“As you wish.”
He pointed at her. “And don’t even think about calling me ‘master.’ ”
“Of course not, Charles.”
“Trip. My friends call me Trip.”
“As you wish, Trip.”
He sighed. This was going to take some work. “Okay . . . what say we get back to the mission planning? Tell me what you know about the Sisters’ plan. How is Maltuvis supposed to maneuver Starfleet into causing a catastrophe?”
Devna returned to her seat. “It will not be Maltuvis—not directly. Starfleet is aiding the resistance—so it is in the resistance that we have placed our key agents.”
Tucker leaned back in surprise. “How’d they arrange that?”
“The agents play the role of arms suppliers and military advisors—just as the Sisters’ chief male Harrad-Sar does for Maltuvis. By arming and influencing both sides, the Sisters can engineer the conflict to suit their goals.”
“I can’t believe the resistance would accept help from the Orions. Surely they know you’re backing Maltuvis.”
“Our agents in the resistance are not Orion. They are an ally the Sisters have used before—in fact, you and I first met when you foiled one of their plans. They are Malurians . . . led by a man named Dular Garos.”
7
February 22, 2166
U.S.S. Endeavour NCC-06
“THE TREES . . . ARE ALIVE?”
Hoshi Sato winced at Takashi Kimura’s question. “Well, of course they’re alive—they’re trees,” the linguist in her answered before the fiancée in her could make allowances for Takashi’s language difficulties. On her desk screen, he winced in embarrassment. “Sorry,” she said. “I know what you meant.”
“Mean . . . they move. Walk.”
“The Jules Verne crew calls them dryads,” she said. She saw him straining to recall the word. “Like kodama,” she clarified. “But more Greek.”
“Ah. So . . . have spirits? In-intelligent?”
“That’s what Starfleet’s sending us to Birnam to find out. Apparently it’s a topic of controversy among the Verne crew. Their science team found that the dryads’ internal tissues have chemical properties that could lead to some powerful new pharmaceuticals and medical treatments. They could be worth a fortune.”
Takashi nodded, understanding that well enough. In many ways, it was lucky for starfarers that the same basic DNA code and biochemistry had been found on planets all over the known galaxy, for it meant that habitable environments and edible foods were easy to find. But the downside of being able to eat a planet’s foods was that its disease organisms could eat you in return. Not to mention that the Earthly germs you brought with you were constantly evolving in new planetary conditions or mutating from space radiation, so that even a disease thought long conquered could cough up, so to speak, a new strain resistant to conventional medicines. Hence the ongoing search for useful new drugs and remedies, which drove the “Space Boomer” crews of the Earth Cargo Service as powerfully as their quest for alien technology, dilithium, rare earths, and exotic foods and artworks.
“Their captain wants to start harvesting the dryads to extract it right away,” Sato went on. “Which would require killing them, but their science officer says he’s found evidence of intelligent behavior and communication. But he doesn’t have hard proof.”
Takashi smiled. “So they called you. Who better?”
Hoshi smiled back. “They called us. Their own science team couldn’t agree on it, so they asked for an outside opinion. I’ll do my part to examine the evidence of communication, but Elizabeth will probably do the bulk of the work.”
“Hm. How would trees talk?”
“On a trunk system, of course.”
He groaned. “For making . . . log entries?”
“You wood say that.” She was glad to hear him making puns—it was good exercise for his impaired language and problem-solving skills. But she was also intrigued by the point he’d raised. “Seriously, it’s a good question. From the reports, it sounds like they’ve detected chemical signals passing among the dryads. Many known plants do communicate through scent and pheromonal exchanges, but the science officer claims these signals are unusually complex. But whether that complexity is the right kind to be a potential language . . . that I’ll have to see when we get there.”
“Sounds like a great challenge. New kind of life . . . tough problem to crack . . . nobody shooting.”
While that last might have sounded like self-pity to some ears, she knew Takashi was thinking more of her safety than his own traumatic memories. “It does sound like a fascinating world. I’m not sure how peaceful it’ll be, though. Boomers don’t tend to be too happy with Starfleet butting into their affairs. Things must be pretty tense between them already if they’d call us in to mediate.”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “Once you talk to the trees . . . sure you’ll be very poplar.”
Hoshi dearly wished there were a way to throw something at him over subspace.
February 24, 2166
Palais de la Concorde, Paris
“I agree that there must be a noninterference directive,” intoned Percival Kimbridge, the dignified, dark-complexioned Federation councillor from Earth. “We may debate the ambiguities of contacts with starfaring peoples like the Partnership,” the middle-aged human went on, his booming voice echoing off the pristine new walls of the conference room, “but when it comes to younger civilizations, our responsibilities are clear. History is replete with examples of the destruction wrought on primitive societies exposed to ideas they are not yet ready to understand.”
“That is pure arrogance!” objected Councillor Kishkik Sajithen of Rigel, pounding the conference table with a heavy manus. “Most of the problems my people faced in our contact with the other Rigelian species,” continued the Chelon female, “were a direct result of their condescending belief that they were more qualified than we were to make decisions about our own lives, our own environment. Had they respected our better understanding of our world from the start, the damage would not have been done.”
“I fear Councillor Kimbridge is . . . overzealous,” Commissioner Soval interposed. “The intention of the proposed directive has never been to discredit the ability of other civilizations to make their own choices, but rather, to respect it. I’m sure Admiral Archer would be glad to clarify.”
Next to Soval, Archer jerked back to full attention on hearing his name. Chastising himself for growing distracted during the Federation Council’s panel review of his noninterference proposal, he strove to catch up with the conversation as best he could. “That’s right. What’s at issue here isn’t other civilizations’ wisdom—it’s our own. We can’t assume that just having more advanced technology makes us wiser, or gives us a better understanding of a civilization’s needs than its own people. That assumption that we know better is exactly what creates the danger to other societies if we allow ourselves to interfere. It’s not about whether they can understand our ideas, it’s about whether we can understand theirs. We didn’t understand the Partnership’s symbiosis with the Ware. We didn’t understand how unstable the political situation was on Sauria. But we assumed we knew better, and that’s why we messed up.”
“But those are different situations,” Kimbridge objected. “One was an interstellar civilization already, the other a pre-spaceflight world with whom we made first contact. Surely there is a fundamental difference in their readiness for such contact.”
“The principle is the same either way, Councillor. No matter how advanced another society is, they know their needs and values better than we do. Therefore, we have an obligation to respect their independence. In the case of pre-contact worlds, it’s best to leave them to discover space travel and aliens on their own, so that they can develop their own understanding of science and not become dependent on us. Also, it’s to protect us from the temptation of using our greater power to boss them around.
“But when
it comes to post-contact, starfaring worlds, we have just as great a responsibility to respect their autonomy and freedom of choice. For instance, by not trying to force another culture to change a practice we dislike. Or not taking sides in a civil war. History shows the dangers of that kind of intervention in other nations’ politics—the ways that misconceptions of their cultural dynamics and needs can cause the intervening nation to do more harm than good. We can interact with worlds like that, trade with them, be good neighbors—but part of being a good neighbor, or a good friend, is not butting in where you aren’t invited.”
“But isn’t that just what we’re currently doing on Sauria?” asked Nasrin Sloane, the councillor from Alpha Centauri. “Favoring one side in an internal conflict?”
“I reluctantly accept that as a necessary measure to correct the mistake resulting from our initial intervention,” Archer said. “But if the noninterference policy had been in place from the beginning, that mistake never would have been made. This directive is about preventing us from making such mistakes in the future.”
Across the table, Admiral Shran leaned forward. “All this sounds very noble, Jon. But can you really expect people to understand all these moral complexities? People don’t like to admit their own fallibility, even if you put a rule in place designed to remind them of it. Say this directive of yours becomes Federation law. You can explain it all you want in the press, teach the moral philosophy in detail at Starfleet Academy, and sure, maybe most officers will get it at first. But people are lazy. Give them long enough and they’ll reduce any complex idea to its simplest level. How can you be sure that the next generation of officers, or the one after that, or the one after that, will still remember the humble principle behind the policy? What if they really do end up thinking it’s about protecting ‘primitives’ from advanced knowledge? Just how far would they take that so-called protection? Would they refuse to give them medicine that would save millions of lives? Would they even allow a whole world to succumb to a natural disaster rather than reveal the existence of spaceflight and other worlds to them?”
Archer scoffed. “Come on, Shran, that’s ridiculous. No one would ever be so twisted as to think it made sense to let a whole species die in order to avoid harming them!”
“They might—if they were more faithful to the letter of the law than its spirit. You know that’s possible. Not everyone bothers to think about why the rules are what they are—they just do what they’re told. That’s why a rigid ban on all intervention is too dangerous. It gives people an excuse to follow the rules blindly and fail to apply their own judgment. If we want our captains to be responsible, we have to let them make these decisions for themselves, case by case. That way, they have to consider the reasons behind their choices.”
Archer fell silent, unable to muster a good counterargument. Though he wouldn’t admit it aloud in this context, he was starting to have doubts. The fact that both the Orion Syndicate and Section 31 wanted the noninterference directive to pass had kept him up nights wondering if he might be on the wrong side. Even if the principle were legitimate, the fact that others saw ways to corrupt the directive might mean that it was the wrong way of serving that principle. Maybe Shran was right that it might be misapplied by future generations, its original intentions forgotten. The directive was meant to minimize the harm that Starfleet crews could do to other societies, but what if it ended up causing equal or greater harm?
Soval did his best to continue making the case, falling back on the Vulcans’ traditional arguments for their own longstanding policy of nonintervention. This only served to rile Shran, who pointed out the often self-serving and hypocritical ways the defunct Vulcan High Command had misapplied or disregarded that rule in their historical dealings with Andoria, Earth, and other cultures. The session only deteriorated from there, and Archer was no help in bringing it back on track.
Once the meeting adjourned, Soval led Archer into a vacant side office to speak to him privately. “Admiral, considering that this is your initiative, it does little to aid its chances if you are unable to muster an effective defense of it. Your attention barely seemed to be on the meeting.”
“I’m sorry, Soval. I’ve just been . . . I’ve been distracted lately. It’s a hard time for me.”
Soval furrowed his brow. “Can you explain the nature of your distress?”
The human hesitated, but he couldn’t dodge such a direct question. “It’s Porthos.”
The commissioner reacted with surprise. “Your canine companion?”
“My pet beagle, yes. He . . .” Archer sighed heavily. “The vet told me yesterday that he hasn’t got long left to live. He’s only eighteen, and with modern medicine, a lot of beagles make it to twenty or more . . . but Porthos is already living on borrowed time. He almost died back in ’52, when a Kreetassan virus shut down his immune system. Phlox had to replace his pituitary gland with one from an alien lizard. The vet tells me it’s actually pretty remarkable that Porthos has lived this long.” He blinked rapidly. “But that doesn’t make it easier to cope with the end coming.”
Soval’s gaze was stony. “Admiral—we are confronting an issue urgent to the entire future of the Federation and perhaps many other civilizations. You cannot afford to be distracted by your emotional attachment to a small animal.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve lived with dogs since I was a boy. Porthos has been with me through all the hardest and most important experiences of my adult life. The whole time I was aboard Enterprise, from Klaang all the way to the Battle of Cheron, Porthos was there.”
“None of which is relevant to the role you must play now, Admiral. You may indulge your sentiment when you are not addressing far more important matters.” Soval paused. “Do not forget all you have learned of Vulcan discipline. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of . . . a pet.”
The admiral clenched his fists as Soval strode away. He should have known better than to expect the haughty commissioner to understand. But in his own condescending way, Soval had a point. With so much else to worry about right now, the need to face Porthos’s mortality could not have come at a worse time. Or maybe it was the debate that had come at the worst time. He wanted nothing more right now than to be at home, keeping his dear old friend company in his last weeks (days?). But his duties kept getting in the way. And those duties were, indeed, too important to walk away from. It was an agonizing truth to face.
Archer strode from the room and headed for the orbital shuttle terminal. At least he could go home now and spend a little more time with Porthos. They could no longer play together as they once had; the little dog had even lost his appetite for cheese. But at least he could sit with his old friend in his lap, and keep him company while he could. The comfort that would bring Archer would be bittersweet at best . . . but giving comfort to the ailing Porthos was the thing that truly mattered. That was something Soval would never understand.
February 26, 2166
Akleyro, Sauria
The fact that the Malurians running guns to the Saurian resistance were double agents for the Orion Syndicate made it relatively easy for Charles Tucker and Devna to get through the orbital blockade. Tucker presented himself as a Space Boomer arms dealer recruited by the Syndicate to supplement the Raldul alignment’s supply effort, using Syndicate authorization protocols provided by Devna. In this way, they were able to hitch a ride with the Malurians on their next arms delivery to the surface, using Orion-provided clearance codes to gain safe passage through the blockade. Devna operated under the alias of Elevia, supposedly a slave provided to Tucker in payment for his services—and, implicitly, to monitor his activity on the Syndicate’s behalf and assassinate him should he prove unreliable. Playing that role required Devna to adopt skimpier attire than she had worn aboard their scout ship, but she had gone with a compromise, an elaborately patterned red-orange halter top, abbreviated shorts, and calf-length boots. It was about as concealing as T’Pol’s regulation underwear, but by Devna’s st
andards, it was downright modest.
The trek from Raldul’s secret landing site through the dense jungle surrounding Akleyro proved more hazardous than the passage through the blockade. The Malurians had been through the rainforest enough times to be alert to the local predators and quick on the trigger when they drew near, and Tucker’s own intensive training served him in stead of such experience, enabling him to get off a phase pistol shot at a fierce-looking gliding lizard that swooped down on him from the lower limbs of the canopy overhead. But not all Saurian predators were as easy to spot. While the group rested against a tree bole as wide as Enterprise’s engine room, one of its supporting roots suddenly moved, revealing itself to be a huge serpent whose scales mimicked the bark of a root. The serpent wrapped its body around Devna, and Tucker was afraid to shoot for fear of hitting her. He tried aiming lower on its body, but the real roots surrounding it confused him.
Moments later, the serpent trembled and fell to the ground, its coils relaxing around Devna. Tucker rushed to her side and offered a hand to help her climb free—but she cautioned him to avoid the poisoned needle she held, then extricated herself lithely on her own. “I’ve been in more dangerous embraces,” she said, seeming almost bored by the whole thing.
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