheek-held "chaw". Human females were also extremely illogical, at times.

Spock was confident the good Captain had found compensations, however.

Her name was Janni, and she was one of the most muscular human females Spock had ever beheld. She had taken Jim and Spock (and those few of the Away Team still clinging to the Captain) on a tour of her own assigned Habitat, her little archaeological kingdom she ruled. Across spidery walkways and along fragile-appearing arches the intent woman had given the Away Team what McCoy referred to as the 'twenty-credit tour'.

She was soon staying physically near to Captain Kirk, her strong hands taking many opportunities to touch, to hold, to caress. From accidental touchings they had progressed to a sensual dance. Swirling her two long jet braids of hair about, placing herself always in the forefront of Kirk's vision, enticing in an impromptu human mating ritual of an erotic type.

She had flashed the green of her Brazilian-flagged shoulder at him, stared at him, caressed his arms, softly bit his shoulder, tongue licking the stigmata of her perfect teeth, the twin red spots on her burnished forehead glowing under the light oiling of her sweat. She had indeed been graceful, and as the tour mutated into a dance of seduction, she had casually relieved herself of clothes until she glided in an iridescent sheen of lubricated nudity for the Captain. The platform hanging underneath the thorax of the Master Spider had been an arena of flesh, and the Good Captain had been clearly overmatched from the first.

For once Spock had understood the patterns played out, and in his own mind approved the mating of two such disparate humans as Janni and Kirk. A mating of sheer physicality and sheer audacity.

Janni had been the aggressor throughout, and Captain Kirk seemed bemused by this aspect of their...courtship? Bemused he might have been, but Spock noticed (he noticed much and said little) his Captain physically responded to the solid musculature of this avatar of human lust. Before McCoy had hustled Spock and the Away Team remainders away from "the youngsters" the gleaming female was rubbing her overpowering body on Kirk, her hands already in his trousers.

Spock wondered what emotions (besides simple lust) the Captain had while he was being....taken. That was the term. The young engineer who had disappointed Kirk by choosing a different man? Forgotten. This tour and visitation, the duties of a captain and the Enterprise? Not forgotten, but...what was McCoy's phrase? Put on a back burner. For the moment.

Kirk had allowed himself to be led away by the sleek-flanked female, leaving her giant Master Spider unit in the care of a bone-thin male assistant. Spock would always remember the seduction dance. Yet another variant in the T-type sexual games.

Under the Habitat's greenish billows she had danced for Kirk, an elaborate, controlled performance, for his amusement, and to awaken his human lusts. Stories and legends were told upon her rippling body, Pict´s flashing in garish light, tattoos displayed in sequence and intent, language spoken with a shining brownish skin. At the end of this dance Kirk had been surmounted, completely. Spock had not seen the Captain since Janni had spirited him away, but believed he was in little danger.

At some point in "the twenty-credit tour", Spock found himself alone with the virtually nude Planetary Director. She also had gleamed, oiling evidently being part of the this Terran facilities sexual enticement. Being abandoned by his fellow shipmates had not prompted a necessity to return to the ship, and thus Spock found himself in these guest quarters. Led to them by an apologetic Director, they were Spartan enough in their lack of luxuries to suit him well.

He unwound, finally, from his modified lotus position, and easily swung his feet to the floor. He took tricorder in hand for a second, noted its readings, and carefully re-laid it upon the small table alongside his simple bed. He noted the incongruousness of the table's pearly shimmer, its seeming delicacy, not in the least in harmony with the barroom simplicity of the room. Spock deduced there was a high probability it was a local artifact, salvaged in the course of an archaeological dig. Another spun silicon antique, far sturdier than the civilization which created it.

He stood, automatically tugged at the bottom of his tunic in what Mr. Sulu referred to as the Starfleet Dance, then turned to face the closed doorway to his room.

"Do please enter, Director. We have a great deal to discuss."

The pastel green door whooshed aside, and the Planetary Director glided in on bare and dusty feet.

She had dressed in a subdued fashion for this night, much changed from the day's colors and flash. No longer a dazzling mystery hidden behind a few dabs of modern fabrics and erotic array's of Picts, the confusing layers of glitterings and primary-colors covered or gone. Her breasts were hidden beneath a white sleeveless jacket without pockets, and a pair of shapeless white pants of an unfamiliar style. Beneath this modest exterior a gray body stocking covered midriff, arms, neck, breasts, her feet in stirrups of the same soft material.

Recent Terran style, no doubt, though the bare feet seemed to be a personal affectation of the Director herself, she had taken the Away Team on its tour unshod as well. Spock usually had no interest in such passing ephemera as Terran fashions, but he knew Nurse Chapel (and others) would press him for any and all details upon his return to the ship. Especially if other groups of ship's personnel were not given shore leave. The crew of the Enterprise had long since realized Commander Spock observed details no one else did.

He doubted Nurse Chapel would opt to dress herself in the oiled skin, garish Pict's, and nipple-revealing haze the Planetary Director had worn earlier in the day. Now, with the day's light rapidly fleeing, the black-haired human had evidently limited her range of Pict's to a few glittering stars upon throat and cheek, and a few light darkenings which accentuated her facial planes.

Those last were termed make-up, and Spock was quite familiar with its usage from his long association with the humans on the Enterprise. Artful enhancements, part of the illogical mating patterns of humans. Which had no effect on Spock's libido, of course. Spock realized human males also used similar enhancers, though he had learned not to compliment the males on the effacy of a hair dye, or 'manly' perfume, nee cologne. The use of such enhancers was, however, a reliable indice of a high efficiency level within the ship, a reassuring statement of positive self-evaluation, and as such met with Spock's approval.

Inside his room the Planetary Director stood easily, ignoring the gathering unlighted gloom, ignoring the lengthening silence between them. 1.6822 Metres, approximately 56.35 Kilos, Spock automatically noted. In her bare feet.

Perhaps listening to the unobtrusive background noises of the project, the Spiders, shields, cleaners, motors. The quieting winds. Or perhaps merely admiring the sprays of nebulae just becoming visible as faint glows in the skies outside. A few faint clicks came to Spock's efficient ears as the Master Spider shifted within its Habitat downslope, and she glanced there, as if the faint tremors had caught her attention. In time her eyes (which he remembered as a pale green) turned to meet his own. He did not flinch, nor did she, to meet eye to eye.

"Does my presence bother you, Mr. Spock? I would not own your displeasure if it could be avoided. Indeed, I am come to seek your pardon if my dress, or lack of it, or my words, if they had offended you," she quietly commented. It seemed less a query than opening given for further conversation between them.

McCoy had opinioned her voice was akin to fine bourbon flowing over crisp ice, though Spock observed the good Doctor had appeared to inspect her oiled buttocks more than her tones of voice. Spock had noted that she spoke Standard with the correctness, precision and flatness of someone to whom the Galactic Lingua was a learned tongue. Also with an accent his well trained mind had already ascertained did not match either the Hispano-Argentine, nor the Hungarian languages she owned to be her native tongues. Thus far he had not yet identified it.

Here, in this room now lit by starlight, her eyes were dark and large, her face beginning to blur within darkness' cloak. Neither Spock nor Mrs. Rogszgy were in a hurry to speak, to terminate their mutual silences. Finally, as the corners began to fill with the darknesses scurrying in, she broke her gaze from Spock's face to stare downslope, looking far past the Habitat Dome...to what?

"There are too many ghosts about this night," she flatly stated.

Spock's interest sharply flared in the light of this most unexpected conversational gambit. A multitude of possible avenues of dialogue suddenly opened before them, and Spock found himself taken by surprise. He raised a sharp Vulcan eyebrow, not believing she could see it in this infinitesimally low light. Yet she reacted, she moved, holding herself tightly within her arms, negatively shaking her head.

"Oh yes," she continued. "And I do not wish to face them all alone, tonight." He almost thought he could detect a pleading note in her voice. "Do not throw me to the ghosts out there tonight."

It was not an error, there was an anxious catch in her voice, but the only ghost seemed to be this newly insubstantial-seeming human female facing him.

"I do not quite follow you, Madam Director," Spock began. "I thought such creatures as ghosts were legends without the basis of logic." He attempted to continue, to find a truth, somehow, in her statements.

"Do you perhaps feel you are desecrating the ancient and unhallowed dead by your Project's uncovering of their unmarked graves? If so, your error in choice of avocations is monumentally astounding."

She came a step closer, two, and lifted her head in the dying light to search his now-invisible eyes. "We carry our own ghosts with us, Mr. Spock. It is an illogical habit we faulty humans would as soon not give up, for all the bitter pains joined to our fears and memories.

"We hold our ghosts tight to us, and weld them to ourselves with sharp shackles of regret, and manacles of remorse. And truly we fear the chilling sounds they make in the night airs", she finished.

"You are a poet," Spock replied in some surprise, recognizing the patterns of words as a form of hyperbole, of artistic flight.

"You are a logical person at times as well," Spock continued. "You are also an embarrassment to me," he finished. She cocked her close-cropped head at him in an obvious note of inquiry, the jet of her hair disappeared in the gathering evening's darkness.

"When I so emphatically stated Vulcans should be in charge of this Archaeological survey, my argument logically buttressed by the discovery of the Vulcan or Romulan genotype skeletons, you failed to defend yourself," he dryly commented.

"You failed to mention the important fact it was my own father, Ambassador Sarek, who had recommended that you personally head this expedition." Spock shook his head in an unconscious but very human gesture, and continued.

"As the representative of the entire Vulcan home world he does not lightly tender recommendations to the Federation concerning such possibly trivial matters. I can only deduce he was in possession of data indicating you were the most logical choice to investigate this planet, this mystery. Which indicates I voiced an objection not founded in fact, and I tender an apology for doubting the logic of your appointment," Spock finished.

A second's pause, then she replied lightly, her hand negligently waved in front of her face. "It is of little import, really it is not, and your apology is unnecessary. We are old acquaintances, your father and I, he and my family. I had asked him to ascertain whether he could in all justice allow me this planetary commission. And he seems to have been both forgiving of my many faults, and willing to permit me this honor, to head and direct this archeological confusion. It is an honor to know he trusted me to do well in this matter, and I intend to do my utmost to make him, in retrospect, proud of my accomplishments.

"The costs to myself were minimal. A few messages, the abandonment of a few minor debts owed me, and my family, by a few of his associates in the councils of the Federation. Political things, you understand, a trading of obligations, nothing more.

"I sincerely wished to perform this study, Mister Spock, this journey into the undiscovered country of the past. And I admit to being extraordinarily pleased that Ambassador Sarek indulged me in this small matter, gave this project to me." Another pause, then she continued; "It looked to be very interesting."

"I repeat, he does not make such recommendations lightly," Spock rejoined. He looked at her again, trying to read her in the darkness, to understand this human standing so near in this star-lit room. However, Spock knew judging humans a task difficult even in the light of day, doubly so shrouded by night. Though humans might frequently wear their fears, hopes, hates and dilemmas like badges sewn to their tunics, too often humans were as blank of meaning to Spock as might be a perfect sphere, all reflection and no revelation of interior. For once he wished the presence of Doctor McCoy, wished to have his revelations, wished his sagacity and penetrating insight. He wished someone near who could tell him what to do with this woman so intent on being more than a chance acquaintance.

His memory from the Project Tour brought up her face to him, he remembered her features clearly, broad cheeked and strong boned. Soft words flowing from a bizarre woman, information brought forth from a human female appearing more creature than Director, more harlot than Head of a planetary facility. She had given the Away Team an exhaustive presentation this afternoon, her movements easy, her tones gracious. Yet she had gazed most often on himself, and had taken many opportunities to touch, brush against him, eye him for any reaction to her presence. Spock did not know quite what to think of her, besides the most obvious one she had personally 'selected' himself for a sensual encounter.

Outwardly she seemed an ordinarily promiscuous human female, stalking her next conquest. Or the brisk and efficient woman seeking to overcome the continuing effect of Terran male chauvinism. Or perhaps an innocent combination of many traits, including ambition and aggressive sexuality. Yet he had seen more to her. And felt McCoy would have seen even more than that.

"Her eyes were set within an oiled steel gate", McCoy had reflected, "borrowed that from an old Terran poet," he had added.

"Not in any degree open, never without a smile, reading her is like trying to read the label on a bottle at midnight."

Spock had been mistaken to dismiss her earlier as a political cipher, a meaningless appointee. As she had walked them about sections of the Project that afternoon, McCoy had understood her much better.

"She is a closed steel gate," McCoy had whispered to Spock, trusting his Vulcan ears to hear his faint words. "Whatever lies behind those green eyes is going to remain well hidden to the likes of you or me."

Spock was again amazed at the accuracy of the good Doctor Bones' offhand comments. Even while under the influence of the Director's sour-mash whisky (straight from eastern Tennessee, on Old Earth), McCoy had understood volumes. The Doctor had seen the tempered steel in this human, when Spock had failed to correctly observe. Spock noted his failing in this matter, he had misjudged this one. McCoy had referred to the Director as a 'hard case', a term Spock many years before had made himself familiar with. McCoy had understood at a time when Spock was dismissing her as a soft dilettante, another meaningless hive-dweller from the arcologies, tower-cities, of Old Earth.

Another old phrase swam to Spock's mind, from an Earther poetess named McKillip; "A steel plate instead of a face, her eyes had been gunports, not access panels, and there was the gleam of fresh oil in her words."

Indeed, a 'hard case'. When she chose to be. In this room, in this intimate darkness, she had chosen to be something else, this too Spock understood.

"Msz. Rogsczy," he began, but she smoothly interrupted.

"Call me Irena," she put in. "You owe me no apologies, Mr. Spock. You had no way of knowing the extent to which I hold dear history, archaeology, close to me. You could not grasp how fiercely I clasp it to my breasts, or the passions with which I have gathered the esoterica of millennia as part of my life." She came to stand directly in front of Spock, and he had to gaze downward upon her faintly scented black hair. Sweet sandalwood and myrrh, he analytically observed, somehow in keeping with a Director of Antiquities.

"To me," she continued, "reality is merely a vast plain, something shrouded in mist and distance, not well seen except when dearly close. And time is a river with deep banks, criss-crossing this shrouded plain. Because we are buffeted by that flow of time as we stand in the river, we think we cannot fight that flow, or are unable to leave the river altogether. Yet we can sometimes see far events upon that plain, if not touch them.

"If we may accept this view it is difficult to forever believe we may not leave this river of time, nor journey to touch other points upon that plain. For our present reality is but a single room, one in which we stand today, but there are other rooms. We know this. I often see them, including many far distant, and sometimes think the Ghosts we humans see are merely inhabitants of those other rooms, rarely seen. I see them all too well this night," she ended.

"Are you serious?," Spock asked.

He thought a smile may have briefly flickered in the darkness.

She hugged herself more tightly, as if chilled.

"Perhaps I am much too metaphysical, it is a state in which I have often found myself," she admitted, then continued. "Yet few illusions are without a grain of reality. Few realities are without a few shards of illusion. So yes, at times, such as tonight, I feel the presence of my own band of ghosts. Tonight their wisps bother me."

"What ghosts are these you sense?", Spock asked in a low voice. "I admit to having journeyed to many strange ports these past years. We have met life forms that at one time I would have unhesitatingly dismissed as completely illogical. These unexpected singularities and collectives have threatened us, displayed considerable cunning, or revealed an astonishing ability to discover faultless logic. They have enlightened me, sometimes airily dismissed us, and very often nearly driven my Captain or shipmates to despair.

"At this moment I find it almost possible to believe in the existence of ghosts, even in your Old Terran varieties."

Instead of immediately answering, Irena first gazed out at the smears and swarms of stars and nebulae which glorified this world's night sky. He could see the wash of the Galactic Lens reflected in the obsidian pools of her night-eyes.

"You must forgive me, Mr. Spock, if long-dead eras seem more alive to me than my own. It is a failing of historians, of archaeologists, who often see with absolute clarity what once was, but see their present days through an interfering mist. I can see my ghosts of yesteryear more clearly than a newscast on the BBC. I can smell the pine-cone smokes of past fires more exquisitely than this morning's colognes. I might almost taste the rabbit they are roasting on that fire, or feel the stretch of hardened muscles as I hunch by the embers. More clearly than I can feel the texture of this tunic across my shoulders." Her face was now only centimeters from his chest.

"I love candles so," she noted, in a seeming veer of subject. "They bespeak of gentler times, softer nights, a slower rush of history, times rich with contemplation..." A sigh came in the dark, a pause in the dark-haired woman's dialogues with herself.

"Most of you today, you understand so very little of history. Even you Vulcans seem to care of little but your own histories, certainly only bits of my Terran past." Distant stellar fires could be seen in her bottomless eyes. Spock felt now was a time to say nothing, as this human female brought out a dozen confusions in her journey towards some personal truth.

"I see faces at times, faces gone for one, two, three millennia. Faces faded and distorted by refraction´s and mislaid thoughts. I hear the stomp of horses gone to dust for four thousand years. It is the cavalry legions of eternity, Mr. Spock, invincible hordes of onrushing time, rending, destroying, raping, burning today into fading embers.

"I see the stars as the campfires of the mighty Khan's armies, sweeping all of us before them. And I can feel the roll of this planet as it rotates, falling, bit by bit, into its sun. I feel dizzy, and sicken to the lurch of the rush of this stellar system across the wash of the universe...." Her voice slowly lowered, and Spock found at the last her head was leaning upon his chest, her hands barely touching his sides.

"Most of the peoples of Terra now are quite proud if they are able to trace their lineage back past the Partition Wars. They wear their old flags with a great pride." She rasped a bitter little chuckle. "A few hundred years and it has all become a source of pride, of accomplishment, to achieve this petty token, this little brace of roots to bolster their petty pasts." Spock felt Irena lean her forehead against the muscles of his chest, one hand brushing his sleeve with a wisp of a touch.

"How little they know of time," she scoffed, almost inaudibly. "They would be chastened to observe it from the perspective of four or five millennia." She raised her head to look at him in the darkness.

"Today we women go by the name of our mothers, we take our mothers name. It is not a new custom, no indeed, it is millennia ancient. Ages before the Aryans, women sought to create civilizations. Before the Mycaneans, women captained precarious little vessels across the Euxine and the Aegean. We went beyond the Pillars of Heryakles, down the desert seas to Hind. The Dancers of Candanea were but a beautiful twilight, before man's civilization extinguished our candles.

"Just a few centuries ago, then, women with their own names, women belonging to no man were still considered an irreligious novelty, a threat to society, a very solid and permanent society, a society which in fact proved no more eternal than any other. If that society had arrived with the chariots of the ax-wielders and cattle-herders and slavers, still it too was only mortal, and must one day die. Humanity has now returned to an old custom, but still only one pattern amongst many.

"I come from a long-lived line, Vulcan, elder by many years to your illustrious own, and we tend to remember our pasts." Perhaps she smiled, and added; "Or at least to remember legends which glorified ancestors and kin whose existence in reality might be problematical.

"My own family has many tales of days when we were separate from our neighbors, always apart, long before the coming of the Celtic ax folk, and a raising of European civilization from the midden-heaps and migratory tribes. Long before the hawk-nosed traders floated out from rocky coasts of Asia to trade bronze swords for furs and amber. Legends.

"It has been said about our own family campfires of a time before there was a Rome, we were part of the Vennoetes, traversing Eurasia's plains and forests in cities of wagons. Before the Cimbri, aye, even before the Lusantianti, or the legendary Alphic, before the dark-haired Big Jaws quit the valleys of the Rhone and the Ebro. We were. Or so it was said.

"As such groups did, we broke away and went then with the Cantumani, and as allies of the Galler Iveci, we journeyed west through central Europe. We might one summer eat the deer of Skandia, the next pressed south by the emerging Goths. We entered the valley of the Po, crushing the black-haired Crisimani between ourselves and the quarrelous Etrusceans, and their enemies the Umbresch, all newly established in the Appenines.

"Later we set our brazen spears against the shields of the Picenni and the Samnites, a kin of the Crisimani, driving them south against Veii and the new-built Latin towns. With the later waves of Gaul and other Celt, we settled for centuries into that rich river valley of the Po. We later fought, and lost, to the Romans and their implacable machines of war called the Legions. Losing, we became of the Picentes, and allies of Rome, then Roman in our own right.

"These are but a few of the fancies and old women's tales of our people. There are many such legends only we of the family Spata appear to have ever heard of," she trailed off. Then she straightened stiffly, and Spock felt more than saw her searching his nighttime face for hints of disbelief.

"Of course, all such tales are probably mere satisfying fairy-tales, a whimsy to instill a sense of uniqueness and pride in susceptible children. Something gratifying for a people made rootless, abused in the times of the Genetic Wars. Something invented, adapted from truth, something which allowed us to survive in times of great trial with our heads held high.

"However, I wish to believe they might all be true, all the tales, both bloody, foolish, and bold. The ones showing us capable of stupidity and cupidity and greed, as well as the ones singing of heroes and wise women forever gone into dust. The tales help me, and many others of my family, to endure. They are a welcome and useful fantasy. We may know them to be fantasy, yet all of us need a fantasy at times. Fantasies are the only creatures insubstantial enough and brave enough and strong enough to fight our ghosts of the night when they raven at our doorsteps.

"But we hear them also when they whisper of our sins as well...
"They whisper of banners turned crimson from soaking in the bloods of innocents, the life-forces of our own kin, of all those we have killed, or watched be killed.

"Maybe it is the ghosts of the innocents walking upon those blasted heaths tonight, following me here, disturbing my repose so that I cannot sleep, fearing to see their faces when I close my eyes.

"For the Christus knows it is many legions of ghosts which might haunt me, after four millennia, if all the bloody tales are true.

"On nights, lying narrow with length and loneliness, I feel as if I have personally laid sword's edge to many thousands of mortal throats, and it is fear of drowning in their deep human pools of blood which troubles my short dreams. After all, blood is black in black in a moon's light.

"Mayhaps all the sins of my forebears and my forebears victims have accumulated in the distances between the stars, waiting for me to arrive on this haunted planet, and all are now owned by me..."

After a motionless minute her voice returned, subtle with a new roll to the verbs, gender word emphasis', as if in remembrance of childhood cadences in a new differing language.

"Can you believe in such stories, Mr. Spock?", she queried the night air. "Probably not, but I feel the weight of those tales, and their victims, tonight. The old tales, there are so many, they are only tales, after all, legends, embellishments on mundane lives, they cannot all be true, they must not be as I remember them, as they have been told to me over fires embers.

"I pray they are not...

"One old tale sadly speaks of how we broke with the disintegrating western Romans, Stilcho, our last hope, his blood in a gutter. We left the Latifundia and our luxuries, and joined fiercely with the Vandals, then the Suevi, and finally with Attila the Hun. We joined him, remembered again how to ride as one with the horse.

We rode halfway across Europe and back again. Ten thousand times ten thousand burning villages lay in our wakes, and the embers of this passage were not merely buildings and calcinated bones, but the very fabric of civilization, what we eventually came to term the infra-structure itself. With the passing of all those props of civilization, it too died in the embers, and a generation of warrior tribes took possession of all the continent. Civilization itself, excepting Byzantium, nearly winked out."

Her hands brushed his tunic again, and she lay her cheek lightly against it, much in the manner of a cat, as if inhaling his male scent.

"Some of our stories are not so very pretty," she whispered into the spaces between them. She spoke softly, as if sure of Spock hearing her clearly.

"Be patient with me, for yet a small time. Allow me my fears. And let me tell you a tale or two, a fantasy, a legend, something impossible, maybe something romantic. You do understand our Terran notion of romance, do you not?" Spock nodded, and she saw it, or guessed it.

"Some are both strange and improbable, against all established history, and they must be fairy tales of the Spata. Still.. May I tell of one or two?" Her fingernails touched his hands as if making sure of his continued presence.

"When Attila died, so our legend goes, the greatest chiefs and the inner circles of their tribes took the dead lord's body east, deeper into the wildernesses of the Danube, seeking a wild place to bury the great ravager of Roman Europe. They took with them an immense army of slaves, beasts of burdens for a treasure beyond belief even in a tale composed of half imagination and half greed.

"These slaves were put to work beside a deep river, I think it the Drave, diverting it to a new course. In the old bed they raised a mighty cairn of wood and soil over Attila, wetting with a cement of bones and blood.

"Next they raised a layer of more earth over Attila, and then began to mound the treasures taken from all Eurasia, tributes from Bactria, gold masks from Aoskan India, silk brocades thick with pearls, white furs, loot from entire pillaged nations. There, in the basin of the Danube they stacked up layer after layer of plate, coin, cloth, statues, ivory, rings, figurines, gilded gods, paintings, opulent fabrics and rich feasts, necklaces, earrings, goblets, crowns, diadems.

"Examples of all the wealth of earth between Old China and the English Channel went to cover Attila the Warlord, meter after meter of wealth, each meter enough to beggar Croseus by comparison, wealth by depth rather than by numbers.

"It rose to a height of nine, maybe ten meters before the slaves began to lay new entire hills of earth upon the treasure. The river roared in its new course, far from the new hill that rose at the edge of the Hungarian plain. New sod was laid over it all, and the entire army marched back and forth to cover its tracks, to obscure what it had done. Maybe a million kilos of gold alone, five times that in silver, jewels enough to parquet a great palace's floor, a hill rose hundreds of meters above the plain where before was nothing but grassland.

"Then the host was marched for ten days into Pannonia, then Illyria, and during one pouring night the bands of warrior guards fell upon the terrified slaves, captives, slaughtering them, and creating a river dark with blood for forty kilometres downstream. Sparing not a crone, not a child, not a dying cripple. Before the sun rose the bands of murderers had already had a falling out amongst themselves, and half of them never saw another sunrise. They departed, splitting into factions, killing each other in a shark-frenzy, until they forgot why they quarreled.

"In the end none of their plans to return to loot the grave ever reached fruition. For hundreds of years the descendants and the allies of the Hunnish Horde fought each other, and eventually no longer remembered where lay what they fought for. In five hundred years, excepting my ancient family, none knew where that rise in the ground was, what lay under its surface, or believed in the tales of Attila's Burial Treasure.

"The Old Chiefs were dead, their warrior hosts mere legends, and the tales, the songs and chants to be repeated around banquet tables and into their bowls of mead, they were already partly fantasy. Then were entirely myth." A strangely sibilant sigh escaped Irena then, and Spock wisely made no motion, no response to this fairy tale, this quaint legend.

"Just imagine, Mr. Spock, if somewhere in central Europe a small hill rises out of the plain, probably a ruined castle upon it now, for the rare height in that area would have been fortified in its medieval past. Somewhere underneath the courses of its stone walls lies the archaeological treasure of all time, loot enough for a thousand plunderers, the restorable art treasures of the ancient age, all waiting for discovery. Were I to go back and discover that hill, and as I said, it is by the Drave, then think of it! The Glory of it, the greatest archaeological and historical find of all time. All time..."

"My name known for a thousand, two thousand years..."

She turned, her back now leaning against Spock's chest. "The milky way shines like a great host of torches tonight, so great a host of torches. As if held aloft by an army a hundred million strong and more, a billion warrior horsemen, all on the move, all coming this way, wanting vengeance, it's throats crying for my blood..." She trailed off. Spock did not know how to accept her story, or her manic by-plays of words.

"Is it a great treasure you seek, Irena?", he gently queried.

"Relief," she quickly returned.

Spock looked down on her, expecting her to continue, puzzled when she did not. He had beamed down this morning expecting nothing more taxing than a few meaningless formalities, and a few insincere comments. He meant to keep his own silences, and expected a few minor elucidation´s of current archaeological techniques. Instead he felt as if he was the only currently functioning crew-member from the ship, and was engaged in a dialogue with a woman who might be seriously, emotionally, and mentally, dysfunctional.

Elsewhere the others in the Away Team might be enjoying their carnal interludes, relishing their new partners, engaged in pleasant 'banter', to quote Mr. Scott.

However, he was alone with the Planetary Director, and she seemed given to romantic fantasies of a type previously unmet in all Spock's readings or journeyings. There was a quality, a fey quality to this female. Spock knew Shakespeare, and had been amused at many similar tales encountered before, concerning the Kingdom Under The Hill, Faeries, Gnomes, and such fantastical creatures of Terran myth. He drew on these memories in a sudden, very human, burst of insight. Mrs. Rogsczy - Irena - could best be described as fey. Most Terran females were beyond being simply mysterious, in Spock's lights. Mrs. Rogsczy embraced a greater share of that mystery shared by all humans. A scrap of poetry came to him. She was surrounded by a soft skein of fragile dreams.

In other words, Spock decided she was a little bit crazy.

It had also been of little comfort to Spock to be continually recording aberrant tricorder readings throughout the day. Analogous traces abounded throughout the ranks of the Project Personnel on the planet, aberrations evidently not linked to the toxic poisons infesting the attenuated atmospheric envelope. The readings might indicate a tricorder malfunction, but more probably a malfunction in the humans themselves. He suspected either a minor infection, linked to the heavy metals present in the air, or the presence of another of those ridiculous 'good time' substances which periodically passed through the human planets of the Federation.

Spock could easily envision a scenario in which Doctor McCoy had to intensely screen all the returning personnel of the Away Team, including himself, for chemical irregularities of unknown natures and properties. Which unexpected and laborious necessity would irritate the Good Doctor, and would prime him for yet another verbal brawl with Spock at some future date. A loud and acrimonious argument over some matter totally unconnected with the chem-scan, but absolutely due to its occurrence.

Spock softly sighed in an intensely human reaction, all very unconsciously. Scotty had once referred to this breathy response as the "Vulcan's work is never done" sigh. Scotty had meant it as a joke, which Uhara had been at great pains to explain until Spock had partially understood it.

Nonetheless, Irena confused him greatly. And not merely because of some chemical or emotional imbalances. Spock knew enough of humanity to realize Irena evidently did not fit into the parameters of previously accepted norms of behavior set for human females.

Still facing the stars, Irena eventually continued, seeming to feel no necessity to fill these long silences with meaningless words. He appreciated this rare human quality when it appeared.

"We have stories in my family, legends all our own, heroes and villains never mentioned in history texts or the collections of fables. I might hear them and laugh, maybe cry, or clench my fists in anger.

"I lust for dead souls gone to their graves a thousand years before Cleopatra. I cry for beautiful lovers forgotten before the rise of Solomon's Temple. I despair for the race, sometimes, Mr. Spock, I fear we shall never see the race change, I do not expect to ever see the end of the game."

Another pause, and her hands reached back to find assurances in the solidity of his flesh and sides. "Do you think me mad, Mr. Spock? Or mayhaps a habitual user of new and exotic chemicals, hallucinatory substances? I think I'd prefer you to think me mad...," she quietly added.

"Sometimes at night I can feel these impossible presence´s gathering close, they wish to own me, to own my dreams, to live again through the medium of my tortured nights, to live through myself, my night-terrors. They brag to me, and cry to me, and tell with sexual delight of long-forgotten battlefields stinking of fresh butchery and glory, battlefields not even mentioned in the texts and books and songs.

"The causes of these wan and bloody ghosts are as forgotten as their names. They scream, joyous with the coupling of sword with the body of a victim, always one hand is raised up against another..." Irena paused again, and seemed to almost cease breathing. Then she came to continue, and Spock was able to note yet another accent, another cadence of words lay in her words, as if she translated yet another tongue in her mind.

"Do I see the past too well? Are my imaginings too real, do the tales supplant truth? I think tonight I can remember Teruel..." Her eyes turned to him, as if seeking belief, seeking somehow to convince Spock of the reality, the truth of this new twisting of legends untold.

"Please," she asked, "let me tell you of Teruel. It is a sad tale, and I remember it as if I were there, which is an absurdity. But please, let me whisper it tonight."

Again Spock marveled at the woman, unable to assure himself that she could see in this darkened room. She was not Vulcan, he noted, no, she could not see. Yet he believed she could.

Her hands touched him as she brought forth this new tale, as a blind one, a child, first finding the truths of existence.

"I see the splintered rocks, and the dryness of dust always in the air, the vicious whines of bullets and richochets on their ungiving surfaces. I can remember the unending barrages of Teruel, the sputtering coughs of mortars behind me, the way shattered rocks could tear a man into instant tatters, the frozen stony muds of central Spain in that bitter winter, the smells of men freshly gutted, or unburied for two months. It was January of 1938.

"All the soldiers had bare, scarred knees from the rocks, and two years of war had destroyed their souls.

"It was a winter of sorrow, both sides bleeding out in their mutual hemorrhaging of hate in that vicious shark-orgy of a civil war. All could tell that the end was nearing, none better than those who had come flocking from the old Democracies to fight for the Republic. It was obvious that Franco had won his stupid war, there in Spain, as much by the indifference of some so-called great nations, as by the cynical cruelty of others who saw the Dictators and murderers as a 'good' defense against the threat of a social theory called Communism. By their supposed neutrality, as by the aid to Franco of a few others, they gave Spain to the Fascisti and execution squads.

"The Republican cause was drawing to a finality, their perimeters shrinking, their offensives bloody comedies of errors, and desperation had become the order of the day. The Soviets had ceased sending modern equipment by then, and would call their pilots and technicians home in a month's time.

"Yet for a moment or two more the Rata's and Chato's would continue to duel the Heinkel's and Savoia's in the winter skies overhead, tiny legions of airborne death foreshadowing the great armadas of aerial destruction to come.

"Below these brave eagles the last gasp of the Republic had ground into ruin upon a pimple in the trenches called Teruel, chewing battalions and regiments into corpses. None of the Russian or Spanish generals had learned a single thing from the apocalypse´s of Passchendael and Verdun, Vimy or Chemin des Dames. These Generals, these amateurs, belonged in a butcher's shop, not a staff headquarters, they should not have been given companies, much less Divisions, Corps, Armies. Franco was not much better, but he had the humans and machines to spare.

"I arrived in Barcelona, accompanied by three friends, nay, lovers, desperation in our movements and hearts. I carried a cachet as Envoy for the Papal State, and a lover with me was the new consul appointed by the Hungarian state, his papers signed by Admiral Horthy himself.

"My driver, Boris, had already proven he would give his life at my command, and we sped the fragmented roads of Catalonia in a frenzy of fear that we might be too late.

"I had a purse stuffed with Dollars and Pounds, and fifteen bars of Swiss gold stuffed into the running boards of my Rolls Royce. We had discovered not a week ago how two vanished lovers of mine, of ours, had enlisted, years ago, in the International Brigades.

"Four days later, thirty thousand dollars poorer, and twelve bars of gold lighter, we had arrived as close to the front at Teruel as we might manage. We had come to save my Autumn Girls.

"They were so beautiful, so sweet, so full of life, so unafraid of me and my little debauched court of the despairing and the bored.

"We found them sitting in a filthy bolt-hole, a shallow stone bunker, lying on stones, built on a hillside of stones. They were part of the Canadian, the McNeil Brigade, a much shrunken Brigade now, and legally non-existent. The shells fell incessantly, making even us afraid for our lives.

"All the soldiers were incredulous to see me, to see the three of us, my abused girls barely recognizing Etienne or Juan. All the volunteers of the International Brigades were at the end of their tether, they were skeletons in that bunker, all wore the look of animated corpses, skeletons with wisps of flesh and cloth still attached. Clean hair, make-up, jewelry, the smell of French perfume, all were forgotten legends this close to the front.

"Their comrades lit little lamps composed of wicks floating in paraffin, and all the dirty men leaned out to touch my clean skin, my soft skin, my cheeks, or my hair. If the Madonna of Loudres herself had descended from a hole in the sky to land within their rathole they could not have been less astonished.

"The two women themselves looked little different from the other desperate wretches inhabiting that stinking refuge, their hair, oh, their soft and glorious hair, reduced to a patchy stubble, their tender faces limned with dirt and scabs. I might have arrived from the planet Mars, it was no more distant than Barcelona.

"My filthy women returned my tears, and caresses, and kisses, with liquid cries and streaks of salted wet upon their own ravaged cheeks, crying as much for their own lost youth as their present condition, their future. I held them tight, caressing my lovers, seeking to cover them with my last memories of their serenity, their surety, their beauty, the softnesses of their breasts in my mouth.

"The human husks remaining there marveled at us all, whistled and smiled in the gloom, trying not to show their quivering eyes when another shell exploded nearby, not when a beautiful lady could see their mortal fears. I cried, we all cried for them, our hearts broke to see their misery, and guess their implacable futures.

"I gave them my earrings, my rings, as souvenirs. Every bill or coin exited our pockets and my purse, the watches off our wrists, every bit of gold or silver we had. We did not have to say we were trying to aid the chances of their own survival if captured. We three there knew prisoners with some small bit of wealth might survive a captivity whereas someone with nothing might not. All eyes in that bunker knew their future if Franco received them.

"During this time of reconciliation and grief my two Amazon soldiers could not stop crying or caressing me, marveling at my fine clothes, unable to recall themselves in laces and in the golden lights of unafraid day. All there accepted the reality of a miracle, my gifts might as well have been presented by the Holy Ghost, and my presence could be viewed as nothing less than divine intervention from the Virgin herself.

"Their Commissar objected to my presence, our presence, and immediately suspected we had come to take the two women back to civilization. He complained he had received no orders concerning the two 'soldiers'. The men in the bunker beat the Basque senseless for his objections, and threw him in a corner. If he continued objecting later, they would shoot him to shut his prattling mouth. There was little humanity left in the trenches or the men by the time of Teruel.

"Their Colonel was there, McNeil himself, still in a ragged Sam Browne crossbelt, a short, slender man, blond and fair, a crusader with all hope of survival dead in his eyes.

"First he ordered the two women to accompany me to Barcelona, as per the Corps orders so much gold had been necessary to buy. Then, as he waved these very expensive scraps of paper at them, at us all, McNeill declared them discharged from the Army of the Republic of Spain. For the sake of my beauties, we all counted the cost a small price to pay. We might have debated saving more of these doomed volunteers, but we had all long ago realized we outside the world must allow the world its excesses and its self-flagellation´s of wartime murder.

"My two American doves of war made their teary farewells to their comrades, said their good-byes, their hearts breaking amidst their joy at their own personal salvation. Guides painfully took us down the mountain at night, our way fitfully lit by the incessant red and green artillery flares hissing overhead. Down the battered slopes we stumbled to my Rolls, my pensive Russian driver, to safety, every step taking us further from chance obliteration. The road to Barcelona, and then to France, to safety, opened before us.

I hope I shall never again have to look into eyes such as those of the two guides who watched us all enter my grand, if now somewhat battered automobile. All were dead men, and all knew it. A few thousand Pounds Sterling in their hands as we left probably simply they died rich. They turned and walked uphill to their own inevitability´s, and I almost cried out to them, to come with us, join me, somehow we would buy their safety.

"My girls cried and shook, we stumbled into the auto in a heap, and made a high-speed run for the bridge over the Ebro at Tortosa, all of us insane with relief, all of us in that car friends, lovers, Kameraden, all together, sure my Autumn girls would never leave me now. I vowed to keep them safe.

"We petted them, and comforted them, and they shook themselves into a nervous sleep as we made plans of the meals we would indulge them in, the fine clothes we would buy for them in Lucerne, or Lyon, or Milan.

"Chris, Christine, forever the female, begged for a pair of fine silk hose, and a lacey bra and soft black step-ins. She would spend at least one whole week making up her face, then spend another week messing her lipsticks upon her cousin's body, and mine. White satin must adorn her, hide her skeletal form as soon as we got to Barcelona.

"Terry wished to sleep in a bed with real silk sheets (after an hour-long soak in a bubbly bath), get sick stuffing pastries into her mouth, drink Coca-Cola, and teach some Catalan how to make a sublimely greasy Yank hamburger.

"Finally, they slept there, in the back seat, my Autumn Girls, curled about each other, twitching in their sleep like a pair of dogs too whipped by an uncaring master. Etienne and I curled together upon the carpeted floor, wide awake, whispering ridiculous plans to each other of how we would pamper our much-abused friends, feed them, caress them, dress them in soft cloths, love them in an eternity of languid nights. The Rolls Phaeton calmly accepted the abuse we inflicted upon it, and resolutely sped us towards Barcelona and asylum.

"At the Ebro bridge we left them asleep on the back seat, my two girls, and we left the bridge guards to make their necessary inspections, confident in our inviolability, oh, so much had we partaken of the naiveté and foolishness of that short era. We thought there were safe places, finally, in the world.

"I went into the guard bunker to present our papers, and my three men dispersed to stretch their legs.

"I came out of that gray guardhouse, and my girls were gone.

"Forever.

"Boris was frothing at the mouth, held back from attacking the armed Republican Garda only by the strength of Etienne and Juan. The guards blanched at the sight of our fury, their guns tight in their suddenly unsure hands. Their Capitano stood ashen of face, afraid to meet our eyes, holding our sheaves of safe passages in his hands, only too aware of the possible diplomatic incident we represented, the international gaffe. For which his superiors would have made him pay an ultimate price.

"Before us lay the end of so many hopes, broken like Dresden dolls. My girls, my, oh, my lovely Autumn Girls, they lay face forward in the ditch, their blood steaming with little curls of smoke in the morning cold.

"I have often since prayed that Chris and Terry both died without understanding what was happening to them. Exhausted, still incoherent with relief, eyes clouded by a sleep still robbing them of rational thought or fear, I have hoped they went unafraid to their gods.

"They shot them for deserters, the Republican Garda did, the vicious guard-dogs the war had created out of their Police. Just like that, as you might snap your fingers, the Russian-trained brutes had murdered them. My Autumn Girls had worn what was at one time a recognizable uniform, and that was quite enough for the Garda.

"The Soviet NKVD had reorganized the Republican Garda to ensure order and discipline behind the lines, and especially to discourage any desertion by the most draconian methods imaginable. These fanatics wasted no time in preliminaries or needless inquiries. They were driven only by their inner fears and hates, and the authority given them by a dying Republic. And the NKVD had taught them much, including the bullet to the base of the brain."

In the darkness´ much amplified within his room Spock yet thought he could detect an indecision about Irena, a dismay, a new confusion amongst the confusions of her unlikely story. It was as if she was the desperate lover of centuries past, not as a story-telling device, a literary ploy, but in fact. Confession or platelet, Spock sought calm as the story continued to flow into the room's night.

"It was Chris I viewed as the most unselfish of the two women. She might watch her cousin Terry caress me, make love to me, dance with me, sleep with me in the autumn's heat under the olive trees, or play pillow games in my Renaissance bed. Chris would hold back, patient, still a shy child, waiting for a word, a plea, a kiss, before joining us. She needed a word or gesture before she could feel welcome in my arms, in our arms. Chris would apply lipstick to our nipples, and sometimes just take me to her arms, content just to hold, to kiss.

"She had such a quiet laugh, she enjoyed my scented soaps when washing, she would constantly brush her long blond hair, slyly watch for the effect of some new garment or pose, ever the femme.

"Chris would put a finger to her lips before asking a question, and refused to darken her pale eyebrows, despite the custom of the times. She would accept a new dress with all the graceless guile of a child hoping for yet another present, and could soak in my outdoor tub for hours on end, ignoring the puckering of her fragile skin. She would undress me with all the solemnity of a priest bestowing the sacrament, and suckle my nipples with the fervor of a newborn. She had a long scar on one thigh and knee, a legacy of an adolescent Lacrosse game. She played a piano in a determined but rather rudimentary fashion, and she and her cousin were a long ways from the Elmira, New York which had condemned them for their Sapphic love.

"Terry wore her dark brown hair short, and would often cry if she felt she had achieved something noteworthy during one of her dance practices. She would grace my miniature Tuscan plaza with her nude grace, the recorded warble of Russian ballets crying over my North Italian hillsides, my valley.

"Old Carlo would gracefully run the big Phillips Victrola, pretending not to see the scandalous nudity, and the sinful lusts practiced amongst us. Carlo protected Terry, she was his favorite, and he was forever disciplining the young men seeking to spy and peep.

"Terry would wet my sheets with tears when making love, her emotions things of ferocity and completeness, her joy always making her cry, her fingers leaving raw trails in her lover's backs.

"Terry wanted to be the next Isadora Duncan, to be a world-class dancer, and she practiced incessantly. She bent to her bar, she leaped and twirled her ballet endlessly, seeking perfection, there in the sun of that glorious autumn of nineteen thirty-five.

"She and Chris might fly about my estate, clad only in sheer and air, scandalizing the old women of the village, and bringing rebukes from the local father. Major, my wine stewart would lay out his best bottles for their lunches, slicing snow-cured ham paper-thin for the hurried snacks they managed. Learning to love them as we all did, coming to accept them as substitutes for the daughters he never had.

"Such a fiery autumn it was that year, it was a lingering summer, there were sprinklings of rains to nuture all of Italy, this blessing of unreal weather lasting for months. The Marigolds were glorious, and the Argenta bloomed until November. Spring had not been kind to the vines, but Oh! The olives!

"The valley rang with clatterings as the peasants beat the olive trees for a phenomenal harvest. They beat the patient trees with love and vigor, and the trees in turn gave the folk of Tuscany a bounty of their little fruits.

"Michael, a lover, a friend, the son of a friend and lover, he might join us, for the girls were able to love men as I did myself. Both lived for their joys and their loves, and were always willing to welcome any lover of mine who could love them without decrying their other lusts. They were blithe spirits indeed, and could smile warmly when Michael came to our couplings.

"The wine stewart would quietly disappear when we would twine together, there, in the poignant autumn of an Italy once more headed into disaster. Oh, how blind we were then!

"I had, long before that day determined that the government, this Mussolini person, would once more bring catastrophe to my ravaged, beloved, Italy. Yet still we did nothing, we did not care to see our own danger. We wanted so much to live apart and unafraid.

"Therefore, during that rich autumn we ignored the world, and were all lovers together, shutting out these rumblings of tragedy. Enjoying my Autumn Girls.

"They had been springtime lovers, these girls, and became winter's friends, and we all held autumn's passions to our memories with a soft tenderness.

"They went off to fight in a bitter slaughter, seeking to spare us all the debacle of another world war. Idealists. Crusaders, my poor sweet lambs.

"They went to fight in that Civil War, not to tend the wounded, but to kill, or be killed, and in this endeavor they would be successful.

"The George Washington Brigade did not know what to do with them, the Lincoln Brigade was for Negroes, so they sent them to the insane Irish Brigade, and they in turn presented them to the Canadians and McNeil's doomed band.

"By the beginning of thirty-eight these lambs had their stomach's fill of useless fighting. By Teruel they had ceased hoping for survival, and smiled the more as they realized what we had come to do. Their relief was limitless, rescue breaking them as horror had not. Their tears fell then. A flood for all their lost inocences, lost forever on the stony slopes of Aragon and Castile, lost forever in the wrecked trenches criss-crossing central Spain.

"They hiccuped with relief, they were free of the stones, they hoped to lose the remembering of what they feared they could never, ever forget. In a year's time, perhaps, they might have begun to heal their souls as well as their bodies.

"They might have learned again to sleep long nights without awakening with a frightened jerk, to be startled awake, swimming in unthinkable remembrances.

"The Spanish Garda shot them in the back of the neck as casually as lighting a cigarette, and denied me ever the hope of holding their sweet breasts to mine again. Of brushing Cris' hair, or spilling sweet wine on Terry's belly.

"It was all gone, their dreams, hopes, and mine. Except for a few inevitably fading memories held by a small handful of others, their lives might just as well have never been. They had devolved into photos in a book, words in aging letters.

"Just like that... It is a measure of my own despair that the Bridge staff was allowed to live." Irena clicked her fingers sharply in the shadows, and did not continue with her emotions, her fantasy, dream, nightmare of the waking, illusion, painful playlet. She turned again to Spock, her face against his chest, her arms partly about him, holding him loosely against her soft breasts.

Spock could recall a dozen human phrases of comfort, another dozen of consolations which might be applicable in these circumstances. A third dozen of gentle observations, words, clichés, regrets. All those words which he had learned over the varied years as the verbal tokens humans sought from others in times of trial, those comments to assist them in combating the chimeras of their pains, their emotions.

Wisely he did not express them, but limited himself to silence, an inner acceptance of the fact of her pain. He grasped the truth that, for whatever reason, because of whatever personal reality, this human was hurting inside. His very presence was necessary, for a madness of an unfamiliar type seemed to have settled into this room tonight. This woman felt regret for sins, events four centuries dead. He felt unsure what should be done, even less sure what should be said, or how he might help her in her unrealistic grief.

Therefore he allowed Irena her tears, and did nothing. Excepting a gentle holding of her body to his.

Finally the jerkings stilled, and in a lowered voice she regained the use of words.

"It is incredibly foolish of me, I know, to feel so badly over what must be at best just part of a legend undoubtedly distorted by many years. Maybe I am indeed unstable if such a thing may affect me so. But I know I must accept myself, I must accept what is, and hope for the healing to arrive when it is due.

"There are so many tragedies, and each must leave a ghost behind it, to share my unquiet bed, and read in mocking tones the scrolls of my days. There are so many ghosts seeking their own purposes, they crowd so close at times.

"They continually pluck at my sleeve, ask of me when shall I join them, and like not the answers I whisper back. They hunger for me, they wish me, they desire the feasting my bloody soul would present to them. Especially the murdered ones. There are so many...."

In the silences surrounding this woman he had once presumed to be so soft, then so harsh and strong, he detected a new level of brittleness and vulnerability. This creature, this female, put her two arms incompletely about his body, hugging herself to him, gave no indication of ever quitting him. A few small hackings issued from her throat, and the night settled into a type of sharply-edged calm.

Eventually she began to stir, to move, to slowly rub her torso against him, her thighs against his, to seek to define his back with her awakening hands. She assumed a yet closer stance, finding his strength something to meld with, and he knew she had begun to softly kiss his chest. Her hands lifted his tunic, and her fingers began to discover him as her own breathing changed, lowered, slowly accelerated.

"Grant me this night, Mr. Spock. Please. Comfort me, sleep with me, use my body. Protect me from the ghosts."

He did not know quite how to equate her convictions with his own realities, her delusions with his truths, he was far from sure what to say, what to do. So he filed the night, and the Director, under 'Insufficient Data', and said nothing.

He ached with a very human emotion now. Regret. He deeply felt the loss of his old truths, old sureties, old certainties, old inhibitions, lost in the course of his years living with humans on the Enterprise. For a few seconds he and Irena were kin, both adrift in a maelstrom. Only for a few seconds. Then, once more, he became First Officer Spock, trying to assess his options with this strange woman.

As Irena's hands grew bolder, as her kisses roamed afield, as she pulled his hands to her breasts, and rubbed them with his palms, he gave a nearly inaudible sigh. He began to hold her insistent flesh in return, and eventually allowed her demanding needs to draw his head down to hers, to her lips, to increasingly desperate kisses. There to meet a new destiny.

EARLY, THE NEXT MORNING

Spock was tugging his boot onto his foot when Irena emerged from the side cubicle. An air of great calm lay about her now, a great peace. The facial lines he had perceived yesterday had apparently vanished in the thin light of this early morning. Another curiosity, Irena might have shed half a score of years in a night's time.

As Spock rose to his feet, Irena studied him in turn, arms behind her back, a toothy grin altering her previous day's look of distraction and partial unease. Today the gray body stocking, disposable, had been disposed of. Today she displayed the hues of skin natural to a human female of her indeterminate years. A few sprinkles of stars remained on throat and cheek, but were subdued and insignificant contrasted with the previous morning's gaudy displays of beast and man, legend and woman, breast and leg. The human body as canvas, McCoy had at the time murmured with appreciation.

Under her simple and understated sleeveless jacket Irena's breasts moved with her breaths, swung with her movements, but today, demurely hidden. Her feet still bare, her legs also demure under her pair of draw-stringed pants.

Spock finished laying his gear about himself, but halted to allow the black-haired woman to come to him, to hold him, touch him, kiss his chest. He did not push her away, feeling it was proper to allow this woman her moments of familiarity. Especially after the previous night's uses. Human females, indeed all humans needed touchings and reassurances, some contact. Without it they became less than human. In truth Spock had come to enjoy types of these small contacts, willingly adapting himself to human needs.

In time Irena moved back, one hand continuing to trace the contours of his arm and chest. Humans, he knew, found such touchings to be an essential part of their hold on the realities. Therefore he allowed them.

Her green eyes followed the dictates of her mind, and with easy motions she went to stand by the large window. Already he knew she was turning her active mentality to the solving of the puzzles presented by the world outside. It was a standard of behavior he was well accustomed to seeing in his human shipmates, as their intellects forever sought new limitations to transcend and conquer. Humans were never at peace, he understood. Rather the best of them continually found new questions to answer. At this Spock glanced at his tricorder, becoming enwrapped in his own continual quest for truths.

"Very odd," he commented. "Barely readable trace amounts of uncommon polyenzymes were unmistakably present in your bioscan yesterday. Yet today many of these marginal readings are gone, and an entirely new set is present in your bloodstream. Mrs. Rogczvy, Irena, your body chemistry, and its uncommon alterations, are both illogical and fascinating. Is your physical profile usually subject to many such minuscule changes?"

A tinkling of sound resolved itself into a small laugh from Irena, and she returned to his position in the middle of the room. "Are you genuinely that unknowledgeable of the human female, Mr. Spock? At this lovely moment in time I should be extremely surprised if my body chemistry was not altered in some significant manner from yesterday's mode. Right now I feel... I feel... Buddha's smile, I feel supremely female right now, it's a glorious feeling to know how thoroughly and completely one may be the woman of the species," she said, laughing again.

"A woman for other species, too," she added, smiling.

"Yes, if a few unusual polyenzymes are present in my bloodstream today, I should be not in the least astonished to discover this as a truth, Mr. Spock."

She let her hands move to his shoulder, to trace the line of one cheek with the back of a hand. She again uttered that sharp crystalline laugh at his stoic demeanor.

"You must drive many of your human compatriots to total distraction on occasion, Mr. Spock. I am quite aware how your Vulcan societal paradigm may be so damned literal at times, but you also have an air about you of such complete certainty.

"Are there no questions, no gray areas of reality in your determined march through the years?" He merely cocked an eyebrow at her, and tried not to be surprised when she again laughed, and then held him so tightly as to make even his own sturdy physique note the strength of her clasp.

A trilling sound broke into their closeness, interrupted their privacy. Irena gave one quick kiss to his biceps, then pulled from underneath the collar of her jacket a small communicator device.

In a second she had transformed herself from soft female to busy bureaucrat, listening, giving orders, making decisions. The decisions might affect little but this battered husk of a world, she might be director of nothing more than an archaeological expedition, not much perhaps in a quadrant of one Galaxy housing Empires, Dominions and Federations. But she was still a Planetary Director, in many senses the government, the last resort for thousands of academics and scholars upon an entire world.

Spock leisurely finished setting about himself a few additional items of gear, and adjusting the lines of his uniform. With this he also assumed the attitudes of a Star Fleet officer, an unmistakable alteration of self.

"Madam Director...," he began.

"Irena," she managed to smile, giving his chin a quick caress. "Certainly today we may be a small bit less formal, yes?"

"There are a few inquires I would wish to make of you, if you are able to spare the time," he relentlessly continued. To his determined face Irena managed a light and indulgent sigh, a cocking of one eyebrow for a few seconds, and an affirmative nod of her head.

"Would you be able to walk with me this morning? I really must return to my offices sometime soon, and we may converse more comfortably when more of my morning's business has been processed. It should take only a minute portion of the day's time." Spock made his own nod as she began yet another arcane conversation with the com-unit voice. She began to glide out of the cubicle, into the enclosed passageways of the base. She paused and gestured to Spock to follow her, then resumed her purposeful movements, quite distracted to the point of almost ignoring Spock thereafter.

Down into glow-lit tunnels they ventured, Irena no longer even needing to glance at the multitude of signs to find her way. Above them lay Crater's World. down here was Irena's.

Within minutes both were able to reach the underground entrances to the office complex, and they entered almost as a pair. Once inside this node of planetary administration she pointedly clung to Spock, displaying territorial imperatives to the few office personnel already present. Spock comprehended the maneuver, Irena had laid a claim upon him with the simple act of touching him as they paraded before other human females. He allowed this. He was, after all, a very patient sentient.

Once inside the austere center of Irena's planetary empire, she displayed a commendable efficiency, as well as frequent smiles aimed in Spock's direction. Silicon chairs and tables, relics salvaged from the city above littered the offices, and a few works of art from the long-dead race.

Inside her own office there stood an achingly realistic bronze statue of a child, possibly male, of that defunct species. A smile played on its cold metal lips, intelligence and humor in its eyes and hands, a very human head of hair ruffled on its head.

Irena palmed some section of her desk, and in seconds it produced a hot cup of some aromatic brew. quickly brought to her large pale lips. Today, themselves the only sentients in the office, with much leisured time in which to investigate, Spock carefully examined Irena's bureaucratic nerve-point. Yesterday morning he had the opportunity to do so, but had refrained, judging no need to do so at the time. Additionally, he had been but one amongst many, politeness limiting his natural curiosity.

Now the two of them were alone, and she was preoccupied with the urgencies of a global project most insistently voicing multiple demands on Irena's attention. Spock therefore took the opportunity to indulge his new desire for additional information concerning this Irena person.

Today he let his questions take him to a holo cube upon Irena's austere desk. It sat prosaically upon the bare surface, an object of such transcendent normality as to approach invisibility. Such cubes sat upon a hundred million million similar desks, shelves, platforms, within niches, within nearly countless rooms across the explored galaxy. Thousands of worlds, numerous outposts and stations, and left behind on purpose or by accident wherever humankind or the Federation had momentarily lingered. Satellites, spatial vehicles, visitations, embassies, closets, trash bins.

Spock lifted it and slowly followed the parade of images presented within this mundane artifact. Multitudes of alien scenes flowed across the visible face, but by far the majority were painfully unimaginative souvenirs from times and encounters important only to Irena. Many were recognizably from Old Earth, many portraying Irena in dozens of styles, varieties of hair colors and backdrops of all the permutations of seasonal weather on three score of planets, scores of unknown faces alone, or with Irena. In short, prosaic beyond easy description.

One was a surprise to him, Irena in long reddish hair, holding close his own mother, the background obviously some portion of the parks common to urban Vulcan. A more startling one presented a less-than-stiff Sarek with Irena's broad elfin face tucked within the crook of his arm. A gag shot, Spock had heard such referred to. His own father in an undignified pose. There was no end to the wonders of the universe, he concluded.

Irena in long braids, Admiral Daystrum with his hand on her smaller shoulder. Spock swung his head from side to side, amused at the familiarity with which humans might impose their presence's upon others, especially federation notables.

After many views he came to one which brought him up short, intent on questioning Irena about it when the opportunity presented itself. He scanned the remainder, and patiently waited for Irena to conclude her business. He had much to question her about.

Eventually she seemed to have finished with her morning's most urgent details, and she indicated to Spock he might interrupt her at his convenience. In response to her own unspoken question, he spun the cube to a specific view and displayed the couple he had seen.

"It appears you knew a man named Flint," he noted.

"He was known to me by a differing name," she returned. "It was some years ago, before my first rejuv treatment. When did you see him last? I would know how he fares, and how he prospers, for he was an individual of extraordinary talent, if somewhat reserved of demeanor. I wished to know him, at the time, far better than in fact I did."

"How did you know him, if you will pardon the query from me?," Spock evaded.

"Leon was a cellist, quite well known in European musical circles. He and I played a duet once, I on the Viola de Gamba, a small cello, he on the Pianoforte, another instrument he had mastered. It was a recital of some beauty, according to others, very sweet, much appreciated by friends," Irena stated in a faraway tone.

"He left Terra at some time in the past, long ago in Terran times, I remember being so young at the time. Now it is your turn to give me information!"

As she cocked an eyebrow at him, Spock quite carefully responded.

"Did he ever tell you how long he had lived?"

Another quizzical look flowed over Irena's face as she responded. "It never seemed important at the time, for he was a most urbane and gentle man, a seeming victim of long life. He seemed a man very much afflicted with a superabundance of years, I assumed he was a person who had reached his own personal limit of medical longevity treatments. "

"Some reach physical points where the body is unable to retain the benefits of longevity. He appeared the more customary type, quite psychologically unable to process the prospect of even more years, redoing again and again a life which no longer held any emotional spice for him. He was ready to cease the struggle, and I dread what I now realize you must tell me about him. A most melancholy soul when I knew him, his bow sang the most langruous melodies, weeping with many regrets. Has he given up the struggle?"

She looked away for a second, seeing her own truths. "You Vulcans with your long life-spans fail to understand these opposites in us.

"We live our first hundred years with a zest and fire unknown to you and yours, understood not at all by your patient people. Yet for most of us at some point in the journeying of our second hundred years our longevity becomes a matter of profound weariness. When reaching this dispiriting time we become more than ready to lay down the swords and bucklers of continued lifetimes. Maybe we just become bored."

"He never mentioned immortality?"

She appeared dumbfounded for the barest fraction of a second, then a tremendous sorrow flowed onto her face, followed by a rigidly enforced passivity. It was some minutes before she managed to reply.

"No one is immortal, Mr. Spock," she most emphatically bit.

"In this case," Spock added, "you are entirely correct. We came upon him, almost alone, quite far from this planet. I regret to inform you that when last we saw him he was indeed in the process of dying."

"Of what was he dying?," she carefully inquired.

"Doctor McCoy stated when Flint abandoned Earth, he also left behind the supportive biosphere of Terra. And was now dying of the lack. Quite irreversible, and most unexpected a consequence."

In a voice so low that even Spock had to strain his hearing to make out the words, Irena pronounced one saddened sentence.

"Ships that pass in the night," was all she said.

He stared at her for some minutes, but she failed to enlarge upon that enigmatic statement. After some thought he again spun the cube back to an earlier display. In this view stood two apparently Old-period Terran females, evidently taken from an old pre-modern 'snapshot'. Its age was evident, despite the coloration and three-dimensionality given it inside the cube, from the simple fact that taken from a period prior to 3-D cameras, the view could not be altered to show the sides or rear of the projection. Two human females, mundaneity exemplified, excepting the archaic style of clothes adorning them, the cloche hats loosely clasped in their hands. He had seen many Earth women in such styles when he and Captain Kirk had journeyed in time to meet Edith Keeler. Organic fibers in their clothes, antique make-up on their faces. Over four hundred years in the past. The 1930's, old calendar, mainstream western culture.

Spock carefully presented this view to Irena and patiently awaited any comment from her.

She sighed again, then took the holocube and held it close to her. "Yes," she noted, "it is them. The ill-fated lovers of Teruel. The fabled Autumn Girls.

“Did you think them entirely the product of fevered imaginings? My night-terrors? They lived, they lived their all-too-short span, and died so uselessly. That much is fact, besides the stories of my family they left their small imprint upon records surviving from the period. All else might be artistic creation, wild fantasy, melancholy legend. But live they certainly did. And then died. Much as has the rest of humanity," she ended.

Irena continued to look thoughtfully at the ancient smiling faces for another moment. When she laid the cube down upon the desk, she lifted her head to gaze directly into the point of Spock's phaser.

"Please desist of any violent or sudden maneuvers, Ms. Rogszgy. This unit is set for maximum lethal destructive effect. I shall use this with the most reluctance, but use it I shall, if I feel the least bit threatened. Please do not push the possibilities at this time."

Irena froze for some seconds, then lifted a disturbingly serene face to Spock's gaze. He felt an uneasy sensation as he perceived how unnaturally calm she appeared. Already he questioned the reality of his supposed control of the situation.

"I believe absolutely you could indeed bring yourself to fire that toy," Irena flatly intoned. "Nonetheless, I am wondering just exactly why I am being subjected to this somewhat dubious honor?" Spock was not reassured by the beginnings of a small smile on her lips.

"What are you, Ms Rogczgy?," he calmly asked.

"Irena, please," she interjected. "Irena."

Spock refused the bait, continuing to unwaveringly hold the phaser aimed at the midpoint of her chest. Between the softly rising swells of her apparently young breasts. Breasts he had held not hours before.

Irena sighed yet again, and began a sing-song monologue, a monotonous recitation for Spock's ears.

"I am Irena Rogczgy, at this moment Planetary Director of M-113, today more commonly referred to as Crater's World, after the unfortunate scientist who lost his wife and life because of the actions of one remaining life-form resident on the surface. I am de jure head of the archaeological expedition..."

Spock waved the phaser minutely, but its movement was sufficient to terminate her uninformative speech.

"Please...Irena...tell me at this time exactly what you are."

"You're making me uneasy," Irena commented, "pointing that nasty little thing at me. What do you think I might be?" In truth Spock did not observe much unease about the...woman?

Spock failed to move, or alter the aim of his weapon. "I think," he returned, "that normal, young Terran females, even rich, spoiled, willful, or overly adventurous females, do not normally bite healthy Vulcan´s on the neck, leaving two small and nearly invisible puncture wounds at the juncture where our version of the jugular vein comes close to the surface. They certainly do not have any known use for any quantity of our blood. I repeat my question; what exactly are you?"

"Indeed," she dryly continued. "Would you please inform me what do you think I am, why might I perform such an, ah, original act?" Spock was little reassured by her continuing serenity.

Spock fingered that small place on his neck, and two very small wounds became more evident as he irritated them. "I am not positive you are what you seem," he relentlessly stated.

"The inevitable logic´s of simple and undeniably straight-forward decision trees leaves me with few suppositions, none of them satisfactory. I fail to enjoy the end answers this series of logic´s has lead me to, none of them complete. Yet they are logical, thus far, and do not admit of equally probable alternatives. Logic persuades me you are not quite Terran-normal. This is cause for considerable alarm, both for myself and humanity, and my ship and its crew. Please give me alternatives to my present quite logical fears, Irena."

He rubbed the two tiny wounds one more time, as if to draw assurance from their reality.

"Convince me my logic is in error," he almost pleaded. "Tell me the truth. Prove to me you are not a threat, besides being an alien creature."

"You think me some breed of alien?," she requested.

"Perhaps," he unhesitatingly riposted.

"Or more exactly you think me a dangerous type of alien? The proverbial evil and lurking menace?," came the reply.

Once more he fingered his neck, failing to lower his weapon.

Irena began to openly smile then, perhaps with more than a trace of sadness, but still definitely a smile. She proceeded to relax without moving much, settling slowly into the overstuffed comfort of her antique Terran office chair.

"Mister Spock," she commented, in the accents of yet another unidentified Old Earth tongue. "Believe me when I say for almost my entire life, excepting these past few years, I have never journeyed from the Solar System. In all possible respects which matter, I am to the core an Old Terran, and cannot recall being anything other than a citizen of Earth."

"You have evaded the question," he calmly noted.

She made as if to push some point atop her desk, but quickly froze as Spock altered his stance.

"You might research me in your ship's computer files on the Enterprise," she pointed out. "I am not only a citizen of some note in my own right, but my family, the Spata's of Old Italy, may be traced back for quite a few centuries into the past, even through the documentation losses commonly attendant on the Wars and Troubles." Irena gently leaned backwards into her faux leather furniture, relaxation perceptibly spreading over her entire body. Like a cat.

"Apart from the fact I might wish to perform a few, ah, extra-ordinary acts upon the flesh of a lover accessed to me, I hardly perceive any proof concerning an extra-Terrestrial origination." Another of those small crystalline laughs, and she continued, her own pale throat pulsing in the steady light within the office.

"If you wish to delve into the matter of deviant behavior between lovers, you might access the files on the Angor Siap or Medellin arcology towers back on Terra...," she mildly prompted with a crooked smile. "Very educational." Spock made no response.

"What do you think I am, Mr. Spock?," she finally asked, her hands opening in a quizzical fashion. "If not human?"

Spock seemed about to speak, then thought better of it, holding himself in. For minutes he stood quietly, finally giving voice to his inner thoughts.

"In our journeying's we have encountered beings made of energy. Or which sucked variant forms of energy as nourishment.

"Incorporeal beings and beings close to that state. Also many others of a diversity impossible to grasp beforehand. Thus the possibility of a copy-cat life-form hiding within humanity would now seem almost prosaic after the past few years of revelations."

"Such by itself hardly sounds menacing," she commented. "Do you feel menaced, threatened by such as me?"

"To hide amongst us rather than openly proclaiming truths and origins speaks of menaces," Spock stated.

Before Spock might continue, Irena interrupted his words with a stream of her own, dripping with repressed bitterness and barely suppressed angers.

"Salem, Massachusetts," she intoned. "And the Holy Inquisition. The Gulags and Dachau. The rack. Witchcraft trials. Mass burnings at the stake. The Loire dotted with hundreds of witch´s...omen´s... innocent bodies. Burning ghetto´s, massacres in Armenia, New Kryzgh, Bosnia, Mamardo, Baluchistan, Timor, Syrtis Minor, Io, Deimos Prison. Marches, Expulsions, Reawakenings.

"Always the blood flows and always it is someone else's, always it is the blood of the innocents," her voice quivered with emotions barely leashed.

"You speak of the past," he returned. "Not today."

Irena laughed again then, a laugh far from the gentle crystalline vibrations he had heard from out her throat before this. Harsh, cold, hard with iron truths.

"Today might be little different from the past. The peasant ever keeps his scythe to hand, and it may harvest much more than grain."

She waved one small hand to eddy the air, despair in the leisured movement. "The mob might yet burst forth, with all it has carried before. Thumb-screw. Pointed stake. Torch and white phosphorous."

Spock shook his head slightly, arguing the point. "Possibly in some extreme cases all the old evils might yet burst forth again," he admitted.

"In an unknown number of cases some few frontier worlds might erupt in fears and hates. Truthfully, many humans feel fears close to the surface, for it is but a few years since the Dustings and the Altered Men. Even the well-adjusted Terran of today is the child of a time which allowed only one in five to survive." A cloud of doubts and questions darkened Spock's brows for some moments. He re-examined Irena as she again began to speak.

"What if there existed a deeply-disguised tiny minority in Federation space today, Mr. Spock? One wishing to emerge some day from hiding? What if once they were deeply feared, but the fears were wildly exaggerated? What if they could provably be made harmless in today's technological society?," she continued to probe. "What if? What then? What to do? Who to see? Who to contact? How?"

Eventually Spock replied to the woman in the overstuffed chair, his voice echoing careful thought. "Obviously they must first contact my own Vulcan race, our leaders, our most logical and gifted inhabitants. For only we of the Vulcan race, of all the major Federation power groups could hope to approach any such problem in a rational manner, free of the customary racial prejudices clouding logical responses and reasoned procedures..."

He stopped completely, in the middle of a sentence, and carefully cocked an eyebrow at Irena in her pose. He gazed for nearly ten minutes at the being who only last night had been a lover. His phaser yet did not waver from the aimed point on her midriff.

His words pronounced in an extremely careful manner, Spock once again requested information from Irena; "What are you?"

"I am pilgrim lost," she began. She laughed. Had McCoy or Kirk been present to hear the words, they might have shivered at the tone of voice, and the cold reality inherent in them. It was a most bitter laugh, and there was a grittiness in her throat bespeaking a million lonely nights, and a thousand cold regrets, even while her voice appeared light. Her tone may have seemed buoyant, but her face was hard as a slammed door. Her new confidence held the sturdiness of a rose dipped in liquid helium, and she shivered with an equal chill. Indeed her eyes now seemed gun-ports in a face of steel.

"I am the fire and I am the Flame and Always I Burn."

As she shook off her words into the gentle lights of day, Spock realized she had become unreachable, lost in an unknown response, a ritual, an unbroken circle of words that conveyed an answer to questions never asked.

"I am the River and I am the Wave.

"I may carry you and I may drown you and I may save you. But for ever more you shall never be able to forget me, not for all of your days."

Her voice caught itself, and lifted into a new timbre. "I am witch, and I am murderer, and I am Demon, and I am Savior.

"Succubus, Angel, Hera, Princess, Despot, Amazon, Warrior, Thief, Sorcerer, fury, Gypsy, Athena, Barbarian, Harpy, Nymph, Prophetress, Oracle, Seer, Enchantress, Summoner, Satrapess, Heretic, Pedlar, and Regicide. I am Death Incarnte, and I might be your Life Eternal.

"Murderess, Poisoner, Prisoner, Pardoner, Fellatrix, Goddess, Healer, Harlot, Imposter, Lesbian, Lover, Liar, Ambassador, Assassin, Alchemist, Soothsayer, Regent, Charlatan, Crone, Mime, and Child.

"You might be able to kill me, Mr. Spock, but I warn you I would not go gentle into that dark night. For I have lasted over five thousand Terran years, and have been cursed with prophecies of thousands more."

She paused in her incantation, then continued in a lower rasp, a whiskey voice throaty with old sins.

"You may call me what you wish, Mr. Spock. I cannot begin to recall all the names and titles attached to me in this unending curse of a pointless lifetime. I am the last being alive able to speak in long-dead languages no Terran scholar has even heard of, languages four thousand T-years dead.

"Here, on this Planet, there is a family of sorts about me in this place, but I have had numerous families. They have withered and perished in flame, or by the mob's edged swords. By impaling stake and stoning have my loved ones quit this plane.

"And by peasant's scythe.

"I have buried a thousand lovers, created a thousand more. Another thousand laid down in the sea with tears as salty as equinoctial storms, yet another thousand bodies of loved and dear have been abandoned to the beasts in every corner of Old Earth.

"To keep these errant souls company in their cold Valhalla´s, I have slain ten times that number, ten times that, so many that in my dreams it is difficult to remember living faces, and I drift on cockleshells afloat in oceans of blood.

"But all the past is now dust.

"As some day you shall be dust. You may call me by any turn of phrase you wish, anything you wish.

"Dust has at least that small privilege."

For minutes Spock slowly fingered the reality of his two tiny throat wounds. Then he slowly placed his phaser upon his belt. The two stared at each other for long minutes in a tableaux vivant.

"You might have been killed," he observed. Her only reply was a cat's grin, prompting Spock to emit a long unhappy sigh. He retrieved his weapon, staring at it. Then he lifted an eyebrow at her, and pointed it, harmlessly, at the far wall. Irena said nothing, but did shake her head in a slow negative. Yet one more sigh, and Spock laid the phaser upon her desk top. "It should be in working order," he said.

With a quick and practiced twist she flipped out the side of the butt, and with a small needle from underneath her collar, probed inside the weapon with a quiet assurance.

"Even your armourer probably doesn't know of this little trick. Fortunately I knew the human who designed this particular model." She handed it back to him. "There. All functional."

Finally Spock broke the new silence. He was discovering extended lack of conversation had its own manner of problems. "I believe I now know what once you have been called, in Earth's old pasts. The very stuff of nightmares and tales of calamity, a terror to frighten obedience in children, and induce cold dreams in adults.

"Yet you walk in the daylight, yesterday you wore small crosses on your necklaces's, you are visible in mirrors, and are able to cross running water, and you probably can eat whole garlic's for dinner. Obviously there are multitudes of errors and misconstructions that beg for correcting..." Spock stopped suddenly.

"I am not the first Vulcan you have contacted. My father?"

"An understanding sentient being," she dryly observed, "full of patience and possessing remarkable powers of cogitation.

"With a human wife holding differing but equally remarkable talents and a sense of what is fit, proper and timely, possessed by few."

Irena waved one hand negligently into the air, looking Spock directly in the eye. "There is much for I and my immediate family, those present upon this planet, to tell you. Volumes of data for you to be given and digest as best you can. Those few here who are more than colleagues shall begin shortly. Yet first there is another matter..."

She tilted her head to one side, and that tinkling little laugh came back to her throat. "If it could be at all possible for you to do so, it would be appreciated greatly if the Enterprise would be permitted to use this planet as a minor shore leave facility. This is not Risa, but there is much to see. And the majority of humans here are simple technicians and innocents, only too glad to break their restrictive routines with new friends.

"Our own med-labs will gladly cleanse their lungs before their return. A cheap price in return for their company. Additionally...," she continued. "Though we were never the double-dyed villains popular legend has ascribed of us, and modern technology has limited even more stringently our actual needs, even so..."

A wide and guileless grin came to her, an open engaging smile. "...Still it would be pleasant if we could get a little new blood around here, if just for a few days."

Spock cocked an eyebrow at her, realizing she had just made something termed a pun. It was supposed to be quietly funny.

"My captain...," he began.

"...Is probably well versed in the problem as well, by now. And becoming better acquainted with the problems of our assimilation into the Galactic life. Please be patient, indulge me this morning, consult with your friend after we have first had a few of our own talks. There is indeed much for me, for us to tell. Would you not wish to know of Galileo and Socrates, Sir Issac Newton and Lao-Tse Ze, Sappho, Gilgamesh, Beethoven, and Biblical Ruth? Does not part of you ever look backwards with curiosity, no matter how profitless it has seemed?

"We look forward to conversing freely with you and Captain Kirk. It will be a relief to relax in the company of the pair of you. We will also discuss whether to include your Doctor McCoy in our circle, yes?"

"You yet have not told me exactly who you are, what you call yourselves, your race, your real racial name," Spock complained mildly.

Irena chuckled, free of rancor, yet it was a very masculine chuckle, from far back in her body. Spock thought he detected an immense satisfaction in her at that moment, as if retelling a favorite joke, retold until it has an edge like freshly chipped obsidian.

"Very well then. First off, have you ever read the works of Bram Stoker? Particularly his lurid and excruciatingly inaccurate masterpiece about the paradigm of evil, the extremely nasty Dracula?" To this Spock nodded assent.

Irena licked her lips, eager to spring her little joke.

"Did you never wonder who brought Dracula into the Night Eternal?"

A pause, then; "And would you like to meet him?"

THE END

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