Not all the Nasat were as discourteous as those that had climbed over Zoë and they had politely queued up behind her. Zoë wouldn’t move without prompting.
“Zoë, can you climb?”
Tilting back her head, she turned her dark-irised gaze on Pattie, swallowed hard, and then nodded. She reached a trembling hand toward the peg above her. One more step and Pattie would be able to offer her a limb to hold on to.
“Keep coming, Zoë. I’m here and I’ll help you.” She watched, noting the extreme concentration etched on Zoë’s face as her friend raised a wavering arm, and then another, and another, until her hands were on the peg below Pattie’s lowermost legs.
“Up one more peg.”
Zoë complied, reaching for Pattie, who grasped her hand in her pincers and pulled the young woman up to stand on the peg opposite her. Pattie used her secondary limbs to maintain her own hold on the peg-pole.
“Let’s climb to the roof, okay?” Pattie said. “I’ll take a step, then you take a step.” They inched upward. Each time the leaning peg-pole vibrated, Zoë clung more tightly to Pattie’s pincers.
After reaching the roof, the pair took a brief rest, allowing Zoë a chance to collect herself. Her time in Starfleet had conditioned Pattie to handle ongoing disaster and trauma with relative calm. Steady reactions had become reflexive, even intuitive to her. Working as a civilian scientist provided very few life-threatening experiences for Zoeannah to cope with. For her, dealing with the ceiling collapse, especially on the heels of the initial tremors, took a bit longer than Pattie.
While Zoeannah rested, Pattie plotted out an alternate—and shorter—route to the lab. The sooner we have her home with Tarak, the better, she thought. Zoë could be tough, but many more mishaps would quickly deplete her emotional and physical reserves.
Soon, they resumed their journey, using jokes and small talk as a distraction from the chaos surrounding them. The conversation eventually moved around to Pattie’s plans for the weeks she would be on the homeworld while the da Vinci underwent repair at McKinley Station on Earth. As they climbed down the last peg-pole before the turnoff to Zoë’s paddock, Pattie called out to Zoë, “I was serious about helping out with the repair efforts, but I’m afraid if I just show up and volunteer, they’ll turn me away.”
“Pattie, you know your people,” Zoë noted sensibly. “They’re very focused on doing things a particular way and once they’re secure about an idea or a course of action, they don’t like making changes. You like to shake things up.”
“I’ll have to go to the top, then,” Pattie said. “What would it take to get an appointment with Governor Z4 Blue?”
“Hmmm. Might be difficult.” Zoë paused on the poles below Pattie to look up at her. “This governor has been slow to warm to the progressive reforms that the Planetary Council embraces. He still considers Tarak’s and my work to be a little fringe. He moves cautiously. Doesn’t like taking unnecessary risks.”
“That’s what should appear next to ‘Nasat’ in the Federation database: insectoid species that doesn’t like to take any unnecessary risks.”
“I’m not trying to discourage you from trying to help out; I’m just being realistic.”
“I know that,” Pattie said, her antennae curled pensively.
They touched down on the deck. Zoë looked noticeably grateful to have solid ground beneath her feet. She circled her head around, stretched her neck, and yawned. Looking over at Pattie, she said, “You okay?”
Pattie sighed. “Shells sometimes don’t make sense.”
“Neither do softs if that makes you feel any better.”
“That, I know.”
Zoë patted her shell kindly and started down the walkway to the lab.
For a few moments, she stood there, watching Zoë walk away, and thinking. The Nasat’s reflexive self-interest had always annoyed Pattie. Upon more thought, P8 Blue acknowledged that some of her present impatience with the Nasat might be a reflection of the time she’d spent around humanoids. Her Starfleet crewmates could be impulsive, but they would never be accused of cowardice. Better to act when you can choose your course than be compelled by circumstance to react—or surrender, Pattie thought. She had learned that behavior from watching her friends.
An unbidden thought came to her and she envisioned Commander Sonya Gomez commanding the da Vinci, carnage surrounding her on every side. Pattie still marveled at Commander Gomez’s single-minded determination to save the crew. What would the commander do if she were here? She wouldn’t wilt on the floor, waiting for the bridge’s ceiling beams to collapse and bury her. Neither would Captain Gold, poor Lieutenant McAllan, Doctor Lense, or any of the others. And Lt. Commander Duffy, Pattie paused to remember. He chose to make a difference. She marveled at the number of lives he’d saved because he refused to put his own interests first.
She could choose to make a difference. A meaningful difference. She could be frustrated with this backward, rural township she called home, or she could put the lessons she’d learned aboard the da Vinci into action.
She resolved to argue with as many Yellows, Blues, Greens, Browns, and Reds as she needed to—from the civil engineers and the bureaucrats to the officers. She would present herself to the township council. She would use every connection she had to land an appointment with the forest quadrant governor.
To have a substantive reason to be here, the potential to accomplish something constructive, excited her. She’d anticipated finding little more than a distraction from her worries about her crewmates. The more she considered her options—in the present and the future—the more sobering reality intruded. Honesty required she acknowledge that her S.C.E. future held a measure of uncertainty.
Realistically, some members of the da Vinci’s crew might be too traumatized to return to starship duty. Corsi and Stevens had struggled mightily when they lost Duffy. Captain Gold faced rebuilding a crew after losing so many, not to mention the heavy repairs his ship required. Even if what was left of the crew reunited, Pattie had no idea whether or not their relationships would ever be as they were before they lost so many comrades. If I can be an individual of action and help my people, then maybe all the events that brought me here might not have been a complete waste. I might be able to help build something good.
For the first time since she’d decided to come here, Pattie felt hopeful.
Chapter 3
As soon as she’d passed through the paddock archway, Pattie felt safe. With only emergency lighting to see by, she still knew the square shadows of terminals, imagined the computer-generated neural maps marked up with Zoë’s notes covering the walls, and recognized the smell of Tarak’s favorite zeeflower hip tea seeping in a kettle. While Pattie strolled around, reacquainting herself with this favorite place, she eavesdropped on Zoë quizzing Tarak about what he’d experienced during the quakes.
She shared Zoë’s relief that none of the lab experiments or data storage had been damaged; the computer had finished the day’s final analysis before the first tremor. Tarak, always methodical, had stowed all their equipment and backed up their data shortly after Zoë had left to meet Pattie’s transport. He’d even had time to deal with the lighting problem. Ingenious Dr. Tarak had rigged makeshift lighting using the elements from a spare computer and an old transtator. Anticipating (logically) that they might be hungry, he’d lit an old-style lab burner to warm a leftover pot of stewed kaino root. Pattie lapped the porridge out of her plate, grateful for the nourishment. They spoke little, comfortable in the silence of friends.
After they’d eaten, Tarak flipped on a fuel-cell powered viewscreen so they could see the updates as they came in. All three settled in to watch; Zoë and Tarak sat cross-legged on a rug they’d thrown on the wood plank floor while Pattie sat in a hammock chair suspended from the ceiling. Tarak had wrapped a blanket around Zoë’s shoulders; she huddled against him, her visible relief a marked contrast to Tarak’s neutral expression.
They watched without comme
nt as footage played and replayed with different expert analysis. As Pattie had hypothesized, the oldest township branch sectors had escaped almost unscathed. Watching the pictures of various township sectors flash across the screen, she puzzled through possible questions. Why had the lab, for example, sustained no damage even though it didn’t benefit from any of the latest engineering designs or materials, and why had sectors like the transport center—which had been designed to withstand a quantum torpedo—nearly collapsed? Conclusions were few: the Planetary Science Council had already ruled out meteorological and seismic causes. A worrisome analysis proposed that the host trees’ root systems had become destabilized.
They listened to reports for a few hours before the scientists and officials had nothing new to offer. Commentators indicated that investigative teams would be dispatched to the lowest level observation decks at the end of the night cycle.
“They should go to the bottom and get it over with,” Pattie muttered as she watched the screen cut between views from various lower-level cameras.
“An interesting thing for a Nasat to say,” Zoë said, raising an eyebrow.
“Just because most of my kindred are phobic about spending time on the forest floor doesn’t mean I share their apprehensions.” Especially when circumstances are serious enough to require it, she thought. And this might be one of those times.
“What about the security service teams that go missing when they have to visit the floor?” Zoë argued. “The flash floods, the quicksand. The countless other legitimate dangers that Nasat, hell, that softs face if they go down to the bottom. Can you explain those away by phobias and prejudice?”
“You can’t live without taking risks. Walking out your door. Visiting the market.” She paused, quirked a smile at Zoë and added, “Picking up a friend at the transport.”
Zoë laughed heartily. “Point taken.”
Pattie had enjoyed this kind of banter with her crewmates and was glad she could have similar conversations with her old teachers. Though Pattie had spent more one-to-one time with Zoë and Tarak than almost anyone else on the homeworld, most of their interactions in the past had been focused on helping Pattie become a fully functioning member of Nasat society. Their discussions about culture or politics had focused on how those issues related to the lab’s research or how they impacted Pattie. Now that she’d “grown up” and become a peer, Pattie sensed the shift in their relationship; she enjoyed it.
“I never would make the mistake of lumping you in with the rest of your kindred,” Zoë deadpanned. She winked at Pattie, quirking a gentle grin.
Pattie shrugged. “I understand where the traditions come from. My kindred spent a thousand years struggling to rise above our beginnings in the caves and dark places below. Developing the technology that allowed us to live in the canopy instead of in the mud and dark of the forest floor was our first step in becoming a space-faring people.”
“Why ‘going to the bottom’ is seen as regression has always puzzled me,” Zoë said. “The Nasat don’t want to preserve their past, their history. Where you’ve come from. In my twenty seasons here I’ve never seen a museum, read a commemorative plaque, or met a historian. If a building has outlived its usefulness, the Nasat tear it down and start again, regardless of how significant the location is.” She looked to Tarak to add his own observations, but his response was limited to a single nod.
“My kindred have always perceived that cutting ties with the past frees us up to progress. Newer is better. If we fully embrace the past, we risk being trapped in it.”
“Do you believe that?”
“You’re asking the wrong Nasat.” Pattie laughed. “I’ve spent the last few seasons working with species who tote four hundred-year-old relics around from posting to posting simply for sentimental reasons. And from what I’ve seen, that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe some of their craziness is rubbing off on me.”
Tarak reached over Zoë’s lap and clicked the viewscreen off. “The comnet is no longer broadcasting any new or useful information. Should the township have further delays in fully restoring power, we need to preserve our resources.” He stood up to stow the portable viewscreen in a cupboard.
Zoë yawned. “Right now, we don’t have any students living here. You can choose any nest you want if you’re ready to conclude your waking cycle,” she said, pushing down another yawn.
“If you require sleep, please don’t stay up on my account,” Pattie offered. “I’m a full cycle away from needing to rest.”
Tarak and Zoë exchanged glances; his eyes narrowed, she shrugged.
“Understanding the situation at hand would be of greater benefit than what would be gained by allowing our physiological processes a regenerative period,” Tarak said. “We will remain awake until such time that the need to rest is equivalent with the need to gain knowledge.”
Grinning gently, Zoë patted Tarak on the thigh. “What he’s trying to say is that we’ll stay up with you if you want.”
“I haven’t heard an update on your research,” Pattie prompted.
“No new breakthroughs, if that’s what you’re asking,” Zoë said.
“It appears that ‘quiets’ hatch at a uniform rate planetwide, regardless of shell color or geography,”
Tarak explained. “When all hatchings are statistically analyzed, one can hypothesize that there will be approximately one quiet in every seven hundred and fifty hatchings.”
Pattie had always wondered whether her own limitations would be passed to her larvae. She felt relieved knowing that her offspring might escape the struggles she had acquiring communication skills. Impressions of her own early days in this lab floated into her consciousness.
Oh how afraid she’d been at the prospect of having her mind probed by aliens. The stories she’d heard! That quiets were being offered to the Federation to be experimented on. In the end, however, her fear of being condemned to a life of silence overcame her fear of the alien softs. She’d discovered a petite Betazoid redhead who had been the first to give words to her feelings. And Tarak: a silent, methodical Vulcan with his neural scanners and his endless hours in the nurseries, watching the nurturers pass information to their charges.
That was where he’d found Pattie, in the nursery. Two seasons old and still mute. She had only vague memories of Tarak asking a nurturer if he could “talk” with her. The nurturer had laughed at the ridiculousness of the request. And then the gentle probing of Tarak’s telepathy had been the first time someone had understood her thoughts and fears, though her mouth couldn’t form the words. How many lives had they touched since hers?
She hadn’t seen any Nasat around the lab tonight, though. “How many students do you have?”
“We’ve recently graduated thirty-five,” Zoë said, pouring herself a cup of zeeflower tea. “Recruiting has been slow, but I’m confident that the Planetary Council will encourage more quiets to take advantage of our program.”
“You’d have more support in the capital township,” Pattie said. “The Federation has a stronger presence there—new ideas are embraced with less skepticism. Nasat and alien live side by side and no one questions it.”
“But what about those quiets who don’t have anything close to the resources offered in the capital? They’ll be forever consigned to menial tasks, to being alone. We can’t abandon them just so we can go where our work would be better received.”
I owe these two so much, Pattie thought. How can I ever repay them? “I’ll see if I can search out quiets among the newly hatched. I’m sure the nurseries would be happy to be rid of them.”
Zoë smiled. “Now then, why would the nurseries want to be rid of their quietest charges? At least they can find a cycle’s rest with the quiets.”
“What else are you planning for while you’re here?” Tarak asked.
Pattie’s mind shifted back to the thoughts she’d had on her journey from the transport to the lab. I will make a difference. “These quakes. I’m confident my enginee
ring training could help in the ongoing repairs. If not my skills, my limbs. I can work a plasteel seamer with the best of the construction workers.”
“I could sense your mind moving a mile a minute on our way back here,” Zoë said. “But I thought you were on vacation. Your last communiqué was ambiguous—I had the impression you’d been under a lot of stress.”
“Our last voyage ended…badly. We lost many crew members.”
“Communicate our regrets to Captain Gold when you speak to him,” Tarak said.
“I will. In the meantime, the best way for me to work through my experiences is to stay busy.”
“We’ll help in whatever way we can. Right, Tarak?”
He nodded his head affirmatively. “If your need for our assistance has diminished, would it be permissible if I retired for the remainder of the dark cycle? I believe I will be more efficient if I can rest before the light cycle begins.”
“Please,” Pattie said, waving him in the direction of the sleep room. “I still have several cycles before I require rest. Don’t stay up on my account.”
Tarak nodded politely in Pattie’s direction. He looked to Zoeannah.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk with Pattie for a bit longer.” An almost imperceptible exchange passed between the softs—Pattie almost imagined he smiled—and he exited the room.
“So…you’re probably wondering about—”
“How long have you and Tarak been—”
“More than research fellows?” Zoë finished with a wry grin. “About a year, though we’d gradually been heading toward being involved since his mate Tu’vara disappeared with the Cairo near the Romulan Neutral Zone. You never would have known by watching him, but the psychic bonds Vulcans have with their mates…”
“Having touched minds with Tarak as a pupil, I can guess at what might have been between him and his mate. You must have been a great comfort to him.”
Balance of Nature Page 3