The being with Vaughn—whose name the translator approximated as “Ventu,” but whom Vaughn had come to think of as “Red-BlueOne”—shimmied slightly in response, sending a complicated series of orange-yellow ripples across his flesh. Vaughn’s own modified translator decoded the communication as “Life is a beauteous thing.”
And that,Vaughn thought, sums up the Vahni.Four billion beings with a benevolent, global government, at peace among themselves, with their world, and with what they knew of the rest of the universe. And they had a technological sophistication that matched their social achievement. Accomplished astronomers and physicists, they had traveled throughout their solar system, discovered subspace, and now stood on the brink of developing both warp drive and transporter technologies. All in all, Vaughn was pleased that the Vahni had found Defiant.
The crew had been on the sixth day of their journey in the Gamma Quadrant, charting and studying the Vahni system via long-range sensors, when they had received a subspace transmission. The message had lacked an audio component, but its visual portion had shown two strange beings, essentially humanoid in shape and size, but wildly different in most other respects. The beings—two of the Vahni Vahltupali—had two legs below a long, narrow torso, two tentacles that approximated arms, and a bulbous, headlike projection atop their frame. Tall and slender, their bodies possessed a firm but malleable and many-jointed skeleton, allowing them to contort their bodies dramatically. They had neither vocal nor auditory organs, but a complex ocular organ ringed their heads. Most intriguing of all had been their flesh, over which they could exercise remarkable control, changing its color and texture in whole or in part.
The two beings sending the message had been different colors, one a reddish blue and the other a greenish yellow, but the shapes and hues flickering across their skins had been identical and had repeated. The crew had concluded that the Vahni communicated via the epidermal patterns, and they had set out to decode the transmission. Ensign ch’Thane had succeeded fairly quickly in determining the rudimentary meaning of the message, which had been an invitation to the Vahni world. Vaughn had considered the matter carefully, since the Prime Directive generally barred Starfleet contact with pre-warp civilizations, but a gray area existed in the regulation when the civilization itself initiated first contact.
For a day and a half, Lieutenant Nog and his engineering staff, along with Lieutenant Candlewood and Ensign ch’Thane, had worked with Vahni technicians to develop a translation system. The Vahni had previously made contact with two other spacefaring—and verbal—species, and so they had already created equipment for the task; it had therefore only been a matter of adapting it to the Defiantcrew’s universal translators. The completed device included an optic patch of fine mesh spread across the chest of each Starfleet uniform, with the interface between the patch and the universal translator mounted in a small casing worn on the hip. The system worked amazingly well, given the diverse natures of the two methods of communication, though occasional lapses did occur.
“We’ve enjoyed our stay here,” Vaughn told Ventu, who had been one of those who had first contacted Defiant.Ventu served within the government here, on one of the many councils given over to affairs of state; the jurisdiction of his council included establishing relations with off-worlders, and he had acted as Vaughn’s guide during the crew’s time here. “We thank you for your hospitality,” Vaughn continued, and then he waited while the translator interpreted his words and sent them shimmering across his chest. Ventu shifted, and a burst of colors bloomed on his flesh, twisting and spinning into complex forms and then vanishing.
“Our people like you being here,” came the interpretation of Ventu’s response. The neutral tone of the voice produced by the translator seemed to Vaughn a poor analogue for the vibrancy of the original communication. “We are [untranslatable].”A low tone signaled the words that could not adequately be deciphered. “Your people are friendly and we welcome you to our world always.”
“Commander,” someone called out, the sound of a raised voice in this environment oddly intrusive. Vaughn looked out over the wall surrounding the top of the tower and saw Lieutenant Bowers and Ensign Roness approaching along with a bright-blue Vahni. Bowers and Roness both waved, and the bounces in their gaits and the smiles on their faces told Vaughn that they had been enjoying their time in the city—as had all the crew. Over the last couple of days, the entire complement of Defianthad cycled down to the planet at one time or another, all of them enchanted by the unique inhabitants of this world. “We’re coming up,” Bowers called, pointing to the tower while colors flickered across the front of his uniform. Vaughn held his hand up, not waving, but indicating that he had seen and heard the lieutenant.
Vaughn turned back to Ventu. “When we return to our own people,” he said, “they will send others here to establish formal relations with you.” Vaughn’s translator drew his words.
“We will look forward to that time,” Ventu flashed. The Vahni then bent at his midsection, just above the tops of his legs, his head coming down to within centimeters of the floor. He reached out a tentacle, and the four smaller, opposable tentacles at its end wrapped themselves around the handle of a cloth bag he had carried here. Ventu opened the bag, then reached in with his other tentacle and withdrew what appeared to be a fist-sized ball composed of an iridescent, silvery material. He stood back up and held it out toward Vaughn.
“What is this?” Vaughn asked, taking the object.
“It is a remembrance for you of the Vahni Vahltupali.” Vaughn turned the ball around in his hands and examined it. The structure of the object was not solid, he saw, but resembled a crumpled piece of paper. As he manipulated it, the surfaces seemed to move, as though covered with a thin layer of liquid.
Apparently sensing Vaughn’s confusion, Ventu extended a tentacle and slipped one of his digits beneath a thin strip of the silvery material, which Vaughn had not seen. Ventu pulled the strip loose with a quick snap, and the ball began to unfurl. In seconds, the object had straightened into a flat sheet, about the size of a companel display. On its surface was a hologram of the city from its tallest point: the tower in which they stood. Vaughn understood now why the Vahni had wanted to bring him to this location before he transported back up to Defiant.
“This is wonderful,” Vaughn said. He peeked at the other side of the object and saw the shimmering, silvery material. “Thank you.”
“To have a new friend is wonderful,” Ventu flashed. “You are welcome.”
Vaughn heard footsteps echoing to his left, through the archway at the top of the stairs. He compressed the picture Ventu had given him back into a ball—it collapsed with almost no effort—found the strip, and fastened it back in place. A moment later, Bowers and Roness emerged from the archway, followed by their Vahni guide. “Commander,” Bowers said, his breathing slightly labored after having climbed the four flights to the roof of the tower. “Brestol just took us on a tour of their natural-history museum. Have you seen it?” Vaughn watched the patch on the lieutenant’s chest as he spoke, fruitlessly trying to correlate his words with the forms and colors into which they were coded.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” Vaughn said. He bowed his head toward Brestol, a greeting he was sure required no translation, and indeed, Brestol made a similar motion in response.
“It’s truly amazing, sir,” Bowers enthused. “The evolutionary chain on this planet…I’m no biologist, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”