Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea (36 page)

“Thank you, Tuvok. I want to thank you for everything you did to keep my family safe.”

“I did my duty as a Starfleet officer, Captain. However, I consider this particular duty to have been an honor as well.”

“Oh, Tuvok, you old softie.” Deanna grinned. “The fact is, Will, he went above and beyond. And I don’t think you’ll be hearing any more complaints about his performance. Isn’t that right, Tuvok?”

The Vulcan closed off somewhat, but he had a serenity about him that Riker hadn’t seen since Deneva was destroyed. “I stand ready to serve, Captain.”

But just then, Deanna let out a giggle as if she were sharing some private joke with Tuvok. “Well, go on, show him.”

“Show me what?”

Tuvok handed him an isolinear chip. “A video recording of the birth, from my tricorder.”

Riker’s eyes widened, along with his grin. “Tuvok! You took baby pictures?”

“I monitored the event as a security precaution. To ensure the safety of mother and child.”

Yet Riker could see the gleam in Tuvok’s eye, a sense of gratification that he could allow a fellow father to witness the birth of his first child. “Thank you,” he said, and he could swear he saw the faintest hint of a smile on the Vulcan’s face in reply.

Growing serious, Deanna said, “Speaking of which…Doctor Ree would really like to talk to you, Will.”

They went out into the shuttlebay, where Nurse Ogawa and her son were in the middle of a joyful reunion, holding hands and telling each other about their respective experiences. Keru and T’Pel stood near them, basking in the warmth of the scene. T’Pel’s eyes widened at the sight of her returned husband, and though she and Tuvok only exchanged a simple nod, Riker believed he’d gotten to know them well enough to see the mutual relief and love beneath the surface.

The scene wasn’t entirely happy, though. Nearby, Ree stood in restraints, surrounded by the security team. Riker came forward to meet him, still cradling the baby. Ree looked at him in surprise. “You…trust me to be near her?”

“Why not, Doctor? You delivered her.” Deanna had shared everything she thought and felt about her experience through their empathic link. He knew they were in agreement on this. “There still needs to be a hearing, but it’s just a formality. I understand why you did what you did.”

“I stole your pregnant wife. Attacked a security team. Hijacked a shuttle.”

“And you did it all to protect my little girl. Do you have any idea how reassuring that is, Doctor? To know that anyone who wants to hurt this child will have to get past the most dangerous and relentless member of my crew to do it?” He took Ree’s shackled manus in his hand and shook it. “Thank you, Doctor Ree. Now don’t ever do that again.”

Ree gave a formal, heartfelt bow, then let Tuvok and the security team lead him away.

Deanna was by his side. “Does he really have to be in the brig?”

“Regulations,” Riker said. “We’ll have the hearing as soon as possible, I promise. But if anything, I think maybe he needs this. He’s obviously very guilty about what he did—I think he wants to feel he’s paid his dues.”

“Hey. Who’s the psychologist in this family?”

He beamed. “Family. We’re really a family now.” He admired his daughter a while longer.

Then he furrowed his brow. “I think we’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“I don’t think the young lady and I have been formally introduced.”

Deanna nodded. “Oh. A name. I wanted to talk with
you about that.” She huddled up against him, stroking the baby’s head. “We’ve all lost so many people this year. You and I lost the one that would’ve been her brother or sister. I want to name her in honor of someone we knew far too briefly. A friend whose life was cut short much too soon…because she tried to save mine.” She whispered the name in his ear.

He smiled. “I like it. In fact…I think there’s someone else lost too soon that I’d like to commemorate. In honor of this world, and the one who saved me from going too soon.”

“The repairs are almost complete,” Vale reported to the command crew. Riker looked around the conference lounge, pleased to see the whole group reunited again. Even Lavena was finally back aboard and back in her hydration suit—fidgeting like crazy, but visibly glowing with pride at the new pip on her collar. “When they rebuilt this ship, they built her to last. Even after all the damage we took, the spaceframe is as solid as ever and all systems are virtually good as new. We should be ready to set course to our next destination within the day,” the first officer continued. “Whatever we decide that destination will be.”

“That’s it?” Lavena asked. “After all this, the relationship we’ve built with the squales, we’re just going to up and leave? There’s still so much we can learn about them, and they about us.”

At Riker’s side, Deanna leaned forward. T’Pel was taking care of the baby so the two of them could both attend the briefing, though he knew Deanna was just as eager to get back to their daughter as he was. For now, though, she
was the ship’s diplomatic officer again. “Aili, we’re all very grateful for the job you did with the squales,” she said. “It was a remarkable piece of diplomacy. I’m glad to know we have someone who can fill in for me when I’m busy with parental obligations.” A chuckle went through the room, though Lavena didn’t join in. “But the Prime Directive is clear. Just because interference has happened, that isn’t a license to keep interfering. We have to minimize the interaction as much as possible, just as we did on Lumbu.”

“But that isn’t fair to them! The squales are scientists and explorers just as much as we are. They have an intense curiosity about the universe, and we’ve just opened the door to a whole new realm of it.”

“Then we need to let them build on that knowledge at their own pace,” Christine Vale countered. “We don’t do them any favors by giving them knowledge they aren’t ready for yet.”

“Who says they aren’t ready? Just because they don’t have warp drive?” Lavena laughed. “Look at what the squales have accomplished. They have a biotechnology far more advanced than our own—and they’ve developed it all, built an advanced technological civilization, without metal, without stone, without even having hands! Can you imagine how long that took? They’re a much older civilization than yours or mine. They had genetic engineering before your species even learned to domesticate animals. And in a lot of ways, they’re a more advanced civilization than ours. Is it fair, is it even meaningful, to use warp drive alone as the only benchmark for whether a civilization is ‘advanced enough’ for contact?”

“It is not the only benchmark,” Tuvok put in. “However
advanced their technology may be, the squales responded to our arrival with aggression and xenophobia.”

“It’s not like we didn’t give them reason. Our devices were hurting them from the moment we landed. And we should’ve left well enough alone with the asteroid.”

“And there’s another reason, Aili,” Deanna said. “The Prime Directive is as much about our lack of readiness as theirs. It’s about keeping us from being incautious in a contact situation. The squales are very, very alien. Who knows how else we might clash with the best of intentions?”

Lavena straightened. “Then doesn’t that make this a symmetrical issue? What gives us the right to make the decision unilaterally? Shouldn’t we at least give them a say, let them decide if they think
we’re
ready for further contact?”

“I think she’s right,” Riker said. “This is their world. And we’ve done enough harm trying to make decisions on their behalf. The Prime Directive exists to keep us from imposing our will on other races, but unilaterally deciding to deny them further contact can be just another way of imposing our will.”

“But do we have the right to reinterpret the Prime Directive?” Vale asked. “If the rules are going to be changed, isn’t that for Starfleet Command and the Federation Council to take up? There’s a reason why the Directive uses space travel as its standard. It says something about a species’ readiness to accept the idea of being part of a larger cosmos, their curiosity about other forms of life, their ability to reach out to them. However advanced the squales’ biotech may be, the idea of space travel is totally new to them. It could be generations before they’re ready to cope with it.”

Suddenly Lavena wore a knowing smile beneath her suit visor. “Commander, I think you should come down to Droplet. There’s something Melo mentioned to me that I really think you should see.”

Lavena’s invitation extended to Riker, Ra-Havreii, and Pazlar as well as Vale. Christine was uneasy about leaving the ship without both its command officers, but Riker assured her that they would be safe in squale…tentacles. She wanted to convince the captain to stay behind, continue recuperating, and spend time with his family, but she could tell that Lavena’s little secret had fired his curiosity and nothing would stop him.

Their destination was one of the woodlike lattice structures that the squales used as secure facilities. They found that the top spiral of the lattice had been bred to fold open in response to a vocal command, irising out in an intricate, flower-petal pattern that was beautiful and stunning to see on such a scale.

The aquashuttle wouldn’t fit in there, of course, so the visitors donned scuba gear to dive in—all save Lavena, who went in nude save for a combadge choker and wrist tricorder. Hardly regulation, but everyone except Ra-Havreii seemed to be taking it in stride. They were accompanied by Melo, the leader of the astronomy pod Lavena had bonded with, and by another pod leader from a bioengineering group, but not the one Lavena and Riker had dealt with before. Reportedly this pod specialized in breeding life forms devoted to meteorological and astronomical research, such as the “weather balloon” creatures that had first tipped the crew off to the squales’ sentience.
Lavena had dubbed this squale Anidel after a famous astronomer from her world.

Once Vale dove into the water and her vision cleared, the object of their journey came into view. It was a large conical structure, over four meters high. Its surface was a honeycomb lattice of hard, whitish material, the holes filled with a smooth translucent substance. It tapered to an elongated spire at the top, and four large fins were evenly spaced around its lower perimeter. It reminded Vale of the silica shell of a protistan organism she’d once seen under a microscope. Beneath the conical “shell” bulged four large spheroids, with pulsing tubes leading into them from parts unknown.

“What is it?” asked Riker. But the squales remained silent. “Lieutenant?”

It took a moment for Lavena to realize he was talking to her. “I’ll tell you if you order me, sir…but I think they want you to figure it out for yourselves.”

It was hard to tell through the scuba mask, but Vale was sure Riker was grinning. “I enjoy a challenge. Commander Pazlar?”

Melora had been glancing at the squale Lavena had named in her honor, or perhaps glaring. She had initially been flattered to learn that Lavena had named a pod leader after her, until Lavena had demurred that they had little in common beyond profession—with Melo being much more good-natured. Now, the Elaysian refocused on her work, bringing her wrist tricorder to bear. “The shell is of a dense organic polymer of some kind.”

“The clear parts of the shell seem to be a polymer resin,” Ra-Havreii added a few moments later.

“The interior appears to be filled with the same oxygenated fluid used in the lifepods,” Melora reported.

Riker swam up and gazed through the translucent ports. “It’s hollow, all right. No sign of internal organs—maybe in the lower part. And there seems to be…algae growing on the inner surface.” He played his helmet light over it. “It’s green…. Photosynthetic?”

“Yes,” Pazlar confirmed.

“The creature has an interesting nervous system,” Ra-Havreii reported. “The wattage is surprisingly high. You could power a light panel with it, which is more than you can say for the humanoid brain.”

Vale swam to the upper portion, which bulged out slightly before tapering to the spire. The honeycomb cells were smaller here, and she realized they spiraled down, growing larger as they went, as in many natural shell formations. But there was a discontinuity in the shell pattern. “There’s some sort of valve here—several plates of that dense polymer that seem to open outward. Maybe ‘hatch’ is a better word.”

Melora’s eyes were wide under her scuba mask. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Vale answered.

“What do you mean?” Ra-Havreii asked.

“Melora,” Vale went on, “what can you tell about the pods at the bottom?”

The science officer swam down to scan them. “They’re made of a more flexible biological material, but they’re still very thick-skinned. I think…yes…they seem to be designed to contain fluids under very high pressure, complete with interior baffles. These conduits seem to be for
filling the tanks…. Must use peristalsis to build up pressure.” She looked to Lavena. “Do we have to guess what they’re for, or will you tell us that?”

“Well, once they’re fully grown,” Aili said after a brief exchange with the squales, “two will be filled with oxygen and the other two with hydrogen.”

“My god,” Vale whispered, gazing at the conical shape of the object.

“What is it?” asked Ra-Havreii, still not seeing it.

Vale’s response was preempted by Riker’s awed laughter. “This is fantastic!”

“Will someone tell me what it is?”

Still laughing, Riker crowed, “It’s a baby space capsule!”

For millennia, Anidel sang to the offworlders, the squales had been exploring their world, seeking to quench their bottomless thirst for knowledge. Using living probes adapted from existing life forms, they had explored the depths of their native sea and the seemingly endless reaches of the sky.

But then they had found the sky was not endless after all. Over centuries, they had evolved their aerial probes to rise higher and higher, to survive ever greater cold and ever thinner air. They gained an understanding of the vast, frigid emptiness between bodies in space, but this did not terrify them any more than the emptiness of the air in comparison to the water. After all, their own World Between was as good as vacuum to the creatures of the World Below, the dynamo layer. That was a realm even the squales had not developed the means to reach, for it was impossible for
their biotechnology to function there. The void of space seemed far more attainable in comparison.