Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [10]
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 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 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 transformed the culture from one devoted to violence and bloodshed