Ree shock his elongated head, a humanoid gesture he had learned to mimic. “Not without disrupting the Pa’haquel’s own endocrine systems. The two species’ hormone receptors are too isomorphic. Suppressing the effects of the jellies’ hormones would mean suppressing many of the Pa’haquel’s innate emotional responses and behavioral instincts. They would be unable to function without, say, the fight-or-flight response or the desire to mate.”
“Then there is no choice,” Qui’hibra said. “The experiment is over. You will return us to our fleet, Riker.”
“Where you’ll do what?” Deanna countered, striding forward to confront him. “Try to go back to the old ways? Chase after star-jellies that you can no longer catch?”
“That is exactly what we should do,” Se’hraqua interjected from his bed. “We will find new ways to take the prey. The Spirit is challenging us, and we will rise to the challenge and restore the balance.”
“Hunter!” Qui’hibra barked, silencing him. The elder then turned back to Troi and Riker. “We will return to our fleet and regroup. We will assess other options. But this option is a failure. It is out of balance, and without balance there is no survival. We must find some other way. At the very least, we can still hunt other starbeasts with the skymounts we have left. So long as the livemounts agree not to try to liberate their dead.”
“And how long will that last?” she asked. “Another few generations, maybe, but with ever-diminishing numbers. What then?”
“Do you have an alternative suggestion?”
“I’m still not convinced the alliance was a failure. You and the jellies were getting along very well after a few false starts.”
“Only when we were not in combat. They have proven that they cannot handle that.”
“Tell that to the thousands of Pa’haquel they’ve killed.”
“They were in no danger from us—you saw to that. They can defend their own when they must, but when faced with danger they flee. This was an easy hunt, and they could not even rise to it.”
“You pushed them into it before they were ready, Qui’hibra. You tried to fight against their emotions rather than working withthem, accepting those emotions and directing them constructively.” She drove the point in forcefully, aggressively, knowing he would respect that, knowing she had to push it through his tough hide. “Because you were too proud to tolerate being made to feel afraid and weak. You pride yourself so much on this cold, stalwart image. The great hunter, carved from stone, never bending, never losing control. So you tried to force your will on the jellies and you ended up spooking the herd. You fought so hard against a perceived loss of self-control that you lost control of the situation.” He glared at her coldly—but he was listening.
So she went on. “Sometimes, Qui’hibra, yielding is necessary. Part of being strong is knowing when to trust in others’ strength, to place yourself in their hands. It’s part of any healthy relationship. A balancedrelationship.”
The elder remained silent for a moment, then spoke decisively. “We will return to our fleet and regroup. However, you and the skymounts may come with us, and we will explore the possibility of continuing the alliance, along with other options. But if you wish this alliance to resume, you must find a way for the skymounts to prove themselves equal to the Hunt.”
Deanna exchanged an uneasy look with Will. Even if she could help the star-jellies meet Qui’hibra’s requirements…was that really something she could forgive herself for doing to them?
Orilly Malar was so slow to answer her door that Jaza wondered if he would have to pull rank. But eventually the door slid open, and the Irriol looked up at him with her big, sad blue eyes. “Hello, Commander. What can I do for you?”
“May I come in?” Wordlessly, she acquiesced. When the door had shut behind him, he got right to the point. “Cadet, I’ve gotten stalled in my investigation of star-jelly evolution. I could use the help of a good exobiologist. Any idea where I could find one?”
“I am a fairly good exobiologist,” she said matter-offactly. “But I’m not a good security risk. Perhaps you should try someone else.”
“Come on, Malar. You’re not going to be made to attack me or anything. The star-jellies have no incentive to push you into that.”
“No—but what if I learned something that they needed to know? Something that could further disrupt the state of affairs in the Gum Nebula, something the captain would not want the jellies to know?”
“I doubt there’s anything in this line of research that could be harmful. If anything, it could be helpful to our current efforts. I’m trying to learn more, if I can, about how they were genetically modified eight million years ago. About whether it was done by someone else or by themselves. And about who else could’ve done it, and why. I keep thinking: back then, maybe five to ten million years ago, the main wave front of star formation in the Orion Arm would have been passing through what’s now Federation space. Our home region would’ve been much like this region is today. It stands to reason that worlds there would’ve faced the same threat from cosmozoans. And it stands to reason that some forerunner of the Pa’haquel would’ve been waging this battle then. What if the jellies were engineered as part of that effort? What if they were used as ships for battling cosmozoans, and have instincts and abilities that they no longer remember they have? If there were some way of demonstrating that, it could help convince the Pa’haquel to try the alliance again.”
Orilly pondered his words, then spoke uncertainly. “Pardon me for saying so, sir…but it can be unwise to start with a desired conclusion and search for evidence to confirm it.”
“Yes, I know, science should never have an agenda. Personally I’ll be happy either way—I just want to find some answers. I hate not knowing. But I’ve run out of places to look for evidence. I’ve had the computer searching through all our records, looking for scientific findings that might turn out to be connected to the star-jellies. Unexplained remains that could be star-jelly skeletons. Geological formations that were once their breeding pools. Ideally maybe the destroyed remains of a cosmozoan planet-killer with scars bearing the signature of star-jelly stings. But I’ve found nothing definite, nothing more than vaguely suggestive. And even that’s probably just my own agenda making me read things into the data.”
Orilly tilted her head, flexing her fingers thoughtfully. “It’s a big galaxy, sir. And the star-jellies can travel very far. The odds are that they originated somewhere else entirely.”
“I know. It’s just frustrating not to have the answers. The best I can do is send what I’ve learned back to Starfleet, and maybe someday, some ship exploring another part of the galaxy will find more answers. But I might be long gone by then. And it’ll always feel like I missed something…like I failed to know the star-jellies as well as I wished to.”
“Evolutionary history is always fragmentary,” Orilly said after a contemplative moment. “So much of the past is simply not preserved. So much of what we conclude is extrapolation and large-scale patterns, and many of the specific causes and pivotal events will never be filled in.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“No,” she said. “My interest in life-forms…is not about their dead ancestors, but about the living beings in the here and now. I wish to know them, to commune with them, to sense their part in the gestalt of nature, and…and maybe feel a connection with them.” She was quiet for a moment, but he sensed she wasn’t finished. “A connection like I felt with the star-jellies. That was…” She trailed off. “Anyway, that is why I took up exobiology. Why I hoped I could make a career of it. To know life as it is, not as it was.”