“I assure you,” she said calmly, “Mr. Tuvok deeply regrets what he was compelled to do under the star-jellies’ influence, and wants nothing more than to make amends for it. We do have means to guard against it happening again.”
“And we should trust the word of another telepath on this?” snapped Chi’tharu, a wiry veteran who had been chosen as huntsmaster for the expedition. “How do we know they are not influencing you now? It is sung in the ancient songs, it is known to all that the Spirit does not abide telepaths in the Hunt, for they compromise the stealth on which victory depends.”
“With all respect, Huntsmaster Chi’tharu, this is not a hunt. We—”
“All life is a Hunt.”
She went on. “We are trying to create a new kind of balance, one based on communication. Telepathic intermediaries are the only way to communicate with the skymounts.”
“But him?”
Deanna explained her reasoning in choosing Tuvok, someone whom the jellies trusted and who could be valuable in advising them tactically. But Chi’tharu was unconvinced. “What do you know of tactics? You are an empath—a weakling, bled by others’ wounds.”
“She is not weak,” Qui’hibra said, silencing the other with his quiet, simple sternness. “She worked tirelessly with the refugees. And she saved Oderi and others from the rampaging Fethet, striking a cunning blow against him and taking no pause for her safety.” A look passed between him and Oderi, and she sensed something else between them too—nothing sexual, but a sense of trust and reliance. Oderi had his ear, had told him what Deanna had done, and was now gratified that her words had done their job. Her loyalty could be a two-way street, it seemed; she wished to do the best for everyone.
Or maybe to take care of everyone? Did the Rianconi see themselves more as servants, or as parents?
“Because of that,” Qui’hibra continued, “I am willing to give you a chance to make this work. But understand that I do not indulge those who fail me. So you had best be very sure of this Tuvok—and of yourself.”
“Let’s be clear here,” she countered, coming on strong in response to the implied threat. “Are you speaking of failure, or of betrayal? I am sure that neither Tuvok nor I, nor any other telepathic member of this crew, will act in violation of their duties.” Regrettably, in some cases that would be because they would not be given the chance. She had sadly recommended that Orilly Malar remain confined to quarters for now, since she simply could not rely on the gestalt-starved Irriol’s ability to resist acting under the influence of other minds—not when it was so much in her evolutionary nature to do so. As for the other psi-sensitives, they would all be on duty (where applicable) but under guard, and kept from high-security areas on Titan,though they might be assigned to work aboard the star-jellies on a case-by-case basis if and when that stage was reached.
“But I cannot promise you that this effort will be successful. We’re trying something new here, and there are no guarantees. Threats and intimidation cannot change that. We will do our best. And if this plan does not work, then we will try something else. We will do so because we choose to and believe it is right—not because you growled at us or gave us an ultimatum.”
Chi’tharu and Tir’hruthi grew angrier at her haughty tone, but Qui’hibra softened fractionally, and she even sensed amusement in him. “Well said, Commander Troi. We cannot shout the balance into shifting in our favor. We go to the Hunt with no guarantee that we will triumph—only that if we fail, it will not be for want of effort or commitment. That is what I require of you and your crew. And I hope that you will not fail me. I hope you will not fail the galaxy.”
So do I,Troi thought devoutly. So do I.
“This plan is doomed to fail.”
Jaza Najem had not met enough Vomnin to know whether repeating oneself was a common practice in their culture. Indeed, given how widespread their worlds were throughout the Gum Nebula, Jaza was certain they had no single culture. But at least it seemed to be a personal habit of Podni Fasden, the Vomnin scientist accompanying this mission. She was a member of Udonok Station’s complement, sent as an observer on behalf of the Consortium which encompassed a plurality of the Vomnin-settled worlds. Her report would be reviewed by the Consortium’s government as they deliberated whether to lend their resources in support of building a partnership between the Pa’haquel and the star-jellies. Given that, Jaza was actually glad of her skepticism; a report of success would carry more weight from someone who had not expected success. Of course, that would require the effort actually succeeding, and Jaza could not be sure that would happen.
Still, he tried to stay optimistic. “But if you’re right, the jellies were engineered to serve as ships sometime in the past,” he reminded Fasden. “And they must have accepted it, or been designed to accept it. Given their form of reproduction, their conscious error-checking of their genome, they wouldn’t have kept those traits if they didn’t want them.”
“Their reasons for wanting them may not have been the same as those of their masters,” Fasden responded, crouching on her haunches while her long arms reached up to tap at a console. Vomnin posture kept them a bit lower to the ground than most humanoids, and on their station the controls had often been at or near floor level. Fasden seemed to have no trouble adjusting to the equipment here in the science lab, though. “Warp drive, replication, more potent weaponry—these are clearly pro-survival traits for most any species. The artificial gravity, as you surmised, is beneficial to their metabolism. So they would have had no reason to eliminate these or other traits when they eliminated their masters.”
Jaza wasn’t quite convinced that the jellies’ added traits had been given them by some other race. True, the Vomnin had been studying the question far longer than he had, and their genetic records—based on the accumulation rate of certain trivial mutations uncorrected by the jellies’ error-checking—showed that these traits and their associated behaviors had been added or enhanced some eight million years ago, later than most of their other attributes. (Their sapience, telepathy, and more limited telekinesis had evidently been innate properties.) The Vomnin assumed the enhancement had been done to turn the jellies into ships for some ancient race, but Jaza did not feel the evidence ruled out Eviku’s hypothesis that the jellies had independently chosen to adopt technologies they had observed. As Fasden said, they were beneficial survival traits.
But the question might never be answered. Despite the jellies’ shared memories, Counselor Troi had reported that their recall grew hazier the further one went back in time. Even telepathically transmitted memory was a subjective thing, susceptible to alteration and forgetfulness, and with each duplication it blurred further. Past a certain point, it was no more reliable than oral history and legend.
For now, though, Jaza admitted that Fasden’s theory was the more probable one, so he didn’t argue the point. At least, not that part of it. “You’re only assuming they turned on these hypothetical masters.”
“What else do you suppose could have become of them?” She shook her wide-featured bronze head. “In our researches we have found the remains of more than one civilization which attempted to master cosmozoans and was destroyed by the effort. They are simply too powerful to control. One world attempted to harness a variant of the sailseeds to extract the vital elements from its system’s asteroids and comets. They engineered away their migratory behavior. As a result, their whole system was overrun and its planets slowly disassembled.
“One great empire at war took a species of predatory cloud creature with metadimensional abilities, engineered it with warp capability and a hunger for humanoid blood, and turned it loose on its enemy. The creatures ended up nearly destroying both sides before they were stopped. And a few escaped to plague the rest of the galaxy, their fate still unknown.”