THE SPACESHIP ENTERPRISE, 2152She had never possessed the kind of beauty a man elbowed his friends about. As the next century passed, doubtless a ruler's diet of privation and Noonday Forge meditations would have her looking much like the prune she herself had prophesied of. But to Captain Archer, she was a living source of wisdom and mystery, and a figurative hand-holder after his mother's passing. She would soon bear the title of Matriarch Of Matriarchs, or Sra Sra, of House Surak, The First Among Houses. She was to become the ruler Vulcan did not have.
"Ambassador T'Pau. Welcome to the Enterprise. You honor us with you presence. As I was a guest in your home, so are you now a guest in mine. As I was never made to feel merely a guest in yours, so I pray that you will feel at home in mine."
The upturn in her face was not imperceptible, but it remained a near thing.
"I first beheld this face on a man I met over thirty years ago. There was a small boy with him, and his presence pleases me now as then. Greetings, Captain Archer, who is always our Jonathan. I do not need to be made welcome to any house of yours. Kaidith. Some things just are."
That some of her words might smack of emotion was less than shocking to those who actually knew Vulcans. But Archer sensed an illogic in her words beyond joy, rage, or even open physical contact. T'Pau's words smacked of nostalgia, and that was one thing that actually was not seen or heard of on Vulcan.
"This is my First Officer, Mister Tucker. As I barge recklessly ahead into the cosmos, I count on his voice to keep me from going too far."
T'Pau regarded Tucker.
"You have been given an impossible task, Mister Tucker. For Jonathan, every last rise of Mount Seleya held mysteries pondered by none but the wisest philosophers. Restraining him shall age you before your time."
Tucker smiled, but it seemed somehow forced.
"I do alright, Madame Ambassador."
If Archer thought the next introduction would be warmer, he was to be proven wrong.
"Of course, you know our ship's Science Officer, Paula Napolitano."
"Ambassador."
"Child. This place suits you. You will prosper here."
And that was all. The next greeting was more along the lines of what he thought he might see.
"Mister Mayweather joined us when the traders' ship he grew up on became a victim of the great misunderstanding you're here to help address."
T'Pau handed Mayweather a small ceremonial stick.
"You who have put aside your grief to further the cause of peace. I ask you to ring our metal sheet when the formal ceremonies begin. Let it be shown that the only thing struck resounds with the beginnings of peace and comfort."
Archer pointed out Hoshi next.
"Since Doctor Phlox is still fine-tuning the environmental controls for the conference room, let me introduce someone who, like yourself, seeks understanding, and knows the vast, simple power of words. Sato Hoshi, our able Chief Communications Officer and the hero of the Orion incursion."
Archer knew that she would get him for bringing that up, not wishing what she saw as undue credit. But he wished to show off his crew to the woman he grew up around, and that meant showing them off in completeness. T'Pau withdrew a small disc from a case her attendant carried.
"My aide, Soval, has a habit of translating my words in a vague manner that invariably comes across as haughtiness. That contains my speech. Will you provide an alternative transliteration?"
Hoshi seemed stunned, but didn't hesitate to answer in the affirmative.
"I'm pleased I have your confidence, Ambassador."
"You have Jonathan's. This is enough."
Malcolm Reed was on the Bridge, both owing to necessity and Archer's feeling that presenting a weapons officer to a Vulcan straight off might be a breach of unwritten protocol. With the officers' all done, T'Pau now introduced herself to her Tellarite and Andorian counterparts.
"Our quarrels are known well by each other. These will continue, at least for a time. But with the help of these resilient Terrans, barbaric intruders were turned away. We did not wish their deaths, yet what wishes did they have for C'Thia? We did not wish their deaths, but how many Tellara children are absent their promised mates because 'those who struck only' could not be bothered to honestly argue their point? We did not wish their deaths, yet how many feuds on Andor are forever muddied by ritual participants who may now never make their appointed duels? And now the Human traders, barely two proper generations in the cosmos, are struck because of an accidental resemblance, and because the losses have robbed the parties of sense and reason, in seeking that the guilty should cease their harm."
Allowing the voder-chips to catch up and correct the original translations, T'Pau then finished up.
"It has been proposed that four great worlds stand together in a mutual sensor-net pact. But you learned ones, know now that it is the cautious Vulcans who propose something… far greater. When we speak in conference, you shall know more, if you would know more."
The looks on Anfo and Bavmet's faces indicated well that they did want to know more. Archer had escorts guide the diplomats to their quarters, and then looked at Tucker.
"Trip--I'd forgotten what it was like to watch her in action. You know--she almost once got me to try brussels sprouts?"
Tucker laughed a little, but as Archer walked away, this faded. Back in his quarters, he found who he expected. What was going to happen on this journey would go down hard. Paula Napolitano stared at a picture of the eight-year old Jonathan Archer holding an upside-down, plainly delighted four-year old Paula. She was crying, as she did every time she looked at it. Trip grasped her hands, and put the picture aside.
"Darlin', its long past time you told him. Jonathan Archer is not a fragile flower, and this isn't exactly bad news. You two love each other, and what you have to say is only gonna deepen that."
"Trip, it will shock him. It will forever change his view of the two most important people in his life."
Tucker shook his head.
"All you'll be doing is confirming a condition that has existed between you two since forever. Even with the shower desensitizing regimen, he is still the only one on board who doesn't snap his neck when you walk in. And that's because deep down, if he doesn't already know who you are, that's still how he thinks of you."
Smiling at the man she had found aboard this new spaceship, she nodded.
"He always did wonder how I kept up with him, endurance-wise. But suppose he takes it out on Sra?"
He kissed her forehead.
"You've honored all her wishes. Kept your silence like a good girl, all these years. But now you're a woman, and this isn't Vulcan."
She got up to have a talk that would change her life, among others, forever.
"But he is still the only one we will tell. Some promises bind me, even as an adult. As they now bind you."
Trip nodded.
"Yeah, well--just don't tell him about that, for now. One spacequake at a time, thank you very much."
After she left, Tucker found that certain words repeated in his ears.
"Something...far greater? Oh, Lord. Its gonna be Philadelphia and Paris, all over again."
Now greatly worried, Trip took a walk to see the Comm Officer, briefly wondering whether she was seriously considering Archer's offer of expanding her duties into Security. Knocking on the door of her quarters, he heard an invitation to come in. As she always did of late, Hoshi faced the door with her back near the wall as it opened. Knowing well why this was, Trip seated himself at a slight remove.
"Hoshi, you have every right and some responsibility to refuse this request. But I'm gonna ask you not to refuse it. So--may I see the text of Ambassador T'Pau's speech?"
But Sato merely handed a copy over.
"I was going to show you, anyway. The Captain's busy in discussion with Paula. Are they alright?"
Tucker viewed the document.
"They will be. Hoshi--is all this translated correctly? No offense."
"None taken. You're looking at a third draft transliteration with notes from the direct translation, to boot. She said it was something greater."
Trip whistled, and closed the document.
"And Vulcans don't bluff."
Inside what would serve as the main conference room, Doctor Phlox showed his Captain the multiple air filters.
"Each time it gets too dry for the Andorians, the humidifier will nanotize a gallon of water. Every time it gets too humid for the Tellarites, the air conditioner will remove that same gallon of water. Then, when it gets too cold for the Vulcans--the saunatizer will send out a blast of very dry heat. In other words, everyone will be miserable enough to feel that the others have not been favored."
Archer nodded.
"You should have been a diplomat, Doctor."
Phlox smiled, but only lightly, as he locked in the controls and stood up.
"Denobulans have diplomats, but we're not much for diplomacy. Frankly, when we first met the Vulcans, we disturbed them with how stunned we were that anyone could settle on one life-mate. Then, they deeply offended us by offering to offset the planetary resource problem that originally caused my remote ancestors to engage in what your species calls for polygamy. In fact, that resource problem was so far in the past, we now have arguments over just what it was we lacked. We came to realize the Vulcans meant well, and that giving offense was about as far from their thoughts as far gets. With that of course, came the next set of problems."
Archer nodded.
"They try very hard to be fair to all parties. It can get them in knots."
Phlox kept on.
"Yes, but its how they go about being fair. For most people, fair means scaling back. If there's a tomato pie--meatless, of course--to be divided up among fourteen diplomats, rather than quibble over how to divide the slices, a Vulcan will tell the chef to make fourteen tomato pies."
Archer realized anew that Vulcan major policy proposals often belied their cautious nature, at least seemingly. In fact, it was a logical extension of the Vulcan need for order, yet it also smacked of overcompensation for their past.
"Good points all, Doctor. But most on Earth don't call them Tomato Pies. Its called Pizza."
Phlox shook his head.
"My friend from near Chicago way--he's in the insurance industry--insisted in fact that they are Tomato Pies, and must be eaten with a fork and knife."
Archer left a bit amused. His shift was still four hours off, and the buzz of the conference had him not sleepy at all as he returned to his quarters, where someone was waiting for him.
"Paula?"
The two would never be lovers, but seeing her sit on his bed was not unusual to him. Until she was nine, Jonathan could in fact recall many nights she would ask to sleep in his room, or in his bed, claiming that nightmares of losing her parents made it too hard to sleep alone. When her tenth birthday hit, and somehow one of Jonathan's prospective girlfriend's found out, a painful argument ensued when he told her flatly that she could not do that anymore, no matter how painful the nightmares. Nightmares that he only now recalled she never gave a single detail of.
"Jonathan. I have something to tell you, and you won't like it. You may not like me, anymore. But I can no longer keep my silence. It is about Uncle Henry."
Archer's mental world began to give way. Silence kept. His father. A man who never remarried, or sought company outside the Ambassador. Yes, he hated himself for the thoughts. But history was replete with both Judases and Januses, gentlemen whom would never be accused, yet were the worst sort of monster.
"What about my father?"
"Look at this."
He took the vidcapture she offered, and played the image. The truth was nowhere near what his fears had been, yet at that moment the impact was just as great.
"That's you as a baby--and him!"
The truly gentle man played with the little girl, honked her nose, took her flying--and then caressed her very distinctive ears. Shutting off the viewer, Archer as though in a dream briefly did the same thing to the grown woman the baby had become. She nodded.
"The surgery would not take until I was about four. Occasionally, I would have to go away 'to visit aunts' and have it adjusted as I grew. I may still have to again, as I grow older."
Jonathan sat down next to Paula, as though for the first time.
"I remember him disappearing for weeks at a time, but I was used to that. I was always so happy when you left, then I would be miserable twelve hours later. By the time you got back, I didn't care if you broke everything I owned, just so long as you were back."
Of course there were questions. But where to start?
"Do you have a Vulcan name?"
She nodded.
"Its not a use-name. But it is T'Pol. I barely think of it anymore. I am Paula Napolitano. Mother and Father knew I could never pass as a full Vulcan. I have long taken a regimen of oxy-tabs and strong iron supplements to disguise my blood for short periods. The emotional strictures are too great to also keep the secret of my birth. Perhaps if it was allowed to be known..."
She trailed off, so Archer filled in with a guess.
"Paula. Pau-la. Deriving from Pau. Na-Pol-i-T-ano. Who came up with that name?"
"I did. I was only four, but I knew enough to tell Father I did not wish to be an Archer, if I were not also known to be his daughter. I was told never to tell you, and now I have broken my promise. Do you hate me?"
He looked in her eyes, and imagined that he was four, being presented with a little angel that he was to protect and help teach. No, his anger could not be directed at those needy eyes.
"Hate You?"
He had hugged her before, but this one had to be special, being as it was decades overdue.
"You're my little sister."
She held onto him for dear life, this grown child now granted identity. Archer now regretted every negative comment he had ever made towards this woman, when they were kids. But hadn't he been lied to, kept in the dark? He didn't know who he was talking to, and this was by design.
"I missed you so much when you left, Jonathan. I hated them both for a time. I was at Father's funeral--I just kept back."
He looked at her, and held her face.
"You were kept back. You were kept out of my life. But now that changes. You don't have to act like a family friend anymore, Paula. You are family. My family. But why did they fight so hard to keep this all secret?"
She shook her head.
"I have answers. But she has more, I suspect. Jonathan, this must still be kept silent. That oath I may not break."
He didn't like that, but in the middle of a high-stakes diplomatic conference, was there really any choice? So he grasped her hand.
"Well, now someone's making a promise to you. Your big brother loves you, and he always has, and he always will. Nothing can change that."
Perhaps it was simply in the air, or perhaps it was the telepathy latent in Paula's contact. But Archer saw what was really there. A sibling, superior to him in some ways--her hug had strained a few ribs and vertebrae--and able to keep a strict control to serve the greater good. But she wavered between self-acceptance and the pit of despair, and it was a struggle that was not likely to end anytime soon. Was there something else to this realization, he wondered?
He guided her back to Trip's quarters, and a look told the First Officer that no grudges were held for secrets kept. Archer's feelings toward the Lady T'Pau, on the other hand, were decidedly less friendly, so he decided to put his shift on the Bridge in between himself and confronting her.
But perhaps some things were not to be put off.
As he entered the Bridge, an anxious Hoshi pulled him aside.
"Captain? You better read this proposal of T'Pau's. I just finished a final transliteration back from Denobulan."
Archer sat in his chair as Reed departed. No patchwork of regulations, he thought, was going to shake him any more than the revised standard family history now eating away at his childhood memories.
"Only on your say-so, Hoshi. I'm not much for heavy reading, right now."
"I wouldn't bother you with this, sir. But you do know her better than anyone here."
He looked at the document, and his eyes went wide. Waiting for his reaction was the former student who had refused the easy translations of her quick-voder in favor of hand-written ones. Along with those had come some notes with schoolgirl suggestions that the officer before Archer had pleaded with him to forget. In fact, though, she no more wanted that than she wanted him to misunderstand what he now read. But he could do neither.
"Hoshi, am I reading this correctly? This isn't about a simple sensor-net, or a mere defense pact. This is central and fundamental, and quadrant-wide in its implications. T'Pau has to know this exceeds everything this conference is about!"
She had no words that he himself didn't know.
But he had some brand-spanking new ones that would shake the galaxy as they knew it to its very core."The United Federation Of Planets."
He gathered himself as he never had before. Because before this, control around this person had never once been an issue. She had been to him a source of order, and such self-control flowed freely from her. Her calm seemed so natural, even for a people whose calm was legendary.
"But how much of that calm was provided by my father's---"
He clammed up, hard and fast. Talking to himself in the corridors was only going to make him edgier, to say nothing of the effect on the crew.
Besides, on a small ship, he was at T'Pau's guest quarters before he knew it."Enter."
Already, her aides had transformed the cramped quarters into a miniature version of the Ambassador's sanctum inside the fortress at Mount Seleya. Hoshi had mentioned that members of her family had a similar philosophy meant for maximizing a lack of space. Yet of course the Vulcans had even this maximization maximized.
"Jonathan. Do you come to wish us well?"
Archer pushed his fury to the back of his mind. He had next to no training in such mental disciplines, but he was not going to allow T'Pau to form plans and words before he even spoke. An aide of many decades was the only one attending her, so he spoke freely.
"No, Lady. I come to speak of my sister."
The aide's departure was of course a smooth one, no gesture or phrase or glance needed. Yet the man stopped on his way out, and pressed his index finger to the underside of Archer's wrist. A single thought boomed in no uncertain terms.
*Tread Carefully*
T'Pau's reaction was yet still restrained, and calm, at least for the moment.
"Told you, did she?"
With her next words, not the calm itself, but the absolute total calm she usually maintained began to fade.
"Are you so upset, Jonathan, to have a half-sister?"
No way was she going to get away with a dodge that obvious. He was angry, but he wasn't stupid.
"In fact I'm delighted. I just hate being kept out of the loop. Being lied to doesn't help matters. How long were you and my father having an affair?"
A raised eyebrow bespoke her upset. Archer recalled how that used to terrify him. Now, he wanted it all. Her facial expressions. Her wisdom. Her logic. Her mastery of many languages. Her suggestions that really weren't. The way she made a young boy so desire her approval, vegetables and violin lessons seemed only natural. He wanted it all from her, so he could at long last tell her that she was just plain full of crap.
"What you call a tawdry affair, we called a proper, though private, bonding."
He had thought she might say that, or something like it. In fact, once the one fact of Paula's identity was exposed, the other facts fell quickly into place. So Archer used the answer meant to convey his anger as little else could.
"Ty Sra T'km'is H'wa."
At that she stood up. Her eyes now barely kept in emotions that surely matched his own.
"How in fact have I wronged you? How in fact have I failed you?"
His words had taken on a near-lethal sting, for Vulcans did not recognize such concepts as 'Step' in determining relations. If T'Pau had once been married to his father, then she was his mother, and her son had accused her of doing him wrong.
"You failed to let me know there was another like me. For a child, that's a centering thing. I treated Paula abominably, sometimes. I said things that I would never have said, had I merely known she was my sister."
"You need to know that one is kin before you will treat them in a just manner?"
"Not now. But then. A teened human boy gets big ideas about himself. Like how he doesn't need his little friend around anymore. I still would have had an ego. But that small bit of information would have enabled me to bypass it enough to tell my little sister that at least to me, she mattered."
T'Pau actually turned away from him.
"You presume much. Henry and I held our daughter in the highest affection."
"Then why was her very existence kept a secret, to be followed by years of lies and elaborate deceptions?"
She now turned back to him, some of her layers of calm restored.
"Do you truly comprehend what the news of her existence--of our bonding--would have given to the forces of isolationism on two planets? What it would have said to those who are often a vote away from severing major treaties, and call lustily for resisting any and all ties between our cultures?"
Archer nodded.
"That they and their hate are irrelevant, and that resistance is futile."
She sat back down, looking towards the floor.
"Would that such were so. But our relationship was only harmless so long as it was seen to be platonic. As for T'Pol, or Paula, as a Human she is complimented for her Vulcan-like control and logic. As a Vulcan, even the most open among us would have called her few Human tendencies as
making her a lesser thing, deserving of only scorn and worse."Archer sat down, and waited until she met his gaze.
"So there would have been a few bullies to fend off. That's what big brothers are for."
She remained silent, so he made a guess.
"The scorn wouldn't have been the real problem, would it? The bigots would have been no more trouble than usual. Was it shame, Sra? Shame that you of all Vulcans rutted with a lowly Human?"
Her two hands clapped suddenly, right by his left ear. The sound was painful, and the closest a sane Vulcan would ever come to slapping a disrespectful child.
"I hold no shame for Henry. None. But I am trained as no other in the regimens of true control. The mastery over emotions. When first I met your father, I dismissed him as a Namruht."
Archer knew the term.
"An offworlder intrigued by Vulcans to such a great degree, they attempt to be exactly like you, but in the process end up looking pathetic and without true identity. What Humans sometimes call a wannabe."
T'Pau nodded.
"I waited for the day when his forced control would slip. I would be confirmed that the differences between us were too vast for anything more than the cursory relations that followed
the flight of the Phoenix. Hmm. An oddity."She raised and shook a finger in the air.
"Our vessel detected a temporal anomaly we assumed to be warp flight. Yet the readings we initially detected were not those of the Phoenix. The mystery has never been solved."
She looked at him yet again.
"You see? It was never my desire to keep you ignorant. But could you as a child have kept the secret of your sister only to yourself?"
"I still don't see why she or the two of you had to be kept a secret. But for now--what changed your mind about my father?"
He was keeping the conversation ruthlessly on target, so T'Pau kept on with her prior thought.
"When your mother died, his intense discipline fell away and he was a shattered thing. I had been certain he would maintain what I thought an artful, well-performed facade. When he did not, I saw that the strength and wisdom were his own, and quite real. I also found I could not abide seeing him in pain. I only meant to lend him some of my strength by way of a meld. But I saw such reserves of strength in him, that curiosity at last yielded to discovery. That discovery was the blood-simple one that the continued existence of one without the other was unthinkable. Your sister occurred as a result of a --cyclical fertile time-- in a female Vulcan's existence."
Archer bypassed questions of how they managed to keep such a liaison secret. Lovers for time without mind had done so, after all.
"Was it also his choice to keep her a secret?"
"It was his suggestion. He feared me losing my position. I came to fear something far greater. For if I, trained to be Sra Sra, had been so intrigued and unable to control my affection for a Human, and had been willing to lie and to yes, wrong all of my children, what then of other Vulcans? We are not made as you. For Humans, there are gradations between the summit and the pit. For Vulcans, it is the one or the other. Your past is less bloody than ours. It took only one atomic conflict to awaken your people. It took ours seventeen. We do not fear Humans. We fear what we will revert to around you. Then, all will have reason to fear."
Archer fought off the urge to shout down her somewhat circular logic.
"Your words sound very ominous. I can't believe that Surak's wisdom could be tossed away so easily. And apologies, Sra. But I think the fear is yours."
She nodded.
"It is. And I must choose for my world. Do you not see, Jonathan? When I first saw you after so many months, I wished dearly to hold my boy again, and let him know of my unfettered affection for him. But it is a small leap from there to wishing in the future to avenge your death, should that occur in battle or ill fortune. I am and must be Vulcan. So must we all. We are not advanced enough to be that when Humans are all about us."
Archer felt another ominous shift.
"Do these--impressions--tie into your proposal for a central government among the many known worlds?"
Her mouth upturned, a bit more visibly than it had when she entered the ship.
"Are you and the young woman at Communications lovers? You have long had a fondness for women of Asian descent. There was the reporter in San Francisco, investigating that brutal murder. You saved her life. I thought certain you two would marry."
He narrowed his gaze.
"Don't. Don't go there, and don't keep changing the subject. Now, this Federation. Does it tie in?"
She would never gulp, yet her face almost seemed to show that.
"It is my gift to you, and to your father's memory. The Humans, who are well aware of their own flaws, will emerge as a galactic power, guiding the others and learning from them as well, til we should reemerge and join you."
"Who said we're ready for that? And what do you mean by reeemerge?"
Her eyes now pleaded for sympathy.
"It is my intention that Andor, Tellar and Vulcan shall call a conference of the many worlds, and quickly piece together this central force for good and right. Its capital will be on Earth. The model I have used is your own American Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the Paris Unity Treaty of 2036. They showed that beings of brilliance and determination can rapidly forge living documents of eternal wisdom. The Vulcan model, I fear, is too slow and plodding for this dire time, when forces of tyranny and piracy strike without warning or mercy."
Her words were too complimentary of humanity for him to not sense a 'but'.
"Then what?"
She closed her eyes.
"Then, Vulcans will by my decree and guidance withdraw from galactic life for a period of fifty years, during which time we will gather ourselves against your species' unintentional challenge to all that we are."
This third blow was staggering to Archer, and he let it be known.
"If you do that, not only will the galaxy suffer, but Vulcans will rapidly go from being real people to caricatures! If you pull back, Vulcans will be creatures spoken of in stories, and not all of them will be good ones. To guard against a potential threat, you will create a very real one. How will people of good will turn back the prejudiced if there are no real Vulcans to point to and refute them? And this central government needs a lot of guiding hands. Remember Humans? The species you had barely met when we blew ourselves to Hell? Yes, we are more comfortable with our emotions. We also admire the kind and generous people that gave us a hand up when we needed it, when those emotions threatened to eat us alive. We must still learn from each other. I beg you not to do this."
She still would not look at him.
"This is how it must be."
Archer left then, and he would barely reach his quarters before the tears began. For the person he had thought of a mother had been just that, yet she had also proven to be not at all the person he thought she was. In time, the door buzzed.
"Not now."
But Paula walked through, and grasped his hand.
"I feel for you, Jonathan. For I was never allowed illusions about their perfection."
"Hey, sis? Am I a fool?"
Her smile was open.
"No. You're a very good man--with even better friends."
Archer looked at her in confusion, and then realization.
"Just what is Trip up to?"
--------
When her aide had returned, T'Pau had received the short cryptic note.
*1787 Philadelphia = 1861 Fort Sumter. 2036 Paris = 2078 Baffin Bay. For more, come to the conference room.*
Her thoughts a jumble after the confrontation with Jonathan, T'Pau left and indeed went to the conference room. Inside it sat Charles Tucker, who waited to speak until they were alone.
"Ma'am? I'm very likely your future son-in-law, and I'm here to say that this Federation of yours just isn't gonna work."
T'Pau stood in serenity. This Human did not hold any portion of her heart. She had never wronged him, or lied to him, and in fact she was never likely to know him, and so she felt well within her rights to act as Vulcan as her hereditary title demanded.
"You are Captain Archer's First Officer. For what reason did you contact me in so odd and illogical a manner?"
Charles 'Trip' Tucker smiled that smile his ancestors nearly had a genetic patent to. It was a smile so inherently disarming, that in the 1970's, his musician ancestor Jesse 'Strings' Tucker had songs written about it by singers Carly Simon and Dolly Parton--among others.
"Ma'am. I'm not your son or your daughter. I'm best friends with one, and much more than friends with the other. Eventually, I even plan to figure out which is which. Both of em' snore, though. Kinda makes it difficult."
Her patience with his humor was limited and now failing.
"Your point?"
As if a drunk who by will could instantly purge his systems, Tucker met the Lady serious for serious.
"My point, Ma'am is that I respect and love and trust those two enough to let them settle their own family business. So what I'm doing here has no bearing on all that, and the inverse of that is true as well. I said I was here to teach you about Earth history, and that's what I'm about to do. So I'll ask you to sit down and maybe even strap yourself in."
T'Pau did not raise an eyebrow, but it was implicit in her speech pattern.
"I know Earth History well, Executive Officer. I wrote a noted book on the subject, some twenty-five years ago. Perhaps you read it?"
Trip nodded, still smiling and faking sincerity rather well.
"The Arc Of Triumph. A glowing praise of our little mudball's history. To hear you tell it, that treaty signing in Paris in 2036 was all but inevitable from the moment that Paris kidnapped Helen. You very logically showed that we Humans had no choice but to overcome every last obstacle we and anyone else could come up with. If you'd found historiographical proof, I even think you'da worked in Cain and Abel."
"There was proof of Cain, at least. But it required believing in so-called Immortals, including at least two or three bullies over six millennia in age. I disallowed the evidence as illogical."
Tucker narrowed his gaze.
"I'm suspicious of you, Lady T'Pau. You admire us a little too well, and not wisely enough."
She looked at him.
"You speak in non sequiturs. More of your odd humor?"
"No, Ma'am. Did you know that Robert E. Lee thought that slavery was nothing to fight for, and that the states in Dixie should have spent all that fugitive slave recovery money on industrialization, like say New York State? Did you know that Admiral Yamamoto fell out with Tojo Hideki over a military reorganization based on a plan made by one of his American idols, Theodore Roosevelt? That Colonel Green won an Alexis De Tocqueville Award for his own History Of The Democracies? Sometimes admiring a people or a concept only means that you are better armed and set to oppose it, when the time comes to choose sides."
She chose to sit down, at that.
"Explain your position, Commander."
He did the same, though at a slight but courteous remove.
"In 1787, certain would-be delegates to the American Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia avoided it entirely, decrying what they saw as a scheme to undo the sovereignty of individual states. Most who had those worries came anyway, though. Through complex representation schemes, they were bought off. Put simply, they were allowed to keep slavery alive."
T'Pau now did raise an eyebrow.
"Put very simply, Commander. The issues bandied about there were many times more complex than mere chattel slavery, loathsome though that very concept be. A great nation and a vital experiment were codified in that short period. Both thrived and endured. As will the Federation."
"Yet I stand by what I said, Ma'am. Because slavery ultimately placed both nation and experiment into mortal jeopardy."
Vulcan debate was notably short on the art of the feint. T'Pau entered what was not a trap, but was definitely Tucker's territory.
"With the exception of the pirates Jonathan's potential bondmate turned away, slavery is not a modern issue. If it will help, I will offer multiple further guarantees against its existence in any form, when the Constitution is written."
Tucker nodded.
"You have guts, Ma'am. Now, if you'll stop dodging the issue and trying to marry off your stepson, I can get to what my real point is. Slavery isn't the issue. How the USA's Founders chose to handle it was. These were brilliant folk. Their whole families were. Their wives weren't trophies. No, they were vital sounding boards. They all butted heads and in a short while, out came a document that never fails to impress. Yet so it came down that within three quarters of a century, their experiment lay in utter ruin, two nations, under vexation."
"Now I suppose you will tell me why this happened, if slavery were not the cause. States' rights?"
A smart historian never assumed they knew more than another. It was all perspective, and part of that was delivered by sheer confidence.
"States' rights is one of a multitude of good causes that got hopelessly hijacked by worthless folks with hate in their hearts and air in their heads. But see, states' rights, slavery and homesteading weren't the bullets. They were the guns. The bullets were the deadline history put these people under. In 1787 Philadelphia, the US Articles Of Confederation just weren't working out well enough. In 2036 Paris, the failures of the League Of Nations, The United Nations and The Aligned Goals Organization all made people crave a central authority with teeth and claws. Yet as surely as Fort Sumter in 1860 came around, so did Baffin Bay in 2078. No one thought Colonel Green would actually do it."
Tucker activated a monitor and on-screen, an actor named Anthony Carradine recited words that no Terran could ever forget.
*Let the world be made to take notice. The United Earth has too many enemies, and the people are sheep in opposing them. So unto this body of water, the pure oxygen source for an entire hemisphere, I unleash the means by which we will begin the last war of purification. I do what is necessary. In time, you will be made to understand. Like Alexander, like Singh, I destroy the world in order to create it.*
Tucker shut it off.
"The Oxygen Destroyer. A weapon that, until Green's crew went to work, existed only in an early anti-nuclear fantasy. Every atom of oxygen in that Bay was instantly converted to hydrochloric acid. The air around it turned to nitric acid. The Western Command panicked as the oxygen began to run out. They seized Greenland. The EU told them to give it back. Go to hell, they were told. You have the Mediterranean. The bombs began to drop soon after. All because the negotiators in Paris said that Oxygen rights could be settled another day, just as the folks in Philly said for slavery. And have no doubt, Lady T'Pau. Your Federation, if it is rushed into, will have something that will eventually pry it apart. Maybe it'll be food shipments to outlying colonies, or some fool treaty that cedes somebody's backyard without telling them first."
She looked harshly at him.
"My proposal addresses such matters. As for the rest, it will be a living document, open to change."
Tucker, having made his point, got up to leave.
"If you want it to stay alive, don't attempt a quickie for your own piece of mind. Give it a gestation period, and I mean a good long one. And stick around to feed it. Because its going to have allergies no living being could foresee, and then is when a child needs its mother. Ma'am."
The great woman was left alone, and was almost amused when she realized that, true to Trip's prediction, it had not been Jonathan or Paula or the absent but objecting Skonn who had struck at her surety. Her unborn child, this idea of Federation, had been called into question by one who might one day but had not yet become her child by law.
The conference was at last underway. Archer took his shift on the Bridge with Napolitano covering the helm/nav console on semi-auto mode. Travis Mayweather's detailed testimony about the varied multiple hazards faced by space-lane traders was vital to the stated purpose of the conference. Malcolm Reed was walking Sato Hoshi through a basic security regimen, to see if it was one she could integrate into her Comm duties, the aim being her long-term full assumption of those burdens.
"Re-atmosphering complete, Captain. Hoses are withdrawn. No planetary beacons on sensors. We remain unchallenged. Weapons systems remain active, polarized shielding readied as before, auto-avoidance messages broadcasting in all known."
Archer saw that the door to the Bridge remained dual-locked, a nod to the priorities of the conference. The woman before him was described as being the ship's sexiest, yet his desire for solitude with her had nothing to do with that.
"Was it hard, keeping the secret from me when we were kids?"
Paula didn't look up. She couldn't afford to. Mayweather's disgraced predecessor, Prisoner Hofstrom Berling, had lost his position for not paying attention to what was, after all, the ship's cerebral cortex.
"No. I knew who you were, before we ever met. Father made it a game. I was shown your face on a screen, and I practiced just talking to it. My brother was a magic face, and I was promised that for never telling, I would be allowed to meet that face."
His voice was a little wistful.
"I should have treated you better."
Hers was firm in its tone.
"I never had any real complaints. It wasn't your job to raise me, Jonathan. And even after you kicked me out of your bed, you sometimes let me sleep on the floor. The only time I hated you was when you left to join Space Fleet Central. I felt like you had left me."
"I tried writing. T'Pau told me you had gone to live with relatives."
"She and father feared letting your college and Academy friends see me. Inside our circle, no one commented on our similar looks. But outsiders would likely not be so reticent."
He nodded. It was all so damnably logical, and yet so devoid of concern for the damage to a little girl's spirit.
"I just wish I could have had the chance to hold you, as a baby. I wanted a little sister or brother, even before Mom died."
The board recalibrated as she turned and looked at him.
"You would have dropped me, just like you did every softball I tossed you."
He had to destroy that self-satisfied smirk.
"To throw like a girl is not logical, sister."
Barriers never truly present dissolved as they went on, keeping well their father's third greatest achievement. Yet questions lingered.
"Paula, what about the species' barrier? I mean, I'm glad they had you. But doesn't science from Sagan's day on down argue against simple conception?"
"The so-called species' barrier has always been exaggerated. When a human male missing his mate is in his prime, and when a Vulcan female's name-only bondmate refuses to hold to certain-- septennial commitments--the result can be, well..."
A gift-wrapped box was placed in front of her. Her captain and brother smiled.
"The result was something beautiful. Happy Birthday, Paula."
The framed photo within was digitally altered. A four-year old boy beamed as he held his newborn sister, her little pointed ears quite obvious. Her gasp was audible.
Nothing more was said for the entire shift. Nothing more needed to be said. This part of it was done.
-------------------------------------------------
Inside the conference room, T'Pau sat and watched a vision come to pass. It just wasn't her vision. The voder-chips were straining, fit to bust.
"Anfo! You Andoria seek over rule all over of Sector Coridan!"
"Bavmet, Tellara you are. For Coridan you seek that there is having no government any. Order you seek to impose and peace and justice and calm and free trade. That you oppose."
Finally giving out and putting fingers to her temples, T'Pau spoke the words she had come to say.
"I have a proposal to shunt all such disputes away from the realms of blood and thunder. Hear me well, for its like has never been spoken of before."
-------------------------------------------------
It was Travis' turn to feed and walk Prisoner Berling. All took turns doing this. On a ship where a brig was a simple pressure-lock on a small emergency sleeping chamber, it became important to give no possible prisoner a chance to memorize any one jailer's routine. It had been that way on the fallen trading ship he'd served on, so Mayweather had no objections beyond the fact that he had also just finished his testimony at the conference.
"Hands turned to butter yet, Mister Mayweather?"
The duty, he had no objection to. The prisoner, though, was the lowest kind of obvious loser.
"Not unless I've had yours transplanted on to my wrists, Berling."
"Self-righteous prigs. All I need is the right break, and I'll make you all eat serious crow."
Mayweather cut the walk short and guided him back to his quarters. Travis then pushed Berling in, and held him against the wall.
"It is very, very possible that your antics just before Enterprise found my ship delayed that recovery by critical minutes. My family might still be alive, if not for you. So don't speak of breaks or eating, Mister Berling. Because you won't like what I break, and you sure as HELL won't like what I make you eat!"
Berling shuddered, but tried to keep up his bravado as Travis pulled back.
"Sure, blame me and not the freaking inhuman aliens who pulled the triggers!"
Mayweather moved for the door.
"The Andorians and Tellarites didn't understand that we weren't their enemy. But I think you and I understand each other very nicely, Berling. For your sake, I hope that's true. Because come your next round of big talk, I swear that I'll put you in the outer airlock, and then let the chips fall where they may."
The door shut on Prisoner Berling. Another would soon open, and the universe would shake as it creaked.
-------------------------------------------------
Inside her quarters, Hoshi grasped at her head, deciding that she hadn't felt this out of sorts since just after the Orion attack. The door chimed.
"Go away."
"Hoshi, we need to discuss this."
That part she couldn't dispute, so in walked Malcolm Reed. When the door closed, she looked at him in near-contempt.
"You let me believe there was a chance."
He nodded, somewhat ashamedly.
"Its a deception I've become practiced at, when it comes to young ladies."
She looked away from him.
"Why lie about that, of all things? Malcolm, it is the 22nd Century, last I checked. Just how many memorials near SpaceFleet HQ in San Francisco commemorate the fact that people don't hide away, anymore?"
Reed shrugged.
"To you and yours, it is the 22nd Century. In the household of my parents, certain things and concepts about people and their place stretch back all the way to the Middle Ages. I'd still prefer you kept what you know quiet. The bargain I've made with my parents ends only after my brother and his wife have children. Oaths are very important to me, Hoshi."
"What about happiness, Malcolm? Your happiness, and your ability to move about freely?"
He looked at the ceiling, and smiled.
"I have some measure of both. I call it Enterprise."
He left, and Hoshi muttered to herself.
"I am not going to be the ship's hard-luck love case. Not this girl. No--way."
-------------------------------------------------
The conferees emerged, one by one. Captain Archer was quite surprised to see his First Officer emerge with them. T'Pau made the announcement.
"Empowered as I am to speak for both Vulcan and Earth, let it be said that a network of relays, satellites, and observatories will soon stretch from the far side of Sol, through to Er'dn'a, and then on to what Tellara and Andoria both call The Place Of The Blue Mist. If friendly or aligned worlds wish it, this Article Of Confederated and Cumulative Equidistant Security Sensors may be amended and expanded to include them, as well. A maintenance organization will be created for it. Yet more may be needed."
Here it comes, thought Archer. If T'Pau and these two luminaries were backing it up, the Federation would be a reality by year's end.
"Commander Tucker will speak for us, hereafter."
Paula saw her man wink at her. Archer steeled himself. Who had won out? The unstoppable force or the immovable object?
"Thank you, Madame Ambassador. With the aid of the Ambassador and in fact everyone here aboard Enterprise, I have prepared the following recommendation : That over the course of the next ten years, an ongoing constitutional convention be convened, its purpose being the slow, deliberate construction of a quadrant-wide central government based on the principles of democracy and representative government, as stated in the United Earth Charter. The delegations will be separated thusly : A Vulcan-like Council to correctly word each proposal within a nanometer of its life. An Andorian-like Circle to weed out proposals as needs be. And a Tellarite-like Pit Of Open Debate, where anything and everything may be brought up. No hiding and wishing the sore points would go away. A decade is a different amount of time to different folks. But we figure its just long enough to hash things out without losing sight of what we started out for. To paraphrase a better soul than most of us will ever know, from the straits of The Bosporus on Earth to the top of Mount Seleya, from the Dagger Quarry on Andor to the Creation Myth Argument Hall on Tellar and then beyond, straight through to the edge of what Cochrane called The Final Frontier..."
A tear formed in his eye.
"...Let Freedom Ring!"
Anfo nudged Archer.
"You Captain. Who spoke such like words?"
Archer smiled.
"A King."
-------------------------------------------------
After Skonn's ship docked to take the Ambassadors to Vulcan to witness T'Pau's enthronement, Skonn himself spoke to Archer and Napolitano.
"You are my siblings, and at last I am able to speak with you of it. Jonathan, I will fight Mother on this withdrawal. I believe I can at least modify it. Paula, after I am bound, I will seek to have children by my wife. May I have your Vulcan name to give my firstborn?"
Paula smiled. If Jonathan's love had never been a question for her, that of her full-Vulcan other half-brother had been. Until now.
"I so yield my name, brother. Let your child be called on Vulcan 'Gift Of The Stars'."
Archer raised a finger.
"T'Pol's fine for a girl. But what if she's a he?"
Skonn nodded.
"Then we shall merely use the male transliteration."
Paula spoke it.
"Sarek."
Of course there could be no embrace. But in Skonn's face was an acceptance that these Humans weren't merely a puzzle to be solved, or a temptation to be avoided. Finally came T'Pau herself. Her looks were growing more severe, as though by force of will.
"We offer our grief with thee on the passing of thy mother."
Sad inside, Archer knew what this really meant.
"She wasn't perfect. But I always loved her. I always will."
She looked at him, a glance of polite disdain she would perfect over the course of one century.
"So like your father. So....Human."
There was no cause for her to speak or even look at Paula. The words spoken to Archer were also meant for her. A mother had died, a hero had been shown to have feet of clay, and history had just had one of those moments.
"Jonathan? May I be alone for a while?"
"A good idea, Ms. Napolitano. And when you don't want solitude, well, I'll be there."
"You always have been."
"No. Not always. But from now on."
Archer spoke to Tucker.
"I think you just saved the galaxy from a lot of dashed hopes, Trip."
"The Lady knew what she was doing, Cap'n. I just needed to remind her that impatience for a Vulcan was not logical. She wanted to set this up, do her cocooning, and wander out into a galaxy at peace. All I did was read her a little history."
Archer then smiled, and suddenly held Tucker against the wall, though not to hurt him.
"If you ever make my little sister cry, I'll
rip you limb from limb."The Captain released his friend, brushed him off, and shrugged.
"Sorry, Trip. I'm doing a lot of catch-up work."
Trip quickly got even, pasting on a broad smile.
"I have made her cry, you know. Not the way you mean. But I have made her cry."
Archer smiled, too.
"She'll make an old man out of you."
Remembering a shoulder that Phlox had relocated a few weeks back, courtesy of Paula, Trip could not argue the point.
-------------------------------------------------
THREE WEEKS LATER
With nearly a full Bridge complement, Archer asked a now-familiar question.
"Rendevous time?"
Mayweather shrugged.
"Thirteen Hours, Captain."
"Hoshi, Comm Range?"
"Not even close enough for code yet, sir."
"Napolitano, any notable hazards to navigation?"
"Except for the Warp Five Barrier--no, sir. Permission to speak freely?"
He sulked a bit.
"Granted."
"Jonathan, we all want to get rid of Berling. But the prisoner transfer ship is as far away as it is. So stop asking."
Her words bordered on insubordination, but she was also right.
"Sorry, everyone. But to find out he conned his way into Spacefleet burns me. We don't even have his real name, yet. I wanna see him and his stupid haircut gone."
An Amen passed around the Bridge. Then the internal comm sounded.
"Reed to Bridge! Its an emergency!"
"Archer here. Malcolm, what's wrong?"
There was a brief silence.
"Sir, a travel pod of a vaguely pyramid-like design just appeared in our pod-bay."
"Appeared?"
"Yes, sir! Out of nowhere. Its about five meters long."
Archer pointed at Napolitano.
"Paula, get Trip up here. Hoshi, you're with me, after you tell Doctor Phlox to meet us."
Quickly, she had her sidearm in hand, and together they made for the bay. Phlox was already tending to a still-stunned Reed. The pod looked like it was made of a shiny material. Hoshi drew her weapon as the door opened--by materializing on the pod's hull.
"Please, my friend is wounded. Is one of you a Doctor?"
Both men appeared to be human, and made no effort to attack. Archer asked the conscious one a question.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
The man looked lost--and he was.
"My name is Daniels, Captain Archer. We two are from your future."
TBC in Land Of Canon : Time Crisis.