“That’s just the propaganda,” Chekov answered with some heat. “The real Captain Kirk is nothing like that. He cares very much for the rules, and doesn’t break them without good reason. And he’s always thinking, always figuring out all the angles. If it seems like he’s rushing into a decision, it’s only because his mind is three steps ahead of yours. Five, if he talks to Mr. Spock first.”
“Hey, I’m defending him!”
“Well, defend the real him, not the caricature.”
“Even if all that’s true,” Zaand said, “it doesn’t change the fact that Captain Decker was supposed to be the captain of this ship.”
“But he’s not anymore,” Sulu said, amiably enough. “You’ve just got to learn to accept that.”
“It isn’t so easy for me, sir. If it had been done the right way, then I could. But it wasn’t. Even by your own rules, it was a breach of protocol.”
Sulu furrowed his brow. “I’d say it was more like… a leap of intuition. Maybe it didn’t go by the rules you’d expect; maybe it even seemed like a bad idea at the time. But it worked. I’m still not a hundred percent clear on what happened with that landing party back inside V’Ger, but it seems that everybody basically got what they wanted, including Decker. So it all worked out right in the end. That’s how you recognize intuition. Once can be luck, twice can be… well, really good luck. But if it happens consistently, then you know you’re onto something. And whatever that something is, James T. Kirk has got it.”
“Maybe that’s so. But still there’s a procedure that could’ve been followed. On Rhaandarel, if one person knew that he was better able to interpret the patterns of the universe than another who was in authority, there are clear procedures for the replacement. It lets those of us in subordinate positions transfer our loyalties from one to the other. But that didn’t happen here. I was never able to go through the transfer process. I’m sorry, but I still think of Captain Decker as my commanding officer. That’s where my loyalty lies. And I just… don’t know what to make of Kirk. He just doesn’t fit.”
“Then maybe you should transfer to another ship,” DiFalco suggested.
Zaand was nonplussed. “Don’t worry,” Chekov told him. “Nobody wants you to transfer. You are welcome here,” he finished with a glare at the chief.
Sulu caught the look. “I’m sure Cella didn’t mean anything by it. She was trying to offer him a solution, right?”
“I’m just saying, if he’s not happy serving with Captain Kirk, maybe it’d be better for everyone if he went somewhere else.”
“Please… that’s not it,” Zaand said. Those subtexts were coming into play again, and he didn’t wish to exacerbate the tension. “It’s just that… I serve where I’m assigned. My place is to serve this ship, until I’m sent to another.”
The chief shook her head. “Oh, brother. You have got problems.”
“Well, it’s simple enough as I see it,” Uuvu’ it put in. “Kirk challenged Decker for command, and Kirk won. That makes him the rightful alpha.”
“But he was placed in command by Nogura,” Zaand reminded him.
“Then Decker should’ve gone to Nogura and fought for his command. Instead he submitted. So he lost. Why do you need any rules more complicated than that?”
“I just… do.”
Chekov stepped forward. “Well, Ensign, I can resolve your uncertainty over who your commanding officer is.”
Zaand looked at him expectantly. “Sir?”
“I am. Do you have any conflict with that?”
“No, sir.” If anything, it was comforting to have at least one unambiguous hierarchical relationship. And to have Chekov assert his rank instead of confusing things by treating him like an equal.
“Good.”
“Except…” Zaand began, causing Chekov to sigh. “I was wondering, sir, if you had a conflict with me.”
“What do you mean?”
He raised the question diffidently. “My training is for field duty, sir. Yet you keep assigning me to the bridge. It isn’t what I’m… supposed to be doing, sir. In your judgment, have I failed to fulfill my duties?”
The lieutenant fidgeted. “No, it’s not that. You’ve done very well in the training, the simulations. You’ve certainly mastered the regulations with flying colors.” Flying… colors? Zaand applied a fraction of his mental processing to the idiom, remembered that “colors” could mean a flag or standard, and concluded that the expression must refer to the use of such a display to celebrate success. “I’m just… not sure you’re ready.”
“If I’ve been inadequate in some way, sir, please let me know so I can fix it.”
“No, no! It’s just…” He closed his eyes briefly. “Ensign—you’re a child. Aren’t you?”
“I’m still immature, yes. But I’ve mastered all the Starfleet regulations and procedures, as far as I know, sir.”
“Yes, but… I just don’t feel right about it. Sending a, a boy into danger. You, you have your whole life ahead of you. You haven’t even… well, matured. As you say.”
“But I could be in just as much danger on the bridge.”
“Well, yes, in a sense. Still, it’s another thing to send someone out there, directly into danger. And someone so… well, young…”
“I am three times your age, Lieutenant.”
“But you have such a long life to look forward to. So many… adult things you haven’t gotten to do yet.” He fidgeted, apparently embarrassed to acknowledge the sexual subtext that Zaand could hear quite clearly in his words. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ensign, but I don’t understand why you went into security at all.”
“Because it’s what I’m best at, sir,” Zaand said simply. “And the rest—my safety, my longevity—it doesn’t matter. My place is to serve. I may be uncomfortable with aspects of it sometimes… but I’m here to serve. If you tell me to man the bridge, then that’s what I’ll do. But it isn’t where I can do the most good, sir.”
Chekov studied him. “You know that on this ship, most of what landing-party security does is to protect the captain?”
“I’ve gathered that, Lieutenant.”
“So if you have a problem following his orders—”
“As you said, sir, you are my commander. So if you order me to obey Captain Kirk’s orders, then that’s what I’ll do, sir.”
“All right, then. I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you, sir.” It was a rather awkward patch job, but it might be a way for him to cope with the protocol problem. As he’d said, there was a rule for everything—maybe even for dealing with a man who defied the rules.
CHAPTER NINE
Cast out fear. Cast out hate and rage. Cast out greed and envy. Cast out all emotion that speeds entropy, whether it be love or hate. Cast out these emotions by using reason to accept them, and then move past them. Use in moderation emotions that do not speed entropy, taking all care that they do not cause others pain, for that speeds entropy as well. Master your passions, so that they become a power for the slowing of the heat-death.
—Surak, Analects
“TRANSPORT CONFIRMED. Spock out.”
Spock lowered his wrist communicator and looked around him at the barren surface of Yonada—or rather, the inner hull that simulated the surface of a planet. The simulation was less convincing now, for the projected sky had been deactivated, as had the simulated volcanic vents. Spock saw no sign of the ropy black plants which had sparsely populated the surface on his first visit, but that was not conclusive, for he could see only as far as the maintenance lights around the underground entrance illuminated, and this area had been free of the plants before. Beyond was blackness. Spock was aware that the Federation researchers had wished to maintain Yonada’s surface as it had been, but Natira’s legislature had declared it an unnecessary expenditure of energy now that the population had been relocated. Spock found it unlikely that any of the plants had survived, although, given the harsh conditions under which they’d existe
d before, he couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility.
Seeing no reason to linger, Spock made his way to the nearest entrance cylinder and depressed the foot panel, now clearly marked for the benefit of the researchers. It was not practical to beam directly to the control room, since the inner shell’s kelbonite-victurium radiation shielding interfered with transporter locks, just as it had obscured the Yonadi’s life signs from the Enterprise’s sensors 4.67 years before. (It had only been the presence of these cylinders’ refined alloys which had allowed Spock to settle on this approximate area as a reasonable beaming site that first time—fortunate, since the inner surface had an area of 296,092 square kilometers, which would have posed a problem had they needed to search at random for an entrance.) He and Kirk had been able to beam through the shell once by using McCoy’s communicator signal to provide a target lock, but it had been a somewhat risky and power-intensive operation.
As he made his way down the spiral staircase, his footsteps clanging loudly in the narrow passageway, Spock reflected on the task his captain had assigned him: to research the historical origins of Yonada’s religious institutions and beliefs, to explain the Fabrini builders’ reasons for establishing them, and to discern the cultural and ideological forces driving the modern factions. This was no small task Kirk had set for him. Indeed, Spock found himself feeling intimidated by its magnitude.
The first step in any historical investigation was to go to the sources, and therein lay the first problem. The available sources were limited, since the Yonadi had been an illiterate culture outside of the ruling priesthood. Essentially, the Book of the People and the Fabrini intelligence files were the only reliable written sources, and they were both limited.
The Book was mostly a primer about Yonada’s technical systems and the procedures for planet-fall upon arrival at Daran IV. It was written at a basic level, beginning with a language lesson and moving on to elementary science and electronics before proceeding to the specifics. On his initial reading of the text, Spock had concluded that the Fabrini had intended it as a hard-copy backup in case of computer failure, and had even accounted for the possibility of language drift—something that had indeed occurred to an extent, as Uhura had determined when she’d checked the translator logs from their encounter. Modern Yonadi was not too different from ancient Fabrini—logical, given the lack of contact with outside cultures which might introduce new vocabulary—but the two dialects were distinct enough to create comprehension problems. Fortunately, Spock had learned the Fabrini’s ancient language from the probes found by the Intrepid, and had thus been able to read the Book instantly in a situation where time had been of the essence.
What the Book did not contain was extensive discussion of Fabrini history or Yonadi religious tenets. Its expository style did have religious elements, invoking the Creators and presenting its instructions in the tone of religious law, even though they mostly pertained to the requirements for maintaining life support, propulsion systems, and the like. There was minimal discussion of abstract spiritual concepts or the foundational ideologies of the culture. This seemed odd, given the central role the Oracular faith had played in the preserving of social order on Yonada.
The intelligence files presented somewhat the opposite problem. They were a comprehensive archive of the Fabrini’s collected knowledge, but only up to the launching of Yonada itself. They thus contained no information about how Fabrini beliefs had been adapted or applied in the life of the Yonadi, or how the modern diversity of religious sects had emerged. Presumably those files pertaining to the planning and construction of Yonada would contain some discussion of the thinking that had gone into the creation of the Oracle and the cultural norms it enforced. But the more recent the information was, the harder it was to reconstruct. The Fabrini had built their archival banks to last for ten millennia, and indeed had done an exceptional job given the limited computer technology at their disposal, comparable to the first century before Surak on Vulcan or the twenty-first century on Earth. But the data files had fallen prey to quantum erosion over that long span of time, as one particle after another had spontaneously changed state in accordance with the uncertainty principle. The occasional cosmic rays energetic enough to penetrate the shielding had done further damage. What survived was fragmentary, though the Federation teams hoped to be able to restore most of it in time. Information which had been part of Fabrini culture for a long time, such as their traditional medical knowledge, was easier to reconstruct since it was referenced in multiple texts and subarchives. What was missing from one source could usually be found in another. But newer memes, such as the records of the Yonada project, had not had time to replicate themselves so widely, to be reprinted and cited and discussed in as many different sources. Without such redundancy, the information was much harder to recover. Spock would use every technique at his disposal to unscramble the remaining data, but much of it was no doubt lost forever.
What remained were written records made by those few Yonadi who had been literate. But few of these had been found to date, and they were mostly fairly recent. Here the problem was the reverse: older documents were less likely to have survived, due to the physical decay of the ephemeral materials on which they were printed. Ironically, the closer one got in time to the building of Yonada, approaching from either direction, the less information was preserved.
Spock had instructed Mr. Lindstrom to research such texts while Spock focused on the data archives. But Lindstrom had suggested one more avenue of investigation: the oral traditions of the People. Spock was skeptical of oral history, since by its very nature it grew more inexact with each retelling. But Lindstrom pointed out that it was the only way to gain insight into a nonliterate culture, and that if one took its inherent imprecision into account, one could still extrapolate certain understandings from it. “Maybe it won’t give us a factual account of what happened,” he had said, “but it might provide context to help fill in the blanks in what you find.”
Spock had assented to Lindstrom’s suggestion, recognizing that Kirk’s mandate was about more than the factual history of the People. What the captain sought, more fundamentally, was an understanding of how they thought and believed, of what drove them as a culture. Their oral traditions, whatever their factual shortfalls, were a much better source for discerning that—if one knew what to look for. This was what truly intimidated Spock: he was being asked to gain insight into the hearts of the People, not simply their minds or their machines. Presumably he was more qualified for such a task now than he would have been before V’Ger, but he found he couldn’t be sure of that. He no longer hid from his own emotions, but did that necessarily mean that he now possessed empathy? It was hard enough figuring out what his feelings meant to him; how well could he decipher the emotional or spiritual life of a whole culture?
Perhaps the captain simply didn’t understand how much Spock still had to learn about emotion. Perhaps he thought that Spock’s epiphanies during the V’Ger mission had been the end of a journey rather than a beginning. But on the other hand, perhaps Jim recognized that Spock still had much to learn, and had given him this challenge as an opportunity to do so. It was somewhat like throwing a novice swimmer into the deep end of a pool—but that seemed like the sort of thing Jim Kirk would do. Certainly the tales he’d heard about the Academy courses Kirk had taught as a lieutenant bore out that assumption.
For a moment, Spock seemed to feel an echo of his rapport with the Voyager, for the first time in days. He realized that the Voyager was experiencing something similar to this: intimidation at the prospect of exploring a whole new realm, or more fundamentally at needing to expand one’s own reach to encompass it. But the challenge Spock faced was ludicrously trivial when compared to the Voyager’s quest. He couldn’t be sure whether the sense of rapport was genuine or simply a memory triggered by the parallel, but either way, it brought him comfort.
Arriving at the temple of the Oracle, behind which the control center was located,
Spock noted the changes that had been made since his initial visit. The temple doors, formerly triggered by biometric scanners concealed in the text panels to either side, now opened freely, though they were flanked by two black-bereted Federation Security guards. The Oracle itself, a large obelisk of black marble with a starburst emblem in the center, stood open, allowing free access to the workings within. However, several Federation-made desks and terminals had been installed along the walls, and were being used by various researchers, most of them Vulcan. Another Vulcan, a roundish middle-aged male, sat at a receptionist’s desk near the entrance, examining a terminal of his own. Sparing him a cursory glance, the receptionist asked, “May I help you?”
“Yes. I am Commander Spock of the Enterprise.”
That caught the receptionist’s attention. He studied Spock for a moment, then said, “Yes…” in a clinical tone and returned his focus to his terminal.
Spock raised a brow. “I need to access the Fabrini intelligence files.”
“Their contents can be accessed from any public terminal.”
“That will not be sufficient. I need access to the memory banks themselves, in order to attempt data reconstruction.”
“That effort is already ongoing. Our staff does not require further assistance. You may go.”
What did humans call this? The runaround. “You do not understand. I am under orders from Captain Kirk.”
Another cold glance. “I am not.”
“Then to whom do you answer?”
“I report to Director T’chan, who is currently on an archaeological dig.”
When nothing more was forthcoming, Spock asked, “And to whom does she report?”
A beat. “Commissioner Soreth.”
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