Broken Bow - Diane Carey [22]
“All work and no play ... everyone should get out for a little R and R now and then.”
“All our recreational needs are provided at the compound.”
Well, wasn’t this rather like having a dinner conversation with a block of granite.
What was it about Vulcans and common courtesy? Maybe humans should just cut their losses and learn to be stiff and rude.
Little blessings ... the door chimed and got Archer off the hook of making small talk with a person with whom he should have an awful lot to talk about. He’d known captains and science officers who talked nonstop for the first five watch rotations, just to get to know each other.
Not this time.
“Come in,” he said thankfully.
Charlie Tucker strode from the mess hall into the captain’s private mess chamber. It was a pleasantly appointed room with a table for four, six if they squished, warmly lit by two candles provided by the captain’s steward as a first-meal gift. There was no food yet, but only a basket of breadsticks between the candles. Tucker came all the way in to let the door close and declared, “You should’ve started without me.”
“Sit down,” Archer said, afraid he might get away.
Tucker clumped into a chair beside Archer and snatched up a breadstick. Noisily he began to gnaw, paying special attention to the sesame seeds.
T’Pol raised her chin and looked down her nose at him—literally and figuratively—in clear disapproval of the eating habits. Archer smiled. How else was there to eat a breadstick except with some noise and breakage? You had to burn a few dilithium crystals to get power, after all.
Archer extended the basket of breadsticks to T’Pol. She obligingly took one and placed it dead center on her plate, then looked at it as if expecting it to explain its intentions.
“T’Pol tells me she’s been living at the Vulcan Compound in Sausalito,” Archer attempted.
“No kidding,” Tucker blurted. “I lived a few blocks from there when I first joined Starfleet. Great parties at the Vulcan Compound.”
T’Pol didn’t respond, but picked up her knife and fork and began dutifully sawing at the breadstick on her plate. It crumbled almost immediately, and sprayed the tablecloth with crumbs.
“It might be a little easier,” Archer suggested, “using your fingers.”
“Vulcans don’t touch food with their hands.”
Where had she made up that one? Archer had seen, with his own eyes, Ambassador Soval eating finger food at a reception. Maybe it was a regional thing. Vulcans always talked in generalizations, he was beginning to realize.
“Can’t wait to see you tackle the spareribs,” Trip Tucker commented as T’Pol changed her approach to the bread-stick.
She held it down with the fork, and began to deliberately saw at it with the butter knife, but she glanced forbiddingly at Tucker.
“Don’t worry,” Archer said. “We know you’re a vegetarian.”
As if conjured, the steward entered from the galley passage with three plates of food. Two meat, one grilled vegetables. Archer was suddenly glad he’d remembered that little detail at the last minute. Vegetarians on ships had caused complications for ship’s cooks for centuries, not to mention allergies and other special needs. Plain baked beans instead of pork ’n’ beans. Having aliens aboard would certainly change even more galley plans. T’Pol was all of those.
“Looks delicious,” Tucker commented. “Tell the chef I said thanks.”
The steward nodded and simply exited.
Archer and Tucker began to eat enthusiastically, but T’Pol ignored her food and continued methodically sawing at the breadstick.
“You humans claim to be enlightened,” she said, “yet you still consume the flesh of animals.”
Archer caught Tucker’s annoyed glance, but got the idea the engineer was enjoying something about this predicament.
“Grandma taught me never to judge a species by their eating habits,” Tucker mentioned.
Ah, yes, infinite diversity, Vulcan style.
“ ‘Enlightened’ may be too strong a word,” Archer pushed on, “but if you’d been on Earth fifty years ago, I think you’d be impressed by what we’ve gotten done.”
“You’ve yet to embrace either patience or