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T’Pau held up a hand for silence, and her deputy dutifully subsided, though he cast a heated glare at T’Pol. T’Pau merely stood in silence as she considered her accuser’s words with apparent serenity.

At length, the administrator said, “Do you harbor... objections to the teachings of Surak, T’Pol?”

That was a question T’Pol hadn’t expected. In fact, she hadn’t expected a question at all; she had assumed that both officials would immediately have her banished from the mountain, if not from Vulcan, for her effrontery.

“No, Administrator,” T’Pol said. “Like all Vulcans, I revere Surak. I deeply respect his accomplishments.”

T’Pau nodded sagely, looking disconcertingly wise for one so very young. “We understand. Yet you will allow your reverence and respect to take you only so far and no farther. You will not permit yourself to pass a certain point of inconvenience, particularly in regard to matters of war.”

“War is never a matter of convenience, Administrator,” T’Pol said, nettled. “But it can be necessary.”

Kuvak ceased glaring at T’Pol and lowered his eyes to the stone floor, perhaps meditating on T’Pau’s words. Did that signify that he agreed with her, T’Pol, about the occasional necessity of war?

She put that matter aside for the moment; her eyes were drawn to those of T’Pau, whose gaze had grown eerily fervid and bright, canceling out some of the darkness that was encroaching upon the guttering brazier’s failing light.

“No, daughter,” T’Pau said, shaking her head. “There are always... alternatives to war. Still, we do not wish to leave you with the impression that we are mad.”

Unable to restrain her irritation at the administrator’s continued predilection for self-absorbed pronouncements, T’Pol said, “Then will you explain precisely whom you speak of when you say ‘we’?”

T’Pau lapsed into a meditative silence for a few moments, then appeared to reach an important decision. “Very well, daughter. The person standing before you does indeed speak for another in addition to T’Pau.”

Noting that the administrator was now speaking of herself in the third person, T’Pol hoped that T’Pau’s grasp on sanity hadn’t grown as tenuous as it appeared.

“Do you claim to speak for all of Vulcan?” T’Pol said.

“No, to do so would be illogical. We speak for T’Pau, but we also speak for another: Surak.”

“Are you... keeping Surak’s katra now?” T’Pol asked. “As Jonathan Archer once did?”

“The Kolinahr adepts have designated one of their own as a long-term vessel for Surak’s katra. But we are together now, and have been for a time, since shortly after our arrival—after my arrival—at Mount Seleya several weeks ago. The experience has been a transformational one. And it is something that all of Vulcan can share, via the meld.”

Syrrannism from Voroth to ShiKahr, T’Pol thought, not quite sure yet how she should regard such a sweeping prospect of change, which could well prove to be both inevitable and permanent. It could spread out exponentially through a network of telepathic contact. All of Vulcan, governed by the purest application of Surak’s ideals, and it could all occur in a single generation’s time.

The night deepened and grew more frigid. T’Pol stood alone beside the dying brazier, pondering, long after T’Pau had retired to an adjacent chamber to meditate, long after Kuvak had excused himself to return to ShiKahr.

She contemplated the broad transformation that was almost certain to come to Vulcan.

T’Pol found a stick of incense that one of the adepts had apparently dropped on the stone floor, and tossed it onto the brazier’s stillsmoldering embers; the incense ignited, and its bitter aroma helped her to focus her racing thoughts.

As she inhaled deeply of the incense, she began to wonder whether there was more to T’Pau’s decision to stay out of the war than simple Surakian pacifism. After all, her meld with Surak had occurred after Jonathan Archer had briefly carried the Vulcan philosopher’s katra in his brain. Therefore T’Pau may have been