Chapter Text
And watching Helen climb the stairs
they spoke in undertones to one another:'We cannot hate her, it is no surprise
if armored Trojans and Akhaians should
so long have suffered the agonies of war
for one such as this.''Divinity. The woman is a goddess to the eyes.'
Homer, ILIAD 3:183-90
(trans. mine)
The greatest irony of her life lay in the fact that she was born on a world where her beauty was irrelevant.
Or perhaps that was her salvation. She was almost nineteen years old before anyone thought to tell her she was beautiful. By then, her personality was fixed. She lacked either the arrogance or uncertainty of the extremely attractive and did not second-guess the motivations of the men around her, nor of the women.
Which is not to say she lacked arrogance, but it sprang from different vanities.
At six, however, she was all brown legs and brown eyes, sitting in the sandpile from her father's latest excavation trench. She was sifting for artifacts with the other camp children, offspring of the ShiBaran archaeology team. It was cool in the shade cast by the tent above, the white sides rolled up to admit stray breezes. Glass rattled in the bottom of her sifter, revealing itself slowly as rocky sand poured through. She held it up—a bright bit of clear blue with gold painting—and spoke to the big boy sitting on her left. "Iskha-nah kathori se, Solon-kam." Some Kathori glass for you. Her Vulcan was as fluent as any of her companions'. It was her native language.
He took it from her fingers and studied it with a surprisingly practiced eye for his seven years. "Middle Dynastic period III-B." Then he set it amid the rest of his pile, which had grown to a considerable size.
Lacking abundant water, Vulcan also lacked extensive clay-beds. Ceramics had never developed on a widespread basis. Early containers had been made of stone or tightly-woven reed, not pottery, and were soon replaced by glass: first cast, then blown. Vulcans were already practicing the art of glass-making when humans were just starting to settle the Euphrates-Tigris river valley. Solon's pile consisted of pieces as old as Archaemenid Persian, but of a quality equal to late Roman. Had a passer-by stopped to ask, he could also have dated them all and explained the process of their creation. Human children memorized dinosaurs. Solon, child of Vulcan archaeologists, memorized ancient Kathori dynasties by their art.
His companion had more eclectic interests to match her eclectic heritage. She was fully the offspring of a United Earth, boasting the blood of at least five continents and a few islands. Her mother's family tree included Maori, Tai, Malaysian, Arab, Somalian, and a renegade Brazilian. Her father called himself Onondaga though in fact he had more French and British in him. Still, it was enough Onondaga for the tribal rolls in the twenty-fourth century, and with the great Mohawk Chief Theyendanegea, Joseph Brant, among his ancestors, no one was inclined to challenge his claim.
Like many children of mixed race, she had managed to inherit the best features of all her ancestors though, even at seven, this was not immediately evident. Perhaps it was prescience then which had led her father to give her the name Helen.
The face that had launched a thousand ships.
That Solon would become her husband simply completed the joke. Solon was a good Vulcan name. It was also a good Athenian name, and had belonged to the man called "the sage of Greece" by Plutarch. Solon the wise ranked up beside Solomon in all his glory. When it was announced later that same year that Solon would be bonded to Helen, one Terran wit was heard to quip: and so does wisdom marry beauty.
Both Vulcans and Greeks would have approved the sentiment. Yet, and despite their evident closeness, their bonding had not been a foregone conclusion even if in retrospect, it seemed so.
Beauty was not Helen Brant's only legacy, and certainly not the one on which she learned to rely. The child of third generation academics, intelligence was her birthright. Precocious, she walked early, talked early and had a fearsome fondness for questions: the sort of child a parent boasts of or dreads. On Vulcan, curiosity is a virtue. Unfortunately, Helen also had an uncanny talent for asking the wrong question at the wrong moment and a chancy grasp of 'private' at best. That was a cardinal sin. But because she was young, and bright—and her father much-respected—those subjected to her childish cross-examinations tended to tolerance and a dry Vulcan amusement. Proper questions were answered; improper were ignored.
For all her human volubility, however, Helen was Vulcan-bred. She grew shorter than she might have, on Earth, but stronger, her lungs and chest cavity larger: the result of higher gravity and thinner air. Unless engaging in particularly strenuous activity, she had no need for the regular Tri-ox injections to which non-native humans were subject. She also learned to control extreme expressions, laughing only rarely—though she smiled often. Her father had made no effort to fix Vulcan stoicism in her. David Brant was accepted so thoroughly because, while following most of the tenants of Surak and being among the few Terrans to possess full Vulcan citizenship, he never tried to be a Vulcan. He could usually be found on a dig by listening for his chuckle or spotting the cloud of sweet smoke from his pipe. Kinikinik herbs. Sacred or not, pure tobacco offended Vulcan noses.
Like his daughter, he considered Vulcan his home and had grown up in ShiKahr. Climbing over the ancient monuments at the modern city's heart, David Brant had developed a fascination with Vulcan history and became the first human to matriculate from the prestigious Science Academy with a specialty in Sakal-Kathori archaeology. His daughter's early toys were piles of bronze coins and reconstructions of marble figurines. She learned Sakal at the dinner table like the child of classicists might learn Latin or Greek.
She was six when it became evident that she had a gift for it.
Like everything else, she read early. Writing was slower; her child's hands had not yet developed the necessary muscle control. But she was reading children's books—in Vulcan of course—by four. By five, she had added Federation Standard. By six, she was reading simple Sakalin inscriptions on the monuments of her father's worksite. One afternoon as she read off magistracies from the grave stele of a man three-thousand years dead, her father's colleague Saval said, "She will be an epigrapher." Vulcan humor. The kind non-Vulcans usually missed. But later, it was remembered that he had predicted it. Akal'dhen. Vulcans gave no credence to fate but they did have the concept of a chance foretelling.
From the beginning, Solon was part of her personal orbit: milk-brother, childhood playmate and sometimes-protector. Neither had other siblings and they became known about the ShiBaran dig as "the twins" for the fact both had wavy black hair. More Vulcan humor as they were not even of the same race, much less the same womb. They did share the same mother—he by blood, she by informal adoption.
She never knew her real mother. Her father had met Jamilla al-Farris at a conference. Though raised on Vulcan, David Brant was no monk and al-Farris had a good measure of the beauty she bequeathed her daughter. Their fling resulted in an unexpected pregnancy; even in the twenty-fourth century, accidents could happen. Raised on Vulcan, Brant had Vulcan views on abortion not required by medical necessity and begged al-Farris to carry the child to term for his sake. She agreed, but left the ShiKahr hospital the day after her daughter was born, never having seen the child. "It'll be easier that way," she had said. Nineteen years later, she would change her mind, but for the moment, the infant was given into her father's care. And Brant—who may have wanted her but knew nothing about caring for her—turned in desperation to his colleagues who had a year-old son: the same Saval who would later predict Helen's career, and T'Syra, his wife. Vulcans were accustomed to extended families and Brant simply moved in with them. Helen was nursed at a Vulcan breast and, after he got over his initial envy, Solon came to regard the small round-eared creature who had invaded his house as his personal responsibility.
If precocious described Helen, Solon was slow. He spoke late and in laconic phrases, and moved with care—in part because he was a big boy and feared breaking things. He preferred to concentrate on one matter at a time and thought through his options before committing himself to any, in contrast to his quicksilver milk-sister. Because of this, it was easy to mistake him for dull, or mentally deficient. He was neither, as his test-scores repeatedly proved, yet the unwary were occasionally fooled.
Some of his tendency to verbal lassitude owed to the fact his world was visual. The forms of things interested him, and he began to draw almost as soon as he could hold a stylus in his hand. Yet his real talent proved to be in sculpture, particularly of the glass he so loved; he might have made an artist had he not been intent on pursuing archaeology. Instead, he became a leading expert in ancient glass-blowing techniques which he understood by practice as well as theory. But all that was in the future. At seven, he was still too young to venture into the dangerous apprenticeship of glass-blowing and had to content himself with collecting and indexing the sherds of ancient containers.
"Is that the last of them?"
Solon looked up. Helen was perched on the edge of his camp bed, watching him where he sat on the floor before a partitioned box of glass sherds. She still wore the loose unisex shift of a child, baring her long legs. Her arms were wrapped around them. Though not yet bonded, he had recently passed his khas-wan and had to wear the trousers and tunic of a man. He envied her the shift's freedom. "Yes," he said now, in answer to her question.
"Tomorrow we leave for your cousin's bonding."
"Yes."
"Are you excited?"
"Excitement is an emotion." But he was parroting what his parents had said to him when he forgot himself and jumped or ran or whooped. He was an adult now; he supposed he should sound like one.
She huffed. "We never have gotten to see a bonding before. Last time, we had to stay home with the babies."
"True." He stood, picking up the box to return it to his little desk in the corner. She followed, momentarily wishing him the more communicative type. It was difficult even for her to tell what he thought sometimes. Standing on tip-toe, she peered over his shoulder as he bent above the box, then reached in to pick up a particularly pretty sherd of red glass. He snatched it away from her, returning it to its proper place. "Leave it. You will mix them up."
"I can remember which square I took it out of!"
"You did not, the last time."
"Only because you stood right over me, watching. It made me nervous."
He peered at her. "I have told you, when you become nervous—"
"'Count to ten and step past the feeling. Concentrate.' I know! But that does not always work."
"It would, if you would concentrate harder."
"No, it would not! I am human and hopelessly emotional."
Hearing the edge in her voice, he turned to face her. "Who said that to you? Not me."
She did not want to answer, but it never occurred to her to lie. "Parla," she said, then stared fixedly at the bare floor of the little camp shelter.
He set a hand on her arm. Not yet bonded, he was still permitted to touch but in a few months, that would change. He could not imagine it, somehow. "Being human is not a fault. It is who you are."
"I wish it was not!"
"That is not logical. Your father does not wish he were not human."
"I know." Abruptly, she plopped down cross-legged on the floor. He seated himself beside her, close enough that their knees brushed. "But I do wish I was Vulcan," she said.
"Why?"
"Vulcans are better."
This took him aback. It was not that he was unaware, even at seven, of the subtle bigotry some of his people displayed towards other races: a belief that contact with the Federation had somehow contaminated the purity of Vulcan culture and logic. He had overheard his own mother denounce it as ignorant and anti-Surakian. But he had not thought that Helen might have come to believe it in any small way.
"That is not true," he said now, more fervently than he usually allowed himself to be since donning a man's trousers. "Humans are not better and Vulcans are not better. They are simply different. My mother says this is so. And Surak himself said that difference is not necessarily better or worse, but simply different."
She listened to him with chin on drawn up knees. Now, she asked, "Would you want to be a human?"
He frowned. "No."
"See?"
"See what?"
"See, you do not want to be a human, even if you could be, but I would like to be a Vulcan."
"That is not an argument," he said. "I do not want you to be a Vulcan. I like you as a human."
Having said that, he realized that both 'want' and 'like' were expressions of emotion, yet as they were also true statements, he let them stand. Early exposure to humans and the liberality of his own parents had generated in him a certain degree of tolerance for and recognition of his own feelings. At seven, he was now expected to control them, but that did not mean erasing them.
Helen was more disconcerted by his admission than he was—not because of his word choice. She had simply assumed that he tolerated her humanness, not that he might actually like it. "I did not know that," she said.
"I am fond of you, milk-sister. As you are also human, then it stands to reason that I cannot be fond of you without also being fond of your humanness." He turned his head to meet her eyes. "I do not wish you to be a Vulcan."
She smiled and hugged his neck; he hugged her back. For a moment, they were reunited by the same need for contact which had led her to crawl into his bed at night when they were younger. But he was too conscious of his newly-adult dignity, and too aware of the fact their touches would soon have to end altogether. He pushed her away.
But after she left, he sat down on his bed to consider proper revenge on Parla. If not by nature a vindictive boy, bigotry bothered him and, where his milk-sister was concerned, he tended to cast himself in the role of paladin.
They took flitters from the dig site into the little city nearby, where transporters beamed them back to ShiKahr. The bonding ceremony was to be held at the ancient holding of T'Syra's family. She did not belong to a particularly high house, but not a humble one, either; the holdings were extensive enough to include an old mine and a village. Solon's four-times-great-grandmother lived on the estate, together with two of her widowed daughters. The three old women used only four rooms of the ancient villa, but for a betrothal, the entire clan descended and the place bustled as it must have done before modernity had turned Vulcan society mobile and its families mostly nuclear.
Brant and his daughter had been here off and on several times in the past six years since moving in with T'Syra and Saval. At first, there had been some hesitation with regard to the humans in their midst, but with time, the two grew familiar. The swarm of young cousins liked the stories Brant told them in the courtyard. So did the adults, as it kept their offspring out from underfoot. T'Syra's clanmother was rather fond of Brant, in fact, and had come to regard him and his daughter as yet one more pair of chicks to be tucked under her ancient wing. No Vulcan could really quite conceive of life without a clan so it was natural to absorb the occasional stray human, and Brant was Indian enough in his outlook to seek a foster-tribe as part of his identity, even if they all had green blood and pointed ears.
Helen enjoyed the trips since it gave her a chance to escape her tutor in order to play. Vulcan children no less than human had their games, some traditional, some invented on the spot. And city children released into the hill country for a holiday were inclined to run a bit wild, even if well past the age of their khas-wan. It was not unheard of to catch a hastily-swallowed giggle; fights were thankfully far rarer.
But this clan gathering was not for a regular festival, and the children were kept tightly in check lest they destroy the extensive decorations in their maraudings. Brant found himself telling a lot of stories as he was not much use in other venues. He had been to betrothals before becoming part of the clan, but there was much he did not know about the preparations.
The day finally arrived, promising to be fair and mild, though mild by Vulcan standards would have been a hot afternoon in Oklahoma. People were out of bed and readying themselves before sunrise. Tradition demanded that the two betrothed meet as the sun came up over the land, symbolic of the start of their lives together. Helen had a new dress for the occasion and was almost too excited to stand herself or be stood by others. Even Solon crossly said, "Calm down," as they walked out through the dawn air towards the family koon-ut-kalifee, the place of marriage. Bells tinkled on ringers and ankles and the chains of censers carried by the boy-groom's escorts. He was allowed three kinsmen and a personal friend, if he wished. The girl-bride was allotted the same but would arrive from another direction in company of her own clan. As hers was the lesser house, she would become part of the vru'Tchai clan, just as Solon's own father had when he had married T'Syra. Though every clan was presided over by a clanmother, the rules governing marriage and clan-adoptions were much more complex, concerned with social hierarchy as much as gender. If equal, the male entered the wife's clan. Otherwise, the partner of lower status joined the clan of the partner of higher status.
Both processions arrived at the koon-ut-kalifee precisely at dawn, emerging to the other's sight gradually through red morning mist. The surreal effect was heightened by the silence, and by the ancientness of their costumes. Perched on a sedan chair, Solon's clanmother led their own procession while the bride and bride's mother headed theirs, the bride guided along by the hand as she was hidden completely from sight by sheer-spun metallic veils so thin they floated about her. "How pretty!" Helen whispered.
"Shhhh!" Solon replied.
The throne-chair of Solon's clanmother was set down inside the ring of koon-ut-kalifee. The groom's father led him forward to kneel before her, then the bride's mother led the bride. Each parent placed their child's hand in her ancient one and the bride's mother drew back the plethora of fluttering gold and silver veils to reveal a dark oval face beneath.
She is as brown as I am, Helen thought, pleased. Most of Solon's relatives were pale like him. The bride's clan was darker.
The clanmother placed the groom's fingers on the bride's face in the proper spread for a mindmeld, then did the same with the bride's fingers on the groom's face. Her own hands lay over each of theirs. "Sorl. Nara. These children are offered today by their houses to be joined after the fashion of our ancestors. Woman holds the life of man. He is born of her, she gives him suck, and grants him life again when his blood burns. He is fire, she is quenching sand. Thus it was from our beginnings, thus it will be for all our tomorrows."
There was silence for a span of ten breaths. Helen counted hers. Then the boy, barely above a whisper, said, "Parted from thee and never parted, ever and always touching and touched." In a somewhat stronger soprano, the girl repeated the same.
Solon's clanmother released their hands. "It is accomplished. Sorl and T'Nara are now made one, bound to return to this place when his need calls them together once more."
Reaching up, the little groom solemnly pulled the veil down over his bride's face, then she was whisked off to be secreted among her own. Once, she would not have been permitted to see him again until the day of their marriage but such strictures were long past and these two would find themselves back in the same schoolroom later that week. Yet for this day, the old ways held and she would be kept apart from him. The festival was not for them, in any case; it was meant to bind two clans. Both processions turned to head back to the vru'Tchai villa where the reception waited. If the walk out had been solemn, the walk back was not. The two clans were expected to intermingle, the host clan making the other welcome. Taking advantage of the low buzz, Helen whispered to Solon, "We walked all this way just for that?"
He shrugged.
She swept back stray braids with an exaggerated gesture. "Well if I am to walk all that way to your betrothal, I had better get to carry one of the censors, at least."
"You cannot. You are a girl."
"So? I am your best friend, and you said this morning that the groom gets to have his best friend."
"It has to be a boy."
Her sigh was grand. "Even if your best friend is not a boy? That is illogical."
"It is tradition. Tradition is not always logical, but it is the way it has always been done."
"So who will you choose?"
"I do not know yet. I do not wish to talk about it."
Solon did not, in fact, wish to think about it at all. He knew his parents intended to use this trip home to discuss with clanmother his potential bondmates. The whole idea frightened him a little, though he did not want to admit that to himself, either. Every young boy and girl faced this same ordeal at seven; every one had to trust his or her parents to choose wisely. Though he had never been told, he knew his parents would endeavor to find the best match for him, not just for the clan. Their own marriage was more than satisfactory to them both. They were...happy, and he knew they wanted him to be, as well. They had even promised to listen to his own opinions of the girls who had expressed an interest in his suit—a concession not always granted. Yet his anxiety remained.
Helen decided, with the logic of six years, that it was up to her to make the little bride feel at home in House vru'Tchai. They were the same color. She completely forgot, for the moment, that they were not the same race.
The bride was in one chamber, the groom in the other. Members of both clans moved back and forth between, offering congratulations and visiting with one another. Most of the congratulations were being given to the bride's older womenkin. Helen found it easy enough to eel up to the little platform where the bride sat, still covered in her veils.
"My name is Helen," she said, plopping down on the platform and carefully settling her dress skirts.
Some of the veils fluttered, crept up a bit. "How did you get in here?" the girl asked.
Helen blinked. "I was invited."
"You are human."
"Yes. So?"
Veils fluttered back from the girl's face. Wide dark eyes stared at Helen. "You belong to the clan of my husband-who-will-be?"
"Sort of. My milk-brother does."
"Ah." The human anomaly thus placed in the order of things in a way the bride could understand, she fluffed her skirts and veils about herself and then scooted down a step so she could sit face-to-face with her well-wisher. "I have to stay here; it is what is done. My mother-sister was to bring me some tlori juice, but she has not been able to leave long enough to visit the refreshments."
"Shall I bring you some?"
"It would be appreciated."
"Then I will be right back."
Getting through the crowd was not much problem. Getting one of the adults to recognize her and fill her order for two glasses of tlori juice was more of one, but finally she had the little glasses and headed back. "Here," she said, handing T'Nara a glass. They sat then, sipping juice neatly and discussing school lessons, ignorant of the amusement of the adults around them.
"T'Nara has a companion already, I see," said T'Nara's mother to a woman of House vru'Tchai. "An unusual one."
"Indeed. Helen is a stranger to none for long." The reply held equal parts dry wit and fond vexation. "She is human. Her vocabulary does not include 'restraint'."
When Helen ran out of things to ask T'Nara, she headed back to the groom's chamber to find Solon. He was playing Scatters on the white tile with a clump of cousins. Dropping down among them, she announced, "When it is my turn to be betrothed, I do not think I shall have quite so many veils. T'Nara said that her mother insisted, but she kept tripping over them on the path this morning."
Silence.
At last one of the cousins, a girl three years older than Solon and already betrothed, said, "Your betrothal? You will not be betrothed."
"Why not?" Helen asked.
"You are a human."
"So? Humans have married Vulcans before—even Ambassador Sarek did."
"That was different. They were already adults. Vulcans are not betrothed to humans."
Helen glanced at Solon, who sat perfectly still, gaze turned inward. The conversation was dragging to light a half-formed wish which he had buried inside himself, a wish too unheard of for him to have named. Ignorant of his mental turmoil, Helen felt only a touch of annoyance at his silence. It made her snap. "But if a human grew up on Vulcan, why should she not be betrothed like anyone else?"
Silence stretched. Dark eyes darted, seeking support for what seemed to them a self-evident truth. "It just isn't done," the girl said finally. "Humans don't need to be bonded."
Another cousin spoke up then, a boy from a conservative branch of the family. Like human families, Vulcan clans did not necessarily enjoy blanket agreement on politics or social issues. This one's parents had expressed private doubts about the Brants. "Who would want to bond to a human anyway?"
"I would," Solon replied almost before he could think.
Had they been human children, they would have laughed to cover their discomfiture. Instead, they shared glances again and subtly withdrew from him, as if he carried some virulent contagion.
Recognizing ostracism, he rose and walked away. Helen leapt up after him. They passed through the gathering room outside, onto the broad peristyle porch where adults were visiting in small clumps, enjoying the breeze coming down off the mountain range. There was no real privacy in the busy villa today. He sat down on the porch steps. She sat beside him, silent, knowing that he would talk when he was ready. Or not. But badgering him would only make him order her to leave him alone.
The conversations of adults rose and fell in unsteady cadencies. She caught a snatch of one, then another: "...according to the latest research, that hypothesis..." "...word came down from administration last week..." "...T'Marta insists that Sarril will improve his...."
Beside her, Solon had picked up a lorl seed-case from the steps and was methodically splitting it down the middle with his thumbnail.
After a long time, he said, "I meant it."
She followed his reference. "I know. Would they let us, do you think?"
"No."
"Why?"
At first, he said nothing, then, in a low voice, "Because you are human."
He glanced over in time to catch her blink rapidly. She told herself she would not cry. She was too old now to cry. "I thought you said my being human was not a bad thing."
"It is not. But that does not mean there is no difference between us."
"But if adult humans can marry adult Vulcans, why can I not be betrothed to you now?"
He shrugged. "It has never been done."
"There is a first time for everything," she said and stood up, brushed sand off of her dress skirts and went back inside the villa, a purposeful look on her face. Curious and mildly alarmed both, Solon followed. She was making a bee-line for their parents who stood with several members of the other clan, describing finds from the latest trench at ShiBaran. Helen stopped at her father's side and waited. The adults would recognize her when they had finished.
Solon came up behind her. "What are you doing?" he whispered. She ignored him.
Finally, T'Syra turned to look down at her. "Yes, Helen?"
Helen drew herself up; she had used the few minutes while waiting to formulate the best way of putting her request. She wanted to do it properly, so she had decided to phrase it in the way she had overheard them discuss Solon's other potential mates. Normally, a boy's family offered for a girl, but a girl's family could invite a suit from a particular clan. That seemed the logical approach. "This one wishes to invite you, honored parents, to submit Solon's suit to this one's father, so that he might consider Solon as a possible bondmate for this one's betrothal."
It was a mouthful for a girl not-quite-seven.
It also brought every one of the listening adults to a full mental stop. T'Syra might have dropped her tea glass had Saval not steadied her hand; Helen's father stared at her with his mouth open for a full five seconds. This development was nothing any of them had foreseen, though perhaps they should have. The members of the other clan prudently and politely disappeared. Solon himself had blanched.
T'Syra exchanged a glance with David Brant, then knelt down so that she could speak face to face with Helen. Whatever amusement and shock she was feeling, Vulcan manners demanded that she treat Helen's request with all due politeness and consideration. It was not the Vulcan way, to dismiss children as non-persons.
"This one is honored by your invitation, Helen Anevay," she said. She glanced up at her husband, as if pleading for help; he just raised his eyebrows. This was hers to answer, as the mother. So she turned back to face her son and the utterly serious human child who was asking for him. Her mind raced, the demands of tradition arguing with logic. Were Helen Vulcan, they would have offered for her without bothering to make any other offers, and no doubt Brant would have accepted the suit. It was a perfect match. But Helen was not Vulcan.
Does it matter? The question came from Saval, who had followed her thoughts. Look at our son, my wife.
She did. Too young yet to control powerful feelings, his wants and terrors chased across his face while his eyes remained fixed on Helen. "My son," she said. "Do you wish this also?"
He flicked his glance to hers, to see if she really wanted his answer. She kept her face blank but open. Finally, he said simply, "Yes."
At that she glanced up at David Brant. She knew him well enough to guess his thoughts. He was of Vulcan no less that they; though betrothal had been denied him, it was still a part of the culture in which he had been raised. It seemed perfectly normal to him—to a point. That point was his daughter. For Helen, betrothal was not necessary. Why lock her into a pairing about which she might later change her mind? Yet simultaneously, why deny her the right, force her to be different in this as in so much else?
Finally, T'Syra turned back to Helen who had waited patiently, used to the Vulcan tendency to weigh decisions. "This is a matter with many facets. It will take time to consider, and much discussion. Betrothal is not a human custom—"
Helen did a daring thing then: she interrupted. "With respect, t'kari T'Syra, it is not an Earth custom. I may be human, but I am not Terran; I am Vulcan. And I wish to marry Solon. He wishes to marry me. I can state for you why it is logical—"
Holding up a hand, T'Syra tucked her chin down and let her silence rebuke the girl. After a full minute, she said only, "The logic of it will be considered—the logic of all aspects of it. I did not say 'no'. But I have not yet said 'yes', either."
For the moment, Helen would have to be satisfied with that.