Tucker nodded. “And so that shifts Federation sentiment in favor of noninterference.”
“In theory, yes. Navaar’s plans do tend to be overcomplicated.” Garos shook his head. “But I have not been provided with anything that could cause such a disaster. That must be something that Maltuvis’s or Harrad-Sar’s people are arranging. So if you hoped for my assistance in preventing the disaster, I must disappoint you.”
Tucker exchanged a look with Devna. This was troubling news. “It makes things riskier,” he said after a moment. “But maybe that doesn’t matter. All we need to do is expose the plan in advance—and pin it on the right people. Once the public knows who’s really behind it and what they were trying to do, there’d be no more point in actually going through with the disaster.”
“You hope,” Garos said. “Maltuvis seems the type who might go ahead with it out of sheer pique.”
Tucker shook his head. “No. Maltuvis is a narcissist. He wants his people to love him, to admire him as the one who protects them from the evil aliens. If people know it was his idea, it would turn them against him.”
“You assume his followers still know how to distinguish truth from propaganda. He has spent the past two years conditioning them to forget the difference.”
“And I’m sure that in M’Tezir, whole generations have been raised not to know it. But it takes time to erode a people’s ability to reason and recognize fact. It requires conditioning them to mistrust sources of information besides the state. Most Saurians grew up in countries that had good schools and a free and responsible press. Those habits of thought can’t all have been eroded in two years, no matter how hard Maltuvis’s propagandists have worked.”
Garos considered his words, then nodded. “All of that is probably true, I grant.” Then his gaze sharpened. “But does Maltuvis know that?”
8
February 27, 2166
U.S.S. Vesta NCC-302
“THIS . . . STARSHIP . . . is a piece of . . . crap!” Caroline Paris cried as she pounded futilely on the turbolift door.
Malcolm Reed clasped her shoulders from behind. “Calm down, Caroline. It’s just a stuck lift. The repair team will get us out of here soon enough.”
Paris struck her fist against the door one last time as punctuation before slumping back into Reed’s comforting embrace. “I know, but it’s not just that. It’s everything. It’s been a month since I got this ship, and it still isn’t working well enough to leave this damn dry dock!”
“Well, at least it’s the shortest month.” His comment evoked a laugh from Paris despite herself. “Remember, we had comparable troubles getting Pioneer up to speed. We almost got crushed inside a Jovian atmosphere.”
She turned to face him, leaning back against the gray-paneled lift wall. “Yeah, and discovered an amazing new life-form in the process. At least you got some excitement. I can’t even get the car out of the garage.” She sighed. “I should’ve known a ship named after the biggest silicate asteroid would get off to a rocky start.”
Reed groaned. “How long have you been waiting to use that one?”
“A while. But I can’t afford to vent like this in front of the crew.”
Reed leaned against the wall alongside her. “Maybe I chose the wrong day to come for a tour. Things will probably be better tomorrow.”
Paris quirked a brow at him. “Since when were you the optimist in this relationship?”
He stroked her shoulder. “Since you needed me to be.”
It was a wonderful feeling to hear him say that, especially when their romance was the only thing that was going right in her life at the moment. So Paris made a decision. Taking a deep breath, she said, “The thing is . . . I asked you to visit now because I know you won’t have the chance for much longer. The investigations are done, your refits are wrapping up. You’ll be taking Pioneer out again soon, and whether this hunk of junk ever starts working or not, we won’t be able to spend as much time together.”
Reed fidgeted. “Well. That’s the way it is with service romances, right? You make the most of the time you have, and you cherish the memories when it’s time to move on.”
She met his eyes intently. “Is that all this has been to you, Malcolm? Just a casual fling?”
“No, I . . . I didn’t mean it like that. These past weeks have been . . . extraordinary. You’ve given me more happiness than I’ve known in a very long time.”
“But you’ve still kept your distance. At first I thought it was out of deference to me, to my hang-ups after Delta. But we’re well past that now. You’ve certainly cured me of my lingering issues with intimacy,” she added with a bawdy grin. Then Paris grew serious again. “So when are you going to tell me about your damage? About why you pull away every time the conversation starts nudging toward commitment?”
Reed spoke hesitantly. “It’s . . . not that I wouldn’t welcome a . . . a lasting relationship with you, Caroline. It’s just that, before we move forward, you should be aware—not that it would necessarily become an issue, I wouldn’t want to assume that—”
“Malcolm.”
He gathered himself. “A few years ago, I was diagnosed with transporter-inflicted genetic damage. In fact, it was my case, along with Admiral Archer’s, that led Doctor Phlox to discover the flaw in our transporter technology. You see, he and I had been the heaviest early users, so—”
“What kind of genetic damage?” she asked, not letting him avoid the issue any further.
He sighed. “The kind that would prevent me from ever having children.”
For a moment, she just blinked. “That’s it? I mean . . . not to belittle your feelings about it, but it’s not something that would have to be a deal-breaker for a relationship.”
“No, of course not. But . . . well, I was something of a womanizer in my younger days, I admit. I had . . . rather a few casual dalliances. But they always meant something to me, and I was always looking for something more. Something deeper, something lasting. I kept hoping to find the person I’d be happy spending my life with—ideally, the woman who would be the mother of my children. You know how important the Reed legacy is to me.” Paris nodded.
“So when I found I could never father a child,” Malcolm went on, “it made me feel, well, as if there was no longer any point in looking for companionship. I haven’t been with anyone since then. Maybe I haven’t felt . . . entirely adequate as a man.”
Caroline stared. “Are you listening to yourself? Oh, Malcolm, just because we like old movies doesn’t mean we have to live in the damn twentieth century. You’re not less of a man if you can’t get a woman pregnant. The human population is large and stable enough that there’s no absolute imperative to procreate; love and connection should be enough for their own sake. Besides, lots of wonderful men are married to other wonderful men. Or are single fathers who adopt. There are plenty of kids who need adoption, even today. That’s as real as any other kind of parenting.”
Reed nodded. “Yes, Phlox and others have made the same point to me. But it still feels different.”
“You mean it’s not what you were hoping for. Welcome to living in the universe.”
“But doesn’t it matter to you? You were raised in a family with just as strong a sense of lineage.”
“My big brother had a son and two daughters before his ship was lost in the war. James Junior’s already applied to Starfleet Academy, and Taylor intends to follow him when she’s old enough. So the family tradition’s taken care of, whether I contribute to it or not. And that frees me to pursue my own aspirations.” She was compelled to pace within the lift, though its confines offered her little release for her need to move. “I’ve seen what happens when societies place too much value on procreation. I’ve been to Earth colonies like Vega and the Altair worlds, where the need to grow the population has caused a resurgence in traditional parenting roles—women of childbearing age expected to devote themselves to that function above all others, men coming to see them as a prec
ious resource to be sheltered at all costs for the good of society. It’s led to a resurgence of gender inequalities that I’d thought were long extinct, the kind of things we make fun of when we watch old movies.
“When I’ve seen those societies, I’ve had to wonder: What will happen to future generations, say, fifty or a hundred years from now, when people raised with those colonial attitudes become a larger percentage of the Federation’s population—of its electoral base? How might their values come to feed back into the larger society, or influence politics?”
“That hardly seems like a plausible concern,” Reed said.
“Well, you have the luxury to think that because you wouldn’t be affected by that kind of a change. I would be. Malcolm, just because we’ve built a world where equality is prized and respected doesn’t mean we can’t backslide. And I, for one, am not going to be part of that. I’m not going to define my identity or my relationships based on childbearing potential.”
She moved closer and held him again. “Malcolm, I decided a long time ago that the only expectations I needed to satisfy were my own. I just wish you were able to feel the same way about yourself. Because I think we could have a future together . . . if you believed in yourself enough to embrace it.”
He blinked away tears. “Then maybe I need you to teach me how. I hadn’t allowed myself to believe that was really possible . . . that you’d want a future with me. So I didn’t allow myself to think about . . . how much I want that too.”
When the turbolift repair crew found them, the two captains were locked in a passionate kiss, oblivious to the lift’s restored movement. The repair crew stepped back, let the doors close, and waited a while before declaring the lift open for service.
Birnam (GJ 1045 I)
“Just so we’re clear,” Zang Liwei said as he led the Endeavour landing party out from the Verne crew’s base camp, “it was Farid’s idea to invite you here, not mine.”
Captain T’Pol absorbed the information dispassionately. “I believe you made that adequately clear already, Captain Zang. Yet we would not be here had you not acceded to his suggestion.”
The burly, middle-aged Boomer captain wrinkled his mustached lip in reluctant acknowledgment. “Just because he wouldn’t let this go. The sooner we get this resolved, the better.”
Hoshi Sato was just glad to be here. She hadn’t expected a half-frozen world under a dim red star that never moved in the sky to be so beautiful. True, the light here was subdued, nothing like the warmth of Earth’s sun shining through the treetops on a clear spring day. Not only was the star itself (which the Boomers were calling Dunsinane) dim and broad and low in the sky, but its light was diffused by a near-perpetual cloud cover that only got thicker the closer you got to the sunward pole. But Birnam’s woods were substantially brighter than those of Dakala, the geothermally heated rogue planet she’d visited in her first year aboard Enterprise, and her eyes adjusted readily enough that the lighting seemed more gentle than gloomy. Perhaps it was the nature of the surrounding vegetation that helped create that impression. The plants came in many unusual shapes and colors, tending toward deep, rich purples and blues that gave the forest a regal air. The vegetation was spaced widely enough to keep the setting from feeling oppressively dark—probably because so much of it was mobile, able to crawl or slither or walk or even glide away from any obstruction that blocked the heat of Dunsinane too long (for it was the star’s infrared heat, more than its feeble visible light, that was its main boon to the life of this planet). Indeed, maybe the very liveliness of the plants here was what made the environment feel so stimulating.
“It’s the oxygen.”
Startled, Sato turned to see the Boomer science officer, Farid Najafi, striding alongside her with his hands in his pockets, offering a boyish grin that sat well on his handsome, dark features. “What is?” she asked.
“Sorry, but that look on your face—we’ve all had it from time to time, especially on the first days before we adjusted. All these plants converting carbon dioxide to oxygen, no animals to respire it back the other way—the O-two levels are pretty high around here. Even with the frequent rainfall, fire’s a big risk. And it has a way of making people giddy when they’re not used to it.”
Sato giggled, realizing that she was proving his point. “And when you do get used to it?”
Najafi tilted his head. “More a general sense of well-being. A lot of energy.”
Zang stared back at him glumly. “Or heightened irritability—if someone gives you reason.”
“Let’s just say we haven’t needed much coffee since we got here,” Najafi finished, visibly resisting the urge to rise to the bait. Then he smiled at Sato, and she felt a thrill that she hoped was just the oxygen talking. “But don’t worry—what’s over this rise will be plenty stimulating.”
He raced ahead, and Hoshi barely remembered to glance at T’Pol for permission before jogging after him. Soon, she caught up at the top of the rise, and the dryads came into view below her. There were dozens of them, maybe a hundred or more, generating a deep, creaking rumble as they made their slow migration through the wide dale below, along the banks of a small brook.
The dryads were not standard-issue trees. They were certainly tall, averaging something like ten meters high, but about a third of the way up from a broad base of root-legs were several dozen thick, vine-like tentacles emerging from all around the trunk. Atop each dryad’s trunk was a single, broad, roughly circular deep-blue canopy like the brim of an inverted sombrero, tilted at a rakish angle to face the never-moving sun. “Are those their . . . leaves?” Sato asked, for want of a better word.
“Essentially,” Najafi answered. “Our scouts have found other dryad populations elsewhere on the planet—the angle of the ‘leaf’ varies depending on the angle of the light in various regions, naturally. A given population can’t migrate too far north or south—well, unless they follow a ring-shaped path around the substellar pole.” He shrugged. “Or maybe we’re wrong—maybe the supporting branches can grow over time and change the angle if they migrate slowly enough. We’d need a broader genetic comparison to find out—unless we just wanted to watch for a few decades.”
Elizabeth Cutler had caught up with them as he spoke. “I don’t know,” the slim, honey-haired science officer observed. “It hardly seems to have the surface area to collect enough sunlight.”
Najafi pulled a compact magnifier scope from a pocket and handed it to her. “Take a closer look at the texture.”
Cutler put the small binocular scanner to her eyes. “Kind of spongy and convoluted, it looks like.”
Najafi grinned. “Increases its surface area, lets it gather more light. Besides, it’s mostly absorbing infrared, and that can penetrate deeper.”
“There’s more,” Cutler reported. “In the middle of the ‘leaf’ is sort of a funnel, filled with water.” She handed the scope to Sato.
T’Pol and Zang soon caught up, and Sato passed the scope to her captain. On locating the funnels for herself, the elegant Vulcan officer said, “I see. I would hypothesize that the funnels collect rainwater, so that the dendriforms do not need to depend solely on moisture absorption through their roots.”
“Exactly, Captain,” Najafi said. “After all, those roots were made for walking. And that’s not all they do. Come on.”
He led them down to the trampled path where the massive creatures had previously trodden. “What do you see here?”
“A lot of mush, basically,” said Sato.
“A lot?” Cutler added. “Maybe, but not as much as there should be.”
Najafi just stood there grinning, letting them size things up for themselves. Recognizing this, T’Pol looked at her science officer. “How would you account for the discrepancy, Lieutenant?”
Cutler cleared her throat. “As Hoshi said, Captain, this stuff is pretty mushy. The plant matter gets crushed, even liquefied by the creatures’ sheer weight. And roots absorb liquid.”
Sato stared a
t her. “They’re grazing?”
“That’s right,” Najafi acknowledged, smiling at her. “They absorb the crushed plant matter and use its nutrients and sugars, instead of depending entirely on their own photosynthesis. Another reason the ‘leaf’ on top doesn’t have to be so big. It seems that’s the only way a plant that big and mobile could manage.”
“So that is why they bypassed your campsite, as described in your initial report,” T’Pol said. “The ground was bare thanks to your landing, so the site offered nothing for the dendriforms to consume.”
“Exactly,” said Zang. “As long as we keep the ground surrounding the camp clear of cover the dryads can feed on, we’re safe from their herds.”
“Copses,” Najafi corrected. Zang just rolled his eyes, as if tired of an old argument.
At Najafi’s urging, the group followed this cluster of dryads (whatever term one might use) along the course of the brook until they reached a wide pond. The humans and Vulcan watched patiently as the dendriforms began to sink into the mud under their own weight. “Watering hole,” Cutler observed.
“In a weird sort of way,” Najafi replied.
“Not all of them are settling in,” T’Pol said. “Observe the ones on the outside.”
The specified dryads had remained in motion, Sato realized—slowly but deliberately circling the perimeter of the herd. “I’d swear they’re standing guard.”
“Exactly,” the Boomer scientist replied, his excitement growing. “The way the others sink in, it takes some time for them to get unstuck. The outside ones keep watch for predators, protecting their immobile fellows. They even do it in shifts—eventually, once the inside ones are sated, they’ll relieve the sentries and let them sink their roots.”
“Social behavior,” T’Pol noted. “In vegetative organisms. Truly intriguing.”
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