And then, not as visible on his deep bronze features, but clearly visible on his stark white tunic, shone a blue-green glow: oceanic, roiling, like the rippling of a strong current. It neared Uroqa; closer and closer it came, until in its deep turquoise light he let go a gasp so deep it seemed all the air had been forced from his lungs.
You, he hissed, with such venom, such fury and bitterness, that even Hoshi recoiled, and he rose up from his chair—staggering, struggling against a sudden weakness. There came the sounds of his [128] uneven footfall as he used the last of his strength to go to his wife’s side. ...
Then there was nothing but pale walls Stinted with the sea-blue glow.
Seething, body taut, Hoshi punched the control on the nearest companel, and turned, ready to make the accusation.
Wanderer was, of course, still gone.
But in its place at the computer console, Kano—Uroqa’s dead mate—stood, her white tunic draped about her erect, stiff body like a shroud. Her dulled eyes were open, but unfocused, and her arms stretched out over the keyboard while her fingers punched the controls with the preternatural speed and grace of a pianist-prodigy.
Dear God, this isn’t happening, Hoshi tried to say, but her tongue, her lips were frozen with disbelief and horror. Somehow, her limbs still worked, and she took a step toward the impossible.
Kano lifted her fingers and paused, head tilting, sensing an intruder’s approach.
At once, the Oani woman dropped to the floor with the dreadful limpness of death, all animation fled from her corpse, white gauze draping over her bronze skin and fluttering out onto the deck about her.
In her place at the console, Wanderer, a neatly condensed column of energy, remained.
Hoshi recoiled. But the weakness—one so [129] draining, so powerfully intense it verged on anguish and made her long for an end, for death—overtook her so swiftly so that she could manage only one whispered word as her eyesight dimmed, replaced by an all-enveloping blue-green glow: “You ...”
Seven
“YOU ...”
The word woke Archer from a deep, dreamless sleep. For a few seconds he stared, dazed and disoriented, face still crushed against his pillow, at the companel where the sound had originated.
He blinked. Beside him, curled in a horseshoe shape, Porthos snored, having ignored the rule—most definitely spoken—that he was to spend all nights in his own bed.
Archer pushed himself up on one elbow and cleared his throat; a glance at the chronometer confirmed he’d gotten less than two hours’ sleep, which explained the mental fuzziness. He fought to shake it off, to replay the single word in his mind to try to determine who had uttered it.
“Archer here,” he croaked, and cleared his [131] throat again. On the next try, his voice sounded more like his own. “Hoshi?”
Silence, but Archer’s hearing was sharp. The channel was still open.
“Hoshi, come in.”
Still no response. Archer sat, then stood, all the while feeling an increasing sense of alarm. “Ensign Sato, report.”
At this point, he did not expect a reply. He cut off the channel himself, and instead opened one to sickbay.
“Cutler here.” She sounded wearier than Archer felt.
“Ensign, send someone down to Hoshi Sato’s lab at once. She tried to contact me, but I’m not able to raise her now. I’m concerned ...”
“I’ll get someone down there right away, sir.” She paused. “We’ve got some strange problems down here, Captain.”
“Strange?”
“An Oani corpse has disappeared, sir.”
“What?”
“That was my reaction, too, Captain. It’s not like we misplaced it—sickbay’s too small for that. It was in its stasis container when Lieutenant Reed collapsed, sir, and now, it’s ... gone.”
“Ensign, we can’t have any breach of containment like that. That’s inexcusable.”
“Yes, sir.”
He could practically hear Cutler flush with [132] embarrassment on the other end. “Well, recruit someone to deal with it. Find that corpse, Ensign. But first, someone needs to go check on Ensign Sato.”
“Yes, sir.”
Archer punched the control and on instinct began to head for the door—then stopped himself. The problem with the corpse he had dismissed as an oversight—Cutler was overstressed, overworked, overwhelmed ... she had moved the Oani and no doubt forgotten about it. The captain had thought to head for sickbay, to check on Hoshi himself, then to the bridge since it was only an hour before his regular shift began anyway. But his brain, fatigued and still hovering near the half-waking, half-dreaming state where insight dwelled, seized on a sudden idea, halting his body in midstep.
“You ...”
Hoshi had been speaking to someone else, not directly to Archer. She had opened the channel, but she had been interrupted before she had been able to address the captain. And her tone had been ... not normal. Archer paused, remembering the emotions carried on that single word. She had sounded angry. Accusatory.
There was only one other person—creature, Archer corrected himself—working in the lab with her.
Wanderer.
[133] Revelation born of pure instinct overtook him, and with it, a sense of dread that left him physically chilled—not out of personal fear, but out of the sickening realization that he had voluntarily been playing host to the very entity that was killing his people, that had killed all the Oanis, and had done so without leaving a trace.
He headed back to the companel and pressed the control, now beyond awake, all tiredness forgotten; he could barely hold himself still for the millisecond before Cutler replied, again in a tone that was beyond exhausted.
His words came rapid-fire. “Cutler, I want to know the instant you find Hoshi how she’s doing—and I need to know whether Wanderer is still in the lab with her. If your medic doesn’t return at once, I want to know about that, too. I don’t want anyone else being alone with Wanderer—”
There was a dazed pause as Cutler struggled to digest everything; then she said, her tone a bit more alert, “Hold on, Captain. The orderly’s coming back right now—you’re right, he’s carrying Hoshi. She’s unconscious ...”
“Ask him. Ask him whether Wanderer’s still in that lab.”
Another pause; Archer listened as Cutler repeated the question, and heard the negative reply even before she could relay it to him.
“I heard, Ensign. I want no one going near that [134] lab anyway. Wait in sickbay until you receive further orders from me. Archer out.” He pressed another toggle. “Archer to bridge.”
“T’Pol here.”
“Sub-Commander. I need to talk to you—in private, where Wanderer can’t hear us. Is there any possible way for us to do that?”
Archer entered engineering to find Trip Tucker already on duty—like his captain, an hour before his shift. T’Pol was already there and waiting, arms folded, looking as fresh as if she had just risen instead of spending the last two nights without sleeping. Trip looked haggard, but intrigued—even more so after one glance at the captain’s taut expression.
“Wanderer refuses to enter engineering,” T’Pol explained, the instant Archer stepped through the doorway. “Apparently, something about the warp engines disrupts its energy patterns.”
The information gave Archer yet another reason to find the hum of engines and the vibration beneath his feet even more reassuring. “There’s a problem with our new friend,” Archer said.
T’Pol tilted her head expectantly.
“I believe the cause of the mysterious deaths is Wanderer,” the captain continued. “Hoshi tried to contact me from the lab. She wasn’t able to finish what she was trying to say. All she managed to say [135] was ‘You ...’ ” He gave it the same accusatory intonation he remembered hearing.
“Son of a ...” Trip let go a breath of surprise; the emotion was soon replaced by anger. His eyes narrowed. “No wonder it gave us that cock-and-bull story about radiat
ion we couldn’t detect.”
“For some reason, it’s killing us,” Archer said, with vehement conviction. “Just like it killed the Oanis.”
T’Pol regarded him with cold-blooded disbelief. “What proof do you have, Captain? Surely you don’t consider Hoshi’s attempt to contact you as conclusive.”
“How else do you explain it?” Archer demanded, even though he understood her position completely. He had no direct proof, other than an unshakable belief.
But the Vulcan was equally immovable. “Wanderer is a pacifist, Captain. It explained to me how it does not believe in killing.”
“How do you know it doesn’t believe in lying?” Trip shot at her; his barb drew her sharp glance.
“Its beliefs are very similar to those of Vulcans,” T’Pol insisted. “It is quite evolved. And it would be most disgusted by your accusations. What possible reason would it have to kill humanoids?”
For that, Archer had no answer; but Trip was all engineer when he replied, “It consists of energy, right?”
T’Pol allowed a single, tight nod.
[136] “Well, how does it renew itself? What’s its energy source, Sub-Commander? How does it feed?”
Archer felt his lips twist with revulsion. »
“It has not discussed that with me,” T’Pol admitted. “But it agreed with me at length that it was against violence of all forms. It specifically stated it was against killing sentient beings.” She paused. “If it was lying, why did it not destroy us all when it first came aboard?”
“Maybe it was full,” Archer said. He was not entirely joking.
“And maybe it’s amusing itself in the interim,” Trip added. “Going along for the ride until it works up an appetite.” A sudden thought alarmed him; he glanced swiftly at Archer. “It’s studying our computer database, right? Then it’s going to be able to locate Earth and Vulcan and other inhabited planets—”
“We’ve got to stop it,” Archer said. “No matter what it takes.”
As the captain expected, T’Pol protested at once. “Sir, how can you even discuss such a prospect without proof that Wanderer is indeed a danger to us? And even if it is a danger to us, how can you decide so swiftly to destroy such a unique life-form, without exploring other options first?”
“If Wanderer is so compassionate about humanoids,” the captain countered, “then ask it why it didn’t inform us at once that Hoshi was ill? I [137] had to send someone from sickbay down to her lab to find her. She was unconscious.”
“Perhaps ...” T’Pol began, then fell silent. At last she admitted, “Wanderer was capable of notifying me, if not those in sickbay. I cannot explain this. Perhaps it was a cultural misunderstanding. Perhaps Wanderer misinterpreted what happened and thought she was dead or asleep, or that there was no point in informing us, since there was nothing we could do for her.”
The captain let go an audible, frustrated breath. “Look, I know I have nothing more than a hunch. But it is a reasonable one. We’ve got to find out whether Wanderer is responsible for all the deaths, and how we can protect our people.”
“Well, it doesn’t like engineering,” Trip said. “So a lot of people can camp out here. But I don’t think we can fit sixty unless we stack ’em like dinner plates.”
“The warp engines bother it,” Archer said. “We’ve got to figure out why, so you can rig something that’ll protect everyone—maybe even drive it from the vessel.”
Trip managed to make a snicker sound grim. “Right. I’ll just build another mini-warp engine with the spare parts lying around here.”
“If it comes to that,” Archer said, in a tone that conveyed he wasn’t joking. He stepped over to a bulkhead and found the nearest companel. “Archer to sickbay.”
[138] “Cutler here.” She sounded on the verge of collapse herself.
Don’t you ever sleep, Ensign? he almost asked, but there was no time. Instead he told her, “I need you to bring all the patients in sickbay to engineering. Bring beds, life-support, whatever they need ... but I want you and them to stay up here for a while.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I’ll explain everything in time. It’s something of an emergency. Get as many hands as you need to help out. Archer out.” He turned to Trip and T’Pol.
“Aren’t you a bit ahead of yourself, Captain?” the Vulcan asked. “We don’t even know that Wanderer is dangerous.”
“That’s what you and I are going to find out now,” Archer said. “I’ll need you to help me communicate with it. But first, we’re going to stop by the armory.”
Trip glanced at him. “You really think a phase pistol’s gonna stop that thing if it gets mad?”
Archer shrugged. “You’ve got a better idea?”
Without moving a muscle in her face or deviating from her normal calm intonation even slightly, T’Pol managed to convey cool disdain for the notion. “Commander Tucker has a point, sir. Phase pistols are likely to be quite useless if in fact Wanderer is a danger to us. And there is no point in your accompanying me to speak to [139] Wanderer, given that you do not feel safe. I am perfectly capable of asking it whatever questions you wish. I am quite certain it will not harm me.”
Archer was by no means as certain—but he was willing to accept T’Pol’s offer so that he could accomplish other things in the interim. “Very well, Sub-Commander. Although I want it noted that I’m gravely concerned for your safety, and am ordering you to arm yourself.”
“And I must refuse, sir.”
Archer could feel no anger: like Trip, he doubted whether a phase pistol would protect T’Pol if Wanderer decided to attack. He could only hope that, having communicated directly with T’Pol, Wanderer would have some compunctions about harming her.
T’Pol found Wanderer still lingering in the laboratory where Hoshi had been working. The creature was still hovering near the main computer databanks—it needed no terminal or viewer to access information, but apparently absorbed it directly from the computers themselves.
T’Pol crossed the threshhold, stood beside the creature, and remained silent—voice silent, thoughts silent, mind still, for she did not wish to communicate inadvertently any of her previous conversation with the captain. If Wanderer was innocent, she had no wish to offend; and if the creature was guilty, she did not wish to give it [140] notice of the preparations to defend the crew, lest it retaliate.
For a full minute, Wanderer continued working on accessing the database. T’Pol waited patiently, but when her gaze fell on Hoshi’s now abandoned station, she noticed something odd: a very slight scorching around the terminal data input area. She moved toward the area, and drew a fingertip over the darkened spot, then examined it.
Fine ash.
She pressed a control to eject the data disk—nothing emerged, and when she peered more carefully into the drive, she discovered a layer of black cinders. The disk had apparently been incinerated.
She turned to the energy creature—blue, roiling, and silent.
“Wanderer, do you know what happened to the Oani medical logs?”
Wanderer did not reply. Had T’Pol been capable of feeling surprise, she would have done so; the most obvious conclusion she could arrive at, given the apparently impossible, complete incineration of the Oani logs, was that Hoshi had discovered information that Wanderer had not wanted her to see.
Which led, inevitably, to the next, more unpleasant conclusion: that Wanderer had, in fact, been responsible for the destruction of the Oanis, and the weakness affecting the Enterprise crew members.
[141] For herself, T’Pol felt no fear: instead, she felt a driving curiosity to know the full truth before she died. If Wanderer chose to kill her, the very fact of her death would serve the captain as notice that his theory was correct, so she would feel no sense of loss, no regret. Once more, she addressed the entity. “Ensign Sato became ill in this laboratory, while working. Yet you did not notify me of her illness. Is there some reason that you did not?”
Aga
in, silence.
“It is interesting,” T’Pol noted, “that the data logs we retrieved from the Oani people have been destroyed. Did you destroy them?”
When Wanderer again did not answer, T’Pol continued. “Your lack of response is perplexing.” She paused. “I have postulated a theory—that you feed off the energy field created by humanoid bodies. Is this correct?”
At last, Wanderer spoke. I do not feed off sentient humanoids.
T’Pol was at once intrigued. “If you do not feed off humanoids, then how do you feed?”
Wanderer paused a time before communicating again. I do not feed off sentient humanoids.
A disturbing realization settled over T’Pol—rather like the sensation she had felt when she realized she had caused the ch’kariya’s death.
“All living humanoids are, save for ancephalic clones, sentient.”
[142] That is not true. The humanoids you have chosen to travel with, for example, are nonsentient.
“Your contention is absurd. You need merely contact them mentally to see that they are sentient. The fact that I am able to communicate with them, and that they have been able to construct this starship, is proof enough.”
They are not sentient.
“On what do you base this conclusion?”
I cannot communicate with them. Their minds are insufficiently sensitive to my efforts at contact. Therefore they are not sentient. You, however, are. Your mind is organized and sufficiently open to nonverbal contact.
“And therefore, you feel justified in killing them in order to maintain your own existence?”
According to your databanks, your people eat plant matter. Do they consider themselves murderers of those plants?
“You cannot compare plants with human beings,” T’Pol countered dryly. “Plants do not possess the form of consciousness we call self-awareness.” She paused. “Speaking in terms of evolution, there are very few differences between Vulcans and humans.”
I cannot contact humans.
“Regardless, the fact remains that they are sentient. They suffer when you feed off them. They grieve the loss of their peers. I assume that you were unable to contact the Oanis as well.”
Star Trek: Enterprise - Surak's Soul Page 10