Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [12]
T’Pol stood for a few seconds longer, casting about for a reply, and then she sat down. For the rest of the lecture, she remained silent.
At last, as she opened her eyes and stared at the glowing flame on the candle in front of her, the adult T’Pol’s mind was at rest. She drew in another breath and prepared herself for the ritual of meditation. As she did, she repeated silently to herself a verse from the teachings of Surak:
The breath we draw in and release is peace. The thoughts in our minds are peace. Our body, our limbs are peace. Our spirit, our essence is peace….
And as she released herself into the nothingness that was meditation, T’Pol herself was finally at peace. She had made her decision concerning the alien’s death; she knew what to do to make amends.
* * *
Yet another memory came to her, this one far more painful to the other two: the recollection of herself some seventeen years before, running through the steamy, tropical jungle on Risa, pursuing Menos and his cohort, Jossen. Both were Vulcans who had been surgically altered in order to infiltrate a group of smugglers from the planet Agaron—but they had chosen to reject their Vulcan upbringing and had instead joined the very group they had been sent to disband.
And T’Pol had been chosen by the Vulcan government to bring them back.
Flash of an image, vivid, emotionally disturbing: Jossen, fallen to the ground, reaching for his weapon…
T’Pol had fired, instinctively…
And in a brilliant, blazing millisecond had killed.
She had been very young then; the fact had left her devastated. Unable to fulfill her duties, she had sought help at the Sanctuary at P’Jem, where she had undergone the ancient Vulcan ritual of Fullara, which eradicated both traumatic memories and all attendant emotions.
But the ritual, ultimately, had failed; her memory had returned.
It returned full force now, as did the promise she had made to herself—that she would never again allow herself to take a life, even accidentally.
Now, she had failed.
In the captain’s dining room, Hoshi stared dismally down at her plate of stir-fried tofu atop a bed of greens. She had yet to take a bite, although Archer was three-quarters of the way through his meal, and Trip had already finished. As for Malcolm, the Englishman had eaten perhaps half of his spaghetti, and was obsessively organizing the rest of it into neatly coiled mounds on his plate.
The captain had insisted on Malcolm and Hoshi joining him for dinner; he was especially concerned about the landing party’s reaction—especially Hoshi’s—to the sad scenario down on the planet’s surface. In decontam, Hoshi had folded her arms tightly about her, lips taut, and said not a word to anyone, although Archer had tried a couple of times to gently engage her in conversation. T’Pol had been as emotionless as ever, Reed typically restless, and Phlox preoccupied with getting to his medical lab; Archer was confident they would be able to deal with the magnitude of the tragedy. About Hoshi, he was not so sure. He would have had Phlox talk to her. Phlox had experience in counseling humans, but the doctor would be consumed with the autopsy. It occurred to Archer that, as captain, he could have used some psychological training in order to help his crew; he made a mental note to make a suggestion to Starfleet. A ship’s therapist: now, that wasn’t such a bad idea.
And, of course, because of his habit of being brutally honest with himself, Archer admitted that, given the fact that he had confronted so much death—on the anniversary of his own father’s passing—he was not particularly in the mood to eat dinner by himself. Otherwise, he’d have spent the entire time wondering what his father would have done in the same circumstance. Surely Dad would have found a way to save those people….
Come on. He was human. And you’re human, too, whether