By the Book (20 page)

"I have heard Engineer Tucker question you."

"Trip knows protocol," Archer said. "He states his opinion at the appropriate time. He is not insubordinate."

T'Pol raised a single eyebrow. "Do you believe that I have been insubordinate?"

"I warned you at the beginning of this voyage about your Vulcan cynicism. You've curtailed that somewhat, but you still insist on acting as if you're supervising us. You are not, Subcommander. I'm in charge of this ship, and I respect your opinion, but in the hierarchy of the Enterprise crew, it does not rank above mine."

"Even when I am correct?" she asked.

"Even if you are correct," he said.

She studied him for a moment. "That does not allow for the free exchange of opinion."

"Damn right," he snapped. "This is a starship, not a university. I'd thank you to remember that when you're standing on my bridge."

She nodded once. "Is that all, sir?"

"No." He was nearly shouting. He took a deep breath and forced himself to speak softer. "No, it isn't."

She put her hands behind her back and raised her chin.

"You have an opinion that you know will get a reaction out of me, one that my crew doesn't need to see," he said. "This room or any place other than the bridge is the place to express that opinion."

"I see," she said. "Thank you."

She turned and headed for the door.

"You are not dismissed," he said.

She stopped.

"I want to hear that opinion."

She hesitated. "Captain?"

"I'm not silencing you, Subcommander," he said. "I'm making certain you do not undermine my command. Do you understand the difference?"

"You believe when I question you on the bridge, I undermine your command?"

"I believe that you could, yes, and it could encourage my other officers to do the same. In serious situations, that might mean that someone doesn't follow an order they need to follow even if they don't understand it."

"I understand your orders, Captain." T'Pol's voice had a chill. He had offended her again. How he offended someone who claimed to have no emotion he had no idea.

"Do you?" he asked. "Then why are you having trouble with this conversation?"

She turned slowly, first her head, then the rest of her body. "I believe that our cultures handle intellectual disagreement differently."

"Yes, they do," Archer said, feeling a familiar frustration. "That has been the crux of our problem with the Vulcans since the first moment we met you."

"We are allowed to challenge our commanders," she said.

"So are we," Archer said. "However, on a ship, there's a protocol for it, and you haven't been following it, especially lately. That's all I'm telling you."

For a moment, he thought she was going to disagree with him. Then she inclined her head forward once.

"Now," he said, "what were you planning to tell me about the Hipon."

She seemed to gather herself as if she had put the argument out of her mind and had to remember it before she could speak. "The Hipon representative is correct. You should not interfere any further in Fazi culture."

"Give me a good reason," he said, crossing his arms. "A reason that has nothing to do with Vulcan priorities. Give me a reason that will benefit not just the Hipon, but the Fazi."

"Very well." She hadn't moved away from the door.

Her gaze dropped to his crossed arms-a sign that he wasn't open to her opinions-and he uncrossed them, letting them fall to his side.

"Your contact with the Fazi," she said, "has already altered the course of their future and many of their belief systems."

"I know that," he said. "Since we're already in the lake, why shouldn't we swim across?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Since we've already made a difference, why not continue?" he said, wishing that Vulcans didn't always take things so literally.

"I am not suggesting that we hold them back," T'Pol said. "However, I agree with the logic of the Hipon. The Fazi should be allowed to move at their own speed."

"And who is to say what their speed is?" Archer demanded. "Not me, I can tell you that. You? Or the Hipon?"

She said nothing.

"No, it is the Fazi who should decide their own pace."

"Introducing new information into their culture will change that culture," T'Pol said.

"Giving them information allows them to make choices in their own development," Archer said. "They already have warp drive. They have made their first forays into space. They'll learn things that they hadn't already known. I don't see the harm in contacting them again."

"Each contact," T'Pol said, "gives them more information. Each piece of information will change the culture-particularly their highly structured, very rigid culture. Your first two contacts with the Fazi did not go well. If the third goes poorly, the Fazi may decide that they do not want to contact other species at all, ever again. You would have affected their development and that effect would be, in my opinion, negative."

Archer took a deep breath. "So, you're saying I should leave them with the negative impression they've gained of humans."

"This is not about humanity," T'Pol said, twisting his own words back at him. "It would do you well to remember that. It is not up to you to interfere with the development of the Fazi people just because you disagreed with what the Vulcan policy was with Earth."

Anger surged through him. Maybe he wanted these meetings in the ready room so that the rest of the crew wouldn't learn how to get under his skin the way she did. She always knew how to make him angry and defensive.

"I will not hold the Fazi back the way your people held Earth back," he said.

"We did not hold you back," T'Pol said. "We allowed you to develop at your own pace."

"Showing an incredible blindness to the way that humans operate," Archer said. "We grasp new information and new concepts and use them. We like new ideas and we like to use them. We are always willing to learn."

"We understand humans and human culture," T'Pol said. "Your people are very reckless in their pursuit of knowledge. I've observed that behavior in you. Your decision to go to Rigel in pursuit of the Klingon could have had disastrous results for this ship. Your unwillingness to wait until Ensign Hoshi had gained a full understanding of Fazi culture before you blustered onto the planet also showed that same recklessness."

"So you Vulcans have only been protecting us from ourselves." He let the full force of his sarcasm out.

"Yes," she said.

He had no response to that. He wanted to slam his fist against the wall, but he didn't. Instead, he took several deep breaths to calm himself. It did no good to fight a Vulcan when you were angry because the Vulcan rarely was.

"We spent some time learning your culture before we decided to trust you with information," T'Pol said. "Your knowledge of the Fazi is a week old. The Hipon, who have known the Fazi for two thousand of this planet's years, believe that too much information will be bad for them."

"You're willing to trust the Hipon?" Archer said. "You know less about them than I know about the Fazi."

"Captain." T'Pol's voice lowered. She sounded almost conciliatory. "I am not advocating that you hold any culture back. I am asking that you not push them forward. There is a third option."

"Giving them the information a bit at a time, like the Hipon have done," he said, shuddering inside. That required a long commitment to the planet, one he was not willing to make.

"I ask you to consider this," she said. "To the Fazi, your arrival is a cataclysmic event."

He raised his head and looked at her.

"They are a very structured people. Their language is so precise that they have only one word for things most cultures have many words for. Their buildings, their roads, their very lives are so rigid that they have trouble with the smallest change. A sentence spoken out of turn is offensive to them, as you learned, Captain."

She had his attention. Grudgingly, but she had it.

"Their only other contact with a race that was not native to their planet resulted in death for their people. That contact with the Hipon probably caused the rigidity of thought that marks the Fazi culture."

"Because they needed to learn control to survive so close to the Hipon," Archer said.

"Precisely," T'Pol said. "To them, your arrival could have been no more shocking had you dropped a bomb in the middle of their capital city. I am certain that their culture is in the same kind of disarray it would be in had you dropped that bomb."

"Because they considered themselves alone in the universe."

"Yes," T'Pol said.

Archer frowned. "But they knew the Hipon weren't native."

"How did they know?" T'Pol said. "They cannot communicate with each other. They know only that the Hipon live on the southern continent and are very, very dangerous."

Archer turned away from her and paced in the small ready room. He couldn't help it. He'd been waiting and standing still through most of this mission, and it was driving him crazy.

"More information," T'Pol said, "will cause more chaos, and we do not know enough about the Fazi to know how they will react to that chaos. I suggest that we leave them in peace and let their relationship with the Hipon continue to develop along its own natural lines."

He glared at her for a moment, then stopped pacing. "I will take that opinion under consideration."

"Please understand, Captain, that with your command comes great responsibility."

"I'm fully aware of that, Subcommander," Archer said. "That was the point I was trying to make to you earlier."

T'Pol ignored his last statement. She went on as if she hadn't heard it. "Sometimes the life or death of entire cultures will depend on your actions. And since your culture does not have the experience of many first contacts behind it, or even a set of rules guiding you in such contacts, I suggest you do not understand the consequences of even the simplest actions now."

"Are you saying humans are too stupid to handle first contacts?"

"No, just uninformed." She took one step toward him, which was, he thought, the closest she could come to pleading with him. "Consider what I have said to you about the Fazi and the impact we have already had upon them. The interactions you have had may seem quite small to you, but I assure you, to the Fazi, they are life-altering."

Her dark gaze met his for a moment. Then she nodded, pivoted, and left the ready room.

He almost stopped her. He hadn't given her permission to leave But he knew there would be no changing T'Pol, just as there was no changing him when his mind was made up.

Archer had been so sure of so many things back home. Especially sure the Vulcans had been wrong in their treatment of humanity. And he still was.

But now, faced with a similar situation and the responsibility, going slowly and cautiously suddenly made a great deal of sense.

He just didn't like admitting that to anyone. Especially himself.

This was one of those times when Travis Mayweather wished he had a higher rank. He wanted to be in on the discussions with the captain about the possible visits to the Hipon cities.

Initially, Ensign Cutler and a few others had received permission to travel to the underwater cities, and meet more of the Hipon. Chief Engineer Tucker, Crewman Williams, and Crewman Novakovich were supposed to alter enough environmental suits for several crew members to travel below the surface. The alterations included the installation of the psionic shield into the suits so that the crew could be around the Hipon without suffering injury.

Then, at the last minute, that plan had changed. Only Mayweather and Reed would be going to the surface, as escorts for their Hipon guests. Mayweather would fly the Hipon back and Reed would be along in case something went awry.

Trip was finishing the adjustments to Mayweather's environmental suit-with Mayweather in it. The engineer wanted to make sure that the shield surrounded Mayweather's face completely, leaving no part of his head unguarded. It was trickier than it sounded.

They stood in engineering, underneath the cat-walk. The warp engines throbbed beside them, the sound muffled by Mayweather's helmet. He hated the environmental suit. It was uncomfortable in the best of circumstances-and this wasn't the best of circumstances.

Mayweather squirmed, trying to ease a spot that felt like it would chaff.

"Hold still," Trip said. "You're jumpier than a June bug on hot concrete."

"That's a new one for you," Mayweather said. "You decide to take up reading again?"

"Yeah, like you've been doing heavy lifting," Trip said, "sitting there in the mess playing with make-believe Martians."

"Trust me," Mayweather said, "they are tougher to beat than you might expect."

Trip snorted and continued making adjustments. Mayweather felt the way he had when he was best man at a friend's wedding. The friend had insisted on old-fashioned morning coats, which had to be specially fitted. Mayweather had stood in some San Francisco tailor's fitting room for nearly two hours while the guy fussily poked and marked and pinned everything.

Once Mayweather had asked if he could use a holographic image like other fashion designers, and he got poked with a pin. He still thought that was deliberate.

"Stop moving," Trip said from behind him.

"I'm not," Mayweather lied.

He wanted to ask how long this would take. He was still toying with talking to the captain about seeing those cities.

Mayweather had seen the scans of the cities and the transports that had brought the Hipon to the Fazi homeworld so long ago. They were magnificent. Long, elegant buildings that looked as if they were made of sea coral. To the untrained eye, the buildings seemed to have grown out of the sea bottom.

Cutler had shown him all the various features that proved they were assembled, not grown, and as she did, Mayweather noticed how similar parts of the Hipon cities were to the Martian city she had been describing. He asked her if that was intentional, and she had blinked.