Spock raised a scathing brow. “That is axiomatic, Admiral. It would be more useful to discuss how that might be achieved.” Ignoring the admiral’s glower, Spock turned to Uhura. “If the next step of our investigation points toward Earth, then I recommend you contact your family and personal friends, Commander. To all accounts, you were quite close to your family before your memory loss. If anyone knew of any activities you chose not to discuss with Starfleet, it would probably be they.”

Uhura had trouble meeting his calm, expectant gaze. What he asked was not as easy as he made it sound.

Sulu residence

“I do not see the problem,” Pavel Chekov said as he, Uhura, and Sulu took tea together in the living room of Sulu’s dwelling, which they had to themselves while Demora was on a sleepover at a friend’s home. “It’s not as if you’re estranged from your family or anything. Don’t I recall your mother helping out Admiral Kirk with an undercover investigation a few years back? Something about smuggling on Mestiko?”

Uhura was glad that Chekov had returned to Earth while the Reliant was under repairs, for she could use the support of her closest friends through all this. But for all his good intentions, Pavel could be blunt and clueless at times. “Oh, yes, we’ve been in touch… at a comfortable distance. Everything’s perfectly… cordial between us.”

Sulu leaned forward in his armchair. “But?”

She shifted her weight uneasily, even though the couch cushion beneath her was quite comfortable. “But… I barely know them. All I know is what I’ve read about them in my logs, what they’ve said in their letters.”

She took a long sip of tea to fortify her, then set the cup back down on the coffee table. “After Nomad, they invited me to return home, offered to help me remember. But I… I couldn’t. I experienced all these emotions when I thought about them… about these people who were strangers to me.”

Chekov answered slowly. “Because your episodic memory was lost, but not your deeper, conditioned responses such as emotions.”

Uhura nodded. “It was terribly confusing. More—it was frightening. Rather than facing all that, it was easier to start over and build a new life with my crewmates.” She reached out and touched both men’s hands. “You were all I knew. Everything I remembered was aboard the Enterprise, with all of you around me. So you became my comfort zone. I came to think of you all as my family.”

She leaned back, lowering her head. “But in the process, I neglected my birth family. I sent polite acknowledgments of their letters, their invitations, their pleas. I said I’d come home when it became feasible, and then I kept putting it off. Eventually the requests tapered off. They must feel that I’ve… moved on without them.