VULCAN, 2065She ran everywhere, and when she was certain her father could not hear her, she would laugh, albeit lightly. She was the freest of spirits, and her name was T'Pau.
But today she waited with her father by the transport site. An event unprecedented was now occurring. A species that observers said was still barely out of mud huts had achieved warp drive. Its local inventor was now being brought to the 40 Eridinai system. She could not contain her excitement, for not merely was this odd accelerated species on board, but two of the people she loved best of all.
"Daughter--you will comport yourself several factors more properly."
T'Pau calmed herself, but issued several silent curses at her father, Sauk. Her vastly more free-spirited mother, T'Soar, had once given T'Pau her only explicit order.
"T'Pau, NEVER become like him."
It was an easy order to obey. Sak was all about logic, and ambition. Succeeding to his mother's position as Head Of House Surak was all he cared for. He certainly did not care for her. She would have undergone a lifetime of Plak Tow if just once he would offer her an appreciative nod of the head for all her efforts-- including the rearing of two willful younger sisters. But as T'Soar would say, the wings of The Dread Old One would block out the sun before that happened.
Now, the transport descended. Soon, the new species would emerge, and nothing would be the same again.
"Daughter--I will not remind you again to calm yourself. Your grandmother is in the distance, watching all this. I will not have her watch a spectacle."
Daughter was not her name, but until she was two, T'Pau had literally thought it was. At times, she could not help but resent the mother who sought the space-lanes so very often, leaving her with the cold Sauk. But now, she was returning with a new chapter of Vulcan's history in tow---not to mention T'Pau's bondmate.
"Father--the ship approaches."
"An illogical redundancy, daughter. All can see that."
The craft landed, and from within it, the oddest sound was heard.
"Here We Are---Pismo Beach, And All The Clams We Can Eat!"
The translation-speakers struggled with the odd words, despite months of programming, to recognize the multiple languages of the new world. To T'Pau it sounded like humorous nonsense, like she would use to distract her two sisters.
A man staggered out, poorly dressed and obviously inebriated.
"I claim this planet--in the name of The Earth! For I am—Duck Dodgers--of the 24th and a half--cen-tu-ree!"
Sauk's eyes went wide.
"No! Never In Living Memory has Vulcan been invaded."
The invader, Doctor Zefram Cochrane, then collapsed on the ground. From inside the shuttle emerged T'Soar, who grabbed up her passenger. T'Pau would not run forward, at this time. But she did not hide her joy at seeing her mother after five years of patrol. T'Soar looked at her nervous bondmate.
"Calm yourself, Sauk. He simply did not handle the journey well. He was given -- calming agents -- to aid his passage."
Cochrane looked at his pilot.
"Hey, Soary! Hows about some more contact?"
Cochrane's words drew outrage, but not as much as T'Soar's next ones did.
"Zefram-Kam---not NOW!"
As he watched his mother's procession withdraw, Sauk felt his heart sink like the stone many thought it was. He looked at his wife, anger still locked tightly away.
"What was we together--is now you and I, quite apart."
T'Soar nodded.
"Long have I regarded it thus."
"Not so long, I think, as I have."
"Sauk--be not so sure."
"T'Soar---I am now not sure of anything."
The woman said nothing further, in part because her daughter was there. The turned back T'Pau offered her said it all.
As her mother left, T'Pau entered the transport, to seek her bondmate, Selen. Seeing him chat with a dark-skinned human female with short curly hair, she spoke out, happy at last that something of this day had gone right.
"Husband!"
Doctor Lillian Galfrey looked askance at Selen.
"Husband? God above help me, they're the same all over the universe!"
Pushing past and away, Cochrane's assistant went to join T'Soar in sobering the drunken fool. T'Pau allowed herself real tears, an extreme measure, even by her standards. Selen gestured.
"T'Pau--you do not know what it was like to be cooped up with these humans. Please, wife, I will offer explanation."
T'Pau left, and never looked upon him again.
"That explanation will, I fear, be largely inadequate."
Sauk came to see her, the next day. She knew there was real trouble by his first word.
"T'Pau?"
He was a great deal gentler, now. It was as though he had dropped his enormous self-discipline regimen. He had done this, because it no longer mattered.
"T'Pau, my bond has been annulled. Your mother, and much of her crew, have been banished to a mining facility on T'Kuht's visible face. I have been permanently excluded from succession."
T'Pau nodded.
"If the bond has been annulled, then logically, I do not exist any longer. Will I be sold?"
Sauk now found himself on the other side of the fence, and was frightened by the daughter he had always previously wished for.
"No, of course not. Your grandmother has chosen to adopt you. You will succeed her, when the time comes. Please do not object to this."
"I do not object, fath--sir."
"Then let us gather your things. You may not bring much, I'm afraid."
T'Pau's mind felt clear, burned bare by grief and shame.
"The Lady will have things for her heir. I neither want nor need any of your possessions, sir."
After leaving she who was his daughter at Gol, Sauk applied for a transfer--to a mining facility on T'Kuht. He and his former bondmate eventually reconciled, and grew happy together. This was forever tainted, though, by the thought that theirs was a freedom traded for in blood.
Kneeling for countless hours inside The Lady's facility at Gol, T'Pau was finally bid to rise by her former grandmother and now adoptive mother.
"Girl--I would know thy mind on the matter of the humans, with whom we are now making contact. They are quite the challenge to all aspects of C'Thia."
T'Pau spoke.
"Mother, they are far more than a challenge."
"Then speak thy mind, child."
T'Pau spoke from a heart that in many ways, she would lose touch with, as time went by, until challenged to come out by a human within her own family.
"Never In Living Memory Has Vulcan Been Successfully Invaded—Until Now."