Titan, Book Three

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Was the Pa’haquel’s side the right one after all?

  Chapter Eleven

  Dr. Ree had been butting heads with Wangliaph, the female Fethet assigned to the station’s medical-wing security, for hours now. Almost from the moment they had met, they had been exchanging insults and threats, challenging each other’s authority, and coming close to exchanging blows.

  It had been the most fun he’d had since last he’d been on the homeworld.

  Even back home, Pahkwa-thanh females weren’t often inclined to play this way with him. Though he was seen as massive and physically intimidating by his Titan crewmates, he was not large or strong by his own people’s standards, nowhere near the alpha or even beta-male status that held the interest of females. He had gone into medicine so that he could contribute to society in another way, one to which he had proven well suited; but partly he had hoped that professional and economic success would draw the females he had been unable to attract with physical prowess. Those plans had been somewhat sidetracked two decades ago when the Pahkwa-thanh had joined the Federation and a whole new hunting ground of alien diseases had been opened to him, daring him to chase them down and wrestle them into submission. The intellectual thrill of that particular hunt had diverted him from the hunt for mates ever since, and he was largely satisfied with that. Among the frail humanoids he had found himself closer to an alpha, respected for his strength and skill, his gregarious instincts serving him well once he had found an audience inclined to listen. Many had been slow to warm to him, intimidated by his appearance or eating habits, but in Starfleet, most made the effort to overcome such reactions and accept him as he was. So he had not lacked for social contact either. Still, he did find himself feeling lonely at times, and was grateful for a holodeck where he could distract himself with chasing across the open plains and ripping into moist, pliant throats.

  From the way she looked at his Shalra patients, it seemed Wangliaph had similar taste in recreation and little interest in settling for holodecks. “Just look at them,” she had said to him in a rare quiet moment between insults and posturings. “Vast, slow-moving hunks of soft, juicy meat. Don’t you just yearn to snap open those shells and feast? At least bite off some arms or eyes to see if they’ll grow back?”

  “Perhaps you need your prey to be so slow and helpless,” Ree had teased, “but I prefer more of a challenge. Besides—it would be rude.”

  Before the Fethet could muster a comeback, Captain Riker had come in, with Lieutenant Commander Keru accompanying him. Counselor Troi was already present, helping Ree tend to the patients. Riker had come to brief them on the situation; Ree appreciated that he had come to them rather than requiring them to leave their work with the refugees. He continued to move around the ward, monitoring patients’ vital signs, as Riker related the tale of the battle with the Crystalline Entities, and pondered aloud what it signified. Wangliaph muttered something about the smell of omnivore breath and lumbered away into the next ward.

  “This situation just gets less and less clear-cut,” he said. “Not that it ever was to begin with, but now…”

  “Now neither side is abstract to you,” Troi said. “You already sympathized with the star-jellies—we all do—but you also have personal grounds for identifying with the victims of the Crystalline Entities.”

  “You think seeing another whole planet destroyed before my eyes didn’t affect me personally?”

  “Of course it affected you, but it was still remote, abstract. A tragedy on that scale can be too large to process. Will, I’m not criticizing. It’s good that you can identify with both sides now.”

  “Is it? It just makes it harder to sort this whole thing out. Obviously what the Pa’haquel are doing serves a valuable purpose—maybe even an essential one. We didn’t know how lucky we had it in the Federation. There are places in the galaxy far more dangerous than we ever knew. Perhaps we even owe the Pa’haquel our thanks for keeping the cosmozoan population from growing out of control, overwhelming known space.

  “But I still can’t accept that slaughtering innocent, sentient life forms is the only way to do it. If they were just…very useful animals, it would be one thing. But hunting thinking creatures, surviving at the expense of other sentient beings…there’s a fundamental difference there that any civilized people should recognize.”

  Ree looked up in surprise at that, and must have made some sound, because he caught the others’ attention. “You have a thought on that, Doctor?” Riker asked.

  “I simply find it an odd sentiment, Captain. And, if I may be so bold, a false distinction.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Simply that my people have always regarded our prey as sentient.”

  Riker and Keru appeared shocked. Troi was simply inquisitive. Ree went on. “I suppose I understand why peoples like yourselves, from agrarian and industrial backgrounds, would think of animals as mere objects, resources to be harvested. But to a hunting people, you must understand, the prey is a powerful, complex entity with a will of its own. To bring it down, we must respect and understand its behavior—its personality. We must be able to judge its moods, guard against its anger.

  “And as often as not, sir, the prey wins. Hunting packs routinely come back empty-handed. Sometimes they come back smaller than they started. So to us, the prey is anything but an inferior. It is a mighty force on whom our very survival depends. How could we not believe it has a mind and a soul?”

  “I thought,” the captain said uneasily after a moment, “that Pahkwa-thanh had clear-cut taboos about killing sentient beings.”

  “Civilized beings, yes.” At their puzzlement, he explained. “Civilized beings tend to consider themselves in control of nature, exempt from its cycles. They do not think of themselves as prey. So to treat them as such would not be…polite. We Pahkwa-thanh always strive to be polite. Even in our insults, there is a proper social protocol.” He gave a hissing chuckle at the humanoids’ fidgeting. “Rest assured I have never been faulted for my etiquette. As long as you do not consider yourselves fair game, I would never dream of treating you as such—although I’m sure you would all be quite succulent. Particularly you, my dear Counselor.”

  She stifled an uneasy laugh. “Why, thank you.”

  “But wild peoples…let me try to think of an example relevant to yourselves. I know. Have you read Dr. Gillian Taylor’s monographs on humpback whale psychology? Or listened to the oral histories of dolphins?” Troi showed recognition, but her husband shook his head. “You should. They are most insightful and witty. The whales were hunted to extinction by your people, brought back only through temporal intervention. The dolphins fared better, but still suffered much from human fishing nets and pollution. But they never blamed you for killing them. They never declared war on you or sought to exact retribution. Because they did not have the civilized being’s conceit of being above the food chain. They were wild peoples who knew and accepted that survival was a day-to-day matter, and that any creature could become food for another at any time. They accepted the risk as part of life, and never condemned their predators.”

  Riker took a moment to absorb his words. “That’s very interesting, Doctor, but I’m not sure it applies here. We know that the star-jellies don’t see it that way. That they’re horrified by what’s been happening to them, outraged at the Pa’haquel for doing it to them.”

  “Respectfully, sir, I disagree. They were horrified when they did not understand it. They saw it as something unnatural, not a normal cycle of predation.”

  “But now they’re turning on the Pa’haquel, killing them en masse.”

  “They are protecting their fallen siblings from desecration. And they will do what they must to achieve that, even kill, just as any animal would kill to survive. But I do not believe that killing is itself the goal. That kind of vengeance is not the way of the wild. You kill to survive, to feed or to escape becoming food. We do not hate our prey, and it does not hate us. We simply play our parts in
the dance of life and death.”

  Riker remained unconvinced. “The star-jelly at Farpoint station tortured the Bandi leader. I saw it with my own eyes. Deanna, you said it felt satisfaction.”

  Troi furrowed her brows. “No, Will, I think Ree’s right. That jelly only tortured Zorn because it wanted him to free its schoolmate. There was anger, yes, but its satisfaction was more about coming closer to its goal. The pain it inflicted was only a means to an end. It didn’t mean the jelly was motivated by sadism.” She fidgeted; something about this line of discussion made Troi uneasy. Ree imagined there might have been times in her Starfleet career when she had been forced to use harsher interrogation techniques than she would have liked.

  Riker fell silent for a time, thinking. Ree returned to checking patients’ vitals, but cocked his head to listen once Riker spoke up again. “If what Ree says is true, then maybe there is a way out of this. The Pa’haquel need the star-jellies to do what they do…but the jellies haven’t understood the situation, so the Pa’haquel have had to use force to get their way. What if we explained the big picture to the star-jellies? Told them how valuable they could be in protecting the galaxy from dangerous cosmozoans? What if we could persuade them to work with the Pa’haquel? To allow themselves to be used as ships while they’re still alive? We know it’s possible. The Farpoint jelly allowed us aboard it, it didn’t expel us. If they could be convinced to let the Pa’haquel live inside them, then the Pa’haquel wouldn’t have to kill them any longer. They might even be stronger for it. Live star-jellies can probably do things that dead ones can’t even approach.”

  By now Troi was staring at Riker in disbelief. “So let me get this straight, Will. You’re asking me to negotiate a treaty between hunters and their prey.”

  “If Ree is right, it should be a lot easier than some of the treaties you’ve negotiated.”

  “I’m not so sure. Even if they don’t hold grudges, convincing them to change such a—primal way of defining one another won’t be easy.”

  Riker stroked his wife’s arm, and Ree felt a twinge of envy at the obvious depth of love they shared. “Deanna, my faith in you knows no bounds.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Just my luck.”

  “Madness!”

  “Impossible!”

  “Blasphemy!”

  Riker had spoken to Deanna about persuading the jellies to work with the Pa’haquel, but had soon realized that the reverse might be just as hard. Now that he had actually proposed it to the Conclave of Elders, an assembly of the leaders of the various Pa’haquel fleet-clans in the area, he realized it would probably be even harder. He wished Deanna were here with him, in this large meeting chamber on the senior clan’s lead skymount, to make the case. But they had only authorized one representative to speak on Starfleet’s behalf.

  However, he noted that Qui’hibra himself had not joined in the chorus of objections. He was nearly the only one who had not—the other being his daughter Qui’chiri. Only the ship elders and the senior males of their subordinate families had formal voting status in the Conclave—with their votes weighted in proportion to their place in the hierarchy—but all the elders were accompanied by their matriarchs, who served as advisors and were free to participate in debate if not voting. A few non-Pa’haquel were present as aides, but none had status on the Conclave. Qui’hibra seemed to hold a high standing in this council, if only because his fleet-clan was now one of the largest and strongest in attendance due to the attrition the others had suffered in the Hounding and against the Crystalline Entities. The key role Clan Qui’Tir’Ieq had played in defeating the Entities had also boosted their status. Given that, it was an encouraging sign that Qui’hibra and his daughter seemed receptive.

  Beyond that, though, they had given Riker no cause for optimism. Qui’chiri said nothing but appeared openly skeptical, while the elder himself maintained his usual statuelike calm, pinning Riker with that cold hawkish gaze that made some primal part of him want to scurry away into the underbrush.

  Not that the others were reticent about speaking for him. “You would have us betray our most sacred traditions,” said Aq’hareq, the senior fleet-clan’s elder, an ancient, wiry, battle-scarred male with almost as many bionic parts as Torvig. “Such a thing could not restore the balance, only worsen it! The Hunt is the struggle for survival! For one to live, the other must die, that is the balance! That is the will of the Spirit!”

  “More than that,” Qui’chiri said, turning to Riker to explain. “If we do not prey on the skymounts, what keeps their population from growing out of control like any other starbeast?”

  “They’re intelligent beings,” Riker said. “If they understand the ecological dangers of their overpopulation, maybe they can be persuaded to limit their procreation. Besides, you’re not the only thing that preys on them, are you?”

  Qui’chiri conceded the point. “True. Indeed, they would still lose many if they joined us in the Hunt.” Riker found he couldn’t share her detachment at the prospect. Even if he did bring about this peace, he realized, it wouldn’t mean an end to the dying. But at least he could give the jellies a choice in the matter.

  “It would never work,” objected a third elder, Rhi’thath. “How can we hunt with mounts that have wills of their own? What if they wish to chase sailseeds or dive in nebulae when we tell them to attack branchers? What if they panic and flee?”

  “Do not speak of them with such disdain!” The others whirled. The cry had come from Se’hraqua. Riker had been surprised to see him on the Conclave, since he had seemed to be a fairly unimportant member of Qui’hibra’s fleet. But apparently he had been abruptly catapulted to the head of his family by the loss of its elder males in some recent battle, so he was entitled to be here, if only in a subordinate standing.

  “Mind your place,” Qui’hibra warned. But Se’hraqua did not subside.

  “Forgive me, Elders, for my disrespect to one of higher station, but I cannot abide his disrespect, his blasphemy toward the skymounts. Let alone that proposed by this alien Riker. The very idea of this disgusts me. The thought of—of taming these glorious souls, reducing them to beasts of burden, it is an outrage!”

  “More so than killing them and living in their corpses?” Riker had to ask.

  “You understand nothing, human. We do them honor by taking them in glorious struggle, freeing their souls to join the Spirit and taking only what they leave behind. We earn their bodies as our prizes, as a legacy of the honored dead. We have no right to their bodies while they live!” Most of the elders nodded or squawked in agreement.

  “All right,” Qui’hibra said, his voice rising slightly. “You have made your point. But have they not now won a great and decisive victory over us? Surely that wins them everlasting honor that we cannot take away.”

  “No, that is not the way of the Spirit!”

  There were gasps around the table. “Silence!” cried Rhi’thath. “Do not presume to lecture your Elder on the ways of the Spirit, you arrogant whelp!”

  “Again, my apologies.” Se’hraqua fell silent, still seething.

  “Impertinent or not, he has a point,” Aq’hareq said. “It would be an affront to the skymounts’ dignity to tend them like livestock. Just as it would be an affront to ours to tend livestock. We are hunters! We earn mastery over beasts by tooth and claw. That is the way of the strong.”

  “Adaptability is also the way of the strong,” Riker said. “A human thinker called it survival of the fittest. Whatever qualities, whatever behaviors are best suited to a particular environment will win out over others. If the environment changes, if the needs of survival change, then the species that don’t change with it are no longer fit to survive.”

  His words were met with thoughtful silence, so he went on. “I also want to make it clear that nobody’s talking about enslaving or domesticating the skymounts. What I’m proposing is a partnership, the two species working together—just as you work with Vomnin or Rianconi or Shizadam.” He looke
d around the meeting chamber, choosing his words carefully. “Clearly you all have great reverence for the skymounts’ power, for their skill and cunning at evading you. Recently you’ve discovered how dangerous they can be, how ruthless and efficient they are against their enemies. If anything, I’m sure that makes you respect them all the more.” Many of the elders and matriarchs were nodding now. “If you respect them that much as adversaries, imagine how valuable they could be as allies. Imagine that power, skill and cunning working alongside yours instead of against it.”

  “But it would be a risky partnership,” Qui’chiri said. “We would be dependent on their willingness to cooperate, answerable to their whims. It would be a struggle to convince them to go along with our wishes.”

  “Isn’t life a struggle already? Isn’t that what the Great Hunt is all about? You’ll just be pursuing the same struggle in a different way. Maybe it carries more risks, but it also promises greater rewards. How is that not worthy of a hunter?”

  Qui’chiri looked around to see the males nodding, looking intrigued. “I am a matriarch, not a hunter. Your words are pretty, but someone must deal with the practical matters. And I would much rather work aboard a nice, well-behaved dead skymount that does not object to my ripping its guts out to install living quarters.”

  The matriarchs nodded and laughed in agreement. The males glared at them, shaking their heads and muttering about disrespect and the inability of females to grasp higher spiritual matters. Qui’hibra, though, merely looked amused. “If anyone can talk a live skymount into letting her rip its guts out, daughter, it is you. Curse me for it all you like, but I know you will meet the challenge and triumph over it.”

  Aq’hareq looked at him sharply. “Then you say we should accede to this mad plan of the human’s?”