Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [20]
Some precautions were taken. Whenever new plots of land were cleared for farming they were first examined for the bacillus which, mysteriously, could no longer be found. Samples of the original organism were kept in stasis in medical facilities in the most secure locations, just in case. In case of what, no one dared say.
The Gnawing is not written in the children’s stories, but every child knows it as they know their own fingerprints, the color of their eyes, the caste they were born to. It isn’t just a matter of hearing it from the adults (“Eat up all your viinerine, there’s a good child; if you don’t eat, you won’t be strong, and you might catch the Gnawing”); it is simply known. It is in great measure what makes Romulans what they are.
Some Earth historians insist that the Renaissance in Europe could never have occurred without the Black Death to reduce the population ahead of it. No telling on how many other worlds something similar might be true.
Those who survived the Gnawing beheld the universe with a jaundiced view in more ways than one. The disease had atrophied the nictitating membrane which had protected their eyes from solar flares on Vulcan, and literally changed the way they looked at color. To the alien eye, Romulan cities seem gray, Romulan clothing drab. Among the genes the virus altered were those governing visual perception. Where a human or Cardassian might see gray, Romulans now saw many colors, which meant that bright colors often disturbed them. Only certain shades of red could soothe, not unexpected for a species whose blood was green.
As for the psychological impact of all of this, if the survivors were xenophobic, could they be blamed? Thereafter anything which approached from the outside might be construed as an attack. When there is no off-switch for the fight-or-flight mechanism, one becomes a Romulan.
Other species found them arrogant. Were they not entitled? Take a Vulcan’s intellect and send it into exile, alone in its own company for however long, set it down on a world entirely different than anything it has heretofore known. Allow it to barely establish itself on its new world, only to be all but buried alive in corpses. Task such a species with a sickness, seemingly out of nowhere, which kills every second person it touches, and you frighten it, humble it, grind its face in the dust. When the sickness passes, those who remain, the taste of dust in their mouths, the stench of death in their nostrils, will never be the same.
Now observe as these people burn their dead and shake off the ashes and establish a civilization, only to find themselves bracketed by the rapacity of Klingons on one side and the sloppiness that is humanity on the other, and dare call it arrogant? Or only Romulan?
“There are really only two kinds of Romulan, you know,” Pardek told Cretak once, in one of his frequent avuncular teaching moods. She was very young then, and one of his newest aides, eager to please him in whatever way she could. Pardek had been married seemingly forever even then, so it wasn’t a matter of that. He was one of those men who cherished power above all else, even wealth and sex. What he really needed was a pair of young, unspoiled ears to listen to him.
“Truly, Lord?” Cretak had responded, humoring him, but also curious. “And what are they?”
“There are those who like things just the way they are and will stop at nothing to keep them that way, and those who understand that change is the natural order of the universe, and one must change with it.”
“I see,” she said, amused at the very idea that it could be so simple. “And which are you?”
“Why, the latter, of course! I am a simple man, Cretak, so lacking in guile it’s a wonder I ever made it into politics. I shift with the tides and follow