The Garden - Melissa Scott [73]
"Wrong?" Torres did her best to swallow the word, bite back her anger, but the sight of the gleaming disk waved so casually beneath her eyes was too much to stomach. "Yes, there's something wrong. How can you do that to yourself-?" She broke off then, seeing the Kirse frown. "I don't understand."
"To link yourself to a machine-" Torres stopped again, at once appalled and steadied by the blank look on Silver-Hammer's face. The Kirse genuinely didn't understand, was truly confused by her response.
"But why not?" Silver-Hammer's voice was plaintive, a child rebuked by a parent for an infringement it didn't truly understand. Torres had heard that note in her own voice too many times as a child, asking why she was different from her peers, why she felt different, was treated differently, and shoved that knowledge away as too painful, retreating again into the familiar Klingon anger.
"There's so much to do, and I can't do it all," Silver-Hammer went on. "If I'm not part of the system-literally so, by the links-the system will fail. It's the most efficient way to make use of all the resources."
"But it makes you a machine yourself," Torres cried, "and you're a person. It's just wrong." She stopped, too late remembering the lectures at the Academy-even in her brief tenure there, she had
heard all the reasons for the Prime Directive, the ethical debates as well as the practical causes. And to lose her temper now, when Voyager was in such desperate need, only proved again that she had never been Starfleet material. Silver-Hammer was still looking at her, not quite alarmed, not yet, but on the verge of it, and Torres made herself take a slow, deep breath, and then another. "I'm-sorry," she said at last. "It's an issue of some importance in the Federation, and my people-my mother's people, the Klingons-are prone to expressing our emotions somewhat violently."
She was quoting Tuvok, she realized, an overheard explanation for one of her rages, and could feel the color rising under her skin. Silver-Hammer seemed unaware of her response, however, and made the slow Kirse nod. "Ah. Thilo has mentioned some cultural taboos, but not this one. I also apologize for having offended you. Please accept that it was not intentional."
"Of course." Torres nodded back, the adrenaline still pulsing in her blood, and Silver-Hammer tipped her head to one side.
"I-you're still upset."
"It'll pass."
"This is a thing I understand," Silver-Hammer said. "There are people, and animals like the gardeners, that are too aggressive-that were bred for aggression, some of them, and are not always under control. There are systems that will regulate the hormone flows, that they can use to damp their instincts."
"Not more machines," Torres said, and couldn't hide her revulsion.
"Implants, yes," Silver-Hammer answered, "but under their own control. Not for the gardeners, of
course, but for people, certainly. An assistant, you might call it. I could show you how it's done."
Torres stopped, silenced by the sudden possibility. Freedom from the Klingon anger, the rough aggression that was the first answer blood and upbringing gave her, a freedom that was under her control, available at her choice.... Silver-Hammer was offering only the plans, not the device, no obligation to do more than look. But the price of that solution is that I'd be relying on something that isn't me, she thought, t hat is a machine that could be broken or be removed, that could become too much a crutch. More than that, it would erase a part of me, however much I may dislike it. "No," she said, and to her own surprise the anger was gone from her voice. "But thank you, Silver-Hammer."
"As you wish." Silver-Hammer looked again at the disk in the palm of her hand, extended it toward