Star Trek: Enterprise - Surak's Soul

by J. M. Dillard

  Reed forced his thoughts to the issue at hand. T’Pol’s lack of response increased his sense of awkwardness. “What I’m trying to say is ... you mustn’t feel responsible for killing off an entire race. Just because he was the last ... We probably wouldn’t have learned that much from him, even if Hoshi had had the chance to communicate with him.”

  Reed trailed off, realizing he was simply digging the hole deeper. He began rubbing the gel on more vigorously. T’Pol’s posture stiffened and she said, “Lieutenant.”

  Reed continued his work, with such intensity that he began to huff a bit. “I’m not accusing you of guilt, mind you, I just want you to know that you don’t bear the responsibility ...”

  “Lieutenant,” T’Pol said, and Reed suddenly realized, that he had been rubbing in the gel with too much vigor. “I do not believe you are required to penetrate the epidermal layer.”

  Heat rushed to Reed’s face; without another word, he handed over the container of gel, then averted his eyes as T’Pol administered the decontaminant to the rest of her body. He sat down on the nearby bench, stricken into silence.

  T’Pol dipped her hand into the container of gel, and said, “Lieutenant. Your back ... ?”

  [27] At first he did not understand, and then he realized that she was working to return the favor. He turned his back toward her and replied, in what he hoped was an indifferent tone, “Of course ...”

  Once T’Pol had finished, she straightened. “Lieutenant ... I appreciate your concern.”

  “You do?” Reed turned toward her in surprise.

  T’Pol cleared her throat delicately. “However, it is misplaced and inappropriate. You are engaging in what your psychotherapists would call ‘mind reading’—you are ascribing your own emotional reactions and thoughts to me, just as Hoshi did.”

  “Oh.”

  “I would appreciate it if you could resist doing so.”

  “I’ll ... do my best to resist,” Reed said.

  In her small, spartan quarters that evening, T’Pol sat cross-legged on the deck, spine perfectly straight as she leaned forward and lit her meditation candle.

  It was still early in the evening, but she had begun her meditation ritual ahead of schedule in order to settle her thoughts. Captain Archer had rejected her request to work a second shift that night in the medical lab alongside Dr. Phlox. There was no hurry now, he’d said grimly; he’d prefer fresh minds in the morning to tackle the problem. T’Pol could take over on the science end when Phlox needed rest. He’d even ordered [28] Hoshi—who was responsible for deciphering a great deal of audio and video records brought from the surface, and eager to get to work—to take a night’s rest first.

  T’Pol had felt oddly troubled since shooting the alien down on the planet’s surface; troubled, indeed, to the point where she had come close to saying something to the captain as they had all been sitting, smeared with gel, in the decontamination chamber. Yet she had not known precisely what she had wanted to say.

  She knew only that she should not have shot the alien; her action had been a mistake, one that led to his untimely death. In the context of the planetary catastrophe, that one premature death had very broad and disturbing implications. The mystery of his peers’ deaths might now never be solved.

  T’Pol settled back into the prescribed position, let go a deep breath, closed her eyes, and forced all thoughts from her.

  For an instant, no more, there was silence, and darkness.

  And then the image of the dead alien, lying at her feet, rose unbidden. Why had she not considered the possible consequences of her action before she fired? Admittedly, she had acted not on intelligence but on pure impulse. Had her time among humans begun to affect her so deeply?

  She rejected the latter question as soon as it [29] arose. She had already told Hoshi that guilt was illogical; so, too, was blame, and she would not lay the responsibility for her own actions at the humans’ feet.

  Once again, T’Pol struggled to quiet her mind.

  The image of the dead alien resurfaced once more; she remembered the instruction of her meditation teacher. If an image will not leave you, simply focus on it. See where it leads; in doing so, you will clear the obstruction it represents. Only then will you be able to successfully meditate.

  T’Pol let go a deep, closemouthed sigh, drew in a fresh breath, and this time studied the image closely when it presented itself.

  And at once, she was no longer a woman sitting on the deck of a starship hurtling at sub-warp speed in orbit about an unknown planet, but a girl, kneeling in the hot red sand of a Vulcan garden.

  Before her, a desert succulent, a large kal’ta plant, lay uprooted and limp beneath the relentless sun, its deep violet leaves, edged with iridescent blue, partially eaten away. The plant had grown for years in the garden, well before T’Pol’s birth; vast and venerable, it had been her father’s favorite, grown from a cutting handed down in the family for unbroken generations.

  Now it lay destroyed; and as young T’Pol studied the damage, aghast (yet even at the age of five [30] years being trained enough to control the outward expression of what she felt), she heard her mothers calm voice addressing her father just inside the house.

  “A ch’kariya, no doubt. I will purchase a trap for it, and contact your father for another cutting from his kal’ta.”

  A ch’kariya: a burrowing mammal that relied on the roots of plants for water and nourishment. T’Pol had never seen one, and when she heard her mother’s word, an idea struck the young scientist: she would construct a trap herself, immediately, from materials already in the family home, and capture the creature for observation. This would do two positive things: please her parents, and further her knowledge of Vulcan zoology.

  T’Pol immediately constructed a simple trap, no more than a transparent box with one side that was rigged to slide closed when the animal entered. As bait, she left a small portion of the kal’ta plant with its roots attached.

  By sunset, her plan bore fruit: inside the box she found a long, slender quadruped, pale-skinned with sparse hair, so small she could hold it in her hands. Its tiny eyes were squinted shut, blinded even by the waning light of dusk.

  She said nothing to her parents, but carried it to her room in secrecy. That night, for many hours, she observed the creature, who, once it [31] decided it was in no imminent danger, wolfed down the bit of plant and root. After a time, it grew sluggish, and apparently went to sleep; pleased that she had gained quite a bit of independent information, T’Pol did the same.

  When she woke the following morning, the animal was motionless and would not be roused, despite her prodding. Alarmed, she took it at once to her parents, who were seated on the stone meditation bench in the garden. At the sound of her faster-than-normal steps, they both opened their eyes and gazed serenely at her, and at the boxed creature in her hands.

  Her mother, jet-haired and black-eyed, waited calmly for her daughter to speak. She had the darker coloration typical of most Vulcans, which T’Pol envied and secretly thought was more beautiful; the girl had inherited her father’s lighter eyes, skin, and hair.

  “I trapped the ch’kariya,” T’Pol said, fighting to keep the childish anxiety from her voice. “I studied it last night and meant to free it in the desert today. But there’s something wrong with it.”

  Her father took the box from her, opened it, and reached in to touch the creature. After a second of examination, he confirmed T’Pol’s suspicion. “It is dead.”

  T’Pol bowed her head in utter shame and dismay. Had she been any younger, any less trained in emotional control, she would have wept. She [32] had committed the most heinous crime possible in Vulcan culture: she had killed needlessly.

  “I suspect it starved to death,” her father continued, his pale eyes bearing a hint of reproach. “Ch’kariyas require a great deal of sustenance because of their high metabolic rate. Did you supply it with a large amount of vegetation?”

  Miserable, T’Pol shook her
head.

  “We are Vulcans,” her mother said softly. “We are the most intelligent species on this planet, and thus far, more intelligent than any other species we have encountered in space. Physically, we are stronger than most other creatures we have encountered; given the combination, we have an extremely great potential to cause harm.

  “Thus, we also have the greatest responsibility to utilize our intelligence and to control our impulses.

  “You see how easy it is to accidentally harm, even to kill. This is why we study the teachings of Surak, that we might avoid our natural impulse to wreak violence. We struggle daily, we meditate, we utilize our intelligence to its maximum, all in order to master that impulse.

  “Now you must learn how to take great care in your every action to avoid causing harm. Intelligence is worthless if it is not backed by compassion.”

  “I will never forget what my carelessness has caused,” young T’Pol said, lifting her chin to at [33] last directly meet her mother’s steady gaze. “I promise you that I will never again cause the death of any creature.”

  Her father spoke at last. “Over the course of your life, you may find, daughter, that yours is not such an easy promise to keep.”

  A new image surfaced in T’Pol’s memory, that of the highly esteemed Vulcan master Sklar, who had come to her city to lecture students. In this case, he had agreed, for the first time in his two centuries of teaching, to lecture the intermediate students as well as the advanced. T’Pol, now aged ten, had recently moved up into the intermediate category, and was thrilled at the opportunity.

  She had sat some distance in the city’s vast auditorium from the speaker, who used no technical enhancement to be heard, but relied solely upon his strong, resonant voice. T’Pol had no difficulty hearing every word; she was in fact mesmerized by each one, by the grace and serenity that emanated from the elder’s posture and expression, by the way the filtered sunlight glinted off his purely white hair. Here was one who had attained the blissful state of Kolinahr, nonemotion; here was one whose life was fully devoted to the pursuit of peace.

  He spoke at first of Surak, the revered bringer of peace to the planet Vulcan, the one whose philosophy had stopped the raging wars, had [34] transformed the culture from one devoted to violence and bloodshed to one devoted to compassion, to unity, to logic.

  “Surak’s earliest teachings spoke of complete nonviolence, a truly noble concept. He carried no weapon, he offered no defense—yet he brought down the fiercest warlords Vulcan has ever seen with his words.

  “We are Surak’s heirs. But we must never let ourselves grow complacent or arrogant, thinking that we are the only ones in the universe capable of such a great philosophy. Others have come to similar conclusions. Can anyone here think of another culture besides ours where one arose to teach peace?”

  Stillness in the auditorium. No one replied, so Sklar gave the single-word answer.

  “Earth.”

  Had it been humans sitting in the audience, everyone would have gasped. As it was, the stillness grew heavier: T’Pol leaned forward ever so slightly, awaiting the explanation for such an unexpected answer.

  “His name was Mohandas K. Gandhi, and he lived on twentieth-century Earth, in an area called India at the time. He was a Hindu, and believed in the principle of ahimsa, a Sanskrit term for the concept of total nonviolence toward every living being. Following ahimsa, Gandhi-ji, as he became known, convinced the Indians to give up [35] their internal fighting and unite against a common foe: Great Britain, which had invaded their country and instituted a government which treated the Indians as inferior.

  “His strategy was successful: the humans used nonviolent protest and, without killing, without war, shamed Britain into leaving their country. Gandhi-ji had a great victory.

  “In the end, however, he was killed by one of his own, who was angered by the thought of cultural unity. His philosophy of peace failed to transform Earth; humans are still haunted by the specter of violence. Many terrible wars followed the death of Gandhi-ji, and in fact, India itself was divided into factions—not without more bloodshed.”

  Sklar paused; had T’Pol believed him capable of emotion, she might have said that slyness flickered over his features.

  “Here is the question I pose to you today, not in hope of a verbal answer, but in hope of inciting thought. It remains a matter of debate, even among those of us in the Kolinahr community.” Again he paused. “Should Gandhi-ji have defended himself from violence? Should he have carried a weapon in order to protect himself—not out of pure self-interest, but in order to protect his peace movement? Or was he right to let himself be destroyed?”

  No one answered, but a slight rustling could be heard in the audience, as T’Pol and her peers glanced uneasily at each other, trying to gauge the [36] general consensus. Finally, a young male rose and said, “With your permission, Sklar.”

  The elder nodded.

  “Surak bore no weapon, yet he managed to convince other Vulcans of the time to follow his philosophy. In fact, he took many risks by approaching notorious warlords.”

  “Vulcans have a renowned capacity for self-discipline,” Sklar replied, “which perhaps allowed Surak’s movement to spread more easily, without Vulcans relapsing into violence. Surak also had tested many methods on himself for years before he began sharing his philosophy—methods for reducing our violent tendencies which we still employ today.” He motioned for the child to sit down, then addressed the crowd. “In fact, our own government employs protective devices as deterrents ... devices which could even be called ‘weapons.’ We do not venture into space without weapons, in order to protect ourselves in case we encounter more violent species. Yet the chance exists that those weapons might be accidentally misused. Are we still justified in bearing them?”

  T’Pol stood up. “With your permission, Sklar.”

  Again, a nod.

  “We have the right to defend ourselves,” she said, “against species who would bring about our destruction.”

  “So, hypothetically,” Sklar responded, “if a [37] warlike alien species threatened to destroy our planet, our entire civilization, we would be justified in protecting ourselves.”

  “Most definitely,” T’Pol answered confidently.

  “Even if it means destroying the alien species,” Sklar finished. His words had the intonation of a sentence, but it was most definitely a question, a challenge. Regarding violence, where do we draw the line? How deeply must we commit ourselves to peace if it is truly to affect the universe around us?

  T’Pol stood for a few seconds longer, casting about for a reply, and then she sat down. For the rest of the lecture, she remained silent.

  At last, as she opened her eyes and stared at the glowing flame on the candle in front of her, the adult T’Pol’s mind was at rest. She drew in another breath and prepared herself for the ritual of meditation. As she did, she repeated silently to herself a verse from the teachings of Surak:

  The breath we draw in and release is peace. The thoughts in our minds are peace. Our body, our limbs are peace. Our spirit, our essence is peace. ...

  And as she released herself into the nothingness that was meditation, T’Pol herself was finally at peace. She had made her decision concerning the alien’s death; she knew what to do to make amends.

  * * *

  [38] Yet another memory came to her, this one far more painful to the other two: the recollection of herself some seventeen years before, running through the steamy, tropical jungle on Risa, pursuing Menos and his cohort, Jossen. Both were Vulcans who had been surgically altered in order to infiltrate a group of smugglers from the planet Agaron—but they had chosen to reject their Vulcan upbringing and had instead joined the very group they had been sent to disband.

  And T’Pol had been chosen by the Vulcan government to bring them back.

  Flash of an image, vivid, emotionally disturbing: Jossen, fallen to the ground, reaching for his weapon ...

  T’Pol had
fired, instinctively ...

  And in a brilliant, blazing millisecond had killed.

  She had been very young then; the fact had left her devastated. Unable to fulfill her duties, she had sought help at the Sanctuary at P’Jem, where she had undergone the ancient Vulcan ritual of Fullara, which eradicated both traumatic memories and all attendant emotions.

  But the ritual, ultimately, had failed; her memory had returned.

  It returned full force now, as did the promise she had made to herself—that she would never [39] again allow herself to take a life, even accidentally. Now, she had failed.

  In the captain’s dining room, Hoshi stared dismally down at her plate of stir-fried tofu atop a bed of greens. She had yet to take a bite, although Archer was three-quarters of the way through his meal, and Trip had already finished. As for Malcolm, the Englishman had eaten perhaps half of his spaghetti, and was obsessively organizing the rest of it into neatly coiled mounds on his plate.

  The captain had insisted on Malcolm and Hoshi joining him for dinner; he was especially concerned about the landing party’s reaction—especially Hoshi’s—to the sad scenario down on the planet’s surface. In decontam, Hoshi had folded her arms tightly about her, lips taut, and said not a word to anyone, although Archer had tried a couple of times to gently engage her in conversation. T’Pol had been as emotionless as ever, Reed typically restless, and Phlox preoccupied with getting to his medical lab; Archer was confident they would be able to deal with the magnitude of the tragedy. About Hoshi, he was not so sure. He would have had Phlox talk to her. Phlox had experience in counseling humans, but the doctor would be consumed with the autopsy. It occurred to Archer that, as captain, he could have used some [40] psychological training in order to help his crew; he made a mental note to make a suggestion to Starfleet. A ship’s therapist: now, that wasn’t such a bad idea.

  And, of course, because of his habit of being brutally honest with himself, Archer admitted that, given the fact that he had confronted so much death—on the anniversary of his own father’s passing—he was not particularly in the mood to eat dinner by himself. Otherwise, he’d have spent the entire time wondering what his father would have done in the same circumstance. Surely Dad would have found a way to save those people. ...