Phlox chuckled to himself. Not on Trill, perhaps, he thought.
“But change can mean losing what flexibility you once had,” Iloja responded. “A mind—or a nation—that starts out free and open can become so ossified in its fears and prejudices that it leaves less and less room for innovation. Eventually it must die and give way to something new. It’s only a question of how long and how viciously it fights against the inevitable.”
Dax stared at the cranky old poet. “You don’t think that’ll happen here, do you? I mean, these are logical people, whatever side they’re on. The old guard must see they’re fighting a losing battle.” He gestured around them at the mostly young audience, at the vibrant debater who was barely out of girlhood. “Demographics alone will make them irrelevant sooner or later.”
“There are none more desperate than those who see their way of life dying around them,” Iloja intoned. “The more inevitable their fate seems, the more violently they resist it.”
Tobin leaned closer, whispering, “You don’t seriously mean to suggest that Vulcans would resort to armed insurrection?”
“For all their veneer of logic, Vulcans have the same drives and passions as any other species—maybe even more so than most. And you’ve heard from that Zadok how easy it is to concoct logical justifications for violence.
“Indeed,” Iloja went on grimly, “the thieves of the Kir’Shara have already committed violence of a sort. Naturally they must have destroyed the original as soon as they obtained it, to ensure that its reality could never be proven. That is a profound act of violence against history and the soul of a people.”
“History, perhaps,” Phlox conceded. “But I agree with the young lady up on stage: The ideas of the Kir’Shara will remain with or without the artifact. I believe that good ideas triumph in the end. It’s evolution: Adaptive ideas, those that help a society thrive and grow, win out over harmful ones. Peace, tolerance, openness to exchange with other species: These ideas create more opportunities, allow individuals more chances to survive and more options to succeed. Therefore, they have an evolutionary advantage over violence, intolerance, oppression—ideas that tend to destroy lives or restrain their opportunities.
“Why, look at Denobula. In just a dozen years, we’ve mostly moved beyond our old enmities toward the Antarans—and now my Vaneel is taking an Antaran as a husband! So you see? Peace only increases our opportunities, reproductive and otherwise, and thus has a selective edge.”
Iloja grinned. “Politics as evolutionary biology! I’m intrigued, Doctor Phlox. I’d love to discuss it more.”
“I’d be happy to oblige!”
“But tell me, Doctor: Do all Denobulans share your rosy view? Have they all embraced their former foes so readily?”
Phlox grew somber, thinking of Mettus, his estranged son. “I must admit, the answer is no. In fact . . . some have only grown more entrenched in their old hatreds. More determined to resist the inevitable change.”
“And so it is here on Vulcan,” Iloja concluded. “Mark my words: There will be violence before this is resolved.”
Phlox hoped he was wrong about Vulcan—and feared even to contemplate how his words might apply to an upcoming Denobulan wedding.
ShiKahr Residential District
Hoshi Sato felt Takashi Kimura’s eyes on her as she stood at the glass wall of their guest room in Skon and T’Rama’s home, gazing through the vertical green slats of the open blinds at the ornate fountain in the courtyard beyond. It was a warm night, as most nights were on Vulcan, and she was sweaty from her earlier exertions with Takashi; so she found it comfortable to stand here nude before an open pane, letting the faint night breeze anoint her skin with the delicate, cooling moisture it wafted in from the fountain.
Yet as Takashi rose from the bed and padded toward her on feet as bare as the rest of him, she could tell from the corner of her eye that his gaze was not lustful or acquisitive. After eight years, being nude together was a routine intimacy, the touch of his skin against hers simply a reminder of their closeness and trust. Although, she reflected absently as she turned to watch his approach, the view was still spectacular. Being the lover of an armory officer who kept himself at the peak of physical conditioning had considerable benefits.
Still, they had sated those emotions at length a little while ago, though Hoshi had been a little inhibited considering Vulcan hearing. Now, her thoughts were elsewhere, and Takashi, attuned to her as always, made no effort to draw them onto other subjects. He just put his left hand on her shoulder, brushed his flank against hers—lightly, for they were both warm enough in this air.
“We never talk about it,” he said after a while. “The long term. But I saw you watching T’Rama.” He let the fountain’s monologue fill the air for a while. “You want a family someday,” he said, not as a question.
Her right hand on his left was her only answer for a few moments. “I always used to think,” she said at last, “that I’d lead a nice, quiet life as a professor on Earth, or maybe Alpha Centauri.”
He nodded. “They have one hell of a university there.”
“That I’d have plenty of time for a career and a family,” she went on. “Get married by thirty, have a kid by thirty-five . . .” She trailed off. They both knew her thirty-sixth birthday was less than two months away.
She shrugged, leaning against him. “But then Admiral Archer roped me into joining Enterprise. And I always thought it’d just be for a few months, or a few years, and then I’d go back home and get my life back on its intended course, with the bonus of some really wild experiences in space.
“But now I’ve been doing this for fourteen years . . . and I can’t see myself giving it up. This is the most important thing I’ve ever done. I’ve helped . . . bring worlds together. Prevent wars. Build alliances. These are such critical years for the Federation . . . we’re still fighting for its survival all the time, it seems. We’re needed where we are, Takashi. There’s still so much good we can do.”
He nodded sagely, silently, going into the inscrutable sensei mode that she found such an adorable affectation. She leaned her head on his shoulder and appreciated it for a time. “All this is true,” he finally said. “But look at T’Rama and Skon. Can you watch them and doubt that bringing a child into the world, and raising it well, is also a very good thing to do?”
He squeezed her shoulder and strode back to bed, and that was the last thing he said on the subject that night. But Hoshi stayed up, staring out at the fountain, for a long time thereafter—because she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d very, very nearly been proposed to.
May 25, 2165
Vulcan Science Academy Museum
It had been Tobin Dax who finally put the investigators on the right track. “We’re looking at this wrong,” the Trill engineer had said after hours of helping his hosts and fellow houseguests search through the security footage from the Kir’Shara study vault. “We’re treating it as a theft. I mean, we’re looking for breaches to the entries we know about, and at the times we know about. But this . . . well, this is a magic trick. Invisibly switching one thing for another. And magic is about, well, making the switch where people aren’t looking.” He’d done a trick with some antique Vulcan coins he’d picked up somewhere, demonstrating the principle. It took two run-throughs before Takashi Kimura had caught on to when the Trill had actually palmed the coin in his left hand, much earlier than it had seemed.
Thinking about this had crystallized something nagging at the back of Kimura’s mind. He had called up the feed from the day the switch had been discovered, showing it to Skon and the others. “Do you notice anything unusual here?” Skon had been uncertain until Kimura ran feeds from several earlier study sessions.
Though it had been T’Rama who spotted the discrepancy. “The Kir’Shara arrives sooner. From the moment the lift is activated to the moment the ark emerges is some seven seconds sho
rter than the average.”
Skon had done some calculations in his head. “The standard deviation on the lift speed is zero-point-four seconds. A seven-second discrepancy is well outside expectations.”
“Moreover,” T’Rama had said, “the time it takes the artifact to emerge fully, from tip to base, is well within the expected range seen in other instances—approximately six-point-four seconds.”
“That’s too close to be a coincidence,” Sato had remarked. “But what does it mean?”
Kimura had grinned as the epiphany came to him. “It means we’ve been looking at every access point except the right one! Come on, we’ve got to get to the museum!”
Now, in the study vault, it didn’t take long for Kimura to find what he was looking for. “We’ve been focusing on the shaft cover on top of the table as if it were the only access point,” he told the others as he knelt below the mushroom-shaped study platform.
“But it is,” Skon replied.
“No, it’s just meant to be. But what about the table itself? The shaft comes up through this base here. And it’s just high enough . . .” His scan of the table’s support column gave him the result he was expecting. “Yes. There’s a removable panel here, and it looks like it’s been unsealed and resealed within the past month. We’ll need to get a forensic team in here for a full analysis.”
“I think I get where you’re going,” Doctor Dax said. “It’s like palming a coin or a card. It’s already there before you reveal it.”
“Exactly.”
“What are you two talking about?” Sato demanded, taut with anticipation.
“The perfect way to switch the Kir’Sharas,” Kimura said. “In plain sight, when everybody was looking.” He rose and faced the group to explain. “Sometime before Skon and Semet discovered the swap, someone came in here, removed that panel on the base, and inserted the fake Kir’Shara on top of a duplicate lift platform. It was already there inside the table, just waiting to be found. Then, when Skon and Semet called the lift to raise up the artifact—”
“I see!” Skon declared, satisfaction in his eyes. “The real Kir’Shara was still in the vault below. But as it ascended in the shaft, it pushed the replica into view above it. That is why the replica emerged several seconds early—because it was above the actual Kir’Shara, which had not yet cleared the shaft.”
“And never did,” T’Rama added. “The real one was still hidden within the base of the table even while you and Professor Semet were discovering the forgery. Where it awaited an opportunity for the thieves to remove it while no one was looking, for we thought it had already been removed!” Kimura grinned to himself at their excitement. Intellectual satisfaction was one emotion Vulcans didn’t seem to mind expressing.
“But wait, that doesn’t make sense,” Sato said. “This whole vault is under constant visual surveillance. Anyone bringing the fake in or taking the real one out would’ve been seen.”
Tobin thought it over. “Skon, what did you and Semet do after you discovered the forgery?”
“We summoned a team of archaeological specialists to confirm our observations.”
“Did they bring equipment?”
“Yes, they did.”
“I want to see that footage, if you don’t mind.”
They went to the security room nearby and scanned through the footage for a while. Indeed, the analysis team had brought in a number of scanning devices, which a museum assistant had carefully rolled in on a cart. “Here,” Tobin said, scanning at high speed through the footage. “The cart is placed right next to the study table for nearly two hours. Very close to the central column.”
“But the base is open,” Skon said. “No one could be concealed within it.”
“Um, sorry, Skon, but even an Earth magician from centuries ago could’ve used mirrors to hide someone inside a cart and make it look empty.”
“Mirrors would not work in this case,” T’Rama said. “The cart was scanned from too many angles, and with so many people moving around it, reflections of their limbs would have been noted.” She leaned forward. “However, I take your point. There are more advanced forms of concealment now available. Commander Kimura, if your hypothesis is correct, then there must have been an earlier instance when a cart was placed against the study platform long enough to allow the initial substitution to have been made.”
A scan of the security footage soon turned up just such an instance—and, moreover, the cart bore the same ID number and was pushed by the same assistant, rather more slowly than seemed necessary given its ostensibly light burden. “We need to find that assistant,” Kimura said.
“I have already checked the museum records,” T’Rama told him. “Her name is given as T’Salan, and she left the museum’s employ four days after the forgery was discovered, yet before it was made public. Supposedly she had taken a position offworld, and she moved out of her dwelling the following day.” She checked the databases further. “There is no subsequent record of her.”
“She’s got to be the thief,” Sato said.
“The accomplice, that is,” Kimura replied. “The thief was the one hiding inside that cart. A cart we need to find right away.”
U.S.S. Endeavour
The cart had disappeared as thoroughly as T’Salan had, but Sato had transferred the high-resolution security files to Endeavour so that she and Cutler could run a full image analysis. The museum’s equipment was at least as good as Endeavour’s Vulcan-designed sensors and analytical tools, but Starfleet records contained scans of more than one form of stealth technology against which the security footage could be compared.
And indeed, it wasn’t long until she and Cutler reported their findings to Captain T’Pol and Commander Kimura. “There’s no doubt about it, Captain,” Cutler said. “There’s a holographic signature around the base of the cart . . . and it matches the technology used in the Romulan holoship we encountered back on Enterprise eleven years ago.”
The captain was visibly troubled by the news. “Is it possible there could be Romulan infiltrators on Vulcan?” T’Pol asked.
“They’ve been quiet since the war ended,” Kimura said. “As far as we know. But we still don’t even know what they look like. They could be anywhere.”
Cutler shrugged. “If they look enough like us to pass for us. We have some reports suggesting they’re humanoid, but we can’t even be certain of that.”
T’Pol paused in thought for a few moments. “The possibility that there are Romulan infiltrators on Vulcan cannot be dismissed,” she said. “At the very least, it should be investigated seriously. Commander Kimura,” she went on, turning to the armory officer, “your priority must be to track down the woman calling herself T’Salan. We must discover her true identity . . . and affiliations. There may be even more at stake here than we have realized.”
14
May 26, 2165
Iatu Vista Station, orbiting Delta V
FOR SOME REASON, none of Devna’s tricks worked on the Deltans. No matter how studiously she played the innocent and strove to make herself alluringly vulnerable, she received nothing but apologetic rebuffs from the men and women she approached. The paradox was bewildering. The Deltans were anything but a sexually reserved people; she’d come across numerous duos and groups availing themselves of the romantic lighting from the shimmering rings and auroras, blithely permitting her to watch their playful yet intricate lovemaking. Yet when she offered to join in, she was politely but firmly turned down.
It had been that way since Parrec-Sut had first brought her, Ziraine, and Rilas aboard the station, extoling the sensual wonders his women had to offer, a sample of which they would happily provide by demonstrating the galactically famous dances of Orion. The women had had their work cut out for them trying to draw the Deltan tourists’ attention away from the glorious dancing colors of the rings of Iatu—not to mention the vast,
swirling auroras that adorned Iatu’s poles with shining red crowns. Indeed, even drawing the tourists’ attention away from one another had been a challenge, for they were a stunningly beautiful race, and the men and women alike were attired in loose, scanty, or diaphanous garments in many lively hues.
Still, she had given it her all, and not just for the sake of the mission. Dancing was Devna’s favorite part of the seduction game. It was a chance to express herself, to wield the potentials of her body entirely on her own rather than at the whims of a master or client. True, it was a tool, an advertisement of herself as a commodity; yet it was the one small part of her life where she was allowed, even encouraged, to be creative. Since she did not have the curves or the raw animal frenzy of Ziraine and Rilas, she had learned to emphasize her grace, her suppleness, her sensitivity. Although she wore as little as her slave-sisters, she was demure, restrained, and teasing in comparison; yet what she held back compared to her dance partners often made her audiences crave her even more intensely. When something was not given freely, after all, it was generally presumed to be more valuable.
Of course, she and her dance partners had the added weapon of their pheromones, which the stimulation and sexual display of the dance prompted their bodies to secrete in abundance, and which their movements were carefully designed to distribute through the air. Although Devna could see the effects of the Deltans’ own pheromones on one another just by watching the casual intimacy of their interactions. She could feel the allure they radiated, a sensory aura as stimulating as that which she felt from more pheromonally potent Orion women—when they were in a friendly mood toward her—yet not as overpowering. That was strange: The Deltans had the means to wield influence, but it remained unfocused, unutilized.
Moreover, watching the Deltans’ interactions had given her no sense of their hierarchy. Did the males dominate? Did the females? Did the pheromonally strong dominate the weak as on Orion? Discerning the power dynamic between a race’s genders was an essential step in learning how to manipulate them sexually, yet Devna could not even begin to see a pattern.
Star Trek: Enterprise - 017 - Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic Page 18
