Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [63]
“Yes,” Reed replied. “A truly great man.” He paused. “Rather a pacifist, like your Surak. He followed the principle of satyagraha, passive resistance, to overcome injustices. What would you like to know about him?”
T’Pol hesitated. She had not known, until that precise instant, what she had intended to ask, but the words came to her at once. “I know that he used nonviolent protest to shame the British into surrendering control of India….”
“Yes.” Reed nodded. “I’m not proud of that part of my people’s history. Thank God, they finally came to understand the injustice of imperialism.”
“I would like to know specifically how the protests convinced the British to leave, even though no violence was used. Why did the protests shame them so?”
Reed’s expression darkened. “In the beginning, the colonials—the Brits—thought all they had to do was fire their weapons into a crowd to disperse them. But the Indians wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t run. Not only that, when one of them fell, another would come to take his or her place. They simply wouldn’t stop coming…which would have forced the British into clearly immoral acts of gunning down innocent crowds.”
A fresh image surfaced in T’Pol’s mind, this time one of white-robed Indians, marching one by one against British soldiers, too many of them for all to be killed…and then the image metamorphosed into that of white-robed Oanis, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Only these Oanis were not dead, but alive, their dark, luminous eyes open, and they sat with arms linked together….
The solution, T’Pol realized, was simpler even than electricity.
She did not mean to be rude to Lieutenant Reed, but the critical nature of the situation demanded it. There would be time, later, to make apologies. She turned away from him abruptly, without excusing herself, and walked over to where Archer sat, dozing.
“Captain,” she said urgently.
* * *
Weak with hunger, Wanderer appeared again in the far corner of the shuttlebay nearest the airlock doors, by the ceiling, and swept gently downward toward the crowd like a sparkling blue-green tide rolling in to the shore.
There, on the deck, sat the Enterprise crew.
They sat in two large semicircles, cross-legged, pressed thigh-to-thigh, each one clasping the hand of two others; near the center of one half-circle, the wounded Commander Trip lay across the laps of his crewmates.
One of those crewmates was T’Pol; and as Wanderer approached, she called to it.
“You cannot feed on one of us alone. You must take us all together, or not at all.”
In response, the creature neared until its periphery hovered just beyond the reach of the last person seated at the end of the first semicircle—Lieutenant Reed, who had volunteered for one of the end positions. He raised his face, sculpted hollows beneath his cheeks cast in shadow, and gazed up defiantly at Wanderer.
“We’re conscious,” he said. “Just like T’Pol. Just like you. We’re not fodder to be eaten, and neither were the Oanis.”
Wanderer hesitated for an instant—whether it did so because of what Reed said, T’Pol could not judge—and then, slowly, hesitantly, it moved toward the lieutenant.
The edge of the creature closest to Reed flowed forth like an amoeba, engulfing the human’s body. Reed shuddered, eyes snapping shut, jaw clamping, grip tightening on the hand of the crewwoman beside him. His body glowed from within, a phosphorescent blue-green….
Eleven
AND THEN the phosphorescence traveled down the row of linked bodies, lightning-swift, fading as it sped across the semicircle until, as it reached the crewman on the other side, it dwindled to nothingness.
T’Pol, in the center of the crescent with Commander Tucker’s head cradled in her lap, saw a flash of blue, felt the slightest surge of static electricity, and a mild dizziness that passed as quickly as it had come.
Abruptly, a transparent wisp of blue-violet ejected itself violently from Reed’s solar plexus; the lieutenant gave a loud gasp, opened his eyes, and looked