Star Trek: Inception

by S. D. Perry

  There were all kinds of things she could really throw herself into now, if she was so inclined. There was the annual rain forest trip with Professor Bonner’s group coming up, a full month in the field, and Bonner had invited her twice already. And she could finally dig into researching that spora design for her thesis, put in some real hours. Adam had often resented the time she spent immersed in work, and she’d cut down accordingly.

  She suddenly remembered that Michael Haines would be going on Bonner’s trip this year. He was the xenobotanist she’d worked with the previous summer, on Professor Asylle’s nitrification project. He had been quite disappointed to learn that she was involved.

  Freedom means options.

  She looked over at the chair she’d cleared off for Mister Spock, remembered how poised he’d been, sitting there, his long arms folded across his chest. What had he thought of all the chaos? The apartment was clean now, Adam’s things finally gone, her own put away.

  And it’s already time to drag them out again, she thought, with a twinge of sadness, to pack for Mars. She was thrilled about the project, of course, but a part of her wished she could stay here, at least as long as Mister Spock was—

  Stop it. He’s a Vulcan. Vulcans don’t feel the way humans do. They’re not like ? like ? But what were they like? Leila wasn’t entirely sure. She had heard things, of course—everyone knew that they relied on logic rather than emotion, that they lived much longer than humans, that their blood was a different color. But they were also a very reserved people, which meant that relatively little was known of their culture, their private culture. The vast majority of Earth’s population—herself included—had never personally met a Vulcan, and theories and legends abounded about what they were really like.

  “Computer, on,” she said. “Search. Vulcan.”

  Saying it made her stomach tighten. The screen began to flicker its results. She sat at the console, not entirely sure what she was looking for. She was a little overwhelmed with the quantity of material; in the two centuries since first contact, it seemed much had been written and said about Vulcans. She watched the words and images run past until something caught her attention. “Stop. Back.”

  Here was an entry about Starfleet, some kind of medal ceremony posting. It mentioned that there was only one Vulcan currently serving in Starfleet.

  Lieutenant Commander Spock.

  “Spock,” she said, and his name illuminated slightly on the screen. “Select.”

  A list of dates and postings, a brief paragraph about his being decorated by Starfleet Com mand for heroism in the line of duty. Next to the article was a small image of Mister Spock in his uniform, his chin high, one eyebrow slightly arched. Leila smiled, recognizing his nearly ever-present look of curiosity.

  “Spock, expand,” she said. Roster lists, from the Academy, from his ship ? and a handful of references that included the name Sarek. Leila followed the thread, curious.

  “Sarek, Vulcan ambassador to the United Federation of Planets.”

  Sarek was Spock’s father, it seemed. She briefly wondered why Spock hadn’t mentioned it. Adam could never stop talking about his great-grandfather’s fame and accomplishments in the music world, his much-hailed performance at Carnegie Hall; he generally brought it up within minutes of meeting someone for the first time. Of course, Vulcans didn’t feel pride, not exactly. But—why didn’t they feel it? Because they truly couldn’t? Or because they chose not to?

  She backtracked her search, looking for general information about Vulcans. She found an entry written by a sociology student, skimmed through it.

  “Modern Vulcan civilization is based around the philosophy of Surak, a great thinker of his time, who founded a movement which is now referred to as the Time of Awakening—”

  Mister Spock had talked about that. “Time of Awakening, expand,” she said softly.

  “Since the Time of Awakening, Vulcans rely on logic to solve problems that trouble their society, rejecting any concepts or solutions that are derived from emotional responses. Currently, the outward expression of emotion is taboo in Vulcan culture.”

  Leila frowned, frustrated. That didn’t tell her if the rejection of emotion was an evolutionary trait or a deliberate suppression. She felt strongly that it was deliberate. Anyone who spent more than a few moments with Mister Spock would come to the same conclusion. Vulcan, perhaps, but she couldn’t believe that he didn’t have the capacity to feel.

  She continued to read and search the pages and pathways, but she couldn’t find anything concrete to support her theory. As the sweet drone of alcohol slowly wore off, she began to feel tired. She sank back into her chair for a moment, telling herself that she needed to sleep, that Carol needed her at her best over the coming days, but on a final whim, she asked the computer to pull up an image of Sarek. She was curious to see if the son looked anything like

  the father.

  There were a number of digital images listed, even a few holopics. One of the larger files was titled “Vulcan Ambassador and Wife,” and Carol quickly tapped it up, glad that she’d decided to look a bit further. Mister Spock’s parents, how delightful—

  Leila’s breath caught. Sarek was handsome in a distinguished way, his hair silvering, his expression stoic, but it was the image of ambassador’s wife that made her heart pound, that made her suddenly wide awake.

  “My parents were atypical ?”

  The woman holding Sarek’s arm was attractive, hair curled behind rounded ears, her barely lined face as kind and smiling as her husband’s was serious.

  Spock’s mother was human.

  Six

  Thaddeus Kent regarded the swelling crowd with a twinge of unease, the sheer number of Starfleet uniforms making him a little uncomfortable. He was no novice when it came to public speaking, but this would be a little different from a Redpeace rally, attended primarily by rational, like-minded individuals. Almost all of the people here today were Starfleet, taught to adhere to a philosophy that ran entirely counter to everything that Redpeace and its sister organizations stood for. It seemed likely that he was in for a rough time.

  If I can enlighten even one person. His nerves be damned. The years his organization had struggled to be acknowledged by the Federation, to be invited to conventions just like this one, would begin to pay off if he could get his point across calmly and rationally, if he could show that his was the saner view. His job today would be to broaden as many minds as were willing to open.

  And this is the right way to do it, he told himself firmly. Getting our message out in this venue is worth a million Tyn Seis. A billion.

  As the seats began to fill and the throng of people entering the room thinned out, the moderator tapped on a voice amplification device. Kent took a deep breath; this was it.

  “Welcome to ‘The Cost of Expansion,’” the moderator said, his voice filling the room. “This is an open forum debate, so we’ll be taking questions from the audience throughout the next hour. Those of you who wish to participate may do so by touching the square button on the right armrest of your seat. If you are called upon, please stand and speak clearly so that your section’s receiver will pick up. Let’s begin by introducing the members of our prestigious panel. To my far left is Doctor Bernard Ellroy, a Federation astrobiologist.” The man stood and bowed, amid a brief scattering of applause.

  The moderator introduced the others in turn, including two of Kent’s associates—a young lawyer from United Environments and a xenobiologist affiliated with several causes—and finally it was his turn. He stayed seated, smiled at the crowd, and raised a hand in informal salute.

  As the questions began, Kent quickly recognized that his earlier assessment of the crowd had been correct; the skepticism directed at the proenvironment panelists was open, to say the least. The lawyer and the xenobiologist were both younger and less experienced than Kent, and quickly became comfortable deferring to him. Kent took it in stride, doing his best to field each question with a pleasant,
knowledgeable air. He wrangled with the astrobiologist on a couple of small points, felt that he held his own without much trouble.

  It’s going well, he thought, scanning the audience as the moderator sought another questioner. As Jess always used to say, he was “making the connection,” putting a personal face on the cause. Although the questions continued to be less than open-minded, and were often too specific to really showcase Redpeace’s ideology, the majority of the crowd was polite, listening respectfully to his answers.

  A pretty young woman near the back stood up, her uniform showing her to be a junior member of the Federation Science Council. “Mister Kent, my name is Sarah Roth. I’m not sure I’m getting a clear understanding of what motivates you to pursue these goals. Is it simply that because you believe nature to be aesthetically pleasing, and you want to preserve its beauty, or are your aims more ideological?”

  Finally, a question he could work with. “I do find nature, in its pristine state, to be lovely and worth preserving for its own sake,” Kent said, “but I am much more concerned about the long-term impact of environmental manipulation than just the loss of some pretty flora. For example, using an agricultural spray solves any number of crop problems, but we don’t know what today’s use of, say, chlorobicrobes will mean for tomorrow’s soil fertility, do we? Simulations are not reality.”

  Roth was polite to the point of chilliness. “I understand why you would be concerned about such things—as everyone should be—but you do realize that all potentially hazardous chemical substances must withstand meticulous scrutiny before they can be approved for use? Countless experts work to ensure absolute safety. With all due respect, sir, I feel that your organization’s aims are retroactive. Don’t you feel that your energy would be better spent helping to improve the situation of—”

  “—the situation of all living things?” Kent interrupted. “This is exactly what my organization advocates, Miss Roth. For all of the Federation’s safeguards, I still feel that it’s important to have at least one group making it their business to watch the watchers, so to speak. Consider the current situation on Mars. Without organiza tions like Redpeace, there would already be a half dozen new deuterium plants set up in the southern highlands, and who knows how many iridium or rhodium mines? Martian citizens have elected time and again to restrict terraforming, to ensure that Mars will not become a second Earth, with her overpopulation problems, her pollution issues of the last several centuries. The government pledged less than thirty years ago that there was no need to strip the surface for metals, not with the Main Belt mining so successful. And yet here they are today, ready to repeal that promise for a few more credits.”

  He started to bring up the terraformation experiment, but without the data to back it up, he didn’t want to risk it. He could see that the audience was really listening now, paying attention in a way that they hadn’t previously, and knew that they were finally hooked. He hit them with the line he’d been rehearsing for the last several weeks, one he knew would resonate.

  “Does anyone here remember what happened the last time a privately owned company felt it had the right to Martian resources?”

  Roth looked taken aback, and what seemed to him a majority of the audience did as well. Kent waited politely for Roth’s response, aware that he’d scored big. In many ways, the Martian Declarations were the very backbone of Federation law.

  “I recognize that your intentions are in the right place,” Roth finally said, “but I hear a fundamental misunderstanding of the possibilities of technology, and an inclination to assume the worst. It’s as though you’re driven by fear.”

  Kent nodded. “Fear is not entirely wrong, Miss Roth, but I like to think of myself more as a concerned person, a person who understands that ‘progress’ does not have to mean blind irresponsibility. I am afraid of what will happen if the Federation continues to allow greed and imperialism to take precedence over the health of planetary ecosystems.”

  “Not fear of disaster,” Roth said, regaining her composure. “I meant fear of progress, fear of things that you don’t fully understand. People nearly always react badly when first introduced to something new and mysterious. When vaccinations were first developed, many people refused to be inoculated against deadly diseases, fearing that they were ‘playing God.’ Just think of all the lives that would have been lost if that kind of irrational hysteria had won out over common sense, over science.”

  Kent changed the subject slightly. “And think of all the deadly strains of bacteria that have de veloped because of the overuse of antibiotics.”

  Roth raised her eyebrows. “Certainly you can’t be condemning the discovery of antibiotics.”

  “No, of course not,” Kent said. “Merely their overuse. What I condemn is the need to always defer to the science of man. When our attempts to fix problems simply create a new set of problems—”

  A man in another section suddenly rose to his feet. “Then we’ll fix the new problems,” he said. He was young but wore the braid of Starfleet commander. “It’s easy to criticize in retrospect, to point out failed chains of action-reaction, but no scientist, no engineer or researcher could possibly predict every single thing that could ever go wrong. By your logic, we should all sit perfectly still, never attempt anything for fear of the consequences.”

  “Well, you and I both agree that there isn’t any way to predict what kind of unpleasant side effects are going to rear up when you toy with nature,” Kent said. “Commander ?”

  The young officer lifted his chin slightly. “Forgive me for speaking out of turn, sir. James T. Kirk.”

  “I welcome your comments, Commander,” Kent said, trying to mean it. Kirk had inter rupted his flow, but the debate was far from over. “That’s why we’re here, after all.

  “So am I to understand that you believe we should stop trying to improve the lives of the beings we encounter?” Kirk said. “That we should just ? give up?”

  Kent forced a slight smile, friendly, open. “Of course not. Only to acknowledge that there are often better ways to get things done. Take the genetic modification of crops, for example, starting back in the late twentieth century—”

  “The results of which have never been anything but positive,” Kirk said.

  Kent laughed, unable to keep the edge of scorn out. “You call the near extinction of the monarch butterfly a positive result?”

  “A butterfly?” Kirk said. “All the countries—the planets—that were rescued from starvation by GM crops, and you think we should worry about a butterfly?”

  A low murmur of disapproval rose from the crowd, mostly Kent’s supporters, but he could see that they weren’t the only ones.

  “This is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to hear from a Starfleet officer,” he said firmly, confident he was regaining the upper hand. “If only Starfleet Academy would stress to their cadets the importance of the little things. The universe, as vast and intricate as it is, can be thrown into complete chaos if something as small and seemingly insignificant as a species of butterfly is destroyed—”

  “What sort of evidence do you have to be making a claim like that?” Kirk asked. “The Federation is interested in helping intelligent beings better the quality of their lives. The preservation of all species is important, of course, but where does an insect stand against feeding a billion hungry children? Or a billion insects, for that matter, to a single child?”

  Another murmur from the crowd, but the reaction was mixed; a few people actually began to applaud. Kent hurried to get them back.

  “Commander, do you know what a keystone species is?” he asked, hoping he sounded more amicable than he felt. “Take the beaver, for example. Did you know that the beaver, before it nearly went extinct in the late part of the nineteenth century, created a natural irrigation system in the whole of North America that could never be rivaled by the dams and ditches created by humans? Did you know that billions of credits’ worth of damage caused by floods could have been
saved, human lives could have been spared—not to mention the health of hundreds of species of plants and animals—if only the beaver population had been allowed to rebound before the twenty-first century?”

  “We’ve come a very long way since the twenty-first century, Mister Kent, as I’m sure you know,” Kirk said, not skipping a beat. “And I’m sure you also know that there have been any number of so-called environmental crises in the past thousand years that have promised to spell the end of life on Earth as we know it. And yet time and again, technology has been able to solve the crisis, so quickly and efficiently that most people forget there was ever any trouble at all.”

  The applause was louder now. Kirk was an influential speaker, Kent thought, but it wasn’t hard to influence a group who already believed in everything you were saying. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, felt his pulse pounding. It was time to shut him down, to point out the folly of his beliefs, the danger of reliance on technological optimism.