Still, many of the natives remained skeptical. “Their resistance is understandable,” T’Pol admitted to Sato as she lay wearied after a long melding session. Hoshi sat next to her with her arms wrapped around her knees, still feeling the need to protect her modesty. T’Pol found this illogical, for there was nothing that these aliens could find sexually desirable about either of them, but she understood her friend’s sense of vulnerability and did not criticize her for it. “They consider themselves a highly ethical people toward their own kind. The prospect that they have been abusive, even murderous, toward other beings of equal sentience disturbs them deeply. For many, it is easier to reject the notion.”
“Sure,” Sato said. “Whatever we feel, we don’t show it the same way they do, so they can pretend it isn’t the same thing.”
T’Pol looked at her. “What if we could?”
“What do you mean?”
“We cannot hope to mimic their magnetic communication. But there are Vulcan biofeedback techniques I could teach you that would allow you to regulate your internal heat distribution to a limited extent. The more muscle activity or blood flow you can concentrate in a certain region, the warmer it would appear to them.”
“I get it. If we could mimic their ‘expressions,’ so to speak, then maybe they’d have a harder time denying that we have feelings like theirs.” She thought about it for a moment, then scoffed. “It seems silly, though. That they’d be fooled by something so superficial.”
“We are dealing with politicians, not just scientists. They deny our emotional awareness because of a difference in superficial display. If we remove the basis for their denial . . .”
Sato chuckled. “You’re right. But it’s still just a start. If we’re going to convince them to free all their prisoners, we’re going to need to prove that those species are real people too. You couldn’t teach that heat-regulation trick to all of them.”
“It would be difficult.”
The communications officer’s brow furrowed. “Maybe what we need is an analogy. A way to show them what they have to look for to read humanoid emotions. The mimicry would just be the first step, to show them how our own emotional expression parallels theirs.”
“You mean, while we mimic a given heat signature, we concentrate on displaying the equivalent humanoid emotional expression.”
“Something like that. But they wouldn’t register tone of voice, and our expressions wouldn’t convey the same sense of interconnection they associate with their emotions.” Sato straightened, snapping her fingers. “Pheromones! We all exchange them without even realizing it.”
“And specific patterns of pheromonal and hormonal secretion are associated with specific emotional states, which would allow them to detect the differences between those states. Very good.”
Sato sighed. “But we’ll still have to convince them to take us to the other prisoners.”
It took another two days for T’Pol to teach Sato the biofeedback techniques, and then meld with the natives in order to inform them to scan for their hormonal and pheromonal signatures. The civilian officials seemed suitably stunned by the mimicry; T’Pol imagined it was similar to the reaction of humans upon their initial success at teaching sign language to their cousin apes. Essentially, beings they had always considered lesser animals were now “speaking” to them in a fair approximation of their own terms. For many of them, she realized, this drove home the truth of human and Vulcan sentience more persuasively than even her own telepathy had done, for it was more recognizable to them, more comprehensible to those whose imagination and experience of the exotic was less than that of the scientists.
Eventually, the women won permission to see the other prisoners. Rather than being given their EV suits, however, they were given force-field carapaces like those used by the natives. The vest-like protective gear provided limited but, given both women’s small size relative to the natives, just barely adequate anatomical coverage. More important, the carapaces shielded them from the planet’s toxic atmosphere as they were escorted from one cell to another. The first group of prisoners they met were Ithenites—roughly a dozen small humanoids with shiny, copper-hued skin and hair. Said hair was quite unkempt, the males sporting several weeks’ beard growth, and all of them were gaunt and mostly nude. This must have been the crew of the Ithenite freighter that had disappeared three weeks earlier. A taller-than-average male, about four-fifths T’Pol’s height and wearing a crude loincloth apparently made from bedding material, strode forward. “You’re Vulcan! And human! Are you here to rescue us? Is the Federation finally here to make these monsters pay?”
T’Pol knelt to match his eye level. “I am Captain T’Pol of the Federation vessel Endeavour. This is my communications officer, Lieutenant Commander Hoshi Sato. May I ask your name?”
“I’m Kadlin. Garet Kadlin, captain of the freighter Noyrit. These things, they took our ship, brought us here. They’ve violated us, tortured and starved us. They’ve murdered three of my people with their obscene experiments, crippled four others. Please tell me you’re here to burn this planet to the ground.”
She traded a look with Sato. “The situation is . . . more delicate than that.” She went on to explain.
When she was done, Kadlin stared in outrage. “Are you serious? You turned yourselves over to these torturers and you think you can talk them into letting us all go?”
“I know how it must sound,” Sato told him. “But we’ve made considerable progress. We wouldn’t be here talking to you if they weren’t genuinely willing to listen. They didn’t mean to be cruel to you; they just didn’t understand what you were. If we can prove to them that we’re as much people as they are, that we feel like they feel, we can bring an end to this.”
“I will instruct you in the necessary biofeedback techniques,” T’Pol told him. “Then it will simply be a matter of demonstrating your emotional bonds with one another. Showing them your capacity for empathy, for sorrow.”
“I can’t believe this,” Kadlin spat. “A Vulcan, telling us that love will set us free? After what these monsters have done to my crew, my friends, I only have hate left in me! And it’s all they deserve!”
“Your anger is valuable too,” she told him. “You are right to be outraged at the wrongs they have unknowingly inflicted. You need to demonstrate that outrage, make them understand your pain in terms they can perceive.”
“I’ll do that, all right, by caving their misshapen skulls in!”
“Enough violence has been done already, and it has accomplished nothing except the escalation of this conflict. These beings have a high regard for their own ethical standards and are horrified by the prospect that they have violated them unknowingly. So show them your anger—our way. Make them understand how much it has wounded you to see your loved ones suffer and die. That will shame them deeply. It will hurt them. And it will convince them to bring an end to their abductions and experiments so that no more of your people have to suffer. Is that not a satisfactory revenge?”
After giving the hirsute Ithenite a few moments to think, Sato shrugged and added, “Besides . . . Starfleet probably doesn’t know where we are, or they’d have been here by now. This is pretty much the only option we have.”
Kadlin gave a rasping sigh. “Very well. Show us how it’s done.”
April 13, 2163
U.S.S. Essex
Captain Bryce Shumar turned as Soval emerged onto the bridge. “Commissioner. Are our guests settled in?”
“Insofar as Saurians ever ‘settle,’ I would say yes,” the gray-haired Vulcan replied. “They seem as eager to return to their homes as I am to put an end to this assignment.”
Shumar chuckled. “Well, we’ll have them back home within a week.”
“Excellent.”
“Cheer up, Commissioner—if you’ll pardon the expression. I think the talks worked out quite well, once the Basileus realized the limits of his leverage and decided to play along after all.”
“I
wish I shared your confidence in the outcome, Captain Shumar. I have my doubts that the Basileus is truly satisfied with the trade deal.”
“He may be, once he sees how it benefits his people along with the rest of Sauria. I admit he’s a dangerous, ambitious person, but I do believe this joint agreement will have a stabilizing effect. After all, neither side benefits if they attack the other and forfeit their trading privileges.”
Soval lifted a brow. “That presupposes that they feel they are the ones dependent on trade with us. If anything, the reverse seems to be the case.”
“He has a point, Captain,” Caroline Paris said from where she stood by the helm console. “The Saurians don’t lack for confidence in themselves.”
“And that’s what makes them such worthwhile allies,” Shumar answered, “sorts like the Basileus notwithstanding. They’re smart, resourceful, incredibly adaptable—and I daresay they’ve already thrived from alien contact, not been damaged by it. They’re too self-assured to let their customs or beliefs get shoved aside by alien ways.”
Soval stepped forward, contemplating his words. “I have heard similar sentiments expressed by my fellow Vulcans about another species. Yours, to be precise.”
“They had a point,” Paris said. “We don’t seem to be speaking Vulcan or quoting Surak.”
“And look how far you have come so quickly. How much you have changed the galaxy.”
“For the better, I hope,” Shumar replied.
“I am . . . more confident of that now than I once would have been,” was Soval’s hesitant reply. “You have proven your maturity, for the most part.”
“For the most part?” Paris protested.
“Don’t prove his point,” Shumar teased.
“But it has not always been so,” the commissioner continued. “I have seen the pattern before in my study of your history. Your Western European region, a thousand years ago, was a primitive backwater compared to contemporaneous human societies in Asia and the Middle East. Its peoples were often seen by their contemporaries elsewhere as violent, uncivilized savages. In time, however, the Europeans gained access to the knowledge and inventions of the more advanced cultures to the East—medical and scientific knowledge, movable type, the magnetic compass, gunpowder. Far from being damaged or overwhelmed by this alien knowledge, the peoples of Europe embraced it, making themselves a stronger, more enlightened society.”
“True.”
“But they did not stop there. Their ambition to compete with their more advanced and prosperous neighbors eventually drove them to surpass those neighbors technologically—and ultimately to subjugate them, either economically, militarily, or culturally. Within a few centuries, they had effectively conquered your entire world.”
“That’s putting it a little harshly, don’t you think?” asked Paris.
“I speak from the Vulcan perspective as observers of your world. After first contact, we often told you that we were holding back your progress into space for your own protection against the dangers that lay out here. But that was only part of the reason.”
Soval met their gazes keenly. “Sometimes a policy of avoiding contact with less advanced civilizations is not about protecting them from us. Consider how strong, how intelligent, how long-lived the Saurians are. Yes, that has let them adapt well to contact with other worlds.
“But what might happen, I wonder, if they adapt too well?”
April 17, 2163
U.S.S. Endeavour, orbiting Gamma Vertis IV
Thanien had been deeply relieved when a signal from T’Pol finally reached the task force. For all his efforts to maintain faith in her, he had spent several sleepless nights afraid that he would never see the captain or Sato again, and that the conflict with the Mutes would only continue to escalate.
But then the call had come, requesting that Endeavour and Vinakthen travel to an uncharted K-star system in order to retrieve the surviving captives from many abducted ships. The system had only a catalog number in Federation databases, but the Rigelians counted it as the third-brightest star in a minor constellation they called Verti, so it was entered in Endeavour’s charts as Gamma Vertis. The message specifically requested that no other ships come, for the situation was still volatile and too large a military presence would be dangerously provocative.
“The release of the prisoners is only the first step,” T’Pol told her first officer as she rose from the sickbay exam table, making room for Sato—who had been holding Kimura’s hand throughout T’Pol’s examination—to take her place under Phlox’s scanner. “The Vertians, as we may now call them, have begun to accept the idea of our personhood and have provisionally agreed to suspend their . . . sample-collection missions—but only if we can assure them there will be no retaliation against their world. They have observed the violence humanoids often inflict on one another, and indeed this was one of the main reasons they became convinced we could not be truly sentient life—for no sane Vertian would harm another.”
“That’s right,” Sato put in. “They know we’re intelligent animals now, but we’re still pretty wild by their standards, and that makes them afraid.”
“From what I have heard,” Thanien said, “the worlds whose citizens were taken by the Mu—the Vertians have legitimate cause for outrage. It will not be enough simply to leave them be and hope they do the same. The victimized worlds are entitled to some form of reparation.” Phlox threw him a look, but Thanien stood his ground. Forgiving old sins was one thing, but these sins were more immediate.
“As I said, the process has only begun,” T’Pol told him. “There is much still to resolve, and many hurdles of communication and psychology to transcend. But the essential thing now is to negotiate an agreement that will prevent further violence.”
“Which is something the Federation can still help with,” Sato added. “But at least we can leave it to the diplomats instead of the military now.” She smiled. “You can’t really get anything done without communication, can you?”
“Are we sure,” Thanien asked, “that we can really trust the Vertians, though? If they still see us as wild beasts, how do we know they aren’t simply handling us in their own interest, rather than negotiating in good faith with equals?”
T’Pol pondered. “I grant there is reason for mistrust on both sides. But one thing that is clear about the Vertians is that they are experimentalists by nature. They probably have as many doubts about the prospect of peace as we do. But they are curious enough to be willing to try it and observe the results.”
“Hm.” Thanien considered it. “Then I suppose that is one area where we do have common ground.”
Once Phlox cleared T’Pol to leave sickbay, she and Thanien headed for the bridge. “Captain,” he asked in the lift, “may we speak in private?”
“In my ready room,” she said, “once I have checked in on the bridge.”
A few minutes later, after the captain had acknowledged the welcomes of Cutler, Romaine, and Ortega and gotten up to speed on the ship’s status, they were alone in her ready room. “I wanted to apologize, Captain,” Thanien said. “My behavior in the wake of Captain Shelav’s death was unacceptable. I let my old prejudices about Vulcans color my thinking.” He shook his head. “No—rather, I used that anger as a diversion from my pain. Either way, I allowed my emotions to compromise my judgment. It is important that I not let that happen again. Perhaps . . . I could benefit by heeding your more logical example.”
T’Pol raised her brows and nodded. “I agree.”
Thanien blinked, then cleared his throat. “I believe this is the part where you concede you could learn a thing or two from my emotional example as well. That our respective reason and passion can complement each other?”
The captain contemplated him for a moment, seeming reluctant to confide something, before finally speaking. “In fact, Commander, I am much more aware of my emotions than I tend to let on. I . . . have always struggled with emotional control more than other Vulcans—at least, mo
re than most Vulcans would admit. But more than that . . . years ago on the Xindi mission, I suffered . . . chronic exposure to trellium-D, a substance which permanently impaired my emotional suppression mechanisms. I have learned to manage those emotions, with much assistance from my studies of Surak’s teachings. But while I am able to maintain my surface equanimity, my emotions are always a part of my decision-making process.”
Thanien thought it over, looking at her in a new light. “I see.”
She met his eyes. “Commander . . . Thanien . . . neither of us is defined by a single trait, such as logic or emotion. We are not racial stereotypes but fully realized individuals with many facets. What I need from you as my first officer is to be engaged with every facet of your own being—emotion, reason, discipline, intuition, all of it—just as I endeavor to be with mine. I need us both to understand each other as individuals with all those traits. That, as I learned from my years as Jonathan Archer’s first officer, is what will make us effective complements for one another. Do you understand?”
Thanien smiled. “Yes. Yes, Captain T’Pol, I understand now.”
T’Pol almost—almost—smiled back. “Good. Then shall we return to the bridge?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Epilogue
April 19, 2163
Federation Executive Building
“THE DENOBULAN CONVOY reached Deneb V without incident, Mister President,” Admiral Gardner informed Thomas Vanderbilt. “Our ships caught a few Nausicaan raiders testing the waters nearby but scared them off with no shots fired.”
“I assume they weren’t the force the Orions were going to send,” the president replied dryly.
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