Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [23]
The incident with T’Pol still worried her; she’d been too busy to check on the Vulcan’s status—and each time she thought of calling to sickbay to see how T’Pol was doing, she instead redoubled her efforts at translating. If T’Pol was sick, then Hoshi needed to work faster; and even if T’Pol wasn’t sick, she, Hoshi, needed to work fast anyway, because who knew when the illness might strike one of them?
The thought made her stop rubbing her forehead and lean over the viewer again, feeling its glow illumine her face.
At least she had made enough progress so that she no longer needed to stop each few words and translate. Now she was listening to Uroqa’s medical logs, compelled by the image of the bronze-skinned Oani, his dark eyes naturally liquid and shining, more so than human eyes ever could. He was thick-necked, broad-shouldered, muscular, brimming with strength and life; but his voice, a resonant baritone, was tentative, filled with concern.
“It is not in the air, not in the earth, not in the sea,” he said. “Therefore, it must be in us. Is it a microbe, too small to be detected by our present filters?” he asked thoughtfully, with such a natural, conversational air that Hoshi felt he was speaking directly to her. “And if it is a microbe, who am I to say I have the right to end its life artificially? Who am I to claim the life of another piece of creation, no matter how small? Who am I to interfere with the natural order of things?”
“But your people are dying,” Hoshi said in English to the small screen. “Do you have the right to let such a lower life-form kill them?”
“Reverence for life dictates that we must not kill,” Uroqa continued, almost as if in reply. “Yet how can I let my people die? All beings must compromise to live in peace—but how do we compromise with a being whose existence depends on our death? When does our right to live supersede another’s?”
Uroqa rose and stepped across the room to a place Hoshi instantly recognized: the shimmering sea green nutrient bed where the dying Oani woman rested—the one Dr. Phlox hadn’t been able to revive.
“I must save her,” Uroqa said simply, and gently took her limp hand in his own.
Hoshi snapped off the viewer, fighting off emotion. Periodically, she had translated and condensed the medical logs into purely pertinent data for Phlox’s computer, omitting the unnecessary personal information—including the sad story of Uroqa and his stricken mate, Kano. Now seemed like a good time to take a physical as well as mental break and walk her latest findings over to sickbay.
She sighed, popped her disk out of the computer, and headed down the corridor. As a scientist, she told herself, she needed to develop a tougher hide: watching Uroqa’s logs with full knowledge of his fate was taking too much of an emotional toll on her, and she needed to remain detached if she was to be of use. It didn’t help matters that Uroqa was so personable, or that his relationship with his mate was so tender: Hoshi was beginning to look on him as a friend, and that, she knew, was dangerous.
He had a good life, an ethical life, she reminded herself. He knew real love, and he was devoted to peace.
But she couldn’t help being sad. The universe was diminished by the loss of a race of such compassionate beings; it would have been wonderful to have met them when they were still alive.
Yet what, she asked herself silently, could have filled a peaceful person like Uroqa with such fury in his final moments?
By that time, Hoshi found herself in sickbay with no memory of having made the walk there; and what she saw, when she walked through Phlox’s office back into the treatment area, made her stop in her tracks.
As T’Pol and the doctor stood at either side of the diagnostic bed, watching, something moved through Kona’s corpse, as if it had burrowed inside. Hoshi stared, aghast, as Kano’s spine began to undulate, and a strange blue-green glow radiated from within her, through the pale gauze of her long,