Star Trek: Unspoken Truth

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  Something she had once overheard on Enterprise, about radiation from a comet causing rapid aging among some of the crew who had beamed down to a particular planet, caused her to search out the logs from James T. Kirk’s first five-year mission. But as far as she knew, none of the three Hellguard dead had left Vulcan since their repatriation. Could there have been some similar form of radiation on Hellguard? If so, why had it affected these three and not others?

  Hellguard no longer existed, and that sector lay within Romulan space. Tolek had been correct. She would need more information, information that she could obtain through Starfleet files that he would not have access to. But there was nothing more she could do tonight. With less than three hours before she was due to report to Chaffee, she allowed herself to sleep, and dreamed.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Captain Esteban said. “Regulations specifically state, ‘Nothing shall be beamed aboard until danger of contamination has been eliminated.’”

  “Captain,” she suggested, “the logical alternative is obvious. Beaming down to the surface is permitted—”

  “—‘if the captain decides that the mission is vital and reasonably free of danger,’” Esteban finished the thought.

  “Captain, please, we’ll take the risk,” David Marcus interjected. “But we’ve got to find out what it is.”

  Saavik would never know what made her add, “Or who.”

  Esteban looked at her strangely. “We’re not here to chase ghosts, Lieutenant. Continue scanning. The answer is no.”

  Why had she said that? If not for that emotional outburst, would Esteban have said yes?

  She was running down the corridor toward Grissom’s transporter room, wresting a phaser from the security guard stationed outside the door to prevent her from beaming down. She could hear the child sobbing, the sound growing fainter and fainter as he grew weaker and weaker … until the sobbing was drowned out by the screams of a half-Romulan child whose hand had been slammed in a door …

  She bolted upright, gasping for breath. Spock was alive, Tolek had not cried out …

  It was only a dream. There had been many, beginning on the journey home from Genesis. Nightmares about what might have happened if she and David had not persuaded Captain Esteban to let them beam down to investigate the mysterious life-form reading. About what might have happened if they hadn’t found the child Spock before he froze to death. About what might have happened if she hadn’t known enough about Pon farr to save him. About every point along the time line at which she might have failed. She would wake, drenched in sweat, jaw clenched, grasping at the shreds of logic to remind herself that none of it was real.

  Running toward or running from, Mironova had asked her. She hadn’t had an answer.

  At least she had made no sound, she thought, slipping out of bed and into the shower, trailing tendrils of the dream in her wake. She had learned considerable discipline since the night terrors that had awakened her in childhood, screaming and inconsolable until Amanda arrived to hold her, soothe her, assure her that she was safe.

  Grateful that the sky was lightening, she dressed quickly, running her fingers through her wet hair without combing it—it would dry quickly in the desert air—intending to slip quietly out of the house before Amanda awoke. They had said their farewells the night before—the human sensing that this was what she wanted—and in her current state of mind she couldn’t bear to see the concern in her foster mother’s eyes.

  As she buttoned the flap of the red uniform tunic over the white turtleneck and examined her attire in the mirror to be certain all was in order, was the figure looking back at her the model Starfleet officer—calm, controlled, prepared for all contingencies—or someone whose turmoil was barely concealed beneath a veneer of civilization?

  Four

  Captain’s Personal Log, Galina Mironova recording. The children are fighting already. Our civilian scientist Doctor Mikal joined us three days out, and the games have begun. Having had the duty

  of escorting Mikal on several missions previously, I’m familiar with his antics. Like all Tiburonians, he’s brilliant enough, but he’s also a bit of a showboat.

  As anticipated, he and Lieutenant Saavik have already locked horns over both the important things and the most trivial. The contrast in their respective methodologies, I am hoping, will result in optimal data gathering and a successful, if noisy, mission …

  “They’re nothing but intelligent worms,” Doctor Mikal said dismissively, the multiple earrings in his overlarge ears jangling as he tried out all the chairs in the small briefing room until he found one he liked.

  “And that in itself does not intrigue you?” Saavik asked as the rest of the science team trickled in and they waited for Mironova so they could begin. “That with neither limbs nor digits, sight nor hearing nor any sense other than touch and, it is presumed, some level of esper skill, the Deemanot have constructed entire cities that suggest a level of civilization—”

  “Worms!” Mikal repeated, but with a winsome smile.

  Not for the first time, Saavik wondered why the Tiburonian had bothered signing on to this mission. However, she was beginning to understand what Captain Mironova meant about him.

  “He’ll tell you he’s slumming,” Mironova had said as they made rendezvous with the ship bringing Mikal to them. “Truth is, he’s been a bad boy … again.”

  Still adjusting to the captain’s unusual way with the language, Saavik waited for the translation.

  “You’ll have researched him by now. Maybe been impressed with the advanced degrees, the scholarly papers, the awards and commendations and visiting professorships. But tell me you’re not equally intrigued by what’s missing. Conclusions, Science Officer?”

  The holos had shown a compactly built Tiburonian male of middle years, bald and tattooed in the tradition of his people, his many-lobed ears ornamented with numerous earrings, no two alike. There was an arrogance in the cant of his head and the quirk of his mouth that detracted, Saavik thought, from the intelligence in his eyes. But Spock would have told her not to be so quick to judge.

  Mironova was correct. His education and his credentials were impressive. But there were also unexplained gaps in both.

  He held degrees from universities on Earth and Trill but, surprisingly, none from a homeworld noted for its advances in science and medicine. A search of all biographical data indicated that he had in fact been born on Tiburon forty-three years earlier, but no mention of him could be found in any other database until his enrollment in the premed program at Nairobi University at the age of twenty-two.

  For every successful expedition, development, or discovery, there was a gap of months or even years. And yet the accomplishments were undeniable: Sepec Awards in biology and mineralogy, a Carstairs Medal in geology, nominee for the Carrington Award two years running, discoverer of numerous species of fungi, lichens, phytoplankton, and even a few complex biota; he’d recently had a conifer found only on Tellar Prime named after him.

  “He seems … quite accomplished,” Saavik said carefully.

  “Oh, come on!” Mironova said dryly. “I know you’ve read the opinions of his peers. The nicest thing they can say about him is that he’s an ‘intellectual swashbuckler.’ He’s reckless and temperamental, and he’s been sacked from more exploratory missions than you’ve got fingers. Yet when he’s good, he’s spot-on, as the awards testify. Still, he has a tendency to go off the reservation, and I’m one of the few in Starfleet who’ll still let him hitch a ride. This little expedition is to be his way back into the fold, if he doesn’t cock it up. That’s where you come in.”

  Before Saavik could ask what she meant, the familiar hum and sparkle of the transporter had deposited Mikal in their midst.

  “Galina Ivanovna!”

  He greeted the captain by her patronymic, as if they were old friends. Arms outstretched, he swaggered down from the transporter platform like a pirate, his traditional multicolored robes swirling around his ankles
, seized Mironova’s hand in both of his and kissed her palm—a Tiburonian greeting, Saavik knew from her research, usually reserved for intimates. He then spun around and, hands on his hips, proceeded to study Saavik with a frankness any other female might have found unsettling.

  “They’re making science officers not only younger but prettier,” he observed in a deliberate breach of several kinds of protocol. “When I heard ‘Saavik of Vulcan,’ I expected some pickled old prune.”

  “It is an honor to meet you, Doctor Mikal,” Saavik replied primly, hands carefully clasped behind her back. What would she do if he tried to kiss her hand as well? She found herself uncertain, and that disturbed her. “I look forward to working with you.”

  “That’s it?” He feigned seriousness, but the hazel eyes beneath the tattooed brow were merry. “Not even a handshake?”

  “Social niceties are in no way essential to the mission, Doctor Mikal,” she replied, mindful of intellectual swashbuckling. If she was to be science officer on this mission, it was necessary to set some boundaries at the outset.

  Mikal threw back his head and laughed. The sound, like his gestures, was exaggerated, too large for him, and seemed staged. Who was he pretending to be, and why?

  “Opinionated as well as pleasing to the eye,” he remarked, shouldering the overlarge rucksack of personal belongings that had accompanied him through the transporter and striding into the corridor ahead of the two women as if he knew exactly where he was going. “This will be fun!”

  Less than an hour later, he had been first to arrive in the briefing room, even before Saavik, who was to conduct the presentation. After the obligatory introductions to the other members of the science department—four males and two females, a Mazarite, a Fabrini, and four Terrans—and his snide comments about worms, he’d tilted his chair back against the bulkhead, hands clasped behind his head, and winked at Saavik, as if to say, Go ahead, impress me!

  “Planet Deema III,” she began, bringing up the starchart on the monitor in the center of the conference table. Mikal made no effort to lean forward in order to see it clearly. “First charted seventeen-point-three-five years ago but unexplored until now. Its primary is a spectral type G2 star, but with slight variations in hydrogen and calcium …”

  She brought up an inset that showed a comparative spectral analysis of a standard G2 star and Deema. Again, Mikal didn’t move, but Saavik became aware (no need to look up; when one had been prey, one knew when one was being watched) that he was studying her face.

  “You’re beautiful, do you know that?” David Marcus had asked her once. “Of course you do—you must! Vulcans have a highly developed aesthetic sense, and I can’t be the first person to have told you that.”

  “You are not,” she had said, wishing not for the first time that humans didn’t set so much store by superficial things. Why compliment one on something over which one had no control?

  What was “beautiful,” anyway? She had read any number of philosophies of aesthetics, and they had had the effect of rendering her more puzzled than before. There was a time when the most beautiful thing in her universe had been the rainbows formed by coolant slicks on the surface of a puddle near the storehouse where the food had been. She no longer remembered why she had returned to this place, perhaps in the vain hope that some few grains of food might remain, or that lizards could be surprised lurking in the cool beneath the rafters. Apparently there had been ground vehicles parked in the courtyard before the adults left, and one had had a leaky coolant hose.

  The puddle, it turned out, had sprung from a long-forgotten water source, a near-empty cistern that exposure to the suns and wind-driven sand had caused to leak, and the water, while stagnant and no doubt teeming with bacteria, was better than no water at all. Saavik’s initial impulse had been to slake her thirst, perhaps even drench her hair and body in the dabblings in order to cool herself, but the rainbows had distracted her and, nascent scientist even then, she had been poking at them, trying to determine what they were, swirling them into different patterns, when the sight of her own reflection had startled her so much she leaped backward, like a kitten confronting itself in a mirror.

  There had been no mirrors in the compound, but there were shiny things that showed reflections. She knew what she’d looked like then—pale and small and solemn, but also clean and groomed. This … thing in the mud puddle was some hideous transmogrification of that child, almost as if it had sprung from the coolant-polluted mud itself, and ought to have been left undisturbed.

  A handful of other children had straggled in then, as if the rumor of water from the cistern had drawn them there, and their squabbling over the puddle not only dispersed and refracted reflections and rainbows but roiled the water into mud, undrinkable even by their limited standards.

  Disgusted, Saavik had withdrawn into shadow until they were gone, then emerged to smear herself thoroughly with the surviving mud, even rubbing it into her scalp, as protection against the heat of the day. Of course it would dry and crack as she walked, but enough would cling to her to offer some scant insulation. Hideous she might be, but she would carry the rainbows with her.

  The years following her rescue had shown her much more flattering images of a tall, well-groomed young woman with large, liquid eyes so dark they were almost black set above high cheekbones in a pale face framed by waves of chestnut hair, a luxuriant cascade to her shoulders when left to its own devices, all but impossible to tame to Starfleet regulation.

  Was this beauty? The males of several species had assured her it was. She lacked the objectivity to judge their accuracy and so solved the problem by giving it no weight, and thus no consideration.

  Mentally she added Doctor Mikal to the list of males who found her beautiful. To her it meant only an additional dimension of complexity to what she had hoped would be an uneventful mission. She cleared her throat and continued her briefing.

  “As its name suggests, the planet is the third from the primary, the first two planets having been scanned from space and found to be virtually devoid of atmosphere, indicating an absence of life-forms past or present, and the two outer worlds being gas giants.”

  Why had she been thinking of David just now? Perhaps it was only the fact that she had once again been paired with another “brilliant” if unconventional civilian scientist. At least this time there would be no Klingon attack, no planet destroying itself beneath her feet, no child Spock to rescue, no Pon farr, just an uneventful scientific survey.

  “Deema III is geologically Earth-like, with one notable exception,” she went on. “Variance in its axial tilt renders the climate slightly more temperate than Earth’s, with fewer extremes of temperature from equator to poles. Tides are also affected, but as we will not be surveying littoral regions, this is of interest only in passing.”

  The Mazarite—Ensign Graana, Saavik recalled—was dutifully taking notes on a padd, absentmindedly twisting her waist-length ponytail around the fingers of her other hand as she did so, her breather gills lying flat against the sides of her face, indicating that she was relaxed and concentrating. The others listened intently, though any one of them, judging from the personnel files Saavik had perused beforehand, could probably have led the briefing at least as well as she could. Appreciating their attentiveness, she went on.

  “Initial orbital surveys indicate extensive plant life, a surprising absence of animal life more complex than bacteria, and the presence of a single intelligent species hereafter designated as Deemanot.”

  A series of images taken by an orbital probe sent out by the first ship to map this sector appeared on the center screen. The Deemanot at first glance resembled nothing so much as very large earthworms, varying from two to three meters in length and perhaps eighty centimeters in circumference. Eyeless, boneless, they moved by undulating along the ground or balancing upright on the lower third of a body that tapered to two almost identical ends, a layer of slime the only thing that protected them from their environment.r />
  There were murmurs of surprise around the table.

  “Imagine how bizarre we would seem to them,” Mikal said. “Assuming we were ever allowed to get near them!”

  So that was what Mironova had meant about his needing a babysitter, Saavik thought. Left to his own devices, he would have no compunction about violating the Prime Directive in order to add a new species to his résumé.

  Not on her watch.

  She went on as if Mikal hadn’t spoken.

  “Global population is sparse, consisting of an estimated ten million inhabitants, concentrated primarily in three central regions.” She indicated them on the readout. “Nothing is known about their culture, but their architecture is quite impressive, constructed as it is without tools. The Deemanot build extensive, complex cities, half aboveground and half underground, entirely by ingesting the soil around them and excreting it into a form that, once hardened by exposure to air and sunlight, appears to be as durable as thermo-concrete. Captain?”

  Mironova took over from there. “Computer, live feed, sector seventeen, grid forty-three.”

  For several moments no one spoke, as they observed the Deemanot about their work, ingesting soil that had clearly been refined beforehand to remove rocks and large particles, perhaps by an earlier version of the ingestion they were watching. In a continuous process, the soil passed through their bodies and was egested into carefully planned forms—a wall, an arch, a path—where other workers shaped and smoothed it before moving on to leave it drying in the sun.

  “Computer, expand by a factor of five,” Mironova said.

  The image panned out to encompass an entire sector, perhaps a hundred by a hundred meters, being constructed in the same manner.

  “Factor ten and continuous,” Mironova said, and the image panned out slowly to reveal winding streets full of ornate and intensely appealing structures as far as the eye could see. Attenuated spires spun out above gigantic wasps’ nests and what looked like cross sections of giant ammonites and stairways out of an Escher print going up and down simultaneously in dizzying profusion.