Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [43]
A disturbing realization settled over T’Pol—rather like the sensation she had felt when she realized she had caused the ch’kariya’ s death.
“All living humanoids are, save for ancephalic clones, sentient.”
That is not true. The humanoids you have chosen to travel with, for example, are nonsentient.
“Your contention is absurd. You need merely contact them mentally to see that they are sentient. The fact that I am able to communicate with them, and that they have been able to construct this starship, is proof enough.”
They are not sentient.
“On what do you base this conclusion?”
I cannot communicate with them. Their minds are insufficiently sensitive to my efforts at contact. Therefore they are not sentient. You, however, are. Your mind is organized and sufficiently open to nonverbal contact.
“And therefore, you feel justified in killing them in order to maintain your own existence?”
According to your databanks, your people eat plant matter. Do they consider themselves murderers of those plants?
“You cannot compare plants with human beings,” T’Pol countered dryly. “Plants do not possess the form of consciousness we call self-awareness.” She paused. “Speaking in terms of evolution, there are very few differences between Vulcans and humans.”
I cannot contact humans.
“Regardless, the fact remains that they are sentient. They suffer when you feed off them. They grieve the loss of their peers. I assume that you were unable to contact the Oanis as well.”
Wanderer kept silent.
“Then you have destroyed an entire world of peace-loving beings,” T’Pol said. “You can hardly claim to be a pacifist yourself.”
You hold primitive beliefs, because you are close to being primitive yourself. Your own similarities to the humans blind you to your differences from them.
“I submit that your belief system has blinded you to the damage you have caused.”
Clearly, I cannot reason with you on this issue. And Wanderer disappeared abruptly—simply vanished, without apparent movement—from the spot.
T’Pol stared at the now empty space with a sense of failure. She had hoped, logically, to persuade the creature to find an alternative food source, since it claimed to value peace so highly. Yet how could she persuade it that humans—and Denobulans, for that matter—possessed true consciousness, when Wanderer could not sense the existence of their minds?
And now that the truth had been revealed, how could she prevent Wanderer from destroying the rest of the Enterprise crew at will?
In engineering, Cutler and a number of assistants had already brought down the three stricken victims—Phlox, Reed, and Hoshi—on portable beds, and set up a makeshift sickbay of sorts. But there had been only one portable life-support, and Cutler had decided, with the professional steadiness worthy of the most senior chief medical officer, that Phlox, the weakest, would have access to it.
Amazingly, Hoshi and Reed continued breathing on their own—there had been some uncertainty as to whether their life functions would fail without the equipment available only in sickbay.
Cutler herself looked ragged, ready to fail at any moment, despite the fact that she was still distraught over the disappearance of the Oani corpse. None of the medics in sickbay had managed to locate it. The captain couldn’t help wondering whether Wanderer was somehow responsible.
“That’s it,” Archer said, once the patients were set up. “You’re off-duty, Ensign.”
Tucker led her to an out-of-the-way corner of engineering, where she lay on the deck, hand tucked beneath her head, and fell fast asleep. Archer envied her.
But this was no time for him to rest; he went over to the nearest bulkhead companel and pressed the shipwide broadcast control. “This is the captain speaking…”
His utterance was interrupted by a decidedly shrill burst of static. He grimaced and made the beginnings of a gesture to cover his ears, but instead terminated the channel, then tried again.
“This is the capt—”
The speaker screeched, this time